Prolegomena II: signs of priority among decrees; Scotus, Occam, Biel, Bannes
Second: although every act in God's mind and will is eternal, and so not parted even by the lightest instant of before and after, still, from the side of the things God understands and has decreed, certain signs of priority and posteriority can be marked — according to our way of understanding. In that sense theologians ask whether God first decreed to give the elect eternal life, or faith and obedience that lead to eternal life; and whether he first reprobated some and cast them from eternal life before he foresaw them fallen and stained by sin. Hence nearly everyone who has written on predestination and reprobation draws a kind of series, almost a little table, trying to sketch the order of the Divine decrees — not because they judge that in God himself one decree is really before or after another, but because, given the ordered dependence of the things in themselves, our intellect ought to conceive one before another. Yet among the Scholastics themselves this teaching about those signs or instants of before and after — props by which our weak reason steadies itself when it thinks of God's decrees — is not very fixed or constant. Scotus, the chief craftsman of these signs, seems to some not only to have set them as prior and posterior in our mode of understanding, but also to have held that one is prior by nature to another in God himself — as if that before-and-after order could be assigned from the nature of the thing in the Divine acts themselves. But when I read carefully what Scotus teaches on these signs (1 Sent. dist. 41 q. unica; 3 Sent. Dist. 7 q. 4 and dist. 19 q. unica), he seems to me to teach y this: that in the things themselves there is some foundation from which we conceive that one decree of God is to be set before another by a certain order of our reason. From the other side our Occam denied these signs however considered (1 Sent. Dist. 9 q. 3); and Biel, taking that view, attacked them (3 Sent. Dist. 2 q. 1 dub. 3): "Priorities are not to be placed in Divine ngs, any more than pluralities of ordered acts. For there is one act in Divine things, indistinct in reality and in reason, which is the Divine essence itself; by that one cognition God foresaw Christ's incarnation, the future beatitude of all the elect, the fall and the repair — not one before, another after." And he adds at once that not even according to our consideration can such an order of before and after be conceived in the Divine decrees without that consideration becoming a false speculation. Dominic Báñez, though he does not wholly explode these signs with Biel, still weighs the theologians' discord in assigning them and says: notice how freely, in the business of predestination and reprobation, theologians multiply instants, and how little those help assign the account of the difference between the predestined and the reprobate. So let this brief warning stand: do not trust too much, or cling as to fixed dogma, to any certain order of the Divine decrees, whether drawn by Protestants or by Papal writers. It is hard to find two — among ours or among adversaries — who agree to the line in every point when they describe this series of Divine decrees. Let each take care not to bring in a view of predestination and reprobation that runs against Divine justice or free grace; and since these decrees are in reality altogether simultaneous in God, it matters little in what order of before and after we distribute and arrange them according to our mode of understanding.
Latin
Secundo, utcunque omnes actus in mente & voluntate Divina sint aeterni, & proinde ne levissimo quidem prioritatis & posterioritatis momento separemur; tamen, ex parte ipsarum rerum quas Deus intelligit & decrevit, signa quaedam prioritatis & posterioritatis distingui possunt, secundum nostrum modum intelligendi. Et hoc sensu quaeritur inter Theologos, utrum Deus prius decreverit dare electis vitam aeternam, an fidem & obedientiam, quae ducant ad vitam aeternam; & utrum prius aliquos reprobaverit & rejecerit a vita aeterna, quam lapsos & peccato contaminatos praeviderit. Atque hinc est quod fere omnes qui de praedestinatione & reprobatione scripserunt, seriem quandam, & quasi tabellam describunt, in qua ordinem decretorum Divinorum conantur delineare: non quod secundum rem in ipso Deo unum altero prius aut posterius esse judicent, sed quod juxta ordinatam rerum dependentiam in seipsis, unum ab intellectu nostro prius alio concipi debeat. Hic tamen observandum est inter ipsos Scholasticos, non admodum certam & constantem esse hanc doctrinam de hisce signis sive instantibus prioritatis & posterioritatis, quibus imbecilla nostra ratio sustentat se in consideratione decretorum Divinorum. Scotus, qui primarius est ad haec signa fabricanda artifex, videtur nonnullis non solum eadem posuisse priora & posteriora secundum nostrum intelligendi modum, sed insuper statuisse unum esse in ipso Deo prius natura alio; quasi hic ordo prioris & posterioris ex natura rei in ipsis Divinis actibus posset assignari. Sed cum attente lego quae Scotus de hisce signis tradit lib. 1. dist. 41. qu. unica, & lib. 3. dist. 7. qu. 4. & dist. 19. qu. unica, nihil aliud mihi docuisse videtur, quam esse in ipsis rebus aliquod fundamentum, unde nos concipiamus unum Dei decretum ordine quodam rationis nostrae alteri esse praeponendum. Jam vero ex adversa parte Occamus noster haec signa, quocunque modo considerata, negavit; In 1. dist. 9. qu. 3. & Bielus sententiam amplexus, haec signa oppugnavit, In 3. dist. 2. qu. 1. dub. 3. Prioritates in Divinis non sunt ponendae, sicut nec pluralitates actuum ordinatorum. Unus est enim actus in Divinis, re & ratione indistinctus, qui est ipsa essentia Divina; qua unica cognitione Deus praevidit Christi incarnationem, omnium electorum futuram beatitudinem, casum & reparationem; nec unum prius, aliud posterius: & mox addit, ne secundum nostram quidem considerationem talem ordinem prioritatis & posterioritatis concipi posse in decretis Divinis, ut talis consideratio non sit falsa speculatio. Dominicus Bannes, quamvis non omnino explodat haec signa cum Biele, perpendens tamen discordiam Theologorum in illis assignandis, Animadvertendum est, inquit, quam pro libito in negotiis praedestinationis & reprobationis multiplicentur instantia a Theologis, & quam parum illa conferant ad assignandam rationem differentiae inter praedestinatos & reprobos. Liceat itaque hic paucis monere, non esse nimis confidendum, aut tanquam certo dogmati adhaerescendum, ulli certo ordini decretorum Divinorum, sive a Protestantibus sive Pontificiis assignato, cum difficile sit duos reperire, sive inter nostros, sive inter adversarios, qui ad amussim per omnia consentiant in hac serie decretorum Divinorum describenda. Caveat itaque unusquisque ne talem considerationem praedestinationis & reprobationis inducat, quae vel Divinae justitiae, vel gratiae gratuitae adversatur: & cum non multum refert quo ordine prioritatis & posterioritatis haec decreta, quae reapse in Deo omnino simul sunt, secundum nostrum intelligendi modum distribuantur & disponantur.