Chapter XI. Predestination according to the teaching of duns scotus
Tue Subtle Doctor most clearly affirms the absolute gratuity of predestination to glory, as well as the intrinsic efficacy of the divine decrees and of grace. He writes: “It is only because God wills or preordains that one shall make good use of free will that He foresees this person will make good use of it; for, as stated in the thirty-ninth distinction (no. 1129), the certain foreseeing of future contingent things is due to the determination of these by the divine will. If, therefore, the occasion presents itself to the divine will of two persons equal in natural endowments, why, I ask, does He preordain that this one shall make good use of free will and the other not? There seems to be no reason to assign for this except the divine will.” * Scotus writes this against Henry of Ghent, and on this point he is in agreement with St. Thomas.
In addition to this, he says: “In another way this can be expressed, by saying that there is no reason for predestination even on the part of the one predestined, such that it is in any way prior to this predestination. But there is some cause for (positive) reprobation.
a) This is proved first from the fact that one who wills methodically the end and those things which are means for attaining the end, first wills the end before willing any of those things which are means for attaining the end, because one wills other things in view of such end. Therefore, since the whole of this process by which the creature capable of eternal happiness is brought to the perfection of its end, the ulti-
THE TEACHING OF DUNS SCOTUS 113 mate end of which is perfect happiness, God who wills to give anything in this order, first wills the end to this creature capable of eternal happiness, and afterwards, as it were, wills to it those things which are in the order of means pertaining to that end. But grace, faith, merits, and the good use of free will, all of these are directed to this end, although some refer more remotely and others more closely to it. Therefore God wills eternal happiness to the creature before any of these means; and He wills whatsoever of these means before He foresees that it will have any of them. Therefore He does not will eternal happiness to it because He foresaw any of these means.
b) In the second place this is proved from the fact that it is only because damnation is just that it is seen to be good. As St. Augustine says: * “God is not the avenger before one is a sinner.” *
In all this Scotus agrees with St. Thomas. Someone wrote recently that Scotus is the one who first injected into this question the principle that the one who wills methodically the end and those things which are the means for attaining the end, first wills the end. St. Thomas had written equivalently in the following words: “Nothing is directed towards an end unless the will for that end already exists. Whence the predestination of some to eternal salvation presupposes in the order of reason that God wills their salvation; and to this belong both election and love.” ¢
It is on the notion of merit and on the nature of the divine motion assuring the execution of the divine decrees that Scotus differs from St. Thomas. Instead of admitting a physical and non-indifferent premotion, he speaks, as we have seen, of a mysterious influx, called “sympathy” by several of his disciples. In virtue of this sympathy, created liberty in-12 clines infallibly and freely to accept the decree of divine liberty, which virtually includes it.”
The Thomists reply to this, saying that this sympathy which subordinates the created will to God, either follows as a natural consequence of the necessary subordination of the creature to God, and in this case liberty is out of the question; or else it is a moral motion, of the objective order by way of attraction, and then only the vision of God face to face can so captivate the will as to attract it infallibly.*
But, let us repeat, this difference is of secondary importance in the question which confronts us, since Scotus admits, as St. Thomas and his disciples do, the absolute gratuity of predestination to glory as well as the intrinsic efficacy of the divine decrees with regard to our salutary acts and the grace by which we are enabled to put them into effect."
7 If one wanted to write the history of the problem of predestination in the fourteenth century, it would be necessary to bear in mind that Occam held that the absolute autonomy of the divine willing makes God's liberty the sovereign arbiter of good and evil, and this to such an extent that there is no longer anything good or evil in it, so that God could have commanded us to hate it. Radical nominalism thus ends in absolute voluntarism and libertism, which is a sort of theological positivism,
It would also be necessary to take note of what Thomas Bradwardine taught about predestination in his De causa Dei contra Pelagium et de virtute causarum (1338-46), and in his commentaries on the Sentences and the Summa theologica. He was influenced in his writings, as several historians relate, by Duns Scotus and Occam, who were countrymen of his. He failed to avoid falling into certain errors that reappear in the writings of John Wyclif.
In his De causa Dei (1, 21, p. 233, ed. 1618), T. Bradwardine writes as Occam did: “That there is no reason or necessary law in God prior to His will.” From this he deduced that the divine will is the necessitating cause, the antecedent necessity, of our volitions: “It suffices for man to be free as regards all things that do not concern God, and that He be only God's slave, of his own accord, I say, not forced.” (/bid., III, p. 667, E. cf. p. 675, C.) This made him say that “God somehow wills sins as such.” Cf. Dr. S. Hahn, “Thomas Bradwardinus und seine lehre v.d. menschlichen willensfreiheit” (Beitr. Gesch. Phil. Mittelalt., V, 2).
Nicholas d’Autrecourt, John of Mircourt, and John Wyclif deduced disastrous consequences from Thomas Bradwardine’s principles. Wyclif taught a necessitating predestination and went back to predestinationism. The most determined opponents of Bradwardine were Peter Plaoul and John of Rive. Cf. Du Plessis d'Argentré, Collectio judiciorum de novis erroribus, I, 328.
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CONCLUSIONS
On these essential points, almost all the old theologians, whether Augustinians, Thomists, or Scotists, are in agreement. Almost all admit the principle of predilection, namely, that one man would not be better than another (by reason of an act either easy or difficult to perform, whether the first or final act), unless he were loved more and helped more by God. Now this principle, as we have seen, presupposes that the divine decrees with regard to our salutary acts are of themselves efficacious, and not because of our foreseen consent. At the same time this principle virtually includes the doctrine of the absolute gratuity of predestination to glory previous to foreseen merits. So speaks the Augustinian author of the Imitation of Christ, in the following extract: “I am to be praised in all My saints; I am to be blessed above all things and to be honored in all whom I have thus gloriously exalted and predestined without any merit of their own. . . . They glory not in their own merits, inasmuch as they ascribe no goodness to themselves but attribute all to Me who of Mine own infinite love have given them all things. . . . In Thee, therefore, O Lord God, I place my whole hope and refuge.” 8 St. Thomas said the same when he wrote: “Since God’s love is the cause of goodness in things, no one thing would be better than another, unless it were loved more by God.” ®
To this principle we must add one no less certain, which is that God never commands what is impossible, and wills to make it possible for all to be saved. We already stated that it is impossible for us, according to our present knowledge, to see how these two principles are perfectly reconciled. As long as we have not the light of the blessed in heaven, vivid faith enlightened by the gifts of the Holy Ghost must preserve the equilibrium between these two principles, and by their means
8 Imitation of Christ, Bk. III, chaps. 58, nos. 4, 8; 59, no. 3. 9 Summa theol., Ia, q.20, a.4.
it senses the direction of the summit toward which it tends and which cannot be seen by anyone here on earth. Thus the two extreme aspects of the mystery are preserved intact, without compromising this latter.
This admirable harmony was unknown to Protestantism, which, in denying one of the two aspects of the mystery, gave an entirely false interpretation of the data of revelation.
SECTION II
PREDESTINATION ACCORDING TO THE TENETS OF PROTESTANTISM AND JANSENISM
Protestantism has given us a conception of predestination that is absolutely irreconcilable with God’s universal will to save. On this point Jansenism differs but little from it. In the two chapters of this section, we will consider: (1) Protestantism; (2) Baianism and Jansenism.
Footnotes
Chapter 13 of 35