Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

Although divine Immutability imports and signifies an intrinsic and positive perfection, nevertheless it is expressed by a negative name, namely, so that from the negation of change, which is more easily known and accessible to us, it may be grasped and become known.

Note 1. Immutability can be distinguished in as many ways as its adversary, change, is manifold: but change in general is distinguished as twofold: namely, intrinsic and extrinsic: each of which can in turn be divided into three heads.

For the first, says St. Bonaventure, in the cited place, q. 2., is said in three ways: in one way, from being to being, and this is change according to accident, and is called variation: in another way, from being simply into being in potency, or in a qualified sense, and this is change according to form, and is called corruption. In another way, there is a change from being into simply non-being, and this is according to the whole substance of the thing, and is called conversion.

In accordance with this it is to be understood that immutability is said in three ways: in one way, invariability; in another, incorruptibility; and in a third, inconvertibility. The second likewise can occur in three ways; for something is said to be changed extrinsically, either through a new termination of its operation; thus sight is said to be changed at the change of a new visible object; or through the termination of a relation, thus a white wall is said to be changed while another equally white wall is erected, which terminates its relation of likeness: or finally through sustentation and hypostatic union; in which way a man would be said to be changed, if his hypostasis were to take on the individual nature of another man.

Note 2. A thing is properly said to be changed only through intrinsic change, namely when it acquires or loses something intrinsic; for a wall, e. g., is not said to be changed when it becomes seen from not being seen, but rather is said to be denominatively seen by a vision extrinsic to itself: or when it is called right or left from the right or left of an animal: for whatever is changed, by that very fact formally by which it is changed, is disposed intrinsically otherwise than before: but to be disposed otherwise is the same as to be in a diverse manner; and hence the same as having in itself, or not having, something other than before, which was previously possessed or not possessed.

Note 3. Three kinds of intrinsic change can most especially befall a spiritual nature: The first is according to entity, inasmuch as a thing can pass from non-being to being, or from being to non-being: The second mutability occurs through an arriving or departing substantial or accidental form, by whose arrival or departure the thing is said to be changed; The third mutability occurs according to the operation of the intellect and of the will, which are said to be changed either by succession, when namely one succeeds another: or by contrariety and opposition, when someone, e. g., now cognizes as false that very thing which before he judged to be true; or now wills that very thing, and with the same circumstances, which before he did not will. But that this threefold intrinsic change must be kept away from God, the three following conclusions will show.

First conclusion. — God is wholly immutable according to entity. This is sufficiently evident from what was said about eternity and the necessity of being; and it is proved by all those places of Sacred Scripture in which God is celebrated as necessary, immortal, and unfailing Being: Thus in Exodi, 3. it is said: I am who am, namely necessarily, absolutely, and unfailingly. And in Psalmo 101.: But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. That is, as St. Chrysostom interprets: Thou indeed hast an immovable nature, more excellent than change. And in primae Timothei, 6.: Who alone hath immortality: Which passage St. Augustine thus weighs, tract. 23. in Ioannem: What then is it that the Apostle says of God, who alone hath immortality, unless that he aptly said here, he alone hath incommutability, because he alone hath true eternity?

St. James commends this same truth with an express testimony in the first chapter, who, when he had called God the Father of lights, adds: With whom there is no transmutation, nor shadow of alteration. That is, that Sun of divinity is not touched by any shadow of vicissitude and obscurity. For mutability itself, says St. Gregory, lib. 12. cap. 17., explaining those words of St. James, is a shadow, which would as it were obscure the light, if it changed it through some vicissitudes. But because mutability does not come upon God, no shadow of vicissitude cuts off His light.

The same truth did not escape the idolatrous Gentiles; for, as Pierius relates in lib. 39., among the Arcadians, the images of Jupiter and of the other gods were wont to be made square, namely, as Pausanias says, so that their stability might thereby be signified; for, as the ancient Poets sing, Jupiter himself, remaining stable, gives all things to be moved.

The pagan Philosophers likewise acknowledged and defended this same truth: for the Platonists established this distinction among the grades of spiritual substances, namely the human soul, the Angel, and God, that the Soul is a mobile multitude, the Angel an immobile multitude, God an immobile unity. Moreover, they called the Soul and the Angel a multitude on account of their diverse and various faculties; but they asserted the Angel to be immobile for this reason, that it was subject to fewer changes than man: but they proclaimed God an immobile unity, because He Himself, immobile, moves all things by a single virtue and power.

