Hence the arguments showing this are to be conceded.
1. To that which is objected to the contrary, that wisdom is more mobile than all mobile things: it should be said that something is called mobile in three ways: either through efficient causality, or through representative exemplarity, or through inherent variation. In the first and second ways wisdom is called most mobile, because this pertains to perfection: but not in the third, because this pertains to incompleteness.
Or it can be said that because a mobile thing according to position is made present to many places by its very motion, and that which is moved more swiftly is more swiftly presented to more places; hence it is that since divine wisdom is most present to all things, it is called most mobile among all mobile things, not because it passes from one thing to another, but because it is present to all things. And this is what Dionysius says in On the Divine Names, chapter nine: "That God is moved must be devoutly understood not according to conveyance, or mutation, or alteration, or modal or local motion, not rectilinear, not circular, not from both combined, not intelligible, not animate, not natural, but that God acts upon substance and contains all things and provides for all things totally, and that he is present to all things by encompassing all and by provident processions and operations toward all existing things."
2. To that which is objected, that a gradation is observed in creatures according to greater mobility, etc.: it must be said that certain things belong to creatures according to more and less, such that of themselves they do not imply imperfection, such as unity, truth, goodness: and in such things the highest degree must be attributed to God, to whom every perfection belongs. But certain things signify some dignity together with imperfection, such as mobility, which signifies a certain actuality with conjoined potentiality, and such things, by reason of the conjoined imperfection, cannot and ought not be attributed to God, neither at the limit nor short of the limit, according to the proper sense of the term.
3. 4. To that which is objected on the part of the comparison, that something accrues to God from time: it must be said that in such things, as was touched upon in the solution, one must understand the principal signification and the connotation; and the principal indeed signification is on the part of God, and thereby eternal and immutable: but the connotation is on the part of the creature, and therefore temporal and mutable. That these things are therefore said to begin or to cease, this is not on the part of that which is posited in God, but on the part of that which is posited in the created effect.
And through this is clear that which is objected, that names of this kind signify something which is God, and something which is from God: and by reason of the first they are predicated, not by reason of the second; and by reason of the second they begin and cease, not by reason of the first: because for some copulative whole to be temporal or contingent, it suffices that it have temporality or contingency in some part of itself.
5. 6. To that which is objected concerning action, that from a non-agent an agent comes to be: it must be said that there is an agent that acts by itself, and there is an agent that acts through something other than itself. The first agent cannot be changed in acting, because nothing accrues to it, nothing departs from it through action, since its action is the same as itself. But concerning the other agent, which differs from its action, the aforesaid proposition holds true. God, however, is an agent in the first way, not the second, because by reason of his supreme simplicity he is his own action.
And if you object: if he is his own action, just as he does not begin to be, so he does not begin to act: it must be said that he does not begin to act by reason of the intrinsic act itself, which is the same as himself, but by reason of the extrinsic effect, which pertains to the side of the creature, which begins and is multiplied according to the variety of creatures.
And through this the response to the following objection concerning the plurality of actions is clear. For that there are posited in God many incompossible actions, this is not by reason of a plurality of intrinsic acts, but by reason of a plurality of effects and connotations. For the intrinsic act, since it is God, is one and immutable and eternal; but the extrinsic effect, since it is created, is manifold and mutable and temporal, taking time in a broad sense; and this introduces no change regarding the divine being.
7. 8. To that which is objected concerning mission, that every mission and descent is a change: it must be said that mission in divine things is not taken there properly, but metaphorically: nor do they signify anything else in God than the emanation of one from another and manifestation in a created effect. Whence since God is always everywhere present, namely the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to essence, power, and presence; because nevertheless He dwells in the heavenly things through glory and appears through open illumination, when He begins to appear in lower creatures, He begins as it were to be present from not being present; and therefore He is said to be sent and to descend, not by reason of any innovation or novelty on His part, but only by reason of the showing and manifestation exhibited to us and made in us.
And if one objects then that the Son of God was made man anew, and man signifies something that is in Him: it must be said that man is predicated of the Son by reason of the union of two natures in one hypostasis: and therefore, since union is spoken of in the manner of a relation and can be attributed to someone anew without a change made in him, but only on account of a change made in the other extreme, as is evident in right and left: hence it is that the Son of God was made man anew without change of the eternal person, from the sole change of the assumed nature, which was simultaneously formed and united to the Word: and just as the Word is not changed in the formation of that nature, so neither in the assumption of the formed nature.
9. 10. To that which is objected concerning indwelling, namely that God through grace begins to be in the penitent: it must be said that something is said to be in another in two ways. Either such that it in some way depends on that thing and through it is contracted and delimited — and that which in this way begins to be in something is changed by that inception and is moved according to the motion of that in which it exists, as is evident concerning the existence of the universal in the particular, of form in matter, of the located thing in a place, and of an accident in a subject. But God is so in the creature through essence and influence that He does not depend on the creature, nor is He confined or delimited in it; and therefore, that He begins to dwell in someone is not on account of a change made in Him, but only in the creature or in the mediating influence, by reason of which God is said to dwell anew in the creature, namely by infusing a new grace. — Similarly, although He is in the creature, He is nevertheless not moved according to its motion, as those things of which the Philosopher says that "when we are moved, the things that are in us are moved," because He does not depend on the creature, nor is He confined or delimited in it. Whence, just as a ray is in the air, yet is not moved according to the motion of the air; just as the soul is whole in every part of the body, yet is not moved according to the motion of any part, because it is not delimited in any particular part: so also must it be understood in the matter at hand. And through this the response to the present objection is clear. — And if one objects that it does not seem intelligible that something should be in another inseparably, yet not be moved according to its change: it must be said that we can understand this if we simultaneously understand God as most simple and immense. For because He is immense, He is so within that He is also without ; because He is most simple, He is in no way distant from Himself, however great the local distance and separation may be among the things in which He exists. And hence it is that however much the things in which God exists may be understood to change, in no way — neither in reality nor in the understanding — is God thereby posited as mutable. For in every motion and change it is necessary to understand approach and withdrawal, and through this some distance between the extremes — which can in no way be posited concerning the divine being, neither per se nor per accidens, since it is at once infinite and simple. And therefore the imagination of the phantasy is here deceived.
