Ii

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idea: idea, universal, form; from the Greek ἰδέα, idea (form). See forma; forma exemplaris; universalia.

ideae divinae: divine ideas; the ideas or forms of all possibles (possibilia, q.v.) that are intrinsic to the divine essence and are the exemplars or exemplary causes of things to be created. Arguably, in the simplicity of the divine essence, there is but a single idea that comprehends all possibility and that finds its expression in things insofar as it is imitable in the finite. Created things, accordingly, are made in the likeness of an idea in God, or perhaps more precisely, in the likeness of some aspect of the idea that belongs to God alone of what is possible. See causa exemplaris; forma exemplaris; idea; simplicitas Dei; universalia.

idiomata: proper qualities; the intimate attributes or properties of a thing that identify it in its individuality, i.e., that are proper to it. See attributa divina; communicatio idiomatum; proprietas; proprium.

idion deipnon (ἴδιον δεῖπνον): one’s own supper or dinner (1 Cor. 11:21), in contrast to the Lord’s Supper, which is not a meal for physical nourishment.

idiopoiēsis (ἰδιοποίησις): self-appropriation; the act of making something one’s own or taking something for one’s self.

idiopoiētikōs (ἰδιοποιητικῶς): appropriately or peculiarly belonging to a person.

ignoratio elenchi: ignorance of the dispute; specifically, the logical fallacy consisting in an ignorance of the actual point in dispute.

illocalis subsistendi modus: illocal mode of subsistence; viz., a mode or manner of individual existence characteristic of a spiritual being as opposed to a physical thing. See localis subsistendi modus; praesentia.

illuminatio: illumination; viz., the realization or actuality of grace (actus gratiae) by which the Holy Spirit instructs the sinner in and through the ministry of the Word, both to convict the individual of sin by means of the law and to convey to the sinner a knowledge of salvation by means of the gospel. Illuminatio is an application of grace and is therefore sometimes called an actus gratiae applicatricis. This application begins with conversion but continues on through sanctification as the basis of both repentance and assurance in the life of the believer. Illuminatio is therefore intimately connected with calling (vocatio, q.v.), specifically with the special or direct calling (vocatio specialis sive directa) of the Word. This illumination can be further distinguished into illuminatio imperfecta sive paedagogica, imperfect or pedagogical illumination, which is an external teaching that prepares the individual for the work of the Spirit; and illuminatio perfecta sive salutaris, perfect or salvific illumination, which is the internal teaching of the Spirit in conjunction with conversion. This latter illumination is both legalis, by means of the law, and evangelica, by means of the gospel. Furthermore, illumination is aided by the adminicula, the spiritual supports or auxiliaries: prayer (oratio), meditation (meditatio), and trial (tentatio).

Also to be noted is the philosophical meaning of illumination, rooted in medieval Augustinianism and less typical of the Protestant than of the medieval scholastics. Illuminatio here indicates the enlightenment of the mind by the divine light with archetypal ideas of truth, goodness, perfection, and so forth. According to the theory of illumination, finite truth, goodness, or perfection is recognized by means of a disposition or capacity of the mind (habitus mentis) that has been graciously instilled in the human reason by the enlightening influence of the divine ideas or rationes aeternae, the archetypal forms or universal ideas. In addition, the indirect knowledge that we have of these archetypes is the foundation of certainty. Apart from this illumination of the mind, our knowledge must rest on sense perception of the finite order, where no absolutes are given and where there is therefore no absolute certainty. This view of illumination belongs to the Augustinian tradition as defined by Bonaventure in the Middle Ages. Its underlying philosophical realism made the theory unacceptable to the more Aristotelian or conceptualist of the scholastics (Thomas and Scotus) and, of course, to the nominalists. The Protestant scholastics tend to inherit the Aristotelian view of truth (veritas, q.v.) and a generally Aristotelian epistemology. They therefore tend away from the philosophical use of illuminatio but retain the specifically theological form of the theory as related to the internal work and testimony of the Spirit. See actus; conversio; sanctificatio; testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti; universalia.

imagines Trinitatis: reflections of the Trinity. See vestigia Trinitatis.

imago Dei: image of God; sometimes imago divina: divine image; viz., that likeness or resemblance to God in which Adam and Eve were originally created and which was lost or at least so vitiated in the fall that only vestigia now remain. The Reformed and the Lutherans agree, against the Roman Catholic (and medieval scholastic) idea of a donum superadditum (q.v.), that the imago divina was not superadded to human nature but was a donum, or gift, belonging to the original human constitution and intrinsic to it, a donum concreatum (q.v.). They also agree as to its nearly complete loss and the present inability of human beings to regain any of the lost gift by their own efforts. They disagree, however, as to the precise identification of the imago. The orthodox Lutheran doctrine was constructed negatively, in reaction to Matthias Flacius’s extreme view of the fall, and positively, under the influence of a highly christological definition of the imago according to its basic substance or essence. Against Flacius’s identification of the imago Dei as the forma substantialis of humanity, the Lutheran orthodox distinguished between the substantial image of God, which is Christ himself, and the accidental image, which is the likeness of the divine in man’s original created nature. The imago substantialis is the image and essence of the Father, which Christ, as the Second Person of the Trinity, possesses in and of himself. Since the substantial image is the Son of God, then human beings neither had nor lost the substantial image; indeed, the fall did not destroy the substance of human nature, nor does grace restore or create substance in redemption. Rather, the fall brought about the loss of accidental perfections or attributes that are restored to human nature by the grace of redemption. This imago Dei accidentalis can therefore be defined precisely in terms of the gifts of grace bestowed on human beings in the work of salvation, viz., righteousness, holiness, and knowledge of God. The Lutheran dogmaticians conclude that the original imago Dei deeply vitiated in the fall consisted in the “principal perfections” of righteousness, holiness, and wisdom. All three are perfections of soul. To these they add three derivative or secondary perfections that belong to body as well as to soul: impassibility, or freedom from suffering; immortality, or freedom from dying—not in the sense of non posse mori, not capable of dying, but in the sense of posse non mori, the ability (through obedience resting on the iustitia originalis, q.v.) not to die; and dominion or power over the creation, subsidiary to and derived from the power of God, including the right to enjoy the fruits of the earth.

The Reformed agree that the imago is accidental, not substantial, so that it was both capable of being passed on and capable of being lost. They do not, however, emphasize as strongly the christological element of the doctrine of the imago in human beings and therefore tend not to juxtapose the concept of the imago substantialis with the imago accidentalis. Instead, the Reformed argue that Christ, as Son of God and Second Person of the Trinity, is the imago Dei invisibilis, the image of invisible God, and thus may be called the essential or natural image of God (imago Dei essentialis sive naturalis) in his equality with the Father, not in the sense of his being an archetype for humanity. In addition, the Reformed do not make the distinction between primary and secondary perfections but join body and soul together more closely in the definition of the imago. Thus the Reformed argue that although the imago is not substantial, nevertheless it belongs to the whole essence of the human being, to the primary faculties of the soul (intellectus and voluntas, q.v.) and all of its virtues, and because of the intimate relation of soul to body, to the body as well. The imago, then, belongs to the body in a derivative sense, but it is the whole imago that pertains to the body in this derived sense and not merely a set of secondary perfections. Rather than a primary attribute of holiness, therefore, the Reformed argue for a perfect blessedness of body and soul. To this they add, in agreement with the Lutherans, a high original wisdom, implying both true knowledge of God and true knowledge of self, as well as original righteousness and dominion over the creation. Beyond this, the Reformed also argue that the liberum arbitrium (q.v.), free judgment or free choice, was part of the original imago and was retained, albeit vitiated, in fallen human nature. The liberum arbitrium, defined originally by the posse non peccare (q.v.), is fundamental to the imago since, together with the gracious support of God, it is the freedom of choosing the good that perpetuates (or could have perpetuated) the attribute of original righteousness. This original freedom of choice, then, was the freedom to obey God perfectly. Of course, the will itself, considered as a faculty, is not lost in the fall; neither is the intellect, the affections, or the basic inward capacity to know the good (see conscientia; synderesis): these are merely vitiated, distorted, deprived of righteousness, and enslaved to sin. The sin that brings about the loss or, more precisely, the profound distortion of the imago, is not an absolute privation of being (privatio pura) but a partial privation of attributes in a substance (privatio non pura). The Reformed therefore make a further distinction between the imago Dei intrinseca, the intrinsic image of God, consisting in the faculties of intellect and will, the affections, and the conscience (or at least the capacity to know good, the synderesis), i.e., the imago abstractly or metaphysically considered, and the imago Dei extrinseca, the extrinsic image of God, consisting in these faculties in their righteousness, holiness, and purity, i.e., the imago concretely and ethically considered. Whereas the imago in the former sense can be said to remain as one aspect of the essence of humanity, the imago in the latter sense is clearly lost in the fall. The regenerate (renati) do not regain by grace all that was lost in the fall, although the sanctifying grace of the Spirit does restore some of the original righteousness and knowledge of self. The Reformed, therefore, speak of an imago spiritualis, or spiritual image, of God in the regenerate.

