Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

Nor indeed should it seem a marvel, nor an unusual thing, that the chief doctors and standard-bearers of heretical impiety strive to disparage its authority in the eyes of all, and to remove and pluck it out of the midst with every curse and reproach; for they know that it is the key and the sword of their errors and of heresy, struck by which it fell prostrate. And I cannot sufficiently wonder at men who are not only Catholic, but some even of their upright ones, and the fiercest enemies of heretical depravity, yet not only speak and think with the heretics, but even assault Scholastic Theology with their own weapons. But I fear that they are counted among those of whom St. Jude the Apostle wrote: What things indeed they know not, they blaspheme; but what things they know naturally, like dumb animals, in these they are corrupted; I fear, I say, lest men of this sort, relying on the felicity of memory rather than on the firmness of judgment and the keenness of wit, speak against the sacred doctrine, which they cannot attain from elsewhere, and despise in appearance those things of which they are deprived against their will. But in order that it may appear how far they wander from the truth and are deluded, the necessity and existence of both theologies, which they call Positive and Scholastic, must be demonstrated in the following Questions: but first must be premised:

Note 1. A twofold necessity is wont to be distinguished, namely absolute and hypothetical; for in the first place that is said to be absolutely necessary which is such that the highest necessity of existing belongs to it per se and by the force of its own nature and essence; so that, prescinding from the supposition of anything else whatsoever, it cannot at all not be, in which manner God alone is called a Being absolutely necessary. Secondly, a thing is necessary from hypothesis, namely because, some other thing being supposed, it cannot not be, because it is included in it, or infallibly follows from it, or has a necessary connection with it; in which manner, if a man exists, it is necessary that he be an animal; if there is a cause under the notion of cause, it is necessary that there also be an effect; if a man wishes to preserve his natural life for a long time, food is necessary for him; if he desires to attain eternal life, he must depart from this mortal life in grace.

Note 2. What is necessary from hypothesis, in order to attain some end, can be said to be so in three ways: First indeed by the necessity of precept only: Second, only by the necessity of means: Third, by both necessities at once, namely of means and of precept. Thus hearing Mass on feast days is necessary by the necessity of precept in order to salvation: but Baptism for the same end is necessary for little children only by the necessity of means, not however of precept, of which infants, as lacking reason, are incapable. But for adults Baptism is necessary by both necessities; by that of means indeed, because without it, received in reality or in desire, they cannot be justified; by that of precept truly, because by divine command they are bound to procure their salvation through the means necessary and ordained by God, such as Baptism is. But whether any Theological Doctrine is necessary for us by some one of these necessities, will have to be resolved in the present Question; but first:

Note 3. Theology properly taken, according to its various division and acceptation, also obtains various appellations: First, by reason of the Means, or of the light, by which it is illumined, it can be distinguished and named threefold, namely Theology of Vision, of Revelation, and of Reasoning. For there is a threefold light by which God becomes known to men, namely the light of glory, by whose aid blessed minds contemplate God face to face, the Royal Prophet saying, Psal. 35.: In thy light we shall see light; another is the light of faith, by which, says St. Peter 2. 1., is a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns, by which light we, still mortal, see divine things through a mirror and in an enigma; for faith, says St. Paul, is the substance of things hoped for, the argument of things not appearing, Hebr. 11. Third finally is the light of natural reason; For God hath signed upon us the light of his countenance, that we might perceive and discern his invisible things, understood through the things which are made. — By reason of the Subject, it is also threefold: namely the Theology of God, of the Blessed, and of the Wayfarers. The first is called Comprehensive, by which God most perfectly comprehends himself and in himself all things by his infinite knowledge: For all things are naked and open to his eyes, Hebr. 4. The second is Intuitive, by which the blessed see God as he is, so that there is nothing in him which lies hidden from the one seeing. The third is Discursive, by which wayfarers either detect the Creator from the magnitude of the species and of the creature, or from the sacred storehouse of the divine Scriptures draw out and demonstrate catholic dogmas. The first is in an adequate subject, the second in a clear subject, the third in an obscure subject: for we know in part and we prophesy in part, 1. Cor. 13. — By reason of the Object about which it is occupied, one is called the Theology of Necessary Things, by which it regards God ad intra and according to himself, and inasmuch as he is one in essence, three in persons, and infinite in his excellences. Another, of Contingent Things, which regards God as operating ad extra and in respect to creatures, which he either creates, conserves, and moderates in the order of nature; or calls and justifies in the order of grace; or beatifies and crowns in the order of glory. — By reason of the Method, one is called Positive, another Scholastic: the former expounds the sacred letters and the articles of faith in a fuller style and in an oratorical manner; and therefore it is called positive, because it as it were posits and proposes the truths of faith, from which, as from principles and premises, the Scholastic in a philosophical manner and by syllogistic art deduces its conclusions, so that it makes catholic dogmas manifest, and separates and defends them from the wicked assertions of Heretics or of those philosophizing badly.

Only conclusion. — Theological doctrine is necessary for men, by which, from principles known by divine faith, it may disclose certain truths which mortal men could not procure for themselves with the aid of philosophy. This is the position of all Theologians against the Philosophers, and the Subtle Doctor proves it in q. 1. of the Prologue, n. 6., thus:

First, it is necessary that man determinately know his ultimate end, toward which he ought to direct all his operations: but he cannot attain this knowledge without some doctrine grounded on revelation, which is called Theology: therefore this is necessary for him. The major is clear from the fullest agreement of the Philosophers, who freely confess that every agent endowed with reason intends in its operations some determinate end, and directs toward it all its motions and acts, so that in it as in a beatifying object it may rest: but it would aim uncertainly at the mark, unless it determinately knew this end: therefore it ought to know it distinctly.

Proof of the minor. If the ultimate end of man could be detected by any of the philosophers with the light of reason alone, undoubtedly Aristotle, the Eagle of the Philosophers and the Genius of Nature, would have discovered it: but he did not discover it: which I indeed show by a twofold reason: first, because nowhere did he teach that God, clearly and intuitively to be seen, is our ultimate end; indeed in 10. Ethic. lib. 7. he placed the ultimate end of man in the knowledge of separated substances; for when in cap. 5. and 6. he had reported and impugned the various opinions of the ancient Philosophers concerning the ultimate end and beatitude of man, he himself established a twofold happiness of man; the one moral and civil; the other speculative and contemplative. The moral he said, 1. Ethic. cap. 7., to be an operation according to the best virtue, which is prudence; so that he judged man to be happy then, when he composed all his actions wisely and in an orderly manner: the speculative, however, he explains in 10. Ethic. cap. 6. 7. and 8., and he teaches that it consists in the most perfect operation of all, which he judged to be the knowledge of God and of immaterial substances; not indeed intuitive, which he himself did not know; but abstractive, such as human discourse can attain, e.g., etc. — It is proved secondly: by the force of no natural principle can it be proved that eternal beatitude and the ultimate end consist objectively in God, and formally in the clear vision of God, or in the love following upon the vision, or in both at once: therefore man's happiness and ultimate end cannot be detected by natural light.

Proof of the antecedent. If there were any such principles from which it were lawful to infer that we are naturally ordered to see God clearly, they would especially be certain acts and effects arising in us, by which as by stimuli we would naturally be incited to that vision: but it is evident that we do not experience such acts or effects; and therefore they are none: therefore neither are there any principles by which we could naturally know our ultimate end determinately; and therefore some doctrine is necessary which infers this from revealed principles; this, however, is Theology, and therefore it is necessary.

Proof of the 2. Conclusion. and the preceding argument is confirmed by the same Doctor, ibid., n. 8.: Every agent acting for an end must necessarily know three things; First, how it is to be acquired; Second, what means conduce to its attainment; Third, whether those means suffice for this attainment; for if anyone does not know how the end is to be acquired, in what manner will he be able to gird himself for its attainment? Likewise, if he is ignorant of what means are necessary, perhaps he will not make use of something necessary, whereby it will come about that he is frustrated in his labor. If finally he is not certain that the means which he uses suffice for attaining the end, without doubt he will either wholly withdraw from the work, or will advance only waveringly; but man the wayfarer cannot know these three things by natural light. Not indeed the mode of acquisition; for that beatitude is to be acquired either as the inheritance of sons, or as the reward of those who labor, or as the crown of those who conquer, is wholly contingent, since God could have ordained that it be conferred otherwise. Not even the means; for that these or other sacraments are destined as necessary means to its attainment depends wholly on the free ordination of God, which has no necessary connection with natural things; and therefore it cannot be detected by natural discourse. Therefore some doctrine is necessary which from revealed principles discloses our ultimate end, and the mode, and the means by which it can be obtained, determinately and distinctly: this, however, Theology provides. Therefore it is necessary for us.

I prove finally, 3. Natural reason is wholly insufficient for detecting and manifesting the principal and higher truths, namely the nature of God, the immortality of the soul, the beatitude of man, etc., since it labors under one of these four defects, and for the most part under all four at once: for that natural reason is either weaker for inquiring into those truths: or obscurer for finding them when sought: or more uncertain for embracing them when found; or more timid and feeble for affirming and publishing them when believed: therefore a supernatural doctrine is necessarily needed, which, being free of these defects, may certainly inquire into, detect, affirm, and manifest the truth. The antecedent is proved as to each of its parts; and this by authority and reason at once, that I may satisfy Preachers and students of Theology.

First, therefore, natural reason is weaker for inquiring into those principal truths, since indeed it begs all its knowledge from the senses, according to that saying of Aristotle, 3. De Anima, cap. 9.: he who perceives nothing can learn and understand nothing; whence that common saying of Averroes, nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the sense; and since the senses have no proportion to divine things and higher truths; from this it comes about that the human mind wholly fails in inquiring into those truths; For the corruptible body, says the Sage, 3., weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation depresses the sense thinking many things: and we hardly estimate the things which are on earth, and we find with labor the things which are in view, but the things which are in heaven, who shall investigate? whence St. Paul, first to the Corinthians 2.: The animal man does not perceive the things which are of God. — St. Augustine weighs this in a marvelous manner, lib. 8. De Trinit., cap. 2.:

Behold, see if you can, O soul weighed down by the body which is corrupted and laden with many and various earthly thoughts: Behold, see if you can, God is truth... do not seek what Truth is; for immediately the darknesses of bodily images and the clouds of phantasms will oppose themselves, and will disturb the serenity which at the first stroke shone upon you, when I said Truth; Behold, in that very first stroke by which you are struck as by a flash, when Truth is said; remain if you can, but you cannot. You will slip back into those usual and earthly things. By what weight at last, I ask, will you slip back, if not by the birdlime of the contracted filth of desire and the errors of the pilgrimage?

Whence rightly, Isai., 14.: My eyes are weakened looking up on high.

Second. Reason is obscurer for finding the truth; for the human mind, bound to and accustomed to corporeal things, can scarcely shake off its phantasms, so that it may be able to perceive and detect things cleansed of all body and free of matter. From this it came about that the Philosophers judged God to be nothing other than something corporeal; since indeed Justin the martyr says, in the first exhortation to the Greeks:

Thales of Miletus, the first author of natural Philosophy, judged the principle of all things to be water: Anaximander, infinity; Anaximenes, air; Heraclitus and Hippasus, fire: Anaxagoras, particles similar to one another, or similarities: Archelaus, infinite air; and the density and rarity of the things which surround it; Pythagoras, numbers: Epicurus, corpuscles, which can neither be corrupted, nor crushed, nor broken: Empedocles, the four elements, and two primary virtues, friendship and strife; of which the one serves union, the other dissension.

Whence St. Justin concludes that the doctrine of the Philosophers about the gods is much more ridiculous than the Theology of the Poets.

Nor was this gross and doubtful opinion of the ancient Philosophers only about God: but their ignorance and quarrel concerning the rational soul was also the greatest. Which the praised St. Justin excellently explains; for when he had said that Plato admitted three parts in it, namely reason, irascibility, and concupiscence, yet that it is immortal; that Aristotle on the contrary said that several little parts are detected in it, and that these are subject to corruption, and therefore that it is mortal, he adds that the other Philosophers, divided as it were in many ways by ignorance, thought that one must also contend about the soul, and be torn asunder by dissensions among themselves. For some of them assert that the soul is fire; some others, air; others, mind; others, motion: others, exhalation; some indeed, that it flows down from the stars; some, that it is a number holding the power of moving; others, genital water.

The same ignorance and disputation of the Philosophers labored in assigning man's beatitude: since indeed Marcus Varro numbered two hundred and eighty-eight opinions about man's happiness. St. Justin assigns the cause of this ignorance and dissension, namely that they did not want to learn from the experts, but trusted that they themselves could perceive heavenly things by the skill of the science of the human mind, when they could not even see through earthly ones. One must infer, therefore, with Tertullian, lib. De Praescript., cap. 7., that it belongs to secular Wisdom to be the reckless interpreter of the divine nature and disposition. Whence rightly St. Hilary, lib. 5.: Of God one must learn what is to be understood about God; because he is known with no one but himself as Author. The same, lib. 1.: Our talents do not ascend into heavenly science; nor will our infirmity conceive the incomprehensible power by any sense. God himself must be believed concerning himself, and the things which he has granted to our knowledge must be obeyed. For, as St. Cyril says, lib. 1. contra Iulianum, the things which exceed the grasp of the human mind must be honored by faith. Hence that celebrated saying of Plato in the Timaeo, that all truth can be learned in one way only, if we are taught it either by God himself, or by those who are born of God. From which Clemens Alexand. lib. 6. Strom.: rightly we, Christians, who gather testimonies from the divine oracles, glory that we have learned the truth through the Son of God.

Thirdly. Reason is more uncertain for embracing the truth once found, which is abundantly evident from the divided opinion of the Philosophers; for not only, as Justin says in the same passage, is there a confused and discordant opinion among them, which seems condemnable at least on one count by those approved by sound judgment, because their study is set upon this, that they argue and convince one another of being deluded and of putting forward nothing true; but (as he had warned above) if anyone wishes to inspect their writings more diligently, they do not sufficiently agree even with themselves in their opinions. Plato himself at one time established three principles of all things, God, matter, and the idea; at another time four: for he adds the universal soul. The same man, where he had professed matter to be unbegotten, later says that the same is begotten. Hence Caecilius, in Minutius Felix's Octavius, not incongruously said, all should be indignant and grieve, that some dare to decree something certain about the highest of things and about majesty, concerning which, through all ages, philosophy itself, with its very many sects, still deliberates. Nor without reason, since human mediocrity is so far removed from the exploration of divine things, that neither the things which are raised up and suspended in the heaven above us, nor the things which are sunk deep beneath the earth, is it given to know, or permitted to scrutinize, or religious to profane.

Fourthly and finally, natural human reason is weaker and more timid in publishing and preaching the divine truths known and believed; this St. Augustine demonstrates concerning Seneca, lib. 6. De Civ., cap. 10. That man (he says), whom the Philosophers made, as it were, free; yet because he was a Senator of the illustrious Roman people, he worshipped what he reproved, he did what he argued against, he adored what he blamed. St. Paul clearly expresses all these things in 1. cap. ad Romanos, affirming that the ancient Philosophers and Wise men had fallen into four horrible vices. The first indeed, of ingratitude, because when they had known God, they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks: The second, of ignorance, their foolish heart was darkened; for saying themselves to be wise, they became fools: The third, of idolatry, for they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things: The fourth, of abominable shamefulness, therefore He delivered them up to passions of ignominy, etc.

It must therefore be concluded with St. Thomas, secunda secundae q. 2. art. 2., that it was necessary for man to receive by way of faith not only the things which are above reason, but also those which can be known by reason, and this for three reasons: First, that man may arrive more quickly at the knowledge of divine truth: Second, that the knowledge of God may be more common: Third, for the sake of certainty; for human reason is greatly deficient in divine matters. Or, as he speaks in 1. p. q. 1. art. 1., the truth about God investigated by reason would come to men only to few, and after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors.

You will object 1. The Doctor argues for the Philosophers. Every potency which is concerned with some common object can also be concerned with any special object contained under that common and general object; for the eye, e.g., because it is concerned with the colored object as such, can also be concerned with the white and the other particular colored things: but our intellect by natural power is concerned with being, as being, as with its first and adequate object: therefore it can also be concerned naturally with any special being; and so it does not need any revelation in order to know certain beings.

The Doctor distinguishes the major, num. 32. A potency which is concerned with some common object can also be concerned with any particular object contained under it — that is, it can have a natural inclination to know that special object: he concedes; that is, it has in itself a natural power by which it knows any special object just as it knows the common object: he denies. For although the intellect, in knowing being as being, also has an inclination implanted by nature to know any special being; it does not, however, follow from this that it can uncover any being by the powers of nature; for there are many knowable things which in this mortal state cannot be known without divine revelation; either because they have no commerce with our senses, such as spiritual substances; or because there is no natural effect leading into their knowledge, such as the Trinity of persons in the unity of essence: or finally because they entirely exceed the grasp of nature, both in being made and in being known, of which sort are grace, faith, and hope, which are therefore said to be of the supernatural order.

You will object 2. Sense is a cognitive potency far inferior to the intellect, which yet needs no supernatural help in order to be borne toward whatever of its objects; for the eye, e.g., can by its native activity see whatever is visible: therefore the intellect ought to need such help much less, in order to be borne toward anything intelligible. The consequence is proved: sense does not need supernatural help for this reason, that according to Arist. 3. De Anima, t. 45., nature does not fail in necessary things, and supplies to potencies all the aids by which they can exercise their operations; therefore it ought to fail much less toward the intellective potency, which, since it is far more excellent than the senses, ought to depend less on what is extrinsic in order to operate; but it would fail it if, besides its native power of understanding, it still needed another help in order to perceive some object: therefore it does not need such help.

The Doctor denies the consequence. and to its proof he responds, that nature does not therefore fail in necessary things because it itself supplies all the means necessary for acting; but because it bestows potencies and faculties ready for the operation befitting each thing: and this it confers on the intellect no less than on the senses; for each faculty, both the sensitive and the intellective, has a power of operating most suited to itself implanted by nature. But if the intellect cannot exercise this its natural power with respect to some object; that does not come from a defect of nature not supplying what is necessary; but from the supreme dignity both of the object, which, since it is of a higher order, exceeds the natural power of the intellect, nor can it be attained by it unless it be raised and strengthened by some help of a higher order; and of the intellect, which is therefore deemed nobler and more illustrious, because it requires not only a natural, but even a supernatural order of perfection for its ornament and completion. Whence the Doctor rightly infers, num. 33., that nature does not fail it; since it confers on it all the things which are desired in it for natural operation; although it does not confer on it what is required for the supernatural knowledge of a supernatural object; for nature ought to accomplish only those things which are natural. But since every perfection of the senses is purely natural, nature would surely fail them if it did not supply them with all things for perceiving their object.

You will insist. Nature supplies the senses not only with power, but also with the means necessary for operating: therefore it ought also to confer on the intellect all the means necessary for understanding anything; otherwise the intellect will be of a worse condition and lot than the senses.

I deny the consequence. for the comparison of the intellect with the senses is not equal; since the senses, on account of their less perfect power of acting, are limited to certain objects and a certain natural mode of operating, beyond which order they can in no way break out; for they are concerned only with sensible being, which, since it is only of the natural order, it is no wonder if the senses desire nothing at all beyond the order of nature for reaching all their objects. But it is otherwise with the intellect, which, since it has as its adequate object any intelligible being, and there are some intelligibles exceeding the grasp and order of nature; hence it happens that although it has a natural inclination to know them, it cannot, however, reach them by the powers of nature; whence it is necessary that, in order to know them, it be enlightened and strengthened by some supernatural means. Nor does it follow from this that the intellect is of a worse lot than the senses, for, as the Doctor speaks, n. 33., it is the greatest perfection for the intellect, that it can be divinely elevated to receive a greater perfection than it can itself actively produce. For it is a sign that it is perfected not only by those things which are confined within the limits and barriers of nature; but that it also requires some preternatural excellence for the completion of its perfection. But it is otherwise with the senses, whose highest and ultimate perfection, since it can be conferred by natural agents, it follows that they are capable of less perfection than the intellect.

