First Distinction

Question One. Whether Primary Causality with Respect to all Causables is of Necessity in the Three Persons

1. About the second book, in which the Master treats of God as to his primary causality, and this specifically of the causality of the triple cause that he has in respect of creatures, I ask the following questions - and first about the first distinction: whether primary causality with respect to all causable things is of necessity in the three persons; and I understand ‘with respect to all causable things’ in any existence [sc. real and in a certain respect], and this of necessity, such that it cannot be save in the three persons.a

a.a [Interpolation] After the Master has in the first book determined about God as the idea of his natural perfection, in this second book he determines about him insofar as his perfection shines out in the works of creation. And about the first determination, in which the emanation of creatures is determined in general, five questions are asked: the first is whether the first causality with respect to all creatable things, according to any existence of them, is of necessity in the three persons, such that it cannot be save in the three persons; the second is whether God can create anything; the third is whether it is possible for God to produce something other than himself; the fourth is whether the creation of an angel is the same as the angel; the fifth is whether the relation of the creature to God is the same as its foundation.

2. That it is not is argued as follows:

Richard [of St. Victor] in On the Trinity bk.3 ch.16: “If it were only in one person, there would still be in that person the fullness of wisdom and power.” Therefore that one person could produce everything producible.

3. Second as follows: action belongs to a supposit, therefore in the case of several supposits there are several actions; therefore there cannot be one action of three persons, -therefore not one power or one causality either, because “what the power belongs to, that the act also belongs to,” according to the Philosopher On Sleep 1.454a8.

4. The third as follows: ‘as the principle of operation is to the principle [sc. as the principle of operation of one power is related to the principle of operation of a second power], so the operation is to the operation’ (this proposition is plain in the sensitive, intellective, and volitional powers and their acts); but the principle of causation of causable things is something essential (because it is common to the three), therefore it is in some way prior to what is notional and personal; therefore so is action prior to action.a

a.a [Interpolation] On the contrary: the act of creating is related to the three persons as the act of inspiriting belongs to the Father and Son, as is plain from Augustine On the Trinity 5.14 n.15; but the act of inspiriting so belongs to the Father and Son that it belongs to them precisely, and to neither without the other;   therefore the act of creating, which is the first act of causing, belongs to the three persons precisely. - Again, to be able to create belongs to no nature but the divine, nor can it belong to any supposit in divine reality besides the three persons, as is plain from Augustine On the Trinity bk.2 ch.10 n.18, “the works of the Trinity are undivided;” therefore etc     .

[Note from the Vatican editors: the arguments to the contrary answered later in nn. 48-49 are actually other and come from the Lectura: On the contrary: as the goodness of God is to the goodness of the creature, so is production to production; but the goodness of the creature does not exist unless the goodness of God precedes; therefore neither will the production of the creature exist unless production of God inwardly is presupposed. - Further, person more agrees with person in operating in divine reality than substance and virtue in the creature do in operating; but in the creature substance cannot operate without its proper virtue; therefore neither can one person in divine reality operate without another.]

I. Opinion of Henry of Ghent

5. [Statement of the opinion] - There is here the opinion of Henry, Quodlibet VI q.2 - look at it there.a, b

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] [Henry’s opinion] that “the philosophers [sc. Avicenna] only posited in God an intellect of simple intelligence whereby he understands himself and all other things; and likewise they posited a simple will whereby all things are pleasing to him according to the fact they are good in their essence. Now such an intelligence, by the fact it is natural, is naturally disposed to producing the things it has understood and in one determinate way - and the like holds of the will concomitant to such simple apprehension; and therefore the philosophers had to posit that God produced creatures outside himself by necessity of nature and in accord with the best way of producing (namely by intellect and will as nature, not by will as dispositive and elective),” and in this they erred, because according to them no intrinsic personal emanation precedes the production of things externally.

    But this point, in the way the opinion of the philosophers says it, is not valid, because in order for God to produce something outside himself, simple knowledge and simple love of being well pleased (which alone belong to speculative knowledge) are not enough, but there is required a declarative and dispositive knowledge of things to be done and a love inciting and aspiring to the production of them; now this declarative and dispositive knowledge is the Word, and the aspiring love is the Holy Spirit; therefore the Word and Holy Spirit precede the production of things.

    Now the manner of positing [sc. by Henry] is as follows, that “however much God by simple knowledge knows things to be done and however much the will loves them, unless the intellect make disposition about them and the will aspire to the production of them, never would God by his wisdom and will produce them in being outside himself, because” - as I said [sc. just above] - “simple wisdom and its ensuing love pertain to pure speculation, but a work is then first produced when it is disposed by wisdom and aspired to by will, for the wisdom and love for this pertain to praxis. Hence, just as a natural form is not a principle of action as it is the perfection of what it is in but only as it has regard to an effect, so wisdom and love in divine reality, as they are the forms of intellect and will (as such, absolutely), are not a principle of action, but only as they have a regard to an effect; but the wisdom that disposes and the love that aspires, which have regard to act, are nothing but the wisdom and love that proceed [sc. as Son and Holy Spirit].”

    Hence he [Henry] says “just as a created artisan has in the wisdom of his art a double knowledge of the artifact, one of simple knowledge in universal art whereby he intuits things to be done purely speculatively, and another that disposes to a work whereby in his particular art, conceived from universal art, he intuits the order of his production (and this is practical knowledge, without which it is impossible for an artisan to proceed to a work) - so it is on the part of the will, because the artisan has a double love of the artifact, one simple whereby the form of the artifact pleases him (and this love does not order him to a work), and the other aspiring love whereby he desires the work to be made. Things are similar on the part of God, because by his simple knowledge he knows all things simply and absolutely, but in his practical knowledge he knows all things as in an art dispositive and declarative of them for a work - and one of these knowledges proceeds from the other; and likewise on the part of the will about simple and aspiring love.”

    Then they say that “intrinsic emanation is necessarily presupposed causally to emanation extrinsically, not because creatures are produced by way of efficient cause by the whole Trinity and by the produced persons, but because ‘produced wisdom and love’ are reasons in essential intellect and will disposing to the production of creatures by way of formal cause... such that the

    Word proceeding and Love proceeding are, with respect to the essence, the formal principle of the act of creating and as it were the proximate principle while the essence is the remote principle. And the essence, or the Father as he is essence, has the word in himself, that is in his essential intellect, for the perfection of his essential intellect - and similarly the Son (who is the Word itself) and similarly the Holy Spirit; but the Father has the word from himself (because he has it by speaking it), while the Son and Holy Spirit have the word in the essential intellect - perfecting the essential intellect - from the Father alone.”

    On behalf of this opinion, thus faithfully recited, one can argue as follows: Augustine On the Trinity 15.11 n.20 says that “just as there can be a word of ours which is not followed by a work, though there cannot be a work unless a word precedes, so the word of God can exist without any creature existing; but no creature can exist save through him ‘through whom all things were made’ [John 1.3];”     therefore etc     . - Again, there is an argument thus, that if creatures were produced only by simple knowledge and complaisance, then they would be produced of necessity, as the philosophers said; therefore they are produced by dispositive and deliberative knowledge and by elective and freely inclining will. Again, a natural form does not produce its effect immediately but introduces a certain respect; therefore the wisdom of artifice is similar. Third, speculative wisdom and the love corresponding to it are not the immediate principle of producing; but “wisdom as it is an essential in divine reality is speculative, possessing speculative ideas and reasons only for knowing, but wisdom that is personal is not only speculative but practical, possessing the idea of operating.”

    Once these things are seen, it is sufficiently plain what he [Scotus] is arguing against in this question [d.1 nn.6-14].

b.b [Interpolation from Appendix A] that although the whole knowledge that is in the Son is really in the Father (because the Son knows nothing that the Father does not know), and although the love too that is in the Holy Spirit is in the Father and the Son (because the Holy Spirit loves nothing that the Father and the Son do not love), yet the knowledge that is in the Son as it is in the Son has a certain special idea that it does not have as it is in the Father, which idea indeed is the idea of dispositive knowledge; likewise, the love in the Holy Spirit has a certain special idea that it does not have as it is in the Father and the Son, which idea indeed is the idea of love making aspiration for a work and aspiring to production of a work. For knowledge in the Father has only the idea of simple knowledge, but in the Son the idea of dispositive knowledge; for the Son in divine reality is nothing other than art or knowledge manifestive or declarative of the things that the Father knows in simple intelligence, making disposition and order for the things that are to be produced and for the manner of working; love too in the Father and the Son has the idea of love of simple complaisance, but in the Holy Spirit it has the idea of love making aspiration for and impelling to a work.

    Now this distinction of knowledge and love in divine reality can be taken according to a proportion to a double knowledge and love that are perceived in us. For an artisan first simply, and with simple intuition, intuits the form of the work, and second he orders and disposes for the making and for the manner of the making - and this is called dispositive knowledge, which is conceived from the prior knowledge. Likewise on the part of the will: when the form of the work is offered to the artisan he is first pleased in himself with it, and second he is moved by his complaisance with aspiration for the production of it - and this aspiration is called aspiring love, and it arises from the first love.

    One must imagine things to be thus in divine reality, according to their opinion; namely that in the Father there is as it were simple knowledge, not dispositive as to producing the thing or to the manner of producing it, but in the Son there is knowledge having the idea of this dispositive knowledge; similarly there is in the Father and the Son the love of simple complaisance in understood things, but in the Holy Spirit there is the idea of love making aspiration and inclination to a work.

    The second thing - which is said by this opinion - is that, for the producing of an effect, simple knowledge on the part of the intellect is not enough, but dispositive knowledge is required; nor even is the volition of simple complaisance on the part of the will enough, but there is required a love or volition making aspiration; from this a third thing follows, namely that the extrinsic production of creatures presupposes the persons in the divine essence as certain formal ideas of the essence whereby creatures are immediately produced - and this extrinsic production presupposes the intrinsic productions as what these formal ideas are acquired by. Hence this is the conclusion of this opinion, that extrinsic production presupposes intrinsic production as the cause by which is got the immediate productive formal principle; for as the author of this opinion expressly maintains (in the afore noted question, n.5), the essential acts of knowledge and love in divine reality, without the produced persons in addition (namely without produced love and produced word), were not complete or perfect for producing, but they are perfected through the produced word and produced love; and so these terms ‘word’ and ‘love’, perfecting the essential acts of understanding and willing in the three persons, are the immediate formal ideas and immediate principles for producing creatures.

    On behalf of this opinion the same doctor, in the same place [n.5], seems to gesture toward three reasons.

    The first is as follows: that which is produced by the knowledge of simple knowledge and by the love of simple complaisance, as by the immediate principles of production, is produced necessarily by the necessity of a natural determination for producing and for the manner of producing. The point is plain, because such knowledge and such love are disposed in a natural manner to producing their effect, and are disposed only to one determinate manner, no less so than heat is disposed to heating; hence too the philosophers (who posited in God only such knowledge and such love) posited that the world proceeds from God by a natural determination for producing and for one manner of producing only, such that God was not able not to produce nor able not to produce in a way other than he did produce, as is plain from Avicenna Metaphysics 9. Therefore, in order for God not to have produced the world by necessity, it is necessary that he have produced it not through knowledge of simple knowledge and love of simple complaisance - as through immediate principles - , but through dispositive knowledge (dispositive about producing and manner of producing) and through elective love and love freely aspiring to a work, as through acts supervenient to the earlier produced acts; but such dispositive knowledge and such aspiring love are the Word and the Holy Spirit in the case of divine reality; therefore the world is produced by produced word and produced love as through the immediate principles of its production.

    The second reason is as follows: as natural form is disposed to producing its effect naturally, so intellectual wisdom and the volition concomitant to it are disposed to producing their effect intellectually and by art; but “a natural form is not the immediate principle of operation as it is the perfection of that in which it is, but only insofar as it introduces a respect to the effect;” therefore in this way the wisdom and the volition of the artisan are not the immediate principle of a work save as they introduce a respect to the work. But this respect they do not introduce save as they are in the produced word and the produced love; therefore produced word and produced love are, in any artisan whatever, the immediate principle of doing a work by art. - Here one must note that, according to this doctor, intellectual wisdom as an essential is as it were the form of a natural agent as it is the perfection of what it is in, but wisdom itself, as it assumes the idea of word, is as it were the natural form itself as having a respect and order to the effect; hence, according to him, the word has, from its proper idea as word, a respect and order to making things, which essential wisdom, as such, does not have.

    The third reason is thus: speculative wisdom and the volition or love corresponding to it are not the immediate principle of operating, but only practical wisdom or knowledge and the love corresponding to it are - as is plain in the rational artisan, because the universal knowledge, whereby he considers something doable in general and according to its common principles, is not for him the idea of operating, but a certain practical knowledge is, one conceived from or under the universal knowledge; but “wisdom in divine reality, as it is an essential perfection, is only speculative, having, as such, speculative ideas only as ideas of knowing, but personal wisdom -which is the word - is not only speculative for knowing but practical, containing in itself ideas as they are principles of operating;”     therefore the produced word corresponding to it and love are the immediate principle of operating and producing in divine reality. - The reason is confirmed by the verse of the Apostle I Corinthians 1.23-24, “‘We preach Christ,’ he says, ‘the virtue of God and the wisdom of God;’ ‘virtue’ insofar as Christ possesses the idea of practical science (and this is proper to him), according to which also the word is called operative power - ‘wisdom’ insofar as he possesses the idea of speculative science etc     .” (look there in Henry [n.5]).

6. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion there is a threefold argument: For first it seems to follow [sc. from Henry saying that ‘the three are with respect to the essence one formal and, as it were, proximate principle of the act of creating, and the essence is the remote principle’] that the Father does not formally create. For nothing formally acts which is not in act according to the proximate reason for acting; the Father is not formally in act with the Word or with the Holy Spirit. But according to this position the Word and Holy Spirit are the proximate reason for acting and causing, as understanding and volition are the remote reasons for causing; therefor the Father does not formally and proximately create.

7. And if you say that they all create ‘because they all have one word in their intellect by which essential intellection is perfected (although that word is only from the Father who speaks in turn for all), and all have one love in the common will (although that love is inspirited by the Father and Son together in turn for all)’, - against this I argue thus: I ask how the Father has this generated knowledge. Not formally (according to Augustine On the Trinity bk.7 ch.2),a but he has it as a correlative, as the producer has the produced; but in this way the haver is not in act formally with what is had by him; therefore he does not formally act by the action with respect to which the had - or that which is had - is the formal reason for acting.

a.a [Interpolation] because, according to him there, the Father is not wise with generated knowledge or wisdom.

8. It seems further to follow that the Son and Holy Spirit do not create, because generally the formal reason for acting does not act in the action with respect to which it is the formal reason for acting.a

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] but the Son and Holy Spirit, according to this position, are the formal reason for creating;     therefore etc     .

9. And if it be said that the Son creates and the Holy Spirit creates - however, neither of the persons seems to create proximately, because neither is in act formally through the other, and ‘everything acting proximately through intellect and will’ is in act by both the knowledge and the volition necessary for such act.

10. Further, second: I ask what you understand by dispositive or disposing wisdom and by aspiring love. For these are either appropriated to the Word and Holy Spirit or they are proper. If appropriated then in truth they are common to the three, and thus two persons are not the proximate formal reasons for creating. If proper, and if they state a respect of reason to creatures (because according to him [Henry] disposition states a respect of reason to the disposed things), then some respect of reason is proper to some divine person, which was rejected earlier (1 d.27 n.95, Lectura 1 d.18 nn.6-16 [no d.18 in Ordinatio]).

11. Further, what he says about practical ideas, namely that they are not in the Father but in the Word (as if one Person were not sufficient for production), seems to be contrary to Augustine On the Trinity 15.14 n.23, “Therefore this Word is truly truth, because whatever is in the science from which he is generated is also in him - but what is not in the science is not in him either;” and a little later, “God the Father knows all things in himself, and knows them in the Son;” and later, “All things that are in their science are fully seen by each of them.” From these words - and from others set down there -Augustine seems manifestly to maintain that nothing is in the Word more actually than it is in the intelligence of the Father, and consequently that nothing is more distinctly in the Word than it is in the intelligence of the Father.

12. Further, what he [Henry] says there, that ‘the word exists for perfecting essential intelligence’ seems to be false, because that which is the reason for acting with some non-immanent action is not perfected by that action (just as the hot, qua hot, is not perfected by the heating that is received in some passive thing); but according to him [v. 1 d.2 nn.277-79, 290-96] actual intellection is the reason for generating the Word, and the generating is not formally immanent in the Father himself, because the term of generating is not the form of the Father; therefore essential intellection - which is the reason for generating the Word according to him - is not perfected by the produced Word.

13. What he says about universal knowledge, that it is speculative, was rejected above (Prol. nn.360-61, ‘about divine theological science, whether it is speculative or practical’), because practical conclusions are resolved to practical principles and not to speculative ones, just as speculative conclusions are resolved to speculative principles and not to practical ones

14. Also, as to his statement that ‘the philosophers for this reason conceded that God necessarily produces what is other than himself, because they denied that in him proceeding dispositive or disposing wisdom and proceeding aspiring love are produced’, does not seem true, because essential volition - whether as it is in the three persons or as it is in the Son or as it is in the Father - is not necessarily of something other than itself

(as of a creature); for the divine will does not necessarily will anything other than itself, even if, per impossibile, it were not a principle productive internally - because then it would necessarily depend on a creature, which is unacceptable in the extreme.

II. Scotus’ own Solution

15. For the solution of the question, then, three things need to be looked at: first, that the first causality with respect to caused things is necessarily in the three persons, and this in respect of caused things as caused whether as to their true being or as to their being simply; second, because of what was added in the question, ‘about causables according to their causable being’ [n.1], one must look at causality with respect to all causables as to their being in a certain respect, as their being known or their being willed; third, because of what was also added in the question, ‘such that it could not be otherwise than in the three’ [n.1], one must look at whether - ifper impossibile one absolute person were posited - there could be in that one person perfect causality with respect to all causables.

A. The First and Perfect Causality is Necessarily in the Three Persons

16. As to the first point, I say that the perfect causality is necessarily in the three persons.

17. The proof is threefold:

First, because in the case of the principles of the two productions, namely the necessary and the contingent, the principle of necessary production is necessarily prior to the principle of contingent production (for a necessary effect cannot presuppose a contingent one); but something in divine reality is principle of intrinsic production, which production is necessary - and something in divine reality is principle of extrinsic production, which production is contingent; therefore necessarily something in God is principle of production that is necessary and intrinsic before something in him is principle of production that is contingent and extrinsic. In that prior stage then, when intrinsic production is complete, there is communicated to the three persons all the fecundity that is not repugnant to them, and consequently there is communicated to them that which is the productive principle of extrinsic communication; therefore in the instant in which there is in God a proximate principle for producing something contingent extrinsically, that principle is communicated to the three persons.

18. Again, the first object is naturally present to the power that has regard to such object as first before a secondary object is present to it, and this is especially true when only the first object is object of the power from the nature of the thing and of itself, and the secondary object is not of itself object of the power but comes to exist as such through the act of the power; now in this way the first object of the divine intellect and of its will is the divine essence alone, and all other things are only secondary objects and are produced in some way in their being by the divine intellect; therefore the divine essence is naturally present to its intellect as first object before anything else is. But the divine intellect, possessing the object present to itself, is not only an operative power about it, but also a productive power of knowledge adequate to the intellect as productive power; therefore it is then productive of the infinite Word and consequently of the Word generated in the divine nature. Likewise the divine will, possessing the essence actually understood as object present to itself, is not only an operative power (by which, namely, what formally has the will loves the object), but is also a productive power of adequate infinite love and consequently of a person inspirited in divine nature. Therefore naturally before the divine intellect and divine will naturally have or regard some secondary object, the complete idea is possessed of the production of the intrinsic divine persons and consequently those persons are produced before any other object is presented, and consequently much more are they prior to the causing of any other object.

19. Further, third, as follows: the relation of nature to supposit is prior to its relation to second act, because acting presupposes being and the relation of nature to supposit pertains to being;a likewise the relation of nature to supposit is essential and is in the whatness, but the relation that is of nature to acting does not appear to be thus essential.     Therefore divine nature has being in the persons before it is a principle of extrinsic production.b

a.a [Interpolation] because nature must have being before acting; but it only has being in a supposit, just as the species only has being in an individual; therefore etc     .

b.b [Note of Scotus] The first reason [n.17], if it proves any priority, does not however prove that contingent production necessarily pre-requires necessary production, because this priority is not as to the dependence of contingent on necessary production but as to the principle ‘by which’, which is common to both productions. Likewise, the second reason [n.18] assumes that the intellect, having the divine essence present to it before it has the secondary object, is the idea of generating, and this is true in such way that ‘as it is the idea of generating’ it does not require the secondary object; thus it may be said, contrariwise, that although the secondary object pre-requires that the first object be present to the power, yet it does not pre-require that, when the first object is present, the second person be generated, because the first object present in one person is sufficient for making the secondary object present. Likewise to the third argument [n.19]; action presupposes nature in some supposit but not necessarily in several - or not even in any supposit when the nature is agent. Thus these reasons [nn.17-19] are conclusive in the way explained in the third article [nn.41-43]; not because the order is by reason of these productions (so the extrinsic production is not properly said to presuppose or pre-require the intrinsic production), but the order is by the common foundation, in which the intrinsic production is more immediate and therefore prior.

20. Secondly, as to this article [n.16], one must look at what is the reason for this [sc. the priority of intrinsic production to extrinsic production].

And I say that the reason is not as the first position [sc. Henry’s, n.5] gestures to, namely that the Word and Holy Spirit are the proximate formal reasons for causing, or that in some way they complete the causality of the Father [nn.6, 12] (rather the same and equally perfect causality is in the Father as in the three persons). Therefore this priority [sc. of intrinsic to extrinsic production] is of the same sort in the Father and Son with respect to the Holy Spirit as was stated in 1 d.12 nn.7, 38-40 - and the reason posited there for this is not that there is a more imperfect fecundity in one person than in two, but that fecundity is communicated to the Son before the Holy Spirit is inspirited; and then in the instant of origin in which the Father produces the Son, the fecundity by which the Holy Spirit is produced will be in the Father and the Son, and from this the consequence is that then the Spirit is produced by the two, and the fecundity in them is one.

