FUTURO-FUTURIBILE. – The future is that which is virtually contained in its own cause and expresses an order or tendency toward being realized by II. 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 that is not necessarily determined, as is the free future proper to the human will; c) absolute or conditional according as it is independent of or dependent upon a condition. If the condition is such that it will never occur, although it could occur, 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 a matter of faith (First Vatican Council; 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 involved (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 virtue of his eternity, knows future things as though they were present; and 2) that he knows futures, including free futures, by knowing his own essence. It is instead a matter of dispute among theologians—particularly lively since the 16th century in the Molinist and Thomist schools—in what way 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.