Forty Third Distinction

Question One. Whether there will be a General Resurrection of Men

1. “Lastly about the condition of the resurrection” [Master Lombard, Sent. IV d.48 ch.1 n.1]

2. About this forty third distinction I ask five questions, and first whether there will be a general resurrection of men.

3. That there will not:

Ecclesiastes 3.19, “There is one death for men and beasts;” but beasts do not rise again; therefore.

4. Again, Job 14.12, “When a man sleeps he will not rise; until the heavens are worn away, he will not awake;” but the heavens will never be worn away, since they are incorruptible.

5. Again the Philosopher On Generation and Corruption 2.338b13-20, “Things that are corrupted in substance do not return the same in number, but the same in species.” He maintains the same in Physics 5.4.228a3-6.

6. Again by reason: the whole requires the union of the parts, so the same whole requires the same union; but the same union will not return because it has been interrupted - and what is interrupted does not return the same, for it if it returns there will be iteration, but iteration is repugnant to identity, because iteration posits number and identity takes number away.

7. To the opposite:

Job 19.25-26, “I know that on the last day I will rise from the earth etc.”

8. Likewise I Corinthians 15, “We shall indeed all rise.”

I. To the Question

9. Here two things need to be considered: first the possibility, second the fact.

A. About the Possibility of the Resurrection

1. First Opinion

a. Exposition of the Opinion

10. About the first, one view [Thomas Aquinas, Sent. IV d.44 q.1 a.1] is stated as follows, that if the sensitive soul in man were diverse from the rational soul and were consequently corruptible as it is in other animals, the conclusion would well be drawn that in the resurrection there would not be the same sensible soul, and so not the same animal either.

11. But if it be posited that the rational and sensible soul in man is the same in substance, we will suffer no difficulties in this respect, as he himself declares elsewhere [ibid. IV d.44 q.2 ad 1], when he shows, relative to the point at issue, the difference between man and other corruptible things, that “the form of the other animals is not per se subsistent so as to be able to remain after the corruption of the composite, the way this holds of the rational soul, which retains after separation from the body the being it acquired in the body. And the body after the resurrection is drawn into participation with that being, so that there is not in man one being of the body and another of the soul; otherwise the union of soul and body in man would be accidental. And thus no interruption is caused in the substantial being of man to prevent the numerically same man being able to return after interruption of being, as does happen with other corrupted things whose being is altogether corrupted.”

12. This claim, then, rests on this, that although something that has been interrupted cannot return numerically the same, yet, because the being of the intellective soul is the same being as the being of the whole, the matter too remains the same; and so in nothing that pertains to man’s substance is any interruption caused in his being. Therefore, it is possible for a man to return numerically the same. It is not so in other corrupted things

b. Rejection of the Opinion

13. Against this is the authority of Augustine City of God 22.20 n.2, when he speaks of the flesh that is to return to man in the resurrection: “although,” he says, “a man had in all ways perished and none of his matter had remained in any hidden parts of his nature, the Almighty may bring it back whence he will and repair it.” Therefore, something totally destroyed and corrupted in the totality of its being can be restored the same.

14. Again by reason:

If a destroyed thing were annihilated, the nothing following the annihilation of it would be of the same idea as the nothing that was the term ‘from which’ of the creation of it, because these opposite changes have the same thing for term - one for the term ‘from which’ and the other for the term ‘to which’. But there is no repugnance in the nothing preceding creation to prevent what is opposed to that nothing from being capable of being created; therefore after annihilation it can be created the same. The reasoning is confirmed because it is plain that the same power on the thing’s part remains. Now a stone, though it be annihilated, has on its part as much possibility simply for existing after its annihilation as it had before its creation, because this possibility does not include contradiction more; nor does the nothing to which the stone departed take away the possibility more, because it would only take it away as being opposed to it; but it was opposed to the same thing, and equally so, before creation.

15. Again, there is some positive entity in man that is neither the material nor formal part or parts, as was proved in III d.2 nn.73-77. And, for the purpose in hand, it is sufficient to repeat one reason, that something is caused there by intrinsic causes; but neither the material cause nor the formal cause, nor both together, are caused by intrinsic causes; so there is some entity other than those causes taken separately or together; and it is destroyed. Otherwise a man would not be truly dead, because the whole entity of man would not be corrupted; and yet that entity will be repaired numerically the same, otherwise it would not be numerically the same man.

16. Again, if God conserved the ‘to be’ in instant a and in the whole intervening time up to b and in b too, one would concede that it was altogether numerically the same. Therefore if God conserve it in a and again in instant b, and not conserve it in the intermediate time, it will still be the same and yet will be interrupted in time; therefore a thing that has been interrupted can return numerically the same.

17. Proof of the consequence:

Because the identity of that ‘to be’ as it is in b in relation to itself as it is in a does not depend essentially on its conservation through the intermediate time, for it does not depend on it as formal cause or as any essential cause.

This is also proved in another way, that otherwise God would not be able to create the same ‘to be’ in some instant and not conserve it in another instant or particular time; because if he creates it in a prior instant and conserves it in the following time, and if the ‘to be’ (as it is conserved in that time) is essentially required for the identity of the ‘to be’ in instant b, then if it were not conserved at this time but were first created, it could not be created the same in b.

18. Again, the diversity of what is posterior does not prove diversity in what is essentially prior; but the above instants are essentially posterior to the persisting ‘to be’; hence too the ‘to be’ remains the same in all succeeding instants whatever. Therefore, whether there is continuity between the instants or not, the ‘to be’ will no less be the same. Or put it thus: if the ‘to be’ were in a and in the subsequent time and in b, it would be the same in a as in b; therefore if it were destroyed after a (which is its enduring in the intermediate time), still no diversity of it between a and b would thereby necessarily follow.

19. Again, from the root principle of the argument, that a ‘to be’ simply destroyed or interrupted cannot return the same [n.11], unacceptable results follow.

First, that God could not resuscitate the numerically same brute, the opposite of which is sometimes read to have been miraculously done by the saints, as is plain of the bull that St. Silvester resuscitated according to the story about him [Jacob Voragine, Golden Legends ch.12]; and to deny that this is possible for God is a mark of great infidelity, and yet a brute’s sensitive soul is interrupted and destroyed.

A further result is that none of the accidents that are corrupted in a man’s corruption, or before a man’s resurrection, could return numerically the same; and then the resuscitated man would not have numerically the same proper accident as before, because the proper accident did not remain after death, for it belonged to the whole as whole and not to the soul alone. The consequent is impossible, that it be the same thing in species and not have the same proper accident.

A further result, about the other accidents, is that the powers of the soul, which (according to him [Aquinas]) are accidents, cannot return numerically the same, for they are not accidents of the soul alone but of the whole composite (according to the Philosopher On Sense 1.436b6-11 and On Sleep 1.453b11-54a7); and so man in the resurrection would not have the same hearing and seeing power, and so on about the rest.

A result too is that he would not have the same quantity, because that does not remain either in the remaining matter alone or in the intellective soul.

20. Again the position seems to be at fault in another respect, that it posits that the whole of man’s ‘to be’ remains uninterrupted. [n.12].

First because, as proved before [n.15], the total entity is interrupted.

Second because the ‘to be’ of the intellective soul is not the total ‘to be’ of man (as he supposes, nn.10, 12), because every being has some ‘to be’, and man as man is some being and is not the soul alone; therefore he has some ‘to be’ of his own and not only the ‘to be’ of the soul.

21. Again, he contradicts himself in this, that elsewhere he says the state of the soul in the body is more perfect than its state outside the body because the soul is part of a composite, and every part is material with respect to the whole.

22. Against this I argue: what has the same proper ‘to be’ totally is not more imperfect from the mere fact that it does not communicate that ‘to be’ to something else. But the soul for you [sc. Aquinas] has totally the same ‘to be’ when separated as when conjoined; indeed, it has the ‘to be’ which, when communicated to the body, is the total ‘to be’ of a man; therefore it is in no way more imperfect by the fact that it does not communicate that ‘to be’ to the body.

23. The major is plain, because perfection is naturally presupposed by what it is ‘to communicate perfection’; therefore, perfection is not greater or lesser by the fact that it communicates or does not communicate - and this is especially so if, by such communication, there is no other ‘to be’ of the whole than the ‘to be’ here in question.

24. Again, it was proved above, in the material about the Eucharist [Ord. IV d.11 nn.285-286] that in man the substantial form is different from the intellective soul, and consequently, since it belongs to any form to give ‘to be’, the intellective soul does not give the total ‘to be’ of the composite.

25. This same argument can be directed against his first argument [n.10], because the form is interrupted in its being and yet is brought back the same.

As to the proof he intimates to the contrary [n.11], that then the union of soul and body would be accidental, the consequence must be denied. For just as union is not nothing but is of something to something and is consequently of being to being, so it is of what has being to what has being (for I do not understand how there could be some being that exists outside its cause and yet does not have its own proper ‘to be’); therefore just as being can be compounded per se with being, so can what is per se receptive and has its proper being be compounded with what is per se received and has its proper being. Nor is the union accidental because the latter is per se perfectible and the former per se perfection, for if ‘having being’ took away the idea of ‘per se perfectible’, then nothing but non-being could be per se perfectible.

2. Second Opinion

a. Exposition of the Opinion

26. A different position [Giles of Rome, Theorems about the body of Christ] is that, because nature only acts by movement and change, it therefore cannot bring back the numerically same thing because motion or change cannot return numerically the same. But God does not act through motion and change, and therefore too, by contrast, he is able to bring back the numerically same thing. And for this view can be adduced something that this Master [Giles] touches on, that because God has regard to matter as it is a ‘what’ he can impress a form on it as in no way distinct; for matter is not distinct as it is a ‘what’, and so God can always impress the same form on it while the matter remains the same, and matter always remains the same. But a natural agent does not regard matter as it is a ‘what’, and so a natural agent cannot bring any form indifferently to be in it however much it remains the same, and so a natural agent cannot bring to be in it the same form.

b. Rejection of the Opinion

27. Against this opinion: as to the issue at hand, it supposes something false, namely that God does not act by motion when he resuscitates. The proof is that matter first existed deprived of form and it comes to be under a form; therefore it transitions from privation to form through the action of the agent; but such transitioning is properly change, because the whole idea of change is preserved in it.

28. As to what Giles says on the other side about a natural agent, the conclusion seems doubtful, and it is touched on in question 3 below [nn.178-180]. However, the conclusion does not follow from the reasoning, because there is no necessity that, if a posterior cannot return the same, therefore a prior cannot either; and change is posterior to form itself.

A confirmation of this is that God, as a matter of fact, does not bring the numerically same change back when he resuscitates, because resuscitation is not the same change as generation; and yet the numerically same form will be brought back. Hence it is a fallacy of the consequent to infer a distinction of terms from a distinction of changes. For the converse does indeed follow, namely that if a different form is acquired there is a different change. But the same form can very well be acquired by diverse changes, just as a ‘where’ the same in species can be acquired by local motions diverse in species, as by motion in a straight line or in a circle, which are so much of different idea that they are not comparable, Physics 7.4.248a10-b6. Augustine too in On the Trinity 3 ch.9 nn.16-19 maintains that a thing the same in species can be generated equivocally and univocally, which however are changes of different idea.

29. There is a proof also for this, that the antecedent (namely that change cannot be brought back numerically the same [n.28]) does not hold, because although the unity of a whole composed of parts is the continuity of part with part, yet the unity or identity of a part with itself is not the continuity of it with another part; so although interruption posits the non-continuity of posterior with prior, the consequence does not hold that it takes away the identity of a part with itself.

3. Scotus’ own Opinion

30. As to this first article, then [n.9], I say that there is possibility on the side of God, because of his omnipotence (whether some other cause has the possibility for this I do not deal with here, but it will be spoken about in question 3 [nn.221-222]); and on the side of the object there is possibility simply, because no contradiction is involved.

31. And this is proved against the first opinion by authority and by reason - and this whether the bringing back is through change or without change, for both are possible, as was argued against the second opinion [nn.27-29].

32. And what is touched on by the second opinion, about having regard to matter as it is a ‘what’ [n.26], was touched on in the material about the Eucharist in d.11 nn.148, 58. For if there were any good sense to the remark it would perhaps be this, that God does not have regard to matter as it passes from form to form in a certain order, the way a natural agent necessarily has regard to it, because a natural agent cannot pass immediately from just anything to just anything.

33. But this difference does nothing for the possibility of bringing back the numerically same thing or not, because the order in question has regard to forms in their specific ideas and not in their identity or distinction. For the form of vinegar can succeed immediately to the form of wine, and the converse not immediately; but that the form of vinegar succeeds to this form of wine or to that is indifferent, just as water is indifferently generated from this fire or from that. Therefore when an agent has regard to the order of forms in a change, it can, just as if it were acting immediately without such order, have something preceding the form to be induced by it; and consequently, if it had the power absolutely to bring back the numerically same thing, it would not be prevented by its being determined to this or that order of forms in its acting.

B. About the Fact of the Resurrection

34. As to the second point, whether it can be shown by natural reason that there will be a resurrection, it will be discussed presently in the following question [nn.52-53].

35. But for now the conclusion is manifest from the truth of the faith.

36. For this truth is expressed as an article of faith both by the Apostles’ Creed and by the Nicene Creed, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead,” and also in the Athanasian Creed, “All men have to rise along with their bodies, etc.”

37. This is also contained very expressly in many places of Scripture, as John 11.23-26, Matthew 22.31-32, I Corinthians 15.20-22, Job 19.25-27, and II Maccabees 12.43-46, “Unless he hoped that those who had fallen would rise again etc.”

II. To the Initial Arguments

38. As to the first argument, Solomon [n.3] was there the proclaimer, now arguing on the part of the foolish, now replying according to the opinion of the wise; and he made the remark in question [n.3] when proclaiming on behalf of the foolish. But he contradicts it later (Ecclesiastes 12.5, 13-14), “Man will go to the home of his own eternity,” and later “Let us all equally hear the end of the speaking: fear God and observe his commandments, that is, let every man fear and observe. God will bring everything that happens under the sun into judgment etc.”