You will object 3. Doctor: For this reason some supernatural doctrine would be required, chiefly because the intellect is not proportioned to knowing every object, and consequently it would have to be conformed and proportioned to it by something else: but this reason is of no force: therefore neither is that conclusion for the proving of which it is assumed.

Proof of the minor. That by which the intellect would have to be equated and conformed to the object would either be natural or supernatural. Not the first, because it could not raise the intellect beyond its natural state, and make it proportioned to a supernatural object. Not the second either, because since the intellect is not of itself proportioned to another supernatural thing, it could not receive that supernatural thing, unless it were again made capable of this reception through another; about which, since the same difficulty would recur, there would be a process to infinity: therefore no supernatural doctrine is required in the intellect.

He answers, n. 31. having conceded the major by denying the minor. For it is true that the intellect is conformed to a supernatural object both formally, through the supernatural knowledge which it has of that very object, and efficiently, through God revealing and concurring effectively to produce that knowledge, which otherwise the intellect could not attain by itself and through phantasms (without which it naturally perceives nothing in this state). Whence that by which it is proportioned to the object, both efficiently and formally, is supernatural; not, however, must it be conformed and proportioned to it through something else; since, as the intellect is in obediential potency both with respect to receiving supernatural knowledge and with respect to the effective supernatural concurrence of God, it can receive both immediately, nor does it need anything else in order to be disposed and proportioned to this.

You will press. To every natural potency there ought to correspond a natural active principle which reduces it to act; otherwise the potency would be in vain, since it would not be reducible to act: but in our soul there is a passible, or passive, intellect, which is a potency receptive of any knowledge, even supernatural: therefore the agent intellect, which is in it, ought to be productive of supernatural knowledge as well.

The Doctor answers 1., n. 25. denying the major; for it is false that a natural active principle corresponds to every natural passive potency; because, he says, many things are naturally receptive of a perfection of which they do not have an intrinsic active principle; but most of all when a potency, on account of its excellence, is naturally ordered to receive a perfection so eminent that it cannot be produced by any natural agent; thus, as a matter of fact, our passible intellect is ordered to the knowledge of a supernatural object, which can be conferred by God alone revealing. Nor does it follow from this that that potency, insofar as it is natural, is in vain; for although it cannot be reduced to act principally through a natural agent; it suffices that it be completed and reduced to act by a supernatural agent.

He answers 2. distinguishing the major, n. 26.: To every natural passive potency there corresponds a natural active principle, insofar as that potency is called natural from the fact that it is ordered to an act or form that is natural and to be received naturally, he denies: but a potency which is called natural insofar as it regards a natural agent, so as to concur with it in producing some effect, e.g., the matter of wood, which regards fire, so as to concur with it in producing another fire, he concedes: but the passible intellect, or the potency receptive of knowledge, insofar as it extends itself to the knowledge of a supernatural object, is not called natural; since indeed it regards a supernatural form to be produced by a supernatural agent: but according to this consideration it can be called supernatural; and therefore, considered in this way, it ought not to be a wonder if it does not have a natural active principle corresponding to itself.

You will insist. The agent intellect cannot immediately produce supernatural knowledge, and knowledge concerning a supernatural object: therefore neither will the passive intellect be able to receive it, when produced by God revealing and acting supernaturally. The consequence is clear, because the activity of the agent intellect for producing ought not to be less than the capacity of the passive intellect for receiving that which is produced.

I deny the consequence. For more things are required to produce even natural knowledge than to receive it once produced; since, in order to elicit knowledge, not only is the activity of the agent intellect required, but also the object moving through phantasms, which must, as it were, be wiped clean of their earthly contagions, so that they can concur with the intellect in eliciting knowledge; but all these things are not required in receiving knowledge, but only the capacity of the passive intellect is required for receiving what is proposed to it. But this capacity, since it extends to receiving every knowledge, in whatever way that knowledge is produced, is of itself, as it were, indifferent to knowledge produced naturally or supernaturally; for it can receive either, whether from the intellect acting naturally or supernaturally. With this difference, however, that for the reception of natural knowledge it needs only the ordinary concurrence; but for the reception of supernatural knowledge it requires a more abundant concurrence of God. It remains, therefore, that theological doctrine, which discloses the more sublime truths, is supremely necessary.

From the preceding Question it is abundantly clear that some theological doctrine must necessarily be admitted, which lays open the principal and most necessary truths, which could in no way be detected with the help of philosophy and the aid of natural reason. Since, however, as we have already warned, theology is divided by reason of method into positive and scholastic; and since the heretics of this age most bitterly attack both; it is worth the effort to resolve whether both are necessary for the faithful and the Church, or whether one or the other is to be banished and rejected; that this may become the more evident

Note 1. Positive theology is so called for one or other of these three reasons. First, because it proposes and expounds the truths and articles of faith as certain and indubitable foundations, from which scholastic theology elicits its conclusions and forms the arguments by which it may illustrate the mysteries of faith and defend the Catholic dogmas against heretics and unbelievers. Second, because it is chiefly occupied with explaining and laying open the divine law and institution, which is called positive divine law. For just as human positive law is so called because it has been freely laid down by a Superior, and could simply not have been prescribed by him had he wished, and could still be freely revoked by him from authority, if it should so seem; in which positive law differs from natural law, because the latter is not such by some arbitrary institution and free precept of the Superior, but is such of itself and from its own nature, nor is it capable of any change: so positive theology is so called, which is wholly occupied with explaining positive divine law, namely the divine law, laying open the sacred Scriptures, as well as investigating the divine traditions and the decrees of the Church, which are called positive, divine, or ecclesiastical law; because it has been freely laid down and determined as much by God as by the Church. Third and finally, it is called positive from the positions and theses, because it treats the weightier controversies of faith and the positions, that is, the principal truths, so that from their declaration faith may be illustrated and persevere unshaken.

Note 2. Positive and scholastic theology do not differ from one another essentially, but only accidentally and according to a different manner of proceeding: since both have the same object, namely God, to be known under the notion of divinity through discourse, whether oratorical by positive, or philosophical by scholastic theology. Both acknowledge the same principles, the same assertions of faith, whether written or handed down. Both do not cling to setting forth the sacred Scriptures alone, but also gather and add the indubitable traditions of the Church; they unfold the ecclesiastical history; they scrutinize the decrees of the Councils; they search out the books and commentaries of the holy Fathers, in order to detect and lay open the Catholic truth hidden in them. Nevertheless they seem to differ from one another in this, that scholastic theology is more exact and accurate, and in treating and applying all these things preserves the philosophical method and the syllogistic order the more, so that it may detect the truths more evidently and persuade more efficaciously: for order is the midwife, just as, diametrically, confusion is the stepmother of all disciplines. Add that scholastic theology for the most part summons the help and light of natural philosophy, not only to dissolve with natural and philosophical reasoning the arguments hurled by heretics and unbelievers at the articles of faith, but also to persuade by natural reasons and philosophical considerations that the dogmas of faith are to be believed.

Note 3. This is the concord of the Church triumphant with the militant, that just as in the heavenly Church God willed the lower Angels to be taught and enlightened by the higher ones, so likewise in the earthly Church

Some indeed, says the Apostle ad Ephesios 4., he gave as Apostles, some as Prophets, others as Evangelists, others as Pastors and Doctors; and that for a twofold end: first indeed, he says, for the perfecting of the saints, in the work of the ministry, in the building up of the Body of Christ, until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, etc. Secondly, that, he says, we may no longer be little children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in craftiness for the circumvention of error.

As if he would say that God therefore established Doctors in the Church, both that they might manifest the divine truths, which they themselves behold more deeply, to the more unlearned company of the faithful; and that, with the torch and club of their doctrine, they might extinguish the heresies springing up and eliminate them from the Church. From which it is clear how much the faithful need Doctors: which indeed will be proved more evidently

Only conclusion. — Positive theology has always been useful to the Church of God and most necessary.

This is the assertion of all Catholics against the heretics, especially the Calvinists, who with their heresiarch contend that the sacred Scriptures lie open so evidently and manifestly, that no Doctor at all is needed to grasp and explain them.

Proof of the conclusion. For first, some doctrine must be admitted which lays open the genuine sense of the sacred Scripture, resolves its ambiguities, and detects the mysteries hidden under the simple coverings of words; by which it may build up faith, destroy heresy, and turn back and blunt against the heretics themselves the darts which they are wont to draw from the divine Scriptures and hurl at Catholics; but positive theology accomplishes all these things: therefore it must necessarily be admitted. The minor is plainly evident from the very definition and office of positive theology; for it is wholly occupied with the explanation of the Scriptures, that it may instruct the faithful, unlock the mysteries, and attack and overcome the false dogmas of the heretics with the same oracles of the Scriptures on which they wickedly relied; therefore Tertullianus, in the book De praescriptionibus, cap. 15, calls it the exercise of the Scriptures, inasmuch as it is wholly devoted to expounding and unlocking the divine Scriptures. — The major is therefore proved from sacred Scripture itself, for St. Paul says, 2. ad Timotheum 2: All scripture divinely inspired is useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing in justice; that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work. By these four he detects and points out the principal offices of positive theology, which it draws from Scripture: First, it teaches the faithful the Catholic truth: Secondly, it reproves the heretics: Thirdly, it corrects the wicked: Fourthly, it teaches and instructs the unbelievers. Moreover he himself affirms, ad Ephesios 4., that God by his ineffable providence toward the Church gave her various ministers, but especially some Pastors and Doctors, for the perfecting of the Saints, in the work of the ministry, in the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet into the unity of faith. He subjoins the reason: That we may no longer be little children, tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, for the circumvention of error. Whence he says, ad Titum 1.: The Bishop ought to hold fast the faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine, and to reprove those who contradict. Therefore he judges that there is some sacred doctrine, which the Pastors and Doctors of the Church ought to master, that they may teach the faithful, lest they be circumvented by the false dogmas of the heretics: for the heretics, says Tertullianus, in the book De praescriptione, cap. 14., parade the Scriptures, and by this their cunning immediately move some; in the very encounter, indeed, they weary the firm, capture the weak, and send away the intermediate with scruple. It is necessary, therefore, that there be some most expert men, who lay open the genuine sense of the Scripture, and unravel the snares which the heretics set for the faithful from the depraved sense of the Scripture.

Second proof. The sacred Scriptures have so profound and hidden a sense, and involve so many and such great difficulties, that the greatest erudition and the greatest study are needed to explain and interpret them, and accordingly it is necessary that some give all their effort to this explanation and interpretation; but this is done through positive theology: therefore it is to be admitted. The minor is evident: the major is proved: for first, nearly the same judgment seems to be passed on all the Scriptures, which St. Peter himself passed on the Epistles of St. Paul, in which, he says, Epist. 2. c. 3., there are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Almost all the holy Fathers confess the same thing: for Origenes, lib. 7. Contra Celsum, says: Other prudent men too, by searching the Scripture, have been able to find its understanding; although in truth it is obscure in many places. Ambrose, Epist. 14.: The divine Scripture is a sea, having in itself profound senses, the depth of the prophetic enigmas. Augustine, 12. Confess. c. 14.: Wondrous is the depth of your utterances, O Lord! whose surface, behold, lies before us, soothing the little ones! but wondrous is the depth. It is a horror to gaze into it: a horror of honor, and a trembling of love. The same, lib. 2. De doctrina Christiana, cap. 4., speaking of the reading of the Scriptures, says: But by many and manifold obscurities and ambiguities are deceived those who read rashly, understanding one thing for another: in certain places, however, they do not find what they might even falsely suspect; so obscurely are some things said, that they draw over them a very dense darkness. — He subjoins, however, the reason for this obscurity: That all of it (he says) I do not doubt was divinely provided, to tame pride by labor, and to recall the understanding from fastidiousness, to which things easily investigated generally become cheap.

St. Gregory agrees with him, Hom. 6. in Ezech.

Of great utility, he says, is the very obscurity of the utterances of God, because it exercises the mind, that it may be expanded by effort, and being exercised may grasp what the idle cannot grasp. It has also another greater good, because if the understanding of the sacred Scripture were open to all, it would become cheap, which in certain more obscure places refreshes what is found with so much the greater sweetness, by how much the more manifestly it is found.

And let Calvinus be gone, who, though contrary to himself, says in lib. 1. Institutionum, c. 7.: Scripture of its own accord presents no obscurer sense of its truth, than white and black things present of their color, and sweet and bitter things of their taste.

Third proof. Heretics twist the sacred Scriptures into a perverse sense in order to patronize their erroneous dogmas: therefore it is necessary that there be some Catholic Doctors who lay open the genuine sense of the same Scripture, by which the truth of faith may be the more easily defended. The consequence is evident. The holy Fathers prove the antecedent, in the first place Tertullianus, in the book De praescriptione haereticorum, cap. 39.: Nor am I in peril saying that the Scriptures themselves were so disposed by the will of God as to furnish material to the heretics; since I read that there must be heresies, which cannot exist without the Scriptures. Origenes, in lib. 3. De principiis, c. 21.: Of all these, he says, the cause of the false understanding, for those of whom we spoke above, was none other than that the holy Scripture is understood by them not according to the spiritual sense, but according to the sound of the letter. Hilarius, in libro 2. De Trinitate: heresy arises from the understanding, not from the scripture; and the sense, not the speech, becomes the crime. St. Augustine agrees, in tractatu 18. super Evangelium Ioannis: For neither, he says, were heresies and certain dogmas of perversity born, ensnaring souls and casting them headlong into the deep, except while the good Scriptures are not well understood; and what in them is not well understood is also rashly and boldly asserted. Vigilius Afer, in lib. 2. Contra Eutychem: This is the origin of all impieties, when the force of the heavenly sayings, violated by the vice of evil understanding, is not weighed according to the quality of its sense, but is diverted to other things at the whim of the reader, otherwise than the reason of the matter demands. Isidore Hispalensis, in lib. 8. Originum, c. 5.: Whoever understands the sacred Scripture otherwise than the sense of the Holy Spirit demands, by whom it was written, although he has not departed from the Church, can nevertheless be called a Heretic. Epiphanius Diaconus, in the 6th action of the 1st Synod: When some attempt to pervert right dogmas according to what seems to themselves, let no one wonder if they use the words of the Scripture. For all Heresiarchs too gather from the divinely inspired Scripture the occasions of their error, adulterating with malicious senses the things that were rightly said through the Holy Spirit.

Thirdly and finally, the truth of our Conclusion is strengthened from the universal practice of the Church; since we read that from its very beginning schools were instituted in which positive theology was publicly taught. Eusebius makes mention of such a school, lib. 5. Historiae Ecclesiasticae, cap. 10., where, speaking of the Alexandrian School, he says:

At the same time there presided over the School of the faithful a man most celebrated for the sake of doctrine, by name Pantaenus, since already from ancient times a School of sacred letters had been instituted in that city, which indeed continues even to our age and is said to be held by men most thoroughly equipped both in eloquence and in the study of divine letters: therefore the heretics wrongly attack and assail the Christian Academies, as a new invention begged from heathenism and pernicious to the faith.

The heretics object: If any reason and utility should persuade that positive theology is to be admitted, it is chiefly that it may interpret the sacred Scripture and resolve its various obscurities and ambiguities: but for this it is altogether useless: therefore it is to be rejected. The major is evident from what has been said. The minor they prove by various texts of the sacred Scripture itself, from which they strive to infer that it is so open, that to perceive its genuine sense no interpreter and no Doctor is needed. Thus Psalmo 18.: The precept of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. Prov. 6.: The commandment is a lamp, and the law a light. 2. Petri 1.: We have the more firm prophetical word, to which you do well to attend, as to a lamp shining in a dark place: therefore so far is it from the case that the sacred Scripture is overspread with any obscurity; rather it is itself the light, which exhibits all the truths that it embraces in its bosom as irradiated with a certain divine splendor.

I deny the minor. And I distinguish its proof: that the sacred Scripture shines in the manner of a light in all its books and contexts, I deny; in some, namely the historical ones, I concede; for I confess that the sacred Scripture sometimes bears so open a sense, that it becomes manifest to any reader at first glance. But the Heretics must also confess that for the most part it is suffused with so great a darkness, that its genuine sense can be detected only either with God revealing, or with most learned men interpreting: as is evident both from the above-mentioned opinion of the holy Fathers, and from David himself, who although he knew to the highest degree the meaning and force of the words of the Hebrew language, in which the sacred Scripture was then written, nevertheless prayed suppliantly to God: Give me understanding, and I will search your law; Open my eyes, and I will consider the wonderful things of your law... Enlighten your servant, and teach me your justifications, Psal. 118. Whence St. Jerome rightly infers, Epist. ad Paulinum: If so great a Prophet confesses the darkness of ignorance, with what night of ignorance do you think us little ones, and almost sucklings, to be surrounded? This veil, however, is placed not only on the face of Moyses, but also in the Gospels, and the Apostles... Unless all things that are written are opened by him who has the key. David, who opens and no one closes, closes and no one opens, will be unfolded by no other opener.

The heretics insist: The sacred Scriptures are not difficult to understand except to proud men, and men blinded by malice, according to that saying of Paulus, 2. Corinth. 4.: If our Gospel is hidden, in those who perish it is hidden; in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the Gospel of the glory of God should not shine unto them. Therefore for the faithful of Christ the sacred Scripture is not hidden, but open. — They confirm it from St. John Chrysostom, Homilia 3. de Lazaro, where, after he had shown that the Philosophers spoke obscurely, and did not uncover the truth, but covered it with many wrappings of words, he adds: But the Apostles and Prophets on the contrary made all things manifest, and brought them forth clear, as the common Doctors of the world; that each one by himself might be able to learn the things that are learned from reading alone: therefore to perceive them the faithful does not need an interpreter and a Doctor.

I answer the first. The Apostle in those words is not dealing with the easy or difficult understanding of the Scripture, but with the Evangelical faith, which many, when the Apostles preached, rejected out of malice and blindness of mind, because they judged the Evangelical truths to be repugnant to the pleasure of the senses and to natural reason. St. John Chrysostom, however, does not speak of the whole Scripture, but only of the historical books, which he declares easy to understand from the mere reading itself. For he adds: Take the book in your hands, read the whole history, and keep in memory the things that are known; and the things that are obscure and little manifest, run through frequently: but if by the assiduity of reading you cannot find what is said, go to the wiser man, go to the Doctor: therefore he judges that there are some obscure contexts, about which Doctors are to be heard and consulted.

The heretics object secondly, that although the sacred Scripture may be overspread with some darknesses, these are nevertheless to be resolved not by man teaching from without, but by God teaching from within; for the faithful ought to have God alone as Doctor, according to that prophecy of Isaias 51.: I will make all your sons taught of the Lord. And of Ieremias 31.: I will give my law in their hearts, and in their heart I will write it: a man shall no longer teach his neighbor, saying: Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least of them even to the greatest. Therefore we need no doctor, nor accordingly is positive theology needed.

I deny the consequence. For neither is that the sense of the aforesaid contexts; for Isaias and Ieremias are to be understood of the Evangelical Doctrine, which excelled over the Mosaic law in this above all, that it was handed down and expressed not through Prophets, but through the very Son of God himself, according to that saying of St. Paul, Hebr. 1.: God, speaking of old to the Fathers in the Prophets, in many ways and in many manners; in these last days has spoken to us in the Son: whence it comes about that all Christians are called Theodidacti, that is, taught of God, either immediately, like the Apostles and Disciples; or at least mediately, like the rest of the faithful.

— Or I say that the aforesaid Prophets compare the state of the new law with the old, so that the sense is that all the mysteries and secrets of faith will be much clearer in the Evangelical law than in the Mosaic, which was full of shadows and figures.

— Or finally I say that the aforesaid texts were predictive of that wonderful descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, and upon all the other faithful sons of the nascent Church, to whom with baptism the Holy Spirit was conferred, and the gift of knowledge, of prophecy, and kinds of tongues were divinely infused, so that any unlearned and rude persons became in a moment most wise.

The heretics press: From the first of Ioannes, 2. cap., You have no need, says Ioannes writing to the faithful, that anyone teach you: but the unction teaches you of all things: therefore the faithful need no Doctor either, nor consequently any theology.

