III. To the Reasons Adduced for the Opinion that Holds the Persons to be Constituted by Absolutes

224. To the reasons adduced for this opinion, some of which were let go, in book 1 [d.26 nn.33-55, 60-64; those let go, nn.93-94].

225. For the response to Augustine [supra nn.53-54] see Appendix B below [last few paragraphs].

226. To the other one [Ord. 1 d.26 n.52“Again, third: the first constitutive element of a supposit in any nature seems to make something that is per se one with that nature, because it does not seem that the per accidens could be ‘first simply’ in any genus, according to the Philosopher Physics 2.1.192b20-23; but just as in creatures relation is of a different kind from the absolute and so does not make something per se one with it, so in divine reality there does not seem to be one concept per se of the absolute and of relation; therefore if person includes these two things, namely essence and relation, essentially, then person does not seem to be a supposit per se and first of such a nature but is a supposit as it were per accidens, and so it seems that some prior thing could exist that is constitutive per se of the supposit in that nature.” ¹⁹], about supposit per accidens, I say that a metaphysician speaks about ‘per accidens’ in one way and a logician in another; for the metaphysician calls ‘an entity per accidens’ what includes in it things of diverse genera, as is plain from Metaphysics 5.7.1017a7-22 ‘about being’, and 6.1015b16-36 ‘about one’; but the logician says that ‘a proposition is per accidens’ whose subject does not include the reason for inherence of the predicate, and if one concept is made from two such things - neither of which is per se determinative of the other - he says that the concept is ‘one per accidens’. There is no example in creatures of a logical concept ‘one per accidens’ save of a concept to which a ‘one per accidens metaphysically’ corresponds, because although this proposition is per accidens ‘the rational is animal’, yet, by joining one to the other, one of them is determinative of the other; therefore the whole concept is not a one per accidens, but only some concept that brings together the concepts of two genera.

To the issue at hand, then, I say that the proposition ‘paternity is deity’ can be conceded to be per accidens - logically speaking -, because the subject as it is subject does not include the reason for inherence of the predicate as it is predicate, because the subject is not the predicate formally. Also, by joining the concept of the subject to the concept of the predicate (by saying ‘God is Father’) one concept does not per se determine the other, because, according to Damascene (Orthodox Faith 3.6), the properties determine the hypostases, not the nature; therefore this concept is not in itself per se one, and so it does not state a concept per se one with respect to any supposit; for what is not per se one in itself in things is not the per se supposit of anything - and so it is in the case of concepts. Thus therefore, speaking logically, it could be conceded that the Father is not the per se supposit of God.

227. But I argue against this, because a primary identity cannot be per accidens, and as not in the case of things so not in the case of concepts either; but there seems to be a primary identity of a primary nature with its supposit; therefore this identity is not per accidens but per se.

228. I reply: primary identity in the case of predication is when anything is said of itself, as ‘man is man’ and ‘God is God’. But, when speaking of real things, according to the metaphysician, since here [sc. in the case of ‘God is Father’ or ‘Paternity is Deity’] there are no genera nor anything of any genus (from Ord. 1 d.8 nn.95-115), there will here be no being per accidens; nor does the inference hold, ‘the supposit is logically per accidens, therefore the supposit is metaphysically per accidens’, because ‘to be a supposit’ states the disposition of something as subject to something as predicate - and thus the supposit can be said to be ‘per accidens’ because of accidentality on the part of the inherence but not on the part of the extremes or the terms.

229. And if it be objected that ‘here things are conceded that are as it were of two genera, namely substance and relation’ [sc. therefore the extremes or the terms must be per accidens]- I reply: the proper idea of things, as to genera or quasi genera, does not make the whole to be a per accidens being, but rather the disposition of thing to thing does, namely non-identity simply; but as it is, although the proper and formal idea of relation - which remains here - does not include formally the idea of essence, yet in reality one of them is most truly the same as the other [sc. ‘relation’ and ‘essence’], and because of this identity there is no disposition of reality to reality of the sort required of things that constitute a per accidens being.

