Per Caritatem

Marion opens chapter three with a wonderful discussion of silence. As Marion observes, the greatest difficulty with silence is understanding what silence says—e.g., there are many and varied silences such as a silence of contempt or a silence of reverence etc. “Silence, precisely because it does not explain itself, exposes itself to an infinite equivocation of meaning” (GWB, p. 54).

It should not come as a surprise to us that we have difficulty in speaking about God, yet what is surprising is our difficulty in keeping silent about God. Marion lists three ways that this failure to keep silent can be taken: (1) as a “pious chattering” – the least interesting; (2) as a discourse of refutation which is not silent in order to silence God. Here one attempts to give an exhaustive definition of “God,” thus providing a definition of an being that is at least possible. Then this definition must undo itself in order to be refuted. This process becomes comprehensible “only if one distinguishes, within the definition of God thus employed, an idol: namely, a representation of God at once inadequate (objectively) and impassable (subjectively) [p. 55]; (3) when keeping silent about God is used as a possible “return to God,” or put more concretely, using God as a figurehead for the promotion of some other purpose or concept. In the last two cases, we have what Marion calls “idolatry of substitution.” That is, a discourse of refutation “presupposes a concept as exhausting the name of God, in order to reject the one by the other.” In the “return to God, “one presupposes that a God guarantees that which another concept signifies more directly, in order to characterize the one through the other” (p. 56).

Marion then enters into a discussion of modernity and how the culmination of Western metaphysics ends in will to power (Nietzsche). Given that our gods are nothing more than the effects of a reactive state of the will to power, we will continue our chatterings. “[W]e will never keep silent, occupied with producing and expressing the thousand and one idols at which the will to power, within and outside of us, will aim as so many goals” (p. 59). Marion concludes the section by saying, “[t]o free silence from its idolatrous dishonor would require nothing less than to free the word ‘God’ from the Being of beings. But can one think outside Being?” (p. 60).

Marion agrees with the basic contours of Heidegger’s critique of onto-theo-logy,[1] which for our purposes may be summarized as follows: (1) God or the divine principle is understood or thought in terms of Being, which means that God or the divine principle is wholly immanent; (2) God or the divine principle functions as both the ground of all beings (as an efficient cause in a univocal kind of way) and thus provides the conceptual foundation for the Being of all beings. Stated slightly differently, God or the divine principle and beings reciprocally ground each other in being; (3) God is both ens realissimum (the supreme or highest being) and the causa sui (self-causing cause).

In an excellent article entitled, “Aquinas, Marion, Analogy, and Esse: A Phenomenology of the Divine Names?”,[2] Derek J. Morrow sheds light on Marion’s current position on Thomas as reflected in his [Marion’s] article, “Thomas Aquinas and Onto-Theo-logy.” As Morrow points out, Marion argues that Thomas escapes all three aspects of Heidegger’s critique as set forth above. Regarding the first point, Marion argues that not Thomas but rather Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and particularly Francisco Suarez are the guilty parties. Suarez, e.g., claims that God is the adequate object of the science of metaphysics; whereas Aquinas makes the proper object of metaphysics esse commune. God then factors into the consideration of metaphysics in an indirect way, viz., as the causal principle of common being. For Aquinas in contradistinction from the thinkers mentioned above, God and creatures are not conceived under a common univocal concept of being (“Aquinas, Marion…” pp. 29-30).

Regarding the second point, Marion also exonerates Thomas because of his distinction between esse commune and esse divinum. Here Thomas distinguishes between the two ways that esse can be predicated when referring to common and divine being. As Morrow explains, the esse of common being can be predicated “without addition by means of an abstraction without precision that as such neither excludes nor includes any addition […] Similarly, to predicate esse ‘without addition’ is to predicate being in a manner that abstracts from all generic and specific differences obtaining among beings. Esse in this sense is therefore common to all beings, without thereby excluding their essential differences. Esse divinum, on the other hand, designates the predication of esse ‘without addition’ in a completely different sense: here ‘without addition’ means that God’s esse precludes any addition, in virtue of its simplicity and purity.” In short, because God’s esse is unique, “without addition” is at best predicated analogically (not univocally) of common being and divine being. God’s esse is wholly other than esse commune and is not included in the concept of the latter. Consequently, God is freed from the onto-logic of metaphysics, as he stands outside metaphysics as its principle (“Aquinas, Marion,” p. 30, 31). Though it is the case that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy conceives God as the efficient cause of common being, Thomas still manages to escape the second aspect of Heidegger’s critique because his understanding of causality in creation is asymmetrical. In other words, God, does not stand in a reciprocal relation to his creation. Rather, the dependency is “one-way”—creation is wholly dependent upon God for its being and intelligibility. Regarding the third point, suffice it to say that for Aquinas, God is the uncaused cause.

If Thomas is exonerated as to all three aspects of Heidegger’s onto-theo-logy charge, then has not Marion completely revised his original position on Thomas as presented in God Without Being? Here we should recall what Marion states in the preface to the English edition of GWB, viz., his concerns with Thomas “would have to be resituated within the wider theological debate of the divine names (p. xxiii). More specifically, we should turn to what Marion says in chapter three of GWB—“[t]he whole question consists precisely in determining whether a name can be suitable ‘maxime proprie’ to God, if God can have an essence, and (only) finally if this essence can be fixed in the ipsum esse/actus essendi (p. 76). As we recall from our previous post, Thomas marks a departure from the Dionysian tradition when he substitutes ipsum esse for summum bonum as God’s primary name. In “Thomas Aquinas and Onto-Theo-logy,” Marion’s revised critique on the particular issue of the divine names separates Thomas from some of his commentators. That is, while Thomas’ naming of God as ipsum esse is interpreted by Marion in a way that this naming does not result in conceptual idolatry, some of his commentators have appropriated a version of ipsum esse that results in a loss of God’s transcendence.[4]

