Quaest. 2, Art. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/9/d/2/q/bon-qmt-q2-a2
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### Article II. *Whether unity of nature can stand together with a trinity of persons.*

Granted that the divine *being* is one in the highest degree, the question is asked next whether unity of nature can stand together at the same time with a trinity of person. And that they are incompossible seems to be shown thus.

1. That is more one which is one by form and by supposit than what is one by only one of the two: therefore if the divine *being* is one by form and not by hypostasis, it seems that it is not one in the highest degree.

2. Likewise, that is more one which is one by substance and by property than what is one by only one of the two; but a trinity cannot stand without a plurality of properties: therefore it necessarily takes something away from the account of the one: therefore these two cannot stand together.

3. Likewise, a thing is one to the degree that it is undivided, by the definition of the one: therefore in what is one in the highest degree there is undividedness in every way, and therefore also indistinction in every way, and therefore no plurality: therefore either there is no trinity there, or there is no highest unity there.

4. Likewise, that is more one which is one in reality and in account than what is one in reality only; but a trinity of persons cannot stand together with unity of account: therefore it takes something away from the perfection of the highest unity, and therefore they cannot stand together.

5. Likewise, it is a rule that « whatever things are the same as one and the same thing are the same as each other », if that one thing is one without qualification; either therefore the divine substance is not one in the highest degree, and the persons do not share in it; or one person does not differ from another; but on either of these granted, trinity and unity are incompossible.

6. Likewise, it is a rule that when things are so related that one is predicated formally of the other, then, the one being multiplied, the other is multiplied too, as is plain in man and animal, and in whiteness and colour; but formally the person is the essence: therefore if there are several persons, there are also several essences; and so the same follows as before.

7. Likewise, syllogistic form does not fail in propositions true of themselves, in which no accident is to be found; but these propositions are true of themselves: every person is distinguished, every person is the essence: therefore the essence is distinguished, therefore it is numbered, therefore it is not one in the trinity of persons.

8. Likewise, it is a rule that, the thing defined being multiplied, the definition and the defining terms are multiplied; but substance and nature fall in the definition of person: therefore if there are several persons, there are also several essences and substances and natures: therefore a plurality of persons cannot be compatible with the highest unity in respect of the divine nature.

9. Likewise, a person is said either according to *substance* or according to *relation*. If according to *relation*: then it would be the same to say several persons and several relations; if according to *substance*: then the multiplication of the person is a multiplication of substance and nature: therefore unity in nature is incompossible with trinity in persons.

10. Likewise, when I say: the person is one, the essence is one; either by the *same* unity, or by *another*. If by *another*: then there are several unities, and therefore not one in the highest degree; if by the *same*: then if the one is made plural, so is the other; and if the one is not made plural, neither is the other: therefore trinity and the highest unity are incompossible.

11. Likewise, production does not belong to the person except by reason of nature; but there is no plurality in the divine

except by reason of production: therefore if production makes the person plural, it will equally make the nature plural: therefore plurality here cannot stand with the highest unity of nature.

12. Likewise, the highest simplicity of God excludes composition not only in nature but also in person: therefore, since unity is related to plurality as simplicity is to composition, if there is the highest unity in the divine nature, there will be able to be no plurality, neither in nature nor in person.

13. Likewise, either there is no distinction in the divine *being*, or there is a most perfect distinction; but the most perfect distinction is that which is taken according to form: since therefore this cannot stand with the highest unity, it remains that either there is no highest unity there, or there is no plurality there.

14. Likewise, unity and truth are reflected upon themselves, to whatever nature they are attributed: if therefore there is a true plurality in the divine, then truth is made plural there, therefore there are several truths, and therefore also several entities: therefore there is no true unity; and so the same follows as before.

15. Likewise, *that the Father generates* and *that the Holy Spirit proceeds* are two truths, if there is a trinity in the divine, therefore there are two truths: therefore if a plurality of truths is repugnant to the highest unity, it remains that a plurality of persons is so too.