21. And thus here: the divine nature is communicated first in nature to the three divine supposits (according to the reasons set down above [nn.17-19]) before the creature can be immediately created; and therefore in the instant in which the creature is immediately producible, there is one causality in the three persons with respect to the creatures to be produced.

22. And this is the reason of Augustine On the Trinity 5.14 n.15, that ‘just as Father and Son are one principle for the Holy Spirit, so all three persons are one principle for the producing of creatures’.

B. On Causality in regard to all Causables as to their Being in a certain Respect

23. As to the second principal article [n.15], it seems that if in the intellect of the Father there are also practical ideas (as was argued against the first opinion [nn.17-19]), then the Word is generated from a creature as it is an idea in the intellect of the Father; and this is also confirmed by Augustine On the Trinity 5.14 n.15, “[The Word is] born from all things that are in the knowledge of God.”

24. But against this there is argument as follows:

In that case [sc. if the Word is generated from all things as they are ideas in the Father’s intellect] the Holy Spirit is inspirited not only as love of the divine essence but as love of every understood lovable thing, and thus by force of his production he would be love of creatures just as of the divine essence; either then God would necessarily love creatures or the Holy Spirit would not necessarily be produced - both of which are false.

25. Again, not only does the Father know creatures formally but he also knows the Son formally; therefore if the Word is generated from all things as known to the Father, then the Word would be generated from the Word as known to the Father, and thus the Word would be generated from himself.

26. Again, no real relation of any divine person seems to be to anything outside it (as to a creature), from what was said in 1 d.30 nn.49-51; but of the generated to that from which it is generated, if it is really distinct, there is a real relation; therefore the Word is not generated from a stone as it is known to the Father.a

a.a [Interpolation] Again, the Word is generated by act of the paternal memory, not of the paternal intelligence - from 1 d.2 n.291. But in the paternal memory, as it precedes intelligence as it were, a stone does not have intelligible being; for it is not intelligible before it is actually being understood or has actually been understood, but the divine essence alone is first actually intelligible, and it as it were makes all other understood things; nor are these other things intelligible before they are understood, because then they would precede by some distinctness the act of understanding, which is false. Therefore they are only in the memory virtually, because the essence is there formally. - If it be said that they first shine forth as intelligibles before they are actually understood, this should be denied of ‘actual shining forth’; it is only true of ‘virtual shining forth’, because the divine essence actually shines forth.

    Again, a stone in intelligible or understood being is not formally of itself necessary being, because then it would in that being not be a secondary object but the primary one; therefore when produced as such by God, it would not be formally necessary being. Again, the divine intellect would be cheapened if it were moved by a stone; therefore similarly if knowledge of a stone were generated in it by a stone.

27. As to this issue [n.23] therefore, I say as follows that two orders can be understood in divine reality, namely the order of nature and the order of origin (and these are of different ideas), and to each degree of one order the whole of the other order can be assigned.

28. An example first: in a creature, where there is order of origin, of nature, and of duration (which are of different order and of different idea), the whole of one order can be assigned to one degree of another order; for let one instant of duration be taken, and to that one instant all the things ordered according to origin and nature can be assigned -also let one instant of nature be taken, and to it can all the things ordered to origin be assigned.

29. Simply, however, the order of nature is first in divine reality, such that, by proceeding simply, the whole first order of origin should be assigned to the first instant of nature, and if to the second instant of nature the first order of origin is assigned, then it is not the first order of origin but the second. I understand this as follows: the order of nature is taken by comparing objects to the divine intellect and will, because when comparing God’s essence to his intellect and will - which essence is the first object of his intellect and will - there is the first instant of nature, and when comparing other and secondary objects to the divine intellect and will, which objects are not of themselves objects but things produced in their being as objects by intellect and will, there is the second instant of nature.

30. In the first instant of nature, if one stops at it, there is a perfect person, possessing perfect memory of the divine essence (namely possessing an intellect to which the divine essence is present in idea of actually intelligible object), and this person, by this memory of the divine essence, can formally operate and formally produce, as was said before (1 d.2 n.311); but this person is understood in some way first to operate by this memory than to produce by it, and in this prior stage this person is understood perfect in himself and is blessed in his act of intellect in understanding the divine essence as his object. Also, the same person, producing by this memory, produces knowledge adequate to this object, and this object, since it is infinite, produces a per se subsistent formally infinite person; and to this produced person is communicated will as first act, not yet having an adequately produced term. Now by this single will, the first and second persons operate about the divine essence as about the object, loving it infinitely, and at this point they are in themselves perfect and blessed in the divine essence; in addition to this, however, these two persons by this same will - being single in them - produce love adequate to this object, known under the idea of being lovable, and so produce infinite love and so inspirit a divine person, because nothing is formally infinite save what is God by identity.

31. Stopping therefore precisely in the first instant of nature, comparing the divine essence to intellect and will, there exists in it the whole first order of origin (namely because two perfect persons are originated); and the whole perfection of the divine persons intrinsically, in intellect and will, exists in the first instant of nature, because the whole perfection simply of any person in understanding and willing the divine essence is complete in that instant.a All this therefore as to the first instant of nature.

a.a [Interpolation] because in understanding and willing it they are formally blessed.

32. The second instant of nature follows, when the divine intellect and will are compared to another object, a secondary one. And because in this instant the object is not intelligible of itself but becomes actually intelligible through the intellect and will [n.29] - therefore it does not have being in the divine memory as it is memory, but is produced into the being of object by an act of intelligence (just as second intentions are produced in us by intelligence and are not in memory as it is memory); and whether too these objects be posited as having being through the memory or as being produced in known being by the intelligence, at any rate both memory and intelligence exist in the three persons prior in nature to these objects having being in the memory or intelligence - and so, insofar as memory or intelligence is in the three persons, it is the reason for producing the objects in their being as objects. The Word, therefore, is not produced by first production from a stone as it is in the memory of the Father, because either a stone does not have being in the Father’s memory as this memory is the principle of producing the Word, or, if a stone does have being in the memory, it does not have it naturally before memory is understood to be in the three persons.

And in this way can it be proved that causality with respect to causable creatures in known being is necessarily in the three persons, as was proved in the second reason for the first article [n.18], and this reason is equally valid for this second article.a

a.a [Interpolated note] About the remark that ‘it is produced by act of intelligence’ [n.32] there is a doubt, because at least it does not exist as formally intelligible in an act of intelligence, although it is there produced by action of memory and not of intelligence. - An example about second intentions is perhaps not similar, because a comparison with an object made by the intellect seems only to be a comparison with the considering intellect as cause, and an absolute object that is shown to the intellect by virtue of another object existing excellently in memory is not like this; a second intention is not made to be actually understood by virtue of the thing that shines forth in memory in the way this stone is made to be understood by virtue of the divine essence shining forth in God’s memory; for take away the comparing act [sc. of the human intellect thinking a second intention] and posit only absolute acts in some way or other, and the stone will be known, but a second intention without a comparing act will never be. Likewise, a second intention is made in its true being and not in known being, therefore it exists before it is known because it is known by a reflex act; a stone is not made in its being save only in diminished way, and so it is known -and by a direct act - before it exists. See on this 1 d.10 n.41, because memory is a principle productive of knowledge of an object shining forth in memory not only formally but also virtually, and so the object exists formally first in produced knowledge, or more or less.

33. However, in the second instant of nature there can be assigned a certain order of origin, because the Father understands stone first in origin before the Son does, because the Father understands stone from himself while the Son not from himself but gets this from the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son; but this second order of origin is not origination simply, namely that by which the divine persons are produced in being of nature simply, but is as it were origination in a certain respect, consequent to the persons already produced.

34. An example of this in creatures: if there is an origin of Socrates from Plato per se in humanity, the order of origin in them in having humanity is the first order of origin simply, but the order of them in having the capacity to laugh is a different order of origin, in a certain respect as it were - because just as in the first instant of nature Socrates has humanity from Plato, so in the second instant he has the capacity to laugh from him; and if both naturally had humanity before the capacity to laugh was produced, both would together cause the capacity, and yet one would have from another the fact that they caused it.

35. So I say in the issue at hand, that the Word’s being infinite generated knowledge is his being infinite knowledge of infinite essence, and this is through his origin from the Father in the first instant of nature; but the Word’s being knowledge of a stone [n.23] or having knowledge of a stone from the Father generating him, this is as it were to originate the Son in a certain respect or in a respect that is additional to ‘Word simply’; for this is not his being generated simply under the idea of a divine person, because neither is it under the idea of knowledge simply infinite and of formally infinite essence as its per se object; for although this infinite knowledge, which is of infinite essence as per se object, is concomitantly knowledge of a stone, yet insofar as it is of a stone it does not have infinity formally.

36. And as has been said of what is produced in understood being [nn.32-35], so can it likewise be said of willed being [n.15].

37. And if it be objected against this [sc. against the causality of the three persons in respect of the creature in known being] that the Father produces a stone in known being prior in origin to the Son’s producing it, therefore the Son does not produce it or the same thing may be produced twice or at any rate may be produced after it is understood to have been already produced (for it is already understood to have been produced by the Father in the prior instant of origin) - I reply that the Father does produce a stone prior in origin to the Son (that is, the Father from himself and the Son not from himself), and yet the Son produces the stone with the same production and in the same instant of nature, and yet to the same instant of nature can be assigned all the degrees of origin [n.33]. So it does not follow that a stone is twice produced or is produced naturally beforehand, because then it would be produced by the Father in an instant prior in nature than by the Son, which is not true; for in the same instant of nature when the Father produces a stone in such being, the Son has the same nature and consequently all the productive fecundity (that is not repugnant to him), and so has the virtue of producing a stone - and before that instant, in order of nature, the stone is not understood to have been produced in known being.

38. And if you say ‘at any rate there is some order in which stone is understood to have been produced by the Father before by the Son, therefore it cannot be produced by the posterior in origin, therefore not by the Son either, for the Son cannot produce a son, because the generative force as it is in the Father prior in origin has a term adequate to it’ - I reply and say that in the case of origination in a certain respect things are not as they are in origination simply; for origination simply posits an originated in being simply, and therefore what in real being precedes origination simply precedes also the originated simply, and thus it cannot be from the originated - and hence it is that the Word cannot produce another word; but in the case of origination in a certain respect the thing originating does not produce an originated in any being simply, and so there can stand with this that its production precedes some originated in such a way that yet it does not simply precede that originated.

39. But this does not seem to suffice, because there seems to go on being a doubt how the Word can produce a stone in known being and how a stone can be produced by the Word when it is produced first in origina by the Father in such being, and the Word cannot produce a word, therefore likewise neither can he produce a stone in known being - provided the reason that the Word cannot produce a word is this which is commonly posited, namely that ‘a term already adequate to the generative virtue or force as it is in the Father is pre-understood’ [n.38] - I reply that this proposition ‘every power having an adequate term prior in origin before it exists in something is not for that something a principle of producing’ is not true unless is added that ‘the haver of the communicated (or adequate) principle cannot be a different term’, or unless is added that ‘the term is not producible a second time by this haver’. So it is in production simply, because ‘the Word having the same memory as the Father’ cannot exist really before the Word is produced simply, and neither is another word producible by the Word having that memory; but it is not thus in the case of the production of creatures in intelligible being.

40. But this response destroys a certain position that is set down by many in 1 d.7,Vatican Editors: Scotus did not deal with this question in 1 d.7 in the Ordinatio and he here corrects a position he had himself embraced in the Reportatio, IA d.7 n.58, “Although the Son has the essence that is the productive principle of the Son, yet he cannot produce by it, because it is already understood to have in the Father a term adequate to the production; and so the essence in the Son cannot be a principle of production of the same idea, because then the production would not have been adequate to the principle in the Father.” ¹ which posits that the Son cannot generate; for the whole reason is not that ‘the memory as it is in the Father has an adequate term’, but one must add that ‘it has a term adequate to the principle, and a term not producible by that to which such a principle is communicated’; because if it were producible by that to which such a principle is communicated, the principle would be communicated to it also in idea of being a principle for producing, and so it could produce by that principle. Now when one asks further why ‘to the Word having the same memory as the Father’ the memory is not communicated in idea of productive principle, it seems one must prove it by something other than by a term adequate to the idea of this principle as it is in the Father.

a.a [Interpolated note] Understand that ‘first in origin’ does not only mean ‘from itself’ (or ‘not from another’) but also ‘from which a second’. Although therefore the Father understands stone from himself, yet if, insofar as he understands stone, he is not ‘from whom is the Word’ (neither simply nor as understanding stone), the Father will not, insofar as he understands stone, be perfectly prior in origin to the Son; and this supposition seems true because the essence ‘as it is in the Son’ is not a less perfect idea of understanding all things than as it is in the Father; therefore since the Father knows all things by the essence alone, the like will hold of the Son.

    Again, if the essence can be the reason for the Son of knowing all things, then it is in fact the reason - because although the science of stone in the Father could be the idea of the science of stone in the Son, yet the essence precedes stone understood by the Father, because it moves more efficaciously.

    Again, stone formally known is only in the intelligence of the Father; the intelligence is not the idea of generating [sc. rather the memory is].

    Again, the remark of Augustine On the Trinity 15.14 [n.23, “[The Word is] born from all things that are in the knowledge of God”] is expounded thus: “from all things... ” supply ‘virtually’ because from the essence, which is virtually all things.

    But does the Son have actual knowledge of stone by virtue of the essence as it is in the memory of the Father or as it is in the memory of the Son? It seems that, as it is in the memory of the Father, it precedes, giving to the Son everything that it can give.

    I reply that the essence absolutely is the first object (not the essence ‘as in someone’), but along with the essence the intellect concurs, by which intellect each person operates as it is his and not as it is another’s. Therefore one should posit only one order of origin, because in the second instant of nature there is no origin; not simply so, as is plain - nor in a certain respect, because what is in the Son in the second instant is not in him through anything in the originating person as through a principle productive in the second instant, but what is in the Son in the second instant is in him only through what he received in the first instant.

    And then the example about ‘capacity to laugh’ [n.34] seems apt, understanding it in this way, that there is origination simply as to humanity, but in the second instant - as to the property [sc. capacity to laugh] - there is not, because he who is generated by what he receives in the first instant is now capable of laughter in the second, and not because of some other beginning in the generator; thus did the Word receive intellect in the first instant (to which the essence is present in itself) and through this in the second instant he knows it.

    But is there not some order to knowledge of a stone in the Father and the Son [n.38]? - I reply: not first but as it were concomitantly, because of that in each person which the knowledge is concomitant to in this person and in that, and in it they have per se an order of origin.

    Yet the doubt seems to remain (touched on here [n.39]), how does the Son produce stone if the Father produces it first in origin? - I reply: the productive principle is in the Father first in origin before it is in the Son, but the Father does not produce stone in that priority of origin but only when the essence has been communicated to the three. One should not say, then, that the principle is communicated under act, as it were, and therefore the act is communicated, but that the principle is first communicated and as ‘already communicated’ it is under act.

    On the contrary: therefore the Father does not, in the first now of origin, have the principle under act. - This can be conceded as he is the principle of origin simply; but in the second instant of nature there is a certain order of origin, not simply nor in a certain respect, but concomitantly as it were (as was said above, in this note), namely in having the principle under act ‘because in having the principle’ - and thus the Father in the first moment of origin has concomitantly the knowing of stone, but this knowing is not the idea of originating anything in the Son.

C. Whether in an Absolute Person, if posited, there could be Perfect Causality with Respect to all Causables

41. As to seeing and understanding the third article [n.15], one needs to know that, in the case of creatures, if a cause is compared to two ordered effects, the comparison of it to each effect is more essential than the comparison of one effect to the other; for they depend in order on each other because of their dependence on the same cause, and do not, conversely, depend in order on the same cause because of the dependence of one on the other; therefore if in this case, per impossibile, the order of effects ordered among each other be destroyed, then not for this reason is the order and dependence of each on the cause to be denied, because a more impossible thing is not to be conceded because of a lesser impossible thing, nor is a more necessary thing to be denied because of a lesser necessary thing.

42. An example. If it be posited that fire has two ordered effects, namely to heat and to burn, and if fire is disposed to each effect more essentially than burning presupposes heating - then, if it is posited per impossible that fire cannot heat, not for this reason must the denial be made that fire cannot burn, nor is he who binds himself to holding the first obliged to hold the second. For this consequence would only hold, ‘if fire could not heat therefore neither could it burn’, because of this understood affirmative proposition ‘what can burn can heat’ - which is destroyed by the supposition [sc. ‘if it be posited that fire cannot heat’], where the perfect idea of fire is posited as being able to stand with the opposite of what it is to heat [sc. not to heat]; and so that which is more immediate to fire (namely to burn) than heating is can stand with the opposite of what it is to heat (because it is posited as standing with ‘not to heat’), and so this position destroys the proposition by which such a consequence would hold.

43. So applying this to the proposition,a one can say that something in God is the principle of intrinsic production and something in him is principle of extrinsic production, so that these productions are ordered to the same principle, and in some way the order of each production to the cause is more necessary than the order of either production to the other. If then - per impossibile - it be posited that one of the principles is not a principle of a prior production (which is posited when one person is posited to be absolute and when intrinsic production is denied), yet not for this reason does it seem one should deny that the other principle is a principle of extrinsic production, because even on this supposition the whole idea of a principle of extrinsic production is still had and all that is denied is the order of production to production, which order does not stand but is destroyed by the supposition. And so if the argument is made ‘this person cannot produce inwardly, therefore he cannot produce outwardly’, the consequence should be denied by one who is bound to the antecedent; for the consequence only holds through the proposition ‘the power to produce something outwardly presupposes inward production’, which is destroyed by the hypothesis. And therefore it seems that a causality perfect in its idea - namely insofar as it states a comparison with an outward product or with extrinsic production - does not require a relation to intrinsic production, although the same foundation is necessarily the idea and cause of each production, intrinsic and extrinsic, and of intrinsic before of extrinsic. Now for this reason does it seem that the philosophers did not posit a relation between these productions; for although they saw a necessary relation to an efficient principle, yet they did not see a necessary relation of extrinsic causation or production to intrinsic production - and so, while they denied the intrinsic production, yet they conceded the extrinsic causation or production [n.14].

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] This reason seems to stand on this claim: every cause productive of two ordered effects, one of which is necessary and the other contingent, if per impossibile the cause not produce the first of these effects it could still produce the second; but the eternal Father is productive principle of the Word necessarily and of creatures contingently; therefore if he does not produce the Word, he could still produce creatures.

    An objection is that the soul produces understanding before willing, and yet it cannot produce and create willing without understanding.

D. Conclusion

44. To the principal question therefore [n.1] it is plain that perfect causality with respect to causables outwardly is of necessity in the three, and this with respect to all causables in any causable being (whether being in a certain respect or simply), so that it could not fail to be in the three [nn.21, 32]; yet if per impossibile there were one absolute person, it should as a consequence be said that in such an absolute person simply there would exist such ‘perfect causality’ [n.43]. And thus ‘perfect causality’ does not seem, from the idea of this term, to include necessarily that it exist in the three persons, just as neither does it include, from the idea of this term, the idea of inward production, even though in fact inward production is necessarily presupposed to it - just as neither does being able to burn, from the idea of it, necessarily include being able to heat, although in fact the latter is presupposed to the former [n.42].

III. To the Principal Arguments

45. To the principal arguments.

First to Richard [n.2]: it is plain that he concludes to the third article of the position [nn.41-43].

46. To the second [n.3], it was stated in a like case, 1 d.12 n.49-52, how Father and Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit - and better, as to the issue in hand, in 1 d.4 nn.11-13, where there was discussion about the truth of the proposition, ‘God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit’; and it was also touched on 1 d.20 nn.24-27, about how power is the same in the three persons.

47. To the third [n.4] I say that although something essential is the principle of producing something externally, yet it is only a principle immediately applicable to work or to act as it is understood in the three persons, because - as was said in 1 d.12 nn.38-40 - what is a principle of ordered acts is only understood to be in proximate potency to remote act as it is under prior act (just as the soul is never understood to be in proximate power to an act of willing save as it is actually understanding, because when it is in proximate potency for willing something it does actually will it, and nothing is willed unless it is understood); and thus although any essential [sc. in God] - in respect of itself - precedes the notional [sc. in God] in some way, yet not every essential needs to be in every outward respect able to precede something notional.

48. To the first argument for the opposite [sc. the second argument from the Lectura, note to n.4 above] I say that the divine persons necessarily come together in every operation outwardly, and more so than substance and virtue - because the divine persons have one operation, by which they are one operator simply; and yet if per impossibile the virtue were in one person, nothing of perfection would be lacking to him to prevent him being perfectly able to produce everything producible.

49. To the second argument [note to n.4] I say that it proceeds about the fact, that production presupposes production - not however as ‘formally cause’ or under the idea by which it is production, but as immediate principle as it were.

Question Two. Whether God could create Something

50. Secondly I ask whether God could create something.

51. It seems that he could not:

Because if something is produced which before was not produced, this is because something is disposed differently now than it was before; this cannot be posited as having happened in the issue at hand unless the cause of the change is the agent, because the passive thing did not exist before;     therefore the agent must be disposed differently now than it was before and consequently must undergo change. But the first agent cannot change; therefore etc     .

52. If it be said that the agent can produce a new effect without change of itself -on the contrary: ‘because the agent gives being, therefore does the passive or produced thing receive being’, and not conversely, ‘because the produced thing receives being, therefore does the producer give being’; therefore some new relation in the agent to the produced thing must naturally precede and not conversely; therefore change in the agent must precede too, which is not to be posited in God - therefore not creation either.a

a.a [Interpolated note from Appendix A] Creation is change, and every change precedes its term; therefore I ask in what thing the change was? And one must necessarily grant a subject of change. Therefore no change can be from nothing.