Proclus proves these things with an effective argument in his Commentary on the Republic of Plato:

If God were changed as regards entity, He would most of all be changed either by Himself, or by another: neither can be said: not indeed by another; for everything, he says, that is changed is the weaker by the very fact of its changing; since the one acts, the other suffers: but everything divine is most powerful, while weakness, since it is an affection proper to matter, is far from the Gods: therefore God cannot be changed by another. But neither can He be changed by Himself; for whatever, he says, is changed by itself is changed either for the better or for the worse. Moreover, nothing has ever changed itself for the worse of its own accord. For everything that suffers something of that kind seems to suffer it from ignorance of the good. But that which is made better, when it is changed, being in need of its own good before the change, chooses a change of that kind. Wherefore from both of those, we would either ascribe to God an action that is not at all voluntary, or a need of goods. But truly both cognition among the Gods is most excellent, and life is sufficient: therefore they need no good, nor do they suffer anything against their will.

Richard of Saint Victor presses and embraces all these things more briefly with this argument, lib. 2. De Trinit., cap. 3., saying:

every change is either into a better state, or a worse, or an equal one: but the divine nature is changed in none of these ways: not into a better, because it is most truly and most perfectly: not into a worse, because it is from itself: not into an equal, because it is perfect: therefore mutability in no way belongs to God.

You will say. God is called eternal Wisdom: but from the book of Wisdom, cap. 7., Wisdom is more mobile than all movable things: therefore God is movable and mutable.

St. Bonaventure distinguishes the minor, in the cited place, to the first. Divine Wisdom is more mobile actively and effectively; because it bestows and grants motion and the power of acting and moving upon all creatures, he concedes: but passively and successively, as if it received motion into itself, he denies: and therefore that divine Wisdom is said to be mobile, as it were moving and motive, not as it were moved and agitated.

You will say 2. He can truly be said to be changed according to entity who passes into another nature, and, putting off his own, puts on another: but such is the case with God, for the divine Word, which is truly God, was made Flesh, says John the Evangelist, in the first chapter, and as St. Paul says, Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man: therefore God is truly changed entitatively.

I deny the minor. For the divine Word was made flesh not by a conversion of the Divinity into flesh, but by an assumption of humanity into God, says St. Athanasius in the Creed: likewise taking up human things, He did not lose the Divine, says St. Augustine, nor, made man, did He cease to be God. Whence Tertullian against Praxeas:

We see a twofold state, not confused, but conjoined in one person, God, and the man Jesus. And so preserved is the property of each substance, that the Spirit also did its own things in Him; that is, virtues, and works, and signs: and the flesh fulfilled its own passions.

Hence St. Augustine subtly observes, lib. 83. Quaestionum, q. 73., that the Apostle says the divine Word was found in habit as a man, because, he says, He was made not by a transfiguration into a man, but in habit, when He put on the man, whom, uniting to Himself in a certain way and conforming, He would associate with immortality and eternity. By which name of habit it must be understood that the Word was not changed by the reception of the man; just as neither are the limbs changed that are clothed with a garment; although that reception ineffably joined the one received to the one receiving. But inasmuch as human words can be adapted to ineffable things, lest God be understood as changed by the assumption of human fragility, it was chosen that that reception be called in Greek σχῆμα, and in Latin habit. But that through this assumption of humanity the divine Word suffered nothing of His majesty and divinity, all the Ecumenical Councils teach, especially Ephesus: as also the holy Fathers, chiefly Cyril of Alexandria, lib. De recta fide, and Epistola ad Nestorium.

It must therefore be concluded with St. Augustine, Epist. 102. This, he says, must chiefly be guarded against, lest anyone say that the nature of God is changeable and convertible. And Chrysostom, Homil. 10. in cap. 1. of John: Transmutation is far from that immortal nature. And Origen, 1. Periarchon, cap. 2., between the middle and the end: In all things He is inconvertible and incommutable: and every good in Him is substantial, which indeed can never be changed or converted. And Chrysologus, Serm. 23.: He who is never changed in Himself is so often changed for thee; for thy sake He is shown various in the servile habit, so that in the form of flesh He might give more of His eternal immensity.

Second conclusion. — God is not mutable as to form. Hugh of Saint Victor proves this Conclusion excellently, lib. 7. Eruditionis Theologicae, cap. 20.:

For whatever, he says, is changed according to form happens either according to increase, or according to diminution, or according to alteration: but in none of these ways is God mutable. For indeed not according to increase; for whatever, he says, grows by increment receives more than itself: but whatever receives something beyond that which it has in itself must needs receive it from elsewhere, because no thing can give to itself what it does not have. But the Creator of things cannot receive from anyone something which He does not have; since everything that is proceeds from Him: therefore he cannot grow, who can receive nothing more than himself. Neither indeed according to diminution; for whatever, he says, can become less than itself is not truly one: because that which divides itself in separation was not the same in conjunction. God therefore, for whom to be is wholly one with what He is, can in no way become less than Himself. Neither finally according to alteration: for the alteration of spirits, he says, occurs through cognition and affection: according to affection indeed, spirits are changed, so that now sad, now cheerful: but according to cognition, so that now less, now more wise:

But God is immutable in both ways, as will appear in the following Conclusion: therefore He is wholly immutable according to form.