230. And if it be objected against the first part [n.228, ‘and thus the supposit can be said to be ‘per accidens’ because of accidentality on the part of the inherence’] that ‘since in creatures the supposit of a nature can be per se one, why not here [in divine reality] in the same way?’, one can reply that some imperfect absolute thing can be incommunicable, and universally something that per se contracts in some genus can be incommunicable, just as it can be communicable - and thus that which in any created thing pertains to some genus can be something that belongs to the genus and that constitutes an incommunicable; but a simply perfect thing cannot be incommunicable nor can it be something of the same idea (and of this sort, according to this opinion, everything is that is absolute in divine reality), and so nothing ‘as it were of the same genus as the essence’ can constitute a person or a supposit there, but only something which is as it were of a different genus. An example: if anything in the genus of substance, up to the furthest point where it is constituted as ‘this substance’, were a perfection simply and so communicable, ‘this substance’ could not be further contracted by anything (because what is of itself a ‘this’ is not further determinable in itself), but only through something in the genus of quality or quantity could it constitute something incommunicable, because the quality or quantity would not be a perfection simply; then the thing constituted of substance and accident would be a being per accidens, and so it would exist per accidens if one of these realities was not perfectly the same as the other.

231. Thus is it set down in the issue at hand, that the essence is a perfection simply, and that whatever is of the same genus or idea is a for itself along with the essence; and therefore anything such is communicable and yet is of itself a ‘this’. And further: that which is of itself a ‘this’ cannot be contracted, but can - by the fact it is a ‘this’ - only be constituted as something incommunicable through something that is not a perfection simply, and that therefore is not of the same genus as the essence but is as it were of a different genus.

232. To the other one [Ord. 1 d.26 n.45“Whatever constitutes existence in something, and in the unity corresponding to such existence, is wholly first repugnant to a distinction opposite to that unity (example: if rational first constitutes man in his being and specific unity, rational is wholly first repugnant to a specific distinction such that, when removing if possible or per impossibile everything other than rational that is not part of the meaning of rational and keeping only the meaning of rational, a division into diverse specific natures will be repugnant to it). And the proof of this proposition is that if such a distinction is repugnant to the constituted whole, then it is repugnant to it by something; let that something be a; if it is wholly repugnant to the a itself then the intended conclusion is gained, - if not but it is repugnant to the a itself through b, there will be a process ad infinitum or, wherever a stand is made, that will be the ultimate constituent in such a unity and a distinction opposed to such unity will be wholly repugnant to it. Therefore if paternity constitutes the first supposit in its personal being under the idea of its being incommunicable, then communicability must of its own idea be first repugnant to paternity.” ²⁰] I say that ‘paternity’ is of itself formally incommunicable; not indeed the concept, which - according to what was said elsewhere [Ord. 1 d.8 nn.236-150] - cannot be abstracted from divine and created paternity as univocal, but the reality that exists in divinity (and that is not formally the essence itself) is formally incommunicable and not as it were through an extrinsic determination (namely the determination ‘because it is divine’). The reason for its incommunicability is as follows: that just as the essence is ultimate act, and therefore cannot be determined by anything with respect to which it is as it were potential, so whatever is in it is ultimate, with the ultimate actuality possible for it, such that in the instant of nature in which ‘wisdom’ burgeons in the essence, it burgeons according to the ultimate determination that it is able to have; hence too the reality that is wisdom formally is not determinable. Likewise, whatever can be incommunicable in the first instant of nature in which it burgeons in the nature is incommunicable and burgeons as incommunicable (and not first as communicable, because then it would be determinable through something by which it would be made incommunicable).

233. And if you say that ‘paternity’ is only incommunicable because it is in the divine essence (for this reality of [divine] paternity only has the fact that it is of itself ultimately determinate because it is in the divine essence) - I say that whatever is as it were originally and fundamentally intrinsic to divine reality is from the essence, because the essence of God, according to Damascene [Orthodox Faith 1.9], is a certain sea of infinite substance; but yet these other things possess formally their own ideas and are by themselves formally such primarily, so that ‘wisdom’, although it gets as it were originally and fundamentally from the essence that it is a perfection simply, is yet formally a perfection simply and is in itself formally infinite, such that in the same instant of nature in which wisdom is now actually in the essence it will, after the removal per impossibile of the essence itself, remain the understanding of wisdom simply and of infinite wisdom. Thus, in the ‘now’ of nature in which ‘paternity’ is understood to be in the essence, it is by itself formally incommunicable, with the essence then per impossibile removed.

Nor is it here a contradiction that something should as it were originally or causally have from another that which belongs to it formally, the way the hot is of itself formally contrary to cold although it is causally this from fire, to which it is not formally contrary. So it is in the case of other things, that the entity by which something is constituted in its specific being is of itself formally indivisible into several species, even given per impossibile that it is uncaused, although as it is it has this indivision causally from there from where it causally is.

