De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 14
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, 208B–214C; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/14/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[208B]
CHAPTER 14. That the divine will is the cause of any future or past thing, the reason why that thing is such as it is.

[208C–208E]
To bring the treatise on the causality of the divine will finally to completion, I think it must be shown that the divine will is the cause of any future or past thing, the reason why that thing is such as it is. For according to the Philosopher, Posterior Analytics 2, 3, whatever is truly the cause of something's being is the same as the cause of its coming to be, of its having been made, and of its being going to be. According to Lincolniensis this is the eighteenth conclusion of that second book [n1]. But the divine will is truly the cause of the being of anything whatever, as the ninth chapter proves. Hence Augustine, City of God 22, chapter 2: "According to that will of God which is everlasting together with his foreknowledge, he has surely already made in heaven and on earth all that he willed, not only things past or present, but also things to come. But before the time arrives in which he willed it to come about, which he foreknew and arranged before all times, we say, 'It will happen when God wills.' But if we are ignorant not only of the time at which it will be, but even whether it will be, we say, 'It will happen if God wills.' This is not because God will then have a new will which he did not have before, but because what has been prepared from eternity in his unchangeable will will then come to be." The same thing seems evident from Anselm, Monologion 18 and On Truth 10, and from Augustine, Soliloquies 1, 21, the second book of the same work, 20 and 26, and Against Faustus 2 [n2], as the eleventh chapter of this book touches on. It appears still more clearly if one attends to Augustine in the same place against Faustus: he places the causes of things future, present and past not only in God but in the divine will. So he says: "What happened to Elijah we do not know, but we believe of him what the true Scripture attests. We certainly know that what God's will holds was done concerning him, and that what God's will does not hold cannot possibly happen to anyone at all. So if I am told that it is possible for the flesh of this or that man, for example, to be changed into a heavenly body, I grant that it can happen, but whether it will happen I do not know. I do not know it because what God's will holds in this matter is hidden from me. But this, at least, is not hidden from me: that it will undoubtedly be, if God's will holds it." And below: "Future things can no more fail to happen than past things can fail to have been done, since it is not in God's will that something be false in that respect in which it is true. Therefore everything that is truly going to be will undoubtedly come about, but if it has not been done, it will not be going to be. So everything that is truly past has undoubtedly passed." Again: future and past things have no being at all, and so they have nothing of cause and nothing of truth; hence they do not truly have it of themselves to be future or past. They have this, therefore, on account of some other cause, and that cause cannot be a purely non-existent thing for the same reason; or at least it is reduced to some existing cause, and of all existing causes the will of almighty God is the first, the highest and the efficient one. Again, the will

[209A–209D]
of God is the cause why any future thing that is open to either alternative is future. By the same reasoning it is so for any others. For Antichrist has no being at all of himself; so of himself he is determined no more to one part of the contradiction than to the other. Therefore of himself he is simply not future, but purely indifferent. If, then, he is to be future, that is through some determining cause; but that cause is necessarily the divine will, or is reduced to it as to the first and highest cause of that determination. Again, Antichrist as a future being has no more of himself whence he should be future than Prochristus has [n3], who is equally possible as a future being but never truly future. But Prochristus is not future of himself, so neither is Antichrist; he is future through some other cause, which cannot cause without the divine will. Moreover, take something not future but nevertheless possible to be future, say A: God can make it come to be, and be future. If he does so, the divine will is the cause why A is future; and so likewise for all similar things without exception. Hence John also says, on Sentences 1, distinction 39 [n4], that nothing of the kind about the future is true before the determination of the divine will, but that determination precedes naturally, as a cause. Again, the cause why any future thing is future now is the same as it was before the world. But then the divine will was the cause of all future things, and so it still is, since according to the fifth chapter God is unchangeable in every way. Again, to be future is more than to be possible; but no future thing has of itself to be possible, so neither does it have to be future. For everything possible is possible by some power; but no future thing has any being, so it has no power either. No future thing, then, is possible to be unless some present thing can make it be; but no present thing can make anything without the concurring will of God. So no possibility, nor cause of possibility, is in future things, but in present ones, and the first and highest cause of all present causes, and of all present possibilities or powers, is in God. The cause of the possibility of future things is the same now as before the world; but then God alone existed, as is evident from the venerable Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil 12, as the twelfth chapter cites it. Again, whatever is necessarily of a certain kind is necessarily so by some necessity; but no past thing has any being, so neither does it have any necessity; and yet each such thing is necessarily past. Therefore this is through some present necessity, which is necessarily God or depends on him, and so on his will. Hence Anselm also says, Why God Became Man 2, 17: "All necessity or impossibility is subject to the will of God; but his will is subject to no necessity or impossibility. For nothing is necessary or impossible except because he himself so wills." Again, the first true thing is the cause of every true thing that follows, and so the cause of its being so in reality, as any true following thing signifies. But the first true thing is in God, as chapter 11 with chapter 12 taught. So in God is the cause of the being of what is true, any truth about the future, and of its being as it is signified; and this is not without a preceding or even a concomitant will. Again, God with his will naturally precedes everything past and future, and so is the cause of them, as was shown in the preceding chapter. Peter Lombard also holds this expressly, Sentences 1, distinction 45, 4, saying: "This supremely good will, then, is the cause of all things that naturally come to be, or have been done, or are future." And is this not what the twenty-four Elders attest in agreement, saying to the One seated on the throne, "You created all things, and because of your will they were, and were created," Apoc 4? They were, I say, as the Doctors explain, first in predestination, in the art, in the Wisdom of God, and were created afterward in work and effect.

