Here are what I considered to be the most relevant sections taken from Andreas Beck’s chapter in “Church and School in Early Modern Protestantism”, presented without comment:
the question at stake is actually more limited: it concerns the activity related to the “being of happiness” and what happiness “essentially is,” thus its very essence.
Voetius first admits that, according to Aquinas, happiness not only consists in its essence but includes its proper accident, the accompanying pleasure or delight (delectatio). Still, the position of Aquinas is quite rigid when he says that “as to the very happiness, it is impossible for it to consist in an act of the will.” According to Voetius, Aquinas supports his rigid statement with one single argument, namely that happiness can only formally consist in the act that attains it, which is not true for the act of will.
There are very few others [among the Reformed] who follow Aquinas, although they, as Voetius thinks, “did not precisely exclude with Thomas the act of will from essential happiness,” but rather wanted to express “that the vision is the principle and foundation of happiness.”
Interestingly, Voetius here gives a brief biographical note and explains that initially he did not object to the opinion of Aquinas, although he did not want to exclude the will as the subject of happiness. This position turned out to be unsatisfying, however: “But later, when I weighed the issue more carefully, I came to believe that the opinion of Thomas barely could sustain a rigorous examination … and that essential and formal happiness is to be constituted either in both acts, or in the act of will alone.”
First, he clarifies what the controversy is not about. To mention only some points, it is not about the questions whether both the act of intellect and will are required for happiness, or whether both acts are included in happiness, or whether “knowledge, perfect love, holiness, delight, joy, enjoyment, and glory” all belong to the state of happiness. It is also not debated whether the vision of God is the ultimate perfection of the intellect and the enjoyment of God the ultimate perfection of the will.
Having clarified what the controversy is not about, Voetius defines the status controversionis: Does the happiness of the whole intellectual nature, which can be made happy in itself, … formally consist in the act of the intellect, namely, in vision, or in the act of the will, and the latter either in love (or enjoyment) [amore seu fruitione], or in delight (or joy) [delectatione seu gaudio]? Or does it consist in those two, or even three acts together, so that happiness is one act, not by an essential union in itself, but an aggregation, or so that those acts are partial (or two) moments, which essentially constitute one essential whole?
he insists that those who prefer to leave the matter undecided should at least recognize that the opinion of Aquinas is “not certain or solid.” Thus happiness should not be ascribed to the act of intellect only and to the exclusion of the act of will.
The authoritative text that Aquinas cites in the sed contra is John 17:3a: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God.” Voetius, however, thinks that it does not help to answer the question at stake. Referring to commentaries of the Jesuits Juan de Maldonado (1535–1583) and Cornelius à Lapide (1567–1637) and the Franciscan Alfonso de Castro (1495–1558), he argues that the text is not about knowledge of God in the next life (in patria), but only in this life (in via). Moreover, it relates knowledge to eternal life in a metonymic sense only. Thus this Scripture does not even prove that eternal life exclusively consists in knowledge in this life, not to mention the afterlife.
Voetius presents the five objections in article 8 in the form of syllogisms. They all argue that happiness consists in the will: because happiness consists in peace (with reference to Augustine and Ps. 147:3);9 because happiness is the supreme good, which is an object of will; because the last end corresponds to the first mover, which is the will in regard to operations; because happiness belongs to the most excellent activity, which is of the will (with reference to 1 Cor. 13); and finally because of the authority of Augustine who sees a relationship between human good will and happiness.
he also cites Scotus who criticized Aquinas for not distinguishing a priority of origin or generation from a priority of perfection and for not including love (amor) in his list of relevant acts of will, but only desire and delight.
In his own response, Voetius insists, with Scotus, that the relevant priority in the act that attains happiness concerns the priority of perfection, which the will has over the intellect, and not the priority of origin, according to which the intellect indeed comes first. Moreover, “it is the act to will friendship, namely the enjoyment of love, by which we adhere to God as he is seen and loved because of himself.”
Interestingly, he applies Scotus’ distinction of two kinds of priority to 1 Cor. 13: Love is higher than faith in perfection, although the act of faith comes before the act of love in the order of generation. The same is true for the will in relation to the intellect.
Moreover, theology is for Voetius a practical rather than a theoretical or mixed discipline, as he argues elsewhere.
If the act is considered in its ultimate analysis as it attains the happy making object “completely, ultimately and immediately,” Voetius agrees with the Scotists that the act at stake is the act of love or enjoyment rather than the act of vision.
formal happiness belongs to “the most outstanding act of the intellectual nature,” as Thomas himself acknowledges. Since such an act is love, and not cognition, it follows that formal happiness is situated in the act of love.
Voetius presents his second argument in the form of a syllogism, as he did with the first and with many other arguments in this disputation. It runs as follows:
(1) In which act there is formally the last attainment of the beatific object, and consequently the final perfection of the intellectual nature, in that act consists formal happiness.
(2) But the last attainment of the beatific object, and consequently the final perfection of the intellectual nature, is in the act of will and not in the act of the intellect.
(3) Therefore formal happiness consists in the act of will and not in the act of the intellect.
The conclusion (3) indeed follows from the major premise (1) and the minor premise (2). Voetius proceeds by giving an argument for the minor, again in the form of syllogism. This argument boils down to the point that, in faculty psychology, the act of intellect precedes the act of will, whereas the act of will finally attains the object.
The first reason says that the love of friendship (amor amicitiae), which presupposes the vision of God, is closer to the happy making object than the vision of God. Thus happiness consists formally in the love of friendship. The second argument also centers around love: The act of understanding is ordered to love, and not vice versa, and thus love must be the ultimate formal end rather than the act of understanding. The third argument says that formal happiness consists in the act of will because this act is more desirable than the act of the intellect.
the sixth argument says that the will is essentially made happy because it is “essentially and formally free.” According to the eighth reason, happiness belongs to the highest potency, which is the will, as it is “made complete by love.” And the last argument exemplifies that an absurd consequence would follow “if every act of will were to be excluded from essential happiness,” namely, the consequence that one could be blessed if one only sees God without having delight in him. Voetius indicates that he supports this argument, if “delight” (delectatio) is replaced by “love” (amor), “by which the intellectual nature finally and perfectly achieves, holds, and keeps God, and enjoys Him.”
Voetius ends the discussion of Scotistic arguments by pointing out some other absurd consequences of the Thomistic responses to the Scotistic position: The beatific vision could be “upheld without love and joy” by God’s absolute power. Likewise, “misery and sadness” would not be absolutely incompatible with happiness.
[Edit: for my own part, this final argument seems suspicious to me. If the last judgment of the practical intellect always determines the will and does so by nature so that not even God could prevent this, then it seems that no, God by His absolute power could not uphold the BV without happiness since the intellect must see God as the ultimate good.]
