Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

The devil has in various ways emulated the truth, and has striven to shake it even by defending it, said Tertullian at the beginning of his book adversus Praxean: and indeed truly; for this, even if all else were silent, would more than sufficiently prove the adorable mystery of the Trinity, which that most astute rival of the Divinity attacked with whatever arms he could, so that he might darken and extinguish with the darkness of error the light of its faith. Wherefore it is worth the effort to begin the explanation of so great a mystery from the very existence, origin, and productive principles of the divine Persons. Which indeed I undertake to set forth in the three following Articles.

A fourfold condition of men is shaken and wavers concerning the existence of the divine Trinity, namely, the Jews, the Gentiles, the heretics, and unlearned and ignorant Catholics. The Jews wholly reject that mystery, because they do not observe that it is written in Sacred Scripture; the Gentiles, in turn, denounce it, because they judge it to be repugnant to natural reason; very many heretics, moreover, attack it for this reason, that they neither wish nor are able to grasp it. Finally, some Catholics shrink from it, because they scarcely know what is to be believed and said concerning so great a mystery. Wherefore I have judged that the following four Questions must be discussed from the very outset, so that the light of divine truth may shine upon all these very men of darkness.

Note 1. The Catholic truth concerning the mystery of the Trinity is contained chiefly in three heads, namely in the unity of Essence, the distinction of the Persons, and their complete equality. The pagan Philosophers assailed the unity of Essence, for the reason that it seemed to be opposed to all the principles of natural discourse, and even to the very dictate of reason; the Jews for that reason rejected the diversity and real distinction of the persons, because it seemed to introduce a multiplication of the Godhead and to bring in several gods. Finally, various heretics time and again attacked the equality of the Persons, because they could not reconcile it with the procession of one from another. We shall attack the Philosophers and the heretics in what follows; now we must fight with the Jews.

Note 2. Three lights are wont to shine forth by which some truth can be discovered and established, namely Demonstration, Authority, and Persuasion. Demonstration generates knowledge, authority faith, and persuasion opinion and even credulity. Demonstration rests and is strengthened on principles evidently known; authority, on the dignity and probity of the speaker; and finally persuasion, on conjectures, arguments, and likenesses. Demonstration is wholly natural; authority is supernatural, especially in manifesting preternatural truths; and finally persuasion is partly natural: for convincing the Philosophers, persuasion for attracting and inducing them, by proving the mystery of the divine Trinity, is to be determined in what follows. In this Question, however, we must fight chiefly against the Jews and the heretics with the divine authority of the Scriptures.

Note 3. Divine truths are to be drawn chiefly from a twofold source, namely from Sacred Scripture and from the constant and firm tradition; for Scripture is the storehouse and museum in which divine truths are contained and even defended: whence St. Paul, 2. ad Timotheum 3.: all Scripture, divinely inspired, is useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for instructing in justice, that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work: this, however, is distributed into two Testaments, the Old and the New. From this twofold storehouse of divine truth, therefore, as well as from the constant tradition of the Doctors of the Synagogue and of the Church, the faith of the Trinity of persons in the unity of essence is to be established.

First conclusion. — The mystery of the divine Trinity is gathered and proved against the Jews, not obscurely, from the Old Testament. This is common among Catholic Doctors.

It is urged first from that celebrated oracle of Genesis, chap. 1, where God, the creator of all things, speaks thus: let us make man to our image and likeness: and a little after: therefore the Lord God formed man: and again: God created man to his own image and likeness; moreover: let us make him a helper like unto himself: where the verb "let us make" and the pronoun "our" introduce a multitude of Persons; while the words "Lord" and "God" designate the unity of essence.

They reply 1. The modern Doctors of the Jews reply that God spoke thus in the plural number, after the manner namely of Princes and Kings, to show his authority and power. — But that this is openly false is gathered from Scripture itself, which almost always, as Theodoret rightly notes, q. 19 on Genesis, uses the singular number, and scarcely ever speaks in the plural; whence it generally doubles and repeats the singular number in order to express the plural. There must therefore be some mystery in this unusual distinction: surely none other than the very signification of the three divine Persons, in whose invocation man, who was then being formed, was one day to be regenerated through Baptism.

They reply 2. That God addressed the Angels in the aforesaid words, so that they might lend their work to the creating of man, forming namely his body, while he himself created the soul and infused the spirit of life. — On the contrary: Sacred Scripture, in these earlier chapters of Genesis in which the formation of man is contained and explained, attributes it to God alone, constantly affirming that he himself formed, created, and made man: therefore the aforesaid speech is not directed to the Angels. Next, that plural speech "let us make" is directed to those to whose likeness man was formed: but man was not created to the image and likeness of the Angels, but to the image and likeness of God alone, as is evident both from chap. 1.: God created man to his own image and likeness; to the image of God he created him: and from chap. 5.: In the day on which God created man, to the likeness of God he made him. Therefore the aforesaid speech was not directed to the Angels, but only to the three divine Persons, whose likeness man's soul expresses and bears, as will appear below.

Finally they reply: That God, speaking with himself and stirring himself to act, said, "let us make." — But the reply is wholly inept:

For who, says St. Basil, Homil. 9. Hexaemeron, is there — a smith, or a copper-worker, or a carpenter, or certainly a leather-worker and cobbler — who, alone by himself, attended by no one else cooperating with him, and sitting among the instruments of his craft: who, I say, mutters to himself alone, saying: let us make a sword, or let us put together a plow, or let us make a shoe? and does he not rather, in silence, when it pleases him, perform the operation suited to his art? It is surely a remarkable thing that nowhere is anyone found who gives orders to himself.

Secondly, the plurality of the divine persons is gathered from that passage of Genesis 11.: Come, let us go down and there confound their language: from which the holy Fathers — Nyssenus, lib. De Trin., Basil, lib. 5. Contra Eunomium — infer the Trinity of Persons; but especially Chrysostom, Serm. De Trinit., where he weighs the aforesaid words thus:

by saying, "come," he calls them, exhorting them as equals in honor; for if he had commanded Angels, he ought not to have said, "come," but, commanding, "go." See, I beg you, how the voice of the Father calls the Son and the Holy Spirit; for if this had been said to one alone, he ought to have said, "come," and "let us go down"; but because he said, "come," it is the voice of one, and of two equal men.

Thirdly, the holy Fathers urge the same from that passage of Genesis 18., where it is said that the Lord appeared to Abraham; it is then added: three men appeared to him standing near him; whom when he had seen, he ran to meet them from the door of the tent, and adored prostrate on the ground, and said: Lord, if I have found grace in your eyes, do not pass by your servant, etc. By which words it is established that Abraham understood that God had appeared to him in those three; and in the singular number he directed his prayers to one only, as to God: whence St. Augustine, lib. 2. De Trin., cap. 12., says: That three men were seen, and no one among them is said to be greater than the rest in form, or age, or power: why should we not here accept the equality of the Trinity as visibly intimated through a visible creature, and in three Persons one and the same substance? The same is weighed by St. Cyril of Alexandria, lib. 1. Contra Iulianum, about the middle: They were three, he says, who appeared, subsisting in their own subsistences, each one comprehended into one by the word of consubstantiality, and thus deliberately mingling conversations among themselves.

Fourthly, it is proved from that passage of Deuteronomy 6.: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, one God is; in Hebrew, however, in place of that word "Lord" is placed the name Tetragrammaton, by which the unity of the divine Essence is designated; while the threefold repetition designates the Trinity of Persons. The same is confirmed from that Ps. 67.: May God bless us, by which the Father is signified: our God, by which the Son is denoted, who through the incarnation was given to us and made ours; May God bless us, by which the Holy Spirit is intimated: for the threefold repetition would seem vain if it did not involve some mystery, and surely none other than the adorable Trinity of Persons in the unity of essence.

Fifthly, it is proved from that Psalmi 32.: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the spirit of his mouth all their power: for by the name of the Lord the Father is designated, who operates through the Word: the second Person, namely the Son, is signified by the name of the Word, through whom all things were made: finally the third Person is called the Spirit of the mouth of God, or the Holy Spirit, to whom the power and perfection of the divine works is peculiarly appropriated; and since to the divine Persons themselves the same operation of the whole universe is assigned, the identity of power and of the divine nature is manifested, as not only nearly all the holy Fathers interpret, whom Ruiz recounts at length, Disp. 36. sessione 5., but also the wiser among the Rabbis, as our Galatinus proves, lib. 2. De Arcanis c. 4.

Sixthly, the Trinity of the divine Persons is proved from that Trisagion of the Seraphim, who, as Isaias reports, c. 6., cried out one to another: Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts: for, as St. Ambrose elegantly weighs, lib. 2. De Fide ad Gratianum cap. 4.:

What does the threefold repetition under the one name of holiness mean? If there is a threefold repetition, why one single praise? If there is one single praise, why a threefold repetition? Why the threefold repetition, unless because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in holiness? He did not say it once, lest he should exclude the Son: not twice, lest he should pass over the Holy Spirit: not four times, lest he should join creatures; and to show that the Deity of the Trinity is one, when he had said, Holy, holy, holy, he added in the singular, Lord God of hosts.

The Jewish Doctors likewise interpreted this same text in the same way, but especially Rabbi Simeon, saying: Holy, this is the Father; Holy, this is the Son; Holy, this is the Holy Spirit, as our Galatinus reports in the cited place; and he adds that for this reason the ancient Talmudists decreed that the aforesaid Trisagion, thus explained, should be said by every one of the Jews at least twice a day, namely morning and evening: whence it also came about that both Churches, the Greek as well as the Latin, adopted it among the solemn prayers, as Antheon, Bishop of Assino, testifies, Epistola ad Petrum Antiochenum, which is placed in the Council of Constantinople under Felix III. in the cause of Peter Fullo, who on that account refutes the heresy of the same Peter, because he subjoined to the aforesaid Trisagion the name of the Crucified, saying: Holy God, Holy strong, Holy and immortal, the crucified one, by which he signified that the crucified one was the Holy Spirit, or some other fourth divine Person.

Finally, this same truth is deduced from that passage of Isaias 18.: From the time, before it came to be, I was there, and now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit, which St. Jerome expounds thus:

when all things were being made by the Father, he himself, namely the Son, was with him, in whom he rejoiced, who even now said: I, who was always with the Father and in the Father and was never without the Father, even now I speak, and according to the weakness of the assumed flesh I say that the Lord God has sent me and his Spirit.

And in a brief verse the Sacrament of the Trinity is shown to us.

Hence it is evident how most truly Christ the Lord, addressing the Jews, Ioannis 5., said: search the Scriptures, for they bear testimony of me; by which he not only designates that he is the true Messiah, but also shows that he is the true Son of God. All these things could be confirmed from the ineffable name Tetragrammaton, which Scripture uses everywhere: for, as our Galatinus observes, l. 2. cap. 10., Rabbi Haccados, writing the mysteries of this name to Antonius, Consul of the city of Rome, affirms that it signifies God generating; and because there cannot be a generator without one generated, nor both without a proceeding love, for this reason the divine Trinity is comprehended in this name. Whence it is commonly called among the Hebrews the "explicit name," and is explained through twelve Hebrew letters, which joined together signify and produce in Latin, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: or it is called the name of forty-two letters, which the same Rabbi Haccados interprets thus: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity. From which it is established what the opinion of the ancient Rabbis concerning the divine Trinity was, and how far the more recent Doctors of the Jews wander from their fathers, while they so greatly resist this most constant truth.

Second conclusion. — The same Trinity and distinction of the divine Persons, subsisting with the unity of nature, is gathered from the New Testament.

First, indeed, from that passage of Matthew, last chapter, where Christ, delegating his Apostles, says: go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: which Oracle so manifestly indicates the Trinity of Persons in the unity of Essence that the Arians could scarcely find anything to reply; for not only are the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit named as distinct Persons, but also to them is attributed the unique name of Divinity, and a single power and authority is assigned, while baptism is commanded to be conferred in their name. Hence the followers of Arius, pressed by this Oracle, kept silence about "in the name" while baptizing, as St. Athanasius reports, lib. 7. Ad Theophilum, and said only: I baptize you in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so as to signify three natures.

The second testimony is that of Ioannis 5., where it is said, there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one: in which words too the distinction of Persons with the unity of essence is manifestly expressed. This text we shall weigh more fully in q. 7.

The third is that which is related of the baptism of Christ the Lord, Matth. 3., Luc. 3. and Marc. 1.: the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and behold a voice from heaven saying: this is my beloved Son. Where the Fathers of the Church commonly recognize three Persons of the same authority, namely the Father speaking, the Son to whom he speaks, and the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ; for he would not descend upon him unless he were of the same authority as the Father and the Son.

The fourth is brought forward from Ioannis c. 10., where Christ speaks of himself, chiefly St. Augustine serm. 5. De verb. Dom.: What he says, "one," let the Arians hear; what he says, "we are," let the Sabellians hear; and let not the former be vain by denying the equal, nor the latter by denying the other. Whence in Tractate 36. in Ioannem he reasons so beautifully:

he does not say, "Father, I am," or "I and the Father is one"; but when he says, "I and the Father are one," hear both, both "one" and "we are," and from both Charybdis and Scylla you will be freed in these two words; what he said, "one," frees you from Arius; what he said, "we are," frees you from Sabellius. If one, therefore not diverse: if we are, therefore both the Father and the Son; for he would not say "we are" of one: but he would not say "one" of diverse things.

The fifth that can be brought forward is that of Ioannis 14., where likewise the three divine Persons are noted when it is said: I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you forever; and below, verse 26.: but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name; and cap. 15. near the end: when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father. For it is necessary that the Persons be really distinguished: the one who asks and the one who is asked, the one who sends and the one who is sent, the one who proceeds and the one from whom he proceeds. The equal authority, however, and consequently the same substance, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is noted, since each is said to be the Paraclete, and the Holy Spirit to succeed in the place of the Son, so as to teach all truth and abide with the Disciples forever. Likewise the same authority of the Son with the Father is designated, since each is said to send the Holy Spirit: likewise, that the Father sends the Spirit in the name of the Son.

Finally, that can be brought forward from 1. Ioannis 1.: of his Spirit he has given us, and we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son, the Savior of the world: and also that ad Titum 3.: the kindness and humanity of our Savior God appeared, not from works of justice which we did, but according to his mercy he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. By which the Trinity of the divine Persons is established and designated: one who poured out the Holy Spirit, another through whom he poured him out, and another, the Holy Spirit himself, who was poured out.

Here I do not relate the things which the heretics were wont to object against this truth; for in a more fitting order we shall satisfy them, when, unfolding this same truth, we shall prove one by one the Trinity of these Persons, as well as their Divinity and equality. These things, however, from the very threshold, suffice to intimate and to establish by the divine Oracles the august mystery of the Trinity. Whether natural reason can also establish it against the pagan Philosophers, the following Question will disclose.

Corollary. — From these things it is evident how most truly St. Augustine wrote, Serm. 38. De Tempore: all Scripture of the Old and New Testament, if understood catholicly, intimates this, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one God, of the same substance and of one essence, and an inseparable unity in the Divinity; this distinction, however, intervenes between the two Testaments, that the Old proposed the Trinity of Persons in the unity of the Divinity, wrapped in certain shadows, more obscurely: but the New, with the Sun of justice shining upon it and the light of the Gospel gleaming, drove away all these shadows, and brought this great mystery into the open light: whence Christ, Ioannis 16., addressing the Disciples, said: the hour comes when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs, but will announce to you plainly of my Father. Hence St. Cyprian, lib. De Cardinalibus operibus Christi in the Prologue De mysterio Trinitatis says: for this search into things so profound, unless the teaching of the incarnate Word had come to our aid, human intellects would have failed, and I know not whether even some would dare to rise to attempts at attempting these things. St. Gregory concurs, lib. 2. In Ezech. hom. 16.

The Hebrew people, he says, strove to keep the commandments of the Decalogue: but still was not instructed in the knowledge of the holy Trinity: and although the spiritual Fathers had known it perfectly, nevertheless the multitude of the Synagogue could neither find the mystery of the Trinity, nor knew how to seek it. But with grace supervening, every faithful people has known that one God is a Trinity.

The reason for this distinction is brought forward by Theodor. lib. 2. Ad Graecos, where he says of the Hebrews:

since they had remained in Egypt for a sufficiently long time, and had learned there the cult of many gods according to the Egyptian rite; the most wise God by no means delivered to them the mysteries of the Trinity in a manifest and wholly open manner; lest, thinking that a multitude of gods was set before them, they should have this occasion for declining into Egyptian impiety; the dogmas of the Trinity, however, he did not even then entirely conceal from those who would be secure in the future; for in the ancient Scriptures he scattered, as it were, certain seeds, the material of a more perfect Theology.

Note 1. The present difficulty is not raised about the inclination and native capacity of the intellect to know this mystery, from whatever source its knowledge is drawn, whether through revelation or through demonstration; for it is certain, says the Doctor, quaest. 1. Prol., that since the possible intellect is naturally perfected by any knowledge whatever, it is also naturally inclined to any knowledge whatever; for every passive potency is borne by a natural weight toward that which perfects it, and so the created intellect naturally inclines toward the knowledge of every truth, but above all toward the knowledge of the most excellent truth, such as is the unity of the divine essence and the Trinity and equality of the persons. Nor is the present question raised about the simple and imperfect active knowledge of these terms, God and Threefold: for it is established, says the Doctor, quaest. 1. quodlibetica art. 1., that any created intellect can, by its native light alone, know God as the first cause, and so can detect the unity of the essence: moreover, attending to the ternary number and to the meaning of the name person, it will also be able to perceive what the Trinity of persons signifies, when it has heard it proposed by someone. But the whole difficulty is whether some philosopher can, through the innate power of understanding and reasoning, detect the Trinity

of the persons in God, just as he can know by natural reasoning that there is one God.

Note 2. Indeed, several philosophers attained some knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity, as Justin the Martyr copiously proves in the Oratione ad Gentes, Clement of Alexandria in lib. 5. of the Stromata, Cyril in lib. 1. and 2. of the Contra Iulianum, and above all Eugubinus in lib. 1. and 2. of the De perenni Philosophia. For first, the divine Plato in various places posited the supreme God; then he asserts that from him was begotten a mind, through which he fashioned all other things: and thirdly, that which he calls the soul of the world. Whence Claudianus Mamertinus, in Eusebius, lib. 11. of the De Praeparatione Evangelica, says of Plato: How many ages before the childbearing of the Virgin, before the preaching of the supreme Trinity among the Gentiles, did he seek, find, and set forth, with praiseworthy daring, wonderful genius, and inimitable eloquence, the ineffable unity, one three Persons in the divinity. Likewise he reports that Mercury Trismegistus, that is, thrice greatest, aimed more closely at the Christian truth: for in the book entitled Pymander he says: That light, I, the mind, am God, before the moist nature which shone forth from the darkness: and further within: but the mind, God, existing as both-sexed, as the author of life and of light, brought forth by word another mind, the maker, whereby God is fire and Spirit. There can be added Zoroaster the Chaldean, who said: The Monad begot the dyad, and in the whole world the Triad shines; to which that well-known saying of Trismegistus corresponds: The Monad begot the monad, and reflected its love upon itself: hence St. Augustine lib. 7. Confessionum, c. 9. in the De Platonicorum libris says: I read there, not indeed in these words, but this very same thing altogether urged by many and manifold reasons, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. From what source, however, these philosophers drew this knowledge is no slight controversy among the theologians, to be settled in this Question.

Note 3. Regarding the resolution of the present difficulty, there is a threefold opinion of the theologians. For some affirm that the mystery of the Trinity so exceeds the grasp of the human mind that it cannot be detected by any natural power: indeed, that the very reasoning toward obtaining knowledge of it is so opposed to all principles that if anyone is led by reason alone, he judges that mystery to be altogether impossible. Others, however, to whom Raymundus Lullius lent his favor, having taken up the completely opposite path, affirm that this mystery not only does not contradict natural reason, but can be evidently demonstrated by it. For Raymundus, in the book which he calls the Apostrophe, and in the books of the Sentences, contends that three things pertaining to this mystery can be demonstrated by natural light. First, that there are several Persons in God. Second, that there are neither more nor fewer than three. Third, that these three Persons are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He notes, however, that the demonstrations of these truths are not a priori, nor a posteriori, but of equiparance: and he calls demonstrations of equiparance those which are made neither through cause nor through effect, but from equals. Finally, the rest, embracing the middle opinion as the safer one, teach that the mystery of the Trinity neither contradicts natural reason, nor can be demonstrated or detected by it, setting aside divine revelation, with whom it is

First conclusion. — No created intellect, setting aside divine revelation, can obtain for itself certain and evident knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity. This seems to be of Faith, for Sacred Scripture urges it: for in Matthaei 11. No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him. Which is read more expressly in Lucae 10. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him: which contexts the Nicene Council brings forth in lib. 2. to prove that the mystery of the divine generation is impossible to penetrate: whence also the Antiochene Synod 1., celebrated in the time of Pope Dionysius, says in the profession of Faith: If we have any knowledge of God, however moderate, with his Son revealing, as he says: no one knows the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son has revealed him, we ought to be content. With which St. Epiphanius agrees, Haeresi 76., saying:

All things fly past and exceed, and they abandon every syllogistic cause to that doctrinal sentence taken from divine Scripture, namely, no one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and the one to whom he has revealed him. He reveals, however, through the Holy Spirit, not to those who reason about him through syllogisms, but to those who believe in him lawfully and perfectly.

It is confirmed. — From the same Matth. c. 16. Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father. By the name of flesh and blood, however, is comprehended and expressed not only all knowledge begged from the senses, but also that which is to be acquired by the powers of nature, as the holy Cyril of Alexandria understands in the Oratione de Verbi Incarnatione, which he delivered in the Ephesine Synod, saying: Do not inquire too curiously into the matter itself: for it is not perceived through the wisdom of the Greeks, or worldly sense, but is foreign to both; Blessed are you, Simon Bariona, says the Lord, because flesh and blood, etc., for the knowledge of the Son of God is a heavenly gift, and of divine inspiration. It can also be confirmed by all those places of Scripture by which we are forbidden to scrutinize the deeper mysteries of the Divinity, of which kind is that of Iob. 28. Where will you find the wisdom of God? for it lies hidden from the eyes of men, and is concealed in the birds of the sky.

Proof 2. By the authority of the holy Fathers, but above all of Dionysius in the book De divinis nominibus cap. 13., where he says: The Divinity, which surpasses all things, celebrated under the name of Unity and Trinity, is not Unity and Trinity known by us, or by any other of the things that are: and he subjoins the reason which we assigned in the preface. To him alludes the holy Nazianzen in the Oration De Theologia n. 67., where, speaking of the Triune God, he says: Let us follow faith rather than reason as our guide, if only you have learned the weakness of your mind in nearer things, and have recognized that it belongs to reason that you know those things which exceed the grasp of human reason to be one: lest otherwise you be altogether earthly, being ignorant even of your own ignorance. Whence the holy Jerome rightly said in the proem of lib. 18. in Isaiam: The right confession of the Trinity is the ignorance of knowledge; for, says the holy Hilary in lib. 1. De Trinit., a steadfast faith spurns captious and useless philosophical questions, and truth, not succumbing to the deceits of human follies, does not offer itself as a spoil to falsity. Whence, wisely and most learnedly pondering those words of Ioannis cap. 6. There are some among you who do not believe, the holy Augustine says that the Evangelist did not say: there are some among you who do not understand, but gave the cause why they do not understand: for there are some among you who do not believe, and therefore they do not understand, because they do not believe; for the Prophet says, unless you believe, you will not understand.

Thirdly, finally, this same truth is proved by reason: every certain and evident knowledge of a thing is born through demonstration: but there is no demonstration by which, setting aside revelation, one could instill certain and evident knowledge of the divine Trinity. Proof: every means of demonstration is either cause, or effect, or something equivalent; for every demonstration is either a priori, or a posteriori, or of equiparance: but in natural things no means shines forth to the intellect by whose guidance it could ascend to evident knowledge of the Trinity. For first, such a means cannot be a cause, since the divine Trinity of persons lacks every cause, and is altogether independent of any extrinsic maker. Nor is it an effect: for if any effect could lead to the knowledge of the Triune God, above all would the creatures which are known to have been established by God himself: but the knowledge of creatures cannot lead by the hand to the knowledge of the divine Trinity, because creatures do not flow from God inasmuch as he is a Trinity in persons, but inasmuch as he is one in essence: therefore from the knowledge of creatures we cannot know the Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

He tries to prove the first, however, in this way: wherever there is concord and equality, there is plurality: but in God there is concord and equality of the agent and of the acted-upon in the act itself, or, as he himself speaks, of the good-making and the good-makable, in the act of making good: therefore there is in God a plurality of persons. He proves the minor: where there is an act, there is concord of the agent; but in God there is a good-making act: therefore there is concord and equality of the good-making and the good-makable; and so there are several persons in God.

But this argument is neither demonstrative, nor of any weight. It is not indeed demonstrative, because it supposes that which is in no way evident, and which is perceived by divine faith alone, namely that in God there is a productive act ad intra: for although natural reason might show that God operates through intellect and will, it would not disclose that this operation is productive of another person; indeed, unless faith persuaded the contrary, one would say that the act of understanding and willing in God is nothing other than his own infinite substance itself, which is conceived by us after the manner of an operation and an act. Nor likewise is that argument of any weight, since it supposes that every divine production is a making-good, and so is done only through the will, which truly is opposed to faith; for the divine Son is produced through the intellect, and only the Holy Spirit proceeds through the will.

Secondly: the same Author tries to prove that that plurality of persons is threefold, because that essence which is in the maximum of action, that is, which acts most perfectly, requires only one good-making action, one good-makable passion, and a single act of making good; that is, that essence is most perfect in acting in which only a single agent or producer, a single product, and a single act are found; for if there were several, one would limit another: but God is in the maximum of action: therefore in God there is a single producer, a single product, and a single act. He proves the same truth from the distinctive notion: that essence is in the maximum of distinction in which there is a single distinguisher, generator, or producer, likewise a single distinguishable and generable or producible, and a single distinguishing through spirating and loving: but goodness is in the maximum of distinction: whence he concludes that there is a single distinguisher and generator with respect to the Son, and this is the Father: and a single distinguishable, generable, and producible with respect to the Father, and this is the Son, and a single distinguishing through spirating and loving, and this is the Holy Spirit.

But these proofs wander far from the intended end; first because this Author supposes what would have to be proved, namely that that essence is in the maximum of action, in which there is only a single producer, a single product, and a single act: indeed natural reason suggests that that cause is the more perfect which has manifold power and produces more effects: then because it is inferred from this that in God there is a single act, namely to spirate, and so the act of the divine intellect, namely to understand, is excluded; but this is heretical and alien to reason: finally, because from these arguments several absurdities follow against the mystery of the Trinity. First indeed, that one person is distinguished through another; which is truly false, for the divine persons are distinguished from one another through their own proper characters. Then, since the three persons are really distinct from one another, there is not only a single distinguishable and a single distinguisher, but there are three distinguishable, namely the three persons, and three distinguishers, namely the three personal properties. Finally, it follows from that doctrine that there are more divine persons than three, for it is of faith that there are two acts of production in God, namely to generate and to spirate: and consequently in God there would be the generative, the generable, and to generate, and so there will be three persons: then the spirative, the spirable, and to spirate, and so another three will also be persons, and so there will be six.

Thirdly, finally: that Trinity of persons which Lullius thinks he has evidently demonstrated, he likewise tries to show by an evident argument to be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and he reasons thus: everything must be conceded in the divine goodness through which the good-making is in the maximum of action, and the good-makable in the maximum of passion; that is, that must be attributed to God which has the more perfect mode of producer and product: but this is done through paternity and filiation: therefore in God, by reason of producer and product, there are the Father and the Son. He proves the minor: because the most perfect mode of producing belongs to the Father with respect to the Son; for he generates the Son from his whole substance. That there must also be the Holy Spirit, he tries to prove thus: everything must be conceded in the divine goodness through which making good is in the maximum of act, that is, through which it is most perfectly the act of the good-maker and of the good-makable: but this is done through loving: therefore in the divine goodness loving is to be admitted, which we call the Holy Spirit. He proves the minor, because otherwise making good, or loving, would not be infinite, and so would not be most perfect, nor in the maximum of act.

