Summa Theologica

natural causes, cannot be foreknown through the consideration of causes, because their causes do not have a determined inclination toward such effects. And therefore such effects cannot be foreknown, unless they are considered in themselves. Now men can consider such effects in themselves only while they are present, just as when a man sees Socrates running or walking; but to consider such things in themselves, before they happen, is proper to God, who alone in His eternity sees those things that are future as if they were present, as has been established (Part I, qu. 14, art. 13, and qu. 57, art. 3, and qu. 86, art. 4). Whence it is said (Isai. XLI, 23): Declare what are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods. If anyone, therefore, presumes to foretell or foreknow such future things in any way, unless God reveals it, he manifestly usurps for himself what belongs to God; and from this some are called diviners. Whence Isidore says (Etymolog. bk. VIII, ch. 9): "Diviners are so called as if 'full of God' (Deo pleni): for they pretend to be full of Divinity, and through a certain cunning of fraudulence, they conjecture future things for men." Divination, therefore, is not said to exist if someone foretells those things which happen by necessity, or for the most part, which can be foreknown by human reason: nor even if someone knows other contingent future things, through God revealing them: for then he does not divine himself, that is, he does not do what is divine, but rather he receives what is divine. But then one is only said to divine, when he usurps for himself in an undue manner the foretelling of future events. Now it is clear that this is a sin. Whence divination is always a sin. And for this reason Jerome says on Micah (ch. 3), that "divination is always taken in an evil sense."

To the first, therefore, it must be said that divination is not named from an ordered participation in something divine, but from an undue usurpation, as has been said (in the body of the article).

To the second, it must be said that some arts exist for the purpose of foreknowing future events which occur by necessity or frequently, which do not pertain to divination. But for knowing other future events, there are no true arts or disciplines; but fallacious and vain ones, introduced by the deception of demons, as Augustine says (De civit. Dei, bk. XXI, ch. 6 and 7).

To the third, it must be said that man has a natural inclination to know future things according to the human manner, but not according to the manner of divination.

ARTICLE II. — WHETHER DIVINATION IS A SPECIES OF SUPERSTITION.

To the second it is proceeded thus. 1. It seems that divination is not a species of superstition. For the same thing cannot be a species of different genera. But divination seems to be a species of curiosity, as Augustine says (bk. De vera religione, ch. 38). Therefore it seems that it is not a species of superstition.

2. Furthermore, just as religion is an undue cult, so superstition is an undue cult. But divination does not seem to pertain to any undue cult. Therefore divination does not pertain to superstition.