1 Introduction¹

How can free will and contingency be preserved in a world created and ordained from eternity by an omnipotent and omniscient deity, who has not only foreseen everything but is also the cause of everything? And why did a benevolent and all-good deity not create a better world, one without pain, misery, and sin, electing all people to eternal bliss without damning anyone? And if people had to be damned because of their sins anyway, how can they be held accountable for these sins which seem unavoidable not only because God had foreseen them but also because he, as cause of everything, somehow caused them?² Deeply committed to a deterministic picture of the world, Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525) must have felt a strong urge to address these age-old challenges to the Christian doctrine; for as he had set out in some recent works, God rules the world from eternity through the heavens, and life on earth including human life, its history and religions, is determined by these higher, external causes.³ Can there be any place for free will and contingency in such a world, and for a God who can freely change his eternal ordinance on seeing people doing good or bad deeds?

Addressing this cluster of problems in his De fato (finished in 1520), Pomponazzi could of course have benefitted from centuries of discussion in which scholastic theologians had come up with solutions that tried to do justice, on the one hand, to the divine attributes of immutability, eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence, and, on the other hand, to the idea that the future is still open and that people can be free in their deliberations and actions, and hence may have a hand in their own fate in the hereafter. Pomponazzi, however, dismisses much of this theorizing of his predecessors in often rather harsh terms as illusionary, deceptive, and verbose. His own solution to the problem of how to reconcile free will and divine foreknowledge, he claims, is “easy and clear.”⁴

Despite this claim, modern scholars have offered widely divergent assessments of Pomponazzi’s position.⁵ To some it presents a highly novel synthesis of medieval discussions, to others there is “nothing new under the sun.”⁶ Some have regarded it as essentially a Thomistic account, while others have identified Peter Auriol as an important source of influence.⁷ Scholars also disagree on the wider aims of De fato: is Pomponazzi’s aim to present a rational theology in books iii–v as an alternative to Aristotelian-Stoic determinism that he had defended in books i–ii against Alexander of Aphrodisias’s attack on Stoic determinism?⁸ Or is he donning the robes of a theologian to undermine and deride the Christian faith?⁹ Or must his arguments be considered in ‘practical’ terms, as aids in upholding a more traditional understanding of Christian doctrine at a time when Luther was preaching a radically new view about the relationship between God and humans?¹⁰

The aim of this article is to show that Pomponazzi’s ultimate goal is not to undermine Christian faith but to point to the limits of theology in the latter’s attempt to offer rationally satisfactory answers to such age-old conundrums as the compatibility of free will with divine providence, the compatibility of God’s eternal ordinance with the contingency of the world, and predestination. On my reading, the ultimate goal of the last three books of De fato is therefore not to robustly strengthen the Christian position vis-à-vis the Aristotelian-Stoic one, for by Pomponazzi’s lights this would be a lost battle: as he writes at the beginning of book iii, he does not agree with those who believe that “the way of Aristotle” and that of faith agree with each other (conveniunt): “to me they seem incompatible (incompossibiles, p. 223¹²),” and he ends his treatise by repeating his claim that the Aristotelian-Stoic position is much more consistent and rational than the Christian one, and that all such arguments to support the opinio Christiana must sound “non-sensical to philosophical ears” (p. 451³). This however does not mean, I suggest, that Pomponazzi’s discussion is not a serious attempt to present arguments that, if not dissolve the difficulties that the Christian position faces, at least offer some support for the religious – that is, once the framework of “the Christian position” is accepted, including the existence of free will, the world’s contingency, and the existence of a caring and benevolent God, we can try to make sense of the Christian attempts to reconcile the several potentially conflicting attributes of God. But as I will suggest, even if he has chosen in these books to discuss matters “in accordance to the evangelical (evangelicam) tradition” rather than from a philosophical (i.e., Aristotelian-Stoic) point of view, in presenting these arguments Pomponazzi still feels the pull towards determinism and to the idea that God acts necessarily according to the providential order established from eternity, rolling on ineluctably. To show this I examine and analyze the main issues of these latter three books.

I start with an examination of what Pomponazzi calls a “clear and easy solution” to the problem of how to reconcile free will and divine providence, looking also at some similarities but also dissimilarities with Auriol’s theory. I will then examine his view on divine providence, addressing in particular the question how God can be considered to be a free agent in creating the world. Here I will explore, again, some interesting but unnoticed similarities with Auriol. Finally, I will discuss Pomponazzi’s half-hearted refutation of Thomas Aquinas’s account of predestination in the fifth and last book of De fato. In the concluding remarks I will suggest how Pomponazzi’s discussions of these themes fit in my overall interpretation of his goals.

2 Free Will and Divine Providence

The classic articulation of the problem of how free will can be reconciled with divine providence was given by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy. If God’s foreknowledge is certain, things foreknown by him cannot turn out differently, for if they could, his foreknowledge was not certain but only “uncertain opinion.”¹¹ Boethius’s own solution was a combination of three elements: the distinction between absolute and conditional necessity, the principle that the nature of knowledge is determined by the knower rather than by the object, and the notion of God’s eternity to which past, present and future are present simultaneously:

Since then every judgement comprehends those things subject to it according to its own nature, and God has an always eternal and present nature, then his knowledge too, surpassing all movement of time, is permanent in the simplicity of his present, and embracing all the infinite spaces of the future and the past, considers them in his simple act of knowledge as though they were now going on.¹²

For Boethius this does not make the future necessary however: just as my seeing Socrates walking does not make his walking in itself necessary, so God’s seeing things does not make future contingents necessary: “this divine foreknowledge does not alter the proper nature of things, but sees them present to him just such as in time they will at some future point come to be.”¹³

As Pomponazzi sees it, Boethius and those who are inspired by him, try to solve the problem by arguing that what is contingent and uncertain becomes certain when related to God: as Boethius writes, future events “related to the divine perception, become (fiunt) necessary through the condition of the divine knowledge.”¹⁴ According to Pomponazzi, however, this goes against a basic Aristotelian maxim that knowledge (scientia) is of things that cannot be otherwise: “Hence if there is understanding simpliciter of something, it is impossible for it to be otherwise” (Posterior Analytics i, 2, 71b15, quoted by Pomponazzi). For Pomponazzi this means that something contingent cannot be known as something necessary, not even by God: “saying that what is contingent in itself is uncertain but certain as known by God is like saying that there is certain knowledge of an uncertain object, and immutable knowledge of a mutable thing.”¹⁵ Necessity and contingency, however, are opposite terms; what is necessary cannot not-be, what is contingent can be or can not-be. Hence, no certain knowledge can be had of something that is contingent in itself. Just as God cannot convert something corruptible into something incorruptible, or a human being into another species, so he cannot know something that is contingent in itself as something certain and necessary.¹⁶

With this basic Aristotelian point in hand Pomponazzi rejects Boethius’s principle that the nature of knowledge is dependent on the knowing subject rather than on the object known. For Pomponazzi, as for many late-medieval philosophers, the modality of knowledge follows the object, which he describes in traditional terms of a similitude between knower and object, and as “adequacy and representation.”¹⁷ He therefore rejects the idea that something contingent becomes necessary when ‘represented’ in God, just as an uncertain opinion does not become a certainty when ‘represented’ in a human mind.

