De causa Dei: Book I, Chapter 23
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, 237A–242E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/1/23/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[237A–237B]
CHAPTER 23. That both the knowledge of God and His will are altogether immutable.

[237B–237E]
After this I think it must be shown that both God's knowledge and His will are altogether immutable. For if the one or the other were changed, God Himself would necessarily be changed, contrary to chapter 5, already set out. This can also be shown sufficiently by the reasons and authorities of that chapter, and confirmed over and above by others. For if God's knowledge were ever changed, this would seem to happen above all with respect to future things, when they become present and so slip away into the past. But this is not true, since these things are in no way the cause of divine knowledge; rather the reverse, as was shown above. Hence He always knows these things intrinsically in the same way, and in no way otherwise.

Hence Avicenna, Metaphysics 8, 6, and Algazel, Metaphysics 3, 1, Sentence 6, show that God does not know singulars or particulars (first the future ones, second the present, third the past) in such a way that He is in any manner changed according to their change. He knows them always alike, and never in any way otherwise. For the same reason the same Avicenna says, Metaphysics 9, 1: "To be necessary being is, by this very fact, to be necessary in all its modes, because there can be no disposition in it, to come in the future, that was not there before." And so also Ammonius, on the last chapter of Peri hermeneias 1, says: "The gods truly exist, and it is not possible for them to bear transmutation, not even according to the intellect." And below: "To know contingent things belongs to the very nature of the gods. Hence these things, having an indeterminate nature, can indeed come to pass and not come to pass; but the gods, taking in advance the knowledge of them in a manner nobler than the nature of those things themselves,[n1] know these things too determinately. For it is necessary that they know divisible things indivisibly and without distance, things made manifold unitively, temporal things eternally, and generable things ingenerably. For we shall by no means allow it to be said that the knowledge of the gods runs along together with the flux of things, or that there is anything with them past or future, or that 'was' or 'will be' is said of them, as we assumed in the Timaeus, since these are signifiers of a certain transmutation. Only 'is' belongs to them, and that not the 'is' which is counted together with 'was' and 'will be' and set in division alongside them, but the 'is' that is understood before every temporal intimation, and which signifies their unalterability and non-lapsing. This the great Parmenides too proclaims of everything intellectual in its being: 'For it was not, nor will it be; but it only is.'"

In agreement with this Boethius writes thus, Consolation of Philosophy 5, last prose:[n2] "Every judgment comprehends the things subject to it according to its own nature; but God has always an eternal and ever-present state, and His knowledge too, surpassing all movement of time, abides in the simplicity of its presence. Embracing the infinite spaces of past and future, it considers all things in its simple cognition as though they were already being done. And so, if you wish to weigh the presence by which He discerns all things, you will judge more rightly that it is not a presence, as it were, of what is future,[n3] but the knowledge of an instant that never fails." All the philosophers and theologians who speak of eternity, and of God's eternal intrinsic actions, measured by eternity and not by time, agree in holding this same thing.

Moreover, Ecclesiasticus 23: "For the Lord," it says, "God, all things were known before they were created; so also after their completion He looks upon all things." Blessed Augustine, treating this in On the Trinity 15, 13, says thus: "He did not know all creatures because they exist; rather they exist because He knew them. Nor did He know created things otherwise than things to be created; for nothing was added to His wisdom from them, but while they existed as was fitting, and when it was fitting, He remained as He was. For so it is written in the book of Ecclesiasticus: Before they were created, all things were known to Him; so also after they were completed: 'so,' it says, 'and not otherwise.'" Dionysius too confirms the same opinion, in On the Divine Names,

[238A–238D]
chapter 7, as 15 recounted. Moreover Augustine also writes thus, On the Trinity 6, last chapter: "Though times depart and succeed one another, the knowledge of God does not depart or succeed. For it is not that these things which were created are known by God because they were made, but rather[n4] they were made, mutable though they be, because by Him they are known immutably."

