Book III, Chapter 52

Chapter 52. By way of eternity he shows the opinion of the fiftieth part, previously touched upon.

I have touched on these matters concerning eternity at somewhat greater length than usual, because I judge it very difficult, indeed almost the most difficult thing, for a man who lives in time and is always used to temporal ways. He is used to acting and understanding all things with the differences and relations of flowing time, in the manner of present, past and future, which never stand still but always run. For such a man to raise his intellect is hard. It has been shackled for so long by these temporal phantasms and this cloudy prison. It must be lifted above time, above the instant, and above all temporal differences, so that it may contemplate serenely and freely eternity, which always remains in the same way without changeability, having nothing of flux or succession, nothing earlier or later, nothing greater or less. It must also contemplate God, who is always, in that eternity alone and above time and the instant, correspondingly eternal. He knows, wills and does all things intrinsically, eternally, simply, uniquely, instantaneously and simultaneously; indeed super-simply, super-uniquely, super-instantaneously and super-simultaneously, in a way that surpasses the temporal instant. Difficult as this is, it is nevertheless necessary for anyone who wishes to know the truth in this matter without grave error.

When I was younger, I was ignorant of the Scriptures and the power of God.1 Blinded by this ignorance, or rather blind from birth, and deceived by a false imagining, I thought that the divine cognition and willing, like the human, alternate through the changes of times and are disposed now one way, now another. The whole of Sacred Scripture seems to testify to this for those who read it superficially. For it very often seems to say that God is affected now in one way, now in another toward men, according as they themselves alternate between one way and another in good or evil merits. But how these and similar passages ought to be understood is explained by the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of the first.2 I also suppose this ignorance to be the reason why some who are perhaps like me believe that God wills and knows future, present and past things differently and differently, intrinsically, because he does so not necessarily and necessarily, freely and not freely; and likewise that he wills and knows the same thing as future, as present, and as passed over into the past. For this reason they also deny every kind of necessity from future things. But scientific reason seems able, by its power, to heal this ignorance of eternity,3 and so do the authors of the sciences, the learned Doctors, the wise Prophets, the wiser Apostles, the wisest Jesus Christ, and the whole series of both Testaments. For every essence existing eternally, that is, most simply, most uniformly and most immutably, likewise wills and knows entirely all that it wills and knows. For if its willing or cognition were changed, the essence itself would necessarily be changed, as no one is ignorant, and the twenty-third of the first shows. But God is such an essence, as the same twenty-third and the fifth of the first taught.

Likewise, every action properly measured by an immutable measure is immutable. This is at once clear from the mutual proportion and correspondence of the measure to the measurable and conversely, and it can be confirmed from the tenth of the Metaphysics. But every intrinsic action of God is measured by an immutable measure, namely eternity, as the preceding chapters make plain. Therefore every willing and cognition of God is immutable, immutable, I mean, according to earlier and later. For in eternity there is nothing earlier or later, as appears from what was just shown. Therefore no intrinsic action of God stands, or stood, otherwise intrinsically earlier than itself. For example, it would be free, according to contradiction,4 before the presence or passing of the thing, and otherwise afterward, namely necessary;

and then it would not properly be measured by eternity but rather by time, at least as to being free or necessary, namely in that time at which ‖B1precisely it was free or necessary. Hence also that whole action would be measured by the whole of time, part by part, just as the parts of the heavenly motion, past and future, are measured by like parts of time, and so whole by whole. It is also immutable in this way, that after it is or was, it cannot not be, for the reasons stated. It is immutable, thirdly, in this way, that whenever it is, it cannot not be for then, but it is necessary that it be for then, as also its measure is. For just as any most mutable thing measured by most fluid time or instant is necessarily existing when it is, and when it is measured is necessarily measured for then, by consequent necessity; so also any most immutable action of the most immutable God, measured by most immutable eternity, is necessarily existing when it is, and when it is measured is necessarily measured. For how could it reasonably be affirmed that a most fluid measure, now in a way full of the most fluid thing measured, is necessarily filled by it for now, and that a most firm measure, now in a way full of a most firm thing measured, can for now be wholly emptied of it?

Eternity, then, carries a presential necessity. By it, just as eternity itself must be, so also everything that is in it must be, because it is always [presentially] in it. Now I wish to confirm further, by the testimonies of greater authorities, what has been said of the eternal God, of his coeternal intrinsic actions, and of those actions that are future yet always present in eternity and therefore necessary as they are there. Consider, then, Hermes, in his On the Eternal Word, 43,C156 who says: "These three, Heimarmene, necessity, order, are produced chiefly by the nod of God, and they govern the world by his law and divine reason. From these, therefore, all willing or unwilling is divinely wholly opposed. These are not moved by anger, nor bent by favor, but serve the necessity of eternal reason, which eternity is inexorable, immovable, C2and indissoluble." Consider also Ecclesiasticus 42, which says: "The Lord knew

all knowledge, and looked into the sign of the age," that is, the sign or instant of eternity; and it continues: "announcing the things that have passed, and revealing, concerning what is to come, the traces ‖D1of the ages. No thought escapes him, and no word hides itself from him. He has adorned the great works of his wisdom, which is before the age and unto the age; nothing has been added to it nor will be taken away, and he needs no one's counsel, since all his works are desirable, and what there is to contemplate of them is like a spark. All these things live and remain unto the age, and in every need they obey him." D2Consider also Boethius, more expressly, who in book 5 of the Consolation of Philosophy, last prose,7 immediately adds to his words on eternity, cited in the preceding chapter: "Since, therefore, every judgment comprehends the things subject to it according to its own nature, and since God has always an eternal and present state, his knowledge also, surpassing all movement of time, abides in the simplicity of its presence. It embraces the infinite spaces of past and future, and considers all things in its simple cognition as if they were now being done. And so, if you wish to weigh that presence by which he discerns all things, you will judge it more rightly to be not foreknowledge, as of the future, but the knowledge of a never-failing instant. Hence it is called not praevidentia but providentia, because, set far from the lowest things, it looks out over all things as from the lofty summit of things." So the divine gaze, looking down on all things, that is, looking downward, that is, seeing, does not at all disturb the quality of things, which are present to it, but future in relation to the condition of time. Where also below, from this presence of future things in eternity in the divine cognition, he concludes a similar necessity. "No necessity," he says, "compels the man who walks willingly to walk, although when he walks it is necessary that he walk. In the same way, therefore, if providence sees anything as present, that thing must be, even though it has no necessity of nature.

Now God beholds as present those future things that arise from the freedom of choice. These things, therefore, when referred to the divine gaze, become necessary." All this was set out more fully in the twenty-eighth part of this book. St. Thomas follows this teaching in his commentary on the first book of the Sentences, distinction 38, question five, as the twenty-eighth part of this book recited more fully; and not only there but almost everywhere he treats this matter. Anselm too, in On Concord 3 and 4, imitates the same teaching most plainly, as his words written down in the twenty-seventh part of this book clearly show. A1Robert of Lincoln,8 in On Free Choice, also reverently embraces this teaching of those two, namely Boethius and Anselm. So in chapter seven he says: "Although we have spoken of God's knowledge by way of temporal extension, it is nevertheless well known that nothing in eternity is according to such a manner of temporal extension; but it is not easy to speak otherwise of the simple state of eternity to a weak intellect still engaged in the phantasms of temporal things." Hence he also says above, in 5, that God knows all things in one indivisible and simple glance, eternally, always, alike and immutably. Therefore what he knows he cannot afterward not know. For the relation that these statements, "I am sitting" and "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, before I sit. For he knows future things as present, and he does not know them otherwise when they are future than when they are present or past. Therefore, in the very 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 them before they are. But when things are, or are past, his knowledge has consequent necessity; therefore it has the same necessity before the things occur. Nor must the cause of the Doctors be forgotten.9 They say that all things are necessary in eternity because they are present there, which is equivalent to the Philosopher's cause, namely, that what is, when it is, necessarily is, which

St. Thomas also expresses most clearly where he was cited. This necessity of eternity, therefore, is equivalent to the consequent necessity shown in the fiftieth part of this book. Some authorities, however, which place this necessity in eternity, were adduced to prove the necessity according to higher causes, premised in the twenty-seventh part of this book. They affirm this one much more immediately and evidently than that one, for the reason stated, in a similar case, in the fiftieth part. Such words of Scripture also sufficiently suggest this aforesaid necessity of eternity: "The counsel of the Lord abides forever," "The truth of the Lord abides forever," "His mercy is for the age; he established them forever and for ever and ever," as is clear from the fiftieth part of this book. And who does not know how great a throng of authorities of the Old Testament and the New, and of authentic writers, brings forth such words, and suggests such necessity, or some necessity of one kind or another? The twenty-seventh part of this book also recalls some few of these, all of which, or nearly all, can soundly be understood according to eternity and the necessity in it. Hence Anselm, in On Concord 4, says: "Whatever Sacred Scripture pronounces as necessary concerning things that happen by free choice, it speaks according to eternity, in which everything true is present, and nothing but what is true, immutably."

Corollary

Corollary 30 consists of parts to be noted, and raises objections and resolves them.

From these things, with the good Spirit of God graciously revealing, certain divine treasures can, I hope, be more easily dug out and brought up. They are most precious pearls, long hidden and unknown to me in the field of Scripture,10 namely certain most brilliant and most profound ‖D1truths, which calm tumultuous storms, pacify the assaults of adversaries, and answer very many objections. Of these, after so long a digging, I seem to myself to perceive and see the ‖D2shining images,11 by certain fine rays, though they reveal themselves through a murky and earthy medium. It seems, therefore, clearly to follow from the premises that God could not, earlier in time or in eternity, have not-willed, whether privatively or positively,12 what he now wills, but only by a certain priority of nature or of cause, namely the priority of the willing power to the act. Indeed God, and likewise the created will, could, prior in this present instant, have not willed what he now wills. Each could have, or would be able, by possibility,13 whether by antecedent power, or so far as concerns the nature of its power considered nakedly and absolutely, or by absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, not to will now and for now what it wills now. This holds above all if, according to the opinion of some, a creature were posited to will and not-will solely from itself; it can likewise not will that thing. But by consequent and determined possibility, actuated or ordained, it cannot. The same judgment must be made concerning God's complex knowledge of later things known.14 From these it is, moreover, clear how the following signify, differ and agree in this matter: "he could," "he could have,"

"he would be able" and "he can," "to be able," "possibility," "power" and "ability."15 Moreover, it is clear how power in God and in man toward some act for now, which it does not have now, can be led out or go forth into it, and how it cannot do this. It is also clear how God and a creature are of a certain sort or are not, for instance willing or not willing this, knowing or not knowing. By antecedent, absolute possibility, or possibility of non-repugnance, either could and can not be of such a sort, or be so, without any change; but by ordained or actualizable possibility it cannot do so. Further, the divine willing is always equally free and contingent intrinsically, and therefore equally free and contingent intrinsically with respect to present and past things as with respect to future things. It is also always equally necessary, and therefore equally necessary with respect to future things as with respect to present and past things. Likewise, God, by antecedent possibility, or so far as concerns the nature of divine power considered nakedly and absolutely, or by absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, could and can now and always in the future not will, and never in the past have willed, any willed thing whatever that is later future, present or past. But by consequent and determined power, actuated or ordained, he cannot. And the same holds of God's being able to will, and to have willed, what he will never will, does not will, or did not will, and of his not being able. Likewise concerning being able not to do, and not to have done, what he will do, does, or did, he both can and cannot; and concerning being able to do, or to have done, what he will not do, does not do, nor did, likewise he both can and cannot. Hence also, correspondingly, any thing now future could and can for now not be going to be, and any created thing now present could or can now and for now not be, and any past thing likewise not have been; and correspondingly also they cannot. So also a thing that is not going to be can be going to be, and what is not now can now and for now be, and what is not now past can now be past; and correspondingly they cannot. Besides, concerning future contingents there is determinate truth with God, but with a creature by no means, unless perhaps God reveals it. Indeed, with God there is intrinsically equally determinate truth about future things as about present and past things. Hence also with God there is intrinsically an equal contingency and freedom with respect to present and past things as with respect to future things, and an equal necessity with respect to future things as with respect to present and past things. With lower causes, however, contingency or freedom is not so equal, nor is necessity so equal.

So that these truths may shine out the more brilliantly, according to the maxim of the Philosophers, when their opposites are set beside them, behold what is commonly opposed to them. Some object against the consequent necessity, or the necessity in the divine will according to eternity as stated, at least with respect to future effects. They say that God could earlier have not willed 16 what he wills, and have willed what he does not will, and also have not foreknown what he foreknows, and have foreknown what he does not foreknow; for he is not less powerful than a man is. C1 Hence Peter 17 also says, in the Sentences 1, dist. 40, that God from eternity could have not predestined this man; and above, dist. 38, he says that God could have not foreknown what comes to pass. On this opinion he is supported there by many distinctions and chapters, and very many imitate him. Again, as they say, God could have not done what he does or did, and have done what he does not do or did not do; and moreover to do otherwise and other things than he has done. God can also not do what he will do, and do what he will not do. Otherwise he would not be omnipotent but would be bound. Many widely known authorities of canonical Scripture and of the canonical Doctors bear plain witness to this same thing. For this reason also the opinion of Peter Abelard ‖D1 18 was condemned as heretical by Pope Innocent. It asserted, as Bernard reports in the tenth letter, that God can do or leave undone only those things, or only in that manner, or at that time, in which he does them, and not otherwise. The sealed rescript of the Pope, transcribed in the fourteenth place among the letters of Bernard, attests this. Stephen, Bishop of Paris, 19 also condemned an article asserting that God necessarily does whatever is done immediately by him. D2 "Error," he says, whether it is understood of the necessity of coercion, because it takes away freedom, or of the necessity of immutability, because it posits an impossibility of acting otherwise. Again, it is not absolutely necessary that future contingents come to pass. Hence the revelations, promises, oaths and ‖E1 predictions of God, of Christ and of the Prophets can with a like possibility be falsified. So against this opinion, as against the opposite one, all the absurdities of very many of the chapters premised return. Again, according to what was premised here and in the fiftieth chapter of this book, 20 it is not necessary, by a preceding necessity, that God will what he wills; hence he can oppositely not will it, and by a like reasoning will what he does not will. Since, then, that power is not idle in God, it can go forth into act; hence he can simply will what he does not will.

Hence the arguments by way of immutability brought forward in the thirty-second chapter of this book do not proceed at all. Or if they do proceed, then, since it follows from this opinion that God can not will what he wills and will what he does not will, it will likewise follow that God is mutable. Again, even if God's willing and knowing were necessary in some way, they would not be so necessary with respect to future things as with respect to present and past ones. So it would come about that they were more necessary once the thing is present, either without any change whatever, which the thirtieth chapter of this book refutes, or through a change in him, which the thirty-second chapter of this book undermines. For unless the divine willing and knowing were more necessary with respect to present and past things than with respect to future ones, God could equally not will and not know present and past things, as he could future ones. So those things too not merely could [be otherwise] 21; indeed they could equally not be, and not have been, as these could fail to be going to be. There would also be in them not only contingency to either alternative and freedom, but as much as in future things; and as much necessity in future things as in them. Moreover the truth would be determinate, indeed equally determinate here and there. Both reason and manifold authority plainly forbid all of this. For if a present thing could for now not be, and past things not have been, by some change (from such into not-such, namely), it would be able to do this, which evidently implies a contradiction. It would also be expedient for men to deliberate about past things as about future ones; indeed, it would not be expedient to deliberate about these, just as not about those. According to this opinion a woman who has been deflowered could also be made a virgin again, and the reverse. The Philosopher also says in Peri hermenias 1, last chapter, B1 22 that what is, when it is, necessarily is; and what is not, when it is not, necessarily is not. The authorities of Averroes, Hugh, and Peter set out in the sixth chapter of this book, and not a few others, seem to bear witness to this too. The same Philosopher, in the passage where he first plainly asserts that in past things there is necessity and determinate truth, in future things by no means, but contingency to either alternative, freedom, and indeterminacy of truth, also asserts that if all future things happened by necessity, there would be no need at all to deliberate or to transact business. In Ethics 3, 7, he also shows that deliberation is not about any necessary things whatever, but only about those that are in us, that is, in our power.

He also says below, in the second chapter of the sixth book: 23 "Nothing that has been done is an object of choice. For example, no one chooses that Ilium should have been captured. For one does not deliberate about what is done, but about what is future and contingent; and what has been done cannot come about as not done. For this reason Agathon rightly says: 'For of this one thing even God is deprived, to make unmade what has in fact been made.'" The same Philosopher says in the last chapter of On the World: "So it is established, with regard to what is done, that one of the Fates is called Atropos, that is, unalterable, because all things that have been done are unchangeable." C1 Pliny agrees with these in Natural History 2, saying that God cannot make one who has lived not to have lived, or one who held offices not to have held them, and that he has no right over the past except that of oblivion. Many Catholic Doctors hold the same in many places. Amos 5 seems especially to speak against the restoring of virginity once corrupted: "The virgin of Israel," he says, "has been cast down upon her land, there is none to raise her up." On this the gloss says: so it comes about that the virgin of Israel who has strayed has no one to raise her up, because whoever has once departed from the union, and has lost the virginity which she had with one husband, will not be able to recover her former state, her virginity, and the blessedness of the union. D1 Hence Jerome also, writing to the virgin Eustochium in letter 82, 24 says: "Beware, I beg you, lest God one day say of you, 'The virgin of Israel has fallen, and there is none to raise her up.' I will say it boldly, boldly will I say it: although God can do all things, he cannot raise up a virgin after her fall. He is able indeed to free her from punishment, but he does not wish to crown one who has been corrupted." And this is alleged in the Canon, in the thirty-second cause, question five, Si Paulus.

So that these assaults may be met more safely, the truths premised must be proved, so that with the shield of solid truth about us we need fear no fear whatever.

For the first truth, it must be known that nolle is said privatively when it means not to will, because of the privation of the act of willing; but nolle is said positively when it means an act of will, positive and contrary to the act of willing, as it were to spurn or to hate. This follows plainly from what was premised. For according to what was shown earlier, God is in no way now one way, now another, intrinsically, or temporally, or changeably according to the successive revolutions of the times; rather, whatever he is intrinsically in any way whatever, he is eternally, immutably and stably.

The second truth follows evidently in the same way. For according to what was premised, in eternity there is no priority or posteriority of duration, nor any succession from this to that.

The third seems to be evident by virtue of the first two. For if there is some sort of priority there, as all confess, and none in respect of time nor in respect of eternity, it remains that it is only in respect of nature, since the other modes of priority have no place there.

To show this truth more fully, it must be known that the willing power in God, as also in a creature, precedes its act in a certain way naturally, as a cause precedes its effect, the begetter the begotten, the producer the produced. This mode of priority in divine things has been shown more fully in the thirtieth chapter of the second book of this work. Now this willing power, according to what was shown earlier in the fourth and fifth chapters of this book, is most completely prepared or disposed, insofar as it naturally precedes its free act toward the outside, which it now elicits presentially and eternally. Yet it could have not elicited it, because there is no antecedent necessity there. Rather it stands equally, contingently, indifferently and freely, with respect to contradiction, 25 toward producing that act and not producing it. This natural or causal priority in God the eternal is in a way like temporal priority in temporal man, by which earlier in time he could have not willed what he now wills. So, by a likeness of extension, it is said that God earlier could have not willed what he now wills. Yet what is properly signified there is not temporal priority but only natural or causal priority, that of a power free with respect to contradiction in relation to its free act. In temporal man, however, besides that temporal priority, there is also that natural and causal priority, namely of the willing and active power to the act. For the human willing power, as far as it is concerned, even when most fully prepared, insofar as it naturally precedes its free act, which it now produces presentially, could have not produced it, because there is no antecedent necessity there. Rather it stands equally, contingently, indifferently and freely, with respect to contradiction, toward producing it and not, as is clear from the fourth chapter of this book and the fifth. But to make this clearer, suppose, according to what was set out in the proof of the eighth truth of the fifth chapter of this book, that a rational creature, an angel or a man, was created at a past instant A with a most sufficient disposition for willing, and willed in it well or badly (let us say the angel well, the man badly), and did not exist beyond A. Each of them, then, according to the Corollary of the fourth chapter of this book, willed freely with respect to contradiction in A, the one well, the other badly. Hence each could, and consequently could earlier, have not so willed. For the verb of past time implies a "before," which cannot rightly be understood of temporal priority, nor of any other successive priority, but only of the natural and causal priority stated.

