Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

The title from what has been said is clear. – In the body there is a single conclusion answering the question: No procession can exist in the divine, except that of the word and of love.

It is proved thus. The divine processions cannot be understood except according to immanent acts: therefore not except according to understanding and willing: therefore not except as word and love.

The first consequence is proved in two ways. First, because in the intellectual nature there is no other genus of immanent action: for it is evident that God, who is of a purely intellectual nature, has no other. – Second, because sensing, which is the third genus of immanent operations, is not entirely outside the transitive operations, insofar as it is brought about by an extrinsic object.

II. Concerning the antecedent, which is the foundation of what has been said and of what remains to be said on the matter of the Trinity, note that it can be attacked in two ways. First, by those who deny that the processions in God are themselves immanent acts. In this negative position Scotus and Durandus agree, as was alleged above¹. And against Scotus indeed an argument has been made, after his opinion was recited². Hence what now remains is to refute the claims of Durandus.

III. For he himself, in the tenth distinction of the First Book³, not assenting to this argument, refers himself to the sixth distinction⁴, in which he both attacked this text and grounded his own opinion. He argues, therefore, that the divine processions are not attended to in respect of understanding and willing: because these are essential attributes common to all the Persons and really identical with one another; but the processions are, according to all, notional acts, do not belong to all the Persons, and are really distinct from one another.

IV. But he himself holds that the divine processions are to be understood according to the acts of nature, with intellect and will and all their acts set aside. And in this he also disagrees with Scotus, who holds⁵ that they are to be understood according to the acts of intellect and will, although he distinguishes those acts from understanding and willing. And Durandus grounds his opinion as follows. The communication of nature proceeds from the fecundity of nature itself; therefore it does not proceed from intellect and will: with these, then, set aside, just as nature remains, so too fecundity remains, and the communicative act of nature; therefore, etc. – The antecedent is evident inductively; and it is known through itself; and it is confirmed by the authority of Hilary⁶: to all creatures will brought substance, etc. – The consequence, however, is proved from the fact that, as the order is between certain things when they are distinguished really, so a similar order is between them when they are distinguished by reason: but it is evident that nature is prior to intellect and will, and likewise the act of nature to their acts. – And it is confirmed: because if heat were intelligent and willing, it would not give warmth insofar as it is intelligent or willing, but from its nature, just as now. Therefore, of itself and first, to communicate nature is an act of nature, with everything else set aside. This is the force of Durandus's position.

V. To make this difficulty evident, note first that a nature can have no act unless it be an immanent or transient action. For it is impossible to find a third kind of operation, or of production, even if license to imagine were granted: since every act, according to its being as perfective (esse perfectivum), must be⁷ either of an agent or of what is acted upon. And by enumerating each of the natures in the universe, sufficient testimony is borne to this proposition, even if the argument adduced were lacking.

Note second, that fecundity is not a condition of every nature: for not every nature can communicate itself according to the same ratio, or univocally; thus we are speaking here. For it is clear that the sun cannot generate another sun; and likewise, far be it from the intelligences to have an act of communicating their own nature (the reason for which is given below, q. XLV, art. 5, ad 1).

Note third, that in that nature to which fecundity belongs, it is found to communicate itself in the very manner in which it is found to act toward the communication of itself. Now, since in the definition of nature, in II Physics⁸, there is posited a first, not proximate, principle, it is not required of every nature that it be, with every power set aside, the proximate and immediate principle of operation; but it suffices that it be the first principle of that operation by means of its natural power, as is evident in the elements and in animals.

VI. From these things, however, evident inductively and consonant with reason, it is deduced first that, if there is any fruitful nature communicable through a transient action, that nature—not insofar as it is understanding, willing, or sensing, but with all these set aside—has a communicative act of itself through its power, which is a transient action. If, however, some nature is fruitful to which it is repugnant to be communicated through a transient action, as is every purely intellectual nature, that nature has, through its power or powers, a communicative act of itself of the genus of immanent actions. And since such actions in an intellectual nature are none other than the acts of intellect and will (for these alone are the natural powers proper to a purely intellectual nature), it follows that if any purely intellectual nature is fruitful, its communicative act is an act of intellect or of will, or both. And this is the meaning of the text here, already begun from the first article of this question, against Arius, etc.

VII. To the objections on the opposite side, therefore, it is said, and first to the first ⁹, that from all of those arguments nothing else is obtained except that the processions or productions are not immanent actions precisely: which is what we teach, holding that they are understanding by expressing the word, and likewise willing by spirating, and so with the others, as will be shown more fully below ¹⁰

VIII. But as to the root of the opinion ¹¹, once the antecedent proposition is granted, the inference must be denied. For it stands that the communicative act of nature arises from its fecundity, and yet it need not precede, in any order, the act of intellect or will, since it is repugnant to that nature to be communicated by any act other than intellect or will. — As to the proof of the inference, where it is said such is the order etc., the major premise being granted, the minor is denied as regards what it supposes, namely, that a fecund nature is owed an act of its own communication with all else set aside: for this is false, as we have shown ¹².

And if it is insisted that the intellect presupposes a fecund nature, and therefore the act of the intellect presupposes the act of the fecund nature: the causal inference must be denied, even though the antecedent of that inference is true. And the reason for the denial is that arguments of this kind do not hold among subordinates whose operation is the same, such that the first can operate only through the second, as happens in the case at hand. — And if it is asked why nature cannot operate with the power excluded: there is no other reason than that it is a nature. For it is owed to it on this account that it be the first, not the proximate, principle of the work: for it is repugnant to a nature to be communicated through such a prior act, as we have said.

The imagination, however, seems to err from this: that one imagines nature and intellect to be as it were two natures; when nevertheless, for the matter at hand, one must imagine that intellectuality is the constitutive difference of a nature in such an order or genus of things that either is infertile, or its fecundity is through intelligible acts. And so it is in the truth of the thing.

And from this it is clear that nothing stands in the way of the truth of that conditional about heat, and similar cases. For these are true of forms communicable through outward action; and we imagine them to stand toward intellectuality as a property does, and not as a determining difference toward the mode of the communication of itself, as happens in the case at hand.

Hence the divine processions must be thought to precontain eminently within themselves the perfections of all processions: and because they proceed from the fecundity of nature, they are communicative of that nature itself; and because they occur in a purely intellectual nature, they are acts of intellect and will; and because they are perfect simply, neither is multiplied, etc.