Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

St. Hilary wisely and prudently warns, in lib. 2. De Trinit., that heretics receive the simplicity of the heavenly words according to the sense of their own will, and not according to the full declaration of the truth itself, interpreting otherwise than the force of the sayings demands; for heresy is of the understanding, not of Scripture, and the sense, not the word, becomes the crime. He adds: Thus they destroy the unlearned while they affirm the reason of this preaching; and they deceive the hearers while they take nature away from the names. He concludes: Therefore... since malice, stirred up by the instinct of diabolical fraud, shuts up the truth of things within the names of natures; let us set forth the nature of the names. But above all, the genuine signification of the names hypostasis, person, and subsistence must be laid open; since it is well known that their varying interpretation has been to many a stone of offense and a rock of scandal. Wherefore, for an easier and safer understanding of the things to be determined in this Article, I have thought it worthwhile to touch upon some things concerning the aforesaid names, and first indeed

On the name of Hypostasis.

Nicephorus rightly relates, in lib. 10. Histor. cap. 15., that the business of Hypostasis and Subsistence once troubled the whole Church; for long was it fought among the holy Fathers concerning the signification of that very name, namely whether it signified the same as substance or the same as supposit. The same Nicephorus writes that the first occasion of this controversy was given by Hosius, Bishop of Corduba, who, sent to Alexandria by the Emperor Constantine to quiet the disturbance stirred up by Arius, first made mention of substance and subsistence, that is, of οὐσίᾳ and ὑποστάσει, and called into question whether they signified altogether the same thing. This question, indeed, the Nicene Synod at first judged unworthy of being treated in a Council, as Nicephorus relates in the same place; but when shortly after, in the Council of Alexandria (as Rufinus witnesses in lib. 1. Histor. cap. 29.), the controversy had again arisen among the Fathers concerning the signification of both the aforesaid names, some asserting that it was the same, others that it was different, it came about, the same Nicephorus says, that in that same Council of Alexandria it was decreed that no one should commonly use the word hypostasis, since it is not contained in the sacred Letters, and St. Paul, compelled only by the necessity of teaching, had as it were misused the name of subsistence in Hebrews 1. to signify essence. Moreover, the great Athanasius seems to have settled that dispute in the Council of Alexandria in the year 362, since Nicephorus affirms in the same place, c. 16., that he was present at the Council of Alexandria; and Nazianzen, speaking of him in Orat. 21., which is on the praises of Athanasius, says: Both parties having been gently and humanely summoned, and the sense of the words diligently and accurately weighed, after he found them concordant, and in no way disagreeing among themselves as far as doctrine is concerned, he so settled the business that, granting them the use of the names, he bound them to the things themselves: Nazianzen himself accomplished the very same thing at Constantinople, as he testifies in Orat. 32., which is addressed to the 150 Bishops; for when they had been convoked at Constantinople by Theodosius, and a similar controversy had arisen among them, Nazianzen proved that there was no disagreement among them concerning the things, between those who say three hypostases and those who profess one; for the former understood persons by hypostasis, the latter essence. Hence it seemed lawful even up to those times to use the name hypostasis indifferently, to signify the nature and essence, which is called οὐσία, or the person, which is called πρόσωπον.

But the controversy about hypostasis was not settled there, nor entirely exhausted; for shortly after the Bishops of the Antiochene Church renewed it, some admitting with the Westerns a single hypostasis, others with the Easterns three hypostases, as is clear from Epistle 10. of St. Athanasius, in which he argues that the Westerns establish heresy per se.

Again, we gather from their writings that this dispute also flourished in the time of Saints Jerome and Augustine. For when St. Jerome was pressed and importuned by the Bishop of Antioch, the patron of the Arian heresy, to confess and admit three hypostases in the divine; consulting on this matter the Roman Church, as the mother of the rest, and she to whom the greater questions of faith are referred, he asks of the holy Damasus, the Supreme Pontiff, what he ought to believe, in Epist. 57., where among other things he writes: The whole school of secular Letters, he says, knows hypostasis as nothing other than usia: whence after a few things he infers: Whoever says that there are three, that is, that there are three hypostases, that is, usias, under the name of piety attempts to assert three natures: and a little further down: Let the three hypostases be kept silent, if it pleases, and let one be held. And again: Poison lies hidden under honey; the Angel of Satan has transfigured himself into an Angel of light. — The same difficulty agitated and detained St. Augustine; for in lib. 5. De Trinitate, cap. 8. he speaks thus:

Essence, I say, which is called usia in Greek, which we more customarily call substance: they indeed (namely, the Greeks) also call it hypostasis, so that most of ours who treat these things in the Greek tongue are wont to say μίαν οὐσίαν, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, which is altogether the same as one essence, three substances.

And immediately after, in cap. 9., he adds: But because our custom of speaking has already prevailed, so that when we say Essence what is understood is what is understood when we say Substance, we do not dare to say one essence, three substances. And lib. 7. cap. 1.

In the beginning, he says, it was said by our Greeks: one essence, three substances; by the Latins: one essence, or substance, three persons, as we have already said; in our speech, that is, the Latin, essence is not wont to be understood otherwise than substance.

From which it is evident that Augustine held the aforesaid word hypostasis in suspicion among the Latins in the same way as Jerome did; except that at length, in lib. 7. De Trinitate cap. 6., he concedes that three substances can be said in Latin of God, just as three hypostases are said in Greek, where there would be no scandal and the Catholic sense would be certain. Hence it came about in the course of time that the word hypostasis, by ecclesiastical usage, signified not substance or essence, but person or supposit. Indeed, whatever certain heretical little grammarians may cry out, if we consult antiquity itself, it will be evident that hypostasis was used by the more learned for subsistence: for it is well known, first of all, that Aristotle, or another author of the book De mundo addressed to Alexander, said, about the middle of it: Of the things which are observed around us, to touch upon these briefly, some appear, others subsist, or in Greek, others are according to hypostasis, that is, they truly exist. Likewise Dionysius, in cap. 1. of De Divinis Nominibus, calls God Ἑνάδα Τρισυπόστατον, that is, a unity thrice subsisting, and in c. 3. he uses the name hypostasis three times to designate the subsistence of the persons. Justin Martyr used the same name, and in the same signification, in the exposition of the true Confession of the Trinity, etc. From which it is clear that Nicephorus, in lib. 10. Historiae cap. 15., and Socrates, in lib. 3. c. 7., wrongly said that the word hypostasis, which the ecclesiastical writers use, is barbarous, and was used by none of the Ancients to signify a person.

On the name of Subsistence.

The word subsistence had various significations in antiquity; for, as Rusticus says in the disputation against the Acephali, subsistence sometimes signifies a person, sometimes a substance; for in the holy Ephesine Synod both are shown. Indeed Athanasius, in Quaestionibus quaest. 1., seems to extend the name of subsistence to signify any individual whatsoever, even of an accident; for he says: Three subsistences of the solar orb: the ray and the light; moreover, three subsistences of the subject of fire: the burning and the shining. More frequently, however, it was used in the Councils to signify hypostasis or person; thus the First Nicene Council, in lib. 2., says: One divinity of the holy Trinity is considered in three perfect, equal subsistences. And toward the end of the same book, after it has distinguished the divine persons and hypostases, it adds: Whatever subsists per se, insofar as it subsists per se, is properly said to have the person, or face, or figure of a nature. Likewise the First Constantinopolitan Council, in the Epistola ad Damasum, says that God is in three most perfect subsistences, or in three perfect ones, so that the languor of Sabellius may have no place, whether by the confusion of the subsistences with the persons or by the abolition of the properties. Finally, the Second Constantinopolitan Council, in anathematism 2., says: If anyone does not confess one Deity to be adored in three subsistences, or persons, let him be anathema. The Lateran Council under Martin the First repeats the same, in Consultation 5., Can. 1., saying: If anyone does not confess, according to the holy Fathers, properly and truly the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity in unity and the unity in Trinity, that is, one God in three consubstantial subsistences, let him be anathema. — All the holy Fathers, whom Ruiz sets forth at length in disp. 31. sect. 3., confirm this very thing. Wherefore Theodoret, in the breviary of Liberatus, in the last chapter of the additions, says: Subsistence and person differ in none of their significata except in name: for subsistence is a person; but nature indeed and substance signify something general, while subsistence and person signify something proper.

On the name of Person.

