Question Four. Whether there is Distinctly in the Mind an Image of the Trinity

569. Lastly about this question I ask whether there is distinctly in the mind an image of the Trinity [cf. nn.281-332].

I argue that there is not;

Because an image represents that of which it is the image; therefore, the mind would distinctly represent the Trinity; this is false. Proof: First because then the Trinity could be proved by natural knowledge from the known the mind. Second because no creature exceeds, in representing, the perfection of its own idea; but the idea of the mind does not represent God insofar as he is triune, because the idea is of God insofar as he is cause, and he is cause insofar as he is one.

570. Again, nothing in the mind represents one [divine] person more than another; therefore, neither does the whole mind represent the whole Trinity. Proof of the antecedent: On the Trinity 15.7 n.12, the Father is memory, intelligence, will etc.; therefore, the Father is as formally intelligence and will as he is memory, and the Son likewise; therefore the memory does not distinctly represent the Father more than the Son.

571. Again, third, in the Trinity two Persons are produced; in the image nothing is produced, as I will prove; therefore, it is not representative of production. Proof of the assumption. In the soul there are only either first acts or second acts. First acts [sc. the powers of intellect and will] are not originated from themselves mutually, because they are co-created with the soul itself. Nor are second acts [sc. the actions of intellect and will] originated. Proof: because there is not an action of an action, either of an action as the subject or of an action as the term, from the Philosopher Physics 5.2.225b15-16, because then there would be a regress to infinity. Therefore, there is no action of these acts as they are terms, because they are actions formally; proof, for they are second acts, not first acts; but if they were not actions, they would be first acts.

572. Again, by them [second acts or actions] a habit is generated; an action by which a form is generated is an action of the genus of action; therefore etc.

573. To the opposite is Augustine On the Trinity 14.8 n.11, “The image must be looked for and must be found where our nature has nothing that is better.”

I. To the Question

A. About the Image of the Trinity in Us

574. Here one needs to understand, first, what is the idea of an image in corporeal things, whence the word has been transferred to the issue at hand; second, with respect to what in the Trinity the image is; third, in what in us the idea of the image consists.

575. [Article 1]. As to the first point I say, as was said in the question about the footprint [nn.289, 293], that an image is representative of a whole, and in this it differs from a footprint, which is representative of a part. For if the whole body were impressed in the dust, the way a foot is impressed, it would be an image of the whole, just as the latter is an image of the part and a footprint of the whole. But the conformity expressive of a whole does not suffice, but imitation is required, because according to Augustine 83 Questions q.74, “however much two eggs are alike, one is not an image of the other,” because it is not of a nature to imitate it; and so it is required that an image be of a nature to imitate that of which it is the image, and to express it.

576. [Article 2]. About the second article,a although in our intellect the concept of one Person is partial with respect to the concept of the whole Trinity, the creature that may lead us to knowledge of the Trinity by way of image will represent the Trinity as to the total concept that our intellect can have of it; therefore it will represent the distinction of three Persons and the unity of the essence and the order of origin, because the real distinction in divine reality is through origin; it will also have an essential imitation relative to the Trinity that it represents.

a.a [Interpolated text] namely with respect to what in divine reality there is an image in the mind, one must understand that the Trinity constitutes in our intellect a certain numerical whole, of which whole the parts are understood to be divine persons. The image, therefore, is not focused on in respect of one Person only, nor in respect of that in which they are one, but in respect of the whole Trinity and of the essence.

577. [Article 3] About the third article [n.574] one must first consider the things that are manifest in being in the mind; second in what things the image does not consist; third in what things it does consist.

578. As to the first, we experience in ourselves that there is an act of intellection and an act of volition, and that these acts are in some way in our power when an object is present; therefore, it is necessary to posit in some way in ourselves principles active for these second acts, so that by them we may have a capacity with respect to those acts. Now the same thing under the same formal idea cannot be the principle of these two second acts, because these second acts require in their principles an opposed idea of being a principle; therefore it is necessary to have some distinction of first acts, and this a distinction corresponding proportionally to the distinction of second acts.a

a.a [Note by Scotus] Objection about the powers of the soul in distinction 13 [Ord. I d.13 q.1 n.12]. Look for this against the final rejected opinion.

579. About the second point in this article [n.577] I say that neither in first acts alone nor second acts alone is there an image. This appears in two ways: first because it is both the case that the latter are two only and that the former are two only, so they would only be an image of a duality, not of a trinity; second, because in the first acts, although there is consubstantiality there, yet there is not a real distinction there between thing and thing, nor an order of origin; in the second acts, although there is a distinction and an origin in some way, yet not consubstantiality.

