Dist. 40, Art. 4, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/40/q/bon-sent-I-d40-a4-q2
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### Question II.
#### *Whether obduration is from God.*

Secondly it is asked whether obduration is from God or whether it is an effect of God reprobating. And that it is so seems thus:

1. *To the Romans*, ninth: *Of whom he wills he has mercy, and whom he wills he hardens*; but it is the same thing for something to come to be with God as author and with God as willing it: if therefore obduration is by God's willing, therefore also by God as author.

2. Likewise, on the same place in the Gloss: «*Obduration is to be unwilling to have mercy*»: either, then, this is predication by *cause*, or by *inherence*, or by *essence*. Not by inherence or by essence — for in God there is the will to have mercy, and yet not obduration — therefore it is said by way of cause; but God does not will to have mercy on certain ones as foreknown, as Augustine says: therefore from him is their obduration.

3. Likewise, on that text of Exodus, *I will harden his heart*, Augustine says: «*God hardened Pharaoh by a just judgment*», therefore according to this it was just that Pharaoh be hardened; but every just thing proceeds from the supreme justice, which is God: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, by reason it seems so, because everything that is something is from God: obduration is something: therefore according to that which it is, it is from God. That it is something is clear, because *hard* names a natural potency; but *soft* names an impotency. Therefore if softness, both in bodies and in spirits, is something which has God for its cause, this is clear etc.

5. Likewise, whoever has charge of someone, if he permits him to do evil when he could prevent it, or to perish when he could help, is not unfittingly said to be the cause of his evildoing or sin or evil. Hence a prelate who does not correct his subjects is called the cause of evils in the subjects; likewise, he who has wherewith to feed one dying of hunger and does not feed him is the cause of his death. If therefore God can prevent our affection from hardening, and can feed it that it not fail, and does not do so; it seems that the ground and cause of the hardening is to be attributed to him.

6. Likewise, the Philosopher gives the maxim: «*If something is the cause of something, then the opposite is the cause of the opposite*», so that, if *to have a lung* is the cause of breathing, then *not to have* is the cause of not breathing. But *to will to have mercy* is the cause of glorification: therefore *not to will to have mercy* is the cause of obduration.

7. Likewise, «*if something by its presence is the cause of something, by its absence it is the cause of the opposite*», this is another maxim of the Philosopher; but God by his presence is the cause of softening of the heart: therefore by his absence he is the cause of obduration.

8. Likewise, if any two are wholly alike, either some property is in one which is not in the other, or, if it is in it, it is in it from elsewhere. Let there be set, then, two infants, like Iacob and Esau: God hardens one, as Esau, but not the other, as Iacob: therefore since they are wholly alike as to nature and as to merits, the obduration comes from elsewhere. But there is nothing to assign as cause except God, therefore etc. *If you say, from the devil*; on the contrary: granted that the devil in no way intervenes, nevertheless this one would be hardened.

9. Likewise, every effect, whether positive or defective, has a proximate and immediate cause: I ask therefore what is the proximate cause of obduration: either *original* fault, or *actual*, or *the use of free choice*, or *something else*. Not original fault, because then all would be hardened; likewise not *actual* fault, because then everyone actually sinning would be hardened; nor *the use of free choice*, because obduration, insofar as it is the *connoted [term] of reprobation*, is in infants, in whom there is no use of free choice. There remains therefore that the *will of God* is the cause, and this seems [to follow] because, given it, the effect is given. For if God does not will to have mercy on this man, it is necessary that he be hardened.

[Note: see ambiguities log — the closing sentence of fundamentum 9 is OCR-bled in raw lines 29991–29995; the gist from PDF: *therefore from these four exhausted possibilities it follows that obduration is something which God in some way wills to bring about*.]

**On the contrary:**

1. [Cited from] Isaiah: *He invites all who come to him*; therefore he is ready to enlighten all simply; therefore the defect of illumination does not come from God's side, but from ours.

2. Likewise, in *Apocalypse* third: *Behold I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open to me, I will come in to him* etc. But if [men] perceive [his knock] and refuse him hospitality, and do not lodge him in the house, the cause is not on his side but on ours that he is not received: therefore likewise of obduration there is no cause, except him who does not receive God knocking.

3. Likewise, Augustine on that text of John: *Behold the light shineth in darkness*, says: «*For just as for those placed in the sun, when it is present, there is light, and the sun itself shines on the light, and on every impiety; the [defect] of perverse minds is the [defect] of the little cloud*», if it is itself absent. If therefore the *little cloud*, which is a blindness or privation of vision, is not from the sun, it is plain that neither is obduration from God.

4. Likewise, Anselm: «*The good man does not lack grace because God does not give it, but because the man does not receive it*»; therefore obduration ought not to be said to be from God.

