Three names are attributed to the Son: the Son, the Word, and the Image. We have considered the name "Son" in connection with the name "Father," hence we must still consider the names "Word" and "Image." These three are entirely the same without even a virtual distinction, but they are distinguished in the mode of designation and with reference to various extrinsic connotations. We say the Son with reference to the Father, Word with reference to the enunciating intellect, and Image with reference to the principle which is imitated.

About the Word there are three articles: 1. Whether "the Word" is used essentially or personally; 2. Whether "the Word" is a proper name of the Son; 3. Whether in the name "Word" any reference to creatures is implied. These questions we will consider carefully in the light of the prologue of St. John's Gospel.

State of the question. This article is introduced to distinguish "the Word" properly so called from "the word" improperly so called, namely, from the thing understood in the word and also from the intellection which is common to the three persons.

Reply. The affirmative reply is of faith as revealed in St. John's prologue, "The Word was with God, and the Word was God... . And the Word was made flesh" (1:1, 14). In this text "the Word" designates the same person as "the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father" (1:18).

This doctrine was defined by St. Damasus I and the Fourth Council of Rome in these words: "If anyone shall not say that the Word of God, the Son of God, God even as God His Father, is able to do all things and know all things and is equal to the Father, let him be anathema."[384] Similarly, the Second Council of Constantinople declared: "If anyone does not confess the two nativities of the Word of God... let him be anathema";[385] the Lateran Council: "If anyone does not confess that God the Word descended from heaven...";[386] and the Eleventh Council of Toledo, explaining the words," and the Word was made flesh, " corroborated this doctrine.[387]

Doubt. Did these councils wish to define solemnly by these words that divine generation is properly by intellectual enunciation?

Reply. It does not seem that this has been properly defined, but it is revealed in the prologue of St. John's Gospel that the Son of God proceeds from the Father as an intellectual word. Therefore all theologians admit that it is at least theologically certain that the first procession is after the manner of intellection. Indeed, it seems that this truth is of faith according to the Scriptures although it is not solemnly defined.

In the body of the article it is shown that the name "Word" in God if used in its proper meaning is a personal and not an essential name. The reason is that "the Word" signifies something proceeding from another as a concept of the mind. But that which signifies something proceeding from another in God is personal since the divine persons are distinguished by their origin.

So that we may understand this reply, St. Thomas, in the first part of the body of the article, shows that the term "word" is used properly in three ways with reference to ourselves (the word of the mind, the word of the imagination, and the vocal word), and besides this it is also used improperly:

(diagram page 211)

word
proper
the interior concept of the mind. imagination of the sound to be emitted.

the sound which signifies the mental concept.
Improper
that which is signified by the word, not the sign, but its meaning.

In God, however, "Word" is used properly only in the first sense, as a concept of the mind; all other words in God are only metaphorical because they are something sensible or even corporeal and external. Hence St. Thomas says that the mental word in its proper meaning is not that which is understood but that in which the thing understood is known.[388] If St. Thomas sometimes says, "It is the word which is understood," he is using "word" improperly for the thing signified by the word. For Descartes, on the other hand, the interior word is that which is understood, although he does not deny every relation of the word with the extramental thing.

Between these two concepts, that is, between realism and idealism, a great abyss exists, as we see when Descartes did not hesitate to write in the beginning of his Discourse on method: "For us a square circle is something unthinkable but perhaps it may not be something really impossible outside the mind. Perhaps God is able miraculously to make a square circle."

For realism, however, this is absolutely and evidently impossible outside the mind, and according to realism I in my mental word and you in your mental word understand the same law of extramental being, namely, that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time. This law of extramental being is what is understood in my mental word and in your mental word.

If, however, the mental word itself is what is understood, then this law of extramental being is placed in jeopardy. Obviously there is a great abyss between realism and idealism. In this fundamental question of philosophy it is important that we preserve the proper meaning of our terms, otherwise we will always be talking incorrectly in our conclusions.

Some have tried to preserve their realism by conceding to the idealists that it is the mental word that is understood but they add later, as indeed the Scholastics generally hold, that the mental word has an essential relation with the extramental thing. But this qualification is not in harmony with the first statement. If the mental word itself is what is properly understood, how can we afterward pass over to the extramental thing, or to its essence? How shall we be able to compare the thing itself with the word that expresses it, when the thing itself cannot be known except in the word? How can we distinguish between the word that conforms to the extramental thing and the word that does not conform, as we are able to distinguish between a statue that represents a real man and a statue that represents an imaginary man? We cannot have recourse to the principle of causality because the validity of that very principle must be proved first.

Obviously an immense abyss stretches between Descartes, idealism and realism, and it would be exceedingly dangerous to concede to the idealists that the mental word is that which is properly understood. St. Thomas always says that the object of the intellect is being (extramental) and he does not say that the object of the intellect is the mental word of being. We are obliged always to speak so carefully about the word that it will be entirely clear, in opposition to Descartes, that a square circle is not only unthinkable but really impossible outside the mind. Descartes was not able to safeguard the validity of sensitive and intellectual knowledge except by having recourse to the criterion of God's veracity as the author of our faculties. But this implies a vicious circle because we must first prove God's existence by effects and by the principle of causality.

Reply to the first objection. The Arians said that the Son of God was a metaphysical word which was external, but, as St. Thomas says, an external word presupposes an internal word. Moreover, in St. John's Gospel we read, "The Word was God, " and God was the Word, and so the Word cannot be something created or produced outside of God.

Reply to the second objection. In God intellection is predicated essentially and belongs to the three persons.

Reply to the third objection. In God enunciation is predicated personally; only the Father enunciates, and the three persons understand. The Son alone is enunciated as the Word; the other persons are enunciated as things expressed in the Word.

Reply to the fourth objection. Sometimes "word" is used improperly for the thing signified by the word.

I reply in the affirmative, because word signifies a certain emanation from the intellect, and the Son alone proceeds after the manner of an emanation from the intellect.

Reply to the first objection. In God the Word is not accidental but substantial, because in God being and intellection are the same.

The difficulty arises from the fact that creatures are contingent and not eternal, whereas the Word is necessary and eternal. But, as is noted in the sed contra, St. Augustine says that the name "Word" signifies not only the relation to the Father but also to creatures.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative, because in the one act by which God knows Himself He also knows creatures, for in God there is only one intellection. Thus the one and only Word is expressive not only of the Father but of all creatures. Moreover, the Word with reference to creatures is not only expressive but also operative. In us, on the other hand, there are various words according to which by different acts of intellection we understand different things. An angel, however, understands all things interior to it by one word, as we shall see below.[389]

Doubt. Whether the name "Word" refers to possible creatures in the same way as it refers to future creatures.

Reply. From the body of the article and from the reply to the second objection the reply is that the name "Word" of itself implies a reference to possible creatures, and only per accidens and concomitantly a reference to future creatures.

Proof. The first part is proved as follows. The divine essence is known by God per se comprehensively, that is, to the full extent of its knowability. But it would not be known comprehensively if the divine omnipotence and the possible effects virtually contained in it were not known. Therefore the Word, by which the divine essence is expressed, has a reference per se to possible creatures.

The second part is proved as follows. Per se the Word does not contain a reference to future creatures or even to futurables, because the knowledge from which the Word proceeds per se is natural and necessary, since the Word proceeds naturally and necessarily. But the knowledge of futures and futurables in God is not natural and necessary but presupposes God's free decree. Hence, if the knowledge of the same nature as now.

But per accidens the Word contains a reference to future creatures, presupposing the eternal decree of free creation, since the Word in expressing the divine nature expresses it as operating freely ad extra.

Consequently we say that the blessed see creatures in the Word as in their exemplary and efficient cause;[390] but they do not see all possible creatures because this would imply the possession of comprehensive vision. Besides this vision of creatures in the Word, the blessed have knowledge of creatures outside the Word by representations and proper species,[391] and this second knowledge is inferior to the first, being clouded and hazy as in the dusk, whereas the first knowledge is clear as in the morning light. Hence many of St. Thomas' commentators, such as John of St. Thomas, point out that the theologians in heaven who while on earth engaged in the study of theology, not only because of a natural desire of learning and teaching but also for the love of God and souls, see the object of theology in the Word, whereas other theologians who studied theology only because of their desire for learning see the object of theology outside the Word, with a knowledge that is inferior and cloudy.

Many mystics, like Tauler, teach that an intellectual creature, elevated to grace, will not be perfect with the ultimate perfection unless it sees God immediately and sees itself in the Word. It is a higher kind of knowledge to see our soul in the Word than to see it in itself and through itself. The mystics often say that the soul must return to its principle, and that the soul will love itself most perfectly when, beholding itself in the Word, it loves itself in the Lord without any inordinate self-love. St. Thomas says: "So far as a thing is perfect it will attain to its principle."[392] This is the return to the bosom of the Father, in some sense similar to what is said of the only-begotten Son, who is "in the bosom of the Father."[393] Then the soul will not live for itself but for God.

THIS article is intended to explain the words of Holy Scripture I about the Second Person of the Holy Trinity: "The unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness";[394] "that the light of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them";[395] "who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature";[396] "who being the brightness of His glory, and the figure of His substance,... sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high."[397]

Reply. The name Image is a personal and not an essential name. The reason is that for something to be a true image it must proceed from another similar to itself in species or in the sign of the species. But that which implies procession or origin in God is personal. Therefore the name "Image" is a personal name.

To explain his reason St. Thomas shows that two conditions are required for an image: 1. that it be similar not only analogically, generically, or even specifically, but in the sign of the species, for example, according to the features of the face; 2. that this likeness have its origin from that being of which it is the image by virtue of some procession. Here we can see the validity of common sense. No one is said to be like his image, but we do say that the picture of this man is perfectly like him. Similarly, as St. Augustine says," ne sheep is not said to be the image of another, because it was not expressed by it." In this observation we see the hidden wealth in common sense and in natural reason, which contain the beginnings and rudiments of ontology just as the earth contains metals, like gold and silver, and precious stones, like diamonds.

A book could be written about the riches hidden in common sense, particularly with regard to the verb "is," its different tenses and modes, its various persons; all this is a reflection of metaphysics cast on the elements of grammar.

Images are of three kinds.

1. The artificial image, which is similar only in the sign of the species, for example, in features or figure, as a picture or statue. This IS an imperfect image.

2. The intentional image, which is the expressed intelligible species implying a likeness not only in the sign of a specific nature but also in the specific nature itself, not in the mode of natural being but in intelligible being. This image is more perfect than the first.

3. The natural image, which denotes likeness both in the specific nature and in the mode of natural being, as the son is sometimes the living image of his father. This is the perfect image. In God it is most perfect because it is likeness in a nature numerically the same. The first and third kinds of image are presented as the thing that is known; the second kind of image itself is not properly known but that in which another thing is known. In God the Word is at the same time the intentional and the natural image.

Reply to the first objection. That from which the image proceeds is properly called the exemplar and improperly the image. Thus it is said that man is made to the image of God, but God is properly the exemplar and man is the imperfect image of God.