580. From these points follows, third, that the image consists in first and second acts together - and I understand this as follows:

The soul has in itself some perfection according to which there is a first act with respect to generated knowledge, and it has in itself a perfection according to which it formally receives generated knowledge, and it has in itself some perfection according to which it formally receives volition. These three perfections are memory, intelligence, and will - or the soul insofar as the soul has them. Therefore, the soul, insofar as it has total first act with respect to intellection (namely something of the soul and the object present to it in idea of ‘intelligible’), is called memory, and this perfect memory by its including both intellect and that by which the object is present to it. The same soul insofar as it receives generated knowledge is called intelligence; the will too is called perfect, insofar as it is under the perfect act of willing. Accepting, therefore, these three on the part of the soul as they are under their three acts, I say that in these three terms there is consubstantiality, by reason of these three realities that exist on the part of the soul. But there is distinction and origin by reason of the actualities received in the soul according to these realities in the soul.a

a.a [Interpolated text. Rep. IA d.3 nn.204-209] What then are the three things in which the image consists?
     I reply that, by taking a single first act or two first acts, whereby we are capable of second acts (intellection namely and volition), we have thus within us some principle fertile for operations producible in the mind. There are therefore three things in us, namely a principle fertile with respect to these two acts, along with the two second acts, which are as one, with a certain unity, and I do not find another three in us as perfectly representing a trinity and a unity. But there is not a like unity here and there. Because in us they are one with unity of subject and accident, but in divine reality the three are one with unity of essence, because in divine reality there is not found a unity conformed to unity of subject and accident. We have therefore three things in us that represent the Trinity, namely the fertile principle, and this is perfect memory in us (which includes the essence of the soul and the intelligible species and the will as parent and combiner), and two operations or productions that respond to that fertile principle with a double fertility (namely the principle of intellect and will, or of intellection and volition); and from this we have the order of origin.
     Now to the mind of Augustine On the Trinity 9.5 at the end, where he assigns the image very beautifully when he says “mind, knowledge, love” - From this he says ‘mind’, which does not precisely state a fertile principle or power for generating or spirating but a certain first act having both in itself virtually, and this representing the Father, who has both from himself. And this is the most properly assigned image of the Trinity, in my judgment.
     But elsewhere, On the Trinity 10.10, he assigns these three: memory, intelligence, and will. And these represent a unity more, and more principally, than a trinity, because they are the same thing as the soul. But they are not thus representative as to the productions and as to the Threeness. For memory only states fertility for understanding, and so does not represent the Father as he has both fertilities, the way mind represents both. Likewise, the intelligence does not represent the Son as produced, or under act of knowing, nor does intelligence as it is a power originated from memory; likewise the will as it is taken for a power does not represent the Holy Spirit.
     But Augustine does not take will there for the power but for the act of willing, as is plain in On the Trinity 15.3, where he compares these images and says that the will is born from knowledge by the fact that it only loves what is known, or that no one loves save what he first knows. That therefore Augustine says that the second assigning of the image is more subtle than the first is true as to some condition of it, because it more perfectly represents the unity of the essence, as was said.

B. Two Doubts

581. But here two doubts arise.

First, that then it seems there is a quaternity in the image, for first act with respect to volition does not go with any of the three in the image. For not with the third part, plainly, because the same thing is not principle of itself; nor with the second part, manifestly, because actual knowledge is not the will; nor with the first either, because memory properly states the productive principle of generated knowledge, not of volition. Therefore, will the will be a fourth along with these.

582. Again, a second doubt is that the order of origin, the way it is in divine reality, is not preserved here. For there the first person originates the second, and these two the third; here the first part of the image is cause of the second, but neither the first nor the second are cause of the third; therefore etc.

1. To the First Doubt

583. To the first [n.581] I reply that the image can be assigned in two ways, according to the fact Augustine assigns it in two ways: in one way On the Trinity 9.5-11, as mind, knowledge, and love; in another way according to the fact he assigns it, ibid. 10. 10-12, as memory, intelligence, and will. And about this double assignment of the image Augustine, speaking in ibid. 15.3 n.5, says that what was set down in ibid. 10 is more evident.

