Norris Clarke on Univocity

 W. Norris Clarke was a Jesuit philosopher who taught at Fordam, dying in 2008. His books are still used as textbooks, so I thought it useful to comment on his characterization of Scotistic univocity. The following text is from his book The One and the Many, p. 45. For some discussion of Clarke's views, see this.

The Analogy of Being vs. the Univocity of Being. Some metaphysicians in St. Thomas’s own time, e.g., Duns Scotus (d. 1308), and William of Ockham (d. 1347), with their followers to this day, defended the univocity of the concept of being against Thomas. Both were leaders in the strong development of logic at the end of the Middle Ages (anticipating many of the developments of modern symbolic logic), and logicians tend to be uncomfortable with flexible ideas, “systematically vague concepts” like the Thomistic analogy of proper proportionality, especially as applied to being in God and creatures. And since their metaphysics were “essentialist,” i.e., focussed on being as essence (not including the act of existence as part of its content), it was hard for them to see how the concept of being could be applied to different essences without breaking up into several distinct concepts ceasing to have the same meaning at all, hence useless as a valid term in any syllogism or other logical argument, where all the terms must remain strictly fixed in the same meaning. Therefore, to retain any unity at all, being always had to be a univocal concept, even applied to God and creatures with their immense diversity as finite and infinite. But they had to pay a heavy price for this apparent logical clarity: they had to make the concept of being so extremely abstract as to empty it of practically all content and make it merely an empty linguistic marker standing for both God and creatures but, as Ockham explicitly admitted, expressing nothing common at all between God and creatures! The result was to render God considerably more remote and inaccessible to human reason than St. Thomas’s God, with important repercussions for the philosophy, theology, and finally spirituality of the late Middle Ages.

Comments:

1.The first thing to note here is that Clarke reads Scotus and Ockham (though he does not distinguish between them) though the lens of Thomism, specifically the real distinction of essence and existence. Hence the label "essentialist", inherited from Gilson. The claim here is that Scotus and Ockham ignore existence and are talking about being as a purely non-existential essence. Wolter, way back in his transcendentals book, commented on this claim of Gilson to the effect that it was an ingenious account of what Scotus would have said if he were a Thomist. But of course, Scotus is not a Thomist. Scotus denies the real distinction of essence and existence.

2. Clarke does grasp that part of the concern of univocity is to have valid syllogisms. He, Clarke, seems to think that being does not have a distinct concept, however, given that he thinks Scotus was also motivated by discomfort with vague ideas. This is a matter of debate among Thomists themselves, historically and today. Some agree with Scotus that there is a distinct concept of being that includes nothing else, some, like Clarke, think you can't separate the concept of being from the concept of God or of something in the categories. One then has to "stretch" created being to get a notion of the divine. Scotus, as we know, did think being had a distinct concept. 

3. The heavy price of univocity. Here I think Clarke's explanation goes awry. He claims that Scotus and Ockham make the concept of being abstract and empty, just a linguistic marker, but also that it stands for God and creatures. Of course, the concept of being, as such, does not stand for God and creatures. As it is included in the concept of God and the concept of a creature it is univocal, but of itself the concept of being is neither the concept of God nor the concept of a creature.  Clarke does not give a reference to the remark of Ockham's that he claims is explicit, to wit, that there is nothing common to God and creatures. This seems to clinch matters for Clarke, we arrive at basically a contradiction, being is univocal, but there is nothing common (which equals univocal, anyway). This appears to be a garbled awareness on the part of Clarke to the problem of the reality of the concept of being. This is the problem that the concept of being, qua abstract and univocal, signifies no corresponding reality outside the mind. This runs against the common notion from the Aristotelian commentary tradition that concepts map directly onto things. Normally, Scotus would agree; but to get to concepts of the transcendentals, you have to abstract from the concept you have derived from the actually existing thing. That abstraction does not correspond to the reality outside the soul. And note, this is a different sense of the word 'abstraction' than you get in Aquinas or even when you are talking about the three acts of the Aristotelian intellect. There is abstraction from the phantasm, that gets you the concept of a nature, say catness. To get being, you abstract from this nature, present in the intellect as an intelligible species, by stripping off the modes of finitude and so on. So in the end, considering God and creatures as they exist outside the soul, there is nothing in common. But one can abstract from the concept of a creature to the concept of being, which can also be applied to God.