Reply to the third objection. Imitation in God does not signify posterity but only assimilation. All words retain a certain amount of imperfection from their original human application, according to which they apply first to creatures.

State of the question. The Greeks applied the name Image to the Holy Ghost as well, while the Latins use it only for the Son.

Reply. The name Image is proper to the Son.

1. Proof from Scripture. In Sacred Scripture the word "image" refers only to the Son, as for instance, "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature";[398] and "Who being the brightness of His glory, and the figure of His substance."[399]

2. Proof from theological reason. Only the Son by reason of His procession formally possesses that which is similar to the Father because He proceeds as the expressed Word. The Holy Ghost, on the other hand, proceeds as love, but love is not a likeness of that from which it proceeds but rather an inclination after the manner of a weight or an impulse.

Out of respect to the Greek Fathers it may be said that the Holy Ghost is like the Father and the Son in nature and thus the Holy Ghost may be said to be the image of the Father and the Son in a broad sense, but not formally by reason of His procession.[400] For the same reason we said above that the second procession is not generation because of itself it does not produce something similar to that from which it proceeds.

Durandus objected that the Son is not similar to the Father by reason of essence, because here there is identity, nor by reason of relation because here there is opposition. We reply that the Son is like the Father by reason of essence and relation at once, that is, by reason of person, for like things agree in some things and differ in others. Thus the Father and the Son agree in nature and differ by relation.

Note on the third objection. Man is said to be in the likeness of God rather than the image of God, that is, man tends toward the likeness of God.

Recapitulation. "The Word" is the proper name of the Son, for the Word in God is both substantial and incommunicable, that is, He is a person, something subsisting and incommunicable. The Word implies a reference to creatures inasmuch as He proceeds from the comprehensive knowledge of the divine essence, which is the cause of creatures. Again, the Son of God is properly the Image, an image that is natural and intentional at the same time, as a son is the living image of his father. Only the Son has this derived likeness of an image by reason of His procession because He proceeds as the expressed Word of the Father.

Therefore we read in the Scriptures, "The image of the invisible God," "the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, "and" the brightness of His glory and the figure of His substance."[401]

The Holy Ghost is known by three names: the Holy Ghost, Love, and the Gift. Hence there are three questions about the Holy Ghost.

About the Holy Ghost four things are asked: 1. Whether this name, Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is personal; 2. Whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son, 3. Whether He proceeds from the Father by the Son; 4. Whether the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Ghost.

State of the question. Often in the Scriptures this name is common to the divine persons, for example, "But if I by the Spirit of God cast out devils."[402] Further, the Holy Spirit does not imply a reference to someone else as the Father and the Son refer to another. Moreover, the name "Holy Spirit" appears to be a divine attribute, as when we speak of the spirit of this man, meaning his mind or his manner of judging.

In the Scriptures, however, especially in the New Testament, "The Holy Spirit" is used personally in many places, for example, in the formula of baptism, and in the instances cited in the introduction.[403] St. Thomas also refers to the Johannine comma, which is at least an expression of tradition even if its genuineness is not entirely clear.

In the body of the article St. Thomas concludes that although the name, Holy Ghost, is not in itself a proper name, it has been adapted by its use in the Scriptures to designate the third person. St. Thomas explains that those things that pertain to love often do not have a proper name, and some common name is adopted.[404] This happens because love is ineffable. The reason is that we give proper names to those things that we understand properly and distinctly, but we are not able to understand the things pertaining to love properly and distinctly in the abstract. Why? Because the elements of love are less known to us than the matters that pertain to the intellect, and this for the following three reasons.

1. The intellect knows those things that are in itself better than those things that belong to another faculty, as the will.[405]

2. Good, which is the object of love, is not formally in the mind like truth, which is the conformity of judgment with the thing, but the good is in things since the good is the very perfection of that thing that is amiable and alluring. Therefore the immanent term of love goes without a proper name.

3. Love as inclining to the good which is in things, like every tendency or inclination, contains something potential, and things are not intelligible except so far as they are in act and determined. A thing is known as an act or as a form; but love is rather a tendency, an impulse, or the weight by which the lover is drawn to that which is loved. St. Thomas said above: "The procession that takes place in the nature of goodness is not understood as being in the nature of a similitude but rather in the nature of something impelling and moving toward another."[406] He goes on to say: "This procession remained without a special name, but it can be called spiration" because of its inclination to a terminus not properly named. Love tends to the good that is in things; first it inclines after the manner of desire before it possesses the thing. The possession takes place by intuitive cognition, that is, by sight and touch in the sensible order; as long as the possession continues, love quiesces by fruition in that which is loved. Therefore bliss or the possession of the thing is not in love but in the intuitive cognition of what is loved, and this is the assimilation of the thing.[407] This tendency of love and this fruition are known experimentally and it is difficult to obtain a speculative knowledge of them which can be expressed by a special and distinct name. Hence we said above that the terminus of intellectual enunciation has a proper name, namely, the word, but the terminus of the act of love has no special name.[408]

Because of this ineffability of love some say that love is something higher than knowledge and that knowledge is a kind of disposition for love. Such was the teaching of Plotinus, who speaks of a supreme <hypostasis> above the second <hypostasis>, which is intellect; the supreme <hypostasis> of Plotinus is the One-Good, which is not intelligible but which can be contacted by love. Later Scotus taught that bliss is essentially in the love of God. But St. Thomas showed that the intellect is simply superior to the will, which it directs, because the object of the intellect, that is, being, is more absolute and universal than the good.[409] Although in this life the love of God is better than the abstract knowledge of God, in heaven the possession of God takes place by intuitive vision, which is necessarily followed by love just as the property is derived from the essence.

The following should be noted about the ineffability of love, which many consider superior to the intellect. When voluntarists and dynamists (like Bergson) say that there is more in motion than in immobility, they confuse the immobility of inertia, which is inferior to motion, with the immobility of perfection, which is above motion and which is the stability as something more perfect opposed to the instability of mobile things. These philosophers never use the terms stability and instability. There is more in motion than in the terminus from which the motion began, but there is not more than in the end of the motion itself, more in esse than in fieri (more in being than in becoming), more in a man than in the embryo. If you deny the superiority of this second kind of immobility, the stability of perfection, you must say with Eduard Le Roy that God Himself is in perpetual evolution and is creative evolution itself. In the treatise on the One God, St. Thomas asks whether God has life.[410] He replies that God possesses immanent life of the highest degree, subsisting intelligence itself whose measure is the one stable instant of eternity, namely, the stable now, not the fluid moment of time which is ever fleeting and ever unstable.

When, therefore, many say that the intellect is more imperfect than love because it is static and immobile, they do not take into consideration sufficiently the distinction between the imperfect immobility of inertia and the perfect stability which is the goal of the highest contemplation of immutable truth. Absolute dynamism ought logically to deny the immobility of God Himself and confuse God with mundane evolution. And anti-intellectualism, professed by many voluntarists, ought to take the stand that the intellect is not a simply simple perfection and that God does not know Himself as Plotinus taught about the supreme <hypostasis> which he had placed above the first intelligence. This is, of course, absolutely inadmissible. We can concede, however, that the human intellect as such sometimes materializes the life of the spirit inasmuch as it knows the spirit in the mirror of sensible things. In this way the human intellect understands spiritual qualities according to the analogy of quantity and speaks of a high or broad spirit or of the height of understanding.

Because of this ineffability of love it follows, as St. Thomas says in this article, that the relations which arise from the procession of love are unnamed. Wherefore the name of the person proceeding in this manner is not a proper name but a name accommodated from the usage of the Scriptures, namely, the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit) as we see it used in the formula of baptism.[411]

The accommodative application of this name has two advantages: 1. since the third person proceeds from the two first persons, who are spirits, this third person is, as it were, their spirit; 2. since the term "spirit" in corporeal things denotes a certain impulse and it is a property of love to move or impel the will of the lover to that which is loved.

Reply to the first objection. Many texts of the Old Testament use the term "spirit of God" as a common name rather than a personal name. Such is not the case, however, in the New Testament, where this accommodation is obvious as in the formula for baptism and in the promise of the Holy Ghost.

Reply to the second objection. The name "Holy Spirit" was adopted to signify a person distinct from the others only by relation and as spirated by them.

Reply to the third objection. Why can we say, "our Father," and "our Spirit," but not "our Son",? We cannot say "our Son" because no creature can be considered the principle with regard to any of the divine persons. On the other hand we depend on our heavenly Father, and spirit is a common name as when we say the spirit of Moses or of Elias. Even the Holy Spirit, dwelling within us and inspiring us to holy deeds, can be called our spirit in the sense that He is the life of our life. In this sense we say that we have received the Spirit of adoption of sons.

State of the question. This article contains two questions: whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, which is the subject of dispute between the Greeks and Latins, and whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son in such a way that if He did not proceed from the Son He would not be distinguished personally from the Son. Concerning this second question Scotus opposed St. Thomas, who gave an affirmative reply. We shall consider first the prior question particularly in its speculative aspect since the positive aspect is treated in the history of dogma.

Various errors and the definitions of the Church. Many errors about the procession of the Holy Ghost have been condemned by the Church. In the beginning the Eunomians and the Macedonians denied that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father, and they were immediately condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 381. Later many others attacked the teaching that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Son, namely, Theodoret (434), the Monothelites and Iconoclasts (eighth century), Photius (ninth century), and Michael Caerularius (eleventh century), whom the Greek schismatics follow until the present day. Photius, the impious usurper of the Constantinopolitan see, who aspired to the supremacy over the Church, found a pretext for attacking the teaching of the Latin Church on this point in some obscure texts of the Greek Fathers. Photius was condemned by Nicholas I and seceded from communion with the Latin Church. After his death union between the Churches was restored, but the schism again broke out because of the ambitions of Michael Caerularius.[412] For many the difficulty arose from the fact that many Greek Fathers said that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father through the Son. This turn of words provided the occasion for the Photians to write against the doctrine of the Latin Church.[413] In the present article St. Thomas presents the principal difficulties of the Greeks, adding that there is no basis for their stand either in Sacred Scripture or in the ancient councils, in which the question was not yet explicitly considered.

It should be said, moreover, that in the Latins, concept of the Trinity, which begins with the unity of nature rather than with the three persons, an easier approach is made to the Filioque, especially if the Latin doctrine is understood in the post-Augustinian view, according to which the processions are after the manner of intellection and love, for love follows knowledge and proceeds from it inasmuch as nothing is willed unless it is known. This point is not so clear in the Greek concept, which starts with the three persons instead of with the unity of nature.