The name person, as Boethius affirms in the book De duabus naturis, seems to be derived from those things by which, in comedies and tragedies, they represented the men whose interest it was; or, as Anitius adds, Since, masks having been put on, the actors, whose interest it was, represented in tragedy or comedy, therefore the rest of men, whose recognition would be certain by their form, the Latins called persons, and the Greeks prosopa. Hence, according to its primary institution, it was used to designate the face and figure of each one; in which way the Fathers of the Nicene Council, in lib. 2., used person: When we hear person, they say, let us not suspect that the divine has a human likeness; for it is free from composition, as being without figure; and when he had proved from the Gospel, especially from that of Matth. 16., You know how to discern the face of the sky, where instead of face the Greek reads πρόσωπον; he concludes: for whatever subsists per se, insofar as it subsists per se, is properly said to have the person, or face, or figure of a nature. — Nevertheless the usage prevailed that the name person signified the same as supposit, or the ultimate complement of the individual nature; in which sense it is also used everywhere in the Scriptures, where we read that God is not an acceptor of persons, especially Acts 10., Romans 2., etc. Wherefore, to comply with the Greek usage, we will use essence for οὐσίᾳ, substance for ὑπάρξει, supposit for ὑποστάσει, person for προσώπῳ.

These things having been premised, three things are to be resolved in the present Article. First, whether and how the name and notion of person befits God. Second, by what things the divine Persons are constituted, namely whether by absolute or by relative properties. Third and last, whether, besides the three relative subsistences which constitute the persons, one absolute subsistence is to be admitted, by which the divine Essence subsists.

Note 1. The definition of person is varied, but especially twofold. The first is handed down by Boethius, praised above, saying: A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Although the Doctor does not disapprove of this definition, in 1. dist. 23. n. 4. he nonetheless judges that it is to be expounded by the definition handed down by Richard in lib. 4. De Trinit. cap. 22., saying that a person is the incommunicable existence of an intellectual nature. For according to the definition of Boethius it would follow that the rational soul, and even the Deity itself, insofar as it prescinds from the divine supposits, would be a person, because both the Divinity and the rational soul are an individual substance of a rational nature; yet no one will call the Deity so considered a person; otherwise there would be four divine Persons; likewise no one should assert that the rational soul is a person, since it is not ultimately complete, nor incommunicable, for it always has an order to the body, either that which it informs, or that which it can inform. It does not escape me, however, that many oppose this opinion as regards the rational soul; but concerning these things let the Physicists and Metaphysicians see.

Note 2. From the same author, in the same place, nature is distinguished from person in this, that nature is communicable, whereas person is incommunicable, both ut quo and ut quod. To be communicated ut quod is to be communicated as a universal to its inferiors, with which it is the same; thus human nature is communicable ut quod to Peter and Paul, each of whom is truly a man; to be communicated ut quo is to be communicated either as a singular nature to its supposit, or as a form to the subject which is denominated from it. Thus, v. gr., human nature in Christ, although it is singular, is nevertheless communicable ut quo, because it is unible to the supposit of the Word; so likewise whiteness, which is in a wall, is communicable ut quo, because it is united to it as to a subject which it informs; the notion of person and of supposit excludes both of these communicabilities, since a personated nature is not communicable to another after the manner of a superior and common nature, because it is singular and individual: nor even ut quo, because it cannot be communicated to another, neither as to a supposit, nor as to a subject. For it does not have the notion of a part, but of a whole in every way complete and terminated.

Note 3. That although the divine nature, considered precisely in itself, and insofar as it prescinds from the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is perfect in the being of a divine and infinite nature; because as such it consists of all the essential predicates, intrinsic modes, and attributes constituting it on every side in the being of an infinite nature; nevertheless, as such, it is not complete in hypostatic being, nor is it ultimately terminated according to existence. For it is communicated to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, subsisting in themselves, and ultimately terminating the divine nature. Hence it comes about that, although the divine nature so considered has existence and subsistence, as will be established in the following Question three; yet as such it does not have the notion of supposit, nor of person; but it is constituted in the notion of person by the relative properties, which determine the divine nature to the supposit of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

These things being noted, three points are to be resolved in the present Question. First, that the notion of person properly belongs to God. Second, that this notion is not something positive, but negative. Third, that it belongs univocally to the three persons.

First conclusion. — The name and notion of person truly and properly belongs to God.

This is the common opinion, and of faith, as is evident from all those oracles both of Sacred Scripture and of the Councils, by which three divine Persons, distinct from one another, are affirmed in God.

It is also proved by reason. Person, from what has been said, is the incommunicable existence of a rational nature: but it is most evident that these three things placed in the definition of person, namely a rational nature, existence, and an incommunicable mode of existing, perfectly belong to God; a rational nature indeed, since God holds the primary and most excellent grade among spiritual natures, and is endowed with infinite power and wisdom, not indeed of reasoning, but of understanding; likewise existence, for to Him first and most of all does it belong to be a necessarily existing being; finally, that incommunicable existence belongs to Him, natural reason itself demonstrates, because to the first and greatest being there necessarily belongs a mode of existing independently of another, and consequently a mode of subsisting per se, which is the same as existing incommunicably: therefore, etc.

Secondly: if He existed in another as a form in a subject, or as a nature in a supposit, He would not exist per se precisely, but only by reason of another, by whom He would be sustained: but this is unbecoming to God, the first being wholly independent: therefore, etc.

Finally: the notion of person will be truer and more perfect in God the more perfectly subsisting per se and existing wholly incommunicably belongs to Him: but the mode of subsisting per se belongs most perfectly to God, since He depends on nothing either in being or in being conserved: the notion of existing most perfectly independently of another likewise belongs to Him, as from a subject and an extraneous supposit, one that is not divine and really the same as the Deity: therefore the notion of person likewise belongs to Him most perfectly.

You will say 1. The name of person is not attributed to God in the sacred Letters. Moreover, it was unusual and unknown to the first Christians, as Coccius relates in lib. 1. De Trinit. articulo 4. Finally, properly speaking there is nothing in God which that name signifies, and the Theologians use the name of person, not to express something, but lest they seem to be silent, as St. Augustine says in 5. De Trinit. cap. 9.: When it is asked, he says, what three? human speech labors under a truly great poverty. Yet three persons has been said, not that that might be said, but lest it be passed over in silence. Therefore it must be admitted that the name of person does not truly belong to God, or at least that the Theologians have nothing certain on this matter. — I deny the consequence, and to the first I say: although the name of person is nowhere found in the sacred Letters said of God, nor do we anywhere read of the person of God; nevertheless, what the name of person signifies is found affirmed of God in many ways in sacred Scripture, namely, that He is a Spirit endowed with infinite wisdom, and hence that He is of a rational nature: likewise, that He has an incommunicable existence, both ut quo and ut quod, since on account of His singularity He cannot be communicated as a common nature, and on account of His independence He cannot be communicated either as a form to a subject, or as an individual nature to a supposit: therefore, since the notion of person belongs most perfectly to God, the name of person is also fittingly attributed to Him. — To the second I say, that indeed the name of person was not first taken up by the faithful and attributed to God; but nevertheless it came about, says Richard in lib. 1. De Trinit. cap. 5., that those who first transferred this name of person to divine things did this very thing out of necessity, that they might have something to answer those asking what those three in the Trinity were, since they could not answer that they were three Gods. He adds: Let us no longer ask from what necessity it was afterwards transferred to divine things, but in what truth, through the Spirit of truth, it was inspired to those who transferred it, and universally used by the Latin Church. It is certain, therefore, from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the common usage of the Church, that the name of person properly belongs to God. — To the third I say, that indeed the name of person does not perfectly declare the quiddity and the peculiar properties by which the three supposits of the Divinity are distinguished from one another; nevertheless, that name was wisely taken up by Catholics, that in one word they could answer the Sabellians asking what those three were. Nor did St. Augustine intend anything else in the cited place: to which that which he adds in lib. 7. cap. 4. corresponds: When therefore it is asked, what three, or what three things, we betake ourselves to finding some special or general name by which we may comprehend these three; nor does it occur to the mind, because the superemi- nence of the Divinity exceeds the faculty of ordinary speech: for God is more truly thought than said, and is more truly than He is thought

You will say 2. The notion of person renders the nature, the same in number, incommunicable to another supposit; for human nature, v. gr., which is personated in Peter, cannot be communicated to another: but the divine nature, which is communicated to the Father, is also communicated to the Son and the Holy Spirit: therefore in the Father it is not incommunicable, and hence not personated. — I answer 1, distinguishing the major: the personated nature is incommunicable precisely insofar as it is a singular nature, I deny: for the human nature of Christ is truly and properly singular and individual, and yet it is communicated and united to the Word: it is incommunicable reduplicatively, as personated, that is, insofar as it signifies precisely the nature determined by personality, or the person in concreto, I concede. And with the minor likewise distinguished, I deny the consequence: thus the divine nature is indeed in the Father communicable to another, insofar as it is divine nature: not, however, insofar as it is the personality of the Father; for as such it signifies nothing other than the supposit consisting of divine nature and Paternity; and hence it signifies nothing other than the Father. It is certain, however, that the divine Father is not communicable to the Son, so as to be one and the same with Him; indeed He is really distinguished from Him. — I answer 2. that this is peculiar to the divine nature, that one and the same wholly indivisible nature can be communicated to three supposits, because neither does its infinity suffer several numerically distinct divine natures, nor does its supreme unity and simplicity sustain any multiplication and division; but it is otherwise with created natures, which, since they are finite and multipliable, hence it comes about that the same numerically one nature cannot be in several supposits.

