Chapter XI. Question 37
Love as THE Name OF THE Hoty Guost
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First ARTICLE
WHETHER LOVE IS THE PROPER NAME OF THE HOLY GHOST
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.
- Proof from authority. St. Gregory the Great declared: “The Holy Ghost Himself is love.” * 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! ?12
The Eleventh Council of Toledo (675) * 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: Khjoes, 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.*
- 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,
LOVE, NAME OF HOLY GHOST 247 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, “a 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; * 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.
THE INTIMATE NATURE OF THE TERMINUS OF THE PROCESSION OF LOVE
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. 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.” * 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”; ° 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.” ° These last words signify not only that Christ knew St. Paul perfectly, but that He also accepted him on the day of his conversion *° 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
LOVE, NAME OF HOLY GHOST 249 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.t! 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.
SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTIES
In article 1, 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, “connotes the condition of the word with respect to the thing expressed by the word.” *° 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.
11 Summa, Ia Ilae, q.28, a.5. Cf. ibid., a.3; IH Sent., d.27, q.1, a.1 ad 4. 12 Summa, la, q. 85, a.2.
WHETHER THE FATHER AND THE SON LOVE EACH OTHER BY THE HOLY GHOST
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.’* 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.
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.
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
LOVE, NAME OF HOLY GHOST 251 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 doctrin-, particularly in the hymn Vent 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."*
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."*
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.” 1€ 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.
14 Roman Breviary, Hymn for Vespers on Pentecost.
15 Roman Missal, Mass for Pentecost. 16 Roman Missal, Preparation for Mass.
Footnotes
Chapter 12 of 46