Twenty Third Distinction

Single Question. Whether Person, according as it says Something Common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, says precisely Something of Second Intention

1. About the twenty third distinction I ask whether person, according as it says something common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, says precisely something of second intention.

That it does not:

The proof is that a person is the term of a real production and is adored; a second intention does not terminate a real production nor is adored;     therefore , etc     .

2. Further, the Trinity in divine reality is not a matter of concepts only but of things, - against the error of Sabellius;     therefore , etc     .

3. On the contrary:

Everything common to many things that is univocal, distinct, and multiplied in them, is said of them according to some idea of a universal; person is a common univocal to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.4 n.7; therefore person is said of them according to some idea of a universal; and if it state some second intention, there would truly be in divine reality some idea of a universal, which does not seem discordant; but if it state a first intention, there will be in divine reality a real common universal, and so some potential reality, - this is discordant.

I. Opinion of Others

4. [Exposition of the opinion] - An assertion here [of Henry of Ghent] is that person only states a second intention:

5. Because what an individual is in any nature that a supposit is in substantial nature and a person in intellectual nature; but individual and supposit state only a thing of second intention; therefore person too states only a thing of second intention.

6. A confirmation of the reason is that the nature in which these are [individual, supposit, person] does not belong to their per se idea; for nature is set down in the definition of them as something added, therefore it does not vary their formal ideas.

7. Again, everything common said of many things is said of them according to the idea of some universal; therefore if person signify a thing of first intention, common to the three persons, it will state it of them under the idea of a most general genus, or of some intermediate genus, or according to some idea of most specific species, - the opposite of all which is manifest. Not under the idea of most specific species because it would follow that there will be as it were two most specific species with respect to the same persons; for deity - according to Damascene On the Orthodox Faith ch.48 -indicates as it were the species that surrounds and embraces the hypostases [I d.8 n.41], and person will indicate the most specific species with respect to them.     Therefore , etc     .

8. There is added to this opinion [n.4] that although person state something of second intention, yet it does not state it in the abstract but in the concrete, - and     therefore it can be predicated of a thing of first intention and supposit for it. An exemplification: in the statement ‘species is a second intention’ species is taken for the very intention in itself - and in the statement ‘species is predicated of many things differing in number’ etc     . species is taken for the thing that it denominates; for this intention ‘species’ is not, as it seems, predicated of many things, but man is so predicated or ass, of which this intention is stated.

9. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion, and first against him who holds it [Henry]:

Whenever from the formal constituents of certain things something common of first intention can be abstracted, then with equal or greater reason something can be abstracted from the constituted things; but the divine persons - according to them [the followers of Henry] - are constituted formally by relations. But from those constitutive relations can be abstracted something real of first intention; for paternity is a relation and filiation is a relation,a and this when taking relation univocally, because there can be certitude about a concept of inward relation while there is doubt about every special concept whatever - and such a one, being thus certain, not only has certitude about the vocal word but about some concept; therefore the concept of the relation in general is other than the concept of it in particular. Therefore much more will a thing of first intention be able to be abstracted from the things constituted by those relations. - But the assumption about the univocity of relation will be clearer below, in this question.Vatican editors: this assumption is not dealt with below, for it seems to have regard to the second way [nn.24-25], which Scotus did not complete. The assumption is dealt with extensively in Reportatio IA d.25 nn.24-29, although here in n.20, and also in the Lectura I d.23 n.20, Scotus did not concede a univocal common quidditative concept abstracted from the constituents of the persons. ¹⁰²

a [Interpolation] and is predication in the ‘what’; but no second intention is predicated in the ‘what’ of a thing of first intention.

10. Against the opinion [n.4] in itself:

Because every second intention is a relation of reason, not any such relation, but one pertaining to an extreme of an act of the intellect combining and dividing or at any rate comparing one extreme to the other (the thing is plain, because a second intention -in everyone’s view - is caused by an act of the intellect busying itself about a thing of first intention, which act can cause nothing in the object save only a relation or relations of reason); but person does not state a relation of reason, and certainly not a relation pertaining to an act of the intellect combining extremes. But that it does not state any relation of reason is evident because then at any rate it would necessarily co-require the correlative to which it is referred, because it is impossible to understand a relation and not understand that it is in relation to some term and correlative, as every second intention requires its correlative (as the species requires the genus for its correlative, and the particular the universal, and so on of others); the point is plain about idea, which is a relation of reason, nor can it be understood save by respect to another. But person is not said to be person of someone, or at least it does not state an extreme of the intellect comparing things.

