I. To the Question

9. I reply that the proposition is true, because the term puts first in the sentence what it first signifies, and if one or other extreme is the same as it, the affirmative proposition denoting such identity is true: but ‘God’ signifies the divine nature as it is naturally predicated of a supposit, and the thing signified is the same for the three persons; therefore the proposition signifying this is true.See appendix point B. ³

10. But is it the case that it has the same truth as this one ‘deity is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’?

I reply. Just as predication in divine reality is distinguished into formally true and true by identity,An interpolated text is worth noting here: “namely, that formal predication is when the predicate agrees formally with the subject, - predication by identity when, because of the divine simplicity, the predicate is the same as the subject though not formally.” ⁴ so this proposition ‘Father and Son and Holy Spirit are God’ is true formally, and this proposition is true by identity ‘Father and Son and Holy Spirit are deity’, but not formally;   therefore this proposition too ‘God is Father’ etc     . has some truth - speaking of formal predication - which this other one ‘deity is Father’     etc . does not have.

11. But for what does ‘God’ supposit, understanding that truth [‘God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit’] to be quasi-formal predication?

I reply. To each ‘in which’ there corresponds a proper ‘what’ or ‘who’, and therefore      to deity as deity there responds a ‘what’ or a ‘who’. First ‘God’ by deity is a being as deity is, and just as deity is of itself a ‘this’, so God - who is God by deity - is of himself a ‘this’ [n.3], and in this concept there is not included incommunicability or idea of person, because deity is communicable, - and therefore God as ‘by deity God is’ does not include anything formally incommunicable. To this concept then as so understood, without conception of persons or of personal features, some real predicates can belong, namely those which do not belong to the nature as existing in idea of supposit, but to this nature as existing in this nature, insofar as it exists in it; in this way perhaps this proposition is true ‘God creates’, and the like, understanding the subject to be ‘this God’ existing in divine nature, and not understanding any supposit, nor anything incommunicable in the nature, because incommunicability is not the idea of such acts; and thus one can posit that this proposition ‘God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit’ is true, insofar as ‘God’ stands for ‘this God’ - insofar as he is by deity a per se being - but not for any supposit properly said, in which the divine nature exists, because when there is truth in the things first signified by the terms, one should not look for truth in others in which those things first signified are included, - just as when the consequent has its own truth, one should not look for its truth precisely in any antecedent.

12. An example of this: ‘this’ color, an existing singular, does not determine for itself the idea of supposit (because the proper idea of supposit is not in accidents), and although it exists in a supposit of substance, yet insofar as it is understood without the substance in the supposit - as ‘this existing color’ - it can be the principle of a real operation, just as, if the same whiteness were in three surfaces, it would have one real act, namely the one idea of diffusing sight. And if, about the truth of this proposition ‘this color diffuses sight’, you ask me for what the term ‘color’ supposits, - I say that it supposits for its first signified thing, namely for ‘this existing color’, but not for any color inferior to this color, namely for ‘this color’ in this surface or in that, because the things that contract color are not the causes of the truth of this proposition, but it is true because of the first extreme terms.

13. Much more would this be true if this color as ‘this’ were a per se being. But deity is per se existence, and so God insofar as he is God by deity is a per se being, because On the Trinity VII ch.6 n.11: ‘the Father is by the same thing by which he is God, although it is not that he is and that he is Father by the same thing’; and so to ‘this God’, without understanding any idea of supposit or person - nay, by understanding the idea of ‘this God’ - can be attributed ‘Father and Son and Holy Spirit’.