39. As to the second [n.4]: although the heaven will never be worn away in substance, yet it will be as to its effect on things here below in its generating and corrupting them, for its influence will cease after the judgment. And thus far can the verse in I Corinthians 7.31 be understood, “The figure of this world is passing away.” Or one could say that this verse is speaking of the heaven that St. Peter is speaking of in 2 Peter 3.10, “The heavens will be consumed in heat,” which is only understood of the elemental heaven [Ord. II d.14 nn.4-8].

40. As to the third argument [n.5], the Philosopher is there distinguishing circulation in celestial bodies from circulation in corruptible bodies, because in the former case the substance is not corrupted by the motion and so the substance returns the same - not meaning its ‘to be’ by this motion, but that it comes to be present to the same part by returning motion. Now circular motion in things down here is according to corruption and return of substantial form, and so the numerically same thing does not return here as it does there. But as to whether Aristotle universally denies that the numerically same thing can return, see question three [nn.173-179].

41. To the final argument [n.6] one can say that a composite can return the same, though the same union of parts not return. For that union is not of the essence of the whole, nor is that union the total entity composed of the parts, nor is it the form of the entity. But because union is simply necessarily required for the total entity, and nothing seems to be numerically the same unless what is necessarily required for it is numerically the same, therefore it seems truer that the union will return the same - and this if union is taken for the relation of the parts united with each other but not for the uniting, which remains only for the instant of resurrection. For the uniting can be posited as different, just as the change in question [sc. the resurrection] is different from generation.

42. And when the argument is made that the union was interrupted [n.6], I say that an interrupted thing can return numerically the same, not only the thing absolutely but also its respects, if the terms of the thing return numerically the same. For I believe that Mary had the same relation to the Son after Christ’s passion as she had to him before his passion, and yet it was interrupted in the death of the Son, because of the destruction of the term, and in the death of Mary,The Church’s teaching that Mary was assumed bodily into heaven does not by itself determine whether she died first or did not die first. ¹ because of the destruction of the foundation.

43. And if you say that this response seems to contradict itself, because it denies that the uniting returns the same, and yet this is necessary for the coming to be of the whole and, according to the above statement, nothing can return the same unless that return the same which is necessary for the thing’s being - I reply: let it be that the uniting, as it is a passive receiving, is necessary for the coming to be of the whole, then it follows that there is not the same coming to be of the whole unless the uniting is the same, and this I concede. And then either it is the case that neither will be the same, which is probable, because the change in question, as was said [n.41], would not be the same as the generation of man; or both will be able to be the same, because there is no contradiction involved.

Question Two Whether it can be Known by Natural Reason that there will be a General Resurrection of Men

44. Secondly I ask whether it can be known by natural reason that there will be a future general resurrection of men.

45. That it can be:

A natural desire cannot be in vain, according to the Commentator on Metaphysics 2 com.1; but man has a natural desire to exist always, and this desire can be known by natural reason;   therefore etc     . Proof of the minor: because nothing is naturally fled from save by virtue of a natural desire or of love in respect of it; but man naturally flees from death (this is plain from experience; plain too from the Apostle II Corinthians 5.4, “We do not wish to be unclothed, but clothed upon”).

46. Again, it is naturally known that beatitude is naturally desired (this is plain from Ethics 1.5.1097b1 about beatitude in general, and 10.4.1174b18-75a1 about beatitude in particular); but it is known by natural reason that there can only be beatitude if it is eternal. Therefore it is known by natural reason that man is ordered to some eternal perfection. The proof of the minor: Augustine On the Trinity XIII 8.n.11 proves it thus by reason: “Life itself, even if blessed, abandons the dying man. It abandons him either as he is not willing or as he is willing or as he is neither. If he is not willing, how is a life blessed that is in his will in such a way that it is not in his power? But if he is willing, how will a life be blessed which he who has it wants to end? If you say he is neither, neither wanting nor not wanting - but neither is that life blessed which is such that it not be worthy of the love of him whom it makes blessed.”

47. Again, it is naturally known that the whole species does not so lack its end that this end is not realized in some individual; but it is naturally known that blessedness is the end of the human species; therefore it is naturally known too that man can attain it, at least in the case of some individual. But it cannot be realized in this life because of the many miseries that accompany this life, as changes in fortune, infirmity of body, imperfection of knowledge and virtue, and inconsistency and fatigue in exercising acts of perfection, so much so that no activity, however delightful in the beginning, can be delightful continually; on the contrary, desisting from it through disgust will be delightful. And it is known by natural reason that beatific activity does not disgust. Nor can it be had by the separated soul alone, because man would not attain his end thereby. Therefore it will be had in another life by the whole man joined together. And, consequently, natural reason seems at least to conclude what the things are wherein man may reach his end.

48. Again, it is known by natural reason that every species that belongs to the integrity of the universe is perpetual, because the integrated whole is perpetual; but man is the most perfect species, at least among things here below, “For we are in some way the end of all things,” Physics 2.2.194a34-35.

49. To the opposite:

Augustine On the Trinity XIII.8-9 n.12, when speaking of immortal and eternal life, says, “Whether human nature lacks this life is no small question; indeed, of those who try to find it by human arguments scarcely a few - endowed with great intelligence, in leisure unbusied, instructed in the most subtle doctrines - have been able to track down only the immortality of the soul.”

50. Again, in Acts 17.18 it is said of certain Athenians listening to Paul that they said “he seemed to be a preacher of new daimons, because he was preaching to them Jesus and the resurrection.” And yet those Athenians were philosophers, very able in natural reason (clear about Dionysius the Areopagite, who was one of them).     Therefore this fact of the resurrection, which seemed to them to be so remote from the truth, did not seem to be well known through natural reason; hence all that Paul adduces there is only certain persuasive considerations, as is plain in the text.

51. Again in Acts 26.23-24, although Paul was saying “If Christ is capable of suffering, if he is first of the resurrection etc     .,” Festus said with a loud voice, “You are mad, Paul.”

I. To the Question

52. Here it is manifest that if any reason prove the resurrection, it must be taken from something that is proper to man such that it not belong to other corruptible things. But this is not matter, even incorruptible matter; nor is it any destructible form, because although there be such form in man, and more excellent than any form of a brute, yet a sufficient reason cannot be taken from it to prove the resurrection of the whole. Therefore, a reason must be taken from the specific form of man, or from an operation belonging to man according to that form.

A. About the Three Propositions for Proving the Resurrection of Man

53. Proceeding in this way, one can prove the intended conclusion from three propositions; and if all these were known to natural reason, we would have that conclusion. Now the propositions are as follows:

That ‘the intellective soul is the specific form of man’; second that ‘the intellective soul is incorruptible’. From these two it follows that the specific form of man is incorruptible. The added third is that ‘the specific form of man will not remain perpetually outside, or without, its whole’. Therefore the consequence follows that the whole will at some point return the same. This repeated return is called ‘resurrection’ according to Damascene Orthodox Faith ch.100, “Resurrection is a second raising up of that which was dissolved.”

54. As to these three propositions let us see how they are known.

1. About the First Proposition, that ‘the Intellective Soul is the Form of Man’

a. The Opinion of Others and the Weighing and Putting Together of it

55. It is said of the first [by Aquinas] that it is known by natural reason.

56. This is shown in two ways: in one way by authorities from the Philosophers who asserted this, and only as something known to natural reason; in another way by adducing the natural reasons from which it follows.

α. Proof by Authorities from Philosophers

57. As to the first point [n.56]: Aristotle On the Soul 2.1.412a19-b6 defines the soul as ‘the act of an organic physical body’ etc. And at 3.4.429a10-11 he says, “About the part of the soul by which it knows and is wise,” where he seems to posit the intellective soul as at least a kind or species of soul previously defined in general terms.

58. Again, all philosophers have commonly put ‘rational’ in the definition of man as his proper difference, meaning by ‘rational’ that the intellective soul is an essential part of man.

59. Nor, in short, is any noteworthy philosopher found who denies this, although the accursed Averroes in his fiction in On the Soul III com. 5, 36 - a fiction that is nevertheless intelligible neither to him nor to anyone else - posits a certain separate intellective substance that is conjoined [to man] by the medium of phantasms. This conjunction neither he nor any of his followers has been able to explain, or to save by means of it, the fact that ‘man understands’. For, according to him, a man would formally be only a sort of excelling irrational animal, though because of an irrational and sensitive soul more excellent than the other animals.

β. Proof by Natural Reasons

60. On the second point [n.56]. No a priori or a posteriori reason can easily be found for the intended conclusion save one taken from man’s proper operation, since form is made known by proper operation as matter is made known by change. So, argument for the intended conclusion is taken from the operation of understanding as follows: understanding is the proper operation of man; therefore it comes from man’s proper form; therefore the intellective soul is the proper form of man.

61. But this reason has an objection against it, that the intellect, according to them, is related only passively and not actively to the act of understanding. Therefore the proposition ‘proper operation comes from proper form’ does not prove that the intellective soul is the proper form of man, since this operation, according to them, does not come from the intellective soul but from the intelligible object or, according to others, from the phantasm.

62. Therefore I form the argument from that operation in another way as follows: man understands formally and properly; therefore, the intellective soul is the proper form of man.

63. The antecedent here seems sufficiently clear according to the authorities from Aristotle On the Soul 3.4.429a21-24 and Ethics 1.6.1098a3-4, 1.7: that ‘to understand’ is the proper operation of man; but operation, as it is distinct from action or making, exists formally in the one operating and does not proceed therefrom to something else. Likewise, Ethics 10.7.1177a12-b1, 8.1158b7-32, 9.1179a22-32, places man’s happiness in an act of understanding, and it is manifest that happiness is in man formally; therefore the operation in which happiness consists is in man formally.

64. But it is necessary to prove the antecedent by reason (against him who impudently denies it), and this by taking in the antecedent ‘understanding properly speaking’, by which I mean ‘an act of knowing that transcends the whole genus of sense knowledge’.

65. This antecedent, therefore, is proved in one way as follows: man understands by a non-organic act of knowing; therefore, he understands properly.

The consequence is plain from the reason already set down [n.63-64], that a proper act of understanding is knowing that transcends the whole genus of sensation; but all sensation is organic knowing, from On the Soul 2.1.412a21-b9, 2.11.423b31-42a7. The proof of the antecedent of this enthymemeThe antecedent is “man understands by a non-organic act of knowing” and the argument it is the antecedent of is an enthymeme because the premise that a non-organic act is an act of understanding properly is left unexpressed. This premise itself is proved by the statements that understanding properly is knowing that transcends the whole genus of sensation, and that sensation does not so transcend because it is the act of an organ and an organ is tied to a determinate class of sensibles. The inadequacy of this argument is shown in what follows. ² is that an organ is determined to a definite genus of sensibles, from On the Soul 3.426b8-23, and this for the reason that it consists in a proportion between the extremes of the genus. But we experience some knowledge in ourselves that does not belong to us according to such organ, because then it would be determined precisely to the sensibles of a determinate genus, the opposite of which we experience; for we know by such act the difference between any genus of sensibles and something else that is not anything of the genus; therefore we know each extreme (the consequence is plain according to the Philosopher when he argues about the common sense in On the Soul 2.11.423b31-4a7).

66. But objection is made here:

First, that organic knowledge is that which is present according to a determinate part of the body; but the knowledge about which it is argued that we distinguish by it sensibles from non-sensibles is present first in the whole body, and so it does not come through any organ properly speaking. However, it does not transcend in perfection the whole genus of sensitive knowledge, because it is present first in the whole body, and consequently it is as material as that which is in the whole part by part; for thus is a property of the whole as material as that which is in the whole part by part.

67. Second, the assumption is denied, namely that the act is not present according to any organ; for it is present according to the organ of imagination. The proof of this is that when this organ is damaged knowledge is impeded. Nor is the proof sound [n.65] about the determination of the organ to a certain genus, because imagination extends itself to all sensibles.

68. However, the first objection [n.66] is excluded by something touched on there [n.65], because we discriminate by the act [sc. of understanding] between the whole genus of sensibles and something that is outside that whole genus.

69. Nor is the proof sound [n.67] that when the organ of imagination is damaged knowledge is impeded; for this happens because of the order of these powers in their operation, and not because understanding is exercised through the medium of this organ.

70. The principal antecedent [nn.65, 62], that there is some immaterial knowledge in us, is proved in another way: no sensitive knowledge can be immaterial,     therefore etc     .

71. This term ‘immaterial’ is frequently used by the Philosopher in the issue at hand, but it seems ambiguous. For it can be understood in three ways relative to the issue at hand:

Cognition is immaterial either because it is incorporeal in the following way, that it does not come through a bodily part and organ; and then it is the same as the proposition already set down about non-organic knowledge.

Or it is immaterial in another way, that it is in no way extended, and then it states more than ‘non-organic’ does; for although all organic cognition is extended because it is received in something extended, yet not only so; because if it were received in the whole composite first, then since the whole composite is extended the operation would still be extended.

In a third way its immateriality can be understood in relation to the object, namely that it regards the object under immaterial ideas, that is, to the extent it abstracts from the here and now and the like, which are said to be material conditions.

72. Now if immateriality in the second way were proved, the proposed conclusion would be obtained more than from a proof of it in the first way. But it does not seem it can thus be proved (save from the conditions of the object that the act regards), unless perhaps by reflection, because, as much as the act of this knowing is not reflexive on itself, we experience ourselves reflecting back on it. And     therefore , it is from the object of the act that a proof of the antecedent is finally reached.

73. In this way: we have in ourselves some knowledge of the object under the idea under which there cannot be any sense knowledge of it; therefore etc     .

74. The proof of the antecedent [n.73] is that we experience in ourselves that we know the universal actually.

75. And we experience that we know being or quantity under an idea more common than is the idea of the first sense object, even as regards the highest sense soul.

76. We also experience that we know the relations consequent to the natures of things, even non-sensible things.

77. We experience too that we distinguish the whole genus of sensible things from anything that is not of that genus.

78. We even experience that we know relations of reason (which are second intentions), namely the relation of universal, of genus and species, of opposition and other logical intentions.

