Franciscan Studies

2.1. Real Distinction in a Simple God:

Aquinas has just spent the first twenty-six questions deploying a philosophical explanatory model to establish the existence of God as self-explanatory explainer of being and goodness, and to characterize the Divine essence as pure act—simple, [End Page 103] infinite, immutable, pure and complete perfection, one in the highest degree. Aquinas famously labors to reconcile Divine simplicity with a plurality of positive attributes, by contending that the latter are really the same but distinct in reason and that a plurality of positive but analogical concepts can simultaneously apply to one simple thing (Summa Theologica I, q. 13). To avoid the Sabellian heresy, however, it is not enough to say that the predicates “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” are grounded in something real in the Godhead. Unlike Divine power and wisdom and justice, the Divine persons must be really distinct from one another, and so it is necessary to find some real basis for this distinction in the Godhead as well (Summa Theologica I, q. 28, quod sic).

Augustine had already pointed to the futility of appealing to the Divine attributes (as if the Father were God qua eternal, the Son God qua Wisdom, and the Spirit God qua Blessedness), since all of these belong equally to each of the three persons. Following Augustine, Aquinas shifts attention to natural operations ad intra, among which he recognizes two fundamental kinds — viz., understanding (intelligere) and will (velle).⁵ Both are real actions.⁶ Both are originating and producing, not as efficient causes of something external, but as “processions” to something internal.⁷ Apparently appealing to Divine simplicity, Aquinas infers that since there are two and only two kinds of productions ad intra, there are two and only two actions.⁸ Embracing tradition, Aquinas says it is fitting to call the intellectual production (intellectual power producing a thought or “word”)⁹ “begetting” because “begetting” implies a likeness between begetter and begotten, and thoughts or words are likenesses of the thing understood. But there is a reason against calling the will’s production “begetting” insofar as no likeness between the loving and the beloved is implied.¹⁰ [End Page 104]

Having identified real “originating” actions, Aquinas turns to explain how these give rise to real relations in the Godhead.¹¹ Categories-doctrine counts both actions and relations among the accidents that exist in (inesse) substance, and so raises the question how either could be found in God. Aquinas’s own philosophical doctrine distinguishes, where the nine non-substance categories are concerned, between inesse, which is common to all of them, and the proper ratio that marks off each from the other. In the case of quality and action and relation, the proper rationes do pertain to a simple God, even though — as Boethius taught — the inesse does not.¹² Moreover, the proper ratio of relation (= ad aliquid) is itself indeterminate and determinable regarding the ontological status of the relation — whether it is real (as when things are mutually ordered by nature) or whether it exists only in the mind of one who compares the relata to one another. Aquinas argues that where real productions of intellect and will are concerned, what is produced and the producer will be on the same ontological level, so that the relations will be be real as well.¹³

Given Divine simplicity, real relations in the Godhead (as much as the Divine attributes) will be really the same as and distinct in reason from the Divine essence, so that they have no other esse than the esse of the essence.¹⁴ Yet, where the “substantialized” qualities such as power, wisdom, and justice are not opposed,¹⁵ Aquinas takes it to belong to the ratio of relation that one thing be in relative opposition to another. Likewise by definition, relative opposition includes distinction. Whatever may be the case with reflexive relations such as self-identity (which Aquinas counts relations of reason), relations of origin do involve opposition insofar as they are non-reflexive and asymmetrical: in any given [End Page 105] production, being the producer and being the product of that production are opposed relations. Aquinas’ swift conclusion is that there must be real distinction in the Godhead, not so far as the Divine essence is concerned (because it is an absolute thing (res absoluta) of maximal simplicity and unity), but so far as relative things are concerned.¹⁶ Thus, the relations of origin are really the same as the Divine essence but really distinct from each other!

Aquinas closes this discussion of really distinct Divine relations by drawing a corollary conclusion about their number. Each instance of production gives rise to a pair of real relations: active production and passive production. If there are two and only two productions in the Godhead, there will be two and only two pairs and hence four real relations. Taking over traditional labels, Aquinas identifies paternity and filiation from the intellectual production, and active and passive spiration from the will’s production.¹⁷

2.2. “Personifying” the Godhead:

If Aquinas has already noted how accidents get “substantialized” in the Godhead, he next shoulders the task of fitting Divine Being and the category of substance to one another.

2.3. Relations versus Actions:

Aquinas does not explicitly ask whether relations are the quasi-personconstitutors in the Godhead. Instead, he poses the question in terms of the intellect’s consideration: if the intellect were to abstract relations from persons, would the hypostases remain? His answer rests on some philosophical and theological preliminaries. First and philosophically, he appeals to a Boethian (Aristotelian?) distinction between two modes of abstraction: that of a universal from a particular (e.g., of animal from human being), and that of form from matter (e.g., the form of a circle from its sensible matter).³³ He observes that neither of these is found in the Godhead secundum rem. Divine simplicity rules out matter/form composition.³⁴ Nor is the Divine essence related to the persons as universal to particular, because — unlike human nature — it is numerically unmultiplied in many persons. Nevertheless, our words apply only analogically to the [End Page 108] Godhead, because their mode of signifying fits the created case. And for that reason, we can speak of some analogy of the above-mentioned types of abstraction in connection with God. Second, in Western “Augustinian” trinitarian theology, not every real relation in the Godhead is proper to a single person: active spiration (based on the will’s production) is common to the Father and the Son.

Returning to the question, Aquinas answers that if relations are abstracted from persons the first way, the hypostasis does not remain. If the second way, the hypostasis does not survive abstraction of its proper but does remain after the abstraction of its non-proper relations.³⁵ Thus, it looks as if in the Godhead proper subsistent relations (viz., paternity, filiation, and spiration) are quasi-personconstitutors, but common subsistent relations (viz., relations of active spiration) are not.

For Aquinas, however, another difficulty must be considered before that conclusion is secure. His own rationale for distinguishing persons within the Godhead begins with real productions or actions. Within his theological tradition there are some older masters as well as contemporary authors who say that the Divine hypostases are distinguished in the first place by their origin — e.g., the Father is distinct from the Son insofar as the Father begets and the Son is begotten. Relations are consequent upon these actions and do not so much quasiconstitute as manifest distinctions among the persons.³⁶ Moreover, this point of view seems to be underwritten by Categories doctrines. Relations presuppose their relata; real relations, really distinct supposits.³⁷ Likewise, relations are posterior in the order of understanding to their foundations. If paternity is founded on an act of begetting, the latter is prior in the order of understanding to the former.³⁸

Laying more of his metaphysical cards on the table, Aquinas declares that origin and relation are really the same but distinct in mode of signification: origin (e.g., [End Page 109] begetting) is signified through the mode of act, while relation (e.g., paternity) is signified through the mode of form.³⁹ Aquinas contends that precisely this difference as to mode of signification favors relation over action for the role of quasi-constitutor. For what distinguishes supposits from one another is what is intrinsic to each. But origin is not signified as anything intrinsic, but as a way from one thing to another.⁴⁰

For that matter, Aquinas insists, simple appeal to priority relations as charted by the Categories — e.g., that relations presuppose their relata and are posterior in the order of understanding to their foundations — will not be decisive. For Categories doctrine equally lays it down that actions presuppose the agent-supposit and are prior to the effectsupposit — theses which would disqualify active or passive productions from quasi-constituting either supposit!⁴¹ Aquinas insists the latter theorem applies even in the region of Godhead: origin passively signified is absolutely prior in the order of understanding to the persons and personal properties of the persons produced, while origins actively signified are prior in the order of understanding only to the common relations of the producer (e.g., spirating is prior in the order of understanding to the relation of active spiration in the Father and Son, but not to their relations of paternity and filiation, respectively). By contrast, paternity can be considered two ways — qua relation and qua person-constitutor. True to the Categories “tag,” paternity considered qua relation does presuppose and so is posterior to the act of begetting that is its foundation. But paternity considered qua constitutor is prior to the act of begetting, in accordance with the Categories dictum that the agentsupposit is prior in the order of understanding to its action.⁴² As for the Categories rule that real relations presuppose the real distinction of their relata, Aquinas contends, this does not apply to non-accidental subsistent relations that do [End Page 110] not presuppose but bring the distinction of supposits with them.⁴³ Aquinas concludes with the inverse of his opponents’ position: “although they [i.e., the Divine persons] are distinct both ways, they are distinguished prior and more principally by relations.”⁴⁴

Ingenious as it is, this manoeuvre is just as available to those who hold that Divine persons are distinguished by origin. Why not instead consider actions two ways — qua action and qua constitutor? Begetting qua constitutor is prior to the Father, while begetting qua action presupposes the Father as agent-supposit. Relations could then presuppose their supposits and foundations as usual, in accordance with the Categories-doctrine.

3. Summary:

Aquinas’s treatment is systematic, pedagogically apt, and resolutely headed towards his conclusion — that Divine persons are distinguished and quasiconstituted by relations of origin. His polemical context allows him almost to ignore Praepositinus’s argument from Divine simplicity that Divine persons cannot be constituted at all but must be distinguished in and of themselves.⁴⁵ Likewise, Aquinas rejects the suggestion (apparently espoused by William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste) that Divine perfection requires the most perfect of person-constitutors, while Categories-doctrine assures us that relatives are less perfect than absolutes. Aquinas quickly turns the latter on its head: because Divine perfection is maximal unity, Divine persons ought to be constituted by what is metaphysically slightest and so renders them least distinct!⁴⁶

Recurrent in Aquinas’s discussion are his philosophical theses that what is/are really the same, may be [i] distinct in reason, [ii] considered under different aspects, and/or [iii] signified together with different modes; and that such distinctions are sufficient to license contradictory predications of what is really one and the same thing, and to rule out [End Page 111] applications of the Transitivity of Identity. Thus, paternity both presupposes and is prior to the action of begetting, even though paternity is really the same as itself and really the same as begetting, because paternity and begetting may be considered and signified in different ways. Likewise, the Father/paternity is really the same as the Divine essence, and the Son/filiation is really the same as the Divine essence, but the Father/paternity and the Son/filiation are not really the same as each other, because there is a distinction of reason between the essence and each person/relation.

