THE TRINITY AND GOD THE CREATOR	
Garrigou-Lagrange 
	
Index
Preface
The Trinity—Introduction
Chapter I: Question 27 The Procession Of The Divine Persons
Chapter II: Question 28 The Divine Relations
Chapter III: Question 29 The Divine Persons
Chapter IV: Question 30 The Plurality Of The Divine Persons
Chapter V: Question 31 Of The Unity And Plurality Of The Trinity
Chapter VI: Question 32 The Knowability Of The Divine Persons
Chapter VII: Question 33 The Divine Persons In Particular—The Person Of The Father
Chapter VIII: Question 34 The Person Of The Son
Chapter IX: Question 35 The Image
Chapter X: Question 36 The Person Of The Holy Ghost
Chapter XI: Question 37 Love As The Name Of The Holy Ghost
Chapter XII: Question 38 The Gift As The Name Of The Holy Ghost
Chapter XIII: Question 39 The Divine Persons In Comparison With The Essence
Chapter XIV: Question 40 The Persons In Comparison With The Relations
Chapter XV: Question 41 The Persons In Comparison With The Notional Acts
Chapter XVI: Question 42 The Equality And Similarity Of The Divine Persons
Chapter XVII: Question 43 The Mission Of The Divine Persons
God The Creator—The Place Of This Treatise In Theology
Chapter XVIII: Question 44 The First Cause Of All Being
Chapter XIX: Question 45 The Emanation Of Things
Chapter XX: Question 46 The Duration Of Created Beings
Chapter XXI: Question 47 The Distinction Of Things In General
Chapter XXII: Question 103 The Governance Of Things In General
Chapter XXIII: Question 104 The Conservation Of Creatures
Chapter XXIV: Question 105 The Change Of Creatures By God
Chapter XXV: Questions 48, 49 The Distinction Of Things In Particular
Chapter XXVI: Question 49 The Cause Of Evil
Chapter XXVII: Question 50 The Existence And The Substance Of The Angels
Chapter XXVIII: Question 54, A. 1 The Angels Cognitive Faculty
Chapter XXIX: Question 55 The Means Of Angelic Cognition
Chapter XXX: Question 60 The Love Of The Angels
Chapter XXXI: Question 62, A. 4, 5, 6 The Merits Of The Angels
Chapter XXXII: The Guilt And Obstinacy Of The Devils
Chapter XXXIII: Question 106 The Illumination Of The Angels
Chapter XXXIV: Questions 108-112 The Hierarchies Of Angels
Chapter XXXV: Question 113 The Guardian Angels
Chapter XXXVI: Question 114 The Assaults Of The Devils
Chapter XXXVII: Questions 65-74 The Corporeal Creature
Chapter XXXVIII: Man
Chapter XXXIX: The Union Of The Soul With The Body
Chapter XL: Questions 77-83 The Faculties Of The Soul
Chapter XLI: The Acts Of The Intellective Part Of The Soul; How The Soul Knows Itself
Chapter XLII: The Separated Soul
Chapter XLIII: The Origin Of Man
Chapter XLIV: Man's Elevation To The Supernatural State
Chapter XLV: The Fall Of Man
Conclusion
Endnotes

Preface
In his motu proprio, <Doctoris Angelici>, of June 29, 1914, Pope Pius X commanded that the universities and institutions of learning which were empowered to grant academic degrees and the doctorate in sacred theology should use the <Summa theologica> of St. Thomas as their text.
On March 7, 1916, the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities interpreted this decree as follows: "The <Summa theologica> of St. Thomas must be accepted as the text for the lectures inasmuch as they treat of the scholastic part of the questions. The method to be followed is this: the <Summa theologica> is to be consulted frequently and explained together with some other text which presents the logical order of the questions and the positive teaching" (<Acta Apost. Sedis>, VIII, 157).
To meet this demand, we have already published three treatises: <De revelatione ab Ecclesia proposita, De Deo uno, De Eucharistia>. The first part of this present work treats of the Trinity. After presenting the testimony of the Scriptures and the Fathers, we explain the questions in St. Thomas' <Summa theologica>, article by article, comparing his doctrine with the teaching of earlier and later theologians.
We have laid great stress on St. Thomas' concept of relation because from it flow all the other conclusions in this treatise, and these conclusions will appear to be in accord with the fundamental thesis of the Thomistic treatise on the one God which establishes that God is self-subsisting Being and that consequently there is but one nature in Him although the real relations in God are really distinct from one another.
In this way we shall show how St. Thomas perfected St. Augustine's teaching on the Trinity. As St. Augustine solved many difficulties remaining in the doctrine of the Greek Fathers on the Trinity, so St. Thomas explained many of St. Augustine's doubts about the processions, relations, and persons. This will become abundantly clear as we proceed to the different parts of the present treatise. We shall give particular attention to the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in the souls of the just.
With regard to the questions on creation, the distinction of things, their preservation, and on evil, we shall explain each article because they are all of great importance. In the treatises on the angels, corporeal creatures, and man, we shall study only the more important questions, laying special emphasis on the principles which throw light on the whole matter. It is well to descend from these principles to the conclusions and then rise from the conclusions to the principles, so that the unity of our science will become clear and that our study may dispose to a contemplation of divine things and to a true union with God.
We hope that in some degree at least we shall attain the goal envisaged by the Vatican Council: "Human reason illumined by faith, when it inquires diligently and piously and sincerely, will with God's help attain to a most fruitful understanding of the mysteries both from the analogies of those things which it knows naturally and from the interconnection between the mysteries themselves and between the mysteries and man's ultimate end."

THE TRINITY
Introduction
1. The Importance Of This Treatise
If we read the Fathers of the Church and the ancient theologians, I we shall see that for them the dogma of the Trinity, however obscure it may have been for them, was of the greatest importance. Thus Tertullian[1] asked: "What is the substance of the New Testament, except that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, believed to be three, are one God?" The words of St. Hilary[2] on this mystery, expressed in the sign of the cross, with which Christians sign themselves, have been quoted many times; "This is what the Church understood, what the synagogue did not believe, what philosophy could not grasp." The dogma of the Trinity, therefore, is that fundamental truth by which believing Christians are distinguished from the Jews and pagans.
Both the Greek and the Latin Fathers wrote long treatises on the Trinity, at first as positive and apologetic theology and later as speculative theology. Among the Greek Fathers we find St. Athanasius,[3] St. Basil,[4] St. Gregory Nazianzen,[5] St. Gregory of Nyssa,[6] Didymus,[7] Cyril of Alexandria,[8] St. John Damascene;[9] and among the Latin Fathers, St. Hilary,[10] St. Ambrose,[11] St. Augustine,[12] St. Fulgentius,[13] and Boetius.[14]
Among the Scholastics, all the great theologians and their commentators wrote speculative treatises on the Trinity; among modern positive theologians, Petau and Thomassin wrote at length on this dogma. Finally, the more recent theologians have accorded this dogma the same importance, as Franzelin, Scheeben,[15] Kuhn, Billot, Buonpensiere, de Regnon[16] (who wrote four volumes, 1892-98), and J. Lebreton.[17] Father Jugie's recent work is based on the sources of revelation and the teachings of the dissident Oriental Churches.[18] A. d'Ales wrote his <De Deo Trino> in 1934; P. Galtier wrote <De SS. Trinitate in se et in nobis> in 1933; L. Choppin, <La Trinite chez les Peres, Apostoliques> in 1925; F. Cavalerra, <Les premieres formules trinitaires de S. Augustin> in 1925, and M. Schmaus, <Die Psychologie Trinitatslehre des hl. Augustinus> in 1927.[19]
In view of this theological activity it is surprising that toward the end of the last century the question of the importance of this dogma should have arisen.[20] With regard to this question three positions may be distinguished.
Certain Protestants, holding that this mystery is incomprehensible, declared that God revealed it as an enigma to humble human reason, which seeks to measure all things according to its own principles, and not in order to perfect our intellects by sublime and fruitful knowledge.
This position, which is in opposition to the whole tradition of the doctors, exaggerates and distorts a truth. It is indeed true that in the revelation of this mystery God shows us that His intimate life and His divinity transcend even our highest and most universal analogical concepts, the concepts of being and unity. For the Deity as such, naturally unknowable, is in a sense above the being and unity which are naturally knowable, as Cajetan said so well.[21] The revelation of the mystery of the Trinity shows that the Deity is also above the absolute and the relative for, as we shall see, the Deity as it is in itself is not really distinct from the divine relations, from paternity, filiation, and spiration. Thus it is not something merely absolute nor merely relative, but something above these, the supreme enigma. But must we conclude that the manifestation of this enigma was intended solely to humble our reason and not also to perfect and illuminate it?
Many other Protestants during the nineteenth century, and some Catholics too, like Hirscher, declared that this dogma indeed illuminated our minds, but only in an extrinsic manner. They thought that for us the Trinity had no intrinsic importance, but that it served only to obviate contradictions in the other mysteries of the incarnation of the Son of God and the sending of the Holy Ghost, which in themselves are of great value to us.
