Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

It is certain from the faith that all men whatsoever are held guilty by the sin of Adam our parent, and bound over to divine justice, and enslaved as debtors to punishment and vengeance: for so the Council of Trent, session 5, canon 2, decreed after the Apostle, in these words:

If anyone asserts that the prevarication of Adam harmed himself alone and not his progeny, and that the holiness and justice which he lost, received from God, he lost for himself alone and not also for us; or that he defiled by the sin of disobedience transferred death and bodily punishments only upon the human race, but not that stain and sin which is death of the soul; let him be anathema: since he contradicts the Apostle who says: By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned: from which it is plain that we are all constituted in a mass of perdition: from which we are drawn out by the merit of the one Mediator Jesus Christ, who reconciled us to God.

Whether, however, and in what manner it was necessary for the Divine Word to become incarnate for this reparation of the human kind, here shall be resolved.

Note 2. Omitting the various divisions of necessity, as regards the present undertaking, I posit two kinds: one indeed absolute, the other hypothetical. Absolute is that by which a thing cannot be otherwise, and that either simply, so that it is a contradiction and repugnance for it to be otherwise; thus it is necessary that God exist. Hypothetical necessity is that by which something is said to be necessary on the hypothesis that it so be. Thus, on the hypothesis that a man run, it is necessary that he be moved: but it is not necessary that he run. The first necessity is called of irritability by St. Anselm, book 2, Cur Deus homo, chapter 1. The second of immutability, because it is sought from the immutability of God, both in his entity and in his decrees. Or, as the Theologians customarily speak, the first is a necessity of the antecedent, the second truly a necessity of the consequent. Moreover, here there is no question of absolute necessity, and simply invincible: for no Theologian was ever one who asserted the Incarnation to have been so necessary that it would imply a contradiction for God not to become incarnate: but the question is moved concerning the necessity of immutability, and the hypothetical: seeing that there are some who judge it necessary for God to have become incarnate on the hypothesis that man had fallen. Thus St. Anselm seems to think throughout the whole first book of Cur Deus homo: to whom subscribe Richard of St. Victor, book De Incarnatione, chapter 1., Raymond Lull in his brief introductory Art to all sciences, eighth demonstration; who nevertheless seem to decline from the opinion of St. Anselm in this, that they do not pronounce absolutely that the Incarnation was necessary supposing the fall of man, but only on the hypothesis that God should will to advance fallen man to his former innocence, and to the beatific state, unto which he had formed him. St. Anselm, however, seems to teach both.

Note 3. This twofold necessity, both absolute, and respective and hypothetical, can be regarded in two ways with respect to the end, namely either absolutely, or secundum quid. That is said to be absolutely necessary without which a thing cannot be obtained: thus a ship is necessary for crossing the sea. Secundum quid truly, that which conduces only to an end to be attained in an easier and more perfect manner: thus a horse is said to be necessary for a man in good health to undertake a journey. It is certain, however, that the Incarnation is necessary secundum quid for the redemption of men, because by it satisfaction was made to God in a more excellent and efficacious manner, and provision and counsel were supplied for our miseries and calamities more abundantly and more salubriously. Whence the discourse here is to be only of the absolute necessity of the Incarnation for the salvation of men.

Two things therefore come here to be determined: First, whether supposing the fall of man, it was necessary for God to become incarnate, that he might restore him,

Second, whether on the hypothesis that God willed to ordain the restoration of man, he had need to effect it through the Incarnation.

First Conclusion. — The Incarnation, supposing the fall of man, was not simply necessary for God.

Proof first from sacred Scripture. Wisdom 2. Who will charge thee with injustice if the nations perish, which thou hast made? It would not therefore turn to the prejudice of justice for God, if he should leave fallen man forever in the state of his misery. And Jeremiah 12. Can the potter himself make vessels of the house of Israel? Therefore God can, short of injustice, by his supreme liberty repair fallen man, or cast off the lost one, as the potter can refuse to restore a broken vessel to wholeness.

