De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 34
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, 761B–764E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/34/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[761B–761E]
CHAPTER 34. He argues specifically against the first.

Now specifically against the first [n1]. Moreover, if it were the case, as it says, that the essence of God showed falsely and presented erroneously [n2], then the spotless mirror of the divine majesty [n3] would become shamefully spotted. The highest truth too would be false, the highest light darkened, the highest justice deceptive, and the highest faithfulness a liar. Then, too, Christ and the Blessed could very easily be deceived all day long, and so be made wretched all day long. Indeed they could even never have been blessed at all, for all deception, like all evil, is repugnant to beatitude and felicity. For felicity, according to the Philosopher, Ethics 1, 9 [n4], is a good sufficient in itself and perfect. Hence Boethius too, Consolation 3, prose 2: "It is clear," he says, "that beatitude is a state made perfect by the gathering together of all goods." And blessed Augustine, on that verse of Psalm 2, Blessed are all who trust in him, says: "Blessed" — he said it where the sum and full heap of all goods is. The same Augustine, On the Trinity 13, 5: "Those are wretched at once who either do not have what they want, or have what they do not rightly want. So no one is blessed unless he both has everything he wants and wants nothing wrongly." And below, 7: "No one will want to live badly in that felicity, nor will anyone want something that will be lacking, nor will what he wanted be lacking. Whatever will be loved will be present, and what is not present will not be desired. All that will be there will be good."

But who is there that does not, by nature and of himself, hate and flee falsity, and love and seek truth? Hence the Philosopher, Ethics 4, 14: "In itself a lie is base and to be shunned, while the truth is good and praiseworthy." And in the Secret of Secrets, part one, 4 [n5]: "Truth is the root of all praiseworthy things and the matter of all goods, because it is the contrary of lying." Tully also, in the second book of his Old Rhetoric [n6], says that truth is among those things which are to be sought for their own sake, both as a whole and in part, and its contrary among those to be avoided in the same way. Hence blessed Augustine, City of God 11, 11, showing that the evil angels were not blessed before their fall, says: "Their life was not blessed, because it was going at some time to end. Whether they knew this, or, not knowing it, thought otherwise, fear in the first case and error in the second certainly did not allow them to be blessed." And below, 11, after a long investigation of this matter, he concludes thus: "Therefore it now occurs to anyone, without difficulty, that beatitude, which an intellectual nature desires with right purpose, is brought about when both are joined. That is, it must enjoy the unchangeable Good, which is God, without any trouble, and it must not hesitate through any doubt that it will remain in him forever, nor be deceived by any error." The same, Enchiridion 9: "We must press on toward that felicity where we are shaken by no hardship and deceived by no error. Error must be guarded against with all the care we can, not only in greater but also in lesser matters."

[761E–762E]
And below, 10: "If, truth being considered more carefully, to err is nothing other than to think true what is false and false what is true, or to hold as certain what is uncertain or as uncertain what is certain, whether it be false or true; and if this is as deformed and unseemly in the mind as we feel it beautiful and fitting, in speaking or in assenting, to say 'is, is; not, not'; then surely for this very reason is this wretched life we live, that error is sometimes necessary to it so that it not be lost. Far be it that such should be that life where our soul's life is Truth itself, where no one deceives and no one is deceived. But here men deceive and are deceived, and they are more wretched when they deceive by lying than when they are deceived by believing liars. Yet the rational nature so far shuns falsity, and avoids error as far as it can, that even all who love to deceive do not wish to be deceived."