The basis of this position, as its authors declared, is that the dogma of the Trinity taken intrinsically, prescinding from the other truths with which it is connected, cannot perfect our inner life, our faith, hope, and charity. They argue as if it mattered not to our interior life whether we believe that there are four divine persons, or that the divine persons are not really distinct from one another. Since, according to these men, God did not reveal this mystery because of its intrinsic validity, any theological attempt to penetrate it is futile, and therefore the treatise on the Trinity is merely an introduction to the treatises on the redemptive Incarnation and the mission of the Holy Ghost, which perfect our faith, hope, and charity.
Such an introduction, they said, is necessary to prevent any contradiction between the essential truths intrinsically necessary for the Christian life: between 1. the unity of God, which is the fundamental truth of the Old Testament; 2. the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who, according to the Gospels, is not entirely identified with His Father; and 3. the divinity of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete and Sanctifier, sent by the Father and the Son. These are the essential dogmas of Christianity, which cannot be reconciled without the distinction and the consubstantiality of the three divine persons, as is clear from the first centuries, when Sabellianism denied the real distinction between the three divine persons, and when Arius and others denied the consubstantiality of the Son and the Holy Spirit. According to this position the dogma of the Trinity was revealed to illuminate our minds but solely in an extrinsic manner to prevent contradictions in the other mysteries.
The Modernists, however, like Le Roy, extended this position in a pragmatic sense, declaring, "The dogmas of faith are to be accepted only in a practical sense, that is, only as preceptive norms of action and not as rules of faith."[22] Thus, for the Modernists the formula of the dogma of the Trinity was introduced into the professions of faith to prevent such heresies as oppose the Christian life.
This position is similar to Locke's Nominalist philosophical position. Locke taught that the principle of contradiction is a solemn futility, in itself of slight importance but necessary nonetheless to obviate absurdity in our thought and speech.
If a principle is necessary to avoid error, is it without all intrinsic value? Certainly contradictions are not eliminated from our thinking without some positive illumination, and the principle of contradiction precludes all absurdity only because it is a fundamental law of real being and of thought. Thus, ontology is not a solemn futility but an important part of metaphysics which, in opposition to absolute evolutionism, defends the validity of the principles of contradiction and identity, which was denied by Heraclitus when he said," ll things are becoming and nothing exists and in the becoming itself being and non-being are identified."
So also in the spiritual order, charity dispels all discord because it is the supreme virtue uniting the soul with God and also uniting souls to one another. Similarly, the mystery of the Trinity would not exclude every contradiction in the other mysteries of the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit unless it were the expression of the intimate life of God in the most sublime aspect of that life.
The third position is the traditional view of those who hold that the dogma of the Trinity possesses intrinsic value of the greatest importance for us. This position was defended during the nineteenth century by Kleutgen (<Theologie der Vorzeit>) and Scheeben, whose fundamental reasoning may here be stated briefly and later developed during the course of this treatise. This dogma 1. perfects our natural knowledge of God the Creator, 2. it gives us supernatural knowledge of the intimate life of God, and 3. it throws light from above on other supernatural mysteries.
The first reason is found in St. Thomas: "The knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for right thinking about the creation of things. For when we say that God made all things by His Word we avoid the error of those who say that God made all things necessarily because of His nature. But when we discover in God the procession of love we see that God produced creatures not because of any need, nor because of any extrinsic cause, but because of the love of His goodness."[23] This is to say, as Scheeben points out, that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity perfects and confirms our natural knowledge of God the Creator and of creation as an entirely free act of God <ad extra>. This will be all the more apparent when we remember that many philosophers denied the freedom of creation because of the Platonic and Neoplatonic principle that the good is essentially diffusive of itself. But God is the highest good. Therefore God is essentially and to the greatest degree diffusive of Himself even as the sun radiates its light and heat everywhere by its very nature.
Reply. That good is diffusive of itself according to its particular aptitude, I concede; that it is always so because of its actuality, I deny. On this principle St. Thomas[24] showed that creation was fitting and proper, but in his following article he went on to say that, although creation is fitting it is entirely free because "the goodness of God is perfect and is able to be without other beings since nothing of perfection accrues to it from other beings." Some obscurity remains, however; for if God had created nothing, how would the principle that good is diffusive of itself be verified in God? In the first place how could there be an end eliciting the action of creation, and secondly how would creation be effected? Here Leibnitz erred by saying that creation is not physically but morally necessary, and that God would not be perfectly wise and good if He had not created, and moreover if He had not created the best of all possible worlds. Such was also the teaching of Malebranche. This obscurity is clarified by the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity, for, even if God had created nothing, there would still be in Him the infinite fecundity of the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Ghost. Thus the principle that good is diffusive of itself is perfectly verified in God. Indeed the highest good is necessarily diffusive of itself within itself but not by causality; by a communication which is not only a participation in its nature but a communication of His entire indivisible nature, of His entire intimate life in the generation of His Son, who was not made, and in the spiration of the Holy Ghost.
Thus from a higher plane comes confirmation that creation is an entirely free act by which God communicates without Himself a participation of His being, His life, and His knowledge. Thus also it is more evident that God is not the intrinsic cause but the extrinsic cause of the universe, the end for which it was created, the being that created, conserves, and keeps it in motion.
If, therefore, God created actually, it was through love, to show in an entirely free act His goodness, and not in any way by a necessity of His nature, as St. Thomas taught in the passage cited above against the pantheists and against that absolute optimism which is found in the teaching of Leibnitz and Malebranche.
The second reason supporting the traditional view is that the revelation of the Trinity has intrinsic value for us and is of the greatest importance for the supernatural knowledge of God in His intimate life and immanent operations. No created intellect by its own natural powers is able to know the formal object of the uncreated intellect which is the Deity in its own proper aspect of Deity; the created intellect knows God only according to the common and analogical terms of being, unity, truth, goodness, and so on. For if any created intellect, human or angelic, could attain even confusedly and vaguely to the formal object of the uncreated intellect, it would then be of that same nature as are the intellects of the ignorant man and the greatest philosopher. Then we would have that pantheistic confusion of the uncreated and created natures which, like sanctifying grace, would be a participation in the formal nature of God. This is profoundly explained by St. Thomas: "It is not by his natural knowledge that the angel knows what God is, because the very nature of the angel by which he attains to the knowledge of God is an effect not commensurate with the power of the cause that made it."[25]
The angel, and especially man, by his natural knowledge cannot attain to God except by those perfections in which he can share in the natural order, such as being, unity, goodness. But God as He is in Himself cannot be shared in the natural order; such participation can be only in the supernatural order by sanctifying grace. Thus even an angel in his natural knowledge is related to God as He is in Himself as the eye that perceives all the colors of the rainbow but would not perceive white light from which the colors are derived as inadequate effects. St. Thomas taught: "Revelation most properly defines God inasmuch as He is the highest cause, teaching not only that which is knowable by creatures but also communicating how He is known to Himself alone and to others in revelation."[26] This is primarily the Godhead Himself, or the intimate life of God, which is properly made known by the revelation of the Trinity.
In the Trinity we see the infinite and eternal fecundity of the divine nature, which is communicated by the Father to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost by the Father and the Son. The Protestant theologians mentioned above say that the mystery of the Trinity is an enigma without meaning for our interior life, but the traditional theologians say that in this mystery of the Trinity we come to some knowledge of the most perfect intellectual life, that is in the three persons, who in the same divine truth live by the same act of pure intelligence which is subsisting intelligence itself.
So also in this mystery there is some manifestation of the supreme life of charity in the love of the three divine persons, who in the same infinite goodness live by the same act of pure love, which is subsisting love itself.
Here we have the supreme model of our supernatural life, the love of the three divine persons, since our adoptive sonship is the image participating in the eternal filiation of the only-begotten Son.[27] For so Christ prayed for us to the Father: "That they may be one, as We also are" (John 17:11); and St. Paul writing to the Romans said: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born among many brethren."[28]
By its own powers the created intellect could not know this essentially supernatural mystery, and without some revelation, more or less obscure, there would be no explicit knowledge of the intimate life of God in itself. Some implicit knowledge of the intimate life of God, however, is obtained when we believe that God is and that He is the rewarder, for we know Him not only as the author of nature but also as the author of grace and the remunerator in the order of salvation. The intimate life of God, therefore, is known from the effects of grace and salvation, but this life is known explicitly in itself in the mystery of the Trinity, although not with that clarity with which it will be seen in heaven.
This is clearly expressed by Alexander of Hales[29] and still more clearly by St. Thomas, who says: "Only this can be known about God by natural reason, that He necessarily possesses being inasmuch as He is the principle of all beings. God's creative power is common to the entire Trinity and pertains therefore to the unity of essence and not to the distinction of persons."[30]
Objection. This knowledge of the intimate life of God remains so obscure that it does not of itself throw any positive light on the human mind.