Finally, the Reformed agree with the Lutherans in allowing that Adam was in some sense immortal and had the posse non mori, but they do not include this ability in the imago itself; instead, it rests on the right exercise of freedom of choice. This immortality, then, is the result of righteousness and, according to the Reformed, does not exclude a physical mortality related to bodily mutability and the need for sustenance. This immortality is a derivation from the imago rather than an aspect of it. The difference here with the Lutherans consists only in the Lutheran inclusion of derived attributes in the imago as secondary perfections belonging principally to the body. See homo; imago Satanae; privatio; privatio boni.

imago Satanae: image of Satan; a term used by the Lutheran theologian Flacius in his extreme view of the fall. He argued that the fall resulted in the loss of the entire imago Dei and therefore in the alteration of the forma substantialis of humanity from good to evil, so that the original righteous forma (q.v.) of humanity, the imago Dei (q.v.), was replaced by a new and utterly depraved form, the imago Satanae, which could be saved only through a new creation by grace.

imitatio Christi: imitation of Christ; a central theme in Christian piety and spirituality from Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century onward; also the title of a book on this theme, attributed to Thomas à Kempis. The term imitatio Christi indicates the form of spirituality that uses the loving, obedient, servant-like life of Christ, including his passion, as the model for Christian living. The early patristic stress on imitation grew out of persecution and emphasized the path to martyrdom and individual acceptance of the cross. The medieval form of the teaching, brought to fulfillment in à Kempis’s work, is a form of this-worldly mysticism that describes the spiritual life and the interior discipline necessary to inculcate a Christlike perfection in this life. This model became typical of the Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devotion, of the fifteenth century. Along with à Kempis’s work, the theme of imitatio Christi was also important for Protestant devotional literature, especially the Dutch Nadere Reformatie.

immaculata conceptio: immaculate conception; viz., the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was conceived sinless so that she would be a fitting vessel for the conception of Christ. The doctrine was developed and hotly contested among the medieval doctors; Thomas Aquinas denied the concept; Duns Scotus argued for its logical probability and, on the basis of probability, its validity. The immaculate conception is universally rejected by the Reformers as unnecessary to ensure the sinless nature of Christ. Note that the word immaculata is used with direct reference to the basic characterization of sin as macula (q.v.), or stain.

immediatio suppositi: the immediacy of the self-subsistent individual or being, specifically, of God in his omnipraesentia (q.v.). See concursus.

immediatio virtutis: the immediacy of effective power, specifically, of the divine omnipotentia (q.v.). See concursus.

immensitas: immeasurability; especially the immensitas Dei, or immeasurability of God. By this attribute the scholastics indicate the freedom of God from all limit of place. The divine essence is sine mensura, without measure, and fills all things repletively (see repletivus). Immensitas can be distinguished from omnipraesentia (q.v.), or omnipresence. The freedom of God from all limit of place or measure, i.e., immensitas, properly describes God in eternity apart from all created place; omnipraesentia, strictly defined, indicates the repletive presence of God in all created places and in relation to the limited presence of all creatures. Of course, place (locus) as such is characteristic of the finite, created order, without which there could be no place. The scholastics do not understand either place or space as an absolute. Thus immensitas is an immanent, essential attribute of God in his distinction from the world, whereas omnipraesentia is a relative attribute that expresses the noncircumscriptive presence of God: God is illocalis, or nonlocal, and his presence is intensiva, indivisibilis, and incomprehensibilis.

immortalitas: immortality; an attribute or property of all spiritual being that, insofar as it is immaterial and simple, is not subject to the dissolution that affects all material and complex substances. Thus the soul (anima, q.v.) is immortal, not only by grace (per gratiam) but also by its own nature (per naturam suam). This immortality of soul is not, however, an absolute immortality. The scholastics note that the soul takes its origin from God, is therefore contingent on the divine will for its existence, and could be destroyed by God, indeed, would cease to be without the continuing providential support of God (see concursus; creatio continuata). The soul is immortal in the sense that it cannot be destroyed or dissolved by finite or secondary causes. The same considerations apply to angels. Absolute immortality, i.e., absolute, noncontingent, self-existent, and necessary life, belongs only to God. The immortalitas Dei can be argued for in terms of the immateriality or spirituality (spiritualitas, q.v.) and the simplicity (simplicitas, q.v.) of God. God as spirit is not subject to dissolution, and as absolute, infinite spirit does not belong, as finite spirits do, to the contingent order. God’s immortality is also, and more properly, a function of the divine life (vita Dei, q.v.) that God has of himself. This divine life, by virtue of which God is eternally active, is identical with the divine essence. Since it is of the very essence of God that God lives or, in other words, that God exists (see actus purus), God is immortal in an absolute sense. Conversely, any being not absolutely immortal could not be God. See immutabilitas.

immutabilitas: immutability, changelessness; especially the immutabilitas Dei, or immutability of God, according to which God is understood as free from all mutation of being, attributes, place, or will and from all physical and ethical change; in other words, the immutabilitas Dei indicates the eternal and perpetual identity of the divine essence with all its perfections. Specifically, immutability of being (esse, q.v.) indicates the immortalitas (q.v.), or immortality, and incorruptibilitas, or incorruptibility, of God; immutability of attributa or accidentia indicates the changelessness of divine perfections; immutability of locus, or place, refers to the omnipraesentia (q.v.), or omnipresence, of God that fills all things; and immutability of voluntas (q.v.), or will, refers to the divine constancy in all that has been decreed and promised. God therefore does not repent; repentance is attributed to God in Scripture by anthropopathy (anthrōpopatheia, q.v.) and indicates, not a change in God, but rather a changed relationship between God and man. Neither does creation imply a change in God and a denial of immutability. The scholastics distinguish between the principium agendi, or effective principle in creation, which is the divine essence itself, and the effectum productum, or produced effect, in creation, which is the created order. In the produced effect there is clearly change or mutation. The creation is a movement from nonexistence to existence. But in the effective principle, God, there is no change or mutation, since God eternally and immutably wills to produce the creation. The change that occurs in creation is external to God. See fidelitas.

impanatio: impanation; viz., the presence of the body of Christ in pane, in the bread of the sacrament, as opposed both to the theory of transubstantiatio (q.v.) and to the theories of illocal and spiritual presence. See consubstantiatio; praesentia illocalis sive definitiva; praesentia spiritualis sive virtualis.

impassibilitas: impassibility, absence of passions; a term sometimes used with reference to the divine essence, but seldom listed among the divine attributes by the Protestant orthodox, who, in continuity with patristic and medieval usage, indicate quite specifically the absence of suffering in God. The attribution of impassibility to God does not, however, imply an absence of relationality, but only of such relationality as causes suffering, understood specifically as a negative relation productive of a mutation in being. The Protestant orthodox assume that God has affections (affectiones). See affectio; passiones.

impeccabilitas: sinlessness. See anamartēsia.

imperium dominicum: lordly command. See lex paradisiaca.

impetratio: impetration, accomplishment; a term mostly used to indicate the objective accomplishment of Christ’s satisfaction as the payment for sin, as distinguished from the applicatio salutis, the application of salvation or application of Christ’s merit to the elect or believers. Various Reformed writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries preferred the distinction between impetratio and applicatio to the more typical distinction between the sufficiency (sufficientia, q.v.) and efficiency (efficientia, q.v.) or efficacy of Christ’s work. See satisfactio vicaria.

impii: the impious; hence, sinners, as in such usages as iustificatio impii, the justification of the sinner.

impoenitentia finalis: final impenitence; i.e., the condition of those who die unregenerate. See intuitu incredulitatis finalis; peccatum in Spiritum Sanctum.

impossibile: impossible; that which cannot be, as opposed to necessaria (q.v.), necessary, that which cannot not be and cannot be otherwise. See contingentia; impossibilia; necessaria; possibile; possibilia.

impossibilia: impossibles, impossible things; in an absolute sense, those things that cannot be (quod non potest esse) because they imply a contradiction. Further distinctions, however, must be made inasmuch as there are things that can be identified as impossible—namely, that cannot be—but that nevertheless do not involve a contradiction. Thus a distinction can be made between things impossible by nature (impossibilia natura), i.e., absolute impossibilities, and impossibilities of nature (impossibilia naturae), specifically things that finite natures cannot accomplish but that are possible for God (possibilia Deo). A tripartite distinction can also be made, among things that are absolutely impossible (absolute impossibile) as involving a contradiction; things that are relatively impossible (impossibile secundum quid), which would reference things strictly impossible by nature; and things that are conditionally or hypothetically impossible (impossibile ex hypothesi), given a prior condition. Absolute impossibilities include such things as square circles, a human being who is a stone, or the nearly proverbial Aristotelian “goat-stag.” Relative impossibilities, impossible for nature, include such events as something being made out of nothing, a virgin conceiving, or heavy things ascending of their own accord. Conditional impossibilities (which coincide with necessities of the consequence) include secondary causes not operating when the primary cause concurs in their operation or for something to be other than what it is when it is what it is. See necessaria; necessitas consequentiae; possibilia; secundum quid.

improprie: improperly or loosely; as in an improper predication or something loosely (latè) rather than strictly (strictè) understood. See proprie.

impulsum scribendi. See mandatum scribendi.

imputatio: imputation, an act of attribution; specifically, either (1) imputatio peccati, the imputation of sin, or (2) imputatio satisfactionis Christi, the imputation of the satisfaction of Christ, which are parallel imputations following a pattern reminiscent of the patristic conception of recapitulatio (q.v.).

