Scotus Academicus, Tomus septimus: De Incarnatione Verbi Divini

Note 1. From Petavius book 12 chapter 6: of all the offices proper to a mediator, and consonant with his duty, is the pacification of those at variance with one another, and the reconciliation of minds to mutual concord. That however the Son was sent by the Father for obtaining and executing conciliation between God and men, Sacred Scripture most openly testifies: above all St. Paul in many places, as will appear below. But that this office of reconciling peace, assumed by that most precious pacifier of the human race, may be the more easily understood, and its worth estimated, it must be observed with St. Augustine, book 19 On the City of God, chapter 13, that peace is the tranquillity of order. Which definition he himself elucidates thus:

The peace of body, he says, is the ordered tempering of parts. The peace of the irrational soul, the ordered repose of appetites. The peace of the rational soul, the ordered agreement of cognition and action. The peace of body and soul, the ordered life and health of the living being. The peace of mortal man and immortal God, ordered obedience in faith under eternal law. The peace of men, ordered concord. The peace of house, ordered concord among cohabitants in commanding and obeying. The peace of city, ordered concord of citizens in commanding and obeying. The peace of the heavenly city, most ordered and most concordant society in enjoying God and each other in God. The peace of all things, the tranquillity of order.

Note 2. From the same St. Augustine there, that two things are necessary for perfect and absolute peace, namely order and tranquillity: Order, he says, is the disposition assigning to equal and unequal things their places each to each. Hence book 5 chapter 12 he explains peace through mere conveniency, writing that God fitly tempered and congruously ordered the universe. Who left not only heaven and earth, nor only Angel and man, but neither the viscera of any small and contemptible living creature, neither the pinions of birds, neither the little flower of grass, neither the leaf of tree, without the conveniency of their parts and a kind of tacit peace. Yet besides the congruence of parts he requires moreover tranquillity in that other passage of the same work. Indeed the miserable, he says, precisely because they are miserable, are certainly not in peace; they lack indeed the tranquillity of order, where there is no perturbation: nevertheless because by merit and justly they are miserable, even in that very misery of theirs they cannot be outside order; joined indeed not to the Blessed, yet separated from them by the law of order. Whom also he says have a certain tranquillity of order in certain things, because they are adapted to them, and so some peace inheres in them. But they are therefore miserable, he says, because although in some security they do not suffer pain, still they are not where they ought to be secure and free of suffering; but when they suffer, on whatever side they suffer, the peace has been disturbed. In that part however peace still remains, in which neither pain burns, nor is the structure itself dissolved. Finally where there is a nature in which no evil is, nor can be, as God: to be a nature in which no good exists cannot be, nor even of the devil: thus heaven is peace without any war: but war without some peace cannot be. Wherefore some tranquillity and quiet is necessary for peace, which is opposed to perturbation and war. Hence Augustine on Psalm 84: What is peace, he says, where there is no war? What is it where there is no war? where there is no contradiction: where nothing resists, nothing adverse. So then peace differs either naught or but very little from concord, if taken universally. Thus far Petavius.

Note 3. That sin introduced into the world war of threefold kind, namely against God, neighbour, and man the sinner himself. Against God indeed, since, as Isaiah testifies chapter 59: Your iniquities have divided between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you that he may not hear. Equally against neighbour: Whence wars and contentions among you, says St. James chapter 4! Is it not hence, from your concupiscences which war in your members? Finally against himself, since flesh concupisceth against spirit, and spirit against flesh. Whence it was necessary that the mediator of God and men reconcile a threefold peace, namely of man with God, with neighbour, with himself, that he might sustain the office and role of supreme and most excellent pacificator; which he indeed performed, as will appear in what follows.

First Conclusion. — CHRIST THE LORD TOOK AWAY THE WAR OF MAN WITH GOD, AND RECONCILED AND CONFIRMED PEACE BETWEEN BOTH.

Thus most beautifully teaches St. Paul 2 Corinthians 5: All things, he says, are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation: for indeed God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their sins; and he hath placed in us the word of reconciliation. For Christ therefore we are ambassadors, God

beseesching through us; we pray for Christ, be reconciled to God. And to the Ephesians 2 the same Apostle writes: In Christ Jesus you, who were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh, making void the law of commandments in decrees, that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, slaying the enmities in himself. And coming he preached peace to you that were afar off, and peace to them that were nigh, because through him we have access both in one Spirit to the Father.

— Augustine illustrates this function of pacifying and reconciling from the same and other passages of Scripture in his tractate on Psalm 61, which Psalm is inscribed concerning Solomon:

Moreover Solomon, he says, is interpreted peaceful (pacificus): and therefore such a title fits him truly and best, through whom as mediator we are reconciled to God, forgiveness of sins accepted, from enemies. For when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son; and, He himself says in the Gospel: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. And with many other testimonies the Lord Christ is shown to be peaceful, not according to the peace which this world knows and seeks, but that peace of which it is said by the Prophet: I will give them true comfort, peace upon peace; to which peace of reconciliation, namely, is added immortal peace. For after all things rendered which God promised, the same Prophet shows we must await the last peace, wherein we shall live with God for eternity, when he says: Lord our God, give us peace, for thou hast given us all things. That peace will plainly be perfect, when the last enemy death shall be destroyed. And in whom shall this be, except in that Pacific One our Reconciler? for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.

