B. The Highest Grace can be Conferred on the Soul of Christ

45. Secondly, and more to the question, supposing that a highest grace can be created by a single action, I prove that it could be conferred on the soul of Christ.

First, because a subject fitted to receive an appropriate accident that comes in degrees (although not a subject that is of itself determined to any particular degree) can, considered in itself, receive that accident according to any degree; the soul is such a subject with respect to grace; therefore it can, considered in itself, receive any degree of grace.

46. The major here is clear from its opposite: for water is for this reason not able to receive any degree of heat, that heat is an accident unfitting to water in any degree, and there is a degree of it that could not exist in water while water remains with its nature as water, but the water would be destroyed;Scotus is following here, and throughout this argument, the traditional Aristotelian analysis of the material elements, according to which earth is cold and dry, water cold and wet, air hot and wet, fire hot and dry. ⁹³ air too, for which heat is an appropriate accident, cannot receive just any degree of heat for the reason it is determined by its nature to have a definite degree of heat; the same too of mixed bodies. But when there is an accident in a certain degree, and it is appropriate to a given subject and the subject is not determined to having any definite degree, there seems no reason for any degree to be unable to belong to the subject; for no greater contradiction at all between accident and subject is found in one degree of the accident than in any other, and the existence of what contains no contradiction is absolutely to be posited as possible.a

a.a [Interpolation] Or the argument [n.45] can be formulated in this way: Further, a subject able to receive a form that comes in degrees where no degree is repugnant to the subject, can receive any degree of it; the soul is disposed to grace in this way. Proof: if some degree of grace is repugnant to a subject that is as such receptive of it (the ‘as such’ excludes from the subject all accompanying idea of the subject’s being an active principle with respect to grace), then that degree of grace is also repugnant to any subject of the same nature, for anything capable of grace is capable of it under the same idea (from the second argument, n.47 infra). But no degree of grace is repugnant to whatever subjects are receptive of grace. So not to any particular one of them either.

     I reply that a greater degree is repugnant to a subject that has a lesser capacity. Therefore the minor [sc. ‘no degree of grace is repugnant to whatever subjects are receptive of grace’] is denied. The consequence proving it is likewise denied. But the inference does indeed hold that ‘if a degree of grace is repugnant to any subject of such and such capacity, then it is repugnant to any subject of equal capacity’, but not that it is repugnant ‘to any subject of the same idea, but of unequal capacity’. An example: if surface contains body then any surface contains any body, but a greater surface contains a greater body; and a smaller surface is not able to contain as large a body, and yet a smaller surface is of the same idea as a larger one.

     And then in reply to the third reason about first extremes in a proportion (n.48 infra, which would be against the above solution) I say: form and subject are adequate extremes when taken proportionally, and otherwise they are not (as a subject with a capacity for such an amount and a form with a degree of such an amount or a lesser amount).

     If a proof from surface to color is given (or a proof from first matter to all material forms) I reply that there is an equality of capacity there, but it is not so in the case of angel and soul, nor yet does the difference exceed the difference [sc. ‘intellectual’ as to angels, ‘rational’ as to men], but the idea of the genus does that is common to the differences [sc. angel and soul are both spiritual beings as to genus, and spiritual is common to the differences of intellectual in an angel and rational in the human soul; but an angel’s spirituality has no relation to a body while the soul’s does]; and so their greater and lesser capacity are of the same idea, although the differences are of a different idea.

47. Further, angel and soul are related to grace according to the same idea of receptivity, because grace, as it is received, is a form of the same idea, and so the receivers - insofar as they do receive - are of the same idea. An example: just as white is of the same idea in stone and in wood, so stone and wood are not related to white as they belong to different natures; on the contrary it is accidental to them that, as they receive a form of the same idea, they belong to different natures. Now grace in soul and angel is of the same species, otherwise one grace would determinately surpass the other and thus all grace in the soul would be greater than grace in an angel or conversely, and both of these are false. Therefore the two are not related to grace as subjects of different nature, but this difference is incidental to them insofar as they receive such accident; and thus the soul can receive as much as an angel can receive. But an angel can receive the highest creatable grace; therefore the soul can, and therefore also can the soul of Christ.

48. Further, when there is a proportion between common extremes, as between the first extremes of the proportion, it is between whatever is contained under either extreme. An example of this: what heats and what is heatable are the first extremes based on ‘having heat’, namely actually so and potentially so; thus, wherever the ideas of actually hot and potentially hot are found, there what heats and what is heatable can be found. But the first extremes of the proportion in question, namely ‘supernatural perfection and supernatural perfectibility’, are (in the present context) grace and intellectual nature; so the idea of this proportion is present in whatever is contained under either extreme; and therefore any grace whatever is the perfection simply of any intellectual nature whatever as that nature is perfectible by grace. An example of this: if color is related in first place to surface as perfection to perfectible, and if it is not determined by the nature of either extreme to some genus beneath it in order to be one extreme of the proportion, then any surface can be perfected by any color; but if the extremes are made determinate by something else, as that the surface, because it is the surface of a stone, is the determinate extreme of such and such a color, then that surface cannot receive any color whatever - but this is not because the surface is perfectible by color but because that whose surface it is determines a certain species or degree of color for itself; but if the surface were perfectible absolutely, and if the perfection were too, then anything with that surface could be perfected by any color in any degree.