You will say 3. The divine nature, insofar as it prescinds from the divine Persons, is in every way complete and incommunicable to another nature; since it is individual and singular: therefore it has no need of any supervening notion of person and of supposit, by which it might be completed and rendered incommunicable. — I distinguish the antecedent. It is in every way complete in the notion of divine nature, namely, because it consists of the essential predicates, intrinsic modes, and attributes perfecting and constituting it in the notion of an infinitely perfect being, I concede: it is complete in hypostatic being, and in ultimate incommunicability, I deny. For the divine nature taken precisely, whole and entire, is in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Whence of itself it does not have the notion of supposit nor of person; since it is not ultimately terminated according to existence; but it is constituted in the being of person by those relative properties, which are the ultimate term of the existence of the divine nature, and together with it constitute the three subsistents, further incommunicable to others, as terminating.

Second conclusion. — It is probable that the divine personalities are some positive mode terminating the divine nature, and as it were completing it in incommunicable being.

This seems to be the genuine opinion of the Doctor in 3. dist. 1. quaestione 1. n. 10., where, after he had said that a created nature can be said to be communicable in three ways, namely, either actually, as the soul is communicated to the body which it actually informs; or aptitudinally, as the separated soul, which has an inclination to inform the body; or obedientially; such as is the obediential potency in the rational soul to inform its body, he adds:

The divine Person has not only the negation of actual and aptitudinal communication, but also has a repugnance to communication ut quod and ut quo. But such repugnance cannot exist except through a positive entity, and therefore it follows that this person is never without such an entity; but the created person too, because it is not repugnant to it to be communicated, since it is in obediential potency, is not thus incommunicable, and therefore it is not necessary to attribute such a positive personal entity to it, but the double negation of actual and aptitudinal communication suffices for it.

It is moreover proved. The divine personality obtains a twofold office; for it completes the divine nature and ultimately terminates it, and constitutes and distinguishes the divine persons: but the divine nature cannot be completed through a simple negation, nor can the divine Persons be constituted and really distinguished from one another through something purely negative: therefore the notion of person in divine realities must be something positive. — Then, from St. Augustine, lib. De Doctrina Christiana: The things to be enjoyed are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Moreover, from the same author, 7. De Trinit. cap. 5.: It is not one thing to be God and another to be a person: but the thing and the Deity are something positive: therefore divine personality, for its formal element, is likewise something positive. — Finally, the divine Person is a real positive being: therefore its formal constituent must also be real and positive.

You will say. Created personality formally consists in a twofold incommunicability, ut quo and ut quod, and imports nothing positive beyond the notion of individual; therefore the same must be said of divine personality. — I deny the consequence. And the reason for the disparity is, first, because, as the Doctor said above, divine personality implies a repugnance to communication in every way, such as created person does not imply; but a negation founded in repugnance, since it is in every way inseparable from the subject, therefore requires something in the subject by reason of which it cannot be separated from it: whence it comes about that every repugnance is the repugnance of something, that is, of something not having a potency to something: but the simple negation, which created personality implies, is not thus inseparable from the subject, because in fact it is separated in the human nature assumed by the divine Word. Add, that even with created personality set aside, the notion of individual still remains, which sufficiently distinguishes the singular nature from another; but with divine personality set aside, nothing would remain by which the divine persons would be constituted and distinguished from one another.

Third conclusion. — Some common concept can be abstracted for the divine persons, which is univocal to them in the notion of person. Thus the Doctor in 1. dist. 25. n. 1., and

Proof. because each of the three divine persons is called a person; and truly the three agree in the notion of person, as such, not however as Peter and Paul agree in this man, for this man is said only equivocally of Peter and Paul: for this pronoun signifies what it demonstrates: whence when this man is said of Peter, that singular thing is demonstrated which is Peter, and which is wholly different from another singular thing which is Paul: whence it comes about that this man is not said of them univocally: but divine Person is truly said of the three according to its own proper notion; since each of them truly is the incommunicable existence of the divine nature; therefore it belongs to them univocally. — It is confirmed: if the name of person did not belong to them univocally, they would not be called three persons; for nothing is numbered except what is univocal: whence the heavenly and the earthly dog are not rightly called two dogs, because the name Dog is not univocal to the heavenly and the earthly: but truly three divine persons are said: therefore the name and notion of person belongs to them univocally.

You will say. Three created individuals and singulars are said as truly and properly as three divine Persons: but according to the Doctor created singulars do not agree in a common univocal notion; for this man does not agree univocally with Peter and Paul: therefore although three divine Persons are said, it is not rightly inferred that the name and notion of person belong to them univocally. — I answer to the major, that three individuals are said to be three only insofar as it is true that the created nature is numbered in them, which belongs to them univocally; whence, since the divine nature cannot be numbered in this way in the divine persons, because it is the same in number in the three; therefore something else univocal to them must be numbered in them; but this other cannot be anything but that which person formally says: therefore the notion of person must be univocal to them.

You will insist. Not only three created individuals, but also three individual differences and singularities are properly said: but three individual differences do not agree in a common univocal notion: therefore although three divine persons are said, it does not follow from this that they agree univocally. — I answer. Indeed three singularities are rightly said to be three, not on account of the commonness of a univocal concept of nature, but on account of the proportion of office, because they equally distinguish ultimately, and render the nature incommunicable to several inferiors. But the divine persons agree thus not only on account of the proportion of office, but also on account of the definition and notion of the divine Person, which belongs to them; for each of them truly is the incommunicable existence of the divine nature, ut quo and ut quod. Whence there is no parity.

Note 1. The opinion of the theologians concerning the resolution of the present Question is varied, but chiefly threefold: of which the First, says the Doctor in 1. dist. 2. n. 1., was that of Praepositivus, who affirmed that the divine Persons are constituted and distinguished by their whole selves, an opinion long since banished from the Schools, which Gregory of Rimini in 1. dist. 26. and 27. called back anew. The Second is that of Lincolniensis, and of John of Ripa, saying in the same place that there are indeed in the divine some constitutive and distinctive properties of the persons, but that they are absolute, not relative; which opinion, because the praised Doctor proves it with various arguments and solves all those things which are wont to be objected against it, some Recent authors wrongly attribute to him. The Third finally, the common and universal opinion of the theologians, now prevails: that the divine persons are constituted through relative properties. How, however, this is done, all do not explain in the same way; for the arguments of Scotus, says Vazquez, disp. 189. cap. 1., exercised the wits of the Thomists to such a degree that they divided them into various opinions: for some assert that the persons are not constituted by relations insofar as they are relations, but insofar as they are hypostatic forms; for they say that a divine relation claims two things for itself, namely, to be in itself, or per se; and to be toward another; and that according to being in itself it constitutes the person, but according to being toward another it does not constitute, but refers the person to another correlative to itself. Some, with St. Bonaventure in 1. dist. 26. q. 3., teach that the three persons are constituted by the relations as they are origins, e.g. that the divine Father is constituted in the notion of person by Paternity, not as Paternity is, but as active generation. The rest finally, with the Subtle Doctor, judge that the divine relations are constitutive of the divine Persons insofar as they are formally relations.

Note 2. Here the question is not raised about real constitution, which is made through constitutive things really distinct from one another, but about formal, which namely is made through constitutive things formally distinct; for although any divine person is a being really simple and indivisible on account of the real indistinction of the personal properties from the essence, nevertheless a twofold entity is conceived in it, one of which is absolute and simpliciter, the other relative and modal, or a mode of so being: through the first God is one, and is constituted formally in the notion of God; through the second indeed He is three, and is constituted in the notion of Father, and of Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Absolute being is prior, with the priority of reason and of sign, to the relative; for it is primary, which through the relative, as through a secondary being, is contracted and determined to the person; whence the relations are rightly conceived, as it were, to come to the divine nature and to constitute it in personal being, which, considered in itself, namely insofar as it is divinity, it does not have.

Note 3. That although the relative properties are conceived to come to the divine nature, already essentially constituted, they are nevertheless not accidental, but substantial; just as forms, although they are not essential to matter, but, as the Logicians say, come to it accidentally, are nevertheless substantial in themselves, and together with matter constitute a composite, not from accident and subject, but from diverse substances. Moreover, not only are those properties substantial and constitute substances, or things existing per se, but they are also hypostatic forms and the notions of supposits and persons, which together with the divine essence constitute the divine Person in the being of an intellectual nature complete and ultimately terminated according to existence. With these things premised, three things must be determined: first, that the divine Persons are constituted by properties. Second, that those properties are relative. Third, that they formally constitute the divine Persons precisely insofar as they are relations.

