Divine Power: The Medieval Power Distinction up to its Adoption by Albert, Bonaventure, and Aquinas 019826755X, 9780198267553

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Citation preview

DIVINE POWER The Medieval Power Distinction up to its Adoption by Albert, Bonaventure, and Aquinas

LAWRENCE MOONAN

CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD 1 994

OxfiJrd University Press, Walton Street, O:eford oxz fop Oxford New York Tr1ronto Delhi Bombf!Y Calcutta Madras Karachi !1i111l11 f,umpur SingafJOre Hon,g Kong Tokyo JVi1irohi Oar es Salaam Cape Town ,\/tfhouml' Auckland Afadrid mm/Htttit.r in llnliu lhrulan

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JOHN GEORGE MOONAN AND

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mark of (!xfiml ( lniuersity Press

Puhlislted in the United States by Oxfiird University Press Inc., New York

© I.awrence Moonan 1994 All ri,ghts reserved. .No part of this publication "''!Y be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in af!Y fi!rm or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any )air dealing fin the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case qf reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licenas issued by the Copyright Licensing Agen~y. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the R(ghts Department, Oxford University Press; at the address above British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

1.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Divine power: the medieval power distinction up to its adoption by Albert, Bonaventure, and Aquinas/ Laummce 1Woonan. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. God Omnipotence · History of doctrines Nliddle Ages, 600- 1500. I. Title. BT!33.M66 1994

I

J

j

7 9

10

8 6 4

2

Typeset by Se/wood ,~ystems, A1idsomer .Norton Printed in Great Britain on acid:ftee paper by Bookcrafi (Bath) Ltd. Midsomer .Norton, Avon

MARY MOONAN

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

·1·hc present book is part of a much wider programme of research, IH1rsued over many years. I acknowledge early encouragement liom E. F. Jacob, L. Minio-Paluello (both now dead), and M. ( :aren Berry, now of London; and shrewd observations from I'rofcssor Geach in a brief exchange of letters following the I1ublished articles mentioned in the Introduction below. A valu; tl ile sabbatical at the Mediaeval Institute, Toronto, permitted a .systematic survey of later medieval uses of the Distinction, and I>y way of a bonus, a pleasant discussion with Professor Courtenay ;ii Madison. At a later stage, tools for a more explicit appreciation (11' the Distinction were sharpened in discussions with Friar 1lcrbert McCabe OP and Dr Gyorgy Gereby, following a series (1f lectures in Oxford, arranged through the good offices of Dr A. Kenny. For a couple of terms in Oxford, I am indebted to the research fund of Bolton Institute of Technology (now Bolton Institute), and to my colleagues there in the Philosophy Section: ('specially Drs Peter Caldwell and Suzanne Stem-Gillet. \Vhen the present book was already in draft, I was able to have a number or discussions with Dr Randi during his short visit to Oxford. Our \'xchanges of drafts and criticisms continued, but in a tragically short time Dr Randi died: a greatly respected colleague, and already a friend. During later revisions I have benefited from related discussions with Mr David Melling, of Manchester Metropolitan University (where I also held a visiting fellowship for a time), and Mrs Julie Jack, of Oxford. For an interest in serious medieval philosophy more generally, I thank Prof. Fernand Van Steenberghen, and my colleagues of many years ago in the seminar of the De Wulf-Mansion Centre in Louvain. The whole of the book in its present form is from a time when my wife was not only providing the support commonly acknowledged in these places, but acting as a one-woman CNRS. This is Pat's book, and without her it could not (de potentia ordinata dei) have appeared.

CONTENTS

I11 lroduction 1.

·2.

3·

4..