Imputatio peccati is distinguished into imputatio mediata and imputatio immediata, mediate and immediate imputation. Mediate imputation refers to the divine attribution of sinfulness to all human beings because of their corruptio haereditaria, or hereditary corruption. The imputation is mediate, since it is contingent upon the natural corruption of individual human beings. Immediate imputation, by contrast, refers to the divine attribution of sinfulness to human beings because of the fall; i.e., it is the immediate attribution of the fall itself to all the progeny of Adam and Eve, apart from their hereditary corruption. The imputation is immediate because it is not contingent upon the corruption of individual human beings. Scholastic Lutheranism tended to recognize both an imputatio mediata and an imputatio immediata; the Reformed, however, in accordance with the principles of covenant theology and their view of Adam as federal head, tended toward imputatio immediata to the exclusion of a theory of mediate imputation. Only the renegade school of Saumur tended in the opposite direction, teaching an imputatio mediata only. This view was rejected by the orthodox Reformed as standing in conflict with and prejudicial to the imputatio satisfactionis Christi. In the era of orthodoxy both the Socinians and the Arminians denied any imputatio peccati.

Imputatio satisfactionis Christi is the objective basis of justification by grace through faith. Christ’s payment for sin is imputed to the faithful, who could not of themselves make payment; the unrighteous are accounted righteous on the grounds of their faith. The orthodox Reformed argued that, since Christ’s righteous satisfaction was imputed immediately to believers without any righteousness being present in or satisfaction made by them before the imputation, the imputation of sin must also be immediate; if not, injustice would be done to Christ’s work. See peccatum originale; satisfactio vicaria.

in abstracto: in the abstract; with reference to an abstraction, as opposed to in concreto (q.v.), in the concrete, or with reference to a concretum (q.v.). The abstract/concrete distinction has numerous applications, inasmuch as something considered in abstracto can be understood as it is essentially, apart from particular times, places, incidental properties, or associated ideas. Thus, e.g., reason (ratio, q.v.) considered in abstracto is the rational faculty as created and as it ought to be apart from the problem of the fall, whereas in concreto, reason has been weakened by the fall and altered in its scope by grace, albeit not fully repaired.

In the problem of the communicatio idiomatum (q.v.), as debated by the Reformed and the Lutherans, the question arises as to whether or not attributes, considered in abstracto, can be predicated of the person of Christ (which is a concretum) and referred or communicated from the abstractum (q.v.) of one nature to the abstractum of the other. The Reformed contend that abstracta cannot be predicated of each other or predicated of concreta. Thus divinity (an abstraction) cannot be predicated of humanity (an abstraction), nor can divinity be predicated of the man Jesus (a concretion) or humanity of God (a concretion). Rather, the attributes of both natures can be predicated of the concretum of Christ’s divine-human person, and because of the unio personalis (q.v.), the concreta of the natures can be predicated of each other. Thus the man Jesus is God. The Reformed argue that to predicate divine attributes of the human nature of Christ is to predicate abstracta of an abstractum and, therefore, an error—a communicatio idiomatum in abstracto.

The Lutheran response agrees that predication is correctly made in concreto and incorrectly made in abstracto, so that it is proper to say that the man Jesus is God and improper to claim that humanity is divinity. They argue, however, that the predication of divine attributes of the human nature arises out of the presence of the human concretum in and with the concretum of the divine person through the unio personalis (q.v.), or personal union. It is therefore incorrect to call the Lutheran view a communicatio idiomatum in abstracto.

in actu: in the state or condition of actualization; in actuality. The scholastics distinguish between an operative faculty in the state of primary actualization, in actu primo, and an operative faculty in the state of secondary actualization, in actu secundo. There is a sense in which a being or a substance endowed with operative faculties like intellect and will is actualized, or in actu, simply by being what it is, apart from the consideration of the operations of the faculties. This condition of simply being what it is with its faculties is the condition of primary actualization; the being or substance is in actu primo. Thus the intellect as having the potency to understand is in actu primo. The condition of the being in the actual exercise of its faculties is the condition of secondary actualization; the being is considered to be in actu secundo. Thus the intellect as actively understanding is in actu secundo.

In finite, temporal creatures a real distinction obtains between being in actu primo and being in actu secundo, since the faculties of intellect and will are not in eternal or perpetual operation. In God, however, the distinction is merely rational or, in the Scotist form of the argument, formal—since there is in God no movement from potency to actuality, no coming into operation of operative faculties, no real distinction between a faculty and its operation, or between an attribute and the divine essence (see attributa divina; distinctio). With the qualification that it is merely rational or formal, however, a distinction can be made between the mind and will of God as such and the operation or exercise of knowing and willing in God or, further, between the life of God as such and the ad intra activity or operations in which that life is eternally expressed. See opera Dei ad intra; vita Dei.

in carne / in gratia / in gloria: in the flesh / in grace / in glory; a way of referring to the three advents of Christ. See adventus Christi.

in communi: in common.

in concreto: in the concrete, or with reference to the concrete thing, as opposed to in abstracto (q.v.).

in consideratione legis: in consideration of or with reference to the law.

in defectu: in defect or defective; contrasted with in excessu (q.v.).

in esse: in existence; i.e., having actual existence as opposed to being in potency (in potentia, q.v.). See actus; esse; potentia.

in excessu: in excess, excessive; contrasted with in defectu, in defect or defective; terms indicating a misuse or imbalance of ideas or principles in a systematic exposition. The Reformed orthodox speak, e.g., of the medieval scholastic use of philosophy in theological system as in excessu and of the Anabaptist scorn of philosophy as usus in defectu, contrasting both cases with their own use of philosophy within the proper limits.

in foro: in the forum, in court.

in foro conscientiae: in the court of conscience. See conscientia.

in foro divino: literally, in the divine forum; i.e., before the divine court or assize; a metaphorical way of describing the pattern of humanity’s reconciliation before God as actus forensis (q.v.), or forensic act.

in foro interiore: in the inner court; viz., in the court of conscience. See conscientia.

in infinitum: without limit.

in lapsu: in the fall. See infra lapsum.

in ordine naturae: in the order of nature, in a natural order; i.e., in order of natural priorities that are neither a matter of reason and logic nor of time. See in ordine temporis; in signo rationis; prioritas naturae.

in ordine temporis: in the order of time, in a temporal order; in a temporal sequence rather than in a rational, logical order or in a natural ordering. See in ordine naturae; in signo rationis; prioritas temporis.

in patria: in the fatherland; viz., in paradise, or in the place and condition of the blessed (beati, q.v.), who are no longer wanderers or pilgrims in search of the heavenly city, but who have found the city that is to come. See in via.

in posse: in potency. See in potentia.

in potentia: in potency or potential; i.e., capable of being or becoming but not yet existent or actualized. See actus; in actu; potentia.

