Chapter X. Question 36

Tue Person oF THE Hoty GuHost

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HE 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.

First ARTICLE

WHETHER THIS NAME, HOLY SPIRIT OR HOLY GHOST, IS A PROPER NAME OF ONE OF THE DIVINE PERSONS

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.” > 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.” St. Thomas also refers to the Johannine comma, which is at least an expression of tradition even if its genuineness is not entirely clear.

® Matt. 28:19; John 14:16 £.; 15:11, 26; 16:7, 8, 13, 14; Luke 12:10; Acts 15:28; 20:28; 13:12; Rom. 8:9-11; 6:19; Eph. 4:30; I Cor. 2:10 ff.; 3:16; 6:19 f; II Cor. 13:13.

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.* 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.‘

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.” * 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

4Thus it is more certain that we have infused faith than that we have infused charity, from which would follow the certitude that we are in the state of grace. Cf. Ia Iae, q. 112, a.5 ad 2.

of the thing.® 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.’

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.® 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.® 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.”°

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.

WHETHER THE HOLY GHOST PROCEEDS FROM THE SON

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 afhrmative 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.* 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.’” 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 Filzogue 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.’* 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.” **

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.” 15 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

13 [bid., nos. 83, 86 (the Nicene Creed); 277, 345, 428 (Fourth Lateran Council); no. 460 (Second Council of Lyons); no. 703 (Council of Florence); no. 994 (the Tridentine profession of faith); no. 1084 (the profession of faith prescribed for the Greeks by Gregory XIII in 1575).

time from the Father and the Son, and that He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and by one spiration.” 1° 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.” ** These words, “He 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,” ** “For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.” *°

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.” °° Here mention is made of another per-

16 [bid., no. 691 (Council of Florence). 17 Ibid., no. 704 (Council of Florence). 18 John 15:26. 19 Matt. 10:20. 20 John 14:16.

son, 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.” °? 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.” *? In the following chapter: “Tf I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” 7°

St. Thomas’ argument ”* 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.” *° 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.”°

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.” ?7

Here the Scriptures explicitly affirm that the Holy Ghost, the Para-

25 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, IV, 20.

clete, 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.” 7°

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.” °° 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.*° 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.” *?

In this last text the Holy Ghost dwelling in the souls of men is

28 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Joan., XVI, 14.

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.” *? Again in the Acts of the Apostles, “They attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.” °? 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 ?” *4

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.*°

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.” ê Inganother place St. Athanasius calls the Son “the font of the Holy Ghost.” ** 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.” ** St. Cyril of Alexandria is more explicit: “Since therefore the Holy Ghost dwelling in us makes us comformable to the Father, He

85 Cf, Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theologicus, no. 168: The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and is also the Spirit of the Son; no. 169: He is called the image of the Son; no. 170: He proceeds from the Father through the Son; no. 171: He proceeds from the Father and the Son. References are also given here to the principal texts of the Greek and Latin Fathers,

Cf. also Tixeront, Hist. de dogma, IV, 518-26; A. d’Alés, S.J., De Deo Trino (1934), VII, VIII, and the index, which treats of Photius; M. Jugie, Theologia dogmatica christianorum orientalium (1926), l, 154-79.

87 De Incarnatione, 9.

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.” *°

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.*°

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.” *? 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,? and in the Council of Florence.*

ST. THOMAS DOCTRINE ON THE FILIOQUE‘* ®

We consider first the theological reason he offers in the Summa *® and later how he solves the difficulties of the Greeks. In the body of

89 Thesaurus, assert. 34, PG, LXXV, 585. CÉ. also A. A. Cayre, Précis de patrologie (1930), “Le mode de procession du Saint Esprit,” point de vue oriental: I, 202 (Origen), 341 (St. Athanasius), 352 (St. Hilary), 426 (the Cappadocians), 531 (St. Ambrose); point de vue occidental: i, 241 (Novatian), 426 (St. Epiphanius), 658 (St. Augustine), Precisions ulterieurs: II, 304 (St. Maximus), 332 (St. John Damascene), 374 (the addition of the Filioque to the creed), 375 f. (the error of Photius), 397 (St. Anselm), 547 (St. Thomas), 684 (review of the entire controversy).

43 Ibid., no. 691. See also the definitions of the Church against the errors of Photius and the Photians at the beginning of this article.

*4 St. Thomas treats this question in several places: 7 Sent. 11, 1; Summa, la. q.36, a.2 ad 3; Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 24, 25; De potentia, q.10, a.4, 5; Opusculum contra errores Graecorum, Il, chaps. 27-32; Compendium theol., chap. 49; Contra Graecos, Armenos, chap. 4; In Joannem, chap. 165, lect. 6; chap. 16, lect. 4.

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.

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.? 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.®

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,*® 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, “All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine.” °° 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.” 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.

SOLUTION OF THE PRINCIPAL OBJECTIONS OF THE GREEKS

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, “He shall receive of Mine”; “All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine.” °?

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.°* 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.**

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,°* although some commentators say that he did not expressly deny the Filioque.*° 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.”

In D’Alés’ 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.” #5

56 Cf, Gotti; Petavius, De Trinitate, VII, chap. 17.

58 Card. Bessarion, Liber de processione Spiritus Sancti (PG, CLXI, 1389-1472), explains the opinion of St. John Damascene as not being at variance with the Latin tradition. Cf. Dict. de théol. cathol., “Jean Damascene,” where a passage of De haeres. (PG, XCV, 780) is quoted: “The Father is like the spring, the Son like the stream, and the Holy Ghost like the sea. The Father is like the root, the Son like the branch, and the Holy Ghost like the flower, and in these three there is the same essence. The Father is like the sun, the Son is the ray, and the Holy Ghost is the color or brightness.”

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,*® 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.” 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,** St. Gregory of Nyssa,°? and St. Anselm.®? The Council of Florence ** 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

81 St. Augustine, In Joannem, 39.

82 Contra Eunomium.

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. l

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 in- tellect 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.

WHETHER THE HOLY GHOST PROCEEDS FROM THE FATHER THROUGH THE SON

State of the question. This article was written because the Greek Fathers and St. Hilary used this expression.*°

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.

FourtH ARTICLE

WHETHER THE FATHER AND THE SON ARE ONE PRINCIPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST

State of the question. It is asked whether this proposition is true in its strict sense. We note that the Greeks considered the Filiogue 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.” ° This doctrine is also supported by St. Basil *7 and St. Ambrose,’ and was proclaimed in the Councils of Lyons °° and Florence.”

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 multi-

68 De Spiritu Sancto, 1, 11, 120 (PL, XVI, 733, 739); cf. D’Alés, De Deo Trino, pp. 158, 163.

ply 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,” ™ 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 ™ 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.” 7°

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.