The Foreknowledge Of God

Priusquam te formarem... Tria dicit, que ad consecracion pertinet, scilicet predestinacionis preordinacionem, gracie apposicionem et gradus sive poetestis collacionem. De primo dicit: Priusquam te formarem, id est: anima racionali, que forma hominis est, in specie hominis ponerem. Novi te, id est: luce predestinacionis ad graciam et gloriam preordinavi. Non enim novit Deus ad modum hominis. Noscit homo noticiam rei a re accipiendo, et hic intellectus sine passione non est, quia rem recipere pati quoddam est. Noscit Deus luce sapiencie res in formis suis constitudendo, et quod meneant in esse approbando. Vidit Deus cuncta que fecerat, et erant valde bona. Sic ergo oculi beneplaciti novit quibus graciam parat et gloriam. Invenisti graciam coram me, et te ipsum novi ex nomine. Novit Deus qui sunt eius. Sic per oppositum de malis quos ad graciam et gloriam non preparavit, dicitur: Ego iurabo illis: quia uumquam novi vos, non quia in noticia simplicis visionis malos non previderit, sed quia lucem gracie ex gratis oculis suis super eos non effudit, sicut de sanctis dicitur: In via hac qua gradieris, firmabo super te oculos meos. Mecum ibit Chanaan, et ponam oculos meos super eum. Secundum hoc ergo, quia noticia Dei a rebus nihil accipit, sed pocius res in esse constituit, ideo eodem modo novit res antequam fiant et postquam factae sunt. Vocat ea que non sunt tamquam ea que sunt. Fuerunt tamen heretici, a philosophis, qui stoici vocantur, occasionem erroris accipientes, qui propter hec et similia, animas ab aeterno esse dixerunt, vel ab inicio mundi simul creatas. Et quia uniuscuiusque animam novit Deus, ideo dicere quod Ieremiam novit antequam nasceretur, et illis obviat glosa que dicit: non quia ante concepcionem fuerit, ut heretici suspiciantur, sed quia prescivit eum Dominus, cui facienda iam facta sunt, qui vocat ea que non sunt tamquam ea que sunt. Sanctus Albertus Magnus Super Jeremiam Source: here

Before I formed you.. 1 Three things he speaks which pertain to consecration, certainly the preordination of predestination, and the application of grace and the degree or amount of power. Concerning the first of these He says, 'Before I formed you,' that is, before I placed the rational soul which is the form of man in the species of man. I knew you, that is, in the light of predestination I preordained you to grace and glory. For God does not know according to the way of men. Man knows by receiving from the thing an awareness of the thing, and this understanding is not without passion, because to receive things is a certain disturbance. God knows in the light of wisdom which establishes things in their forms and they remain in being by His approval. 'God saw everything which He made and it was very good.' 2 So with benevolent eye He knows those He prepares for grace and glory. 'You have found grace before me and I know you by name.' 3 'God knows those who are His.' 4 And contrariwise of the wicked ones He has not prepared to grace and glory, He says, 'I shall swear to them, I never knew you.' 5 not because with the awareness of simple vision He does not foresee, but because He does not pour the light of grace from the eyes of grace over them, just as concerning His holy ones He says, 'In this way which you shall walk, I shall fix my eyes over you.' 6 With me he shall go to Canaan, 'And I shall place over him my eyes.' 7 According to this, therefore, the knowledge of God receives nothing from things, but rather He establishes things in their being, and therefore in the same way He knows things before they are and after they are made. 'He calls things that are not as if they were.' 8 There were certain heretics, philosophers called Stoics, who received an occasion of error, who on account of this and similar things, spoke of souls as being created from eternity, or at the beginning of the world. And because He knows the soul of everyone, therefore He says that He knows Jeremiah before he was born, but against this there is a gloss which says, 'Not that he was before his conception, as the heretics assume, but because the Lord foreknew him, to whom things to be already are, and He calls those things which are not as if they are.' 9 Saint Albert The Great, On Jeremiah 1 Jerem 1.5 2 Gen 1.31 3 Exodus 33.12 4 2 Tim 2.19 5 Mt 7.23 6 Ps 31.8 7 Gen 44.21 8 Rom 4. 17 9 St Jerome Pl 23.682 and PL 114.9