Ordinatio

This opinion posits four articles which I do not believe to be true. The first is that the divine Word is generated through impression [nn.273-280]; the second is that this is through impression on the intellect as it is turned back on itself; the third is that essential knowledge is the formal idea of generating declarative knowledge; the fourth is that it is generated through impression on the intellect as bare.

[Article one] – I set aside the rejection of the first article until distinction 5 [I d.5 q.2 nn.2-10], where it properly has place.

[Article two] – Against the second article I argue in a threefold way: first that on the intellect thus turned back the Word is not impressed, the second that such turning back is not necessary for generating the Word, the third that there is no such turning back.

I argue for the first as follows, namely¹ that the intellect is not turned back save as it is in some supposit, because turning back is posited as an action, and actions are of supposits. Then I ask, whose supposit or whose person is it as turned back on the formed intellect? If as so converted it belongs to the person of the Son, and according to you this conversion precedes the generation of the Word, then before the generation of the Word there are two persons, which is heretical. But if, as it is turned back on the formed intellect, it belongs to the Father himself, and if whose it is as converted is his as formed by generated knowledge, as I will prove, then the intellect as it is of the Father is formed by generated knowledge; therefore generated knowledge is formally of the very person of the Father, because what person the intellect is of as formed, of the same person is the knowledge by which it is formed. The assumption that needs to be proved I prove thus: whose it is as it is turned back on formed intellect, his it is as he has formed intellect for object actually present; therefore it is his as formed by the object. The proof of this consequence is that a passive thing proportioned, disposed, and approximated to a proportioned sufficient active thing is of a nature to be immediately perfected by that active thing, from the Philosopher Metaphysics 9.5.1048a5-7; for then is something in proximate potency, according to the Philosopher, when nothing needs to be added, subtracted, or lessened for the act to be present within. But the intellect bare, as converted and having formed intellect as present object, is a passive thing disposed, proportioned, and approximate to informed intellect as to a sufficiently active object; therefore the bare intellect as converted – with no variation made with respect to it of subsistence or any entity at all as such – is formed generated knowledge. And thus is the first consequence proved.²

Here a response could be made that the intellect bare, through the fact that from it the knowledge is actually formed, or by the fact it is a quasi-matter informed by generated knowledge, has ‘existence’ in the generated person [I d.5 q.2 n.8]. But against this response are the two first arguments set down in d.5 [ibid. nn.5-8] against the opinion about quasi-matter, which is there specifically refuted.³

I argue for the second [sc. of the second article, n.284] thus,⁴ because the intellect of the Father, having the object present to itself, is a natural principle, not only operative with respect to the intellection of the Father but also productive with respect to generated knowledge; therefore it would still, when the reflection is removed, be a productive principle.

Again⁵ I prove the third [= the second, n.284] thus: if by conversion nothing is understood to be in the intellect which would not be understood to be there when no conversion is understood, then conversion is nothing there; if something is understood to be in the intellect which would not be understood without the conversion, what, I ask, is it? – not the presence of the object, not the perfection of the power, not finally the determination of the power to act or to the exercise of act. As to how some posit that the will in us turns the intelligence back toward memory, it is plain that the will does not turn it back toward generation of the divine Word.

Again, this conversion is not the action which is operation, because it is not intellection nor volition, nor is it an action productive-of-which.

[Article three] – The third⁶ article [n.282] is that the intellect informed with actual essential knowledge is a principle active and elicitive of generated knowledge.

This I refute⁷ as follows: the Word is not generated by intelligence but by memory,⁸ according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.14 n.24;⁹ therefore, although in the Father memory, intelligence, and will go together,¹⁰ the Father does not generate the Son formally by intelligence as ‘by which’ but as he is memory. Now as he has actual knowledge quasi-elicited and as second act, he is in act of intelligence, to which belongs all actual understanding; therefore as such he will not generate the Word, but as it is in act of memory, that is, as he has the intelligible object present to his intellect; for here first act is understood as if preceding second act, and second act is to understand actually.