234. And if you object, ‘why does some entity arise communicable in the essence and this one incommunicable?’ - I say that there is no formal reason for this save that this entity is ‘this’ and that entity is ‘that’, and that this entity, because it is ‘this’, is communicable and that that entity, because it is ‘that’, is incommunicable, so that it could not arise unless it arose formally incommunicable, and so that the other could not arise unless it arose formally communicable. But the extrinsic reason for this - as it were the original and fundamental reason - is that the essence is radically infinite, wherefrom can arise intrinsically not only communicable perfections simply but also incommunicable properties; but any one of these arises, when it arises, determinate with the highest determination possible for it.

235. From this [nn.232-234] is plain the response to all the proofs that show paternity is not of itself incommunicable [Ord. 1 d.26 nn.45-50].

For when you say ‘it is not of itself a this’ [ibid., n.47], I say this is false, when one understands it formally of the reality that is ‘paternity’ and not of a concept common to this paternity and to that, because (as was expounded in 1 d.8 nn.136-150, d.23 n.9 [nothing in 2 d.23 referred to by Scotus]) there can be a common concept when there is no order of realities intrinsically of which one is contractive or determinative of the other. But this paternity or that is not of itself a ‘this’, that is, is not a ‘this’ fundamentally, but is so from the essence, and paternity is incommunicable from the same essence itself because it is not a ‘this’ before it is incommunicable; but there arises, without any order of singularity toward incommunicability in this reality, a reality supremely determinate in the first instant of nature in which it arises.

236. Nor is the proposition true [Ord. 1 d.26 n.46] that ‘every quiddity is communicable’, but only that quiddity is which is a perfection simply or is divisible (for the first is communicated in unity of nature without division of itself, and the second is communicated with division of itself); this quiddity [sc. paternity, n.235] is not a perfection simply nor is it divisible, because it exists in a nature perfect simply.

237. Nor is the proposition true [ibid., d.26 nn.48-49] that ‘opposite relations are of themselves equally communicable’, but rather active inspiriting arises as communicable to two and can never become incommunicable by anything determining it; but passive inspiriting is of itself, in the same instant in which it arises in divine reality, formally incommunicable.

238. Also as to the statement [ibid., d.26 n.50] that ‘with anything whatever posited - possible or impossible -, and while its idea stands, it remains incommunicable’, I concede it as to ‘while its idea stands’ and ‘with nothing posited that is repugnant to its idea’. But if what is posited is that its idea remains and that there is something repugnant to it, then from opposites in the antecedent follow opposites in the consequent, namely that it is incommunicable formally of itself and also that it can be communicated. So it is in the issue at hand: if inspiriting is posited as preceding active generation, then something is posited incompatible with the paternity of the Father and yet the idea of paternity remains - and thus from the first would follow that paternity is communicable and yet from the second that it is incommunicable; hence there is formally a contradiction in generation being the second production in divine reality.

The paternity, therefore, because it is divine, is incommunicable, such that the ‘because’ is the circumstance of original or fundamental principle and not of principle contracting or determining in the way that white is contracted when ‘white man’ or ‘human whiteness’ is said; for here this whiteness is understood beforehand as existing in itself and, as such, it would be indeterminate and determinable so as to belong to a man; and it is determined when ‘human whiteness’ is said, but not because whiteness arises from the nature of man and is, in the instant in which it arises, of itself indeterminate. So it is, oppositely, in the issue at hand, because, just as a cause would not give being to an effect unless it gave to it ‘an existence agreeing with the effect’, and just as it would not produce this effect unless it produced something that was of a nature to have such an effect (for instance, no cause would cause a triangle formally unless it produced something that was of a nature to have three angles equal to two right angles, and if it could produce something that did not necessarily have three such angles, it would not produce a triangle but something else; nor is there any reason for this save that the formal idea of a triangle is such that it be a triangle), so I say that deity would not be the formal idea of any intrinsic reality unless this reality arose such that - in the first instant in which it is - it be determinate with ultimate determination; therefore, if it produced something determinable by some reality that came to it as it were from outside after it was already produced, it would not produce something intrinsic in divine reality - also, if it produced something incommunicable, it would not produce a personal property but something in some way different from it.