The chief reason why it seems we should say that God and man could earlier have not willed what they will is that contingency and freedom may be preserved in them. These seem necessarily to imply a possibility of the opposite according to temporal priority. But they do not imply it necessarily; they imply only that causal priority stated, as is clear from the seventh and eighth truths of the fifth chapter of this book, from their defences in the sixth chapter of this book, and especially from the sayings of John Scotus set down there. God, therefore, could likewise earlier, causally, have not willed privatively what he now wills, and so also positively. This, I judge, is the understanding of certain Doctors who say that active powers, in a certain prior [stage] to their acts, can fail to produce those acts, and sometimes [produce] contrary ones. I think ignorance of this causal priority in God the eternal is the cause why some perhaps suppose that God the eternal, like temporal man, according to before and after in time, can and does act, is affected and is disposed intrinsically in one way and another, successively. Because of the likeness of these two likenesses 26 and the very great habit of temporal men of measuring temporal powers and actions according to before and after in time, they do not distinguish between them, but judge that causal priority to be temporal. But not so, not so, according to the opinion of the Fathers; we must think far otherwise. So it must be imagined, imitating the image of the truth, that God the eternal willed something later freely, not temporally nor at a temporal instant, but supertemporally and super-instantly with respect to the temporal instant, in the one and most simple instant of eternity; and how he could earlier have not willed what was willed, because there is no priority in time nor in eternity, but only that causal priority stated. So that temporal men, thinking temporally by way of the instant of time, which is best known, may in some fashion rise to the instant of eternity, which is less known, we should imagine, according to the image set out about creatures, that God in the instant of the creation of the world (let that be A) freely willed something lower, and never afterwards temporally had a freely willing power, just as he did not properly have it temporally even then. For let it be imagined, perhaps by way of the impossible, or by way of the possible, as it seems, that no time followed that A itself; or, by way of the impossible, that the freely willing power had been taken away from God himself immediately after A; and how he could earlier have not willed what was willed, because the priority is not of time or of eternity but only of nature or of cause. Nor can anyone posit any successive and long duration before A, as was shown in the first chapter of the first book. Or perhaps, against an obstinate opponent at least, let it be imagined that God did not precede A by any partibly successive duration.

This same thing seems capable of being shown with no such imagination to support it, but by the sole and solid Catholic truth itself. For God created the world in A, and then freely willed that the world be; hence, as was objected at the outset, he could earlier have not willed that the world then be. But by what priority? Not of time, not of eternity, not of successive duration, but only of nature and of cause, as was shown above. Of natural and irrational powers, however, though they precede their acts naturally and causally, we must think otherwise. For there is not there a freedom of contradiction toward acting and not acting, but an antecedent necessity, as is established from what was shown earlier in the second chapter of this book and the fourth. And although the willing power in God ad ‖A1 intra precedes its act in some way causally, by which, namely, he wills himself to be, and wills and loves all his essential attributes, yet he cannot, nor could he earlier causally, not will thus. For he does so by way of nature and of preceding necessity, not of freedom of contradiction, just as he also begets and breathes forth. The forty-third chapter of the first book solves the contrary objections that can be raised.

The fourth truth is clear enough from the third and its proof. For according to the sense of the fourth, perhaps that verse of the second Psalm is to be explained, You are my Son, today I have begotten you. "Day" does not seem to be taken there in the proper sense, for a day of flowing time, but for the day, or instant, of eternity, where nothing is prior or posterior successively, as the premises of this chapter and of the one immediately before it make plain. So Augustine too, expounding that verse, says: B1 27 "'Today' signifies presence; and in eternity nothing is past, as if it had ceased to be, nor is anything future, as if it were not yet. There is only the present, because whatever is eternal always is. 'Today' is understood divinely according to that saying, Today I have begotten you, by which the most sincere and catholic faith proclaims the everlasting generation of the Power and Wisdom of God, who is the only-begotten Son." "Today," then, designates the instantaneous presence of eternity. And yet he does not say "Today I beget you," which nonetheless would be most truly said, but "Today I have begotten you." He says it to signify that there is no temporal priority, or priority of ‖B2 duration, of the Father to the Son, as certain heretics have fabricated. There is only a certain priority of origin, or of cause, of which the thirty-second of the second was treating more fully. In this manner an Angel, now first created, knowing and willing, could say to its act: "I have now, in this present instant, begotten you, or produced you."

For the fifth it must be known that necessity is twofold, namely preceding and following 28, as was said in the second of this book and often afterward. Correspondingly, therefore, power (possibility, or potestas) is twofold, namely preceding and following. The preceding is, as it were, the contrary of preceding necessity. That is, an active power or cause has been posited, most sufficiently prepared, insofar as it naturally and causally precedes its act; it is then possible, according to contradiction, for the act to be produced and not to be produced. For there is there no antecedent necessity, but contingency to either alternative, and liberty of contradiction, as was said in the proof of the third. The following power, however, is opposed in a similar way to following necessity. Power considered nakedly and absolutely is active power insofar as it precedes the act, and is not limited or determined by anything. Absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, can be said to be that by which whatever is called possible that does not formally include contradiction and repugnance in a good consequence, simply and formal. Of this it was said more fully in the first of the first, in the proof of the first supposition. It corresponds to what is necessary simply and wholly absolutely, namely, that whose not-being formally implies and involves the repugnance of contradiction. Hence the Philosopher in Prior Analytics 1 29 defines the contingent, as the opposite of the necessary, in this way: "I say that something is contingent, or a contingent thing, when it is not necessary, namely absolutely, and yet, when it is posited in being, nothing impossible will result on that account." "When it is posited," he says, "in being," namely by that species of obligation which is called positio, "nothing will result," that is, nothing simply impossible will occur in formal consequence, namely simply and wholly absolutely, such as to imply and include a contradiction formally. It is from this absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, that I think God is truly called, and is, omnipotent.

These explanations of terms having first been tasted, this fifth truth, understood of the posterior things willed by God 30, is plainly shown by the fourth and its proof. For who doubts that in God's willing outward there is no preceding necessity but the purest liberty of contradiction, and that therefore, by preceding power according to the explanation of preceding power given above, He is able not to will what He thus wills? Who, again, would say that the omnipotent God, as far as concerns the nature of His power considered nakedly and absolutely, or even of absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, according to the earlier explanations, is unable not to will what He thus wills? Hence John Scotus 31 also, on the first Sentences, dist. 40, the question being proposed, "Whether the predestined can be damned," answers first that predestination, properly taken, says an act of the divine will, namely the election of some intellectual or rational creature to grace and glory. Secondly, he distinguishes the proposed question according to composition and division. Having denied the composite sense, he says that in the divided sense these two, namely "to be predestined" and "to be able to be damned," are said separately, in two categorical propositions, of the same subject. They are therefore not opposites that are true together, nor can one succeed the other, ‖A1 because in eternity there can be no succession. But they are true together insofar as the divine willing is considered as naturally prior to its passage onto that object, which is glory for this man. In that naturally prior moment it is not repugnant to it to be of the opposite object; indeed it could essentially be of the opposite, but not of both at once.

Who, moreover, would concede that a rational creature, above all if it should will and not will solely from itself, produces its free willing from preceding necessity and not from liberty of contradiction? Or even, as it in fact now wills, with God pre-acting, that it produces its free willing from preceding necessity with respect to inferior causes, and not from liberty of contradiction with respect to them? And would he concede that therefore, correspondingly, it is by preceding power in no way able to refrain from producing it 32? Nor will anyone judge that a rational creature, as far as concerns the nature of its power considered nakedly and absolutely, and of absolute power, and of non-repugnance, is unable not to will what it now wills. For how, when this man now wills to read tomorrow, does this simple categorical, "This man does not now will to read tomorrow," of itself, simply and formally, absolutely imply repugnance or include contradiction? For who is so ignorant in obligational positing that, this being admitted as possible, he does not easily defend himself from contradiction and from every absolute impossibility? One does this by conceding everything that formally follows, denying what is repugnant, and rejecting what is irrelevant, as the jurists do. For otherwise, any one thing being posited, one could dispute about anything, replying according to its quality, if one wished, as also about this case. Take this man, who at A, this present instant, is in London. Suppose it is posited as absolutely possible, and likewise admitted, "This man is not in London but in Rome." At A no contradiction formally follows, nor anything absolutely impossible. It is true that as of now, and accidentally, a contradiction and an absolute impossibility may seem to follow, namely that this man, who is in London at A, is not in London but is in Rome at A; yet it is evident that this does not follow per se, simply and absolutely.

For that this man is in London at A is not absolutely necessary, nor does being in London at A belong to this man at A per se and essentially. Rather, as far as the nature of the thing and the absolute power of things go, it would not be repugnant for this not to belong to this man at A. For this man could have set out on his journey long before, and have finally arrived in Rome by A, or earlier. In a similar way too this man who at A is white and seated can, at A, not be, at A, white or seated, but black and standing or lying. And if anyone objects that in a similar way God could, or can, not be, that is most false, as the corollary of the fourteenth of the first teaches.

John Scotus plainly bears witness to this opinion on the first Sentences, distinction two: "I call," he says, "contingently caused that whose opposite could come about when that comes about." And further on, on dist. 39: "Not only," he says, "is it a contingent cause because it pre-existed before that instant in which it causes, and then, as pre-existing, could cause or not cause 33; for just as this being, when it is, is necessary or contingent, so the cause, when it causes, then causes necessarily or contingently. Since, therefore, in this instant the will causes this willing, and not necessarily, it causes it contingently. There is therefore a power of the cause toward the opposite of what it causes, without succession, and that real power is the power of what is naturally prior, as first act, in respect of all that is naturally posterior, as second act. The first act, considered in that instant in which it is naturally prior to the second act, thus posits it in being as its effect contingently; and, as naturally prior, it could not posit it, but posit the opposite in being." The same man, distinguishing liberty in many ways, says there: "There is also another liberty, not so manifest, without any succession. For suppose a created will to have being in one instant only, and to have volition in that instant; it does not then have it necessarily." This he also proves in consequence by the obligational art, positing as possible that this volition in that instant does not exist, as I was doing above.

Henry of Ghent professes this same opinion, Quodlibet 5, D1 question four, saying that this proposition in the divided sense, "What God wills, He cannot not will," has a twofold cause of truth. Of the second he says: "The other cause of truth is: God has not in Himself a power by which the will of what He wills could fail to be present in Him 34. That is false, because the power in God's will concerning the actual being of creatures, as was said, is determined by no necessity. Rather, so far as concerns itself, it is indifferent to either alternative, of willing that thing and of not willing it. It recognizes nothing of the possibility or non-possibility of an act of nilling succeeding, in God's will, after an act of willing, but says a sheer possibility toward either, as far as concerns the nature of the divine will. And in that sense likewise that proposition is false in the divided sense: 'It is not possible for one who is not sitting not to sit.' Therefore, according to him, for one who is not now sitting, it is possible, now and for now, to sit."

The same is confirmed by the saying of Saint Thomas in the first part of the Summa, section 19, question 3 35, as written out in the fiftieth of this work.

The sixth truth, however, is shown by this fifth, and by the proof of it.

For the seventh truth it must be known that the following possibility defined above, the actuated and also ordained possibility, and the determined, actuated or ordained possibility are the same. For just as the necessity by which everything that is, when it is, necessarily is, is called following, determined, actuated and ordained, so also the opposite possibility, by which, according to some, something that is, while it is, can oppositely not be, is named by the same names, on account of a lack of proper names or ‖A1 by-names, that is, of proper differentiae. This seventh truth, so understood, plainly follows from what was shown earlier here and in the fiftieth of this work above. For it was shown here and there that an act of the divine will, as of the human, when it is, necessarily is, by following necessity; wherefore, by the opposite possibility, it is not possible for it not to be.

For the eighth it must be known that God's knowledge is twofold, namely incomplex and complex, in the manner in which it is granted to an ignorant and ‖B1 stammering man to know and express it, as the eighteenth of the first showed more fully. God's complex knowledge of things known that are posterior to the divine will is, by the same eighteenth, through the divine will. Hence it also follows that will, negatively and affirmatively, according to the truths set forth about it. But God's incomplex knowledge, that of simple apprehension, in no way follows the divine will. For God so knows all knowable things necessarily and simply. Although the cognitive power in God in some way precedes this act naturally or causally, it is nevertheless in no way possible that He should not always produce and have that act, as was said of similar matters in the proof of the third truth. Of God's complex knowledge of things known that are prior to the divine will, the same must be held as of His incomplex knowledge.

For the ninth I judge it should be held that potuit 36, said of God, in no way properly signifies temporal priority, nor any successive priority, as appears from the premises. It signifies natural or causal priority of a power free according to contradiction toward its free act. According to that priority, namely insofar as the cause preceded, it could thus have refrained altogether from producing that act, as was said above in the proof of the third truth. If, however, it is said of a creature, both priorities can fittingly be designated, since both are found in it, as the proof of the third made plain. The word potuit, of past time, is said more fittingly and customarily of the past than of the present. So, for instance, God could have been unwilling to create the world at the past instant A at which He created; and likewise of creatures, namely of an Angel and a man created and willing at the past instant A, as was said in the proof of the third. It can also be said of the present, though less consonantly, as the fourth truth expressed. Potuisset, however, as every mind assents, signifies the same priority, and this more closely than potuit to this causal priority according to human understanding, and more remotely from temporal priority; and it is likewise said more fittingly of the past than of the present. Yet it is said of the present more fittingly than potuit is. It can also fittingly designate power considered nakedly and absolutely, or absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, as the fifth truth spoke. So it may be said that this man could have done this or that, that is, insofar as it belonged to the nature of absolute power, such that no repugnance would formally have followed. Posset, as every mind conceives, signifies the same natural and causal priority, yet more closely, according to human conception, to this causal priority, and more remotely from temporal priority, than potuit or even potuisset. It also quite apparently signifies absolute power and power of non-repugnance, as was said of potuisset. It is, however, said more fittingly of the present than potuit or potuisset; for it is of present time, but is not said of the past, as those are, whereas it is said of the future, as those are not. For according to the logicians it is an ampliative verb, so that under the form of the present tense it can be extended further to the future, as when one says, "God could tomorrow not will what tomorrow He will will, and do what He will not do." Here, however, temporal priority is in no way properly designated, but natural or causal priority, or even absolute power, or power of non-repugnance. Potest is likewise said for two times, namely present and future, because it is an extensive or ampliative verb, as was said above. If it is said of the future, as "God can tomorrow not will what tomorrow He will will, and not do what He will do," it does not properly signify temporal priority, but causal, or absolute, priority, and that of non-repugnance, as was said of posset. If it were said of a creature, say of a man, both priorities could be designated, as was said of potuit. That is also true of potuisset when it is said of the past, and of posset when it is said of the future. But if it is said of the present, and for the present, as "God now can, and for now, not will what He now wills,"

it does not so plainly signify the natural or causal priority mentioned. Hence the mind of the hearer does not so readily admit that saying as it would if potuit, potuisset or posset were said. It recoils somewhat and resists, as if it were said of a man, "A man now willing something can, now and for now, not will it," or "A man now white or seated can, now and for now, not be white or seated." For the mind takes the underlying thing together with the quality or disposition which it now has, which at first sight it also indicates to be necessarily for now. Every mind likewise takes it as a principle, as it were naturally implanted in it and well known, that "Everything that is, when it is, necessarily is." So it also rejects, and does not admit, the contrary possibility. Again, when it is said, "God or man can, now and for now, not will what he now wills," if this is understood of power considered nakedly and absolutely, insofar as it belongs to the nature of power, or of absolute power, or of non-repugnance, it is true and truly to be conceded, as can be gathered from the proof of the fifth truth set out above. Yet the mind receives such a saying much more willingly with posset than with potest, because the signification of the former becomes known more easily in posset than in potest. In a similar way a difference can perhaps also be assigned between volui, voluissem, volo, vellem ("I willed, I would have willed, I will, I would will"); feci, fecissem, facio, facerem; and the like.

"To be able" (posse), however, possibility, power and potestas seem to signify a power preceding its act naturally or causally, able freely, according to contradiction, to do that act and not to do it. According to this opinion the Philosopher says in Metaphysics 9, 10 37 that rational powers, or powers with reason, are of contraries; and further on, in 18, that powers according to reason are of contradiction, since what is able to move in this way is able also not in this way, as the fourth of this book and the twenty-fifth of the first showed more fully. They can also signify the naked and absolute power, or power of non-repugnance, spoken of above, according to the opinion of the same Philosopher in Prior Analytics 1, recited above in the proof of the fifth. For so it is said that in God there was, is, or will be the ability, possibility, power and potestas of not willing what He willed, wills, or will will; and the same can likewise be said of a creature. I thought these matters should be treated somewhat at length, for this reason: knowledge of them greatly distinguishes, elucidates and clears the understanding of Sacred Scripture, of the Doctors, and of all who speak in common, while ignorance of them greatly confounds, clouds and obscures it.

This depth, and the other preceding ones, that most subtle investigator Robert, Bishop of Lincoln 38, digging most profoundly even to the foundation in them, found; and he showed most clearly how God earlier could, and could not, have failed to know or to will what He knows or knew, wills or willed. He showed also how He would be able and would not be able, is able and is not able, not to know and not to will what He knows and wills. He did so after he had said, in On Free Choice 7, that in God there is the power that He might not have known what He knows; and in chapter eight he argues thus against it: "Whatever is, while it is, necessarily is, and it is not possible that it not be then, when it is; just as for Socrates to be white, if it is true at instant A, he has no ability that it be false at A. If, then, what is true at instant A cannot be false at that same A, then, since eternity, lying at the limit of simplicity, is simpler than any instant, what is true in eternity cannot be false in that same eternity. But that God knows A in eternity is true; therefore there is no ability in Him not to know A." In chapter nine, replying by way of final determination, he says thus: "Just as light is prior to brightness not in time but by nature and cause, so, even if the light were eternal and without beginning, nonetheless the light generating the brightness would be prior to the brightness generated, naturally and causally. And just as, according to Chrysostom, the Father too is prior to the Son neither in eternity nor in nature but in cause (for he says thus on In the beginning was the Word: 'The Father precedes the Word not by nature but by cause; the Father precedes the Word causally; the Son precedes all things that were made through Him, naturally'), so there power in some way precedes act, not in eternity, nor perhaps in nature, since they are one in nature and one nature, but perhaps power there precedes act by cause, and also by a priority from which the consequence is not convertible. So animal precedes man, though power and act are not one thing and another in substance; so the Father is prior to the Son in cause, though Father and Son are one in substance. This causal priority is suggested by the co-signification of the past tense through this word potuit. When I say, 'God could not have known A,' and when it is said, 'God would be able not to have known A,' there is suggested freedom of choice, and a rational power, one by nature toward this, which is in act, and toward its opposite. This predication, therefore, when I say 'God can,' can turn back upon the very nature that is able, and so it is true that He can do either of the opposites. So what Anselm says is true: 'God can not will what He wills.' And it is evident that He can will what He wills, and so He can do the opposites. For so, by the force of the expression, on account of the priority suggested by this word

potuit, the predication of that same word turns back, and likewise of this word posset. Or this predication can turn back upon Him considered under the aspect of one acting 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 in God's nature there is power toward both, which causally precedes both; but with respect to Him acting one of the two, since He is immutable, there is no power toward the opposite of what is in act. For just as, according to Anselm's distinction, the free will of a man, where power precedes the act temporally, can not will, and cannot not will, but necessarily wills (for it can not will before it wills, because it is free, and when it already wills it cannot not will, but necessarily wills, since it is impossible for it, with respect to the same thing, at once to will and not to will), so perhaps in God, where there is no temporal precedence but a causal one, if God's nature itself is regarded not under the aspect of acting, and is compared with the free will of man bare of act before he wills, it will be true to say, 'God can not will what He wills.' But if the divine nature itself is regarded under the aspect of acting, and is compared with the free will of man when he already wills in act, it will be true to say, 'God necessarily wills what He wills, and does not will what He does not will.' For it is impossible for Him not to will what He wills, or to will what He does not will. This distinction, which temporal priority makes in our power and act, causal priority makes there likewise, as does the subject upon which the diverse predication turns back, by diverse consideration 39. But the distinction is more manifest where temporal priority accompanies it.

"By such a distinction too, in the consideration of the subject, when 'to be able' is predicated of God, we say that God can create many worlds, or infinite worlds, and yet that He cannot do this. For if God's nature itself is regarded, being infinitely powerful, it can indeed do this as regards power. But if that same nature is regarded in its most ordered acting, it is impossible for it to create many worlds, and impossible for it not to create one world; yet as regards its power this is possible. Likewise God could, so far as power goes, have freed man otherwise than through the death of His Son; but if He is considered as doing all things most fittingly, He could not have freed man otherwise. Hence Augustine says that He could have freed him otherwise; Anselm, however, that He could not have freed him otherwise; and so likewise many other Authors. And to make evident what has already been said, let us posit that created free choice does not exist before it actually wills something, rightly or not rightly, as perhaps was the free choice of the Angel and of the first man. Did not the Angel, according to this, when he was simultaneously with the first act of existing, will in an act of willing something well or badly (Gabriel, for instance, something good, Lucifer something bad), and was what he willed in the free power of each, and could each have been unwilling ‖C1 the opposite of what he willed 40? Otherwise neither would the one be praiseworthy, nor the other blameworthy, nor would they have had freedom of choice. Let their state also be understood to have been simple, namely instantaneous or eternal. Would not each, simultaneously with the act of one of the opposites, have had in the same indivisible the power toward the opposite act? And would not such a predication be true of each, 'This one can will the opposite of what he wills, or not will what he wills,' if the predication turns back upon the nature of free will considered nakedly, without its act? And because by the force of the expression the predication with this verb potuit or posset so turns back, every mind at once conceives this to be true: 'The first Angel, at once, together with the first [instant], was, and willed this; he could, or would be able, not to have willed the same.' And because a present verb, according to the usage of speech, turns back more upon the subject according to the disposition which it has in act, the mind at once conceives this rather to be false: 'He can not will what he wills,' if he wills in the indivisible, as was posited."

