De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 50
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, 808B–825E; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/50/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[808B–808C]
CHAPTER 50.

He answers, according to the opinion of the Philosophers and Theologians, that God wills and knows necessarily whatever he wills and knows, by a following necessity [n1] — a necessity of immutability, immovability and stability, and an ordered one — not by a preceding and simply absolute necessity, not a natural, violent or unwilling necessity, not a contrary one, but one agreeable to the highest and greatest freedom.

[808C–808E]
Good Master, only Master, Master and Lord: from my youth, that youth in which, with your inspiration, I set about this work, you have taught me until now all the true things that I have learned and that I, your pen, have written [n2]. Even now, most merciful, send out your light, so that you who led me into this deepest abyss may yourself lead me forth to the mountain of this inaccessible truth. You who led me into this vast sea, lead me to harbour; and you who led me into this longest desert, wild and pathless, be guide, way and end alike, and lead me to the end.

O Lord of the sciences [n3], who hold the key of the well of the abyss, who hold the key of knowledge, who hold the key of David, who open and no one shuts, shut and no one opens, who alone are worthy to take the book and to loose its seals: show, I beg, most learned of Doctors, the solution of a saying so intricately bound, to your little boy, who does not know the way out. But now I give you thanks, most serene Lord, who gave to him who asked, showed to him who sought, and opened to him who knocked the door of piety, the door of clarity, the door of truth. For now, with you making your face shine upon your servant, as it were in a certain brightness of eternal light and in the spotless mirror of divine majesty, I seem to myself to see that most right solution of this saying, which you once deigned to show to your dearest sons and disciples, our own most worthy Fathers and Masters. For in them your Spirit was fuller: prudence and understanding, the interpretation of dreams, the showing of secrets, and the loosing of what is bound.

These men posited a twofold necessity, the preceding, namely, and the following. They said that it is necessary that God will and know whatever he wills and knows by the following necessity, but in no way by the preceding, as is more fully recounted in the twenty-eighth of this book.

[808E–809B]
Now, that I may set out as briefly and clearly as God has taught me, it must be known that in the divine will toward things outside [ad extra], that is, with respect to the later things willed, there is no [preceding] necessity. There is instead the highest contingency to either alternative [n4] and the highest freedom of contradiction, than which none greater can be thought, as appears from the fourth of this book, and from the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth parts of the fifth of this. Yet some concomitant, or following, necessity is in it.

For consider the present act of the will of the most changeable man, with respect to any object whatever, present, past or future. It is contingent and free, even if (as some hold) it were as contingent and free as the act of the divine will, and were brought about not by God but by man's most free will alone. When it is, it is necessary that it be, by this following necessity. So too the act of the divine will, which is altogether immutable, as the twenty-third of the first book teaches, is necessary by a following necessity, I say, that belongs to the present, as was more fully shown in the twenty-eighth of this book from the second supposition of Anselm's following necessity.

The same is shown by what was set out in advance in the thirtieth of this third book. The act of the divine will with respect to a thing present and past is necessary, and so also with respect to a future thing. For it does not become newly necessary from the presence or the pastness of the thing, nor from anything extrinsic or intrinsic, as was shown there. It is therefore eternally and always necessary from its own intrinsic firmness. By that firmness, generally, everything that is, when it is, necessarily is. And specifically: just as the present act of an angelic or human will, with respect to an object of any difference of time whatever, necessarily is when it is, so also the present act of the divine will, with respect to any temporal difference whatever, necessarily is while it is.

All this can be reduced more briefly to syllogistic form thus. Every will that is wholly immutable intrinsically, if at one time free or necessary with respect to any object whatever, is always free or necessary with respect to it; the divine will is of this kind. Or thus: Every will that cannot be newly necessitated from outside or from within, if at one time necessary with respect to something willed, is always necessary with respect to it; the divine will is of this kind.

[809B–809D]
Moreover, lest in a matter so shadowy and perilous, so surpassingly high and unsearchable, so closed and sealed, I, so tiny a man, should seem to dream up something [singularly] out of the shadowy fantasy of my own head: behold, the soundest minds, the clearest intellects, the most famous authors and Catholic Doctors bring forth this opinion in concord, some explicitly, some implicitly.

Hermes, the thrice-great Trismegistus and Father of Philosophers, says in On the Eternal Word 9: "What has pleased God, necessity follows; the effect accompanies the will; and the reason of what was said first follows. For it is not credible that what pleased God will come to displease him, since he knew long beforehand that this would be, and would please." Other sayings of his, written in the twenty-seventh of this book, are in harmony with this opinion.

And might not those obscure words of Plato, Timaeus 17 [n5], be explained of this following necessity? He speaks thus: "Now since we have gone through everything, with very few exceptions, that the intellect of mind has thereupon established, we must speak also of those things that necessity brings in. For the generation of the sensible world arose as a mixture from the meeting of necessity and intelligence, with intellect dominating and salutary persuasion continually drawing the rigour of necessity toward the best actions. And so, with necessity conquered and obeying provident authorities, the first beginnings of things and of the world were established."

[809D–810A]
It is true, however, that each of these sayings could be understood of the efficacious necessity in the divine will spoken of in the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of this book. In the same way, many things said there can fittingly be understood of this following necessity. For necessity, according to what was set out in the twenty-seventh of this book, and as Plato's sayings just cited seem to attest, was posited among the Greek philosophers as one famous principle of beings, and in God. Some expounded this in one way, others in another, some in both, and all of them not badly; for it can fittingly be understood and expounded in either way.

The great philosopher of Christ, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, imitated them. In Cur Deus homo 2, 17, and in De concordia 2 and 3, he explicitly and in so many words denies preceding necessity in God, but affirms and demonstrates this following necessity. This was briefly shown in the second member of the distinction on following necessity in the twenty-eighth of this book, set out before.

But that the testimony of so great a man may be published more fully, behold, he says thus: "Finally, the Virgin, who was made pure by faith, so that he could be assumed from her, by no means believed that he would die unless because he willed it, as she had learned through the Prophet who said of him, 'He was offered because he himself willed.' Therefore, since her faith was true, it was necessary that it be so, as she believed. But if it troubles you again that I say 'it was necessary', remember that the truth of the Virgin's faith was not the cause that he die; rather, because this was going to be, her faith was true. Wherefore, if it is said, 'It was necessary that he die by his own will, because the faith or prophecy that had preceded about this was true', that is nothing other than if you were to say that it was necessary that it be going to be so, since it was going to be so. But a necessity of this kind does not compel a thing to be; rather, the being of the thing makes the necessity to be. For there is a preceding necessity, which is the cause that a thing be, and there is a following necessity, which the thing makes. Preceding and efficient necessity is when it is said that the heaven revolves, because it must revolve [n6]; following necessity, which effects nothing but comes to be, is when I say that you speak of necessity, because you are speaking.

[810A–810B]
"For when I say this, I mean that nothing can bring it about that while you are speaking you are not speaking, not that anything compels you to speak. For the violence of its natural condition compels the heaven to revolve, but no necessity makes you speak. Wherever there is preceding necessity, there is also following; but not, where there is following, there at once also preceding. For we can say that it is necessary that the heaven revolve because it revolves; but it is not similarly true that you speak because it is necessary that you speak. This following necessity runs through all times in this way: whatever has been, necessarily has been; whatever is, necessarily is, and necessarily was going to be; and whatever will be, necessarily will be.

"This is that necessity which, where Aristotle treats of singular and future propositions, seems to destroy the open alternative and to establish that all things are of necessity: by this following necessity, which effects nothing. For since the faith and prophecy about Christ were true, that he was going to die by will and not by necessity, it was necessary that it be so. By this he became man; by this he did and suffered whatever he did and suffered; by this he willed whatever he willed. For they were of necessity because they were going to be; they were going to be because they were; and they were because they were. And if you wish to know the true necessity of all that he did and suffered, know that all of it was of necessity because he himself willed it; and no necessity preceded his will. Wherefore, if they were not except because he himself willed, then if he had not willed, it would not have been. So, therefore, no one took his life from him, but he himself laid it down, and took it again, because he had power to lay down his life and to take it again, as he himself says."

[810B–810C]
Behold how, according to what has been set out, he posits a like following necessity in God's intrinsic acts with respect to future things, as also in human acts, intrinsic and extrinsic: in the Virgin's faith and cleansing, for instance, and in the prophecy and speech of a man while he is speaking presentially. Aristotle too posits such a necessity, in Peri hermeneias 1, last chapter, as following inseparably on all things, namely that everything that is, when it is, necessarily is. This was said more fully in the twenty-eighth of this book.

The authorities of the same Anselm in De concordia 2 and 3 show this same necessity, with the same cause and likeness, in human acts most plainly, as was more fully shown in the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of this book.

This Archbishop is humbly followed by his devoted suffragan, a most subtle philosopher and most profound theologian, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln [n7], in De libero arbitrio 3. He explicitly denies preceding necessity in God and grants this following one, as was briefly touched on in the third exposition of Boethius set out in the twenty-eighth of this book. But since so great a testimony is not to be squeezed into a few words, behold his words at greater length.

[810C–810E]
Wishing to save contingency together with necessity, indeed even to show that the contingent follows from necessary things, he speaks thus: "Necessity is twofold, as Anselm distinguishes in the second book of Cur Deus homo, chapter 17. One he calls preceding necessity, which is the cause that a thing be and compels the thing to be. The other he calls following necessity, which is not the cause of the thing and does not compel the thing to be. And this, as he himself says, is that necessity which, where Aristotle treats of singular and future propositions, seems to destroy the open alternative and to establish that all things are of necessity. By this following necessity, which effects nothing, it is necessary that God know my sitting tomorrow, which is future, and the like. For there is no necessity in God, since all things are voluntary in him, nor is necessity in him anything other than the voluntarily persevering inflexibility of his will. That the contingent follow from necessary things by this following necessity involves no inconsistency; indeed it seems the more necessary that it should follow.

"For while I sit, it is necessary that I sit, and after I have sat, it is necessary that I have sat. But the relation that these sayings, 'that I sit' and 'that I have sat', have to my sitting, while I sit and after I have sat, is the same relation that God's knowledge has to my future sitting before I sit. For he knows future things as present, and does not know them otherwise when they are future than when they are present or past. Therefore, in every similar way in which it is necessary that God know things when they are, or when they have been, it is necessary that he know the same things before they are. But when things are, or have been, his knowledge has a following necessity; therefore it has the same necessity also before things come to pass. Suppose, per impossibile, that this statement, 'that I have sat', had before my sitting the same necessity that it has after I have sat. That necessity would not compel my sitting to be, yet from that necessity my contingent sitting would follow. So from the necessity of God's knowledge a contingent future follows. By this same account the objections seem able to be solved which, from the truth of a statement about the future, seem to destroy the open alternative, and free choice.

