Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« Although intellection and dilection, taken absolutely, is one and common to the three persons; nevertheless intellection, only insofar as it is of the Father, and dilection insofar as it is of the Father and of the Son, is relative or notional and fruitful for producing an adequate immanent term. From the very infinity, moreover, both of the act and of the term, it is declared why the Word can be only one, and the proceeding love only one ».

From the already declared procession of the Word through intellection and the procession of the Holy Spirit through dilection, we can advance a little further in coming to know the manner of fruitful intellection and dilection. For from what has been said thus far there follow the solutions of some questions, which are somewhat more difficult, yet are necessary both for the understanding of the dogma, namely insofar as it is permitted to us by faith to attain to it, and for the very defense of the mystery against adversaries. With the explanation of these chapters, distributed into several theses, we shall conclude this whole part on the understanding of the dogma. Of these questions, moreover, the first is that which we have set down in this thesis: how fruitful and therefore relative intellection and dilection are related to absolute and therefore common intellection and dilection of the three persons; where it is at the same time asked how it comes about that, although the Word is intelligent by the same intellection and the Holy Spirit loving by the same love, there are nevertheless not several processions in God.

I. From the foregoing it is established that the formal reason of intellection is that by which the Word, and the formal reason of dilection that by which the Holy Spirit, are produced as immanent terms of intellection and dilection. But intellection and dilection is one altogether common to the three persons; how therefore is the production of the Word nonetheless not common but proper to the Father, and the production of the Holy Spirit proper to the Father and the Son? It is customary to attribute to Scotus (I. dist. 2. q. 7. n. 22. 26.; Quodlib. 4. q. 2. n. 8.) that, on account of this difficulty, he judged that to understand and to speak in the Father, and again dilection and (active) spiration in the Father and the Son, are distinguished in such a way that intellection in the Father and the diction of the Word, and likewise dilection in the Father and the Son and spiration, are two distinct formalities; and so these two, to understand all truth and to speak the Word in the Father, should be conceived as parallel acts; and that the same is to be understood of the acts of dilection and spiration in the Father and the Son (Suarez l. I. c. 6. cf. Ruiz disp. 59. sect. 4.). Which being posited, it would have to be said that the Word proceeds not through the formal reason of intellection but of diction or speech, and the Holy Spirit not through the formal reason of dilection but of spiration. But certainly mental diction, both in the created mind and in God, is nothing other than intellection as it were active, by which the mental word is produced, nor can any act other than the intellection of the true be conceived, by which the mental word might be produced, and which would therefore be the diction of the word. Moreover, intellection in God is one substantial, most pure act, by which the divine essence, the first true, and in the essence all truth according to its whole intelligibility, is comprehended. This intellection, therefore, according to its formal reason insofar as it is intellection — and no other act distinct in reason — is the diction of the Word. This consideration is to be applied also to diction as it were active, by which love or the Holy Spirit is breathed forth as the term of dilection intrinsically produced. The whole difficulty therefore remains: how production is not common, just as intellection and dilection are common.

The difficulty can be resolved from what was demonstrated above (th. XXI-XXIII), that the absolute in God has at the same time the reason of the relative, in such a way that under the formal reason of the absolute it is one common to three distinct persons, while under the formal reason of the relative it is proper and not communicable, and therefore under this formal reason of the three relatives the persons are distinct. Whence even the very act of understanding is absolute as the comprehension of all truth, and thus is common to the three persons; and the same act of understanding at the same time has the reason of the relative (ad intra), and thus produces the Word and is in opposition of relation to the Word, as producer to product; whence under this formal reason of the relative it is proper, for substantial understanding, relative ad intra as expressing the Word, is the very person of the Father. In this way essential understanding common to the three and notional understanding proper to the one Father are distinguished, not as if in the Father there were a twofold act of intellection, but because, as we have said, one and the same act of understanding is at once absolute and relative, or the intellection of all truth and by this very fact at the same time the expression of the Word (above p. 360).

II. Although these things are so, there nevertheless remains the question not yet sufficiently clear: why substantial intellection, since it is the same in the three persons, is fruitful in the Father alone, and dilection in the Father and the Son but not in the Holy Spirit, and thus why there are only two processions in God. The reason of this matter lies in the infinity of the perfection, which can be considered both in the act of intellection and dilection and in the immanent term produced, namely in the Word and in the proceeding love.