Moreover, error and deception about future things, especially those that pertain to the one deceived, seem more repugnant to beatitude than simple ignorance of future things. But the latter is repugnant too. Hence Augustine too, on Genesis 11, 23, 25 and 27, shows that the apostate angels were not blessed before their fall, because they neither foreknew nor were certain of their own future outcome. In chapter 26 he proves the same of the first man in a similar way. Lombard [n7] also, in the second book of the Sentences, distinction 4, speaking of the angels, says: "Those who fell were never blessed, because they were ignorant of their own outcome." This causal statement he confirms through blessed Augustine on Genesis, where [cited] before. And if anyone should say that Augustine speaks there of foreknowledge of future things that pertain, and not of those that do not pertain, to the angel or man who foreknows, let the argument be made about those alone. For it pertained to Christ and the blessed Virgin, beatified in heaven, that their kin according to flesh and grace [n8], then pilgrims away from the Lord (whom they loved so much and desired to be saved, and for this prayed earnestly, and for whom Christ especially shed his blessed blood), should be saved, since their salvation had been granted to them and divinely revealed so that they would be saved. What lying spirit, then, will presume that Christ and the Virgin, already blessed, are deceived in these matters, or even in any matters that pertain? And to which of the Blessed does it not pertain whether he is disfigured by the errors of shadowy falsity or adorned with the splendors of luminous truth? What indeed pertains more to a blessed one than his own perpetual beatitude? And about this it is possible for him to be deceived. For notwithstanding that God has shown him in the Word his beatitude as destined to last perpetually, and that he himself has seen this, God can refrain from beatifying him for the future: namely by withdrawing beatitude, or annihilating him, or sending him back to the state of the way, in which he would sin finally and be damned.

Again, everything that harms beatitude is repugnant to it; but all ignorance harms, as Anselm says, Why God Became Man 2, 13: "Ignorance, even if it sometimes does no harm in another respect, harms in this alone, that it takes away the good of knowledge." Again, every punishment is a kind of misery, and every error, at least involuntary error and in matters pertaining to the one who errs, is a punishment, as Augustine says, On Free Choice 3, 29: "To approve false things as true, so as to err unwillingly, is not the nature of man as instituted, but the punishment of the condemned." Therefore Christ, Mary, and the blessed, during all the time they were blessed, could have been deceived, punished, and wretched, and so not blessed. Indeed this too seems to make God unjust, since he would be punishing a holy angel without fault. Hence Augustine too, On Genesis according to the Letter 11, 30, says: "It occurs to anyone, and it is true and manifest, that it is contrary to justice itself that God, with no preceding merit, should condemn in anyone the very thing which he himself created in him." And above, 24: "Is God an avenger before the Devil is a sinner? Far be it." And On Free Choice 3, 29: "Every punishment, if it is just, is the punishment of sin." And Against Julian 2, 20: "If God, though just, inflicted such great evils on infants who draw no sin, he would appear rather unjust." The same Augustine teaches the same most constantly below, at 3, 4 and in many following chapters, in the last of the fourth, the first of the fifth, and afterwards in various chapters, and in the first of the sixth, and thereafter in not a few chapters.

Anselm, Why God Became Man 2, 2: "That man was made such, namely the first man, that he would not die of necessity, is easily proved from this. As we have already said, it is repugnant to the wisdom and justice of God to force to suffer death without fault one whom he made just for eternal beatitude. It follows, therefore, that if he had never sinned, he would never have died." He proves the same most sweetly in the Monologion 69. All the Catholic Doctors who treat this matter also hold it in agreement.

Again, if that response were true, it would not be possible for God to beatify anyone perfectly. For perfect beatitude requires certainty that it will remain eternally. Beatitude, as was shown before, is a good lacking in nothing but perfect, and, as Boethius says, once it is attained there is nothing further a person can desire. And Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil 6, says that the angels who stood have so advanced that they have attained whatever they were able to will, nor do they now see what more they could will. Hence the Prophet also says, I shall be satisfied when your glory appears, Psalm 16; and Apocalypse 7, They will hunger no more, nor thirst any more. But who would doubt that certainty about the good forever is a great good, which all desire and without which they cannot be satisfied, even if they abound in all other goods to any degree? For the more and greater goods they have had, the more ardently will they long for certainty that these will always be theirs. Otherwise they could reasonably, and ought to, have some fear of perhaps losing those goods, and fear cannot be joined with perfect beatitude.