I deny the consequence. For St. John does not intend that the faithful have no need of a man as Doctor; for to what end would he himself have written the Epistles for the instruction of the faithful? To what end would God have ordained in his Church pastors and Doctors for the perfecting of the Saints, as we said above? He wishes, therefore, only to curb the vain curiosity of certain faithful, who, taught by the Apostles, also listened to the Pseudo-Apostles, who, sowing tares, darkened the Catholic truths with their perverse dogmas. — Or I say that he is to be understood of Affective and Mystical theology, which not reading teaches, but unction; not the letter, but the spirit: not mortal man, but immortal God, who for the most part chooses the weak things of the world, that he may confound the strong. For it happens not rarely that any rude and unlearned persons, who scarcely know their letters, with God teaching within and divinely enlightening, perceive the most hidden mysteries of faith, and open and explain the recondite senses of the Scriptures more plainly than any most learned man could do. Concerning whom St. Augustine seems to speak, lib. 83. Quaestionum, q. 48., saying:

There are three kinds of things to be believed: some are those which are always believed and never understood, as is all history, running through temporal and human deeds: others which, as soon as they are believed, are understood, as are all human reasonings, whether about numbers, or about any disciplines whatsoever. The third, which are first believed and afterwards understood, such as are those things about divine matters which cannot be understood except by those who are clean of heart, which comes about by keeping the precepts, which are received by living well.

Note 1. Scholastic Theology is so called for a threefold reason. First, because this theology is chiefly taught and learned in the Schools; whereas Positive theology is acquired by one's own study and by the private and assiduous reading of the sacred Scriptures and by the exercise of the holy Fathers. Second, because in the Academic and philosophical manner, from the principles of the divine faith known immediately or mediately, it elicits its conclusions through legitimate discourse, so that it may explain the mysteries of the faith more clearly, defend them courageously against those who attack them, and, by resolving all the contradictions and entanglements which could be raised against them, persuade that they are the more easily to be believed. Third and finally, it is so called by a certain analogy with Philosophy; for just as Philosophy is engaged in investigating natural things, so Scholastic Theology is chiefly detained and occupied with the divine natural law, that is, with truths altogether immutable; of which sort are not only the essence of God, His perfections, the Trinity of persons; but also the worship due to Him according to Himself: nay, and His divine precepts, and all the means which conduce to the attainment of God; not indeed as they are actually existing; for in that way these are altogether free, and are considered rather by Positive than by Scholastic Theology: but as they are possible, and inasmuch as they involve no contradiction, namely that the Theologian may show that there is no repugnance in the works of God; and that grace does not obstruct nature, nay rather perfects it; and that all the mysteries of the faith are not contrary, although they are not according to natural reason.

Note 2. It is most certain that Positive or Scholastic Theology, individual faithful being considered singly, is not absolutely necessary for the attainment of salvation. The reason is clear; for many rustics, wholly rude and ignorant of theological matters, as dwelling in the fields almost always and among cattle, nevertheless believe the Articles of the faith most firmly, and, fortified with the holy sacraments of the Church, depart happily from this life and attain eternal salvation. Nay, Scholastic Theology does not even seem absolutely necessary to the whole assembly of the faithful, or to the entire Church; since before the times of the Master of the Sentences, who around the year 1140 reduced Theology to academic form and method, the Church long flourished in piety and doctrine, and was furnished with sufficient means both for instructing its own people in matters of faith, and for repelling the force of heretics and eliminating error.

Note 3. Scholastic Theology is necessary for individual faithful, at least mediately, but for the whole Church immediately, by a moral necessity, or one of the greatest advantage and of the highest utility; for individual faithful have need of Doctors, who may render the Articles of the faith, obscure and difficult in themselves, credible by various reasons proposed; and may dilute and dissolve all the doubts which can arise either from each one's own talent, or be suggested by the art of the devil, or finally be proposed from the perversity of heretics: for rude faithful, exposed to so many perils, if they are deprived of the protection of Theologians of this kind, will with difficulty stand firm in the faith. The Church likewise, assailed by the darts of so many heretics, would be weakened, if those subtle princes of Theology were not present, who could unravel the tricks and fallacies of heretics, and dissipate the darkness of error cast over men's minds. Which indeed will be demonstrated more fully and more effectively

Only conclusion. — Scholastic Theology is supremely useful to the Church of God, and necessary. This is the judgment of all the wise against the heretics, and certain pseudo-Catholics.

It is proved first indeed from the universal consent of the whole Christian commonwealth, which venerated and embraced this methodical Theology as soon as it came forth into the world, and raised up most ample schools for teaching and learning it; enriched it with ample stipends for the Professors, and adorned it with honorable privileges.

Second. From the oracles of the Councils; for the Council of Constance approved Scholastic Theology more than enough, when in Session 8 it disapproved and condemned all the errors of Wicleff; especially that one by which he proclaimed that universities, studies, colleges, and masterships had been introduced by vain vanity. Likewise Clemens V, in the Council of Vienne, where he had established that baptism is necessary for salvation both for adults and for little children, adds: But, because as regards the effect of baptism certain theological Doctors are found to have held contrary opinions; some of them saying that by the power of baptism guilt is indeed remitted to little children, but grace is not conferred: others on the contrary asserting that both guilt is remitted to them in baptism, and the virtues and informing grace are infused as to habit, although not for that time as to use; We, however, attending to the general efficacy of the death of Christ, because through baptism it is applied equally to all the baptized, have judged that the second opinion, which says that informing grace and the virtues are conferred in baptism on little children as well as on adults, is to be chosen as the more probable, and the more consonant and agreeable to the sayings of the Saints and of the modern Doctors of Theology, the sacred Council approving.

— From which it is plainly clear how much authority not only so great a Pontiff, but also the universal Church, attributes to the Scholastic Theologians; since in a matter of such moment he wills and decrees that one must adhere to the opinion approved by several of them; what if all had conspired among themselves with one constant accord? It is of no avail to relate how much aid and dignity the Scholastic Doctors have contributed in the other subsequent Ecumenical Councils, by sifting each most difficult question and weighing them on both sides, so that the truth might appear the more easily, and the false dogmas of the heretics might utterly fall and vanish; for this only he can be ignorant of who has not read the acts of those Councils. Hence the Council of Trent sanctioned by several decrees that colleges should be instituted in all places, and that Academies should be endowed with all graces and privileges.

Third. The same thing is evident from the decrees and judgment of the Supreme Pontiffs: since Innocentius IV commanded our Alexander Alensis (who, on account of his supreme learning, was called while he lived the Fountain of life) and by Apostolic authority enjoined that he should write a Summa of Theology; which finally Alexander IV also approved by an Apostolic Diploma. And that I may pass over the other decrees of the Pontiffs, I relate one or another: First indeed that of Honorius III: for he, in the chapter Super specula, concerning masters, decreed:

Some are destined to the study of the profession of Theology, who, when they have been brought into the Church of God, may shine like the splendor of the firmament: and from whom afterwards a supply of Doctors may be had, who, as stars about to remain unto perpetual eternities, may be zealous to teach many unto justice.

Gregory IX commends this very thing excellently in an Epistle directed to the Masters and Students of the Parisian Academy for the restoration of studies, and dated at the Lateran in the 5th year of his Pontificate, in the month of April, where among the other praises of this Academy he has these words:

Paris, the parent of the sciences, like another Cariath-Sepher, a city of letters, shines clear: great indeed, but of itself it makes greater things to be desired, gracious to those who teach and to those who learn. In the cross indeed, as in a special workshop of wisdom, it has the beginnings of its veins of silver, and for gold there is a place in which it is duly smelted: from which the prudent, forging golden chains of mystic eloquence fretted with silver, and fashioning necklaces adorned with precious stones, nay, to be compared with no price, adorn the Spouse of Christ.

Fourth. The utility and necessity of Scholastic Theology appears from its offices and duties; for its principal offices are four; namely, the declarative, the probative, the defensive, and the discursive; which it is allowed to gather from St. Augustine, lib. 11. De Trinitate, cap. 1., where, speaking of Theology, which he calls science and wisdom, he says: To this science is attributed that by which the most saving faith, which leads to true beatitude, is begotten, nourished, defended, strengthened. From which the generation and nourishment of faith conduce to the utility of the faithful; but its defense and strength conduce to the conquest of the unbelievers. For St. Augustine adds:

With this science very many of the faithful do not abound, although they abound very much in the faith itself; for it is one thing to know only what a man ought to believe for the sake of obtaining the blessed life, which is none other than eternal, but another to know in what manner this very thing both helps the pious and is defended against the impious.

But that Scholastic Theology contributes most to the generation, nourishment, defense, and strength of faith through its four offices is easily shown. For by declaration faith is begotten; for by the explanation of Sacred Scripture and the proposal of the revealed object, faith is begotten dispositively; since faith is from hearing, and hearing through the word of God. Rom. 10. By proof faith is strengthened; for the reasons, similitudes, motives and examples by which the Scholastic Theologians elucidate the articles of the faith and show them credible, strengthen and cherish the weak and wavering faith of the feeble. By defense faith is fortified as with a firm shield, in which, as St. Paul speaks, Ephes. 6., it can extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one; for while the Scholastic Theologians detect the fallacious reasonings of the heretics and the tricks and sophisms of those who philosophize badly with the torch of reasoning, and dissolve them into smoke, faith triumphs safe and victorious. By discourse faith is nourished; for when through theological discourse it appears that the articles of the faith are not contrary, although they are beyond and above natural reason; nay, for the most part they are shown conformable to the principles of nature, it is certain that the intellect is inclined more and more to give them a firmer and more tenacious assent, whence it happens that faith is, as it were, nourished and grows.

Fifth and finally, just as there is no one who does not receive the Theology of the holy Fathers with the highest praises, and does not judge it most useful and most necessary to the Church of God; so there is no one who ought to judge Scholastic Theology useless and to be rejected: for it has the same object as the Theology of the holy Fathers, rests on the same principle, and aims at the same end, namely the explanation of the faith and of the mysteries, the extirpation of heresies, the instruction of the faithful, etc. Nor does this differ from that in anything, except that with a better method and order it reduces into one body those things which the holy Fathers treated in various places, as the occasion offered, and aptly disposes each thing in its own place. Whence, just as no one in his right mind would judge Aristotle worthy of blame, because he ordered Philosophy, previously disturbed, undigested, and dissipated, delivered it with supreme art, distributed it into parts, to which he recalled all things in order, and enlarged it in many places; so far is it from being the case that the Scholastic Theologians are worthy of reproaches, that rather they merit the highest praise among all, because they have performed the same service for Theology, and have ordered it in the place and by the method in which it now is, and have enlarged it with many questions explanatory of the divine mysteries. For Scholastic Theology so investigates, weighs, and sifts all the dogmas of the faith, that it leaves almost nothing untouched and undiscussed: for the various difficulties and questions omitted by the ancient Fathers, or at least briefly touched upon, it has excogitated more subtly, proposed more clearly, explained more abundantly, and has weighed them, tested by the norm of faith or by the exact rule of reason. Whence not undeservedly the Scholastic Theologians can be called the Doctors and Fathers of the Church of their time; for they surely play the part of those ancient Doctors of the nascent Church, who illustrated the dogmas of God by their doctrine, and defended them most fiercely from the attacks of the heretics. — Add. That against Theology of this kind, which is most pleasing to all the pious and learned, only grammatical idiots, and heretics and men of heretical parties, speak ill; of whom the first are no more to be heard than the blind judging of colors; the latter, indeed, are to be made as much of as the frenzied who struggle against the physician and medicine, to whom these words of Augustine fitly apply, lib. 3. De peccatorum meritis et remissione, cap. 6: Because they were not such men as that I should be solicitous about their authority, I easily held this among things past and abolished. — Our Sixtus V confirms all these things no less luculently than wisely. For he, the supreme Pontiff of the Church of God, in the decretal letters by which he numbers the holy Bonaventure among the distinguished Doctors and Fathers of the Church, where he had said that Scholastic Theology was invented by the divine gift through most wise men, adds:

The knowledge, indeed, of this so salutary science, which flows from the most abundant fountains of the divine letters, of the Supreme Pontiffs, and of the Councils, could certainly always bring the greatest aid to the Church, whether for reading the Fathers more safely and more usefully, or for detecting and refuting the various errors and heresies, etc.

The heretics object: Scholastic Theology is far from the gravity and skill of speaking of the ancient Theologians: for the Doctors and the first Fathers of the Church treated the divine mysteries more weightily; for they judged nothing without the authority of Scripture, or the opinion of the prior Fathers and the definition of Councils; but those syllogistic formulas, the mousetraps of the weak, they either did not know, or as useless they shunned and rejected: but the Theologians of this time, having omitted all things which most become the faithful, examine all things on the balance and scale of reason: therefore this theology is to be cast away as useless. — I deny the antecedent. For as was said above, Scholastic Theology differs from the doctrine of the holy Fathers in this alone, that those things which they disputed more diffusely, and in an oratorical style more accommodated to the understanding of the common people, in whole books and volumes, this concludes in a brief and dialectical manner of speaking, sometimes by one or another reasoning. Wherefore if there is anything in which the more recent Theology disagrees with the old, for that very reason it ought to seem worthy of more utility and advantage to its students, and therefore of greater commendation and celebrity.

The heretics press: All novelty is to be avoided, and to be cast far away from the Church: therefore this scholastic doctrine, as being a new invention of later centuries, is to be banished far away. — I distinguish the antecedent. The novelty of dogmas is to be feared and is not to be heard, until it has been examined and reprobated by the Church, I concede: the novelty of the method of handing on doctrine, especially if it be clearer and easier, is to be rejected, I deny: nay, Christ himself, praising the Theologian, Matth. 13., makes him like a man who is the father of a family, who brings forth from his treasury new and old things. Not that he ought to teach new dogmas opposed to the old: but that he should teach and explain the old by a new method, as Vincentius Lirinensis warns, cap. 27.

Let it be understood, he says, more clearly through you who explain it than it was formerly believed more obscurely: through you may posterity congratulate itself for understanding what antiquity venerated without understanding: teach the same things which you have learned in such a way that, when you say them in a new way, you do not say new things.

Scholastic theology carries this out above all to the letter, for it does not hand down new dogmas, but the things which were said by the ancients, whether more diffusely and copiously or more lightly, it touches upon more acutely, and searches out and explains more profoundly.

They object 2. Scholastic theology is wholly occupied in discussing certain vain philosophical questions, which contribute absolutely nothing to salvation and to the illustration of the dogmas of faith: therefore it is to be dismissed as useless. — I answer 1. The antecedent is altogether false, for experience itself shows that Scholastic Theologians treat the things of faith accurately and exactly from the very principles of faith, namely Sacred Scripture, the doctrine of the holy Fathers, the sanctions of the Councils, and the other sanctuaries of Catholic truth, from which they elicit conclusions through legitimate discourse; which greatly contributes to the elucidation of the mysteries, the confutation of heresies, and the instruction of the faithful; for as Melchior Cano aptly says, loc. 8. cap. 1.: If you remove reason from Theology, you will lose both the thing and the name; because science is sought only through the syllogism... for what difference is there, when reason is removed, not only between a rustic and a Theologian, but between a Theologian and a beast, or a stone, or a block? — Secondly, if Scholastic Theology were to be rejected for this reason, that on the occasion and for the sake of treating divine things it discusses some philosophical questions which do not per se contribute to salvation, by a similar argument sacred Scripture would have to be cast aside, as reporting many things that do not lead to salvation: for instance when it deals with the histories of the Patriarchs, the Judges, the Kings, with the animals brought into Noah's ark and led out of it, with the dog of Tobias wagging its tail, and countless other things, the knowledge of which per se contributes nothing to salvation. — I say therefore that all useless contentions and quarrels among Theologians are to be ascribed not to Theology, but to the Theologian who wills to know more than he ought. What then? Are not heretics daily abusing sacred Scripture to the ruin of faith; should it therefore be dismissed? Or is the crop to be burned and rooted out because sometimes among the ears of wheat oats and tares grow up? By no means, but the useless weeds are to be plucked out, the crop is to be left untouched. All those vain questions, I admit, are to be cut off: but those which serve to explain and illustrate theological matters are to be kept and discussed.

They object 3. That perpetual dissensions blaze among Theologians, and that their writings are wholly filled with quarrels and contentions; nor is there any limit to their wrangling among themselves: nothing therefore certain, nothing stable can be found among them. — I answer. Theologians do not disagree among themselves in those things which pertain to faith, but are supremely in concord among themselves; that they differ in other matters is no inconvenience: nay, various matters are greatly illustrated thereby, and truth shines forth more and more each day: for while each one defends his own part, and strives to confirm his own opinion with reasons gathered from every side and to cultivate it with every kind of learning, infinite treasures of the sciences are little by little heaped up for the honor and ornament of the Church, and all disciplines are rendered complete in all their parts. — I answer 2. Heretics unjustly blame the dissension of Theologians: for he who casts a crime upon another must needs be innocent, lest he constitute himself guilty of the fault which he reproves in another. Who, however, does not know with how many quarrels and how hostile contentions heretics fight among themselves? For scarcely was the Lutheran sect born, than it was immediately cut into three other classes, and divided into Anabaptists, Confessionists, and Sacramentarians, as into three heads, and in its very infancy made three-headed: but soon, when it had grown up (for heresy is a fruitful parent of monsters), it thrust out now one and now another head from itself, and in a brief space of time grew into thirty-four sects: now indeed almost a hundred most diverse Religions are numbered as sprung from one Luther. Nor do they disagree among themselves only in lighter matters, but also in the principal Articles of faith, and brand upon one another the name and mark of heretic. Thus Luther, in his book Against the Sacramentarians, calls them and the Zwinglians heretics: and elsewhere says: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the Sacramentarians, nor stood in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sat in the chair of the Zurichites: and not content with these, he even calls them devil-ridden, super-devil-ridden, and trans-devil-ridden. But they, to repay him in kind, say that Luther's mouth is full of devils, etc. — And what is the crown of inconstancy, one and the same sect so disagrees in the articles of faith that, leaving the earlier ones behind, it forges new and different dogmas day by day and proposes them to all to be believed. Hence George, the Saxon Duke, asked by the Catholics what the Lutherans there believed, said: I know what they now believe; what they will believe next year I am wholly ignorant: thus indeed are they carried from faith to faith, from religion to religion. Wherefore, most aptly to the present matter, St. Hilary, in the book to Constantius and Constans the Emperors:

It is dangerous, he was saying, and even astonishing to us, that there now exist as many faiths as wills: as many doctrines for us as there are customs, while faith is either written as we wish, or understood as we practice it, so that very many faiths burst forth in such a way that none may exist; nay, even yearly and monthly faiths about God are decreed, etc.

They object 4. Scholastic theology empties and extinguishes the merit of faith; therefore so far is it from benefiting faith in any way, that it greatly harms it. They prove the antecedent from St. Gregory, hom. 26. in Evang.: Faith has no merit where human reason supplies the proof: but through theological discourse natural reason supplies the proof to faith; for through it the intellect is moved to give its assent to the proposed object: therefore this empties the merit of faith. — I distinguish the antecedent. If the revealed proposition is believed only on account of the evidence of reason, it empties the merit of faith, I concede. If it is believed chiefly on account of the authority of God revealing, I deny. But theological discourse does not evidently demonstrate the revealed proposition; for it implies a contradiction that something should be revealed and be per se evident insofar as it is revealed; but it only demonstrates that that proposition is contained either in Scripture, or in the Councils, or in the universal tradition and practice of the Church. Hence it does not induce the intellect to assent to it on account of the evidence of reason: but only on account of the certain and infallible authority of the Revealer.

They insist. Scholastic theology relies most of all on philosophical and dialectical subtleties: but these greatly harm Faith and Christian truth: therefore, etc. They prove the Minor from the Apostles and the holy Fathers, who confess that Philosophy is the enemy and adversary of faith; for saint Paul admonished the Colossians, 2. cap.: See that no one deceive you through Philosophy and empty deceit: and Tertullian, lib. De Anima, cap. 3., calls Philosophers animals of glory and Patriarchs of Heretics, and in cap. 18 says that philosophical argumentations are torments for torturing simplicity and hanging truth, and in the same place calls Plato the condiment-maker of Heretics. Hence, in the book De praescriptionibus he says: God chose the foolish things of the world for the confusion of Philosophy itself; for it is the material of secular wisdom and the rash interpreter of the divine nature and disposition: in fine, heresies are furnished by Philosophy. What then has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What the Academy with the Church? What heretics with Christians? We have no need of curiosity after Christ, nor of inquiry after the Gospel; when we believe, we desire to believe nothing beyond.

