I. Opinion of Others

4. [Exposition of the opinion] - An assertion here [of Henry of Ghent] is that person only states a second intention:

5. Because what an individual is in any nature that a supposit is in substantial nature and a person in intellectual nature; but individual and supposit state only a thing of second intention; therefore person too states only a thing of second intention.

6. A confirmation of the reason is that the nature in which these are [individual, supposit, person] does not belong to their per se idea; for nature is set down in the definition of them as something added, therefore it does not vary their formal ideas.

7. Again, everything common said of many things is said of them according to the idea of some universal; therefore if person signify a thing of first intention, common to the three persons, it will state it of them under the idea of a most general genus, or of some intermediate genus, or according to some idea of most specific species, - the opposite of all which is manifest. Not under the idea of most specific species because it would follow that there will be as it were two most specific species with respect to the same persons; for deity - according to Damascene On the Orthodox Faith ch.48 -indicates as it were the species that surrounds and embraces the hypostases [I d.8 n.41], and person will indicate the most specific species with respect to them. Therefore, etc.

8. There is added to this opinion [n.4] that although person state something of second intention, yet it does not state it in the abstract but in the concrete, - and therefore it can be predicated of a thing of first intention and supposit for it. An exemplification: in the statement ‘species is a second intention’ species is taken for the very intention in itself - and in the statement ‘species is predicated of many things differing in number’ etc. species is taken for the thing that it denominates; for this intention ‘species’ is not, as it seems, predicated of many things, but man is so predicated or ass, of which this intention is stated.

9. [Rejection of the opinion] - Against this opinion, and first against him who holds it [Henry]:

Whenever from the formal constituents of certain things something common of first intention can be abstracted, then with equal or greater reason something can be abstracted from the constituted things; but the divine persons - according to them [the followers of Henry] - are constituted formally by relations. But from those constitutive relations can be abstracted something real of first intention; for paternity is a relation and filiation is a relation,a and this when taking relation univocally, because there can be certitude about a concept of inward relation while there is doubt about every special concept whatever - and such a one, being thus certain, not only has certitude about the vocal word but about some concept; therefore the concept of the relation in general is other than the concept of it in particular. Therefore much more will a thing of first intention be able to be abstracted from the things constituted by those relations. - But the assumption about the univocity of relation will be clearer below, in this question.Vatican editors: this assumption is not dealt with below, for it seems to have regard to the second way [nn.24-25], which Scotus did not complete. The assumption is dealt with extensively in Reportatio IA d.25 nn.24-29, although here in n.20, and also in the Lectura I d.23 n.20, Scotus did not concede a univocal common quidditative concept abstracted from the constituents of the persons. ¹⁰²

a [Interpolation] and is predication in the ‘what’; but no second intention is predicated in the ‘what’ of a thing of first intention.

10. Against the opinion [n.4] in itself:

Because every second intention is a relation of reason, not any such relation, but one pertaining to an extreme of an act of the intellect combining and dividing or at any rate comparing one extreme to the other (the thing is plain, because a second intention -in everyone’s view - is caused by an act of the intellect busying itself about a thing of first intention, which act can cause nothing in the object save only a relation or relations of reason); but person does not state a relation of reason, and certainly not a relation pertaining to an act of the intellect combining extremes. But that it does not state any relation of reason is evident because then at any rate it would necessarily co-require the correlative to which it is referred, because it is impossible to understand a relation and not understand that it is in relation to some term and correlative, as every second intention requires its correlative (as the species requires the genus for its correlative, and the particular the universal, and so on of others); the point is plain about idea, which is a relation of reason, nor can it be understood save by respect to another. But person is not said to be person of someone, or at least it does not state an extreme of the intellect comparing things.

11. Again, I take their reasoning [of Henry and his followers] to the opposite by taking the same major and the opposite of the minor, that an individual that imports individual unity states a thing of first intention, because unity is a property of being (as is plain in Metaphysics 4.2.1003b22-25), and consequently unity follows a thing from the nature of the thing - and this is above all true of the unity that is true unity, of which sort is the unity of the individual; therefore such unity does not state a second intention; and just as unity in any nature does not do this, so neither does unity in intellectual nature; if then person states unity in intellectual nature as individual does in any nature, what follows is the opposite of their conclusion [n.5].

12. Further, against the second reason [n.7]:

Augustine On Christian Doctrine I ch.5 n.5 (and it is Lombard’s text in I d.25 ch.2 nn.220, 222) says that “things to be enjoyed are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit:” hence, according to him, the three persons are three things; but thing does not seem to state a second intention, and yet it is common to the three persons and is numbered in line with them; therefore one should not say that person, because it is common and multiplied in number several times, signifies a second intention.

13. The Master too, in d.25 ch.2 n.220, expounds three persons through ‘three subsistences or three subsistents’; but by subsistence he does not seem to signify a thing of second intention, and yet it is common to the three and multiplied in number with them (‘for they are called three subsistences or three subsistents, three beings or three things’).a

a [Interpolation] Again, the aforesaid opinion asks ‘how person can be univocally predicated of several subjects in divine reality unless it be a universal’, but the same difficulty arises about relation and follows in the same way; for it seems that a common element could be abstracted more from the things constituted than from the constituents. But how something common of first intention can be abstracted and yet not be a real universal will be stated in distinction 25 [Reportatio IA d.25 nn.27-29].

14. Further, against the other thing added [n.8] I argue as follows: an adjective does not determine anything save that which is the term of its dependence; but an adjective cannot be the term of the dependence of another adjective because their dependence is equal; therefore neither determines the other, - and so if this name ‘person’ is a concrete of the sort in question [n.8], then the statement that there are ‘three persons’ will not be well made save by understanding another substantive which would be determined by both adjectives; but no such implicitly understood other substantive is given, therefore etc.a

a [Note by Duns Scotus] Response: there are many concretes that are not adjectives (for example cause, genus, species), and the argument [n.14] is against adjective, not against concrete.