11. 12. To that which is objected concerning power, namely that God cannot now do whatever He could do: it must be said that someone is said not to be able to do what he could do in two ways: either on account of some defect introduced on the part of the producing power itself, or on account of a change of condition on the part of the possible itself. For that which is possible and true can be made impossible through a change in the thing; just as that I have not read, before I read, is true, but after I shall have read, it has become impossible, which is called impossible per accidens: which also, as Augustine says against Faustus, is impossible for God, because that ability is not of power, but rather of impotence, since it is against the supreme truth, namely, to make what was, after it was, not to have been. Since, therefore, the divine power always perseveres uniformly, whatever things, and of whatever quality, and in whatever way, and of whatever quantity He could do, He can also do now, so far as concerns Himself: but because many true things have become false, and possible things have become impossible: hence it is that, so far as concerns those things themselves, He cannot do whatever He could do, because not whatever things were possible are possible, and this not through a change regarding the efficient power, but regarding the possible effects.
And through this the response to the following objection concerning the impossible per accidens is clear.
And if you object that the divine power in no way depends on the possible, since He can produce all things from nothing: it must be said that this is not on account of dependence, but on account of connotation: because, when it is said that God can do something, it is simultaneously implied that that thing is possible for Him, and consequently, that it has nothing repugnant to the divine power, wisdom, and goodness, such that it could not be produced into being, with every nobility of the divine power preserved.
13. 14. To that which is objected concerning knowledge, it must be said that when God is said to know something, this can be understood in two ways: either because He has cognition of it, or because He judges it to be true. In the first way, the knowing of God does not connote the existence of truth in the thing known; and in this way, whatever He knew He knows, because He has knowledge of everything of which He had knowledge from eternity. In the second way, it connotes truth regarding the thing known: and in this way, He does not know whatever He knew, just as He does not do whatever He did; and this not on account of a change on the part of the knower, but only on the part of the thing known.
And through this the response to that which is consequently objected concerning the truth of the thing known is clear: because the divine knowing posits truth in the thing known according to one acceptation, not according to another, as is clear through the distinction previously given.
15. To that which is objected on the part of the divine will: it must be said that a proximate and immediate cause is spoken of in three ways: either with respect to substance, or disposition, or act: by reason of substance, between which and the effect no other mediating causing substance falls; by reason of disposition, to which no new disposition is added for producing the effect; but by reason of act, because it is conjoined to the act itself. But the divine act is taken in two ways, namely as within and as effecting something without. The divine will is therefore the proximate and immediate cause of things to be produced by reason of substance and disposition and intrinsic act, but not by reason of exterior efficiency except for that time for which it wills. And the divine will has this because it is at once most omnipotent and most free: and therefore, although from eternity it willed to produce the world, because nevertheless it did not will that the production of the world should be from eternity, but only in time: hence it is that it produced in time, no change having been made in the will, and the effect began without the cause beginning. And that which is objected concerning the proximate and immediate cause is understood of that which is a proximate and immediate cause according to the threefold reason stated above.
16. To that which is objected, that God, who wills something, can not-will it: it must be said that the divine willing connotes a respect and order to some future thing, and that future thing can be or not be without change, as was said before in the principal solution: hence it is that with respect to contingent futures God can be called willing or not willing, no change whatsoever having been made in the one willing.
17. To that which is objected, that God is an agent according to will in such a way that His operation is configured to His will, etc.; it must be said that an agent according to will is twofold: one, whose will is determined to some particular thing willed, such that it does not simultaneously and at once bear upon the universality of its effects, but now wills this, now that—and in this agent according to will, what is objected holds true. The other is an agent according to will whose will bears upon everything that wisdom has disposed by dictating; and such an agent, just as it disposed simultaneously all things that are produced successively, so that the disposition itself does not vary according to the variation of things to be produced, so also the will, which is entirely consonant with that disposition, remains unchanged. Whence, just as the divine art and divine counsel, according to which diverse things are made and commanded, always remains unchanged in itself, so also the divine good pleasure always remains unchanged, although those things that proceed from it are changed—for the reason that it simultaneously and at once and eternally and immutably regards all things that are eternally produced, just as also art, reason and exemplar, word and wisdom and other similar things: in which no variation occurs on account of change made in things outside, with respect to which there is in God absolutely no dependence, although all things depend upon His wisdom and will and power as upon a cause most noble, most stable, most sufficient, primary, and supreme.
ARTICLE II.
Whether trinity and supreme immutability stand together.
Next it is asked whether trinity and supreme immutability stand together. And that they are incompossible appears as follows.
1. It is impossible for a species to exist without a genus; but generation or production is a species of motion or change: therefore where there is generation, there is change; but trinity does not exist except because one person proceeds from another through generation: therefore etc.
2. Likewise, generation in creatures signifies relation and signifies change, and more essentially and principally signifies change than relation; but it cannot be posited in the supreme Trinity without relation, otherwise it would not signify true distinction: therefore by equal or stronger reason it cannot be posited without change.