[810E–811B]
"For if I am going to sit tomorrow, then that I am, or was, going to sit was true without beginning. It cannot not have been true, because the truth that was in this statement without beginning cannot not have been in it. It is necessary, therefore, that it was and is true; and from this necessary thing there follows my sitting, still contingent."

These two necessities, from one of which only the necessary follows, while from the other, as has been said, the contingent seems to follow: Boethius, we may suppose, called these simple necessity and necessity of condition. Some, however, understand "necessity of condition" not as that which was called following necessity above, but as necessity of consequence, of the consequent to the antecedent. When it is said, for example, "If a man runs, he moves his feet", this is the necessity of consequence of the consequent to the antecedent, though both, the consequent as much as the antecedent, be contingent. But from Boethius's own words, looked at more closely, it can be better judged that he called "necessity of condition" what we were calling following necessity above.

For he says that the same future thing, when it is referred to the divine cognition, seems necessary, but when it is weighed in its own nature, seems wholly free and absolute. And a little later: "Yet God beholds as present those future things which proceed from freedom of choice. These, therefore, referred to the divine gaze, become necessary through the condition of the divine cognition; but considered in themselves, absolute, they do not abandon the freedom of their nature." And again: "These, if they are referred to the divine knowledge, are necessary; if they are considered in themselves, they are free of the bonds of necessity."

What else do these words mean, but that things which in their own nature are contingent to either alternative, flexible and mutable, are invariable in God's cognition? This is not on account of the invariability of the things, but on account of the immutability of the knowledge. That God knows this to be is inflexible and immutable by reason of the truth that it has. And so, since from this invariable fact, that God knows, this contingent follows, namely that this contingent be from the necessary, the contingent seems, according to Boethius's opinion, to follow. It follows not from the necessary absolutely, or preceding, which compels the thing to be, but from the necessary of condition, the following one, which permits it to be free.

[811B–811E]
Behold how he attests the sixth truth set down in the fifth of this book. Behold also how he professes what was shown in the thirtieth and thirty-first of this book: that God does not know anything intrinsically otherwise when it is future than when it is present or past, but in every way alike, that is, always necessarily, by this following necessity. Hence, concerning God's willing [n8] whatever is first future, then present, and at last past, he undoubtedly means to say the same by consequence.

The same man again, further on in the same fifth [n9]: "God," he says, "knows all things in one indivisible and simple gaze, eternally, always, alike, immutably. Therefore what he knows he cannot afterwards not know, which can also be proved in very many ways. For it is clear from what has already been said that the relation which these sayings, 'that I sit' and 'that I have sat', have to my sitting, while I sit and after I have sat, is the same relation that God's knowledge has to my sitting tomorrow, which is future, before I sit. For he knows future things as present, and does not know them otherwise when they are future than when they are present or past. Therefore, in every way in which it is necessary that God know things when they are, or when they have been, it is necessary that he know the same things before they are. But when things are, or have been, his knowledge has a following necessity; therefore it has the same necessity before things come to pass.

"Again: suppose, per impossibile, that Socrates's running, which is to be tomorrow, were now presentially in my bodily sight, in every same way in which his running will be present in my sight tomorrow. Just as tomorrow it will be necessary that I see or have seen Socrates running, so now it would be necessary, before Socrates ran. But all future things are far more presentially in God's sight than any present thing can be presentially in mine. Much more strongly, therefore, does God necessarily see and know all future things."

Behold also how, here and above, in accordance with what has been set out, he supposes with Anselm that the act of divine cognition, with respect to any future thing whatever, is just as necessary by this following necessity as the act of human cognition with respect to a present thing, and indeed more necessary. So too is its extrinsic act, such as a present sitting.

[811E–812B]
Note also, I beg, the Doctor's cause, here and above: "For he," he says, "knows future things as present." For what does this cause put forward but the cause of Aristotle and of Anselm, namely that "what is, when it is, necessarily is," by this following necessity, and that therefore God thus necessarily knows future things? Boethius, philosopher both human and divine, in the Consolation of Philosophy 5, last prose, shows the same following necessity, though not so explicitly. The same cause of that necessity he shows as explicitly, with the same likening of the divine act to the human act, to a present walking. The twenty-eighth of this book, and the first authority of Lincoln set out before, make this more fully manifest.

Saint Thomas also plainly follows the worthy footsteps of Boethius, as much in this necessity as in its cause and the likening set out. He does so on Sentences 1, dist. 38, question five [n10], which asks whether God's knowledge is of contingent things. There, in the fourth place, for the negative side, he makes an argument of this kind: "God knows or foreknows that Socrates will run; therefore Socrates will run. And the antecedent is necessary; therefore the consequent." To this he also recites two responses, each of which agrees with the principal hypothesis treated above.

The first says that this is not necessary: "God foreknows or foreknew that Socrates runs", or "This was foreknown by God", although it is true of the past, because it depends on the future. The other posits that God can at present not know what he now knows; and this, he says, seems to be the view of the Master in the text [n11]. He rejects both, and so speaks thus: "To the fourth it must be said that this argument is answered in many ways. For some say that this antecedent, namely 'This was foreknown by God', is not necessary. And if it is objected that it is said of the past, and therefore is necessary, they answer that it has a counter-instance in past things that bear a reference to the future. Hence when it is said 'This was going to be', although it is said of the past, yet because it depends on the future it is not necessary. For what was at one time future can fail to be future, since one who is about to walk will not walk, as is said in On Generation 2.

[812B–812C]
"But that counter-instance is nothing. For although what was future can fail to be future, if the causes that were determined to the effect, at least for the most part, are impeded, yet it cannot not have been future; for it will always be true to say, 'This was at one time future.' Likewise it is not to the point, because when 'foreknown' is said, there is conveyed not only an order to the future but also a certain act, which is signified as past.

"And so others say, as the Master seems to say in the text, that this antecedent is not necessary, because 'foreknown' (although as a word it signifies past time) nevertheless signifies a divine act to which pastness does not attach. And so, as God can not know, he can not foreknow. But that too does not solve it. For although a divine act does not have necessity of compulsion, it has nevertheless necessity of immovability, speaking of intrinsic acts, such as to will, to understand, and the like. Hence it is not contingent for it not to be, if it be posited to be. And because the consequent cannot be posited not to be without the antecedent also being posited not to be, [the consequent also will not be able to be posited not to be]. But this is certain, that the antecedent can be posited to be; for it is determinately true that God now knows something future. And so it follows that the consequent cannot be posited not to be, even taken absolutely, and much less that it can happen not to be."

[812C–812D]
Behold, I beg, how expressly he posits this following necessity in the intrinsic acts of God, calling it the necessity of immovability, by which it is not contingent that the act not be. Behold it still more expressly when he adds his own response: "And therefore," he says, "it must be said otherwise, that the antecedent is necessary absolutely, both from the immovability of the act and also from its order to what is known. For that thing is not posited as subject to the divine knowledge except while it is in act, so far as it has determination and certitude; for it is necessary that it be while it is. And therefore a like necessity must be inferred in the consequent, namely, that the thing itself, which is, Socrates's running, be taken as it is in act, and so it has determination and necessity. Hence it is clear that if 'Socrates runs' is taken as it follows from the antecedent, it has necessity. For it does not follow from the antecedent except as it stands under the divine knowledge, to which it is subject, as it is considered presentially in its actual being. So too the consequent is to be taken in this way, whence it is clear that the consequent is necessary; for it is necessary that Socrates run while he runs."

Behold most clearly the aforesaid necessity with the cause assigned above. He holds this opinion expressly through the many distinctions and questions that follow, on God's knowledge, providence and predestination.

[812D–812E]
The same man, in the first part of the Summa, question fourteen, article 13, asks whether God's knowledge is of future contingents. The second argument holds that it is not, because for every conditional whose antecedent is absolutely necessary, the consequent is absolutely necessary. But of this conditional, "If God knew this to be future, this will be," the antecedent is absolutely necessary, both because it is eternal and because it is signified as past [n12]. He sets down the first of the two earlier responses and rejects it in these words: "To the second it must be said that some say that this antecedent, 'God knew', is not necessary but contingent, because although it is past, yet, because it is contingent, it carries a reference to a contingent future. But this does not take away its necessity, because what had a reference to a future thing necessarily had it, even though the future [animal] [n13] may sometimes not follow."

[812E–813A]
There also, further on, he answers according to his own opinion thus: "Hence it must be said that this antecedent is absolutely necessary." Having touched on the ambiguity, he adds the question whether the consequent too is absolutely necessary: "It must be said that when something pertaining to an act of the soul is posited in the antecedent, the consequent is to be taken not only as it is in itself, but as it is in the soul. For the being of a thing in itself is one thing, and the being of a thing in the soul another. If I say, for instance, 'If the soul understands something, that is immaterial', this is so as it is in the intellect, not as it is in itself. Likewise if I say, 'If God knew something, that will be', the consequent is to be understood as it is in its presentiality, and so it is necessary, as the antecedent also is, because 'what is, when it is, necessarily is,' as is said in the first book of Peri hermeneias."

Nor should it trouble anyone that he says that God's foreknowing this future thing is absolutely necessary. For to our purpose absolute necessity can reasonably be taken as it is opposed to conditional necessity, which had been rejected in the forty-eighth of this book [n14], namely for the aforesaid following necessity, by which, without any condition whatever, "Everything that now is, for now necessarily is."

[813A–813C]
In another way absolute necessity is taken as necessity simply, whose opposite formally includes a contradiction. He speaks of it so further on in the nineteenth part of the same work, question 3, which asks whether God wills of necessity whatever he wills. There, in replying, he confirms following necessity, saying: "It must be said that something is called necessary in two ways, namely absolutely and from supposition. Something is judged necessary absolutely from the relation of its terms, as when the predicate is in the definition of the subject, as it is necessary that man be animal; or when the subject is of the nature of the predicate, as it is necessary that a number be even or odd. But it is not necessary in this way that Socrates sit. Hence it is not necessary absolutely, but can be called necessary from supposition; for, supposing that he sits, it is necessary that he sit while he sits. So too God, by absolute necessity, wills himself and his goodness; but that he will things other than himself is not necessary absolutely, though it is necessary from supposition. For, supposing that he wills, he cannot not will, because his will cannot be changed."

The same in the Quaestiones de veritate, part 13, question 4 [n15], which asks whether God wills of necessity whatever he wills. He replies that the end, namely himself, he wills necessarily, but other things by no means. There, in answering the first argument, he says: "To the first it must be said that something is called necessary in two ways: in one way absolutely, in another from supposition. Something is called necessary absolutely on account of the necessary relation to one another of the terms that are posited in some proposition, as that man is animal, or that every whole is greater than its part, or the like. But what is necessary from supposition is that which is not necessary of itself, but only when something else is posited, as that Socrates has run. For Socrates, so far as he is of himself, is no more disposed to this than to its opposite; but once the supposition is made that he has run, it is impossible that he has not run. So I say, then, that God's willing something in creatures, for instance that Peter be saved, is not necessary absolutely, because the divine will has no necessary order to this, as is clear from what has been said. But once the supposition is made that God wills or has willed it, it is impossible that he has not willed, or does not will it, because his will is immutable. Hence a necessity of this kind is called among theologians the necessity of immutability."

