Question 4. Whether in the divine essence there are only two intrinsic productions

212. Next I ask in particular whether there are only there two intrinsic productions.

That there are not two I argue thus, that of one nature there seems to be one mode of communicating according to Averroes, Physics VIII com.46.

213. This is proved by his own reasons in the same place:

First, because of a second matter there is a second form, otherwise there would not be a proper form for this matter;Interpolation: “and anything might be generated from anything, and then matters would universally be otiose.” ¹³⁸ but matters corresponding to diverse agents and productions belong to diverse ideas, which is plain in generation by propagation and putrefaction, because the thing propagated is generated from semen, while the other is not but from some putrefied body;     therefore etc     .

214. Second he argues in this way, by inferring from that supposition [n.213] that the same species would be then both from nature and from chance; from which he infers that a man could be generated from the seed of an ass and from an infinite number of matters. Now he proves the first consequence to be discordant because what happens by chance is opposed to what happens by nature, and for that reason no species is by chance, because things found to exist by chance are monstrous. All of this is manifest of itself. But if a nature had diverse modes of communicating, then according to one mode of communicating a species can be by nature and according to another mode of communicating it can be by chance or by fortune.Interpolation: “as follows: this generable thing is generated equivocally, not from seed; either therefore of necessity, or for the most part, or rarely. If it is equivocally generated of necessity then it is never generated from seed, which is false. But if it is generated for the most part, it is equivocally generated from putrefaction; but things that happen for the most part happen naturally; therefore it is naturally generated equivocally, and further it follows that they are rarely propagated from seed, which seems false. But if it is generated rarely, it is generated equivocally; but what happens rarely happens by chance and fortuitously, and because they are fortuitous they are monstrous. And things that are of this sort, this thing and that thing, are not of the same species; therefore nature is communicable in only one way.” ¹³⁹

215. Again, an argument for the conclusion of the Commentator [n.212] is as follows, that of changes diverse in species there are terms diverse in species; therefore if there are communications or productions of another nature there are also terms of another nature.

216. Again that there are not two productions I prove because the Philosopher, Physics 5.1.224b7-8, distinguishes nature and intellect as diverse active principles; the idea of both is truly found in God, because neither includes imperfection, and internally, because neither is productive externally;     therefore besides the production of will there will be another two productions internally.

217. This is also proved by the Philosopher, Metaphysics 9.2.1046b1-11, where he expressly seems to say that a rational potency is capable of opposites, because science is of opposites. If then the intellect of its nature is indeterminate as to opposites, and nature is determined to one thing, then the intellect will have a different way of being a principle than nature; therefore etc     .

218. Further, the power of the will is free, therefore its producing too is free; therefore it is not determined to one thing, but from its liberty it can be to opposites or of opposites; but only the creature is able to be and not be, not however a divine person; therefore the will is only a principle of producing creatures, but not a divine person.

219. To the opposite:

If there are not two produced persons only, then there will either be more persons than three or fewer persons than three, which is false. Therefore those authorities by which it is shown that there are only three persons in divine reality show that there are only two produced persons.

I. To the Third Question

220. Because, as I said [n.201], plurality is made clear from production, therefore I respond first to the question about production, which is the third in order [nn.191, 201], and I say that in divine reality there is and can be production.

A. Scotus’ own Proofs

221. I prove this as follows:

[The first principal reason] - Whatever is of its own formal nature a productive principle, is a productive principle in whatever it is without imperfection; but perfect memory, or, what is the same, the whole ‘intellect having the intelligible object present to itself’, is of its own formal nature a productive principle of generated knowledge [n.310], and it is plain that such memory is in some divine person and is so of itself, because some divine person is not produced; therefore that person will be able through such a perfect principle to produce perfectly.Text cancelled by Scotus: “therefore in whatever there is this ‘intellect having an actually intelligible object present to itself’, in that there will be a productive principle of generated knowledge, and this according to the proportion of its own perfection. But in God this exists according to the true nature of itself; therefore in God there is production of generated knowledge.” Interpolation [following on]: “Or one can argue in this way: any supposit that has of itself a sufficient and formal principle of producing can produce a supposit or product adequate to that principle, namely, the most perfect supposit that can be produced for such a principle; but not a product adequate in nature, because this would be a begging of the question, but a product adequate to the active virtue of the producer, just as the sun, when it produces a most perfect effect, is said to produce an effect most perfect not in nature but in its active virtue. The following is the minor: some divine supposit has of itself a principle of producing, which principle is perfect memory; therefore etc. The major and minor are made plain in what follows.” ¹⁴⁰

222. I argue further: no production through perfect memory is perfect unless it be of knowledge adequate to that memory or that intellect with respect to such object; but to the memory or intellect of a divine person no knowledge is with respect to the divine essence adequated as intelligible save an infinite one; because that intellect comprehends the infinite object, therefore some divine person can through memory produce infinite knowledge. Further, but the knowledge will exist only in the divine nature, because no other thing is infinite; therefore in divine reality there can through memory be an internal production. But, further, if it can be then it is; both because there ‘possible being’ is ‘necessary being’, and because the principle is productive by way of nature; therefore necessarily. The consequence is plain, because it cannot be impeded, nor does it depend on another in acting; but everything acting from necessity of nature necessarily acts, unless it is impeded or depends on another in acting.

223. The major of the first syllogism [n.221]The reference may, however, be to part of the interpolated text following on from the cancelled text in the previous note. ¹⁴¹ is clear, because what does not of itself agree with a productive principle which is productive in it can exist only for one of two reasons: either because of the principle’s imperfection in it,Interpolation: “as an imperfect hot thing that imperfectly possesses heat is, according to him, not sufficient to cause heat.” ¹⁴² or because the principle exists, as received in it, by a production adequate to it, as is true of the generative power if it exist in the Son, and of the inspiriting power if it exist in the Holy Spirit; but each of these reasons is excluded by the ‘of itself’ [‘of its own formal nature’] which is said in the major,Interpolated note: “the major of the second syllogism which was...” [as in the interpolation to the cancelled text in a previous footnote]. ¹⁴³ because nothing has of itself a productive principle unless it have it without imperfection and as also not communicated by a production fitting such a principle.

224. The proof of the minor of the first syllogism [n.221]Or the reference may again be to the interpolated text mentioned in a previous note, where the minor is stated thus: “some divine supposit has of itself a principle of producing, which principle is perfect memory; therefore etc.” ¹⁴⁴,Interpolation: “the thing is plain as to the first part, because unless some person in divine reality had of itself perfect memory there would be a process to infinity; the other part of the minor, namely that perfect memory in a supposit possessing of itself that memory is a principle of producing generated knowledge...” ¹⁴⁵ is that this belongs to every created memory; not however insofar it is created or imperfect, because imperfection is never the idea of producing or communicating existence, because this belongs to it from perfection, not from imperfection.Interpolation: “every created memory, not because it is created nor because it is limited or imperfect, is a principle of producing generated knowledge, because imperfection is never a reason for producing or communicating existence; and therefore the fact that it is a perfect principle of producing a generated knowledge corresponding to itself, this belongs to it not from imperfection but from its own natural perfection.” A further interpolation follows: “Therefore this too belongs to it most perfectly where memory is most perfect and exists most perfectly; so it is in the uncreated supposit of the Father; therefore etc.” ¹⁴⁶,Text cancelled by Scotus: “The conclusion absolutely inferred, namely that memory in the first divine person is a principle for itself of producing or simply communicating, proves the intended proposition [n.220], because it is only a productive principle by way of nature; but such a production is only internal [n.222]. It proves the intended proposition more in another way, that it is a productive principle of generated knowledge; therefore internally [n.224]. And then the major [n.221] ought to be taken in this way: ‘Whatever of its own formal nature is a productive principle of something according to this something’s formal nature, is a productive principle, in whatever it is of itself in, of such a thing’. In a third way it proves most of all the intended proposition thus:” Here Scotus breaks off and cancels the note, because he has not yet made clear (he does it next in n.225) the major of the second syllogism [n.222]. ¹⁴⁷

225. The major of the second syllogism [n.222] is made clear thus: for just as there is no perfect memory with respect to any intelligible object unless the object is present to it in its idea of being actually intelligible, insofar as it can be present to it as an intelligible, so there is no perfect offspring of such memory unless there is as much actual knowledge of the object as can belong to such an intellect with respect to such an object; and I call that knowledge adequate to such an intellect with respect to such an object.

226. This [n.221] can be argued of the will, because the will that has an actually known object present to it is of its own nature productive of love of such a produced object.

227. [Response to the first principal reason] - On the contrary I bring an instance against this reason [n.221] so as to make it clearer. And the major indeed of the reason I concede. But to the minor let it be said that the whole thing is not of itself a productive principle, but only when the intellect can have of itself a produced knowledge; but this happens when it can have a knowledge other than that by which it is perfected; but an infinite intellect cannot have a knowledge distinct from itself by which it is perfected, and so it does not seem that a productive principle should be there posited.

228. And this reason [n.227] is confirmed, first because a generated knowledge would be posited in vain, second because it is impossible to posit it.

229. Proof of the first point [n.228]: in us there is a necessary generated knowledge, because by it the intellect is perfected, and it would without it be imperfect; but an infinite intellect, although it have an object present to itself, is however not formally perfected by generated knowledge but by the ungenerated knowledge, really the same as itself, by which it formally understands.

230. The second point, namely impossibility [n.228], I proveIn place of “I prove” Scotus wrote “I prove in two ways, first.” on which then follows this interpolation: “.thus: the memory in anything is either really productive of generated knowledge, as it is in us, or quasi-productive, as it is in God, because in God his accidental intellection is understood as generated quasi-knowledge. Next I argue.” ¹⁴⁸ because a productive thing that has an adequate product cannot produce another one; therefore since that whole ‘an intellect having an object actually present to itself’, or a memory, has in the paternal intellect an ungenerated knowledge adequate to itself that is quasi-produced from itself (because posterior in some way in idea of understanding to such memory or to such presence of an object), it seems that it has no further virtue for producing a distinct knowledge, different from this one.Text cancelled by Scotus: “It is proved secondly because the intellect is a power of acting, not of making, as is said in Metaphysics 9.8.1050a21-b2; therefore if it can produce a product it can produce it in itself and not outside itself, otherwise it would not have the idea of acting as this is distinguished from the idea of making. This intellect, therefore, which cannot produce knowledge in itself, cannot produce another knowledge, as it seems.” ¹⁴⁹

231. By excluding these reasons I confirm the argument [n.221]. And to exclude the response to the minor [n.227] in itself, I say that our intellect has with respect to generated knowledge a receptive power; and this power is one of imperfection, because it is a passive power; but nothing is active through itself on the idea of a productive principle, because there is no imperfection formally in the idea of a productive principle, and especially when the productive principle can in itself be perfect. Our intellect also has the idea of productive principle with respect to generated knowledge; and this comes from its perfection, insofar as a first act virtually contains the second act.

232. The first of these, namely to receive intellection, clearly belongs to the possible intellect. About the second it is not as certain whether it belongs to the possible or to the agent intellect; let there be inquiry about this elsewhere [Scotus, Quodlibet q.15 nn.13-20, 24]. But as for now, taking this point about the intellect indistinctly, that it is a productive principle of knowledge, I suppose it to be sufficiently true, and it will be made clear later [I d.3 p.3 q.2]; and intellect in this sense exists in God, because he has intellect in every idea of intellect that does not posit imperfection.

233. Then I argue thus: whenever two things per accidens come together in something,Interpolation: “one per se and another” ¹⁵⁰ namely the idea of doing and of suffering, then, when that which is the idea of acting exists per se, the idea of acting no less exists; the point is plain from Physics 2.1.192b23-27 about a doctor healing himself; if the medical art is separated from the illness the idea of healing will exist no less. Therefore if these two are separated in the intellect from each other, then, when that remains which was the per se idea of active principle, the idea of producing will still exist, however much the passive power of receiving is not there. There might be a manifest example of this: if knowledge of itself were co-created or consubstantial with our intellect, as some understand Augustine about hidden knowledge, On the Trinity XIV ch.7 n.9, then the intellect, although it could not receive the generated knowledge by which it knows itself formally,Interpolation: “because it knows itself by co-created knowledge according to them.” ¹⁵¹ yet in another intellect, to wit in an angel or a blessed man in the fatherland, it could generate knowledge of itself in idea of object, because thus to generate belongs to itself in the way it is in act, although it is not receptive of it.Text cancelled by Scotus: “if however it could have another object actually intelligible present to itself, it can generate another knowledge in a nearby receptive thing, if there is something such [or an interpolation: ‘if any such knowledge is something that is received in another’], or it can generate a self-standing knowledge if it have the virtue of generating something self-standing; therefore, when the idea of being receptive of knowledge is removed, though the idea of being productive of knowledge remains and this a self-standing knowledge, knowledge will be able to be generated by the intellect, although it would not be received in the intellect which is the principle of the generating.” ¹⁵²

From this is plain that the gloss [n.231] on that first minor [n.221] is in itself nothing.

234. To confirm the gloss about the ‘in vain’ [n.228], I say that in every order of agents, especially where a principle active of itself is not imperfect, there is a stand at some active principle that is simply perfect - namely because the agent acts from the fullness of its perfection and is called an agent from liberality, according to Avicenna Metaphysics 6. ch.5 (95ra). But no agent acts liberally which expects to be perfected by its action. For, just as in human acts he is liberal who acts or gives expecting no return, so, similarly, that agent is called liberal which is in no way perfected by its production or product.

235. From this an argument is made as follows: in every genus of productive principle that does not include imperfection, it is possible to stand at some principle simply perfect; but the intellect is such a principle, and the will similarly; therefore in that genus it is possible to stand at something simply perfect. But no agent is simply perfect which does not act liberally, in the way stated [n.234].Text cancelled by Scotus: “therefore this is something acting freely, in the way stated before.” ¹⁵³ Therefore in the genus of that productive genus there is some such principle that is in no way perfected by its production; such an intellect, thus having an object actually intelligible to itself, is only that which does not receive nor is perfected by the intellection which it generates or which is by its virtue generated. Therefore it is not necessary that every intellect produces a knowledge so as to be perfected by it, but it is necessary that there is some prior producing intellect that is not perfectible by its product.

236. And when one says ‘then it will be in vain’ n.228, this does not follow, for it will be the supreme good; but it is not produced by the producer so that the producer be perfected by it, but it comes from the fullness of perfection of that producer.Interpolation: “the product is the supreme good, abiding per se, produced from the fullness of the perfection of the producer itself; but it is not produced so that the producer may be perfected through it.” ¹⁵⁴

237. But when the argument about impossibility is made afterwards [n.230], I reduce it to the opposite, because if some actually intelligible object present to the intelligence or memory of the Father have actual quasi-produced knowledge there of the Father, yet it does not have actual knowledge produced in the Father. Now from no principle productive of itself is producing as it exists in something taken away, unless that principle be understood to have produced, or to produce, by some production adequate to the virtue of such productive principle; therefore to whatever extent memory, as it is in the Father, has a quasi-product, it can still truly produce a product. But it is true that when it truly have a really produced product adequate to itself, it will not be able to produce another.Text cancelled by Scotus: “When it is further argued about what acts and what makes [footnote to n.230], I say that these are different accidental productive powers, namely the power that acts and the power that makes. For universally every power of itself productive of something receivable in something, produces or can produce that producible in any proportionate or nearby receptive thing; but if the producible is not of a nature to be received in anything, the productive power will produce it and not in anything but as per se subsistent, if however the productive power is sufficient for producing it without anything else presupposed. So it is in the intended proposition, that the Father has generated knowledge not by acting, that is, not by producing something in himself, nor by making, that is, not by producing something essentially distinct outside himself; but because the product is not of a nature to be received in anything, and the intellect is a sufficient productive principle, because it is infinite, therefore it produces a generated knowledge that is in itself subsistent, and that is a person. And thus the responses to the instances [nn.231-237] are clarifications of the first reason [n.221], and consequently of the principal proposition [n.220].” ¹⁵⁵

238. [Second principal reason] - Second principally [n221] to the principal conclusion [n.220] I argue thus: the object as it is in the memory produces or is a reason for producing itself as it is in the intelligence; but that the object has ‘existence’ in both places in a certain respect is a matter of imperfection, because if the memory were perfect and the intelligence perfect, the object would be simply the same as both; therefore when all imperfection has been taken away, but preserving that which is simply a matter of perfection, the object simply the same as the memory will generate or will be the reason for generating something in the intelligence to which it is simply the same, which is the intended proposition.