The same writer, further on, resolving the argument recited above, writes thus: "It is clear, then, that what is, necessarily is while it is, D1 and yet it is not unfitting, but for something it is necessary, that in the same indivisible there be a power toward the opposite of what is, as in the example given about the Angel; and that the predication of necessity and of the possibility of the opposite does not turn back upon what is simply the same and considered in the same way." According to this understanding, therefore, I think the statements of Lombard alleged to the contrary can reasonably be explained; and Robert of Lincoln understands him in this way in similar matters, in On Free Choice 7, saying: "There is in God an eternal power that, without beginning, He might not have known what He knows. Hence the Master in the Sentences: God could have created nothing, and so have foreknown nothing created. He has therefore the power that He would never have created, and never have known many things which He created and knew. From this power, which is toward either of the opposites, namely to have known and not to have known without beginning, there follows the contingency of things." The words of Lombard himself also plainly express this understanding. E1 For in the first of the Sentences, dist. thirty-nine, he says thus: "Just as the divine essence cannot be increased or diminished, so neither can the divine knowledge; and yet it is granted that He can know what He does not know, and can not know what He knows, because something that is not could be an object of His knowledge, and something that is could fail to be an object, without any change in the knowledge itself." "Posse," he says, "and posset"; and these, according to the explanations given above, signify a power free as to contradiction, insofar as it precedes its free act naturally or causally, or else power considered nakedly and absolutely, namely as far as concerns the nature of power. Hence also further on, in the same distinction,

"If," he says, "you say that God can know or foreknow what from eternity He has not known or foreknown, that is, that He has the power of knowing and foreknowing from eternity, and now something, and yet that thing is neither foreknown nor future, it is true" 41; and in dist. forty: "When foreknowledge or predestination of God is in question, possibility and impossibility are to be referred to the power of God, which has always been and is the same, A1 because predestination, foreknowledge and power are one in God." In a similar way the Philosopher seems to speak in Peri hermeneias 1, last [chapter] 42, denying necessity in future contingents, and affirming that in them it is possible to be and not to be, and that in them it happens to be and not to be. These words, however, signify power insofar as it precedes its act naturally, as appears from the premises; or rather, as seems more likely, insofar as it precedes its act temporally, through which precedence natural precedence also can reasonably be intimated, as was said above. That he is speaking of temporal priority the example shows well: "Many things," he says, "are manifest to us as being so, such as that this cloak can be cut up and is not cut up, but is first worn out; likewise it is also possible for it not to be cut up; for it would not be possible for it to be worn out first, unless it were possible for it not to be cut up."

It also seems not out of keeping with the text that when he says "it is possible for this to be and not to be," he is speaking of absolute power, as was clear in the twenty-ninth part of this 43, that is, as far as the nature of power considered bare and absolutely is concerned. Hence, immediately after reciting his last words, he concludes and adds: "So in other future things, that is, from the cutting or not cutting of the garment, whatever are said to be of this kind according to power, it is clear that not all things come about from necessity," namely from a necessity repugnant to this power. The sayings of Scotus on Sentences 1, dist. 2, 39 44, and especially the fortieth, indicate this same opinion; they are cited in the proof of the fifth part of this. B1 Otherwise it can be said that Lombard 45 is not speaking there by way of definition and according to his own opinion, but rather by way of inquiry and according to the opinion of others. For in the fortieth distinction, where he had been cited, he raised the question of predestination, "Can the predestined man be damned?", and says: "In the solution of this question I would rather hear others than teach." And below: "It is conceded by some that even now it can be, God not having predestined from eternity 46. Likewise they say of things foreknown and of foreknowledge what they by no means concede in the actions or operations of God and of men; for once something has been done or said, they do not concede that it can not be, or not have been." A third response could be given, which does not please me: to deny the very thing outright in this matter. This seems to be the view of St Thomas on Sentences 1, dist. 38, question 5, where he plainly rejects the response that seems to be his, as is more fully recited in the fiftieth of this.

The tenth truth, as to both parts of it, follows plainly from what has been premised. For the affirmative part follows from the fifth and sixth, and the negative part follows evidently from the seventh. And if someone objects that, were there a power that could in no way pass into act, that power would be wholly idle, so that if there is some power that in some way cannot pass into act, it is at least idle in that respect, and therefore some power in God is in some way idle: someone could press this argument, perhaps more sophistically than demonstratively, by arguing similarly. In God there is power for the infinite division of a continuum into equal parts, for the infinite creation of finite foot-long quantities, for inscribing in or circumscribing about an assigned circle a figure of infinitely many rectilinear angles that is equilateral and equiangular, and for creating, to any finite continuous or discrete quantity whatever, what is to be created. Yet this power cannot be brought to act, for it would involve a contradiction for it to be so. But it can more truly be said that the power by which God can for now positively not will what he now wills is a rational power, and so is the same for contraries, and therefore is now in act, though not of not-willing but of willing. Hence Robert of Lincoln, On Free Choice 8, argues against this possibility in this way: D1 "If this possibility is without act and void, it is not deducible into act." 47 Replying below at 9, he says: "It is true that a possibility that is impossible to be led into act is no possibility, or is void; and yet the possibility by which God can not know, or could have not known what he knows, is something and is not void, because it is a rational possibility and the same for opposites, and whichever of the opposites it be, it is brought into its act, since it is one and the same for both." Nevertheless, as it seems, this does not wholly settle the mind of the objector. For the objector means that every active power can issue not merely into some act, but into any act whatever in respect of which it is called a power, and when, or for when, it is called a power. Hence also the power of willing in God or in man, which is called power now and for now toward an act that it does not now have, can for now issue into that act. So, approaching the matter more closely,

it seems that one should say this: power in respect of some act, when and in the way that it is in respect of that act, can issue into it, but in the way in which it is not in respect of it, by no means. Now the power of willing in God and in man is, for now, power to the act opposite to the one it now has only by preceding possibility, and as far as the nature of power considered bare and absolutely is concerned, that is, of absolute power or power of non-repugnance. So understood, it can, or (to put it in the way more acceptable to the mind) it could for now issue into that act, as is evident from the sixth truth and the fifth and their proofs. By the following possibility, however, determined, actuated, or ordered by the act it now has, it by no means can; rather, in this way it is necessary that that power for now have this act and lack the contrary. Perhaps one may still object by asking: is a power of willing of this kind before the act, or with the act? For this division is by opposites, as the Philosophers and all commonly attest. Not before the act, because in this instant it is not, nor can it be, before and after; nor with the act, because the act is not. Here, however, one can answer as above: that that power is with the act, namely the act it now has. But if he is speaking of the act in respect of which it is called a power, which it does not have, it can be said that it is not before that act in time, nor with it, because that act is not. So it is with a man's power of willing in respect of act A, which he can have tomorrow but will not have. Hence that division mentioned seems to be understood by no means of possible acts alone, but only of acts really present or future. Or it can be said that there is there a certain priority, not actual but habitual, not temporal but natural or causal, by which that power could produce that act beforehand; and such priority and posteriority is, without repugnance, simultaneous with the simultaneity of a temporal instant.

The eleventh truth follows from the fifth, sixth, and eighth. For if God or a creature wills or knows something now, then now and for now he can not will it and not know it. And this cannot be through change between opposite terms, namely from such into not-such, because it is not through change in the one willing or knowing, nor in the thing willed or known, nor in any third thing. Not through change in the one willing or knowing, as all concede of God, which the fifth and twenty-third of the first teach. Again, neither is it possible for this to come about in the Creator, nor in the creature, through change in him or in it, past or future, as no one fails to know; nor in the present instant. For that change would necessarily be between opposite terms, namely from such into not-such, or from not-such into such, as every successive or sudden change necessarily is. But no such change can occur in this present instant; for it evidently includes a contradiction that, of one willing A in B at the present instant, there should come to be in B one not willing A in B. For it includes that the same man in the same B at the present instant would will the same A and not will it. Nor is it possible for this to come about through a change in the thing willed or known, because not in the thing willed or known as future, which for now can be not future, and about which it would most seem so. For it formally implies a contradiction that something be changed from non-future to future, or from future to non-future,

except by its being posited in existence, as the eighteenth of this shows. Nor can this come about through change in the thing willed or known as present, for this includes a contradiction, as was shown above in a similar case; nor in the thing willed or known as past, as no one fails to know, and this can be shown as it was shown above of the future. Nor again is it possible for this to come about through change in some third thing, as any mind grasps, since that seems irrelevant. Likewise this man who in the present instant A is in London, white and sitting, can by this possibility in A not be white in London, nor sitting; indeed he can be in A in Rome, black and standing, as the proof of the fifth shows, and not through any change, as no one fails to know. John Scotus plainly testifies to this opinion, as appears in the proof of the fifth truth; Henry of Ghent also holds it in agreement, Quodlibet 5, question four, D1 48 objecting and replying in this way: "What God wills, he cannot not will, because otherwise his will would be changeable." It must be said that that proposition, namely "what God wills he cannot not will," can be about the thing (de re) or about the saying (de dicto), divided or composite. If it is about the saying and composite, it is true; if about the thing and divided, the sense is that "what God wills, etc.," that is, God does not have the power of not willing what he wills. By force of the wording this can have a twofold cause of truth. One of them is: God does not have the power by which he would otherwise not will what he now wills. This is true, because such a power would posit in God a possibility, in succeeding, concerning God's will, of an act of not-willing after an act of willing; for thus he would be changeable, as the objection proceeds. But according to that sense, that proposition is false in the divided sense: "It is not possible that one sitting not sit," because a man sitting now can afterwards actually not sit. The other cause of truth is: God does not have in himself a power by which unwillingness of what he wills could be in him. This is false 49, because the power in God's will concerning the actual being of creatures,

as has been said, is determined by no necessity. Rather, as far as itself goes, it is to either, to willing that and to not willing, connoting nothing about the possibility or non-possibility of succession in God's will, of an act of not-willing after an act of willing, but it states precisely a possibility to either, as far as the nature of the divine will is concerned. In this sense that proposition is likewise false in the divided sense: "It is not possible that one not sitting not sit"; nor does such a power posit any changeability. For just as two things are required for actual change, namely power simply to the contrary of what is now present, and the actual succession of one of them after the other, so two things are required for changeability, namely the power mentioned, and power to actual succession. That is, the power by which something is to either must be power to the succession of one after the other, which can in no way happen regarding God's will; hence there is no changeability either, though in some sense he can not will what he wills, and therefore in no way wills it of necessity. Hence, of that which he has always from eternity willed, and wills, and will will, he simultaneously from eternity had, and has, and will have the power of not willing. He could from eternity not have willed it, or have been unwilling from eternity; he can now not will it, and will be able in eternity not to will it, or not to will it in eternity; and all this without any changeability in himself.

For the twelfth truth it must be known that "actualizable power" can be said to be not that wholly absolute power, the power of non-repugnance mentioned above, but that which, in the common way of understanding and speaking, is said to be able to issue into act, as it is said of one sitting that he can stand, of one existing in London that he can be in Rome, and the like. The twelfth, so understood, is evidently known from the thirty-second of this.

The thirteenth truth follows manifestly from what was earlier shown in this chapter. For it was shown above that every intrinsic action of God is measured by eternity, in which there is nothing prior or posterior, nor any changeability at all; that every intrinsic action of his is intrinsically immutable in every respect; and that no action of his is intrinsically in one way and then in another, for example free and not free, according to prior and posterior. Hence no willing of his before (for example before the presence or passing of the thing) is more free than after, that is, when the thing has become present or has slipped into the past; nor is it less free after than before; nor less free before and more free after, for the same reason, as no one fails to know. Hence it always remains equally free, immutably, intrinsically. Likewise, though in the divine willing there is consequent necessity, there is nevertheless in it contingency and freedom of contradiction from preceding necessity, as was shown in the fourth and fifth of this. This freedom always remains equal, whether the thing willed is first future, then present, and finally past. For the incomplex or simple cognition of the thing in God, and his power of willing, and all things causally prior to the act of will, remain eternally equally potent, equally causing, equally acting that act. The reasons of the thirtieth of this also show this; for otherwise

the eternal God would be changed intrinsically; indeed he would be wounded beyond healing, maimed beyond cure, and slain beyond revival, as the reasons and authorities of the same thirtieth make manifest. D1 So the Philosopher also says well that the divine will, or God willing, is an immovable law moving all things, and equally inclining to us 50, and therefore remains always equally free. So he also adds: "receiving no corruption, correction, or transposition," as the same thirtieth cited more fully; Avicenna, likewise cited there, agrees with him. Moreover, who would steal or snatch even the smallest portion of divine freedom? Who, further, will presume to make his God newly not supremely but remissly free, not supremely but remissly perfect, not supremely but remissly powerful, and hence not omnipotent? Who, I say, will thus presume to make nonsense of all reason, to falsify all faith, and to nullify all the creeds? Otherwise, too, a thing willed later would diminish divine freedom and subject it to a new servitude; so that that freedom could be wholly taken away and removed. No one doubts that all these things are false, as can be more fully known from the same thirtieth. Likewise divine freedom is no more handmaid or slave than human freedom, but is equal with respect to the future, the present, and the past.

The fourteenth truth, the very close sister of the thirteenth, can be plainly known through that one and through its proof. For just as in human will or willing there is equal necessity with respect to the thing willed, whether future, present or past, so also in the divine will; for it is in no way increased extrinsically from outside (that is, by the presence or the passing-by of the thing), nor from within, since the eternal God is immutable intrinsically in every respect. Finally, there is no necessity there except what follows from the firmness and stability of the act of the divine will, as is clear from the fiftieth of this 51; but that act always remains intrinsically, equally stable and equally firm, like the volitive power and the other things intrinsic to God himself. These things too are plainly shown by the thirtieth of this.

Moreover, I take the cause of the contrary error to be ignorance of eternity, together with an imagining by which some temporal men, perhaps, imagine and suppose that God's intrinsic willing and knowing is intrinsically varied according to the revolutions of times and of temporal things, as are actions and other temporal things. For they hold that things are at one time future, at another past, intrinsically with God, and therefore that they stand now one way and now another with him; yet this conflicts with the instant of an eternity that is most indivisible, most immutable and most stable, as is clear from this and from the fifty-first of this. In accordance, then, with what has been set out about eternity in these chapters, so that we may ascend from the better-known instant of time to the less-known instant of eternity,

it seems that one should imagine, plausibly, in this way: as though God, in the instant of the creation of the world (in which let us suppose ourselves to be, an instant that no succession preceded and none would follow), standing at the centre of a circular line bent back from the east through the south and the west to the east, were by his most efficacious will, going out as it were along each of the radii to each of the points of the circumference, creating now at once all things (in truth present, past and future according to before and after in time), according to before and after in the line, corresponding to the prior and posterior in time, with the beginning of the line placed in the east. Just as, then, if it were so, these created things would have a similar order among themselves according to before and after in the line, but by no means with God, all of them standing equally to him, and he 52 equally to all; so also now these temporal things, compared with one another, have a similar order according to before and after in time; but with God, in the most simple and most unique instant of eternity, by no means: there all things that are temporally past, present and future, not only are present but remain equally present always. Nothing arises there, nothing dies, nothing there is future, nothing past, but only present in the most instantaneous way, as this chapter and the next make plain. Hence Hermes too, On the World and Heaven 2, says thus 53, C1 "As the circle stands to the centre, so the temporal world stands to eternity." Therefore, even if it were so in reality, as that imagining supposes, the divine will would be contingent and free (indeed equally contingent and equally free with freedom of contradiction and from preceding necessity), and necessary (indeed equally necessary with subsequent necessity), with respect to whatever thing willed, prior or posterior in position relative to one another, but not with respect to God. So it is also now with respect to whatever thing willed, prior or posterior in time relative to one another; but with God it is in the instant of an eternity that is present and equally present. How, however, all things are said to be present eternally with God, and to be in him and to live in him, although the fourteenth of this explains it, still

needs, perhaps, to be explained more plainly for the somewhat slow. I reckon this to be said causally, according to that figure of trope expounded in the twenty-sixth of the second, by which an effect is at times named by the name of its cause; according to which the Philosopher too says, in Physics 4, 23 54, D1 that something is said to be in something as the caused in the cause: as, for example, the affairs of subjects are in the King, and in general what is moved in the first mover; and this, according to him in the same place, is likewise true of the things caused by the formal cause and the final. And because, according to the same in Metaphysics 12 and Averroes there, comment 6, God stands in this threefold kind of cause toward all things, all things can be said to be in God: as in an efficient cause, because he makes and creates all things; as in a formal cause, because he forms all things and preserves them in being; and as in a final cause, because he disposes, perfects and consummates all things. Wherefore Hermes too, On the Eternal Word 38, says, "All things are from him, D2 and in him, and through him"; which, as I think, the Apostle also meant in Romans 11 when he said, "From him, and through him, and in him are all things." Hence too Esther 13: "Lord, in your dominion all things are placed." All things are therefore said to be present eternally with God because the causes of things,

that is, God's knowing and willing, are present eternally with him. According to this figure the Apostle also says in Hebrews 7 that Levi was in the loins of his father, that is, of Abraham, E1 when Melchizedek met him, [Levi,] who nevertheless followed him in the third generation 55. Moses seems to hold this opinion, or rather the Lord through Moses, in Deuteronomy 32, when he says: E2 "Are not these things stored up with me, and sealed in my treasuries?" And the Prophet says, or rather the Lord through the Prophet, E3 "The beauty of the field is with me," Psalm 49 56. On which Augustine: E4 "'The beauty of the field, the abundance of all things that spring up on the earth, is with me.' How with him? With him were all things that were to come, and with him all things are to come, and not all past things are taken away from him; with him all things are established, by a certain knowledge of the ineffable wisdom of God in the Word." It is better, however, according to that figure, to say that things neither were nor will be, but are present causally, in the divine willing and knowing, eternally with God; for nothing at all befalls these causes, or departs from them, as something future or past, as the caused things themselves approach or depart,

but altogether similarly, and in no way otherwise intrinsically, God knows and wills a thing first future, then present, and at last past; wherefore all things can be said to be with God eternally not only present but equally present. Hence the Apostle, Romans 4: A1 "He calls the things that are not as the things that are," that is, altogether similarly, and not dissimilarly in any way intrinsically. The Gloss: "Thus the things that are to be already are with God; for with God what is to be by his disposition or predestination has already been done"; A2 hence elsewhere: "Who made the things that are to be." Wherefore Ecclesiasticus too, chapter 23, says: "To God all things were known before they were created, and so after they were completed he looks upon all"; A3 which, understanding it according to the exposition set out above, Augustine, On the Trinity 15, 13, says means that God did not know created things otherwise than things to be created: "For nothing of his wisdom

was added to it from them, but, with them existing, he remained as he was. For it is written thus in Ecclesiasticus: 'Before they were created all things were known to him, so also after they were completed.' 'So', he says, 'not otherwise.'" The same Augustine, in On Genesis according to the letter 5, 18, speaking of the things made by God, says: "Before they were made, they both were and were not: they were in God's knowledge, they were not in their own nature. And to God himself I dare not say that he learned of them in any other way, once he had made them, than in that way in which he knew them in order to make them, with whom there is no change, nor the overshadowing of a moment." For a like reason I judge it rightly said that things past, present and future were, or are, life in God, because, in so far as they are there, they in no way at all die; for no intrinsic mode of divine knowing or willing dies or can die. Wherefore too, according to the Apostle, "God alone has immortality," that is, immutability intrinsically in every respect, B1 as the thirtieth of this expounded more fully. Hence John 1: "What was made, in him was life," or "is life," according to the translation that Augustine expounds; on which, in homily 1, he says thus: "What is this: the earth was made, yet is it not itself life? But in Wisdom itself there is, spiritually,

a certain principle by which the earth was made; this is life." Having shown this by the example of the craftsman and the chest, he concludes and adds: "So then, since the wisdom of God, through which all things were made, contains all things according to art before it fashions them, the things here that are made through that art are not at once life, because they are not so in their own nature; but whatever has been made is life in him." The same Augustine, in On Genesis according to the letter 5, 15, says: "All these things, after they were made, were in the knowledge of the maker; and certainly they are better there, where they are truer, where they are eternal and unchangeable. Further, if he knew them before he made them, assuredly before they were made they were known with him in that way in which they live everlastingly and unchangeably and are life; but once made, they are in the way in which each creature is in its own kind." And in Confessions 1, 6: C1 "You, Lord, live always, and nothing dies in you; with you stand the causes of all unstable things, and of all mutable things the immutable origins abide, and of all irrational and temporal things the reasons live everlastingly." This opinion Parmenides, C2 Plato, Aristotle and Ammonius attest. For Ammonius writes on Peri hermeneias 1, the last [chapter],

