I. To the First Question

27. To the first question I say that ‘highest’ can be taken in two ways: in one way positively, for exceeding everything else; in another way negatively, for not being exceeded by anything else. In the first way there can be only one thing that is said thus to exceed. In the second way there can be many such things (as the most general categories being of are because they do not have a genus above them).

28. When speaking in the first way, I say that God could not have conferred on Christ’s soul the highest possible grace to which he could not create an equal, for he was and is able to assume another nature equal to that one and to give it an equal grace; in the second way I say that he was able to give the highest creatable grace to Christ’s soul.

29. To show this I prove two things: first that the highest grace could in this way have been created at once in a single creation; second that it could be conferred on a creature.

A. The Highest Grace could have been Created

1. Scotus’ own Reason

30. I prove the first: taking some determinate grace, say a, I ask by way of progressive ascent: either there is a stand at some highest grace, and then the conclusion is gained; or there is no stand and an infinite process is possible. And then it follows, in the latter case, that the more some grace exceeds a certain grace a the more perfect it is; and so a grace that exceeds infinitely is more perfect infinitely and will thus in itself be intensively infinite; and since it would be seen by the divine intellect as a single creatable thing, it can be created in a single creation. And thus, setting aside what the inference shows to be impossible, namely that there does exist such an infinite grace [sc. a grace to which there can be no equal, n.28], the conclusion is gained that the highest grace can be created by a single act of creation [cf. n.16], just as it is seen by the divine intellect to be a single creatable thing.

2. Others’ Reasons

31. [First reason]. From this reasoning two other arguments get their evidence, one of which is taken from the Philosopher Physics 3.7.207b17-18, the chapter on the infinite, that “as much can be in act as can be in potency”, and so there is no process to infinity when advancing toward form; and for this reason it has been necessary to posit for any form however perfect a completion that is somehow possible

32. But an objection is raised against this position [n.31], that in the case of numbers it is possible to advance toward a potential infinite even though no number is actually infinite; so it is not true of numbers that as much can be in act as can be in potency.

33. I reply in accord with Averroes [Physics 3 com. 67] that addition in the case of numbers is by division of the continuous; but in the division of the continuous the advance is made materially [sc. by division in the matter]; consequently numbers increase by an advance that is in the matter; but the continuous grows and increases by an advance toward form; now in an advance toward form there must be a stand, and a stand that is as much in act as in potency; but there is no stand in an advance that is in matter; and so there is a stand in the quantity of continuous things but not in a multitude of numbers, just as neither is there a stand in the division of continuous things into lesser and lesser quantities.

34. But an argument against this is that if number is per se one and is not like a heap (Metaphysics 8.6.1045a7-10, b23 - the Commentator Averroes says the opposite in Physics 3 com.68), then any number has its own proper form. Therefore in advancing to a greater number there is a progress toward a form that is proper and includes the preceding forms virtually; so there is no progress to infinity in numbers.a

a.a [Interpolation] Note on this point Augustine City of God 12.19, and the Commentator on the chapter on the Infinite, Physics 3 com.33, who says that every number is divisible; so see Metaphysics 2.2.994a11-19 on the Infinite, and note that the Commentator says the opposite, Physics 3 com.68.

35. I say, then, that the Philosopher’s argument here [n.31] is only conclusive about quantity of bulk, and according to this sort of quantity ‘a thing can be in potency as much as it can be in act’ - in fact it is in act because, according to the Philosopher, a quantum cannot grow in this way unless the parts taken from one continuous thing (by way of removal or division) are added continuously to another that is growing; and so, although these parts could never exceed the divided whole nor the increased whole, yet the divided whole can go to excess by addition of these parts; for if the whole quantity, to which addition is being made, could be actually greater than the whole potentially divided thing is and can be growing accordingly, then it could be bigger than the heaven.

36. The provability of the Philosopher’s statement is that a natural agent (without whose action he supposes nothing new can come to be) cannot make something bigger unless it takes parts from one quantity and adds them to another quantity. According to the theologians, indeed, this is not true when speaking of divine power, because there is some quantity potentially bigger than it actually is, for God can make it larger without adding to it parts that have been taken from another quantity [cf. Ord. 1 d.42 n.9].

37. In order, then, to apply the stated proposition of the Philosopher [n.31] to a virtual quantity, one needs to have a different proof from the Philosopher [sc. a philosophical and not theological proof], and in the place cited [n.31] the only proof is that, just as in the case of some permanent things something finite can be makeable by a single making, so too if one of the infinite things were makeable by a making, it would be makeable by a single making, and so something highest could be made, yet if there can be a process to infinity it would not be infinite.