239. [The third principal reason] - Further, third in this way: in any condition of being which is not in its idea imperfect, there is a necessity simply for perfection;

240. [Fourth principal reason] - In addition, opposite relations in the second mode of relatives can belong to the same limited nature, just as to the same will can belong the idea of motive and movable when the will moves itself; but the relations of produced and produced, although they are more repugnant than the relations of mover and moved, are relations of this sort according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 5.15.1020b26-32, 1021a14-25; for in that place he sets down, for example, the heater and heated as relations of the first kind [mover and moved], and father and son, or generated and him whom he generates, as relations of the second [producer and produced].Text cancelled by Scotus: “I reply that it is not imperfect, nor does it signify a respect to something imperfect, because necessity in such a relative requires a necessity in the imperfect thing for what it is.” ¹⁵⁶

241. The reason is confirmed, and then I argue thus, that just as will is in a way unlimited insofar as it founds some opposed relations of the second mode, namely from the fact it virtually contains that which it is in potency for formally possessing, therefore much more can an essence simply unlimited simply found relations of the same mode that are more opposed, such as are the relations of producer and produced. For the infinity of the divine essence more exceeds any lack of limitation of anything created than the repugnance of any relations of the second mode exceeds the repugnance of any others of the same mode.Text cancelled by Scotus: “The antecedent is denied as the natural is distinguished from the artificial, or as nature is from the intended proposition. It is conceded by philosophers as the natural is concomitant to the intellectual and the volitional; thus it is posited externally.” ¹⁵⁷

242. According to the Canterbury articlesText cancelled by Scotus: “Therefore the relations of producer and produced are compossible in the same nature” ¹⁵⁸ the reasons [nn.221, 238-241] for solving this question should not be demonstrations.

243. So, the minor of the first reason [n.221] is not manifest according to natural reason. When it is proved [n.224] I reply: to be a principle of producing really belongs to the memory not whence it is memory, insofar as memory has a unity of analogy to an infinite and finite memory, but to the finite memory only, not however that finitude is the formal reason of producing, but the nature is, which we specifically gesture to by ‘finite memory’. I concede therefore that imperfection is not the idea of producing but perfection is [n.224], yet not a perfection common to finite and infinite perfection, but such perfection as is necessarily accompanied by some imperfection; the reason is that to have the relation of naturally productive cause according to natural reason belongs only to such a perfect thing as is imperfect, because the imperfect is not naturally immediately producible save by the imperfect, and it is not plain that every producible is imperfect.

244. Therefore the instance against the gloss of the minor [n.233] is to be conceded because it is not for the reason that it is non-receptive that it is not-active.

245. But to the second instance about a liberal agent [n.235] I reply: here it is not plain that the productive principle is necessarily imperfect and perfectible by the product, although that perfectibility is not the idea of acting.

246. To the third instance about the product and quasi-product [n.237] I reply: it is not plain that perfect memory is a principle of producing.

247. To the fourth about acting and making [footnote to n.237]: the response to the major by the gloss is not valid, that ‘it is understood of a principle of producing in which it is univocally, not equivocally’, because - against this - where the principle is analogical, there will be there a greater principle of producing; an example is about heat in the sun with respect to heat in fire.

B. Proofs of Others

248. A certain doctorText cancelled by Scotus: “The reason [n.240] is also confirmed because all relative opposites equally involve contradiction; therefore if some of the second mode do not involve it then neither do others.” ¹⁵⁹ argues otherwise in this way: the first person is constituted by relation to the second, and only by relation of origin;     therefore one should posit in divine reality diverse supposits of which one is from another, etc     . Proof of the first proposition: for the first person is relative to the second; and if it were not constituted by that relation then that relation would either be accidental to it or would be adventitious to the personWhich these articles are is obscure. The articles must at any rate have said that the Trinity is not a matter of demonstration but of faith. ¹⁶⁰ constituted, which is discordant.

249. Secondly he argues thus: a virtue supremely active diffuses itself supremely; but it would not diffuse itself supremely if it did not produce something supreme,A reference to Henry of Ghent. ¹⁶¹ or unless it communicated a supreme nature to something;     therefore etc     .

250. OthersInterpolation: “and it would be as it were adventitious to the person already [constituted].” ¹⁶² argue through the idea of good, that the good is of itself communicative;     therefore the supremely good is supremely communicative; only internally because nothing ‘other’ can be supreme.

251. There is a similar argument about the idea of the perfect, that the perfect is what can produce something like itself, from Metaphysics 1.1.981b7 and Meteorology 4.3.380a12-15; therefore the first agent, which is most perfect, can produce something like itself. But the more perfect is what can produce something univocally like itself than equivocally so, because an equivocal production is imperfect; therefore etc     .

252. These reasons do not make the intended proposition [n.220] clear through what is more manifest, whether to the faithful or to the infidel.

The first [n.248], when it accepts that the first person is constituted by relation, is, if it intends to persuade the infidel, accepting something less known than the principal proposition; for it is less known to such a person that a per se subsistent thing is constituted by relation than that there is production in divine reality.Interpolation: “and this thing a second person.” ¹⁶³ If the reason intends to persuade the faithful it still proceeds from that is less known, because that there is production in divine reality is an evident article of faith; but it is not so primarily evident that it is an article of faith that the first person is constituted by relation.A reference to Bonaventure and Richard of Middleton. ¹⁶⁴

253. And when it is argued further that the distinction there is only by relations of origin [n.248], this not as immediately manifest from faith as is the conclusion which it is intending to show.Interpolation: “because if some per se subsistent person is known to have been produced, yet he would not seem to himself to be so through a relation but through an absolute.” ¹⁶⁵,Interpolation: “Nor is the consequence valid, because common inspiriting is a relation and not constitutive.” ¹⁶⁶

254. When he proves that otherwise the relation would be adventitious to the constituted person and so would be an accident [n.248], this proof does not seem to be valid, because it could be argued in a similar way about active inspiriting, about which all hold that it does not constitute a person, nor yet is it an accident, because it is perfectly the same as the foundation that is the essence in the person.

255. And when it is argued secondly that something supremely active is supremely diffusive of itself, the response would be that this is true to the extent that it is possible for something to be diffused, but it would be necessary to prove that it would be possible for something to be diffused or communicated in unity of nature.

256. The same to the third about the idea of good [n.250], because it would be necessary to prove that the communication of the same thing or nature would be possible, because there is no power or communication of goodnessText cancelled by Scotus: “Also it is not necessary for the intended proposition, because even if the distinction there were in another way, origin could still be preserved.” ¹⁶⁷ for an impossible that involves a contradiction.

257. Likewise to the fourth ‘the perfect is of a nature to produce something supreme like itself’ [n.251], this is true as to something that is a supreme as similar to itself as can be produced;Interpolation: ‘nor is this consequence valid that ‘the distinction is through relation, therefore through a relation of origin’ because not all relations are relations of origin.” ¹⁶⁸ therefore one ought to prove that a like univocal supreme would be producible.Interpolation: “and consequently neither is the communication of goodness supreme.” ¹⁶⁹

II. To the Principal Arguments of the Third Question

258. By holding onto the four reasons [nn.221, 238, 239, 240-241] and especially the first two [nn.221, 238] for the affirmative conclusion to the question, I respond to the arguments for the opposite conclusion [nn.201-208].

To the first [nn.201-206] by denying the major.

259. When it is proved first through the necessary of itself and the necessary from another [n.202], I say that if the same genus of cause is meant by these two, ‘of itself’ and ‘from another’, it is true that in this way nothing is necessary of itself and from another; but if another genus of cause is meant, to wit through the ‘of itself’ the formal cause and through the ‘from another’ the effective or productive cause, it is not discordant for the same thing to be necessary of itself in one way and from another in another way.

260. When the major of the prosyllogism [n.202] is proved, I say that what is necessary of itself formally cannot not exist when any other thing is removed whose removal does not include incompossibility with the positing of something else existing; but ‘necessary of itself formally’ follows ‘being able not to be’ when any other thing is removed through incompossibility, just as from the positing of one incompossible another incompossible follows.

261. But then there is a doubt what the difference is between necessary of itself as applied to the Son according to the theologians and as applied to the necessarily produced creature according to philosophers.

I respond: the philosophers, when positing that creatures are necessarily produced, had to say that creatures had an entity whereby they were formally necessary, although in that entity they depended on a cause that necessarily produced; but the Son has a formally necessary entity and the same entity as the producer. A creature, then, if it was necessary of itself, could not fail to be when everything else was removed whose removal does not involve a contradiction, although, when the cause other than itself was removed through incompossibility, it could fail to be; but the Son could not fail to be when everything else as to entity was removed, because it could only fail to be when the person producing was removed, and the producer is not other as to entity than the produced. Hence if the Father produced a creature naturally and necessarily, he would produce it to be formally necessary, and yet it would not then be necessary with as much necessity as the Son nowInterpolation: “but it is not a supreme that is univocally similar, because then it could produce another God.” ¹⁷⁰ is necessary.

262. To the second proof of the major [n.203] I say that logical possibility differs from real possibility, as is plain from the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.12.1019b28-30. Logical possibility is a mode of composition formed by the intellect whose terms do not involve contradiction, and so this proposition is possible: ‘God exists’, ‘God can be produced’, and ‘God is God’; but real possibility is what is received from some real power as from a power inhering in something or determined to something as to its term.

But the Son is not possible with real possibility or with a possibility inhering in something or determined to him, because possibility, whether active or passive, is to another thing in nature, as is plain from the definition of active and passive power at Metaphysics 5.12.1019a15-20, because it is a principle of changing another either from another insofar as it is other, or from another or insofar as it is other. But the Son is the term of productive power, which abstracts from the idea of effective power, and if that power be called simply power, the term of that power can be called simply possible; but that possibility is not repugnant to being formally necessary, although perhaps the possibility of which the philosophers speak, of active and passive power, is properly repugnant to necessity of itself; but this doubt concerns active power, if they posited that something necessary has a productive principle.

263. To the third proof, when it is said ‘there is order then, so the first person is understood when the second person is not understood’ [n.204], I reply that in the first understanding the second person is not necessarily understood along with the first person if that first person is absolute; but it does not follow from this that, if the first person is understood with the second not understood, therefore the second person is understood not to exist,Interpolation: “but this is impossible, because there cannot be several Gods, as was shown in the question about the unity of God” [nn.165-181]. ¹⁷¹ just as it does not follow ‘the animal which is in man is understood when rational is not understood, therefore man is understood not to be rational’.Text cancelled by Scotus: “A stand therefore is made in the Son that he is formally necessary of himself, and yet from another producing him by efficacy [interpolation: or originally], together with whom he has the same necessary entity [interpolation: for necessary formally and non-necessary in origin are not contradictory].” ¹⁷²

264. When, however, you infer change from the opposed terms [n.204], you take it as if the produced was understood not to be when the producer is, which is false; you are changing abstraction without falsehood, which is by not considering the thing from which the abstraction is made, into false abstraction, which is by considering the thing not to exist from which abstraction is made.

265. To the fourth proof [n.205] I say that the person would not be in essence without production; for it has essence through production. The consequence is not: ‘therefore the essence becomes from not having the person to having it’, but the consequence is: ‘therefore the essence, which of its idea does not include person’ (which is true if person is relative, first because then there is something when the relative is taken away, according to Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.1 n.2, and second because a respect is not of the idea of an absolute) - the essence, I say - has ‘that production, or through production it has the person in which it subsists’, which person or production, however, is not of the idea of essence. But change does not follow from the fact that something is in something which is not of the idea of it, but change requires that something be in something in which the opposite of it first was, which does not hold in this case.

266. To the fifth proof [n.206] I say that also in generation in creatures two ideas come together, namely that generation is a change and that it is a production; but as it is a change it is the form of the changed subject, and as it is a production it is as the process of the produced term. These ideas do not include each other essentially even in creatures, because they have a regard first to diverse things. Therefore without contradiction the idea of production can be understood without the idea of change, and so generation is transferred to divine reality under the idea of production, although not under the idea of change.

267. To the second principal argument [n.207] I say that this does not follow ‘it is from another therefore it is dependent’. When it is proved I concede that nature exists equally independently in producer and produced.Interpolation: “for here the intellect, by abstracting in this way, does not merely abstract but also divides what exists in reality.” ¹⁷³ When it is argued from independence that there will not be a pre-requirement, I deny the consequence, because dependence follows the formal entity of what depends on that on which it depends; when therefore it has the same entity, there is not in that case dependence, although there can be a prerequirement if one supposit has it from another.

268. To the final argument [n.208] I say that changes other than generation are in their formal idea more imperfect than generation, becauseInterpolation: “For it is not the same thing to understand animal without rational when understanding by way of a proposition that it is not rational, and not to understand animal to be rational by way of abstraction. Hence this is the order in the intellect: first not to be understood to be, second to be understood to be; but in real existence there is no order. But on the contrary: in the first stage one must understand that the thing is not, because in that first stage it does not have being, otherwise it would have a priority of being along with that first stage. To this objection, which is set down in the Reportatio IA d.2 n.142, I reply as follows: it is not understood in that prior stage not to be absolutely but not to be in prior stage of origin, that is, not to be of itself, and it is in this way understood to exist in that prior stage, and absolutely, because that is prior; but in the later stage of origin it is understood to have been produced, because it is from another.” ¹⁷⁴ the terms introduced are more imperfect than the terms of generation; yet the other changes do not require, as to what they presuppose, as much imperfection in the subject as generation requires, and this in the way generation is a change, because generation requires in the subject a being in potency, and potency to existence simply, but the other changes do not.

269. Applying this to the intended proposition, I say that generation is not transferred to divine reality as to what generation presupposes, to wit a changeable subject, which is a matter of imperfection, because in the way it is a change it is not in divine reality, - but it is transferred to divine reality insofar as it is a production, under the idea in which production is of a term, which term is more perfect than the terms of other changes; and thus can essence well be taken through generation as the most perfect term in divine reality, although there could not be taken through some other change some other term of other changes, because this other term would include composition and imperfection, because the term of any other change would be an accident combinable with a subject.

III. To the Fourth Question

270. To the fourth question, about the number of productions [n.212], the truth is plain that there are only two productions.

A. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent is Expounded.

271. But this is explained by some [Henry of Ghent] in the following way:

notional acts are founded on immanent essential acts; but there are only two essential acts abiding internally, and these are understanding and willing; therefore there are only two notional acts that are productive internally, founded on the same essential acts.

272. A confirmation of the reason is that notional acts founded on essential acts are adequated to them, and so there cannot be a multiplication of notional acts founded on the same essential act.

273. The modeInterpolation: “and they have essence first equally by the primacy that is opposed to dependence.” ¹⁷⁵ of their founding is the following, as collected from the many things that he opined scattered about in many places:Text cancelled by Scotus: “by reason of the more imperfect forms introduced they have greater imperfections, or because...” ¹⁷⁶ “Both the intellect and the will, whatever they have being in, because of their separation from matter, after they have being in their own first act of simple intelligence or volition, can turn themselves back on themselves and on their simple acts and on their objects through acts of turning back or through conversive acts of understanding and willing.

