II. To the Third Question

A. The Opinion of Others

91. To the third question an answer given is yes [sc. that the divine word does state a respect to creatures], because of the authority of Augustine 83 Questions question 63, where he speaks of the beginning of John’s Gospel and says: “Logos is better translated by us in this place as ‘word’” (instead of as ‘reason’), “so that there may be signified not only a respect to the Father but also to the things that are made through the word by his operative power.”

92. There is added too that the word states a proper respect to creatures, because word, of its idea, is declarative knowledge; therefore it belongs to it in its idea ‘to declare’ things.

93. There is also appropriated to the Son a relation to creatures: but the appropriation is only made because of the agreement of such appropriated thing to the property of the person to which it is appropriated. And it is made clear by a likeness about gift.

94. And in a similar way is set down that just as there gift, as it connotes an aptitudinal relation, pertains to the property of the Holy Spirit, so the word, as it states an aptitudinal relation - not an actual or habitual one - pertains to the second person.

B. Rejection of the Opinion and Scotus’ own Response

95. Against this one can argue as was argued above about gift [in d.18, which is missing in the Ordinatio; see equivalent in d.18 of the Lectura and Reportatio], that no respect to creatures is a property of a divine person nor is per se included in any property of a divine person, and just as it was rejected there so it can be rejected here, - and this I concede.

96. And then there is no force [sc. to the question] save about the name ‘word’. For formally a respect of expressed knowledge to the one who expresses it is different from its respect to the creature that is declared; and not only this, but also the respect of the expressed word to the one who expresses it and the respect of the word as declaring something qua declared to the one who expresses it are two respects, because the first is real and the second of reason. But these two do not make anything per se one, because a true thing and a being of reason constitute nothing ‘per se one;’ and therefore if both these respects are signified by one name, they do not for this reason make a concept that is ‘one per se’, but one of them is precisely the property of the second person (namely the passive expression, which is a real respect), but the other - namely the respect of what is declarative - is only a respect of reason, or exists toward the declared Father or the declared creature. This was otherwise touched on above from the authority of Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.3 n.4 where he means that the word declares itself, - and the same ibid. XV ch.14 n.23: “The Father is perfectly a sayer of himself,” that is perfectly declares himself etc.;a from which two authorities is plain that the same thing can be referred to itself as declarer to declared, and consequently it is not a real relation.

a [Interpolation] “As if saying himself, the Father generates a word equal to himself in everything; for he would not have perfectly said himself if something less or more was in his word than in himself;” and ibid. VII ch.1 n.1: “With a Word, equal to himself, he always says himself.”

97. And then indeed it seems that the word per se and first signifies that real respect, because its abstract - as was said [n.85] - and its concrete first signify the same thing; but because word connotes perfect knowledge, by which knowledge it has a respect of reason to the things known through it, therefore it also connotes - as if still more remotely - the idea of what is declarative. And so the word will signify the property of the second person, although it connotes something absolute in that person (which is as it were the formal term of the production of that person), and through it as means it will connote, as if more remotely, a respect to all that to which the absolute can have a respect of reason, namely to all things it declares.

C. To the Principal Argument

98. To Augustine On the Trinity VI [n.9] I concede that the Word or the Son is the art of the Father; he is thus also called the wisdom and virtue of the Father [I Corinthians 1.23-24], and yet just as the Father is formally wisdom and virtue, so also is the Father formally art; for if he formally creates, and this as artisan, the creative principle is formally in the Father, - and so the respect of art to creatures ‘as to artifacts’ is common to the three, although it is appropriated to the Son, just as to him is appropriated wisdom because of its agreement with his own production.

