II. To the Principal Arguments

53. To the first principal argument [n.1] I reply: the supreme goodness can stand with free communication, although it not be equal for everyone. For someone ‘supremely good’ can with generosity freely communicate himself, and in order to show that he is not generous by necessity but is generous as ‘freely communicative’ he can for two persons -apprehended as equal - will ‘to communicate a good non-equally’; nor is any injustice committed in this (as the third opinion asserts [n.20]), because nothing is due.

54. To the second [n.2]: when two things are equally will-able for some end, and they have on their own part the reason for which they are to be willed by some will, a will that prefers one of them to the other for that end sins by acceptance of persons; such is every created will, because with respect to it the lovable good is the reason for right loving. The uncreated will is not so with respect to any good other than its own essence; for no other good thing is, because it is good, loved for that reason by that will, but conversely; and it cannot accept persons, because the good that is the reason for loving is not in them.

55. To the first argument for the opposite [not nn.3-4 but Rep IA d.41 nn.7, 81].

He who wants to hold another way [sc. other than Scotus’, nn.40-42] can say as the fourth way says [nn.25, 35] that the Apostle in this passage [Romans 11.33] is rebuking the presumptuous who inquire into things they have no capacity for, - not because of being in want of a reason to give, at any rate in general, although it not be known in particular the evil that God foresees in someone for which he reprobates him; and in these special sins, that are foreseen, there is ‘a depth of riches’ and that ‘the judgments are past finding out’. - With which agrees that word ‘judgment’, because judgment is about particular doables; for we do not usually say, when speaking of practical principle - or about established laws -, that they are ‘judgments’, but we do so when a judgment is made about some particular in accord with the practical principles or the established laws; and so notwithstanding that there is a practical principle, established by the divine will, that ‘everyone foreseen to be finally evil will be damned’, yet about the particulars to be assumed under it (‘this person is foreseen to be finally evil in this way, that one in that’, and as it were for this reason the former is reprobate for that evil and the latter for that other one), these judgments are inscrutable; for man does not know, nor can know, into what sin God wills to permit him to fall with respect to which there is a non-volition to confer grace, so that thus he be presented as finally a sinner in that sin and thus because of that foreseen sin he will be reprobated. But about the good it can be posited that there is no reason, as was said in the fifth opinion [nn.40-41].

56. And if you argue against this that at any rate about the good the judgments will not be inscrutable (for it is easy to say about them that ‘because he wills, therefore he saves’), - it can be said about them, insofar as he predestines, that there is no judgment, neither of the fact in existence nor of it in divine foreknowledge as it were; for judgment is about something done or foreseen. But about the evil, although there is no judgment about the fact (because they have not sinned), yet condemnation can be said to be a judgment about them in God’s foreknowledge (when they are called ‘evil’), and then the inscrutability of the judgments can be referred to the evil on whose part some reason is posited, although those reasons on the part of diverse things - because of which the judgments are as it were on their part passed - are inscrutable and for this reason the judgments are inscrutable.

57. To the other one [nn.6, 43]: Augustine responds to it for the fifth opinion [n.43], because he proves that on the part of the predestined there is no reason.