Proof 2. Three things are required for true change: First indeed, potentiality, or the privation and lack of some form, which is as it were the terminus a quo; second, a mutable subject is required, capable of receiving diverse forms; Third, a terminus ad quem is necessary, or a form to be newly produced, which would affect such a subject: but none of these can be found in God. Not indeed potentiality, because God is pure act, and therefore lacks the privation of form, which pertains to the side of the terminus a quo: not the second either, because He is most simple, and hence rejects every composition from form, and consequently every motion toward form. Not the third either, since, being infinite, He contains in Himself absolutely all perfections to be desired, nor can He receive any which He did not have before. — St. Hilary sets forth and confirms all these things in fewer words, on the second Psalm:

God, he says, being blessed and perfect, has no need of progress, He to whom nothing is lacking: by change He is not made new, He who is without origin. He Himself is who He is, not from elsewhere: He is in Himself, He is with Himself, He is toward Himself, He is His own to Himself, and He Himself is all things to Himself, lacking every change of newness.

With him St. Augustine agrees, Tractatu 1. in 1. Epist. Ioannis: God is not only called is, he says, but truly is: He is incommutable: He always remains: He knows not how to be changed, in no part is He corrupted; nor does He advance, because He is perfect; nor does He fail, because He is eternal.

You will say 1. He is truly to be judged to be changed as regards form who is agitated by the various motions of affections and passions, of anger, vengeance, zeal, and the rest: but such is the case with God, since Sacred Scripture not rarely attributes these affections to Him: thus in Psalm 37. O Lord, rebuke me not in thy fury, neither chasten me in thy wrath. — Origen answers, Homil. 23. in Numeros: All these things are to be received as said by Scripture in a tropological and human manner: moreover, the divine Nature is alien from every affection of passion and change, always remaining immovable and unshaken on that summit of beatitude. Therefore in form I distinguish the minor: the aforesaid motions of anger and of the other passions are attributed to God as regards effect, because namely His tranquil and unchanged will produces those effects which in us arise from the commotions of those passions, I concede: as regards affection, as if He felt these motions of the passions in Himself, I deny. St. Augustine luculently weighs these things, cap. 29. of the Meditations, where he thus addresses God:

Thou lovest, and dost not burn; Thou art jealous, and art secure: Thou repentest, and dost not grieve: Thou art angry, and art tranquil: Thou changest Thy works, but not Thy counsel: Thou receivest what Thou dost not find, and hast never lost: never in want, and Thou rejoicest in gains; never avaricious, and Thou exactest usury: what is over and above is paid to Thee, so that Thou mayest owe, and who has anything that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing to any; Thou forgivest debts, losing nothing.

You will insist. Not only according to effect and metaphor, but also truly according to affection and a movement of the will, anger and indignation and the other aforementioned movements are attributed to God: therefore there is no solution.

Proof of the antecedent. From Lactantius, cap. 12. lib. De ira Dei, which St. Jerome calls most beautiful, where, after he had said that human society and life are sustained, protected, and governed by the fear of God, he adds: But this fear will be removed, if it be persuaded to a man that God is free from anger, whom not only the common advantage, when unjust things are done, but also reason itself and truth persuade to be moved and to be indignant. That he is to be understood not tropologically, but literally, he himself indicates in cap. 16., where, setting out his opinion, he says:

Empty and false are found the arguments both of those who, since they do not wish God to be angry, wish to gratify: because not even this can be done without anger: and of those who think that there is no movement of the soul in God. And because there are some affections which do not fall upon God, such as lust, fear, avarice, envy, they said that He is entirely free of every affection. For He is free of these, because they are affections of vices. But those which belong to virtue, that is, anger against the wicked, charity toward the good, compassion for the afflicted, since they are worthy of divine power, He possesses as His own, and just, and true ones.

by which he openly teaches that some affections are in God only metaphorically, but others truly and properly. Tertullian seems to have gone over to the same opinion, lib. 2. contra Marcionem, cap. 26., where, inveighing against him because he said that God is without anger, he writes thus:

Most stupid, therefore, is he who is not offended by a deed which he does not love to be done, when offense is the companion of a frustrated will. But if he is offended, he ought to be angry: if he is angry, he ought to avenge: for vengeance too is the effect of anger, anger the due of offense, and offense, as I have said, the companion of a frustrated will.

