VI. To the Arguments for the Third Opinion

     To the first argument for the third opinion: Boethius expounds himself in the same place directly; for there he at once immediately distinguishes between the necessity of the consequent and the necessity of the consequence, and from this I concede that contingent things ‘related to divine knowledge’ are necessary by the necessity of the consequence (that is, this consequence is necessary, ‘if God knows that these things will be, these things will be’); but they are not necessary with absolute necessity, nor with the necessity of the consequent.

     To the other one for the third opinion, I say that contingency is not only a privation or defect of entity (as deformity is in the act that is a sin), rather contingency is a positive mode of being (as necessity is another mode), and a positive being - which is in the effect - is more principally from the prior cause; and therefore this inference does not hold ‘just as deformity is in the act itself from the second cause, not from the first cause, so also is contingency;’ nay, contingency is from the first cause more originally than from the second, - for which reason no caused thing would be formally contingent unless it was contingently caused by the first cause, as was shown above.