Ordinatio

But this is explained by some [Henry of Ghent] as follows: notional acts are founded on essential immanent acts; but there are only two essential acts that abide within, which are understanding and willing; so there are only two notional acts that are productive within, founded on the same essential acts.

A confirmation of the reason is because notional acts founded on essential acts are adequated to them, and so there cannot be a multiplication of notional acts founded on the same essential act.

The mode¹ of their founding is this, as is collected from the many statements of him who has this opinion that are scattered about in many places:² “Both the intellect and the will, whatever they have being in, because of their separation from matter, after they have being in their own first act of simple intelligence or volition, can turn themselves back on themselves, and on their simple acts and on the objects of them, through acts of turning back or through conversive acts of understanding and willing.”

“For the intellect not only understands truth by simple intelligence but also by conversive intelligence, by understanding that it understands, by turning itself back on the understood object and on the simple act of understanding and on itself understanding through the conversive act, because the second knowledge which is in the word not only knows and understand the thing but knows and understands it in such a way that it knows that it knows and understands it. Likewise the will not only wills the good with simple volition, but also with conversive volition, by willing that it will, by turning itself back on the willed object and on the simple act of willing and on itself willing through its conversive act.

But this turning back agrees with the intellect and the will partly in one and the same way and partly in different ways. For the fact that both turn themselves back as they exist as bare, pure, and mere powers, this is in one and the same way as far as concerns their turning themselves back; for both turn only themselves back by their own active force, which force agrees equally with both, but in different ways as concerns the objects to which they turn themselves back.

For the intellect, after it has turned itself back to the things to which it is turned back, is related as a certain potential and pure possible, and this as the bare and pure intellect is of a nature to receive something from them, as a proper passive thing receives from its proper natural active thing, which active thing indeed is the intellect informed with simple knowledge, and this in respect of the formation of declarative knowledge. But the will, after it has turned itself back to what it has turned itself back to, is related as a certain active thing, and this as the bare and pure will is of a nature to express something about those things, as a proper active thing about its proper passive thing, which is the same will, informed by simple love, about which – when thus informed – the same will as bare is of a nature to express incentive love, who is in the divine reality the Holy Spirit, who has being from the persons producing him, not by an informing of that about which he is subjectively, nor through any impression made on the same according to the manner in which the Word or the Son proceeds from the Father by a certain quasi-informing or impression made on the paternal converted intellect,³ but by a certain quasi-striking or pushing out or progress or – speaking more properly – by a certain expressing of what is produced from that from which it is subjectively produced.”

“On the part of the intellect an act of saying is caused by simple knowledge in the bare intellect when it is turned back on itself and on its simple knowledge, such that the intellect informed with simple knowledge is an active and eliciting principle of the notional act of the intellect. But the bare converted intellect itself is only a passive principle, of which, as if of some material, the Word is produced as though by impression. Now, on the part of the will, a notional act is caused by the bare will itself when turned back on itself and on its simple love and on the will informed with simple love, such that the bare converted will is an active and elicitive principle of the notional act of the will. But the will itself, informed with simple love, is a quasi-passive principle, from which, as from material, the Holy Spirit is produced according to a certain expressing.”

But how the intellect as nature is an active principle with respect to intellect as pure for producing the Word, this is made clear in this way,⁴ because [point f] “the intellect as essential notion existing in the Father, or, which is the same thing, existing in an act of understanding its own essence, which act the essence itself as it were brings about in its own intellect as it is in potency, as it were, to essential knowledge according to the idea of understanding – this intellect is fertile with natural fertility for producing from itself something like itself.⁵

Now the intellect, as it is a certain essential knowledge in act, is the nature and as the active principle, by which the Father, as he is pure intellect and only intellect, forms from the same intellect, as from a passive principle, the knowledge which is the Word, which in reality is the same knowledge as that from which it is formed, differing from it only insofar as it proceeds from it as manifesting and declaring it.

And in the whole same way must we thus understand the word to be formed in us. For a thing when first known impresses a simple knowledge of itself on our intellect by representing itself to the intellect as to something purely passive and as under the idea in which it is intellect. But the intellect thus perfected by simple knowledge through the object known, which it contains expressively in itself, is made to be fertile and an active principle by way of nature, making impress on itself as it is intellect only as on a passive principle, so as to form in itself declarative knowledge about simple knowledge, so that – according to this – when it is said ‘a word is formed by the intellect’ and that ‘the intellect is active also in the formation of it’, this is understood about the intellect actually informed with simple knowledge, by which, as by the formal idea of acting, the intellect is an active principle; for by this it is a principle, and its idea as it is intellect and passive with respect to the simple knowledge, which it receives from the object, is necessarily prior to its idea according to which it is nature and active through inherent simple knowledge; and therefore, in order of idea, it has being as it is intellect before it has being as it is nature.”

Thus then is the mode made plain how, according to this opinion, the notional act is founded on the essential act, and how it is so in diverse ways in the intellect and the will [nn.273-280].