Ordinatio

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.