[209D–209E]
COROLLARY.

And it has a corollary. If God were to cease to be, nothing would be past or future, true or false, possible or impossible, necessary or contingent, nor could anything even be; and from this the opposite evidently follows, namely that God himself exists, and so that something has existed before, exists, and will exist. O how necessary it is that he be, when it is so impossible that he ever cease to be, and when that God in any way not be contains and entails a contradiction most necessarily [n5]; and "necessary to be" seems the name most proper to God.

[209E–210B]
Hence a wonderful corollary seems to follow, namely: if God were to cease to be, nothing would be past or future, true or false, possible or impossible, necessary or contingent, nor could anything even be; and from this the opposite evidently follows, namely that God himself exists, and so that something has existed before, exists, and will exist, and likewise that other things can exist through the great omnipotence of God. O how necessary it is that he be, whom it is so impossible ever to cease to be, and for whom in any way not to be contains and entails a contradiction most necessarily. Hence perhaps the name most proper to God, though enigmatically, can be drawn out, namely "to be necessary," or "necessary to be." This must be understood of being per se and of the necessary with the highest necessity, which includes, that is, the contradictory repugnance of not being. That if God were to cease to be, nothing would be past or future is clear from this chapter. That nothing would be true, nor would anything truly be or not be, is clear from the eleventh and twelfth, since nothing can be true or truly be without the first true thing, which is in God. From this it follows that nothing would be false, because if one of two opposites were false, the other would be true. That nothing would be possible or impossible, necessary or contingent, is clear from the preceding chapter, for all these originate from God. And that none of these could even be is clear, because none of them could be without God; but if God were not, he could not be, because if he could be, he would be, as the premises in the proof of the first Supposition show. The remaining parts, up to the next to last, are clear enough. As for the next to last, it must be known that something can be said not to be in many ways: first, as future; second, as past; third, as something possible to be which will not be, is not, and was not; fourth, as what is simply impossible to be and includes a contradiction, like a chimera, or the commensurability of the diagonal of a square with its side. Let it be posited, then, with Diagoras or with the fool [n6], as something absolutely possible and including no contradiction, that God does not exist. If, then, God does not exist, he does not exist in one of the aforesaid ways. If in the first way, he will at some time begin to be, and will be a new and recent God; and so he will be God, and therefore will be necessary to be and eternal, as the demonstration of the first Supposition shows. A contradiction is therefore implied here. If in the second way, God is past and not present, and he was God, so he was necessary to be and eternal, as the proof of the first Supposition showed. Here, then, is a manifest contradiction. If in the third way, God does not exist and can exist, then he exists and is necessary to be, as the aforesaid proof plainly proves; so a contradiction is entailed here. If in the fourth way, then what can be cannot be; but it is absolutely possible that God exist, as the premises in the demonstration of the first Supposition manifest clearly;

