I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

3. This is said by Henry Quodlibet VI q.3 - for the opposite, manifestly, of which see Quodlibet VIII q.3.Vatican editors: in the first reference Henry holds that the first reason for something not being makeable is the thing, in the second that it is God. ¹⁸

4. Against this second opinion [sc. that the first reason is on the part of God], either it was said with retraction from that article of the first opinion or it was itself retracted by the first opinion, - but one should not argue against him save from his own words, which manifestly imply opposites.

5. However, I specifically argue against him thus: nothing is simply impossible save because being is simply repugnant to it; but what being is repugnant to, to that it is repugnant of itself first and not because of any affirmative or negative respect of it to something else first. For any repugnance is of the extremes by their formal and per se essential idea, with removal of any other respect of either extreme - positive or negative - to anything else, just as white and black are contraries and have a formal repugnance by their own formal ideas, with removal, per impossibile, of any respect to anything else. That thing is then simply impossible for which being is per se impossible, which is of itself first such that being is repugnant to it, - and not because of any respect to God, affirmative or negative; nay being would be repugnant to it if per impossibile God did not exist. Therefore it seems the first opinion is more probable than the second [sc. that the first reason is on the part of the thing and not of God].

6. But against this first opinion I argue first as follows:

The active power by which God is said to be omnipotent is not formally the intellect but presupposes as it were the action of the intellect, whether the omnipotence is will or some executive power; but a stone is possible of itself formally; therefore too by reducing it to the first extrinsic principle as it were, the divine intellect will be that from which comes the first idea of possibility in a stone. Therefore the active power by which God is said to be omnipotent is not the first idea of possibility in a stone.

7. Proof of the assumption: the possible, according as it is the term or object of omnipotence, is that to which being is not repugnant and that which cannot of itself exist necessarily; a stone, produced in intelligible being by the divine intellect, has these features of itself formally and from the intellect as principle; therefore it is of itself formally possible and is from the divine intellect as it were from a principle.

8. The first opinion [n.3] seems badly to posit that ‘omnipotence in God is the power that is active power, from which comes first possibility in a creature’, and this if we speak of the active power by which God is called omnipotent and with respect to which passive power in a creature is spoken of.

9. Confirmation of the reason [n.6]: the active power ‘which is omnipotence’ does not give any being to anything save by producing it, because it is a power productive of a thing outwardly; but before any production of a thing outwardly, the thing has possible being, because - as was proved in distinction 36 nn.26-29, 36 - that a thing is produced in intelligible being is not that it is produced in being simply, and if it were, it would not be by the power by which God is called omnipotent; a thing is not first possible, then, by the power ‘that is omnipotence’.

10. Again, in precise causes if affirmation is cause of affirmation and negation is cause of negation (according to what the Philosopher says Posterior Analytics 1.13.78b20-21), just as if having lungs is cause of breathing and not having lungs is cause of not breathing, then if the active power, which is omnipotence in God, were the precise cause of possibility in a creature, negation of active power in God would be cause of the negation of ‘possible being’ in a creature, which he himself [Henry] denies (and well to this extent [sc. as concerns impossibility on the part of the makeable thing], that the impossibility in a creature is because of the formal repugnance of the parts [nn.5, 15-17]).

11. Further, the respect that follows active power in the fourth instant, is either real or not. If real and outward, this was rejected in distinction 30 nn.49-51. If it is a respect of reason then in the third instant the possibility has God as term under an absolute idea - which I do not infer as in itself unacceptable, but as to be conceded by many people (if it be granted), and at any rate as not to be held as unacceptable by those who hold the opinion of this doctor [Henry], because it follows on that opinion.

12. Likewise, for the same reason I infer from this position another conclusion, namely that there is no respect on the part of the cause prior to one on the part of the caused; nay from the cause itself under the idea of an absolute it is caused under an absolute idea, and later - third - a respect follows in the caused, and fourth a respect in the cause to the caused. This order of absolutes and of respects, then, which he concedes, must never and nowhere be held as unacceptable by those who hold it.