584. I say, then, when treating of the first assignment, that by ‘mind’ we can understand first act with respect to both second acts, namely fertility for generating and for spirating. For in this the mind has perfectly the idea of parent, because it perfectly includes both fertilities; and then the two others, namely knowledge and love, are two things produced by the soul in a certain order. And then there will not be a quaternity, because in the parent having the perfect idea of parent the double first act comes together.a And in this way is it in divine reality, because in the Father there is not only fertility for generating but for spirating, and this from himself; because if the Father did not of himself have fertility for spirating, but had it by way of leftover from the production of the Son (as some say [Henry of Ghent, Summa a q.8, a.54 q.6]), this impossible result, it seems, follows, that the Father would never have that fertility. For no reality, whether absolute or relative, does the Father have in any way by production, and therefore whatever reality he does not have in the first moment of origin (insofar, namely, as he is pre-understood in order of origin to the Son) he never has. Therefore, if that double fertility he does not have in himself in the first moment of origin, he will never have it.

a.a [Note by Scotus] We experience two acts, and acts that originate in a certain order, and are in our power (On the Soul 2, n.560). Therefore, the principles of them are, in us, either the same thing or united in the same thing. That thing will be fertile with a double fertility and from itself (a stand here [sc. no reduction further]); and the two products are distinct and in some way the same as the first fertile principle, taking powers precisely under acts. And they show the first supposit to be fertile of itself with both fertilities, and two products to be adequate to that fertile principle, distinct and originated; therefore an image. On the contrary: the second part does not produce the third.
Reply: here the image falls short.

585. But if mind be taken precisely as first act, having only fertility with respect to generated knowledge, the image in this way is imperfectly assigned, because in this way the mind does not have perfectly the idea of parent.

586. So I say, about the other assigning, that if memory be taken precisely for the parent with respect to generated knowledge it is a parent imperfectly; but a parent perfectly has not only that whereby it generates but that whereby it spirates, because it cannot have that from something else; and it must have it totally; and therefore it must be had in a parent of itself. But if memory be taken for the whole soul, as it aptitudinally has in first act that double fertility, then in this way it has perfectly the idea of parent. But although memory be more evidently a parent, as one must concede because of the word of Augustine On the Trinity 15 ch.3 n.5 [n.583] - namely insofar as it expresses more than the mind does the relation of generator to generated - yet the mind seems to import more perfectly the idea of parent if it be taken as it includes both fertilities.

587. Briefly, then, however a trinity is assigned in the image, whether this way or that, there is no quaternity, because a double relationship and fertility come together in a parent, if is perfectly parent.

2. To the Second Doubt

588. To the second [n.582] I say that in us there cannot be the likeness of an image for the prototype. For generated knowledge in the created image is a certain accident, to which is not communicated the fertility for producing love, by which fertility it is formally something productive of love. For such an accident is not of a nature to be formally thinking and willing, and therefore the memory that generates actual knowledge (taking memory as it is a parent perfectly) cannot communicate to the generated knowledge the fertility that it had before, because it does not communicate to it the same nature, but produces it equivocally in another nature. Now when the Father generates the Son he communicates to him the same nature, and the same fertility for spirating love, which fertility in the generation of the Son is not understood to have an adequate term; and therefore the Son can, by the same fecundity, produce as the Father does. The reason, therefore, is plain why that production cannot be preserved in the parts of the image the way it is in the Persons of the Trinity, because there cannot be the same fertility in the two first parts of the image. But it is and can be the same in two Persons with respect to the third.

589. Similarly, if generated knowledge were in any way productive of anything, this would only be by way of nature and not freely. There is here, however, an order between the second part of the image and the third, because the third part presupposes the second naturally, though it not be from it. And this does Augustine express in On the Trinity 15 ch.27 n.50, “the will, third, joining parent and offspring, which will does indeed proceed from knowledge.” And he adds and expounds at once how he understands it: “for no one wants something that he altogether does not know as to what it is or what it is like, etc.” It is plain, therefore, that he posits the order of origin precisely on account of the natural order of volition to intellection, and not because intellection is cause with respect to volition. It is plain, then, according to Augustine’s intention, that he there takes will (according as it is the third part of the image) for the act of willing, as he takes it here and adds, “which will does indeed proceed etc.” [supra n.589], which is not true of the will as it is a power, but if it be true, this is true of the act of willing.