[210C–210E]
indeed it is also necessary, simply and absolutely, that God's existing be possible, simply and absolutely, as the things established in the same demonstration prove. A contradiction is therefore evidently included here. Again, it is necessary that God exist, so that his not existing includes a contradiction; the proof recalled above shows this evidently. For let that be called absolutely possible which, absolutely necessarily in a formal consequence simply, does not include contradictories; and let the impossible and the necessary, or necessary to be, be taken correspondingly, etc., as there. For it is agreed that it is absolutely possible that something of this sort, necessary to be, exist. Who, with this posited and admitted, could by no means easily defend himself from every contradiction [n7]? Furthermore, as impossible as a thing is, so necessary is something; for as impossible as it is that contradictories be true together, so necessary is it that contradictories not be true together; and universally, as impossible as it is that something be, so necessary is it that it not be; and as impossible as it is that something not be, so necessary is it that it be, as could easily be demonstrated; but I reckon no one ignorant of this. Now there is something so impossible that its being true includes a contradiction; so there is also something so necessary that its being false likewise includes a contradiction. But what is more necessary than God's existing? Who dares to say this thing or that, when he is the first in the genus of necessary things and the cause of all later necessary things, and so is the most necessary above all, as the preceding chapters taught? The many corollaries of the thirteenth, mentioned above, show this same thing evidently. The same can likewise be shown by way of the true and the false, since as false as something is, so true is something; for as false as it is that something be or not be, so true, conversely, is it that it not be or be. But something is so false that its being true includes a contradiction, so something is also so true that its being false includes a contradiction. But what is truer than the first true thing, as the argument just set out and the earlier chapters make manifest? And what is simply and naturally the first true thing? Is it not that God is, as the twelfth demonstrated? Besides, if God is not, it is truly the case that God is not; so God is not by some truth; so there is some truth, and therefore a first truth, which is God. If also some truth, or anything at all, exists, God exists, because that truth or thing is necessarily God or from God, as the second [chapter] of this shows. If moreover God is not, it is so that God is not, because it is true that God is not, because truly he is not; so it is so that God is not by some being. But every being is the first being, which is God, or from the first being, as the same second [chapter] demonstrates; therefore God is. This seems to be the argument of Augustine in his Soliloquies, and of Anselm in the Monologion and On Truth, and it is written in the eleventh of this book. From these it seems clearly evident that every negative implies and includes some affirmative. For every negative intimates and includes that what it denies truly is not; and does it not also follow, A is not

[211A–211B]
B, therefore truly A is not B? For whatever things it seems true and necessary that truly this is that, or truly this is not that, then whether anything is or is not, God necessarily is, because there is some truth. Moreover, if God is not, nothing truly is and nothing truly is not; nothing truly is this or of this kind, nor truly is not this or of this kind, because there is no truth, according to the premises. So anything whatever both truly is and truly is not, and anything whatever truly is and truly is not anything whatever, [and of whatever kind,] in every way. Furthermore, one can argue likewise by way of possibility and necessity. If God is not, it is possible that he be, or possible that he not be; so this possibility is by some power; so there is some power, and something able through it, as is clear from the fourteenth of this; so something exists, and therefore God. Again, if God is not, it is necessary that he not be, at least for now, and necessary that he not be God; so this is by some necessity of some necessary existing thing, as was shown in the same fourteenth, etc., as before. Again, if God is not, there is some positive cause of his not being, and prior to it, as the thirteenth of this shows, etc., as before. Moreover, if God is not, neither is a creature, nor anything at all; yet it is absolutely possible that a creature be and that something be. For in the truth of the matter it is now true and possible; and what once is, or can be, absolutely possible, is always, by absolute necessity, absolutely possible, taking these terms as above and as the proof of the first Supposition sets them out more fully. For what once does not include a contradiction formally, simply, never does; because a consequence which at some time is not formal simply, of itself and per se, never is; and whatever can at some time be not formal simply is always necessarily not formal simply, just as whatever can at some time be formal simply is always necessarily formal simply, as no logician is ignorant. For who is ignorant that a formal consequence simply is absolutely necessary in its consequence? Whose mind would grasp that what is absolutely necessary could become, or be, possible according to contradiction between being and not being, or the reverse? Who also doubts that

