D. How the Second Opinion could be Sustained

76. If this third way is not found pleasing, nor that Christ’s soul sees infinites elicitively (whether by receiving infinite visions of infinites or by receiving one vision of infinites [n.71-75]), one can say that it sees everything habitually in the Word but not actually [n.50] by explaining the distinction in this way: It sees the Word by some act or habit, and through the act all things shine forth in the Word as present in first act, and so are known to it habitually; for, speaking generally, that is said to be known habitually for which the habit is a sufficiently ostensive first act. There is not therefore any single habit in Christ’s soul which, by its single idea, displays infinite objects; rather that by which the soul sees the Word first is a first act by which shine forth for it all that shines in the Word - and this because the Word is an object manifest to it, and a willing mirror representing all things.

77. Let the second member [sc. ‘not actually’, nn.76, 50] be conceded -and what we find express in us declares in its favor, that attention directed to many objects is less perfect; and so it seems impossible for a finite power to see infinite objects at the same time with perfect attention.

78. Likewise, if Christ’s soul were to see infinites actually, the perfection of his soul would infinitely exceed the perfection of other souls, which seems unacceptable.

79. In favor of this can be adduced Avicenna’s remark (On the Soul part 4 ch.2) that ‘there is in the wisdom of the Creator no hiddenness save according to what can be received’, for although the Word, as willingly showing everything, is willingly present to Christ’s soul, yet that soul cannot receive everything at once but each singular one by one; and so Christ’s soul can see one thing after another as regards any of the numerically infinite things it turns itself toward. The result then is that it does not know everything [sc. actually], because all the things successively received are infinite.

80. And if it is objected that any blessed can in this way see anything in the Word non-simultaneously, I reply that for any other blessed the Word is a mirror representing a determinate number of things beyond which such soul cannot want, in ordered way, to see other things. But for Christ’s soul the Word is a mirror representing everything, and so this soul can want, in ordered way, to see as many of the infinite things as it has immediate power for seeing, just as if they were present to it through its own habit or through some known first act that could be called a habit.