So how exactly does Marion interpret Thomas’s ipsum esse as a proper first name of God? According to Marion, “the Thomistic esse cannot be understood starting from ontological determinations, whatever they may be, but only starting from its distance with regard to all possible ontology, following instead the claims imposed by the transcendence of God on entity as well as on his own being. […] If esse truly offers the first name of God according to Thomas Aquinas, this thus signifies for him in the first place that God is called esse but as to name only and not as such. For in good theology, the primacy of esse implies especially that it is to be understood, more than any other name, starting from God, and not that God can be conceived starting from esse” (“Thomas and Onto-theo-logy,” p. 61). Marion then proceeds to discuss the many aspects of this “distance.” First, he notes that God’s esse is wholly other than created esse. Second, the divine esse “causes the entities because he causes also their entitativeness (their esse commune), their esse as created.” Yet, here again in order for God’s transcendence to be upheld, we must understand God’s esse as something completely different than created esse—as excluded from created being—“and consequently from all [that] we understand and know under the title of being. Therefore, God without being (at least without this being) could become again a Thomistic thesis (“Thomas and Onto-theo-logy,” p. 62). Third, we must see in God’s esse an excess given its identification by Thomas with (God’s) essence. Again we are confronted with esse which is not like that of any other being, as all other beings are esse/essence composites. Hence, given the uniqueness of God’s esse which is his essence (and which perhaps points to the complete absence of essence understood in the Aristotelian sense of providing a definition) “the excess of the proper esse of God disqualifies all metaphysical (conceptual) meaning of being” (“Thomas and Onto-theo-logy,” p. 62). Lastly, God’s unknowability points us to something beyond a metaphysics of being. “[T]he irreducibility of esse to any essence argues for the impossibility of articulating anything about God in a predicative way and, therefore, of speaking of it discursively or, in a word, of understanding it. Thus this pure esse reveals itself in principle as unknowable as the God it names. God known as unknown—this implies that his esse remains knowable only as unknowable, in sharp contrast to the esse that metaphysics has essentially set in a concept to make it as knowable as possible” (“Thomas and Onto-theo-logy,” p. 63).[4] In short, God’s unknowability cannot be bound by a metaphysics of being and to understand Thomas’ ipsum esse in a non-idolatrous way is to recognize it as such a “distant analogy” with created being that God, however paradoxical it sounds, proves not to be (i.e., as a being “is”). “Esse refers to God only insofar as God may appear as without being. […] The statement ‘God without being’ not only could be understood as fundamentally Thomistic, but it could be that no contemporary interpretation of Thomas Aquinas could retrieve its validity without assuming the unconditional exclusion of esse–therefore without the wise imprudence of such paradoxes” (“Thomas and Onto-theo-logy,” pp. 64-65).

Notes
[1] In short, for Heidegger onto-theology characterizes the Western metaphysical tradition and is expressed as an attempt by philosophy to use conceptual systems in order to control and master Being (and God/gods).
[2] Though I do not discuss this here, Morrow argues that according to Marion’s interpretation, Thomas’ doctrine of analogy, as well as the divine names function phenomenologically (not metaphysically) to manifest God as infinite goodness and excessive givenness. [See Derek J. Morrow. “Aquinas, Marion, Analogy, and Esse: A Phenomenology of Divine Names?,” International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 46 (March 2006): 25-42].
[3] In footnote 57, Marion cites E. Gilson as one such commentator. E.g., Gilson writes in “Dieu et l’être,” )Revue Thomiste [1962], reprinted in Constantes philosophiques de la question de l’être [Paris: J. Vrin, 1983], 211, 377), “L’être de Heidegger est le vrai, non parce qu’il se définit contre Dieu, mais parce qu’il se définit comme Dieu, n’étant qu’un autre nom du Dieu judéo-chrétien de l’Exode” (“The Being of Heidegger is the true one, not because it is defined against God, but because it is defined as God, being just another name for the Judeo-Christian God of Exodus”) [“Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy,” p. 73].
[4] Marion lists the following quotes from St. Thomas as textual support for this interpretation: “Just as the substance of God is unknown, so it is for His esse” (De Potentia, question 7, answer 2, ad 1); “God is known through our ignorance, inasmuch as this is to know God, that we know that we do not know what He is” (In librum De divinis Nominibus VII, 4 [in Opuscula omnia, ed. Mandonnet, 2:534; in Expositio in librum Dionysii de Divinis nominibus, ed. Pera, line 731] ); “The highest and most perfect degree of knowledge in this life is, as Denys said in his book On Mystical Theology (I.3), to be united to God as unknown. “This is what happens when we know about God what He is not, since what he is remains profoundly unknown” (Contra Gentiles III, sec. 49 [see also I, secs. 11 and 12); “With the exception of a revelation of grace we do not, in this life, know about God what He is and therefore that we are united to Him as unknown” (Summa Theologia Ia, q. 12, a. 13, ad 1]) [“Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy,” p. 63, fn. 65].

In this series of posts I interact with selected moments from Jean-Luc Marion’s work, God Without Being. This is not an area of expertise, as I have only read one other book by Marion, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, and a few articles on Marion. However, I find Marion’s work appealing and stimulating on a number of levels, i.e., it speaks to me spiritually, intellectually, aesthetically, and existentially to name a few. Given my limited exposure to Marion (and one of his chief conversation partners, Heidegger), I especially invite dialogue and engagement with those who have studied Marion’s (and Heidegger’s) work in detail.

***
The Idol and the Icon

In chapter one of God Without Being (GWB), Marion discusses the difference between an idol and an icon. An idol is that which results from conceptually circumscribing that which is beyond conceptualization, viz., God. [“God” in quotation marks indicates a conceptual idol]. The idol in effect becomes a mirror that reflects the human gaze back to itself. “The idol measures the divine to the scope of the gaze of he who then sculpts it” (p. 21). Conceptual knowledge of God is associated with the idol because it limits God to the human gaze, i.e., it measures God by human understanding. In contrast, the icon allows one’s gaze to move beyond the icon (visible) to that which is invisible. “What characterizes the icon painted on wood does not come from the hand of man but from the infinite depth that crosses it—or better, orients it following the intention of a gaze. The essential in the icon … comes to it from elsewhere. […] Contemplating the icon amounts to seeing the visible in the very manner by which the invisible that imparts itself therein envisages the visible—strictly, to exchange our gaze for the gaze that iconistically envisages us” (p. 21).

