V. To the Principal Arguments

95. To the principal arguments.

To the first [n.1] it is plain how persons do not differ in species, nor also is the production of person by person equivocal - as was touched on about this in distinction 7 nn.51-64, 47-50.

96. To the second [n.2] the response is (according to those who hold the second opinion) that common relations do not first burgeon in the essence, but that relations of origin first burgeon in it [n.28]. However it does not seem that this can be proved, because magnitude more pertains to essence as it is understood in abstraction from the persons than action or passion do, which belong only to a supposit; therefore relations that follow magnitude - of which sort is the relation of equality - can be more understood in the essence as essence, as it seems to be abstracted from person, than relations of origin can be. Similarly one can argue - in the case of the matter at issue - about likeness, which follows the essence as it has the idea of form, in which form the supposits are alike. Therefore the latter do not burgeon first before the former, or if they do burgeon first, what is the reason? But if common relations equally burgeon first or in advance, and these can constitute [sc. persons], - therefore they do constitute them. For there is no possibility there for anything which is not in act, nor can any form constitute a person unless it constitute in act (if the form is in act), as it seems, just as neither is any form able to constitute in act something in a species without - if it exist and not have imperfect existence - constituting something in a species.a

a [Interpolation] To this one can say that, just as any created essence, although it is a quiddity and a quantity (because it is in a certain grade of perfection) and an essential quality (as is touched on in distinction 31 nn.10, 16-17, distinction 19 n.8), yet it is a quiddity before it is a quantity or a quality (and therefore there is in the individual first the idea of identity to another individual before of equality or likeness), so too there is first in a supposit the idea of acting - if it is an active form - before there is the idea of equality or likeness; for the idea of the active does not follow it later after there is the idea of identity. In divine reality, therefore, since to communicate is an action whose formal principle is the essence as a ‘what’, there will in some way be first in it relations pertaining to communication before other relations, those of equality or likeness, which are founded on the idea itself of quantity in virtue and essential quality. Hereby I say to the argument [n.2] that neither action nor equality can be understood inwardly in the same nature unless it be of supposits or things related (yet they will be natures and foundations), and of these action is prior to equality, just as action itself follows the foundation first - by reason of which it belongs to supposits - before equality follows it.

     On the contrary: this response seems to suppose that the essence merely as a ‘what’ is the reason for communication in divine reality, the opposite of which was said in distinction 13 nn.45, 63.

     I reply: the essence ‘as it is a what’ is the reason for communicating the essence, but not this only, but along with this the essence ‘as it is intellect and as it is will’ is a productive principle of a person and communicative of the essence, as was said there [ibid. n.93] and in distinction 2 of this first book [nn.221, 226, 300-303, 355-356]. But now, just as essence is understood to be the idea of communicating itself before it is understood to be a quantity or a quality, so also it is understood to be the idea of operating before it is a quantity or a quality; for being an operative principle with respect to operations proper to such a nature does not belong to the essence after the active principle belongs to it, and this whether the active principle is productive with respect to producibles in the nature or is communicative of the nature itself. But the divine essence is a principle of operations proper to such a nature, insofar as the nature is intellect and will, because to understand and to will are the proper operations of that nature; therefore first it is essence, not only essence but also intellect and will, before it is a quantity or a quality. Therefore, although production does not belong to the essence alone ‘as it is essence’ as to a productive principle, but also to intellect and will as productive principle along with the essence insofar as it is essence, yet the fact still stands that the relation of producer and produced first burgeon in the essence before the relation of equal and like.

     On the contrary: from this response it seems to follow that intellect and will are not attributes, because an attribute quasi perfects in second being something quasi presupposed in first being; therefore nothing that pertains to essence before it is understood to be a quantity or a quality is an attribute. Likewise, from this it seems that intellect and will are not distinguished there from the nature of the thing; the consequent is contrary to things said before in distinction 13 nn.64-67; the proof of the consequence is that that which in God precedes the idea of quantity and quality is only a ‘what’, - but a ‘what’ as a ‘what’ is not distinguished in God from the nature of the thing, because then his ‘what’ would not be simple.

     To these points. To the first I say that if in created substance the power - or that which is the principle of proper operation belonging to such a nature - is not something pertaining to the genus of quality, but is either merely the substance itself to which the operation belongs, or it is some perfection identically contained in the substance (and this belonging to it as it is substance, but not as a certain quality circumstancing the substance, - in the way one must posit about powers when positing that there is some real distinction between them and yet that they are not accidents), much more does the divine essence - when everything is removed that is a quasi quality - have in itself ‘as it is essence’ the things that are the principles of proper operation belonging to God; of this sort are understanding and willing. I concede     therefore that, when properly calling ‘attributes’ those things only that as quasi qualities perfect in second being a thing presupposed in perfect first being (namely as far as concerns every perfection that belongs to the thing as it is substance), then in this way intellect and will are not attributes, nay they are certain perfections intrinsic to the essence as the essence is pre-understood to every quantity and quasi quality.

     This point is made clear by the fact that if some [Henry of Ghent etc     .] concede that life or living is not an attribute (because it states such being, not with a quasi accidental suchness, but as if per se contracting the thing, - just as man is such an animal, because he is rational), in the same way, since the intellect is a certain life and the will a certain life, they will not properly be attribues.

     Or it is made clear in another and better way, that this essence as ‘this essence’ -preceding every quasi quality - is an intellective and volitional essence, such that, just as rationality is not an attribute of man, so neither is intellectuality an attribute of this essence. The point is plain from a likeness about the infinite, which infinite I have denied elsewhere [d.19 n.15, d.31 n.19] to be properly an attribute, because it states a mode intrinsic to whatever is in God, both substance and any attribute; so intellectuality states a mode intrinsic to this essence (but properly the attributes are wisdom and charity - and in another way the transcendentals, namely truth and goodness).

     To the second point I say that a ‘simple what’ is not simple unitarily (as containing in itself only a single perfection), but this essence is simple and unlimited, because unlimited not only intensively in one idea but in everything that is a principle of proper operations in God, just as created substance is in some way unlimited because it is by identity any such principle of operating whatever. But along with this unlimitedness of the divine essence - a quasi extensive unlimitedness - stands simplicity; nay the simplicity follows from the infinity, because the infinite is combinable with nothing as part with part, but it can be really the same - although not formally - as any infinite at all.

97. To the third [n.3] response has been given in distinction 3 [nn.519-520], that there are certain relations of the second mode that are incompossible in the same thing, and that these relations state an essential order of origin, - but some relations of the same mode are not incompossible, because namely they state an accidental order, as mover to moved. For the moved does not depend on the mover save per accidens, namely as to the act which it receives from it, namely to move, - and therefore, although the will can move itself, yet no supposit the same can produce itself; and therefore the relations of producer and produced sufficiently distinguish the supposits really.

98. To Boethius [n.4] I reply that he is thinking of a relation of identity according to nature, not formally, as if he were to say that certain relations necessarily require a diversity of nature in the extremes; but the relation in question here - which is a relation of origin - has no such requirement, but identity of nature is compatible with it, and therefore it is a relation ‘quasi of the same thing to itself’ because of the identity in nature of the things related, although it is a relation of a distinct thing to a distinct thing, speaking of the distinction of supposits.