To clarify the matter in opposition to Photius, the term Filioque was added to the Nicene Creed, first in Spain, then in France and Germany, and later was accepted and approved by authority of the Roman Pontiffs.[414] Finally under Pius X it was declared: "It would be no less temerarious than erroneous to entertain the opinion that the dogma of the procession of the Son from the Holy Ghost can hardly be proved from the words of the Gospels or from the faith of the ancient Fathers."[415]

The Church has indeed defined that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son "as from one principle and by one single spiration."[416] The Council of Florence declared: "We define that this truth of faith be accepted and believed by all Christians and that all shall profess that the Holy Ghost is eternally from the Father and the Son and that He has His essence and subsisting being at the same time from the Father and the Son, and that He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and by one spiration."[417] In the same council it was defined: "The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son... . Whatever the Holy Ghost is or has He has received simultaneously from the Father and the Son. But the Father and the Son are not two principles of the Holy Ghost but one principle just as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not three principles of creatures but one principle."[418] These words, "We proceeds by one spiration," were added in the Council of Florence and in the Council of Lyons to solve the difficulty of some Greeks who rejected the formula ex Patre Filioque because they erroneously thought that it implied two principles of the Holy Ghost.

Whether there is a clear warrant in Scripture and tradition for this definition of the Church.

The testimony of Scripture. No doubt exists that it is clearly taught by the Scriptures that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father: "But when the Paraclete cometh..., who proceedeth from the Father, "[419] "For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you."[420]

It is also clear from many passages of the New Testament that the Holy Ghost proceeds also from the Son. We prove this in three ways: 1. because the Holy Ghost is said to be sent by the Son; 2. because the Holy Ghost is said to receive something from the Son; 3. because the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of the Son.

In proving these three points we presuppose from the formula of baptism and from similar texts already cited for the three persons together that Holy Ghost and Spirit of the Father are names not of a divine attribute but of the third person. In these proofs we follow the chronological order in which this truth was revealed, beginning with the revelation of Christ Himself when He promised the Holy Ghost.

1. The Holy Ghost is said to have been sent by the Son as well as by the Father. "I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth... shall abide with you."[421] Here mention is made of another person, that is, another Paraclete, distinct from Him who asks and from the Father, who will send Him. "But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things."[422] If the Father sends the Holy Ghost in the name of the Son, the Son also sends Him. This thought is more clearly expressed in the following: "But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall give testimony of Me."[423] In the following chapter: "If I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you."[424]

St. Thomas' argument[425] is built on these texts as follows: A mission or sending presupposes a certain influence of the sender on him who is sent. This influence of the sender is either in the nature of a command, as when a master sends a servant, or in the nature of counsel, as when a man sends his friend to another, or in the nature of origin, as when leaves are sent out by a tree. A divine person, however, is not sent by command or counsel because these imply inferiority since he who commands is greater and he who counsels is wiser. Hence sending in God denotes nothing except the procession of origin to a terminus where the person sent was not before. If the Holy Ghost, therefore, is said to be sent by the Father and the Son, He proceeds from the Father and the Son. "The Father... is not said to be sent for He does not have a terminus from which He is or from which He proceeds."[426] In God, then, a sending cannot take place without being a procession, and the Holy Ghost, who was sent by the Son, must proceed from the Son.[427]

2. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son because He is said to receive something from the Son. "But when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will teach you all truth... . He shall glorify Me; because He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine, and show it to you."[428]

Here the Scriptures explicitly affirm that the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, receives something from the Son. But in God one person cannot receive anything from another except to proceed from that person because, besides the relation of origin, all things are common to the three persons. "In God receiving is not understood in the same sense as in creatures... . For, since the divine persons are simple, that which receives is not different from that which is received... . Moreover, the person who receives was not at some time lacking what is received, because the Son had from eternity what He received from the Father, and the Holy Ghost had from eternity what He received from the Father and the Son... . Therefore the Holy Ghost receives from the Son as the Son receives from the Father. Therefore in God to receive denotes the order of origin."[429]

Objection. "To receive of Mine" must be understood as referring only to the communication of the knowledge of the future because "and shall show it to you" follows immediately.

Reply. The Holy Ghost appears as a divine person from the other texts quoted and is therefore called the Spirit of truth. But a divine person who is not incarnate cannot receive the knowledge of futures except by receiving the divine nature because in the divine nature this knowledge is uncreated and identified with the divine nature. The text confirms this argument in the words: "All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine; therefore I said that He shall receive of Mine." Here the reason is assigned why the Holy Ghost proceeds also from the Son, namely, because the Son has whatever the Father has, including active spiration.

3. In several passages of the Scripture the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of the Son or the Spirit of Christ Jesus: "God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father."[430] From the use of the word "sent" we see reference is made to the Holy Ghost, sent by the Father and the Son on Pentecost, who dwells in the hearts of the just, as St. Paul frequently says.[431] Further confirmation is found in St. Paul's words to the Romans: "But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."[432]

In this last text the Holy Ghost dwelling in the souls of men is called the Spirit not only of the Father but also of Christ, as in the words of Christ, "But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father."[433] Again in the Acts of the Apostles, "They attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not."[434] From these texts the following argument is constructed: here the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of the Son. But he could not be so called unless He proceeded from the Son just as He is called the Spirit of the Father because He proceeds from the Father. In other words, if the Greeks admit that the Spirit of the Father is the Spirit proceeding from the Father, why do they not admit that the Spirit of the Son is the Spirit proceeding from the Son? This argument is found in the writings of St. Augustine: "Why therefore do we not believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds also from the Son since He is also the Spirit of the Son?"[435]

The testimony of tradition. Is the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son explicitly found in tradition as expressed by the Fathers?

Since the Greeks admit this doctrine is found in the Latin Fathers, it will be sufficient to refer to the Greek Fathers who wrote on the Trinity: St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyril of Alexandria.[436]

St. Athanasius writing to Serapion said: "We find that the same property that the Son has to the Father, the Holy Ghost has to the Son."[437] In another place St. Athanasius calls the Son "the font of the Holy Ghost."[438] St. Gregory of Nyssa explains this truth by a comparison: "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are like three lights of which the second is lit by the first and the third by the second."[439] St. Cyril of Alexandria is more explicit: "since therefore the Holy Ghost dwelling in us makes us comformable to the Father, He truly proceeds from the Father and the Son, and it is clear from the divine essence that He is essentially in it and proceeding from it, just as the breath comes from the human mouth, although this is a humble and unworthy illustration of such a sublime thing."[440]

Many of the Greek Fathers explain this truth in a slightly different manner, declaring that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son. This expression was explained by the Council of Florence with the approval of the Greeks.[441]

The Church's doctrine on this point is found in the synods and councils held prior to the Greek schism.

In the profession of faith presented by the bishops of Africa to King Hunneric in the fifth century, we read: "We believe that the unbegotten Father and the Son begotten of the Father and the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, are of one substance."[442] The synod of Alexandria approved the letter in which St. Cyril wrote that the Holy Ghost "proceeded from the Father and the Son, " and this letter was later applauded by the Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople (II).

In the ninth century the Roman Pontiffs approved the addition of the Filioque to the creed; later with the consent of the Greeks it was defined in the Fourth Lateran Council,[443] and in the Council of Florence.[444]

We consider first the theological reason he offers in the Summa[446] and later how he solves the difficulties of the Greeks. In the body of the article we find three reasons: the first from incongruity and the other two from the congruity or conformity with things in the natural order. From the analogy with natural things we can to some degree know the mystery of the Trinity although we cannot demonstrate it.

1. The reason or argument from incongruity is an apodictical argument by reduction to the impossible. It begins with the negation of the position to be admitted: if the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son, He would not be distinguished from the Son, because the divine persons are distinguished only by the relation of origin, which is founded on the processions. We do not delay in considering this argument because it will be developed against the objections of Scotus after an examination of the Greek difficulties.

2. This argument is based on the nature of the processions. The Son proceeds after the manner of intellection as the Word, and the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of the will as personal love. But love proceeds from the word, for we do not love anything unless we have apprehended it by a concept of the mind. Nothing is willed unless first it is known. Therefore the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son. This argument proposed by St. Thomas is sufficiently clear from the foregoing. It is at least a profound argument of congruity. Against it, however, two objections have been raised which are too much concerned with particulars and in this way do not take into consideration what St. Thomas wished to say.

Objection. In the beatific vision there is no word, and yet it is followed by love.

Reply. In the beatific vision there is no accidental created word, but the divine essence takes the place of the expressed species because the divine essence of itself is understood in act and cannot be represented in a created word as it is in itself. We are obliged to express ourselves in this manner because of the imperfect manner of our intellection although there is in our intellection an expressed species (when it exists) which is the vicar of the object and which takes the place of the object, as when the object is not understood of itself in act. Thus what St. Thomas wished to say in this argument stands: nothing is willed unless first known, and love follows vision and proceeds from it in some way. So proportionately the Holy Ghost proceeds as love from the Word, and this procession is understood to take place as intellection from the words of the prologue of St. John's Gospel.

I insist. In created beings the word does not concur effectively in love; it concurs only objectively and as the final object inasmuch as the word proposes the object that elicits love.

Reply. Granting this for the sake of argument, it is still true that love in some way proceeds from the knowledge of the good or from the good as known; it also is still true that the appetitive faculty comes from the essence of the soul as endowed with the intellectual faculty, and the essence is therefore the root of the other faculties. Moreover, according to revelation, the divine Word is a subsisting person and thus can be the principle (principium quod) of notional love and active spiration, whereas our accidental word is not the principium quod but a necessary condition (sine qua non) of love since love tends only to the known good.

We granted for the sake of argument that the word in created beings does not concur effectively in love, because a dispute exists on this point between Thomistic theologians.

Conrad Kollin, Cajetan, and others hold that the intellect moves the will with respect to its specification as an efficient cause inasmuch as the object proposed by the intellect is the cause for eliciting a determined act of love. The particular specification of the act of love, as distinguished from the exercise of the act of love, must have an efficient cause, and the will alone is not a sufficient efficient cause for this specification, otherwise all acts of love would be of the same species. Moreover, as Conrad Kollin and Cajetan point out, in God the subsisting Word effectively produces personal love or the Holy Ghost. Therefore the same thing takes place analogically in the case of the non-subsisting word of our intellect. To support this interpretation they cite certain texts of St. Thomas: "The intellect is prior to the will as the mover is prior to what is moved and as the active is prior to the passive, for the good that is understood moves the will."[447]

Other Thomists, among them Capreolus, Ferrariensis, Bannez, and Gonet hold that the intellect moves the will only as a final and formal extrinsic cause because the object proposed by the intellect to the will is not intrinsic to the will. But even if this second opinion is admitted, our argument still holds because the word in created beings produces love at least in a broad sense because it leads to the eliciting of a definite act of love inasmuch as it specifies the act, and no act can be elicited without being specified.

Further, the subsistence of the divine Word elevates all the conditions of the word to most perfect being and in this state of being the Word actively and properly influences love. Thus the Word of God spirates love.

St. Thomas' argument remains unscathed. He was disinclined, however, to descend to these particulars because as he said: "Our intellect cannot understand the essence of God as it is in itself in this life, but it determines and limits every mode in the things it understands about God and departs from the mode of God's being in Himself. Therefore the more certain nouns are unrestricted and common and absolute, the more properly they are predicated by us of God, as, for instance, the name "Who is," which expresses the vast and infinite ocean of substance itself.

