A. About the Mode in which a Person is in a Person

1. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

38. [Exposition of the Opinion] - About the first point [n.37] the statement [sc. of Henry] is of the following sort, that something’s being in another can be understood in two ways: by being in it ‘first’, that is, totally - the way wine is in a jug; or by being in it partially, and this in two ways: either such that a part is in another and is not anything of the other, as the foot of the bird is in the trap and is not anything of the trap (and for this reason the whole bird is said to be in the trap), or that a part of it is in another and is something of that other (and for this reason that of which it is a part is said to be in that other).a

a [Interpolation] just as if some monster, possessing two bodies and two heads, had only two feet, then one [body and head] would be said to be in the other [body and head] by that other’s foot, because the foot is a part of the other.

39. As to the proposition then [n.37], the statement [of Henry] is that the Father is not in the Son in the first way.

40. The proof given is threefold:

First, because everything whatever of that which is in another in the first way is equally first in it - just as if earth is first in the center, then any part whatever of earth, as far as concerns itself, is equally first in the center; therefore if the Father is first in the Son, everything whatever of the Father will be first in the Son, and so paternity will be as equally first in the Son as deity. And from this further: just as by deity the Son is God, so by paternity he will be Father, which is false

41. Second, because that in which something is first seems to surround it and penetrate and contain it; but that the same thing with respect to the same thing contains and is contained, surrounds and is surrounded, is unintelligible;     therefore etc     .

42. Therefore it is necessary that, just as in creatures something is said to be in another as a part and not first, so one person may be said to be in another as to something of itself; but not as to something of itself that is nothing of that in which it is, because that would be the personal relation of the in-being person, and that relation is not the reason whereby a person is in a person (as will be plain in the second article [nn.58-62], wherein I agree with Henry); therefore it is the essence which is in such way something of the inbeing person that it is something of that in which it is.

43. And the proof that it is by reason of this essence of the Son, which exists in the Father, that the Son is in the Father is that wherever the foundation of any relation is, there the relation founded on it is; therefore wherever the essence is on which filiation is founded, there filiation is.

44. A distinction, however, is made as to the person ‘which is in another’ and the person ‘which another is in’, because although the person ‘which is in another’ is placed in another not first but by something of itself, that is, by its essence [n.42], yet the person which it is in is what the other is in first, that is itself totally, because it is itself totally disposed in some way as the reason of that which is surrounding and containing deity, which, although it is not part of the in-being person, is yet something of the person.

45. [Rejection of the Opinion] - Against this opinion.

First: to be ‘in’, as everyone thinks, does not state something self-referred, because then the Father would be in himself; therefore it states the relation of a person to a person. Not the relation of origin, because that does not have the same idea in the extreme terms (while the persons are in each other uniformly, according to them [n.60]); therefore it states a common relation [n.6]. But a common relation in accord with the same idea of foundation is in the supposit that is referred and in the supposit that it is referred to, just as likeness requires the same idea of whiteness in the like thing that is referred and in the like thing it is referred to; therefore if that to which the in-being person is referred is first such as what that person is in itself, the consequence is that the in-being person will be related by this relation first through itself and not through something precisely of itself.a

a [Interpolation] this is plain in the example about a rivalry between a and b.

46. Secondly as follows: when something is said to be in another by a part, it is in it by a part in the same way as the part is in it ‘first’. An example: if a man is on the earth by his foot, just as the foot is located on the earth so the man is by a part located on the earth - but it is not the case that if the foot is there as by location, the man will be there as form in matter; so too if whiteness is in a man by a part, because it is in his face, then in the same way of being ‘in’ as to the category in which it is in the face first - to wit, as an accident in a subject - in that same way, I say, it is in the man by a part, because it is in him as in a subject. Therefore if the Son is in the Father because of the essence that is formally in the Father, the consequence is that the Son is in the Father formally as it were (although according to something of himself), which is not to be ‘in’ by way of circumincession [sc. one person being in another and conversely].