How Marion’s Thesis Relates to St. Thomas

Before going further, I should note that GWB received a good deal of criticism from various Thomistic quarters when it was first published. As a result, Marion has modified his views somewhat, and in the preface to the English edition he clarifies his position. In the preface, Marion calls into question whether Being is the first and highest of the divine names.[1] “When God offers himself to be contemplated and gives himself to be prayed to, is he concerned primarily with Being? When he appears as and in Jesus Christ, who dies and rises from the dead, is he concerned primarily with Being?” (p. xx). At this point, many Thomists might become rather suspicious—after all doesn’t Thomas consider Being as the first and highest of God’s names? If so, then how does Marion’s thesis relate to Thomas? On the one hand, Marion says that his thesis “confirms the antagonism between the Thomistic esse and the ‘Being’ of nihilism [construed as univocal etc.] by disqualifying the claim of the latter to think God.” On the other hand, certain texts do seem to suggest that God must be liberated from esse in the sense understood by Thomas. Here Marion says that this debate “would have to be resituated within the wider theological debate of the divine names. Though Marion sees Thomas’ substitution of esse for the good as the first divine name as problematic, he does not suggest that Thomas “chains God either to Being or to metaphysics.” The divine esse so transcends the being of creatures—the former’s esse being identical to his essence, whereas the latter are esse/essence composites, whose being is received from God, yet is metaphysically different from God’s being. Hence, no idol is erected, as the Creator/creature distinction is maintained and God’s transcendence is safeguarded. Likewise, for Thomas God is not an object of metaphysics properly speaking—God’s esse is not part of esse commune. The relation of metaphysics and God is one of subordination not inclusion. “God, as principle, subjugates the subjects of philosophy to himself. Consequently, since the subjects of philosophy belong to Being, we must go so far as to conclude that their cause, God, also causes Being itself” (pp. xxiii-xxiv). Marion grants all of the above; however, these debates do not get at a deeper issue, viz., “can the conceptual thought of God (conceptual or rational, not intuitive or ‘mystical’ in the vulgar sense) be developed outside the doctrine of Being (in the metaphysical sense or even in the non-metaphysical sense)? Does God give himself to be known according to the horizon of Being or according to a more radical horizon?” (p. xxiv). According to Marion, God gives himself according to the horizon of the gift itself. It is the approach and reception of this gift that Marion attempts to describe.

In part II, I shall (attempt to) discuss Marion’s engagement with Heidegger and his critique of onto-theo-logy, as well as the ways in which Thomas escapes Heidegger’s charges (or does he?).

Notes
[1] For a more detailed explication of Marion’s current position on Thomas see Jean-Luc Marion, “Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy,” in Mystics: Presence and Aporia eds Michael Kessler and Christian Sheppard, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 2003), pp. 38-74.

As we saw in part two, Edmondson finds Muller’s proposal for the structure of the 1559 Institutes wanting. However, Edmondson believes that Muller’s insight that the Institutes be read in a developmental relation with Calvin’s commentaries is no doubt on the mark. This leads Edmondson to look in books I and II for traces of Calvin’s commentary work on the OT and the gospels—work that he had completed in the period just prior to having finished the 1559 Institutes.[1] When we turn to book II of the Institutes, we observe that Calvin moves from a discussion of “The knowledge of God the Creator” to “The knowledge of God the Redeemer in Christ, disclosed first to the Fathers under the law, and then to us in the gospel.” Scholars have been baffled over Calvin’s decision to place a discussion of sin at the beginning of book II, as such a positioning neither harmonizes with the creedal structure or the duplex cognitio Dei schema. In addition, “it breaks his consideration of theological anthropology in two—allocating the understanding of humanity as created to Book I and humanity as broken by sin to Book II” (pp. 5-6). According to Muller, Calvin’s placement of sin at the opening of book II makes sense within the Pauline schema. However, Edmondson contends that if we examine the text closely we see that Calvin’s discussion of sin at the opening of book II is very general as it is “contextualized by a discussion of the fall. Calvin locates us in scripture here, but he locates us in Genesis, at the turn of the narrative between chapters 2 and 3, when the story of Adam, Eve and the ‘apple’ sets the course of the grand story of God’s redemptive history with God’s people” (p. 6). Interestingly, in the 1559 version of the Institutes, we find in II.i new insertions from the book of Genesis that inform us that we are dealing with Adam’s rebellion as manifest in the fall. Likewise, as we are brought in to Adam’s story, we learn of the goodness of the original creation, as well as the corruption and misery that accompany our present state as a result of Adam’s fall (II.i.1, 3). In addition, Calvin discusses the nature of sin by examining “what kind of sin there was in Adam’s fall that enkindled God’s dreadful vengeance against the whole of humankind” (II.i.4); and we consider the relation of Adam’s fall to the universal estrangement of all humanity from God (II.i.5) [p. 6]. These new assertions do not dominate the chapter, and in fact harmonize well with the many Pauline references taken primarily from Romans (as well as other Pauline epistles) that also discuss sin and Adam in particular. However, Edmondson contends that the new additions do affect the text. “They provide a context for this discussion as a whole by locating it within the narrative of biblical history. Calvin discusses sin here at the start of his exploration of our redemption, but he discusses it as Adam’s story, so that his reflections from his work on Paul become commentary to that story—much as Paul himself might have intended” (p. 7). In other words, the movement from book I to book II does not signal a “doctrinal transition, but a cosmic cataclysm that will open out onto an inestimable blessing. We thereby gain an appreciation of the dynamism inherent in the Institutes. We also recognize that Book I is an exposition of Gen 1 and 2. Book I begins where scripture begins—with creation—thereby reflecting scripture’s witness to the reader, while its purpose in relation to Book II is to introduce the principal characters of the narrative of fall and redemption with which Calvin deals in the latter book and to provide the essential back story against which this narrative makes sense” ( pp. 8-9).

Notes
[1] In footnote 4, Edmondson writes, “[i]n the decade immediately preceding the publication of the 1559 Institutes Calvin published commentaries on Isaiah (1551/1559), the Gospel of John (1553), Genesis (1554), the harmony of the Synoptic gospels (1555), the Psalms (1557), Hosea (1557) and the minor prophets (1559). At the time of the publication of the 1559 Institutes Calvin had set about work on a commentary on the last four books of Moses” (p. 2). According to Edmondson, recent studies focusing on the structure or form of the Instituteshave overlooked the importance of the influence of the commentaries mentioned above.

Edmondson builds his case on three central developments in the structure of the 1559 Institutes: “(1) Calvin’s separation of the material concerning our knowledge of God the Creator in Book I from the material concerning our knowledge of God the Redeemer in Book II, his account of this separation, and the place of division marking the transition between these books; (2) Calvin’s creation of a new chapter discussing the relationship of Christ’s mediation to the history of the covenant in the OT (II.vi) and his addition of material to the following chapter on the Law, tying it to this same history; and (3) Calvin’s new placement of the chapters discussing the relationship of the Old and New Covenants, prefaced by a new chapter, again tying this earlier material to the historical narrative (II.ix-xi)” [“The Biblical Historical Structure of Calvin’s Institutes, p. 4]. Edmondson’s next move is to situate Book II within the larger narrative of Calvin’s rendering of biblical history, which will also allow us to see the Christological emphasis of Calvin’s understanding of biblical history with Christ as both the climax of this history and of Book II.

