Book III, Chapter 35

CHAPTER XXXV. He argues against the second.

Nor can the second response stand, which says that the cause of such a past effect could have been not a revelation in the Word 1 but an appearance, an estimation, or an opinion created in its own genus. For that appearance is or was false if what was revealed will not come to be. It would follow that it is possible for Christ, Mary, and the blessed saints to be deceived and wretched, and not certain of their own blessedness, together with other absurdities brought against the earlier response.

Again, Paul, in his own genus *B1 and in act, believed that A would be, as revealed 2, and that was not going to be. Let this be posited, because it is possible and compossible with this. Then the Word did not show him that A would be, but that A would not be. Therefore he believed at once, in particular and in actuality, contradictories, each under its own proper form: one in his own genus, the other in the Word. This is manifestly impossible, and against the Philosopher, Prior Analytics 2.

Again, that belief in his own genus was one effect; therefore it had a cause, and none other than that revelation and vision in the Word. For if that is taken away, there would have been no cause of believing thus in Paul rather than in Peter. And it is necessary that this effect have been, because its own effect, namely the external work previously done, necessarily was. Therefore it is necessary that its cause have been, namely that vision in the Word. Or conversely, if it is possible that that cause not have been, then it is possible also that the effect not have been, as the thirty-third of this book argued more fully.

Nor can anyone say that Paul merely opined that A would be gratuitously and freely, without cause. For then there is no reason why Paul would opine thus rather than Peter, nor why Paul would opine that A will be rather than that A will not be, since no evidence and no cause at all is stronger for this than against it. Indeed, in the case where A will not be, the opinion is perhaps more apparent, more opinable, and more favorable than in the case where it will be. Nor can Paul opine anything gratuitously and freely, as no one fails to know, because no one can opine anything unless it appears true to him, and this is not in anyone's free power. Hence the Philosopher too, On the Soul 2, 151, shows that imagination is not opinion 3. Imagination is in us when we wish, that is, it is voluntary, according to Averroes; opinion is not, because what is opined must be true or false, and must appear true or false. "To opine," says the Philosopher, "is not in our power: for one necessarily says what is true or false." The text which Averroes expounds reads thus: "But to judge is not in our power; for one must either be in error or be right."

Let it also be posited that Paul is a serious and steady man, and wills or believes nothing from mere voluntary levity, but from a preceding reasonable cause; and the argument returns. Or suppose that he received this from God as a command, and that he wills and believes in his own genus, and works externally only in conformity with the divine revelation and command; and the difficulty returns.

Let it also be posited that, acting only thus, he died long ago and is in heaven. According to that response it is now possible that he acted otherwise, indeed contrary to the aforesaid revelation and command, and was always after death in hell, as the thirty-third of this book argued more fully. This argument also goes directly against that response, if the case of the thirty-third of this book, set out above, is kept. For it follows that Paul, after he received the revelation and command, obeyed well by meriting, and is crowned in beatitude, having lived and died in charity, yet afterward omitted it and did the contrary, and was always afterward without charity, in mortal sin, wretched and damned, as the deduction set out above from the thirty-third of this book proves.

And if someone says that it does not follow that it is now possible that Paul was without charity and not saved, because God by his absolute power can preserve charity in one who sins mortally and save him in that state, it still necessarily follows that it is now possible that Paul, who by act A merited eternal life, sinned mortally by the same act and merited eternal death, by doing that act against the revelation and command of God in the Word. It follows also that Paul, who for all the time after A was good and dear to God, was for all that time mortally evil and hateful to God; and that Paul, who for all the time after his death was blessed, was for all that time wretched. For there is no greater misery than sin; hence Proverbs 14: "Sin makes peoples wretched."

It follows also, by the reasoning set out above, that it will be in the power of Antichrist, and of any wayfarer 4, to overturn the laws of God and to change the faith of the Church. For when, concerning Antichrist or any other wayfarer, a revelation and a command in the Word have been made to Paul, as the thirty-third of this book touches on, and he himself is good

and obeys well in charity, and so has died and been beatified in heaven, it is possible for Antichrist or another wayfarer so to act that Paul, though he had charity, was not good or dear by it, nor merited, but sinned; and that the blessed one in heaven was wretched in heaven. There are other abuses like these, which twist, indeed pervert, the law of God and the general faith of the Church, as is plain to every Catholic who knows the law and the faith. Yet no one will presume to concede this except a disciple of Antichrist, who "shall speak words against the Most High, and shall crush the saints of the Highest," A1 and "shall think that he can change 5 times and laws" against God, Dan. 7.