4.  The alleged result is to make God more remote and unknowable. But since we have now seen that Scotus does not hold that the concept of being is both pure and contains the concept of God and creatures, the result doesn't follow either. Scotus himself, interestingly, defends the univocity of being not in metaphysics, but in the context of describing the natural knowledge of God. Not only being is univocal, but all the transcendentals, general divine attributes, are as well. So a lot more is known, both by an intellect trying to have a general cognition of the divine nature, as well as scientifically by means of forming valid demonstrations. Indeed, it has always seemed to me that Scotus is the affirmative theologian par excellence, who ought rather than Aquinas to be paired with Dante. But that can wait for another day.

5. Repurcussions. The alleged effect of rendering God more remote has repurcussions many later areas of life. The usual Thomist claim from the 20th century, disagreement with our man leads to societal decay. I've always been rather struck that the ones who trumpet this the loudest, the RO crowd, are by practice theologians who supposedly believe in sin, or at least weakness of will. sin seems to me to be a far better explanation than that of univocity for the apparently inevitable march from Scotus to whatever modern thing you don't like. If I were to have lived during the reformation period and watched christians killing each other over the proper definition of the eucharist I would probably try to set up a non christian secular state of skepticism as well. To be fair to Clarke, this is not the focus of the discussion, just a throwaway line at the end.

A Text on Scotus on Essence and Existence

While transcribing some stuff out of the Additiones secundi libri (compiled by William of Alnwick from the Oxford and Paris lectures of Scotus), I came across the following comment about the relation of essence and existence, a doctrine of paramount iportance in Thomism, but less so in Scotism.

Additiones II d. 16 q. 1: "esse est actus intrinsecus essentiae idem sibi realiter non ab ea progrediens"

"'to be' is an act intrinsic to essence, really the same as it, not coming forth from it"

Thomistic Essence and Existence as the Primary Christian Truth

Go here for a discussion of how the Thomistic doctrine of esse and essentia is a primary truth of Christian metaphysics, (conveniently) indemonstrable. What I can't get my mind around is the claim that every Christian thinker thinks this. Perhaps despite all the exposition of Aquinas it is not the specifically Thomistic view that is being argued for, but rather just that essence and existence are distinct in some unspecified way? For otherwise, how can we account for the dozens of scholastic theories on the topic?

Against the Real Distinction of Essence and Existence

In what follows I post some arguments against the real distinction of the Thomists by the super-famous thinker Himbertus de Garda. They are from a fascinating article that I have been meaning to do a post on, as it is full of material to delight both loremasters and the most hard-headed of philosophers. Here's the citation: William Duba, Christopher Schabel,  "Ni chose, ni non-chose: The Sentences-Commentary of Hibertus de Garda, OFM," Bulletin de Philosophie medievale 53 (2011), 149-232

Reminder of the meanings of the terms:

A distinctio ex natura rei is any distinction obtaining apart from the activity of the intellect, including the divine intellect.

A distinctio realis (or distincta realiter) is a distinction between entities that can exist without each other. Probably a subset of the ex natura rei distinction. Sometimes, as in the case of body and soul, only one of the items can exist without the other.

A distinctio formalis obtains ex natura rei but the items so distinguished (definitions, quiddities, formalities, parts of definitions, etc.) are not separable.

Ratio: probably here means definition, or a formal nature.

From Himbertus, Rep IA d. 36 a. 2 (ed D-S, 199-200):

There is a second mode of speaking, which is of our Doctor [=Scotus], that essence and actual existence are not really distinguished. Which is proved thus: whenever some things are really distinct, and one descends from the other, if that which descends is real, then that which remains will be real, as is clear regarding whiteness in a wall; but actual existence descends from essence, and essence remains,  and nevertheless is not real; therefore they are not really distinguished.