53. Secondly thus: a cause equally always determined to acting seems equally always to act and to produce the effect, because there does not seem any reason that it should produce now and not at other times, if it was at other times as determined to act as it is now; but if something is created now, the cause is otherwise disposed now than it was before and through a greater determination of it now to the effect than before; therefore the cause is sometimes more determined to producing the effect than at other times, and thus not equally so - and consequently it will have changed.

54. Third thus: according to the Philosopher On Generation 2.10.336a27-28, “the same thing while remaining the same is of a nature to do the same thing;” therefore there will never be variation in the effect if variation is not first naturally posited in the cause.

55. Fourth thus: if no change is posited on the part of the cause (so that it be said to be now ‘more approximate’ or ‘less approximate’ than at other times), and if there could not be any impediment on its part either - no reason appears for it to act now and not to have acted before.

56. And if you say, ‘because it acts voluntarily, therefore it can act when it wants to act’ - against this: there seems no reason for a voluntary agent to act sometimes and not at other times save because it expects a greater opportunity for acting now than at other times; but this cannot be assigned to the first agent and first mover with respect to its effect;     therefore neither ‘does it act when it wants because it acts voluntarily’.

57. To the opposite:

Genesis 1.1, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”

I. To the Question

58. I reply:

To create is to produce something in fact from nothing. Now although the ‘from’ can be taken in many ways (as is plain from Anselm Monologion 8), namely as far as it denotes order etc     . [1 d.5 n.53],2 yet there is - in addition to this - still multiplicity when taking ‘from’ thus as it denotes order, because it can denote the order of nature or of duration.

A. About Creation from Nothing as ‘From’ denotes Order of Nature

59. In the first way [sc. when ‘from’ denotes order of nature] the philosophers concede that God can create and produce something from nothing, as is plain from Avicenna Metaphysics 6.2 (f. 92ra) (look there).The three ways are: negatively, when someone says he is speaking ‘of nothing’ because he is not speaking; or affirmatively when the ‘from’ marks the matter out of which something is made; or affirmatively when the ‘from’ marks origin or order, in the sense of ‘after nothing’. ²,“Since something from among ‘things by essence’ was cause of the being of something else always, assuredly it will always be the cause of it as long as it has this being; and if the being of the cause always was, the being of the something else always will be; the reality of this cause then is more worthy in causality than all causes, by the fact it absolutely prevents a thing not to be. This then is the cause that gives a thing being in fact, and this is what for the wise is meant by ‘creation’, which is the giving of being to something after absolute not-being. For the caused thing, as far as concerns it in itself, is that it not be - but as far as concerns its cause, it is that it be; but what belongs to a thing from itself is, as to understanding, prior in essence, not in time, to what belongs to it from something other than itself; therefore everything created is being after not-being, by posteriority of essence.” ³

60. I understand this point ‘about priority of nature’ as follows:

Something can be said to be ‘prior in nature’ positively because it is in something first, and is a prior entity to that which is said to be present in the thing posteriorly in nature - as is the case with animal and rational in man, and with substance and accident in some per accidens composite thing.

61. In another way one thing is said to be prior in nature to another privatively, as it were, or potentially, by the removal or exclusion of another, because it would belong to it when some other cause is excluded - namely because it is not present in what it is said to belong to first but would be in it unless it were prevented by something else; as if it were said that privation is naturally prior to form in matter, not indeed because the two are in matter together (such that privation would be present before form was), but privation can pro tanto be said to be prior by nature, and prior by nature to form in matter, because privation would always be present in matter unless it received form from some agent - such that for the having of privation matter alone suffices along with negation or privation of an extrinsic cause, but for having form an extrinsic cause is required; yet privation is not of the idea of matter, as neither is form, nor are both present together in matter.

62. So I understand it in the issue at hand, that a creature does not have of itself not-being, nor that being and not-being are together in it (as if being and not-being were simultaneous), nor that it somehow has not-being when it is; but that, as far is of itself, it would have not-being unless an extrinsic cause were to prevent its not-being by giving it being - because from its own idea alone it would not have being, when every extrinsic cause giving it being is excluded, because in no way would it have being unless it were produced in being by an extrinsic cause; such that one should more properly say that of itself formally a creature is not rather than that of itself formally a creature has not-being (because ‘of itself formally it has’ is an affirmation [sc. and not a negation]); neither does it of itself have being nor not-being.

63. On behalf of this position [n.59] as so understood [n.62], an argument is made as follows: a more perfect agent presupposes less in its acting than a more imperfect agent does - just as nature presupposes less than art, because nature presupposes only being in potency and art presupposes being in act; but God is a more perfect agent than nature or art; therefore he presupposes in his acting less than being in potency (which is something presupposed by nature), and so he presupposes nothing, and as a result he can create.

64. This reason is adduced by some for the second member, namely as ‘from’ denotes an order of duration. But there [n.62] it is altogether invalid, because although God does not, in producing, presuppose anything from which he may produce, yet the consequence does not thereby hold that he could produce something new, just as this does not follow (by force of the argument) about nature and art either, because the inference ‘nature does not presuppose in its action a being in act, therefore it can produce something altogether new as to existence in act’ does not follow.

65. But the argument [n.63] is not valid for the first member either, because, according to the philosophers, any intelligence is an agent superior to a natural agent, and yet they do not commonly concede (although Avicenna would concede it) that an intelligence could create or produce something from nothing.

66. Therefore I argue differently for this same first member, namely thus: God can immediately cause and effect something, therefore he can create and make something from nothing.

67. The antecedent is manifest, because God is the first efficient cause, from 1 d.2 nn.43-59; and if he makes nothing immediately then he cannot make anything mediately either (because he is the first efficient), and so he would produce no effect.

68. The consequence [n.66] I prove thus, because if he can effect something, that something does not have of itself necessary being formally, and so it has being from a cause; therefore it has being after non-being, according to the understanding of this member [sc. where ‘from’ states order of nature]. And he produces immediately, with nothing else presupposed - because if something is presupposed, then that something presupposed would be effected by him (as is plain from 1 d.8 nn.7-8), and so the thing that presupposes it would not be an immediate effect from him. We have, therefore, from the first antecedent [n.66] to this consequent, that he produces, in order of nature, something from not-being to being, and that with nothing presupposed; therefore according to this understanding he creates. This reason seems to be pointed to by Avicenna Metaphysics 6.2 [n.59, see the note there].

B. About Creation from Nothing as ‘From’ denotes Order of Duration

69. About the second member, as ‘from’ denotes order of duration [n.58, cf. Prol. n.18, 1 d.2 nn.83, 120, 149, d.8 nn.251, 255, d.42 nn.10, 13], creation is commonly denied by the philosophers, because they say that God necessarily produces something immediately and with nothing presupposed - but what he mediately produces, he produces presupposing something from which he produces, because he then produces through second causes; and so he produces neither a mediate nor an immediate effect from nothing, taking ‘from’ here in the sense of order of duration.

70. But proof was given against this in 1 d.8 nn.275-277, 281-291 (and it was also touched on in 1 d.39 nn.35-37, 41, 91 [in the Lectura; there is no d.39 in the Ordinatio]), because God causes ‘everything that exists outwardly’ contingently and from himself; and from this it follows that he does not cause necessarily, and consequently that he does not necessarily cause something eternal (because Aristotle seems in Metaphysics 9.8.1050b6-8 to concede that everything eternal is necessary; he seems to indicate the same in On the Heavens 1.12.283b1-6 against Plato, who conceded that something is eternal and yet is able not to be, Timaeus 30-33).

71. But you will object against this reason [n.70] that it is not necessary that, where there is contingency in the effect, there possibility for newness may be inferred; for God wills a contingently (from 1 d.8 nn.275-277, 281, 291), and yet he cannot de novo not will a, because then he would be changeable.

72. I reply. In divine production there can be newness of product although there is no newness in the producer himself, because in the case of ‘first production’ there is change and newness on the part of the product, as will be plain when responding to the first principal argument [nn.85-86]. But in ‘willing’ there cannot be newness or change on the part of the thing willed unless there is some newness on the part of the act of willing, because the act of willing - being disposed the same and in the same way -cannot be of anything newly willed; for a willed thing does not have willed being save through the act of willing, and so it is not new in the being of being willed save through a new act of willing.

73. So it seems in some way to follow, therefore, that if God can cause something contingently, he can also contingently cause something new, because there is no reason that he could not cause a non-eternal thing contingently just as he can cause something eternal contingently, on the grounds that he does not cause necessarily; for that a ‘caused thing’ had to be eternal seemed to follow from the necessity of causation or from the immutability of the causer himself, neither of which entails the eternity of the thing caused; therefore newness has the possibility of being inferred.

74. There is also another argument for this member [the second, n.69], because if something is new, I ask by what cause is it new? Let the cause be a. - I then argue: a produced this new thing either when disposed in the same way or when disposed in a different way. If in the same way then the intended conclusion is obtained, that from the same unchanged cause there can be some new effect. If when a is disposed in a different way, I ask by what mover a was disposed differently for producing this new effect; there is no process to infinity, therefore a stand will at length be made at something that will be new from a cause that is uniformly disposed.

The reason is confirmed too, because if from the first mover this part of new motion can be that never was before, why cannot some whole thing thus be new, nothing of which ever was before?

75. But this reason (along with its confirmation) is of little validity against the philosophers [n.69] and would easily be solved by them; however the conclusion is true, that from some unchanged agent there can be a product in some way thus new.

76. However, in this second member (namely when understanding ‘from’ as it states an order of duration), a distinction can be made about what is meant by ‘nothing’ [n.58], namely that it can be taken for nothing in every way [nn.83-84], or for nothing in being of existence, although it is in some way in being of essence [n.82].

77. And some people give an example, that although God could create from nothing in the second way, yet not from nothing in the first way [n.76], because nothing can be produced that is not on its own part possible, according to Avicenna Metaphysics 4; but nothing is not possible on its own part, because there is no reason that one nothing should be possible on its own part and another nothing not.

78. The reason is also confirmed, because in every creature there is composition of act and potency - and wherever these are, possibility or potentiality precedes in order of nature; therefore potentiality, in whatever created thing it is, naturally precedes and is prior in nature to actuality. And then this potentiality is not nothing but belongs to some entity according to some being; not according to being of existence, therefore according to quidditative being.

79. And this is posited according to the way recited in 1 d.43 n.5 [of the Lectura, not the Ordinatio]. For it is there posited that, by the active power of God relative to itself, things are first produced in passive possible being relative to themselves; and then further they can be produced in being of existence, but not unless they have first in nature been produced in quidditative being and in passive possible being.

80. Against this is the argument in the same place [1 d.43 nn.6-9], that ‘a thing is not produced in possible being by omnipotence but by intellect, whereby the thing is produced in intelligible being’; and when it is in intelligible being, existence is not repugnant to it, nor is it of itself formally necessary; therefore it is possible.

81. Likewise there is another argument, in 1 d.36 n.17, against this being of essence, that ‘if this being were true being, production in that being would be truly creation and it would be into some being simply from nothing’. Therefore this production is simply different; not in possible being (or not of a thing in possible being), because if a thing is not possible before it is in being of essence, and if it is produced in this being -then something is produced in some being, by some production, that is not possible on the part of itself.a

a.a [Interpolated note from Appendix A] It was impossible or necessary; therefore from the impossible or the necessary it becomes possible - which is false; for what is impossible on its own part cannot be produced in being of essence or in being of existence.

82. As to this third article then [n.76], I say that God can create in being of existence from nothing (that is, not from anything), and consequently he can create from nothing (that is, not from anything) according to being of essence, because, as was proved in 1 d.36 nn.26-29, 48-49, 53, never is being of essence really separated from being of existence.

83. And yet a thing cannot be created, that is, produced in being simply, from nothing, that is, from what is in no way a being (whether simply or in a certain respect). For nothing is created that did not first have understood and willed being, and was in understood being formally possible, as was said in the first reason against the position in question here [nn.80, 79]; and then it was as it were in proximate potency so as to be able to be an object of omnipotence and to be posited in being simply.

84. Something can be produced (although not created) from nothing simply, that is not from anything in being of essence or in being of existence or in any being in a certain respect - because a creature is produced in intelligible being not from any being, neither simply nor in a certain respect, nor from something possible in that being from its own side; but this ‘to be produced’ is not to be created, because there is not anything created in being simply, but it is produced in being in a certain respect.

II. To the Principal Arguments

85. To the first principal argument [51] I say that the first cause can immediately produce some new effect without any newness in the cause itself. The thing is plain from an example: for if the sun be posited always to be in itself equally bright and if there is created some transparent medium near to it, the sun will de novo illuminate it, such that nothing new will be in the sun in order for there to be from it a new illumination; and if it could of itself posit a transparent medium and put it under the light, then, just as it causes light in it, so it could produce in being the whole thing - namely the illumined medium -without any newness in its own self.

86. And if you say ‘it could not do this if it were a natural agent and disposed uniformly (because then it would always produce uniformly), therefore the example is not valid for illustrating the issue at hand’ - I reply: it is true that this example was valid to this extent, that it is not necessary to posit newness in the cause because of newness of effect; yet it was not valid as to there being a new effect from a cause naturally acting and complete, because such an agent would always uniformly act (if it were such) with respect to the effect. But a free agent can by the same previous will produce a new effect for the time when it wills that new effect to be; for it is not necessary that ‘if it eternally wills and cannot will de novo, therefore it wills for the eternal’, just as it is not necessary in me that if I now will something, that I will it for now; but I can will it for tomorrow, and with the same will in place (without any change on the part of my will) I can cause that new thing tomorrow, for which I will it.

87. And when argument is made against this by the reasoning ‘that it is naturally necessary for some new relation to the product to precede in the producer and not conversely’ [n.52] - I say (as was said in 1 d.35 nn.31-32, 47-50, and frequently elsewhere, d.3 n.326, d.30 nn.22-23, 30-45, 65-68, d.43 nn.11-12) that on an absolute in the cause there follows immediately an absolute in the effect - and in the effect there first follows a respect to the cause; and then, if there is some respect of the cause to the effect, the respect to the effect is last and as it were null.There are four in order: absolute in the cause, absolute in the effect, respect or relation of effect to cause, respect or relation of cause to effect; see references in the text. ⁴ As to what the argument says, therefore, that ‘because the cause gives being, therefore the effect receives being and not conversely’ [n.52], I say that if the argument intends by the ‘because’ a reduplication of relation in the cause to some new reality in the cause (whether relative or absolute), the proposition is false; but if it intends to reduplicate the first act of the cause, which cause naturally precedes the thing caused, in this way the proposition is true: for the absolute in the cause naturally precedes the thing caused.

88. And if you say ‘it does not cause merely because it is absolute, for it is such -namely absolute - even when it is not causing’, I say that in the instant in which it causes, it still causes as naturally prior to the action itself - and as such only the absolute itself is understood, from which the caused is posited in being; and so nothing can be taken along with the ‘it causes’ save that it is prior, and not that it is so in respect of this instant or in respect of another one. But imagination deceives ‘because it always seems that the cause is indeterminate up to the instant when it causes, and then that some relation -determining the cause to the effect - is required first on the part of the cause’, which is false; for the same absolute, which in the cause preceded both in nature and in duration the effect produced or caused, is in the cause in that instant naturally before it causes -and according to the same absolute ‘according to which it was first causative’ it now is causing, and not according to anything added, whether absolute or relative.

89. To the second [n.53], when argument is made for determination - I say on the same basis [n.88] that a cause equally determined to producing some product (as far as concerns its part) can sometimes produce and sometimes not produce, because just as in natural things ‘a cause being determined on its own part’ is its having the form whereby to cause, so in a free thing ‘a cause being determined’ is its having there a volition with respect to something willable; and just as in the former case the form can be had before the effect is caused (but it is now prevented from the outside or by the absence of a passive thing), so also a volition can be had in the latter case before the willable thing is had, and before both in nature and in duration.

90. To the third, from the Philosopher in On Generation [n.54] - I say that the Philosopher’s understanding is about a natural agent, as is plain from him in that place.

91. To the fourth [n.55] I say - as was said in 1 d.8 n.299 - that ‘it is a mark of lack of education to seek demonstrations for everything’ (according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 4.4.1006a5-8), ‘for there is no demonstration of principles’. And in the same way in contingent things; otherwise there would be a process to infinity in the case of contingents, because contingent things do not follow from necessary ones. And therefore this will of God - which wills this and for now - is immediate and first cause, for which no other cause must be sought; for just as there is no reason that he wanted human nature to be in this individual and to be possible and contingent, so there is no reason that he wanted it now and not then, but only that ‘because he wished this to be, therefore it was good that it be’; and to seek some reason for this proposition - although it is an immediate contingent one - is to seek a reason for what no reason should be sought.

92. And when the argument speaks about ‘expecting’ [n.56], I say that a will that has goodness from the willable itself, this will - if it is right - immediately wills the willed thing, unless there is some reason that it should will it rather to be at another time, and then it expects or waits for that more opportune time; but a will that has no reason for willing something now (just as neither does it absolutely have a reason for willing this thing) does not have to wait for some opportunity in the willed thing - neither does it have goodness from the willed thing, but conversely.

III. To the Other Arguments

93. To the first argument for the third opinion ‘about being of essence’ [n.77; the first opinion, n.59; the second, n.69], the response is plain from what was said before

[nn.80-81, 82-84]. For I concede that everything creatable was first possible on its own part, but this possibility or potentiality is not founded in any being simply but in known being (such that potentiality for being simply is concomitant to known being), although formally known being is not possible being, because ‘known being’ is being in act in a certain respect - but possible being is to be in potency for being simply, and not to be in act. Nor yet is ‘being in potency’ being simply, but there is a fallacy of simply and in a certain respect; just as neither is ‘future being’ being simply, nor is ‘past being’ being simply; for just as ‘to have passed in being simply’ does not imply being simply, so neither does ‘future being’ imply being simply; therefore much more does ‘able to be simply’ not imply being simply, because ‘able to be’ seems to be more remote from being simply than ‘to be future’ does.

94. To the other reason, about composition of act and potency [n.78], the answer is plain from the same point [n.93]. For although it be conceded that objective potency precedes act, yet that potency is not in any act - and although what is conceded to be known is in some ‘known being’, yet it is not formally known being. However the reasoning in question [n.78] is not valid, because the composition is not of objective potency and terminating act, but this composition is in some other way, as was said in 1 d.8 nn.32-33.

Question Three. Whether it is possible for God to produce Something without a Beginning other than Himself

95. Thirdly I ask whether it is possible for God to produce something other than himself without a beginning.

96. That it is possible:

The Philosopher in Physics 1.9.192a27-31 proves that matter is ungenerated and incorruptible - otherwise there would be a process to infinity in matters. Therefore either matter was not produced, or it was produced without a beginning, which is the intended conclusion; or if not, at any rate some form was produced in it and without a beginning, because matter never was without form.

97. Secondly thus: time, according to the Philosopher Physics 8.1.251b10-28 and Metaphysics 12.6.1071b6-9, is without beginning, which he seems to prove from this: because if not, then time could have been before it was, or could be before it was; but ‘before’ is a difference of time;     therefore before time there was time.

98. Thirdly thus: according to the Philosopher On Generation 1.3.318a23-25, the generation of one thing is the corruption of another. So there never was any first generation, and consequently some generable things were without a beginning.

99. Fourthly thus: a cause not acting by motion and being unable to be prevented can have an effect coeval with it, as is plain in creatures; therefore etc     .

100. On the contrary:

Augustine To Felicianus [Ps.-Augustine ch.7] assigns a definition for creatures and says that ‘a creature is from the fact that - by the will of the omnipotent God - its substance is produced from not-being to being’. If therefore it is of the idea of a creature to be produced from not-being, then it is impossible for it to be produced without a beginning.

101. Secondly thus: by the same reason that God could have produced one thing without a beginning, he could also have produced another - and so things infinite in multitude would have been produced in act; God could also have piled together all the magnitudes that there would have been afterwards and so have made an infinite mass. But an infinity both in mass and in number is rejected in Physics 3.5.204a17-b10.

I. First Opinion

102. Here it is said that God could have produced something ‘other than himself’ without a beginning, because his not being able to have done this (namely to have produced something ‘other than himself’ without a beginning) cannot be demonstrated either by an intrinsic middle term or by an extrinsic one. Not by an extrinsic middle term because that term is the will of God, for which no reason can be known or had as to why it wills this thing to be with a beginning rather than without a beginning. Nor by an intrinsic middle term, namely by the ‘what it is’ of the makeable thing, because the ‘what it is’ abstracts from the here and now; so it is not a reason for demonstrating the here and now.

103. Again, that ‘anything else whatever’ is from God is an article of faith. Therefore it is not expedient for demonstrations to be made about it, neither because of the faithful nor because of infidels; nay, it seems dangerous: as to the faithful indeed, because thus the merit of faith would be made empty, as it seems; and as to infidels, because then they could accuse us of believing these sorts of things for reasons and thus of being without faith - and also if such reasons should seem sophisms to them (just as they seem to certain of the faithful [e.g. Aquinas Sentences 2 d.1 q.1 a.5]), infidels could doubt the things we would believe because of such sophisms.

104. Besides thirdly, Augustine On the Trinity 6.1 n.1, “If fire were eternal the splendor caused by it would be eternal, and would be coeternal with it.”

105. And from this point an efficacious argument is made for this position [n.102], as it seems: for Augustine’s consequence is natural - otherwise it would not be valid against Arius to prove the coeternity of the Son with the Father; but it cannot hold save on the basis of the perfect idea of cause and caused; therefore just as in that case [sc. Augustine’s case of fire] necessary coeternity is inferred from a perfect cause acting naturally, so from a perfect cause acting voluntarily the possible coeternity can be inferred of a limited effect with an unlimited cause, because the only difference there seems to be between a natural agent and a free agent is in acting contingently and naturally (but there is no difference between them in being able to act and not to act, because whatever a natural agent can do a free agent can do as well, and the two differ only in mode of causing).

