Dist. 8, Part 1, 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/8/q/bon-sent-I-d8-p1-dubia
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### DOUBT I

In this part there are doubts concerning the text, and first there occurs a doubt about what the Master says: *Now concerning the truth or property of the divine essence* etc. For he seems to speak badly, because everything that has a property is distinguished; but the divine essence is not distinguishable: therefore it does not have a property.

**I respond:** It must be said that the divine essence is distinguishable in the same way as it has properties, and conversely; because although in itself it is not distinguishable by a multiplication of itself nor from a person by diversity, nevertheless it is distinguishable with respect to created essence, with respect to which it has these properties.

### DOUBT II

Likewise it is asked about those three properties which he lays down, namely about *truth*, *immutability*, *simplicity*, since there are many other conditions of the divine essence, why does he treat only of these three?

**I respond:** It must be said that through these three properties uncreated being is sufficiently distinguished from created. For the created, by the very fact that it is created, has being after non-being, and so an empty and possible being: therefore it has being mixed with possibility, and on this account it falls short of truth, of stability, and of simplicity. Uncreated being, on the contrary, has the contrary properties, and in these it is sufficiently distinguished. For *truth* regards *what it is*, *immutability* *that by which it is*, *simplicity* both. Therefore the sufficiency and order are clear.

### DOUBT III

Likewise it is asked about what he says, that *wisdom is named from to-be-wise*, because he does not seem to speak truly. For just as whiteness stands to the white, so wisdom to to-be-wise; but whiteness is not named from white, but rather conversely: therefore etc.

**I respond:** It must be said that according to the composing intellect *to-be-wise* is named *from wisdom*, because the composing intellect proceeds from the abstract to the concrete; but according to the resolving intellect it is conversely; and Augustine speaks with respect to this. — Or it could be said that he speaks according to the consideration of the grammarian, not of the logician.

### DOUBT IV

Likewise it is asked about what he says: *Who is more than he who said to his servant*. For he seems to speak badly, because being does not admit of more and less, and most of all in God.

**I respond:** It must be said that *more* and *less* can be considered in two ways, namely in comparison to the same; and thus they signify intensification and remission;

or in comparison to different substances and natures; and thus they signify degree and excess, and thus it is good to posit more and less in being with respect to Creator and creature, and with respect to creatures among themselves. But in the comparison of Creator to creature there is a disproportionate and infinite excess; with respect to creatures among themselves it is proportionate.

### DOUBT V

Likewise it is asked about what he says: *Whose essence does not know past or future*. For this property seems to belong also to the Angels, since Augustine in *De Civitate Dei* says that «the immortality of the Angels is not past, as though it were not, nor future, as though it were not yet», but is always present: therefore it is not proper to God alone.

**I respond:** Some say that the duration of aeviternity is simple and all at once, not having past and future; nevertheless the aeviternal thing itself has past and future as to its affections; and so it is proper to God alone.

Others say that in every created duration, since it differs from the one enduring and has possible being, there is a before and after; but they distinguish in the before and after. For there is something which signifies the succession of duration, and something the duration of succession with variation and innovation. The first is in aeviternity, the second in time; and this Anselm expressly maintains, and this I believe more probable. And the response to the word of Augustine is clear; for he speaks of a before and after which indeed signifies innovation and variation and corruption.

### DOUBT VI

Likewise it is asked about what he says, that our being is nothing compared to the divine essence. For this seems false, because what belongs to something substantially is not taken away by any comparison; but being is substantial to each thing: therefore etc. Likewise from comparison to God a creature is improved, as Augustine says, therefore it is more than if it were not compared: therefore etc.

**I respond:** Such a comparison can be taken in two ways. In one way according to the relation of influence and reception; and thus a creature compared to God is more than if it were not compared. In the other way it is compared according to the relation of equiparation and proportion; and in this way it is true that none is proportionable according to the condition of the truth and nobility of the divine being; and therefore it is as if nothing, not entirely in itself, but nothing as to proportion, because no quantitative proportion can be found.

