II. To the Principal Arguments

35. To the principal arguments.

To the first [n.1] I speak by denying the first consequence, as far as the form of the consequence is concerned.

When proof is given from Augustine Against Maximinus I reply that the argument does not hold on the basis of its internal logic (as on the move from a universal whole to a part of a universal whole, by supposing that ‘to be able to generate’ is a particular ‘being able’), but it holds because of many implicitly understood propositions. In fact the argument has to be reduced to many syllogisms as follows: Maximinus has conceded that the Father generates a Son, though not an equal Son, - Augustine argues ‘if he generated and could not generate an equal Son, then he was impotent’. Proof of the consequence: from the fact that the Father gave deity to the Son (even according to Maximinus, because otherwise there would properly be no generation), but a deity lesser (according to Maximinus) than the deity of the Father, then deity is not of itself infinite, because there cannot be anything greater than the infinite, nor can the infinite be lessened; and if deity is not infinite then he who has deity is not omnipotent; for nothing is omnipotent (since omnipotence requires infinite power) unless it have an infinite essence. Therefore the consequence holds, not because the singular instance [sc. being able to generate] is contained under the universal [sc. being omnipotent], but because the universal - which is the ‘to be omnipotent’ - is accompanied by infinity of essence and so by an ability to be communicated equally. And this inference similarly holds, ‘if the Father cannot understand, the Father is not omnipotent’; but it does not hold on the basis of its internal logic (as if the Father’s act of understanding were the term of omnipotence), but on the basis of these implicitly understood propositions: ‘what cannot understand does not have every perfection simply, and in that case it is not of infinite essence, and therefore not omnipotent either’.

36. When the argument is then made about omniscience [n.1], I say that knowledge does not require an order that is determinate to knowable things, nor an order of prior or posterior,a - and therefore knowledge is of necessity extended to every being, because every being is knowable; but power is not extended - as to extension to an object - to every being, but only to possible being, which possible being, in whatever way ‘possible’ is taken, is of a nature to be posterior; and so it is not extended to what is not of a nature to be posterior, and therefore not to that which is [not?] of a nature to be, in an infinite person, the same thing as that person.

a [Interpolation] because knowledge, whether in respect of what is prior, as of its object, or of what is posterior, can also be in respect of itself; but power requires an order determinate to a term, as of prior to posterior.

37. When the argument next from Richard is made [n.2], I say the argument is valid if it be supposed, per impossibile, that there are two Gods (as was made clear in I d.2 n.180), but it is not valid of two persons who are equal in power.

38. When proof is given, first, through the fact that ‘one person could make another person nulli-potent by willing all possible things and bringing them into existence’ [n.5], I say that he cannot will them save with the other person also willing them, and so they are not brought into existence by one person while the other person is not bringing them into existence, but just as the three persons are in the same moment of nature understood to have a sufficient principle for bringing these things into existence, so they are also in the same moment understood to have the act by which these things are brought into existence. But if two Gods were posited, one of them could by its own action bring everything into existence or produce everything into existence while the other could not produce them by the same action; therefore either he could not produce them by any action, and thus he would not be omnipotent, - or he could produce them by another action, and thus the same thing could receive existence twice, which is impossible.

39. To the second proof, that ‘one omnipotent could prevent everything that was willed by another omnipotent’ [n.4], I say the proof is good about two wills, because -per impossibile - what has its own will could use it contingently as to any object other than itself; but the proof is not good about two persons who have the same will, because by the same necessity by which there is one will there is also one use of the will, and so it cannot be the case that one person wills with this will and the other does not, just as neither can one person have this will and the other not have it.

40. When - against this response - an objection is made about the form that exists in the two of them, that ‘the principle of operating exists in each of them the way it would if it existed in one alone’ I concede that the Son does not as it were naturally or by coercion will with this will, as if the Father by willing has predetermined the Son to will the same thing and the willing is not in the Son’s power the way it was in the Father’s, but rather the Father and the Son are in the same moment of nature understood to have the same will and to have any act of will - as the act is of this object - in as equally free a way as if one of them did not have the will. This form, then, is as much a principle for operating uniformly for any person who has it as it would be if he alone had it; but it is not a principle of operating for one possessor of it and a principle of not operating for the other, with an operation that is the same as the will, just as this same will is not both ‘a will’ and ‘not a will’. Hence the necessity of the inference ‘if the Father wills this, the Son wills this’ is not against the freedom of the Son’s volition, just as neither is the inference ‘if I will, I will’ against my volition’s freedom; thus it is not in this case either, ‘if the Father wills a, the Son wills a’, because the Father’s and the Son’s act of will is the same.

41. As to the other argument about first and second causes [n.6], the response has been given in distinction 12 n.68, because the proposition in question gets its truth from the fact that there is a different virtue or power of causing in the prior cause than in the posterior - and that what the prior has is more principal; but the proposition is false of a principle belonging to a prior in origin and to a posterior, where they have the same power or virtue of causing in respect of a third - and of this sort is the power in the issue at hand, and so in this case the argument is not valid.