Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

Having investigated, and as far as was permitted explained, the existence and essence of the divine Emanations, it remains, for their exact and clearer understanding, that we investigate and lay open their principles, objects, and terms. For since by their formal notion they are actions truly productive, it is necessary that they have principles from which they arise, objects by which they are formed, and terms, the offspring and progeny of their fecundity.

Wherefore the present Article will be completed especially in three Questions. In the First of these it will appear what are the immediate formal principles of the divine Emanations. In the Second, from what objects they are formed, namely whether the generation of the Word and the procession of the Holy Spirit suppose and require the knowledge and love of creatures. In the Third, finally, whether the term of those Emanations is either the divine Nature, or a Relation and a Supposit, or finally the divine Person itself coalescing as it were from nature and personality at once.

Note 1. Truly there is in the divine realities a true and real productive principle of the Persons; for where there is a true production and a truly produced term, there must also be a true productive principle. This, however, is commonly distinguished as twofold, namely, the principium quod, which is the person itself, the very supposit operating and producing; whence the common saying, actions belong to supposits. The other is called the principium quo, and it is that formal notion which immediately concurs to the action, that is, the power by means of which the supposit elicits its action. This, again, is twofold, namely, radical or remote, and formal or proximate, as is evident in illumination, or the diffusion of light. For light is the principium quo of illumination; but the illuminative power, which is substantial in the sun, is called the remote principium quo of the same illumination.

Note 2. It is certain that neither the divine essence nor the intellect and will are the principia quod of the divine Persons. For this role is claimed for themselves by the persons of the Father and of the Son — of the Father, indeed, with respect to the generation of the Son, and of the Father and of the Son with respect to spiration; for what really proceeds from something as from a productive principium quod is also really distinguished from it. But it is evident that the produced divine Persons are not really distinguished from the essence, nor from the intellect and will, but only from the producing persons. And therefore only those have the role of principium quod of the divine persons. The present difficulty, therefore, is moved only about the principium quo, namely, whether the Son and the Holy Spirit proceed immediately from the divine nature, or only remotely, that is, through the mediation of intellect and will.

Note 3. Since in the Father generating the Son, and in the Father and the Son producing the Holy Spirit, there are absolute and essential perfections, namely, the divine essence itself together with the attributes, modes and powers, or faculties of intellect and will; as also relative or notional ones, namely, the divine relations and personalities; hence, with regard to the resolution of the present Question, the opinion of the authors appears to be threefold and most opposed. For Durandus, in 1. dist. 5. qu. 2., affirms that the divine nature, precisely and formally, or virtually, distinct from the intellect and will, is not only the radical and remote, but also the proximate and immediate principium quo of the divine emanations. St. Thomas, in 1. dist. 11. qu. 1. art. 3., teaches that the emanations arise immediately from the relations themselves; for he says: Generation does not proceed from the essence insofar as it is essence, but insofar as it is Paternity; and if these two, namely essence and Paternity, differed in the divine realities, generation would proceed from both, but immediately from Paternity, and from the essence as from a first principle. But since elsewhere he asserts that essence and paternity are distinguished virtually, it follows that he maintains that generation arises immediately from Paternity, virtually.

Nevertheless, the opinion of the Thomists is now common, that the divine emanations arise immediately not from the essence, nor from the relations, but from the intellect and will, determined to the person of the Father and of the Son through the relations of Paternity and Filiation. That this may be made evident, let it be

Single conclusion. — The divine nature, as formally distinct from the intellect and will, is not the proximate and immediate principium quo of the divine processions, but the intellect and will claim this formal notion for themselves.

This is the more common and truer opinion received among theologians, and it is proved first by all those texts of Sacred Scripture in which the Son of God is called the Word. Thus Ioann. 1.: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, etc. And 1. Ioan. 5.: There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. Apoc. 19.: His name is the Word of God. But the Word is a term produced through the intellect and formed through the utterance, which is an operation of the intellect: whence St. Cyril, lib. 1. on John, cap. 5.: The Son, he says, is called the Word and Wisdom, because He is immediately and indivisibly from the intellect. With this Basil agrees, hom. 16. on John: Why Word? he says, that it may be shown that He proceeds from the mind. Athanasius also agrees, in the Epistle de sent. Dion. Alex. contra Arianos, saying:

The Word, as it were the Son of the mind: just as it is impossible that it should have existed before the mind, so it by no means existed without it, but together with it, and was brought forth from it; in the same way, too, the Most Great Father, being wholly mind, has His Son, the Word, as the interpreter and messenger of Himself.

Hence Athanasius concludes that Dionysius teaches that the Word is proper to the substance of the Father, and that by the same reason by which the Word is from the substance of the mind. With these Damascene agrees, lib. 1. De Fide c. 8.: The Word is the natural motion of the mind, according to which it is moved, understands and thinks, being as it were its light and splendor. By these oracles, then, of Sacred Scripture and of the Holy Fathers, it is clearly established that the Son of God is therefore called the Word, because He proceeds immediately through the intellect, whose office it is to speak the Word, as we have proved sufficiently, and more than sufficiently, above.

The same can also be inferred concerning the Holy Spirit, who is called charity and produced love, because He arises from the divine will. Thus 1. Ioannis 4.: Let us love one another, because charity is from God, which words St. Augustine explains of the Holy Spirit, lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 17. Add that many things are attributed to the Holy Spirit, whether properly or by appropriation, which cannot come from nature; indeed, they are opposed to natural production; for He is a gift: but nothing less befits a gift than to be natural; for a gift is free, whereas what is natural is necessary. He is holy: but holiness, since it is worthy of praise, is the work not of nature, but of freedom; for on account of what is natural we are neither praised nor blamed, says Aristotle, 3. Ethic. cap. 1. Finally, He is love: but love is the offspring of the will, not of nature: therefore He proceeds immediately not from nature, but from the will.

Durandus replies. That the Son of God is indeed called the Word, and the Holy Spirit Love, but not properly, rather metaphorically, namely, through a certain proportion and likeness to created things; that is, just as the intellect is the first property of an intellectual nature and the will the second, so the Son is called the Word because He proceeds first, while the Holy Spirit is called love because He arises second and presupposes the origin of the Son.

On the contrary. This rejoinder smacks of the error of the Alogians, who, since they denied that the divine Word is a person distinct from the Father, also contended that it is only metaphorically appropriated to a divine person by Sacred Scripture.

Further, if it were allowed to explain the Word, so often used by St. John in the first Chapter, as spoken improperly and metaphorically, with equal audacity and rashness it will be allowed to assert that the names of God and of the Son are also said metaphorically and improperly, and likewise that the words, all things were made through Him, refer not to true creation, but to a metaphorical and apparent, or borrowed, one; and finally, that the words, the Word was made flesh, are used of a metaphorical incarnation. Since this is absurd and intolerable, and all other things must be taken in their proper sense, the name of the Word must likewise be taken properly.

Wherefore Cyril justly says, lib. 7. Thesauri cap. 1., almost at the beginning: John called the Son the Word, and he seems to have chosen this name as proper and most significative of the very being of the Son, etc. You see how this name signifies the very being of the Son according to nature?

Finally, it is certain that St. John undertook in that place to explain the Divinity of Christ against the Cerinthians and Ebionites, as all interpreters acknowledge. But who, unless estranged from the truth, would say that he uses improper and metaphorical words to explain the two principal mysteries of the faith, namely, the distinction of the divine persons and the incarnation of one of them? Whence the above-praised Cyril: In vain, he says, do we marvel at the Evangelist and, as it were, call him the Son of thunder for having thundered something great and proper, unless he had pronounced the Word as something proper, wonderful and unheard of.

It is confirmed. This response and the Conclusion are proved together: it is settled by faith that there are two, and only two, processions in the divine realities, of which the former is of the Son from the Father alone, the latter of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, so that the former is first, the latter second. For since the Son is the principle of the Holy Spirit, He must be produced prior in origin to the Holy Spirit. It is likewise evident that the first procession is generation, but the second is not so. But this diversity of processions and persons cannot be drawn from any other source than this: that the Son proceeds through the intellect, while the Holy Spirit proceeds through the will. Proof: for, given that the Son does not proceed immediately through the intellect, and the Holy Spirit through the will, no efficacious reason can be given why there are two processions. For if they arose immediately from the divine nature, someone could say that the divine nature poured out all its powers into one person, and thus there would be no place for the production of another divine person. Likewise, no reason could be brought forth why the production of the Son is from the Father alone, and that of the Holy Spirit from both; nor why the former is prior in origin and the latter posterior; nor, finally, why the former is generation and the latter spiration. Therefore the reason of all these things cannot be given and drawn from any other source than this: that the Son proceeds immediately through the intellect, and the Holy Spirit through the will: therefore, etc.

You will object 1. The Holy Fathers, some of whom call even the eternal Father the Word. Thus St. Ambrose, lib. unico De Filii divinitate cap. 50.: Whether you say light from light, or Word from Word, or Spirit from Spirit, or Lord from Lord, whatever you say of Him, yet believe the Father and the Son to be of one essence. Similarly Basil, lib. 5. Contra Eunomium cap. 11.: The Word of God, he says, is the Son, but the Word of the Son is the Spirit. For, says the Apostle, Hebr. 1., upholding all things by the word of His power, and since the Word of the Son is through God, etc. But from the fact that the Father and the Holy Spirit are called the Word, it is not lawful to infer that they proceed through the intellect: therefore neither is it lawful to gather from this that the procession of the Son is made immediately through the intellect.

I answer. That the Holy Fathers sometimes extend the name of the Word more broadly to an improper and unusual acceptation, so as to signify not only the operation of the speaker, which is in the Father, but also every action and communication appropriated to the Holy Spirit toward creatures; nevertheless, the aforementioned Fathers also use the name of the Word in its proper signification, so as to signify by it the divine Son; for St. Ambrose says in the same place: This is called the Word, because it proceeded from the proper mouth of the speaker, and the Father commanded or did nothing without it. And St. Basil, in the same place, about the middle, likewise signifies that the name of the Word is proper to the Son, saying: The Father is the begetter of the Son, as the mind is the Father of the Word, as the wise one who begot wisdom. And so from the aforementioned texts nothing at all may be urged against the truth of the Conclusion.

You will object 2. The Holy Fathers assert that the Son proceeds from the divine nature. Thus Saint Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit. c. 20., says that the Word, through which all things were made, is the Son of God by nature. Likewise Damascene, lib. 1. De Fide cap. 8., calls the procession of the Son a work of nature. But it could not rightly be so called unless the Word proceeded immediately from nature, and not from the intellect: therefore, etc.

I deny the minor. For that is not the opinion of the praised Fathers; for they dispute there against the Arians, who said that the divine Word is a creature, and that therefore its procession arises not from nature, but from the divine will; and in order to refute this, the holy Fathers assert that it is a work of nature, that is, necessary and natural, not free and voluntary.

I distinguish. The procession of the Word proceeds from nature as from a proximate and immediate principle — I deny; from a remote and radical one — I concede.

You will object 3. If the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeded immediately from the intellect and will, this would be especially through understanding and willing: but this cannot be said. First, because the productions of the persons are notional acts, and not essential ones: but understanding and willing are essential acts, not notional ones. Second, because to whomever the act belongs by which a person is produced, to the same one it belongs to produce the person to which that act is terminated, just as to whom it belongs to generate, to him it also belongs to produce the Son: but understanding and willing belong to all the divine Persons: therefore to all of them it also belongs to produce the Son and the Holy Spirit. Third, because the productions of the persons differ really; for active generation differs from filiation: but understanding and willing do not differ really: therefore, etc.

I answer. That this argument of Durandus by no means fights against us; for we do not affirm that the processions are made through the essential acts of understanding and willing, but through the notional acts of uttering and spirating.