But how weak this proof is, there is no one who does not see; for even if we conceded that in God there is a most perfect production and in the maximum of passion and of action, it would not follow from this that it is between the Father and the Son, even though it were from the whole substance of the producer: for the generation of the Son among humans is a true generation, and yet it is not from the whole substance, but from part of the substance of the begetter; how then can Lullius gather that the production from the whole substance, which is found only in divine things, must be called the generation of the Son, especially since the Holy Spirit is also from the whole substance, and yet is not the Son? Therefore truly, setting aside divine revelation, the divine mystery of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated.

You will say 1. The evident knowledge of an effect begets evident knowledge of the cause: but the creatures evidently known by us are effects of the divine Trinity; for the three divine persons, who have the same omnipotence and power of creating, concur per se to all created effects: therefore from the knowledge of creatures a man will be able to detect the divine Trinity. — I distinguish the major: if the necessary connection and dependence of the effect on the cause is known, I concede: otherwise, I deny. Likewise, with the minor distinguished, I deny the consequence; for a man will indeed be able to know the creature as it is an effect of God, and from this knowledge to infer that the productive divine power is necessarily in some supposit; for all actions are held to be of supposits; and so he will be able to know naturally that there is some divine person which is productive of creatures. From this knowledge, however, he cannot naturally gather the plurality of persons in God, because creatures have a necessary connection with the one God, as he is one; not, however, as he is threefold: for if per impossibile there were a single person in God, the infinite productive power would be no less in it, and so creatures would depend on it no less.

You will say 2. Once the image is known, its prototype can be known: but man is truly an image of the Most Holy Trinity: therefore from the knowledge of himself he will be able to rise to the knowledge of the divine Trinity. — I distinguish the major: if the formal notion of the image and that relation which it has to the Prototype are known, I concede: otherwise, I deny: for a relation cannot be known unless both extremes are known. To the minor I say that a man cannot know himself under the notion of image through the light of reason innate to him, as the holy Augustine most excellently explains in lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 21., where, pondering that saying of the Apostle, 1. ad Corinth. 13.¹ Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, he says that the Apostle did not say, we see now the mirror, but through a mirror. Whence he concludes:

Those, therefore, who see their own mind, in the manner in which it can be seen, and in it that Trinity, and yet do not believe or understand it to be an image of God: they see indeed the mirror, but to such an extent they do not see through the mirror him who is now to be seen through the mirror, that they do not even know that the mirror itself, which they see, is a mirror, that is, an image.

You will say 3. Several philosophers obtained a sufficiently clear knowledge of the divine Trinity, as we observed in Note 2: but they did not acquire it from any other source than the very storehouse of philosophy and the innate power of reasoning: therefore the knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity can be obtained. — I deny the minor: for first, they could have received that knowledge from tradition itself, which was propagated by hereditary right from Adam to Noah, and from him to Abraham: and Abraham and Moses disseminated that same knowledge among the Egyptian philosophers, from whom all the Greek sages who ever existed, but especially Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, were instructed, as the holy Fathers Justin and Cyril, cited above, affirm. Clement of Alexandria adds, lib. 5. of the Stromata, that Plato and the other philosophers learned very many things from the Hebrews and Chaldeans, among whom the knowledge of the Most Holy Trinity, divinely revealed to the first patriarchs, had been derived and propagated. I add, moreover, that the philosophers could perhaps have received such knowledge from the Sibyls, whose distinction was virginity, and the reward of virginity, divination, says St. Jerome, lib. 1. Contra Iovinianum: whence it is the concordant opinion of Christians, as is clear from Lactantius, lib. 1. cap. 6., that the Sibyls by divine instinct prophesied many things about the Holy Trinity, but especially about the Son of God and the humanity to be assumed by Him: whence all this knowledge of the philosophers about the Trinity presupposes revelation. Finally, the philosophers could have attained some knowledge of the divine persons through the oracles of the demons, to whom this mystery had been revealed before their fall: for, as Eugubinus relates, lib. 2. De perenni Philosophia, last chapter, Apollo of Delphi, asked by a priest about the true religion, answered among other things:

Do not question me about the Holy and divine Father, and the dear Offspring of the great Sovereign, and the Breath, which holds the whole bound world together.

Vives relates something similar in the 10. lib. of De Civit. cap. 23. De Serapide, who, consulted by Thule, King of Egypt, as to which one might be the more blessed, is said to have answered:

In the beginning God is, then the Word, and to Him the Spirit is added; these are coeval and tend to the One.

Nor should it seem a wonder that the demons were the heralds of so great a mystery; for they could have been driven to this either by the good angels, or by God Himself, who sometimes commands the light of truth to shine forth from the darkness of falsehood. Add that the demons themselves could have been stirred to this, in order to undermine belief in the Divinity: for, instilling the knowledge of the three divine Persons, they the more easily persuaded that there are three Gods; hence also all that knowledge which the philosophers had about the Trinity was mixed with almost infinite errors: whence not undeservedly Plato himself is called the Forerunner of the Arians; for he posited three Gods, namely the supreme God, the Demiurge, and the Soul; but he asserted the two latter to be created, and far inferior to the supreme God, which was almost the invention of Arius: whence Tertullian with the best right called the philosophers, especially the Platonists, the Patriarchs of the heretics.

You will insist. St. Athanasius, in many places, but especially in the disputation against Arius, which is read in the Council of Nicaea, and in Oration 2. contra Arianos, affirms that the pagan philosophers were inexcusable, because they did not acknowledge the divinity of the Word from creatures; for in that second Oration he says: Paul rightly reproaches the Greeks, because, contemplating the mutual harmony of the parts and the order of the things of nature, they thought nothing of the reason of nature, that is, the Word. For things known show forth their Maker, that through them they may understand the true God. And by the same Paul eternal power and divinity were also added, to signify the Son: and in the third Oration he says: in the works there is impressed an image of wisdom, that the world might through it acknowledge its Maker, namely the reason, or the Word, and through the Word the Father, etc.

Therefore the philosophers could in truth have discovered the Trinity of Persons through the innate light of reason.

I answer. St. Athanasius, in these and similar words, understood the supernatural help of exciting grace, by which the philosophers, enlightened, contemplating created things, could attain at least an obscure knowledge of the divine Trinity; for the same Athanasius says, Orat. 1. Contra Arianos: The gifts of His grace conferred upon us are without doubt great and above man, and that which by its excellence transcends all those charisms of the Father, namely the knowledge of the Word Himself and the gift of the Holy Spirit; by which words he openly confesses that the knowledge of the Word and of the Holy Spirit is above man, and so transcends the natural powers of the human intellect.

You will ask 1. whether Raymond Lull really judged that an evident knowledge of the Trinity can be obtained without any supernatural illumination, or rather presupposed revelation? I answer. that it is more likely that he judged that the Trinity of divine Persons can be demonstrated evidently, independently of any supernatural illumination: both because he himself affirms in many places that all the articles of faith can be proved by necessary, demonstrative, and evident reasons: therefore he does not think that faith and revelation are prerequired for those demonstrations; and because Eymericus relates, in the Directorium Inquisitorum, part two, q. 9., that Lull professed that for such demonstrations faith is not necessary, for he used to say: faith is necessary for ignorant, rustic men, and for ministerial men, and for those not having an elevated intellect, who do not know how to know through reason, and love to know through faith; and men of dull wit, and the illiterate, and the ignorant love to know the articles of faith through faith, and not through reason, and are more easily drawn to the truth of Christians through faith than through reason: but a subtle man is more easily drawn through reason than through faith.

You will ask 2. whether at least by natural light the mystery of the Trinity can come into suspicion? I answer. that it seems more probable that the inquiry into and suspicion of so great a Mystery, divine revelation being set aside, can nowhere be excited in the created intellect: both because there is no natural object that could suggest such a doubt or inquiry; and because if perhaps it apprehended that three Persons are three Gods, it could not recall its thought from this apprehension, as now we recall it whenever it presents itself to our minds, on account of a firmer reason, namely on account of the supreme authority of God revealing and saying that there are three Persons in the unity of the Godhead.

Second conclusion. — Just as the divine existence of the Trinity cannot be proved by natural reason, so neither can its impossibility be demonstrated.

Proof. if any natural reason could persuade the impossibility of the divine Trinity, it would be chiefly because it is repugnant to the most universal and best known metaphysical principles: or because it runs against the most accepted principles of discourse and of the syllogistic art; or finally, because the Trinity of Persons in the unity of essence conflicts with the very inmost predicates of God: but neither can be said. Therefore, etc. The minor is proved as to the first part. the metaphysical principles, on which all truth whatsoever rests, are chiefly these: it is impossible for something to be and not to be at the same time: that is, affirmation and negation of one and the same thing cannot be enunciated at once and together; which, however, the mystery of the Trinity seems to impugn: for the divine essence, which is really the same as the personality, is communicated, but the personality is not: therefore the same entity is really communicated and not really communicated. Similarly, the Father and the Divinity are a single thing, and yet the Father really generates; but the Divinity does not really generate: therefore the same indivisible thing generates and does not generate. Finally, the same singular thing is and is common, for the Deity is essentially this, and yet is common to several: therefore it is at once common and not common: and so the mystery of the Trinity seems to run against the most accepted principles of Metaphysics, and to involve open contradictions.

On the contrary. for a contradiction to be true and manifest, it does not suffice that affirmation and negation be made of the same thing according to its real entity, but it is also required that it be made according to one and the same formality: for it is true that man reasons insofar as he is rational, and does not reason insofar as he is sentient, nor does any contradiction follow from this; because to reason and not to reason are not enunciated of man in respect of the same principle and the same power; for the sentient power is formally diverse from the rational power: so, by parity of reasoning, no contradiction follows in God from the fact that the essence is communicated but the Personality is not; likewise that the Father generates but the essence does not; because although Paternity and Personality are really the same as the essence, they nonetheless differ from it formally, which suffices to save and resolve the contradiction, as we proved when treating of the formal distinction of the attributes, both from one another and from the divine Essence.

The minor is also proved as to the second part. namely that the mystery of the Trinity does not conflict with the syllogistic principles, which are chiefly three: The first is, things which are the same as one and the same third are the same among themselves: the second, being said of all: the third, being said of none, that is, whatever is affirmed or denied of some superior is also affirmed and denied of all things that are contained under it; whence the difficulty can be formed in this way: Paternity and Filiation are really the same as the divine Essence: therefore they must also be really the same among themselves, if indeed that principle is true: things which are the same as one and the same third are the same among themselves; and so there will be no real distinction of the persons. Then the essence is really the same thing as Paternity, and is really the same thing as Filiation: but Paternity and Filiation are two things: therefore the essence is also two things; otherwise the principle of being said of all will be false.

But these difficulties are easily resolved; for, omitting the various answers of others, the Doctor answers two things in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. n. 17. First, that from this principle one may only infer that the extremes have no other identity with one another than they have with the third: whence, since the personalities do not have formal identity with the divine essence, so neither can they have that formal identity with one another. But since someone could insist that, since the personalities have real identity with the essence, so they should also be really the same among themselves; because things which are the same as one and the same third are the same among themselves with that very identity by which they are the same with the third.

He answers 2. that that principle holds universally only when the extremes which agree in a third have it from their own principles and their formal notion that they also agree with one another in this way. When, however, things that are identified with a third cannot from their own formal notion be so identified, then it does not necessarily follow from their identity with the third that they are also really identified among themselves. But the divine personalities have it from their formal notion that they cannot be identified with one another, because they are the constituents of distinct persons.

Finally the third part of the minor is proved. if the plurality of persons were repugnant to God from His own predicates, chiefly because it seems to obstruct His Unity, Aseity, and Infinity: to unity indeed, because since God is the first being, He must be no less alone by reason of person than by reason of essence: to aseity truly, because God is a being a se: therefore, since the Son is produced by the Father, and the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son, they cannot have the notion of Divinity: finally to infinity, because if several persons are given, there will be several infinite things, which is repugnant.

But these are easily resolved. The first indeed, because the primacy of being denies a multitude of gods, but this is not asserted through the Trinity; since the three persons are only one God: the second likewise, because Aseity, as we said in the Disputation on the Attributes, denies only dependence, but not production; although the Son and the Holy Spirit are produced, their production is nonetheless wholly independent. Finally the third, because the Trinity of Persons does not import a plurality of infinite things, because, as will be proved below, the personalities import neither perfection nor imperfection. And consequently, from no ground can the impossibility of the divine Trinity be evinced.

Note 1. Revelation is the proposition of an object made through the testimony of some person speaking, whether it takes place in the intellect through God, or in the imaginative faculty through an Angel, or only externally through the teaching of men, or through voices and visions formed by Angels: hence there is a twofold revelation; one created and natural, which is made through the ministry of Angels or men; the other, however, supernatural and divine, which is customarily called the interior light supernaturally infused, efficaciously inclining the will and the intellect to give assent to revealed things; concerning which Matth. 16. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father. But concerning this revelation we ask in the present, whether through it the human intellect can be so enlightened and strengthened that it may be able to find urgent natural arguments by which it would evidently demonstrate the Trinity, or at least probably recommend it.

Note 2. It is certain that, with supernatural faith presupposed, the human intellect cannot by its innate power of reasoning efficaciously prove the impossibility of the mystery of the Trinity: both because all the natural principles which could suggest this impossibility are taken from finite and limited things, to which, since there is no proportion to divine and infinite things, so neither should there be any comparison, and hence natural reason itself teaches that there is in God something which the created intellect cannot attain by its own powers: and because all the arguments which can assail the Trinity, natural reason illustrated by faith probably solves and dissolves, as will be clear in the course of this Treatise: and finally because natural reason seeks out and supplies certain likenesses and congruities, by which the intellect is led by the hand to assent to this mystery, and the reasons which seemed to suggest its impossibility it so dissolves that they scarcely retain any force: there remains, therefore, only the difficulty concerning the possibility and existence of this mystery, namely whether through natural arguments it can be efficaciously persuaded by a Christian Philosopher to a pagan and an unbeliever.

Note 3. Concerning the resolution of the present Question there are two maximally opposed opinions of Theologians. Richard of St. Victor carried the torch of the first, asserting in lib. 5. De Trinitate cap. 8. that it is proved by manifest reason, indeed convicted by manifold demonstration, that just as the perfection of one person is the cause of another, so the perfection of the two is the cause of the third in the Trinity: whence, speaking of the reasons set down by himself for proving the Trinity of the divine Persons, in cap. 11. he adds: as we have shown above evidently, a manifold reason convinces of the plurality of persons: and in cap. 13.: behold that it stands clearer than light that we find three in three distinctions of properties. With these he contends that the mystery of the divine Trinity can be efficaciously and evidently proved, once the knowledge of it has shone upon us through revelation: for he speaks of the reasons which presuppose faith; for in lib. 1. cap. 1. he weighs that saying of Isaiah c. 7.: Unless you believe, you will not understand. And in cap. 4. he says: Those things which we believe, we can bring forward not only probable but even necessary reasons.

Some Theologians defend the second, entirely opposite opinion, asserting that the mystery of the divine Trinity is so proper to faith that no natural reason can prove it, indeed cannot recommend it in any way at all; with whom St. Thomas seems to agree in I. dist. 33. art. 1. ad. 2., where he says:

in no created thing is there found anything similar to divine simplicity, so that the having is the same as that which is had: for all the likenesses which could be adduced, whether from points or from differences existing in a genus, have more of dissimilitude than of similitude: and they altogether lead away from the truth rather than lead into a true understanding.

But that we may avoid these extremes, we embrace the middle opinion, and we here undertake two things to be resolved: First, that, even with faith and revelation presupposed, no convincing reasons can be brought forth which would evidently persuade one of the Trinity. Second, however, that at least some congruous reasons and likenesses can be brought forth, by which the difficulty of the unbelieving intellect may be softened and it may be disposed to the faith and assent of that mystery.

First conclusion. — The created intellect, however much it may be illustrated even by divine revelation, cannot evidently and certainly demonstrate the mystery of the divine Trinity.

Proof 1. By the authority of the holy Fathers, but especially of Justin in his exposition of the faith concerning the Trinity:

Although, he says, a pure mind is implanted in us, through which we often apprehend by reasoning things higher than ourselves; nevertheless, weighed down by the flesh, it grows dull for the evident perception of greater things. In no way, therefore, since we are men, can we penetrate to that first and blessed essence: what do I say, the divine essence? nay, not even to its mysteries; for nothing divine is manifest to men.

With him agrees St. Augustine lib. 1. De Trinitate, cap. 1.:

We bring forward, he says, at times a reason, not the one they seek when they inquire about God, because they themselves are not able to take it up, nor perhaps can we either apprehend or set it forth, but one by which it may be shown to them how incapable, and utterly unfit, they are for perceiving what they demand.

St. Hilary agrees, lib. 8. De Trinit., where, affirming that this mystery transcends natural reason, he says:

For this the Church understands by faith, this the Synagogue does not believe, this Philosophy does not know: one from one and the whole from the whole, God and the Son, neither having taken away from the Father by nativity that which He wholly is, nor by being born having failed to keep this same whole with Himself.

It is also proved by reason. Faith, or revelation, cannot bring it about that purely natural and sensible effects have a necessary connection with the Trinity of persons: therefore neither can it bring it about that through the evident knowledge of those effects the divine Trinity be evidently demonstrated. The consequence is clear: for a cause cannot be evidently known through an effect, unless the necessary connection which it has with that effect be likewise made known. Next, faith cannot bring it about that natural reason, leaning only on its own powers, be carried beyond its own sphere: but the mystery of the Trinity is outside the sphere of natural light: therefore it cannot be attained by natural reason itself. Finally, even with the light of faith presupposed, all natural reasonings remain within the sphere of natural light, which cannot show anything divine except by the ministry of creatures: but creatures of themselves lead rather into the assent of the impossibility of this mystery than into the assent of its existence: therefore in truth, although someone through revelation and faith has known the mystery of the Trinity, he nevertheless cannot devise natural reasons which would evidently persuade that mystery to another who does not believe.

Proof 2. From the weakening of all the reasons which could be brought forth for demonstrating this mystery. If any reasons could evidently prove the divine Trinity, the five following above all could: but none of them is demonstrative.

For the first reason could be formed thus from the Doctor in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. n. 3.: whoever has from himself and without imperfection a productive principle sufficient for producing, can produce: but some divine person has from itself and without imperfection a productive principle sufficient with respect to another divine person: therefore it can produce another divine person. The minor is proved. For first it is certain that there is one person, by the same reason by which it is certain that there is God, since Deity must be personated, that it may be able to act and produce: second, that divine person has a fecund memory, that is, an infinite intellect and an infinite object present and applied in the order of the intelligible: moreover it has this memory infinitely fecund from itself, because it is unproduced; and it has it without imperfection, for no imperfection is to be found in God: but that infinitely fecund memory is a productive principle of some infinite perfect thing; not indeed of another God, because the plurality of Gods is repugnant: therefore of another divine person. The minor is proved. A fecund memory from its formal notion is productive of generated knowledge: therefore the fecund memory of the unproduced divine person is productive of knowledge generated and proportioned to itself, and hence infinite: but that infinite knowledge is not an accident, because this would disgrace God: therefore it is something subsistent, and consequently something spiritual living an intellectual life, otherwise it would not be proportioned to the productive principle: and hence it is a divine person: therefore the fecund memory in God produces another divine person; and thus already there are two divine persons, one producing, the other produced.

But that the third can be known in like manner is clear; for that unproduced divine person has a will infinitely perfect from itself; but an infinitely perfect will is productive of an infinite love proportioned to itself: but that produced infinite love must be a divine person, otherwise it would not be proportioned to the producing principle: therefore by natural reason that divine Trinity of persons can be evidently proved.

But although this reason seems to some the most pressing of all, nevertheless a Pagan Philosopher could easily dissolve it. First by denying the minor, and affirming that God does not understand except through an intellection really identified with Himself, not truly distinct from Himself, and therefore His intellection is not a real production of a really distinct term, but only an operation. Second, he could reply that the intellect produces indeed something immanent, but inhering, not truly something subsistent, and hence from this it would not be lawful to infer that the Word produced by God is something subsistent. Third, finally, although he would concede that the divine intellect is productive of a subsistent Word really distinct from the producing principle, he would nevertheless not on that account be bound to admit three persons; indeed he would have a handle for asserting that there are infinite divine persons produced; for since the Word and the Holy Spirit have intellect and will, each of them could produce another Word and another Holy Spirit, and these again others, and so on to infinity.

The second reason can be formed thus; what is supremely and infinitely good is supremely and infinitely communicable: but God is naturally known to be the supreme and infinite good: therefore He must be communicated supremely and infinitely: but outside Himself He cannot be so infinitely and supremely communicated, because a supremely infinite creature cannot be produced: therefore it is necessary that He be infinitely communicated within Himself: but that communication cannot take place except through intellect and will: therefore it is necessary that God communicate Himself through the operation of intellect and will to another within Himself; not indeed to another according to essence, because there cannot be many Gods: therefore according to person; and hence there will be three divine persons, namely one which communicates itself, and two others with whom it is communicated; to one indeed through the intellect, to the other through the will.

But the Philosopher would answer, first, by denying the major, since actual communication brings no perfection into the communicating cause, but only into the produced effect; for actual illumination is not a perfection existing in the Sun, but in the bodies illuminated. He would answer, second, that infinite communication is repugnant to God, since it would seem that it could not take place without a division of the essence and the production of another God, which implies a contradiction. Third, finally, he could distinguish the major: that the infinitely good is infinitely communicable — syncategorematically, so that it can always be communicated more — he will concede: but categorematically, so that it could have at once a communication adequate to itself — he will deny.

The third reason: God is naturally known as most happy: but happiness cannot be that of one solitary being; for it requires companionship: therefore He must have a companion: but creatures, since they are dissimilar and have not existed from eternity, cannot give God true and perfect society: therefore it is necessary that God have a companion who is not a creature: but that one cannot be another God, because many Gods are repugnant; therefore He must have other divine persons. Whence Tertullian Contra Praxeam:

Before all things God was alone, Himself to Himself World and place and all things; alone, however, because there was nothing extrinsic besides Him: otherwise not even then alone: for He had within Himself His own reason, namely His Word, His Son and His Holy Spirit.

But the Philosopher would deny that for the happiness of an infinitely perfect being the companionship of another is required; for God fully suffices to Himself, inasmuch as He is the greatest of all goods and their center.

The fourth reason can be sought from the supreme Charity of God: where there is supreme goodness, there is perfect Charity, which is necessarily toward another, and there is no supreme Charity except toward another supremely good being: but in God there is supreme goodness: therefore there is supreme Charity, which is toward another supremely good being — not indeed toward creatures, which are not supremely good: nor toward another God, because many Gods are repugnant: therefore it must be toward another divine person; and hence several divine persons can be proved by natural reason.

But the Philosopher would deny the minor; for where there is supreme goodness, there perfect Charity, having the notion of friendship, need not necessarily be; for the infinite love which God has toward Himself suffices.

Finally, the fifth reason could be formed thus: we naturally know that no perfection is to be denied to God: but to produce one like oneself in nature is the supreme perfection: therefore it is known not to be denied to God.

But the Philosopher could refute it, first, by distinguishing the minor: namely, that to produce one like oneself is the supreme perfection in corruptible beings, namely that they may be able to preserve their species; but not in beings free from corruption, as is clear in the Angels, who do not procreate other Angels; and hence, since God is free from all corruption, to produce one like Himself would not be a perfection in Him. Second, he would answer that that production is repugnant to God; because in order truly to produce one like Himself He would have to produce another God, which implies a contradiction. Third, if to produce one like oneself is the supreme perfection, since the divine persons which would be produced would be infinitely perfect, they also would have to produce other divine persons; and thus there would have to be an infinite number of divine persons.

It is clear, therefore, that no natural reason can be brought forth which would so evidently persuade the mystery of the Trinity to an unbeliever that he could not deny it his assent. Therefore this mystery can only be probably recommended through those aforesaid reasons; as well as through certain likenesses of natural things, in which the vestige and image of the adorable Trinity is engraved, as will appear.

Second conclusion. — The mystery of the Trinity can be probably recommended and explained from natural things, in which in a certain way its vestiges and images appear and shine forth. This is the constant opinion of the holy Fathers. And they recommend it by various likenesses.

First indeed, in the Sun St. Athanasius q. 1. and Nazianzen Oratione 45. find an expressed image of the Trinity, for the reason that that one heavenly body is one in which nevertheless three distinct things are found, namely the solar orb, the ray and the light. For just as, says Athanasius, the sun consists of three subsistences, so also one God of three persons. For the type of the Father is the solar orb: the type of the Son is the ray: the type of the Holy Spirit is the light of the sun. Accordingly, just as in the Sun the orb, the ray and the light are not called three Suns, but one Sun: so likewise in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God and not three: whence the compendious exposition of the faith, which is attributed to Cyril of Alexandria, has: The Sun is the Father, the ray is the Son, the fiery splendor is the Holy Spirit.

Second, the holy Fathers draw the same image of the Trinity from the elements; first indeed from fire: for as the above-praised St. Athanasius says, there are three subsistences of one fire, namely the subject of the fire and the burning and the shining: and yet the nature of the fire is one. Thus the Father is the fire, the Son is the burning, the Holy Spirit is the illuminating power. But by subsistence he here calls individual things, although they are accidents. With him agrees Isidore lib. 2. De differentiis Spiritualibus cap. 2. Just as, he says, fire, brightness and heat are three words indeed, but one thing: so in the relation of the persons there is the Trinity, but in the substance of the nature one God.

Third, from the element of air, in which God painted the Rainbow, that in it, as on a triumphal chariot, the holy Trinity might be discerned: for just as in one Rainbow three colors so come together that sight cannot discern in which part one color is terminated and distinguished from another: so in the holy Trinity the divine persons so come together in the Deity that they are the one only God.

Fourth, from the element of Water; for a spring produces a river and a stream, as it were a threefold water and yet a single one: whence Nazianz. Oratione 37. calls the Father the eye of the spring, the Son the spring itself, and the Holy Spirit the river. Tertullian, however, in the book Contra Praxean chapter 8. assimilates the Father to the Spring, the Son to the River, the Holy Spirit to the Stream.

Fifth, from the element of Earth, because in it there are Root, Trunk and Branches, which all form a single tree, as the above-praised Tertullian weighs in the same place, as also St. Augustine lib. De fide et Symbolo cap. 9.

Sixth, St. Augustine collects the same thing from all creatures, 6. De Trinitate last chapter: It is fitting, he says, that we, contemplating with the intellect the Creator through the things which have been made, understand the Trinity, whose vestige appears in the creature in the way that is worthy. Explaining which vestige afterwards he adds: for in that Trinity there is the supreme origin of all things and the most perfect beauty and the most blessed delight. He collects this same thing also in book 4. super Genesim, from the fact that God is said in Sapientiae 11. to have made all things in number, weight and measure; measure, he says, fixes a mode to every thing: number gives to every thing its species, and weight draws it to rest and stability. The Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 13. quaest. 6. num. 6. adds that the vestige of the Trinity which shines in the creature consists chiefly in their unity, species and order, and he collects this from St. Augustine 6. De Trinitate cap. 10. saying: All these things therefore, which have been made by divine art, show in themselves a certain unity and species and order. But the unity found in the creature represents the supreme unity of the first Principle, which is appropriated to the Father; and the species of the creature represents the supreme beauty, which is attributed to the Son; finally the order of the creature represents the most perfect operation of God, which is His blessedness, and is appropriated to the Holy Spirit.