Reason also favors this: for God works all things ad extra according to the counsel of his own will, and in modulating all his operations he is most free, and far removed from every coaction and necessity; seeing that nothing of perfection accrues to him or recedes from him on account of the salvation or perdition of a creature: therefore he is impelled by no necessity to receive and restore fallen man; and presently he is led by no necessity to undertake the Incarnation. This truth will be made plainer by the following consideration, but first must be resolved the arguments by which St. Anselm seems to assert the contrary.

He objects therefore: First, book 1. Cur Deus homo, chapters 2. 4. The purpose of God cannot be evacuated: but God, in creating man, had purposed to advance him to eternal beatitude, which he cannot attain so long as he lies in his fall: therefore it was necessary for God, lest his purpose prove frustraneous, and lest what he had purposed concerning man be utterly annihilated, and the human kind, so precious a work of his, perish altogether, that he repair him from his fall: but this could not be done except through the Incarnation of the Word: therefore it was simply necessary. —

I answer. From this argument nothing else follows than that it would have been fitting indeed for God to repair fallen man, but not that he was driven to it by any necessity. Or if there be any such necessity, certainly no other than one of consequence, drawn from the immutability of his purpose, which assuredly does not imply absolute necessity: for it does not follow, says the Seraphic Doctor in the same place, if God repairs by the necessity of his immutability, that therefore he does not repair by the liberty of his benignity: for these can stand together. Add that even if God had some decorum and necessity of repairing men, he was not therefore bound to accomplish it necessarily through the Incarnation; since there was supplied to him a varied and manifold mode of saving men, even if the Word had not become incarnate, as will appear below.

They object 2. chapter 21. It is not fitting that supreme wisdom permit the noblest creature universally to be defrauded of its end: but unless the reparation of fallen man intervene, all men created unto eternal beatitude would be defrauded of their end, and thus all the sons of men would have been constituted in vain, since everyone is unjust who does not render to God what he owes: and no unjust man, says St. Anselm, is admitted to beatitude, since as beatitude is a sufficiency in which there is no indigence, so it befits no one in whom justice is not pure, so that there be no injustice in him: therefore it was necessary for God by reason of his divine wisdom to restore fallen man, and to advance him to his due end.

I answer. The solution of the former argument serves also sufficiently for the present one: for from it is understood only that it was congruent indeed to the divine wisdom that God should raise man up from his fall, and advance and order him toward his end; but not that this was absolutely necessary: since God, as we said, is most free in his operations ad extra, and whatever benefit he bestows he lavishes especially upon sinners, not from constraining necessity, but from overflowing mercy and goodness.

You will object. Wisd. chapters 16 and 17. It would be unseemly, and therefore impossible, to leave forever diminished the number of Angels, as being the most excellent creatures: yet that number could not be restored from those who had fallen; since an Angel once fallen cannot be reconciled to God through penance. Nor could that number be repaired through other Angels newly created, because those who were to be substituted ought to be such as those who fell would have been had they not sinned: but they could not be such without the former Angels, who fell, being better if they had persevered than the later Angels would have been, who were to be created after their fall: since the former, had they persevered, would have done so with no punishment of sin seen, nor strict chastisement of God upon his enemies: whereas the latter, newly created, would persevere only after that punishment had been witnessed: but it is more excellent and more perfect to persevere in grace with no example seen of the divine justice vindicating sin, than to persevere on account of that example: because the former perseverance proceeds from the pure and sole motive of divine love, while the latter has fear mixed in; and the act elicited simply from the motive of love is more excellent than that elicited from the motive of fear: therefore the former manner of persevering would be more excellent than the latter. From these things St. Anselm infers that the ruin of the Angels must be repaired out of another nature than the Angelic: but no other nature was apt for this than the human: therefore it was necessary for human nature to be raised up to supply the number of the Angels. But where it had fallen, it could not be advanced to that elevation unless it were raised up and restored to its pristine innocence: therefore it was necessary for it to be saved, and consequently for God to have a Savior, which he obtained only through the Incarnation.