The second argument: if essence and actual existence are really distinguished, essence will actually exist without actual existence, because whenever some things differ really, one is able to be [esse] without the other; but essence is not able to actually exist without actual existence; therefore they are really the same.

Here are two doubts. It is said that essence is distinguished from actual existence: is it distinguished formally? I say that it is not, because when some things have the same definitional and quidditative ratio, they are the same formally; but essence and actual existence have the same definitional and quidditative ratio; therefore they are the same formally. The major premise is proved, for the formal ratio is taken from the definitional and quidditative ratio. The minor premise is also clear, because neither something else nor a new quiddity is acquired through actual existence.

Second thus: that which does not vary the formal ratio of something does not differ formally from that which it does not vary; but actual existence does not vary the formal ratio of essence; therefore it does not differ formally from it.

The second doubt is if essence and actual existence are distinguished ex natura rei. I say that they are, because whenever it is the case that something befalls one which does not befall the other, those are distinguished ex natura rei, if it befalls them ex natura rei; but it befalls essence that it is not in act, but in potency, and [it befalls] actual existence that it is in act; therefore they are distinguished ex natura rei.

Again, it befalls essence that it is indifferent to being and non being; but actual existence is not indifferent, because it is in act. Whence I say that actual existence and essence are the same really.

Number and Existence

I haven't posted much lately, because I've been studying a lot of things unrelated to Scotus and I'm always uncertain how far afield this blog should roam. For the last week, for instance, I've been reading Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit pretty intensively, along with Kalkavage's commentary, but I don't know that Smithy readers want to read about that.

They may not want to read about this, either, but I've seen a couple of references to Bill Vallicella's post about Inwagen and existence. Brandon Watson has a post on it, for instance, saying that Vallicella went too easy on Inwagen. I agree, and I also think that Watson went to easy on Vallicella, since in my opinion Inwagen's argument is worse than either of them indicate.

Here is the Maverick Philosopher:

Van Inwagen begins by noting that number words such as 'six' or 'forty-three' do not "mean different things when they are used to count objects of different sorts." Surely he is correct: "If you have written thirteen epics and I own thirteen cats, the number of your epics is the number of my cats." So the first premise of the argument is the indisputable:

1. Number-words are univocal in sense: they mean the same regardless of the sorts of object they are used to count.

I am okay with this. But not with this:

"2. "But existence is closely allied to number.". . . Van Inwagen proceeds: "The univocacy [univocity] of number and the the intimate connection between number and existence should convince us that existence is univocal." The conclusion of the argument, then, is:

3. Existence is univocal.

Vallicella is not okay with it either, but to my mind not for the right reason. Vallicella accepts that "existence is closely allied to number", but doesn't give a good reason for thinking so. He says, "to say that unicorns do not exist is equivalent to saying that the number of unicorns is zero, and to say that horses exist is equivalent to saying that the number of horses is one or more." I don't see that this is necessarily true at all. It depends on whether we're already talking about existence or not.

Take the following two statements:

a) The number of cats in the room right now is two.

b) Of the four hobbits that set out for Mount Doom, the number that arrived is two.

Now, the number "two" is univocal in both statements; the number two means the same thing regardless of the sorts of object it is used to count. And the two statements are true: my cats are two and Frodo and Sam are two, and in the same sense. But obviously the two hobbits don't have existence in the way that the cats do: my cats have actual existence and the hobbits don't and never did. Number numbers existing beings, but it can be used equally well to number things without existence. Non-existing things are numbered by the same number as existing things. So whence comes this "existence is closely allied to number"? I would propose that "to say that unicorns do not exist is equivalent to saying that the number of unicorns is zero" is only true when it's already clear that our domain of discourse is the actually existing world, which it often is not.

