Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

Lest we retrace worn paths with repeated step, what we have said concerning the object — both primary and secondary, both material and formal — of the divine Intellect must be recalled; for these things can be affirmed of the divine Will by a similar line of reasoning; and moreover, for the clearer resolution of this Question

Note 1. It is certain that the divine essence considered precisely in itself is the first object of the divine Intellect and of the divine Will, by a primacy, indeed, of dignity and of a certain natural presupposition; for since this essence is thinkable before all its attributes and all its divine perfections, of which it is the source and origin, and is therefore first in the notion of divine being, it is also to be reckoned first in the notion of the intelligible true and in the notion of the appetible and lovable good.

But the difficulty is under what notion the divine Essence itself has the character of the object first moving and terminating the divine Will; for some Theologians affirm that the motive object of the divine Will is indeed the divine goodness itself — not essential, but attributal. Others, however, with the Disciples of the Subtle Doctor, assert that the adequate formal motive object of the divine Will, both for the love of itself and for the love of its attributes, is essential goodness itself; and so that God loves himself on account of his essential goodness.

Note 2. It is certain that God loves himself: first, because the will is borne toward the good; therefore a will infinitely perfect, such as the divine will is, is borne by its native weight and love toward the infinite good, such as God is; second, because any will naturally tends toward its adequate object; but God alone is the adequate object of his will, since he is infinitely lovable, and satiating and terminating of an infinitely loving faculty; finally, because every will is borne by love toward its beatifying object; but God is for himself objective beatitude, and he delights only in the possession and fruition of himself.

But the difficulty remains how God loves himself, namely whether necessarily or freely, whether comprehensively or finitely; whether he loves himself and his own primarily on account of his essential goodness. Since, however, the difficulty is greater concerning the free love of God toward himself, therefore

Note 3. With the Subtle Doctor, qu. 16. Quodlib., a threefold freedom is distinguished: The first is called the freedom of Contrariety or of Specification, by which the will can at its nod tend toward some object or toward another opposite one, and by which it can elicit an act of love or of hatred. The second is called the freedom of Contradiction, or as regards exercise, namely by which the will can elicit an act or not elicit it; tend toward an object or not tend toward it. The third, finally, is essential freedom, by which the will, since from its intrinsic notion it is indifferent and undetermined, is regarded as always eliciting its act freely from itself and tending toward the object, although it is moved and necessitated from within.

But this essential freedom is gathered by the Doctor from St. Augustine in Enchirid. c. 105., where he says:

It was fitting that man should first be so made by God that he could will what is good and what is evil; but afterwards, that is, in beatitude, he will be so that he cannot will what is evil: for he will not lack free choice; indeed, the choice will be all the freer, which will not be able to serve sin at all; for neither is that will to be blamed, nor is it not a will, by which we so will to be blessed that we not only do not will to be miserable, but can in no way will it at all.

By these words St. Augustine affirms that the necessity of not sinning in the Blessed stands together with their freedom: not indeed with the freedom of contrariety or of contradiction, by which the will can seek or not seek something against the will of God, and consequently by which it can sin; but with the essential freedom, that is, the radical and entitative freedom of the will itself, which is a faculty that always remains free from itself entitatively and intrinsically and radically, even if at times it is so necessitated and efficaciously drawn by another extrinsic being to his love that it can neither cease from loving him, nor elicit an act opposed to love, namely hatred, regarding that object.

First conclusion. — God loves himself primarily, and comprehensively, on account of his essential goodness.

This conclusion has three parts, of which the first is proved: He loves himself primarily who is for himself the adequate object of volition and of love; but God alone is for himself the adequate object of love and volition: therefore, etc. The major is certain, for every faculty per se first tends toward its adequate object. The minor is equally evident; for the adequate object of an infinite will must necessarily be infinite in every way, and so, since the divine will is infinite, it must have an adequate object infinite in every way; but nothing is infinite in every way except God: therefore, just as he is the adequate object of his intellect under the notion of the infinitely intelligible true, so likewise is he the adequate object of his will under the notion of the infinitely lovable good.

Next, that is the primary object of the divine Will for the sake of which and in which God loves other things; but God, as will be proved in the following Question, loves all creatures in himself and on account of himself: therefore he loves himself primarily.

Finally, God is Holy, Blessed and Infinite; but he would not be such unless he loved himself primarily: for Holiness is the immediate conjunction with God through appreciative love, by which all things are loved on account of God and God above all things; but Beatitude is the highest and absolute possession and fruition of the highest good through intimate and immediate knowledge and love: for if the love were not intimate, that possession would not be the fruition of the good, since no one enjoys an absent good. Likewise, if it were not immediate, the object would not be beatifying per se, but through another, and consequently God would not be blessed in himself and through himself.