First conclusion. — The divine Persons are not constituted, nor distinguished, by their whole selves, but by certain personal properties.

This is the common opinion among the theologians, and is gathered and confirmed, first, from the various Councils, especially from the Lateran, cap.

Firmiter. where it is said that the Most Holy Trinity is undivided according to the common essence, but distinct according to the personal properties: likewise in the Council of Florence, sess. 1., it is asserted that the divine Persons differ by their properties: finally the Church sings in the preface of the Mass of the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity: And in the persons let property, in the essence unity, and in majesty equality be adored.

Proof 2. by the authority of the holy Fathers. First indeed of St. Dionysius, lib. De Divinis Nominibus cap. 2., saying: Those things which are of divine fecundity are not reciprocated among themselves, but only the Father is the font of the heavenly Divinity, so that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, but the holy praises preserve for each divine Person its own properties. Likewise Saint Basil, lib. 2. Contra Eunomium: The properties, he says, αἱ δὲ ἡμέτεραι, like certain characters and forms beheld in the substance, distinguish indeed what is common by the appropriated characters, but do not cut off the communication of the substance. Saint Athanasius, Dialog. 1.: A hypostasis, he says, has a property by no means common to the hypostases which underlie the essence, nor does it admit the multiplication of number, since it is one and singular; but whatever admits the multiplication of number wholly has a property, and what has a property admits number. Saint Ambrose, in Symbolum Apostolorum cap. 11.: We, he says, distinguishing the persons of the Deity in their properties, nevertheless confess the inseparable unity of the Most Holy Trinity. To these St. Augustine assents, serm. 38. De Tempore: Each of the persons in the Trinity, he says, has something proper, by which, in inseparable equality, they show in themselves some property: whence the Council of Toledo 11. in the Confession of Faith rightly concludes, There is, he says, abiding in each person his own property: for the Father has eternity without nativity, the Son eternity with nativity, the Holy Spirit procession without nativity.

Proof 3. The Doctor proves by theological reason: whatever things are not first diverse, but have something in which they agree, are not distinguished by their whole selves, but by something of themselves: but the divine Persons are not first diverse, because they are of the same essence: therefore they are not distinguished by their whole selves, but by something of themselves. — Then, several properties are in the same person, as in the Father innascibility, and active generation, which according to St. Augustine 5. De Trinit. cap. 6. are mutually distinguished; for, he says, if the Father were not unbegotten, He could nevertheless be Father, and conversely: therefore even if per impossibile one would not distinguish the Father from someone, another could distinguish, and conversely; and so the Father always has something by which He is distinguished from the Son, and consequently they are not distinguished by their whole selves. — Finally, in the Father there is active generation, and active spiration: but by active spiration He is not distinguished from the Son: indeed that is common to Him with the Son: therefore the Father is not distinguished by his whole self, but by something of himself. — These reasons are confirmed: if the persons are distinguished by their whole selves: therefore they are distinguished also by the essence: but this cannot be, because they agree in the essence, and the same thing cannot be the principle of agreeing and of distinguishing. Moreover, either the divine Person, e.g. the Father, has something beyond the essence which the Son does not have, or He does not: if the first, we have what was intended: if the second, no reason can be given why this person is the Father rather than the other; indeed nor why He is a person distinct from the other: therefore some Recent authors rightly pronounce the opposite opinion of the Conclusion to be rash, and almost heretical; nevertheless its assertors

They object 1. The divine Person is just as simple as the essence: but the divine essence itself is distinguished by itself from anything else: therefore also the person. It is confirmed: Paternity is not more simple than the Father: but Paternity, because it is simple, is constituted by nothing distinct from itself: therefore neither is the Father. — I deny the major. for, as we observed in the 2. Note, the divine Person is constituted in the being of a complete person through the entity of the Deity, and of personality, and so the person expresses two entities, or formalities, constitutive of itself, and thus could be said to be less simple than the essence. Or I distinguish: it is just as simple as the essence, with real simplicity, which excludes real composition from parts really distinct, I concede: with formal simplicity, which excludes the plurality of formalities, I deny: but this formal simplicity does not befit God, but real simplicity does, as we proved when treating of divine Simplicity. The confirmation is to be distinguished in like manner. I add moreover, that Paternity is not therefore not constituted by something distinct from itself because it is simple, but because it is conceived after the manner of a form, which does not consist of other formalities: whence since the Father is signified after the manner of a whole and of a concrete, and consists of nature, and of Paternity, which are formally distinguished, He must also be constituted by something distinct from the divine nature, and so the account is not the same of Paternity as of the Father.

They object 2. The constituted depends on, and is caused by, the constituent: but the divine Persons are wholly independent, and uncaused: therefore they are not constituted by something distinct. — I distinguish the major. the real constituted, which is made through the union of constituents really distinct, such as is the constitution of a physical composite, which is made through the union of matter with form, depends on the constituent and on the uniting of the constitutive things, I concede: the formal constituted, which is made through formalities really indistinct, and which by themselves, and independently of anything extrinsic, are united and constitute the whole, depends thus, I deny.

They object 3. From the Lateran Council, chapter Firmiter, it is said that the Father gave the whole substance to the Son: but those properties, if there are any, whether relative or absolute, are substances: therefore He gave them to the Son; and so He is not distinguished from the Son by them: therefore neither is the divine Father constituted in the being of a person by them. — I answer. The Council understands by the name of substance the essence, and the divine nature, insofar as it prescinds from the personal properties; in which way also the holy Fathers are wont in this matter to oppose substance to relation: whence Boetius toward the end of lib. De Trinit.: Substance contains unity, relation multiplies the Trinity; by which he opposes unity to multitude, substance to relation.

Second conclusion. — The divine Persons are constituted and distinguished by properties not absolute, but relative.

This is the more common, and truer opinion of the theologians, and it is proved first. by all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which the divine Persons are called by the relative names of Father, and of Son, and of the Spirit of truth proceeding from the Father, most of all from that text of the last of Matthew, where Christ, sending the Apostles for the conversion of the Gentiles, commands that they baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; from which places I argue thus: Sacred Scripture, and Christ the Lord designate the divine Persons by names most proper and signifying the personal properties: but these names from their primary imposition signify a relation, not indeed something absolute: therefore those personal properties are relative. The major is clear; for Christ the Lord imposed on the persons those names which best fit them, as they can be conceived and distinguished by us in this life.

Proof 2. From the Councils, especially the 11th of Toledo, in the Confession of Faith, chapter 1.: In the relative names of the persons, he says, the Father is referred to the Son, and the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both; and although the three persons are thus said relatively, one nature is nevertheless believed through the substance: and below: In the relation of the persons the number is discerned. The same is gathered from the Council of Florence, where John the Theologian, pleading the cause of the Latin Church, with the Council silently approving, said: Relation alone, among all the Greek and Latin Doctors, multiplies the persons by the divine procession; to which also those two, the a quo and the ad quod, of which mention was made above, agree. Since therefore relations in this way multiply the persons, so that the Father differs from the Son, one person from another, by no other reason than by the force of the relation. It judges therefore that the divine Persons are constituted and distinguished by relations; which is confirmed moreover from the oration which Bessarion the Patriarch gave for the union of both Churches, namely the Greek and the Latin, where cap. 6. he says: Therefore the divine Persons are distinguished in both ways indeed; but first and principally, according to the manner of understanding, through the relations, through which also the divine Persons are constituted: and after a few words inserted: the divine Persons are distinguished indeed in both ways, but more principally relatively, or by properties.

Proof 3. By the authority of the holy Fathers; for Nazianzenus, Orat. 37.: The mutual difference of their relation, he says, produced also different names for them; namely of Father, and of Son. Similarly Chrysostom, homil. 5. De incomprehensibili Dei natura, thus distinguishes: The proper names of God, so that the property of the persons may be denoted; for Father, and Son is the proper name of a person, but God, and Lord is common: St. Cyril of Alexandria, lib. 12. Thesauri cap. 15.

There is, he says, no difference between the Father and the Son, except only the personal, because the Father is, and the other is the Son; how will the Son be created, since the Father is uncreated? especially since the relative names are said of the one in regard to the other, and by one word spoken the other is immediately understood? for, he who says Father immediately understood the Son, and he who named the Son at once referred to the Father.

Damascenus also agrees, De Fide cap. 11.: We acknowledge one God, he says, but in the properties alone, namely of Paternity, of Filiation, and of Procession, and as regards the cause, and those things which proceed from the cause, and the perfection of the person, that is, the mode of existing, we notice the difference. Finally St. Anselm, book De Processione Spiritus sancti, chapter 1., writes thus: This therefore is the sole cause of plurality in God, that Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be said of one another, but are others in regard to one another, etc. From all of which it is clear that the opinion of the holy Fathers is manifest: that the divine Persons are constituted by properties not absolute, but relative.

