Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

There is a celebrated and famous controversy between the Subtle Doctor and the Angelic Doctor, and their followers, concerning the resolution of the present question. For St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 8. art. 1., affirms that from the operation of God in all things His substantial presence in them is rightly and necessarily inferred: but the Subtle Doctor, in 1. dist. 37. q. unica, denies that this is a legitimate inference; and contends that if per impossibile God, for example, were present in Heaven only through essence, He could nevertheless operate in the other parts of the universe; and thus from His operation somewhere it does not follow by a formal consequence that He is there substantially and essentially present: and, that this dispute may be settled more evidently,

Note 1. Agents, considered according to their varying mode of operating, can be distinguished into two kinds. For some act upon both a proximate and a remote subject with the same potency and an undivided action; but more perfectly upon the proximate than upon the remote. Thus, for example, the Sun illuminates the celestial and sublunary bodies with the same diffusion of light and through the same illuminative power: but these less than those. There are, however, some which not only operate upon a proximate and a remote subject with a distinct action; but also with a distinct potency, one of which is so subordinated to the other that the latter does not act upon a distant object unless the former has first acted upon the proximate medium; thus, for example, the Sun through its illuminative power first fills the air with light: then through its substantial power it concurs in the production of living things, especially of certain imperfect ones, and also in the formation of minerals.

Note 2. An agent, by respect to the patient upon which it immediately operates and which it reaches, can again be distinguished as twofold; for one is immediate with the immediacy of power, another with the immediacy of supposit. The first is that which has from its own nature a power of acting proper to itself, and not begged from another. Thus the Sun obtains its illuminative power from itself; the other celestial bodies, however, borrow it from it. Hence it comes about that the higher an agent is, the more immediate it is with the immediacy of power; and therefore God is the most immediate agent, because He has the power of acting from Himself, and altogether independent, begged from none. — An agent, however, immediate with the immediacy of supposit, is that between which and the produced effect no other co-acting supposit mediates; from which it comes about that among created agents, the lower an agent is, the more immediate it is.

Note 3. Two diverse kinds of operations are distinguished in God, some of which are immanent, so named because the term produced by being remains outside the bosom of the divinity, such as the generation of the eternal Word, the spiration of the Holy Spirit, the divine intellections, volitions, etc.; others transient, so called because through them God produces something outside Himself; such as the creation of the world, its conservation, etc. The discourse here is not about the former, but about the latter, namely, whether from them it can be gathered by a formal consequence that God is present somewhere, because He operates there.

Only conclusion. — If per impossibile God were only essentially and substantially in Heaven, He could nevertheless operate with the immediacy of power in the other parts of the universe.

This is the teaching of the Doctor in the passage cited above.

It is proved first: A creature can act, and produce something, where it is not immediately, nor substantially present. Therefore much more could God operate where He would not be substantially present. The consequence is clear, for the power of God is greater than that of a creature. The antecedent is proved by various examples; for the Sun, although it resides substantially only in the fourth Heaven, nevertheless diffuses its power through all the parts of the world. Likewise the Magnet moves and attracts distant iron, Amber draws straws, the Basilisk kills distant men by its gaze, the Torpedo numbs the hand of the fisherman touching the net in which it is enclosed, and other things similar to these, by which in our Physica, Disputation, De causa efficiente, we proved that a created cause can act upon a distant object, without acting upon the medium with the same action, and we satisfied all these things that could be objected against the truth. Therefore, since from the operation of a created agent upon some patient its intimate presence according to substance does not necessarily follow; much less should the substantial presence of God be inferred by a formal consequence from His operation somewhere. — It is confirmed from the Doctor, ibid. n. 2.: A secondary cause therefore cannot act upon a distant object without acting upon the medium, either because there are in it two potencies and operations, one of which must be terminated at the medium before the other extends itself to the distant object; or because the same potency cannot produce a perfect effect in a distant object unless it has first produced a less perfect one in the nearer medium, as was said in Note 1: but in God there are neither those several subordinated potencies, one of which acts upon the remote, another upon the proximate; nor does He need, in order to produce the most perfect effect, to have first produced a less perfect one by way of disposition. Therefore, if He were not everywhere, He could act and produce upon a distant object, even by in no way acting upon the medium.

