Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/65

Rh improperly asserted of God, since lie is independent of time. If we connect it with any notion of necessity it cannot be asserted of him at all; since his will is absolute freedom; and man, as the highest image of God, possesses this same entire freedom of will, which he can use as he pleases for good or evil. There remains but one sense in which we can speak of God s predestination; that is, his permission of what happens in the creature by reason of his free will. He suffers this freedom of will, but when it moves to evil he knows it not; for God is ignorant of evil. If he knew it he would be the cause of it: we cannot separate his knowledge from his will, which is cause. For God, therefore, evil exists not; it has no cause, it is simply the negation of good. Sin, therefore, and its punishment come not from God. Every misdeed bears its punishment in itself, in the consciousness of lacking good. The eternal fire is a necessary part of God s universe. The righteous will rejoice in it; the wicked suffer, because they are wicked, just as (he quotes the simile from the Confessions of Augustin) the sunlight hurts the weak while it is harmless to sound eyes. The order of the world sets a limit within which each creature moves and which it cannot overpass. It sets a bound to the possibility of wickedness, but for which the wicked would fall into that nothingness which is the nature of evil. In this sense alone is punishment fore-ordained, that wickedness be not ''able to extend itself, as it would, into the infinite. ''

These are some of the arguments which the Scot brings against the contention of Gottschalk. We see at once their startling character. They were no doubt entirely unadapted to their purpose; it was no doubt vain to argue on philosophical grounds with men who relied exclusively on theology and on a one-sided selection of scriptural proofs. But it is on this very account that the reasoning is memorable. There is nothing in it of the commonplaces of controversy or of theology. It has a terminology of its own. Outwardly, indeed, John Scotus appeals, like his opponents, to the Bible, to Augukin, to