I answer. All those consequences are utterly void. First, for it was not absolutely necessary, but only congruent, to restore and supply the number of the Angels; for, as we said from Wisdom, What shall hinder him if the nations perish? since God owes the sinner nothing by justice except punishment. Secondly, it appears less true that the number of the Angels could not be restored from those who had fallen, or from others newly created; since we proved in Volume 2 that it involves no contradiction that Angels can be recalled to penance through the aid of divine grace; for the hardening of those in evil arises chiefly from the aid of grace being denied them. God could equally supply that number through Angels newly created: both because it was not necessary that it be restored from Angels equally good with those who fell, since it was free for God to constitute and order otherwise; and also because God by his grace could bring it about that Angels newly created would be even better than those who had fallen; for the grace of God is not less efficacious for preserving and increasing goodness and justice than the chastisement of God and his vindication for punishing. Finally, even if the number of the Angels were to be repaired through men, still it would not follow that those men were to be restored through the Incarnation of the Word; since by very many other modes, even setting aside the Incarnation, God was able to liberate man and make safe what had perished, as he will judge.

Second conclusion. — THE INCARNATION WAS NOT SIMPLY NECESSARY, EVEN ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT GOD DECREED TO RESTORE AND SAVE FALLEN MAN. This is common among Theologians.

It is proved first from Scripture, which commends the Incarnation as a most excellent work, and a benefit of the love, mercy, and liberality of God. Thus John 3: So God loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting. To Titus 3: According to his mercy he saved us. And 1 John 4: In this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him: but the work of the charity, mercy, and benignity of God is not a work of necessity, but of supreme liberty: therefore the Incarnation, through which God restored men, was not in any way from necessity.

St. Anselm responds, book 2, Cur Deus homo, chapter 5.

That a twofold necessity must be distinguished: the one which compels someone unwilling to confer a benefit, because he cannot do otherwise: and this necessity, he says, of benefiting takes away or diminishes grace; for when anyone benefits against his will by that necessity to which he is subject, either no gratitude, or less, is owed him: the other, indeed, through which rather the gratitude of the benefactor is increased, because he has freely subjected himself to this necessity: when he submits himself to the necessity of benefiting, and does not sustain it unwillingly, then surely he merits greater gratitude for the benefit; for this ought not to be called necessity, but grace, because he undertakes or keeps it under no compulsion, but freely. Such is the case when one vows a purpose of holy living; for although after the vow it must be kept of necessity, lest he incur the damnation of the apostate, and although he can be compelled to keep it if he should be unwilling, yet if he keeps not unwillingly what he has vowed, he is not less but more grateful to God than if he had not known it, since he denied himself not only the common life but also its license for the sake of God: nor is he to be said to live holily of necessity, but with the same liberty by which he vowed it. Wherefore much more if God does good to man, whom he has begun, although he ought not to fall away from the good begun, we must impute the whole to grace; because this he began on our account, not on his own, needing nothing; for it did not lie hidden from him what man was about to do when he made him, and yet by his goodness, creating him spontaneously, he bound himself to perfect the good begun.

Such are the words of St. Anselm; by which he signifies that because God created man, whom he foreknew would sin, and consequently that it would be necessary for one of the divine persons to become incarnate, who would redeem him, and nevertheless produced him freely and permitted him to sin, therefore he willed to undergo this necessity of his own accord; and consequently nothing was derogated from his liberality, grace, love, and benignity thereby. — But this response does not meet the authorities cited above, for

Scripture openly intimates the free and supremely merciful will of God after the fall in repairing man, and in that mode of reparation which he chose among all those which he was able to employ for that office, as we shall say presently.