[211C–211D]
whatever is of a certain kind per se and essentially is always necessarily of that kind, at least while it is [n8]? For otherwise it would not be such per se and essentially, but through something else, which could be present and absent while it itself remains, and accidentally. The cause of this is that whatever is, as long as it is, cannot lack itself and its own essence. For this reason also whatever is of a certain kind per se and essentially of itself is always, while it is, absolutely necessarily of that kind. And hence it is, I think, that the Philosopher, Posterior Analytics 1, 4, says that per se implies "of every" and "always," as is more fully recited in the second of this [n9]. So, God not existing, a creature and something can be; therefore a creator and God can be, and if he can be, he is, as the premises here and in the first of this show. If also something can be, truly something can be; therefore by some truth, and by some power of something now able and existing; it is also necessary that a creature can be; therefore by some necessity of some necessary existing thing, etc., as above. If moreover something can be, this is through a prior act, and there is some act prior by nature to potency, as the first part of the thirteenth taught, and by the third part of this the necessary is prior to the possible according to contradiction. But that prior act, and that prior necessary thing, is necessarily from God, or is God. If also a creature is not, then prior to that non-being, and to that negation, there is some being, and some affirmation prior by nature and the cause of it, as the second part and the ninth of the thirteenth showed; that is necessarily from God, or is God, which the tenth and eleventh parts of it also confirm evidently. If, then, God is not, God is; and if God is, God is. You are therefore truly my God; indeed you not only are, but you are most necessarily, to such a degree that nothing else could be more necessarily or as necessarily. For apart from you, who alone truly are, scarcely anything else is. For nothing else is necessarily of itself, or is from itself; indeed of itself it is nothing, but from you, through you, and in you, and cannot be otherwise in any way. Did your secretary Isaiah not see this when he said, "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weighed the heavens with his palm? Who has held up the mass of the earth with three fingers, and weighed the mountains in a balance, and the hills in a scale? Behold, the nations are reckoned as a drop from a bucket and as a speck on the scales; all the nations, as if they were not, so are they before him, and they are reckoned by him as nothing and as emptiness."

[211E–212A]
O Lord my God, did you not point this out to Moses, your most intimate servant, when he asked for your name and you answered as though with a name proper to you: "I am who I am; thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He Who Is has sent me to you"? O Lord my God, how wonderful is your name! Truly, Lord, every name of yours is wonderful, but how wonderful above all is this name! Hence another Moses, a wise man [n10], following the Sages to whom your oracles were entrusted, says that all your names are taken over from your works, except one, written with four letters and therefore called in Greek the tetragrammaton. This one, as he says, signifies your substance purely, without sharing in anything alien; and for that reason your name is called the Separated Name. It therefore deserved such reverence that it was pronounced only in the Sanctuary, by your holy priests, on the day of the fast, in the priestly blessing, and by the greatest priest. Nor did they teach this name except to a disciple fit for it, and once in a week, no more.

This Moses, the guide of the doubtful, and yet himself doubtful on this point [n11], also says that perhaps it signifies, on the notion of necessary being [n12]. And I think, Lord, that you showed this to the earlier Moses, though under a cloud, when you said: "I am who I am; thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He Who Is has sent me to you." "This name is mine for ever," you say: "mine." Your grammarians say, Lord, that a pronoun ought to be placed in a sentence for the sake of distinction or of making the sense plain. When you say "mine," then, you seem to intimate that this name belongs to you distinctly. It belongs to you alone, through yourself alone and not through anything else, because otherwise it would rather be the name of that other, and would belong to no one else except through you; for otherwise it would be the name of another just as it is yours. So you likewise intimate, I think, that this name belongs to you significantly, that is, more excellently than to anyone else whatever. You said likewise, Lord, that this name is yours for ever. You did not say "it is now," "it was before," "it will be afterward," but "it is for ever." And to be for ever, whether to have been or to be going to be, and thus to be through oneself: what does this seem to signify better than stability, immutability, and the firmest necessity of being?

