A. First Opinion

160. [Exposition of the opinion] - The first rests on this reasoning:Scotus seems to be following, somewhat freely, Henry’s report of this opinion (with which opinion Henry himself did not agree), and the Vatican editors suggest that Henry’s report is not fully accurate to, e.g., Sutton’s own view. They quote the following from Sutton [Quodlibet II q.2]: “Therefore the divine intellect, insofar as it is the same, never distinguishes several reasons in its essence. But, once all respect to creatures is removed, the divine intellect is, in knowing its essence, only disposed in one and the same way alone; therefore it does not distinguish several reasons of attributes without respect to creatures, but it has one reason of the essence, by which it perfectly knows the essence... The divine intellect knows distinct attributes through respect to the human intellect distinguishing the attributes.” Again: “For because our intellect - on account of its imperfection - cannot know in one conception the perfection of the divine essence, therefore it has need to understand it in diverse conceptions, which are diverse reasons that it receives from creatures and attributes to God.” Again: “For because the created intellect cannot know the one divine perfection, in the way it is, according to its own single reason, therefore it has need, because of its imperfection, to know it under many distinct reasons.” They also quote the following from Bernard of Auvergne criticizing Henry [Quodlibet V q.1]: “But as to his [Henry’s] imposing on this position that ‘only one concept can be formed of the divine essence’, it is false, because the position says that ‘one complete concept is formed of the divine essence and that concept God forms, who conceives himself completely; but the created intellect can form many concepts of the divine essence, because it cannot capture the whole perfection all at once’; hence that position is true.” ⁸¹ “whenever there is in one extreme a difference of reason to which a real difference corresponds in the other extreme, the distinction or difference of reason is taken by comparison with things really distinct (an example of a distinction according to reason is of the right and left side of a column, which is taken by respect to the real distinction of these in an animal, - likewise, an example of a distinction of reason is in a point as it is the beginning and end, which distinction is taken by respect to lines really diverse); but the divine attributes have in creatures certain things really distinct corresponding to them, as goodness to goodness and wisdom to wisdom, and other things that are really called attributes (by which are excluded certain divine properties, as everlastingness and eternity, which are not properly attributes);     therefore etc     .”

161. “The adherents of this reasoning say that the attributes are distinguished with respect to our intellect in that, once the corresponding attributes have been removed, only a single and simple concept can be formed about the divine essence (which would be expressed in a single name for, if other names were imposed, either they would be synonymous names, because the same thing in reality and in reason would correspond to them - or they would be empty, because nothing would correspond to them).”

162. “Their mode, then, of positing attributes is of the following sort: to all the ideas of the attributes (namely those that state a perfection in God and in creatures) there corresponds in God the unity of essence, not according to the being which he has absolutely” - as was said - “but according to the respect which he has to creatures; not in the genus of efficient cause (for no attribute is thus taken, as wisdom because he causes wisdom), nor even to remove something from God - which two modes seem to be the ones asserted by Avicenna [Metaphysics VIII chs.4 and 7 (99ra, 101rb)] and Rabbi Moses [Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed p.1 chs. 53, 55-60] - but insofar as the divine essence is compared to creatures according to the idea of formal cause, containing in itself the completeness of every perfection which is dispersed and imperfect in creatures, and in this respect the divine essence can in diverse ways be imitated by everything. - Further: the plurality of attribution-al perfections, as it exists in the divine essence, is as it were in potency, but as it is in a concept of the intellect it is as it were in act (example about the universal in the thing and in the intellect). But this plurality has a diverse existence in diverse intellects; in the divine intellect, indeed, and in a creature made blessed by the fullness of the perfection of the simple essence, it is conceived according to diverse ideas, and from this comes the multitude of conceptions in act in the intelligence, but by an intellect understanding with natural light they are conceived a posteriori, insofar as this intellect forms, from perfections really diverse in creatures, corresponding conceptions and perfections proportional in God; yet no intellect actually understands them without respect to those they are proportional to - whether it understand them from those they are proportional to, as does the third intellect [an intellect understanding with natural light], - or not, but from the essence, as does the first and the second intellect [sc. the divine intellect and the intellect of a blessed creature]. -Limited perfections insofar as they are actually in the intelligence are called reasons, and reason here is said to be the conception of a determinate perfection, from its respect to the determinate perfection corresponding to it in creatures.”