Seventh, finally, the holy Trinity painted its own image in man, and deservedly said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: for, as the Doctor teaches in 1. distinct. 3. q. 9. num. 6., just as in the Trinity there is the same divine nature, and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are three persons really distinct among themselves and identified in the same divine nature: so besides the soul there is found in us a fecund memory, which is the intellect with its object, or the species of it, and this corresponds to the Father. Then in us there is found the intellect informed with actual knowledge, which corresponds to the Son. And finally there is found the will informed by a volition, which corresponds to the Holy Spirit. Moreover, just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are really distinguished among themselves, and yet are identified with the divine Essence; so the fecund memory and the intellect, as affected by intellection, and the will, as affected by volition, are really distinguished among themselves, and yet are really the same with the soul, inasmuch namely as the intellect and the will are considered in first act, and as they are faculties of the soul itself formally only distinguished from it.

Blessed Augustinus lucidly explains all these things lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 20. Whoever (he says) vividly perceives these three, namely memory, intelligence and will in his mind, naturally instituted by God, and how great a thing is in it, whence even the sempiternal and immutable nature can be recalled, beheld, embraced. He remembers through memory, beholds through intelligence, embraces through love: he truly finds the image of that supreme Trinity: to which supreme Trinity, to be remembered, to be seen, to be loved — that he may recall it, contemplate it, delight in it — he ought to refer the whole of that which he lives.

The error of those who deviate from the truth is not one but manifold: hence one can scarcely recount how many and what manner of dark spirits of heresies have gone astray concerning the greatest of all truths, namely the divine Trinity: yet it is fitting to distinguish them all into a threefold order. For some asserted more divine persons than three; some indeed dreamed of a single person in the Godhead distinct only by a threefold office or name; finally, others said that the three divine persons are not one God, but a threefold one; which errors, so that they may more easily appear and be refuted

Note 1. There were various heretics who attacked the Trinity of divine persons in manifold ways: for first of all the Emperor Anastasius decreed that not a Trinity, but a quaternity, was to be adored, and that for that reason he was struck by lightning from heaven, as Paul the Deacon and Pomponius Laetus report in Cellius, lib. 1. De Trinitate, art. 1. A certain Gallic cleric seems to have subscribed to this error, who, as St. Anselm reports in the book De Incarnatione Verbi, cap. 1. and 13., distinguished the three divine persons really from the divine Essence, and said:

If in God the three persons are only one thing, and are not three things, each one by itself separate, like three Angels, or three souls, yet in such a way that they are entirely the same in power and will: therefore the Father and the Holy Spirit were incarnate together with the Son.

Nor was Gilbert of Poitiers far off, for, as Matthew Paris reports in the Historia Anglicana, in the year 1119, his third assertion was: The properties of the persons are certain eternal relations, which are indeed not what the persons themselves are, but divided in number, and divided in substance, and have three unities, and so there are many eternal things, none of which is God. But far more monstrous was the multiplication of persons, which the first Council of Braga thus condemns in Can. 2., saying: If anyone introduces outside the holy Trinity other names of divinity, I know not what they be, saying that in the divinity itself there is a Trinity of Trinities, as the Gnostics and Priscillians said, let him be anathema.

Note 2. There were some heretics utterly opposed to the former, who from the wholly complete unity of the essence inferred the unity also of the divine person; so that what designates the distinction of persons in Scripture they referred not to the diversity of the persons themselves, but to the difference of the offices and actions of the same person, and said that the same person, inasmuch as it is unbegotten and productive of creatures, is named Father; inasmuch as it is incarnate, is called Son; inasmuch as it sanctifies the creature, is called Holy Spirit; as if one and the same person were distributed into different effects and distinct offices. Praxeas seems to have borne the torch to this error; he, as Tertullian says in the book which he wrote against him, in order to make a heresy of the One, said that the Father himself descended into the Virgin, that he himself was born of her, that he himself suffered: and he adds: Praxeas managed two businesses of the Devil at Rome: he drove out prophecy and brought in heresy. He put the Paraclete to flight and crucified the Father. Hence Optatus of Milevis, in lib. 5. Adversus Parmenianum, calls Praxeas a Patripassian, because he asserted that the divine Father had been crucified and had suffered. Noetus subscribed to him, who, as St. Epiphanius reports in Heresy 57., said that there is one God, the same Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who suffered and was born in the flesh. The disciples of Montanus also favored this, for although St. Epiphanius says in Heresy 48. that Montanus thinks about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit just as the holy Catholic Church does; nevertheless St. Jerome, in the Epistle to Marcella, qu. 54., says of the disciples of Montanus: They forced the Trinity into the narrows of a single person: whence Nicephorus, lib. 4. Historiae, c. 22.: Montanus, he says, taught the same things as we do about the divine Trinity and the creation of the world; nevertheless some of his followers afterwards thought that the three substances of the Divinity were one. But this error, almost buried in the netherworld, was stirred up anew by Sabellius the African of Pentapolis, who, as St. Anastasius reports in the Contra Gregales Sabellii, said: The Father is dilated into the Son by taking on flesh, and into the Holy Spirit by sanctifying men: whence he called the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit not three persons, but the same one under three names; hence his disciples were called Patripassians, because they asserted that the Father had been incarnate, had suffered, and had died. To this error afterwards adhered Paul of Samosata, then Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, and also many more recent heretics, as has already been said.

Note 3. Other heretics, opposed to the aforesaid in the extreme, acknowledged indeed the distinction of persons in God; but denied the unity of the essence; these are distributed into two rivulets of error; for some denied the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Origen is said to have gone before them; nevertheless this error is attributed to Arius as its author, because it was so propagated and disseminated by him that it poured out its poison through the whole world. And when he was extinguished, and, in the manner of Judas, his entrails were poured out in a solitary place, the sect of the Semi-Arians arose, who, tempering the error of Arius as far as possible, asserted the Son to be like the Father and coeternal with him, yet not consubstantial and equal. Changing the word Homoousion, which means consubstantial, into Homoiousion, that is, like in substance, as if softening its rigor: so that by the very similarity and consonance of the word they deceived very many, as if using a catholic word. With them the Macedonians are wont to be numbered, who denied that the Holy Spirit is truly God, and some of them said that the Father is omnipotent, the Son semi-omnipotent, but the Holy Spirit nullipotent. But another error, opposed to them, grew up, that of the Tritheists, who asserted three natures and substances alike in all things, whose leader was Philoponus, as Nicephorus reports, lib. 18. cap. 49.; concerning whom Dionysius the Roman, in Athanasius, in the Epist. De Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, says: These men in a certain way constitute three Gods, while they divide the holy unity into three foreign substances. Hence it is worth the effort at present to resolve three things. 1. That there are only three divine Persons: 2. That they are really distinguished from one another: 3. That they are truly one God. In the following Question, moreover, we shall prove the consubstantiality of the Persons.

First conclusion. — Truly there are three divine persons really distinct from one another. That they are three is sufficiently and more than sufficiently established by the Oracles of both the Old and the New Testament reported above. But that they are really distinguished from one another is proved by the same sacred texts; and moreover the same thing is further confirmed from those various places in which Sacred Scripture commemorates Generation, Paternity, and Filiation in God, which cannot be verified without a real distinction of Persons: For, says St. Augustine, lib. 1. De Trinit., cap. 1., there is altogether no thing which begets itself, so that it may be: and Tertullian, Contra Praxean:

Everything which proceeds from something must of necessity be of the same kind as that from which it proceeds, yet it is not the same, but separate: but where the Second is, there are two, and where the Third is, there are three: for the Third is the Holy Spirit from God and the Son, just as the third from the root is the fruit from the shoot, and the third from the spring is the stream from the river, and the third from the sun is the beam from the ray.

Nor should you say with the Sabellians that these words Father and Son denote in God only a distinction of Persons, not entitatively and really, but according to the diverse offices which the single divine Person bears and executes, and that he is called Father by reason of creation, the Son by reason of incarnation, and the Holy Spirit by reason of justification: for, as Tertullian rightly replies against Praxeas, c. 10.:

It can in no way happen that the Father makes himself a Son to himself, and the Son makes himself a Father to himself: what God has instituted, he himself also guards; the Father must have a Son, that he may be Father, and the Son a Father, that he may be son; but it is one thing to have, another to be; v. g. that I may be a husband, I must have a wife; I shall not myself be a wife to myself; so also that I may be a Father, I have a Son; I shall not myself be a Son to myself; and that I may be a Son, I have a Father; I shall not myself be a Father to myself: for the things which make me, if I have them; then I shall be a Father, if I have a Son: I shall be a Son, if I have a Father: moreover, if I myself am one of these, I no longer have that which I myself am, neither a Father, because I myself am the Father, nor a Son, because I myself am the Son; but inasmuch as I must have one of these and be the other, if I shall be both, I shall not be the one, while I do not have the other: for if I myself am the Son, who am also the Father, I no longer have a Son, but I myself am the Son: but by not having a Son, while I myself am the Son, when shall I be the Father? I must have one Son, that I may be the Father, etc.

Moreover the same thing is established from those very words of Scripture, Ioan. 8., in which the Son affirms, I proceeded from God: and in the same place: I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me. And c. 14. I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that he may remain with you forever, the Spirit of truth. For the one proceeding must be really distinguished from the one from whom he proceeds, and the one sent from the one by whom he is sent, and the one asking from the one whom he asks: since the same one cannot proceed from himself, nor send himself, or ask himself, as Tertullian rightly urges in the same place, and likewise St. Athanasius in the Contra Gregales Sabellii.

Finally, Sacred Scripture expressly pronounces that the Son of God was begotten before the daystar, and that divine Wisdom came forth from the mouth of the Most High before every creature: and that the Word was in the beginning with God, and that through him all things were made: therefore truly within God himself a real distinction of Persons is to be admitted, and not only from a diverse connotation and respect to the effects to be produced in creatures. Add that this divine truth is strengthened by those very principles by which the Sabellians strive to overturn it; for

They object 1. Various places of Scripture in which the unity of God is predicated, whence they infer that there is a single Person: thus Deuteron. 6. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And c. 4. The Lord himself is God and there is no other besides him.

But so far is it from being the case that these words indicate the unity of Person, that rather they signify the Trinity and denote the distinction: for by a wonderful instinct of God it came about that Moses and the other writers of the Old Testament signified the very unity of God by a threefold repetition, namely that they might designate the three Persons in the unity of the Godhead, as the holy Fathers gather, especially Athanasius in the books De Trinit.

They object 2. That saying of Ioan. 14. I am in the Father and the Father is in me: whence they infer that the Father and the Son are a single Person distinguished by only two names. They confirm it from that saying of Isaiae 43. and 45. Only in you is God and there is no God besides you; truly you are a hidden God.

But from those texts the holy Fathers gather the distinction of Persons, especially Athanasius in Dialogue 3. De Trinit. and Hilary, lib. 4., who weighs those words of Isaiah thus: Isaiah, discerning the inhabitant from that in which he inhabits, does so only by distinction of Person, not of kind; for God is in him, and he in whom God is, is God; for God is not in a dwelling-place diverse and alien in nature from himself.

They object 3. That saying of Ioan., I and the Father are one.

But that context fights against them: for, as St. Augustine notes, tract. 36. in Ioan., If one, therefore not diverse: if we are, therefore both the Father and the Son are; for he would not say 'we are' of one, nor would he say 'one' of diverse ones: whence Nazianzen, lib. 1. De Fide: 'One,' he says, he refers to the unity of the Godhead: 'we are,' however, he assigns to the persons. In like manner Tertullian, lib. 1. Contra Marcionem, weighs that saying of 1. Ioan. c. 2. There are three who give testimony in Heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one; and he says: Those who are three, he says, are one thing, not one person, just as it was said, I and the Father are one? He answers that it refers to the unity of substance, not to the singularity of number.

They object 4. All things that the Father has, the Son equally obtains: therefore there is nothing by which the Son can be really distinguished from the Father. They prove the antecedent from Matth. 11. All things have been delivered to me by my Father: and Ioan. 16. All things that the Father has are mine: and c. 17. All my things are yours and your things are mine.

But from those very words the holy Fathers gather the distinction of persons; for there must be a real distinction between the giver and the receiver. Hence they commonly interpret the aforesaid texts as meaning that the Father gave all things to the Son, except being the Father. Hence the Council of Florence says in the letters of Union: All things that are the Father's, the Father himself gave to his only-begotten Son by begetting, except being the Father: to which that saying of Nazianzen, Orat. 44. in Sanctam Pentecostem, accords: All things whatsoever, he says, that the Father has, are the Son's, except that he is not unbegotten: all things whatsoever the Son has, are the Holy Spirit's, if you except generation. But that the aforesaid exception is implicitly contained in the very words of Christ, Athanasius teaches, Orat. 4. Contra Arianos, saying: But lest anyone, seeing the Son have all things whatsoever the Father has, deceived by the indiscriminate likeness of the things that are had, should think impiously in the Sabellian manner, and judge that the Son is also the Father: for that reason this Word was uttered: 'It was given to me and I received and it was delivered to me,' for no other reason than that he might show that he is not the Father, etc.

And a little further down, that saying of Ioan. 5. Just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to the Son to have life in himself. He weighs it thus: For from this word 'gave' he indicates that he himself is not the Father; while from the very saying he signifies the likeness and property of the Son with the Father.

They object 5. Sacred Scripture affirms that God is alone, Ps. 85. You are the only God; and 1. ad Timotheum 1. To the King of the ages, immortal and invisible, to the only God: therefore he is also solitary: but solitude does not stand with the fellowship of three Persons: therefore three Persons are not to be admitted in God.

The holy Fathers answer that the Scriptures also teach that the Father is not alone, but that the Son is with him; for Christ himself, Ioan. 8., expressly pronounces: I am not alone; but I and the Father who sent me. And in your Law it is written that the testimony of two men is true: I am the one who bears testimony about myself, and the Father who sent me bears testimony about me: which words St. Athanasius, in the Contra Gregales Sabellii, weighs thus: Behold two Persons for you; and unless you say that they are truly two, when he says this, you do not allow a true testimony to exist; for that testimony is confirmed only if it is borne not by one but by two. Therefore the Scriptures are so to be reconciled that the former do not exclude the Trinity of Persons, and the latter do not introduce a plurality of Gods.

They answer secondly that God is called alone by the exclusion of other gods, not by the exclusion of the divine Persons; and this exposition is strengthened by Sacred Scripture itself; for Ioan. 17. we read: This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God: and it is added: and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Moreover, of the Son it is said, Isaiae 45., There is no God besides you: truly you are a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Savior: and Baruch 3. This is our God and no other shall be reckoned against him: but it is added, After these things he was seen on earth, to signify that the former words are to be understood of the Son of God; nor yet does it follow from this that the Father is not truly God and Lord; and so the particle 'alone' is not exclusive of the Persons, but of vain gods.

I answer 3. With the Doctor, in 1. dist. 2. qu. unica, the word 'alone' can be taken in two ways, namely either categorematically or syncategorematically: taken categorematically it is the same as 'solitary,' and therefore it has no place in the divine realities: hence those propositions are false, God is alone, the Father is alone: that is, solitary. But syncategorematically it can be taken in four ways: for either it determines the essential subject with respect to an essential predicate, and so this proposition is true, You alone are God and the true God: or it determines the personal subject with respect to an essential predicate, and so the proposition only the Father is God would be false; hence when it is said of the Father, Ioan. 17., That they may know you, the only true God, the particle 'alone' does not hold on the part of the subject, namely the Father, but on the part of the predicate, namely the true God, so that the sense is this, That they may know you, Father, who are the only true God. Thirdly, 'alone' can be taken insofar as it determines the personal subject with respect to a personal predicate, and so the proposition is true, Only the Father generates, only the Son is generated. Fourthly and finally, it determines the personal subject with respect to a notional predicate common to several persons, and so it is not rightly joined to a subject importing only one person; but it must be joined to a subject importing both; for you would not rightly say, Only the Father spirates, but you should say, only the Father and the Son spirate.

They object 6. Some testimonies of the holy Fathers by which they seem to affirm that the divine Persons are distinct only by names and by the consideration of the intellect: thus St. Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. 13., after he distinguished the three divine supposits by their proper characters, subjoins: Each one is God, if it is considered separately, the mind, of course, separating those things which cannot be separated: the same, Orat. 35.: That there is one essence and nature and appellation of God; although through certain distinct thoughts the names also are distinguished at the same time.

But St. Gregory of Nazianzus himself thrusts this wrong far away from himself, for in Orat. 49., showing that in his earlier little works he had professed the true real distinction of the Persons, he says: Since indeed I have condemned this sect, that is, the Sabellian, in the same little book, and I have written the distinction of persons according to the word; for no one can say 'they are one' for one person, nor assign the unity of kind except to the persons: whence, Orat. 35., It is, he says, an equal impiety either to connect the persons in the manner of Sabellius, or to distinguish and separate the natures after the fashion of Arius. Therefore, when he says that one person considered apart from another is distinguished by intellection, he is so to be understood that our intellect can scarcely really conceive and separate one person from another; for a parte rei every person has in itself the two other persons remaining through circumincession, and as to essence it is the same with them, and so it cannot be really separated from them.

They object 7. Things which are the same as one and the same third are the same among themselves: but the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are the same as the divine essence: therefore they are the same among themselves.

I distinguish the major. as I have already distinguished: in whatever identity they are the same as something, in an equal identity they are the same among themselves, I concede; hence since the divine Persons are not the same personally and suppositally, but only essentially in the third, so neither should they be the same among themselves personally, but only essentially.

They object 8. It is a contradiction for something unique to be at once one and manifold: but God, one and Trinity, is divided and manifold: therefore God is not the Trinity.

I distinguish the major. Under the same notion under which it is one, it cannot be divided and manifold, I concede; under another notion under which it is not one, I deny: thus, therefore, God is one in essence and manifold in persons; and so He is not one, and divided, and manifold under the same notion, but under diverse ones.

Finally they object. Nothing is to be admitted in God, with the removal of which God would remain infinitely perfect: but with the Trinity of persons set aside, God remains infinitely perfect, for to be infinite is of the essence of Deity itself: therefore, etc.

He denies the minor. The Doctor denies it in 1. dist. 2. quaest. 53.; for once one person is removed, another will not remain infinitely perfect, not because one person constitutes the perfection of the essence, or of another person, but because all the persons are really identified with the essence, and thus really and essentially are also identified with one another: but it is a contradiction that something really identified with another subsisting thing be removed, otherwise the same thing would really be both removed and not removed, which is a contradiction. Or I distinguish the minor. With the Trinity of persons removed, God would remain infinitely perfect, if that condition were possible, I concede: if it is impossible, as in truth it is, I deny.

You will insist. From the infinity of the divine nature we gather that the divinity is one and incapable of multiplication: but the divine person, as formally distinct from the essence, is no less infinite: therefore neither is it less one and incapable of multiplication.

I distinguish the major. From infinity simpliciter and absolutely, I concede: from infinity in a certain respect and in a certain definite and determinate genus, I deny.

I likewise distinguish the minor. The divine person is no less infinite simpliciter and absolutely, I deny: infinite according to its own proper formal notion, let it pass. Or otherwise, I deny the minor. For the person formally, as it is a person, is neither infinite nor finite, neither imperfect nor perfect, as we shall prove below.

Second conclusion. — In God there are only three divine persons, and there can be neither more nor fewer. This is of defined faith in several Councils, the doctrine of all of which the Lateran Council gathers together and proves again in the chapter Damnamus in these words:

We believe and confess that there is one supreme reality, which is truly the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three persons together, and each one of them singly... Each of the three persons is that reality, namely substance, essence, or divine nature... And that reality is not generating, nor generated, nor proceeding, but it is the Father who generates, and the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds, so that the distinctions are in the persons, and unity in the nature. Although, therefore, the Father is another, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another, it is not however another thing, but that which is the Father is the Son and the Holy Spirit, the same entirely, so that according to the Orthodox and Catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial.

This very thing St. Athanasius openly hands down in the Symbol: There is therefore one Father, not three Fathers, one Son, not three Sons, one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. All the contexts of Sacred Scripture likewise prove it, by which in the previous Question we intimated the holy Trinity, that is, that there are three divine persons. Moreover, Sacred Scripture itself openly declares that the Father is unique, while God the Father is expressed by a singular name. But it also clearly sets forth that the Son is unique, and the Holy Spirit unique; for they call the Son the Only-begotten, thus Ioan. 1.: The Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father. And below: glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father. And chap. 3.: So God loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son. Likewise of the Holy Spirit, 1. Corinth. 12.: There are divisions of graces, but the same Spirit. And below: But all these things one and the same Spirit works. And again: in one Spirit we have all been baptized into one body. But John speaks this very thing more evidently, Epist. 1. chap. 5., saying: There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. Although, however, this proposition does not express the exclusion directly and explicitly, nonetheless it designates and imports it implicitly, according to the common interpretation of the holy Fathers.

The same truth is proved by reason: first indeed, if there were more than three divine persons, there would likewise be more Gods, and not one only God: but it is a contradiction that there be more Gods: therefore it is also a contradiction that there be more divine persons than three. Proof of the major. The reason why several persons make one only God, and do not have a distinct Divinity and essence, is that the Father communicates the same Divinity undividedly to the Son through generation; which moreover the Father and the Son communicate to the Holy Spirit through spiration. But such a communication of the same Divinity in God would be impossible, if there were several Fathers, several Sons, or several Holy Spirits. Therefore, etc. The holy Fathers prove the minor, who from that communication confess that God is one; first of all St. Ignatius in the Epistola ad Philippenses gathers: There is therefore one God the Father, and not two, or three, namely one who is, and there is no true one besides Him alone; for the Lord says, God is one... One Son also, God the Word. And with a few words interposed for the unity of the Holy Spirit he concludes: Again, therefore, there are neither three Fathers, nor three Sons, but neither three Paracletes. But one Father, and one Son, and one Paraclete. By which Ignatius observes that it pertains to the unity of God, that there be not several Fathers, nor several Sons, nor several Paracletes.

St. Basil agrees with him, lib. 3. Contra Eunomium: Thus, he says, the notion of unity will be preserved in the Trinity, if we profess one Father, one Son, one Holy Spirit. Epiphanius also subscribes, haeresi 64.: The Father, he says, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, a Trinity in truth and a Monad; for therefore there is one God, because there are neither two Fathers, nor two Sons, nor two Holy Spirits. Whence St. Fulgentius, in his response to the first objection of the Arians, concludes the whole matter: if both, he says, were called Fathers, they would surely be dissimilar in nature; for each would consist from himself and would not have a common substance with the other, nor would the Deity be one for those to whom one nature did not belong. The same, to objection 5., says of the Son: Two unbegotten ones, he says, cannot have one nature, where neither of the two finds in the other generation from himself, nor does either recognize in himself the substance of his nativity from the other, etc.

Proof 2. There are as many divine Persons, and no more, as there are unproduced and produced ones: but only one unproduced person exists and can exist, and two produced: therefore only three divine Persons can exist. The major is clear; the minor, however, is proved, as to its first part, by the Doctor in 1. dist. 2. qu. 7. num. 37.: If several unproduced persons could exist, they would necessarily be infinite; but it is a contradiction that there be infinite persons in God: therefore several unproduced persons likewise imply a contradiction. The minor is evident: for those infinite unproduced persons would either be of the same species and distinct in number alone, or diverse. Not the first, because it is a contradiction that there be several infinite things differing in number alone, as we proved in demonstrating the unity of God. Not diverse either, because thus none of them would be infinite, since it would not have the perfections of a person of another species, just as man does not have all the perfections of the brutes, nor do the brutes obtain the perfections of man; and so it would not be infinitely perfect, since it would not have all possible perfections.

He proves the minor. The Doctor: whatever can be in several supposits, and is not determined to a certain number of supposits by something distinct from itself, can by its own notion be in infinitely many, and if it is a necessary being, in fact it is in infinitely many; for as Aristotle speaks, 1. phys. text 32., In perpetual things, being able and being do not differ: but the unproduced divine Person, if it could be in several supposits, could not be determined by anything, so as to be in a certain and determinate number of supposits, because to be determined by another, in order to be in a supposit, is against the notion of an unproduced person: therefore from itself it could be in infinitely many, and thus in fact there would be infinite produced persons: but this is a contradiction: therefore also that from which it follows.

Proof 2. of the same part of the minor: plurality is never to be posited without necessity: but there is no necessity of admitting several unproduced persons; for neither would that regard the production of an unproduced person, nor would it help anything toward the perfection of the produced persons: therefore several cannot exist. Thirdly, because one essence actually existing cannot from itself have diverse modes of existing without productions. Whence, indeed, would that diversity of existing have to be derived? Therefore the unproduced person cannot be manifold.

The same minor is proved, as to its second part. namely that there are only two produced persons, by the same Doctor, ibidem, number 18.: there are as many produced persons, and no more, as there are adequate and sufficient productive principles of diverse notion in the unproduced person: but those principles are only two, namely the intellect and the will: therefore there are also only two produced persons. The minor will appear in the following Disputation, where we shall demonstrate that only two divine processions and productions are to be admitted, and so only two produced persons.

St. Bonaventure proves this very truth from a sufficient combination, which he presents as threefold in 1. dist. art. 1. qu. 4. The first indeed he forms thus: The first Person, who is innascible and inspirable, generates and spirates. The second Person, however, because inspirable but begotten, does not generate, but spirates. The third Person, because spirated and proceeding from the one generating, neither generates nor spirates. And therefore it is impossible that there be more persons than three. The second he forms thus, with Richard of St. Victor, lib. 3. De Trinit. and 20.: From a threefold love; for love is threefold, namely gratuitous, owed, and mixed from both: therefore there must be only three divine Persons: one which only gives, in which is gratuitous love; another which only receives, in which is owed love; and a middle one, which gives and receives, in which is love mixed from both. The third he gathers from origin, for, he says, it happens that one understands a person who is the principle of a person and is not principled, and again a person who is principled and not the principle of a person; and in a third way, a person who is principled and principle. But the fourth mode, that one be neither principle nor principled, is altogether impossible, nor intelligible.

You will say 1. In created things generation proceeds from the fecundity of nature: therefore likewise in God, besides the two processions, one of which is through the intellect and the other through the will, another one arising from the fecundity of nature is to be admitted, and consequently another proceeding person distinct from the Word and the Holy Spirit.

The Doctor answers. ibidem n. 21., distinguishing the consequent: that a production from the fecundity of nature is to be posited in God as from an adequate principle, he denies; from an inadequate and partial one, he concedes. For the adequate and total principle of the production of the Son includes the intellect and the divine essence, each of which concurs partially in that production. The same is to be said of the divine will with respect to the production of the Holy Spirit. Whence, although the divine essence concurs as the principle by which to the production of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, it does not thereby have the notion of a distinct adequate principle productive per se of some divine Person, but only insofar as it concurs with the intellect and the will; and so, since there are only two adequate productive principles of the divine Persons, there are also only two produced divine Persons.

You will insist. One and the same adequate principle can have several productions and distinct terms: therefore, although in God there are only two productive principles, it does not follow from this that there are only two produced persons. Proof of the antecedent. The created intellect, e.g., is the adequate principle of the mental word; but it can produce several total and adequately distinct words: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the antecedent. If the produced terms are not adequate, both intensively and extensively, that is, if they do not equal the whole perfection of the producing principle, both in being and in operating, I concede: if they do, I deny. The created intellect, however, can for this reason produce several distinct mental words, because none of those words equals the perfection of the intellect in being. For this is a substance, whereas that is an accident; nor in operating, because the intellect, which concurs with one impressed species to the production of one word, can again concur with another species representative of a dissimilar object to the production of another word. But it is otherwise in divine things; for the divine Word equals the whole perfection of its productive principle, both in being, because it is consubstantial with the Father, and in operating, because it exhausts and equals all the fecundity of the divine intellect; and so the consequence is to be denied.

