1. About the First Doubt

319. About the first, it may seem to someone [Aquinas, Metaphysics 5 lect.17] that the act of reception of the sacrament, when it crosses over into the past, would be the proximate foundation or the proximate idea of founding the relation [n.317].

320. But that is false, especially in the matter at issue, because the idea of founding and the relation are in the same proximate subject (the reception of the sacrament and the character). Even if they be in the same supposit, yet not in the same proximate subject; because the reception of baptism was in the supposit according to the body, the character according to the soul.

321. Now it is generally false here and in other cases, for two reasons;

First, because non-being cannot be the foundation or idea of founding any real relation, because neither can it be the term. For on this account, ‘relation of reason’ is reckoned a contradiction, because it has a negation as foundation or term [cf. Scotus, Praedicamenta, q.25 nn.22-24]; an act crossing over into the past, after it has crossed over, is simply not; therefore after it has crossed over, no new relation is founded on it.

322. The fact, second, is plain because to an immutable term and on an altogether immutable foundation a relation cannot be founded unless it simply necessarily inheres in the foundation - hence if some essence of a creature were simply immutable, its relation to God would be simply immutable; therefore if character state some relation to God (about whom it is plain that he is an immutable foundation), and it is founded on an act as it is past, and the past act as past is simply necessary (insofar as it cannot by absolute divine power be non-past), it follows that that real relation would be altogether immutable, even when speaking of God’s absolute power. But this is unacceptable, because there would be some real relation, different from its foundation, that God could not by his absolute power eliminate from its foundation, as eliminating a posterior from a prior.

323. And these last two proofs [nn.321-322] prove that paternity is not founded on ‘having generated’.

324. And if you bring against this the remark in Metaphysics 5.15.1021a21-25 [“‘father’ is so called by the fact he generates”], I reply that an act could be the cause in the coming to be of the relation (and indeed, when the cause was, then the relation was coming to be present), but it is not a cause of the relation’s being present, just as it does not remain while the relation does; but a foundation is not only cause of coming to be present but also of being present.

325. What then is the foundation of paternity?

I say that the proximate foundation is the very generative power, not when speaking of the respect that power of itself states, but of the absolute that is denominated by the respect.

326. I say therefore, by way of similarity to the matter at hand, that if character is a real relation, its proximate foundation is the bare soul itself (but whether a power or the essence will be discussed in the following question [nn.371-372]); because a respect that arises extrinsically can be founded on a foundation whose principles it in no way leaves, nor need its proximate foundation be in any way determined for it by its own proper idea (because then the respect would not arise extrinsically), but is only determined for it by the very agent; so it is in the matter at hand.