 At the beginning of the third book, Pomponazzi maintained that his naturalistic arguments (argumentationes naturales) of the first two books were by no means certain and were to be rejected if they contradicted the teachings of the Catholic Church (3.1.1). He then proposed to find solutions to the questions of fate and divine providence that preserve free will. Accordingly, Pomponazzi, seemingly in opposition to the arguments outlined in the first two books, opened the door for the possibility of freedom of choice that potentially could be in line with Christian theology by identifying the human will with the intellect. He argued that God limited his omnipotence and foreknowledge, thereby allowing for the possibility of future contingents. This divine self-limitation allows for the possibility that the human intellect, through the power of deliberation, is capable of suspending predetermined acts of volition that go against the moral interests of the actor, thereby being able to choose to sin or not sin. Human liberty is defined in negative terms, a privation and a suspension, since the will does not produce action in these instances but only impedes it (3.8). While some commentators have seen this line of argumentation as a potential “line of defense for the opinio christiana” (Poppi 1988: 659), it was specifically condemned in 1576 by a censor who placed the work on the Index of Prohibited Books (Baldini &amp; Spruit 2009: vol. 1, tome 3: 2279–80).