You will subsume. But the same productive principle can have distinct adequate terms, both in being and in operating: therefore, although in divine things there are only two adequately productive principles, no fewer produced persons can exist. Proof of the antecedent. Produced fire equals all the perfection of the producing fire; for it is of altogether the same nature and activity with it; but from the same fire two other fires can be produced, from two distinct matters applied in diverse ways: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the antecedent. If it does not conflict from elsewhere, namely if the adequate term is not infinite, I concede: if it is, I deny. Whence, since one finite productive principle can have various terms that are also finite, because several finite beings of the same notion do not conflict, since one need not involve the perfection of another; for that reason a finite potency, notwithstanding its limitation, can extend itself to two terms at once, which it could produce separately. But it happens otherwise when the produced term is infinite, because it conflicts for two infinite things of altogether the same notion to exist; for either one would involve the perfections of the other, or not: if so, then they would not be diverse, nor consequently two; if not, then neither would be infinitely perfect, since it would not have those perfections which the other infinite thing would comprise. And therefore the consequence is to be denied.

You will press. As finite potency is related to a finite effect and term, so also is infinite potency to an infinite one: but finite potency can have several finite adequate terms: therefore much more will infinite potency be able to have various infinite adequate terms. Proof of the antecedent. If some difference intervened, it would be chiefly either because the infinite effect exhausts the fecundity of the productive potency, or because it is incompossible with another infinite effect of the same notion: but this does not stand in the way. Not indeed the first, because no reason appears why an infinite adequate effect would exhaust the fecundity of an infinite potency more than a finite one exhausts the fecundity of a finite potency: but the latter does not so exhaust the fecundity of its potency that it cannot further produce another adequate term, as appears from the adduced example of fire: therefore neither does one infinite term so exhaust the fecundity of an infinite potency that it cannot produce a further term. Not the second either: both because, since the effect is posterior to the cause, it does not impede the fecundity of the cause; and because all the divine Attributes and the three divine Persons are several infinite things of the same notion in the notion of Attribute and of Person, although they differ from elsewhere: therefore several infinite terms of the divine Intellect will also be able to exist, although they have their own particular characters by which they are distinguished.

I distinguish the major. According to some proportion, I concede: according to a total one, I deny. It is indeed true that, just as finite potency requires a finite adequate term, so infinite potency must have something infinite as its adequate term; but it is false that, just as a finite faculty can have successively various finite adequate terms, so an infinite one will be able to have various infinite ones; whence the consequence is to be denied. To the proof I say that the variety of infinite terms of the same divine potency conflicts on both counts; namely first, because a single term exhausts and equals the fecundity of its faculty; for if that faculty could produce something further, it would no longer act infinitely in the production of the first term, since it would not bestow every perfection whatsoever on that first term, if it could produce another equally perfect and endowed with like excellences. The second conflicts, because it is a contradiction that there be two infinite things of the same notion, on account of such express contradictions. Nor do the adduced examples prove that; for the divine personalities formally considered are neither infinite nor finite, as will appear below. Likewise the attributes formally considered are neither finite nor infinite; for thus they are distinguished formally, both from formal infinity, which is a mode of the divine essence, and from radical infinity, which is the constitutive and distinctive difference of the divine essence itself. Whence they are not infinite formally, but only really, inasmuch as they are identified with the divine Essence itself; and so they are not several infinite things, but one only, because they do not have the notion of the infinite as they are distinct, but only as they are identified.

You will say 2. There are as many divine Persons as there are their constitutive principles: but these are four: therefore also those. The major is evident: the minor is proved: The constitutive principles of the divine Persons are the opposed relations: but here there are four, namely Paternity and Filiation, passive and active Spiration: therefore, etc.

I deny the minor. And to its proof I distinguish the major: A relation belonging to one Person only is the constitutive principle of that Person, I concede: one that belongs to several Persons, I deny. Active Spiration, however, belongs to the Father and the Son, who indivisibly spirate the Holy Spirit, and therefore it is not constitutive of any divine Person; indeed it presupposes the Father as already constituted through Paternity, and the Son through Filiation.

You will insist. As being generated and being spirated are related, so are generating and spirating; but being generated and being spirated, which are signified through the relations of Filiation and of passive Spiration, constitute distinct Persons: therefore likewise generating and spirating, which are explained through Paternity and active Spiration, ought to constitute two distinct Persons.

I deny the major. For being generated and being spirated are opposed at least mediately, and therefore constitute diverse persons, namely the Son and the Holy Spirit. But generating and spirating are not opposed in any way, and therefore ought not to constitute diverse Persons.

You will say 3. In a most necessary being, to be is the same as to be able: but the divine Son can produce another Son: therefore He really produces Him. The minor is proved from St. Augustine, lib. 3. Contra Maximinum, who asserted that the Son of God is not equal to the Father, and whom Augustine thus sharply refuted in cap. 7.:

The matter is wholly gathered to this point, that God the Father either could beget for Himself an equal Son, or would not. If He could not, He is found weak; if He would not, envious; but both of these are false. Therefore the true Son is equal to God the Father; finally in cap. 12. he concludes thus: But far be it that, as you think, the Father is therefore more powerful than the Son, because the Father begot a Creature, while the Son did not beget the Creator (that is, another Son,) for it was not that He could not, but that it was not fitting:

therefore St. Augustine really judges that the Son of God could have begotten another Son like to Himself, whom nevertheless He did not beget, lest there be several divine Sons.

It is confirmed. There St. Augustine is wholly intent on proving that if the divine Father could not beget for Himself an equal Son, He was impotent, and that conversely, if He is omnipotent, He ought to have begotten for Himself an equal Son: therefore by parity of reasoning, if the Son could not beget another Son, He would not be omnipotent, nor consequently God; and so, in the mind of St. Augustine, the divine Son really could beget another son.

The Doctor answers in 1. dist. 20. qu. unic. n. 12. by denying the minor. As for the consequence of St. Augustine, he says that it holds only through an extrinsic argument, so that if the Father did not beget for Himself an equal Son, He would really not be omnipotent, not that omnipotence is the principle and reason why the Father can produce another Son, otherwise, since the Son and the Holy Spirit are equally omnipotent, They would also have to beget Sons; but that if the Father could not produce for Himself an equal Son, that impotence would argue in Him some defect, which certainly could not be other than a defect of omnipotence, since there was nothing else in the Father that could impede the production of an equal Son. But the same reason does not hold for the Son, since the negation of the production of another son cannot be traced back to a defect of His omnipotence, but to another reason, namely, that two adequate and infinite terms of the same faculty wholly contradict each other. And consequently, the divine Son did not produce another son for this reason, because He could not, or because He is not omnipotent, but because it was not fitting, or because the production of two Sons contradicts itself.

I answer 2. That St. Augustine there argues ad hominem; for since Maximinus conceded at the same time that the Son of God is the natural Son and yet that He was made and is a creature, it followed from this that there was some factible Son of God, who would be equal to the Father: therefore the Father was not omnipotent, if He could not make this Son equal and factible. But that this was the mind of St. Augustine is gathered from the following words, for he adds:

The divine generation would be immoderate, if the begotten Son begot a Grandson for the Father, because the Grandson Himself, unless He begot a great-grandson for His Grandfather, would, according to your wonderful wisdom, be called impotent. Likewise also He, if He did not beget a Grandson

for His Grandfather, and a great-grandson for His Grandfather, would not by you be called omnipotent, nor would the series of generation be fulfilled, if one were always born from another, nor would anyone perfect it, if one omnipotent did not suffice. And so He begot an omnipotent Son, since whatever He Himself does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

Third conclusion. — The three divine Persons are one God in number.

This is de fide, determined in the Councils: in the Nicene, lib. 2., where the holy Trinity is proclaimed undivided and indivisible; in the Sixth of Toledo, e. 1., In the Trinity there is so great a unity of substance, that it lacks plurality and retains equality, nor does less remain in the single persons than in all, nor more in all than in the single persons; and in the Eleventh of Toledo, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is spoken of in the singular. And below: Therefore each single person is affirmed and believed to be one God in the singular. All of which the Lateran Council embraces in the chapter Firmiter, saying:

that there is one only and true God... the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three indeed Persons, but one essence, substance, or nature wholly simple: the Father from no one, the Son from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit in like manner from both. The Father generating, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding.

This very thing the holy Fathers most steadfastly defend. First of all, Pope Damasus in his profession of Faith, where he anathematizes him who would divide God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, affirming that they are called Gods and not God, on account of the one Deity and power, which we believe to be the Father's and the Son's and the Holy Spirit's. Whence St. Epiphanius in the Ancoratus pointedly notes that the seraphim in Isaiah say: holy, holy, holy, not indeed holy ones, holy ones, holy ones, whereby they pronounce the celebrated singular, nor do they hide the number of the three, but thrice indeed they give sanctification, while uniformly and in the singular they utter the word, lest they name a multitude of gods.

This same truth the holy Fathers prove with very many arguments. First indeed from the Simplicity of God: for the Divine simplicity would not be most strict, if it were not a unique and indivisible essence, as is clear from the example of human nature, which in all men is not properly and truly simple, because it consists of many natures really and numerically distinct. This argument St. Dionysius touched upon, lib. De Divinis Nominibus cap. 1. In nearly all the sacred books, he says, we notice the Divinity to be holily proclaimed, namely as singular and unique, and the simplicity and unity of that excellent individual. With him St. Gregory of Nyssa agrees at the end of the book ad Ablabium:

Since therefore, he says, it distinguishes the hypostases of the holy Trinity by the reason of cause, requiring one indeed to be without cause, another truly to be from a cause, while the Divine nature is found to be free of variation and division in every consideration, for that reason there is properly one Deity and one God, and all the other names fitting God are uttered in the singular.

St. Athanasius confirms it in the first dialogue De Trinitate contra Anomeum. The essence, he says, has no property not common to the hypostases which are subject to the essence, nor does it admit the multiplication of number, since it is unique and singular.

Secondly they prove it from the infinity of the divine essence: for an infinite essence does not admit another as its consort, because it would lack the perfection of the other, which would be possible in the same species; wherefore each created essence is numerically circumscribed and finite, nor does it admit the perfection of another. But what is not circumscribed, says the praised Nyssenus, is not numbered; and what is not numbered cannot be considered in a multitude. Whence, since the divine Essence is not circumscribed nor finite, it cannot be manifold. From this the holy Fathers infer that the divine Essence has no more or less perfection in three persons than in one alone.

This St. Augustine admirably develops, lib. 7. De Trinit. cap. 1., 5. and 6., where, after proposing various reasons why three human persons are three men, while the three divine Persons are not three Gods, he finally concludes in cap. 6.:

One man is not as much as three men together, and some two men are more than one man; and in equal statues there is more gold in three together than in single statues, and there is less gold in one than in two; but in God it is not so, for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together are not a greater essence than the Father alone or the Son alone: but those three substances, or persons, if they are so to be called, together are equal to each one singly.

With him agrees St. Bernard, Epist. 190. to Innocent.

The whole, he says, is the Father, which the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are; the whole is the Son, which He Himself and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are; the whole is the Holy Spirit, which He Himself and the Father and the Son are; and the whole one is the whole, neither superabounding in three nor diminished in each one, for they do not divide among themselves particularly the true and supreme good, which they are, since neither do they possess it participially, but this very thing they are essentially.

Thirdly, finally, the holy Fathers prove it from the supreme Unity and Uniformity of God. For, says St. Fulgentius, lib. De Fide ad Petrum cap. 1., the Trinity itself would not be one God, if, just as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinguished from one another by the property of persons, so They had also been separated by a diversity of natures. Whence he adds: For this reason therefore we rightly believe and say that the three are one God, because there is altogether one eternity, one immensity, and the divinity of the three Persons is one numerically.

This very thing St. Ambrose admirably develops, lib. 5. De Fide cap. 1., where, solving this objection of the Arians saying: If you confess the Father and the Son to be of one substance, you do not introduce one God but two Gods, because those who are of one substance appear not as one God but as two Gods, just as two men, etc., he answers:

We approve by the Lord's words, that where there are several, there is a difference either of natures or of wills and operations. Finally, that they may be refuted by their own testimonies, two men are so called, because although they are of one nature, nevertheless they differ by right of birth, and in time, and in thought, and in work, and in place; and therefore one man cannot be said in the signification and number of two, because there is no unity where there is diversity. But one God is said, and the glory and fullness of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is signified.

Here I will not weave again all those scholastic arguments, which I have sufficiently and more than sufficiently inculcated in proving that the plurality of gods is impossible, and hence that the unity of the divinity is numerical and singular; nevertheless here some holy Fathers are to be explained, who seem to assert that among the divine Persons there obtains only a unity of species.

You will say. Therefore the holy Fathers affirm that the divine Persons agree with one another in the unity of the Divinity, just as two men agree in the unity of humanity: but two men so agree in specific unity, and are really two men numerically distinct from one another: therefore in like manner the three divine Persons agree only specifically, and will be three Gods numerically distinct. The major is proved, for St. Gregory of Nyssa, lib. De Fide to Simplicius, says: In the divine dogmas, being begotten makes no difference of nature, but just as in Adam and Abel there is one humanity, or human nature, in their manner also in the Father and in the Son the Deity, or divine nature, is one. Likewise St. Justin in the Expositione fidei, just as Adam, he says, although not begotten in the same manner as his descendants, nevertheless has a common essence with them, so there is no reason why, on account of the name of the unbegotten, the essence common to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit should be torn apart. Similarly St. Athanasius Contra Macedonium, in the first Dialogue:

But Paul, Peter, and Timothy are three, he says; the heretics think that the Son is not consubstantial with the Father, because He is not the Father either: and on account of the difference of persons they introduce differences of substances; how then can Abel and Adam be called consubstantial, since neither can Abel be Adam, nor Adam Abel? But if the difference of persons does not destroy the identity of nature in men, how will it not be impious, for that reason, to think that the supernatural substance of God is diversified?

From which it is clear that the holy Fathers asserted that among the divine Persons there is found only a specific unity, not indeed a numerical one, and hence that They can be called three Gods numerically distinct.

I deny the minor. For that was not the opinion of the praised Fathers, that they should establish an absolute parity between the three divine Persons and three men: but since they were dealing against the heretics, who said that the Son is a substance of a different kind from the Father, and consequently unequal, just as a creature of a different kind is unequal to the Creator, the holy Fathers refuted them thus: if the Son is truly and properly a natural Son, He must necessarily be equal and of the same substance with the Father, just as a begetting man and a begotten man are of the same substance and essence: therefore since you admit that the Word is the Son of God, you must also necessarily confess that the divine Persons are of the same substance. But by a prudent counsel, the Fathers then pronounced nothing about the numerical and real unity of the divine nature, the mention of which would undoubtedly have given the Adversaries occasion for many sophisms, by which they might blunt the force of the arguments. The Fathers therefore judged it enough to bring the disputation to this point, that the Adversaries could not deny the specific identity and equality of substance among the divine Persons; which once admitted, it was easiest for them to prove the numerical identity by those arguments already adduced by us. But that this is really the opinion of the praised Fathers is gathered sufficiently and more than sufficiently, both from what has been said and from what will be said, in which it will appear that they assert that the three divine Persons are one God in number.

From the preceding Question it is clear that various heretics have shamefully erred concerning the equality of the three divine persons: but of all, Arius wandered from the truth most disastrously, who had many forerunners and followers of his error. That this may appear more evidently

Note 1. Tertullian above all carried the torch of the Arian error; for he judged that the Word of God was then begotten by the Father, and was made the Son, when He fashioned all created things out of nothing, and he used this very manner of speech. Thus he testifies in cap. 7. Contra Praxeam:

"This is," he says, "the perfect nativity of the Word (by which, to be sure, He brought forth the Word itself in its own species and adornment, when He said: let there be light), while it proceeds from God, being fashioned by Him first for His thought under the name Sophia: the Lord founded me at the beginning of His ways; then begotten unto effect; when He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him. Thence making him equal to Himself, of whom, by proceeding, the Son was made first-begotten, as begotten before all things and only-begotten, as alone properly begotten of God from the womb of His own heart.

He builds up things no less false, indeed even more absurd, against the eternity of the Son and His equality in lib. Contra Hermogenem cap. 3., where he asserts that God was indeed from eternity, and always God, yet was not always Father:

"The Father," he says, "God and Judge: He is God, yet not the same Father and Judge always, because He could always be God, but never Father before the Son, nor Judge before the offense; there was, moreover, a time when both the offense and the Son did not exist, which would make the Lord Judge and Father.

These words contain the same error which Arius afterwards disseminated, which St. Athanasius demonstrates from his book, which he entitled Thalia, in the book De Synodis:

"He who lacks a beginning," Arius used to say, "constituted the Son as the beginning of the things that were made, and brought him forth and adopted him for himself as his own Son; he has nothing of God according to the hypostasis of his property, for he is not equal, nor even consubstantial. The Father is alien to the Son according to substance, since He is without beginning. Understand that the Monad was at the beginning, namely the Father: but the Binary, namely the Son and the Holy Spirit, did not exist before it came to be; indeed, with the Son not existing, the Father is God; finally, when the Son was not, he came to be by the Father's will, etc.

Note 2. That Arius, born in Libya, namely that part which borders on Egypt, because he was a participant in the Meletian schism, was first cut off from communion by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, as Baronius proves from the acts of the same Peter the Martyr, at the year 301., but afterwards reconciled to the Church, was made a deacon by the same Peter. But when he had again returned to the schism, he was again deprived of communion. Nay more, Peter, arrested in the persecution of Maximinus, while he was in chains, learned from Christ that Arius was a desperate case; wherefore he warned Achillas and Alexander, whom he knew by divine revelation to be destined as his successors, never to receive Arius into communion anywhere. Nevertheless, when he had feigned repentance, under Bishop Alexander he was made a priest, and was appointed curate of a certain Church, or Parish, named Bauculis, in the city of Alexandria. But when that Alexander, disputing in a certain assembly of Clerics about the mystery of the Trinity, explained more subtly in what manner the Unity was in the Trinity, Arius began to contend against him and to impute the Sabellian error to him. Hence it came about that around the year 317., as Orosius notes in lib. 7. C. 28., he began to disseminate and defend his heresy. At first there adhered to him seven Priests, twelve Deacons, one Bishop, namely the second of Pentapolis, as well as seven hundred virgins, as Epiphanius teaches in Heresy 69., all of whom Alexander cast out of the Church. Thence he wrote encyclical Letters to each of the Bishops, seventy in number, upon receiving which, the Bishops, each according to his own talent and character, replied variously. Some approving the deed, and urging him to persevere in it; others, on the contrary, began openly to profess themselves patrons of Arius, and to admonish him to receive the ejected back into favor, especially Eusebius of Nicomedia, to whom at length Eusebius of Caesarea and Patrophilus of Scythopolis adhered, who, convening Synods, restored Arius in full, as Sozomenus narrates in lib. 1. cap. 15.

Hence it came to pass that the fire kindled in the East by the continual bellows of altercations and wranglings took on greater growth day by day, and already the Christian Religion itself and the most sacred mysteries of the faith had come into contempt and mockery among the Gentiles, and the same were publicly traduced through the stages and theatres, as Eusebius reports in lib. 2. De Vita Constantini.

To settle these dissensions, the Emperor Constantine, first by letters sent to Alexander and Arius through Hosius, Bishop of Corduba in the Spains, urged them to concord. When Hosius accomplished nothing by these, he convened a Synod at Alexandria, as he had in his instructions, against the new heretics springing up. But when no hope of recovering peace and concord seemed to remain, Constantine, sending letters to the Bishops everywhere, convened the first Ecumenical Synod at Nicaea in Bithynia in the year of Christ 325., at which 318 Bishops gathered, and in which Arius was condemned, his error proscribed, and a profession of faith was published, by which the Son is asserted to be Consubstantial with the Father.

Note 3. That the heresy condemned in the Synod of Nicaea, and recanted by Arius and his disciples, gradually gathering strength, was spread far and wide not only through the spaces of regions and in the number of men, but was also divided into various sects and factions, and above all into three factions: the first of which was that of the Anomoeans, who openly said that the Son was a creature, and in no way like the Father, much less equal and co-equal; which was the very heresy of Arius himself: the second, that of the Semiarians, who by no means asserted that the Son was consubstantial with the Father, but only like Him in substance: the third, finally, lying between the two, was that of some who held that the Son was neither consubstantial, nor like in substance, but only like, and who either denied that He was a creature from the order of the rest, or did not dare to profess it openly, as Epiphanius, Athanasius, Hilarius, etc. report. Or, as Rufinus writes in lib. 1. Historiae cap. 25., this triple division of the Arian sect was marked by a triple and diverse name: for some were Eunomians and Anomoeans, who made the Son like in nothing at all; others, Arians, who said He was like by the largesse of grace, not by property of nature; the rest, Macedonians, who asserted Him like in all things; these Macedonians were also called Pneumatomachi, that is, impugners of the Holy Spirit, because they denied His divinity, and asserted that He was a pure creature. Two things, therefore, must chiefly be established in this Question, namely, the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit must be proved, and their consubstantiality with the Father must be defended; therefore let it be

First conclusion. — The Son is truly consubstantial with the Father and true God.

This is of faith, determined in various Councils and expressed in all the Catholic professions of faith, and in the first place all the testimonies of the Old and New Testament set out in the preceding Question for proving the plurality of persons in God prove it.

It is proved, moreover, by manifest oracles of the New Testament, the first of which is that celebrated confession of Peter, Matth. 16. Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God; for by asserting Him to be the Son of the living God, he professed Him to be the natural Son of God.

Add. that that divine Son is also elsewhere called the Only-begotten, Ioannis 3., and the Proper, ad Rom. 8.: but if He were only the adopted Son of God, as the Arians replied, He would be called neither only-begotten nor proper; for many are the adopted sons: moreover, if Peter had pronounced Christ to be only the adopted Son of God, there would be no reason why his confession should be preferred to the others, and why he should be proclaimed blessed by Christ on account of it; for those who thought Him to be Elias, or one of the Prophets, also confessed the adopted Son of God; Peter, therefore, must have acknowledged Him to be truly the natural Son; but if Christ is the natural Son of God, He must necessarily be in the same nature, that is, of the same nature with His principle; for in any other nature He could be nothing but adopted.

It is confirmed. from the fact that Christ Himself testified on many occasions that He is the true and natural Son of God: whence in Ioannis 19. they accused Him of having made, or proclaimed, Himself the Son of God: They said: We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God. Whence Ioann. 5.: The Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He did not only break the Sabbath, but also said God was His Father, making Himself equal to God: but Christ nowhere excused Himself for having said He was God, or the Son of God: nay, in that very chapter He adds: Amen I say to you, the Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He sees the Father doing: for whatsoever He does, these the Son also does in like manner. By which words He not only does not answer the Jews as slanderers, but rather again asserts Himself to be the Son of God, and to have the same operation and power with the Father.

The Arians reply: that Christ excused Himself before the Jews who wished to stone Him, because He had said He was the Son of God; for when the Jews had said, Ioann. 10.: For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God, He excuses Himself by that testimony of Scripture: I said: you are gods, whence He inferred: If He called them gods to whom the word of God was made, namely the Prophets and the Patriarchs, why with a stronger right is He not called the Son of God, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? By which argument Christ names Himself the Son of God in the same way as the just and the Prophets; and so He proved Himself to be only the adopted Son.

But such was not Christ's reasoning, as Hilarius noted very well in 7. De Trinit.; rather He argued from the lesser to the greater in this way: if the Just and the Prophets can be called sons of God, how much more He whom the Father sanctified in a peculiar manner in the unity of the divine person, that is, through the humanity assumed by the Word? Chrysostom adds that Christ indeed first answered these things to the Jews, so that He might blunt their calumny verbally by saying: in vain you say that I have blasphemed by calling myself the Son of God, since the same name is given to those to whom the word of God was made, whom you nevertheless hold to be just and holy men: but once the calumny was repulsed, He afterwards showed by His works that He was not only the adopted Son, but also true God, in these words: *If I do not the works

of my Father, believe me not, that you may know that I am in the Father and the Father in me*.

Add. that the Jews always remained in the same opinion, that He had made Himself equal to God; for the Evangelist adds: They sought to apprehend Him, certainly for the same cause for which they earlier wanted to stone Him; and they would without doubt have laid aside that intention, if they had judged that He was only asserting Himself to be an adopted son, since this appellation is attributed by Scripture to any just man.

It is confirmed 2. The true Son is the same as the natural Son: but Christ is called the true Son of God in 1. Ioann. last, That we may be in his true Son, this is the true God: therefore He is the natural Son. Then Moses, as a just and holy man, was the adopted son of God; and yet Paul ad Hebraeos 8. calls him a servant in comparison to Christ, whom he names the Son: Moses indeed, he says, was faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ as the Son in his own house: therefore Christ was not the Son of God by reason of adoption and justification, but by reason of eternal and natural generation. Finally, the Angels, on account of their eminent holiness, are sometimes called sons of God in the old Testament: but Christ is called the Son for a different reason than the Angel: For to which of the Angels, says Paul ad Hebraeos 1., did he at any time say: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? Which, however, was said to Christ. It is, therefore, a consequence that He is the true and natural Son, born by proper generation.

Proof 2. From that passage of Ioannis 10. I and the Father are one; for that word, One, in the neuter gender, without another substantive noun, signifies the same as one being; and of one being there is a single essence. Since, therefore, the Father and the Son are not one by accident, because God is incapable of accident, as also of change; nor are they one by relation — nay, they are distinguished personally and really by relations — St. Augustine rightly infers, in book De Trinitate chapter 2., that they are one in substance.

The Arians reply, both the old and the new, namely the Transylvanians, that the Father and the Son are indeed one, not in essence or substance, but by consent of minds and unanimous concord of wills. And they confirm it from Ioann. 17., where Christ prays that all the faithful may be one, as thou, Father, in me and I in thee; that they also may be one in us: and again: I have given them the glory which thou gavest me, that they may be one, as we also are one: but the faithful among themselves and with Christ the Lord are not one in substance and essence, but in consent of faith and concord of charity: therefore, from the aforesaid oracle, the Father and the Son are not proved to be one in essence, but in concord of wills.

Against this the holy Fathers reply, as many as have written on the divine Trinity: first, that in the sacred letters, whenever several things are said to be one in such a way that it is not added what kind of one they are, the same nature and essence is signified, because, as the cited St. Augustine notes in cap. 3., one and being are convertible. One being, moreover, is the same as a single essence, which is the abstract of being, the foundation of which signification he takes from 1. ad Corinth. 6.: He who cleaves to a harlot is made one body; he did not say one absolutely, but one body: and again: He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit; he does not say one simpliciter, but one Spirit: nor will any place be found in which several things are said to be simpliciter one, without explaining what kind of one they are, unless they are one in substance and essence. Nor does it matter that in the same place it is said of the faithful that they may be one, without adding what kind of one, for it is sufficiently understood that that unity and identity is only through consent and mutual concord, both with one another and with God, when it is said: That they all may be one, and that they also may be one in us: for it is openly certain that the faithful cannot be one with one another by unity of essence, nor with God; whence this unity cannot be understood of the unity of essence, as the unity of Christ with the Father must be understood.

Add. that in that very context Christ wished to prove that He had the same power with the Father, and that therefore no one could snatch the sheep out of His hand, because He and the Father are one, and no one can snatch from the hand of the Father: whence it necessarily follows that they are of one and the same nature and will. Thus reason St. Chrysostom Ioann. 60., Hilarius lib. 7. De Trin., Ambrose lib. 3. De Spiritu Sancto, cap. 18., Augustinus Tract. 18. in Ioannem. And they confirm it from the fact that, if Christ the Lord had meant not one in power, but only one in concord, He could not have proved from that that no one could snatch the sheep out of His hand, unless the unity of essence constituted it.

