The Ordinatio of John Duns Scotus :: Ordinatio. Book 1. Distinctions 4 to 10. :: Book One. Distinctions 4

Eighth Distinction. First Part. On the Simplicity of God

Question One. Whether God is supremely Simple

1. Concerning the eighth distinction I ask whether God is supremely simple, and perfectly so.

That he is not:

Because simplicity is not a mark of perfection simply, therefore it should not be posited in God as an essential. - Proof of the antecedent: if it were a mark of perfection simply then anything having it simply would be more perfect than anything not having it, and so prime matter would be more perfect than man, which is false, - nay, generally, in corruptible or generable creatures the more composite things are more perfect.

2. Again, it is a mark perfection in a form to be able to give being, although it is a mark of imperfection to depend on matter; therefore if the first idea were separated from the second, because there does not seem to be a contradiction in such a separation, deity can be a form giving being, although it does not depend on that to which it gives being, and so it can be posited without imperfection to be a composition of matter and form, or a combinability at least of matter and of deity as form.

3. Again, what is a non-substance for one thing is not a substance for anything, from Physics 1.3.186b4-5; but wisdom in us is an accident; therefore in nothing is it a substance or a non-accident. But wisdom is in God according to the same idea as it is in us; so there is an accident in God and thus a composition of subject and accident.

4. On the contrary:

On the Trinity VI ch.7 n.8: ‘God is truly and supremely simple’.⁴⁰

I. To the Question

5. I reply to the question, and first I prove the divine simplicity through certain particular middle terms, and second from common middle terms, namely infinity and necessity of existence.

A. Proof of the Simplicity of God through Particular Middle Terms

6. Proceeding in the first way, I show that [divine] simplicity is opposed to composition from essential parts, second that it is opposed to composition from quantitative parts, and third opposed to composition from subject and accident.

7. [God is not from essential parts] - The first thus: the causality of matter and form is not simply first, but necessarily presupposes a prior efficient causality, - therefore if the First thing were composed of matter and form it would presuppose the causality of an efficient cause; but not the causality of this First thing, because it does not, by joining its matter with a form, cause itself - therefore of a different efficient cause, a prior one; therefore God would not be the first efficient cause, the opposite of which was proved in distinction 2 question 1 [I d.2 nn.43-59]. Proof of the first proposition: the causality of matter and form involves imperfection, but the causality of the efficient and the final cause do not involve imperfection but perfection; every imperfect thing is reduced to a perfect one as to what is essentially prior to it; therefore etc.

8. I prove the same thus: matter is of itself in potency to form, and this in a potency that is passive and open to contradictories, as far as concerns itself, - therefore it is not under a form of itself but through some other cause, reducing the matter to the act of the form; but this cause reducing it cannot be called form only as it is form, because thus it does not reduce matter save by formally actualizing the matter itself; therefore one must posit something effectively reducing the matter to that actuality. Therefore if the First thing were composed of matter and form, there would be some efficient cause through whose effecting act its matter would be under the form, and so it would not be the first efficient cause, as before [n.7].

9. Third in this way: every single caused entity has some one cause from which comes its unity, because there cannot be unity in the caused without unity in the cause. The unity therefore of a composite, since it is caused, requires some one cause from which comes this caused entity. The causality in question is not of matter or form, because each of these is a diminished entity in respect of the composite entity; therefore besides these two causalities, namely of matter and form, some other one must be posited - it will be the efficient cause, and so the same result returns as before [n.8].

10. [God is not from quantitative parts] - The second, namely the lack of quantitative composition, seems to be proved by the Philosopher in Physics 8.10.226a24-b6 and Metaphysics 12.7.1073a3-11, because the First thing is of infinite power; but infinite power cannot exist in a magnitude; and the proof of this is that in a greater magnitude there is a greater power, and so an infinite power cannot exist in a finite magnitude; but no magnitude is infinite; therefore neither does any infinite power exist in a magnitude.

11. But this argument seems deficient, because one who would posit that an infinite power exists in a finite magnitude would say that the power is of the same nature in a part of the magnitude as in the whole magnitude, and so of the same nature in a greater as in a lesser magnitude; just as the intellective soul is whole in the whole of the body and whole in any part of it, and is not greater in a greater body, nor greater in the whole body than in a part; and if an infinite power of understanding were consequent on this soul, this infinite power would exist in a finite magnitude, and in a part just as in the whole and in a little part just as in a big one. So should it be said in the proposed case, because an infinite power in a magnitude would be of the same nature in the whole as in the part.

12. Making clear, then, the reasoning of Aristotle [n.10], I say that his conclusion is this, that an infinite power, extended per accidens to the extension of the magnitude, ‘does not exist in a finite magnitude’. His reasoning proves this in the following way: any power that is extended per accidens is, ceteris paribus, greater - that is more efficacious - in a greater magnitude, and it is not greater as follows, namely that it is more intense formally, because a small fire can have more heat than a big one if the big one is very diffuse and the small one concentrated (and therefore one must add the ‘ceteris paribus’ clause in the major); the example too is about heat in the same fire, which although it is of equal intensity in the part as in the whole, yet a greater fire is ‘of a greater power’, that is, more efficacious.

13. And from this it follows that every such power ‘extended per accidens’, as long as it exists in a finite magnitude, can be understood to grow in efficacy by increase of magnitude - but as long as it is understood to be able to grow in efficacy it is not infinite in efficacy; and from this it follows that every such power ‘extended per accidens’, as long as it exists in a finite magnitude, is finite, because an intensive infinity cannot exist without infinity in efficacy; and from this it follows that a power infinite in efficacy cannot exist in a finite magnitude, - nor therefore can a power infinite in intensity so exist; and then further: since there is no infinite magnitude, it is plain that there is no such infinite power in a magnitude.

14. But how does this result, that every such power would not exist in a magnitude, relate to the intended proposition [nn.5-6],?

I reply. By joining with this result the conclusion proved earlier by the Philosopher [Metaphysics 12.6.1071b19-22], - that such a ‘potent thing’ is without matter - the intended proposition follows. For, because it is by extension that a thing is extended, or, if extension were to be per se existent, there would be something that was the form informing the extension, and the form would be extended per accidens, -therefore if the infinite power were to be posited in a magnitude, I ask what thing is this extension of magnitude? Not the infinite power itself, as was proved [n.13], - nor does the infinite power perfect the magnitude as form does matter, because the power is not in matter, from the conclusion shown before [sc. by the Philosopher ibid.]; therefore one would have to posit that the matter is what is extended with this magnitude, which matter would be perfected by infinite power, just as our matter or our body is extended in magnitude and is perfected by a non-extended intellective soul; but there is no matter in a possessor of such [infinite] power, from the conclusion shown before by the Philosopher [ibid.]. From this immateriality then - shown before by the Philosopher and just shown in this conclusion [n.13] - the reasoning in question [that God is not a quantity, n.10] gets its efficacy.

15. [God is not from subject and accident] - The third conclusion is proved specifically from these [first two conclusions, nn.7, 10]: for because God is not material or a quantity, therefore he is not capable of any material accident fitting a material thing in the way a quality fits a material thing; therefore he is only capable of those accidents that fit spirits - to wit intellection and will and the corresponding habits - but such things cannot be accidents of such a nature, as was proved in distinction 2 [I d.2 nn.89-110], because its understanding and its willing, and its habit and power etc., are its substance.

B. Proof of the Simplicity of God through Common Middle Terms

16. Second I prove the intended proposition [n.5] generally.

[From necessary existence] - First from the idea of necessary existence, - because if the First thing is composite, let the components be a and b; I ask about a, whether it is of itself formally necessary existence, or is not but is possible existence (one of these two must be given in each thing, or in the whole nature, from which something is composed).

But if it is of itself possible existence, then necessary existence of itself is composed of possible existence, and so it will not be necessary existence; if a is of itself necessary existence, then it is of itself in ultimate actuality, and so with nothing can it make itself to be per se one thing. Likewise, if the composite is of itself necessary existence, it will be necessary existence through a, and by parity of reasoning it will be necessary existence through b, and so it will be twice necessary existence; it will also be a composite necessary existence through something which, when taken away, will leave it to be no less necessary existence ⁴¹, which is impossible.

17. [From infinity] - Second I show the intended proposition from the idea of infinity, - and first that God is not combinable; for this reason, that everything combinable can be part of some composite whole which is combinable from itself and from something else; but every part can be exceeded; but to be able to be exceeded is contrary to the idea of infinity; therefore etc.

18. And there is a confirmation of the reason, and it is almost the same, - because everything combinable lacks the perfection of that with which it is combined, such that the combinable does not have in itself complete identity, and identity in every way, with that with which it is combined, because then it could not be combined with it; nothing infinite lacks that with which it can in some way be the same, nay everything such has all that in itself according to perfect identity; because otherwise it could be understood to be more perfect, for example if it had all that in itself as a ‘composite’ has it and if the

‘infinite’ does not have it;⁴² but it is contrary to the idea of infinity simply that it could be understood to be more perfect, or that something could be understood to be more perfect than it.

19. From this follows further that it is altogether incomposite, - because if it is composite, then composed either of finite things or of infinite things; if of infinite things, nothing such is combinable, from what has been proved [nn.17-18]; if of finite things, then it will not be infinite, because finite things do not render anything infinite in the perfection that we are now speaking of.

II. To the Principal Arguments

20. To the first argument [n.1] I say that simplicity is simply a mark of perfection according as it excludes combinability and composition of act and potency or of perfection and imperfection, as will be said in the following question [nn.32-34].

21. Nor, however, does it follow that every simple creature is a more perfect creature than a non-simple one [n.1], because something that is simply a mark of perfection can be repugnant to any limited nature, and so it would not simply be such a nature if it had that which is repugnant to it; so a dog would not be a simply perfect dog if it were wise, because wisdom is repugnant to it. Likewise, to any limited nature one perfection simply can be repugnant and another one not be, - and then it does not follow that that nature is more perfect to which such a perfection as is repugnant to it belongs, especially when there belongs to that to which this perfection is repugnant another perfection simply, which latter perfection is perhaps simply more perfect than the former, the repugnant one. An example: ‘actuality’ is a perfection simply and ‘simplicity’ is a perfection simply; but to a composite there belongs greater actuality though not greater simplicity, - while to matter, although there belongs simplicity, there does not however belong as much actuality as belongs to the composite; simply, however, actuality is more perfect than simplicity, - and so, simply, that to which actuality without simplicity belongs can be more perfect than that to which simplicity without actuality belongs.

22. But there seem to be doubts here: one, how a perfection simply is something that is not a perfection everywhere, although it is of the idea simply of perfection that ‘it be simply better, in each thing, than not-it’, according to Anselm Monologion ch.15; the second doubt is how one perfection simply is more perfect than another absolutely.

23. To the first I say that this description [from Anselm’s Monologion] ought to be thus understood, that perfection simply is not only better than its contradictory (for thus anything positive is better and more perfect simply than its negation, nay no negation is a perfection formally), but this is how is understood the remark ‘it is better than not-it’ - that is, than ‘anything incompossible with it’ - and then should the remark which is ‘in anything it is better’ be understood by considering the ‘anything’ precisely insofar as it is a supposit, without determining in what nature the supposit subsists [cf. I d.2 n.384]. For, by considering something insofar as it subsists in a nature, some perfection simply is able to be not better for it, because it is incompossible with it as it is in such nature, because it is repugnant to such nature; yet it is not repugnant to it insofar precisely as it is subsistent, but it will be a simply more perfect being if it is in this way considered to have it than if it had whatever [sc. perfection simply] is incompossible with it.

24. To the second doubt [n.22] I say that clarification is required of ‘what is the order of perfections simply’. And now, briefly, let it be supposed that there is some order of perfection among them such that one is of its idea more perfect than another precisely taken, although when any of them exists in supreme degree then all are equally perfect, because infinite - and then any of them is infinite. About this elsewhere.⁴³

25. To the second principal argument [n.2] I say that ‘to give something being formally’ necessarily posits a limitation, because what thus gives being does not include by identity that to which it gives being; nor can imperfection be separated from thus giving being, because neither can limitation, or even every sort of dependence, be separated from it; for although dependence on matter be separated from it, yet there always remains dependence on the efficient cause by virtue of which the form informs the matter. And if an instance be made about the Word, that it gives being to human nature, - this is not to give being formally, as will be clear in book 3 distinction 1 [III d.1 qq.1-5]

26. To the third [n.3] I say that wisdom, according to the idea by which it is a species of quality and an accident in us, is not of the same idea in God, as will be clear in this distinction better at the question ‘Whether God is in a genus’ [nn.112-113].

Question Two. Whether any Creature is Simple

27. Following on from this I ask whether any creature is simple.

And I argue yes as follows: the composite is composed from parts, and these not from other parts, therefore these other parts are in themselves simple.

28. The opposite of this is in On the Trinity VI ch.6 n.8, where Augustine says that no creature is in itself simple.

I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of Others ⁴⁴

29. There is said here that ‘any creature at all is composed of act and potency’; that no creature is pure potency, because then it would not exist, - nor is any creature pure act, because then it would God.

30. Further, that ‘any creature at all is a being through participation’, -therefore it is composed of participant and participated.

31. Against this conclusion I argue that if in anything at all there is composition of thing and thing, I take the thing that does the composing and I ask if it is simple or composite; if it is simple, the proposition is gained [sc. that some creature is simple], - if it is composite, there will be a process in ‘things’ to infinity.

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

32. I concede then that some creature is simple, that is, not composed from things. However no creature is perfectly simple, because it is in some way composite and combinable.

How it is composite I clarify thus, that it has entity along with privation of some grade of entity. For no creature has entity according to the total perfection that is of a nature to belong to entity in itself, and therefore it lacks some perfection which is of a nature to belong to entity in itself, and so it is ‘deprived’, - just as a mole is said to be blind ‘because it is of a nature to have sight according to the idea of animal, but not according to the idea of mole’ according to the Philosopher at Metaphysics 5.22.1022b24-27. Therefore any creature is composed, not from positive thing and thing, but from positive thing and privation, namely from some entity, which it has, and from lack of some grade of perfection of entity - of which perfection it is itself not capable, though being itself is capable of it; just as a mole is, according to itself, not of a nature to see but is, according to that which is animal, of a nature to see. Nor yet is this composition ‘from positive and privative’ in the essence of the thing, because privation is not of the essence of anything positive.

33. On this composition there also follows composition of potency and act objectively; for anything that is a being and that lacks some perfection of being is simply possible and is the term of potency simply, whose term cannot be infinite being, which being is necessary existence.

34. It is also the case that any creature at all is combinable:

This is plain about accident, which is combinable with a subject. In the case of substance too it is plain, about form as well matter. Also plain about substance per se generable and corruptible, because it is receptive of accident; no substance then would be non-receptive of accident save on account of its perfection. - But the most perfect intelligence [sc. creaturely intelligence] is receptive of accident, because it is capable of its own intellection and volition, which are not its substance; first, because then it would be formally blessed in itself, the opposite of which was proved in distinction 1 [I d.1 n.175]. Second, because any intelligence can understand infinite things, because these are all intelligible; therefore, if its own intellection were its essence, it could have an infinite essence, because it would have one intellection of infinite things. Third, because its own intellection would not depend on any object save that on which its own ‘existence’ would depend, and so it could understand nothing inferior to itself - not even itself - in its proper genus, but only in the superior object moving it; nay no intelligence could understand anything save in God, because its own existence is not caused by any other intelligence -therefore not its intellection either. Fourth, because the word of an angel would be personally distinct from it and essentially the same as it, as was proved in distinction 2 about the divine Word [I. d.2 n.355].