Regarding the literary history of the Institutes, Edmondson explains that there have been two fundamental shifts in the structure of text. The original 1536 version was designed for catechetical purposes and was structured around expositions of the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. The 1539 version expands this forms by adding new sections, which deal with the similarities and differences of the two testaments and justification by faith. As a result, the catechetical form is morphed into a set of loci communes that serve to instruct the student of theology in his interpretation of Scripture (p. 4). Edmondson agrees with Muller’s thorough analysis of the relation and influence of Melancthon’s work on Calvin—both drawing heavily from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans in terms of structuring ideas and doctrinal content. As Muller observes, the new, expanded structure becomes “sin—law—grace—the people of God in the OT and NT—predestination, with justification by faith (as a primary thesis in the discussion of grace) serving as the heart of the whole alongside a more expansive rendering of the gospel in a chapter on faith and the creed” (pp. 4-5). Edmondson agrees with Muller up to this point. However, Edmondson takes issue with Muller’s account of Calvin’s restructuring of his material for the final 1559 version. According to Muller, the 1559 structure is organized under four creedal topics—God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Holy Spirit, and the church. Muller does of course emphasize that the ordering of the Institutes is best understood in relation to Calvin’s understanding of Scripture, which as Edmondson points out means Scripture with a distinctively Pauline emphasis (Ibid., p. 5). For Edmondson, Muller’s proposal for the 1559 structuring leaves us with “a melding of catechesis, creed and Pauline soteriology” […] Moreover, Muller’s Pauline soteriological structure of sin—law—grace—people of God in the OT and the NT has fallen apart at this point. It can make little sense of the placement of Book I and its treatment of God and creation, in so far as a doctrine of God as Creator doesn’t register in the ‘Pauline’ context that Muller outlines, and the section on the people of God now precedes what is better described as a discussion of Christ, not of grace” (p. 5).

In the next post, we will look at Edmondson’s suggestion as to an alternative structure that takes its cue from Muller’s insight.

In his recent article, “The Biblical Historical Structure of Calvin’s Institutes,” Stephen Edmondson argues that the final form of the 1559 Institutes reflects a biblical historical (narrative) structure due to the influence of Calvin’s commentary work on the structure of the Institutes. Richard Muller has of course written a number of essays on the intimate relationship between the Institutes and Calvin’s commentaries.[1] As Muller has shown, the Institutes were meant to be read in conjunction with the commentaries. Muller also believes that Calvin’s commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, along with Philip Melancthon’s focus on the same epistle given Melancthon’s influence on Calvin’s work, provides the overall structure of the Institutes from 1539-1559 (p. 2). Edmondson agrees in great part with Muller’s findings; however, he believes that Muller has overlooked a crucial aspect or perhaps even the foundation of Calvin’s theological structure. Though Muller mentions that “the Institutes were given their definitive form in the years immediately following Calvin’s work on his OT and gospel commentaries,” this does not play a significant role in his account of the framework of the 1559 Institutes (p. 2). However, Edmondson argues that “traces” of the OT and gospel commentaries produced during this period appear in Calvin’s reworking of the first two books of the Institutes. In other words, “what emerges is a picture of the first two books of the Institutes shaped by Calvin’s reading of the biblical history as it is expansively outlined in the history of God’s covenant with Israel and concluded in the history of Christ’s gospel. Calvin’s reading of this history is clearly Pauline in many places, but we shall only understand the relationship of these two—that is, the shape of history and Pauline lens through which it is read—in Calvin’s thinking when we first grasp the centrality of the history. The heart of my argument rests in the reflection in the Institutes of Calvin’s rich reading of the covenant history throughout his commentaries, especially as that history is instantiated in the calling of Abraham, the giving of the Law, and the anointing of the Davidic kingship” (Ibid., p. 3). Though it is the case that I in the Institutes Calvin does not analyze the concept of covenant, yet, according to Edmondson, he does “inscribe” this covenant (which here implies Christological) history in the very structure of the 1559 Institutes.

Notes
[1] The Unaccomodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of the Theological Tradition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 101-58.

By Michael Vendsel

In part VI, we saw that Turretin and Vermigli both agree that while essential liberty is an inalienable feature of human nature, that is perfectly consistent with our being morally corrupt and capable at best of a formal obedience.

Similar as they were, however, Turretin and Vermigli were operating in significantly different intellectual contexts. While they offered the same basic formulations, they were offering them in contrast to very different rival theologies.

On the first two questions, it has been made clear that Vermigli does not mean to distance himself from the medieval Catholic tradition. If he is responding to something, then, it is not to Catholicism. John Patrick Donnelly thinks his primary target might actually be Lutheranism:

“Luther’s De Servo Arbitrio developed two lines of argument against Erasmus and free will. One line tried to show that God’s foreknowledge, providence, and predestination were incompataible with human free will. The second line of argument showed that original sin and concupiscence made it impossible for man to perform any acts which lead to eternal salvation without the help of grace. Martyr’s Romans commentary deals at length with both these arguments. Although Martyr makes no explicit reference to the Erasmus-Luther controversy on free-will, his statements reveal an easy familiarity with their debate. Martyr rejects Luther’s unfortunate argument that divine foreknowledge precluded human freedom, as have most Protestant theologians throughout history.[1]

Of course, Luther’s theology was heavily influenced by Scotus and Ockham, who, as we have seen, placed great emphasis on freedom as the power of contrary choice and the will’s ability to decline the dictates of reason. If this is the essence of freedom, one can see how it would be harder to understand how the will could be free while governed by providence. Perhaps Luther, influenced by this tradition and zealous to maintain providence, was driven to deny free will. If this is the case, then Vermigli’s criticisms would ultimately be not just of Luther, but of late medieval voluntarism as over against Thomism as well. Where Vermigli does distance himself from the medieval Catholic tradition, however, is with respect to the third question. As Joseph McLelland writes, “in his doctrine of providence he cites ancient schools of Stoics and Epicureans, and on freedom of the will he obviously has in mind modern Pelagians, Roman theologians in particular.”[2] In contrast to these, Vermigli reasserts Augustine’s understanding of the state of man in sin and under grace.

These concerns surrounding the third question are equally pressing for Turretin. In his day, the decrees of the Council of Trent had reasserted those teachings Vermigli had been writing against, and within the Jesuit order debates over middle knowledge had opened up. Middle knowledge is the view that the actions of free agents given certain antecedent conditions are a fixed reality apart from God’s decree. God’s decree may determine which antecedent conditions will obtain, but it does not determine how human beings will act should those situations obtain. In this context, the explanation for why some people are elected to eternal life while others are passed over is given in terms of God’s foreknowledge of faith. The assumption that there could be foreseen faith prior to grace, however, severely contradicted the Augustinian notion that apart from grace there could be no faith.