11. Again, I take their reasoning [of Henry and his followers] to the opposite by taking the same major and the opposite of the minor, that an individual that imports individual unity states a thing of first intention, because unity is a property of being (as is plain in Metaphysics 4.2.1003b22-25), and consequently unity follows a thing from the nature of the thing - and this is above all true of the unity that is true unity, of which sort is the unity of the individual; therefore such unity does not state a second intention; and just as unity in any nature does not do this, so neither does unity in intellectual nature; if then person states unity in intellectual nature as individual does in any nature, what follows is the opposite of their conclusion [n.5].

12. Further, against the second reason [n.7]:

Augustine On Christian Doctrine I ch.5 n.5 (and it is Lombard’s text in I d.25 ch.2 nn.220, 222) says that “things to be enjoyed are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit:” hence, according to him, the three persons are three things; but thing does not seem to state a second intention, and yet it is common to the three persons and is numbered in line with them; therefore one should not say that person, because it is common and multiplied in number several times, signifies a second intention.

13. The Master too, in d.25 ch.2 n.220, expounds three persons through ‘three subsistences or three subsistents’; but by subsistence he does not seem to signify a thing of second intention, and yet it is common to the three and multiplied in number with them (‘for they are called three subsistences or three subsistents, three beings or three things’).a

a [Interpolation] Again, the aforesaid opinion asks ‘how person can be univocally predicated of several subjects in divine reality unless it be a universal’, but the same difficulty arises about relation and follows in the same way; for it seems that a common element could be abstracted more from the things constituted than from the constituents. But how something common of first intention can be abstracted and yet not be a real universal will be stated in distinction 25 [Reportatio IA d.25 nn.27-29].

14. Further, against the other thing added [n.8] I argue as follows: an adjective does not determine anything save that which is the term of its dependence; but an adjective cannot be the term of the dependence of another adjective because their dependence is equal;     therefore neither determines the other, - and so if this name ‘person’ is a concrete of the sort in question [n.8], then the statement that there are ‘three persons’ will not be well made save by understanding another substantive which would be determined by both adjectives; but no such implicitly understood other substantive is given, therefore etc     .a

a [Note by Duns Scotus] Response: there are many concretes that are not adjectives (for example cause, genus, species), and the argument [n.14] is against adjective, not against concrete.

II. Scotus’ own Response

15. My response to the question [n.1] is that by taking the definition of person that Richard [of St. Victor] posits in On the Trinity IV ch.21, that it is ‘the incommunicable existence of intellectual nature’, by which definition is expounded or corrected the definition of Boethius when he says that person is ‘an individual substance of rational nature’ (because thus it would follow that the soul is a person, which is discordant, and that deity is a persona), I say that there is nothing in this definition of Richard’s that signifies a second intention, because from the nature of the thing - without the work of the intellect - there is in the Father intellectual nature and incommunicable entity.

a [Interpolation] and also it would not properly belong to God, because there is no individual save where is something divisible, which does not belong to God; likewise the name of person would belong properly only to man, who alone is properly said to be rational.

16. But this incommunicability is double (which can be understood from what was said in distinction 2 [nn. 379-380]), because ‘communicable to many’ is said in two ways: in one way that is said to be ‘communicable to many’ which is the same as each of them, such that, whatever it is, it is said to be communicable as a universal is to the things under it; in another way something is communicated as a form by which something is but which is not it, as the soul is communicated to the body. And in both ways deity is communicable, and in neither way is person communicable, and so the incommunicability that pertains to the idea of person is double; for which reason the separated soul, although it has the first incommunicability, is yet not a person because it does not have the second, - and each incommunicability is required for the per se idea of person, and each is in the thing from the nature of the thing, and so nothing of the idea of person states a second intention.