The same, On the Questions of Orosius 22: "God made from eternity, by a counsel established by Himself, all that He willed, and He did not see them one way as made, another way as to be made. He sees the things made, therefore, in the same way in which He had seen them as to be made."

The same, On Genesis according to the Letter 5, 18: "How," he says, "were things known to God that were not? And again, How would He make things that were not known to Him? For He made nothing in ignorance. He therefore made things known; He did not come to know things made. Hence before they came to be they both were and were not: they were in God's knowledge, they were not in their own nature." And below: "But I do not dare to say that to God Himself, when He had made them, they became known in another way than in that by which He knew them in order to make them, He with whom there is no change, nor shadow of a shift."[n5]

The same, On the City of God 11, 21: "What else is to be understood in what is said all through the account, 'God saw that it was good,' than the approval of the work according to the art of what was made, which is the Wisdom of God? But God so little learned that it was good only when it was made, that none of those things would have been made had it been unknown to Him. When therefore He sees that it is good (which, had He not seen it before it was made, would certainly not have been made), He shows that it is good; He does not learn it. And Plato indeed dared to say more, namely that God was elated with joy when the universe of the world was complete; where even he was not so far out of his wits as to suppose that God was made happier by the newness of His work, but wished to show in this way that what had pleased his Craftsman in the art, when it was to be made, now pleased Him once made. He did not mean that God's knowledge is in any way varied, as though things not yet in being, things now in being, and things that have been, each made a different thing in it. For He does not, in our manner, look ahead at what is future, or look at what is present, or look back at what is past, but in a certain other manner, far and deeply different from the habit of our thoughts. For He sees not by passing from this to that with a change of thought, but wholly unchangeably, so that of those things which come to pass in time, the future ones are not yet, the present ones now are, and the past ones now are no more;[n6] while He comprehends all these things in a stable and everlasting presence, nor otherwise with eyes, otherwise with mind. For He does not consist of soul and body, nor is He otherwise now, otherwise before, and otherwise afterwards, since His knowledge, unlike ours, is not changed by the variety of the three times, the present, namely, and the past or the future. With Him there is no change, nor shadow of a shift. Nor does His attention pass from thought to thought; in His incorporeal gaze all that He knows is present together."

The same, on that verse of Psalm 138,[n7] "Your knowledge has become wonderful beyond me," says that God spoke to Moses through some assumed bodily creature, not in the way in which He speaks in His own substance. "For how does He speak in His own substance? The speaking of God is the Word of God; the Word of God is Christ; that word does not sound and pass away, but remains always unchangeably the Word through which all things were made. To this Word it is said (for it is also the Wisdom of God): 'You will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the selfsame.' And in another place, when Scripture was speaking of Wisdom, 'Remaining in itself,' it says, 'it renews all things.' That Wisdom, therefore, standing (if it ought to be called 'standing'; it is so called on account of its unchangeability, not on account of immobility), ever holding itself in the same manner, varied in no place and at no time, nowhere otherwise than here or there, never otherwise than now or before: this is the speaking of God."

The same, On the Trinity 4, 1: "There is one Word of God, through which all things were made, which is the unchangeable truth. There, primordially and unchangeably, all things are together, not only those that now are in this whole creation, but also those that have been, and that have been made.[n8] But there they neither have been nor will be, but only are; and all things are life, and all things are one, and (what is more marvelous) it is also one life. For all things were so made through Him that whatever has been made in these things is life in Him, and is not made."

Moreover, if God's knowledge were mutable, it would also be in some way mortal, as is clear from the fifth of the foregoing chapters of this book. How, then, when the Apostle says, "He alone has immortality" (1 Timothy, last chapter)? And how, when another Apostle, who is also an Evangelist, teaches, "What was made in Him was life" (John 1),[n9] what kind of life? Mortal? Which of mortals would say so? Does not this also seem contrary to Augustine, just recited?