This truth cannot be proved by an efficacious reason: for all the reasons which can be devised, the Doctor sets forth and subtly solves in 1. dist. 23. n. 31.; therefore only this one can be formed: in the mysteries of the Faith, especially in the mystery of the Trinity, nothing should be affirmed except what appears more conformable to Sacred Scripture, and to the sayings of the holy Fathers: but both Sacred Scripture and the holy Fathers signify that the divine Persons are constituted not by absolute, but by relative properties: therefore it must be so held. — Then, the holy Fathers for the most part teach that all absolute things are common to the three divine persons: but the personal properties are not common to the three: therefore they are not something absolute. — Finally, by that thing the divine Persons are formally constituted by which they are formally distinguished and multiplied: but this is done through the relations alone, as is clear from what has been said; for relation alone multiplies the Trinity: whence that common saying: In the divine, all things are one, where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way: therefore, etc.

You will object 1. That text of Proverbiorum 30.¹ where Solomon, speaking of God, asks among other things: What is his name, that is, of the Father, and what is the name of his Son, if you know? From which it is argued thus: every question supposes something, and inquires after another: but here the Father, and the divine Son are supposed to be; and moreover their proper names are asked: therefore Solomon supposes that the proper name of the first and second person is not Father, and Son, otherwise there would be no place for the question, for thus he would know and not know the same thing, or he would suppose to know and investigate, than which nothing is more inept. — I answer. That Solomon there indeed rightly asks something else, which adequately and exactly explains the nature and property, both of the divine Father and of the divine Son; because although these names Father, and Son signify that the divine persons are constituted and distinguished through relations, they do not however sufficiently explain who, and of what sort, those constitutive divine relations are, and in what way those divine Persons are constituted: they signify indeed the constitution of the persons through relation; they do not explain the dignity of the persons.

You will object 2. One divine Person is referred to another through a relation: therefore they are not constituted through it in the being of person. The antecedent is clear; for that which is referred is neither the essence, because the relatum must be really distinguished from the term; but the divine essence, which is in the Father, is not really distinguished from itself in the Son; indeed it is really the same; nor again is the relation referred, because it is itself the cause of referring; and therefore what is referred is the person. The consequence is proved 1. by the authority of St. Augustine saying in book 7. De Trinit. cap. 2.: Every relative is something, except the relation. And cap. 3.: If the Father, he says, is not something in regard to himself, there is nothing that is referred. — Then, that which is referred through a relation is prior to the relation, because it is the foundation and subject of the relation; but the foundation is presupposed to that which is founded in it. — Finally, that which is denominated a relatum is neither the essence nor the relation: therefore it is the supposit, and person: therefore just as a wall, which is denominated white, is presupposed to whiteness, so the person must be presupposed to the relation, through which it is referred, and so is not constituted through it in the notion of person. — The Doctor denies the consequence, n. 41. For that which is referred is the whole supposit consisting of essence, and of relation, which supposit indeed thus constituted is called relative, or relatum. — To the first proof. he responds, n. 42., that St. Augustine does not will that that relatum, as that which is referred, is something absolute, but only that it includes some absolute, as the foundation of the relation. To the second proof. he says that the antecedent is true of created relations, which do not constitute the supposit in the being of supposit, but not of the divine ones, which are constitutive of the supposits; for the constituted is posterior to all its constitutive things, or at least simultaneous in nature with them; and so the person constituted through the relation is simultaneous in nature with the relation itself, through which it is constituted in the being of divine Person. Add that created relations must therefore suppose that which they refer, because they are accidents, which come to the foundations, as to subjects: but it is otherwise with the divine relations, which, since they are substantial, do not pre-require a subject which they refer, but only presuppose the essence, from which they arise, and with which they constitute the person. In the same way the third proof is solved; for whiteness supposes the white thing for this reason, because it is an accident coming to it extrinsically, and really distinct from it; but the divine essence is neither really distinguished from the relation, just as neither is the related person, and therefore it should not be presupposed to it.

You will object 3. A real relation presupposes extremes constituted as really distinct: but the divine relations are real: therefore they presuppose the persons related to one another, really constituted and distinct, and so they do not constitute them. The major is proved: both because that which is referred is constituted before it is referred: and because Aristotle proves that identity is for this reason not a real relation, because it does not presuppose really distinct extremes: and finally, because the producing person, constituted in personal being, is prior in origin and in reason to the person proceeding from it: but a relation can be prior in neither way, because relatives are simultaneous in nature and in knowledge: therefore the producing person is not constituted in its personal being through a relation. — The Doctor denies the major ibid. n. 42. For in the first place that is false of transcendental relations, which do not presuppose extremes already constituted and distinct, but are one of the extremes, which by itself formally and from its own nature is referred to another, and is of itself formally a relation to another; thus, for example, knowledge is referred to its object, potency to the possible, etc.; but the relations of the divine Persons are transcendent. To the first proof I say, that what is referred through another must be constituted before it is referred, I concede; what is referred through itself, I deny: but the divine Persons are referred to one another through themselves: whence it comes about that a divine Person is not constituted in being before it is referred. To the second proof the Doctor says, that Aristotle gathers that identity is not a real relation not only from this, that it does not presuppose really distinct extremes; but also because he supposes that the identity of one thing with itself does not make really distinct extremes either. To the third proof, I distinguish the major; the producing Person is prior in origin to the produced, by a priority in quo, that is, of duration, I deny: by a priority a quo, that is, of origin, I concede. To the minor I say, that relatives are simultaneous in nature and in knowledge, because from the production of the one the existence of its correlative is gathered, either in the being of existence or in objective being. Hence it follows that in the first sign of origin in which the Father is conceived, the Son is also known, not indeed in the being of existence for that prior sign, but only in objective being, as was said when treating of the objects of the divine processions. Add that, as the Doctor says n. 41., although relations are simultaneous in nature, yet among some correlatives one can be prior to the other with a priority of origin; thus action is prior to the passion correlative to it.

You will insist. The supposit is in some way pre-understood before action, because each thing is understood first to exist of itself, and then to act of itself; therefore in the prior sign of origin the supposit of the Father is understood either as something absolute or as something relative; if the first, the intended conclusion is had; if the second, then in that prior sign of origin the Son is also presupposed before he is generated, and so he will not be the term of generation. It is confirmed, because with whatever priority one correlative is pre-understood before something, with the same priority its correlative is also pre-understood. Add that, if Paternity is constitutive of the Father, it will thus be prior to the Father; therefore Filiation, which is simultaneous with Paternity, will also be prior to the Father, and so the Son will not be produced by the Father. — The Doctor distinguishes the major. When the supposit is not constituted through a productive action, he concedes; when it is so constituted, he denies. But the divine Father is constituted in the being of Father, and of the first Person, through active generation; and so he ought not to be presupposed to it. He also denies the second part of the consequent, together with its confirmation, because, as was just said, the simultaneity of nature which correlatives have does not remove the priority of origin, and consequently does not prevent Paternity from belonging to the Father prior in origin to Filiation, or from being understood to belong to the Son.

You will object 4. Every real relation is terminated at something absolute: but this would be false if the person at which Paternity is terminated were constituted through a relation, for then it would not be something absolute, but something relative: therefore, etc. — The Doctor denies the major n. 48. For although it is true of relations that do not constitute their extremes that they must be terminated at something absolute; it is nevertheless false of those which constitute really distinct extremes: for just as their foundation is something relative, so likewise is their term, which can be something relative, because it is constituted in the being of a term through relations.

Third conclusion. — The divine Persons are constituted in personal being through relation, under the formal notion of relation.

This seems to be the Doctor's genuine opinion, as is gathered from various places, especially q. 1. of the Quodlibet n. 1., and q. 19. n. 5., and in 1. dist. 2. q. 7., dist. 5. q. 2. and dist. 11. q. 4.; finally at greatest length throughout dist. 26., and Proof, first. by the authority of the Eleventh Council of Toledo c. 1., where it is said that the divine Persons intimate number by this alone, that they are toward one another, and they lack number in that which they are in themselves: therefore from the Council's definition the relations do not constitute nor distinguish the persons according to their being in, as the Thomists will, but according to their being toward, that is, under the formal notion of relation. It is gathered likewise from the discourse of John the Theologian in the Council of Florence, sess. 18., saying: It is said that relations of this sort multiply the persons, so that it is on no other ground than by force of relation that the Father differs from the Son, nor one person from another. But what is it to differ by force of relation, if not under the formal notion of relation? but the proper being of relation, as the Philosopher says, is being toward, not being in: therefore they truly constitute the divine persons under the formal notion of relation.