III. Objections against Scotus’ own Response

17. Against this can be objected that, according to it, person would seem to signify only a double negation of a double communicability,a - and if this be true then it seems doubtful how negation could be common to the three persons unless some affirmation be common to them because of which such a negation is in them;b but that affirmation is not ‘deity’, because deity is not multiplied in number along with the three [sc. one does not say ‘three deities’ or ‘three Gods’]; therefore some common positive -as person - must be given first that is abstracted from them before there is such negation, and then the intended proposition is obtained.

a [Interpolation] Again, I argue as follows: if person formally states incommunicability, then it formally states negation; but negation is a second intention, since it is a being of reason; therefore person states a thing of second intention, which is the intended proposition. - I reply that person does not only state incommunicability but gives to understand the intellectual nature in which it is, as individual gives to understand nature in general. However, I am in doubt whether it state existence formally along with double incommunicability, or only state formally incommunicability-negation and existence in the concrete as a way of having the nature, so that the sense is ‘person is incommunicability having existence in intellectual nature’; and even if one suppose it to be so, I still say that person does not state a second intention (because a second intention, since it is a being of reason, is only caused by the intellect busying itself about something), for that to the knowing of which the thing moves the intellect before any busying of the intellect is not a second intention, but a thing that moves the intellect moves it to negation of the opposite before any busying of the intellect, because such negation follows the thing from the nature of the thing before any busying of the intellect (and hence it is that one of the opposites moves to knowledge of its opposite before any busying of the intellect, for which reason the Philosopher says that ‘the same science is of opposites’ [Posterior Analytics 2.26.69b8-32]).

     Therefore although it be posited that person only formally states a negation, yet it does not state a second intention, because a negation that follows from the nature of a thing is not a second intention, and negation in general chiefly so, of which sort is incommunicability. When therefore it is said that ‘negation is a being of reason’, I say that it is a negative entity from the nature of the thing; for just as Socrates is man from the nature of the thing, so he is not-ass from the nature of the thing; also negations - in the intellect - are entities, because the first motion of the intellect (not first before affirmation but first before negation) is to apprehension of negation. - Thus therefore I hold that person is not a name of second intention but of first, and that it formally signifies the double negation of communicability and connotes intellectual nature. And perhaps it also formally imports existence, and then it not only imports a common negation but something positive; or perhaps it does not formally state existence and then there belongs to what it formally signifies only double negation which gives to understand a double positive, namely nature and the mode of having it. And hereby, whichever way of importing is given, the answer to the arguments [nn.1-2] is plain, because if person states existence in the abstract and the way of having it in the concrete, it is formally positive, and then person is formally incommunicable existence possessing an intellectual nature; but if it only formally imports negation, then it connotes existence in the nature, and thus it stands for that which is incommunicable, - and thus is person adored and is a term of real production. But to the other argument [n.2] the answer will be plain elsewhere, in distinction 25 [Reportatio IA d.25 n.24; also above nn.12-13, and below n.24].

b [Interpolation] because negation does not seem common to the three unless it follow a common affirmation.

18. Even if it state such negation precisely, it does not seem to state the whole idea of person, because person states something pertaining to dignity, but negation posits no dignity or perfection.

19. It seems too that it states a relation of reason, because of the fact that its opposite - namely what is communicable - only states a relation of reason in the divine essence; for essence is communicable to the Son and yet essence is not really referred to the Son; therefore communicable too states a relation of reason.

20. To the first of these objections [n.17] I say that from the ultimate distinctive and constitutive factors of the persons nothing common that is said in the ‘what’ of them can be abstracted from them, because these factors are primarily diverse, that is, they do not include anything really the same (for in that case it would be possible to ask about them what they were distinguished by [I d.3 n.132]); and therefore everything common abstracted from them is either a concept altogether negative or at any rate is not a quidditative concept of reason. But it is certain that some common negation can be abstracted from those ultimate factors, and that a negation of one idea, because negation is of one idea by the fact that it opposes an affirmation of one idea. Therefore whatever things an affirmation of one idea opposes, to those things belongs a negation of one idea, - and so to the three persons, and also to the ultimate factors distinctive of them, there can belong some common negation. But if that negation be said to be incommunicability, and if it be posited that incommunicability alone is of the per se idea constitutive of a person (so that personality be ‘incommunicability of what subsists in intellectual nature’, and everything beside the first [sc. incommunicability] be an addition to the idea of person), then person properly does not state some concept of second intention; for every concept is a concept of first intention that is of a nature to be caused immediately by the thing, without work or act of the busying intellect, of which sort is not only a positive but also a negative concept.