At the same time, the real identity of Divine actions and relations with the Divine essence is supposed to be enough to preserve Divine simplicity. Moreover, if Categories-doctrine forbids created relations to function as person-constitutors on the ground that they are accidents, the Divine relations avoid this metaphysical disqualification because their real identity with the Divine essence “substantializes” them into subsistents. Thus, Aquinas’s considered opinion is that the Divine persons are distinguished and constituted precisely because they are subsistent relations!

3.1. Constituted Simplicity?

If Aquinas rushed by, Scotus sets the stage with Praepositinus’ argument that since simplicity characterizes not only the Divine essence but the Divine persons, the Divine persons must be distinguished from one another in and of themselves. Consequently, it makes no sense to ask by what they are distinct and by what they are constituted. Simples are not constituted by anything. Once again, they are distinct in and of themselves.⁴⁹

Scotus’s reply is entirely predictable from his understanding of the problem of universals. Recall how Scotus begins with his conviction that created substance natures are common in reality; that is, they possess a real unity less than numerical unity insofar as they exist in reality in numerically distinct substance individuals. But if numerically distinct co-specific substance individuals are thus “something-the-same” entities, Scotus reasons, they must also have constituents that they do not share, by virtue of which they are distinct from one another. Moreover, such “distinguishers” must be positive entities, because they are that by which the individual receives a higher degree (viz., numerical) of unity. Not just theological consensus, but the Saints and Ecclesiastical determinations specify that Divine persons are “something-the-same” entities: all share (numerically the same) Divine essence⁵⁰; Father and Son share active spiration.⁵¹ Scotus concludes that Divine persons [End Page 113] must also have something else that makes them distinct; “the question remains, by what are they distinct?”⁵²

3.2. Relative Simplicity?

Henry of Ghent agrees that “something-the-same” entities must be distinct in something. But he draws on his own understanding of Categories-doctrine to argue that “relation-constitution” does not really compromise Divine simplicity the way absolute-constitution would. (1) First, absolute added to absolute makes for composition. When Socrates becomes white, Socrates changes: a really distinct quality of whiteness comes to exist in (inesse) Socrates when it did not before, and thereby makes composition with Socrates. By contrast, Henry contends, when white Socrates becomes similar to Plato by virtue of Plato’s becoming white, nothing new and really distinct is added to Socrates that was not there before. The inesse of Socrates’ similarity to Plato is really the same as the inesse of its foundation — viz., the whiteness that exists in Socrates. Neither does the esse ad of Socrates’ similarity add anything over and above his whiteness. Just by virtue of what it was, the whiteness was “ready and waiting” to make its subject “be towards” another, should that other also come to be white. So, too, neither the subsistence nor the esse ad of the Divine relations would add anything really distinct from their foundations, and so would not compromise Divine simplicity.⁵³

(2) Again, Divine simplicity makes the Divine essence incapable of numerical multiplication into numerically many Divinities in numerically distinct supposits. There is no problem with an unlimited thing’s being at once the foundation of many relations to numerically distinct supposits.⁵⁴ But in his Commentary on Porphyry, Boethius contends that a nature is numerically multiplied in numerically distinct co-specific [End Page 114] absolute supposits, because what is “contained” in one cannot be simultaneously “contained” in the other.⁵⁵

(3) Again, Divine simplicity excludes being the subject of accidents. But if Divine persons were constituted by absolutes, the relations would become quasi-adventitious and accidental.⁵⁶

Finally, in a different vein, (4) because correlatives cannot exist one without the other, relation-constitution can explain the metaphysical impossibility of one Divine person’s existing without the others. But if the first person of the Trinity is constituted by an absolute, the first person will be understood as perfectly constituted prior to and independently of the second person, so that the second person’s existence will not be required for the existence of the first, and the disposition of the first person to the second will not be a real relation but only a relation of reason.⁵⁷

As for how what is really one and the same thing (i.e., the Divine essence) could be both absolute (ad se) and relative (ad aliud), Scotus reformulates the majority-report answer in terms of his own metaphysical framework. The Divine essence and the relations are distinct formally, because their formal rationes are distinct, prior to and independently of any activity of the intellect. But because the Divine essence is infinite, it draws into real and perfect identity with itself not only every absolute perfection but any reality that is compossible with it.⁵⁸ Thus, the Divine relations “cross over” into real and perfect identity with the Divine essence, while retaining their formal non-identity with it.⁵⁹

3.3. Relative Drawbacks:

However fortified with arguments and the weight of tradition “relation-constitution” is, Scotus identifies and catalogues four sets of considerations [End Page 115] against it: two from “Aristotelian” relations-theory, one from the very nature of what it is to be a supposit-constitutor, and the fourth from authority. (1) Comparing Relation to Relatum: [a] The relatum, not the relation, is what is said to be primarily and properly related. But for something to count as a relatum presupposes [i] the relation as a form, [ii] what is related as a quasi-subject, and [iii] their union. Moreover, the relation as form presupposes its quasi-subject, so that the latter is prior to the former. Since the Divine essence is not the quasi-subject which — by receiving the form — comes to be related, Divine relations must presuppose something else — viz., the Divine supposits — as quasi-subjects, and therefore must not be the primary constitutors of the Divine supposits.⁶⁰

[b] Again, a real relation presupposes a real distinction of extremes. That is why Aristotle denies that self-identity is a real relation. But what real relation presupposes, it does not produce. Therefore, the Divine persons are not primarily distinguished and constituted by real relations in the Godhead.⁶¹

(2) Comparing Relation to Origin: [a] Categories-theory teaches that nothing is relative at bottom. Consequently, for a relation to originate, something absolute must already have originated — whether as a relatum or as a term. But the Divine essence itself is neither the producer nor the product in Divine productions, and so neither what is referred nor the term of Divine production relations. Therefore, the origination of the relation must presuppose something else that is absolute — viz., the supposit.⁶² [b] Absolute-constitution allows room to distinguish between supposita — a and b — and supposita qua informed by relations — Ra and R’b, where R and R’ are correlations (e.g., paternity and filiation), and so can recognize a sign or instant of nature at which the supposita are not informed by the relations, and a subsequent sign at [End Page 116] which they are. It then allows the relation to originate from a and terminate in b (i.e., from the supposita in the earlier sign or instant of nature), rather than originating in Ra (e.g., the Father) and terminating in R’b (e.g., the Son) (i.e., in the later sign or instant of nature). By making R a constituent of a and R’ a constituent of b, relation-constitution erases this distinction, so that there is no instant of nature or origin at which the thing that is the Father can be understood without the Son or without being understood to have a Son.

Thus, relation-constitution seems to take the priority and posteriority out of origination and to reduce origination to correlation. Because correlatives are naturally simultaneous, the “originating” supposit will not be prior to the “originated” supposit after all.⁶³ Moreover, as Henry himself observed in touting up alleged philosophical advantages of relationconstitution, the coexistence of correlatives is metaphysically necessary. But if origination is reduced to correlation, then both productions will have to be natural and necessary. Yet, proponents of relation-constitution themselves appeal to the contrast between natural (intellectual power producing a thought) and voluntary (the will producing an act of love) to locate two sorts of production in the Godhead.⁶⁴ Again, the natural simultaneity of correlatives combines with the further Categories-doctrine of the natural priority of the agentsupposit to its action, to generate a reductio ad absurdum: by the latter the Father must be naturally prior to begetting, but by the former the Son is naturally simultaneous with the Father, so that the Son is naturally prior to His begetting, too!⁶⁵

(3) From the Proper Ratio of Supposit-Constitutors: Turning from relations-theory to the nature of supposit-constitutors, Scotus cites three arguments — two metaphysical and one corollary epistemological or cognitive-psychological — against relation-constitution. [End Page 117]

[a] The first rests on the controversial if characteristically Scotist thesis that whatever constitutes something in some being and in the unity corresponding to that being, is of itself and as a whole primarily repugnant to the distinction opposed to that unity. Thus, Scotus holds (as above) that if human nature is common in reality and so possesses a real unity less than numerical unity, what individuates human nature into this human nature as opposed to that, and so confers the higher degree of numerical unity upon it, must be of itself this and so of itself incompatible with being shared by or numerically multiplied in numerically distinct individuals. Analogously, person-constitutors in the Godhead must be fundamentally unsharable. Put otherwise, Aristotle declares in the Categories that second substance signifies the quiddity of first substance. Therefore, first substance does not involve any further quiddity.⁶⁶

Paternity seems not to meet this criterion, however. As a quiddity, paternity is not unsharable.⁶⁷ To be sure, the Divine essence, although a quiddity and sharable, is of itself “this.” But that is because the Divine essence is formally infinite and so includes as really identical with itself whatever is compossible with it. By contrast, Paternity as a quiddity is not formally infinite and so not of itself “this.”⁶⁸ Arguably, the same goes for the other Divine relations. For — assuming that opposite relations are disposed to sharability or unsharability the same way — since active spiration is sharable (and shared by the Father and the Son), passive spiration will be sharable as well.⁶⁹ Reasoning from impossible positio, if will were prior to intellect, active generation would be shared instead of active spiration. Therefore, active generation is sharable, too.⁷⁰

[b] Categories-doctrine lays it down that the primary supposit-constitutor must combine with the nature to make [End Page 118] something one per se. But relations and absolutes are of different categories and so cannot combine to make anything one per se in creatures (cross-categorial person-constitution, like cross-categorial individuation, is impossible). Therefore, cross-categorial person-constitution is ruled out in the Godhead as well.⁷¹

[c] Finally, if the ultimate person-constitutors are neither quiddities nor sharable, it will be impossible to abstract any quidditative concept common to all of them. But the concept ‘relation’ is an abstract quidditative concept that is common to paternity, filiation, and spiration. Therefore, they must not be ultimately constitutive of the Divine persons.⁷²

(4) From authority: Here Scotus cites proof-texts to show that some of the same authors — Augustine, Boethius, Richard of St. Victor — who seem at times to speak in favor of relation-constitution, at other times appear to sponsor absolute-constitution of Divine persons.⁷³

3.4. Absolute-Constitution: A Live Option?

Scotus finds the case against relation-constitution powerful. Philosophy compels, counter-balancing authorities permit serious consideration of the alternative hypothesis that persons are constituted by absolutes. Such an opinion was attributed to doctors of older generations (i.e., to Robert Grosseteste and William of Auvergne)⁷⁴ and Scotus reaches back to a Franciscan source, to Bonaventure’s Sentence-commentary for a summary, in three theses:

[T1] The Divine persons are constituted in personal being and distinguished from one another through some absolute realities. [End Page 119]

[T2] The Divine persons are distinguished by their origins, not formally, but as quasi-principles or quasi-efficient causes.