II. To the Arguments

35. [To the principal argument] - To the principal argument of Augustine [n.28] I concede that no creature is truly simple, because it is composite - in the aforesaid way - from positivity and privation [n.32], act and potency objectively [n.33], and combinable with some other creature [n.34].

36. [To the argument of the opinion of others] - And from this is plain the response to the argument about the first opinion [n.29]; for no act is pure that lacks a grade of actuality, just as no light is pure that lacks a grade of light, even if there is not mixed with that impure light any positive entity but only a lack of a more perfect grade of light.

37. To the second [n.30] I say that ‘to participate’ is in some way the same as ‘to take part in’, so that it involves a double relation - both of part to whole and of taker to taken.

The first relation is real. Nor yet is part understood to be that which is something of the thing, but it is taken extensively, insofar as every less is said to be part of a more; but everything that is a ‘finite such’ is simply a ‘less such’, if anything such is of a nature to be infinite; but any perfection simply is of a nature to be infinite - therefore wherever there is a finite perfection it is less than some similar perfection, and so it is a part extensively.

38. But the second relation - namely of taker to taken - is a relation of reason, as in the case of creatures between the giver and the given. However a thing is taken in three ways; either such that the ‘whole’ taken is part of the taker, as the species participates the genus (as far as the essential parts of the genus are concerned, not the subjective ones),⁴⁵ or ‘part’ of the taken is part of the taker, or -in the third way - ‘part’ of the taken is the whole taker itself. In the first two ways the relation of taker and taken can be conceded to be real, but not in the third way; this third way is the one in the intended proposition, because every limited perfection (which perfection is of itself, however, not determined to limitation, and it is the part taken) is the limited whole itself,⁴⁶ except that a distinction can be made here between the supposit taking and the nature taken - but there is not thus a real distinction.

Question Three. Whether along with the Divine Simplicity stands the fact that God, or anything formally said of God, is in a Genus

39. Third I ask whether along with the divine simplicity stands the fact that God, or anything formally said of God, is in a Genus.

That it does:

Because God is formally being, but being states a concept said of God in the ‘what’ - and this concept is not proper to God but is common to him and creatures, as was said in distinction 3 [I d.3 nn.26-45]; therefore, in order that this might become proper, it must be determined by some determining concept; that ‘determining’ concept is related to the concept of being as the concept of ‘what sort’ to the concept of ‘what’, and consequently as the concept of difference to the concept of genus.

40. Further, Avicenna Metaphysics II ch.1 (74vb): between ‘a being in a subject’ and ‘a being not in a subject’ there is no middle - and he seems to be speaking according to the fact that ‘a being not in a subject’ is the idea of substance and ‘a being in a subject’ is the idea of accident. Therefore God, since he is being formally and is not ‘a being in a subject’, therefore he is ‘a being in a non-subject’ - therefore he is substance; but substance as substance is a genus.

41. Further, where there is species there is genus - according to Porphyry [Book of Predicables ch.3] - because these are relatives; the divine nature is a species with respect to the persons, according to Damascene On the Orthodox Faith ch.48; therefore etc.

42. Again, wisdom is formally said of God, and this according to the same idea by which it is said of us, because the reasons that were set down in distinction 3 question 1 [I d.3 nn.27, 35, 39] about the univocity of being conclude the same about the univocity of wisdom; therefore wisdom, according to the idea in which it is said of God, is a species of a genus [n.153]; and this is proved by the saying of the ancient doctors [Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Aquinas], who say that species is transferred to divine reality, because it states a perfection, although not the genus, because it states an imperfection -as ‘science’ is transferred but not ‘quality’.

43. To the contrary is the Master [Lombard] in the text, and he adduces Augustine [On the Trinity V ch.1 n.2] - and shows through him that from God are removed the categories of the art of dialectic.’

I. First Opinion

A. Exposition of the Opinion

44. Here there are two opinions, at either extreme. - One [Henry of Ghent] is negative, which says that with the divine simplicity does not stand the fact that there is some concept common to God and creatures, and it was touched on above in distinction 3 question 1 [I d.3 n.20].

45. For proof of this certain reasons are set down which were not touched on before [sc. not touched on by Scotus in I d.3 qq.1-3].

The first is this: there is for things that are totally and immediately under the extremes of a contradiction no common univocal term; God and creatures are totally and immediately under the extremes of a contradiction - to depend and not to depend, caused and not caused, to be from another and not to be from another; therefore there is for them no common univocal term.

46. Again second thus, and it is a confirmation of the previous reason: every common concept is neutral with respect to the things to which it is common; no concept is neutral with respect to contradictories, because it is one or other of them; therefore etc.

47. Again third thus: things primarily diverse agree in nothing; God is primarily diverse from any creature, otherwise he would have that in which he would agree and that in which he would differ, and so he would not be simply simple; therefore God agrees in nothing with the creature, and so neither in any common concept.

48. Again, where there is only the unity of attribution there cannot be the unity of univocity; but it is necessary to posit unity of attribution of the creature with respect to God in the idea of being; therefore there is in this no univocity.

49. For this opinion [n.44] is adduced the intention of Dionysius [On the Divine Names ch.7 sect.3, ch.2 sect.7], who posits three grades of knowing God - by eminence, causality, and negation - and he posits that the knowledge by negation is the ultimate, when from God are removed all the things that are common to creatures; therefore he himself does not understand that any concept abstracted from creatures remains in God according to the respect in which it was common to creatures.

50 For this opinion there is also Augustine On the Trinity VIII ch.3 n.5 (in the middle of the chapter): “When you hear of this good and of that good (which could elsewhere also be said to be not good), if you could without the things that are good by participation perceive the good itself, by participation in which they are good (for you also at the same time understand the good itself when you hear of this good and that good), but if you could, with these things taken away, perceive the good in itself, you would perceive God, and if you cleaved to him with love, you will at once be blessed.” Therefore he intends that, by understanding this good and that good, I understand the good by participation in which they are good, and this is ‘the infinite good’; therefore I do not have there only a concept of God in general [I d.3 n.192], but also a concept of the good through its essence.

B. Reasons against the Opinion

51. Against this position [n.44] there are two reasons,⁴⁷ which were touched on above in distinction 3 in the aforesaid question [I d.3 n.35, 27].

[First reason] - One reason is ‘that this concept proper to God could not naturally be caused in our intellect’; for whatever is naturally a mover of our intellect for the present state, whether the agent intellect or a phantasm or an intelligible species of the thing, has for adequate effect causing in us a concept of the quiddity and of what is contained essentially or virtually in such quiddity; but that proper concept is contained in neither way in the quiddity, neither essentially nor virtually (that it is not essentially is plain, because it denies univocity, - that not virtually because the more perfect is never contained in the less perfect); therefore etc.⁴⁸

52. The response of some people ⁴⁹ is that the being which is thought on causes knowledge of itself insofar as it is a being which is thought on (that is, insofar as it is a being related to the first being), and so to conceive it under that idea is not to conceive it under an absolute idea, but under an idea related to the first being; but the relation has to cause in the intellect a correlative concept, or a concept of the corresponding relation -and although the corresponding relation is not conceived of ‘as subsisting in itself’, yet it will be conceived in some way by virtue of the foundation of that relation.⁵⁰

53. Against this argument [n.51] the fact seems to stand that, if there is anything adequate to the object, the one naturally knowable and intelligible to us (whatever way it is present to our intellect), it can cause a concept of itself and of the things that it essentially or virtually includes, and, according to what was already said [n.51], it in no way includes the absolute that is the foundation of the relation in God, as I will prove [nn.54-55]; therefore it follows that in no way is a concept of that absolute caused in us, and so we will not naturally be able to have any concept of anything absolute about God.

54. Proof of the assumption [n.53], - because although the said response [n.52] supposes that a relation in creatures is naturally first conceived before the relation corresponding to it, or before the foundation of the corresponding relation (which I believe to be dubious, because the term of a relation is naturally pre-understood to the relation, just as the foundation is too), - although it supposes too that a created thought-on thing is not understood by us save insofar as it is related (which was refuted in distinction 3 in the question ‘On the Footprint’ [I d.3 nn.310-323] and seems to be against Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.4 n.9: “Each thing subsists to itself, - how much more God?” - and Augustine is speaking about subsistence as about that by which a created thing naturally is not, and which naturally subsists in itself, otherwise the remark, ‘if each thing subsists to itself, how much more God’, would, if the same thing were taken in the premises as in the conclusion, not be an argument), - omitting these things, I say, which perhaps would be denied by the adversary, I argue as follows: although relation in a creature is able, by its virtue, to cause a concept of the relation corresponding to itself, yet that corresponding relation does not include in itself some absolute concept on which it is founded, because the relation of a creature - conversely - to God, which is only one of reason, does not include the divine essence or any perfection absolute in God (which perfection it naturally is), which essence, however, or perfection must be set down as the foundation of the relation of God to creatures; and so there could not, by these relations, be caused in us any concept of absolute perfection unless another relation possessed in itself virtually that absolute which is the proper perfection of God, and that is impossible.

55. This point [sc. that nothing absolute is included in the concept we have of God] is also proved by the fact that, according to them [sc. those holding the opinion in n.53], the divine essence is of a nature only to cause, about itself, a single concept in the intellect, - therefore only a single real concept about it is of a nature to be possessed. The proof of this consequence is that the divine nature itself is of a nature to cause in the intellect every real concept that is, as to its simple understanding, of a nature to be possessed about it (and more imperfect objects are not capable of this). I infer further: therefore any object that is of a nature to cause, about itself, some real concept, is of a nature to cause that single concept which is itself of a nature to be possessed about it -and, if it does not cause that concept, then it causes no concept about it; but no creature can cause that single concept, because then the concept could, under the idea in which it is a singular essence, be understood from creatures; therefore through no creature -according to this position [n.53] - can any singular concept be possessed about the divine essence.

56. [Second reason] - The second reason, touched on in the aforesaid question [I d.3 n.35, 27], was about one certain concept and two doubtful ones, where the certain concept is common to them.⁵¹

57. To this there is a threefold response.⁵² - First, that there is some concept one and the same that is ‘certain’ and ‘doubtful’; as the concept of Socrates and Plato is doubtful while the concept of some man is certain, - and yet both this and that concept are the same.

58. This is nothing, because although the same concept might be diversified in grammatical and logical modes (grammatical ones as in any modes of signifying; logical ones as in any diverse modes of conceiving, as universal and singular, or explicitly or implicitly: explicitly, as definition expresses it - implicitly as the defined thing expresses it), and not only could one posit certitude and incertitude by these differences, but also truth and falsehood, congruity and incongruity, - yet the fact that the same concept, conceived or taken in the same way, may be certain and doubtful according to, or as to, the modes mentioned, is altogether the same as to affirm and deny. Therefore if the concept of being is certain and the concept of created and uncreated being is doubtful (and this is not because of grammatical modes of signifying, nor is it in logical modes of conceiving), then either the concepts will be simply other, which is the intended proposition - or there will be a concept diversified in mode of conceiving universal and particular, which is also the intended proposition.

59. In a second way it is said [by Henry of Ghent] that they are two concepts close to each other, but that also, because of their closeness, they seem to be one concept - and the concept about the ‘one’ seems to be certain, that is, about these two concepts when doubtfully conceived, while doubtful about the two concepts when distinctly conceived.

60. On the contrary. When there are concepts that cannot be conceived under any unity unless they are at the same time, or beforehand, conceived under a distinction proper to them, which distinction is presupposed to the unity, the intellect cannot be certain about them insofar as they have that unity and doubtful about them insofar as they are distinct; or thus: the intellect cannot be certain about the unity of them and doubtful about their distinction; or thus: the intellect cannot be certain about them under the idea of the unity and doubtful about hem under the idea of some proper distinction. But the intellect conceiving the being that is said of God and creatures - if they be two concepts, it cannot have those concepts according to any unity unless it naturally have them first, or at the same time, under their idea as distinct; therefore it cannot be certain about them under the idea of them as one and doubtful about them under the idea of them as many.

61. Proof of the major [n.60], that if there was certitude about any concept (or about all concepts whatever) while there was a doubting about a and b (or along with doubt about a and b), then this one concept or these two concepts [sc. which seem to be one] are conceived first naturally - under the idea under which there is certitude about it or about them - before a and b are conceived [sc. but this is false].⁵³

62. However it is conceded that concepts that have a relation are pre-conceived. -On the contrary. Either conceived as altogether disparate, - therefore they do not ‘seem’ one; or conceived as having some unity, or any unity, of order or distinction among themselves, - and then comes the proof of the minor [n.60]: being in God and being in creatures, if they are two concepts having attribution, cannot be conceived insofar as they have unity of attribution unless this concept and that are first - or at least at the same time - naturally conceived insofar as they are distinct, to wit this concept under its own proper idea and that one under its own proper idea, because these concepts under their own proper ideas are the foundations of the unity of ‘order’ or of ‘attribution’.

63. This is confirmed by an argument of the Philosopher On the Soul 2.2.426b8-15 about the common sense, which sense he concludes is common through its knowledge of the difference between white and black, from the knowledge of which difference he concludes that it knows the extremes. For if it could know them under the idea of this respect which is ‘difference’, without knowing them under their proper idea, then his argument would not be valid. Therefore likewise in the intended proposition, a and b cannot be known at the same time under the idea of this relation - namely of the unity of order - unless a is known under its own proper idea and b under its own proper idea (since for you there is nothing common between them), and so any intellect that conceives these two under the unity of order conceives them as in themselves distinct.

64. A better argument is as follows, against the claim ‘they seem to be one concept’ [n.59]:

Two simply simple concepts are not in the intellect unless each is there distinctly, because such a simply simple concept is either altogether unknown or totally attained (Metaphysics 9.10.1051b17-26); therefore no intellect is certain about it in some respect and doubtful or deceived about it in another. Form, then, a reasoning as follows: an intellect has two concepts; therefore, if ‘they seem’ to be one, something is plain to the intellect about each concept, and something else is not plain -clearly - otherwise they would always seem ‘one’; therefore neither concept is simply simple, therefore they are not first diverse or most abstract.

65. Again, an intellect in possession of a distinct concept can distinguish by it ‘a known object’ from the concept which it has; here [n.59] it cannot distinguish because it does not have a distinct concept, - therefore neither does it have a proper concept, because a proper concept is a concept that is repugnant to another one; therefore the intellect conceiving this proper concept conceives a something that is repugnant to another concept; for example, sight does not see something repugnant to black without thereby distinguishing it from black. I call concepts formal objects. - For because two objects under their proper ideas (one of which is diverse first from the other) are understood by me, and yet I cannot distinguish what this one is, then I do not understand their proper ideas; therefore I understand nothing or I understand something common.

66. Again, when it is know ‘if a thing exists’, the question ‘what it is’ remains, Posterior Analytics 2.1.89b34.⁵⁴

67. Again there is a more brief argument thus: when the intellect is certain, either it is certain about a concept simply one, or it is not but about a concept one ‘by unity of analogy’. If in the first way, and the intellect is not certain about this concept or about that one (because it is in doubt about each in particular), then it is certain about some third concept that is simply one, which is the intended proposition. If in the second way, it is true, insofar as it is thus one concept, - but about that which is thus one I argue: the intellect cannot be certain about something one ‘by unity of analogy’ unless it is certain about the two as they are two; therefore those two do not seem to the intellect to be ‘one’, because they are at once conceived as distinct concepts.