Hence we should not descend to small particulars, to excessive precision and delimitation; these things remove us from the contemplation of God and we cannot understand a free act in God or how the Word spirates love. This is true of many speculative and practical questions. For instance, a certain particular intention virtually lasts for several days, but we cannot say for how many days it lasts since there is a great difference here between a superficial soul and one that is profoundly recollected. Again, it is certainly very laudable to unite our personal offerings often during the day by prayer to the oblation made continually in the heart of the glorious Christ and to the offering of all the Masses celebrated throughout the world. If we wish to descend mechanically to particulars, we might ask how it is possible to unite oneself to all these Masses in particular. This does not mean that it is impossible to unite ourselves to the oblation which perdures in the heart of Christ in glory, which is, as it were, the soul of all these Masses.

Very often excessive and pseudo-scientific exactitude in spiritual things removes us from the contemplation of God. Such concern with particulars detracts from the beauty of St. Thomas, argument that love proceeds from the knowledge of good, and therefore it appears right to say that in God personal love proceeds from the Word. In the light of this argument we understand those beautiful words of tradition: The Word spirates love. The same is true with regard to our understanding of the mystery of the cross or of the Redemption: too much concern with details impedes us in contemplation of the mystery.

The third argument of congruity may be stated as follows: When several things proceed from one, they are distinct only by number and matter unless they are distinguished because of the orders of origin or causality. But the Son and the Holy Ghost proceed from one and the same Father and they are distinct by more than number and matter, that is, by the two processions of intellect and love, which are more than numerically distinct. Hence there must be between them some order; not the order of causality or of greater or less perfection, but of origin. And since the Son does not proceed from the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost must proceed from the Son.

The major of the argument is based on the fact that when several things that are distinct by more than number and matter proceed from one thing they proceed according to some order, and in created beings according to some kind of subordination. When several things proceed from one thing and are distinguished only by number and matter, they may proceed without any definite order as, for instance, when a workman makes many knives distinct from one another only numerically and materially, they have no order to each other. Such is not the case, however, with the species of number and the figures of geometry in the order of quantity; all numbers proceed from unity according to a definite order. So also in the order of quality: for example, the different degrees of heat and light, the various colors of the spectrum. The various species of minerals, plants, and animals are subordinated according to their greater or lesser perfection; such subordination is also found among the angels.

This gives us an analogy of the divine processions. But in God there can be no order of greater or lesser perfection and so there can be no subordination or coordination, which implies subordination. Nor can there be an order of causality since each divine person is uncreated, uncaused, and entirely equal to the others. In the divine persons there is an order of origin as we know exists between the Father and the Son, and between the Holy Ghost and the Father, and equally between the Holy Ghost and the Son, otherwise there would be no more order in the divine persons than between those things that are distinguished only numerically and materially.

If there were no such order the analogy with intellect and will would break down, for the will, as the rational appetite, does not come from the essence of the soul except through the mediation of the intellective faculty, otherwise the appetite would not be properly rational in its root nor would it be under the direction of reason. In other words it is impossible that the intellect and the will should be equal (ex aequo) as Suarez thought; there must be some order between them as there must be order between vision and love.

Suarez failed to see that all coordination supposes subordination and that the intellect and the will cannot be coordinated on an equal plane (ex aequo) nor can vision and love.

Order is a disposition by way of earlier and later with respect to some principle, and thus order is discovered in subordination before it is found in coordination. Two soldiers are not coordinated in an army unless they are first subordinated to the leader of the army.[448] St. Thomas asks whether the inequality of things is from God, and he replies in the affirmative, saying that the subordination or hierarchy of things serves to manifest in many ways the divine goodness, which in itself is most simple and would not be fittingly manifested if all things were entirely equal. Then there would be no reason for multiplying created things.[449]

Thus, as Leibnitz said, no one would place in his library several identical copies of the same edition of Virgil. The variety of species necessary for the subordination of created things is a better manifestation of the divine goodness, which is in itself most simple.

In God's intimate life there is no subordination or hierarchy, but there is an order of origin that transcends coordination and subordination.

In the body of the article St. Thomas notes that the Greeks concede that there is an element of truth in this argument; they concede that the Holy Ghost is from the Father through the Son. This formula will be examined in the next article. St. Thomas also notes that some Greeks are said to concede that the Holy Ghost flows from the Son but does not proceed from Him. To which St. Thomas replied: everything that flows from another proceeds from it, as the brook from the spring and the ray of light from the sun. The Greeks insisted that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father as the brook from the spring and through the Son as through the channel in which the brook flows.

The fourth argument is taken from the general principle that in God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation. But between the Father and the Son there is no opposition of relation in active spiration. Therefore active spiration is common to both. This commonly accepted principle was expressly formulated in the Council of Florence,[450] and as Denzinger notes, it was at this Council that the learned Cardinal Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, the theologian of the Greek party, proclaimed: "No one is ignorant of the fact that the personal names of the Trinity are relative." It is on this accepted principle that the argument is based.

The fifth reason is drawn from the words," ll things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine."[451] If the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son, the Son would not have whatsoever the Father has (excepting paternity), and the divine will would be less fecund in the Son for active spiration than in the Father. Nor should it be said that the Holy Ghost has the same will as the Father and still does not spirate actively because the Holy Ghost, proceeding not by intellection but by the will, exhausts the will as its adequate terminus. In other words, the Holy Ghost exhausts the entire fecundity of the divine will within itself (ad intra), just as the divine Word proceeding by intellection ad intra, exhausts the entire fecundity of the divine intellect as its adequate terminus.

The sixth reason is found in the Contra Gentes.[452] In God, since He is necessary, there is no difference between being and possibility, that is, being follows immediately on possibility. But it is not the impossibility but rather the possibility that appears that the Son should be the principle of the Holy Ghost, for that which is from a principle in the first procession can be the principle in the second procession. Therefore the Son is a principle of the second procession together with the Father.

First objection. This objection is stated as the first difficulty in St. Thomas, article, namely, Sacred Scripture states that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father but it never says He proceeds from the Son.

Reply. Sacred Scripture does not express this truth in so many words, I concede; it does not express this truth, I deny; for as we have seen, the Son says of the Holy Ghost, "We shall receive of Mine"; "All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine."[453]

Second objection. The First Council of Constantinople, which was the second ecumenical council, does not make any mention of the Son.

Reply. St. Thomas replies that the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son was not explicitly mentioned in this council because the opposite error had not yet arisen. But later, when the error arose, the Filioque was added to the creed, first in Spain and later in France and Germany in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries.[454] Thereupon Benedict VIII approved the addition and finally it was accepted by the ecumenical councils of Lyons (II) and Florence by both the Greeks and Latins present at these councils.[455]

In the reply to the third difficulty, St. Thomas notes that St. John Damascene, following the Nestorian error on this point, spoke inaccurately in his book,[456] although some commentators say that he (lid not expressly deny the Filioque.[457] Petavius points out that St. John Damascene understood that the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son as from the first font of origin because among the Greeks the preposition ex and the noun principium denote the first font of origin.[458]

In D'Ales' words, "St. John Damascene did not deny simply that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Son but that He proceeded from the Son as from the first principle. He had evolved a physical theory of the Trinity, according to which the procession was like a breath coming from the mouth, a figure certainly less apt than that of St. Augustine."[459]

St. John Damascene approaches the Latin doctrine when he compares the Father to the sun, the Son to the ray, and the Holy Ghost to the brightness, which is from the ray. Indeed, in his book, De fide orthodoxa,[460] he says that the Holy Ghost is the image of the Son as the Son is the image of the Father.

This is a sufficient defense of the Church's doctrine on the Filioque. In the third article we shall see that it is permissible to say that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son, according to the Greek Fathers, and St. Hilary among the Latin Fathers.[461] The reason is that the Son has from the Father that by which the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son.

Other objections. Whatever is in God is either common or proper. But the spiration of the Holy Ghost is not common to the entire Trinity. Therefore this spiration is proper to one person, namely, to the Father and does not belong to the Son.

Reply. I distinguish the major: whatever is in God is either common (to the three persons) or strictly proper, as risibility in man, I deny; is common or proper in a broad sense, I concede as, for instance, spirituality and freedom properly belong to the human soul and also to the angels.

I insist. But to spirate the Holy Ghost is strictly proper to the Father, for absolutely contrary properties cannot belong to the same person. But the property of the Son consists in receiving, of which spiration is a contrary property. Therefore the Son cannot actively spirate the Holy Ghost.

Reply. I distinguish the major: properties that are contrary with respect to the same other person cannot belong to the same person, I concede; with respect to distinct persons, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor in the same way: the Son is both active and passive with respect to distinct persons and not to the same person. This is not an impossible contrariety.

I insist. The Son is no more in agreement with the Father than the Holy Ghost. But the Holy Ghost does not concur with the Father in the generation of the Son. Therefore the Son does not concur with the Father in the spiration of the Holy Ghost.

Reply. I distinguish the major: with regard to essentials, I concede; with regard to the notional act of spiration, I deny.

The second article contains references to the discussion between the Thomists and Scotus, which we shall examine immediately.

Doubt. If the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son, would He be distinguished from Him?

In the beginning of the body of this article St. Thomas answers negatively, and not only the Thomists but most other theologians agree with him. Scotus and his followers, however, reply in the affirmative, arguing that if the impossible were true and the Holy Ghost were not spirated by the Son, the Son would still be distinguished by filiation from the Holy Ghost because the Holy Ghost would not be the Son.

St. Thomas, position is based on that principle commonly accepted and explicitly formulated in the Council of Florence: "In God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation"; in other words, the divine persons are really distinguished only by the relation of origin, which is founded on the processions, as was explained above. If therefore the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son, He would not be distinct from the Son. The reader is referred to the body of the article.

It should be noted that this principle is found prior to the Council of Florence in the writings of the Fathers, particularly in St. Augustine,[462] St. Gregory of Nyssa,[463] and St. Anselm.[464] The Council of Florence[465] proved against the Greeks that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Son; its principal reason was that otherwise the Holy Ghost would not be distinguished from the Son. In the eighteenth session John the Theologian declared: "According to both the Latin and the Greek doctors, it is relation alone that multiplies the divine persons in the divine productions, and this relation is the relation of origin." None of the Greeks, not even Mark of Ephesus, the most prominent adversary of the Latin theologians, opposed this principle. While this was not a definition of the Council, this argument ought to have great weight because by it the Church was disposed to define the dogma of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son.

What is the basis for the axiom: In God all things are one and the same where there is no opposition of relation? Note that the axiom does not say merely a distinction of relation. The basis for the axiom is that, since God is most simple being, He admits no real distinction in Himself except that distinction which, according to revelation, is founded on the procession of origin, namely, the distinction between the principle and that which is of the principle.

Objection of the Scotists. The principle accepted and expressed in the Council of Florence is to be understood as referring not only to the relative opposition of relation but also the disparate opposition of relation. The first kind of opposition is that between two relations that have reference to each other, as between paternity and filiation, and between active and passive spiration. Disparate opposition of relation exists between two relations that have no reference to each other, as between filiation and passive spiration.