The adversaries reply: that an adequate cause has not been assigned in the major: for a cause cannot act upon a distant object without acting upon the medium, not only for this reason, that there is in it a subordination of potency and operation, but also for other reasons, to be assigned in the objections. But we shall solve them all in the responses.

Secondly: The omnipotence of God is His will itself, upon whose willing the production of the thing follows; For all things whatsoever He willed, the Lord has made in Heaven and on earth, says the Psalmist: or, as St. Paul speaks, He works all things according to the counsel of His will: but the will can will that something be done in a distant place, without willing that it be done in a nearer place: therefore God could act where He would not be; and thus from His operation His substantial presence cannot be formally inferred. The major is evident from the aforementioned places of Sacred Scripture, and will be more evidently established when treating of the Omnipotence of God. The minor is also evident, for if by my volition I could produce some thing, it is certain that I could will that it be made in a distant place, even if nothing were produced in the medium.

Thirdly: Before the production of the world, God was not present to any thing; but some thing had first to be produced by Him, before He would become present to it: therefore substantial presence to some thing is not a condition necessarily prerequired for the production of the thing itself: nor is it rightly inferred from it that God is substantially present to it. It is confirmed. By nature the creature first terminates the act of divine power, before God is present to it; for presence, since it is a relation, supposes a term and a foundation: therefore the production of a thing does not suppose the presence of the substance producing, nor is the latter legitimately inferred from the former.

Fourthly: The greater activity an agent has, the more it acts upon a distant object; for the greater fire is, the farther it diffuses its heat: but God is the most powerful agent, and of infinite power: therefore if per impossibile He were distant from some thing, He could act upon it no less, otherwise His power would be determined and limited to a place: and so it would not be infinite, nor divine.

They reply: That the major is indeed true, not absolutely but on this condition, that the agent first diffuses its power into the proximate rather than into the remote: thus, they say, fire does not diffuse its heat into a distant subject except by the benefit of the intervening air. — On the contrary: That mediation does not arise from the intrinsic notion of the agent, and inasmuch as it is an agent; but from one or other of those conditions which we assigned in the second Note; which conditions, since they have no place in God, do not prevent Him from being able to act upon a distant object independently of the medium. And since the Sun, for example, concurs in the formation of minerals and living things, which it does not form in the intervening air, it is evident that it has some action upon the remote object which it does not have upon the proximate subject. Therefore it is clear that the immediacy of subject and agent is not necessarily to be desired for the production of a thing. — All these aforementioned reasons are confirmed by the example of an Angel. One Angel can impress upon another some spiritual effect, even if they are distant from one another: but this impression is made independently of the medium, as being incapable of such a spiritual effect, because it is corporeal, as St. Thomas teaches, prima parte q. 107. art. 1. ad 3., where he affirms that Angels speak to one another, not only by willing that his own concept be made known to the other, but also, he says, by exciting the other to attend through some intelligible power impressed upon him, by which his intellect may be moved, just as the sense is moved by the sensible. Moreover, art. 2. ad 11., he teaches that Angels infuse knowledge into separated souls, by infusing, namely, intelligible species into them independently, he says, of a different medium: therefore at least an Angel, even in the opinion of the adversaries, can act upon a distant object without acting upon the medium; nor is it necessary that two spirits, speaking to one another, be so entirely immediate that not even an atom of air intervenes, as Suarez says in Metaphysica, Disputatione 18. num. 16., and consequently God could much more accomplish this, if He were absent from some thing.