16. Likewise, in that trinity there is either a repetition of the *same* unity or of *another*. If of the *same*: then there is no plurality according to the thing, and so it is idle talk and superfluity; if of *another*: then, since the multiplication and aggregation of diverse unities is repugnant to the highest unity, the point is plain, etc.

17. Likewise, every plurality is reducible to unity; but in God nothing is to be posited which is reducible to something else: therefore etc.

18. Likewise, *many things in many* express the highest distinction, therefore *one thing in one* expresses the highest unity, by the topic from *opposites*: therefore if there is the highest unity in God, it follows that there is no plurality there.

19. Likewise, God has nothing except from himself: therefore whatever person is God has from itself whatever it has; but only one person can be from itself: therefore with the unity of the divine *being* a plurality on the side of the person cannot stand.

20. Likewise, where there is plurality, there is diversity; and where there is diversity, there is a lessening of identity; and where there is a defect of identity, there is not the highest unity: therefore etc.

*But it is objected* on the contrary *by authority and by reason; by authority* thus.

1. In the fifth chapter of the First Epistle of John: *There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one*; I call *one without qualification* that which I say with nothing added: therefore they are one without qualification: therefore trinity does not take away unity.

2. Likewise, Bernard to Eugene: « Among all unities the unity of the Trinity holds the citadel »; but what holds the summit among certain things has its being at the highest point: therefore the unity of the Trinity is the highest unity, and therefore a true trinity and the highest unity stand together.

3. Likewise, a plurality of individuals is not repugnant to the unity of the species, but rather they stand together: therefore if *nature* names the common form, while *person* names the individual or supposit, the trinity of persons in no way derogates from the unity of the essence.

4. Likewise, a plurality of natures is not repugnant to the unity of the person, but rather they stand together, as is plain in man: therefore, by *conversion*, a plurality of persons in the divine is not repugnant to the unity of the essence or nature: therefore they can stand together without lessening.

5. Likewise, we find in one person one nature, as in an angel, and we find in one person three most diverse natures, as in Christ: therefore it seems that it is not only possible but in the highest degree fitting to find in one nature a trinity of persons; and this is so in God: therefore etc.

6. Likewise, that unity is more excellent which remains one in many than that which cannot preserve its own unity except in one person; but the divine unity is most excellent: it is necessary therefore that it stand with a plurality of persons; therefore it has no opposition to it.

7. Likewise, as the Philosopher says, « what generates does not generate another except on account of matter »; but in the divine there is no matter: therefore what generates is not other than what is generated. Nor yet can the same thing generate itself: therefore if in the divine there is generation, and that without matter, then there is a plurality of persons with no multiplication of the form.

8. Likewise, as Damascene says, « to generate is to produce one like oneself out of one's own substance »; but the divine substance is impartible: therefore it is necessary that what generates give to what is generated the whole substance: therefore

they cannot be distinguished according to substance. And yet they are distinguished; and not by an *accident*, since in the divine there is no accident: therefore by *person*: there remains therefore a distinction in person together with indistinction in every way in nature.

9. Likewise, that unity is more perfect in which, together with unity of nature, there remains unity of charity; but « charity tends toward another »: therefore it includes a distinction of the one loving and the one loved: therefore if the divine unity is most perfect, it is necessary that it have an intrinsic plurality; for outside itself it has nothing which is supremely lovable.

10. Likewise, likeness and equality and identity all at once enclose in their understanding both plurality and unity; which is plain, because « likeness is the same quality of differing things »: therefore, since the highest likeness can exist both in reality and in understanding; and since the highest likeness and identity can neither be nor be thought without unity and with plurality: therefore either it is necessary that the highest unity and a true plurality stand together, or the highest likeness will neither be able to be thought nor to be, and thereby no likeness of any kind at all. But if these things are impossible, it remains that in God the highest unity and a true plurality stand together.