Reply. Clearly even a very imperfect knowledge of the intimate life of God is of the utmost importance for us in this life since it is an anticipation of eternal life. This knowledge will correspond to our natural inefficacious and conditional desire of seeing the essence of the first cause and the intimate conciliation of the divine attributes; it corresponds also to our supernatural and efficacious desire which proceeds from infused hope and especially from infused charity, which is the true friendship between God and the just man. Any friendship presupposes a union of the friends and strives for a more intimate union between them.
To say, therefore, that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity is without real value for us is to look at the matter from a naturalistic viewpoint. We recall here the words of Aristotle: "Man should be attracted to divine and immortal things as much as he is able, and however little he may see of these things, that little is to be loved and desired more than all knowledge he has of inferior substances."[31]
Christ our Lord pointed out the importance of the mystery of the Trinity when He said: "But I have called you friends; because all things whatsoever I have heard of My Father, I have made known to you, "[32] and "Father, I will that where I am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that they may see My glory which Thou hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world."[33] These words refer primarily to the eternal generation of the Word.
Indeed the act and the fruit of charity is that rejoicing in God because God is infinitely perfect in Himself.[34] This joy, however, is greatly increased by the knowledge of God's inner life and His infinite fecundity. This is what St. Paul meant, writing to the Colossians: "That their hearts may be comforted, being instructed in charity, and unto all riches of fullness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of Christ Jesus: in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."[35]
When theologians abandon the contemplation of divine things, they say that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity is of no intrinsic value for us, that it is useful only to prevent contradictions in the enunciation of other mysteries. And because of this trend theology gradually became anti-contemplative. Men began to write books of theology devoid of contemplation and piety, just as if they were to write books of piety devoid of doctrine. The Fathers of the Church and the great doctors, on the contrary, looked on the mystery of the Trinity as having the greatest importance for us. The tract on the Trinity, of course, was not purely practical like the tracts on penance and matrimony, but it afforded the greatest help in attaining the higher stages of contemplation and union with God.
Amid his tribulations, St. Hilary, writing of the Trinity, said: "The persecution of men is a small thing because the persecutors cannot touch the divine persons nor diminish their joy." A friend rejoices in the joy of his friend, and the just man rejoices in the beatitude of God.
All the great doctors who wrote about the Trinity, from St. Athanasius to St. Thomas, were true contemplatives, deeply concerned not only with purely practical human affairs but also with divine things, with the divine life itself, the knowledge and love of which is the beginning of eternal life. By the revelation of the Trinity we are given the supernatural knowledge of God, as distinct from natural knowledge; and immediately the distinction of the two orders of knowledge becomes clearer. This was the great argument against Baius, who denied the essential distinction between nature and grace, as if grace were something owing to nature.[36] This distinction between the two orders stood out so clearly in the revelation of the dogma of the Trinity that some rationalists taught that the tract on the one God contained all that could be said about God. Consequently the Protestant liberals, who are rationalists in a sense, no longer mention the Trinity, speaking exclusively of the unity of God, and therefore came to be known as Unitarians.
Finally, the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity not only serves to obviate contradictions in the teaching of the other mysteries, but also throws a positive light from above on all the other supernatural mysteries, on the redemptive Incarnation, the sending of the Holy Ghost, and the life of grace. All this will be clear to us in heaven, but even now we can see that the visible and invisible missions of the divine persons presuppose the internal processions, because no one is sent by himself, but the Son is sent by the Father, and the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. Again, our adoptive sonship is the image and participation in the sonship of the eternal Son, since the only-begotten Son is "the first-born among many brethren."[37] Adoption is attributed to the Father as to its author, to the Son as to the model, and to the Holy Ghost as to Him who imprints the character. So also the friendship between the saints and the just is an image participating in the friendship of the divine persons, according to our Lord's words, "that they may be one, as We also are." The life of grace is, as it were, a reflected light, manifesting God's inner life and the divine processions.
Thus St. Thomas taught: "The knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for us,... especially that we might think correctly about the salvation of the human race, which is accomplished by the incarnate Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit."[38] He says it was necessary for correct positive thinking, not only to avoid contradiction negatively. The reason is that a truth which excludes equivocation and absurdity in any teaching is a higher truth, such as those eminent principles of being and reasoning and ontology itself in the philosophical sphere. This will stand out most clearly after we have attained the light of glory; when we see the Trinity clearly, the other supernatural mysteries will be lucidly evident.
We see, therefore, that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity has not only an extrinsic value, but an intrinsic worth in illuminating our minds, for it makes manifest to us the principal and supreme object of our faith, which according to the arrangement of the Apostles' Creed is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and those things attributed to them in the order of salvation.
Lastly, we should point out that the just here on earth, until that time when they reach the height of perfection which is called the transforming union, described by St. Theresa in the seventh mansion, enjoy the contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity amid the darkness of faith, which is really the highest exercise of the theological virtues and of the gift of understanding and wisdom.
Looking at the matter from this exalted viewpoint, those opinions which hold that the mystery of the Trinity is of no intrinsic value appear not as the dicta of wise men but rather as the fruit of spiritual stupidity and ignorance in the scriptural sense of the word. St. Paul said: "Although we speak wisdom among the perfect; yet not the wisdom of the world,... but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,... that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him."[39]
2. The Teaching Of The Church On The Trinity
The Catholic doctrine on the Trinity is expressed in the various creeds and definitions, such as the Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, and many others of later date, and in Denzinger.[40] Finally, the Catholic belief in the Trinity was summed up by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) in that famous chapter, <Firmiter>: "Firmly we believe and simply we confess that one alone is true God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, three persons, but one essence, one substance, and one nature entirely simple. The Father is from no one, the Son from the Father alone, and the Holy Ghost equally from both... consubstantial, co-equal, co-omnipotent, and co-eternal... . We confess and believe with Peter Lombard that it is one supreme being, incomprehensible and ineffable; this supreme being is truly the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, three persons together and each one singly; and therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, because each of the three persons is that thing, that substance, that essence, that divine nature."[41]
Again, "No real distinction exists between the essence and the persons, but a real distinction exists between the persons among themselves."[42]
Again, the three persons are one principle of operation without, because the divine operation without proceeds from the divine omnipotence, which is common to the three divine persons.[43]
This definition of the Fourth Lateran Council was amplified by the Council of Florence (1439) in the dogmatic decree of the union of the Greeks: "We define that the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son and that He has His essence and His subsisting being simultaneously from the Father and the Son, and that He proceeds eternally from both as from one principle and by one spiration."[44] Other definitions about each person in particular may be found here.
The mystery of the Trinity may be more briefly stated as the mystery of one God in three divine persons. But in opposition to the pseudo-synod of Pistoia it should be said that it is not one God divided into three persons but one God in three distinct persons, since there is no real distinction in the Godhead Himself, as the Eleventh Council of Toledo declared: "The Godhead is not reduced to single persons and is not increased into three persons."[45]
The Traditional Symbol Of The Trinity
The equilateral triangle is commonly proposed as a symbol expressive of this mystery, and the symbol expresses more than is sometimes thought. It very tangibly expresses an outline of the mystery with respect to the distinction between the persons and those things that flow from it.
(a) The three angles are really distinct from each other although they are not really distinct from the area of the triangle, which is numerically the same for all three angles. Thus the three divine persons are really distinct from each other but not from the divine essence, which is numerically the same in all three persons. Further, the three angles are really distinguished from each other by opposite relations but not from the area to which they are in no way opposed; so also it is with the three divine persons.
(b) The three angles are equal and, as it were, consubstantial because they are constituted by the same surface which is no greater in the three than it is in one. Thus there is one surface in three distinct angles but not distinguished into three angles.
(c) Each angle renders the surface incommunicable in its own way, nevertheless when the first angle is formed it does not cause the surface of the other angles although it communicates its surface to the second angle, and through the second angle to the third. Thus the first angle, although not really distinct from its surface, communicates that surface without communicating itself. In the Trinity the Father communicates the divine nature but not Himself; likewise the Son with respect to the Holy Ghost.
(d) Lastly, even though the angles are equal, there is among them an order of origin without causality: the first angle once formed becomes the principle of the second, and both of these are the principle of the third. At the same time the second and third are not caused by the first because their surfaces are not caused, but it is the surface of the first which is communicated to them. This analogy will become clearer when the principal definitions of the Church on the Trinity are reduced to the following propositions, which are often written around an equilateral triangle as below.
(diagram page 15)
The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God, and yet the Father is not the Son, because He does not generate Himself; nor is the Father the Holy Ghost, or the Son the Holy Ghost, because those who spirate are distinguished from that which is spirated as he who generates is distinguished from that which is generated. In the statement of this mystery we see the profound meaning of the word "is" and of the negation "is not." As St. Thomas says:[46] In every affirmative proposition about some reality the word "is" expresses the real identity of the subject and predicate. Here it expresses the real identity of the three divine persons with the divine essence, and the negation "is not" expresses the real distinction of the persons from each other. In this statement of the mystery the apparent contradiction is explained, that contradiction arising if God would be said to be one and three under the same aspects, e. g., nature.
In the Catholic Catechism, written by Cardinal Gasparri, this mystery is defined as:
(a) "God is one in the unity of nature in three really distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, who constitute the Holy Trinity."[47] Thus the Father is the Godhead but He is not the Trinity.