[212B]
You taught me also, sweetest Teacher, in the preceding chapter that necessary being in a certain way precedes every other being of yours, as I can scarcely express it, stammering. Hence it seems to follow that this is the first and highest of your divine names. O Lord, my Father, allow your little boy [a little] [n13] to play boyishly before you. See, I perceive that necessary being, by the ordering of your providence, fits your great name, the tetragrammaton, not only in signification but also in a certain way in the number of letters. For it has only four letters, four species of letters [n14]. O Necessary Being, because of your name my being is most sustainable [n15]. May I always lean wholly upon you, may I be upheld, may I be strengthened by you; may I cling to you with my whole heart, may I cleave to you with all my powers, may I be wholly transformed into you and eternally confirmed.

Against this, however, someone [n16] will perhaps object in this way: If the divine will is the cause of futurition [n17] in things, it causes futurition in them; therefore at some time it causes this. Therefore at first some thing was not future, but then begins to be future.

[212B–212D]
Again, if the divine will were the cause of the futurition of all future things, it would be the cause of the truth of all true propositions, even those about contingent futures. And since the divine will wills freely toward what is outside it, it could will nothing about future contingents. If it did so, all propositions of this kind about the future would lack all truth, and in such cases both contradictories would be false at once, and so likewise true at once. But these subtleties, if they went through, would also demonstrate that God, of his absolute omnipotence, cannot make anything to be going to be, or anything to be future. Yet there are many things possible to be made immediately by him alone which will never be made by him, and which, if he wished them to be going to be, would necessarily be going to be and would be future by 10, and only through the divine will. Indeed, even by that earthly wisdom of theirs, God could not in any way prevent any future thing, or make it not going to be, except by leading it to being, that is, by making it never going to be, never to be, or never to have been [n18]. But why could God omnipotent not prevent the future act of a powerless man or of another creature, and not perform some future act of his own? That would be against the first Supposition, the eighth part, 32 and 34 of the first Corollary of this book, and against the Prophet who says that God has acted freely, and therefore acts and will act with the same freedom.

[212D–213A]
If anyone nevertheless wishes to resolve these points directly, the answer must be that God, by eternal causation (that is, by eternal willing, immutable and in every way unfrustrated), makes future things be future. Hence Aristotle too, in On the World 11 [n19], having shown that everything in the world is truly the work of God, adds: "From whom," [that is, from God], "according to the natural philosopher Empedocles, all things that are, and that afterwards will be, have proceeded." It is as if he were speaking with the Prophet, or the Prophet with him: "He who made the things that are to come." In the same way the Father, by eternal causation and generation, causes and begets his eternal Son.

You will perhaps reply that even if, according to what has been premised, a future thing begins to be future in no instant or measure of time, nevertheless it begins to be future in some instant, or measure, or sign of origin, of order, or of nature; and this seems to hold no more of these than of those. But this hardly counters what was said even verbally, and not at all in reality. For the signification of the word "begin" perhaps deceives, since it signifies with time, with flux, and with the succession of a temporal measure, and signifies only a beginning like that, a temporal one. If it signifies only so, the objection does not stand in the way. But if the word "begin" can somehow, without offence to common speech and to the authors, be transferred to signify procession, causation, origination, and any order whatever, not of time but of nature, I do not see why it cannot be conceded that the thing began to be future: that is, that it had a cause of its futurition which precedes it naturally, causally, and originally, as the foregoing has taught. Yet speaking in this way, the thing began to be future in no other way than it always and continually begins to be future so long as it remains future. So it would have been, and would be, eternally in the case of an everlasting foot, dust, and footprint [n20], or of the everlasting Father and Son, between whom Augustine asserts a priority of origin; if, however, in that ineffable Trinity it is permissible to affirm any beginning whatever, although the generation of the Son seems in a certain way to be begun or initiated by the Father, as from the term from which it proceeds, and to be terminated in the Son, as in the term to which it tends.