**CONCLUSION.**

*The highest unity and trinity in God have no repugnance, but a wondrous concord and harmony.*

**I respond:** It must be said that in the divine, trinity and the highest unity have no repugnance, but a wondrous concord and harmony, according to what *the most healthful faith* says; and this too the *soul purified and raised up in some measure by faith* can grasp; otherwise it is difficult and impossible that it should understand, unless it first assent.

The *Christian faith*, therefore, says that the divine nature is one and one in the highest degree; and yet there are three persons there, of whom one is of another and from another, and therefore they share in essence and form, but are distinct in their own property. — Now these things seem to unbelievers to be incompossible, but to believers they seem not to be repugnant but to be consonant. But that we may be able to understand this, two things must be noted here: the first is how person and nature are notified; the second is how they are related to production; the first takes away the repugnance, while the second brings in the consonance.

It must be known, therefore, that, as Boethius says in *On the Two Natures and One Person*, « nature is the specific difference informing each several thing »; « *person*, however, is an individual substance of a rational nature », or, as Richard says, « an incommunicable existence ». This, then, is the difference: that *nature* expresses the form itself, by which each thing is what it is; whereas *person* expresses the individual or incommunicable supposit. — On account of ignorance of these definitions the heretics said that in Christ there were two persons, as there were two natures; others, that there was one nature, as there was one person; because they did not see the difference between these, and if they had known it they would have seen how a plurality of natures could stand with unity of person, as is plain in any man whatever. If therefore *a plurality of nature* and unity of person are not repugnant, so far as concerns themselves, then by the same reasoning, and conversely, *a plurality of person* and unity of nature are not repugnant; and if they are not repugnant, then they can be found in God.

Now they not only have a *different notification*, but they are also *related in different ways* to production. For since it belongs to the *supposit* to act through the form, it belongs to the *person* to produce and to be produced, not to the *nature*, but it belongs to the *nature* to be communicated through production; since therefore the divine nature is impartible and without any matter, it is not multiplied nor numbered by division or by partition: it is therefore altogether *one* in the produced and in the producer. But since no one can produce himself, it is necessary that there be a *plurality* on the side of the person. Since in the emanation of the persons the *nature* stands in the account of what is communicable, and the *person* stands in the account of what produces; on account of that same emanation it is necessary that there be plurality in the persons and unity in the nature, so that there is no repugnance there, but the highest concord. — Since therefore neither does plurality divide the unity, nor does unity confound the plurality, the divine *being* appears singularly admirable and admirably singular. For this belongs to it alone on account of its highest *simplicity*, which does not allow the nature to have a part nor to be aggregated with matter; and therefore it belongs to it alone, and thereby admirably, because nothing altogether like it can be found. To be one in many, therefore, without any multiplication or diversification of essence, is properly proper to the divine nature and its singular privilege. And this privilege the *first and highest one* must have: because it is first and highest, therefore it is one in such a way that it can in no way be formally multiplied; it is one in such a way that it cannot be confined nor restricted to one supposit only; it is one in such a way that there is not taken from it the eternal ground of being a principle in respect of one

coequal and coeternal and most perfect with it. — Hence no one perfectly praises the divine unity unless he equally attributes trinity to it; nor does anyone perfectly worship one God unless he faithfully professes that he is three. — Hence the reasons which show this are to be conceded.

1. To that which is objected in the first place, it must be said that form is twofold: one which is multiplied in several supposits, and in such a form perfect unity and a plurality of supposits cannot stand together. The other is a form which does not admit of being numbered in several supposits, of which kind is the form of deity; and because such a form is in no way numbered through a plurality of supposits, therefore a true plurality and the highest unity stand together with it — which the name *trinity* intimates, in which unity of nature is enclosed together with plurality.

2. To that which is objected, that a thing is more one which is one by substance and by property, etc.: it must be said that property is twofold, namely *absolute* and *respective*. If it be understood of the *absolute*, it holds true; but if of the *respective*, it does not hold true, for the reason that plurality in respect of *respective* property does not posit diversity in the thing and in the nature, neither in respect of the *essence* nor in respect of the *being*, but expresses only a varied *relation*, which is not incompossible with the highest unity, as can be shown by examples in the point and in unity.

