B. The Opinion of Henry of Ghent is Rejected.

282. This opinion posits four articles which I do not believe to be true.

The first is that the divine Word is generated by impression [nn.273-280]; the second is that this is by impression on the intellect as it is turned back on itself; the third is that essential knowledge is the formal idea of generating declarative knowledge; the fourth is that it is generated by impression on the intellect as bare.

283. [Article one] - I dismiss the rejection of the first article until distinction 5 [I d.5 q.2 nn.2-10], where it properly has place.

284. [Article two] - Against the second article I argue in a threefold way: first that on the intellect thus converted the Word is not impressed, the second that such conversion is not necessary for generating the Word, the third that there is no such conversion.

285. I argue for the first as follows, namelyText cancelled by Scotus: “And hence is apparent the difference between intellect as intellect and intellect as nature.” ¹⁸⁰ that the intellect is not turned back save as it is in some supposit, because turning back is posited as an action, and actions are of supposits. Then I ask, to which supposit or to which person does it belong as turned back on the formed intellect? If as so converted it belongs to the person of the Son, and according to you this conversion precedes the generation of the Word, then before the generation of the Word there are two persons, which is heretical. But if, as it is turned back on the formed intellect, it belongs to the Father himself, and if to that to which it belongs as converted it belongs as it is formed by generated knowledge, as I will prove, then the intellect as it belongs to the Father is formed by generated knowledge; therefore generated knowledge belongs formally to the person of the Father himself, because to what person the intellect belongs as formed, to that same person belongs the knowledge by which it is formed. The assumption that needs to be proved I prove thus: to what person the intellect belongs as it is turned back on the formed intellect, to that person it belongs as it possesses the intellect formed for the object actually present; therefore it belongs to that person as it is formed by the object. The proof of this consequence is that a passive thing proportioned, disposed, and approximated to a sufficient proportioned active thing is of a nature to be immediately perfected by that active thing, from the Philosopher Metaphysics 9.5.1048a5-7; for, according to the Philosopher, something is in proximate potency when nothing needs to be added, subtracted, or lessened so that act might be present in it. But the intellect bare, as converted and having the intellect formed as present object, is a passive thing disposed, proportioned, and approximate to the intellect formed as a sufficiently active object; therefore the bare intellect as converted -with no variation made with respect to it, in subsistence or any entity as such - is formed by generated knowledge. And thus is the first consequence proved.Text cancelled by Scotus: “to which it is as intellect in potency as it were through the fact that it is in act under that essential knowledge.” ¹⁸¹

286. Here a response could be made that the intellect bare, through the fact that from it the knowledge is actually formed, or by the fact it is a quasi-matter informed by generated knowledge, has ‘existence’ in the generated person [I d.5 q.2 n.8]. But against this response are the two first arguments set down later [ibid. nn.5-8] against the opinion about quasi-matter, which is there specifically refuted.Text cancelled by Scotus: “The first is that in the intellect as bare, turned back on the intellect formed by simple knowledge, generated knowledge is formed; this I refute as follows...” ¹⁸²

287. I argue for the second [n.284] thus,Text cancelled by Scotus: “Again, that the Word be formed about the intellect as bare, and yet that it be impressed on the intellect as having essential knowledge [the matter of the fourth article], do not seem to stand together, because under what reason the intellect is the proximate about-which, under that it is also the proximate in-which; but at point f [n.278] he says that it is in quasi-potency to the Word through the fact that it is in act under essential knowledge.” ¹⁸³ that the intellect of the Father, when it has the object present to itself, is a natural principle, not only operative with respect to the intellection of the Father but also productive with respect to generated knowledge; therefore, when the reflexion is removed, it would still be a productive principle.

288. Again I prove the third [n.284] thus: if by conversion nothing is understood to be in the intellect which would not be understood to be there when no conversion is understood, then conversion is nothing there; if something is understood to be in the intellect which would not be understood without the conversion, what, I ask, is it? - not the presence of the object, not the perfection of the power, not finally the determination of the power to act or to the exercise of act. As to the way in which some posit that the will in us converts the intelligence to memory, it is plain that the will does not convert it to generation of the divine Word.

289. Again, this conversion is not an action which is an operation, because it is not intellection nor volition, nor is it an action productive of which.

290. [Article three] - The third article [n.282] is that the intellect informed by actual essential knowledge is a principle active and elicitive of generated knowledge.

291. This I refuteInterpolation [replacing what follows after ‘intellect bare’]: “from which generated knowledge is formed, and is communicated to the Son by an act of producing generated knowledge, - about which we will speak in distinction 5, and so I pass over it here.” ¹⁸⁴ as follows: the Word is not generated by intelligence but by memory,Text cancelled by Scotus: “The third article is that the turning back of the bare intellect on the formed intellect is necessary for the bare intellect to be formed by the formed intellect [n.277]. This I do not see.” ¹⁸⁵ according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.14 n.24;Interpolation: “But that intelligence or essential knowledge in the Father is not the formal idea of acting or generating the Word, I prove...” ¹⁸⁶ therefore, although in the Father memory, intelligence, and will go together,Interpolation: “through an act of intelligence but through an act of memory.” ¹⁸⁷ the Father does not generate the Son formally by intelligence as ‘by which’ but as it is memory. But as it has actual knowledge quasi-elicited and as second act, it is in act of intelligence, to which belongs all actual understanding; therefore as such it does not generate the Word, but as it is in act of memory, that is, as it has the intelligible object present to its intellect; for here first act is understood as if preceding second act, and second act is actual understanding.