Hence St. Gregory Nazianzen, in oration 26., grieves that Sophistic cavils and the depraved artifice of the Aristotelian art have crept into the Church, and other things of this kind, like certain Egyptian plagues. Likewise Gregory of Nyssa, lib. 2. against Eunomius, reproaches that sophistic cunning: We frankly and without shame confess, he says, that we have prepared neither any speech elaborated by rhetorical artifice nor a contest; nor do we put forward the subtlety of Dialectical acuteness as an aid against adversaries, which also brings truth into suspicion of falsehood among the unskilled. Ambrose also, lib. 1. De Fide, cap. 3., speaking of the Arians says:

They place all the force of their poisons in dialectical disputation, which by the opinion of the Philosophers is defined as having the power not of building up, but of the zeal of destroying: but it has not pleased God to save his people through Dialectic; for the kingdom of God is in the simplicity of faith, not in the contention of speech.

And in Psal. 118.: We have nothing to do with Philosophy, lest it draw our faith from the truth through the elements of this world: lest anyone plunder our assertion through Philosophy. For thus we have learned that the Arians fell into perfidy, while they think that the generation of Christ is to be gathered from the usage of this age. They abandoned the Apostle, they follow Aristotle; they abandoned the wisdom which is with God; they chose the little snares of disputation and the bird-catching of words according to the discipline of Dialectic: therefore Scholastic theology is proscribed by the holy Fathers, and so is to be exploded by us. — I distinguish the major. That it relies on philosophical subtleties to detect the sophisms of heretics and to eliminate their tricks, I concede: that it relies on them to circumvent the simplicity of faith and to obscure the Catholic truths, I deny. To the minor I say that Philosophy is adverse to faith not per se, but through the perverse malice of those who philosophize, who, as saint Jude speaks, vers. 1: For the things which they know not, they blaspheme; but the things which they know naturally, as dumb animals, in these they are corrupted. — And that this and no other is the opinion of the holy Fathers is clear from this, that they themselves adorn Dialectic with many praises, and confess that it is necessary for the defense of Faith: for St. Clement of Alexandria, lib. 2. Stromata says: Dialectic leads by the hand to the true and eternal wisdom, and to the knowledge of the supreme truth. St. Jerome, on cap. 25. of Ezekiel: Truly, he says, whatever of perverse dogmas is shown to be strong in earthly wisdom is overthrown by this Dialectical art, and, like a fire, is dissolved into ashes and cinders. St. Augustine inculcates the same in many places, but especially in the books against Cresconius, who mockingly called Augustine a Dialectician: But even the Apostle, namely Paul, was a dialectician, Augustine answered in lib. 2., and freely did not fear to dispute with the Stoics, because not only acutely, like them, but also truthfully, which they were not. He subjoins: Beware lest you cast Dialectic as a crime against anyone, Dialectic which you confess the Apostles used. Nay, he even shows that Christ the Lord used Dialectic: But if you call Christ a Dialectician, you will praise the Dialectic which you cast at me as a crime: therefore the treatment and method of those philosophical matters, which can be of use for better explaining or more accurately defending the things of faith, ought not to be judged useless or importunate. — Add. That heretics themselves are the cause why Scholastic Theologians discuss certain philosophical questions; for they are wont to argue from Philosophy against Catholics, v. g. that the same body cannot be at the same time in different places, so that they attack the real presence of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. So of old the Arians used philosophical arguments, or rather sophisms, against the mystery of the Trinity, in order to deceive Catholics; and they had (says St. Epiphanius) three hundred arguments from natural reason, with which they attacked the divinity of the Son. Hence it was necessary for Catholics to fight back with the same weapons of Dialectic with which they were assailed, and, the heretics compelling, to take up Philosophy in defense of faith, that with its help they might investigate the Evangelical truths more diligently and explain them more evidently. For as St. Augustine says, lib. 16. De Civit. Dei, cap. 2.: Many things pertaining to the Catholic faith, while they are pondered amid the cunning attack of heretics so that they can be defended against them, are both considered more diligently, and understood more clearly, and preached more insistently: and a question moved by the adversary becomes an occasion for learning. And as Gregory the Great says, lib. 14. Moral., cap. 12., When the heavier contests of enemies have come forth, then indeed are more sublime darts of the senses required; then the razor of arguments, then a more perplexed search of words. Justly therefore have Theologians taken up Dialectic to refute the fallacious subtleties of heretics and of Gentile Philosophers, which St. Basil, on the second Chapter of Isaiah, did not hesitate to call a wall to the sacred dogmas, because it does not allow them to be easily plundered and to lie open to the incursion of anyone. And Clement of Alexandria, lib. 6. Stromat., says that the same is the hedge of Christ's vineyard, lest the Catholic truth be trampled by Sophists.

They object 5. The accusers of Scholastic theology charge it with its uncultivated style, and with the harsher and barbarous words with which it expresses its meanings, which certainly disgrace wise men and depress and obscure the august mysteries of faith. — But if for this reason Scholastic theology does not please them, then the simplicity of the sacred Letters and the uncultivated manner of speaking ought also to displease them. Do they perchance not know that under a rough cloak a learned Philosopher often lies hidden, and that the roughest and most uncultivated mountains sometimes conceal the richest veins of gold? Truth has no need of verbal allurements to shine: it is better to express it in easy and common speech than to obscure it with affected elegance; that succinct brevity which Theologians use cannot bear a wider compass and ornament of speech, lest, already burdened by the abundance and multitude of things, they be crushed also by the useless burden of words. But that it employs certain words proper to itself and otherwise unheard of and unusual ought not to seem wonderful; since every discipline has its own terms unknown to others, and devised at the pleasure of those who teach. What will not be allowed to Theology, the queen of the sciences, which its handmaids freely usurp?

You will ask. Why in these later centuries alone have the sacred Doctors of Theology used the Scholastic method, when from the very beginnings of the Church itself the Positive theology was chiefly frequented?

I answer 1. This was done for very many and most weighty reasons. First indeed, because positive Theology savors more of the Platonic manner of teaching, inasmuch as, after the fashion of Plato, it makes great use of allegories and oratorical and rhetorical syllogisms; Scholastic theology, however, imitates the Aristotelian method of teaching through analysis and tighter syllogisms: God, however, willed

that the Platonic Philosophy should serve the children of the nascent Church for just reasons. Then because this manner of philosophizing and reasoning was more frequent among the Jews and the Gentiles, whose errors were to be attacked and conquered with the same weapons with which they were defended. Then because the Platonic Philosophy was less stubborn and more docile than the dogmatic; and the same was more apt for insinuating the truths of faith and persuading the divine mysteries. Then, finally, because, since it flourished and was illustrated very much with parables and allegories, it tempered the rays of divine truth with these coverings, and proposed them, as it were milk, to the still weaker capacity of the faithful. For the children of the Eastern Church were still like weak little ones, of whom St. Paul speaks to the Hebrews 5.: You have become such as have need of milk, not of solid food; for every one that partakes of milk is without experience of the word of justice, for he is a little one: but solid food is for the perfect, for those who by habit have their senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil. — It was fitting, therefore, that the children of the Church, still little ones, should first receive the Evangelical truths tempered by allegories and parables and be nourished, as it were, with milk, before, having grown greater and been exercised for many centuries in this heavenly doctrine, they would have the discerning of good and evil, and would separate the depraved dogmas of heretics from Catholic truths through analysis.

Secondly: It was unbecoming that, once the Gospel was published, the Christian truths should be reduced into theological summaries and various questions formed about them, which would both have disturbed the wavering faith of the faithful, and revealed the hidden mysteries to the infidels. It was necessary, therefore, that Allegory should precede Analysis, and that, with a new revelation of truths always coming to hand, the body of Catholic doctrine should, in the course of time, be, as it were, joined together, before it should be cut apart and distributed, as it were anatomically, through the resolutions and disputations of Scholastic Theology and through the dissections of Analysis.

But when the body of Evangelical doctrine stood solidly constituted in all its parts; then, for the easier understanding of the truths, it was fitting to reduce them into a certain and methodical order, and to take up the more contracted and briefer, but more urgent, Aristotelian manner of philosophizing; then so that the Evangelical truths should shine forth more brightly; then so that the tricks and sophisms of heretics should be more easily solved and cut asunder. — Add. That since Plato is wholly occupied in contemplating divine things, and learned very many truths of faith and not a few mysteries from the Hebrews in Egypt, and set them down in his writings; his Philosophy seemed by far more apt for persuading those truths to the Philosophers and Pagan Doctors than the Aristotelian, which is wholly detained about natural things, and scarcely searches out and investigates divine things. But when these divine truths were sufficiently and more than sufficiently published, and disseminated in the writings of the holy Fathers and set forth and approved in oratorical speech and rhetorical syllogisms; then it was necessary that Theologians should take up the Aristotelian analysis, and gather them into one body, and, after the manner of Anatomists, cut them apart with various questions and resolutions, as with so many dissections, so that each one might be more aptly ordered and appear more evidently.

There is no reason, therefore, why heretics should so much inveigh against this change of Theological Method, and long for the Positive and Oratorical Theology used by the holy Fathers to be frequented again, which, they say, they would not criticize, nay, would receive with the highest praises. But to them I can justly return what the adorable Savior returned to the Scribes and Pharisees, Matth. 23.:

Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, who build the sepulchres of the Prophets, and adorn the monuments of the just, and say: if we had been in the days of our Fathers, we would not have been their companions in the blood of the Prophets; so you are witnesses to yourselves, that you are the children of those who killed the Prophets. For what else are the heretics of this time than the children of those heretics who persecuted the holy Fathers and criticized their doctrine? Nor do they accomplish anything else while they assail the more modern Theologians with words and writings, than what the ancient heretics plotted against the sacred Doctors in the Church. These, indeed, the heirs of Arius, Nestorius, and Manichaeus, while they attack the Theologians, fill up the measure of their Fathers, and do the same things which they blame in others.

Threefold, and indeed accommodated to natural reason itself and to the order of things, is the method of teaching, so that, once the existence of something has been intimated and proved, its essence and nature — the source and spring of all its properties and excellences — may immediately be inquired into and set forth.

Therefore, since the necessity of admitting theological doctrine is now more than sufficiently evident, it must now be resolved whether that eminent and sublime habit of mind rejoices in and glories in the title of science and wisdom, which indeed we accomplish in the present article, inquiring: 1. Whether the theology of God and of the Blessed is a true and perfect science. 2. Whether our theology, that of the wayfarers, possesses all the characters of a perfect science. 3. Whether it is worthy of the appellation of wisdom. 4. Finally, whether it is subalternated to divine and beatific science.

From the first Question of Tom. 3. it is evident that theology taken generally is divided by reason of its subject into the theology of God, of the Blessed, and of wayfarers; in the present Question it must be resolved whether the theology of God and of the Blessed can truly and properly be called science: the following Question, however, will disclose whether our theology possesses the characteristics of perfect science.

Note 1. According to the Subtle Doctor, in 3. dist. 4. quaest. unica, the name of science is used in two ways. First, indeed, for true knowledge, in whatever manner its truth becomes known; thus Aristotle defined science in 6. Ethic. c. 1.: The habit by which the soul speaks truth in affirming or denying: whence St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trin. cap. 12., calls science the knowledge which we receive either through the senses or through the report of others: Far be it, he says, that we should deny that we know what we have learned on the testimony of others; otherwise we do not know that the Ocean exists; we do not know that there are lands and cities which the most celebrated fame commends. 2. Strictly, as Aristotle used and defined it, 1. Post. cap. 2., saying: But we think that we know each thing (namely, not as the Sophists do, per accidens) when we think that we know the cause on account of which the thing is, and that it is its cause, and that it cannot be that the thing be otherwise. From these things the Doctor infers, in question 3. of the Prologue n. 36., that four conditions are required for science properly so called. First, that it be true and certain knowledge, by which it is distinguished from error and opinion. Second, that it be of a necessary thing, that is, about a necessarily true proposition, so that it may be separated from art and prudence, which are concerned with particular and changeable things. Third, that it be through causes evident to that intellect which reasons scientifically; so that science may be distinguished from divine faith, which indeed is true, certain knowledge, and of a necessary thing, at least consequently, namely from the certainty and infallibility of the revealer; but it is obscure and enigmatic. Fourth, finally, that from evidently known causes the conclusion be drawn out through a true and legitimate syllogistic discourse, so that scientific knowledge may differ from understanding, by which we perceive the first principles of things not through discourse, but by the bare apprehension of men.

Note 2. That although the Royal Prophet marvels, How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High?, because sinners themselves had obtained riches, nevertheless it is established by faith that there is in God a true knowledge, not one which is an accident, as in us and in the Angels, but one which is really the very essence of God itself, and without any defect containing entirely every perfection of knowledge. This, although it is altogether indivisible, can nevertheless be distinguished as twofold by reason of object and term, namely, essential and altogether intrinsic, by which God knows himself; and extrinsic, by which he knows the other things from himself, through himself, and in himself. Which again is distinguished as threefold in the usual way; namely, the knowledge of simple Intelligence, by which he knows purely possible things, according to that text in Romans 4.¹: He calls the things that are not as the things that are. Second, the knowledge of Vision, by which he knows things determinately future, present and past, according to that text of Psalm 138.: You understood my thoughts from afar; you have searched out my path and my line, and you have foreseen all my ways. You have known all things, the newest and the ancient. Third is called the Middle knowledge, by which he is said to know future things under a condition, so that if the condition is posited, the thing will come about; but if it is not present, the thing will not exist.

Note 3. A twofold knowledge is distinguished in the Blessed: the first is called beatific, and it is the beatific Vision, by which they see clearly and intuitively in the divine Word all the mysteries which, obscurely only and through revelation and faith, are made known to us who are still wayfarers. The second is Discursive, which the Blessed themselves form from principles known through the light of glory, inferring conclusions about God through discourse and the natural light of the intellect; for glory and beatitude do not destroy nature, but perfect it; and therefore the discursive power remains whole and unimpeded in the Blessed, and consequently they can use it by discoursing and inferring theological conclusions. The former knowledge is called by St. Augustine the morning knowledge, because it is clear, and the first which the Blessed have of the beatific object: the latter is named the evening knowledge, because it is last and follows the former, nor does it have as much light and clarity as the former; because the natural light of discourse, on which it rests, does not shine as much as the light of glory by which the former is irradiated.

Note 4. The special object of theology is in part necessary from itself, and in part contingent from itself. The first is said to be that which from its own nature cannot be other or otherwise, e.g. God one in essence, three in persons, eternal, infinite, etc. The second, that which can be otherwise, namely incarnation, vocation, sanctification, etc., which absolutely could have not been, if God had indeed decreed and ordained otherwise. Although these contingent things, inasmuch as they are decreed by God and as they fall under that divine knowledge, cannot fail to come about, they are nevertheless not necessary ex natura rei and from themselves; but only from an extrinsic source, and through divine determination and knowledge. Whence the knowledge which is formed about these objects themselves is not intrinsically, and by reason of the object, simply necessary, but only secundum quid, and by reason of an external condition. These things having been premised, let it be

First conclusion. — The theology of God can truly and properly be called science as regards the three former conditions required for perfect science, but not as regards the fourth.

This involves two parts, which the Doctor approves together in q. 3. of the Prologue, n. 26., for he says: Theology in itself is not science as regards the last condition of science: but as regards the other three conditions it is science in itself and in the divine intellect.

The first part is easily established; for that knowledge is scientific which is evident and of a necessary thing. But such is the knowledge which God has, both of himself and of the things which he embraces and beholds in his infinite entity: For all things are naked and open before his eyes, which are brighter than the sun, as the sacred text declares. It is likewise about an object supremely necessary: for God is a being simply necessary, instilling evident and certain knowledge of himself into an intellect apprehending him distinctly and perfectly, and therefore the knowledge which he has of some theological object (e.g. of this proposition, the Father produces the Word by uttering it) is certain knowledge of a necessary object, and on account of an evident cause, namely on account of the divine nature, which is evident to God, and therefore from this part it is scientific.

The second part is also evident. For God cannot discourse: therefore he does not have the fourth condition required for science. The antecedent is proved: Perfect discourse requires three things: first, that one thing be known through another; second, that one thing be known from another; third, that one thing be known after another, at least in an instant of nature: but these things are supremely unbecoming to God, who knows all things by one most simple act; whence Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 12., after having said that God the Father and the Son know all things in themselves, concludes:

They know each other, therefore, the Father and the Son, but the former by begetting, the latter by being born, and all things which are in their knowledge, in their wisdom, in their essence, each one of them sees at once. Not partially or singly, as with an alternating concept, from here to there, and from there to here, and again from there, or from there to here, and one thing and another, so that one cannot see some things unless not seeing others: but as I have said, he sees at once all things, of which there is none which he does not always see: therefore since God does not have alternating concepts, but comprehends all things by one most simple act, he cannot discourse at all, nor consequently have the fourth condition required for perfect science.

It is confirmed. From the Doctor cited. The causation of science through discourse from cause to the thing known includes an imperfection on the part of the science, namely, that it is an equivocal effect, and also a potentiality on the part of the receiving intellect. That is, science generated through discourse imports and connotes a twofold imperfection, one indeed on its own part, the other on the part of the intellect. — The former imperfection arises from the fact that discursive science is an equivocal effect, because it is produced by a more perfect cause, and of a different species, namely, by understanding, or the knowledge of the principles from which science is drawn out. But understanding is more perfect and more evident than science, because that on account of which each thing is such is itself more so; it is certain, however, that a scientific conclusion is evident only on account of the evidence of the premises, and therefore the premises which are known through understanding are more evident than the conclusion. — The latter imperfection arises on the part of the intellect, which through theological discourse acquires scientific knowledge, and consequently was earlier stripped of such knowledge, and was in potency to its reception; but this lack of knowledge and potentiality is an imperfection, and therefore to be kept far from God: therefore God cannot discourse.

You will say. To discourse scientifically is to know a thing certainly and evidently through another: but God thus knows some things through others, namely effects through causes, and properties through the essence. Proof: God knows things as they are: but effects are through causes, and properties through essences: for the former are produced through causes, the latter emanate through essences: therefore God truly discourses.

I distinguish the major. To discourse is to know a thing through another or dependently on another, so that one is the principle and means of the knowledge of the other, I concede; it is only to know a thing proceeding from another and dependent on another, I deny. I likewise distinguish the minor: God knows effects dependent on causes, I concede: he knows them dependently on the knowledge of the causes, I deny. For, as St. Dionysius speaks, lib. De divinis nominibus, cap. 7., God does not have a peculiar knowledge of himself, and another, common knowledge embracing all things, for the cause of all things itself, knowing itself, will in no way be ignorant of the things which are from it and of which it is the cause. Therefore God, knowing these things, knows them not by a knowledge of the things, but by the knowledge of himself. And as he had said a little above: He knows all material things without matter, and divisible things indivisibly, and many things singly: therefore his knowledge is intuitive, not discursive. For discourse requires that the principle of discourse be naturally known first, and that it be causative of the knowledge of another (as the Doctor speaks in question 3. of the Prologue n. 27.); for discourse is the inference of a less known thing from a more known one; which certainly cannot befit divine knowledge.

You will ask. Whether on account of the defect of this condition, the knowledge of God cannot be called science simply?

I answer. that it can rightly be so named. For the inference of one thing from another through legitimate discourse is not of the intrinsic notion of science, but is required for it only on account of the weakness of the created intellect, which, since it is not the same as its act, and cannot through one single simple act detect the cause and the effect at once and know all things at the same time, hence it happens that in order to attain scientific knowledge it is compelled to discourse from one proposition to another, inferring the less known from the more known, on account of the necessary connection which it perceives between the two. But since the divine intellect has no need of these things, its knowledge likewise does not need discourse in order to be reckoned scientific.

But concerning divine knowledge we will institute a fuller and more explicit discourse in the course of the Work, wherefore let it be

Second conclusion. — The theology of the Blessed can truly and properly be called science as regards the four aforementioned conditions. This is the express opinion of the Doctor in the cited place n. 27. This can be conceded, he says, that the Blessed one can truly have theological science as regards all the conditions of science, because all the conditions of science truly concur in the knowledge of the Blessed.