13. Third I infer likewise that omnipotence as it is a divine attribute and states a perfection simply, does not state any respect to a creature (which he himself proves in the first opinion, Quodlibet VI q.3), because no divine perfection simply depends on a creature (Anselm proves this in Monologion ch.15). Since that ‘relation to a creature’ does not state a perfection simply even in God, because then God would not be such if the creature did not exist (but God is something perfect with all perfection simply, of himself and of his nature, and not by any respect to a creature), this inference then -which I think to be true (as also the other two inferences [nn.11-12]) - should not be rejected by any who hold to his opinion [sc. Henry’s].

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

14. I speak in a way different from the first opinion (as to what the two arguments prove [nn.6, 9]), that although the power of God to himself - that is any absolute perfection by which God is formally powerful - is in God in the first instant of nature, as is also any perfection simply (just as being a power for heating is consequent to heat, which heat however is an absolute form), yet by the power itself ‘under the idea in which it is omnipotence’ it does not have an object that is first possible save through the divine intellect producing it first in intelligible being, and the intellect is not formally the active power by which God is called omnipotent; and then the thing produced in such being by the divine intellect in the first moment of nature - namely intelligible being - has itself to be possible in the second instant of nature, because being is not formally repugnant to it, and having necessary being of itself is formally repugnant to it (on which two points stands the whole idea of omnipotence, corresponding to these ideas of active power). Therefore possibility is not in the object in any way before omnipotence is in God, taking omnipotence for an absolute perfection in God, just as the creature is not prior to anything absolute in God. If however a thing is understood to be possible before God by his omnipotence produces it, this understanding is in this way true, but the thing is not simply prior in that possibility but is produced by the divine intellect.

15. But as to impossibility, I say that it cannot be first on the part of God but on the part of the thing (as the first opinion says), and this for the reason given against the second opinion, because the thing is impossible for the reason that coming to be is repugnant to it.

16. Which point I understand thus: ‘impossible simply’ includes incompossibles that, by their formal ideas, are incompossible, and they are incompossible from that thing as principle from which as principle they have their formal ideas. So there is here this process, that as God by his intellect produces a possible in possible being, so he also produces two entities formally (each in possible being), and these ‘produced’ things are of themselves formally incompossible, so that they cannot be together one thing nor can any third thing come from them; but the impossibility that they have, they have formally from themselves, and from him as from a principle - in some way - who produced them. And on this incompossibility of theirs there follows the incompossibilty of the whole imagined construct that includes them, and from the impossibility of the imagined construct in itself and from the incompossibility of their parts there comes its incompossibility with respect to any agent; and from this must the whole process of the impossibility of the thing be completed, as if the ultimate degree of incompossibility or impossibility is the negation of a respect to any agent. Nor does it need to have any negative respect on the part of God, nor on the part of anything else (nor is there, perhaps, any negative respect in the nature of the thing), although the intellect can compare God -or any agent - to it under the negation of respect.

17. So in this way the first impossibility is on the part of the impossible thing and in God as in the principle; and if it is reduced to anything as a principle, yet it is not reduced to a negation of possibility in God; rather it is reduced to the divine intellect as principle, which is the principle of it in that being in which the parts are formally repugnant, because of which formal repugnance the whole composed of those parts is simply impossible.

18. And from this is clear that the imagination of those is false who look for the impossibility of anything in some one thing, as if some one thing - whether an intelligible or any sort of being - is of itself formally impossible as God is of himself formally necessary being. For nothing is such first in the being of non-entity, nor even is the divine intellect the reason for the opposite possibility of the entity that is opposed to such a nonentity; nor even is the divine intellect the precise reason for the opposite possibility about nothing, because then the argument ‘about precise causes in affirmation and negation’ [n.10] would hold. But everything ‘simply nothing’ includes in itself the idea of many things, such that it is not first nothing by its own idea but by the ideas of the things that it is understood to include, because of the formal repugnance of those several included things; and this reason for repugnance comes from the formal reasons, which repugnance they have first from the divine intellect.