292. Second thus: production more agrees with first act as active principle than with second act, because perfect operations are ends in their idea, and so they are not for the sake of other ends; therefore intellection as it is the operation of the Father is not the formal productive reason of any term, but only first act - by whose virtue the operation is elicited - will be productive principle.

293. Third thus: if the actual intellection of the Father is the formal idea of producing the Word, still the object as present to the Father’s intellect, as the intellect possesses the idea of memory, will be the prior productive principle of generated knowledge, because it is apparent in us that it is of a nature to generate more immediately than the act of understanding is; therefore some Word will be generated by the Father as he is memory itself before being generated by him as he is knowing intelligence itself.Interpolation: “at the end: ‘the way,’ he says, ‘that the Word of the Father is knowledge from knowledge, etc.’; knowledge according to him is only ever in the memory.” ¹⁸⁸

294. Further, all intellection, since its existence is in becoming, has a principle or quasi-principle whose existence is not in becoming, because otherwise there will be a process to infinity; therefore of some understanding of the object a, to wit the first understanding, only the memory must be the principle or quasi-existence such that it is not the whole complex ‘intellect understanding’ [n.221], otherwise there would not be a first intellection. But all understandings of a, and in an intellect of the same nature, are of the same nature. But whatever is the first principle of the first thing in a species can be the principle of anything else and immediately; therefore perfect memory of a can be the immediate principle or quasi-principle of every understanding of a. Therefore the memory of the Father can be the immediate principle of the Word; therefore necessarily it is.

On the contrary: therefore the memory of the Son to the intelligence of the Son is not as the memory of the Father to the intelligence of the Father.

295. Further, the Word is most immediately declarative of that by which it is most immediately expressed; therefore if the elicitive nature of the Word is the actual knowledge in the formed intellect of the Father, it follows that the Word is more immediately Word, or declarative, of the intellection of the Father than of the essence of the Father, which seems discordant, because then there would be some prior Word that would be immediately declarative of the essence of the Father, or one should say that the essence could not immediately be declared by some Word, which seems discordant, since according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.10 n.19: “knowledge formed by the thing which we contain in memory” is the word; the first object of the divine memory is essence as essence.

296. Further, if the actual intellection of the Father were generated or produced, it would be produced by virtue of the essence not as already known but as prior to all knowledge; this is plain also according to truth, because otherwise there would be a process to infinity in acts of understanding, namely act before act, and also according to them, because he said above [Henry of Ghent, n.278] that in the Father the essence itself in the Father’s intellect operates the act of understanding the essence. From this I argue as follows: actual knowledge of the essence cannot formally be of another idea in the persons by the fact that it is communicated by another or not communicated by another, because then deity would formally be of a different idea in the persons;Interpolation: “according to Augustine On the Trinity 15 ch.7 n.12, however.” ¹⁸⁹ therefore actual knowledge of the essence belongs to the same idea in the Father and in the Son.

Therefore, that which is of a nature to be the principle ‘by which’ with respect to one of them if it were principal, will be the same principle with respect to the other if it is what follows a principle.Text cancelled by Scotus: “There is a confirmation, that for you essence quasi-operates the essential act of understanding in the paternal intellect [n.278]; the essence then as present to the intellect is a sufficient principle ‘by which’ with respect to actual intellection; but the fact that it is only a quasi-principle with respect to it as it is in the Father is because the intellection of the Father is not producible; therefore with respect to actual producible knowledge it will be simply the principle ‘by which’, and so the first Word will not be produced by the actual intellection of the Father as by the formal productive idea.” ¹⁹⁰

297. I pass over the fourth article [n.282], except for the fact that by thinking in this way here he seems to contradict himself, as was argued before [footnote to n.285].

298. The second article [n.282] is also false in us, because the most perfect word will exist in the fatherland, according to Augustine On the Trinity XV ch.11 nn.20-21, and yet it will not be a word generated by a turning back on first act, so that the word, because of this, is a reflex act in the way he says that by the second knowledge which is in the word the intellect knows that it know and understands [n.274]. But the proof that the word is not reflex knowledge [n.257] is that the most perfect created word does not have for its first object something created but something uncreated.

299. The third article too [nn.282, 290] is false in us; both because confused knowledge cannot be the elicitive principle of distinct knowledge, just as neither can an imperfect thing be the elicitive principle of some perfect production; and also because the actual confused knowledge would exist at the same time with actual distinct knowledge, and so there would be two elicited acts at the same time, or a confused act would, when it did not exist, generate a distinct act; and also because every second act of understanding is generated by memory as memory exists in a first act proportional to itself, to wit perfect act by perfect memory, imperfect by imperfect, as will be clear later [I d.3 p.3 q.2 nn.12-13].