274. For the intellect not only understands truth by simple intelligence but also by conversive intelligence, by understanding that it understands, by turning itself back on the understood object and on the simple act of understanding and on itself understanding through a conversive act, because the second knowledge which is in the word not only knows and understand the thing but knows and understands it in such a way that it knows that it knows and understands that thing. Likewise the will not only wills the good with simple volition, but also with conversive volition, by willing that it will, by turning itself back on the willed object and on the simple act of willing and on itself willing through its conversive act.

275. But this turning back agrees with the intellect and the will partly in one and the same way and partly in different ways. For the fact that both turn themselves back as they exist as bare, pure, and mere powers, this happens in one and the same way as far as concerns their turning themselves back; for both turn only themselves back by their own active force, which force agrees equally with both; but it happens in different ways as concerns the objects to which they turn themselves.

276. For the intellect, after it has turned itself back to the things to which it has been turned back, possesses itself as a certain potential and pure possible, and this in the way the bare and pure intellect is of a nature to receive something from those things, as a proper passive thing receives from its proper natural active thing, which active thing indeed is the intellect informed with simple knowledge, and this in respect of the formation of declarative knowledge. But the will, after it has turned itself back to what it has turned itself back to, is related as a certain active thing, and this in the way the bare and pure will is of a nature to express something about those things, as a proper active thing about its proper passive thing; this passive thing is the very same will, informed by simple love, about which - when thus informed - the same will as bare naturally expresses incentive love, who is in the divine reality the Holy Spirit, and he has being from the persons producing him, not by an informing of that about which he is subjectively, nor through any impression made on the same according to the manner in which the Word or the Son proceeds from the Father by a certain quasi-informing or impressing made on the intellect by the paternal turning back,Interpolation [from Appendix A]: “This mode is set down, and it is gathered from the many statements of that doctor, scattered about in several places. For, according to him, the word is formed in us in this way, that ‘when first known it impresses a simple knowledge of itself on our intellect by representing itself to it as to what is purely passive and to it as under the idea in which it is intellect. But the intellect when perfected with simple knowledge through the object known, which it contains expressively in itself, is made fecund and an active principle as nature - in itself being as intellect merely and as a passive principle - for forming a declarative knowledge in itself from the simple knowledge. And in this respect, when it is said that ‘the word is formed through the intellect’ and that ‘the intellect is active in the formation of the word’, this is understood of the intellect actually informed with simple knowledge; for by this simple knowledge, as by a formal idea of acting, the intellect is an active principle, and necessarily the idea of it, as intellect is passive, though passive with respect to the simple knowledge which it receives from the object, is prior to the idea of it according to which it is nature and active through the simple knowledge inhering in it; and therefore, in the order of reason, it has being first as intellect before it has it as nature, and before the notional act is founded that it performs as nature over and above the essential act which it undergoes as intellect’ [Henry of Ghent, Summa a.54 q.10 ad 2], namely over and above the simple knowledge of the object which it receives as it is bare. But as to how the intellect as nature is an active principle with respect to the intellect as purely for producing he makes clear in this way, that ‘Both the intellect and the will, whatever they have being in, because of their separation from matter, after they have being in their own first act of simple intelligence or volition, can turn themselves back on themselves and on their simple acts and on their objects through acts of turning back or through conversive acts of understanding and willing. For the intellect not only understands truth by simple intelligence but also by conversive intelligence, by understanding that it understands, by turning itself back on the understood object and on the simple act of understanding and on itself understanding through a conversive act, because the second knowledge which is in the word not only knows and understand the thing but knows and understands it in such a way that it knows that it knows and understands that thing. Likewise the will not only wills the good with simple volition, but also with conversive volition, by willing that it will, by turning itself back on the willed object and on the simple act of willing and on itself willing through its conversive act. But this turning back agrees with the intellect and the will partly in one and the same way and partly in different ways. For the fact that both turn themselves back as they exist as bare, pure, and mere powers, this happens in one and the same way as far as concerns their turning themselves back; for both turn only themselves back by their own active force, which force agrees equally with both; but it happens in different ways as concerns the objects to which they turn themselves. For the intellect, after it has turned itself back to the things to which it has been turned back, possesses itself as a certain potential and pure possible, and this in the way the bare and pure intellect is of a nature to receive something from those things, as a proper passive thing receives from its proper natural active thing, which active thing indeed is the intellect informed with simple knowledge, and this in respect of the formation of declarative knowledge. But the will, after it has turned itself back to what it has turned itself back to, is related as a certain active thing, and this in the way the bare and pure will is of a nature to express a certain incentive love about those things, as a proper active thing about its proper passive thing (of which sort is the same will when informed by simple love) [ibid. a.60 q.1 in corp.].’ Applying this to the proposed case in divine reality he says, ‘the intellect as notional essence existing in the Father, or, which is the same thing, existing in an act of understanding its own essence, which act the essence itself as it were brings about in its own intellect as intellect is in potency, as it were, to essential knowledge according to the idea of understanding - this intellect is fertile with natural fertility for producing from itself something like itself, to which it is as it were in potency through the fact that it is in act under that essential knowledge. For the intellect, as it is a certain essential knowledge in act, is the nature and as if the active principle by which the Father, as he is pure intellect and only intellect, forms from the same intellect, as from a passive principle, the knowledge which is the Word, which in reality is the same knowledge as that from which it is formed, differing from it only insofar as it proceeds from it as making it manifest and declaring it’ [ibid. a.54 q.10 ad 2]. ‘Therefore on the part of the intellect an act of saying is caused by simple knowledge in the bare intellect when it is turned back on itself and on its simple knowledge, such that the intellect informed with simple knowledge is an active and eliciting principle of the notional act of the intellect. But the bare converted intellect itself is only a passive principle, about which, as if about some material, the Word is produced as though by impression. Now, on the part of the will, a notional act is caused by the bare will itself when turned back on itself and on its simple love and on its will informed with simple love, such that the bare converted will is an active and elicitive principle of the notional act of the will. But the will itself, informed with simple love, is a quasi-passive principle, from which, as from some material, the Holy Spirit is produced according to a certain expressing’ [ibid. a.60 q.4 ad 1], ‘not by an informing of that about which he is subjectively, nor through any impression made on the same according to the manner in which the Word or the Son proceeds from the Father by a certain quasi-informing or impressing made on the intellect by the paternal turning back, but by a certain quasi-striking or pushing out or progress or -speaking more properly - by a certain expressing of what is produced by that about which it is subjectively produced’ [ibid. q.1 in corp.]. In this way, then, the mode is plain in which, according to this opinion, the notional act is founded on the essential act, and how it is founded in diverse ways in the intellect and the will.” ¹⁷⁷ but by a certain quasistriking or pushing out or progress or - speaking more properly - by a certain expressing of what is produced by that about which it is subjectively produced.

277. On the part of the intellect an act of saying is caused by simple knowledge in the bare intellect when it is turned back on itself and on its simple knowledge, such that the intellect informed with simple knowledge is an active and eliciting principle of the notional act of the intellect. But the bare converted intellect itself is only a passive principle, about which, as if about some material, the Word is produced as though by impression. Now, on the part of the will, a notional act is caused by the bare will itself when turned back on itself and on its simple love and on its will informed with simple love, such that the bare converted will is an active and elicitive principle of the notional act of the will. But the will itself, informed with simple love, is a quasi-passive principle, from which, as from some material, the Holy Spirit is produced according to a certain expressing.”

278. But how the intellect as nature is an active principle with respect to intellect as pure for producing the Word, this is made clear in this way,Interpolation: “For the word is formed in us, according to him, in this way, that ‘when first known it impresses a simple knowledge of itself on our intellect by representing itself to it as to what is purely passive and to it as under the idea in which it is intellect. But the intellect when perfected with simple knowledge through the object known, which it contains expressively in itself, is made fecund and an active principle as nature - in itself being as intellect merely and as a passive principle - for forming a declarative knowledge in itself from the simple knowledge. And in this respect, when it is said that ‘the word is formed through the intellect’ and that ‘the intellect is active in the formation of the word’, this is understood of the intellect actually informed with simple knowledge; for by this simple knowledge, as by a formal idea of acting, the intellect is an active principle, and necessarily the idea of it, as intellect is passive, though passive with respect to the simple knowledge which it receives from the object, is prior to the idea of it according to which it is nature and active through the simple knowledge inhering in it; and therefore, in the order of reason, it has being first as intellect before it has it as nature’. But how intellect as nature is an active principle with respect to the intellect as bare for producing the word, it is made clear thus, that...” [as in nn.276-277 below]. ¹⁷⁸ because [point f] “the intellect as notional essence existing in the Father, or, which is the same thing, existing in an act of understanding its own essence, which act the essence itself as it were brings about in its own intellect as intellect is in potency, as it were, to essential knowledge according to the idea of understanding - this intellect is fertile with natural fertility for producing from itself something like itself.Text cancelled by Scotus: “as it is declarative knowledge about simple knowledge.” ¹⁷⁹

279. Now the intellect, as it is a certain essential knowledge in act, is the nature and as if the active principle by which the Father, as he is pure intellect and only intellect, forms from the same intellect, as from a passive principle, the knowledge which is the Word, which in reality is the same knowledge as that from which it is formed, differing from it only insofar as it proceeds from it as making it manifest and declaring it.

280. And in the whole same way we must thus understand the word to be formed in us. For a thing when first known impresses a simple knowledge of itself on our intellect by representing itself to the intellect as to something purely passive and as under the idea in which it is intellect. But the intellect thus perfected by simple knowledge through the object known, which it contains expressed in itself, is made to be fertile and an active principle by way of nature, making impress on itself as it is merely intellect, as on a passive principle, so as to form in itself a declarative knowledge about the simple knowledge, so that - according to this - when it is said ‘a word is formed by the intellect’ and that ‘the intellect is active also in the formation of it’, this is understood about the intellect actually informed with simple knowledge, by which, as by the formal idea of acting, the intellect is an active principle; for by this it is a principle, and its idea as it is intellect and passive with respect to the simple knowledge, which it receives from the object, is necessarily prior to its idea according to which it is nature and active by the inhering simple knowledge; and therefore, in order of idea, it has being as it is intellect before it has being as it is nature.”

281. Thus then the mode is plain in which, according to this opinion, the notional act is founded on the essential act, and how it is so in diverse ways in the intellect and in the will [nn.273-280].

B. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent is Rejected.

282. This opinion posits four articles which I do not believe to be true.

The first is that the divine Word is generated by impression [nn.273-280]; the second is that this is by impression on the intellect as it is turned back on itself; the third is that essential knowledge is the formal idea of generating declarative knowledge; the fourth is that it is generated by impression on the intellect as bare.

283. [Article one] - I dismiss the rejection of the first article until distinction 5 [I d.5 q.2 nn.2-10], where it properly has place.

284. [Article two] - Against the second article I argue in a threefold way: first that on the intellect thus converted the Word is not impressed, the second that such conversion is not necessary for generating the Word, the third that there is no such conversion.

285. I argue for the first as follows, namelyText cancelled by Scotus: “And hence is apparent the difference between intellect as intellect and intellect as nature.” ¹⁸⁰ that the intellect is not turned back save as it is in some supposit, because turning back is posited as an action, and actions are of supposits. Then I ask, to which supposit or to which person does it belong as turned back on the formed intellect? If as so converted it belongs to the person of the Son, and according to you this conversion precedes the generation of the Word, then before the generation of the Word there are two persons, which is heretical. But if, as it is turned back on the formed intellect, it belongs to the Father himself, and if to that to which it belongs as converted it belongs as it is formed by generated knowledge, as I will prove, then the intellect as it belongs to the Father is formed by generated knowledge; therefore generated knowledge belongs formally to the person of the Father himself, because to what person the intellect belongs as formed, to that same person belongs the knowledge by which it is formed. The assumption that needs to be proved I prove thus: to what person the intellect belongs as it is turned back on the formed intellect, to that person it belongs as it possesses the intellect formed for the object actually present; therefore it belongs to that person as it is formed by the object. The proof of this consequence is that a passive thing proportioned, disposed, and approximated to a sufficient proportioned active thing is of a nature to be immediately perfected by that active thing, from the Philosopher Metaphysics 9.5.1048a5-7; for, according to the Philosopher, something is in proximate potency when nothing needs to be added, subtracted, or lessened so that act might be present in it. But the intellect bare, as converted and having the intellect formed as present object, is a passive thing disposed, proportioned, and approximate to the intellect formed as a sufficiently active object; therefore the bare intellect as converted -with no variation made with respect to it, in subsistence or any entity as such - is formed by generated knowledge. And thus is the first consequence proved.Text cancelled by Scotus: “to which it is as intellect in potency as it were through the fact that it is in act under that essential knowledge.” ¹⁸¹

286. Here a response could be made that the intellect bare, through the fact that from it the knowledge is actually formed, or by the fact it is a quasi-matter informed by generated knowledge, has ‘existence’ in the generated person [I d.5 q.2 n.8]. But against this response are the two first arguments set down later [ibid. nn.5-8] against the opinion about quasi-matter, which is there specifically refuted.Text cancelled by Scotus: “The first is that in the intellect as bare, turned back on the intellect formed by simple knowledge, generated knowledge is formed; this I refute as follows...” ¹⁸²

287. I argue for the second [n.284] thus,Text cancelled by Scotus: “Again, that the Word be formed about the intellect as bare, and yet that it be impressed on the intellect as having essential knowledge [the matter of the fourth article], do not seem to stand together, because under what reason the intellect is the proximate about-which, under that it is also the proximate in-which; but at point f [n.278] he says that it is in quasi-potency to the Word through the fact that it is in act under essential knowledge.” ¹⁸³ that the intellect of the Father, when it has the object present to itself, is a natural principle, not only operative with respect to the intellection of the Father but also productive with respect to generated knowledge; therefore, when the reflexion is removed, it would still be a productive principle.

288. Again I prove the third [n.284] thus: if by conversion nothing is understood to be in the intellect which would not be understood to be there when no conversion is understood, then conversion is nothing there; if something is understood to be in the intellect which would not be understood without the conversion, what, I ask, is it? - not the presence of the object, not the perfection of the power, not finally the determination of the power to act or to the exercise of act. As to the way in which some posit that the will in us converts the intelligence to memory, it is plain that the will does not convert it to generation of the divine Word.

289. Again, this conversion is not an action which is an operation, because it is not intellection nor volition, nor is it an action productive of which.

290. [Article three] - The third article [n.282] is that the intellect informed by actual essential knowledge is a principle active and elicitive of generated knowledge.

291. This I refuteInterpolation [replacing what follows after ‘intellect bare’]: “from which generated knowledge is formed, and is communicated to the Son by an act of producing generated knowledge, - about which we will speak in distinction 5, and so I pass over it here.” ¹⁸⁴ as follows: the Word is not generated by intelligence but by memory,Text cancelled by Scotus: “The third article is that the turning back of the bare intellect on the formed intellect is necessary for the bare intellect to be formed by the formed intellect [n.277]. This I do not see.” ¹⁸⁵ according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.14 n.24;Interpolation: “But that intelligence or essential knowledge in the Father is not the formal idea of acting or generating the Word, I prove...” ¹⁸⁶ therefore, although in the Father memory, intelligence, and will go together,Interpolation: “through an act of intelligence but through an act of memory.” ¹⁸⁷ the Father does not generate the Son formally by intelligence as ‘by which’ but as it is memory. But as it has actual knowledge quasi-elicited and as second act, it is in act of intelligence, to which belongs all actual understanding; therefore as such it does not generate the Word, but as it is in act of memory, that is, as it has the intelligible object present to its intellect; for here first act is understood as if preceding second act, and second act is actual understanding.