590. Further, in particular: since all the things aforesaid are found in the mind with respect to any object whatever, one must note that the most perfect and ultimate idea of the image is when these things come together in the mind with respect to God as object; for then the soul has not only an expressive likeness as concerns the aforesaid (by reason of the things in it), but also by that reason by which the acts themselves are conformed to the object. For an act is truly a likeness of the object, as was said in the prior question [n.565], and therefore, when these acts are so in the mind that they not only have consubstantiality and likeness and distinctness and origin but have also a further likeness to God by reason of the object about which they are, there is a more perfect likeness; but the likeness is less perfect when the soul has itself for object, because then, although a likeness is not had from God immediately as from proximate object, yet it is had in some way, insofar as in the mind, as in an image, God is known.

591. And this double trinity is assigned by Augustine, namely the one that is in respect of God, On the Trinity 12.4 n.4, when he says, “in it alone which pertains to the contemplation of eternal things is there not only a trinity but an image of God - but in this which is derived in the doing of temporal things, even if a trinity could be found, yet an image cannot be.” This is to be understood of the expressive image, as far as concerns supreme expression or likeness. About the same is also On the Trinity 15.20 n.39,

“Whence can an eternal and immutable nature be recollected, seen, desired,” etc., “an image, to be sure, of the supreme Trinity, to remembering which, seeing and loving which, everything should refer that lives.”

592. About the other image he speaks in On the Trinity 14.8 n.11: “Behold,” he says, “the mind remembers itself, understands itself, loves itself; if this we discern, we discern a trinity, not yet God indeed, but already an image of God.” This second authority seems to contradict the first [n.591] unless it be understood in the aforesaid way [n.591 “This is to be understood of the expressive imae...”].

593. And then is it plain how, in respect of all the objects lower than the mind, Augustine does not posit an image in the mind, because no other object is an image of God, with respect to whom most of all (and with respect to his image secondarily) there is an image in the mind, as far as concerns the likeness which is had from the object.

3. Corollary

594. From these points appears, by way of corollary, why in the sensitive part there is no image. First, because there is not a consubstantiality there of things operating, or of the totality of them taken along with their operations, because the principle of sensing is not only something of the soul but something composed of soul and part of the body (and a part thus physically constituted See fn. to n.122. ⁵⁵), which is the whole organ.a Likewise, the principle of desiring of the sense appetite is not something of the soul alone, but is similarly composite. These two, which the operations are of, are not consubstantial, because although these powers of the soul are in the same essence, and are perhaps the same as the essence of the soul, yet they are not total causes of operation (namely the whole organs themselves), because the parts of the body are not consubstantial, neither among themselves nor with the powers of the soul.

a.a [Note by Scotus] Note, the proximate reason for receiving a sensation is some simple entity, neither namely something of the soul nor even a thus physically constituted body, but the form of the whole organ (which is called form as the quiddity is the form of the supposit, and not as an informing form).

595. Likewise, in the sense part there is not a double mode of originating, because just as the sense senses naturally, so the sense appetite desires naturally; hence according to John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith 2.27 (seek for it), the brutes in their actions do not ‘act’ but are ‘acted’.

II. To the Initial Arguments

596. As to the first main argument [n.569] I concede that any created essence, insofar as it is this essence produced according to such idea, does not represent God under the idea of three; because it is not caused or ideated by God under the idea of three, but under the idea of one. But yet some created essence, by reason of its essence and the many things that go along with it (as one whole aggregate), can be representative of the Trinity and of the things that are apprehended in the Trinity. Such a thing is the mind, taken in itself and with its operations, because there is unity there and distinction and order of origin; such a thing too, insofar as concerns such coming together, is nothing that is inferior to the mind, as was plain in the case of the sensitive part [nn.594-595].

597. But when you argue [n.569] that if it were an image, the Trinity could be known through knowledge of the mind, I reply that the things that come together in the mind are for someone who believes the Trinity able to persuade him how the Trinity could be, but they do not prove to one who does not believe that it exists; for the total combining of many things in the mind, wherein the image consists, could be and is from one person; and so from it cannot be shown, by a demonstration-why, that it is an image of the Trinity. Of this Augustine speaks in On the Trinity 15.24, “Those who see the mind and that trinity in it and yet do not believe it is an image of God see indeed the mirror but do not see through the mirror, since neither do they know that what they see is a mirror.”

598. But how the deduction may be able, from the idea of intellect and will in divine reality, to display the three Persons was stated in d.2 in the question about the two productions [Ord. I d.2 nn.301-303, 355-356].

