Ordinatio

But now we must see as to contingent theological truths [n.150, Quodl. q.7 n.10] what the prime subject is there. And as to these truths I say that no subject contains only necessary truths about itself, because it is of itself equally disposed to contingent truths about itself and to their opposites. There is, however, an order in contingent truths, and some contingent truth is true first;¹ and so that can be posited the first subject of many contingent truths about which first, that is immediately, is stated the predicate of the first contingent truth (which is as it were the principle in the order of contingent truths), or the predicates of several first contingent truths, if several be first. But the first subject of the first contingent truth is said to be that which, when seen as such, is of a nature to be seen first to be conjoined with the predicate of that truth, because nothing is a first known in contingent truths save through intuition of the extremes; therefore the first intuitable thing in which is the predicate of the first contingent truth is the first subject of all ordered contingent truths.

From these statements I say to the issue in question that the divine essence is the first subject of contingent theology, and this when taken in the same way in which it was previously said that it is the first subject of necessary theology [n.167]; – and this holds of that contingent theology in itself as it holds of it as it is in the divine intellect and also of it as it is in the intellect of the blessed. Therefore, of the whole of theology in itself, both of God and of the blessed, the first subject is his essence as this essence, the vision of which by the blessed is like what the cognition of being is in metaphysics; and for that reason blessed vision is not theological [science] but a sort of perfect simple apprehension of the subject naturally preceding science.

Of our contingent theology there seems to be the same first subject as also of necessary theology, and in the way expounded above [n.168], because it is not the subject as containing – even if it is seen in intuition – but as knowable by us, proximate to that which, known intuitively, the predicate of the first evident contingent truth is of a nature to be in [n.169]. On the contrary: it seems that the Word is the adequate object of contingent theology, both of that theology as it is in itself and as it is in the divine intellect, because it is the first subject of all the articles of our reparation. I reply: something contingent can be first said of the Word, and something of the Holy Spirit, and something of the triune God, as ‘to create’; therefore, the persons will be as it were parts of the subject, just as also some necessary things are first true of the diverse persons.