292. Second thus: production more agrees with first act as active principle than with second act, because perfect operations are ends in their idea, and so they are not for the sake of other ends; therefore intellection as it is the operation of the Father is not the formal productive reason of any term, but only first act - by whose virtue the operation is elicited - will be productive principle.

293. Third thus: if the actual intellection of the Father is the formal idea of producing the Word, still the object as present to the Father’s intellect, as the intellect possesses the idea of memory, will be the prior productive principle of generated knowledge, because it is apparent in us that it is of a nature to generate more immediately than the act of understanding is; therefore some Word will be generated by the Father as he is memory itself before being generated by him as he is knowing intelligence itself.Interpolation: “at the end: ‘the way,’ he says, ‘that the Word of the Father is knowledge from knowledge, etc.’; knowledge according to him is only ever in the memory.” ¹⁸⁸

294. Further, all intellection, since its existence is in becoming, has a principle or quasi-principle whose existence is not in becoming, because otherwise there will be a process to infinity; therefore of some understanding of the object a, to wit the first understanding, only the memory must be the principle or quasi-existence such that it is not the whole complex ‘intellect understanding’ [n.221], otherwise there would not be a first intellection. But all understandings of a, and in an intellect of the same nature, are of the same nature. But whatever is the first principle of the first thing in a species can be the principle of anything else and immediately; therefore perfect memory of a can be the immediate principle or quasi-principle of every understanding of a. Therefore the memory of the Father can be the immediate principle of the Word; therefore necessarily it is.

On the contrary: therefore the memory of the Son to the intelligence of the Son is not as the memory of the Father to the intelligence of the Father.

295. Further, the Word is most immediately declarative of that by which it is most immediately expressed; therefore if the elicitive nature of the Word is the actual knowledge in the formed intellect of the Father, it follows that the Word is more immediately Word, or declarative, of the intellection of the Father than of the essence of the Father, which seems discordant, because then there would be some prior Word that would be immediately declarative of the essence of the Father, or one should say that the essence could not immediately be declared by some Word, which seems discordant, since according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.10 n.19: “knowledge formed by the thing which we contain in memory” is the word; the first object of the divine memory is essence as essence.

296. Further, if the actual intellection of the Father were generated or produced, it would be produced by virtue of the essence not as already known but as prior to all knowledge; this is plain also according to truth, because otherwise there would be a process to infinity in acts of understanding, namely act before act, and also according to them, because he said above [Henry of Ghent, n.278] that in the Father the essence itself in the Father’s intellect operates the act of understanding the essence. From this I argue as follows: actual knowledge of the essence cannot formally be of another idea in the persons by the fact that it is communicated by another or not communicated by another, because then deity would formally be of a different idea in the persons;Interpolation: “according to Augustine On the Trinity 15 ch.7 n.12, however.” ¹⁸⁹ therefore actual knowledge of the essence belongs to the same idea in the Father and in the Son.

Therefore, that which is of a nature to be the principle ‘by which’ with respect to one of them if it were principal, will be the same principle with respect to the other if it is what follows a principle.Text cancelled by Scotus: “There is a confirmation, that for you essence quasi-operates the essential act of understanding in the paternal intellect [n.278]; the essence then as present to the intellect is a sufficient principle ‘by which’ with respect to actual intellection; but the fact that it is only a quasi-principle with respect to it as it is in the Father is because the intellection of the Father is not producible; therefore with respect to actual producible knowledge it will be simply the principle ‘by which’, and so the first Word will not be produced by the actual intellection of the Father as by the formal productive idea.” ¹⁹⁰

297. I pass over the fourth article [n.282], except for the fact that by thinking in this way here he seems to contradict himself, as was argued before [footnote to n.285].

298. The second article [n.282] is also false in us, because the most perfect word will exist in the fatherland, according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.11 nn.20-21, and yet it will not be a word generated by a turning back on first act, so that the word, because of this, is a reflex act in the way he says that by the second knowledge which is in the word the intellect knows that it know and understands [n.274]. But the proof that the word is not reflex knowledge [n.257] is that the most perfect created word does not have for its first object something created but something uncreated.

299. The third article too [nn.282, 290] is false in us; both because confused knowledge cannot be the elicitive principle of distinct knowledge, just as neither can an imperfect thing be the elicitive principle of some perfect production; and also because the actual confused knowledge would exist at the same time with actual distinct knowledge, and so there would be two elicited acts at the same time, or a confused act would, when it did not exist, generate a distinct act; and also because every second act of understanding is generated by memory as memory exists in a first act proportional to itself, to wit perfect act by perfect memory, imperfect by imperfect, as will be clear later [I d.3 p.3 q.2 nn.12-13].

C. Scotus’ Own Opinion

300. I say then to the question that there are only two productions distinct according to formal ideas of productions, and this because there are only two productive principles that have distinct formal ideas of production.

Of this causal statement I prove the antecedent and the consequence.

The antecedent I prove as follows: every plurality is reduced to as much unity, or as much fewness, as it can be reduced to; therefore the plurality of active principles will be reduced to as much unity, or as much fewness, as it can be reduced to. But it cannot be reduced to some single productive principle. The proof is thatInterpolation: “because one person and not another has it from himself.” ¹⁹¹ the principle would determinately have one mode of being principle, or the mode of being principle of one of them: for either it would be of itself determinately productive by way of nature, or not of itself determinately but freely productive, and so by way of will; therefore these cannot be reduced to some as it were third principle among them that would have, that is in producing, the idea of neither of them. Nor is one reduced to the other because then one would in its whole genus be imperfect, which is false, because since it belongs to both from the same perfection to be an operative and productive principle (which was proved in the preceding solution, in the proof of the minor of the first syllogism there given [[nn.224, 226]), and since neither is in itself imperfect insofar as it is operative, for then it would not exist formally in God, therefore neither is imperfect either as it is productive.

302. The productive principles, therefore, cannot be reduced to a lesser fewness than to a duality of principle, namely a duality of a principle productive by way of nature and of a principle productive by way of will. Now these two principles, according to their reasons of being principle, should be placed in the first thing, because in it there is every idea of principle that is not reduced to another prior principle. Therefore there are only two productive principles of different idea in the first productive thing, namely a single one productive by way of nature and a single one productive freely. But these productive principles are inward, because any productive principle which is not reduced to another prior principle is of a nature to have a production adequate and a product adequate to itself; therefore the productive principle which is will is of a nature to have a product adequate to it, and the productive principle which is nature is of a nature to have a product adequate to it. These productive principles are infinite, therefore the products adequate to them can only be infinite. Also omnipotence in the first thing cannot have a possible infinite object, because then the creature could be infinite;Interpolation: “But it has been made clear [in the footnote to n.293] that actual knowledge in the Father, if it were generated, would have the essence as formal principle; therefore in the Son, where it is generated and is of the same idea, it will have the essence as formal principle and not the intellect or simple knowledge.” ¹⁹² but nothing is formally infinite except God, from the question ‘Whether God Exists’ [nn.39, 74-147]. Therefore these principles are productive of some things in the divine nature.

303. Further it follows: if there are only two productive principles of different nature, then there are only two productions numerically. The proof is that each productive principle has a production adequate to itself and co-eternal; therefore while that production stands it cannot have another.Text cancelled by Scotus: “the productive principles which are nature and will have opposite modes of being a principle, because one is of itself inclined to acting naturally, the other has the producing freely in its own power, such that it is not of itself naturally inclined to this; but if they were reduced to some single productive principle^” ¹⁹³

D. Instances against the Solution

304. An objection is raised against this deduction as follows: nature of itself is a principle determined to action; but in divine reality intellect whereby it is intellect not only seems to be a principle determined to action but also by nature an essence as essence is in some way prior to intellect, being its root as it were and foundation, in the way that any essence seems to be the foundation of the power; therefore not only the intellect but also the essence itself as essence should be set down as having the idea of being principle of the principle which is nature as distinguished from will.

305. Second, there is a doubt about these productive acts, how they belong to those productive principles whose the essential acts are; for since acts distinguish powers, On the Soul 2.4.415a16-20, it seems that to the powers to which the essential acts [understanding, willing] belong, the notional acts [generating, inspiriting, n.271] do not belong.

306. Third, the proof does not seem to be valid which is adduced for showing that the duality in productive principles cannot be reduced to unity [n.301], for to be principle necessarily and to be principle contingently are opposite modes of being a principle and yet this duality is reduced to unity. And I concede that the ‘one thing’ has determinately one of these two modes, the mode namely that is more perfect and prior. So it should be said, in the proposed case, that to the principle which is nature - because it is prior in idea of being principle - the will is reduced, although it have the opposite mode of being a principle.

307. Fourth,Text cancelled by Scotus: “I prove that perfect memory is productive inwardly by way of nature, from the preceding solution [nn.225-226], because perfect intellect, insofar as it is an operative power, is of a nature to understand an object insofar as the object is knowable, and thus, insofar as it is a productive power of generated knowledge, it is of a nature to be a principle of as much knowledge as there can be of the object; but the intellect in the first thing too, as it is a productive principle, is simply perfect, as is plain, because it is not reduced to another prior principle, and everything imperfect is reduced to a perfect thing prior to itself. This first object too of the intellect is an infinite intelligible; therefore the intellect, as it is a productive principle, is of a nature to be a principle of producing an infinite knowledge. A similar argument holds of the will with respect to infinite love.” ¹⁹⁴ whence is proved the proposition ‘when one act adequate to the power stands, the power cannot have another act’ [n.303]? If it understand adequation according to extension, the question is begged; if according to intension, it seems to be false. For although the vision of the Word is adequate to the intellective power of the soul of Christ, yet it can also know by an elicited act some other intelligible; it is plain too that God knows himself by a knowledge adequate to his intellect according to intension, and yet he knows things other than himself. If this is how it is about an act adequate to the operative power, which allows of another, much more does it seem to be so of the productive power, because its product is not in the productive power as operation is in the operative power.

308. Again, a principle is not a principle insofar as the thing that has a principle is already understood to be posited in existence, but insofar as it is prior to that thing; but as it is prior it is not differently disposed by the fact that what has it as a principle is posited to be in existence. Therefore if, when this thing is not posited, it could be the principle of another thing, it seems by parity of reason that, when this thing is posited, it could at the same time be the principle of another thing, because when the first thing is posited the principle, insofar as it is principle, that is, insofar as it is prior to what has it as a principle, is in no way differently disposed.

309. The solution of these two ultimate questions [nn.307-308], and the clarification of the reason against which they are made, and the proof of the conclusion for which the reason is adduced, namely that there are only two productions - let them be dismissed to distinction 7 [n.358], in the question ‘Whether there could be several Sons in divine reality’ [I d.7 q.2].Note cancelled by Scotus: “One must keep in mind that the whole matter of distinction 13 [I d.13 q. un.] turns about the antecedent of this causal argument [n.300], therefore either the dispute about the antecedent should be deferred to that point, or here the whole of it should be touched on. Second, it would be done better if this question is moved, ‘Whether productions are precisely distinguished according to the distinction of formal principles of producing’. The solution of this question depends on these questions: ‘Whether essence as essence is formal principle of communicating essence’ (and as to the former ‘That thus’ in the Collations [16], and as to the latter ‘It is objected to the contrary’ etc. [n.304]); again, ‘Whether there can be the same formal principle of producing with respect to distinct products’ (as here at ‘Fourth, whence’ etc. [n.307]); again third, ‘Of what nature is the distinction of principles of producing’, but this pertains to the question about the distinction of attributes [I d.8 p.1 q.4]. Note, for the solution of the question [‘Whether productions are precisely distinguished...’] let there be the proposition: ‘Everything that, while being of the same idea, extends itself to many things of the same idea, is not determined of itself to as many such things as it extends itself’. The proof is found in the relation of what is common to the supposits and in the relation of the cause to its effect. From the proposition it follows that neither does the divine nature, insofar as it is common, determine for itself a number of supposits, nor insofar as it is a principle of producing - if it is such a principle - will it determine for itself a number of things from a principle; therefore if there is a definite number of persons, it will be because the productive principle is distinguished. Thus are [the first] two ‘Whether.’ questions solved; the third requires a proof through the adequation of one or a single principle to the principle of one idea.’ ¹⁹⁵

310. [Response to the instances] - To the first [n.304] I reply that this whole ‘the intellect having an object actually intelligible present to itself’ [n.211] has the idea of perfect memory in first act, namely the idea that is the immediate principle of second act and of generated knowledge; but in this principle that is memory two things come together which constitute one total principle, namely essence in the idea of object and intellect, each of which is per se a partial principle as it were with respect to a production adequate to this total principle. When therefore it is argued that the idea of nature belongs not only to intellect but to essence [n.304], I reply that the total principle, including the essence as object and the intellect as a power having the object present to itself, is the productive principle which is nature and is the complete principle of producing by way of nature.Interpolation: “against the ultimate proposition of the aforesaid deduction I argue; for I ask...” ¹⁹⁶ For if essence as object did not have the idea of principle in the production of the Word, why would the Word be said more of essence than of stone, if from the sole infinity of intellect as productive principle an infinite Word could, when any other object whatever was present, be produced?

311. To the second doubt [n.305] I say that memory in the Father is the operative principle of the Father, by which, namely, as by first act, the Father formally understands as in second act; the same memory of the Father is also the productive principle by which the Father, existing in first act, produces, as he is in second act, generated knowledge. The productive act, therefore, is not founded on the essential act which consists in second act, that is, which is a quasi-operating on the formal reason of eliciting the second productive act, but in a certain way pre-requires that second act, because the first act which is operative and productive is the idea of perfecting a supposit in second act, in which it exists first by a certain order before that which is produced is understood to be produced or perfected. For what operates and produces through that principle is operating before it is producing.

312. An example. If ‘to shine’ were set down as some operation in a luminous thing, and ‘to illuminate’ were set down as production of light by the luminous thing, light in the luminous thing would be the principle ‘by which’ both with respect to the operation which is ‘to shine’ and with respect to the production which is ‘to illuminate’; yet ‘to shine’, which is an operation, would not be the formal idea of the illumination, which is production, but would there be the order, as it were, of the effects ordered to the same common cause of both, from which one of the effects proceeds more immediately than the other. So it is in the proposed case. A certain order to the same first act, which is the memory of the Father, is understood to be possessed by the ‘to understand’, which is an operation of the Father, and by the ‘to say’, which is the ‘to produce’ of the Father with respect to generated knowledge; not such an order that the ‘to produce’ of the Father is the cause or elicitive principle of the ‘to say’ of the word, but that the ‘to understand’ is more immediately quasi-produced by the memory of the Father than the ‘to say’ or the Word is produced by the same memory. So there is not such an order there as is posited by the first opinion [of Henry of Ghent, 280] in the idea of a presupposed object or in the idea of the formal principle of acting, but only the prior ordering, with respect to the same principle, of a quasi-product to a product, a principle common to quasi-product and product.

313. And then to the passage of On the Soul, about the distinction of powers to acts [n.305], one could say that ‘to quasi-produce’ and ‘to produce’ are acts of the same idea; for if that which is not produced but quasi-produced were really distinct from the producer, it would truly be a product; therefore what is only present without production, though by virtue of a principle which would be productive of it were the thing able to be made distinct - and to this extent one may call it a quasi-product - does not vary the act formally from the act by which it would be produced were it producible.

314. Another response would be about the agent and possible intellect, but I pass it over now; I have not yet said to which intellect, as to partial principle, it belongs to produce knowledge (this will be spoken of below), but I have now spoken about the intellect indistinctly [n.232].

