Footnotes

¹Tr. The five commonly accepted notions in divine reality are: being unable to be born (unbegotten), active generation (paternity), passive generation (being able to be born, filiation), active inspiriting

²Text cancelled by Scotus: “at any rate simultaneous in nature with that which is ‘intellection of this’. What does this help, if the relation is simultaneous in duration - because there are the same difficulties (of what it is and to what) which there would also be if it was posited as being simultaneous in nature!”

³No response is given by Scotus.

⁴Actually a response to an argument found in Rep. IA d.36 nn.3, 87. No response is given here by Scotus to the arguments stated above in nn.3-4.

⁵[Text canceled by Scotus] This does not follow, if it is a true being, and not divisible into necessary and possible.

⁶In d.39, which is lacking in the Ordinatio. See the Interpolation that follows at the end of distinction 38.

⁷The Vatican editors report that the text of the questions interpolated here is put together from the Lectura I d.39 qq.1-5 (whose order it generally follows) and the Reportatio IA d.38 qq.1-2, d.39 qq.1-3.

⁸The Vatican editors were unable to find any author of this opinion.

⁹The Vatican editors refer to St. Thomas Aquinas, e.g. ST Ia q.14 a.13, Sent. I d.38 q.1 a.5, De Veritate q.2 a.12, CG I ch.66.

¹⁰The Vatican Editors refer this argument to Richard of Middleton, Sent I d.39 princ.1 q.1.

¹¹The Vatican Editors refer to Aquinas ST I q.10 a.5, Sent. II d.2 q.1 a.1.

¹²An opinion the Vatican Editors also attribute to Aquinas, Sent I d.38 q.1 a.5, ST I q.14 a.13, SG I ch.67.

¹³The Vatican Editors suitably quote Avicenna thus: “We must dismiss the obtuse to the flames, as long they hold that fire and not-fire are one - and we must make them suffer the pain of beatings, as long as they hold that to be pained and not to be pained are one... This principle, then, which we defend against those who falsify it, is the first of the principles of demonstration; but the philosopher should be the first to guard them.”

¹⁴Tr. ‘Animal’ does necessarily belong to man, but to man qua man and not to man qua white.

¹⁵Nowadays logicians would explain this point by talking of the scope of the modal term ‘necessary’, that either it takes the whole proposition for its scope, so that it means: “the proposition ‘everything is when it is’ is necessary;” or it takes only the predicate for its scope, so that it means in effect: “everything that is exists with necessary existence when it exists.”

¹⁶The Vatican editors refer to Aquinas ST I q.23 a.5.

¹⁷Tr. This explanation is no doubt compatible with orthodoxy but it seems wholly unconvincing that God should make creatures whose perfect end is glory and yet not choose to give them the grace to reach glory (this criticism would apply to Aquinas’ position too, of course, but not perhaps to Henry’s, as Scotus reports it nn.26-35). Better, then, perhaps to focus on the fact of free choice (also necessary for glory) and say that while God chooses to give grace to everyone yet some, like Peter, do not choose to resist the gift while others, like Judas as it seems, do so choose. The gift is free and precedes all merit; the resistance comes, not from God, but from the creature. And if it be said that grace is irresistible, or that God also gives the grace not to resist grace, the answer will be that free choice is precisely free and so can resist any grace, including the grace not to resist grace. If it be said, further, that then God is passive with respect to who resists or does not resist grace, let it be conceded. But the passivity is not with respect to the possibility (God knows all possibilities by his eternal essence); it is only with respect to this possibility being actual in creatures and that other one not. But the relation of God’s knowledge to creatures is real on the part of creatures and not on the part of God, and so no change is undergone by God because of anything that happens in creatures. Thus there is no real passivity on God’s part either. But this proposal is made under correction.

¹⁸Vatican editors: in the first reference Henry holds that the first reason for something not being makeable is the thing, in the second that it is God.