[813C–813D]
There also, further on, replying to the fourth, he says: "It must be said that God's willing something, or having willed it, after he wills or has willed, is necessary from supposition, but not absolutely, just as Socrates's having run, after he has run. The same holds of creation and of any act of the divine will that terminates in something external."

From these it appears sufficiently that, in the manner of speaking of the Parisian Doctors, that is called necessity from supposition which, in the manner of speaking of Boethius and Anselm, is called necessity of condition and following, in the sense stated, as was briefly touched on in the twenty-eighth of this book. But that this may be made plain a little more fully and clearly, it must be known that this manner of speaking is originally Greek: "necessary from supposition or from hypothesis"; "good, better, best, worthy of choice, more worthy of choice, most worthy of choice from supposition or from hypothesis"; and so of the rest. In this manner the Greek philosopher Aristotle speaks in Ethics 4, last [n16], Politics 7, 12, and Politics 4, 3. So too Theophilus [n17], expounding the parable of the dissipating or prodigal son in Luke 15.

[813D–813E]
Nor is it to be thought that the Greek philosophers, who loved wisdom, sought wisdom, and found so great a wisdom, thought or spoke so insipidly. When they said "This is necessary, good, better or best, worthy of choice, more worthy, or most worthy from supposition or from hypothesis", they cannot have meant only this: "This conditional is necessary, good, better or best, worthy of choice, more worthy, or most worthy: If A is, B will be"; or "If someone does shameful things, it is good that he be confounded by shame"; or "If citizens are of such a condition, such a polity will be better and more worthy of choice for them; if of another condition, another." For what is great in that for the discipline of ethics or politics?

Indeed, looking more subtly according to the method of logic, it will be clearly seen that these differ. A conditional posits nothing, and therefore supposes nothing. For what is it to suppose, if not to posit under another? It is evident that a conditional of this kind, "If a man runs, a man is moved", neither posits nor supposes that a man runs; but whether he runs or does not run, the conditional is always good and true. Nor should it trouble anyone that among the childish rudiments the hypothetical conditional, that [n18]

[814A–814C]
…that is, the "suppositional" or "suppositive" proposition, is so named. For it is called so quite childishly and crudely, unless perhaps "hypothesis" has another meaning in Greek. Yet among Greek authors I do not recall that the conditional proposition is called hypothetical, or a hypothesis. Every supposition supposes something, and therefore also posits, and for that reason is also a hypothesis. For what does hypothesis mean in Greek, if not supposition in Latin? Wherefore the Philosopher also, in Politics 7, 12 [n19], showing that the best polity is the one under which a city will be governed best and will most readily attain happiness, and that happiness is the perfect activity and use of virtue, and this not from supposition but simply, defines "from supposition" and speaks thus: "I call 'from supposition' what is necessary, but 'simply' what is good. For example, the sentences, punishments and penalties that concern just actions are indeed from virtue, but they are necessary, and they have what is good in them by necessity. For it is more eligible that neither man nor city should need any such thing, whereas whatever pertains to honors and abundance is simply the best of choices. For the one kind is the choice of a certain evil, while such choices are the reverse; for they are preparations and generations of goods. The virtuous man will use poverty and sickness and other fortunes [n20] well, but what is blessed lies in the opposites. For this has been determined in the moral discourses, that such is the virtuous man, for whom, through virtue, goods are simply goods." In a similar way he speaks in Politics 4, 3 [n21] of the polity that is better not simply but on a hypothesis.

Hence also Theophilus, in the place cited earlier, says: "By the present parable the Lord corrects the intention of the Pharisees, whom he names just on a hypothesis, as if to say: 'Grant that you are truly just and have transgressed none of the commandments; does it follow, then, that on this account one ought not to admit those who return from their disgraces?'" Looking, then, to the words and the mind of the Greeks, and of the Parisian Doctors (who in this matter reckon the Greek glosses the best, and for that reason perhaps imitate them), when they say that it is necessary from supposition that God wills or knows anything outside himself, I do not think they understand merely the necessity of such a conditional, or of such a consequence as "If God wills or knows this to be or to be going to be, this is or will be" (as appears from what has been premised here, and from the twenty-eighth of this [n22]). They mean rather the necessity from a condition, and the aforesaid consequent necessity.

For once any willing or knowing in God is posited as present, and supposed as it were for a foundation or root, there springs up from it at once, in a manner, and rises this consequent necessity. In the same way, to any other aforesaid thing whatever, posited or supposed in being, this consequent necessity is attached, and in a manner supposed, as a consequence, and by it whatever is, while it is, necessarily is. And the earlier words of Thomas accord with this view, who also in Against the Gentiles 1, 83 speaks thus: "From these things it can be gathered that although God wills nothing about caused things necessarily and absolutely, he nevertheless wills something necessarily from a condition or supposition. For it has been shown that the divine will is immutable; but in anything immutable, if something once is, it cannot afterwards not be, for we say that something is moved which stands otherwise now than before. If, then, the divine will is immutable, once it is posited that he wills something, it is necessary from supposition that he wills this."

[814D–815B]
Again, everything eternal is necessary, but that God wills some caused thing to be is eternal; for as his being, so his willing is measured by eternity. It is therefore necessary, but not considered absolutely, because God's will has no necessary relation to this thing willed; it is therefore necessary from supposition. Moreover, whatever God could do, he can; for his power is not diminished, any more than his essence. But he cannot now not will what is posited as having been willed, because his will cannot be changed; therefore he never could not will whatever he has willed. Therefore it is necessary from supposition that he willed whatever he willed, as it is also that he wills; yet neither is necessary absolutely, but possible in the manner stated. See how, by the arguments of the thirtieth of this, touched on much though briefly, he shows this consequent necessity in the divine will: namely, that whatever God ever earlier could will or not will, he can now, and whatever he now cannot, he never could earlier. He also, in the first book of the Sentences, in the distinction and question just cited, resting likewise on the arguments of the thirty-first of this, shows this necessity in God's knowledge;

whence he says thus: "I say, therefore, that the divine intellect beholds from eternity each of the contingent things, not only as it is in its causes, but as it is in its determinate being. For if this were not so (since, when the thing exists, he sees the thing itself as it is in its determinate being), he would know the thing otherwise when it is than before it comes to be, and so something would be added to his knowledge by the happenings of things." Whence he subsequently infers the consequent necessity in God's knowledge, as is recounted above. He also, in Against the Gentiles 1, 67, positing a like necessity in God's knowledge, says thus: "From these things it can now in some manner be clear that God from eternity had ineffable [n23] knowledge of singular contingents, and yet contingent things do not cease to be. For the contingent does not conflict with certainty of cognition except insofar as it is future, not insofar as it is present. For a contingent, when it is future, can not be, and so the cognition of one who judges that it will be future can be mistaken; for he will be deceived if what he judged to be future will not be. But from the moment it is present, for that time it cannot not be, though it can not be in the future. But this no longer pertains to the contingent as it is present, but as it is future; hence nothing is lost to the certainty of sense when it sees a man running, although this has been called contingent. Every cognition, therefore, that bears on a contingent as it is present can be certain; and the gaze of the divine intellect is borne from eternity upon each of those things that are carried out in the course of time, as present, as was shown above. It remains, therefore, that nothing prevents God from having from eternity infallible knowledge of contingents." Behold: what is future contingent with us is thus always present to God, just as, when it comes presentially, it will be to us, as other contingent things are now to us; and so what with him cannot not be is as contingent things present with us now cannot [not be].

Where he immediately adds: "Again, the contingent differs from the necessary according as each is in its cause. For the contingent is so in its cause that from it it can both not be and be, whereas the necessary cannot from its cause but be. But according to what each of these is in itself, they do not differ as regards the being on which it is founded; for in the contingent, as it is in itself, there is not being and not-being but only being, though as a future thing the contingent can not be. But the divine intellect knows things from eternity, not only according to the being they have in their causes, but also according to the being they have in themselves; nothing, therefore, prevents him from having an eternal and infallible cognition of contingents." Behold: as the contingent and the necessary, being now with us, do not differ in being, nor in the consequent necessity of being, so also eternally with God. And further on: "It does not happen that an effect exceeds its cause, but sometimes it falls short of it; hence, since in us cognition is caused by things, it happens sometimes that things which are necessary we know not in the mode of necessity but of probability;

[815C–815E]
but as with us things are the cause of cognition, so divine cognition is the cause of the things cognized. It does not therefore prevent those things from being contingent in themselves, of which God has necessary knowledge." And further on, supposing that an effect is called necessary or contingent from the proximate cause, not the remote, he adds: "But God's knowledge, although it is the cause of the things known through it, is nevertheless a remote cause; to its necessity, therefore, the contingency of the things known is not repugnant, since it can happen that the intermediate causes are contingent." And further on, moreover: "If each thing is known by God as seen presentially, then it will be necessary that what God knows be, just as it is necessary that Socrates sit from the fact that he is seen to sit; but this is not necessary absolutely." The Doctor therefore concedes in such matters the aforesaid consequent necessity, and denies only absolute necessity, as was also shown more fully in the twenty-eighth of this. William of Auvergne also seems to concede this consequent necessity, in his Tripartitum, last part, chapter 10, asserting, like Thomas, a necessity of stability and immutability in God,

by which it is necessary that he be whatever he is, and always act well, as is recounted more fully in the demonstration of the first corollary of this. This necessity also of stability, immutability and immobility, held by these Doctors, and with it the aforesaid consequent necessity, greater Doctors and Authors imply and affirm. For Isaiah says, or rather the Lord through his mouth: "My counsel shall stand, and all my will shall be done," Isaiah 46. But how will it stand? Firmly, or weakly? Without doubt whoever says it stands weakly is himself weak. For whose counsel will stand firm, if that of the firmest foundation of all things does not stand firm? [n24] The Apostle does not think so, who says: "The firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows who are his," 2 Timothy 2. Why, I ask, did the Apostle say "The firm foundation of God stands," if it stands most weakly, indeed incomparably more weakly than the weakest and most mutable created thing? For it is necessary that any created thing now standing now stand by this consequent necessity. So if the divine counsel and foreknowledge and fundamental predestination, which now stands, could for now not stand, it would stand more weakly than the most unstable creature.