315. To the third [n.306] I say that when two principles have opposite modes of being principle, neither of which requires any imperfection, neither is reduced to the other as to a prior in nature, although there could there be some priority of origin, as it were, or something of the sort. But now neither of these principles includes any imperfection, no more insofar as it is productive than insofar as it is operative; therefore one of them will not be reduced to the other as to a prior in nature, nor both to a third, for the same reason, because neither is imperfect, and also because the third thing would be a principle according to the idea of one or other of them, because there is between them no middle in being principle, and so, if both were reduced to a third, one would be reduced to the other and the same to itself.

316. Against these [nn.310-315] an instance is made, and first in this way: intelligence is in the Father under the proper idea of intelligence, and the Word is the proper perfection of intelligence as intelligence; therefore the Word belongs to the intelligence of the Father [n.290], which was before denied [nn.291-296].

317. Further, Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.12 n.22: “The Word is vision of vision;” therefore actual knowledge is the idea of generating the Word [n.290].

318. Further, there does not seem to be a difference between memory and intelligence in the Father, therefore to reject the Father as he is intelligence from being the principle of the Word does not seem to be other than rejecting the Father as he is memory from being so; therefore you approve and reject it as one and the same thing [nn.310, 291].

319. The fourth instance is: there seems to be no reason for the Father to produce generated knowledge in this act and not in that, since each is second act and is a principle by virtue of the same first act [nn.311, 292].

320. To the first [n.316] I say that the Father is formally memory, intelligence, and will, according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.7 n.12: “In the Trinity who would say that the Father only through the Son understands himself and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but of himself only remembers either the Son or the Holy Spirit?” - conclusion -“who would presume to opine or affirm this in the Trinity? But if there only the Son understands and neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit understand, one is reduced to the absurdity that the Father is not wise about himself but about the Son.” So St. Augustine. He understands, therefore, that the Father is formally memory for himself, intelligence for himself, and will for himself; and in this respect there is a dissimilarity between the persons and the parts of the image in us, according to him.

When therefore it is said that ‘the proper act of intelligence is the Word’ [n.316], I deny it; rather it belongs to the idea of the Son that he is generated knowledge.

312. You say that it suffices that the knowledge be declarative.

I deny it, understanding by ‘declarative’ a relation of reason, as of the intelligible to the intellect; for such is the relation of the actual declarative knowledge of the Father, by which the Father formally understands, to the habitual knowledge of the Father as he is memory, such that the object present to the Father’s intellect is made clear as equally by the actual knowledge of the Father as by the actual knowledge of the Son, - and yet the actual knowledge of the Father is not the Word, because nothing can exist formally in the Father save what is non-generated.

322. When it is said, second, that there is ‘knowledge of knowledge’ [n.317] I reply that the self-same Augustine expounds himself On the Trinity XV ch.11 n.20: “the vision of thinking is most similar to the vision of science;” and ibid. ch.12 n.22: “In this case is the word most similar to the thing to be known from which it is generated, and the image of it: vision of thinking from vision of science.” - These phrases are intransitive. For as ‘vision of thinking’ is nothing other than thinking, so ‘vision of science’ is nothing than science. It is the same thing then to say that from the vision of science the vision of thinking is born as to say that from science thinking is born. But ‘science’ is habitual science, which perfects memory, according to the same Augustine ibid. ch.15 n.25, where he says: “If there can be in the soul some eternal science, there cannot be eternal thinking of the same science.” The ‘eternal’ according to him pertains to memory, ‘non-eternal’ to intelligence. He does not then intend the phrases ‘vision of vision’, ‘knowledge of knowledge’ to mean anything other than that second act, which is vision or thinking in intelligence, is born of first act, which is habitual vision or science, according to him.

323. To the third instance, when an argument is made about the difference between memory and intelligence [n.318], I say that those adversaries do not posit a real difference between the intellect and the will of the Father, and yet these have so much difference that one can be the elicitive principle of some production of which the other is not the formal elicitive principle; for the Son is not formally produced by way of will. Therefore although the memory and intelligence of the Father do not differ really, there is yet as much difference between them that one of them could be posited as the elicitive principle of some production of which the remaining one is not posited as the formal elicitive principle. Such difference is plain according to Augustine ibid. ch.7 n.12 and before [n.291]. For the difference is such that if the Father by way of memory were knowing but not understanding, he would not be perfect, according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 12.9.1074b17-18, notwithstanding the identity of memory with intelligence or recollection with understanding.

324. To the fourth instance [n.319] I say that this is an immediate contingent proposition, ‘heat is heating’ and this an immediate necessary one, ‘heat is able to heat’, because there is no middle found between the extremes of either of these. So I say that this proposition is per se, ‘operation insofar as it is operation is not productive’, because operations as operations are the ends and perfections of the operator [n.292]; but production as production is not the perfection of the producer but contains the term produced outside the essence of the producer, or at any rate this term is not formally in the person of the producer.

325. Why then does the first act by which the Father understands or formally operates not produce?

I reply that the ‘to understand’ is the ‘to operate’ of the Father from his own idea, and is not the ‘to produce’; but by production or by speaking he produces in the way that something heats by heating, of which there is not formally some other prior cause.

326. But as to your statement that the principle of these two acts is the same [n.319], without interchange of mode of agent and possible intellect [nn.314, 232], it can be conceded that, from the fullness of perfection, there can belong to something that it operate and that it produce something other than itself. This, however, will be plainer when it is stated that ‘to say’ is not formally an act of understanding [I d.6 q. un. nn.2-4]; it is however an act of intellect. But no act of understanding is formally productive, but some other natural act, preceding or following, can be productive - of which sort is the act of saying.

IV. To the Principal Arguments of the Fourth Question

327. To the principal reasons [nn.212-218]. - To the first [n.212] I say that Averroes in comment 49 on the Physics 8, whose text begins “Whether each of the moving things,” is only speaking expressly of man, and on this point he is contradicting Avicenna (On the Nature of Animals, XV ch.1 59rb-va), as he himself says in the same place. He imputes to Avicenna, then, that he posited that man could be generated equivocally, - and in that case the conclusion of Averroes [n.212] is true, because nothing univocally generable can be generated equivocally unless it is so imperfect that an equivocal or a univocal cause is sufficient for its generation; and therefore imperfect beings can be generated univocally and equivocally but not perfect ones. However, the reasons of Averroes [nn.213-214] seem to prove the conclusion not only about man but about any species of natural generable things; and if he does not intend this, his conclusion is false and his reasons not conclusive.

328. That his conclusion [n.212] is false is plain from Augustine On the Trinity III ch.8 n.13. And the reason of Augustine, in the same place, is that a generated thing propagates other things through putrefaction; but the propagators are univocal with the things generated by them; therefore things propagated and generated by putrefaction are univocal.

329. But if Averroes deny the assumption of bees and of animals, he cannot deny it of plants, because plants equivocally generated, that is, not generated from seed, do afterwards produce semen univocally, from which are generated other plants of the same species.

330. Augustine also contradicts him in Letter to Deogratias q.1 n.4,Note cancelled by Scotus: “Note: the instances against the antecedent are about the matter of distinction 13 [I d.13 q. un], however some are touched on here, at least the first one [n.304]; the second [n.305] can be against the preceding solution [nn.221-241, 258] rather than here, and the argument about the distinction, in idea of principle, of intellect from nature [nn.216-217] is proper here. The instances against the consequence [nn.307-308] pertain to the question ‘Whether two Sons’, in distinction 7 [n.309]. See in the other part of the folio the four instances [nn.316-319] against the rejection of the second article of the opinion [nn,290-296]: of which two are put first for confirming the opinion [nn.316-317], the other two are against the reasons against the second article of the opinion [nn.318-319].” ¹⁹⁷ and so does Ambrose On the Incarnation at the end, ch.9 nn.101-102.

331. But Averroes himself also contradicts himself in other places about this conclusion. For about the equivocal generation of accidents he himself makes it plain in On the Heavens 2 com.42, where he himself concedes that in accidents there is not always generation by a univocal cause; and he sets down an example about heat and fire; for he posits that heat is generated equivocally from the motion and the concourse of rays, and also univocally from heat. - In substances too it is plain that fire is generated univocally and equivocally. That it is generated equivocally is plain from On the Heavens com.56: “The proceeding of fire from a stone is not in the chapter on transfer but in the chapter on alteration,” that is, it is not generated by transference but by alteration; it is also generated by local motion, Metaphysics 12 com.19, and Meteorology 1 summa II ch.1, about the generation of ignition by striking.Note of Scotus: “Note how in the production there is a double principle ‘by which’, how the essence alone is not a ‘by which’ sufficient for communicating existence, how something quasiposterior can be a principle ‘by which’ for communicating which is quasi-prior in perfection, how essence is not as it were the root of everything equally in anything whatever [n.304] (but the Son is first knowledge and the Holy Spirit first love, and as it were concomitantly with essence; distinction 13 [I d.13 q. un. nn.11-25]).” ¹⁹⁸ - The same is plain about animals, that many are generated equivocally, Metaphysics 12 com.19: “For wasps seem to come to be from the bodies of dead horses, and bees from the bodies of dead cows, etc.”

332. But that all the aforesaid generated things are of the same species with things generated univocally is proved by the fact they have the same operations, and operations about the same objects; they are preserved by the same things and are corrupted by the same things. They have the same motions, either as to going up or down, or as to progress forward and as to the same organs of progress forward; but from the unity of motion Aristotle concludes, in On the Heavens 1.2.269a2-7, to the unity of nature, and the Commentator in com.8 at the same place says: “unity of motion only comes from unity of nature.” These - the former and the latter generated things - also have limbs of the same species, and “the limbs of a lion do not differ from those of a deer save because soul differs from soul,” Averroes On the Soul 1 com.53. And generally all the middle terms that prove unity of species, whether these terms are taken from acts or from operations, prove the intended proposition about the univocity of things generated in this way and in that.

333. Averroes’ conclusion is also contradicted by the Philosopher Metaphysics 7.9.1034a9-14, 30-b7, where his intention is that, just as some of the same things come to be by nature and by chance, namely when the principle is in a matter similar to what would be the principle of the motion of making if the same thing were to come to be by art, so his intention is that some of the natural things come to be by nature and by chance, and some do not; and in the same place Averroes’ intention - and the text beings “Therefore just as in syllogisms” [Metaphysics 7 com.31] - is that those thngs can be generated without semen, and consequently, according to him, equivocally, in whose matter some virtue, similar to the virtue of semen in propagated things, can be introduced by the virtue of the heavens.

334. Therefore the opposite of the conclusion of Averroes is plain, if he be understood generally and universally.

335. His arguments too are not conclusive. - To the first [n.213] I reply: matter according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.2.1013a24-25 is that “from which, when present within, a thing comes to be;” ‘when present within’ is added to differentiate the opposite case, when a thing comes to be from something that is transmuted and corrupted but that is not present within the thing made. - But if he take the phrase ‘a form of the same nature belongs to matter of the same nature’, speaking properly of matter as it is a part of a thing which exists within that thing, I concede the point; but if he take matter for the opposite, for that from which, when corrupted, the composite is generated, I deny it; for fire of the same species is generated either from corrupted wood or from corrupted air. In propagated things, however, and things putrefied, the matter is of the same nature in the first way but not in the second way.

336. To the second [n.214] I say that something is not said to happen rarely or for the most part because it is in itself a frequent or rare contingency; for a falling stone breaks someone’s head more frequently than the moon is eclipsed. But the difference should be understood by comparison of a thing to its cause; and that effect is said to come about for the most part which has, ordered to the effect, a cause which produces the effect for the most part; that is said to come about rarely which does not have a cause ordered to its coming about but arises only from some cause that is ordered to another effect but that has been prevented from the effect it is ordered to, and from this preventing the thing comes about rarely. - The rare or for the most part are also taken as they distinguish between contradictory opposites, not as they distinguish between disparate things.Interpolation: “where he says: ‘Many kinds of animals are procreated from earth without parents, and yet they produce their like among themselves something; nor is there because of the diversity of their birth any difference in the nature of those which are procreated from earth and those which come from their coition; for the live and die in similar way despite have a dissimilar birth’.” ¹⁹⁹

337. So when he [Averroes, Physics 8 com.46] argues that if this generable thing is generated equivocally, or not from semen, ‘then either it is from necessity’, and this I concede it is not, ‘or it is for the most part or rare’, and this I concede it is for the most part, by comparison to determinate cause and also as distinction between contradictories,Interpolation: “Fire, then, that is generated from a stone by the motion of striking it and that is generated from the reflection of the rays of the sun is generated equivocally, and the fire thus generated univocally generates fire.” ²⁰⁰ although it more rarely happen that this generable thing is generated not from semen than that it is generated from semen, namely as two things disparate among themselves are compared.

338. Now, the proof that in the first way a thing happens for the most part is: for thus is the sun per se a cause ordered to generating not from semen, just as a propagating cause is ordered to generating it from semen. If he infers that if in the second way something happens rarely then it happens ‘by chance’, the consequence does not follow, - and he argues further in this way about causality insofar as those things are said to be by chance that happen only from an impeded cause of another thing; and therefore, as he says, chance things are monstrous and not perfect in any species [n.214].Interpolation: “Between contradictories, because for the most part and more often than not a mouse will be generated if the sun comes close to such and such matter.” ²⁰¹

339. When the argument is made, third, about motion and its term [n.215], I reply that this proposition ‘of motions different in species the terms are different in species’ is not an immediate one, but it depends on these two: the first is ‘in motions differing in species, the transient forms, or forms according to which there is transience, are different in species’; the second is, ‘a transient form, or a form according to which there is transience, is of the same nature as the terminating form’. When one of these two is false, the assumed proposition is false. So it is in the proposed case, because the form introduced by the production is not of the same nature as the form which is quasitransient or according to which there is quasi-transience.Interpolation: “namely by comparing an equivocal effect with an equivocal cause under disjunction to contradictories.” ²⁰²

340. But the difficulty of Averroes’ arguments still seems to remain. For although the same nature might be communicated equivocally and univocally, yet not by something of the same species, but it is only univocally caused by an individual of one species and equivocally by a superior cause; but divine nature is not communicated by any superior cause, but only by something in the same nature; therefore it seems that the nature would not have a communication save in one idea.

341. I reply that created nature cannot be communicated save by a communication in one idea from a supposit of that nature; the reason is that the effect does not exceed the cause. But the communicated effect from such a supposit is nature; therefore the principle of communicating should be nature, because nothing more perfect than nature, nor anything equally perfect with nature, exists in such a communicating supposit. But nature is a communicative principle in one idea; therefore to a supposit acting by virtue of nature there belongs a communication only in one idea.