I answer. Whatever Tertullian and Lactantius may have thought, not only anger but also the other movements of the soul — not only insofar as they are perturbations, but also insofar as they are calm and tranquil affections — are utterly unbecoming of God, because God admits nothing new and nothing that is not eternal; whence Arnobius rightly derides them, lib. 7. Contra Gentes, because they proclaimed to Christians that the gods were angry:

For all the affections of minds, he says, are unknown to the gods: it is consistent to believe that the gods never become angry. Indeed, no affection is farther from them than that which, being closest to wild beasts and brutes, troubles those who suffer it with storms and leads them to danger and destruction. For whatever is vexed by the movement of anything is plainly passible and fragile; what is subject to passion and fragility must necessarily be mortal: but anger vexes, and stirs up those who suffer it: therefore that which is subject to the passions of anger must be said to be mortal.

Whence the holy Fathers interpret this anger of God, employed metaphorically, in various ways. St. Hilary indeed, on Psalm 2., says that the anger of God is nothing other than the vengeance and punishment of sin established by another. The punishment, he says, of the one suffering is believed to be the anger of the one decreeing. And so God is angry, when through the pain of punishment those who are punished feel in themselves the anger of the decree. But St. Augustine, on the same Psalm: The anger of God, he says, is the movement which arises in the soul that knows the law of God, when it sees that same law being transgressed by a sinner: for through this movement many things are avenged by just souls. Although the anger of God may also rightly be understood as the very obscuring of the mind which follows those who transgress the law of God.

You will say 2. God receives in time new appellations, of Lord, Creator, and Redeemer, etc., which He did not have from eternity: therefore He also takes on some forms from which those appellations arise, and consequently He is changed as regards form.

I answer 1. This argument once seemed insoluble to St. Augustine, as he himself confesses, lib. 12. De Civitate Dei, cap. 15., where he says:

How was the Creator always Lord, ifthe serving creature was not always? Or how was it created, and why is it not rather co-eternal with the Creator, if it always was? I fear that I may more easily be judged to affirm what I do not know, than to teach what I know. I return, therefore, to that which our Creator willed us to know: but those things which He either permitted even the wiser to know in this life, or kept to be known in the other life by the altogether perfect, I profess to be beyond my powers.

Nevertheless, lib. 5. De Trinit. cap. 16., treating the same question, he clearly proves that God is not mutable through the aforementioned appellations. For when he had distinguished two kinds of relations, of which some arise with the change of the things of which they are said: Just as a friend, he says, is said relatively — for he does not begin to be one except when he has begun to love; therefore some change of will takes place, that he may be called a friend. But there are other relations which do not imply change: A coin, however, he says, when it is called a price, is said relatively, and yet it has not changed when it began to be a price; nor when it is called a pledge, and whatever things are similar. Whence he concludes first: if, therefore, a coin can, with no change of itself, be so often said relatively, so that neither when it begins to be so called nor when it ceases is any change made in its nature or form, by which it is a coin; how much more easily ought we to accept, concerning that unchangeable substance of God, that something is so said of it relatively to a creature, that, although it begins to be said temporally, yet nothing is understood to have happened to the substance of God itself; but to that creature to which it is said? He concludes 2.: That God begins to be said temporally what was not said before is manifestly said relatively; not however according to an accident of God, as if something had happened to Him, but plainly according to the accident of that to which God begins to be said relatively; whence in form I distinguish the antecedent: that God receives these appellations by reason of some intrinsic form coming to Him in time, I deny the antecedent: by reason of the change which happens to the creature proceeding from Him and depending on Him, I concede: and I deny the consequence.

Third conclusion. — God is utterly immutable even as regards the operations of the will and of the intellect. It is proved first from Sacred Scripture, Num. 23.: God is not as a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man, that He should be changed: has He said, then, and will He not do it? Has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it? 1. Regum 15.: The Triumphator in Israel will not spare, and will not be bent by repentance, for He is not a man, that He should do penance; that is, that He should repent of His decree, and change and retract it. And Iacobi 1.: With whom there is no transmutation, nor shadow of alteration. This was said chiefly concerning the free will of God begetting us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of beginning of His creatures; as is manifest from the text itself. — The same thing is gathered not obscurely from Psalmo 32.: The counsel of the Lord stands forever: the thoughts of His heart from generation to generation, that is, they always remain the same and unchangeable from eternity to eternity. And Proverb. 19. v. 21.: There are many thoughts in the heart of a man, but the will of the Lord shall stand. And Ephes. 1. v. 11. St. Paul affirms that God works all things according to the counsel of His will. A counsel, I say, not temporary, but eternal, according to that which he had said a little before, vers. 1.: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy.