in this way: "As Timaeus taught us, and as Aristotle theologizing declares, and before these Parmenides, both in Plato and in his own poems: with the gods there is nothing either past or future, since each of these is non-being, the one no longer, the other not yet; the one has been changed, the other is born to be changed; D1 but the gods truly exist, and it is not possible to sustain change even in thought. What is unchangeable must altogether precede that which is changed in whatever way, so that what is changed may remain. Wherefore, in the gods, having the character of a principle toward beings, it is impossible to consider past and future, but all things with them are in one fixed eternal now, the temporal measures emerging together with the subsistence of the whole itself and measuring only those things that have subsistence or operation according to time." And below: "We shall by no means allow it to be said that the knowledge of the gods runs along with the flux of things, or that there is anything with them either past or future, or that 'was' or 'will be' is said of them, as we assumed in the Timaeus, since these signify a certain change. 'Is' alone belongs to them, and not that 'is' which is counted together with 'was' and 'will be' and divided along with them, but that which is understood before all temporal intimation, and which signifies their unchangeability and freedom from decline; which indeed the great Parmenides too proclaims, together with the intellectual, in being 57: 'For it neither was nor will be, but only is.'" This imagining set out above (as though God were creating all things at once in an instant, and as though all future and past things were instantaneously present with him, and as though his willing and knowing had now a similar and equal necessity, just as they would have then), the things now shown just before seem to confirm; E1 and Ecclesiasticus too, though obscurely, seems to have put it forward, who in chapter 42 says thus: "The Lord knew all knowledge, and looked into the sign of the age,

announcing the things that have passed and the things that are to come, revealing the traces of the ages. No thought escapes him, and no word is hidden from him. He has adorned the great works of his wisdom, which is before the age and unto the age; nothing has been added, nor will anything be diminished, and he needs no one's counsel. How desirable are all his works, and what is to be considered is like a spark! All these things live and abide forever, and in every need all things obey him." Augustine too expounds this more clearly, in On the Trinity 4, 1, and says thus: "There is one Word of God, through which all things were made, A1 which is unchangeable truth. There, principally and unchangeably, are all things at once, not only those that now are in this whole creation, but also those that were and those that are to be; but there they neither were nor are to be, but only are; and all are life, and all are one, and, what is more wonderful, there is one life. For all things were so made through him that whatever has been made

in these things is life in him and is not made." The same Augustine, in To Simplicianus 2, 17, treating of the repentance and the foreknowledge of God, says: "When someone, going into these matters with a clearer examination, has asked how even foreknowledge itself befits God, and has found also that the notion of this word is far and wide surpassed by the ineffable divinity of him of whom it is said, he will not wonder that both could be said of him on account of men, of whom both would be said incongruously on his own account. For what is foreknowledge but knowledge of future things? And what is future to God, who surpasses all times? For if God's knowledge holds the things themselves, they are not future to him but present, and hence it can no longer be called foreknowledge, but only knowledge. If, however, as in the order of temporal creatures, so with him too the things that are to be are not yet, but he anticipates them by making them, then he perceives them in one way according to foreknowledge of future things, in another according to knowledge of present things; something therefore happens temporally to God's knowledge, which is most absurd and most false. We return, therefore, to this: that for things now

present there should come to be knowledge, which for those same things when future was foreknowledge; and, since what was foreknowledge earlier afterwards becomes knowledge in God, it admits mutability and is temporal, whereas God, who truly and supremely is, is in no part mutable, nor [his] notion temporal by any motion 58." And it follows, in the eighteenth: "If it is so in God that it can be said properly, 'He understands and understood, perceives and perceived,' time is admitted, and that mutability nonetheless creeps in which must be removed far from the substance of God; and yet God both knows and foreknows, in an ineffable way; for so also he repents, in an ineffable way." And it follows, in the nineteenth: "When I have removed from human knowledge its mutability and whatever is imperfect, and have left only the vividness of certain and unshaken truth, surveying all things in one eternal contemplation; nay, I shall not have left it (for human knowledge does not have it), but I shall have thought it out as far as my powers go, God's knowledge is in some way intimated to me." Anselm too confirms this, in On Concord 7: "It is to be known," he says, "that just as foreknowledge

is not properly said of God, so neither is predestination, because for him there is nothing before or after, but all things are present to him at once." He also, in On the Fall of the Devil 21, says that the deserting Angel could not by knowledge of certain reason foreknow that he would fall, because he could have been not about to fall; and when the disciple objected concerning God's foreknowledge and matters of free choice, "Briefly," he says, "I answer: God's foreknowledge is not properly called foreknowledge. For he to whom all things are always present does not have foreknowledge of future things, but knowledge of present ones; therefore, since the account of foreknowledge of the future is different from that of knowledge of a present thing, it is not necessary that divine foreknowledge and that [foreknowledge] about which we inquire have the same consequence." Boethius too, 5, D1 On the Consolation of Philosophy, the last prose, expressing this most clearly ‖D2, says: "His knowledge, having surpassed all movement of time, abides in the simplicity of its presence, and, embracing the infinite spaces of past and future, considers all things in its simple cognition as if they were now being done. And so, if you wish to weigh the presence by which he discerns all things, you will judge more rightly that it is not foreknowledge as of the future, but knowledge of a never-failing instant." From this he infers

in turn a following necessity in God, as the present chapter and the fiftieth of this recounted more fully. John Scotus follows him in this, on Sentences 1, dist. 40, E1 and asks, argues and answers thus: "I ask whether the predestined can be damned. That he cannot: everything past is simply necessary; but the predestination of this predestined man has passed into the past, because God predestined him from eternity." And below: "To the first argument I say that the argument proceeds from a false imagining, the understanding of which imagining helps toward understanding the truth of the question proposed. For if, per impossibile, we were to understand that God had not yet determined his will to one side, but was deliberating whether he would predestine this man or not, our intellect could well grasp that he would contingently predestine him or not predestine him, as appears in the act of our own will; but because we always have recourse to the act of the divine will as if it were past, we therefore in a way compare the freedom in that will to the act, as if the act had already been posited by the will; but that imagining is false. For that now of eternity, in which this act is,

is always present; and so it must be understood of the divine will, or of his willing as it is of its object, as if, per impossibile, God were now beginning to have a willing in this now; and thus God can freely, in the now of eternity, will what he wills, as if his will were determined to nothing. Then, to the form of the argument, I say that the predestination of this man has not passed into the past. For although it coexisted with past things that have passed away, it did not itself pass away; rather, other things passed away that coexisted with it. Hence, as was said in dist. 9: Verbs of different tenses, said of God, as they most truly apply to him, do not signify parts of the time measuring that act, but consignify the now of eternity, which measures that act as coexisting with those several parts of time; and therefore it is the same for God to predestine, to have predestined, and to be going to predestine, and so the one is as contingent as the other,

because there is nothing there except the now of eternity measuring that act, which is neither present nor past, B1 nor future, but coexisting with all these." Saint Thomas too, on Sentences 1, dist. 38, question 5, quite plainly follows and cites this: "God," he says, "beheld from eternity the very being of the thing; how this is, Boethius clearly teaches in the book On Consolation. For all knowledge is according to the mode of the knower, as has been said. Since therefore God is from eternity, it must be that his knowledge has the mode of his eternity, which is the whole being at once without succession. Hence, just as, though time is successive, eternity is nevertheless present to all times, one and the same indivisible, as a standing now, so his knowledge beholds all temporal things, though they be successive, as present to itself, and none of them is future with respect to it, but one is future with respect to another." And below, on dist. 40: "What is measured by eternity is together with all time, yet in such a way that it is measured by none of them; and therefore the act of divine foreknowledge cannot be posited as existing in a now, as if measured by the present time, so that it would have the order of the present time to the future in respect of what it knows; but toward all

time and everything known it has the order of present to present. So when it is said, 'God foreknows this,' it is not understood that this is future with respect to divine knowledge, but with respect to the time in which it is referred; and therefore such verbs and participles, said of God, must be released from the determination of time, so that they consignify the now of eternity and not of time; otherwise error would inevitably follow." C1 This he declares in Against the Gentiles 1, 66, by an example in agreement with the imagining set out above: "To any time or instant of time," he says, "eternity is present presentially; an example of which can in some way be seen in a circle. For a point marked on the circumference, though indivisible, does not coexist at once, according to position, with every other point; for the order of position makes the continuity of the circumference. But the centre, which is outside the circumference, has a direct relation of opposition to any point marked on the circumference. Whatever, therefore, is in any part of time coexists with the eternal as present to it, even if with respect to another part of time it is past or future; but nothing can coexist presentially with

the eternal except with the whole of it, because it has not the duration of succession. Whatever therefore is done through the whole course of time, the divine intellect beholds in its whole eternity as present." D1 The same Thomas writes below, 67: "When we say, 'God knows,' or 'knew, this future thing,' a kind of medium is brought into play between divine knowledge and the thing known, namely the time in which the speaking occurs; with respect to this time what is said to be known by God is future, but it is not future with respect to divine knowledge, which, existing in the moment of eternity, stands presentially toward all things. With respect to this knowledge, if the time of speaking is removed from the middle, one cannot say that this is known as not existing, so that the question 'Whether it can not be' would have a place; rather it would be said to be known by God as already seen in its essence, which being posited, there remains no place for the aforesaid question, because what already is cannot, so far as that instant goes, not be. The deception therefore arises from this: that the time in which we speak coexists with eternity, or even the past time that is signified when it is said, 'God knew.' Hence the relation of past or present time to the future

is attributed to eternity, which does not fit it at all, E1 and from this it happens that one is deceived by accident 59." Robert of Lincoln also followed him, writing in On Free Choice 3 thus: "While I am sitting, it is necessary that I sit, and after I have sat, it is necessary that I have sat; but the relation that these sayings, 'I sit' and 'I have sat,' have to my sitting while I sit and after I have sat, the same relation God's knowledge has to my sitting that is to be, 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 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; E2 therefore he has the same also before things come to pass." And below, 5: "God

knows all things in one single, indivisible and simple view, eternally, always, similarly, A1 immutably. For it is clear from what has already been said that the relation that these sayings, 'I sit' and 'I have sat,' have to my sitting while I sit and after I have sat, the same relation God's knowledge has to my sitting tomorrow, which is to be, 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 ‖A2 identical 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 he has the same necessity also before things come to pass." This ever-present instant of eternity, spoken of above, in God, and the complete stability and immutability in him, according to every intrinsic mode of his, God himself intimates and attests, saying, "I am who I am; thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you," Exodus 3; and also in John 8: "Before," he says, A3

Abraham was made, I am"; and, in agreement, the Prophet: "Before the mountains were made, or the earth and the world were formed, from age to age you are God," Psalm 89; and below, 92: "From age you are"; and further down, 101: "As a cloak you will change them and they will be changed, but you are the same, and your years will not fail." And the Apostle, 1 Timothy 6: B1 "He alone has immortality." Of authorities of this kind the authentic expositions plainly ‖B2 attest the sense, those set out in the first and fifth of the first, to which I shall add a few others here. Blessed Augustine, then, on that verse of Psalm 89 set out above, says thus: "But he said it excellently, not 'From age you were' or 'unto age you will be,' but he used a verb of present signification, intimating the substance of God as in every way unchangeable, where there is no 'it was,' nor 'it will be,' but only 'it is'; whence it was said, 'I am who I am,' and 'He who is has sent me to you'; and, 'You will change them and they will be changed, but you are the same, and your years will not fail.' Behold what eternity has become for us: a refuge, so that, to abide in it, we may flee to it from this mutability of time;"

the same Augustine, on that verse of Psalm 101 quoted above, says: "Let us hope that we shall come to these standing years, in which the days are not completed by the circuit of the Sun, but what is remains as it is, because this alone truly is." And earlier, on the same Psalm, on the verse "In generation and generation," or, as Augustine has it, "In a generation of generations are your years": "The years of God," he says, "are not one thing and he himself another; but the years of God are the eternity of God; the eternity of God is his very substance, which has nothing mutable, where nothing is past as if it no longer were, nothing is future as if it were not yet. There is nothing there but 'is'; there is no 'was' there, and no 'will be'; because what was already is not, and what will be is not yet, but whatever is there is only 'is.'" "Rightly, then, did God send his servant Moses in this way, who knew the name of him who sent him; and he, pointing to himself as immortal to a mortal, eternal to a temporal, said, 'I am who I am.'" The same Augustine, in On Genesis according to the letter 5, 16: "That eternal and unchangeable nature, which is God, has in itself that it is, as was said to Moses, 'I am who I am,' far otherwise than these things that have been made are; since that truly and primarily is which is always in the same way,

and is not only not changed but cannot be changed at all." D1 In agreement with him also Gregory, Moralia 18, 31, on that verse of Job 28, "Nor shall they be remembered in comparison with it": "The Prophet," he says, "contemplating the immutability of its essence, says, 'All things shall grow old like a garment, and as a cloak you will change them and they will be changed, but you are the same, and your years will not fail.' Hence it is said to Moses, 'I am who I am,' and 'You shall say to the children of Israel, He who is has sent me to you'; for he alone truly is who alone abides unchangeably. For whatever is now thus and now otherwise is next to non-being; for it cannot remain in its own state, and in some way is going toward non-being, while from what it had been it is always being led to something else through the moments of time."

The fifteenth is plainly known through the fifth and sixth and their proofs, and it is also manifestly concluded through the thirteenth. For if, according to the thirteenth, the divine will is equally free and intrinsically contingent with respect to things present and past as with respect to things future, then, by the possibility of which the fifteenth speaks, it could and can, now and always in the future, not will the future things, and never in the past have willed them. Otherwise, by the tenth of the first, all future things would come about of necessity simply, which the twelfth of this condemns. It could and can likewise not will all things present and past, and never have willed them.60 This is also demonstrated through the fourteenth. For if, as the fourteenth asserts, the divine will is equally necessary with respect to future things as with respect to present and past, and yet it could and can (by the possibility of this fifteenth) now and always in the future not will the future things, and never in the past have willed them, then it could and can likewise not will all things present and past. The saying of Henry of Ghent in the proof of the eleventh truth, recited above, also attests this.

The sixteenth is plainly inferred from the seventh, which the thirteenth and fourteenth and their proofs also demonstrate, with this added: that God cannot, by such a power, not will present things, nor not have willed past things. For it is necessary, by the opposite necessity, that is, the consequent one, that God will present things and have willed past ones, as is clear from this chapter and from the fiftieth of this.

The seventeenth, as to both parts, the affirmative and the negative, is known correspondingly through the fifteenth and sixteenth, the topic from likeness assisting.

The eighteenth is inferred, as to the first two parts, from 15 and 16, and as to the two remaining, correspondingly from the two parts of the seventeenth. For he makes or fails to make nothing except what he wills or does not will, the ninth and tenth of the first book standing. By this, as I hope, the objections about the possibility of God's not doing what he will do, does, or did, and of his doing otherwise and other things, can be resolved. By this too the error of Abelard and the condemned Parisian article can be avoided.61 For a fuller understanding of both, one must begin a little further back. Now, looking more diligently into the writings of the Fathers, it plainly appears that there was a threefold necessity wrongly posited about God,

and about God's actions outwards, all of which are alike reduced to necessity of nature. For some said that whatever God does outwards he does from the necessity of his essence, like irrational agents, as light does its brightness and fire its heat. Others held that whatever God does outwards he does from the necessity of his knowledge, because by his knowledge he grasps the better possible order in things, to which he necessarily conforms himself by working according to his knowledge. A third group believed that whatever God does outwards he does from the necessity of his will, ‖B1 because by his knowledge he grasps the better possible order in all beings, and the most perfect and best will necessarily conforms itself to a like knowledge, according to its inner dictate, in working outwardly. These three errors concerning this necessity are recounted by Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet 5, question 4, who also attributes them to Avicenna. Saint Thomas likewise attributes similar errors to certain Philosophers and also to Theologians, namely Peter Abelard, in the questions on the power of God, question 5,62 which asks, Whether God can do what he does not do, and leave undone what he does. Answering there, he says: "It must be said that this error, namely to posit that God cannot do except what he does, belonged to two groups. First, certain Philosophers, who said that God acts from necessity of nature. If that were so, since nature is determined to one thing, the divine power could not extend itself to doing anything other than what it does. Second, certain Theologians, who considered the order of divine justice and wisdom, according to which things are made by God, an order that, they said, God cannot pass by; and so they fell into saying that God cannot do except what he does. And this error is imputed to Master Peter Abelard." It is clear, then, that this Peter understands God to be able to do or leave undone only what he does, so far as concerns the nature of his natural power, and of his power taken nakedly and absolutely, so that this power could not extend itself to doing other things or leaving other things undone, because his volitive power could not in any way carry itself out to anything else. Hence also that whatever he does and leaves undone he does and leaves undone by necessity of nature and simply absolute, which his other words also plainly indicate. D1 For Bernard, where he had been cited, recites similar sayings of his in these words:63 "By this reasoning, by which it is proved that God the Father begot the Son as good as he could (since otherwise he would be guilty of envy), it is clear also that all the things he does he does outstandingly, as far as he can, and does not wish to withhold any benefit he could confer." And after a few lines: "In all that God does, he so attends to what is good that he is said to be inclined to each action by the very price of the good, rather than by the pleasure of his own will." Again: "From these things, therefore, compared both from reason and from the written text, it is established that God can do only what he at some time does." And after a few lines: "If he could thwart the evils that occur, and would do even this only opportunely (he who can do nothing inopportunely), I truly do not see how he would not be consenting to sins. For who is to be called consenting to evil, if not the one by whom it could be opportunely thwarted?" Again: "By the aforesaid reasons, therefore, ‖D2 or by the solutions of the objections, I think it is clear to all that God can do or leave undone only these things, or only in this manner, or only at the time at which he does them, and not another." And below, in chapter 7 of the errors of the same man, he recites him saying: "First we must see what it is to consent to evil, and what not. He is said to consent to evil who, when he ought to prevent it and is able, does not prevent it. But if he ought and cannot, or conversely if he can and ought not, he is not guilty; and if he neither ought nor can, he is much less to be judged guilty. And so God is alien to consent to evils, since he neither ought nor can hinder evils. He ought not, because, since things come about through his benignity in the best way they can, he ought in no way to will against this. And he cannot, because his goodness, the lesser good having been chosen against that which is greater, can in no way prepare an obstacle." He wished to say, therefore, that God in no way would have the power of doing other things or otherwise, nor of leaving undone what he does, just as both

his arguments and his words, especially when expounded according to the ninth truth, make plain. ‖A1 Abelard meant to say that, just as God necessarily and absolutely wills his ultimate end, namely his own goodness, so he also necessarily and absolutely wills the things that are for the end, namely all creatures. So all these things, the same in number, in all their modes issue from him by the necessary order of goodness. Hence none of them could in any way be left undone, nor could anything else be made in any way, because then the necessary order of goodness would be disturbed, and the divine goodness could not manifest itself. Who, then, will accuse me of this error? For I say that God, so far as it belongs to the nature of his volitive power, can most contingently and most freely, according to contradiction, not will what he wills and will what he does not will, and correspondingly not do and do, as the fifteenth truth and those following testify. Yet he wills and does what he wills and does by a certain irresistible necessity, following upon the act of the divine will already posited in being and altogether immutable. So an angel or a man, even if most contingently

and most freely, and even of himself alone, as God does, would, by this following necessity, necessarily will whatever he would will. Therefore Saint Thomas also, where earlier, B1 after reciting the error of the Philosophers and of Abelard, and having first refuted it, adds: "But now it remains to investigate the second position. On this it must be known that it is said in two ways that someone cannot do something. In one way absolutely, namely when some of the principles necessary to the action do not extend to that action: as if the foot is crippled, a man cannot walk. In another way, on a supposition: for, the opposite of some action being posited, that action cannot come about; thus I cannot walk while I sit. But since God is an agent through will and intellect, as has been proved, one must consider in him three principles of action: first intellect, second will, third power of nature. Intellect, then, directs will, while will commands power, which executes; but intellect moves only insofar as it proposes to the will its desirable object, so that the whole moving of intellect lies in the will. In two ways, then,

it is said that God absolutely cannot do something. In one way, when God's power does not extend to it, as we say that God cannot make affirmation and negation simultaneously true, as is clear from what has been said above; but in this way it cannot be said that God cannot do except what he does, for it is established that God's power can extend to many other things. In another way, when God's will cannot extend itself to it. For every will must have some end that it wills naturally, and whose contrary it cannot will: as man naturally and of necessity wills happiness and cannot will misery. But along with this, that the will necessarily wills its natural end, it also wills those things without which it cannot have the end, if it knows them, and these are the things commensurate with the end; as, if I want life, I want food. But those things without which the end can be had, which are not commensurate with the end, it does not will of necessity. The end, then, which is the natural end of the divine will, is its goodness, which it cannot not will; but creatures are not commensurate with this end, so that without them the divine goodness

could not be manifested, as God indeed intends from creatures. For just as the divine goodness is manifested through these things that now are, and through this order of things, so it can be manifested through other creatures ordered in another way. And so the divine will, without prejudice to will, justice, or wisdom, can extend itself to things other than those it does. In this the aforesaid errorists were deceived: for they supposed the order of creatures to be as it were commensurate with the divine goodness, as if without it that goodness could not be. It is clear, then, that God can absolutely do other things than those he does; but because he cannot make contradictories simultaneously true, it can be said, on a supposition, that God cannot do other things than those he does." Thomas also touches this error in the Summa, part 1, question 25, article 5, and in Against the Gentiles 1.81, D1 and refutes it. Hugh likewise, in On the Sacraments 1, part 2, chapter 22, understands and refutes it in the same way, as being detractive of and diminishing the infinite divine power, whence he says thus: "Let them go now and boast of their own sense, because they think they can examine the divine works by reason and constrict his