47. The response is made that the major premise [sc. when something is said to be in another by a part, it is in it by a part in the same way as the part is in it ‘first’] is true when speaking of that which is the proximate reason of something’s being ‘in’, but is not true of the remote reason; but the essence, as it is formally in the Father, is not the proximate reason of the Son’s being in the Father but the remote reason - the proximate reason, however, is that he falls under the property of the in-being person.

48. On the contrary. This response includes the proposed conclusion, because that is said to agree with the whole ‘first’ which does not agree with it according to any part of itself but according to what comes from all the parts of itself, in the case of creatures; therefore things are such here that, since - according to them [sc. Henry and his followers] - there is in the person only relation and essence, whatever belongs to a person not precisely by reason of one of these, but by reason of the essence together at the same time with the relation (and conversely), belongs to it first, because this states the person in its totality.

49. Further [i.e. thirdly], the property of a person, since it is incommunicable, does not belong formally to the essence (as: the essence does not beget nor is begotten, nor is it distinct or referred), and not the converse either (the property that belongs to the essence as it is communicable does not belong to the person, because this property is proper to the essence as essence is distinguished from person [I d.2 nn.389-390]), because essence is single in the three persons, but person in no way - neither first nor according to something of itself - is single in the three; therefore since this way of being ‘in’, by which the essence is in the Father as a quasi form (to wit, as that by which the Father is God), belongs in no way to the person, because it is proper to essence as essence is distinguished from person, therefore in no way will the Father be said by this to be in the Son, just as neither from the fact that ‘the Father is essence’ will the Father be the same as the Son.

2. Scotus’ own Opinion

50. As to this article [n.37] I say as follows, that a predicate belongs to the whole ‘first’ as ‘first’ is distinguished from that which is according to a part (as is said in Physics 5.1.224a21-34), because it does not belong to it precisely for the reason that it belongs to a part of it.Vatican editors: for example, ‘capable of laughter’ belongs first to man not because it belongs to a part of him, because it does not belong first either to his soul or his body [n.52]. ⁵² And contrariwise, nothing is said to belong to any whole because of a part save what belongs to a part and is, through that part, said of the whole - as is plain from the Philosopher in the Physics [ibid.] in his example: “The man is healthy because his thorax is healthy;” the ‘to be healthy’ is said formally and first of the thorax, and by this it is said of the whole, of which whole the thorax is part.

51. A predicate that inheres first in some whole is sometimes in no part of that whole, and sometimes it is in some part of it.

52. An example of the first case: triangle is what first has angles equal to two right angles, and yet no part of the triangle (speaking of integral parts) has this predicate, namely ‘to have three angles equal etc.’; likewise man is what first is capable of laughter, and yet this property is not first in any part of man; and the composite is what is first generated, although no part of it [sc. form or matter] is first generated, speaking of this way ‘of that which is generated’; and so universally in all heterogeneous substances and their properties. And the reason is as follows, that the nature of such a subject is adequate to such a predicate, which adequacy is indicated by such primacy (as is plain from the definition of ‘universal’ in Posterior Analytics 1.4.73b32-33), and the nature of that adequate whole is not saved in any one part, and so its property does not belong to any one part of it.

53. An example of the second case [n.51] is: if fire is what is first hot, any part of fire whatever is hot. So too does the Philosopher in Physics 7.1.241b32-242a15 argue that no body can be moved by itself first, because then it would rest on the resting of a part; for it would not be first moved unless motion were in every part of it; for if motion were not in some part of it, motion would not be in the whole ‘first’. And so it is universally in homogeneous substances and their properties, because the nature to which first - that is, adequately - such property belongs is of the same nature in the part as in the whole; therefore a predicate adequate to such a nature is in every part in which that nature is, and in this way it belongs to a part.

It is not therefore because of the idea of primacy that a predicate - which belongs to the whole - must belong to the part, nay never should it for this reason belong to the part, but rather when the nature of the whole is the same in such whole and in its part.

