Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

Note 1. The philosophers distinguish four ways of operating, namely freely, naturally, contingently, and necessarily: of these the first two are so opposed to one another that they cannot subsist together in the same principle and with respect to the same effect; just as neither can two differences dividing the same genus be present in the same species. For every agent is either determined to act, and so acts naturally; or determines itself, and so acts freely: but the latter two ways of operating are not so opposed to one another; for the same faculty can act necessarily and at the same time contingently. For an action is called necessary which cannot fail to follow, from wherever the necessity may come, whether from the free determination of the faculty, or from elsewhere: but a contingent action is one which can not be, whether it be impeded from without, or suspended by the free determination of the will; whence it comes about that contingency and necessity can stand together with the natural and free ways of operating: for from the fact that something is free it does not follow that it is not necessary; indeed, the greater the freedom, the greater the necessity; for, as St. Anselm says in lib. De libero arbitrio cap. 5., He who so has what is fitting and expedient, that he cannot lose it, is freer than he who so has this very thing, that he can lose it. Whence he adds: Therefore the will which cannot decline from uprightness is freer. St. Augustine teaches the same in the Enchiridio cap. 105., speaking of the supreme freedom which man will enjoy after the miseries of this life:

Thus it was fitting, he says, that man first be made, so that he could will both good and evil; that is, that he might have the freedom of contradiction and of contrariety: but afterwards he will be so, that he cannot will evil; nor will he lack free choice, since the choice will be all the freer which will be altogether unable to serve sin: for no one's will is either not a will or not to be called free, by which we so will to be blessed, that we not only nill to be miserable, but cannot will it at all.

Note 2. Freedom is distinguished in many ways, but chiefly fourfold, namely 1. of contradiction, which concerns the positing or non-positing of an act, e. g. willing or not willing. 2. of contrariety, which concerns contrary and positive acts with respect to some object, of which sort are nilling and willing, loving and hating. 3. of complacency, by which the will takes complacency in something, even if with respect to it it has no character of cause, nor elicits any positive act. 4. finally, essential or simple, which consists in the ordination of the act to a principle determining itself to the act in an elective and delightful manner.

— Similarly, necessity is fourfold. 1. of violence, which occurs when nature resists; so a heavy thing is violently borne upwards, and a light one downwards. 2. of coercion, which occurs when the will resists; while someone, e. g., does or suffers something against his own inclination. 3. of immutability, by which it comes about that the opposite cannot happen, although the thing could absolutely not be; so God is said to do necessarily whatever He decreed should be done, otherwise He would be changed, yet He could have not decreed that that thing should not be done. 4. Finally, there is the necessity of complete inevitability, when namely something is so, that it absolutely cannot not be: so God loves Himself necessarily, because He cannot not love Himself.

Note 3. When it is asked whether the divine Father begot His Son willingly, this question is said to have a twofold sense; of which the first is whether the Father produces the Son by the will, and that by a will either concurring in the production of the Son, as in that of creatures, or by a will immediately eliciting the production of the Son, as it concurs in the production of the Holy Spirit; or finally by a will applying or joining the parent with the offspring, that is, the intellect of the Father to the generation of the Word. The second sense is whether at least voluntarily the Father generates the Son; and that either antecedently, or concomitantly, or subsequently, that is, whether He willed the generation of the Son in the prior sign of origin, in which the Son is not yet understood as produced, or while He is produced in the second sign, or when He is conceived as produced in the third sign.

First conclusion. — The procession of the divine Word is in no way free, but natural. This conclusion stands proven from what we have said, that the Son does not proceed through the will, but through the fecund memory and the divine intellect of the Father, which, as is evident, is not a faculty operating and producing freely, but naturally.