You will object 1. In the same way, with proportion kept, fecundity belongs to creatures and to God: but productive fecundity in creatures does not belong to them through intellect and will; for purely spiritual creatures do not produce others, as is evident in the Angels, although they are endowed with a most excellent faculty of understanding and willing; but corporeal and mixed creatures, such as man, consisting of body and spirit, generate their like not through intellect and will, but through another faculty: therefore the productive power of the divine Person belongs to God not by reason of the intellect, but proceeds immediately from the very fecundity of nature.

I answer 1. That the argument can be turned back against Durandus; for if fecundity must belong proportionally to God and to creatures, it follows that God could not communicate His substance and essence to another person, because no created spiritual person can communicate its substance to another, not only through intellection and volition, but not even through any fecundity of nature; and so, if that proportion is to be exactly kept, even the divine nature will have no fecundity of communicating itself. Which, however, Durandus asserts.

I answer 2. To the minor: fecundity in spiritual creatures is nothing through the intellect — I distinguish; fecundity that is productive of a substantial term — I concede; of at least an accidental term — I deny. For the production of the created word is a kind of spiritual generation, as we have said; for all knowledge is born from the object and the potency. But birth signifies generation. And the reason why through the created intellect only an accidental Word is produced is that, as the Doctor says in 1. dist. 3. q. 8., the created intellect is not productive of intellection except with the intelligible species partially concurring, which, since it is an accident, will be productive only of an accident, because no effect is more perfect than its cause. The divine intellect, however, concurs to the production of the begotten knowledge together with the divine essence, and these two are adequately substantial; wherefore it is no wonder if they are productive of substance.

From these gather 1. That the divine essence is, not indeed the proximate, but at least the remote and radical principium quo of the divine processions. This is evident first from the holy Fathers; for first of all Cyril, lib. 1. Thesauri cap. 7., says that the generative power is the essence of God. And Damascene, lib. 1. De Fide cap. 8.: Generation, he says, is of nature, not as of the one generating, but as of that by which it generates. With these St. Anselm agrees in Monologio, cap. 52. where, speaking of the Holy Spirit, he says: The Father and the Son do not send forth so great a good from their relations, which are many, but from the essence itself, which is one. Hence St. Dionysius, lib. De Divinis Nominibus c. 2., calls the Son and the Holy Spirit the gems and shoots of the fecund Divinity. Secondly, reason itself persuades this. For the radical principium quo of generation is that in which the one begotten is assimilated to the one generating: but that in which the divine begotten Son agrees with the generating Father is not a relation, but the divine nature: therefore this is the first and radical principium quo of the generation of the Word, not indeed considered simpliciter and absolutely, but insofar as it is modified and determined to the first supposit through the relation of Paternity.

Gather 2. That the proximate principium quo of the generation of the Word and of the production of the Holy Spirit is indeed the intellect and will of God, but insofar as they are modified and determined through the relations of Paternity and Filiation. First, because the intellect and will are proximate principles in the same way in which the divine essence is the remote principle of the divine processions: but the divine essence, as we have said, is such insofar as it is determined through the personal relations; for if it were such considered absolutely, it would follow that it is formally the principle of generation in the Son, and of generation and spiration in the Holy Spirit, since it is formally in them: therefore by the same reason the divine intellect and will are principles of the divine processions, insofar as they are also determined through the same personal relations. Second, because potencies do not have the notion of proximate principle except insofar as they are in supposits, whence actions belong to supposits: therefore the divine intellect and will will not be proximate principles except insofar as they are determined to the Person of the Father and of the Son. Finally, because St. Athanasius, in Dialogue 1. De Trinit., says: The Father generates by hypostasis, and Ambrose, lib. 4. De Fide cap. 4.: Generation, he says, is of the paternal property, not of potency. And St. Augustine, lib. 1. De Trinit. cap. 5., says: By this very fact the Father is called and is the Father, that He has a Son: therefore, since the Father does not have the Son except by force of the generative potency determined through Paternity, neither does He generate by a principium quo except one determined through hypostasis and the personal relation.

The present Question is wont to be proposed otherwise by the Thomists; for since they teach that the divine Word proceeds through intellection, and the Holy Spirit through love, they not undeservedly ask from the knowledge and love of which object each of these two divine Persons proceeds. But we, adhering to the footsteps of the Subtle Doctor, since we assert that those divine processions do presuppose essential knowledge and love, and are acts of speaking and breathing forth distinct from those essential operations, it follows that we should inquire into and resolve from the knowledge and love of which object the divine intellect and the divine will are rendered fruitful, so that the former may produce the Word through the act of speaking, and the latter the Holy Spirit through the act of breathing forth. And so the present difficulty (whatever some may protest) concerns the followers of both Schools, although its proposition is diverse, and the manner of solving it varied.

Note 1. Since the object of divine knowledge and of divine love can be distinguished as fourfold — namely, 1. the divine essence, endowed with all its absolute perfections, namely its attributes, modes, and faculties of understanding and willing; 2. the divine Persons, consisting in their relations, hypostases, and personalities; 3. possible creatures, prescinding from all futurition and existence; 4. finally, all creatures, whether actually existing or at some time future — so also around the resolution of the present Question there is a fourfold, most opposed opinion of the theologians. The first affirms that the Word proceeds from the knowledge, and the Holy Spirit from the love, of all those objects, even of future creatures. Thus Ruiz, Disp. 63, Sect. 1 and 5, etc. Some contend that future creatures should indeed be removed from the number of those objects from whose love and knowledge the divine Persons proceed: but they will that the divine Word proceeds from the knowledge of possible creatures, and also of the three divine Persons and of the divine essence: such is the common opinion of the Thomists. All the Scotists, together with the Subtle Doctor, teach that the divine Word presupposes no knowledge of creatures for its production. Vasquez, Disp. 112, holds that it proceeds indeed from the knowledge of the Father and of itself, but not of the Holy Spirit. There are also those who assert that it proceeds not indeed from the knowledge of creatures and of the divine Persons, but of the divine essence alone, whom the Doctor seems greatly to favor in the places to be adduced below. But all agree that those divine processions are either the knowledge and love of the divine essence, or at least presuppose both, and are posterior to them.

Note 2. That supposition or priority by which the divine Father is said to know His essence, or the divine Persons, or creatures, before He produces the Son or the Holy Spirit, is not a priority of existence and of reality, but only of sign, not indeed in quo, as they speak, but a quo; that is, it does not import an order of duration in which one exists while the other does not exist, since in the adorable Trinity nothing is prior or posterior in duration — all three Persons, namely, are eternal, as St. Athanasius says in the Creed; for what is prior to another in duration cannot be co-eternal with it, since eternity acknowledges nothing prior or posterior. They are therefore only signs a quibus, that is, of the pre-requirement of one to another, whether according to the order of Nature, or of Origin, or of Presupposition. The order of nature is considered not according to causality, by which the cause is prior to its effect, because in divine things there is no true causality, nor any true and properly so-called effect; but only according to the consequence of subsistence, in which manner, says Aristotle, Praedicament., cap. De modis prioris: One is prior to two; for if two exist, one follows in being. But if one exists, it does not necessarily follow that two exist; hence, one being posited, the consequence does not convert, so that two exist. The order of origin is that by which one is from another, namely, in the way in which the produced person emanates from the producer. Finally, the order of pre-requirement is that by which one is preconceived before another and is presupposed to it. The order of nature is among the essential things, both among themselves and compared with the notional, because, the notional things and the divine attributes being understood, it is necessary that the divine essence be understood as their root; but, the essence being understood, it is not necessary that they be conceived. There is therefore among them an order of nature according to the consequence of subsistence. The order of origin is only among the divine Persons, one of whom proceeds from another. Finally, the order of pre-requirement or presupposition is between the Father and the divine essence, because the divine essence is presupposed as the root of Paternity, and also of all the properties, whether absolute or relative, in God.

Note 3. That just as in the same instant of time there can be various instants of nature, says the Doctor in 2. dist. 1. q. 1. n. 13. — for an Angel, v. g., in the first instant of time in which it was created, could produce in itself knowledge and love, which, although they have no order as regards the duration of time, because they were produced in the same instant, nevertheless have several instants of nature, because by nature the Angel was produced before the knowledge, and knowledge before love, since the Angel was produced by God alone, knowledge by God and the angelic intellect, but love by the will presupposing the angelic intellect and the divine concurrence; for by nature the intellective potency must operate before the will; just as, I say, various instants of nature can be distinguished in the same instant of time, so also various instants of origin will be able to be distinguished in the same instant of nature, since in that very instant of nature in which the intellect and the divine will regard their primary object, namely the divine essence, the whole order of origin is found; for nothing is required for the productions of the persons besides those potencies and the primary object. Whence in that very instant of nature three instants of origin can be distinguished: first indeed, that in which the Father has being from Himself; but this origin is only secundum quid; second, that from which the Son has being from the Father; third, that from which the Holy Spirit has being from the Father and the Son; which two latter origins are real and complete.

Indeed, one instant of nature can be subdivided and distinguished into several smaller instants, as may be gathered from the Doctor in 2. dist. 1. quaest. 13., where he assigns only two instants of nature: the first, in which God knows and wills Himself with essential knowledge and volition; and in which, through the fruitful intellect and will, there is within Him a twofold procession of persons and a twofold order of origin, which he asserts to be contained in that first instant of nature; the other, in which God, one and triune, knows and wills creatures; so that in the first instant He comprehends all things which belong to God ad intra; but in the second He embraces those which belong to God ad extra. Whence that first instant of nature can be divided into seven other smaller instants, so that the first instant of nature in divine things is that by which the essence is understood to be under the notion of this essence; the second, by which it is understood to have its intrinsic modes; the third, by which it is understood to have its first attributes; the fourth, by which these attributes are understood to have their first intrinsic modes; the fifth, by which it is understood to have its other attributes founded on the first attributes; the sixth, by which these attributes are understood to have their own intrinsic modes; the seventh, by which the processions of the persons are understood; after which follows the eighth, by which creatures are understood in possible being, etc. These things being thus premised, two things are to be resolved: first, that the divine processions presuppose the knowledge and love not only of the divine nature, but also of the divine persons. Second, that they in no way presuppose the knowledge and love of creatures, whether future or possible.

First conclusion. — The generation of the Word and the spiration of the Holy Spirit do not presuppose the love and knowledge of creatures, whether future or possible, nor do they arise from them as from objects rendering the divine intellect and will fruitful.

This conclusion, as regards both parts, is the Doctor's in 1. dist. 18. quaest. unica n. 1. and 5., and in the second, already cited, as well as in Quodlibet 14.

Proof 1. from the Doctor in 2. dist. 1. q. 1. n. 9.: The divine intellect and the divine will are terminated at the divine essence before they are terminated at creatures under possible or future being: but in that prior instant each of those divine potencies is fruitful for the production of the Word and of the Holy Spirit: therefore the Word and the Holy Spirit proceed from the intellect and will terminated at the divine essence, before they extend themselves to the knowledge and love of creatures. The major is evident, for the divine essence is the primary and adequate object of the divine intellect and of the divine will; moreover, it is that which moves each divine faculty to the knowledge and love of creatures; but creatures are only a secondary object: but the intellect and will are first terminated at the primary object, before at the secondary, especially when the primary object per se necessarily moves to the knowledge and love of the secondary: therefore, etc. The minor is also evident: for the intellect and will are rendered fruitful by a perfectly adequate object: but the divine essence is a perfectly adequate object for the divine intellect and will; for it is in every way infinite in the notion of object, just as those faculties are infinite in the notion of productive potency: therefore those potencies are in every way rendered fruitful by the very termination at the divine essence, nor is it necessary for this that they be terminated at secondary objects.