Proof 3. From that passage of prima Ioannis 5.: There are three who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one: and there are three who give testimony on earth: the spirit, the water and the Blood, and these three are one. By which words St. John signifies that there are three witnesses in heaven, not indeed Angels — for they are more than three — but divine witnesses, namely the Persons of the Trinity, who are one, that is, one Divinity, essence and substance, as all the holy Fathers interpret.

The Arians reply: First, that those words There are three who give testimony in heaven are read by St. Jerome alone.

But this is an open lie, for Pope Higinius in Epist. 1., and Cyprianus in lib. De Unitate Ecclesiae, etc. also read it so.

They reply 2. That in the same way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are said to be one by St. John, as the Spirit, the Water and the Blood: but these three are not one in essence, but only in testimony, because they testify the same thing, namely, that Christ the Lord endured the torments not by natural and human, but by divine power: the Spirit indeed, because, crying out strongly after so many tortures, He expired; the Water likewise and the Blood, which flowed from His side when He was already dead; wherefore the Centurion, seeing and hearing these things, rightly exclaimed, Marci 15.: Indeed this man was the Son of God. Therefore also the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are only one by unity of testimony, and not one by unity of substance and essence.

I answer 1. That that phrase, and these three are one, when the discourse is about the Spirit, the Water and the Blood, is not read in some exemplars. Second, that in the Greek idiom it is not read simpliciter, and these three are one, but and these three are in one, namely in one testimony; but of the three heavenly witnesses it is read simpliciter, these three are one, by which it is signified that they are one by unity of essence and substance.

Proof 4. From all those texts of Sacred Scripture in which the divinity of the Son is expressly set forth, such as Ioannis 1.: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, whence St. Ambrose, lib. 1. De Fide Trinitatis: Our Fisherman excluded all heresies in these four or five words; for what was in the beginning is not included in time, is not preceded in the beginning: therefore let Arius hold his peace, who denies that the Son is coeternal with the Father. But what was with God is not confounded by commixture; rather it is distinguished by the solid perfection of the abiding God with the Father, so that Sabellius and Photinus, who acknowledged no distinction among the divine persons, may be struck silent. But if the Word was God of sempiternal divinity, in the Father and the Son there is inseparable unity and consubstantiality, so that Eudoxius and Eunomius blush: behold how within one text he rightly concluded all, so as to render them incapable of fraud, although they were useless against captiousness.

It is confirmed. from that text of Isaiah 45.: They shall adore thee, and shall make supplication to thee; only in thee is God, and there is no God besides thee; truly thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Saviour: by which the divinity of Christ is openly signified. Secondly, from that text of Baruch 3.: This is our God, and no other shall be accounted of in comparison of him; he adds, however: After this he was seen upon earth, etc. who is over all things, God blessed for ever. We shall bring forth in passing many other contexts of Scripture hinting at the divinity of the Son in the course of this Work.

Since, however, the Arians shamelessly boasted that none of the Fathers had remembered the divinity and consubstantiality of the Son before the controversy arose, it is worthwhile to bring forward some Fathers of the nascent Church who professed the divinity and consubstantiality of the three divine Persons: these are chiefly Clemens Romanus, lib. 8. Constit. Apostol., Ignatius in the Epistola ad Antiochenos, ad Philadelphos, ad Philippenses, Dionysius Areopagita, lib. De mystica Theologia cap. 2. and lib. De divinis Nominibus cap. 1., Iustinus, lib. De Fide and in the Apologia ad Antonium and in the Dialogo cum Tryphone., Irenaeus, lib. 3. c. 8. 9. 16. 19. 20. and lib. 1. cap. 11., Clemens Alexandrinus, lib. 1. Paedag. cap. 6. and lib. ult. cap. ult., Tertullianus, lib. Contra Praxeum, Cyprianus, lib. 2. ad Quirinum cap. 6., and other orthodox writers of the earlier centuries before the Council of Nicaea: after whom so many Doctors wrote for this truth that it would be long and useless to enumerate them.

The Arians object first the various contexts of sacred Scripture in which the divine Son is said to be created and a creature: thus Proverbiorum 8. we read in Greek of Wisdom, The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways in his works; similarly, Colossians cap. 1. Christ is called the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, that is, the first and most excellent of all creatures, as the Arians interpret it; therefore he is not truly God, nor consubstantial with the eternal Father.

I deny the consequence. and to the first context I answer 1. that the Greek version in this place does not seem to agree with the Hebrew text, which in place of "He created" has "He possessed me", as our Vulgate expresses it: But between possession (says Jerome, Epist. 139., in which he treats the same place) and creation there is much difference; for possession signifies that the Son was always in the Father and the Father in the Son: but creation is the beginning of the condition of him who previously was not: hence Basil of Seleucia, Orat. 1. De Adamo in Paradisum translato, says: Man was made the possessor of those things of which he had already been the creator.

I answer secondly. that since in Christ there are two natures, namely the human and the divine, in a certain

Certain things are attributed to him according to one nature which do not belong to the other; and so according to the divine nature he is truly the uncreated Wisdom, but according to the human he can be called the created Wisdom, as very many holy Fathers interpret, especially Athanasius, Orat. 3., where, treating this passage, The Lord created me, he says: We must not so think that the whole Word is by its own nature a creature; but that he put on a body that is a creature, and that for our sake he was created by God.

Or, as Ambrose says, lib. 3. De Fide cap. 5.: The Arians, like Jewish tavern-keepers, mix water with wine, because they confound the divine and the human generation, referring to the divinity what was said of the flesh. For this reason St. Augustine lib. 1. De Trinitate, cap. 11. commends this rule for understanding the Scriptures concerning the Son of God, that we should distinguish what in them sounds according to the form of God, in which he is equal to the Father, and what according to the form of the servant, which he received from the Father.

Similarly I answer to the 2. context, that Christ, as incarnate Wisdom, is called the firstborn, because he was beforehand destined by God, for all things are on account of Christ; and his incarnation was, as it were, the motive for God to fashion man and the world.

They object 2. those texts of Scripture in which the Son is said to be inferior to and subject to the Father, such as Ioannis 14.: The Father is greater than I. And Matth. ultimo: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth: and ad Philippenses 1.: Made obedient unto death: therefore he was not truly equal to the Father in divinity, authority and power.

I answer 1. That here all these things are indeed true according to the assumed humanity, but not according to the divinity, or, as St. Athanasius speaks in the Creed, Equal to the Father according to Divinity, etc. For in putting on humanity he also put on servitude: whence after the Apostle had said, He did not think it robbery to be equal to God, he adds: He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, etc. And in this way it can be verified that he was subject to the Father and that authority in heaven and in earth was given to him, which he did not claim for himself by right of human nativity.

I answer 2. that the Son is also said by some Fathers to be less than the Father according to divinity, namely inasmuch as he has a principle from the Father, who is therefore called greater because he lacks a principle: thus St. Hilary, although he explains the aforementioned passage of the assumed human nature in 9. lib. De Trinit., nevertheless also interprets it of the divinity, saying: Therefore the Father is greater than the Son, and plainly greater, to whom he gives as much being as he himself is: or, as Sabadius more briefly has it, lib. Contra Arianos: The Father, he says, is greater than I, rightly greater, because he alone is here the author without an author. But St. Augustine explains the matter most clearly of all, lib. De Fide et Symbolo, saying that Christ said these things partly on account of the administration of the assumed man; partly because the Son owes to the Father what he is, owing this also to the Father, that he is equal or like to the same Father: but the Father owes to no one whatever he is.

You will object 3. True divinity does not suffer a defect of knowledge: but in the Son such a defect of knowledge and ignorance is found; as is evident from that text of Mark 15., where Christ, speaking of the day of judgment: But of that day or hour no man knoweth, neither the Angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father.

I answer 1. That St. Ambrose, lib. 5. De Fide cap. T., believed that the codices of the Gospel had been falsified by the Arians, because that phrase, "nor the Son", is absent from the ancient copies; Jerome also, in the Commentario ad cap. 21. Matthaei, says that in certain Latin codices "nor the Son" was added, although it is not found in the Greek exemplars and especially in those of Adamantius and Pierius.

Secondly I say that this restriction of knowledge in the Son is to be understood of him according to the humanity specifically, not reduplicatively, that is, not denying that the humanity of Christ knew the aforesaid day, but that he did not know it with human knowledge; for he did not know it except through knowledge divinely infused, or through revelation: whence Athanasius, Orat. 3., where he at length weighs this oracle, says:

It is manifest that he knows the end of all these things, inasmuch as he is the Word; but inasmuch as he is man, he is ignorant, for it is proper to man to be ignorant, and especially of such things: but this is peculiar to the kindness of our Saviour: for after he was made man, he was not ashamed, on account of the flesh, to say, I do not know, so as to show that he, who as God knows, does not know carnally.

So likewise very many holy Fathers think, especially Hilary, Augustine, etc.

They object 1. the various opinions of the holy Fathers; first of all St. Ignatius' Epistola ad Magnesianos, where he says of Christ: He announced his one and only true God as his Father: therefore, they say, the Father alone is the true God, not so the Son. Secondly, the Epistola ad Tharsenses, where he likewise says of Christ: He is not that one who is God over all things, but his Son. Thirdly, the same author's Epistola ad Philippenses, where he proves that the Father is one God by that text of Deuteronomy 6.: The Lord thy God is one God, and about the middle he introduces Christ speaking with Satan at the time of the temptation in these words: I know him, namely God, I acknowledge one only, to whom I do not deny service, from whom thou, Apostate, wast made; I am not Antitheus, that is, contrary to God, I confess his eminence. From which the Arians gather that the Father alone is God, to whom service is due.

I answer. that by these and other similar words of Ignatius the other persons are not excluded by him from the fellowship of Divinity with the Father; nay, he himself openly affirms the Divinity of the Son in the cited Epistola ad Tharsenses; for he adds of Christ: How then is such a one a pure man, having at last from Mary the beginning of his existence, and not rather God the Word and the only-begotten Son, of whom it was said: in the beginning was the Word? Whence also in the earlier words Ignatius deliberately did not say: because he is not God over all things, but because he is not that one who is God over all things; so that the pronoun "that one" designated the person of the Son distinct from the Father, who is therefore especially called over all things, because he is doubtless the fount of all Divinity. We shall solve the other cavils and objections of the Arians in the course of this Treatise.

Second conclusion. — The Holy Spirit is true God, and therefore consubstantial with the Father and the Son.

This is inferred from the preceding conclusion, and is specially proved by those texts of Scripture, first those by which it is commanded that baptism be conferred, In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: Matth. ultimo, and Titus 3.: He saved us by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Spirit: from which St. Gregory of Nazianzus gathers: If the Holy Spirit is not God to be adored, how does he make me God through baptism? As if he would say: if I am sanctified through baptism and, by the invocation of the Holy Spirit, am made God by participation of divine holiness: therefore he is God to be adored, because no one can remit sins, nor sanctify, except God alone.

Secondly, Acts 5. Peter thus addresses Ananias: Why hath Satan tempted thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? soon after he declares to whom he had lied: Thou hast not lied to men, but to God, where Epiphanius, Heresy 74.: Therefore God is from God, and the Holy Spirit, he says, is God, to whom they lied who had embezzled from the price of the field.

Proof 2. To have a temple and to be the beatitude of a rational creature, and its ultimate end, belongs to God alone: but these things are attributed in Scripture to the Holy Spirit; for of the first it is said 1. ad Corinth. 6.: Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? And of the other, 1. Peter 1.: the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, on whom the Angels desire to look. But he on whom the Angels desire to look is their Beatitude and ultimate end: therefore, etc.

Thirdly. He is truly God to whom the operations and properties of Divinity belong: but all those belong to the Holy Spirit: for first, it is a property of Divinity to be everywhere; but at Sapientiae primo: The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world. Secondly, creation is the work of God alone: but to the Holy Spirit is attributed Psalm. 13.: Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created: Judith. 16.: Thou sentest thy Spirit and they were created, etc. Thirdly, to raise up and quicken the dead is an operation proper to God, as is evident from that text of Ioannis 5.: As the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth, so the Son quickeneth whom he will: but this power belongs to the Holy Spirit, for as St. Paulus speaks, Rom. 8.: He that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Finally, it belongs to God alone to foretell and announce future things through the Prophets: but from 2. Peter 1. cap.: Holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Spirit: therefore the Holy Spirit is true God, since indeed he has operations proper to God; not by ministry alone, as the Macedonians once said, but by authority; for Paul says, 1. ad Corinth. 10.: All these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will. Whence it must be inferred with St. Fulgentius, lib. 3. Ad Trasimundum cap. 25.:

Let it be said therefore, he says, if he who is not God could fix the power of the heavens: if he who is not God can sanctify in the regeneration of baptism: if he who is not God can bestow Charity: if he who is not God can dwell in believers: if he who is not God can give grace: if he who is not God can have the members of Christ as a temple; then the Holy Spirit will worthily be denied to be God... But if these things were never possible to a creature, and are found in the Holy Spirit, to whom, however, they belong to God alone, we must not say that he is naturally different from the Father and the Son, whom we cannot find different in the power of works, and so from the unity of the work the unity of power is to be acknowledged.

The Macedonians object: First, that text of John: All things were made by him, namely by the Word: therefore the Holy Spirit also was made by him. Secondly, that text of Rom. 8.: The Spirit asketh for us: but if he were God, he would not ask, but would give: therefore he is not true God. Thirdly, Ioann. 16.: Whatsoever he shall hear he shall speak, and he shall announce to you: but he who must hear and be instructed, so as to speak to others, is not God: therefore, etc.

I answer to the first. with Nazianzen, Orat. 5. on Theology, that not all things were made through the Word, but whatsoever things were made; and that the Holy Spirit is outside the order of those things which were made, for otherwise the Father also would have been made through the Word.

To the second I say with St. Augustine, Epistle 121., that Paul asserts that the Holy Spirit asketh for us, because he makes us ask, aiding our infirmity with his graces and helps, so that we may ask: whence Paul, Galatians 4.: God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father.

To the third I say with St. Basil, lib. 1. Contra Eunomium, that the Holy Spirit hears from the Father and the Son those things which he speaks and announces, not through instruction and a discipline begged from one wiser and more learned, but through the communication of that very essence and divine knowledge which he received from the Father and the Son through eternal procession.

AN UNITAS TRIUM DIVINARUM PERSONARUM CONSUBSTANTIALITATIS VOCABULO A SANCTIS PATRIBUS RECTE EXPLICATA FUERIT.

The word ὁμοούσιος, or Consubstantial, was used by the holy Fathers, above all in the Nicene Synod, to express the unity of essence and substance of the three persons; for this word condemns Sabellius as much as Arius: Sabellius indeed, because since the same thing is not consubstantial with itself, if the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were one person, they would not be consubstantial; but Arius, because if the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were distinct persons, they would not be ὁμοούσιοι, or consubstantial, but at most, according to Arius, they would be ὁμοιούσιοι, that is, of similar substance; and according to Sabellius, ὁμοούσιοι, that is, of one substance; whence Epiphanius, Haeresi 69.: As the serpent, he says, flees the smell of bitumen, as it flees the breath of the hind, or hyacinth stones, or the fumigation of storax; so Arius and Sabellius hold in abhorrence that constant truth, the profession of the consubstantial. Wherefore Marius Victorinus, in his little work on the word ὁμοούσιος, affirms that it was divinely discovered: and St. Athanasius, in the book De Synodo, divinely calls it a Column, or Pillar, in which the impiety of those, namely of the Arians, is proscribed, and as it were a trophy is set up over it, conquered and prostrated. Pope Liberius likewise agrees, Epist. 11. ad Orientales, about the middle, concerning the Nicene faith, where he speaks thus: What is comprised under the name consubstantial, like a firm and inexpugnable bulwark, beats back and represses all the onslaughts and engines of God. Not only, moreover, did Catholics use this word, but also heretics older than the Nicene Synod. For St. Athanasius relates, in the book De Synodis Ariminensi et Seleuciensi, that Paul of Samosata, who asserted that Christ was not begotten of God from eternity, but had His origin only in time, from Mary, used this argument, that unless it were so, it would follow that He was consubstantial with the Father; and so that there would be three substances, one primary and two derived from it. He interpreted consubstantiality, namely, in the way it is found in creatures and corporeal things, in which, that is, from one substance another, distinct and separate, is propagated. Whence the same St. Athanasius affirms, at the end of the same book, that the bishops, who to the number of seventy — or, as St. Hilary writes, eighty — gathered at Antioch against Paul

of Samosata decreed that the Son is not ὁμοούσιον, that is, consubstantial with the Father, namely in the sense in which Paul of Samosata had understood it: whence St. Hilary, in the book De Synodis, toward the end,

Samosatenus confessed ὁμοούσιον badly, he says; but did the Arians deny it any better? Eighty bishops once rejected it; but three hundred and eighteen recently received it. Those disapproved it against the heretic; and so, both in approving and in disapproving, both parties established one and the same thing. Why do we compare things well established?

Now that this was the cause of the sanctioning and using of the word by the Nicene Fathers, St. Athanasius relates in the book De Decretis Synodi Nicaenae that when the Catholic bishops in the Nicene Synod deliberated among themselves by what formula of words they might frame the true profession of faith, so as to extinguish the Arian treachery, first it came into their mind to say that the Son is God of God, only-begotten; but when Eusebius of Nicomedia, who defended and cherished the party of the Arians, had warned his followers that they had no reason to fear assenting to this determination, because all created things were likewise from God, the Fathers, noticing this, added that the Son is from the substance of the Father; but when this addition also pleased the Arians, they subjoined that the Son is the power and image of the Father, and like Him in all things and immutable; seeing, however, that the Arians would not decline to subscribe even to this, then, to shake and crush their heresy, they used the name ὁμοούσιον, affirming that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, so that He might be believed not only like Him, but altogether of the same nature and substance with Him.

Indeed, the occasion for using this word was furnished by Eusebius of Nicomedia himself, as St. Ambrose affirms, lib. 3. De Fide, cap. 7.: for one of his letters was brought to the Fathers, the one which he directed to his followers, in which he warned them not to confess the Son as true God, because this was to confess Him consubstantial with the Father, which he judged most contrary to his own opinion: For, says St. Ambrose, why would they be unwilling to call the Son ὁμοούσιον with the Father, unless because they are unwilling to confess Him the true Son of God? Just as their own author Eusebius of Nicomedia declared in his letter, saying: if we say that He is the true and uncreated Son of God, we begin to confess Him ὁμοούσιον with the Father. When this letter had been read in the Nicene Council, the Fathers placed this Word in the statement of the faith, because they saw that it was a terror to their adversaries, so that, as it were with a sword drawn by themselves, they might cut off the head of their nefarious Heresy. Whence St. Gregory of Nazianzus rightly notes, Orat. 49., that the Arians admitted all other words, by which they pretended to profess the Divinity of the Son, except ὁμοούσιον: They could, he says, have named ὁμοούσιον, like the rest, verbatim, if they had had a way to pervert it, according to their sense, to another meaning. But when they saw themselves caught in this word, they wanted no mention at all to be made of this matter: lest either by professing they should be believed, or by believing they should seem to profess, excusing themselves with a subtle device, that either it was not written, or that God ought not to be said to be in substance, lest He be believed corporeal, etc. Or, as St. Athanasius adds in the book De Synodo Ariminensi: The refined account of this word, he says, since it convicts the pretence of all of them, if indeed they say that He is from God, also shuts out their subtle arguments, by which they circumvent the simple. Certainly, since they can adulterate and change all things with sophistical calumnies at their pleasure, they dread this single expression alone, as the one which convicts their heresy; and this the Fathers set in writing and opposed as a bulwark and citadel against all their impious inventions.

Therefore the Arians employed all their engines and onslaughts to abolish that distinction; for they objected first that this word was a new invention, unknown to the ancient Fathers and Apostles, and not found in Sacred Scripture; and therefore to be rejected, since the Sage admonishes, Proverbiorum 22.: Do not transgress the ancient boundaries; and the Apostle, 1. ad Timoth. 6.: Keep the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words: therefore, etc.

To which the holy Fathers answered 1. that this argument must be turned back against the Arians:

For if they think that all words not written in Scripture are to be wholly excluded, says St. Athanasius, lib. De Synodis, why did they not contradict Arius, who heaped up so great a mass of expressions which nowhere occur in the Scriptures, such as: from non-existent things; and the Son was not before He was begotten; and He was when He was not; and the Father is changeable, and is ineffable, and is invisible to His own Son; and the Son does not know even His own substance; and the rest, which Arius vomited forth in his ridiculous and impious commentary, from his own opinion?

Or as Hilary elegantly wrote in the book Contra Constantium Augustum, who was himself an Arian:

The Apostle commands that not novelties of words but profane ones be avoided; why do you exclude pious ones, especially since it was said by him: all Scripture divinely inspired is useful? Do you nowhere read 'unbegotten' written? Will this too have to be denied, because it is new? You decree that the Son is like the Father: the Gospels do not preach this. How is it that you do not shrink from this word? In one case novelty is chosen, in another it is set aside. Where an occasion of impiety lies open, novelty is admitted. But where the greatest and only safeguard of religion is concerned, it is excluded.

They answered 2. that in truth the name ὁμοούσιον and consubstantial is not new; since it had been used by the ancient Fathers, namely by Tertullian, lib. 4. Contra Marcionem; by Prochorus in the Vita S. Ioannis: by St. Martial, Epist. 1. ad Burdigalenses, cap. 10., etc. This the Arians themselves acknowledged; for St. Athanasius relates, in the Epistola ad Africanos Episcopos, that Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, although he had earlier favored the Arian Sect, nevertheless later subscribed to the decrees of the Nicene Council, and affirmed the same thing among his own people in his own letters; of which these are the words: We know that certain learned and renowned Prelates of old, and other writers, when they spoke of the Deity of the Father and the Son, used the word consubstantial; a copy of this letter, moreover, is found in Theodoret, lib. 1. Historiae Ecclesiasticae, cap. 12. Add that this name is inserted even in the sacred Scriptures, inasmuch as the sacred Scriptures expressly affirm that the Father and the Son are one; and that the Son is begotten from the womb of the Father, and equal, etc. Whence St. Augustine, lib. 3. Contra Maximinum, cap. 14.: What is ὁμοούσιον, except I and the Father are one?

They answered 3. that as new diseases arise, new remedies must be applied, and that against new dogmas new formulas of faith must also be written down; for, as the holy Athanasius rightly replied in the disputation held at Laodicea before Probus: It is always the custom of ecclesiastical discipline that, whenever a new doctrine of heretics arises, against the insolent novelties of questions, while things remain immutably the same, the words of names be changed, and the natures of things be expressed more significantly — words which nevertheless show that their existence corresponds to the powers of the causes, and that they were the same in antiquity rather than new.

They objected 2. that the most pious Emperor Constantine reproved the word ὁμοούσιον as new and useless, in the letter which he wrote through Hosius of Corduba to Alexander and Arius, in which he says: It is a very trifling matter, and by no means worthy of so great contention: and after a few words: You will make inquiry about a certain empty particle of a question: and a little below: Concerning matters of this kind, neither ask at all, nor answer when asked: for such questions as no law or Ecclesiastical Canon prescribes of necessity, but an empty contest of dissolute idleness proposes.

The holy Fathers answered that an excessive zeal for composing the tumults excited in the Churches impelled the pious Emperor to believe readily the deceivers who affirmed that the dissension of the Arians from the Catholics was about a single word; but, as we read written in lib. 2. Concilii Nicaeni, a little before the subscriptions, in a fragment, once he had been informed of the definition of the Nicene Council, he praised God when he had heard these divine dogmas, and rejoicing at the concord of our bishops, he exulted in spirit: for he strove that no one, neither great nor small, should dissent from this confession; whence he wrote orthodox letters against Arius, which are related in book 4. Concilii Nicaeni.

Finally they object that the word ὁμοούσιον and consubstantial was proscribed and condemned by the Councils of Ariminum and Sirmium.

But I answer that although very many reject the authority of the Synod of Ariminum, as one favoring the Arian heresy, nevertheless in the Synod of Ariminum, insofar as it had the character of a Synod, not only was nothing decreed against the name or the reality of the consubstantial, but rather the Catholic truth on this matter was defined anew, and Valens and Ursacius, the supporters of the Arians, with their fifty or eighty followers who were present at the Synod, were condemned by three hundred and more Fathers, and in this way the Synod was dissolved: but when its definition had been sent to the Emperor Constantius, devoted to the Arians, he forced and compelled some of those Fathers to subscribe to the confession fabricated by the Arians; wherefore the Synod of Ariminum is condemned by some: although only that subscription should be condemned, which was made after the Synod by the Fathers lingering at Ariminum and awaiting the response of the Emperor. As for the Council of Sirmium, it is certain that nothing at all was done in it freely and rightly; but only under compulsion and by force; as the Arian Emperor Constantius was present and pressing; nor does it matter that Liberius and Hosius subscribed to it, for they did this out of weariness of exile, as we will show at greater length in the Tractatu de Conciliis.

Truly, in this Article we undertake to navigate an immense ocean of difficulty. For who can grasp how in God there are processions, and yet no motion: processions which, by an eternal and altogether immutable flux, are always ancient, always new; always complete, always beginning: which produce a term, yet do not cause an effect. Who will disclose how the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from the beginning, and yet are not themselves later? How they are not from a subject, and yet are not from nothing: how they are from another, and do not depend: how they are in another, and are not received: how they are referred to another, and subsist in themselves? How, finally, is there fruitfulness without corruption; plurality without division; emanation of one from another without inferiority? Whence rightly Saint Ambrose in book 1 De Fide: If Paul declares ineffable the things he heard when caught up to the third heaven, how can we express the secret of the paternal generation, which we could neither perceive nor hear? Wherefore the Nazianzen rightly rebukes the curious inquirer into this mystery in Oration 5 De Theologia: "What then is this procession," you will say; "tell me how the Father is unbegotten, and I will undertake to explain to you the generation and the procession of the Spirit, so that we may both be driven headlong by the madness of the mind, casting our eyes into the mysteries of God". Nevertheless, since the reason of theological doctrine requires that we, who have thus far discoursed on the plurality of the divine persons, should also lay open the mode by which they are multiplied through production and procession: therefore we propose the following four Questions to be discussed: 1. Whether a true and real procession of one person from another is to be admitted in God. 2. Of how many kinds it is. 3. What and of what sort, 1. How the processions of the Word and of the Holy Spirit differ from one another.

Note 1. The name of procession is used in creatures chiefly to signify the origin, or emanation, of one thing from another, as from a principle or cause; hence a twofold emanation, or procession, is distinguished, namely immanent and transient. The former is that whose term remains within its principle or cause, such as is the production of a mental word residing in the intellect that produces it: the transient, however, is that whose term goes forth outside its principle or cause, from which it is produced, such as is the procession of heat from fire into water. In divine matters, however, the word Procession signifies a true and real emanation of one person from another, which does not go forth from God into creatures, but remains within the entity of the divine substance and, as it were, subsists eternally in the bosom of the producing person, concerning which is that saying of Ioannis 1.: The Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father.

Note 2. That although, in order to explain the ineffable mystery of one divine person proceeding from another, Theologians indiscriminately use the names of production, procession, origin, or emanation: nevertheless the word Production properly signifies, as it were, the action of the person producing another: but the others more correctly express the going forth, or emanation, of one person from another: hence they distinguish a twofold procession, just as they do origin itself, namely active and passive. Active procession is the very action of the producing person: passive, however, is the emanation of the produced person. Moreover, it must be noted that although Procession, by the usage of the Church, signifies the emanation of the Holy Spirit, who in the Creed of St. Athanasius is said to be not begotten, but proceeding: nevertheless its signification extends more widely among Theologians; for they are accustomed to use that word to express the origin of each divine Person that emanates.

