Question Twenty-one: Can One Who Admits That The World
Question Twenty-one
CAN ONE WHO ADMITS THAT THE WORLD
IS ETERNAL DEFEND THE POSITION THAT
ANYONE COULD ALWAYS BE FORTUNATE?
[1] 21.1 The last question asked is this: Can one who admits the world is eternal maintain that anyone could always be fortunate?
Arguments Pro and Con It is argued affirmatively:
One who admits the eternity of the world does not deny, but admits, the existence of movement. Consequently, he does not deny the existence of nature as the principle of movement. Now the Philosopher, in the book Good Fortune, declares that good fortune is nature without reason, etc.
21.2 For the negative view:
He who admits the eternity of the world denies that God can immediately influence our souls. As the Physics? explains, it is impossible that the eternal principle, God, can influence terrestrial beings except by means of the heavens, and the heavens cannot influence our souls. According to such a view, then, God can have no influence. But anyone who admits good fortune also admits that God immediately influences our souls. Towards the end of that little book it says*: "The fortunate do not need advice, for they have a principle that is better than intellect." And just above, it says*: "The principle of reason is not reason but something better. But what can be better than intellect and knowledge except God? For the organ
1 This opuscule is not an authentic work of Aristotle. It is an extract from Aristotle's Magna Moralia and Ethica ad Eudemum. Cf. S. D. Wingate, The Mediaeval Latin Versions of the Aristotelian Scientific Corpus, with Special Reference to the Biological Works
(London, 1931), 93-94.
For the references to De bona fortuna we are using MS. Lat., fols. 7-10, from Charles Patterson Van Pelt Library of University of Pennsylvania.
2 Aristotle, Physic. vil, c.6 (259b32-260a19).
3 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 8, fol. 1or.
4 Ibid., lect. 7, fol. 10r.
GOD AND CREATURES
of the intellect is power or virtue." He means that those who are fortunate are immediately influenced by God.
Body of the Question 21.3 As one gleans from the argument for the negative view, the question inquires about not just any way of admitting eternity, but the precise way in which the Philosopher admits it. That is to say, the question is whether the fact that someone is fortunate can be reconciled with those principles of the Philosopher that were his grounds for maintaining the world was eternal. To see whether the two views are compatible or not, one must first know them. What needs examination in this question, therefore, is: (1) the view that someone is fortunate, especially the view set forth in the book Good
Fortune, attributed to Aristotle; (2) the view that this world is eternal, as is said in the Physics' and many other places; and (3) whether there is any conflict between these two views.
ARTICLE I
The View that Someone is Fortunate 21.4 [Two points] As for the first, we can sum up the Philosopher's view in Good Fortune as an answer to two questions: (1) Is there such a thing as good fortune and in what does it consist? (2)
What is the cause of it?
1. The Existence and Nature of Good Fortune 21.5 The first of these includes three problems, namely, does fortune exist? Second, is there good fortune? Third, is anyone fortunate?
21.6 [First problem] The truth about the first can be expressed succinctly in the form of three conclusions.
The first conclusion, which accords with the common opinion, is that there is such a thing as fortune. In philosophizing, Aristotle as a general rule always presupposed what was commonly accepted.*
This is clear, for instance, when he says that place is immobile according to the common view, though it would be difficult to prove this by reason, or when he declares that time is numerically the same everywhere and that this is the common view, though it presents difficulties to reason. Many other instances could be cited where Aristotle takes what is commonly accepted. In like manner
6 Aristotle, Physic. vill, c.1 (251a20-252b7).
6 Ibid., Iv, c.4 (212a27-30),
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
he could have accepted as common opinion that events happen by fortune, for it is clear that unintentional and fortuitous events happen to one who is acting on purpose. Hence fortune is the cause of these incidents. And the Philosopher explains just what kind of cause it is in Book II of the Physics,? where he says that it is the incidental cause* [per accidens] of those effects which happen infrequently to an agent acting on purpose.
21.7 The second conclusion is that fortune is not a per se cause* distinct from nature and intellect or purpose. In fact, the same will that is the per se cause of an intentional effect is called fortune as regards an unintended effect. The intended effect happens on purpose and therefore is caused voluntarily, whereas the unintended effect went beyond what the agent had in mind and hence was caused fortuitously. From this it follows that the pagan view that fortune was a goddess who caused fortuitous events per se is false.
It was this false pagan view, perhaps, that caused Augustine to chide himself in his Retractations*: 'I am not pleased with having spoken so often of fortune with a capital F."" Catholics, on the other hand, ought to attribute such effects, at least in general, to divine providence.
21.8 Our third conclusion is that fortune is not the whole cause, that is to say, nothing happens by fortune which does not stem from some per sé cause pursuing its own purpose, according to Plato in the Timaeus®: "Nothing occurs that is not preceded by some lawlike cause." And Augustine'? in turn says, "Cicero concedes that nothing happens if an efficient cause does not precede.' And it was reasonable that he concede this, for anything not of itself can only happen because of an efficient cause, and in this case a purposeful cause is required, for as several effects are intended by a more universal cause, so all effects fall under what was intended by the first cause. But when the proximate per se cause or purpose is not apparent, the effect is called casual or fortuitous. In this sense Augustine's words should be understood": "'Perhaps we call chance that element in things for which we can offer no cause or reason." The Phi7 Tbid., 1, c.5 (197a33-b25).
8 Augustine, Retract. 1, c.1, n.g: PL 32, 585, CSEL 36, 7.
9 Plato, Timaeus 28a, in Platonis Opera ex recensione C.E.Ch.Schneidert graece et latine, ed. A. Firmin Didot (Parisiis, 1846), 204.
10 Augustine, De civ. Dei v, c.g, n.4: PL 41, 151, CCSL 47, 139.
11 Augustine, Contra Academ. 1, c.1, n.1: PL 32, 905; Retract. 1, c.1, n.2:
PL. 32, 585, GSEL 36, 3.
47]
GOD AND CREATURES
losopher touches on this view in his little book??: '""Though nothing can be said to be directed by fortune, whenever we do not see another cause for it, we call fortune the cause."
21.9 [Second problem] 'The second question raised in [21.5 of] [5] this section, viz., whether there is good fortune, can be answered with one conclusion and a twofold distinction.
21.10 The conclusion, which also seems to be commonly accepted, is this: Good fortune does exist. For it is clear that a purposeful agerit has some good things happen to him that he did not intend.
It follows, therefore, that good fortune exists, since by "good fortune' we mean a fortuitous good effect, or to speak more properly, if less in accord with common usage, by "good fortune" we mean the cause of such an effect, and cause and effect each entail the existence of the other. This distinction of good fortune as meaning either the cause or the effect is something the Philosopher touches on's:; "Now we frequently say fortune is the cause. However, fortune is distinct, for cause and that of which it is the cause are two different things."
21.11 Next the Philosopher makes two distinctions of good fortune by reason of its effects.
This is the first distinction: The effects of good fortune may consist of things outside of us in which we play no part and over which we have no control. The example he gives is "the good fortune of someone being a nobleman, something that lies completely beyond his control."* In another sense, our good fortune lies in those things which depend on us, for "we call a person fortunate if his actions led to some unexpected good."!5 For if someone without planning it has an impulse that leads to good results, he is indeed said to be fortunate. Or, to put it more plainly, we speak of one having good fortune if he intended one thing and, in carrying out his plans, stumbled upon some unintended good.
The above distinction seems to be a distinction between what is good fortune proper and what is commonly but less properly called such, for properly speaking good fortune, like fortune in general, seems applicable to what is in our power. What we mean by "in our power" is that even though the fortuitous event is not in our power per sé or in a primary sense, nevertheless it is in our power in an 12 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 5, fol. or.
13 Tbid., lect. 3, fol. 8r.
#4 Ubid:, deéct.2sfol, 7ve 15 [bid., lect. 3, fol. 8r.
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
accidental and secondary sense, as it were, insofar as it is connected with what we intended. Now those things which are not in our power in any way, but which happen to us independently of any purposeful action on our part, happen not by good fortune but by chance, as Physics [1** makes clear.
21.12
A second distinction of good fortune by reason of its effects is into an effect that is good per se and one that is so per accidens, where the former consist in obtaining a good and the latter in avoiding some evil. This distinction is frequently referred to in this book, Good Fortune.'
[6] 21.13 [Third problem] The third question in this section, viz., whether there is anyone who is fortunate, is answered in terms of a tripartite division.
21.14 The first member: We do not call one a fortunate man if something good happened to him on only one occasion.
21.15 The second member: No one is called fortunate only because something fortuitously good is always happening to him. For whether we take this to mean that every purposeful action of his results in some unintended good, or whether whenever some unintentional result does occur, it turns out to be good, in either case this could not occur without a special miracle. And this would be so whether we take "purposeful action" generally, or we limit it to a certain type of action (e.g., military action or a business deal), or whether we take "unintentional result" to refer to the same kind of event (e.g., a victory if the action is military, or a profit if it is a business deal), or to chance events of different kinds. For in none of these ways would the Philosopher say that someone is a fortunate man, and there are no probable reasons why we should say so.1*
The Reportatio Version This question is asked: Can those who admit the world is eternal also admit that a man is fortunate?
It is argued that they can:
For he who assumes the world is eternal does not deny nature, 16 Aristotle, Physic. 11, c.6 (197b1-15).
17 For example, ibid., lect. 2, fol. 7v.
18In Mi: question twenty-one ends in folio 85vb with these words:
"aliquem esse bene fortunatum sicut nec ratio probabilis persuadet. Tertium membrum." Then it reads: "Finis. Quodlibet repertum in suis quaternis. Quod sequitur est de Reportatione."
GOD AND CREATURES
since he does not deny movement. But good fortune is nature without reason, according to Aristotle in the little book Good Fortune.'®
Therefore [he can admit that a man is fortunate].
Argument that they cannot:
He who admits the eternity of the world denies that God can produce something new immediately in the terrestrial world, since
God, according to Aristotle,?" does not act on anything except by means of movement [of heavenly bodies]. But one who assumes that someone is fortunate does admit that God produces something new immediately, according to Aristotle,?! who says that it is not necessary to counsel the fortunate because he has a directive principle better than intellect and reason, viz., God. Therefore [one who admits the eternity of the world, cannot admit that someone is fortunate].
Body of the Question In this question any opposition between these two views can be properly evaluated only if one sees what each one involves. Therefore, I shall first say something about the opinion of those who admit someone can be fortunate and, second, something about those who claim the world is eternal. For according to many theologians the world could have been made from all eternity and good fortune can be reconciled with this assumption. Consequently, the question should have been put in this way: Could one who admits that nothing new can be produced immediately by an immutable God, still admit that good fortune exists or that someone is fortunate?
Put in this way, the question raises doubts according to the opinion of Aristotle. For he understands "good fortune" according to its commonly accepted meaning, known to all. Hence his customary way was to assume some propositions commonly admitted, for example, that place is immobile and time is the same for all temporal things, etc.2? And so, following the common opinion, he says that good fortune is that by which some one is fortunate, if not in all cases, at least in most cases.*? And if we follow Aristotle in that lit19 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 3, fol. 8r.
20 Aristotle, Physic. vil, c.6 (259b32-260a19).
21 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 8, fol. 10r.
22 Aristotle, Physic, Iv, c.4 (212a27-g0), 8 He does not hold that good fortune means that by which someone is fortunate in all cases, but in most cases. See 21.16.
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
tle book, there should be a second point as to why someone is fortunate.?+ 1. The View that Someone can be Fortunate
As to the first: According to one way of understanding it, fortune in itself is nothing, for it is not something independent of nature and purpose, which according to Aristotle in Physics II? are the causes of all movement. Now fortune is reducible to these according to the pagans' false opinion, which attributed fortune to a goddess called
Fortuna. According to them, therefore, it is reducible to a cause that acts naturally and with purpose, viz., when something happens that was not intended by the per se causes.
One should know, however, that an effect is not said to be fortuitous as regards just any efficient cause acting on purpose, for where the First cause is concerned, no effect is caused fortuitously. Nothing can exist or come to be that is not subject to the causality of the First cause, and no matter how it is intended by a secondary cause, it is always intended per se by the First cause, which is the per se cause intending and directing all things to their respective ends.
The fortuitous gua fortuitous cannot be intended per se; hence, as regards God, no effect can be called fortuitous.
It is also obvious, therefore, that those who claimed fortune was a distinct and total cause, for example, a certain goddess, denied that divine providence governs things, for providence cannot be reconciled with fortuitous effects, as was said. Consequently, fortune is not a distinct or separate cause. Neither is it an adjunct of just any intelligent cause, because it never occurs with the First cause.
Aristotle in Physics I1?* points out that fortune is present when something happens beyond what a purposeful agent intended. Now in some sense the agent in such a case is called the cause of the fortuitous event but not precisely as either nature or as acting purposefully, because he did not intend what happened, but he is its cause in the sense that the event followed incidentally [per accidens] from what was intended per se. It is clear then what sort of thing fortune is according to Aristotle.
Now good fortune occurs when the unintended event that hap24 Ps,-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 2, fol. 7r.
25 Aristotle, Physic. 11, cc.5-6 (197a33-b25).
26 Tbid., c.5 (197a35-b25).
GOD AND CREATURES
pens to the agent acting on purpose is something good, for instance, if someone found a treasure when he only intended to dig his field.
In this case the will of the agent with reference to what happened by accident is called good fortune.
21.16
But is there anyone who is fortunate? According to Aristotle in Ethics I?7: "One swallow does not make a spring." Similarly, one happy coincidence is not enough to call that man fortunate to whom it occurred; such events must happen to him often or for the most part. As Aristotle says in Good Fortune: "Unwittingly they direct many things." Consequently, when these individuals carry out their own purposes and good things result independently of their intentions, they are said to be fortunate, according to common usage. And in the Rhetoric®® he says: ""We see men arrogant because of their good fortune."
21.17 But is there anyone who is fortunate in all cases? This can be understood in two ways: (1) in the sense that some incidental good accompanies everything he does or plans per se, for instance, every time he plants something, or every time he practices the healing art. Or it may be understood (2) in the sense that every time something unforseen happens to him, it turns out to be good. I believe that no one could be always fortunate in either of these senses without a special miracle. For with all the other causes that concur with one's action, what is to prevent something unfortunate occurring, such as uncovering a snake or a toad while cultivating a field, unless God by a miracle disposes these causes that lie outside one's control?
However, someone can be fortunate in most cases, whether this refers to similar situations, as when victory accompanies the intention to make war, or dissimilar situations. It is possible in this sense, as experience shows, for one to be fortunate most of the time.
21.18 But what kinds of good fortune are there? In the Rhetoric?° Aristotle says it can be of two kinds, either obtaining some unintended good or avoiding something unfortunate, such as falling into the hands of thieves.
21.19 Another distinction Aristotle makes in Good Fortune? is *7 Aristotle, Ethica ad Nic. 1, c.6 (1098a19-20).
28 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 4, fol. 8r.
29 Aristotle, Rhetor. 11 (1391a32-1391b4).
80 Tbid., 1, c.5 (1362a1-14).
81 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 2, fol. 7.
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
between (1) things that are in our power or of our own doing, as when one sets out to do one thing and another happens to him, and (2) those that are not in our power, such as being noble, beautiful, or born rich, and the like. This is really a distinction between fortune proper and fortune in a less proper sense which ought rather to be called chance, since things of the second type, not being in the power of the purposeful agent, are not due to him.
21.20 But according to Aristotle, what is the reason why someone is fortunate? As for good fortune in an improper sense, viz., things not in our power,*? I find nothing in a man by reason of which he should be called fortunate. This is something that happens to him by the coincidence of extrinsic causes, and these can be due to God's disposing them in this way according to theologians, though not according to Aristotle. If there is gold in this spot and someone who digs there finds it, such a discovery is due to the concurrence of extrinsic causes. There is no other reason unless it be that a person is more disposed to look here than there.
21.21 [Impulse] But why does some unexpected good result from what one person intends to do and not from what another intends to do? Aristotle asks about the intrinsic cause of this in the little book Good Fortune** and concludes that the cause is impulse.
21.22 You may object: You are looking for the reason or cause of something which has no reason or cause. A fortuitous event has no cause.
[9] I reply: Aristotle knew that just as that which happens most of the time has a cause that acts uniformly most of the time, so also that which happens infrequently and in random fashion must be traced back to causes which act uniformly and per se. Now the intrinsic and proximate cause of a fortuitous event is what Aristotle calls "impulse." In the little book Good Fortune,** he says: "Good fortune is nature without reason, and the fortunate man is one who without reason possesses an impulse to what is good and who gets it. This pertains to nature, for in the soul there is something natural which impels us, without reasoning, to some good we would be
32 The text should be corrected. It does not deal with fortune improperly so-called, but with fortune in the proper sense of the term, namely, of that which somehow is in our power according to the definition given above.
33 [bid., lect. 8, fol. ior.
34 Ibid., lect. 3, fol. 8r.
GOD AND CREATURES
happy to have. And if someone asks the person why he acted in this way, he will say: 'I don't know, I just wanted to.' One impelled by God to do certain things is in a similar situation, for he who without reason has an impulse to do something is driven by God."
21.23 He wants to say that someone's volition which is followed by an unexpected good proceeds from impulse and without reasoning, and that the cause of this impulse is to be found in his nature.
Aristotle admits that experience shows men to be different, and that one is impelled whereas another is not. And since reason cannot be credited with this behavior, it must be ascribed to their nature.
Now this difference between men implies not a specific but an individual difference. For if the extrinsic causal agencies at work in the world move this man, but not that man, to some happy coincidence, the reason must lie in some factor characteristic of one but not of the other. This cannot be reason or anything else characteristic of human nature as such, for then it would be present in all.
Hence it must be an individual property.
That this factor is not reason is clear because ''where intellect and reason most abound, fortune is minimal, and where fortune is maximal, intellect is minimal" as Aristotle puts it.*° Neither is the intrinsic cause the will, for the act of the will can be similar in two men and yet the fortuitous event happens to one and not to the other. Consequently the intrinsic cause is impulse, which stems from nature. One is called fortunate, wellborn and the like, because in him there is a disposition by which he is impelled by a higher mover to an undertaking from which unexpected good effects follow.
21.24 But does this natural disposition pertain to the body or soul? I answer: If Aristotle understood that souls differ according to natural degrees of nobility and perfection, one would have to say that the most noble soul would possess such an impulse, just as the most noble brute has the more noble estimative power and natural instincts for obtaining what is good for it. But I do not believe Aristotle thought that this impulse is characteristic of someone by reason of the nobility of his soul, for he claims that fortune is greatest where intellect is minimal.** That is why, he says, it is not necessary to advise such an individual. Fortune, then, does not pertain to the intellect because of its perfection, but because it has something impelling it in a better way. A boat that is difficult to guide often sails better, not because of itself, but because it has a better skipper.
35 Tbid., lect. 2, fol. 7r.
86 Ibid.
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
Therefore this natural disposition is found in the body as the result of a certain particular constitution.
21.25 [Doubts] There is some doubt as to how nature is the cause of this impulse which moves one to will and to act in such a way that some unexpected good results. Is it analogous to the way in which weight is the cause of a body's descent? If so, the fortuitous event would not be caused by fortune, for there would be in nature a disposition which, though it does not suffice of itself to cause the movement, does incline one to such an action.