And what about numbers themselves? Do they exist? Do they exist in just the same sense that cats and dogs do? The number of cats in the room is two; does it make sense to ask what is the number of twos in the room? Numbers can be numbered; the number of primes between 1 and 10 is 4 (2,3,5,7). Do these four primes exist, then? But there are good reasons to claim that there cannot be an actually existing multitude; but the number of numbers is infinite. Do numbers then not exist, or just not all of them? Does a number have to number an existing multitude of things to exist? Call the number of existing particles in the universe (x); do the numbers (x) and (x+1) have the same kind of existence? The number of things that can be numbered by (x) is 1 (the collection of particles in the universe); the number of things that can be numbered by (x+1) is 0. Does this mean that the number (x) exists but that (x+1) doesn't? Do negative numbers etc. have actual existence or are they beings of reason?

Note that I'm not saying these issues can't be resolved, or that (for token Scotus relevance) we don't have a univocal concept of being, but that, while existing things can be counted or more generally quantified, not everything that can be counted or quantified exists. In this sense, the sense that whatever exists can be numbered, though number does not exhaust the being of anything that actually exists, we might say that "existence is closely allied to number." But then whatever exists can be cognized, so we might also say that "existence is closely allied to thought," or any number of similar statements. But we shouldn't infer anything about the nature of existence from this kind of thinking. We might as well argue that color as applied to men and holograms is univocal, since we see color in a hologram of a man and an actually existing man in the same way, so holograms and men have color in the same way, therefore holograms and men have the same kind of being.

Update: On further thought, I think a more useful approach would be to consider the transcendental convertibility between unity and being. Aristotle and his followers all agree that something has being just to the extent that it is one. But this unity is not numerical unity, the unity of counting, because different sorts of beings, e.g. fictional hobbits and real cats, can be counted with the same numbers. Scotus recognizes a less than numerical unity, the unity of universals; there is numerical unity, the unity whereby a thing can be counted as one item; perhaps we should also recognize a more than numerical unity, the unity of a real being, which comes in degrees.

On the identity of Quiddity and Esse

Here's one for the Thomists:

Duns Scotus, Rep. IA d. 11 q. 2 (Wolter-Bychkov I, 420):

Idem enim est quiditas et esse.

Here it is in context:

To the first reason, when it says that relations would distinguish either according to quiddity or according to being, I do not understand nor see what philosophy asserts this. For quiddity and being is the same thing. Hence, each distinguishes, because the being of a relation is 'towards another' just as its quiddity is, for the same thing both remains and passes over [into the essence], both according to being and according to quiddity. What, then, is [this relation] formally? Remaining as 'being towards another'. For it is not towards, or in relation to itself, as Augustine says: "What makes him God is not the same as what makes him Father." At the same time, to pass over is for something to be really the same thing as something else, not to form a composition with the latter. And it is in this way that a relation in the divine passes into [essence], because [then] it is the same thing as the essence, not producing a composition with it. Hence, the aforesaid distinction of a relation is non-existent; for this is to distinguish something into two relationships, one of which is nothing.  For a relation compared to its foundation is a nothing, because then it is not a relation, but only in potency towards an opposite. Hence, a relation in every way in which it is a relation is 'towards another' and is some reality; however according to how one thinks of it as compared to the foundation, it is the mean, as it were, as it is compared to the term.

Henry of Ghent on Aquinas and Existence

For Thomists the "real distinction" between essence and existence is a bedrock principle of metaphysics. Often (e.g. Jacques Maritain in Preface to Metaphysics et al.) a Thomist will speak as though the real distinction is one of the first and most obvious metaphysical truths that can be known. It's one of the principal "Thomistic Theses" and St Thomas uses it constantly, for instance here, in Summa Theologiae I.104.1 (For the Latin see the Logic Museum):

Therefore as the becoming of a thing cannot continue when that action of the agent ceases which causes the "becoming" of the effect: so neither can the "being" of a thing continue after that action of the agent has ceased, which is the cause of the effect not only in "becoming" but also in "being." This is why hot water retains heat after the cessation of the fire's action; while, on the contrary, the air does not continue to be lit up, even for a moment, when the sun ceases to act upon it, because water is a matter susceptive of the fire's heat in the same way as it exists in the fire. Wherefore if it were to be reduced to the perfect form of fire, it would retain that form always; whereas if it has the form of fire imperfectly and inchoately, the heat will remain for a time only, by reason of the imperfect participation of the principle of heat. On the other hand, air is not of such a nature as to receive light in the same way as it exists in the sun, which is the principle of light. Therefore, since it has not root in the air, the light ceases with the action of the sun.