[238E–239A]
Who also says, Confessions 1, 6: "You, Lord, live always, and nothing dies in You, since before the beginnings of the ages, and before everything that can be said to be before, You are; and You are my Lord, and Lord of all that You have created. With You the causes of all unstable things stand, of all mutable things the immutable origins abide, and of all irrational and temporal things the everlasting reasons live." And below, 12 of the tenth book:[n10] "You are eternal, having immortality, since by no species of motion are You changed, nor is Your will varied by times, because a will that is now one thing, now another, is not immortal." Hence also is taken the 183rd proposition of the Sentences of Prosper, which says thus: "The true eternity is God's, who alone has immortality, since by no species of motion is He changed, nor is He of a temporal will. For a will that is now one thing, now another, is not immortal."

Why, then, should we not think likewise about knowledge? Nay, hear the very same Augustine, On John, Homily 23 of the first part, saying: "Pass beyond every changeable spirit; pass beyond the spirit that now knows, now does not know, now remembers and now forgets, wills what it did not will, does not will what it willed, whether it already suffers these changeabilities or could suffer them; pass beyond all these things. For you will find in God nothing of changeability, nothing that is now one way, was a little before another. For where you find 'otherwise and otherwise,' a kind of death has come about there; for death is to be no longer what one was." Gregory also confirms this opinion, Morals 18, 31, as is clear from the fifth chapter of this book.

From these things I judge that the immutability of the divine knowledge is evident; once it is granted, who will deny the immutability of the divine will? Is not the reasoning similar on both sides? Do not certain of the authorities set out above also plainly attest to it? Moreover, if God's will were mutable and successively alternating, it would be possible for someone to begin to be one to be saved, and for something to begin to be future, and likewise to cease, without any positing in being.[n11]

[239B–239D]
Suppose, then, that God yesterday positively willed against[n12] Peter's being saved and A's being future, but willed the opposite, and that today He wills both. Then, by the tenth, yesterday Peter was not to be saved, nor A to be future, and today he is to be saved, and A to be future, which is manifestly impossible. And the same can be argued about the aforesaid ceasing, supposing the opposites of the premises.

Likewise, if God's will were mutable, He would not know future contingents with certainty. For He cannot know them with certitude except through something certain, as was shown in the eighteenth; and God knows future contingents only through His will, and if that is successively alternable, it is itself uncertain, like the human will. For just as I do not now know that I shall write tomorrow, from the fact that I now will to write tomorrow, because my will can change in the meantime, so it seems that God would not now know that Antichrist will be, from the fact that He now wills him to be, if His will could likewise be alternated. For granted this, it does not follow: "God now wills Antichrist to be at time or instant A; therefore Antichrist will then be." For after the present willing, before A, He can have a willing-not or a not-willing with respect to him, and continue it up to A, and forever; and if this is posited in being, the truth of the antecedent follows together with that of the opposite of the consequent.

The sacred authorities also attest this: whence Psalm 32: "But the counsel of the Lord remains for ever, the thoughts of His heart to generation and generation." Gloss: that [n13] is, they are not changeable, but eternal, and His predestination, in which all things are laid up, is immutable. And this Gloss is taken from Augustine, on the same place of the Psalm, tractate 1, who says, "The thoughts of His wisdom are not changeable, but abide for ever and ever." Similar is that of Psalm 116: "The truth of the Lord remains for ever"; and that of Psalm 118: "From the beginning I have known of Your testimonies that You have founded them for ever"; and that of the Apostle, 2 Timothy 2: "The firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows who are His." And Hebrews 6: "God, wishing to show to the heirs of the promise the immutability of His counsel, interposes an oath"; and Isaiah 46: "My counsel will stand, and all My will shall be done"; and Jeremiah 31: "With perpetual love I have loved you, therefore I have drawn you, taking pity": "In love," he says, "perpetual, not newfound."