21.26 Besides, if a person were called fortunate because he has a disposition impelling him to will in such a way that without reason or advice some unexpected good follows, then everything would occur by fortune. In human actions the one advising is not first advised, neither does one deliberate about deliberating; otherwise there would be an infinite regress. The impulse to elicit the initial acts, therefore, is not the result of reasoning; hence such acts are elicited by nature without reason and this is what we call fortune.
21.27 Contrary to what you say about the fortunate possessing impulse without reason, one could say there is no good fortune without there being some act of the will, for fortune is a contingent result accompanying an effect that was intended. But the will only eee acts if there is some object presented by reason. Consequently such an impulse to will does not occur in the absence of reason.
21.28 Furthermore, if it were nature and not reason that impelled one to will, we would not call the result fortune, but chance, for according to Physics II*" this is precisely how chance differs from fortune.
21.29 [Solution to these doubts] I reply: The first reason claims the initial intellection is fortune, and if something good or convenient results from it, a person is called fortunate.
Answer: The way one doctor** explains the little book of the Philosopher is that the initial intellection or volition seems to be the result not of the presence of an object but of God moving the intellect and will. He claims this is the view of Anselm in The Fall of the Devil®® where he says, '""The angel did not have his initial act of himself.'' Now I believe he did have it of himself, and this was true not only of his initial act but of that which followed. He did of course receive the faculty of will from God. But all that is required for voli37 Aristotle, Physic. 1, c.6 (197b1-15).
38 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. v1, q.10 (fol. 227V-X).
39 Anselm, De casu diaboli, c. 12: PL 158, 342-43; ed. Schmitt 1, 254.
GOD AND CREATURES
tion is the will and prior knowledge of the object presented by the intellect. Consequently, the solution to the objection is obvious.
21.30 Against this it is argued that if the angel had his initial act of volition of himself, either he had it by willing it (in which case we have an infinite regress) or he did not have it by willing it (which seems incongruous).
[14] Answer: I claim that he had the volition because he possessed a will and an intellect which presented the object, both of which are prior to volition by nature but not temporally. Consequently, I admit one must grant that the initial intellection does not stem from reason but in some way from chance, for it is not by some prior act of understanding that the knower understands. The initial intellect, then, does not result from reason showing one the object beforehand, therefore it must come in some way by chance. As Augustine puts it*°: "It is not in our power to be unaffected by what we see."
This is a fortuitous and chance effect.* 21.31 If you claim that if the first intellection is fortuitous, then all that follows will be fortuitous also, I say this does not follow. For once someone has the first intellection and volition, he can reason about what to do, and what follows deliberation is not fortuitous but the result of considered reason.
21.32 But if you ask: Are the initial intellections simply fortuitous? the answer must be in the negative. When otherwise unimpeded, the mind is moved more forcefully by objects whose sense images are strongest, and thus the initial intellections have a natural cause within us.*? But because they do not result from rational deliberation, they are only imputable to us in the sense that it is in a person's power through frequent consideration to make certain objects move him more forcefully than others in his memory, and when other impediments were removed these would have the first and strongest influence upon him. Though the initial intellection is not in our power, the initial state of indifference is, for one can determine himself to will or not to will—something which does not depend on the intellect but on the will. The object moves the intellect naturally. Now if the will were moved naturally by the intellect, then the will itself would be moved naturally and man would not be human but a brute. The will, then, is not moved naturally, but *9 Augustine, De libero arbitr. m1, c.25, n.74: PL 32, 1307; CCSL 29, 318.
'1 Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. 11, d.42, q.4, n.5 (ed. Vives xin, 454-55).
42 Cf. ibid., 1, d.g, nn.73-76 (111, 50-51, 52-53).
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
given the initial intellection, it has it in its power to turn the intellects consideration to this or that and hence it can will this or that or reject these. Thus the first volition depends entirely on us and does not stem from chance the way the first intellection does.
21.33 As for the second argument [in 21.27], what Aristotle says in his little book#' is that the impetus or impulse to will something that results in an unexpected good does not result from reason in the sense that one could explain why he performed such an action.
We must say, then, that a person has such a volition because reason revealed the object to him, not because rational considerations revealed the reason why he did what he did. This is something that happened on impulse.
21.34 To the third argument [21.28] we must say that even though nature is the mediate cause of the fortuitous event, its immediate cause is the will which intends one thing although something unintended happens as a consequence. This is called "fortune," not "chance."
21.35 According to Aristotle, however, it seems that one must not call nature the extrinsic cause of the fortuitous event, for nature is determined to one line of action, or at least natural events are connected in a certain orderly and unified way. Fortuitous events, on the contrary, seem to lack any definite order or connection with other things. Consequently, nature cannot be the complete or sufhcient cause of the fortuitous event.
21.36 Besides, if it were such a cause, it would follow that fortune is a per se cause.
21.37 Besides, no one is called fortunate because impelled to will something that could have happy consequences unless he actually obtains this good. But if other intermediate causes do not concur, the good will not be obtained. Now nature alone does not suffice to explain this concurrence. Consequently, some extrinsic cause is required to bring these factors together.
21.38 [The extrinsic cause] What does Aristotle say this extrinsic cause is? Is it the heavens, or an Intelligence moving one heavenly sphere by means of another, or is God the immediate cause?
One must say that if only those effects were fortuitous which fell under the causal influence of the heavens, then there would be no need to look for a cause in addition to the heavens and its mover. To the extent that there seems to be nothing fortuitous for men that 3 Ps.-Aristotle, De bona fortuna, lect. 3, fol. 8r.
48]
GOD AND CREATURES
does not fall immediately or mediately under the causal influence of the heavens, this view appears probable. But I do not believe it to be true, for man's volition is something to which the causal influence of the heavens does not extend except that occasionally the sense appetite would be moved, and this in turn could incline the will in one way rather than another. Since the heavens cannot touch volition itself, however, the heavens cannot bring about the concurrence of causes so that volition occurs. Therefore, there is something in man beyond the causal influence of the heavens.
21.39 Suppose someone made this claim, and perhaps it would be true. In the will there is no fortuitous effect conjoined per accidens with volition, but to everything else the causality of the heavens extends so that there is no other extrinsic cause besides the heavens, the intelligence moving the heavens [immediately] and God moving the heavens mediately. Now if Aristotle seems to say that such a principle is God one ought to add the explanatory gloss.
He is the extrinsic cause of the fortuitous event only mediately, namely, by means of the heavens.
21.40 But if one assumes that there is some fortuitous effect in the will, since neither the heavens nor any created intelligence could produce such an effect or bring the causes together that would produce it, one would have to trace this fortuitous effect back to God, whose providence extends to all things and who brings together those intermediate causes to produce such effects.
2. About Aristotle's View that the World is Eternal 21.41 But how can the preceding be reconciled with Aristotle's position which seems to hold that God cannot produce anything new immediately? In assuming that the world was eternal, Aristotle denied that any movement could be wholly new. While a particular cycle could be new, the movement as a whole is not. He based this conclusion on three principles, the first of which is the absolute immutability of the first principle. Being a principle that is completely immutable, he cannot produce immediately any new movement or mobile thing. Otherwise he would change, because he would exist differently at one moment from how he did at another.
21.42 But I do not believe that Aristotle argues solely from the immutability of the agent. Another principle involving the effect is needed, viz., an immutable agent cannot cause immediately a new kind of effect. Otherwise Aristotle would contradict himself, for he admits that an intelligence that is completely immutable does cause
QUESTION TWENTY-ONE
a new cycle of the movement and does not become mutable by doing so.*# 21.43 But neither does this suffice. We must add a third principle.
A completely immutable agent could not immediately cause a new kind of effect unless other causes, active or receptive, intervened.
Otherwise the position he maintained would not be true, for if the intermediary causes are disposed to act differently or to receive the action differently, different effects could occur even though there is no change or novelty in the first cause.
21.44 We may say, then, according to Aristotle, that a completely immutable agent, in the absence of any active or passive mediating factors that could be differently disposed, could not cause a new kind of effect. But if any of these conditions is lacking we have no grounds for concluding that, according to Aristotle, if God caused any new effects, this would introduce novelty into God.
21.45 We must conclude, therefore, that Aristotle does not contradict himself in the two works Good Fortune and the Physics*® in the way some would wish to claim he does. According to one interpretation [21.39], it suffices to trace back every fortuitous event to the heavens, and this does not imply any mutability or novelty in God, for he would only cause new fortuitous events by means of the heavens, and this would not count against him. But even on the second interpretation [21.40], if one has to trace back some new fortuitous effects directly to God, Aristotle would still not contradict himself, for he was certain that according to his principles** the intellective soul had to come immediately from God and that natural reason could reach this conclusion because the soul is immortal, and this is quasi-evident from reason. Thus something new could come immediately from God, and this does not imply that Aristotle contradicted himself according to his principles.*
21.46 But how is this possible? We have to say that that agent's immutability excludes the possibility of his causing a new kind of effect, according to Aristotle, only if one excludes the intervention of other intermediary active or passive causes. But if this condition is lacking, as it would be when the active or passive causes are differently disposed, God could cause a new and different kind of thing. And if the effect caused were of the same kind, God could
44 Aristotle, Metaph. xu, c.7 (1072a20-25).
45 Aristotle, Physic. Vill, c.1 (251a20-252b7).
46 Aristotle, De animal. gener. I, c.3 (736b28-32).
47 Cf. Duns Scotus, Ord. 1, d.8, nn.239-52 (IV, 288-95).
GOD AND CREATURES
cause it immediately. Just as sun can immediately melt ice and harden mud without there being anything new in it, so God, according to Aristotle, with the necessity of immutability causes this soul once this particular body is organized. This did not occur earlier because the matter was not disposed to receive the soul earlier. Just as the sun causes one effect in the air and another in water only because of the difference in what receives the radiation, so in the case we are discussing. According to Aristotle, God's influence, so far as he is concerned, proceeds from him uniformly, but because this person is disposed and that one is not, he impels the former to the sort of purposeful action that results in an unexpected good. He does not impel the second person to this because he finds that he lacks the aforesaid disposition. Aristotle's view in Good Fortune is consistent with his position in Physics VIII'*, namely, that God cannot produce a new world, or a new heaven, or new movement by his causality.
21.47 According to faith and the truth of the matter, however, we must say that by his general providence, God rules all things as they are suited by nature to be ruled, as The City of God puts it*®: "The creator of every nature has so ordained that each of his creatures is permitted to have and to exercise powers of its own." In addition to this general providence, by a kind of special election, God provides for each man according to present or future merits, which though veiled from us are present to him, for his judgments, though hidden, are always just, so that, as Boethius puts it.°? adversity is sometimes more beneficial than prosperity.
21.48 And so it is that while we do admit that someone is fortunate, we do not assume this implies something new in God. Thus the answers to the arguments for the contrary are obvious.
48 Aristotle, Physic. vl, c.6 (259b32-260a19).
49 Augustine, De civ. Det vil, c.30: PL 41, 220; CCSL 47, 212.
°° Boethius, De consolat. philos. c.4, n.4: PL 63, 805; CCSL 94, 77.
Appendix ADDITION 1.11
(VIVES xxv, 9-10) Seek the solution in the first book, distinction eight, question three on the attributes.?
To the first objection [in 1.8], one can answer that the essence includes all divine perfection unitively and identically, but not formally. In this way Damascene's dictum must be understood as it appears clear from 1, dist. 8, q.3.2 Although such perfections are identical with the essence, yet they are distinct extramentally and formally. To the confirmation from Anselm one answers likewise that the essence is unitively and identically the whole perfection, but not formally and extramentally. Hence, though every divine perfection is formally infinite, it is not radically infinite in the way the essence and existence of God are.
To the second objection [in 1.10], one can say that the essence and existence in creatures are like quiddity and its mode. Therefore they are distinct. However, in God existence pertains to the concept of essence and is predicated in the first mode of per se predication,* so that the proposition asserting this would be first and immediate, and all other propositions would follow from this, as it appears in 1, dist. 2.2 Consider the many ideas on these objections in Iv, dist. 46, q.3* and Reportatio 1, dist. 45, q.2° and dist. 2, part 2, q.2° and infra,
G-tacbt, 3. and in 1 dist. .1,.C,2.° ADDITION 1:39 (VIVES xxv, 21) Or the argument could be formulated this way. No potency has its first being [esse] by its operation. This is evident, for nothing gives being to itself, as is obvious from The Trinity I,° and consequently no potency receives its first being from the operation which 1 Ord. 1, d.8, nn.218-22; IV, 274-77.
2 Tbid., n.158, 198; Iv, 230, 264.
3 Tbid., d.2, n.25; U, 137-38.
4 Ibid., 1v, d.46, q.3 (Vivés xx, 446-48).
5 Rep. 1, d.45, q.2 (Vivés xxI, 500-507).
6 Ord. 1, d.2, nn.25-26; Il, 137-39.
7 Quodlibet 5.43-56.
8 Ord. 1, d.1, nn.21-61
(II, 17-45).
9 Augustine, De Trin. 1, c.1; PL 42, 820; CCSL 50, 28.
APPENDIX stems from it; but every intellection is an operation of the intellect qua intellect. Therefore, the divine intellect as such has not its first being from its operation. But everything that is in God by virtue of an extrinsic operation [ad extra] as such does derive its being from the operation of the intellect or from intellection, because its "being," which is that of a conceptual relation, stems from the consideration of the intellect.
ADDITION 7.38 (VIVES xxv, 294-95) The first objection [in 7.35] is answered by making a distinction in regard to the will. Either the pilgrim can know the will of God in an obscure concept, and then it is conceded that he is able to know by his purely natural endowments that God has a will most perfect and infinite, but then it is denied that this concept of the will provides a middle term for demonstrating that God is omnipotent as a reasoned fact (for the middle term would have to be known distinctly for this sort of demonstration), or else the pilgrim can know of the will of God in a distinct concept, and this is denied to be the case.
As for the second objection [in 7.36], the major could be denied, for there are plenty of cases to the contrary. For the propositions
"Being is true" and "Being is good" are true and necessary and their terms are simply simple* concepts, for neither being nor true nor good contain concepts that can be resolved into other more primitive concepts. However, such propositions are demonstrable as reasoned facts using the first property of being, viz., one, as middle term. The minor [in 7.36] is simply false, for the divine essence and every positive attribute we have of God is conceived through concepts resolvable into more primitive concepts, namely, into the concept being, even though the divine property itself has the highest degree of simplicity of the sort that is opposed to composition and compossibility.
As for the third objection [in 7.37], it is claimed that just as there is an order among demonstrations of the reasoned fact, so also too there is an order among demonstrations of the simple fact. For, if the philosopher of nature can demonstrate God's existence as a simple fact, the metaphysician can do so even more perfectly.
For the solution of these objections!® the Doctor refers to another 10The Wadding edition has this second set of answers as one of the three Additions printed at the end of the Quodlibet with instructions where to insert it. Cf. Opera omnia (Lugduni, 1639) xu, 544.
APPENDIX place. However, the first can be answered by denying the consequence or implication. For though the intellect of the pilgrim by its natural power can know that God has a perfect will, it grasps this only in an imperfect concept, for there is no more incongruity about knowing that something is most perfect by means of an imperfect concept than there is about knowing something is infinite by means of a finite concept. That is why the omnipotence of God cannot be inferred by a demonstration of the reasoned fact from the concept of the will a pilgrim possesses according to the present dispensation.
To the second objection [in 7.36], one must say that, whatever be said for the major, the minor, it seems, must be denied. Even though
God is a most perfect being, not every concept we have of him is irreducibly simple, and, therefore, every proposition affirming some attribute of him need not be per se properly speaking, and even if it were, it would not follow that it is known per se.
To the third objection [in 7.37], one must say that the metaphysician's knowledge of God surpasses that of the natural philosopher both extensively (because of the greater number of attributes) and intensively (because of its greater perfection and its superior mode of cognition). To the form of the argument, then, one may concede the first entailment and consequent that the metaphysician can have a knowledge of the simple fact that is more perfect and beyond that attained by the natural philosopher. The reason is that where knowledge of the simple fact is concerned there is a certain leeway such that one form of it exceeds another both intensively and extensively. Therefore, the further inference that the metaphysician's knowledge will be knowledge of the reasoned fact must be denied.
ADDITION 9.53 (VIVES xxv, 392) To the sixth objection [in 9.36], one can say that although Avicenna!! in his Metaphysics 1x, ch. 4, affirms that the heaven is animated, Aristotle never said this. If it is claimed that Aristotle seems to maintain this in the De caelo 1, ch. 5}? and in the Metaphysics x,13 one can answer that the soul has two functions, as is indicated in the De anima," that of moving and that of informing. By the first,
Aristotle says, we understand, feel, and move. And according to the last named property, one can say the heavens are animated and, to 11 Metaph. 1x, c.4 (I, 104V-105r).
12 De Caelo il, c.2 (285a28-286a2).
13 Metaphysica XU, C.5 (1071a1-14).
14 De anima Ul, c.2 (414a12-18).
APPENDIX that extent, the angels for Intelligences*] are the "forms'—not indeed as informing [matter] but as moving.
Answer to the other objection [in 9.37]: As 1t appears from I, dist. 8,1° the angel can take a body and unite itself to it in the way a motor is united to a ship or a mover to that which is mobile, but this is not by informing it, as appears from the case of the good and bad angels, as is explained in the second [book].'°
ADDITION 11.15 (VIVES xxv, 442) To the first [in 11.13], it is answered that such localization belongs to the category of ubiety. Although the Philosopher only defines ubiety [wb7] passively, there is another that is active. It represents another species that falls under the common category "ubiety,"' which contains both the active and passive forms, as is evident from IV; Gist10; G41"
To the second [in 11.14], some say in such a case the heaven would not move. However, I say otherwise that such a movement would be in reference to an imaginary, not an actual, ubiety. Nor is it incongruous to concede this, since it follows from the case under consideration, as is evident later on in this question.
ADDITION 12.28
(VIVES xxv, 483) To this question I answer:
If God should produce something, either he would produce it without secondary causes—which philosophers would not admit—and then it would be possible that the product lasted for an instant, just as God's action did, or he would produce it through secondary causes, and then, it seems, we could not admit that the product, if it were something permanent, could exist for only one instant. It would be different, of course, with indivisible things like mutation or instants which, even according to the Philosopher, last but an instant.
But in our case, if we are speaking of permanent things, it is more probable simply to hold the negative view. See dist. 8 of book 1, at the end of the last question.!* ADDITION 13.56 (VIVES xxv, 545) The objection [in 13.54] could be answered the way the Doctor solves the question in dist. 46 of book 1v.19 There he makes the point
15 Ord. 1, d.8 (Vives x, 417-22).
16 Tbid.
17 Tbid., 1v, d.10, q.1,n.11
(Vivés xvu, 79).
18 Thid., 1, d.8, nn.294-301; Iv, 322-26.
19 Thid., 1v, d.49, q.3, nn.27-32 (Vives xxI, 52-55).
APPENDIX that although beatitude does not include the relationship of attainment essentially, it does require such if the happiness is to be complete and_ perfect. Consequently, anyone who would have this beatific operation without the relaticnship, would not be truly and completely happy.
As for the second objection [in 13.55], look for the answer in dist.
10 of book tv, the last question®° and also in the present question in the distinction about the ultimate perfection."
ADDITION 14.25 (VIVES xxvi, 11) My reply [to 14.25] can be gathered from book m1, dist. 23 and 24.°° That infused faith is present in us is a matter of pure belief and, therefore, it is not evident. But we do experience acquired faith in ourselves and, by means of it, whatever is present by hearing is credible and is consequently in some sense evident, although, speaking properly, neither of the two kinds of faith is evident by virtue of its object. It is not possible to have an act of infused faith without acquired faith, as is obvious from what was said above [in 14.24]. The acquired faith has its evidence from the testimony of the one who makes the revelation or the one who preaches the doctrine in question.