In propria causa nemo iudex: No one can be judge in one’s own cause or case.

in propria persona: in one’s own person or on one’s own behalf.

in proximo gradu: in the next or nearest degree.

in puncto rationis: in point of reason.

in puris naturalibus: in a purely natural condition. See status purorum naturalium.

in re: in the thing or in the matter or transaction. See universalia.

in rerum natura: in the nature of things; i.e., belonging to the fundamental actuality of existents. See ex rerum natura; natura; res.

in se: in itself; often indicating consideration of a thing as such or according to its essence as distinguished from consideration of the thing secundum quid (q.v.), relatively or “according to another,” namely, in relation to other things. The distinction between in se and secundum quid parallels the distinction between absolutus (q.v.) and relativus. In discussion of the doctrine of God, in se bears basically the same sense as ad intra. See opera Dei ad intra.

in sensu composito: in the composite or compound sense. See sensus compositus; simultas potentiae.

in sensu diviso: in the divided sense. See sensus compositus; sensus divisus; simultas potentiae.

in signo rationis: in the sign of reason or in the relation of reason; in a purely rational manner or relationship; viz., from the standpoint or perspective of reason; a term used to identify rational as opposed to temporal and essential or natural distinctions in order; thus as opposed to being in a temporal order (in ordine temporis) or in a natural order (in ordine naturae). Thus divine attributes, which have neither an essential priority over one another (inasmuch as they are essentially identical, albeit formally or rationally distinct) nor a temporal priority over one another in exercise, can have a priority in signo rationis. The intellectualist model can argue for the priority of the divine intellect over the divine will, the voluntarist model for the divine will over the divine intellect. The notion of distinctions in signo rationis relates directly to the concept of instants of nature (instantes naturae, q.v.), or moments (momenta) that are logical and not temporal. There can therefore be an ordo rerum decretarum (q.v.) in the Godhead, in which gradations or degrees (gradus) can be rationally distinct and logically ordered by priority, albeit not temporally distinguished. See attributa divina; supra lapsum.

in solidum: as a whole or for the whole; also in solido.

in spe: in hope.

in specie: in kind. See species.

in subiecto: in the subject; specifically, an idea or concept as it appears in a knowing subject, as opposed to the idea or concept given objectively in itself (in se).

in testimonium: in testimony or in witness.

in via: literally, on the way; a term applied to the viator (q.v.), or Christian pilgrim in the world, on the way to heavenly reward and blessedness. See in patria.

incarnandus/incarnatus: to be incarnate / incarnate or incarnated; an important distinction regarding the divine Logos, or Word of God. The Word of God (Verbum Dei, q.v.), understood as the Second Person of the Trinity, can be considered in his eternal Godhead, in his revelatory work throughout history before the incarnation, or in his work as the incarnate Lord. In the first two senses, the Word is not incarnate but is, nevertheless, not ever severed or divorced from incarnation in the eternal plan or purpose of God (consilium Dei, q.v.). In particular, the revelatory work of the Word in the Old Testament represents a foreshadowing of incarnation. Thus both eternally and in the Old Testament history, the Word may be called the Logos incarnandus, the Word to be incarnate. Once the consilium Dei has been executed in time and from thence to eternity, the Word is Logos incarnatus, the Word incarnate as the divine-human person of Christ. See ensarkos; incarnatio; unio personalis.

incarnatio: incarnation; viz., the unition (unitio), or act of uniting, human nature with the Logos, or Word, accomplished by the Word in his assumption of a human nature, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, into the unity of his person. Like all the opera Dei ad extra, or outwardly directed works of God, the incarnation is defined as an opus commune, or common work, of the Godhead. Thus the Logos, the Word or Son, does not incarnate himself apart from the will of the Father and the Spirit. Scripture speaks of the sending of the Son by the Father (Gal. 4:4); of the assumption of flesh by the Word, or Son, himself (John 1:14); and of the conception of Christ by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18). The Protestant scholastics therefore distinguish between (1) the opus, or work, of incarnation considered efficiently (efficienter) and in terms of origin (inchoative) and (2) the work of incarnation considered with a view toward its end, or terminatively (terminative). Efficiently and inchoatively it is the work of the undivided Trinity; terminatively it is the work of the Son. Thus incarnation can be called an opus mixtum, or mixed work.

The language employed by both Lutheran and Reformed orthodox to describe or define incarnation follows the tradition of the later fathers and medieval doctors in identifying the persona Christi, or person of Christ, as the Second Person of the Trinity, or Son, who in the assumptio carnis, or assumption of the flesh, unites with a non-self-subsistent, impersonal, or anhypostatic human nature (see anhypostasis; enhypostasis); the human nature is assumed into the unity of the person. The scholastics also therefore conclude that incarnation does not amount to a denial of divine immutability (immutabilitas, q.v.), insofar as the divine person of the Son undergoes no change in himself but rather executes in time his own eternal will. The change lies in the produced effect, in the human nature of Christ and in the relationship between humanity and God brought about in and through the incarnation.

The orthodox also describe at length the work of the Spirit in incarnation: the Spirit’s work is formativa, or δημιουργική (dēmiourgikē), in the conception of Christ by the Virgin; sanctificativa, or ἁγιαστική (hagiastikē), in the cleansing and sanctifying of the human nature of Christ; coniunctiva, or τελειωτική (teleiōtikē), in relation to the incarnating work of the Logos. Thus the unio personalis (q.v.), or personal union, of the divine and human natures occurs according to the will of the Father, through the formative and sanctifying work of the Spirit, in conjunction with the action of the Logos assuming the flesh or human nature.

Within this union, the orthodox describe a communio naturarum (q.v.), or communion of natures, resulting from their perfect relation in the unio personalis. Lutherans and Reformed disagree radically over the implications of the communio naturarum for the human nature: in the Lutheran view, divine attributes are communicated to the human nature without the loss of human attributes; in the Reformed view, no such communication of proper qualities (communicatio idiomatum, q.v.) takes place, but rather there is a verbal predication (praedicatio verbalis, q.v.) in which the attributes of both natures are predicated of the person only. See ensarkos; persona Christi.

inclinatio ad malum acquisita: an acquired inclination to evil. See peccatum habituale acquisitum.

incompossibilia: incompossibles or noncompossibles, absolute contradictories; i.e., things or properties of things that by themselves may be possible but that cannot be possible together. See contradictoria; impossibilia; necessaria; possibilia.

incrementa fidei: increments of faith; viz., the growth and increase of faith following the initial experience of justification; in later pietist orthodoxy, one of the necessary or essential attributes of saving faith, the others being perseverantia (q.v.) and bona opera, good works springing from a living faith.

independentia: independence; specifically, the independentia Dei, independence of God. As a divine attribute, independence indicates the ontological independence of God from the created order and stands as a corollary of both the all-sufficiency (omnisufficientia, q.v.) of God and the self-existence (aseitas, q.v.) of God. God is independent of all created things insofar as he stands in no need whatsoever of the created order; God is self-sufficient or all-sufficient in his being. The concept does not imply a lack of relationship to creation; rather, it manifests God as the necessary being on whom all finite things depend. If God were not independent, there would be no ontological or providential ground of the existence of finite, nonnecessary, or contingent things. Similarly, God, in order to be God, must be independent in the sense of being self-existent and prior to all other beings and therefore not owing his existence to a prior and higher source. If there were such a source for the existence of God, not only would God lack independence, God also would not be God. See attributa divina.

indifferentia: indifference, arbitrariness; particularly, indifferentia voluntatis, indifference of the will, as an explanation of free choice, characteristic of early modern Jesuit theology and some Lutheran patterns of argumentation. Reformed theologians could agree that there is a root sense in which—in its primary actuality (actus primus, q.v.), prior to operation—the will is indifferent, having not engaged in a prior choice with regard to particular objects, but they deny indifference in the secondary actuality (actus secundus), or operative life of the will. See in actu; liberum arbitrium.

individualitas: individuality; specifically, the property that identifies something as an individual distinct from other individuals of the same kind. See principium individuationis.

individuum: an individual thing, as opposed to a plurality of things; also, by extension, the term predicated of an individual thing. Individuum and suppositum are synonymous.

inexistentia: inexistence or mutual interexistence; i.e., existing or subsisting in another. See circumincessio; emperichōrēsis.

infantes fidelium: children of the faithful; a term referring to all the offspring of believers; used by the orthodox to identify specifically the unbaptized children of believers, who are recognized, because of the faith of the community into which they have been born, as members of the people of God. The Reformed, in particular, claim covenant membership for the infantes fidelium, and some of the later orthodox Lutherans also use covenantal language in describing the place of newborn and as-yet-unbaptized children in the church. The concept is of particular importance in arguing the probable salvation of unbaptized children who die in infancy.

infinitas: infinitude; especially the infinitas essentiae Dei, or infinitude of the divine essence. By infinitas Dei the scholastics understand the limitlessness of the divine essence in one or another of two ways: either (1) in contrast to both time and place, namely, as eternity (aeternitas, q.v.) and immensity or omnipresence (see immensitas; omnipraesentia); or (2) in contrast to time and paired or coordinated with immensity. In the latter model, infinitas and immensitas are the ad intra attributes; aeternitas and omnipraesentia are their ad extra relational analogues standing, respectively, over against time and space or place. Identifying God as infinite marks a significant departure of scholastic theology from Aristotle, who associated infinity with physical magnitude.

