QUOD HOC BONUM SIT PARITER PATER ET FILIUS ET SPIRITUS SANCTUS; ET HOC SIT UNUM NECESSARIUM, QUOD EST OMNE ET TOTUM ET SOLUM BONUM.
The Simple Good of Father and Son
God the Father and his Word, the Son, are one and the same simple good, since nothing greater or lesser can proceed from him than himself.
This good you are, God the Father; this is your Word, that is, your Son. Your Word can't be anything other than what you are, nor can something greater or less than you exist in the Word by which you express yourself; your Word is true just as you are truthful, and therefore it is truth itself, just like you — not other than you; and so you are simple, such that from you nothing can come into being other than what you are.
The One Love Proceeding as Spirit
The Holy Spirit proceeds as the one love common to the Father and Son, equal to both because supreme simplicity allows no unequal or alien procession.
This itself is the one love, common to you and to your Son, that is, the Holy Spirit proceeding from both. This same love is not unequal to you or to your Son, because you love yourself and him as much as you and he are, and he loves you and himself as much as you and he are; nor is there anything other than you and him that is not equally related to you and to him; and from the highest simplicity there can't proceed anything other than that from which it proceeds.
The Undivided Trinity
Each divine person individually and the whole Trinity together are supremely simple unity, incapable of multiplication or division.
Now what each one individually is, that is the whole Trinity together — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — since each one is nothing other than supremely simple unity and supremely one simplicity, which can neither be multiplied nor be one thing and another.12
The One Necessary Good
This simple, undivided Trinity is the one thing necessary: the only, whole, and every good.
Besides, one thing is necessary. And this is that one necessary thing, in which is every good — or rather, that which is at once every good and one good and the whole of good and the only good.
Read the original Latin
Hoc bonum es tu, deus pater; hoc est verbum tuum, id est filius tuus. Etenim non potest aliud quam quod es, aut aliquid maius vel minus te esse in verbo quo te ipsum dicis; quondam verbum tuum sic est verum quomodo tu verax, et idcirco est ipsa veritas sicut tu, non alia quam tu; et sic es tu simplex, ut de te non possit nasci aliud quam quod tu es. Hoc ipsum est amor unus et communis tibi et filio tuo, id est sanctus spiritus ab utroque procedens. Nam idem amor non est impar tibi aut filio tuo; quia tantum amas te et illum, et ille te et seipsum, quantus es tu et ille; nec est aliud a te et ab illo quod dispar non est tibi et illi; nec de summa simplicitate potest procedere aliud quam quod est de quo procedit.
Quod autem est singulus quisque, hoc est tota trinitas simul, pater et filius et spiritus sanctus; quoniam singulus quisque non est aliud quam summe simplex unites et summe una simplicitas, quae nec multiplicari nec aliud et aliud esse potest.
"Porro unum est necessarium". Porro hoc est illud unum necessarium, in quo est omne bonum, immo quod est omne et unum et totum et solum bonum.
Notes
- 1 ↩The antecedent of the relative clause 'quae nec multiplicari...' is ambiguous: it could refer to 'simplicitas' (simplicity) or to the implied unity of the Trinity. I've rendered it as referring to the simplicity/unity of each divine person, which carries the force of the argument either way.
- 2 ↩'unites' (lemma uncertain, rare/medieval form) is rendered as 'unity' to parallel 'simplicitas' → 'simplicity'. The pair expresses that each divine person is not a composite or divisible reality but is the divine essence itself, wholly and indivisibly.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
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