power under a measure. For when they say, 'So far he can, and no further,' what is this other than to enclose and restrict to a measure his power, which is infinite? For they say, 'God cannot do other than he does, nor do better than he does.' And below: 'Some are led by causes and reasons of this kind to say that God is so bound and tied by the measure and law of his works that beyond what he does he can do nothing, neither other nor better.' And by this they are plainly convicted of binding that infinite and immeasurable power of the divinity under a limit and measure, in that they extend it to something that truly has its own end, and deny that it goes beyond. For it is certain that everything that has been made in number and weight and measure has its lawful limit and end; and therefore, if the Creator's power and manner are made to conform to the measure of the work, that power is without doubt declared to be bounded by end and measure. Here those searchers of ours, who have failed, searching out searchings,64 say that they bring something new, and truly new, and not so much true as new. They say that single creatures, considered in themselves, have less than the perfect, but that the universe of all things is expressed in such a consummation of good that it cannot be better than it is." The same Hugh recites the same error in his book of Sentences, chapter 12, and refutes it, where he says: "When Augustine says, 'God can do many things that he does not will,' he looked to the effect that he does not will; that is, what he does not work, he can work, for he does not omit it from impotence; and according to this it can be said, 'God can will what he does not will.'" Peter, following his opinion and almost his words, A1 Sentences 1, distinction 43, recites and rebuts the same error in the same sense, saying: "Some, glorying in their own sense, have tried to constrict God's power under a measure. For when they say, 'So far God can, and no further,' what is this other than to enclose and restrict to a measure his power, which is infinite? For they say, 'God cannot do other than he does, nor do better what he does, nor omit anything of what he does.'" The same Peter, below, reciting and resolving a certain subtlety of Abelard, says: "As to what was proposed, 'God cannot do except what his justice demands, and cannot do what his justice demands not be done,'

we say that in those expressions there is a twofold sense. For if you understand it so: he cannot do except what his justice demands, that is, except what his just will wills, you speak falsely.65 For the justice of God himself is taken as his most equitable will, as Augustine takes those words of the Lord in Genesis, speaking to Lot, 'I cannot do anything until you go in there,' explaining: 'He said he could not what he doubtless could by power, but could not by justice.'" Behold how evidently the aforesaid opinion appears here: that God, so far as it comes from the side of power, can will what he does not will and do what he does not do, but so far as it comes from the side of his will, already actually and immutably willing or unwilling anything, he cannot. So too at the end of the distinction, showing that God can will what he does not will and never willed, he says: "For he has the power of willing, both now and from eternity, what yet he neither now wills nor has willed from eternity." Other similar and more explicit statements from him had been cited in the proof of the ninth truth. Almost all the Parisian Doctors also rebuke this Peter Abelard, Master at Paris, on this point,

and I think that he, together with his undisciplined disciples, who followed the shadow of certain Philosophers and said that God does whatever he does by necessity of nature, gave the cause for the edict of condemnation of the Parisian article raised against him. Hence, according to his opinion already set out, it ought to be understood and expounded against him, namely thus: that that Article condemns the claim that God must do whatever is done immediately by him by necessity of coercion or necessity of immutability, that is, by a natural necessity, and one of the divine will, which is naturally determined to do these things and not others. This is an absolute necessity, which, as the article puts it, posits in God an impossibility of acting otherwise, namely a natural impossibility from a defect of natural power, that is, an absolute impossibility. Many others condemned by the same Bishop together with this one also bear witness to this understanding of the article. One of them affirms that God is eternal in acting and moving, as in being; otherwise he would be determined by another, which would be prior to him. Another, that what is determined of itself, as God is, either always acts or never, and that there are many eternal things. Another, that the first principle cannot immediately produce

‖D1 generable things, which are new effects;66 but a new effect requires an immediate cause which can hold otherwise. Another, that God is the necessary cause of the first intelligence, which being posited, the effect is posited, and they are simultaneous in duration. Another, that God is the necessary cause of the motion of the heavenly bodies, and of the contingent conjunction in the stars. With these many other similar ones are condemned, before and after the aforesaid article, in the same series. D2 Henry of Ghent also, on the occasion of this article, asks in Quodlibet 5, question 4, Whether God necessarily produces whatever he immediately produces externally. He argues first that he does, because it follows of necessity: God wills to do this, therefore he does this, and the antecedent is necessary, because otherwise God's will would be mutable. Then he argues that he does not, by the article recited. Answering, he says that, according to the opinion of the Philosophers, a threefold necessity was posited in every divine making, as recited above. Having rejected the first two, namely necessity of essence and of knowledge, and rejecting the third necessity, namely that of

will, he speaks thus: "Likewise God in no way acts from necessity of his will, whether the will is taken as concomitant with matter or as considered absolutely, according as some might say that, although he does not act by necessity of his nature, nor of his knowledge, he nevertheless acts by necessity of his will, because his knowledge grasps the better order in things, and a perfect will necessarily adheres to it. This is clear, since the will is not per se except of its own end, and what is per se of something, though it has a necessary order to it and to those things that have an essential

relation to it, does not have it to those that have a relation to it ‖A1 that is accidental." Having shown this by an example, he adds: "Therefore, since God's will is per se of the end of the good that he himself is, although he necessarily wills it, and those things that have a necessary relation to it, such as whatever are in the divine essence, he does not nevertheless necessarily will those things that have an ‖A2 accidental relation to it.67 And such are all things other than he, because nothing of them adds to his goodness. By no necessity, therefore, does he will any of them, but he does nothing except what he wills; therefore of the things other than himself that he makes, he makes none of necessity." And below: "God does not will of necessity the things that are outside him; therefore, when he makes them in the being of existence about which the question is, he does not make them from necessity of his will. So in this manner the goodness of his essence is not for him the reason for willing all things, because he could ‖A3 will other things, which he neither wills nor will will, just as the truth of his essence is not for him the reason of knowing everything he could know, namely those things that could be or will be and yet will not be. So that, as he does not know of necessity that he does what he does, just as he does not will of necessity to do what he does (as will now be said), likewise he does not of necessity know or will to be those things that are of absolute necessity.

"It must be said, therefore, simply and absolutely, that of whatever God makes outside himself he makes none of necessity: neither of those things he makes immediately (which, according to the Philosopher, was the one single thing that, as has been said, they posited he makes of necessity), nor of those he makes through the mediation of others, in which the Philosophers agree with us. Nor does he make any of them by necessity of coercion, which impels the will into action against its own inclination, whether natural or voluntary, since he is impassible and omnipotent; nor by necessity of immutability, which binds and holds power simply and absolutely in act, as the condemned article rightly says, as was stated in raising the objection." B1 The same, below, answering the first argument, says thus: "To the opposed argument, that what God wills to do is done of necessity, it must be said that this is true by necessity ‖B2 of the consequence, not of the consequent; because the antecedent, namely that God wills to do what he does, is not necessary simply, except in considering the act of will as it is in God, the divine essence itself, in which way it is not considered in the question proposed, but only as it passes actually into the thing willed externally. And as to the argument that the antecedent is necessary simply, because what God wills he cannot not will, since otherwise his will would be mutable, it must be said, etc." (cited in the proof of the eleventh truth). What is condemned in the article recited, therefore, is a natural, simple, absolute necessity, antecedent with respect to the divine willing and making outwards, and not the aforesaid consequent necessity. For who would deny that, by this consequent necessity, God must do whatever is done immediately by him, just as by this necessity also: Everything that is, when it is, necessarily is; and what is being made and has been made, necessarily is being made and has been made; and that God wills it so to be? From these things it can be drawn out and had that necessity of immutability, in the understanding of the Doctors, is twofold or threefold. The first is that by which, if it were in use, whatever is of some quality, and cannot fail to be such through change, could be said to be necessarily such by necessity of immutability,

because it cannot be changed from this. And so whatever is past, it is necessary that it be past; whatever was future, it is necessary that it was future; whatever is not future, it is necessary that it be not future; and the like. The aforesaid article does not speak of this. The second is the necessity of stability, which is also consequent, as the fiftieth of this makes clear; the article mentioned does not mean this either. The third is the necessity of natural immutability, by which a thing is determined naturally, and by necessity of nature, to doing some one thing, and has no natural power for the opposite, like irrational active powers, as is clear from Metaphysics 9, 10.68 Such a necessity of immutability Peter Abelard posited in God outwards, and it is such as is condemned in the article. Hence also Thomas, in On the Power of God, where earlier: "Those," he says, D1 "who said that God acts from necessity of nature posited the power under discussion not only by reason of immutability of nature but by reason of the determination of nature to one thing." D2 Therefore Henry of Ghent says that God does not act outwards by the necessity of immutability, which binds and holds power simply and absolutely in act, so that the condemned article speaks rightly.69 The irrational reasons of Peter Abelard, and of any others whatever, whether Philosophers or lovers of frivolity,70 eager to build up a natural necessity in God with respect to his works, ought to move no rational animal. For if he acted outwards by necessity of nature, since any effect of his is finite, he himself would be finite, against the first supposition; or if, according to that necessity, he is infinite, any effect of his whatever would likewise be infinite, as is argued more fully by the ninth of the first. Nor does God comprehend by his knowledge (indeed he cannot comprehend) a better possible being to be made, than which nothing better could be made. For suppose that he comprehends and makes it, and let it be A. Then either A is infinite simply and in every respect, and then it is God, and so not made, as the first supposition proves; or it is finite,

and then something greater than it could be made. For any possible good that can be made, therefore, a greater can always be made, and so too comprehended; so a perfect and best will cannot make the greatest good, the best possible to be made. It suffices for it, therefore, to make as much good as it freely wills, without evil, especially since there is no reason prior to it, or regulating it in acting, but it is itself the principle and rule of reason, as was more fully shown by 21 of the first. It was also objected above that if that following necessity were posited in God, the omnipotent would be bound. But I wonder with what mind, with what face, they dare to object this to me, affirming the contrary, since they themselves must necessarily concede that God, formerly loose and free from eternity, is now temporally and newly bound by a most feeble extrinsic bond (say, a spider's thread), even indissolubly, and made captive without liberation, as 30 of this has argued more fully. But I do not say that he is newly necessitated by the aforesaid following necessity, nor by anything outside him, but eternally and uniformly, only through his eternal and most free act of his own most free will. If anyone, however, following the metaphors of Poets, Grammarians and Rhetoricians, wishes to call this necessary act of the divine will, or this following necessity, a tie, a knot, or a chain, as love too is called,

I do not think there is much to contend about the name, provided the thing is soundly understood. In that case one can say metaphorically that God is bound, namely by the tie of love and the chain of charity. Yet I know that some, from catholic piety, shrink from this, not because what is said metaphorically is not said catholically, but because what is said catholically is not understood catholically. For some, because the customary tie and bond seem to bring with them some violence, understand it likewise if anything of the kind is said of God. But they err, since in the customary tie and bond there are two things, namely violence and firmness. And since, according to the Philosopher in Topics 6, all who transfer a term transfer it according to some likeness, not according to every likeness, as he shows in his Poetics,71 it suffices that this transference be made for the second property, though not for the first. Nor is it true that every bond implies violence. For many put themselves freely under the bonds of many obligations toward God and men, and bear them freely.

C1 Whence Ecclesiasticus 6: "Put your foot into her fetters, namely those of wisdom, and your neck into her collars; bow your shoulder and carry her, and do not grow weary in her bonds; and her fetters will be for you a protection of strength and bases of virtue, and her collars a robe of glory, and her bonds a saving binding." Wherefore the Apostle also, C2 in Colossians 3, calls charity the bond of perfection; whence also Hosea 11: "With the cords of Adam I will draw them, in the bonds of charity." Hugh of Saint Victor too, in his Praise of Charity, to Peter, addressing charity, says thus: "O charity, how great is your power, you who overcame God! You compelled him, obedient to you, to descend from the seat of paternal majesty even to the depths of our mortality, to ‖C3 endure them; you brought him bound with your bonds. Let man therefore be the more ashamed to resist you, when he sees you triumph over God: you wounded the impassible, bound the unconquerable, drew the unchangeable." Below he also praises this charity because it is God. But what is this charity except God's dear will, and God's dear willing, according to what was set out at the twenty-fifth of the first?72 But because Henry of Ghent

imputes to Avicenna the threefold erroneous necessity recited above, and I have myself cited him on occasion, we must discuss a little whether Henry accuses him justly: for it seems he can be defended probably and reasonably. Henry objects to him that for the first necessity he says thus: "The first truth's first action is not except through essence." And who would deny this? For its first action is not outward but inward, by which it knows and loves itself, and this not freely according to contradiction, but purely necessarily, from necessity of its essence. Again, he opposes him because for the second necessity he says thus: "His knowledge is knowing that his perfection and his excellence is that goodness be made by him, and this belongs to those who ‖D1 communicate their glory; and from the fact that he understands himself, there follows the ordering of goodness into being, and he understands how it is possible for the being of the whole to come forth, and more elegantly. Whence, as he says, from the fact that he understands the order and goodness that can be better, according as he understands it, it flows by such a flow, by which one arrives more perfectly at order according to possibility." But if for this saying he deserves to be condemned, why

…not likewise Augustine, who in On Free Choice 3, 7 speaks thus: "Whatever occurs to you as better by true reason, know that God has made it, as the maker of all goods"? There can therefore be something in the nature of things that you do not conceive by your reason; but what you conceive by true reason cannot fail to be. For you cannot conceive in a creature anything better that has escaped ‖E1 the maker of the creature. The human soul, indeed, is naturally joined to the divine reasons on which it depends. When it says, "This would be done better than that," if it speaks truly and sees what it says, it sees it in those reasons to which it is joined. Let it therefore believe that God has made what it recognized by true reason was to be made by him, even if it does not see this in the things made. For even if it could not see the heavens with the eyes, and yet by true reason inferred that such a thing was to be made, it ought to believe it made, though it did not see it with the eyes; for it would not see by thought that a thing was to be made, except in those reasons by which all things were made.

A1 And in On Genesis according to the Letter 4, 18: "If God could not make good things, there would be no power; but if he could and did not, there would be great envy; since therefore he is omnipotent and good, he made all things very good." He also says in On the Greatness of the Soul 18: "By the justice of God," he says, "this universe is sustained and governed, by which it has even come about that all things not only exist, but exist in such a way that they cannot at all be better." And below, 20: "God judged it most beautiful that whatever is should be, in the way it is." And below: "Who is there who could justly be indignant that a soul was given to the body to act upon and manage it, when so great and so divine an order of things cannot be joined together better?" Behold Augustine, a Catholic Doctor, professing a like opinion. Therefore, just as Henry of Ghent wishes to expound Augustine, so let him expound Avicenna also. Both can be well understood and expounded in many ways. In one way, on God's side, and on the side of the manner of making as related to God, that is, so far as it is on the side of the maker. For he makes all things through infinite wisdom, goodness, and power; B1 and so Peter answers, Sentences 1, dist. 44, and Thomas, Summa, part 1, particle 25, the last question, 73 when he asks whether God can make better things than those he makes. In another way, on the side of the things made, and this in manifold ways. In one way: God could not make the things made, numerically the same, essentially better, because they would then be other and not the same; accidentally, however, he could. And so Thomas answers where he was cited. Third, it can be said that God could have made nothing better, that is, a purer good, namely one less mixed with evil or natural wickedness. For the Philosopher says in Topics 3 that things less mixed with their contraries are more truly of their kind, as that is whiter which is less mixed with black; wherefore a lesser evil is sometimes called good, and sometimes better. Hence the Philosopher in Ethics 5, 5: "In the account of the good, the lesser evil, in relation to the greater evil, is counted;"

for the lesser evil is more choiceworthy than the greater; and what is choiceworthy is good, and what is more so is the greater [good]. 74 And Lamentations 4: "It was better for those slain by the sword than for those killed by hunger," C1 and this is a very frequent manner of speaking among all people. According to this manner of speaking too, one thing is sometimes said to be better than another because the former is good and the latter evil, or not good. C2 Hence the Philosopher, On Generation 2, next to last [chapter]: "It is better to be than not to be"; 75 and the Prophet: "Better is a little for the just man than the many riches of sinners," Psalm 36 [37]. And Solomon, Proverbs 16: "Better is a little with justice than many fruits with iniquity; and better is it to be humbled with the meek than to divide spoils with the proud." The Authors say, then, that God cannot make anything better than he makes, perhaps against those who posited in beings something evil per se; these are touched on in the first and the twenty-sixth of the first. 76 Avicenna, with many other Philosophers, contradicts them, as the same twenty-sixth sets out; almost all the Catholic Doctors contradict them too, but especially Augustine in his books On Free Choice,

as appears evidently there and in Retractations 1, 9. The first of these books is for that reason called "Whence evil," and so in many other books. Therefore, in On Free Choice 3, 6, he also warns that no one should say of sinning souls that it would have been better if they did not exist, by suggesting that the universe would then have been purer and less mixed with evil, and therefore that those souls are not part of the perfection of the universe and have no goodness at all, but only pure wickedness, according to the consideration of the Philosopher in Topics 3 touched on above. For that reason he also says in the same [chapter] 6 that sinning souls are not blamed except in comparison with themselves, when it is thought what they would be if they had not willed to sin. And below, 7, he shows that no thing is blameworthy except in comparison with a better. Nor should anyone say that the whole universe, or any part of it, can be better than it is, in such a way that it could be good and now is evil, or is not good. Therefore, in the same sixth [chapter] of the third [book], as he also touches on in Retractations 1, D1 the ninth chapter, he shows that God is to be praised in all things for the making of creatures, not blamed. He also suggests above, at 5, that God could have created human beings in some lower grade of creature; therefore, according to him, God does not necessarily always make the better thing that he could.

Furthermore, in a fourth way, perhaps with regard to the natural order of things: namely, that the parts of animals and plants, and of the whole world (the elements and the heavens, for example), are now better naturally ordered than they would be if they were placed in the opposite order, so that nothing there is useless or base. The Philosopher suggests this in On Animals 13 and through the three books following, where he deals with the parts of animals, and their formation, fitness, and usefulness, and frequently elsewhere in the same book. Avicenna follows him in this respect, as the twenty-seventh of the first cites regarding both; Algazel follows them too, as the same twenty-seventh cited. With regard to the arrangement of the elements and the heavens as well, E1 Augustine suggests this in On Free Choice 3, 7, where he was cited. He also says in On the Greatness of the Soul 20: "God does not abandon the soul in any act without penalty, without reward. For he judged it most beautiful that whatever is should be, in the way it is, and should be so ordered by grades of nature that those considering the whole would be offended by no deformity from any part, and every penalty of the soul, and every reward, would always contribute something to the just portion of beauty and the disposition of all things. For free choice was given to the soul, and yet free choice was not given to the soul in such a way that, by attempting anything with it, the soul would disturb that part of the divine order and law; for it was given by God, the wisest and most invincible Lord of the whole creation. But to see these things as they are to be seen is for few, and no one is fit for it except by true religion. Since these things are so, who is there who could justly be indignant that a soul was given to the body to act upon and manage it, when so great and so divine an order of things cannot be joined together better?" He teaches this opinion also in On Free Choice 3, 24. If, then, by some sentence of his said in one way, or another left unsaid, Avicenna can, like Augustine, be soundly understood, well and good; but if not, well and good all the same, since Avicenna is not an altogether necessary witness for me in this cause, especially where he errs; and even if he has erred in one point or a few, like other Philosophers, and indeed even Catholic Doctors, he can still speak the truth in many others.

If, however, he can be soundly understood, it can be said further that Henry of Ghent refutes the surface of the letter, or rather those who misunderstand Avicenna's letter. So too, on the testimony of Eustratius, 77 Aristotle, when he refutes Plato at times (as it seems), did not wish to argue against him, but against those who misunderstand his sayings, as the second [part] of the first has cited more fully. Third, Henry of Ghent objects against Avicenna that for the third necessity he says thus: "Every knowledge, by which it knows what proceeds from it, and with which no impediment is mixed, is pleased by what proceeds from it; therefore it pleased ‖B1 the First 78 that everything that is should flow from its essence." But this saying, taken by itself alone, does not seem to contain, either explicitly or implicitly, the aforesaid necessity of the divine will, but rather to suggest freedom.

The nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first follow clearly from the corresponding parts of the fifteenth (speaking correspondingly of "can"), and likewise from the first three parts of the next truth, with this added: that the divine will is a necessary cause, that is, necessarily required for something to be future, present, or past, to be done or made, or even conserved, as the fourteenth and ninth of the first taught. The nineteenth in particular is doubtful to almost no one: for otherwise everything that happened would happen by simply absolute necessity, which the twelfth of this book condemns.

The twentieth too is established in particular from the fifth truth of this book and its proof, which the testimonies of Henry of Ghent there plainly confirm; and, in the proof of the eleventh and eighteenth, those of Saint Thomas, Summa, part 1, particle 19, question 3, in the fifth of this [book]; those of Scotus on Sentences 1, dist. 29, in the proof of 5 and 18; and those of Robert of Lincoln 79 in the proof of the ninth truth of these, as more fully recited there. 80 For if, as they assert, the power in God's will concerning the actual being of creatures is determined by no necessity, but, so far as it is in itself, is open to either alternative, to willing that and not willing it, then creatures that now actually exist can also now, and for now, not exist. Also, if, according to them, it is possible for one who is not now sitting to sit now and for now, and the converse, why not likewise for any creature now existing? If, moreover, as Scotus and Lincoln affirm, a creature's willing, now existing, can now and for now not exist, why should the same not be thought of similar things?

