a. Against the Opinion in Itself

29. Against these views:

First as follows: God is not disposed in himself differently now than before, nor does he in-flow into this soul or angel differently now than before (if one considers essence precisely on each side), because there is always uniformity as to the in-flowing of the divine essence into the creature’s essence while the essence of the creature remains; so, if there is some newness in the beatified soul, it must be through some effect caused by God in the soul’s essence. The effect is said to be the beatitude of the soul formally, and this effect cannot be principally in the essence as the essence is distinguished from the power, because then it would be first act; but by no first act, distinct from second act, can a creature immediately attain the beatific essence.

There is a confirmation: nothing is properly speaking changed unless something new formally inhere in it; someone blessed is disposed now so differently than someone non-blessed before that he changes from misery to beatitude; but the divine essence is not by any in-flowing the essence of the blessed; therefore, something else must be in the blessed whereby he is formally blessed.

30. Again, in-flowing is prior in nature to any operation, since it is according to some first act, as was argued [nn.23-24, 29]; therefore it could, without contradiction, exist without operation, and consequently someone who is not operating but disposed as someone asleep could be principally blessed - which Aristotle considers unacceptable, Metaphysics 12.9.1074b17-18 [n.11]

31. Again a creature is blessed in some way proportionally to the way that God is blessed; but God is not blessed precisely by the fact he is the same as himself, but by the fact he understands and wills himself as object - otherwise, from the fact that he is blessed it could not be inferred that he is intelligent, because if he did not have an intellect he would still be the same as himself, just as a stone is the same as itself.

32. This point is argued briefly as follows: if divine beatitude does not consist, by way of its completion, in the identity of the beatifiable thing with the beatific object, then neither does the beatitude of the creature consist in any identity or internalizing of the beatific object through in-flowing; because if operation is required there [in God], over and above identity, much more is it required here [in the creature] over and above inflowing; because whatever were posited here as beatitude, something corresponding to it eminently would be beatitude principally there; but to the in-flowing by which the soul is said to be deified, as it were, identity corresponds there far more eminently.