### DOUBT VII

Likewise it is asked about what he says: *Let it therefore be said that he always was, is, and will be*. For these words seem not to be said of God, because they signify different times; but in God no diversity of times falls.

**I respond:** Some have wished to say that these acts do not predicate of God different times according to essence, but according to concomitance; because the divine being, altogether unvaried, is accompanied by every time. But this position does not fully solve. For it is truly said that God was before every time; then therefore it cannot signify concomitance. — Therefore others say that time as cosignified is not a disposition of the thing received or understood, when it is said of God, but only of the mode of understanding; but when said of a mutable thing, in both ways. The example is plain from masculinity in a stone and in a man: for in a man it is as a disposition of the thing received, in a stone only as a mode of understanding. But this position does not seem sufficient, because the intellect does not posit a past about its own understanding when it understands that God was: therefore it is necessary that it posit it about the thing.

On account of this it must be noted that words of different times are said in one way of the eternal, in another of the aeviternal, in another of the temporal. For with respect to the temporal they import mutability and succession and duration. According to how they are said of aeviternal things, they import only two things, succession and duration, as Jerome, Augustine, and Anselm hold. But according to how they are said of God, they import only duration. Hence it is said: *God was*, because his du-

ration did not begin; *is*, because his duration is not interrupted; *will be*, because it does not cease nor is it corrupted. Strictly speaking, therefore, they are not said of God, as Jerome says: but broadly speaking, they are said, as the Master and Augustine say; and to this the Master's opinion tends.

### DOUBT VIII

Likewise it is asked about the word of Hilary: *Being is not an accident to God* etc., because being is not an accident to a creature either — for being is in no way accidental to anything whatever — how then is it noted through this that God differs from a creature?

**I respond:** It must be said that an accident signifies something whose nature is to be in another, to come forth from another, and to depart from it. For an accident is what is in a subject and draws its origin from it, and on this account can be present and absent. In these three properties created being shares, though not in entirely the same way. For our being depends on another that sustains it, arises from another that effects it, and the creature is of a nature even to lose its being: therefore its being is as it were an accident, yet not truly an accident, because, although it depends on God, it does not depend as on a subject. The contrary is in God; and therefore Hilary says that *being is not an accident to God*; and this on account of the contrary properties: because an accident is of a nature to be in another, on this account he says: *subsisting truth*; because it is of a nature to come forth from another, against this he says: *abiding cause*; because it is of a nature also to depart from another, against this he says: *the property of the natural genus, which does not let go of being*.

### DOUBT IX

Likewise it is asked, how immortality is to be understood, when it is said: *He alone has immortality*, and Augustine says that it is taken for incommutability; but this does not seem fitting. For death does not signify every mutability, but only the corruptibility of living things: therefore it is not the same thing to say.

**I respond:** Just as life is taken commonly and properly, so also death, so also immortality. For in one way life is called a continuous and internal act which is from a spiritual form; and so it is called properly, and so immortality signifies such a life with an impossibility of its privation. In another way life is called the complete act of a potency that is according to the nature of the thing, as living water is so called which has the operation appropriate to water; and in this way it imports a repugnance to corruption. And therefore according to this life that must be called immortal which is so in complete act that it can in no way receive any worsening; and so the Apostle takes it and Augustine expounds it.

### DOUBT X

Likewise it is asked about what blessed James says and which is in the text: *Nor a shadow of vicissitude*; what is the difference between vicissitude and adumbration, and what the agreement, by reason of which vicissitude is said to overshadow?

And it must be said that vicissitude implies the number of a turn, and this is a number with interruption; but adumbration is so called by the privation of the act of light. Since therefore the act of form is light, its privation is rightly called adumbration; and because vicissitude by reason of number signifies interruption, and by reason of interruption signifies privation, and by reason of privation adumbration, hence it is that it is rightly called *a shadow of vicissitude*.

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