1°. The divine intellect comprehends the divine essence, and in it all truth according to all intelligible reasons, not by many acts but by one simple and infinite act; or rather, the divine intellect is itself the one infinite act of comprehension. This one infinite and therefore non-multipliable act expresses as its immanent term the adequate Word, and hence infinite in the formal reason insofar as it is the Word. « As if speaking Himself, the Father begot the Word equal to Himself in all things; for He would not have spoken Himself wholly and perfectly, if something less or more were in His Word than in Himself » Aug. Trin. XV. c. 14. n. 23. Whence most acutely Gregory Nazianzen (or. 30. al. 36. n. 20) said: « The Son is related to the Father as the definition to the defined. » And according to the declaration of the Angelic Doctor: « it is manifest that if God understands Himself, the whole fullness of Himself must be contained in the Word » S. Th. cont. gent. IV. c. 14. (cf. Ruiz disp. 28. sect. 2. n. 2.). From these things it is understood that it is as repugnant that there be several Words in God as the plurality of gods is repugnant. a) For on the part of the act, if there is one non-multipliable infinite act infinitely understanding all truth, and if from the nature of this intellection it necessarily expresses in the Word everything that it understands, it is repugnant that the Word not be one, just as the act understanding and speaking by the adequate Word is one.

b) The same is clear on the part of the Word. For because the Word is infinite in the formal reason of the Word, that is, the adequate and therefore infinite expression of the divine intellect; by this very fact it comprises the whole possible expression, beyond which no other can exist, except only as the imitation and adumbration ad extra of that infinite internal expression. Everyone sees that for the same reason for which the multiplication of the absolute (infinite) being is repugnant, the multiplication of the infinite Word proceeding through the infinite intellect is repugnant. The reason, of course, is that two infinities are repugnant, as in the supreme reason of being, so in any formal reason. But just as the necessary unity of infinite being not only does not exclude but rather includes the possibility of beings which, as adumbrations ad extra, are analogically beings before it; so also the infinite Word does not exclude but includes that imitations and adumbrations ad extra of the infinite Word are possible. (See Tract. de Deo sect. III. c. 2.).

It is therefore clear that from infinity comes the unity of the divine Word, and from this the singularity of fecundity for producing the Word in the Father alone. Namely, the divine intellect, one in number in the three persons, in such a way that it is not communicated in the Father, is communicated from the Father to the Son and from both to the Holy Spirit — once the expression of the infinite Word is supposed, it is understood that it is not as it were twice fruitful, either for producing the same or another Word. Not the former: for the intellect, insofar as it is not communicated in the first person, necessarily produces the Word by its intellection of itself; but the produced Word cannot produce itself, nor can the third person, whose principle (with the Father) is the Word itself, be the principle of its own principle. Not the latter: because from what has been said the divine intellect is fruitful of only one Word, which very unity follows from the infinity of the fecundity, i.e., from the fact that by reason of infinity the divine intellect is one pure act expressing the adequate and therefore infinite and therefore one Word.

2° The same must be said of the one act of dilection and of the produced term of this act, which is the Holy Spirit. « God by one simple act understands all things and likewise wills all things; whence in Him there cannot be a procession of the Word from the Word, nor of love from love, but in Him there is only one perfect Word and one perfect love; and in this His perfect fecundity is manifested » S. Th. I. q. 27. a. 5. ad 3. Suarez explains the matter distinctly (l. I. c. 7. n. 11. 12.). « The eternal Father produces the Son through that very act of understanding which is common to all the persons, insofar as He has it from Himself and not through generation; for this is enough, that the Father should produce through that act of understanding and not the Son nor the Holy Spirit. Because since the Father has it from Himself and before all production, He can rightly communicate it to the other person; and He communicates it by the virtue and fecundity of the very act of understanding..... In the Son, however, and in the Holy Spirit the intellect no longer has that, as it were, virtue, because it already had the act adequate to itself, which cannot be multiplied..... And in this way and with the same proportion one must philosophize about love or dilection, as far as the matter is concerned....... In the will, however, on account of the scarcity of names, we are accustomed to signify by the same word the act of loving, the production, and the term, namely by the name of love or dilection.... Properly, however, love is essential and common, and by it the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit, insofar as they have that love without emanation of the will, either from themselves as the Father, or through generation as the Son (i.e., in the Father and the Son the act of love or dilection is no longer such as to suppose the emanation or production of its term, but rather such as to produce its adequate term, which is the Holy Spirit or the one proceeding); and therefore, although they themselves produce through that love, the Holy Spirit nonetheless, by loving with the same love, produces nothing ad intra, because it already supposes the (adequate) production of love ».