Ordinatio

About the second article [n. 30] it is asserted that it is not possible, when speaking of the absolute power of God, that anyone who comprehends should enjoy the divine essence without enjoying the person. The proof of this is first about vision [about enjoyment see nn. 40-41], namely that it is not possible absolutely for any intellect to see the divine essence without seeing the person: The first proof is as follows, because confused knowledge is imperfect knowledge; the vision of that essence cannot be imperfect; therefore visive knowledge of it cannot be confused. But if it were only knowledge or vision about the essence and not the person, or of the essence and not the person, it would be confused vision, because it would be of something common to the persons and would not be of the persons, which seems unacceptable.

The second is as follows: vision is of the existent as it is existent and as it is present to the seer according to its existence; and in this respect vision is distinguished from abstractive understanding, which latter can be of what is not existent or of what is existent not insofar as it is present in itself; and this distinction between intuitive and abstractive understanding is in the intellect as the distinction between the act of vision and the act of imagination is in the sensitive part. There is then an intuitive knowledge of the divine essence different from that which is abstractive knowledge, and the former is vision of the existence of it as it is existent and present according to its existence to the knowing power; but the divine essence only exists in a person; therefore there can only be vision of it in the person.

Again, something in which there are many things distinct by the nature of the thing cannot be known by intuitive knowledge unless all those things also be distinctly and perfectly seen. An example: whiteness is not seen distinctly unless all the parts that are at the base of a pyramid be seen, which parts are distinct by the nature of the thing. But the persons are in the essence and are distinct by the nature of the thing; therefore the essence is not distinctly seen unless the persons be seen.

From this there is an argument to the intended proposition [n.34] as concerns the second distinction, namely of the persons between themselves [n.30], because if the essence cannot be seen save in the person – and it is not seen more in one person than in another, because it is seen with equal immediacy to be related to any person whatever – therefore it cannot be seen unless it be seen in any person whatever, and so it is not seen in one person unless it be seen in another.

There is also further argument as to the enjoying proposed [n.34], because the will cannot abstract its object more than the intellect can show it; therefore if the intellect cannot distinctly show essence without person or person without person, then neither will the will be able to enjoy them distinctly.

And there is confirmation too as follows, because the will cannot have a distinct act on the part of the object unless a distinction either real or in idea is posited on the part of the object; but if the intellect apprehend the essence and person indistinctly, there will not be on the part of the object a distinction either of the thing or of the idea; therefore the will cannot have a distinct act on the part of a distinction in the first object. That there is not a real distinction on the part of the object is plain; that there is not a distinction in idea the proof is because the intellect does not distinctively comprehend, or does not distinctly apprehend, this and that; therefore it does not distinguish this and that.

On the part of enjoyment the argument is as follows: enjoyment gives rest to the enjoyer; one person without another does not give rest perfectly to the enjoyment of the enjoyer, nor does the essence without the person, because then the power at rest in it could not be made to be at further rest; nor can it be made to be at rest in anything else, because what is at ultimate rest cannot be made to be at further rest, and consequently that power could not be made to be at rest in another person or to enjoy it, which is false.

Again, if it were at rest in this person alone, and it is plain that it can enjoy another, then either the enjoyment of the other person can exist with the enjoyment of this person, or they will be incompossible, so that one of them will not exist with the other; if in the first way then two acts of the same species will exist at the same time in the same power, each of which acts is equal to the capacity of the power, which is impossible; if in the second way then neither act will be enjoyment, because neither act will be able to be perpetual.¹

[Scotus’ own opinion] – As to this article [n.34] I say that, speaking about the absolute power of God, there seems to be no contradiction in the possibility that, on the part of the intellect and on the part of the will, the act of each be terminated by the essence and not the person, or terminated by one person and not another, to wit that the intellect see the essence and not the person, or see one person and not another, and that the will enjoy the essence and not the person or enjoy one person and not another.

Proof for this is as follows:² any act has a first object on which it essentially depends, and it has a second object on which it does not essentially depend but does tend toward it in virtue of the first object; although, therefore, the same act could not remain in the same place unless it have a relation to the first object, yet it can stay the same without a relation to the second object, because it does not depend on the second object. An example: the act of vision of the divine essence and of other things in the divine essence is the same, but the essence is the first object and the seen things are the secondary object; now the seeing could not stay the same unless it were of the same essence, but it could stay the same without the fact of being of the things seen in the essence. Just as God, then, can without contradiction cooperate with that act insofar as it tends to the first object and not insofar as it tends to the second object, and yet it will be the same act, so he can without contradiction cooperate with the seeing of the essence, because the essence has the idea of the first object, while not cooperating with the same act of seeing or of enjoying insofar as it tends to a person, and, by parity of reasoning, insofar as it tends to one person and not to another.