Now every creature may be compared to God, as the air is to the sun which enlightens it. For as the sun possesses light by its nature, and as the air is enlightened by sharing the sun's nature; so God alone is Being in virtue of His own Essence, since His Essence is His existence; whereas every creature has being by participation, so that its essence is not its existence. Therefore, as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 12): "If the ruling power of God were withdrawn from His creatures, their nature would at once cease, and all nature would collapse." In the same work (Gen. ad lit. viii, 12) he says: "As the air becomes light by the presence of the sun, so is man enlightened by the presence of God, and in His absence returns at once to darkness."

Henry of Ghent paraphrases this passage in his Quodlibet I q.9, on whether a creature's essence is its being (my translation):

Those who say that in creatures the essence of a creature is one thing and its being another thing think that a creature participates in being. Whence they say that creatures are related to God as air to the sun illuminating it, for as the sun which shines by its nature, so that it is nothing other than light itself, so God has being through his nature and essence, for he is nothing other than being. And as air is of itself obscure, and of its nature is not altogether a participant in light unless it be illumined by the sun, participating through this light from the sun, so a creature of itself and of its essence does not have the character of being, but is in the darkness of nonentity, unless it be lightened by God and the being in which it participates be given to it.

After noting a different sense in which we might understand "participation", Henry goes on:

The first way of understanding the participation of a creature in being is mistaken; it is not an understanding but a phantastical imagination. For the essence of a creature should not be imagined like the air indifferent to obscurity and luminosity, but like a certain ray in itself apt to subsist, produced by the sun, not by the necessity of nature but by free will. Whence, if the sun by free will could produce a subsistent ray, that ray, inasmuch as its own nature is concerned, would be indifferent to being and non-being, and of itself would be a certain kind of non-being.

Henry goes on to explain the reason for the correction of St Thomas' image. In the image of the air being illumined by the sun the nature of the air is something different from the nature of the light or its illumination, whereas in a luminous body and the ray of light the nature of light is the same, though one light is dependent on and participates in the other. The ray which reaches our eye is not the same as the sun but is its similitude, as the creature is the similitude of God - but the air is not the similitude of the sun at all. (This seems to me to agree with the way Thomas elsewhere characterizes the essence of creatures as modes of imitability of the divine essence.) Thomas' image of the air's illumination is an image of one sort of thing being poured into another sort of thing to make it actual in a certain way, but for Henry (and, I might add, the Franciscan tradition in general along with him) existence can't be understood as a different sort of thing than the existing nature and added to it in order that it can be.

Of course, whether Henry's own account of the relation of essence and existence in terms of his intentional distinction is ultimately successful is another matter.

God as Being

The second paragraph of Scotus' De Primo Principio reads as follows (trans. Wolter):

O Lord our God, true teacher that you are, when Moses your servant asked you for your name that he might proclaim it to the children of Israel, you, knowing what the mind of mortals could grasp of you, replied: "I am who am," thus disclosing your blessed name. You are truly what it means to be, you are the whole of what it means to exist [or: you are true being, you are whole being]. This, if it be possible for me, I should like to know by way of demonstration. Help me then, O Lord, as I investigate how much our natural reason can learn about that true being which you are if we begin with the being which you have predicated of yourself.

In The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy Etienne Gilson comments on this passage:

Nothing can surpass the weighty fullness of this text, since it lays down at once the true method of Christian philosophy, and the first truth whence all the others derive. Applying the principle of St Augustine and St Anselm, the Credo ut intelligam, Duns Scotus, at the very outset of his metaphysical speculation, makes an act of faith in the truth of the divine word; like Athenagoras, it is in the school of God that he would learn of God. No philosopher is invoked as intermediary between reason and the supreme Master; but forthwith, after the act of faith, philosophy begins.