[T3] The Divine persons, thus constituted by absolutes, are relatable by the Divine relations which manifest their distinction.⁷⁵

3.5. Defending the Majority Report, Categories-Doctrine Readjusted:

Scotus is well aware that Categories-doctrine was not formulated with Divine Being in mind. Nevertheless, he finds that — as with theological authorities — the Philosopher’s wax nose softens to be turned one way by absolute-constitution and another by relation-constitution theories, allowing each its philosophical counter-defense. (R1) Relation and Relatum, Re-compared: [Ra] It is with horizontal gaze fixed on things here below that the Categories teaches us to think of relations as accidents that inhere — by way of their foundations — in subsistent subjects. Thus, for example, the foundation (e.g., whiteness) exists in the subsistent subject (e.g., Socrates), and the foundation is informed by the relation (e.g., whiteness by similarity) prior in the order of explanation to the subsistent subject’s being so informed (prior to Socrates’ being similar).

Scotus thinks that a successful relation-constitution theory should deny that this model and its attendant priority assessments apply. We should not — pace Aquinas and Henry of Ghent — think of paternity as a quasi-form that comes to the Divine essence as its foundation and thereby to a Divine person as its supposit, the way similarity comes to whiteness as its foundation and thereby to Socrates. We come closer to the truth if we hearken back to the model of substance-individuation, turn the analogy upside down, and think of the person-constitutor (according to them, the subsistent relation) as quasi-subject and the Divine essence as the quasi-form and act by which it is God.⁸³ Once again, it would not be correct, strictly speaking, to speak of essence and relation in the Godhead as “parts” of a Divine person, because the infinity of the Divine essence draws everything compossible with It into perfect real identity with It. But relation-constitution can still — if it likes — give something to the intuition that the union of parts is prior to the whole, by endorsing a somewhat more complicated claim: viz., “where there are neither parts nor quasi-parts but the perfect identity of those that otherwise would be parts but for the [End Page 123] infinity of one of them, it is not necessary for their union to be understood prior to the whole, but rather the perfect identity of one to the other.”⁸⁴

[Rb] What about the theorem that a real relation presupposes a real distinction of extremes? While acknowledging that it is generally true among creatures, Scotus stresses the importance of understanding why it is true. Among creatures, relata and/or the foundations inherent in them function as external efficient or material causes of relations. Only real causes have real effects; and, by definition, where the causes are absent, so are the effects. Scotus denies, however, that what makes a relation real (or a relation of reason) is the fact that its relata are real (or beings of reason). Rather whether or not a relation is real (or a relation of reason) is a primitive feature that belongs to the formal ratio of the relation itself.

... formally, a real relation is real in and of itself, and a relation of reason is merely such in and of itself ... [I]dentity is a relation of reason because it is identity, and there is no other formal “reason why” it is a relation of reason. [Likewise,] paternity is a real relation because it is paternity, and there is no other formal reason why....⁸⁵

Because Divine paternity is — by nature — a real relation, and because Divine paternity does not depend on anything external as its efficient or material cause, Divine paternity can be a real relation even if it constitutes rather than presupposes its real relatum.

(R2) Relation and Origin, Accepting the Consequences: So far as comparisons between relation and origin are concerned, relation-constitution has to be prepared to “bite” some “bullets.” [Ra] It has to deny that relatives cannot be the primary term of originating acts. The reason is that the supposits (i.e., the Son and Holy Spirit) are the terms [End Page 124] of Divine productions. Both producer and product are supposits. Relation-constitution makes the Divine supposits relatives.⁸⁶ But relation-constitution can concede something to the objector’s intuition by affirming that relations (e.g., filiation and passive spiration) cannot be the primary terms of such acts. Likewise, neither relatives (in this case, Father and Son) nor relations (in this case, Paternity and Filiation) are the formal term of acts of origination; rather the absolute Divine essence is.⁸⁷

[Rb] Likewise, relation-constitution will have to concede that for the Father to originate the Son is for the Father to have the Son as a correlative. But — Scotus thinks — it can still insist that the correlation is a relation of origin. There is no contradiction in X and Y being naturally simultaneous and yet X being prior in origin to Y.⁸⁸ Scotus thinks, however, that relation-constitution will find it difficult to deny that both productions — the begetting of the Son by the Father and the spirating of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son — are naturally necessary.⁸⁹

(R3) Reconsidering the Ratio of Supposit-Constitutors: In his Lectura treatment, Scotus confesses that he does not know how to resolve the arguments under this heading against relation-constititution.⁹⁰ In Ordinatio I, d. 26, q. u, he comments that relation-constitution should find these counterarguments “difficult” but “resolvable,” and he proceeds to “pass the buck” to “anyone who knows how.”⁹¹ In Ordinatio III, d. 1, however, Scotus shoulders the responsibility of cataloguing replies that relation-constitution could make to the above worries. [Ra & c] Scotus distinguishes the issue of whether we have univocal abstract quidditative concepts common to God and creatures, from whether there is some formal reality [End Page 125] or nature common to God and creatures, determinable one way in Godhead and another way in creatures. We do have univocal abstract quidditative concepts common to Divine wisdom and Socrates’ wisdom, on the one hand, and to Divine paternity and Socrates’ paternity, on the other. But God and creatures share no univocal formal realities.

By contrast, not only does our abstract quidditative concept ‘human being’ apply univocally to Socrates and Plato, there is a common formal reality — human nature — that they share. Human nature is common of itself and indeterminate and determinable with respect to individuation by many individuator-entities. Human nature of itself is also naturally prior to its individuation. Thus, Socrates’ humanity and Plato’s humanity are each constituted by two formally distinct realities — common human nature and Socrateity or Platonicity — but Divine wisdom and Divine paternity are not. Each of the latter gets its existence (“springs forth”) from the Divine essence, but there is no earlier instant of nature at which the quiddity — wisdom or paternity — is somehow indeterminate and determinable followed by a posterior instant of nature at which it is rendered determinate. Rather each is as fully determinate as possible from its first instant of nature. Thus, from its first instant of nature, the formal reality that is Divine wisdom is infinite wisdom. And from its first instant of nature, the formal reality that is Divine paternity is unsharable.⁹²

Surprises multiply. (i) If there is no instant of nature at which Divine paternity fails to be determinately unsharable, it follows that the formal reality that is Divine paternity is unsharable of itself. Relation-constitution will thus have to contend that not every quiddity is sharable, but only quiddities that are absolute perfections (e.g., infinite wisdom and infinite justice) or quiddities that are divisible (i.e., numerically multipliable in numerically distinct supposits the way human nature is). Divine paternity is neither.⁹³ (ii) [End Page 126] Nor is the premiss — that opposed relations are related the same way to sharability and unsharability — compelling. Active spiration is of itself sharable with two supposits, while passive spiration is of itself unsharable. (iii) Nor is the argument — that active generation is sharable because if it were not the first but the second Divine production it would be sharable the way active spiration is now — a legitimate application of impossible positio. Where F and G cannot exist separately for reasons having to do with something other than the formal definition of F, it may be of interest to explore what follows from F alone by positing that — per impossibile — F exists without G. But when one posits F and something that contradicts the formal definition of F, all one gets is a fruitless contradiction from which impossibles follow. It is contrary to the formal definition of Divine generation not to be the first but rather the second Divine production. So the argument involves an impossible positio of the disallowed type.⁹⁴

[Rb] As to the argument — that cross-categorial suppositing would produce a supposit that is one per accidens — Scotus distinguishes the metaphysician’s from the logician’s understanding of “per accidens.” Following Aristotle in Metaphysics V, the metaphysician counts as a being per accidens one that includes things (res) from two different categories. Scotus says that what makes the union per accidens rather than per se is that the things of different categories are absolutely non-identical (e.g., Socrates and his whiteness). In the Godhead, however, even though the Divine essence and Paternity are distinct formally, they are the same by identity. Therefore, metaphysically speaking, their union is not per accidens.⁹⁵

By contrast, the logician says that a proposition is per accidens when the subject does not contain the explanation of the inherence of the predicate (e.g., “Socrates is white”), and a composite concept is per accidens when neither of its [End Page 127] components is per se determinative of the other (e.g., “white Socrates” as opposed to “rational animal”). Scotus concedes that the proposition “Paternity is Deity” will be per accidens by the logician’s criterion. Likewise, “God the Father” is a per accidens concept, because neither of “God” nor “Father” per se determines the other in its genus. Neither is the concept “Father” one per se the way the concept “Socrates” is. Scotus concludes that the proposition “the Father is God” is not per se the way the proposition “Socrates is human” is either.⁹⁶

(R4) Malleable Authorities! In Ordinatio I, d. 26, q. u, Scotus cuts short his review with the general observation that since “authorities are commonly drawn to one sense or another,” the troublesome citations “can be expounded differently” in the case at hand!⁹⁷

3.6. Summary:

So far as the philosophy of absolute- versus relation-constitution is concerned, Scotus finds some Categories-considerations easier to handle than others. On his understanding, Divine infinity draws everything compossible with It into perfect real identity, and so neutralizes worries that absolute-constitutors might introduce composition or numerically multiply the Divine essence. Perfect real identity also erases the idea that any relations (whether proper or common) are quasi-accidental to Divine persons. Divine aseity and simplicity could likewise be invoked to explain why “relations presuppose really distinct extremes” does not apply in the Godhead, where Divine relations require and find neither efficient nor material cause in their extremes.