54. As to the intended proposition [n.37] I say that this way of being ‘in’ [sc. circumincession] is not in the way that nature is in a supposit or form is in matter, but as a subsistent is in a subsistent, according to Hilary On the Trinity ch.7 n.41 when he speaks as follows: “The being-in is not as one thing is in another, the way body is in body, but it is to be the way that to subsist is in the subsistent, but to be in it such that it itself also subsist.” Now to subsist, that is, ‘to exist per se incommunicably’, belongs first to the person (for it is not said of the person because it is said of the essence or the relation), just as also ‘to act’ in the case of creatures, or ‘to be produced’, belongs first to the supposit of the whole (that is, does not belong to it because it belongs to a part). Therefore also ‘to be subsistently in’ belongs first to the person; for although the nature is first in the Father, as nature in a supposit, this however is not the subsistence or the in-being of a subsistent in a subsistent, but is precisely the in-being by which the whole Son by presence and intimately is in the whole Father; and to this alludes the remark of Ambrose in his hymn [Splendor of the Father’s Glory]: “The whole Son in the Father, and the whole Father in the Word.”

3. To the Arguments for the Opinion of Henry

55. And next to the arguments for the aforesaid opinion against this [n.51].

To the first [n.40] I say that the major premise is false in two ways:

First, because there is no need for the predicate that agrees ‘first’ with the whole to agree with any part (as is plain enough from the clarifications [nn.52, 54]), because its primacy is that of adequacy.

Second, because if it do agree with any part, or agree with the whole by reason of any part [n.50], it need not agree with a second part by reason of any part,a especially when the parts are not of the same idea in being integral to the whole [n.52]. It is just as if man is first rational because his specific difference (as ‘rational’) is said first of the species, and also man has first that act which agrees with rational animal insofar as it is rational, namely the act or understanding or reasoning; and yet this predicate [sc. rational] does not agree equally with each part of man, namely with soul and body; for perhaps it can be said formally of the soul and in no way of the body, but it is not said of man because it is said of his soul, because then it would agree with man as to a part, just as ‘to be tall’ agrees with man as to a part, because it agrees with him as to the body. Also if ‘to understand’ were to agree with each part in such a way that it could be said of the part, nevertheless each part is not equally disposed to that predicate as regard the inherence of the predicate in the ‘whole’; for the body is not the reason for the inherence of this sort of predicate in the way the soul is, and this because the parts - namely body and soul - are not parts possessed of the same idea in being integral to the whole, but one part is matter and the other form; for matter is not the reason for the operating of the whole, which is what operates first, in the way the form is.

a [Interpolation] and so it need not be the case that it agree equally with the parts because it is first present in the whole, because the parts in a whole are not equally cause of the property as it exists.

56. So it is then in the intended proposition [n.54, 37]: one should not concede that because ‘the Father is first in the Son’ therefore deity or paternity is in the Son in the same way of being ‘in’ [sc. the way of being ‘first’ in]; but if one do concede it, one should yet not concede it equally, because they [sc. deity and paternity] are not of the same idea in the person that includes them. And further, when it is argued ‘if they were equally in the Father, then if one of them were in him formally, the other would be too’ [n.40], - the argument is not valid, but there is a fallacy of equivocation, because when the ‘to be in the Father’ is taken in the antecedent it is taken as being in a subsistent by way of presence, while in the consequent a different mode of being ‘in’ is inferred [sc. the mode by way of informing], which mode is not formally this mode [sc. the mode by way of presence], although it is presupposed to this mode of being ‘in’; hence from a mode of being ‘in’ by way of presence a mode is concluded to that is ‘in’ by way of informing [sc. which is the fallacy of equivocation].

57. To the second [n.41] I say that it is not only contrary to the part about being ‘in’ first, but also contrary to the principal conclusion [sc. about being ‘in’ simply and not first]; for it seems in creatures as impossible that the same thing should with respect to the same thing contain and be contained, or should contain by reason of the whole and be contained by reason of a part, as that the same thing should first contain and be contained. And therefore I reply to the argument and say that this mode of being ‘in’ [sc.

circumincession] does not state containment but the presence of the subsistent in the subsistent, and it has the same idea in both of them, because just as this subsistent is present to that one so that one is present to this one.