The divine infinitas can also be described negatively and positively. It is not an infinity of corporeal quantity or extension but rather an infinity defined by the absence of limit; positively, it is an infinite superiority over all things. In addition this infinitas Dei or infinitas essentiae ought not to be viewed as an isolated attribute but as a property of the divine essence that extends to each and every one of the divine attributes, so that the divine knowledge or scientia is omniscientia (q.v.), the divine potentia is omnipotentia (q.v.), and so forth. Divine infinity, therefore, reflects the divine transcendence and serves to define it as a categorical transcendence that does not render God either distant or in some sense outside of the world order. Rather, it identifies God as incapable of being grasped in terms of finite categories of knowing, as the maxim Finitum non capax infiniti (q.v.) indicates. See ad intra; attributa Dei; opera Dei ad intra.

infirmitates communes: common infirmities; i.e., the weaknesses or infirmities that after the fall beset the whole human race, such as hunger, thirst, pain, and anxiety; as distinguished from infirmitates personales, the personal infirmities resulting from heredity or personal excess or specific disease, which are not common to all human beings without exception. See anamartēsia.

infra lapsum: below or subsequent to the fall; as opposed to supra lapsum (q.v.); the usual identification of the human objects of divine willing in the infralapsarian understanding of predestination, according to which God eternally wills the salvation of some persons out of the fallen mass of humanity. Some of the Reformed orthodox (e.g., Turretin, Institutio theologiae elencticae 4.9.3, 30) prefer to use the term in lapsu, in the fall, rather than infra lapsum, holding that the object of God’s eternal willing is not humanity after the fall so much as humanity considered corporately in the fall. In this usage, the term infra lapsum is reserved for those who, like the Arminians, understand the object of divine willing as after the fall and after the promise of redemption, and foreknown either as believers or unbelievers. See praedestinatio.

inhaerens in re: immanent; literally, inherent or inhering in things.

initio: beginning; initio mundi: beginning of the world. See creatio; ex nihilo.

innascibilitas: innascibility; the condition or property of not being begotten, i.e., unbegottenness, the Latin equivalent of agennēsia. Innascibilitas is therefore the personal property (see proprietas) or hypostatic character (character hypostaticus, q.v.) of God the Father. See Trinitas.

inscriptio legis Dei in corda: the inscription of the law of God upon the heart; one of the benefits of the new covenant revealed in Jeremiah 31:33. The term is used in Reformed federalism in its description of the foedus gratiae (q.v.) in its evangelical administratio.

insitio in Christum: literally, engrafting into Christ; standing in Christ or being in Christ. See unio mystica; vocatio.

inspiratio: inspiration; a term used to describe the role of the Spirit in the composition of Scripture. Since spiratio (q.v.), spiration, is the activity of Spirit, inspiratio is an apt term for the inworking of Spirit. The inspiration of human authors, and hence of the text written by them, in no way deprives them even momentarily of their reason, their usual forms of expression, or the thought patterns typical of their time in history and specific culture. In their locus de Scriptura Sacra, the Protestant scholastics are careful to balance the human and divine elements in Scripture. Inspiration provides a guarantee of the truth of the text and of its authority in matters of faith and practice. It also serves to underline the traditional assumption of the infallibility of the text, specifically the freedom of the text from error in both its literal and its spiritual senses while at the same time allowing for the accommodation of the language to human forms and conventions. See accommodatio; afflatus; authoritas Scripturae; spiratio; theopneustos.

instans: adj., present; n., moment. See instantes naturae.

instantes naturae: instants of nature; namely, logical or, as some would translate the term, structural moments or instants that are ordered logically but not temporally. In some cases, momenta is used in place of instantes. This terminology is found in medieval and early modern scholastic discussions of divine knowing and willing. Thus, e.g., it can be argued that God knows all possibilities in a first instant of nature, all concatenations of compossibles in a second instant, and these specific concatenations of compossibles that he will actualize in a third instant—without implying discursive knowing or a temporal order of knowing. See in signo rationis.

institutio: instruction, the formal basis for education; a term used in the titles of several important classical works: Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria; the Roman manuals of jurisprudence, Institutiones iuris civilis; Lactantius’s Divinae institutiones; and Cassiodorus’s Institutiones divinarum et saecularium lectionum. From these works, the title passes over into the Reformation in Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis. It was subsequently used by the early orthodox Reformed theologian Bucanus, Institutiones theologicae seu locorum communium christianae religionis—a conscious echo of Calvin—and by the Arminian Simon Episcopius, Institutiones theologiae. In all cases the term indicates an instruction basic to the discipline.

instrumenta operativa sive effectiva: operative or effective instruments; viz., the Word and the sacraments. See media gratiae; organa gratiae et salutis.

instrumentum: instrument; a means, or medium, used to bring about a desired effect.

instrumentum aergon (ἀεργόν): an inactive or inoperative instrument; as distinguished from an instrumentum συνεργόν (synergon), a cooperative instrument.

instrumentum arbitrarium: a voluntarily chosen instrument or means, as distinct from an instrumentum necessarium, necessary instrument; a distinction used in discussions of the mediate providential working of God, in which God administers or governs the world order using the things of his order as instruments or means of governance. God, in other words, is not bound to particular instruments or modes of instrumental causality but can employ instrumenta arbitraria. See providentia.

instrumentum coniunctum: a conjoined or conjunctive instrument; also instrumentum unitum (q.v.). In Christology, the human nature of Christ may be called an instrumentum of the Word; yet it is not an instrumentum separatum (q.v.), or separated instrument, since it is in union with the Word, indeed personally conjoined (personaliter coniunctum) to the Word.

instrumentum iustificationis: instrument of justification; i.e., faith. Justification is accomplished by grace in an actus forensis on the basis of faith. Both the Lutherans and the Reformed view faith as a passive instrument in justification, since faith does not cause justification but is the medium lēptikon (q.v.) of justification.

instrumentum necessarium: a necessary instrument or necessary means. See instrumentum arbitrarium.

instrumentum separatum: a separate or separated instrument; also instrumentum assumptum sive extrinsecum: an assumed or extrinsic instrument; an implement or tool (organum) assumed by an agent for use in an action or work, but which is physically or ontologically distinct from the agent.

instrumentum unitum: a joined or united instrument; also instrumentum coniunctum (q.v.); i.e., an implement or tool united or conjoined with the active agent in its work or activity.

integritas: integrity, soundness of health in body and soul, purity, uprightness; specifically, the condition of humanity in the state of integrity (status integritatis, q.v.) as created in the imago Dei (q.v.).

intellectus: intellect, understanding; viz., the faculty of the soul that knows, makes or passes judgment (iudicium, q.v.), and assents to the truth of what it knows, as opposed to voluntas (q.v.), or will, the faculty of soul that reaches out to objects and goals. Intellect conjoins with will in human free choice (liberum arbitrium, q.v.), presenting the will with objects and with judgments concerning their theoretical and/or practical goodness, acceptability, or usefulness. Intellect and will also conjoin in faith (fides, q.v.), which consists both in knowledge and in the faithful apprehension of the knowledge for oneself (fiducia, q.v.). Intellect, like will, is immaterial, though as a faculty of soul it is substantial. A distinction must be made between intellectus separatus, a separated intellect that does not exist in union with a body, e.g., an angel, and intellectus coniunctus, a conjoined intellect that exists in union with and in relation to a body, e.g., the human soul. See intellectus practicus; intellectus theoreticus; spiritus completus; spiritus incompletus.

intellectus agens: agent intellect, active intellect. All human beings have a capacity or disposition to understand, namely, the possible intellect (intellectus possibilis, q.v.) that belongs to the faculties of the soul even when dormant, which is to say, the intellect need not be active: it has a preoperational reality, existing in its primary actuality (actus primus, q.v.) prior to any activity. The active or agent intellect is the intellect engaged in its task, the operation of intellect in its secondary actuality (actus secundus, q.v.). Since, moreover, the active intellect is an operation or activity, it is not the inward location of the ideas of things: rather, it is the operation of the active intellect to abstract what is intelligible, namely, ideas or universals, from the images of things, or phantasma (q.v.), provided by the senses and to impress the universal, or species (q.v.), on the mental substrate, which is the possible intellect. The universal, or species, as impressed on the possible intellect is the species impressa.

