Question One. Whether Some Relation is Said of God from Time

1. About the thirtieth distinction I ask whether some relation is said of God from time.

That there is not:

Because whatever is said of God is God, - therefore it is eternal; therefore it is not new, nor from time.

2. Further, nothing eternal is said of the temporal; therefore not conversely either.

3. Further, making does not seem to be without change - therefore God, who is immutable, does not come to be anything; but if some new relation were said of God, he could be said to be come to be according to that relation.

4. The opposite is plain from Augustine On the Trinity V ch.16 n.17 [sc. God is said to be Lord of creatures from time]. And by relation, because relatives are simultaneous in nature; therefore to relations in creatures in time toward God there correspond relations in God from time.a

a [Interpolation, from Appendix A] Whether a new relation of the creature of God necessarily corequires a new relation of God to the creature.

     That it does:

     On the Trinity V ch.16 n.17: “As there cannot be a servant who does not have a master, so there cannot be a master who does not have a slave.”

     Again, “relatives are simultaneous in nature.”

     Again, ibid.: “If a coin - with no change of the whole of it - can be said relatively, how much more easily in the case of that substance?”

     The contrary is argued here.

     Opinion of Henry [of Ghent] IX: ‘These three things in God differ only according to reason and they are the same respect in reason, differing only in name, ‘creative’, ‘going to create’, and ‘creating’. The name ‘creating’ belongs to him from time, because the creature is referred to him, - yet ‘to create’ (actively) is rather the reason for ‘to be created’ than the reverse (by six principles). The relations that it is customary to say of God from are not properly relations, but new names of eternal relations.”

     Whether every relation by which the creature is referred really to God, and by which God is referred according to reason to the creature, is the same in creatures as it is in God to creatures.

     “It is one in reality, diverse in reason.”

     First in God. New denomination, no new relation; and not as in the case of a column [sc. as a column is to the right of an animal because the animal is to the left of the column], before the passion by which the creature is created, is it new; hence there is from it a new name of action, as. - “Hence Augustine ibid., names things of this sort rather new appellations than new relations: ‘Our Lord, only when he begins to have a servant, and it is a relative appellation from time; for the creature [is not eternal whose lord he is]’.”

     Solution. Three things: in the creature there is a new relation to God, it does not corequire a new one in the other extreme, third according to what reason God is the term of the new relation.

     Proof of the first: because the foundation is new, because ‘creation passively’ is a relation.

     Second: the relation is not real, - not of reason, caused by the divine intellect.

     On the contrary: he knows himself creating; either therefore he knows a new relation about himself or an eternal one. - I respond: neither; in another way: he knows the eternal relation of reason, because it is eternally related to a thing known, but not the same relation; and not by the creative intellect of the Father, when ‘this is created’ is removed.

     Third: it is the term under no idea of relation (Philosopher, Metaphysics 5, 9).

     To the issue at hand, Augustine, the Master.

     The false understanding is rejected and opposites at the same time: the foundation denominates as form.