342. The opposite exists in the proposed case [sc. of the divine nature], because a supposit of that nature can have principles of a different idea in producing, each of which is equally perfect with nature, and therefore each can be a principle for communicating nature; and so here there can be a twofold communication by supposits which are of this nature.Text cancelled by Scotus: “which chance things - in the proper sense of chance - do not come about from a cause ordered to producing them, but what produces chance things is an impeded cause ordered to producing something else.” ²⁰³

343. If an instance be made that the twofold principle of operating in us, namely intellect and will, is equally perfect with the nature, because it is equally perfect with the form, according to one opinion about the powers of the soul, - I replyText cancelled by Scotus: “But that the assumed proposition is false when one of those two propositions is false is plain, because the same ‘where’ can be acquired by circular and by direct motion, which are also motions of a different species and incomparable, according to the Philosopher Physics 7.4.248a10-b6; but this is because the form which is the term of the transience does not have a specific distinction, just like the form which is transient or according to which there is transience. However it may be with the example, one must perhaps expound the Philosopher there and hold that the ‘where’, which is transient in a circular or straight line, is of the same species insofar as the ‘transient wheres’, whether straight or circular, which are accidents of the line or magnitude over which the motion is, are not of the same nature; and therefore in this respect they are incomparable, but not in respect of the ‘where’ or the ‘transient where’ per se; and therefore not in respect of the motion per se. At least this is true as to the example here adduced, because when the transient form is of a different nature from the terminating form, one should not conclude from a distinction of motions to a distinction of terms. But in the proposed case production is of a different nature from the terminating essence, as from the terminating form taken from it, because production is relation but essence is for itself; therefore a plurality of productions does not prove a formal distinction of their terms.” ²⁰⁴ that although in us there is a twofold operative principle, will and intellect, and both are perfect principles of operating and can have perfect operations adequate to themselves in idea of perfection of operation, yet they do not have operations adequate to themselves in being, that is, although by our intellect we can have an intellection as perfect as any that can belong to our nature, yet this intellection will not be as perfect a being as nature, because an intellection adequate to the intellect, as to a power or object, in idea of operation, is not adequate to the object or intellect in being. The intellect therefore and will, namely in the creature, although they are principles of producing adequate to themselves in idea of operation, are yet not so in being, and consequently much more are they not really adequate to the nature of which they are the intellect and will.

Thus can one argue about any productive principles in creatures, the distinction between which principles stands in the same supposit of some nature.

344. But in divine reality the operative principle is not only equal with the nature in idea of operative principle but also in being; the operation is also equal with the operative principle, and that in being, and consequently it is equal with nature. Likewise the productive principle is equal with nature in being.Note by Scotus: “This response [nn.241-242] is valid in responding to the first instance brought against the solution of this question [n.304].” ²⁰⁵

345. To the arguments which prove that there are not just two productive principles in God [nn.216-218]. - First, when it is argued about nature and intellect that they are two distinct productive principles, from the Philosopher Physics 2.5.196b17-22, I reply that the Philosopher spoke little about the will as it is distinguished from the intellect, but he commonly conjoined intellect with will in idea of active principle; and therefore in the Physics passage, where he distinguished these active principles, namely nature and intellect, the intellect should not be understood there as it is distinguished from the will but as it goes along with the will, by constituting one and the same principle in respect of artifacts.

346. This will be plain from the response to the instance of the Philosopher [n.217], to which instance I say that the intellect is contrasted with its own nature and with its own proper operation, of which it is in some sense the elicitive and productive principle; and it is contrasted also with the operations of the other powers, with respect to which it is the directive and regulative power. If it is taken in the first way, I say that it is merely nature, both in eliciting and in producing; for whatever act of understanding it produces when the object is present in memory, it produces merely naturally, and whatever operation it operates, it operates merely naturally.

347. Now the will as productive with respect to its proper operation has an opposite mode of producing, and this is sufficiently clear from the Philosopher Metaphysics 9.5.1048a8-11, where he treats of how a rational or irrational power is reduced to act; and he argues that a rational power, which of itself is related to opposites, cannot of itself proceed to act; for then it would proceed to opposites at the same time, because it is of opposites at the same time; and from this he concludes that one must posit, in addition to that rational power, another rational power, a determinative one, by which it is determined, and, when determined, it can proceed to act.

348. And from this it follows that the intellect, if it is of opposites, is of opposites in this way, namely by way of nature, because, as far as concerns itself, it is necessarily of opposites; nor can it determine itself to one or other of them, but requires something else as determinant which can freely proceed to act on one or other of the opposites; but this is appetite, according to him, or choice.

349. An example. The sun has the virtue of producing opposites, namely liquefaction and constriction. If there were two things nearby, one of which was liquefiable and the other constrainable, the sun would, by necessity of nature, have to elicit those two acts on them, and if some one and the same thing were nearby that was of a nature to receive opposites at the same time, the sun would, by the necessity of nature, at the same time produce the opposites, or neither of them.

350. The power of the sun, therefore, is merely natural, although it is of opposites, because merely by itself it is of them in such a way that it cannot determine itself to one or other of them. Such a power is intellect, as it is precisely intellect, with respect to understood opposites; and there is no determination there to one of them and not to the other save to the extent the will concurs.

351. But the Philosopher commonly speaks of intellect according to how it constitutes along with the will one principle with respect to artifacts, and not as it is naturally elicitive of its own operation; and therefore as to the fact he sometimes distinguishes intellect against nature, and sometimes art against it, and sometimes the thing intended, it is the same intellect in the case of all of them.

352. When, finally, the statement is made about the will, that it is the principle in respect of creatures [n.218], I say that the will of God is naturally the productive principle of some product adequate to itself before it is the productive principle of something non-adequate; what is adequate to the infinite is infinite, and so the creature is willed secondarily, and produced by the will of God secondarily.

IV. To the Second Question

353. To the second question, when the question is asked about the trinity of persons in divine reality [n.197], I reply that there are only three persons in the divine essence.

The proof is as follows: there are only two produced persons and only one unproduced person; therefore there are only three.

A. About the Produced Persons in Divine Reality

354. About the first proposition I first prove that there are two produced persons [nn.355-357], second that there are not more [358].

355. To prove that there are two produced persons I prove first that there is one produced person, and this as follows: the intellect as it is perfect memory, that is ‘having an object actually intelligible present to itself’ [n.221], is through some act of itself productive of an adequate term, namely an infinite one, from the preceding question [nn.302, 222]; but nothing produces itself, On the Trinity I ch.1 n.1; therefore what is produced by the act of the intellect is in some way distinguished from the producer. It is not distinguished in essence, because the divine essence, and any essential perfection intrinsic to it, is not distinguishable, from the question about the unity of God [nn.89-104], therefore the thing produced is distinguished in person from the thing producing; therefore there is some person produced by the act of intellect.

356. There is a similar argument about the act of will [footnote to n.302, nn.222, 226].Text cancelled by Scotus: “A further reason for what is here [nn.241-242] supposed, namely about the twofold principle of communicating nature in divine reality, but not in creatures, can be set down as follows:...” ²⁰⁶

357. Now that the person produced by this act and by that are different the one from the other is proved because the same person cannot be produced by two sufficient and total productions; but this production is different from that one, from the preceding question [n.303]; therefore by this and that production not the same person but two are produced. Proof of the major: if the same thing were produced by two total productions, it would receive being sufficiently from each; but if it receives being sufficiently from the producer by this production, it would perfectly have its being by no other posited production;Text cancelled by Scotus: “and so by it can be communicated a formal term of production adequate in being to itself and to nature.” ²⁰⁷ therefore it cannot receive being through another production, because then it would not exist without it.

358. Further, that there cannot be more produced persons than these two I thus prove: there can only be two productions inwardly. This was in some way proved in the preceding question [n.303], but the final declaration of it was deferred to distinction 7 [n.309], so let this now be certain, that there are only two productions inwardly. But neither of these can be terminated save in one person, because the produced person is the term adequate to the production;     therefore etc     .

B. About the Sole Non-produced Person in Divine Reality

359. It now remains to prove that one person is non-produced.Interpolation: “But you will say that one and the same person can be produced by either production. On the contrary.” ²⁰⁸

Here one doctor says [Henry of Ghent] that this is shown the way the unity of God is shown. The thing is also clear from Hilary On Synods n.26, where his meaning is that someone who says there are two unborn is confessing two gods.Interpolation: “nay, when everything else is removed.” ²⁰⁹

360. Again Henry [of Ghent] Summa a.54 q.2, where he argues in the opposite way: “two cases of being unborn would be of the same idea, and thus there would be several properties of the same idea in the same singular nature, namely deity, which is impossible, whether these properties be absolute or relative; the thing is clear in the case of creatures.”

361. Again he there argues: “the un-produced person is the first principle; therefore there would be several first principles.”

362. Again, in the solution: “Richard [of St. Victor] On the Trinity V ch.4: ‘the person not from another has power through the essence; wherefore he has in himself all power’.”

363. To the first [n.360]: there are in this as many negations of the same idea as there are other possibilities of the same idea; being unborn is a negation. - In another way: several relations exist in the same thing, III d.8 q. un.

364. To the second [n.361]: as things are now, the three persons are one principle of everything else.

365. To the third [n.362]: all power is in respect of any possible whatever. Nor can the reason be colored as the reason is colored about omnipotence in the question of the unity of God [n.180]; it is plain why not.

363. Further he argues in this way: several absolute supposits cannot exist in this nature, because nature does not exist in several absolute supposits without division of nature; there will then be several relative supposits. Either therefore by mutual relation among themselves, or in relation to some other things. But if there were several unproduced supposits, they would not be distinguished by relation to other supposits, because not by relation to producing supposits, because ex hypothesi there are none; nor by relation to produced supposits, because they would have to them the same relation, as now the Father and the Son have the same relation of active inspiriting to the Holy Spirit. Therefore they would be distinguished by relations among themselves, and this by relations of origin, which is the intended proposition.

367. These proofs do not seem sufficient. The first [n.359] is not, because the unity of God is proved from the fact that divine infinity is not divided into several essences; but it is not thus manifest that the idea of ‘ungenerated’, or of ‘unborn’, is not in several supposits, - both because the idea of ‘unborn’ does not indicate simply a perfection from which the unity of being unborn could be simply concluded in the way that from infinite perfection the unity of the divine essence is concluded; and also because indivisibility does not prove incommunicability. - Likewise, the authority of Hilary which he adduces [n.359] asserts that it is so but does not prove that it is so.

368. And when he assumes in his argument that several absolute persons cannot exist in the same nature [n.366], how is this more known than the conclusion? For he who would posit several ungenerated persons would not say that they are formally constituted by any relations; therefore, contrary to him, to assume that there cannot be several absolute persons seems to be to assume what is more immanifest than concluding to it.

369. When he says further that they are not distinguished by relations among themselves, because this would only be by relations of origin [nn.366, 253, 248], he should prove this consequence.Interpolation: “the non-produced person is only one.” ²¹⁰

370. So I prove the intended conclusion in another way thus: whatever can be in several supposits and is not determined to a definite number by something other than itself, can, as far as concerns itself, exist in infinite supposits; and if it is a necessary being, it does exist in infinite supposits, because whatever can exist there does exist there. But if what is ungenerated can exist in several supposits, it is not determined by another as to how many supposits it is in, because to be determined by another to existence in a supposit or in several supposits is contrary to the idea of the ungenerated; therefore of its own idea it can exist in infinite supposits; and if it can exist, it does exist, because everything ungenerated is of itself a necessary being. The consequent is impossible, therefor also that from which it follows.Interpolation: “See the authority in the text” [Reportatio IA d.2 n.205]. ²¹¹

VI. To the Principal Arguments of the Second Question

371. To the arguments. - When it is argued ‘they are equally noble, therefore they are equally many [n.197]’, there is figure of speech, by change of ‘what’ or ‘what sort’ to ‘how many’. And the reason for the failure of the consequence is: for it is not because of nobility or ignobility of the relation of principle or of what is from a principle that it is multiplied or not multiplied, but unity is of the idea of principle, although in things from a principle there can be plurality, because there is always reduction of plurality to unity.

And so, with equal nobility standing, there can be multiplication in the relations of the produced though not in the relations of the producers.

372. Another response is that any relation there of one idea is of itself a this, although from the several relations of the producers there can perhaps be abstracted one common thing, to wit ‘productive’, and so from the several relations of the produced there can be abstracted one common thing, to wit ‘produced’. Although therefore there is one relation in common - if there is a common abstractable - which is called in common ‘relation of producer’, yet there are two relations of the producer, in this way and in that, just as there are two relations corresponding to them.

373. To the second reason [n.198] I concede that to relations on the part of the produced there correspond relations on the part of the productive, and as many relations, but it does not follow ‘if the relations of the produced are distinguished personally, therefore so are the relations of the producer’; the reason for which is assigned as that on the part of the producer another idea of producing is sufficient,Text cancelled by Scotus: “For when it has been conceded that the distinction is only by relations of origin, the intended proposition would be quickly obtained.” ²¹² just as artificial and natural production are thus distinguished through productive principles, namely art and nature, although they come together in the same supposit. But the relations of the produced cannot so come together in the same supposit and in one person, but they are personally distinct, because the produced is per se subsistent and supposit.

374. Another response is plain from the solution of the question [nn.357, 172173], because the same thing cannot be produced by two total productions, although the same thing can produce by two total productions; and so the relations of the produced are not multiplied in the same thing, although the relations of the producer can be multiplied.

375. To the third [n.199]: a finite power cannot have at the same time two adequate terms in being produced, although it can have one in being produced and another in having been produced; but an infinite power has its term always within in being produced, and this term is adequate, and therefore it cannot have several terms.

VII. To the First Question

376. To the first question [n.191] I say that the unity of essence and plurality of persons do stand together, as appears from the solution of the preceding question [nn.353-370], because this plurality exists there at the same time along with this unity.

A. Declaration of Scotus’ Own Solution

377. Now to make this in some way clear one must note that, just as repugnant things are repugnant by their own proper reasons, so non-repugnant things, or compossibility, are so by the proper reasons of the compossible things.

378. But to see this compossibility one must look at the reasons of the extremes, namely of nature and of the supposit.

Here one should note that nature is not related to the supposit as a universal to a singular, because in accidents too singularity is found without the idea of supposit, and an individual nature was assumed in our substance by the Word, according to Damascene On the Orthodox Faith III ch.3, but not a supposit of our nature. Nor is the nature related to the supposit as the ‘in which’ to the ‘what’, for to the ‘in which’ of anything there corresponds a proper ‘what’ or ‘who’, and so, as nature is the ‘in what’, so it has a proper ‘what’ or ‘who’ which it does not contract to the supposit, and as the supposit is the ‘what’ or the ‘who’, so it has a proper ‘in what’ in which it subsists, and yet the supposit concomitantly is of necessity a singular, - and also, the nature cannot be an ‘in what’ with respect to something else, because it is subsistent, incapable of being the act of another subsistent thing; these two indicate a twofold incommunicability.Text cancelled by Scotus: “Second thus: plurality should never be posited without necessity; there is no necessity, whether in relation to itself or outwardly, for the contingency that there are several unborns; therefore there is only one. - Third, because one essence actually existing does not seem of itself to have very immediately several modes of existing. The opposite would follow if there were several ungenerated supposits. But it does not follow now, because the divine essence does not have very immediately several modes of existing without production, but only one of existing without production and another two by intermediates that are also productions.” ²¹³

379. Here one needs to know that something is said to be communicable either by identity, such that what it is communicated to is ‘it’, or by informing, such that what it is communicated to is ‘in it’, not ‘it’.

380. In the first way a universal is communicated to a singular, and in the second way a form to matter.Text cancelled by Scotus: “because the relations of the produced can be distinguished by the distinct ideas of producing in the producer, although there is the same supposit producing.” ²¹⁴ Any nature, therefore, insofar as concerns itself and the idea of nature, is communicable in both ways, namely to several supposits, each of which is ‘it’, - and also as ‘in which’, by way of form, in which the singular or the supposit is a quidditative being, or in possession of a nature; but the supposit is incommunicable by the opposed twofold incommunicability.

381. On this basis the intended proposition is made clear.

And first in this way: any nature is communicable to several things by identity,     therefore the divine nature too is communicable (for this is plain from the question set down before [nn.353-370]); but the nature is not divisible, from the question about the unity of God [nn.157-190]; therefore it is communicable without division.

382. Again I argue thus: ‘perfection simply’ as far as concerns itself, whatever may be incompossible with it, is better than any supposit absolutely taken according to idea of supposit; the divine nature is not thus better, ex hypothesi; therefore etc     . Proof of the minor: divine nature determines for itself a single subsistence, therefore it is of itself incompossible with any other subsistence, even precisely taken as it is another subsistence, namely without considering that it may be in another nature; and so, further, it is of itself not better than any other thing as this other thing is another subsistence.

