II. Replies to the preliminary arguments
IS GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF CREATED THINGS PRACTICAL?
knows on that basis that Peter is to be given grace.4 And this is cognition that gives a dictate but is not in itself taken formally from the will, although the will does bring about the truth of the premises from which the intellect has this cognition.
9 To the first of these [n. 7]: the divine intellect is speculative by necessity of nature, and with respect to this there is no freedom, formally, though it does not happen without the will's being pleased with it. For God is necessarily a knower. Now it is not in virtue of his will that he is properly a knower, just as God exists, not in virtue of his will, but by necessity. So the argument "If the will cannot fail to will that the intellect speculate, it is not supremely free" is a non-sequitur, since its freedom is not with respect to what is intrinsic to God (those things precede, as it were, any act on God's part). Rather, his freedom is with respect to all creatable things, and for that reason one must ascribe to God's will the first determination with respect to creatable things.
But this would not be the case if the practical intellect predetermined the divine will; indeed, freedom in the proper sense could not be salvaged in his will with respect to creatable things—nor could any contingency—because the intellect would necessarily predetermine the will by sheer natural necessity, and the will would necessarily be conformed to the intellect. But something that is necessarily (even by the necessity of consequence) in conformity with something necessary cannot be contingent.
10 To the second [n. 8] I say that the divine intellect does not know anything discursively, as this argument assumes. But we can distinguish instants of nature: in the first instant the divine intellect apprehends everything within the domain of possible action (both the principles of possible actions and particular possible actions); in the second instant it presents them all to the divine will, which accepts some of them— both some of the practical principles and some of the particular possible actions; and then in the third instant the intellect knows those particulars and those universals equally immediately, and thus it does not acquire cognition of those particulars from principles predetermined by the divine will. This will become clearer in the question on God's knowledge of future contingents.5
II. Replies to the preliminary arguments 11 To the authoritative passage from Augustine [n. 2] I say that art is a "productive habit with true reason," as we read in Ethics VI [1140a20–1]. If this is to be a definition of art in the fullest sense, 'true reason' must here be understood to mean correct reason, that is, reason that directs or rectifies the power whose function it is to act in accordance with art. But a habit with true reason is art in a diminished sense when it is a habit that merely apprehends the correctness of possible actions but does not 4 "is to be given grace": reading gratificandum, as the sense requires, for the edition's glorificandum.
5 Scotus did not revise that question for the Ordinatio. See instead Lectura I d. 39 nn. 43–4, 62–6;
Reportatio IA d. 38 nn. 35–44.
ORDINATIO I, D. , Q. UN.
direct or rectify in such matters. It can be conceded that there is art in God in this second sense, because once his will has made its determination concerning all the things that are to be done, his intellect cognizes this order of things to be done, and then there is correct reason: that is, reason that cognizes correctness, but not correct reason in the sense that it directs the active power. And that is especially the case if one posits that the will itself, and not some other executive power, is the power that acts externally. If one were to posit an executive power other than the will, one could evidently apply the notion of correct reason in relation to that active power in a different way from that in which it is applied in relation to the will.
The reply to the other passage from Augustine [n. 3] is clear on this same basis. For ideas are secondarily cognized objects, as was said above,6 in accordance with which certain external objects are made. But these secondarily cognized objects do not include any knowledge that dictates that such-and-such should be done or not done, even though they do represent things that can be done. And cognition that is strictly of what can be done is not practical science unless it virtually includes a principle or a practical conclusion, which is not the case for the ideas in the divine intellect.
6 Ordinatio I d. 35 nn. 40, 42.