79. We experience too that we know the act by which we know these intentions and know that by which the act is present in us, which is by an act that reflects back on the direct act and is receptive of it.

80. We experience too that we assent to certain propositions, as the first principles, without possibility of contradiction or error.

81. We experience too that we come to know the unknown from the known by a discursive process, such that we cannot dissent from the evidence of the discursive process or from the knowledge inferred.

82. Each of these ‘knowings’ is impossible for any sense power;     therefore etc     .

83. But if someone stubbornly deny that these acts are present in man, and deny that he experiences them in himself, one should not dispute with him further but should say to him that he is a brute thing. Just as one should not dispute with someone who says ‘I do not see color there’, but should say to him ‘you need senses because you are blind’. So we we experience these acts in us by a certain sense, that is, by an interior perception. And therefore, if someone denies them, one must say that he is not a man because he does not have the vision that others experience.

84. The proof of the assumption, namely that ‘none of these acts can be present according to any sense power’ [nn.82, 73], is because the universal in act is known with as much indifference [to any particular] as the thing thus known can be asserted of every singular in which it is found to be preserved. Sense does not know in this way [n.74].

85. But this is more evident from the second point [n.76], because no power can know anything under an idea more universal than its proper object (as sight does not know anything under an idea that is indifferent as to color and sound); therefore the knowledge that is of something under an idea more common than any posited object, even of the highest sense, cannot be any sensation.

86. The third point [n.77] proves the same, because no sensation can distinguish its first sense object, that is, its most common object, from what is not of that sort, because neither can it distinguish both the extremes.

87. About relations consequent to things not mutually sensed by each other, or are non-sensible in relation to things sensible [n.78], the answer is plain from the same point [n.86], that the senses have no power for them. And this is much plainer about those relations that are called relations of reason, because a sense cannot be moved to know something that is [not?]There is no ‘not’ in the Latin but it seems to be necessary, unless ‘sensible qua sensible’ means ‘sensible under the idea of sensible’, for sense perceives the sensible thing and not the idea of what it is to be a sensible thing. ³ included in a sensible object as sensible. The relation of reason is not included in anything as it is existent; but sense is of the existent as it is existent. And hereby can also be proved the principle too about a universal act, because to be an existent as it is existent is repugnant to a universal in act.

88. The other point, about reflection back upon act and power [n.79], is proved by the fact that a quantum is not reflexive on itself.

89. The other two points, about composition and assent to composition, and about discursive reasoning and assenting to the evidence of discursive reasoning [nn.80-81], are proved from relation of reason, because they are not without relation of reason.

90. The consequence of the first enthymeme [n.65] is proved as follows: if such an act is in us formally (since it is not our substance because sometimes it is present and sometimes not present), then one must grant there something properly receptive of it; but not anything extended, whether it is an organic part or a whole composite, because then the operation would be extended, and it could not be such as it is said to be about objects such as they are said to be; therefore it must be present according to something nonextended and that is formally present in us; but that cannot be without the intellective soul, because any other form is extended.

91. Or the consequence can be proved in another way, by going to the condition of the object of the act; because any form lower than the intellective form, if it has an operation, has it precisely in respect of an object under ideas opposite to those that have been stated. Therefore, if we have an operation about an object under those ideas, it will not be in us according to any form other than an intellective one; therefore it is in us according to an intellective one. Therefore an intellective form is in us formally, otherwise we would not be operative formally according to that operation.

92. The same thing can be proved from the second human operation, namely the will, because man is lord of his acts such that it is in his power to determine himself by his will to this thing or its opposite, as was said in Lectura II d.25 n.94. And this fact is known not only from the faith but also by natural reason. Now this indetermination cannot be in any sense appetite, either organic or extended, because any organic or material appetite is determined to a certain genus of desirables that is agreeable to it, such that when the genus is apprehended it cannot not be agreeable nor can the appetite not desire it. Therefore the will by which we thus indeterminately will is an appetite that is not of any such form, namely material form, and consequently it is an appetite of something that surpasses every such form. We set down the intellective form as of this sort, and then, if that appetite is formally in us, because desiring is so as well, it follows that that form is our form.

2. About the Second Proposition, that ‘The Intellective Soul is Incorruptible or Immortal’

93. About the second main proposition, which is that ‘the intellective soul is immortal’ [n.53] the procedure is the same as about the first one, by first bringing forward the authorities of the philosophers who held this opinion.

a. Proof through Authorities of Philosophers

Aristotle, On the Soul 2.2.413b25-27, says that “the intellect is separated from other things as the perpetual from the corruptible.” If it be said that it is separated as to its operation, on the contrary: from this the proposed conclusion follows, that if it can be separated as to operation then as to being as well (according to Aristotle On the Soul 1.1.403a7-12).

94. Again, On the Soul 3.4.429a29-b5, a difference is set down between sense and intellect, that “a surpassing sensible object destroys the sense”, and so, after the sensation, the sense perceives a lesser sensible thing less. But it is not so with the intellect; rather after it has understood things supremely intelligible, it understands lesser things more; therefore the intellect is not weakened in its operation; and then it follows further that it is incorruptible in its being.

95. Again Metaphysics 12.3.1070a21-27, “Moving causes, just as they exist beforehand, are yet as the rational nature (that is as the form) simultaneous with the caused thing as a whole. For when a man is being healed, health exists then also. But whether anything remains afterwards needs to be examined. For nothing prevents this in some cases, as suppose the soul is such - not every soul, but the intellect     etc .” The Philosopher means to say, then, that the intellect is a form that remains after the composite but not beforehand.

96. Again Generation of Animals 2.3.736b27-28, “It remains then that only the intellect comes from without.” Therefore     , it does not receive its being through generation but from an extrinsic cause. And, consequently, it cannot receive non-being through corruption or through any other inferior corruptive cause, because its being is not subject to any such cause, for it is immediately from a superior cause.

97. Again, a number of reasons can be formed from the Authorities of the Philosopher [3.18, n.45].

There is one principle the Philosopher has that ‘natural desire cannot be vain’; but there is a natural desire now in the soul to exist always.

98. Again, in Metaphysics 7.15.1039b29-30 he maintains that ‘matter is that whereby a thing can be and not be’; therefore, according to him, what does not have matter does not have the possibility not to exist; the intellective soul, according to him, does not have matter, because it is a simple form.

99. Again, in Ethics 3.9.1115a32-b1 he maintains that a brave man should expose himself to death for the sake of the republic, and he maintains the same in Ethics 9.8.1169a18-20, and speaks according to the judgment of natural reason. Therefore, the immortality of the soul can be known according to natural reason. The proof of this consequence is that no one should or can desire his own complete non-existence for any good of virtue, whether a good in himself or in another or of the republic. For, according to Augustine On Free Choice of the Will 3.7-8 nn.68-84, non-existence cannot be desired; but now, if the soul were not immortal, someone would get, by dying, total nonexistence.

b. Proof through Arguments of Doctors [of Theology]

100. Again, one doctor [Aquinas] gives, as if from the words of the Philosopher, the following argument: what is corrupted is either corrupted by its contrary or by a lack of something necessarily required for its being; but the intellective soul has no contrary, nor is the being of the body simply necessary for its being, because it has its own proper being per se and has it the same in the body and outside the body; nor is there any difference involved save that in the body it communicates it to be corrupted and outside the body does not communicate it. Again, what is simple cannot be separated from itself; the soul is simple; therefore it cannot be separated from itself, and consequently cannot be separated from its being, because it does not have being from a form other than itself. Things are otherwise in the case of a composite thing, which has being through a form and this form can be separated from matter, and so the being of the composite can be destroyed.

101. But the Philosopher seems to have thought the opposite, because at the end of Metaphysics 7.17.1041b11-33 he expressly maintains that all the parts that can remain when separated from the whole are elements, that is, material parts, as he there takes the term ‘elements’. And one must, besides such elements, posit in the whole some form whereby the whole is what it is, and this form could not remain in separation from a material part when the whole does not remain. Therefore, if he conceded that the intellective soul is the form of man, as is plain from the proof of the preceding proposition [nn.62-63], he does not posit that it remains separated from matter when the whole does not remain.

102. Again, it appears to be a principle with the Philosopher that ‘what begins to be ceases to be’; hence in On the Heavens 1.10.279b17-21 he seems to hold, against Plato, that it is incompossible for something to begin to be and yet to be perpetual and incorruptible; and in Physics 3.4.203b8-9, on the infinite, he says that what has a beginning has an end.

α. The Proofs of the Philosophers are not Demonstrative

103. It can be said that although the reasons for proving this second proposition [nn.53, 93] are probable, they are not however demonstrative, or indeed necessary.

104. And what is adduced for it in the first way, from the authority of philosophers, can be solved in a twofold manner:

In one way that it is unclear what the Philosopher thought about the matter, for he speaks variously in different places; and he held different principles, from some of which one of the opposed sides seems to follow and from others the other. Hence it is probable that he was in doubt about this conclusion, and seemed to incline now more to one side and now more to the other, as he treated of material consonant with the one side more than with the other.

105. There is also another response, a more real one, that not everything said assertively by the philosophers was something they had proof for through necessary natural reason, but that frequently they had only certain probable convictions, or the common opinion of preceding philosophers.

106. Hence the Philosopher says On the Heavens 2.12.291b25-28, “One must try to say what appears, considering it proper that eagerness be attributed rather to modesty than daring if, for the sake of philosophy, one prefers to make a stand and embraces slight indications as sufficient where the doubts we have are very great.” Hence the philosophers were content with slight indications when they were unable to reach anything greater, lest they go against the principles of philosophy.

107. And in the same chapter [n.106] he says, “accounts of the other stars are given by the Egyptians and Babylonians, from whom we get much of what we believe about individual stars.”

108. Hence the philosophers are content sometimes with probable arguments, sometimes with assertions of their principles beyond any necessity of reason. And this response might suffice for all the authorities, many though they be, because these authorities do not prove their conclusion.

109. However response can be made to them in order.

To the first [n.93], that Aristotle only understands this separation in the precise sense that the intellect does not use the body in its operation; and for this reason it is incorruptible in its operation -meaning by ‘corruption’ that by which an organic power is corrupted because of the corruption of the organ. And this is the only corruption that belongs to an organic power, according to the Philosopher On the Soul 1.4.408b21-22, “If an old man were to be given the eye of a young man, he would see just as a young man does.” Therefore, the seeing power is not weakened or corrupted as far as its operation is concerned, but only the organ is. Nor yet from this in-corruption in the intellect (namely that it does not have an organ by the corruption of which it could be corrupted in its operation) does it follow that it is simply incorruptible in operating (for then it would follow that it would be incorruptible in being, as is then [n.94] argued); but all that follows is that it is not corruptible in its operating the way an organic power is. Still, it would be posited to be simply corruptible, according to On the Soul 1.4.408b21-22, “The intellect is corrupted in us when something within is corrupted,” and this to the extent that it would be posited as the principle of operating its proper operation for the whole composite; but a composite is corruptible; therefore the operating principle of it is corruptible too. And that the principle of operating is for the whole, and that the operation of it is an operation of the whole, seem to be what Aristotle says in On the Soul above.

110. To the next argument [n.94] I say that a surpassing sensible object destroys the sense per accidens, because it corrupts the organ, for it disrupts the mean proportion in which the good disposition of an organ consists; and, by contrast, the intellect, because it does not have an organ, is not destroyed by a surpassing object; but from this does not follow that the intellect is incorruptible, unless it be proved not to depend in its being on the whole thing that is corruptible.

111. To the third [n.95], about Metaphysics 12.3.1070a21-27, the answer is that Aristotle made that statement in a state of doubt, for he says ‘perhaps’, but he does not say ‘perhaps’ as regard the fact that the intellect remains afterwards, that is, after the whole; but he says, “not every soul, but the intellect;” and then follows, “for it is perhaps impossible that every soul should etc.,” where he was in doubt whether it is possible for every soul to remain after the composite. But as to the intellect he does not doubt but that it does not depend in its being on the whole that is corrupted. If then he expressly asserts it, one can say that nevertheless it was not proved to him by necessary reasoning but that he was persuaded by probable reasons.

112. To the next [n.96], it is very doubtful what he thought about the beginning of the intellective soul. For if he did not posit that God does something afresh immediately but only moves the heaven with an eternal motion, and does so as remote agent, by what separate agent would Aristotle posit that the intellective soul is freshly produced?

113. For if you say it is produced by some intelligence, there is a double unacceptability: first, because an intelligence cannot produce a substance (Ord. IV d.1 n.75); second, because an intelligence cannot more produce something new immediately than God can - according to the principles of the Philosopher about the immutability of the agent, and so about the agent’s eternity in acting. Nor can Aristotle posit, according to his own principles, that the intellective soul is the term of a natural agent, because, as appears from Metaphysics 12.3.1070a25-27, he posits that it is incorruptible (and no form that is the term of a natural agent is simply incorruptible).

114. One can say he posits that it receives being, and new being, immediately from God, because the fact that it receives being follows sufficiently from Aristotle’s principles, since he does not posit that it had perpetually preceded without a body nor that it existed beforehand in another body. And it is not provable by reason from whom it could receive such being (nothing else being presupposed) save from God.

115. But on the contrary: then Aristotle would be conceding creation.

I reply: this does not follow, because he did not posit a different production for the composite and for the intellective soul, as neither for fire and the form of fire; but he posited the animation of an organic body to be a production per accidens of the soul itself.

116. We, however, posit two productions: one from the non-being of the soul to its being, and this is creation; a second from non-animation of the body to animation of it, and this is production of an animate body and is through a change in the proper sense of change. Someone, then, who posited only the second production would posit no animation,That is, presumably, no making of a soul by creation. ⁴ and thus Aristotle did.

117. But although you may, according to him, avoid creation, how can the proposition be saved of an unchangeable agent producing something?

I reply: in no way except because of a newness in the passive receptive thing. For the fact that an effect, dependent totally and precisely on its active cause, should be new would be reduced, according to Aristotle [nn.94-99], to some variation in the efficient cause itself; but the fact that an effect that is dependent on the agent and on the receptive thing is new can be reduced to the newness of the passive thing itself, without newness in the agent.