What can we make of this point? Pomponazzi seems to ignore Boethius’s intention. Boethius does indeed say that the future “becomes” necessary but of course only “under the condition of” – or “related to” – God’s knowledge. The future contingent event does not, of course, turn into a simple necessity such as the rising of the sun tomorrow. According to one interpretation, Boethius is making a scope distinction here: “necessarily (God knows p, then p)” (wide scope) versus “God knows that p, then necessarily p” (narrow scope), traditionally known as the necessity of the consequence versus that of the consequent. This is also how Pomponazzi seems to interpret Boethius, but his objection does not explain what he thinks is wrong with it.¹⁸ According to a more recent reading, Boethius does not make such a scope distinction but uses the Aristotelian notion of the necessity of the present to explain how God can foreknow what in itself is contingent.¹⁹ It is necessary for Socrates to sit, when he is sitting, but his sitting itself remains a contingent fact. Applied to God’s eternal presence, this means that future events are present to God and hence become (fiunt) necessary “when related to the divine perception,” even though in themselves they are contingent. As we will see, Pomponazzi will use this notion of the necessity of the present himself for his own solution.

Having thus rejected several arguments that on his reading seem to turn the contingent into something necessary when related to God, Pomponazzi presents his own solution as “a different way of responding” that he had invented (imaginatus sum) out of dissatisfaction with “the common answers.”²⁰ However, earlier in De fato he had presented it as a common answer, “put forward and affirmed by our Christians,”²¹ while somewhat later he called it a solution that Aquinas and others had in mind, though expressed “in different terms” than his own.²² Be that as it may, let us see then what his ‘solution’ is.

In line with his earlier conclusion, Pomponazzi argues that God cannot have certain and determinate knowledge of future contingent acts such as acts proceeding from a created will. As long as they are still in the future, still “in their potency,” “in their causes,” that is, not yet actualized (in actu), even God cannot have certain knowledge of them. God knows only that such a future event can occur or not occur.²³ This lack of certain knowledge must not be interpreted as “being in doubt.” In fact, God’s knowledge of a future contingent corresponds exactly with (or represents exactly) its contingent nature: if God sees future p as contingent, he knows “most certainly” what this means, viz., that p can be or can not-be: “the nature of the future qua future requires nothing more than this.”²⁴ In this mode God does not see or know the outcome: Socrates might sin or not sin tomorrow.²⁵ There is however another mode in which God knows future events, namely as events present to his eternity. Following tradition, Pomponazzi defines eternity as tota simul in the sense that God “comprehends and contains all time” or, with a phrase not uncommon among scholastics, “all differences of time.”²⁶ God has certain knowledge of what in time are future acts, because in his eternity he sees future events as present, as “reduced in act” (ad actum reducta, p. 149¹⁷), as “outside their causes”:

God does not have certitude of such a future event qua future and he looks at (respicit) the time in which the effect will occur in its causes; but according to this manner he only knows and can know that it can be and can not-be. But if he has certainty about such future event (which indeed he has), he has it as it is outside its causes and he looks at that moment of time in which it will be outside its causes and such moment is present to his eternity; that is why he is certain about such an event, and it cannot not-be, because the thing which is outside its causes is either actualized (actu) or has been actualized; and if it has [already] been actualized, it is impossible not to have been, and if it is actualized, it is impossible not to be in that measure (mensura) in which it is; that is why it is then inevitable that it is.²⁷

Thus, God has a double way of knowing a future event: as future and as already actualized in that moment of time at which it happens. According to Pomponazzi, this saves free will, for a future contingent act is known by God as such, namely as contingent, while at the same time God’s omniscience is saved, for he knows the future not only as future (and hence in an indeterminate way) but also as actualized, present to his atemporal eternity.

Though Pomponazzi repeats the distinction time and again, he does not offer much explanation of how we must understand it exactly. Does God’s knowledge of the future as future mean that he knows the future in any temporal sense? Pomponazzi clearly wants to deny this: God is beyond time, comprising “all dimensions of time”: “In his eternity God knows the future in a contingent and indeterminate way, and in the same eternity in a determinate way.”²⁸ So how can God know the future as future? I suggest we can explain Pomponazzi’s words as follows: in his eternity God may decide to zoom in at a particular moment in time; everything after that moment is still indeterminate (except what will take place with simple necessity such as the sun’s rising), “still in its causes,” while everything before that moment has run its course and is thereby determinate. When God, in his eternity, zooms in on Socrates on Monday, he brackets his knowledge of whether Socrates will sin on Tuesday, that is, his knowledge of the future is indeterminate. This suggests that God, properly speaking, does not look into the future. He only zooms in on Monday, not on Tuesday, but his realization that Socrates may sin or may not sin presupposes time: Socrates may or may not sin in the future. Contingency in itself does not presuppose time: it merely states that p can be or can not-be. But it is clear that when God zooms in on one particular moment in time, a temporal future must be assumed in which Socrates will sin or not sin. And this is of course only to be expected, for God is said to know the future in an indeterminate way. Thus, while God is beyond time, he also sees things in time and assumes (but does not look into) future time.²⁹

The second mode was influentially articulated by Boethius: God sees the future in his eternal present, hence as determinate and certain. In explaining this idea Pomponazzi follows Boethius and Aquinas in using the Aristotelian notion of the necessity of the present, mentioned above: when p is, it necessarily is, and when p is not, it necessarily is not.³⁰ Applied to God, this means that future contingents when seen by God in their moment of actualization, cannot not-be. His knowledge is therefore certain. In explaining this mode Pomponazzi often writes that God does not have “the mode (rationem) of the future” but only of “the present or past.”³¹ This terminology might be felt to be somewhat misleading, for God does not have any ratio of time in his eternity: he transcends time. But God’s eternal present was traditionally compared to the temporal present, e.g., by Boethius: “why then do you require those things to be made necessary which are scanned by the light of God’s sight, when not even men make necessary those things they see? After all, your looking at them does not confer any necessity on those things you presently see, does it?”³² In his attempt to explain God’s eternal knowledge, Boethius had referred to human knowledge, and it is this comparison – despite the difference between divine and human knowledge – that may have led Pomponazzi to argue that God has – seen from a human point of view – a present and a past mode, not a future mode. God’s certain knowledge in seeing past, present, and future all at once in his eternal present is like the certain knowledge humans have in seeing present and past things, that is, things in act or already actualized.