This word also, "to stand," said of God, designates firmness and immutability. Whence also Augustine, Confessions 1, 6: "With you, God," he says, "stand the causes of all unstable things, and the unchangeable origins of all changeable things abide, and the everlasting reasons of all irrational and temporal things live." And in On Genesis according to the Letter 5, 18: "To God himself," he says, "created things did not become known in any other way when he had made them than in that way in which he had known them in order to make them. With him there is no change, nor shadow of a moment, but in a single and wonderful manner he knows all things stably and unchangeably." Why, moreover, did the Apostle compare God's foreknowledge and predestination, or the predestined themselves, to a foundation, indeed to a firm foundation, if there is there no firmness of necessity but the greatest weakness, greater than in any thing continually slipping and flowing, since in any such thing the consequent necessity is firm? For it would be a weak and feeble foundation, so easily about to fail,

[816A–816D]
that now and for now it could fail and not be, and it would be incomparably weaker and feebler than the feeblest natural foundation, which cannot do so. But it seems rather that by this figurative expression [n25], in which he calls God's foreknowledge, or the predestined, a foundation, which is the firmest and most immovable of all things, he understood a like firmness and immovability. For as the Philosopher says in Topics 6: metaphor makes known in a way what is signified through likeness; for all who transfer a word transfer it according to some likeness. Wherefore the Gloss says: "The firm foundation of God stands," that is, those whom God has chosen and immovably founded in faith, as the twenty-seventh of this showed more fully. Whence also Augustine, on that verse of the second Psalm [n26], "He has established the world, which shall not be moved," says: "There is an immovable world, which is that of the good, who are stable in faith.

For 'the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows who are his'; this is the world that shall not be moved. And there is also a mobile world, which is that of the wicked." The Psalmist also frequently implies this firmness under the metaphor of a foundation, whence Psalm 8: "I will see your heavens, the works of your fingers, the lights and stars which you have founded" [n27]. On this Damascene, in his Sentences 21, treating of the planets, speaks thus: "They run their ceaseless course, which the Maker appointed to them; and as he founded them, so David says to the Lord: The moon and the stars which you have founded. For in saying 'you have founded,' he signified the stability and immutability of the order and construction given to them by God." And further on, Psalm 23: "He himself founded it upon the seas," that is, the world, that is, the Church, according to Augustine, who, expounding how he founded it upon the seas, adds: "He has most firmly established it above all the floods of this age, that they might be overcome by it." And further down, Psalm 118: "In generation and generation your truth; you founded the earth, and it endures." On this Augustine, understanding by "generation and generation" all generations, adds thus:

"But why truth never fails even these generations, as if revealing the cause: 'You founded,' he says, 'the earth, and it endures,'" calling those who are on the earth "earth"; "but no one can lay another foundation than that which has been laid, which is Christ Jesus." This most firm firmness Isaiah also implies under the same metaphor, in chapter 28; or rather the Lord through Isaiah, saying thus: "Behold, I will lay in the foundations of Sion a stone, a corner stone, tried, precious, founded on a foundation." And this stone, once sent to us, confirms this firmness, saying: "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be likened to a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they rushed upon that house, and it did not fall; for it was founded upon the rock," Matthew 7. On this Chrysostom says: "As the Church built by Christ cannot be destroyed, so no adversity can cast down such a Christian, who has built himself upon Christ. Nor is it contrary that some fall away from the Church; for not all who are called Christians

are Christ's, but the Lord knows who are his." This necessity, then, of stability, immobility and immutability, and the consequent necessity too, I consider the Apostle to have understood when he said, "The firm foundation of God stands, the Lord knows who are his," and the Lord when he said through Isaiah, "My counsel shall stand." David also implies a like immovable stability of the divine counsel, saying: "But the counsel of the Lord abides for ever, the thoughts of his heart in generation and generation," Psalm 32. The Gloss: that is, not changeable but eternal, as his predestination too is immutable, in which all things are laid up. Whence Augustine also, in the first treatise: "The thoughts of his wisdom are not changeable, but abide for ever and ever." The Apostle also teaches this most plainly in Hebrews 6: "God, wishing to show to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed an oath, that by two immovable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have the firmest consolation, we who have fled for refuge to hold the hope set before us, which we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm."

[816E–817B]
Gloss: "By two immovable things," that is, by promise and oath. The Apostle therefore means that God's counsel, promise and oath are confirmed by such immovability that God cannot do the opposite, just as he cannot lie. With this agrees that text of Numbers 23: "God is not like a man, that he should lie, nor like a son of man, that he should be changed; has he said, then, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?" And that text of Psalm 88 [89]: "Once I have sworn by my holiness, if I shall lie to David." Cassiodorus: "Once," that is, immutably. So also Augustine, City of God 5, 9, and On the Spirit and the Letter 29, and Isidore, Etymologies 8, 45, explain that text of Psalm 61 [62], "God has spoken once": that is, immutably, that is, he has spoken unchangeably, just as he knows unchangeably all things that will be and that he will do, as the twenty-seventh [chapter] of this part set out more fully. Many authorities of canonical Scripture and of the Doctors bear this same witness, as do the authorities on the oath of God speaking, in the forty-seventh [chapter] of this work. Very many similar ones in the twenty-third [chapter] of the first book likewise say that God knows and wills all things immutably and unchangeably.

To this, perhaps, some defender of the contrary opinion will reply that it is true that God wills and knows all things immutably, because he cannot be changed in volition or cognition. Yet without any change whatever, he says, a future thing that he has always willed and foreknown, and now wills and foreknows, can be such that he never willed or foreknew it, and now neither wills nor foreknows it, but wills and foreknows its opposite, now and before. Hence it does not follow that God wills and nills future things necessarily, by the consequent necessity stated above. But this reply will be corrected by what was shown earlier, in the thirtieth and thirty-first and especially the thirty-second [chapter] of this third book. For certain authorities, touched on here and there, imply that God is a liar if what he foretold does not come to pass. If, however, he could have not foretold what he foretold, without any change whatever, this would in no way follow, as was shown more fully in that thirty-second. Nor is there greater necessity in things foretold by God than in things simply willed beforehand and foreknown, as the forty-ninth of this part showed. God, therefore, cannot fail to know, nor fail to will, the future things that he knows and wills, unless he were changed, as the same thirty-second showed. Hence, for the present, he cannot fail to know or fail to will what he now knows and wills.

Robert Lincolniensis[n28] relies on the arguments of this thirty-second [chapter], premised by way of mutability and immutability, in On Free Choice 4. There he recites the opinion which says that this proposition is not necessary, "God knows that A will be," if A is one of the future contingents, because he can not-know A before A exists. Hence, according as A is or is not, he becomes knowing and not knowing A, namely necessarily; "and this is the contrary opinion, and the principal hypothesis."[n29] Lincolniensis adds: "But to say by this reasoning that the stated proposition is not necessary is openly impious, because to say this is to say that God is mutable in knowledge. First, therefore, one must meet this impiety with authorities, by which it will be plain that he knows all things immutably and always and eternally." And he adduces many authorities that say that God knows and wills all things immutably, as was touched on above. Further on, in the fifth [chapter], having rejected the aforesaid opinion by authorities and by some reasons,

[817C–817E]
he adds: "Again: God knows A. Either, then, he can not-know A, or he cannot. If he cannot not-know A, then he necessarily knows A. But if he can not-know A, then he can become, from one knowing A, one not knowing A; therefore he can be changed and altered, which is impossible." The same author, below at 9, where he answers by a final determination, says that God, considered as causally preceding his acts of willing and knowing, can refrain from those acts. Considered as actually performing them, he cannot, since he is immutable. Hence he says: "This predication, 'God can not will or not know A,' can be turned back upon him considered in the aspect of an agent of one of the opposites, and so it is impossible for him not to will what he wills, or not to know what he knows. For it belongs to the nature of God to have power toward either, because he causally precedes both; but upon him as acting one of them, since he is immutable, there is no power toward the opposite of what is in act." Saint Thomas relies on like arguments about immutability in the first part of the Summa, question 19, article 3, and in Against the Gentiles 1, 83, as was recited above.

How, moreover, if it were so, as the response says, would the firmness in God's knowledge, and the foundational stability shown above, be preserved? How, too, if it were so, would we have, according to the Apostle, the strongest consolation through God's promise and oath concerning anything future, as the thirty-second of this part shows more fully? For how should we have the strongest consolation from a thing so weak that, for the time or instant at which it is or was, it can not be and not have been? Indeed, from a thing incomparably weaker in being than the weakest creature? For any creature is stronger and more constant in being: while it is, it is necessary that it be, and that it have been if it was. How, again, if it were so, would the Apostle have said that our hope in such promises is like an anchor of the soul, sure and firm? For what security or firmness is there in an anchor of this kind, which, even if now it held as firmly as it could, and had held in the past on due foundation, could now, and for the present, be loosed and wholly betray us,[n30] and could have been loosed always in the past and betrayed us totally? An anchor of this kind, then, if it be posited, is less secure,

infirmior et instabilior omni vento et mari, ac re fluxibili qualicunque.

I give the sentence's opening here; the Latin of 817E continues below as one piece with 817D.

weaker and less stable than any wind and sea, or any fluid thing whatever. Who, then, trusting such an anchor, will expose himself to the stormiest deep? Who, then, will be safe through an anchor of this kind on the great and most perilous sea of this world? Wherefore it seems to me that the Apostle, by this expression, taken over by metaphor from the anchor, which is the firmest of a ship's equipment, steadying and securing the whole ship provided that it clings to something firmer, signified figuratively the most stable security and firmness of our hope. That hope is like the anchor of Peter's ship, tossed by the waves and by the contrary wind of this world. And this anchor of our hope is not safe and firm of itself, but by its attachment and binding to something firmer: namely, to the immovability of the divine counsel, and to the two immovable things mentioned above, which it is impossible should fail or not be, just as it is impossible for God to lie. The account of this metaphor can be shown likewise, just as the answer about the metaphor of the foundation was shown above.

Moreover, the words of sacred Scripture and of the Doctors must be taken according to the usual and common manner of understanding and speaking

[818A–818C]
as was shown in the forty-fifth [chapter] of the first book. But it is not a usual and common manner of understanding or speaking, but a very unusual and quite alien one, scarcely admitted even among deceitful Sophists, to say that God decrees or has decreed, has willed or wills, immutably that something will be, when without any change whatever he can never have decreed or willed this, nor now decree or will it. Indeed, the customary and common manner of understanding and speaking seems, in such cases, to hold "immutably" and "not able otherwise" and "necessarily" as the same, and to reckon them convertible. For this reason the Parisian Doctors call the consequent necessity described above a necessity of immutability and immobility. Hence also Anselm, in Cur Deus homo 2, 17, almost throughout, holds as the same and indifferently takes "to be or to be going to be immutably," and "not able not to be, or not to be going to be," and "to be or to be going to be necessarily." There also, asserting that this consequent necessity is spontaneous, he writes thus by way of dialogue between Anselm and Boso on Christ: "Since they are subject to the same reasoning, namely to die and to will to die, each seems to have been in him by necessity.

