Dist. 6, Dubia
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/6/q/bon-sent-I-d6-dubia
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### Doubts concerning the Master's text.

### Doubt I.

In this part, concerning the text, a doubt is raised about Augustine's argument *to Orosius*, namely that [the Son was generated] neither by will nor by necessity, because necessity is not in God, etc. For the division seems to be sufficient: indeed, whatever God does, he either does naturally, and so necessarily, or voluntarily; therefore, etc. If you say that he himself is responding according to the heretic's understanding, and the heretic understands [the question] of an antecedent will and a necessity of unavoidableness — it is objected that the proposition is nonetheless in itself ambiguous. But one who responds to an ambiguous proposition by simply affirming or denying responds badly, according to what the Philosopher says: therefore, etc.

**I respond:** It must be said that Augustine responds according to the heretic's understanding. For although the proposition is in itself ambiguous, since nevertheless the heretic takes it in one sense, that ambiguity would not bear upon the solution, because [the heretic] does not proceed according to it. But the distinguishing of an ambiguous proposition, when no deception arises through that ambiguity, belongs more to ostentation than to a true response.

### Doubt II.

Likewise it is asked concerning what is said: *Let us say that the Word of God is the Son of God by nature, not by will.* For it seems to speak well, since the Father is God by one [thing], and Father by another, because by deity he is God, and by paternity he is Father, as Augustine says. But the Son is God by the nature of deity: therefore he will not be called Son by this [nature], but by filiation itself.

**I respond:** It must be said that that ablative can be construed formally; and so it is false, because formally he is God by one [thing], namely by nature, and Son by another. It can again be construed originally and in the manner of a principle; and so it is true, and the sense is that the Son has his origin from the Father naturally.

### Doubt III.

Likewise it is asked concerning what is said: *Acutely indeed has someone responded* — for Augustine commends that solution, which is not to be commended, because to multiply an inconvenience is not to solve it.

**I respond:** It must be said that there is a solution *ad hominem* and a solution *ad orationem* [to the proposition]; and sometimes it is better and more useful to solve *ad hominem* than *ad orationem* — for instance, when the respondent is contentious and unwilling to understand the truth, and when the bystanders are simple and cannot grasp the truth and its subtlety. Therefore, because the heretic was rejecting and opposing the truth, for that reason the opponent had to be opposed, and in such a way that he might be the more deprived of glory and the bystanders of deception. So Augustine commends that response, because he manifestly bound the opponent by his own question. The Lord taught this manner of responding in Matthew chapter twenty-one, where he said: *The baptism of John was from heaven, or from men*, etc.

Again it is asked: since there has been no response to the proposition itself, how it ought to be responded to. For it seems that the heretic's division is by immediates, since *to will* and *not to will* are opposed contradictorily, and between contradictories there is no middle. And it must be said to this that the heretic asks this concerning an accompanying or antecedent will; and then neither part is true, nor are the members opposed contradictorily, but contrarily. For *not to will* and *to will* signify contrary acts of the will, between which a middle does fall. For there is something in respect of which the will has neither the character of cause nor of repugnance; and so that is plain.

### Doubt IV.

Likewise it is asked concerning the Master's solution. For he seems to say something false when he says: *The knowledge and foreknowledge of God is of good things and of evil things.* For the Gloss says, on that text of the Psalm: *Things which I knew not; they questioned me*, etc.: «Art does not know vice»; but in God there is the art of arts: therefore, etc. If you say that [God] does not know [evil] in a practical mode, but knows [it] in the mode of speculation; *on the contrary:* he knows in this mode only that which shines in him; but evils do not shine in God: therefore, etc.

Likewise, the Master does not seem to solve the argument; for to multiply an inconvenience is not to solve it.

**I respond:** It must be said that, as will be said below, God knows evils through himself, just as the straight judges of the crooked, and light of darkness; nor is it necessary that evil shine in God, but it suffices that the opposite of evil shine in him.

To that which is objected concerning the Master's solution, it must be said that he does not posit a solution, but [rather] suggests one by counter-arguing, as if to say: from this, the one cannot be inferred from the other, because although they are the same in essence, nevertheless their connotations are different.

### Doubt V.

Likewise it is asked concerning what he says in the marginal note: *that the holy Church anathematizes those who say that God did not beget by counsel.* For it seems to contradict Damascene, who says that in God there is no counsel, because counsel belongs to a nature that is ignorant.

**I respond:** It must be said that *counsel* is said in two ways. In one way, *to take counsel* means *to receive counsel*; and so it implies ignorance, and likewise *counsel*, said from this; in another way, *to counsel* means *to give counsel*, and in this mode it implies knowledge, and this can be transferred to divine things. For God in no way receives counsel from elsewhere. Hence it is to be noted that in counsel there are two things: there is the cognition of a hidden matter, and there is firm disposition. Since therefore in God there is the truest cognition of hidden things and invariability, for that reason it is rightly said that in him there is counsel. Hence Gregory: «God changes his sentence, but not his counsel».

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