I. To the Question

7. As to the question,a a distinction can be made (the way it is commonly, and well, made), that ‘only’ can be taken as categorematic and as syncategorematic.Tr. ‘Only’ as categorematic qualifies the noun, so that ‘only the Father.’ is equivalent to ‘the Father on his own’. ‘Only’ as syncategorematic qualifies the proposition, so that ‘only the Father.’ is equivalent to ‘the Father with exclusion of everything other than the Father.’ ⁶² For ‘only’ signifies the same as ‘not along with another’, as is plain from the Philosopher

Sophistical Refutations 2.22.178a39-b1. But this negation of association can be understood either to determine something in itself or in its nature, or to determine something as it is an extreme in composition relative to the other extreme, namely by denying that what is other than it is associated with it in receiving the predication of the relevant predicate. In the first way the word ‘only’ is not admitted in divine reality, because nothing is solitary there. In the second way the word is conceded whenever someone, of whom the same predicate is said, is not associated with the subject; so it is not conceded when the essential is predicated of the personal, because the essential belongs to the other excluded by the first extreme - and therefore such a proposition [sc. ‘only the Father is God’] is denied.Tr. The proposition ‘only the Father is God’ is false because it excludes the Son and the Holy Spirit from being God. But ‘God’, being an essential and not a personal name, belongs to all three persons. ⁶³

a [Note by Duns Scotus]The Vatican editors, in the Preface to this volume, point out that this note assumes that passages from the Reportatio are to be added. The note makes frequent reference to these passages and has to be understood in relation to them. ⁶⁴ There are three opinions as to this question:

     First opinion: the correlative is not excluded because it belongs to the understanding of what is included (response: not what this is, but to what or of what this is);Tr. That is, in ‘only the Father is God’ the correlative, or the Son, is not what the Father (the included) is, but to what or of what the Father is, as that the Son is not what the Father is but to what or of what the Father is the Father. ⁶⁵ again, this consequence holds: ‘only the Father is, therefore the Father is’, and further ‘therefore the Son is’ -therefore ‘the Son is’ is included, and consequently that he is God is included (deny the consequence, because they are opposites in the subject term.Tr. ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are opposed relatives in the subject term ‘God’. ⁶⁶ On the contrary: a syncategorematic term [sc. ‘only’] makes a disposition about the categorematic concept [sc. ‘the Father’];Tr. ‘Only’ determines the concept ‘Father’, but the concept ‘Father’ includes the concept ‘Son’ (for they are relatives), so ‘only’ does not exclude ‘Son’ from the subject term. ⁶⁷ again, it would rule out, in respect of any predicate, ‘only the Father is Father’.Tr. If one denies the consequence ‘only the Father is, therefore the Father is, therefore the Son is, therefore the Son is God (or wise or omnipotent etc.)’ on the grounds that ‘Father’ excludes ‘Son’, then one should, by parity of reasoning, rule out saying ‘only the Father is Father’ because this too, by rejecting the same sequence of inferences, will exclude ‘Son’ and so will exclude the Son’s being or being God or being wise or omnipotent etc. But it is absurd to rule out saying ‘only the Father is Father’. ⁶⁸ Therefore in another way: the correlative is formally excluded; thanks to the matter the predicate does not follow about the excluded correlative, because correlatives go together, and therefore opposites go together in the antecedentTr. ‘Only the Father is God’ is excluded, not because ‘Father’ does not include ‘Son’ (on the contrary it does), but because ‘only’ as applied to ‘Father’ excludes, not ‘Son’ from ‘Father’, but the application to ‘Son’ of the predicate ‘God’. ⁶⁹); again, when the accident is included the subject is not excluded (response: true about a concrete, because it is predicated of a subject; false about an abstract - hence