A. Who of his own accord willed to make himself man, so that by that same immutable will he would die, and through faith in this certainty a pure virgin would be made, from whom that man would be assumed? B. God, the Son of God. A. Has it not been shown above that the will of God is compelled by no necessity, but by its own immutability, spontaneously, keeps itself, when he is said to do something by necessity? B. It has truly been shown; but we see the contrary, because what God immutably wills cannot not be, but must be. Therefore, if God willed that that man should die, he could not not die. A. From this: because the Son of God assumed man with the will that he should die, proving that this same man could not not die. B. So I understand. A. Did it not likewise appear from what has been said that the Son of God and the assumed man are one person, so that the same one is God and man, Son of God, and son of the Virgin? B. So it is. A. The same man, therefore, by his own will could not not die, and he died. B. I cannot deny it." He also says plainly below, in the same work, that if God purposes to do something immutably, he will do it of necessity, yet not by a violent or contrary necessity,

but by one consonant with freedom. This too he elucidates and clears still further below in the same work by the distinction of necessity recited above. He also says, in On Concord 3: "Things that are past in time are, in the likeness of the eternal present, altogether immutable. In this respect, indeed, things past in time are more like the eternal present than are things present, since what exists there, that is, in eternity, can never not be present, just as things past in time can never not be past. But all present things in time, as they pass away, become not present." And immediately below, at 4, he adds: "In this way, then, whatever Sacred Scripture pronounces about things that happen by free choice as though necessary, it speaks according to eternity, in which every truth is present, and only the truth immutably." See how indifferently he takes and holds as the same: to be immutable,

[818D–818E]
that is, immutably not able not to be, and to be necessary, that is, for anything to be of necessity, namely by the necessity which in the same places he calls "consequent," as was touched on above. So also Robert Lincolniensis, in On Free Choice 4, after reciting authorities of Augustine (On Genesis 5, 19) and others above here, and those set out in the twenty-third [chapter] of the first book, which say that God knows all things immutably, concludes in the fifth chapter thus: "From these authorities it is evident that God knows all things in one indivisible and simple gaze, eternally, always, [likewise,] immutably. Therefore what he knows he cannot afterwards not-know." And it follows: "Therefore, in exactly the same way in which it is necessary that God know things when they are, or when they are past, it is necessary that he know the same things before they are. But when things are, or are past, his knowledge has consequent necessity; therefore it also has the same necessity before the things come to pass." He also alleges below, at 6, Augustine, who says that the Ideas in God, which he also calls exemplars, are immortal, immutable, invariable, eternal and unwearying. Hence he concludes: "From these it is plainly gathered that the exemplars

are necessary." Sacred Scripture, therefore, the Glosses, and the Doctors who say that God knows, wills, decrees and the like immutably, unchangeably and immovably, understand that it is not possible otherwise, and that he necessarily so acts: necessarily, I say, by the consequent necessity described above. Nor is it to be reckoned of least account that Robert Lincolniensis, Saint Thomas and other Parisian Doctors unanimously recite, reject and condemn, in its own proper form, the opinion contrary to this necessity, and the principal hypothesis, as they recited it somewhat earlier. Hence without doubt they approve and affirm this response, in accordance with this consequent necessity, since it is not possible to assign any reasonable middle between these two, as

[819A–819B]
the [chapters][n31] above make plain. The Oxford Doctors likewise deny absolute necessity in such matters, but they grant another, which they likewise call ordained, or the necessity of ordained or decreed law. According to what was shown in the forty-ninth of this part, this cannot rightly be understood as other than this consequent necessity. For the divine will, with respect to the things willed outside itself, is rightly called ordained, and the law likewise ordained or decreed. A legislator, or any other who gives order, first at least in the order of nature thinks of this and that, and then freely orders or decrees one definite thing; so too God, King and Lawgiver of the universe: having thought that this and that can come to be, deciding most freely, he ordained that these things come to be and not those. And this is the universal law, decreed, laid down, ordained, ordaining, regulating and governing the universe, as is clear from the twenty-first of the first book. It is also called necessity because, just as a merely positive law, decreed by a man most freely and without any compelling necessity, is from then on necessary by consequent necessity and ordained by a necessity of this kind, so far that according to the jurists that is called possible or impossible

which is possible or impossible in law, so also the divine will, though ordained, laid down and decreed without any preceding necessity, most contingently and most freely, is confirmed by like necessity. What was said above about fate, in the twenty-eighth of the first book and the twenty-seventh of the third, seems to strengthen this opinion. For all the authors who posit fate as something said by God's utterance (a famine Dei),[n32] and such a fatal necessity, concur in implying that God, like man, speaks outwardly freely, with respect to contradiction, yet that he speaks while he speaks, just as a man speaks while he speaks, is necessary: by the ordained, that is, consequent necessity stated above, which necessarily follows any being by accompanying it, and by which everything that is, when it is, necessarily is. For fate, as Isidore reports (Etymologies 8, 45 and 46),[n33] "the ancients said is whatever the gods speak, and what is assigned and decreed to each." Therefore the Philosopher also says in On the World, at the end, that there are three decrees of the fates according to as many times, which in another translation are called the three Parcae. These, according to Papias in his Elementarium, and Isidore (Etymologies 8, 45), and other grammarians, because they spare no one, or hardly spare,

[819C–819D]
are so called [Greek phrase in the print, not read][n34]: Atropos in the past, Lachesis or Lichesis in the future, and Clotho in the present, completing, as the Philosopher says in the place cited before, and twisting for each what is his own. And he adds: "The fable too is brought to completion, not without order." But all these are nothing other than God, as the vigorous Plato also says. He[n35] also says earlier, at 13, that in the greater city, that is, in the world, God is a law inclining equally (in another translation, "equal"), receiving no corruption or transposition (in another translation, "direction or transposition"), but greater and more certain than those writings which are on the cirbes[n36] (according to another translation), and better and firmer than writings on stones. For writings on stones are first written freely and contingently, but once they are written, they necessarily remain written, or at least they are then necessarily written by the consequent necessity stated above. So too the firmer writing of the book of God. There it is added in consequence: "by whose governance the whole beauty of heaven and earth is ever immovably and carefully ruled,

and all things are generated, grow, and are corrupted, obeying divine decrees." Hermes also confirms this opinion in On the Eternal Word 43 and On the World and Heaven 1,[n37] showing that the necessity of things comes from divine law. For he says that these three, Heimarmene, necessity, and order, are chiefly effected by God's nod, and that they govern the world by his law and divine reason. He says that the fabric of the work, the fatal series, the disposition of the ages, the limit of all temporal things, and universally all things are there, namely in God, inscribed by the finger of the supreme Disposer, as the twenty-seventh of this part recited more fully. Hence also the Prophet: "Forever, Lord, your word endures in heaven; in generation and generation your truth; you founded the earth and it endures; by your ordinance the day continues, for all things serve you; were it not that your law is my meditation," etc. (Psalm 118 [119]). Behold the lawful ordinance of the Lord, embracing things heavenly, earthly, and universally all things. Behold the law of the Lord, most completely

[819E–820A]
ordained with firm necessity, and enduring eternally with necessary firmness: for these words of the Prophet convey immutability and necessity. For Augustine says, On the Trinity 15, 20: "Nor is it written for any other reason, 'Many are the thoughts in the heart of a man, but the counsel of the Lord remains forever,' than that we may understand or believe that, as God is eternal, so his counsel is eternal, and for that reason immutable as he himself is. And what is said of thoughts can also most truly be said of wills: 'Many are the wills in the heart of a man, but the will of the Lord remains forever.'" Psalm 32 [33] also says: "The counsel of the Lord remains forever, the thoughts of his heart in generation and generation." On this Augustine, in the first treatise: "The thoughts of his wisdom are not mutable, but remain forever and ever." There too the Gloss: that is, "they are not mutable but eternal, and his predestination, in which all things are laid up, is immutable." And Cassiodorus says on that text of Psalm 118 [119]

cited above, "O Lord, your word endures in heaven": "because, literally, the solemn order of the heavenly decrees endures. The year glides by through days and months, and by the same successions the revolution of Sun and Moon returns, and the law of all things, once established, remains immutable." And below: "'in generation and generation your truth,' that is, in every generation; 'You founded the earth,' that is, the Church, by faith, 'and it endures.' For literally this cannot be said of the earth, which is to be moved. But Christ is the foundation, besides which no one can lay another, in whom those who are not sons of the handmaid abide. For there follows, 'By your ordinance the day continues.' For these things said above, that the Word is in heaven, that truth is in generation, that the earth is founded, are the day which the Lord made. For this day Christ, the Sun of justice, whatever may press, never sets, and when in the future he brings it to perfection, it is to be closed by no end. And I rightly say 'the Word in heaven, truth, and in generation the earth founded,' since all things that pertain to this day serve you; literally, he disposes all things temporal and eternal

[820B–820C]
by his nod." "You founded," he says, "the earth, and it endures"; but founding and foundation convey immutable stability and necessity, as was shown above. Hence also below in the same psalm: "In the beginning I learned from your testimonies that you founded them forever." Words of this kind imply a like opinion: "His mercy is confirmed upon us, and the truth of the Lord remains forever," Psalm 116 [117]. "He has made firm the round world, which shall not be moved," Psalm 92 [93], where Augustine says that it is immovable, as was alleged above. "Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion; he will not be moved forever," etc., Psalm 124 [125], where Cassiodorus shows that those who trust in the Lord cannot be moved. "It will not be inclined forever and ever" (namely the earth), Psalm 103 [104], where Cassiodorus says: "It cannot be said of the earth, which is read as going to pass away; but in a mystical sense it can rightly be taken of the Church, founded upon Christ, which cannot be inclined." "The mountains shall be moved, and the hills shall tremble, but my mercy shall not depart from you, and the covenant of my peace shall not be moved, says the Lord your Pitier," Isaiah 54. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (or "shall not pass"), Matthew 24, and many similar texts with their expositions and glosses written in the twenty-seventh of this part. With these that text of Jeremiah 5 likewise agrees: "I have set the sand as the boundary of the sea, an everlasting decree which it shall not pass; and they shall be moved, and shall not be able, and its waves shall swell, and shall not pass over it." This hints at the limit of tribulations and toils, as is clear from the expositions set out in the forty-sixth of the first book. And again that text of Psalm 148: "He established them forever and ever; he laid down a decree, and it shall not pass." Hence blessed Gregory, Moralia 16, 15, on that text of Job 23, "No one can turn aside his thoughts" (namely God's), says thus: "Aptly it is added of his immutability, 'No one can turn aside his thoughts,' for as his nature is immutable, so is his thought immutable. Let him say, then, 'and no one can turn aside his thoughts,' because judgments once fixed can in no way be changed. Hence it is written, 'he laid down a decree, and it shall not pass'; and again, 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away':