163. [Godfrey of Fontaine’s clarification for the opinion] - Others clarify this position in the following way, that “the divine intellect, apprehending its own essence according to one simple reality, yet a reality virtually containing, without limitation and defect, the simple and absolute perfections of all things, insofar as it is more eminently perfect than the same perfections because of the eminence of its own perfection, understands that essence as one in reality, perfect with a multiple perfection that differs according to reason; and if it did not apprehend that the creature was perfected with diverse perfections really different insofar as the creature is good and wise, or because those perfections introduce diversities in the creature, it would not apprehend itself as perfect in wisdom under one reason and perfect in goodness under another reason, nor would it apprehend the difference in reason between its own wisdom and its own goodness unless it apprehended the difference in reality of wisdom and goodness in the creature, - otherwise unity and plurality would be taken from one thing disposed in the same way in reality and in concept. Since, therefore, the divine essence, as considered in itself, is something wholly without distinction - altogether simple - in reality and in reason, it cannot be said that, without a comparison between it and other things in which is found a diversity of reality and reason, such a distinction could exist, because, when that is apprehended which is altogether simple and single under the reason that belongs to it in itself without any relation to anything else in which there is some distinction, then, just as the apprehended is only one in reality, so it cannot be apprehended save as one simple reason.”

164. “Nor can it - namely the intelligible and the intelligent - apprehend in its essence certain things as differing in their comparison with each other or as having a mutual relation with each other, unless these things are supposed already to exist in their own difference, or to be introducing a certain difference. For things which are apprehended as certain different things having a mutual relation to each other, and which are also, by the operation of the intellect, compared as differing from each other, these are also supposed to exist in their own difference; but things that, by the operation of reason or intellect, do not possess what makes them to be beings according to reason, and to differ by reason from each other, these cannot be said to be constituted in their own such being and to have this difference according to reason through comparison of them with each other by the operation of reason or the intellect; nay this second operation necessarily presupposes the first, such that, first, they are by one operation of reason constituted in such distinct being, and, second, by another operation of the intellect they are compared as thus distinct from each other; for just as things of absolute nature, when they are compared with each other, are supposed to have a distinct being in reality, so too beings of reason, when these are compared with each other, are supposed to have a distinct being according to reason. Therefore, if the divine intellect apprehends its own essence as different in reason from the attributes, and if it also apprehends the attributes as different in reason, and if the attributes are compared with each other under this very difference, they are of themselves in it actually as so differing, and under their own actual distinction - which they thus have of themselves - they move the divine intellect so that it conceive them as so distinct and compare them with each other. But this does not seem to be concordant.”

165. This reasoning is confirmed as follows: “For all things that differ, or have a difference, formally in themselves or from themselves through what they are in themselves, without comparison to other differing things, all such things differ in reality. But there are other things that have plurality or difference from comparison with other things that really differ, and these things differ by reason; and this is plain in creatures, for once unity of specific form in reality is presupposed, the intellect distinguishes in it the idea of genus and difference - which are said not to be diverse things - but this diversity could not be taken in any single and simple thing unless it were compared by the intellect to some things really different and, according to some order, agreeing with that single thing; one and the same thing would not have diverse reasons of true and good unless to understand and to will the ‘one and the same thing’ were, for some subject, acts really diverse and ordered with respect to each other. This is plain also in God, because, when every kind of comparison to the diverse essences of creatures introducing a real diversity has been stripped away, the divine essence would not be apprehended by the divine intellect under the reason of diverse ideas (or of forms), differing by reason alone, but under one simple altogether indistinct reason.”

166. “And this is the intention of the Commentator in Metaphysics XII com.39 where, speaking of this matter, he says that life, wisdom, etc. are said properly of God, because God is properly and truly said to be alive and to be wise etc. But such and the like things, which are signified by way of disposition and thing disposed, ‘are reduced’ in material things ‘to one thing in being and to two things in consideration; for the intellect is of a nature to divide things united in being, but in composite things - when it disposes the composite, or what has a form, through the form - it understands both the things that are united in some way and different in another way; but when the disposed thing and the disposition have been considered in immaterial things, then they are reduced to altogether one intention, and there will be no mode by which the predicate is distinguished from the subject outside the intellect, namely in the being of the thing. But the intellect understands no difference between them in being, save according to way of taking them, namely because the same thing receives the disposed thing and the disposition as two, the proportion of which to each other is as the proportion of predicate to subject; for the intellect can, in the case of composite things, understand the same thing according to likeness to a categorical proposition, just as it understands many things according to likeness’.”

167. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this position I argue first thus:Scotus’ arguments here [nn.167-173] are, according to the Vatican editors, freely based on statements by Henry of Ghent (indicated by the quotation marks). ⁸² “whatever is a mark of perfection simply in a creature is more principally and of itself in God, and not with respect to another;” an attribute is a mark of perfection simply in a creature, such that ‘it rather than not it’ is simply ‘better’ [n.22];     therefore etc     .

Proof of the major: “the perfect is always independent of the imperfect, just as the imperfect is dependent on the perfect;” an attributal perfection is in God perfectly, in creatures imperfectly. - Likewise it would not be of infinite perfection simply unless it contained all perfection simply without respect to anything external.

The minor is made clear thus: for because any created thing, and any perfection of it essential to it, is limited in quidditative existence, therefore from nothing of this sort is an attribute taken (for by parity of reason an attribute might be taken from any created essence), but an attribute is taken from that which is an accidental perfection in a creature - or in its existing well - and which states a perfection simply in the subject substance, -because, although as a certain nature it has a limited rank, yet as perfecting another in its existing well it indicates no limitation, and thus it is an attribute. Thus too in God it does not indicate a proper perfection but as it were an accidental one, in his existing well, - On the Trinity XV ch.5 n.8: “If we say wise, powerful, beautiful, spirit, what I put last seems to signify substance, but the rest qualities of this substance.”

168. Again, those things are not distinguished by respect externally of which any one contains essence according to every ideal reason; but “any attribute contains essence according to every reason of ideal perfection;”     therefore etc     .

The proof of the minor is that the ideal reason corresponds to the perfection of the creature insofar as it is perfected in quidditative existence and, consequently, under the idea by which the essence is limited (hence also creatures are distinguished according to diverse degrees of limitation), but not insofar as the essence is perfect simply, because thus one attribute in God, as good or perfect, corresponds to all of them; from this the proof of the minor is apparent: for because any attribute is a perfection simply (from the clarification of the minor of the first proof [n.167]), it follows that any one of them is imitable by every limited grade.

The proof of the major is that what contains every idea seems to regard equally everything patterned after the idea, and so in regard to none of them can it be distinguished from another, because it similarly regards any one at all; hence the attribute wisdom does not more regard wisdom patterned after the idea than color patterned after it, because both are equally limited, nor is the attribute taken more from one than from the other.

169. Again, “the distinction of attributes is the foundation of the distinction of the personal emanations, because the Son proceeds by being born as the word in the intellect, the Holy Spirit by being inspirited as love in the will, and not as the word, - which could not be unless there were some distinction of intellect and will internally,” such that the production of the persons is compared necessarily to nothing external;     therefore etc     .

170. Again, “he [God] understands his essence insofar as it is true, not insofar as it is good, - and he wills it insofar as it is good, not insofar as it is true;” “also from eternity he understood that he understands his essence and wills it simply, not in respect of something external,” because this act follows natural immateriality.     Therefore , without such respect, it includes in its essence the idea of true and good, and similarly the idea of understanding and understood, of willing and willed, as formally distinct; therefore etc     .

171. Again, “divine beatitude consists in its perfect acts, of intellect and will, but all the divine attributes mutually regard each other in perfecting those acts,” as will be plain [n.175]; but the beatitude of God depends on no extrinsic respect;     therefore etc     .

172. Against the reasons for the opinion [n.160].

The major is false. First because the divine essence is distinguished by reason from the attribute, just as one attribute is from another; can it therefore follow that ‘essence as essence is only there by outward respect’? - Second because true and good in creatures are distinguished by a distinction of reason; from which really distinct things, then, is this distinction taken? From none but from true and good in God, which differ in reason. - Next, third because where there is “a mere distinction of reason, no outward respect is required” (just as is the case with definition and defined); and such is the distinction in the case of attributes, “which are objects of the divine intelligence, different in reason, although they are one act of understanding in God.” For when an outward respect is required, then the distinction is partly from the intellect and partly from elsewhere; and this either from diverse circumstances extrinsic in diverse ways, as is plain in the examples adduced of the column and the point [n.160], - or from the same thing diversely circumstanced, as is plain in the second instance [above, n.172] against the major.

173. Again, against the minor of the reason [n.160] there is this argument: “since all the attributes pertain to the intellect and the will - which are the principles of the emanations - the distinction of attributes can be really reduced to distinct persons, such that those which pertain to the intellect have respect to generation, - those which pertain to the will have respect to inspiriting; so that, just as the natural intellect does not distinguish these and those save by respect to things in creatures to which it turns back all its understanding, so the blessed intellect distinguishes them about the persons, to which it directs all its understanding.”