This however raises the following question: if God sees everything at once and simultaneously, does he not see p and not-p simultaneously, since both are present to his eternity? Here is Pomponazzi’s answer:

When he sees each part of a contradiction in his eternity, he does not see them according to the same ratio of time, for he sees one part of a contradiction because the time, in which that part is verified (verificatur), is present to his eternity; he sees the other part because the time in which this other part is verified is present to his eternity. And although these times are not simultaneous in themselves, they are simultaneous in eternity; and where a diversity of real time is required in our will and intellect, a diversity of reason suffices in eternity.³³

The thought seems to be that events keep, so to speak, their temporal index in God’s eternity: when God sees p (that in time had taken place on a certain Monday) and not-p (on the following day), they are seen by God simultaneously as both are present to his eternity but they are seen by God “not according to the same ratio but according to a different one” (non tamen secundum eandem rationem sed secundum diversam).³⁴ This means that their differences, which are real in the temporal world, are only rational in God: “a diversity of reason suffices in eternity.” God sees things simultaneously, but this does not mean that p on Monday and not-p on Tuesday have somehow lost their differences due to their different moments of actualization in the flow of time. In one gaze God surveys everything at once that is spread out in time, but for Pomponazzi this does not mean that temporal differences get entirely lost.³⁵

As Pomponazzi himself observes, Aquinas had offered roughly the same solution, inspired by Boethius. Aquinas had also distinguished “two respects in which God’s foreknowledge is related to the future things”:

(a) insofar as they exist in themselves, i.e., insofar as they are intuited as present; and (b) insofar as they exist in their causes, i.e., insofar as He sees the ordering of causes to their effects. Even though future contingents, as existing in themselves, are determined to a single outcome, nonetheless, as existing in their causes, they are indeterminate in the sense that they could turn out otherwise.³⁶

For Aquinas, however, this does not mean that God has indeterminate knowledge of the future qua future, for he sees everything in his eternal gaze:

The vision of the divine intellect from all eternity is directed to each of the things that take place in the course of time, in so far as it is present … It remains, therefore, that nothing prevents God from having from all eternity an infallible knowledge of contingents.³⁷

As we can see, Pomponazzi’s account of this mode comes close to the account of Boethius and Aquinas, but unlike them he allows for a mode in which God’s knowledge is indeterminate. This raises the obvious question how the two modes are related: how can God be indeterminate about the future while he sees that future as present to his eternity? Interestingly, Pomponazzi raises the question himself already in book ii, as part of his discussion of the “Christian secta”: “Why is it that in one consideration (consideratio) [of the future qua future] he cannot certify (certificari) one part of the contradiction, while in the other consideration [future as actualized], when it is outside its causes, there is certification (certificatio) in God?”³⁸ Pomponazzi does not give an answer, however, and only somewhat later suggests that God, in seeing the future as future, “abstracts or rather prescinds” from the determination that a future event has as actualized, that is, as present to God’s eternal present.³⁹ This terminology of abstraction can also be found in Peter Auriol, and Chris Schabel has therefore suggested that Auriol must have been a source for Pomponazzi. Schabel quotes the following passage from Auriol:

Even if a thing is future in itself and as compared to the present now [i.e. to time], it is not determined like this, but rather it is ad utrumlibet for this now. Because of this, when the divine knowledge compares the [thing’s] actuality to this now, it does not know determinately whether it will be or it will not be, because as such it is ad utrumlibet. But insofar as it apprehends [the actuality] in a way that is abstracted from futureness, it knows that actuality determinately, and so it is true that the actuality as known is not future. So God has cognition of this sort of actuality in two ways: first as it is abstracted from futureness in His knowledge, and this is determinate [cognition]; second as it is future – not to Him of course, but to the present now – and this is indeterminate and ad utrumlibet.⁴⁰

Like Pomponazzi later, Auriol argues that God does not have determinate knowledge of the future qua future, for if he did, the future would be necessary. Both Pomponazzi and Auriol reject for that reason the Boethian principle that knowledge is dependent on the knower rather than the object, and solutions that in their eyes make the contingent necessary when related to God’s foreknowledge. According to Schabel, this amounts to “significant evidence of Auriol’s influence.”⁴¹ It should be noticed, however, that Pomponazzi’s use of the notion of abstraction differs from Auriol’s. Whereas Auriol argues that God abstracts from the flow of time to know the future as present, Pomponazzi states the opposite, writing that God abstracts from his knowledge of future as present in order to see the future as future: God abstracts “from the determination of the part [of the contradiction]” to see the future as future. Moreover, we do not find other typically Auriolean terminology in Pomponazzi’s discussion at this point. Auriol had employed technical terminology to develop his position, speaking of God in terms of “indistance” to time and “the eminent similitude and exemplar of all.”⁴² Nor do we find Pomponazzi mentioning the idea for which Auriol was most famous, namely that future-contingent propositions do not have a truth value and that they are neutral. This is not to say that Auriol might not have been one of Pomponazzi’s sources of inspiration, and we will examine some similarities in the next section, but in the absence of any quotation from Auriol’s work it remains difficult to determine his influence on Pomponazzi on this point.

Does Pomponazzi’s discussion show what I have called a pull towards determinism, even in discussions which aim to allow for future contingency? That does not seem to be the case. His aim is clearly to make room for contingency by arguing that God’s foreknowledge does not change the contingency of future event p. However, he also argues that p, once related to God’s infallible foreknowledge, cannot not-be, and hence that to speak of p’s contingency and its (conditional) necessity – as Boethius and Aquinas had argued – at the same time is misleading. But are there any events not present to God’s eternal moment? The answer is of course: no. That means that all events, considered “outside their causes,” are necessary. Pomponazzi claims, as we have seen, that this does not threaten their contingency but because he had rejected the compatibility between contingency and conditional necessity, he owes us an explanation of how their contingent status can be saved in a world of which all dimensions of time are present to God’s eternity.⁴³

3 God’s Eternal Ordinance and the World’s Contingency

In the previous section we have seen Pomponazzi trying to find a place for contingency (including free will) in a world known by God, concluding that a correct understanding of God’s eternity shows that divine knowledge is compatible with contingency. But God does more than just knowing the world: he is also its creator, and according to Christian dogma he has ordained from eternity the world and everything in it including people’s fate in the hereafter. This seems to imply that the world cannot be otherwise than it had been ordained from eternity. It also means that reprobates have been condemned from eternity and the predestined saved from eternity. Is God indeed bound by his own eternal decree to save a and condemn b? Or is God free to change his eternal decree? But if so, how is this compatible with his attribute of immutability? Without discussing scholastic theories, except that of Aquinas, Pomponazzi offers his thoughts on these issues in the last book of De fato.