68. The response in the third way [nn.57, 59] is that there is not certitude about some one concept and doubt about two, but certitude about two concepts and doubt about one or other of them; as for example, ‘I am certain that this is a being, that is, that it is a substance or an accident, but I doubt whether it is determinately this being, as substance, or that being, which is accident.’

69. On the contrary. The certitude precedes all apprehension of anything whatever that divides being itself, therefore it precedes certitude ‘about the whole disjunct’. - The proof of the antecedent is that in the first apprehension by which ‘this’ is known to be something, or a being, there is no need to apprehend it from itself or from another, in itself or in another, and so on about other disjuncts.

70. [Third reason, nn.51, 56] - Against this opinion [n.44] there is also a confirmation for the fourth argument stated above [point (d) in footnote to n.51], which was about the inquiry of the intellect, which inquiry we make by natural investigation about God [I d.3 n.39]; here the ideas of creatures that state imperfection of themselves are separated by us from the imperfection with which they exist in creatures, and we consider them, taken in themselves, as indifferent, and we attribute to them supreme perfection; and, when thus taken as supreme, we attribute them to the Creator as proper to him.

71. Thus does Augustine argue On the Trinity XV ch.4 n.6: “Since we put the Creator without any doubt before created things, he must both supremely live, and perceive and understand all things.” This he himself proves from the fact that “we judge that living things are to be preferred to non-living ones, things endowed with sense to non-sentient ones, intelligent things to non-intelligent ones, immortal things to mortal ones,” - which argument does not seem valid if such things, as they are displayed in creatures, were not of the same idea as those which, when such in supreme degree, we attribute to God.

72. The like arguments [sc. taking creaturely imperfection away and attributing supreme perfection to God, n.71] are frequently made or held by the doctors and saints.

For thus are intellect and will posited formally in God, and not only absolutely but along with infinity, - thus too power and wisdom; thus is free choice posited in him; and Anselm On Free Choice ch.1 blames the definition that says free choice ‘is the power of sinning’, because according to him free choice would then - according to this definition -not exist in God, which is false; and this refutation would be no refutation if free choice were said of God and creatures according to a wholly different idea.

73. This is also the way of Dionysius [On the Divine Names ch.7 sect.3, ch.2 sect.7], because when by the third way, or on the third level, he has come to the

‘knowledge by remotion’ [n.49], I ask whether the negation is understood there precisely, - and then God is not more known than a chimaera is, because the negation is common to being and non-being; or whether something positive is known there to which the negation is attributed, - and then about that positive thing I ask how the concept of it is possessed in the intellect; if no concept by way of causality and eminence is possessed, previously caused in the intellect, nothing positive at all will be known to which the negation may be attributed.

74. There is a conformation for this reason [n.70], that we do not say that God is formally a stone but we do say that he is formally wise; and yet if the attribution of concept to concept is precisely considered, stone could be formally attributed to something in God - as to his idea - just like wisdom is.

75. The response is that God is not called wise because the idea of wisdom is in him, but because such a perfection simply is in him, although of a different idea from created wisdom.

On the contrary:

76. Our wisdom is a certain participation in the ‘wisdom in God’, and likewise also in the idea; but only some single same perfection participates essentially.

77. Again, the relation of what participates the idea to the idea is the relation of measured to measure; but a single measured is referred only to a single measure, - the idea is its measure; therefore since the wisdom by which God is wise is the measure of the same, it is not distinguished from the idea (response: the idea is the proper measure and the proper participated, or rather, is the relation of measure and participated, -wisdom is not thus but is the foundation of the relation of measure and participated, and is common, not proper, because one creature participates the perfection in just the way another does).

78. And similarly, if you say that we conclude something about God by reason of effects, where proportion alone and not likeness is sufficient - this does not reply to, but confirms, the argument [n.70], because, by considering God under the idea of cause, he is from creatures known proportionally well enough, but in this way there is not known about God any perfect thing’s perfection that is in creatures formally, but only causally, namely that God is cause of such perfection. But attributes are perfections stated simply of God formally - therefore such attributes are known about God not only by way of proportion but also by way of likeness, such that it is necessary to posit some concept in such attributes common to God and creatures, and the common concept in the first way, knowing God by way of causality, is not of this sort.

79. For this argument [n.70] there is the authority of the Philosopher Metaphysics 2.1.993b23-29, who, when arguing that ‘the principles of eternal things are most true’, proves it through this major, that ‘that thing is in each case maximally such whereby univocity is predicated in other things’, and he exemplifies it about fire; and from this he concludes that ‘the principles of eternal things must be most true’. This consequence is not valid save in virtue of the following minor, that the eternal principles ‘are the univocal cause of truth in other things’. For if in the minor the proposition is taken that the principles are equivocal or analogical, there will be four terms in the Philosopher’s syllogism, which is not likely.

C. To the Arguments for the Opinion

80. To the arguments for the opposite opinion [n.44].

To the first [n.45]. Either one understands in the minor the ‘they are totally under the extremes of a contradiction’, that is, that they are precisely under the extremes of a contradiction, - and thus the minor is false; for God is not precisely the extreme ‘not from another’, because this negation is said of a chimaera, nor is a creature precisely the negation ‘not a necessary being’, because this belongs to a chimaera, - but both God and a creature are something to which one or other side of a contradiction belongs. Take the major then to mean that whatever things are of the sort that the extremes of a contradiction belong to them, that ‘these things are not univocally spoken of in anything’; this major is false, for all things that per se divide something common are of the sort that the extremes of a contradiction are said of them, and yet they are univocally spoken of in that division. So in the intended proposition: these things can all receive, according to themselves, the predication of a contradiction, and yet they can have something abstract -or some substrate of the extremes of the contradiction - which is common to both [sc. extremes].

81. As to the confirmation about the ‘neutral’ [n.46], I say that even a concept common to two things is neutral formally, and so I concede the conclusion that the concept of being is not formally the concept of something created or of something uncreated [I d.3 n.27]; but if the understanding be that this concept is neutral such that neither of the contradictories is said of it, it is false. For thus it is about rational and irrational, that the concept animal is formally neutral with respect to them, and yet that which is conceived is not neutral but is truly one or other of them. For one or other of the contradictories is said of any animal whatever, and yet it is not necessary that any concept whatever is formally one or other of the contradictories.

82. As to the third [n.47] the answer will be plain in the third article ‘that God and creatures are not diverse first in their concepts’ [nn.95-127]; they are, however, diverse first in reality, because they agree in no reality - and how there can be a common concept without agreement in thing or in reality will be said in what follows [nn.137-150].

83. To the next one, about attribution [n.48], I say that attribution by itself does not posit unity, because the unity of attribution is less than the unity of univocity, and the lesser does not include the greater; yet a lesser unity can stand along with a greater unity, just as things that are one in genus are one in species, although the unity of a genus is less than the unity of a species. So here, I concede that the unity of attribution does not posit unity of univocity, and yet this unity of attribution stands along with unity of univocity, although this unity is not formally that unity, example: the species of the same genus have an essential attribution to the first thing of that genus (Metaphysics 10.1.1052b18), and yet there stands along with this the unity of univocity of idea in those species. Thus -and much more so - must it be in the proposed case, that the attributes may have in idea of being, in which there is unity of attribution, a unity of univocity, because never are things compared as measured to measure, or as exceeded to exceeding, unless they agree in some one thing. But just as comparison simply is in the univocal simply (Physics 7.4.248b6-7), so any comparison is in what is somehow or other univocal. For when it is said ‘this is more perfect than that’, if it is asked ‘a more perfect what?’, one must assign something common to both, so that the determinable of every comparative is common to each extreme of the comparison; for a man is not a more perfect man than an ass, but is a more perfect animal. And so, if certain things are compared in being, where there is attribution of one to the other (‘this is more perfect than that; a more perfect what? - a more perfect being’), there must be a unity in some way common to each extreme.

84. Thus may it also be argued about number or about distinction, because all distinct or numbered things have something common, as Augustine means in On the Trinity VII ch.4 n.7: “If three persons are spoken of, common to them is what a person is,” - so that the determinable of a numerable term is always something common (according to Augustine) to all the numbered things. - And if it be instanced that there is properly no number of God and creatures, I argue about the diverse or the distinct or the other, thus: God and a creature are diverse or distinct, or God is something, or someone, other than a creature. In all these cases the determinable of the distinction, or of the stated singularity or plurality, must be common to each extreme - the point is plain in all examples, because a man is not ‘another man than an ass’ but ‘another animal’. This is proved by reason, because in relations of equal comparison the extremes are of the same idea; otherness is such a relation; therefore in all things ‘other’ there is an otherness of the same idea, and consequently the determinable of otherness will be of one idea. Do not rely on this, because it would conclude that the foundation is of the same idea, hence the minor [‘otherness is such a relation’] is contrary to the article about ‘other’.⁵⁵

85. As for the argument from Dionysius [n.49], it is clear rather in the third argument [n.73] that the intention of Dionysius is to the opposite, because at the third level a stand is not made at negation alone, but at some concept taken from creatures, to which that negation is attributed.

86. To Augustine [n.50] I reply that ‘the good by participation in which other things are good’ (which good is understood by understanding this good and that) can either be posited as a universal to all goods, and then ‘the other goods’ are by participation in it (the way a species participates the genus, or as any inferior participates the superior), or it can be understood as the good in essence, by participation in which, as in their cause, the other goods are, and then it is true that, by understanding this good and that good, I understand the good in essence, but in the case of the universal I understand good the way that, when understanding this being, I understand being as part of its concept, and that in being I understand any being whatever universally. And when Augustine adds ‘if you can know it in itself’ [n.50], I say that if the ‘in itself’ is referred, not to the act of knowing, but to the object [sc. if ‘in itself’ goes with ‘it’ not with ‘know’], - to wit, that I know the good, which I know universally, with the determination ‘in itself’, namely that I conceive the good with the sort of determination that it is a nondependent good and good in essence - then I understand God not only in a common concept but in a proper concept, and then, by the phrase ‘in itself’, the good that was common is contracted and becomes proper to God; and beatitude lies in cleaving to this good by enjoyment (speaking of the beatitude of the way [sc. as opposed to the beatitude of the heavenly fatherland]), because this concept is the most perfect we can have in conceiving God naturally.

87. And this appears to be the intention of Augustine in On Free Choice of the Will II chs.8-14 nn.23-28 - or elsewhere in the same book [On the Trinity VIII, n.50], where he says: “do not look for what truth is, because at once phantasms will present themselves, etc.;” which would not be true if there was a concept of being or of good in God altogether different from the concept of them in creatures. For then one well ought to look for ‘what truth is’, because then a truth would be looked for that is proper to God, nor would phantasms there present themselves to disturb the concept of truth as it is proper to God, because this concept does not have concepts corresponding to it. But they do disturb the concept of truth as it belongs to God when speaking of truth universally, as has been expounded elsewhere [I d.3 n.193].

But there are some who shamelessly insist that there is one concept of being and yet none that is univocal to this thing and that, - this is not to the intention of this question, because, whatever it is that is conceived according to attribution or order in diverse things, yet if there is a concept of itself one, such that it does not have a different idea according as it is said of this and of that, that concept is univocal.

89. Also if anyone in any way shamelessly insists that a denominative concept is not univocal, because the idea of the subject is not of the idea of the predicate, - this instance seems puerile, because in one way a denominative predicate is a middle between a univocal and an equivocal predicate, in another an equivocal and a univocal predicate are, in logic, immediate [extremes]. The first is true when taking a univocal predicate which is univocally predicated, that is because, namely, its idea is the idea of the subject, and in this way a denominative predicate is not univocal. The second is true when understanding it of the unity of the idea which is predicated; thus a univocal concept is that whose idea is in itself one, or the idea is the idea of the subject, whether it denominates the subject or is said per accidens of the subject, but an equivocal concept is that whose idea is different, however that idea is disposed to the subject. An example: animal is univocal, not only as said of its species but also as determined by its differences, because it has one concept determinable by them, and yet it is not said univocally of the differences, such that it is predicated in their ‘what’ - such that its idea is the idea of the differences, the way it is said of the species. Also, this dispute is nothing to the purpose, because if being is said about God and creatures according to a single concept of itself, one must say that the idea of being is the idea of the subject; for it will be said of both in the ‘what’, and so it will be univocal in both ways.

II. Second Opinion

90. The other opinion is affirmative, at the other extreme [n.44], which posits that God is in a genus - and they [sc. those who hold this opinion]⁵⁶ have also on their behalf the authority of Damascene Elementary Instruction on Dogmas ch.7: “Incorporeal substance etc.”⁵⁷

91. Again Boethius in his little book On the Trinity ch.4, where he seems to say that two genera ⁵⁸ remain in divine reality. This cannot be understood only according to some similar mode of predicating, because Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.5 n.8 speaks thus: “If God be called good, just, spirit” etc., “only the last one I mentioned seems to signify substance, and the rest qualities;” and On the Trinity V ch.8 n.9 he seems to say that action most properly agrees with God. Therefore it is not merely the modes of predicating similar to those genera that remain, and in this way does it seem one should understand Boethius ‘about those two genera’ that in themselves remain.

92. Third for this opinion seems to be the authority of Averroes Metaphysics X com.7 (and the text begins “And being is said”),Cf. Scotus’ Lectura I d.8 n.92. ⁵⁹ where the Philosopher says that “there is some one first substance,” which is the measure of the others [Metaphysics 10.2.1054a8-9, 11-13]. The Commentator wants this first substance to be the prime mover. Therefore, just as in the case of other genera the ‘first’ is something of that genus, so the first mover is something of the genus of substance.

93. A first reason set down for this opinion is of the following sort, that created substance can be conceived from uncreated substance, and that neither concept is simply simple. Therefore, by resolution, the idea of substance will remain, indifferent to each contracting instance - and the idea of genus seems to be thus indifferently taken.⁶⁰

94. A second reason is that many simple entities are placed in a genus, such as angels, according to those who posit them to be immaterial - accidents too, according to those who posit them to be simple. Therefore the simplicity of God does not exclude from him the idea of genus.

III. Scotus’ own Opinion

95. I hold a middle opinion, that along with the simplicity of God stands the fact that some concept is common to him and to creatures - not however some common concept as of a genus, because the concept is not said of God in the ‘what’, nor is it, by whatever formal predication said of him, per se in any genus.

A. Proof of the First Part of the Opinion

96. The first part was proved when arguing against the first opinion [nn.44, 51-79].

B. Proof of the Second Part of the Opinion

1. By the Reasons of Augustine and Avicenna

97. The second part I prove by Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.5 n.10: “It is manifest that God is improperly called a ‘substance’.” - His reason there is that substance is said to be that which stands under the accidents; but it is absurd to say that God stands under any accident; therefore etc. This reason holds in this way: Augustine does not understand that the idea of substance is ‘to stand under accidents as substance is a genus’, because he has given there as premise that “it is absurd that substance be said relatively.” But substance, as it is a genus, is limited, as will be immediately proved next [nn.101-107]; but every limited substance is able to receive an accident; therefore any substance that is in a genus can stand under some accident, - God does not so stand, therefore etc.

98. Again, Avicenna Metaphysics VIII ch.4 (99rb) argues that God is not in a genus, because a genus is a ‘part’; but God is simple, not possessing part and part; therefore God is not in a genus.

99. These two reasons [nn.97-98] are true by authority and reason together.

2. By what is Proper to God

100. I now show the intended proposition [n.95] by two middle terms (and they are made clear from things proper to God): first from the idea of infinity, - second from the idea of necessary existence.

