Adam Wodeham

Johannes Capreolus, Defensiones theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Paban–Pègues, Tours 1900, vol. 2, pp. 102–103, Dist. XVII q.2 art.1, II. Argumentum Adae — reporting Adam Wodeham, Lectura I d.6 q.4

Reported. These are not Adam Wodeham's own words. The Latin below is John Capreolus's report of him — staged as Argumentum Adae against the second conclusion, before Capreolus answers it. It is evidence for what John Capreolus wrote about Adam Wodeham, and never for what Adam Wodeham wrote.

Datec. 1332PlaceOxfordBench / banddissentingDistinctionI d.17 · Lectura I d.6 q.4, as staged by Capreolus at I d.17 q.2

Can charity increase

English

Adam too (Sentences I, distinction 6, question 4) argues to the same purpose, proving that it is naturally impossible for contraries to be in the same subject in any degree whatever, thus: because contrary qualities are not compatible with one another in intense degrees; therefore neither in remitted ones. The antecedent is granted by everyone. But the consequence is proved.

First. Because a remitted degree is of just such a nature as an intense degree is; and consequently, if it belongs to the nature of whiteness that whiteness is incompatible with the coexistence of blackness, then there will be the same incompatibility in a remitted whiteness with respect to blackness as in an intense one. But if it is not incompatible because it is whiteness, but because it is so much whiteness, this will be said arbitrarily and without reason […]

Second. Because the incompatibility that holds between degrees of intensity is either formal or virtual: formal, he says, as being white and not being white are formally incompatible in respect of whiteness; and being blind and being sighted are virtually incompatible, because the one form is destructive of the other. If in the first way, then, as before, since whiteness in a lesser degree is just as much whiteness as in a greater degree, a small degree of whiteness will be as incompatible with a degree of the other as a great one is. […]

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by · published at bonaventure.wrootpress.com. This page quotes it; that is its home.

Latin

Adam etiam (1. Sentent., dist. 6, q. 4) ad idem propositum arguit probando quod sit impossibile naturaliter contraria esse in eodem et quantocumque gradu, sic: Quia qualitates contrariae non compatiuntur se in gradibus intensis; igitur nec in gradibus remissis. Antecedens datur ab omnibus. Sed consequentia probatur.

Primo. Quia gradus remissus ita est talis naturae vel talis sicut gradus intensus; et per consequens, si albedini ex natura albedinis repugnat nigredini coexsistere, ita habebitur repugnantia in remissa albedine, respectu nigredinis, sicut in intensa. Si autem non repugnat quia est albedo, sed quia est tanta albedo, hoc erit dictum voluntarium et sine ratione […]

Secundo. Quia repugnantia quae est inter gradus intensionis, aut est formalis, aut virtualis; formalis, inquit, sicut esse album et non esse album formaliter repugnat respectu albedinis; et esse caecum et esse videntem, virtualis est, quia una forma est corruptiva alterius. Si primo modo, tunc, sicut prius, cum albedo in minori gradu sit ita albedo sicut in majori gradu, ita repugnabit parvus gradus albedinis gradui alterius sicut magnus. […]

Notes

⛔ Two things about this note are not what they look like. The words are Capreolus's report of Wodeham, not Wodeham's own (RULINGS.md ruling 8); and the text being reported is not on this distinction at all — Capreolus gives the reference himself, Lectura I d.6 q.4, a question about contraries, which he brings here because the increase question had become a question in the physics of intensification. ⭐ That is what this note is for. A reader who wonders why an argument about whiteness and blackness is standing on a page about the love of God is seeing the fourteenth century accurately: by 1330 the dispute over whether charity increases had been absorbed into a general one about whether any form can be more or less intense without something being added or destroyed, and the theology follows the physics. ⚠ Wodeham's Lectura secunda was first printed in 1990 and has no early edition, so report is not a shortcut past the plates here; it is the only public-domain access to him that exists. ⚠ The 1900 print of pp. 102–103 carries a systematic OCR substitution of ro for m and several words no reading recovers; his argument is quoted as far as it is legible and elided at […] thereafter.

Threads

→ contests · John Capreolus
Capreolus prints Wodeham's argument under the heading Argumentum Adae, in the objections against his own second conclusion, and states its target himself: ad idem propositum arguit probando quod sit impossibile naturaliter contraria esse in eodem et quantocumque gradu. If contraries cannot coexist in remitted degrees, the coexistence Capreolus's conclusion depends on is gone.
→ parallel · Peter Auriol
Two dissenting arguments fifteen years apart with no citation between them, arriving at the same place from opposite ends. Auriol argues positively that intensification is always the acquisition of something real: omnem formam intendi necesse est per acquisitionem alicuius realis. Wodeham argues negatively that a remitted degree is of just the same nature as an intense one, so no degree of a form tolerates its contrary. Neither will let increase be a matter of degree alone, and neither is arguing about charity when he says so.
← contests · John Duns Scotus
Two objections against one conclusion, from opposite sides, printed within four pages of each other by the man answering both. Wodeham: qualitates contrariae non compatiuntur se in gradibus intensis; igitur nec in gradibus remissis — contraries coexist in no degree whatever. Scotus: contraria in actu completo et quieto, et non solum in fieri, possunt simul esse — they coexist even in complete and settled act. ⚠ Neither cites the other and neither is answering the other; the relation is visible only because Capreolus staged them together, and this thread records what his page shows, not a dependency between the two texts.