5. Likewise, by reason it seems so, because «*the fifth [is the ultimate] privation*»; but obduration is the worst of all evils: therefore the supremely good God does not bring it about.

6. Likewise, obduration renders the soul powerless for the good, therefore it is a defect; but a defect either has no cause, or, if it does, has a deficient cause. But God is in no way a deficient cause: therefore obduration is in no way from God.

### Conclusion.

> *Obduration, insofar as it is a defect, is not from God; but insofar as it is ordained by divine justice as one repaying as a punishment for sin, it is from God.*

**I respond:** It must be said that obduration, insofar as [it is] *punishment*, signifies the soul's ineptitude, and so it signifies a penal *defect*; and every punishment, insofar as such, is just and *ordained*: therefore it signifies an *ordained defect*. Insofar therefore as it is a *defect*, it has no cause but a deficient one; and this is not God, since God is not a deficient cause, but [rather] a destitute free will. But insofar as it is *ordained*, it has a *meriting* cause, namely the fault itself, and an *ordaining* cause, namely the divine justice repaying.

**To the arguments:**

*Ad 1. 2. 3.* Those three authorities therefore — namely of the Apostle, of Augustine, and of the Gloss, and the like, which say that God has hardened someone — are to be understood as regards the *ratio of order*, not as regards the *ratio of defect*; since by comparison to the *defect* [God] is compared only in the *ratio* of one *permitting*, not of one *effecting*. And there is an example: if someone were worthy to perish of hunger, and another could feed him, and by just judgment refused to feed him: if it were asked what was the cause of his death in this case, it would be answered that the lack of food [was]; but the other would not be said to have killed [him], but to have permitted [it]. If *again* it were asked whether this man acted justly, it would be answered that yes; even though indeed he *did nothing*, since this very *not-doing* was ordained by his authority to the merits of [the other] — and consequently he

[that one] is ordered into the punishment due to himself. In this manner is it to be understood in the matter at hand.

*To 4.* To that which is objected, that obduration speaks a *positing*; it must be said that in bodies it speaks a *positing*, because by their nature they are made to resist themselves; but in spirits it speaks a *defect*, because by the natural aptitude the spirit ought to be apt for the reception of divine influence. Hence such aptitude belongs to potency and habit; but on the contrary obduration and ineptitude is by way of *privation*.

*To 5.* To that which is objected, that one who permits a subject to perish is a cause etc.; it must be said that this is true if he is bound and ought to act; but if he is not bound nor ought to do this, indeed rather the contrary, in no way can the danger be imputed to him, but [it is rather] justice; and so it is in God.

*To 6, 7.* To that which is objected, that if something is the cause of something, then the opposite is cause of the opposite; it must be said that this holds in things natural and necessary, as in *having a lung* and *not having one*, and *breathing* and *not breathing*; but it does not have place in voluntary matters, as Anselm says. Now the cause why this man has grace is because God gives; the cause why he does not have it is because he does not receive. — But this solution does not seem fitting, since if the Philosopher's maxim is sound, it is necessary that it hold in every matter.

And therefore it must be said that he speaks of the *proximate and immediate* cause, and the cause which is *the whole cause, requiring no other*; and in every such case it holds. But although the will of God is the efficient cause of glorification, nevertheless to salvation free choice concurs as consenting. Because therefore these two concur, any of them can cause a defect; and the divine will, which is most liberal, does not cause [it]; rather the free choice causes [it], which, although it cannot and does not suffice to effect [the good], nevertheless can be a deficient cause, which is sufficient for the defect of the effect. For in good things «*it is easier to destroy than to build up*».

*To 8.* To that which is objected concerning absence, it must be said that when the absence of something is an evil, either he is the cause of his own absence, or not. If he is the cause of his own absence, he is consequently called the cause of what is incurred from the absence; if however he is not the cause, but rather, so far as in him lies, is always ready to be present; then in truth he is in no way to be called the cause, but rather that on account of which he justly absents himself, that is our sin, and not God. *For our sins have divided between us and our God*, and they are like very dense clouds taking from us the illumination of grace.

*To 9.* To that which is asked, what is the efficient cause by reason of which it is in [the soul]; it must be said that the cause is free choice; the meritorious cause is sin, whether original or actual. But the deficient cause, which posits the defect, is the free choice, deficient and remaining in its defect, either because it itself neglects, or because, sins requiring it, no other comes to its aid. Because indeed, when two stand alike, one can have a hand lifting him up, the other not; therefore one is *hardened of himself*, the other is *lifted up by another*. And in this manner is it to be understood in Iacob and Esau; for Esau lay [fallen] by his own infirmity, but Iacob was raised up by another's strength.