Moreover, infinity requires every simple perfection intimately and immediately; but the immediate love of God is a simple perfection; for it is more excellent to love God immediately and in himself than mediately and in another: therefore God loves himself primarily.

The second part is evident per se, namely that the Love by which God loves himself is comprehensive: for that love is comprehensive which is as perfect in the notion of love as the object is perfect in the notion of the lovable, and which extends itself to all those things that are lovable in the object; but such is the love of God toward himself, for it is as perfect in the notion of love as the object is perfect in the notion of the lovable, since each is infinitely perfect; it likewise extends itself to all things that are lovable in God, namely to the essence, the attributes and the divine Persons: and consequently that love is truly comprehensive.

The third part is proved, namely that the essential goodness of God is the first motive notion of his love: First, because the divine Will is related to its lovable object in the same way as the intellect is to the cognoscible; but essential truth is the first motive object of the divine Intellect: therefore essential goodness is likewise the first motive object of the divine Will. Next, that first moves the divine will to love which is first apprehended per se by the divine Intellect as lovable, for the object of the will is the apprehended good; but essential goodness is first apprehended per se by the divine Intellect; for the divine essence and the essential predicates are conceived before the attributes and the other things which surround the divine Essence: therefore, etc.

Finally, if anything else could be assigned for the first motive object of the divine will, it would most of all be either something within God or something outside God; but neither can be said. Not indeed something outside God: first, because the divine Will would be debased if it could be first moved by something else outside itself, as has already been said by way of likeness concerning the divine Intellect; second, because it would follow that the divine Will depends on something extrinsic, which is wholly repugnant to divine independence; finally, because creatures do not have the character of the first motive object of the divine Will, as will be proved more fully in the following Question. Nor the second: for since the divine Essence is by nature prior to all those things which surround it by way of a perfective property or of a personal relation, it does not receive its essential perfection from them; rather, it is their root and origin: and consequently it cannot receive from them the power of terminating the divine Will; nor can those perfective or relative properties be the notions on account of which the divine Will pursues the divine Essence with love.

From which it is clear that Attributal Goodness cannot have the character of the first moving object: first, because it presupposes the essential goodness from which it emanates; second, because since it is a special attribute, it does not contain virtually and eminently all things that are in God, but only really and identically; that is, on account of its real identity with them.

But the divine Essence, by reason of its essential goodness and perfection, contains in its formal concept every perfection whatsoever — whether essential, or attributal, or relative — not only identically, but also virtually, eminently and radically. And so essential goodness alone can have the character of the adequate and first moving object of the divine Will toward the love of itself.

You will say 1. If God loved himself, that love would be either the love of friendship or the love of concupiscence; but neither can be said. Not indeed the first, because the love of friendship is toward another, and so God cannot have this love toward himself. Nor the second, because the love of concupiscence is concerned with the useful or pleasant good, not however with the honest good; but God cannot love something only on account of its utility and pleasantness, but only on account of its honesty, dignity and excellence: therefore God cannot love himself.

I deny the minor. For God truly loves himself with the love of friendship, at least an improper one, and insofar as it is the complacency of the will in the good proper to himself, of which he is truly worthy. Nor does it matter that this love does not have the return of love by which the beloved person loves the lover; because this return of love is the complement only of perfect friendship, which indeed God does not have toward himself, although the divine Persons have it toward one another, since they pursue one another with mutual, although indistinct, love.

You will say 2. If God loved himself comprehensively, he would also have to love his own love itself; but this cannot be done: therefore neither can he love himself comprehensively. The major is clear: for comprehensive love would have to be terminated at everything that is in God, and consequently it would also be terminated at itself. The minor is proved: if divine love were terminated at itself as at a lovable object, God would love his own love; and that either through the same love, or through another. If through the same, then the same love will be direct and reflex: direct indeed, insofar as it tends toward the divine essence; reflex, however, insofar as it is terminated at itself: and so this proposition would be true: God loves the love of his own love, which seems ridiculous. If through another, then infinite reflections of love will be admitted: for if he loves his love through another love, this second love will be loved through a third, and so on to infinity. Therefore God cannot love his own love, nor consequently is that love of his comprehensive.

I deny the minor. For truly God, loving Himself comprehensively, also loves His very love itself, identified with Himself; and that through the same love directed formally, insofar as it tends toward the divine essence and the divine perfections; but virtually reflected, insofar as indeed the same infinite act of love is equivalent to two acts of finite love, namely the direct and the reflected. Whence it comes about that in God there is that wondrous circle of divine love, by which, with a perpetual conversion from good in good toward good, God moves Himself, and divine love returns into itself.