For Turretin, however, these Catholic concerns were only half the story. In addition, there were Socinian and Remonstrant worries.[3] The same notion that election turns on non-decreed foreseen faith marked the Remonstrant controversy. More radical, however, was Socinian theology, which denied the need for an atonement altogether and taught something like a gospel of works through moral effort. In his day, then, Turretin had every bit as much need to reassert human depravity (i.e., that sin affects every aspect of the human person) as did Vermigli, but his opponents had broadened to include more than simply the Catholic Church.

The two contexts were even more different when it came to the first two questions. If Donnelly is right that Vermigli was responding to Luther’s extreme claim that man has no free will, Turretin was responding to claims that man has something like a divine will. The Socinians took the view that the future is not foreknown by God and that human action is radically free and independent of divine influences. Similarly, middle knowledge suggests that God’s decrees are conditioned by what he knows free agents will do in specific circumstances, and so there is a body of truths having to do with human activity which exert an independent influence on God’s decrees. On both counts, the divine decree is somehow suspended on something outside itself. In this context, it was necessary to offer a version of human freedom that did not compromise the comprehensive character of God’s sovereignty. For Turretin, then, articulating the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human freedom is not important because of contemporary efforts to deny that freedom but because of efforts to assert it. If Vermigli’s criticisms have a rejection of the sort of freedom espoused by late medieval voluntarism in the background, Turretin has an advancement of that freedom in the immediate foreground.

We could say, then, that on the third question Turretin was addressing the same issue as Vermigli (denials of depravity) with an expanded set of opponents, while on the first two questions he was addressing an entirely new issue (the assertion of freedom rather than the denial of freedom) raised by that same set of expanded opponents. In both cases, there was a need to strike a very delicate balance between providence and free will, and that prompted both men to draw on medieval formulations. The end result is that with respect to the first two questions each thinker ended up being far more medieval and Catholic than modern. And if this analysis is correct, then hopefully it gives the lie to the sort of characterizations mentioned at the beginning of the first post. Whether the Reformed tradition does full justice to human freedom is one thing, but whether it attempts to do so and whether it has any regard for the history of Catholic attempts to do so has, I should hope, been clearly shown.

Notes
[1] Donnelly, John Patrick, Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli’s Doctrine of Man and Grace (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976) 140
[2] Vermigli, Philosophical Works, 266
[3] These camps seem to be constantly on Turretin’s mind as he deals with these questions. For example, under Topic 10, question 2 reads “Whether every necessity is repugnant to freedom of will. We deny against the papists and Remonstrants,” question 3 reads “Whether the formal reason of free will consists in indifference or in rational spontaneity. The former we deny; the latter we affirm against papists, Socinians, and Remonstrants,” and question 4 reads “Whether the free will in a state of sin is so a servant of and enslaved by sin that it can do nothing but sin; or whether it still has the power to incline itself to good…. The former we affirm; the latter we deny, against the papists, Socinians, and Remonstrants.”

By Michael Vendsel

Turretin takes up the question of God’s providence in Topic 6 of the Institutes. The most important questions under that topic for our purposes here are questions 1, 3, and 6 – the nature of providence, the extent of providence, and the relationship between providence and free will.

Question 1 deals with the nature of providence and notes that it involves both foresight as well as the bringing to pass and administration of the thing foreseen. In Question 3, Turretin considers whether God’s providence is all encompassing. He goes through a number of passages that assert God’s sovereignty over even the smallest details of the creation. He goes on to ask whether this includes contingent and voluntary actions, and then cites a set of passages suggesting that both are included. He ends by promising to discuss the nature of the concurrence of providence and free actions in more detail at a later point.

That discussion comes at the end of question 5 and throughout question 6. At the end of question 5, he writes:

“Predetermination does not destroy but conserves the liberty of the will. By it, God does not compel rational creatures or make them act by a physical or brute necessity. Rather he only effects this – that they act both consistently with themselves and in accordance with their own nature, i.e., from preference and spontaneously (to wit, they are so determined by God that they also determine themselves).”[1]

This explanation very closely resembles Vermigli’s; God’s providence conserves the liberty of the will because it does not impose a physical or brute necessity, but works through the nature and constitution of rational creatures. Providence moves rational creatures through that which is inherent in and proper to them, so much so that God’s determination of them can equally be called their determination of themselves.

What exactly is the nature of free, rational creatures through which providence works? Or, asked a different way, how does Turretin analyze the metaphysics of free human choice? Jumping ahead to section 10 of question 3 of Topic 10, he answers this question as follows:

“Since, therefore, the formal reason of liberty is not placed in indifference, it cannot be sought elsewhere than in rational willingness, by which man does what he pleases by a previous judgment of reason. Thus two things must here be joined together to its constitution: 1) the choice…so that what is done is not done by a blind impulse and a certain brute instinct, but from choice…and the previous light of reason and judgment of the practical intellect 2) the voluntariness…so that what is done may be done spontaneously and feely and without compulsion.”[2]

The structure here is the very same Aristotelian structure which Vermigli and Thomas adopt. Free choice does not consist in indifference – in the power of contrary choice – but in rational willingness. There is an impulse or instinct, but lest it be blind, it is met by the light of reason and the practical intellect, the dictates of which are presented to the will as the object of choice. And lest there be any doubt that Turretin sees himself standing in this tradition, in the very next sentence he quotes the Nichomachean Ethics in support of his point.[3]

Thus far, then, we can answer the first two questions. In keeping with Vermigli, Turretin holds to a basically Thomistic/Aristotelian view of free will. He definitely sees God’s sovereignty as encompassing the human will, but he sees that as consistent with the freedom of the will because the free-making properties of the will are those properties which providence utilizes in the accomplishment of its purposes, just as it utilizes other natural forces such as gravity. On these first two questions, then, it is hard to find much difference between Vermigli and Turretin.

Two further passages will make this continuity all the more indubitable. First, at the end of the first question of Topic 6, as Turretin begins to respond to anticipated objections to the doctrine of providence, he writes:

“The providence of God neither takes away the contingency of things…nor overthrows the liberty of the will (because the hypothetical necessity of the decree brings no coaction to the will, but permits it to exercise its own movements most freely, although inevitably)….”[4]

This language of hypothetical necessity recalls the distinction Vermigli highlighted. This either reflects a direct borrowing from Vermigli or a separate appropriation of the same resources Vermigli used, but in either case it shows continuity. Secondly, in the first question of Topic 8, Turretin distinguishes different kinds of necessity:

“Not every necessity contends with liberty, nor agrees with it. A certain extrinsic necessity destroys liberty; another agrees with it. A certain intrinsic crushes it and another perfects it. The necessity of coaction, which is extrinsic, is incompatible with liberty; but a hypothetical necessity, arising either from a decree of God of from the existence of the thing, conspires with it. Intrinsic necessity (arising from a physical and brute determination to one thing) takes away liberty; an intrinsic necessity (flowing form the rational determination of the will by the intellect) not only does not destroy liberty, but preserves and fosters it.”[5]

These distinctions are a precise echo of Vermigli. Turetin is quite clearly on board with him, then, as far as the first two questions.