3. To that which is objected, that the more a thing is one, the more it is undivided: it must be said that *undividedness* in the definition of the one excludes that division which is of a whole into parts; but the unity of the trinity is not related to the plurality of persons as a whole to parts, since the whole deity is in the several persons most fully and most perfectly; and therefore personal distinction is not repugnant to that undividedness which is to be found in what is one in the highest degree.

4. To the other, that a thing is more one which is one in reality and in account, etc.: it must be said that account is twofold: one which adds something real differing from the thing, of which kind is the account according to that *which it is*. The other account adds nothing differing according to that *which it is*, but only by reason of that *to which it is*; and in this way the proposition laid down does not hold true, because a plurality of such accounts takes nothing away from the highest unity of the essence or nature.

5. To that which is objected, that whatever things are the same as one and the same thing are the same as each other: it must be said that this is understood of identity in a supposit; and hence it is that, although the *dignative* unity which is in Christ is less than the unity of the trinity which is in God, nevertheless man is predicated of God, and God of man, by reason of the *unity of person*; whereas the Son is not predicated of the Father, nor the Father of the Son, by reason of the *unity of nature*, since the distinction of supposits stands in the way. — Or it can be said that that maxim does not fail if it be understood of the *same genus of unity*, but if it be transferred to another genus of unity, then the understanding of that proposition is taken neither rightly nor soundly. For it does not follow that, if certain things are one with something by *identity of genus*, on that account the persons are the same as each other in *number*. In this way too, in the case before us, it must be understood that even if essence and person are one essentially, it does not follow that they are one with each other personally; but it is enough that they have an essential unity with each other.

6. To that which is objected, that *in formal predication, the subject being multiplied, the predicate is multiplied*: it must be said that this holds true when the multiplication of the subject comes about through addition or *formal diversity*; for then it is necessary that with the multiplication of the subject there come about a multiplication of the predicate. But it is not so in the case before us; for the pluralizing of the persons is not a formal pluralizing, nor is it through the addition of some absolute quality, but through origin alone and a respective emanation.

7. To that, however, which is objected, that syllogistic form does not fail in propositions true of themselves: it must be said that although in the divine there is no *accident by inherence*, nevertheless, because there are there various *modes of saying*, namely according to *substance* and according to *relation*, so that « substance contains the unity, and relation multiplies the trinity »: hence it is that in this respect one of those modes of predicating or of saying is foreign to the other; and this suffices to introduce the *fallacy of accident*.

8. To that which is objected, that, the thing defined being multiplied, the defining terms are multiplied: it must be said that this holds true of those things which fall in the definition formally and in the direct case; but *nature* falls in the definition of *person* in an oblique case, while *substance*, in the sense in which it falls in the definition of person, is the same as *hypostasis*, which is made plural in the divine without essential pluralizing.

9. To that which is objected, that a person is said either according to substance or according to

relation, etc.: it must be said that *person* is nothing else than « a hypostasis distinguished by a property », and therefore it is said according to an *intrinsic* relation and according to a substance that is not *common* but *proper*; and therefore it does not follow that there is there only a plurality of relations, nor that there is there a diversity of natures on account of the pluralizing of the divine persons.

10. To that which is objected, that person and essence, since each is one, are so either by the same unity or by one and another: it must be said that they are neither altogether the same nor altogether other, but the same *in reality*, not the same *in account*, because, according to what Augustine says, « by one thing God is, and by another the Father is » — not because there is between deity and paternity a difference according to essence or according to *being*, but according to the account of standing thus, since the Father is said in relation to another, whereas the essence is not.

11. To that which is objected, that production does not belong to the person except by reason of nature: it must be said that *production* regards the *person* as standing in the account of subject and of principle and of object or term, and therefore a true production necessarily makes the person be pluralized; but it regards the *nature* as the *ground of producing* and as that which is communicated through production; and because in that production the whole of what is had is given, and is not lost when it is given, therefore, although the person is pluralized, the nature is nevertheless not multiplied.