You will object 1. Sacred Scripture gathers the divine presence from the operation of God somewhere: therefore it is rightly inferred from it. The antecedent is proved, first indeed from the words of the Psalmist, who, when he had said in Psalmo 138, Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? immediately infers, If I ascend into Heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present; and, opening the reason of God's ubiquity with these words, he adds: For there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me: but by the hand and right hand of God, His operation is frequently signified in Scripture: therefore Scripture gathers the presence of God in all things from His operation. — It is confirmed from Actuum 17. cap., where St. Paul, disputing with the Athenians, concludes that God is not far from each one of us, because, he says, in Him we live, and move, and are: or as Pagninus and others render it, for through Him we live, whence the gloss: because He operates in us that we live: therefore the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of David and Paul (says Molina here, Disputatione 2.) must have rendered the reason inept, and made an inefficacious argument for proving the presence of God in things: and so, he says, it must be confessed that from the immediate operation of God in some place the presence of God in things is concluded more than enough, and the contrary opinion not so. — I answer 1. by denying the antecedent, and to the first proof of it I say that the Psalmist intends there only that God is everywhere through knowledge and providence; so that there is no one who can escape His divine ordination and disposition. — To the confirmation I say that St. Paul wills only that, since we live, and move, and are in God, it follows that He is not so far from our knowledge that we cannot easily attain to the knowledge of Him. But the Apostle does not will that the substantial presence of God is rightly gathered from His operation. — I answer 2. that although Sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers sometimes infer the substantial presence of God from His operation in things, this inference is not made through an intrinsic locus, but through an extrinsic one: namely, either because there is no greater reason that He operates everywhere than that He is present everywhere: or inasmuch as, given that it is established from elsewhere that He is present wherever He operates, it follows that He is everywhere, if He operates everywhere. And so that argument is from concomitants, such as this would be: God is infinitely powerful, therefore infinitely knowing: not that infinite knowledge directly follows from infinite power: but because knowledge and divine power, since they are perfections of the divine essence, identified with it, and hence infinite, it rightly follows that if divine power is infinite, divine knowledge is also infinite; namely, by reason of a third, that is, by reason of the divine essence, in which both agree. — Add that Sacred Scripture does not always produce an efficacious argument, but sometimes also a probable one for insinuating the truth; for it sometimes argues from human authority, which is only a probable means. Thus St. Paul in the same chapter proves that God is not like wood and stones, by the testimony of the Poet saying that we are the offspring of God: as if he said: from your authors, human nature, which is the image and offspring of God, is far more excellent than the wood and stones of which your idols consist: therefore much more does God far exceed these. Likewise to Titus, chapter one, he proves the vices of the Cretans by the very testimony of their own writer saying: The Cretans are always liars. — From these it is clear how utterly inept and ridiculous is the censure of Molina, with which he fulminates against the opinion of the Subtle Doctor; for although from the authority of Scripture it were inferred that the substantial presence of God is to be gathered from His operation, this inference would nonetheless not press the opinion of the Doctor: since the Doctor contends that the presence of God cannot be gathered from operation, because no natural reason can evince this; although perhaps some authority might persuade it.

You will object 2. The active and the passive are related as act and potency: but act and potency necessarily require presence and union in order to cause something: therefore also the agent and the patient require intimate and substantial presence. — I distinguish the major: they are related as act to be produced and productive potency, I concede: as informing act and potency to be informed, I deny. I distinguish the minor similarly; act to be produced and productive potency require intimate union and presence, I deny; for the power of creating, for example, has for its corresponding act a thing only in possible being; and hence it cannot be really present to it: informing act and potency to be informed require the presence of the act itself, because from their mutual union something one must be made, just as a physical body, for example, is made from the union of matter and form, I concede. And so this objection does not touch the present difficulty.

You will object 3. Just as being as such is related to operating as such, so being here is related to operating here: therefore just as operating as such implies a contradiction unless being as such is first supposed, so operating here implies a contradiction unless being here is supposed. — I deny the major, because being as such is related to operating as such as first act to second; but it implies a contradiction that there be a second act without the first being presupposed: but being here is not related to operating here as first act to second, because being here only signifies the relation of the presence of a thing in a place, which relation of itself is not active, nor a condition necessarily prerequired for operation, since a thing can exercise its power and produce something where it is not.

You will object 4. Action is a kind of motion: but it is repugnant that motion be in the extreme term unless it has first been in the middle, as is clear in local motion: therefore it is repugnant that any action be done upon a distant object unless it first be done in the medium. — The major can be denied: for not every action is motion; for motion supposes a movable subject, but creative action, for example, has no real subject which may be said to be moved and changed: but I deny the minor; for at least by divine power motion can be made in an instant, since motion is a passage from one extreme to the other extreme, and for this passage to occur here, it is absolutely not necessary that the movable be in the middle before it reaches the term.