Augustine says the same expressly, On the Trinity 3, 2, expounding that verse of Psalm 121, "Jerusalem, which is built as a city, whose participation is in the selfsame." "By the Selfsame," he says, "in this place, that supreme and unchangeable good is understood which is God, and His wisdom and His will, to which it is sung in another place, 'You will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the selfsame.'" And in chapter 3, that of all things made, visible and invisible, the cause is the invisible [n14] and unchangeable will of God. And in chapter 4: "God uses all things, whether incorporeal or corporeal, rational or irrational, good or evil, according to the unchangeable decision of His judgment." And in the Enchiridion 75, speaking of the Tyrians and Sidonians, whom God did not will to be saved, he says that in the resurrection it will be seen in the brightest light of wisdom (what the faith of the pious now holds) how certain and immutable and most efficacious the will of God is. And Eighty-three Questions, 27: "The law of God remains unchangeable, and regulates all mutable things with a most beautiful governance." And On Free Choice 1, 13.

[239E]
That law which is called the highest reason, by which the temporal law is made and changed, is unchangeable to such a degree that it cannot be varied in any way. The sentences of Prosper bear witness to this as well. I cite them gladly for this reason: whenever I cite them, I bring forward two witnesses beyond all exception, Augustine and Prosper of Aquitaine. Prosper, like a shrill little bee sucking the marrow from the flowers of Augustine's works, put it together in the hive of these sentences into honeyed combs.[n15] Of these sentences, then, proposition 342 says this: "Since the law of all the arts is wholly unchangeable, it is quite evident that there is a law above our mind, which is called truth. For this is that unchangeable truth which is rightly called the law of all the arts, and the art of the almighty Artificer." Proposition 42: "An unchangeable reason contains the arrangement of changeable things." And 169: "God's thinking and recognition of things that are to be changed is an unchangeable reason."

[239E–240B]
For God does not, as a man does, regret anything he has done, God whose decision about all things whatever is as fixed as his foreknowledge is certain. And proposition 158: "What is said to be earlier or later in the works is to be referred not to the one who makes but to the things made. For his will is eternal and unchangeable, nor is it varied by counsel in alternation; in it at once is whatever, in things to be created or ordered, either precedes or follows."

Likewise Augustine, On the Trinity 5, last chapter: "But God forbid that God should love anyone temporally, as with a new love that was not in him before, God with whom past things have not passed away and future things have already been made. And so he loved all his saints before the foundation of the world, just as he predestined them. But when they are converted to him, then they are said to begin to be loved by him, so that what is said is put in the way in which it can be grasped by human feeling. So too when he is said to be angry with the wicked and gentle toward the good, it is they who are changed, not he, just as light is harsh to weak eyes and mild to strong ones, by their change, not by its own."

The same Augustine, On the Trinity 15, 20, recites the dialectic of the heretic Eunomius, which deserves derision. Eunomius held that the only-begotten Word of God is not Son by nature but by will. He wished, that is, to assert in God a will that is accidental, by which God would beget the Son, and did so for this reason: that we at times will something which we did not will before. Augustine immediately refutes him, saying: "As though our nature were not understood to be changeable on account of these things, which God forbid we should believe to be so in God! For it is written, 'Many are the thoughts in the heart of a man, but the counsel of the Lord remains for ever,' for no other reason than that we may understand or believe that, just as God is eternal, so eternal is his counsel, and hence unchangeable, as he himself is. And what is said of thoughts can most truly be said also of wills: 'Many are the wills in the heart of a man, but the will of the Lord remains for ever.'"

The same is said by the same author at much greater length in City of God 22, 2, where he makes a distinction concerning the will of God. For "will" is sometimes taken for the effect of the divine will, and so it is changeable; but sometimes it is taken for that will of his which is everlasting with his foreknowledge, and so he never has a new will, but always the same, which remains unchangeable. He shows the same at great length above, 12, 17 and 14. The same, in On Genesis according to the Letter 8, 17, speaking of divine providence, says:

[240C–240D]
"Almighty God, holding all things in unchangeable eternity, truth and will, himself always the same, moved neither through time nor through place, moves creatures through place and time." The same is evident from the same author in City of God 5, 9, and in other places and in not a few books; and from Anselm, On Concord 3 and 4 and 2,[n16] Cur Deus homo 17, and often elsewhere. And blessed Gregory says, Moralia 26, 4: "Almighty God, though he often changes his sentence, never changes his counsel." The same is found in the Gloss on Isaiah 38, where it treats of the addition of fifteen years to the life of Hezekiah.

