John Duns Scotus
Ordinatio 3, d. 32, q. un.

Translated by Thomas Williams from the Wadding edition

[Distinction 32, quaestio unica: "Does God, in virtue of his charity, love all things equally?"]

1 Regarding this thirty-second distinction, in which the Master [of the Sentences, Peter Lombard] deals with the charity by which God loves the creature, I ask whether God, in virtue of his charity, loves all things equally.

Arguments for the negative:

Charity is a habit, and consequently, it formally perfects a power. Therefore, it presupposes that [the power] is imperfect. But God’s will is utterly perfect. Therefore, etc.

Furthermore, not all things are suitable to being loved [diligibilia] in virtue of charity, since neither inanimate things nor irrational things are. Therefore, etc.

Furthermore, God does not love all; rather, he is angry at some. Therefore, he does not love equally the elect and those at whom he is angry.

Furthermore, he does not give equal goods to all. For his well-pleased will is fulfilled in all. Therefore, he does not will good things equally for all.

Argument for the affirmative:

On the contrary, he understands all things equally, since [he understands them] by a ratio that is formally one. Therefore, by the same token, he loves them all equally in virtue of his charity.

[Scotus’s view]

2 There are three things to be seen here. First, God loves all things. Second, that act is not proper to one Person [of the Trinity]. Third, there is one act; and in this connection it will be shown how it is equal, and how it is unequal, with respect to all things.

[1. God loves all things]

Proof of the first. As was shown in Book 1, distinction 2, question 1, God is understanding and willing, and consequently, he is capable of happiness. But in him, potentiality does not precede act, since if it did, he would be imperfect. Therefore, he is happy, and [his happiness comes] in no other way than by understanding and willing himself, since no other object can confer happiness on a rational creature, as I argued in Book 1, distinction 1, question 1. Therefore, he actually understands and loves himself.

That he also [understands and loves] other things is proved in this way. Just as every intellect can be aimed at any given intelligible thing, so every will can be aimed at any given willable thing. Therefore, the divine will can love all lovable things other than itself.

At this point the objection is raised that if this were true, the divine will would love contraries simultaneously, since each of them has the ratio of the lovable. One must indeed concede this conclusion with regard to the natures that are contraries. But the divine will does not love them both simultaneously with the same intention, since this is not lovable. Rather, it loves some with an efficacious love—those, namely, that it at some time produces in being—and others with a certain non-efficacious love of complacency. But it never produces the latter in being, although they are shown by the [divine] intellect to have, as possibles, just as much goodness as those that God loves with an efficacious love.

For this conclusion—which I am assuming has been proved in Book 1, distinction 2—namely, that God is formally willing, I offer one argument. To be willing is an unqualified perfection. For in all things that divide being, the one that divides being more nobly is a perfection, and more specifically, an unqualified perfection. Now if being is divided by voluntary and non-voluntary, voluntary divides being more perfectly. Therefore, it is an unqualified perfection.

[2. God’s love for things is not proper to one Person of the Trinity]

3 From this it follows, second, that no unqualified perfection is proper to one Person. For this is proved in another way, since if it were proper to any Person, it would be proper to the Holy Spirit, and so the Holy Spirit would not proceed necessarily [from the Father and the Son], or else God would necessarily love something other than himself. By parity of reasoning, the same conclusion follows with respect to the Word, which does not necessarily imply any distinct and proper relation to anything other than God [the Father].

There is a common argument [that will serve] for both [the Son and the Holy Spirit]. A relation cannot be more necessary than an extreme, since it presupposes both extremes. But nothing other than God is, in virtue of its own nature, necessarily in being of any sort. Therefore, no relation to anything other than God in being of any sort is unqualifiedly necessary. Therefore, [no such relation] can be intrinsic to one divine Person insofar as it possesses the divine nature in a determinate manner of possessing.

4 There is another argument regarding the Word. If the Word implied a proper relation to the creature as declarative [of the creature], this would be the case insofar as the creature has being in the Father’s memory, and so the Word expresses it. But this is false in a number of ways. First, no creature has being, properly speaking, in [the Father’s] memory as such, as was discussed in Book 2, question 1. For it becomes intelligible in first act through an act of the divine understanding, and it has being first of all in that act.

Second, [if the Word implied a proper relation to the creature as declarative], the creature would be a principle [ratio] of moving an infinite intellect in order that the Word might express it, and thus a finite thing would move an infinite intellect, and so that infinite intellect would be cheapened [vilesceret]. Or at least, if, per impossible, there were one stone in the divine memory, just as sometimes there is one intelligible thing in our memory, that stone, along with its essence, would be the principle of expressing the Word. For the Word is produced from those things that are in the memory of the Father. If that were true, it would follow that a finite thing would be a principle of understanding for an infinite intellect as well as a principle of producing an infinite act of knowing—and that seems false. Also, it does not seem probable that that which is not formally infinite, either in memory or in understanding, could be the foundation for opposed relations of originating. [So] it would also seem to follow that there would be as many words as there are intelligible things in the Father’s memory, and [that those words would be] distinct in the same way [that the intelligible things expressed in them are distinct], since if they were in his memory and were expressed in that way, they would be expressed only in the way in which each is intelligible.

If the aforesaid is interpreted differently, to mean that the Word declares all things insofar as those things have the ratio of a term with respect to an act of declaring them in some intelligible being, as was said in Book 2, question 1, then this would not be proper to the Word, since the whole Trinity produces them in intelligible being, since each Person has any given thing in memory for himself [sibi meminit cuiuslibet].