The Power Distinction: \Vorking Notions

r6

A Working Notion of the Distinction Further Notions, and "False Friends"

16 28

Early Use of the Distinction: By the Pupils of the Ma~n

~

Masters and Transmitters Early Users Geoffrey of Poitiers (fl. 1215) (57) An Earlier Use? (61) 'Quidam' (a. 1229) reported by William ofAuxerre William of Auxerre (d. 1231) (66) Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236) (76) William ofAuvergne (d. 1249)? (86)

50 57

(63)

Early Use

96

The Distinction Wins Acceptance

98

Continuities and Breaks Influential Adopters Roland of Cremona, OP (d. 1259, apparently) Hugh of St Cher, OP (d. 18 Mar. 1263) (II5) Alexander of Hales, OFM (d. 1245) and his Corpus (128) Summa Theologica Alexander and the Power Distinction Winning Acceptance

98 101

St Albert the Great, OP Albert the Great (a. II96-15/Nov. 1280) Albert and Negative Theology Commentary on the Sentences (124y-9?) Summa Theologiae

(101)

131 143

Contents

Contentr

5.

TI II" n (!!,11'1/io11.1 (I 271) Albert and the Power Distinction

190 191

St Bonaventure, OFM

1

Bonaventure (d. l5July 1274) Creatures' Knowledge of God: quid sit, or just quia est? The Power Distinction in the Sentence Commentary In the Breviloquium In the De mysterio Trinitatis Exemplars and Things Bonaventure and the Power Distinction

6.

7.

8.

9.

St Thomas Aquinas, OP: Understanding the Distinction Thomas of Aquino (d. 7 Mar. 1274) Knowability of God by Creatures Negative Theology, and Theology Commentary on the Sentences Understanding and Use

93

1 93 1 95

Ways of Expressing the Understanding Using the Distinction Its Point Summary of Main Conclusions Prospects

Index nominum Index rerum

198 205

212 216 225 229 230 231 239 245 263

Aquinas: Using the Distinction Uses, and Audiences A Use in the De Potentia (268) Shipments of Divine Power? (281) Summa 7heologiae l/25/5 (1266-8) (288) Aquinas's Use of the Distinction

265 267

Beyond Paris's Theology Faculty From Theology to Law Hostiensis (a. 1200-1271) (298) From Paris to Oxford Robert Kilwardby, OP (d. 1279) (305) Roger Bacon, OFM (d. 1292?) (3II) Richard Rufus, or Richard of Cornwall, OFM (fl. 1250) (315) The Distinction Leaves the Schools Hugh of Strasbourg, OP (fl. 1265) (319) Towards Wider Horizons

296 298

The Earlier Medieval Power Distinction The Distinction Reconsidered Understanding It

327

292

304

319 324

327 339

Xl

39 1

Introduction

Can God save my family from the plague? If he knows that I shall be damned, or that my lover is going to reject me, can I avoid rejection, or damnation? These are not academic questions, hut they had academic counterparts-just as sharply personal to many of the medieval academics who faced them-which took a challenge to the heart of the thinking Christian's world-view. If God has disposed this or that mode of redemption, the schoolmen were asked, could he nevertheless have ordered otherwise? If he has disposed this or that mode of redemption, is it possible in any way that precisely this or that mode of redemption will not be punctiliously executed, no matter how terrible that might sometimes seem?

THE CHALLENGE -AN ENDURING CHALLENGE?

The opus redemptionis was at issue, and theologians were precisely as theologians concerned. But the issues of theory which lay behind the challenging questions were not so narrowly theological, and put schoolmen in perplexity not only as working theologians, but as reflecting Christians, and indeed as reflecting human beings, considering how ultimately the world is, or is not. On the one hand, the schoolmen could hardly deny out of hand that, say, God could save my family from the plague, or could have disposed redemption otherwise. How could such a denial have been rendered consistent with their view that we live in a universe ordered by God? To deny a God-ordered universewould it not have been to leave the way open for the position that there is no infinite God and no universe; nothing more than a sum of things, in which whatever happens happens by necessity, and can appear to recur indefinitely many times? On the other hand-and it is crucial to give weight to this-

