Book II, Chapter 26

CHAPTER XXVI. He corrects the fifth.

By the fifth evasion every way will easily be closed off, by the same means that closed off the other windings. It is also fully blocked by 33 of the first book. Again, every evil act of the will is done by God according to the substance of the act and not according to its deformity, as is sufficiently taught in 26 of the first and in 18, 19, and 20 of this second. This cannot be understood of a merely permissive making, because in that way he would produce any deformity of anyone whatever. It is therefore understood of making that is properly and really effective. Again, to say that God hands men over to sins (which are also punishments of preceding sins) only permissively was the error of Julian, the Pelagian heretic, whom Augustine refutes at length in book 5 Against Julian, as 34 of the first book cited more fully. To those authorities, however, which seem to prove this opinion, it can be answered briefly that they prove well enough that permission is one transferred and improper way of doing, but they do not prove that God produces the free acts of the will only in this improper way and in no way properly. Why God is said to make some voluntary acts and to permit others, although he makes all of them properly, 33 and 34 of the first book sufficiently show.

Now as to that multiple divine will which Hugh and Lombard posit, it must be known that one simple thing sometimes admits a multiplicity of names, as is clear of God, as the third of the first book cited from Aristotle in On the World. 1 The multiplicity of namings is twofold: either many names signify the same thing, or the same name signifies many things. The first kind is itself again twofold. The many names signifying the same thing either signify it in every respect in the same mode and for the same reason, and then they are synonyms, of which Averroes says on Physics 1, the first [comment], that synonymous names are not used in demonstrative teaching 2; and he holds the same on Metaphysics 12, 39. Or they signify it in a different mode and for a different reason, and then, according to Averroes in the same 39, they can be called dispositive names, because they stand to one another as a disposition and the thing disposed; or attributive names, as theologians prefer. Of this sort are power, mercy, wisdom, and similar things said of God. If, however,

the same name signifies many things, this can happen in two ways. Either it does so equally primarily, through different modes and meanings not referred to some one common thing, and such names are equivocal, as is plainly clear from the Philosopher at the beginning of the Categories, and he hints at the same in Metaphysics 4, 2; and no art considers such names, as is clear there from Averroes. Or it does so not equally primarily, nor in wholly different modes or meanings, but signifies primarily and principally some one thing in one mode and by one principal and primary meaning, while consequently, denominatively and transumptively, it signifies other things in other modes and meanings, yet not altogether other, but related to the first. Such names are called denominatives, as is clear from the Philosopher at the beginning of the Categories, or "principal" and "derived," as is clear from the same in the Topics and from Averroes on Metaphysics 12, 39. They are intermediate between equivocals and univocals, D1 as Averroes says on Metaphysics 4, 2. Names of this kind are "being," "one," and similar ones that are in common use in the sciences, as is clear from Metaphysics 4, 2 and nearly throughout Metaphysics 5. Hence Averroes also, on Metaphysics 5, 1, says: "He intends in this treatise to distinguish the significations of the names to be considered in this science; and all these names are said in relation to one thing, with different modes; and therefore the exposition of these names is a part of this science per se, so that the whole content of this fifth book is this: to know in how many ways any name is said, and why, and what is the first thing to which the others are referred, and what is the order of those others to one another and to the first, E1 as the whole sequence of the book makes plain."

The Philosopher also, in Metaphysics 4, 2, says: "Being is said in many ways, but in relation to one thing and one certain nature, and not equivocally; but just as everything healthy is related to health, this by preserving it, that by acting upon it, another is a sign of health, and this because it is capable of receiving it." On this Averroes says that all these are attributed to the same thing as to the same end; and further on, distinguishing A1 three modes in which some things are attributed to the same, he says: "He meant by this to declare that the things attributed to the same end, as healthful or sound things to health, or to the same agent, as medicinal or medical things to medicine, or to the same subject, as the nine categories to substance. He passes over a fourth mode, in which, namely, some things are attributed to the same form: for according to any kind of cause such a transferred attribution arises. He likewise passed over the conversions of these four modes mentioned, because not only are things caused attributed to their causes, but also causes to the things caused." 3 Nor does such a transference arise only according to some kind of cause properly so called, but also according to any connection, nearness, comparison, or likeness whatever, but in no way according to contrariety or irrelevance. For every transference makes one thing known through another, or makes known some pertinence or likeness between them. Hence the Philosopher says in Topics 6: "Transference makes known in some way what is signified by likeness: for all who transfer, transfer according to some likeness."