It is moreover confirmed by authority, first indeed of the Council of Nicaea lib. 2. about the middle; Of the wisdom of the Father, he says, God truly is from God Himself, eternal from the eternal, true from the true, since He is by nature the Son of the eternal God and Father. Likewise Athanasius, Orat. 2. Contra Arianos, says that the Son is from the Father a natural offshoot and natural fruit and offspring: and Orat. 3. he calls the generation of the Word a natural generation: and Orat. 4. he inveighs against the Arians, who ascribed to God a necessity of coercion, because the Catholics said that the Son of God was born of the Father naturally and necessarily: whence he adds:

For they noticed that which is opposed to the will: but that which is greater and higher they did not perceive. For just as that which is by deliberate choice is opposed to the will, so that which is according to nature is higher and prior to the will.

St. Basil speaks in the same way, who in lib. 2. Contra Eunomium calls the generation of the Son connatural to the Father: and Cyril of Alexandria in lib. 1. Thesauri cap. 6. says: The Son Himself has dignity from nature, namely, that God His Father is naturally His: and Ambrose lib. 4. De Fide cap. 4. As a good Father, he says, is not from will or necessity, but above both, that is, from nature: so the Father does not generate from will or necessity. Hilary speaks likewise, lib. 6. De Trinit., where he says: From Himself the natural nativity of His Only-begotten is taught: and Augustine lib. 5. De Trinit. cap. 20. notes that the Word is the Son of nature, not of will. By these things, therefore, it is established that the generation of the Word is natural, and not free.

It is also confirmed by reason: every production which is made from an intrinsic principle determined of itself to one thing, and therefore operating necessarily, is altogether natural: but the generation of the divine Word proceeds from an intellect intrinsically determined to one thing and operating in every way necessarily: therefore it is also in every way natural.

Secondly: that production is to be judged absolutely natural which per se and most formally communicates nature by producing something like itself in nature: but such is the production of the divine Word, as we saw in the preceding Article: therefore, etc.

Finally, that production is to be judged the more natural the farther it stands from the free: but the generation of the Word stands at the greatest distance from freedom; because it in no way proceeds from the will, which is the throne and origin of freedom: therefore it is also to be called absolutely natural.

You will object 1. Several of the holy Fathers assert that the Word proceeds through the will: first of all, indeed, James the son of Zebedee, who in Clement the Roman, lib. 8. of the Constitutions, cap. 12., thus addresses the eternal Father: But You Yourself, before all ages, begot by will, power and goodness, without any medium, the only-begotten Son. The same is found in c. 16. Secondly, Athanasius writes in the Gospel on the most holy Mother of God: that the Word is from the paternal will. Thirdly, Hilarius, lib. De Synodis, immediately before the exemplar of the Sirmian faith, Nativity, he says, is in him so perfect a nature, that he who has been born of the substance of God is born also of His counsel and will. Likewise St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 20., calls the Son of God counsel from counsel, will from will: with which the 11th Council of Toledo agrees, writing in the Confession of Faith: According to essence, the will begot the will; the Son is will from will. Therefore the divine Word is to be said to be produced not naturally, but voluntarily.

I deny the consequence. For that is not the opinion of the holy Fathers; but they say the Son is produced by the will for this reason, namely, that by His production the divine nature is communicated, which essentially comprises all the attributes, and so also the will; whence all these things are said, as it were, to concur in the formation of the Word, not in the manner of a producing principle, but in the manner of communicated divinity, namely, so that the Father, who is His own will, counsel, wisdom and the other perfections, begot the Son, who is also His own will, counsel, etc., as the aforesaid Council of Toledo explains, writing that the Son is called will from will in the same way that He is called nature from nature, since according to Athanasius the will of the Father is not one thing and His nature another.

— This response is also confirmed from those words of St. James, "without any medium", by which he signifies that the Son was not begotten with the will concurring as a productive principle; but as a will included in the essence with the other attributes: whence he says that the Son is generated by the will just as by power and goodness; but it is certain that the Word does not proceed from power and goodness as from principles: therefore neither does it so proceed from the will.