106. And this argument can be replicated in many ways:

Because no perfect condition, whatever the positive mark laid down (being a condition of perfection), is found in a second cause which is not in the first cause as cause; but it is a mark of perfection in some second cause to have an effect coeval with it - and from this, if the effect were eternal or coeternal with its cause, the perfection would be in the cause;     therefore etc     .

107. The deduction is also made in another way (and it is more or less the same): that the mode of causing does not vary formally the caused thing itself, according to Ambrose Incarnation of the Word 9 n.103; but if God caused naturally and necessarily, he could cause an effect coeval and coeternal with himself; therefore if he now causes voluntarily, although he not cause necessarily, yet he could cause an effect coeval with himself.

108. And if it be said that Augustine’s understanding [n.104] is about the immanent splendor of light, which is not formally caused by it - against this is his text, which says ‘the splendor generated and diffused by it’.

109. And he states the same opinion in homily 36 On John, about a stick and its image in water. But it is certain that such an image, if it existed, would be caused and generated by the stick.

110. Besides, fourthly: whatever is not repugnant to limitation is not repugnant to a creature, if it is an entity; but duration however long is not repugnant to the limitation of a creature, because what lasts for a day is not more imperfect than what lasts for ten years; therefore it seems that an infinite duration would not posit a greater perfection in a creature than a lesser duration, and consequently it posits no repugnance that a creature always was without a beginning.

111. Again, a creature tends to not-being, to the extent it is from itself, just as it is a not-being to the extent it is from itself and from nothing; therefore just as some creature can, without contradiction, always tend to not-being and yet always exist (as is plain of an angel and the soul), so it can without contradiction always have existed and yet - to the extent it is from itself - always have had not-being.

112. Again, Augustine City of God 10.31 says that “if a foot had been in sand from eternity, its footprint would always have been under it, and yet no one would doubt that the footprint was made by the treader; nor would either of them be without the other although one was made by the other.”

113. Again in the same place, “in a scarcely intelligible way” the philosophers said that the world was made and yet does not have a beginning of duration. Therefore this way, if it is scarcely intelligible, is intelligible, and so no contradiction is included in something’s having been always and without a beginning.

114. There is a confirmation too, that it does not seem probable that such brilliant philosophers, and such diligent inquirers into truth and such perspicuous conceivers of the reasons of terms, did not see the included contradiction if it had been included in the terms.

115. And there is also a confirmation (that there is no contradiction there) according to the philosophers, because not only does the natural philosopher consider the four causes but the metaphysician does so too, though under a prior and more common idea [sc. by abstracting from motion or change]; so the efficient cause is in more things than a mover (or even a changer) is, and consequently it can give being without motion. The first efficient cause, therefore, can give being without its having to give new being, because without its having to give being through motion or change.

116. Again, motion is an effect coeval and coeternal with the first mover; therefore there can be some product or effect from the first efficient cause that is coeternal and coeval with it.

II. Second Opinion

117. Against this position [n.102] it is argued [from Henry of Ghent] that there is a contradiction involved in something ‘other than God’ having existed without a beginning; because it is at some time true - or will at some time be true - to say of any produced thing that it is produced, because even of the Son of God produced in eternity it can truly be said that he is produced in eternity. The creature then is either always being produced when it is, or it is produced at some time and not always; if in the second way, then in the instant in which it is produced it first obtains being, and the proposed conclusion is plain [sc. that the creature at some time began to be]; if in the first way, then the creature is in continual becoming - which seems unacceptable, because it would in that case be impermanent.

118. It also seems that in this case [sc. the first way in n.117] being created would not differ from being conserved, and this is disproved in two ways:

First because ‘to be created’ is to be produced from not-being to being, but ‘to be conserved’ belongs to the very being already possessed, and thus to be created is not to be conserved.

119. Second, because a particular agent generates and does not conserve; therefore when both come together in the same thing, the one is different from the other.

120. And added to this reason [n.117] is that a creature has acquired being and consequently it exists after not existing; because if not, it would have being without acquisition, as the Son of God does - although it would not have the same being with that from which it acquires being.a

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A]. Third, by the authority of Augustine Immortality of the Soul 8 n.14, “What is made by him, he guards; for what does not exist per se will be nothing if it is deserted by that through which it exists.” And Genesis 2.1, “God rested on the seventh day from the work of creation,” not from the work of conservation [Henry of Ghent].

121. A second argument is as follows: “Everything that is, when it is, necessarily is,” from De Interpretatione 9.19a23-24; therefore it can only not be because potency precedes its being, whereby it can be prevented from being. But if anything was from God from eternity, no potency preceded its ‘being from God’; therefore it was not able not to be from God.

122. An objection is raised to this that someone predestined can be saved and not saved; therefore likewise in the case of something made from eternity it is possible for it to have been and not to have been.

The response is that predestination regards ‘a thing outwardly’ for some definite now of time, namely a time for which the thing cannot not be and so cannot not be predestined, because predestination corresponds to the nature of the thing; but to give to something being from eternity regards power for infinite eternity, wherein there is no power for the opposite and so not in the act of giving either.

123. And there is confirmation for this, that “in perpetual things to be and to be possible are not different,” Physics 3.4.203b30; and in Metaphysics 9.8.1050b7-8, “Nothing eternal is in potency.”

124. Further, the same is argued thus in another way: any species is in equal potency for existing, when comparing it to God as to the giver of being; therefore just as the sun could have been from eternity, so also an ass, and this a perfect one being able to generate; and from this ass all the other asses that there have been could have been generated, up to this one generated now. And then I ask whether all the asses would in that case have been finite or infinite; if finite, then the whole time from then up to the present would have been finite; if infinite, then, once the extremes are posited, an actual infinity of middles between them could have existed, which is unacceptable.

125. Further, a fourth argument is as follows: a creature from eternity is able to be and able not to be,a     etc . [sc., from Henry, but ability not to be precedes in nature and duration ability to be, just as not being precedes being in nature; therefore      if the creature can have being from God from eternity, it would either have being after not being in duration (and so it would at some point begin to be), or it would have being and not being together, which is impossible; n.162, Quodlibet 8.9].

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] if then it is posited in being, it has that being as acquired; therefore its not being preceded in duration its new and acquired being. Or...

126. Again an argument for this opinion [n.117] is made that, if the world could have been from eternity without a beginning, there have been an infinity of intellective souls.

127. Further, it is against the idea of the infinite in quantity that it can be exceeded or can be taken in its totality (as is plain from its definition in Physics 3.6.206b33-7a2, 79, “the infinite is that of which nothing outside it can be taken,” and “that which, when one takes its parts, there is always something further to take”); but if the world could have been from eternity and without a beginning, an infinite duration would have been taken.a Nor is the response valid which says that ‘an infinite duration would have been in potency and in always receiving being and not in having-received being’, because the intellect’s taking note does nothing to make the infinite to be actually taken, for that a future infinite has at some time been taken is incompossible, even if there had been no intellect that would take note of the parts of the infinite time.

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] an infinite could have been exceeded and taken in its totality, because infinite things have preceded to which addition is continually made, which additions are also now taken; therefore it is impossible for the world to have been from eternity.

128. Again, argument is made that the part would be greater than the whole -because let midday today be a and midday tomorrow be b; if time on either side of a could have been infinite, the same reasoning holds about the past and the future with respect to b; therefore by whatever amount the past up to b is greater, by that amount the future from b is greater [sc. so that the amounts of time on either side of b remain equal]. But the past up to b is greater than the past up to a as the whole than the part, therefore the past up to b is greater than the future from a; therefore the future from b - which is equal to the past up to b - would be greater than the future from a, and so the part would be greater than the whole.a

a.a [Interpolation] Again, every permanent eternal thing is formally necessary; nothing other than God is formally necessary [1 d.30 n.56, d.36 n.19]; therefore. - Proof of the major: a permanent thing has the whole of its being at once, such that if it remain perpetually it receives no new being [1 d.8 nn.257-58]; therefore it now has the being whereby it formally is; therefore it now has the being whereby it would be a repugnance for it sometimes not to be; therefore it is now a necessary being. Proof of the minor: what includes being in act is of itself a ‘this’.

    Again, when a determinate act necessarily follows a determinate act, if the necessity of the prior can be demonstrated, the necessity of the posterior can be demonstrated as well; the act of the divine will with respect to ‘anything other than itself’ necessarily follows the determinate act of the divine intellect about the same thing, and by a necessary reason can the determinate act of God’s intellect about it be demonstrated; therefore it can be demonstrated of the determinate act of the will too; and also creation, which follows the determination of the will. - Proof of the first part of the minor: by a likeness about sense and the sensitive appetite. Proof in another way: the divine will presupposes an act of the divine intellect (about the same object) and a right act; the will cannot fail to be in concord with the intellect, because then it would not be right. - Proof of the second part of the minor: what follows on causes that cause necessarily can be inferred necessarily from them; the determinate act of the intellect follows on such causes, for only the intellect and the object are causes of the act (in no way the will, because then the will would have an act about a non-understood thing). Another proof of the second part: as the principle is in speculative things, so the end is in desirable and practical things; from the principles there is necessary speculative knowledge of all other things, therefore from the end there is necessary practical knowledge of things for the end.

    Again, every essence other than God is finite and not pure act - therefore (according to Thomas [Aquinas]) it is in matter or in potency to being, and by parity of reasoning it is material; it is therefore in potency before it is in act (Metaphysics 5.11.1019a7-11), and the order of nature between incompossibles has a similar order in the case of duration.

    Again, the more necessarily and immediately a determinate relation to something follows on the essence, so much the more can such a relation be demonstrated through the essence as through the middle term; but a relation to the first efficient cause more necessarily and immediately follows an essence than does a relation to something posterior, because it depends essentially on the former but not on the latter (some relation to something posterior is determinately and necessarily inferred through the essence as to its specific property); therefore this determinate relation is demonstrated more. Creation states such a determinate relation, because it states a determinate receiving of being from such a cause; therefore.

    Again, through the essence is necessarily inferred that without which the essence cannot be; such is dependence on the first efficient cause; creation as it is common to everything other than God states this dependence and states no other respect, because then it would not signify a concept per se one.

    Again, there is no less dependence in real being than in known being; but by a necessary reason the passive exemplification of anything exemplified is entailed, because God is an agent through knowledge, because he is the first orderer.

    Again, how the divine will is disposed to quiddities is demonstrated necessarily, therefore also how it is disposed to existence. - Proof of the antecedent: God is well pleased by participation of his goodness. Proof of the consequence: existence has an equally perfect relation to the first object of the divine will as essence does.

129. Many other reasons can be adduced, but some are sophistical and many others are made frequently.

III. To the Reasons for the First Opinion when holding the Second Opinion

130. Those who hold this conclusion [sc. that there is a contradiction involved in

God having made something other than himself without a beginning], especially because they posit the same impossibility to exist on the part of any species (and in some species - as in successive ones - it seems that everything taken is finite, although the whole is infinite by taking part after part [nn.124-28]), give response to the reasons of the first opinion [nn.102-116] thus:

To the first [n.102], that although it cannot naturally be known whether God’s will exists in respect of this particular, yet it can naturally be known that his will is not of anything that is not of itself willable, and this because there is a contradiction - and consequently an incompossibility - involved in the divine will’s being of that of which there is no idea; but then it is necessary to place the ‘non-willability’, as also the incompossibility, on the part of the object, from 1 d.43 nn.3, 6.

131. And so, when it is argued that ‘the what it is’ is not a middle term for demonstrating existence [n.102], the response is made that, although this is true, yet a creature can be a middle term for demonstrating the beginning of its existence.

132. Against this: that the middle term by which the beginning of existence will be demonstrated cannot be the ‘what it is’, according to them, therefore it must be existence.

133. And then it seems that the argument is doubly at fault: first, according to the fallacy of the consequent, because existence in the minor does not entail actual existence; second, because the premise in which existence is applied to a stone will be contingent, and thus the demonstration will not be a very probable reason but sophistical.

134. A response can, however, be made to the argument [n.102], that although the ‘what it is’ is contingently disposed to existence actual or non-actual (and therefore it is not a middle term for demonstrating absolute existence, or any absolute condition of existence [131]), yet some condition of existence can be repugnant to some ‘what it is’, and so can be a middle term for demonstrating that existence under such a condition does not fit that to which the ‘what it is’ belongs; just as the quiddity of a stone, although in itself it does not include existence, does yet of itself have ‘uncreated being’ repugnant to it - and so from the idea of this quiddity can be inferred that it does not have uncreated being, and not eternal being either.

135. Therefore one should say as to the issue at hand (according to this position [sc. when holding the second opinion, n.130]), that eternal existence is repugnant to a stone, and therefore from the quiddity of a stone can be demonstrated that it does not have eternal existence; and from this further, not absolutely that it has new being, but that if it exists it has new being - which is the intended conclusion.

136. The reasoning [nn.102, 131] is also at fault - as it seems - according to the fallacy of the consequent; for this consequence does not hold, ‘the opposite of this cannot be demonstrated, therefore this is possible’, but there is a fallacy of the consequent, for ‘first impossibles’ are impossible from the terms, just as their opposites, the ‘first necessaries’ are necessary from the terms; and although the first necessaries cannot be demonstrated (because they are first truths), yet it does not follow that therefore they are possibles; but to the antecedent ‘the opposite cannot be demonstrated’ one should add that the opposite is not a first necessary or something known from the terms - and perhaps this would be denied by some in the case of the issue at hand, although the fact that the opposite is necessary from the terms is latent and not evident to any intellect that confusedly conceives the terms.

137. To the second [n.103] it can be said that if there are necessary reasons for things believed, yet it is not dangerous to adduce them, neither because of the faithful nor because of the infidels.

138. Not as to the faithful, for Catholic doctors, when examining by reasons the truth of things believed and striving to understand what they believed, did not intend by this to destroy the merit of faith - on the contrary, Augustine and Anselm believed they were laboring meritoriously to understand what they believed, according to Isaiah 7.9 (according to another translation [the LXX]), “unless you believe you will not understand;” for while believing they examined, so that they might understand through reasons what they believed. But whether demonstrations - if they can be had - make faith void or not, on this see book three on the incarnation [3 Suppl. d.24].

139. Nor is it dangerous as regards infidels if necessary reasons can be had;a even if necessary reasons cannot be had for proving the existence of a fact - namely an article of faith - yet if they may be had for proving the possibility of the fact, then to adduce them against an infidel would even be useful, because he would in some way be thereby persuaded not to resist such articles of belief as impossibilities. But to adduce sophisms for demonstrations against infidels would indeed be dangerous - because the faith would thereby be exposed to derision (and so it also is in every other matter, even an indifferent one, as in the case of geometers, to propose sophisms as demonstrations). For it is better for the ignorant to know he is ignorant than to think because of sophisms that he knows; but those who state the opposite view say that they are not adducing sophisms but necessary reasons and true demonstrations - and hence they are not doing anything prejudicial to the faith (neither in respect of the faithful nor of infidels), but are rather with reasons of this sort confirming it.

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] because “demonstrative speech is of a nature to solve all questions that arise about a thing,” Averroes Physics 1 com.71.

140. As to the third [nn.104-105], although different people speak in many ways about it, yet I say that in the same consequence there can be many reasons because of which the inference is necessary, and therefore many places (namely taken from the many reasons of such consequence) in the antecedent itself; and wherever any of these reasons or any of these places can be found, a like inference can be found and drawn. An example: ‘a man runs, therefore an animal runs’ rightly follows from the place taken from species [sc. because man is a species of animal], and not only from this place but also from a more common one, namely from the place taken from subjective parts [sc. because animal is a subjective part of man, for man is a rational animal] - because not only is the consequence good wherever there is an inference from species to genus, but it is also good wherever there is an argument from a subjective part to the whole. And another example could be posited where many reasons for an inference come together, but this suffices for the present purpose.

141. So I say that this consequence holds, ‘there is fire in this moment now and it is not impeded, therefore there is light’; the place is from a cause naturally causing and not impeded; and not only this, but this consequence can also hold from a certain more common reason in the antecedent, namely from the reason of something naturally producing and not impeded. For not only does ‘a thing naturally causing and not impeded’ have a caused thing or an effect coeval with it (Physics 2.8.199a10-11), but also ‘a thing naturally producing’ has a product coeval with it, as is manifest from the second reason [here above]. So wherever there exists a like reason for inferring, there will exist, not only according to the special reason [sc. a thing causing] but also according to the general one [sc. a thing producing], a necessary and natural consequence.

142. And so I say that the example [n.104] is very well to the purpose; because if ‘there is fire’ entails, by reason of a thing producing naturally, ‘splendor is diffused’, then even if the antecedent were impossible and incompossible and the consequent likewise, yet the consequence is necessary and good. Therefore, wherever this reason for entailment exists [sc. a thing producing naturally], the consequence is necessary and good, however things may stand with the antecedent and consequent; but so it is here with the Father and the Son, because the Father is a natural producer with respect to the Son; therefore there will be here a like entailment, good and necessary.

143. And hereby is plain the response to the confirmation of the reason, ‘that no perfection that can be in a second cause is taken away from the first cause’ [n.106]. Now to have a simply necessary caused thing is not a mark of perfection in a second cause, nay it even fails to belong to any second cause (as was said in 1 d.8 n.306), although some second cause may have it in a certain respect; for to cause simply necessarily involves a contradiction, and so it belongs to no second cause.1 d.8 n.306: “I say that no natural connection of cause and caused is simply necessary in creatures, nor does any second cause cause simply naturally or simply necessarily but only in a certain respect. The first part is clear, because any second cause depends on the relation of the first cause to the caused; likewise, no second cause causes save by the first cause causing the caused along with it, and this naturally before the proximate cause causes; but the first cause only causes contingently, therefore the second cause causes simply contingently because it depends on the causation of the first, which causation is simply contingent. The second part, namely about necessity in a certain respect, is plain, because many natural causes, as far as concerns themselves, cannot not cause their effects, and so there is necessity in a certain respect -namely as far as concerns themselves - and not simply; just as fire, as far as concerns itself, cannot not heat, yet, with God cooperating, it can absolutely not heat, as is clear, and as was clear about the three boys in the furnace [Daniel 3.49-50].” ⁵ Nor does Augustine (when inferring something on the part of fire) argue from this as from something impossible, but he argues it [sc. splendor is coeternal with fire] from a more common reason (namely from the reason of a thing producing), which does not involve a contradiction, and this suffices for his reasoning [n.104, cf. 1 d.9 n.10].

144. The same point makes plain the response to the other reason, ‘that a diverse mode of causing does not vary the caused thing formally’ [n.107]. This is true of ‘diverse modes of causing’ that can be causes in some causation, but if one mode in causing is possible and another impossible, then according to the possible mode the caused will be such [sc. possible] and according to the impossible mode the caused thing will be different [sc. impossible]; just as the impossible follows from the impossible, though by natural consequence - so I say that by natural consequence the inference holds that if something did cause naturally it would cause necessarily (and even coeternally), but this mode of causing involves a contradiction in the case of ‘causing freely’; however some other mode of causing - namely causing freely - is compossible with this cause, and therefore it does not remove compossibility in the antecedent and consequent [sc. in the inference ‘if it causes freely, then it causes contingently’].

145. As to the fourth [n.110] someone might say (on behalf of this way [n.117]) that ‘to be eternal’ includes a lack of limitation, because it includes being made equal to God in some respect (namely lack of limitation in duration), and this cannot be without lack of limitation [sc. in every respect], because a thing cannot be made equal to God in one respect and not in another.

146. But this is nothing, because what also coexists with God today is not for this reason made equal to eternity, with which it coexists today; and this eternity too, as it coexists with this day, is infinite and independent - and the creature, as coexisting with eternity today, is finite and dependent and so is not made coequal with it. Therefore one should say that ‘to be eternal’ states some lack of limitation in a creature and hence is repugnant to it; but why there is this repugnance and lack of limitation, let each show through the fundamental reason that he would posit for it.

147. To the fifth [n.111] the response is by reducing it to the opposite, because ‘just as a creature could not actually tend to not-being and yet be always going to be, so it cannot actually have been after non-being and yet always have been’ (now it is of the idea of a creature, according to this position [n.117], that not only is it a having had in aptitude not-being before being, but also a having had in actuality not-being before being).

148. As to the authority [n.112], I say that the authority posited there from Augustine City of God is not according to Augustine’s own opinion, but he put it there according to the understanding of the philosophers; hence he prefaces there about the philosophers, “For they speak thus, ‘if a foot were in sand from eternity, etc.’” Hence, according to the truth, that a foot has always been thus and has caused a footprint in the sand involves a contradiction, because the footprint is caused by a pressing down of the foot in the sand through local motion; and so for some motion to have been such without a beginning, when the motion, of its very idea, is between opposites [sc. between a beginning and an end], is a contradiction.

149. To the point about ‘scarcely intelligible’ [n.113] I say that contradictories can be apprehended by the intellect, and can even be apprehended together (otherwise no intellect would say they were contradictories), as is generally plain from the argument of the Philosopher On the Soul 3.2.426b8-23, where he proves about the common sense and the other particular senses that no sense compares extremes unless it apprehends both. But to be understood thus is to be ‘scarcely understood’ because it is not a being understood along with assent, in the way we say that we ‘understand’ what we believe to be true and ‘do not understand’ what we do not believe to be true, although yet we apprehend it.

150. Or it can be said in another way that, if the ‘intelligible’ is taken for what the intellect can assent to and if it be said that the manner of the philosophers was in this way scarcely intelligible, then the exposition can be that the manner was in its universal form intelligible but not in itself and in particular; for it was intelligible along with assent under the idea of producer and not under the idea of causer - and to understand ‘causer’ under the idea of producer is to understand ‘causer’ imperfectly, just as to understand man under the idea of animal is to understand man imperfectly.