But this principal falsification 6 does not escape the argument. For it is possible that God reveal to Paul in the Word that A will be, without Paul's having such a willing, or a created belief in his own genus, as no one fails to know; and if that is posited, the argument is set up again. For any two things wholly and really distinct, so that neither has any part of the other, nor is any cause of it, can be separated from each other. For every thing sufficiently is, once all and only its causes and essential constituents are had. If it were not, that would be on account of the lack of something necessarily required for its being. But God cannot be separated from existing things, because he is their necessary form, and in a certain way the being of all things, and their necessary conserver in being, as the second of the first shows 7. All created things, however, wholly distinct, that is, really distinct according to all their parts, even if one is the cause of the other, can be separated from each other, for the reason set out above, and because God from the fullness of power can supply the causality of a secondary cause.

This is confirmed by a most reliable argument. In the sacrament of the altar, accidents exist without a subject. Much more, then, can any accident exist without any other ‖B1 existing one, and any substance without any accident, and any substance also without any other created substance whatever, wholly distinct from it.

The Philosophers seem to bear witness to this, though obscurely. For Aristotle, Metaphysics 7, 55 8, reproving those who wish to define singulars, for example the Sun, says: "They err by the addition of such things as, once removed, there will still be a Sun: for example, one going round the earth, or hidden at night. For if it should stand still, or appear, would it not still be the Sun? But it is absurd to say not: for 'Sun' signifies a certain substance."

Plato likewise in the Timaeus posits two powers of fire, namely heat and light, and says that the divine powers are joined to the kindred and familiar body of the eyes, a fire that is translucent, clear, and purified, without destructive and devouring heat. According to him, then, fire can be without heat, and by the same reasoning every substance can be without its proper accident, and much more without an accident that is not proper, and any substance also without any other substance, in the way stated.

Augustine agrees with these, City of God 11, 10 9: "For this reason," he says, "the divine nature is called simple, for which there is no having of something that it could lose, nor is the haver one thing and what it has another, as a vessel has ‖C1 a liquid, or a body a color, or air light or heat, or a soul wisdom. For none of these is what it has: a vessel is not the liquid, nor is a body the color, nor is air light or heat, nor is a soul wisdom. Hence it is that they can even be deprived of the things they have, and be turned and changed into other states or qualities, so that the vessel is emptied of the moisture with which it is full, and the body is discolored, and the air grows dark or cold, and the soul grows foolish."

And in On the Trinity 15, 13: "Our knowledge is far unlike this knowledge. But what is the knowledge of God is itself wisdom, and that wisdom is itself essence or substance. For in the wondrous simplicity of that nature, to be wise is not one thing and to be another, but to be wise is to be. Our knowledge, however, in very many things besides, is both admixable and receivable 10, because for us to be is not the same as to know or to be wise, since we can be even though we neither know nor are wise."

The same writer, in his homily on John, 45 of the second part, or 99 of the whole, says: "Our mind is changeable, which perceives by learning what it did not know, and loses by unlearning what it knew. And therefore that substance is not most truly simple, for which to be is not the same as to know: for it can be and yet not know. But that divine substance cannot, because what it has, it is; and therefore it does not so have knowledge that knowledge, by which it knows, is one thing for it, and essence, by which it is, another, but each is one."

Hence the 368th proposition of the Sentences of Prosper E1 was taken over from this 11. The blessed Gregory, Morals 18, on that text of Job 28, "But where is wisdom found?" etc., holds the same.

Again, the Word was made flesh, naturally before any revelation in its own genus made to him for the redeeming of us captives and wretched, on account of the one eternal revelation eternally shown to him by the Father in the essence of God alone, according to what was shown in the preceding chapter. Therefore in the intervening time in which we are, between the incarnation and the redemption, it is possible that he was not incarnated, because he did not have that revelation, because the human race was not shown to be redeemable through him, because it is now possible that it not be redeemed through him, as the principal hypothesis says.

And if someone says that it does not follow that the Word can now not have been incarnated, but only not have been incarnated for that cause, namely for the redeeming of man, but for another, then also after the redemption of man was completed through him, and after the final judgment, it will similarly be possible. Or if it will not then be possible, neither was it before. For the divine will is always equally free or necessary with respect to it, as is clear from the thirtieth of this book.

Then also, by a similar reason, God could now have never willed that the Sacraments of the Church be instituted for that end for which they were instituted, nor that they have the effect which they have always had. Hence it is now also possible that those Sacraments were always delusory, false, empty, and fictions, and that the men justified and ‖A1 saved by them were always sinners and damned. Again, by the same reason it is now possible that God conferred all sacramental power on other operations, things, or signs which the wicked have used. Hence it is consequently possible also that the wicked, always until now, and the damned in hell, always until now, are now good and rewarded in the heavenly places.

It follows also, as is clear from the deduction set out above, that it is in the power of Antichrist and of any wayfarer to make the Word have been incarnated and to have suffered for a different final cause than the one he had: namely for the redeeming of one whom he did not intend to redeem, and not for the redeeming of one whom he intended to redeem. This does not seem to agree with sound faith. It follows also that it was and is in the power of men to empty out the whole effect and power of the Lord's passion, as the eighth of this book argued more fully.