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 TRINITY

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TRINITY

by which God loves; but in loving Himself God breathes forth this subsistent term. He is Hypostatic Love. Here, however, it is necessary to safeguard a point of revealed doctrine. It is of faith that the procession of the Holy Spirit is not generation. The Son is "the only begotten of the Father" (John, i, 14). And the Athanasian Creed expressly lays it down that the Holy Ghost is "from the "Father and the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding". If the immanent act of the intellect is rightly termed generation, on what grounds can that name be denied to the act of the wOl? The answers given in reply to this difficulty by St. Thomas, Richard of St. Victor, and Alexander of Hales are very different. It will be sufficient here to note St. Thomas's solution. Intellectual procession, he says, is of its very nature the production of a term in the likeness of the thing conceived. This is not so in regard to the act of the will. Here the primary result is simply to attract the subject to the object of his love. This difference in the acts explains why the name generation is applicable only to the act of the intellect. Generation is essentially the produc- tion of like by like. And no process which is not essentially of that character can claim the name.

The doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit by means of the act of the Divine will is due entirely to Augustine. It is nowhere foimd among the Greeks, who simply declare the procession of the Spirit to be beyond our comprehension; nor is it found in the Latins before his time. He mentions the opinion with favour in the "De fide et symbolo" (a.d. 393) (P. G., XL, 191); and in the "De Trini- tate" (a.d. 415) develops it at length. His teaching was accepted by the West. The Scholastics seek for Scriptural support for it in the name Holy Spirit. This must, they argue, be, like the names Father and .Son, a name expressive of a relation within the God- head proper to the Person who bears it. Now the attribute holy, as applied to a person or thing, signifies that the being of which it is affirmed is devoted to God. It follows therefore that, when applied to a Divine Person as designating the rela- tion uniting Him to the other Persons, it rnust signify that the procession determining His origin is one which of its nature involves devotion to God. But that by which any person is devoted to God is love. The argument is ingenious, but hardly convincing; and the same may be said of a somewhat sunilar piece of reasoning regarding the name Spirit (I, Q. xxx-vi, a. 1). The Latin theory is a noble effort of the human reason to penetrate the verities which revelation has left veiled in mystery. It har- monizes, as we have said, with all the truths of faith. It is admirably adapted to assist us to a fuller com- prehension of the fundamental doctrine of the Chris- tian religion. But more than this must not be claimed for it. It does not possess the sanction of revelation.

C. The Divine Relations. — The existence of rela- tions in the Godhead may be immediately inferred from the doctrine of processions, and as such is a truth of Revelation, \^■here there is a real procession the principle and the term are really related. Hence, both the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit must involve the existence of real and objective relations. This part of Trinitarian doctrine was familiar to the Greek Fathers. In answer to the Eunomian objection, that consub- stantiality rendered any distinction between the Persons impossible, Gregory of Nyssa replies: "Though we hold that the nature [in the Three Per- sons] is not different, we do not deny the difference arising in regard of the source and that which pro- ceeds from the source [rrif (coTari atriovKal ri atTiaTiv Sia<)iopdp]; but in this alone do we admit that one Per.son differs from another" ("Quod non sunt tres dii", P. G., XLV, 134. Cf. Greg. Naz., "Or.

theol.", V, ix, P. G., XXXVI, 141; John Damascene, "F.O.", I, viii, P. G., XCIV, 828). Augustine also insists that of the ten Aristotelean categories two, sub- stance and relation, are found in God ("De Trin.", V, V, P. L., XLII, 913). But it was at the hands of the Scholastic theologians that the question received its full development. The results to which they were led, though not to be reckoned as part of the dogma, were foimd to throw great hght upon the mj'stery, and to be of vast service in the solution of some of the objections urged against it.

From the fact that there are two processions in the Godhead, each involving both a principle and a term, it follows that there must be four relations, two of origination {palernilas and spiratio) and two of pro- cession {filiatio and processio). These relations are what constitute the distinction between the Divine Persons. They cannot be distinguished by any abso- lute attribute, for every absolute attribute must belong to the infinite Divine Nature and this is com- mon to the Three Persons. Whatever distinction there is must be in the relations alone. This con- clusion is held as absolutely certain by all theologians. Equi\alently contained in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa, it was clearly enunciated by St. Anselm ("DJ process. Sp. S.", ii, P. L., CLVIII,288) and re- ceived ecclesiastical sanction in the "Decretiun pro Jacobitis" in the form: "[In divinis] omnia sunt unum ubi non obviat relationis oppositio." Since this is so, it is manifest that the four relations suppose but Three Persons. For there is no relative opposi- tion between spiration on the one hand and either paternity or fihation on the other. Hence the attribute of spiration is found in conjunction with each of these, and in vh'tue of it they are each dis- tinguished from procession. As they share one and the same Divine Nature, so they possess the same trirtus spirationis, and thus constitute a single origi- nating principle of the Holy Spirit.

Inasmuch as the relations, and they alone, are distinct realities in the Godhead, it follows that the Divine Persons are none other than these relations. The Father is the Divine Paternity, the Son the Divine Filiation, the Holy Spiiit the Divine Pro- cession. Here it must be borne in mind that the relations are not mere accidental determinations as these abstract terms might suggest, \^'hatever is in God must needs be subsistent. He is the Supreme Substance, transcending the divisions of the Aris- totelean categories. Hence, at one and the same time He is both substance and relation. (How it is that there should be in God real relations, though it is altogether impossible that quantity or quality should be found in Him, is a question in^•olving a discussion regarding the metaphysics of relations, which would be out of place in an article such as the present. A lucid treatment may be found in Billot, "De Deo uno et trino", 3rd ed., 380 sqq.)

It will be seen that the doctrine of the Divine relations provides an answer to the objection that the dogma of the Trinity involves the falsity of the axiom that things which are identical with the same thing are identical one with another. We reply that the axiom is perfectly true in regard to absolute entities, to which alone it refers. But in the dogma of the Trinity when we affirm that the Father and Son are alike identical with the Divine Essence, we are affirming that the Supreme Infinite Substance is identical not with two absolute entities, but with each of two relations. These relations, in virtue of their nature as correlatives, are necessarily opposed the one to the other, and therefore different. Again it is said that if there are Three Persons in the Godhead none can be infinite, for each must lack something which the others possess. We reply that a relation, viewed precisely as such, is not, like quantity or quality, an intrinsic perfection. When we affirm a