Proof 2. From the holy Fathers, who defend the same immutability of God's intellect and will. Thus St. Fulgentius, lib. 1. *Ad Monimum, cap. 12.; Gregory Magnus, lib. 16. Moralium, c. 17.; Bernard, sermone 81. in Cantica; but especially Augustine, who sets forth the immutability of divine knowledge in this way, lib. 11. De Civitate Dei, cap. 21.:

There, he says, He does not see with thought changed from this to that, but altogether unchangeably: so that those things which are done in time — future things are not yet, present things are already, and past things are no longer. But He Himself comprehends all these with a stable and everlasting presence, etc., nor in one way now, nor in another way before and in another way after. Since, not like ours, so also His knowledge is not changed by the variety of the three times, namely present, past, or future, with whom there is no transmutation, nor shadow of a moment. For His attention does not pass from thought to thought, in whose incorporeal gaze all the things that He knows are present at once.

— The same thing concerning the divine will, lib. 12. De Civit. cap. 17.: In God, he says, no subsequent will changed or took away a preceding one: but with one and the same everlasting and immutable will, He brought it about that the things which He founded first were not, as long as they were not: and that they afterwards were, when they began to be. And tract. 23. in Ioann. n. 9. he says thus:

Pass beyond every mutable spirit, pass beyond the spirit that now knows, now does not know, now remembers and forgets, wills what it did not will, does not will what it willed: whether it already undergoes these mutabilities, or can undergo them: pass beyond all these. You will find in God nothing of mutability: nothing that is one way now and was otherwise a little before.

Proof 3. This same conclusion is deduced by reason from the eternity of God; which St. Augustine sets forth in this way, lib. 12. Conf. 15.:

Surely you will not say that those things are false which truth says to me with a strong voice in the inner ear about the true eternity of the Creator, that His substance is in no way varied through times: nor is His will outside His substance? Whence He does not now will this, now will that, but once, and at once, and always wills all things that He wills: not again and again: nor now these, now those, nor willing afterwards what He did not will, or not willing what He previously willed. Because such a will is mutable: and everything mutable is not eternal: but our God is eternal.

— He pursues the same point concerning knowledge:

What is said to me, he says, in the inner ear: the expectation of things to come becomes a beholding when they have come: and the same beholding becomes memory when they have passed: moreover every intention which is so varied is mutable: and everything mutable is not eternal. But our God is eternity itself. These things I gather and join together, and I find that my God, the eternal God, did not found the creature with any such will as this now, nor does His knowledge suffer anything transitory.

— Hugh of St. Victor admirably proves this very truth, lib. 7. Eruditionis Theologicae, cap. 20. in this manner:

First indeed, as regards the immutability of the divine will, there are two principal things, he says, which usually change the disposition of one who acts, namely, either because he has done something in the past to repent of, or because he proposes something disordered for the future. But that God in fact does not repent, that immutable course of all things shows sufficiently evidently, which, by the perpetual law of the first institution, does not forsake its mode. But that He proposes nothing disordered, the rational outcome proves, which nowhere contradicts itself in so great a body of nature. Therefore the will of God is always immutable, who neither changes His counsel about the past, nor His purpose about the future.

— He proves the same concerning the immutability of knowledge.

For in three ways, he says, human knowledge is subject to mutability: by increase, by diminution, by vicissitude. By increase, as when we learn what we do not know. By diminution, when we forget what we know. Vicissitude, moreover, is fourfold: in essence, in form, in place, in time. In essence human knowledge suffers vicissitude when we now think this, now that, because we cannot comprehend all things at once with our sense. In form, when we attend to the same thing now in this way, now in that way: because we are not capable of both at once. In place, when we now direct our thought here, now there: because we cannot be everywhere at once in thought. In time, when we now consider past things, now present, now future. Knowledge is also varied in time when we now interrupt the knowledge we have, now resume again the interrupted knowledge, because we cannot hold it without interruption. But divine knowledge receives none of these mutabilities. It is not increased, because it is full. For He cannot be ignorant of all things, who created, who governs, who penetrates, who carries all things. And He who is present to all things by His Deity cannot be absent by vision. It cannot be diminished, who is not from elsewhere whatever He is; but the very same whatever He is is from Himself, from the one, and one is the whole that He is. What shall I say of vicissitude? How could Wisdom receive vicissitude, which comprehends all things at once and at the same time under one ray of vision? At once, because every essence, every form, all places, all times. At the same time, because it receives vision neither interrupted, nor interrupts vision once had: but what is once is always, and what is always is whole. It sees all things, and from all things sees all things, and always sees, and sees everywhere. For nothing new, nothing foreign arrives, nothing passes away from itself. When it is future, it foresees it: when it is present, it sees it: when it is past, it retains it. Nor does it foresee, see, and retain anything other than what is in itself: but what arrives in time was in vision, and what passes in time remains also in vision. Just as if your whole body were an eye, and being were not one thing for you and seeing another, wherever a thing turned, it could not fail to be present to you: and remaining immovable under one glance of vision, you would comprehend whatever you had in view on every side: the thing would pass away, and the vision would stand, and wherever it turned by its own mobility, it would be present, and only present, to you standing. But now, because you see in part, you see mutably, and when a thing passes from the one seeing, either it ceases to be seen, or it draws the vision along with itself mutably. But if you were wholly an eye, you would not see so mutably: whatever, therefore, is in part is mutable, and whatever is not in part is not mutable. But God, for whom to be, to live, and to understand are the same, since He is not in part by essence, He will not be able to be in part by wisdom: but just as His essence is immutable, so also His wisdom is immutable. Thus far Hugh of St. Victor.