101. [From the idea of infinity] - From the first I argue in two ways.

First as follows: a concept having an indifference to certain things to which the concept of a genus cannot be indifferent cannot be the concept of a genus; but something commonly said of God and creatures is indifferent to the finite and infinite, speaking of essential features, - or at any rate indifferent to the finite and non-finite, speaking of any feature whatever, because divine relation is not finite; no genus can be indifferent to the finite and infinite, therefore etc.⁶¹

102. The first part of the minor is plain, because whatever is an essential perfection in God is formally infinite, - in creatures it is finite.

103. I prove the second part of the minor by the fact that a genus is taken from some reality which, in itself, is potential to the reality from which the difference is taken; nothing infinite is potential to anything, as is plain from what was said in the preceding question.⁶² This proof stands on the composition of species and the potentiality of genus, but both these are removed from God, because of infinity.

104. This assumption [n.103] is plain from the authority of Aristotle Metaphysics 8.3.1043b25-26: “The term” (that is, the definition) “must be an extended proposition,” “because of the fact that it signifies something of something, so that the latter is matter and the former is form.”See Appendix to this question point D. ⁶³

105. The same assumption is also apparent by reason, because if the reality from which the genus is taken were truly the whole quiddity of the thing, the genus alone would completely define it, - also genus and difference would not define it, because the account composed of them would not indicate what is first the same as the thing defined; for each thing is itself once, and therefore an account that would express it twice would not indicate what is first the same as the quiddity of the thing.

106. Treating further in some way of this reasoning [n.105], I understand it thus, that genus and difference are, in the case of some creatures, taken from one and another reality (as, by positing there to be several forms in man, animal is taken from the sensitive form and rational from the intellective form), and then the thing from which the genus is taken is truly potential and perfectible by the thing from which the difference is taken. Sometimes, when there is not there thing and thing (as in the case of accidents), at any rate there is in the one thing some reality from which the genus is taken and another reality from which the difference is taken; let the first be called a and the second b; a is in itself potential to b, so that, by understanding a precisely and b precisely, in the way a is understood in the first instant of nature - the instant in which it is precisely itself - it is perfectible by b (as if it were another thing), but the fact that it is not perfected really by b is because of the identity of a and b with some whole with which they are first really the same, and this whole is indeed what is first produced and in this very whole both those realities are produced; but if either of them were produced without the other, it would be truly potential to it and truly imperfect without it.

107. This composition of realities - of potential and actual - is the least that is sufficient for the idea of genus and difference, and it does not stand along with the fact that some reality is infinite in something; for if the reality were of itself infinite, however much it is precisely taken, it would not be in potency to any reality; therefore since in God any essential reality is formally infinite, there is none from which the idea of genus can formally be taken.

108. [Again from the idea of infinity] - Second, from the same middle [n.100], I argue as follows: the concept of a species is not only the concept of a reality and of a mode intrinsic to the same reality, because then whiteness would be a genus and the degrees of intrinsic whiteness could be the specific differences;⁶⁴ but those things by which something common is contracted to God and creatures are the finite and infinite, which state intrinsic degrees of it;⁶⁵ therefore the contracting things cannot be the differences, nor do they constitute with the contracted thing a composite composed in the way the concept of a species should be composed, nay the concept from such a contracted and contracting thing is simpler than the concept of a species could be.⁶⁶

109. From these middles about infinity, the reasoning of Augustine stated above about ‘standing under the accidents’ [n.97] gets its evidence. Thence too does Avicenna’s reasoning get its evidence, in Metaphysics VIII ‘about the partial nature of genus’ touched on above [n.98], because a genus is never without some partial reality in the species, which reality cannot be in something really simple.

110. [From the idea of necessary existence] - I argue, third, from the second middle, namely from the idea of necessary existence [n.100], - and it is the argument of Avicenna Metaphysics VIII ch.4 (99rb): if necessary existence has a genus, then the intention of the genus will either be from necessary existence or not. If in the first way, “then it will only cease at the difference;” I understand this as follows: the genus will in that case include the difference, because without it the genus is not in ultimate act and ‘necessary existence of itself’ is in ultimate act (but if the genus includes the difference, then it is not the genus). If the second way be granted, then it follows that “necessary existence will be constituted by that which is not necessary existence.”⁶⁷

111. But this reasoning [n.110] proves that necessary existence has nothing common with anything, because the common intention is ‘non-necessary existence’; hence I respond: the intention as understood includes neither necessity nor possibility, but is indifferent; but as to that in the thing which corresponds to the intention, it is in ‘this thing’ necessary existence, and in ‘that thing’ it is possible existence (this is rejected if to the intention of the genus a proper reality corresponds, and if it does not thus correspond to the common intention, - as is said [later, n.139].

112. [As to ‘whatever is said formally of God’] - As to that which is added in the question ‘about whatever is formally said of God’ [n.39], I say nothing such is in a genus,⁶⁸ for the same reason [nn.95-111], that nothing which is limited is said formally of God; whatever is of some genus, in whatever way it is of that genus, is necessarily limited.

113. But then there is a doubt, as to what sort the predicates are which are said of God, such as wise, good, etc.

I reply. Being is divided first into finite and infinite before it is divided into the ten categories, because one of them, namely ‘finite’, is common to these ten genera; therefore anything that agrees with being as indifferent to the finite and infinite, or as proper to infinite being, agrees with being, not as it is determined to a genus, but as prior, and consequently as it is transcendent and outside every genus. Anything that is common to God and creatures is such as to agree with being as indifferent to the finite and infinite; for as it agrees with God it is infinite, - as it agrees with creatures, it is finite; therefore it agrees with being before being is divided into the ten genera, and consequently whatever is such is transcendent.

114. But then there is another doubt, as to how ‘wisdom’ is set down as transcendent although it is not common to all beings.

I reply. Just as the idea of ‘most general’ is not the having of several species under it but the not having any genus above it (just as this category ‘when’ - because it does not have a genus above it - is most general, although it has few or no species), so the transcendent is whatever has no genus under which it is contained. Hence it is of the idea of the transcendent to have no predicate above it save being; but the fact it is common to many inferiors is accidental to it.

115. This is plain from another fact, that being not only has simple properties convertible with it, - as one, true, good - but also it has some properties where there are opposites distinguished against each other, as necessary existence or possible existence, act or potency, and the like. But just as the convertible properties are transcendent, because they follow being insofar as it is not determined to any genus, so the disjunct properties are transcendent, and each member of the disjunct is transcendent because neither determines its determinable to a definite genus; and yet one member of the disjunct is formally specific, agreeing with only one being, - as necessary existence in this division ‘necessary existence or possible existence’, and as infinite in this division ‘finite or infinite’, and so on in other cases. Thus too can wisdom be transcendent, and anything else that is common to God and creatures, although some such be said of God only, and some other such be said of God and a creature. But it is not necessary that a transcendent, as transcendent, be said only of whatever being is convertible with the first transcendent, namely with being.⁶⁹

3. Statement and Refutation of Some People’s Proof

116. [Some people’s proof] - Some people Aquinas On Power q.7 a.3. ⁷⁰ prove it in a fourth way [nn.101, 108, 110], that God is not a genus because “he contains in himself the perfections of all genera.”⁷¹

[Refutation of the proof] - But this argument is not valid, because what contains something contains it in its own way. Substance too, which is now the most general genus, contains, as it is taken for all inferior species, all the accidents virtually; so that, if God were to cause only the individuals of substances, they would have in themselves the wherewithal to cause all accidents, and yet created substances would not be denied, because of this, to be in a genus, because they contain accidents virtually in their own way and not in the way of accidents. So, therefore, from the fact alone that God contains the perfections of all genera, it does not follow that he is not in a genus, because containing them in this way does not exclude finitude (for this ‘to contain virtually’ is not ‘to be infinite’), but from God’s absolute infinity this does follow, as was deduced before [nn.101-109].

117. [Instances from infinite line] - But against this [sc. the last clause of n.118] an instance is made that infinity simply does not prove the intended proposition [sc. that God is not in a genus], because the Philosopher Topics 6.11.148b23-32 takes exception to the definition of straight line (namely this definition, ‘a straight line is that whose middle does not extend outside the extremes’), for this reason, that if there were an infinite line it could be straight, - but then it would not have a middle, nor extremes or ends; but a definition is not to be taken exception to because it does not agree with that to which being in a genus is incompossible; therefore it is not incompossible for an infinite line to be in a genus, and consequently infinity does not necessarily prohibit being in a genus.⁷²

118. I reply, first to the intention of the authority [sc. of Aristotle, n.117], -because a straight line is a whole per accidens, and, if this whole be defined, it will be assigned one definition corresponding to line and another corresponding to straight. That which corresponds to ‘straight’ in the place in the definition does not formally contradict the infinite (because straight does not formally contradict the infinite), and what a definition is formally repugnant to, the thing defined will also be repugnant to; but that there is assigned in the definition, which the Philosopher takes exception to, a definition as it were of straight (that is, to have a mean within the extremes), this is formally repugnant to the infinite; therefore, if this definition were good, it has to be that straight would be formally repugnant to the infinite, - but this is false, although straight is, as to its subject, formally repugnant to the infinite. The Philosopher, then, does not intend to say that an infinite line can be in a genus, but that infinity is not formally repugnant to the idea of straight, - and therefore the definition to which infinity is formally repugnant is not a definition ‘of straight insofar as it is straight’; for he would not have taken exception to this definition ‘a straight line is length without breadth, whose extremes are two points equally extended’, because here something would be repugnant to infinity, but it would assigned as the idea of line, not as the idea of straight, - and then it would be well assigned because infinity is repugnant to that line.

119. But there is another doubt, concerning the thing, whether an infinite straight line could be in the genus of quantity, - and if it could, then the two reasons taken from infinity [nn.101, 108] do not seem to be valid.

I reply. Never does the supreme in a superior follow on the supreme in an inferior unless the inferior is the most noble thing contained under the superior, just as ‘the most perfect ass, therefore the most perfect animal’ does not follow, but ‘the most perfect man, therefore the most perfect animal’ does, thanks to the matter, follow, because man is the most perfect of animals; therefore the best or most perfect being does not follow on the most perfect of the things that are contained under being unless it is the simply most perfect thing contained under being; but quantity is not such, nor anything in that genus -because anything in it is limited - nay, nothing is such save what is perfection simply, which can of itself be infinite; and so ‘the most perfect quantity, therefore the most perfect being’ does not follow, nor does it thus follow about anything in any genus, but only this follows, ‘the most perfect truth or goodness, therefore the most perfect being’. So it is, then, with the infinite, that because it does not assert only supreme perfection but also a perfection that cannot be exceeded, infinite being does not follow save on such an infinite as is the most perfect thing in which there is the idea of being, namely which asserts perfection simply. And therefore, although there were a quantity infinite in idea of quantity, yet, since quantity is not a perfection simply, it would not follow that it was an infinite being, because it would not follow that it was a being which could not be exceeded in perfection. There might, then, be an infinite line in the genus of quantity, because it would be a simply limited being and exceeded simply by a simply more perfect being, but ‘an infinite being simply’ cannot exist in a genus; and the reason is that the first infinite [sc. that of a line] does not take away all the potentiality that the idea of genus requires, but it only posits an infinity in a certain respect of some imperfect entity (in which, as it is that thing, there can well be composition, in whatever degree it be put -

as long as it is that thing), but the second infinity necessarily takes away [that potentiality], as was made clear before [nn.106-107, 103].

120. [Instance from the insufficiency of the categories of Aristotle] - Against this [n.119] it is opposed that then contradictories would be posited, by conceding a common concept said in the ‘what’ about God and creatures and denying that God is in a genus; for every concept said in the ‘what’, if it is a common concept, is either the concept of a genus or the concept of a definition, otherwise there will be more predicates than Aristotle taught in Topics 1.4.101b15-28.⁷³

121. To this I say that they are not contradictories. The thing is plain from the authorities of Augustine given above [n.97], - where he denies that God is a substance and concedes that properly and even truly he is essence. But if there were a different, an equivocal, concept for essence as essence belongs to God and creatures, then there could thus be an equivocal concept of substance, - and so God could then be called substance just as he is called essence.

122. Likewise Avicenna in Metaphysics VIII ch.4 (99rb), where he denies that God is in a genus, concedes there that he is substance and being not in another. And that he is taking ‘being’ non-equivocally from the concept according to which it is said of creatures appears from himself in Metaphysics I ch.2 (71ra), where he says that “being in itself does not have principles, which is why science does not look for the principles of being absolutely, but of some being.” But if being had a different concept in God and in creatures, there could well be a principle in itself of being, because of being according to one concept being itself according to another concept would be the principle.

123. When you argue ‘it is said in the ‘what’, then it is genus or definition’ [n.120], - I reply: Aristotle Metaphysics 8.3.1043b23-32 teaches what sort of ‘predicate said in the what’ is a definition. For he introduces there, against the ‘ideas’ of Plato the sayings of the followers of Antisthenes, - whom to this extent he approves when they say, “a long account is a term.” And afterwards he adds that “it is a feature of substance that of it there can be a term (to wit of composite substance, whether sensible or intelligible), but of the first elements from which these are, there is not” (supply, a definition), - and he adds the reason: “since a definition signifies something of something” (this needs to be understood virtually, not formally, - as was said elsewhere [I d.3 n.147]); and he adds: “this indeed must be as matter, but that as form.” From which he seems there to be arguing that the [Platonic] ‘idea’, if it were posited, would not be definable, and so if, because of the simplicity of the ‘idea’, his own reasoning has validity in any way, he himself would much more deny a definition of God, whose simplicity is supreme. Therefore it follows from his authority that nothing is said of God in the ‘what’ as a definition.

124. From the same it follows that nothing is said in the ‘what’ of God as a genus. For whatever has a genus can have a difference and a definition, because (Metaphysics 7.12.1038a5-6) genus ‘either is nothing besides the species, or if it is, it is so indeed as matter’, and then that of which there is a genus should be set down as being able to have a difference as form. If, therefore, something is said of God in the ‘what’, it follows, arguing constructively from Aristotle’s authority not destructively, that that something is not a genus or definition; but when you infer ‘it is a genus or definition, because Aristotle did not say that there were other predicates asserted in the ‘what’, therefore there are no other predicates’ [n.120] - you are arguing from the authority destructively, and there is a fallacy of the consequent.⁷⁴

125. But you will say: then Aristotle did not sufficiently hand on all the predicates said in the ‘what’.

I reply. The Philosopher in the Topics [n.120] distinguished predicates because of the distinction of problems, because diverse problems have, from the diversity of predicates, a diverse way of terminating. So he does not there number all the predicates, because he does not number specific difference (although he did include general difference under genus); and yet specific difference has the proper idea of a predicate; now species too has the proper idea of a predicate, different from definition, otherwise Porphyry [Book of Predicables ch.1] would have been wrong to posit five universals. For that reason, therefore, Aristotle did sufficiently there distinguish the predicates, because he distinguished all those about which puzzling problems require a special way of terminating, which is what he was there intending to hand on. - But the transcendent ones are not such predicates, because there are no special problems about them; for a problem supposes something certain and inquires into what is doubtful (Metaphysics 7.17.1041b4-11), but being and thing “are impressed on the soul in first impression” (Avicenna Metaphysics I ch.6 (72rb)), and therefore about these most common concepts there are no per se terminable problems. It was not necessary, then, to number them among the predicates of problems.