One of the several arguments of Avicenna, Averroes, and the so-called Latin Averroists, rejected by Christian theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages and early modern era (beginning in the thirteenth century), was the claim of a single or unified Agent Intellect: they held that by nature human beings have only a disposition to understand, a possible intellect, which cannot be self-moved from possibility or potency to actuality. This actualization of understanding, particularly the human apprehension of universals, was ascribed to a mediating Intelligence emanated from God. The Avicennan and Averroistic theories were rejected as forms of pantheism and, especially in the case of the Averroistic version, as a rejection of the individuality of the human being and of the immortality of the soul.

intellectus Dei: the divine intellect or understanding; viz., the intellect of God. Just as God is described as having a will (see voluntas Dei), so is he claimed by the scholastics to have intellect or understanding, the other faculty of spiritual or rational being. Like all the other divine attributes, the intellectus Dei is identical with the divine essence. Thus it is infinite, perfect, and self-sufficient, absolute, totally free, and necessary. Both the divine knowledge (scientia Dei, q.v., or omniscientia, q.v.) and the divine wisdom (sapientia Dei or omnisapientia, q.v.) belong to the intellectus Dei. It is of the nature of the divine understanding that it knows all things and knows them wisely. See Deus.

intellectus possibilis: the potential intellect, possible intellect, passive intellect; viz., the intellect understood purely as a capacity or disposition in its primary actuality (actus primus, q.v.), apart from its operation. The possible intellect is a potency that in itself has no innate ideas but is capable of receiving ideas or universals by the operation of the active intellect (intellectus agens, q.v.).

intellectus practicus: practical intellect; the function of the intellect or understanding that identifies the good in the limited or present sense of what is good or beneficial at a particular moment. One aspect of the problem of free choice (liberum arbitrium, q.v.) concerns the identification of objects presented by the practical intellect to the will: identification of the good in the present moment or circumstance, in the here and now (hic et nunc, q.v.), does not necessarily coincide with the ultimate or moral good known to the theoretical intellect (intellectus theoreticus, q.v.). This practical-theoretical distinction offers one explanation of how human beings can at one level universally and theoretically know the precepts of the natural law and at another level, at a practical level, readily disobey that law: intellect and will do not choose options or objects that are recognized as bad in the moment—rather, they make bad or evil choices identified as good in the moment, following the last determinate judgment (iudicium, q.v.) of the practical intellect. A thief, e.g., understands theft as good for himself, apart from his potential theoretical recognition that it is wrong. Conscience (conscientia, q.v.) relates to the theoretical intellect. See intellectus.

intellectus theoreticus: theoretical intellect; the function of the intellect or understanding that identifies the good in the absolute sense of the goodness of being or of the moral law, as distinct from the limited perception of what is good at any particular moment, which follows the practical intellect (intellectus practicus, q.v.). See intellectus.

intelligentia: intelligence, understanding; one of the five distinct forms of knowing identified in the traditional Peripatetic philosophy, specifically the form of speculative or contemplative knowing that consists in the understanding of first principles (principia, q.v.). Intelligence is one of the natural intellectual virtues. See ars; prudentia; sapientia; scientia; virtus.

inter alia: among other things.

intercessio Christi: the intercession of Christ; specifically, the supplications offered by Christ on behalf of humanity and for the sake of believers in the execution of his munus sacerdotale, or priestly office. Christ’s intercessory work is distinct from his other priestly work, that of making satisfaction for sin (see satisfactio vicaria), and it is not confined to the status humiliationis (q.v.), or state of humiliation, but continues after the resurrection into the status exaltationis (q.v.), or state of exaltation. The intercessio Christi can also be distinguished into the intercessio generalis, or general intercession, in which Christ prays for the forgiveness of the sins of all people (Luke 23:34), and the intercessio specialis, or special intercession, in which Christ prays for believers only (John 17). In the state of exaltation Christ prays to the Father for the continued gracious application of his satisfaction. The Reformed orthodox tend to argue that the postresurrection work of intercession is a continuing mediation but neither oral nor verbal, whereas the Lutherans leave the question open. The intercession may be verbal but solo mente, of the mind only, or it may be only the continued presentation before God of the merit of Christ’s satisfaction by Christ himself, as a real act of intercession. See munus Christi; sacerdotium.

interior Spiritus illuminatio: inward or inner illumination of the Spirit. See illuminatio; testimonium internum Spiritus Sancti.

interitus mundi: the destruction or annihilation of the world; specifically, the final purgation by fire that will occur at the end of the age (consummatio saeculi, q.v.). Following Johann Gerhard, Lutheran orthodoxy tended to argue for a total annihilation (annihilatio, q.v.) of the sinful earth, an interitus mundi secundum substantiam, the destruction of the world according to substance. Early Lutheran theologians, including Luther and Johann Brenz, argued for a purgation of evil and sin, an interitus mundi secundum accidentia, or destruction of the world according to accidents or incidental properties. In this view, the goodness of being as created by God, the substantial goodness of the created order, is preserved in the consummatio, whereas the evil that inheres in the world as a defect will be purged away; the evil is accidental, an incidental property of good things. The Reformed agree that the destruction will be secundum accidentia and frequently argue that, after the purging away of evil, a refashioning of the world will take place in which all things will be made new. This renovation (renovatio) of the creation represents the fulfillment of God’s original creative purpose and the triumph of God’s grace in all things over the effects of the fall.

intuitu fidei: in view of faith; a term used by the Lutheran scholastics, beginning with Aegidius Hunnius and Johann Gerhard, to qualify the divine predestination as a decretum conditionatum, a conditioned decree, willed by God in view of faith or with respect to faith. The term represents a counter to the Reformed conception of decretum absolutum and an attempt to teach predestination and salvation by grace alone without undercutting the universal grace of the gospel. Although it may be argued that this doctrine was derived from Melanchthonian synergism, it in no way reflects or relates to the semi-Pelagian perspective of seventeenth-century Arminianism. This is clearly witnessed by the Lutheran rejection of even a hypothetical universalism (universalismus hypotheticus, q.v.) that would make salvation contingent on human decision. Salvation cannot be contingent on something in a human being (aliquid in homine) but must be entirely the gift of God. Thus Lutheranism can argue for both the beginning of faith by grace alone and the intimate relation of election to a foreknowledge of final faith (intuitu fidei finalis or ex praevisa fidei finalis). The divine foreknowledge implied in the latter term is not, of course, a temporal or time-conditioned foreknowledge of future events, but rather an eternal, simultaneous knowledge of all things and of their place in the divine will (see praescientia). Election intuitu fidei finalis is a decretum conditionatum insofar as it rests on God’s eternal knowledge of the effective power of his own grace to produce faith in particular individuals: both the decree and the condition belong to God.

Quenstedt argued, therefore, that the form of election (forma electionis) is the entire order (τάξις, taxis) according to which God ordains that those who apprehend Christ’s merits (see meritum Christi) in faith and who persevere in faith are elect. In this election, the efficient cause (causa efficiens; see causa) is the will of God alone, the internal impelling cause (causa interna impulsiva) is the grace of God alone, and the external impelling cause (causa externa impulsiva) is Christ’s merit in its gracious application. Final faith, as foreknown by God in eternity, appears in this causality as an external, less principal cause (causa externa minus principalis), or as a less principal impelling cause (causa impulsiva minus principalis), and faith itself appears not as a cause but as instrument or means (see instrumentum; medium lēptikon), or even as a reason (ratio) for election, although always with the qualification that it is not a principal or effective cause—indeed, faith does not enter the causality of election apart from Christ’s merit and its gracious application; i.e., not apart from the causa impulsiva externa, but rather in gracious conjunction with it. Thus, in the divine foreknowledge, the external impelling cause of election may also be defined as Christ’s merit apprehended by faith.

Election remains solely the gracious work of God but is not defined either in such a way as to exclude the possibility that some may fall away from grace and from genuine faith and be lost, or in such a way as to deny that the elect can truly fall away from faith and stand in total need of the gracious calling of the Word to repentance and new faith. The terms intuitu fidei, intuitu fidei finalis, and electio expraevisa fidei finalis ultimately became a source of concern within Lutheranism. Proponents of the usage felt that it was a necessary barrier to strict Calvinistic predestinarianism; opponents of the usage felt that it could be too easily misconstrued as synergistic in implication. The seventeenth-century orthodox usage, however, is clearly designed to stand between the doctrinal poles: Calov and Quenstedt maintained the intuitu fidei while at the same time polemicizing against the synergism of Georg Calixtus’s followers Latermann and Dreier. If the term did become truly problematic for Lutheranism, this occurred in the eighteenth century as orthodoxy declined and rationalist theologians both turned toward synergism and set aside the fine distinctions made during the era of orthodoxy. See conversio reiterata; decretum; electio; intuitu incredulitatis finalis; obiectum electionis; praedestinatio.

intuitu incredulitatis finalis: in view of final unbelief; the negative counterpart to the scholastic Lutheran doctrine of election intuitu fidei (q.v.), in view of faith. The Lutheran orthodox insist, against the Reformed, that the seriousness and efficacy of God’s universal grace (gratia universalis, q.v.) must not be denied. The divine decree of reprobation is therefore not an absolute decree (decretum absolutum) but a decretum conditionatum, a conditioned decree, ordained by God in view of final unbelief, i.e., in view of the ultimate resistance of unbelievers to the gracious call of the Word. See praedestinatio; reprobatio; vocatio.

invidia: envy, covetousness. See septem peccata mortalia.

