d. What one should Think about the Two Ways

44. Without asserting, one can mediate between these two ways by denying -with the first way - that there is any positive entity in created intellectual nature which is repugnant by contradiction to being communicated by some communication repugnant to person, because there seems to be no positive entity in created nature that is not capable of being dependent on the Word, and so to be communicable in the same way in which nature is said to be communicated to the supposit, as is the nature by which the supposit is said to be a being in nature (namely, ‘by humanity’ a thing is called ‘man’ and ‘by this humanity’ called ‘this man’). And one should not concede with the second way that mere negation of dependence on an extrinsic person is what is formally completive in the idea of person, because - as was argued at the beginning against it [n.40] - the separated soul would then be a person.

45. But thus one should distinguish between actual, possible, and aptitudinal dependence; and I call the sort of dependence aptitudinal that would always - as far as concerns itself - be in act (in the way that ‘heavy’ is apt by nature to be in the center, where it would always be, as far as concerns itself, unless it were impeded); and ‘possible’ I call absolutely that dependence where there is no impossibility from repugnance or from impossibility of terms (and this possibility can be sometimes with respect to a supernatural active power, and not only a natural one).

46. Although therefore merely negation of ‘actual’ dependence does not suffice for the proposed conclusion, nor could negation of the third dependence [sc. possible dependence] on the Word be posited in created nature (for there is no created nature or entity to which dependence on the Word is repugnant by contradiction), yet negation of ‘aptitudinal’ dependence on the Word can be conceded in the created nature that is a person in itself, otherwise it would rest by violence in created nature (as a stone rests upwards by violence). And so this negation, not of actual but aptitudinal dependence, as such completes the idea of ‘person’ in intellectual nature and of ‘supposit’ in created nature.

47. Yet neither does this aptitudinal non-dependence posit repugnance to actual dependence, because although there is not an aptitude in such a nature for depending, there is yet an aptitude of obedience, because the nature is in perfect obedience for depending, by the action of a supernatural agent; and when such dependence is given to it, it is a person with the personhood on which it depends - but when it is not given, it is a person in itself by this negation formally, and not by any positive addition over and above the positive entity by which it is ‘this nature’.