[820D–820E]
and again, 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways.' When, therefore, the decree seems outwardly to be changed, the counsel within is not changed, because within it is immutably settled concerning each thing, whatever is mutably done outside." Augustine agrees with him, in the Sentences of Prosper, proposition 169: "God's thought and re-thought of things to be changed is an unchangeable plan. For, unlike a man, God does not repent of any deed of his, whose judgment about all things whatever is as fixed as his foreknowledge is certain." Isaiah too is in harmony with this: "The Lord of hosts," he says, "has decreed, and who can annul it?" (Isaiah 14), on which the Gloss says, "that is, it cannot be changed." The authorities set out above on the necessity of stability, immobility and immutability clearly imply this same necessity, ordained according to law, as was premised. No less clearly do the authorities on the divine oath, set out in the forty-seventh [chapter] of this part, show it, on account of the immutability and necessity contained in it, especially since, according to what was shown there,

every word of God, intrinsically with respect to things outside, is confirmed by equal necessity and is equivalent to an oath. The authorities alleged in that forty-seventh imply the same likewise, saying that divine predictions and promises must necessarily be fulfilled. This holds especially since the necessity in such matters is not greater than in any things known by God outside himself, as the next [chapter] of this part teaches. But the whole necessity there is from the firm presentiality and present firmness of the divine act, cognition and volition, by which it is necessary that it, like other present things and other acts of whatever kind, be while it is, by the consequent and ordained necessity stated above. Moreover, all authors who posit fate as something said by God's utterance concur in implying this same ordained necessity, as was premised, and a consequent one,

[821A–821B]
and such a fatal necessity, as was shown above. How many and how great are the authors and doctors, philosophical and theological, who posit this fatal necessity explicitly and implicitly, as the twenty-eighth of the first book and the twenty-seventh of this part teach? For what else does the untransgressibility, immutability, stability and firmness signify of the words of Christ, and of the laws, pact and covenant of God, from the Gospels and Prophets with the glosses and expositions of the Doctors, which the twenty-seventh of this part recited more fully? In what way, moreover, can the Philosopher be more fittingly expounded in On the World 13, where he says that God, himself unmoved, moves all things and carries them round whither he wills, like a law of the world admitting no alteration, more certain and firmer than writings on stones, as is alleged more fully in the same twenty-seventh and above here? For writings on stones are first written freely and contingently, but once they are written, they necessarily remain written, or at least they are then necessarily

written by the consequent necessity stated above. So, and indeed incomparably more firmly, is the firmer writing of the book of God. Why, moreover, did he compare the divine law that governs all things to writing on stones rather than to writing on wax, parchment, a painting, dust, or on the ground, or on any metal, unless to designate in some manner by example and figure its greatest firmness, since such writing is firmer than others? So too Job says: "Who will grant me that my words be written? Who will give me that they be engraved in a book with an iron stylus, or on a plate of lead, or be written with a chisel on flint?" (Job 19).[n38] So also the sons of Seth wrote the discoveries of the sciences on two pillars, one of bricks, the other of stones, as was recited above. How firm, then, is the necessity, and how necessary the firmness, of the divine Scripture written in God's most firm knowledge, in his most firm mind, in the book of most firm life! And the supreme Philosopher, giving authority on this point to this Philosopher,[n39] says: "Scripture cannot be dissolved, which the Father sanctified

[821C–821D]
and sent into the world," John 10. With this a fair number of similar texts set down in the forty-seventh of this part likewise agree, which bear witness that the prophetic Scriptures, promissory and juratory, of the Prophets and of God must necessarily be fulfilled. For the fact that natural writing, made with a fragile reed, fluid ink, rotting parchment or papyrus, cannot be dissolved, cannot come from any firmness or stability of this weak and slippery writing. It comes only from the insoluble and necessary firmness of the writing of the book of immortal, indelible, unerasable, uncancellable and indefectible life, from which all true material writing, originally and figuratively, flows down and issues. To this cause of such necessity in the Scriptures the Gloss on the first [chapter] of Matthew bears witness. It first says that prophecies must necessarily be fulfilled, as the forty-seventh of this part alleges. Afterwards, however, it says that the prophet imposes no necessity on the things prophesied but is a sign of God's foreknowledge, as

the forty-ninth of this part recited more fully. This necessity, then, is founded on God's foreknowledge. For it cannot be founded on the things prophesied, which are as it were the effects and outcomes of prophecy, and which impose no necessity on themselves, since they have none of themselves; nor on prophecy, which does not bring about the things prophesied but is only a sign of divine foreknowledge. The necessity, therefore, of the writing of the book of immortal life, of God's firm foreknowledge, is the necessity of the prophetic Scripture spoken of above. Hence also Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace 29, says that the sons of God according to foreknowledge, before they were made, were already sons of God, written down in the memorial of their Father with unshaken stability. Below, at 34, expressing this unshaken stability more fully, he writes thus: "Whoever, then, in God's most provident disposition have been foreknown, predestined, called, justified and glorified, I do not say even those not yet reborn, but even those not yet born, are already sons of God, and therefore can in no way perish." Note, I beg, the causal clause: "They are already," he says, "sons of God and therefore can in no way perish." What else does this causal clause convey, or rather express, than that whatever things are in God's providence, disposition, foreknowledge and predestination cannot fail to be there, at least for the present, according to the Philosopher's text so often recalled, "What is, when it is, necessarily is"?[n40]

[821E–822A]
How great a number, then, how great a throng, how great an army of authorities of canonical Scripture and of the Doctors professes this opinion of necessity, explicitly or implicitly, no doubt it is not easy to count. But to set forth in brief the greatest abundance: behold, reasons and authorities, touched on in many ways from the thirtieth of this part up to this place, imply and confirm this opinion of consequent necessity. It does not seem possible for anyone who does not hold this opinion to resolve them plainly, solidly and truthfully, but scarcely even by sophistries of any kind, insipid, by oblique quibbles, by profane falsifications of writing, and violent effrontery, by twisted circumlocutions, by schismatic expositions and by viperous glosses that destroy the very text. But all reasons and authorities, according to the surface of the letter as well as according to the deep and solid

understanding, seem plainly and fully, solidly and sincerely and spontaneously, to consent to this opinion and to bear concordant witness. Let any judge who is impartial and a friend of truth alone, I beg, simply compare the proofs, responses and authorities of any other opinion with those of this one. Let him, I implore, meanwhile lay aside hatred and love. For the Philosopher says in the first [book] of his Rhetoric, chapter one, that love and hatred and one's own advantage are often attached to a prefect and judge so that they cannot see the truth sufficiently but attend in judgment to what is personally pleasing or painful. And in the second [book] of the Rhetoric, chapter one: "The same things," he says, "do not seem the same to those who love and those who hate, nor to those who are angry and those who are mild, but either wholly different, or different in magnitude." With this Ptolemy likewise agrees, in word 12 of his Centiloquium, saying: "Love and hatred remove men from rectitude," or according to another translation, "Love and hatred pervert

[822B]
the truth of judgment." Or, if he is unwilling to lay them aside, then let him exchange them: giving to this opinion, which he hated for no reason, the love and favour of the other, and the reverse. In this way let him weigh with even balance which is more firmly founded, more copiously attested and more reasonably defended, and in the meantime, until God reveals otherwise to him, let him soberly choose that one, hold it and defend it. For, as the Philosopher says in Ethics 1, 11,[n41] "With the truth all things that exist are in harmony; with the false the truth quickly clashes." This is plainly the teaching of the same Philosopher in On the Heavens 2, 1, and of Averroes his Commentator, who also recites there the famous Alexander saying: "We are not supported in the opinion of this man above all others, except because we see it to be of less ambiguity and further removed from contradiction." Moreover, the authorities on the necessity of fate, or of the divine utterance, and the like, which posit necessity in God and in things, and give as its cause that "What is, when it is, necessarily is," or that all things are always present with God, on account of the necessity of things according to higher causes, adduced in the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of this part, do much more immediately and evidently[n42]

[822C–822D]
…for this following necessity [n43] of the present chapter than for that other. But because another necessity follows from this one, they also make for that other. And because that necessity was being contradicted, it had to be established by the valid testimonies of many truthful witnesses, men beyond all exception, so that, that one being granted, this one might be admitted more easily. The procedure and order could also have been reversed, so that this following necessity would have been shown first and then that other by the higher causes. For this one is prior to that by nature, though not so convenient for teaching. For the things prior and better known by nature are not always prior and better known in human cognition. Indeed, as is usually the case, it is the other way round, as the Philosopher attests in Physics 1, 2 and following, and in Metaphysics 2, 1 [n44]. The Apostle also attests it when he says, in Romans 1: "The invisible things of him"—that is, of God—"from the creation of the world"—that is, by man—"are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made, and his eternal power and divinity too." Hence it seemed more convenient to observe the order set out above, just as it was also observed at the beginning. For by nature God seems first to make something and then to preserve what is made; and yet it was shown earlier that God is the necessary preserver of beings than that he is their maker, because this was more useful for teaching. For from this, in human cognition, the one is more easily shown than the other from the contrary.

[823A]
COROLLARY.

Corollary: that it is necessary that every present act of divine willing and knowing, by the following necessity described above, has always been, and likewise always will be; wherefore also that all things which are, come to be, or happen in the present are, come to be, and happen in the present by a similar necessity; and that all things that will happen will happen in the future by a similar necessity; indeed also that all things that now come to be now come to be from some preceding necessity; and that all things that happen from some preceding necessity will happen in the future. [n45]

