Commentaria in Primam Partem Summae Theologiae

The title is sufficiently clear from what precedes. – In the body he does two things: first, he answers according to the opinion proved above¹ less fully; second, he answers according to the way he follows.

II. As to the first point, the conclusion, according to them, is a single one: Relations follow upon the notional acts. - And it is made evident: because in their view they neither distinguish nor constitute the hypostases, etc.

III. As to the second point, first he distinguishes origin into active and passive, making them clear by way of exemplar. – Second, he states one conclusion concerning passive origin: Passive origin precedes the properties of the persons proceeding, even their personal properties. This is proved: because it is signified as a way to a person constituted by a property. – Third, he states the second conclusion, concerning active origin: Active origin precedes the relation of the originator that is not personal. And this is made clear in common spiration, both as it is an act and as it is a relation. – Fourth, he distinguishes the personal property of the Father, which alone remained; and this can be considered in two ways, namely as a relation, and as constitutive of the person. And he states this conclusion: that paternity, as a relation, follows generation; but as constitutive of the person, it precedes generation. And he declares the first part: because a relation is founded upon an act. The second part, however: because action presupposes an agent who is a being.

IV. Concerning the last things said, a doubt arises. First, because these seem to contradict what was said above in article 2. For either we speak of origin and relation according to the thing itself: and thus they do not differ. Or according to the concept: and thus, since each of them is multiple (for origin can be taken as origin, and as constitutive of the person, just as relation can); and neither relation as relation, nor origin as origin, constitutes: either one ought to have distinguished concerning origin, as was distinguished concerning relation; or it ought not to have been affirmed that relation rather than origin constitutes and distinguishes.

V. Concerning the same part, a greater doubt arises. For paternity, for example, is either a constitutive form under the express notion of paternity itself, or under some other notion. If under the notion of paternity, then insofar as it is a relation: and thus there is no distinction. If under another notion, then what was said above collapses, by which the Author tried to show that to constitute and distinguish the person is the act of relation, as distinguished against essence and against origin, as is clear in articles 2 and 3.

VI. And the doubt is confirmed and increased. For from St. Thomas we have four real predicates by reason of which it is attributed to relation to constitute the person. The first is the divine essence. For he says in Quaestiones de Potentia, q. VIII, art. 3, in reply to 7, that relations constitute the hypostases insofar as they are the divine essence. – The second is the divine esse. For he says in I Sent., dist. XXVI, art. 2, ad 2, that relation, insofar as it is divine, distinguishes the hypostasis. – The third is the subsistent esse. For he said in the second article of this question, in reply to 4, that relation, if it be subsistent, carries with it supposital distinction. – The fourth is the very person itself. For he said in the aforesaid article that relations constitute and distinguish the hypostases insofar as they are the subsisting persons themselves.

From all of which is woven together the ambiguity as to whether, according to the mind of St. Thomas, relation is constitutive of person, standing within the breadth of relation and its conditions: whether it constitutes insofar as it includes essence, or some essential element. On every side there are straits. For if it constitutes within the range of the relative, the arguments alleged from the passages cited collapse. But if it constitutes as being identical with something absolute, it follows that personality in God is formally absolute: whose opposite we have confessed².

VII. There are also the arguments of Aureol, as found in Capreolus, on distinction 26 of the First Book³, specifically against that dictum taken from the Questions on the Power of God⁴. – And again, against the third dictum, taken from article 2 of this question, namely, that relation as subsistent constitutes: by asking what the phrase "as subsistent" signifies; and, briefly, inferring that this is nothing other than that the same thing constitutes itself, or that what constitutes, as constituted, constitutes.

VIII. To make these things evident, know that, although Thomists holding the opposite are not lacking, on account of those things adduced from Qq. Dispp., and the passages alluding to them in I Sent.; yet it seems to me to be the mind of St. Thomas that those relations which we call personal, namely the first and incommunicable ones, within their own relative breadth, nevertheless constitute the persons. I am moved, moreover, by the doctrine of this question. For expressly, in the first place, the act of constituting personally is attributed in article 2 to relation, as it is distinguished against essence, and also against origin. Therefore not insofar as it is essence does it constitute a person. – Then in article 3 it was expressly said that the personal relations carry their supposits with them. If therefore they carry them with them, they supposit not insofar as they are essence: for it is evident that they do not carry essence with them. – Afterwards also there, in the reply to objection 2, it was explicitly said that the Father is by paternity not only Father, but someone and a hypostasis. Now it is evident that what belongs formally to a person by paternity does not belong to him insofar as he is one with the essence, but rather as he is distinguished from it.

IX. That all things may be in harmony, however, and that the intended point may be better understood, know that it is one thing for something to have a relation because it is the same as the essence, and another thing for it to have a relation to something as it is an essence. For the first signifies having that relation from the essence radically, while the second formally. An example of the first: the relation is a real thing; an example of the second: the relation is creative.

Hence, in the matter at hand, I imagine that, just as that relation is real not on account of being a relation, but on account of the esse which belongs to the number of essential realities, as was said above⁵ against the Porretans; and yet reality belongs to that relation through itself formally, but through the essence radically: so too the esse of a subsistent nature, namely hypostatic subsistence, belongs to that relation, say paternity, through itself formally, but through the essence radically. And thus that relation, not insofar as it is a relation (for in that way it would belong to every relation), but insofar as it is that relation, that is, insofar as it is a relative thing hypostatic and first, constitutes the person. Therefore the esse constitutive of hypostasis, or hypostatic esse, does not belong to it formally by reason of some absolute, but by reason of itself.