383. The proof of the first consequence is that, just as anything of itself determines for itself a single supposit, so anything else incompossible with that is repugnant to it; ex hypothesi divine nature of itself determines for itself not only a subsistence which is in one nature (a trinity would stand along with this), but a single subsistence - this subsistence as it is a this - in idea of subsistence, without considering only the fact that it is in this nature.

384. The proof of the second consequence is that, just as divine nature is incompossible with this other thing, so it is no better than this other thing than is anything else incompossible with itself.Text cancelled by Scotus: “The idea of the supposit then exists in a double incommunicability.” ²¹⁵

385. There is a clarification from the infinity which is a condition of nature, and that as follows: form, which is in some way unlimited in perfecting matter, can, without distinction in itself, perfect several parts of matter.

386. An example. The intellective soul, which is not limited to perfecting this part of an organic body, can, without any distinction or extension of itself, whether per se or per accidens, perfect another part of an organic body. But this property, namely that the form is not distinguished and yet it perfects several parts of body or matter, does not belong to the soul by reason of imperfection, because the soul is posited as the most perfect form among all natural forms, and all other more imperfect forms lack this grade in perfecting; for all are limited to perfecting one thing, nor do they perfect several parts of matter without per accidens extension.

387. From this I argue as follows: if such a oneness may stand with plurality, and not from the imperfection of that which is ‘one’, then, when everything of imperfection is removed from each part, perfect oneness can stand with plurality. But the fact that the soul perfects matter belongs to imperfection in it; the fact too that the several perfected things are parts of the same whole belongs to imperfection. If, therefore, the ‘perfecting matter’ is taken from the soul, and from the many distinct things the ‘being parts of one whole’, there will remain a form that has perfect unity, but does not perfect matter, but does give total being, and that to several distinct things, which distinct things will not be parts of one whole but per se subsistent; and then there will be one nature giving total being to several distinct supposits. Therefore the divine essence, which is wholly unlimited, which has everything of imperfection taken away from it, can give total being to several distinct supposits.

B. On the Formal Distinction or Non-Identity

388. But there still remains a further difficulty. For it does not seem intelligible that the essence is not multiplied and that the supposits are several unless a distinction is posited between the idea of essence and the idea of supposit. And therefore, to preserve the aforesaid compossibility [nn.376-387], one must look into this distinction.

389. And I say, without assertion and without prejudice of a better opinion, that the idea by which the supposit is formally incommunicable (let it be a) and the idea of essence as essence (let it be b) have a distinction that precedes every act of created and uncreated intellect.

390. I prove this as follows: the first supposit formally or really has a communicable being, otherwise it could not communicate it; also it really has an incommunicable being, otherwise it could not be a positive supposit in real being. And I understand ‘really’ thus, that which is in no way by an act of an intellect considering it, nay that which would be a being of this sort there if no intellect were considering it; and to be in this way there if no intellect were considering it I call ‘existing before every act of intellect’. - But it is not the case that some entity before every act of intellect, such that it is not by an act of intellect, is communicable and that another entity is of itself incommunicable, unless there is before every act of intellect, that is, not precisely through an act of understanding, some distinction between this entity and that;     therefore etc     .

391. If you say that before every act of intellect of the Father there is not there any distinction but an entity of altogether one idea,Interpolation: “such that matter is actually a being through form.” ²¹⁶ and thus the Father has no positive entity in himself which he does not communicate to the Son; therefore he communicates to him paternity just as he does essence!

392. There is an argument, second, as follows: one distinction exists in the intellect in virtue of a diverse mode of taking the same formal object, and this either by taking it grammatically, as ‘man’, ‘of man’, or logically, as ‘man’ and ‘this man’; another distinction, a greater one, exists in the intellect by conceiving two formal objects in two acts, and this whether diverse things correspond to them, as when understanding man and ass, or whether one thing corresponds, as when understanding color and that which diffuses [sc. sight].

393. From this I argue: the Father, when understanding himself in the first moment of origin, either understands the essence and property a [n.389] as diverse formal objects, or he understands them as precisely the same object under this and that mode of conceiving. But not in the second way, because then there would be no greater difference than when conceiving God and deity, and so one would not conceive the property a as more incommunicable than deity is, for man is not incommunicable if humanity is communicable, nor conversely; so it is in the intended proposition. And then too the intellect of the Father would not be more blessed in the divine essence than in a, which is said to be a property of the Father, nor more in a than in a property of the Son, and thus in two objects, as in the property of the Father and of the Son, he would first be blessed.

394. And if the first mode be given, that the paternal intellect has the essence and a as two formal objects [n.393], then I argue: that intellect understands nothing save intuitively, because - as will be plain from I d.3 p.1 q.3 nn.24, 28 [above n.139] - every abstractive and non-intuitive intellect is in some way imperfect. But intuitive knowledge is of an object as the object is present in actual existence, and this either in itself or in another containing eminently its whole being; therefore, as to the things that are known intuitively as formal distinct objects, either one is contained eminently in another, or each according to its own existence terminates the act as the act is of it. But nothing intrinsic to a divine person is properly contained in something eminently, because then it would not be a being save by participation in the thing containing it; therefore all intrinsic things that are diverse formal objects, according to their proper actual existence, terminate intuition as objects, and so they have some distinction before the act of understanding.

395. If you say that the essence makes of itself one concept in the intellect of the Father but that concerning it the paternal intellect can make diverse ideas, and that it is precisely in the second mode that essence and a in the paternal intellect are distinguished, but not in the first mode [n.393], - on the contrary: whatever the intellect, without the action of the object, causes concerning the object precisely by the proper virtue of the intellect, and this when speaking of the object as it has known being in the intellect precisely and from the intellect as considering it, that thing is precisely a relation of reason. But now the idea which the essence makes of itself is plainly absolute, otherwise it would not beatify the intellect of the Father; beyond this absolute idea there is no other in reality before the act of the intellect, or the intended proposition is attained [n.389]; also there is for you no other idea in the intellect of the Father save by an act of intellect being busy about it and not through an impression made by the object, which, for you, only imprints one concept; therefore any idea other than the absolute idea of the essence would be precisely a relation of reason, and thus the property of the Father by which he is incommunicable will be a relation of reason, which seems discordant.

396. Second, it is necessary to see [n.388] of what sort the difference is that is posited to precede every act of intellect.

I say that both in things and in the intellect a major difference is manifest, and that from it a minor difference is frequently inferred that is not manifest, just as from the difference of creatures a difference of ideas is inferred in the divine intellect, as is plain from Augustine On 83 Diverse Questions q.46 n.2. In reality, however, a distinction of things is manifest, and this a twofold one, namely of supposits and of natures; in the intellect there is manifest a twofold difference, namely of modes of conceiving and of formal objects [n.392].

397. From what has been said is inferred the difference here intended, which is not manifest, namely because it is least in its order, that is, among all those that precede the intellect.

398. Now the inference is made from the difference in reality in this way: the distinction of divine supposits is real; therefore since with the same one formally, which is something of itself, the same one cannot agree in reality to such an extent that it cannot be distinguished from it, and since it cannot differ from it in reality to such an extent that it cannot agree with it (because if it is altogether the same in reality, why is this one so great a principle of identity and non-distinction and the same one so great a principle of distinction and non-identity?), there is inferred some difference or distinction of the essence in which the supposits agree from the ideas in which the supposits are distinguished.

399. Likewise in the second way [n.396]: from the difference of formal objects, neither of which is contained eminently in something, and this in an intellect considering intuitively, there is inferred in the things known intuitively some difference prior to an act of intellect [n.394].

400. But is this distinction to be called real?

I reply that it is not an actual real, understanding this in the way ‘actual real difference’ is commonly said to be that which is a difference of things and actually so, because there is not in one person any difference of things, on account of the divine simplicity; and just as the distinction is not an actual real so it is not a potential real, because nothing is in potency there that is not actual.

401. But it can be called ‘a difference of reason’, as a certain doctor said [Bonaventure]; - not as ‘reason’ is taken for a difference formed by the intellect, but as ‘reason’ is taken for the quiddity of a thing as quiddity is an object of the intellect.

402. Or, in another way, it can be called ‘virtual difference’, because what has such a distinction in itself does not have thing and thing, but it is one thing having virtually and pre-eminently two realities as it were, because to each reality, as it is in one thing, there belongs, as if it were a distinct thing, that which is a proper principle for such reality; for in this way this reality distinguishes and that one does not distinguish, as if the former were one thing and the latter another.

403. Or, most properly in a way, let it be said: just as we can find in unity many grades - first, there is the least degree of aggregation; in the second grade there is unity of order, which adds something more to aggregation; in the third there is unity per accidens, where beyond order there is an informing, although an accidental informing, of one thing by another of those that are in this way one; in the fourth there is a per se unity of a thing composed of essential principles that are per se in act and per se in potency; in the fifth there is the unity of simplicity, which is truly identity (for each of what exists there is really the same as any other, and is not just one with the unity of union, as in other modes) - thus, further still, not every identity is formal. But I call it formal identity when that which is called thus the same includes that with which it is thus the same in its own formal quidditative reason and per se in the first mode of per se. Now in the proposed case essence does not include in its formal quidditative reason the property of supposit, nor conversely. And therefore it can be conceded that before every act of intellect there is a reality of essence by which the essence is communicable and a reality of supposit by which the supposit is incommunicable; and before every act of intellect this reality is formally not that one, or it is not formally the same as that one in the way that what ‘formally’ is was previously expounded [n.390].

404. But should some ‘distinction’ then be conceded?

It is better to use the negative ‘this is not formally the same’ than to say this is ‘distinct’ thus and so.

405. But surely this follows, a and b are not the same formally, therefore they are formally distinct?

I reply that it need not follow, because formality is denied in the antecedent and affirmed in the consequent.

406. Briefly then I sayText cancelled by Scotus: “This is also argued as follows: divine nature, and whatever belongs to this nature as it is nature, is ‘perfection simply’; every ‘perfection simply’ is communicable to several things; therefore etc. Proof of the minor: ‘perfection simply’ is that which in anything whatever “is better existing than not existing,” Monologion ch.15; which fact is understood in this way, that ‘perfection simply’ is better than whatever may be incompossible with it, whatever supposit absolutely considered it may be in, that is, not determining what nature it is subsistent in. But if the divine nature determined itself to incommunicable subsistence, it would in no other subsistence be better than anything incompossible with it save in that subsistence to which it determined itself, because it would be incompossible with any other subsistence; therefore it would not be ‘perfection simply’.” Text following on from this also cancelled by Scotus: “This is also argued on the part of the idea of supposit; for because a supposit is of its idea incommunicable simply, that idea should not include any idea of existing through identity, and thus another distinct idea of supposit can stand, and therefore the idea of supposit is not ‘perfection simply’ in the aforesaid way [in the previous paragraph of this footnote]; but if two distinct ideas of supposit can stand, then so can two distinct supposits, and without division of nature; therefore etc. - This fourth...” ²¹⁷ that there is in the divine essence before an act of intellect entity a and entity b, and this one is not formally that one, such that the paternal intellect when considering a and considering b has, from the nature of the thing, that which makes this composite true ‘a is not formally b’, but not precisely from any act of intellect about a and b [n.389].

407. This difference is made clear by an example: if whiteness be set down as a simple species not having in itself two natures, yet there is something really in whiteness whereby it has the idea of color, and something whereby it has the idea of difference; and this reality is not formally that reality, nor formally the reverse, nay one is outside the reality of the other - speaking formally - just as if they were two things, although now by identity those two realities are one thing.

408. But this example, although it is in a way similar to the proposed case (namely as to the fact that real identity does not necessarily entail the formal identity of anything in something that is thus the same with whatever is in it), is yet not altogether alike, because there is some composition in whiteness, although not of thing and thing, yet such is not conceded in God, because of formal non-identity. But where formal nonidentity of certain things in the same thing requires some composition, and where it does not, will be stated in distinction 8 in the question about attributes and in the question ‘Whether God is in a genus’ [I d.8 p.1 q.4.3].Text cancelled by Scotus: “on the contrary: therefore the Father communicates that whole entity of one idea.” ²¹⁸

409. This formal distinction or non-identity, which was proved before by three reasons [nn.390, 394, 398], can also be proved by two or three authorities of Augustine:

On the Trinity VII ch.1 n.2 ‘about big things’ or ‘about little things’: “Every essence which is said relatively is something when the relative is removed;” and: “If the Father is not something in himself he is altogether not someone who may be spoken of relatively.” In reality     therefore he is essence in itself and not in relation to another, and in reality the Father, insofar as he is Father, is said relatively, or he is in relation to another thing or another person; but he is not formally the same entity in himself and not in himself; therefore etc     .

410. Again in the same place ch.2 n.3: “He is not Word by the fact he is wisdom, because Word is not said by itself but only relatively, in relation to him of whom he is the Word, as Son is in relation to Father; but he is wisdom by the fact he is essence.”Text cancelled by Scotus: “omitting the words about distinction of reason and virtual distinction [nn.401-402]; not because they are badly said but because it is not necessary to use them; I say...” ²¹⁹ And from this he concludes: “Wherefore not because the Father is not the Son^is there for that reason not one essence, because by these names of theirs relatives are indicated; but both are together one wisdom, one essence.” There is, therefore, according to him such a non-identity of relation with absolute in divine reality, because if one is the ‘by which’ with respect to another, the other will not be the ‘by which’ with respect to the same; but to be the ‘by which’ belongs to one according to its formal idea; therefore one of them is not of the formal idea of the other but is outside it, and consequently it is not formally the same as the other, just as the idea of that which is ‘not to be the same’ was expounded above [n.403].Text cancelled by Scotus: “An example could be posited about a quantitative whole, by subtracting what belongs to imperfection and positing what belongs to perfection [nn.386-387]; but it would be unlike in more things than like [n.408], so let it be omitted.” [It is stated in Lectura I d.2 n.273: “a quantitative whole is taken possessing parts, and we imagine that the extension of the parts is taken away and that the parts remain and that one part is another by identity, the formal idea of the one part will still exist outside the formal idea of the other part.”] ²²⁰ And yet from this does not simply follow a real diversity or non-identity of substance and relation. For that by which the Father is Father is not other than the essence but the same, according to Augustine himselfText cancelled by Scotus: “Augustine therefore understands that in the mode that the Father is in the same way wisdom and essence, in that same mode the Father is not in the same way Father and God” [cf, On the Trinity VII ch.4 n.9] ²²¹ City of God XI ch.10 n.1: “God is called simple because he is what he has, except that each person is said relatively to the other;” nor is essence “as the Father has a Son but is not the Son,” but “whatever the Father has in himself, to which he is” as a consequence “not said relatively, that he himself is” by true identity, although not by formal identity.

VII. To the Principal Arguments of the First Question

411. [To the first] - To the first principal argument [n.191] I say that the major is to be understood in this way: ‘all things that are by some identity the same as another, they are by such identity the same thus among themselves’, because an identity of extremes with each other cannot be concluded unless they are according to that identity the same as the middle and the middle is in itself the same in this way; and by this proposition so understood ‘every syllogistic form holds’. For when one or other condition is omitted, whether of the unity of the middle in itself or of the extremes to the middle, there is no syllogism, but the paralogism of the accident.

412. Another response is where the unity of the middle is unlimited with respect to the unity of the extremes. An example of limited where-ness and limited when-ness: things that are together according to ‘where’ or ‘when’ without limitation, either in this way or in that, are nevertheless not the same thus among themselves. Another example, more familiar, is about the intellective soul and about this and that part of flesh [nn.386-387]. - This response succeeds when the same unlimited thing is the ‘with which’ or the ‘in which’, not when it is the ‘this’, unless the requisite unity is lacking to the middle in itself, as the logical response contained here just above says.

