be thickened toward this fall, so that you may learn that you yourself are mutable, and made versatile, and subject to corruption. A But whether that will rise again, or be perfected, or be adorned, is not for me to know; but it is for me to know whether I shall survive, whether I shall enter, whether I shall see, whether I shall adore, whether I shall call upon God, God assuredly knowing even that.
OF THE MOST WISE PSELLUS
A COPY IN RESPONSE TO THE INTERROGATION OF A CERTAIN MONK CONCERNING THE DETERMINATION OF DEATH
1. B The question proposed by you, most learned Father, is not as difficult as you have asked; for as I set it out, the solution to the matter inquired into is obvious. For there is nothing indefinite to God, neither life, nor death, nor generation, nor essence, nor anything of those things that exist or of those that come to be. For if indeed the Divine is the boundary of all things, how could anything of all things be indefinite to Him? And if He has comprised all of time—or rather, if He exists by Himself even before time and before the ages—how would He know the present but suffer ignorance of the future? C This ignorance pertains to us, to whom time is divided, who know present things when they arrive at our knowledge, but are utterly ignorant of the future, because we do not live with future things, but are entirely separated from that which is to come by the living in the present. Therefore, the answer to what you asked is very easy.
2. But, so that I may summarize for you this talked-about question in the form of a letter, the more expert ones propose it in this way, extending the argument not only about the term of life, but also about all other things that come to be.
3. For they ask if God knows the future; then, indeed, when the interlocutor agrees (for it is not possible to contradict common judgment), they add: "Whether the knowledge of the future is defined to Him, or is indefinite as it is to us?" And when we concede that for God the knowledge is defined (for the other is absurd), D they immediately bring forward some absurd consequence. For they say: "If He knew definitely who should be just and who unjust,"