De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 17
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, 219B–220C; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/17/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[219B]
CHAPTER XVII. He distinguishes the things God knows: some in a certain way precede his knowledge, and some follow it; and he shows that the former are in some way a cause of divine knowledge, the latter never.

[219B–219E]
Yet do not understand this too generally: a certain distinction must be noted in these things known by God. For some of them in a certain way precede God's knowledge, and others follow it. Those that precede that very knowledge are the divine essence, omnipotence, the divine Intellect, and the like (for God naturally is, and has omnipotence and Intellect, before he understands or knows anything). The others follow it. Now those things known which naturally precede divine knowledge are a cause of it. For whatever is naturally prior to another is some cause of it, as the 13th showed beforehand. Likewise everything that is necessarily presupposed to anything seems to be some cause of it: for if it were not some cause of it, why could the thing not exist without it, especially when it is presupposed and necessarily required beforehand? But what follows of necessity upon anything must be judged otherwise: an effect, for instance, follows its producer of necessity, though it is not the cause of it. Yet God's being, and his having power and intellect, are necessarily presupposed to his knowledge; therefore they are some cause of it. Again, an intellective power, or Intellect, produces as an efficient cause its every act of understanding and every act of its own; therefore the divine Intellect is the cause of each of its acts of understanding and of any knowledge whatever. For so God eternally produces and causes his Word, and the Father his holy Son, and is his eternal cause, as appears from the second of this book. But the remaining intelligibles, which are not God, have, according to the opinion of the Fathers, a twofold being: namely, intelligible being and the being of existence, or real being; that is, they are intelligible before they exist in complete act. The first being of these in a certain way precedes the divine act of understanding. For in a certain way they are intelligible before they are understood by God, not of themselves (for since they are nothing at all, they have no aptitude or potency of themselves, as is clear from what came before) but through God. And so in a certain way they are causes of the divine understanding, though not truly themselves (since they are nothing at all). Rather the divine essence alone, of itself first of all, pregnant and fertile with the ideas and proper reasons of all intelligibles, anticipates the divine intellect, offering all these to it most clearly, most distinctly and, as it were, most by name; and beholding this essence, and the things it offers, the intellect understands all things,[n1] as the 7th and the 13th urged. For it seems to me that the divine essence is like a kind of intelligible mirror, most clear and infinite, suffering, receiving or reflecting nothing from objects, but actively, from its own most infinite brightness, bringing forth distinctly and not confusedly the faces and ideas of all intelligible objects; and the eye of the divine intellect, gazing into this mirror, beholds all these things. I do not suppose, however, that such reasons or ideas in the divine essence are distinguished from it essentially and really, as the words of the Fathers seem to sound in the ears of some; but that all these are really the same as the divine essence, indeed that this essence, most unified and most simple, of itself alone so represents all intelligibles, as is clear from the first and the 7th of this book. Hence also Augustine, On the Trinity 6 (the last chapter), speaking of the Art of almighty God, full of all reasons, says, "And all are one in it;" and he writes thus also about the joys of the just and the punishments of the wicked, or about the threefold dwelling:[n2] "All the things of God are one in God, except what pertains to relation. For God's wisdom and truth and eternity are not different from one another, but are one, like all the rest. God's wisdom is not more wisdom than it is truth, and not more truth than it is wisdom, and not more truth than eternity, than all the rest of God's attributes."[n3]

[220A–220B]
For they are one in God, and nothing more; these are not only the same among themselves in God, but they are nothing other than God himself, and the world was in God before it was in itself: not the World, but God. In agreement with this Anselm teaches in Monologion 33 that God says himself by one and the same word, etc.; and below, in 34: "A work that is made according to some art is always in the art itself, not only when it is made but also before it is made and after it is dissolved, and is nothing other than what the art itself is. Therefore when the supreme spirit says himself, he says all things that have been made. For both before they came to be, and when they have been made, and when they are corrupted or in any way changed, they are always in him, not as what they are in themselves, but as what he himself is. For in themselves they are a mutable essence created according to an immutable reason; but in him they are the first essence itself and the first truth of existing." But the being of existence, and the complete being, of any creature does not precede the divine act of understanding, nor is it the cause of it, but follows it and is caused by it. For he does all things not unwisely but through his wisdom, wisdom herself bearing witness: "When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when with fixed law and compass he fenced in the abysses; when he made the sky firm above and balanced the fountains of waters; when he set about the sea its limit; when he laid down a law for the waters, that they should not pass their bounds; when he hung the foundations of the earth, I was with him, arranging all things" (Proverbs 18 [8]);[n4] and Psalm 103 [104]: "You have made all things in wisdom." Therefore this [knowledge],[n5] this one, precedes its own works as principal and instrumental efficient cause. Nor do these things conflict in any way with the two chapters just set before this: for those speak of things known that come to exist in being after divine knowledge,[n6] and of things known that are only Intelligibles, insofar as they are distinguished, in the imagination, over against the aforesaid reasons and ideas of the divine essence; and according to that being of theirs they are in no way causes of God's knowledge.

[220B–220C]
COROLLARY.

And the Corollary holds that divine knowledge, which is his simple awareness, is truly the cause of any thing made, and not only a cause without which not.

From this it can be established plainly that divine knowledge, which is his simple awareness, is truly the cause of any thing made, and not only a cause without which not, as Peter Lombard says, distinction 38 of his Sentences, where cited above.[n7] The authorities cited here and in the 15th bear sufficient witness to this, and the immediately preceding arguments likewise prove it. For this knowledge of God naturally precedes each of his works, and is of necessity presupposed to anything whatever. Again, actual understanding and cognition move the will and are the cause of its willing, as could be proved by the same arguments and by the Philosopher, On the Soul 3, 54, both before and after;[n8] and actual divine willing is the cause of any thing made, as the ninth chapter proves; and whatever is the cause of a cause is the cause of the thing caused. For so too the Son is the cause of the Holy Spirit, as the Father is of the Son, as was touched on above.

NOTES

1. quam et quae intuens intelligit vniuersa. The relative construction is awkward in the print. I take quam to be the divine essence and quae the ideas it offers, both objects of intuens; the sense (the intellect understands everything by beholding the essence and what it presents) is not in doubt.
2. The first quotation (the Art of God "full of reasons"; "all are one in it") is a loose citation of Augustine, De Trinitate 6.10.11. The second, on the joys of the just and the punishments of the wicked and the threefold dwelling, I have not been able to identify in Augustine; "Qui" is Augustine, as the margin shows.
3. The final clause repeats "truth" ("no more truth than eternity, than all the rest"); it is the print's wording. The sense is that none of the divine attributes is more than another, and all are one in God. Translated literally.
4. Savile prints "Parab. 18"; the passage is Proverbs 8:27–30. The Psalm reference is Ps 103 [104]:24.
5. Ista igitur haec praecedit. The pronouns are as printed. "This" refers to the divine wisdom or knowledge that has just been spoken of; I supply "[knowledge]" and keep both demonstratives.
6. The print has posteriobus diuina scientia (I read the first word as posterioribus). I construe the phrase as "later than divine knowledge", with diuina scientia standing for the dative or ablative of comparison.
7. Savile prints "Pertus Lumbardus" for Petrus Lombardus: Peter Lombard, Sentences I, d. 38.
8. "3. de Anima 54": Aristotle, De anima III, with the number 54 evidently the comment number in Averroes's Long Commentary. Savile's numbering is kept (Conventions §5.4).