Note 3. Productive action in creatures is various, but has especially a threefold imperfection attached to it; inasmuch as it produces in the effect dependence, contingency, and diversity of entity from the producing principle. Dependence, I say, because since the effect that is produced passes from non-being to being, it is most certain that before its production it was nothing; and therefore the whole being which it obtains it owes to the producing cause, and consequently depends on it as regards its entity, which it borrows only from the fecundity of the producing cause. Moreover, it imports contingency; for since before its production it was nothing, it is evident that it does not have a necessity of existing, nor therefore is it a necessary being, but only a contingent one. Finally, it has an essence at least numerically different from its principle, because a created being, on account of its finiteness, cannot be communicated without division of itself. Hence if some productive action is granted in which the produced thing is so necessary simpliciter that it cannot be conceived not to exist, and has the same numerically identical essence with the producing principle, it will certainly be established that it is free from these imperfections. Whether, however, in God there is some action of this kind, without any imperfection, productive of the divine persons: or whether the divine Essence is determined from itself to three persons, as to the first without any production, as certain heretics will, who on that account are called Αὐτόθεοι, because they asserted that all divine Persons are from themselves and not from others, this is to be determined in the Question.

First conclusion. — It has been established by faith that there is in divine things a real procession ad intra, according to which one person proceeds and is produced by another.

It is gathered first from various texts of Sacred Scripture, by which the divine Word is said to proceed from the Father; especially, however, from Ioannis 8.: I proceeded from God; and chapter 7: I know him, because I am from him. Although Origen, Euthymius and Theophylact explain these passages of a temporal procession, that is, of the temporal mission of the Son from the Father, that he might come into the world; nevertheless from this too the intended point is proved, because the mission of one person from another does not take place except by reason of the procession from the one by whom it is sent, as will be proved below. — Then Sirach 24: the divine Word, or divine Wisdom, is said to have come forth from the mouth of the Most High, that is, from the intellect of the Father, as the firstborn before every creature. And Sapientiae 7: it is called a certain pure emanation of the brightness of the omnipotent God. And Micah 5: it is said: His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. — Finally, this very thing is proved by all those oracles by which the Son is said to have received from the Father 1. Life; thus Ioannis 5.: As the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself. 2. Power, Ioannis 17.: As you gave him power over all flesh. 3. Authority, Matthew 11: All things have been delivered to me by my Father, etc. For since the divine Essence really contains all these divine perfections and is not distinct from them, it follows that the Father gave the essence to which he conferred the aforesaid perfections. — The same sacred Scripture testifies the same thing concerning the Holy Spirit, for Ioannis 15. we read: When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father: and chapter 16: He will glorify me, because he will receive from what is mine and declare it to you. Therefore the Holy Spirit receives knowledge from the Son, and consequently the essence and the other attributes. The word will receive, however, is put in the future, because it indicates the future effect of the same Holy Spirit upon the faithful; nor does this conflict with the procession, which, since it is eternal, embraces all times. Moreover, the Holy Spirit is called in Romans 8 the Spirit of Christ: in Acts 6 the Spirit of Jesus: in Galatians 1 the Spirit of the Son: but one person cannot be called another's, except because it proceeds from it. It is established, therefore, from Sacred Scripture that there are in God from eternity two productive processions of the divine persons.

Secondly: This same truth was defined in various Councils, especially the Nicene, Constantinopolitan, Lateran and Florentine, and is contained in all the creeds of faith approved by the Church, especially the Nicene, where it is said of the Son: God of God, light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made. Of the Holy Spirit, however: Who proceeds from the Father and the Son: and in the Constantinopolitan these are added: We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, proceeding from the Father, and with the Father and the Son to be adored. With these accords St. Athanasius in his Creed, in which it is read: The Son is from the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten: the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. The Council of Toledo 11, celebrated in the year 675, also assents and excellently teaches and embraces all things in its exposition of the faith, in which we read: We confess and believe that the holy and ineffable Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is one God by nature... And we indeed profess the Father to be not begotten, not created, but unbegotten; for he draws his origin from no one, from whom also the Son received nativity, and the Holy Spirit procession, etc.

Thirdly: The holy Fathers prove and confirm this same truth with unanimous assent; and that especially from that passage of Ioannis 5.: As the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself. This passage St. Ambrose weighs here, lib. 4. De Fide, chapter 5: Who does not notice, he says, that this is to be referred to the unity of life, that the same life is that of the Father and of the Son? For as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son to have life in himself, he gave through unity. With him accords St. Hilary, lib. De Synodis, on Canon 4 of the Orientals, where, explaining the same text, he says: That in both there is life, in both is signified essence... For he does not have anything other than what he gave; and as he has life, so he gave life to be had. With them accords St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinitate cap. 26, treating the same passage: As generation from the Father, he says, bestows on the Son essence without beginning of time, without any mutability of nature; so procession from both bestows essence on the Holy Spirit, without beginning of time, without any mutability of nature. They likewise prove from the fact that the divine Essence is communicated by the Father to the Son and the Holy Spirit: thus Cyril, book 2 Thesaurus, chapter 1: The divine substance, he says, constituted by a certain ineffable and supreme nature, begot the Son from the hypostasis of the Father: for perfect Deity cannot be, unless it has the Son and brings forth fruit from itself. Hence St. Athanasius, in the 3rd sermon of the Acts of the Council of Nicaea, reproves the Arians, because they said that the paternal nature is sterile and unfruitful. St. Hilary accords, lib. De Synodis, about the middle: A perfect nativity, he says, gave the nature of the Son from the impassible substance not born. We will bring forward abundantly more things similar to these in what follows.

It is proved fourthly by reason, and that a manifold one, by Theologians. Of these the first is gathered from the holy Fathers, who therefore gather that the three persons are not three Gods, but one God, because the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from a single principle, namely the Father, who communicates his same essence to the Son and the Holy Spirit through origin, which, if removed, it would follow that the Son must be of another essence: for thus Nazianzen reasons, Orat. 37: For us, he says, there is one God, since there is one Deity, and those things which are from him are referred to the one: similarly St. Hilary in the same way gathers that there is one unproduced person, but the other two produced: Since therefore (he says, lib. De Synodis, about the middle) there is one God, while they cannot be unbegotten: since for this reason God is one, when the Father is God and the Son is God of God; because innascibility alone rests with the one. St. Fulgentius subscribes, to the fifth objection of the Arians: For indeed, he says, while the unbegotten cannot have one nature, since neither does one find in himself the generation of things from himself; nor does one from one truly recognize in himself the substance of nativity. — The second reason: it is of faith that three persons really distinct from one another are given in the unity of essence: but there cannot be a real distinction of persons in the unity of essence, without a real production and procession of one person from another: therefore it must truly be admitted. The minor is proved: with the procession ceasing, the opposition ceases: but where there is no opposition, there cannot be a distinction of persons: therefore, etc. The minor is evident: since the divine nature, on account of its infinity, identifies with itself all things with which it has no opposition. The major is proved: the divine essence cannot have opposition, except on account of opposite relations; for all things in divine matters are the same, where the opposition of relation does not obstruct: but there is in God no opposition of relation, except on account of procession: which I prove thus: every relation is founded either in measure, or in unity, or in production: but in an infinite being the notion of measure cannot have place; for the infinite is immeasurable, because it is interminable; similarly the relation of unity cannot be found in God, because the supreme unity of the divine nature excludes every distinction of nature whatsoever: therefore only the relation of origin can be found in God. — Thirdly: the Doctor proves this same truth in 1. dist. 2. quaest. 7.: whatever from its formal notion is a sufficient productive principle, in whatever it is from itself, in that it is truly a perfectly productive principle: but the intellect, having an object actually intelligible present to itself and duly proportioned, from its formal notion is a productive principle of begotten knowledge: therefore wherever it will be, it will produce begotten knowledge, and that according to the proportion of its perfection. He subsumes; but in God there is an intellect having an object actually intelligible present to itself and proportioned, namely the divine essence: therefore also in God the intellect is a productive principle of begotten knowledge, not of any kind whatsoever, but of one adequate to itself; for every perfect principle can produce a term adequate to itself; and consequently, since the divine intellect is infinite, it is productive of infinite begotten knowledge. Moreover, since no infinite thing can exist in another; that begotten knowledge will necessarily be subsisting per se. Again, since outside God there is nothing infinite subsisting per se, it follows that the divine intellect must produce a subsisting begotten knowledge, which truly is God. — The same argument can be formed concerning the divine will:

The will, having an object lovable and proportioned to itself, is productive of love proportioned to itself: but the infinite divine will has the divine essence adequately proportioned to itself: therefore it will be able to produce infinite love: but infinite love is a produced divine person: therefore, etc. Although, however, this argument does not suffice to prove that the mystery of the Trinity can be demonstrated and known naturally, as we said in Question 3 of the preceding Article, nevertheless it is efficacious, so that, with the light of faith going before, it may be established that real productions ad intra must necessarily be admitted in God — In like manner St. Augustine proves the same truth lib. 9. De Trinitate, cap. 11. In speaking, he says, it must be held that every thing whatsoever which we know generates in us a knowledge of itself: for knowledge is born from both, from the knower and the known. Therefore when the mind knows itself, it alone is the parent of its knowledge; for it itself is both the known and the knower. Hence he concludes: The mind itself and its knowledge, which is its offspring, and its Word concerning itself, and love as the third, are a certain image of the Trinity; and these three are one, and one substance; nor is the offspring lesser, while the mind knows itself as great as it is: nor is the love lesser, while it loves itself as much as it knows and as great as it is. But so that the aforesaid reason may appear more efficacious from the solution of its attacks, the Doctor attacks it in this way.

He attacks 1. The intellect is productive of generated knowledge only then, when it must understand through that generated knowledge, or must be perfected through it: but the divine intellect cannot be perfected, nor understand through any knowledge really distinct from itself: therefore although it has an object adequately proportioned to itself, it does not follow from that that it is productive of generated knowledge. It is confirmed 1. God through ungenerated knowledge sufficiently understands all intelligible things and is perfected through it: therefore generated knowledge would be entirely futile for this. It is confirmed 2. Ungenerated knowledge is adequate to the divine intellect: therefore it cannot have another generated knowledge. The consequence is clear: for we say that the divine Word is not productive of another Word for this reason, because the divine intellect has an adequate term in the production of only one Word. It is confirmed 3. The intellect, since it is an active potency and not indeed a factive one, cannot produce anything except in itself: but generated knowledge, if there were any, would not be produced in the intellect: therefore it cannot be produced through it: and consequently the intellect is not productive of generated knowledge. — He denies the major. The Doctor denies it, because the notion of the active does not depend per se on the notion of the passive, or of the perfectible; but it is per accidens that the created intellect is productive of the knowledge by which it understands and is perfected: for since it cannot understand through any ungenerated knowledge, it is necessary that it produce generated knowledge, through which it understands and is perfected; and therefore it produces it out of need. Whence a twofold notion is to be distinguished in it: one indeed insofar as it is receptive of generated knowledge; the other insofar as it is productive of the same: the former denotes imperfection, because it involves potentiality and perfectibility; the latter however imports no imperfection, rather it expresses the highest perfection, namely fecundity and activity. Therefore the former is not found in the divine intellect, but only the latter. Whence it follows that the divine intellect can produce intellection, although it cannot receive it, and consequently not only can the fecund memory produce generated knowledge when it can understand and be perfected through it, but also when it neither understands nor is perfected through it. — To the first confirmation he denies the consequence: for it is false that every agent acts for this reason, that it may be perfected through its production: rather there are many agents which operate from the fullness of perfection and fecundity; and therefore by Avicenna, 6. Metaphysicorum, cap. ultimo, they are called agents from liberality. — To the second confirmation he distinguishes the antecedent: ungenerated knowledge is adequate in the notion of ungenerated and as it were produced knowledge, he concedes the antecedent: adequate in the notion of knowledge truly generated and produced, he denies the antecedent and the consequence. Rather, from this he turns the argument back: the divine intellect does not have all the adequate knowledge corresponding to itself without generated knowledge: therefore it has generated knowledge. — To the third confirmation he denies that the active and the factive are accidental differences of potency, since the same potency can be active and factive, as is clear concerning the angelic intellect. But that every created intellect requires a subject in which it acts or brings about intellection, this comes about from the imperfection of created intellection, which since it is an accident, therefore requires a subject in which it inheres, or in which it is received connaturally: whence since in the divine the produced knowledge is per se subsistent, it can truly be understood to be produced, without its being understood to be received in the intellect itself.

Again it can be objected against the aforesaid argument: if this argument concluded anything, it would follow that the Son and the Holy Spirit could also produce generated knowledge and produced love, and so more than three divine persons would be given: but this is repugnant to faith: therefore the aforesaid proof is null. The sequel of the major is proved: for the Son and the Holy Spirit have the divine intellect and will with the divine Essence adequately proportioned, in the notion of the intelligible and the amiable, just as much as the Father: therefore if by this argument the Father can produce generated knowledge and produced love, the Son and the Holy Spirit will be able to do the same. — I deny the sequel and the consequence. For the argument of the proof is not the same concerning the Father as concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit: for the Doctor in his major posited: wherever there is a productive principle sufficient from itself, that is, not from another, it will be able to produce: which argument cannot be applied to the Son and the Holy Spirit; for they do not have a productive principle from themselves; for they have their being from the Father. Add that the argument is not the same concerning the Father as concerning the other persons, because the Father, since he is from himself, does not presuppose generated knowledge adequate to his fecund memory; rather it is presupposed to him, and therefore the production of such knowledge is not repugnant to him: but the Son, since he is the generated knowledge itself, adequate both intensively and extensively to the productive principle, therefore cannot produce another generated knowledge: likewise the Holy Spirit, since he has being from the Father and the Son, presupposes both, and consequently cannot produce generated knowledge.

You will object 1. Against the truth of the conclusion: a being from itself cannot have origin from another: but every divine person is a being from itself, otherwise it would not be God: therefore it cannot have origin. The major is evident, for to have origin is to be from another. — I distinguish the major. A being from itself cannot have origin from another, as from an extrinsic cause and a principle of a diverse nature, I concede: as from a principle of the same nature and excluding all dependence, causality and contingency, I deny: for a being from itself can be taken in two ways: first, as it excludes an extraneous principle and one of another nature; and so truly all divine persons are from themselves: second, as it excludes a real principle which is of the same nature, and so only the divine Father is from himself.

You will insist. What proceeds from another must have a distinct being, and a nature diverse at least in number from him from whom it proceeds: but the divine persons subsist in the same nature in number, and are one God, as we have proved: therefore one cannot proceed from another. — I distinguish the major. What proceeds from another by a finite, corporeal and material procession must have another nature diverse from him, I concede the major: what proceeds by an infinite, intellectual and spiritual procession, I deny the major. For since infinity identifies to itself all things which do not have opposition; and since there is no opposition between the nature which is in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, therefore although the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father, they ought not on that account to be divine natures distinct in number.

You will object 2. What proceeds from another receives something from him from whom it proceeds; and so it is of a needy and more imperfect nature; needy indeed, for unless it were in need it would not receive: more imperfect indeed, because according to that word of Act. 20., it is more blessed to give than to receive: but among the divine persons, since there is the highest equality, no neediness and inferiority can be found: therefore neither can there be a procession. — I distinguish the major. To be produced by another freely and contingently, not through the communication of a diverse nature, is to be of a needy and inferior nature, I concede: to be produced by another most necessarily and through the communication of the same infinite nature, is to be in need and of an inferior nature, I deny: in the former way, it is more blessed to give than to receive; but not in the latter, as St. Augustine expressly explains, lib. 3. Contra Maximinum, c. 14., after the middle: It is more blessed to give than to receive, he says, but in this life, where there is want, than which abundance is certainly better; for it is better to have than to lack; and it is better to give than to receive; to spend than to beg. But where he who gave gave by living, and he who received received by being born, help was not brought to the needy, but abundance itself was generated. Nor can he who received be unequal to him who gave, because he received even this, that he might be equal.

You will object 3. No product is necessary from itself: but every divine person is a necessary being from itself, since it is God: therefore none is produced. The Doctor proves the major in 1. dist. 2. qu. 7. num. 1.: what is necessary from itself is necessary, all else being set aside: but what is necessary from another is not necessary when that is removed: therefore it cannot be necessary from itself and be from another. He proves secondly: every product can possibly be produced, or has a receptive potency of the very being which it receives, otherwise it could not be produced, nor consequently would it be a product, or it would follow that the impossible would be produced; but what can possibly be produced is not a necessary being: therefore etc. He proves thirdly: through production the divine Essence has a product, which it would not have without production: therefore through production it is truly changed, because from not having a product it becomes having one, and consequently it is not a necessary being. He proves fourthly: production through the intellect would be true generation: therefore if one of the divine persons were produced through the intellect, it would truly be generated: but every generation is essentially a change: therefore there would truly be change in the divine, if production were given: but every change in God implies a contradiction: therefore likewise every production in God implies a contradiction. — The Doctor answers, ibid. n. 9. by denying the major; to the first proof of which he distinguishes the major: nothing can be formally necessary from itself, and at the same time be formally necessary from another, he concedes: nothing can be formally necessary from itself, and at the same time be necessary from another efficiently, or productively, he denies. For in the opinion of the ancient Philosophers, who judged that creatures are produced by God necessarily, it was necessary that they assert those creatures to have an entity by which they were formally necessary, although they received that entity from a cause producing necessarily: whence it is clear that in the opinion of those Philosophers something can at the same time be formally necessary in itself, and at the same time be necessary from another productively. Greater however is the necessity of being, both formally and productively, in the divine Son, e.g. than it would be in creatures if they were produced necessarily; because creatures would receive a diverse essence from the producing cause; but the Son has altogether the same essence with the principle from which he is produced: whence the Doctor concludes: if the Father naturally and necessarily produced a creature, he would produce it formally necessary: yet it would not then be necessary with as great a necessity as the Son is necessary. Or more briefly I distinguish the major: what is necessary from itself, by exclusion of both contingency and production, would be necessary with anything else set aside, I concede: what is necessary from itself only by exclusion of contingency, but not by exclusion of the producing principle, would be necessary with anything else removed, or with that productive principle set aside, especially where it has altogether the same entity with the producing principle itself, as the Son and the Holy Spirit have with the divine Father, I deny. — To the second proof the Doctor distinguishes the major, n. 10.: every product can possibly be produced, either with logical possibility, which says only the non-repugnance that something be produced, so that those terms, possible and to be produced, can be composed with one another without contradiction through the concept of the intellect; or with physical and real possibility, by which is expressed an aptitude, either to receive some accident, or to receive an entity diverse from the productive principle, he concedes the antecedent: that it is only possible to be produced with physical possibility, he denies. He likewise distinguishes the minor; that what is necessary simpliciter does not have physical and real potency to be produced, he concedes; logical and intentional, he denies. Thus a divine Person cannot have physical potency to being, because it would have to be first in potency before it were in act, which is repugnant to a most necessary being. It can however have logical potency, because since in fact it is produced, it is not repugnant that it can be produced. Or more briefly and clearly: what is necessary does not have potency to receive being, I distinguish: if that being which it receives through production is not most necessary and essentially the same with the producing principle, I concede; if it receives being which is most necessary and altogether essentially the same with the producing principle, I deny: but the produced persons in the divine have altogether the same being, essentially and most necessary, with the producing principle; whence although they are from another, they are no less a necessary being. — To the third proof he denies the consequence, because for a change it does not suffice that something so has being through something, that without it it truly would not be; but further it is required that it could have not had that being, and moreover that it could have received it from another than the one from whom it receives it; but the divine Essence never was without production, nor without the Person which it had by means of production, nor could it be without both of them, and consequently it does not become from not having to having, and therefore it is not changed. — To the fourth and final proof he denies the minor; for although generation in creatures imports two things, namely production and change, nevertheless it is essentially production, and only per accidens involves change: whence there can be true generation, where there is true production in the likeness of nature, even if it does not import change, as happens in the divine.

You will object 4. Every production imports the dependence of the product upon the producer: but in the divine there can be no dependence; for all things are most highly equal: therefore neither can there be production. The major is proved: if the product did not depend on the producer, both would have the nature equally, and consequently the product would not require that the producer first have the nature, insofar as it would receive it from him; which is against the formal notion of production: therefore, etc. — He denies the major. The Doctor, ibidem n. 12., denies it and distinguishes its proof: if the produced person did not depend on the producer, both would have the nature equally, that is, would have it without any real dependence of one upon the other, he concedes: both would have it from itself, but not one from the other, he denies: for although one divine Person does not depend on another, nevertheless it requires that the producing person first have the divine nature determined to itself by priority of origin, before it is determined to the produced person: but this pre-requirement is more a presupposition of one person to another than a dependence of one upon another, as we will explain more fully when treating of the consubstantiality and equality of the divine Persons.

You will object 5. Several changes, which do not involve as much imperfection as generation involves, cannot be in the divine: therefore much more can there not be generation in the divine: but if there is no generation in the divine, neither will there be able to be spiration: therefore in the divine there will be no production. The antecedent is proved: neither local motion (latio), or local change, nor alteration, that is, change toward quality, can be in the divine: but these changes do not involve as much imperfection as generation imports, as is clear from the fact that many perfect beings, e.g. the Heavens and the Angels, can be moved locally, which however cannot be generated. — He distinguishes the consequent. The Doctor ibidem: generation cannot be in the divine, insofar as it says imperfection, he concedes: insofar as it says production, he denies: for generation can be considered, as we have already said, either according to the notion of change, by which it connotes the passage from non-being to being, or according to the notion of production, which connotes the produced substance: in the former way it is equally repugnant in the divine, as are the other changes; but not in the latter, because the produced person does not pass from non-being to being, but through its production receives altogether the same being with the producing principle.

Finally you will object with the holy Fathers; first indeed the holy Epiphanius, haeresi 69., who calls the Son Αὐτοθέον, which the heretics Autotheani interpret as having essence from himself. Then St. Augustine, in Ps. 109., and Cyril, lib. 6. De Trin., say that the Father and the Son are one principle, from which it seems to follow that the Son lacks a principle, and accordingly is not from the Father, but from himself. Thirdly, the Son is called Iehoua, just as the Father: but this name signifies him to be the fountain of being: therefore he has essence from himself, and consequently is not produced. — I deny the consequence. And to the first proof I say that St. Epiphanius only intends that the Son of God is truly and properly God; not supposititious, nor fictitious, nor has the Divinity as it were foreign and undue, but proper and due to himself, no less than to the Father, who communicated it; for αυτό, whether in composition or outside, signifies hardly anything else than properly and per se, as Genebrardus notes from Plato and Aristotle, lib. 1. De Trinitate, as Ruiz observes, Disp. 1. Sect. 2. num. 4. — To the second I say that when the holy Fathers call the Son of God a principle, they are to be understood comparatively and respectively, either with regard to the Holy Spirit, or with regard to creatures; so that with the Father he is the one principle of the Holy Spirit ad intra; and with the Father and the Holy Spirit he is the one principle of creatures ad extra. In a similar way the Third objection is solved: for the Son is called the fountain of being, because namely through the fecundity of love he communicates the divine being to the Holy Spirit, and through the fecundity of power he bestows created being upon all beings ad extra.

Note 1. The question proceeds concerning the Processions, both of the same notion and of a diverse one; namely, whether in God there are several processions distinct in number and in species. For although according to the Doctor in 1. dist. 17. n. 3. there is not properly genus, nor species, nor specific difference in the divine realities; because these smack of part and composition, and therefore of imperfection; whence properly no specific distinction is to be assigned among the divine realities; nevertheless in God there are some things which, since they are distinguished more than by number and have diverse formal notions, can for that reason be called as it were distinct in species; for they differ more, v. g. generation and active spiration, than two generations and two active spirations would differ, if there were so many. It is to be resolved, therefore, whether the divine Processions are several diverse in species, and several of the same notion distinct by number alone.

Note 2. The individual Processions are distinguished by Theologians into active and passive, whence they can be compared with one another in four ways: First, indeed, the active Processions can be compared among themselves, namely generation with spiration: Second, one passive Procession with another, as being generated with being spirated: Third, the active can be compared with the passive corresponding to it, as to generate with to be generated: Fourth, finally, the active can be compared with the passive disparate from it, as to generate with to be spirated. It is certain, however, that the passive Processions are really distinguished among themselves, for this is necessary for establishing the real distinction and constitution of the divine Persons, as will be evident in the following Disputation. It is equally certain that active spiration is distinguished from the passive corresponding to it; for from this the real distinction between the producing and the produced person is gathered; and likewise from the passive disparate from it, as will be evident when we prove that even if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, He would nonetheless be really distinguished from Him; whence for the present there remains the difficulty to be solved, in what manner the active Processions are distinguished from one another.

Note 3. The distinction of things can be conceived in two ways, namely, either with respect to us, or with respect to themselves. Things are said to differ with respect to us when we conjecture their distinction from certain merely extrinsic notions; since otherwise the intrinsic notion, from which their discrepancy could be derived, lies hidden from us; but they are said to differ with respect to themselves when they are known to differ from their own proper and formal intrinsic notions. And this again in two ways, namely adequately, or first; and inadequately, or not first. In the former way those things are mutually discrepant which differ in their whole selves, as individual differences. In the latter way those things are said to differ which agree in some intrinsic principle, and are discrepant through another thing intrinsic to themselves, as species and individuals, which agree with one another in the generic or specific notion; but they are discrepant through the specific or individual difference.

These things being premised, a threefold difficulty is to be solved; the first, indeed, whether in reality there are two and not more than two processions formally and as it were specifically distinct. The second, whether several processions of the same notion, or in number, is repugnant. The third, from which principles the diversity and distinction of those processions is to be derived. The first resolution will militate against Raymundus Lullius, who, if any faith is to be given to Eymericus, not consistent with himself, affirmed now one only, now several and almost innumerable divine Processions: one only, indeed, for he repeatedly asserted that within God there is only one act of making good, that is, of communicating goodness and the divine essence, because, he says, if there were several acts, each of them would be finite and limited, but this is supremely repugnant to a being infinite in every way. But he likewise admitted several divine processions, for in lib. 1. Sentent. q. 2. he speaks thus: In the divine realities the essence is not idle, but essence and nature nature-fies, goodness makes good, and infinity infinitifies, and eternity eternifies, etc. That, however, in the aforesaid words he did not understand only the formal constitution and denomination of the attributes, but truly also willed there to be various operations ad intra, such as are to understand and to love, is gathered from the same author: As God, he says, naturally has to understand and to love intrinsically, so intrinsically He has naturally to make good, to eternify, to possify and to virtufy; as he speaks in lib. De Centum Dei Nominibus. The second difficulty, however, will have to be solved against the Theologians, who do not agree among themselves in assigning the principles from which the distinction of the divine Processions is to be derived.

First conclusion. — In reality there are two and not more than two processions formally and as it were specifically distinct from one another.

The first part already remains proved more than sufficiently from what has been said thus far, and will appear more evidently from what is to be said in the following Article, in which it will be proved further that the divine intellect and will in God are two distinct principles of the proceeding divine Persons; whence only the following remains to be proved

The second part, which the Doctor thus proves in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. n. 18.: There are as many and no more Processions of diverse notion in the divine realities as there are distinct productive principles: but these are only two, namely fruitful memory and fruitful will, of which one is productive by way of nature; the other, however, by way of freedom, or of will: therefore there are only two Processions of diverse notion. The major is evident; for since the Processions are from productive principles, it follows that their diversity and multiplicity is to be derived from these principles. The minor is proved as to the first part, namely that those two productive principles are distinct: the principle of acting naturally, and the principle of acting freely, have an opposite mode of acting: therefore there cannot be given one principle, to which this diverse mode of acting uniquely belongs; for either, says the Doctor, that productive principle would act from itself determinately, and thus by way of nature, or it would act not from itself determinately, but freely, and thus by way of the voluntary. But since these modes of acting are directly opposed to one another, they cannot be reduced back into one only principle: therefore, etc. Nor can they even be reduced to some third, because it would be necessary that that third principle also have those diverse modes of acting, namely by way of nature and by way of the voluntary: moreover, neither can one of them be reduced to the other: both on account of the same reason, and because since those principles are equally perfectly productive, there would not be a stronger reason why one should be reduced to the other, than why that one to the other: and finally, because nothing is reduced to another, unless the less perfect to the more perfect; in God, however, there is not found an inequality of perfection; therefore if in God there are necessarily two productive principles and not more, there are also only two processions.