Second thus: production more agrees with first act as active principle than with second act, because perfect operations are ends in their idea, and so they are not for the sake of other ends; therefore intellection as it is the operation of the Father is not the formal productive idea of any term, but only the first act (by virtue of which the operation is elicited) will be the productive principle.

Third thus: if the actual intellection of the Father is the formal idea of producing the Word, still the object as present to the Father’s intellect as having the idea of memory will be the prior productive principle of generated knowledge, because it is apparent in us that it is of a nature to generate more immediately than the act of understanding is; therefore some Word will be generated by the Father as he is memory itself before generated by him as he is knowing intelligence itself.¹¹

Further, all intellection, since its being is in becoming, has a principle or quasi-principle whose being is not in becoming, because otherwise there will be a process to infinity; therefore of some understanding of the object a, to wit the first understanding, only the memory must be the principle or quasi-existing such that it is not the whole complex ‘intellect understanding’ [n.221], otherwise this would not be the first intellection. But all understandings of a, and in an intellect of the same idea, are of the same idea. But whatever is a perfect principle of the first thing in a species can be the principle of anything else and immediately; therefore perfect memory of a can be the immediate principle or quasi-principle of every understanding of a. Therefore the memory of the Father can be the immediate principle of the Word; therefore he necessarily is. On the contrary: therefore the memory of the Son to the intelligence of the Son is not as the memory of the Father to the intelligence of the Father.

Further, the Word is most immediately declarative of that by which he is most immediately expressed; therefore if the elicitive idea of the Word be the actual knowledge in the formed intellect of the Father, it follows that the Word be more immediately Word or declarative of the intellection of the Father than of the essence of the Father, which seems unacceptable, because then there would be another prior Word that would be immediately declarative of the essence of the Father, or one should say that the essence could not immediately be declared by some Word, which seems unacceptable, since according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.10 n.19: “knowledge formed by the thing which we contain by memory” is the word; the first object of the divine memory is essence as essence.

Further, if the actual intellection of the Father were generated or produced, it would be produced by virtue of the essence not as already known but as prior to all knowledge; this is plain also according to truth, because otherwise there would be a process to infinity in acts of understanding, namely act before act, and also according to them, because he said above [Henry of Ghent, n.278] that the essence itself in the Father’s intellect does in the Father the act of understanding the essence. From this I argue as follows: actual knowledge of the essence cannot formally be of a different idea in the persons by the fact that it is communicated by another or not communicated by another, because then deity would formally be of a different idea in the persons;¹² therefore actual knowledge of the essence is of the same idea in the Father and in the Son. Therefore, that which, if it were principal, is of a nature to be the principle ‘by which’ with respect to one, the same will be principle with respect to another if it follow the principal.¹³

About the fourth article [n.282], I pass over it, except that in this he [Henry of Ghent] seems to be contradicting himself, as was argued before [footnote to n.285].

The second¹⁴ article [n.282] is also false in us, because the most perfect word will be in the fatherland, according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.11 nn.20-21, and yet it will not be a word generated by a turning back on first act, so that the word, because of this, is a reflex act in the way he says that by the second knowledge which is in the word the intellect knows that it knows or understands [n.274]. But the proof that it is not reflex knowledge [n.287] is that the most perfect created word does not have for its first object something created but something uncreated.

The third¹⁵ article too [nn.282, 290] is false in us; both because confused knowledge cannot be the elicitive principle of distinct knowledge, just as neither can an imperfect thing be the elicitive principle of some perfect production; and because the confused actual knowledge would exist together with distinct actual knowledge, and so two elicited acts together, or a confused act would, when it did not exist, generate a distinct act; and because every second act of understanding is generated by memory as memory is in a first act proportional to it, namely perfect by perfect, imperfect by imperfect, as will be clear later [I d.3 p.3 q.2 nn.12-13].