Proof by reason. A relation cannot constitute or distinguish the divine persons except according to the formal notion which it has: but it has no formal notion other than the relative one: therefore it constitutes the persons precisely insofar as it is relative, that is, insofar as it regards its term. — It is confirmed: a relation cannot be conceived unless it is understood according to its essence and the formal notion by which it differs from the other beings: but the proper essence of a relation is to regard its term, for by this it differs from the other beings, for the other beings have being in themselves; but this one is wholly toward another: therefore, etc. — Secondly, that by which a relation formally constitutes a person is either something formally in itself, or toward another. If the first, that is something absolute; and so persons are not constituted through a relation: if the second, then it truly formally constitutes the divine Persons insofar as it is relative. — Thirdly, it is impossible to conceive that some form inhere in something without giving it its formal effect: but the formal effect of a relation is actually to refer one thing to another: therefore by the very fact that the divine Paternity is understood, e.g., it is also understood as actually referring the Father to the Son, and consequently it implies a contradiction that Paternity be understood to constitute the Father in the notion of person, without being understood as actually referring the Father and the Son. Moreover, that being in which relation expresses either signifies the essence with which it constitutes the person, or the constituted person: not the first, because the relation of Paternity is not said to be in the essence, but in the Father: not the second either, for then the relation of Paternity would not constitute the first supposit, but would presuppose it already constituted, just as a form presupposes the subject in which it is.

They object 1. St. Augustine in lib. 7. De Trinit. cap. 2. saying: Substance is the Father Himself, not by that by which He is Father, but by that by which He is; thus the Person of the Father is so called, for the person is said indeed in reference to Himself, not to the Son or the Holy Spirit: therefore according to the mind of St. Augustine the divine person is not formally toward another; and so it is not constituted in the being of person through relation reduplicatively, as relation is. — I answer. St. Augustine by that being toward oneself does not deny that the person is relative to another, for he asserts that same thing ibid., but only that each person has in itself its own constitutive principle, really distinct from the other person: Or I say that he wishes there that the divine personal relations are substantial and per se, not however accidental and in another as in a subject of inherence, as the relations of creatures are.

You will object 2. The notion of person and the notion of relation are opposed; for a person is something subsisting in itself; but a relative is essentially toward another; personality is substance itself in itself, but relation is the very referring to another: therefore a person is not constituted in the notion of person through relation reduplicatively, as it is relative. — I distinguish the antecedent. The notions of person and of relation are opposed in creatures, I concede; in the divine, I deny: for the disparity is that a created relation is an accident presupposing a subject already in every way substantially complete, and so having the notion of subsistent and person; but it is otherwise in the divine, where the relation itself constitutes and distinguishes the persons.

You will object 3. If the divine relations, insofar as they are relations reduplicatively, constituted and distinguished the divine Persons, this would be at most either insofar as they are relations, or insofar as they are divine relations. Not the first, because then any relation, even a created one, would be constitutive and distinctive of a person: not the second either, otherwise it would belong to every divine relation to constitute a person, and so active spiration, which is a divine relation, would constitute a divine person, which is false: therefore, etc.

I answer. That constitutive notion of person belongs to the divine relations not precisely insofar as they are divine, but insofar as they have mutual opposition by reason of procession, and the origin of one person from another: or rather insofar as they imply and signify the real distinction of one from another: but active spiration does not imply such a distinction, because it is made through one and the same formal principle by which, namely through the will.

Corollary I. — From what has been said it is inferred 1. against the Thomists that the divine relations are not constitutive of the persons insofar as they are a hypostatic form, as the Doctor rightly proves in 1. dist. 28. q. 3. n. 2. Both because a relation considered as a hypostatic form is conceived as an entity either absolute or relative: for although the concept of being in common is neither relative nor absolute, because being as such prescinds from relative and absolute being and embraces both under itself: nevertheless a singular entity, such as the entity constitutive of a person in incommunicable being, must be either absolute or relative, since between a singular absolute being and a singular relative being no middle is given: but the entity constitutive of a person cannot be absolute, otherwise it would follow that the divine persons are constituted through absolutes, which has been disproved: therefore it must be conceived as relative. Both because that notion of hypostatic form either signifies something distinct from the formal notion of Paternity, e.g., as relation is formally, or not; if the first, therefore the Father is not constituted through the relation, but through a formality distinct from the formality of the relation, which nevertheless all the Thomists disapprove. If the second: therefore the persons are formally constituted through the relations, as relations are, since they are constituted through an entity which is formally a relation.

It is confirmed from a similar case. Although whiteness, e.g., can be conceived as dispersive of sight, without its being conceived as it is a quality; nevertheless just as no one can say that it is not whitening, nor dispersive of sight, as it is such a quality; so by parity, although we can form some concept of the divine Paternity in which the concept of relation is not explicitly involved, nevertheless it ought not on that account to be inferred that it does not constitute the persons, as relation is.

Corollary II. — It is inferred 2. from the same ibid. n. 3. that although the divine origins are not formally distinct from the relations, both because otherwise they would be something absolute, and so would be common to the three Persons, which implies a contradiction: and because nothing is so much toward another as generation and active or passive spiration; and so active generation is formally nothing other than Paternity, just as passive generation is formally the same as Filiation: nevertheless they constitute the divine Persons not precisely as origins are reduplicatively, but only as relations. First because, as the Doctor says, origin, as origin formally, is only a way between the producing and the produced person: therefore it is not their constitutive form; indeed it seems to presuppose in the producing person a proper constitutive form; for a thing is first conceived to have its own being before it is conceived to operate: therefore the Father is first conceived as constituted in the notion of person, at least inadequately, before he is conceived adequately to produce the Son: the same must be said of the produced person. For origin is the way by which the produced person receives its being, and consequently by which it receives its constitutive form in the being of person. — Secondly, the constitutive of a thing having fixed and permanent being must be expressed after the manner of the fixed and permanent, not however as a way to being, that is, not as in fieri, but as in facto esse: but the divine persons have fixed and permanent being: origin, however, signifies something flowing, and precisely signifies only the being which is made and produced: therefore the divine persons in facto esse are not adequately constituted through origins, but through relations. — Thirdly, finally, origin, as origin formally, is something absolute or something relative; not the first, as has been said, and moreover it would follow that the persons would be constituted through something absolute, if in their personal being they were constituted through absolute origins: if the second; therefore they constitute the persons not precisely as origins, but as relations. — And so the divine origins properly signify persons really distinct, but do not formally constitute them. In this sense are to be understood those holy Fathers who seem to assert that the divine persons are constituted and distinguished through origins.

Thus St. Cyril lib. 2. Thesauri cap. 3.: In order, he says, that the divine Scripture might distinguish by its reasonings the hypostasis which generates and that which is generated, it made use of the names of Father and Son. Thus St. Anselm in the book De processione Spiritus sancti cap. 2.: This, he says, is the sole cause of plurality in God, that the Father and the Holy Spirit cannot be said of one another, but are other from one another, because in the two ways aforesaid God is of God, all of which can be said relatively. Thus finally St. John of Damascus lib. 1. De Fide cap. 2. says: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are altogether one, except for the property of the unbegotten, of generation, and of procession: not that the Fathers truly wish the divine Persons to be constituted through origins, but that, constituted and really distinct, they become better known through the relations insofar as they are origins, than as they are conceived under the formal concept of relations.

This same doctrine borrowed from the Subtle Doctor Cardinal Bessarion lucidly expounds in the Council of Florence, Oratione pro unione utriusque Ecclesiae Graecae, et Latinae c. 6., saying:

Relation and origin, although they differ according to the mode of understanding (since origin is signified after the manner of an act, as generation; relation however after the manner of a form, as paternity) nevertheless do not differ in reality; therefore in both ways indeed the divine Persons are distinguished; yet first and principally according to the mode of understanding through relations, through which also the divine Persons are constituted; consequently through the diverse mode, that is, through origin. For to generate and to be generated, which belongs to origin, does not principally constitute the person, but Paternity and Filiation, that is, to be Father and Son, which belongs to relation; but because relation and origin are the same in reality, and relation follows upon origin (according to concept) therefore in both ways indeed the divine Persons are distinguished, but more principally by relation.

Corollary III. — It is inferred 3. that the divine Father is not constituted through the notion of the unbegotten, but through the relation of Paternity, because, as the Doctor says in 1. dist. 28. q. 2. num. 11., the unbegotten formally expresses a negation: but a divine person cannot be formally constituted through a negation: therefore, etc. The major is evident, for the unbegotten is the negation of the begotten. The Doctor proves the minor: no negation can be of itself incommunicable; but it must be incommunicable by reason of another: therefore it cannot of itself make an incommunicable person, but only by reason of another incommunicable thing in which it inheres: but there is nothing in the divine essence which is incommunicable: therefore no negation together with the divine essence can constitute a person. — It is confirmed, and the preceding argument is further illustrated: in the first divine Person there must be a negation of communicability inseparable from its foundation, and rendering that foundation altogether incommunicable both actually and aptitudinally and obedientially, because the divine person has a repugnance to its own communication: but that foundation is not the divine essence; nor any absolute common to the three Persons: therefore that positive absolute which is constitutive and distinctive of the first person must be something. Therefore the first Person is not formally constituted through a negation, and so neither through the notion of the unbegotten, which is formally a negation.