Therefore that flowery Tully also, at the end of his New Rhetoric, B1 treating of the colours of rhetoric, sets out certain other modes of attributions of this kind and hints at many more. 4 For such an attribution, or transference, is a certain colour of rhetoric, which he sets down in 33 there and calls "denomination," defining it thus: "Denomination is that which draws its expression from near and neighbouring things, by which a thing can be understood that is not called by its own word." He says that this is sometimes made from the inventor to the thing invented, sometimes the reverse: as if someone should call the Tarpeian [height] the Capitoline or the Capitol, or wine "Liber," or grain "Ceres," or the reverse. Sometimes the master who uses an instrument is named from it, indeed named by the name of the instrument, as the Macedonians by "sarissae," as if Englishmen were called "bows and arrows." 5 Sometimes the thing made is named from the maker, as if someone should call war "Mars"; sometimes the reverse, as if someone should call an art "idle" because it makes men idle, and cold "sluggish" because it makes men sluggish. Sometimes again such a denomination is made of the contained from the container, sometimes the reverse. This colour is one figure of grammar contained under a trope, which Bede, Donatus, Isidore, Hugh, and the other grammarians call metonymy 6, a word meaning "denomination" or "transnomination"; and these authors also set out the modes mentioned and certain other modes of it. Tully, however, leaves the remaining divisions of denominations of this kind to the usage of poets, orators, and everyday speech: and rightly, because every science, language, and country delights in such expressions, in its own modes, tropes, figures, colours, and schemes. I have pursued these matters a little more broadly than my purpose demands because Sacred Scripture is most copiously sprinkled with them, and it cannot be understood unless they are understood. For they clarify its obscure sense, unfold what is implicit, make certain what is doubtful, and unlock the closed sense; and so no one who knows the figures of grammar and the colours of rhetoric, and who studies Scripture itself, is allowed to be ignorant of this, as Augustine in the book of Locutions 7 and in book 4 of On Christian Teaching, Bede, Cassiodorus, and the other fathers in their various works have taught more fully.

Hence nearly all the distinctions of the names of Sacred Scripture, which Maurice, Nicholas, and others make, are not distinctions of purely equivocal terms among the things they equivocally name, but rather of denominatives among the things denominated, or of transumptives among the things to which they have been transferred. Therefore all these distinctions too are reduced to the second mode of equivocation, of which the Philosopher speaks in Sophistical Refutations 1: "Another is transumptive, or from transumption, when we are accustomed so to speak." The perfect science of these distinctions is this: to know in how many ways any name is said, what its primary signification is, what the reason of its transference to the others is, and what the order of the others is, in that order, to one another and to the first, as was said above about the distinctions of names in Aristotle's Metaphysics 5. Applying these things, then, to the matter at hand, I say that the divine will, like the angelic and the human, is taken first and principally for the instrument of willing, or for the volitive power. Second, it is taken for the habit of this will, of which sort is charity, because this too is likewise in a certain way an instrument of willing and a certain volitive power, inasmuch as together with the will it co-produces its act, as the fortieth of the first teaches. Third, it is taken for the proper and intrinsic act of the will spoken of in the first way, namely for the willing itself, because it is produced by the will. These three wills are really distinguished in creatures; in God, however, they are really one and the same, his most simple essence, God himself.

In the fourth place the divine will is taken for his extrinsic operation, because it is done by the first three, or by the first through the two that follow. Hence the Prophet says in Psalm 110 [111]: "The works of the Lord are great, sought out for all his wills." 8 E1 For since there is only one will in the Lord, "for all," he says, "his wills," that is, for all the effects of that will; just as God himself also, according to the Philosopher in On the World 12, although he is one, E2 has many names, named from all the affections that he himself renews, and this both in the abstract and in the concrete. For he is called not only "thunderbolt-hurling," "rainy," "thundering," and the like, but indeed "motion of the unwearied fire," "root of the sea," "sun," and "moon," as the third of the first book recounted more fully. So also "tongue," both in Sacred Scripture and in the common manner of speaking, is taken for speech formed by the tongue; so also "hand" is taken for writing. And Augustine gives these examples for the same conclusion in On Free Choice 3, 30, and Against Faustus 14, 2; and he intends the same in the ‖A1 Questions of Orosius 18, expounding that text of 1 Corinthians 15, "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God," that is, the works of flesh and blood; and on that text of Psalm 50 [51], "Behold, I was conceived in iniquities," and below, "Deliver me from bloodshed," he intends the same. For all these things are attributed to the same agent, as Averroes said above.

