1. Reasons and Responses of those who Think that the Persons are Constituted by Relations

165. [Special reasons] - This first point was touched on in 1 d.26 nn.15-31; but special reasons are put forward that the persons cannot be absolute properties.

The first is as follows: if this [absolute] property did constitute the persons, it would not exist merely potentially or virtually in God, because then he would not be more ‘this person’ than an ass (for God includes the perfection of an ass virtually in himself); therefore it must be in him actually; therefore it is in him as act (both as that which gives being and as absolute act). So there would be three absolutes in divine reality, which is unacceptable.

166. Further second thus: let the absolute property be called a; therefore, if a makes a unity with the essence, the one is act and the other potency, and the one is the perfection of the other; essence does not perfect the personal property, because it does not presuppose it but vice versa; therefore the absolute personal property will be the perfection of the essence. And then two unacceptable results follow: one, that the essence is not in itself wholly perfect; the other, that one person is not wholly perfect, because he does not have the absolute property of another person (which property, from what was just said, is a perfection).

167. And if this second result may be confirmed, because according to Anselm, Monologion 15, everything else besides relations is either simply better it than not it, or this is not so but in something it is better not it than it; that which is disposed in the second way, according to Anselm, is not in God; therefore everything else in God, once relation is removed, is better it than not it, and is a perfection simply; - then, if so, from this it follows that no person will be simply perfect, because no person has the absolute property of another person; it follows also that two persons are something more perfect than one person, which is contrary to Augustine On the Trinity 8.1 n.2.

168. Further third as follows: when some absolute is multiplied, every other absolute circumstance of it is multiplied (an example: when quantity is multiplied, the whiteness of it is too, and vice versa); therefore, if there are distinct proper absolutes that circumstance the divine essence, they would distinguish the divine essence too.

169. And the major here is confirmed, because several things of the same species cannot exist in the same thing; these absolutes, if they are posited, will be of the same species - for if not, they will be of different species, and so there is need to inquire what makes either of them incommunicable: for just as it is posited that paternity (which differs in species from filiation) cannot be of itself incommunicable [1 d.26 n.46], so the consequence, as to the property a in the Father (if it is an absolute) and the property b in the Son - if they are different in species - , is that neither will be of itself incommunicable, and there will be need to make a stand at some properties of the same idea. This argument is at least confirmed by the fact that there are not several things of the same idea in the same perfect thing (just as there are not several Words or several Fathers in divine reality), because it seems a mark of imperfection that in some nature there can be several things altogether alike; therefore in the simply perfect divine nature there will not be several absolutes of the same nature, nor of a different nature, and so not in any way.

170. Fourth: if the absolute property a and likewise the absolute properly b are expressed by the essence, and if what is expressed exists in the same supposit as that by which it is expressed (according to the way of expressing here set down), then a and b will be in one person, and so no person will be originated by another (because their properties will be in the same person); indeed it follows that there will be no distinction of persons.

171. Fifth: [if persons are absolutes] the consequence is that there is no origin in God, because the originated person receives being through the origin; but the person, if he is an absolute, precedes the relation of origin; therefore the second person would in essence precede passive origination itself, and so would not have being through it.

172. [Response to some reasons for the opposite opinion] - And so those who hold the conclusion of these reasons [nn.165-175, that the persons are not constituted by absolute properties but by relations] would make a response to the opposite reasons touched on for the opposite opinion [1 d.26 nn.32-55]:

To the quote from Augustine about person [1 d.26 n.54] the response is that Augustine is speaking there of the thing that is formally and not materially signified by ‘person’; but ‘person’ formally signifies something in intellectual nature that is non-distinct in itself and distinct from another; but that whereby (whether an absolute or a relation) there is such a distinction is accidental to the formally signified thing; and yet in the case of some nature the absolute necessarily involves a relation. So it is in the issue at hand.

173. To the statement that ‘the supposit of the divine nature is not a one per accidens, therefore it is not constituted by something of another genus in nature’ [1 d.26 n.52], the response is that relation constitutes as it passes over into the essence and not as of a different genus; nor because of this does it follow that the thing constituted is an absolute, because relation preserves what is proper to it - yet the concession is good that ‘what is left from relation’ is an absolute, because what is left is being.

174. To the other claim [1 d.26 nn.45-50], that ‘the property of the person is incommunicable primarily, but relation is not’, the response is that a subsistent relation, of the sort that a divine relation is, is incommunicable primarily, although by the absolute idea of such a relation it is communicable.

175. More or less the same is said to the claim [1 d.26 n.51] that ‘things that distinguish are primarily diverse, but not so paternity and filiation’; the minor is denied, because even if paternity and filiation in creatures communicate in something, yet the divine ones, or those in divine reality, do not.

176. To the claim [1 d.26 n.36] that ‘real relation requires really distinct extremes’ the response is that this is true of relation as accident, and divine relation is not of this sort, but it is substantial relation, constituting the supposit of a substance.