The modern Thomists object 5.: An agent which operates in all things through a power not diffused from itself, but intrinsic to itself and identified with itself, must be present immediately and according to its substance in all things: but God operates in all things through a power not diffused from itself, but intrinsic to itself and identified with itself: therefore, etc. The major, they say, is supposed from 7. Physicorum, where it is said that the mover and the moved must be together: with this difference, however, that an agent acting through a power diffused from itself need not be present immediately and according to its substance to the subject upon which it acts: but only mediately, and by reason of the power which it transmits into it through some mediating supposit, as is clear in the Sun, which, since it acts through a power diffused from itself, is not substantially present in the bowels of the earth when it produces gold and other metals: but an agent acting through a power intrinsic to itself and not diffused from itself must necessarily become present immediately and according to its substance to the subject upon which it acts, and touch the patient itself suppositally; as is clear in fire, which although it acts upon a distant subject through heat diffused from itself, nevertheless through heat intrinsic to itself acts only upon the subject which it immediately touches. The minor, however, is proved: God in all things per se primo produces and conserves their being; for entity is that which is most intimate to any thing, and which inheres in all things most deeply, since it is formal with respect to all things which are in the thing: but He cannot reach that per se primo through some power diffused from Himself, but only through a power intrinsic to Himself and really identified with Himself: therefore God operates in all things through a power not diffused from Himself, but intrinsic to Himself and identified with Himself. The major is clear, both because being, since it is the most universal effect, must per se primo be reduced to the most universal cause, namely God; and also because, just as to ignite is the proper effect of fire, because fire is by essence fire, and therefore it belongs to it to make something ignited; so also, since God is being by essence, His proper effect is every participated being. — Add that since God can annihilate any created thing by the mere suspension of His influx, it is necessary that the influx of God per se primo reach the being of every created thing. The minor, however, is proved: a power which reaches being according to the proper notion of being must be creative and productive of the whole creatable being, and hence infinite, as is taught in the Metaphysica: but every power diffused from God is finite, as being caused by God and received in some subject: therefore God cannot per se primo cause and conserve being in individual things through some power diffused from Himself, but only through a power intrinsic to Himself and really identified with Himself, and consequently He cannot operate anywhere unless He essentially exists there. — I answer to the individual parts of the objection, and first indeed I distinguish the major: a corporeal and finite agent, which acts through influx, must be present immediately and according to substance to the things in which it operates, let it pass; a spiritual and infinite agent, which produces all things at the mere command and nod of its will, must be present in such a way, I deny; since, as we have already said, it can will that a thing be made in a distant place, just as it can will that it be made in a nearer place; but God is not a corporeal and finite agent, but infinite and spiritual; and consequently He does not require such presence. — To the proof of the minor I say that the entity of a thing considered precisely is not the only formal term of the productive action of God, but the thing itself total, and according to all the other predicates intrinsic to it; thus a man, who would be created immediately by God, would not be only the term of that creation according to the formal concept of being, but also according to the concept of animal, rational, risible, and of the others which concur to the integrity and constitution of man: and hence the doctrine of the Thomists, by which they contend that created being has the formal notion of term of divine production, seems less philosophical. — To the major, however, probative of that minor, I deny that created being is the most universal effect, and proper to the most universal cause alone; for any particular and secondary cause also truly produces its effect according to the formal notion of being, so that the being of that effect is attributed to the secondary cause as well as to the first. — To the minor, however, of that proof, I deny that the creative and productive power of creatable being must be infinite; for the power must be as great as the effect to be produced, and as great as the distance from the term a quo to the term ad quem; but no created effect is infinite, as is clear; likewise there is no infinite distance between nothing and created being, as the Doctor proves in 2. sentent., and hence the creative power need not be necessarily infinite.

Finally they object the authorities of several Holy Fathers, by which they gather the presence of God in all things from His operation in them. Thus Anastasius Sinaita, book 2, De rectis fidei Catholicae dogmatibus, has this: For as long as no one, if he is absent, works a work: therefore since God at no time does not effect whatever of those things which come to be, and governs and disposes all things by His continual conservation, it is wholly necessary to confess that God is in all things. Likewise Hugo Victorinus, lib. 7. Erud. Theolog., cap. 19., speaks thus: When we see that the effect of divine power is nowhere lacking, why do we doubt that the same power of God is in all things? But if the power of God is everywhere, since the power of God is not other than God, it is clear that God is nowhere lacking. Finally Anselm in Monologio, cap. 22.: Since, he says, nothing can be or be conserved without God, we are compelled to say that God is everywhere and always. — I answer that some of the Holy Fathers do indeed gather the presence of God in things from His operation; but through an extrinsic locus and a material consequence; not, however, through an intrinsic locus and a formal consequence. As if they said, God is everywhere, and therefore He operates everywhere; as has already been said.