As I will argue, the general tenor of his discussion is that God must be held to act in a determinate way and that his determination cannot be changed. Whatever God wills (or has willed from eternity), necessarily happens. For Pomponazzi God’s immutability implies necessity and vice versa.⁴⁴ Still, Pomponazzi also wants to find room for contingency and free will, and in doing so, as we will see, must fall back on distinctions he had rejected earlier.

He starts with a very brief discussion of some arguments which show that God does not act contingently. First, contingency means indeterminacy, something which suggests imperfection, and this cannot be said of God.⁴⁵ The second argument, densely stated by Pomponazzi, says that “God has determined everything from eternity,” for if there were something that would not have been made “in accordance with God’s will and determination,” this must have been known to God, “because nothing escapes him.” But because his knowledge is “practical or factive knowledge,” “whatever is willed by God is determined by him, because his will determines his act; hence we should necessarily say that God determines everything from eternity.”⁴⁶ Thirdly, God is immutable, hence future contingents cannot turn out in a different way than he had determined.⁴⁷

The conclusion is that God acts in “a most determinate way” (determinatissime) and that his determination cannot be changed, for if he would act contingently, he could either act or not act (or determine p or not-p). If he does one of the two, the other side is no longer possible, for two acts at the same time are not possible (actus sunt incompossibiles).⁴⁸ If he has not yet determined, a later determination means a change in God, and this cannot be imputed to God. Hence, “it is impossible that God acts contingently.”⁴⁹

Without discussing Duns Scotus, whom he mentions only once in passing (p. 392²⁶), Pomponazzi clearly alludes here to a Scotist understanding of contingency in terms of simultaneous alternatives. As is well known, Scotus had argued that at t₁ it is possible that p and it is possible that not-p, which should not be confused with the (false) proposition that at t₁ it is possible (p and not-p).⁵⁰ Scotus had used such a view to argue that God does not act necessarily. God’s willing p is free only if God could have willed not-p in the same instant. It is possible for God to will p and it is possible for him to will not-p in the same instant. This however does not mean that his determination or his knowledge is mutable. Scotus argues that God has immutable knowledge, but it is logically possible that he knows other than he does. Pomponazzi argues against such an understanding of contingency as he thinks it implies a change in God. For him immutability implies necessity and vice versa. As he writes, theologians had argued that God can change his determination even though he is immutable, using the distinction between a composite and a divided sense of a proposition. As he reconstructs the case, these theologians would argue that the proposition “It is possible that God does not have the determination that he has” or, in other words, that it is possible that God changes his determination, is true in the divided sense but false in the composite sense. It is true in the divided sense as follows: It is possible that God has determination p and it is possible that God has determination not-p. Pomponazzi calls this “a nugatory play” (ludus consistens in puris nugis, p. 395²). What he has in mind is the following: if God could have had another determination in t₁ than in fact he has, this would imply a change in God, which goes against his immutability. The reason why Pomponazzi thinks the distinction does not avoid the problem is that the divided and composite sense, if analyzed correctly, come down to the same thing, so that “if it is true in the divided sense, then also in the composite sense and vice versa.” The two propositions “it is possible (p and not-p)” (composite) and “it is possible p and it is possible not-p” (divided) can only be compared if in both cases p and not-p refer either to the same moment or to different moments. If p and not-p refer to the same moment, the proposition is false, both in the divided and in the composite sense. If p and not-p refer to different moments, the proposition is true, both in the divided and in the composite sense. In the latter case, however, a change is implied in God, who determines first p and later not-p, while he is supposed to have determined one or the other from eternity.⁵¹

It seems then that Pomponazzi argues for a deterministic thesis: God has ordained everything from eternity. This however raises an important question: was God’s creation a free act, and if so, would this not imply a change on God’s part?⁵² Pomponazzi does not avoid the question. His answer is that the moment of creation too had been ordained from eternity:

Given that determination [to create the world], it was necessary that the world was produced in that moment (pro tali instanti), not however in whatever moment (pro quocunque tempore), for although he has determined from eternity (ab aeterno) to produce the world, he has determined it not at eternity (pro aeterno) but anew and at a new [moment] (de novo et pro novo).⁵³

By distinguishing the particular moment from any moment, Pomponazzi thinks he can save God’s immutability when God created the world at a particular instant. The common opinion, as Pomponazzi tells us, among theologians, however, was that the effects of God’s acting are contingent (p. 391⁹). To explain how contingent effects can be produced by a necessary cause the majority, including Aquinas, invoked the distinction between simple (or absolute) and conditional necessity. God could have willed otherwise, e.g., not creating the world, but once he had willed it, the effect is necessary.⁵⁴ Pomponazzi rejects such a solution. The determination of the divine will is either necessary simpliciter or it is not. But if it is necessary simpliciter, the production of the universe is also necessary simpliciter, for if the antecedent is necessary simpliciter, then also the consequent. If the divine will is not necessary simpliciter, hence contingent, it is possible for the determination to create the world not to have been in God or only later, and then a change must be admitted in God, which goes against his immutability.⁵⁵

In equating necessity and immutability Pomponazzi was not alone. Again, Auriol comes to mind, and because no such a comparison has been made concerning this point, I think it is instructive for understanding Pomponazzi’s position to briefly examine Auriol’s (rather complicated) view. Auriol too had rejected the application of this distinction to God’s will. Like Pomponazzi some centuries later, Auriol had argued that from something absolutely and simply necessary, the production of the world as a consequence must also be regarded as necessary:

If one holds that through some intrinsic will, proper to the formal characteristic of volition, He determines Himself to produce, it would be inevitable that God would produce from absolute necessity whatever He produces. For that which necessarily follows from something simply and absolutely necessary is certainly simply and absolutely necessary.⁵⁶ But it is manifest that when God of necessity wills the production of the world (or something else) ⟨to occur⟩ at some instant, the production follows in that instant … Therefore the production of the world has followed, with absolute necessity, from something absolutely and simply necessary, and consequently this ⟨production⟩ is necessary.⁵⁷

Like Pomponazzi (p. 408^2–13), Auriol argues that from eternity God had ordained the creation at a particular instant of time, and that, if one ascribes to God the possibility not to have willed the creation of the world while actually having the determination to will it, one presupposes a change in God. Hence, to escape the necessity of God’s effects by saying that in a divided sense God could have determined something differently from what he actually did does not help.⁵⁸ One of Auriol’s targets is Aquinas, who had argued that God’s so-called disposition towards the creation is contingent, and that God could not have willed the world (or its creatures), since they do not add to God’s perfection, but that since he had willed the existence of the world, it is necessary.⁵⁹ Against Aquinas, Auriol argues that God’s disposition towards the world stems from what he calls God’s intrinsic will, and since God’s will is necessary, the disposition towards the world is also necessary. Further, Auriol argues that what God could have intrinsically willed is no different from what he did will:

Furthermore, that disposition is necessary which is impossible and was impossible ab eterno not to be; but if the intrinsic divine willing has a disposition toward the creation of the world such that God may have willed for that instant that the world could come about, then it was impossible for that disposition not to be, even ab eterno.⁶⁰

For Auriol then it does not make sense to say that God could have willed something he does not will. What God wills, he wills from eternity: “it cannot be said that the divine willing has a contingent disposition, or any disposition, according to which it would be true to say that God willed or did not will to create the world.”⁶¹ But to avoid the fatalism that this position seems to imply, Auriol develops the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic will to argue that the former is immutable and absolutely necessary, while the latter is what we may call God’s free exercise in willing certain things.⁶² The intrinsic will stands above God’s willing specific things: it is God’s delight (complacentia), being entirely free and unconstrained, which is indifferent to willing specific things, e.g., a or not-a, but it takes delight in whatever comes about or does not come about. As such the intrinsic will lacks efficacy. It is the will’s extrinsic aspect that is efficacious and wills particular things, e.g., the existence of the world:

It is clear how God is said to will creatures and their production, for He is said to will them by the will of a certain complacency (complacentia), inasmuch as He is complacent in their being … This complacency, however, is immutable and absolutely necessary, and God is not determined by it to produce or not produce, because He is equally complacent whether they come about or not. He does not have, however, any willing by which He intrinsically strives for or chooses, or desires … Nevertheless, God is said to will freely and voluntarily to produce what He produces; indeed, freely because He produces complacently …⁶³

Auriol’s motivation for drawing this distinction between the intrinsic and extrinsic will is to save God’s simplicity and immutability, on the one hand, and God’s free acting in the world, on the other. If the latter were part of God’s intrinsic will, as Aquinas according to Auriol had maintained, God’s “operations” in the world would be absolutely necessary. But the world is contingent – God does not need it for his perfection (as Aquinas had already said): “the contingency that a creature has in existing does not arise from the contingency of the intrinsic will, but of a certain extrinsic thing, namely operation …”⁶⁴ With this brief explanation of Auriol’s position in hand, we can now turn to Pomponazzi to explore the similarities in their positions.

Like Auriol, Pomponazzi stresses time and again that God has determined everything from eternity. What God wills, he wills from eternity; his immutability rules out any determination other than the one he has. Both Auriol and Pomponazzi reject therefore distinctions such as between simple and conditional necessity and between divided and composite sense, used by many scholastics, to avoid such a fatalistic conclusion. Pomponazzi, however, does not take over Auriol’s distinction between what is intrinsic and what is extrinsic to the divine will. Pomponazzi seems to suggest that God’s nature must be distinguished from the effects of his action (e.g., the creation of the world) and that while the former has determined everything from eternity (“just as his wisdom, goodness and other single attributes follow necessarily from his nature,” p. 408¹²), God’s actions do not necessarily follow directly from his nature. Divine acts such as the creation of the world are as it were extrinsic to God’s internal nature. They are not necessary to his perfection: the world does not add to God’s perfection nor does the loss of it diminish or annul it. As Pomponazzi writes:

Therefore, the universe is indifferent (indifferens) to the divine perfection, nor is it good or bad unless it falls under the divine will. Therefore, although it is necessary that the universe is or is not, neither part is necessary in itself. Because nothing is or is not except by divine determination, it is necessary that God had determined one of two parts, but it was not necessary that he had determined this or that part except according to his good pleasure (secundum suum beneplacitum). No further reason should be sought why he had determined this rather than that part except that it has pleased his will.⁶⁵

Superficially, Pomponazzi’s motivation looks like Auriol’s, namely, to save the divine immutability by relegating the effects of the divine will to what is extrinsic to it. As we have seen, God’s intrinsic will, according to Auriol, wills indifferently, and this is perhaps also what Pomponazzi wants to maintain when he says that “it is necessary that God had determined one of two parts, but it was not necessary that he had determined this or that part except according to his good pleasure.” However, while Auriol locates God’s (inefficacious) complacency at the level of intrinsic willing, Pomponazzi makes it the source for God’s willing specific things such as the creation of the world.

The terminology of God’s willing might suggest that God had several options available and choose a particular one simply out of his will, but we have also seen Pomponazzi rejecting a Scotist understanding of modality according to which at the same moment it is possible that p and it is possible that not-p. The tension becomes clear in his surprising use of the traditional distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power.⁶⁶ Interestingly, Auriol thought the distinction not well founded, “not only because,” as W. J. Courtenay explains, “power is one in God in the sense that potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata are identical, but ⟨also⟩ because God is not subject to any order or rule; he is only subject to his nature.”⁶⁷ Pomponazzi however does use the distinction to argue that in his absolute power God could have determined things differently, e.g., creating more than one world, but not in his ordained power (potentia ordinaria). We could therefore call God’s determination contingent, not in the sense that things can turn out differently from his determination but because the opposite of the determination is not “repugnant” or “inconvenient,” e.g., the determination not to create the world.⁶⁸ God has not ordained more than one world, but in his absolute power he could have done so. Given the order he has determined, however, he acts necessarily in accordance with his determination, that is, on the “presupposed determination” (praesupposita determinatio, p. 411¹⁷). In view of Pomponazzi’s criticisms of the distinction between simple and conditional necessity, it is remarkable – not to use stronger terms – that he uses this distinction much in the way in which Aquinas had used it. Perhaps even more remarkable is that Pomponazzi claims: “I know that many very learned men hold the opposite but to me it seems impossible to say something else. Hence those distinctions between composite and divided sense seem to me intricacies (involutiones) and child play.”⁶⁹ It is highly likely that Pomponazzi refers to Aquinas here, who had argued for much the same position as Pomponazzi, but had used the distinction between divided and composite sense:

It is clear then that God absolutely can do otherwise than he has done. Since, however, he cannot make contradictories to be true at the same time, it can be said ex suppositione that God cannot make other things besides those he has made; for if we suppose that he does not wish to do otherwise, or that he foresaw that he would not do otherwise, as long as the supposition stands, he cannot do otherwise, understood in the composite, not the divided sense.⁷⁰

God can do things otherwise in the divided sense, by which Aquinas means that in his absolute power God could have determined, for instance, not-a instead of a. But given his determination of a, he necessarily wills and produces a. This is just what Pomponazzi maintains as well; hence his criticism of those who use such distinctions as simple/conditional necessity and divided/composite sense is inconsistent with his own view, unless he thinks that the divided sense, as used here, for instance, by Aquinas, entails a change on God’s part.⁷¹