It remains to consider the third question. Turretin discusses this in two places – in the first question of Topic 8, and in the entirety of Topic 10. The very first thing he discusses in Topic 8 is Augustine’s fourfold state of man – “the instituted of nature, the destitute of sin, the restored of grace and the appointed of glory.”[6] In the first question, he asks about the liberty of Adam in that first state. To make clear just what sort of liberty Adam had, he distinguishes four different kinds of liberty:

(1) the liberty of independence which belongs to God as the first being; this is opposed to the necessity of dependence which belongs to all creatures. (2) Liberty from coaction by which man acts spontaneously and with freedom; this is opposed to the necessity of coaction seen in those who act through force. (3) Rational liberty from brute and physical necessity by which man acts from choice and not by a brute instinct and blind impulse; this is opposed to the physical necessity of inanimates and brutes, and (4) liberty from slavery by which man is subject to the yoke of no slavery, either of sin or of misery; this is opposed to the necessity of slavery in sinners.”[7]

With these distinctions in place, Turretin proceeds to say that Adam had a threefold liberty. He did not have liberty in the first sense, since that sort of liberty belongs to God alone and not to any creature. The other three forms of liberty, however, did belong to him. There were no external factors constraining him to act contrary to that which was rationally voluntary for him, and he was not captive to animal passions unchecked by reason. Most significantly, though, he was not subject to sin or misery. “The former two constituted his essential liberty,” Turretin writes, “…[which] belongs to man in whatever state constituted and has two characteristics: preference…and will, so that what is done may be done by a previous judgment of the reason and spontaneously.”[8] The former two are central to what it is to be a free moral agent and cannot be lost without a fundamental loss of humanity. The last sort, however “was accidental because it comes in upon the essential liberty and can be separated from it.”[9] And that is the very sort of liberty that Adam forfeited through the Fall.

Turretin devotes the entirety of Topic 10 to defending the loss of this third form of freedom. He spends the first three questions defending the claim that the essential liberty of man is not affected by the Fall. Question 4, however, asks “whether the free will in a state of sin is so a servant of and enslaved by sin that it can do nothing but sin….”[10] His answer is that “the orthodox, although maintaining that the free will of man always remains as to essentials, still think that no power to good survives in it.”[11] He spends the remainder of the fourth question appealing to passages from Scripture in support of this, and then in the fifth question he turns his attention to the virtues of the pagans. Like Vermigli, he acknowledges that in addition to their essential freedom, the unregenerate are capable of a certain outward form of goodness. He denies, though, that this external or civil goodness can in any sense be considered adequate to the divine law:

“Although we confess that some good can be found in these actions (as to the external honesty of the act commanded by God and which therefore cannot but be good), still we deny that they can be called properly and univocally good works as to the truth of the things and mode of operation (to wit, internal rectitude of heart and intention of the end) We assert with Augustine that they were nothing but ’splendid sins’”.[12]

It is clear, then, that Turretin is as much in agreement with Vermigli on the third question as he was on the first two. For him, while essential liberty is an inalienable feature of human nature, that is perfectly consistent with our being morally corrupt and capable at best of a worthless formal obedience.

Notes
[1] Turretin, 508
[2] Ibid, 667.
[3] Idem “Hence the philosopher calls it hekousion probebouleumenon.” According to Dennison, the reference is to the Nicomachean Ethics 3.2.17.
[4] Ibid, 492
[5] Ibid, 569-570
[6] Ibid, 569
[7] Idem
[8] Ibid, 570
[9] Idem
[10] Ibid, 668
[11] Ibid, 671
[12] Ibid, 683

By Michael Vendsel

Having drawn these distinctions (i.e., between necessity of consequence and necessity of the consequent—see part IV), Vermigli proceeds to consider the question of free will in light of them. “Our actions have no intrinsic necessity,” he writes. “Willing is of its own nature (as God created it) mutable and flexible to either side.”[1] The will is not inherently disposed to any one option, then, just as water is not inherently disposed to be solid, liquid, or gas. However, “it has a hypothetical necessity.”[2] That is to say, there are certain antecedent conditions under which the will must, of necessity, incline in one direction. “As soon as you consider the foreknowledge and predestination of God,” he writes, “it follows of necessity that it will come about just as God foreknows and predestines it.”[3] Just as water must freeze if located in a zero degree climate, so our will must choose x if God has predestined that it choose x. But our will is just as capable in itself of choosing x or y as water is of being frozen or gaseous. “The necessity falls on the connection and conjunction of God’s predestination with our works….”[4]

There is a further similarity, however, which Vermigli thinks is all important. Earlier we said that frozen water is not hypothetically necessitated in a way that runs contrary to its nature but rather in conjunction with its nature. Vermigli thinks the same thing is true with respect to the human will. In his terminology, the necessity created by God’s predestination is one of certainty, but not of compulsion. “Nor do we grant that predestination brings any necessity of compulsion,” he writes, “for compulsion and violence are against the nature of the will. If the will should do anything unwillingly it would not be called will but “nil” (if one may so call it), and it would be destroyed.”[5] God’s predestination does not force the will to do something contrary to its nature any more than zero degree temperatures force water to do something contrary to its nature. God’s predestination works through the natural process of human choosing; it does not run contrary to that process. “This will neither subverts nor destroys natures,” he writes,

“but works in them so that it agrees with them. Therefore, since the nature and property of the human will is to work freely and by choice, God’s foreknowledge and will do not take this power or faculty from it…. The will and foreknowledge of God employs itself in such a way that it does not overthrow the faulty or power of man’s will…the determination in God is of the kind that agrees with the property or nature of will. It is proper to its nature to will one part in one way and it can also will another part in another way. Therefore, we confess that if we consider God, it is appointed and decreed what we shall do…but this determination and certainty of His…does not subvert the nature of things or take away liberty from our nature.”[6]

But what is the nature of this will that God’s providence works through? How does Vermigli understand the mechanics of human choosing? He describes his view elsewhere in this fashion:

“it appears we have free will when the appetite is moved by itself toward what the understanding or power of knowing reveals to it. It is indeed in the will, but it takes root in the understanding since it is appropriate that something is judged and measured first, and then follows either refusal or endorsement…. Accordingly, we may define free will as a certain faculty of the will that follows the directive of the intellect to refuse or desire something by itself….Whatever we choose, we do so for the sake of something else, not for itself but through some previous deliberation. For we do not choose unless things have been identified, and distinguishing must be done by the understanding.”[7]

He subscribes, then, to a basically Thomistic picture of the will, where choice is directed toward the desires as they have been processed by the intellect. And this, he says, is the process that God’s decree works through. Vermigli gives a rather vivid description of this,

“let us say that it [the will] receives from God such impulses and motions as he wants to give, and meanwhile, let us note that God so works in our will that it gladly, willingly, and of its own accord receives the motions that God puts into us.”[8]

Thus far, then, we have a fairly clear answer to the first two of the questions mentioned at the beginning. He sees God’s providence as including the human will, but he does not think that is inconsistent with its freedom, because the very thing that makes the will free – the governance of impulse by reason – is the very thing that providence works through. It is also worth noting that Vermigli does not seem to be self-consciously distancing himself from the medieval tradition. His anthropology (at least so far as the will is concerned) is basically Aristotelian and Thomistic, as is the principle that God builds upon and completes nature rather than overruling it. Moreover, the distinction he is using is borrowed from the Scholastics. In spite of the fact that he prefers the terms “necessity of compulsion” and “necessity of certainty”, he understands the distinction to be the same; for example, he writes,

“that necessity comes from foreknowledge and…such a necessity is not absolute, but hypothetical, which we call a necessity of consequence, of infallibility, and of certainty, but not of compulsion,”[9] and

“it has the necessity we call the necessity of certainty and others the necessity of consequence,”[10] as well as

“the necessity falls on connection and conjunction of God’s predestination with our works, by which they mean the compound sense and the necessity of consequence.”[11]

In these passages he seems willing to use the scholastic terminology interchangeably with his own.

As to the third question, Vermigli’s treatment of the moral freedom of the will is conveniently summarized in a lecture he delivered on January 25, 1560, the text of which was later appended to certain editions of the Loci Communes.[12] “Regarding the state of the first man,” he writes, “we have but little in Holy Scripture, except we know that God made him righteous and that he fell by his free will.”[13] Regarding the state of man after the Fall, however, Vermigli is concerned to say more and to draw careful distinctions. The sort of freedom just described – the sort involved in following the dictates of reason, free from blind impulses or external compulsions – is essential to human nature and cannot be lost. Beyond that, fallen man also has the freedom to perform certain works of civil goodness. However,

“if the law of God is understood properly and truly we cannot by such freedom perform what agrees with it. The law does not require of us mere externals…above all it requires good inward motives, that we should love God with all our heart…”[14]

And that sort of obedience is entirely beyond the power of the unregenerate to offer:

“What is done by the unregenerate lacks the proper goal because it is not referred to God. So they cannot love God above all, which is nothing else than to refer all things to him; all their works are corrupt and therefore sins, since they are without faith. For whatever is not of faith is sin. What God requires of us in impossible compared to that state of which we speak.”[15]

Matters are different, however, for the regenerate. “The regenerate can know spiritual things,” he writes, “[and] can also choose and to some extent perform them; for they are not now merely and only human but people of God; they are engrafted into Christ, they are members and therefore partakers of His freedom.”[16]

This obedience is partial and incomplete in this life, of course, but will be brought to completion at the end of time, in what Vermigli (following New Testament usage) calls “the final regeneration.”[17]

For Vermigli, then, 1) free will functions the way Aristotle/Thomas described it, 2) God’s sovereignty most definitely encompasses human will, but works through those features of it that serve to make it free, and thus it does not counteract the will’s freedom, and 3) the will in sin remains free from necessity, but is capable at most of a hollow, civil obedience that falls short of the law of God.

Shifting attention to Turretin now, I will try to show that he falls within the same trajectory.

Notes
[1] Vermigli, Peter Martyr, Presdestination and Justification: Two Theological Loci (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 2003).
[2] Idem
[3] Idem
[4] Idem
[5] Idem
[6] Ibid, 73-74
[7] Vermigli, Philosophical Works, 272
[8] Vermigli, Predestination and Justification, 81
[9] Ibid, 82
[10] Ibid, 71
[11] Ibid, 70
[12] Ibid, 265, see especially footnote 3
[13] Ibid, 273
[14] Idem
[15] Ibid, 278
[16] Ibid, 317
[17] Ibid, 318

By Michael Vendsel

As was mentioned in part III, Vermigli distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic necessity. The former is due to the internal constitution and nature of a thing, and the latter is that which is imposed on the thing from outside and has nothing to do with its nature and constitution. Intrinsic necessity is of two kinds, that which is due to the laws of logic and mathematics, and that which is due to the laws of nature. Extrinsic necessity is also of two kinds, that which is violent and works against a thing’s nature, and that which is hypothetical. The latter is less explicit and, therefore, demands a closer analysis.

A hypothetical proposition is a proposition of the form “if x, then y”, in which x is the antecedent and y is the consequent. If a hypothetical proposition is true, it means that the antecedent condition cannot be fulfilled without the consequent condition being fulfilled. However, that does not mean that the consequent condition is absolutely or inherently necessary. An example would be frozen water. If water is brought to 0 degrees Celsius, it will freeze, and necessarily so. All else being equal, water cannot reach the freezing point and remain in liquid form. However, water is not intrinsically or absolutely frozen. It can be a solid, liquid, or gas, just as it can be hot or cold. There is nothing about water itself that demands it be one of the three; what demands it be one of the three is the situation or conditions in which it is currently located. Since those are matters extrinsic to the water itself, this sort of necessity is an extrinsic rather than intrinsic necessity. As Vermigli points out, however, this sort of necessity should be carefully distinguished from that which is imposed through violence or coercion as in the case of the wrestler or the criminal. There is no such violence being done when water is forced to freeze, because it belongs to the nature of water to freeze.