[762E–763E]
Hence Augustine, On Genesis 11, 23, and then in what follows, shows that the Devil and the first man were not fully blessed before their fall, because they did not have certainty about it . In that chapter 23 he says: "Nor are the holy angels uncertain about their eternal life and beatitude. For how are they blessed, if they are uncertain?" And below, 24: "If God did not reveal to the Devil, while he was still a good angel, what he would do or suffer, he was not yet fully blessed, since the fully blessed are so certain of their beatitude that no fear disturbs it." And 25: "I do not see how they could be blessed, to whom their very beatitude is uncertain." He also holds a similar course in City of God 11, 11: "And so the blessed life is beyond doubt nothing but eternal, and certain and secure of its eternity." His authorities, cited above from the same 11th and 12th, also attest this. The same, On the Trinity 13, speaking of final beatitude, says: "Whatever will be loved will be present, and what is not present will not be desired. All that will be there will be good, and God himself will be the highest good, and will be at hand there for those who love him; and what is wholly most blessed, it will always be certain that it will be so."

Certainty of this is therefore required for perfect beatitude. But God cannot give it, because he cannot do so through any revelation, since not through that revelation in the Word, which is the most luminous and highest of all. For that revelation, as the response says, can be deception and error. Hence through it no one can be perfectly certified about the beatitude or about what is revealed of it. Nor through another, because that other would be either certain or uncertain. If uncertain, it would not certify. If certain, it would be so either through itself or through another. If through itself, then by the same reasoning one should have stopped at the first, and then the difficulty similarly returns. If through another, then either there will be an infinite regress, or some revelation will be certain through itself, and so by like reasoning the first too. And even supposing one is certain, however far along the series it stands, the argument returns. Indeed, what seems more absurd, God can certify no one about his past or present beatitude, as the foregoing makes clear, because any such revelation can be deluding and false. Every blessed person also believes and hopes for future things, and has continually done so before. Every such belief and hope can now be, and can always have been before, erroneous and false. No such person, therefore, now is or ever was certainly blessed; hence neither can this be revealed with certitude.

But if someone should answer that the good are certain of their beatitude, which will last eternally, with a certitude of most firm belief that excludes all actual hesitation and fear of its opposite, he must by the same reasoning concede that God, of his omnipotence, cannot perfectly certify anyone about future things, nor otherwise than has been said. This does not seem to be so, for about present and past things God certainly can, hence also about future things, since present and past things cause nothing at all there, as can be had from the thirtieth and thirty-first of this [book]; and past things least of all, since they are nothing and so cause nothing. If also present or past things were the cause of this certitude, they would also be the cause of the beatitude of the blessed, hence they would also beatify the blessed. The Devil, then, and his sin and punishment, and his eternal misery, would beatify Christ and the other blessed. That is absurd enough in itself, and also false. For since they are of finite power in acting, they would have a greatest and most remote limit of action beyond which they cannot go, as seems almost self-evident, which the Philosopher also shows, On the Heavens 1, 116 [n9], and Averroes in the commentary. But God can beatify and certify the blessed about such present and past things beyond every assignable limit. Indeed it does not seem that the action of such lowest things ascends to the highest heaven. Or if those present or past things contributed anything to the certitude of the blessed, God can supply their causation and cause the whole by himself; otherwise he would not be omnipotent. Hence Stephen, bishop of Paris, also condemned an article asserting that God cannot bring about the effect of a secondary cause without that cause [n10]. For this reason Peter [n11], Sentences 3, distinction twenty-six, says that Christ, in whom were the goods of the homeland, believed and hoped in the resurrection that would be on the third day, but did not know it more perfectly as past than he understood it as future.