You will object 1. Doctor: a diverse mode of principiating can be reduced back into one only principle: therefore although to principiate by way of the will and by way of nature are opposed modes of principiating, from this it is not lawful to infer that there are two distinct principles; nor consequently two processions, nor two proceeding persons. The antecedent is evident; for to principiate necessarily and to principiate contingently are opposed modes of principiating: but these belong to the same principle, namely the divine will, with respect to diverse productions; for with respect to the production ad intra it principiates necessarily; with respect, however, to the production ad extra it principiates contingently: therefore a diverse mode of principiating can be reduced back into one only principle. — The Doctor cited above, n. 23., answers by distinguishing the antecedent; a diverse mode of principiating can be reduced back into one only principle, when those two modes import no imperfection, he denies: when one of them connotes an imperfection, or a lesser perfection, he concedes. For it is necessary that everything imperfect be reduced to the perfect; whence since the mode of principiating contingently connotes an imperfection, because all contingency imports mutability and defectibility; hence it must be reduced to the necessary principle. But the modes of principiating by way of nature, and by way of will have no imperfection mixed in, and so neither of them must be reduced to the other. — Or I distinguish the consequence. From a diverse mode of operating in whatever way it is not lawful to gather the diversity of the principles, I concede; from a diverse mode of operating, such as fruitful memory has, and the divine will, I deny the consequence. For it is evident that the divine intellect does not have the same mode of operating, which the will has; for that one acts naturally, this one, however, voluntarily; it is likewise evident that in God there is no other potency, to which both of these opposed modes of operating could belong: therefore from those diverse modes of operating the diversity of the productive principles in God is rightly gathered; and consequently the diversity and distinction of the divine processions is also duly inferred.

You will object 2. The divine nature, inasmuch as it is nature, is no less a productive principle than the intellect and the will; therefore if from the diversity of principles the diversity of processions is justly gathered, three must necessarily be admitted; since indeed there are three productive principles in the divine realities, namely nature, intellect and will. — The Doctor answers in the same place, distinguishing the antecedent: the divine nature is a productive principle considered apart from the intellect and the will, he denies; joined with each divine faculty, he concedes; for fruitful memory, which is the adequate and total principle of the production of the Son, v. g., includes the intellect and the divine essence, each of which partially concurs to that production. The same is to be said of the will with respect to the production of the Holy Spirit. Whence the divine nature together with the intellect and the will constitutes two integral and adequate principles of the divine productions, of which the Doctor offers the reason, that the adequate principle of intellective knowledge and of love is not the object alone, but the object together with the potency of understanding and willing: whence since the divine nature concurs to the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Spirit as the object to the speaking of the mental Word, and the expression of subsistent love; hence it is that the essence, or divine nature, constitutes only two adequate principles of production, but is not, however, some adequate principle distinct from them.

You will object 3. Doctor: potencies are distinguished by acts: therefore since from the twofold essential potency in God there are two essential acts, namely essential understanding and willing, there cannot be assigned to them two other notional acts, namely generation and spiration; and consequently from those two divine potencies the duality of the divine processions is not rightly inferred. The sequela is evident, since from the same distinctive the distinctions of diverse notions cannot be derived: but the distinction of the notional acts and the distinction of the essential acts are distinctions of diverse notions: therefore that diversity of both cannot be derived from those same two principles. — He denies the sequela. The Doctor ibidem n. 22.; and also the consequence of its proof; for although one potency cannot have several adequate acts of distinct notion, behaving in the same way toward those acts, so that it has each one produced, or each one unproduced; nevertheless it can have several acts of diverse notion, behaving in a diverse way toward them; so that it is related to one by way of an operative, or emanative, principle; to the other, however, it is related by way of a productive principle: thus, however, fruitful memory is related, v. g., to the essential unproduced knowledge and to the generated knowledge, because to the first it is related by way of an operative principle, not, however, a productive one; to the second, however, it is related by way of a productive principle, not an operative one.

You will object 1. Not only is potency the principle of the divine procession, but also the object, namely the divine essence: but although in the divine realities several potencies are given, several objects are not, however, given; for the object of the intellect and of the will is one only, namely the divine essence: therefore although there are two potencies, it does not, however, follow from this that there are two diverse processions and productions. — I distinguish the minor. In the divine realities there are not distinct objects, as it were material ones, I concede: formal ones, I deny. For the same divine essence, since it is intelligible and amiable, has a diverse formality; and so a distinct notion of the formal object, by which it is diversely attained by the intellect in the notion of the intelligible and by the will in the notion of the amiable.

You will object 5. In the divine realities there is only one action: therefore also one only procession. The consequence is evident: for a procession either is active, and thus is synonymous with action; or passive, and thus is correlative to action, and so can only be multiplied according to its multiplication. The antecedent is proved; for active spiration and active generation in the divine Father are really identified, as we shall prove below: therefore they are one only action really. — I deny the antecedent. And to its proof I say that indeed spiration and generation are indeed one thing, not, however, one action: for if notwithstanding the real identification of the relations with the divine essence, there are nonetheless several diverse and distinct relations, why not likewise, notwithstanding the real identification of spiration and generation, can there be diverse actions? Add, that if the real identification were an obstacle to the multitude of productions, or processions, the Son and the Holy Spirit would not be several, or distinct, because namely the intellect and the will, from which they proceed, are not really distinguished.

You will insist. In the divine realities nothing is distinct from another, except according to origin and relation, or inasmuch as one proceeds from another: but one procession, or production, does not proceed from another: therefore neither is it distinguished from it. — I distinguish this major. If it does not have principles from elsewhere, by which it is distinguished, other than through the notion of origin from another, from which it is distinguished, I concede: if it has them, I deny. For we shall prove below, that even if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, He would nonetheless be really distinguished from Him; because passive spiration, by which He is constituted, is a distinct constitutive and distinctive principle from filiation, or passive generation, by which the Son is constituted; therefore by parity, although one procession does not arise from another, it is nonetheless no less distinguished from it, from the fact that they are diverse modes of operating, namely to proceed naturally and voluntarily, and they proceed from distinct and diverse principles, namely the intellect and the will, which suffice to distinguish those processions.

You will object 6. The divine Father, in producing the Son, either expends his whole power and fruitfulness and totally, or not; if the first, he cannot produce another person, for beyond the whole there is nothing; if not, it follows that the term produced by it is not infinite: for creatures are not infinite for this reason: although God expends his whole power in their production — for his power has no parts, of which he could occupy one while reserving another, but is wholly indivisible, and therefore he expends it whole when he occupies it — creatures, I say, are not infinite, because God does not totally occupy his power in them. — I answer. God, while he generates the Son, occupies his whole power and totally, namely as much as he can occupy it through one potency, namely through the intellect: for thus the Father expends the fruitfulness of the divine intellect in the production of the Son, so that he cannot produce another Son, as will be evident in the following Conclusion: this, however, does not prevent that he can at the same time go forth into act, also totally through the will, because it is a productive term as it were of another species and through a production as it were specifically distinct from the production, which is made through the intellect. Whence in form: the divine Father expends his whole power and totally in the production of the Son, so that that production adequately matches and as it were exhausts the fruitfulness of every kind of the divine intellect, I concede; for the speech is only about the generation of the Word, or of the intellective term: so that it adequately matches and exhausts the fruitfulness of every kind of the Divinity, so that he cannot through another potency, namely the will, go forth into a productive act of another divine person, I deny.

You will insist. The divine power expended in the production of the Son is in every way infinite: therefore it not only totally matches the fruitfulness of the divine intellect, but also of the Deity itself. The antecedent is evident: for if it were not in every way infinite, it would be limited in some things; and thus it would not produce a term in every way equal to the producing principle. The consequence is likewise evident; for that which is in every way infinite comprehends everything that is of the same genus, and so an infinitely productive power must contain every altogether conceivable productive power. — I distinguish the antecedent. It is in every way infinite in the notion of the divine intellective power and productive of generated knowledge, I concede: in the notion of the divine power simpliciter, I deny. For although for any procession an infinite perfection, or productive power, is required, which in any procession has an adequate act in the notion of the formality of the act, it does not, however, have an extensive adequacy and according to the notion of all the acts, which it can have ad intra: for just as to produce any creature from nothing the infinite power of God is required, as some will have it, and nonetheless not any creation is an adequate act of that power; so in like manner, although for the production of the Son an infinite perfection and fruitfulness of the divine nature is required, that, however, is not exhausted by that procession alone, because it is not in every way adequate to the communicative power of the divine essence, which can be communicated not only through the intellect by way of generation and of knowledge, in the notion of the knowable; but also through the will, by way of spiration and as amiable; whence each one of those productions is adequate to its principle, and therefore cannot be multiplied in number, as will appear

Second conclusion. — It is of faith that there are not in fact several processions of the same kind, distinguished only in number, nor can there be.

It is proved by all those considerations by which we have already shown that there are only three divine persons, and not more. It is moreover evident from all those texts of Sacred Scripture, especially Io. 1. and 3., in which the Son of God is called the only-begotten, from which it is established that God has only one only Son; and so in the divine there are not two generations, much less several. The same is confirmed by all the Creeds, by which we believe in Jesus Christ the only-begotten and only Son of God; whence in the Creed of Saint Athanasius we expressly profess that there is one Son, not three Sons, one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.

The Doctor proves this truth in q. 2. Quodlib. art. 2. by this theological argument: if in the divine there can be several productions of the same kind, then there could be infinite ones, and consequently there will necessarily be infinite ones; for in a being that is supremely necessary, to be is the same as to be able: but the consequent is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The minor is evident, for no one has so far so ineptly raved as to assert that the divine Persons are infinite in number: and Saint Bonaventure proves this truth in 1. dist. 2. art. 1. qu. 2. by a fourfold argument; namely, from distinction, order, connection, and completion. First, indeed, from distinction: where there is distinction, he says, there is no confusion: but where there is infinity, there is confusion: therefore, since there is distinction among the divine Persons, there will be no confusion, nor consequently infinity. Second, where there is order, there is termination and mediation: but where there is termination there is no infinity, because infinity knows no term: therefore if there is order in the divine, there is no infinity. Third, where there is connection, it is necessary that all the persons proceed from one; for if one from another, and so on in consequence, then there is an infinite distance between the first and the last: but this is incongruous: therefore all proceed from one. Finally, where there is supreme completion, there is no infinity, for completion takes place in beatitude: but if the persons were infinite, it would be impossible for anyone to be beatified by God: for the knowledge of each person contributes to beatitude: therefore the blessed soul must know all the divine Persons; but it could not know infinite ones, since its power is finite: therefore an infinite number of divine Persons would be absurd. The Doctor proves the major: first, indeed, by the authority of St. Augustine, who argues thus in Contra Maximinum, lib. 3. c. 12. The divine generation would be immoderate, he says, if the begotten Son were to generate a grandson for the Father, because the grandson himself, unless he were to generate a great-grandson for his grandfather, would, according to your wonderful wisdom, be called impotent. He then adds: Nor would the series of generation be filled up, if one were always generated from another, nor would anyone complete it, if a single omnipotent one sufficed. As if he were saying that if one produced person does not suffice to complete the whole production of one action, neither in like manner will another suffice, nor again another, and thus processions and persons of the same kind, infinite in number, would necessarily have to be admitted.

The Doctor proves 2. by this argument: everything multiplicable into several things of the same kind is not determined of itself to a certain plurality, but if it is so determined, it is necessary that it be determined by another: but the divine procession, if it is multiplicable into several processions of the same kind, e.g. into several generations, cannot be determined by another to a certain plurality: therefore if it is multiplicable into several processions of the same kind, it is in no way determined to a certain plurality, but it is necessary that that series of divine processions become infinite. The major is evident by the example of created being, which since it is multiplicable into several created beings of the same kind, it follows that it is not determined of itself to a certain plurality, and unless it were determined to a certain number by an extrinsic agent or by circumstances, its productions could be infinite syncategorematically. The minor is proved: if the divine procession were determined to a certain plurality by another, it would be most of all either by something posterior, or by something prior: but it can be done by neither. Not indeed by something posterior to itself, for no being has its entity from a being posterior to itself; therefore neither can it have its unity from it: nor even by something prior: for this would be either the formal principle of the divine procession, namely the fecund memory and will, or it would be the producing principle, namely the divine person: but by none of these would the divine procession be determined to a certain plurality, if it were multiplicable into several processions of the same kind: for the formal principle of production, namely that by which, and the producing principle, namely that which, if it can have several productions of the same kind, cannot determine itself to a certain number of productions; whence if it were so determined, it would necessarily have to be determined by another: but this cannot be said: both because there is nothing in God besides the fecund memory and will from which this determination could be understood to be made: and because, whatever that may be, about it the same question returns, whether it is prior or posterior; but it could not be posterior, because, as I said, nothing receives its unity, nor its plurality, from what is posterior to itself; nor could it be prior, because that will also be necessary, and so it will not be able to determine the other to a certain number, unless that in turn is determined by another, and so there will be a progress to infinity in those determinations of the divine processions, which since it implies a contradiction, also implies that there are several divine processions of the same kind and distinguished only in number.

He proves 3. also by this argument: a potency which has an adequate act, while it has it, cannot have another: but the divine generative potency has in fact an act adequate to itself in the generation of the Son, or of the Word: therefore it cannot have another at the same time; otherwise that act would both be and not be adequate to it. The minor is proved: for the Son is an infinite term, just as the intellect is; therefore he is truly its adequate term.

You will say. That adequacy is understood either of the act adequate extensively, or of adequacy intensively. If the first, the principle is begged; for this is the same as having an act beyond which another could not be had, whose truth and proof is not evident. If the second, that seems plainly false: for the soul of Christ, e.g., has the created vision of the Word adequate to itself intensively, and yet besides that it still has other visions: likewise the divine intellect has the vision of the divine essence adequate to itself intensively, and nevertheless it also has beyond that the vision of things other than itself. Whence the Doctor in the Reportatis lib. 1. dist. 2. qu. 7., having adduced the same argument, adds that this argument too does not hold; which he proves with the argument just made: therefore etc. — I answer. The aforementioned argument must be understood of adequacy intensively: for the Doctor explains this adequacy through the perfectional infinity of the productive principle and of the produced term; but it is repugnant that an infinite term be multiplied according to the same kind, because the infinite of itself is a being, and therefore it truly is repugnant that there be several sons infinitely perfect. With adequacy thus taken, I answer that the examples put forward in the objection do not press, for neither the intellect of God nor the intellect of the soul of Christ has several visions adequate to itself intensively, but the divine intellect indeed beholds with one vision adequate to itself the divine essence and in it everything visible: but the intellect of the soul of Christ, although it has several visions, nevertheless does not have several visions adequate to its total power of understanding; for it has one vision of the Word and of certain things in the Word adequate to itself, insofar as it is equipped with the light of glory: it also has visions of other things outside the Word, or in their own kind, proportionate and perhaps adequate, insofar as it is equipped and informed by other co-principles of understanding, so that, as our Smising says, Disput. 3. num. 109., neither the created vision of the Word and of the things in the Word, nor the visions outside the Word considered separately, are in Christ adequate to the one total power of understanding which is in him. The objections which could be formed against this solution have already been solved in qu. 3. of the preceding Article.

You will say 2. The aforementioned argument supposes that the divine generative potency is in perpetual use and act of generation: but this seems false, for what forbids God, after his Son was begotten, from having ceased from his generation, so as thus to produce another again? For if anything were an obstacle, it would be most of all because God's actions must be measured by eternity, and must not pass into the past: but this argument seems weak; for, as we read in Genesis 2.: He rested from all the work that he had made: moreover, God no longer produces past days, or those things which passed away with those days: finally, that divine generation itself is said to have passed into the past, for we read in Psal. 2. and 109.: From the womb, before the daystar, I have begotten you: therefore etc. — I deny the minor. For God is in perpetual act of the generation of his Son, and that necessarily and unfailingly: for the divine Father is in perpetual inception or conservation of his own being: but his being is the actual generation, or the notion of Paternity, by which he is constituted, as will be evident below: therefore he always necessarily generates the Son. The same is to be said by parity of the Holy Spirit; for if God is always in actual generation, and it itself does not pass into the past, by the same argument he must be in perpetual spiration. To the confirmations I say that God is in perpetual creation, or conservation, of creatures as long as they exist; whence, since the divine Son always exists, it is necessary that his generation also be necessarily continuous. But to Sacred Scripture I answer that past is indeed truly said of that generation; yet not past in our way of conceiving, that is, that it is purely past; but past in such a way that it involves all times, as is said in Apocalypse 1.: Who is, who was, and who is to come: nay, the very same is gathered from the same words of the second Psalm: This day I have begotten you; for just as I have begotten signifies the past, so this day denotes the present.

Third conclusion. — The divine processions are formally distinguished by themselves. This is the Doctor's teaching in 1. dist. 13. num. 18. For, as he says there, generation is formally by itself generation, and spiration is formally by itself spiration; and from their formal notions it is impossible for generation to be spiration, everything else being excluded per impossibile, so that one need not ask by what they are distinguished, because the whole formal notion of the one is not the same as the whole formal notion of the other.

But he proves first by the authority of St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 27. where, after he had declared the supreme difficulty of investigating the difference between the generation of the Word and the spiration of the Holy Spirit, which indeed he says is to be detected only through the beatific vision, he says: Lift up your eyes to that very light, and fix them on it if you can, for thus you will see what distinguishes the nativity of the divine Word from the procession of God, on account of which the only-begotten Son is not of the

Father, otherwise he would be his brother, but the Holy Spirit is said to proceed: and a little below he affirms that the will proceeds from knowledge, yet is not an image of knowledge, saying: Since indeed the will proceeds from knowledge, for no one wills what he does not at all know what or of what kind it is: yet it is not an image of knowledge, and therefore in this matter a certain distance between nativity and procession is understood to be intimated, because to behold something in thought is not the same as to desire it. By which St. Augustine openly confesses that those divine processions are distinguished from one another by their intrinsic principles: since from the distinction of the processions he concludes the distinction of the proceeding Persons. The Doctor confirms this from the same lib. 5. of the De Trinitate, cap. 9. and 11., where St. Augustine, inquiring why the Holy Spirit is not the Son, since nevertheless he goes forth from the Father, solves it by saying: For he goes forth not as born, but as given: by which it is established that St. Augustine intimates that the distinction of the divine Persons is to be traced back to their distinct emanations; and therefore it must be inferred that he teaches that the emanations of the divine Persons are distinct by themselves; for if their distinction were to be traced back from another source, St. Augustine would also affirm that the distinction of the persons is to be traced back from the same source.

He proves 2. Those things differ first per se which differ from one another as wholes formally and adequately: but such are the divine processions: therefore they differ by themselves and are distinguished formally. The major is evident: since the discrepancy of the individual differences (which all philosophers confess to differ of themselves spontaneously) cannot be traced back from elsewhere. The minor is therefore proved: those things differ formally by themselves which differ through a form intrinsic to themselves, and which are the formal notions of the distinction of others: but such are generation and spiration; for from them the difference of the produced divine persons is traced back, while they themselves are distinguished from one another by their own formal notion: therefore etc.

You will say 1. Processions of this kind agree in several predicates, for instance in being, in Divinity, in spirituality, and in the notion of one divine Person proceeding from another: therefore they do not differ as wholes, nor formally by themselves. — Some Scotists answer. This generic and, as it were, transcendental agreement does not stand in the way of those divine processions differing first formally and adequately by themselves: for if by a precision of the intellect they are considered under their own formal notion of generation and of spiration, and insofar as they abstract from the aforementioned predicates as transcendental, it will evidently appear that they are first diverse; because no predicate belonging to generation, as generation is, is included in the definition of spiration, as spiration is; not so is it to be said of those that agree specifically: for man, as man is, e.g., involves in himself a predicate which is common to brute, as brute is, a common predicate, which by proper differences can be contracted to either. — These solutions are indeed the best; nevertheless I add a third, namely that generation and spiration signify an opposed mode of proceeding: for generation signifies the mode of proceeding naturally, but spiration the mode of proceeding freely: but to proceed naturally and to proceed freely are modes of proceeding diverse by themselves: therefore those divine processions are also such.

From these gather 1. The aforesaid processions are indeed gathered by us to be distinct from the diversity of the principles, that is, intellect and will, from which they arise, but not to have their formal distinction from them; for they have their distinction from that from which they have their being formally: but they do not have their being formally from the principles, but only principiatively: therefore neither do they have their formal notion from them, but only their origination.

From these gather 2. That diversity is not to be traced back from the fact that one person is from one principle, another from two, because, as the Doctor says in 1. dist. 13. q. unica, the unity and plurality of supposits does not cause a diversity of notion in forms, or quasi forms, which are in them, or from them, e.g. because whiteness of its notion and of itself is that which changes sight, it does not vary this notion from the fact that it is either in a wall, or in paper, or in other subjects: therefore, by a like argument, generation and spiration do not differ from one another from the fact that they are in diverse supposits, one of which emanates from one principle, namely the Son from the Father; the other from two, namely from the Father and the Son; most of all, since the Holy Spirit from his formal notion does not require a plurality of supposits for his production and spiration, as will be evident below.

From these gather 3. This diversity of the processions is not to be traced back from the fact that one should be prior in origin to another, namely generation prior to spiration, nor from the fact that one originates from another, namely passive spiration from passive generation, or filiation: for when something is prior to another, the reason of such priority and origin is rightly sought; whence things are not precisely distinguished first by the notion of such priority or posteriority which is to be found between them: therefore neither are those divine emanations first distinguished through this notion of prior and posterior. Moreover, even if the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, he would not on that account be less really distinguished from him, as we will teach below: therefore, although he would not originate from passive generation, he would not the less be really distinguished from it, and so their diversity is not to be traced back by reason of the origination of one from the other. It is consequently the case, therefore, that that very diversity of the divine processions is traced back from their formal notion.

Nearly all theologians agree, if you except Durandus and a few other followers of his, that the divine processions are operations of the divine intellect and of the divine will: but what operations they are, and of what kind, they do not agree among themselves. Some indeed affirm that they are certain resultances, or emanations, of the divine intellect and will; so that the divine Persons produced proceed from another Person, in nearly the same way in which properties flow forth from essences, not through a true action, but through a simple emanation. Suarez seems to think this, lib. 1. De Trinitate c. 8. Whence in lib. 6. c. 1. he teaches that the relation alone of the producing Person is the whole active procession, or productive action. Some Thomists teach that a twofold intellection is to be distinguished, one essential, common to the three divine Persons; the other notional, proper to the Father and productive of the Word. Others reject this distinction as contrary to the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, and affirm that in God there is a single essential intellection, which is productive of the divine Word, inasmuch as it is modified by the relation of Paternity and has the character of diction and of a true productive action. The rest, however, with the Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. n. 13. and dist. 29. q. unica and Quodlibeto 14., contend not only that the divine processions are true actions, but also that they are equally and totally distinct from the essential acts of understanding and willing; so that diction does not formally include intellection, nor active spiration essential volition: whence it comes about that, although to understand and to will are operations common to all persons, yet to speak and to breathe forth are not. Which opinion, as truer and more consistent, in order that it may be defended more evidently and efficaciously,

Note 1. with the Doctor at the cited places, especially in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. n. 22., two acts of the divine intellect can be distinguished, namely to understand and to speak, and the same number of the divine will, namely to will and to breathe forth, of which the first is operative and the other productive; which two acts are formally distinguished from each other: for it implies a contradiction that one and the same act should by its nature be productive and non-productive of a term really distinct from the producing principle. Moreover, the productive act necessarily presupposes the operative one; for one operating and producing through the same principle, says the Doctor, is operative before he is productive: add that all theologians admit that the essential perfections, involving no relation to creatures, are prior to any notional perfection: whence since the divine intellection is something essential, but diction something notional, the latter presupposes the former; not indeed as a principle by which, but only as a condition without which not; not from need, but from the condition of the principle, which is first determined to operation rather than to production, as the Doctor observes in the same place: hence it comes about that the divine Father is first conceived as understanding and knowing himself and his own essence, before he is conceived as producing and speaking the Word.

Note 2. Our intellection is not formally and properly an action: both because every action properly so called always has some produced term; but intellection is not productive of a term, but is the very ultimate act and the ultimate perfection of the intellective potency: and because to understand is not to act, but a kind of undergoing, says the Philosopher, 3. De Anima, t. Whence formal intellection is the reception of that quality, namely the mental word, which is produced through diction and is received in the intellect itself. Hence inchoatively and effectively intellection consists in that operation of the intellect by which that quality, or mental word, is produced; but consummatively and formally in the reception of the same quality. For since that quality or word is the expressed likeness of the thing understood, without doubt by informing the intellect and adhering to it, it will assimilate the intellect to the known object, and thus render it completely understanding. But if intellection is sometimes called an action, this is not to be interpreted of an action properly so called, but because it has itself after the manner of an action, since it is always in fieri, and regards a term, not one which it produces, but one about which it is engaged, namely about the object, of which it is the living and perfect expression.

Note 3. From the Doctor, in 1. dist. 27. q. 3. n. 12., that the mental word is an act of the intelligence produced by the fruitful memory, not having being without actual intellection, representing the divine Word.

The Doctor gathers all the parts of this definition from Saint Augustine. It is said therefore, first, that it is an act of the intelligence, because it is a form actualizing the intellect, and rendering it formally and actually understanding, just as heat constitutes water formally hot: this part, however, is gathered from St. Augustine lib. 9. De Trinitate, cap. 12. and 13., where he expressly proves that the intellect alone, and not the will, produces the Word perfective and informative of itself. There is added: produced by the fruitful memory; that is, by the intellect informed and as it were pregnant with the intelligible species, for, as St. Augustine lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 10 says, formed thought from the thing which we know is the Word: and c. 11. our Word is born from our knowledge, and cap. 26. he says: the Word is expressed from memorable knowledge, that is, from the intellect having habitual knowledge, as it were the seed of the object. There is subjoined: not having being without actual intellection; for since the Word informs the intellect, and denominates it actually understanding, as long as it subsists, so long does actual intellection remain: whence St. Augustine lib. 9. cap. 8. says: We have the true knowledge of things conceived, as a Word within us, and by speaking it is born within, nor by being born does it depart from us. Finally there is added: representing the divine Word: for St. Augustine in lib. 9. investigates the origin and nature of the divine Word from a certain likeness with our word; whence in the last chapter he says: The mind itself and its knowledge, which is its offspring, and its word about itself, and love as a third, is a certain image of the Trinity. — These things being premised, three things are to be resolved: First, that the divine processions are true actions, and not only emanations and quasi resultances of one person from another: Second, that they are not the essential acts of understanding and willing: Third, that they are diction and spiration equally distinct from intellection and love.

First conclusion. — The divine processions are true and proper vital actions, and not pure and simple emanations.