Pomponazzi seems then to vacillate between a strong necessitation (implied by God’s immutability) and contingency (involved in God’s will to do p while he could have done not-p if he had so willed). He only briefly mentions the distinction between potentia absoluta and potentia ordinaria, and he does not insist on the alternative scenarios that are possible by God’s absolute power. He emphasizes all the time that God has ordained this world, and this fact alone bespeaks his wisdom and goodness.⁷² Of course, if he had chosen otherwise, that effect too would be good, for everything God has willed must be regarded as good, but since this world is the one God has apparently willed, the logical possibility of another world must indeed be considered to be a purely logical possibility:

Hence God has determined everything eternally, and it is not possible that God has not determined everything eternally; hence to have determined everything follows necessarily from God’s nature just as his wisdom, goodness and the other individual [attributes] (singulis) follow from his nature.⁷³

If the creation of the world follows necessarily from the divine nature just as his wisdom, goodness, and other attributes necessarily follow from his nature, alternative scenarios seem to be indeed merely logically possible. (But this would be acceptable to a Scotist whose views on modality Pomponazzi had rejected, as discussed above.) For Pomponazzi there is just this one world, willed by God from eternity (or rather willed to be produced at the time God had ordained) and though it does not add to God’s perfection, this is the world God has apparently willed.⁷⁴

We may thus conclude that Pomponazzi feels the attraction of the deterministic view according to which, as he frequently writes, God acts necessarily according to the providential order established from eternity, rolling on ineluctably. On this Pomponazzi seems to come close to Auriol, who likewise had argued (in a much more elaborate and technical way) that the application of a divided and composite sense to God does not make sense: there is no other instant at which God could have done something differently from what he actually does. Auriol equates God’s immutability with necessity, but to avoid the conclusion that God’s willing to create is necessary, Auriol, as we have seen, draws a distinction in God’s will between an external and internal aspect. Similarly, Pomponazzi rejects the traditional distinctions for much the same reason, namely that God’s immutability does not allow for considerations what God could have done differently from what he actually does. But like Auriol, Pomponazzi cannot rest the case here, and even though he does not introduce the Auriolean distinction in God’s will, he allows after all for the possibility that God could have done different from what he actually did, leaving the tension between necessitation and determinism, on the one hand, and contingency, on the other, thereby unresolved.

4 Predestination

The last topic to be discussed in order to see how Pomponazzi tries to steer between the Charybdis of determinism and the Scylla of contingency and free will is predestination, which is the main topic of the last part of book v. Again, as I will suggest, we find the same unresolved tension. The framework in which Pomponazzi discusses predestination is Aquinas’s account, summarized in seven points by Pomponazzi, followed by what is presented as a thorough refutation of Aquinas’s views. Pomponazzi then offers his own account, listing objections, offering tentative solutions, raising new objections, and so on, but concluding that all such arguments must sound like pure nonsense (deliramenta) “in the ears of philosophers” (p. 451^3–4). To understand and evaluate Pomponazzi’s critique we must briefly examine Aquinas’s position first.

Central to Aquinas’s position, as summarized by Pomponazzi, is the idea that in order to reveal his perfection God created the world in all its variety: because no finite creature can adequately reflect the infinite perfection of God, God created the great variety between species and within the species of humans. The variation in humans reveals God’s mercy and justice: his mercy when he forgives the sins of a repentant sinner, his justice when he punishes a non-repentant sinner, in short electing some, damning others. As Aquinas explains:

But it is necessary for God’s goodness, which is one and simple in itself, to be represented in a multitude of ways in the things, since created things cannot attain to God’s simplicity. And so diverse grades of things are required for the completion of the universe – with some things occupying high places and others the lowest places in the universe. And as was explained above (q. 2, a. 3, and q. 22, a. 2), in order for this multiplicity of grades to be conserved among things, God permits certain evils to be effected, lest many goods should be impeded. So, then, suppose that we think of the whole human race as a complete collection of things. God willed that some men, whom He predestines, should represent His goodness in the mode of mercy, by sparing them; and He willed that other men, whom He reprobates, should represent His goodness in the mode of justice, by punishing them. And this is the reason why God chooses some and reprobates others.⁷⁵

Evil is thus part of the variety in the world, but it too reflects God’s goodness: by permitting evil, more good may happen. Among other points Pomponazzi mentions is Aquinas’s distinction between particular and general effects of predestination. The idea is that predestination and reprobation, as general effects, are the work solely of God: there is no cause on the part of the predestined for their predestination, or on the part of the reprobates for their reprobation. “The divine goodness is the cause of predestination.”⁷⁶ However, particular effects can be the causes of other particular effects: glory is the final cause of grace and merit, while grace and merit are the material causes of glory. As James L. Halverson explains Aquinas’s position:

A particular effect of predestination can be the cause of another particular effect of predestination. For instance, glory is the final cause of grace and merit, because God’s glory revealed in saving the elect is an end to which God’s will is directed, and grace and merit are means by which this end is brought about. Thus, merit and grace are the material causes of glory, because God saves and glorifies the elect on account of the presence of grace and merit in them. In general (i.e. in taking all effects in common), however, the effect of predestination has no temporal, created cause.⁷⁷

Pomponazzi summarizes this as follows: “God has preordained that someone will be given glory from merits (ex meritis), and God has preordained that he will be given grace in order that he will merit glory.”⁷⁸

Two other points mentioned by Pomponazzi concern Aquinas’s distinction between predestination and reprobation as something intrinsic to God, on the one hand, and their effects, on the other. While predestination is most certain and infallible, it does not impose necessity on its effects. And while predestination is immune to prayers and good works, the effects of predestination can be influenced or helped by them: “Hence it should be attempted by the predestinates to act well and pray, because in this way the effects of predestination will be fulfilled in a most certain way (certitudinaliter).”⁷⁹

In his characteristically bold style, Pomponazzi rejects Aquinas’s views as “deceptions and illusions” (p. 419¹⁹). His main point of critique, surely not original with him, is that finite creatures can never represent the infinite power and perfection of God.⁸⁰ Hence, God does not need justice and mercy or anything else to reveal his perfection.⁸¹ Aquinas realizes of course that an infinite power cannot be demonstrated by a finite effect, but his answer is that creation out of nothing can do so.⁸² But if creation out of nothing is sufficient, Pomponazzi retorts, the creation of one flea instead of a whole universe would suffice. That is also the reason why Aristotelians thought that God should not be credited with an infinite power, for why would he then not create infinitely more worlds, or a perfect creature?⁸³

Pomponazzi’s second major point concerns God’s justice and misery: if these are thought to be necessary to represent the divine perfection, then sin itself must be regarded as necessary, for without sin, no mercy or justification (p. 420^5–8). But this would make God the creator of sin and evil, which brings Pomponazzi to the central problem of justifying predestination: if some are reprobated from eternity, then, given this reprobation, it is impossible for them not to sin. The sin is necessary and inevitable, and hence God punishes them for something they could not avoid, which would make God most “unjust and cruel” (p. 420^24–26).