Some reply: That the notion of the unbegotten is not a pure and simple negation, but imports something positive, namely the notion of first principle and of fontal Divinity.

On the contrary. The Doctor presses in Quodlibet 4: that notion of first principle signifies that the Father is a se, and that either effectively, because He is the cause of Himself, or only negatively, because namely He has no principle of Himself: not the first, because it is repugnant that something be the author and cause of its own being; otherwise it would be before it was, as has already been said many times: if the second, then to be the first principle is only a negation of another prior principle, and so is not something positive. Secondly, if the unbegotten expresses something positive, it is at most either something absolute or something relative: if absolute, then the first person is constituted through something absolute, which the holy Fathers and Councils deny: if relative, either that relation is formally the same as Paternity, and the intended conclusion is had; or it is formally distinct from it, and so there will be more than four distinctive relations of the divine Persons, which no theologian admits. Thirdly, finally, that fontal notion of Divinity which is in the Father is either essence or relation. If essence, it cannot be constitutive and distinctive of the person: if relation, either it is Paternity, or it is distinct from Paternity: and thus the prior objection recurs. It must therefore be conceded that the first person is formally constituted through Paternity, which in its formal concept of constitutive relation of the first supposit imports the notion of the unbegotten and of first principle, etc.

Note 1. The name subsistence is here used to signify the mode of existing per se. It is, however, taken in two ways: first, as it is opposed to existing in another through inhesion, in which manner every substance is called a being subsisting per se, whether it be complete or incomplete: thus any part of a physical body, whether integral or essential, although existing in the whole, is called a being subsisting per se, no less than the physical body itself. Second, it is taken for existing per se, insofar as it signifies a most perfect existence, independent of another as of something perfective or sustaining, in which manner any nature wholly complete, and standing firm in its essential predicates, as well as in its attributes and properties, prior in nature to being in its own supposit or another's, is called a being subsisting per se: thus humanity, prior in nature to being assumed by the Person of the Word, is said to exist per se, or to subsist; for by the name of subsistence is signified not only a person or hypostasis, but also any thing whatsoever existing per se and in itself, as Rusticus clearly teaches in his book De Incarnatione contra Acephalos: Therefore, he says, the name of subsistence very clearly signifies sometimes a person, but sometimes a nature.

Note 2. The mode of existing per se completely is again twofold, namely communicable and incommunicable. The former belongs to any common substantial nature, which, insofar as it prescinds from those things to which it is communicated, just as it is called a truly complete and real nature, so likewise is to be called existing per se, or subsisting; the latter, however, belongs to a singular nature, not only complete in the notion of a singular nature, but also in the notion of a person, or supposit. Hence a twofold difficulty arises concerning the present Question: first, whether the divine nature, insofar as it prescinds from the divine persons and the relations constitutive of the persons, can be said to subsist per se, and to have an absolute existence and a subsistence distinct from the relative subsistences: second, whether on the hypothesis that this absolute subsistence is given, three others are to be admitted as relative, really distinct from one another, and formally from the absolute existence.

Note 3. Concerning the two aforesaid difficulties there is a twofold opposed opinion of the Authors: for first Vazquez, Disp. 125., affirms that the divine nature subsists in the divine persons only through their own relative subsistences; and hence denies that there is given in the divine any absolute subsistence common to the three persons and proper to the divine nature. Durandus, however, in 1. dist. 13. quaest. 2., judges that the three divine Persons draw the whole notion of subsisting from the absolute subsistence of the divine essence included in them; but that they have incommunicability from their constitutive relations; and hence that three relative subsistences are altogether superfluous for constituting the divine persons. Between these extreme opinions the disciples of the Subtle Doctor walk by a middle and safer way, and the weightier Thomists follow them, affirming that one absolute subsistence and three relative ones are to be admitted.

First conclusion. — Truly there are three relative subsistences in the divine persons. This Conclusion sufficiently stands firm from the Holy Fathers praised at the beginning of the present Article in the explanation of the name of subsistence, and is moreover proved: there are several subsistences in the divine: but there are not several absolute subsistences: therefore there are several relative ones. The major is evident, both from what has been said, and especially from the Sixth General

Synod, action 11., where it is said that the Most Holy Trinity was made numerable by personal subsistences. Likewise from the holy Fathers, especially Cyril of Alexandria in the Dialogo De Trinit., lib. 3., where he says: Every discourse of our faith tends to this, that we see one nature of the Deity, which properly subsists in three subsistences. So likewise Athanasius, in the Sermone De Deipara, says: We proclaim one God in three subsistences, in which there is one substance. Finally, St. Ambrose in the Symbolum Apostolorum, cap. 2., says: It is Catholic, that we confess both one God according to the unity of substance, and that we acknowledge the Father and the Son in each one's own subsistence.

Some reply: That while the Councils and holy Fathers proclaim several subsistences in God, they take subsistence for personality.

On the contrary. That acceptance is either a proper or an improper locution: if the first, the proposition is had, namely that subsistence in some proper acceptance of itself is manifold in God: if the second, surely it is unbecoming, without any urgent necessity, to twist the words of the Councils and Fathers to an imperfect sense.

Add. That if the Fathers and Councils have used subsistence for personality, the proposition is truly concluded; for just as there are several relative personalities in the divine, so also there will be several relative subsistences.

Others reply: That the Councils and holy Fathers take subsistence, not for personality in the abstract, but for the persons and the subsisting thing in the concrete; and so when they affirm that several subsistences are to be admitted in God, it is the same as if they said that there are several persons and subsisting things by the same essential subsistence.

On the contrary. The holy Fathers and Councils speak of subsistences as of forms by which the divine Persons are constituted, distinguished, and numbered: but this is to use subsistence in the abstract, and not in the concrete: therefore, etc. Then, even if they use subsistence in the concrete, it is always lawful to infer that the relative subsistences are distinct: for to the multiplication of a concrete substantive it is necessary that the forms be multiplied: whence the three Persons cannot be called three Gods, because the name God is a substantive; and there is only one form signified by that name, namely the Deity: therefore if only one absolute subsistence is given, it will not be able to be multiplied in the persons, just as the Deity itself is not multiplied. And consequently, since the Councils and holy Fathers affirm that subsistences are multiplied, it is necessary that they distinguish the relative subsistences from the absolute one.

The Conclusion is moreover proved by theological reason. Whatever belongs to the divine Persons by reason of the relations by which they are constituted in personal being is multiplied in them: but subsistences belong to them in this way: therefore they are multiplied. The major stands firm, for with the formal notion multiplied it is necessary that that also which is formally the same with it be multiplied; but subsistences are formally the same with the constitutive relations of the divine Persons: for subsistence, as it expresses a mode of subsisting incommunicably, is the very constitutive notion of the person in personal being: for the divine Persons, insofar as they are Persons, subsist per se independently and incommunicably, therefore they truly have incommunicable subsistences. — Then; where there are diverse productive principles quod, there must be diverse subsistences: for just as to operate follows being, so the productive principle quod presupposes complete being, and hence subsisting per se: but in God there are diverse productive principles quod of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; for the Father is the principle quod of the Son, and the Father and the Son are the principle quod of the production of the Holy Spirit: therefore the Father and the Son must have distinct subsistences. — Finally, the humanity of Christ was assumed and terminated only by the subsistence of the Word, not by the subsistence of the Father or of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the subsistence of the Word is distinguished from the subsistence of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, and hence they do not subsist by a single absolute subsistence.

You will say 1. To subsist is a perfection simpliciter simplex: but a relation in the divine expresses no perfection, as will be established in the following Article: therefore likewise no relation is a subsistence.

I distinguish the major. To subsist per se communicably and absolutely expresses perfection, I concede: to subsist per se incommunicably and relatively expresses perfection, I deny.

You will object 2. The notion of subsistence is something absolute: therefore no relative subsistence is given in the divine. The consequence is evident. The antecedent is proved from St. Augustine, 7. De Trinit., cap. 1., saying: Every thing subsists to itself; how much more God? But that which is to itself, and not to another, is absolute. Therefore the notion of subsisting is something absolute.

I deny the antecedent, and to its proof I say that St. Augustine there speaks of subsistence as it expresses a per-se-ity independent of another sustaining it, such as is the absolute subsistence belonging to the divine Persons by reason of the essence communicated to them, not by reason of the relations. Or I say that he wills only this, that subsistence, or the subsistent, be not to another, so as to be the subsistence or the subsistent of another thing, as the Father, e.g., is the Father of the Son: this, however, does not prevent subsistence from being relative, just as a person, which although it cannot be called the person of another person, is nonetheless no less relative.