But hear also Augustine, splendidly confirming both sentences together, Confessions 12, 15, speaking thus: "Truth tells me about the true eternity of the creator that his substance by no means varies through times, nor is his will outside his substance. Hence he does not will this at one time and that at another, but wills all that he wills at once, all together, and always; not again and again, nor now these things, now those; nor does he will what he did not will, or not will what he did will. For such a will is changeable, and nothing changeable is eternal, but our God is eternal. Likewise, what it tells me in the inner ear is this: the expectation of things to come becomes a beholding when they have come, and the same beholding becomes memory when they have passed. Now every attention that is varied in this way is changeable, and everything changeable is not eternal; but our God is eternal. I gather these things and join them together, and I find that my God, the eternal God, did not found his creature by any new will, nor does his knowledge undergo anything transitory."

Both these sentences, on the knowledge and on the will of God, are also unanimously attested by the aforesaid Anselm of Canterbury, Robert of Lincoln, Hugh of St Victor, Peter Lombard, and not a few other doctors. It is also laid to the Egyptians as an error that they thought the divine will could be changed by sacrifices.

[240D–240E]
COROLLARY.

1. And the Corollary holds that God loves no one newly, nor hates;[n17] 2. nor more or less at one time than at another; 3. nor do prayers, or any merits whatever, good or bad, bend or change the divine will in the least, this way or that; 4. and that God willed from eternity that everyone who is to be saved or damned, rewarded or punished, to whatever degree, be saved or damned, and likewise be rewarded or punished to exactly the same degree; and this not merely by a conditional or undetermined will, but by one so absolute and determined as he wills in the present or the final judgment, or will will afterward.

[240E–241A]
1. From this it follows manifestly that God loves no one newly, nor hates; 2. nor more or less at one time than at another; 3. nor do prayers, or any merits whatever, good or bad, bend or change the divine will in the least, this way or that; 4. and that God willed from eternity that everyone who is to be saved or damned, rewarded or punished, to whatever degree, be saved or damned, and likewise be rewarded or punished to exactly the same degree; and this not merely by a conditional or undetermined will, but by one so absolute and determined as he wills in the present or in the final judgment, or will will afterward.

All this follows manifestly from what precedes. But lest, in so sublime a matter, I seem to dream even the least thing out of the phantasm of my own head, I shall show it by the testimonies and reasons of my elders. The first part of this, then, and the second are evident from that saying of the Apostle in Ephesians 1: "He chose us before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and immaculate in his sight in love, according to the purpose of his will"; and from Romans 9: "When they were not yet born, and had done nothing good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, it was said that the elder shall serve the younger, as it is written: Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." The same is evident from Peter Lombard, Sentences 3, dist. 32, and from the testimonies he adduces.

[241A–241B]
The third part follows evidently from the former, and can be proved by the Saviour's response to the sons of Zebedee. Their mother worshiped him, and asked that he say that they should sit, one at the right hand and one at the left, in his kingdom; and he answered them thus: "To sit at my right hand or my left is not mine to give you, but for those for whom it is prepared by the Father" (Mt 20). But if prayers and merits could obtain this, he himself could give it.

This is also evident from the answer of Samuel, which he gave to Saul. Samuel had said to him, "Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, God has rejected you, that you not be king." Saul asked him to bear away his sin and to return with him, that he might worship the Lord. Samuel refused, and answered: "The Victor in Israel will not spare, and will not be bent by repentance;[n18] for he is not a man that he should repent" (1 Kgs [1 Sam] 15). And when Samuel mourned for Saul, the Lord rebuked him and said to him: "How long will you mourn for Saul, when I have cast him off from reigning over Israel?" below, 16. Similar is that of Jeremiah 7: "I will cast you away from my face. You, therefore, do not pray for this people, nor take up praise or prayer for them, and do not stand against me, for I will not hear you."

