Ordinatio

As to the first main argument [n.569] I concede that any created essence, insofar as it is this essence produced according to such idea, does not represent God under the idea of three; because it is not caused or ideated by God under the idea of three, but under the idea of one. But yet some created essence, by reason of its essence and of the many things that go along with it (as one whole aggregate), can be representative of the Trinity and of the things that are apprehended in the Trinity. Such a thing is the mind, taken in itself and with its operations, because there is unity there and distinction and order of origin; such a thing too, as to such coming together, is nothing that is inferior to the mind, as was plain in the case of the sense part [nn.594-595].

But when you argue [n.569] that if it were an image, the Trinity could be known through knowledge of the mind, I reply that the things that come together in the mind are of value for one who believes the Trinity for giving conviction how it could exist, but they do not prove to one who does not believe that it exists; for the total combining of the many things in the mind wherein the image consists could be and is from one person; and so from it cannot be shown, by a demonstration-why, that it is an image of the Trinity. Of this Augustine speaks in On the Trinity 15.24, “Those who see the mind and that trinity in it and yet do not believe it is an image of God see indeed the mirror but do not see through the mirror, since neither do they know that what they see is a mirror.”

But how the deduction may avail for displaying the three Persons from the idea of intellect and will in divine reality, was stated in d.2 in the question about the two productions [Ord. I d.2 nn.301-303, 355-356].

To the second [n.570] I say that the argument seems efficacious if it were posited that the Father generates insofar as he is intelligence, as one opinion [Henry of Ghent] has posited it (posited above and rejected in d.2 in the aforesaid question [Ord. I d.2 nn.278-279, 291-296]), which posits that the actual knowledge of the Father has, in some way, the idea of what produces in respect of the generation of the Son, and has the idea of formal productive principle [ibid.]. But according to the other way, which I held there, that the Father insofar as he has the divine essence present to him under the idea of being intelligible in act (which belongs to the Father insofar as he is memory) – that in this way does the Father generate; but not insofar as he is understanding, as was there made clear [ibid.]. In that case the antecedent [n.570] is false, because my memory represents the Father more than the Son – not in this respect, that memory alone is in the Father and intelligence alone in the Son, but in this, that the Father generates the Son insofar as the Father has the idea of memory, not as he has the idea of intelligence or will.

To the third [n.571] I say that second acts are products.

When you give proof from the Philosopher Physics 5 [n.571], the argument is on my side. For since an action is not the term of an action, and since these acts [second acts, ibid.] are truly terms of action (as Augustine says On the Trinity 9.12 nn.17-18, that knowledge is truly generated and volition proceeds, as he says ibid. 15.27 n.50), therefore they are not actions of the genus of action but are absolute forms of the genus of quality.

When you prove [n.571] that they are actions properly because they are second acts, I say that certain forms have a fixed being, not dependent continuously on their cause (as if in coming to be), the way heat is in wood; certain have a quasi continual dependence on their cause, as light in the medium on the sun. And about this Augustine speaks, Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.12 n.26, saying that “air is not made transparent but being made transparent.” First forms, because of their independence in being, do not have the idea of action or motion; second forms, because of their continuous dependence, seem rather to have being in becoming than in having-become. And they thus have it because always, while they are, they are as equally caused as in the first instant when they begin to be; and therefore, when the cause ceases to cause, these forms cease to be. But it does not follow from this that they are actions of the genus of action, but the opposite follows, that they are terms of such actions.¹

Intellection is disposed in this second way, because it is in continuous dependence on the presence of its cause; for otherwise it would not have being, as is plain from Augustine On the Trinity 11.3 n.6, “But when the glance of the one thinking has been turned away from it²…nothing of the form that preceded in it will remain;” for the act of the intelligence does not remain without such presence of the cause, namely of a cause continually inflowing. But this alone does not prove it is a second act (for thus light in the medium is posited to be second act); and therefore, along with this, there is another further condition, namely that these forms, by reason of themselves, pass into something else as into a term,³ and this whether the something else be within or outside the thing operating, I care not, for it is not intelligible that there be intellection or volition and that it not be of some term. But this belongs to action properly speaking, that it pass into something as into a term. On account of those two conditions coming together in these forms, these forms are said to be second acts, although truly they are abiding forms.

To the other proof, when it is said that such act is generative of a habit [n.572], I reply that the argument is to the opposite, because action of the genus of action cannot be of the same idea unless it have the same term, as heating is not of the same idea unless heat be of the same idea. Therefore, if an act were to generate a habit as action of the genus of action terminated at the habit as at a term, it could not be of the same idea unless it were per se generative of the habit. Indeed, it would seem to be a contradiction that it would an action of the same idea and not be of some term, because there cannot be an action of the genus of action unless it be of some term. But now some act of intellection or volition can be of the same idea though not be of some produced term; therefore, the act is not generative of a habit as being generation but as being form, by which the habit is formally generated. Then I say briefly that an act is generative of a habit as some form that is cause or reason for causing another form, as the light of the sun in the medium is the reason of begetting heat there. Now such an act is not such as to beget as an action, but by such action are both an act and a habit begotten, as the proper term of such action – and to signify this sort of begetting, which is action of the genus of action, we say that the power elicits the act of understanding.