It is confirmed. Then there is no need that the faculty be terminated at the secondary object, so as to draw from it its complete fruitfulness, when all that perfection to be found in the secondary object is in the primary in a more excellent way than in the secondary: but every notion of being and perfection is in the divine essence in a more excellent way than in creatures, whether possible or future: therefore, in order that the divine intellect and the divine will become fruitful for the production of the Word and of the Holy Spirit, there is no need that they be terminated at creatures, but it suffices that they be terminated at the divine essence, as at the primary object.

Proof 2. ibidem n. 8. The divine Persons are produced before creatures have possible or future being: therefore the productions of the divine Persons cannot presuppose the knowledge and love of creatures. The consequence is evident: for if in that prior instant creatures have no being, they will in no way be able to be known or loved. The antecedent is proved: the divine Persons are produced earlier if their productive principle is earlier; but in truth the productive principle of the divine Persons is earlier than the productive principle of creatures, especially in the being of futurition; which the Doctor proves thus: the principle of necessary production is prior to the principle of contingent production: but the productive principle of the Persons is necessary; the productive principle of creatures, however, is contingent: therefore the latter must presuppose the former. He proves the major: every production going forth from a supposit presupposes the supposit from which it goes forth: but the production of creatures goes forth from the three divine Persons: therefore it must presuppose them: and hence their necessary productions, and consequently their necessary productive principles.

Proof 3. Quodlibet 14. The motion of the divine essence toward an infinite term is prior to that toward a finite term: but the procession of the Word and

of the Holy Spirit is an infinite term: whereas the being of creatures in known being is a finite term: therefore the productions of the Persons are presupposed before the being of possible creatures. The major is proved, for the infinite simpliciter cannot pre-require the finite, but rather the finite pre-requires the infinite: therefore the knowledge of creatures does not precede the production of the persons. And it is confirmed: for, the prior being removed, the posterior is removed, and not the contrary: therefore, the finite being being taken away, namely the being of possible creatures, the production of the Word is not taken away: therefore the production of the Word is prior to the finite being of creatures.

It is confirmed 1. That, which being removed those divine Persons would nonetheless subsist, does not per se concur to the production of the Word and of the Holy Spirit: but if the knowledge and love of creatures, whether future or possible, were absent, those divine Persons would nonetheless be produced and subsist: therefore their production does not presuppose the love and knowledge of creatures. The major is evident. The minor, however, is proved 1. from St. Anselm in Monol. cap. 30., where he says: Whether God be thought of, no other essence existing, or others existing, it is necessary that His Word be co-eternal with Him along with Himself: and cap. 31.: If nothing else ever were, except that supreme spirit, reason nevertheless compels His Word, by which He speaks Himself, to exist from necessity. By which Anselm openly teaches that, even if there were no creatures, whether possible or future, nevertheless the divine Word would subsist wholly unchanged: but if there were no possible or future creatures, there would likewise be no knowledge in God: therefore, the knowledge of creatures being removed, the divine Word would subsist wholly unchanged: the same is to be said of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, it seems ridiculous and absurd to assert that God exists, and the divine Word proceeds, for this reason, because a fly or an ant, v. g., is possible: therefore it is also ridiculous to say that if this or that creature, which is possible, were rendered impossible, the divine Word would not remain intrinsically unchanged. Thirdly, what is more necessary cannot depend on what is less necessary: but the necessity of the procession of the Word is greater than the necessity of the possibility of creatures, since it is the necessity of a being from itself; whereas this is the necessity of a being dependent on another: therefore the Word in its production cannot depend on the possibility of creatures: therefore neither can it proceed from their knowledge.

The Thomists reply. that even if the divine Word proceeds per se from the knowledge of possible creatures, it does not follow from this that it depends on them, or that it needs them, but only that it is necessarily connected with them.

On the contrary. By the very fact that the divine Word is so necessarily connected with the possibility of creatures that it cannot subsist without it, it depends on creatures: for those things depend mutually on one another which mutually imply and remove one another; but, the necessary connection between the production of the divine Word and the possibility of creatures being admitted, they would mutually imply and remove one another: therefore, if the divine Word cannot proceed and subsist without creatures, it follows that it depends on them.

It is confirmed 2. Especially with regard to future creatures: the divine Word is necessary simpliciter: therefore its procession is necessary simpliciter, and so it arises from the divine intellect rendered fruitful by a supremely necessary object: but future creatures are not necessary; indeed, they are altogether contingent, because God can decree or not decree their futurition at will: therefore they cannot be supposed as a pre-required object influencing the generation of the Word. Next, if the divine Word presupposed the knowledge of future creatures, it would follow that free knowledge is in God before the Word is produced: but this is absurd. If free knowledge were in God before the production of the Word, then free decrees would also precede that production of the Word by a priority of nature: for free knowledge presupposes the decree, and so if free knowledge is prior, the decree is also prior. But the decrees are not in God before the Word is generated; both because in God natural things are prior to free things; therefore the generation of the Word, which is natural, is prior to the free decrees; and because if the decrees were in God before generation and spiration, they would necessarily be communicated, like the Word, in the generation itself: but this implies a contradiction, because thus the decree would not be free with respect to the Word to which it is communicated; for that act is not free with respect to the Word, to which the Word does not freely determine itself: but if it receives the decree from the Father in its generation, it does not determine itself to it, and so with respect to it the decree would not be free; and finally because the works of God which concern creatures are the undivided works of the Trinity: but those decrees concerning the futurition of creatures are works of God concerning creatures: therefore they belong indivisibly to the adorable Trinity, and so presuppose it, and consequently the persons to be produced do not presuppose that futurition of creatures, nor therefore are creatures the objects from which the divine intellect and the divine will are rendered fruitful in the production of the Word and of the Holy Spirit.

You will object 1. The divine Word is expressive of all those things which are represented in the knowledge of God: therefore it presupposes their knowledge: but all creatures are represented in the essence of God: therefore, etc. The major is proved by the authority of St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit. c. 14.

For, he says, He would not have spoken Himself wholly and perfectly, if there were anything less or more in His Word than in Himself; for whatever is in that knowledge from which it is begotten is in Him; but what is not in it is not in Him either. And so God the Father knows all things in Himself, He knows them in the Son; but in Himself, as in Himself; in the Son, however, as in His Word, which is of all things which are in Himself.

And Zeno Veronensis, serm. 1. De aeterni Verbi Generat.: The whole is born of the whole, the perfect of the perfect, having all of the Father, detracting nothing from the Father. The minor also is established from the same St. Augustine, who teaches in many places that creatures are represented and are in the divine essence as in an ocean of entity: whence in De Trinitate cap. 10. he calls it a perfect Word, to which nothing is lacking, and a certain art of the Almighty, full of all living and changeable reasons, and all are one in it, just as it itself is one of one, with whom it is one; there God knows all things which He has made through it.

I distinguish the major. for that instant in which they are representable, I concede; before, I deny. Because, therefore, creatures are not representable in that same instant, since they are not yet conceived as possible or future in that prior instant of origin in which the Word is produced, but only in some posterior instant, therefore in that prior instant the Word is said neither to represent nor to express creatures. I distinguish the minor similarly: that creatures are represented in the divine Essence, in that prior instant of origin in which the Word is produced, I deny; in the posterior, I concede: or otherwise: that creatures are in the essence of God according to their virtual being, namely insofar as the divine essence is the fount and ocean of any entity whatever, whether uncreated or created, I concede: according to their formal and proper being, I deny: whence, although creatures are supposed for the production of the Word according to that virtual being, they cannot for that reason be said to concur to that production in the notion of object, because that virtual being is nothing other than the divine essence itself.

You will insist. The divine Word is infinite in the notion of Word: therefore it is also infinitely representative and expressive; and consequently it must express and represent absolutely everything representable, for whatever instant in which it is the Word: but in that prior instant of origin the Word is produced under the formal notion of Word, and so it must represent whatever is representable, and consequently, since creatures are representable, it must express them, and so it must presuppose their knowledge, for that instant of its generation.

I distinguish the sequel of the major. that it must represent everything that is representable, for that prior instant in which it is the Word, I concede; that it must represent what is not yet representable for that instant, I deny; therefore, since creatures are not possible or future for every instant in which it is formally the Word, but only in the instant following the divine processions, it must not represent them for that prior instant either, but only in the consequent instant.

You will press. The Word, from the formal notion of Word, cannot represent anything except those things from which it proceeds: therefore either the divine Word in no way represents creatures for any posterior instant, or it proceeds from them: but to assert that the divine Word does not represent creatures is openly against the opinion of Saint Augustine cited above: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the antecedent. A created word, on account of its limitation, cannot express anything except those things from which it proceeds, because namely all those things of which it is the word concur to its formation, I concede: that the divine Word cannot represent anything except those things from which it proceeds, I deny. For since it has an infinite power of representing, it can express whatever is representable for that instant in which it is representable. Whence it is fittingly said in Speculum Sapientiae 7.: For we know that mirrors can represent even those things which are not, not indeed when they are not, but afterwards when they are: hence the divine Word expresses and represents creatures according to their virtual being in the prior instant of origin; but in the posterior it represents them according to their formal being, namely after the order of the divine processions is complete.

You will object 2. The divine Word proceeds from the comprehensive knowledge of the divine essence and omnipotence, and consequently from the knowledge of all those things without which omnipotence cannot be comprehended: but omnipotence cannot be comprehended if creatures are not known, at least under the notion of possible things: therefore it presupposes their knowledge. The major is evident. The minor, however, is proved: the power of a cause cannot be comprehended unless all the effects arising from such a cause and virtually contained in it are known: but omnipotence is the operative power of God in which all possible creatures are contained: therefore, if they are not known, it cannot be comprehended.

I distinguish the major. that it proceeds from comprehensive knowledge, that is, which is intensively infinite and adequate to the infinite object per se moving and rendering fruitful the divine intellect for the production of the Word, I concede: that it is such as, in that very prior instant of origin in which the Word is produced, must be terminated at all the secondary objects, which have being only in the posterior instant, namely after the order of the divine processions is complete, I deny: for it suffices for the perfect notion of the Word that it proceed from an infinitely perfect object, virtually containing in its omnipotence, as in a root, all the secondary objects; nor is it required that it proceed from those secondary objects formally and actually known. To the major I say that for the comprehension of some power it is not necessarily required that all the effects and all the objects to which it can extend itself be known formally and in act, but it suffices that they be known virtually and habitually, or that the wholly complete power of that potency be known according to all the grades of activity, if it has such grades; it is certain, however, that in that very prior instant of origin, in which the divine Father produces the Son, He also knows His omnipotence to be of infinite power and activity, and so He comprehends it.

You will object 3. Either the eternal Father knows creatures in the instant of the generation of the Son, or He does not know them. If He knows them: therefore, since in that instant the Son proceeds, those creatures are set before the divine intellect; and so the Son proceeds from them. If He does not know them: therefore He learns something in the generation which He did not know in the prior instant.

I answer. that it can be said that in that prior instant of generation the Father is indeed not yet conceived to know creatures, nor are they set before His intellect, but only when the divine processions are wholly complete. Nor does an absurdity follow from this, just as none follows from the fact that in that prior instant of generation He is not yet conceived to produce the Holy Spirit, who is produced only in the posterior sign of origin.

You will insist. whatever the Word has it receives from the Father through eternal generation, according to that saying of Matth. 11. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and of Ioannis 17.¹ All my things are yours and your things are mine; and this: My doctrine is not mine, but of him who sent me, the Father: but the divine Word has the knowledge of creatures: therefore it received it from the Father through eternal generation and by force of its procession; and so in the instant of the generation of the Son creatures are perceived by the divine intellect, and consequently the Son proceeds from the knowledge of all those things.