126. But is it really the case that Aristotle never taught those general predicates [sc. the transcendent ones]?

I reply. In Metaphysics 8 [n.123] he taught that nothing was said of God as genus (from the afore-mentioned authority [n.123]), and yet he did teach that ‘truth’ is said univocally of God and creatures in Metaphysics 2.1.993b30-31, as was mentioned above (where he says that ‘the principles of eternal things are most true’ [n.79]); and by this he taught that entity is said univocally of God and creatures, because he adds there (sc. Metaphysics 2, ibid.) that “as each thing is related to being, so is it related to truth;” it is also plain - according to him ⁷⁵ - that if being is said of God, it will be said in the ‘what’. Therefore in these passages he implicitly taught that some transcendent predicate is said in the ‘what’, and that it is not genus or definition, - and that other transcendent predicates are said in the ‘what sort’ (like true), and yet that they are not properties or accidents in accord with the fact that these universals (sc. property and accident) belong to the species of some of the genera, because nothing which is a species of some genus belongs to God in any way.

127. He also in some way taught the same in Topics 4.6.128a38-39: “If something,” - he says - “always follows and does not convert, it is difficult to separate it from being a genus.” And he afterwards adds: “To use it as a genus by the fact that it always follows, although it does not convert,” - as if he were saying that this is expedient for the opponent; and he adds: “when the other grants one of the two sides, one should not obey him in everything,”⁷⁶ - as if he were to say that this is expedient to the respondent, not to concede that every non-convertible consequent is a predicate as a genus; and, if he were not speaking of a predicate said in the ‘what’, there would be no plausibility to what he teaches, that the opponent is using such as a genus. Therefore he insinuates there that something is a common predicate said in a ‘what’ which is not a genus. - And that he is speaking of predication in the ‘what’ is seen from his examples, ‘tranquility is quiet’. For predication in abstract things is not predication in the ‘what sort’ or a denominative predication.

IV. To the Arguments for the Second Opinion

128. To the arguments for the second opinion [nn.90-94]. I respond to Damascene [n.90]. Although he says many words, in diverse places, which seem to say that God is in a genus, yet one word - which he says in Elementary Instruction on Dogmas ch.8 -solves everything. For there he says that “Substance, which contains the uncreated deity super-substantially, but the whole creation cognitively and content-fully, is the most general genus.” Therefore he does not say that the substance which is the most general genus contains the deity as it contains the creature, but contains it ‘super-substantially’, that is, by taking that which is a matter of perfection in substance, as it is a genus, and leaving out that which is a matter of imperfection - in the way Avicenna says in Metaphysics VIII ch.4 [n.122] that God is ‘being in itself’.

129. As to Boethius [n.91] I say that nowhere in that little book is he found to say that ‘two genera remain in divine reality’. In brief, neither genera, nor modes or genera, nor their ideas remain there, - because, just as genera and the things in them are limited, so also are their modes and ideas (speaking of ideas of first intention, which are founded on these), because nothing can be founded on a limited thing save a limited thing.

130. Yet Boethius does - in his little book On the Trinity chs.4, 6 - say, after enumerating the categories, that “if anyone turns these toward divine predication, all that can be changed are changed; but a something is not at all predicated as ‘a relation to something’,” - and later, “essence contains the unity, relation multiplies the trinity;” and from these is taken the thought that he indicates substance and relation remain in divine reality. But he expressly says there that neither substance, which is a genus, nor anything of it, remains there; for he says “When we speak of God, we seem to signify substance, but a substance that is beyond substance,” in the way Damascene spoke of substance ‘super-substantially’ [n.128]. Boethius intends, then, that there are two modes of predicating in divine reality, namely of relative predicate and essential predicate, which modes Augustine expresses rather as ‘to itself’ and ‘to another’ - On the Trinity V ch.8 n.9 - , and all the predicates said formally of God are contained under one or other of these two members; but under the first member [sc. ‘to itself’] are contained many predicates that have a mode of predicating like quality and quantity (and not only those that have a mode of predicating similar to the ones which are of the category of substance), and under the second member [sc. ‘to another’] are contained all that have a mode of predicating similar to relatives, whether they are properly relatives or not.

131. And as to why all essential predicates are said to be predicated according to substance, and why against them are distinguished the predicates said ‘in relation to something’, although however the predicates said ‘in relation to something’ pass over, by identity, into substance, just as the other predicates also do, - the reason for this will be assigned in the following question ‘About attributes’, in the second doubt against the principal solution [nn.215-216, 222].

132. As to Averroes [n.92] I say that he does not seem to have the intention of the master, because Aristotle, in Metaphysics 10.1.1052b18-1053b3, 2.1053b9-1054a19, asks whether in substances there is something one that is the measure of the others, and whether this is the one itself. And he proves - from his intention against Plato - that it is not the one itself, but something to which one itself belongs, just as with all other genera when speaking of one and of the other common things measured in the genera. And he concludes at the end: “Wherefore indeed, in properties and qualities and quantities one itself is something one but not the substance of it; and in substances things must be similarly disposed - for things are similar in everything” (about which text the Commentator set down the words afore mentioned [n.92]). But if the first mover is posited as the measure of the genus itself of substance, this one thing would itself be posited as the measure, because the first mover - on account of its simplicity - would much more truly be this one thing itself than the idea of Plato.

133. What then is the first measure of the genus?

I reply: some substance in that genus, to which unity belongs, is first. - But the first mover is not the intrinsic measure of that genus, just as not of the other genera either. Yet insofar as it is, in some way, the extrinsic measure of everything, it is more immediately the measure of substances, which are more perfect beings, than of accidents, which are more remote from it. It is, however, the intrinsic measure of no genus.

134. To the first reason [n.93] I say that if you contract substance with the difference of created and uncreated, then substance is not taken there as it is the concept of the most general genus (for uncreated is repugnant to substance in this way, because substance in this way involves limitation), but substance is taken there for ‘being in itself’ and not ‘being in another’, whose concept is prior and more common than the concept of substance as it is a genus, - as was plain from Avicenna above [n.122].

135. To the other reason [n.94] I concede that the composition of thing and thing is not required for a being ‘in a genus’, but there is required composition of reality and reality, one of which - precisely taken in the first moment of nature - is in potency to the other and perfectible by the other; but such composition cannot be of infinite reality to infinite reality; but all reality in God is infinite formally, as was made clear above [n.107], - therefore etc.

V. To the Principal Arguments

136. [To the first] - To the first principal argument [n.39] I concede that this concept said of God and creatures in the ‘what’ is contracted by some contracting concepts that assert a ‘what sort’, but it is not the case either that this concept said in the ‘what’ is the concept of a genus, or that those concepts asserting a ‘what sort’ are concepts of differences, because this ‘quidditative’ concept is common to the finite and infinite, which community cannot be in the concept of a genus, - and those contracting concepts assert an intrinsic mode of the contracted thing itself, and not some reality perfecting it; but differences do not assert an intrinsic mode of reality of some genus, because, in whatever grade animality is understood, rationality or irrationality is not on this account an intrinsic mode of animality, but animality is in that grade still understood as perfectible by rationality or irrationality.⁷⁷

137. But there is a doubt how a concept common to God and creatures can be taken as ‘real’ save from some reality of the same genus, - and then it seems that it is potential to the reality from which the distinguishing concept is taken, as was argued before ‘about the concept of genus and difference’ [n.39], and then the argument made above for the first opinion stands, that, if there were some reality in the thing that distinguishes and another reality in it that is distinguished, it seems that the thing is composite, because it has something by which it agrees and something by which it differs [n.47].⁷⁸

138. I reply that when some reality is understood along with its intrinsic mode, the concept is not so simply simple that the reality cannot be conceived without the mode, but it is then an imperfect concept of the thing; the concept can also be conceived under that mode, and it is then a perfect concept of the thing. An example: if there were a whiteness in the tenth grade of perfection, however much it was in every way simple in the thing, it could yet be conceived under the idea of such an amount of whiteness, and then it would be perfectly conceived with a concept adequate to the thing itself, - or it could be conceived precisely under the idea of whiteness, and then it would be conceived with an imperfect concept and one that failed of the perfection of the thing; but an imperfect concept could be common to the whiteness and to some other one, and a perfect concept could be proper.

139. A distinction, then, is required between that from which a common concept is taken and that from which a proper concept is taken, not as a distinction of reality and reality but as a distinction of reality and proper and intrinsic mode of the same, - which distinction suffices for having a perfect or imperfect concept of the same thing, of which concepts the imperfect is common and the perfect is proper. But the concepts of genus and difference require a difference of realities, not just of the same reality perfectly and imperfectly conceived.

140. This point [n.139] can be clarified. If we posit that some intellect is perfectly moved by color to understand the reality of the color and the reality of the difference, however much the intellect may have a perfect concept adequate to the concept of the first reality, it does not have in this concept a concept of the reality from which the difference is taken, nor conversely, - but it has there two formal objects which are of a nature to terminate distinct proper concepts. But if the distinction in the thing were only as of reality and its intrinsic mode, the intellect could not both have a proper concept of the reality and not have a concept of the intrinsic mode of the thing (at any rate as of the mode under which it would be conceived, although this mode itself would not be conceived, just as is elsewhere said ‘about conceived singularity and the mode under which it is conceived’ [I d.2 n.183]), but in the perfect concept it would have one object adequate to it, namely the thing under the mode.⁷⁹

141. And if you say ‘at any rate the common concept is indeterminate and potential with respect to the special concept, therefore the reality too is indeterminate and potential with respect to the reality, or at any rate the concept will not be infinite, because nothing infinite is potential with respect to anything’, - I concede that the concept common to God and creatures is finite, that is, it is not of itself infinite, because, if it were infinite, it would not of itself be common to the finite and infinite; nor is it of itself positively finite, such that it of itself include finitude, because then it would not belong to the infinite, - but it is of itself indifferent to the finite and the infinite; and so it is finite negatively, that is, it does not posit infinity, and in such negative finitude it is determinable through some concept.

142. But if you argue ‘therefore the reality from which it [sc. the above concept] is taken is finite’, - it does not follow; for it is not taken from any reality as a concept adequate to that reality, or as a perfect concept adequate to that reality, but it is diminished and imperfect, to such an extent even that if the reality from which it is taken were to be seen perfectly and intuitively, he who intuits it would not there have distinct formal objects, namely the reality and the mode, but one and the same formal object [n.140], - yet he who understands it with abstractive intellection can, because of the imperfection of the intellection, have it for formal object although he not have the other one.

143. As to the ‘I concede...’ [n.141 near the middle]: the concept is not the finite act [sc. whereby we conceive] but is the formal object [n.65]. If it is determinable [n.141], then it is formally finite and potential, and then not common to an infinite thing.

The final consequence [sc. the clause immediately preceding] is to be denied, because the infinite thing is in the formal finite object understood imperfectly to the extent that the infinite object would be of a nature to cause in the intellect such a formal object if it were to be moving it in diminished fashion [n.142], just as also a created object moving in diminished fashion is of a nature to do the same; and therefore it is common to both, as a sort of common and imperfect likeness.

144. To the contrary: an infinite thing is not anything finite; God is the object in question, if the object is predicated of God in the ‘what’, in the way ‘man is an animal’ -similarly, God is not anything potential.

Response. Although there is in the intellect a composition of concepts, yet the conception is on behalf of the external thing. Just as signs are taken for the things signified, and just as several concepts can be the signs of the same thing (although one is common, another proper), so the composition of the concepts is a sign of the identity of the things signified by those concepts. Because, therefore, the thing signified by the finite concept, as by the common sign, is the very thing which is signified by the concept of God, therefore, by compounding the finite concept in the intellect with the concept of God, this proposition is true ‘God is a being’; but the composition is not on behalf of the finite thus signified, but on behalf of the infinite signified in common.

145. Then to the proposition ‘God is the object in question, a being’ [n.144, init.], I reply: God is that which in reality is signified by being as by a common sign, and therefore in the intellect this composition is true ‘God is a being’, which composition is a sign of that identity.

146. When you say ‘God is not anything finite’ [n.144, init.], the statement is true, when speaking of identity in the thing, namely the identity which is signified and belongs to the signified things; but, when speaking of being as it is a composition in the intellect, the statement that nothing which in the intellect is a finite sign can be predicated of God in a composition is false. An example of this: ‘a man is an animal’, - in the intellect ‘animal’, as it is there the formal object, is a diminished being. But no diminished being is true of [the man] Socrates existing in reality.

147. So this is false, then, ‘Socrates existing is an animal’? - I reply: a composition is always made of concepts, and it is a sign and of things signified; but it is on behalf of material objects, which are signified by the concepts, and of identity, which is signified by the composition, such that if there is an identity of the things signified, namely of the material objects, the composition of the concepts, which are the formal objects, is true.

148. The point [n.139, 140] can also be further clarified. If there is posited for any universal a proper individual (to wit in reality, a proper individual for substance, a proper individual for animal, a proper individual for man, etc.), then not only is the concept of genus potential to the concept of difference, but the proper individual of the genus is potential to the proper individual of the difference. But if we take the proper individual of this concept ‘being’ which is individual in God, and if we take the proper individual of this which is ‘infinite’, it is the same individual, and it is not potential to itself.

149. But you ask at any rate: why does entity not have a proper individual in reality, which individual would be in potency to the individual of the determining feature, so that ‘this’ being is first understood before ‘infinite’ being is?

I reply, because when something is existent of itself, and is not merely capable of very existence, it has of itself whatever condition is necessarily required for existence; but being as it belongs to God - namely being through essence - is infinite existence itself and not something to which existence itself merely belongs (God is of himself ‘this’ and of himself ‘infinite’), so that infinity is in some way as it were first understood to be a mode of being through essence before it is understood to be ‘this’; and therefore one should not ask why ‘this’ being is infinite, as if singularity first belonged to it before infinity. And so is it universally in the case of things that can be beings through essence. Nothing such by participation is first of itself determined so as to be such by essence, both so as to be an infinite such and so as be of itself ‘this’.

150. And if you argue that individual includes individual, therefore common includes common, therefore if ‘this’ being includes ‘this’ infinity, and if being in common includes infinity in common, - I reply that the consequence is not valid, because individual includes some perfection which common does not include, and on account of this perfection it can formally include the infinite, and yet the common - by reason of the common concept - does not include it as an included concept, but is in some way determinable by it.

151. [To the second] - As to Avicenna Metaphysics II [n.40], the answer is plain from himself in Metaphysics VIII, as was said [n.122].

152. [To the third] - As to Damascene [n.41], the answer is plain from the Master [Lombard] in distinction 19 [Sentences I d.19 ch.9 n.182], because he puts species there ‘for some likeness of species to individuals’; there is however a greater unlikeness, according to Augustine, and therefore Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.6 n.11 denies species there as he also denies genus. Hence the definition of Porphyry [Book of Predicables ch.3] ‘species is said to be that which is predicated of many things in the what’ should be understood as meaning that the species in those many is multiplied as to its nature, but in the divine persons the divine nature is not multiplied; the species too has in itself a reality corresponding to it, potential to the proper reality of the individual, but the divine essence is in no way potential to the relation, as was said in distinction 5 question 2 [I d.5 nn.70, 113, 118-119, 132, 138].

153. [To the fourth] - To the final one, about wisdom [n.42], I say that wisdom is not a species of a genus as it is transferred to divine reality, nor is it transferred according to that idea, but according to the idea of wisdom as it is transcendent. But how such a thing can be transcendent was said in the principal solution, the third article [nn.114-115].

154. There is, however, a doubt about the wisdom which is in us, whether it is an individual of transcendent wisdom and of quality, or whether only of something else.