118. And thus it would be said here that by natural necessity does God move an organic body to animation as soon as there is a body susceptible of this animation, and that by natural causes does this susceptible thing sometimes newly come to be. And for this reason is there then a new movement for animation from God himself.

119. But why must this newness be reduced to God as to the agent cause?

I say because it is like a first agent, and therefore, according to Aristotle, it is always acting with some action on the passive subject, being disposed always in the same way, so that, if some passive subject can be new and be receptive of some form, which form cannot be subject to the causality of a second cause, God is the immediate cause of it. And yet he is so newly, because one must posit to every passive power in an entity some corresponding active power; and so, if no created active power corresponds to a new passive power, the divine active power will immediately correspond to it.

120. To the next argument [n.97], about natural desire, response will be given in replying to the initial reasonings [nn.138-145], because the first initial reason and the second and third [nn.45-47] proceed on the basis of natural desire.

121. To the next [n.98] from Metaphysics 7 about matter, the description there of matter is true, not only when understanding ‘matter is that whereby the thing of which the matter is part can be and not be’ about the thing of which matter is part, but about the thing whether it is that of which matter is part or that which is received in matter; otherwise the form of fire would not be able not to be, because matter is not part of the form of fire.

122. To the next argument [n.99] about the brave man, there is considerable disagreement whether one should, according to right reason, expose oneself to death. Yet one can say, as the Philosopher replies in Ethics 9.8.1169a17-33, that the brave man gives himself the greatest good in performing that great act of virtue; and he would deprive himself of that good, indeed he would be living viciously, if, by omitting the act, he were then to save his being for however much being. But a simply greatest and momentary good is better than a diminished good of virtue, or than a vicious life, for a long time. Hence from this argument it is clearly proved that the common good, according to right reason, is more to be loved than one’s own proper good, because a man should expose to destruction simply all his own proper good, even if he not know his soul is immortal, so as to save the common good; and the good for whose preservation the being of something else is despised is more to be loved simply.

β. To the Arguments of the Doctors

123. To the arguments of the Doctors:

As to the first argument [n.100], if it take the soul to have the same per se being in the whole and outside the whole (insofar as ‘per se being’ is distinguished from the ‘being-in’ of an accident), the form of fire in this way, if it were without matter, would have per se being, and then one could admit that the form of fire would be incorruptible. But if the argument take ‘per se being’ as what belongs to a composite thing in the genus of substance, then it is false that the soul without the body has per se being, because then its being would not be communicable to another; for in divine reality too per se being in this way is taken to be incommunicable. Hence the argument, that because the soul has per se being without the body therefore it does not need the body, altogether fails. For in the second way of understanding ‘per se being’ the antecedent is false, and in the first way the consequence is invalid - unless you add to it that the soul naturally or without a miracle has per se being in the first way; but this proposition is something believed and is not known by natural reason.

124. To the other argument [n.102]: not every corruption is by separation of one thing from another; for if one takes the being of an angel - supposing this to be, according to some [Aquinas], different from the angel’s essence - it is not separable from itself, and yet it is destructible by the succession to its being of the opposite of being.

3. About the Third Proposition, that ‘The Specific Form of Man will not Perpetually Remain Outside its Whole’

125. About the third proposition it is said [Aquinas] that it can be proved from the fact that a part outside its whole is imperfect; but a form so noble will not remain imperfect perpetually; therefore not separate from the whole either.

126. Again, “nothing violent is perpetual” according to Aristotle On the Heavens 1.2.269a19-28. But the separation of the body from the soul is violent, because against the natural inclination of the soul, according to the Philosopher; for the soul is naturally inclined to perfecting the body.

127. Now as to this proposition [n.125], it seems that if the Philosopher had posited the soul to be immortal he would rather have posited it to remain perpetually without the body than in the body, because ‘everything composed of opposites is corruptible’.

128. Nor do the above reasons prove it:

Not the first [n.125] because the major premise, ‘a part outside its whole is imperfect’, is only true of a part that receives some perfection within the whole; now the soul does not receive perfection but communicates it. And thus an argument to the opposite can be formed, because it is not repugnant for something to remain equally perfect in itself though it not communicate its perfection to another. This is clear about the efficient cause, whose remaining however much without its effect is not repugnant to it. But the soul remains equally perfect in its proper being whether it is joined or separated, being different however in this, that when separated it does not communicate its being to another.

129. Hereby also to the next argument [n.126], because natural inclination is double: one is to first act and is the inclination of the imperfect to the perfect, and accompanies essential potency; and the other inclination is to second act, and is of the perfect to the communicating of perfection, and accompanies accidental potency.

About the first inclination it is true that its opposite is the violent and is not perpetual, because it posits perpetual imperfection, which the Philosopher considers unacceptable [On the Heavens 2.14.296a32-34], for he placed causes in the universe that at some time take away any imperfection. But the second inclination, even if it be perpetually suspended, is not properly called anything violent, because neither is it an imperfection; but as it is now the inclination of the soul for the body is only in the second way.

130. Or one can say, according to Avicenna [On the Soul 1.1, 3], that the appetite of the soul is satisfied by the fact that it once perfected a body, because its conjunction with the body is so that by means of the body the soul acquire its perfections through the senses, which it could not acquire without the senses, and so not without the body either. But when the soul has been once conjoined, it has acquired as much as it desires simply to acquire in that way.

B. Recapitulation of the Things Said about the Three Propositions

131. I say, then, about these three propositions [n.53], from which is formed a reasoning for the resurrection that is in some way a priori (because the propositions are taken from the form of man who is to be resuscitated), that the first of them is naturally known. And the error opposed to it, which is proper to Averroes and his alone [n.59], is worst, not only against the truth of theology but also against the truth of philosophy. For it destroys science, because it destroys all acts of understanding as distinct from acts of sensing, and all acts of choice as distinct from acts of sensitive appetite, and so destroys all the virtues, which are not generated without choices made according to right reason. And consequently, someone who so errs would need to be exterminated from the community of men who use reason.

132. But the other two propositions are not sufficiently known by natural reason, although there are certain probable persuasions for them. For the second, indeed, the persuasions are more numerous and more probable, and hence the Philosopher seems to have more expressly perceived it; for the third proposition, however, they are fewer. And consequently, the conclusion that follows from them is not in this way [sc. a priori, n.131] sufficiently known by natural reason.

133. The second way to the conclusion is from arguments a posteriori, some probable ones among which were touched on in the initial arguments, as about the beatitude of man [nn.46-47].

134. Added to this is also the argument about the justice of God as exacting retribution, whereas now in this life the virtuous suffer greater pains than the vicious. And this argument the Apostle seems to touch on I Corinthians 15.19, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are more miserable than all men etc.”

135. But these reasons a posteriori [nn.133-134] are less conclusive than those taken a priori from the proper form of man [n.131]; for it does not appear through natural reason that there is for all men a single Judge ruling according to the laws of retributive and punitive justice.

136. Let that also be true which might be said in this way, that for each man there is in his own good act a sufficient retribution, as Augustine says [Confessions 1.12 n.19], “You have commanded, O Lord, and so it is, that every sinner is a punishment to himself,” so that sin itself is the first punishment of sin. Hence it is plain that the Saints, when arguing for the intended conclusion a posteriori, only intend to give certain probable persuasions. As Gregory says, after he has set down certain persuasions for the purpose [Moralia 14.55 n.70], “He who will not believe for these reasons, let him believe because of the faith.” Likewise too is the teaching of St. Paul in Acts 17.4, 12, 34; 26.8, 19-20, and I Corinthians 15.12, 35-38, 42-51, through the example of a grain of wheat that falls [in the ground], and through the resurrection of Christ, that if Christ is risen the dead too will rise, and through just retribution - these are only probable persuasions, or taken only from premises of faith. The fact is plain by running through them one by one.

137. In brief, then, it can be maintained that neither a priori (namely by reason of the intrinsic principle in man), nor a posteriori (namely by reason of some operation or perfection befitting man), can the resurrection be proved necessarily by relying on natural reason. Hence the resurrection is only held as absolutely certain through faith. Indeed, neither is the second proposition taken in the first way [nn.93-102] held by reason, as Augustine says On the Trinity 13.9 n.12,See above n.49. “Of those indeed who tried to find these things out by human argumentation scarcely a few, endowed with great genius...and educated in the most subtle doctrines, were able to attain to tracking down the immortality of the soul alone. But that the whole man, who consists of soul and body, will be immortal, and for this reason truly blessed, is promised by this Faith, not with human argumentation, but by divine authority.” ⁵ but only through the Gospel, when Christ says [Matthew 10.28], “Fear not those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”

II. To the Initial Arguments

138. To the first argument [n.45]:

139. Either the argument is about natural desire properly speaking, and that is not any elicited act but only the inclination of nature toward something; and then it is plain that a natural desire for anything cannot be proved unless a possibility in nature for it is first proved; and so, by arguing in the reverse direction, there is a begging of the question.

Or the argument is about natural desire less properly speaking, namely that it is an elicited act but in accordance with natural desire; and then again it cannot be proved that some elicited desire is natural in this way unless it first be proved that there is a natural desire for it in the first way.

140. But if you argue that that is naturally desired which, as soon as it is apprehended, is desired by an elicited act, because this proneness seems to come only from a natural inclination - the first would in this one way be denied, that a vicious man is inclined at once to desire, in accord with his habit, what is offered to him; but because nature is not vicious immediately in itself or in everyone, and because anyone at all immediately desires what is apprehended, the upshot is that the desire is not vicious; therefore this response is not a general one.

141. Therefore it can be said that one must show the apprehension to be in accord with right reason and not vicious - otherwise if upon an erroneous apprehension everyone immediately desires it with an elicited act, what follows is not that the desire is consonant with the inclination of nature but rather that it is opposed to it. Now it is not manifest by natural reason that, when reason displays eternal existence as desirable for man, it is not an erroneous reason, for one would first have to show that this existence is capable of belonging to man.

142. Briefly then, every middle term taken from natural desire seems not to work, because for it to work one must show either a natural potency in nature for such existence, or show that the apprehension of it (upon which this desire immediately follows if it is an elicited act) is a correct and not erroneous apprehension. And of these alternatives the first is the same as the conclusion that is drawn from natural desire, and the second is more difficult or less known than this conclusion.

143. But as to the proof of the claim that ‘the natural desire of man is for immortality because he naturally flees death’ [n.45], one could say that this proof would prove the same equally of a brute. And if the remark of the Philosopher On Generation 2.10.336b27-29 is brought forward that “in everything to be is better than not to be,” it is to the opposite effect: first because it would be equally conclusive of a brute as of man, and second because Aristotle adds [ibid. 30-32], “but this continual existence is not possible in all things, because of their great distance from the Principle,” and therefore “God has completed nature in another way, making generation continual,” as if he were to say: since natural desire is for existence always, in things in which this existence is impossible in itself the desire is for it in the way possible, namely by continuing the species in diverse individuals. And thus might it be conceded about man as about other generable things, that he has a natural desire to exist always, not in a single individual but in this sort of succession.

144. But the drive seems always to remain, that in fleeing one opposite it only flees it because of love of the other opposite. One can concede that from this follows that, when it flees death for the moment now, it loves life for the moment now, and so on about any designated now; but it does not follow that therefore it flees it for an infinite [of nows].

145. To the remark of the Apostle [n.45] I reply: we who are inspired or confirmed by faith ‘do not wish’, and so ‘we do not wish naturally’, such that this ‘not wishing’ is according to natural inclination; but it is not known by natural reason that this ‘not wishing’ is according to natural inclination.

146. To the second argument [n.46] I concede that it is true, not only universally but even specifically, that beatitude is desired naturally by man, as will appear below in d.49 [Rep. IVA d.49 nn.6-8]. But it is not known by natural reason that beatitude in particular, namely which consists in what we believe it to consist, is naturally desired by man; for one would first need to know by natural reason that that act would be suitable for us as the end.

147. When therefore you prove [n.46] through the Philosopher that, from Ethics 1, beatitude not only in general but that also, from Ethics 10, beatitude in particular is naturally desired, I reply: the idea of beatitude that the Philosopher reckons particular, namely what consists in the most perfect speculation of the highest causes, is very universal. But, when descending to it in particular, the Philosopher does not seem to have gone beyond the speculation that is most perfect in this life. Hence, after he has inquired into man’s beatitude, he adds, “The body too must be healthy, and there must be food and servants; but the happy man must not be supposed to need much and great things” [Ethics 10.5-9.1175a3-78b35].

148. Therefore the specific happiness that we posit (for we posit a speculation possible for man far more perfect than any perfection possible for him in this life) is not naturally known to be our end, nor is it naturally known that it is naturally desired by us as the end.

149. When you prove through Augustine’s reason that beatitude cannot be but eternal [n.46], he who holds that human beatitude can be had in this life will grant this, that he loses it willingly, because, according to right reason, he ought to will the condition of his life; but right reason shows to him who does not have the faith that, as it seems to him, the condition of his nature is mortality of soul as well as of body; and therefore just as he ought to will the loss of life so also of blessed life.

150. And when you say ‘a life which was not loved by him who has it is not blessed’ [n.46], this is true if it were not loved for the time when it is possible and fitting the lover of it; but that ‘it is fitting thus forever’ is not known by natural reason.

151. As to the next argument [n.47], it is conceded that it is known to man that he can attain his end in some individual and, consequently, attain beatitude in that degree in which it is known that beatitude is the end of man.

152. And when you say that this is impossible in this life [n.47], I say that this impossibility is not known through natural reason.

153. When you appeal to misfortunes (infirmity of body, imperfection of virtue and of science) [n.47], the response will be that all these are repugnant to the sort of perfect happiness known to belong to the intelligence, but not to the sort known to be capable of belonging to man.

154. To the fourth argument [n.48] it might be said that the species will be perpetual in the universe by continual succession of individuals, which the Philosopher would posit through continuous generation; but it will not be continued in the life of any one or several within the species.

