α. Opinion of Others

97. To this question one could say [Peter OliviSumma IIa q.116: “Some say that the essence of all actions, both natural and vicious, are as immediately from God as are the essences that he creates... But others say that the actions of created agents, at least those that are bad, are not at all immediately from God, because he does not make them except by the fact he makes and holds and conserves in being all active and passive causes, or all causes cooperating and concurring in any way to the production of such actions. Because therefore this second way seems to me it should be altogether held, for I do not see that God could otherwise appear altogether guiltless in the case of our guilt and vices, for this reason - without prejudice to any better opinion - I will subjoin the things that seem capable of being adduced for this side. That therefore the aforesaid actions are from God not in the first way but in the second is proved thus: first, that they are totally and immediately from second causes; second, that they are from free will; third, that they are vicious; fourth, that they are culpable, or that the agent or recipient is guilty because of them.” ⁴⁶ and others] that the will is the total and immediate cause with respect to its own volition.

98. [Proof by reason] - This is proved by reason:

First, because otherwise the will would not be free; second, because otherwise it could cause nothing contingently; third, because otherwise it could not sin; fourth, because otherwise it could have altogether no action; fifth, from comparison of it with other created causes.

99. In the first way [n.98] the proof is twofold:

First as follows: no power has perfectly in its control [power] an effect that cannot be caused by it immediately or that cannot be caused by any cause whose causation is not in the control of that power; but the causation of God is not in the control of a created will (as is plain), just as the virtue of a higher agent is not in the control of any lower agent; therefore if God is necessarily immediately concurrent - as immediate cause - in respect of a created volition, the created will does not have the volition fully in its control. The assumed major premise is plain, because what has an effect perfectly in its control either has from itself alone power over the effect, or the causation of any concurring cause is in its control, namely as to the causing or not causing by that concurring cause; there is an example about the intellect which, if it concurs in causing a volition (according to the third opinion in 2 d.25 [not in the Ordinatio but the Lectura, where it is Scotus’ own opinion]), yet does not cause it save with the will’s causing, so that the intellect’s causing is in the power of the will.

100. The second argument according to this way is as follows: what is determined to something by another does not have that something perfectly in its control; the created will is determined to this something - ex hypothesi - by the divine will;     therefore etc     .

The proof of the minor is that either one of the wills determines the other or vice versa (and our will does not determine the divine will, because the temporal is not the cause of the eternal), or neither will determines the other, and then neither of them will be a moved mover, and there would be no essential order between them; rather, if the divine will does not determine our will (as the second reason argues [n.101]), the divine will could will something that, because of the disagreement of our will, would not come about.

101. Further, from the second way [n.98] the argument is as follows: a thing is not contingent because of its relation to some cause if a higher cause is determined to the thing’s coming about, and if the determination of this higher cause is necessarily followed by the determination of all the lower causes. An example: if my will were now determined to the affirmative option about writing tomorrow, and if my will were not subject to impediment or change, then my writing tomorrow would not be contingent (now, however, it is contingent to either option because of its relation to my hand), for as the will is determined now to one option, so there are contained virtually in it all the lower causes for the same effect, and simply so (because, if a thing by whose determination the effect would be determined is determined, the happening of the effect is not simply indeterminate as to either side - at any rate its existence is not contingent because of the power of a lower cause). But if the divine will is the immediate cause of my willing, there is now some cause determinate with respect to my willing, because God’s will is eternally determined to one of the contradictories, and the determination of this divine cause is necessarily followed by the determination of my will with respect to the same willing (otherwise ‘God willing this’ and ‘this not going to happen’ would stand together); therefore this willing is not contingent to either side because of the power of my will.

102. From the third way [n.98] the argument is as follows: if God is the immediate cause of volition, it is clear he will be a cause prior to the will; therefore he will have an influence on the effect prior in nature to my will. I take then this moment of nature wherein God causes a willing, insofar as it is prior to the moment in which the will acts for the willing; either God in that moment immediately causes perfect rightness in the willing, and consequently in the second moment the will does not sin, because it does not cause in the effect the opposite of what the first cause causes; or in that first moment God does not cause rightness in the willing, and then it follows that in the second moment the will does not sin, because it then has no power to will rightly (for in the second moment it only has power for what the prior cause produces in the first moment); but the will does not sin by not having a right willing if it cannot have a right willing;     therefore etc     .

103. From the fourth way [n.98] the argument is: if God is the cause of the volition, he will be the total cause of it, because he will cause it by willing it (but he is, by his willing, the total cause of a more perfect creature, namely an angel, or of anything created from nothing; and if he was the cause of it by willing it, he would be the total cause of it); but nothing else along with the total cause of something can, in any genus of cause, co-cause that something along with it; so the will would have no causality with respect to its own volition.

104. From the fifth way [n.98] the argument is: if any [creature] is the total active cause with respect to its effect, this must be conceded most of all about the will, because the will is supreme among active causes; but some [creature] can be the total cause with respect to its effect.

105. I prove [the minor] in two ways:

First, because this [sc. being total active cause] is not repugnant to creatures. For though there is something that is the total efficient cause of heat, this does not posit in that something any infinity or perfection repugnant to a creature; for if the thing is a univocal cause, it need not excel the effect in perfection, and if it is an equivocal cause, it need not excel the effect infinitely but in some determinate degree.

106. There is a second proof of the minor, for that thing is total cause of something which, if it existed while everything else was per impossibile removed, would perfectly cause the effect; but a subject, if it existed while everything else was removed, would cause its proper accident; therefore the subject is the total cause with respect to its proper accident.

107. From this minor, proved in two ways [nn.105, 106], the conclusion is drawn that the will can be the total cause with respect to its volition; and further, since nothing else beside the total cause causes in the same genus of cause (otherwise the same thing would be caused twice, or would be caused by something without which it would not be able not to be), then God will not immediately cause this volition.

108. [Proof from authorities] The intended conclusion [n.97] is proved by authorities:

First from Ecclesiasticus 15.14-18, where it is said that God “made man from the beginning and left him in the hand of his own counsel. And gave him his commandments and precepts: ‘If you wish to keep the commandments, they will keep you’. For he has put before you fire and water; stretch out your hand to what you want. In front of man is good and bad, life and death; what has pleased him will be given him.”

109. Augustine too, City of God 7.30, says, “God so administers the things he has made that he permits them to make their own motions.”

110. Anselm too, On Concord 1.7, “God has made all actions and all movements, because he himself made the things by which and in which and from which they come to be; and no thing has any power of willing or doing but he himself gives it.”

111. The same again, 2.3, “God does not do the things he predestines, by compelling or resisting the will, but by giving power to its being.”

112. To this effect also is the Commentator [Averroes] Metaphysics 9 com.7 (on the remark, “So it is possible for something to have power”): “The moderns posit that one agent, namely God, causes all things without intermediary. And it happens that no being has naturally its own action; and since beings do not have their own actions, they will not have their own essences (for actions are not distinguished save by diverse essences). And this opinion is very far from the nature of man, etc.” a

a. a[Interpolation] These two reasons [from Averroes] seem to make the opinion [n.97] more compelling than those that are put for the opinion [nn.98-107].