Introduction many of the schoolmen could not claim to say anything intelligible about what God may have it in him to do, but does not do. Most if not all of the schoolmen examined below, for example, maintained or sought to maintain a rigorously negative theology on the nature of God: a view to the effect that nothing we can understand may be affirmed properly and with truth of the divine nature. The views of Albert, Aquinas, and Bonaventure, to mention only the most famous, were all as stark as that on the point, as will appear. Schoolmen persuaded of such views could not escape from their perplexity simply by asserting without commentary such things as 'God has freely decreed this, but might have decreed something else.' They certainly used formulas to that effect, but were able to use them to good purpose only by understanding them rather carefully. For the faith of their Church also taught them that 'God has sworn and will not repent' (Ps. wglrw), that the actual order of things is by God's free disposition to be the only order of things, maintained punctiliously and in perpetuity. From this further point a number of more subtle perplexities arise, as will appear, from difficulties in reconciling the point with others which the schoolmen typically wished to maintain: not only in order consistently to pursue the theology of the theology faculties, but in order to pursue a genuinely scientifical inquiry--scientifical, by the received (Aristotelian) standards of the time-into the natural world.

THE DISTINCTION MENTIONED IN THE TITLE

A remarkable generation of schoolmen sought to dissolve their perplexities by (1) a distinction and-in the period covered below-by (2) a regularly followed manner of using it. The distinction is the one which for convenience I am calling the Power Distinction, or sometimes simply the Distinction; made typically in such locutions as: Even if God cannot de potentia ordinata sua save my family from the plague, or dispose some mode of redemption other than some mode mentioned, he nevertheless can de potentia absoluta sua do so; or

Introduction

3 Neither de potentia ordinata sua nor even de potentia absoluta sua can God be said to be able to do some other thing you mention, or purport to mention. The regular manner of using it will appear. So will the point of !icing able to do so, which is not always immediately obvious to sophisticated modern readers; for reasons which have to be looked for. In the meantime I note a further fact which appears below about the earlier medieval Power Distinction; as it opens up horizons today, of a kind which not every idea important in its own day necessarily does. It appears that the Distinction is ;1ddressed to complications arising from a concern to maintain I Joth a rigorously negative view on the divine nature, and a specific view of the things around us as being providentially y that understanding, because what God is has no determinate bound (non habet terminationem). Neither can the "on account of" clement in knowledge be taken in, because there is no "because of" in the case of Cod's existence (non habet causam). Neither can a dctcrminatt' 'thaL-' be had, because God's existence has neither a remote cause nor a proportionate dkct; and for that reason neither in 11ia nor in patria will I here be seen anything of God, save the confoscd "that" of knowledge that God exists, although God himself may be seen more or less clearly in accordance with the diverse modes of vision involved, and the diverse modes of those doing the seeing. (In Apist. V Diorrysii, dub. r, Cologne cdn. 37/2; +95, already rit. Dondaine, RTAJ\.f (r95s), 75, from Borgnct, q; 8CJSbl'

Albert is here eliminating, in the case of coming to know God, a succession of kinds of knowledge or elements of the knowledge which might initially be thought to be obtainable, and which may be had in other matters. He leaves only one possibility. Albert eliminates from our putative knowledge of God all the modes of knowledge about things which we have of the things around us. He eliminates the knowledge of what God is (quid sit): ;) Strictly speaking, in via is not necessarily what rnight be recognised by us as 'alin·', but signifies the condition of everyone who is uot )Tl either finally blesst'.d (in patria)_, or finally reprobate. The text, now available in Cologne ed11. 37/2: •l9:l, runs: Solutio. Conccdimus quorl intcllectus crcalus non potcst pc1frcte attingerc ad deurn, ita ut nihil de cognitionc cius rnaneat extra curn, scd sub quadarn confusione iungitur ci quasi excedenti, eo quocl non potest de ipso accipi ·'quicf', quia non habct tcn11inationcrn; ncque "proptcr quid') quia non habct causa1n; ncquc ''quia"