38. From the fact, then, that charity or grace is something permanent, even as to any degree, the result is that if there is a process to infinity then any degree that has been made will be further perfectible; and so there can be at the same time as much in actuality as there can be in potency, for the possibility for such form is not a possibility for something that is only in a state of becoming but for something that is in a state of having become.

39. And this interpretation is touched on by the Commentator in Physics 3 com.69, that all powers that are in increase belong to one definite or demonstrated power; that is, that there is one power for a highest act in which are contained all the acts the many powers are capable of that are reduced to act one after another. But in the case of the division of the continuous, the many powers are not parts of one demonstrated or definite power, that is, there is not in their case some single act in which are contained all the acts completing the powers that are reducible to that act in turn; and so they are not parts of one demonstrated or definite power. This seems to mean only that in all ordered acts where there is, according to each degree, some act that is per se makeable, there is a highest in potency that can at the same time be in act, because it can be reduced to act by a single power; but in the case of acts that are only of a nature to exist in coming to be and where there are many ordered powers, there cannot be some single highest thing that can be in act as much as it is in potency but, beyond any potential coming to be, there can be something greater, although not something makeable by a single making.

40. [Second reason, n.31]. There is another reason posited for this conclusion [sc. that the highest grace can be created, n.29], namely that God can create as much charity as he can create (the subject of this major includes the predicate). Posit then that in fact ‘he creates as much as he can create’; therefore he cannot make anything greater; therefore the conclusion is gained that a highest creatable degree can be created.

41. Here the response is that the first proposition [sc. he can create as much as he can create, n.40] can be a hypothetical conditional, or a categorical proposition about a conditional predicate [sc. when the statement is conditional only about the predicate; William of Sherwoode Introductions to Logic pp.33-34, Syncategoremata pp.79-80].

42. In the first way the proposition is necessary because the antecedent includes the consequent: ‘if he can create so much, he can create so much’; and in this way one must suppose that it actually holds, so that both the antecedent and the consequent are posited as holding; because if the consequent is posited as holding and not the antecedent there is a fallacy of the consequence. For it need not be that what the antecedent follows on the consequent follows on, and this proposition about the holding of the antecedent [sc. ‘he can create as much as he can create’] is related to one about the possible holding of the consequent, and the inference ‘if man is an animal it is possible that he be white, therefore every animal is white’ is not valid. The first proposition therefore [sc. ‘he can create as much as he can create’] would have to be posited as holding in this way: ‘he creates as much as he creates’.

45. But if it is taken in the second way (when it is a categorical about a conditional predicate), the sense is, ‘he can create as much as he can create, that is, he can create a highest creatable’. And if a single power is indicated as modifying the whole proposition, it is, in its form, not true; and so the subject does not include the predicate, for the predicate is specified by a determination that is not per se known to be present in the subject, but it is true only by reason of the matter (for in the case of permanent things, however far one proceeds, the highest possible is as makeable by a single making as is anything else).

44. And these two reasons [nn.31, 40] get their evidence only from the first reason [n.30]

B. The Highest Grace can be Conferred on the Soul of Christ

45. Secondly, and more to the question, supposing that a highest grace can be created by a single action, I prove that it could be conferred on the soul of Christ.

First, because a subject fitted to receive an appropriate accident that comes in degrees (although not a subject that is of itself determined to any particular degree) can, considered in itself, receive that accident according to any degree; the soul is such a subject with respect to grace; therefore it can, considered in itself, receive any degree of grace.

46. The major here is clear from its opposite: for water is for this reason not able to receive any degree of heat, that heat is an accident unfitting to water in any degree, and there is a degree of it that could not exist in water while water remains with its nature as water, but the water would be destroyed;Scotus is following here, and throughout this argument, the traditional Aristotelian analysis of the material elements, according to which earth is cold and dry, water cold and wet, air hot and wet, fire hot and dry. ⁹³ air too, for which heat is an appropriate accident, cannot receive just any degree of heat for the reason it is determined by its nature to have a definite degree of heat; the same too of mixed bodies. But when there is an accident in a certain degree, and it is appropriate to a given subject and the subject is not determined to having any definite degree, there seems no reason for any degree to be unable to belong to the subject; for no greater contradiction at all between accident and subject is found in one degree of the accident than in any other, and the existence of what contains no contradiction is absolutely to be posited as possible.a

a.a [Interpolation] Or the argument [n.45] can be formulated in this way: Further, a subject able to receive a form that comes in degrees where no degree is repugnant to the subject, can receive any degree of it; the soul is disposed to grace in this way. Proof: if some degree of grace is repugnant to a subject that is as such receptive of it (the ‘as such’ excludes from the subject all accompanying idea of the subject’s being an active principle with respect to grace), then that degree of grace is also repugnant to any subject of the same nature, for anything capable of grace is capable of it under the same idea (from the second argument, n.47 infra). But no degree of grace is repugnant to whatever subjects are receptive of grace. So not to any particular one of them either.