(b) How are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost distinguished from one another?
Answer. By the opposite relations of the persons, inasmuch as the Father generates the Son, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from both. (The Father does not generate Himself.)
(c) How are the three divine persons one God?
A. Because they are consubstantial, that is, they have one and the same divine nature and therefore the same attributes or perfections and operations <ad extra.> (The operations <ad extra> proceed from omnipotence, which is common to the three persons.)
(d) Is not power usually attributed to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures?
A. Although all the attributes of divinity are common to the three divine persons, the Scriptures usually attribute power to the Father because He is the font of origin, wisdom to the Son because He is the word of the Father, and goodness and holiness to the Holy Ghost because He is the love of the other two.[48]
We will spend no more time in the simple statement of this mystery; the explanation of the terms nature, person, and so on will be found in St. Thomas' articles.
3. Trinitarian Errors
We are here not concerned with atheists and pantheists, who deny God the Creator Himself, nor with the rationalists, who simply reject every supernatural mystery. The errors about the Trinity can be easily divided into those which attempt to safeguard the unity of the divine nature by denying either the real distinction between the persons (Monarchians and Sabellians) or the consubstantiality of the persons (Subordinationists, Arians, Macedonians). Opposed to these are the Tritheists who say there are three natures in God in order to safeguard the Trinity of persons.[49]
We see how divine providence permits errors and heresies that the truth made stand out more clearly, just as it permits sin for a greater good. With regard to the Trinity, God permitted errors to appear which are opposed to one another as early as the first three centuries. During that time all the principal aspects of this supreme mystery were speculatively considered and this supreme dogma stood forth in the clearest light. In the East particularly the chief speculative heresies, those of the metaphysical order, preceded the Pelagian heresy, which is of the moral order and originated in the West.
The Trinitarian errors can be so classified as to support the axiom that erroneous systems often are true in what they affirm and false in what they deny because the reality with which they deal is higher and broader than the heresies themselves.
(diagram page 17)
Denial
Trinity of persons
With respect to their real distinction—Monarchians & Modalists
With respect to their consubstantiality—Arians and Macedonians
Unity of nature—The Tritheism of Roscelline (11th cent.) and of Abbot Joachim (12th Cent.)
It would be difficult to imagine any other errors, unless we include the errors of modern rationalists, such as Kant.
These errors can also be presented in a way to show the opposition existing between them. Between Unitarianism (Monarchists, Modalists, and Arians) and Tritheism, the Catholic dogma of the Trinity appears as the highest point of truth, like the apex of a pyramid rising from errors opposed to one another. The errors thus opposed to one another appear false in what they deny, e. g., the denial of the Trinity or of the divine unity, and true in what they affirm, because the divine reality is infinitely broader than the limited concepts of the human mind. As we shall see, the medieval conflict between nominalism and realism had considerable influence on these theological questions.
Errors Denying The Real Distinction Between The Persons
In the second century the Monarchians, believing in only one divine principle, declared that Christ was only man endowed with some divine power (Paul of Samosata) or that Christ was the Father who became incarnate and suffered (Patripassians). Chief among the Patripassians were Noetus, who was opposed in the East by Hippolytus, and Praxeas, whom Tertullian refuted in the West. Noetus and Praxeas argued that the Father and the Son were not really distinct but merely different names for the same person.
In the third century Sabellius proposed his Modalism, so called because in God he did not admit distinct persons but only accidental modes. Later the Modalists taught that in God there was but one person, who manifested Himself in three modes: as the lawgiver in the Old Testament (the Father), as the Redeemer in the New Testament (the Son), and finally as the sanctifier or Holy Spirit. The Sabellians and Modalists were opposed by Tertullian, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, St. Zephyrinus, and Callistus.[50]
In the seventh century Modalism was revived by the Mohammedans. Mohammed admitted the existence of only God the Creator, Allah, who alone was to be adored, excluding the Trinity of persons. The Islamic formula of prayer, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His prophet, " was in Mohammed's mind a negation of the Trinity and contained within it the total apostasy from the Christian faith, denying at the same time the dogmas of the incarnation and redemption by Christ, who was no more than one of the prophets. Those who now write about the mysticism of Islam, should note this essential difference between Islam and Christianity.
In the Middle Ages, Modalism was again revived by the Waldensians and the Socinians, and later by the Unitarians, who constitute the liberal wing of Protestantism. It appears again in the theology of Kant, where God the Father is called the lawgiver, the Son the ruler, and the Holy Spirit the judge. Modern theosophists also are Unitarians, teaching that there is one eternal, infinite being, which manifests itself in three ways: as the first <logos> or the root of being, the second <logos> or the primitive duality, and the third <logos> or the universal intelligence.[51] Others say in God there is intelligence, without real distinction from the object and the union of these two, and that these three may be called, in the Hegelian sense, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All these errors are revivals of the Modalism of the third century.
Errors Denying The Divinity Of The Persons
Most famous of these heresies was that of Arius, a priest of Alexandria, who was addicted to the Gnostic principle that God by reason of His excellence could not immediately produce inferior creatures but required some superior creature to mediate between Him and His creation. Following the leadership of the Ebionites and Gnostics, Arius denied the divinity of the Son, declaring that the Son was only the most perfect of creatures, made out of nothing in time, and thus subordinate to God. Hence the name Subordinationism. According to Arius, God the Father alone is eternal; the Father created the Son, not of His own substance but out of nothing, and then God made use of the Son as an instrument to create the universe and redeem men. According to Arius the Holy Ghost also is a creature, inferior not only to the Father but also to the Son. Hence Arius, at least in the beginning, held that the Son was entirely different from the Father in nature. This error was attacked by Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, who called a synod attended by almost a hundred bishops, and excommunicated Arius. Best known among the opponents of Arius was St. Athanasius, who valiantly defended the Catholic teaching and the words of St. John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."[52]
To restore peace to the Church, a general council was called in 325 at Nicaea in Bithynia, which defined against Arius that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, homoousion two patri ("of the same substance with the Father").[53] The Council's formula of faith was: "We believe in one God, the Father almighty maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten born of the Father, that is, out of the substance of the Father[not out of nothing], God of God, light of light, true God of true God, born, not made, of one substance with the Father, which in Greek is called <homoousion>, by whom all things were made. And in the Holy Ghost... ." After Arianism was thus condemned by the Church as a heresy, the Arians tried to dissimulate their error and said that the Son was similar in nature to the Father, <homoiousion> or <homoion>, but they refused to say that He was consubstantial or <homoousion>. Such was the teaching of Basil of Ancyra and Auxentius of Milan, who are called Semi-Arians. Arianism lasted into the sixth century, when it completely disappeared.[54]
St. Athanasius' defense of the dogma may be briefly summed up as follows: The Word is called God in St. John's prologue, "And the Word was God"; His divinity is often affirmed in the epistles of St. Paul and by Christ Himself when He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Further, the Word deifies us, making us gods by participation, and for this it is necessary that the Word be God essentially, consubstantial with the Father, although distinct from Him as His Son. Similarly the Holy Ghost who vivifies us is essentially God, and therefore is mentioned with the Father and the Son in the formula of baptism.[55]
Following the principles that misled Arius, Eunomius concluded that the Holy Ghost was not God but a creature made by the Son of God, inferior to Him and similar to the angels. At about the same time, the Macedonians like the Semi-Arians denied the divinity and consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost. Eunomius was refuted by St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil of Caesarea, and St. Ambrose. Macedonianism was condemned by St. Damasus in the fourth Council of Rome (380) and in the following year by the second ecumenical Council of Constantinople.[56] The most important definition of the Council is: "If anyone shall say that the Holy Ghost is not truly and properly of the Father, like the Son, of the divine substance, and true God, let him be anathema." Thus in the fourth century, opposing these heresies, the Church explicitly taught a Trinity of distinct persons, upheld their divinity and consubstantiality, and so preserved the unity of essence together with the distinction of persons. In the earliest centuries, therefore, the Church explicitly condemned that Unitarianism which the liberal Protestants have recently revived.
Tritheism
Tritheism as such did not appear until the Middle Ages. In the sixth century, however, John Philoponus, a philosopher of Alexandria, prepared the way for Tritheism when he identified person with nature and taught that there were three natures in God and that there were still three persons in one God. In other words, the three divine persons participate in the divine nature as three men participate in human nature. He was condemned as a heretic in the Second Council of Constantinople (the fifth ecumenical council).[57]
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the controversy about universals affected questions about the Trinity in various ways. Roscellinus, the celebrated doctor of Nominalism, taught that the divine essence could not be common to three persons and that the three divine persons were three distinct realities or substances, in much the same way that three souls or three angels differ. Nevertheless, he said, the three divine persons form a certain unity inasmuch as they are endowed with one will and the same power.