Concerning the twenty-first, the contest presses more sharply because of the very many who oppose it; yet I think it sufficiently shown from the last part of the fifteenth truth, which the proof of the fifth of this book also shows well enough. For let A be a singularly proper name of some past thing, the general flood, for example, not however connoting its pastness, nor any accidental condition of it, but so far as it is possible to take 81 the thing itself essentially, simply, and wholly absolutely; why then could not, or can not, A not have been? What repugnance does it formally imply? What contradiction does it evidently include? None, without doubt, as was shown there. For at one time, for example when A was, or before, no per se impossible and no contradiction followed formally and simply from the announcement "A never was"; so neither does one follow now, as appears from the proof of the first supposition. Also, from a proposition that was once true, nothing false ever follows formally and simply, since then from a true thing a false thing would follow formally. Likewise it is of the same account that a thing can not have been when it was, and that a thing can have been when it was not, that is, before it was; but a thing that has not always been, such as the world or an angel, can by a possibility of this absolute kind have always been, and this implies no repugnance formally, nor necessarily imports one.

It can also, by such a power, have been for one day before it was, or for one year, and for two by like reasoning; why then not for three and four, and so on infinitely? This also seems to confirm the opinion of many Doctors. Again, by the twentieth truth and by what has just been set out, a thing now present can without repugnance now and for now not be, and that it be for now is as necessary as that A has been; therefore A too can not have been. Indeed it seems that, for a thing that is now present, its being for now is in some way more necessary (at least necessary in more ways) than A's having been. For a present thing, beyond the necessity from the ‖A1 divine will alone, which is common and equal to both, must intrinsically be through its proper natural causes, through matter and form, and also through the common natural causes that naturally conserve it in being; whereas A must have been from the divine will alone, or at least not from so many causes, since not from proper ones, because they now neither exist nor cause. Or let it be supposed that God wholly destroys every natural cause of A, proper and common, while conserving an existing stone; and then it will appear more clearly that it is more necessary that the stone be for now than that A has been. If, therefore, the stone, now existing, can now and for now not be, it seems that A can not have been just as much, or more.

It will perhaps be answered that from the pastness of a past thing there arises a certain relation, by which it is simply necessary that it has been, and hence simply impossible that it has not been. But this was rejected earlier, when it was shown that A's not having been implies no contradiction formally. Moreover, that relation itself is not simply necessary to be or to have been; for at one time it was not; so it would not be formally repugnant that it now not be; therefore it makes nothing simply necessary. That relation, too, is either to God, that is, to the divine will, or to some natural thing or things. The first was destroyed by the thirtieth of this book; the second cannot stand: for suppose God destroyed all the other natural causes. Besides, so great and so powerful a relation, indeed one reasonably more powerful, whether to God or to natural causes, arises from the presence of a present thing, just as from the pastness of a past thing; and notwithstanding that, it is possible for a thing that now is to be not, now and for now, and so for a past thing not to have been. For no absolute thing, such as a most powerful or most ‖C1 efficient natural form, makes what it forms, or its effect, to be necessarily and simply; so neither does a relation, since it is of weaker being, as the twentieth of this book touches on, make anything necessarily and simply to have been. A relation as great and as powerful seems likewise to arise from the futurity of a future thing as from the pastness of a past thing, so that it would make that future thing just as necessary, while it is future, as that other relation makes the past thing. Then too that relation would simply necessitate the will of God to will that relation to be, and, according to it, the thing to have been; and this, as can be shown from the eighteenth and nineteenth of the first, does not befit his most worthy freedom, as the thirtieth of this book and the thirteenth and fourteenth truths make plain. Perhaps still others will answer otherwise, saying

that A cannot not have been because of the lack of a necessarily required relation, the lack, namely, of its being willable, or makable, by God. But this answer does not avoid the reasons given for this twenty-first, nor does it give the reason for what it says. For although God could not will the contrary, 82 namely that A not have been, he could nonetheless, as it seems, and as the fifteenth truth asserts, not will A to have been, as he also could before A was; and with that posited, A would not have been past, by the fourteenth of the first, just as the thirtieth of this book also goes against a similar answer. By the same reasoning, a thing that is now present, because of the lack of a similar relation, could not now and for now not be, contrary to the twentieth truth. Such a privation of relation would also simply necessitate the divine will to will it, and to will in accordance with it, and would also make it impossible for that will to will the opposite, as it could ‖D1 once will; which was rejected earlier, in what was written in the thirtieth of this book against a similar answer, and is against the thirteenth and fourteenth truths. Nor, again, is such a lack of relation simply necessary to be or to have been, since neither is that relation, if it were or had been, any more than absolute things are, as was shown above, and as can be shown in a similar way. Indeed God's opposite willing, namely that A not have been, is simply possible now to be, as it was before the pastness of A, as can be shown from the premises, and from the thirteenth and fourteenth truth.

Third, it is said by some that the past cannot not have been, nor can God bring this about, because each includes a contradiction; to prove this they bring forward testimonies of the Doctors. Augustine, indeed, says in Against Faustus 26, 2: "Whoever therefore says, E1 'If God is omnipotent, let him make it that what has been done has not been done,' does not see that he is saying this: 'If he is omnipotent, let him make it that things which are true, by the very fact that they are true, are false.'" Jerome to Eustochium, Aristotle, and Agathon, cited above, 83 seem to think the same; E2 Saint Thomas followed them in Summa, part 1, particle 25, question 4, where it is asked whether God can make it that things which are past have not been, 84 *E3 and answers thus: "It must be said that nothing that implies a contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God; but that the past has not been implies a contradiction. For just as it implies a contradiction to say that Socrates sits and does not sit, so too to say that he has sat and has not sat. To say that he has sat is to say what is past; to say that he has not sat is to say that its opposite has been." To prove this he cites the sayings of Augustine and the Philosopher mentioned above. But these men understand the statement "the past cannot not have been" either in the composite sense or in the divided sense. If in the composite sense, they must consistently say that the present cannot not be present, and that the future cannot not be future, because of a similar contradiction included. If in the divided sense, taking, that is, some past thing, the flood for example, not enfolding its pastness, or any accidental condition, but only the thing itself, bare, essentially, simply and wholly absolutely, and let it so taken be called A, then it is absolutely and per se, and simply and without repugnance, possible that A not have been, as was shown above.

For their cause, moreover, we must inquire further whether they mean that the past's not having been, in the divided sense in the aforesaid manner, includes a contradiction per se and wholly formally, or per accidens and only as of now. Not in the first way, as is now clear. If in the second way, their cause is not helped, when we speak of power absolutely, as the truth to be shown speaks. For so too this, "You will run," includes a contradiction if you are not going to run; for it includes per accidens and as of now that one who is not going to run is going to run; for you actually, and as of now, are not going to run. Indeed, so every false proposition about the future, and universally every false proposition, includes a contradiction; yet who would deny that this is possible absolutely, and that God can thus make true this, "You will run," and many other false statements? So I judge that a thing that is past, such as A, can not have been, and that God can make A not to have been. By this I mean that God, so far as concerns his power absolutely, and by the nature of his willing power, free as to contradiction,

insofar as it precedes causally his act by which he now wills A to have been, could not elicit or have that act, but its opposite, as he could when A was future, as a man also could with respect to his own past willed object. For with God nothing is intrinsically past or future, but only eternally and instantaneously present, as the proof of the fourteenth declared. Yet, with the necessity that follows arising not from the pastness of the thing (for that causes nothing whatever in the divine will) but only from the stability, firmness, and presentness of the intrinsic act of the divine will, it is necessary that God will A to have been, and likewise that A have been. But although these things seem evident from the premises, behold still some testimonies of my elders for fuller evidence. Anselm, in Why God Became Man 2, 17, says: "God is improperly said not to be able to do something, or to do it by necessity. For all necessity and impossibility are subject to his will; but his will is subject to no necessity or impossibility; for nothing is necessary or impossible except because he himself so wills. But for him either to will or not to will anything on account of necessity is alien to the truth. Wherefore, since he does all that he wills, and nothing but what he wills, just as no necessity or impossibility precedes his willing or not willing, so neither does it precede his doing or not doing, although he wills many things immutably and does them. And just as, when God does something, after it has been done it can no longer not have been done, but it is always true that it has been done, and yet it is not rightly said that it is impossible for God to make what is past not be past (for there no necessity of not doing, and no impossibility of doing, is at work, but only the will of God, who wills the truth always to be immutable, as it is, since he himself is the truth), so too, if he proposes to himself to do something immutably, there is nonetheless in him no necessity of doing it, nor impossibility of not doing it, since in him only will is at work." D1 The same, in On Concord 2: "A thing," he says, "for example some action, is not necessarily future, because after it is, it can come about that it not be; and of the past likewise it is true, because a thing is not past by necessity, since before it was it could have come about that it not be"; which can fittingly be understood of the priority of the power, free as to contradiction, with respect to its act, as was shown above in similar cases.

E1 Whence also John Scotus on Sentences 2, dist. 2, question 7, says that the creation of an angel, and the angel, cannot not be at the instant at which it is, in the composite sense, but in the divided sense can well; as was touched on in the matter of the predestination and foreknowledge of God; where he also says that what is conserved can not be when it is conserved, and when it is produced, in the divided sense. And below, answering: "When it is said in the argument," he says, "that God cannot make an angel not to have been, that is denied of the thing signified by 'to have been'; and if it be said, 'the past cannot not have been,' it is denied, because this is not past in itself, that is, per se and essentially, since pastness, or being past, is not of its essence, nor essential to it, but accidental, and so it is absolutely possible for it to be separated." This question 7

on the second distinction is, in some books, the first on that same distinction. For he wrote twice on the Sentences, 85 and this is the cause of discord in this place, as in many other places. A1 Gilbert attests the same, on Boethius's book On the Trinity, 86 affirming that God can make Peter never to have been, and that this woman who has been corrupted was never corrupted. William of Auxerre, Bishop, also follows him, who in Sentences 1, question 49, asks A2 whether God can damn Peter and save Judas. He argues 87 that he can, because he can do this by power; and that he cannot, because he cannot do this by justice; and he answers thus: "We say that God, power being considered purely, can damn Peter, having regard to God's power and to Peter's natural power, by which he could sin and not sin; but it does not follow, 'therefore he can damn Peter,' because this verb 'can' in the conclusion has regard to merits." Or, if what Master Gilbert says on Boethius's book On the Trinity is true (for he says that God can make it that Peter never was), it can be said, accordingly, that God can damn Peter, because he can make Peter begin to be now, and be able to sin and sin, and so be damned. Below, in question 50, he also asks whether God can make a ‖B1 virgin of one who has been corrupted. He argues that he cannot, by the authority of Jerome cited above; and that he can, because he can restore the blind and the dead, and so also the corrupted. And having recited one answer, which says that God cannot make a virgin of a corrupted woman as regards every dignity of virginity, since he cannot make her not to have been corrupted, which is a certain dignity in a virgin, by which she merits the aureole, he objects against it: "Let God give this corrupted woman every dignity of virginity, if he can; then he can make a virgin of a corrupted woman. If he cannot give it now, though he gave it before, then something hinders, and nothing but pastness, namely that what has been done cannot be undone; therefore something hinders God's power; therefore God is not omnipotent." So, answering the question in another way, he adds: "For this reason one must say, as Master Gilbert says, that God can make it that this woman was never corrupted, because, so far as he himself is concerned, he does not stand otherwise toward things than he stood from eternity; hence past, present, and future are on the side of things, not on God's side. But we are accustomed to speak in such matters with the supposition of the past, when it is said, 'God cannot make a virgin of a corrupted woman.' For he cannot do this with the supposition of the past; yet he can do it in himself, since he is omnipotent; and in his omnipotence four things are understood, namely an enlargement of power, which is not determined to any one effect, as the power of heating is to heating; and that he can from himself and through himself, that is, without ‖C1 need of extrinsic help, without coercion, and without impediment."

From this one solution of the objections appears. For according to this Doctor, the authorities that say that the past cannot not have been past, and that God cannot make of the past something not past, or a virgin of the corrupted, are understood in the composite sense, namely by composing and co-signifying pastness with the thing, not in the divided sense, namely by dividing pastness from the thing and taking it bare, essentially, and simply absolutely, as was said above; or even according to the common way of assigning the composite and divided sense, which does not differ really from the former. For he says: "We are accustomed to speak in such matters with the supposition of the past, when it is said, 'God cannot make a virgin of a corrupted woman,' that is, he cannot do this with the supposition of the past, yet he can in himself." Anselm, in On Concord 2, seems to hold 88 this same logic, where, making this distinction in statements about the necessary, the future, the present, and the past, he concedes the composite sense D1 and denies the divided; hence he says: "For it is not the same, that a thing be past, and that a past thing be past; or that a thing be present, and that a present thing be present; or that a thing be future, and that a future thing be future; just as it is not the same, that a thing be white, and that a white thing be white. For wood is not always white by necessity, but at one time, before it became white, it could have not become white, and after it is white it can become not white; but white wood is always necessarily white, since neither before it is, nor after it is white, can it come about that a white thing at the same time be not white. Likewise a thing is not present by necessity, since before it was present it could have come about that it not be present, and after it is present it can come about that it be not present; but a present thing is necessarily always present, since neither before it is, nor after it is present, can it at the same time be not present. In the same way a thing, for example some action, is not future by necessity, since before it is, it can come about that it not be future; but a future thing is necessarily future, since the future cannot at the same time be not future. Of the past likewise it is true, because a thing is not past by necessity, since before it was, it could have come about that it not be, and because the past is always necessarily past, since it cannot at the same time not be past."

According to the same logic, John Scotus also, ‖E1 proceeding on Sentences 1, dist. 39, distinguishes in like manner, E2 conceding and denying that well-known saying of the Philosopher in On Interpretation 1, last [chapter]: "What is, when it is, necessarily is." For he says that a thing, for example A, which now is, can now, and for now, not be, as had been cited in the proof of the fifth truth. Saint Thomas also, hinting at the same logic,

In the first part of the Summa, where he had been cited,89 he answers thus: "It must be said that although it is impossible per accidens that past things not have been, if one considers that which is past, namely the running of Socrates, yet if the past is considered under the aspect of being past, its not having been is impossible per se and absolutely implies a contradiction." It seems, therefore, that when he says that past things cannot not have been, and that God cannot do this, he understands it in the composite sense, not the divided. Another saying of his in On the Eternity of the World attests the same, as does his distinction concerning the necessary, and another similar distinction in the first part of the Summa, particularly question 19, article 3, set out earlier in the fiftieth of this.

The same point can be confirmed in another way. For he himself does not dare to concede any diminution whatever of God's power intrinsically; so he will not dare to concede that God once could will or nill anything that he cannot now. For where he treated earlier of how past things can not have been, he argues thus: "Whatever God could do, he can, since his power is not diminished; but God could, before Socrates ran, make it that he not run; therefore, etc." And he replies thus: "It must be said that just as God, so far as concerns the perfection of the divine power, can do all things, yet some things do not lie under his power, because they fall short of the nature of the possible; so, if the immutability of the divine power is considered, whatever God could do, he can; and he could once have willed that the flood would never be future, present, or past; therefore he can now too."

But against this reply of these Doctors one may reasonably object in return. For if the Philosophers and Theologians, in asserting that past things cannot not have been, and that God cannot do this, understand it in the composite sense, then they must consequently assert, on a like understanding, that future things cannot not be future, that present things cannot not be, and that God cannot do this or that, nor anything that he does not do; yet while they assert the former, they deny the latter.

Hence, to grasp the meaning of the Philosophers and Doctors perhaps more clearly, it must be known that the Philosophers, when they consider natural causes and the natural course of beings and say that something can or cannot come to be, understand this, as they frequently do, of the power of natural and lower causes, and according to the natural course and order established naturally in natural things; and in this way it is true that past things cannot become not past, just as future things can become not future, and present things not present, since the former arrive as the latter recede.

Yet there is, as I think, another understanding, deeper and truer. For if one turns over the books of the Philosophers carefully, and turns them over again more carefully, it appears that they posit a general twofold division, into termini, namely, and into paths. The termini are two, being and not being; and the paths correspondingly are two, generation and corruption, leading to these termini. When the Philosophers see, then, that any thing existing in one of the two termini must, in order to be in the other, pass by a path to it, or that the terminus must in some way approach the thing, they say that this must happen through generation or corruption, through change or motion in the thing itself or in another. Hence, when they say that a thing existing in some terminus,

that is, in or under any being or not-being whatever, can be in or under the opposite terminus, they understand it of a power that is mutable, actualizable, and terminable by opposed termini succeeding one another, which cannot come out into act except through some change in that thing or in another, namely by approach to one of the opposites and recession from the other. To explain this as briefly as I know how, I say that power is twofold. One is wholly absolute, or the power of non-repugnance, and in this way something that is of a certain kind can be not of that kind without any change whatever, as the eleventh truth showed. The other is natural power, mutable, actualizable, and terminable by opposed termini in succession, according to contradiction and natural order;90 and according to this power, whatever it is, of whatever kind, cannot be not of that kind except through some change between opposed termini in itself or in something else, as the twelfth truth urged. And it is of this power that the Philosophers commonly speak when they say that something or some quality can or cannot be of such or such a kind, for the reason premised.

Speaking thus of power, then, it is most true that the past cannot not be past. For it cannot do so by change or making between opposed termini, namely between past and not past; for it evidently includes a contradiction that A was formerly past and now is not past. With future and present things it is not so. For the future can be changed, and will be changed, from future into not future, when it becomes present; and the present from present into not present, when it slips away into the past. This, then, according to the Philosophers and Theologians, is the difference among things divided by the threefold difference of time: the future can be changed, and from future become not future, and the present from present not present; but that the past be changed from past into not past is absolutely impossible. But further, in accordance with what has been said, it must be observed that making is twofold: one mutable, or the very change, initiable

and terminable by opposed termini, which corresponds to the similar power, namely the natural, mutable, actualizable, and terminable power just mentioned. It is of this power that the Philosophers, the Theologians, and all the learned and unlearned alike almost always understand and speak when they say that something can or cannot come to be. The reason is that whatever they see come to be, whether naturally, artificially, voluntarily, violently, casually, or by chance, they see come to be through this kind of making. Of this cause, moreover, there seems to be another cause prior: for making precedes its deed at least naturally and causally, so that it cannot be preceded by it in time; and the maker likewise precedes the making, and cannot be preceded by it in time; and so the maker too precedes his deed and cannot be preceded by it in time. Hence, just as every temporal maker has a temporal beginning, so also does each of his makings and each of his deeds. By the first making, then, namely that which is mutable and terminable by opposed termini, God cannot make from the past a not past, in such a way, that is, that something is first past and then recedes from that as from the terminus from which of the making and motion, and approaches the not past as to the terminus to which of the same making and motion: for in this way something would first be past and afterward not past, which evidently implies contradictories.

The Philosophers and Theologians, therefore, in dividing all things generally by the threefold temporal difference, namely into future, present, and past, intend to assign a further difference among the members: that God by this initiable and terminable making between opposed termini can make from the future a not future, by bringing it into being, and from the present a not present, by withdrawing it from being; but from the past a not past, in no way. This understanding is plainly evident from the words of the Doctors and Philosophers just adduced for the opposite view. Hence blessed Augustine, Against Faustus 26,B1 who denies that God can make what has been done not to have been, as was more fully alleged above, showing that he is speaking of this kind of terminable making, mutable from some terminus into its opposite,

adds immediately: "He can make it that something not be which was; for he then makes it not be, when he has found something existing from which it may be made, as when he makes one who began to be by being born not be by dying; for in this he found a deed from which it could be done. But who would say that he makes that which already is not to be not? For whatever is past already is not; and if anything can be made from it, there is still something from which it may be made; and if there is, how is it past?" The authorities that say a creature cannot always have existed understand that a creature imports a making from a preceding nothing, that is, an initiable and mutable making, supposing the Catholic truth. The others, which say that nothing other than God can be coeternal, perhaps mean by this, with the Catholic truth supposed, that everything other than God has been made by him, after not being. Or perhaps, more subtly, that nothing other than God can be eternal in the proper sense, in the sense of having its whole being together, without any mutable succession, and without possibility of change, as Boethius, Anselm, and the preceding chapter said. Hence, even if the world had no beginning of duration or time, and no end, it would in no way be called eternal in the proper sense, on account of the defect of the cause aforesaid. So Boethius too, Consolation of Philosophy 5, last prose,D1 91 writes thus: "Whatever is subject to the condition of time, even if, as Aristotle held of the world, it never began to be and does not cease, and its life is extended with the infinity of time, is nevertheless not yet such as to be rightly believed eternal. For it does not comprehend and embrace the whole span of its life, though unending, all at once, but does not yet have the future and no longer has what has passed. Whatever therefore comprehends and possesses together the whole fullness of unending life, to which nothing of the future is lacking and from which nothing of the past has flowed away, is rightly called eternal; and it must needs be that, master of itself, it stand ever present to itself, and have the infinity of mobile time present. Hence some are wrong who, when they hear that Plato thought this world had no beginning of time,

and would not come to an end, suppose that in this way the created world is made coeternal with its Creator. For it is one thing to be led through an unending life, which Plato attributes to the world, and another for the whole presence of unending life to be embraced together, which is manifestly proper to the divine mind: for God ought not to seem more ancient than created things by quantity of time, but rather by the property of a simple nature."