Possibly more problematic are the adjustments that relation-constitution demands in Categories-understandings of active-and passive-production. First, relation-constitution has to replace the doctrine that relatives cannot be the primary term of originating acts with the claim that relations cannot, and to minimize the damage by insisting that the absolute Divine essence is the formal term even if the relative supposit is the whole term of the production. Second, relation-constitution [End Page 128] has to deny that there is any natural priority of producer to product within the Godhead. Rather origination implies to correlation in which the extremes (producer and product) are naturally simultaneous.

4.1. Per Se Unity?

In this work, Scotus elaborates his Ordinatio-III response to the objection that relationconstitution turns the Divine persons into per accidens unities. This time, Scotus distinguishes the metaphysician’s [End Page 129] and the logician’s understandings of both “per se” and “per accidens.” For the metaphysician,

[MDef 1] X and Y make one per se, if and only if {[a] X and Y are of the same genus and [b] either X is per se and essentially in potency to Y or Y is per se and essentially in potency to X}.

[MDef 2] X and Y make one per accidens, if and only if {[a] X and Y are quidditatively different and [b] X and Y include quiddities of different categories and [c] either X is somehow in potency to Y or Y is somehow in potency to X}.

Thus, animal and rational satisfy [a] and [b] of [MDef 1] to make one per se (viz., human nature), while human and white satisfy [a]-[c] of [MDef 2] to make one per accidens (viz., white human being). But in the Godhead nothing is in potency to anything: even where X and Y are not formally the same (as with Divine Wisdom and Goodness), neither is in any way in potency to the other. Thus, even where X and Y are not formally the same in the Godhead, condition [b] is not satisfied in [MDef 1] and condition [c] is not satisfied in [MDef 2]. It follows that — in the metaphysician’s sense — they do not combine with each other either to make anything one per se or to make anything one per accidens!

So far as metaphysical unity is concerned, Scotus here says that reflection on the Godhead encourages us to posit “a quasi-intermediate unity” between “formal unity by which one quiddity is formally the same as another (e.g., the quiddity of human and the quiddity of animal)” and “unity per accidens by which one quiddity is neither formally nor really the same as the other (e.g., the unity of human and white)”: viz., a quasi-intermediate unity “by which one quiddity is really the same but not formally the same as another.”⁹⁹

Scotus admits that this might seem novel from a philosophical point of view, because “in creatures” “there is never a real unity that is not also formal (e.g., human and animal).” Taken literally, this is a claim that Scotus cannot [End Page 130] consistently make, because he believes that common nature and contracting difference are really the same but formally distinct in created substance individuals (e.g., that human nature and Socrateity are really the same but formally distinct in Socrates). Evidently, Scotus means to be restricting his attention to created quiddities (where contracting differences are not quiddities). All creatable quiddities are finite, and no finite quiddities can be really the same without being formally the same. By contrast, the Divine essence is infinite and so draws everything that can combine with it into real and perfect unity. Therefore, in the Godhead, the Divine essence (a quasi-substance) and relation-constitutors could be really the same without being formally the same.¹⁰⁰ (This is the move that Scotus offered proponents of relationconstitution in his earlier discussions.)

Logicians apply the per se/per accidens distinction, twiceover: to propositions on the one hand and to concepts on the other.

[LDef 1] A proposition is per se when the subject is the cause of the inherence of the predicate.

[LDef 2] A proposition is per accidens when the subject is not the cause of the inherence of the predicate.

[LDef 3] A composite concept XY is per se when [a] X and Y are in the same genus and [b] either X is apt to determine Y in that genus or Y is apt to determine X in that genus.

[LDef 4] A composite concept XY is per accidens when [a] X and Y are not in the same genus and/or [b] X is not apt to determine Y in its genus and Y is not apt to determine X in its genus.

Thus, by [LDef 1] “human beings are animals” is true per se, while by [LDef 2] “A human being is white” is true per accidens. By [LDef 3] “rational animal” is one per se, while by [LDef 4] “white human being” is one per accidens. (q. 2, n.74) But [LDef 3] the Divine essence and a constitutive relation cannot be conceived by a concept that is one per se, because neither condition [a] nor condition [b] is satisfied. [End Page 131] Scotus concludes that — from a logical point of view — ”The Father is God” is less per se than “Socrates is human,” “because Socrates is a proper determinate of human and is of the same genus, but not so paternity with respect to the essence.”¹⁰¹ Once again, it is not the per se-relation, but the real identity between the infinite Divine essence and the person-constitutors that underwrites the truth of “The Father is God” and “God is the Father.”¹⁰²

4.2. Unsharability, a Non-Perfection?

Older masters (e.g., William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste) had argued for absolute-constitution on the ground that the person-constitutor would have to add perfection. Aquinas also speaks as if an individual substance nature’s being a supposit is a perfection that it would be unbecoming of God to take away. In Reportatio IA, d. 26, Scotus counters that the role of the suppositer-entity in the Godhead cannot be to add perfection, first because the Divine essence is of infinite perfection already, and second because any perfection would be sharable among all three persons.¹⁰³ Rather — Scotus here contends — the role of the suppositer-entity is to confer unsharability, and unsharability is not of itself a perfection!

Where supposits are concerned, Scotus again invites us to compare the Divine with the created case. Creatable substance natures are not “this” of themselves but are common of themselves — of themselves determinable by each of (infinitely?) many unsharable properties. Since only individuals really exist, creatable natures can really exist only when made “this” through combination with an unsharable property, its “last actuality.” But because creatable natures are finite, they cannot combine with many or all such unsharable properties without being “contracted” and “divided” into numerically many substance individuals. Created substance individuals are aptitudinally and — if not forced by Divine power to depend on “alien” supposits (the way the individual human nature of Christ does) — actually [End Page 132] self-suppositing. Thus, a created substance-supposit satisfies three conditions.

• [1] A created substance-supposit has existence per se through its individuator-entity.

• [2] A created substance-supposit has ultimate (numerical) unity through its individuator-entity.

• [3] A created substance-supposit is unsharable.¹⁰⁴

By contrast, the first two of these conditions — existence per se and ultimate unity — pertains to the Divine essence Itself.

• [1’] The Divine essence is maximally actual and has in and of itself its ultimate actuality, because it is incompatible with infinite actuality to be further perfected.

• [2’] The Divine essence is “this” and maximally singular of itself, and therefore has ultimate unity of itself.

For Scotus, the reason is obvious: ultimate actuality and ultimate unity are absolute perfections, and any and every absolute perfection is essential to Godhead.¹⁰⁵

The third condition — unsharability — does not pertain to the Divine essence, however. Scotus explains that actual, or at least aptitudinal unsharability pertains to individual created substance natures by virtue of their limitation. Because they are not “this” of themselves, they cannot get their per se existence or ultimate unity without being contracted by an individuator-entity, which “divides” the common nature into numerically many individual substance natures, each of which is naturally apt to be its own supposit. The Divine essence is “this” of Itself and so has real per se existence and ultimate unity of Itself. No division — and hence no actual or aptitudinal unsharability — is required for its real per se existence and ultimate unity.¹⁰⁶ [End Page 133]

Scotus reasons that unsharability of itself must not be an imperfection, because the Divine persons have it. But it must not be a perfection either or else it would pertain to the Divine essence of Itself. Moreover, unsharability is common to substance and to accidents. Therefore, unsharability of itself is neither a perfection nor an imperfection, but something indifferent to each. Thus, the person-constitutor does not function as a perfection-amplifier, but merely confers unsharability on the substance-supposit.¹⁰⁷

4.3. Priority Puzzles:

Returning to the worry that relation-constitution takes the priority out of origination, Scotus tries at greater length to enforce a distinction among kinds of priority that will break natural priority and priority of origin apart. ‘X is prior to Y and yet simultaneous with Y’ is not contradictory if there are two orderings of different kinds: e.g., X can be naturally prior to Y and yet simultaneous with Y in time or duration. Here Scotus explains,

[SDef 1] X is naturally simultaneous with Y if and only if it is impossible for X to exist without Y and impossible for Y to exist without X.

[SDef 2] X is prior in origin to Y if and only if X is that by which another exists (on which it essentially depends for its existence).

Evidently, Avicenna and Averroes rely on this distinction when they posit a hierarchy of intelligences, with the first necessarily and eternally emanating the second, the second necessarily emanating the third, etc. By [SDef 1], the first is naturally simultaneous with the second, because — since the first acts necessarily and eternally — it is impossible for the first to exist without the second, and vice versa. Nevertheless, by [SDef 2], the first is the efficient cause of the existence of the second, and the second essentially depends for its existence on the first, and not vice versa. Scotus wants to say, so also with the Trinity. Father and Son are naturally simultaneous, but the Son depends upon the Father for His [End Page 134] existence the way a product depends upon its producer. What has to “give” in this attempted solution, is the intuition that producer-supposits are also naturally prior to their actions and to their products!¹⁰⁸

Even if constitution by relations of origin would not keep the Father from being prior in origin to the Son, Scotus admits that it does keep the Father from being prior in origin to His generation-action. Aquinas insisted that the relation of Paternity and the productive actions can be conceived in many different ways with the result that Paternity qua person-constitutor is prior but Paternity qua relation is posterior to generation-action. Scotus counters that no matter how they are conceived, there is no distinction between Paternity and generation-action in reality: in reality they are one maximally singular property and neither is prior or posterior to the other, no matter which kind of priority and posteriority is understood. Since the Father is constituted by that property, the Father cannot be prior to it. Rather the reverse: Paternity/generation-action is prior to the Father the way a constitutive form is prior to what is constituted by it.¹⁰⁹

4.4. An Absolute Divine Supposit After All?

In Reportatio IA, d. 26, q. 5, Scotus turns to some arguments that he did not consider in the Lectura- and Ordinatiodiscussions — arguments mounted by older masters that, whether or not there are relative Divine supposits, there must be an absolute Divine supposit as well. Scotus presents their case in the form of two difficulties. The Argument from Subsistence: In De Trinitate VII.9, Augustine declares, “the substance of the Father is not that by which the Father is Father, but that by which the Father primarily exists.” This authority seems merely to apply the philosophical principle that to each formal entity in the genus of substance there corresponds a being (something or someone) that exists through that formal entity. To the formal entity bovinity there corresponds a concrete individual bovine substance that exists through bovinity. To the formal entity humanity there [End Page 135] corresponds a concrete individual human substance that exists through humanity. Likewise, in the case of Divinity, there corresponds a concrete individual that exists through Divinity — viz., this God. But if the corresponding entity is individual of itself (the way this God is) and so exists per se, won’t it also be an absolute supposit.¹¹⁰

Arguments from Essential Action: Two further arguments take off from the “Aristotelian” dictum that ...