ADDITION 15.79 (VIVES xxvl, 171-72) The answer to the other two objections [in 15.72f.] can be found in q. 2, dist. 14 of book 11 towards the end.?* Therefore, the entire first objection can be admitted. But if one goes on to infer that, therefore, the vision of the intellect of the blessed will be the same as that of God, the validity of the parallel will be denied, for the intellect of God has the vision of secondary objects necessarily per se and comprehensively by virtue of his perfection and by means of the primary object [or divine essence], which naturally represents all things to him. But the created intellect of the blessed has an incidental vision of the secondary objects, because it understands them incidentally or per accidens (i.e., by means of the essence which reveals such objects to this intellect freely and contingently). Hence the act of the blessed does not receive any perfection from such objects, but all of its perfection stems from the essence which this intellect sees and which reveals such objects to this intellect.
20 Tbid., d.10, q.g, nn.5-6 (Vives XVII, 303-304).
21 Cf. 13.49.
22 Ord. i, d.23-24 (Vives XV, 5-53).
23 Ibid., d.14, q.2, nn.18-21 (Vivés XIV, 515-19).
APPENDIX To the other objection [in 15.73] the answer is that the objection is valid and the entailment follows if the act of the vision of the essence and other objects were one and the same. But if the acts are distinct, the implication is not valid.
ADDITION 18.23 (VIVES xxvi, 238-39) Note that in addition to the natural goodness of volition which pertains to it as a being and is characteristic of every positive being in a greater or lesser degree, there are three degrees of moral goodness. The first is called generic goodness, which pertains to volition because it has to do with an object that is not only naturally suited to it, as sunlight is to vision, but is appropriate to it according to the dictates of right reason. This is the first stage of moral goodness which can be called "generic," because it is like the material element as regards every further [specification or] ulterior goodness in the moral order. For an act which has a suitable object can be formed, as it were, by other moral circumstances, and therefore is quasipotential. Yet it is not completely potential in the sense of being outside the moral order entirely as an act would be if considered exclusively from the standpoint of nature. On the contrary, it is potential within the genus of morality because it already has something characteristic of morality, namely, an object appropriate to the act.
The second stage of moral goodness can be called "virtuous" or that due to the circumstances. It pertains to volition because the will elicits the act according to all the circumstances which right reason says must be there in performing the act. For according to Dionysius,?* '"Good requires that everything about the act be right." Such goodness is specific moral goodness, so to say, because the act has all the moral differences that contract or specify the generic goodness.
The third goodness can be called meritorious or gratuitous in the divine acceptation as regards a reward. Such goodness pertains to the act from the fact that once the first two degrees of goodness are there, the act is elicited in conformity with the principle of merit, which is grace or charity. An example of the first degree of goodness is to give alms; an example of the second is to give alms to a needy pauper and in the proper place and to do this for the love of God.
An example of the third is to perform such an action as the above not only by natural inclination—as it could have been performed by a man in the state of innocence and perhaps even now could be per- *+ Ps.-Dionysius, De divin. nomin. c.4, 30; PG 3, 806; Dionysiaca 1, 208.
APPENDIX formed by a sinner should he remain such and unrepentant but were moved by natural piety towards his neighbor. What is needed for this third is that the act be performed through charity by virtue of which the one doing the act is a friend of God, insofar as God regards his works with favor. Now this triple goodness is so ordered that the first is presupposed by the second, and the second by the third, but not vice versa.
To this threefold goodness a triple badness corresponds. The first badness is generic. This is present when an act with only natural goodness is had because the first element that should put it in the moral order is absent because the object is unsuitable, for instance, an act of hating God. The second badness stems from some circumstance that makes the act inordinate, even though it has a suitable object. The third is demeritorious.
ADDITION 20.49 (VIVES xxvi, 321-22) As for the difficulty raised [in 20.49], one could say that if there were but one pilgrim [in grace], there is at least a virtual or habitual intention of wanting God to accept the prayers of the Church.
With this, one can then proceed to solve the problem the way the initial argument is solved at the end [in 20.71].
Second, one can say that the [personal] merit of the Church militant is related to the merits of Christ's passion not because Christ merits now, but because when he suffered he merited that his merit be applicable to this merit of the militant Church.
Third, I say to the first objection, [viz., that there might be no pilgrim in a state of grace], that by divine providence there will never be a militant Church without someone having grace and charity, according to Christ's words in Luke: "I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may never fail.'
25 Luke 22:33.
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——_ Glossary References in the text to terms explained in the glossary are marked with an asterisk as are cross references within the glossary itself. a posteriori proof: An argument from what is posterior logically or ontologically to what is prior, such as from effect to cause, or from an agent's functions or operations to the nature underlying such behavior. If the proof fulfills Aristotle's definition of epistemic* or demonstrative knowledge, an a posteriori proof is equivalent to his demonstration of simple fact.* Since such arguments usually begin with empirical data, such as observed effects or behavior patterns, a posteriori proofs are often said to be based upon experience, in contrast to a priori arguments. a priori proof: An argument that proceeds from what is prior logically or ontologically to what is posterior, such as from cause to effect, from the nature of an agent to its function. If couched in the form of an Aristotelian syllogistic demonstration, an a priort proof is equivalent to a demonstration of the reasoned fact* where the middle term gives the cause, reason, or explanation why the predicate of the conclusion is universally characteristic of the subject.
As such it is contrasted with an a posterior: proof or a demonstration of simple fact.* Inasmuch as such a proof indicates not just that something is so, but explains why it must be so, an a priori proof is sometimes said to be independent of experience, viz., that the conclusion is a fact. absolute form: In terms of the ten Aristotelian categories,* Scotus adopts the view common among his contemporaries that only the first three categories involve an absolute entity or thing* in contradistinction to the remaining seven. Thus, in addition to the substantial form, any accidental form falling under the two categories of quality or quantity would be absolute forms. Some later scholastics like William Ockham restricted absolute forms to substance or quality. abstractive cognition, see cognition, intuitive and abstract accidens per accidens: The five predicables of Porphyry expressed the five relations in which a universal term may stand to the subject of which it is predicated. They are genus, specific difference,
GLOSSARY species, proprium (property), and contingent accident. The first three represented the essence as a whole (species) or a part thereof
(genus, difference) and were said to be necessarily connected wth the essence and predicable of it in the first mode of per se predication. Thus, since the defining characteristics of Socrates, Plato, etc., would be, according to Aristotle, "rational animal," both notions, either singly or conjointly, are predicable of these individuals per se primo modo. A property (or proprium), though it is not part of the essential definition of the subject, is nevertheless inseparable from the essence and can in fact be shown to follow from the definition as a logical consequence.
It is predicable of the subject, therefore, per se or necessarily, but in the second mode. Examples as regards man would be "risible," "teachable," etc. Scholastics sometimes called such properties per se accidents
(accidens per se) where accident is contrasted with essence. Those predicates which did not express necessary features of the individual, such as "ruddy," "bearded," "musical," etc., were said to be predicated per accidens or contingently. In contrast to per se accidents, they were called accidens per accidens or simply accidents. Scotus usually prefers the latter usage. accidens per se (proprium), see accidens per accidens accidental potency, proximate, see proximate potency act, second, see in actu primo, in actu secundo act, substantial, see substantial act or act and potency act and potency: Aristotle's basic modalities of being, where ''act"' denotes what exists or is the case, whereas "potency" expresses what can be. But since "is" and "can be" have many linguistic usages, both act and potency took on various shades of meaning in philosophy that bear only a family resemblance to each other (Cf.
Scotus, Quaestiones subtilissimae in Aristotelis Metaphysicam 1x, qq. 1-2). Thus the following pairs of opposites are often related respectively as act to potency by medieval philosophers: actual vs. potential, real vs. possible, form vs. matter, existence vs. essence, agent vs. patient, operation vs. operative faculty, what is complete, finished, or perfect vs. what is incomplete, not fully actualized, or imperfect. Potencies are further classified as active powers or passive capacities depending on whether they refer to what a subject or agent can do (operative faculties) or what can be done to or in a subject (receptive capacities). An active potency, argued the scholastics, unlike a passive potency, does not necessarily imply imperfection. Consequently, though God is called 'pure act' inas-
GLOSSARY much as there is no ad intra* possibility in the divine that is not fully actualized, not all possible relationships ad extra* to creatures need be realized since their actualization is contingent upon his free will as Creator. It is in this sense that we attribute '"omnipotence" to God as a perfection. Various acts or degrees of actualization also are distinguished. If God as pure act lies at one end of the spectrum, primary matter as '"'pure potency to form" has the least degree of actuality, according to Scotus. In between God and prime matter come: (1) The "separate substances''*
(i.e., the Intelligences* postulated by the philosophers, or the angels of Judeo-Christian theology), so-called because they exist in separation from all matter. As spiritual or immaterial substances they are only in accidental potency to change such as that involving new knowledge or voluntary actions. (2) The celestial bodies which, though they contain prime matter, are substantially immutable in virtue of their incorruptible form. They are only in potency to motion or change of place. (3) Corporeal or bodily substances, ranging from man, the most complex, to the four elemental substances
(fire, air, water, earth), are all composed of primary matter and one (or more) substantial forms, and as such are in potency to substantial changes (generation and corruption*) as well as to accidental ones. Generation of one substance from another or others represents a major actualization, and the new form matter receives is called a substantial act.* New qualities or a change in size or quantity, by contrast, involve the actualization of accidental potentialities and the new form acquired is called an accidental act.
See also in actu primo, in actu secundo. action, immanent and transient: Immanent activity is that which has its principle or source and its term or effect within the agent and which represents a perfection of the agent and not that of some external patient. Vital activities are instances of immanent actions. Transient (transeunt, transitive), by contrast, are actions which have their term outside the causal agent in some other being that is changed by the agent. ad extra, ad intra: As applied to divine relationships, attributes, or operations, these Latin expressions designate what is exterior or interior respectively to the Godhead itself. Scotus adopts the common theological view that a monotheistic interpretation of the Christian Trinity implies that all ad extra effects, such as creation, conservation, or direct divine intervention with creatures, must stem causally from the divine nature as a whole and hence are the
GLOSSARY common voluntary and contingent effect of all three divine persons. What is ad intra, by contrast, may be either common to all
(e.g., God's self-knowledge and love) or proper to one person to the exclusion of the others (e.g., the Father's eternal generation of the Son or Word). However, a unique personal relationship between a single divine person and a creature is not ruled out by this communality of ad extra operations. Thus, for example, while the Incarnation of the Word in terms of efficient causality is ascribed to all three divine persons, only the Son, and not the Father or Holy Spirit, is said to be personally or hypostatically united to the human nature of Jesus Christ. Though this nature qua nature is perfect, theologians argued, it lacks a distinct human personality.
Hence the effect of such a hypostatic union is that Christ's human actions can be ascribed exclusively to the second divine person. In Question Nineteen, Scotus attempts to give some rational account of what is involved in this assumption of a human nature exclusively by the divine Word or Son. See hypostatic union. advene, see advenient intrinsically and extrinsically advenient intrinsically and extrinsically (adveniens intrinsecus et extrinsecus): Websters New International Dictionary
(2nd ed.) defines "'advene"' as '"'to be added to something or become a part of it, though not essential," and "advenient" as "coming from outward causes; superadded."' Scotus uses the terms to describe how the category of relation* differs from the last six categories,* which also involve some sort of relation. Since he does not consider any relationship to form a per se or essential unity with its foundation or with the terms said to be related, all relations are in that sense
"advenient."" However, those belonging to the category "relation," e.g., similarity based on equality in size, or the same shade of color, etc., are said to be "intrinsically advenient" in that they follow necessarily given the existence of the two relata and the foundation, e.g., the quantity or color. So far as the last six categories are concerned, however, the relationship does not arise automatically given the existence of the relata and the foundation for the relationship, but an additional extrinsic factor is required. Thus, for instance, the category of "action" or "passion" is not the result of the existence of agent and patient and the foundation for the respective relationships (the active and passive) potencies, but something more is required, e.g., volition in a free agent, the lack of impeding factors, etc., etc. In discussing ubiety* he also shows that the existence of a body and place and the foundation for being cir-
GLOSSARY cumscriptively in place (viz., the extension of quantity of the body) is not sufficient to have ubiety, but the body must be put into place either by itself or another agent. Cf. 11.34. aeviternity: A form of duration intermediate between time and eternity. Whereas eternity was considered to be proper to God, and time characteristic of changeable things, aeviternity (sometimes called "created eternity') was considered to be characteristic of creatures incapable of substantial change, such as the angels, which were subject only to accidental changes as regards knowledge, volition, etc., or the heavenly bodies which, though incorruptible, were subject to locomotion or change of place. While these accidental changes were measurable by time, the substantial nature was possessed whole and entire, as it were, at all times, and thus resembled eternity, but, being created, was properly called aeviternal duration.
Scholastic philosophers and_ theologians, though agreeing that aeviternity (aevum) was intermediate between time and eternity, explained it differently. Cf. St. Thomas, Sum. theol. 1, q. 10, a.5. agent intellect: Medieval philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition considered the intellect as playing a dual role, one active (which was ascribed to the agent intellect), the other passive (attributed to the possible intellect*). This division is based on an obscure passage in Aristotle's De anima (10, c.5; 430a18) and underwent a variety of interpretations. Though Aristotle compares the active factor to a light (7rd dés), he never uses the term
(vots zounrtixds, agent intellect). With Alexander of Aphrodisias, as well as with some scholastic interpretations of Augustinian illumination, the active intellect is identified with God. With Alfarabi and Avicenna, it is a subordinate intelligence or "angel" somehow connected with the moon. Aquinas considers the active intellect to be a faculty of the soul really distinct from the possible intellect. Scotus also considers it to be a property of the soul, but regards it as only formally distinct from, but really identical with, the possible intellect and the soul's substance. The general function of the agent intellect is to render the potentially intelligible in the sense image or phantasm* actually intelligible. Scotus' own interpretation of possible refinements of this basic role are discussed in connection with the problem posed in Question Fifteen. appropriation, appropriated: In theological usage, appropriation denotes the attribution to one divine person in particular of some characteristic common in fact to all three persons. The basis for the 497]
GLOSSARY ascription is some degree of affinity, according to our way of thinking, between the attribute in question (usually some divine action ad extra*) and the notional* or personal characteristics peculiar to one divine person in particular. Thus in both the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, God, the Father, is described as '"'Almighty, maker of heaven and earth' because power and creativity seem peculiarly appropriate to him as the first productive principle from whom the other persons proceed. Similarly because the Son or Word*
(Logos), according to Augustine, proceeds from the intellectual memory* of the Father (even as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the will they share as the principle of active love), whatever pertains to knowledge, truth, or wisdom is appropriated to the Son whereas charity and holiness are attributed especially to the Holy Spirit.
In addition to the four Aristotelian ''causes"' (viz., material, formal, efficient, and final), medieval philosophers commonly spoke of an exemplar cause, where the "exemplar'' referred to the idea in the artisan's mind that he planned to embody in the artefact. Since
Christian Neoplatonists identified the Platonic archetypal ideas with the "blueprint" of the creature in the mind of the Creator, on the one hand, and spoke of the divine Son as the Logos or Word of the Father, on the other, it seemed particularly appropriate to associate the divine exemplars of creatures with the second person of the Trinity. One question proposed to Scotus (Q.10) was whether the Word exercised some causality in regard to creatures that was not shared with the other persons. Since Scotus believed exemplar causality was simply a species of efficient causality, viz., that of an agent endowed with intelligence, he discusses this question in the context of divine omnipotence. categories, the ten (decem praedicamenta): According to Aristotle
(Categories, c.4, 1a25) they are (1) substance, (g) quantity, (3) quality, (4) relation, (5) action, (6) passion, (7) place, (8) time, (g) position or posture, (10) state. Scotus often refers to them as genera generalissima, 1.e., the most universal genera. cause, equivocal, see equivocal principle or cause cause, essential (per se) vs. incidental (per accidens): Scotus speaks of nature (natura) and will (voluntas) as per se causes in contrast to chance (casus) and fortune or misfortune (fortuna). Nature embraces all natural causes, i.e., those which produce their proper effect without deliberation. Will is regarded as the essential cause of all effects deliberately intended by a voluntary agent. In-
GLOSSARY cidental or chance effects result from the interference of two or more mutually independent causal sequences. Where a voluntary agent is involved, the effects he causes unintentionally are called luck or fortune. Scotus follows Aristotle here
(cf. Physics 1, c.5, 196b17-22). causes, essential order of: In his proofs for God's existence
(e.g., Ordinatio 1, d.g, nn.47-55 and the parallel passage in the Lectura), Scotus is especially concerned with spelling out the difference between an essential versus an accidental concatenation of causes. A series of generative causes such as that of grandparents, parents and child, or any sequence of events such as those later analyzed by Hume, would be causes only accidentally ordered to one another in producing the final effect of the series. Where an essential ordering or concatenation exists, all the causal factors must coexist both to produce and conserve their effect. This is true whether they be of different types (such as material, formal, efficient, and final) or a chain of the same type, e.g., efficient or final causes, as Avicenna postulated for the hierarchy of Intelligences* between God and the material world. While infinite regress in accidentally ordered causes may be possible, Scotus claimed the chain as a whole must be essentially ordered to some coexisting cause which guarantees the perpetuity of what is constant or cyclic about such repetitive productivity, for no philosopher postulates an infinite regress where the concatenation of causes is essential and all must coexist. To assume an infinity of links upon which a possible effect is conserved, for example, is not to explain its actual conservation.
See also essential order. circumscriptive[ly], see place, types of presence in coeval: The adjective meaning "the same age as." It is used specifically to express those characteristics of things present as long as the subject has existed. Thus Scotus sometimes speaks of "possible creatures" in the divine mind as being coeval with him, rather than as "eternal," where "eternity" is used to designate a divine attribute
Similarly, whatever substances incapable of substantial change, like the angels, intelligences, or heavenly bodies, may have possessed in terms of powers, etc., are said to be coeval. cognition, intuitive and abstract: By intuitive knowledge is meant the simple (non-judgmental) awareness of something as existing here and now. Not only are the senses capable of such knowledge,
Scotus argues, but the intellect possesses such a capacity as well.
He argued this on the theological ground that if man's simple in-
GLOSSARY tellection was limited only to abstract concepts—what can be abstracted from sense encounters in the way described by Aristotle
—then the face-to-face vision of God promised to man in the afterlife becomes impossible. But Scotus also believed rational considerations required some measure of intellectual intuition. There are many primary contingent propositions that are indubitable (such as "I doubt such and such" or "I am thinking of such and such").
Since this certitude cannot be accounted for by any amount of conceptual analysis of the propositional terms, some simple awareness of the existential situation verifying the proposition is required.
