c. The Third Proposition

113. The third proposition is conceded by Avicenna [n.81], as is plain according to his way of positing it in his Metaphysics 9 ch.4 [n.72].

114. However this can also be made clear because a nature merely intellectual cannot produce save by understanding and willing, or by act of understanding or will (either one of them or both, I care not). Hence too a divine Person produces nothing internally or externally without an act of these same powers; for if the divine nature, as it is prior to the intellect, were a principle of producing a Person, there could be some Person in divine reality prior to the Word, and so four Persons.

115. Also if some third executive power is posited in an angel, different from intellect and will, this does not impede the intended conclusion, because nothing can be produced by this third power save in virtue of the intellect and will, for the reason that every per se agent acts for an end that it knows or to which it is directed by what knows. And thus every per se active principle which is not cognitive seems to be directed in its action by a cognitive principle. At least this fact is plain, that the third power, if it existed, would be subordinate in acting to the intellect and will, and thus nothing could be produced by it without an act of intellect or will, and the argument stands.