De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 11
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, 686C–688C; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/11/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[686C]
CHAPTER XI. He raises an objection and replies.

[686C–686E]
But an objection will perhaps be raised against what has been said. For it was said in the ninth of this book that although all human acts proceed from a naturally preceding necessity, a man is nevertheless called free, and of free will, because he does not act unwillingly or under compulsion but spontaneously, and does some act of his when he wills and does not do it when he does not will. In the same way beasts, although they do their deeds from a naturally preceding necessity, nevertheless do not act unwillingly or under compulsion but purely spontaneously. When they will or desire, they act, and when they do not will or do not desire, they do not do any of their deeds from a naturally preceding necessity. Therefore they act as freely, and as meritoriously, as man. Again, it seems that no possible reason can be given why, in human acts, a necessity with respect to God or the divine will, naturally preceding such acts, should be compatible with merit, as the corollaries of the last and of the second say, rather than any other necessity: or at least rather than a necessity with respect to nature or fate, which the last corollary denied to them, or than a thoroughly absolute necessity. But these points are easily resolved if what was shown before is kept in memory. For as the last chapter taught, the rational creature is free with a threefold freedom: from natural, fatal and violent necessity; indeed also from the necessity with respect to all secondary causes, by the third of the second. The irrational creature is not so. In all things it is subject to the necessity of nature and, as some hold, to the necessity of the fate of the stars. As for Augustine's meaning, when he says that a man does something freely for this reason, that when he wills, he acts, and when he does not will, he does not act, it can be said that he is speaking there against the Pelagians and against the violent and unwilling necessity which they said follows from divine foreknowledge or predestination, as the last chapter recounted. He is removing that necessity from man, yet he does not affirm that this is the only freedom in man. It can be said otherwise, and better, that a man is called free with the freedom of contradiction [n1] because, when all secondary causes naturally prior to his free willing are posited, together with all the dispositions necessarily required, his willing does not necessarily follow, but he can equally will and not will, as is clear from 4 of this book and the chapters following.

[687A–687E]
And so, all these conditions standing in this way, when he wills, he wills and brings about his willing, and when he does not will, he neither wills nor brings about his willing. Hence, supposing according to the opinion of the fool that God does not exist and that man exists and can act, or according to the opinion of certain people, namely the Pelagians, who say that they are wise, that man can act without God's in any way co-acting [n2], man in his free acts would be free simply, with the freedom of contradiction, but beasts would not be so. Indeed, even if it is posited that they can act with God not co-acting at all, still, given an appetible object and the other secondary causes with the dispositions required and naturally prior to the appetite (that is, to the act of desiring), it necessarily follows that they desire, namely by natural necessity. Hence the Philosopher, in Metaphysics 9, 10 [n3], says: Irrational potencies, when the passive and the active approach as they are able, must of necessity, the one act and the other be acted upon. The authority of Damascene also bears witness to this, saying, Irrational things are not free in choice; for they are driven by nature rather than act [n4]. And therefore they do not contradict their natural appetite, but at once desire something and make an impetus toward the act, as is recounted more fully above.

Anselm, in On Free Choice 5, answers this same objection in a similar way. There he first asks, through the disciple: How is the will not free, when no alien power can subject it without its own assent? And when the disciple presses, Can we not say by a similar argument that the will of a horse is free, since it serves the appetite of the flesh only when willing? he replies: It is not similar. In the horse the will itself does not subject itself, but, subjected by nature, it always serves the appetite of the flesh of necessity. In man, however, as long as the will itself is upright, it neither serves nor is subject to what it ought not, and it is turned away from that very uprightness by no alien force, unless the will itself willingly consents to what it ought not; and this consent it plainly seems to have from itself, not naturally nor of necessity, as the horse has it. Blessed Augustine, too, in On Free Choice 3, 1, answers a similar objection, about the natural motion of a stone, in a similar way. But as to the further argument of the objector, beasts act freely, therefore meritoriously, that consequence does not hold [n5]. For as is taught very often in moral philosophy and in sacred theology, to merit it is not enough merely to do one good thing naturally; one must do it well, which only a right intention of the end brings about, as is clear from 34 of the first, and reason rightly pre-judging directs this intention. So beasts, lacking reason, will lack the necessity of merit as well. Indeed, just as it is perhaps absolutely possible that God should make some wholly immaterial nature free to will without the judgment of reason (for since he now makes one nature having both those powers, he could, it seems, make another that had only either one), so, if he made such a creature, it would be as free as man or angel, and yet it could not merit or sin at all, because it would lack the judgment of reason, to which it would freely conform itself or even fail to conform.

There is also an unassailable reason that can be assigned why the necessity in the will with respect to the divine will is compatible with merit, and no other at all. For this necessity is compatible with merit for the reason which the proof of the first corollary of this book assigns; and to state the reason briefly, I say that the nature of the created will is such that in its free acts it is not subject of necessity to any secondary cause, as the third of the second shows, but only to God, as the thirtieth of the second and the second of the third taught. This was also well shown in man's first institution, when he was set up to be subject to God alone and to have charge over all else, as the history of Genesis 1 teaches. So it will be likewise in merit. No rational mind ought to doubt that the omnipotent Creator, over the rational creature as over the whole creation, is reasonably to be preferred, by some special prerogative, to all other created or creatable agents, active or otherwise.