Gilson has a number of favorable remarks about Scotus in the present book. Here is another one, from an endnote: "Duns Scotus' proofs of God's existence should occupy a prominent place in any history of Christian philosophy, for they are immediately based on the idea of being and its essential properties, causality and eminence."

Reflecting on Essence and Existence

I wanted to address some of what commenter "AT" says in this thread, not because I have a burning urge to refute him, but because this is a topic I'm none too sure of myself and I'd like to reflect on it. So I hope our commenter will forgive my using his remarks as a springboard. He writes:

To say something that doesn't exist has a potency to exist doesn't seem to make sense. If true this would mean the things created by God had a potency to be created. Where would this potency come from? Not from God because in God there is no potency. Also, creation was a free act of God and didn't depend on anything else.

I think that many theologians would admit that "the things created by God had a potency to be created". This potency doesn't come from anywhere except the intrinsic properties of the essences themselves. Now, the commenter makes two claims, each of which is true in one sense and - according to some theories at least - false in another respect.

1) The potency to be created cannot come from God because there is no potency in God.

I think we need to distinguish, as Faber does, between active and passive potency. God can't have passive potency whereby something other that himself can cause anything about or in him. But God can and does have an active potency to cause things other than himself.

I think that we would want to say that the "creatibility" of essences before creation comes from God, not insofar as he has the ability to create them, but insofar as he understands them. That is, the active potency of God to create (in the example) a rose, comes from, and is logically posterior to, his understanding of the essence of a rose, whether or not he decides ever to create any. "AT" says in another comment, "I think you will agree that God knows things which have never existed, don't now exist, and will never exist. In what sense could they be said to have a potency to exist?" To which I reply, that have a potency to exist insofar as they can exist but do not. It can't be the case the essence of a rose in itself is posterior to its existence, since it had to be an "existible" object, intelligible to the mind of God and willable by his will, in order for it to be created. This is because a rose has an intrinsic intelligible structure, a nature, a quod quid erat esse, which can be grasped and expressed whether there is an actually existing rose. This essence exists in the mind of God as an exemplar, a divine idea, and the existent rose is conforms to it, in a way analogous to the way the concept of the rose in our minds conforms to the essence as existing in the real rose.

To show that the essence pre-exists in the mind of God, before God decides to create it, we can advert to the (presumed) fact that there are other possible kinds of flowers which God also knows about, but has never created and will never create. The essences of these flowers remain externally non-existent, in the sense that there are no such flowers, but there still are such essences, in the sense that they are possible and God knows them to be such.

2) Creation is a free act of God and doesn't depend on anything else.

From the foregoing we can infer that creation, while indeed a free act, does depend on something else, namely the prior understanding of what is to be created, not as a cause of the act of creation per se, but as a sine qua non. For if the essence to be created was not an intelligible structure and if it were not already understood in the mind of God, God could never will to create it. This is no way compromises the freedom of divine action, since the act of understanding something as creatible in no way determines that it should be created, but it is a necessary condition (as Faber said a little while back, it's an essentially ordered co-cause).

The difficulty of the "real distinction" is that it treats essences as though they are the matter of existence. Just as matter, according to St Thomas, does not exist until actualized by some form, so form does not exist until actualized by existence. Can an essence, like the nature of a rose, be thought of in this respect?

But if we don't want to think of the form or essence as a potential principle, then we have to grapple with this separability criterion - which amounts to the claim that the essence can "exist" in the mind of man or of God, but without "existing" in its own right. Since the essences of elanor and simbelmyne "are", in the sense that I can tell you what sort of flowers they are and what their natural habitats are and what are the differences between them, and yet since they do not exist, since the flowers are fictional and there aren't any, it seems that it isn't true that if there is an essence then a thing of which it is the essence exists.

There's lots more to think about here, and perhaps I'll come back to it soon.