This cannot be purely sensory knowledge, since the existential judgment often involves conceptual or nonsensory meanings. Nor can this awareness of existence be something that is known only in and through the judgment itself, since judgment, as the second act of the intellect, always presupposes logically, if not necessarily psychologically or temporally, prior acts of simple awareness, called the ''first acts' of the intellect. And in the case of primary contingent truth, this awareness cannot be limited simply to abstract conceptual meanings. communicable: Whatever can be given to more than one subject
(individual or person) is said to be communicable. In creatures, this includes every positive trait or perfection they possess except that unique individuating feature called haecceity.* In God, however, it includes the unique divine nature or essence with all its perfection. Only the positive features formally constituting each divine person as Father, Son (or Word), and Holy Spirit, respectively, are said to be incommunicable. In begetting the Son, the Father communicates the divine nature to the Son; the Father and Son jointly communicate it to the Holy Spirit. In 19.81 Scotus discusses various ways in which one thing can be said to be communicated to another. See also hypostatic union. confused knowledge: "Confused" is usually used in a_ technical sense. As a noun (confusum) it means any universal notion with respect to what falls under it extensively. Thus Scotus speaks of ens, which is a primitively simple (simpliciter simplex) term, as a confusum (in virtue of its universal extension) but which, if known at all, can only be known distinctly. As an adverb (confuse) it expresses the way in which one knows an object, viz., by name. As such it is contrasted with distinct knowledge*, viz., knowledge by way of definition. In 14.12 he speaks of knowing something in a quasi-confused manner.
GLOSSARY corruption: The perishing of the substantial form upon the generation of the new form. One of the most characteristic marks of terrestrial or sublunary substances, according to Aristotle, was their capacity to undergo substantial change. Celestial bodies, by contrast, were incapable of substantial change and subject only to rotary motion or change of place. Many commentators explained the incorruptibility of the heavens not only on the grounds that the form of celestial bodies was incorruptible but also because the ethereal matter of which they were composed was essentially different from the primary matter characteristic of terrestrial elements (earth, water, air, and fire) and their various compounds.
Scotus, on the contrary, argues that primary matter throughout the universe is essentially the same and that the difference between celestial and terrestrial bodies stems from the different nature of their forms. Terrestrial forms are such that the natural causes operative throughout the realm of the four elements cause the corruption of one form in generating its contrary. This is not the case with the more perfect celestial form, which has no proper contrary. Nevertheless, the celestial body is not something absolutely necessary or intrinsically incorruptible, since God, for instance, could by direct action cause its form to perish and convert the heavens into fire or water. Cf. Ordinatio u, d.14, q.1. declarative knowledge:
Following St. Augustine, the scholastics spoke of actual knowledge not only as a child conceived or begotten by the mind, but as revealing or declaring what lay hidden in the memory. In God, declarative knowledge was considered to be involved in some way with the production of the Word or second person of the Trinity, but theologians interpreted this in different ways. Cf. Ordinatio 1, d.32, n.23; Ord. 11, d.g2. declaratively, see declarative knowledge demonstration of simple fact (demonstratio quia), see epistemic knowledge demonstration of the reasoned fact (demonstratio propter quid), see epistemic knowledge diminished entity, see diminutive being diminutive being (ens diminutum): This expression, which had its origins in the Arabian translation of Aristotle's Metaphysics v1, c.
4 and Averroes' Commentary on it, is used exclusively by Scotus to express the sort of being a thing acquires in the mind or intellect (created or divine) by being known or thought of.
GLOSSARY distinct knowledge: Distinct knowledge in a technical sense is contrasted with confused knowledge.* As Scotus explains (Ord. 1, d.
3, n.72) we know something confusedly when our concept stands for the object in much the same way as a name does; we know it distinctly when we are able to define it. Following Avicenna, Scotus argues that being (ens) is the first primitive or undefined element in every real definition. Like all irreducibly simple concepts it can only be known distinctly and zn toto if it is known at all. All other distinct knowledge of real things includes being as part of their essential definition. eminently: In a higher or more perfect way or even in a supreme or infinite way. It is often contrasted with formally* or virtually.* epistemic knowledge: The conclusion of a demonstration in the technical sense defined by Aristotle in Analytica posteriora
1, c.
13-14 is called émorjun in Greek and scientia (science) in Latin.
Scotus cites four basic conditions for such scientific or epistemic knowledge: (1) it must be certain and not just an opinion; (g) it must be a necessary truth, not just a contingent one; (3) 1t must not be immediately evident but it is known by means of other evident and necessary truths; (4) it is derived from these latter truths by way of some form of syllogistic or discursive reasoning process.
Cf. Ordinatio, prol., n.41; Ord. 1, d.zg, n.gg; d.g, nn.2goss. Demonstratio propter quid, or dw7, uses as its middle term something which expresses an ontological cause or reason why the predicate of the conclusion inheres in the subject. The essential definition of the subject or any one of its four Aristotelian causes might serve as the middle term. Following the Oxford translation of Aristotle, we have called a syllogism of this sort a "demonstration of the reasoned fact" and the conclusion it yields "knowledge of the reasoned fact." Demonstratio quia, or ér, which we have translated as "demonstration of the simple fact,' uses as a middle term something that logically connects the predicate to the subject, but does not give what Aristotle or the Scholastics would consider to be the real reason or the ontological cause why the subject in question has such a predicate.
It is not clear whether Scotus equates propter quid and a priori on the one hand, and quia and a posteriori on the other, as Ockham expressly does. (Cf. Ockham's
Summa Logicae ul, pars.
2, c.17). For Aristotle, demonstration through a remote cause (an a priori principle), however, is only a demonstratio quia.
GLOSSARY equivocal effect: One that is of a nature specifically different from that of its cause, as, for instance, a creature as caused by God, or a painting as caused by the artist. Equivocal effects are contrasted with univocal effects, such as fire producing fire, or like begetting like. See also equivocal principle or cause. equivocal principle or cause: One that produces an effect or product specifically different from its own nature. Sometimes called an analogous cause. essential order: Order exists between two or more things if one can be said to be either prior or posterior to the other. If this is based on something accidental such as time, motion, place, size, etc., the order is accidental.
If the priority or posteriority relationship stems from the nature or essence, it is essential. Though Scotus treats of essential order in all of his works, only in the De Primo
Principio is there an attempt to treat the various types of essential order exhaustively under the two headings of eminence and dependence. The first obtains if one essence is more perfect than another; the second holds if one essence can exist without the other, but not vice versa. This may be because the first is the efficient, final, formal, or material cause of the second; or because of two effects of a common cause, the existence of the first is a precondition for that of the second. Where several causes are required to produce a particular effect, they may not be essentially ordered to one another in producing that effect. In this connection, see causes, essential order of. Because of the special theological problem of the hypostatic union* in Christ where a human nature depends on the person, but not on the divine nature, of the Word in a special way, Scotus speaks in 19.30 of an extended sense of ''essential dependence." essential priority, see essential order essential dependence, see essential order estimative power: From the Latin aestimare, to form an estimate of. One of the internal senses, whereby the desirable is instinctively distinguished from the baneful. To it was ascribed such instinctive animal behavior as the lamb's flight from the wolf or the monkey's avoidance of poisonous berries. eucharistic species: The whole Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, is said to be present under the appearances of bread and wine after the consecration in the mass. Species was the name given by the theologians to these appearances, which were conceived as having an objective status or reality that enabled them to act di-
GLOSSARY rectly on the senses. As Aristotle's philosophy came into general acceptance, medieval theologians developed various theories to explain the continued existence of the species after consecration, usually identifying them with the accidental categories of Aristotle, as distinct from substance. Hence the species came to be called commonly the 'accidents of bread and wine" and since Christ's presence under these appearances was obviously not that of a normal material body, these accidents were not said to be inhering in the substance of Christ's body. Rather they were considered to be miraculously supported by divine power, which played the role or, better, took the place of the support ordinarily supplied by the substance. Hence they were referred to as "separated accidents." eviternal, see aeviternity ex opere operantis (Latin, "from the work of the worker"): A term used in describing the effects of prayers, good works, sacred signs or ceremonies (sacraments or sacramentals), and indicating that the effect depends upon the sanctity of the minister or the dispositions of the subject. ex opere dperato (Latin, "from the work wrought'): A term used in describing the effect of a sacrament or sacrifice to indicate that the effect (e.g., grace, or answer to prayer, etc.) is conferred in virtue of the work or action performed independently of the merits of the minister performing the action or conferring the sacrament. exemplar: A model, idea, or exemplary cause. In Neoplatonic philosophy it is regarded as a distinct form of causality; Aristotlelian philosophers, on the contrary, usually reduce it to some form of efficient, formal, or final causality. As something the artisan intends to realize, it falls under final causality; as a preconception in the mind of the artisan, it is characteristic of an intelligent efficient cause (Scotus adopts this version); as that eventually impressed on the material by the efficient cause, it is identified with the formal
Ideas* or ideal types that form the intelligible world and which the sensible world imitates.
In Christian Neoplatonism, these archetypal exemplars are identified with the ideas of possible creatures in the divine mind and are often associated in a special way with the Word or second person of the Trinity. See appropriation. extramentally (ex natura rei): In contrast to what exists only as the content of a concept or object of thought (i.e., an ens diminutum, or diminished being*), Scotus uses the expression ex natura rei to indicate something that exists in reality or has real being. Hence
GLOSSARY the English term "what exists outside the mind" or "extramentally"' seems to come closest to expressing his meaning. This may be either a thing* (res) or some real aspect of a thing (i.e., a formality* or reality). See formal distinction. faith, acquired vs. infused: Medieval theologians generally considered the supernatural virtue of faith (like hope and charity) to be directly infused in the human soul, for instance, at baptism. As such it differed from the acquired inclination or disposition to beheve the testimony of a reliable witness. See also habits. fontal plenitude (fontalis plenitudo): A medieval theological term used to describe the divine fecundity of the Father as the generator of the Son or Logos and as coproducer (with the Son) of the Holy Spirit. The term seems to have its origin in Pseudo-Dionysius, who describes the three divine persons in these words: '"The Father indeed is the fontal or fountain deity; the Son and Holy Spirit are offspring of the deity .
. the progeny of the divine nature" (De divinis nominibus, c.2). Scotus' interpretation of the term can be found in Ordinatio 1, d.28, nn.21-23, and in the parallel passage of the Lectura. formal: What pertains to the essential nature or constitutive essence of a thing is called a formal characteristic of the same and is said to be predicated of it formally. Formal is often contrasted with what something contains or possesses only virtually* or eminently.* See also formal predication vs. predication by identity. formal distinction: Scotus' theological colleagues were commonly concerned with the problem of how to distinguish God's various attributes without prejudice to his real and essential simplicity. On the one hand, they argued that knowledge, volition, goodness, justice, and love express pure perfections* or formal* characteristics essential to the Godhead. On the other hand, "knowledge" is no synonym for "'volition" nor are their formal definitions the same.
Even the mode of infinity does not seem to erase their formal nonidentity. For knowledge as such does not become formally volition, justice, or goodness, simply because it embraces all that can be known. Notional* characteristics like "paternity," "'filiation," etc., posed similar problems with respect to the numerically identical essence, for while Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were admittedly really distinct persons with respect to each other, no theologian would go so far as to claim the notional or personal features proper to each represented something really distinct from the essence they shared in common. All agreed on the need for some distinc-
GLOSSARY tion intermediary between one that is simply or unqualifiedly real (distinctio realis) and one that is merely mental or conceptual (distinctio rationis). But because "reason"
(or ratio), like the Avicennian term intentio*, could express an intelligible feature or essential characteristic of a real or extramental thing (ens reale) as well as the formal content of the concept used to think about it (ens rationis), most of Scotus' contemporaries were content to call it a special type of distinctio rationis, namely, one that existed only potentially or virtually in the thing (a parte rei) and became an actual distinction only when a created or divine mind reflected on its direct (or first intentional knowledge*) of the deity, either with reference to its discrete mirror images in creatures or to the really distinct relationships of origin* that characterized the divine person. Qua actually distinct, then, such rationes were the result of a kind of second intentional knowledge* and would have only diminished being* or esse dimninutum, namely, as entities created, as it were, in the very act of being known. Scotus argues that this interpretation will not do, especially as regards the distinction between the notional and the essential elements in God. What God knows about himself ad intra he knows directly and intuitively, and this holds not only for his self-knowledge of the divine nature, which is communicable, but also for "paternity," "filiation," etc., which are personal and incommunicable. Knowledge of "paternity" as something other than "deity" is direct or first intentional knowledge. Some non-identity a parte rei would seem to be a logical precondition for conceiving "paternity" as formally distinct from ''deity," for the eternal generation of the Son by the Father and their "breathing" of the Holy Spirit in love represent a very real and objective production or communication of the divine nature no matter how metaphorically expressed. Yet if the distinction or non-identity of "paternity" and "deity" is created only by the mind in reflecting on the Father and divine nature and is not ex parte rei logically prior to any actual knowledge of this sort, it is impossible to see how the divine nature is communicated without the paternity. Similarly, even if one divine perfection is not actually separable from the other in reality, some actual non-identity a parte rei is required as a logical presupposition for separating first intentional objects even conceptually, to say nothing of sharing or imitating only some of the divine perfection with one creature and other formal perfection with another. Cf. Ordinatio
1, d.2, nn.
388-410; d.8, nn.191-217. The objective correlate of a distinct for-
GLOSSARY mal concept Scotus calls a "reality" (from realitas, a "little thing'') or "formality"
(from formalitas, or "little form''), since, in Aristotelian terminology, "form," in contrast to matter, represents the quiddity* or what is essentially intelligible about a thing. Hence he calls the distinction formalis a parte rei (i.e., a formal distinction on the part of the thing), though he admits it could also be called a distinctio virtualis (virtual distinction), since one and the same simple thing or res is virtually many things and has the power or virtue (virtus) of producing objective notions or natural signs of itself that are conceptually separable, just as if they were produced by distinct things. It can even be called a distinctio rationis (distinction of reason), if rato be understood not as something created by the mind, but insofar as ratio expresses the quiddity of the object, namely, what is known about the object through a first intention. (See also intention.) Though Scotus is most impressed with the need for postulating the formal distinction in the Trinity, as a metaphysician he also finds it useful for explaining how first intentional characteristics can be ascribed to one and the same physically simple thing. Thus he employs it between being and its attributes, the soul and its powers, the nature an individual shares with others of his species on the one hand and his unique individuality or haecceity* on the other, or between "'animality," a generic perfection, and "rationality," the aspect that differentiates man as a rational animal from the brute beast. Though all composition is ruled out by God's simplicity, some form of metaphysical, if not real, composition is possible in these other cases.
See formality. formal predication vs. predication by identity: Theologians introduced this distinction to explain why abstract predication of certain attributes of one another (e.g., "'wisdom is goodness'') could be true when speaking of God whereas statements of this sort in other cases would be false. Since "wisdom" and "goodness" are not synonymous terms, even when applied to God, a statement such as the above cannot be true according to formal predication, for this is possible only when the predicate expresses an essential or constitutive element of the subject. Nevertheless, since "wisdom,"
"goodness," "paternity" and "deity" are not really distinct from each other, predications of the form "wisdom is goodness" and "paternity is deity," though false according to formal predication, are said to be true "by identity.' Where other scholastics used some form of virtual, or intentional or conceptual distinction, all
GLOSSARY with a foundation of sorts in reality, to justify formal predication, Scotus links it with his explanation of formal non-identity or distinction a parte rei. See formal distinction; formality; intention. On the other hand, he argues that there is no formal difference a parte rei between a formality and its intrinsic mode*
(the degree in which a formal perfection, like being, wisdom, or goodness, exists in reality). While pure perfections* like these may be found in some finite degree in creatures, they are all present in an intensively infinite* degree in God. It is this infinity that rules out any perfectibility of one formality by another, as is sometimes the case in creatures which may lack any real or physical composition, but are at least metaphysically composed (viz., of formalities related to each other as potential and actual). See formality. Hence there is an even greater real identity among God's attributes than that which holds between ''animality" and "rationality" in man, or between the essential nature of the soul and its faculties, though man is substantially one, and the soul with its powers a simple substance, according to Scotus. On the other hand, the notional features like "paternity" or "'filiation" are neither formally nor really identical with one another, and hence can give rise to a real distinction of persons. On the other hand, even though "paternity" is not infinitely perfect, formally speaking, for otherwise the Son would be imperfect in lacking this characteristic, still the divine nature which the three divine persons possess in common is infinitely perfect and hence is really identical with, but formally distinct from, "paternity," "filiation," "active and passive spiration."
Hence Scotus argues that statements of the form "paternity is deity" or "deity is paternity," though false according to formal predication, are true by identity. Similarly, "paternity is infinite" can be true in virtue of paternity's real identity with an infinitely perfect essence, but paternity is not formally infinite in the way divine goodness, for instance, is. formality: The objective correlate of a distinct formal object. See formal distinction. Scotus identifies a formality with Avicenna's intentio (see intention) inasmuch as an intention represents a characteristic of an extramental thing, though not the whole of its intelligible essence. Hence a formal distinction on the part of the thing (a parte ret) is compatible with its physical or real simplicity.
That is to say, though the formalities are always conceptually separable, one formal reality may be inseparable from the other so far as the concrete individual thing is concerned. The reason for this
GLOSSARY real simplicity in the things, however, may be different. In God, where each formality is infinite, since there is no formal distinction between a formality and its intrinsic mode (see intrinsic mode), all composition in the sense of one part perfecting another formally is excluded. For composition occurs only where there is potentiality, and hence limitation or finitude, in the parts as such, a potentiality which is actualized only when one part is combined with another to form something that is one per se. But because each divine attribute exists in an infinite degree, Scotus argues, the highest form of real identity compatible with a formal distinction is present in God. In the case of the soul and its powers, or a man's "'animality" and "rationality," or between the specific nature (natura communis) of an individual and his haecceity*, there is usually some form of metaphysical composition present in the sense that the formalities in question mutually perfect each other and hence have the aspect of parts, for a given formality may be present in different natures in different degrees (and hence with different intrinsic modes). Thus the creative imagination of the human artist in which intelligence and sensitivity are blended is something that neither the brute beast endowed with sense perception nor the angel with its intellectual life possesses. formally, see formal fortune: According to Aristotle, what happened to a rational agent unintentionally, but as the result of some free decision on his part, was ascribed philosophically to luck or fortune. Chance, on the other hand, was an accidental effect involving natural or non-rational causes, an effect, namely, that they were not intended or designed by nature to produce, for Aristotle considered all of nature to act for the sake of an end. Theistic interpreters usually explained his teleological description of inanimate agents as the result of the intrinsic design built into their natures by an omniscient creator. Effects intended either by nature or by deliberation were said to be the result of per se causes, whereas those not intended in this way were called coincidents or the result of per accidens causality—either chance or fortune or a combination of both. Theologians who stressed the belief that all worldly events, if not directly intended, were at least permitted by God, were constrained to modify Aristotle's conception of fortune and chance.
Usually they retained these notions, but restricted the scope of their activity. With the prominence given to the Arabic-Aristotelian conception of an eternal world in the last half of the thir.
GLOSSARY teenth century, medieval philosophers were concerned with the problem of whether good fortune, providential or otherwise, was philosophically compatible with the philosophers' theory of the eternity of the world. It was one of the problems proposed to Scotus and he deals with it in Question Twenty-one. See cause, essential vs. incidental. generation: Scotus defines generation as "the production of a suppositum* so far as the being of its substantial nature is concerned"
(cf. 2.2). This is an extended sense of what Aristotle meant by the term. See generation and corruption. generation and corruption: Aristotle analyzed all natural change in terms of the four categories of quantity, place, quality, and substance.
