 Typical for Arabic intellect theory is the distinction between several degrees or levels of intellect, from an entirely potential intellect up to a perpetually active intellect, and the assumption, taken over from later Greek philosophers, that the active intellect is an entity separate from the human being. Al-Fārābī, Avicenna and Averroes identify the active intellect with the lowest of the cosmological intelligences, and argue that the human intellect is able to conjoin with the active intellect. The great majority of scholastic writers teach that potential and active intellect are parts of the soul, but there also existed a current adopting the Arabic idea of a separate active intellect (e.g. Dominicus Gundisalvi and Petrus Hispanus). Several scholastic authors identify the active intellect with God on the authority of Avicenna and Augustine – a position which modern scholars have labeled “Augustinisme avicennisant” (Gilson 1926/27, 102). Among the earliest exponents of the doctrine is Jean de la Rochelle, whose psychological works were written in the 1230s. He teaches that the term “active intellect” refers either to God or to the angels’ intellect or to the internal light of human beings, depending upon which intellectual objects are grasped by the human intellect (Summa de anima 116). This doctrine reappears in the 1240s in the Summa fratris Alexandri, and in Vincent of Beauvais. Later adherents are Roger Bacon, John Pecham, Roger Marston, Vital du Four, and also Henry of Ghent (though only in parts of his work). But other scholastics disagree. Adam of Buckfield, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas criticize unnamed theologians for identifying the active intellect with God. As philological evidence shows, they refer to the above-mentioned current which begins with Jean de la Rochelle. Thomas rejects the thesis because he interprets it in illuminationist terms and finds it incompatible with his own epistemology of abstraction (Summa contra gentiles II.74). One should note, however, that Avicenna’s epistemology combines both abstractionist and emanationist aspects and that his theory of abstraction also attracted Latin readers (Hasse 2001, but cf. McGinnis 2007, and Black 2014).