II. Scotus's view
ORDINATIO I, D. , PART , Q. UN., NN. –, –, –
secondary cause, can by itself immediately cause anything causable, just as it can in cooperation with a secondary cause.
And if the final consequent—namely, that secondary causes are deprived of their actions—is not regarded as an absurdity, I can argue from that to something still more absurd: it will turn out that the First Cause causes both all things and just one thing, such that all things will be only one thing. For just as the First Cause causes all causable things, because it causes all the things that it can cause, so too in each act of causation it will cause to the furthest extent possible and thus cause something supremely perfect; and thus all those things will be the one single [supremely perfect] thing caused, so it turns out that all those things are one single thing.
And by that same intermediate premise—namely, that it causes necessarily and to the utmost extent of its causal power—it follows that the First Cause moves the heavens in non-time, or at least that he changes the heavens in non-time, so that the heavens are not moved, properly speaking.13
Nor does the response discussed earlier, in the previously cited question "On infinity,"14 work. For this infinite power has in itself every perfection of an efficient cause that it has in cooperation with a secondary cause, and so it follows that it can, of itself, immediately cause every effect in the heavens that it can cause in cooperation with an intelligence. Therefore, if it necessarily does whatever it can, it also causes
[every such effect]. And moreover, if it causes [such an effect] immediately, it follows that the First Cause changes the heavens in non-time, because an infinite power acting to the utmost of its power cannot act in time; and if that is the case, it follows that there is no generation and corruption in these lower realms, contrary to what the philosophers say. Therefore, the premises from which these conclusions follow are false by the philosophers' own lights.
II. Scotus's view
With respect to expounding the negative part of the exclusive proposition at issue,15
I reply to the question as follows: I concede the conclusions of these arguments
[nn. 275–91]. Granted, some of them might not be so convincing to the philosophers that they would be unable to respond, but they are still more probable than the arguments given on behalf of the philosophers [nn. 259–62]; and some, perhaps, are even necessary.
Nonetheless, as to this part of the question, I say that nothing other than God is immutable if we are speaking of the change that is versio,16 because nothing other
13 Reading non proprie with all the MSS except A for the edition's in non-tempore.
14 Ordinatio I d. 2 n. 156.
15 That is, that nothing other than God is immutable.
16 Scotus takes the word versio from Damascene (see n. 229) and defines it as "a change (mutatio) from being to non-being or from non-being to being."