Quantitative change he called growth or diminution; change of place, motion; change in quality, alteration. When change can no longer be accounted for in terms of these three accidental categories but involves substance itself, it is called '"coming-to-be" (generation) and its converse, "'passing-away'' (corruption). Confer De generatione et corruptione 1, c.4. Since he went on to say that matter in the proper sense of the term is the substrate receptive of coming-to-be and passing-away, generation came to be defined as the acquisition of a substantial form and corruption as the loss of one substantial form upon the acquisition of another. Though Aristotle's analysis did not cover all types of supernatural transformations discussed by medieval theologians, his description suggested fruitful analogies that might be employed to give a more rational account of what the schoolmen believed such changes involved. Cf., for example, 10.62-64. habit (habitus, from the Latin habere, to have): According to Aristotle, an acquired disposition or tendency of a natural agent made constant and fixed by use. A habit once acquired becomes itself the principle of activity, a kind of second nature, so that acts corresponding to it are produced readily, easily, and with pleasure; once acquired it is with difficulty lost, and in this it is opposed to a mere disposition that is readily lost. Knowledge once acquired, for instance, like the moral virtues, represents a habit in this sense.
Both habits and dispositions fall under the first species or type of the category of quality,* according to Aristotle. Medieval theologians adapted this philosophical notion to explain not only acquired virtues, but also those supernaturally infused, like faith,
GLOSSARY hope, and charity. However, to the extent that they denied that any supernatural quality in the soul could be detected by natural reason alone, theologians argued that infused virtues give only the possibility of acting supernaturally, not necessarily an ease or facility such as that acquired by repeated actions. haecceity (haecceitas, from the Latin haec, this): The term means literally "thisness." It designates the unique formal principle of individuation that makes the nature, which all individuals of the same species have in common, to be just this or that individual and no other. Scotus regards it as a distinct positive formality* over and above the common nature of the individual (natura communis). Petrinity, for instance, would represent the '"'haecceity'' of Peter; Paulinity, that of Paul, and so on. happiness: Though Aristotle uses the term in the general sense of well-being, the scholastics, following St. Augustine, usually employ it in some ultimate sense as involving the knowledge and the love of God as the end of man. This may refer to such knowledge and love as is possible for man either in this life (beatitudo viae) or in the next (beatitudo patriae). Cf. Ord. 1, d.8, n.87. hypostasis; hypostatic (from the Greek, ind, under; ordois, position): Though hypostasis etymologically corresponds perfectly with the Latin term suppositum* it came to mean more specifically a "rational suppositum" or person, in contrast to animals, trees, stones, etc., which are irrational or simple supposita. Among the Greek theologians hypostasis came to be used to distinguish the three divine persons as distinct from the essence or nature common to all. A similar usage developed among Latin theologians.
Thus "hypostatic' referred to some personal or notional* aspect of the Trinity. See hypostatic union. hypostatic union: The union of the divine nature and the human nature in the person of the second divine person or Word. In reaction to the early Trinitarian and Christological heresies, condemned by various Church councils, the generally accepted theological view arose that in Christ there were two distinct natures, in no way fused as natures, one divine, shared also by Father and Holy Spirit, and one human, which belonged to the person of the Son alone. Since the human nature was complete as a nature, there were two wills in Christ, two types of operations, one divine, the other human, etc. However, the only thing lacking to the human nature in Christ was a human personality. Thus the effect of the hypostatic union is that though there is but one person or personal-
GLOSSARY ity in Jesus Christ, that of the second person of the Trinity, there are two natures, wills, operations, etc. While what Christ did through his divine nature was also attributable to the Father and Holy Spirit as well, what he did through his human nature was attributable personally to the Son alone. The distinction between the person, nature, and operative faculty was expressed by saying the person is the one who acts (principium quod), the nature, or operative faculty, by contrast represents that by which (principium quo) the person acts. See principium quo and quod. ideas: In Platonic philosophy an eternally existing pattern or archetype of any class of things of which the individual things in nature are but imperfect copies. Among Neoplatonic Christians the ideas were identified with the exemplars of creatures in the mind of God. See exemplar. ideate or ideatum: The object corresponding to an idea. In Platonic philosophy the existing object in the real world insofar as it is a representation or realization of an exemplar or archetypal Idea.* identity, formal and real: Identity is inversely related to distinction. To the extent that two aspects are formally indistinguishable, they are said to be formally identical. Where two such characteristics are really indistinguishable in the sense that this individual cannot possess one of the two without the other, the two are said to be really identical with the subject though they may still be formally distinct from each other as well as from the essential or defining characteristics of the subject. Thus the faculties of intellect and will are said to be formally distinct from each other and from their subject. At the same time they are one by a real identity with each other and with the substance of the angel or human soul. See also formal distinction and formality. identity, predication by, see formal predication vs. predication by identity immanent, see action, immanent and transient impassibility: The inability to undergo suffering, death, or corruption. So far as man is concerned, theologians attributed this quality to the risen body of Christ, to Adam and Eve before the fall, and to the bodies of the saints after the general resurrection. implication (consequentia): The logical connection between the antecedent proposition or set of propositions and the consequent, such that the latter is entailed by the former, is called in medieval logic consequentia. One would normally tend to render this as by
GLOSSARY "consequence," as some medieval translators have done, but since this word in normal English usage refers not to the logical connection so much as to the proposition entailed (i.e., the conclusion or consequent), we have used implication consistently wherever consequentia occurs in Latin. imposition, names of first and second: Names which do not signify parts or qualifications of our spoken or written language are called words (or names) of first imposition, whereas words which do signify such are called names of second imposition. Thus "man,"
"stone," "white," etc. are words of first imposition, whereas '"'sub- ' yy
stantive," "adjective,"
"nominative case," etc., are words of second imposition.
Hence words of second imposition always signify words of first imposition. This distinction between words is analogous to that between first and second intentional concepts or mental terms in that first intentions signify objects which are not intentions or concepts whereas second intentions signify first intentions.
See intentions, first and second. in actu primo, in actu secundo: From the Latin meaning "in the state of primary actualization and secondary actualization," respectively. Though the operative faculties of an active substance are formally distinct from each other and from that which formally constitutes its essence or nature, according to Scotus, they are actually inseparable from the concrete substance or existing thing.
(See formal distinction.) Hence a substance is said to be in actu primo with respect to a given operation or actualization simply by being what it is, namely, by having the nature it has with its corresponding faculties. When the agent is actually operating it is said to be im actu secundo. In God, where every possible operation ad intra is fully actualized, the operation is only conceptually distinguished from the operative faculty or power. In this sense, Scotus claims that God the Father is omniscient not only because he has such knowledge in actu primo in the sense that he possesses the divine essence or nature with its intellectual memory, but also in actu secundo in the sense that he actually knows or understands the divine nature and all that this necessarily entails. Cf. 1.69. in quid predication: In quid and in quale are two basic modes of predication.
They refer primarily to the five predicables of Porphyry, namely, the genus, species, specific difference, property, and accident, though Scotus extends the idea of in quid and in quale predication to the transcendental order. Briefly, the difference between the two is this: To predicate in quid means to predicate
GLOSSARY either the entire essence (i.e., the species) or at least the determinable part of the essence
(e.g., the genus). The term is derived from quiddity* or essence, and such predication represents an answer to the question: What is it? (Quid est?). To predicate in quale means to predicate a further determination or qualification of the essence. This qualification (quale) may be either essential
(e.g., a specific difference) or non-essential (€.g., a property or accident). Since the specific difference is really a part of the essence or quiddity, it is sometimes said to be predicated in quale quid or in quale substantiale in order to distinguish it from properties or accidents which are said to be predicated either in quale accidentale or simply in quale. To predicate something im quid, it is not enough that the predicate be an essential note but that it be predicated per modum subsistentis, which from the viewpoint of grammar means that it must be predicated as a noun, not as an adjective or participle or adverb. Predication in quale, whether it be an essential qualification or not, is always predicated per modum denominantis, which from the viewpoint of grammar means it is predicated as a modifier. "Substance," "whiteness,"
"rationality,"
"rational animal," "life," "truth," "goodness," if used as predicates, would be predicated in quid, whereas "substantial," "white," "'rational," "living,"
"true," "good," if used as predicates, would be predicated in quale. eee eZ
in sensu composito et diviso: In the composite sense and in the divided sense. When a complex expression is taken in a composite sense both parts of the expression must be understood as applying simultaneously to the same subject, whereas if it is taken in a divided sense both parts of the expression apply to the subject separately. '"The blind do not see," for example, is true in the composite sense, whereas "the blind see, the lame walk
. the deaf hear, the dead rise'' (Matt. 11:5) must be understood in a divided sense. Failure to distinguish the two senses leads to the well-known fallacies of composition and division, for instance, "five is three and two, three and two are odd and even, therefore, five is odd and even." incommunicable, see communicable infinity, intensive: An unlimited degree with respect to the same formal perfection; it refers to the intrinsic mode* of a pure perfection.* Thus God's knowledge is intrinsically infinite if it is without limitation qua knowledge, i.e., if it extends to all that is knowable. As applied to God, intrinsic infinity is sometimes contrasted
GLOSSARY with his extensive infinity. God is extensively infinite if there is no pure perfection of any sort lacking in him. intelligences: The pure spirits such as God and the intelligent beings postulated by the philosophers as responsible in some way for the regularity of movement characteristic of the heavens and celestial bodies. They were also called "separate substances'* inasmuch as they existed apart from all matter, unlike the human soul, which, though spiritual substantially, was the form of a material body. The angels of Judeo-Christian theology were sometimes identified with these Intelligences of the philosophers as were the Greco-Roman gods of pagan mythology. intelligible species: A likeness or representation of what is intelligible about an object, especially one perceived by the senses. Various interpretations were given to Aristotle's account in the De anima of how the soul is only potentially knowledge and sensation, and becomes aware of an external thing by taking its form or likeness (species) into itself. At the level of the external senses, like vision or hearing, or the internal sense of imagination or memory, sensible species were involved. But there was a problem as to how this sensory information was conveyed to the intellective or nonmaterial part of the soul, inasmuch as its conceptual notions as to what the object was were incorporeal and universal. How the mind as essentially only potential knowledge (i.e., as the possible intellect*) becomes fully actualized through understanding was only vaguely explained by Aristotle. Two factors at least were involved. One was an active agency which, like a light that brings out the potential colors of a darkened object, transformed the phantasm* or sensible species in the imagination by making its potential intelligibility actually intelligible. This mysterious "light" of Aristotle came to be called the agent intellect,* and dozens of theories were proposed to explain its precise nature and function.
The second factor was the presence of the potential object in the mind itself that enabled one who had once acquired knowledge of a thing to draw upon this potential knowledge at will. As the storehouse of this virtual or habitual information, the intellect was described by Aristotle as "the place of the forms" (De anima 11, c.4,
429a27-28). His scholastic followers gave the name "intelligible species" to these distinct universal forms in the possible intellect.
Almost every prominent theologian among them had his own personal theory as to how these
"'species'" were formed and functioned. Underlying their accounts was often the desire to reconcile
GLOSSARY their basically Aristotelian epistemology with certain insights of Augustine. One of these was his conviction that knowledge was more an activity of the soul than a purely passive reception of impressions from external objects. The other was his contention that the human soul is an image of the Trinity in that its superior part is characterized by intellection, memory, and volition. Among these three, memory (memoria) was of special importance. It included not only the power of recalling things and events of past experience, but also that of producing mental concepts of objects not actually present to the senses. Among these were included such transcendent notions as had no strict counterpart in the sensible world but, like the Platonic ideas, were explained in terms of some illumination of the human mind by the divine archetypal ideas.
(See also memory.) While the more "Augustinian" epistemologies of the last half of the thirteenth century retained some form of special illumination, their account of it was always integrated in some way with the explanations of how the agent intellect illumined the phantasm. By Scotus' time, most scholastics denied that anything more than the general "illumination" of the agent intellect was needed to account for our natural knowledge of the world about us. Similarly, though they retained the Augustinian notion of "memory" as the source of the "word" or mental concept of a thing in the mind, mainly because of its analogical explanatory value in accounting for the eternal generation of the Word by the Father,
"memory" became a synonym for the intellect, usually insofar as it contained the latent image of the object as an ens diminutum
(see diminished being) in the form of an intelligible species. Depending on how they interpreted the various functions of agent and possible intellects, Scotus' contemporaries assigned various roles to the intelligible species. Those who held that the intellect was purely passive in conceiving the object, maintained the simple impression of the intelligible species (called then the "impressed species") as the form of the object, sufficed to produce actual knowledge (the expressed species or word). Others, stressing the activity of the intellect, even denied the need of an intelligible species distinct from the sensible species in the phantasm. Scotus, while rejecting the need of an intelligible species for intuitive cognition, required it to go proxy for the object in abstractive cognition in order to explain why our conceptual knowledge, that is a result of a cocausality of intellect (agent or possible) and intelligible species as essentially ordered causes, reflects only the universal
GLOSSARY characteristics or common nature of the object and not its haecclety.* (See cognition, intuitive and abstract.) Scotus' own account of the origin and function of the intelligible species is colored by his conception that throughout the cognitive process, be it at the sensory or intellective level, the cocausality of mind and object are required. That is to say, the soul, which is really identical and only formally distinct from its cognitive faculties (see formal distinction), functions as one active but partial cause, whereas the object, or some species that goes proxy for it, is the other partial cause. As he explains in the Ord. 1, d.3, nn.496-503, this cocausality is that of essentially ordered causes which are related to each other in the manner described in 15.33-34. In this way agent intellect and phantasm produce the intelligible species. The intelligible species and the intellect (call it active or possible intellect as you will) in turn produce the actual knowledge or mental word. The intellect with respect to this latter role is called "memory," to use Augustine's terminology. If actually informed by the intelligible species, the memory passes from the state of essential or remote potency with respect to actual knowledge to one of accidental or proximate potency and in that state is called "perfect memory." Theologians also discussed how the immortal soul after death might acquire intelligible species of things not experienced in the present life.
Scotus' questions on this subject are to be found in Ord. tv, d.45. intensively, intensively infinite, see infinity, intensive intention (intentio): In medieval epistemology, an intention came to acquire the technical sense of a 'natural sign in the soul." In the Latin translation of Avicenna, intentio was used to render the term ma'na (viz., a notion or meaning), which referred to intelligible form (species) of an extramental thing (extra animam) insofar as it existed in the soul (intra animam). Now the form, in contrast to matter, was for Aristotle the essence, quiddity*, or intelligible part of a thing. But any given notion or conceptual meaning, though expressing part of the quiddity of a thing, usually did not exhaust its essential intelligibility, so that intention took on the character of a formal aspect of the thing (a little "form" or formalitas), as it were, and like ratio or logos was used not only for the formal concept in the mind but also for its precise objective correlate. Since these formal aspects, though found inseparably united in the thing, were separable in thought or as intentions in the mind, the intentional distinction became one way of describing the virtual distinction or distinctio rationis insofar as it was used to explain the
GLOSSARY plurality of divine attributes, for example. One and the same indivisible thing had the power or virtue (virtus) of producing in a created mind several objective concepts of itself. Scotus, on the other hand, reduces the virtual or intentional distinction to his formal distinction* a parte rei and the objective correlate of distinct formal concepts to what he calls a ratio realis, a reality (realitas) or formality* (formalitas). Insofar as intention is considered as an intelligible aspect of the thing, it too can be identified with Scotus' formality. See his remark: "What Avicenna himself understands by a different intention is the same thing as I mean by another formality" (Reportata Parisiensia u1, d.1, q.6, n.20). See also intentions, first and second. intentions, first and second: As Porphyry had distinguished between words of first and second imposition* (viz., words that refer respectively to things or to other words), so Avicenna distinguished between first and second intentions. First intentions as natural signs in the soul referred to things and expressed some intelligible aspect or essential characteristic to be found in them (see intention), whereas second intentions referred to first intentions or concepts in the mind. They included such logical notion as genus, species, etc., which the mind discovers by reflecting on how the formal content of one intention relates to that of another. Logic, he claimed, was concerned only with second intentions whereas a real science, like metaphysics, was concerned with first intentional aspects of things. intrinsic mode: A qualification so identified with the subject it modifies that it is neither really nor formally distinct from it, yet it is possible to conceive the subject without the mode as a first intention® at the level of abstract cognition.* Though Scotus speaks of contingency and necessity as positive modes of entity, his only discussion of intrinsic modes in any detail is in connection with magnitude* as a transcendental attribute of being. As an intrinsic mode, magnitude is the degree of intensity or measure of intrinsic excellence characteristic of some formal perfection as it exists extramentally in a particular subject. The most fundamental or basic division of magnitude is into the mode of infinity on the one hand and the various degrees of finitude on the other. Infinity is that mode which transcends every finite mode by a non-finite degree.
From the discussion of magnitude in the present work (cf. 6.15-26) two characteristics of an intrinsic mode emerge. First, it exists extramentally (ex natura ret) in the thing (in re). Hence notions like
O18
GLOSSARY "being," "good," or "wise," which prescind from the mode as well as the modal notions themselves, viz., ''finite' or "infinite," and composite concepts like "infinite being" and "finite goodness," are all first intentions or real concepts when predicated of either God or creatures. Second, the fact that the mode represents something real or actually present in the thing does not entail that it is present in the thing as actually distinct from that of which it is the mode. Though 6.26 makes it clear there is no real distinction a parte rei between the two, the discussion in Ord. 1, d.8, nn.13750 indicates that Scotus does not consider the distinction between God's being and his infinity to be even as radical or basic as that between two formalities. In fact intuitive cognition* or the faceto-face vision of God would erase the distinction entirely, which would not be the case with two formally distinct perfections such as divine wisdom and divine power (cf. Ord. 1, d.8, nn.137-50).
Only at the level of abstract cognition is it possible to conceive the formalities of being or goodness apart from their intrinsic mode.
If there is any objective basis for the distinction, it is to be found not so much in the thing itself as in the different way in which the object known presents itself to the intellect. For the intuitive cognition of the formality and its mode as a single formal object, the actual presence of the existing thing is required. For the abstract conception that prescinds from the mode, an intelligible species* is needed to present the object as an ens diminutum
(see diminished being). This is not to say that "being" and "infinite" are not first intentions when one asserts propositions like "God is a being" or 'The divine being is infinite," for the intelligible species is not that which is known but that by which something is known. What
Scotus is claiming is that as first intentions, "being" and "infinite being" refer to the same divine formality, viz., infinite being. They differ, however, in their conceptual content and in the information they convey, in that the first notion is imperfect and does not serve to distinguish God from creatures, whereas the second is a perfect and proper concept, applicable to God alone. The same could be said of "good" and "infinite goodness" or "wise" and "infinite wis- " dom.
