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Part One · Chapter Sixty-Eight — Intellect, Intellector, and Intelligible Are One in God
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You already know the fame of the doctrine that the philosophers stated concerning God, exalted be He — namely their saying that He is the intellect and the intellector and the intelligible, and that the enumeration of these three does not entail multiplicity in His essence; and that this has not been transmitted from anyone before me. Without doubt, everyone who has not studied the books composed on the intellect, and who has not attained from the sciences what we clarified in our discourse on these matters, will find this very strange and will ask: how can two be one, and three be one?
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Without doubt, everyone who has not studied the books composed on the intellect, and has not grasped what the intellect is, and has not learned what the difference is between intellect in potency and intellect in act, and has not learned that the intellect in act is identical with the act of intellection of what it intellects — such a person will not understand this doctrine. Only one who knows these things and has mastered them, and has learned the equivocality of the term 'intellect,' will understand it.
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Know that a human being before he intellects anything is an intellector in potency. When he intellects something, it is as if you said: when Zayd brings to presence the intelligible form of this thing and joins it to his essence — that is intellect in act. For every human being's essence is not devoid of a rational soul possessed of preparedness; therefore each one of us is an intellector in potency; but according to what he brings to presence of that abstracted meaning stripped of matter, he becomes an intellector in act.
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When you posit an intellect existing in act — it is the intellection of what it intellected; and this is very clear to one who has sought examples of it. For when I, for instance, intellect the form of a horse, the intellect that is in me in act is that very intellection itself, which is the form of the horse; and I am the intellector; and thus intellect, intellector, and intelligible in this regard are one single thing.
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But if it is posited in potency, then necessarily there are two: intellect in potency and the intelligible in potency — as if you said: this person has a preparedness and many intelligibles are possible in existence for him. Therefore, anyone in whose essence there is a potency from the standpoint of his being an intellector and intellecting something — in his essence there are two parts: one is the intellect, his essence; and the other is the intelligible object, distinct from his essence.
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Every intellect in potency and intelligible in potency are two; and everything that is in potency necessarily requires a substrate that bears that potency. But intellect in act is identical with the intellection itself — that is, it is that abstracted meaning stripped from matter in act. So when you judge that God is intellect in act without any potency, the preceding [conclusion] follows necessarily from it.
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Since it has been demonstrated that God, mighty and glorious, is intellect in act and there is no potency in Him whatsoever — as has been made clear and as is demonstrable — it necessarily follows that He, and the intellect, and the intelligible are numerically one, with no multiplicity in Him and no distinction from these two standpoints. The philosophers call this 'providence,' and they call His knowledge of His own essence His knowledge of everything other than Him — for by His knowledge of His own essence He is the Originator of everything other than Himself.
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It has thus become clear that the intellect, the intellector, and the intelligible being numerically one is not true only with regard to the Creator, but rather it holds for every separate intellect — for it is intellect in act with no potency in it. As for the human being, because of the potency that is in him and because of matter, the intellect, the intellector, and the intelligible are distinct.
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We have repeated this meaning in this chapter several times, because minds are very remote from this conception. And do not suppose that what we mentioned here — that the intellect, the intellector, and the intelligible are numerically one — is merely casual talk or permissive language. For it is among the necessities of speculative inquiry; and once this is established, one is compelled to expel imagination from the mind. Understand this.