— That this is likewise the mind of the aforesaid Fathers is certain; for Hilarius and Augustinus, in their books De Trinitate, are wholly intent on proving that the Word is the Son not by adoption or by free will, but by nature: likewise St. Athanasius establishes this by many arguments against the Arians: whence Orat. 4. The Word, he says, begetting from nature does not deliberate beforehand; since the Father in the Word makes and founds all the remaining things which He decrees by will: just as the Apostle Iacobus taught, willingly He begot us by the word of truth. And below, setting forth the difference between the production of the Son and that of creatures, he adds:

The Son, the proper offshoot of the substance of the Father, is not from elsewhere but from the Father, and so there is no deliberation about Him, lest He also seem to deliberate about Himself; because, namely, if the Father had decreed not to have a Son, by that very fact He would have decreed that He Himself would not be the Father, and consequently simpliciter would not be.

You will object 2. The sophism of the Arians, which Nazianz. thus reports, Orat. 3. De Theologia:

Either willingly, they say, the Father begot the Son, or unwillingly... If unwillingly, then violence must have been brought upon Him: and who is he who brought violence upon Him? and how can he to whom violence has been brought be God? But if willingly, then the Son is the Son by will: therefore, in the very way in which He was brought forth from the Father, they devise a certain new Mother, the will of the Father, in His place.

— Nazianz. retorts the objection in the same place:

The Father is God either willingly or unwillingly: If willingly, how did He begin to will? For He did not will before He was? and below: but what will he be able to adduce, who according to your manner of arguing has himself also been the nursling of the will? But if unwillingly, who compelled Him to be?

Aug. has the same in lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 20., and Cyril in lib. 1. Thes. cap. 8. Whence I answer in form. That the Father produces the Son willingly with an effective or productive will, I deny: with an operative and essential will, I concede.

Hence a threefold divine will can be distinguished, according to its threefold relation to three distinct terms, namely to creatures, to the Holy Spirit, and to the Son. For it is the effective principle of creatures, which it produces ad extra freely with the freedom of contradiction, because it could not produce them, if it did not so will: it is also the productive principle of the Holy Spirit ad intra through spiration, which is free with an essential freedom, as we shall say below: finally, it is operative with respect to the divine essence and also with respect to the production of the divine Word; since in the prior sign of origin the divine Father knows and wills and loves His essence and Himself; indeed also the Son and the Holy Spirit, by an intellection and volition essential and simpliciter operative, before He is conceived to produce the Son and the Holy Spirit in the posterior signs, as will again be disclosed

Second conclusion. — The Father produces the Word voluntarily, with a will both antecedent and con- sequent. This is the teaching of the Doctor in 1. dist. 6. n. 6., where he thus proves the first part of the conclusion.

I say, he says, that the Father in this way begets the Son willingly, because the Father in the first sign of origin understands formally, and then can also have an act of willing formally; in the second sign of origin He begets the Son, and He wills that begetting not only by a volition following upon the first begetting, but by a volition had in the first sign of origin, by which volition the Father formally wills, presupposing in some way the intellection by which the Father understands, but not the begetting of the Word; thus, therefore, I say that the Father generates willingly, not only with the consequent will, but with the antecedent will.

Which truth he thus expounds — or anyone else — with the following addition:

in the first instant the Father has a perfect understanding of everything intelligible and willable from himself: therefore in that sign He understands the generation of the Son, and in the second sign of the instant He has the term produced; for even in the first sign, although no person should proceed from Him, He has understanding and willing; and in that prior sign He understands the act of speaking, which is as it were posterior with respect to the act of understanding and willing. The Father therefore does not merely take complacency by His will in the production of the Son, but willing precedes the act of the Son's generation; because the Father wills, through His essence, whatever He understands, namely that it be communicated to the other person through production; because what does not belong to Him in the first instant, in which the Father is, never belongs to Him, since no perfection can be added to Him by the production of any person, because no person has anything except what is communicated to it by Him: Therefore willing, just like understanding, precedes speaking: thus breathing follows speaking in some way, namely by the order of origin.