Yet for these and other purposes a certain distinction concerning eternity or the eternal is worth noting. For authors take "eternal" in one way, as has just been said; in another way, as it imports only the lack of beginning and end. Hence the grammarians too, following Everard of Bithynia, or, according to some, of Bath, in his Graecismus,92 where he assigns the differences of nouns, speak thus: "The eternal truly is without beginning, without end; the perpetual has a beginning, but will lack an end." And because this second sense is easier to grasp than the first, almost all, neglecting the first, would adhere‖E1 to the second. Other authorities too that assert that a creature cannot be

coeternal with the Creator can be understood and explained like the others touched on earlier. Jerome clearly indicated the same understanding when he says that God cannot raise up a virgin after her fall:93 for raising up evidently imports a transition from one of two opposites into the other, say from death to life, from wickedness to goodness, and universally from any not-being to the opposite being. In the same way the gloss on Amos can be understood, which says that a virgin who has lost her virginity will not be able to receive virginity back; for to receive back is to take again, and to take at another time, and so it designates a change and a beginning terminus. Or perhaps he understands it according to enacted law; for immediately it adds: "Hardly is it granted her to return from a thousand to a hundred, and from a hundred to ten." This perhaps must be understood according to dignity and rank in the Church Militant, not according to grace and merit. For according to the laws of the Church, well known in the Decrees and Decretals, those established in orders and dignities may so sin that they must be deposed or suspended, and never be restored, but remain forever in a lower state; and every sin is a kind of unvirgining, deflowering, and corruption of the sinner.

And this understanding likewise agrees with the words of the gloss; for it says: "So it comes about that the virgin Israel, who has erred, has no one to raise her up, because one who has once departed from union, and has lost the virginity which she had with the one husband, will not be able to receive back her former state, and virginity, and the blessedness of union; and hardly is it granted her to return from a thousand to a hundred, and from a hundred to ten." It agrees also with the text, which has to the same effect that the house of Israel has fallen and the virgin Israel has been cast down upon the earth; and it too does not deny the power of rising again to an equal state, but the act, assigning her a lower grade. Whence it says thus: "The house of Israel has fallen, she shall not add to rise again; the virgin Israel has been cast down upon her land, there is none to raise her up, for thus says the Lord God: The city from which a thousand went out shall have a hundred left in it, and that from which a hundred went out shall have ten left in it." On which the Gloss: "He does not deny that she can rise again, but the virgin Israel will not rise again, because she once went astray; and if she is carried back on the shepherd's shoulders, she does not have the same glory as one who never strayed from God. Hence through the Prophet: 'I prefer the repentance of the sinner to death'; he does not compare‖C1 repentance with the holiness of the Church, but says that, compared with death and hell, it is better." Literally, too, no woman who has been defiled, even before baptism, can be consecrated among the virgins of God, as Augustine attests on the epistle to Titus; it is cited in the Canon, distinction 26, Acutius,94 with which many other laws also agree.

From what has been said, the meaning of the Philosopher in Ethics 6C295 is likewise clear, when he says that what has been done does not admit of not being done. For he is speaking there of what can be deliberated and chosen through lower causes, say through men; and he says that no one chooses a deed, that is, a past thing, say that Ilium was captured, nor deliberates about a deed, but about the future and the contingent, because what has been done does not admit of not being done. All of this, in uniform conformity with the foregoing argument, is clearly understood of the power of secondary causes, namely of men; and it is true that what has been done does not admit of not being done by human power, deliberation, or choice, whereas a future contingent does admit of being done or not being done through these causes.

He understands also, consequently, that the past cannot not be, that is, cannot become not past, by a power and making that is mutable, initiable, and terminable by opposed termini, as all the true and proper effects of a cause truly and properly making come to be. Hence he himself says in Physics 2, 31:96 "The doctor, and the counsellor, and in general the maker, are all a principle of change or of rest." But the saying of Agathon himself seems to suffer a just objection: for it is not of this alone‖D1 that God is deprived, of making undone the things that are done. He is deprived of this also: of making, in respect of the present, mutably, now and for now, a not present; and in respect of the future, of making mutably the exhibition of a thing as not future;97 and, from among four contingent contradictories, of making all simultaneously true that can be simultaneously true, and which he can make simultaneously true; of making the greatest circular line, or the greatest finite straight line possible to be made, or the one he can make; of inscribing in a circle, or circumscribing about it, the greatest or the smallest rectilinear figure;

of making another God, and infinite gods; and universally God can do nothing that necessarily implies a contradiction. Someone will perhaps say on Agathon's behalf that none of these is anything; and I answer against both; therefore he cannot even make undone what has been done.98 But lest I seem to speak less than rightly in saying that Agathon did not speak rightly, whom Aristotle attests to have spoken rightly, I say that to the letter he spoke rightly: for he says that God is deprived of making such things, but not of the power of making; and it is true, and necessary, that God never makes undone what has been done, though that he cannot do it he does not say. It can also be understood and explained that God cannot do this by the power and action of natural and lower causes, as he can make future effects, nor even

by mutable power and making, terminable by opposed termini, as the saying of the Philosopher was explained before. Perhaps, however, it can be explained otherwise too, closer to his mind: he supposes generally that all things are divided into three, the future, the present, and the past, or done; and by saying exclusively, "of this alone is God deprived, to make undone things that are done," etc., he intends to include the last of the three members of the division just given and to exclude the first two. Let him also understand it of mutable making terminable by opposed termini; and so it is true that, of the number of these three, God is deprived of this alone: of making, that is, of being able to make by making of this kind, from the past, as from the terminus from which of the making and change, a not past. For this evidently includes a contradiction, namely that something first is or was past, and afterwards not past. From the future, however, as from the terminus from which, he can by making of this kind make a not future; and from the present, a not present; which he also does continually, since as the one arrives the other recedes.

The saying of Aristotle in On the World can likewise be understood and explained according to what was premised, and similarly the saying of Pliny that was recited; Pliny, however, seems to rave most wretchedly,99 saying that God has no right over the past except that of oblivion, as the fourteenth, sixth, and twenty-third of the first teach. Those, therefore, who deny that God can make from the past a not past understand it of the power and making according to the natural course and order established naturally in natural things, of the mutable, actualizable power and making, terminable by opposed termini, mentioned above. But, as was briefly touched on above, there is another making opposed to this one, namely stable, not mutable, not newly actualizable, not initiable nor terminable by opposed termini; and this corresponds to the absolute power, the power of non-repugnance, mentioned above. According to it, even what is of a certain kind in this present instant can be made by God, in this present instant, not of that kind, indeed even of the opposite condition, without any change whatever, according to the eleventh truth; for God's so making would be his so willing. So perhaps God could make the world, which has a beginning and is temporal, not to be of this kind but eternal. For it includes no contradiction

formally simply, as it seems, that the world should not have a beginning of duration or time, but should always have been, as it seems to some; or at least that in this way he could make the world older, and have it be earlier in time by however much: for this implies or imports no repugnance formally. Now making of this kind is like divine generation, cognition, and willing, or rather like God's knowing and willing toward the outside; by which, according to the fifth, sixth, and eighth truths, what he now wills and knows he could and can, now and for now, not know nor will, without any change whatever. It is also like the teaching by which the Father eternally teaches the Son and the Holy Spirit, of which see the thirty-fourth‖C1 of this. This manner of speaking about making is found in John 11, where it is asked thus about Christ: "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the man born blind,C2 have made it that this man also should not die?" Augustine speaks in the same way, Against Faustus 26: "If I hear," he says, "that something was going to be, if God made it not happen, I will answer most confidently: What was going to be was rather what God did, not that thing which, if it had been going to be, he would have done this; for God certainly knew what he was going to do, and therefore knew at the same time that that had not been going to be which he was going to prevent from happening." So too Peter, Sentences 1, distinction 38, says,C3 that God

could make it that what comes to be would not come to be, and thus would not have been foreknown. By the absolute power, then, the power of non-repugnance mentioned above, and by making of this kind, God can make a thing that is past, say A, considered bare and absolute, not to be past. For God's so making would be nothing other than his nilling that it be past, or willing the opposite, by a nilling or willing that is not mutable, not initiable or terminable, but stable and eternal, which is absolutely and without repugnance possible, both as far as concerns the nature of his absolute power, and as far as concerns the nature of his willing power, free with respect to contradiction, insofar as it precedes its act causally; by this act, in every case in the same way, he wills intrinsically now that A has been, just as he willed earlier, now, that A would be,100 as the preceding has taught. The reason for this is that with God intrinsically nothing is past or future, but only present, immutably, stably, eternally, and instantaneously, as was shown above.

Further, because it perhaps seems difficult to some to understand how the past can become not past by the making described above, not mutable, not initiable, nor terminable by

opposed termini, here is an example for this, plain and easy to understand. The future can indeed become not future before it comes to pass, or, to put it more truly, when it never comes to pass, is never placed in being, is never made present. Let A be John's running tomorrow, to be contingently future; and who among men doubts that God by his power, indeed by his absolute omnipotence, can make it that John will not run, and hence that A will not be; and so, consequently, can make something future not future, without its ever having been made present? And without doubt he cannot do this by the mutable, initiable, and terminable making mentioned above: for it evidently includes a contradiction that something from the future, as from the terminus from which of making and change, become not future, unless by positing it in

being. Here is a still more evident example, perhaps, to the same purpose: something that is not future can become future. Let A be an effect possible to be made, which will not be made; and, as everyone confesses, God by his absolute power can make it that A will be; so too that what is not future be future, but not by the mutable, initiable, or terminable making so often mentioned: for it evidently implies a contradiction that something be future at some time, and always or at some time before have been not future, as the eighteenth of this shows. Just as, then, the not future can become future, and the future not future, without its being posited in being, by a making that is not mutable but stable, so likewise can the past become not past. It does not follow, therefore, as was objected above, that if past things can by that power not have been, they can do this by change;‖A1101 nor does it follow, if past things can be or become not past, that it is expedient for men to deliberate about them; for not everything that can be or come to be can do so through the deliberation of men or by human power.

The twenty-second truth says that a future thing cannot fail to be, that a present thing cannot fail to be now and for now, and that past things cannot fail to have been, taking power correspondingly to the sixteenth truth. Thus understood, it follows evidently from that same sixteenth, with this one point added: that the divine will is a necessary cause, that is, one that cannot be thwarted and cannot fail in causing, as the tenth of the first teaches. It can also be shown from the first negative part of the eighteenth truth.

The twenty-third truth is clear from the first three parts of the seventeenth, with this added: that the divine will cannot be thwarted and cannot fail in causing. It follows also from the corresponding parts of the eighteenth truth.

The twenty-fourth follows manifestly from the last part of the seventeenth, with this one thing assumed: that the divine will is a necessary cause, that is, necessarily required for something to be future, present, or past, as the fourteenth and ninth of the first demonstrate. This is also shown manifestly from the last negative part of the eighteenth. According to these points, moreover, the well-known saying of the Philosopher can be fittingly understood and expounded: that it is necessary that what is, is when it is, and that what is not, is not when it is not, and the like. The sayings of Averroes, Hugh, and Peter that were objected here102 were expounded in the sixth of this book. That other saying of the Philosopher, that if all things were or came to be from necessity there would be no need to deliberate or to do business, was expounded in the twenty-ninth of this book. It can also be fittingly expounded by saying that he understands there a necessity contrary to, and repugnant to, a preceding possibility and contingency, as appears in the proof of the ninth truth. In similar ways the saying of the same Philosopher from Ethics 3 that was objected can be expounded. Many other similar sayings I judge to be expounded likewise. By what has been premised, God, Christ, and the Prophets, who predicted certain things still future, can likewise be defended from fallacy, falsehood, and every absurdity. For just as those future things can in no way come to pass, so too those revelations, promises, oaths, and predictions can fail to have been past.

The twenty-fifth follows evidently from what has been premised about eternity. For concerning future contingents, when they come to be present and past, there will be a determinate truth with God, and not then for the first time and anew. For with God, intrinsically and in eternity, nothing is before or after in succession, nothing changeable, nothing new, as this chapter and the one next before it have taught.

Again, the will of God is the cause of all future things by the fourteenth of the first, and is unthwartable and immutable by the tenth and twenty-third of the first. And it is determinate with God, as no one is ignorant. And since it is determinate concerning present and past things, it is so likewise concerning future things, as can be shown by the thirteenth and fourteenth truths. Again, with God there is determinate knowledge of all future things, because it is through a determinate cause, namely his will, by which he knows them, as was shown in the eighteenth of the first. And otherwise God would know present and past things more certainly than future ones, and so something would accrue to his knowledge from the things known, against the twenty-third of the first and the thirty-first of this book. Again, all things are always present in eternity and intrinsically with God, namely causally, as the proof of the fourteenth truth shows. Hence there is determinate knowledge, certitude, and truth with him of all things, as of things temporally present.

Hence Ammonius, on the last chapter of Peri hermeneias 1:103 "It is not possible either that the gods have an indeterminate knowledge of future things, as though conjecturing about them. First, as Timaeus taught us, and as Aristotle declares when speaking theologically, and before these Parmenides, both in Plato and in his own poems: with the gods there is nothing either past or future, since each of these is a non-being; the one is no longer, the other not yet, and the one has been changed, the other is apt to be changed. Hence conjectural knowledge must be cast away from the gods, and relegated to the lowest part of rational life. Next, how shall we partake even a little of sobriety, unless we attribute more to the knowledge of the gods than to yours? But, hearing this, they will have to confess104 that it too is doubtful and indeterminate; for it will be of the same account."

The same author further on, having shown this in many ways, concludes openly that it must be said both that contingent things are ordered by the gods and that their outcome is known determinately. To teach this more evidently, he cites Adnulam blichi105 (to the effect) that knowledge is a mean between the knower and the known; for it is the operation of the knower about the known; and the known itself is sometimes known in a higher manner than its nature, sometimes in a lower, sometimes equally. "For when our intellect arranges political actions, it knows singular affairs by referring them to universals. This knowledge, however, is higher than the singular that is known: the singular is divisible and changeable, but the reason by which the practical intellect knows is indivisible and unchangeable. But when the intellect, turned back to itself and operating according to the purificatory virtues, considers according to substance, the knowledge is of the same order as what is known. When, however, ascending to the summit of its perfection and meditating according to the contemplative virtues, it considers what concerns the divine orders, and how these are produced from the one principle of all, and what the property of each is, the knowledge is inferior to what is known. These things being so, it must be said that the gods know all things that have come to be, that are, and that will be,106 in the manner fitting to gods; and this is by one, determinate, and infallible knowledge. On account of which it must be said that they also comprehend the knowledge of contingent things, as of all things that are in the world, being their producers, being themselves the causes of the perpetual substances and co-causes of the generable ones, according to their own proper operations, and as seeing not only the substances themselves but their powers and operations, both those according to nature and those beside nature. What is beside nature entered together with the necessary order that underlies the course of beings, in those things that are apt to share in this, not principally but according to the mode called parypostasis,107 that is, of side-existence. To know

contingent things, however, is their nature; on account of which, while these things in this respect have an indeterminate nature, able to happen and not to happen, those others, in a manner nobler than the nature of the things themselves, take in advance the knowledge of them determinately, and know them. For it is necessary that they know divisible things indivisibly and without distance, and multiplied things unitively, and temporal things eternally, and generable things ungenerably. For we shall certainly not tolerate its being said that the knowledge of the gods runs on together with the flux of things, or that anything with them is either past or future, or that 'was' or 'will be' is said of them, as we assumed in the Timaeus, since these signify a certain change; but only 'is' is said of them." This opinion too is plainly attested by the authorities of Augustine and Cassiodorus on Psalm 43 [44],108 written in the forty-seventh of this book.

For the twenty-sixth, it must be known that things are of determinate being, and of determinate stability, for a creature in three ways: in themselves, in their causes, and in both ways.

In themselves, as a present contingent thing, for example, John's running or sitting, which from its presence has a certain consequent necessity of being for now, and so ‖D1 is determinate and certain, and has a like knowability by man; and a past thing likewise. In their causes, as natural things that will be by natural necessity, for example, a future eclipse of the luminaries, the transmutation of the elements, and the death of mortals. In both ways, as such natural effects when present or when passed over into the past. Future contingents, however, are determinate in none of these ways. Not in themselves, evidently; not in their causes, because then they would not be contingent to either side, but contingent of the natural kind109 or necessary; therefore not in both of these ways either. This is the opinion of the Philosopher in Peri hermeneias 1, last chapter, as it is commonly alleged from him and was touched upon in the objections, although the word "determinate" is never placed D2 there in the whole sequence of his text. Hence Ammonius too, expounding that place, says thus: "The same thing is contingent by its own nature, but to the knowledge of the gods it is not still indeterminate but determinate. It is plain that for our knowledge too it is impossible to be known determinately while contingent; but it will follow from necessity, the causes of its generation having gone before." Nor do any resist this except perhaps the mathematicians and diviners, who say that all human acts are subject to the necessity of the stars; but the third of the second refutes these. But through divine revelation a rational creature can have determinate and certain knowledge of future contingents, indeed even something like a demonstration propter quid, that is, from the cause. For God can reveal with certitude to a rational creature his will concerning some such future thing, in its own kind or in the Word,110 as the fortieth of this book and the chapters following have taught. The divine will, however, is a necessary cause of future things in being, by consequent necessity, and is unthwartable in causing,111 as the fourteenth of the first, the fifty-second,112 and the fiftieth of this book, and the tenth of the first teach; all of which he can likewise reveal. A creature can therefore know that a contingent thing will be, through its cause, both that it is its cause and that it is impossible for it to be otherwise. It can also know that it will be from things true, primary, immediate, better known, and prior, and from causes of the conclusion; or rather, and perhaps more eminently, than through created propositions, namely through the mirror of eternal truth; and so also demonstratively, A1 as is clear in Posterior Analytics 1, 2, or more perfectly and excellently than through discursive syllogistic demonstration. The authority of Augustine on Psalm 43, written in the forty-seventh of this book, confirms the same.

The twenty-seventh can be shown through the twenty-fifth and its proof. It can also be shown through the fourteenth and its proof, since the divine will is the cause of all future things, and through it God foreknows all of them, as the fourteenth and eighteenth of the first teach. The sayings of Augustine and Cassiodorus on Psalm 43 [44], written in the forty-seventh of this book, also clearly attest this.

The twenty-eighth can be shown through the one next before it, and the thirteenth, and their proofs.

B1 The twenty-ninth can be shown through the one next before it, and the fourteenth, and their proofs. The authorities of Augustine and Cassiodorus on Psalm 43, set out before in the forty-seventh of this book, also plainly seem to attest it. Augustine too, in the twenty-sixth book Against Faustus, 2,113 says: "Future things can no more fail to come to pass than past things can fail to have been done." Nor can anyone say that Augustine understands this in the composite sense, or de dicto, and not in the divided sense, or de re; for thus he would clear up nothing obscure or doubtful, nor teach anything. The course, the end, and the reason he gives also show that he is speaking in the divided sense and de re. His reason seems to be the efficacious will of God, which cannot be thwarted or changed, and a truth irrefragable and immutable in every respect. Hence also, immediately before, he speaks as follows about something possible to come to pass: "I grant that it can come to pass, but whether it will be, I do not know; and I do not know for this reason, that what God's will holds about this matter is hidden from me. This, however, is not hidden from me: that without doubt it will be, if God's will holds this. Furthermore, if I hear that something was going to be, but that God made it not come to pass, I shall most confidently answer: what was going to be was rather what God made, not that thing about which, if it were going to be, he would have done this.114 For God certainly knew what he was going to do, and so he knew at the same time that that thing was not going to be which he was going to make not come to pass; and beyond doubt what God knows is more true than what man opines." From these he immediately concludes: "Hence future things can no more fail to come to pass than past things can fail to have been done." But how would that follow from what precedes, if he were speaking only in the composite sense? Behold likewise the reason which he immediately adds: "since it is not in God's will that something be false by that by which it is true. Wherefore all things that are truly future will without doubt come to pass; but if they have not come to pass, they were not future. So all things that are truly past have without doubt passed." It also appears manifestly, through those two universal affirmatives, one about the future and the other about the past, that he is speaking of the future and past things themselves, and not merely of the propositions. He says also further on: "The statement by which we say that something has been is true for this reason, that that of which we speak no longer is. God cannot make this statement false, because he is not contrary to truth. And if you ask where this true statement is, it is first found in our mind, when we know and say that it is true. But even if it is taken away from our mind, when we have forgotten what we know, it will remain true by that very truth.115 For it will always be true that that thing was which was and is not; and it will be true that it has already been, which was, in the place where it was true, before it came to be, that what was not would be. God cannot oppose this truth, in whom is the supreme and unchangeable truth itself, by which it is illumined that whatever is true in any souls and minds whatsoever is true." This equality of necessity with God in respect of future things, as in respect of past things, inasmuch as all these are present with him in eternity, and indeed even as past, because confirmed with like certitude, stability, and necessity, and because they thus coexisted with all past time, and indeed preceded all the times of the age, all the Prophets commonly hint, or rather, more truly, the Holy Spirit who spoke through the Prophets, prophesying future things as already past, as the matters set out before in the forty-seventh of this book show. With these the Philosophers too seem to agree:

for Aristotle says in On the World 11116 that all things are truly the works of God; from whom, according to Empedocles the natural philosopher, E1 all things that are, and that will afterwards be, have proceeded. Hence Augustine too, in On Rebuke and Grace 33, treating that saying of the Apostle in Romans 8, "Those whom he foreknew and predestined," etc., writes thus: "All those things have already been done: he foreknew, predestined, called, justified, because all have already been foreknown and predestined. Yet until the end of the age many are still to be called and justified, and nevertheless he set down verbs of past tense, even about future things, as though God had made what he has already disposed from eternity to come to be. Therefore the Prophet Isaiah too says of him: 'Who made the things that are to come.'" A1 Yet in Isaiah, in this sequence of words, I do not remember having read this; perhaps, however, he cites ‖A2 another translation, which I have not seen. This sense, nevertheless, does occur in Isaiah. For in the forty-first chapter, according to Jerome's translation, Isaiah, or rather the Lord through Isaiah, says thus: "Who raised up the just one from the East," namely Jesus Christ, "and called him to follow him?" Behold a prophecy of the past; and he adds, mingled in ‖A3 with the future, "He will give nations before his face," etc. And he adds, "Who has worked and made these things, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first and the last, I am"; and further on, in chapter 48: "The former things I announced from then, and they went out of my mouth, and I made them heard; suddenly I acted,117 and they came." For this necessity following from presence, or pastness, with God in eternity, Augustine further on, in 34, adds in conclusion: A4 "Whoever, therefore, in God's most provident disposition have been foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified, I say not yet reborn, but not yet even born, are already sons of God, and therefore cannot perish at all." Anselm too, treating this in On Concord 3, B1 sets forth the same authority of the Apostle much more clearly, as the forty-seventh and twenty-seventh of this book reveal. Augustine moreover, in the second part on John, homily 14, or 68 of the whole,118 B2 treating that passage of John 14, "In my Father's house there are many mansions," and further on, "If I go and prepare a place for you," etc., says: "How are the mansions in the Father's house not other ones but the very same, and without doubt already are, in the sense that they are not to be prepared, and are not yet, in the sense that they are to be prepared? How have we supposed this, except in the way that the Prophet also proclaims God, that he made what is to be? For he does not say, 'because he is going to make what is to be'; so then he both made them and is going to make them. For neither have they been made, if he did not make them, nor will they be, if he does not make them; he made them, therefore, by predestining; he will make them by working." Here he understands and expounds in a similar way that saying of the Apostle to the Ephesians 1, "He chose us before the foundation of the world," and the one to the Romans touched on above, "Those whom he predestined, those he also called."