151. Or it can in a third way be said (and perhaps in accord with Augustine’s mind) that latent contradictories - as long as an evident contradiction in them is not perceived - can in some way be apprehended by the intellect, but not with certitude; and so this ‘contradiction’, if it exists, did yet escape the philosophers and could by them be ‘scarcely understood’.

152. As to what is added about the philosophers, it can be said that they conceded many latent contradictions - as that they commonly denied that there was a first cause causing contingently, and yet they said that there is contingency in beings and that some things happen contingently; but there is a contradiction involved in ‘some things happening contingently and the first cause causing necessarily’, as was proved in 1 d.8 nn.275-277, 281-291, and 1 d.39 nn.35-37, 41,

91 [in the Lectura; there is no d.39 in the Ordinatio], and to some extent above at nn.69-70.

153. As to what is added about the four causes [n.115] (which are considered by the metaphysician), and that proves that the abstraction, in understanding, of the efficient cause is from the mover and changer - I say that not everything abstracted in understanding (or in the consideration of the intellect) needs to be able to be separated in being from that from which abstraction in the intellect is made; and so from this it does not follow that there is in fact some efficient cause which is not a mover or changer.

IV. To the Reasons for the Second Opinion when holding the First Opinion

154. Now as to those who hold the first opinion [sc. God can make something other than himself without a beginning, n.102], especially because no contradiction is found in the terms ‘other than God’ and ‘to exist eternally’ [n.114, Aquinas On Power q.3 a.14], and secondly because the reasons that seem to prove contradiction are special (and so, although they prove contradiction of something special, yet do not prove it of everything that is ‘other than God’ [Aquinas ST Ia q.46 a.2 ad 8]), and thirdly because some reasons seem to reject a like able to come to be about the future as about the past [n.127] (although however no one denies ‘the possibility of a future without end’ or the coming to be of the non-successive or the able to come to be of the successive) - those, as I say, who hold this first opinion have a reply to the reasons against this opinion that show contradiction [nn.117-28].

To the first [n.117], that some creature could have been always produced, as an angel, whose being is to be in eternity.

155. And if you say that that creature [sc. an angel] at some time comes to be [n.117] - they would concede that it comes to be in an instant of eternity and that it always comes to be and is produced when it is. And when the inference is drawn that ‘therefore it would be successive’ [n.117], this does not follow, because the Son of God too is always generated, and yet is not something successive but supremely permanent, because the instant in which he is generated always persists. And so they would say that the same ‘now’ persists, wherein the angel persists and receives being, and thus there is no succession; for successive things always receive one part in being after another.

156. To the other proof, about being conserved and created [n.118], the answer will be plain in the first question about eternity [2 d.2 nn.49-51, 63].

157. To the point added about acquired being [n.120] - they concede that a creature has an acquired being, because it does not have a being that is of itself formally necessary; yet it does not seem to have been acquired after not-being, but acquisition (like reception too) seems to stand sufficiently if the creature does not have of itself what it is said to acquire, whether what it acquires is new or old.

158. To the second reason, about the Philosopher in De Interpretatione (“Everything that is, when it is, necessarily is” [n.121]), the response is plain from earlier [1 d.39 nn.55, 58 of the Lectura and 1 d.39-40 nn.45, 49 of the Reportatio], where this objection is introduced to prove that a thing does not exist contingently in the instant for which it exists, since then the opposite could be present in it; and from this it is plain that the assumption is false - rather, in the instant and for the instant in which it is and for which it is, it exists contingently, as was proved and determined there. And I say the same of the cause, because the cause does not cause insofar as it precedes the effect in duration, but it is cause insofar as it precedes the effect in nature; if therefore every cause - for the instant for which it causes - necessarily causes and not contingently, then every cause necessarily causes and none contingently.

159. As to the third reason [n.124], one could deny that there is in each species an equal possibility for eternity and everlastingness, because a contradiction does not appear on the part of each species equally [e.g. it does not appear on the part of angels but does on the part of souls, n.154 ref. to Aquinas]; and so not a like possibility. Or if it be conceded of an ass that it could have been produced from eternity, and could have generated, and that consequently from it all the asses could have been that have been generated up to now [n.124] - when you ask whether they were finite or infinite, let it be denied that they are infinite; rather let it be said that they were finite [editors: the position actually adopted by Thomas of Sutton, who supposed an infinite past time before the first generation by the first ass, but a finite time from the first generation to the present].

160. And when the inference is drawn [n.124] that ‘therefore the whole duration from the production of that ass up to this one would have been finite’, let the consequence be denied; for although the first ass was produced from eternity, yet it could not have been generated from eternity, because generation necessarily includes - in creatures - that there is a change between opposite terms (namely privation and form), and whatever is between opposites succeeding to each other cannot be eternal.

161. And if you say that the ass would in that case have had to be at rest from generating for an infinite time (although however it had been made perfect and capable of generating), which seems unacceptable - I reply that the ass was not from eternity made more perfect for generating than God for causing, and yet for you [sc. someone who posits that creatures were produced at some time and not always, n.117] God must have been at rest from causing a for a quasi-imagined infinite duration, such that there would be a contradiction in his having caused anything without a quasi-imagined infinite past having gone by; and yet in the causing of it, namely in the giving of total existence to what has being in itself [sc. as to the first ass], it does not seem that newness was as necessarily included as it is in generation, which is from privation to form. It is not disagreeable, therefore, that, if an ass had to have generated, it was at rest for an imagined infinite time from an action [sc. generation] that necessarily involves its being new, when you posit that God was necessarily at rest from an action that you do not show formally includes newness.a

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] and so, as to anything else that would have been created from eternity, what is said is that it had rested for an imagined eternity.

162. To the fourth [n.125] I say that the whole deduction about those powers seems to be superfluous and to be at fault in many ways.Vatican Editors quote from Henry Quodlibet 8 a.9: “If the creature has from God actual being, then the creature is of itself a possible to be...; wherefore, since just as being simply is related to possible being simply, so too is being from eternity to possible being from eternity - therefore, if the creature has from God being from eternity, then the creature is of itself a possible to be from eternity...and a not haver of being from eternity. I ask therefore whether at the same time the creature has altogether from God being from eternity and from itself possible being and not-being from eternity, or whether it has being first from God before the reverse, or the other way around? Not in the first way because then contrary acts would be together in the same thing, namely being and not-being; nor in the second way, because what belongs to a thing from itself is prior to what belongs to it from another. So the third way is necessary, namely that the creature has from itself possible being and not-being before it has being from God. -- Being able to be in existence and being able not to be in existence, do they have being in the essence of the creature at the same time, or one first and then another? Not together because contrary powers (according to the Philosopher On the Heavens) cannot be wholly together in the same thing, just as neither can contrary acts; for if (as they say) the powers were present together.then two contrary powers could at the same time issue in contrary acts, and from the positing of a possible in being there would follow a false impossible. - Can then in the essence of the creature possible being in existence precede possible not-being in existence, or the reverse, and this either in nature or in duration? Now possible being cannot precede in nature, because not-being precedes being in nature. Possible not-being then precedes possible being. There remains a doubt, therefore, which of these precedes in duration? For if one of them precedes in duration then of necessity either possible this precedes possible that, or the reverse, or either of them can indifferently precede the other. And the last of these is impossible because then the essence of the creature under indifference would be disposed to both of them, and thus to the possible and to the act of them; but as it is, the essence of the creature is not equally disposed to act of existing and act of not-existing, because it is not of a nature to have the act of existing save from another, while the act of not-existing it has from itself. But if possible to be precedes in duration, and this of necessity. then of necessity the existence of the creature would precede its not-being (thus the creature would not be of itself a non-being in nature before it would be a being from another by some duration; for nothing belongs prior in nature to something which is not of a nature to belong first in duration to the same); but this is impossible, because (as has been said) what belongs to something of itself by nature is prior to what belongs to it from another. The second member (what I called above ‘the reverse’) is therefore necessary, that of necessity possible not to be is prior in the being of the creature in duration; wherefore so too is its not-being prior not only in nature but also in duration. It remains therefore that the creature cannot have being from something other than itself prior in duration to its having not-being (which belongs to it of itself) - and thus in no way could it be posited that a created thing could be made from eternity but from time.” ⁶ And yet when speaking of power as he himself [sc. Henry] does in arguing at the end, one should conclude that ‘potency to not-being’ necessarily precedes potency to being, and thus his argument, namely about contrary potencies (which he takes from the Philosopher On the Heavens 1.12.281b9-18) should be understood of potencies incompossible with their acts; and then if potency for not-being necessarily precedes potency for being, then being necessarily precedes not-being, because potency for not-being never exists, according to this understanding [sc. about potencies incompossible with their acts], unless in the same thing being has preceded.

163. Here one needs to know that when speaking properly of potency, namely prior to act, the subject of the immediate opposites is never in opposite potencies at the same time, because then it would lack both acts, and so the opposites would not be immediate to the same subject; and in the case of these it is true that never is the potency for one without the act of the other; not because the act is receptive of the potency, rather the subject alone receives the potency, just as it also receives the act of it (for if act a is prior to potency for b, because it is the idea of being receptive - then it is also prior to b itself, because in the same thing potency is prior by nature to act; but b is by the same reason prior in potency to a, and thus the same thing is prior and posterior to the same thing) - but the potency for one is necessarily concomitant with the act of the other, because of the immediacy of the acts.

164. To the proposed conclusion [n.125] I say that the creature was not from eternity under potency to being but under potency to not being, but it was first under potency to being (according to truth) because it was under not being, and so it was not in potency to not being; but if it had existed from eternity, it would always have existed under potency to not being, and never under potency to being but under act [sc. of being]. But if you are not speaking of potency before act but of quasi subjective potency, and if you are assuming essence not to be in this way to being save as under not being, the assumption is false and was rejected above [n.162].

165. Passing over this point about potencies, then, the argument in brief seems to stand on this, that opposites which are in the same thing in order of nature cannot be in the same thing at the same time in order of duration, because what is first by nature in a thing is first by duration in it; therefore, being and not being, since they are present in a stone in order of nature, cannot be present in it at the same time in duration, nor can they precede each other indifferently, but necessarily not being precedes being in duration, and so the stone could not have existed for ever. Now there is proof as follows that not being is present by nature first before being is: because not being belongs to a stone from itself, while being belongs to it not from itself but from another [from Henry: see footnote to n.162].

166. In response to this [n.165] I say that two opposites are not present in the same thing at the same time in order of nature when speaking quasi positively of order of nature (the way one must speak of animal and rational, of substance and accident), but they are thus present when speaking quasi privatively, namely that one of the two is present unless it is impeded - and this way was expounded in the preceding question [n.61], when expounding the opinion of Avicenna; and in this way I say that it is not necessary that what belongs to something first in nature should belong to it first in duration; for that which does not have any being from itself can be prevented by a positive cause that gives it something which it does not have of itself; and so it would, prior in duration to what it has from itself, have the opposite of this first.

167. This response [n.166] is plain in the case of other things. For the argument [sc. of Henry, footnote to n.162] would prove that God could not create matter under form, because matter is in nature first without form before it is with form, for it has privation of form from itself and it has possession of form from another; therefore form could not be in matter unless unformed matter had been prior in duration. But this argument is not conclusive, because matter is not of itself positively without form but only privatively without form, for from itself it does not yet have form but from another (as from its generator or creator), and it alone by itself, without any other positive cause, suffices for its being without form; it would therefore always be without form unless there were some positive cause impeding its continuing without form; and yet, because a positive cause can, from the beginning of essence itself, prevent matter’s being deprived by giving it being so that it is not always without form, therefore one should not necessarily deduce a priority of duration from such a priority of nature.

168. To the other point, about an infinity of souls [n.126] I reply that anything which cannot be made by God in one day ‘because it involves a contradiction’ cannot, for the same reason, be made by him in an infinite past time (if there had been an infinite past time). For in this one day there are infinite instants (nay, in one hour of this day), in each of which he could create a soul just as he could in one day of the whole of infinite time, if there were such infinite time (for it is not necessary that God rest from one day to the next in order to create one soul after another), and so if in the infinite instants of this day he cannot create infinite souls (because this cannot be done), neither could he have created infinite souls in the infinite days of the whole of past time.

169. And if you say ‘the instants of this day have not been actual in the way the infinite days of the past have been’, this is not enough, because just as the infinite instants of the infinite days - wherein God would have created - would have been in potency according to you [sc. you who say that the instants of this day have not been actual] (just as ‘the indivisible’ is in continuous coming to be and is not actual), because none of the instants would have been the end in actuality of the whole time, so too about the infinite instants of this day; therefore the instants of this day - or of this hour - seem to have an infinity equal to the infinite instants of the infinite days, and so the proposed conclusion seems to follow [n.168]. Yet some philosophers would concede that an infinity in accidentally ordered things is not impossible, as is plain from Avicenna Metaphysics 6.2 [f. 92ra], on causes.

170. As to the argument about the passing through of an infinite time [n.127], it seems to reject an eternity of successive things. But according to those who hold this opinion [sc. the first, n.102], there is not the same impossibility in successive things as in permanent ones, because although a permanence (of any kind) could be measured by time as to its motions, yet they posit that it is measured by eternity as to its substantial being; and so, to posit that a permanent thing is without beginning does not seem to mean positing that anything infinite has been taken.

171. This reasoning about ‘the successive infinite’ [n.170] is confirmed by the imagination about a converted line: that if some line were extended as it were to infinity, then, beginning from this point a, it would not be possible for it to be passed over; therefore it also seems that by imagining, to the converse, a line thus as it were taken into the past, it would not seem possible for it to be taken forward to this point a.

172. To the final argument [n.128] one can say that equal and greater and lesser only belong to a finite quantity of amount, because ‘quantity’ is divided first into finite and infinite before equal and unequal belong to it; for it is of the idea of a greater quantity to exceed and of a lesser quantity to be exceeded and of an equal quantity to be of the same measure - and all of these seem to involve finitude; and therefore an infinite should be denied to be equal to an infinite, because equal and unequal and greater and lesser are differences of finite quantity and not of infinite quantity [cf. Thomas of Sutton].

IV. To the Principal Arguments of Each Part

173. To the first principal argument [n.96] I concede that matter is ungenerated and incorruptible; but it does not follow from this that it is eternal, because although matter does not have a source whence it comes to be, it is yet itself a produced whole -and this production is not generation, because generation and corruption are of composites and not of simples.

174. To the second argument [n.97], about the eternity of time, I say that it is not valid, because it otherwise entails that ‘the mover cannot not move’The mss. are obscure here. The Vatican editors note that the second ‘not’ is omitted by them, and they also print ‘be moved’ and not ‘move [something]’. But Scotus’ criticism seems to be that if time has to be eternal then God has to be always moving things, which he rejected in n.70 against the philosophers. Accordingly the alternative reading in the mss. of ‘move’ for ‘be moved’, together with the addition of ‘not’, is translated here. ⁷ (this response was made to the argument in the preceding question [n.70]). And as to what is argued and added about ‘before’ [n.97], I say that it is not conclusive save about an imagined ‘before’, or in the way that eternity is ‘before’ - which is nothing; it is as when we say ‘outside the universe there is nothing’, where the ‘outside’ is denied, or only an imagined ‘outside’ is asserted.

175. To the third about On Generation [n.98]. Although the proposition is in some way probable that ‘the corruption of one thing is the generation of another’ (I say that it is to this extent true, that no natural agent intends per se to corrupt anything, but it per accidens corrupts that which is incompossible with the generated thing that it per se intends), yet from this no perpetuity of generation follows, because the ultimate corruption can be concomitant with the ultimate generation, for example when all mixed things are resolved to the elements - and then there will be a stand both of generation and of corruption, although the ultimate corruption is not annihilation;a however the Philosopher supposes another proposition along with this one [sc. ‘the corruption of one thing is the generation of another’], namely that such a generable thing is again corruptible, and that its corruption is the generation of something else - and this is not true. But when arguing about past things one should take the proposition that ‘the generation of one thing is the corruption of another’ - and this is not as true from the per se intention of a natural agent as is the previous one; for it is accidental that the generator corrupts, because of the incompossibility of the term to be corrupted with the term the generator intends, because the generator cannot produce the form it intends save in preexisting matter - and this preexisting matter is commonly under a form incompossible with the form it intends, and so it must corrupt the preexisting composite in order to generate what it intends. And given that from this it would follow that there would be no generation in which the whole is produced, the eternity of the thing would not follow for this reason - because when the whole is produced it is not necessary that a part of it preexist under an incompossible form, and such production of some being does not have to be the destruction of some other being, but only the destruction of nothing or of not being precisely; and then there is no need for another production to have preceded the first production, because the term ‘from which’ [sc. nothing] of this production was not the term ‘to which’ of some other production, because ‘nothing’ was produced by no production.

a.a [Interpolation] because it is to matter, which is not nothing.

176. To the fourth [n.99] about succession because of motion (when it is said that ‘an agent not causing by motion and not able to be prevented can have an effect coeval with it’), one should say that where cause and effect can have an essence of one kind this major is true; but where they cannot be of one kind but the priority of nature in the cause requires of necessity priority of duration in the cause with respect to the effect, here the major is false; and so it is in the case at hand.

177. To the first argument for the opposite [n.100] I say that either that is not the definition of creature but a certain description, conceded by Arius (against whom Augustine is arguing) because Arius said that ‘the Son of God at some time was not’ -and then it is enough for Augustine to take against Arius this definition or description as conceded by him, and, from denying this description (conceded by Arius) of the Son of God, to conclude against him that the Son is not a creature; or if it is the definition of creature (speaking properly of creature qua creature), yet it is not for this reason a definition of whatever is other than God (for example of an angel or a man) - because it would be said that this definition is accidental to that which it is ‘to be a creature’. But if something were posited to be the definition of ‘what begins’ and in fact everything other than God is a thing that begins - ‘therefore everything other than God is a creature’ does not follow but is a fallacy of the accident, because of the extraneousness of the middle term with respect to the third as it is compared to the first; for not everything that is repugnant to the accident is repugnant to the subject of which such accident is an accident.Tr. The argument being criticized would run: ‘what begins is a creature, everything other than God begins, therefore everything other than God is a creature’. The middle term is ‘what begins’ which is extraneous both to ‘other than God’ and to ‘creature’, because ‘what begins’ is not part of what it is to be a creature or of what it is to be other than God, but is accidental to both. For those who hold the first opinion think a thing can be a creature and other than God and yet not have had a beginning (in time). ⁸

178. To the second, about the infinite in multitude and magnitude [n.101] - the response was made before, in the response about the actual infinity of souls [n.168].

Question Four. Whether the Creation of an Angel is the same as the Angel

179. Fourth I ask whether the creation of an angel is the same as the angel.

180. That it is not:

Because according to Avicenna Metaphysics 5.1 (f. 86va), “horse-ness is just horse-ness, neither one thing nor many;”“Hence horse-ness is not anything but horse-ness alone; for it is of itself neither many nor one, nor is it existent in these sensibles or in the soul; nor is it anything of these in potency or in fact, such that this be contained within the essence of horse-ness.” ⁹     therefore , by parity of reasoning, an angel is just an angel, and no respect is the same as it.

181. Second thus: there is creation of an angel only in the first instant of nature, when the angel receives being; but an angel persists after the first instant, and nothing persists without that which is really the same as it; therefore etc     .

182. Third thus: because if creation were the same as the angel, God could not renew de novo one and the same - annihilated - angel in number; the consequent is false, therefore so is the antecedent. Proof of the consequence: God cannot renew the same creation in number (so it seems) because neither can he renew the same motion in number (according to some), for the interruption would prevent the motion from being the same in number.

183. Fourth thus: ‘generated fire’ is from some other fire that causally generates it (and consequently the generated fire has its nature from the other fire); and yet creation -in a causally generated fire - is not from a generating fire;     therefore etc     . The proof of the minor is that then the generated fire would have from the generating fire the fact that it is a creature, because the fire is created by whatever agent creation in the fire is from - but this consequent seems false, because ‘being a creature’ states only a respect to the Creator.

184. Fifth thus: change differs from the term to which; creation is change;     therefore etc     .

185. Proof of the major [n.184]: both because change precedes the term, and because change is in the genus of undergoing (for motion is too), according to the Commentator, Physics 5 com.9; but the intrinsic term is of the same genus as the thing it is the term of (as point is of the same genus as line), but the form to which there is motion or change is not of the genus of undergoing (from Physics 5.2.226a23-25).

186. Proof of the minor: first, because a new relation does not come to a thing without change of some extreme; through creation there is a new relation of the creature to God, because something new is said of the Creator but only because of a new relation in that to which he is said [sc. to be Creator]. There is confirmation from Augustine On the Trinity 5.16 n.17: “Those things are relative to God that exist with a change in that of which they are said.” Second, because “in every genus there is some one thing that is the measure of all other things that there are in that genus” (Averroes, Metaphysics 10 com.2); but the first thing in the genus of changes does not seem it can be set down as generation, because generation is not the idea of change in all changeables, for not all changeable things are generated - likewise the opposition between the terms of generation, which are privation and form, is not the greatest; but there is a greater opposition between the terms of creation, which are contradictories, as being and nothing; therefore creation is the first change.

187. To the opposite:

If the creation of an angel is other than the angel, then either it is the Creator -which is not the case because creation is new; or it is a mean between the Creator and the creature - which is not the case, because nothing is the mean; or it is posterior to the created thing - which is not the case because creation is as it were the way to the being of a creature. Therefore creation is the same as the angel.

Question Five. Whether the Relation of the Creature to God is the Same as its Foundation

188. And because this question [question 4, n.179] depends on a certain other question, namely about ‘the identity of the relation with its foundation’, and this when speaking specifically of the relation which is of the creature to God - therefore I ask fifth whether the relation of the creature to God is the same as its foundation.