155. From these facts is apparent how great are the thanks that should be given to our Creator, who has made us by faith most certain in matters that pertain to our faith and to eternal continuance, which matters the most clever and most learned were not able, by natural reason, to attain to in almost any way at all, according to what was brought in from Augustine above about ‘scarcely a few’ [n.49]. But if faith is present, which is in those to whom Christ has given it to become sons of God, there is no question, because Christ himself has made his believers most certain of it.

Question Three. Whether Nature Could be the Active Cause of Resurrection

156. Thirdly I ask whether nature could be the active cause of resurrection.

157. That it could be:

Because in nature there is a passive and natural potency for resurrection; for the soul naturally inclines to the perfecting of matter, and matter, conversely, is naturally inclined to the soul, as to its perfection. But to every passive natural potency there corresponds an active natural potency, otherwise the passive natural potency would be vain. So there is some natural active potency with respect to resurrection.

158. Again, in nature there is a double process: one by way of compounding, the other by way of dissolving; and that from which one of these begins is that in which the other is terminated, and conversely. Therefore, each seems to be equally subject to natural action, because each is also the term of each. But nature can dissolve this composite into the components. Therefore, conversely, nature can produce this composite from the components.

159. Again, let fire be corrupted into air, then air into fire: this second fire seems to be the same as the first, because the matter is the same, and it is possible that it have the same efficient cause as the first fire. But now, from the Philosopher Metaphysics 8.4.1044a30-32, “if the matter and the efficient cause are the same, the effect too is the same;” if therefore nature can bring back the same fire, it can by equal reason also bring back [the same] man.

160. On the contrary:

Dionysius Divine Names ch.6 says about resurrection, “A thing seen by antiquitya to be against nature is seen by me and the truth to be above nature.”

a.a [Interpolation] “Hence the whole of all of us, souls, I say, and bodies conjoined, he promises to transpose to a life altogether perfect and to immortality: a thing seen perhaps by antiquity as against nature, but to me and you and the truth as also above nature - considered, I say, according to us, as not altogether the fortune of divine life. For this life, as being the life of nature of all things and especially of divine things, is not a life against nature or above nature.”

     Here Dionysius intends to say that the resurrection of the dead was incredible to antiquity, namely to the ancient folly of the Gentiles, as being against nature and above nature in respect of any agent at all. And this is false, according to him, because although, as concerns us and our strength, it is above nature, yet in respect of God it is neither above nor against nature; for, as the Commentator of Lincoln says [Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln], what does not fall under the ‘to will’ of divine life itself, falls immediately under the ‘to be able’ of it, that is, when it is maker of vessels [sc. creatures, Romans 9.19-21]. And therefore for that life it is neither against nature nor above nature nor against nature.

161. Again, a perfect animal is not produced equivocally [sc. by specifically different causes], as the Commentator [Averroes] argues against Avicenna, Physics 8 com.46. Man,     therefore , since he is the most perfect animal, can only be produced by nature with univocal production [sc. production only by specifically the same causes]; but resurrection is not a univocal production, because it is not generation; therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

162. Here one needs to know that since, according to Damascene ch.100, “resurrection is a second rising of that which fell and was dissolved,” and that the whole man fell in death, and also that, if one posits that the form of the mixed [body] there was different from the intellective soul (as I believe to be true), then the mixed body was dissolved in death or after death - since this is so, then there is needed for resurrection, in the order of nature, first indeed that the mixed body be restored the same, and second that the same intellective soul be united to the mixed body so that the same man may thus rise again [Ord. IV d.11 nn279-284].

163. First then one must see if nature could bring back the numerically same form of mixed body; second if to the dissolved mixed body an intellective soul could be reunited so that there be the same man. The first point contains two things: first whether nature can bring back something corruptible the same in number; second whether it can bring back this mixed body. Thus there are as it were three articles in particular.

A. Whether Nature can Universally Bring Back Some Corruptible Thing the Same in Number

1. First Opinion, which is that of the Philosophers

a. Exposition by Augustine of the Opinion

164. About the first article Augustine in City of God 12.14 reports the opinion of the ancient philosophers saying that the numerically same things return in a circuit of time. They posit that after the ‘great year’, that is, after a circuit of 36,000 years, everything will return numerically the same.

165. Their reasoning is that when the cause of things returns the same, the effect will be the same; and, as it is, all the celestial bodies will return to their position, because, on the supposition of Ptolemy in his Almagest 9.6 that the heaven of the fixed stars moves one degree in a hundred years contrary to the daily motion, the result is that the motion from East to West will be completed in 36,000 years.

b. Rejection of the Opinion

α. Through Scriptural Authorities

166. But this opinion is rejected there [n.164] by Augustine through the authority of Scripture:

Romans 6.9, “Christ being risen from the dead does not now die; death will no longer have dominion over him.” I Thessalonians 4.17, “We who are alive, who remain, will be taken up together.. .to meet Christ in the air, and thus we shall be always with the Lord.” Psalm 11.8-9, “Thou, O Lord, wilt preserve us and guard us from this generation forever;” - hence about those who hold the above opinion the Psalmist well adds, “the impious walk in a circuit.” p. By Reason

β. By Reason

167. And Augustine [ibid.] rejects it by reason, as regard beatitude, because according to the above circular process there would be no true beatitude, in that the blessed soul would be going to return to the miseries that it had before. And so, while it is blessed, it either believes it will never return, and then it is blessed with a false opinion, or believes it will return, and then it is afraid and consequently not blessed. And to the verse of Ecclesiastes 1.9-10, “There is nothing new under the sun.,” Augustine replies there [ibid.], “Far be it that we believe that those circuits are referred to in these words of Solomon; but the point must be taken either in a general sense, that the same things were before that will be, but not the same numerically, or, as some have understood, that the wise man [Solomon] wanted it to be understood that everything has already happened in the predestination of God, and that for this reason there is nothing new under the sun.”

168. The opinion can also be rejected as concerns the reason for it [nn.165, 167], because if some celestial motion be incommensurable with another (which can be proved if it be posited that, on the supposition of equal velocity on both sides, expanse is incommensurable with expanse over which the motion goes), then, I say, it follows that never will all the motions return to the same point. Nor is this feature of incommensurability in the motions opposed to the continuity of continuous motion, because if two movables were moved, one over the side of a square and the other over the diagonal of it, these motions would be incommensurable, and they would, if they lasted, perpetually fail to return to uniformity. But this question would require a long discussion of the individual motions that are congruent with the [Ptolemaic] epicycles and deferents, as to whether any motion incommensurable with another could be found in the whole heavens.

169. Again, the foundation adopted by Ptolemy [n.165] is rejected by Thebit,Thabit ibn Qurra, died 901. His rejection of the position held by Ptolemy position is reported by Roger Bacon, Communia Naturalium 2 p.5 ch.19. ⁶ who proves that the sphere of the fixed stars is not thus moved from West to East, because, according to Thebit, the star that was otherwise at the starting point of Capricorn in the ninth heaven [sc. sphere] would be at the starting point of Cancer in the ninth heaven. And therefore Thebit posited for the eighth heaven or for the heaven of the fixed stars a motion in certain small circles described on the starting point of Aries and of Libra in the ninth heaven. And he posited that it is a certain motion of precession and recession, according as the starting point of Aries, movable in its circle, is ascending, and as, oppositely, the starting point of Libra, movable in its circle, is descending; and as elsewhere, conversely, the head of Libra is ascending while the head of Aries is descending. And thus do the stars in the eighth heaven move in longitude and latitude together. If then this motion be proved to be completable in a period of time in which not all the lower spheres would be able to return to the same place that they had at the beginning of the motion, the proposed conclusion would follow.

170. Again, the reasoning [n.165] is defective, because identity of effect depends not only on the efficient cause but also on the matter; but the matter can be altogether different, or possess a different place in comparison with the heavens, because bodies can be prevented by the action of free choice from being in the ‘where’ where they were before. By such action too a body can be divided, and so the matter of it dispersed.

171. Again, manifest unacceptable results in the case of the human species follow on this position:

For it follows first that learning is nothing but remembering, which the Philosopher touches on in Posterior Analytics 1.1.71a1-11; and this is unacceptable because, as he proves in Posterior Analytics 2.19.99b22-27, it is unacceptable that the noblest habits exist in us and escape our notice.

172. Another unacceptable result is that the acts of free choice are not necessarily subject to the causality of the heavens, and consequently the acts will not necessarily return the same, and consequently not those acts either which necessarily depend on them. And however this example is posited by Augustine (ibid. n.164) about the saying of the philosophers, “As in this age,” he says, “Plato taught his students in the school called the Academy, so through innumerable ages backwards the same Plato and the same city and the same school and the same students are to be found.” And he adds, “Far be it from us to believe these things,” and he introduces the disproofs from Scripture previously brought forward [n.166].

2. Second Opinion

173. There is another opinion [Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Aquinas, Giles of Rome etc.], totally to the contrary, that it is impossible for anything to return numerically the same through a natural agent.

174. For this is adduced the authority of the Philosopher, On Generation 2.11.338b161-7, “Things whose substance has perished do not return the same in number.”

175. And there is his authority in Physics 5.4.228a6-12, about health, that it does not return numerically the same.

176. And his authority in Categories 10.13b20-27, “a return from privation to possession is impossible,” which is to be understood about the privation subsequent to form and about the preceding form. In agreement with this is what some allege from Metaphysics 8.5.1045a3-6, about wine and vinegar. And Aristotle denies that the return is immediate, even as to the species, because there must first be a resolution back into common matter.

177. There is also his authority in Ethics 6.3.1139b9-11 approving the saying of Solon [actually Agathon] that ‘God is deprived of this alone, to make undone what has been done;” therefore it is impossible to bring back past things, because this would then make them not only not to be past things but also to be present things.

178. Again, by four arguments:

The first is this: in every case of corruption, the matter of a generated thing is divided up, so that the generated thing is not generated from the whole same matter that was in the corrupted thing before, and thus further a greater and greater division of the matter is always being brought about. Therefore, in any circular process, if return is made to something of the same species as the thing first corrupted, it will not be from the same total matter, and consequently will not be the same, because identity of matter and of form is required for numerical identity- from the Philosopher Metaphysics 12.5.1071a17-29; and by reason, because identity of matter and form is the essential principle of the whole.

179. Again, a natural agent can only act through motion and change; but motion and change cannot return the same, because their unity is their continuity, and interruption or repetition is repugnant to continuity; repugnant therefore also to unity of motion and change. Therefore, the term of a natural agent cannot return the same.

This reason is confirmed as follows: as ‘this product’ is to product, so is ‘this production’ to production; therefore, by permutation, as product is to production, so is ‘this product’ to ‘this production’. But there cannot be product without production; therefore neither can there be ‘this product’ without ‘this production’. And ‘this production’ cannot return the same, because it is a change; therefore neither can ‘this product’ return the same.

180. Again, the same thing could not return unless there could be the same potency for it; but this is false, because either the same potency always remains or it is newly produced:

Not in the first way, because potency is corrupted in the arrival of form, and consequently, after the first reduction to act, the same potency does not remain. Nor in the second way, because just as a privation succeeds to the form different from the privation that preceded the form, so the form is resolved into a different potency - if it is resolved into any potency.

There is also a joint proof that neither way is possible, because there is no potency for the past; this form is past.

181. Why too is the same thing not brought back by nature immediately, if the potency for the same thing is in the receptive subject and if nature could be the active cause?

For since nature acts by impetus, there is no reason in this fact why nature may not as immediately bring back the same thing as not immediately do so when at least the sort of order of forms is in place by which it can bring back the same thing in species. But we clearly see that the same thing in number is not immediately brought back in the initial bringing back of the same thing in species - the fact is plain from the altogether different accidents that are consequent (at least as inseparable accidents) to the supposit itself.

And this question, posed by ‘why’, could be the fourth principal reason [n.178].

3. Third Opinion

182. The third opinion [Henry of Ghent, William of Ware] is an intermediate one, which posits that although not everything could return numerically the same by the action of nature, yet something can thus return numerically the same.

183. [First argument] - Argument for this opinion:

First by the remark of the Philosopher Metaphysics 8 [n.159], “If the agent is the same and the matter the same, the effect will be the same,” because he only assigns a possible diversity of effect because of a diversity of matter or efficient cause. But it is possible for the efficient cause and the matter to be, in their second relation to the thing produced, the same as they were in their first relation to the thing produced; therefore, it is possible for the thing produced second to be the same as the thing produced first.

184. The proof of the minor is that, although dispersion or division of matter frequently happen in corruption, yet the opposite is possible in many cases. For example, if a fire is contained within a urinal and is corrupted there into air and then from this air is generated fire by reflection of the rays of the sun or in some other way, the contained matter will be the same. Similarly, if something compact is generated from something compact precisely when the form of the thing generated can follow the form of the thing corrupted, the consequence is that the reason that the whole matter was in the form of the thing corrupted is equally reason that the same whole matter will be in the form of the thing to be generated.

185. Response: the remark of the Philosopher [n.183] must be understood with the addition of ‘at the same time’, because, according to him in Physics 5.4.227b21-24, not only is there an adding up of effects because of difference in species and subject, but also because of difference in time.

186. Another and better response is that Aristotle means that if the agent and matter are different the effect too will be different, but not that, by reversing the antecedent, if the agent and matter are the same, therefore the effect will be the same. Hence at the end [of the passage from the Metaphysics 8., n.159] he says in conclusion: “If then [nature] happens to make the same thing from the matter, it is plain that the principle that functions as mover is the same, for if the matter is different the mover and what is made are different,” supply: “since there the mover is different, what is made will also be different.”

187. Against the first response [n.185]: if the agent acts now in instant a, it will cause this (let this be p), and if it does not act now but stops until instant b, it will cause the same thing; therefore if it cause in a, and in the time intermediate between a and b the caused thing is destroyed, and the cause act again in instant b, it will cause the same thing. The consequence is plain from the fact that the continuity of the intermediate time does nothing for the identity of what persists through it, because what persists has the same being in the time as in the limits of the time.