Scotus considers 'finite' and 'infinite' to be transcendental modes of being, that is to say, they divide being before its division into the ten categories*. This suggests a solution to two related problems: (1) Why does God not fall under a genus if the common concept ens (a being) is univocally predicable of him and creaog
GLOSSARY tures? (2) Why does the formal distinction of attributes not introduce some kind of composition in God? His answer to the first is that God's being is formally infinite whereas a being must be finite to fall into a category or genus. For the constitutive perfections that correspond to 'genus' and "'specific difference" are related respectively as potency to act. In man, the "rational animal," for instance, rationality is not only formally distinct from animality, but man's very potential as an animal is increased and heightened by the fact that he has a rational mind. And this provides an answer to the second question. In God, where every attribute is formally infinite, no composition is possible, for all composition, even that between generic and differential formalities, implies that one reality is perfected by another, and hence it is imperfect or finite in itself. In short, Scotus thinks it is precisely because of his infinity that God has the highest degree of real identity consistent with formal diversity. intuitive cognition, see cognition, intuitive and abstract knowledge, abstract, see cognition, intuitive and abstract knowledge, confused, see confused knowledge knowledge, declarative, see declarative knowledge knowledge, distinct, see distinct knowledge knowledge, epistemic, see epistemic knowledge knowledge, first and second intentional, see intentions, first and second knowledge, intuitive, see cognition, intuitive and abstract living reasons, see ideas and exemplar magnitude: The degree of intrinsic excellence or measure of greatness characteristic of a given nature, perfection, or formality. So defined, magnitude is used in a transcendental sense (i.e., it is not limited to the Aristotelian category of quantity). In this sense various properties that are not strictly quantitative can be arranged in some hierarchic fashion. Thus the brightness or intensity of a given color, the relative strength of some virtue or vice, the degree of wisdom or intelligence can be correlated with some fixed scale of values, in which each higher degree contains the lower degree virtually* or eminently*. In modern terminology, such properties are called intensive or nonadditive in contrast to additive or extensive properties like length, mass, or time. Nevertheless, magnitude
GLOSSARY could be called a quantitative rather than a qualitative characteristic of a thing inasmuch as it represents a reply to a question of the form: "How great is this perfection?" or "To what extent is such and such a characteristic present?" rather than an answer to a query of the form: "What kind of perfection is this?" or "What type of thing would this be?" As Scotus himself argues in 6.13, both
Aristotle and St. Augustine distinguished between the strict and transferred sense of such quantitative terms as "great and small," and that "in their transferred sense at least, they are transcendentals and proper attributes of the whole realm of being." In 5.5-9 he shows how this transcendental notion of "quantity" can be extended to form a notion of the "'infinite"' itself as a kind of limit that the various finite magnitudes approach but never reach. Though in this sense magnitude (be it finite or infinite) is a real or extramental characteristic of its respective subject, it is neither really nor formally distinct from it, but is related to the entity or perfection in question as its intrinsic mode.* The distinction between a formality* and its intrinsic magnitude is already implicit in the very notion of a pure perfection,* since creatures are found to possess intelligence, goodness, wisdom, power, and the like in varying degrees, yet the degree as such does not enter into the formal notion or essential definition of these attributes and hence they are said to be perfection purely and simply, and are ascribed to God in an infinite or unlimited degree. memory (memoria): Though Scotus employs this term in its more customary sense as that by which we recall or remember the past
(cf. Ord. 1v, d.45, q.2), his usage of the word throughout the present work reflects the influence of St. Augustine, who had gradually extended the common-sense notion of memory until it came to include everything the individual mind is capable of knowing or thinking about, whether previously experienced or not. Every concept we form is a kind of "child" born of this memory, and every thought we bring to mind reveals or declares what is hidden in its depths. As he puts it in De Trinitate xv, c.10, "The thought formed from that thing which we know is the word which we speak in our heart, and it is neither Greek, nor Latin, nor any other language."
(See declarative knowledge.) This notion of our memory as speaking its "word" provided him with a useful analogy for explaining the eternal generation of the Word* by the Father in the Trinity.
He also argued the soul is an image of the Trinity in that its superior part contained memory, intelligence, and volition. Scotus
52]
GLOSSARY adapted both of these analogies to his own conception as to how the intellect functions in producing actual knowledge as a concept or quality within the soul. In Ord. 1, d.3, nn.58off., he explains how this trinitarian image could be Gndecteor! There are three perfections in the intellective portion of man's soul. The first is its power to produce knowledge in itself and this is called memoria.
The second is its passive ability to receive the knowledge thus produced and this is called intelligentia or intellection. The third is its capacity to have volition as such and this is called voluntas or will.
In short, memory represents the productive aspect of man's mind whereby he forms a concept or mental word. But according to his theory of knowledge, which is neither purely Augustinian nor purely Aristotelian, the intellect is only the partial efficient cause of its own concepts. The other partial cause is the intelligible species,* which informs the intellect, reducing it from remote potency to proximate potency with respect to actual knowledge.
Thus "perfect memory," as the total cause of the concept, includes both the intellect and the intelligible species which function as a single principle or as essentially ordered causes of the mental word. "Perfect memory," however, can be defined even more generally as a pure perfection so that it would also apply to God, in whom there is no real distinction between nature, intellective power, and actual knowledge, nor is any intelligible species derived from some extrinsic object required. In this sense, perfect memory is defined in 1.54 as "an intellect having actually present an intelligible object proportionate to itself." Scotus also adopts Augustine's other analogy. As perfect memory in us begets our thoughts or mental words by a kind of internal speech act, so the Father's
"memory" begets his Son or Word by a kind of eternal speech act.
Thus the mystery of how the Son proceeds from the Father is described in alternate ways as a "speaking of the Word," as an eternal generation of the Son, as a communication of the divine nature to the second person, or as an act of declarative knowledge, in that the Word, as the image of the Father, is a kind of eternal expression of what the Father is in himself. modes of per se predication, see predication, per se natural, naturality: In general, whatever is in accord with the nature or essence of a thing is said to be "'natural.'' More specifically, these terms refer to an action which proceeds from an active power or agent without deliberation and in a manner determined by D22
ae GLOSSARY the nature of the agent. Such an action is said to occur "after the manner of nature" (per modum naturae). Even actions that are essentially free, and hence do not occur simply per modum naturae, may be said to have a certain '"'naturality'" about them, in that some measure of natural determinism accompanies the rational self-determination on the part of the will. See nature and will as primary divisions of active powers. natural will: Either (1) that principle of action called the will, insofar as it is the seat of the affection for what is to the advantage of the agent, or (g) an act freely elicited by the will that is in accord with this inclination or affection. See will and will as nature. nature: In a broad sense "nature" designates simply what a thing is, v1z., its essence or quiddity, and as such would apply not only to positive things but also to such things as privations or negations, as when one inquires about the nature of blindness. In a strict sense, however, nature refers to those causes or agents that do not act with knowledge and deliberation.
Aristotle had already divided all active potencies into either rational or irrational. It is clear from 16.39-40, and even more so from his questions on Aristotle's Metaphysics
(Bk. 1x, q.15, nn.4-7), that Scotus considered his own basic division of nature (natura) and will (voluntas) to be equivalent to irrational and rational principles of action. The will is a rational faculty inasmuch as it acts with reason; that is to say, a free agent after deliberate consideration of various alternatives freely determines his course of action. All other agents, including the intellect itself, except where their actions are subject to voluntary control, act naturally, that is to say, their mode of activity is determined by their respective natures and when all external conditions for action are present, these agents must act and to the utmost of their ability. Unlike some of his contemporaries who admitted that certain acts of the will were necessary whereas others were free, Scotus denies that any elicited act of the will proceeds from that faculty or power naturally (per modum naturae); all the will's actions, by contrast, are elicited freely and as an agent, the will is said to be essentially free and can be equated with liberty as opposed to nature. That is to say, the will is essentially that potency or faculty that can act rationally or with reason. This means first of all that a free agent does not act blindly but has prior knowledge of what can be loved or willed. While such knowledge is a necessary condition, a logical presupposition, for volition, it is not of itself a sufficient condition for the same, for the
GLOSSARY will must determine itself to love or will the object. Furthermore, the will is rational in another more interesting sense, viz., it has an inborn inclination to act in accord with right reason. Though not an elicited act, this affection for justice, as it is called, represents a positive bias in the will that inclines it to love the good in terms of its objective worth or intrinsic value regardless of how this happens to be related to what is good or advantageous for the agent.
See will and will as free. necessity: The correlative of contingency. As a positive state of being or action, it expressed not only what can be but what must be.
The contingent, by contrast, is what can, but need not, be. As a positive state, contingency, as Scotus understands the term, is a logically complex notion. If it refers to something actual, it means that what exists now need not have existed now and that a contrary state could have existed in its place. Such a contingent state 1s possible only if the cause does not act of necessity, that is to say, the cause was free to cause or not to cause the effect with respect to that moment when the effect will begin to exist. Necessity also has a variety of connotations. Scotus, in regard to God's foreknowledge of contingent events, is concerned to distinguish necessity of inevitability, which applies to what is not only the case but could not have been otherwise, and even here he distinguishes between what is inevitable of itself and what is an inevitable consequence of something other than itself. (See necessity of inevitability.) He also refers to a necessity of immutability,* viz., something which must be so only because God is not intrinsically mutable, since this would imply imperfection. necessity of immutability: Though Scotus regarded the will of God to be the contingent cause of all created events, his volition with respect to creatures, like his foreknowledge of their free actions, was not something he has at one moment of.time but not at another. On the contrary, he freely chose from all eternity to create what would begin to exist at that point in time that he wanted it to.
Similarly, what he knows to be true of a free agent, he knows from all eternity, but he knows it as a contingent truth, one which might not have been the case and hence was not something inevitable. necessity of inevitability: A necessity that is completely and absolutely deterministic, stemming as it does from a nature whose actions are not subject to any inhibitive conditions or external restraints. Unlike the natural actions of created agencies which can always be impeded, only the divine nature itself and what is a
GLOSSARY necessary consequence of that nature possesses inevitability in this sense. Other things are inevitable only conditionally, namely, on the assumption that something else is the case, or has been the case, or will be the case. Cf. 16.47. notionallly]: "Notional" (from notio, a sign or distinguishing mark) refers to any characteristic peculiar to any one or, at most, to any two divine persons. As such it is contrasted with those divine properties all three persons have in common. The latter are called
"essentials." obediential potency: The capability or potentiality, inherent in every creature in view of its complete dependence upon the will of God, to be elevated to a supernatural state or condition that transcends any natural exigency, inclination, or potency, for instance, that of hypostatic union* with a divine person or persons. origin, relations of: The relationships that arise between things in virtue of the fact that one originates from another; in its specifically theological and trinitarian usage, the relationship of the principle (principium) to what proceeds from a principle (principiatum) and vice versa. The divine persons are commonly held to be constituted by that relationship of origin that is proper to each.
Thus the Father is said to be constituted by the fact that he begets, or generates, the Son or "speaks the Word." Conversely, the Son is constituted by the fact that he is begotten, or generated, or "spoken" by the Father. The Holy Spirit is constituted by passive spiration*, viz., his relationship to the active spiration of Father and Son as a joint productive principle. According to an oftrepeated theological principle, in the Trinity there is no real distinction except that which arises in virtue of the diametric opposition between the relata or terms related by the relationships of origin. Thus Father is really distinct from the Son and vice versa; the Holy Spirit (passive spiration) is really distinct from active spiration and vice versa. But because Father and Son are not really distinct from the principle of active spiration, nor is active spiration as a principle really distinct from Father or Son, the two types of production in the Trinity give rise to only three rather than four persons that are really and mutually distinct from each other. origination, active and passive: That relationship of origin that is active or passive respectively. Active origination is a notional* characteristic of the Father; passive origination on the other hand
GLOSSARY is a notional characteristic of the Son. The Holy Spirit also has the notional characteristic of passive origination with respect to the active spiration* on the part of Father and Son. passion (passio):
(1) One of the ten categories* of Aristotle, viz., that which consists of the state of being acted upon. Passion and its correlative category, action or the state of acting upon some patient or recipient, are regarded as extrinsically advenient relationships. (See advenient intrinsically and extrinsically.) (2) Among the third class of qualities Aristotle cites in the Categories, c. 8, ga2g-10a10, are what the Oxford translation calls "affections" (passiones). These are transitory sensible qualities which are affected by or affect the senses or sensitive appetite. Examples are the blush of embarrassment, the pallor caused by fear, a passing irritation, as opposed to the more permanent affective qualities such as the natural color of the skin, or a chronic bad temper. (3) A transcendental attribute of being such as true (verum) or good (bonum), considered to be formally distinct from being (ens). (4) A state of suffering, as the passion of Christ. perfection, pure and mixed, see pure perfection permanent vs. successive creature:
Some things are successive or in process, like a melody, a game of tennis, a walk, or a journey.
They are of such a nature that temporal succession enters into the very idea or definition of what they are. Such things are said to have their being sequentially, or to be in a state of becoming (in frert), in contrast to such relatively permanent things as a man, a mountain, or a house, which have being complete and are said to be in fact (in facto esse). See Aristotle, Physics 11, c.6, 206a20-be.
The second class of things Scotus calls the permanent or enduring creatures (cf. 12.5) even though, with respect to God, who creates and conserves them in being, they are in a quasi state of becoming
(ClaeronrA): person, see hypostasis and suppositum phantasm: The sense image or sensible species of the object as present in the internal sense or imagination; also spelled "fantasm." According to Scotus it is the product of (a) the sensible species in an external sense such as sight, hearing, etc., and (b) the internal sense acting as a single principle or as two essentially ordered efficient causes. The phantasm in turn acts in similar fashion with the agent intellect to produce the intelligible species. See agent intellect and intelligible species.
GLOSSARY pilgrim: A person who journeys through this life as an exile on the way (im statu viae) to his heavenly home. place: The whereabouts of a body; one of the ten categories* of Aristotle. It is essentially a relationship between the body and that which surrounds or contains it. (See advenient intrinsically and extrinsically.) In contrast to space, which may or may not be empty, place is regarded as something positive, namely, the boundary of the containing body or bodies considered as immovable and immediately contiguous to the body located there. Confer Aristotle,
Physics tv, cc.4-5. Also called technically, in English, uwbiety.* place, types of presence in: Circumscriptive presence is the natural way in which bodies are in place or space, viz., such that each part of the body occupies its own place distinct from that occupied by other parts; each part, then, has one restricted or circumscribed location. Circumscriptive presence is contrasted with definitive presence, which is said to be characteristic of an immaterial or spiritual substance, or of the soul (with respect to the place occupied by the body it informs). In this case, since the spiritual substance does not have organic or distinct parts like a body does, it is said to be whole and entire in each part of the space or place that defines it, as well as in the entire area. Since place (in contrast to empty space) is the containing surface of surrounding body, place is, according to Aristotelian philosophy, something real and finite. Since God is everywhere by reason of his omnipresence, according to the theologians, God is said to be neither circumscriptively nor definitively in place, since, though he is whole and entire everywhere in place, he is not defined or restricted by it, but rather comprehends it. Hence he is said to be comprehensively present in place or to have repletive presence there, inasmuch as he fills the whole of it. Scotus refers to the first two kinds of presence in 10.34 ff. possible intellect: 'The mind or intellective portion of the soul insofar as it is potentially knowledge, and the recipient of intellectual information. This faculty passes from a state of remote potency to proximate potency by the reception of the (impressed) intelligible species. When fully actualized, the possible intellect is that by which the soul is formally* said to know, apprehend, or grasp the meaning of its conceptual notions or mental "words." See agent intellect; intelligible species; memory; word. postpredicaments: Those general notions such as opposition, privation, simultaneity, posteriority, possession, and the like which K 527
GLOSSARY are discussed in Aristotle's Categories, cc.10-15, after the treatment of the predicaments or ten categories.* potency, see act and potency potency, accidental and substantial: Anything, be it substance or accident, is said to be in objective potency if it has no real or actual being, but has only virtual existence as a possible object of God's creative power. In this sense, the essence of a possible substance is said to be in substantial objective potency; the essence of a possible accident, in accidental objective potency. More frequently, however, accidental and substantial potency are subjective, that is to say, it is some existing subject that is in potency to some substantial or accidental change respectively. Thus matter is in substantial potency to such substantial forms as it can receive but does not have as yet. Similarly, a substance can be in accidental potency to some further accidental perfection or modification. Both substantial and accidental (subjective) potency are further subdivided into proximate and remote potentiality. A subject in proximate potency is reduced to act by one single change or actualization, whereas one in remote potency can be actualized in stages or through a gradated series of changes. Thus the intellective soul is said to be in remote accidental potency to intellection by the very fact that it exists. But to be in proximate accidental potency, the intellect must have the intelligible object present to it, either in its actual existence, if the intellection in question is intuitive cognition, or as presented to the intellect in the form of an intelligible species.* Confer Scotus, QQ. in Metaphysicam 1x, q.2, nn.8-9. potency, proximate accidental, see potency, accidental and substantial predication, formal, see formal predication vs. predication by identity. predication, in quid, in quale, see in quid predication predication, per se: Necessary predication, either (1) because the predicate gives the whole of the essential definition (species) or a part thereof (genus or specific difference), which is the first mode of per se predication, or (2) because the notion of the subject enters into the definition of the predicate. This is the case when the predicate is a proper accident or proprium* of the subject. Confer
Aristotle, Analytica posteriora 1, ¢.4, 73a34-be. See accidens per accidens. principiated (principiatum): That which proceeds from a principle. Because the Son receives the divine nature from the Father as
GLOSSARY a source or productive principle, he can be called a principiatum, but not an "effect" of the Father, according to scholastic theologians. See productions. principle (principium): A beginning, source, or cause of something other than itself, a logical principle. As the originative source of some actually existing entity, principle is used in a more general sense than a cause in any of its Aristotelian connotations. Thus, in speaking of the Trinity, theologians call the Father the originative principle, but not the cause, of the Son. (See productions.) Also, in regard to an action, there are various ways in which an agent is said to be the principle of the action. The person or suppositum is the principium quod (that which acts, i.e., the one who or the one which acts). The nature is the remote principle by which the person acts, and the faculty is the proximate principle by which it acts.
See principium quo and quod. principium quo and quod: In the case of a person (i.e., a rational suppositum*) the person is the one who acts (principium quod agit); the nature of the person is the remote principle by which the person acts (principium quo remotum), whereas the faculty or active potency rooted in the nature is the proximate principle by which the act is elicited (principium quo proximum). In the case of an irrational suppositum, such as a stone or a dog, the suppositum as the ultimate subject is the principium quod agit. Thus it is the stone that rolls and the horse that kicks. priority of nature: A priority based on an order of nature, in contrast to a temporal order or an order of origin. If any two distinguishable elements are so related in virtue of what they are that the very notion or existence of one, call it B, entails the notion or existence of the other, call it A, but not vice versa, then A is prior by nature to B even if neither is temporally prior to the other. If A entails B and B entails A, however, the two are said to be simultaneous by nature; such for instance would be the case with true correlatives (cf. Aristotle, Categories, c.7, 7b15). See also sign of nature. priority of origin: A priority based on the order that exists among the divine persons in virtue of the way one person proceeds from another. Since the three divine persons share the same divine nature or essence from all eternity, there is no one person prior in time or nature to another. In virtue of origin, the Father as eternally generating the Son is prior in origin to the Son who proceeds from him eternally. Similarly, the Holy Spirit is posterior in origin,
GLOSSARY though not in nature or in time, to both Father and Son. See processions, divine; productions and sign of origin. processions, divine: The process whereby the Son proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and Son as from a single principle. Though the process can be called a production, theologians argue it is essentially different from any causal production. See productions, speaking, and spirating. productions: As applied to the inner life of God, the divine productions refer to the eternal generation of the Son by the Father, and the eternal spiration of the Holy Spirit by the Father and Son acting as a single principle. Because the end result of these productions or divine processions of one person from another or others is that one and the same numerical nature is shared equally by all three persons, theologians felt justified in distinguishing such a "production" from a causal production where not only is the cause really distinct from the effect, but the effect has a nature or essence that is numerically distinct from that of the cause. According to this technical usage, the Father can be called a "producer" (producens) or a "principle or source" (principium) but not a "cause"
(causa). The Son and Holy Spirit conversely cannot be called "effects" or said to be ''caused'"' but they can be called "'producibles'"' or principiata (singular principiatum) in the sense that they proceed from a principle. proprium: One of the five predicables of Porphyry; a property.