21. And if this be posited, then when it is doubted ‘how there can be a common negation without a common positive which it is in’, I reply: however diverse things are, even if they have nothing common, they can have a common negation, - just as notSocrates is a univocal common to everything other than Socrates, beings and not beings. And although the things to which the negation is common have something common that is positive, yet it is not necessary that the common negation be in them because of that common positive; for non-rationality agrees with the ultimate difference of horse and ass, and not because of something common to the things to which that negation belongs, because either there is nothing common to the ultimate differences, or if entity is common to them, such negation yet does not belong to them because of entity, just as neither is the contrary affirmation opposed to them because of entity.a

a [Interpolation] And so one should say that the major [interpolation b to n.17] is false, for a negation is of one idea because it is opposed to an affirmation of one idea and not because it follows an affirmation of one idea; for not-man is of one idea because man, to which it is opposed, is of one idea and not because it follows an affirmation of one idea; for not-man is common to being and not-being, to which nothing affirmative or positive is common.

22. And when, second, it is objected that ‘negation does not state anything of dignity’ [n.18] (and for this can also be adduced the reasons for the principal conclusion, that ‘negation is not adored’, ‘nor is it even a term of a real action’ [n.1]), - it could be said that negation in a genus differs from negation outside a genus and from privation. Privation indeed requires an appropriate subject, either in itself if it is a privation in itself, - or in a genus, if it is a privation in genus (the way a mole is called blind, Metaphysics, the chapter on privation, 5.22.1022b24-27). Negation outside a genus requires absolutely nothing, because it is said equally of being and not-being. But negation in a genus is as it were in the middle, because it requires a subject of which to be said, though it does not indicate aptitude for a form; such negation is perhaps imported by diversity (about which elsewhere [I d.18 qq.1-2]), because it indicates such non-identity in being - therefore incommunicability, as it is included in person, can name such non-identity, because it indicates the negation of a double communicability in intellectual nature; nor yet does it state any aptitude for communicability, but it states the negation in positive intellectual nature, - and so it states dignity, not by reason of what is signified, but by reason of what is connoted and of the subject, and thus can person be conceded to be adored and generated (just as ‘a blind man walks or is loved’, not because the blindness is the principle of the walking, but because that in which such privation exists is the subject in respect of such predicate).

23. When argument is raised about the communicable and incommunicable [n.19], I say that one opposite can be a relation of reason and the other a real relation (or at any rate a real negation or privation of some relation), just as ‘the same’ with perfect identity states a relation of reason (Metaphysics 5.9.1018a2-4, on ‘the same’), and yet ‘diverse’ -which denies this identity - belongs to a thing without act of reason or intellect; and the reason is that, although something not belong to a thing save from work or act of intellect, yet that something can be opposed to the thing of itself, without any act of intellect, just as universality is opposed to Socrates, although universality does not belong to man save through an act of intellect working and busying itself about man. Although therefore communicability state only a relation of reason in the essence, yet it can be opposed to person by something that is real, and incommunicability can belong to person on the same basis.

24. If therefore this way is supposed as certain (that from person can be abstracted some negative concept of negation in a genus, and this abstracted not only from the persons as wholes but also from the formal constituents of them [nn.20-23]), there is a further doubt whether only such a common negative is abstractable from them or some common positive.

And it seems one should posit something positive, capable of being abstracted from them, because of what Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine and of what the

Master says in the text of distinction 25, which were adduced against the first opinion [nn.12-13].

25. It can be said that from individuals can be abstracted not only the species, which states the quiddity of the individuals, but also something quasi-proper.Vatican editors: Scotus did not finish the question but left here a blank space. ¹⁰³