I. Reply to the question
Ordinatio III, d. 32, q. un.
(omitting nn. 12–18) "Does God love all things equally through charity?"
1 Concerning distinction 32 I ask whether God loves all things equally through charity.
2 Arguments for the negative:
Charity is a habit; consequently, it formally perfects a power. Therefore, it presupposes that the power is imperfect. God's will is supremely perfect in and of itself.
Therefore, etc.
3 Furthermore, not all things can be loved through charity, since inanimate and nonrational things cannot be. Therefore, etc.
4 Furthermore, God does not elect everyone; he is even wrathful toward some people.
Therefore, he does not love the non-elect and those toward whom he is wrathful equally with the elect. Furthermore, God does not give equal goods to everyone; but his well-pleased will is always fulfilled; therefore, he does not will goods equally for everyone.
5 Argument for the affirmative:
God understands all things equally, because he understands all things through a single formal notion. So similar reasoning applies to his loving all things through charity.
I. Reply to the question 6 In this question there are three topics we need to consider: first, that God loves all things; second, that this act is not proper to any one divine person;1 third, that it is one act. And regarding the third topic I will discuss in what way the act is one, and whether it is equal or unequal, or how it is related equally or unequally to all things.
1 I omit Scotus's discussion of this second topic.
ORDINATIO III, D. , Q. UN.
A. God loves all things
A proof of the first claim: as I showed in Book I, distinction 2 [nn. 74–88], God of himself naturally understands and wills; consequently, he is capable of happiness.2
Now in God there is no potentiality that precedes actuality, for if there were, he would be imperfect. Therefore, he is happy in actuality—and not otherwise than by willing and understanding himself, since no other object can make a rational creature happy (as I argued in Book I, distinction 1, question 23). Therefore, he actually understands and loves himself.
That he also loves other things is proved by the fact that just as every intellect can understand any intelligible thing, so too every will can will every willable thing.
Therefore, the divine will can love all lovable things, and not in potentiality before actuality. Therefore, God loves all lovable things distinct from himself.
One might object that if this were the case, God would love contraries at the same time, since either of two contraries has the character of something lovable.
The conclusion should be conceded in the case of those natures that are contrary in themselves. But God does not will that such contraries be in the same subject at the same time, because that is not something that can be loved. Yet he loves some things with an efficacious love,4 that is, a love that at some time brings them into existence, whereas he loves other things by a simple complacent volition rather than an efficacious volition. The latter are things that he never brings into existence but are presented by his intellect as having, qua possibles, as much goodness as the things that he does love with an efficacious volition.
This conclusion presupposes what was proved in Book I, distinction 2 [n. 74], namely that God is formally willing. I offer one argument for that conclusion: being-willing is an unqualified perfection, because in every pair of attributes that divides being, the nobler of the two is an unqualified perfection. Now given that being is divided into voluntary and involuntary, and the voluntary is more perfect, it follows that voluntariness is an unqualified perfection.
B. How there is both equality and inequality in God's single act of love
The third claim is evident, because there is one power and one first object, and that power has one infinite act that is adequate for itself. And this one act need not regard all things, as though all things were required for the perfection of the act; rather, that it tends perfectly to its first terminus, and to all things with regard to which the first
2 Cf. Ordinatio II d. 1 nn. 30–1, IV d. 49 pars 1 qq. 1–2 nn. 113–16.
3 Cf. Ordinatio I d. 1. n. 15.
4 Reading Quaedam tamen diligit dilectione efficaci with Q against the edition's Quaedam etiam diligit voluntate, et hoc volitione efficaci.
DOES GOD LOVE ALL THINGS EQUALLY THROUGH CHARITY?
terminus is the total basis for acting, follows solely from the perfection of this act.
Now only the divine essence can be the first basis for acting for either the divine intellect or the divine will, because if anything else could be the first basis, that power would be cheapened.
20 From this it is clear that there is no inequality on God's part in loving all things in terms of the comparison of the act to the agent.
21 But in terms of the comparison of the act to the things it connotes—in other words, the things to which it goes forth—there is inequality, not only because the things willed are unequal, or unequal goods are willed for them, but also because the act goes forth to them according to a certain order. For everyone who wills rationally, first wills the end; second, that which immediately attains the end; and third, other things that are more remotely ordered to attaining the end. And in keeping with this order God wills in a supremely reasonable way (not in diverse acts, of course, but in a single act, insofar as the act tends in diverse ways to ordered objects): first he wills the end, and in this his act is perfect, his intellect is perfect, and his will is happy. Second, he wills those things that are immediately ordered to the end: that is, he predestines the elect, who immediately attain the end. He does this as a quasi-reflex act, willing that others share with him in loving the same object, as I said earlier in my discussion of charity in distinction 28 [nn.
14–15] of this third Book: for someone who first loves himself ordinately (and consequently not inordinately—jealously or enviously), wills second that he have others who share in this love with him, which means willing that others have his love in them; and that is to predestine them, if he wills that they have this sort of good finally and eternally. Now third he wills those things that are necessary for attaining this end, namely, the goods of grace. Fourth, for their sake5 he wills other things that are more remote, namely this sensible world,6 so that it might serve them. So in this sense what is said in Physics II [194a34–5] is true: "Human beings are in a way the end of all things"—of all sensible things, at any rate, because it is for the sake of the human beings whom God wills in the second instant of nature that God wills all sensible things in the fourth instant, and that which is closer to the end is customarily said to be the end of things that are more remote.7 So human beings turn out to be the end of the sensible world both because God wills the existence of the sensible world for the sake of predestinate human beings and because he wills that human beings love himself more immediately than he wills that the sensible world exist.
22 It is clear, therefore, that the inequality concerning willable things, with respect to the willed things themselves, characterizes this volition not as it issues from the one willing
5 Reading propter istos with all the MSS but AP for the edition's propter ista. Obviously, given the way this sentence continues, Scotus is arguing that God wills the sensible world for the sake of the predestinate, not that he wills it for the sake of the goods of grace.
6 Omitting pro aliis with Q.
7 Thomas Aquinas, Sent. II d. 1 q. 2 a. 3 in corp.; Richard Middleton, Sent. II d. 1 princ. 5 q. 3 in corp.