[P] every action primarily belongs to a supposit.

[a] The first has an epistemological twist. Scotus and others agree that cosmological arguments lead back to causal action in the form of understanding and willing. Natural reason also knows that understanding and willing are essential acts of an intellectual nature, and [P] that natures do not act but rather supposits subsisting in those natures do. What — all agree — natural reason does not know (because it is an article of faith) is that there is a Trinity of Divine persons constituted by relations of origin. Because natural reason cannot conclude to a relative supposit, it must recognize the causal action as belonging to an absolute supposit. Therefore, unless we are prepared to say that the deliverances of natural reason are wrong even in the state of innocence, we have to grant an absolute supposit in the Godhead to whom the essential actions belong.¹¹¹

[b] Theologians distinguish between essential actions that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all share, and notional actions such as begetting and spiration-action. Some infer that just as the notional acts pertain to some relative Divine supposits and not others — begetting to the Father alone, spirationaction to the Father and the Son but not to the Spirit — so [End Page 136] the essential actions must pertain to some absolute supposit common that the three relative supposits share.¹¹²

Terminological Clarification: All of these arguments would leave the Christian theologian claiming that besides three relative supposits — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — there is an absolute supposit that the relative supposits all share. Scotus explains how this conclusion doesn’t make sense in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century contexts in which Scotus was disputing. True, Boethius had defined “person” as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” So understood, the Divine essence (which is selfindividuating and per se extant) and separate intellectual souls (which exist per se) would qualify as persons. For that reason, Richard of St. Victor had “precisioned” Boethius’ definition by defining “person” as “an unsharable substance existence.” In this question, Scotus mentions two kinds of sharability: the way a form is sharable with matter, and the way a universal is sharable with particulars. (Elsewhere he adds the standard third type: the sharability of a part with its whole.) Richard’s usage — which Scotus, his contemporaries and near predecessors had adopted — rules out both kinds of sharability. Nothing sharable either way qualifies as a person or supposit in Richard’s sense. Richard’s definition makes the notion of a sharable supposit — whether absolute or relative — self-contradictory.¹¹³

Reply to the First Difficulty: So far as the argument from subsistence is concerned, Scotus replies that the concrete individual substance corresponding to Divinity is “this God” — i.e., the Divine essence Itself, which is self-individuating and per se extant. Scotus, therefore, agrees that “this God” is absolute, but he denies that it is a supposit on the ground that it is necessarily sharable among the three relationconstituted persons.¹¹⁴

Reply to the Second Difficulty: So far as the arguments from essential action are concerned, Scotus boldly rejects [P]. [End Page 137] Supposits are not the primary subjects of actions, because supposits are denominated from actions only by reason of the form that is the principle of action. Thus, the form or the principle of action is what is primarily denominated from actions. And if the form exists in a supposit, then the supposit is remotely denominated from the action. Thus, vision is attributed first to the visual power or sensory soul and ultimately to Beulah the cow who exists by that form and sees through the visual power operative in her eyes. Likewise, understanding is attributed first to the intellectual soul and ultimately to Socrates. By definition, the supposit isn’t shared with anything else the way the form is: i.e., nothing else exists or acts through the supposit the way the supposit exists and acts through the form. Therefore, when the form that is the principle of action exists in a supposit, the supposit is not only remotely but ultimately denominated from the action: it is the ultimate subject to which the action is attributed.¹¹⁵

Scotus considers, what if the form or principle of action existed per se? He concludes, in that case, the form or principle of action would act per se and it would be the ultimate subject of the action. To convince us, Scotus offers two examples: the post-mortem intellectual soul existing separately from the human body, and the post-consecration eucharistic quantity existing without inhering in the eucharistic bread after the latter has ceased to exist. Neither the separate intellectual soul nor the separate quantity is a supposit, because each is sharable the way a form is sharable. Indeed, each has a natural tendency to be shared that way. Nevertheless, when each exists per se — separately from what it has a tendency to inform — each acts just as much as their supposits act when they are not separate. The separate soul still understands and the separate quantity still supports and extends the qualities that inhere in it. And because they are separate, they would be the ultimate subjects: no further subjects would be denominated from their actions.

For Scotus, the truth that [P] mistakes is ... [End Page 138]

[P’] action presupposes a form or principle of action that either exists per se or informs something that exists per se.

Only what really exists acts. So there will be real action only if there is a real principle of action, and there will be a real principle of action only if either the principle of action itself exists per se or the principle of action (proximately or remotely) informs something that exists per se.

(Ra) Returning to the first argument from essential action, Scotus replies that the cosmological arguments mounted by natural reason can move via [P’] from the causal actions of understanding and willing to the principle(s) of those actions, and from the principle(s) of those actions to a per se extant and hence individual subject of those actions. But natural reason alone will not be able further to determine whether that subject is a supposit or a per se extant principle of action. By cosmological arguments, natural reason can arrive at a first efficient cause, but it cannot tell further whether that first efficient cause is sharable or unsharable. Accordingly, natural reason has to rest with an indeterminate conclusion and does not compel us to recognize any absolute supposit in the Godhead.¹¹⁶

(Rb) As for the pro-arguments, that notional actions pertain to relation-constituted persons but essential actions to an absolute supposit common to the three, Scotus brings us back to the point that an action pertains primarily to the form or principle of action. Therefore, the difference between essential and notional actions must be principally due to some difference in their elicitive principles. The form or principle of action for essential actions is something essential and absolute: viz., this God, the self-individuating, self-extant Divine essence. But the form or principle of action for notional actions is not this God simpliciter, but this God qua existing in the only supposit(s) to whom the notional action belongs. For example, the form or principle of Divine generation is not Divine power simpliciter or the Divine intellect simpliciter, but Divine power or intellect insofar as it is exercized and exercizable by the Father alone. Once essential and notional acts are primarily attached to different elicitive principles, [End Page 139] the relation-constituted Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will do perfectly well as the ultimate subjects of those actions. No intermediate — per impossibile shared — absolute supposit, is required.¹¹⁷

5.1. “Infidel Fiction and Error”!

Scotus was focussed on philosophical formulations of Christian faith in a Trinity when he considered whether the Divine persons are constituted by absolute entities. But the most obvious supporters of absoluteconstitution are “infidels” who insist that there is and can be one and only one Divine supposit.¹¹⁹ Bassolis retails four arguments on their behalf. (1) Arguing first from Divine perfection, they infer that, since unity pertains to absolute perfection, maximal unity will pertain not only to the Divine essence but also to the Divine supposit. Because any relative has a corresponding correlative, any nature supposited by relatives will have more than one supposit, and any nature supposited by a single supposit must be supposited by an absolute.¹²⁰

(2) Again, God is the “One over many.” But what is absolutely first in a given order is maximally absolute and one. Just as God is first, absolute, and one in the order of [End Page 140] beings, so in the order of supposits there must be a first supposit — viz., the Divine supposit — which must likewise be maximally absolute and single.¹²¹

(3) Third-cited is a version of the “argument from subsistence” (cf. sec. 4.4 above), that whatever is simple and non-multipliable has, corresponding to it, something one and absolute with respect to its entity. But what is one in an intellectual nature is a supposit. Therefore, the simple and numerically non-multipliable Divine essence has, corresponding to it, an absolute supposit.¹²²

(4) Likewise, the fourth adapts the first “argument from essential action” (cf. sec. 4.4 above), that natural right reason leads only to the truth and brings humans to knowledge that the Divine nature subsists in a supposit. But natural right reason does not allow us to demonstrate a trinity or even a plurality of Divine persons; a fortiori, it does not license the conclusion that there are relative supposits.¹²³

Unsurprisingly, Bassolis thinks these arguments must be rebutted and their conclusion repudiated. (R1) Against such infidels, Bassolis argues first from his own understanding of the nature of unity. Scotus often explains unity in negative terms — as incompatibility with certain kinds of multiplicity. But where Scotus metaphysically grounds increases in unity (e.g., from specific to numerical) in additional positive entity (e.g., the individuator-entity), Bassolis reasons that since unity is formally a matter of negation, it cannot pertain to absolute perfection.¹²⁴ Therefore, the inference—from God’s absolute perfection to there being only one Divine supposit — fails.¹²⁵ [End Page 141]

(R2) Bassolis agrees that God is first in many orders, and that — One over many — what is first in any order is one. But he denies that the first is invariably absolute. Thus, Bassolis is willing to identify God the Father as one and first in the order of supposits, but thinks it does not follow further from these considerations alone that God the Father is an absolute rather than a relative supposit.¹²⁶ (R3) Against the third, Bassolis follows Scotus, insisting that what corresponds to the simple, absolute, numerically unmultipliable Divine essence, is not one supposit but one God, the concrete Divine essence that is self-existent and “this” of Itself. (R4) Scotus replied to the first essential action argument by saying that cosmological arguments get — via [P’] — to a principle of action, but not necessarily to a supposit and hence not to an absolute supposit. By contrast, Bassolis agrees that cosmological arguments in the order of dependence and eminence do arrive at a supposit: they establish that there is at least one Divine supposit but do not reach further to prove that there is at most one Divine supposit. Likewise, the deliverances of natural right reason are indeterminate and indeterminable as to whether the Divine supposit(s) is (are) absolute or relative.¹²⁷

