Disputationes metaphysicae

1. The last difficulty resulting from the second section is whether the free cause has actual freedom when it operates, or before it operates; because, if it already operates, it operates necessarily, so that it is impossible for it not to operate for that time; and the same argument can be made about the lack of operation; but if freedom always regards the future, no act existing in reality will be free, because a future act, as such, is not existing, and so in fact no effect will be free; besides which, it is repugnant that the future as future be free and afterwards in the present not be exercised freely, since the future is future for no other reason than because it will at some time be present.

2. In this difficulty Ockham, Gabriel and other nominalists, In I, dist. 38, teach that the will is not free with respect to the act which it already exercises, for that very instant in which it exercises it, except either inasmuch as it proceeds from the indifference and freedom which the will had immediately before that instant, or inasmuch as in that instant the will has the power to omit it in the time immediately following, even if all the other conditions or causes concurring to it are present, in which they say the free cause differs from the natural. Which opinion the Master seems to embrace, In II, dist. 25, c. 2, where he says that free choice is not referred to the present and the past, but to the future. And its foundation was touched upon above, because in the present the will is already determined to one, and because that which is, when it is, necessarily is, as the Philosopher says, I De Interp., last chapter. Hence Boethius, I De Consolat., last prose, says that the rising of the sun and the walking of a man agree in this, that while they take place they cannot not take place; but differ in that the rising of the sun, even before it took place, was necessarily future, but the walking of a man not so.

3. The will most properly exercises freedom in the instant in which it operates.—This opinion, however, is false, and to me plainly improbable. Wherefore it must be said that the freedom of the will is properly exercised in the very same instant, and about the same act which it presently elicits or exercises. So Scotus taught, In I, dist. 39; and Hervaeus, Quodl. I, q. 1, doubt 6; Capreolus, In II, dist. 25; Gregory, In I, dist. 39, who, however, added something false, as I shall at once show. This opinion is proved, first, by the reason intimated, which for me is a demonstration; for, if the will in the instant in which it elicits the act does not proceed freely to the act, it was never before free in order to that act, because it was free only with respect to that instant in which it was going to effect such act freely. Likewise, because, if in that instant it has the act not freely but necessarily, then by parity of reasoning in the whole preceding time in which it lacked the act it lacked it not freely but necessarily; and the same reason will hold of future time; therefore in truth there is never use of freedom.

4. Secondly it is declared a priori, because the authors of the former opinion err in that they do not distinguish priority of time and of nature, and the true composite sense from the divided; the will, then, in the same instant in which it elicits the free act, prior in nature to its eliciting it, is understood to have the power of eliciting it and then from that power is understood to elicit it; therefore in the same prior of nature it is to be understood as able to elicit and not to elicit such act; otherwise it is not in truth understood to be free for eliciting that act. And it is confirmed and declared; for in the time immediately before that instant the will is supposed having that power for eliciting and not eliciting the act. And in that instant, prior in nature to that power's determining itself to the act, there is nothing which has taken away from it the power for eliciting it; therefore the will retains both powers in that instant, and from that elicits or does not elicit the act for that very instant. Wherefore, if the will is taken simply and absolutely in that instant with all the prerequisites for acting, in truth it can not elicit such act in it, which is power in the divided sense, or in priority of nature, which is necessary and most sufficient for freedom. But if it is considered as already in that posterior of nature in which it has already elicited the act, it can no longer go back for that same instant; but this is only necessity of composition from the supposition consequent upon the determination or action of the will itself.

5. And it is confirmed; for God from eternity freely loved creatures, and yet for no instant or real duration did He lack that free determination, which is so compared to the divine will as a free act to ours; therefore the freedom of the will is not only with respect to an act posterior in real duration, but also with respect to an act existing in the same instant, posterior indeed in nature, if such act is truly elicited and caused by the power, or only according to reason or understanding, if it is only a free determination of the same act. Otherwise free love could not be understood in God, because neither would He have loved freely from eternity, since He always perpetually loved, nor after the instant of eternity, because much less can He either begin to love what He never loved, or cease to love what He loved and as He loved from eternity. The same argument can be taken from the free action of the angels, which they had in the first instant of their creation, since in it they had merit according to the truer opinion. Nor is what Ockham signifies of any weight, that that act was meritorious because it was in the power of the angel to continue or not continue it in the time immediately following; for this power could contribute to the continuation of that act being meritorious and the cessation being a lack of such merit¹; yet it contributed nothing to merit in the first instant, both because that power was not exercised in the first instant, and we do not merit formally through free power but through its use; and also because cessation from that act cannot contribute to merit, and yet the evil angels, who immediately after the first instant ceased from that act, nevertheless merited in the first instant; therefore for that instant that act was free, at least as to exercise. And the same argument can be made about the merit of Christ, of which it is more certain that it began from the first instant of His conception.

6. Finally, proportional arguments can be made in men; for, as I said above, a man can in the first instant of the use of reason have a free act, both good and also evil. Likewise, whenever a man sins, he does not demerit or lose grace in the time immediately before the instant in which he exercises the sinful act, as is evident per se; for no one sins or demerits in what he is going to do, but in what he does, as Augustine broadly, epist. 107. It is necessary, therefore, that in the same instant in which the act of sin is exercised it be free; because no one truly sins except then when he can avoid what he does or do what he omits. Likewise, there is a similar argument when a sinner is contrite; for he does not obtain grace before or after the instant of contrition, but in the very moment in which he elicits contrition, and in the same only does he sufficiently dispose himself, although the disposition must be free, and in the same he merits glory; therefore in the same and for the same he exercises a free act.

7. The reason of the contrary opinion is destroyed.—The foundation of the former opinion has already been solved. For Aristotle clearly speaks of conditional necessity and from consequent hypothesis, and Boethius is to be understood of the same; for what he says, that the rising of the sun was previously necessary, is to be understood not only of priority of time but also of priority of nature or cause. Indeed, it was true in the prior time to say that that effect was of necessity future precisely because it has necessity in its cause. But what they say, that the same power cannot at once effect and not effect, is a sophism consisting in an equivocation of words; for both powers are at once in the same instant, not however for exercising both acts conjointly, but dividedly, that is, either one or the other at its choice. Hence, although it exercises one part of the power, for example by eliciting the act, it nevertheless retains the power for the opposite, which it could exercise in the same instant, not indeed together with the other act nor making composition with it, but absolutely.

8. An act of the will does not necessarily last for some time.—Gregory above adds, however, that, supposing the will has elicited the act, it can not only not abandon it for the same instant, but not even in the time immediately following, because he thinks it repugnant that an act cease in the same instant in which it begins to be. But this opinion has foundation neither in theology nor in philosophy. For it is not repugnant that a thing which is made last for one instant only; for the same instant can be the first and the last of the being of a thing; for what repugnance is there in this? He answers that it is repugnant that a thing at once begin and cease. But if the beginning takes place through an intrinsic instant, and the ceasing through an instant extrinsic to the ceasing itself or intrinsic to the existence, there is no repugnance, because it does not follow that the thing at once is and is not, but only that it so is that it neither was immediately before nor will be immediately after; in which way the instant itself has being, and in it God could create an angel and conserve it no longer; therefore from this side there is no necessity of continuing the free act. Nor from another; for the evil angels, as is probable, lasted for one instant only in good acts; and he who sins is compelled by no necessity to persevere in sinning; otherwise a man could in this life for some time sin of necessity and not desist from sinning, which is most absurd. And conversely, he who has begun to merit perseveres freely in merit; otherwise he would merit nothing in that perseverance in the good work; but this matter is disputed more broadly by the theologians.