III. To the Principal Argument

218. To the principal argument that is taken from the authority of Augustine On the Trinity XV [n.212], I respond that in the creature there is no prediction through identity which is not so formally,Note by Scotus: “On the contrary: entity is unity or truth; if they are properties of being, they are also the same as themselves.” ⁹⁰ and therefore never has a logic of true predication formally and by identity in creatures been handed down; but in divine reality there is true predication by identity, in the abstract, and yet it is not formal.

219. The reason for this difference is this - as I think - that, when conceiving something abstract with ultimate abstraction, a quiddity is conceived without relation to anything that is outside the proper idea of the quiddity; therefore, by thus conceiving the extremes, there is no truth in the uniting of them unless precisely the quiddity of one extreme is the same precisely as the quiddity of the other extreme. But this does not happen in creatures, because there, when abstracting the relations that are in the same thing (to wit, the reality of genus and difference) and considering them very precisely, each is finite and neither is perfectly the same as the other; for they are not in any way the same among themselves save because of a third thing with which they are the same, and therefore, if they are abstracted from that third thing, there does not remain a cause of identity for them, and therefore not a cause either for the truth of the proposition uniting the extremes. This proposition, then, is false ‘animality is rationality’, and conversely, and this in any predication whatever, because the extremes are not only not formally the same but they are not truly the same either; for this quiddity precisely is potential to that quiddity, and is not the same as it save because of identity to the third thing from which they are abstracted; therefore the abstraction takes away the cause of the truth of the affirmative proposition uniting them.

220. The opposite is the case in God, because by abstracting wisdom from whatever is outside the idea of wisdom, and abstracting goodness similarly from whatever is outside its reason formally, each quiddity remains, precisely taken, formally infinite, and from the fact that infinity is the idea of their identity - in such very precise abstraction - the idea of identity of the extremes remains. For they were not the same precisely because of their identity to a third thing from which they are abstracted, but because of the formal infinity of each.

221. And a sign that this is the idea of predication through identity is from the fact that this proposition is not conceded ‘paternity is not-being-born’ (nor this proposition ‘paternity in divine reality is active inspiriting’), whether as true formally or as true by identity; but this proposition is conceded ‘paternity is deity’, and conversely. The reason seems to be that, by abstracting paternity and not-being-born from the essence or the supposit, neither is formally infinite and therefore neither includes in its thus abstracted idea the idea of its identity to the other, and so neither, as so abstracted, is truly predicated of the other; but by abstracting deity and paternity to whatever extent, one of the extremes still remains formally infinite, which infinity is a sufficient reason for the identity of the extremes, and therefore the idea of identity remains, and consequently the idea of the truth of the composition of the affirmative proposition. But in this proposition ‘deity is goodness’ there remains infinity not only in one extreme but in both, and therefore there would be truth here because of the identity included virtually in each extreme.

222. From this, and from the response to the saying of Augustine adduced before in the second doubt [nn.215-216], what was supposed before in the question ‘about genus’ is clear, namely how there remain only two modes of predicating in divine reality [nn.130-131], - because although by identity the relations pass into the essence, yet not in the way the essential predicates do, because all essential predicates state rather quidditative perfections, but the personal idea does not state a quidditative perfection; and therefore all the essential predicates are reduced to one mode of predicating among themselves more than the personal predicates are reduced to one mode of predicating along with them, so that, according to this, it can be said that two modes of predicating remain in divine reality, not only because of the modes of conceiving the predicates, but also in some way because of the reality of the things that are predicated.