You will say 3. The divine nature, as we will soon prove, subsists by an absolute subsistence; therefore it does not subsist by relative subsistences. The consequence is evident; for subsistence is the ultimate term in the line of subsisting. Therefore it cannot be terminated by another, and consequently besides the absolute one a relative one ought not to be admitted.

I distinguish the antecedent. It subsists by a communicable subsistence, I concede; by an incommunicable one, I deny. Likewise I distinguish the consequence: other communicable and absolute subsistences ought not to be admitted, I concede: incommunicable and relative ones, I deny.

I likewise distinguish the proof. A personal and incommunicable subsistence is the ultimate term in the notion of subsisting, I concede: a non-personal and communicable one, I deny. For an absolute and essential subsistence, just as it is not incommunicable, so neither does it have the notion of an ultimate term, but only of a term constituting the nature wholly complete in the notion of the divine nature, and rendering it capable of being communicated to the three divine Persons.

Second conclusion. — Subsistence taken for the mode of existing per se, and excluding dependence on another extrinsic thing in existing, belongs to the divine nature, insofar as it prescinds from the personalities. This is the teaching of the Doctor in 2. dist. 7. quaest. 1. and in 3. dist. 1. quaest. 1. n. 6., where, speaking of the divine nature insofar as it prescinds from the personal relations, he affirms that it could have been the term of the hypostatic union, because, he says, it has no being from a person, but is naturally prior to being in a person, and gives being to the person; for it is a nature of itself this, and subsisting per se, although not incommunicably.

The Conclusion is proved. First indeed by the authority of the holy Fathers: for first of all Pope Agatho in the decretal Epistle, which is found in the sixth Synod, art. 4., says: We confess God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, not three Gods, but one God: not the subsistence of three names, but one subsistence of three subsistences. Likewise St. Augustine, 7. De Trinit., cap. 1.: Every thing, he says, subsists to itself; how much more God? And cap. 5., near the end: For God to be is the same as to subsist: and therefore if the Trinity is one essence, it is also one subsistence. St. Jerome agrees with him, Epistola 57. ad Damasum: One, he says, is the nature of God, and alone, which truly is; for that which subsists does not have it from elsewhere, but it is its own. St. Hilary urges the same thing in his book De Trinit.: It is not, he says, the condition of corporeal natures, that they be in one another: that they have perfect unity of nature in subsistences; with a few words interposed: but to be in, not one thing in another, as a body in a body, but so to be and subsist, as to be in a subsistent; and to be in in such a way, that these things subsist, belongs to God alone. St. Anselm also subscribes in the Monologion, cap. 13., where he says: The Father, by begetting, gave to the Son, that he might subsist, be wise, and live, not through an extraneous, but through his own essence, wisdom, and life, etc. Finally Boethius concludes in his book de duabus naturis, about the middle: God, he says, is a hypostasis, that is, a subsistence; for he subsists needing nothing; whence we say that there is one usia, or usiosis, that is, one essence, or subsistence, of the Deity.

The Conclusion is proved by reason. To the divine essence, insofar as it prescinds from the divine Persons, belongs every perfection simpliciter simplex: but to subsist per se is a perfection simpliciter: therefore it is to be attributed to it. The major is evident: for the divine essence, the relations being cut off, is infinitely perfect in the genus of being, and is true God, and hence a complete being in the notion of the Deity. Therefore all compossible perfections are to be attributed to it. The minor also stands firm: since it far surpasses to subsist per se than to exist either in another, or dependently on another. Therefore it is a perfection simpliciter simplex to be attributed to the divine essence; not indeed through the personal relations, which express no perfection. Therefore it subsists per se and immediately. — Second, the divine essence, insofar as it prescinds from the persons, exists per se completely, and independently of any extrinsic thing, as well as of the persons. Therefore it truly subsists. The consequence is evident: since by absolute subsistence we understand nothing other than a complete substance existing per se, and incommunicable to any extrinsic complement really distinct from itself. The antecedent, however, is proved; the divine essence receives no perfection from the Persons, but bestows on them very many perfections, indeed all, since all the perfections of the divine Persons flow from the essence. Therefore it subsists independently of them: much more independently of every extrinsic thing really distinct, and hence it subsists per se. — Third, that which is a sufficiently active principle per se is also subsisting per se: but God, as He is pre-understood to the persons, is a sufficiently active and productive principle: therefore He is subsisting per se. The major stands firm: for since subsistence is the complement of nature, and since nature ought first to be complete in being before operating, because being is prior to operating; therefore it ought first to subsist before it acts. The minor also stands firm: both because the works of the Trinity ad extra are undivided, namely by reason of the undivided Deity, for whatever belongs to all the persons entirely, that belongs to them by reason of the essence common to them; but to create, e.g., belongs to them undividedly: therefore by reason of the common essence, or the Deity. Therefore producing belongs to God prior to the persons; and producing cannot belong to the essence unless it is subsisting, since actions belong to subsistents; and consequently God, insofar as He prescinds from the persons, is subsisting.

It is confirmed. By the authority of the holy Fathers, who affirm that creatures are produced by God subsisting. Thus St. Dionysius, cap. 1. De Divinis nominibus, says: The subsistence of Goodness, through its own being, is the cause of all subsisting things; and Gregory of Nyssa in the book De Vita Moysis: Nothing, he says, besides the supreme essence, which is the cause of all things, and on which all things depend, truly subsists.

You will say 1. If the divine Essence subsisted insofar as it prescinds from the persons, it would be a person: but this is absurd; otherwise there would be given in God a quaternity of persons, which was condemned in the Lateran Council: therefore God, insofar as He prescinds from the persons, does not subsist. The sequel of the major is proved: a person expresses nothing other than the subsistence of an intellectual nature: but the divine Essence, insofar as it prescinds from the persons, is an intellectual nature; therefore if it subsists per se, it will truly be a person. It is confirmed, for according to the holy Fathers praised at the beginning of this Article, Subsistence signifies the same as Hypostasis: but hypostasis in God is the same as person: therefore if the divine Essence subsists, it will truly be a person.

I distinguish the major. If it subsists by a personal subsistence, incommunicable to another as to a supposit, it will be a person, I concede: if it subsists by an absolute subsistence, incommunicable indeed to another extrinsic thing really distinct from the subsisting essence itself, but communicable to the divine supposits really indistinct from the essence itself, it will be a person, I deny: for it is of the notion of a person that the subsistent be an intellectual nature incommunicable to another, whether extrinsic or a supposit. To the confirmation I distinguish the major: subsistence in Latin signifies the same as hypostasis in Greek, according to some acceptance of it, and that the more frequent, I concede: according to every acceptance of it, I deny. For, as we have observed, the name of subsistence is taken in two ways by the Fathers: first indeed for a per-se-ity excluding dependence on a sustainer: second, for a per-se-ity excluding communicability to a supposit. In the former way it does not signify the same as hypostasis; but only in the latter; according to the former acceptance, we say that there is a single absolute subsistence in God; according to the latter, truly there are three relative subsistences.

You will say 2. Subsistence is the ultimate term of the nature which it affects: but the divine Essence antecedently to the personalities has nothing which is its ultimate term. Therefore it does not have subsistence. The minor is proved: the ultimate term excludes a posterior term; but the divine essence does not exclude a posterior term; since it is still terminated by the relative subsistences: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the major. A personal subsistence, incommunicable to another supposit, is the ultimate term of the nature, which acknowledges no posterior one, I concede; an absolute and natural subsistence, by which it makes the nature existing per se, and nonetheless communicable to another as to a supposit, ought to be its ultimate term, I deny: for thus the divine nature, since it is infinitely fruitful, by its own notion demands to be communicated to the divine Persons, and to be finally terminated by them, and further to be made incommunicable.

You will say 3. To subsist is to exist per se, not only independently of another, but also with a repugnance to being in another; just as to inhere is to be in another with a repugnance to existing per se: but the divine nature, insofar as it prescinds from the Persons, does not enjoy this mode of existing per se; rather it demands to exist in the Persons: therefore as such it does not truly subsist.

I distinguish the major. It is to exist per se, and not in another, as in a sustainer, I concede; as in an ultimate terminator, I deny. And with the minor likewise distinguished, I deny the consequence. For the divine nature, although it demands to be in the Persons, as in the terms of its fruitfulness; is not, however, in them as in a sustainer completing it; for the divine Essence receives no perfection from the Persons, indeed every perfection of the Persons flows from it; nor is it completed by them in the notion of the divine nature, but only in them is its infinite fruitfulness derived, and by them terminated.