[241B–241D]
And below, in the same book, 11, he commanded the same thing. On this the Gloss says: "The prophet is commanded not to pray for those against whom sentence has been completed, lest his prayer seem weak and deservedly unheard. 'Do not take up praise for them,' that is, lest by repeating the clemency of the ancient story, by which I am accustomed to show mercy, and by praising it, you strive to change my sentence." And below, 14: after the manifold confession of sins and the devout prayer of Jeremiah, the Lord said to him: "Do not pray for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their prayers; and if they offer holocausts and victims, I will not accept them, for I will consume them by the sword, by famine and by plague."

Is this not also what the Lord plainly teaches in Ezekiel 14 through Noah, Daniel and Job? Even if they were in the midst of a sinful people to which the Lord was foretelling punishments, they would not free sons or daughters, but only themselves. Hence also Gregory, as is recited in the Canon Cum superna, 23, q. 4,[n19] says thus: "When anger, if I may so put it, moves itself from the marrow, human opinion does not remove it, nor does anyone's entreaty usefully interpose itself, once God has determined something from the depths in his anger."

[241D–241E]
With this Augustine agrees, City of God 21, 24, saying thus: "If the Church were so certain about some people that it knew who they were, who, though still placed in this life, are nevertheless predestined to go into eternal fire with the devil, it would no more pray for them than for the devil himself." Similar also is that of the Apostle in Hebrews 12: "Esau, desiring to inherit the blessing, was rejected. For he found no place for repentance, though he sought it with tears"; in Genesis 27 it is written that he wept with a great wailing. Similar too is that of Numbers 23: "God is not like a man, that he should lie, nor the son of man, that he should be changed. Has he said, and will he not do? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfil?" With this agrees 2 Timothy 2: "He remains faithful; he cannot deny himself." The Gloss says: "He, namely Christ, remains faithful in his sayings, and truly faithful because he cannot deny himself, who is the truth; which he would do if he did not fulfil his sayings." And lest this seem to detract in any way from the freedom of the divine will, the Gloss adds at once: "That he cannot deny himself is the praise of the divine will." And this is from Augustine, Homily 53, first part, on John. The same Augustine, in On the Trinity 15, 14, says: "The Word of God can never have anything false, because it is immutably as that is from which it is. For the Son cannot do anything of himself, unless he sees the Father doing it. It is powerfully that he cannot do this;[n20] and this is not weakness but firmness, because truth cannot be false."

This third part is also evident from blessed Gregory, Dialogues 1, 21, and is alleged in the Canon Obtineri, 23, q. 4, which says: "Things that are not predestined can by no means be obtained. But the things that holy men bring about by praying are so predestined that they are obtained by their prayers. For even the predestination of the everlasting kingdom is so ordained by God that the elect reach it through labor, in order that by asking they may deserve to receive what almighty God ordained before the ages to give them."

[241E–242A]
With this Augustine also agrees, City of God 10, 12, saying thus: "The unchangeable counsel is with him, in whose ordering the times, whatever are to be, are already made. For in moving temporal things he is not moved temporally; he knows things to be done no otherwise than as done, and hears those who call on him no otherwise than as he sees those who will call. For even when his angels hear, he himself hears in them, as in his true temple not made by hands, just as in his lowly saints; and his commands, seen in his eternal law, are carried out temporally."

The same author also writes thus above, 5, 9: "Laws, rebukes, exhortations, praises and blamings are not in vain, because God foreknew that these too would be, and prayers avail to obtain those things which he foreknew he would grant to those who pray." And below, 21, 24, he says: "The Church prays for all men, and yet is not heard for all, but only for those who, though they oppose the Church, are nevertheless so predestined that it is heard on their behalf." Book 15 of On the Trinity, 13, also wants the same.