To this it can be added, that if there were in God any mutation of intellection and volition, there would likewise be in Him ignorance and inconstancy. Ignorance indeed: for if God knew something anew, or in another way, He would without doubt have been ignorant of it before, or would not have known it most perfectly. Likewise, if He ceased to know something entirely, or in another way, there would now be in Him, or would have been before, ignorance of that thing, or an imperfect knowledge of it. There would likewise be in Him lightness and inconstancy, if His will were disposed otherwise than before toward an object so perfectly known from eternity, that He could not have a greater and more perfect knowledge of it: for he is judged inconstant in will who is disposed otherwise than before in willing or not willing; or in nilling or not nilling, with no new reason presupposed why he should so will or nill otherwise. But ignorance and inconstancy are supremely unbecoming of God, the most perfect of all beings: therefore mutation of volition and intellection is also repugnant to Him.

You will say 1. He truly changes according to intellection and volition, who now knows and wills an object otherwise than before: but God now knows the incarnation of the Word, v. g., otherwise than from the beginning of the world, for He regards it then as future, but now as past. Likewise He loves Peter while he is in the state of grace, but holds him in hatred when he is in the state of mortal sin: therefore there is a succession and temporary variation among the acts of divine knowledge and will. The minor is clear as regards the act of the will; otherwise, indeed, if in God there were no variation and succession of love and hatred, it would follow that God would at the same time love and hate the same person; and it would be true to say that He now hated the Blessed, who at some time sinned mortally, and conversely that He now singularly loved very many of the damned, who at some time were innocent and in an excellent state of grace.

I distinguish the major. If this variation of volition and intellection proceeds from a diversity of acts, I concede: if only from the diverse termination and bearing of the same infinite and undivided act to the object, according to the varied and diverse disposition of time and the bearing of the object, I deny: for this whole change is to be referred back to the creature, not to God Himself, who from eternity willed and understood all things by one most simple and unvaried act. Whence He always knew the incarnation as future, while it truly was future, and as past when it had been accomplished. The same must be said of the will of God: for divine love and hatred, according to the diversity of motives existing at various times, are not contrary acts, but one wholly indivisible act in entity, which, according to its varied bearing and termination to the pleasing object, is called love, but with respect to the displeasing one is called hatred: for He loved Judas considered for that time in which he was just; but He hated him regarded for that time in which he was a sinner. Nor does it follow on that account that God now hates the Blessed as Blessed, or loves the damned as damned and as evil: but only that the act which was called hatred, and by which God from eternity hated those who at some time were sinners, for that state in which they were sinners, and insofar as they were sinners, endures up to now and into eternity. Although it is not called hatred, but love, because they have already been changed from sinners into Saints and Blessed, and therefore are said to be loved by God, as such, with an equally eternal love; inasmuch as for another difference of time they are lovable, and in the state of grace. The same is to be said conversely of the damned, who at some time were innocent.

— Whence St. Augustine lucidly sets this out, lib. 5. De Trinit., cap. 16.:

That God, therefore, begins to be spoken of temporally in a way in which He was not spoken of before, it is manifest that this is said relatively. And that a just man begins to be a friend of God, he himself is changed. But far be it that God should ever love temporally, as with a new love which was not in Him before — He in whom past things have not passed away, and future things are already done. Thus He loved all His saints before the constitution of the world, as He predestined them. But when they are converted and find Him, then they are said to begin to be loved by Him, so that it is said in that way in which what is said can be grasped by human affection. So also when He is said to be angry with the wicked and placid toward the good, they are changed, not He Himself. Just as light is harsh to weak eyes and gentle to strong ones; namely by the change of the latter, not by its own.

You will say 2. God creates, preserves, and governs the world in time, which He did not perform from eternity: therefore He has some operations in time which He did not have from eternity, and consequently He is changed.

I distinguish the antecedent. That He performs these by a volition, or by a real act, which He did not have from eternity, I deny; by a new extrinsic termination of this same act of the divine will toward the world itself as produced, preserved, and governed, I concede: thus, says the Doctor in secundum dist. 1. q. 2. n. 7., the volition by which God founds, sustains, and governs the world is indeed from eternity; yet not for eternity, but for a determinate difference of time. That is, God wills indeed from eternity to produce and rule the world; not that the world ought to be produced from eternity, but only at the beginning and in the succession of times.

