Book II, Chapter 24
Chapter Xxiv
He corrects the third. 1
563A CAP. XXIV.
563B Corrigit tertiam.
The third foolishness in the premises can be refuted in the same way as the others. 2 Again: if a created will cannot subsist through itself, but necessarily needs God to keep it in being, much less can its act subsist through itself, or through the created will alone. The act necessarily needs divine conservation, and therefore all the more divine co-production, or co-action. 3 For if a created will cannot, without God, keep in being its act once that act has been produced, which is the lesser thing, neither can it, without him, produce any act into being, which is the greater, as has often been argued. The reasoning brought forward above in support of this opinion proves only that God is said in a certain way to effect the act of the created will, in a transferred sense, 4 because he conserves the created will. It does not prove that he does not also effect, in the proper sense, every such act.
563B TErtia vero fatuitas praemissarum potest refelli similiter vt praemissae. Item si voluntas creata non potest per se subsistere, sed necessario indiget, vt Deus eam in esse conseruet, multo minus potest actus eius per se aut per solam voluntatem creatam subsistere, sed necessario indiget conseruatione diuina, quare et multo magis comproductione seu coactione diuina: Si enim voluntas creata non potest sine Deo seruare in esse actum suum iam in esse productum, quod est minus, nec potest sine eo actum quenquam in esse producere, quod est maius, vt saepius est argutum. Ratio vero pro hac opinione adducta superius tantum probat, quod Deus ideo dicitur quodammodo transumptiue efficere actum voluntatis creatae, quia conseruat voluntatem
563C creatam; sed non probat, quin efficiat etiam proprie quemlibet talem actum.
Notes
- 1
The "third" is the third of the foolish premises (fatuitates praemissarum) of the opinion under attack. Chapter 25 begins on the same page with the correction of the fourth (quarta falsigraphia). The argument heading is Savile's own.
↩ - 2
Similiter vt praemissae: "in the same way as the preceding ones." Bradwardine refers to the refutations of the first two foolishnesses in the preceding chapters.
↩ - 3
Comproductio seu coactio: God's concurrent producing, or acting together with the creature. This is Bradwardine's usual language for divine co-operation in the act of will. The Latin coactio is not "coercion" here, and I take it as "co-action".
↩ - 4
Transumptiue: by transference, that is, in a figurative or derived sense. It is opposed to proprie, "in the proper sense", in the last clause.
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