Reply to the Maverick Philosopher

Dr Vallicella has honored me by responding to my last post at his blog, here:

Here is most of the reply that I posted there:

According to him: You write that God is a nature, and that this nature is thrice instantiated in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But the reader may notice that I never wrote any such thing. It is clear that Dr Vallicella taken the word “nature” in the wrong sense, and read “instantiation” into it when this is doctrinallly inappropriate. Again, he writes, Your talk of instantiation suggests that God is a multiply instantiable entity whose instances are F, S, HG.

But I very much wish to deny this. It is central to monotheism that there is only one instance of the divine nature, and so whatever the multiplication of persons in God may be taken to mean, it cannot mean that there is more than one instance of God or individual God, which as he rightly points out compromises monotheism. As St Bonaventure says (In Sent. I.2.1): “It is impossible for there to be several gods, and if the meaning of the word ‘God’ is correctly received it is not only impossible but even unintelligible.”

So his use of “nature” to mean “multiply instantiable entity” suggests that the divine nature is a universal which is individuated in three instances. But the divine nature is not a universal, apt to be applied to or predicated of many, but a “form” which is singular by necessity. Theologians explain this necessity because of God’s simplicity (in order for a universal to be multiply instantiated it has to enter into composition with some individuating factors, but the divine nature is neither composible nor composed), God’s infinity (the divine nature is without limitation, but every case of instantiation involves a delimitation of one instance from all others), and so forth. Duns Scotus writes (in Reportatio I-A 2.3.3), “Whatever is of itself just a ‘this’ cannot possibly be multiplied, but whatever exists in the divine that is of one sort, is just of itself ‘this’ [i.e. is individual per se]”.

Every orthodox theologian, therefore, denies that in the Trinitarian productions – the generation of the Son by the Father or the spiration of the Holy Ghost by the Father and the Son – God produces another God, precisely because the divine nature cannot be multiplied. Again, Scotus (Reportatio I-A 5.1.1): “The essence neither procreates nor is procreated, and all the arguments that I find why it does not generate really come down to this. If this thing generates, then it procreates a real thing distinct from this essence. For no real thing generates itself. Therefore, it procreates some real thing that is not in the divine nature, because intrinsically there is no diversity there . . .”

If the divine nature were multiplied, there would be a plurality of Gods, and so a plurality of divine existences, operations, etc. But it’s intrinsic to the doctrine of the Trinity that the being or existence of the Father and the Son is one being. The operation whereby God creates the world is one operation, equally belonging to all three persons, not three cooperative activites. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not one God because they are each a (different) instance of the divine nature, but because they are each the same instance of the divine nature. Scotus once more (Reportato I-A 4.2): God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost “by a singularity which is shared, by which ‘this God’ is common to all three. And a singularity or haecceity similar to this is not to be found in creatures, because in creatures nothing is a ‘this’ except by the ultimate haecceity, which is completely incapable of being shared.”

That is, for creatures a supposit or hypostasis is only distinguished from another one of the same nature by the multiplication of the nature through an individuating difference. “Humanity” is not a singular individual nature by itself, but only by an additional instantiating factor. But “deity” is a singular individual nature by itself.

This is why the divine persons are said to be distinguished from one another only by their relations of origin. The Son has the very same deity that the Father has, which means he shares every single attribute belonging to the Father, except Paternity. In begetting the Father communicates his numerically identical essence and existence to the Son, and fails to communicate only his ingeneracy, the fact that he is unbegotten. St Bonaventure writes (In Sent. 1.4.1.1): Whatever the Son has, he has either freom himself or from another; but he has deity, and not from himself, for then he would be unbegotten, therefore he has it from another.”

So there is no individuting factor in the three divine Persons except their relations of origin, and these relations are within the single divine nature or essence rather than multiplications of it. Paternity and Filiation are ways in which the one God is related to himself. The divine persons as distinct from one another have only relative subsistence, as opposed to the absolute subsistence of the divine nature. Again, this is contrast to the state of things we’re familiar with, in which for there to be many human persons there have to be many humanities. St Bonaventure once more (In Sent. 1.4.1.2): “Father and Son and Holy Ghost are united in this name ‘God’, not from diverse causes [of individuality] but by reason of one deity or essence. [In contrast] there is a union of diverse causes, for example, when Peter and John are united in ‘man’, but by reason of diverse instances of humanity, because the humanity of Peter is one thing while that of John is another. . . . but Father and Son and Holy Spirit are united in one deity or essence but are distinct by reason of the plurality of persons.”

