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In other words, it is asked whether several persons can
be generated or spirated in God, as one man can beget
several sons.
Reply. The reply is in the negative.
1. In God being and possibility are not different.
Therefore if it were possible to have several sons of
God, there would actually be several sons of God; and
this conclusion would be heresy.
2. Such plurality of sons could arise only from matter,
which does not exist in God. It would also presuppose
several numerically distinct generations. This is
impossible because generation and spiration are acts
naturally determined to one terminus and the terminus is,
as it were, an adequate fruit (result). Thus the Son
is the perfect Son, in whom the entire filiation and the
entire divine nature is contained without multiplication.
We should note what St. Thomas says in this sixth
article (as everywhere else): "The forms of one
species are not multiplied except according to matter, "
and therefore a form that is not received in matter cannot
be anything but one.
Recently some Thomists have said that God could
miraculously make several angels in the same species, that
is, many Michaels multiplied without matter. According
to St. Thomas this is impossible because we are dealing
here with a metaphysical principle in which there is no
place for a miracle.[571] It is not merely a natural
law but a metaphysical principle that an act that is not
limited in itself is not limited or multiplied except by
the potency or real capacity in which it is received.
Therefore a form is not multiplied except by matter, or
by an order to matter, and it is this order to matter that
remains in the separated soul. In this metaphysical
principle, if it is really metaphysical, that is,
absolutely and not only hypothetically necessary, there is
no exception by way of a miracle.
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