189. It seems that it is not:

First thus: everything ‘other than God’ has a relation to him, therefore everything other would be ‘relative to something’ not only accidentally but by identity; the consequent seems impossible, because the Philosopher infers it, Metaphysics 4.6.1011a19-20, from the statement of those who say ‘everything that appears is true’.

190. Second thus: the categories are primarily diverse - from Metaphysics 5.9.1018a12-13, 10.3.1054b28-30 - and are as beings simply diverse, because being is of iself divided into them (Metaphysics 5.7.1017a22-27); therefore nothing in one category is the same as something in another category. Therefore no relation is the same as something absolute.

191. The opposite:

Any created thing whatever does not less depend on God than any created thing whatever depends on another created thing, because dependence on the First thing seems most essential; but a whole has a relation to its parts the same as to itself, because it cannot be a whole and not be made of parts; therefore, by parity of reasoning, it will have a dependence on the first cause, albeit an extrinsic first cause, the same as to itself. For although an extrinsic cause does not constitute a thing the way the intrinsic cause does, yet it causes the thing more perfectly than an intrinsic cause does; for to constitute a thing involves imperfection, namely potentiality.

I. To the Fifth Question

A. On the Identity of Relation in General to its Foundation

1. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent

192. [Exposition of the opinion] - Here it is said [sc. by Henry] that every relation is the same as its foundation - look at his Quodlibet 9 q.3 and 5 q.2 (which seem as it were to be contrary).

193. For this opinion multiple arguments are given:

First, that relation is transferred to God according to the proper idea of relation, and therefore there are said to be two categories properly in divine reality, namely relation and substance [1 d.8 n.130]; but if it were going to be of the idea of relation that it would be a different thing from its foundation, then in God there would be thing and thing, which is against divine simplicity.

194. And from this middle term, namely from simplicity, a general argument is made: for a ‘like white thing’ is not more composite than a white thing simply, and consequently the relation of likeness does not add anything different from the foundation; therefore neither is relation a different thing.

195. Secondly this point is argued by way of change, that if relation were a different thing from the foundation, then whatever foundation it would come to de novo would be changed - which seems to be denied by many authorities; first of the Philosopher Physics 5.1.225a34, who denies that there is motion or change in the category of relation; second of Boethius On the Trinity ch.5 (look at him there [not expressis verbis but implicity]); third of Anselm Monologion ch.25.a

a.a [Interpolation] from Boethius On the Trinity: negative and relative predicates make no composition (look at him there); third of Anselm, Monologion, “For it is clear that for a man after a year...”

196. Third an argument is made from this, that if relation were a thing different from its foundation then likeness would have its own presence in a subject different from the presence in it of whiteness; and this seems prima facie unacceptable, because a relation founded on a substance (if there is any) would be accidental because of its own accidentality - which seems against Simplicius On the Categories (f. 95r, 40v-41r) where he says that the Philosopher treats of quantity and quality before relation because relation is founded immediately on these; and it is not founded on substance immediately (and this when speaking of accidental relation), because relation founded on substance does not have a proper accidentality of itself.

197. The same preceding inference [n.196] is also proved to be unacceptable because then the genus of relation would not be simple but as it were composed of ‘in’ and ‘to’ - which seems unacceptable because the first concept of any first genus should be altogether simple, as it seems;     therefore etc     .

198. Fourth it is argued that if relation were a thing other than the foundation, then there would be an infinite regress in relations; for if this relation is a thing other than the foundation, by parity of reasoning the otherness too (which is a certain relation) will be a thing other than the foundation, and this otherness a thing other than the foundation, and so on ad infinitum; but this is unacceptable,     therefore etc     .

199. Fifth thus: relation does not have a distinction in its species save by reason of the foundation (for lordship is not distinguished from paternity by the fact it is ‘in relation to’ but by reason of the foundation - nor are these disparate relations distinguished, nor are they the same as relations of equivalence, save by reason of unity and difference of form in the foundations [n.205]); but if relation were a thing other than the foundation, it would have of itself formally a distinction in its species;     therefore etc     .a

a.a [Interpolation]: Again, if likeness in this thing [sc. one of two things alike in whiteness] is other than the whiteness in it, by parity of reasoning the likeness in the other term [sc. the other white thing the first white thing is like] is also other than the whiteness in it; therefore both foundations can be together without this likeness or that, as things prior in nature can be without things posterior in nature; and so two white things can be together and not two like things - which seems incompossible, because likeness is unity in quality.

200. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion I argue first as follows: nothing is the same really as anything that it can, without contradiction, really be without; but there are many relations that foundations can, without contradiction, be without;     therefore there are many relations that are not the same really as their foundation.

201. Proof of the major: because that the ‘same being’ should really be and really not be seems to be opposed to the first principle [sc. the principle that the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time etc     .], from which first principle the diversity of things seems at once to be inferred; because if contradictories are said of certain things, these things seem not to be the same in the way that the contradictories are said of them, and so if the contradictories ‘to be’ and ‘not to be’ are said of them, they seem not to be the same in being or in reality, or not to be the same being.

202. There is confirmation of this, because if the major [n.200] is denied, there seems no way left for being able to prove the distinction of things; for it will be said by the impudent not only that the several natures in one supposit - as substance and accidents - are the same, but also that Socrates and Plato are the same, or that Socrates and stone or white do not really differ; and if it be argued against him that ‘Socrates can exist when a stone does not exist’ and if from this the distinction of one from the other is inferred, or if it be argued that ‘Socrates can exist and not be white’ and if from this the distinction of subject and accident is inferred - the consequence will be denied, because the impudent will deny the proposition [sc. the major, n.200] on which these consequences rely, which proposition you also deny [sc. ex hypothesi from the beginning of this paragraph].

203. This proposition too, ‘those things, one of which can persist without the other, are really distinct’, will be denied by the impudent. But once it has been denied, the whole doctrine of the Philosopher perishes, Topics 7.8-9.154a23-55a38, whereby he teaches that a proposition or problem is easily destroyed by discovery of its contradictory but is with difficulty established; but if this proposition [sc. at the beginning of this paragraph] is denied, no proposition or problem seems able to be destroyed (because if it is not destroyed by a contradiction then not by any other opposition either), or at least it seems not able easily or very easily to be sustained - because no place [sc. of argument] according to or assigned by Aristotle seems efficacious for destroying anything if this place is destroyed.

204. On this way of the philosopher is also founded the way of motion or change for proving a distinction - the way that the philosopher uses when proving that matter is a thing other than form, because it remains the same under opposed forms; the Philosopher also uses it, in Physics 5.2.220a1-11,a to prove that place is other than the things placed in it, because the same place persists along with different things placed in it.

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] Averroes com.3 and more manifestly in com.7 says, “If place is prior to any natural body (as Homer posits), then there could be place without body, and the place would not be corrupted on the corruption of the body.” See there.

205. The minor [n.200] is also plain in all relations whose foundations can exist without terms, as is the case with all relations of equivalence (as are similar, equal, and the like); for if this white exists and that white does not, this white is without likeness -and if that white should come to be, there is likeness in this white; therefore this white can exist with it and without it. It is similar in the case of many relations of nonequivalence; for if this man exists and he is such that no one else is subject to his power, he will be without lordship - and again he can be a lord with the accession of slaves, as Boethius says [On the Trinity ch.5]; and so it is in many other cases, about none of which is there need to adduce examples.

206. This reason [n.200] is also confirmed as to the whole of itself (because the following confirmations are valid for both the major and the minor); for if a relation is not other than its foundation, which yet remains in the relation’s absence, the incarnation seems to be denied, and the separation of accidents from the subject in the Eucharist; also every composition in things seems to be denied, and all the causality of second causes.

207. Proof of the first unacceptable result [sc. about the incarnation]: if the union of human nature with the Word is the same really as the human nature, then if the Word had never assumed that nature and made it, the same nature, absolute, then it would really have been united with the Word as it is now, because the whole reality of the assumption was assumed; also if the Word put aside the nature (while the nature itself remained in itself the same), the nature would remain really united with the Word and as really as it is united now, because the whole reality of the nature would then be preserved as it is now.

208. The proof also of the second unacceptable result [n.206], about the Eucharist: that if the same quantity of bread remains (the same as was before), and if the inherence of the Eucharist in the bread is nothing other than really that very quantity, then the Eucharist is really united to the bread (or informs it) now as before.

209. Proof of the third unacceptable result [n.206, composition in things]: because if a and b compose ab, and if the union of these parts with each other is nothing other than absolute a and b, then when a and b are really separate the whole reality remains that belongs to a and b united. And then a and b when separated remain really united and so the composite remains when the components are separated, and so the composite will not be composite - because when the composite remains while the component parts are separated, it is not composed of them; for then nothing would remain but a one by aggregation, as the Philosopher seems to conclude in Metaphysics 7.17.1041b11-19.

210. Proof too of the fourth unacceptable result [n.206, about the causality of second causes]: because whatever is caused by diverse second causes requires in them first a due proportion and coming together so that it may be caused by them; but if this coming together and proportion are only something absolute, then the causes are in this way really causative of this sort of effect when they do not come together just as when they do, and thus they can when together really cause nothing that they cannot cause even when not together; for when no other reality is posited, no thing can be caused that could not have been caused before. And thus could one have argued in the case of the third member, about the composite parts [n.209], because if a and b when separate do not compose ab, then neither do they do so when united, because just as the same thing -without any other reality - cannot cause something now which it could not cause before, so neither can the same things without any other reality compose now something that they could not compose before;     therefore etc     .

211. Seconda principally I argue against the aforesaid position [n.192]: nothing finite contains, according to perfect or virtual containing, opposites formally (because however much in God is conceded a most perfect containing of all perfections by identity that are in him, yet he cannot contain absolute opposites formally in himself, although he could have in himself such opposites virtually and such relatives formally - but from this is conceded an infinity of the foundation). But equality and inequality are opposites formally, and similarly likeness and unlikeness - at any rate relative to the same correlative term; but these can be perfectly founded on the same foundation successively. Therefore the foundation contains neither of them formally (or, more to the point, really and by perfect identity), because the reason for its not containing both is the same as the reason for its not containing either.

a.a [Interpolation from Appendix A] This reason is doubly deficient: first because the major is false of divine relations, second because the first part of the minor is false, save when making comparison to the same thing; thus there are two false premises. However the major holds the difficulty by adding to the subject the ‘nothing finite’     etc . - The minor is true when comparing equality and inequality to the same thing, and thus both are in the same foundation, though successively.

212. Third thus: the same thing does not contain many things of the same idea the same in perfect identity with itself; but many relations of the same idea are in the same foundation, as there are many likenesses founded on the same whiteness; therefore      etc. The major is plain inductively in the case of everything that contains many things by identity, because one containing thing contains one thing of the same idea.

213. Fourth thus: that which contains something by identity entails too, if it is more perfect, that what is contained in it is more perfect by identity (as a more perfect soul has a more perfect intellect - and according to those who posit that the same form is intellective and sensitive, and of corporeity and of substance, the intellective form includes a more perfect sensitive form than is the sensitive form in brutes); but a more perfect foundation does not contain in itself a more perfect relation, because not every whiter thing is more alike, as is manifest to the senses;     therefore etc     .

214. Fifth thus: things contained in something by identity are not less different if the containers of them are more distinct; but relations founded on two genera are less different than two relations founded on a thing of the same genus (nay on the same most specific species), because equality, which is founded on quantity, and likeness, founded on quality, are less different than likeness and relation of active power, which can be founded on the same heat;     therefore etc     .

215. Sixth and last thus: a relation of reason is a thing of reason different from its foundation, therefore a real relation too will be a real thing different from its foundation. The proof of the consequence is that, just as a relation of reason is the mode of the object in the first act of the intellect, and yet it is in itself not nothing in the genus of intelligibles but is in itself something truly intelligible (although it is not as or equally first as that of which it is the mode, since it is only understood by a reflex act - and so it is not as perfectly understood as that of which it is the mode), so too a real relation, although it is a mode of its foundation (and not equally first with it, nor as equally perfect as it), yet in itself it is a thing, because what is in itself nothing is the real mode of nothing; for there is no more general name than being or thing (according to Avicenna Metaphysics 1.6, f. 72rb), and so that to which being or thing do not belong has no real being belonging to it.

216. Further, the conclusion - for which these reasons have been adduced [nn.200-215] - is proved by authorities:

And first from Augustine On the Trinity 5.5. n.6, “In the case of created things, what is not spoken of as substance is left to be spoken of as accident;” here he expressly maintains that relation is an accident in creatures. Although this does not have to be understood of the relation that is of the creature to God [cf. nn.253-54, 260-63, below], yet it is certain that it holds, both in truth and in his intention, of the relation that can be lost while the foundation remains.

217. Again, Ambrose On the Trinity 1.9 nn.59-60, “If God existed first and later the Father, he has changed by the accession of generation; may God ward off this madness.” Therefore by mere accession of real relation a change could be made in a divine person, according to Ambrose - and this would not be unless that relation was a thing other than the foundation, because the foundation was there beforehand.

218. Again, Hilary On the Trinity 12 n.30, “That what was is born is already not only to be born but to undergo change by being born,” and he is speaking of the nativity of the Son of God. Therefore ‘to be born’ states a new relation.

219. Again, the Philosopher in the Categories 7.6136-37 says, “Relatives are all things that are said of others or exist to others as to what it is they are,” - and by this reasoning are substances excluded, which, although they are ‘of others’, are yet not ‘to another’;     therefore the ‘as to what it is they are’ is taken here, not for existence in the intellect, but for existence in reality. But if relations in reality are of others ‘as to what it is they are’, and a foundation is not of another ‘as to what it is’ - then the being of the latter is one thing and the being of the former another thing; therefore etc     .

220. Again, Simplicius On the Categories ‘Relation’ (f. 43r) declares expressly that relation is to another.

221. Again, the Philosopher Metaphysics 12.4.1070a31-b4 maintains that as the categories are different so also are their principles - and he exemplifies it specifically of the distinction of relation from other categories and of the distinction of the principles of relation from the principles of other categories..

222. Again, Avicenna Metaphysics 3.10 (f. 83va) seems to maintain expressly that relation has its proper certitude; and at the beginning of the chapter he maintains that it has, according to its certitude, its own presence in things and its own accidentality.

2. Objections

223. And because stubbornness is possible about relations, by conceding that they are not the same really as their foundation but that they are not different realities, and by denying that they are certain things by saying that a relation exists only in the act of the comparing intellect [Henry of Ghent] - there are arguments against this view: first that it destroys the unity of the universe, second that it destroys all substantial and accidental composition in the universe, third that it destroys all causality of second causes, and fourth that it destroys the reality of all the mathematical sciences.

224. The first is easily proved, because, according to Aristotle Metaphysics 12.10.1075a11-15, the unity of the universe exists in the order of the parts to each other and to the first thing, as the unity of an army exists in the order of the parts of the army to each other and to the leader; and from this can be asserted, against those who deny that a relation is a thing outside the act of the intellect, the word of the Philosopher, Metaphysics 12.10.1075b37-6a3, that the sort of people who speak thus “are disconnecting the substance of the universe.”

225. The proof of the second is that nothing is composite without the union of composable parts, such that, when the parts are separated, the composite does not remain; but nothing real depends on what is merely a matter of reason (and precisely of reason caused by an act of our intellect), or at any rate the sort of real that is not a product of art; therefore no ‘whole’ will be a natural real thing if for its being is necessarily required a relation and if this relation is nothing but a being of reason.

226. The proof of the third is that the causing of a real being does not require a being of reason in the cause, and because second causes cannot cause unless they are proportioned and nearby; therefore, if this being nearby is only a being of reason, causes under this being nearby will not be able to cause anything real. Because without this being nearby they cannot cause, and this being nearby (which is a relation) is no real thing, according to you [n.223, Henry] -     therefore a second cause contributes nothing to a being able to cause.

227. The proof of the fourth is that all mathematical conclusions demonstrate relations of subjects. The point is clear first from the authority of the Philosopher, Metaphysics 13.3.1078a31-b2, who says, “Of the good the species most of all are order [common measure and the definite] etc     ... and these are shown most of all by the mathematician,” because a mathematician’s art lies in proportion and the measures of certain things with each other. Secondly, this same thing is plain from experience by running through mathematical conclusions, in all of which some relative property is commonly predicated; as is plain beginning from the first conclusion of geometry, where the equality of the sides of a triangle is shown, or the predicate ‘able to be the base or side of an equilateral triangle’ is shown of a straight line; and so in all the rest, as that a triangle has three angles equal to two right angles (the property demonstrated of the three angles of a triangle is this, namely ‘equal to two right angles’), and so in other cases.

228. But if the stubbornness is still continued, that although relations are not formally beings of reason but something outside the intellect and not the same as the foundation, yet they are not a thing different from the foundation but are only proper modes of the thing - this objection seems to be a contention only about the term ‘mode of a thing’; for although the mode of a thing is not a thing other than the thing of which it is the mode, yet it is not no thing (just as neither is it no being), because then it would be nothing; and therefore relation falls under the division of being per se, according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.7.1017a24-27. Nor is everything into which ‘being per se’ is divided an equally perfect being; on the contrary, quality in respect of substance can be called a ‘mode’ and yet quality is in itself a true thing. Thus relation, although it is a mode (though one more imperfect still than quality), yet if it is outside the intellect (and not a mode intrinsic to the foundation, as infinity is in God and the infinity of all the essentials in God, as was said in 1 d.8 nn.192, 220-221 [d.3 n.58, d.10 n.30, d.19 n.15, d.31 n.19]) it follows that such a mode, being from the nature of the thing other than the thing, is a different thing from the foundation, taking ‘thing’ in its most general sense as divided into the ten categories.

229. And if it be said that the genus of relation is a thing, not because of the mode that is a disposition to something else, but because of the thing to which the being toward another belongs - this is not true; because just as every ‘being for itself’, conceived under an absolute idea, can pertain essentially to some absolute genus provided it is per se one (for no mode of conceiving, along with which the concept ‘per se unity’ [or: the per se unity of a concept] can stand, and which concept is absolute, takes away from the thing thus conceived its belonging to an absolute concept, because what is thus conceived includes something absolute asserted of it in its whatness and something said of it in its what-sortness, whereby it is distinguished from other absolute concepts - as its genus and difference, outside the intellect), so every such respect, or disposition or relation (or however it is named, for these are synonyms), can be per se conceived as per se one, having some quidditative predicate asserted of it in its whatness (as it is outside the mind, as was proved [nn.224-227]), and distinct from that in which it is founded, as was proved in the first article [nn.200-222]; therefore a proper genus can be had of those respects as they are respects without including their foundations essentially - and so the reality of the things that are in this genus is not precisely such because of the foundations, formally speaking, because the foundation is outside the per se idea of them as they have the complete of idea of a being in a real genus.

3. Scotus’ own Conclusion

230. With the reality of relation thus made clear in the second article [nn.224-229], and its real distinction from the foundation made clear in the first article (and this as to the relations about which the reasons there adduced are conclusive[nn.200-222; the relations in question are those that the foundations can exist without]), the first opinion

[sc. of Henry, n.192] seems sufficiently refuted, whatever understanding it is posited as being understood by.

4. To the Arguments for Henry’s Opinion

231. To the first argument for the other opinion [n193] I say that nothing of any genus is said of God, as was said in 1 d.8 nn.95-115; and, just like absolutes, so relations too that are formally said of God are not of any category but are transcendentals and properties of ‘being in general’, because whatever belongs to being as it is not distinguished into finite and infinite belongs to it before it is divided into categories, and so is transcendent.

232. To the point [n.194] that a like white thing is not more composite than a white thing merely, although it could be easily expounded by stressing the force of the word, saying that ‘com-position’ is ‘position together’ [sc. ‘like’ and ‘white’ are positioned together in a like white thing but not in a merely white thing, and so a like white thing is more ‘com-posite’], however - not caring about the word - one should say as a result that a like white thing is more composite than a white thing merely, because it has in itself act and potency really distinct [sc. its potentiality to be like is now actual, while in a white thing merely its potential to be like remains potential].

233. This should also be conceded by him [sc. Henry], on behalf of whose opinion the argument was made. For he himself concedes that there is never a difference of intention without composition, and that a relation differs from its foundation in creatures by a difference of intention. He concedes too that in divine reality person is a quasi-composite and essence a quasi-potency and relation a quasi-act [1 d.5 n.52], but where there are quasi-act and quasi-potency there is quasi-composition - so there, where there is act and potency, there is truly composition (but not a composition of two absolute entities, because one entity [sc. ‘like’] is not an absolute entity).

234. To the second argument, about change [n.195], Simplicius On the Categories ‘Relation’ (f. 43r) replies: since just as relation is not in respect of itself but of another, so that to which relation applies does not change in respect of itself but of another; and if, in that case, only that is said ‘to be changed’ which is disposed to itself differently now than it was before, there is no change in the category of ‘relation’ - but if ‘to be changed’ is common to a thing’s being differently disposed both to itself and to another, then change is in the category of ‘relation’ (as Simplicius maintains), because in relation someone is differently disposed to another.

235. The Philosopher, however, because he posits that it is not possible for something to be differently disposed to another unless it is differently disposed to itself, says for this reason that there is no motion in the category of relation; hence he only shows what categories motion is first in and what it is not.

236. Again, the Philosopher shows there [Physics 5.2.225b10-11] that there is no motion in substance, and yet there is change in substance; so from the Philosopher’s intention one can only get that in the category of relation there is no motion, and with this stands however that there is change in it. And this response is confirmed by the authority of Ambrose adduced above [n.217], who concedes that relation is a thing different from the foundation.

237. To the third argument, about presence-in [a subject, n.196], I concede that relation has its own presence-in (as Avicenna says in his Metaphysics [n.222]), and yet a composition of the genus out of things essentially included does not follow, because even quality has its own presence-in (which is not of the idea of its genus formally) and yet it is not composed with a composition respecting the nature of the genus; but this is because a property is present in the thing it belongs to and is not of the per se understanding of that thing, which however seems to be more true of property than of relation.

