Dist. 36, Art. 1, Q. 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/1/d/36/q/bon-sent-I-d36-a1-q2
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### Question II.
#### *Whether things are in God by reason of essence, or of person.*

Secondly it is asked, whether things are in God by reason of essence, or of person. And that [they are] by reason of essence, it appears thus:

1. Because that which is in [something] by reason of person is proper, [whereas] that which is in [something] by reason of essence is common: if therefore this is common to the three [persons], it is plain, etc.

2. Furthermore, things are in God by reason of exemplarity; but the exemplar of the creature in God is the divine essence, since God knows and produces by his very self: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, it is a rule that whatever is said of God in relation to a creature is said essentially; but for things to be in God is so said: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**

1. That [it is] by reason of person it appears, because things are in God insofar as they can come forth from him; but to produce, since it is an act, belongs to the supposit itself: therefore [by reason] of person.

2. Likewise, as Augustine says in *On Eighty-Three Questions*: "The Word states an operative power": if therefore things are in God by reason of operative power, they are in him by reason of the Word: therefore, since the Word is a person, they are in God by reason of person.

3. Likewise, Augustine, *On the City of God*, book eleven, chapter twenty-four, says that "when it is said: *He said, that it might be made*, the Father is understood: in the word of saying [is understood] the Son, in the seeing the Holy Spirit": therefore, since to him in whom they are belongs producing, it is plain that they are by reason of person.

### Conclusion.

> *Things are in God not by reason of essence nor by reason of person, but they are in God as in a cause.*

**I respond:** It must be said that in the divine [things] there is to consider the essence, which is common as common and absolute, [and] to consider the properties, and to consider the common as in relation to the proper [things]. The first is said in every-mode absoluteness; the second, namely property, states a relation to person; the third states a relation to things; and those appropriated [terms] signify God as cause. — When therefore it is asked, whether things are in God by reason of essence, or of person, it must be said that, properly speaking, neither so nor so, but they are in God as in a cause, and thus by reason of the appropriated [terms], which are essential [things] considered in the persons.

When therefore it is objected that they are in the essence: it must be said that those reasons conclude that they are in the essence taken in the common sense, according as it comprehends the appropriated [terms], not according as it is considered in every-mode absoluteness.

What is objected to the contrary does not conclude concerning person by reason of the proper [terms], but by reason of the appropriated [ones].