The second and third parts are proved by all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which it is intimated that the Son is loved by the Father and that the Father takes complacency in Him: thus Matthew 3: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; so likewise Proverbiorum 8, the eternal Wisdom says: I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, etc. In place of which the Seventy Interpreters read: I was he, in whom He rejoiced daily, etc. Whence Athanasius, Orat. 2. Contra Arianos: God, he says, is Himself the begetter of the image, being cheered by contemplating it; in like manner Tertullian, lib. 6. Contra Praxean reads the aforesaid passage: I was with Him composing, I was he in whom He rejoiced, but daily I was delighted in His person. Here is to be observed the love together with joy, not only with regard to the Divinity, but also with regard to the persons of the Father and the Son.

— It is confirmed also by all those opinions of the holy Fathers who say that the Son of God is loved by the Father and begotten by a willing Father. Thus Clement of Rome, lib. 7. of the Constitutions, cap. 12., says that the Son was begotten by the good pleasure of the Father; Justin, in the Dialogue with Trypho, begotten with the Father willing; and Cyril, in the Dialogue De Trinit., lib. 2., after denying a will which should have preceded the divine generation by way of a producing principle, says: For the (generation) which is natural is not without will, since the will runs together with its nature, so that it is what it is. Those things which could be objected from these against this Conclusion were resolved in Question 2 of the present Article, where we proved that the production of the Son and of the Holy Spirit supposes knowledge and love not only of the divine Essence, but also of the Son and the Holy Spirit themselves.

Third conclusion. — The procession of the Holy Spirit is necessary, and yet free with an essential freedom.

This is the teaching of the Doctor in 1. dist. 10. n. 10. and the following, and also of St. Thomas, as is evident especially in q. 10. De potentia art. 2. ad 5., where when he had objected:

But if the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of the will, it is necessary that He proceed by way of freedom: but what proceeds by way of freedom can proceed, or not proceed, because the things which are done freely are not determined to one: therefore the Father could produce the Holy Spirit, or not produce Him, and give Him whatever measure of greatness He wished, etc.

he answers:

That natural necessity, according to which the will is said to will something of necessity, as happiness, does not conflict with the freedom of the will, as Augustine teaches in 5. lib. De Civitate Dei cap. 10. For the freedom of the will is opposed to violence or coercion: there is no violence or coercion in the fact that something is moved naturally, but rather in this, that the natural motion is impeded, as when a heavy body is impeded from descending to the center. Whence the will freely desires happiness, although it desires it necessarily. Thus also God freely loves Himself by His will, and it is necessary that He love Himself as much as He is good: just as He understands Himself as much as He is: therefore the Holy Spirit proceeds freely from the Father, yet not possibly, but of necessity, nor was it possible that in proceeding He should be made less than Himself, but it was necessary that He be equal to the Father, as also the Son, who is the Word of the Father.

From these things it clearly appears that St. Thomas asserts not only that freedom subsists with necessity, but also expressly agrees with the Doctor that the Holy Spirit proceeds freely, and yet necessarily. Nor does it matter that in the same place, answering to 3., and in prima p. q. 41. art. 2., he calls each divine procession natural, and affirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds naturally, although He proceeds by way of the will. For there he takes "natural" for "necessary", and as opposed to "contingent", and so "voluntary", which he there opposes to "natural", he takes for free with the freedom of opposites; not, however, for the essential freedom, which he teaches subsists with the necessary.

The Conclusion is therefore proved: the Holy Spirit proceeds through the will, that is, through the proper mode of operating of the will: but the proper mode of operating of the will is free: therefore He proceeds freely. The major remains proved from what has been said and is conceded by all. The minor, however, is proved: freedom is of the intrinsic notion of the will, so that it is no more repugnant to conceive a man without a rational animal than a will without freedom; For either the will is not, or it must be called free, as St. Augustine, quoted in Note 1., used to say: therefore whatever is produced by the will as by a principle by which, is produced freely.