Fifth, the divine will is taken for its sign: for the sign and the thing signified frequently correspond. Thus, according to the Philosopher cited above, urine is called healthful or sound because it is a sign of health; and so a name and a word in Sacred Scripture is frequently taken for the thing signified by the name and the word. A2 Hence Psalm 39 [40]: "Blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord [his]." And Proverbs 18: "The name of the Lord is a most strong tower." Jeremiah 29: "I will raise up over you my good word, to bring you back to this place." And Amos 3: "The Lord will not do a word unless he has revealed his secret to his servants the prophets": B1 "word," he says, that is, the thing signified by the word. And Matthew 7: "Whoever hears my words and does them will be likened to a wise man." And below, 24: "But my words will not pass away." And so Christ is called a serpent and a ram, B2 because he is signified by the serpent of Moses, Numbers 21, and by the ram of Abraham, Genesis 22. So also in Daniel 7 it is said: "These four great beasts are four kingdoms, which shall arise out of the earth." And below, in 8 of the same: "The ram which you saw with horns is the king of the Medes and of the Persians; and the he-goat of the goats is the king of the Greeks, and the great horn that was between his eyes, he is the first king," and so on; there are similar passages. These things were said to be those things because they were their signs. Of signs, however, as the Philosopher says in Prior Analytics 2, next to the last [chapter], one is the icos and another the prodigy. A prodigy, as he says, is a demonstrative and necessary sign, which for that reason makes one know; for it is called a prodigy as if "held for a finger." 9

Such a sign of the divine will is twofold, namely, his external operation, that is 10 his will spoken of in the fourth way: for it follows necessarily, if God does something externally, that he wills it, as chapters 8 and 9 of the first teach. God's permission also is a demonstrative sign of this kind of that will, as 33 of the first proves; yet that sign is not as evident as the first. For the first is evident to all, in all free works, not only of God but of any creature working freely; the second, however, is not evident to all. For even a rational creature permits many things to be done which it neither properly wills nor does; but God does not do so, because of the most infinitely infinite actuality of his will, as 22 of the first taught, and because no creature can do anything without his co-acting, and therefore also willing, as 2, 3, and 4, 8 and 9 of the first sufficiently show. Permission, therefore, taken generally, is the superior term to willing and acting properly. For whoever voluntarily does anything permits it, and the converse does not hold universally, since it does not hold in creatures, although it does in God, for the causes stated.

The icos, however, as he says, is a probable sign: "For what," he says, "they know to have been done or not done, or to be or not to be, thus for the most part, this is the icos." Such a sign of the will, both uncreated and created, is threefold, namely precept, prohibition, and counsel. For each of these is a sign of willing in anyone who does it; yet it is not demonstrative but probable, and therefore it can deceive, and sometimes does. Hence God himself commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, and yet did not will this, as is clear from Genesis 22 and from 10 of the first book; nor can anyone imagine that he first willed it and afterwards did not will it, on account of the immutability of the divine will proved in 23 of the first. He also forbade the two blind men who had received their sight to let anyone know, Matthew 9, and the cleansed leper to say anything to anyone, Mark 1, and yet did not will this, because in doing the opposite they did not sin, as is clear there from all the Catholic expositors, who say that the said healed persons, in spreading abroad the miracles, did not sin for this reason, that they understood that God had not forbidden it as being unwilling that his works be proclaimed, but to give men a pattern for declining the praise of men. He also counselled the young man to sell what he had and to come and follow him, Matthew 19, and yet did not will this, since the young man did not do it, as is clear from Matthew with the tenth of the first book added. That these three signs are probable but deceptive ‖E1 with respect to created will, no one is ignorant. There is also a fourth species of this sign, namely of the icos type 11, with respect to created will, namely permission. For it is a probable sign that a rational creature, knowing that someone is doing something and permitting it when it could freely prevent it, wills it; nonetheless it often deceives.

From these things, then, it is sufficiently clear that permission and the other signs of the divine will, although in the way stated they are improperly called the will of God, are nevertheless not his uncreated and intrinsic will, but created signs of it: and this is the view of Hugh and Lombard in the places mentioned above. These created signs, however, do not properly and sufficiently co-produce the act of the created will, any more than that of any other creature; but beyond them there is necessarily required God himself, who by himself properly co-produces that act, as 3 and 4 of the first and 20 of the second taught; and this by his will and willing, intrinsic to him, uncreated, as is clear from 8 and 9 of the first and from the corollary of the twentieth of this second. Wherefore everywhere, when I say simply "the will of God," I mean his actual willing, namely the act proper and intrinsic to that will itself taken in the first way.