5.2. Sharable Absolute Supposit?

Having dispatched the infidels, Bassolis turns to the older masters’ hypothesis that [a] there is a single absolute supposit that is [b] sharable by three relative Divine persons, [c] who are one God.¹²⁸ (1) The first argument Bassolis cites in their favor is the “epistemological essential action argument” summarized by Scotus (cf. sec. 4.4 above).¹²⁹ (2) The second depends on the Anselmian philosophical principle that when some possess F in greater, lesser, or equal degree, there is something — F-ness — through which they are F. But subsistence is common to the relative persons, and subsistence does not pertain to the Divine essence. Therefore, there must be an absolute [End Page 142] supposit common to them and through which they all have subsistence.¹³⁰ (3) A third appeals to Boethius and Anselm who maintain that what pertains to the perfection of created natures ought not to be denied of God. But it pertains to the perfection of a created nature that its supposit be absolute. Therefore, it should not be denied that there is an absolute supposit in the Divine nature.¹³¹

Following Scotus, Bassolis first points out how the notion of a shared supposit could seem coherent only to thinkers working with Boethius’s definition of “person” as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” For late thirteenth and early fourteenth century theologians who follow Richard of St. Victor’s definition of “person” as “unsharable subsistence,” the notion of a shared supposit is contradictory. Standard by Bassolis’s time was the observation that what keeps the numerically unmultipliable Divine essence from being Itself a supposit is that It is sharable among the three Divine persons.

Even on the assumption that the older doctors were working with a different definition of “person,” Bassolis finds their position theologically inadequate. Drawing on Scotus’s philosophical machinery, Bassolis asks how the absolute and the relative supposits would be related. Either as really distinct — in which case, there would be a quaternity in the Godhead — or as distinct formally — in which case the three persons would be really the same as the absolute supposit, and there would be only one Divine supposit after all! Against such polemics, the older doctors might rise again to apply their own distinction between sharable and unsharable individuals of a rational nature: in effect, creeds, ecclesiastical definitions, and theological tradition, lay it down that there are three and only three unsharable supposits, but define nothing about sharable supposits. Confronted with Bassolis’s dilemma, they would doubtless reject real distinction, holding relatives to be related to the sharable absolute supposit the way others say relatives are related to the sharable absolute Divine essence. [End Page 143]

From Bassolis’s point of view, such a reply shows up the philosophical redundancy of the putative sharable supposit. (R1) Bassolis borrows his reply to the epistemological essential action argument from Scotus. Rejecting the Aristotelian theorem [P] — that action presupposes an agent supposit — Bassolis explains that [P’] actions pertain immediately and properly to the principle of action, while supposits are the last to be denominated from the action. The principle of Divine essential functions and actions ad extra — viz., intellect and will-power — belongs to the Divine essence, which is shared by the three Divine persons, each of whom is thereby said to act.¹³² There is no need to turn the Divine essence into a supposit as well. (R2) To the argument that — “One over many” — there must be a single sharable source of subsistence, Bassolis opposes Scotus’s contention that “unsharable subsistence” names no quiddity or common positive property in which all unsharable supposits participate. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Socrates the philosopher and Brownie the donkey are all truly denominated by the same negative descriptions — “not sharable the way a common nature is,” “not sharable the way a part is,” “not sharable the way an accident is.” But it is one more philosophical confusion to explain this by positing some positive feature univocal to them all.¹³³

5.3. Personification and Perfection:

Much of what Bassolis says about the pros and cons of absolute-constitution travels over ground Scotus has already surveyed. But Bassolis does draw on his own and on Scotus’s philosophical insights to make some further points. All parties to the discussion concur that personification involves a higher degree of unity and unsharability than individuation does. Disputes arise when some sponsor the generalized assumption that higher degrees of unity and unsharability entail higher degrees of perfection. Scotus himself reasons that since common nature enjoys only a real unity less than numerical unity, the “contracting difference” or individuator must itself be a positive entity thereby to endow the creatable nature with greater unity, [End Page 144] unsharability, and perfection. Both ancient authorities and contemporary sponsors of absolute-constitution assume an analogy between individuation and personification, and so forward the thesis that person-constitutors must be perfection-enhancers as well. They conclude that absolutes are better suited to the job than relatives because the former have and so are in a position to confer more positive entity than the latter.

Bassolis agrees that created substance supposits are absolute rather than relative beings. But this is not because they are constituted by absolute-suppositors. On the contrary, Scotus’s own theory of personification — developed in connection with the doctrine of the Incarnation — denies that created individual substance natures can be supposited by the addition of any positive entities whatever.¹³⁴ For either such suppositor entities would be really distinct from the individual substance natures they supposit, in which case God could create the latter without the former and it would be metaphysically possible for substance natures to exist in reality without being the natures of any supposit at all — which he counted absurdly unAristotelian. Or else suppositor entities would be really the same and distinct formally from the individual substance natures they supposit, in which case it would be impossible for an individual substance nature (e.g., this human nature) to be supposited by something else (e.g., the Divine Word) as the doctrine of the Incarnation requires. Scotus concluded that created individual substance natures were supposited by a “double negation” of aptitudinal dependence and actual dependence: individual created substance natures have a natural aptitude for independent existence and so for being their own supposit; when this aptitude is not actually obstructed by Divine power making it to be supposited by an alien supposit (as happens in the Incarnation), the individual substance nature will be its own supposit. Thus, Scotus’s theory cuts off any analogy with created personification on which an argument for the absolute-constitution of Divine persons might rest. [End Page 145]

More fundamentally, Bassolis joins Scotus (in Reportatio IA) in contending that personification is not in itself perfectionconferring. First, primary unsharability is itself a negation (in creatures, a double negation), and — as above — negations do not formally pertain to absolute perfection. Second, primary unsharability does not satisfy Anselm’s Monologion-criterion — whatever is in general better than what is not it — because the Divine essence is sharable and yet maximally perfect.¹³⁵ Because real identity with the maximally perfect Divine essence will make each of the Divine persons maximally perfect, neither absolute nor relative person constitutors would be able to add to their perfection.¹³⁶ So far as personconstitution is concerned, the debate over whether absolutes are more perfect than relatives is a red herring!

Divine persons require to be constituted by positive entities, not to enhance their perfection, but to accomplish their differentiation as “something-the-same” entities. But the fact that created individual substance natures are not supposited by positive entities, is a marker of their less than maximal perfection as finite beings. Divine infinity draws in everything compossible with it and so can be really the same as many person-constitutors at once. As finite, created individual substance natures cannot be shared by many “internal” supposits at once. Likewise, it is metaphysically impossible for Divine aseity to be assumed or supposited by an alien or “external” supposit. But it is a mark of creaturehood that even individual substance natures are in obediential potency with respect to existing in or being supposited by something else. These metaphysical possibilities — that created individual substance natures be their own supposits, that they be supposited by external supposits, and that the very same created individual substance nature be first externally and then internally supposited, or vice versa — mean that created individual substance natures cannot be supposited by the addition of positive person-constituting entities at all.¹³⁷ [End Page 146]

When all is said and done, Bassolis embraces Scotus’s position in Reportatio IA — that relation-constitution is more defensible and that there are no absolute supposits in the Godhead¹³⁸ — not because there are effective arguments to prove this conclusion,¹³⁹ but because of the Saints and authorities.¹⁴⁰ To the end, Bassolis insists that the definition of “person” is philosophically neutral on the absolute vs relation-constitution question.

6.1. Actions versus Relations:

Where Aquinas appealed to distinctions of reason or of modes of signification, Mayronis draws on Scotus’s formal distinction, which is a distinction [End Page 147] a parte rei prior to and independent of any activity of the intellect and so prior to and independent of modes of signifying within human language. Consider the relation/production pairs: paternity and active generation; filiation and passive generation. Mayronis maintains that in each case relation and action are really the same but distinct formally and quidditatively.¹⁴⁴ He then suggests that Categories-doctrine aims to chart comparisons among quiddities, which remain the same whether their instances are really distinct or really the same. In Reportatio IA, Scotus had insisted that in the Godhead no priority of any kind is to be found between active generation and paternity (cf. sec. 4.3 above). But Mayronis reverts to the more intuitive view that production is prior to relation — active generation to paternity, passive generation to filiation — and concludes that action is more constitutive of the Divine person than relation is — active generation more constitutive of the Father than paternity, passive generation more constitutive of the Son than filiation. Both are constitutive, but action is first and relation derivative — the very opposite of what Aquinas claimed!¹⁴⁵

6.2. Relation-Constititution — Which and How?

In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas claims that it is the opposition of the relations to one another that gives rise to distinction among the persons. Mayronis follows Scotus in rejecting this, and takes a page from Aquinas himself: person-distinguishers are internal whereas the opposition of the relations to one another is external to the persons. Rather, the relations are constitutors in comparison with their foundations (in this case, within the Divine essence Itself).¹⁴⁶ Being a constitutor does not pertain to relations per se the first way, because its formal ratio is to be ad aliud [sic: Aristotle says ad aliquid] and relations are not constitutors insofar as they are compared to something external to the person constituted. Rather — like the passive power of matter and the active power of substantial form to [End Page 148] unite to make something one per se — being a constitutor is a passio of person-constituting relations.¹⁴⁷ Pulling the necessary conditions together, Mayronis contends that to be person-constituting a relation must be [i] formally internal (insistens) rather than formally adventitious and external (assistens), [ii] subsistent (the way accidental relations are not), [iii] proper (the way sharable and shared relations — such as equality, similarity, and identity — are not), and [iv] first (the way active spiration is not in comparison with the Father and the Son who are already constituted by paternity and filiation, respectively).¹⁴⁸ As to whether paternity as a quiddity satisfies condition [iii], Mayronis takes up Scotus’s startling reply in Ordinatio III, d. 1, that not every quiddity is sharable (cf. sec. 3.5 above). Mayronis follows with the corollary caution that we use the word “paternity” in this context not with reference to a common concept but rather to a specific ratio that is found only in the Godhead and that is essentially unsharable.¹⁴⁹