Roscellinus arrived at this conclusion because of his Nominalism, according to which the universals have not even a fundamental existence in things, that is to say, the universals have no objective reference but are merely words adopted into our speech. Positivists and modern empiricists have returned to this view, refusing to admit any essential difference between intellectual and sensitive knowledge and reducing the idea to a composite image of the phantasm to which a common name has been joined. According to pure Nominalism, therefore, the universals do not exist in things even fundamentally; the only things that exist are the individuals. Thus humanity designates the aggregate of men and not human nature, which is specifically one. If, therefore, according to revelation, there are three divine persons, the Nominalists cannot conceive how they can have the same divine nature, especially a divine nature which is numerically one, nor do they admit one specific nature for all men. St. Anselm attacked the Nominalism of Roscellinus, and in 1092 it was condemned by the Synod of Soissons.[58]
In the eleventh century Gilbert Porretanus, who although he is often called a Nominalist is really a realist, inclined to Tritheism in another way by teaching that the divine relations are really distinct from the divine essence. Extreme realism believes that the universal exists formally apart from the thing, and consequently Gilbert placed real distinctions where they do not exist, for example, in man between the metaphysical grades of being, substantiality, corporeity, life, animality, rationality, unmindful of the fact that all these things are reduced to one comprehensive concept of man.
Similarly this extreme realism places a certain real distinction, or at least more than a virtual distinction, between the divine attributes, and also between the divine essence and the divine persons. It thus inclines to Tritheism because the "<esse in>" is multiplied in the divine persons and in the divine relations opposed to one another, while St. Thomas has shown that the "<esse in>" in the divine persons is not accidental but substantial and therefore is not multiplied.[59]
Gilbert Porretanus was condemned by the Council of Reims in 1148.[60] From his doctrine it would have followed that the divine relations would be accidents in God. St. Thomas' reply[61] is that in God, who is pure act, no accident is found, and the relations thus really distinguished from the divine substance like accidents cannot constitute persons. As we shall see below, the "<esse in>" of the relations in God is something substantial and therefore not really distinguished from the substance.
Thus Roscellinus and Gilbert Porretanus by different routes reached Tritheism by placing in God real distinctions which are not there. Finally, in the twelfth century Abbot Joachim of Calabria fell into Tritheism in an effort to correct Peter Lombard, whom he had misunderstood. He feared that the teaching of Peter Lombard would lead to a kind of quaternity inasmuch as the divine essence was neither the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost. Trying to avoid this error he fell into another: he taught that between the three divine persons only a moral unity existed, arising from the consent of the will, a unity such as exists between a group of Christians. Consequently the divine nature would not be unique or one numerically, but it would be multiplied. This error of Abbot Joachim was condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council: "We, however, with the approbation of the sacred council, believe and confess with Peter Lombard that the supreme entity is one, incomprehensible and ineffable indeed, which is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the three persons together and singly each of the three persons. Therefore in God only a Trinity is found and not a quaternity, since each of the three persons is that entity, namely, the divine essence."[62] In this definition the word "is" in the statement, "The divine essence is the Father, " indicates, as in every affirmative proposition, the real identity of the subject and the predicate. The divine essence is the Father without any real distinction; on the contrary the Father is not the Son and between the two persons is found a real distinction, a distinction which is antecedent to any consideration of the mind and based, as was more clearly expressed by the Council of Florence, on the opposition of relation.[63] In the Council of Florence, called to reconcile the schismatic Greeks to the Church, was formulated the principle which illumines the whole doctrine of the Trinity: "In God all things are one and the same where no opposition of relation exists." This opposition of relation exists between the divine persons themselves but not between the persons and the divine substance. The doctrine of the Church thus appears as the apex of a pyramid rising above the heresies opposed to each other which either deny the Trinity of the divine persons or the numerical unity of the divine nature. According to the judgment of the Church, these heresies are false in what they deny, whereas something of the truth remains in what they affirm. Whatever these false teachings affirm positively, such as the unity of nature and the Trinity of persons, is also affirmed by the Church.
It should be noted that in the nineteenth century, Gunther inclined to Tritheism when he defined personality as the consciousness of oneself. He thought that if God were conscious of Himself by His divine essence only one person would be in God. Accordingly he placed three distinct consciousnesses in God, distinguishing between the subject of the consciousness (the Father), the object of the consciousness (the Son), and the equality of both conscious of itself (the Holy Ghost). He arrived in this way at three intelligences. This error was condemned by Pius IX.[64]
Among the errors about the Trinity we must mention the theory of the Modernists, who declare that the dogma of the Trinity, like other dogmas, is a human invention, achieved by laborious effort and subject to continuous change and evolution.[65]
From this brief enumeration of the errors about the Trinity, we see not only the revealed truth as taught by the Church standing forth more clearly, preserving both the unity of the divine nature and the Trinity of the divine persons, but by reason of these errors the distinction between nature and person is greatly clarified. As has often been said, the great difficulty in determining this distinction arose from the difference between the Latin and Greek terms. In the Western Church, the Latin word persona (prosopon) at first meant a theatrical mask, worn by actors when impersonating famous individuals; later the term was used for those who held some dignified position (a personage), and finally it designated all men who are of their own right, that is, capable of rights, and thus persons were distinguished from things. More philosophically Boethius in the sixth century defined a person as "an individual substance with a rational nature."[66] Today we define a person as a free and intelligent subject.
In the Eastern Church, however, in the first centuries the terms <ousia> and <<hypostasis>> were used indiscriminately to designate substance and essence. This was the cause of many controversies and at the same time it was realized that <prosopon>, with its etymological meaning of a theatrical mask, did not clearly express the real distinction between the divine persons. The Arians understood the term <<hypostasis>> to refer to the substance and declared that there were in God three subordinate substances. At length, at St. Athanasius' urging, the word <ousia> was accepted to mean nature and the word <<hypostasis>> to mean person. From this time the Greek <<hypostasis>> was equivalent to the Latin <persona>, hence the expression hypostatic union to designate the union of two natures in the one person of the incarnate Word; similarly three <hypostases> in one nature were said to be in God. Later, among the Greek Fathers, St. Basil further determined the meaning of these words. He taught that <ousia> designated what was common (<to koinon>) to individuals of the same species.[67] Even then the meaning was not clear because the nature assumed by the Word, although it is individual, is not a person. Therefore Leontius of Byzantium, to avoid confusing the individual humanity of Christ with His divine person, defined <<hypostasis>> as a substance not only individual but also separately existing of itself and truly incommunicable.[68]
St. Thomas perfected the definition of person when he said that a person is an individual substance with a rational nature, that is, incommunicable, existing of itself separately and operating separately of itself, of its own right.[69] Today commonly, as we have said, a person is defined as a free and intelligent subject, and this definition (analogically, yet properly) applies to the human person, the angelic person, and the divine persons, as will be seen more clearly below.
We find two tendencies among the Catholic doctors and theologians. The Greek Fathers and theologians, when explaining this mystery, generally began with the Trinity of persons as explicitly revealed in the New Testament, rather than with the unity of nature. The Latins, on the other hand, especially after the time of St. Augustine, generally started with the unity of nature, as stated in the tract on the one God, and went on to the Trinity of persons. Thus the two groups began from either extreme of the mystery and proceeded to the other and therefore they were met with opposing difficulties: the Greeks found difficulty in safeguarding the unity of nature, and the Latins had to be careful to safeguard those things which are proper to the persons.
Among the Latin Scholastics we find a notable difference caused by the controversy about universals, since some, like Scotus, placed between the divine essence and the persons a formal distinction, actual on the part of the thing, whereas the Nominalists made the distinction only verbal, such as exists between Tully and Cicero. The Thomists, however, and many other theologians called it a virtual distinction.
4. Scriptural Testimony On The Trinity
State of the question. It is better to speak of the testimony of the Scriptures than to say that the existence of the Trinity is proved from the Scriptures, for the Trinity is not proved, nor is it a theological conclusion, but it is believed. To say that it is proved from the Scriptures is to insinuate that faith is the conclusion of this syllogism: Whatever God has revealed is true and is to be believed. But in the Scriptures God had revealed the mystery of the Trinity. Therefore I believe this mystery. The real conclusion of this syllogism, however, is that the Trinity is believable and should be believed. This is a judgment of credibility, but not an act of faith which is simply an essentially supernatural act, above discursive reasoning, and never the result of a syllogism, because it is based immediately on the authority of God the revealer, inasmuch as I believe in God revealing and God revealed by one and the same act.[70]
This statement, that the existence of the Trinity is proved by the Scriptures, can be accepted in the sense that this truth is proved to be of faith by the Scriptures. It was in this sense that many Thomists used the formula.
It is not necessary that every dogma be proved as revealed by the Scriptures, since a dogma may be contained implicitly in the Scriptures and more clearly be found in tradition, which preceded the Scriptures in the preaching of Christ and the early preaching of the apostles, which were not completely recorded in writing.