238. When therefore it is argued that then relation founded on substance would have its own accidentally, because it would have its own presence-in [n.196] - I reply: if there is any such relation (about which the reasons adduced above, in the first article [nn.200, 211-215], are conclusive) I concede the conclusion; both parts of the antecedent [sc. relation founded on substance, and having its own accidentality] seem to be true of the specific identity of one individual with another in species, or of essential likeness in specific form.

239. To the fourth, about infinite regress [n.198], I say that it does not follow, because the relation itself is referred to the foundation; for it cannot be without a foundation, or in the absence of it, without contradiction. For when it exists, and the foundation at the same time, both are the extremes of the relation which is of the relation to the foundation; therefore it cannot be - without contradiction - in the absence of the relation of it to the foundation, and thus it cannot, without contradiction, be in the absence of its foundation - and so the relation by which it is referred to the foundation will be the same as itself (and this will be plainer in the next solution in the following question, nn.268-71).

240. To the fifth argument, about distinction [n.199], I say that relation has distinction into its species as any other genus has distinction into its species; and yet the distinction only becomes known through the foundations, because of the littleness of its entity, which it has in the foundations. So it is also in the case of other accidents, which have a greater identity and reality, that sometimes the distinction is made through extrinsic things and is known from extrinsic distinction; yet in them it is formal, intrinsic, but made known through extrinsic things.

B. On the Identity with its Foundation of the Special Relation of ‘Creature to God’

1. First Opinion

241. [Exposition of the opinion] - The point about relations in general then has been seen. About the special relation of ‘creature to God’ there is one opinion [from William of Ware] that says this relation is the same as its foundation, and this in such a way that the foundation is nothing other than a certain relation to God; for just as a creature, although in itself it is a being, yet in respect of God is called a non-being, according to Anselm [Monologion ch.31],a - so too, although in itself it is an absolute being, yet in respect of God it is nothing other than a certain respect.

a.a [Interpolation] which statement must be understood insofar as the comparison falls under negation (in this way: ‘a creature, not in comparison to God, is something’), because according to no comparison is a creature’s entity proportional to God. But the statement is false if the comparison is affirmed (in this way: ‘in comparison to God a creature is nothing’); for such speech is metaphorical, according to Anselm.

242. With this claim seems to agree the statement that relation is the ratifying of the foundation, which was rejected in 1 d.3 nn.302-329, about the vestige.

243. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion there is Augustine On the Trinity 7.1 n.2, “Everything said relatively is, after removal of the relative, still something;” and again, “What is not anything in respect to itself is not anything that is said in respect of another.”

244. The foundation of a relation, therefore, is some entity formally that does not include the relation itself formally - because if it included it formally, the relation would not formally be a relation to another but to itself, for its foundation is formally to itself and the relation is being posited as formally the same as the foundation. Nor could relation be the first foundation of relation, for there would still remain the question what that first relation would be located in. It is not the case, therefore, that a relation is precisely the foundation of a relation.a

a.a [Interpolation] A reason as follows is formed: if relation is not founded in another it is not relation; so either there will be an infinite regress [sc. if relation is founded in relation] or relation will eventually be founded in the absolute. But the idea of the absolute is that it is to itself, while the formal idea of relation is disposition to another; but formal entity to itself is not the same as formal entity to another;     therefore etc     . - Again, that in whose quidditative idea there is a disposition to another is not to itself, nor is it absolute; therefore nothing created is an absolute entity.

245. This fact [sc. the foundation does not formally include the relation] is also plain in divine relations, where there is the greatest identity with the foundation; and yet the foundation is not formally the relation, because then the foundation would not be formally infinite perfection [1 d.5 nn.114, 117].

246. Secondly there is argument against the aforesaid opinion [n.241] as follows: a definition indicates the total quiddity of a thing, provided it is perfect; but the definition of stone does not include, essentially or formally, respect to another, because then it would not be the definition of stone as stone is in an absolute genus, and so it would not be of a stone as stone is in the genus of substance or as it is a species of substance; therefore in the essence of stone, formally, no respect is included.

247. Third thus: according to this opinion [n.241] creatures are not more distinguished from God than the relations in divine reality are distinguished from each other, because all opposite relations are equally distinct and especially when they pertain to the same mode of relatives; but divine relations, which are relations of origin, pertain to the second mode of relatives, to which also seem to pertain the relations that are in God by reason of efficient causality to creatures [1 d.3 n.287]; therefore if the creature is only a relation, and if opposite relation in God - as filiation - is subsistent relation, opposed to relation of Father, there will be an equal distinction on this side as on that.

248. And there is confirmation, because then a created supposit would only be a subsistent relation, and thus it would be more difficult to conceive the mode of existing of a created person than of an uncreated person.

249. And if you say that creatures differ in absolute nature among themselves but [divine] persons not so - this seems to destroy the position [n.241], because then the creature will have an absolute essence that will not be merely a relation.

250. The further consequence also seems to follow [sc. from the view that a creature is only a relation] that a creature differs less from God than one divine person differs from another, because in divine persons the relation is real and mutual, but between creature and God there is no real mutual relation [1 d.30 nn.30-31, 40, 43];     therefore etc     .

251. Fourth, to the opinion itself [n.241], as follows: things that are formally distinct are not formally and precisely the same (because then they would be formally distinct and not formally distinct, because they would be nothing but the same, formally indistinct); but the relation of creature to God is not formally or specifically distinct in diverse creatures; therefore either creatures do not differ in species or they will be precisely that relation. Proof of the minor: to all those relations - in creatures - there corresponds the same extreme on the part of God, but to relations of different idea there does not correspond a term of the same idea.

252. Fifth thus: in creatures there is a triple relation to God [1 d.3 n.287]; so a reason that the creature will be nothing but one relation is equally a reason that it will be nothing but another relation;     therefore it cannot be precisely any one of the relations. Nor can it be all of them, because they are formally different among themselves - and then any one created essence would have a formal distinction from itself. Therefore etc     .a

a.a [Interpolation] Or thus: a nature one formally and specifically is not many specifically; but any nature has three relations specifically different with respect to God, as is plain - conversely in God to creatures there are three relations of reason;     therefore etc     .

2. Second Opinion

253. [Exposition of the opinion] - Another position [of Peter of Tarantsia and Romanus of Rome, based on sayings of Thomas Aquinas] is that this relation of an angel [and of any creature] to God differs really from the essence of the angel [and any creature].

254. There is confirmation of this from blessed Augustine On the Trinity 5.5 n.6, where he says that in the case of creatures “what is not spoken of as substance is left to be spoken of as accident;” and he argues that in this case of creatures relation is an accident.

255. He also expressly maintains this in the same place 5.16 n.17, “Those things are relative accidents that occur with some change in the things of which they are said,” and he means from this that the relation of creature to God is an accident, but that the relation said relatively of God to creature is not an accident in God.

256. And from this he says more expressly toward the end, “That God begins to be called in time what he was not called before is manifestly said relatively; however it is not said as an accident of God (because something happens to him), but plainly as an accident of that in reference to which God begins to be relatively called something.”

257. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this:

Substance is said to be prior to accident in three ways (according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 7.1.1028a31-33), namely in knowledge, in definition, and in time; and what it is to be prior in time is so understood that there is no contradiction on the part of substance to prevent it being able to exist prior in duration to any accident; so there would be no contradiction in a stone’s being prior in duration to all dependence on

God, and as a result there would be no contradiction in a stone’s not depending on God, which seems absurd.a

a.a [Interpolation] Or thus: if the relation of creature to God is other than the creature, it is naturally posterior to the creature; but what is prior in nature can exist without what is naturally posterior -as far as it itself is concerned - without contradiction; therefore a stone can exist without a respect to God - therefore it can exist without a term for the respect, which includes a contradiction. The first proposition, the major, is plain, because a relation cannot be prior; for a relation, being founded on the absolute, cannot exist prior to it - nor can it exist simultaneously in nature with it, for the same reason; therefore it is posterior, because it is an accident of it. The second proposition, the minor, is plain, because the idea of ‘naturally prior’ is that - as far as concerns itself - it can be without the other, and in this way, according to the Philosopher, substance precedes accident.

258. Further, Augustine is either taking ‘accident’ generally there [nn.254-56] for anything changeable - and then any created substance is an accident, because it is changeable; or he is taking it there for what is changeable, that is, able to be lost (namely because it can be lost when something remains, and because it is posterior in nature or in duration to the something that remains); if in this second way, then the relation of creature to God is not an accident, because a creature cannot remain either in duration or in nature without that relation.

259. And it seems that Augustine is speaking in this way in 5.4 n.5, in the way some accidents are inseparable: “Just as the color of a raven’s feather is black - but it loses the color, not indeed as long as it is a feather, but because it is not always a feather. Wherefore the material itself of the feather is changeable, and because it ceases to be a feather, so it loses the color also.”a The loss of color however is not a change, because thus indeed the loss of the feather would be a change; but the loss of color is a loss, because just as the feather is prior in nature to the blackness, so too it could be posterior in nature to the blackness, that is, not be at once corrupted together with the corruption of the blackness.

a.a [Interpolation] because while the raven remains it cannot lose the blackness, but it can lose feathers and certain other things.

3. Scotus’ own Solution

260. As to this question then [question five, nn.188, 241], I say that the relation to God common to all creatures is the same really as the foundation; it is not however the same formally, nor is it the same precisely (or not the same with adequate identity), such that the foundation is only relation formally [cf. on real identity and formal non-identity, 1 dd.33-34, nn.1-3].

a. The Relation of Creature to God is the same really as its Foundation

261. The first point is proved by two reasons:

Because what is said properly to be present in something, and in the absence of which the something cannot be without contradiction, is the same as the something really; but relation to God is properly present in a stone, and in the absence of this relation a stone cannot be without contradiction; therefore the relation is the same really as the stone.

262. Proof of the major: because just as a contradiction stated of certain things is a way of proving distinction, so an impossibility of receiving the predication of contradictories pertaining to being is a way of proving identity in being - and this when there is no essential dependence that requires a manifest distinction (which I make clear thus: because the impossibility that a [e.g. a creature] is without b [e.g. relation to the Creator] is either because of the identity of a with b or because of its priority or simultaneity in nature with b; therefore if b is not naturally prior to a nor necessarily simultaneous in nature with it, and if a cannot be without b, the result is that a is the same as b; for if b is other than a or posterior to it, it is not likely that a could not naturally be in the absence of b without contradiction); but what is present in something properly, as relation is present in the foundation (that is, what is so present in what it is present in that if it were other than what it is present in then it would be posterior to what it is present in), is not prior in nature nor simultaneous in nature with what it is present in; therefore if what is present in something is necessarily required for the being of what it is in, such that what it is in cannot be without it, necessarily it is the same really as what it is in. So it is as to the issue at hand.

263. The minor [n.261] is manifest, because just as it is impossible for a stone to be without God, so it is impossible for it to be without its dependence on God - for it could be without the term of the dependence in just the same way as it could be without the dependence; for being without the term is not incompossible save because of the dependence itself - but something ‘not necessary simply’ is not the idea of what is simply necessary;     therefore etc     .

264. Against this reason [n.261] I raise the objection that then [sc. if relation to God were the same really as the creature] any relation that is present in the divine essence through act of the divine intellect would be the same as the essence (proof: it is incompossible for the essence to be without it - for if such a relation could be new then the divine intellect could change, which is impossible); but to posit that such a relation is the same as the essence is unacceptable, because then it would be real (for whatever is the same as a thing is real); but the relation is not real (from 1 d.31 nn.6, 8-9, 16, 18); wherefore     etc .a

a.a [Interpolated note] Again, the relation of likeness is not the same as whiteness, and yet it is necessarily present when the term is in place; therefore      if the term were necessary, the relation would simply necessarily be present - and yet it is not then more the same, because it is not more intrinsic to the term just because the term is incorruptible. Likewise there is this argument: if the term were corruptible the relation would not be the same as the foundation, therefore neither is it the same when the foundation is incorruptible. - This reason well shows that incorruptibility of the term does not make per se for this identity; but incorruptibility of the term in comparison with the foundation does well make for it, that is, if it is simply impossible for the term not to be unless the foundation is not - and further, if this is the first relation of dependence of the foundation on a term, because then by reason of the foundation there is simply this necessity of coexistence; because of the first of these points [‘if it is simply impossible for the term not to be     etc .’] the relation, according to one opinion, of vision to the object would be that of identity - because of the second of them [‘and further, if this is the first etc .’] the dependence of our nature on the person of the Word in Christ would not be identical with our nature.

    Again, a relation to something simultaneous in nature as to a term is posterior to the foundation (as likeness is posterior to whiteness); therefore      also a relation to something prior in nature to the term can likewise be posterior. Nor does it therefore follow, from the fact that the foundation’s being without the term is a contradiction, that the foundation’s being without the relation is a contradiction [nn.262-263].

    These two reasons [sc. in the preceding two paragraphs] are probable reasons against the first reason about the contradiction of ‘being without each other’ [n.261]. Likewise, the foundation cannot generally be without a respect that is other than it (as body and figure); therefore the inference ‘not without this, therefore the same as this’, when the thing in question is a respect, does not follow.

    Against the other reason, namely that a respect common to everything other than the term is not the accident of anything [n.266], has a logical instance against it, that creation is not created (a concrete is not asserted of an abstract). Again, more really: ‘inherence accidentally’ is itself present in a thing but whiteness is not; therefore a relation is itself related but the foundation is not. There is therefore not the same reason of standing in the first case and the second. [Vatican editors: these interpolated objections are left without answer.]

    Note, in the year 1304 (almost at the end): ‘the two extremes are the one total cause of relation’; later differently: ‘because the foundation is the total cause of relation but the term is a sine qua non’ (just as fire is the total active cause of heat but wood is a sine qua non), such that the foundation is prevented from causing as long as it does not have the term. [Vatican editors remark that the first note in this paragraph is the regular teaching of Scotus; the second or later note is nowhere found in him.]

265. I reply. The incompossibility of a separation can be by reason of that from which something is inseparable, and it can be by something extrinsic. An example of the second: because, according to the Philosopher, for the heaven to be without motion would be a contradiction, not indeed from a cause intrinsic to the heaven (because the heaven is receptive of motion, indifferent to rest and to motion), but from an extrinsic moving cause; yet it does not follow that the heaven is [the same as] its own motion, although it cannot be without motion. Now I say that the incompossibility of being a stone without dependence of it on God is by reason of the stone precisely; and by this reason is also the reason for the incompossibility of being a stone without a term for the dependence of it - and whatever is the reason for requiring a term of dependence is the reason for having the dependence. But in the objection adduced [n.264], there is no necessity for the inherence simply of such relation, nor any incompossibility of the nonbeing of the object on the part of the divine essence itself (as if it were impossible for the essence to be unless it required a term ‘to which’ and this term was unable not to be), but there is only incompossibility from an extrinsic cause, namely the divine intellect (a cause, I say, simply necessarily acting), and the incompossibility is on the part of the intellect’s doing something new.

266. The second principal reason for the first member of the solution [nn.260-61] is as follows: what is uniformly said of everything other than the term [of a relation] is not accidental to anything that is said relative to that term; the relation of creature to God is of this sort [sc. said uniformly of everything other than the term];     therefore etc     .a - and so it is the same as the foundation.

a.a [Interpolation] but such a relation, common to every creature, is uniformly said ‘of everything other than God’ in relation to God himself; therefore it is not accidental to any creature.

267. Proof of the major: because if it were accidental to one it would, by parity of reason, be accidental to another; as, for example, if the relation of effect to cause were accidental to the stone (and would consequently be a thing other than the stone), then by parity of reason this relation would have the relation of effect to God - and then another relation of effect would be accidental to the first relation, and so on ad infinitum.

268. Against this reason [n.267] I raise the objection that there appears nothing unacceptable in relations proceeding to infinity; for it was said in 1 d.19 n.6 that relation is founded on relation, as proportionality on proportion. From this the argument goes as follows: if Socrates is the same as Plato then the sameness of Socrates is the same as the sameness of Plato, and by parity of reason the sameness is the same as sameness; and the first sameness [sc. of Socrates with Plato] is a thing other than the foundation, because the foundation could be without it; therefore by parity of reason any sameness will be a thing other than that which it belongs to, and so there will be infinite real relations. And so can it be argued about proportions and likenesses.

269. To this I reply that there is a stand in the second stage [of the infinite process]. To understand this, let the first foundations be taken, namely Socrates and Plato, between which there is mutual sameness, and let this sameness in Socrates be called a and that in Plato b; let the sameness of a with b be called c, and let the reverse sameness, of b with a, be called d. I say that a differs from Socrates because Socrates can be without a (because he can be without the term of a), and a cannot be without the term; however a does not differ from c but c is the same as it, because a cannot be without b (since they are by nature together); and consequently it is a contradiction for a to be unless both the foundation of that which is c and also the term of it are. But when the foundation and the term of c exist, c will necessarily exist - so it is a contradiction for a to be without c; and c is formally present in a, because a is said to be the same with the very sameness that is c; therefore c is the same as a, and consequently a stand will be made there.

270. And if you ask by what sameness c is the same as a, I say that it is so by a itself, because the sameness is only one of reason, for it is simply of what is the same as itself.

271. In the same way there is a stand in likenesses of proportionalities, because one proportionality is like another with essential likeness (but two individuals of the same species are said to be alike in specific form), and so just as there is a stand in specific sameness in the second stage [of the process to infinity] (and not in the first stage), so too in the case of likeness of proportionalities.

b. The Relation of Creature to God is not the same formally as the Foundation nor is it precisely the same

272. As to the second article, namely that a relation is not formally the same as its foundation [n.260], I suppose this to be manifest from the understanding of what it is to be ‘formally the same’, because the per se idea of a respect does not formally include the idea of an absolute, nor conversely does the idea of an absolute per se include the formal idea of a respect; likewise, as to what is there added [n.260], that the foundation is not precisely the relation itself, this was proved against the first opinion [nn.243-52].

273. And then I understand how there can be a true and non-precise identity in the following way:

When, in the case of creatures, something contains another thing by identity, or is unitively many things, this is not because of the perfection of what is contained but of the perfection of what contains - just as, if the intellective soul (according to some) contains the vegetative soul and the form of substance, this is not because of the perfection of the form of substance (because it does not contain all the others), but because of the perfection of the intellective soul. Likewise, let it be that being contains any property at all of being (as truth, goodness, and unity), yet this containing is not from the perfection of what is contained but from the perfection of what contains - just as also in divine reality, the fact that relation is the same as the foundation is not from the perfection of the relation (as if it contains the essence by identity), but from the formal infinity of the essence, because of which the essence has in itself relation by identity.

274. In all these cases (and especially in the case of creatures) the container is not precisely the contained, but is an entity as perfect in itself as it would be if the contained were outside the container and added to it - nay, a more perfect entity, because by its perfection it contains every other entity; hence the intellective soul is not merely substantial form (because then it would not be perfect), but is as perfectly the ultimate entity - which is there - as it would be if it presupposed entity other than itself.

275. So I say in the issue at hand, that the foundation is not only the relation (which it contains by identity), but is as absolute as it would be if the relation were added to it, or if it had altogether no relation; but this is not because of its own perfection [sc. as foundation], but it is because of perfection (either simply or in some way or other), because the foundation contains the relation by identity, so that the containing itself prevents the accidentality of the relation from being able to be an accident, because it is perfectly contained in the substance - which relation, however, if it were not thus contained, would of itself not perhaps have the fact that it is the substance by identity.

C. To the Principal Arguments

276. To the principal arguments of this fifth question.

To the first, from Metaphysics 4 [n.189]. It is said that Aristotle infers that ‘everything is relative to something’, that is, ‘relative to opinion and sense’. - But on the contrary: the consequent should differ from the antecedent in a proposed conclusion [1 d.3 n.316].

Therefore I say that it is unacceptable to say that ‘all things are relative to something’ such that their being is formally to be relative to something else, as the opinion said which posits that all appearances are true [n.189] - which opinion also said that the being of a thing is formally appearance. And I do not in this way concede that ‘all things are relative to something’ such that their being is formally relative to something -rather their being is formally to themselves, although this being contains by identity the being of things that are relative to something else.

277. As to the second [n.190], although its conclusion could be denied of relatives or of things in diverse genera (and they would then be said to be primarily diverse as far, namely, as concerns their formal reasons, such that none of them formally includes another or anything of another, although by identity in existing one contains another), yet it can be said - in consequence of what has been said elsewhere [n.231] - that this sort of relation is transcendent, because what belongs to being before it descends to genera is transcendent; but what belongs to every being belongs to it before it descends to genera; therefore anything such is transcendent and does not belong to any genus. And so these relations that follow being before it descends to beings of any genus will, since they are transcendent, not be of any determinate genus.a

a.a [Interpolated note by Richard of Sloley] against the first response [n.277]:

    Then, for the same reason, the powers of the soul could be set down as qualities and yet be really the same as the substance of the soul, because the reason that something in one accidental category - for instance relation - is the same in reality with substance is also a reason that something in another accidental category should also be. Again, nothing finite includes by identity anything primarily diverse from it; therefore substance does not include a relation of the genus of relation.

    Against the second response [n.277]:

    That which is of a determinate genus cannot be the same as that which is of some other genus but is transcendent. Again, what is a substance to one thing is not an accident to anything (from the Philosopher and Commentator, Physics 1.3.186a32-b12). Again, then an absolute thing and a comparative thing would not be contraries nor the first differences dividing being, because -according to Aristotle - great and small are not contraries because they are present in the same thing [Categories 6.5b11-6a11]; the second point is plain, because the first differences divide more than the second ones (but the second differences dividing being, when one says ‘another substance, another quality,     etc .’ are primarily diverse; therefore     ). Again Avicenna Metaphysics 3.10, f 83rb, “There is no relation which is not an accident;” again On the Soul 5.2, f 23va, “Substance is not of itself referred to anything in any way.”

