Chapter 52 — Solution of the difficulty: in God there is no distinction except according to relation

The principle for solving this difficulty must be derived from this fact: namely, that there are different ways something can originate or proceed among different kinds of things. Among lifeless beings, which do not move themselves but can only be moved from outside, one thing arises from another by being, as it were, outwardly altered and changed. In this way fire is generated from fire and air from air.

But among living beings, whose characteristic property is that they move themselves, something is generated within the one generating; for example, the fetuses of animals and the fruits of plants. Moreover, one must notice different ways of proceeding among living beings according to their different powers and operations. For there are certain powers in them whose operations extend only to bodies according as they are material; this is clear with regard to the powers of the vegetative soul, which serve nutrition, growth, and generation. In virtue of this class of the soul’s powers, there proceeds only what is bodily and bodily distinct, although in the case of living beings what proceeds is joined in some way to that from which it proceeds.

There are other powers whose operations, although they do not go beyond bodies, nonetheless extend to the species of bodies by receiving them without their accompanying matter. This is the case with all the powers of the sensitive soul. For sense is capable of receiving species without matter, as the Philosopher says. But such faculties, although they are receptive of the forms of things in a sort of immaterial way, do not receive them without a bodily organ. If procession takes place within these powers of the soul, that which proceeds will not be something bodily, nor will it be distinct from or joined to that faculty whence it proceeds in a bodily way, but in a certain non-bodily and immaterial way (although not entirely without the help of a bodily organ). This is how, in animals, the representations of things imagined proceed, which exist in the imagination not as a body in a body, but in a certain spiritual way. This is why Augustine calls imaginary vision spiritual.

But if something proceeds in a way that is not bodily when the imagination operates, this will be the case much more in the operation of the intellectual faculty, which does not need a bodily organ in its operation, but whose operation is entirely immaterial. For in an intellectual operation a word proceeds in such a way that it exists in the very intellect of the speaker: not as locally contained there, nor as bodily separated, but as existing in it according to the power of the natural operation while distinct from it according to the order of origin. The same is true in that procession which is observed to take place in the operation of the will, so far as the beloved exists in the lover, as was said above.

However, although the intellectual and sensitive powers are nobler in character than the powers of the vegetative soul, nothing that subsists in the nature of the same species proceeds either in men or in other animals according to the procession of the imaginative or sensitive faculties. This occurs only in that procession which takes place through the operation of the vegetative soul. The reason for this is that in all beings composed of matter and form, the multiplication of individuals in the same species is effected by a division of matter. Hence among men and other animals, composed as they are of form and matter, individuals are multiplied in the same species by the bodily division which ensues in the procession that is proper to the operation of the vegetative soul, but that does not take place in other operations of the soul. In beings that are not composed of matter and form, there can only be formal distinction. But if the form that is the reason for the distinction is a thing’s substance, then the distinction must be between subsistent things. (Of course, this is not the case if the form in question is not the substance of the thing.)

As is clear from what has been said, every intellect has this in common: what is conceived in the intellect must in some way proceed from the knower, so far as he is knowing; and it must be in some way distinguished from him by its procession, just as the conception of the intellect, which is the intellectual likeness, is distinguished from the knowing intellect. Similarly, the affection of the lover, whereby the beloved is in the lover, must proceed from the will of the lover insofar as he is loving. But the divine intellect has this unique to itself: since God’s understanding is his existence, his intellectual conception (which is the intelligible likeness) must be his substance; and the case is similar with affection in God’s loving. Consequently, the representation in the divine intellect, which is God’s Word, is not distinguished from him who produces the Word as regards substantial existence, but only according to the relation of procession of one from the other. The case is similar concerning the affection of love in God loving, which pertains to the Holy Spirit.

Thus it is plain that nothing prevents God’s Word, who is the Son, from being one with the Father in substance, and that, nevertheless, the Word is distinct from the Father according to the relation of procession, as we have said. Hence it is also evident that the same thing does not arise or proceed from itself; for the Son, as proceeding from the Father, is distinct from him. And the same observation holds true of the Holy Spirit, relative to the Father and the Son.