And it seems not to be an individual of either.

Because nothing contains the same thing under diverse predicates which are said in the ‘what’ about the same thing and are not subalternate; but transcendent wisdom and quality are not subalternate; therefore etc.

155. Again, transcendent wisdom is a property of being, - therefore being is not said of it in the ‘what’, nor conversely, from distinction 3 [I d.3 nn.131, 134-136]; therefore neither does anything in which transcendent wisdom is included include a being in ‘what’, because then it would be a being per accidens; for it would essentially include the idea of subject and property, and these do not make anything one per se but only per accidens.

156. If these arguments [nn.154-155] are valid, and the wisdom in us is only an individual of transcendent wisdom or only an individual of the genus of quality - the second of these does not seem it should be granted, because then wisdom would not be in us a perfection simply, which seems to be contrary to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.4 n.6: ‘Every creature around us cries out’ etc. [n.71]; if the first of them is granted, then not every habit is formally in the genus of quality, but all that indicate perfection simply are transcendent.⁸⁰

Question Four. Whether along with the Divine Simplicity can stand a Distinction of Essential Perfections preceding the Act of the Intellect

157. I ask whether along with the divine simplicity there can in any way stand a distinction of essential perfections preceding every act of the intellect.

I argue that there cannot:

Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.5 n.7: “Wisdom and justice are not two qualities in God as they are in creatures, but that which is justice is itself also goodness.” From this I argue: predication in the case of something abstract is only true if it is ‘per se in the first mode’; therefore this proposition ‘wisdom is truth’ is per se in the first mode, and so there is in no way a distinction between the subject and the predicate, but the subject per se includes the predicate, because this is what belongs to per se in the first mode [Posterior Analytics 1.4.73a34-37]; therefore etc.

158. On the contrary:

Damascene On the Orthodox Faith I ch.4: “If you say just or good or anything of the like, - you are not stating the nature of God but something in respect of the nature.” But you are stating something that precedes the act of the intellect; therefore, before every work and act of the intellect, there is something in God which is not the nature formally.

I. The Opinions of Others

159. On this question there are many opinions, all of which I do not intend to recite. But there are two holding to the negative conclusion that nevertheless contradict each other; each posits that along with the simplicity of God no distinction of attributes stands save only a distinction of reason, but the first [from Thomas of Sutton] posits that it cannot be had save through an act of the intellect ‘understanding God himself in an outward respect’, - the second [from Henry of Ghent] posits that this distinction of reason can be had ‘without any outward respect’.

A. First Opinion

160. [Exposition of the opinion] - The first rests on this reasoning:⁸¹ “whenever there is in one extreme a difference of reason to which a real difference corresponds in the other extreme, the distinction or difference of reason is taken by comparison with things really distinct (an example of a distinction according to reason is of the right and left side of a column, which is taken by respect to the real distinction of these in an animal, - likewise, an example of a distinction of reason is in a point as it is the beginning and end, which distinction is taken by respect to lines really diverse); but the divine attributes have in creatures certain things really distinct corresponding to them, as goodness to goodness and wisdom to wisdom, and other things that are really called attributes (by which are excluded certain divine properties, as everlastingness and eternity, which are not properly attributes); therefore etc.”

161. “The adherents of this reasoning say that the attributes are distinguished with respect to our intellect in that, once the corresponding attributes have been removed, only a single and simple concept can be formed about the divine essence (which would be expressed in a single name for, if other names were imposed, either they would be synonymous names, because the same thing in reality and in reason would correspond to them - or they would be empty, because nothing would correspond to them).”

162. “Their mode, then, of positing attributes is of the following sort: to all the ideas of the attributes (namely those that state a perfection in God and in creatures) there corresponds in God the unity of essence, not according to the being which he has absolutely” - as was said - “but according to the respect which he has to creatures; not in the genus of efficient cause (for no attribute is thus taken, as wisdom because he causes wisdom), nor even to remove something from God - which two modes seem to be the ones asserted by Avicenna [Metaphysics VIII chs.4 and 7 (99ra, 101rb)] and Rabbi Moses [Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed p.1 chs. 53, 55-60] - but insofar as the divine essence is compared to creatures according to the idea of formal cause, containing in itself the completeness of every perfection which is dispersed and imperfect in creatures, and in this respect the divine essence can in diverse ways be imitated by everything. - Further: the plurality of attribution-al perfections, as it exists in the divine essence, is as it were in potency, but as it is in a concept of the intellect it is as it were in act (example about the universal in the thing and in the intellect). But this plurality has a diverse existence in diverse intellects; in the divine intellect, indeed, and in a creature made blessed by the fullness of the perfection of the simple essence, it is conceived according to diverse ideas, and from this comes the multitude of conceptions in act in the intelligence, but by an intellect understanding with natural light they are conceived a posteriori, insofar as this intellect forms, from perfections really diverse in creatures, corresponding conceptions and perfections proportional in God; yet no intellect actually understands them without respect to those they are proportional to - whether it understand them from those they are proportional to, as does the third intellect [an intellect understanding with natural light], - or not, but from the essence, as does the first and the second intellect [sc. the divine intellect and the intellect of a blessed creature]. -Limited perfections insofar as they are actually in the intelligence are called reasons, and reason here is said to be the conception of a determinate perfection, from its respect to the determinate perfection corresponding to it in creatures.”

163. [Godfrey of Fontaine’s clarification for the opinion] - Others clarify this position in the following way, that “the divine intellect, apprehending its own essence according to one simple reality, yet a reality virtually containing, without limitation and defect, the simple and absolute perfections of all things, insofar as it is more eminently perfect than the same perfections because of the eminence of its own perfection, understands that essence as one in reality, perfect with a multiple perfection that differs according to reason; and if it did not apprehend that the creature was perfected with diverse perfections really different insofar as the creature is good and wise, or because those perfections introduce diversities in the creature, it would not apprehend itself as perfect in wisdom under one reason and perfect in goodness under another reason, nor would it apprehend the difference in reason between its own wisdom and its own goodness unless it apprehended the difference in reality of wisdom and goodness in the creature, - otherwise unity and plurality would be taken from one thing disposed in the same way in reality and in concept. Since, therefore, the divine essence, as considered in itself, is something wholly without distinction - altogether simple - in reality and in reason, it cannot be said that, without a comparison between it and other things in which is found a diversity of reality and reason, such a distinction could exist, because, when that is apprehended which is altogether simple and single under the reason that belongs to it in itself without any relation to anything else in which there is some distinction, then, just as the apprehended is only one in reality, so it cannot be apprehended save as one simple reason.”

164. “Nor can it - namely the intelligible and the intelligent - apprehend in its essence certain things as differing in their comparison with each other or as having a mutual relation with each other, unless these things are supposed already to exist in their own difference, or to be introducing a certain difference. For things which are apprehended as certain different things having a mutual relation to each other, and which are also, by the operation of the intellect, compared as differing from each other, these are also supposed to exist in their own difference; but things that, by the operation of reason or intellect, do not possess what makes them to be beings according to reason, and to differ by reason from each other, these cannot be said to be constituted in their own such being and to have this difference according to reason through comparison of them with each other by the operation of reason or the intellect; nay this second operation necessarily presupposes the first, such that, first, they are by one operation of reason constituted in such distinct being, and, second, by another operation of the intellect they are compared as thus distinct from each other; for just as things of absolute nature, when they are compared with each other, are supposed to have a distinct being in reality, so too beings of reason, when these are compared with each other, are supposed to have a distinct being according to reason. Therefore, if the divine intellect apprehends its own essence as different in reason from the attributes, and if it also apprehends the attributes as different in reason, and if the attributes are compared with each other under this very difference, they are of themselves in it actually as so differing, and under their own actual distinction - which they thus have of themselves - they move the divine intellect so that it conceive them as so distinct and compare them with each other. But this does not seem to be concordant.”

165. This reasoning is confirmed as follows: “For all things that differ, or have a difference, formally in themselves or from themselves through what they are in themselves, without comparison to other differing things, all such things differ in reality. But there are other things that have plurality or difference from comparison with other things that really differ, and these things differ by reason; and this is plain in creatures, for once unity of specific form in reality is presupposed, the intellect distinguishes in it the idea of genus and difference - which are said not to be diverse things - but this diversity could not be taken in any single and simple thing unless it were compared by the intellect to some things really different and, according to some order, agreeing with that single thing; one and the same thing would not have diverse reasons of true and good unless to understand and to will the ‘one and the same thing’ were, for some subject, acts really diverse and ordered with respect to each other. This is plain also in God, because, when every kind of comparison to the diverse essences of creatures introducing a real diversity has been stripped away, the divine essence would not be apprehended by the divine intellect under the reason of diverse ideas (or of forms), differing by reason alone, but under one simple altogether indistinct reason.”

166. “And this is the intention of the Commentator in Metaphysics XII com.39 where, speaking of this matter, he says that life, wisdom, etc. are said properly of God, because God is properly and truly said to be alive and to be wise etc. But such and the like things, which are signified by way of disposition and thing disposed, ‘are reduced’ in material things ‘to one thing in being and to two things in consideration; for the intellect is of a nature to divide things united in being, but in composite things - when it disposes the composite, or what has a form, through the form - it understands both the things that are united in some way and different in another way; but when the disposed thing and the disposition have been considered in immaterial things, then they are reduced to altogether one intention, and there will be no mode by which the predicate is distinguished from the subject outside the intellect, namely in the being of the thing. But the intellect understands no difference between them in being, save according to way of taking them, namely because the same thing receives the disposed thing and the disposition as two, the proportion of which to each other is as the proportion of predicate to subject; for the intellect can, in the case of composite things, understand the same thing according to likeness to a categorical proposition, just as it understands many things according to likeness’.”

167. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this position I argue first thus:⁸² “whatever is a mark of perfection simply in a creature is more principally and of itself in God, and not with respect to another;” an attribute is a mark of perfection simply in a creature, such that ‘it rather than not it’ is simply ‘better’ [n.22]; therefore etc.

Proof of the major: “the perfect is always independent of the imperfect, just as the imperfect is dependent on the perfect;” an attributal perfection is in God perfectly, in creatures imperfectly. - Likewise it would not be of infinite perfection simply unless it contained all perfection simply without respect to anything external.

The minor is made clear thus: for because any created thing, and any perfection of it essential to it, is limited in quidditative existence, therefore from nothing of this sort is an attribute taken (for by parity of reason an attribute might be taken from any created essence), but an attribute is taken from that which is an accidental perfection in a creature - or in its existing well - and which states a perfection simply in the subject substance, -because, although as a certain nature it has a limited rank, yet as perfecting another in its existing well it indicates no limitation, and thus it is an attribute. Thus too in God it does not indicate a proper perfection but as it were an accidental one, in his existing well, - On the Trinity XV ch.5 n.8: “If we say wise, powerful, beautiful, spirit, what I put last seems to signify substance, but the rest qualities of this substance.”

168. Again, those things are not distinguished by respect externally of which any one contains essence according to every ideal reason; but “any attribute contains essence according to every reason of ideal perfection;” therefore etc.

The proof of the minor is that the ideal reason corresponds to the perfection of the creature insofar as it is perfected in quidditative existence and, consequently, under the idea by which the essence is limited (hence also creatures are distinguished according to diverse degrees of limitation), but not insofar as the essence is perfect simply, because thus one attribute in God, as good or perfect, corresponds to all of them; from this the proof of the minor is apparent: for because any attribute is a perfection simply (from the clarification of the minor of the first proof [n.167]), it follows that any one of them is imitable by every limited grade.

The proof of the major is that what contains every idea seems to regard equally everything patterned after the idea, and so in regard to none of them can it be distinguished from another, because it similarly regards any one at all; hence the attribute wisdom does not more regard wisdom patterned after the idea than color patterned after it, because both are equally limited, nor is the attribute taken more from one than from the other.

169. Again, “the distinction of attributes is the foundation of the distinction of the personal emanations, because the Son proceeds by being born as the word in the intellect, the Holy Spirit by being inspirited as love in the will, and not as the word, - which could not be unless there were some distinction of intellect and will internally,” such that the production of the persons is compared necessarily to nothing external; therefore etc.

170. Again, “he [God] understands his essence insofar as it is true, not insofar as it is good, - and he wills it insofar as it is good, not insofar as it is true;” “also from eternity he understood that he understands his essence and wills it simply, not in respect of something external,” because this act follows natural immateriality. Therefore, without such respect, it includes in its essence the idea of true and good, and similarly the idea of understanding and understood, of willing and willed, as formally distinct; therefore etc.

171. Again, “divine beatitude consists in its perfect acts, of intellect and will, but all the divine attributes mutually regard each other in perfecting those acts,” as will be plain [n.175]; but the beatitude of God depends on no extrinsic respect; therefore etc.

172. Against the reasons for the opinion [n.160].

The major is false. First because the divine essence is distinguished by reason from the attribute, just as one attribute is from another; can it therefore follow that ‘essence as essence is only there by outward respect’? - Second because true and good in creatures are distinguished by a distinction of reason; from which really distinct things, then, is this distinction taken? From none but from true and good in God, which differ in reason. - Next, third because where there is “a mere distinction of reason, no outward respect is required” (just as is the case with definition and defined); and such is the distinction in the case of attributes, “which are objects of the divine intelligence, different in reason, although they are one act of understanding in God.” For when an outward respect is required, then the distinction is partly from the intellect and partly from elsewhere; and this either from diverse circumstances extrinsic in diverse ways, as is plain in the examples adduced of the column and the point [n.160], - or from the same thing diversely circumstanced, as is plain in the second instance [above, n.172] against the major.

173. Again, against the minor of the reason [n.160] there is this argument: “since all the attributes pertain to the intellect and the will - which are the principles of the emanations - the distinction of attributes can be really reduced to distinct persons, such that those which pertain to the intellect have respect to generation, - those which pertain to the will have respect to inspiriting; so that, just as the natural intellect does not distinguish these and those save by respect to things in creatures to which it turns back all its understanding, so the blessed intellect distinguishes them about the persons, to which it directs all its understanding.”

B. Second Opinion

174. [Exposition of the opinion] - There is another position [Henry of Ghent’s],⁸³ which says that “the divine essence absolutely considered, insofar as it is a nature or essence, has no distinction of reasons save as it were in potency, - for the Commentator says Metaphysics XII com.39 that ‘the multiplicity of reasons in God is only in the intellect alone, not in reality’; but the divine essence considered, not in itself, but insofar as it is truth - insofar namely as it has existence in the intellect - can be taken in two ways, either insofar as it moves the intellect as by simple intelligence, and thus it is still conceived by reason of its simplicity and does not have any plurality save as it were in potency, - or insofar as the intelligence, after this apprehension, busies itself about the very plurality of the attributes, as if reducing them from potency to act. In the first way [sc. the divine essence absolutely considered] the natural intellect does not attain it but then only perceives it from attributes conceived from creatures,” according to this opinion; “in the second way [sc. the first way of taking the divine essence considered as it is truth] the blessed intellect grasps it as if in the first action of understanding; in the third way [sc. the second way of taking the divine essence considered as it is truth] the same intellect [sc. the blessed intellect] combining as it were and dividing, and the divine intellect in a single, simple intuition, distinguish the reasons contained in the essence, which essence contains, of its supreme perfection, all the perfections simply that are, by the sole operation of the intellect, to be distinguished.”

