System of Sacred Theology · §3.32.3 · Ludwig Crocius

Chaldeans, Peripatetics, Astrologers, Aquinas, and Boethius on fate's mutability

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The Chaldean and Egyptian wise men thought fate can be changed by sacrifices and prayers, because God, the orderer of things, did not bind His own hands so that He cannot do other than He decreed from eternity. The Peripatetics do not admit this mutation in God, but rather that some things happen by chance beside His intellect and will from the concurrence of inferior causes, and that the series of fate can be cut by our choice and by fortune.

Astrologers deny this, because every accidental cause is reduced to a superior cause of itself: whence the series of fate seems infallible to the Arabs in Averroes, and namely to Avicenna with the Stoics against Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas (lecture 3 on Metaphysics VI) thinks Aristotle's reason neither takes away fate nor providence, and is fallacious because it regards particular causes, not universal — which Boethius also teaches by the example of two servants. And a triple cause is to be posited: (1) the most universal and immutable, as God; (2) universal but mutable, as heaven; (3) particular, ordered to its proper effects.

Latin

Chaldaei et Aegyptii sapientes putarunt fatum sacrificiis et orationibus mutari posse, quia Deus ordinator rerum non ligaverit sibi manus ne possit facere aliud quam ab aeterno decreverit. Peripatetici hanc mutationem in Deo non admittunt, sed potius quaedam praeter eius intellectum et voluntatem a casu fieri ex concursu causarum inferiorum, et posse a nostro arbitrio et a fortuna fati seriem rescindi. Hoc negant Astrologi, quia omnis causa per accidens reducitur ad superiorem causam per se: unde series fati infallibilis videtur Arabibus apud Averroem, et nominatim Avicennae cum Stoicis contra Aristotelem. Thomas Aquinas lectione 3 in sextum Metaphysicorum putat Aristotelis rationem nec fatum tollere nec providentiam, et esse fallacem quia respicit causas particulares non universales, id quod et Boethius docet exemplo duorum servorum. Ponenda autem est triplex causa: 1. universalissima eaque immutabilis ut Deus; 2. universalis sed mutabilis ut caelum; 3. particularis ad proprios effectus ordinata.

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About this text

Ludwig Crocius's System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636), all four books: theology and its rule in Scripture; man's last end, death and the resurrection; God, the Trinity, creation, providence and sin; and the grace of Christ, the Word and sacraments, faith, the Christian life and prayer.

Ludwig Crocius (1586–1655) taught theology and philosophy at Bremen and sat as a delegate at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). A Calvinist of the irenic school, he spent his career seeking common ground between the Reformed and Lutheran churches.

His System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636) is a full Reformed dogmatics in the high-orthodox style: precise definitions, ordered questions, objections raised and answered.

Date1636 AD (Bremen; Reformed professor)

EditionSyntagma sacrae theologiae (Bremen: Berthold Villerian, 1636)

English follows the 1636 Bremen Latin (Berthold Villerian), read chapter by chapter from the SLUB Dresden page images, with a machine reading of the same pages as a check. No modern English was copied. The author index at the end of the volume is not translated.

Reference

VD17 14:684303C. SLUB id335860389.

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