But the sense in which it is conceded that the Father alone utters the Word is explained in Book 1, distinction 32, question 1. “To utter” implies a twofold relation: a real relation of origin, which is [the relation] of that which is expressed to that which expresses, and a conceptual relation, which is [the relation] of the thing declaring to the thing declared. Thus, “to utter” connotes both the thing expressed by the utterer himself, and the declaring that is uttered by him. And this relation of “declaring” is appropriated exclusively to the Word, since he proceeds [from the Father] after the manner of begotten knowledge, and that declaratively. Understanding “declaring” formally, however, it is common to all three [Persons]. But understanding it principatively, it can be proper to the Father, since the Father declares principatively insofar as he expresses the begotten knowledge. This twofold way of understanding “declaring,” formally and principatively, is evident in other relatives, as in “assimilating” and “adequating.” For the form by which something is formally similar [to another] assimilates it to the other; but the agent giving that form assimilates [the thing to which the form is given] effectively or principatively. In the same way it can be conceded that the Father loves through the Holy Spirit in the sense expounded in Book 1, distinction 32. And this is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, not proper to him. And here we note a twofold real relation, that is, of spiration, and another conceptual relation, that is, of inspiration to what is loved through him. The latter is a conceptual relation appropriated to the Holy Spirit, but in fact it is common to all three.

[3. There is one act of love]

5 The third is evident, since there is one power and one first object, and [that power] has one infinite act adequated to itself. And it is not necessary that that one act be with respect to all things, as if all things were required for the perfection of this act. Rather, from the perfection of this act it follows only that it tends perfectly into the first term, and that it also tends perfectly into all things with respect to which that first term is the total principle of acting. Now only the divine essence can be the first principle of acting for either the divine intellect or the divine will, since if anything else could be the first principle of acting, that power would be cheapened.

From this it is evident in what sense there is equality in God’s loving of all things, relating the act to the agent. But relating the act to the things it connotes—in other words, to those things over which the act goes forth [circa ea super quae transit]—there is inequality: not merely because the things willed are unequal, or because unequal goods are willed for them, but also because that act goes forth over them according to a certain ordering. For everyone who wills reasonably wills, first, the end; second, that which immediately attains the end; and third, those things are more remotely ordered to attaining the end.

Therefore, since God wills most reasonably—albeit not by distinct acts, but only by one act, insofar as by that act he tends in orderly fashion to [different] objects in different ways—he first wills the end. And in this his act is perfect and his will happy. Second, he wills those things that are immediately ordered to the end, viz., by predestining the elect, who immediately attain the end. This he does by way of reciprocity, as it were, by willing that those others love the same object along with him, as was said earlier regarding charity in distinction 28 of this Book. For someone who loves himself ordinately, and consequently not with inordinate jealousy or envy, wills in this second way to have other lovers, and this is to will that others have his love in themselves, and this is to predestine them, if he wills this good for them finally. Third, he wills those things that are necessary for attaining this end, namely, the goods of grace. Fourth, on account of them he wills other things that are more remote, for example, this sensible world, that it might serve them. And thus what is said in Book 2 of the Physics is true: “Man is in a certain sense the end of all sensible things”—namely, because of man himself, willed by God as it were in the second instant of nature, all sensible things are willed as it were in the fourth instant. Also, that which is closer to the ultimate end is customarily said to be the end of those things that are more remote. Therefore, whether because God willed this sensible world in an ordering to predestinate man, or because he in some way wills that man love himself more immediately than he wills that this sensible world exist, man is the end of the sensible world.

So it is evident that there is inequality regarding the things willed, not as the volition belongs to the will itself, but as it goes forth over its objects in the way I have explained. And this inequality is not on account of any goodness presupposed in any objects other than God himself that is, as it were, his reason for willing in this way or that. Rather, the reason is in the divine will itself. For as he accepts those things in a certain degree, they are good in that degree, and not vice versa. Or if it is granted that some degree of essential goodness is revealed [ostenditur] in them as they are presented [ostensa] [to the divine will] by his intellect, in accordance with which they ought reasonably to please his will, one thing at any rate is certain: their pleasing him as far as actual existence [is concerned] is entirely from the divine will, apart from any other determining reason on their part.

Reply to the arguments for the negative

To the first I say that a habit has some element of perfection, and in that respect it is posited in God. The fact that a habit requires perfection in the thing that is perfectible by it is accidental, and it is not the case here. Hence, a habit in God is identical with the power, since either of them is infinite.

To the second I say that although inanimate things are not properly suitable to be loved out of the charity that is friendship, and friendship cannot properly be had with them, it is nonetheless possible to have a certain willing out of charity towards them—the sort, namely, that one ought to have towards them. For I can will out of charity that the tree exist and that the tree serve me in such-and-such an act insofar as that sort of act helps me further in loving God in himself. And in this sense it can be conceded that God out of charity loves all things: not by a willing of friendship, but by the sort of willing that is to be had with respect to them.

The third argument proves inequality with respect to the goods willed for the things loved. For God does not will the non-predestinate as great goods as he wills for the predestinate; and so long as he is said to be angry at them, he does not will as much good for those with whom he is said to be angry as he wills for those others with him he is said not to be angry. And this inequality of love—that is, of the effect of love—is to be conceded not only with regard to the degrees [of being or goodness] definitive of certain species [concedenda est non solum quantum ad gradus specificos], but even in individuals of the same species. And the reason for this is not the nature that is in this one and that one, but rather only the divine will.

Reply to the argument for the affirmative

As for the argument for the opposite, it proves equality only as the act belongs to the agent, not as it goes forth over its object.