6.3. Presupposed Supposits?

Action-constitution and relation-constitution both seem to run afoul of Categories doctrines that actions presuppose agent-supposits and real relations presuppose really distinct relata. Acknowledging that both actions and relations presuppose something, Mayronis follows Scotus’s contention (cf. sec. 4.4 above) that supposits are required in neither case. Separate souls are not supposits because they are incomplete beings. But it is metaphysically possible for them to be the subjects of beatific acts of enjoying God even before the general resurrection.¹⁵⁰ Likewise, two separate souls could be the really distinct relata of real relations.¹⁵¹ Reformulating for precision, Mayronis declares that action presupposes not [P] the being of the supposit but [P’] the being of the active principle, while [End Page 149] relations necessarily presuppose formally distinct extremes (but not always supposita).¹⁵²

Thus, in the Godhead, Divine memory is the foundation of paternity, and the Divine essence is its term, and the Divine essence and Divine memory are distinct formally. Mayronis confronts the worry that identifying the Divine memory and the Divine essence as extremes of the begetting-relation will turn the Divine memory into the Father and the Divine essence the Son. Precisioning again, he explains that the common dicta — “every form confers its formal being on that in which it principally inheres” or “the proximate subject of the form is denominated from it” (e.g., the surface is called “white” from the whiteness inhering in it) — are only “rough and ready.” Where relations are concerned, sometimes the foundations and terms are denominated from them, sometimes only the supposits, sometimes both. Divine paternity and filiation fall into the second category and denominate supposits only. Thus, Mayronis concludes, the Divine essence isn’t Itself said to be generated, because it is only the formal term but not the whole term of the relation. The Son is said to be generated, because the Son is the whole term of the relation.¹⁵³

Likewise, the explanatory circle of actions presupposing the supposits that they constitute, is avoided. For the fertile Divine memory is naturally prior to the activity of conceiving understanding (and so to both active and passive understanding), while the action is naturally prior to the supposits (Father and Son). Once again, this analysis may surprize, insofar as the supposits (Father and Son) turn out to be naturally simultaneous, with the result that the Father is not naturally prior to the Son. But — as Scotus insisted (cf. secs. 3.5 and 4.3 above) — the Father can still be said to be prior by origin, insofar as the supposits are denominated from active and passive generation, and from the relations of paternity and filiation, respectively.¹⁵⁴ [End Page 150]

7.1. Praepositinus, Rejected:

Off hand, one would expect [i] Ockham’s nominalistic conceptualism to make him receptive to Praepositinus’s proposal that the Divine [End Page 151] “persons are distinguished in and of themselves.”¹⁵⁹ After all, Ockham has insisted against Scotus that human nature need not be common in reality because one of a pair of cospecific individuals (e.g., Socrates) can, in and of itself and by itself as a whole, really agree with and really differ from the other (e.g., Plato). There is no need to posit in them any metaphysical composition of some item in which they agree (e.g., human nature) and another (e.g., their contracting differences or haecceities) which they do not share. Doesn’t Praepositinus in effect simply apply Ockham’s nominalistic conceptualism to the Divine case?¹⁶⁰

Yes, Ockham recognizes, but inappropriately so, because there is a decisive disanalogy between Divine and created cases. Socrates and Plato are really distinct from one another in every respect, but the Divine persons share the Divine essence which is numerically unmultiplied in the three persons. Since the Divine persons cannot be distinguished from one another by what is the same in each, Ockham concludes, they cannot be distinguished from one another in and of and by their whole selves. Thus, Ockham’s first concession is that each Divine person must be metaphysically constituted by “something-the-same” (i.e., the Divine essence) and something by which it is distinguished from the other two.¹⁶¹

7.2. Real Identity, Problematic and Problem-Solving:

Recall how Ockham rejects the “common” opinion about universals because of its alleged inability to give any adequate account of the relation between the sharable nature on the one hand and its individuators on the other. So far as the Divine essence and the Divine person-distinguishers are concerned, the thinkers we have been discussing took the answer to be fixed by ecclesiastical consensus: each persondistinguisher (and accordingly each constituted person) is really the same as the Divine essence and really distinct from the other person-distinguishers (and hence the other [End Page 152] persons), so that — and this is Ockham’s second concession — tres res sunt una res. Scotus sought to eliminate the philosophical scandal in this apparent contradiction of logical laws (alternatively, of the Indiscernibility of Identicals or the Transitivity of Identity) by appealing to his formal distinction. Neither the Divine persons nor their person-constitutors are in every way the same as the Divine essence; they are really the same but distinct formally. Only where a and b are in every way the same as c, do the Indiscernibility of Identicals or the Transitivity of Identity apply. For Scotus, this claim had explanatory value, because he believed the non-identity of formalities could dissolve apparent contradictions either by distinguishing their subjects or by relativizing their predicates. But Ockham argues that Scotus’s formal distinction is bogus and devoid of explanatory underpinnings.¹⁶² In his discussion of the Trinity, Ockham sometimes deploys the term “formal distinction” or “distinct formally” simply as shorthand for what he regards as “unique and beyond understanding”:¹⁶³ that in the Trinity, tres res sunt una res!¹⁶⁴ For Ockham this is a big miracle; his warning against eager Scotistic appeals to formal distinction, the stern rebuke not to multiply miracles beyond necessity!

Once this “real identity” thesis is accepted as a fixed point, however, many Categories-generated difficulties about person-constitution are rendered moot. Real sameness erases the worry that absolute-constitutors would introduce composition into the Divine persons, because composition presupposes real distinction.¹⁶⁵ Nor would there be any priority of parts to the whole (e.g., of the Divine essence or person-constitutors to the persons), because real identity would erase any composition.¹⁶⁶ Again, the real identity of each and every person-constitutor with the Divine essence is sufficient to guarantee the logical inseparability of the [End Page 153] Divine persons, no matter whether absolutes or relatives are invoked to do the job.¹⁶⁷ Concern that cross-categorial personconstitution would threaten unity dissolves because real sameness is the strongest version of per se unity.¹⁶⁸ Likewise irrelevant is the dispute over whether the putative minimal entity of relations is a disadvantage or an advantage (á la Aquinas); for whatever may be the case with creatures, the entity of Divine relations is — by virtue of their real identity with the Divine essence — maximal!¹⁶⁹

Moreover, Ockham’s rejection of Praepositinus notwithstanding, the “real identity” thesis lessens the distance between Divine personification and what Ockham understands to be the ordinary case. For, presumably because he denies formal distinction any explanatory power, Ockham insists that real identity is just as great an identity as real identity plus formal identity. Thus, the Divine essence is the same as the Father by just as great an identity as it is the same as itself, but not by every sort of identity, because the sort of identity does not add greatness or greater perfection [to the identity].

And in general, each Divine person is just as identical with its essence as Socrates is with his human nature, although the Divine person will not be the same as the Divine essence in every way that Socrates is with his human nature.¹⁷⁰ This is important because — as Praepositinus insisted — paradigmatic unity should be a feature of the Divine persons as much as the Divine essence.

7.3. The Ease of Absolute Constitution:

Ockham’s own philosophical distaste for relation-constitution arises from another quarter, however: viz., that — in his estimation — “it is so difficult to understand that a relation is a certain thing and that it is really distinct [from the absolute things] in a creature.”¹⁷¹ This philosophical bias leads him to distinguish [End Page 154] two versions of absolute-constitution. Ockham characterizes the one considered by Scotus (the “third” opinion, both in Scotus and in Ockham) as the view that [a] the Divine persons are constituted or distinguished by absolute properties first, and [b] by relations quasi-consequently.¹⁷² With this Ockham contrasts an unattributed alternative (the “fourth” opinion) more suited to his own philosophical proclivities, that [a] the Divine persons are constituted by absolute properties, and [c] that there is nothing at all imaginable in God except absolutes, so that “there would not be any relations or origins in God in any way distinct from absolute things.”¹⁷³ This “fourth” opinion does not deny statements such as “the Father begets the Son” or “the Father and the Son breathe the Holy Spirit.” Rather, it treats relations among the Divine persons the same way Ockham treats intrinsic relations in creatures:

just as — given this whiteness and another whiteness, everything else imaginable circumscribed — these two whitenesses are similar; likewise — given God and the absolute that is a stone, everything else circumscribed — still the stone really depends on God and God is really the cause of the stone; so ... — given three such absolute persons, one of the persons would be from one and one would be from two, and the one would be Father, another Son, another Holy Spirit, without anything else imaginable [being posited].¹⁷⁴

Like Scotus, Bassolis, and Mayronis before him, Ockham insists that — theological majority reports aside — [a] absolute-constitution (the ground common to the third and fourth opinions) is an adequate metaphysical interpretation of “three persons are one God.” Unsurprisingly, Ockham adds that absolute-constitution is philosophically easier to uphold than relation-constitution.¹⁷⁵ [End Page 155]

7.4. Relation-Constitution, the “More Difficult” but “Truer” Way!

Despite philosophical reservations, Ockham joins the theological consensus¹⁷⁶ — and this is his third concession — that the Divine persons are constituted and distinguished by really distinct relations, because

the authorities of the Saints seem explicitly to posit relations in the Godhead — not only that some relative concepts are truly predicated of Divine persons, as when we say that Socrates is similar and that Socrates is father and son, but that there are [in the Godhead] true and real paternity and filiation, and that there are two simple things of which one is not the other.¹⁷⁷

If the role of person-constitutors is to distinguish “something-the-same” entities from one another, Ockham argues, Divine paternity can function in that role insofar as it is a res that is [a] unsharable and “this” of itself, [b] really distinct from the other persons, and [c] united with the Divine essence to make one per se.¹⁷⁸ And if really distinct relations are person-distinguishers and constitutors, Ockham thinks it would violate his famous Razor to posit absolutedistinguishers and constitutors as well. Neither Scripture nor the Saints require it, and it is contrary to natural reason to suppose that three absolute things could be really the same as one thing — i.e., to multiply cases in which tres res sunt una res.¹⁷⁹

For Ockham, the most difficult remaining philosophical obstacle to relation-constitution is that real relations seem to presuppose and so would not be in a position to constitute their relata or extremes.¹⁸⁰ This theorem would be firmly entrenched in the theory of relations Ockham attributes to Aristotle, according to which Socrates’ being similar to Plato [End Page 156] is a matter of how Socrates and Plato are, and posits nothing really distinct from, e.g., Socrates and his whiteness and Plato and his whiteness. But it is equally rooted in Scotus’s theory, which treats Socrates’ similarity to Plato as a thing (res) really distinct from both its extreme (Socrates) and its foundation (Socrates’ whiteness).