St. Leo Pope likewise most beautifully, in his sixth sermon on the Nativity of the Lord, both describes this office of mediator bestowed unsparingly by Christ upon the human race; and also its excellence and utility in these words:

For what in the treasury of the Lord's bounty, he says, can we find so fitting to the honour of the present day as peace, which at the birth of the Lord was first proclaimed by angelic concert? Itself indeed is that which begets sons of God, nurse of charity, and mother of unity: repose of the Blessed, and habitation of eternity; whose proper work and special benefit it is to join to God what it severs from the world. Whence the Apostle incites us to this good, saying: Being justified therefore by faith, let us have peace toward God. In whose sentence's brevity is contained the effect of all earthly commandments: because where there shall be the truth of peace, nothing there can be lacking of virtue. But what is it, dearly beloved, to have peace toward God, except to will what he commands, and not to will what he forbids? If indeed for human friendships equal souls seek like wills, nor can diversity of morals ever arrive at firm concord, how shall he be partaker of divine peace, to whom those things please which displease God, and who desires to delight himself in those things by which he knows Him offended? That mind is not of the sons of God, neither does such wisdom receive adoptive nobility. Let a chosen generation and royal respond to the dignity of their regeneration. Let him love what the Father loves, and dissent from his author in nothing.

Second Conclusion. — HE RECONCILED ALSO INTERNAL PEACE TO MEN WITH THEMSELVES.

The Holy Fathers prove this truth, above all the most holy Augustine Tractate 104 on John, where teaching by what modes and means our interior peace is instituted and confirmed through Christ:

The peace of Christ, he says, has no end of time, and itself is all perfection of pure intention and action. On account of it we are imbued with his sacraments: on account of it we are taught by his wonderful works and words: on account of it we receive the pledge of the Holy Spirit: on account of it finally we bear bravely every tribulation, that in it we may reign happily without tribulation.

That peace indeed is not yet perfect and absolute, nor will be resolved into all its numbers, save in eternal beatitude. Hence St. Augustine distinguishes thus, and weighs thus, the twofold peace promised us by Christ, one in the present, another in the world to come, tractate 77 on John, weighing these words of Christ: Peace I leave with you: moreover he says: He leaves peace to us who is about to depart: his peace he will give us coming at the end: he leaves peace to us in this world, his own peace he will give us in the world to come: he leaves peace to us, abiding wherein we conquer enemies: his own peace he will give us, when without enemy we shall reign. There also the most holy Doctor observes admirably that Christ signified both these peaces there, when first he says: Peace I leave with you, nor added, mine, then subjoined, My peace I give unto you. For the former peace, says St. Augustine, is called ours rather than his: since he has nothing at all repugnant in himself who has no sin whatever: but we have such peace wherein we still say: forgive us our debts. There is therefore some peace, since we delight in the law of God according to the inward man: but it is not full, because we see another law in our members repugnant to the law of our mind.

— Moreover this internal peace that adorable Mediator reconciled to us chiefly for three reasons; namely doctrine, example, and aid; which all contribute most to extinguishing in us perturbations of soul and inducing the sweetness of peace and tranquillity. First indeed his doctrine looks chiefly to this, since precisely therefore, taking up the cross daily, curbing and taming cupidities, scorning the enticements of pleasures, undertaking the laborious and arduous path through virtues to heaven, in fine informing us concerning all fomentations and blandishments of vices by his divine precepts and institutions, he reconciles true internal peace, the tumults of all passions being calmed. Which indeed St. Ambrose teaches pre-eminently on Psalm 36, where expounding those words, the mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom, he shows reconciliation made of both parts of man, interior and exterior, through the benefit and doctrine of Christ:

What is the mouth of the just, he says, which shall meditate wisdom, except the interior man? For there are two men in each one, one interior, the other exterior; the interior thinks those things which are of the mind, speaks those things which are of the mind: the exterior, those which are of the body: nevertheless the Lord coming joined both together, and constituted two men in one, lest they assail themselves with diverse motions, but be mutually associated by unity of their wills. Therefore the mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom: for now even the exterior man himself, transfused into the discipline of the interior man, and conformed to his nature, exercises its offices, that flesh may meditate what is of interior mind; but lest this seem incredible to thee, hear the Apostle saying: that Jesus will transfigure the body of our humiliation, that it be made conformable to the body of his glory.