Though it is not part of the essential definition of the subject, it is inseparable from the essence and can be shown to follow from the definition as a logical consequence. Hence, in contrast to the genus, difference, and species which are predicated in the first mode of necessary or per se predication,* the proprium is also predicable per se but in the second mode. Examples as regards man would be the properties of "teachable," "risible," etc. See also accidens per accidens. pure perfection (perfectio simpliciter): Anything that is purely and simply perfection. The scholastic conception of the term goes back to St. Anselm of Canterbury (cf. Monologion, c.15), who distinguishes among the various names that designate perfections in creatures those which seem to imply no imperfection as such and which absolutely speaking it would be better to have than not to have. Such, for instance, would be "being," "living," "wise," "powerful," "just," "blessed," etc. "Man," "gold," "lead," by contrast, represent perfection, not simply, but in a qualified sense. The dis-
GLOSSARY tinction between unqualified and qualified perfection corresponds to what are often called pure and mixed perfection. Consequently we have translated perfectio simpliciter uniformly as "pure perfection." Since the notion of a limited degree does not enter into the formal definition of a pure perfection, Scotus argues that pure perfection is compatible with the intrinsic mode of infinity. See intrinsic mode. quality: A quality is any attribute that expresses the kind of thing the subject is (cf. Aristotle's Metaphysics v, c.14). As such it would include first of all the substantial or specific difference itself, which is predicated in quale quid of the subject. (See in quid predication.) More often, however, quality refers to one of the ten categories.* Under this heading, Aristotle enumerates four distinct types: (1) habit and disposition, (2) inborn capacities or incapacities, (3) affective qualities and affections (passiones), (4) form and figure. Though he admits there may be other sorts, he believes these four cover what are most properly called qualities (Categories, c. 8, 8a25-10a25). Habit differs from a mere disposition, he tells us, in that it is more lasting and firmly established. It includes various kinds of knowledge or virtues like justice, self-restraint, and so on, that are not easily dislodged, whereas heat, cold, disease, and health represent dispositions which can quickly change.
While habits are at the same time dispositions, not all dispositions are necessarily habits. This notion of habit was extended by medieval theologians to include also supernaturally infused habits, like faith, hope and charity. (See habit.) For Aristotle, the second class of qualities seemed to differ from the first largely in that they were native abilities whereas the first were acquired in the course of time. Scholastics were not agreed as to how this second class of "accidental" qualities were to be understood, especially in regard to the powers of the soul. The third class of qualities are those which produce or result from some accidental sensible change. If this is relatively permanent, the alteration is an affective quality, whereas if it is more ephemeral in nature, it is called an affection or passion.* ''Affection'"—which is the Oxford translation of md6os
—in this context does not mean love or attachment, but is rather used in the sense of ''affecting" or "being affected by" something in which the senses or sense appetites are involved. Thus such sensible qualities of a thing as its color, flavor, sound, temperature are listed among this third class because they affect the senses.
GLOSSARY Since the natural color of one's skin is permanent, Aristotle calls it an affective quality, whereas the passing blush of shame or embarrassment, the pallor of fear, a feverish temperature, or other such transient qualities are called affections or passions. Not only the body but also the soul has affections and affective qualities, he explains. For instance, we speak of men who are bad-tempered, irascible, or mad, in virtue of a more or less permanent condition in contrast to the even-tempered man, who may nevertheless occasionally lose his temper. Such a flash of vexation would be an affection, whereas the more or less permanent temperament would represent an affective quality. The fourth quality involves such things as shape or configuration, which result from the arrangement of the quantitative parts of a body. quantity: Though Scotus is well aware of the usual sense of this term as an Aristotelian category, the questions that gave rise to the present work, especially Questions Five and Six, caused him to turn to the extended or transferred meaning of the term that had been employed by theologians since the time of St. Augustine. See intrinsic mode and magnitude. quiddity (from the Latin, quid, "what''): The real nature or essence of a thing; literally, it means the "whatness" as an answer to the question Quid est? (What is it?). real relation, see relations, real reduplicated (reduplicatus): An expression in which the notion itself or some aspect thereof is repeated after some connective as qua, as, under the aspect of, etc.; for example, being qua being, will as nature, or will as free. relations, common: 'Those relationships between the divine persons that are symmetrical and hence do not distinguish one person from the other in the way that the relations of origin* do. The only common relationship of this sort that Scotus considers to be real is that of equality. Confer Question Six. relations, real: A relation is real, according to Scotus, if these three conditions obtain: (1) its foundation is some extramental reality or formal characteristic of a thing; (2) the related terms are themselves things* (res) and are really distinct from each other; (3) the relationship is extramental, that is to say, it holds independently of any intellectual consideration. Confer 6.82. relations, second type of, see relatives, three types of relations of origin, see origin, relations of
GLOSSARY relatives, three types of: In the Metaphysics v, c.15, Aristotle enumerates three kinds of relative things on the basis of the foundation for the relationship. The first is founded on number or quantity, as double to half or treble to a third, or in general that which is contained many times to its multiple and that which exceeds to that which is exceeded. Equal, like, and the same are included under this heading inasmuch as they all refer to unity.
Those are equal whose quantity is one; those are alike whose quality is one; and those are the same whose substance is one. The seceee ond class of relatives is based on their acting or being acted upon, that is to say, on their active or passive potencies; for example, the relationship of what can heat to what can be heated; or of what can cut to what can be cut, and in general of everything active to everything passive. The third class includes such things as the knowable, the thinkable, the visible and the like, which are described in relative terms only because something else is related to them, namely knowledge, thought or sight. res, see thing sacrament of the altar: The Eucharist or the consecrated elements of bread and wine. See eucharistic species. science, subalternate, see subalternate science scientific knowledge, see epistemic knowledge separate substance: A substance which exists apart from all matter; a pure spirit such as God or the intelligent beings postulated by the philosophers as responsible in some way for the regularity or movement characteristic of the heavens and celestial bodies. These were called Intelligences* and Judeo-Christian theologians considered them as angels. separated accident, see eucharistic species, transubstantiation separated quantity, see transubstantiation sign (signum): In De quantitate animae, c.11, St. Augustine defines a sign as ''a mark without parts." Examples would be a geometric point, a particular point in time, or a logical "moment." As a temporal sequence of events can be described in terms of the point in time when each occurred, so a nontemporal ordered sequence can be distinguished according to different "signs" indicating priority or posteriority according to that order. Sce sign of nature and sign of origin. sign of nature: Though Scotus does not admit any temporal sequence or priority among the various essential or notional attributes
GLOSSARY God has from all eternity, he does believe one can distinguish a certain order of nature among these attributes or properties in virtue of what they are. Knowledge of a creature's possibility, for instance, does not logically entail a decision to create, but God's decision to create (made from all eternity) does entail knowledge of this possibility. If B entails A, but not vice versa, A is said to be prior by nature to B even when there is no temporal precedence. As one may number various moments of time to distinguish the order of temporal events, so Scotus distinguishes various instants or logically discrete moments to show the logical sequence of such non-mutual entailments. "Sign" in this context has the meaning of "a mark without parts" (confer St. Augustine, De quantitate animae, c.11). sign of origin: A discrete instance in a sequence of elements ordered according to a priority-posteriority relationship on the basis of how one divine person proceeds eternally from another. See
Sign. simply simple (simpliciter simplex): A primitive or irreducibly simple concept. Simple concepts are those which can be grasped in a single act of understanding. Some simple concepts, like that of man, for instance, can be analyzed in terms of two simpler concepts, one of which is determinable, e.g., "animal," the other determining, e.g., "rational." Such a process of analysis, however, must eventually end up with irreducibly simple notions which are known 2n toto if they are known at all. Such, Scotus claims, are the concepts of ''being" and its ultimate differences. In contrast to simple concepts, Scotus calls concepts that have no per se unity, but only an accidental unity, e.g., a white man, composite concepts, because several distinct acts are required to grasp their meaning.
Confer Lectura 1, d.3, n.68; Ord. 1, d.3, n.71. singularity, determinate: The haecceity* of a particular individual; individuality as something unique and proper, in contradistinction to "individuality" as the common or general characteristic of all individuals (indeterminate singularity). speaking (dicere): The act of producing a '"word."* Because the second person of the Trinity is called the Logos or Word of the Father, St. Augustine describes the eternal generation or production of the Son by the Father as "speaking the Word." The force of the analogy springs from his peculiar conception of our "memory," which is a kind of intellectual storehouse or reservoir of all that we can know or think about. From it every thought we have is born,
GLOSSARY or brought to light, being given conceptual expression as a kind of mental "word spoken in the heart" that declares to our mind what is hidden within it. See declarative knowledge and memory. species, eucharistic, see eucharistic species spirating, spiration (Latin spirare, "to breathe"): The manner in which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. Following St. Augustine, theologians regard it as an act of love involving the will, shared as a single principle (sometimes called ''active spiration" in contrast to the Holy Spirit as "passive spiration"') by both Father and Son. subalternate science: A science which draws its principles from a higher science. If science be taken as a demonstrated conclusion
(see epistemic knowledge) or a body of such conclusions, then some of the conclusions demonstrated in the higher science become premises for demonstration in the subalternate science. subsistence: The perfection whereby a being is cavable of existing in itself or per se. In 9.7 Scotus enumerates some of the various senses in which a thing could be said to be per se or subsistent.
They range from that minimal degree of subsistence characteristic of a separated accident* miraculously supported apart from its connatural substrate, to that of substances, swpposita, or persons. substantial act: In material or bodily substances, composed of matter and form, the substantial form, which unites with the material component to form a single complete substance or nature, is called the substantial act, in contrast to further accidental modifications of the substance, called accidental forms or acts. See act and potency. successive, see permanent vs. successive creature sun: According to Aristotle, not only is the parent an efficient cause of generation, especially in the case of plants, animals, and men, but the movement of the sun along the ecliptic is given as reason why the cycle of generation and corruption is perpetuated (cf. De generatione et corruptione ul, c.10). The sun functions as a general cause, whereas the nature of the parent is the specifying factor in generation. Scotus alludes to this view of Aristotle and discusses his own views about the effects of the heavenly bodies on various types of change including generation and corruption in Ord. u, d.
THis suppositum: The general name for a being that is per se in the third sense defined by Scotus in 9.7. If the swppositum is of a rational or intellectual nature, it is called a person. Suppositwm is a literal
GLOSSARY Latin translation of hypostasis, the term Greek theologians used to designate a divine person in the Trinity. The Latin form is retained in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary and is translated as '"'supposit" in the third. Because of their interest in explaining the union of Christ's human nature and his divinity in the person of the Word (see hypostatic union), theologians were forced to develop some clear idea of what constituted a person, be he human, angelic, or divine. In this connection they went on to determine the analogue of person in a nonrational subsistent, and retained swppositum as a general designation for any fully subsistent individual, be it rational or not. Boethius had defined a person as '"'an individual substance of a rational nature"
(confer De persona et duabus naturis, c.3, PL 64, 1343). Those who accepted this definition pointed out that "substance" was not to be taken in a categorical sense but as equivalent to a distinct subsistent, in the sense that Scotus seeks to clarify in discussing the various meanings of subsistent or per se being in g.7. Others stressed that "rational'' was equivalent to "intellectual" in its most general sense, viz., as applicable also to the divine nature as well as to one which reasoned in the discursive manner characteristic of man. Others, who unlike Scotus made matter the basis for individuality, had to qualify the term "individual." Richard of St.
Victor, in his De Trinitate iv, cc.21-22, called attention to what' seemed to be an even more serious drawback of the Boethian definition, namely, that, according to it, the divine nature itself would be a person in its own right. Hence he suggested an alternate definition, viz., that a person is "the incommunicable existence of an intellectual nature" (intellectualis naturae incommunicabilis existentia). "Existence" here seems to be simply the abstract form for "the existent" or "the subsistent." It implies that the subject characterized by it has substantial being (esse) in a transcendental or non-categorical sense, and that this being is complete and individual. It also connotes, says Richard, that this existent has this being in virtue of some property that indicates something of its origins, that is to say, it has this being of itself, or by creation, or by propagation, etc. In God the divine nature itself has such existentia, for it has substantial being of itself. Now the three divine persons share this existentta commonly and hence indistinguishably, but each person also has his own incommunicable existence in virtue of which he is a discrete and unique individual. It is this incommunicable existentia in the divine intellectual nature that best de-
GLOSSARY fines what a divine person is. And more generally, it is the incommunicable existence of any intellectual nature that commonly defines a person, be he divine, angelic, or human. On this Richardian definition, which Scotus accepts and develops, a suppositum would seem to be the incommunicable existence of any nature, and a person would be an intellect suppositum. terminus a quo: The initial state or starting-point of change, from the Latin, the "terminus from which." Since change was described as the passage of some subject from one state or condition to another, scholastics distinguished three elements involved in change:
(1) the underlying substrate or subject of the change, (2) the initial terminus, and (3) the final state or terminus ad quem (literally, the "terminus to which") the process of change proceeds and with which it ends. terminus ad quem: A goal, object, or purpose; the final state, for instance, of a process of change. thing (res): Whatever exists or is conceived to exist as a really distinct entity, be it a substance or accident, or a really distinct constituent of substance such as matter and substantial form. As such it is distinguished from a formality or reality which is an intelligible aspect, several of which can be distinguished within a single thing. (See formality.) It is also used as a synonym for ens (a being) and in addition to the above meaning it is used in the broader as well as the more restricted sense given in 3.6-14.
. transient action, see action, immanent and transient transubstantiation: The term coined by Catholic theologians to indicate the change involved when, at the consecration in the mass, the substances of bread or wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ. The accidents (called Eucharistic Species*) of the bread and wine—the sensible qualities that one can see, taste, and touch—remain, but conversion is called total because, unlike the generation and corruption* involved in the ordinary changes of one substance into another, e.g. elements into chemical compounds, etc., in which some form of matter or material cause serves as the underlying subject of the change, in transubstantiation both the matter and substantial form cease to exist and are replaced by the presence of Christ.
A common explanation adopted by medieval theologians to explain how the Species, appearances, or accidental features remained despite the absence of the normal substantial substrate was that God miraculously conserved the ac-
GLOSSARY cident quantity,* which in turn supported the other accidental qualities. Accidents thus lacking substantial support were called separated accidents.* Though they existed in themselves after the manner of substance, their natural inclination to inhere in a substance was sufficient to keep them from being regarded as a substance in their own right. ubiety (ubi): The relationship between a body and the place it occupies; hence the presence of a body in a definite place; sometimes called ubication. See place. univocal principle or cause: One that produces a product or effect specifically like itself. Living generation is of this type. virtually: One thing is said to contain another virtually if it can produce it, for example, as a cause or as a principle. Scotus also uses the word in a special sense, namely, when two distinct formalities are found in one and the same really identical thing, one of the two formalities can be said to virtually contain the other. Thus, for example, he explains that the divine paternity, though formally distinct from the divine essence, is contained virtually in the essence' (ch Lectura, G2) 11-272). will: That faculty or active principle whereby an agent acts freely and not per modum naturae (i.e., in the way or manner that nature does). Where Aristotle divided all active powers or potencies into rational or irrational (cf. Metaphysics 1x, c.2, 1046b1-2), Scotus equates these with will (voluntas) and nature (natura), respectively. The will is called a rational faculty because it acts with reason, and that on two grounds:
(1) After deliberate consideration of what is good or bad, the agent freely elicits an act of volition or nolition as the case may be. (All other agents, including the intellect itself, except where their actions are subject to voluntary control, act naturally or per modum naturae, i.e., when all external conditions for acting are present, the act is elicited necessarily and in a manner determined by nature. See nature. Even the initial acts of the intellect are natural or determined in this sense. Only those secondary acts of the intellect as fall under the command of the will are rational in the strict sense of being the result of a rational deliberation.) (2) But free will is rational also in a further sense, viz., that it has an inborn inclination to love an object according to right reason, that is, for what it is in itself or for its intrinsic value.
GLOSSARY Following St. Anselm of Canterbury, Scotus calls this inclination an affection for what is just (affectio iustitiae) since it inclines the will to love what is good objectively or justly. By contrast, nature and all natural causes are inclined to seek their own perfection, namely, what they were born to be (natura, from nasci, to be born). Because the will, like other natural faculties, is not indifferent to its own perfection, it also has such an inborn inclination for the advantageous (affectio commodi). As the seat of this inclination or affection, the will is said to be voluntas ut natura. If this inclination went unchecked it would incline the will to seek its own perfection and happiness above all else. But because nature, in the case of finite agents, is not the supreme good, either in itself or as a potency perfected by its elicited act, the affectio iustitiae, or inclination to love as right reason dictates, is the higher inclination.
It is the first checkrein or moderating influence on the affectio iustitiae, freeing the will, as it were, from the need to seek only itself and its own perfection above all else. Hence it is called by Scotus the native freedom of the will, and, by some commentators, a "freedom for values." According to Scotus, neither the affectio commodi nor the affectio iustitiae is an elicited act of the will, but when the will acts after deliberation, it always elicits an act in accord with one or both of these affections or inclinations. A created will is physically free to follow either inclination, no matter how strong, and though it has the capacity and inclination to follow reason, it can love a good inordinately or unreasonably. In the case of the supreme or infinite good, however, this is not possible. Here our finite will can love God in three ways, viz., (1) as a good in himself by an elicited act of friendship love in accord with the affection for justice and this cannot be inordinate; (2) as a good for us, inasmuch as the union with God through such knowledge and love represents the ultimate perfection of our nature; (3) the will can also want the delight or happiness that is the natural concomitant of such a well-ordered love. Though (2) and (3) are acts in accord with the affection of the advantageous, they are well ordered, since they are recognized as subordinate but inseparable consequences of (1). To will (2) because it is intended by God and (3) because it enables us to love God better in the first way incorporates these secondary loves into the primary love so that all three can in some way be said to be acts in accord with the affectio tustitiae. will, natural: Either (1) that principle of action called the will, inope)
GLOSSARY sofar as it is the seat of the affection for what is to the advantage of the agent, or (2) a freely elicited act in accord with that inclination or affection. will as free (voluntas ut libera): (1) The will as rational or as voluntas (in contradistinction to natura as the common designation of all nonrational agents, whose mode of action is determined by their nature). (See nature.) (2) The will as the seat of the affectio iustitiae in contradistinction to the will as nature (voluntas ut natura), i.e., the will as the seat of the affectio commodi. See will. will as nature (voluntas ut natura): The will as a faculty or active principle insofar as it is the seat for the affectto commodi and is inclined, like all other faculties to seek what perfects and hence is to the advantage of the agent. See will. word (verbum): The divine Word or second person of the Trinity.
The concept or mental word in the soul. See memory.
Index of Authors* *The numbers refer to paragraphs, not to pages Alexander of Hales: Summa 7.80, 7.85, 7.101-102, 7.107, POS LOO, alow el id, theologica, 4.20
Alhacem: Perspectiva, 14.88
Ambrose, St.: De fide ad 7.116, 7.120-23, 8.8, 8.23, 9.9, 9-13, 9.24, 9-31, 9.36, 10.5, 10.26, 10.27, 12.10-12, Gratianum, 5.43; Ex positio Evangelii Lucae, 14.36
Anselm, St.: 1.30; De casu 1Bo1O; 19800513.
1 Oyelt99"7, 13.50, 13.55, 13.65, 13.68, W917 287 Be l3.63, Lao, diaboli, 21.29; De conceptu virginali, 18.36; De libero LO NO2 Aa 70 1h. 95 lly.
