A. Opinion of Henry of Ghent

9. Here the following is said [by Henry], that the producing supposits are distinct, and because of this distinction they would not in any way be conceded to inspirit insofar as they are plural, - for they have one inspiriting force; but further, this inspiriting force is not wholly under the idea of its unity the proximate fecund principle for inspiriting, but rather under the idea of concordant will, where some distinction is connoted; and, because of this distinction, connoted on the part of the principle ‘by which’, one can concede that they inspirit insofar as they are distinct. - This opinion is given confirmation through Richard [of St. Victor] On the Trinity III ch.16.

10. “SinceScotus here proceeds to quote Henry, though, according to the Vatican editors, his quoting, for whatever reason, is not fully accurate. ³ the intellect, as it exists in one person, can have perfect fecundity for the production of the Word, but the will, unless it exists in a double person, cannot have perfect fecundity for the production of the Holy Spirit, and this because the fecundity of the intellect consists in the fullness of perfect wisdom, which can exist in a single person, as Richard says [ibid.]: ‘Nothing is defined contrary to nature if the fullness of wisdom is said to be able to exist in only one person in the deity, for if there were only one person in the deity he could nevertheless have the fullness of wisdom’; but the fecundity of the will consists in the fullness of true love, which cannot exist save, at a minimum, in two persons, on the saying of the same Richard [ibid. ch.3]: ‘Love cannot be delightful unless it is mutual’, because, since the fecundity of the will cannot exist in essential love unless the love is supremely perfect and delightful, it is necessary that, if the will is fecund, the love be mutual, ‘so that there may be’ - according to him ch.3 - ‘one who bestows love and one who pays it back’, because, as he says in ch.7, ‘there is no satisfaction for a supreme lover if the supreme loved does not pay back supreme love’.

11. And for this reason, so that - as was said above [n.10] - the common will of the Father and the Son may be fecund for inspiriting the Holy Spirit, it is not enough that both have one will and an essential common love in it, whereby both of them love and will together, but it is necessary that both have a mutual and concordant will, such that one of them bestows supreme love on the other and the other in turn always pays supreme love back to the first; when this love exists, the will is fecund so that it produces love from itself, which love is the Holy Spirit, as Richard says (ibid. [n.10] ch.11): ‘in love mutual and most fervent there is nothing more admirable than that by him whom you supremely love, and by whom you are supremely loved, you should wish another to be equally loved’; ‘therefore in that love, as it is mutual, the love of each, in order to be consummate, requires there to be a sharer in the love already possessed’, and this through the inspiriting force, which is concordant will in mutual love, by producing the Holy Spirit, - not only as they are one in that will or love, but as they are plural distinct among themselves, which distinction is connoted by the fact that the will is said to be concordant and the love mutual; this cannot be unless it be of more than one insofar as these plural are inseparable, for the prefix ‘con’ indicates association, which is only of serveral who are distinct (and, for this reason, it is well said that ‘Father and Son and Holy Spirit are three co-eternals’, although it is denied that ‘Father and Son and Holy Spirit are three eternals’).

12. By the fact too that this will is concordant, and although the mutual love of both is one and the same, yet there is not the same idea to it as it is bestowed by the Father on the Son, and as, conversely, it is paid back by the Son to the Father, - since (according to Richard, ibid. ch.19) ‘when the two love themselves mutually and pay each other back the affection of supreme desire, and the affection of the first runs round to the second and of the second round to the first, it tends as it were to things diverse’, because it is in some way diverse in idea; but this diversity is in love and essential will, notwithstanding which, the fecundity is thoroughly one and the same in that concordant will and mutual love, in which fecundity the Father and the Son are one and they uniformly inspirit the Holy Spirit, who ‘is loved concordantly by both, and the affection of the two is melted into one by the fire of the third love’, as the same Richard says.

13. And accordingly, in the inspiriting of the Holy Spirit, a double distinction between Father and Son is to be considered; in one way as they are expressed in eliciting the act, - in another way as they are understood to be concordant in mutual love and will about the act to be elicited. And, by the distinction of inspiriting considered in the first way, they are in no way to be said to inspirit as plural; for although they are plural who inspirit, yet they do not inspirit because of the plurality that is prior in them, but only from the distinction between them considered in the second way; and thus the Father and the Son do not inspirit the Holy Spirit insofar as they are plural in eliciting the act (although they concur in the one idea according to which the act is elicited), but as they are plural in one will, which is the idea of eliciting the act, by being concordant in their love in that mutuality.”