I distinguish the major. whatever the divine Word has it receives from the Father formally and by force of its procession; or concomitantly and identically, namely by reason of the divine nature communicated to it together with all its attributes and infinitely operative potencies, I concede: that it receives it only by force of its generation, I deny. Similarly I distinguish the minor: the divine Word has the knowledge of creatures which it receives by force and formal reason of its generation, as if the eternal Father knew creatures in that very instant of generation, I deny: it has that knowledge concomitantly and identically, inasmuch as in its generation it received the divine nature and the divine intellect infinitely cognoscitive; and hence the intellect which can extend itself to everything cognoscible, for that instant in which it will be cognoscible, I concede. Add that although we would concede that the divine Father knew creatures in that prior sign in which the Word generates, it would not however follow in our opinion that the Word proceeds from the knowledge of creatures, since above it was proved that the procession of the Word is not an intellection, but a diction: whence, although creatures were the objects of the divine intellect in that prior sign in which the Word is generated, they do not on that account concur to the production of the Word; for not every object fecundates the divine intellect, so that it be productive of the Word, but only the motive and adequate object does that, such as creatures are not with respect to the divine intellect, but only the divine nature; and therefore the preceding and other similar objections do not directly militate against our assertion.

Second conclusion. — The divine processions presuppose the knowledge and volition not only of the divine essence and of all the attributal perfections, but also of the three divine persons.

This seems to be the genuine opinion of the Subtle Doctor as to both parts: as to the former indeed there is no difficulty, for all the theologians of both schools, the Angelic and the Subtle, agree that the divine essence together with all its absolute perfections, and so with intellect and will, and with the most perfect knowledge and volition, terminated indeed at the essence itself and its perfections, is prior to the processions and relations, and so is known and loved before the Word and the Holy Spirit are produced.

— But that the Doctor judges that the divine persons likewise are known and loved in that prior sign, I gather from his various sayings. For first, in 1. dist. 6. q. unica n. 5. he says:

The Father in this way generates the Son, willing; because the Father in the first sign of origin understands formally; and then he can also have formally an act of willing. In the second sign of origin he generates the Son, and wills that generation not only with a volition following that generation; but with the volition had in the first sign of origin, by which volition the Father formally wills, some intellection being presupposed, by which the Father understands, but not the generation of the Word.

Thus, therefore, I say that the Father, willing, generates, not only with consequent will, but with antecedent will: as if he would say that the Father, willing, generates the Son with a volition which precedes and is terminated also at the generation itself, before the Son exists with some priority of reason or origin; in which manner Faber, Smising disp. 3. n. 28., Rada controversia 12. on the fourth conclusion explain and defend him; where he says it is more conformable to Scotus to assert that the knowledge and simple complacency of the divine will toward the Son precedes his generation in the Father: and the same reason holds proportionally concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit; so that the knowledge and the simple volition and dilection of the Holy Spirit precede it in the Father and the Son.

2. The Doctor in 1. dist. 1. quaest. 2. n. F. asserts that the divine Father is blessed prior by origin than he generates the Son, because he has no perfection intrinsic to himself from the person produced: but beatitude is an intrinsic perfection of the blessed person, and this beatitude is brought about by the vision of the essence, either absolutely or inasmuch as it is the essence, or, he says, as it is in one person precisely: therefore he judges that the divine essence can be seen, as it is in the person of the Father, prior by origin than the Son is generated: but it cannot be seen in that way without the Son being seen equally: for the essence cannot be seen intuitively as it is in the Father, without the Paternity constituting the Father being seen at the same time: nor can the Paternity be seen without the Filiation being seen, because correlatives are simultaneous in nature and in knowledge: therefore, from the mind of the Doctor, the vision and love of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, precede by the instant of origin their production.

— 3. The Doctor confesses in many places, especially in 2. dist. 1. q. 1. n. 11., that the divine Persons proceed from the intellect and will fecundated by the primary divine object: but there num. 3. he teaches that not only the essence and attributes, but also the divine persons are comprehended under the primary object; for there he distinguishes two instants of nature, in the first of which are contained the divine productions and operations ad intra; in the second indeed the operations of the divine intellect and will concerning creatures, as concerning secondary objects, which, he says, are not objects of themselves, but produced by the intellect and will into the being of object: therefore he judges that the divine processions presuppose the knowledge and love not only of the divine Essence, but also of the divine persons.

Nor does it matter that in 1. dist. 10. quaest. unica it is not known, "It is necessary," he says, "that the divine Essence, whose love is breathed, be foreknown to the Father and the Son, in order that they breathe: but not that the breathed love be foreknown to the Father and the Son:"

for he did not say these things resolutively and assertively; but as if doubtfully and problematically, whence he adds,

Otherwise it could be said that in that first sign of origin, before the Holy Spirit is understood to be breathed, the Father and the Son know the Holy Spirit intuitively, although not as existing in himself, because they know the divine Essence, which is the reason for knowing intuitively whatever intelligible object.

That is, the Holy Spirit can be known by the Father and the Son before he is conceived as produced, namely in the divine Essence itself, in which God knows intuitively even created things before they exist.

— From these things, therefore, it is evident that the Subtle Doctor, in resolving this question, is either altogether problematic, or inclines to our opinion; and hence it can be seen how much certain recent theologians are deceived, who ascribe the opposite opinion to the Doctor, as if he had taught and defended it assertively.

Moreover, the first Conclusion is proved. The divine Father first knows and loves himself than he generates the Son: therefore he also first knows and loves the Son. The antecedent is evident, because in that prior sign of origin the divine Father is adequately constituted in his personality: he was therefore under that notion cognoscible and diligible in that prior sign, for each thing, in the way in which it is, is also cognoscible and diligible. Therefore under that notion he actually knows and loves himself for that sign; for infinite knowledge and dilection, such as the divine is, cannot fail to attain everything cognoscible and diligible, according to the mode of its cognoscibility and diligibility.

The consequence is proved: with the same act by which the Father knows and loves himself under the notion of Father, he also knows and loves the Son under the notion of Son; for since the whole being of the Father, inasmuch as he is Father, is relative, nor can anyone know or will a relative, as such, unless with the same act, at least obliquely, he knows and wills the correlative: hence it comes about that the divine Father in the prior sign of origin in which he knows and loves himself, also knows and loves the Son.

The same reason holds for the Holy Spirit; for if there were any reason on account of which the Holy Spirit could not be known and loved for that sign, it would be chiefly because in that prior sign the Holy Spirit is not yet

understood to exist; but nothing is intelligible and diligible unless while it has being. But in the same way, neither is the Son understood to exist for the first sign, and yet for that sign it is necessary that he be loved and known by the Father, because the Father, inasmuch as Father, cannot be understood without the Son: therefore, etc.

— Next, the Word presupposes comprehensive knowledge of the divine Essence: but the divine Essence cannot be comprehended unless the divine persons are known in it: therefore, etc. The major is evident. The minor is proved: the divine Essence cannot be comprehended, unless whatever is intrinsic to it and in every way identified with it is likewise known: but the divine persons are identified with the essence: therefore it cannot be known without the persons.

— Finally, the divine Essence cannot be comprehended, unless it is likewise known as fecund and communicable to the three Persons: but it cannot be known in that way without the divine Persons themselves being known; therefore, etc. The major is known: for the essence to be communicable to the three Persons is an absolute predicate of that divine Essence: therefore it implies a contradiction for the essence of God to be comprehended, unless it is known as communicable to the three persons. The minor is also evident: for the essence, as communicable to the three persons, is essentially connected with them and really identified with them; but it implies a contradiction for that which is essentially connected and identified with another to be comprehended, the term of the essential connection not being known: just as neither a relation without its term, nor knowledge without an object, can be comprehended: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. In that sign in which the Son and the Holy Spirit are not cognoscible nor diligible, they cannot be known and loved: but in that prior sign they are neither cognoscible nor diligible. Proof: for they are either cognoscible abstractively, or intuitively: but neither can be said. Not indeed abstractively: both because such knowledge would be imperfect and not commensurate to the object, which cannot prescind from existence, because it is a being that necessarily exists: and because the divine persons are pure acts, and that objective abstraction would be a certain potentiality, which is repugnant to pure act. Nor even intuitively, because intuitive knowledge is terminated at an existing or future thing: but the divine persons, in that prior sign, are not conceived as existing; nor can they be said to be future; for futurition is repugnant to pure act and to a supremely necessary being, such as the divine persons are: therefore their knowledge is not presupposed to the divine processions.

I deny the minor. and to its proof I say that the produced persons are known in the same instant in which the producing ones are. For something can be prior to another according to origin, and yet be simultaneous with the other according to knowledge; because the priority of origin is not a priority in which, but only a priority from which; but the simultaneity of knowledge takes place in the instant in which. Although, therefore, the Son and the Holy Spirit are posterior to the Father in origin, yet because they are with him simultaneous in duration, nature, and consequence of subsisting, hence they are cognoscible together with the Father in the same instant in which. Not therefore as future, or as abstracting from being; but only as present and as a being that necessarily exists, just as the Father himself.

You will insist. intuitive knowledge presupposes its object as existing: but in that prior sign, in which the divine intellection is terminated at the essence, the Word is not presupposed as existing, because it is not yet presupposed as produced: therefore in that prior sign it cannot terminate an intuitive knowledge, and consequently it can be known in that sign neither abstractively nor intuitively; and hence in it it is in no way cognoscible.

I distinguish the major. it presupposes its object as existing in a real instant of nature, or of duration, I concede: of origin and emanation, I deny. I distinguish the minor similarly: in that prior sign of origin the Son is not conceived as produced, I concede; in reality he is not produced, I deny. For the priority of origin says only that the Son is from the Father, not that the Father exists in some instant in which the Son is not; for in that adorable Trinity nothing is prior or posterior.

You will press. if the Word presupposes the knowledge of itself and of the Holy Spirit, it follows that it proceeds from itself and from the Holy Spirit, and also that it is posterior to itself and to the Holy Spirit: but both are absurd: therefore, etc.

I deny the consequence of the major. for, as has been said, that priority of origin does not infer an anteriority of one to the other according to existence, but only according to the termination of knowledge, so that the simple operation of the divine intellect and of the divine will is terminated at the essence and at the divine persons before the diction and spiration are conceived to be terminated at the Word and the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as they are productions; and hence it does not follow that the produced persons are prior or posterior to themselves; but only that they can be conceived and known before they are produced, not with a priority of duration, but of concept.

You will say 2. If the production of the Word presupposed the knowledge of the Holy Spirit, it would be his image: but this cannot be said; for he is the image of the Father alone, as we will say below. The consequence of the major is evident: for he is the image and expression of that knowledge which his production follows.

I deny the consequence of the major. and also its proof; for the Son is only the image of that one by whom he is produced, because as such he claims for himself a double respect of image, namely the respect of the principled to the principle by which he is produced, and the respect of similitude, or of the representing to the represented: whence, since the Holy Spirit is not the productive principle of the Word, but only the term of that divine knowledge which the production of the Word presupposes, hence it cannot be said that he is the image of the Holy Spirit: both because the Holy Spirit is not the motive object for that previous knowledge, but only the divine essence, which the divine Father has from himself, not indeed from the Holy Spirit: and because with respect to the Holy Spirit he does not have the respect of the principled to the principle: therefore, etc.