This authority of Augustine, though not in its order, is alleged in the Canon, on penance, distinction 4, "In domo."119 C1 The same Augustine, moreover, in On the Trinity 5, last chapter, says: "With God past things have not passed away, and future things have already been made." And further, in City of God 10, 12: "Where and when God carries out his unchangeable counsel120 is with him, in whose disposition all the times that are to be have already been made. For in moving temporal things he is not moved temporally, nor does he know things to be done otherwise than as done, nor does he hear those who call upon him otherwise than as he sees that they will call upon him; and his eternal commands, written down by his law, ‖C2 are carried out in time." The same Augustine, in Confessions 1, 6, says to God: "Your years will not fail; your years are a today; and how many! And how many of our days, and of our fathers' days, have already passed through your today, and from it received their measures, and in whatever way they existed; and others still will pass, and will receive, and in whatever way they will exist; but you are the same, and all tomorrow's things and all that is beyond, and all yesterday's things and all that is behind, you will make today, you have made today. What is it to me, if someone does not understand? Let him too rejoice, Lord, saying, 'What is this?' Let him too rejoice in this way, and let him love to find by not finding rather than to find not by finding you."

The thirtieth seems so certain that it hardly needs proof. For inferior causes are temporal, active and passive, with motion and time, with beginning and with end. What is past has already passed beyond the power of these causes and is no longer subject to them. It cannot be initiated by them through operation and motion, as the demonstration of the twenty-first makes clear. What is present, for now, must be, by consequent necessity 121. What is future can be initiated, through action and motion, by a secondary cause that is free with respect to contradiction as to acting and not acting, and it has of itself no necessity of being. Moreover, no secondary cause has a will that is effective in all things, as God has. Indeed, according to the Philosopher, Ethics 3, 5, will is of impossibles 122. So even if it can will that past things not have been and present things not be, the thing does not follow its willing, as it follows the willing of God.

Against the first of these, however, it can be plausibly objected in this way. A secondary cause can make a present thing out of a past one. For the Sun, presented in the same way to the same illuminable thing, whether corruptible or eternal, now as before, generates now the same light it generated before. For according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 8, 11 E1, diversity of effects is due to diversity of the efficient cause or to diversity of the matter. And according to the same, Metaphysics 12, 11, if the agent is one and the matter one, what is made is one E2. Averroes also says this plainly in both Comments ‖E3 123. The Philosopher likewise says, in On Generation 2, next to last chapter, that what is the same and stands in the same way is always naturally apt to make the same, supposing, that is, identity of matter.

Just as it has been argued that a light once destroyed can be generated again the same in number, so too it can be argued of the other generable and corruptible forms, accidental and substantial, and therefore of the composites themselves, that they will return the same in number. Water, too, destroyed by discontinuation, is generated the same in number by recontinuation. Some, such as the Platonists, ‖A1 concede this. But the thirty-ninth part of the first corollary of the first 124, and Philosophers and Theologians alike, refute and deride them.

Others, wishing to avoid so great an error, say that not only the Sun but all the other stars, wandering and fixed, co-act *A2 in every effect produced by any agent. Since their positions and aspects, toward one another and toward the Sun, vary continually, the effects produced vary continually too. But these men do not escape the authorities of the Philosopher already cited. For not every slight accidental diversity in the agent makes a numerical diversity in the effect, least of all in simple and composite substances. The stars of heaven can also be applied to some place on earth in an equally strong aspect, now as before, though perhaps not in one similar in every respect. So they can also regenerate a corrupted effect. At some time, moreover, as it seems, all the planets and stars will return to an aspect entirely similar to the one they now have, and to the one they had at any earlier instant. According to the Platonists, this will be at the end of the great year of the world, which in their account is the return of all the heavenly bodies to their original state, a matter the first of the first discussed more fully. Then, therefore, corrupted things will return the same in number.

Some, wishing to dissolve this reasoning, B1 affirm that the heavenly motions are not commensurable with one another by any rational proportion but only by an irrational one, such as the proportion of the diagonal of a square to its side, or of a cone to its half, on which kinds of proportion I have treated more fully elsewhere. So the heavenly motions will never fully return to their original state, nor to any other later one. But this hypothesis, offered as a reply, is posited very much at will and easily, without evidence of reason, and so it is just as easily rejected. Even with the hypothesis admitted, would they show their point? It is not altogether evident 125. And to examine the matter by evident reasoning through mathematical theorems, which are very foreign to sacred letters, would perhaps seem to theologians more curious than fruitful, especially since the axiom proposed can be fully resolved in another way.

C1 Others, however, say that the diversity of numerical time is the cause of the numerical diversity of effects. But how can it be, since time is neither an efficient cause, nor a material or a formal one, of the effects produced? And what is the cause of the diversity of numerical time? If they say it is the diversity of the heavenly motions, what is the cause of the numerical diversity of these? So one must keep ascending until one arrives at the first of such diversified things. C2 Still others say that the cause of such a diversity of effects is the diversity of natural order in the subject toward diverse effects. But that a diversity in relation should be the cause of a diversity in absolute accidents, or in substances, does not seem right. Rather, reasonably, it is the other way round. Moreover, the totality of order arises of necessity from diverse ordered things, as from a foundation and prior cause. So those diverse ordered things would rather be the cause of such a diversity of effects than the diversity of order. Which these diverse ordered things are, of what kind, and how many, is not stated, and could hardly be stated clearly.

The Philosopher also, in Metaphysics 12, where he was cited, touches on one point by which he seems to resolve the objection set out and to expound his own words: "That," he says, "is made actual whose matter was potency, or in potency." He implies that even if the agent is the same and the matter the same, still diverse effects can arise from the diversity of the potencies in the matter toward diverse effects. So for the effect to be the same in number, identity of numerical potency is required. For this reason Averroes too, in that eleventh Comment, says: "If the matter is one, and the generating thing one, and the potency one, then what is made will be one. For when the subject is one, and the potency existing in it one, and the agent one, there will be no cause of multitude."

But against these Philosophers the principal objection can be recast thus. Suppose an active A acts tomorrow on a passive B that has C, a potency toward an effect D. Tomorrow it will produce D. Now suppose that today God, by his omnipotence, creates D, changing nothing around A, B or C. Or, if a change necessarily follows, suppose that with D also corrupted, omnipotent God today brings A, B and C back entirely to their former state. Then tomorrow A will make from B and C a D that is past and corrupted. In a similar way it can be shown that a man once made by God, to be generated naturally in the manner stated, who has since been deflowered, has died and been buried, can be generated anew by a man and borne by a woman, and borne a virgin 126. For every birth necessarily comes out a virgin. Therefore a secondary cause can make what is past and corrupted exist as present, and so make it not be past.

Of all the opinions recited, the opinion of the Philosopher seems to me the most consonant with reason: namely, that the numerical diversity of effects succeeding one another in the same matter or subject, with the same agent and the same matter or subject, arises from the diversity of the potency, or potencies, in it. Yet a far greater discussion is required for a full exposition of such potency. But whatever the pagan Philosophers may think, A1 Catholic Theologians unhesitatingly acknowledge that the first, highest and truest cause of such diverse effects is the divine will. It is not changeable or diverse but stable and the same, and by it, without any succession of acts of will and without any change in itself, God wills and makes diverse effects succeed one another when he wills, and where, as the 9th, 23rd and 47th of the first teach. Hence also Judith 9: "This was done, which you yourself willed." Blessed Augustine also, in On the Trinity 3, 2 A2 127, speaking of everything that happens in the usual or unusual way, often or rarely, says: "Of these nothing happens except by the will of God, but to most people this is not apparent. And so it pleased the vanity of the Philosophers also to attribute them to other causes, either true but proximate, since they could not see at all the cause above all other causes, that is, the will of God, or false, and not even brought forth by investigation of bodily things and changes, but from their own suspicion and error." Hence he also says in the Enchiridion 6 128: "When it is asked what is to be believed in what pertains to religion, the nature of things is not to be probed in the way of those whom the Greeks call physicists. Nor is it to be feared, as they fear, that a Christian may be ignorant of something concerning the force and number of the elements, the motion, order and eclipses of the stars, the shape of the heavens, the kinds and natures of animals, of waves, stones, springs, rivers, mountains, the spans of places and times, the signs of impending storms, and other things that follow, of the things which they have discovered, or think they have discovered. For even they did not discover everything, though so excellent in genius, ablaze with study, abounding in leisure, investigating some things by human conjecture and searching out others by historical experience. And in those things which they boast they have discovered, they hold opinions rather than knowledge. It is enough for a Christian to believe that the cause of created things, whether heavenly or earthly, visible or invisible, is nothing but the goodness of the Creator, that is, the Creator's good will."

Further, whether a secondary cause can make the same effect in number as the one that preceded, or cannot, the objection does not go through. It seems probable that it can, a miracle having preceded, as was objected a moment ago, and perhaps in the recontinuation of a liquid corrupted by discontinuation. Outside these cases it seems that it cannot. For if it cannot, the objection does not stand in the way. But if, existing as present, it could freely make something present out of what is past and corrupted, it still could not on that account make what is past not past, or make a virgin out of one corrupted, as God can. For although God by his omnipotence were to bring Abraham and Sarah back, in every respect, to the same state they had when Isaac was being begotten, so that he begot and she bore Isaac, she would bear him as one corrupted, and past, the father of Jacob 129. Yet it is true, according to the course of nature and without miracle, that every birth necessarily comes out a virgin.

But perhaps a sophist will still press sophistically thus. Let that be called past which was and is not. If, therefore, a secondary cause can make of the past that it be, it can also make that it not be past. But this does not prove that a secondary cause can make of what is past something not past, as to this condition, having been, namely, that it lack having been. So it does not stand in the way. But perhaps he will still rejoin: A free secondary cause, say Peter, could earlier have made some free effect of his, now past, call it A, not past, namely by simply omitting it, as the law Facere speaks in the Digest, On the rules of law 130: "He who does not do what he ought to do is seen to act against it, because he did not do it." This is a quite common manner of speaking. Or he could have done so by making an effect contrary to A and incompossible with it, call it B. And omnipotent God can restore to Peter all the power he had earlier, and more, and when that is done Peter can make A not past. Or thus: Peter earlier could do that A not have been. So even if by God's omnipotence he has now been made as powerful as he was then, or more powerful, he can still do it. Or perhaps even more strongly in this way: whatever God could once do, in whatever way, he can still do in the same way. Otherwise he would become less powerful and cease to be omnipotent. But God once could make, through a secondary cause, say through Peter, that A not be past, or that A not have been.

But these arguments, though they seem acute, are easily blunted. For even if Peter now had all the power he had before, or more, he would not on that account be able now to produce every effect the same in number as before, but perhaps the same in species and equal, or greater. The reason is that for the numerical identity of an effect, the numerical identity of the agent alone, or of the agent's power, does not suffice. Rather, numerical identity of the matter, or of the object, and of its potency, is required, as the foregoing attest.

And if it is supposed that omnipotent God fully restores all these things the same in number, grant that Peter can now make the same effect in number, or the same lack, as before. Still he cannot on that account now make A not be past, since he never could do this earlier, namely, not before A was. For then it was not makeable by Peter that A not be past. It was so eternally before, just as it is not now makeable by any secondary cause that Antichrist, who is to be, should not be past, now or before. For how would he make what eternally was before, and what cannot have a beginning and an end of making, when every making of a secondary cause necessarily requires this, as is clear in the demonstration of the twenty-first part of this corollary? Nor, when A was, could Peter make A not be past, for similar reasons. For then, as always before, A was not past, and this did not then, or before, depend in any way on a making or failing of Peter's. So neither, after A was, could Peter make A not be past. For if he had made this, A, both then and always before, would have been not past. For nothing can begin to be not past. And he could not do this, or have done it after A was, except by a making that is initiable and mutable from past into not past, which includes a contradiction.

The second instance is solved like the first. For from equal or greater power in Peter now than before it does not follow that he can produce every effect the same in number as before, as has already been shown. And suppose someone, objecting, assumes that omnipotent God restores in Peter the agent, in the passive subject, and in all that is required, everything the same in number as before. Even though Peter could now make the same effect in number as before, or the same lack, he still cannot on that account now make it that A had not been earlier. He can make only that A not be now, by failing, that is, solely privatively, from the making of A, or by making an effect contrary to A, incompossible with it and excluding it. Otherwise A would now be. And to have made earlier, or to make, that A had not been earlier would be the same as to make now that A not be now; but it would not be to make now that A had not been earlier, according to Logic 24 of the first, premised 131. It is just as it was really the same, at the time of Christ's passion, to say "Christ now suffers" and now to say "Christ was then suffering," and so with all other past things. The last instance is solved like the earlier ones;

God cannot make A not past through a secondary cause, just as he never could earlier. For he can make nothing through a secondary cause unless that cause can in some way make it. But no secondary cause can in any way make this, as was shown above. For every making of a secondary cause is temporal, with change and beginning. But A's not being past cannot be initiated, so neither can it be made through a secondary cause, by any temporal making, but only by God, by an eternal making: namely, by his eternal nilling or willing 132, having no beginning, by which he does not will A to be past, or wills A to be not past, as the demonstration of the 21st part shows more fully.

But perhaps you will not cease to object that this man, say John, who did this or that, could contingently not have done this or that, and that John, who did not do this or that, could contingently have done this and that. For it is contingent that God ‖C1 should not will, or should will, this. But that does not stand in the way. For although this is possible and contingent with respect to the divine will, it is not so with respect to the human will, say John's. For nothing is in John's power except what he does when he wills, as the earlier points attest. But even if John wills this, it does not follow that it is so, although, in addition, John could have not done what he did. Yet he cannot make himself not to have done what he did. For whatever he may do in the present, or even in the future, it does not follow that he has not done what he did.

Against the second part of this thirtieth the objection is pressed thus. Contingency and freedom are said properly with respect to the present, but with respect to the future improperly, or less properly, commonly or by extension, as the 5th and 6th of this affirm. So among inferior causes there is greater contingency and freedom with respect to the present than with respect to the future. But who does not know that it does not follow, from being such more properly, that it is such more simply? For who does not know that "perfect" is said more properly of a creature fully made than of God, who is in no way makeable and was never made? And who would concede that a creature is more perfect than God? Who ‖D1 also is ignorant that "great" is said more properly of a body than of God, and of powers extended according to bodily dimensions than of an indivisible, unextended power? Yet who would concede that a finite body is greater than God, whose magnitude has no end? Or that the finite power of any element, of any clod of earth or any drop of water, is greater than God's infinite power? Hence that consequence does not hold.

Further, against the third part of this thirtieth someone will perhaps object that the divine will is a cause that cannot be frustrated and cannot fail. So any inferior cause will produce whatever future effect of its own, just as 133 it produces and has produced every present and past effect of its own. And by the 14th and 29th parts of the corollary mentioned above there is in the divine will an equal necessity with respect to future things as with respect to present and past ones. So it is equally necessary that inferior causes produce their future effects, as that they produce present ones and have produced past ones. But this neither concludes nor stands in the way.

It does not conclude, because even if there is in the divine will an equal necessity with respect to future things as to present ones, there is nonetheless a different necessity in inferior causes with respect to their present effects. With respect to future effects that are contingently open to either alternative there is none at all. So the necessity with respect to the present effects of inferior causes is more manifold than that with respect to their future effects. And even if this did conclude, it would not stand in the way. For although it would be necessary, and equally necessary, that inferior causes produce their future effects, just as that they produce present ones, or have produced past ones, as far as the divine will is concerned, it is not so as far as the inferior causes are concerned. For an inferior cause that is to do something to either alternative, considered bare and absolutely, as far as it itself is concerned, is bound by no necessity to do it. It is disposed indifferently, indeterminately and contingently to either, to doing that thing and not doing it, as was similarly answered to a similar argument in the 29th of this.

Further, besides the objections stated, it can also be objected otherwise against what has been said. For from the foregoing it seems to follow that contradictories are true together, at least in eternity, since all things that succeed one another in time are there together without succession, as the foregoing attest. Again, if there were such a consequent necessity, and of immutability, in God, he would not be possessed of free choice, since he would be in no way flexible this way and that. Moreover, if such necessity is in God, prayers are offered him in vain, since by them he cannot in any way be inclined or bent. The first of these was solved in the 24th of the first. The second will be solved by the first and fifth of this, for these show that freedom, contingency and necessity are not in conflict. Who, moreover, would doubt that freedom of choice is compatible with consequent necessity? For man, the most changeable of creatures, though according to the opinion of some he could will something of himself alone, without God's co-acting, would still, if he now willed anything, will it necessarily, for now, by consequent necessity. Does God, then, have freedom of choice about present and past things, as about future ones? Or does he have less with respect to these than with respect to future ones, and so, with respect to the same object, less now than before? Or rather has he already irrecoverably lost all freedom regarding certain things willed, incurring a fresh servitude, fresh fetters of a fresh necessity, contrary to what was shown earlier in the 30th, 50th and 52nd of this, and especially contrary to the 13th and 14th parts of this corollary?

Nor, because God has free choice, does it follow that he is mutably flexible this way and that, like changeable man. God is called free with freedom of contradiction because there is in him no antecedent necessity toward an act of the will directed outward. Rather, insofar as he causally precedes that act, he could produce it or not, to either alternative, as the demonstration of the third truth of this corollary, and of the ninth, shows more fully. Hence also St Thomas, on Sentences 1, dist. 39, question 1 134, asks whether God can not know what he knows. The third objection argues that he cannot, because everything that is must be while it is, and God's knowing is a being in act. The fourth argues the same, because everything eternal is necessary, and every knowing of God is eternal. He replies in this way: "To the third it must be said that what is, must be while it is. Speaking absolutely, however, it need not be. And so it is necessary that God know while he knows, yet it is not necessary that he know except by a necessity of immutability, which does not exclude freedom of the will. This freedom is signified when it is said that God can not know and can not will. To the fourth it must be said that everything eternal is necessary by a necessity of immutability, which does not exclude freedom of the will, as has been said." How knowing pertains to freedom of the will he immediately ‖D1 sets forth: "Although," he says, "to be and to know are the same in God as to the thing, yet knowing follows the will as commanded by it, or not. And therefore its being is subject to the freedom of the will, as knowing is to the operation of the creature." He holds the same opinion in Against the Gentiles 1, 85, as the twenty-eighth of this briefly recited.

The third objection supposes, with the Egyptians, that God is changeable and of a will alterable by merits and by prayers, against the 5th and 23rd of the first book. It is solved by the foregoing, with regard to the saying of the Philosopher in On Interpretation 1, last chapter 135, and the instance about negligence in the 29th of this. For God, as he predestined to some, say to the elect, the end, so he predestined the way to it. As he predestined the extreme, so he predestined the means. As he predestined the crown, so he predestined the warfare, the merits and the labors, as the authority of Blessed Gregory, Dialogues 1, 21 136, and others written in the 23rd of the first clearly show.