B. This Sort of Love is not Proper to Any One Divine Person

12. From the above conclusion [n.10] there follows a second, that no pure perfection is proper to any one Divine Person [n.6].

13. For the point [in n.11] may be proved in another way, that if willing were proper to one Person it would be proper to the Holy Spirit, and so either the Holy Spirit would not necessarily proceed [sc. from the other Persons] or the Father would necessarily love something other than himself. By parity of reasoning the same holds of the Son, that he does not state any respect proper to something other than God. For to both the Spirit and the Son there is one common idea, namely that their relation cannot be a necessary prerequisite for the extremes because the relation itself requires both extremes. But nothing in any being whatever other than God is of itself necessary. So no relation to anything other than God in any being whatever can be in itself simply necessary, and so no such relation can be intrinsic to any Divine Person insofar as the Divine Person has the divine nature in the determinate way the Person has it.

14. There is an argument also about the Word, that if the Word were to state its own proper relation to a creature as being declarative of the creature, this would be insofar as the creature has being in the Father’s memory and thus expresses the ‘word’ of the Father,a and from this conclusion there seems to follow a manifold falsehood:

a.a [Interpolation] or insofar as [the Word] manifests everything and makes it to exist in intelligible being.

     First because no creature has being properly in the divine memory as it is memory (as was touched on II d.1 n.32); for it first becomes intelligible by act of the divine intelligence.

     Second because then the creature would be the idea of moving the infinite intellect to a word insofar as this word is the intellect’s word, and so a finite thing would move the infinite intellect and thus the infinite intellect would be cheapened. At any rate if, per impossibile, there were a single stone in the divine memory (as there is sometimes one intelligible thing in our memory), it would then be the reason in the memory for the expressing of its own ‘word’; and then the intended conclusion would follow, namely that a finite thing would be a reason for moving the infinite intellect.a

a.a [Interpolation] and would be the reason for producing infinite knowledge. This seems false.

     Again too, since a creature is not formally infinite in the divine memory or even the divine intellect, how it might found opposite relations of origin does not seem easy to prove.

     This consequence also seems to hold, that there would be as many ‘words’ as there are intelligibles in the Father’s memory; and they would be simply distinct. For if they were in the memory and were thus to be expressive in the memory, they would only be so as each is thus intelligible.

15. But if there is another understanding of what was stated [n.14], namely that the Word declares other things as they have, with respect to the act of declaring, the idea of term in some intelligible being, then this does not seem proper to the Word, because the whole Trinity produces them in intelligible being (as was said in II d.1 nn.32-33). For each Person holds each thing in its memory.

16. Now as to how the Father is admitted to speak properly by the Word, this was expounded in I d.32 nn.24-25, namely that there ‘to speak’ imports a double respect: a real respect of origin (which is of the expressed thing to the expresser of it), and a relation of reason (which is of the thing declared to the declarer of it), so that the Word is that by which he is called both what is expressed by the one speaking and called what declares what is spoken. Now the relation of ‘to declare’ is appropriated to the Word alone, for it proceeds by way of generated knowledge and is thus declarative. Now it is common to the three Persons if one takes ‘to declare’ formally. But when it is taken by way of principal it can be proper to the Father, for the Father declares as a principal insofar as he expresses generated knowledge.

17. And this double way of taking ‘to declare’, namely formally and by way of principal, is seen in other relative terms, as in ‘to assimilate’ and ‘to adequate’ [I d.31 nn.23-29]; for the form whereby something is similar is what formally assimilates it to another, but the agent that gives it its form is what makes it similar.

18. The Father can, in the same way, be admitted to love by the Holy Spirit, as was expounded in I d.32 nn.32-33; and this is appropriated to the Holy Spirit but is not proper to him. And a double relation is connoted there, namely one real, that is, the relation of spiration, and another a relation of reason, namely in what is spirated to what is loved by it - this relation of reason is appropriated to the Holy Spirit yet it belongs to the three Persons.