FUTURE-POSSIBLE. - The future is what is contained virtually in its own cause and denotes order or tendency to be realized by it. The future is a) necessary if it depends on a cause determined according to a fixed natural law, e.g., an eclipse; b) contingent if it depends on a cause not necessarily determined, as is the free future, proper to the human will; c) absolute or conditioned according as it is independent of or dependent on a condition. If the condition is such that it will never come about, though it could come about, the future is called hypothetical or futurible, e.g., if Christ were to return to preach before the judgment there would be more conversions.
That God knows the future, of whatever kind, is of faith (Council of the Vatican; Denz-U, 1784). God, who is the author of all things, knows and wills them before producing them.
How God knows the future, and especially the free future, is mysterious to us, because the elements at play (human freedom and divine foreknowledge) seem at first sight irreconcilable and because the concepts and terms at our disposal are inadequate to express the act of divine knowledge. It is certain 1) that God, by reason of his eternity, knows future things as though they were present; and 2) that he knows future things, even free ones, by knowing his own essence. It is, however, a question discussed among theologians, particularly lively since the 16th century in the Molinist and Thomist schools, in what way the free futures are contained in the divine essence, and consequently how God knows them in the intuitive knowledge he has of himself. For this particular question v. SCIENZA DIVINA.
Bibliography2 works
Albino Lucioni