Then, whatever proceeds as love and as gift proceeds freely: for nothing is freer than love and gift: but according to St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit., the Holy Spirit proceeds not as one born, but as one given: therefore He proceeds as love and gift, and consequently freely.

Finally, the Adversaries deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds freely for this reason, that they contend that no freedom subsists with necessity, and that every freedom is either of contrariety, that is, of specification, or of contradiction, that is, of exercise: but this is false: therefore also that position from which it follows.

The minor is proved; first, for the act of love and desire by which we desire happiness is without doubt free, as we experience: but it is not free with the freedom of specification, because that act cannot become hatred or aversion, for we cannot hate happiness: therefore that act is at once necessary and free, not indeed with the freedom of specification, by which we can love or hate some object: therefore it must be free with that freedom which we call essential; which can be defined: A volitive potency acting from full deliberation, without coercion and violence, or, as others say, a freedom acting with choice and delight.

Secondly, Christ died freely, according to that text of Ioan. 10.: No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down; and yet He could not but accept the death commanded Him by the Father, since He was impeccable, for if He had fled from dying, He would have been disobedient to the Father's will, and so would have sinned: therefore He died at once freely and necessarily; not indeed with the freedom of specification, or of exercise: therefore with essential freedom.

Thirdly, in God there is true holiness, and it is worthy of infinite praise, according to that text of Psalmi 98: For the Lord our God is holy; but holiness necessarily requires freedom in acts, for in no way can it be compatible with the mere naturalness of actions, for in those things which are natural we are worthy of neither praise nor blame. Therefore God must be called free in those His acts, not only toward creatures (for although creatures were not possible, God would nonetheless be infinitely holy), but most of all in loving Himself, and the love of God toward Himself is supremely necessary, both as to specification and as to exercise, for in no way can He omit it, and much less change it into hatred. Therefore there is given some act which is at once necessary and free, not indeed with the freedom of specification, or of exercise, and so with essential freedom.

The Scotists confirm all these reasons from this, that the most perfect mode of operating which we can conceive must be conceded and assigned to the divine will: but the mode of operating freely and at the same time necessarily is the most excellent of all: therefore we must assign it to God. The major is clear. The minor is proved: a good, the more firmly it is possessed, the better it is: but it is certain that to operate freely is a good for a free principle: therefore the more certainly and fixedly it is possessed by it, the better and more perfectly it inheres in it: but that is most certainly possessed which is had necessarily: therefore the freedom of operation can belong necessarily to someone, indeed it must, so that he may operate in the most perfect mode.

You will say 1. The Holy Spirit proceeds naturally: therefore not freely. The consequence is evident from what has been said, for the modes of operating naturally and freely are directly opposed. The antecedent is proved from St. Cyril, book 13. of the Thesaurus cap. 1. and 2., where he says that the Holy Spirit exists naturally from the Son Himself and in Him: and further on: therefore the Spirit is not other than the essence of the Godhead, but from it and in it naturally, as the finger in the hand and the hand in the body. Finally, toward the end of the same chapter, he calls the Holy Spirit naturally sent forth from the very essence of the Divinity: therefore His procession is not free, but natural.

I distinguish the antecedent. The Holy Spirit proceeds naturally, that is, from the divine nature itself, which is the remote principle of His procession as also of the Son's, I concede; that is, in a natural mode, insofar as "natural" is opposed to "free", I deny. Likewise the proof must be distinguished; for St. Cyril meant nothing other than that the Holy Spirit is produced through the divine essence communicated to Him: whence in the same place, c. 1., he says: the Holy Spirit is essentially in God Himself, and proceeds from Him inseparably, that is, He has the same essence as His productive principle.

You will insist. The Holy Spirit proceeds from a principle determined to one, therefore His procession is natural, also as regards the mode of producing naturally. The antecedent is evident because the Holy Spirit cannot not be, and so necessarily proceeds from a principle determined to His production.