Pomponazzi is equally scornful about Aquinas’s argument that predestination does not impose any necessity on the elect and reprobate. As Pomponazzi argues, if the reprobate does not necessarily sin, it is possible that they never sin, and in never sinning they would not reveal God’s mercy and justice, which would be against God’s intention.⁸⁴ To argue that a reprobate can not-sin in a divided sense, not in a composite sense, is, as Pomponazzi is not tired of saying, nonsense (“illusions and clearly puerile trifles,” p. 421¹³). It would amount to a change in God. Further, God has not given the power to sin for nothing, and in fact people do fall into sin all the time. This makes the Christian God worse than the Stoic God (who acts in accordance with “necessity and the nature of fate,” p. 422¹²), for he could have arranged things differently but apparently did not want to.

Aquinas’s other points provoke equally strong objections from Pomponazzi. The difference between general and particular effects does nothing to avoid the conclusion that in the end it is up to God’s will to reject or elect someone. Good works on our part cannot change God’s will. To say that people who are doomed from eternity have it in their power to sin or not to sin is saying something totally incomprehensible: “certainly I don’t know what more unintelligible can be said or thought” (p. 423¹⁹). All these answers, Pomponazzi concludes, corroborate and support rather than undermine the determinism of the Stoic position according to which, as Pomponazzi believes, God could not have done differently from what he did.⁸⁵ The Stoic position is in fact much more consistent: it does not make use of those illusionary distinctions, it does not imply any change in God, and it does not make God a voluntary source of evil.

Pomponazzi’s allegiance thus seems clear, but of course he cannot rest the case like this, for he was approaching the themes in the latter three books of De fato “in accordance with the evangelical tradition” (p. 223⁵). So what is his own answer? Despite his criticisms of Aquinas’s view, Pomponazzi’s own position does not seem too different from it. As before, he argues that this world is the one God had apparently willed. God did not need to create anything to reveal his essence but the fact that he created the world shows his will. The infinite perfection stands in no proportion to anything finite. God could have made a more beautiful world, one with many more perfect beings, “but he does not do it, because he does not will it, and no other reason for this must be sought.”⁸⁶ Given the fact that this is the world that God created, it must be considered a perfect world – perfect in the sense of complete, consisting of “its proper form and matter and all that is found therein” (p. 429¹⁶). Without one of these ingredients the universe would not be complete, just as a human being would not be complete if they lack some body parts. Because God wanted to create a complete universe, he included creatures “from the most perfect to the most imperfect and intermediate forms, the necessary and the contingent, the free and unfree.”⁸⁷ On Pomponazzi’s view then it seems that God had an idea of perfection in mind that he then wanted to see reflected in the universe. A complete world must therefore also include free will:

Therefore, the nature of a perfect universe requires that some things are not masters of their own acts, others who have mastery over their acts – and if these two natures were not present in the universe, it would certainly not have been a universe or if there was one, it would be a flawed and truncated one.⁸⁸

According to Pomponazzi, humans have been granted free will, including the potency to sin, not in order to sin – for in that case God would be the author of evil – but in order to become wiser and more virtuous in not sinning and in fighting against sins. It is therefore in humans’ own hands to become either like gods or like brutes (p. 430¹⁷). This is true in principle for all human beings, for God has given grace to everybody; God wills everybody to be saved, however not in equal measure:

Therefore, God does not will all humans to be perfected equally, but some more, some less. Hence, although he wants all humans to be blessed, he does not will them to be blessed equally; therefore, he has diversified them in complexion and in regions and in the aids to lead them to beatitude, even though without doubt he wants no one to be a sinner and be miserable.⁸⁹

This raises the obvious but difficult question why God has not willed people to be blessed in equal measure. We must here make a difference, Pomponazzi argues, between the non-elect and the elect, and among the elect between the predestined and the reprobate. Among the non-elect we find the (wise) pagans. They can attain natural beatitude if they live wisely according to the rule of nature. The other category is the elect, that is the people who have been given grace from God and who, in principle, can reach supernatural beatitude. We should not try to find a reason why God bestows grace on some, while denying it to others: this is entirely a matter of the divine will, and not dependent on merits.⁹⁰ Pomponazzi tries to soften the apparent arbitrariness of the decision by stating that God still loves the non-elect, whom God gives the possibility to attain beatitude, be it only natural beatitude. The elect, on the other hand, are those who have received God’s grace, but election does not automatically mean salvation. Only those who use their God-given grace well will be saved. Others who abuse it will be punished, in fact more harshly – because they have squandered God’s gift – than the wrongdoers among the non-elect (p. 433¹⁹). Thus, predestination can be taken in two ways: a broad (larga) sense according to which everybody (the elect, that is) has received divine grace, without the guarantee that they will be saved, and a proper (propria) sense according to which only those who are saved on account of having used divine grace well are properly called predestined.⁹¹

Pomponazzi realizes that this proposal does not solve the problem of how to reconcile God’s eternal, immutable decree and free will. If God has ordained Peter’s salvation from eternity, what role is left for Peter’s free will to merit his own salvation? And how can a reputedly immutable God change his decree, having seen the deeds of Peter? Pomponazzi introduces his distinction between God’s knowing the future as future and the future as actualized (that is, present to his eternity) to suggest an answer: “the predestination [of Peter] is not certain, yet God is most certain about Peter’s salvation or damnation” (p. 435¹²).⁹² When Peter’s possibly meritorious acting is still in the future (“in its causes”), God cannot have certainty about Peter’s fate, but of course God does have certainty in his eternal present when he sees all dimensions of time, including the future, as present: God is most certain “in so far as he sees the future as present, and the effect is outside its causes and no power is left to commit or not commit any sins (because power in its true meaning does not refer to the past or present).”⁹³ The idea then seems to be that once Peter’s life is finished, God can take stock, seeing all things as realized and present to his eternity, things which in the flow of time were still future and in their potency.

Pomponazzi hopes his tentative suggestions might teach people not to be despondent: God knows their destination, but it is still in their own hands: “if we will use God’s grace well, we are certain about our vocation (vocatio), for he has certainly given us grace. But he has promised glory not absolutely but conditionally (conditionate), a condition which we can fulfill by our free will.”⁹⁴ But it is striking that Pomponazzi does not explain how this condition can be reconciled with God’s eternal decree. And in fact, the condition is superfluous, for independent of whether Peter sins or not, he will be saved if God had chosen so.