You will insist. An efficacious volition of God obtains its effect: therefore if the volition of God is efficacious from eternity, the willed effect will likewise be from eternity.

He distinguishes in the same way. If it is efficacious, that is, efficient, from eternity, and for eternity; that is, if God wills the effect to be produced from eternity, such an effect will be eternal, he concedes: if it is efficacious from eternity, but for time, not for eternity, the effect will be eternal, he denies. For a free agent (he says) can by the same ancient volition produce a new effect, for then, for the time when he wills the new effect to be: for it does not follow: he wills sempiternally, and cannot will anew: therefore he wills for the sempiternal. Just as it is not necessary in me that, if I now will something, I should will it for now: but I can will it to be for tomorrow; and without any change on the part of my will, I can cause it tomorrow, for which I will it.

You will press. It is contradictory for there to be an actual action and for there to be no term of the action, which is the effect: therefore it is contradictory for there to be an actual creation, e.g. from eternity, and for there to be no thing created from eternity.

I distinguish the antecedent. It is contradictory for there to be an actual action actually connoting a present term, while there is no such term, I concede: it is contradictory for there to be an actual action connoting a term that is not present but future, I deny: but that volition connotes the effect not indeed as present, but as future: and therefore from this alone it follows that that effect is indeed actually future, not however actually existing and present.

You will press again. From Arist. 2. De generatione 56. The same, remaining the same, is always wont to do the same: therefore if creation is eternal, it will have its effect from eternity: or if it has it only in time, it will not be the same as it had been from eternity.

The cited Doctor answers, n. 9. That this Aristotelian saying is to be understood only of a natural agent; not, however, of an agent acting in a supernatural manner, such as God is when He creates.

You will press finally. It cannot be understood how God could operate in time through an eternal volition, without a new and actual application of the executive power, that is, of divine omnipotence, which application must be made through some new act of the will itself. For just as we freely operate nothing through the executive power by virtue of a past decree alone and of a preceding will, but beyond that a new act of the will applying the power to operating here and now is required: so likewise in God such a new act seems to be required, which would determine and apply the eternal will to producing this or that: therefore in God there must be a variation of acts.

I deny the antecedent. For God does not need a new act of the will, in order to apply the executive power to operating here and now; but the eternal decree suffices, by which He always willed to produce this or that here and now: for since that divine decree remains unvaried up to this or that instant, it is sufficient to apply divine omnipotence to producing this or that. Whence that divine decree, always enduring, is equivalent to two acts of our will, by one of which we decide and determine to operate and to produce something in the future, while by the other we will to operate efficiently here and now, and we actually apply the executive powers to the operation. Nor does it matter that that decree was efficacious from eternity, for not on that account ought it to have actually applied omnipotence to operating from eternity, because it was not a decree about an operation to be done from eternity, but at that time or instant at which God freely determined to operate and decreed to produce something.

You will say 3. He who retracts a judgment, and who repents of his deed, he is truly mutable as regards operations: but such is the case with God, for Genes. 6.: I will destroy, He says, man, whom I have created ....... for I repent that I made them. Likewise primo Regum cap. 15.: I repent that I have made Saul king. And Hieremiae 18.: If that nation shall repent of its evil, which I have spoken against it, I also will repent of the evil that I thought to do to it. Whence that well-known saying of St. Ambrose on Luke, God knows how to change His sentence, if you know how to amend your fault: therefore, etc.

I answer. That this repentance of God is used only metaphorically, so that it signifies a change in the effect produced, not however in the affection of the one producing. Which St. Augustine explains excellently in lib. 2. ad Simplicianum q. 2., where, when he had proved that God, foreknowing all things, cannot repent, he explains in what manner He is said by Sacred Scripture to repent, by comparison with repenting men, removing however from Him those things which in human repentance sound of imperfection, such as are retraction of judgment, and affection with grief of mind.

In men, he says, the work of repenting is at hand, when without doubt a will to change is found. But in man it is with grief of mind, for he reproaches in himself what he did rashly. Let us therefore take away those things which come from human infirmity and ignorance, and let there remain only the willing that something should not be as it was; in this way there can be intimated to our mind, in some small measure, the rule by which it is understood that God repents. For when He is said to repent, He wills that something should not be, as He had made it to be. But nevertheless, even when it was so, it ought to have been so; and when it is already being ended, it ought no longer to be so — by a certain perpetual and tranquil judgment of equity, by which God disposes all mutable things with an immutable will.

He inculcates the same thing, but more briefly, in 83. Quaestionum q. 52.

Since, he says, we are not easily wont to change something begun and transfer it into another, except by repenting, although divine providence appears to those contemplating it with a serene mind to administer all things in a most certain order, nevertheless, most fittingly to humble human understanding, those things which begin to be and do not persevere as long as they were hoped to persevere are said to be taken away, as it were, through the repentance of God.