With regard to the origin of the dogma of the Trinity, the rationalists, the Protestant liberals, and the Modernists say that Christ in no way taught that God was triune, but only that God was the Father of all. They say further that in the beginning the apostles indeed believed in God the Father and in Jesus Christ, the man, the divine legate, and in the spirit, power, and operation of God, but that they did not accept these terms as referring to three distinct persons. About A.D. 80 we find in the Gospel of St. Matthew the formula of baptism, in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are enumerated but not as distinct persons. Shortly thereafter certain Christians, influenced by the philosophy of Philo, concluded that Christ was the Logos, that intermediary being between God and men. Others, because of their addiction to certain Hellenic theories, concluded that Christ was the Son of God in a literal and proper sense, and therefore equal to the Father. After long controversy this theory was defined by the Council of Nicaea. For the rationalists, therefore, the dogma of the Trinity is nothing more than a Judae-Hellenistic theory, slowly elaborated during the first four centuries.
Against this rationalist interpretation, it can be shown from the testimony of the Scriptures that this mystery was adumbrated in the Old Testament and more fully revealed in the New Testament. In a course of dogmatic theology, however, it is better to follow a regressive method by first explaining the texts of the New Testament and then indicating how the mystery was adumbrated in the Old Testament, just as we would regressively follow the course of a stream in order to discover its source. In explaining the doctrine of the New Testament it is more desirable to follow the order in which the revelation was proposed by Christ and the apostles, considering first the texts about the three persons together and then those about each person in particular.[71]
New Testament Testimony On The Three Persons
Presupposing a course in exegesis, our explanation of this doctrine of faith ought to point out the theological sources. As great rivers come down from the mountains, so sacred theology descends from the heights of doctrine as expressed in Sacred Scripture and in tradition, and then, in the end, theology should ascend to the heights and dispose us to a contemplation of divine things.[72]
We shall first consider the New Testament testimony on the three divine persons together as found: 1. in the Synoptic Gospels, the first expression of Christian preaching; 2. in the epistles of the apostles, the first of which were written about A.D. 53; 3. in the Gospel of St. John, written about A.D. 80 against those who denied the divinity of Christ. First we shall cite the clear texts and then point out the difficulties arising from the more obscure passages.
The Synoptic Gospels. The first text, sufficiently clear to show the mystery of the Trinity, is found in Luke 1:30-35, where the incarnation of the Word is announced to Mary by the archangel Gabriel, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
The Trinity of persons is clearly enunciated in this text, for the angel is sent by God the Father, who is often referred to as the Most High, and the Holy Ghost and the Son of the most high God are distinguished from the Father. That which was to be born of the Virgin Mary was not the Father or the Holy Ghost, but the Son of God. The consubstantiality of the persons is also implied in the text especially since the term "Son of God" is not used in the broad sense but in the proper sense, inasmuch as farther on (Luke 1:43) Mary is called the mother of the Lord. Finally, the Holy Ghost, to whom the work of the Incarnation is attributed is not less than the Father and the Son. This is the first manifestation of the Trinity in the New Testament before the Incarnation.
The second text of the Synoptic Gospels is Matt. 3:16 and Luke 9:34 (cf. II Pet. 1:17), before the beginning of Christ's public ministry at the time of His baptism. In Matthew we read: "And Jesus being baptized, forthwith came out of the water: and lo, the heavens were opened to Him: and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him. And behold a voice from heaven, saying: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." These words were spoken by God the Father in this solemn theophany.
More clearly than in the first text we see the distinction of the persons, since the Father speaks from heaven and the Son by this personal appellation is opposed to the person of the Father. The Holy Ghost is distinguished from both the Father and Son, for while the Father speaks from heaven the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove descends upon Christ, who is called the Son of God.
It is sufficiently clear that the Father is not the Son, for no one is ever called the father of himself, and that the Father and the Son are not the Holy Ghost. If the Father, antecedent to all consideration of our minds, is not the Son, then they are really distinct; and if the Father and the Son are not the Holy Ghost, they are really distinct from Him.
In this text, too, there is some manifestation of the divinity of the Son, since He is called <ho huios>, with the article, that is, son not in the wide but proper sense, and the Father added, "In whom I am well pleased, " that is, beloved above all others. As Father Ceuppens remarks, "It should be noted that the three Synoptic Gospels use the same expression, <ho agapetos> (beloved), and this term is never used in the New Testament for an adoptive son and seems to have the meaning of <ho monogenes> ("only, or only-begotten").[73]
In this text the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of God (Matt.) and is therefore not any divine spirit, such as an angel, but a well defined Spirit, to pneuma. And lest there be any further doubt, St. Luke added <to pneuma to agion> (3:22), that divine person who throughout the New Testament is called the Holy Ghost and who together with the Father and the Son constitutes the Holy Trinity.[74]
The third text of the Synoptic Gospels is Matt. 28:19 and Mark 16:13, the formula of baptism, which Christ, before He ascended into heaven, transmitted to the apostles while He was commissioning them to preach the gospel. This is at the end of the whole Gospel, as the first manifestation was at the beginning prior to the Incarnation. In the text from St. Matthew we read: "Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." The personal distinction is clearer in the Greek, where the conjunction kai and the article are repeated before the name of each person. This emphatic repetition of the article cannot be explained except by the real distinction between the persons. Moreover the Father is not the Son, since these are personal nouns and not impersonal nouns, like truth, goodness, wisdom, which indicate divine attributes pertaining to the divine nature. Thus Father and Son designate distinct persons, and if this is true then the third term ought also to designate a distinct person.
Lastly, the text implies that the divinity of these three persons, like the baptismal grace bestowed in their name, cannot be conferred except in the name of God, and thus in this formula the same worship of latria is given to the three persons. In the formula, then, the Son and the Holy Ghost are equal to the Father; if they are not God, they would be infinitely below the Father.
The rationalists and liberals, acknowledging the force of this text, have tried to impugn its genuineness because Eusebius gives the words of Christ as, "baptizing them in My name." The objection is futile, however, since all the codices give the received text, and almost all the Fathers before Eusebius, among them St. Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Origen. Eusebius himself sometimes gives the received text and sometimes the short form.[75]
The Epistles. In the Epistles we find three witnesses to the three persons. The first is II Cor. 13:13 (according to Harnack, A.D. 53): "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the charity of God and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all." Here St. Paul attributes to three persons the granting of sanctifying grace; but God alone is the author of grace, of the remission of sin, and of salvation. We refer the reader to Job 14:4: "Who can make him clean that is conceived of unclean seed? Is it not Thou who only art?"; and to Ps. 83:12: "The Lord will give grace and glory"; and Jas. 4:6: "God... giveth grace to the humble." The second testimony is Eph. 4:4 ff. (according to Harnack, A.D. 57-59), where the Apostle is speaking of the mystical body of Christ, "one body and one Spirit,... one Lord (namely, Christ), one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all." The equality of the persons is inferred from the fact that the three together confer grace, of which God alone is the author. This was St. Athanasius' great argument: God alone deifies.
The third testimony is I Pet. 1:1 f.: "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, unto the sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied." As in the other texts, the three persons are presented as the highest source of grace.
The Gospel of St. John (according to Harnack and Zahn, written between 80 and 110) clearly affirms the Trinity of persons and their equality. We quote only the two principal texts referring to the three persons.
The first is John 14:16 and 26, concerning the promise of the Holy Ghost made by Christ at the Last Supper: "And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever,... but the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things." Here we see a clear distinction between the Father who sends the Spirit, and the Son who asks the Father to send the Spirit, and the Spirit who is sent by the Father in the name of the Son. Certainly the one who sends is distinct from him who is sent, antecedent to our thinking the sender is not the one who is sent, and thus the Father is not the Son, for the one who generates is not the one who is generated. If we rightly understand the meaning of the verb "is" and the negation "is not, " the real distinction between the persons will be clear, a distinction which is antecedent to our mind's consideration. Although those things which the Scripture speaks of here are intimately united, they are really distinct; the substance of bread is not its quantity, but they are intimately united. So, in this text and in the context the consubstantiality of the three persons emerges, for a little earlier (John 14:9-11) Christ said: "He that seeth Me seeth the Father also... . Do you not believe, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?" Again John 10:30: "I and the Father are one"; John 15:26: "the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father"; John 16:13: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will teach you all truth."
The second text of St. John referring to the three persons together is the famous Johannine comma: "And there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one" (I John 5:7). A great controversy has arisen about the genuineness of this text. Those who attack the text argue from the fact that it is not found in any Greek codex of any authority, nor in many Latin codices and versions. From this they conclude that this "comma" was originally a marginal note which in the course of time was incorporated into the text. Consequently the text would enjoy only the force of tradition. The defenders of the text say that it was always in the Latin version, which is more ancient than the Greek codices, for it is found in many Latin codices and is cited by many of the Fathers, by Tertullian, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine. The omission of this verse in the Greek codices is explained by the fact that the seventh and eighth verses begin and end in the same way and thus the scribes could easily have omitted the seventh verse. In the Latin version the seventh verse is: "And there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one." The eighth verse is: "And there are three that give testimony on earth: the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three are one."