[213A–213B]
For who would deny that the Father is the principle of the Son? Nor do I reckon anyone so impudent as to deny altogether that future things have some cause of their futurition , and to say that "You will run," and any true proposition about the future, is the first principle and first truth simply, or its equal or peer in the order of truth, the preceding chapters having been understood. Who, too, would presume to deny that the divine will is, or can be, the cause of the predestination, election, and salvation of the saints?

To the other subtlety, however, some perhaps would reply that God can suspend every act of his will about any future and non-future things whatever, and so in a certain way make nothing to be future, and therefore make every affirmation of this kind false. But even if God could make nothing to be future, and no simple categorical proposition about the future true, he still cannot bring it about that any disjunction between such an affirmative and its opposite negative fail to be true. Therefore the truth of no disjunction of this kind depends on the divine will; rather it naturally and necessarily precedes it, as it seems, and so too, as it appears, does the truth of the other part [n21]. Perhaps, then, it will be said that a future thing, say A, is of itself and through itself not future but non-future, and this antecedently to the divine will. Yet no thing is future except with the divine will as antecedent [n22], and this includes no contradiction. For just as, according to the Philosopher, a temporal contradiction must hold for the same time or instant, so too a natural contradiction must hold for the same order, instant, or sign of nature. They do not, therefore, contradict one another, namely that A should first, antecedently to the divine will, not be future of itself, and secondly, subsequently to the divine will and through it, be future; just as neither do these: "this was a non-being before generation or creation, and now afterwards is a being."

[213B–213C]
Or perhaps it is better said that every true proposition about the future, negative as well as affirmative contingent, is subject to the divine will, originates from it, and depends on it causally. For every such proposition entails a certain freedom; but the first principle of freedom is in the divine will, as the corollary of the tenth of this book shows. There, then, is the first principle and the cause of every other freedom.

Moreover, if a negative part of this kind were in no way subject to the divine will causally but preceded it, it would of itself be naturally determined, and in a certain way necessary, except in so far as it were perhaps hindered by the divine will. Hence in such negatives and affirmatives there would be, on the side of the thing, no contingency to either alternative, nor equal contingency. Nor would such affirmatives and negatives be equally convertible through opposite qualities, which no one fails to deny, nor does the Philosopher in Prior Analytics 1 [n23]. Rather, such propositions would be said to concern what is contingent by nature, contingent in the majority of cases or in the minority, rather than what is contingent to either alternative or equally. For infinitely more such negatives than affirmatives are true, just as infinitely more possible things are non-future than are future, as indeed they are of themselves naturally non-future.

[213C–213E]
Again, what is of itself indifferent to both opposites is determined to neither from itself alone; but anything possible to be and not to be, or to be going to be and not to be going to be, or contingent to either alternative, or equally to this and that, seems to be of this kind. For it can be and not be, be going to be and not be going to be.

Moreover, such a true contingent negative about the future, say "B will not be," is true either through itself, so that the thing is non-future without any other cause whatever of its non-futurition, or through another and through some other, prior cause. If through itself, then always and necessarily, as it seems, by what was premised in the second of this book. According to this too, "B will not be" would be a first complex principle simply, against what was premised in the 11th and 12th of this book. Moreover, if that negation had no prior cause, then by like reasoning, as it seems, no negation would. Rather, anything whatever, whether being or non-being, whatever was not, would not be through itself, not through a prior cause. For what is not through itself is not, through itself, substance, quantity, or quality, against what was premised in the chapter immediately before this. Do not also the 2nd part and 9, 10, and 11 of the immediately preceding chapter condemn this? Otherwise, moreover, neither God nor any creature could make something not be future, nor in any way not be. But who would fail to see that it is not so?