188. If you deny the assumption, because in instant b a cause second from the universal cause (namely the heaven) cannot have the same influence as it had in instant a, and therefore it will not be able then to cause the same thing - to the contrary in two ways:

First because a like influence is sufficient for identity of effect; for if in instant a another agent were next to the passive thing, it would produce the same thing numerically as the original agent produced, and yet the influence would not be numerically the same as the influence of the latter, but only like it; now, however, there is in the other instant, namely b, an influence like what there was in instant a.

Again, this influence is not anything absolute received in the second cause, because then the second cause could, through what it received, act without the first cause whose influence it receives, because it now has the whole of that for which it needs the action of the first cause - which is unacceptable; therefore the influence of the higher cause with respect to the lower one is not anything received in the lower cause. Hence there is only the order in causing of the lower cause to the superior cause, which superior cause is, as concerns itself, always causing; so there will not be a different influence, just as neither a different order of higher cause to lower cause.

189. [Second argument] - Again, either it is simply impossible for the same thing numerically to be differently produced, and then it follows that neither does God have power for this; or it is not simply impossible, and then it follows that it will also now be in the causality of the things which it was possible in before; but it was before in the causality of natural causes, therefore it will be in their causality now as well.

4. Scotus’ own Judgment about these Opinions

190. As regards this article I reply that the third opinion seems more probable. For the first opinion, about the return of all things, is altogether improbable, because it is at least against the faith. Nor is the reason given for it effective, because the reason about the return of the heaven both presupposes a dubious antecedent and its inference is dubious.

191. The second opinion does not sufficiently prove the impossibility of the return by nature of anything at all.

192. And therefore the third opinion can be maintained, because it does not appear why nature could not bring something back that is numerically the same. For when there is continuous action by an agent natural in respect of what it produces, as there is in the sun in respect of its rays, if the sun be posited to produce a ray in a first instant and to conserve it in succeeding time, then in the last instant, for example b, there will be the same ray, since the identity of a ray in a second instant with itself in a first instant does not depend on its existence in the intermediate time, because the numerically same thing could have been produced in the same instant without the intermediate existence. It follows that, with the intermediate existence destroyed, the same thing could exist in both extremes; and although in the case of other agents, where the agent would not be said to act after the first instant, there might be evasion on this point in respect of the proximate agent, yet the argument remains the same with respect to the remote agent on which the effect continuously depends; and the intended conclusion follows about this effect dependent immediately on the proximate agent.

5. To the Arguments for the Second and Third Opinions

193. To the arguments that are for the second opinion and consequently against the third opinion:

194. [To the authorities of Aristotle] - To the first [n.174] response was made in the first question [n.19].

As to the second [n.175], the opposite could rather be drawn from the doubt in Physics 5, because if the health that continued for a day remains the same, why will the health that existed in the morning and was interrupted at noon and returned in the evening not in the same way be the same? Hence the negative response that is alleged is not expressly obtained there [in Physics 5].

195. To the other authority from Categories [n.176]: if privation, which is the term ‘from which’, cannot return the same, neither can the term ‘to which’ (and this when speaking of the precise term ‘from which’, and as regard a natural agent). But now the only cause why it does not return the same is that the positive state, with which the privation is conjoined, does not return the same; for if the form can return that, according to the order of generation, immediately precedes the other form in the matter, there appears no reason why the concomitant privation could not also return. This proposition, then, from the Categories is understood in the order of natural generation in descending process, because after the privation there the positive state does not return, for the form does not return that immediately preceded the positive state in the order of generation. Briefly it can be said that the proposition is understood of identity in species, not of identity in number, and then of immediate return; and consequently neither [of these authorities, nn.175, 176] is about mediate return.

196. To the one from Ethics 6 [n.177]: the Philosopher understands the phrase “to make undone what has been done” to mean that one cannot make them not to have been done; but it does not follow that therefore one cannot make them present, because it is not repugnant for them to have been done and to be, by another making, present now, even had they been destroyed between the first action and the second.

197. To the reasons for the opinion:

[To the first reason] - As to the first [n.178], it is plain that it should not move us: First because some part of the matter remains the same notwithstanding the division of it; therefore in that part the same form as before would be brought back (if return of the same form is not impeded for any other reason than the difference of the matter); and then the new generated thing would in part be numerically the same as what was before, and in part diverse, because as regard the part of the matter that remains the generated thing would be the same as what was first corrupted; but as regard other parts of the matter (that have succeeded to those that were before in the corrupted thing and have been dispersed) the generated thing would be different from what was corrupted.

Second because God or an angel could collect all the parts of the matter of the corrupted thing and apply them in due proportion to a natural agent, and thus, according to this reason, the whole of the numerically same thing would return as before.

Similarly, the whole matter can be naturally preserved the same without division - for example if fire in the urinal be converted into air and all the air conversely be converted into fire, there is here no dispersion of the matter.

The response then is that it is not necessary for the matter of the previously corrupted thing to be divided and, granted it remained the same, it would not be the whole idea of the return of the same thing.

198. [To the second reason] - As to the next, about motion and change, response was made in the first question [n.27].

199. As to the confirmation, about the interchange of proportions [n.179], I say that an interchanged proportion is taken from Euclid 5 prop.16, “if quantities are proportional, they will also be quantities when proportioned” [Euclid: “If four quantities be proportional, they will be proportional when interchanged”].

200. And this point is carried over [sc. to the confirmation]. Also, to arguments of this sort the answer is plain from Aristotle Prior Analytics 2.22.68a3-16: “If a and b are converted, c and d are also converted; if a and d contradict, b and c contradict.” And thus does the argument from interchanged proportion universally hold, provided the interchange happen as to contradiction and conversion. But if it happen as to contradiction and consequent and antecedent, it is not valid, but there is a fallacy of the consequent. Hence this inference is not valid: as man is to non-man, so animal is to nonanimal; therefore, by interchange, as man is to animal as to consequence, so non-man is to non-animal as to consequence [cf. Ord. I d.36 nn.56-57].

201. As to the proposed conclusion, which is argued for to this effect, which is that ‘it cannot be without this’ [n.179: sc. ‘this product cannot be without this production’], the consequence is not valid when a common term determines for itself another common term [sc. ‘product’ and ‘production’], and an inferior under a common term [sc. ‘this product’ under ‘product’] does not determine for itself an inferior under the other common term [sc. ‘this product’ under ‘this production’]. But the following is quite possible that, from the fact that some common term determines for itself another common term, the only consequence is that an inferior determines for itself the same common term.

An example: ‘as surface is to this surface, so is color to this color’ and conversely; therefore, by permutation, ‘as surface cannot be without color, so neither can this surface be without this color’ - this does not follow, because although one common term determines for itself another common term, yet the singular term does not determine for itself a singular term. Similarly: ‘as body is to this body, so place is to this place’; therefore, by permutation, ‘as body is to place, so this body is to this place’; but body cannot be without place; therefore neither can this body be without this place - the consequence is not valid, because this body does not determine this place for itself in the same way that body determines place for itself. But this consequence holds: if that which is necessarily required for another cannot be without something, neither can that for which it is required be without that something. And so, since production is necessarily included in the idea of ‘this production’, if production cannot be without product, the consequence is that ‘this production’ will not be able to be without ‘this product’; but neither production in common nor product in common necessarily require ‘this’ production.

202. In brief: permutation only holds in accord with the same thing that the proportion accorded with before, or in accord with something where ‘to be a proportion’ is included in the first proposition - as in this case, which is that included in ‘a proportional is in accord with convertibility’ is ‘the proportionals are in accord with repugnance’ [sc. that ‘product’ and ‘this product’ agree in being repugnant to ‘without production’ and ‘without this production’ respectively]. But in the issue at hand it is not so, because in ‘being proportional as to higher and lower’ is not universally included ‘being proportional as to the same sort of inseparability in the lower as in the higher’.

203. [To the third reason] - To the next one [n.180] I say that the potencyprinciple always remains the same, and it suffices for the reception of form. Because if you seek beyond this principle for another potency, which is a potency of relation, it does nothing for the reception of form; but if it be required, it can be said to be now the same.

204. And when you ask, “either it remains the same or it returns the same” [n.180], each can be granted:

The first, to be sure, because, when speaking absolutely about the potency that states the order of the receiver to the received, the order remains the same whether before the received thing is present or when it is present, because the order follows the nature of the receiver, which nature is naturally perfected by such form. And the proof that the potency remains is that if God were to bring back the same form (which is not denied to be possible for him), it would make with the matter something ‘per se one’ just as before; therefore the potency in the matter with respect to the form would be the same as before.

205. And then when the argument is made that ‘potency is destroyed in the arrival of form’ [n.180], one must say that this is not properly understood of the idea itself of potency, but of a certain respect concomitant with the potency that the potency has because of the fact that it precedes act, which preceding is a certain priority in duration to act; but this is not included per se in the idea of potency, because potency can exist at the same time along with this priority and along with immediacy to act.

206. One could also say that potency before act remains always the same, even along with act; and yet opposites are not together at the same time, because the potency before act is not a potency for form for the same ‘now’ as when act is present in it, because it has act for that ‘now’. But the potency before act is not present in it for the same form, but for a form in the future.

207. Now that either one of these responses may be true is proved by this that, if something can have a potency for form, it already has the potency, because the impossible cannot become possible and, consequently, potency for some form cannot be had at some time without being had now, provided that what is susceptive of the form is possible now.

208. It might in another way be said that the same potency would return, just as it is also possible that the same act return. And then it would be said that, for the moment when the act is present, the potency opposite to act does not remain but that it does return when the act ceases.

209. In a final way it might be said that, from the beginning of creation, there are distinct potencies in the potency-principle, as many as are the receivable forms, not only distinct in species, but in number and not precisely so many but even that there are as many for the same form as there are times when the form can be induced, and that each of these potencies ceases to be when its proper act arrives and does not return; and yet the same form can return, because there is not only a single potency for it but different potencies according as the form was differently inducible into the same potencyprinciple.

When it is argued against the second member [n.180] that the same potency cannot return because neither can the privation - it was said above [n.195] that privation can return if the positive state can return with which the privation is conjoined; and about potency in the same way, if the form prior in the order of generation can return with which the potency for the second form is concomitant.

210. When it is argued, against each member [n.180], that there is no potency for the past, this is true of the past as it is past; hence there is properly no potency for the past to have been or not been, but there is potency for the thing that was past insofar, however, as it can be future.

Now this argument about potency [n.180] works not only against a natural agent but also against the return of the same material form through divine action, because divine action requires in matter a potency that it perfects. He who would say that these potencies are nothing, when speaking of any power besides that which states a respect of the receiver to the form received, should free himself of all this bother, because how many nothings are posited does not matter. But the potency that is a real relation on the part of matter to form (just as, conversely, in-forming is a real relation of form to matter) - that potency, I say, returns the same if the form returns; or if it not return before the composite, it could return the same (the point was stated in the first question [n.41]).

211. [To the fourth argument] - To the final argument [n.181], as to why the same thing in number would not return at once with the initial return of the same thing in species, one can say that there are impediments on the part of the passive thing and the agent, because of which inseparable accidents cannot immediately be brought back; and without these inseparable accidents the same substance would not be brought back. It need not always be so that there are such impediments.

B. Whether it is Possible for Nature to Bring Back the Same Mixed Body

212. As to the second principal article [n.163], it is absolutely possible for nature to bring back the same mixed body on the supposition of the third opinion in the preceding article [n.182]; but it is not possible for nature to bring back the same thing in the way it will be brought back.

213. The proof of the first conclusion is that, if the third opinion in the preceding article be true, then whenever the whole of the same matter is, without impediments, in proximity to the same agent, the same thing can be brought back - in proximity not just to the same agent in number but to the same agent in species, because identity in species in an agent is equivalent to identity in number. The proof is that if in this instant this fire generates from this wood this fire, then if in the same instant that fire were proximate to the same wood it would generate the same fire. But it is possible for the whole matter (from which this body was otherwise generated in a natural generation) to be again under the form of sperm and menstrual fluid in another womb, as is proved by the statement of Gregory Moralia IV ch.31 n.62 (and it is set down in II d.20 nn.18-20, of the Lectura). Therefore the same mixed body would then be formed in another womb.

214. The second conclusion is for me more certain, because it depends on certain particulars, namely if the third stated opinion is true [nn.182-192]. My proof for this second conclusion is that the whole of active nature is tied to a certain order of forms in the changing of things, so that the whole of nature could not produce wine immediately after vinegar (only God is not limited to this order in his acting). And this order is especially necessary as regard a natural agent when process is being made to what is perfect, because something perfect cannot be produced in many ways but in fewer ways. Now, as it is, the mixed body is perfect among corruptible things, and     therefore a considerable order in forms that are first according to natural order (as the order of seed, blood, flesh etc     .) is determined for the mixed body. But such forms do not, as it is, precede this formation of the body in the way the body will then be restored [sc. at the resurrection], because it will be restored suddenly from ash or dust or other things, whatever it was before reduced to; therefore, the whole of nature will not be able to restore the same body in the way in which the body will then be restored.

C. Whether Nature Could Reunite the Intellective Soul to the Dissolved Mixed Body so that it be the Same Man

1. Opinion of Others and its Refutation

215. As to the third article [n.163]: once the body has been restored by something or other, it seems that the soul could be united to that body by nature, because this form [the soul] is the disposition that necessitates with respect to animation; so there is in nature a disposition necessary for animation, but that which it disposes for necessarily follows on such disposition.

216. But on the contrary

It is plain that the soul cannot be united to the body by any creature other than itself; but neither can it be united by itself as by the effecting principle of the union. Proof of both theses: an equivocal cause is simply nobler than the effect, and the proof is from Augustine 83 Questions q.2, “Everything that comes to be cannot be equal to that by which it comes to be, otherwise justice, which must render to each what is his own, would necessarily be taken away from things.” But Augustine means this about an equivocal cause, because justice in a univocal cause requires equality, while in an equivocal it requires eminence. Avicenna holds the same in his Metaphysics 6.3, and Augustine Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.16 n.33, holds the same, that “the agent is more outstanding than the passive thing.” This proposition, as stated elsewhere [Ord. I d.3 n.407], depends on this other, “the agent is simply more perfect than its formal effect;” but man is simply more perfect than his soul (as whole than part), and than any other bodily substance. It is plain, therefore, that neither the soul nor any other bodily substance (other than man) can be the effective cause of man.