D. To the Authority for the Second Opinion

278. As to the authority of Augustine for the last opinion [nn.254-56], I concede that ‘relations in creatures are accidents’ in the case of relations of creatures to what they do not essentially depend on; but as to what something essentially depends on, its essential dependence on it is not an accident of it, that is, is not something really different from it.

279. And then to the first [n.254], which is adduced from ch.5, that “what is not spoken of as substance is left to be spoken of as accident,” one must expound ‘spoken of as accident’ in the sense that it is not predicated per se in the what of a thing, and along with this that it is also changeable, not while the foundation remains, but by change of the foundation; and the first condition here fails in the case of essential (or rather substantial) predicates said of creatures, and the second condition fails in the case of divine relations - but both when concurrent are sufficient [sc. for something to be spoken of as an accident].

280. And so can the last authority [n.255] from ch.19 be expounded, that “they are accidents”, ‘in the case of things to which God is said’ [n.256]; that is, they are simply changeable but not losable - and they are said ‘by way of accident’ [n.256], that is, are not said essentially of their subjects; and one condition fails in the case of divine relations.

II. To the Fourth Question

A. Solution

281. As to the fourth question, about creation [n.179], I say that creation seems to import not only relation to God in idea of efficient cause but also a respect to preceding not-being, and this in order of duration, as creation is properly taken. But this order can be understood to be either to immediately preceding not-being or to not-being taken indistinctly; and in the first way a thing is said to be created only in the first instant - in the second way a thing can be said to have always been created, as long as it persists.

282. If we speak of the first relation (namely to the efficient cause), the solution is plain from the preceding question [the fifth question, n.260].

283. If we speak of the second relation [sc. order to preceding not-being], the relation seems not to be the same as the foundation - and this follows from the first way [n.281], insofar as the relation belongs to the thing in the first instant, provided the respect to not-being persists only in that instant; but what is absolute persists after that instant, and what does not persist is not the same really as what does persist.

284. If we speak of the order to not-being taken indistinctly, the same conclusion seems to hold [sc. that the relation is not the same as the foundation], unless proof can be given that it is contradiction for the essence to be without a respect to a preceding not-being in duration. But if there be proof (in the third question asked [n.95]) that it is a contradiction for a stone to be without a respect to a preceding not-being in duration, then it could be said as a consequence that the respect does not differ from the foundation save in that the respect is not a dependence on something on which what has the foundation essentially depends; and it was said generally in the preceding question [the fifth question, n.260], not that ‘every respect is the same really as its foundation’, but that ‘every respect of dependence on something, without which the dependent thing cannot be, is the same as the dependent thing’ [nn.261, 263, 265, 278]. But if it is not a contradiction for a stone to be without such respect and order to not-being, then it is plain that the order is not the same as the foundation.

285. Thus, therefore, creation is the same as the foundation either, according to one opinion, as to both respects that it states [nn.282, 284], or, according to the first opinion, at least as to the first respect (though not as to the second [n.282]).

B. To the Principal Arguments

286. One can reply as to the first argument [n.180] that the authority is speaking precisely of things that are included per se in the quiddity of the thing as it is quiddity (as quiddity excludes one and many, act and potency, because nothing such is of the per se understanding of quiddity); and in this way I concede that no relation is formally the same as the foundation, even if it is sometimes really and by identity contained in it, as is the case with the issue at hand.

287. As to the second [n.181], it is plain that the respect to God in question remains not only in the first instant but always, as long as the thing remains - as will be said below in d.2 n.62.

288. As to the third [n.182]. Although the statement ‘God cannot renew the same motion’ is not true (there will be discussion of this in 4 d.43 q.1 n.8, q.3 n.7), yet, if this is conceded, it is conceded because of the interruption, which according to them prevents the sameness of a renewed motion with a motion that has been destroyed. But this does not happen with the issue at hand save in that the same creation cannot be renewed insofar as it states an immediate order to not-being, but not insofar as it states a respect to the cause; hence, the same respect can be renewed, because the same maternity was in the mother of Christ (in relation to Christ) after the resurrection as before [4 d.43 q.1 n.13].

289. To the fourth [n.183] one can concede that creation as undergone is in the fire from the generating fire (namely the creation by which everything other than God is said to be created, whether it is created or generated); but the consequence does not hold ‘if creation is in the fire from the generating fire, therefore the creation is related to the generating fire as to the term’ - for likeness is in this white thing and in that from what generates it, and yet the likeness does not have to be related to the generator as to the term.

290. As to the fifth, the argument about change [n.184] - there seems to be a difficulty there both about the major and about the minor. I say that in natural change there is matter and form and agent and composite of matter and form and many respects (to wit: the respect of the agent to the produced composite, and conversely a respect of the produced composite to the agent, a respect of the matter to the form and conversely, and a respect of both to the whole and conversely, and a respect of the composite and of the present form to the preceding opposite; and not only were these absolutes preceded -namely composite and form - by their opposites, but the respects of matter to form and conversely, and the respects of form to composite and conversely, these too were preceded by their opposites, and so there can be respects of all these respects to their opposites; nor is this all, but also all these respects are from the agent, and so there can be respects of all these respects to the agent) - such that about these many respects, taking those that relate to the issue at hand, matter has respect to form as the perfectible and that which is perfected to its perfection, and these are coeval with the existence of the composite; this respect too is from the agent, which effectively induces the form and perfects the matter with this formal perfection, such that there is founded on this respect, which is ‘of matter to form as of receptive to perfection or of perfectible to perfection’, a respect of the passive thing to the agent; this respect too succeeds to its opposite, because the matter was previously unformed. These three respects seem to be what is meant by passive change, namely: the respect of matter to form as of perfective to perfection or of perfectible to perfection; the respect of passive or produced thing to the agent or producer; and the respect of a later thing to the preceding opposite. But two of these respects, namely the first and third, seem to concur in change absolutely (when not comparing change to the agent), and these are expressed by the idea of change whereby something is said to be changed ‘because it is disposed differently now than before’; if ‘disposed’ expresses the respect of matter to form or of the perfectible to the perfection which it is thus disposed to, this is what is actualized by that perfection; if ‘differently than before’ expresses it, here is another respect, founded on some respect of matter to form or of perfectible to perfection. And if one adds that change means that something is disposed differently now than before by some changer, here is a third respect.

291. As to the issue at hand, therefore, one can say that change, properly taken, is not the same as form (because then change would remain while the form remains), nor is it the same as the respect of matter to form or conversely (because then it would always remain while this sort of respect remains), nor is it the same as the respect of the whole to the opposite or conversely of the opposite to the whole (because then it would likewise remain while the composite remains) - but it is the order of matter to form as a new and immediate order to such form; and neither of these orders is an essential dependence on anything on which what has the order depends, and so neither is the same as the absolute thing. In this way then the major of the reason [nn.184-85] is conceded.

292. And to the minor [nn.184, 186] I say that creation is the producing into being of the whole created thing without presupposing any part of it - such that, although the created thing has two parts (one of which naturally precedes the other and receives it as its perfection), yet it is created as a whole. The first term of creation does not seem to be any part but total being, or at least it is so if we are speaking of a created angel, where nothing is a potential receiving something actual the opposite of which it was under previously.

293. And then if change is called ‘a new relation of the potential to the actual’, such that the potential pre-existed in itself and yet without the actuality, it is plain that no creation is change, because nothing potential pre-existed creation.

294. But if change is called ‘a new actualization of a potential’, such that the potential did not pre-exist under the act nor need it have pre-existed in itself - then in this way the creation of an angel is not change, because there is nothing potential in it. Yet it could in this way be said that creation of fire was change (if fire was created), because in fire there would be a potential and it would be actualized by form and it would be disposed differently now than before; not that it is ‘differently disposed than it was before’, but that it was ‘not disposed before as it is now’. And it seems that in the definition of change the ‘being disposed differently now than before’ should not be taken positively, because it is plain that the reference is not to a subject but to the term ‘from which’; but the term ‘from which’ of motion is properly not anything positive but is a privation, according to the Philosopher Physics 5.1.224b35-5a16.

295. I say then that either no creation is change, if change is that a potential always has to have pre-existed and be newly actualized by a received form (because the potential of no created thing pre-existed), or at least no creation of a simple is change, if it is sufficient for change that a potential was not in the act it is in now and was thus newly in act through change. But, in whichever way it is taken, the immediate order to not-being [n.281], by reason of which it was conceded that change differs from form [n.291], is also the reason by which it was conceded that creation is not the same really as the foundation [n.283], for the order immediate to not-being is not the same if it only remains in the first instant, just as, on account of the same order, creation does not remain in the same instant as form.

Question Six. Whether Angel and Soul differ in Species

296. Sixth - and finally - about this distinction, where the Master [Lombard] deals with the purely spiritual creature and with the creature composed of the spiritual and corporeal, I ask whether angel and soul differ in species.a

a.a [Interpolation] About this second distinction, where the Master deals specifically with the issue of the existence of creatures, and first of the purely spiritual creature - there are thirteen questions to ask (and they all pertain to the present discourse); the first is whether angel and rational soul (which are creations purely spiritual) differ in species; the second is whether in the actual existence of an angel there is some succession formally; the third is whether in an actually existing angel something should be posited that is the measure of the angel’s existence, or of the duration of his existence, which is really other than his existence; the fourth is whether there is one eternity to all the eternities; the fifth is whether the operation of an angel is measured by an eternity; the sixth is whether an angel is in a place; the seventh is whether an angel requires a determinate place such that he cannot be in a larger or a smaller space but precisely in so much space (and there is included in this seventh question whether an angel can be in a point of space and whether he can be in any space however small); the eighth is whether one angel can be in several places at the same time; the ninth is whether two angels can be in one place at the same time; the tenth is whether an angel can be moved from place to place by continuous motion; the eleventh is whether an angel can move himself; the twelfth is whether an angel can be moved in an instant; the thirteenth is whether an angel can be moved from extreme to extreme without passing through what is in between. About the first question the argument is... [d.1 n.296, d.2nn.1, 84, 126, 143, 189, 197, 254, 273, 439, 486, 507].

297. Proof that they do not:

Because if the essences differ in species then the powers also do that are founded on them; and if the powers differ then so do the operations - and further, the objects then differ as well, from On the Soul 2.4.415a18-22. The consequent is false, because an angel’s intellect and mine have the same object.

298. Secondly as follows: Augustine On Free Choice of the Will 3.11 n.32 says, “Angel and soul are equal in nature but unequal in office;” but an equality of nature does not exist in things differing in species;     therefore etc     .

299. Thirdly as follows, that if they are of different species, then one of them will, as to its totality, be nobler than the other, and consequently each individual of the nobler kind will be nobler than any individual of the less noble kind; and then either any angel at all will be more perfect than any soul at all, or conversely; and then further, since capacity follows nature, either the capacity of any angel at all will be greater than the capacity of any soul at all, or conversely; and since blessedness requires the whole capacity of the soul to be satisfied, it follows that there is necessarily a greater perfection in any angel (so that it may be blessed) than in any soul, or conversely - each one of which is false, because angel and soul are disposed as exceeding and as exceeded in blessedness.

300. On the contrary:

The more noble a created form is, the more it is distinguished into degrees of nobility (as there are more forms of mixed things than there are elementary forms, and more forms of animate things than of inanimate ones, and perhaps more animals than plants); so there will be more differences in species in the case of intellective nature than of non-intellective nature, which cannot be if angel and soul do not differ in species;     therefore etc     .

I. To the Question

A. About the Conclusion in Itself

301. The conclusion of this question [n.296] is certain, namely that angel and soul differ in species - because forms of the same idea have the same idea of perfecting and not perfecting; but the soul is naturally perfective of an organic body as form of it, but an angel is not naturally perfective of any matter;     therefore etc     .

B. On the first Reason for this Distinction

302. But what is the first reason for this distinction in species?

1. First Opinion

303. Some say [Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas] that the first reason is unitability with matter and non-unitability with matter.

304. On the contrary: form is the end of matter, from Physics 2.8.199a30-32, and so the distinction of matter is for the distinction of form and not conversely (hence the bodily members of a deer are different from the bodily members of a lion, because soul differs from soul [1 d.2 n.332]); so the first distinction of this thing and of that will not be through matter and non-matter, but will be prior in itself to those acts.

305. There is a confirmation; for because this nature is such and that nature is not, so this nature is not that nature; therefore this idea of perfecting and of not perfecting [matter] will not be the first reason for distinction.

2. Second Opinion

306. In another way it is said [Thomas Aquinas] that a greater or lesser degree, in angel and in soul, is what first distinguishes one from the other.

307. There is a confirmation through a likeness, because the sensitive soul does not seem to be distinguished in the brutes save because of diverse degrees of perceiving, and yet there is there a specific difference; therefore it can be like this here with diverse modes of understanding, namely a more perfect mode and a more imperfect one.

308. But what is this distinct mode of understanding? - What is posited is that an angel understands non-discursively and a soul understands discursively (speaking of the natural intellect); and these modes are distinct in species and are intellectualities of different species.

309. On the contrary:

The soul is not discursive as to principles and is discursive as to conclusions; therefore if knowing in this way and knowing in that way are different species, and if that is why they require intellectualities of different species, then there will be two intellectualities of different species in the soul, one insofar as it understands principles and another insofar as it understands conclusions.

310. Besides, the soul of the blessed is not discursive about the beatific object, but it is discursive about an object known naturally; therefore there will be one intellectuality in species insofar as the soul understands God beatifically and another insofar as it understands something naturally.

311. Again, third as follows: if the intellectuality of angel and soul differ in species, then things that essentially depend on the one and on the other differ in species; but essentially dependent on these is the beatific vision of an angel and of a soul (for although an angel is not the total cause of his vision nor the soul of its, yet each vision essentially depends on the intellectuality of the nature it belongs to); therefore this beatific vision and that differ in species - but this is false, because all diverse species have a determinate order according to more perfect and more imperfect, such that any individual of the more perfect species exceeds any individual of the more imperfect species; and then it follows that any blessedness of any angel would exceed any blessedness of any soul, or conversely, both of which are false.

312. Again, fourth: what is meant by the statement ‘an angel does not understand discursively’?

Either that an angel does not have a power by which he can know the conclusions when he knows the principles (supposing the conclusions were not known to him in act or habit before); and then this does not seem to be a mark of perfection in an intellect; rather it seems to be a mark of imperfection in a created intellect, because it is a perfection in our intellect - supplying an imperfection - that it can from known things that virtually include other things acquire knowledge of those other things.

313. Or what is meant is that an angel can for this reason not know discursively, because all conclusions are actually known to him from the beginning (and so he cannot know them through the principles); but this is false, because he does not actually and distinctly know and understand everything from the beginning.

314. Or for this reason, that everything is known to him habitually from the beginning (and therefore he cannot acquire an habitual knowledge of them from principles); and this does not posit an essential difference of intellectuality in soul and angel, because it might be thus in the case of my soul, that if all conclusions were known to it from the beginning (God impressing on it knowledge of the conclusions at the same time as knowledge of the principles), it could not know them discursively - not because of an inability of nature but because it would have knowledge of the conclusions beforehand and cannot acquire de novo what it would already have (in this way the soul of Christ was not discursive but knew habitually all the principles, and the conclusions in the principles, and yet his soul was not angelic in nature).

3. Scotus’ own Solution

315. I say then to the question [n.302] that whatever is able to act is some being possessed of first act; and by nature the idea there of first act in itself is prior to first act in comparison with second act, of which first act is the principle, such that, although that by which such a being is the principle of second act is not other than its own nature, yet its primary entity is not its nature as its nature is principle of such second act, but it is its nature as its nature is in itself a ‘this’; and so the first distinction of being is not through its nature as its nature is principle of such operation but through its nature as it is ‘this nature’, although it is by identity the principle of second act.

316. So I say in the issue at hand that, although the angelic nature is the principle of understanding and willing, and the soul likewise (such that these powers do not state anything added to the essence of the soul), yet what is first - in this case and that - is this nature and that nature, in relation to itself. And so the first distinction is that on which there follows the distinction of principles of operating, whether operating the same act or different ones; for it is because it is this nature that is the principle of such operation, and not contrariwise.

317. There is an example of this: the sun has the virtue of generating many mixed bodies inferior to it. And if you ask for the first reason for the distinction of sun from plant, the first reason for the distinction of one from the other is not through the power of generating a plant on the part of the sun, because, if that power were communicated to another, yet not for this reason would that other be the sun, nor would it be distinguished from a plant as the sun is distinguished. The first distinguishing reason then is that the form of the sun is such and such a form and the form of a plant is such and such a form, and on this follows the fact that this form can be the principle of such operations and the other cannot be.

318. So I say in the issue at hand, that because an angel is such a nature in itself and because the soul is such a nature in itself, therefore are they first distinct in species; not indeed as two species but as species and part of a species, because the soul is not properly a species but a part of a species; and yet soul is the first reason for distinguishing its species - the species of which it is a part - from an angel, and so the first reason for specific distinction on the part of its species is itself.

319. One can also add (although it is not absolutely necessary for the solution of the question) that the intellectuality of an angel, qua intellectuality, does not differ in species from the intellectuality of the soul qua intellectualitya - this is because, although this first act and that first act differ in species as these acts are considered absolutely in themselves, yet not as they are considered according to the perfection that they virtually contain, namely the perfection according to which they are principles of second acts; the point is seen from this, that these acts are about objects of the same idea and in relation to objects of the same idea (and a likeness of this is that, if the soul of ox and eagle differ in species, yet not for this reason do the powers of seeing of the one and of the other, insofar as they are this sort of perfection and that sort of perfection, differ in species).

a.a [Interpolated note from Appendix A] Opinion of venerable Alexander of Hales. - Angel and soul can be considered:

    Philosophically, and thus they differ essentially in being “separate in substance” and in being “unitable in substance.”

    Logically, and thus ‘they differ by the essential powers that they add over and above the genus’, as is ‘to be intellectual with reason’ and ‘to be intellectual without reason’. “And I mean that ‘intellect with reason’ combines and divides and proceeds discursively through middles from an extreme, and the angelic intellect is not of this sort.”

    Metaphysically, and thus “they differ essentially through an intellect with a possibility for species existing in phantasms and through an intellect abstracted from this possibility,” of which latter sort is the angelic intellect, because “an angel does not have a sensitive power.”

    Theologically, and thus they differ because an angel “is changeable immutably and the soul is changeable mutably.”

320. Now this is very possible, because some containing things differ in species and yet what they contain does not differ in species, as the properties of being are contained by identity in beings ever so distinct and yet these properties in them are not distinct in species; for the oneness of a stone (which is not really other than the stone) and the oneness of a man (which is really the same as the man) are not as formally distinct in species as man and stone are; rather, this oneness and that oneness seem to differ only in number.

321. This is also made clear through something else, that just as things, whose formal distinction is as it were one of species, can be by identity contained in the same thing (as in the same soul are included the intellective and sensitive perfections such that they are as formally distinct as if they were two things), so conversely something ‘formally non-distinct’ can be contained in distinct things.

322. And if this is true [sc. that formally non-distinct things can be contained in formally distinct things, as an intellective power not distinct in species can be contained in specifically distinct angel and soul], then it is plain that angel and soul are not in this way distinguished first in species, namely by such and such an intellectuality - rather, neither first nor not-first are they distinguished in species ‘because such and such an intellectuality exists in them’. Or, if this not be true, but be left now as in doubt, at least the first statement [sc. that angel and soul differ specifically on the part of their absolute natures, nn.315-318] seems sufficiently clear, because their first distinction is not through this [sc. through distinct intellectualities].

II. To the Principal Arguments

323. As to the first principal argument [n.297], one can concede that the essences of angel and soul can differ in species and that yet the powers do not, if the final statement in the solution of the question [nn.319-21] is true - and in that case the argument [n.297] does not proceed.

324. Yet one can say that powers, different in species on the part of the foundation (but not on the part of the object), can have acts different in species insofar as the acts depend on the foundation of the power, though the acts are of the same species insofar as they depend on the objects; and then it would be conceded that the intellection of angel and of man about the same intelligible thing is the same in species on the part of the object, but on the part of the foundation - insofar as the foundation is the power’s reason of acting - is different in species.

325. One should then also say that the operations simply differ in species -because the identity on the part of the object is not simply an identity in species but is a diversity simply and an identity in a certain respect (for any difference suffices for drawing a distinction between certain things but not any identity suffices for a perfect identity between them); and then the same unacceptable result seems to follow as was inferred against the second opinion, the one about beatific acts [n.311], unless perhaps it be said that the total cause of the beatific act is the object and that the powers are disposed there in respect of the act as merely receptive and passive - and receptive things do not distinguish received forms in species, as is plain about whiteness when received in a stone and in wood.

326. As to the second argument [n.298] (and all like authorities), the answer is plain from the authority of Augustine [On 83 Diverse Questions q.51 n.4] ‘the soul is formed by truth alone’; indeed for this reason nothing is superior to the soul - for this is true by reason of the object in which it rests; and to this extent the soul is equal to an angel, because no intellectual nature can be made to rest save in an infinite object. And thus must the authority be understood, and all like authorities.

327. As to the third [n.299] it can be conceded that any individual of one species exceeds any individual of the other - but what that means does not have to be explained before book 3, when comparing the soul of Christ with the angelic nature [2 d.13 qq.1-4 nn.2, 5-6, 9, 19]. And the whole argument should be conceded up to the phrase that ‘the whole capacity of nature is satisfied in blessedness’ [n.299]; for that proposition is not true when speaking of merely natural capacity; for this capacity is precisely satisfied in proportion to its merits (commonly speaking), and in this is deliberative appetite sufficiently satisfied. But as to how blessedness from only such satisfaction can stand perfect even though there can be natural appetite for a further and added perfection - this can be dealt with elsewhere, in the subject matter of blessedness in book 4 (Suppl. d.50 p.2 qq.1-3 n.3).