[213E–214A]
Hence Augustine too, Against Faustus 26, 2, says: "God certainly knew what he was going to do, and therefore he knew at the same time that that would not have been future which he was going to act to prevent from coming about." Of negations too, of which it seems less so, there is some prior cause: namely of these, "A chimera is not," "A chimera is not a goat-stag," and the like, as the chapter immediately before this teaches. Does it not also hold, according to what was written in the chapter next to this, that if God's willing something to be is the cause of its futurition, God's not willing something to be is the cause of its non-futurition? And if someone were to say first that B is non-future not through itself alone but through some other prior cause, that cause is necessarily in God, or is reduced to some cause existing in him; and that cause in God is either the divine essence, power, or intellect with the will set aside, or it is the divine will. If it is the divine essence, power, or whatever precedes his will, then since that cause is merely necessary in being and likewise in causing, as is clear from the corollary of the tenth of this book, B is necessarily non-future, contrary to the hypothesis. In the same way a chimera of necessity will not be, and of necessity a goat-stag will not be [n24].

[214A–214B]
If, however, that cause is the divine will, then just as the divine will is the cause of the futurition of all things that are future contingently and freely, so also it is the cause of the non-futurition of all things likewise not future. Nor does what was said at first seem true, namely that God can suspend every act of his will about any future and non-future things whatever. Rather it seems necessary that about any future or non-future thing whatever, indeed about any object whatever of volition or nolition, he has some distinct act of will proper to it. For how else would he be supreme, or supremely active, or even actual, as the first Supposition and the third part of the first corollary teach? Nor does this depend freely on the divine will with respect to contradiction, any more than his very being supremely actual, immutable, and perfect does; it is absolutely necessary, and therefore it is also necessary that, of any such contradiction, he wills one part specially and does not will the other.

Hence also, by willing in this way, he makes true any disjunction between opposed contingent parts. Yet it is not simply necessary that God will, nor that he not will, either part of any such contradiction; he can freely, with respect to the contradiction, will and not will any such part. Hence it also appears evidently that although a disjunction of this kind is necessary with a simply absolute necessity, antecedent naturally to the divine will, so that its necessity or divine truth is not subject to the will, nor to contradictory freedom, nor to a free power of this sort, nevertheless the truth or falsity of each of its parts is subject to his will causally, originally, and naturally, being itself posterior and following it. In the same way God wills necessarily and simply "this or that," when A and B are indicated as contingent contradictories, but wills neither of these necessarily; he wills it most freely, with the greatest contradictory freedom.

[214B–214C]
Perhaps it will be pressed further in this way: If the divine will is the cause of the futurition and non-futurition of things, it is the cause of the truth of this disjunction, "this will be, or this will not be," let this be A; and therefore it is naturally prior to it. Therefore in that instant or prior sign of cause, origin, or nature, let that be B, or in the instant or sign prior to B, A is not true, or could not be true, although it is absolutely necessary. But whom would this subtlety move or trouble? Would it not likewise prove that B has no cause of its truth, that there is no God, that no other proposition is naturally true before it, but that it itself is the first principle, or its equal or peer in the order of truth, which the preceding chapters do not permit? And would it not likewise prove that God's understanding or Word has no cause, or can fail to be? Some little replies, however, can also be devised here, such as those in the second of this book, the third, and the fourth, and be destroyed as those were, with the help of the corollary of the ninth of this book.