Reply. I deny the antecedent, since disparate relations are not impossible in the same person, as paternity and active spiration, and as filiation and active spiration. Therefore it is not sufficient that two relations, like filiation and passive spiration, are disparate in order to constitute two distinct persons.

The Scotists insist. Even though paternity and active spiration are not incompatible in the same person, nevertheless filiation and passive spiration are incompatible and require two persons, because that would imply that the same person was produced by two complete productions, which would be the case if the one person were at the same time the terminus of generation and spiration. This is the crux of the problem.

Reply. This insistence begs the question; it proves a thing by itself. There are not two complete, distinct productions except when they tend to two distinct termini or to two really distinct persons as on the way to the terminus, for the production of a person is a person in becoming (in fieri). As the two sides of the triangle are not two except because they tend toward constituting with the base the two inferior angles opposed to each other and therefore distinct, so two processions in God are not two except inasmuch as they tend to constitute two proceeding persons opposed to each other and therefore distinct. Thus the adversaries prove that there are two proceeding persons and not one because there are two proceeding persons and two processions, which is begging the question. It is incumbent on the Scotists to find another reason to prove that even if the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son He would be distinct from Him.

In this hypothesis generation and passive spiration would be one and the same total procession, formally and eminently generative and spirative, just as generation and active spiration are only virtually distinct in the Father.

The other Scotist objections are of minor import.

They say that the person of the Son is sufficiently constituted and distinguished by filiation. We reply that it is constituted but not distinguished from the Holy Ghost without the opposition of relation.

They insist that by filiation the Son has incommunicable being, otherwise He would not be a person, and this distinguishes Him from the Holy Ghost.

Reply. In God being is unique and it is communicated to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; that which is incommunicable is only the subsisting relation which is opposed to another. Thus the Father has communicable being but He is a distinct person by the paternity, which is opposed to filiation; similarly, active spiration is opposed to passive spiration.

I insist. By filiation the Son is distinguished from any other who is not the Son. But the Holy Ghost is not the Son. Therefore the Son is distinguished from the Holy Ghost by filiation alone.

Reply. I distinguish the major: the Son is thus distinguished from any other person who is opposed to Him, I concede; otherwise, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: if the person is opposed to the Son, I concede; otherwise, I deny.

We must conclude that the Scotists do not safeguard the doctrine of the Fathers and of the Council of Florence, according to which all things in God are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation or relative opposition based on a procession. If therefore the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son, He is not distinct from the Son. The fiction of disparate opposition is an abuse of the terms and in violation of common sense, or, as Billuart rightly says, a confusion of the notions of things. Things are disparate when they are not opposed, for example, white and cold. Thus St. Thomas, opinion stands.

The triangle lends confirmation to this view. If in the triangle the third angle constructed did not proceed from the first and second, it would not be distinguished from the second, and then there would not be two sides because they would be identified in their tendency to the same terminus. Similarly, if the will did not presuppose the intellect and did not depend on it, it would not be distinguished from it; there would be not two but one faculty. Spinoza, in his absolute intellectualism inclines to this view; he reduces the will to a natural appetite or the natural inclination of the intellect itself to truth. At most there would be two entirely equal faculties (ex aequo), and this is impossible for there would be no order between them, as was explained in the third argument of St. Thomas' second article. For it to be a rational appetite, the will must proceed from the substance of the soul, presupposing the emanation from the intellect; thus the will proceeds from the intellect and is distinguished from it; and so also analogically if the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son, He is not distinct from the Son.

State of the question. This article was written because the Greek Fathers and St. Hilary used this expression.[466]

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative in the sense that the Son has from the Father that by which the Holy Ghost proceeds from Him. Analogically, a statue proceeds from the sculptor through the hammer or chisel, because the hammer is operated by the power of the sculptor. But the Son is not like an instrument of the Father or His assistant, but an intermediate person who, by reason of origin, has from the Father that by which the Son proceeds from Him.

Doubt. Does the Holy Ghost proceed immediately from the Father?

Reply. In his reply to the first difficulty, St. Thomas replies in the affirmative, namely, that the Holy Ghost proceeds directly from the power of the Father because the spirative power in the Father and the Son is the same, indeed it is one act of spiration. More than this: the Holy Ghost proceeds immediately from the Father directly from His suppositum (as Abel proceeds from Adam), although there is an intermediate person. Analogically, between Adam and Abel there is Eve, who herself proceeded from Adam and from whom Abel proceeded. This analogy is quite inept, of course, with regard to the divine processions.

In his reply to the fourth objection, St. Thomas explains why we cannot say conversely that the Son spirates the Holy Ghost through the Father. The reason is that the Father does not receive from the Son that by which the Holy Ghost proceeds from Him. But the Father is not a more immediate principle by reason of His power since this power is the same in the Father and the Son.

In the triangle the third angle constructed proceeds immediately from the first and second, and the second angle is not less necessary for the construction of the third than the first.

Similarly, the will proceeds immediately from the soul, of which it is a faculty, although the activity of the intellective faculty is presupposed, without which the will would not be the rational appetite. The will, then, is a faculty, not of the intellect, but of the soul itself and immediately pertains to the soul, although the intellect comes from the soul prior to the will.

State of the question. It is asked whether this proposition is true in its strict sense. We note that the Greeks considered the Filioque a serious objection against the Latins, understanding that the Latins implied that there were two principles of the Holy Ghost.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative; there is but one principle. This is proved by the authority of St. Augustine: "We must confess that the Father and the Son are not two principles but one principle of the Holy Ghost."[467] This doctrine is also supported by St. Basil[468] and St. Ambrose,[469] and was proclaimed in the Councils of Lyons[470] and Florence.[471]

The theological reason given in the body of the article is as follows: the Father and the Son are one in all things in which they are not distinguished by opposition of relation. But in their being the principle of the Holy Ghost they are not relatively opposed.

In explanation of this reasoning we point out that in order to multiply a substantive name, like God, or man, which denotes a form with an accompanying suppositum, both the form and the suppositum must be multiplied. Hence we cannot say "several gods." On the other hand, for the multiplication of an adjective, like divine and white, which does not denote a form with the accompanying suppositum but only as something attached to the suppositum, it is not required that the form be multiplied; only the suppositum need be multiplied, and thus we say not "three gods, " but "three divine beings." But the term, principle of the Holy Ghost, like spirator, is a substantive name. Therefore there is one principle and one spirator, but two spirating beings (the adjective form), as St. Thomas explains in his reply to the first difficulty. Thus, according to a rather remote analogy, when the Holy Ghost Himself "asketh for us with unspeakable groanings, "[472] there is but one prayer and two who ask: the inspirer and the other inspired. In inquiring how operating grace is distinguished from cooperating grace, St. Thomas explains[473] that under operating grace the soul is moved and not moving, no matter how vitally, freely, or meritoriously it consents to the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Such are the acts of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and here the effect is attributed to the one who moves, namely, God who inspires us. Thus St. Paul says, "The Spirit Himself asketh for us."[474]

Doubt. What is the suppositum for the spirator or principle of the Holy Ghost?

Reply. This term "spirator" has for its suppositum two persons taken together, as when we say that the father and mother are the principle of the son. The adequate principle is the father and mother taken together, and in this sense we understand the proposition; man generates man. The father alone is the inadequate principle. Proportionally this is true in the present question.

State of the question. It seems that love is not the proper name of the Holy Ghost since the three persons love, and love therefore is predicated essentially. Moreover, love is the name of an action, not of a subsisting person, and it is predicated of the Holy Ghost as His operation after He is constituted a person.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative. Love, used personally and not essentially or notionally, is the proper name of the Holy Ghost.

1. Proof from authority. St. Gregory the Great declared: "The Holy Ghost Himself is love."[475] St. Augustine also frequently uses the name "love" to designate the Holy Ghost. This usage is plainly in accord with the Latin theory of the Trinity, according to which the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of love, and the term of such procession can be called love. But we do not have an explicit warrant in Sacred Scripture for the use of this appellation, while on the other hand the Son of God is explicitly called "the Word" in the Scriptures. St. Ambrose calls the Holy Ghost the charity of God, and this thought is also expressed in the liturgy:

Thou who art called the Paraclete,
Best Gift of God above,
The living Spring, the living Fire,
Sweet Unction, and true Love ![476]

The Eleventh Council of Toledo (675)[477] makes reference to this name: "The Holy Ghost is shown to have proceeded from the Father and the Son because He is acknowledged to be the charity or the holiness of both."

In the writings of the Greek Fathers the Third Person of God has one proper name, the Holy Ghost, but He has various appellations: kleseis, that is, energeia, or vital action, the gift of God and certain symbolic names: living spring, chrism, anointment, and spiritual unction. But the Greeks do not distinguish the proper name from the others as the Latins do.[478]

2. Theological proof. In the body of the article St. Thomas argues that love is accepted in three senses: essentially, notionally, and personally. In all three senses it is substantial love. In the essential sense it denotes the condition of the lover with reference to the thing loved and belongs to the three persons like intellection. Notionally love signifies active spiration, by which the Holy Ghost is designated as proceeding from the spirating Father and Son, just as in the first procession the enunciation as distinct from intellection is something notional, as will be explained more fully below in question 41. Personally love denotes the condition of him who proceeds after the manner of love with regard to his principle, and in this sense it is a proper name of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the mutual love of the Father and the Son as a "certain impression of the thing loved in the affection of the lover," as St. Thomas says. This notional love of the Father and the Son is unique if understood substantively, because there is but one spiration and indeed only one spirator; it is also said to be mutual when understood adjectively because there are two spirating.

As we have said in the first article of question 36, the procession of love is not as well understood by us as the procession after the manner of intellection, and therefore we do not have the proper terms to designate what pertains to love. Thus while the term of enunciation in the intellect has a proper name, the mental word, the immanent terminus of love is unnamed. Three reasons are given for this: 1. the intellect knows better what is in itself than what is in the will; 2. good, the object of love, is not formally in the mind as truth, that is, as the conformity of the judgment with the thing, but it is in things outside the mind. A certain terminus of love exists in the affection of the lover, "I certain impression of the thing loved on the affection of the lover" and at the same time "an impulse to the thing loved." In St. Augustine's words, "My love (is) the pressure that is on me." Thus love can be predicated of God not only essentially and notionally but also personally because, although a special name for the immanent terminus of love is lacking, we use the common name of love;[479] 3. a reason why love, the act of the will, is less known than the act of the intellect arises from the fact that a thing is not intelligible except inasmuch as it is in act or determined; but the act of the will or love, tending to the good which is in things, retains something that is potential. We do not understand divine love, which is determined to the highest degree, except from the analogy with our love, whose tending to the good remains somewhat potential and not fully determined. From this difficulty in understanding the things that pertain to love comes this poverty of words, and so we must have recourse to common terms.

Because of this limited vocabulary we often hear preachers speak of the Holy Ghost as if He were the active, mutual love of the Father and the Son, whereas this love is active spiration and if the Holy Ghost were identified with it there would be only two persons in God. Certainly the Holy Ghost is not the active spiration which is in the Father and the Son; He is the terminus of that spiration, a terminus which is opposed to the first two divine persons by the opposition of the relation of procession or of passive spiration.