     I reply that a greater degree is repugnant to a subject that has a lesser capacity. Therefore the minor [sc. ‘no degree of grace is repugnant to whatever subjects are receptive of grace’] is denied. The consequence proving it is likewise denied. But the inference does indeed hold that ‘if a degree of grace is repugnant to any subject of such and such capacity, then it is repugnant to any subject of equal capacity’, but not that it is repugnant ‘to any subject of the same idea, but of unequal capacity’. An example: if surface contains body then any surface contains any body, but a greater surface contains a greater body; and a smaller surface is not able to contain as large a body, and yet a smaller surface is of the same idea as a larger one.

     And then in reply to the third reason about first extremes in a proportion (n.48 infra, which would be against the above solution) I say: form and subject are adequate extremes when taken proportionally, and otherwise they are not (as a subject with a capacity for such an amount and a form with a degree of such an amount or a lesser amount).

     If a proof from surface to color is given (or a proof from first matter to all material forms) I reply that there is an equality of capacity there, but it is not so in the case of angel and soul, nor yet does the difference exceed the difference [sc. ‘intellectual’ as to angels, ‘rational’ as to men], but the idea of the genus does that is common to the differences [sc. angel and soul are both spiritual beings as to genus, and spiritual is common to the differences of intellectual in an angel and rational in the human soul; but an angel’s spirituality has no relation to a body while the soul’s does]; and so their greater and lesser capacity are of the same idea, although the differences are of a different idea.

47. Further, angel and soul are related to grace according to the same idea of receptivity, because grace, as it is received, is a form of the same idea, and so the receivers - insofar as they do receive - are of the same idea. An example: just as white is of the same idea in stone and in wood, so stone and wood are not related to white as they belong to different natures; on the contrary it is accidental to them that, as they receive a form of the same idea, they belong to different natures. Now grace in soul and angel is of the same species, otherwise one grace would determinately surpass the other and thus all grace in the soul would be greater than grace in an angel or conversely, and both of these are false. Therefore the two are not related to grace as subjects of different nature, but this difference is incidental to them insofar as they receive such accident; and thus the soul can receive as much as an angel can receive. But an angel can receive the highest creatable grace; therefore the soul can, and therefore also can the soul of Christ.

48. Further, when there is a proportion between common extremes, as between the first extremes of the proportion, it is between whatever is contained under either extreme. An example of this: what heats and what is heatable are the first extremes based on ‘having heat’, namely actually so and potentially so; thus, wherever the ideas of actually hot and potentially hot are found, there what heats and what is heatable can be found. But the first extremes of the proportion in question, namely ‘supernatural perfection and supernatural perfectibility’, are (in the present context) grace and intellectual nature; so the idea of this proportion is present in whatever is contained under either extreme; and therefore any grace whatever is the perfection simply of any intellectual nature whatever as that nature is perfectible by grace. An example of this: if color is related in first place to surface as perfection to perfectible, and if it is not determined by the nature of either extreme to some genus beneath it in order to be one extreme of the proportion, then any surface can be perfected by any color; but if the extremes are made determinate by something else, as that the surface, because it is the surface of a stone, is the determinate extreme of such and such a color, then that surface cannot receive any color whatever - but this is not because the surface is perfectible by color but because that whose surface it is determines a certain species or degree of color for itself; but if the surface were perfectible absolutely, and if the perfection were too, then anything with that surface could be perfected by any color in any degree.

C. A Doubt

49. There is a doubt here about the second member of the distinction, namely when ‘highest’ is expounded in the negative sense [sc. ‘highest’ as ‘what is not exceeded by anything else’, n.27]; the doubt is whether by God’s ordained power some other grace could be equal to this one [sc. the grace of Christ’s soul].

50. And it seems it could not:

For no other nature could be head of those who have grace, for there cannot be two heads, just as there cannot be two things that are highest in the same order.

51. Likewise, if the same amount of grace could be given to someone else, then this someone else could advance to the same extent in merit, which seems absurd.

52. Here one could say that although God could by his absolute power confer the same amount of grace on another nature, whether the nature was assumed or perhaps not assumed, yet he could not do so by ordained power because (according to the laws already set down by divine Wisdom) there will be only one head in the Church, from whom graces will flow to the members.