Proof. First, for it is certain knowledge, without error, since they themselves see God face to face, and behold the divine essence evidently and intuitively. 2. It is about a necessary object, without change; for with God there is no transmutation of accidents or of existence, nor any overshadowing of contingency and vicissitude. 3. Through causes, for they can gather that God is immense, e.g. on account of his infinite essence, which is the cause and source of all divine perfections and attributes. 4. Through legitimate discourse; for since they see in the divine essence the causes and natures first, with at least a priority of nature, before they see the properties and effects, it is certain that they can infer one from the other.

Which the Doctor proves thus: The essence of the subject contains virtually its properties, and the cause its effects, and can instill knowledge of them into every intellect capable of knowing them: therefore whether that essence and cause is seen by wayfarers by natural light, or by the Blessed by supernatural light, it will always be able to produce the knowledge of its property and effect. The Doctor subsumes: But every truth and knowledge caused in the intellect through something naturally known first, is made through discourse, because it is made through the inference of the less known from the more known: For discourse, he says, does not require a succession of time nor its order, but an order of nature: namely, that the principle of discourse be naturally known first, and as such, be causative of the other extreme of the discourse.

That is, for legitimate discourse it is not required that some space of time flow between the knowledge of the premises and the inference and the knowledge of the conclusion deduced from them, but it suffices that the premises be known first by nature, and as containing in themselves virtually the knowledge of the conclusion deduced from them.

Whence although the Blessed see at once in one single moment of time the essences and properties, the causes and effects, the premises and the conclusion, they can no less be said to discourse, because they know by nature first the essence before the properties, the causes before the effects, and the premises before the conclusion; but this priority of nature suffices for the less known to be said to be inferred from the more known: therefore it likewise seems to suffice for forming a perfect discourse, although in reality it can hardly be understood how discourse could take place in an instant, since it requires a judgment about the legitimate inference of the consequent from the antecedent. That these things may appear more evident

You will say 1. Discourse involves several acts by which the principles are known, and the conclusion is inferred from them: but the Blessed do not have a multiple act about the object of beatitude, rather they perceive it and all things represented in it by one single and simple act, as St. Augustine affirms in lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 16. where, after he had said: In beatitude our word will not be false, because we will neither lie nor be deceived; he adds: Perhaps even our cognitions will not be fluid, going and returning from some things to others, but we will see all our knowledge in one simultaneous view.

The Doctor answers in the cited place. denying the minor, nor does Aug. affirm this, but only proposes it doubtfully, for he said perhaps, which is the word of one doubting, not of one affirming. Or Augustine is to be understood of the beatific vision, inasmuch as it extends itself to essential things alone; for this he beholds by one single and simple act: but the attributes and other things which arise from the essence they can gather through legitimate discourse: for the Blessed one, seeing the divine essence unlimited and infinite, can gather evidently that it is likewise immense, by reasoning thus. Every infinite entity is immense: but the divine essence is an infinite entity: therefore it is immense. Which conclusion is truly scientific and inferred through legitimate discourse.

Or finally I say that St. Augustine is to be understood of the beatific and morning knowledge, which is invariable and always the same, as we will prove in section 4. On the invisibility of God, third conclusion; but not of the discursive and evening knowledge, as was observed in the third Note. And so a twofold theology can be distinguished in the Blessed: one formally incomplex and intuitive, which is the beatific vision itself: the other complex and quasi-abstractive, which is made through discourse from principles clearly and evidently known. The former is similar to the theology of God on account of its simplicity and vision; the latter is assimilated in some measure to our theology on account of the discourse by which it is strengthened.

You will say 2. Science ought to be concerned with a necessary object: but theology, whether of God or of the Blessed, and ours, is concerned with a contingent object, namely, about the creation of things, the existence of the Angels, their order, operation, speech, motion, the incarnation, grace, the sacraments, the laws, the virtues and the rest, which are all contingent: therefore on account of the contingency of its object neither can be called science.

The Doctor answers in question 3. of the Prologue, n. 28. that indeed by the defect of this condition neither theology can properly be called science, inasmuch as it is defined by Aristotle in the first book of the Posterior Analytics:

nevertheless, he says, it can be said that for the intrinsic perfection of science it suffices that it be evident and certain; but that it be about a necessary object, this is altogether extrinsic to it and holds itself more on the part of the object than on the part of the science; which is evident from this, because science can be contingent, even if it be about a necessary object; since it can be destroyed through forgetfulness. Whence if some knowledge were given which from itself were certain and evident, and as far as in it lies were perpetual, although its object were contingent, it would seem to be more perfect than science, which although it is about a necessary object is nevertheless from itself defective and variable. For this reason, says the Doctor, both theologies can be called certain, and therefore perfect science, because in God and in the Blessed it has perpetual certainty and evidence; in us it has also an invariable certainty by reason of faith, by which it discloses the truths certainly and constantly.

Or I say again with the same Doctor in the same place.

that contingent things, as they pertain to theology, are born to have certain and evident knowledge, and, as far as concerns themselves, perpetual evidence: because all theological contingent things are born to be seen in the first theological object, and in it the conjunction of those contingent truths is born to be seen. But the vision of the extremes of a contingent truth and of their union necessarily causes evident certainty about such evident truth; as far as it is also on the part of the theological object showing such true things, they are born to be seen in such a perpetual object as far as concerns itself: Therefore contingent things, as they pertain to theology, are born to have a more perfect knowledge than science acquired about necessary things.

Nevertheless, inquiring there whether on this account the theology of contingent things is truly science, the Doctor answers:

I say that according to that notion of science posited in the first book of the Posterior Analytics, which requires the necessity of the object, there cannot be science about them, because to know the contingent as necessary is not to know the contingent; nevertheless, according as the Philosopher takes science in the 6. book of the Ethics, as it is said against opinion and suspicion, it can well be science, because it is a habit by which we speak the truth determinately. And so the theology of contingent things does not have the notion of proper and perfect science; therefore it is established that only the theology which is about a necessary object can truly be called science.

From the preceding Question it is established that knowledge is twofold, namely perfect and imperfect; it is likewise established that four characteristics and conditions are required for perfect knowledge, namely that it be certain without fear and any doubt, evident without obscurity, about a necessary object without any change, and through reasoning with a true and legitimate inference of one thing from another. Whether, however, Theology, insofar as it is in us wayfarers, possesses the four aforesaid characteristics, is to be resolved in this Question. But first

Note 1. A threefold light can be assigned by which divine and supernatural things can become known to men who are still mortal. The first is the light of infused faith, by which they are perceived through a mirror and in an enigma. The second is the light of knowledge, either divinely implanted or acquired with the aid of revealed principles and of the natural sciences, by which the learned and the Doctors perceive the mysteries of faith more deeply and more openly than the unlearned and the simple do. The third, finally, is the light of divine contemplation, by which minds cleansed of various and earthly contagions are for the most part caught up into ecstasy and see secret words which it is not lawful for a man to speak. The first is likened to nocturnal light, for faith is a lamp shining in a dark place until the day of eternity dawns; the second is compared to the dawn, which partly dispels the darkness and is partly overspread by it; the third is like the light of day, by which all things are disclosed and made manifest. Whether, moreover, besides this threefold light another light is also divinely infused into Doctors and students, by which the mysteries of faith become evident and manifest to them, as Henry of Ghent contends, will appear below.

Note 2. Evidence (about which the controversy chiefly turns in the present question) is the clear and perspicuous truth of an object, which becomes known from the perceived necessary connection of the predicate with the subject. This, however, is twofold: for some proposition is evident from its terms, such as are all immediate propositions and those necessary of themselves; another is evident from principles, such as is the evidence of a conclusion, which is drawn from evidently known principles through a true demonstration. This evidence from principles, moreover, comes about in two ways: first, when we proceed from principles and causes known to us to demonstrating their effects, as is done through a demonstration a posteriori; second, by proceeding from effects known to us to the knowledge of the principles and causes. — Each of these processes, however, is made from things which are known to us: the first indeed from what is better known by nature; for since causes are universal and more remote from the senses, they are indeed better known by nature and in themselves, because they virtually contain the truth and entity of the effects, whose truth emanates from the principles and is resolved back into the principles; whereas the effects, since they are nearer to our senses, are also said to be better known to us than their principles are; and every science must proceed from one or the other evidence. Evidence, therefore, is distinguished from certainty in this: first, that certainty is sought on the part of the faculty, whereas evidence is on the part of the object; second, everything evident is certain, but not everything certain is evident, for the things that are believed with divine faith are indeed certain, yet obscure.

Note 3. Concerning the resolution of the present question, different men think different things. For some contend that our Theology is truly and properly a science; and to establish this, some have devised various ways of speaking by which they might prove its evidence; others, however, seeing that it is entirely lacking in evidence, have judged that it is nonetheless on that account a perfect science, because (they say) evidence is only an extrinsic condition to be desired for science, namely for establishing its certainty, which, if it is firm from elsewhere, has no need of evidence. But so that it may become known what is to be judged more truly with the Subtle Doctor, let it be:

First conclusion. — Theology in us wayfarers is not properly to be called a science. This is the teaching of the Subtle Doctor, Quaest. 3. Prologi n. 30. and in 3. dist. 24. n. 7.

Proof 1. Perfect science is the effect of a legitimate demonstration; but theological knowledge is not produced by a legitimate demonstration; therefore it is not perfect science. The major is evident. The minor is proved from these words of Aristotle, 2. De Demonstratione, cap. ultimo: That, therefore, he says, it is not possible to know through demonstration without knowing the immediate principles has been said before. From which I argue thus: a perfect demonstration must be made from the evident and certain knowledge of the principles from which the conclusion is inferred; but the Theologian cannot have evident knowledge of the principles from which he deduces his theological conclusions, for those principles are revealed and believed by faith, and accordingly obscure and lacking in evidence, as St. Paul indicates, 1. Corinth. cap. 13.: We see now through a mirror and in an enigma.

It is confirmed. No one, unless foolish or obstinate, can dissent from a perfectly demonstrated proposition; but many dissent from and oppose theological conclusions, as is clear concerning heretics and unbelievers, who laugh at and reject all the theological arguments by which we strive to commend the mysteries of faith; therefore it is a sign that those arguments are not perfectly demonstrative.

Proof 2. Perfect science makes a perfect knower; but theological knowledge does not render the Theologian perfectly knowing. I prove it: he is not to be called perfectly knowing who assents to a proposition more on account of the authority and truthfulness of the one revealing than on account of the legitimate inference of the conclusion from the premises; but the perfect Theologian experiences his intellect inclining more toward assent to a conclusion drawn from the principles of faith, on account of the infallible authority of God revealing, than on account of the legitimate inference from the premises; for he adheres more firmly and tenaciously to a theological conclusion than to any philosophical conclusion, not on account of the perfection of the syllogistic inference, in which he is equal in both; but because he leans more firmly on the authority of God revealing the premises of the theological conclusion than on the natural light manifesting the principles of the philosophical conclusion; therefore it is a sign that the Theologian assents more on account of authority than on account of inference. But to assent to some proposition on account of authority is not to know it perfectly, but to believe it; therefore Theology is not perfect science, since it makes one more a believer than a knower.

It is confirmed. From the Doctor in 3. dist. 24. n. 9.: no voluntary adherence is scientific; for knowledge compels and necessitates the intellect to assent; for given the assent to evident premises, the intellect is so necessitated to assent to the conclusion that it cannot in any way dissent, as we proved in Logic; but the Theologian can voluntarily suspend his assent, both with regard to the believed principles, that is, the articles of faith, from which he deduces the theological conclusion, and with regard to the conclusion itself; For nothing is more in our power than to believe, says Augustine, lib. De spiritu, et littera, c. 21. Therefore such assent is not scientific.

Proof 3. Knowledge which lacks the perfect and principal characteristic of science is not perfect science; but theological knowledge lacks the principal characteristic of science. I prove it: evidence is the principal characteristic of science, for it is defined thus: certain and evident knowledge; so that just as by certainty it essentially differs from error and opinion, so by evidence it essentially differs from faith, both divine and human; indeed certainty belongs to it only by reason of evidence, since the intellect for that reason gives firm assent to a scientific proposition, because it sees it evidently deduced from evident principles, and accordingly it is established that evidence is the principal and essential characteristic of science. But theological knowledge has no evidence. I prove it: the evidence of a conclusion arises from the principles from which it is deduced; therefore where the principles lack evidence, it is likewise necessary that the conclusion equally lack evidence, because the perfection which is not in the cause cannot be in the effect; for since the effect receives all its entity from the cause, it also receives its perfection from it; and accordingly, since no one gives what he does not have, it is impossible that principles lacking evidence can confer evidence on the conclusion. But the principles of the conclusions of our Theology are not evident, but revealed and believed; for, says St. Paul, Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the argument of things not appearing; therefore they can confer no evidence on a theological conclusion; and hence, since Theology lacks the principal characteristic of perfect science, it cannot be called perfect science.

In order that the adversaries may solve this most powerful argument, different men set down different replies; and I have therefore judged that they should be refuted one by one, so that the truth of our conclusion may shine forth more brightly and be strengthened.

First, therefore, some reply with Henry of Ghent, quodlib. 12. q. 2., that the principles of theological conclusions are indeed of themselves lacking in evidence, but are made manifest through a certain light, as it were a mean between the light of faith and the light of the beatific vision; for Henry distinguishes a threefold light: the obscure light of faith, the clear light of the homeland, and the evident light of vision. The first he compares to night, the second to midday, the third to the dawn, because it has something of light and of darkness; and he says that this light presupposes, but does not precede, faith; so that the student of Theology must first believe, according to that saying of Isaiae 7. according to the version of the Seventy Interpreters: If you do not believe, you will not understand; secondly, he must strive for a more perfect penetration of the terms of which the articles of faith consist; and this with the aid and study of the natural sciences; which being posited, as a prior disposition he judges that that intermediate light is divinely infused, by which it comes about that the Theologian perceives the articles of faith more clearly than the faithful rustic and ignorant man; because through that light the Theologian perceives the terms of the things to be believed more evidently and better than they are understood by the common run of the faithful.

But the Doctor attacks this reply in 3. dist. 24. quaest. 1. n. 7. First indeed, because science and faith cannot exist at the same time about the same object, which he proves thus: science and opinion cannot exist at the same time about the same thing, therefore neither can faith and science. The antecedent is clear: for since they fight each other contradictorily, they cannot stand together; but opinion and science have contradictory predicates, namely certainty and non-certainty; for science is certain knowledge, whereas opinion is uncertain, and consequently opinion, which has non-certainty, and science, which has certainty, are incompossible. The consequence is likewise clear by the same reason; for science has evidence on the part of the object, whereas faith has non-evidence: therefore, since evidence and non-evidence fight each other contradictorily, it is established that evident science cannot stand with non-evident faith, nor accordingly can the evident light which Henry imagines subsist with the obscure light of faith about one and the same object.

It is confirmed. From Henry's opinion, that scientific light which he imagines cannot precede faith, but only follows it; from which the Doctor argues thus: that scientific light cannot precede faith, either because the habits of science and faith are incompossible, and so the point is established; or because of the formal repugnance of the objects, and so likewise it is proved that faith and science cannot be had at the same time about the same thing, because, says the Doctor n. 9., objects are distinguished equally according to formal notions after faith is posited just as before. Nor does it avail to say that they are together as contraries in a mean, like the extreme colors in redness, because so there would be one cognition mixed and intermediate from science and faith, for then that cognition would be neither of faith nor of science, just as redness is neither whiteness nor blackness. But it seems absurd that between obscure and evident cognition there should be given some cognition which would be neither evident nor non-evident.

Secondly: since this light presupposes faith and leans upon it, it follows that at the loss of faith this light also perishes, and so there would not remain in the Doctors the same greater and clearer cognition of the articles of faith than in the rustics, which had existed before; but that this is false, experience itself bears witness, for when a Theologian falls into heresy, he loses the faith, yet he does not lose any of the cognition of theological matters which he previously had; therefore his theological cognition did not lean upon any light divinely infused, which could be lost at the loss of faith.

Thirdly: this divinely infused light would be desired either that the intellect of Theologians might be more firmly strengthened in assenting to the articles of faith; but for that it would be useless, since for this firm assent infused faith suffices; or that the Theologian might adhere so firmly and tenaciously to the articles themselves that he could in no way dissent; but this too is false, otherwise men could not fall away from the faith once they were Theologians, the contrary of which daily experience persuades, for many Theologians, even the most skilled, miserably fall into heresy; or finally that Theologians might have a more evident knowledge of the mysteries and of the articles of faith, both for teaching the rest of the faithful and for defending faith itself against heretics and unbelievers, which Henry seems chiefly to intend; but for this too this light is entirely useless, since for it the light of faith by which we perceive the mysteries suffices, and the light of natural reason of the philosophical sciences, by which we are able to explain the truths believed by us and to draw conclusions from the articles of faith with the benefit of philosophy, with which we both conquer heretics and defend the faith. — Fourthly: even if this light were admitted, it would not suffice to cause perfect science and evident cognition through a true and legitimate demonstration, as the Doctor most subtly proves in 3. dist. 24. n. 11. et 12.; both because, in order that through this light science might be caused concerning this proposition, e.g., God is three and one, it would be necessary that first, at least by priority of nature, some immediate principles be evidently perceived from which this proposition could be inferred; but this light does not provide this, for no evidently known principles appear to us from which it would be permissible evidently to infer the aforesaid proposition. And because, if through some light the articles of faith, which are the principles of theological conclusions, were evident and were made manifest under their own proper notion, they would be most certain, not only on account of the assent of faith, but also on account of their own evidence; and so Theology would be more certain than all other sciences, not only on account of faith, but also on account of the evidence of the object, which no Theologian admits. And finally, because either God grants this light to all who strive for the understanding of the Scriptures and of the mysteries, or only to those whom he wills, by his good pleasure. If the first, that light, says the Doctor n. 12., will not be miraculous and supernatural, for when God confers something as a general cause and according to the disposition of nature, it cannot be called miraculous, nor divinely but naturally infused; thus, e.g., the infusion of the rational soul into an organized body is not called miraculous, although it is done by God alone, because it is done according to the disposition and exigency of nature. If the second, therefore, says the Doctor in the same place, we labor in vain in studying and in seeking by our own power, and it would be much better, for acquiring Theology, that one earnestly beseech God in the temples that he deign to infuse this light into him, than to sit among books, so that from their laborious reading he might dispose himself for the uncertain infusion of this light. It is clear, therefore, that this light is wholly fictitious and empty. — It is confirmed. That light seems to have been granted to no one thus far: therefore it is asserted without foundation. I prove the antecedent: if that light had been granted to anyone, by which the terms of the articles of faith and the principles of theological conclusions would become evidently known, it would have been granted most of all to St. Paul and St. Augustine, who more than the rest seem to have penetrated divine things and unlocked the mysteries more intimately and clearly; but they themselves testify that no evidence of the mysteries is granted to us in this mortal life. For, says St. Paul, 1. Corint. 13.: We see now through a mirror and in an enigma, but then face to face. And St. Augustine, Epistola 3. which is to Volusianus, says:

So great is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that I should make daily progress in them, if I alone, from earliest boyhood even to decrepit old age, with the greatest leisure, the utmost study, and a better mind, should strive to learn them.

Not that in regard to the things necessary for salvation so great a difficulty is met with in them, but when anyone there has held the faith, without which one does not live piously and rightly, so many things remain to be understood by the faithful, darkened by so many and so manifold coverings of mysteries, and so great a depth of wisdom lies hidden not only in the words in which these things are said, but also in the realities which are to be understood, that it befalls the most aged, the most acute, and those most fervent in the desire of learning, what Scripture, Eccles. 18., has: When a man has finished, then he begins.

Therefore by these words he openly confesses that he does not evidently perceive the terms of the articles of faith, and that consequently that light devised by Henry was not granted to him. Hence, in tractate 68. on John, weighing those words: I go to prepare a place for you, he says:

Faith is that by which the hearts of those who are to see God are cleansed while they journey; it believes what it does not see, for if you see, it is not faith; for the believer merit is gathered, for the one who sees the reward is rendered. Let the Lord go, then, to prepare a place; let Him go lest He be seen, let Him hide that He may be believed; for a place is then prepared if one lives by faith, if the believed One is desired, so that, being desired, He may be possessed; the desire of vision is the preparation of the dwelling.