With regard to the immanent and unnamed terminus of love, we should note what St. Thomas says: "the thing loved is in the lover, not according to the likeness of the species as the thing known is in the intellect, but as that which inclines and to some extent intrinsically impels the lover toward the thing loved."

By analogy with the word of the intellect this unnamed and immanent terminus can be called, as it were, the word of love, keeping in mind that it is a kind of inverted word, that is, it is produced not by the lover as the intellectual word is produced by him who understands but rather the thing loved attracting the lover to itself. Truth is formally in the mind (as the conformity of the judgment with the thing); but good is in things (as the perfection of a lovable thing) and draws the lover to itself. Cajetan says: "The thing loved does not become different in the lover except according to the affection of the lover for the thing loved... . Thus the lover is drawn, transformed, and objectively impelled to the thing loved, and so the lover is in that which is loved... . To be loved is not to be drawn, but to draw the lover... . Therefore to be in the will as loved is to be in the will as drawing it, " or attracting the will to itself.[480] This is what St. Thomas remarks so often: knowledge draws the object, for instance, God, to us, but love draws us to the good which is in things. Therefore in this life "the love of God is better than the knowledge of God."[481] While this terminus of the act of love is difficult to express, we find it expressed in various languages as a wound. In the Canticle of Canticles: "Thou hast wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse";[482] and some of the mystics, St. Theresa and St. John of the Cross, often speak of this holy wound of love by which God enters into our hearts and inclines and impels us to Himself. This holy wound of divine love completely heals the wounds of sin. It was this truth that prompted the beautiful prayer of St. Nicholas of Flue: "O my Lord and my God, take me from myself and make me entirely Thine."

St. Paul also speaks of this drawing by our Lord: "Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect: but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus."[483] These last words signify not only that Christ knew St. Paul perfectly, but that He also accepted him on the day of his conversion[484] as His apostle and beloved disciple and that Christ always drew St. Paul Himself. Thus the Christ who is loved is in St. Paul, who loves, as drawing St. Paul to Himself.

Although the immanent terminus of love has no name, it finds at least metaphorical expression in various languages, especially in the metaphor of a wound. This metaphor is explained by St. Thomas as follows: Love causes a languishing, a sadness, because of the absence of the lover; it wounds, and sometimes violently draws the lover outside himself and thus produces ecstasy and rapture.[485] Hence we see that even in his intellectualism St. Thomas did not ignore the psychology of love even though there is such a penurious vocabulary about it; he intentionally makes use of general terms and supplies with such metaphors as that of the wound.

In article I, in the reply to the second objection, St. Thomas says that in God love can be a divine person inasmuch as it is subsisting and also incommunicable as the terminus of the second procession.

The third objection: Love is a nexus between lovers; but the nexus is the medium between those things which it joins and therefore it is not a terminus or something that proceeds.

Reply. The Holy Ghost is at the same time a nexus and a terminus, since He is the terminus of the mutual love of the Father and the Son. This mutual spirating love is notional love, and the Holy Ghost is personal love. The Holy Ghost is said to be the terminus of mutual love inasmuch as He proceeds from two spirators, but the love of the two spirators is unique since there is only one spiration.

In the reply to the fourth objection we learn that the Holy Ghost loves with an essential love like the Father and the Son. We should note how St. Thomas safeguards the proper meaning of the terms. "The word," he says, "onnotes the condition of the word with respect to the thing expressed by the word."[486] That which is really understood is the thing understood in the word; that is, what we first understand in direct intellection is not the mental word of the extramental thing but the nature of the extramental thing expressed by the mental word. We know the extramental thing in the word but not in the word first seen or known in itself. On the other hand we know a man in his reflection, and the reflection is that which is first seen or known, and God knows all creatures in Himself and He knows and sees Himself first, for what is first known by the divine intellect is the divine essence itself and not possible or actual creatures.

State of the question. In the sed contra St. Augustine is quoted as saying that the Father and the Son love each other by the Holy Ghost.[487] But the difficulty arises because the Father and the Son cannot love each other by the Holy Ghost either by essential love or by notional love, just as we do not say that the Father understands the Son by the Son or begets by the Son. But the Father and the Son have no other love than essential and notional love.

Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative: the Father and the Son love each other by the Holy Ghost with notional love as a tree is said to flower with flowers.

1. Proof from authority. The text of St. Augustine, quoted in the argument, had been explained in several ways by Scholastics prior to St. Thomas as is indicated in the beginning of the body of the article.

2. Theological proof. A distinction is made between essential and notional love. If love is understood essentially, the Father and the Son do not love each other by the Holy Ghost but by the divine essence because the Holy Ghost is not essential but personal love. By essential love the three divine persons love one another in one and the same act of the divine will, and this act of essential love is identified with the divine essence. But if love is understood notionally, that is, as denoting the third person, then love is nothing else than the spiration of personal love just as enunciation is the production of the word and flowering is the production of flowers. So as we say that a tree flowers with flowers and the Father understands Himself and creatures by the Word, so the Father and the Son are said to love themselves and us by the Holy Ghost, that is, by proceeding love. As we have said, this notional love is mutual although there is but one active spiration and one spirator with two who spirate.

St. Thomas, explanation is more satisfactory than those proposed by earlier Scholastics who understood the ablative "spiritu Sancto" (by the Holy Ghost) either as a sign of mutual love and thus weakened the sense of the expression; or as a formal cause, as if the Holy Ghost were the mutual love of the Father and the Son and thus identified the Holy Ghost with active spiration and then there would be no third person; or as the formal effect, and this last approaches closest to the truth.

Therefore we must say that the Father and the Holy Ghost love each other by notional love inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is the terminus of this love. Confirmation is found in a rather remote analogy: parents are said to love each other by their son since the son is the terminus of their love in the sense that we say that a tree flowers with flowers. We refer the reader to the third paragraph of the body of the article.

Reply to the second objection. "Whenever the understanding of any action implies a determined effect, the principle of the action can be denominated by the action and the effect."

Reply to the third objection. "The Father loves not only the Son but also Himself and us by the Holy Ghost as He enunciates Himself and every creature by the Word which He generates." This is so "because the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the first goodness according to which the Father loves Himself and all creatures." Hence the Holy Ghost proceeds not only from the mutual love of the Father and the Son but also from the love of the first goodness, which the Father loves in Himself and in the Son and which the Son loves in Himself and in the Father. In this way many difficulties proposed recently on this point are solved.

Doubt. From the love of which things does the Holy Ghost proceed?

Reply. The Holy Ghost proceeds per se from the love of all the things that are formally in God, and per accidens and concomitantly from the love of creatures. This is because the Holy Ghost proceeds from the most perfect love. By this love whatever is in God is necessarily loved and by it God freely loves creatures. But the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the love of possible creatures since God is not said to love possible creatures because He does not will for them the good of existence. This suffices to explain why the Holy Ghost is properly called love, namely, personal Love.

Corollary. The expression sometimes heard, "incarnate love," is not admissible as is "incarnate Word," because it seems to imply the incarnation of the Holy Ghost.

We may recall here how beautifully the liturgy makes use of metaphors to express this doctrine, particularly in the hymn Veni Creator:

Thou who art called the Paraclete,
Best gift of God above,
The living spring, the living fire,
Sweet unction, and true love!

O guide our minds with Thy blest light,
With love our hearts inflame,
And with Thy strength, which ne'er decays,
Confirm our mortal frame.[488]

Since, as St. Thomas says, those things which pertain to love are unnamed, the liturgy has recourse to various metaphors, some of them opposed to the others, as the spring of living water and fire, but whatever is said dividedly is finally united in spiritual love.

In the sequence, Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the liturgy amasses antithetic metaphors about the Holy Ghost:

Thou in labor rest most sweet,
Thou art shadow from the heat,
Comfort in adversity.

What is soiled, make Thou pure;
What is wounded, work its cure;
What is parched, fructify;

What is rigid, gently bend;
What is frozen, warmly tend;
Strengthen what goes erringly.[489]

In the preparation for Mass among the seven prayers to the Holy Ghost we read: "Inflame, O Lord, our reins and our hearts with the fire of the Holy Ghost; that we may serve Thee with a chaste body and please Thee with a pure mind."[490] As we have a consecration to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin Mary we should also consecrate ourselves to the Holy Ghost.

THIS question is the basis for the question on the missions of the divine persons (question 43) and it is also fundamental to the questions on grace. For a clear understanding of the following articles we must first present a few notes on the differences between the Latin and Greek Fathers.[491]

For the Latin Fathers the natural order, or the order of creation, depends efficiently and finally on the one God, the author of nature; the supernatural order, or the order of grace, depends efficiently and finally on the triune God, the author of grace. For the Greeks, the natural order is also produced by God ad extra through efficient causality and by the command whereby God in pronouncing the fiat produced all created things from nothing. The supernatural order, however, for the Greeks is rather the indwelling of the divine persons in the just than an effect of efficient causality ad extra. This indwelling is in a sense a prolongation of the divine processions ad extra, distinct from the creative action as living is distinct from commanding. Living is an action essentially immanent whereas the divine command is something that refers to things outside the divine nature. It was in this sense that the Greek Fathers interpreted St. Peter's words, "My whom He hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature."[492] In order that the intimate life of God may come to us it is necessary that the divine persons themselves, without whom this intimate life of God cannot exist, should come to us in their substantial reality. It is not enough that the Father should have the simple will of adopting; He must operate, as it were, by His nature or according to His intimate life by sending us the Son and the Holy Ghost. Thus in the mind of the Greek Fathers the order of grace is rather the order of substantial indwelling than an effect of divine causality, and therefore the Greeks insist that we receive not only grace, which is a created effect, but the Holy Ghost, who is the gift par excellence. For Origen[493] and the Alexandrian Fathers, the Holy Ghost is the substantial font of all graces. For Didymus[494] the Holy Ghost is the seal impressed on the soul, and sanctifying grace is the impression of this seal in its passive aspect, and this seal must remain in the soul.[495]

Similarly St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen call our sanctification a deification, and this deification is described as the projection of God's inner life ad extra by the divine missions.

For the Greek Fathers, then, the Holy Ghost is the uncreated gift and at the same time the enexgeia metaphorically expressed by the figure of the spring of living water; and this uncreated gift is prior, on the part of God who gives it, to the created gift of grace. In this sense they also understood the words, "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us."[496]

St. Thomas does not appear to recede from this position of the Greek Fathers, although he does insist that habitual grace is a previous disposition on the part of the subject, man, for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This does not preclude the idea that the Holy Ghost on the part of the efficient cause, which is God, is given prior to grace. Causes are often causes of each other; thus the ultimate disposition for a perfection precedes the perfection in the order of material cause and follows it as a property in the order of formal cause. In the theory of the Greek Fathers, although the entire Trinity dwells in the just, the Holy Ghost is in the just by a special presence which is more than the presence by appropriation of which the Latin Fathers speak. In other words, the theory of the Greek Fathers, which considers the three persons prior to the divine nature, finds it easier to explain the special nature of the mission of the Holy Ghost, which as a mission is something more than simple appropriation.