     ‘only... whiteness’ is contradictory).Tr. A suggestion about this puzzling remark: The claim being made is that to speak of an accident or property (e.g. wisdom) is to include and not exclude the subject whose property it is (e.g. a wise man). Thus to say ‘only the Father is God’ is to include ‘Son’ because ‘Son’ is also subject of ‘God’. Scotus’ response is that the subject is included when a property in the concrete is in question (as ‘wise’), but not when a property in the abstract is (as ‘wisdom’). Hence it is contradictory to say ‘whiteness’ includes a subject, because, as abstract, it is taken precisely as excluding a subject. In relation to ‘only the Father is God’, then, the point perhaps is that ‘God’ taken concretely or along with a subject always means one or other of the persons. But when it means the essence without reference to the personal subjects it is not taken concretely but, as it were, abstractly (as ‘God-ness’). So if ‘God’ is taken concretely in ‘only the Father is God’ then it includes the subject, that is, the person in question, and is equivalent to ‘only the Father is God the Father’, which is true and uncontroversial. But if ‘God’ is taken abstractly then ‘only the Father is God’ is equivalent to ‘only the Father is God-ness’, which is false if not indeed contradictory. ⁷⁰ - To the contrary, in three ways: Physics 1, “only the principle is” [n.13 below];Aristotle is arguing at this point in the Physics against Parmenides and Melissus, that if they say that only the principle is, then they are saying that what is from the principle is not. So the Philosopher thinks that to assert ‘only’ of one of a correlative pair (here the pair of ‘principle’ and ‘from a principle’) is to exclude, and not implicitly to include, the other correlative. ⁷¹ again, opposites are such that it is impossible for this one to be that one (any ‘not-this’ is excluded);Tr. ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are opposite relatives, and opposites exclude one opposite from being the other, so to say ‘only the Father...’ cannot be to include the Son implicitly. ⁷² again, the whole concept does not allow of being expressed, because nothing can be attributed precisely to a relation, not even a proper difference; still a relation can be understood.Tr. Relational terms, as ‘father-son’, do not have a strict conceptual definition, because neither relative can be defined in isolation from the other (as that one cannot define ‘father’ without mentioning the son relative to whom a father is father). But one can nevertheless understand relations and relatives. Hence it is not to the point to say that ‘only the Father.’, with ‘Father’ taken in its whole conceptual idea, implicitly includes the Son, because there is no whole conceptual idea of ‘Father’ in the first place and the ‘only’ attached to it has to be interpreted according to this feature of relative terms, that is, as excluding from the predicate the opposing relative (‘Son’) which its understanding nevertheless implicitly includes. ⁷³

     In another way: [the substantive is] one thing, [the adjective attaching to it] is another. -To the contrary: the adjective conforms to the substantive in its mode of signifying, therefore so does anything included in the adjective, and the same of the converse ‘no non-Father^ ’; the substantive states a whom, not a what.Tr. The other way of saving ‘only the Father is God’ is to say that ‘only’, taken as an adjective (as categorematic), signifies the Father as to deity, while the substantive ‘Father’ signifies the Father as to person. Hence ‘only the Father is God’ means something like ‘the Father only as to deity is God’, which does not exclude the Son from also being God. Scotus’ response is that if the substantive is taken personally, as signifying a ‘whom’ and not a ‘what’, the adjective attaching to it must be taken personally too. Hence ‘only the Father is God’ means ‘the person alone who is Father is God’, which does exclude the Son from being God. The response is confirmed by appealing to the converse of ‘only the Father’, namely ‘no non-Father’, because to say ‘no non-Father is God’ also clearly excludes the Son from being God. ⁷⁴

     In another way third: composition and division. - To the contrary, as argued above.A reference to Reportatio IA d.21 nn.27-30. And see n.14 below. Perhaps the point about composition and division is that if ‘only’ is taken as dividing Father from Son, the proposition is false; if it is taken as combining them (because they are said relatively to each other), it is true. Scotus’ response is doubtless that ‘only’ as used here excludes taking the proposition in a combined sense. ⁷⁵ Solution: ‘only’ - not along with another (Sophistical Refutations [n.7 above]). When ‘only’ is taken categorematically, ‘solitary’ is what is per se predicated. When taken syncategorematically it makes a disposition as to an extreme term in the intellect combining the terms, and it states the mode under which the extreme is taken in the combined proposition - but this in two ways: either to the extent that (as reduplicative) it states a disposition in relation to the predicate, because it states the per se reason for the inherence of the predicate, - or it states the formal reason according to which the subject is taken in itself, not that it is the formal reason for the inherence of the predicate. Thus the subject can be taken in itself precisely, and something can be said about the subject so taken, - in another way the subject can be taken precisely in its order to the predicate as the predicate is asserted of it; in the first way ‘only’ indicates that the subject is in itself precise, whatever may agree with it in respect of the predicate, - in the other way it indicates the subject precisely, whether the subject is precise in itself or not: taken in the first way is Augustine’s “so great is the Father only”, that is the Father precisely taken truly has the predicate “so great [is he]” (we speak like this in other cases: “You only will count for 10,000” is true; even if there are many other lords who would count for so many servants, yet ‘You’ precisely taken will so count, and yet not as solitary or on its own but as existing among others; hence ‘only’ here is not a categorical, because neither is it a predicable but a co-predicableTr. ‘Only’ in this case means ‘you by yourself count as so many, even if others also by themselves count as so many’; it does not mean ‘you alone and no one else count as so many’. ⁷⁶); taken in the second way Augustine’s proposition is false, as is proved above and by its consequences.Tr. In the second way ‘so great is the Father only’ means ‘only the Father is so great and not also the Son and Holy Spirit’, which is false. ⁷⁷