Any nature except the divine nature is a “multiply instantiable entity”, not individual through itself, and so the multiplication of hypostases, persons, or supposits requires the multiplication of the nature through some individuating factor in addition to the essence, whereby John’s humanity is specifically identical to but numerically distinct from Peter’s humanity. But, as I said before, the divine nature is necessarily individual through itself, and so in the multiplication of supposits in God the nature “deity” remains numerically as well as specifically identical, and the supposits or person are only distinct through their constituting relations.

More from Petrus Thomae on Intelligible Being

The following are six conclusions and twelve propositions excerpted from Petrus Thomae's QQ. De esse intelligibili, Q.3: "Utrum illud esse intelligibili quod habuit quiditas creabilis ab aeterno sit esse creatum." In the text each conclusion is surrounded by a mass of argumentation, examples, rambling, etc., which I've removed so that they can be seen on their own and some idea can be formed of Petrus' position. After the conclusions and some other stuff the propositions follow in straight sequence.

I. Six Conclusions

i. The intelligibility of the quiddities of creatibles is not caused or produced through a compared act of the divine intellect, as some say.

ii. The intelligibility of creatible things is not caused or produced by the divine intellect directly.

iii. The intelligibility of a creature is not caused or produced by the divine intellection as though principiated.

iv. The [divine] essence does not create the intelligibility of creatible things as an exemplar.

v. The essence does not cause the intelligiblity of creatibles metaphorically.

vi. The intelligibility of created things is not created or caused in any way.

II. Twelve Propositions

i. The divine essence is a certain most perfect intelligible mirror.

ii. In this mirror, out of its own maximal and highest perfection, everything other than itself is represented.

iii. In this mirror everything which can be mirrored has mirrorable being.

iv. Nothing really distinct from either can mediate between that mirror and the mirrorable.

v. There is nothing which is not mirrorable by the divine intellect.

vi. That mirrorable being is neither from the [divine] essence nor by the essence nor by anything else, nor briefly can it be construed with any proposition denoting any causality of any sort meant by 'from' or 'by'.

vii. That mirrorable being, although not from the essence nor by the essence, can still be said to be in it, not subjectively, but as in what necessarily results or follows from it.

viii. The necessity of this following-upon places no imperfection in the divine essence.

ix. This necessity is not one of dependence, but one of a certain necessary following-upon of resolution or of shining-forth, in that way in which, in the perfect mirror, every mirrorable necessarily shines forth.

x. Although there is no dependence between this mirror and this mirrorable, there is nevertheless a correlation between them, for the mirrorable is necessarily correlated with the mirror as that which necessarily results upon it.

xi. This correlation posits an imperfection on the part of the mirrorable and a pefection on the part of the mirror.

xii. Although the quiddity of a creature according to this intelligible being is not caused, still it is truly creatible in itself. For that intelligible being does not prevent it from being placed in actual existence, and so caused.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

As conceptualized, existence manifests itself as absolutely necessary for the constitution of the thing. As originally grasped through judgment, it shows itself to be accidental to the thing. Existence is that way. It has both aspects, and allows itself to be known under both. If either aspect is neglected or excluded, a one-sided picture arises. If the specific role of judgment is not understood, the contingent side of existence is disregarded as irrelevant to philosophy, for instance in Aristotle and Duns Scotus. If the universalizing and necessitating function of conceptualization is set aside in the case of existence, the extreme individualism and antinomian vagaries of recent existentialist movements result. Existence, as actually found in things, is both highly individual and necessarily specified by a universalizing nature that it actuates. For a balanced estimate, neither viewpoint, neither cognitional approach, can afford to be neglected.

--Joseph Owens, An Interpretation of Existence, 62.