Single Question. Whether Grace is in the Essence or in a Power of the Soul

1. Concerning the twenty sixth distinction I ask about grace and firsta whether it is in the essence or in a power of the soul.

a. a[Interpolation] Concerning this twenty sixth distinction, where the Master deals with the gratuitous helps that the first parents had for resisting evil and advancing in good, the question concerning the present distinction is first about grace.

2. Proof that it is in the essence:

Because the essence comes from God before the power,     therefore it is reduced first back to God; but it is reduced by grace; therefore etc     . Proof of the consequence: first from Dionysius [Celestial Hierarchy ch.4], “for things are reduced back to God the way they proceed from God,” and second because, just as each creature has God for first efficient cause, so also for final end.

3. Further, the essence is more indeterminate than the power, therefore it is more in need of being determined; but grace is as it were the form that determines indeterminate soul, therefore grace is more in the essence than in the power.

4. Again, grace is always in act; a power is not always in act; therefore grace is not in a power. The proof of the first premise is that the act of grace is to make pleasing; but grace always makes pleasing. The proof of the second premise is that a habit can only be always in act if what it belongs to is in act.

5. Again, approval of the essence suffices for approval of the power and not conversely; therefore grace, which is the principle of approval, ought to be put per se in the essence.

6. Proof the antecedent, Genesis 4.4, “God had respect for Abel and his offering;” further, since the essence is essentially prior in being to the power,     therefore likewise in approval, as it seems.

7. Further, the form determining for action should be put more in the principal agent than in the instrument; the essence is the principal agent, the power is as an instrumental agent, according to Anselm On Concord q.3 ch.11; therefore etc     .

8. Again, there should be a correspondence of the recreated image to the created image; the created image requires a unity of essence and a trinity of powers;     therefore that which is recreated also requires a unity of grace perfecting the essence and a trinity virtually perfecting the powers.

9. To the opposite:

Grace is a form in the soul, as is proved in 1 d.17 nn.121, 129-131; it is not a passion or a power, so it is a habit, according to the division posited by the Philosopher Ethics 2.4-5.1106a11-24, “Every habit is in a power, because it makes the work of the possessor of it good;” therefore etc     .

10. Again, operating grace and cooperating grace are the same, as is plain from the Master in the text [Sentences 2 d.26 ch.s.1-2]; but cooperating grace is in the power of will;     therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of Others

11. On this point it is said that grace is first in the essence [Aquinas Sentences 2 d.26 a.3].

12. The proof is from Augustine On Charity [Sermon 350 n.1], that charity is “the root and life of all the good;” ibid., “charity is the life of the dying;” life and death pertain to the essence;     therefore etc     .

13. A confirmation is that if grace is posited in the essence, it gives supernatural and primary being; therefore by parity of reasoning it will be able to give supernatural acting. Now it would not give per se supernatural being if it was only in the power, but since being necessarily precedes all acting, natural being necessarily precedes natural acting, and supernatural being supernatural acting.a

a. a[Interpolation] Or in another way thus, that acting presupposes being;     therefore what gives natural or supernatural acting gives natural or supernatural being. But grace gives acting to the soul, therefore it gives being to it; but being belongs to the essence; therefore etc     .

B. Rejection of the Opinion

14. Argument is made against this position in two ways.

15. [First argument] - First, because since grace is the same in reality as glory, or is a per disposition for it, the result is it is per se in the same subject as blessedness is; but blessedness is not per se in the essence but in a power; therefore grace is too.

16. A response is made that blessedness is principally in the essence and, by means of it, redounds into the powers.a The soul, by a special descent of God into it, is deiform in the first way (as burning embers are igni-form).

a. a[Interpolation] according as they are capacities, more or less, or prior or posterior.

17. On the contrary:

Therefore the soul, with its powers removed, could be per se blessed, and thus blessedness would not be in any second act, nor even in the attaining of the ultimate object, for an object is not attained as object save by second act, and second act belongs to the soul as it is a power.a

a. a[Interpolation] Again, blessedness is only present because it satisfies and gives rest to the blessed; this resting can only come through union with the beatific object; union is only through some act that belongs to a power alone - and this is the opinion of the Philosopher when he posits that blessedness is in an act.

18. Further, if blessedness were placed in the essence and if ‘grace in the essence’ is of the same idea in a wayfarer as in the fatherland, then the soul would be blessed now, although less so than in the fatherland; the consequent is false, therefore so is the antecedent. The proof of the consequence is that now the soul has - for you - a first act of the same idea as the act in which blessedness is.