X. Nor do they will the places cited⁶. For in the Disputed Questions he intends that they have from the essence radically; as is clear from q. IX, art. 5, ad 13, where he gives the same judgment on this matter, and on the reason why the Father is paternity, namely because of identity with the essence; which is evidently to be understood radically. – A relation also can be called divine in two ways: one way identically, namely because it is the same as the deity; another way formally, namely because it is in the genus of divine things. In the case at hand, the relation is divine in this second way: for that paternity is of the uncreated and supreme being, and hence of the divine order, formally through itself; although it has this radically from the essence, with which it is identical. – And since a thing, by the fact that it is divine formally, is subsistent or substantial (for nothing divine can have the nature of an accident); therefore saying relation as divine and as subsistent comes to the same thing. So that a relation, say paternity, as a relative substantial thing constitutes the person of the Father; other conditions being understood, namely incommunicability and primitivity; by contrast with spiration, which even if it belonged to the Father alone, since it is not first, would not constitute a person. Hence what is meant by relation as subsistent⁷ is clear: namely, as it is formally through itself the nature of a substantial thing. For from this it has both that it constitutes a hypostasis, and that it does not include the essence intrinsically, but connotes it as its root. – And since, according to the truth of the matter, there is here no distinction between the constituting and the constituted except in the mode of signifying; therefore, to intimate this, it was said that the relation constitutes inasmuch as it is itself the person; that is, the relation constitutes the person in this one way only, namely by positing itself, because it is itself the person. And therefore the constituting and the constituted are entirely the same really and formally, and distinct only in the mode of signifying.

Gathering everything, then, since it has been said: Relation constitutes the person, because it is the divine essence, because divine, because subsistent, because it is the very person itself; essence expressed the root, divine the formal condition in common, subsistence the same condition in particular, and the very person itself the mode of constituting a person. For a constitution of such loftiness had to be expounded by several names, insofar as it involves several conditions.

XI. Hence all of Aureol's arguments⁸ cease entirely. For, taking note when the discourse concerns the root, when the formal condition, and when the mode of constituting, and not confusing one with another, they will likewise perceive either that they labor in equivocation, or that what appears unfitting is not unfitting—for instance, that the constituting principle constitutes insofar as it is itself constituted, if "insofar"inquantum specifies the mode of constituting, etc.

XII. The final difficulty having been dispatched, then, by pursuing the order in reverse, we must speak of the remaining ones. And to the second⁹ indeed it is said that, just as among the logicians relation is signified in two ways, namely as conceived and as exercised, and yet it is one and the same relation; so in the matter at hand paternity, as exercised, follows the act of generation; and that same paternity, under the explicit intelligibility of paternity as conceived, precedes generation and constitutes the hypostasis. Hence the members do not coincide. Nor does it follow, therefore, that paternity precedes insofar as it is a relation (sharing words with the letter): for in the letter paternity as relation signifies paternity as exercising the act of relation insofar as it is a relation; but paternity as constitutive of the person signifies that same paternity as exercising the act of a hypostatic form. And although both are comprehended within the breadth of that relative being, they are nevertheless not simultaneous according to the order of reason: rather paternity, as it precedes generation, constitutes and distinguishes the relative person of the Father in relative hypostatic being really and formally, but not relatively exercised (and therefore paternity is called such not as a relation, but as constitutive); but as it follows generation, it constitutes and distinguishes the same person, not in hypostatic being, but in exercised relative being (and therefore paternity is called such as a relation). So that there are not two relative beings in the Father, but only one, given by paternity formally before generation as hypostatic, and after generation as exercised. And likewise there is one single relative distinction of the Father from the Son, but given first as hypostatic, and afterward as exercised. And thus of similar cases.

XIII. And if you perceive these things, all will be in harmony. And you will see how Scotus's argument, in I, dist. XXVIII, qu. ult., against this distinction of the text is worthless: because it labors under an equivocation, not perceiving that as relation here signifies not the nature but the act or office of the relation, as has already been explained. – You will also perceive how vain was so great a labor of his in the Quodlibets, qu. IV¹⁰, polluted by the same sin. For paternity as constitutive and as relation imports not two natures but one, and that an atom, namely paternity; signifying distinct rationes of the same relation, according to one of which it precedes generation, and according to the other follows it. But the word "relation" deceived him, and the motive concerning which there will be discussion in qu. XLII, art. 3¹¹, where the remaining points will be resolved.

XIV. To the first¹² it is said that relation, and not origin, ought to have been distinguished and affirmed. First, because those who hold the opposite do not distinguish concerning origin, but rather make it the very constituent, paying no heed to the mode of signifying. – Second, because real relation, as has been said¹³, according to its proper character not only is present but is, as was said against the Porretans; origin, however, as such, has the character of a way only. – Third, and most importantly, because in the divine only two genera are preserved, according to Boethius¹⁴, namely substance and ad aliquid. But the divine person is formally ad aliquid, as we suppose: and consequently the constituent of the person must be ad aliquid. And therefore relation had to be affirmed, and then distinguished into its twofold act, namely of being a relation, and of being such, as has been explained¹⁵. – If, however, the common doctrine of the Saints had posited in the divine the genera of origin, say of action and passion, and not of relation; without doubt origin would have been affirmed as constitutive, and distinguished. Since, therefore, the opposite is in fact the case, for this reason relation is most fittingly pre-affirmed and distinguished.