NOTES

1. Lincolniensis is Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln; the reference is to his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, book 2. Bradwardine's "18th conclusion" is kept as he gives it.
2. The string "Soliloq. 21. secundi eiusdem 20. et 26. Contra Faust. 2." is kept as printed. I have not resolved the numerals, and "the second book of the same work" is a literal rendering of secundi eiusdem. The Elijah passage quoted below comes from the Against Faustus.
3. Prochristus is Bradwardine's name for a merely possible figure, equally possible as a future being with Antichrist but never actually to be. I have kept the Latin name.
4. "John" (Iohannes) is not further identified in the print. The Scotus named at the top of p. 208 is called "Scotus" there, so I did not assume the same person.
5. The print reads quàm tam impossibile est desinere vnquam esse, with quàm where the roman restatement of the corollary just below has quem ("whom it is so impossible …"). I have construed the clause as a causal one ("when it is so impossible …"), which makes the sentence run and gives the evident sense. In the same sentence et quod necesse esse, videtur … is taken as "and 'necessary to be' seems …".
6. Diagoras of Melos, the "atheist" of antiquity, and the "fool" who says in his heart "there is no God" (Ps 13 [14]:1) are the two standard figures of the denier of God.
7. The antecedent of hoc ("this") is not explicit. I have translated literally, and the sense seems to be that anyone who posits and admits the non-existence of God (or the possibility of a necessary being that does not exist) cannot easily escape contradiction.
8. The Latin is quis etiam dubitat quod quicquid … necessario esse tale?, with an infinitive after quod where the sense requires est ("that … is necessarily such"). I have translated the evident sense.
9. Bradwardine's "of this" (huius) after an ordinal ("the second of this," "the first of this") refers to a chapter of this work. Where partem follows (3am partem huius, "the third part of this"), I have translated literally; the antecedent (this chapter or this corollary) is not made explicit.
10. "Rabbi Moses" in the margin is Moses Maimonides. What follows draws on his Guide of the Perplexed I.61–62: all the names of God except the Tetragrammaton derive from his actions; that Name was pronounced only in the Sanctuary, by the priests, in the priestly blessing. The "day of the fast" is the Day of Atonement.
11. Dux dubiorum is the medieval Latin title of Maimonides' Guide (also Dux neutrorum, perplexorum). The pun dux dubiorum… dubius is kept. The "doubt" is Maimonides' discussion of Exodus 3:14 in Guide I.63.
12. Super ratione necesse esse is elliptical. I take it that the name, according to Maimonides, signifies necessary being as regards its notion (ratio). The "earlier Moses" is the Moses of Exodus.
13. The keyed text reads puerulum [pauiulum]. The bracket in the print appears to read paululum. Savile's bracket is kept. The word is either a variant adverb ("for a little while") or an adjective ("tiny"), and I take it as the adverb.
14. Printed as given. The Hebrew name has four letters but only three distinct ones (the he recurs), so species here seems to mean the letters taken individually. Bradwardine does not say what the "four" corresponds to.
15. Propter nomen tuum sustentabilissimum meum esse is compressed. I take sustentabilissimum as a predicate agreeing with meum esse: because the Name signifies necessary being, my being can be fully upheld. It could instead modify nomen: "O Necessary Being, for the sake of your most sustaining name, [be] my being."
16. Savile's text has quisnam ita ("who, pray, thus"), with the variant quispiam in the margin. Quisnam is interrogative and does not construe as the subject of obiciet without strain. I have therefore adopted the marginal variant quispiam ("someone") (rule §2).
17. Futuritio is rendered "futurition" (the condition of being future, or going to be), and non futuritio "non-futurition". The cause of futurition in things is the topic of the whole passage.
18. Printed per deductionem eius ad esse. "Leading it to being" does not fit the gloss facere scilicet ipsum nunquam fore, esse, aut fuisse, and the sense seems to require ad non esse. I translate the print and do not emend.
19. Savile's "de Mundo 11" is the pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo, in the modern division ch. 6 (401a). The words in brackets, [id est Deo], are Savile's. The line is Empedoclean. Bradwardine closes the sentence with a scriptural phrase, "who made the things that are to come" (cf. Isaiah 45:11).
20. Augustine's image of a foot that had been in the dust from eternity, so that its footprint would always lie under it, an eternal cause with a coeternal effect. Cf. City of God 10.31. Bradwardine uses it for causal, not temporal, priority.
21. Alterius partis ("of the other part"). Here the "other part" is the negative member, A's being non-future. The objector argues that its truth too precedes the will; see the sentence that follows.
22. Nisi antecedenter a voluntate diuina. The print has antecedenter, which in strictness contradicts the "subsequently" of the next sentences. I take the phrase to mean "with the divine will as antecedent (cause)", i.e. no thing is future except in dependence on the will. The objector's position is that A is of itself non-future antecedently to the will and future subsequently to it.
23. Neque Philosophus 1. Prior. is elliptical. I read it as "nor does the Philosopher fail to deny it", with Prior Analytics I (the convertibility of contingent propositions through opposite qualities, I.13). The Latin is rendered literally.
24. Savile's marginal variant at 214E·1 is minime for mere ("merely"). It would give "not at all necessary", reversing the argument, so the main reading stands. The marker is addressed 214E in the keyed text, but in the print it stands at the top of p. 214, in section A (see Errata).