175. “These reasons of the attributes, which the intellect forms from the simple essence through diverse conceptions, are only respects founded in the essence (because simplicity prevents the concept of several attributes within it), and they are several concepts, lest the concepts be synonymous, and lest they be empty in the essence, but they are not outward respects” (as was proved [nn.167-171]), “but inward ones. Thus all the divine attributes pertain to the intellect or will, and they mutually regard each other inwardly insofar as they all - these and those - fall, by congruence, under the apprehension of the intellect; this intellect firstly conceives, in a simple intelligence, the essence as it is essence, and then, busying itself about it, conceives it as understood and as understanding and as the reason of understanding, - such that the essence, insofar as it is essence, has a respect to the other things as they are founded in it; but the essence as conceived, and as moving the intellect to understand, is called truth, whose proper reason is that it have a respect to the essence, insofar as it is essence, as being that of which it is clarificatory, and to the intellect as that to which it has to clarify it, and to the act of understanding as that by which it has to clarify it, and to wisdom as the habit in which the intellect is fit to have a clarification made to it. But the essence itself, as it is conceptive of itself by an act of understanding, is the intellect, and it has a respect to truth as that through which the essence which is conceived is made manifest,” - and likewise of the act, etc. - Thus too about the attributes pertaining to the will.

176. “From the supreme unity of the essence, in ordered manner, according to the mode of conceiving, the diverse reasons of the attributes are first conceived (and among these attributes there is still order, according as they are more immediately or more mediately ordered to the emanations), next the emanations are conceived, and there an inward stand is made, and finally there follow all the outward respects, which are per accidens; but just as the distinction of real relations is to what corresponds to them, so too is the distinction of relations of reason to what corresponds to them, and wholly inwardly, according to the argument that was made for this part [sc. that the relations of reason are inward only].”

177. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion there is argument through the reasons I adduced against the first opinion [nn.167-176], - first, by the third reason, because it is against them [sc. the followers of Henry, n.169]: the distinction of the attributal perfections is the foundation with respect to the distinction of the emanations, -but the distinction of the emanations is real, as is clear; but no real distinction necessarily pre-requires a distinction which is only one of reason, just as neither does anything that is truly real pre-require something else that is merely a being of reason; therefore the distinction of attributes is not one of reason only but is in some way from the nature of the thing. - The assumption is plain, because a real being, which is distinguished against a being of reason, is that which has existence of itself, setting aside all work of the intellect as it is intellect; but whatever depends on a being of reason, or pre-requires it, cannot have existence when all work of the intellect has been set aside; therefore nothing that pre-requires a being of reason is a truly real being.

178. A confirmation of this reason is that what is naturally posterior cannot be more perfect than a being that is naturally prior; but real being is more perfect than a being which is a being of reason only [sc. therefore a real being cannot be posterior to a being of reason].

Although this reason is sufficient against one who holds the opinion, yet it is necessary to confirm it for the conclusion in itself [nn.180-181; the conclusion is that attributes are distinguished in the nature of the thing,].

179. Let it be said to it that the attributes are not the foundations of the distinct emanations,⁸⁴ nay the essence alone along with the relations is the principle of the diverse emanations; yet the intellect can afterwards consider the essence itself as it is, along with the relations, principle of this and that emanation, and then can consider the idea of nature and of will, and yet these will not there be prior from the nature of the thing.

180. On the contrary: in the instant of origin in which the Son is generated, I ask whether his productive principle is related to him in a way other than the productive principle of the Holy Spirit is related to him, or not in another way. If not in another way, then the Son is not more son or image of the Father by force of his production than the Holy Spirit is, - if in another way, then in those moments of origin, before all act of the intellect, some distinction and formal non-identity is obtained.

181. Nor is it valid to attribute this distinction to the relations, because every relation has a respect naturally to its correlatives; therefore the essence, as it is under the idea of inspiriting, equally has a respect to the inspirited, just as under the idea of generative it has a respect to the generated or the begotten. The different modes, then, of producing - naturally and freely - cannot there be saved by the relations, but only if the absolute, by which the producer produces, is of a different idea.

182. This point [that the attributes are distinguished in the nature of the thing] is also argued against this position by yet another of their reasons, about the objects of true and good [n.170] - because if ‘from eternity God, of his immateriality, understands himself and wills himself’, and this under the idea of true and good, then there is there a distinction of true and good by reason of formalities in the objects, before every act about such objects.

183. This is also confirmed by their argument about beatitude [nn.174-176], which belongs to God from the nature of the thing before every act of busying intellect, because the act of being busy about something is not formally beatific; but that beatitude (as is said) requires the proper idea of object and of power and of the one operating; therefore etc.

184. However the position [of Henry’s] is expounded in this way, that we can speak about the relation that the object makes in the intellect of itself, or about that which the intellect can make by busying itself about the object;⁸⁵ if we speak of the first, it is single, as it is also single in reality, - and this the opinion in itself said, that it has, as it is in the intelligence by an act of simple knowledge, the idea altogether of something indistinct [n.174]; if in the second way, thus the intellect can form about that one idea of the object many distinct ideas, comparing this to that, - and this likewise the opinion said, that the object, as it is in the intellect busying itself, has distinct ideas, quasi-formed about it [nn.174-175]. Yet this exposition adds - which the opinion in itself does not seem to say - that the one idea in itself is formally truth and goodness, and any perfection simply, and that the one idea, which is made in the intellect by virtue of the object, is also the idea of goodness formally and of truth, etc. The opinion in itself, however, seems to say that they state diverse respects founded in the essence.

185. Because, therefore, the said opinion [nn.174-176] can be understood in diverse ways, besides the arguments already made, I append other reasons, - and first I show that truth and goodness are formally in the thing, as well as any perfection simply, before all work of the intellect; because any perfection simply is formally in a simply perfect being from the nature of the thing; truth is formally a perfection simply, and goodness likewise; therefore etc.

The major is plain, first because otherwise there would not be a simply perfect thing, because there would not be ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ [I d.2 n.137] (for a greater than it would be thought if it were perfect thus and so), second because otherwise perfection simply would exist perfectly in nothing (for there is no perfection perfectly in a creature, because it exists there finitely, nor is there any perfection perfectly in God if it is not in him as existing but only as known, because ‘to be known’ is to exist in diminished fashion in contradistinction to something existent), then third because perfection simply in something would exist formally by participation and would not exist formally in that from which it would be participated (nay, such perfection in the participant would not be by participation of the perfection in its cause, because there is nothing on which participation in something existent depends save something existent), all which - namely all these inferred results - seem absurd. - The minor is plain, because otherwise Anselm would not posit such things in God, because according to him, Monologion ch. 15, nothing such should be posited in God which is not ‘better existing than not existing’, and hence a perfection simply. The same minor is also plain because anything such can be formally infinite; infinity is repugnant to anything that is not a perfection simply; therefore etc.⁸⁶

186. Further, I prove that such perfections in the nature of the thing do not, before the work of the intellect, have formal identity; because the intellect can by its own act only cause a relation of reason, from the fact, namely, that it is a collative virtue, able to confer this thing as known to that. I ask then whether truth states precisely the perfection which is in the thing formally, or precisely the relation made by the intellect, or both? If precisely the relation of reason, then truth is not a perfection simply, because no relation of reason can be infinite; for if a real relation - as paternity - is not formally infinite, how much less so the relation of reason. If both, since they are not one save per accidens - because a relation of reason never makes with a real being something one per se (as is plain, because it makes one thing much less with a real being than a property does with the subject; for a property follows the subject from the idea of the subject, but no being of reason follows a real being from the idea of it) - then separate those two things apart that come together in this being per accidens, and it then follows that truth always states precisely that perfection in the thing, and goodness likewise; and then further, since there is no distinction in the thing, whether according to the opinion or according to the exposition of the opinion [nn.174-176, 184], it follows that goodness and truth are formally synonymous (which they themselves deny [n.175]), because they would state the same perfection as it is a perfection in the thing, as was proved [just above at “then separate...”], and without any distinction of thing or of reason.

187. Further, the intuitive intellect has no distinction in the object save according to what is existent, because just as it does not know any object save as existent, so it does not know any things formally distinct in the object save as it is existent. Since, therefore, the divine intellect does not know its own essence save by intuitive intellection, whatever distinction is posited there in the object - whether of distinct formal objects or as of reasons caused by an act of intellect [sc. the two ways of taking Henry’s opinion, his and the expositor’s] - it follows that this distinction will be in the object as it is actually existent; and so, if this distinction is of distinct formal objects in the object, those distinct objects will be formally distinct (and then the intended proposition follows, that such distinction of formal objects precedes the act of the intellect), but if it is of reasons caused by an act of understanding, then the divine intellect will cause some intellection in the essence ‘as a relation of reason’, as it is existent, which seems absurd.

188. Again, there is an argument against the exposition [n.184], - that if only one real concept is of a nature to be had about any object, nothing causes a real concept of the object unless it causes that one concept; but about the divine essence, according to them, only one real concept is of a nature to be had, because the divine essence is only of a nature to make one real concept (but it is of a nature to make any real concept that can be had of it, otherwise it would be a more imperfect intelligible than is any created intelligible, which created intelligible indeed is causative of every real concept that can be had of it); therefore nothing will cause in the intellect any concept of God unless it make that single concept, and so since the creature cannot cause that concept in the intellect - because the concept is of the divine essence as the essence is a ‘this’, in itself, under its proper idea - it follows that by no action of a creature can any natural concept be had of God in this life [n.55].

189. Further, against the opinion in itself, because if these things [the attributes] are distinguished in some way or other by reason, they are not distinguished by the nature of the thing, but by an act of intellect or will. From this I argue: a distinction preceding the idea of the first distinguishing thing is not made by such a distinguishing thing; but a distinction between nature and intellection, or between will and intellection, precedes intellection, which is the distinguishing principle of things which are distinguished by reason; therefore the distinction between nature and intellection, or between intellection and will, will not be made by intellection.⁸⁷ - The assumption is plain. For if no distinction of them were to precede, these [attributes] would not be distinguished more by intellection than by nature or will; but whatever is distinguished by intellection, as it is altogether indistinct from nature, is also distinguished by nature; for whatever belongs to a as it is in every way indistinct from b, belongs to b itself, - the opposite seems to involve a contradiction.

190. And if it be said, as if despising this argument [189] (perhaps by precaution, because of the defect of the reply), that if there were, per impossibile, intellection alone, by itself, it would do the distinguishing, not nature or will, - this response is not sufficient, because however much certain things are per impossibile separated, if, when they are separated, something belongs to one and not to another, this cannot be except because of some formal distinction of the reason of this one from the reason of that one. Therefore if, per impossibile, with these things separated, a distinction would belong to intellection and not to nature, there is some distinction ‘between this reason and that’ even when they are not separated; for, after white and white are per impossibile separated, you will not be able to have it that white is the cause of something without white being the cause of the same thing, because there is no distinction between white and white; hence, there would never be a fallacy of accident here, ‘these attributes are distinguished by intellection, intellection is nature, therefore they are distinguished by nature’, unless the idea of intellection were extraneous to the idea of nature, insofar as they are compared to a third thing; therefore that extraneity precedes ‘any distinction’ of this idea from that, insofar as they are compared to a third, and it [sc. the idea of intellection or of nature] precedes the distinction of the ideas between themselves.

II. To the Question

191. [Solution of the question] - To the question [n.157] I reply that between the essential perfections there is only a difference of reason,⁸⁸ that is, of diverse modes of conceiving the same formal object (for there is such a distinction between wise and wisdom, and a greater one at any rate between wisdom and truth), and there is not there only a distinction of formal objects in the intellect, because, as argued before, that distinction is nowhere in intuitive cognition unless it is in the object intuitively known [n.187]. These two members are also proved by the reasons made against the preceding opinion [sc. of Henry, nn.177-178, 182-183, 185-190].

192. So there is there a distinction preceding the intellect in every way, and it is this, that wisdom is in the thing from the nature of the thing, and goodness is in the thing from the nature of the thing - but wisdom in the thing is not formally goodness in the thing.

The proof of this is that, if infinite wisdom were formally infinite goodness, wisdom in general would be formally goodness in general. For infinity does not destroy the formal idea of that to which it is added, because in whatever grade some perfection is understood to be (which ‘grade’ however is a grade of that perfection), the formal idea of that perfection is not taken away because of that grade, and so if it as it is general does not include it formally as it is in general, neither does it as infinite include it formally as it is infinite.

193. I make this clear by the fact that ‘to include formally’ is to include something in its essential idea, such that, if a definition of the including thing be assigned, the included thing would be the definition or a part of the definition; but just as the definition of goodness in general does not include wisdom in itself, so neither does infinite goodness include infinite wisdom; there is then some formal non-identity between wisdom and goodness, insofar as there would be distinct definitions of them, if they were definable. But a definition does not indicate only the idea caused by the intellect, but also the quiddity of the thing; there is then a formal non-identity on the part of the thing, and I understand it thus, that the intellect, when combining this proposition ‘wisdom is not formally goodness’, does not, by its collative act, cause the truth of this proposition, but it finds the extremes in the object, from the combining of which the act is made true.

194. And this argument ‘about non formal identity’ the old doctors [e.g. Bonaventure] stated by positing in divine reality that there was some predication true by identity that yet was not formal; thus I concede that by identity goodness is truth in the thing, but truth is not formally goodness.

195. The rule of Anselm, Monologion ch.15: “It is necessary that it be whatever is altogether better it than not it;” no relation of reason is of this sort [sc. a perfection simply, n.185], and nothing is unless, when relations of reason have been removed, it is altogether the same in the thing and in reason; therefore Anselm’s rule is nothing other than ‘God is God’.

196. On the contrary. In [Monologion] ch.16: “If it be asked what that nature is, what better response than that it is justice?” Therefore anything at all is said of it in the ‘what’. The perfect quidditative concept is only one, or at any rate there is no formal distinction between ‘what’ and ‘what’. - Again, ch.17: “The nature itself in one way and in one consideration is whatever it is essentially.”

197. Response. ‘What’ by identity, not formally; proof of this gloss: ch.17 says: “justice signifies the same as the other things, whether all together or singly.” It is not understood here that they signify the same ‘formally and first’, because then they would be synonyms; therefore they connote the same, or signify the same really, not formally. Again, Damascene [n.198]. To the second [quote from Anselm, n.196]: he adds an example about man, who “is not in one way or in one consideration said to be these three: body, rational, man.” As to why, he posits two reasons: “in one respect man is body, in another rational;” second reason: “each of these is not the whole thing that is man.” It was in opposition to these two reasons that the remark ‘in one way and in one consideration’ was made.⁸⁹

198. This opinion [of Scotus, nn.193-194] is confirmed by the authority of Damascene On the Orthodox Faith ch.4 cited previously [n.158], and ch.9, where he himself means that, among all the names said of God, the most proper is ‘Who is’, because he says God is ‘a certain sea of infinite substance’; but the other names - as he said in ch.4 - state things that ‘circumstance the nature’. This would not seem true unless there were some distinction on the part of the thing; for God is not ‘a sea of infinite substance’ because of the fact that many relations of reason can be caused in respect of him - for thus can they be caused by an act of intellect in respect of anything.

199. Note on behalf of the saying of Damascene, that ‘sea of perfections’ can be understood in one way for an act containing, both formally and in itself, all perfections under their proper formal reasons; thus nothing formally one is a ‘sea’, because it is a contradiction for one formal reason actually to contain so many reasons. In this way, then, nothing is a ‘sea’ unless it is identically one, that is: “God, wise, good, blessed’, and all the rest of this sort. Damascene is not taking ‘sea’ in this way.