D. To the Arguments for the Opinion of Others

99. To the remark - on behalf of the opinion - from 83 Questions question 63 [n.91], one can say that logos (in Greek) is better translated through what is meant by ‘word’ than by what is meant by ‘reason’, because reason does not thus signify a respect to the Father as word does, nor does it thus connote a respect to what is declared as word does. But Augustine does not mean to say that word states essentially relation to the creature under the idea of what is declarative, because he says “so that not only is respect to the Father signified, but a respect to those things too that are made through the word by operative power;” but the word is not said to be ‘operative power’ of the Father save as it is said to be the wisdom and art of the Father, which are not the word’s save by appropriation. Or if Augustine intends this name ‘word’ to signify both respects, then it does not precisely signify the property of the second person but, along with this, another appropriated respect; and then the interpretation of logos as ‘word’ and not as ‘reason’ is fitting, because ‘reason’ does not thus signify either a proper or an appropriated respect. The interpretation as ‘word’ is indeed true (for that reason it asserts more than the property of a person), nor does Augustine say the interpretation is in something that signifies a property of the second person.

100. When the addition is made that it asserts a respect to creatures, proper to the word [n92], - this seems much more false than the opposite conclusion that I maintain [nn.95, 98, 100], because not only is relation to creatures not included in the essential idea of any person, but it can also in no way pertain to any person without uniformly pertaining to the whole Trinity, because the whole Trinity is uniformly related to everything other than itself, according to any existence whatever, whether existence in reality or intelligible existence.

101. And when proof is given through the word’s being ‘declarative’ [n.92], I say that the actual intellection of the Father is declarative. Nor is ‘declarative’ the proper idea of word, but what is declarative is concomitant to expressed knowledge, because the expression is of actual knowledge; and therefore what is declarative is appropriated to word, although it is not proper to it.

102. When proof is afterwards given that ‘appropriation is not made save because of agreement with what is proper’ [n.93], the inference does not hold - from this - that appropriated is proper, but the opposite holds; and I concede that what is proper to the Son - which is ‘to be expressed’ - has an agreement with wisdom and with what is declarative, and with art, because of the fact that this expression is of something by way of intellect and by virtue of intellect; and such expression is actual knowledge, to which it belongs to declare the habitual knowledge from which it is expressed [n.64].

E. A Doubt about the Expression of the Divine Word

103. Here, however, a difficulty arises (a better one than is that ‘about the idea of declarative’), namely whether the word is expressed by virtue of the paternal intellect not only about the divine essence as object present to the intellect of the Father, but about other intelligibles, so that it should thus have a respect to creatures not as they are in themselves but as they have being first in origin in the paternal intellect (as it seems) before the word is expressed. And then it would have to them the relation of what is expressed; for then the word would be expressed not only about the essence as it is object of the intellect of the Father, but also about other intelligibles. - But about this difficulty elsewhere, in the question ‘On the Uniform Relation of the Trinity to what is Other than Itself’ [II d.1 q.1 nn.12-19].a

a [Interpolation, from Appendix A] Whether by natural reason it can be known that the word is not an ‘essential’ in divine reality.

     That it cannot be: for then the Trinity would be known by natural reason; again, in the creature the word is equally of any supposit in nature.

     On the contrary: it is known that it is not necessary that the first person is word, - it is another person.

     Solution:

     To the negative answer the solution is plain, because the concept of the term - whether true in itself or not - shows that the negation can be proved about the positive. It cannot, on account of causing an effect, be a common term. It can be known that the not-impossible and anything contrary are solved.

     Whether the idea of Word is prior to the idea of Son in the second person.

     That it is: it is more of a per se term of the productive principle (on the contrary: there is no prior knowledge).

     On the contrary: Augustine, On the Trinity VII ch.1 n.2 [“He is Word by that by which he is Son”].

     Opinion: intellectual nature. - On the contrary: nature thus states a mode of active principle.

     Solution: the Son is a subsistent in intellectual nature, generated by virtue of a nature of the same idea, existing in the first person (Hilary, On the Trinity V n37 [“For he is not God by cutting or extension or derivation from God, but by virtue of nature he subsists by birth in the same nature.”]).