Note 1. Since the divine processions are truly productive actions, they also necessarily require a term, just as, with due proportion observed, all the productive actions of creatures do. Now a twofold term of a productive action is distinguished in creatures, namely, the term from which and the term to which; for a productive action is, as it were, a tendency from one thing to another. The term from which is again twofold, namely, the one properly and the one improperly so called: the former, following Aristotle, lib. 1. Physicorum c. 5, and the following chapters, is nothing other than the privation of that form which is acquired through the new production or change; whence it happens that, once the form is produced, the term from which, that is, the privation of that form, ceases: the latter, however, can be called that from which something arises and is produced, just as the divine nature can be called the term from which of the generation of the Son, because it is indeed the principle of the Son's productive action. Likewise, the term to which is distinguished as twofold, namely, formal and total: the former is that by reason of which the action is referred to the total; the latter, however, is the person produced itself, according to his whole being, both essential and personal.

Note 2. In the divine realities there is no term from which properly so called, since the term from which is the privation of that form or thing which is produced, and it ceases at the very instant at which the form is produced; but in the divine realities there is no privation of the produced persons, and there is nothing that is extinguished or ceases to be in God through the production of the divine persons, as the privation is extinguished at that very instant at which the produced form begins to be. The difficulty, however, concerns the term from which understood secundum quid and improperly so called, namely, whether it is to be admitted in the divine realities, and whether the divine persons can be said to emanate from the substance of the one producing.

Note 3. Although all Catholic Doctors agree that the Son arises from the substance of the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the substance of the Father and the Son, they do not however agree on the manner in which the produced person is from the substance, or essence, of the person from whom he proceeds. For Durandus, in 1. dist. 5. q. 2., and Henry, in the same place, judge that the Son is said to be from the substance of the Father because the Father's essence constitutes the Son as matter, setting aside, however, these imperfections of matter — namely, that, he says, matter is pure potency, which does not become act except through some form coming to it; likewise, that it is changed from privation to form, and that in acquiring one form it loses another, etc. Durandus assigns three perfections of matter fitting the divine essence, namely, that matter pre-exists the thing producing and in-exists the thing produced; that together with the form it constitutes the whole; that it receives the form in itself and is the subject of generation. From this Durandus concludes that the divine essence has, as it were, the character of matter with respect to the Son and the Holy Spirit; for the divine essence, by a certain order of nature, pre-exists the person proceeding in the divine realities, and in-exists the person produced. Likewise, together with the relative property, which is the form of the person, it constitutes the whole person producing. Finally, it receives that same relation in itself and is, as it were, the subject of divine generation: whence it comes about that it is from the essence of the producing person as if it were matter. But against this opinion nearly all the other Catholic Doctors protest, asserting that the divine essence is neither matter nor, as it were, matter of the divine procession, but is only the subsisting formal principle, insofar, namely, as the essence of the Father, communicated to the Son through generation, subsists in him.

— These things being premised, three points are to be resolved in the present Question: first, whether the proceeding person is truly from the substance of the one from whom he proceeds; second, whether the divine essence is the term from which of the processions after the manner of matter or of form: third, whether the term to which of the divine processions is either the essence, or the relation, or both.

First conclusion. — The divine processions are truly from something, namely, from the divine essence. This is the opinion of nearly all theologians, and

It is proved first by the authority of the Councils; for the Toledan Councils 3. 1., and especially the eleventh, speak thus in the Confession of faith: The Son is to be believed to be begotten not from nothing, nor from another substance, but from the womb of the Father, that is, from his substance: where it imitates that word of the Father to the Son in the Psalm: From the womb before the day-star I begot thee: which testimony the Second Council of Seville also uses, Can. 18, as does the Council of Nicaea in the Confession of faith; and the Council of Ephesus in the Epistle to Nestorius: We believe, it says, in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, born of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father, God of God.

— Finally, the Council of Florence has the same, sess. 19, saying: All the Doctors had handed down to us this doctrine, explaining these expressions: the Son is from the substance of the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the substance of the Father and of the Son.

It is also established from the Creeds, in which the Son is called God of God, light of light, etc., and especially in the Creed of Saint Athanasius, where we read, God is from the substance of the Father, begotten before the ages.

All the holy Fathers prove this very thing, especially Saint Augustine, lib. 3. Contra Maximinum, cap. 14.

Either the Son of God was born from some substance, he says, or from none: if from none, therefore from nothing, which we now hold that you, Arians, do not say: if from some substance, yet not from the Father's, then the Son's origin is not certain; if from the Father's, the Father and the Son are of one and the same substance.

And in c. 15 he extends the same proof, with due proportion, to the Holy Spirit, saying: The Holy Spirit is not from nothing, but is from that whence he proceeds. With a similar argument the same author, or rather another, proves the same truth in the book Contra Felicianum, cap. 6.

To those who examine the birth and origin of the Son of God, these alternatives, if I am not mistaken, present themselves: namely, that he is either from the Father, or from nothing, or from another, or from himself. Let us, I ask, consider the consequence of these: if from himself, he is not rightly called the Son, who is proclaimed not born but unbegotten: if from nothing, he is shown to be a creature with the rest, not the author of creatures. If from another, he is proclaimed the Son not of him in whom we believe, but of some unknown Father, whoever he may be. But if, on account of these four, a fifth cannot be found; and if, on account of the evident blasphemy, three of these can by no means be affirmed; it remains that he was begotten substantially from the Father.

The Conclusion is moreover proved. The divine Son was not produced from nothing; otherwise he would be created and a creature: therefore he is from something pre-existing: but nothing else pre-exists but the Father himself: therefore he must arise from the Father's substance.

— Secondly, every son has in himself something of his father; for that is not a son which is produced from external matter; otherwise keys and tunics and the other artifacts would be the sons of smiths, cobblers and craftsmen: therefore the divine Son also must have in himself something of the Father: but he does not have Paternity: therefore he has the essence, from which he arises.

— Finally, if he were not from the substance of the Father, he could not be called consubstantial with him: but the consequence is absurd and against the faith: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. The divine essence and substance is most simple and is undividedly common to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: therefore if the Son, e.g., arises from the divine essence, by the same reason by which he is said to be from the substance of the Father, he is likewise said to be from his own substance, and also from the substance of the Holy Spirit: but this consequence is absurd: therefore, etc.

I deny the sequel of the major. For when the Son is said to be from the substance of the Father, nothing else is signified than that the same essence and substance, which is in the Father in the first sign of origin, is communicated to the Son in the second sign of origin: the Son, however, in that prior sign of origin, is not rightly said to have the essence which is communicated to him in the second sign; nor does he communicate his own substance to himself, and therefore he ought not to be said to be from his own substance, but from the substance of the Father.

You will say 2. If the divine Father begot the Son from his own substance: therefore the Word could be called the Son of the Father's substance: but this is absurd, for he is called Son only in respect of the correlative, namely, the Father: but the divine essence has not the character of Father, nor of correlative to the Son: therefore neither can the Son be said to be begotten of it.

I deny the sequel of the major. For although Saint Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit., cap. 19, explaining that passage to the Colossians 3, Who delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, says that the Son of love is the Son of the Father's substance, that is, the Son who was begotten from his substance, nevertheless this manner of speaking is improper; for the Son is not properly called Son by reference to the principle by which he is produced, but by reference to the principle which: whence the divine Word ought not properly to be called the Son of the Father's substance, but rather the Son from the Father's substance, as Saint Augustine himself explains in the same place, and also in c. 12 or 13: Such is what I say, he says, of the Father's knowledge or of the Father's essence, as if I were saying more expressly, from the Father, knowledge, or from the Father, essence.

Second conclusion. — The proceeding persons are from the substance of the ones producing, not after the manner of matter, but after the manner of form.

It is proved 1. by the authority of the holy Fathers, who with the greatest consensus affirm that the material cause must be removed from the divine processions; thus Saint Hilary, lib. 12. De Trinitate: This one, he says, unbegotten before all time, begot the Son from himself, not from some underlying matter, because through the Son are all things; not from nothing, because he begot the Son from himself; likewise Saint Augustine, lib. 3. Contra Maximinum, cap. 11.

But you, he says, do not want the Son begotten from the substance of the Father, and yet you concede that he is not from nothing, nor from some matter, but from the Father; nor do you see how necessary it is that he who is not from nothing, nor from any thing, but from God, cannot be unless he is from the substance of God.

Whence the Doctor rightly gathers, in 1. dist. 5. quaest. 2. num. 11., that all the ancient Doctors, who from the time of Augustine up to him (namely Henry), did not dare to name matter, nor quasi-matter, in the divine realities; while yet all concordantly say with Augustine that the Son is generated from the substance of the Father.

The Doctor proves the Conclusion in the same place, n. 5. First, because the divine essence is the formal term of the generative production of the Son: therefore it is not quasi-matter of the same. The consequence is clear: for what is matter, or quasi-matter, in generation is in potentia, or quasi in potentia, to the formal term: but the same thing cannot be in potency to itself: therefore the same thing cannot be the formal term and quasi-matter of generation: therefore if the divine essence is the formal term of divine generation, it is not quasi-matter of the same. He proves the antecedent: first by authority; for in Ioannis 10. the Son says: My Father, that which he gave me, is greater than all: but nothing is greater than all unless it is something infinite, and so it is the divine essence which the Father gave to the Son.

Then Saint Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit., cap. 26: Just as generation from the Father bestows essence on the Son, without a beginning of time, without any mutability of nature, so does procession from both bestow essence on the Holy Spirit, without any beginning of time, without any mutability of nature.

Secondly, the formal term is that which is more perfect in generation: but the essence is more perfect in the produced persons, because the personal relations do not import perfection: therefore it is also the formal term. He adds that in creatures nature is the formal term of generation, not, however, the individual property: therefore the same must be said in the divine realities. Finally, generation in the divine realities would not be univocal if the divine essence were not the formal term, because for univocal generation it is required that the one generating and the one generated agree in the formal term; but the produced persons would not agree with the ones producing if the divine essence were not the formal term: therefore, etc.

He proves 2. Because if the Son were generated from the essence as from quasi-matter, either the essence thus taken would be something absolute and common to the three Persons, or insofar as it is in the first supposit. If the first: therefore the Son proceeds from himself, because he proceeds from the essence as it is common to the three Persons. If the second: therefore the essence, as it is in the Father, will be the Son, because, as it is in the Father, it receives the relation of filiation, as the form constitutive of the Son.

Thirdly, because the Holy Spirit is from the essence just as much as the Son, and yet, in Henry's mind, he is not from the Essence as from matter, otherwise his production would be natural: therefore neither ought the Son to be from it as from matter.

Although this more common manner of speaking of the Doctors is more accommodated to Catholic truth, nevertheless the opinion of Henry is not altogether to be disapproved: if, namely, the sense is that, just as matter is presupposed by the thing which is made from it, and is found and subsists together with that thing which is the determining and constituting form, so the divine essence of the Father is presupposed in the prior sign of origin to the Son, who is said to be generated from it, and is intrinsically included in the Son together with the relation of filiation, by which it is, as it were, the constituting form of the Son; whence this whole question is almost entirely about a name. For it is certain that in the divine realities there is not properly form, just as neither is there matter: but both are attributed to God only by metaphor and by a certain proportion which the divine essence can have with form and matter in creatures: nevertheless the name of matter befits God less than that of form. For since he is a spiritual substance and pure act, both these appellations directly militate against the word matter, not so against the name form.

Third conclusion. — The total term to which of the divine processions is the whole person produced; the formal term, however, is the divine nature itself, communicated to the produced persons by the ones producing.

This Conclusion has two parts, of which the first is proved; first indeed from the holy Fathers, who pronounce that the Son of God was originated and produced wholly from the whole; thus Nazianzen, Orat. 50, calls the Son Perfect from the perfect, whole from the whole, full from the full; and below: In the Father, the whole that is in him begot the whole Son: Saint Ambrose subscribes, De Filii Divinitate, cap. 7: The Son is as great, he says, as the Father will be seen to be, whole from the whole, entire from the entire, perfect from the perfect, and with consummate power, and as the Apostle says, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Divinity corporally.