12. To that which is objected, that the highest simplicity excludes composition in nature and in person: it must be said that the highest *simplicity* excludes composition *out of others* and *with another*; and therefore it cannot stand with composition either of nature or of person; but the highest *unity* of nature excludes nothing but essential diversity: and therefore it is not incompossible with personal plurality, and thereby the case is not alike on the one side and on the other.

13. To that which is objected, that in the divine *being* there must be either a most perfect distinction or none: it must be said that a distinction is called *perfect* in two ways: either *intensively* or *completively*. In the first way it need not be posited in God, but in the second; and in this way it is there, because a thing is more perfect the less it withdraws from unity. Since therefore that plurality does not withdraw from the highest unity, hence it is that it alone is a plurality at once true and most perfect.

14. To that which is objected, that unity and truth are reflected upon themselves: it must be said that this holds true in the singular and not in the plural. But when truth is compared to plurality, and conversely, this is not done singularly but plurally; and therefore there is no necessity of consequence there. For when a *true* plurality is said to be in the divine, *true* expresses nothing else than the expression of the plurality which is in the supposits; but when, conversely, truth is said to be *made plural*, a multiplication is intimated in the truth itself and in the divine essence.

15. To that which is objected, that it is one truth that the Father generates and another that the Holy Spirit proceeds: it must be said that if it be understood of the *truth of what is complex*, such as the truth of a sentence or of a saying, then there are several truths and several articles. But if one speak of the *truth of what is incomplex*, which is the truth of the thing, then, because *that the Father generates*, and *that the Son is generated*, and *that the Holy Spirit proceeds* is nothing else than that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit *are*, and their *being* is one in them, the truth is altogether single according to the thing.

16. To that which is objected, that either there is a repetition of the same unity or there is not: it must be said that there is a repetition of the same unity, but not about the same one — rather about one and another; and therefore there is there no idle talk nor aggregation of unities; and therefore there is there such a pluralizing that there is no lessening of the highest unity. And to this extent that word of Boethius in *On the Trinity* is to be understood, where he says that « God is three in such a way as if one were to say *sun, sun, sun* »; which is *like* by reason of the iteration of that unity, but *unlike*, because the unity of the trinity is iterated about one and another, whereas the unity of the sun is iterated about one only; and therefore there is a real trinity in God, though none in the sun.

17. To that which is objected, that plurality is reducible to unity: it must be said that a plurality which *expresses a defect* from the highest unity is related to that unity as to a principle and cause; and this is reduced to unity by a *proper* reduction, which is that of an effect into its cause, and such a plurality is not in the divine *being*. But a plurality which *does not express a defect* from the highest unity does not need to be reduced, because it is itself the highest unity; nevertheless, in the sense in which there is posited there an emanation of the divine persons from the first as from a principle, in that way and in that manner a reduction to it as to a principle from which they are produced is not repugnant.

18. To that which is objected, that many things in many express the highest distinction or diversity: it must be said that although according to an extrinsic account a plurality of nature in a plurality of person seems more repugnant to the highest unity, nevertheless according to the thing and according to the intrinsic account a plurality of natures about one supposit, which

is constituted out of them, is more repugnant, since it is rendered composite and less one, than if several natures were found in several supposits, as is plain in the angelic and the human nature; and therefore, because the highest unity is in God, it is on that account posited in a nobler and more excellent way by this, that one nature is posited in several supposits without being multiplied, than if one nature were posited in one person.

19. To that which is objected, that whatever God has he has from himself: it must be said that this is true, because the divine essence cannot be given a principle by any other; but from this it does not follow that whatever the person has it has from itself; hence, just as it does not follow that the essence is not produced, therefore the person is not produced, so neither does the aforesaid reasoning conclude.

20. To that which is objected, that where there is plurality there is diversity: it must be said that, as is plain from what has been said, that plurality does not properly bring in the diversity which is taken according to form, substance and nature; and therefore it takes nothing away from the highest unity and identity, which consists in this, that the three persons have the highest unity of essence and of nature.

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