In today’s readings, we watch Augustine slowly being cornered by the truth—resisting superstition on moral grounds while still clinging to astrology as an intellectual refuge—until the deeper issue is exposed: any system that removes moral responsibility ultimately makes God the author of sin, and that lie cannot stand before the God who “repays each according to his works” and delights in a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17; Romans 2:6). His rejection of the soothsayer was real, but incomplete; his rejection of astrology would require something stronger than persuasion—it would require certainty. Aquinas supplies that certainty from another angle, teaching that God’s knowledge extends even to things that are not: not as existing realities, but as possibilities, pasts, futures, and privations, all known through His own essence without confusing non-being with being. Together, these readings dismantle fatalism from both directions—pastoral and metaphysical—showing that God’s sovereign knowledge grounds reality without excusing sin, and that freedom is preserved not by ignorance in God, but by His perfect knowledge ordered to truth (Isaiah 46:9–10).

Readings: Augustine, The Confessions — Book 4, Chapter 2 (Section 3) Augustine, The Confessions — Book 4, Chapter 3 (Sections 4–6) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica — Part 1, Question 14, Article 9

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