On this matter the Holy Office has issued two declarations.[76] In the first, dated January 13, 1927, we read: "The authenticity of this text of St. John cannot be safely denied or called into doubt." Later, on June 2, 1927, the Holy Office declared: "This decree has been issued to repress the temerity of those private teachers who have attributed to themselves the right of completely rejecting this 'comma' of St. John or at least by their final judgment of calling it into doubt... . It is in no way intended to deter Catholic writers from investigating the matter more fully,... or from adopting an opinion opposed to the genuineness of the text, as long as they profess to be willing to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom has been committed by Jesus Christ the duty not only of interpreting the Sacred Scriptures but also of guarding them faithfully."
We proceed now to the testimonies in the New Testament about the individual persons of the Trinity.
Special Testimonies About God The Father
In the Sacred Scriptures God is called Father in a threefold sense: 1. in the broadest sense by reason of the creation, thus He is called the "father of rain" (Job 38:28); 2. in the broad sense by reason of the adoption of men as His sons, thus He is called our Father in the Lord's Prayer; 3. in the strict and proper sense by reason of the generation of His only-begotten Son. Thus Christ Himself, of whom it was said," his is My beloved Son" (Matt. 3:17), said, not "our Father, " but "My Father": "It is My Father that glorifieth Me" (John 8:54); "Come, ye blessed of My Father" (Matt. 25:34); "I must be about My Father's business" (Luke 2:49); "No one can snatch them out of the hand of My Father" (John 10:29); "They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father" (John 15:24); "I ascend to my Father and to your Father" (John 20:17). God is not the Father of Jesus Christ in the same way as He is the Father of His adopted sons, for in the prologue of St. John's Gospel we read: "The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John 1:18). Frequently St. Paul speaks of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for instance," hat... you may glorify God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 15:6); and "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (II Cor. 1:3 and Eph. 1:3). Thus the Father is represented as a person and moreover as a divine person; no one has called this into doubt. The Father is called the Lord of heaven and earth and living God, as for instance, "Thou art Christ the Son of the living God." Throughout the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel, Christ invokes the Father as God, and it is clear that the Father is a person distinct from the Son from the fact that he who generates is distinct from him who is begotten. This will appear more clearly when we speak of the Son.
Special Testimonies About God The Son
In Sacred Scripture the term son of God is used in a twofold sense: in the broad sense for adoptive sons, and in the proper sense for the only-begotten Son both before and after the Incarnation. References to the Son of God are to be found 1. in the Synoptic Gospels, 2. in the Epistles, 3. in the Gospel of St. John.
In the Synoptic Gospels Christ is described as the incarnate Son of God, not only distinct from the Father but also equal to Him. The principal text is: "All things are delivered to Me by My Father. And no one knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither doth anyone know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him" (Matt. 11:27). From various codices and from the Fathers it appears that this text is authentic, and its authenticity is admitted by almost all critics, not only Catholics but also the Protestant liberals. In this text is expressed the distinction between the Father and the Son as well as the equality of knowability and knowledge which presuppose an equality of nature and the identity of the divine nature.
"No one knoweth the Son, but the Father, " and therefore the Son is above natural created knowledge and cannot be known naturally by anyone but God. From this it follows that He is God. To this text we may add all the texts in the Synoptic Gospels, in Christian apologetics, and in the tract on the Incarnation, which demonstrate the divinity of Christ. These texts may be grouped together as follows:
1. Jesus, according to His own testimony, is greater than all creatures, greater than Jonas, Solomon, David, who called Him lord, greater than Moses and Elias, who appeared beside Him at the Transfiguration, greater than St. John the Baptist, greater than the angels "who ministered to Him" (Mark 1:13), and of whom He said, "The Son of man shall send His angels" as His servants (Matt. 13:41).
2. Jesus speaks as the supreme lawgiver, complementing and perfecting the divine law in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 10:21-48).
3. He vindicates for Himself the prerogative of forgiving sins, which according to the Jews was a divine attribute (Matt. 9:2).
4. He assumed the right of judging the living and the dead, and of raising the dead to life (Mark 14:62; 8:38; 13:26).
5. He promised to send the Holy Ghost, to whom He is therefore not inferior (Luke 24:49), and He accepted the adoration which the apostles had rejected (Matt. 8:2; 28:9, 17).
6. He is called the Son of the living God by St. Peter (Matt. 16:16).
7. In the parable of the vineyard He is called the Son of the lord of the vineyard (Mark 12:1-12; also in Matthew and Luke). In this parable we are told that the lord of the vineyard first sent his servants, who were put to death by the workers in the vineyard. "Therefore having yet one son, most dear to him; he also sent him unto them last of all,... and laying hold of him, they killed him." Of the Pharisees who heard this parable, we read: "And they sought to lay hands on Him, but they feared the people. For they knew that He spoke this parable to them." From all these texts of the Synoptic Gospels it is clear that Jesus' utterances about His eminent dignity imply more than a simple Messiahship and express a divine filiation entirely proper to Him, constituting Him above all creatures, equal to God and God Himself, although distinct from His Father.
In the epistles of the apostles and in their preaching, the divinity of Christ is still more explicitly expressed.
In the Acts of the Apostles (3:13, 15), St. Peter declared: "The God of our fathers hath glorified His Son Jesus, whom you indeed delivered up... . But the author of life you killed." The author of life is none other than God. Again in the Acts of the Apostles, St. Peter said: "Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved," that is, Jesus is the Savior of the world, the author of grace and salvation. Of no prophet and of no angel were similar words spoken. Again, "Him hath God exalted with His right hand, to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins" (Acts 5:31). But only God can be the Savior, forgiving sins. Similarly St. Peter calls Jesus "the Lord of all, appointed by God judge of the living and of the dead" (Acts 10:36, 42).
Since St. Peter uttered these words immediately after Pentecost, the argument of the rationalists that a process of idealization intervened, transforming the original preaching of Christ, has no validity. These words represent the confirmation by the Holy Ghost of those things that Christ, during His public ministry, said about His divine filiation. It should be remembered that the Acts of the Apostles in its entirety is attributed to St. Luke, who was St. Paul's co-worker, and this not only by all Catholic and conservative Protestant critics but also by many rationalists, among them Renan, Reuss, and Harnack, and that it was most probably written about A.D. 63-64.[77]
In the epistles of St. Paul we find the following references to the divinity of the Son, as distinct from the Father. These texts are important since St. Paul, beginning in the year 53, speaks of the divinity of Christ as a dogma already received in the various churches before there was sufficient time for any process of idealization.
1. St. Paul speaks of the Son of God in the strictest sense: "God sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8. 3)
"He that spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all" (Rom. 8:32); "God sent His Son... that He might redeem them who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Gal. 4:4 f.). In the last text the adopted sons are clearly distinguished from God's own Son, and the only-begotten Son is represented as the Savior of the world.
2. St. Paul affirms the pre-existence of the Son of God before the Incarnation: "Giving thanks to God the Father... who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the remission of sins. Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. For in Him were all things created in heaven, and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him. And He is before all, and by Him all things consist" (Col. 1:12-17). These attributes belong to God alone, and at the same time the Son of God is distinguished from the Father. A little farther on we read: "Because in Him, it hath well pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself" (w. 19 f.). Here the Son of God is clearly called the Creator and the Savior.
Again, St. Paul says: "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead corporeally; and you are filled in Him, who is the head of all principality and power" (Col. 2:9 f.). Writing to the Philippians, while exhorting them to humility he casually says these sublime words: "For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man" (Phil. 2:5 ff.). In this text, the expression "in the form of God" (qui in forma Dei esset) signifies the essence and nature of God, and this interpretation is confirmed by the following words, "No be equal with God." We could have no clearer statement of the pre-existing glory of the Son of God before the Incarnation.
Writing to the Romans, St. Paul said: "For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren,... and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever. Amen" (Rom. 9:3 ff.). Some controversy exists whether the punctuation mark before the phrase "who is over all things" is a comma or a period, but most critics, even those who are considered liberal, admit the comma, and thus this phrase refers to Christ.
Lastly, we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "In these days [God] hath spoken to us by His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the world. Who being the brightness of His glory, and the figure of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high" (1:2 f.). In this text the Son of God, distinct from the Father, is declared to be the Creator, the Preserver, and the Savior, "upholding all things by the word of His power." In this Epistle also the Son of God is said to be superior to Moses and the angels, the mediator and the high priest for all eternity. Speaking in this manner, St. Paul intended to affirm, not something new, but that which had been held by the different churches before this time. No time had intervened, therefore, to permit any progressive idealization of the primitive preaching.
In the Gospel according to St. John the divinity of Christ and the distinction of the Son from the Father is so clearly enunciated that the rationalists themselves have had to admit it, but they argue that this Gospel, written against those who denied the divinity of Christ, was composed only in the second century. Renan places it about A.D. 125, and Holtzmann between 100 and 123. The later rationalists however have had to acknowledge that it was written toward the end of the first century: B. Weiss placing its composition in the year go; Harnack between 80 and 110. The theory of the intervening process of idealization is excluded by the fact that as early as 54 and 58 St. Paul speaks of the eternal pre-existence of the Son of God.
