Before the disputeAlexander of Hales · Albert · Fishacre · Kilwardby
Empty on this page. Albert the Great stands in this band on the other cruxes of this edition, but he does not take up this question in his commentary on the distinction. Alexander of Hales, who would otherwise be here, cannot be printed at all: his Glossa was first published in 1951 and is in copyright, with no earlier edition to fall back to. Fishacre and Kilwardby are unread. Nothing here is a claim that these masters were silent.
ThomistThomas · Tarentaise · Capreolus · Denys
thomist · c. 1426 · Toulouse
To Gregory's first argument against the first and second conclusions, the major is denied — speaking of being dear and accepted formally, not merely extrinsically.
Then to the first proof of that antecedent I say that it is impossible for the Holy Spirit to be given to any creature unless the gift of sanctifying grace is given to it, as was shown above at distinction 14 out of St Thomas; because a created gift belongs to the very account of that giving, in the manner set out there.
And even granted that the Holy Spirit were given to a man without an infused habit, that man still would not be called accepted formally, or worthy of eternal life; because the Holy Spirit cannot be a form of the creature rendering it formally worthy — that is done by a created habit. Whence St Thomas, De veritate q. 27 a. 1 ad 1: «God, he says, gives life to the soul not as a formal cause but as an efficient cause; and so some form falls between. As a painter makes a wall white effectively, by the mediation of whiteness, whereas whiteness does so by the mediation of no form, because it makes it white formally.» — Thus he. So in the present case: the Holy Spirit makes a man worthy of eternal life effectively, but habitual grace or charity makes him worthy formally.
To the second proof of the said antecedent the antecedent is conceded, but the consequence is denied in the sense in which we are speaking — namely that someone, according to the state in which he would be without the habitual gift, would be […]
The most direct engagement anywhere in this edition: a Thomist of 1426 answering a named fourteenth-century opponent argument by argument. His whole reply turns on one distinction — the Holy Spirit makes a man worthy of eternal life EFFECTIVE, habitual grace or charity makes him worthy FORMALITER — with Thomas's painter and the white wall for an illustration. He concedes the second proof's antecedent outright and denies only its consequence. ⛔ What he stages is not on this page as its authors' own words: Gregory's three arguments and Scotus's three (which Capreolus has apud Aureolum, at second hand) are reported here, and reporting is not witnessing. Gregory stands on this page only on his own leaf.
A created habit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
thomist · c. 1426 · Toulouse
The second conclusion is that a meritorious act necessarily requires a created grace in the soul that elicits or produces such an act.
It is proved, as to the first part, that grace is required. Whence St Thomas, Summa theologiae I-II q. 109 a. 5, proves it thus: «Acts that lead to an end must be proportioned to that end. But no act exceeds the proportion of its active principle. And so we see in natural things that nothing can bring about by its operation an effect exceeding its active power, but can only produce by its operation an effect proportioned to its power. Now eternal life is an end exceeding the proportion of human nature, as has been said. And therefore man by his natural powers cannot produce meritorious works proportioned to eternal life; for this a higher power is required, which is the power of grace. And therefore without grace man cannot merit eternal life — though he can do works leading to some good connatural to man.» — Thus he. He puts the same argument at Sentences II d. 29 q. 1 a. 1.
But the second part, namely that such grace is something created in the soul, St Thomas proves at De veritate q. 27 a. 1 […]
The Thomist answer to a question Thomas never put in this distinction. Capreolus has to reach outside d.17 for his proof — to the Summa's treatise on grace and to the De veritate — because the Scriptum's ten articles on d.17 do not contain it. That reaching is itself the evidence that the question has arrived from elsewhere. Latin restored from the 1900 print's OCR: repair of scanning damage, not expansion of abbreviation.
A created habit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
I d.17
Utrum Deus possit acceptare hominem sine caritate infusa, de potentia absolutaCan God accept a person without infused charity (de potentia absoluta)?
Cap. 1 · That the Holy Spirit is the charity by which we love God and neighbor.
PL 192, col. 564
Cap. 2 · That fraternal love is God — neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Holy Spirit.
PL 192, col. 565
Cap. 3 · That the saying God is charity is not said by way of cause, in the way that Thou art my patience and my hope is.
PL 192, col. 565
Cap. 4 · In what way the Holy Spirit is sent or given to us.
PL 192, col. 566
Cap. 5 · Whether the Holy Spirit is increased in a person, or is more or less had or given, and whether he is given to one who has and to one who does not have.