[823B–823E]
From these things, as by a porism [n46], it shines out clearly that it is necessary that every present act of divine willing and knowing, by the following necessity described above, now is, always has been, and likewise always will be; wherefore also that all things which are, come to be, or happen in the present are, come to be, and happen in the present by a similar necessity; and that all things that will happen will happen in the future by a similar necessity; indeed also that all things that now come to be now come to be from some preceding necessity; and that all things that will happen will happen in the future from some preceding necessity. Now the first, second and third parts of this porism follow clearly. For according to what has been shown before, it is necessary that every such act, now present, now be, and so also that it always has been and likewise always will be, since God is immutable in every respect, as the fifth and the twenty-third of the first teach. Hence the agreement and the difference between the divine will and the angelic or human will are also plainly recognized: for they agree in two respects and differ in two. For just as it is necessary that a created will, for the present, will what it wills and have willed what it has willed, so too the divine will. But it is possible that this one, namely the human, will in the future not so will, and in the past did not so will; the divine will, however, not at all, either after or before. The cause of this is not hidden: for this will is mutable, while that one is altogether immutable. The three following parts, however, will easily be concluded from these three together with certain things shown earlier. For syllogistic reasoning teaches plainly that all things that are, come to be, and happen in the present from a cause necessary in being by the following necessity and unfrustrable in causing [n47] are, come to be, and happen in the present by a similar necessity. All things that are, come to be, or happen in the present, are, come to be, and happen from a cause of this kind. Why, then, does it not follow for the future? For in the same way in which the syllogism was applied to present things, it will be applied to future things also. For all things that will happen from a cause always necessary in being by the following necessity and unfrustrable in causing will happen by a similar necessity; all things that will happen will happen from a cause of this kind. For no possible cause can be assigned, it seems, why not all things that will happen from any cause whatever will happen from some necessity, unless either because the cause can fail in being, or because, even if it remains, it can be hindered, frustrated, and fail in causing. So a man who wills to do some future thing can drop that willing, and even if he holds to it continually, can be hindered and frustrated in many ways. It is also certain that all things that will happen will happen from such a cause . For they will happen from the divine will, by the corollary of the ninth of the first; and that will is necessary in being by the following necessity, by the parts of the preceding corollary, and is also unfrustrable in causing, by the tenth of the first book. To this some will perhaps reply that all future things are necessary insofar as they are present to God and in him, but not insofar as they will come about outside, in material or real being in their own natures. Now this reply, if it means that future contingents, considered absolutely as regards themselves and their lower causes, will not happen necessarily, understands truly, but does not evade the point. But if it means that future contingents, in relation to the divine pre-willing and pre-cognition [n48], which is necessary in being and unfrustrable in causing, will not happen necessarily outside, in material, real, or natural being at the times pre-ordained by God, it does not understand truly, as the preceding plainly showed. This can also be shown more briefly thus. It follows necessarily: whatever God wills and foreknows will be in real, extrinsic, natural being, will be so; God wills and foreknows that this will be so; therefore this will be so. Or, enthymematically, if one prefers: God wills that this will be in reality; therefore this will be so. And the antecedent is necessary, as was shown above, just as these respondents also admit; wherefore the consequent too, as is clear from the thirtieth of this. All this Robert of Lincoln plainly attests in On Free Choice 10 [n49]. There, treating of the concord of predestination and free choice, he first makes in substance the argument set out above, and recites in effect the reply of the contrary opinion and of the principal hypothesis [n50], which distinguishes propositions of this kind ("Whatever God predestines or wills to be, it is necessary that it be") according to composition

[824A–824E]
and division, conceding the composite sense and denying the divided. Then, formally approving that reply but materially rejecting it, and answering according to his own view, he says that pre-willing, that is, divine predestination, is a cause necessary in being by the following necessity and unfrustrable in causing; wherefore also any total effect of it will exist by a similar necessity. Hence he says: Divine predestination seems especially to annihilate free choice. For it is itself the cause of the good things of the predestined; and such a cause cannot not be, nor can it be frustrated of its effect; but of every cause that cannot not be, nor be frustrated of its effect, every effect cannot not be; therefore the effect of predestination cannot not be; therefore it is necessary that every effect of predestination be; therefore everyone who is to be saved will necessarily be saved; therefore salvation, or a good work meritorious of eternal life, is not from free choice. Perhaps some respondent, to escape, will distinguish thus, saying: The predestined is necessary; yet that which is predestined is not necessary, but contingent. But although this distinction is true, it nevertheless seems to contribute nothing to the truth of a solution. For let some effect of predestination, considered in itself, bare of this accident "predestined," be called A, and let it be argued in this way: every effect of a necessary cause that cannot be frustrated of its effect is necessary and cannot not be; A is an effect of such a cause; therefore A cannot not be, but is necessary. And so, as regards its being, free choice is nothing, since what has being from the free choice of a rational creature is contingent, not necessary. And here is his own reply. Will the effect of predestination perhaps simply be A's being contingently rather than A's being? For example, let some wayfarer now existing be named Peter. Not this, namely that Peter is to be saved, but that it is contingent that Peter is to be saved—that is, that Peter is to be saved not from necessity but with the possibility of the existence of its opposite, namely that Peter not be saved—is simply an effect of predestination. For God knows not only that Peter is to be saved, but that Peter is to be saved not from necessity but contingently, and so from eternity he pre-ordains that Peter be saved, and not from necessity but with the possibility of the contrary. And the whole of this, infallibly pre-known and pre-ordained by God, namely that Peter be saved not from necessity but with the possibility of the existence of the opposite, namely that Peter not be saved, is necessary simply [n51]. And so the effect of predestination, which is an invariable cause and cannot be frustrated of its effect, is not Peter's being saved, but Peter's being saved not necessarily but contingently. And the whole of this, namely Peter's being saved not necessarily but contingently, is necessary, as the syllogism posited above argues the effect of predestination ought to be. But I say "necessary" by consequent, not antecedent necessity, by necessity of condition according to Boethius, not by simple necessity; and for this reason Peter's being saved is not necessary but contingent. This major proposition, then, of the syllogism posited above, namely "Of every cause that cannot not be, nor be frustrated of its effect, the effect cannot not be, but is necessary," seems to be understood thus: that we understand the effect simply and totally, and not according to a part, that is, the whole effect proportioned to the cause, with no conditions omitted. So, for example, with respect to this cause, which is predestination, the effect will not be Peter's being saved simply and totally, but this whole: Peter's being saved not from necessity but contingently. Therefore, according to how the major proposition is truly understood, if under the effect of predestination one assumes "Peter's being saved" or something of the sort, without adding this condition, "not from necessity but contingently," the assumption does not correspond to the major proposition, nor does the conclusion follow. But if the effect falling under predestination is taken simply and totally, namely Peter's being saved not from necessity but contingently, it is assumed in correspondence with the major, and the conclusion follows. The same author, below in 11, showing the concord of grace with free choice, plainly offers a similar view. Nor should it disturb anyone that he says it is not necessary that Peter be saved, but that Peter be saved not necessarily but contingently, when it nevertheless follows necessarily: Peter will be saved not necessarily but contingently, therefore Peter will be saved. For the antecedent, according to him, is necessary, wherefore also the consequent. When he says that Peter's being saved not necessarily but contingently is necessary, he means the following necessity described above, which is consonant with contingency and freedom of choice, as he also expresses plainly. But when he denies that Peter's being saved is necessary, he means the necessity contrary to contingency and freedom of choice. According to what was premised in the tenth of this about the adversative conjunction "but," he evidently intimates this by saying: Peter's being saved is not necessary, but contingent. For this he also says below in 11: Since grace is nothing but the will of God by which he saves freely [n52], and he wills, for example, not only that Peter be saved but that he be saved from the freedom of his choice,

[825A–825E]
and not necessarily but contingently, just as he foreknows and predestines not only that he be saved but that he be saved with the addition stated, grace or divine will does not compel Peter to be saved, nor anything like it to be necessary. Rather, as has been said, it is necessary that he be saved from free choice and contingently. Nor should it disturb anyone that he says "perhaps," and seems to reply as if doubting, not defining: for this is his final reply. And because he can reasonably do this, even if he himself does not doubt, it serves to restrain the presumptuous boldness of others and to instruct them to grasp things soberly. For adverbs of doubting and similar words do not always import doubt in the speaker. Sometimes, by the figure of Irony, they import certainty and firm affirmation; sometimes doubt in the minds of the hearers, and a rebuke of them. Hence the Prophets, the Apostles, and God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing most certainly, sometimes uttered adverbs and words of this kind. So Psalm 80 [81]: "For nothing, perhaps, I would have humbled their enemies." Cassiodorus: "Perhaps," that is, "truly," if said ironically. And below,

Psalm 118 [119]: "Unless your law were my meditation, then perhaps I would have perished in my humiliation." And the Apostle in Romans 8: "I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not commensurate with the future glory." Gloss: "I reckon," that is, "I know." And 1 Corinthians 7: "I think that I too have the Spirit of God." Gloss: Note that in saying "I think" the Apostle does not doubt, but rebukes the contemners. And Job 14: "Do you think that a dead man will live again?" On which Gregory, Moralia 12, 5 : Just men are accustomed, in what they themselves feel to be certain and solid, to put something forward as though from doubt, in order to take the words of the weaker upon themselves; but then again by a strong statement they contradict in every way the wavering doubt, so that by what they are seen to utter doubtfully they somewhat condescend to the weak, and by uttering a certain statement they draw the doubtful minds of the weaker toward firmness. Jesus Christ himself, in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, speaks likewise, saying: "Is he grateful to that servant because he did what he had been commanded? I think not," Luke 17. And Matthew 11: "If in Sodom," etc. [n53] "perhaps they would have remained

until this day." And John 4: "You would perhaps have asked him," etc. And below, 5: "If you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe me also." And further below, 8: "If you knew me, perhaps you would know my Father also." On which Augustine, part 1, homily 37 [n54]: He who knows all things, when he says "perhaps," does not doubt, but rebukes. For notice how that very "perhaps," which seems to be a word of doubt, is spoken as a rebuke. It is a word of doubt when said by a man who doubts because he does not know; but when a word of doubt is said by God, since nothing is hidden from God, by that doubt unbelief is reproved; divinity does not conjecture. For men too sometimes doubt in a rebuking way about things which they hold as certain; that is, they set down a word of doubt though they do not doubt in their heart, as if you were indignant with your servant and said, "Do you despise me? Consider: perhaps I am your Lord." Hence the Apostle too, speaking to some who despised him, says: "But I think that I too have the Spirit of God." One who says "I think" seems to doubt, but he rebukes; he does not doubt. In Matthew 24 also Wisdom of God herself says:

"They will give great signs and wonders, so that even the elect, if it were possible, are led into error." On which Gregory, on Ezekiel 1, 9: Why, he asks, is this said with doubt, when what will be is foreknown by the Lord? And he answers: That doubt in the Lord's discourse was a designation of the temptation arising from the hearts of the elect. By this, then, it is expressed that the elect will be tempted in heart; for they totter, if they do not fall. It is said, therefore, "if it were possible," because they will tremble, and yet they are called elect because they will not fall. As for the two remaining parts, one must observe that in the divine will, with respect to its extrinsic effects, present or future, there is the fullest contingency to either alternative and the highest freedom of contradiction, as was often said. Yet that will is itself, with respect to them, an antecedent necessity, as with respect to present effects, as the last part of the second corollary of this shows; wherefore by a similar reason also with respect to future ones likewise. For all things that will happen from a cause necessary in being and unfrustrable in causing will happen from a necessity naturally preceding, as the definitions of naturally preceding necessity and of its effect show in the second of this; and all things that will happen will happen from such a cause, namely from the divine will, as was shown above. Nor do these things involve any such repugnance, as is more fully declared in the twenty-ninth and the fifth of this.