Hilary likewise agrees, lib. 7. De Trinit.: One, he says, from one, and the whole from the whole, God and the Son, neither having taken away from the Father by his nativity that he is the whole, nor having failed, in being born, to hold this same whole with himself. Saint Augustine has the same in many places, especially Sermon 125. De Tempore: The Father begot the Son, he says, whole from the whole, perfect from the perfect, full from the full. The same must be said, by like reason, of the Holy Spirit; whence the Council of Florence, sess. 18, by the common consent of the Latins and Greeks through John and Mark, decreed that the procession is that by which the Holy Spirit receives being, and that whole by which he is, and by which he is properly called the Holy Spirit.

Hence, therefore, it is established that the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to their whole selves, that is, insofar as they consist of the divine essence and the personal relation, but not according to the precise relation of filiation or of spiration, are the total terms of the divine processions.

— Secondly, the produced Person is not composed, but is wholly indivisible: therefore it is produced entirely; especially since production terminates at the thing insofar as it exists a parte rei. This argument St. Hilary presses in this way, lib. 9. De Trinit.

While, he says, He (the Son) is not composed from a portion, but is perfected from simplicity: it is necessary that, according as the Father is, He Himself be one in all things with Him whom He begot from Himself, the whole Father; while the perfect nativity of the Son, from all that is His, consummates Him as Father.

As if he would say: since the produced Person is wholly simple, it must also be said to be produced simpliciter.

The second part is the Doctor's in 1. dist. 5. q. 2., and dist. 13. n. 12., where, speaking of the divine productions, he says: That production is not some flux, nor a flowing form, nor is it of the same nature as the form which is the formal term of the production, which is something essential. The Doctor therefore judges that the constitutive relation of the produced person is not the total term of the production.

It is proved first: nature is the formal term in the production of creatures, not however personality or suppositality: therefore the same holds equally in divine things by a full parity of reason.

Secondly, that is the formal term of a production which is the form conferring that being which is intended first and per se in the production: but the divine essence confers that being which is intended first and per se in the divine productions, namely that the produced Person be God: therefore the essence must be called the formal term of the production.

— It is confirmed: since generation tends to this, that the Son be perfectly assimilated to the Father in essence, by the most formal force of His generation; and the Holy Spirit, by the identity of the essence communicated to Him; but that likeness and identity is conferred not by the relation, but by the essence: therefore the communication of the latter is primarily intended in the divine production.

Thirdly and finally, if the relation, and not the essence, were the formal term of the divine processions, it would follow that they are not univocal but equivocal: but the consequent is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The consequence of the major is clear; for those things are univocal whose name is common and the notion of the substance of the name wholly the same, as Aristotle teaches in the Ante-praedicamentis: but if the constitutive relations of the Persons were the formal terms of their productions, the produced persons would have no common name with one another and with their producers, for the Son is not called the Father; nor would the formal significate of the name be common to them, for what is signified by filiation is not common to the Father nor to the Holy Spirit, and consequently they would not be univocal but equivocal.

But this is absurd; for it would follow that they are of diverse species and nature, which implies a contradiction; for equivocal things are of diverse natures, and so of diverse species. Nor does it matter that the persons taken adequately are not of the same notion, because they have opposed and disparate relations; for to univocation, the Doctor says in 1. dist. 13. n. 23., it is not required that the univocates taken adequately be wholly of the same notion; otherwise Peter and Paul would not be univocal, because they include Petreity and Pauleity, which are primarily diverse; it suffices therefore that they agree in the univocation of the essence.

You will say 1. The formal term of a production must be produced: but the essence is not produced: therefore it is not the formal term of the production. The minor is established, for the divine essence neither produces nor is produced. The minor is proved, because that on account of which each thing is such is itself more so; but the total term, which is said to be produced, is so denominated on account of the formal term; therefore the latter must the more be said to be produced. The minor is clear; for the formal term of a production is the notion formally constituting the product in the being of the product: therefore, etc.

I deny the major. For the rational soul in the production and generation of a man is the formal term giving formal being to the man begotten, and yet it is not produced by the man generating, but it suffices that it be communicated from natural exigency to that body of the man begotten; so also the most blessed Virgin is called Mother of God, not because she begot the Word or effectively produced the hypostatic union, but because they physically concur to the production of the human nature, which naturally requires a supposit, whether its own or divine. Therefore by a like case it suffices that the divine essence be communicated to the produced persons and give them divine being, so that it be called the formal term of the production. To the proof I answer that that axiom, that on account of which each thing is such is itself more so, is not verified in every genus of cause, especially in the formal cause: for on account of the rational soul Peter is a man, yet the soul is not more a man than Peter. Add that neither in creatures nor in God is the formal term of the produced thing the notion formally constituting it in the being of the product; indeed in creatures this notion is of the predicament of action or passion, and so is accidental; such certainly is not the produced substantial form.

You will say 2. The term which is produced receives its reality formally from the force of the formal term: but the Son does not formally receive His reality from the force of the essence, but from the force of filiation, which is His personal property: therefore the essence is not the formal term of the divine production.

I distinguish the minor. That He does not receive His formal reality from the force of the essence, I concede; that He does not receive the essential and divine reality, I deny. For through the essence communicated to Him the Son receives divine being, in which the divine filiation inhabits, and without which it would be nothing; and so Filiation is as it were a form constituting Him in the being of Son and of person; which form pertains to the total term, which is produced as that which; but the term as that by which is the very essence itself.

You will say 3. That is the formal term which in the total term has the nature of a constitutive and distinctive form: but only the personal relation has this in the produced person: therefore that alone is the formal term. The major is clear from what was just said. The minor is proved: it is the relation which constitutes the person and effects the distinction between the producer and the produced term: for they are not really distinguished from one another by the essence: therefore the essence is not the formal term.

I distinguish the prior part of the minor. as before: that the relation has the nature of a constitutive form in personal being, I concede; in substantial being, I deny. Whence the divine essence is indeed related as a form giving divine being; the relation, however, as a mode, or term of the essence, bestowing personal being. To the posterior part of the minor I say that the formal term in created products does indeed establish the order and the real distinction between the producer and the produced formal term, since that formal term in created things is ordinarily produced. But it is otherwise in divine things, where that formal term is not produced, but only communicated. Whence as to this part the parity must be denied.

You will insist. The essence, as we have said, is the formal term by which, at least so-called improperly: therefore it cannot be formally the term to which. The consequence is clear; for the term by which and the term to which are opposed.

I deny the consequence. For just as it is not repugnant that the same essence which is in the Father be communicated to the Son through generation, so too it is not repugnant that the same essence be the formal principle by which and the term to which, insofar as it is considered in diverse supposits and persons.

From these he gathers 1. The Doctor, in 1. dist. 5. q. 2. n. 13., gathers that the divine Son (the same is to be said of the Holy Spirit) is not from nothing, from the fact that He is of the substance of the Father, that is, because He receives from the Father the same nature in number; for just as, he says, those things are not made from nothing which presuppose their matter, so neither ought those things be said to be made from nothing which presuppose their form: but the Son presupposes the divine essence in the Father, as a form communicated to Him: therefore He is not to be said to be made from nothing.

He gathers 2. That this total communication of the divine nature suffices for the true and genuine notion of generation, no less, indeed much more perfectly, than if it were made through a cutting off of the generating substance;

for just as, he says, a generating man is truly held to be a father, from the fact that he cuts off a part of his substance and supplies it for the formation of the son; much more perfectly must the divine Father claim for Himself the name of Father, not by cutting off anything of His own, but by communicating His whole essence, and this as the formal term of that production. For just as, if a created father immediately cut off a Son from himself, he would truly be a father, because that which would be would truly be, of itself, the term of the action; so much more is the eternal Father said to beget a son perfectly, not communicating a part only, but His whole nature indivisibly to him.

He gathers 3. That the divine Word is produced not by a cutting off of the divine substance, nor by its destruction; but by an indivisible communication of the very same, not only by real identity, but also by formal identity of the divine essence, as is decreed in the chapter Damnamus, De summa Trinit., namely, that it cannot be said that He gave a part of His substance to the Son

the Father and retained a part for Himself, since the substance of the Father is indivisible, as being wholly simple.

You will ask. Whether one may lawfully use the prepositions ex and de in the same way and without distinction to signify the consubstantiality of the proceeding person with the producing principle?

I answer 1. That these two prepositions ex and de have scarcely any distinction among those skilled in the Greek and Latin languages and among the interpreters: whence also many of the holy Fathers use both without distinction, to denote the consubstantiality of the produced person with the producer; thus St. Chrysostom, tom. 3., proves the Divinity of the Holy Spirit and His consubstantiality with the Father from the words of the Apostle, 1. Corinth. 2., the Spirit, who is from God. But nothing, he says, is said to be from God except what is from His substance: thus Nazianzen uses both particles in Orat. 2. De Fide Nicaena, where we read thus: God of God, light of light, life from life, perfect of perfect, whole from whole, full from full. Thus finally the Latin Church pronounces the Nicene Symbol, born of the Father before all ages, God of God; and of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

I answer 2. That the preposition de is more suitable and is more frequently used to signify the consubstantiality of the product and the producer; for the preposition ex, according to the force of its signification, imports only the order of the product to the producer, not signifying consubstantiality: but the preposition de signifies besides the consubstantiality of the produced thing with the producing principle, as St. Augustine explains in lib. De natura boni, Contra Manichaeos cap. 26.

From him, he says, does not signify the same as of him; for what is of him can be said to be from him, but not everything that is from him is rightly said to be of him. For Heaven and Earth are from him, because he made them; but not of him, because not of his substance; just as if some man beget a Son and build a house: from him is the Son, from him the house; but the Son is of him, the house of earth and wood.

Whence also the Ariani, as Theodoret relates in lib. 1. Historiae Ecclesiasticae c. 8., and as is read in the acts of the Council of Nicaea cap. 2. near the end, in order to feign consent to the Catholic faith, conceded that the Son is from God. For, Eusebius of Nicomedia, their prince, would say, We too are from God; and there is one God, from whom are all things; but the Catholic Bishops, having clearly recognized the fraudulent attempt, explained more fully that being from God, so that creatures are said to be from God for this reason, because they did not arise of themselves or without a cause, but have a principle of their origin; and so that the Son alone is held to consist of the Father's essence: for this is proper to the only-begotten and true Word of God the Father: and what was written by the Bishops, from the Father's essence, had this cause: thus Nazianzen marked the treacherous words of the Arians in Orat. 49., where he thus attacks the Arian:

Because the Father is light and the Son is light, we rightly believe light of light. But you assert not light of light, but light from light, as it were that from the Father, who is truly light, another light was made, which is not of the Father's very substance, but just as any other light, although made by God, is nevertheless far other than Him who was; and therefore you say light from light, not light of light.

— Nor does it matter that the particle de sometimes seems not to signify the consubstantiality of the principle and the product, as Driedo gathers in lib. 3. De Regulis et Dogmatibus sacrae Scripturae, from that of Matth. 1., what is born in her is of the Holy Spirit, and from the Symbol of the Apostles, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit from Mary the Virgin, and in the Nicene Symbol, He was incarnate of the Holy Spirit: which words indicate the formation of Christ's humanity, according to which He is not consubstantial with the Holy Spirit.

For they answer that the particle de there signifies the same as the preposition ex: first, because St. Athanasius so explains the aforesaid context of Matthew in Dialogue 3. De Trinit. near the end, She was found, he says, with child from the Holy Spirit: then because Maldonatus and Salmeron, expounding the same context, affirm that the preposition ex responds more literally to the Greek: and finally because St. Ambrose, in lib. 2. De Spiritu sancto cap. 5., expounding that of Matth. 1., she was found in the womb having of the Holy Spirit, observes that although most have of the Spirit, the Greek nevertheless, from which the Latins translated, says: from the Holy Spirit;

for what, he says, is from someone is either of his substance or from his power: of the substance, as the Son, who says: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High: as the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father; but from the Father, as that is: one God the Father, from whom are all things:

from which he infers that the most holy Mary gave birth from the Holy Spirit, not from the substance, but from the power; and hence he supposes that the preposition de determinately signifies consubstantiality, which the preposition ex declares only indeterminately.