He has the same in lib. 3. De vera innocentia and in the Epistle to Consentius: Faith, he says, has its own eyes, by which it in a certain manner sees that to be true which it does not yet see, and by which it most certainly sees that it does not yet see what it believes; by which words he openly confesses that no evidence of the same object subsists along with faith, and that consequently that scientific light devised by Henry is fictitious.

You will say. St. Augustine himself seems to admit and approve this light, since on these words of John, cap. I., He was the true light, he says: It is one thing to be a light for believing: another for understanding. And in the same place: The uncreated light illumines man with a twofold light of wisdom, by which they are fed as with solid food, which the Apostle had who said: We speak wisdom among the perfect, 1. ad Corint. 2. The same, tractate 39. on John: With faith going before, which heals the eye of our heart, so that what we understand we may grasp without obscurity, what we do not understand we may believe without doubt. Finally, against the Epist. Fundamenti cap. 24.: I profess the Catholic faith, and through it I presume that I shall arrive at certain science, with God, no longer men, illuminating our mind inwardly. Therefore, besides faith another light divinely infused is given, by which theological science is generated and formed in us. — I answer. Denying the consequence, and to the first authority of St. Augustine I say that it must be understood either of the light of contemplation and understanding, which we said in Note 3. is sometimes infused by God into the purest minds, or into the Pastors and Doctors of the Church, that with greater ease they may perceive the divine mysteries, and explain and commend them to others through certain fitting reasons and likenesses: or of our theology, which can be called a light of wisdom, not indeed by reason of the evidence of its object, but by reason of the discourse and of the greater knowledge of the terms by which the articles of faith are expressed; whence it comes about that the reasons and arguments which could be urged to the contrary are easily resolved. — To the second authority I say that a twofold obscurity can be distinguished: one which is opposed to evidence, another which is opposed to distinct and explicit knowledge, and which is the same as indistinct and confused cognition, for what we understand only confusedly we are said to know obscurely. St. Augustine speaks of the latter obscurity, not of the former, so that he wishes theologians to know the things of faith more explicitly and distinctly than the unlettered and ignorant, not that they perceive them more evidently. For while the unlettered man hears that God is one in essence and three in persons, he indeed perceives that there are three divine persons and one God, yet he does not know what the word essence signifies, or what precisely the name of person indicates, which are nevertheless known to the theologian from Metaphysics. — To the third authority I say that St. Augustine speaks of the gift of understanding and science, which God at His pleasure infuses into the Pastors and Doctors of the Church, that they may instruct the other faithful.

Some reply, with our Aureolus, Q. 1. Prologi, article 1, that theology is indeed not evident with the evidence of the object, of the principles and of the consequent, but with the evidence of the consequence, so that for the evidence of science it is not required that it be evidently known that the consequent is rightly deduced from the antecedent, but it suffices that it be known that the consequence is correctly inferred from the premises according to syllogistic form; but this evidence of the consequence is found in theology, since the theologian can easily judge that his conclusions are legitimately inferred, and according to the rules of syllogistic form. — On the contrary. First, it is false that the evidence which is desired in science consists in the consequence, not in the inference of the consequent: for scientific discourse does not consist in a judgment of the consequence, but of the consequent, as we have demonstrated in Logic. Second, it is not for the theologian to judge of the goodness of the consequence, for this wholly pertains to the logician, but whether the consequent is rightly inferred from the Articles and Principles of faith. Third, the evidence of the consequence does not prevent the consequent from being evident: therefore neither will it bring it about that the theological assent is not obscure; and consequently, notwithstanding the evidence of the consequence, theology will always be obscure.

Some reply, with Francis de Marchia as reported by Gregory, Question 1. Prologi, that the principles of theology are indeed not evident per se, since they are articles of faith known only through revelation; yet they are made evident from without, and through their resolution into certain evidently known principles. But he says these principles are two: the first indeed is this: whatever God has revealed is true, which is indeed known by the light of nature, because natural reason dictates that the first truth can neither be deceived nor deceive. The latter, however, is this: God has revealed all the articles which are proposed to us for belief, which likewise becomes evident through the miracles wrought in their confirmation. — On the contrary. Miracles are only motives of credibility, not of the assent of faith; and they evidently demonstrate that a thing is credible, not that it is evidently true, because the evidence of credibility arises from the truthfulness of the one revealing; but the evidence of truth proceeds from the principles of the thing itself, which appears evidently true either per se or through its effects. Hence, with the evidence of credibility there can stand the inevidence of the thing according to its entity: for if God immediately and clearly revealed to me that the mystery of the Trinity exists, v. g., that mystery would indeed appear to me evidently credible; yet not on that account would that mystery be evidently known to me. — Then: although from an evident revelation there might inhere in the articles of faith some evidence, this would be wholly extrinsic, and consequently insufficient to cause scientific evidence in the theological conclusions to be elicited from the articles of faith themselves; for the evidence of science is not to be sought from without and on the part of the one testifying and revealing, otherwise the scientific assent would not differ from the assent of faith, which rests on the evident testimony of the one speaking: but it must be taken from the intrinsic and entitative evidence of the principles from which the scientific conclusion is deduced: therefore, although through an evident revelation the articles of faith would be evident, their evidence would nevertheless not suffice to cause scientific evidence in theology, and consequently for this reason theology cannot be called a perfect science.

You will say. No one is bound to believe anything except what is evidently true: but we are bound to believe the articles of faith: therefore they must be evidently true. Proof of the major: we are not bound to esteem a thing as true, as long as its truth does not sufficiently appear to us: therefore we are not bound to believe it as true. — I deny the major. For we are bound to believe not only what is evidently known, but also what is evidently credible, namely by reason of the infallible authority of the one revealing; indeed, if it were evidently known, it would no longer be credible, but knowable: and we would assent to it not by faith, but by science. To the proof I say that it suffices that the truth of the credible thing be made known through the infallible testimony of the one revealing; but it is not necessary that it appear evidently from the terms.

The Thomists reply, that our theology is made evident through the resolution of its principles into the science of God and of the Blessed, to which it is subalternated; for it must be known, says Saint Thomas, 1. parte, q. 1. art. 2.:

That there is a twofold genus of sciences; for some are those which proceed from principles known by the natural light of the intellect, such as Arithmetic, Geometry and the like: but some are those which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science, just as Perspective proceeds from principles made known through Geometry, and music from principles known through arithmetic: and in this way sacred Doctrine is a science, because it proceeds from principles known by the light of a higher science, which namely is the science of God and of the Blessed.

By which words he plainly teaches (say the Thomists) that although in the subalternating sciences the formal and actual evidence of the principles is required, in the subalternated ones, however, there suffices the radical evidence which arises through resolution into the subalternating science. Hence, since our theology is subalternated to the science of God and of the Blessed, to whom the articles of faith are evidently known, it suffices for its evidence that its principles become evident through resolution. — On the contrary. First, it is false that our theology is subalternated to the theology of God and of the Blessed, as we will prove in the following Question: therefore the Thomists' reply falls entirely. Second, in order that the principles of a subalternated science become evident through their resolution into the subalternating science, it is necessary that both sciences, both the subalternating and the subalternated, be in the same intellect; so that the same intellect can resolve the principles of the subalternated science into the subalternating one; for if this resolution were made by Peter, v. g., how could Paul know that it is evidently made, especially if he does not master the subalternating science? Does a blind man evidently perceive color, because I myself attest to him that I see color evidently and intuitively? Who would assert that a physician evidently knows this principle of Medicine, contraries are cured by contraries, through its resolution into this physical principle, contraries mutually expel each other from the same subject, if he himself does not hold Physics? But the theology of the Blessed is not in us, nor do we have it as known. Therefore we cannot evidently resolve the principles of our theology into it. Third, experience shows that the theologian does not assent to a theological conclusion drawn from the articles of faith because those articles are evidently known by God and the Blessed; but because they are believed by faith by the theologian himself: therefore his assent is inevident, since it rests only on motives and principles known without evidence; and consequently theological knowledge for this reason cannot be called evident and scientific.

Some modern Thomists reply, that our theology does not indeed have the mode and state of perfect science, namely evidence; yet it has its essence, namely certainty and necessity, and therefore can indeed be called an imperfect science as to mode and state, in comparison with the perfection which it can have within its own species, namely in the state of beatitude, when that which is perfect shall come, and that which is in part shall be done away. Just as, they say, a boy, although he is substantially a man, yet because he lacks the use of reason and freedom, is not called a perfect man according to state. — On the contrary. 1. Evidence is an essential character of science, as has been proved: therefore a knowledge which does not have evidence cannot be scientific. Second, it is false that our theology differs from the theology of the Blessed only in state, and that it can at some time attain that evidence, just as a boy can attain the use of reason and freedom; since our theology differs in species from the theology of the Blessed, nor does the same theology remain in the Blessed which had been in the wayfarers, as we will prove below: therefore if it is imperfect, it must be called imperfect not only comparatively, but simply, because it lacks the essential perfection desired for science, which it will never obtain.

Finally, others reply, that our theology is indeed not evident, but that evidence is not required for the notion of perfect science, except on the hypothesis that the intellect has no other more excellent motive by which it may adhere more firmly and tenaciously to a proposition: but it has a more excellent motive by which it adheres more firmly to theological principles, and is convinced of their truth, than is the evidence of the propositions and of the natural sciences; for faith brings it about that it adheres to them on account of the first truth revealing, which is by far a firmer motive, and one more convincing to the intellect, than the evidence of the knowledge of the principles of the other sciences: therefore evidence is not needed for the perfect notion of the science of theology. — They confirm it. From Aristotle, who, speaking of science, 1. Poster. says: That unless one has the science of the premises, or something greater than science, he cannot be truly knowing. Therefore when he has something greater than science, he will be able to be truly knowing: but divine faith is a motive greater and more perfect than science: therefore the theologian will be able to elicit scientific conclusions from principles known by divine faith. — On the contrary. Perfect science differs essentially from faith; but it differs from it by nothing other than evidence: therefore either it is not perfect science, or it must have evidence. The major is evident; for faith and science are essentially diverse habits, since the former rests on the authority of the one revealing, the latter on evident knowledge of the premises; the former inclines to an obscure assent without discourse; the latter to a clear assent with philosophical discourse, etc. The minor is also clear; since it does not differ from it by certainty and necessity, because each is a certain knowledge and about a necessary object, especially while they are concerned with God subsisting in Himself: therefore it remains that science is distinguished from faith by evidence; and consequently evidence belongs to science not hypothetically and per accidens, but essentially. 2. That firmness of assent, which is made greater by faith than by evidence, does not render the intellect readier and more expeditious for producing the reasons of its knowledge, and for demonstrating it from principles known to all, which anyone perfectly knowing ought to accomplish, but only makes it adhere more tenaciously to the revealed proposition than it adheres to an evident one: therefore it does not make him perfectly knowing, but only certain and believing; and consequently certainty does not suffice for perfect science. — To the confirmation I say that Aristotle, by something greater than science, does not understand some supernatural light, such as is the light of faith; for that genius of nature recognized no supernatural things, as one illumined only by the natural light; but by that greater thing he wished to signify and indicate the habit of first principles, or understanding, by which the premises are sometimes known, and that more certainly than through science.

You will say. The Subtle Doctor, in 3. dist. 24. q. 1., speaking of the Prophets and Apostles and the other sacred Doctors illumined by God, said that they had a habit which, although it was inevident, yet on account of its firmness and certainty could be called science: for he says n. 17.:

I say that every effect which God can produce through a second efficient cause, He can produce immediately; now if the things themselves of which Sacred Scripture treats were clearly and intuitively apprehended, they would generate certain knowledge without doubt; and this knowledge, because it is evident, would be called science. But God, without the motion of the object, can so cause certain knowledge without any doubt: so that one having such knowledge revealed by God could not doubt its truth; of which kind of knowledge the Prophets are believed to have had, and many other saints in Scripture. And such men had a habit affording a great assent, so that, while it stood, they could not but assent to the truth: that certainty, however, was not evident from the evidence of the thing; because then it would be a contradiction that knowledge of this kind and faith should stand together: yet that certainty was firm, just as is scientific certainty, which is caused from principles known from the evidence of the terms.

Therefore, according to his mind, a habit having certainty can be scientific, even if it is inevident: but theology has greater certainty than all the natural sciences; therefore with all the more right it claims for itself the dignity and appellation of science. — I deny the consequence. For neither is that the mind and opinion of the Doctor; he indeed wills that the canonical writers received from God a certain habit, by which they adhered to the truths revealed to them, and that more firmly and tenaciously than if those truths had been elicited and demonstrated from evident principles through discourse; yet he does not will that this habit was scientific, for he adds: Therefore it could not be called science from the evidence of the thing; there was, however, greater certainty than the certainty of faith, because faith does not exclude all doubt, but some doubt can stand with faith. From which it is clear that he speaks, not of a habit which is science — for no science has greater certainty than faith — but of the most perfect habit of faith, which wholly excluded all doubt in those holy men, such as the habit of faith which is infused in other men does not exclude. Hence after he added that faith cannot stand with science, he says: there is nevertheless had along with faith by many another habit, that is, a new firmness and perfection, or mode, superadded to the prior habit of faith; by which one assents firmly to the truth of Scripture, and not to one truth on account of another, but to any- one immediately: but it is evident that no one assents to Scripture immediately except through faith; and consequently the Doctor speaks there of the perfect habit of faith, not indeed of some other habit which is truly and properly science.

Second conclusion. — Our theology can be called a science, in the manner in which Aristotle defined science, 6. Ethicor. The truth of this conclusion is clear from the preceding one; since theological knowledge is certain; indeed it is far more certain than all the natural sciences, as we will prove below. For this reason the holy Fathers call theology Science, and the Prince and Queen of the Sciences: indeed Saint Augustine affirms at length that it is at once science and wisdom, especially lib. 14. De Trinitate, cap. 1., where, making a discourse about theology, he says:

With which science very many of the faithful do not abound, although they abound very much in faith itself. For it is one thing to know only what a man ought to believe for the sake of attaining the blessed life, which is only eternal: but another thing to know how this very thing both helps the pious and is defended against the impious, which the Apostle seems, by its proper word, to call science, primae Corinth. 12., saying: To another is given the word of science.

By which it is established that our theology can be called a science, insofar as science is said to be certain knowledge, about a necessary and infallible object, and generated through legitimate discourse; not, however, as scientific knowledge also requires the evidence of the object. But whether it claims for itself the august name of Wisdom, will reveal

Note 1. From Aristotle, 6. Ethic. cap. 4., five intellectual virtues are commonly distinguished. The first is Intelligence, by which it perceives the first principles of things immediately and per se, and known not through another. The second, Wisdom, which is the knowledge of divine things through their highest causes. The third, Prudence, which is occupied with those goods to be pursued and evils to be avoided by man. The fourth, Science, which is certain and evident cognition generated through demonstration. The fifth, finally, is Art, which is a habit directing an external faculty to skilfully produce some sensible work. It is certain, however, that theology is not art; for it regards no external work to be fabricated directly or indirectly. It is equally certain that it is not perfect science, since, as was proved above, it lacks evidence. It is likewise established that it is not adorned with the name of intelligence, since that power of perceiving the first principles of cognition is not innate to individual men; rather it contemplates divine things revealed and disclosed by the benefit of faith. It could indeed partly glory in the name of prudence, for no small part of it is held and occupied in pointing out vices to be fled, virtues to be pursued, and the means leading to the ultimate end: nevertheless, since its dignity and nature are discerned from its object, namely God to be known, hence it comes about that it is not judged to be called by the proper name of prudence. It remains, therefore, to be shown whether it can be called true and perfect Wisdom,

Note 2. Wisdom can be distinguished as threefold: one indeed profane, and vicious; another indifferent, and neutral; another truly sacred, and praiseworthy. The first is the astuteness and cunning of worldly men in establishing their own affairs and fortunes. Thus to the Romans 8.: The prudence of the flesh is death; but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace: since the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God, for it is not subject to the law of God; whence James 3.: This wisdom is not descending from above; but is earthly, animal, devilish. The second is that philosophical knowledge which is concerned with being as such; and it contemplates its nobler species; which St. Paul calls human, 1. Corinth. 2. My speech, he says, and my preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the showing of the spirit and power. The third is either acquired or infused; the former is called Theological, which elicits conclusions from revealed principles; the latter, truly, is the Gift of the Holy Spirit, which is a light descending from the Father of lights, says St. Bonaventure, book On the seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and which, irradiating the soul, makes it Godlike: for it illuminates the intellective power, inflames the affective, strengthens the operative. It makes the intellective comely, the affective pleasant, the operative robust: for it is at once splendor and savor; splendor directing the intellect to the cognition of truth, savor raising the affection to the savory love of the good. Whence in the same place it is defined as a supernatural habit of the soul infused by the Holy Spirit for knowing God and loving him savorously, about which Wisdom there is no discourse here, just as neither about profane and natural wisdom, but only about theological.

Note 3. Acquired wisdom, from Aristotle, lib. 1. Metaph. cap. 1., and from the Doctor in the same place, is rightly defined thus. Wisdom is the highest habit of the mind, occupied with the most universal, most difficult, most certain causes of all things, and evidently setting forth principles, to be sought especially for its own sake, and commanding the other scientific habits as servants. From this definition it is gathered that six conditions are required for perfect wisdom. First indeed, that it be concerned with all knowable things, at least in kind; for it is the prince and moderatrix of all the sciences, and therefore it ought to open and prescribe their principles and greatest truths, at least in common. Second, with the most difficult things, and remote from the senses; for to know things open to the senses is common to all, says Aristotle; but it belongs to the wise man alone to search out things hidden and abstruse. Third, with the most certain things, either in themselves, as all necessary beings are, or in another, as contingent things are, which are certain in the divine essence and science. Fourth, evidently setting forth the general causes of all things which are known; for from it the other sciences receive the confirmation and evidence of their principles. Fifth, it ought to be sought for its own sake; for those things which are among the most knowable, such as the sciences which are concerned with first principles, are sought for their own sake. Sixth, finally, the other Sciences ought to be subjected to it as servants, and to serve it. Whether, however, the theology of God, of the Blessed, and of the wayfarers has all these or at least the principal characters, so that it may be resolved, let it be

Single conclusion. — The theology of God and of the Blessed has the principal characters of perfect Wisdom; but the theology of the wayfarers fails in evidence.

This Conclusion embraces two parts, of which the Doctor proves the first in quaest. 3. of the Prologue, n. 28., where, when he had said that theology cannot be called a perfect science, insofar as it is concerned with contingent things, he adds:

Yet it can more properly be said that theology in itself is wisdom, because of the necessary things contained in it it has evidence, and necessity, and certainty, and the highest and most perfect object. As to contingent things, however, it has manifest evidence about the contingents in the theological object, as seen in themselves; and it does not have evidence begged from other prior sciences: whence the knowledge of contingents, as it is had in it, is more assimilated to the understanding of principles than to the science of conclusions.

By these words the Doctor proves two things: First indeed, that theology in itself, and insofar as it is in the divine and beatific intellect, has all the principal characters of perfect Wisdom, inasmuch as it is concerned with necessary objects. Second, moreover, that it can also be called intelligence, insofar as it is concerned with contingent things. It is clear, therefore, that theology thus considered can be called wisdom; namely inasmuch as wisdom is that cognition by which it is evidently occupied with the most certain, highest, and most excellent object.

That moreover the theology of the wayfarers (if you set aside evidence) can also be called wisdom is proved; first indeed by the authority of Sacred Scripture; for St. Paul, speaking of theology in 1. to the Corinth. 2., says: We speak wisdom among the perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which is hidden, etc. This same thing Christ the Lord had promised to the Apostles, Luc. 21.: I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and gainsay. All the holy Fathers likewise go in this opinion, who call theology by the illustrious name of Wisdom.

