De docta ignorantia

After absolute unity is necessarily trine, not indeed contractedly, but absolutely, for absolute unity is nothing other than trinity, which indeed is familiarly apprehended in a certain correlation, as has been sufficiently said in the first book, so indeed the maximal contracted unity, even as it is unity, is trine, not indeed absolutely, that trinity be unity, but contractedly, so that unity be only in trinity, as a whole contractedly in parts. In divinity unity is not contractedly in trinity, as a whole in parts, or a universal in particulars, but unity itself is trinity. Therefore any of the persons is unity itself; and since unity is trinity, one person is not another. In the universe, however, it cannot be so. On this account those three correlations, which in divinity are called persons, have no being in act except simultaneously in unity.

These things must be acutely noted. For in divinity so great is the perfection of unity, which is trinity, that the Father is actually God, the Son actually God, the Holy Spirit actually God; Son and Holy Spirit actually in the Father, Son and Father in the Holy Spirit, Father and Holy Spirit in the Son; so indeed it cannot be in the contracted. For correlations are not subsistent of themselves except conjointly. Nor therefore can any one of them be the universe, but all simultaneously. Nor is one in the others in act, but they are in that mode which the condition of contraction most perfectly contracted to one another suffers, that from them be one universe, which without that trinity could not be one. For the contracted cannot be without contractible, contracting and nexus, which is perfected through the common act of both. Contractibility, however, says a certain possibility, and descends from that begetting unity in divinity, as otherness from unity. For it says mutability and otherness in consideration of the principle. For nothing seems able to precede. For how would a thing be, if it could not be? Possibility therefore descends from eternal unity. The contracting itself, since it terminates the possibility of the contractible, descends from the equality of unity. For the equality of unity is equality of being. For being and one are convertible. Whence, since the contracting is adequating possibility to being contractedly this or that, it is rightly said to descend from equality of being, which is the Word in divinity. And since the Word itself, which is reason and idea and absolute necessity of things, necessitates and constrains through itself such a contracting possibility. Hence some called the contracting itself a certain form or soul of the world, and possibility matter. Others fate in substance, others, as the Platonists, necessity of complexion, since it descends from absolute necessity, that it be as it were a certain contracted necessity and contracted form, in which all forms are in truth. Concerning which will be said below. There is then the nexus of the contracting and the contractible, or of matter and form, or of possibility and necessity of complexion, which is perfected in act as it were by a certain spirit of love with a certain motion uniting them. And this nexus was customarily named by some determined possibility, since posse-be to be this or that in act is determined from the union of the determining form itself and the determinable matter. Hence that the nexus descends from the Holy Spirit, who is the infinite nexus, is manifest. The unity of the universe, therefore, is trine, since from possibility, necessity of complexion and nexus, which can be called potency, act and nexus. And from this collect the four universal modes of being. For there is a mode of being which is called absolute necessity, namely as God is form of forms, being of beings, reason or quiddity of things; and in this mode of being all things in God are absolute necessity itself. Another mode is as things are in necessity of complexion, in which are the forms of things true in themselves with distinction and order of nature, as in mind; whether this be so, we shall see below.

Another mode of being is as things are in determined possibility in act, this or that. And the lowest mode of being is as things can be, and is pure possibility. The last three modes of being are in one universality, which is the contracted maximum; from which there is one universal mode of being, since nothing can be without them. I say modes of being, since there is not a universal mode of being as composed of those three as of parts in such a way, as a house of roof, foundation and wall; but from modes of being, since the rose which is in the rosebush in potency in winter and in act in summer passed from one mode of being of possibility to the determinate in act. From which we see the mode of being of possibility to be one, of necessity another, and of actual determination another; from which there is one universal mode of being, since without them nothing is, nor is one without another in act.