FOURTH ARTICLE: WHETHER IN GOD THERE IS POTENTIA WITH REGARD TO THE NOTIONAL ACTS

State of the question. It is asked whether there is a potentia of generating and spirating in God. Following St. Augustine, St. Thomas replies in the affirmative because potentia is nothing else than the principle of some act, and in this instance the potentia is active. As he says in the reply to the second difficulty, passive potentia cannot exist in God, nor can there be any power which is necessarily opposed for then the potentia would be passive.

A difficulty is raised in the third objection. Potentia is predicated of God with respect to certain effects (in this way we speak of God's omnipotence); but power is not predicated of God with respect to the divine operations, divine intellection and will, because God is pure act. Therefore in God there is no intellective faculty but only intellect subsisting per se, nor is there a volitional faculty. Indeed, the divine persons are not effects of God, and therefore we cannot speak of the potentia of generating or spirating in God.

Reply. According to St. Thomas' reply the potentia of generating is not properly the principle of active generation but the principle of the begotten person, just as the creative power is not the principle of the creative action, which is not an accident in God, but the principle of the created effect.

As Billuart points out, these notional powers, that is, the powers of generating and spirating, are not virtually distinct from the acts because there is no foundation in God for conceiving Him as being in potency to anything since He is pure act.

Thus in God the intellect is not virtually distinct from intellection since God's intellect is intellection subsisting per se, noesis noeseos Similarly God's will is not virtually distinct from His love, by which He loves Himself necessarily, and loves other things freely. This unique act of love is the indifferent mistress of those goods which are able not to be.