Note 1. The philosophers distinguish four ways of operating, namely freely, naturally, contingently, and necessarily: of these the first two are so opposed to one another that they cannot subsist together in the same principle and with respect to the same effect; just as neither can two differences dividing the same genus be present in the same species. For every agent is either determined to act, and so acts naturally; or determines itself, and so acts freely: but the latter two ways of operating are not so opposed to one another; for the same faculty can act necessarily and at the same time contingently. For an action is called necessary which cannot fail to follow, from wherever the necessity may come, whether from the free determination of the faculty, or from elsewhere: but a contingent action is one which can not be, whether it be impeded from without, or suspended by the free determination of the will; whence it comes about that contingency and necessity can stand together with the natural and free ways of operating: for from the fact that something is free it does not follow that it is not necessary; indeed, the greater the freedom, the greater the necessity; for, as St. Anselm says in lib. De libero arbitrio cap. 5., He who so has what is fitting and expedient, that he cannot lose it, is freer than he who so has this very thing, that he can lose it. Whence he adds: Therefore the will which cannot decline from uprightness is freer. St. Augustine teaches the same in the Enchiridio cap. 105., speaking of the supreme freedom which man will enjoy after the miseries of this life:

Thus it was fitting, he says, that man first be made, so that he could will both good and evil; that is, that he might have the freedom of contradiction and of contrariety: but afterwards he will be so, that he cannot will evil; nor will he lack free choice, since the choice will be all the freer which will be altogether unable to serve sin: for no one's will is either not a will or not to be called free, by which we so will to be blessed, that we not only nill to be miserable, but cannot will it at all.

Note 2. Freedom is distinguished in many ways, but chiefly fourfold, namely 1. of contradiction, which concerns the positing or non-positing of an act, e. g. willing or not willing. 2. of contrariety, which concerns contrary and positive acts with respect to some object, of which sort are nilling and willing, loving and hating. 3. of complacency, by which the will takes complacency in something, even if with respect to it it has no character of cause, nor elicits any positive act. 4. finally, essential or simple, which consists in the ordination of the act to a principle determining itself to the act in an elective and delightful manner.

— Similarly, necessity is fourfold. 1. of violence, which occurs when nature resists; so a heavy thing is violently borne upwards, and a light one downwards. 2. of coercion, which occurs when the will resists; while someone, e. g., does or suffers something against his own inclination. 3. of immutability, by which it comes about that the opposite cannot happen, although the thing could absolutely not be; so God is said to do necessarily whatever He decreed should be done, otherwise He would be changed, yet He could have not decreed that that thing should not be done. 4. Finally, there is the necessity of complete inevitability, when namely something is so, that it absolutely cannot not be: so God loves Himself necessarily, because He cannot not love Himself.

Note 3. When it is asked whether the divine Father begot His Son willingly, this question is said to have a twofold sense; of which the first is whether the Father produces the Son by the will, and that by a will either concurring in the production of the Son, as in that of creatures, or by a will immediately eliciting the production of the Son, as it concurs in the production of the Holy Spirit; or finally by a will applying or joining the parent with the offspring, that is, the intellect of the Father to the generation of the Word. The second sense is whether at least voluntarily the Father generates the Son; and that either antecedently, or concomitantly, or subsequently, that is, whether He willed the generation of the Son in the prior sign of origin, in which the Son is not yet understood as produced, or while He is produced in the second sign, or when He is conceived as produced in the third sign.

First conclusion. — The procession of the divine Word is in no way free, but natural. This conclusion stands proven from what we have said, that the Son does not proceed through the will, but through the fecund memory and the divine intellect of the Father, which, as is evident, is not a faculty operating and producing freely, but naturally.

It is moreover confirmed by authority, first indeed of the Council of Nicaea lib. 2. about the middle; Of the wisdom of the Father, he says, God truly is from God Himself, eternal from the eternal, true from the true, since He is by nature the Son of the eternal God and Father. Likewise Athanasius, Orat. 2. Contra Arianos, says that the Son is from the Father a natural offshoot and natural fruit and offspring: and Orat. 3. he calls the generation of the Word a natural generation: and Orat. 4. he inveighs against the Arians, who ascribed to God a necessity of coercion, because the Catholics said that the Son of God was born of the Father naturally and necessarily: whence he adds:

For they noticed that which is opposed to the will: but that which is greater and higher they did not perceive. For just as that which is by deliberate choice is opposed to the will, so that which is according to nature is higher and prior to the will.

St. Basil speaks in the same way, who in lib. 2. Contra Eunomium calls the generation of the Son connatural to the Father: and Cyril of Alexandria in lib. 1. Thesauri cap. 6. says: The Son Himself has dignity from nature, namely, that God His Father is naturally His: and Ambrose lib. 4. De Fide cap. 4. As a good Father, he says, is not from will or necessity, but above both, that is, from nature: so the Father does not generate from will or necessity. Hilary speaks likewise, lib. 6. De Trinit., where he says: From Himself the natural nativity of His Only-begotten is taught: and Augustine lib. 5. De Trinit. cap. 20. notes that the Word is the Son of nature, not of will. By these things, therefore, it is established that the generation of the Word is natural, and not free.

It is also confirmed by reason: every production which is made from an intrinsic principle determined of itself to one thing, and therefore operating necessarily, is altogether natural: but the generation of the divine Word proceeds from an intellect intrinsically determined to one thing and operating in every way necessarily: therefore it is also in every way natural.

Secondly: that production is to be judged absolutely natural which per se and most formally communicates nature by producing something like itself in nature: but such is the production of the divine Word, as we saw in the preceding Article: therefore, etc.

Finally, that production is to be judged the more natural the farther it stands from the free: but the generation of the Word stands at the greatest distance from freedom; because it in no way proceeds from the will, which is the throne and origin of freedom: therefore it is also to be called absolutely natural.

You will object 1. Several of the holy Fathers assert that the Word proceeds through the will: first of all, indeed, James the son of Zebedee, who in Clement the Roman, lib. 8. of the Constitutions, cap. 12., thus addresses the eternal Father: But You Yourself, before all ages, begot by will, power and goodness, without any medium, the only-begotten Son. The same is found in c. 16. Secondly, Athanasius writes in the Gospel on the most holy Mother of God: that the Word is from the paternal will. Thirdly, Hilarius, lib. De Synodis, immediately before the exemplar of the Sirmian faith, Nativity, he says, is in him so perfect a nature, that he who has been born of the substance of God is born also of His counsel and will. Likewise St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 20., calls the Son of God counsel from counsel, will from will: with which the 11th Council of Toledo agrees, writing in the Confession of Faith: According to essence, the will begot the will; the Son is will from will. Therefore the divine Word is to be said to be produced not naturally, but voluntarily.

I deny the consequence. For that is not the opinion of the holy Fathers; but they say the Son is produced by the will for this reason, namely, that by His production the divine nature is communicated, which essentially comprises all the attributes, and so also the will; whence all these things are said, as it were, to concur in the formation of the Word, not in the manner of a producing principle, but in the manner of communicated divinity, namely, so that the Father, who is His own will, counsel, wisdom and the other perfections, begot the Son, who is also His own will, counsel, etc., as the aforesaid Council of Toledo explains, writing that the Son is called will from will in the same way that He is called nature from nature, since according to Athanasius the will of the Father is not one thing and His nature another.

— This response is also confirmed from those words of St. James, "without any medium", by which he signifies that the Son was not begotten with the will concurring as a productive principle; but as a will included in the essence with the other attributes: whence he says that the Son is generated by the will just as by power and goodness; but it is certain that the Word does not proceed from power and goodness as from principles: therefore neither does it so proceed from the will.

— That this is likewise the mind of the aforesaid Fathers is certain; for Hilarius and Augustinus, in their books De Trinitate, are wholly intent on proving that the Word is the Son not by adoption or by free will, but by nature: likewise St. Athanasius establishes this by many arguments against the Arians: whence Orat. 4. The Word, he says, begetting from nature does not deliberate beforehand; since the Father in the Word makes and founds all the remaining things which He decrees by will: just as the Apostle Iacobus taught, willingly He begot us by the word of truth. And below, setting forth the difference between the production of the Son and that of creatures, he adds:

The Son, the proper offshoot of the substance of the Father, is not from elsewhere but from the Father, and so there is no deliberation about Him, lest He also seem to deliberate about Himself; because, namely, if the Father had decreed not to have a Son, by that very fact He would have decreed that He Himself would not be the Father, and consequently simpliciter would not be.

You will object 2. The sophism of the Arians, which Nazianz. thus reports, Orat. 3. De Theologia:

Either willingly, they say, the Father begot the Son, or unwillingly... If unwillingly, then violence must have been brought upon Him: and who is he who brought violence upon Him? and how can he to whom violence has been brought be God? But if willingly, then the Son is the Son by will: therefore, in the very way in which He was brought forth from the Father, they devise a certain new Mother, the will of the Father, in His place.

— Nazianz. retorts the objection in the same place:

The Father is God either willingly or unwillingly: If willingly, how did He begin to will? For He did not will before He was? and below: but what will he be able to adduce, who according to your manner of arguing has himself also been the nursling of the will? But if unwillingly, who compelled Him to be?

Aug. has the same in lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 20., and Cyril in lib. 1. Thes. cap. 8. Whence I answer in form. That the Father produces the Son willingly with an effective or productive will, I deny: with an operative and essential will, I concede.

Hence a threefold divine will can be distinguished, according to its threefold relation to three distinct terms, namely to creatures, to the Holy Spirit, and to the Son. For it is the effective principle of creatures, which it produces ad extra freely with the freedom of contradiction, because it could not produce them, if it did not so will: it is also the productive principle of the Holy Spirit ad intra through spiration, which is free with an essential freedom, as we shall say below: finally, it is operative with respect to the divine essence and also with respect to the production of the divine Word; since in the prior sign of origin the divine Father knows and wills and loves His essence and Himself; indeed also the Son and the Holy Spirit, by an intellection and volition essential and simpliciter operative, before He is conceived to produce the Son and the Holy Spirit in the posterior signs, as will again be disclosed

Second conclusion. — The Father produces the Word voluntarily, with a will both antecedent and con- sequent. This is the teaching of the Doctor in 1. dist. 6. n. 6., where he thus proves the first part of the conclusion.

I say, he says, that the Father in this way begets the Son willingly, because the Father in the first sign of origin understands formally, and then can also have an act of willing formally; in the second sign of origin He begets the Son, and He wills that begetting not only by a volition following upon the first begetting, but by a volition had in the first sign of origin, by which volition the Father formally wills, presupposing in some way the intellection by which the Father understands, but not the begetting of the Word; thus, therefore, I say that the Father generates willingly, not only with the consequent will, but with the antecedent will.

Which truth he thus expounds — or anyone else — with the following addition:

in the first instant the Father has a perfect understanding of everything intelligible and willable from himself: therefore in that sign He understands the generation of the Son, and in the second sign of the instant He has the term produced; for even in the first sign, although no person should proceed from Him, He has understanding and willing; and in that prior sign He understands the act of speaking, which is as it were posterior with respect to the act of understanding and willing. The Father therefore does not merely take complacency by His will in the production of the Son, but willing precedes the act of the Son's generation; because the Father wills, through His essence, whatever He understands, namely that it be communicated to the other person through production; because what does not belong to Him in the first instant, in which the Father is, never belongs to Him, since no perfection can be added to Him by the production of any person, because no person has anything except what is communicated to it by Him: Therefore willing, just like understanding, precedes speaking: thus breathing follows speaking in some way, namely by the order of origin.