The distinctions Vermigli has identified were also identified by the scholastics. In the very next sentence, he writes

“the scholastics have said that there is a necessity of consequence and another of the consequent. By this distinction they mean that the connection is sometimes necessary, although what is inferred is not itself necessary. The Logicians have also distinguished them in this way, calling the one a compound sense, the other a divided sense.”[1]

A necessity of consequence results when, given the proper antecedents, a specific consequence is inevitable – as Vermigli puts it, “the connection is…necessary.” This is distinct from the necessity of the consequent, which would be an intrinsic or absolute necessity in that which the antecedent brings about – in “what is inferred.” Put another way, the consequent may be necessary when combined with the antecedent (the compound sense of necessity) without either of the two being intrinsically necessary in themselves (the divided sense of necessity). He gives an example to try to make all of this clear:

“If you would say that it is impossible for white to be black, that would be granted. If these two are taken in conjunction and together, that is, if the same thing should be both black and white, this is by no means possible, but if they are taken separately, then it may not be impossible, since something now white may be changed and made black.”[2]

Put simply, in most cases something can be either white or black, but it cannot be both at the same time. Our thoughts about what is possible, then, clearly turn on whether we are thinking of those two colors together or separately, and that sort of difference must be born in mind when talking about different kinds of necessity.

Continuing to address the scholastics, Vermigli writes:

“the Scholastics think that the whole difficulty of this controversy consists in the necessity of the consequence and the necessity of the consequent in the compound sense, but to clarify things we will add another distinction: that there is one necessity of certainty and another of compulsion.”[3]

Is Vermigli here just renaming these distinctions, or is he purposing to move beyond them with distinctions of his own? This question is significant, because it affects whether we see him as breaking with or utilizing the scholastic tradition on the problem of free will.[4] When he says “the Scholastics think” and then says “but to clarify things we will add another distinction,” it sounds as if he is moving beyond scholastic categories. In what follows, however, it will become clear that all he is doing is renaming this distinction for clarity’s sake. He thinks that confusion over this distinction is what “the whole difficulty of this controversy consists in,” too.

Notes
[1] Vermigli, Predestination and Justification, 69.
[2] Ibid, 69-70
[3] Ibid, 70
[4] John Owen, for example, in his Dissertation on Divine Justice, mentions several different scholastic theories concerning the nature of justice in God, only then to say that those theories obfuscate rather than clarify matters, following which he suggests new parameters for the discussion. Is Vermigli doing something like that here, or does he want to utilize the scholastic distinctions he has just discussed?

By Michael Vendsel

Vermigli discusses the providence of God in chapter 15 of part I of his Loci Communes. He begins by discussing the Greek and Hebrew notions of providence, noting that the word literally means foresight or foreknowledge. The Christian concept, however, involves more than that:

“Divine providence includes not only the knowledge of the divine mind but also His will and election, by which future things are arranged and determined in one way rather than another. It also includes a power and faculty of directing and governing those things it is said to foresee.”[1]

He moves on to consider whether providence is inclusive of all things. “Some dare to deny it,” he writes, “ascribing only the greatest and principal things to divine care and attributing the rest, if they are of little account, to natural causes, while greater matters they leave for angels or demons to accomplish.”[2] He rejects this view as unbiblical, citing Jesus’ statement that even the fates of sparrows are governed by the Divine will. In section 9 of chapter 1 of part III, he makes the same point using the terminology of “common predestination”: “Since God does all things by an appointed counsel, and nothing by chance or fortune, [then] doubtless whatever he creates or does, he appoints it to some end or use…. If predestination is taken in this way, then it is common to all things.”[3]

Thus far, then, Vermigli provides a fairly clear answer to the first part of our second question: the providence of God is absolutely all inclusive, and thus it must include the human will. In section 4 of chapter 15 of part I, he begins to consider the second part of the question, asking whether providence destroys chance and fortune. “Fortune and chance are not taken from us by the providence of God,” he writes, “[for] why should it not be true that nothing is done by chance in relation to God, while as for ourselves much is done blindly and by fortune?”[4] He proceeds to give an example of a master who sends a servant to the market and then sends another to the same market separately. If the two should encounter, they will see it as a chance or random meeting, but only because they did not realize that the master had designed that they would both be there. Similarly, “many things done by God’s foresight and knowledge happen by chance according to our dull and weak understanding.”[5] While there are many seeming accidents, then, there are no true accidents.

Vermigli immediately anticipates the objection that if the providence of God is as all encompassing as he claims, then nothing could be other than it is, with the result that human choices could not be other than they are and there is no such thing as free choice. “If, as we believe, all things are directed by God and happen by His counsel, where will their contingency be,” he asks, “for everything will fall out by necessity. Some think this argument against divine providence so strong that the freedom of our will can hardly be defended.”[6] He gives a short response in this section, but a fuller response making use of the same basic categories comes in sections 49 and 50 of chapter 1 of part III. At the beginning of these sections, he purposes “to treat three things especially: first, whether any necessity is laid on us by God’s predestination or reprobation, second, if there is any necessity, does it hinder free will, [and] last, whether God’s foreknowledge or predestination takes away his justice….”[7] Turning to the first of these, he writes,

“Earlier in the first part, we said that necessity is to be defined as that which cannot be otherwise; but the principles or grounds of necessity are sometimes intrinsic and sometimes extrinsic. Things that are inherently necessary by an internal principle are either necessary absolutely (simpliciter) or are such that they cannot be changed without contradiction…. For example, that four is not an even number or that four and three are not seven: this is called geometrical necessity, for it permits no variety. Other things are of intrinsic necessity, yet not absolutely and simply, unless they follow the regular course of nature. Fire is said to burn necessarily things that are suitable to be burned and it is necessary that the sun move perpetually, but this is not simple necessity, for God is able to prevent them and to cause physical and natural things at times to cease from their proper operation. This is clear from the three children put in the fiery furnace…Also, the sun strayed form its course while Joshua pursued his enemies.”[8]

There is, then, an intrinsic necessity – necessity due to the internal constitution and nature of a thing – and this necessity is of two kinds, that which is due to the laws of logic and mathematics, and that which is due to the laws of nature. By the former sort of necessity, an odd number cannot be even, and by the latter sort, fire cannot fail to be hot. In each case, the necessity is due to the nature of the thing under consideration. There is another sort of necessity, however – extrinsic necessity – that is imposed on the thing from outside and has nothing to do with its nature and constitution. As with intrinsic necessity, there are two forms of this – “one is violent, when things are compelled to work against their nature. The other is hypothetical.”[9] The former sort of necessity is familiar enough – it is the sort of necessity by which criminals are kept from wandering the streets and pinned wrestlers are kept from getting up from the mat. The latter is less explicit and deserves more careful explanation.

Notes
[1] Vermigli, 177
[2] Ibid, 178
[3] Vermigli, Peter Martyr, Presdestination and Justification: Two Theological Loci (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 2003) 15-16
[4] Vermigli, Philosophical Works, 181
[5] Idem
[6] Idem
[7] Vermigli, Predestination and Justification, 68
[8] Ibid, 69
[9] Idem