Preliminary Note: This article is a compilation of some notes and outlines from my documents. It is thus not as well organized and formatted as some other articles may be!
“The virtual distinction is not an actual distinction, but an equivalence of distinction that obtains when one and the same thing is equivalent to many distinct things in act.” (Scholastic Renaissance)
Extrinsic virtual distinction: A thing which is simple in itself is equivalent to many in perfection or operation. The intellect conceives various aspects of the thing that is distinguished, without compromising its real unity. A single thing contains “more rationes or perfections in some being.” (John of St. Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus Logica, Q. 2 art. 3). Human nature is identical with rationality and animality, and yet these two perfections are able to be distinctly conceived.
Intrinsic virtual distinction: The intrinsic capacity of a thing to receive without contradiction predicates that are contradictory to each other, prior to the operation of the intellect. Unlike the Scotist formal distinction, this type of virtual distinction does not exist ex natura rei.
“In order for certain perfections or notions to be virtually distinct in God, it is not enough that they correspond to multiple notions or perfections in created things which are really or virtually distinct. Rather, it is necessary that these multiple aspects differ by genus and belong to different lines. Thus, because in created things essence and existence, intellect and intellection, will and volition do not differ by genus or belong to different lines—since they do not have different formal objects—they are not virtually distinct in God, but are only distinct by reason (distinctione rationis), based on their relation to creatures and the way we conceive divine things by analogy to created things.” (Jean Baptiste-Gonet, Clypeus theologiae Thomisticae [Paris: Sumptibus Antonius Bertier, 1669], pg. 50)
The virtual distinction has also been divided by the scholastics into major and minor. The major virtual distinction is with respect to the excluding and excluded, as how animality and rationality are virtually distinct in man, with the former being in potency to the latter. Obviously, this cannot be applied to God. The minor virtual distinction is of the nature of that which is explicit and implicit.
In the doctors of Salamanca, a virtual distinction of divine perfections requires there to be correspondence to multiple lines belonging to different genera in creatures. Since nature and essence are not really distinguished in creatures by genus, they are therefore not virtually distinct in God.
Charles Billuart lists the following two foundations (fundamentum) for the virtual distinction (‘reason reasoned’):
Extra animam (outside the soul) - This foundation resides in the eminence of thing that “identifies in itself various perfections really distinct in the inferiors.”; for example, heat and dryness are both found in sunlight formally. This eminential complexity is the basis for a plurality of concepts. In God, it would be that the objective formal concepts of the attributes differ from each other. However this minor virtual distinction is potential and seeks to “impose” onto a human intellect.
Intra animam (inside the soul) - This is based on the finite nature of human reasoning, which is discursive, thus meaning that it must differentiate between concepts in the intellect, not being able to comprehend the one simple essence of God as it exists in itself.
The distinction of reason reasoned:
With perfect foundation - This occurs when the several concepts do not imply each other and can be separated. E.g., animality and rationality both exist in man, but there are brute animals which lack rationality, and intellectual creatures (such as angels, separate substances) which lack animality.
With imperfect foundation - When several concepts include each other in such a way that they cannot be separated. E.g., this type of distinction exists between being and the transcendentals, and among themselves.
None of this is to say that Thomists universally deny altogether any basis for the virtual distinction ex natura rei. Indeed, Gonet says quite explicitly that “Between the divine attributes and the essence, and among the attributes themselves, there exists a reasoned distinction with a foundation in reality; it is not merely a reasoning distinction, or from an extrinsic connotation of created things.” (Clypeus thomisticae Theologiae, pg. 80). Instead, the virtual distinction is founded on the finite nature of human intellects and the eminence of God’s simple essence: “Therefore, the reasoned distinction we conceive in divine attributes has a dual foundation: one from our part, namely the limitation of the created intellect and the mode of conceiving divine things by analogy to created things; the other from the part of God, namely the eminence of divine perfection, which although most simple in itself, corresponds to multiple things distinctly on the part of reality.” (Jean Baptiste-Gonet, Clypeus theologiae Thomisticae, disp. II, art. I, sect. 1 [Paris: Sumptibus Antonius Bertier, 1669], pg. 80)
The foundation ex natura rei is the divine essence in comparison to the deficiency of created intellects:
“The concepts expressed by these names correspond in God to different objective aspects. This diversity of aspect is not taken adequately from our intellect, but is founded on the eminence of divine perfection in comparison to the deficiency of our intellect, which is not able to conceive it under a single concept— and consequently, not to name it with one name.” (Pedro de Godoy, Disputationes theologicae in primam partem divi Thomae: Tomus Primus [Venice: Antonii Zatta, 1763], pg. 93)
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