Dist. 44, Art. 2, Q. 1
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/44/q/bon-sent-I-d44-a2-q1
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### Article II. *On the immutability of the divine power.*

Next, with respect to the second article, the question is asked concerning the immutability of the divine power, namely whether what He once can do, He can always do.

### Question Unica.
#### *Whether God can always do what He once can do.*

That He can, it seems:

1. Because every power which is the same as essence has the same *can-be* as *being*, and everything whose *can-be* is the same as its *being*, if it has immutable and eternal being, has also its power; but what God once is, He always is, since His being is immutable: therefore also what He once can, He always can.

2. Likewise, every power which is infinite and cannot fail to be infinite is always exercised with respect to equal things, because if it were with respect to fewer, at some time it would cease to be infinite and would cease to be omnipotent; but the divine power is always infinite and omnipotent: therefore nothing among the possibles is added to it nor subtracted from it: therefore what He once can, He always can.

3. Likewise, every power which is altogether sufficient and in no way dependent on the possible, whatever it can, it always can, if it remains itself unchanged; but the divine power is of this kind, and is not changed in itself: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, whatever God once could, He still can, if nothing has come of it; but nothing can be done by Him which is not subject to the divine power: therefore on account of that having-been-done He is not hindered from still being able: therefore He can do whatever He once could.

**On the contrary:**

1. If God can always [do] whatever He once could; but He could raise Christ from the dead and create the world: therefore He can also now; which is foolish to say.

2. Likewise, if whatever He once can, He always could; but now He can have-created the world: therefore from eternity He could have created it.

3. Likewise, if whatever He can once, also always; but before the world He could bring it about that the world should not have existed: therefore even now He can bring it about that the world should not have existed.

4. Likewise, when it is said: *God can [do] this* or *He can do this*, something being indicated, either something is connoted, or nothing. If nothing: then it can be said equally truly that God can [do] evil as good. But if something is connoted, this is nothing other than the possibility of coming-to-be; but what has been done does not itself have possibility of coming-to-be: therefore God cannot do what has been done: and previously He could: therefore He cannot [do] whatever He could.

> **Conclusion.** Although the divine power is in itself immutable, nevertheless by reason of what is connoted — which was once possible and afterward became impossible — God cannot always [do] whatever He could.

**I respond:** To this there is a twofold mode of replying, as to the sophism concerning knowledge. For granting that the divine power according to truth is altogether immutable, according to the position of the Nominalists they concede this: He can [do] whatever He could. And they reply to the inference: but He could raise Christ: therefore He also now can; they reply that it ought not to be inferred under that tense, but under another: therefore He can have-raised Christ, since this proposition, joined to verbs of different tenses, is not the same. Therefore they say that the proposition is true, and if it is inferred otherwise, they assign a fault in the inferential process according to figure of speech or according to accident.

Nevertheless, as has been proved above, this position does not have truth — although that position may have seemed probable, and the Master held this position — because by it he does not solve [the problem]; and again it does not solve the matter at hand. First, because if it were said that God can [do] whatever He could, because He can have-done what He could do; by parallel reasoning he who is now blind can [do] whatever he could, and the maimed man too, because he can have-done what he could do, and can now have-seen what he could see. Furthermore, even granting the opposite of this solution, it can still be solved, with the reasoning formed thus: He can [do] whatever He could; but He could not-have-made the world before He made it: therefore even now He can not-have-made it: in place of *not-having-made* there is nothing equivalent to give. — Therefore that response does not solve [the matter], especially since the Master himself says in the text, that God cannot do everything which He at some time could do, nor does He will to do or to be or to come-to-be what He at some time willed to do or to be or to come-to-be.

Therefore it must be said, as was said concerning knowledge, that the divine knowledge, in itself altogether immutable, ceases to know some enunciable by reason of what is connoted, because the knowable ceases to be true, and the knowledge itself or *to-know* connotes in one mode in the cognized the truth. Similarly it must be understood that the divine power connotes in the thing, with respect to which it is spoken, a possibility; and such, I say, a possibility, which regards the agent power under the character of power, not of impotence. Therefore since it is so, that many possible things become impossible by accident and many possibles become beings and now are impossible to-be-made — for to make that the non-being should not be is to do nothing; likewise to make what has been done is to do nothing, and so it is impossible to come-to-be — hence it is that, because God cannot [do] except the possible, that *can* belongs to power, because with no change made in the power, but with God existing equally able, something becomes impossible to God on account of a change on the part of the thing. And this is to be conceded, that the divine power is immutable, and this to be denied: *whatever God once can, He always can.*

**Replies to the affirmative arguments:**

*To 1, 2, 3.* To what is objected, that the divine *can-be* is both being and infinite and independent: all that concludes only that it itself is not changed; but nothing follows about what is connoted. Yet it is true that the *can-be* of God with respect to what is connoted is always infinite, because if a finite be subtracted from an infinite, the infinite still remains: and therefore, although He cease to be able to do some thing, He can still always [do] infinite things.

*To 4.* To what is objected last — since the other points are clear — from the fact that the divine power dominates all things that are; it must be said that all things are subject to it; nevertheless it does not follow that He can also do what has been done; He can however destroy it, but cannot do it, because in doing He either does something or nothing. If something: then there is now something more than before: therefore He is not doing what has been done. If nothing: then doing nothing He does nothing. Similarly, concerning that-which-was being made not-to-have-been, He either does this by being still, or by operating, or by destroying. By being still — no: for if God should do nothing, since this is past, it is always past.

If however He should do [it] by operating, since nothing comes about from this — for *this not having been past* is not anything — therefore in doing He does nothing. But if by destroying, since the past or what was is not, He does nothing by destroying, and by destroying He destroys nothing. — Therefore it must be conceded, that He cannot [do] whatever He could, because what was once possible has become impossible — not on account of a constriction of the power, but on account of this, that it necessarily connotes impotence. And thus the objections are clear.