Nor is any other necessity compatible with merit. For about violent and wholly unwilling necessity no one doubts or is ignorant; and every natural necessity belongs to a material and irrational form, as can be gathered from the third of the second. Hence, according to what was shown in this chapter, it cannot have merit. So Augustine, in the Questions on the Old and New Testament, question 2 [n6], says: If the devil were evil by nature, he would not have will; for he would not be able to discern, but would plunge into everything, in one and the same place, like a blind man. But as it is, he acts by a kind of judgment; hence it is clear that his will is in guilt. And later: If it is thought that he does these things naturally, he cannot be made guilty; for how is he made guilty who does not know what he does? So too the devil: if he does not know the good, why is he judged damnable, when he does not do what he does not know? But we are justly made guilty, because we do something other than what we know we ought to do. Every form, moreover, if there be any subject to the fatal necessity of the stars, is necessarily material and consequently irrational; so, by what has been said, it is not capable of merit. For no immaterial and rational form is subject to the necessity of any material and irrational form, by the third of the second; for it would not befit the natural order of things that the more perfect should be necessarily subjected to the less perfect, the rational to the irrational, and the wise to what knows nothing at all.

[688A]
Nor is a thoroughly absolute necessity compatible with merit. For if there were such a necessity in man's acts, there would be no possibility of acting otherwise, either in him or in God. Hence God would act human acts necessarily, and by the same reasoning whatever he does outside himself. So he would not be a rational and free agent, as is clear from what was shown in 4 of this book and 5, but an irrational agent acting from necessity of nature. And since by the thirtieth of the second he is the first mover of all, every inferior mover would likewise act and move only so. For it would not be fitting, nor would it be possible, that a second mover should be more rational or freer than the first, as has just now been shown, and as is argued also by 6 of the first and 9 [n7]. So no inferior mover could merit either, as was shown above.

[688A]
COROLLARY.

A corollary on what kind of freedom there is in irrational creatures, and how it differs from the freedom of rational creatures and agrees with it.

[688B–688C]
From these things it is clearly known what kind of freedom there is, or is not, in irrational creatures, and how rational freedom differs from the freedom of irrational ones and how it agrees with it. For in them there is, with respect to their natural actions, freedom from violence and unwilling compulsion. For when they desire, they act, and when they do not desire, they do not; this is verified primarily and above all of their appetite, as in men it is of their will, as the ninth of this book showed more fully. Hence the Philosopher too, in Ethics 3, 5, attributes will to both children and animals, saying, Children and animals share in the voluntary [n8]. Anselm, too, in On Free Choice 5, intimates that the horse has will, as the present chapter recounted above; and further on, at 13, he says: A dog naturally keeps uprightness of will when it loves its puppies, or its master who does it good. There is moreover in beasts perhaps a freedom from the necessity of the fate of the stars. For it seems that if beasts had been created perfect on the first day of the world, before the creation of the stars, they could then have exercised their own natural actions. But because the verification of this seems not to bear much on the knowledge of piety, I leave it to the natural philosophers and astrologers, whom curious study drives harder. There is not in them, however, freedom simply, because it is not with respect to higher causes, namely the first cause, that is, the divine will, any more than in rational creatures, as the fifth and ninth of this book show; nor is there in them freedom from the necessity of nature, as the present chapter showed above. So neither can freedom of contradiction simply be in them, nor with respect to all inferior causes, that is, all secondary causes, as the corollary of the fourth of this book shows. The difference and the agreement of these freedoms with one another I consider clear from what has gone before.

NOTES

1. Libertas contradictionis is the freedom, with all prior conditions posited, to will or not to will (the two contradictory alternatives), as against freedom from some particular kind of necessity. Bradwardine will go on to deny it to beasts "simply."
2. Two scriptural echoes mark the irony. "The opinion of the fool" recalls Ps 13 [14]:1 ("The fool has said in his heart, There is no God"), and "who say they are wise" recalls Rom 1:22 ("saying they were wise, they became fools"). The Pelagians are thus put in the fool's company.
3. Aristotle, Metaphysics 9 (Θ) 5, 1048a5–8. Savile's "10" is not a chapter number of the modern text. I take it to belong to the medieval translation's division or commentary numbering. It is kept as given (Conventions §5.4).
4. John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa II, in the chapter on what is in our power, in Burgundio's Latin. The sentence is cited again as an authority at 688B only by implication.
5. The cum clause ("Cum autem obijciens vlterius arguebat") has no main verb of its own. I take it as introducing the objection that the following clause then denies, and translate "as to the further argument of the objector."
6. Quaestiones veteris et novi testamenti, q. 2, a work transmitted under Augustine's name and now commonly ascribed to Ambrosiaster. Bradwardine cites it as Augustine, and so do I in the text and the margin.
7. Savile prints argutum ("argued," a participle without construction), apparently for arguitur or similar. The sense is that the same conclusion is also argued from chapters 6 and 9 of the first book. I translate that sense. The error is in the print and is not an emendation of mine.
8. Ethics 3, 5 in Savile's numbering is Nicomachean Ethics III.2, 1111b8–9, where children and animals are said to share in the voluntary, though not in choice. Bradwardine reads voluntarium as proof that they have voluntas.