2 he arbitrio, 16.30; Monologion, 15.33, 16.33, 16.39-41, 16.49, 18.24, 18.40, 19.21, 19.83, 1.2, 1.22-23, 1.28-29; 5.31, 6.34; 20.23, 21.42, Appendix, add.
Proslogion, 1.9
Aristotle: Analytica posteriora, 9.53; Physica, 2.2, 2.35,°2.80, Pes NO, Geis IIE (toa lau aoy, 7-7) 7-24) 7-99 9-7, 13-58; Analytica priora, 3.27; De anima, 8.8, 8.25, 9.7, 9.15, 7:3» 7-20, 7-43» 7-471 7:50 7-61, Flay "7g NUP, Upfe CAEeeO, i Aese 13.60, 13.76, 13.91, 14.10, 15.3, 9-3, 10.32, 10.37, 10.62, 10.71,
W510, 15.0; 15-24, 1532, 15.37,
Tita, Ney ATL Ttey, TANGY, Whe).
11.31, 11.35-36, 12.14, 12.10, 15-39, 15-42-44, 15-57; 16.31, Appendix, add. 9.53; De animalium generatione, 12.22-24, 12.26, 12.29, RG, UO, TACO ale act 13.78, 13.87, 13.89, 16.10, 16.39, 15.33, 21.45; De caelo, 2.59, 7B 10230, Llnl e230, Appendix, add. 9.53; De generatione, 9.15, 10.5; De 16.40, 18.17, 19.83, 19.90, 21.2, PUG, Me PY ey Lee 21.45, 21.46; Praedicamenta, interpretatione, 3.10; De 3.49, 6.6, 13.74, 13.101, 17.14, sensu et sensato, 9.28; De sophisticis elenchis, 3.6; 18.17; Rhetorica, 21.16, 21.18; Topica, 3.6, 3.57, 13.58
Augustine, St., 1.10, 1.29-30, Ethica ad Nichomacum, 1.71, 4.66, 6.66, 6.68, 7.93, 7.95:
IeA heal AOL 23a Opel 577, 13.80, 13.85, 13.88, 16.10, 17.23, Confessiones, 10.27; Contra academicos, 21.8; Contra epistolam Manichaei, 14.21;
TBI, 18.17, 20107; 20.10;
Metaphysica, 1.45, 2.17, 2.23, Deda, AAR), POA, GI) Beer Contra Maximum, 2.48, 6.75, 7.4; Contra epist. Funda4-1, 4.5, 4.51, 4:58, 6.2, 6.6, menti, 14.21; De civitate Dei, 6.13, 6.30, 6.55, 6.64, 7.3, 7-5, 7:7) 7:24) 7-48» 7-49 7-6, 7-77; 7.65, 14.19, 15.64, 16.3, 16.39, 54]
INDEX Avicenna: Metaphysica, 2.23, Augustine, St. (cont.) 3.10-11, 3.52, 7-115, 9.36, Appendix, add. 9.53
Boethius: De persona et 16.47, 16.48, 21.8, 21.47; De diversis quaestionibus, 1.65, 8.1, 8.45, 8.49, 13.53, 16.22, duabus naturis, 10.10, 10.16, 18.37; De doctrina christiana, 10.17, 10.18; De consolatione philosophiae, 6.34, 21.47; De Trimitate, 3.12; In categorias Aristotelis, 18.19
Bonaventure, St.: In libros 0.2, 13.11; De fide ad Petrum, 4.52, 6.7; De genesi ad litteram, 12.13; De libero arbitrio, 16.2, 16.30, 18.24, 21.30; De quantitate animae, 6.80; De Sententiarum commentarium, Trinitate, 1.1, 1.5-7, 1.10, 1.15, 4.12, 4.20, 4.13, 4.22, 12.10, 12a Chrysostom, St. John: In 1.23, 1.35, 1.59, 1.65, 1.67, 1.69, 1.70, 1.73, 2.66, 2.70, 2.85, 3.36, 3.51, 4.18, 4.20-21, 4.42, Iohannem homiliae, 6.75
Cicero: De divinatione, 16.47; 4.50, 4.65, 4.68, 5.53, 6.2, 6.13, 6.24, 6.25, 6.41, 6.45, 6.57, 6.76, De fato, 16.47; De natura deorum, 16.47
Damascene, St. John: De fide 8.1, 8.2, 8.4, 8.6, 8.8, 8.11, 8.19, iA, hi, TO), Ue, Ie MK.
13.20, 13.58, 14.12, 14.19, ORO
Aaa?
VAG VAL FOL Ar TO 14. Oy) lines, Wel ls Omelet ment 2a orthodoxa, 1.1, 1.7-8, 1.10, 3:42, 3-49) 4.3) 4.13, 4.22, 5.11, 6.15, 6.29, 14.69, 17-5, 19.55; 15.2.2), Ub. 20. 1543.5 5.50, 19.60; De institione 15.60, 16.11, 18.5, 18.9, 18.31,
OIL, NCA, MOL Ney, XIE, POM,
Appendix, add. 1.39; Enchielementarit, 2.11
Fulgentius of Ruspe, De fide ad Petrum, 4.52, 6.7
Euclid: Elementa, 5.57, 6.41 ridium, 16.21, 16.30, 18.50, 19.4, 19.20, 19.31, 20.31; Gilbert de la Porrée, 11.1
In cathedram S. Petri, 20.31; Giles of Rome: In libros SenIn Iohannis Evangelium tentiarum commentarium, tractatus, 6.77; Retracta3.22, 7.97; Quodlibetum, 3.22; Theoremata de corpore tiones, 16.17, 18.28, 21.7, 21.8; Sermones, 20.56; Super genesim, 10.9, 10.13, Christi, 10.22, 10.59
Godfrey of Fontaines:
12.9, 15.8, 15.20, 15.39, Quodlibetum, 15.10, 17.30
15.47, 18.50
Averroes: De anima, 15.45-47; Gratian, Decretum, 20.26, 20.38, 20.56
Gregory, St.: XL homiliae in De substantia orbis, 7.114; Ethica, 13.85; Metaphysica, Evangelia, 20.47
Gregory IX, Decretales, 7:45» 7-49, 7-66, 7.67, 7.70, 7.111, 9.26, 13.26, 13.64, 20.54-55, 20.57, 20.69
Henry of Ghent: Quodlibet, 13.67; Physica, 11.12, 11.21, 13.23, 13.58, 13.78, 13.89, 13.101
1.195, 2.5)82:359 2-7 2509-22p 4 2%.
5.40, 6.59, 7.28, 7.102, 8.9, b42
INDEX 10.56, 16.8, 19.9, 21.29; Summa quaestionum Pseudo-Dionysius: De divinis nominibus, 6.33, 6.36, 8.6, ordinariarum, 1.19, 1.57, 2-5, PY) Dai PPR API TR aoy 18.16, Appendix, add. 18.23
Richard of Middleton: In 6.59, 7.28, 7.102, 8.9, 16.34-35 libros Sententiarum commentarium, 9.5, 16.34, Hilary, St.: De Trinitate, 1.24, 2.66, 4.51, 4.52, 6.45
Innocent III: De sacro 19.9
Richard of St. Victor, 4.10: altaris mysterio, 10.73
De Trinitate, 4.10, 6.34, 7.94
Roger Marston: De emanaIsidore, St.: Sententiarum libri tres, 20.56
Jerome, St.: Commentarium tione aeterna, 4.12, 4.17, 4.20
Thomas Aquinas, St.: Summa theologiae, 2.5, 2.72, 3.22, in Evangelium Matthaei, 5.43; De regula monachorum, 4.20, 4.27, 5.40, 6.53, 6.609, 20.11, 20.26; Epistolae, 20.38
Liber de causis (anonymous), 7-99, 8.13, 9-5) 9-17) 9.22, 9-45, 10.74, 14.40, 16.8, 19.46
Walter of Bruges: Jn libros 9.20
Peter Lombard: Sententiae in Sententiarum commentarium, 4.20
William of Ware: In libros IV libris distinctae, 4.52
Plato: Timaeus, 21.8
Sententiarum commentarium, Pseudo-Aristotle, De bona 1.5, 2.35, 5.42, 10.62, 19.9, fortuna, 21.1-2, 21.8, 21.10-12, QNeliol Opa IMO eel 2-246 21.88
19.46
Index of Subjects* * The numbers refer to paragraphs, not to pages accident: being or entity of, charity: indifferent act and, 17.11-12; meritorious act and, 3.44-47; inherence of, 3.51-53, 17.8, 17.31-34; moral virtue 19.24, 19.40; suppositum and, 19.83-84. See also substance angel: as a being that is simply and, 17.18-21; sin and, 17.10-11. See also love conservation: conversion and, subsistent per sé, 9.7-12:
10.49-54; creation without, cannot inform matter, 12.18-33; identity of the real relation to God of the created and conserved, 12.5-14; meaning of, 12.15-17 creation: annihilation and, g.1-53; demonstrable that it is causable, 7.104-22; dependence of less perfect natures on, 19.26; individual multiplication of, 2.10-15 appetition: implies some 10.55-68, 12.23-33; conservation and, 12.15-17; the divine internal productions precede, 8.19, absolute entity, 13.8-16; involves a relationship, 13.17-67. See also love, operation being: accidental and essential, 8.28-34, 14.51-73; an individual is the term of, 1.13-15; action presupposes, 2.16-18. See also conservation dependence: independence 4.66-69; dependent and independent, 19.12-32, and, 19.12-32, 19.69-72, 19.69-72, 19.79-93; infinite, 19-79-93 divine power, see omnipotence 5.8-9, 5.57-58; minddependent, 3.31; necessary, equality: basis in general for, 7,101-106; notional and 6.5-6; of divine persons, essential, 1.14-16; repugnance 6.7-86; of duration, 6.32-37; to, 3.53, 9-50-54, 19.79; types of per se, 9.7, 9.46-47. See also of magnitude, 6.12-31; of power, 6.38-42. See also relation accident, causality, relation, substance, thing Eucharist, 10.1-74: how it causality: necessity and, ceases, 10.73-74; possibility 7.50-66; omnipotence and, of converting the species into something preexistent: on the 7.40-76. See also cause, order cause: extrinsic and intrinsic, part of God, 10.1-3; on the part of the preexistent, 3.19; mediate and immediate, 7.40, 7.54-56; secondary, 10.21-54; on the part of 7.61-66; superior and inferior, 7.78-83. See also order quantity, 10.4-20; without
INDEX annihilation, 10.55-68. See nature of, 1.5-13; eternity of, also mass 6.32-37; foreknowledge of, faith: acquired and infused, 16.47; intellect and 14.24-33; knowledge of Trinity by, 14.19-23; natural knowledge of God and knowledge by, 17.22-29 Father: intellectuality of, 1.31-45, 1.67-71, 2.25-30, 5.47-50, 5-54-56, 8.8-12; knowability of, 7.29-34, 14.10-17, 10.34-39; meaning of notional and essential in, 1.13-45; predication formally and by identity concerning, 3.38; relationship to creatures of, 8.48; suppositum and the nature of, 1.78. See also divine paternity as thing and aspect, 3.1-58; divine paternity not formally infinite, 5.12-15; relation constitutive of, 4.1-69: opposed to the Son's constitutive relation, 4.8-46; with no real internal infinite, Trinity, omnipotence Holy Spirit: production of, distinction, 4.48-52; with some conceptual distinction 2.76-80; his spiration as necessary, 16.5-29; his spiration as both necessary and free, 16.35-46. See also Trinity imputability, 18.24-26: possible, 4.53-60 form: information of matter by substantial, 9.13-14; information of substance by distinction of types and accidental, 19.40; matter does not multiply, 2.9-24; orders of, 7.60, 9.15-16, 19.30; principle of production, 2.82degrees of, 18.27-29; of external act, 18.54-55; merit and, 17.8. See also merit, 85. See also accident, substance fortune, 21.1-48: does it exist? moral badness, moral goodness 21.58, if the world is eternal? individual: can be multiplied 21.41-47; does good fortune ad infinitum, 2.49-50; the exist? 21.9-11; does anyone kind of Aristotelian "matter" possess it? 21.13-17; what is that individuates the, 2.59-62. the cause of it? 19.20-40 freedom: coexistence of See also person, suppositum infinite: description of, 5.5-9; necessity and, 16.30-32; divine foreknowledge and, 16.47; finite and, 5.57-60; as primary or adequate object, 5.26-29; an intrinsic condition of the several really distinct and will, 16.32; natural necessity formally infinites impossible, and, 16.1-28; and nature as the primary principles of 5.17-29. See also God infinity: ascribed formally or action, 16.39-46; required for only by identity, 5.12-15, the perfection of an action, 5.37-42; Not a property, but 16.32
God: activity of, 1.37-45, an intrinsic mode of being, 5.10-11. See also infinite 8.1-34, 16.1-50; essence or
INDEX can a priest satisfy several intellect: obligations with one mass? as active in intellection: qua 20.50-70; has value ex opere operantis agent intellect, 15.40-44; qua possible intellect, 15.45-50, and ex opere operato, 20.3:
15.80-85; Scotus' view, 15.60-63: acts by viz. (a) its value in virtue of the celebrant's personal way of nature, 16.41; merit, 20.5-27; and (b) its value as a sacrifice: can be applied by the celebrant, intellection and, 1.37-41, 1.73-74; natural object of man's, 14.40-50, 14.74-92; and the production of a word, 2.25-30; 15.4-63.
20.29-30, and at will, 20.36; if applied to many, has not the same value for each as See also intellection if applied to one, 20.45-46; solution of cases and doubts, intellection: as an absolute entity yet implying a relation, 13.8-67; immaterial or 20.37-44.
See also Eucharist matter: different meanings of, spiritual nature of, 9.17-30; neither object nor intellect 2.59-62; identity of, 10.25-29; individuation and, 2.5-24; and order of perfection in the total cause of, 15.27-39; the object's role in, 15.19-26; the soul's active principle of, forms, 9.15-16; substantial form and, 9.13-14. See also form 15.6-18. See also intellect knowledge: abstractive and intuitive, 6.18-21, 13.28-47; merit: application of prayer's, of the blessed, 15.64-79; the capacity to receive vs. the 20.4-49; definition of, 17.6; natural love not specifically distinct from, 17.13-33; ability to attain, 14.5-6; direct and reflex, 14.74-92; distinct and confused, perfect and relations implied by, 7.6-12. imperfect, mediate and immediate, 14.7-8; of the pilgrim, 7.19-27; in the See also imputability, moral goodness moral badness: aversion and, 18.51-52; different kinds of, sensitive and intellectual 18.45; distinction of sins, part of man, 15.6-18; of the simple fact and of the reasoned fact, 7.7. See also 18.46-50; of external acts, 18.30-34; manifold in one act, intellect 18.23; as a privation and as the contrary of goodness, 18.18-21.
See also moral goodness love: natural, 17.4-5; no specific distinction between natural and meritorious acts moral goodness: defined and of, 17.13-34 explained, 18.8-17; of external mass: acts, 18.30-33; intensive and by reason of the general will extensive, 18.5; justice and, 18.41-42; manifold in one of the Church, God accepts the value of, 20.48-49; act, 18.22; natural goodness
INDEX and, 18.3, 18.8-11. See also dispensation, 7.29-34; (2) imputability, merit, moral as a simple fact, two badness conclusions: "God's power movement: order in, 14.51-73 extends immediately to nature: and liberty as primary every possible'"' is true, but we cannot demonstrate it, principles of action, 16.34, 7.39-75; but we can demonstrate that God is omnipotent immediately or mediately, 7.76-82; 16.39-46; meaning of ''Nature is determined to one effect or mode of action," 2.31-33; suppositum and, 1.1, 1.78, its scope: excludes causing 4.4-7, 19.33-45. See also freedom, necessity an angel to inform matter, g.1-53; but includes the necessity: in action of a natural agent, eucharistic conversion, 10.1-72; and the possibility 16.34, 16.39-46; of a body without ubiety in divine self-love and or ubiety without a body, spiration of Holy Spirit, 11.1-47 operation: an absolute entity and ultimate perfection of a living being, 13.8-16; falling 16.5-29; and freedom: in spiration, 16.35-46; in the will, 16.30-34.
See also freedom omnipotence: into the category of quality, 13.71-95; but implying a relationship, 13.17-67. See also appetition, intellection, soul order: of causality (i.e., clarifications: defined with reference to possible causables and distinguished efficient, 7.58, 7.61; material, into immediate and immediate-or-mediate, 7.8; 7.59; formal, 7.60; final, 7.60); of duration and nature, infinite power, 7.83-92; obediential potency, 19.61; possibles and the divine power, 6.38-40; productive 4.4-7; essential, 7.55-56; of movements, 14.51-73; of origin and nature, 4.30-32; of priority and dependence, vs. causal power, 7.92-98; 19.29; of reality and knowability, 7.16. See also its demonstrability:
(1) asa reasoned fact, three conclusions, 7.10: "God is omnipotent"
(in either sense of omnipotent) is a truth demonstrable in itself, cause person: created: constituted formally not by something positive, 19.55-62; but by the negation of actual and 7.13-18; and under certain circumstances even to a person in this life, 7.19-27; but not in terms of what he knows naturally and according to the present aptitudinal dependence, 19.63-72; uncreated: constitued by a relation, 4.3; human nature
INDEX formally infinite, 5.1-60; person (cont.) their personality as thing and as aspect, 3.1-58. can depend upon, 19.73-92.
See also individual, See also Father, Holy Spirit, suppositum power: relation of action to, Word ubiety: and the body of Christ 2.40-44 pure perfection:
1.20-0, D300 relation: conceptual in strict in the Eucharist, 10.39-48; God's power as regards a body without ubiety or ubiety without a body, 11.1-47 and broad sense, 17.73 distinction from the last six will: acts not by way of nature, 16.39-46; created will not necessitated by the categories, 11.34-37; its entity, 3.16-58; never infinite, beatific object, 16.12-24; freedom and intrinsic 5.12-15. See also equality soul: an individual, 2.16-24; its perfection in this life and condition of, 16.32; freedom not incompatible with its supreme natural perfection, 14.2-67; its necessity in, 16.1-49; meaning of voluntary, 18.56; morality substance and operation, of internal and external acts 9-32-33, 9-39-48. See also of, 18.1-55; natural and meritorious love, 17.1-33.
See also appetition, freedom, form, intellect, operation, will substance: dependence of accident upon, 19.24, 19.40, love, operation Word:
19.83-84; first and second, 3.49-53; incommunicability and, 19.41-45. See also accident suppositum: and form, 2.82-85; qua divine person: as the art of the Father, 1.59, 1.70-71, 8.17; causality ad extra not proper to, and incommunicability, 19.41-45; and nature, 1.1, 8.1-35; definition of, 8.48; between Father and, 8.35-39; 1.78, 4-4-7, 19.33-45, 19.85, 19.93. See also individual, person thing: absolute and relative, no relationship to creatures included per se in the constitutive property of, order in causing ad extra 3-16-17, 3.21, 3.37-39, 4.373 classification of, 0.1-2; 8.40-56: produced or spoken by the Father's memory, essential and notional, 0.2, 1.14-16; of the mind, 3.31; 1.59°77, 2-25-30, 2.34-45, 2.82-92, 16.37-41; union with a human nature: three senses of, 3.6-14.
See also being Trinity: nature of this union, 19.5-11; not impossible on the part knowledge of, 14.10-92; persons in: constituted by a of the Word, 19.12-54; or on the part of the created nature, 19.73-92 relation of origin, 4.3; equality of, 6.1-86; not
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