This seems to be the genuine opinion of Saint Thomas and of the Subtle Doctor: for the former, 1. p. q. 10. art. 2, says: Origin signified actively is signified as proceeding from a subsistent person: whence it presupposes it; but origin signified passively, as nativity, is signified as a way to a subsistent person, and not yet as constituting it: and q. 41. art. 2. ad secundum: Motion being removed, he says, action imports nothing but the order of origin, according to which it proceeds from some cause or principle into that which is from the principle. In which words he plainly declares that origin, or the divine procession, is a certain mode, as it were a mean between the producing and the produced person, and so is not a simple immediate resultance of one person from another. — The Doctor agrees with him in 1. d. 28. q. 3. n. 3., saying: Origin, as origin, is not the proper form, neither of the person in which it is, nor of the person to which it is, but is as it were a way; and then neither is it primarily the form of the person, but as it were presupposes it. As if he would say that origin formally considered is a way between the producing person and the produced person; and so is not the proper form constitutive of that person of itself, but presupposes the producing person already constituted by its own proper form, and is the reason by which the produced person receives its being: but this is to have the true character of an action: therefore those authors truly judge the divine processions to be true and properly so called actions; not indeed simple emanations and metaphysical resultances. This same truth can be strengthened by all those opinions of the holy Fathers which we shall report below, by which we prove that the divine Word proceeds from the Father through a true and properly so called generation, just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son through active spiration; for generation and spiration are true actions: therefore the divine processions are to be called such.

This same truth is also proved by theological reason: First indeed: the divine essence is otherwise determined to the Son and the Holy Spirit than to the Father: but it is determined to the Father through a simple resultance: therefore it ought not to be determined to the Son and the Holy Spirit through a simple resultance, but through a real and properly so called action. The major is clear: since the divine essence is not determined to the Son and the Holy Spirit, except inasmuch as they are said to be produced: but the Father is produced by no one: therefore the divine essence is otherwise determined to him than to the other persons. The minor also is evident: since the formal constitutive notion of the first supposit is not produced by anyone, but flows forth from the very bosom of the divine nature, as a property flows from the essence. — Then, a simple resultance is immediately from the substantial nature itself; for metaphysical properties flow immediately from the very bosom of the essence: therefore if the procession of the Son and of the Holy Spirit were a simple resultance, it would be immediately from the divine nature; which however Suarez himself with other theologians denies and impugns against Durandus, as will be clear in the following Article. — Finally, a subsistent person ought to be produced through a true action: but the divine processions are productive of subsistent persons, as is known by faith: therefore they are true actions.

You will object 1. In created things relations are not made through a true and proper action, but result from the foundation and the term being posited; whence Aristotle in the Praedicamentis, in the chapter On Relation, affirms that there is no motion per se toward a relation: therefore in like manner the constitutive relations of the divine persons are not produced through a true action, but through a simple resultance and emanation. The consequence seems evident, for it is lawful to proceed and reason from created things to divine things with proportion.

I deny the consequence. And the reason of the disparity is that, since created relations are small accidents of diminished entity, says the Doctor, they cannot be terms of a true productive action; whence they cannot be made otherwise than through a pure emanation and simple resultance: but it is otherwise with the divine relations, which, since they are substantial and constitutive of the divine persons, also have the perfection of substances and of things subsisting per se, which are properly said to be made, and therefore can be the proper terms of a true productive action.

You will object 2. An action properly so called involves several imperfections, namely, that it is a motion, an egress from the agent, and a reception in the patient, and that its term is really an effect and an act, just as the principle is really an agent and an efficient cause: but all these imperfections are unseemly for God: therefore an action properly so called is to be removed from him.

I deny the ma- jor: for action according to the common concept of action is only the ultimate actuality of the agent proceeding from it, indeed by a virtual egress, in which no imperfection is imported, because it signifies neither contingency nor dependence. Nor does it in like manner follow from this that the produced term is an effect, or an act, but only that it is truly and really produced: just as neither does it follow from the fact that the Father is the principle of the Word that the Word is called principiate, because principiate denotes an inferiority which is repugnant to the Word.

You will object 3. Aristotle, 9. Metaph. cap. 7., in this distinguishes an immanent operation from a transient one, that by the latter something is produced, but by the former nothing: he thinks therefore that by the immanent action of the intellect nothing can really be produced; and so that it is not truly productive: but the divine Persons proceed through immanent operations: therefore these are not truly productive actions.

The Doctor answers in 1. dist. 3. q. 7., near the end, that the Philosopher is to be understood of operative actions, which namely are occupied about the object, not in that they produce, but in that they perceive; such are intellection, volition, sensation, and appetition, which for that reason would more properly be called acts than immanent actions. But he is not speaking of actions productive in an immanent manner, such as are diction and active spiration, which were not known to Aristotle: for if indeed absolutely nothing were done through immanent actions, it would follow that neither the created intellect nor the divine intellect is truly productive of the Word, which is absurd to reason, but also seems to be adverse to faith.

Second conclusion. — The essential acts of understanding and willing in God, namely the divine intellection and volition, are not the actions by which the divine persons proceed.

This seems to be the manifest opinion of the holy Fathers, to be commended in the following Conclusion, which the Subtle Doctor proves in various ways at the places cited above: First indeed, essential intellection and volition are common to the three Persons: but the notional acts, or active processions, are not common to them, as is evident: therefore, etc. — Then, if those acts of understanding and willing were productive of the Persons from themselves, it would follow that each of the divine Persons would proceed from each, indeed even from themselves: for since those acts are essential, they are truly in each person, and thus would produce in each person. Finally, if those acts were productive and were lacking to some divine Person, it would follow that that Person is not blessed: for the divine Persons are beatified through the essential acts of understanding and willing. Therefore it must be concluded that the divine processions do not consist in those acts.

Some Thomists reply, that a twofold act of understanding and willing can be distinguished in God, one indeed essential, the other notional: that by the former the divine Persons are not produced, but by the latter.

On the contrary. This reply directly militates against St. Thomas; for in the first part, q. 31. art. 1. ad 2., he says: Nothing of those things which pertain to the intellect is said personally in divine matters, except the Word alone: and ad 3. To understand imports only the relation of the one understanding to the thing understood, in which no notion of origin is imported, but to speak imports principally the relation to the conceived Word. He does not therefore admit that twofold intellection, of which one is essential and the other notional, indeed he distinguishes intellection from diction, and says that the former is unproductive, but the latter productive. — Then, if the notional intellection were distinct from the essential one, it would be most of all through a relation; for notional things are not otherwise distinguished in God from essential and common ones, except because the former express a relation, but the latter do not so: but a relation is not sufficient to constitute any intellection formally or virtually distinct from the essential one; because every intellection is a vital act and a perception of the object, about which it is occupied, inasmuch as it is an object. But the divine relation is neither a vital act nor a perception of an object, but is only the term of the divine nature constitutive of the person, nor is it occupied about the object inasmuch as it is an object, but only regards it inasmuch as it is its term: therefore, etc. — Finally, in God there cannot be posited several Deities, of which one is essential and another notional: therefore neither several intellections and loves. The consequence is evident from the parity of reason: for Deity cannot be multiplied for this reason, that it is formally infinite; but it implies a contradiction that there be several infinite things of the same notion, because the infinite comprehends every perfection whatsoever that can be thought within its own genus: but intellection and love in God are no less something infinite in the notion of intellection and love, than Deity in the notion of Deity: therefore if there cannot be a twofold Deity, a twofold intellection cannot be admitted in God.

Others reply, that the divine processions taken actively are indeed the very acts of understanding and willing, not indeed absolutely, but with this modification, that intellection, inasmuch as it is in the Father, is the expression of the Word, but not in the Son and the Holy Spirit; the same is to be said of the divine love. As if they would say: essential intellection and love, as they are in some persons, have a term, but in others not; which indeed they explain and confirm by the example of the intellect and the will, which are the principles of these processions and persons; for although the intellect and the will are in all persons, yet they do not principiate and produce in all. Therefore, they say, just as the intellect and the will are communicated to several persons, without their carrying along with themselves procession and principiation, why should not the same be said of that essential intellection and love.

On the contrary. Either that modification adds something to the real essential intellection and love, or nothing: if it adds nothing; therefore there is no reason why in one person it should produce a term, but not in another: for the same thing remaining altogether the same is always apt to do the same, as the Philosophers commonly say. If it adds something, it is either something essential, or notional. Not the first, because the same difficulty recurs; for essential things are common to the three persons: nor the second, for nothing is notional besides the constitutive relations of the persons; but a relation, as we have said, is neither formally intellection, nor the same formally with intellection; for the whole being of a relation is to be had toward another; but the whole being of intellection is to perceive the object and to represent it; which two are formally distinct. Add that if that modification adds to the essential intellection something which is really or formally distinct from it, then intellection will not be the production of a term as it is essential intellection, but only as it is notional intellection; but it is false that two intellections are to be distinguished, of which one is essential and the other notional: therefore, etc. To the confirmation I say that there is no parity; for the actual production of heat is one thing, and actual heating another, because its whole essence is in second act, that is, in the actual production of heat: if therefore the actual production of the persons were the very essential intellection and volition, it implies a contradiction that they should be in some person and not produce a term in it.

The rest reply, that intellection and volition are the productions and processions of the persons, not as acts, but as the actions of speaking and of breathing forth.

On the contrary. Intellection is something formally distinct from diction: therefore they are not one and the same, and are badly confused by the Adversaries. The antecedent is proved: for intellection is something absolute in divine matters, but diction is something relative; or, which is the same, diction is something notional, but intellection something essential: but it is clear that essential things are distinguished from notional ones, and behave in divine matters in the same way analogically as with us substance and accident, or the essential and the accidental. Then, to speak is opposed relatively to the spoken, namely to the Word which is spoken: but to understand is not opposed to the Word itself; otherwise it would be really distinguished from it: therefore to speak and to understand are not one and the same. Finally: Paternity itself is formally diction, but that cannot be intellection, as we have already said: therefore intellection and diction are not formally one and the same.

Some reply, that diction is not indeed formally intellection, but truly really: but this is nothing else than openly passing over to the opinion of Scotus, who judges that diction is to be distinguished from essential intellection only formally, just as also from the essence; and so only the dispute about the name will remain, by which namely the Thomists call really intellection what we formally call diction. — Nevertheless in this also they seem to deviate much from the truth, for if the real identification of diction with intellection should suffice that diction be called intellection, then volition will be the procession of the Son, for volition, or love, is really diction: and then the essence also will be a production of itself, for the essence also is really diction.

Some reply 2. that to speak is indeed other than to understand, but only as the including is other than the included. For just as man is other than animal, because namely he includes animal and adds to it something else, namely rational; so by parity the notional act, besides the order which the essential act expresses to the known object, adds an order to the term produced through itself; for the divine intellect, they say, simultaneously understands the object by producing the term, and produces the term by understanding the object.

I answer. that the divine Speaking does not include the essential intellection, just as man includes animal; because man adds some notion and a perfective difference to animal, namely rationality: whence rationality is a certain animality, just as the fissure of the feet is footedness, as Aristotle says in lib. 7. Metaph. But speaking does not include anything of intellection in its concept; otherwise the speaking person would understand more, because it would have some intellection which the person who does not speak does not have, and so one would be wiser than the other, which implies a contradiction. — Secondly, speaking, as has been proved, is formally an action: but intellection is not an action, but an operation: therefore the one does not formally include the other, for they are of disparate and entirely different genera. — Finally, that which speaking would add over and above intellection would either be within the line and notion of intellection, and thus it would be something essential and consequently common, just as intellection itself is; or it would be something distinct, and so something notional, and thus speaking will truly be a formality distinct from the essential intellection, which is what we intend.

The 2nd Conclusion is proved. If the production of the divine Word were formally the essential intellection, it would follow that the Father does not communicate the perfectly blessed essence to the Son, nor that the Father is blessed before the production of the Son: but the consequent is absurd: therefore so is the antecedent. The consequence of the major is clear: because beatitude consists rather in an act of the will than in an act of the intellect; for beatitude is fruition, which is formally an act of the will: but intellection precedes the act of the will, and so precedes fruition itself, in which beatitude formally consists: therefore if the divine Word were produced through intellection, the Father would be conceived as producing him before he was blessed, and thus the Son would receive an essence not yet perfectly blessed. If these things are so, either the Son is blessed thereafter, and thus he has something not received from the Father; or he is not blessed, and so he will not be God, who is beatitude itself. — Nor does it matter that the Thomists reply that beatitude does not consist formally in an act of the will, but of the intellect; for although this were true, which we have nevertheless demonstrated to be false in Philosophy, yet the aforesaid argument still always presses them. For from this it also follows that something notional would be prior to something essential, the contrary of which is the received view among the theologians. The consequence is clear: because the production of the word, if it takes place through intellection, will be prior to the essential love; for intellection precedes love. It is confirmed: for if intellection is the actual production, for whatever instant there is essential intellection, there will also be the production of the Word: but intellection necessarily precedes the essential love: therefore it follows that, if the Word is produced through the essential intellection, its production precedes that love, and so something notional is prior to the essential things, which is repugnant.

Thirdly, the same Conclusion is finally proved. If the Word were the term of the divine intellection, as intellection is, it would follow that the Father is formally understanding by the Word, and thus formally wise with a begotten wisdom: but the consequent is against the holy Fathers and Doctors: therefore, etc. The consequence of the major is clear: because the Father is formally understanding; but one who is formally understanding understands by the intrinsic term of his intellection, when intellection claims such a term for itself; for this is why the Thomists affirm that the Word is produced by us through intellection, so that through it the object is understood. The minor will be clear below, and is sufficiently proved through St. Augustine lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 7.:

In that Trinity, he says, who dares to say that the Father understands neither himself, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, except through the Son? For if there only the Son understands, so that the intelligence belongs both to himself and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, we return to that absurdity, that the Father is not wise of himself, but of the Son, nor has the wisdom of the wise begotten, but the Father is said to be wise by that wisdom which he begot. For he who is not intelligence, neither is he able > to be wisdom; nor, if by this the Father does not understand of himself, but the Son understands for the Father, will the Son indeed make the Father wise.

The Thomists object 1. the various authorities of the holy Fathers, by which they seem to suggest that we, by understanding and thinking, speak in the heart and produce the word of the mind; from which they gather a similar production of the divine Word: first of all Saint Augustine lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 10. says: The word which sounds outwardly is a sign of the word which shines within, to which the name of word more properly belongs; and what Sapientiae 2. says: They said within themselves, thinking not aright; Matth. 9. They said within themselves, this man blasphemes, which speaking is at once explained when it is added: When Jesus had seen their thoughts; likewise cap. 15. He thought within himself, saying; and Luke 5. They began to think, saying. From which St. Augustine concludes: Certain thoughts, therefore, are locutions of the heart: and further on: Within, when we think, locution and vision are one... For the thought formed by the thing which we know is the Word which we speak in the heart. He asserts moreover in the same place that this must be transferred to the divine Word, saying: Whoever can understand this, namely that we speak a mental word by thinking, can now see through this mirror and in this enigma some likeness of that Word, of which it is said: In the beginning was the Word. With him agree St. Fulgentius, lib. 1. ad Monimum cap. 7.: So, he says, is the Word with God, as the word is in the mind, as the counsel is in the heart: for when the mind has the word within itself, it certainly has it by thinking, because to speak within oneself is nothing other than to think within oneself: and also St. Anselm in Monologio, cap. 28. This very locution, he says, can be understood as nothing other than the intelligence of the same Spirit, by which it understands all things; for what else is it for him to speak some thing to himself in this manner of speaking, than to understand? Although immediately in the same chapter and the following 29. he restricts this locution, so that it is the begotten Word itself. Again cap. 34.: It is the same, he says, to the supreme Spirit to know as to understand, or to speak: and cap. 16. about the middle: To think a thing of which we have memory, this is to speak it in the mind.

I answer. that the holy Fathers, by these and similar ways of speaking, mean nothing other than that we speak and converse mentally when we think something, whether that thought is meanwhile that action by which the word of the mind is produced, or the formal reception of that word in the intellect. Which they did not weigh so exactly, with the sole exception of Augustine, who, inquiring into these things more subtly, also gave the Subtle Doctor the occasion to distinguish the production of the Word from simple thought. And so the other Fathers, judging that it suffices for the explanation of this mystery that, just as we, when we think, form within ourselves an image of the thing thought, which is called the word of the mind; so God the Father, by conceiving his essence, forms a Word consubstantial with himself, which conception of the Word they improperly call thought and intellection; so that they confound simple thought with the true internal speaking. Which impropriety of speech St. Thomas also noted, 1. part. q. 31. art. 1. ad secundum and ad tertium, and it is openly gathered from St. Anselm himself in the cited place; for cap. 58. he says: Just as the Father is understanding and the Son is understanding and the Holy Spirit is understanding, so the Father is speaking and the Son is speaking and the Holy Spirit is speaking. By which he openly confounds speaking with simple intellection; for it is certain that the Son and the Holy Spirit are truly understanding, as the Father is, namely by essential intellection, but they are not speaking with the productive speaking of the Word. But as to Saint Augustine, I say that he is to be understood of speaking and locution as it were in facto esse, so that, just as the Word outwardly uttered is called by these words, locution, speaking, utterance, word, as synonyms, although properly locution and speaking are the expression or production of the Word and as it were the Word in fieri; so internal locution is sometimes taken for the knowledge, as it were in facto esse, which thought, so taken, is the Word itself produced: whence Saint Augustine, after the words cited above, adds: The thought formed by the thing which we know is the Word.

You will object 2. Every operation of the intellect is understanding; but speaking, or conversing mentally, is formally an operation of the intellect: therefore speaking, or conversing mentally, is understanding.

I distinguish the major. it is understanding, either radically, or formally, I concede; formally only, I deny: and so every operation of the intellect can be called intellection radically and denominatively, because it proceeds from the intellective potency, but not formally, as if it were truly intellection and formal thought; for the intellect has a twofold operation, namely the speaking productive of the Word, and the intellection, which in creatures is the very formal reception of the produced Word.

You will press. if that action which we call speaking is not formally intellection, it will not be from the intellect formally, or inasmuch as it is intellect, but only inasmuch as it is a productive potency, and thus the divine Word will proceed from the intellect only as it were materially, that is, from a principle which is really only intellect, but not formally: but the consequent is false; for if the Son does not proceed from the intellect inasmuch as it is formally intellect, it follows that by force of his procession he cannot properly be called the Father's mental Word, nor proceed from the memory of the Father, nor be wisdom from wisdom and vision from vision, as Saint Augustine speaks in book 15, chapters 7. and 13.; therefore, etc. The major is proved: for the intellect is not formally intellect, except inasmuch as it unfolds itself into the act of understanding, which is the act adequate to the intellect, inasmuch as it is intellect.

I distinguish the major. it will not be formally from the intellect, inasmuch as it is intellect, or inasmuch as it produces an act which is formally intellection, I concede: inasmuch as it produces an act which is intellection at least radically, I deny.

I likewise distinguish the proof. the adequate act of the intellect is intellection, either formally, or radically, I concede; formally only, I deny.

Add. that the argument can be turned back upon the Adversaries; for intellection, as intellection is formally, is not speaking; but they themselves admit that the divine Word does not proceed from the divine intellection, inasmuch as intellection is formal; for this is common to the three divine persons; but only inasmuch as it is modified in the first supposit and is called Speaking: therefore the aforesaid argument fights more against them than against us. Nor does it follow from this that the Son is not rightly called the Word, nor wisdom and vision from vision, etc.; rather, he has his appellation of Word from the fecund memory of the Father, by whom he is produced through speaking, and he is more rightly named the Word than if he were made through intellection; for thus he would have to be called not a word uttered, but only a thought, or intellection, of the Father: but the appellation of Word is followed by the other aforesaid denominations of his, which are synonymous with the Word.

You will object 3. The divine processions are not only productions of persons, but also communications of the nature and of the essential acts; for the procession ought to contain in fieri whatever the term produced through it contains in facto esse: but the produced Word contains the nature and the essential acts: therefore its procession must also contain the divine nature and the essential act of understanding, and so it must be none other than the divine intellection itself.

I answer. that indeed the divine procession contains in fieri and as it were communicates the essence and the essential acts; but I deny that it follows from this that it must therefore be that formal act of understanding; for by this reasoning the production of the Son could also be called an act of willing; for in the Son there is not only the divine Essence and the essential act of the Father's intellect, but there is also the essential act of his will: if therefore, in order that the Son have that act of the Father's intellect by force of his procession, it is necessary that the act itself be formally included in his procession, it will also be necessary that the act of the will be formally included in it, since he has the whole essence and the essential things by force of his procession. The same can be said of the Holy Spirit. The essential things are therefore not communicated to the Son because his procession is an essential act, but because the essence itself is the other co-principle of this offspring and production. Add that, if the Adversaries' inference were true, it would also conclude that the divine Essence is formally included in speaking, because the Son, by force of his procession, has the divine Essence no less than the divine intellection; but no theologian admits this consequence: therefore neither ought he to admit the antecedent.

They object 4. If intellection were presupposed to speaking and were something common to the three persons, it would follow that the Father does not know himself in the Word more than the Word itself and the Holy Spirit would be said to understand themselves in the Word: but this is against the common assertion of the theologians, who say that the Word represents the essence to the Father; whence it comes about that he is called his image: therefore, etc. The consequence is clear, because if the Father understands by an essential intellection, which is not formally speaking, the other persons will already be his equals; since they too understand the divine essence by the essential intellection and thus will know in the Word, etc.

I distinguish the consequence. that the Father would not be said to know himself in the Word more, by reason of the operation, I concede; by reason of representation, I deny; for when it is said that the divine Father knows himself in the Word, the sense is not that through the production of the Word he knows his essence, otherwise he would be wise with a begotten wisdom, which was said above to be false from St. Augustine; but the sense is that the Father has given to the Son the power of representing that essence as his own Word, not indeed as the Word of the other Persons. Therefore, just as the created word expresses the object to the speaker himself; so in the divine things, although the Word is not in the one speaking after the manner of an informing form, as it is in creatures, it nevertheless has from him a peculiar habitude, whereby it comes about that it is said to represent the divine essence more to him than to the other persons.

They object 5. The Subtle Doctor therefore distinguishes speaking from the essential intellection, namely lest the Word be said to proceed through the essential operation of understanding common to the three persons: but the same difficulty recurs if one admits an act in the divine intellect distinct from the essential intellection; therefore he falls into Scylla while wishing to avoid Charybdis. They prove the minor: that action formally distinct ex natura rei from the essential intellection is, in the notion of action, an absolute act, just as intellection itself is; therefore in the notion of action it is common and essential, just as intellection itself is. The consequence is clear; the antecedent is proved: that action, in the notion of action flowing from the intellect, is not formally a relation; for this is neither productive, nor does it go forth from the intellect after the manner of an action, since it is the term of the divine nature constituting it in the notion of person: therefore such an action under the concept of action is something absolute, just as intellection also is; for in God whatever is not relative is absolute and belongs to the essential things, and so it follows from the opinion of Scotus that the Father produces his Word through an absolute act common to the three persons — why then could he not concede the same of the very essential understanding itself, lest actions be multiplied in God in vain?

I deny the minor. and also the major of its proof: for the divine Speaking is in reality that constitutive formality of the first supposit; and so the very relation of Paternity: not indeed inasmuch as it is considered under the precise notion of a relation referring one thing to another, nor as it is that very divine operation by which the first supposit communicates its existence and its essential things to the second supposit, to which it is therefore referred as the generating to the begotten: whence the generative action in the divine things can be said to be formally a relation according to its adequate entity, although it is not formally a relation according to its inadequate entity and diverse connotation; for one and the same constitutive formality of the first supposit receives various appellations, because of the diverse connotation of the terms and its various offices; for first it constitutes the first person subsisting incommunicably; then it constitutes the principle able to produce, as that which; thirdly it bestows the active potency unto generation, or speaking; and finally it constitutes the Father as actually and as it were praedicamentally related to the Son.

Third conclusion. — Truly the divine Word proceeds through speaking, and the Holy Spirit through active spiration.

This is the opinion of the Subtle Doctor, at the places cited in the prior Conclusion, and the truth of this follows from the preceding; for if the Word and the Holy Spirit do not proceed through formal acts of intellection and essential love, whether considered formally or as modified, it follows that they must necessarily proceed through the acts of speaking and breathing forth, for no others can be devised in the divine things.

Moreover the Conclusion is proved by the Doctor in 1. d. 2. q. 7. n. 15. first indeed by the authority of St. Augustine, who everywhere teaches that the Word, both divine and ours, is produced by the fecund memory, not indeed by the intelligence: but the fecund memory is productive through speaking, not through intellection: therefore, according to the opinion of St. Augustine, the divine Word truly proceeds through a speaking distinct from intellection. The major is clear, namely that the Word, both divine and ours, must proceed from the fecund memory. St. Augustine indeed has this expressly lib. 15. De Trinitate, cap. 10. where he speaks thus of the word produced by us: When we beget the Word it is necessary that the Word be born from that very knowledge which we hold in memory; for the thought formed by the thing which we know is the Word which we speak in the heart. But he had said a little before that from this likeness of our word the production of the divine Word can be uncovered. In this mirror, he says, and in this enigma, some likeness of that Word is seen, of which it is said: In the beginning was the Word. And that both words, the divine as well as ours, proceed from the fecund memory, he indicates openly enough in the same place, c. 11.: Our word, he says, that which has no sound, is not just anyhow like in this enigma to that Word of God, which is also God, since thus this one too is born of our knowledge just as that one was born of the knowledge of the Father. — The minor is likewise evident; for the intelligence is concerned with the object to be perceived, but the fecund memory with the Word to be produced; the former is held in the simple vision of the object, the latter in the production of its term; the former alone is the operation of the divinity by which the divine persons comprehend their essence and themselves: the latter is the speaking and production by which the Father generates the Son entirely equal to himself, by force of his procession and production. Whatever could be objected against this Conclusion has already been solved in the preceding and will be solved in the following.

You will ask, whether the act of understanding is presupposed to the act of speaking in the divine things? — The Scotists commonly affirm it, both because the Subtle Doctor seems manifestly to assert this in 1. dist. 2. qu. ultima, as has already been observed in the first Note: and because the essential things are prior to the notional, but understanding is something essential, while speaking is something notional: and finally, because it belongs to the notion of a perfect principle that it first have its ultimate perfection before it produces: but understanding and willing seem to be the ultimate perfections of the Deity, and therefore the divine person must first be understanding and willing before it produces the Word from the fecundity of the nature. But it happens otherwise in creatures, where speaking precedes understanding, since the created intellect is not formally understanding except through the reception of the Word produced by speaking itself.

Nevertheless some protest, to whom our Baronius subscribes, Apolog. 2. act. 4. about the end, affirming that in the Father speaking is prior to intellection and volition, because, he says, speaking is the constituent of the Father, and nothing is prior in anything than that by which it is constituted; for nothing can be in something before that thing is, nor can it be before it is constituted in being, nor can it be constituted except through its constitutive principle, and so nothing can be in the Father before the Father is constituted in his being of Father. But he is not constituted in that being except through speaking, which, as is supposed, is the active generation itself. Whence he concludes that, although absolutely in God understanding is prior to speaking, nevertheless in the Father, as in the Father reduplicatively, speaking is prior to understanding, just as, although animal is prior to rational, nevertheless, as it is in man, rational is prior to animal; whence, since the Father is constituted in the being of Father through speaking, it is necessary that he speak before he understands, because it is prior for the Father to be than to understand. — But the other Scotists protest, with Rada, in the first part, Controversia 12. art. 3.: first, because according to the Subtle Doctor the Father is blessed before he generates: but beatitude is either in intellection, or in volition, or in both: therefore the divine Father understands his essence before he speaks and produces his Word. Then, because whenever some things observe a necessary order among themselves, they necessarily observe the same order wherever they are found: but understanding in itself is prior to speaking: therefore also in the Father intellection precedes speaking. Nor does the example of the animal help; for it is false that in man rational is prior to animal, for both concur to the constitution of man, animal indeed as the superior predicate, rational as the interior predicate; so, by parity, understanding and speaking together constitute the Father, understanding indeed as the superior predicate, speaking as the ultimate predicate, and therefore the latter presupposes the former. Finally, because whatever follows upon a notional predicate is not communicated to the other persons, for it is the proper character of the divine person: but the divine understanding is communicated to several and passes to all the divine persons: therefore it does not presuppose speaking, by which the latter is a notional predicate, but precedes.