599. To the second [n.570] I say that the argument seems efficacious if it be posited that the Father generates insofar as he is intelligence, as one opinion [Henry of Ghent] has posited it (posited above and rejected in d.2 in the aforesaid question [Ord. I d.2 nn.278-279, 291-296]), which posits that the actual knowledge of the Father has, in some way, the idea of what produces in respect of the generation of the Son, and has the idea of formal productive principle [ibid.]. But according to another way, which I held there, that the Father insofar as he has the divine essence present to him under the idea of being intelligible in act (which belongs to the Father insofar as he is memory) - that in this way does the Father generate; but not insofar as he is understanding, as was there made clear [ibid.]. In that case the antecedent [n.570] is false, because my memory represents the Father more than the Son - not in this respect, that memory alone is in the Father and intelligence alone in the Son, but in this, that the Father generates the Son insofar as the Father has the idea of memory, not as he has the idea of intelligence or will.

600. To the third [n.571] I say that second acts are products.

601. When you give proof from the Philosopher Physics 5 [n.571], the argument is on my side. For since an action is not the term of an action, and since these acts [second acts, ibid.] are truly terms of action (as Augustine says On the Trinity 9.12 nn.17-18, that knowledge is truly ‘generated’ and volition ‘proceeds’, as he says ibid. 15.27 n.50), therefore they are not actions of the genus of action but are absolute forms of the genus of quality.

602. When you prove [n.571] that they are actions properly because they are second acts, I say that certain forms have a fixed being, not dependent continuously on their cause (in quasi state of becoming), the way heat is in wood; some have continuous dependence on their cause, as light in the medium depends on the sun. And about this Augustine speaks, Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.12 n.26, saying that “air is not made transparent but is becoming transparent.” First forms, because of their independence in being, do not have the idea of action or motion; second forms, because of their continuous dependence, seem rather to have being in becoming than in having-become. And they thus have [being in becoming] because always they are, while they are, as equally caused as in the first instant when they begin to be; and therefore, when the cause ceases to cause, these forms cease to be. But it does not follow from this that they are actions of the genus of action, but the opposite follows, that they are terms of such actions.a

a.a [Text canceled by Scotus, replaced by “And they thus have.. .such actions”] although, in truth, there is not action and passion in them, because they are whole at once and not part after part; but action properly is only toward a formb of which part is acquired after part.

b.b [Note by Scotus] this is false in all cases of generation and change.

603. Intellection is disposed in this way, because it is in continuous dependence on the presence of its cause; for otherwise it would not have being, as is plain from Augustine On the Trinity 11.3 n.6, “But when the glance of the one thinking has been turned away from ita.nothing of the form that preceded in it will remain;” for the act of the intelligence does not remain without such presence of the cause, namely of a cause inflowing continually. But this alone does not prove it is a second act (for thus light in the medium gets to be posited as second act); and therefore, along with this, there is another further condition, namely that these forms pass, by reason of themselves, into something else as into a term;b whether, moreover, the something else is within or outside the thing operating [or: ‘is operating within or without’], I care not, for it is not intelligible that there be intellection or volition and that it not be of some term. But this belongs to action properly speaking, that it passes into something as into a term. On account of those two conditions coming together in these forms, these forms are said to be second acts, although truly they are abiding forms.

a.a [Interpolated text = continuation of the citation from Augustine] “and that which was seen in memory has stopped being looked on”

b.b [Note by Scotus] About this relation [sc. of a form to something as to a term], in question three, before, under 3 [nn.478-479].

604. To the other proof, when it is said that such act is generative of a habit [n.572], I reply that the argument is to the opposite, because action of the genus of action cannot be of the same idea unless it have the same term, as heating is not of the same idea unless heat is of the same idea. Therefore, if a habit were to be generated by an act that is an action of the genus of action, and terminated at the habit as at a term, the act could not be of the same idea unless it were per se generative of the habit. Indeed, it would seem to be a contradiction that an action would be of the same idea and not be of some term, because there cannot be an action of the genus of action unless it be of some term. But now some act of intellection or volition can be of the same idea though not be of some produced term; therefore, the act is not generative of a habit as being generation, but as being a form by which the habit is formally generated. Then I say briefly that an act is generative of a habit as being a form that is cause or reason for causing another form, as the light of the sun in the medium is the reason for generating heat there. Now such an act is not generative as an action, but by such action are both an act and a habit generated, as the proper term of such action - and to signify this sort of generation, which is action of the genus of action, I say that the power [of understanding] elicits the act of understanding.