I distinguish the antecedent. It proceeds from a principle determined to one by its own and voluntary determination, I concede; by determination through a natural form, as a heavy body is determined by its natural form to downward motion, I deny: the divine will is therefore determined by itself on account of its rectitude toward the infinite object: for the divine Essence, says the Doctor cited above, nu. 11., which is the first object of that will, is of itself to be willed; therefore the will is of necessity in the right act of willing that object, which is of itself rightly to be willed, and just as it is of necessity the principle of willing, so it is of necessity the principle of producing the love of it... And such a will, having such an object present, is the principle of communicating the divine nature, which is the principle of producing the infinite love produced: for such a produced love is proportioned both to the potency and to the object: whence it follows that the productive act of the Holy Spirit is necessary, both on the part of the infinite object, and on the part of the rectitude of the will, which cannot but love the infinite good and produce a term adequate to the object itself.

You will say 2. Such is the productive action of some term as is the term produced: but the Holy Spirit is naturally God; for He cannot be said to be God freely in any sense of freedom: therefore His production is also natural and in no way free. — I deny the major. For God freely produces a stone, since He does all things ad extra most freely; the stone, however, is in no way free, indeed it exists purely naturally. Therefore there can be freedom in the action of the producer together with the naturalness of the term produced; and so, although the Holy Spirit is in no way freely God, nevertheless His production can be in some way free.

You will say 3. Although the procession of the Holy Spirit is free, it can nonetheless also be natural: therefore on this side the truth of our Conclusion fails. The antecedent is proved: just as natural and free divide the principle of acting, so likewise necessary and contingent divide it: but the same principle can act contingently and necessarily: therefore it will also be able to act naturally and freely. The major is evident from what was said in Note 1. The minor is proved: the divine will, one and simple, is at the same time the principle of acting contingently and necessarily; for it necessarily produces the Holy Spirit, and contingently creatures: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the minor. The same principle can act contingently and necessarily, with respect to a primary and adequate term, I deny: it can act necessarily about an adequate, primary, and intrinsic term, and contingently about a secondary, inadequate, and extrinsic term, I concede: and so the divine will, as it has the notion of first act, is of itself and from within productive of the Holy Spirit, who is its adequate, primary, and intrinsic term: but with respect to the creature, which it produces contingently, its act of willing is terminated only secondarily, extrinsically, and inadequately: whence, since the diversity of this act arises from the diversity of termination, and this from the diversity of the term; and since the creature is a contingent being, that termination of the divine will to the creature is also said to be contingent. Or I deny the minor absolutely, and to its proof I say that the divine will is not the immediate productive principle of creatures, but the divine omnipotence, which is formally distinguished from the divine will, and so that diversity of productions, namely of the Holy Spirit and of creatures, is to be traced back not to the same principle, but to diverse ones.

You will say 4. If the Holy Spirit proceeds freely, it follows that He is foreknown before He is produced: but this is absurd: therefore, etc. The major is evident, for nothing is produced by an act of the will except what is foreknown. The minor is proved; for if the Holy Spirit is known, then while He is foreknown He is either something or nothing; He cannot be said to be nothing, because thus He could not be foreknown, and moreover it would follow that He presupposes nothing before His production, which no one would say: if He is something, either something existing or something possible: not the first, because thus He would exist before existence: not the second either, because the Holy Spirit cannot have possible being. — The Doctor answers in the same place, n. 14. That in that prior sign of origin, before the Holy Spirit is understood to be breathed, the Father and the Son know the Holy Spirit intuitively, although not as existing in Himself, because they know the divine essence, which is the ground of knowing intuitively any intelligible object: which also we taught above, namely that the Holy Spirit and the Son are pre-understood before their production, and so the aforesaid argument indeed brings force against others, but not against us; but in what manner He is foreknown was said in the preceding Article.