Ordinatio

But here two doubts arise. First, that then it seems there is a quaternity in the image, for first act with respect to volition does not go with any of the three in the image. For not with the third part, plainly, because the same thing is not principle of itself; nor with the second part, manifestly, because actual knowledge is not the will; nor with the first either, because memory properly states the productive principle of generated knowledge, not of volition. Therefore, will the will be a fourth along with these.

Again, a second doubt is because it does not seem that the order of origin as it is in divine reality is here preserved. For the first person there originates the second, and these two the third; here the first part of the image is cause of the second, but neither the first nor the second are cause of the third; therefore etc.

To the first [n.581] I reply that the image can be assigned in two ways, according as Augustine assigns it in two ways: in one way, On the Trinity 9.5 and following, “mind, knowledge, and love;” in another way, according as he assigns it ibid. 10.10 and following, “memory, intelligence, and will.” And about this double assignment of the image Augustine, speaking in ibid. 15.3 n.5, says that what was set down in ibid. 10 is more evident.

I say, then, when treating of the first assignment, that by ‘mind’ we can understand first act with respect to both second acts, namely fertility for generating and spirating. For in this the mind has the idea perfectly of parent, because it includes perfectly both fertilities; and then the two others, namely knowledge and love, are two things produced by the soul in a certain order. And then there will not be a quaternity, because in the parent having the perfect idea of parent the double first act comes together.¹ And in this way is it in divine reality, because in the Father there is not only fertility for generating but for spirating, and this from himself; because if the Father did not of himself have fertility for spirating, but had it by way of leftover from the production of the Son (as some say [Henry of Ghent, Summa a q.8, a.54 q.6]), this impossible result, it seems, follows, that the Father would never have that fertility. For no reality, whether absolute or relative, does the Father have in any way by production, and therefore whatever reality he does not have in the first moment of origin (insofar, namely, as he is pre-understood in order of origin to the Son) he never has. Therefore, if that double fertility he does not have in himself in the first moment of origin, he will never have it.

But if mind be taken precisely as first act, having only fertility with respect to generated knowledge, the image in this way is imperfectly assigned, because in this way the mind does not have perfectly the idea of parent.

So I say about the other assigning that, if memory be taken precisely for the parent with respect to generated knowledge, it is parent imperfectly; but parent perfectly has not only whereby it generates but whereby it spirates, because it cannot have that from something else; and it must have it totally; and therefore it must be had in a parent of itself. But if memory be taken for the whole soul, as it has aptitudinally in first act that double fertility, in this way it has perfectly the idea of parent. But although memory be more evidently a parent, as one must concede because of the word of Augustine On the Trinity 15 ch.3 n.5 [n.583] – namely insofar as it expresses more than the mind does the relation of generator to generated – yet the mind seems to import more perfectly the idea of parent if it be taken as it includes both fertilities.

Briefly, then, in whatever way a trinity is assigned in the image, whether this way or that, there is no quaternity, because a double relationship and fertility come together in a parent, if is perfectly parent.

To the second [n.582] I say that in us there cannot be the likeness of image to prototype. For knowledge generated in the created image is a certain accident, to which is not communicated the fertility for producing love by which it is formally something productive of love. For such an accident is not of a nature to be formally thinking and willing, and therefore the memory that generates actual knowledge (taking memory as it is perfectly parent) cannot communicate to what is generated the fertility that it first had, because it does not communicate to it the same nature, but produces it equivocally in another nature. Now when the Father generates the Son he communicates to him the same nature, and the same fertility for spirating love, which fertility is not understood in the generation of the Son to have an adequate term; and therefore the Son can, by the same fecundity, produce as the Father does. The reason, therefore, is plain why that production cannot be preserved in the parts of the image the way it is in the Persons of the Trinity, because there cannot be the same fecundity in the two first parts of an image. But it can be and is the same in two Persons with respect to a third.

Similarly, if generated knowledge were in any way productive of anything, this would only be by way of nature and not freely. There is here, however, some order between the second part of the image and the third, because the third part presupposes the second naturally, though it not be from it. And this does Augustine express in On the Trinity 15 ch.27 n.50, “as if the will, third, joining parent and offspring, which will does indeed proceed from knowledge.” And he adds and expounds at once how he understands it: “for no one wants what he altogether may not know, as to what it is or is like, nevertheless not to exist.” It is plain, therefore, that he posits that order of origin precisely on account of the natural order of volition to intellection, and not that intellection be cause with respect to volition. It is plain, then, according to Augustine’s intention, that he there takes will (according as it is the third part of the image) for the act of willing, as he takes it here and adds, “which will does indeed proceed etc.” [supra here], which is not true of the will as it is a power, but if it be true, this is true of the act of willing.

Further, in particular: since all the things aforesaid are found in the mind with respect to any object whatever, one must note that the most perfect and ultimate idea of the image is when these things come together in the mind with respect to God as object; for then the soul has not only an expressive likeness as concerns the aforesaid by reason of the things in it, but also by that reason by which the acts themselves are conformed to the object. For an act is truly a likeness of the object, as was said in the prior question [n.565], and therefore, when these acts are so in the mind that they not only have consubstantiality and likeness and distinctness and origin but have also a further likeness to God by reason of the object about which they are, there is a more perfect likeness; but it is less perfect when the soul has itself for object, because then, although a likeness is not had from God immediately as from proximate object, yet it is had in some way, insofar as in the mind, as in an image, God is known.

And this double trinity is assigned by Augustine, namely the one that is in respect of God, when he says On the Trinity 12.4 n.4, “in it alone which pertains to the contemplation of eternal things is there not only a trinity but an image of God – but in this which is derived in the doing of temporal things, even if it could be a trinity, yet an image cannot be found.” This is to be understood of the expressive image, as to supreme expression or likeness. About the same also in On the Trinity 15.20 n.39, “Hence can an eternal and immutable nature be recollected, seen, desired,” etc., “an image to be sure of the supreme Trinity, to remembering, seeing, and loving which, everything should refer that lives.”

About another image does he speak in On the Trinity 14.8 n.11: “Behold,” he says, “the mind remembers itself, understands itself, loves itself; if this we discern, we discern a trinity, not yet God indeed, but already an image of God.” This second authority seems to contradict the first [n.591] unless it be understood in the aforesaid way [n.591 “This is to be understood of the expressive image…”].

And then is it plain how, in respect of all the objects lower than the mind, he does not posit an image in the mind, because no other object is an image of God, with respect to whom most of all (and with respect to his image secondarily) there is an image in the mind as far as concerns the likeness which is had from the object.

From these points appears, by way of corollary, why in the sensitive part there is not an image. First, because there is not a consubstantiality there of things operating, or of all of them taken along with their operations, because the principle of sensing is not only something of the soul but something composed of soul and part of the body (and a part thus mixed¹), which is the whole organ.² Likewise, the principle of desiring of the sense appetite is not something of the soul alone, but is similarly composite. These two, which the operations are of, are not consubstantial, because although these powers of the soul are in the same essence, and are perhaps the same as the essence of the soul, yet they are not total causes of operation (namely the whole organs themselves), because the parts of the body are not consubstantial, neither among themselves nor with the powers of the soul.

Likewise, in the sense part there is not a double mode of originating, because just as the sense senses naturally, so the sense appetite desires naturally; hence according to John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith 2.27 (seek for it), the brutes in their actions do not ‘act’ but are ‘acted’.