NOTES

1. Praecedens (and its synonym antecedens, "[antecedens,]" at 809A) is rendered "preceding"; sequens is "following"; and consequens said of necessity (811C–D) is also "following". "Antecedent" and "consequent" are kept for the two members of a conditional, so that Anselm's two necessities are not confused with the logical terms.
2. quae calamus tuus scripsi: the verb is first person, so calamus tuus is the subject: "I, your pen". Compare Ps 44:2 [45:1], "my tongue is the pen of a scribe". The print has scripsi, not scripsit.
3. The prayer is built of Scripture. Domine scientiarum is 1 Kgs 2:3; clavem putei abyssi is Rev 9:1; clavem scientiae is Luke 11:52; clavem David… aperit et nemo claudit is Rev 3:7; dignus accipere librum is Rev 5:9; quaerenti… pulsanti aperuisti is Matt 7:7–8; illuminante faciem tuam super servum tuum is Ps 30:17 [31:16]; candor lucis aeternae et speculum sine macula is Wis 7:26; interpretatio somniorum… solutio ligatorum is Dan 5:12. puero tuo parvulo exitum ignoranti echoes Solomon's prayer for wisdom, 3 Kgs [1 Kgs] 3:7.
4. Utrumlibet (ad utrumlibet): the open choice between alternatives. Rendered "to either alternative", and "the open alternative" where the term is the object of destruere (810A, 810D, 810E).
5. "Timaeus 17" is Bradwardine's own numbering. The passage is Calcidius's Latin Timaeus (47e–48a). The wording here is Bradwardine's Latin.
6. coelum volui … voluatur … voluitur (810A, and below) is volvi, volvatur, volvitur: "to revolve, be turned", with Savile's u for v. It is not velle.
7. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1235–53), De libero arbitrio. "Suffragan" is used of the see's place in the province of Canterbury, not of contemporaneity with Anselm.
8. quare et de Deum velle: the print has de with an accusative. The sense is plain ("concerning God's willing"), and it is translated so.
9. eodem quinto: ambiguous. It may be the fifth chapter of this book, where Lincolniensis was cited, or the fifth part of Grosseteste's work. Translated literally.
10. Aquinas, Scriptum super Sententiis I, d. 38, q. 1, a. 5 (Savile's "question five" is the article). The argument cited is the fourth objection.
11. "The Master in the text" (magister in litera) is Peter Lombard, whose Sentences Aquinas is commenting on.
12. arguto secundo: the print has arguto, presumably for argumento or arguitur; the sense is unaffected. The passage is Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 13, obj. 2.
13. "[animal]": printed in square brackets in the middle of Aquinas's sentence (licet etiam futurum [animal] non sequatur quandoque), where no word is needed for the sense. Kept in brackets, translated around, not emended.
14. The text reads "48o", and the main reading is kept. The margin's variant "28o" is probably right, since conditional necessity and Boethius's necessitas conditionis were treated in the 28th. quae … reprobata seems to refer to the conditional necessity; the clause is not wholly clear.
15. Apparently Aquinas, De veritate 23, 4 (whether God wills of necessity whatever he wills). Savile's "part. 13, quaest. 4" and "particula 19a, quaestione 3a" (813A) are Bradwardine's own references and are kept as written.
16. Savile's numbering of Aristotle is kept. Ethics 4, last is Nicomachean Ethics IV.9 (1128b), on shame, which is the source of the "shameful things" example below. The Politics references are kept as Savile gives them, unchecked.
17. "Theophilus": as in Savile. Possibly Theophylact, the commentator on Luke, but not identified.
18. The keyed unit 813E runs on beyond the foot of p. 813 (the print breaks at "conditionalis est sem-"), and the last clause, "per bona et vera; Nec moueat … id", lies on p. 814, which is not among the images supplied, so it has not been checked against the print. The sentence breaks off at the end of this stretch and is completed in the next.
19. Savile's "7. Polit. 12" is the passage at Politics VII.13, 1332a7–21. The Latin ex suppositione renders Aristotle's ex hypotheseos. That is Bradwardine's evidence that suppositio and hypothesis are one word in two languages, and that a mere conditional (which posits nothing) is not a supposition.
20. Main text fortunis is construable, and so I keep it. But in Aristotle the sense is "misfortunes", and the variant prauis ("bad") at 814B·1 makes that explicit. Likewise at 814B·2 the main reading beatum ("blessed") is kept against the variant bonum ("good"). The sentence says that happiness lies in the opposite of poverty and sickness.
21. Savile's "4. polit. 3." I take the passage on the polity that is best only relative to a hypothesis (given conditions) to be Politics IV.1 (1288b). I have not verified this.
22. Here and below ("the thirtieth of this", "the thirty-first of this", "the twenty-seventh of this", and "the first corollary of this" at 815D) huius leaves the referent open. I do not expand it (Conventions §5.4). The numbers presumably point to the numbered parts of the first Corollary of Book I, ch. 1, but this is not confirmed.
23. Print and keyed text both read ineffabilem. The Thomas passage, and the same quotation's own conclusion at 815A ("scientiam infallibilem habere"), suggest that infallibilem may have been meant. I translate the print as it stands.
24. The Latin is elliptical: omnium fundamenti firmissimi non stet firmum, with consilium understood from the first clause ("if that [counsel] of the firmest foundation of all things does not stand firm").
25. Translatio is "metaphor" (literally "transfer"), and transumptam is its participle: a figurative expression. The Aristotelian line plays on transferentes … transferunt, "those who transfer … transfer".
26. The verse Firmauit orbem terrae, qui non commouebitur is Psalm 92:1 [93:1] (also 95:10 [96:10]), not the second Psalm. Secundi stands in both print and keyed text and may be a corruption. I translate the print.
27. Psalm numbers in the text are Vulgate. Psalm 8 is the same in both numberings (Ps 8:4 [8:3]). Psalm 23 is Ps 24, Psalm 118 is Ps 119, and Psalm 32 is Ps 33.
28. Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln (Lincolniensis). Savile and Bradwardine cite his De libero arbitrio by the chapter numbers given in the text.
29. hypothesis principalis. Evidently Bradwardine's term for the thesis he is opposing, the "contrary opinion" that God's knowledge or will concerning future contingents is not necessary. Compare 818E, where "the opinion contrary to this necessity, and the principal hypothesis" are rejected together. The sentence is Bradwardine's comment between the report of the opinion and Grosseteste's reply ("But to say…").
30. decipere. "To deceive," used here of an anchor that gives way and so betrays the ship.
31. The word is in square brackets in the print, supplied by Savile or the scribe. It is the catchword at the foot of 818 and the first word of 819. The bracket is retained.
32. The Latin plays on fatum (fate), fari (to speak) and famen (utterance): fate is "what is spoken" by God. The English can give only the gloss.
33. "Eth." in Savile's citations of Isidore stands for the Etymologiae, which he cites by book and by the chapter numbers of the older editions.
34. The Parcae are explained by antiphrasis from parcere, "to spare," because they spare no one, a pun the English cannot reproduce. The keyed text has a gap here. The print has a short Greek phrase that I could not read with confidence. It may be kat' antiphrasin ("by antiphrasis"), as in Isidore, but this is unverified.
35. "Qui" must be the author of De mundo (pseudo-Aristotle, "the Philosopher"), as the parallel passage at 821A shows ("De mundo 13"). It is not Plato, the nearest preceding name.
36. cirbesibus: the Greek kyrbeis, the revolving tablets on which Athenian laws were inscribed. Savile's Latin translation of De mundo keeps the Greek word. The English gives "tablets" where sense requires it and leaves the transliteration in the text.
37. Hermes Trismegistus. The triad heimarmene, necessity, order appears in the Latin Asclepius, but Bradwardine cites it by titles of his own (De verbo aeterno, De mundo et coelo), so the identification is uncertain. The keyed text omits the Greek word in Savile's margin. I read it from the print as εἱμαρμένη, which matches the transliteration in the text.
38. The Vulgate of Job 19:24 has celte, "with a chisel." Savile's margin offers the variant certe ("surely"), but the main reading construes and is kept.
39. The "supreme Philosopher" is Christ, quoted from John 10:35. Bradwardine's text reads quam ("Scripture, which the Father sanctified"). In the Vulgate, John 10:35–36 has "Scripture cannot be dissolved" and then, in the next verse, "quem Pater sanctificavit et misit in mundum" ("him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world"). His version conflates the two verses. "This Philosopher" is the author of De mundo just cited.
40. Aristotle, De interpretatione 9 (19a23): "what is, when it is, necessarily is." Bradwardine cites it repeatedly as the Philosopher's axiom.
41. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.8 (1098b11). Savile's "1. Ethic. 11" is the old reference and is kept unchanged.
42. The sentence continues in the next unit (822C): "…do much more immediately and evidently [make] for this consequent necessity of this chapter than for that."
43. Necessitas sequens ("following necessity") is Bradwardine's term for the necessity that attaches to what God wills once he wills it. Its opposite is necessitas praecedens ("preceding necessity"), which compels from before; this is the same as antecedens at 825D. Consequens at 824C is the Boethian name for the same following necessity. I keep the four Latin words apart in English: following, preceding, antecedent, consequent.
44. Savile's numbers follow the medieval divisions. The passages are presumably Physics I.1 (184a16 ff.) and Metaphysics α (II) 1 (993a30 ff.). Savile's numbers are kept in the text.
45. The statement reads quae eueniunt … euenient ("all that happen … will happen"), a present tense. The restatement at 823B and the sense require the future: quae euenient, "all that will happen". I have translated the print and read the sense by the later wording.
46. Porisma (Greek porisma, a corollary or incidental result, as in Euclid): "as by a porism" means as a further consequence drawn from what has been proved.
47. Infrustrabilis in causando: a cause that cannot fail of its effect once it is operating. Frustrari is "to be frustrated or defeated". Necessaria in essendo means "necessary in being", that is, it cannot fail to exist.
48. Praeuolutio and praecognitio are Bradwardine's. They mean God's willing and knowing before the thing exists, and are applied to predestination and foreknowledge. I use "pre-willing" and "pre-cognition" and keep "foreknowledge" for praescientia.
49. Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, De libero arbitrio. Chapters 10 and 11 are cited as Savile gives them. The quotations are not checked here.
50. Hypothesis principalis is printed in the nominative form, but the construction needs a genitive depending on responsionem ("the reply of the contrary opinion and of the principal hypothesis"), with distinguentem agreeing with responsionem. Possibly hypotheseos is meant, or the Greek genitive form is used. I have translated the evident sense and made no emendation.
51. The "simply" of the main text, with the margin's variant simpliciter itaque, does not agree with what follows, since the necessity is then specified as "not simple". The variant does not resolve the difficulty, so I have translated the main reading. The sentence gives the whole contingent event (Peter's being saved contingently) as necessary, and the next sentence limits this to the consequent necessity of Boethius (Consolation V, prose 6), the necessity of condition.
52. Gratia … qua gratis saluat: grace is the will by which God saves "freely", gratis. The gratia/gratis link cannot be kept in English.
53. In the print the margin names stand at separate lines: Luke at 825B, and Matthew, John and Augustine in 825C. The keyed text gathers them under one marker, 825B·3, which I keep.
54. Probably Augustine, In Iohannis euangelium tractatus 37, on John 8:19 ("If you knew me, perhaps you would know my Father also"). "Part 1, homil. 37" is Savile's reference to the old edition.