The same thing is clear by reason. For our theology has all the conditions to be desired for perfect Wisdom, if you exclude only evidence. First, indeed, it is the highest habit and occupied with the most universal and most excellent things; for it contemplates God, the most excellent of all beings and the artificer and creator of the rest; thence it opens and explains the principles of things, their origin, state, and their direction to their ends through suitable means. 2. It is concerned with the most certain and most invariable things, at least by reason of the means through which they become known; for it searches out and investigates divine things by the medium of the light of faith, than which nothing can be more excellent. 3. It scrutinizes the most difficult things; what is more difficult to understand and to know than the mysteries of faith from which our theology deduces its conclusions? For natural reason, however perspicacious it may have been, could not so much as remotely suspect and detect these mysteries. 4. It sets forth the causes and principles of all things; since it itself discourses about God as the supreme efficient cause, and end of all things; and so about the emanation, conservation, government, and direction of all things from him to their fitting ends: and so it is the science of all things; not indeed in the universal, according to predication and cognition, as if it handed down the principles by which individual things would be known: but because it opens the font and principle of all things, and that relying on the divine and supernatural light of faith; which is certainly much nobler and more excellent than if it handed down general and common concepts of all things, and their complex principles, through natural light, as Metaphysics does. Although, however, it is ordered to practice, nevertheless it is especially sought for its own sake, if it is considered comparatively to the other sciences; since it is not ordered to them, so as to serve them: indeed the others are referred to it, as handmaids, so as to be subject to it and serve it. For this is that divine Wisdom which sent her handmaids, namely all the natural sciences, to call to the citadel of divine cognition and the defense of faith; as St. Bonaventure most eloquently indicates in the little work on the reduction of the arts and sciences to Theology: therefore, since all the conditions to be desired for wisdom, with evidence removed, belong to it, it not undeservedly rejoices in the title of wisdom.

You will say 1. Wisdom ought to hand down, prove, and make known the common principles of things and of the sciences: but our theology does not do this: therefore it is not wisdom. — I distinguish the major. Philosophical and common wisdom, which rests on the light of reason and is concerned with first principles evidently and naturally known, I concede; supernatural wisdom, or that which proceeds by a supernatural light, such as theology is, I deny. For Metaphysics, v. g., hands down and proves the principles of the other sciences for this reason, because it is of the same natural order with them, and is concerned with being in common, and with the general principles of things, insofar as they are naturally known: but theology, since it rests on the light of a higher order, reaches even higher, nor does it lower itself to the natural sciences, except to judge of their doctrine, and to disapprove whatever it finds alien to truth in them, and to eliminate it from the Academies of Christians as a perverse dogma. — Add. But if theology does not hand down the principles of cognition, it at least hands down the principles of the entity of things; since it treats of God, the first cause of all things, the supreme moderator, and the ultimate end: and this as much in the natural order as in the supernatural. It is also, in some measure and on occasion, the science of all things in particular, and more penetrating than any natural science; since, on the occasion of the Mystery of the Incarnation, it treats of essence, subsistence, and personality; and teaches that subsistence and personality are really distinct from the entity of the individual; and also that two natures can subsist in the same subsistence, which indeed was previously unknown to the Metaphysician. Similarly, in treating of the works of the six days, it opens the origin, place, state, and direction of beings: moreover, it indicates the nature, endowments, and properties of the most excellent species of being, namely of Angels and of men. It likewise treats of corporeal accidents subsisting without a subject in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, of the habits of virtue and grace, etc., and therefore it can in some measure be called a universal science.

You will say 2. Wisdom ought to be concerned with difficult things and remote from the senses: but theology treats of those things which can easily be known and are exposed to the senses, for example the humanity of Christ, man, the Sacraments, etc.: therefore it should not be called wisdom. — I distinguish the minor. That those things can easily be known and be perceived by the senses, as they are considered by the Philosopher externally and according to their natural constitution, let it pass: that they are considered by the theologian, and insofar as the humanity of Christ is personally united to the divine Word: likewise inasmuch as men are destined to a supernatural end through supernatural means; similarly inasmuch as the Sacraments are taken up by God as certain and efficacious signs for producing grace, etc., these things, I say, are easy to know, I deny. For these and whatever other things are handed down in theology become known and are opened only through the light of faith and a discourse resting on the supernatural light, to which man can in no way rise by the forces of nature; for as saint Paul says, 1. to the Corinth. 2., But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined; but the spiritual man judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.

Although our theology, on account of its lack of evidence, is not distinguished with the titles of a perfect science, and hence the present Question may seem to be raised superfluously and in vain; for if it is not a science, it follows that neither is it a subalternated science; nevertheless, because from its discussion and resolution the preceding conclusion is more firmly established, and the opinion of the Thomists, who contend that our theology is a science precisely for this reason, because its principles are evident in the theology of God and of the Blessed, to which it is subalternated, is more strongly weakened; in order that we may close off this last refuge, it is worthwhile to demonstrate that our theology is in no way subalternated to the science of God and of the Blessed, which, in order that it may be done more evidently

Note 1. Among the sciences, some are called subalternated and others subalternating. The former are those which are placed under another science, on which they depend in the certainty and evidence of their object and of their principles; the latter, however, are those which evidently demonstrate such objects and prove the principles of the inferior sciences. Thus Medicine is said to be subalternated to Physics, because in Physics the principles of Medicine are proved, and the nature and properties of the human body, which is its object, are demonstrated and made known.

Note 2. For the subalternation of the sciences three principal conditions are required. The first is that the material subject of the subalternated science be contained under the general object of the subalternating science, just as the human body, which is the object of Medicine, is contained under the natural body, which is the general object of Physics, to which Medicine is subalternated. The second is that the subalternated science consider that object under some accidental difference, under which it is not considered by the subalternating science, by reason of which difference the object has a new knowability, and is as it were the root of new properties, which are demonstrated in the subalternated science. Thus Medicine considers the natural body as curable, which curability is not considered by Physics, and is the reason and root of all the properties which Medicine detects and investigates in the human body. The third is that the subalternated science depend in the certainty and evidence of its principles on the subalternating science; so that the conclusions of the latter are the principles of the former; for where the subalternating science ends, there the subalternated begins, as the Doctor observes in Q. 3 of the Prologue, no. 30; whence the common saying: There the physician begins, where the physicist ends.

Note 3. A subalternated science has some properties different from the properties of the subalternating science. The first is that the subalternating science proceeds from principles known per se in itself: the subalternated, however, from principles known in the subalternating science. The second is that the subalternating science is superior and independent, both as regards its object and as regards its principles to be made known: the subalternated, however, is inferior and dependent on the subalternating science in both respects. The third is that both ought to be and can be in the same subject and intellect, because one must illustrate the other by proving and making known its principles, which could not be done if the subalternating and the subalternated sciences were in different subjects; for just as the subalternated would not be a science if its conclusions were not resolvable into evidently known principles, so it would not be a science in this intellect, unless this intellect could resolve the conclusions of that subalternated science into evidently known principles; but it could not form this resolution if it did not have the subalternating science, by which it contains and demonstrates the subalternated principles, and therefore both must be in the same intellect.

First conclusion. — The theology of the wayfarers is in no way subalternated to the discursive and theological science of the Blessed.

This is the teaching of the Subtle Doctor, q. 3 of the Prologue, n. 30, and in book 3, the single question, dist. 24, against St. Thomas and his followers.

The Doctor proves it. First: a subalternated science is compatible with the subalternating science in the same subject: but our theology cannot subsist with the theology of the Blessed; therefore it is not subalternated to it. The major is clear from note 3. The minor is proved: our theology rests on faith, for its principles are the articles of faith, from which it elicits its conclusions: but faith cannot subsist with the science of the Blessed: therefore neither can our theology; which we will prove more fully in the following conclusion.

Second: a subalternated science depends on the subalternating science as on a cause; for the conclusions of the subalternating science are the principles of the conclusions of the subalternated science; for the latter are proved through the former, and consequently they are also the principles and causes of the subalternated science; because what is the cause of a cause is also the cause of the thing caused: but our theology does not depend on the science of the Blessed as on a cause. Proof. If the theology of the Blessed were the cause of our theology, this would be most of all either by reason of the object, or by reason of the power and subject, or by reason of the light: but none of these can be affirmed; for our theology does not depend on the science of the Blessed as on an object, or on a power, because God is the object, and our intellect is the subject of our theology independently of the theology of the Blessed. Nor does it depend on it as on a light, because our theology depends on the light of faith. Moreover, the conclusions of our theology are formed and known independently of the light of the beatific vision; and consequently they do not depend on it as on a cause. Therefore our theology is not subalternated to the theology of the Blessed.

Third: a subalternated science does not primarily and of itself concern the same truths which the subalternating science considers; because where the latter ends, there the former begins, in that the conclusions of the subalternated science must be proved through the conclusions of the subalternating science as through principles: but our theology concerns the same truths with which the theology of the Blessed is occupied: for the believed mysteries, from which we deduce our conclusions, are the same from which the Blessed elicit their conclusions; with this sole difference, that the same mysteries which are made known to us obscurely through faith are made known to them clearly and intuitively through the light of glory. Hence they can say: As we have heard (through faith, which is from hearing), so we see in the city of the Lord etc. Psal. 47.

Fourth: he who has a subalternated science can, indeed ought to, have also the subalternating science; otherwise he is not perfectly knowing, since he cannot resolve the conclusions of the subalternated science into evidently known principles, which are made known through the subalternating science; for the subalternating science is the habit by which the principles of the subalternated science are known: but it is impossible to acquire the habit of the conclusions unless the habit of the principles is first had; whence the physician ought to be skilled in Physics, at least as regards those things which have the character of a principle with respect to Medicine. But neither can we have the theology of the Blessed, nor can they have ours: therefore our theology is not subalternated to their science.

Fifth: a subalternated science considers its object under some real accidental notion, under which it is not considered by the subalternating science; for Medicine considers the natural body as curable, in a way in which it is not regarded by Physics, and by this difference Medicine is specifically distinguished from Physics: but our theology has altogether the same object as the theology of the Blessed, namely God under the notion of Deity: therefore it is not subalternated to it. — Nor does it matter that God is clearly seen by the Blessed, but is known obscurely and through revelation by us. For these do not effect a real diversity in the object: both because this diversity is to be traced back not to the object, but to the diversity of light, namely of glory and of faith: and because being clearly seen is only an extrinsic denomination, which therefore does not introduce any real diversity in the object, under which it could be considered by one science and not by another: and because the object under the formal notion of object precedes the science, as the cause precedes the effect; for every knowledge is born from the object and the power: but God as clearly seen does not precede the beatific science, which is vision; rather he follows it, because he is said to be seen from the vision. Therefore this notion of being clearly seen is not an objective notion specifying and essentially distinguishing the science of the Blessed from ours.

Gonet replies that although in the natural sciences the subalternated science must consider the object under some accidental notion, which is the notion of a new knowability and the root of the properties which the subalternating science does not consider; nevertheless this condition is not required in theology. For since the object of theology is infinite and unlimited, of itself, and without the addition of any accidental difference, it has several modes of knowability, by reason of which it can terminate different sciences, and be known through one wholly supernatural science, such as is the science of the Blessed; and through another natural one, which through natural light and discourse deduces its conclusions from the principles of that science of the Blessed, such as is our theology. — Against this: 1. He speaks contradictorily, saying that our theology demands lack of evidence from its own nature, yet has it only as joined per accidens and by reason of state; for what is demanded from the nature of the thing belongs to it, not per accidens and by reason of something extrinsic, but by reason of its intrinsic principles. For although, e.g., heat in fire is an accident; yet because fire demands heat from its own nature, no one would say that it belongs to it only by reason of state and from what is extrinsic; and therefore either our theology does not demand lack of evidence from its own nature, or it does not have it only from what is extrinsic and by reason of the faith on which it leans, and of the state of a wayfarer in which it is; but it has it from its intrinsic notion and from the principles from which it deduces its conclusions. Whence just as evidence is intrinsic to the science of the Blessed, because they elicit their conclusions from principles evidently known through the light of glory; so lack of evidence is intrinsic to our theology, because it deduces its conclusions from principles known without evidence through faith. — Secondly, that obscure revealability does not hold on the part of the knowable object, which of itself has nothing obscure, nothing that is not evident and evidently knowable: but it is traced back only to the part of the light and medium, by which the same object is apprehended clearly by the Blessed through the light of glory and obscurely by the wayfarers through faith: but the diversity of light does not suffice for the notion of subalternation, as we have shown in the second proof. — Thirdly, this response rests on a false foundation, namely that our theology and that of the Blessed differ only with respect to state, so that the theology of the wayfarers remains the same in the state of beatitude, which, in order that it may be resolved, is

Second conclusion. — The theology which we acquire here through discourse will not remain in the state of beatitude.

Proof first. From the Apostle, the first Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. 13, where when he had said: Charity never falls away, he adds: Whether prophecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed. From these words I argue thus: the knowledge which the Apostle indicates is to be destroyed in the homeland is the theology acquired here: therefore this will not remain in the homeland. The antecedent is proved: he says that that knowledge is to be destroyed about which, speaking earlier, he had said: If I should have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge: but this is theological knowledge, by which namely one knows the mysteries through conclusions deduced from the articles of faith, as is evident. Therefore he judges that theological knowledge does not remain in the homeland.

You will answer. Perhaps, with certain Thomists, you will say that knowledge is said by the Apostle to be destroyed in the same way in which the elements are said by Christ to be dissolved after the day of judgment: so that, just as the elements will not be dissolved as regards their substance, but only as regards their mode and state, because namely they will pass from a more imperfect state to a more perfect state; so likewise our knowledge is not destroyed as regards the substance of the habit, but only as regards the mode of obscurity or lack of evidence which it has here. — On the contrary: this explanation is altogether contrary to the words of the Apostle, and far removed from his mind; both because the Apostle says simply and absolutely that knowledge is to be destroyed: but destruction is not merely a purification of the thing or a passage from a less perfect state to a more perfect state, as Christ speaks of the elements saying: Heaven and earth will pass away: but the verb "to destroy" signifies the cessation and ending of a thing, or the passage from non-being to being. And because he says that knowledge is to be destroyed in the same way in which prophecy is to be made void: but it is certain that prophecy does not in any way remain in the homeland, but fails entirely: therefore the same judgment is to be rendered concerning theological knowledge. And finally, because the Apostle gives the reason for this cessation and destruction: For we know in part, he says, and we prophesy in part: but when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be made void. That is, whatever we now know, we know only partly through prophecy and partly through theological knowledge; and since both kinds of knowledge, being imperfect, as being obscure and lacking evidence, will be made void when the perfect and evident beatific knowledge has come: therefore the Apostle openly judges that all the knowledge which we have here of God through theological discourse does not subsist in the homeland, but ceases.

Proof second. Faith will not remain in the state of beatitude: therefore neither will our theology. The antecedent is admitted by all theologians, and is gathered from these words of the Apostle: We see now through a mirror, and in an enigma; but then face to face. The consequence is proved: our theology rests on faith; for from its articles it deduces all its conclusions: therefore, faith perishing, it is necessary that our theology also perish; for the loss of the foundation brings the ruin of the building.

It is confirmed. Faith does not remain in the homeland for this reason, because since it is obscure and lacking evidence, it is incompatible with the beatific science and clear vision of God: but our theology is likewise obscure and lacking evidence, not only by reason of state and per accidens (as the Thomists will have it), but from its intrinsic principles and from its formal notion, which I thus establish: such is the conclusion essentially and intrinsically as are the principles from which it is deduced: but the principles of our theology are intrinsically lacking in evidence: for they are the articles of faith, which, as they are articles of faith, have annexed to them lack of evidence and obscurity, since they are made known through faith and revelation alone: therefore the theological conclusion is intrinsically lacking in evidence; and consequently it cannot subsist with the beatific vision.

You will say 1. No habit is destroyed, except either per se, and for the introduction of a contrary, as the habit of temperance is dissolved by the vice of intemperance; or per accidens, and upon the cessation of the subject in which it is, or of the object about which it is, or of the act by which it is formed and nourished: but our theology can perish in the homeland in neither of these ways: therefore it does not cease, but perseveres. The major is known to the Philosophers: the minor is evident as regards both parts: for first, the beatific vision is not opposed per se to our theology, but only per accidens and by reason of the different light, of faith and of glory: second, the object is the same, and the same intellective and discursive faculty, both in the way and in the homeland: therefore, etc. — I deny the minor. As regards the first part, since the beatific vision is opposed per se to theology, as the clear is opposed to the obscure and the evident to what lacks evidence, as has often already been said, and therefore it is necessary that upon the coming of the beatific vision all our theology perish, just as at the rising of the sun the darkness is dissolved and vanishes.

You will say 2. St. Jerome judges that theological knowledge perseveres in heaven, since in the Epistola ad Paulinum, when exhorting him to the study of Sacred Scripture, he says: Let us learn on earth those things the knowledge of which will persevere with us in the heavens. And St. Chrysostom, in c. 13 of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, weighing the aforesaid words of St. Paul, says: Knowledge will not be abolished, but will cease to be imperfect: therefore they judge that theology does not fail, but perseveres in heaven. — I deny the consequence. And to St. Jerome I say that he speaks of the things known, not of knowledge itself, so that he wishes Paulinus to apply himself to the study of the mysteries, the evident and clear knowledge of which he ought to have in the heavens. To St. Chrysostom I say that he wishes our knowledge indeed not to be abolished, not because the preceding one remains, but because upon the cessation of the imperfect and obscure knowledge, a clear and evident one succeeds.

From philosophy it is established that the object of a science is said to be everything that is set before or proposed to the intellect to be known through that science: it is also called the subject, not indeed of inherence, that is, that to which some accident inheres, but of attribution, because all things with which a science deals are attributed to it, and are referred to it either as parts, or as properties, or as species, if it has any.

Note 1. First, a twofold object is commonly distinguished, namely material and formal. The former is so called not because it is corporeal and composed of physical matter, but by a certain analogy which it has with matter; for just as matter is indifferent to the various forms by which it is informed, so this is indifferent to the various sciences by which it is attained and perceived; for the same human body, v. g., can be called the object of medicine as healable, of physics as natural, and of geometry as extended. The latter, however, is that formality to be found in the material object by which the object is determined to a certain science; thus naturalness determines the human body to physics, healability to medicine, quantity to geometry, etc. Each of these is again twofold, namely adequate, or total, to which all things treated in a science are referred either as parts, or as properties, or as causes, or as effects, etc.; and inadequate or partial, which is considered from only one part of that science.

Note 2. The formal object — to pass over all its other acceptations and usages — can be distinguished as threefold, namely specificative, motive, and terminative. The specificative, or that by which, is that formality to be found in the material object, v. g., healability in the human body, which determines the object to medicine, and specifies and distinguishes that science from any other. The motive, or that because of which, is the reason by which the intellect is moved to know the object, and without which it would not apply itself to the knowledge of it; thus light can be called the object moving sight to perceive color, and premises can be said objectively to move the intellect to give assent to the conclusion: and because divine revelation, objectively proposed to the intellect, moves it to the assent of faith, it can be called the formal motive object of that assent. The terminative, however, or that which, is the whole compounded of the material and formal object, which terminates all the cognitions which are had in a science about such an object: thus the healable can be called the terminative object of medicine, because it is the reason terminating all the cognitions and conclusions of medicine. — To these add the formal notion under which, which, although the intellect does not attend to it in the object while through science it is engaged about that object, nevertheless if it were absent, it would not tend to the object through that science. Thus visibility is the reason under which the eye perceives color; for although one seeing color does not see visibility, nevertheless if color were not visible, it would not be seen by the eye. So likewise abstraction from matter is the reason under which metaphysics considers being and its properties; because although while the metaphysician considers being, and in it unity, goodness, etc., he does not attend to whether they prescind from matter; nevertheless unless they so prescinded, them

the metaphysician would not consider, for the reason that the object of metaphysics must prescind from all matter.

Note 3. Something can be said to be revealed in a twofold manner. First, formally, immediately, and explicitly; thus it is revealed that God is one in essence, and three in persons, that the divine Word is incarnate, etc. Second, virtually, mediately, and implicitly, when namely in the thing immediately revealed, another is virtually, intrinsically, and necessarily contained, or follows upon it, either as a principle, or as a property, or as an effect, which is deduced from it by reasoning; in which manner in this immediately revealed proposition: Christ is a man, these are virtually and mediately revealed: Christ is capable of laughter, of discourse, etc., because the power of laughing and of discoursing are properties inseparable from man.