239. To the other argument [Ord. 1 d.26 n.51] I say that, although some common concept could be got that is said quidditatively of divine paternity and divine inspiriting (rather perhaps some common concept that is said quidditatively of divine paternity and created paternity [supra n.232]), yet no reality can be distinct in the deity in any way on the part of the thing (from which this concept said quidditatively may be taken), which reality would be determinable by another reality (in the way that a common concept in the intellect is determinable by another concept); and the possibility and reason for this was touched on above, 1 d.8 n.135-150.

240. I say therefore that paternity and filiation are not diverse primarily as to understanding such that it not be possible for the intellect to abstract some common concept from them [cf. Rep. IA d.26 n.105], but they are diverse primarily as to reality and reality, so that they include no single degree of reality that is quasi potential and determinable by proper differences (in the way that whiteness and blackness include some reality of the same idea determinable by their proper specific differences, from which their specific differences are taken). And then the major proposition, which is that ‘the first distinguishing factors are primarily diverse’ [Ord. 1 d.26 n.51] must only be understood of the realities themselves that primarily constitute them as to a nonagreement, which they formally include, in some single formal reality.

241. To the other argument [ibid., d.26 n.36] I say that every real relation is between extremes really distinct, but sometimes with a distinction that precedes the relations and sometimes not but only with a distinction formally caused by the relations; and this is not only true in divine reality but also in creatures and even in accidental relations. For the will moves itself and is moved by itself, and there is not only a real relation of the will to volition but also of will as active to itself as passive (just as father is not only said really to son but also to mother, and a heating thing is not only said really to the generated heat but also to that which it heats - and universally an effect dependent on an active and passive principle necessarily requires a real relation, of the sort that is ‘of passive to active’, and this either a single or a mutual relation so that there be a relation of one or other of the principles to the effect and conversely). And yet the will, which is the foundation of these opposed relations of ‘mover and moved’ and is denominated by both of them, is itself not distinguished by any distinction of these relations but only by a distinction made by them.

242. When the argument is made [Ord. 1 d.26 n.37] against this part, that then there will be no proof by a proof that this relation is real because the extremes are really distinct - I say that one must prove by inferring the conclusion on the ground that the extremes are distinct neither by a distinction preceding the relation nor by a distinction caused by the relations. And for proving the second part [sc. ‘nor by a distinction caused by the relations’] it is not enough to take the premise that these opposed relations are said of the same thing; so the inference does not follow, ‘they are said of the same thing, therefore they are not distinguished formally by a distinction pertaining to the genus of relation’, just as the inference does not follow, ‘they are said of the same thing, therefore they are not real’ - as in the issue at hand, where mover and moved are said of the same thing and yet they are real; but one must prove it because the distinction that they cause, if they do not presuppose any distinction, is only made by them from the nature of the thing along with an act of intellect. Hence one can well concede that the argument for destroying the reality of relations, on the ground of a lack of real distinction in the extremes, frequently begs the question, and it is difficult to prove everything that is needed for that argument to be conclusive. If however everything is proved, the consequence is good. But one must eventually end up at the point that the extremes do not make the distinction they make from the nature of the thing (as with identity and identity) but rather along with an act of intellect; and one can at once argue from that middle term, passing over the middle term about the distinction of extremes; for the inference at once follows, ‘if the relation is not consequent to the nature of the thing, it is not real’. And on this way does the Philosopher rely in Metaphysics 5.9.1018a2-4 to show that identity is not a real relation, because the intellect uses the same thing twice, and not because the extremes are not distinct. But if this latter argument were accepted, one should expound the antecedent as saying that the extremes are not distinct by a distinction preceding the relation, nor by relations distinct by distinction of incompossibles, nor by a distinction of compossibles that are from the nature of the thing; and one must prove all these parts so that the enthymeme [sc. ‘the extremes are not real, therefore the relation is not real’] may prove the inferred conclusion.

243. Hence the argument about primary substance [Ord.1 d.26 nn.60-64], that it is not constituted by relation, coincides with the argument about per se supposit [ibid., d.26 n.43], and it can be similarly solved, because ‘this essence’ has this from the idea of primary substance, because it is ‘of itself a this’; yet anything that is for itself cannot have incommunicability, but rather any entity for itself is there a perfection simply; so one can find in what is posited in divine reality that it has the idea of substance in the ultimate coordination insofar as concerns its not being repugnant to perfection, namely insofar as it is a ‘this’, but not insofar as concerns incommuicability, which is something repugnant to perfection.

244. The other arguments for the opinion about constitutive absolutes were solved in 1 d.26 nn.84-92.