In the Greek mind the Father, in order to sanctify men and angels, sends them the uncreated gift, namely, the Holy Ghost, who dwells personally in the just and by circumincession, as it were, draws the Son, who is also sent, and the Father, who is not sent but who comes. Thus the Holy Ghost dwells in us formally as a person and as the uncreated gift. There is not, however, a hypostatic union of the soul of the just man with the Holy Ghost because the just man retains his own personality and the union with the Holy Ghost is not substantial but only accidental.

According to the theory of the Latin Fathers the Holy Ghost dwells in us by reason of the divine nature, because the Latins considered the divine nature before the three persons, and in the souls of the just they considered first the participation in the divine nature, which is created grace, before they considered the uncreated gift, for which grace disposes the soul. These are two aspects of the same mystery, and divine Providence has arranged that both be studied so that we might understand this mystery better although we shall never be able to express it adequately.

From this it is clear that the Greeks understood the absolute distinction between the order of nature and the order of grace; indeed they declare that without the uncreated gift we cannot be made partakers of the divine nature; that is, habitual grace cannot be infused except through the divine persons dwelling in the just, especially by the Holy Ghost, who is the uncreated gift, the living spring of all graces.[497]

This at all events is the interpretation of the doctrine of the Greek Fathers proposed by many modern authors although the doctrine of the Greek Fathers in other texts seems to be closer to St. Augustine and the Latin Fathers.

We shall now consider how St. Thomas preserved the doctrine of the Greek Fathers and how he reconciled it to the Latin theory of the two processions after the manner of intellection and of love. This question has two articles: 1. whether "the Gift" can be taken as a personal name; 2. whether it is a proper name of the Holy Ghost. Such is St. Thomas' procedure because the Son of God is also given to us, and he wished to show that the Holy Ghost is properly the gift.

State of the question. It appears that "gift" is not a personal name because the divine essence is the gift which the Father gives the Son. Moreover, a gift is something inferior to the giver. Finally, gift implies a reference to creatures and is predicated of God in time, whereas personal names are predicated of God from eternity.

Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that it belongs to a divine person to be given and to be a gift.

1. Proof from authority. This entire doctrine has its source in the words of our Lord as explained by St. John and St. Paul. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: "If thou didst know the gift of God, and who He is that saith to you, Give Me to drink; thou perhaps wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water... . But the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting."[498] The living water springing up into life everlasting is grace, the seed of glory, but the spring of the living water or the font of grace is something else than grace. These words are explained by our Lord Himself later on: "If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink. He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this [the Evangelist adds] He said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in Him; for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified."[499] It pertains, then, to the glory of Christ to give His supreme gift, the uncreated gift of the Holy Ghost. The same doctrine is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us."[500]

In the light of these texts of the New Testament many passages of the Old Testament, cited by the Fathers, especially Didymus, appear much clearer.[501] In Jeremias we read: "They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."[502] How true these words are of those who put aside everything that disposes to the contemplation of God and lose themselves in mere human learning and are busy with trifles! They gnaw at the shell and never taste the meat, as Pope Leo XIII pointed out.[503]

In the prophecy of Isaias we read: "For I will pour waters upon the thirsty ground, and streams upon the dry land: I will pour out My spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thy stock."[504] "And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him."[505] "And the Lord will give thee rest continually, and will fill thy soul with brightness, and deliver thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail."[506] And in the prophecy of Joel we read: "I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,... moreover upon My servants and handmaids in those days I will pour forth My spirit."[507]

These words of Joel were quoted by St. Peter on Pentecost to explain the extraordinary events of that day: "For these are not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day: but this is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass, in the last days (saith the Lord) I will pour out of My spirit upon all flesh... and they shall prophesy."[508]

In the psalms we often read of the font of life," or with thee is the fountain of life: and in thy light we shall see light";[509] "His wind (spirit) shall blow, and the water shall run";[510] "the stream of the river maketh the city of God joyful."[511]

In the mirror of sensible things by this metaphor of the spring of living water we find a wonderful expression of the Holy Ghost, the font of all graces. We may add those texts of the New Testament in which the Holy Ghost is promised or the mystery of Pentecost is commemorated, "We shall give you another Paraclete, "[512] "Receive ye the Holy Ghost."[513]

After these preliminary remarks it will be easy to understand the reply to this article: It is proper for a divine person to be given and to be a gift.

This is theologically explained in the body of the article. Obviously the syllogism is explicative and not objectively illative because we do not arrive at a new truth distinct from the truth contained in the passages quoted from revelation. The theological explanation is an analysis of the concept of gift. The word "gift" implies the aptitude to be given, an aptitude toward the giver and to him to whom the gift is made so that the receiver may really accept and enjoy the gift. But any divine person can be given by another inasmuch as it proceeds from that person, and a divine person may be possessed by a rational creature if the creature also is given the ability to enjoy the divine person. Therefore the name "gift" is a personal name, or it belongs to a divine person to be given and to be a gift.

The reader is referred to the article,[514] where we see that this presence of the Holy Ghost in the just is real and not an intentional, representative, or affective presence like the presence of the humanity of Christ or of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who remain physically distant.

Reply to the first objection. "The Holy Ghost gives Himself inasmuch as He has disposition over Himself and is able to enjoy Himself, just as a free man is said to have disposition over himself... . But in the case when the gift is said to be from the giver (by origin) it is thus distinguished personally from the giver and then 'gift' is a personal name."

It should be noted that as the Holy Ghost gives Himself so Christ gives Himself in Holy Communion, especially when He gave Himself to His apostles with His own hands. To give oneself is much more excellent than to give something external to oneself; it is a sign of great love. Thus in God, the Father gives Himself to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, communicating something of Himself, His own divine nature.

Reply to the third objection. "'Gift' when it is used as a personal name in God does not imply subjection but only origin with regard to the giver. In comparison to the receiver, however, it implies free disposition (if the gift is inferior to the giver) or fruition (if the gift is a divine person)." This is the basis of that mystical, fruition union in which the soul of the just man, already purified, experimentally knows the divine persons as really present in itself and enjoys them imperfectly in this life in anticipation of the perfect enjoyment in heaven. From this it follows that infused contemplation, which proceeds from a living faith illuminated by the gifts of knowledge and wisdom, and the mystical union that results, are not something extraordinary like the gifts of prophecy and tongues. They are rather something at once eminent and normal in perfect souls, a certain normal beginning of eternal life, like the acts of the gifts or virtues which are perfected by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, as St. Thomas said in speaking of the beatitudes.[515]

Reply to the fourth objection. "A divine person is called gift from eternity although He is given in time" for He has this aptitude to being given from eternity. Nor does the name "gift" imply a real relation to creatures but only a relation of reason.

State of the question. It seems that "gift" is not a proper name of the Holy Ghost because it is also used for the Son, "I son is given to us,"[516] and "God so loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son."[517] This name, moreover, does not appear to signify any property of the Holy Ghost since it is predicated with respect to creatures, which are able not to be and which are not from eternity.

Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that "gift" taken personally in God is the proper name of the Holy Ghost.

1. Proof from authority. This is proved by the authority of St. Augustine: "As to be born is to be the Son from the Father, so for the Holy Ghost to be the gift of God is to proceed from the Father and the Son."[518]

2. The theological proof. A beautiful explanation is taken from the fact that the Holy Ghost is personal love, as was explained above.[519] Here St. Thomas reconciled the theories of the Greek and Latin Fathers; for the Latins the Holy Ghost is personal love, for the Greeks He is the uncreated gift of God.

The reasoning may be summed up as follows: Since a gift implies a gratuitous donation based on love, the first thing that we give another is the love by which we will good for him. Thus love is the first gift and the root of all other gifts. But the Holy Ghost proceeds as personal love. Therefore He proceeds as the first gift and consequently "gift" is a name proper to Him, that is, it belongs to Him rather than to the Son.

If however "gift", is understood essentially, it belongs to the three divine persons, who are able to communicate and give themselves to us gratuitously. If "gift" is taken notionally, according to its passive origin from the giver, it refers also to the Son, but less properly than to the Holy Ghost, who alone proceeds as personal love.

The reader is referred to the article.

Thus once again is confirmed the Latin theory of the Trinity, according to which the Son proceeds as the intellectual word and the Holy Ghost as love. This doctrine admirably agrees with revelation and is based on the fact that the Son is called the Word in the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, and on the fact that the Scriptures call the Holy Ghost the uncreated gift of God; for the primary gift is love, the root of all gratuitous donation. St. Thomas thus preserves what the Greek Fathers taught about the Holy Ghost, the uncreated gift, and His indwelling in the souls of the just.[520] The Greek theory is more concrete; it speaks of God the Father as the Creator, of the Son as the Savior, and of the Holy Ghost as the Sanctifier. The Latin theory is more abstract; in a more abstract way it considers the divine nature common to the three persons and the participation in that divine nature, which is habitual grace without which the indwelling of the Holy Ghost does not take place. The Latins had to be more abstract in their approach because they began with the divine nature as that which is common to the three persons. Gradually it became clearer that every divine operation ad extra, such as creation and sanctification, is common to the three persons because it proceeds from the omnipotent divine will, which as an attribute of the divine nature belongs to all three persons. Thus the Father cannot be said to be the Creator in the sense that He alone creates, nor is the Holy Ghost properly the Sanctifier as if He alone sanctified, but these terms are predicated of these persons by appropriation. It was necessary for the Latins in this way to complement the concept of the Greeks.

Those who write about love from the psychological or theological viewpoint ought to keep in mind that love, especially pure and gratuitous love, is the gift par excellence from which other gifts flow. The Latin theory offers an excellent explanation for the Greeks, frequent assertion that the Holy Ghost is the fountain of living water, the source of all graces, namely, because He is love and the first and most excellent gift. This is a legitimate commentary on our Lord's words to the Samaritan woman and on the following: "If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink... . Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this He said of the Spirit which they should receive."[521]

Corollary. As Christians we should try to attain a more intimate union with the Holy Ghost, who is the most excellent of all divine gifts and the root of all others. This present doctrine should be applied to all those who are seeking to live an interior life and not only to those who are led by God along extraordinary paths and who receive graces which are not given to all. If anyone should ask whether our Lord's words, "If thou didst know the gift of, God..." pertain to the ascetical life or the mystical life, it seems to me the question smacks of pedantry. Indeed it refers to the spiritual life, a spirituality it is true that is profound and leads to eternal life, for which the mystical life is only a normal and preliminary disposition in perfect souls.

In the Contra Gentes St. Thomas presents a beautiful chapter on the other proper and appropriated names of the Holy Ghost.[522] The Holy Ghost is often called the nexus or bond of the Holy Trinity, the complacent joy of the Father and the Son, since the Holy Ghost is produced by the joyous love which the Father has for the Son. He is called the Paraclete and the consoler of the soul, the spiritual unction, which heals the wounds of our souls; the power of the Most High, because love is the greatest power; the finger of God, because the sending of the Son was the beginning of salvation, and the Holy Ghost is, as it were, the index and sign of sanctification.[523]

We have completed the second part of the treatise, which deals with the divine persons in particular, and now we begin the third part, which treats of the divine persons: in comparison with the essence; 2. in comparison with the properties; 3. in comparison with the notional acts, namely, generation and active spiration; 4. and in comparison with each other.