These things having been premised, it must be resolved what is the object of theology, both material and formal: in the discussion of which question the foremost theologians so disagree that among them all they scarcely consent with one another. But, that what has seemed truer to the Subtle Doctor may become apparent, let there be

First conclusion. — God is the adequate object of our theology.

So the Doctor, q. 3. Prologi. n. 7.; for although there he speaks only of the object of theology in itself and insofar as it is in the divine intellect, nevertheless that he thinks the same about the theology which is in us, I shall establish below.

Therefore the conclusion is proved. That is the adequate object of a science which contains all the truths, and to which are referred all things which are treated in it: but God virtually contains all truths, and to Him are referred all things which are treated in theology: therefore He is its adequate object.

The minor is proved. Whatever is handed down in theology regards God subsisting, operating, and producing, either in the order of the Divinity — and this is the First book of the Sentences; or in the order of nature, by creating, moderating, and destining things to their ends through means suited to each — and this the Second book contains; or in the order of grace, by supplying supernatural means to men for attaining the supernatural end — and about these the Third book disputes. Finally, in the order of glory, by decreeing to each one a reward or punishments according to merits and demerits. — Or, as our Aureolus says, q. 1. Prologi art. 4., since theology, he says, is about God and about divine things, some things can be called divine by essence, some by participation; some are called divine by assumption, as Christ and His humanity: some indeed by creation and governance, as the whole world comprising every creature: some indeed by precept and prohibition, as virtues and vices: some indeed by institution, as the Sacraments: some indeed by final direction, as the beatific vision and love; by which it openly stands that all things which are treated in theology are referred to God as to the adequate object.

It is confirmed. By the refutation of the other principal opinions: First indeed, the object of theology is not things and signs, as the Master of the Sentences asserts, book one, dist. 1., understanding by the name of signs the things which are symbols of others; whether meanwhile they effect what they signify, as the Sacraments; or only signify and prefigure, as the figures of the Old Testament which signified the mysteries of the new law. This opinion, I say, is deservedly rejected by all. Then because things in themselves are considered by physics or metaphysics, whose office it is to investigate the nature and properties of things; insofar, however, as they have the notion of a sign, they are considered either by grammar or by logic, whose office it is to unfold the signification of names and things: therefore things and signs are not the proper object of theology. Then because theology, according to the etymology of the name, is speech or knowledge about God; and therefore things and signs cannot be its object, except insofar as they are appropriated to God, and employed to signify divine things: and so God is more fittingly established as the object than things and signs. — Secondly, neither can meritorious work nor the salvation of man fittingly be assigned as the object of theology, as Durandus wished, q. 1. et 5. Prologi. Then because the things which are treated in theology are not referred to meritorious work, e.g., the unity of essence, the trinity of persons, etc.: indeed meritorious works are ordered to something else; for they are considered as they are from God and tend into God: Then because even if there were no meritorious work, and no salvation to be hoped for, theology could nonetheless remain safe; for an Angel or a wayfaring man, not illumined, could deduce theological conclusions from the objects revealed to him: therefore, etc. — Thirdly, finally, neither is Christ, insofar as He is God-man, legitimately established as the object of theology, as St. Bonaventure wished, q. 1. Prologi, and many others with him: Then because, as the Doctor says, if Christ were the adequate object of theology, it would follow that four propositions would not be theological; namely, the necessary propositions about the Person of the Father and of the Holy Spirit; such as: The Father generates, The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; nor even the contingent truths which are formed about them, for example: The Father creates with the Son: The Holy Spirit was temporally sent to the Apostles, and is infused by grace into justified men. — Likewise neither would the necessary propositions about the triune and one God be true; for example, God omnipotent, and immense, etc.; nor the contingent ones, for example, God creates, orders, and rules the world, etc.; but this is absurd: therefore also that from which it follows. The consequence is clear; for no truth belongs to any science, except because it looks to its object, either as its subjective part, or as an integral or essential part, or finally as its property. But neither the Father, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the Trinity of persons is Christ, nor a subjective or essential or integral part of Christ, nor are they His properties: therefore the truths about them would not be properly theological if Christ were the adequate object of theology. The minor is clear, because Christ as God-man is not deemed to comprehend the Father and the Holy Spirit, for He is a person distinct from them. — Moreover, since Christ involves and expresses at once the divine and human nature, if He were the adequate object of theology, since this must be prior at least in nature and concept to all the particular objects which it comprehends, and which are referred to it, it would follow that according to the human nature He would be prior to the Father and the Holy Spirit: but no Catholic ought to or can assert this. — Finally, Christ as man is considered by the natural sciences; by metaphysics indeed, insofar as He is a being; by physics insofar as He is corporeal, etc.; and therefore He could not be established as the object of theology, except precisely insofar as He is man-God, and so the Deity would be the principal reason why He is established as the object of theology. Therefore not Christ, but God Himself is legitimately assigned as the adequate object of theology.

The Bishop of Lincoln replies, that Christ, to be sure, precisely considered and according to the divine and human nature alone, is not rightly assigned as the adequate object of theology: but well if He is considered according to a threefold unity: either of essence, which He has with the Father and the Holy Spirit; or of person, which He has with the divine and human nature; or of head, which He has with the members of the Church: for nothing, he says, is treated in theology which is not referred back to one or other of those unities. — But truly neither by this reason can Christ be assigned as the adequate object of theology; since, as has been said, all the propositions, both necessary and contingent, which are made about the Father and the Holy Spirit, would not by this reason be theological; since they cannot be referred back to Christ according to one or other of those unities. Then from this it would follow that Christ could be said to be prior to the Father; since the adequate object is prior with the priority of concept to the particular objects contained under it. And so it follows that God Himself is assigned as the adequate object of theology.

You will say 1. Many things are handed down in theology which ought not and cannot be reduced to God, e.g., vices and sins: therefore God is not the adequate object of theology. — I distinguish the antecedent. That they ought not to be reduced directly, I concede; for they are not means ordered to attaining God, indeed they remove from His possession; that they ought not to be reduced at least indirectly, I deny; for vices, although they do not have God as author, because they do not have an efficient cause, but a deficient one, in that they are not effects, but rather defects of human liberty deviating from the right path; nevertheless they regard God as the permitting, ordering, and punishing cause. For God, on account of His infinite liberty, and lest He coerce our will, permits sins to be committed out of wisdom, orders them to some good out of providence, and punishes them out of justice; for as St. Augustine says, tractate 112. on Ioannem, The good God uses evils well, and makes good things from evils, and makes the good to be made from the evil, and the good to be discerned from the evil.

You will say 2. Any science supposes, but does not prove, the existence of its object: but theology proves the existence of God, as will be clear below: therefore God is not its object. — I distinguish the major. That a science does not prove the existence of its object a priori and through a proper and intrinsic means, I concede: that it does not prove it a posteriori through an extrinsic means, or through its effects, I deny the major. — Similarly I distinguish the minor. That it proves the existence of God a priori and from its own principles, namely the articles of faith, I deny: that it proves it a posteriori through effects, and from the principles of the other natural sciences, in order to beat back the madness of the Atheists, I concede: for the existence of God, as it is a supernatural being, in the manner in which it is considered by theology, is not proved by any reasoning, but is believed by faith.

Second conclusion. — The formal object by which, that is, the specificative and terminative object of theology, is God, under the notion of the Deity.

The Doctor proves it. Quaest. 3. Prologi num. 7.: God is the specificative object of theology under that notion under which He virtually contains all the truths which are treated in it: but He contains them under the notion of the Deity: for all the truths which are handed down and considered in theology are either of necessary or of contingent things; and all these God virtually contains through the formal notion of the Deity.

— The necessary ones indeed; for the reason why God is one, triune, infinite, eternal, etc., is the Deity itself; and through the Deity itself, evidently known, any of the blessed can demonstrate all things which belong to God; for the Deity itself is the fount and root of all things which are in God; and therefore it is likewise the reason by which it can be proved that they belong to God. — The contingent ones also; for that God is creator, sanctifier, glorifier, or something of those things which are contingently attributed either to the Father, or to the Son, or to the Holy Spirit, singly, or to the whole Trinity together, these belong to Him by no other reason than the Deity itself, which, since it is the first and fundamental reason of all things which are in God, also virtually contains the truth and knowability of all those things which are affirmed of God.

Second. The noblest habit ought to have the noblest object, and under the noblest notion: but among the habits of the intellect, theology is the noblest; among knowable objects God is the noblest; and the Deity itself is the most excellent among all the divine notions, since it is the root and foundation of the others: therefore God under the notion of the Deity is the formal object of theology.

Third. That is the specificative formal object by which theology is distinguished from the other sciences regarding God: but by the sole notion of the Deity theology is distinguished from metaphysics, which likewise considers God, not under the notion of the Deity, but under the notion of first cause, of infinite being, of ultimate end, etc., as is clear from 1. et 12. Metaphysicorum: therefore it is necessary that theology contemplate God under the notion of the Deity.

Fourth. God is the object of theology under that notion under which He is set before faith and the beatific vision; for theology depends on faith and is ordered to the beatific vision, and those cognitions succeed one another: but all confess that God is the object of the beatific vision under the notion of the Deity; since the blessed see God as He is; He is likewise the object of faith under the same notion; and that either immediately, e.g., in those articles of faith which are immediately about the one or triune God; or mediately, namely in those articles which concern the incarnation, nativity, passion, etc., of the Word; for those articles are not about a pure man but about the man-God. Therefore God under the notion of the Deity is the object of theology.

Fifth. Finally, that is the specificative formal object of theology which, being posited, theology is posited, and which, being removed, it perishes, even with all the others remaining: but even if God had not been either Redeemer, or Creator, or Glorifier, nor had any of those appellations which He obtains in the order of nature, or of grace, or of glory, theology would nonetheless have remained safe: since, these being set aside, the theologian could have elicited various conclusions about God, and proved that God is eternal, because He is immutable; infinite, because He is being by essence; intelligent, because He is a spiritual substance: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. God cannot be known by us wayfarers under the notion of the Deity: therefore neither can He be the specificative object of our theology under the same. The antecedent is proved: God cannot be known under the notion of the Deity, unless His essential predicates are known: but these cannot be known by us, as is certain: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the antecedent. That God cannot be known by us under the notion of the Deity distinctly, intuitively, and in itself, I concede: that He cannot be known confusedly, abstractively, and through alien species, which lead us into the cognition of that divinity, I deny; for, as St. Paul says ad Rom. 1., His invisible things, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity. Therefore His Deity and attributes can be known through the species of creatures, at least abstractively, by us wayfarers. But this abstractive cognition suffices for the notion of a scientific object; otherwise we could have no scientific cognition of substance, not only spiritual, but even corporeal; since (as the Doctor says, q. 1. Prologi n. 11.) we know no substance in this state distinctly and through its own species, but only confusedly and through the habitude and order to some effect proper to it.

You will say 2. A science ought to equal and comprehend its object, and to know it only as much as it is knowable: but our theology, since it is finite, cannot equal God, infinite under the notion of the Deity: therefore under this notion He is not its object.

I distinguish the major. That science must equal its object with an arithmetical equality, by which a two-foot line, for example, is equal to another two-foot line, I deny: with an equality of proportion, that is, that it knows the object just insofar as it is knowable in this way and by this science, I concede; and in this way our theology equals God under the notion of Deity: because it attains and knows him insofar as he is knowable from revealed principles. But that this equality of proportion suffices for science, and that arithmetical equality is not required, is evident; otherwise metaphysics would scientifically know nothing about God as the supreme being and first cause; indeed, neither would the science of the Blessed be perfect: for neither of them can equal God arithmetically, since each science is created and finite, whereas God is infinite and uncreated.

You will say 3. The adequately specifying object of some science must be predicated of all the special objects which are considered by that science: but Deity is not predicated of the Angels, of Man, of the Laws, of the Sacraments, of the Vices, of the Virtues, which are considered in theology: therefore this is not the specifying object of theology.

I distinguish the major. That it must be predicated either in the direct or in the oblique case, I concede: always in the direct case, I deny. To the minor, I say that Deity is indeed not predicated of all the aforementioned in the direct case; for it is true that those things are not God; but it is predicated in the oblique case; for they are either effects of God, or means conducing to God as to a supernatural end.

You will say 4. The specifying and formal object must be the cause and formal notion of all the properties which are demonstrated of the object: but Deity is not the cause nor the formal notion of innascibility, which, for example, is in the Father; otherwise the Son and the Holy Spirit, since they have the Deity, would be formally innascible; which is false. Therefore, etc.

I distinguish the major. Either per se and immediately, or through another in which it is found and by which it is determined, I concede: always per se, I deny. For naturalness, for example, which is the specifying formal object of Physics, is the notion and formal cause of all the properties which are demonstrated of the human body; not indeed per se, but insofar as it is determined to such a body through humanity.

Similarly I distinguish the minor. That Deity is not the notion why innascibility belongs to the Father per se and precisely insofar as it is divinity, I concede; mediately and by reason of another, that is, insofar as it is determined through the relation of paternity to the first divine supposit, I deny.

You will say 5. That is not the formal object of theology to which alone the formal notion does not belong, under which theology considers its object. But this notion does not belong to the Deity alone. Proof: The notion under which theology considers its object is the truthfulness of God in revealing, as will be proved in the following conclusion: but this belongs not to the Deity alone, but also to anything supernatural; for every supernatural being is revealable just as much as the Deity itself: therefore Deity is not the formal object.

I distinguish the major. That the notion under which does not belong to it alone proximately, let it pass; ultimately and remotely, I deny. And with the minor likewise distinguished, I deny the consequence. For although this notion can proximately belong to every supernatural being immediately and proximately; nevertheless it is certain that it must principally and ultimately be traced back to the Deity itself: whence the Deity is not only a revealable object, but is also the source of all revealable things; and it is revealable per se, whereas the rest are revealable through it, and by reason of it.

You will say 6. This conclusion openly contradicts the Subtle Doctor: for he teaches in q. 3. of the Prologue n. 7. that God under the notion of Deity is indeed the object of theology in itself, or insofar as he is in the divine intellect: but in n. 12. he affirms that the object of our theology is infinite being, for he says:

For our theology, insofar as it is ours, there need not be given a first object, except the first known; from which, once known, the first truths are immediately known. But that first known is infinite being, because this is the most perfect concept which we can have of him, etc. therefore he judges that infinite being is the specifying formal object of our theology: not indeed the Deity itself.

I distinguish the consequence. That he judges infinite being to be the object first specifying and as regards the mode of knowledge, so that God is known by us earlier and more easily under the notion of infinite being than under the notion of the Deity itself, I concede: as regards the truth of the matter and the substantial notion of the specifying object, which from itself must virtually contain all the truths which are treated in the science, and to which all things which are in it must be reduced, I deny.

The Doctor therefore does not will that the notion of infinite being be absolutely the formal object of theology, whether considered according to itself and in the divine intellect, or in our intellect; for he had previously disapproved and attacked this in n. 9., saying:

That God under the notion of infinite or necessary being is not legitimately established as the object of theology, because as such he cannot cause all theological truths, and be the means for demonstrating that they belong to God; for infinity and necessity of being is not the notion why God is One and Triune, why the Son is generated, why the Holy Spirit is breathed forth; otherwise, since we naturally know God to be infinite and necessary being, we would also naturally know God to be Triune, the Son to be generated, and the Holy Spirit to proceed by spiration; for once the cause is known, that can be known to which it leads in knowledge. But it is false that we can naturally know the mystery of the Trinity, as all admit.

But the Doctor through the aforementioned words in the objection intends only this, either that the notion of infinite being is the principal and better-known concept which we can have of God in this state; for since God is variously conceived by us, now under the notion of first cause, now under the notion of necessary being, now under the notion of the omnipotent, now under the notion of infinite being, the Doctor judges that the notion of infinite being is the principal and nobler among all these notions under which God can be conceived by us wayfarers.

Or in a word, the Doctor judges that God under the notion of infinite being is the object of our theology comparatively with respect to the mode of our knowledge; because he is known by us more easily and more evidently under this notion than under the notion of Deity; not however absolutely and according to the essential notion of the adequate formal object, namely insofar as it is the first notion and as it were the root of all the truths which are treated in theology: for these belong to the Deity alone, as has been proved.

But that this is the mind of the Doctor openly appears, for he adds:

Nevertheless, because our theology is about necessary things, it is about the same things about which theology in itself is, therefore a first subject is assigned to it as regards this, that it contains truths in itself: and this same is the subject of our theology which is the first subject of theology in itself: but because that is not evident to us, therefore it does not contain these truths as known to us. And proposing to himself this objection: Therefore God under the notion of Deity is not the first object of our theology, he says: I answer, it is true, it is not the first subject giving evidence, but the first subject containing all the truths, and born to give evidence, if it itself were known. Therefore he speaks comparatively and with regard to our mode of conceiving; not however absolutely and with regard to the substantial and fundamental notion of the adequate formal object; and consequently neither does he contradict us, nor we him; for we speak of the adequate formal object considered according to itself; he indeed of the object as it is more evidently attained by us. As also Smising consents, q. 2. n. 58.

Third conclusion. — The formal object by which, or the motive of our theology, is the truth, or the truthfulness of God in revealing, insofar as it is applied and becomes known through theological discourse.

Proof. Our theology does not rest on the evidence of its object, but on the testimony and revelation of God; for it deduces its conclusions from the principles and articles of faith: but the authority and certainty of testimony is resolved into the truthfulness of the witness, as into the motive of the assent which one gives to testimony: therefore the truthfulness of God is the motive of the assent which we give to a theological conclusion; not indeed truthfulness alone, otherwise theological assent would not differ from the assent of faith, which is given only on account of the truthfulness of God revealing: but truthfulness applied through theological discourse.

Secondly. Our theology must be borne toward God by some special motive and singular notion which does not belong to others: therefore, since the theology of the Blessed is borne toward God clearly and evidently, and deduces its conclusions from evident principles; while faith is borne toward God to be known obscurely and on account of the sole authority of the one revealing: it is necessary that our theology, as it were middle between the two, be borne toward God on account of his truthfulness in revealing applied through discourse, so that through the obscurity of revelation it may differ from the theology of the Blessed; and through discourse be distinguished from the knowledge of faith.

Thirdly. Through our theology we know God more certainly and more truly than through any natural science, for instance Physics and Metaphysics: but this greater certainty and firmer truth does not come from elsewhere than this, that the natural sciences rest on the light of reason alone, while theology rests on the testimony of God, which is far firmer and truer than any natural light of reason: therefore the testimony of God revealing is the motive object of our theology.

You will say 1. The formal motive notion of the object must be intrinsic to it: but the truthfulness of God revealing is extrinsic to the object of theology: therefore it is not its motive notion.

I distinguish the major. In the natural sciences, which deduce their conclusions from evident principles and are borne toward the object on account of its evidence, I concede: in theology, which deduces its conclusions from the articles of faith, whose truth and certainty depends on the truthfulness of God testifying and revealing, I deny.

You will say 2. That truthfulness is resolved into the Deity, for that testimony is true and infallible for this reason, because it is divine: therefore the Deity itself is also the formal motive notion of theology.

I distinguish the antecedent. That it is resolved into the Deity as into the ultimate and remote motive, I concede: as into the immediate and proximate, I deny: for the first motive why I assent to some revealed proposition is the truth of God in revealing; the mediate one, however, is his infinite goodness and wisdom, by which it comes about that he can neither be deceived nor deceive: the ultimate one, however, is the Deity itself. For a theological conclusion is on that account judged true, because it is deduced from principles revealed by God: on that account these revealed principles are certain, because God is truthful and cannot lie: on that account he cannot lie, because since he is infinitely wise he cannot be deceived, and since he is infinitely good he cannot deceive: on that account, however, he is infinitely good and wise, because he is God: and so the truth and certainty of a theological conclusion is ultimately resolved into the notion of Deity.

Now it is already sufficiently and more than sufficiently evident how great is the necessity and majesty of our theology; it remains for us to examine closely its genuine characteristics and dispositions. These are indeed various; but we shall touch upon and weigh the principal ones in the following questions.