invinatio: invination; the presence of the blood of Christ in vino, in the wine of the sacrament, as opposed both to the theory of transubstantiatio (q.v.) and to theories of illocal or of spiritual presence. See consubstantiatio; praesentia illocalis sive definitiva; praesentia spiritualis sive virtualis.

invisibilitas: invisibility; a characteristic or attribute of spiritual being. Since the eye, like all other organs of sense, perceives only objects and effects in the physical order, the order of spiritual being transcends the eye’s ability to perceive. The soul, angels apart from their occasional self-manifestation in bodily form, and God are therefore all invisible.

ipse dixit: he himself said it; usually referencing a statement or argument made by an authority; also sometimes expressed as magister dixit (q.v.), the master said it.

ipsissima verba: the words themselves, verbatim; often with reference to the specific words of an authority, cited verbatim, such as the very words of Scripture.

ipso facto: by the fact itself; often indicating that something is true without further demonstration.

ira: wrath, anger, ire; specifically, the ira Dei, or wrath of God, against sin. The wrath of God may be counted either as a function of the iustitia Dei (q.v.), the righteousness of God, and specifically of the iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva (q.v.), the vindicatory or punitive righteousness of God; or as one of the affections of the divine will (voluntas Dei, q.v.) in its relation to human sin. The ira Dei is both most clearly manifest and most fully satisfied in the death of Christ. It is also ultimately expressed in the damnation of those who do not have faith in Christ. See poena; septem peccata mortalia.

ira misericordiae / ira severitatis: literally, wrath or anger of mercy / wrath or anger of severity; a distinction between the divine anger against the sins of those who are in Christ (ira misericordiae)—in Luther’s language, the divine No beneath which lies the deeper Yes of grace—and the absolute divine anger against unrepentant and unjustified human beings (ira severitatis), the absolute No against sin.

irascibilis: adj., irascible; n., a passion or motion of the sensitive appetite that apprehends objects difficult of attainment; also appetitus irascibilis, irascible appetite; and irascibilitas, irascibility; in Greek, θυμικόν (thymikon). The root of irascibilis is ira, but as is the case with the other motion belonging to the sensitive appetite, concupiscibility (concupiscibilis, q.v.), it bears a neutral connotation in the faculty psychology. Irascibilitas consists in five distinct passions: courage and fear, hope and despair, and anger. See appetitus.

iratus, -a, -um (adj.): angry, wrathful.

isorropia (ἰσορροπία): equal propensity.

isotēs (ἰσότης): equality; used by the fathers to indicate the equality of the First and Second Persons of the Trinity and, because of its patristic usage, adopted by Protestant scholastics in their locus de Trinitate.

iudex: judge; especially Christ in the exercise of his kingly office at the end of time in the last judgment (iudicium extremum, q.v.).

iudicium: judgment, decision; in general, a function of the intellect as it identifies objects and goals to be willed or chosen. It is also one of the powers belonging to Christ and exercised by him in his kingly rule. See intellectus; intellectus practicus; iudicium extremum; liberum arbitrium; regnum Christi.

iudicium extremum: last judgment; also iudicium universale et manifestum: the universal and manifest judgment; in contrast to the iudicium particulare et occultum (q.v.), or particular and hidden judgment, which occurs at the death of the individual. The last judgment, then, is the final, universal judgment of all human beings, which will be manifest to all after the resurrection of the dead (resurrectio mortuorum). The judge (iudex) will be Christ himself, who will come again with glory and visibly, in and through his human nature, pronounce the judgment of the Triune God on the righteous and the unrighteous. The righteous will be rewarded, according to the remuneratory or distributive justice (iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva, q.v.) of God, with life everlasting (vita aeterna, q.v.), and the wicked will receive, according to the vindicatory or punitive justice (iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva, q.v.) of God, the just recompense of eternal damnation (damnatio, q.v.) and eternal death (mors aeterna, q.v.). The scholastics also argue that the judgment will bestow, in addition to the blessedness of salvation and the punishment of damnation, distinct rewards and punishments that recompense individuals according to their deeds. Thus there will be degrees of glory (gradus gloriae, q.v.) and degrees of punishment in hell (gradus poenarum infernalium; see poena).

iudicium particulare et occultum: the particular and hidden judgment; viz., the judgment of the individual at death, according to which God either draws the souls of the departed righteous into fellowship with himself or consigns the souls of the unrighteous to Hades, to await the final judgment and eternal damnation. See Hades; paradisio; status animarum a corpore separatarum.

iure divino / iure humano: by divine right / by human right; this distinction is used both with reference to the biblically instituted order of the church, as applied by the Reformers against human tradition, and with reference to the political theory of monarchy, according to which the authority or rule of the king derives from God, not from human beings.

iussio: a mandate, order, or command (from iubeo).

iustificatio: justification, a counting or reckoning righteous; specifically, that actuality, or act, of grace (actus gratiae) in which God forgives sinful individuals, counts them as righteous on the basis of their faith in Christ, and accepts them as his own reconciled children, apart from all human merit and solely because of the superabundant merit of Christ’s work of satisfaction (see satisfactio vicaria). The justification of sinners is also defined as a forensic act (actus forensis, q.v.) insofar as it is a legal declaration made, figuratively speaking, in foro divino, in the divine assize, and not an infusion of righteousness into the sinner. Since justification is viewed by the Protestant orthodox as a counting righteous rather than a making righteous, it rests not merely on the merit of Christ but also on the union of the believer with Christ by grace through faith. An individual is counted righteous because of being in Christo, in Christ, covered by the righteousness of Christ. This justification is entirely gracious and in no way merited by the believer. Thus the causa impulsiva, or impelling cause, of justification is God alone. The scholastics further distinguish between the causa impulsiva interna, or internal impelling cause, the love of God; and the causa impulsiva externa, or external impelling cause, the merit or righteousness of Christ. Faith is not, therefore, an active cause of justification but rather the means, or medium, that receives the grace of God in justification (see medium lēptikon). (Word and sacrament are also classified as media iustificationis, means of justification, specifically, as media dotika [q.v.], or given means, since they are instruments of grace bestowed by God and properly received by faith.)

In accord with the basic definition of justification, the Protestant scholastics can also distinguish between iustificatio negativa, or negative justification, and iustificatio positiva, or positive justification. These are inseparable though logically distinct aspects of the single forensic declaration of the sinner as righteous. The former, iustificatio negativa, is the forgiveness of sins; the latter, iustificatio positiva, is the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner. This distinction relates directly to the Protestant view of the obedience of Christ (obedientia Christi, q.v.) and the fullness of Christ’s satisfaction for both punishment (poena, q.v.) and guilt (culpa, q.v.). The forgiveness of sins and the consequent remission of punishment rest directly on the satisfactio vicaria, i.e., on Christ’s obedientia passiva, or passive obedience. But justification also entails the setting aside of guilt in the positive fulfillment of the law for sinners by Christ in his obedientia activa, or active obedience. Thus sinners are considered positively righteous by the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. This iustificatio positiva, or imputed righteousness (iustitia imputativa), is the end or goal, the terminus ad quem, of justification. Thus the end of justification is not the making righteous of sinners; iustificatio is an actus, an act or actualization, not a process, and it is forensic, not regenerative.

The scholastics therefore tend to place justification after calling (vocatio, q.v.), regeneration (regeneratio, q.v.), and conversion (conversio, q.v.), insofar as these are necessary antecedents to the faith that receives God’s gracious justification, but distinct from and prior to sanctification (sanctificatio, q.v.), wherein the believer is actually made righteous or holy by the grace of God. Justification is an actus forensis sive iudicialis, a forensic or judicial actuality, whereas sanctification is an actus physicus sive medicinalis, a physical or medicinal act, i.e., a curative actuality. Finally, scholastic Protestantism distinguishes between the actus gratiae or actus forensis of objective justification (iustificatio objectiva) and the actus iustificatorius, the justificatory realization, or subjective justification (iustificatio subjectiva) of the believer. The former set of terms refers to the objective work of Christ and its effect, the remission of sin and the counting righteous of all who are in Christ; the latter set of terms refers to the inward, subjective recognition on the part of believers that they are counted righteous in Christ and therefore freed from the condemnation of the law. In Lutheran orthodoxy the distinction is of considerable significance, since, like the Lutheran view of election, it attempts to balance the concepts of universal grace and salvation by grace alone. Unlike the Reformed, the Lutherans can argue for a universal grace in objective justification such that all who believe—hypothetically all people—can be justified. In the Lutheran view, justification is therefore limited subjectively but not objectively; the Reformed, however, view justification as limited both objectively and subjectively insofar as it extends in intention as well as in fact to the elect only. See electio; intuitu fidei; ordo salutis; unio mystica.

iustificatio peccatoris: the justification of the sinner; pl., iustificatio peccatorum: the justification of sinners. See iustificatio; simul iustus et peccator.