217. Again, Physics 2, the form and efficient cause are not numerically the same; therefore the soul, which is the formal cause of man, cannot be the efficient cause of the same man.

218. Again, the first union [of body and soul], made in generation, is not less natural than this other, made in resurrection; but the soul could not have been the effective cause of this union; therefore only God was in creating and infusing the soul. - I concede the conclusion that if the first production of man is subject to active divine virtue alone, then to him alone will be subject the second production of man; but this production is in the animation of the organic body.

219. To the argument for the opposite [n.215] I say that in the whole of nature there is nothing in the receptive thing that is a disposition that necessitates for the form, because along with any such disposition there stands the potency for the contradictory opposite [sc. the disposition, qua disposition, can be with or without the form it is the disposition for]; the receptive thing, which is precisely receptive, necessarily goes along with this potency, for such potency is repugnant to necessity [sc. a potency qua potency is not necessitated to being actualized or to not being actualized].

220. But the customary phrase ‘the disposition that necessitates’ [n.215] must be understand in this way: not because the disposition belongs to the idea of necessity but because, when the disposition is posited, the agent necessarily induces the form for which the disposition is the mere disposition - the agent induces either with necessity simply, as when the agent is merely natural, or with necessity in a certain respect, as when the agent is voluntary and disposes itself so to act. And in this last way the form of corporeity is a disposition necessitating for the soul, not that the disposition is of itself or by virtue of itself followed by animation, but because once the disposition is in place, the agent, by the conditioned necessity of its own disposition, induces the form that it is for.

II. To the Initial Arguments

221. As to the first initial argument [n.157], I say that there is not any created passive potency to which there does not correspond in nature an active potency, lest the passive potency be posited in vain. But this active potency in nature is differently posited by philosophers and theologians [cf. Ord. prol. p.1 q.un. nn.5-89], for [the latter posit it] by taking active nature strictly for created nature. Not that Aristotle posits that the intellect is immediately induced by God (as was touched on above, n.60), but, by taking nature for what acts by natural necessity, the Philosopher would in this way say that there is an active potency in nature, because he takes the first cause to be acting on the passive subject by natural necessity.

222. But the theologians deny that there is an active potency in nature even in this way, because they say that the first principle [sc. God] acts on the passive subject, not by natural necessity, but freely. And then, according to them, when it is said that ‘there is in nature some corresponding active potency’, ‘nature’ must be taken universally there for the totality of being. Nor do they posit something in being more vainly than the Philosopher does, because the passive potency can be as much reduced to act if it is not reduced by a created agent but by an uncreated one, and one that is not active naturally but freely - just like if the potency were posited as being reduced by the agent in different ways.

223. As to the next [n.158], the inference is not valid: ‘it is capable of the dissolving process, therefore also of the reverse process, which is by compounding’. An instance is plain, for I can divide up a solid object but I cannot join the divided parts together again.

224. As to the third [n.159]: in one way it is denied that the same matter in itself and in its parts can again be in proximity to some agent (because of the division of the matter’s parts that happens in corruption); in another way it is denied that the same potency or matter can remain or return. However, this argument touches on the general point dealt with in the first article of the solution [nn.190-192], and it is in favor of the third opinion, which is not simply rejected there.

Question Four. Whether the Resurrection is Natural

225. Fourth I ask whether the resurrection is natural.

226. That it is:

Damascene ch.58 “What is common to all (in the same species) is natural;” the resurrection is of this sort.

227. Again, a motion is natural that terminates in natural rest, because a movable is naturally moved to that in which it naturally rests; and, by equal reason, a change is natural that terminates in a form that naturally perfects the changeable thing; but the resurrection is of this sort, because the perfectible thing will be naturally perfected by the reuniting of the form.

228. On the contrary:

Dionysius, Divine Names ch.6 says of the resurrection, “seen by me and the truth to be above nature” [n.160]; therefore it is not natural.

229. Again, knowledge of natural effects can be reached by natural reason; the resurrection cannot be so reached, (from the second question of this distinction [n.137]).

230. Again, what is natural happens for the most part, not only in most individuals but also at most times [cf. Ord. I d.3 n.235], because it happens as often as its cause, which is natural, is not impeded, and its cause is impeded for the least part; but resurrection happens only once.

I. To the Question

A. About the Meaning of the Term ‘Natural’

231. Here one needs to understand that ‘natural’ is taken equivocally [cf. Ord. prol. nn.57-59] - which is plain from the fact it has diverse opposites.

232. And this is one teaching about knowing what is multiple, for in Topics 1.15.106a9-10 the natural in one way is opposed to the supernatural, in another way to the artificial (or to the free or voluntary), in a third way to the violent.

233. For naturality sometimes pertains to the active principle, and then are opposed to it the free in one way and the supernatural in another way - for a natural agent or an agent acting naturally (which is opposed to the free) is said to be that which acts of natural necessity, while the voluntary or the free is that which determines itself to acting. And in this way does the Philosopher speak in Physics 2.3.195a27-b6, 5.196b17-22, when he divides nature from what acts by design, and in Metaphysics 9.2.1046a22-b2, 5.1047b31-8a8, when he speaks about irrational active powers and rational or free active powers. In another way the natural, on the part of the active principle, is said to be what has a natural order of active to passive, and the supernatural what exceeds all such natural order; and in this way any created agent is said to be natural and only an uncreated agent is said to be supernatural.

234. On the part of the passive principle, the natural is spoken of in one way as it is opposed to the violent, insofar as it is said to be moved naturally because it is acted on according to its proper inclination as passive; the violent is what is acted on against its inclination as passive. From this follows that the natural and violent are not immediate contrary opposites; rather there is a mean between them, namely when the passive thing is disposed in neither way, and is not inclined to what it receives nor to what is opposite (as a surface is disposed to whiteness or to blackness or to something intermediate).

235. There follows too that the violent cannot exist in what is primarily passive, namely in prime matter, because prime matter is never inclined against anything that it is absolutely receptive of.

236. And the distinction between these opposites and the intermediate in the passive thing is taken as it is compared to form. But as the passive thing is compared to the agent from which it receives the form, it is said to be moved naturally when it is moved by an agent naturally corresponding to it; however, it is said to be moved supernaturally when it is moved by an agent proportioned to it naturally above the whole order of these sorts of agents.

237. Thus we have, therefore, in two ways the natural as it belongs to the active principle, because we have it as it is distinguished from the free and supernatural [n.233]; and we have in two ways the natural or naturally as it belongs to the passive thing, because we have it as it is distinguished from the neutrals and the violent [n.234].

B. Objection against What has been Said and its Solution

238. But argument is made against the distinction in the case of the two last items [n.236], for Aristotle in Ethics 3.1.1110b15-17 says that “the violent is that whose principle is extrinsic, with the passive thing not conferring any force;” therefore the moving principle is placed in the definition of the violent, and consequently the violent is not just taken essentially from the comparison of the violent with the passive subject [cf. Ord. IV d.29 n.22].

239. I reply (and to however many such instances) with this proposition: ‘that is per se cause on which when posited, and with anything else and any variation in it removed, the effect follows’; but now, although a form against which the receptive thing is inclined is only induced by an agent that per se inflicts violence on the passive subject, yet the per se idea of the ‘violent’ is taken from the relation of the passive subject to the form, because as long as the passive subject and the form remain in their idea (namely, that the form can be received, but against the inclination of the passive subject) then, whatever variation there is in the agent, the passive thing receives the form with violence.

240. This is plain, because not only in ‘the being induced’ but also in the ‘persisting’ is some form said to remain violently, and some form naturally, and for a long time, in the passive subject, so that, if one removes the agent (namely because it has no action after inducing the form), the naturality and the violence are there, if one compares the form precisely with the receptive subject [cf. Ord. prol. nn.58-59].

241. I concede, therefore, that in the description of the violent the agent is placed as something extrinsic, but not as per se completing or as per se constituting the idea of the violent, but this idea is completed only by “with the passive subject not conferring any force,” that is, contra-ferring.I.e. the passive subject does not cooperate with the agent in bringing action contra or against itself as passive subject. ⁷ And the violent would remain after the whole action of the agent stops (just as if a stone could rest above without the continuous action of what detains it). However, in the description of the violent is added ‘principle’ [n.238], as being for the most part the extrinsic cause.

242. Similarly, although the passive subject receive some form that is in some way supernatural (and in this respect supernaturality could be called the manner of relation of the passive subject to the form), yet it is never called supernatural save because it receives the form from such an agent. The proof of this is that if it receive from such an agent a form naturally perfective of it, still it would receive it supernaturally -not indeed because of its relation to the form (because in this way it receives it naturally), but because of its relation to the agent from which it receives it.

C. Conclusion of What has been Said

243. To the issue at hand: resurrection signifies a passive undergoing to which resuscitation corresponds as the action undergone; therefore in the question ‘whether resurrection is natural’ [n.225] naturality is only taken as it pertains to the passive undergoing; but in the question ‘whether active resurrection is natural’ natural is taken as it pertains to action and the active cause.

244. In the first way, then, I say that resurrection will be natural as natural is opposed to violent, but it will not be natural as natural is opposed to supernatural. And the reason for each point is plain from what was said in the first article: the reason for the first point is that the passive subject is naturally inclined to the form that it receives [nn.234-235]; the reason for the second is that it does not receive the form from an agent possessing a natural order to what needs to be done to the passive subject, but from an agent above the whole of this sort of order [n.236].

245. If however the question be about whether active resuscitation will be natural, one must reply that in neither way in which natural belongs to action will the action be natural, because it will be from an agent acting freely, not by natural necessity, and from an agent above the whole order of created causes that are said to have a natural order of acting on a passive subject.

II. To the Initial Arguments

246. As to the first of the initial arguments [n.226], the authority of Damascene about ‘all’ must be understood about what is common to all in the species from an intrinsic principle or a natural cause; it is not so here. And it is plain that such is Damascene’s understanding, because he applies the proposition so understood to the double operation in Christ that is present to all in the human species from an intrinsic or at least natural cause.

247. As to the second [n.227], it proves only that resurrection is natural as natural is opposed to violent. Yet what is touched on there about change contains a doubt, namely whether resurrection is a change - and this will be spoken of in the following question [nn.269-273].

Question Five. Whether the Future Resurrection will be Instantaneous

248. The question asked fifth is whether the resurrection is instantaneous.

249. That it is not:

I Thessalonians 4.16-17, “The dead who are in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive     etc .;” therefore      those who are found to be dead at the advent of Christ will rise first, then those caught up to meet him will die and afterwards rise; therefore the resurrection of the latter and the former will not be simultaneous; therefore not in an instant.

250. Again, Augustine in City of God 20 ch.20 n.3 says, “Then with ineffable speed the dust of the most ancient corpses returns to bodily members that will live without end.” And in the same chapter, “They will with marvelous speed pass to deathlessness through death;” the Apostle most openly says the same [n.249]. But fast and slow (from the Philosopher, Physics 4.5.218b15) “are determined by time.”

251. Again, in the resurrection something that existed before will be corrupted, because the matter that will receive the new form existed before under another form that is to be corrupted. That which is to be corrupted will have a finite being; but everything positive that is everywhere finite has at least two positive terms; therefore the being that precedes [the resurrection] will have two terms, and consequently one can grant there is an ultimate instant in the being of that preceding thing. Therefore, if the resurrection will be immediately after the being of that preceding thing and instantaneous, an instant will be immediate with an instant, which is against the Philosopher, Physics 5.3.227a27-32, 6.1.231a22-b10, 232a18-22, 3.234a22-31.

252. Again, the body that is now to be corrupted will have permanent being; but the permanent does not have being in time save because it has it in an instant; therefore if the being of what is to be corrupted immediately precedes the being of what is to be resuscitated, the result is that it will precede in an instant immediate with that resuscitated being, and then (as before [n.251]) it will not be possible for the thing to be resuscitated to have being immediate with an instant.

253. To the opposite:

I Corinthians 15.52, “In a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trump.” This authority is adduced by Augustine City of God, in the place cited before [n.250], as proof for the resurrection’s happening suddenly.

254. Again, generation is in an instant, therefore resurrection is too.

255. Likewise the Master [Lombard] says in the text that the resurrection will be in an instant.

I. To the Question

256. Here one needs to see that since resurrection, according to Damascene [n.162], “is a rising again of that which fell” - but the whole man fell through separation of the intellective soul from the body, and the mixed body secondarily fell through corruption into some other thing or things; and generation and corruption proceed in reverse order, and so the body must be repaired first, in the order of nature, before the soul is united, but this restoration of the body is preceded by collection of the parts of the matter that were dispersed by dissolution of the body into diverse elements (at once or after a delay) - one must see first about this preliminary to resurrection, which is the collection of the parts of the body, second about the induction of the form of the body into the matter, third about the union of the soul with the body.

A. About the Collection of the Parts of the Body

257. About the first point [n.256], I say that collection of the parts will be done by the ministry of angels, and therefore in time. The antecedent is plain from the saying of the Savior, Matthew 24.31, “The Son of Man, with a trumpet and a loud voice, will send forth his angels, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from the tops of the heavens to the limits of them,” which is to say: whithersoever the parts of the matter of the body had been dispersed into the elements, whether into fire or earth (“from the tops of the heavens to the limits of them”), whether into any intermediate body (of water, or air, or imperfectly mixed),Scotus is proceeding on the assumption, common to the ancient and medieval world, that the elements of matter are the four of fire, air, water, earth (of which fire is naturally at the top and earth at the bottom and the other two in between), and that material bodies are mixtures more or less of these four. ⁸ from the four winds all the parts of matter will be collected again and reunited.

258. The consequence [sc. the collection will be in time, n.257] is plain from what was said in (Rep. IIA d.8 n.2), that an angel cannot move a body in an instant.