At first sight it will appear to many readers that St. Thomas is again saying what he said in the first part of this treatise, when he treated of the persons absolutely in common and then went on to the two processions and the relations founded on the processions. St. Thomas, however, is not making a new beginning of the treatise. What in the first place he had considered analytically, first in common and then in particular, he now considers synthetically, that is, by comparing with each other all that has been determined theologically in the light of revelation. This treatise is a kind of circle, beginning with the processions, going on to the persons, and returning to the terminus a quo, that is, the divine processions. This "circular" contemplation may appear to be returning always to the same things but in reality it seeks always to penetrate more deeply into the matter just as the eagle high in sky seems to be making the same circle again and again, looking up into the sun and in the light of the sun above looking down on the vast expanse of the earth below. "This circular movement is the movement around the same central point. Dionysius ascribed to the angels a circular movement since they, uniformly and unceasingly, without beginning and without end, look upon God, just as circular movement has neither beginning nor end and uniformly moves about the same center."[524]

We will understand the necessity of this synthetic part when we come to the theory of appropriation, which cannot be explained until we have determined those things which are proper to each person, and when we consider the notional acts, active generation and active spiration, which presuppose the persons from whom these acts proceed.

In question 39, on the divine persons in comparison with the divine essence, St. Thomas again considers (in the first two articles) the distinction of the persons, but not in the same manner as in question 28, which dealt with the relations. Then he proceeded analytically because he had not yet arrived at the concept of a person, explained later in question 29.

Now he considers the matter synthetically, beginning with the concept of a person, which has now been determined. After the first two articles, St. Thomas determines the exact manner of speech to be observed in order to avoid errors about the Trinity; he explains the essential names, whether concrete or abstract, the notional adjective, notional verbs, such as generate and spirate. Here he also explains the difficult theory of appropriation, to which the Latins, more than the Greeks, recur for a clearer presentation of the distinction between the persons. The Greek Fathers had no great need of this theory because they began with the consideration, not of the unity of nature, but of the Trinity of persons, which for them obviously were distinct from the beginning.

State of the question. In this title "the same" signifies real identity. It appears that the essence is not the same as the person because there are three persons and only one essence. Moreover, the persons are distinct and the essence is not distinct. Finally, the person is subject to the essence inasmuch as the person is the first subject of attribution and nothing is subject to itself.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative: the persons are not really distinguished from the essence. This doctrine was defined by the Fourth Lateran Council: "In God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, because each of the three persons is that thing which is the substance, the essence, or the divine nature."[525] We have treated of this matter in question 28, where we referred to the definition of the Council of Reims (1148) against Gilbert Porretanus. There we also expounded Scotus' theory, which tries to establish between the divine persons and the divine essence a distinction called formal-actual on the part of the thing.

In the sed contra St. Thomas quotes the authority of St. Augustine: "When we say the person of the Father we are saying nothing else than the substance of the Father."[526] We should note that the words "nothing else" mean not really distinct. This point is of major importance with regard to St. Thomas, doctrine about the real distinction between a created essence and being. Although St. Thomas does not often say expressly that a real distinction exists between created essence and being, he often affirms that opinion. For example, in the Contra Gentes he says: "It is proper in every substance, except subsisting being itself, that the substance itself be one thing and the being another."[527] In other words, antecedent to the consideration of our minds Peter is not his being; his being, which is in him as a contingent attribute, is something other than his essence. We are now asking whether a divine person is something other than the divine essence. St. Augustine answered in the negative.

In the body of the article St. Thomas coordinates and synthesizes the conceptual analysis given previously.[528] He reasons as follows: Relations inhere accidentally in creatures, but in God they are the essence itself because their <esse in> is substantial. But a divine person, for example, the Father, signifies a subsisting relation.[529] Therefore the divine persons are not really distinct from the divine essence although they are really distinct from each other because of the opposition of relation. Symbolically, in the triangle the three angles are really distinct from each other but they are not distinct from the common surface.

Reply to the first objection. This does not involve a contradiction because the relations are not distinguished from each other according to their <esse in> but only according to their <esse ad> because of their relative opposition.

Reply to the second objection. But the divine persons are distinguished from the essence just as the divine attributes are distinguished from one another, and this is sufficient so that something may be affirmed of the essence and denied of the persons; for example, the essence is communicable but paternity is not, just as mercy is the principle of forgiveness and justice is not.

Reply to the third objection. If it should be said that nothing is subject to itself, the reply is that the divine persons are analogically considered as the subject of the divine essence without any real distinction, whereas in sensible things there is a real distinction between the matter, by which the thing is individuated, and the form which is given to this subject; similarly in created things a real distinction exists between substance and the accidents.

Scotus raised certain objections against this article, but we have already considered them together with Cajetan's replies.[530] We recall here that the formal-actual distinction on the part of the thing which was proposed by Scotus is an impossible middle between a real distinction and a distinction of reason. A distinction either precedes the consideration of our minds and then it is real, however weak it may be, or it does not precede the consideration of our minds and follows and then it is not real but of reason although it may often be founded in the thing and then it is called virtual. In the present instance the distinction in question is a virtual distinction of a minor order after the manner of that which is implicit and explicit, that is, the essence of God as understood by us implicitly contains the persons in act and the Deity as seen by the blessed and as it is in itself explicitly contains the persons in act.

No middle can be found between the distinction which precedes the consideration of our minds and the distinction which does not so precede. Scotus, theory of the formal-actual distinction on the part of the things sins against the rules of division. A division, as Aristotle pointed out, must divide the whole, and in order that it be adequate it must be into two members opposed to each other by affirmation and negation and not into three members. In the Porphyrian tree substance is divided per se, adequately and progressively into members contradictorily opposed to each other: corporeal and incorporeal substance; animate and inanimate corporeal substances; sensitive and non-sensitive living substances; sensitive rational and sensitive non-rational. Distinction must be divided in the same way: real distinction or that which precedes the consideration of our minds and the non-real, which does not precede the consideration of our minds; between these two we cannot conceive, nor can there be, a middle, because a thing either is or is not antecedent to the consideration of our minds.

Hence distinction, which is the absence of identity, must be divided immediately, not into three members (of reason, formal-actual on the part of the thing, and real), but into two members opposed to each other by contradiction:[531]

1. Real distinction.

2. Distinction of reason, either founded on the thing, or virtual, or not founded on the thing.

The major virtual distinction after the manner of that which is excluded and excluding, for example, between genus and difference.

The minor virtual distinction after the manner of that which is implicit and explicit, for example, between the attributes of God.

A similar case arises in the division of divine science.[532]

We recall here Cajetan's admirable reply to Scotus on this question: "The Deity as it is in itself is above being and above unity, it is above all simply simple perfections, which it contains formally and eminently in their formal natures." These words of Cajetan are the sublimest comment on this entire treatise.[533]

"We fall into error," says Cajetan, "Then we proceed from the absolute and the relative to God, because the distinction between absolute and relative is conceived by us as prior to God and therefore we try to place God in one or the other of these two members of the distinction. Whereas the matter is entirely different. The divine nature is prior to being and all its differences, it transcends all being and is above unity... . Thus in God there is but one formal nature or reason, and this is neither purely absolute nor purely relative, not purely communicable or purely incommunicable, but it contains most eminently and formally both that which is of absolute perfection and whatever the relative Trinity requires."

This formal and most eminent nature is the Deity as it is in itself, and when the blessed behold God they see no distinction between the essence and paternity although the essence is communicable while the paternity is not. It appears therefore, as it were a posteriori, that the Deity is above being, although the Deity formally and eminently contains being; a sign of this is the fact that, whereas in the natural order being is particible, as are also good, truth, intellect, and will, the Deity as such cannot be participated in naturally by even the highest angel or creatable angel. Participation in the Deity can take place only through grace, which disposes us to see God immediately as He sees Himself, although not comprehensively.

The Deity inasmuch as it is above being, unity, intellect, and will is that great darkness of the mystics because it transcends the limits of intelligibility in this life.[534]

State of the question. This is a question of terminology. The difficulty arises from the use of the genitive, "If one essence"; or it might be better to say, "One essence of three persons."

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative. The formula is found in the councils, for example, "We confess and believe that the holy and ineffable Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, one God in nature to be of one substance, of one nature, and of one majesty and power."[535]

In the preface of the Mass of the Holy Trinity we say: "One God, one Lord: not in the singleness of one only person, but in the Trinity of one substance, " that is, the three persons are of one essence. Thus the Church uses this genitive. As is said in the argument sed contra, this is a translation of the Greek homoousios, of one substance, that is to say, that the three persons are consubstantial, as was defined by the Council of Nicaea.

The theological argument, given in the body of the article, is the following. We cannot denominate divine things except in the manner of our own intellectual processes with the ever-present reference to creatures from which our concepts are derived. But in creatures the essence signifies the form of individuals and persons and is attributed to them. Thus we say the sanity of this man, or by means of the genitive we say, a man of perfect virtue.

Similarly in God, where the persons are multiplied and the essence is not, we say, the one essence of three persons, and the three persons are "of one essence, " and the genitive is construed as signifying the form.

Reply to the fifth objection. We cannot say that the three persons are out of the same essence, because the preposition out of does not express the formal cause but the efficient and material cause, which do not exist in God with reference to the divine persons.

The question is whether the essential names are predicated of the three persons only singly or also in the plural, for example, whether we can say, in God there are three Gods, or at least three divine beings.

In reply we refer to the distinction between the substantive and adjective. Those things which signify the essence substantively are predicated of the three persons only singly and not in the plural; thus we do not say, three Gods. Those things, however, which signify the essence adjectively are predicated of the three persons in the plural: thus we say three wise beings.

It should be noted that what grammarians today call substantive and adjective were formerly called a substantive noun, as stone, wood; and an adjective noun, as white. It was called adjective because it denoted something that inhered in a subject like an accident.

The point is that a substance is in itself and not in another, and thus it has in itself its own unity or plurality. Therefore if a substantive noun is predicated in the plural it signifies a plurality of substances, for example, many men, in which the essence or substantial form is multiplied. Therefore we do not say, three Gods.

On the other hand an accident is not in itself but in another, and therefore the accident receives unity or plurality from its subject. In adjective nouns, therefore, the singularity or plurality follows on the subject or suppositum, and the multiplication of the suppositum suffices without the multiplication of the form, for example, if the same whiteness pertains to two supposita, we may say, two that are white.

Thus we do not say, three Gods, but three divine beings, three who exist, three who are eternal, three uncreated, if these terms are taken adjectively. In the Athanasian Creed we read: "The three persons are co-eternal together and co-equal." If these words are taken substantively, we say One uncreated, as we read in the same Creed, &quo