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.”]).