Given that every perfection is of God's essence, does personal subsistence follow; and is God, as communicable to three, a person (Cajetan)

Article VIII. This being laid down — that every perfection is of the essence of God — whether it follows that personal subsistence is of his essence; and whether God, insofar as he is communicable to the three persons of the Trinity, is a person, as Cajetan maintains.

1. From the preceding doctrine there arises a difficulty of no small weight concerning subsistence or personality: for since it has been established that every perfection is of the essence of God, it seems necessarily to follow that subsistence, or personality, is included in his essence; and therefore that God, insofar as he is common to the three persons of the Trinity, is a suppositum or person. The reason of the connection is this: because subsistence is a certain substantial perfection, and that not a slight one; for every suppositum has a more perfect mode of existing than the nature which exists in the suppositum. Here, therefore, two things are to be discussed: first, whether personal subsistence is of the essence of God; second, whether God, as God, is a certain person common to the whole Trinity.

2. That the former difficulty may be removed, after two observations have been set down beforehand, I will propose my sentence in several assertions. First it is to be held that subsistence is taken by the philosophers in three ways, as was said above: for (1) those things are said to subsist which do not exist in a subject of inherence; (2) those which do not so inexist that they depend, as to the act of existing, upon those in which they inexist; (3) those which in no way inexist in another suppositum, or can inexist in one. Second it is to be held that to these three significations of this word a fourth can be added, which, although it is less frequent, is nevertheless no less proper. For that being can be said to subsist which so exists that it depends in its being upon no creating or conserving cause: this mode of existing is proper to God, and cannot be communicated to any created being; and therefore it is without doubt the most perfect mode of existing.

3. These things being laid down, let this be Assertion 1. Subsistence taken in the first and second way is essential to God, and equally common to the Trinity: for just as it belongs essentially to God to exist in act, so also it is of the essence of God so to exist that he neither exists in any subject, nor depends, as to the act of existing, upon that suppositum in which he is.

4. Second Assertion. Subsistence taken in the third way, although insofar as it is in God it does not differ in the thing from his essence, nevertheless cannot truly be said to be of the essence of God: for whatever is of the essence of God belongs to God as God. If therefore personality is of the essence of God, God insofar as he is God is a person, and consequently all three persons, insofar as they are one true God, can truly be called one person: which is plainly absurd, and contrary to the principles of our faith.

5. Assertion 3. Subsistence taken in the fourth way is of the essence of God, or is an essential attribute of his: for to be the first Being, having its being from itself and not from elsewhere, is the very nature or essence of God.

6. Assertion 4. This word "perfection" is to be distinguished; for some are perfections whose negation imports imperfection — as to be or to exist, to live, to be a Spirit, to be good, to be just: for their opposites, namely not to exist, not to live, and so on, are manifestly imperfections. Others are perfections whose negation imports no imperfection: thus the most wise decrees of God concerning the creation and governance of things are perfections, but their negation imports no imperfection: for even if God had had no such decrees, indeed even if he had had decrees contrary to these, he would not have been more imperfect. So to walk, to run, to sit, to speak are perfections of a human being — for they are acts, and every act is a perfection: but the negation of those acts involves no imperfection; although the negation of the potencies from which they arise brands the thing to which it is attributed with a mark of imperfection. I say that the negation of these acts involves no imperfection, because a human being is not more imperfect when he does not walk than when he walks, or when he does not speak than when he speaks.

7. All perfections of the former kind are of the essence of God, and necessarily belong to him as God: but concerning perfections of the second order one must think otherwise; for they are not of the essence of God, nor do they necessarily belong to him as God — for example, the decrees of God concerning the eternal salvation and death of human beings, although they do not differ in the thing from his essence, are nevertheless not truly said to be of the essence of God: for if that were true, they would be in God by the necessity of nature, and thus the liberty of the divine decrees would be taken away. To this latter genus of perfections we refer personal subsistence; for although its negation, when it is attributed to the finite essence of creatures, involves imperfection, yet when it is attributed to the Godhead, or to the divine nature, it imports no blot of imperfection. The reason of the disparity is this: the divine essence includes in itself a certain mode of existing far more perfect than personal subsistence — namely the mode of existing without dependence in being upon any creating or conserving cause. I say that this mode of existing is more perfect than personal subsistence, because in it is placed the perfection of the first being; and on that account it cannot be communicated to creatures: but personal subsistence is communicated both to human beings and to angels. On the contrary, the finite essence of creatures includes in itself neither the act of existing, nor any mode of existing more perfect than personality: and therefore it is imperfect on account of the defect of personality, whereas the Godhead is in no way imperfect on account of the lack of such subsistence.

8. Francisco Suárez, On the Trinity book 3, chapter 10, brings forward another distinction of perfection; but a more obscure and difficult one, and therefore I will not propose it here. But this is carefully to be noted which he adds to that distinction — namely, that divinity, the personal relations or subsistences being prescinded, does not formally include their perfections; yet it includes them eminently, both because this is necessary for the infinity of that being, and because the Godhead itself is the root and foundation of all those perfections.

9. The latter question is easily solved once the former difficulty has been removed: for since that subsistence which is proper to supposita does not belong to God as he is common to the three persons, it is to be said without fear that God so considered is not a person. But (says Cajetan) God, insofar as he is common to the three persons, although he is not a person strictly and properly speaking, can nevertheless be called a complete person. I answer with Fonseca that in divine things novel and unused locutions, abhorrent from every custom of the Fathers, are not to be employed — especially since someone can be deceived by such a manner of speaking and suppose that the three persons are one person, or one suppositum.