Passing over the Arians, where he had said that God fittingly undid the malediction through the Incarnation of the Word, which He had threatened, saying: Earth thou art, and into earth shalt thou go, he subjoins this objection of the Arians: But it could have been so even if the Savior were a creature, or merely spoke, and thus undo the malediction: which he solves in this manner: God could without the advent of Christ merely speak, and undo the malediction: here it must be considered what is useful to men, not what lies within the power of God. — The same is said by very many holy Fathers. St. Leo, sermon 2. On the Nativity, chapter 3. A marvelous thing, he says, is the mercy of God, to whom ineffably many ways lay ready for repairing the human race, and who chose above all this way of consulting for us, whereby to destroy the work of the devil he would employ not the power of might but the reason of justice. St. Bernard subscribes, Epistle 190. Who denies, he says, that by the nod of the Omnipotent there could have been other and other modes of our redemption, justification, and liberation? — More openly, however, St. Augustine insinuates this truth, book On the Christian Struggle, chapter 11, where he says: They are fools who say: the wisdom of God could not otherwise deliver men unless he took upon himself a man, and was born of a woman, and suffered all those things from sinners. And lib. 13. De Trinitate, chapter 10, arguing against those who say that there failed God another mode by which he might deliver men from sin, he says: It is too little thus to refute, so as to assert that this mode, by which God deigns to liberate us through the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, is good and fitting to divine honor: but we must also show that no other possible mode failed God, to whose power all things lie equally subject: but that there has not been, nor ought to have been, another mode more fitting for healing our misery.

Theological reason also gives its suffrage. For first, since God is most free in his operations ad extra, and since he himself was offended by the sins of men, he was able to pardon and remit that offense gratuitously by a simple and gratuitous condonation, exacting no punishment or satisfaction for the fault committed; for this would above all savor of his divine clemency, benignity, and mercy, and his superabounding sufficiency in himself would appear; since indeed thereby he would manifest himself in no wise to need our goods, nor would honor paid by us to him, or denied him, add anything to or detract anything from his perfection or felicity. Add that it seems laudable to every man who has been offended, when he gratuitously pardons an injury inflicted upon him: for this gratuitous remission of an offense is a manifest argument of a generous and magnanimous soul: therefore that equally gratuitous condonation would tend supremely to the honor and glory of God. It is confirmed, because although a Magistrate, or a particular Judge, sometimes cannot leave unpunished an offense even remitted by the man offended and gratuitously pardoned, but according to the prescriptions of the laws is held to prescribe due punishments to the guilty party; yet a prince, for just causes, by his authority over the community, can gratuitously relax the principal punishments from the guilty party according to the prescriptions of the laws, and dismiss him free without any satisfaction: therefore much more will God, by his supreme authority and clemency, be able to condone gratuitously to men the punishments due according to the prescriptions of his divine justice, and exact from them no satisfaction; therefore, even presupposing the fall of men, the Incarnation of the Word was not necessary. —

Then, even if God out of justice necessarily exacted some satisfaction from men for expiating their offense, he could have required it from each man individually guilty; so that each one of men would be bound to satisfy God in his own singular person for original sin contracted from himself: just as any sinner is held to render God satisfaction for all his actual sins: since original sin is contracted by each man for this reason, because his will interpretively was in the will of Adam, so that in him they sinned; why could God not also prescribe to each of men some satisfaction to be rendered voluntarily and freely, for expiating that guilt, which was only interpretively voluntary with respect to each man? — Finally, God was able (as we shall say in the following Question) to confer so great a grace upon some particular man, that his works would become wholly pleasing and acceptable to God for satisfaction on behalf of the whole human race: therefore satisfaction rendered by the God-Man was not absolutely necessary for that end.