St. Dionysius explains this wondrous circulation of divine love in this way in the book De Divinis Nominibus, cap. 4:

The divine love excellently shows itself to be without end and beginning, like an everlasting circle: going round for the sake of good, from good, in good and toward good, with an unswerving conversion; and in the same and according to the same, always proceeding, and remaining, and returning.

You will say 3. If essential divine goodness were the primary motivating notion of divine love, it would also have to be the notion for the divine will of willing the other things which are in God under the notion of their end: but essential goodness cannot be the motivating notion of the divine will under the notion of the end of the other things which are in God; for the divine properties and perfections are not ordered to the divine essence as to their end; because, says the Doctor in 1. dist. 1. q. 5, nothing has any final cause except with respect to that of which it is the efficient cause: since the causality of the final cause is to move the efficient cause to act: therefore, since the divine perfections have no efficient cause, neither can they have a final cause, and consequently they cannot be ordered to the divine essence as to an end.

I deny the major. For in order that something be ordered to another as to an end, it is necessary first that it be really distinct from the end, second that it have the notion of a means orderable to the end, third that it be intended by the will and referred to the end: but the divine properties and perfections, since they are not really distinguished from essential goodness but only formally, for that reason can neither have the notion of a means orderable to this goodness, nor can they be intended and ordered by God to this very essential goodness as to an end. Whence it is not necessary that essential goodness have the notion of an end with respect to the divine properties: but it suffices that they flow from it metaphysically and be referred to it as to the fontal notion of their emanation; for since essential goodness itself is their fount and origin, it is also rightly established as the primary motive why those divine perfections are loved by God.

Second conclusion. — God loves Himself necessarily and freely with essential liberty.

This is the teaching of the Doctor in several places¹, but especially in quaest. 16. of the Quodlib., art. 1. and 2.

The Doctor proves the first part in this way. God is necessarily blessed, therefore He necessarily sees and loves the beatific object: but He Himself is the beatific object: therefore He necessarily sees and loves Himself. The major is evident: for since God is the highest good and infinitely perfect, He must also be most blessed; for beatitude is a state made perfect by the union of all goods. — Then, if God did not love Himself necessarily, He would be mutable: but the consequent is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

Proof of the consequence of the major. If He does not love Himself necessarily, He can love Himself or not love Himself; for His love of self, if it is not necessary, is contingent, and so can be or not be. But one who can love himself or not love himself is intrinsically mutable; for either he will never actually love himself, but will always be in potentia and indifference to loving himself or not loving himself, which is absolutely repugnant to pure act, such as God is: or he will at some time love himself, although he could from eternity not love himself, and so he will be changed: for it cannot be understood how the same God, persevering in the same way, could both love Himself and not love Himself.

Nor should you say that the same God, remaining altogether the same, now loves creatures actually existing, which nevertheless He could from eternity not love, since He could have not decreed their existence: therefore He can similarly love Himself actually without any change, although from eternity He was indifferent with regard to the love of Himself.

I answer that there is no parity: and the reason for the disparity is that, in order that creatures pass from being unloved to being loved, some change intervenes in them, by which it comes about that God is said to love them; for through this divine love they pass from possible to future, and from future to existing: for if God did not love them, they would not now be otherwise than they were from eternity; whence this change of love is to be attributed not to God Himself but to the creatures themselves, as has already often been said. But if God loved Himself actually when He could from eternity have not loved Himself, this change would fall not upon something external but upon God Himself; for in order that God, from being one who does not love, be said to be one who loves, some change must intervene, either in the lover himself or in the thing loved. Since therefore in His love of Himself God would be at once lover and beloved, if any change should intervene in this love, the whole of it would have to be attributed to God Himself: therefore, since no intrinsic change falls upon God, it is necessary that He love Himself necessarily as regards exercise. — Finally, to love the infinite good is the highest perfection: therefore the love of the infinite good necessarily belongs to God. The antecedent is clear, for just as to know intuitively the highest intelligible is the highest perfection of the intellect, so to love the highest lovable is the highest perfection of the will. The consequence is also evident, for God, since He is most perfect, necessarily embraces in Himself every manner of perfection, and consequently necessarily involves infinite love about Himself.

It is confirmed. It is not a contradiction, says the Doctor, that the infinite will have an infinite act about an infinite object, and consequently an act that is necessary and also necessarily; because if it could fail to have such an act about such an object, it could lack the highest perfection.