Not only Christian precepts of life comprehended in Evangelic and Apostolic writings, but far more the illustrious examples of sanctity of Christ the Lord renew this internal peace in us. For what else did he do in his whole life, or to what did his acts and thoughts tend, except that he might store up and propose in himself a perfect exemplar of most absolute holiness for all to imitate? Since however this sanctity of our perfect life and internal peace consists chiefly in consension and concord, that wonderful consension that divine Saviour expressed and taught thus, when he suspended all his own appetites upon the nod and arbitrament of the one divine will, and bore forth nothing else than to obey the will of him by whom he had been sent into the world. Thus John 3: I seek not, he says, my own will, but the will of him that sent me. Likewise chapter 4: My meat is to do the will of him that sent me. And there: I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.

Lastly, He confirmed and established in each individual man this same private peace against not only all the tickling enticements of lusts and the allurements of pleasures, but also against every sort of temptation, by His own most potent help and the efficacy and abundance of overflowing grace in His faithful; whence it comes to pass that human weakness, fortified and upheld by these divine safeguards, silently strives toward the haven and state of eternal peace and tranquillity.

Hence Saint Augustine, book De Correptione et Gratia, chapter 12, splendidly demonstrates that the grace of Christ is far more powerful in the faithful than it was in Adam. Because, he says, with no one to terrify him, and moreover with the free choice of his will set against the command of the terrifying God, he did not stand firm in so great an ease of not sinning. These others, however — I do not say with the world merely terrifying them, but raging against them that they should not stand — stood firm in the faith; since the former man saw the good things present, which he was about to abandon, while these did not see the future good things, which they were about to receive. Whence this? Except from Him who bestowed it, from whom they obtained mercy so as to be faithful, from whom they received the spirit not of fear, whereby they would yield to their persecutors, but of power, and of charity, and of continence, whereby they might overcome all that threatens, all that provokes, all that torments.

Third Conclusion. — CHRIST ALSO RECONCILED THE THIRD KIND OF PEACE, NAMELY AMONG MEN THEMSELVES.

Proof: from the more celebrated oracles of the Prophets, wherein is signified that so great a peace and concord was to come at the time of the Messias that, wars being everywhere settled, all nations would enjoy the utmost tranquillity and peace. Thus Isaias, chapter 2: And in the last days the mountain of the house shall be prepared... all nations. And many peoples shall go, and shall say: Come, let us go up... many, shall lift up sword against nation; neither shall they be exercised any more to war. Micheas adds to these words: And every man shall sit under his vine, and under his fig tree, and there shall be none to make them afraid. By which words those most illustrious

prophets of Christ signify that an affluence of peace and quiet was to be imported through Christ. But as to what peace these prophecies are to be understood of — whether civil and political, or truly spiritual and divine — the sacred Interpreters do not agree. For some think these prophecies are to be referred to that peace which is said to have occurred under the reign of Augustus at the rising of Christ the Lord. So Saint Chrysostom and Cyril on Isaias, and Jerome in his commentaries on both Prophets. But since many grievous wars and many disasters of the Roman empire intervened while Augustus still lived, that prophetic promise does not seem to have been fulfilled in every way in this sense; wherefore I judge it more correctly to be said, with other sacred Interpreters, that those prophetic oracles are to be referred, not to a temporal and external peace, but to spiritual concord and tranquillity, which is also the later opinion of SS. Jerome and Cyril. Thus above all Justin Martyr interprets those oracles in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew; thus Tertullian in Scorpiace, chapter 13; thus especially Rupert, book 2, on Nichaeas: Have we not read, he says, that this has come to pass everywhere among peoples and nations while the Gospel of Christ shines forth, and do we not see it happening: while men formerly restless and warlike laid down their weapons of war, and by their very manner or garb changed, became the ensigns of Evangelical peace? Some were converted to the cenobitic life, others to the eremitical rule. The same is found in book 1, on chapter 9 of Isaias.

Saint Athanasius, in the book De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, excellently proves and illustrates this interpretation, where he confirms the divinity of Christ by this argument among others: that He engendered in His followers love of and zeal for peace.

For of old, he says, the Greeks and barbarians alike, given over to idolatry, waged wars against one another, and were cruel even to their own kin. For no one could make a journey at all by land or sea unless bearing a sword in hand, because of the implacable wars with which they raged against each other. Indeed their whole life was spent in arms, and the sword served them for a staff, and in it they placed all their confidence and protection. Yet, as I have already said, they worshipped images and offered sacrifices to demons; and meanwhile none of those so affected in mind could be weaned from that superstition of idols. But after they passed over to the discipline of Christ, then beyond expectation, their souls truly being compunct, they cast off that savage cruelty of slaughter, so that they no longer breathe some warlike and hostile thing or other, but all things are peaceful for them, and the things pertaining to peace and concord wonderfully affect them, etc.

Such are the words of Athanasius. Petavius adds that even in our own age the truth of this prophecy is fulfilled in savage nations abandoned to every cultivation of humanity, such as the Indians, Brazilians, Canadians, and other Americans, who so long as they are entangled in ancestral superstitions adore demons, wage incessant wars with one another, and after the manner of lions and wolves prepare banquets and feasts from the flesh of enemies. But when they have become Christians, suddenly laying aside their savagery they become so tame that they prefer to suffer evil from their enemies rather than inflict it, and they soothe them with benefits and all the offices of charity.