Question Two. What Sort of Intention is Required in the Minister who Baptizes

136. To the second proceeding thus - and argument is made that actual intention is required in the one who baptizes.

Because an effect does not proceed from a first act save by means of a second act; habitual intention is as it were a first act; therefore, an act does not proceed from it without actual intention, which holds the place of a second act.

137. On the contrary:

Intention in a minister is no less sufficient for earning merit than for conferring the sacrament; but actual intention is not required for merit; therefore not here either. The proof of the major is that merit does not have an effect save because of the proper effort of the will of him who merits; but the sacrament does not have effect through the motion of anyone’s will but only if no obstacle is put in the way. The proof of the minor is that if actual intention were always required for earning merit, someone distracted in a work he has begun, however perfect the work and with however much perfection begun, would not earn merit because he would not have actual intention.

I. To the Question

138. Here a distinction is commonly drawn between actual and habitual intention, as if these sufficiently divide intention.

139. But it seems that a third member could rationally be added on, and it can be called virtual intention; for he is said to intend actually who has an elicited act with respect to what he intends; he is said to intend habitually who has a habit inclining him to such an act; but there is someone less perfectly intending than in the first way, and more perfectly intending than in the second way; so there is a middle between those members.

140. The proof of the assumption is that, if someone who is intending at the beginning to celebrate mass is afterwards distracted, he does not have actual intention when he is distracted (which is plain because he does not then intend it in act, therefore neither does he will it in act); nor does he have only habitual intention, because someone asleep has such intention; therefore he is disposed in a middle way.

141. And I call this disposition of his ‘virtual intention’, namely because in virtue of some possessed intention he does actually all that he does thereby as by its root, such that this actual intention was the principle directed to all those acts, and he had in himself in virtue the intention proper to each of those acts (as the intention of the end has in itself virtually the intention proper to each thing ordered to the end); and to this extent, while the intention of each thing for the end remains and does not depart from that intention [sc. the intention for the end], the first actual intention remains in all of them virtually.

142. In this way, he who intends to go to SantiagoOr St. James, which is likely a reference to Santiago de Compostela in North West Spain, which was one of the best-known pilgrimage destinations in Medieval Europe. Those who started on this pilgrimage from Paris (where Scotus lectured on and wrote some of what became the Ordinatio) would have to prepare many things for so long a journey on foot. They would typically start from the church of St James, or St-Jacques, in the Latin Quarter of Paris. ⁴⁴ orders, on the basis of this intention, the many things necessary for that end; but while he is carrying out these ordered things he is not always thinking of St James, or of reverence for him. Yet I say he is always meriting because he has always that first intention virtually, wherein the reason for merit principally was; because either he has an intention for things which are for the end that the first intention is for, or he has some acts following from those intentions, even though accompanying those acts are some acts distracting him both from that first intention and from the intentions proper to the things which are for that end.

143. This was made clear in Ord. II dd.4-5 nn.19-20 and in Ord. III d.15 n.62, where it was said that perhaps the martyrs in their acts of undergoing martyrdom had only the virtual intention, because the enormity of the pains perhaps absorbed their use of reason; but the suffering of pains was a certain effect derived from the intention of keeping the faith of God, and therefore, while the suffering thus lasted, the intention always lasted virtually, as in its effect.

144. As to the issue at hand, I say that habitual intention alone in the baptizer is not sufficient, because his act is not called a human act on account of it, even though there be a human act conformed to that habit. For if someone have a habit inclining him to desire of health, if he were to go running in no way intending health but play, he is not said to be pursuing health through any human act but incidentally or fortuitously, no more than if he had had no intention for health; therefore habitual intention alone does not suffice with respect to the end of a human act as human.

145. Nor is actual intention always required in the baptizer, because God has not obligated man to what is impossible or too difficult, of which sort is not being distracted, because Augustine On Free Choice III ch.25 n.255 [cf. n.78], “It is not in our power what things when seen we are touched by.” Nor even has God obligated the minister more in that act than in the carrying out of the acts of the other sacraments. But in confecting the Eucharist, which is the most excellent sacrament, he did not obligate man not to be distracted but that he who before is intending to celebrate it (though in speaking the words of the sacrament he is distracted) has nevertheless truly confected it.

146. From these things I conclude that virtual intention is sufficient in the baptizer, that is, that he sometime had actual intention from which comes the act now of baptizing, whether he have or not have in this act some actual intention or other that comes from the former one. But I mean that this act will have come from the former without any contrary motion of will intervening - just as if someone, while dressing for mass, intend to celebrate according to the use of the Roman Church and he therefrom proceed continuously with great distraction, perhaps in accord with some habit left behind in his imagination, he truly does what is necessary for the sacramental act, which is to confect.

147. If it be asked how some effect that now is can be reduced to that first intention as to its cause, if that intention now is not, nor any other intention commanding that act - the answer is it is through a certain virtue impressed on a virtue that moves through an actually intending will; and as long as that impressed virtue remains, the moving virtue moves. The result is that if someone were to intend to go to the place and afterwards on the way think of other things, in the actual volition some actual impression on the motive power was coming to be; and as long as that impression moves toward the willed-for term and the man continues, little by little the impression lessens and at length fails and the man cease from motion. Then it is said that the man does not have the virtual intention save while he has the effect impressed by the actually intending will on the inferior power.

148. But it seems marvelous how the will could be a factive virtue, causing such a form in this organic power; it is also marvelous if it were caused in the place from which it was little by little departing.

149. If can therefore be said that in the sense appetite, or in the imagination, there is some disposition according to which it moves when the act of will commanding them ceases.

150. Or differently to the issue at hand: because whether the will, while actually intending, leaves something behind in the lower powers or not, yet it possesses in orderly way its volitions with respect to the end and with respect to the things that are for the end. And when it will have reached one of them and commanded an act of the corresponding inferior power, that commanded inferior act can remain although neither the first nor the second intention remain; and while the act remains, however much the will is distracted, the virtual intention is said to remain.

II. To the Initial Arguments

151. As to the first argument [n.136], I concede that some act is required for the effect to be, and that that act can be said to be what the external effect is produced by.

152. But if you are looking for some act according to which the operation is that is immanent to the agent, there is no need to grant that there is such an act then remaining when the exterior act is elicited - just as it is manifest that many effects are caused when actual motion of a cause acting through intellect (by which those effects are produced) does not remain.

153. And an example can be posited in natural things, because when a pebble is thrown into water, the first ring is cause of the second ring, and so on; but the first does not always remain as long as the second does, nor the second as long as the third does; so too universally in the motion of things that are thrown, the first part, and the one locally closer to the mover, is moved before a remote part is.