B. About the Inducing of the Form of the Body into the Matter

259. On the second point [n.256] I say that the formation of the body will be instantaneous, because it will be done immediately by divine virtue; for an angel will not be able to induce the material form into matter. Now divine virtue, although it can act successively and induce a form successively (just as created virtue can), and although a substantial form could be induced successively (which others deny [Aquinas, Henry of Ghent]), yet it is more fitting that divine virtue instantaneously induce a form that can be induced instantaneously, for succession is only necessary because of some deficiency in the agent. For all the causes touched on by the Commentator, Physics IV com.71, namely of the movable in relation to the mover, and of the movable to the medium, and of the medium to the mover, are ultimately reduced (as I have touched on elsewhere [Ord. II d.2 nn.428-429]) to the imperfection of the virtue of the agent; and because of this imperfection the movable can resist that virtue, not absolutely but as it regards the terms and the medium through which the movement from term to term needs to be made. But, as it is, the [divine] virtue can have no imperfection; and that this form can be induced instantaneously is plain, because that virtue can perfect it instantaneously.

260. But there is here a doubt, for then it follows that a local motion will be instantaneous. A proof is that the body will be more densely or more rarely formed from the dust that it will be formed from and, whether this way or that, it will occupy a greater or lesser place than that out of which it will be generated, and so there will be local motion not only of it but of the surrounding air.

261. [A proof] secondly is that the body will be of a different shape than the body from which it will be formed, therefore it will occupy a place proportionally corresponding to its shape - and so as before.

262. I concede the conclusion of these argument [nn.260-261], that by taking local motion generally, in that, when a generated thing succeeds to what is corrupted and occupies a greater or lesser place than the thing corrupted, some change of place is being spoken of - for there is occupation (though not by a body the same in act) of a greater or lesser place; so there is instantaneous change of place because there is occupation of a greater place. And not only so but the surrounding air is at once expelled if the body is greater or follows it if the body is lesser. And indeed I concede that in the first instant, namely when the air is expelled, it is expelled instantaneously, and is so immediately by divine virtue, because that virtue immediately positions a greater body where the lesser body was.

263. But now, what effectively moves one body in place, effectively expels the other body - and it is not the moved body that effectively expels the other body, just as heat too in wood does not effectively expel the cold from the wood, but the hot itself, which effectively causes heat in the wood, effectively expels cold from it.

264. However it is possible for divine virtue to position a greater body in a ‘where’ and to keep the body that was there before, and then two bodies will be together at the same time; but then there would be a new miracle over and above the sudden positioning here of the larger body. But if, simultaneously with this positioning of the body, this body expels that one, there is only one miracle.

265. Now when the generated body is less than the corrupted body, things are different: for then either God will immediately move the surrounding air so that it touches the surface of the lesser body, or he can refrain from moving it. For his moving it is not simply necessary in order for a lesser body to be here; because God can leave nature to itself, and since nature cannot move air instantaneously so as to apply it to the sides of the lesser body, there will for a time be a vacuum - namely until nature is able to make the surrounding air contiguous with the body.

266. From this is plain that, on the supposition that God suddenly makes a lesser body (which assuredly does not involve a contradiction) and leaves the surrounding air and nature’s action to themselves, there will for a time be a vacuum. So there is no contradiction in a vacuum existing in the universe; on the contrary, if nature were instantaneously to make a lesser body from a greater, it would seem one could conclude that a vacuum, without any divine miracle, exists for a time.

C. About the Union of the Soul with the Body

267. On the third point [n.256] I say that animation not only is instantaneous (for the reason stated in the second article, namely that animation is immediately from God alone, whose active virtue nothing resists [n.259]), but must be instantaneous, because there can only be succession in reception of a form either because of the parts of the form to be induced, or because of the parts of the body one of which receives the form before another. But neither of these can be posited in animation. Not the first because this soul will be reunited in the unique degree in which it was created, so that although some part could be more perfect than another, yet this does nothing for the intended conclusion of a successive uniting of the soul. Nor can the second be granted, at least as regards that which is first ensoul-able; for there is something that is the first proportioned ensoul-able, such that nothing of it can be animated unless the whole of it is animated - although perhaps as to many parts of the body that are not simply necessary for animation (as are hands and feet and other exterior parts), one of them could be animated before another; but we are speaking of the first animation.

268. I say too, secondly, that the body is animated in the same instant in which it is formed, because from the fact that this form is a necessitating disposition for the soul (not absolutely, but from the necessity of the agent; not simply, but from its disposition), the soul is, from the necessity of the disposed matter, at once induced when the form of the body has been induced.

269. And if you ask whether the form of the body and the soul are induced by the same change, I say no, but rather that the inducing of the form of the body is by change, while the inducing of the soul is not by any change so as to be a change to the soul, or to animation, as to a term.

The first point is plain, because what is susceptive of the form of corporeity passes from privation to form. The second is plain from the same fact, because what is susceptive of the soul or of animation is not prime matter but the body; now the body will not have privation of the soul itself, so as to pass from this privation to form; nor will it have it at the same time as the soul, because then privation and form would be simultaneous; nor will it have it before it has the form, because it will not exist before; therefore, body and soul will exist simultaneously. But there is never change except when what is susceptive of the term ‘to which’ of some inducing precedes in time the term ‘to which’ and when it is then under privation of the term.

270. If you argue that therefore neither animation as action nor animation as passive undergoing will be there, because action is not without passive undergoing nor passive undergoing without change, and change is denied to be there; so both action and passive undergoing are denied to be there, which seems unacceptable - I reply that, as was said above in Ord. IV d.13 n.54, passive undergoing asserts of the passive thing a relation which comes to it from without, that is, which follows necessarily when the extreme is posited. Now such relation can exist even if the passive thing never precedes in time the form that it receives, for, however much it may at the same time have the potency in itself, yet it cannot receive this potency from another. And then, in brief, a passive undergoing in the inducing of a form coeval with the passive thing does very well exist without change.

271. An example of this, according to Augustine Confessions 12.3:“Have you not taught me, O Lord, that before you were forming and distinguishing this unformed matter it was not anything, not color, not figure, not body, not spirit? But it was not altogether nothing; it was some unformed-ness without any appearance.” ⁹ matter is, by a certain mode of priority, created before form. And in that prior instant matter has only the respect toward God of produced to producer; and this respect comes from within, indeed is necessarily consequent to the foundation’s nature (from Ord. II d.1 nn.260-275). In the second instant matter receives form from God, and the respect here is not of it as produced to God as producer, but of it as what is unformed to God as in-forming and impressing form; and this second respect comes to matter from without, because matter could remain perpetually (God conserving it) without the respect of receiving something from God.

272. The form, then, is created together with matter simultaneously in time, but later indeed than it in nature is induced or impressed on the matter with a passive undergoing [of the matter] that is in the category of passion but without any change -because never does matter pass from privation of the form to form nor, in brief, is it differently disposed according to form, because different dispositions presuppose an entity [sc. which matter as such is not].

273. From this follows a corollary, that when one says action and passion are taken in abstraction from motion and change, one should not say that only the idea of relation remains in them; rather the idea of action and passion, without any idea of motion and change, truly remains.

D. Two Small Doubts

274. Two small doubts remain: one is whether the resurrection of everyone will be at the same instant (the first argument touches on this [n.249]), and the other is at what instant - though not a determinate or specific one, yet what instant by comparison to the parts or hours of the natural day, as whether in an instant of the middle of the night, or some other instant that has a determinate relation to the parts of the natural day.

275. As to the first, Augustine in the whole of the cited chapter 20 [n.250, City of God] seems to determine of express intent that the resurrection of those who will be found dead at the coming of the Judge will precede in time the resurrection of those who will be found alive. But those who are alive, according to the words of the Apostle [n.249, I Thessalonians 4], “will be taken up to meet him etc.,” and there as is probable, according to Augustine, they will die and immediately afterwards rise; and so the resurrection of these latter will follow after the resurrection of the former.

276. Hence Augustine says [ibid.], “If we believe that the saints who will be found alive at Christ’s coming, and who will be taken up to meet him, will in that same taking up leave bodies mortal and return directly to the same bodies immortal, we will experience no difficulties in the words of the Apostle.” This also seems to be expressly indicated by the words of the Apostle, “the dead who are in Christ will rise first, then we etc.,” where, according to Augustine, the Apostle “exemplified in himself and in those who were alive with him the persons of those who will be found alive [sc. at Christ’s coming].”

277. As to the second doubt, it seems true prima facie that any instant at all has every relation to the parts of the natural day; for what in one part of the earth is an instant in the middle of the night is in another meridian an instant between midnight and midday, and in the meridian opposite the first an instant of midday, and so on about the individual instants that can be singled out in a natural day; therefore, comparing things in this way, the dead will rise in any and every hour of the natural day.

278. But since not without cause is a question raised about the hour of the resurrection, one must understand that those who ask it are asking about the hour in comparison to the region where the judgment of the resurrection will be, and to where those who are to rise will be transferred so as to be judged - transferred, I say, either after complete resurrection or before it through transfer of the collected dust. For both are possible to God, so that either they will be resuscitated in diverse places, perhaps where they were buried, or the dust will be collected from the individual places to the one place where all must come together after the resurrection to be judged; and in that place the resurrection of everyone will happen.

279. Now I mean by ‘dust’ any bodies whatever into which resolution is ultimately made, namely if into so much amount of fire and so much of water and so much of earth; and let an amount of fire be immediately next to the sphere of the moon above any point on the earth, and another amount directly in the diametrically opposite extreme in the sphere of fire, and let a third part be at the bottom of water or the middle or top of it, and the like.

280. All these parts, even a thousand thousands, are understood when ‘dust’ or ‘ash’ are spoken of. For when Christ says, “from the ends of the heavens” and “from the four winds” [Matthew 24.31], he himself does not mean that the dust we usually take in tombs has been dispersed to the furthest distance, but he means generally that ‘whatever bodies or parts dissolution may have been made into, those parts will be collected, and from the collected parts, that is, from the matter in them which was previously the matter of the corrupted body, the same body will again be restored’.

281. Now the place of the general judgment is reckoned probably to be the land of promise [Genesis 13.14-17, 17.8] or the valley of Josaphat [Joel 3, 2.12], or another determinate part there, or as large a part as will suffice for the reprobate (if indeed the elect will not be on the earth but “will be caught up to meet Christ in the air” [n.249]); and, consequently, the hour [of general judgment] must be understood with respect to that part of the earth.

282. But as to what is then said to be “in the middle of the night” (it is taken from Matthew 25.6 and from the Apostle in I Thessalonians 5.2, “Now the day of the Lord will come as a thief”), it does not seem it must be understood literally, because, although the Lord could make himself manifest to each singly, yet it is more probable - for the confusion of the reprobate (who will be seen by each other and the good) and for the glory of the elect (who will be seen by each other and the bad) - that it will be in an illumined place, and so there will not then in the place of resurrection and judgment be the darkness of the middle of the night. Therefore, in the hour perhaps in which Christ rose, in that hour, I say, in reference to the place mentioned, the dead will be resuscitated; or in the hour in which he was condemned by Pilate; or in the hour in which he expired on the cross - since we do not have certainty about this from Scripture. And whichever of these times be posited, the words ‘in the middle of the night’ must be expounded as signifying uncertainty.

II. To the Initial Arguments

283. As to the first argument, from the Apostle [n.249], I concede that the instant of resurrection will not be the same for all, because in the first instant of the resurrection of the dead there will still be some alive, and that too with mortal life; and it is probable that they will pay the due of death as Christ and his Mother did, and then they will rise, and so after others who have already been resuscitated.

284. As to the next [n.250], what Augustine says about speed, I say that it can be referred to the collection of dust, not to the two other things that follow [sc. in Augustine, inducing and uniting the soul, nn.257, 259]; and it has been conceded that the collecting will take place in time, but the other two in an instant and in the same instant.

285. The third and fourth [nn.251-252] raise considerable difficulty among those who philosophize about the last instant of a thing permanent in being. But if it be said, as was said in Ord. II d.2 n.167, that ‘anything permanent in its being is measured by aeviternity’, there is no difficulty, because the same aevum measures the body that precedes [sc. the resurrection] as long as it remains, and when that body ceases to be its aevum ceases to be; and then one can, it is true, grant there is an ultimate in the being of a permanent thing [n.251], and the ultimate and the first are the same, and this same measures the whole, if one upholds the indivisibility of an aevum. So when it is argued about finite being that it will have two terms [n.251], one must deny it, because it is not something continuous but indivisible.

286. And if you say, “at least immediately before the being of what is to be resuscitated there is the being of what is to be corrupted” - I ask in what or with what limit of the time itself? Not with time because then the time would not be something finite with proper limits; with an instant of time therefore, so an instant of time will not immediately succeed - I reply: the being immediately preceding the resurrection is itself in an instant of the aevum, which aevum indeed can coexist with time as also with the ‘now’.

287. And when you ask about what coexists with it in time as it immediately precedes resurrection [n.252], I say that what coexists with it is time and not an instant; and thus those who speak of permanent things as if they had being in time should say that they never have ultimate being, but have being in the whole time, and in the ultimate of the time they have non-being, because then the thing generated has being; however the finite time has its own limits, because the instant that measures the being of what is to be generated is the term of the time that measures the being of what is to be corrupted.

288. And if you say that that being is something finite, therefore it will have its own proper limits - the inference that it will have limits within which it may be preserved does not follow; for ‘having its own proper limits’ only corresponds to it by reason of the time that measures it, and its proper limits are two instants, whether they measure that being or another.

289. Thereby to the next argument [n.252]: when it is said that a permanent thing does not have being in time or with time save because it is in an instant - this is false when holding to the first way, about being measured by the aevum [n.285].

290. But if one holds the other way [sc. being measured by time, Ord. II d.2 n.146], one must say that it is with the whole time as it is immediate to an instant in the way something continuous is immediate to its term; and it does not have this immediacy save as it is in some instant; and then one must deny the statement that “the permanent does not have being in time save because it has it in an instant” [n.252]. True indeed it is that it can be in an instant, provided, however, it can have being in time, namely being with duration; and according to this being, and not instantaneous being, it is immediate to the following instantaneous being.

291. But the first response [n.290] seems easier and more reasonable, because a permanent thing, even if it persist with time, seems nevertheless to have a being in itself that is just as indivisible.