SUBSCRIBER:


past masters commons

Annotation Guide:

cover
The Ordinatio of John Duns Scotus
cover
Ordinatio. Book 1. Distinctions 26 to 48.
Book One. Distinctions 26 - 48
Forty First Distinction
Single Question. Whether there is any Merit of Predestination or Reprobation
I. To the Question
A. First Opinion, Proposed and Retracted by Augustine

A. First Opinion, Proposed and Retracted by Augustine

5. About this question Augustine once thought that although good works in the fore-knowledge of God are not the reason of predestining, yet faith is in his foreknowledge the reason for predestining - as is plain from him On the Epistle to the Romans (the one namely where he intends that because of the faith - which God foreknew - by which Jacob would believe and because of the infidelity of Esau God preferred Jacob and not Esau), and is contained in the text [of Lombard]. But Augustine retracts this in Retractions I ch.23, indicating his reason against it ‘because faith is a gift of God just as are also other good works’ (which is proved by the Apostle 1 Corinthians 7.25); hence Augustine says that ‘I would not have said that, if I had known to number faith among the gifts of the Holy Spirit’.