Again, in that case the good angels could have been certain of their future beatitude with such a certitude before their confirmation, and the saints now on the way could be too. Indeed it seems that some wayfarers have had some such certitude about various things. Hence in Romans, chapter eight: "I am certain," says the Apostle, "that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor strength, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God." And in Acts 16: "A vision was shown to Paul in the night: a certain Macedonian man was standing and begging him, saying, 'Cross over to Macedonia and help us.' And when he had seen the vision, we immediately sought to set out for Macedonia, made certain that God had called us to preach the gospel to them." Hence also Wisdom 7 says that the spirit of wisdom is unique, manifold, subtle, moderate, discerning, nimble, undefiled, sure. And what Catholic is not so certain about the articles of faith concerning the future, namely that there will be a final judgment and a general resurrection of the dead, and that God will repay each one according to his works?

[763E–764E]
The saints on the way, then, now have a similar certitude to that which the perfectly blessed have and will have. Again, this certitude is only a certitude of hope, for this is what is found in wayfarers, as was just shown. Hence Lombard too, Sentences 3, distinction 26, says: "Hope is a certain expectation of future beatitude." Therefore in Christ and in the other blessed there is only a hope-certitude. This is false, because that is imperfect, whereas beatitude is perfect, as was shown above. Hence the Apostle, 1 Corinthians 13: "We know in part and we prophesy in part; but when what is perfect has come, what is in part will be done away. We see now through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known. But now faith, hope, and charity remain." Hence Peter too, Sentences 3, distinction 26, when the question is posed whether faith and hope were in Christ, answers thus: "To some it seems, not unlearnedly, that faith, as a virtue [n12], and hope were not in him, just as they are not in the saints already beatified or in the angels. And although the saints believe and hope in the future resurrection, and the angels believe the same, yet in them faith or hope is not a virtue, because they enjoy God by contemplating him by sight [n13], and in the Word of God they behold the future resurrection or judgment, not through a mirror in a riddle but most brilliantly. For if it is true that they have faith because they believe in the future resurrection, then once it has been accomplished, after the judgment, they will likewise be said to have faith, because they will believe it as past. But just as they will then believe and yet will not have the faith that makes people faithful, because they will not believe without knowledge, which will not be riddling but by sight, so too they now believe and hope in the resurrection and yet do not have faith, because in believing they know. For what is perfect has come to them, and what is in part has been done away. For knowledge has come and faith has been done away; sight has come and hope has ceased. So also Christ, in whom were the goods of the homeland, did indeed believe and hope in the resurrection that would be on the third day, for which he also prayed to the Father, and yet he had neither faith, nor virtue, nor hope [as such], because he had not a riddling or mirrored knowledge of it but a most clear one, since he did not know it more perfectly as past than he understood it as future. Yet Christ hoped, as he says in the Psalm, In you, Lord, I have hoped; but he did not have faith or hope as a virtue, because by sight he saw those things which he believed." Hugh too, On the Sacraments 2, part 13, holds the same, and all Catholic writers hold it in agreement.

Again, if God can certify no one perfectly, he can beatify no one perfectly, because certitude is the most blessed part of the whole of beatitude, as was cited from Augustine above. Whose mind, having only the aforesaid certitude, would not seek a firmer? Hence it would not be fully quieted or satisfied, nor beatified by it, nor by the whole beatitude that it would have. Therefore it would not be perfectly blessed, and yet that is the beatitude awaited in the homeland by all the faithful. For if any beatitude or felicity is perfect, as was taught above, which is it, if not that one? Hence the Apostle says, 1 Corinthians 13, when what is perfect has come, what is in part will be done away. This response, then, eclipses the light of the blessed, bewitches their sight, strips them of certitude, which is the most blessed portion of the whole of beatitude, and drags them down wretchedly to misery. And what seems more marvelous and more wretched than all, it makes Christ, Mary, and the other saints, who have been blessed from of old, never to have been blessed, but always wretched before, and it transfers the place of beatitude, the highest heaven, into hell, a place of misery.