Hereby to the arguments against this way [n.34]. When a statement is first made about confused vision [n.34], I say that the universal in creatures is divided through its singular instances; but this thing, which is ‘to be divided’, is a mark of imperfection, and so it does not belong to what is common in God, nay the divine essence, which is common to the three persons, is of itself ‘this’. So that is why knowledge of some universal abstracted from singulars is confused and imperfect, because the object is confused, being divided in the things which are confusedly conceived in it. But this knowledge of the divine essence is distinct, because its object is what is of itself ‘this’, and yet there is no need that in the distinctly conceived concept the person be distinctly conceived or known, because the person is not the first term of enjoyment or of vision, as has been said [n.32].

To the second, when argument is made about existent essence etc. [n.35], I say that it is necessary that the term of vision be existent as far as it is existent, but it is not necessary that subsistence, that is, incommunicable essence, belong to the idea of the term of vision. But the divine essence is of itself ‘this’ and actually existent, although it not of its idea include incommunicable subsistence, and therefore it can as ‘this’ be the term of vision without the persons being seen. An example: a white thing is seen intuitively insofar as it is existent and is present to vision according to its existence; but it is not necessary that the white thing be seen as subsistent or insofar as it has the idea of a supposit, because it does not have the idea of a supposit nor have the supposit in which it exists or is seen. As to the form of the argument, then, it is plain that although vision is only of the existent insofar as it is existent and is existent only in the person, yet the inference does not follow ‘therefore it is of the existent insofar as it is in the person’, but what should be inferred is only that it is of what subsists, or or of what exists in a subsistent.

To the third [n.36] I say that the first proposition is false except when in those things that are distinct by the nature of the thing the first thing seen is distinct, as is clear in your example about the base of a pyramid, for whiteness and a seen white thing are distinguished into the parts in which they are seen, and therefore the white thing is not distinctly seen unless these parts in which the seen white thing is distinguished be distinctly seen. But in the matter at hand, although the divine persons are distinct by the nature of the thing, yet the seen essence is not distinct in them, because it is of itself ‘this’; therefore the essence can be distinctly seen without those that subsist in it being seen.

As to the further deduction about the will [n.38], although there be no need to reply to it, because the antecedent must be denied, yet a reply can be made because the consequence does not seem to be necessary. When it is said that ‘the will does not abstract more than the intellect shows’, I say that the intellect can show some first object to the will and show in this first object some per se and not first object (and here the whole of that in which the act of the power terminates is called ‘first object’, and what is included per se in the object that first terminates is called ‘per se object’). Now each idea there shown [the idea of first object and of per se object] suffices for the will to have its own act with respect to it; for there is no need that the will wills the whole of the first object shown, but it can will the first object shown and not will what is shown in that first object shown. Let the following sort of example be posited: in bishop-hood is shown priesthood; such showing suffices for the will to have an act of willing or of not willing with respect to priesthood, so that it could from such showing have an act of willing with respect to bishop-hood and not with respect to priesthood; and yet there is only one showing, and a showing of one first object, in which first object however is included something as per se object. I say that the will does not abstract the universal from the singular, but there are many willed things shown to the will by understanding, which understanding is of some several things included in the first object, each of which, as thus shown, the will can will.

To the confirmation, when it is said that ‘the object differs either in reality or in idea’ [n.39], I say that it differs in idea. And when the criticism is made that it does not, ‘because the intellect does not conceive this distinctly from that’ [n.39], I say that for a distinction of reason it is not necessary that the intellect possess them as distinct objects, but it is enough that it conceive them in the first object.

To the other point about rest [n.40] I say that the Father rests in his essence as it is in himself; nor does it follow that ‘therefore he cannot rest in it as it is in the Son or the Holy Spirit’, rather he rests in the essence as communicated to them and does so with the same rest with which he rests in the essence as it is in himself. For that which rests first in some object rests in it as to whatever it is according to that mode; so here, if the blessed first enjoy the essence and then the person, he does not rest with a further rest beyond what he was resting with first but with the same rest, insofar as the object giving rest is the term as it is in any of them, and was not first the term as it is in that one.

Hereby to the fifth argument [n.41] I say that there will not be two acts there, because whatever act there is there of enjoyment or of vision, it is of the first object under one formal idea; but that one act can be of all of them or of the object per se by virtue of the first object, or it can be only of the first object itself; there will not then be two acts, at the same time or in succession, of the same species.³