You will object 1. The holy Fathers affirming that the Incarnation was absolutely necessary ex hypothesi, that God decreed to liberate man. Thus St. Chrysostom, Homily 10. on John. Our nature fell, he says, in such a manner that it could by no means be restored by anyone whatsoever, except by that most omnipotent hand: for neither otherwise could it be restored, unless he who fashioned it from the beginning stretched forth his hand. Cyril, book 6. of the Treasury, chapter 7. Since, he says, it befitted not the work of God to be imperfect, and it could not otherwise be repaired, God became of necessity man. Ambrose on Hebrews 9. So great was our sin, that we could not be saved otherwise than if the omnipotent Son of God died for us. Leo the Pope, Epistle 81. What reconciliation, he says, could there be, whereby God might be propitiated to the human race, unless the Mediator of God and men took upon himself the cause of all? To these add St. Anselm throughout the whole of book 1. Cur Deus homo, etc. —

I answer, that all those holy Fathers can be expounded by us in the manner in which our Alensis and the Seraphic Doctor expound St. Anselm, when he said it was impossible for God not to become incarnate; and thus it was necessary for man to be redeemed through the Incarnation, such that otherwise it neither could nor ought to have been done. For those Doctors say that St. Anselm spoke only of the necessity of immutability, which proceeds from the decree of the will of God, which God himself, once held, cannot change. Therefore, supposing the divine ordination concerning redeeming man through the Incarnation, we could not otherwise be saved, nor could God deny us this benefit: otherwise he would have been mutable. Secondly, the holy Fathers can be expounded as speaking of the necessity of being better: so that that may be called necessary which is most fitting, and which compensates on every side the loss inflicted by sin: for in this way neither does the disgrace of sin remain without the adornment of justice, and man pays the penalties which he owes, and worthily satisfies God, who can render worthy satisfaction. Finally, they can be expounded as speaking of the necessity conducing to the mode of redemption most perfect that can be conceived: it is certain, moreover, that the most excellent satisfaction for the sins of men that can be conceived is that which is exhibited by the Man-God.

You will object 2. with St. Anselm, book 1. Cur Deus homo, chapter 12: God can accomplish nothing to the prejudice of his divine equity and justice: but if he relaxed the offense of men without due satisfaction, which can be made only by the God-man, he would act against the requirement of his justice, which wills every sin to be punished and the honor taken away from God to be repaid: therefore, etc. —

I distinguish the minor; that it would tend to the prejudice of divine equity and justice according to the reason of the present disposition and ordination of things, I concede: since indeed God decreed that no sin should go unpunished, nor be remitted without satisfaction, either proper or another's: according to the ordination which God could have established, had he willed to succor us by another means, as it was in his liberty, I deny; since the whole justice and equity of God depends upon his divine ordination, and that is considered just and equitable only which accords with the divine will; thence it is clear that if God had disposed the matter otherwise, that decree would not have conflicted with divine equity.

You will object 3. with the same St. Anselm: If sin is not punished, it is left disordered: because as virtue is ordered unto glory, so sin unto punishment: but it beseems not God to leave anything disordered in his kingdom: therefore it beseems not God to leave sin thus unpunished. —

I distinguish the major: that it is disordered to leave sin without punishment, according to the present divine ordination, I concede; since God, as we said just now, wills every sin to pay due penalties: but since God could have disposed the matter otherwise, so equally could he have brought it about that sin should not be ordered absolutely to punishment infallibly to be inflicted.

Finally you will object with the same: If sin is not solved by due satisfaction, nor punished, the consequence is that it lies subject to no law: but this conflicts: both because it would follow that injustice would be freer than justice: because this lies subject to divine providence, while that would lie subject to no law; and equally that injustice would be like unto God; seeing that, like God, it would lie subject to no law: which consequences are altogether absurd: therefore also that whence they are inferred. —

I deny the sequel of the major: since in that case sin and injustice would lie subject to the divine will ordaining them, so that they be remitted gratuitously, just as the works of justice themselves lie subject to it, which by divine ordination ought to receive their due reward, for no other reason than that namely God so decreed and ordained.