In this text, Duns Scotus asks: does the image of the Trinity in the rational soul consist in three really distinct powers? His answer is in the negative. The powers of the soul, he maintains, are really the same as the soul, but formally distinct from it as well as from one another. To develop this view, Scotus first refutes several alternative theories, including Aquinas’ distinction theory and Henry’s relational account of powers. In his refutation of Aquinas, Scotus provides a discussion of the Category Argument, arguing that it confuses two distinct senses of the term ‘potency’, ‘potency’ understood as power and ‘potency’ understood as a non-actual mode of being. Against Henry, Scotus argues that the view that the powers of the soul are the soul as related to different acts entails that these powers must always be actualized. To develop his own account of the soul and its powers, based on the formal distinction, Scotus draws on the notion of unitive containment and his account of the transcendentals. He argues that the soul is explanatorily prior to its powers, arguing that it exists at a “first instant of nature” while its powers exist at a “second instant of nature”.