PL 192, col. 566
Cap. 6 · That some say that the charity of God and of neighbor is not the Holy Spirit.
PL 192, col. 567
FranciscanBonaventure · R. Middleton · Scotus
Empty, and this one is not a gap in the edition. Bonaventure's disputed question on this distinction does not pose the question of God's absolute power, and neither does any of the ten articles of Thomas's d.17 — the vocabulary is absent from both texts as we hold them. The Thomist column here is occupied by a defender writing in 1426, not by Thomas. That this column is blank is part of what the page is showing: the question has a date.
Dissenting · nominalist · AugustinianDurandus · Auriol · Ockham · Gregory · Biel
dissenting · 1317–1319 · Oxford
Therefore I say otherwise to the question. And first I show that someone can be accepted and dear to God without any supernatural form inhering in him. Second, that whatever supernatural form has been placed in the soul, the soul can still be not accepted by God.
But first I set out what I understand by being accepted and dear to God. And I say that he is accepted and dear to God who, being in such a state, will — unless he offends by sin — be disposed by God to eternal life. As with a baptised child: for he is then in such a state of soul that unless he afterwards sins mortally, God will give him eternal life. It is not so with him before baptism: for whether he afterwards sins or not, unless he is baptised with some baptism he will not have eternal life.
This being supposed, I prove the first conclusion. Whoever can have a meritorious act without such an inhering supernatural form can be accepted by God without such an inhering supernatural form; but someone, by God's absolute power, can have a meritorious act without such a form; therefore, and so on. The major is plain. I prove the minor: whenever there are several acts in someone's power, neither of which is of its own nature worthy of eternal life, if both are simply good and have no bad circumstance, then by whatever reasoning one of them can be meritorious of eternal life, so can the other, by God's absolute power. But an act with such a supernatural form and an act of loving God above all things stand thus: neither is of its own nature meritorious of eternal life, but only because God accepts it contingently. Therefore by whatever reasoning one of them can be meritorious of eternal life, so can the other, by God's absolute power. […]
Therefore I say that for the soul to be pleasing and accepted by God, by God's absolute power, no supernatural form is required in the soul; and whatever form has been placed in it, God can by his absolute power not accept it. So that he always beatifies anyone contingently and freely and mercifully and out of his own grace; so that out of purely natural powers no one can merit eternal life, nor even out of any gifts at all conferred by God, except because God has contingently and freely and mercifully ordained that one having such gifts can merit eternal life; so that God can be necessitated by no thing whatever to confer eternal life on anyone.
And so this opinion of my own departs as far as possible from the error of Pelagius. For Pelagius himself held that if someone has an act good in its kind, God is necessitated to confer eternal life on him, and not purely out of his own grace — so that he would necessarily be unjust if he did not grant him eternal life. But the aforesaid opinion, although it does not hold that an act elicited out of purely natural powers necessitates God in this way, does hold that some supernatural form created by God necessitates God: for it has to hold that it involves a contradiction that such a form should be in the soul and that God should never give that soul eternal life.
I, however, hold that no form, neither natural nor supernatural, can necessitate God in this way — such that it would not involve a contradiction that such a form […]
The first witness on this page that does not answer the Master's question in the Master's terms. Ockham does not say charity is the Spirit, and he does not deny the created habit; he denies that any created thing can make God accept a soul, because God accepts contingenter et libere et misericorditer and cannot be necessitated. The question shifts from what charity IS to what it can DO. Rostered here as the determination only (n376): the question, the principal argument and the opinio prima that he is answering stand on n373 and are not part of this continuous argument; the elisions marked […] are the proof of the second conclusion and the sentence he is in the middle of at the column's foot. ⭐ The word maxime, at 'ista propria opinio maxime recedit ab errore Pelagii', first read as the non-word 'marie' at the 1495 scan's resolution ceiling by two readers independently; it was settled not by magnification but by Biel, who quotes the sentence in roman type. In this fount the x has a descending tail all but identical to the r-rotunda (~/paleography/research/letterform-confusions.md).
No created form is required
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
dissenting · 1343–1344 · Paris
Concerning the first part of the seventeenth distinction, in which the Master shows that the Holy Spirit is the charity by which we immediately elicit the act of love meritoriously, and that no infused habit of created charity concurs in such an act — I ask whether it is possible for someone to love God meritoriously without having in himself an infused habit of created charity.