Moreover, and this seems the most heretical of all, this response must consequently assert that God himself can be deceived and err. For if a man or an angel can be deceived and err in the essence of God, so can God, since he understands nothing except what, and as, is shown and shines forth in it. This response also makes God similarly uncertain about future things. For if through his knowledge of future things he could be deceived about them, he cannot be certain of them through it; nor could the Father, of his omnipotence, certify the Son about any future thing. For he himself is not certain; how then will he be able to certify another? Indeed, even if he were certain, as no one doubts that he is, he still could not certify the Son. For he could not certify him except through revelation in the Word, in the clear essence of God; but that does not certify, since error stands together with it. Hence neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit can know any future thing with certainty. For they can know nothing, in no way, except what, and as, they receive from the Father to be known. For as they have their whole being from the Father, so also their whole knowing, and all else, as was shown more fully in the thirty-second of the second.

NOTES

1. "The first" is the first of the six answers listed at the head of Savile's p. 761 (761A). I take that to be the answer that the revelation in the Word was possibly not a true revelation but a false appearance. The passage is not in the units given here, so the identification is inferred from the argument that follows.
2. Porro si esset, ut dicit, essentia Dei false ostenderet et erronee praesentaret: the construction is elliptical. I take si esset ("if it were so") as governing the clauses ostenderet … praesentaret, with essentia Dei as their subject and ut dicit referring to the response under attack.
3. An allusion to Wisdom 7:26, speculum sine macula Dei maiestatis. It is not flagged in Savile. It matters because the vision of God's essence is here imagined as seeing in a mirror. Compare the speculum in aenigmate of 1 Cor 13, quoted at 764A.
4. Savile's "Eth. 1, 9" and "Eth. 4, 14" follow the medieval Latin division of the Ethics. The passages are Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.7 (1097a–b, the final good is perfect and self-sufficient) and IV.7 (1127a–b, the lie is base, the truth praiseworthy). The numbers are kept as printed (Conventions §5.4).
5. The pseudo-Aristotelian Secret of Secrets (Secretum secretorum). "Part one, 4" is Savile's reference, kept as printed.
6. The "old Rhetoric" is Cicero's De inventione, as against the "new", the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium. The phrase totaliter et cum ex parte is obscure. I read ex parte as "in part", so that truth is sought for its own sake both as a whole and in its parts.
7. Lombard = Peter Lombard, Sentences II, d. 4. Savile spells Lumbardus throughout.
8. The clause quod propinqui sui … peregrinantes a Domino has no finite verb of its own after pertinuit. I supply "should be saved" from the end of the sentence (ut salvarentur). I take eis in quorum salus erat eis concessa as referring to Christ and the Virgin, whose prayers obtained the grant. The alternative, that eis means the kin themselves, does not change the argument.
9. Aristotle, De caelo I (on the limit of a power), cited with Averroes's commentary. Savile's "116" is kept as printed. It is probably the number of Averroes's comment, but it could also be read as chapter 11, section 6.
10. Stephen Tempier, bishop of Paris, whose condemnation of 1277 included an article of this kind. Savile's Latin (non potest in effectum causae secundariae sine ipsa) is elliptical, and I supply "bring about".
11. Peter = Peter Lombard, Sentences III, d. 26, the same distinction that is cited as Lumbardus at 764A. The margin at 764A confirms this.
12. fidem, virtutem, et spem (and again fidem, virtutem, vel spem, 764B). Savile's punctuation lists "virtue" as a separate item, but the sense is "faith as a virtue, and hope". Compare the closing phrase fidem vel spem virtutem, where the virtue is plainly the theological virtue of faith or hope.
13. per speciem is the antithesis of per fidem in 2 Cor 5:7 (per fidem ambulamus, et non per speciem). Species here is the visible form, hence "by sight". The Lombard passage also contrasts it with the speculum in aenigmate of 1 Cor 13.