The Doctor proves the second part in the same place, art. 2. The same faculty by which it freely operates about means also freely tends toward the end to which and for which it orders those means: but the divine will freely wills and loves the means which it orders to its essential goodness: therefore it also freely tends toward that essential goodness. The Doctor proves the major by the authority of the Philosopher in 2. De Anima, who says that the potency by which we know the difference of one object from another object ordered to the prior object is operative in the same way about each object; as is clear in the case of the common sense, which is concerned with the common sensible and with the particular sensible ordered to the common. He proves the minor, namely, that God freely wills the means ordered to His essential goodness: because, he says, He wills them contingently: but contingency in acting is reduced to the first cause acting not naturally but freely: therefore He wills His own goodness itself under the notion of a free potency. — Then, action about the ultimate end is the most perfect action, whose freedom in acting is the highest intrinsic perfection; therefore whatever necessity may accrue extrinsically will not take away that perfection. — Finally, an intrinsic condition of the potency, either belonging to it absolutely or in order to a perfect act, does not conflict with perfection in operating: but freedom is either an intrinsic condition of the will absolutely, or in order to the act of willing: therefore freedom itself can stand with the perfect condition possible in operating: but such a perfect condition possible in operating is necessity itself, namely when no contingency intervenes in the operation: therefore this necessity does not take away freedom; so that although God necessarily loves His goodness, nevertheless He is freely borne toward it with essential liberty.

Add. that that faculty is freely borne toward an object when motives are proposed to it so that it may determine itself about that object: but motives are proposed to the divine will by the divine intellect by which it is borne about divine goodness: therefore it is freely borne toward it. The major is evident, for in this a free agent differs from a natural agent, that motives are proposed to the former, by which it determines itself to operate in this way or that, about this or that object. But not so for the latter; rather, by its natural weight and innate activity, without any deliberation, it operates and tends toward its object.

You will say 1. The free and the necessary are opposed: therefore if God loves His goodness necessarily, He does not love it freely.

Some distinguish the antecedent. The necessary is opposed to the free as regards specification and exercise, they concede; it is opposed to the free essentially, they deny. But the Doctor absolutely denies the antecedent; for the free is opposed to the natural mode of acting, and the necessary is opposed to the contingent; and if you ask, says the Doctor praised above, how necessity can stand with freedom? He answers according to the Philosopher, 3. Metaph. cap. 20, The reason of those things of which there is no reason is not to be sought, for the demonstration of a principle is not a demonstration: so it must be said here that just as this proposition is immediate and necessary, the divine will wills its own goodness; nor is there any other reason except that this is such a will, and that is such a goodness: so the divine will contingently wills the ordering of another good to its own goodness; for no other reason except that it is such a will, and that is such a good.

He nonetheless adds this reason why divine freedom is at once with the necessary

love of divine goodness; because, he says, the infinite will necessarily has an act about an infinite object, because this is the highest perfection in the will itself; but it has an act that is not necessary but free about a finite object; it can sometimes act contingently, because indeed it can be impeded by some extrinsic cause; so by a like reason a free agent can act necessarily, because it can be necessarily determined to action by something extrinsic.

You will say 2. That essential freedom either consists in indetermination to acting, or in dominion over its act: but the necessity of the love by which God loves His goodness can stand with neither: therefore either He does not love it necessarily, or He does not love it freely.

Proof of the major. For either that necessity is prior to the action of the will, so that it falls upon the will, which it impels into act and determines necessarily, and fixes in actu: or it accompanies the will itself operating, and so that will is so necessarily determined in operating that it can neither not act, nor act otherwise: but in neither way can this necessity stand with freedom. Not indeed in the first way, because thus the will would be acted upon more than it would act, and would be determined, but would not determine itself. Nor in the second either, because there is no freedom where there is no difference as to acting or not acting; or as to doing this or doing something else: and consequently the necessity of divine love cannot consist with essential freedom.

The Doctor denies the minor in the same place. and says that that necessity accompanies the act, but does not precede it, so that the will, because of the firmness of its own freedom, imposes necessity upon itself in eliciting the act and in persevering, thus fixing itself in the act. Whence he concludes that the procession of the Holy Spirit is free, because the necessity of nature accompanies spiration in communicating the nature through love and will, which of itself is essentially a free faculty. For a clearer evidence of these things he distinguishes a fourfold order of necessity in God: The first, he says, by which God necessarily lives. The second, by which He necessarily understands. The third, by which He necessarily spirates. The fourth, by which He necessarily loves Himself. Then he asks in what the freedom of willing stands with these necessities? He answers: because the will elicits the act and remains in actu delightfully and electively.