Book I, Chapter 44
Chapter 44. On Predestination, according to the meaning of the name.
After this, a few brief things must be said briefly on predestination, and first we must know what the name means. B1 For according to the Philosopher in Sophistical Refutations 1 1, those who are ignorant of the power of names are led into fallacies, both the disputants themselves and those who listen to them. The Apostle agrees with this in 1 Corinthians 14, where he says: "If I do not know the power of the voice, I shall be a barbarian to the one to whom I speak, C1 and he who speaks will be a barbarian to me" 2. Now according to the grammarians, "to destine" is said to mean to send, to assign, to mark out, to ascribe, to ordain, and Sacred Scripture speaks in these last senses. So in 2 Corinthians 9: "Each one as he has destined in his heart," C2 and so on. The Gloss says: "destined," that is, "preordained." And Wisdom 5: "Like an arrow shot to the destined place," and so on. Hence "to predestine" and "predestination" are used in the same senses. Blessed Augustine, proceeding along a like road in his work against the Pelagians on predestination, in the second place defines predestination in this way: "Predestination is the sending ahead, and the foreseeing, or the preordaining, of something future" 3.
420B CAP. XLIIII. De Praedestinatione secundum quid nominis.
420B POST haec autem De praedestinatione aliqua breuia breuiter sunt dicenda, B1 de qua, quid nominis est sciendum. Nam secundum Philsophum 1. Elench. Qui nominum virtutis ignari sunt, paralogizantur et ipsi disputantes, et alios audientes; cui et concordans Apostolus 1. ad
420C Cor. 14. ita dicit, Si nesciero virtutem vocis, ero ei, cui loquor barbabarus, C1 et qui loquitur mihi barbarus. Dicitur ergo destinare secundum Grammaticos, mittere, deputare, signare, ascribere, ordinare, et istis vltimis modis loquitur sacra Scriptura. Vnde 2. ad Cor. 9. Vnusquisque prout destinauit in corde suo, C2 etc. Glossa, destinauit, id est, praeordinauit. Et Sap. 5. Tanquam sagitta emissa in locum destinatum, etc. Quare et Praedestinare, et Praedestinatio dicitur eisdem modis. Vnde beatus Augustinus simili via incedens de Praedestinatione contra Pelagianos secundo definit Praedestinationem hoc modo, Praedestinatio est praemittendo, et praeuidendo, vel praeordinando futurum aliquid.
Notes
- 1
Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations 1 (165a10–13): those unskilled in the power of names are misled by paralogisms, both when arguing themselves and when listening to others. Bradwardine's "of the power of names" renders the Latin nominum virtutis, which is clumsy but construes.
↩ - 2
Vulgate 1 Cor 14:11. Barbarus is kept as "barbarian": the Greek sense of a foreign speaker whom one cannot understand is exactly Bradwardine's point about knowing what a name means.
↩ - 3
Secundo is ambiguous: "in the second place" (after some earlier definition) or "in the second [book]". I take the first. The definition is built on three gerunds (praemittendo, praevidendo, praeordinando), which I render as verbal nouns. The wording is Bradwardine's presentation of Augustine and does not match any one Augustinian sentence.
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Errata: where the keyed text and the 1618 print differ (2)
| Savile | Keyed text (TCP) | 1618 print |
|---|---|---|
| 420B | Philsophum | Philosophum |
| 420C | barbabarus | barba-/barus across the line break (the print's own dittography; read barbarus; no change to the sense) |