[242A–242B]
Likewise, if the will of God could be changed by some prayers, it would be lawful, and pious, to pray for the damned, both angels and men. This is plainly contrary to Augustine, City of God 21, 24, and contrary to the general faith of the Church. Likewise, if that were so, it would be seen above all through the most worthy prayers of his most holy mother, of the holy angels, and of the holy souls; but these dare to will nothing, nor ask, nor are they able, except what they have seen God will. Hence Peter Lombard, Sentences 3, dist. 31: "Those who are in the fatherland," he says, "are so devoted to the justice of God that nothing pleases them except what pleases God. And therefore they will the salvation of those only whom God wills to be saved, and love them alone as themselves." The same, in Sentences 4, dist. 45, writes thus: "God is said to hear the prayers of some not only when he commits it to effect, but also when it is made known to the court of the angels and holy souls what will come of it or not; and what they know to be in the will of God, they too will. For they are so devoted to the supernal will that they can will nothing beyond his will. The saints, then, intercede for us with God, and deservedly, both by merit, when their merits support us, and by affection, when they desire our prayers to be fulfilled; which nevertheless they do not do unless they have learned that they are to be fulfilled in the will of God." It appears, therefore, that the will of God is not changed by prayers and good merits, and so neither by bad ones.

[242B–242D]
The fourth part is evident through the earlier parts and their proofs, and because, if God willed otherwise or differently at one time than at another, his will, and he himself likewise, would be changed. This same thing can also be proved in particular as follows. When God created angelic and human nature, he intended something finally concerning it, absolutely and determinately. (For that Wisdom which reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly, acts no more foolishly or vainly than nature and created will, which perform determinate actions for the sake of a determinate end, as is evident, at length, in Physics 2.) And he did not intend that the whole of it should stand and finally enjoy beatitude, because then his purpose would be frustrated, which the tenth chapter does not permit. And the same argument holds for Lucifer, Adam and Judas, and for any person who fell or is damned.

Hence Augustine says, Against Julian 5, 6: "Of the number of the elect no one perishes; but the other mortals, who are not of this number but have been made vessels of wrath, are born for the benefit of the elect. For God creates none of them rashly or by chance, nor does he fail to know what good he will work from them, since he works good even in this very thing, that he creates human nature in them, and adorns by them the order of the present age."

[242D–242E]
God, then, did not intend the standing of those who fall, nor the beatitude of those who are to be damned. Wherefore, as is seen through the twenty-second chapter, he intended in some way the fall and damnation of anyone of this kind. The Psalmist too seems to think this in Psalm 103 [104], when he says, "This dragon which you formed to mock him,"[n21] if Lucifer is signified by the Dragon. And Ecclesiasticus 39: "There are spirits that were created for vengeance," etc. And above, in the same book, 26: "He who passes from justice to sin, God has prepared him for the sword." With these the Saviour's saying about the son of perdition, namely Judas (John 17), also seems to agree; and the Apostle in 2 Thessalonians 2, about the man of sin, the son of perdition, namely Antichrist; though these too are expounded otherwise by the holy Fathers.

This also seems to be the meaning of the Apostle in Romans 9, who says: "Does the potter of clay not have power to make out of the same lump one vessel for honor and another for contumely?" He at once expounds this of the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, and the vessels of mercy prepared for glory. Augustine, Against Julian 5, recites this passage of the Apostle more expressly for this opinion, according to another translation, in these words: "But if God, wishing to show his wrath and to make known his power, bore with, in much patience, vessels of wrath, which are perfected for perdition,"[n22] etc.