200. In another can be understood [sc. by ‘sea of perfections’] something formally one, containing all perfections in the most eminent way in which it is possible for them all to be contained in one; but this way is that they are not only contained identically, because of the formal infinity of the container (for thus any [perfection] contains them all), but that further they are contained virtually, as in their cause, - and further still, in something as first cause containing them of itself, and as most universal cause, because containing them all. In this way ‘this’ essence is a ‘sea’, because in the case of any multitude one must come to a stand at something altogether first; in this [divine multitude] there is nothing altogether first save ‘this’ essence, therefore it is not only formally infinite, but it virtually contains the others; nor only some of them (as perhaps the intellect contains wisdom and understanding, and the will love and loving), but all of them, nor containing them by some other virtue of something else, but by itself. Therefore it has infinity formally and primarily, namely as well from itself as in respect of everything, an infinity universally causal and virtually containing, - and thus it is a ‘sea’, thus containing all of them as they can be contained eminently in some formally one thing. “All the rivers flow into the sea; whence they come thither do they return” (Ecclesiastes 1.7).

201. Therefore this proposition ‘God is wise’ is more per se than this other ‘the wise is good’. The other [sc. perfections other than the essence] have formal infinity, and if they have causal or virtual infinity (which needs to be preserved because of their nearer or remoter order to the essence), yet they do not have causal infinity with respect to all, nor do they have it with respect to any from themselves, but from the essence. - All these points [nn.199-201] are plain in the example of being and its properties (if they be posited to be the same, as is necessary [sc. for the purpose of the example]), if infinity is avoided.

202. On the contrary: the truest unity is to be posited in God; formal unity is truer than mere identical unity.

Response: formal unity is posited, but not of anything whatever in respect of anything whatever. If the major be taken in this way it is false of person and person, and the gloss would be: ‘[the unity] which is possible is true’; but, as it is, formal identity of anything whatever with anything whatever is not possible, but only real identity. From this middle the argument is made to the opposite, that every unity simply of perfection is to be posited there [sc. in God]; such unity there is identical unity, without formal unity, because it is simple and unlimited, but formal unity does not posit un-limitation.

203. The opinion [n.198] is confirmed by Augustine On the Trinity VIII ch.1 n.2, where he proves that in divine reality ‘two persons are not something greater than one, because they are not something truer’. What consequence would that be? If it were only a distinction of reason between truth and wisdom and greatness, the argument would not seem to be different from an argument that proved ‘wisdom, therefore wise’, or conversely [n.191].

204. To what purpose, too, do the doctors who hold the opposite opinion [to that of Scotus] fill up so many pages demonstrating one attribute from another if there were between them only a difference of relations of reason? For God would seem thus to be perfectly known - as to every real concept - as he is known under one attribute just as if he were known under the idea of all the attributes, because the knowledge of several relations of reason does not make a more perfect knowledge, nor does it do anything for having a more perfect real knowledge of anything.

205. Likewise, third, in line with the aforesaid authority of Damascene [n.198], to what purpose do they [sc. those who hold the opposite opinion to Scotus] assign an order to the attributes, as if the essence were the foundation and certain attributes were closer to the essence and certain closer to the emanations? If they are only relations of reason, what is the order in comparison to the emanations?

206. Likewise, Augustine Against Maximinus II ch.10 n.3: “If you can concede God the Father to be simple and yet to be wise, good, etc.” (and he enumerates there many perfections), “how much more can one God be simple and yet a Trinity, so that the three persons are not parts of one God.” - He argues there that if in the same thing without composition or division into parts there can be many perfections simply, therefore much more can there be in the deity three persons without composition and division into parts. What argument would that be if the attributes only stated relations of reason and the persons were distinguished really? For this inference does not follow:

‘relations of reason do not cause composition in anything, therefore neither do real relations’.

207. Also the same Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.3 n.5 says that all those predicates [the ones listed in n.206] are equal. But nothing is equal to its own self. For what does it mean to say that something under one relation of reason is equal to itself under another relation of reason?

208. Hilary too in On the Trinity XII n.52, addressing God the Father, speaks thus: “Of Perfect God, who is both your Word and wisdom and truth, there is absolute generation, who in these names of eternal properties is born.” He says then that these properties are eternal, and that in this the Son is born of the Father, that is: the Father, possessing them first, communicates them to the Son. But if they were only distinct in reason, they would not seem be first in origin in the Father before the Son was produced. For whatever is produced there in being of reason by an act of intellect seems to be produced by the whole Trinity (and so is not in the Father as he precedes the Son in origin), as if necessarily preceding the origin.

209. But this formal non-identity stands along with the simplicity of God, because there must be this difference between the essence and the property, as was shown above in distinction 2, the last question [I d.2 nn.388-410] - and yet for this reason no composition is posited in the person. Likewise, this formal distinction is posited between two properties in the Father (as between not-being-born and father), which, according to Augustine On the Trinity V ch.6 n.7, are not the same property, because it is not the case that ‘he is Father by the fact he is ungenerated’. If then there can in one person be two properties without composition, much more, or at least equally, can there be several essential perfections in God ‘not formally the same’ without composition, because the properties in the Father are not formally infinite, but the essential perfections are formally infinite, - therefore any of them is the same as any of them.

210. [Doubts] - Against this solution [nn.191-209] there are three doubts.

For first it seems that the divine simplicity is not saved, because from the fact the essence is posited as the foundation and the attributes as circumstances of the essence [n.198] it seems that the attributes are disposed as acts and forms with respect to the divine essence.

211. The second doubt is that when Augustine (On the Trinity VII ch.4 n.9 ‘On Great Things’ and ch.2 n.3 ‘On Little Things’) denies the identity of paternity and deity -for he says he is ‘not Father by the fact he is ungenerated’ just as neither ‘is he the Word by the fact he is wisdom’ - he there concedes the identity of greatness and goodness, and of the essential perfections, because he says ‘he is great by the fact he is God’ etc. Therefore, just as he there denies identity, so he concedes it here; but he only denies formal identity there, so he concedes it here.

212. The third doubt is that, just as goodness would not be really infinite unless it was really the same as wisdom, so it seems that the idea of goodness is not formally infinite unless it is formally the same as the idea of wisdom. Therefore, for the same reason as you posit true identity between the former, you should posit the formal identity of reason with reason.

213. To these doubts. - To the first [n.210] I reply that form in creatures has something of imperfection in a double way, namely because it is a form informing something and because it is part of a composite, - and it has something which is not of imperfection, but is consequent to it according to its own essential reason, namely that it is that by which something is the sort of thing it is. Example: wisdom in us is an accident, and this is a matter of imperfection - but that it is that by which something is wise, this is not a matter of imperfection but of the essential idea of wisdom. Now in divine reality nothing is a form according to that double idea of imperfection, because it neither informs nor is it a part; yet there is wisdom there insofar as it is that by which it - what wisdom is in - is wise, and this not by any composition of wisdom with anything as a subject, nor as the wisdom is a part of some composite, but by true identity, by which wisdom, because of its perfect infinity, is perfectly the same as anything with which it naturally exists.

But you will object: how is something formally wise by wisdom if wisdom is not the form of it?

214. I reply. The body is ensouled as it were denominatively, because the soul is the form of it - man is called ensouled not as it were denominatively but essentially, because the soul is something of it as a part; there is no requirement, then, that, for something to be the form informing something, it be itself of such a sort in itself, because the form is not a form informing the whole, although the whole is formally said to be such through it. If therefore some form were the same as something by a truer identity than is its identity with the thing informed, or with the whole of which it is a part, that true identity would be enough for the thing to be of such a sort by such a form; so it is in the intended proposition. - And then if you ask whether by first act there could be some abstraction of the form, - I say that there is not there abstraction of the form insofar as by it something is of such a sort taken precisely, without consideration of its identity with that which is of such a sort in itself.

215. To the second, which seems to possess difficulty from the words of Augustine [n.211], I say that in five ways is God wise and great by the same thing, and yet he is not God and Father by the same thing; in one way because wisdom and greatness are perfections of the same idea, that is, of quidditative idea, because whatever is perfected by those perfections is perfected not as by reasons of the supposit but as quidditative perfections, - but paternity and deity are not thus of the same idea; wisdom and goodness are also in another way of the same idea, because they are perfections simply, - not thus paternity and deity; in the third way, because greatness is the same as deity anywhere, - paternity is not but only in one supposit; in the fourth way, because goodness and wisdom and the rest of this sort are the same as it were by mutual identity, because each is formally infinite, because of which infinity each is the same as the other, - but paternity and deity are not thus mutually the same, because one of them is not formally infinite, but only deity is formally infinite, and because of this infinity paternity is the same as it; and, from this, fifth, he is good and wise by the same thing, ‘by the same thing’ - I say - by identity adequate in perfection, because each is infinite; paternity does not thus have adequate identity with deity, because it is not infinite.

216. To the form [of the argument, n.211] I concede that he is good and wise by the same thing in the way that he is not God and Father by the same thing, because by the same thing he is good and wise, namely by the same thing anywhere and by the same thing as by mutual identity; but paternity and deity are not the same anywhere. Likewise, by the same thing - that is by perfection of the same idea - he is good and wise, because he is quidditatively good and wise; he is not God and Father in this way by the same thing, because each ‘by which’, there, is not the essential perfection of that of which it is, because although the quiddity of paternity remains there, yet the quiddity is not the quidditative idea simply of any supposit, but the personal idea of the same is.

217. To the third [n.212] I concede that the idea of wisdom is infinite, and the idea of goodness similarly, and therefore this idea is that by identity, because an opposite does not stand with the infinity of the other extreme. Yet this idea is not formally that one; for this does not follow ‘it is truly the same as the other, therefore it is formally the same as the other’; for there is a true identity of a and b, without a formally including the idea of b.

III. To the Principal Argument

218. To the principal argument that is taken from the authority of Augustine On the Trinity XV [n.212], I respond that in the creature there is no prediction through identity which is not so formally,⁹⁰ and therefore never has a logic of true predication formally and by identity in creatures been handed down; but in divine reality there is true predication by identity, in the abstract, and yet it is not formal.

219. The reason for this difference is this - as I think - that, when conceiving something abstract with ultimate abstraction, a quiddity is conceived without relation to anything that is outside the proper idea of the quiddity; therefore, by thus conceiving the extremes, there is no truth in the uniting of them unless precisely the quiddity of one extreme is the same precisely as the quiddity of the other extreme. But this does not happen in creatures, because there, when abstracting the relations that are in the same thing (to wit, the reality of genus and difference) and considering them very precisely, each is finite and neither is perfectly the same as the other; for they are not in any way the same among themselves save because of a third thing with which they are the same, and therefore, if they are abstracted from that third thing, there does not remain a cause of identity for them, and therefore not a cause either for the truth of the proposition uniting the extremes. This proposition, then, is false ‘animality is rationality’, and conversely, and this in any predication whatever, because the extremes are not only not formally the same but they are not truly the same either; for this quiddity precisely is potential to that quiddity, and is not the same as it save because of identity to the third thing from which they are abstracted; therefore the abstraction takes away the cause of the truth of the affirmative proposition uniting them.

220. The opposite is the case in God, because by abstracting wisdom from whatever is outside the idea of wisdom, and abstracting goodness similarly from whatever is outside its reason formally, each quiddity remains, precisely taken, formally infinite, and from the fact that infinity is the idea of their identity - in such very precise abstraction - the idea of identity of the extremes remains. For they were not the same precisely because of their identity to a third thing from which they are abstracted, but because of the formal infinity of each.

221. And a sign that this is the idea of predication through identity is from the fact that this proposition is not conceded ‘paternity is not-being-born’ (nor this proposition ‘paternity in divine reality is active inspiriting’), whether as true formally or as true by identity; but this proposition is conceded ‘paternity is deity’, and conversely. The reason seems to be that, by abstracting paternity and not-being-born from the essence or the supposit, neither is formally infinite and therefore neither includes in its thus abstracted idea the idea of its identity to the other, and so neither, as so abstracted, is truly predicated of the other; but by abstracting deity and paternity to whatever extent, one of the extremes still remains formally infinite, which infinity is a sufficient reason for the identity of the extremes, and therefore the idea of identity remains, and consequently the idea of the truth of the composition of the affirmative proposition. But in this proposition ‘deity is goodness’ there remains infinity not only in one extreme but in both, and therefore there would be truth here because of the identity included virtually in each extreme.

222. From this, and from the response to the saying of Augustine adduced before in the second doubt [nn.215-216], what was supposed before in the question ‘about genus’ is clear, namely how there remain only two modes of predicating in divine reality [nn.130-131], - because although by identity the relations pass into the essence, yet not in the way the essential predicates do, because all essential predicates state rather quidditative perfections, but the personal idea does not state a quidditative perfection; and therefore all the essential predicates are reduced to one mode of predicating among themselves more than the personal predicates are reduced to one mode of predicating along with them, so that, according to this, it can be said that two modes of predicating remain in divine reality, not only because of the modes of conceiving the predicates, but also in some way because of the reality of the things that are predicated.

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Annotation Guide:

Eighth Distinction. First Part. On the Simplicity of God

Question One. Whether God is supremely Simple

I. To the Question

A. Proof of the Simplicity of God through Particular Middle Terms

B. Proof of the Simplicity of God through Common Middle Terms

II. To the Principal Arguments

Question Two. Whether any Creature is Simple

I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of Others ⁴⁴

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

II. To the Arguments

Question Three. Whether along with the Divine Simplicity stands the fact that God, or anything formally said of God, is in a Genus

I. First Opinion

A. Exposition of the Opinion

B. Reasons against the Opinion

C. To the Arguments for the Opinion

II. Second Opinion

III. Scotus’ own Opinion

A. Proof of the First Part of the Opinion

B. Proof of the Second Part of the Opinion

1. By the Reasons of Augustine and Avicenna

2. By what is Proper to God

3. Statement and Refutation of Some People’s Proof

IV. To the Arguments for the Second Opinion

V. To the Principal Arguments

Question Four. Whether along with the Divine Simplicity can stand a Distinction of Essential Perfections preceding the Act of the Intellect

I. The Opinions of Others

A. First Opinion

B. Second Opinion

II. To the Question

III. To the Principal Argument

SUBSCRIBER:

past masters commons

Annotation Guide:

Eighth Distinction. First Part. On the Simplicity of God

Question One. Whether God is supremely Simple

I. To the Question

A. Proof of the Simplicity of God through Particular Middle Terms

B. Proof of the Simplicity of God through Common Middle Terms

II. To the Principal Arguments

Question Two. Whether any Creature is Simple

I. To the Question

A. The Opinion of OthersAquinas Contra Gentes II chs.53-54, I ch.22; ST la q.50 a.2 ad 3. 44

B. Scotus’ own Opinion

II. To the Arguments

Question Three. Whether along with the Divine Simplicity stands the fact that God, or anything formally said of God, is in a Genus

I. First Opinion

A. Exposition of the Opinion

B. Reasons against the Opinion

C. To the Arguments for the Opinion

II. Second Opinion

III. Scotus’ own Opinion

A. Proof of the First Part of the Opinion

B. Proof of the Second Part of the Opinion

1. By the Reasons of Augustine and Avicenna

2. By what is Proper to God

3. Statement and Refutation of Some People’s Proof

IV. To the Arguments for the Second Opinion

V. To the Principal Arguments

Question Four. Whether along with the Divine Simplicity can stand a Distinction of Essential Perfections preceding the Act of the Intellect

I. The Opinions of Others

A. First Opinion

B. Second Opinion

II. To the Question

III. To the Principal Argument

A. The Opinion of Others ⁴⁴