And it is argued that it is not, thus. It is impossible for someone to be dear to God and accepted to eternal life, in the state in which he now is, without a created charity supernaturally infused; therefore it is impossible for someone to love God meritoriously without charity of this kind. The consequence is plain, since it follows: someone lacking charity loves God meritoriously, therefore he is dear to God, and so on. But if the consequent is impossible, the antecedent is impossible too. The antecedent is proved: because if it were possible for someone without charity to be dear to God in this way, it would be far more possible for someone without faith to be dear to him; but this is against the Apostle to the Hebrews, who says that without faith it is impossible to please God.
It is confirmed: because by whatever reasoning someone could be dear to God without a supernaturally infused habit of charity, by the same reasoning he could be dear to him without any supernatural habit at all, and consequently could be worthy of eternal life out of his natural powers alone — which was the error of Pelagius.
On the opposite side stands the Master in the text.
I answer. This question can be understood both of God's absolute power and of his ordained power, which is made known to us by the authorities of holy scripture and of the church. There will therefore be two articles to the question. The first: whether, by God's ordained power — that is, according to the ordinance and law established by God — it is possible for someone to love God meritoriously without having a habit of created charity supernaturally infused in him. The second will be whether this is possible by God's absolute power.
As to the first article, the Master's opinion was that it is. For he held, as is clear in the present distinction, that no supernatural habit of created charity concurs in the meritorious act of loving, but that the Holy Spirit himself works it with no habit of virtue as a medium — which is not so with the acts of faith and hope, for those he works by means of supernaturally infused habits, namely faith and hope. This opinion is strengthened by authorities of Augustine, of which the first is On the Trinity VIII […]
And from this it must consequently be said, on this opinion, to the article in question, that it is possible, and in fact is the case, that a man can love God meritoriously without such a created habit of charity.
But although the opinion just recited is a solemn one, on the Master's authority, the doctors commonly hold the opposite. And I, together with them, think the opposite is true. What moves me to this are the Apostle's words in 1 Corinthians: If I speak with the tongues of men, and so on — where he says that all the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit, and their acts and works, profit a man nothing, and consequently are not meritorious, unless they have charity. And if it be said that the Apostle was speaking of the uncreated charity which is the Holy Spirit, without whom the rest do not profit — that, even if it could be maintained brazenly, does not seem to be the Apostle's intention. For there he speaks of charity as of a certain virtue, setting out its necessity and its excellence over the other virtues; whence at the end of the chapter […]
On the dissenting bench by tradition, and against the Master by conclusion — the combination this page needed to show. He divides the question de potentia ordinata and de potentia absoluta, gives the Master a fair hearing under the first with his own Augustinian dossier, and then breaks: communiter tamen doctores oppositum opinantur, et ego una cum eis puto oppositum esse verum. His reason is 1 Cor 13, and he refuses the obvious escape from it — that Paul meant uncreated charity — as something that could be maintained only proterviter, brazenly. The elision […] is the Augustinian dossier, which runs to the foot of the column and is the Master's case, not Gregory's. ⛔⛔ Read the Pelagius sentence for what it is: it stands in the OPENING ARGUMENT (Et arguitur quod non … Confirmatur …), before Ad oppositum, and is not Gregory's determination. He divides the question and answers only its ordained-power half here. Article 2 — de potentia absoluta, which is Ockham's question — runs on at n172–n177 and is unread; Capreolus cites it by reference (1 Sentent., dist. 17, q. 1, art. 2) and reports Gregory arguing there that God CAN so accept without a created habit. Do not let this witness carry a verdict on the absolute-power question. It belongs to crux 4.
A created habit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
dissenting · c. 1490 · Tübingen
In the present distinction the Master treats of the manner of the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit. And the sense of the text can be summarised in these conclusions.
First conclusion. The Holy Spirit is said to be given or sent to us when he makes us love God and neighbour, by which we remain in God and God in us.
Second conclusion. The Holy Spirit is the charity and the love by which we love God. Now if this is understood formally, it does not hold. If effectively, it is true — because he it is who infuses the habit of charity. If it is understood of the uncreated charity that is simply necessary for salvation and for loving God, then again it can be saved.
Third conclusion. Charity is said to be increased, even though the Holy Spirit in himself is neither increased nor diminished. See the text at greater length.