NOTES

1. quam sit ipsorum natura: "their nature" could be the gods' or the contingent things'. I take it as the things'. The preceding clause speaks of "these things having an indeterminate nature", and the point is that the gods know contingents determinately, in a way nobler than the things' own nature allows.
2. pros. vlt.: the last prose of Book 5, i.e. V, prose 6 in modern citation.
3. The margin offers praescientiam ("foreknowledge") for praesentiam. This is Boethius's own word (V pr. 6: "that it is not foreknowledge, as of the future, but knowledge of an instant that never fails"). The main reading construes, so I translate it; the variant would give "that it is not a foreknowledge, as it were of the future".
4. ac non potius: as printed, "and not rather" reverses the sense that the argument needs, so I translate with the force of "but rather". I take vel mutabilia as "even mutable", i.e. "mutable though they be".
5. momenti obumbratio: the Old Latin of James 1:17, familiar from Augustine (Vulgate: vicissitudinis obumbratio). It recurs a few lines below in the long City of God passage.
6. The print has praesentia iam non sint a second time, where Augustine has praeterita. The evident sense, "past", is given.
7. Psalm numbers in the running text are the Vulgate's, as Savile prints them. Here 138 = 139 in English Bibles; below 32 = 33, 116 = 117, 118 = 119, 121 = 122.
8. The print reads quae facta sunt ("which have been made"), which is redundant after quae fuerunt. The context requires "will be" (futura sunt): the next sentence says "there they neither have been nor will be", and Augustine's text has futura. I translate the print.
9. Bradwardine reads quod factum est in ipso, vita erat, taking in ipso with factum est ("what was made in Him was life"). The now usual punctuation takes in ipso with the following clause. The argument needs his reading: what is in God is life, not death.
10. Et infra 12. libri 10o.: the reference is given as Savile prints it. It does not fit the work just cited (Confessions 1), and I have not identified it; the wording is the same as the Prosper sentence cited immediately after.
11. absque positione in esse: I take this as "without any real thing's being posited in being", so that the change would be one of status, effected by God's changing will alone.
12. noluit positive: nolle here is a positive act of will against, not mere absence of willing; compare "to have nolle or non velle" in the later argument, where the two are distinguished.
13. The variant prima stands against id est ("that is"). I see no evident bearing on the sense. The main reading construes and is translated.
14. In the print the variant mark ‖ stands before the earlier invisibilium ("visible and invisible"), not where the keyed text puts the marker (after invisibilis). The variant mutabilium would give "of all things made, visible and mutable". The main reading is sound and is translated. The marker is kept where the Latin file has it.
15. Prosper of Aquitaine, Sententiae ex operibus S. Augustini delibatae, a collection of excerpts from Augustine. The numbers (342, 42, 169, 158) are those of its propositions. The sentence "That law which is called the highest reason…" is Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1, 6, 15, cited at the end of the preceding passage as "1 De libero arbitrio 13."
16. Savile prints "Anselmum de Concordia 3. & 4. & 2. Cur Deus homo 17." The second "2" may belong with Cur Deus homo, whose relevant chapter is II, 17. The citation is translated as printed.
17. The numerals 1–4 stand in Savile's margin beside each member of the Corollary's statement and again beside its repetition ("From this it follows…"). The keyed text has them inline, and they are kept inline. In the first statement the print has omne saluandum (neuter) where the repetition has omnem. It is construed in both places as the object of voluit.
18. Triumphator in Israel is the Vulgate's title for God in 1 Sam 15:29 ("the Victor of Israel"). Poenitudine here is God's "regret" or "change of mind", the word on which the argument turns.
19. Gratian's Decretum, Causa 23, question 4. Savile cites the canons by their opening words (Cum superna, Obtineri), as is done here.
20. Potenter hoc non potest: his "cannot" arises from power, not from lack of it. The next clause draws the contrast between infirmitas and firmitas.
21. Ps 103 [104]:26, ad illudendum ei. In the psalm the pronoun probably refers to the sea. Bradwardine, reading the Dragon as Lucifer, takes it as "to mock him", and the translation follows that sense.
22. Rom 9:22. The "other translation" is the Old Latin text that Augustine quotes (attulit… perfecta), where the Vulgate has sustinuit… apta in interitum ("fitted for destruction"). The English renders Augustine's wording.