De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 11
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/).
Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 198A–199E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/11/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[198A–198B]
CHAPTER XI.

That the first necessary and true incomplex principle is God; and that the first complex principle simply is about God: for example, God exists, God knows all things, God wills all things, or something similar. [n1]

Now that the first free principle has been found, it remains in consequence to inquire into the first necessary principle, and the first true thing among all true things. Among the philosophers, the necessary and the true are twofold: the incomplex, namely, and the complex. From what has gone before I judge it clear that God is the first being of all beings and the first cause of the being of anything whatever. In the same way he is the first true and necessary incomplex, and the first cause of the being of anything necessary or true. For as was alleged in the 2nd chapter, the first in any genus is the cause of all the others in so far as they are in that genus, and is most worthy of the name of that genus. But God is first in the genus of incomplex true things, as can easily be seen from what has been laid down. The Philosopher seems to bear clear witness to the same thing in Metaphysics 2, 4, and so does Averroes in the commentary. [n2] Avicenna does likewise, Metaphysics 8, 6, as the second of this book set out more fully. [n3] Augustine, Confessions 7, 15, agrees with these, and is likewise cited there.

[198C–198E]
Hence also Anselm, On Truth 7: Do you think that there is something, at any time or anywhere, that is not in the highest truth, and that has not received the force of what it is, in so far as it is, or that could be other than it is there? [n4] It is not to be thought. Therefore truth is in the essence of all things that are, because they are what they are in the highest truth.

But because there seems to be no doubt about the first true incomplex, I do not judge that we need linger over it further. About the first true complex, however, the difficulty is more doubtful. For the Philosopher says in Metaphysics 4, 9 that this is the first principle of complexes: that it is impossible for the same thing at once to belong and not to belong to the same thing, and in the same respect. But lest I, so small, seem to growl against so great a Philosopher, it must be known that principle is twofold: of knowing, namely, and of being; or, as regards us and as regards nature. He is speaking there of the first principle of knowing, and only as regards us, by which we are governed in general in all the sciences, as the course of the text and commentary shows well enough. But the first complex principle simply is about God, as for example, God exists, or God knows all things, or God wills all things, or anything else of the kind. For the first in the genus of true complexes, as in any other genus, is the cause why all the posterior ones are true. Therefore it is the cause of things being really so, as any following truth signifies. For according to the Philosopher in the Categories, from the fact that a thing is or is not, a statement is called true or false; and no posterior truth is the cause why the first is true. So, then, the real being as the first truth signifies was the cause of the real being as any following truth signifies, and no following truth will be the cause of the real being as the first truth signifies. Now the cause why it is so in reality as it signifies, for any truth not said of God, is in God, and none of the others is a cause of being to God, as is clear enough from what has been laid down in this chapter and others. In God, then, or about him, is the first principle simply of the whole genus of complexes.

Likewise, God is the first cause of every essence, or mode of being, and therefore also of every truth. Likewise, a truth that can be true without the others, and not conversely, is prior to them; but that is how God exists stands to any other truths whatever. Likewise, as that which is best known in cognition for us is the first principle in that respect, as is plain from the Philosopher where cited above, so that which is best known simply, and for nature, is correspondingly the first principle. That, however, is God exists, though on account of the corruption of the body that weighs down the soul we know this only with difficulty. Hence the Philosopher, Metaphysics 2, 1: the difficulty of theory about truth existing in two modes, its cause is not in things but in us. For as the eyes of bats are disposed to the light of day, so is the intellect of our soul to those things that are by nature the most manifest of all. [n5] On this Averroes says: The difficulty in things that are at the end of truth, namely in the first principle and in principles distinct from matter, is from us, not from them. [n6]

[199A–199B]
The same could be argued from the firmness of the first principle, since as it is first so it is firmest, as is plain from the Philosopher, Metaphysics 4, 8. All other truths lean on the truth of this one as on their original root and primary foundation; and it is doubtful to no one that God exists is the firmest of true things. Likewise, the incomplex truth is naturally prior to the complex truth, as the simple to the composite, and is its cause and principle. Therefore principle will stand to principle in the same proportion; but God is the principle of the whole of the incomplex truth, as the earlier part of this chapter showed. Likewise, in the order of true things there is no infinite regress; but there is some first truth, which is the cause of all the others. That is God exists, since no truth prior to it has it as its cause. Likewise, that truth which only causes other truths, and is not caused by them, is first; and this is God exists. Likewise, that which is truest of all is the principle of all; and this is God, because he most of all is, as what has been laid down taught. Likewise Anselm, On Truth 10, says that the highest truth owes nothing to anyone, but all things owe to it; it is the cause of all other truths, and nothing is its cause. And having distinguished truth into causing and caused, he says that the truth which is in the existence of things is an effect of the highest truth, while the highest truth is itself the cause of the truth that belongs to cognition and of that which is in the proposition. Further on in the same work, in the last chapter, he proves at length that there is one truth, and that this is the highest truth, by which all true things are true. [n7] The same is done in the Monologion 18, and by Augustine, Soliloquies 1, 21, and in the second book, 20: they prove the eternity of God from the eternity of truth. And they prove the eternity of truth thus: This was always true: something will be; and this will always be true: something is past; therefore it is so by some truth also; hence that truth too never began and will never cease; therefore truth is eternal. [n8] This proof, however, does not conclude if some proposition could be true through itself, without a higher truth in God causing the truth in such a proposition and continually sustaining it. Hence Anselm, On Truth 10, expounding this proof, which he recounts having made in his Monologion, says to his pupil:

[199C–199E]
Now you can understand how, in my Monologion, I proved that the highest truth has neither beginning nor end, by means of the truth of a statement. [n9] For when I said, 'When was it not true that something was going to be?', I did not say it as if that statement which asserted that something will be had existed without a beginning, or as if that truth were God. I said it because it cannot be understood when, if that statement existed, truth would be lacking to it. By this, then, since it is not understood when that truth could not have been, were there a statement in which it could be, that truth is understood to have been without beginning which is the first cause of this truth. For the truth of a statement could not always be, if its cause were not always. For the statement that says something will be is not true unless something is in fact going to be; and nothing is going to be if it is not in the highest truth. The same is to be understood of the statement that says that something is past. For if in no conceivable way could truth be lacking to this statement, should it be made, then of necessity no end can be conceived of that truth which is the highest cause of it. For it is said truly that something is past for this reason, that it is so in reality, and something is past for this reason, that it is so in the highest truth. Therefore, if it can never not be true that something will be, and it could never have been not true that something is past, it is impossible that the highest truth had a beginning or will have an end.

Likewise Augustine, Against Faustus 26, 2: Whatever is past now is not; so what we truly say has been is not. But it is true that it was, because, in our statement, the very one by which we say that something was, it is true for this reason: that that of which we speak is now not. [n10] God cannot make this statement false, because he is not contrary to truth. And if you ask where this true statement is, it is found first in our mind, when we know and say that thing to be true. But if it is also taken away from our mind, when we have forgotten what we know, it will remain in truth itself. For it will always be true that what was has been and is not; and it will be true that what was has already been in the place where it was true, before it came to be, that what was not would be. God cannot oppose this truth; in him is the supreme and unchangeable truth itself, by which whatever is true in the souls and minds of any persons whatever is illumined, so that it may be true. The same, on that verse of Psalm 4: 'Why do you love vanity, and seek after lying?': Truth alone makes people blessed, and from it all true things are true. The same also, on that verse of Psalm 55 [56]: 'In God I will praise my words'; 'In God I will praise my words, because there is the source of true words.' Therefore in God, truly, is the first principle of any truth whatever. [n11]

NOTES

1. Complexum / incomplexum are the scholastic terms for what is signified with composition (a proposition, such as "God exists") and what is signified without it (a thing or term taken simply, here God himself as the first truth). I keep the transliterations "complex" and "incomplex" throughout the chapter.
2. Savile's Aristotle numbers follow the medieval Latin Metaphysics with Averroes's commentary: "Metaph. 2" is Book α, "Metaph. 4" is Book Γ, and the second number is the chapter of that Latin text, not the modern chapter. So "2, 4" is α 1, 993b23–31 (the cause of truth in others is itself most true); "2, 1" is α 1, 993a30–b11; "4, 8" and "4, 9" are both Γ 3, 1005b11–20. They are kept as Savile gives them (Conventions §5.4).
3. secundum huius: the noun is elliptical. I supply "chapter", as the backward reference ("in the 2nd chapter … there") requires, and take huius as "of this book".
4. Savile's marginal variant idem stands against vim. I keep the main reading. vim non acceperit quod est is awkward, and I take it as "has not received the force of what it is". The variant "has not received the same thing that it is" hardly construes, so it is not adopted.
5. nycticoracum (gen. pl. of nycticorax, "night-raven") is the medieval translators' rendering of Aristotle's νυκτερίς, the bat. I give "bats" because that is the animal of the comparison (Metaph. α 1, 993b9–11).
6. Savile's sentence runs over the page turn (ma-|teria). It is completed here, at the end of this block, so that the English does not break mid-sentence. In the Latin its last words, est ex nobis, non ex illis, are the first words of 199A (unit 199A).
7. Eodem vlt.: I take it as "in the same [work], the last [chapter]", that is, the last chapter of Anselm's De veritate, where he argues that there is one truth in all things. 2i libri 20 is read as "of the second book, 20", as in the preceding Soliloquies reference.
8. The print reads ergo et aliqua veritate (ablative). The sense is evidently "so it is by some truth also" (that is, there is a truth that makes it so), from which Bradwardine concludes that illa veritas never began. I translate the evident sense and have not emended the Latin.
9. oratio here is Anselm's term for the statement or sentence that bears truth (the propositio of the schools). I render it "statement".
10. The Latin is elliptical (quia in nostra sententia, quippe qua dicimus aliquid fuisse, ideo vera est, quia …). The subject of vera est is the statement itself, and I supply it as such. The point is that the truth of "it was" lies in the statement, not in the thing, which is now no more.
11. in Deo vero is ambiguous: it can be "in God, truly" or "in the true God". I take vero adverbially, as closing the argument of the chapter.