Single Question. Whether Person in Divine Reality states Substance or Relation

1. About the twenty fifth distinction I ask whether person in divine reality states substance or relation.

2. Without arguments.

I. Response to the Question

3. I reply:

Person does not state a proper relation, because this name ‘person’ is common to the three (according to Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.4 n.7: “If there are three persons, that which is ‘person’ is common to them”), and not by a commonness of equivocation, as ‘this man’ is common to Socrates and Plato. The phrase ‘this man’ is indeed equivocal because the demonstrative ‘this’ signifies what it points out; not so here [sc. with ‘person’] because an equivocal is not counted up along with equivocals; for dogfish and dogstar are not two dogs, because the counting of something in several things requires the unity of what is counted in them. Person is common in this way, because it is counted (Augustine, ibid.).

4. Nor does person state a common relation, - which is proved by Augustine On the Trinity VII ch.6 n.11, because “the Father is not the person of the Son,” nor conversely. And this reason can be deduced as follows: whatever a subordinate [sc.

specific] relative is said with respect to, to that same thing the higher [sc. more generic] relative is said, although not said first. An example: if the double is double of the half, and this first, then the double is a multiple of the half, although not first; and not only this but even up to the most general genus it is a relative of the half, although not first, that is, not adequately. Therefore if person stated a common relation, then Father, just as it is Father of the Son first, so Father would be person of the Son per se, although not first -which is false.

5. Nor does person state a secondary substance, that is, a quiddity, because this is not counted up in the three [sc. ‘three deities’ is not said]; but person is counted up [sc. ‘three persons’ is said].

6. Therefore [the reply must be] in accord with the two opinions treated of in the question ‘On Person’ in distinction 23 [d.23 n.24], that according to one opinion person states a negation in general, common to the three, and so in this way it does not signify either substance or relation. It does however connote something positive; and first it connotes that of which it is first predicated (namely Father and Son and Holy Spirit), not as if by what is first understood from it but as a common term connotes the inferior for which it supposits; secondly it connotes the relation whereby such common negation agrees with the Father and likewise with the Son; third and lastly it connotes the essence, which although it is in what is first connoted is yet not in it the reason for the negation.

7. If however the other opinion in that question is held, that person states something positive, abstracted from the three as a quasi-property, not as a species - then it can be said that it signifies a positive ‘what’; but not substance nor relation (and this when extending substance to include both primary and secondary substance), but first something positive that is indifferent to both of them; for the idea of a subsistent, when one holds that the divine persons are relatives, is indifferent to the absolute and to the relative. Yet it gives to understand as a consequence - the way the superior genus gives to understand its inferior species - that for which it is taken, namely the relative of which person is said (namely Father and Son and Holy Spirit), and second the relations themselves, and third the essence - such that each opinion (set down in distinction 23, ibid.) agrees here that person in its first idea states neither relation nor substance, and this neither primary nor secondary substance. But according to one of the opinions it states a concept of negation (in general) common to the three, and so it states a concept of negation common to the three that is distinct in them; according to the other of the opinions it states a concept of a common thing that is positive and distinct in them. And according to both opinions such a common thing, whether positive or negative, connotes - as its inferior - that of which it is formally said (namely Father and Son and Holy Spirit), and second as it were it connotes the formal elements that are distinct in them, and third the essence that is common to them.

II. The Objections of Others

8. But an objection is raised that person signifies secondary substance (that is, quiddity), because of what Augustine says in On the Trinity VII ch.6 n.11, that through the phrase ‘three persons’ response is made to the question whereby it is asked ‘what three?’; but ‘what’ is asking for the essence.

9. Further, Augustine says [ibid.] that “to be God and to be person are not different things;” therefore person is purely essential, and so it signifies a secondary substance, that is, quiddity.

10. To the first of these [n.8] I say that ‘what’ sometimes is asking for the definition and sometimes is asking for that about which something is said. The first is plain from the Topics 5.101b39: “Definition is a statement indicating the ‘what is’ of something.” The second is plain from the Philosopher in Metaphysics 10.2.1053b27-28: “the whole question is what is ‘one’, how it is being and what being it is, because to say that this very thing is its nature is not enough” (he means to say that it is not enough to say that the ‘one’ is principle, the way the old philosophers said the ‘one’ was principle, like the Platonists, but something must be asserted that is what the ‘one’ is said about). And accordingly the question ‘what is the element’ has a double response; one is to give the essence of the element, and the other is to give that about which element is said, as ‘fire is an element’. Now when Catholics were confessing the ‘three’ (according to the canonical epistle of John ch.5), the heretics asked ‘what three?’, not questioning what the definition of the word was, but asking what the substantive was that was determined by the adjective ‘three’ (or, what thing ‘three’ was being said of) - and to this question response was well made by the remark ‘person’. When therefore it is assumed that ‘what’ asks about the essence, this is not generally true, nor is it true in particular of the issue at hand [n.9].

11. As to the second, from Augustine [n.9], the answer will be plain in the following distinction, that person is referred to itself (both in itself and in its specific subordinates), although it is not referred to itself as essence is referred to itself, and this provided the position is laid down that the persons are constituted in personal existence by certain absolutes; but if this position is not laid down, then expounding Blessed Augustine’s authority seems difficult; but there will be discussion of this in the next distinction [d.26 n.52].a

a [Note of Duns Scotus] Henry of Ghent says [a.43 q.2]: “A specific relation under its genus is not distinguished save by what it is founded on, and so there is no universal nature truly in it save for the fact it is founded on a universal” (he gives an example about likeness and whiteness); “but every divine relation is founded on the essence, which cannot in any way have the idea of a universal,” because a universal nature is “that nature alone which is nature only by reason of quiddity” (Avicenna, Metaphysics V), “without reference to the idea of universal or of particular, but of a nature in itself to receive the idea of each of them; a singular by determinate existence in a supposit, - a universal by the fact it is of a nature to fall under consideration by the intellect, taken as one in its idea, applicable by predication to the many particulars it is multiplied over,” that is, “of itself it is a certain singularity;” “although therefore relation is predicated univocally of paternity and filiation, yet it is not a universal.”