The second and third parts are proved by all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which it is intimated that the Son is loved by the Father and that the Father takes complacency in Him: thus Matthew 3: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; so likewise Proverbiorum 8, the eternal Wisdom says: I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, etc. In place of which the Seventy Interpreters read: I was he, in whom He rejoiced daily, etc. Whence Athanasius, Orat. 2. Contra Arianos: God, he says, is Himself the begetter of the image, being cheered by contemplating it; in like manner Tertullian, lib. 6. Contra Praxean reads the aforesaid passage: I was with Him composing, I was he in whom He rejoiced, but daily I was delighted in His person. Here is to be observed the love together with joy, not only with regard to the Divinity, but also with regard to the persons of the Father and the Son.

— It is confirmed also by all those opinions of the holy Fathers who say that the Son of God is loved by the Father and begotten by a willing Father. Thus Clement of Rome, lib. 7. of the Constitutions, cap. 12., says that the Son was begotten by the good pleasure of the Father; Justin, in the Dialogue with Trypho, begotten with the Father willing; and Cyril, in the Dialogue De Trinit., lib. 2., after denying a will which should have preceded the divine generation by way of a producing principle, says: For the (generation) which is natural is not without will, since the will runs together with its nature, so that it is what it is. Those things which could be objected from these against this Conclusion were resolved in Question 2 of the present Article, where we proved that the production of the Son and of the Holy Spirit supposes knowledge and love not only of the divine Essence, but also of the Son and the Holy Spirit themselves.

Third conclusion. — The procession of the Holy Spirit is necessary, and yet free with an essential freedom.

This is the teaching of the Doctor in 1. dist. 10. n. 10. and the following, and also of St. Thomas, as is evident especially in q. 10. De potentia art. 2. ad 5., where when he had objected:

But if the Holy Spirit proceeds by way of the will, it is necessary that He proceed by way of freedom: but what proceeds by way of freedom can proceed, or not proceed, because the things which are done freely are not determined to one: therefore the Father could produce the Holy Spirit, or not produce Him, and give Him whatever measure of greatness He wished, etc.

he answers:

That natural necessity, according to which the will is said to will something of necessity, as happiness, does not conflict with the freedom of the will, as Augustine teaches in 5. lib. De Civitate Dei cap. 10. For the freedom of the will is opposed to violence or coercion: there is no violence or coercion in the fact that something is moved naturally, but rather in this, that the natural motion is impeded, as when a heavy body is impeded from descending to the center. Whence the will freely desires happiness, although it desires it necessarily. Thus also God freely loves Himself by His will, and it is necessary that He love Himself as much as He is good: just as He understands Himself as much as He is: therefore the Holy Spirit proceeds freely from the Father, yet not possibly, but of necessity, nor was it possible that in proceeding He should be made less than Himself, but it was necessary that He be equal to the Father, as also the Son, who is the Word of the Father.

From these things it clearly appears that St. Thomas asserts not only that freedom subsists with necessity, but also expressly agrees with the Doctor that the Holy Spirit proceeds freely, and yet necessarily. Nor does it matter that in the same place, answering to 3., and in prima p. q. 41. art. 2., he calls each divine procession natural, and affirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds naturally, although He proceeds by way of the will. For there he takes "natural" for "necessary", and as opposed to "contingent", and so "voluntary", which he there opposes to "natural", he takes for free with the freedom of opposites; not, however, for the essential freedom, which he teaches subsists with the necessary.

The Conclusion is therefore proved: the Holy Spirit proceeds through the will, that is, through the proper mode of operating of the will: but the proper mode of operating of the will is free: therefore He proceeds freely. The major remains proved from what has been said and is conceded by all. The minor, however, is proved: freedom is of the intrinsic notion of the will, so that it is no more repugnant to conceive a man without a rational animal than a will without freedom; For either the will is not, or it must be called free, as St. Augustine, quoted in Note 1., used to say: therefore whatever is produced by the will as by a principle by which, is produced freely.

Then, whatever proceeds as love and as gift proceeds freely: for nothing is freer than love and gift: but according to St. Augustine, lib. 15. De Trinit., the Holy Spirit proceeds not as one born, but as one given: therefore He proceeds as love and gift, and consequently freely.

Finally, the Adversaries deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds freely for this reason, that they contend that no freedom subsists with necessity, and that every freedom is either of contrariety, that is, of specification, or of contradiction, that is, of exercise: but this is false: therefore also that position from which it follows.

The minor is proved; first, for the act of love and desire by which we desire happiness is without doubt free, as we experience: but it is not free with the freedom of specification, because that act cannot become hatred or aversion, for we cannot hate happiness: therefore that act is at once necessary and free, not indeed with the freedom of specification, by which we can love or hate some object: therefore it must be free with that freedom which we call essential; which can be defined: A volitive potency acting from full deliberation, without coercion and violence, or, as others say, a freedom acting with choice and delight.

Secondly, Christ died freely, according to that text of Ioan. 10.: No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down; and yet He could not but accept the death commanded Him by the Father, since He was impeccable, for if He had fled from dying, He would have been disobedient to the Father's will, and so would have sinned: therefore He died at once freely and necessarily; not indeed with the freedom of specification, or of exercise: therefore with essential freedom.

Thirdly, in God there is true holiness, and it is worthy of infinite praise, according to that text of Psalmi 98: For the Lord our God is holy; but holiness necessarily requires freedom in acts, for in no way can it be compatible with the mere naturalness of actions, for in those things which are natural we are worthy of neither praise nor blame. Therefore God must be called free in those His acts, not only toward creatures (for although creatures were not possible, God would nonetheless be infinitely holy), but most of all in loving Himself, and the love of God toward Himself is supremely necessary, both as to specification and as to exercise, for in no way can He omit it, and much less change it into hatred. Therefore there is given some act which is at once necessary and free, not indeed with the freedom of specification, or of exercise, and so with essential freedom.

The Scotists confirm all these reasons from this, that the most perfect mode of operating which we can conceive must be conceded and assigned to the divine will: but the mode of operating freely and at the same time necessarily is the most excellent of all: therefore we must assign it to God. The major is clear. The minor is proved: a good, the more firmly it is possessed, the better it is: but it is certain that to operate freely is a good for a free principle: therefore the more certainly and fixedly it is possessed by it, the better and more perfectly it inheres in it: but that is most certainly possessed which is had necessarily: therefore the freedom of operation can belong necessarily to someone, indeed it must, so that he may operate in the most perfect mode.

You will say 1. The Holy Spirit proceeds naturally: therefore not freely. The consequence is evident from what has been said, for the modes of operating naturally and freely are directly opposed. The antecedent is proved from St. Cyril, book 13. of the Thesaurus cap. 1. and 2., where he says that the Holy Spirit exists naturally from the Son Himself and in Him: and further on: therefore the Spirit is not other than the essence of the Godhead, but from it and in it naturally, as the finger in the hand and the hand in the body. Finally, toward the end of the same chapter, he calls the Holy Spirit naturally sent forth from the very essence of the Divinity: therefore His procession is not free, but natural.

I distinguish the antecedent. The Holy Spirit proceeds naturally, that is, from the divine nature itself, which is the remote principle of His procession as also of the Son's, I concede; that is, in a natural mode, insofar as "natural" is opposed to "free", I deny. Likewise the proof must be distinguished; for St. Cyril meant nothing other than that the Holy Spirit is produced through the divine essence communicated to Him: whence in the same place, c. 1., he says: the Holy Spirit is essentially in God Himself, and proceeds from Him inseparably, that is, He has the same essence as His productive principle.

You will insist. The Holy Spirit proceeds from a principle determined to one, therefore His procession is natural, also as regards the mode of producing naturally. The antecedent is evident because the Holy Spirit cannot not be, and so necessarily proceeds from a principle determined to His production.

I distinguish the antecedent. It proceeds from a principle determined to one by its own and voluntary determination, I concede; by determination through a natural form, as a heavy body is determined by its natural form to downward motion, I deny: the divine will is therefore determined by itself on account of its rectitude toward the infinite object: for the divine Essence, says the Doctor cited above, nu. 11., which is the first object of that will, is of itself to be willed; therefore the will is of necessity in the right act of willing that object, which is of itself rightly to be willed, and just as it is of necessity the principle of willing, so it is of necessity the principle of producing the love of it... And such a will, having such an object present, is the principle of communicating the divine nature, which is the principle of producing the infinite love produced: for such a produced love is proportioned both to the potency and to the object: whence it follows that the productive act of the Holy Spirit is necessary, both on the part of the infinite object, and on the part of the rectitude of the will, which cannot but love the infinite good and produce a term adequate to the object itself.

You will say 2. Such is the productive action of some term as is the term produced: but the Holy Spirit is naturally God; for He cannot be said to be God freely in any sense of freedom: therefore His production is also natural and in no way free. — I deny the major. For God freely produces a stone, since He does all things ad extra most freely; the stone, however, is in no way free, indeed it exists purely naturally. Therefore there can be freedom in the action of the producer together with the naturalness of the term produced; and so, although the Holy Spirit is in no way freely God, nevertheless His production can be in some way free.

You will say 3. Although the procession of the Holy Spirit is free, it can nonetheless also be natural: therefore on this side the truth of our Conclusion fails. The antecedent is proved: just as natural and free divide the principle of acting, so likewise necessary and contingent divide it: but the same principle can act contingently and necessarily: therefore it will also be able to act naturally and freely. The major is evident from what was said in Note 1. The minor is proved: the divine will, one and simple, is at the same time the principle of acting contingently and necessarily; for it necessarily produces the Holy Spirit, and contingently creatures: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the minor. The same principle can act contingently and necessarily, with respect to a primary and adequate term, I deny: it can act necessarily about an adequate, primary, and intrinsic term, and contingently about a secondary, inadequate, and extrinsic term, I concede: and so the divine will, as it has the notion of first act, is of itself and from within productive of the Holy Spirit, who is its adequate, primary, and intrinsic term: but with respect to the creature, which it produces contingently, its act of willing is terminated only secondarily, extrinsically, and inadequately: whence, since the diversity of this act arises from the diversity of termination, and this from the diversity of the term; and since the creature is a contingent being, that termination of the divine will to the creature is also said to be contingent. Or I deny the minor absolutely, and to its proof I say that the divine will is not the immediate productive principle of creatures, but the divine omnipotence, which is formally distinguished from the divine will, and so that diversity of productions, namely of the Holy Spirit and of creatures, is to be traced back not to the same principle, but to diverse ones.

You will say 4. If the Holy Spirit proceeds freely, it follows that He is foreknown before He is produced: but this is absurd: therefore, etc. The major is evident, for nothing is produced by an act of the will except what is foreknown. The minor is proved; for if the Holy Spirit is known, then while He is foreknown He is either something or nothing; He cannot be said to be nothing, because thus He could not be foreknown, and moreover it would follow that He presupposes nothing before His production, which no one would say: if He is something, either something existing or something possible: not the first, because thus He would exist before existence: not the second either, because the Holy Spirit cannot have possible being. — The Doctor answers in the same place, n. 14. That in that prior sign of origin, before the Holy Spirit is understood to be breathed, the Father and the Son know the Holy Spirit intuitively, although not as existing in Himself, because they know the divine essence, which is the ground of knowing intuitively any intelligible object: which also we taught above, namely that the Holy Spirit and the Son are pre-understood before their production, and so the aforesaid argument indeed brings force against others, but not against us; but in what manner He is foreknown was said in the preceding Article.