Ockham treads well-worn paths when he admits — and this is his fourth concession — that this theorem is counterexampled in the Divine case: e.g., that Divine paternity constitutes the supposit that is referred by it (i.e., the Father).¹⁸¹ Likewise, not every relation will have an absolute supposit as its primary term (e.g., neither Divine paternity nor Divine filiation will).¹⁸² The term of a relation (e.g., of Divine paternity) will not be its correlation (e.g., Divine filiation) either, but rather the supposit constituted by its correlation (e.g., the Son).¹⁸³ Ockham does find it a general truth that relations presuppose their foundations, and Ockham identifies the Divine essence as the foundation of all of the Divine relations. Yet, the Divine essence is not Itself referred by any of these relations, but only the supposits are.¹⁸⁴

Ockham merely follows Scotus’s lead when he acknowledges that relation-constitution makes persons constituted by the correlations (e.g., Father and Son) naturally simultaneous, and so takes the natural priority out of origination or production.¹⁸⁵ Because — pace Scotus — Ockham recognizes naturally necessary productions of the will, the More than Subtle Doctor has no trouble admitting that the Son and the Holy Spirit are both naturally produced.¹⁸⁶

Scotus’s epistemological objection to relation-constitution — that the ultimate person-constitutors wouldn’t be “something-the-same” entities from which any general concept [End Page 157] could be abstracted, whereas “relation” is a quidditative concept common to Divine paternity, filiation, and spiration — is countered by Ockham’s contrary contention — that abstract quidditative concepts can apply to numerically many things (e.g., “human” to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) even if they do not have a common metaphysical constituent.¹⁸⁷

7.5. Invidious Distinctions, Spurious Priorities:

By the time of Scotus, “tres res sunt una res,” the summary tag from Fourth Lateran, functioned among other things to rule out any idea of there being more than three res in the Godhead. But if there are three and only three res to work with, the semantics of whatever is said about the “inner” Trinity will have to be mapped onto these three, each and all of which are really identical with one. Recall how Aquinas begins with two real productions or originating actions — active/passive intellectual production and active/passive production by the will — which give rise to two pairs of relations — paternity and filiation from the first; active and passive spiration from the second. Henry of Ghent distinguishes four aspects within the first person — generative, able-to-generate, generator, and Father. The “third” position reviewed by Scotus and Ockham posits absolute person-constitutors as well as relations in the Godhead. However many distinctions they posit, these thinkers still operate within the confines of Fourth Lateran, and do not take themselves to be adding to the number of really distinct things with which the Divine essence is really identical. Thus, Aquinas voices the consensus that origins are really the same as the relations. All agree, too, that if active spiration were really distinct from each of the other Divine relations — paternity, filiation, passive spiration — there would be a quaternity in God. Their solution is to hold that just as the Divine essence is really the same as each of three really distinct things, so active spiration is really the same as each of two — viz., paternity and filiation.¹⁸⁸ Although summaries of the “third” opinion do not explicitly address the issue, presumably its adherents would want to [End Page 158] regard the Divine relations as really the same as the absolute constitutors.

Yet, having agreed to work with the three and only three res, these thinkers still want to identify among features that are really the same which characteristics are prior and which posterior, which fundamentally constitutive and which quasi-adventitious. Thus, Aquinas contends, it is relations not origins that do the person-constituting; Mayronis, that it is primarily origins and secondarily relations; the “third” opinion, absolutes but not (or only “consequentially”) relations; Henry of Ghent, “generative” aspect, but not “ableto- generate” or “generator.” Many who hold to relationconstitution insist that active spiration does not constitute but is quasi-adventitious insofar as it “comes to” persons “already” constituted by paternity or filiation, respectively. The articulation of such claims require the philosophical machinery of some sort of distinction among entities that are really the same. Thus, Aquinas appeals to real distinction versus distinction of reason; Henry of Ghent to distinction secundum rem versus distinction secundum vocem; Scotists, to real versus formal distinction.

7.5.1. Distinctions of Reason, Modes of Signification:

In Ordinatio I, d. 26, qq. 2–3, Ockham takes up these issues with a particular focus on Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, and presses an interpretation of their positions that attends more to the letter of their works than to the spirit of their intentions. (1) First, Ockham charges that to speak, e.g., of generation and paternity as really the same and distinct in reason is a category mistake. For, strictly speaking, real sameness or distinction obtains between real beings and not between beings of reason, while sameness or distinction of reason obtains between beings of reason and not between real beings. Pace Scotus, it is the ontological status of the relata that makes it to be a case of real sameness or distinction on the one hand, and sameness or distinction of reason on the other. Since Divine generation and paternity are real, they are not the kind of entities that can be distinct in reason. (2) In the same vein, Ockham contends that only words or signs have modes of signification; non-signs do not. But the [End Page 159] question is not whether words or signs constitute the Divine persons, but whether the origins or the relations that are really in the Godhead, do. Moreover, a distinction of reason between concepts or a distinction of modes of signification belonging to a word cannot effect any distinction in real things. For, as Aquinas himself insists, nothing external to a thing can make it to be the same as or distinct from anything else. But the concepts or words “generation” and “paternity” are external to Divine generation and paternity, respectively.¹⁸⁹ Ockham’s conclusion is that distinctions of reason and of modes of signifying leave origins and relations,¹⁹⁰ as well as such aspects as generative, able-to-generate, generator, and Father,¹⁹¹ altogether the same a parte rei, with the result that the Indiscernibility of Identicals applies.¹⁹² Therefore, it is impossible for any of those that are altogether the same a parte rei to be either prior or posterior to each other¹⁹³ or for one to be a person-constitutor and the other not.

Ockham proceeds to spell out how this consequence “makes hash” of Aquinas’s treatment of origins and relations in the Godhead. For if they are altogether the same a parte rei origins will be just as internal to the person as the relation.¹⁹⁴ Generation will be in no way either prior or posterior to paternity.¹⁹⁵ Active production or origination will not always presuppose but in some cases (viz., at least in the Godhead) may constitute the agent supposit, just as much as the relation does. Passive origination will not be “a way” and hence prior to the originated person, but in some cases may be really and formally constitutive (and not merely a quasiefficient cause) of the supposit.¹⁹⁶ Likewise, Henry of Ghent’s attempts to distinguish immediate from intermediate among [End Page 160] characteristics that are altogether the same a parte rei, will have no metaphysical basis.¹⁹⁷

7.5.2. Really the Same, Distinct Formally:

Scotus and his followers agreed with Ockham in that distinctions of reason and/or of modes of signification, were inadequate to this formulative task. They insisted that Scotus’s own formal distinction was a superior tool, among other things, because it does posit a distinction a parte rei prior to and independently of any and every act of intellect. As we have seen, Scotists grounded putative priority claims, such as Aquinas and Henry have made, by positing formal distinctions within what is really one and the same thing.

Presumably, Scotus’s own interest in the “third” opinion — that persons are constituted primarily by absolutes, while relations supervene on these — presupposes its potential development within the full resources of his philosophy. Thus, taking a page from Scotus’s theory of relations, adherents might claim that the absolute person-constitutors are the foundations of the Divine relations; and that since such foundations cannot exist without being thus related, the relations are really the same as but distinct formally from their foundations. Inevitably, wherever the absolute person-constitutors are, the relations will be there, too. Taking a page from Mayronis, adherents might nevertheless hold that formal distinction allows us to treat such absolutes as naturally prior to the relations they found, and so to see the absolutes as the primary person-constitutors in a way that the relations would not be.

Against this, one might have expected Ockham to rehearse his case against Scotus’s formal distinction and doctrine of instants of nature, both of which are supposed to license the predication of contradictories of what are really one and the same thing (res). But while the More than Subtle Doctor does allude to his rejection of instants of nature, in connection with his denial that the Father is naturally prior to the Son, he does not take out after Scotus’s formal distinction in [End Page 161] these questions. Instead, he turns to critique from a different angle.

7.6. Summary:

Prima facie, it is Ockham’s reading of Aristotle’s Categories that is most challenged by the doctrine [End Page 165] of the Trinity. In response, Ockham does make a series of substantial concessions: first, against his understanding of individuation, that numerically distinct supposits of the Divine nature are constituted by “something the same” and something distinct; third, that the Divine persons are constituted by really distinct relations; and fourth, that relations do not invariably presuppose but sometimes constitute their relata. Ockham expands this common turf with his second concession that tres res sunt una res, and argues that given the real identity of persons and personconstitutors with the Divine essence, his interlocutors are able to preserve less of Categories-metaphysics than they think. Drawing on his own views of identity and distinction, Ockham argues that there is no distinction a parte rei within a Divine person between origin and relations on the one hand or between proper and shared relations on the other. His opponents’ appeals to distinctions of reason or modes of signification or formal distinctions to maintain Categories analyses of natural priorities are inefficacious.