     But an instance is made in objection to the remark from On Interpretation [see n.11 below] by taking what is distinct ‘in the respect in which it is dependent’: this sequence is true, ‘only man or non-man is non-man, therefore nothing non-identical with man or non-man is nonman,’ - the inferences ‘therefore no non-man is non-identical with man or non-man, therefore no entity [sc. no man or non-man] is not identical [sc. with non-man], therefore every entity is identical [sc. with man]’, and ‘nothing non-identical with man or non-man is a non-man, therefore nothing non-identical with man or non-man is not a man’, these inferences do not hold, because then every such thing [sc. everything identical with man or non-man] is a man. - I concede the point; the inference from the negative to the affirmative in the case of a subject that includes contradictories is not valid; the term ‘non-identical with man or non-man’ is such a subject. This as to consistency in the subject term, namely that what is taken here on the part of the subject should be capable of being a subject, that is, should not include contradictories, because contradictories make no single term, Metaphysics 5 “what is in itself false is false of everything,” and so too every predicate is false of it, because it is repugnant to itself and to each of its parts. -To the contrary: to which affirmative is this negative reduced from such an antecedent (reduced to it enthymematically)? Response: to affirmatives about its parts.Tr. The negative statement ‘nothing non-identical with man or non-man is non-man’ should, like any negative, be reducible or convertible to an equivalent affirmative (according to the rules for obversion, as that ‘no a is b’ is equivalent to ‘all a is non-b’). Scotus’ answer is that it is reducible to two affirmatives, according to its two-fold and contradictory subject: ‘everything non-identical with man is non-man’ and ‘everything non-identical with non-man is man’. ⁷⁸

8. A clarification of these points - namely how a syncategorematic term disposes the extreme in the intellect as the intellect combines and divides it in respect of the other extreme, and how a syncategorematic term differs from a term of second intention [sc. a logical term], and how diverse syncategorematic determinations differ among themselves - would require a long treatise but, because of more useful and more necessary things, we should not delay over it.

9. The falsity of the proposed proposition [sc. ‘only the Father is God’] is also proved through the rule in the ‘Sophisms’, that ‘an exclusive affirmative entails a universal affirmative about the terms when they are transposed’ [Walter Burleigh, Longer Treatise on the Purity of the Art of Logic tr.2 p.3 subpart.1 ch.1]; therefore this proposition ‘only the Father is God’ entails this other ‘every God, or every divine person, is the Father’.

10. The rule is also proved by reason of exclusion, namely the exclusion that indicates precision in what it is added to with respect to the other extreme - or that indicates precise commensuration, namely that one extreme does not exceed the other; and this is what the universal affirmative ‘about the terms when they are transposed’ indicates, and especially in the case of common terms, where either extreme can be taken universally.

11. The rule is also logically proved by a single proposition that expresses the whole understanding of the exclusive term; for this proposition ‘only man is capable of laughter’, although it is commonly posited as having two exponents, is nevertheless sufficiently expounded by this one, ‘no non-man is capable of laughter’; from it there follows (by conversion) ‘nothing capable of laughter is a non-man’, and further that ‘    therefore nothing capable of laughter is not a man’ (through the rule, in On

Interpretation 2.10.95b-20b10,Vatican editors: This rule is not as such found in Aristotle but arises from two of the things he says. For he says first: “On the proposition ‘no man is just’ there follows the proposition ‘every man is nonjust;” he says second, “‘a non-just man is’ whose negation is ‘a non-just man is not’.” From the first of Aristotle’s statements this rule follows: ‘from a negative about a finite predicate there follows an affirmative about an infinite predicate’, and conversely ‘from an affirmative about an infinite predicate there follows a negative about a finite predicate’, from which finally there follows ‘man is non-just, therefore man is not just’. But according to the second of Aristotle’s statements, by adding ‘not’ to his first example, this sequence follows: ‘no man is non-just, therefore every man is not nonjust’; there also follows ‘therefore every man is just’ and ‘no man is not just’, because this sequence holds ‘man is non-just, therefore man is not just’, as has been said. ⁷⁹ ‘from a negative about an infinite predicate there follows an affirmative about a finite predicate and a negative about a denied predicate’, -which is proved by the first principle ‘an affirmation about anything whatever etc     .’ [Ord. prol n.89], and this in the case of simple predicates, because, when the consequence is denied, both opposites are denied of the same thing), and further ‘    therefore everything capable of laughter [sc. is a man]’ by equivalence - therefore from the first etc     .Vatican editors: “that is: therefore by running through from the first (‘only man is capable of laughter’) to the last (‘therefore everything capable of laughter is a man’), the rule [n.9] follows.” ⁸⁰

12. Here some people object that when one relative is included the other is not excluded, because the one is included in the understanding of the other [see note n.7], because ‘things posited are posited (and things taken away are taken away [Peter of Spain, Logical Summaries tr.3 n.21])’ and also relatives are ‘by nature together’ [Categories 7.7b15].

13. But this is contrary to the Philosopher’s intention in Physics 1.2.185a3-5 when he argues there: “If only the principle is, then what is from the principle is not.” Therefore a correlative is not included in the understanding of its relative as something belonging to it (to wit as an essential or integral part), but as something to which the understanding of it is determined - and such is diverse enough from what is included in the relative that it has as much diversity as is required for being excluded from it.