413. When it is taken in the minor that ‘whatever is in the divine essence is the same as it’ [n.191], this is not true of formal identity, and therefore the formal identity of the extremes among themselves cannot be inferred; but as long as the formal distinction of the relations of the supposit stands, the distinction of the supposits stands.

414. And if you say that at least from the real identity of them with the essence the identity of them among themselves is inferred, I say that the essence does not have such unique identity of subsistence to the extent the persons or the personal features as extremes are united in the essence, and therefore one cannot infer identity of subsistences or of subsistence by reason of their identity in the essence as in a middle term.

415. From this the response is plain to such sophisms as ‘this God is the Father, the Son is this God, therefore the Son is the Father’, which sophism has a confirmation in that, when ‘this something’ exists as middle term, the extremes must necessarily be conjoined.

My reply. Just as in creatures the common is related as ‘qualified what’, the singular as ‘this something’, so here the essence common to the persons has the idea of ‘qualified what’, and the person has the idea of ‘this something’. The middle term here, then, is ‘qualified what’ and not ‘this someone’. But the identity of the extremes in the conclusion is inferred as if the middle term was ‘this something’; likewise there [in the above sophism] it seems there is a fallacy of the accident and of the consequent, because ‘this God’ is taken in the premises for different supposits, and likewise a fallacy of figure of speech, by change of ‘qualified what’ to ‘this something’.

416. But if you argue ‘the deity is the Father, the Son is deity,     therefore etc     .’, although deity does not stand for any supposit in the major or in the minor, yet there is a figure of speech there, by change of ‘qualified what’ to ‘this someone’. For to make a change like this is nothing other than from the force of the inference to interpret that which has the idea of ‘qualified what’ to have the idea of ‘this someone’; so to infer the supposition about the supposit in this way is to interpret the middle as being the same according to idea of existence or of subsistence, which is false.

417. But if at any rate you argue that ‘the extremes are really the same among themselves because they are the same also in the middle term’, I concede that essential identity can be inferred but not formal identity or identity of supposit. And therefore one should not infer ‘the Son is the Father’, because in this case formal or hypostatic identity is denoted by the form of the words, but one should infer ‘the Son is the same with that which the Father is’ or ‘the Son is that which the Father is’.

418. But if there is still a confirmation of the major of the principal argument [n.191] through the fact that, by denying it, one seems to destroy a first principle, namely by positing affirmation and negation to be true of the same thing, I reply: about something that has true identity, but not so much unique or formal identity, the same thing must, by reason of one ‘reality’, be formally predicated of it and not be formally predicated of the other ‘reality formally’. Just as whiteness by reason of some reality which it has in itself agrees with blackness, and by reason of another reality does not really agree with it but differs, and the affirmation and negation are not said of the same thing by reason of the same thing - namely ‘of reality formally’ -, so here, the Father by reason of essence is the same quidditatively, and by reason of property is not the same formally or hypostatically, and the affirmation and negation are not said of the same identity about the same thing nor by reason of the same thing; and although the affirmation and negation be said of the same identity about the same thing, not however by reason of the same thing, to wit if it were said that by reason of paternity the Father is not the same quidditatively with the Son but by reason of essence.

419. If on the contrary you say that affirmation differs from affirmation where the negation of one is said about something else or stands with something else, because the other is not true of the affirmation which contradicts the negation, therefore if deity stands with non-paternity (to wit in some other person), deity itself would differ from paternity, which never stands along with non-paternity in the same thing, I reply: the major may be conceded of formal, or not adequate, non-identity, because one of them is not determined to the other, wherefore it stands with the opposite of the other, - or in other words the major may be conceded of convertible and precise non-identity. But if the major takes real distinction simply, it is to be denied; the thing is plain in whiteness; by taking the proper reality from which the genus is taken, with that reality the opposite of the difference of blackness is not of itself repugnant; yet with the reality from which is taken the specific difference of whiteness, the difference of blackness is repugnant.

420. And this response should be understood as to the second part of the major, which says that one or other affirmation ‘stands’ with the negation. But as to the first part of the major, which takes the negation ‘to be said’ of the affirmation, the major could, as to that part, be conceded if ‘to be said’ is understood ‘necessarily and universally and through the proper reason of that of which it is said’, and this when the contradiction which the words concern is real or is of thing to non-thing, but not of reason to nonreason, for then there only follows a distinction of reason of affirmation from affirmation.

421. By applying the first part of the major - in the way it is true - to the proposed case, it follows that the Son is really distinguished from the Father, but not that God or deity is, because not-Father is not said of God necessarily and universally, nor by reason of the subject, although according to some [Henry of Ghent] it be said particularly by reason of the supposit of the subject.

422. But if you argue, let that by which the Father is distinguished from the Son be a, then a, insofar as it is a, is either the same as the essence or different - if it is different, this is discordant; if insofar as a is the same, then, insofar as it distinguishes, it is the same as the essence, and consequently the essence distinguishes - I reply: I say that it is neither true that a insofar as it is a is the same as the essence nor that a insofar as it is a is different from the essence, and this by understanding that which follows the reduplication to be taken according to its formal reason, and that along with this it has to be the formal reason for the inherence of the predicate, just as I distinguished above in the case of unity of enjoyable object in response to the third argument [I d.1 n.58]. There is an example for this: for man and non-man are immediate opposites, and yet neither is said formally about anything along with reduplication; just as a white thing is not man insofar as it is white nor is it non-man insofar as it is white.

423. And if you say ‘the same’ and ‘other’ are immediate opposites in the case of being, I say that it does not follow “they are immediate opposites, therefore one or other is said of anything along with ‘insofar as’” such that the idea of the subject is the formal reason for the inherence of the other contradictory, but it suffices that one or other of the contradictories truly exists in any subject, although not per se by reason of the subject. But if the ‘insofar as’ is taken in the first way, so that it only indicates that the a is taken according to its formal reason [n.422], I say that a, when in any way formally taken, is the same as the essence, although it is not formally the same as the essence; but in that case this inference does not follow “‘a formally’ is the same as the essence, ‘a formally’ distinguishes, therefore the essence distinguishes,” but there is a figure of speech, by change of ‘this someone’ to ‘qualified what’.

424. If still you insist that a insofar as it is a is a being or a thing, so which thing or which being? - if the essence then the proposition [n.191] is obtained, if a thing and not the essence, then some other thing - I reply: I concede that it is a being and a thing, and this by taking ‘insofar as’ in both ways, because if some predicate per se in the first mode is present in something, then it will be present in the same mode per se whether the subject is a thing distinct from whatever is outside the idea of it or is contained by identity in something which is outside the idea of it; for such containing does not take away the formal reason nor what is present per se in the first mode.

425. But when you ask, which being? [n.424], - I say the being which a is; just as if a substance is a per se being, that being, by descending under being, is per se substance, and not anything else. If you ask further whether it is per se essence, it has been said [n.423] that it is not. If you infer ‘therefore it is another per se thing’, it is the fallacy of the consequent to say ‘it is not per se this thing, and it is a thing, therefore it is another thing’ [n.424], because in the antecedent ‘per se identity’ is denied, in the consequent ‘identity’, and so the antecedent is destroyed.Text cancelled by Scotus: “Augustine in the same place: ‘Now substance will not be substance, because it will be relative’; and there follows: ‘It is absurd for substance to be said relatively’ (deduce: ‘therefore the converse is absurd’).” ²²²

426. Suppose you object: ‘it is per se a thing, and it is not per se essence’, ‘therefore it is per se another thing’, and further, ‘therefore it is another thing’.

427. The proof of the first consequence is that in the case of a being ‘same’ and ‘different’ are immediate opposites; therefore if it is per se a thing, it is per se the same thing as the essence (and so it is per se essence), or it is per se some other thing. The proof of the second consequence is that ‘per se’ is not a determination that divides, as is plain.

428. Further, the first consequence is proved, and it is to the principal point, because if it is per se a thing, it is either a thing which is the essence or a thing which is not the essence. If it is per se a thing which is the essence, therefore it is per se the essence; if it is per se a thing which is not the essence, then it is a thing other than the essence.

429. Further, third: essence is per se a thing, and a property is per se a thing, and they are not per se the same thing; therefore they are per se two things, and so each is per se a different thing from the other.

430. To the first [n.426]. Although the conclusion of the first argument could be distinguished, because there would be there a difference of per se-ity or a per se-ity of difference, and in the first way the ‘per se’ would be denied by the negation included in the difference, in the second way it would be affirmed, because it would precede the way of negation, and consequently in the first way the consequent of the first consequence would be conceded - but then the second consequence would offend according to the consequent by destroying the antecedent [n.425], in the second way the first consequence would offend according to the consequent - however, because it does not seem logically well said that negation, if it is in any way included in the difference, could attain something other than the term of the respect and than the form in which, or according to which, the difference is noted to exist, nor does it seem logically well said that the ‘per se’, which indicates the mode of inherence and consequently determines the composite, could be denied by some denial in the predicate, therefore one should say in another way that, in the consequent of the first consequence, there can be obtained, by force of the words, only one sense, namely that this predicate, to be a thing other than the essence, is ‘per se’ present in the property; and this sense is false, because thus the false thing that is inferred in the second consequence very well follows. Therefore I simply deny the first consequence, since the two propositions in the antecedent are true and the consequent false.

431. To the proof of the consequence [n.427] I say that ‘same’ and ‘diverse’ are not immediate about any predicate as said per se of a subject, nay rather contradictories are not thus immediate; for man is not per se white nor per se not-white. Yet between contradictories absolutely taken or absolutely said of something, there is no middle; so if a property is a thing, it is true it is the ‘same’ or ‘other’, but with a ‘per se’ it is not valid that it be ‘per se the same’ or ‘per se other’.

432. To the second [n.428]. The antecedent can be distinguished according to composition and division. In sense of composition neither [part of the antecedent] is to be granted; for just as one must not grant that it is per se essence or per se non-essence [n.431], so neither must one grant the other member of this disjunctive, with ‘which is’, in sense of composition. Nor are by this both contradictories denied, because if you are speaking of the terms, it is given that neither of them is said per se of the subject; this I concede. If you wish to hold to the contradictory propositions, I say that they will be these: ‘either the property is per se a thing which is essence, or it is not per se a thing which is essence’; and the negative here is true, but it does not entail ‘therefore it is per se a thing which is not essence’, just as it does not follow ‘a man is not per se white’, ‘therefore he is per se non-white’. - In sense of division the affirmative part of the disjunctive must be granted; but it does not further follow ‘therefore it is per se essence’, because formal identity is being inferred from real identity, for the antecedent in sense of division only indicates real identity by the ‘which is’.

433. In another way could the aforesaid antecedent [n.432] be distinguished, so that by the implication ‘which is’ be understood formal inherence or only identical inherence. In the first way neither part is to be granted, because neither of the opposites is per se in the thing which is said per se of the property. In the second way the affirmative part is to be granted, but the intended proposition [n.191] does not in addition follow, because of the positing of the consequent [n.428].

434. This second distinction [n.433] does not hold by force of the words, because the implicated composite [‘which is’] is not determined to something which indicates that it means formal inherence, but only identical inherence; the first distinction [n.432] does hold by force of the words, and although ‘which is’ there does not indicate formal inherence in sense of composition, yet from the unity of the extreme, as it is a quasi specific or determinative construction, the essence has to be denominated ‘per se present in’ the subject.Note cancelled by Scotus: “Let here be introduced the saying of the doctor [Augustine] about double predication in divine reality, namely by identity and formally, which he well explains in this one way...” ²²³

435. [To the second] - To the second [n.192] I say that what is accidental is either taken for something extraneous or is taken properly, for that which as it were perfects something accidentally which in itself pre-exists as perfect. If in the second way, I say that not every being is essential or accidental to every being that it is in; for there is a middle between the accidental and the essential, as in the case of that which contracts, as difference contracts a genus, because such a thing is neither substantial nor accidental, taking it in this way. And thus in divine reality nothing is accidental, but there is beside the essence something non-essential. - But if the accidental is taken in the first way, anything that is not of the formal idea of it but extraneous, although it not properly be called accidental, would thus be an accidental difference with respect to the genus; and in this way the Philosopher takes the accidental for the extraneous in the fallacy of the accident [Sophistical Refutations 1.5.166b28-30]. Thus can anything be called accidental to something which is extraneous to it as it is compared to some third predicate.

436. [To the third] - To the third [n.193] I say that if in the major by the ‘if’ is understood a possible condition, the major is true and the minor false; for, when a possible is posited, by no positing can the second person in divine reality be lacking without the supreme good and supreme perfection being lacking. And if you prove that, if the second person were lacking, supreme perfection would exist in the Father, I say that if that person were lacking, supreme perfection would be lacking; and if the second person were lacking and the Father was not lacking, supreme perfection would be present; and so for supreme perfection to be lacking and for the Father to be present includes a contradiction. - But if in the major by the ‘if is posited an incompossible positing, I say that the major is false; for in the supreme good must be posited that which cannot be posited not to be without the positing of incompossibles.

437. [To the fourth] - To the final one [n.195] I say that the reason about ‘necessary being’ must be thus understood: whatever is of itself a necessary being has of itself the most actual existence, such that it does not by anything - in any way other than itself - expect any actuality of existing. And therefore it is of itself indivisible, because if it could be divided, then from the things by which it might be divided it would expect some actuality of existing that it would have in the divided parts; and then it would be necessary that the things distinguishing that necessary being would formally be necessities of existing, because they would be ultimate actualities of necessity in those diverse necessary beings, without which they would not have the most actual being, because the divisible does not have the most actual being or the most actual existence. On this basis, then, the reason holds that was above posited [n.177] in the question about the unity of God, from the reason about ‘necessary being’, which was also touched on in the first question of the second distinction [n.71], that necessary being is not divided among several things. Because if a and b were not formally necessities of existing, even before they were understood in any of the things among which necessary being is divided, then, since they are ultimate actualities without which that common actuality would not exist, that common actuality would not be necessary being, because it would in some way require something other than itself by which it would be. But this does not hold of diverse persons in the same necessary entity; for that entity, which is of itself necessary, does not expect any actuality from the things that distinguish the persons, because it is not divided by the things that distinguish the persons, and the things that distinguish the persons are not as it were ultimate actualities by which such beings exist.

438. When therefore it is argued ‘a and b (understanding by these here two personal properties) are either formally necessities of existing or they are not’ [n.195], one can concede that they are not formally necessities of existing; and it does not follow ‘therefore they are possibilities’, because they are by identity that one necessity of existence. But if a and b were in diverse things, one would have to say that they were formally necessities or possible entities, because they could not be the same as some entity that was of itself necessary; for that common entity, to which they were the same, would be as it were a potential for existing, in the way this common entity is understood before the idea that contracts or divides it.

439. Against this [nn.438, 437]: being able to be lacking is either repugnant to the a, insofar as it is a, or is not repugnant. If it is, a insofar as it is a is necessary, and so it is the reason for necessarily existing for that for which it is the form. If not, then by nothing can something else be repugnant to a precisely insofar as it is a, therefore by nothing is there taken away from a, precisely insofar as it is a, its being able ‘to be lacking’; therefore, as precisely taken, it is always ‘able to be lacking’;     therefore it is repugnant to ‘necessarily of itself’. - To this...The point seems to be that the argument is of this form: ‘if it is not per se this thing, then it is some other thing; but it is a thing; therefore it is some other thing’, which amounts to denying (‘destroying’) the antecedent, and asserting the consequent, which move is fallacious. ²²⁴