II. To the Principal Arguments

27. To the arguments for the opposing side [nn.2-8].Scotus’ response to these arguments is actually to the order they have in the equivalent place of the Lectura, as that the first one he answers here is actually second in the Ordinatio though first in the Lectura. Further the one he answers fourth here [n.31] is the first in the Ordinatio and lacking in the Lectura. The last argument in the Ordinatio is also lacking in the Lectura and is not answered here at all. ³⁴

I say [n.3] that grace determines to a gratuitous operation in the way that habit has the property of determining; a power is in this way indeterminate with a proximate indetermination, and the essence is not.28. To the next [n.4] I say that although ‘to en-grace’ (that is, ‘to make pleasing’) has an active signification, it is not an acting; just as neither is a white wall making whiteness an acting but an informing [sc. an informing of the eye to see white].

29. To the third [n.5] I say that approval of a power suffices for approval of the essence and not conversely. For just as a man, if he could see another’s act of loving, would approve, because of the act, that other person as a whole, and thus would approve first the act freely elicited first and then the power freely eliciting it (and thereby he would sufficiently approve the whole supposit) - so God first approves the act freely elicited by the power; not indeed with the general approval with which he approves every creature (because in this way the essence is first approved), but with the special approval by which he ordains to blessedness the one approved; but God thus approves first and principally the power itself, which is capable first of blessedness, and through it he approves the essence.

30. And when objection is made bout Abel and his offering [n.6], I say that an exterior act is only approved because the interior one is, and the interior one is only approved because it is elicited or commanded by the power of which it is the act; but there is no further resolving of the approval of this power back to the approval of some prior approved thing, because nothing prior is approvable with special approval save by mediation of the power.

31. And as to the statement [n.2] that ‘things are reduced back to God in the order they proceed from God’ (according to Dionysius), one must say that this is true of extremes produced in diverse persons and not of things that are in the same supposit, because the essence receives being first and yet is reduced back through the power first, because it is reduced through the power’s operation.

32. To the next argument [n.7] I say that the major can be conceded about an extrinsic instrument, but not about an intrinsic one that is the same as the operating thing (the way the operating thing is called an instrument insofar as it has a determinate operative power); for in the sense in which the instrument is an intrinsic instrument the form receiving the action should be posited as instrument, but in the principal agent as it is distinguished from an instrument should be posited only the form.