19. A response is made that one could thus argue in the same way about the act as about grace, because the act is of the same idea now as it will be then; nor is it valid to make objection about the act of seeing and the light of glory, because these do not per se belong to glory.

20. I say that the argument about first act [n.18] proves that the soul would now be blessed (although less now than later), but not if blessedness is placed in the second act also of loving, because this act is not of the same idea here and in the fatherland [contra n.19]. For if intellection is a partial per se cause in respect of volition (as the third opinion says in the preceding question [lacking in the Ordinatio; see Lectura 2 d.25 n.69]), then it follows that vision and obscure intellection [cf. 2 Corinthians 13.12] -which are intellections of different idea - can come together for a volition of simply different idea (and this was one of the reasons touched on above for the third opinion [Lectura 2 d.25 n.79]), because the same object when known in diverse ways can be loved by acts diverse even in species. But if the view is held that the will is the whole cause of enjoyment, then it is more difficult to save the view that blessedness consists more principally in enjoyment; for that by which the perfect qua perfect is formally distinguished from the imperfect qua imperfect seems to be more perfect in it; but if enjoyment in the fatherland and on the way are of the same species (which seems to be the case), and if the will alone is the cause of enjoyment and if the object is the same and the habit the same, then the blessed qua blessed is distinguished from the non-blessed by vision and not by enjoyment, which is of the same idea in both; therefore vision would be nobler than enjoyment.

21. However, by maintaining that will is the whole cause of its own act [the opinion of Henry of Ghent, mentioned second by Scotus in Lectura 2 d.25 n.54], one can say that a cause that is without limit as to diversity of effects can cause things diverse in species because of the coming together of the diverse things required for the causation of a thing diverse in species, even though these diverse things do not come together in idea of effecting cause; hence a cause without limit as to diversity of effects causes diverse things when the requisites, according as they are requisites, come together - the way the sun solidifies mud and liquefies ice, because of the diverse disposition of the things it acts on [1 d.2 nn.347-350]; but the will is a cause without limit, possessing in its power volitions diverse in species, and so, when vision and obscure intellection come together (which are things diverse in species and per se required for an act of will), the will can cause acts diverse in species, and thus enjoyment in the fatherland and on the way can be distinct in species.

22. [Second argument] - Further, second [n.15]:

When some form is undetermined in its active power for several things, then what has a precise respect to one determinate action cannot be a perfection of the form insofar as the form is undetermined, but insofar as it is a power determinate with respect to the action in respect of which it is perfected by such perfection. An example: if the soul is undetermined as to the several acts agreeable to it according to its several powers, then wisdom (or any other intellectual habit) does not perfect the soul insofar as the soul is undetermined but precisely insofar as it is intellect (and the reason for this proposition is that, if wisdom were to perfect the soul insofar as the soul is undetermined in its active power, then wisdom could equally perfect the soul in its order to any of its acts whatever; likewise, if it does perfect the soul precisely in its order to a determinate act, it would thus perfect the soul only if the soul were an active power for that act and were not undetermined as to several acts). But grace only perfects the soul in its order to a determinate act (namely a meritorious act), which belongs namely to the will alone, according to Anselm, On the Virginal Conception ch.4 and frequently elsewhere;     therefore it precisely perfects the soul insofar as the soul is the power to which such act belongs; this power is the will, therefore etc     .

23. There is confirmation of this reason in that, if grace were to perfect the essence as essence of the soul, grace would be able to redound to the first act of the power, namely of the intellect, and so an act of the intellect, as it precedes an act of the will, could be meritorious; indeed, if the intellect existed alone without the will, grace and merit could be in the essence.

C. Scotus’ own Opinion

The conclusion of the above reasons [nn.15, 22] can be conceded, because the habit which was proved to be supernatural in 1 d.17 n.129 perfects a power of the soul and a determinate power, namely the will, because it is ordered to the determinate object of such power; but it does not perfect the essence, because essence has regard to no object nor to any act.

25. There is confirmation from Anselm On the Virginal Conception ch.3, “All justice and injustice are formally in the will.”a

a. a[Interpolation] grace is a certain justice and rectitude;     therefore etc     .

26. Again, opposites are naturally about the same thing; but grace and sin are opposites; now sin is in the will, according to Anselm, ibid.

II. To the Principal Arguments

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

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

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

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

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

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