Thus God truly does not retract His internal decree, which indeed is an act wholly invariable according to entity: but He only retracts those things which He had done, and which He had foreseen to be retracted and had decreed from eternity, according to such a difference of time and state.

You will say 4. God is intrinsically free: therefore He is also intrinsically mutable. The antecedent is evident. The consequence is proved. Whoever is free can will and nill; likewise he can will and not will: but this potency, or indifference, imports mutability: therefore it is necessary that either God is not free, or He is mutable.

I answer. That this concord of divine liberty with immutability has always seemed inscrutable to the human intellect, even to the wisest; nevertheless, since we shall attempt to reconcile both in proportion to our measure, treating of the liberty of the divine will, here only briefly do I distinguish the antecedent with the Doctor in primum dist. 39. God is intrinsically free with respect to opposed acts, I deny; with respect to opposed objects, toward which He is terminated and has a varied habitude and extrinsic determination, I concede.

For the divine will, says the Doctor, is not indifferent to the diverse acts of nilling and willing, because this in my will was not without imperfection of the will: for our will was free with respect to opposed acts, in order that it might be free with respect to opposed objects, and this on account of the limitation of each act with respect to its object: therefore, given the unlimitedness of that same will with respect to diverse objects, it is not necessary, for the sake of liberty with respect to opposed objects, to posit liberty with respect to opposed acts.

The divine will itself also is free with respect to opposed effects, but this is not the first liberty, just as neither is it in us. There remains therefore that liberty which is per se of perfection, and without imperfection, namely with respect to opposed objects, so that, just as our will can tend by diverse volitions to diverse willables, so that will can tend by one single simple unlimited volition to whatsoever willables; so that if that will, or that volition, were only of one willable, and could not be of the opposite, which nevertheless is of itself willable, this would be an imperfection in the will, as was previously deduced concerning our will.

By these words the Subtle Doctor teaches three things. First indeed, that the divine will is not free with respect to opposed acts, because this designates an imperfection in us, inasmuch as we are changed from act to act, on account namely of the limitation of our faculty, by which it cannot perceive all objects by one single and simple act. Second, he teaches that divine liberty consists in the free tendency, or termination, of the necessary volition itself toward the various created objects. Third, that since the act of divine volition is infinite and unlimited, nor is it measured and specified by any determinate object, it can be terminated toward various objects — toward the necessary, indeed, necessarily; toward the contingent, however, contingently — and consequently this whole change is to be conceived with respect to the varied termination alone of the same act, not however with respect to the act itself.

You will insist. But the divine will is free not only with respect to that diverse extrinsic termination, but also according to intrinsic acts: therefore it is also intrinsically mutable. The antecedent is proved. He who can will or not will something is intrinsically free: but God could will and decree from eternity that the world was to be founded, or not will it: therefore He was intrinsically free and capable of forming that decree, or of not forming it.

I deny the antecedent. And to its proof, I distinguish: He was free and capable of forming that decree, or of not forming it, entitatively, and inasmuch as it is an intrinsic act of the divine will, I deny: terminatively, and inasmuch as it is a tendency toward an object which is contingent, and which can exist or not exist, I concede. Thus the act of the divine will, inasmuch as it is in the divine will itself, is necessary and invariable, just as the divine will itself also is, and the essence, to which it is really identified.

But its tendency toward the extrinsic object is contingent, nor, taken absolutely, is it connected to the act of the divine will itself; for the divine will could have that tendency toward founding this world, or not have it. Nay, it could even have the opposite, if it had willed, because namely to tend, or not to tend, toward this fabric of the world does not per se belong to the divine will itself with absolute necessity: but from free choice it determined itself, as it willed, to this or that tendency, or non-tendency, and consequently that whole change is extrinsic, and with respect to a diverse tendency and habitude, not however intrinsic, and according to diverse acts.

You will press. God was intrinsically indifferent and free to form the decree about founding the world, or not to form it: therefore He was free not only with respect to the tendency toward the extrinsic object, but also with respect to the decree itself, and consequently intrinsically mutable.

I distinguish the antecedent. He was free to form the decree, that is, to produce the act of intrinsic volition about creating the world, or not to produce such an act entitatively, I deny: to have the respect and tendency, or extrinsic denomination, which that infinite act of the divine will obtains from the futurition or non-futurition of the world, I concede.

You will insist finally. From eternity God was free to posit that decree about founding the world, or not to posit it; but once such a decree has been formed, and once the world has already been founded, He is no longer free and indifferent with respect to this decree, but is absolutely determined: therefore at least in this respect He is changed.

I answer. That just as the positing or non-positing of this decree is judged extrinsic, and by respect to the world to be produced contingently, so this determination and change of God is extrinsic, not however intrinsic, and consequently for this reason God ought not to be judged intrinsically mutable.