Three hundred and thirty years after Lombard, the distinction is no longer disputed but summarised — and the whole crux is settled in a subordinate clause. Biel reduces the littera to three conclusions and disposes of the second with a distinction: formaliter non tenetur, effective verum est, quia ipse infundit habitum charitatis. What Bonaventure and Thomas argued at the length of a disputed question, Biel decides in eleven words before the question proper has begun. The nearest thing on this page to the divisio's function on the Franciscan bench, and the reason it is rostered.
A created habit
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
dissenting · c. 1490 · Tübingen
Third conclusion. Whatever supernatural form has been placed in the soul, God can decline to accept that soul unto eternal life.
It is proved: because, whatever form has been placed there, God is not necessitated to produce anything else without which that form can stand and be conserved; therefore, once that habit has been posited, God can still not beatify.
Again, whatever form God can produce and conserve for a time without another, he can conserve perpetually without it. Again, he can annihilate that form together with the soul in which it inheres. Again, who doubts that he could keep Enoch and Elijah perpetually in paradise without the beatific vision and enjoyment — who are nevertheless believed to have grace?
From which it follows that God beatifies anyone he beatifies purely conting⟨ently⟩ […]
Ockham's second conclusion, restated by his epitomator seventy years on and given an argument Ockham does not use: Enoch and Elijah, who are believed to have grace and are held in paradise without the beatific vision. A scriptural case for a metaphysical thesis, and the one place on this page where the absolute-power argument touches anything a reader could picture. His conclusion, deus quemcunque beatificat mere contingenter, is Ockham's word.
No created form is required
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
ReceptionLuther (WA 9) · Estius (1616)
Empty. Luther's marginal notes on d.17 answer the Master's question about what charity is; they do not take up the absolute-power question, and this edition does not yet carry a reception witness that does.
This is the one page in the edition where the question itself has a date.
Nobody on the thirteenth-century benches asks it. Bonaventure's disputed question on this distinction does not pose it; none of the ten articles of Thomas's d.17 poses it; and the vocabulary of God's absolute power does not occur in either text as this edition holds them. That is why the Franciscan column is empty here and why the Thomist column is occupied only by a man writing in 1426. The emptiness is not a gap in the edition. It is the finding.
What the fourteenth century does is not answer Lombard's question differently. It changes what the question is. Lombard asked what charity is, and his opponents answered that it is a created habit. Ockham asks instead what a created habit could possibly do, and answers: nothing that binds God. Whatever form is placed in the soul, God can decline to accept it — ut deus per nullam rem possit necessitari ad conferendum cuicumque vitam eternam. Gregory of Rimini takes the same question and gives it the shape it will keep, dividing it into an ordained-power article and an absolute-power article; Biel makes it his third conclusion and gives it the only picture on the page, Enoch and Elijah held in paradise with grace and without the vision of God.
Capreolus is the reason this page can be read at all, and he is also its chief hazard. He states the Thomist answer, and to prove it he has to leave the distinction — the Summa's treatise on grace, the De veritate — because Thomas's own commentary on d.17 has nothing to reach for. Then he stages the opposition by name: Gregory's article 2, argument by argument, and Scotus's, which he has at second hand from Auriol. That staging is the fullest fourteenth-century material anywhere in this edition, and none of it is a witness. Gregory's arguments here are Capreolus's report of them. Scotus and Auriol are not on this page at all. A text may be found through Capreolus and never cited through him, and on this page that rule is doing most of the work.
What both benches share by 1426 is the instrument. Capreolus answers Gregory by distinguishing effective from formaliter: the Holy Spirit makes a man worthy of eternal life effectively, habitual grace makes him worthy formally, as a painter whitens a wall by means of whiteness and whiteness whitens by means of nothing. Sixty years later Biel disposes of Lombard's thesis with the same couple — formaliter it does not hold, effective it is true. The distinction that the Thomist uses to save the created habit is the distinction the Ockhamist uses to explain away the Master. Neither cites the other. By the fifteenth century the argument is no longer about whether the distinction holds but about which side of it the Master's sentence falls on.
⚠ Regions and reading. The Franciscan bench and both bands are empty, for the reasons above and because Alexander of Hales remains blocked. Gregory stands here on the leaf where he formulates the question and defers it; his article 2 — the one Capreolus answers — is located at n172–n177 of the 1520 print and has not been read, so this page carries his question and not his answer. Auriol's own d.17 q.1 is still unreached. Every English on this page is a fresh draft awaiting approval.