iustificatus fide sine operibus: justified by faith without works.

iustitia: justice, righteousness; a moral virtue or disposition belonging to rational beings by nature; one of the four cardinal virtues (virtutes cardinales). In human beings it is distorted by the fall but remains in a weakened state that continues to regulate conduct toward others. In theological usage, equivalent to the Greek δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē). Often associated with or included under the virtue of iustitia are such virtues as religion (religio, q.v.), piety (pietas, q.v.), gratitude, affability, and liberality. See iustificatio; virtus.

iustitia aequalitatis: justice of equality; viz., distributive or remuneratory justice (iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva, q.v.).

iustitia civilis: civil justice or righteousness; viz., the righteous acts of unbelievers that oblige the lex civilis; the Protestant scholastics argue that this righteousness comes from God as a result of the divine concursus (q.v.) and that it is the basis of all human community. Unlike the iustitia spiritualis (q.v.), it has nothing to do with redemption, and it falls completely under the usus legis civilis (q.v.).

iustitia Dei: the justice or righteousness of God. Just as the Latin word iustitia is equivalent to the Greek δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē), so is the Latin iustitia Dei to the Greek δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ (dikaiosynē Theou), so that both the Latin and the Greek indicate righteousness, justice, and uprightness. Within iustitia Dei the scholastics distinguish iustitia interna and iustitia externa. God’s iustitia interna, or internal righteousness, consists in the holiness of the divine will and its perfect correspondence with the good of God’s eternal law. The iustitia externa is the righteousness of God as it is manifest ad extra (q.v.), or externally, in the lex Dei, or law of God (see lex). This external righteousness can be further distinguished into the iustitia externa antecedens sive legislativa, the antecedent or legislative righteousness of God, according to which he makes his laws, and the iustitia externa consequens sive iudicialis, the consequent or judicial righteousness of God, according to which God rewards those who keep his law and punishes those who break it. The iustitia externa consequens is therefore both a distributive or remunerative righteousness (iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva, q.v.) and a vindicatory or punitive righteousness (iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva). In the economy of revelation, the judicial righteousness, with its promise of reward to the obedient and of punishment to the disobedient, is manifest as the legislative or normative righteousness (iustitia legislatoria sive normativa, q.v.) of the Mosaic law (lex Mosaica, q.v.). The Socinians argued that there was no vindictive or punitive righteousness in God, but the Lutheran and the Reformed orthodox defended the concept as necessary to the divine righteousness and the divine law, both of which would be meaningless without it. See iustitia.

iustitia fidei: the righteousness of faith; i.e., the righteousness that is imputed forensically to the believer on the ground of faith. Therefore iustitia fidei is not a iustitia infusa (q.v.), or infused righteousness, nor is it a disposition in the believer. Rather, it is a iustitia aliena, an alien righteousness, a righteousness not our own, which is imputed to us. Ultimately the iustitia fidei is the righteousness of Christ (iustitia Christi). The iustitia fidei is also termed iustitia imputata, imputed righteousness, or iustitia fidei imputata, the imputed righteousness of faith.

iustitia habitualis: righteousness of habit or disposition; also iustitia vitae: righteousness of life.

iustitia imputata: imputed righteousness; specifically, the righteousness of Christ, which is counted toward or imputed to believers on the ground of faith. This iustitia is imputed according to the actus forensis (q.v.) of iustificatio (q.v.) and merely counts the believer righteous rather than actually making the believer righteous. Iustitia imputata belongs to the iustificatio peccatoris (q.v.), or justification of sinners, by grace, not to the subsequent iustificatio iusti, or justification of the just, which implies the gracious gift or impartation of righteousness, a iustitia inhaerens (q.v.). Whereas the iustitia inhaerens, like the sanctification of believers, must always remain incomplete and imperfect in this life, the iustitia imputata is complete and perfect, since it is not ours but Christ’s.

iustitia infusa: infused righteousness; an actual gift (donum) of righteousness infused into the sinner by grace; denied by both the Lutherans and the Reformed. In the sixteenth century, Andreas Osiander (the Elder) argued, following medieval scholastic models, that justification (iustificatio, q.v.) was partly a forensic declaration of the sinner as righteous on account of faith but also partly an infusion of the righteousness of Christ (iustitia Christi) into the sinner, making the sinner righteous.

iustitia inhaerens: inherent or inhering righteousness; viz., the righteousness that is infused into and indwells the believer through the grace of the Holy Spirit following the imputation of righteousness (see iustitia imputata) in the actus forensis (q.v.) of iustificatio (q.v.). This iustitia inhaerens is a work of grace and rests on Christ’s righteousness no less than does the iustitia imputata. Since it represents the believer’s growth in righteousness, it is sometimes called the iustificatio iusti, justification of the just, or justification of those declared just through faith. It corresponds with the iustitia fidei, or righteousness of faith, which by outward acts manifests the sinner’s receipt of the divine act of justification and the accompanying grace of the Spirit. Whereas the Reformed will speak of the iustitia inhaerens and iustificatio iusti as a second kind of justification and will argue for a progress in justification distinct from sanctificatio (q.v.), the orthodox Lutherans restrict iustificatio to the actus forensis and the iustitia imputata, reserving the language of actual transformation, iustitia inhaerens, iustitia habitualis, iustitia vitae, to the doctrine of sanctificatio.

iustitia legislatoria sive normativa: legislative or normative justice (righteousness); the eternal and immutable iustitia; iustitia Dei (q.v.), or righteousness of God manifest in the revelation of the divine demand of perfect obedience to the law, which is the standard and codification of righteous or just life. Therefore the law—both the lex Mosaica (q.v.), or Mosaic law, and the two great commandments of love for God and neighbor—is called the revelation of the iustitia legislatoria sive normativa. In a negative sense, because of human disobedience, the revelation of iustitia legislatoria is the antecedent and ground of the iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva (q.v.), vindicatory or punitive justice. It is also, because of the grace of God in Christ, the ground of the iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva (q.v.), remuneratory or distributive justice.

iustitia originalis: original righteousness; the righteousness of Adam and Eve, as first created by God, which was lost in the fall; also termed iustitia naturalis: natural righteousness, inasmuch as it was natural to human beings as originally created. See imago Dei; peccatum originale.

iustitia rectoris: rectoral or regulative justice; viz., the legal or governmental justice underlying the Grotian theory of atonement. See acceptatio; iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva.

iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva: remunerative or distributive justice. In their typical division of the external, consequent justice or righteousness of God into iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva and iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva, vindicatory or punitive justice, the Protestant scholastics closely follow the model set forth in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (1131a–32b), according to which particular or individual justice is declared to be either distributive or rectificatory: distributive justice belongs to those cases in which no wrong has been done and a reward or recompense is to be bestowed in proportion to the value of a deed performed or an obedience rendered; rectificatory justice belongs to those cases in which a wrong has been done and a penalty is to be exacted of the wrongdoer for the sake of vindicating or making restitution to the victim or the wronged party. In the theological adaptation of the Aristotelian model by the scholastics, a dimension of punishment is added to the concept of restitution. Thus the divine iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva is exercised in the just judgment of God on the last day (dies novissimus, q.v.), when God graciously rewards those who are justified in Christ; the iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva is exercised in the just judgment of God on the last day, when God consigns to eternal damnation the unrighteous who have rejected Christ.

The concept of a iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva, as developed by the Protestant orthodox in relation to their theory of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction (satisfactio vicaria, q.v.), indicates an exact equivalence between merit offered and salvation bestowed, just as the iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva indicates a strict equality of crime and punishment. Thus the remunerative justice of eternal salvation rests upon the sufficiency of Christ’s satisfaction and the fullness of Christ’s merit (meritum Christi, q.v.) as imputed to believers. This model stands in direct opposition to the iustitia rectoris, or rectoral justice, of the Grotian theory of atonement, according to which there is no exact equivalent between the value of Christ’s work and the offered salvation, but rather a divine acceptation (acceptatio, q.v.) of Christ’s death as payment for the sake of providing, not full satisfaction for sin, but rather an example of the divine wrath against sin. The iustitia rectoris maintains or regulates the moral government of the world by demanding a payment for sin while at the same time setting aside the universal demand of payment or punishment.

iustitia spiritualis: spiritual righteousness; viz., the righteousness of believers accomplished in them by the gracious work of the Spirit, distinct from the iustitia civilis (q.v.) since it involves the work of conversio (q.v.) and results in a true spiritual good. The conversio results in a new spiritual habitus (q.v.) and in a habitus potentiam agendi, or ability to act, not previously present. See libertas naturae; posse non peccare.

iustitia vindicativa sive punitiva: vindicatory or punitive justice. See iustitia; iustitia remuneratoria sive distributiva.

Iustus fide vivet: The just will live by faith.