Pomponazzi is quite aware that his tentative answers only go so far in reconciling free will and predestination, and more generally in preserving contingency in a world governed by God’s eternal plan. He raises a number of difficulties in the penultimate chapter of book v (pp. 438–443): God does not seem to want to save everyone if natural beatitude is dependent on the right use of reason (many people, babies, young children etc. lack proper reason);⁹⁵ God’s justice and mercy presuppose the existence of sins, hence God does not will that people never sin; divine justice seems arbitrary, for why does God save only some people, and why does he sometimes save those who have lived a sinful life, thereby making merits less important? Further, God’s knowledge of the future as future makes his knowledge of the number of the elect uncertain (p. 441⁸). Also, prayers do not seem to help if God foreknows such prayers or knows to which prayers he will respond and to which he will not.⁹⁶ And again: why does God not create a better world to show his perfection? Why all this diversity in the universe while he could have created just one angel or even just one flea (pulex) (p. 443^21–28) to reveal his perfection? To these difficulties Pomponazzi formulates some tentative answers, hedged by many “maybe’s.” Several answers come down to an acceptance of this universe, with its variety, seeming inequality and injustice, sins, and so on: we have to accept that God simply did not want a different world or a better world, even though he could have done so; no other cause must be sought (p. 451^1–3). All such answers may be in line with Scripture and Christian faith, but “in the ears of philosophers” they will sound as pure nonsense (deliramenta) (p. 451^3–4). The impression Pomponazzi conveys particularly in these chapters is that theology has reached its limits in trying to explain rationally what seems to defy rational argument. This brings us to the initial questions of how to interpret Pomponazzi’s arguments in the light of the overall goals of De fato.

5 Conclusion: The Limits of Rational Theology

What conclusion can we draw from Pomponazzi’s discussion “in accordance with the evangelical tradition” of the “grave” problems he sees for the Christian position? Is he undermining Christian religion? Is he, on the contrary, practicing rational theology in the spirit of his sources, who, with the exception of Aquinas, remain virtually unmentioned? Or is his aim to offer some consolation to the Christian believer by presenting some reasonable arguments that might make the believer less despondent when it comes to free will in a world ruled by God, and predestination in a divine plan already ordained from eternity? I think these interpretations can be brought into some sort of agreement by underlining what on my reading can be regarded as the main goal of De fato, namely to admit that rational theology cannot solve these issues in any rationally satisfactory manner. Pomponazzi’s aim – or at least it is, as I see it, a subtext of the work – is to point to the limits of rational theology.

There are three clear indications for this. First, Pomponazzi is very clear about the distinction between faith and (Aristotelian) philosophy. As we have already had occasion to quote him, he thinks that the via Aristotelis and the via fidei are incompatible (incompossibiles). Second, every argument he tentatively puts forward with the aim to make some sense of a seemingly inconsistent position is immediately followed by a counter-argument, and that one by another counter-argument, and so on; this may look like the usual scholastic procedure, but there is no sententia at the end but rather the radical conclusion that all this argumentation will sound foolish in the ears of the (Aristotelian-Stoic) philosophers. Third, Pomponazzi’s arguments do not excel in consistency (to say the least). Though I do not want to suggest that he deliberately offers poor arguments, his way of presenting them sometimes leaves the impression that he does not have much confidence in their validity. (Chapters frequently start with stating how difficult it is to offer some satisfactory answers to the “foregoing objections” or “doubts.”) As observed, Pomponazzi does not explain the relationship between the two modes of knowledge in God; he rejects Scotist modality but seems to accept a position of synchronic alternatives that comes close to it; he rejects traditional distinctions such as conditional and simple necessity and composite and divided sense while at the same time making use of them and speaking of God’s “presupposed determination” which comes very close to conditional necessity; he believes that God is immutable whose plan rolls on ineluctably from eternity, and yet claims that God has promised salvation “conditionally”; and so on. What can explain this vacillating attitude? Apart from his self-professed style of doubt, I suggest that Pomponazzi still feels very much the attraction of the Aristotelian-Stoic position even when dealing with the notions central to the Christian position “in accordance with the evangelical tradition.” He rejects for instance the Boethian distinctions and Scotist modality because on his understanding they compromise God’s immutability (which he equates with necessity), but in his attempt to find room for free will and contingency he himself cannot do without such distinctions.

If I am correct in my reading, the other interpretations which emphasize different aspects of Pomponazzi’s multifaceted text need not be dismissed: in pointing to the limits of rational theology Pomponazzi is not denying that the Christian position cannot be supported by reasonable arguments. Such arguments can aid the faithful in making sense of some of the “grave difficulties” that this position faces. And while arguments must be found “in accordance with the evangelical tradition” rather than in accordance with the standards of Aristotelian natural philosophy (in puris naturalibus, p. 451¹³), they are not to be dismissed for that reason; as such they engage with the theories of the theologians. However, these arguments are shown only to go so far in reconciling free will and predestination, and more generally in preserving contingency in a world governed by God’s eternal plan: the limits of such a rational theological enterprise come into view sooner or later; to that extent Pomponazzi undermines the ambitions of rational theology (and perhaps with that the consistency of “the Christian position”).

The limits become glaringly obvious when in a daring move in the epilogue Pomponazzi goes even one step further. He had believed that from a purely naturalistic, philosophical perspective the universe is one eternal causal system. But now, in one smooth movement, Pomponazzi uncouples the sublunary part of this universe from the supralunar one, characterizing the lower part as “dung” (stercora), and a place where there are virtually no good, decent people (p. 452^21–25): “it is enough that no malice is found in heaven, but below the moon everything stinks and rots as it tends to its destruction” (p. 452^26–27). Such a world full of decay cannot be of any concern to God, Pomponazzi now suggests:

I think that according to this opinion God does not know particulars, at least generable and corruptible things, unless according to species (nisi secundum speciem), however not according to the individual, because it seems difficult that God knows and wills in this way, or because he does not seem able to know infinitely many things (infinitum), or because it does not seem possible that this happens without a change in God. Although I have stated something different above, this now pleases me more.⁹⁷

Much earlier in De fato Pomponazzi had criticized such a position, there ascribed to Aristotle. As Pomponazzi had argued there, nothing escapes divine providence, and heavenly influences stretch out to the lower world.⁹⁸ Now Pomponazzi thinks that it makes more sense to put God at a distance of this world of decay: “I do not see any natural argument that would tell against this opinion” (non video rationem naturalem demonstrantem adversus istam opinionem, p. 453^6–7). It is a remarkable concession for someone who had defended a view of the universe ruled by universal causation from the highest to the lowest spheres. It would also require a reconsideration of much he had tentatively put forward in support of the Christian views of free will and of a benevolent, caring God, giving grace on the condition that people make the best of it. But more importantly, it would provide a huge challenge for the rationalist theologian, for if God is put at a distance from this rotten world (for the possible reasons Pomponazzi suggests), what would remain of the rational theologian’s task to bring together into one coherent and rationally satisfying picture a caring, benevolent and all-powerful God and human free will and contingency? This pessimist ending does not represent the best efforts Pomponazzi had put in the arguments up to then, but it shows even more clearly his daring boldness in questioning the ambitions of rational theology and pointing to its limitations.