With regard to the texts of the Fourth Gospel, we present first the words of our Lord Himself and then the words of St. John the Evangelist in the prologue of his Gospel, thus observing the order of revelation.
The words of our Lord referring to His divinity and His distinction from the Father are the following.
"The Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He... said God was His Father, making Himself equal to God. Then Jesus said to them... the Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing: for what things soever He doth, these the Son also doth in like manner... . For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life; so the Son also giveth life to whom He will. For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son. That all men may honor the Son, as they honor the Father... . For as the Father has life in Himself, so He hath given to the Son also to have life in Himself" (5:18-26). This thought will be more clearly presented below In this text the same works <ad extra> of the Father are attributed to the Son, particularly miracles and the sanctification of souls, of which God alone is the author.
"Not that any man hath seen the Father; but He who is of God, He hath seen the Father" (6:46); "You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world" (8:23); "For from God I proceeded, and came" (8:42), that is, I proceeded from eternity and came in time; "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I am" (8:58), is a clear declaration of the pre-existence of the Son of God; "I and the Father are one" (10:30), whereupon the Jews took up "stones to stone Him."
"As the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father" (10:15), is an affirmation of the equality of knowledge and nature, already expressed in St. Matthew, "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father" (11:27); "I am the way and the truth and the life" (14:6), that is, I not only possess life and truth, but I am life and truth, and since truth and life are identical, He alone is truth itself who is being itself by His essence, that is, subsisting being. Such is the profound meaning of the verb "is" as distinguished from "have" in the sentence, "I am truth and life," that only He who can say, "I am who am," could utter these words.
"All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine, and show it to you" (16:15). These words clearly state that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son.
"And now glorify Thou Me, O Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee,... because Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world" (17:5, 24).
Lastly, the revelation of this doctrine is enunciated by way of synthesis in the prologue of St. John's Gospel, especially in the first four verses: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him: and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4). These words contain the statement of two fundamental truths: 1. the distinction of the Word from the Father, 2. the consubstantiality of the Word with the Father. From these truths others follow in the prologue.[78]
1. The distinction of the Word from the Father is enunciated in the words, "The Word was with God, " for, as is commonly remarked, no one is said to be with himself. One difficulty, however, arises from the fact that it is not clearly stated that the Word is a person; it might be understood as similar to the word of our mind which is in our intellect and "with" the intellect. This difficulty, however, is removed by what is said later of the Word, especially by the words," and the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (1:14); and "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (1:18).
From these verses it is clear that the Word mentioned in the first verse is the only-begotten Son who became incarnate and before this was in the bosom of the Father, or "with Him," in the words of the first verse. From this we may infer a real distinction between the Father and the only-begotten Son, for apart from any consideration of the mind the Father is not the Son, and he who begets does not beget himself. Father and Son, as has been said, are personal nouns and not impersonal nouns like truth, goodness, and intelligence, which designate the attributes of the divine nature. Therefore, apart from any consideration of the mind, it is true to say that the Father is not the Son.
On the other hand, as theologians point out, we cannot say that, apart from the consideration of the mind, the essence of God is not His intellect, for His essence is subsisting being itself and subsisting intelligence itself; no real distinction exists in God between His being and His essence, nor between His essence, faculties, and operation. Therefore this proposition is false: God is not His own being, as is also the following: God is not His own intelligence. From revelation, however, we infer that the following is true: God the Father is not the Son, for he who begets does not beget himself. If therefore, apart from any consideration of our mind, the Father is not the Son, He is really distinct from the Son.
2. The consubstantiality of the Word with the Father is expressed in the same first verse, in the words, "the Word was God." According to the generally accepted interpretation, for instance, that of St. Thomas in his commentary on St. John's Gospel, in this phrase the term "Word" (<ho logos>) is the subject and "God" is the predicate. This is evident from the context, which refers to the attributes of the Word, and from the Greek article <ho>, which precedes the term "Word" (<ho logos>).
Moreover, in this sentence the predicate "God" retains its proper meaning, as is evident from the parallel statements, "the Word was with God," and "the Word was God," and from the second verse, "the same was in the beginning with God." Thus, the word "God" is used three times in its proper meaning, designating not God by participation, but God Himself. The sense of the text is, therefore, that the Word is no less God than He with whom He was from the beginning. There is, therefore, a perfect equality between the Word and the Father. Moreover, since the most simple and infinite divine nature cannot be multiplied, and since, as is clear from the Old Testament and from philosophy, there cannot be many gods, it follows that the Word and the Father are consubstantial. This consubstantiality was more explicitly stated later at the Council of Nicaea. The words "in the beginning" at the opening of the prologue mean first of all before the creation of the world, as is clear from the context, and also from eternity, since God is eternal and immutable, since before the creation no change took place.
From these two truths others follow.
1. The Word together with the Father is the Creator. "All things were made by Him: and without Him was made nothing that was made" (v. 3), that is, nothing whatsoever was made without the Word. This follows from the fact that the Word is God.
2. The Word is the author of both the natural and the supernatural life. "In Him was life" (v. 4); thus He is the author of life equally with the Father, since He is God. Jesus expressed this later on in the words, "or as the Father has life in Himself, so He hath given to the Son also to have life in Himself" (5:26), and this life is essential and subsisting life and the cause of participating life, the life He spoke of when He said, "I am the life." Further, the Word is the author of supernatural life, as is clear from the words," and the life was the light of men, "which are explained in verse 9, "that was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world." Later on this is expressed still more clearly, especially in verse 18, "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him, " and by our Lord's words to Nicodemus," or God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting" (3:16).
In his commentary on the fourth verse of the prologue, "and the life was the light of men," St. Thomas says: "This life may be explained in two ways: first, as an infusion of natural knowledge; secondly, as the communication of grace. It should be especially understood in the second way, because of what follows, namely, 'And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it... . (John) came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through Him'" (w. 5, 7), believe, that is, to attain salvation.
3. The Word is the author of our redemption. In verse twelve we read: "But as many as received Him, He gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in His name," that is, by the Word we are made adopted sons of God, as St. Paul said, "[God] who hath predestined us unto the adoption of children through Jesus Christ unto Himself" (Eph. 1:5), and "that we might receive the adoption of sons" (Gal. 4:5).
The five following truths, then, are announced in the Prologue of St. John's Gospel: the Son of God is 1. distinct from the Father, 2. equal and consubstantial with the Father, 3. the Creator, 4. the author of both the natural and the supernatural life, 5. the Redeemer and the author of salvation. In this way the divinity of the Word is proclaimed.
Objection. The rationalists and liberals say that this doctrine of the Word apparently stems from Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, born about 20 B. C., who tried to conciliate the monotheism of the Jews with the Neoplatonism in vogue at the time in Alexandria. Relying on the Old Testament, Philo admitted the existence of one personal God, the Provider, but in accord with the Greek philosophers of Alexandria he held that the most high God could not produce this finite world except through some intermediate being, which he called the <logos.> As a Jew, Philo tried to reconcile two contradictory teachings, namely, monotheism and free creation with the pantheistic doctrine of necessary emanation. Thus, when he considers the <logos> under the Neoplatonic aspect he speaks of him as an intermediate being, but when he considers the <logos> in the light of the New Testament and Jewish monotheism he speaks of him as a divine attribute.
Reply. The Catholic reply to this difficulty is the following. A great difference exists between the <logos> of Philo and the Logos of St. John. The Logos of St. John is neither a being beneath God nor a divine attribute, but He is properly the Son of God the Father, at the same time God, the Creator, and the Redeemer in the strict sense. Philo's <logos>, however, is in no way the Redeemer. St. John's teaching, therefore, is not derived from Philo, but from Christ's preaching, as explained by him, and as understood by the other apostles, as we see in the preaching of St. Peter and in the epistles of St. Paul. St. John could have found an adumbration of this mystery in the Old Testament, especially in the Book of Wisdom, "or she is a vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty" (7:25 f.).
As to the word "Logos" itself, St. John could have taken it from revelation, but it would not be derogatory to admit, as many do, that he derived it directly from Philo, for when the Evangelist was writing in Ephesus, Apollo was preaching there, and Apollo was widely versed in Alexandrian philosophy. Quite probably also the earliest heretics misused the word "<logos>" to designate a being midway between God and the world. St. John may have used the term to correct the current false interpretation, when he said, "The Word[Logos] was God."[79]
We must add here that the Logos of St. John has no connection with the teaching of Plotinus, who in the third century spoke of three subordinate <hypostases>, of different rank, in his system of pantheistic emanationism. Plotinus posited: 1. the One-Good, corresponding to Plato's idea of the good; 2. the primal intelligence, or the <logos>, proceeding, not by a free creation, but by a necessary emanation from the supreme good, to whom it was inferior. Here the <logos>, according to Plotinus, resembled Aristotle's god, who is "<noesis noeseos noesis>". In his primal intelligence Plotinus tried to discern the duality of the subject and the object known, besides a multitude of ideas for things that were to be produced. Plotinus' third <<hypostasis>> was the soul of the universe, corresponding to the god of the Stoics, from which, by a pantheistic emanation, the seminal ideas of all things proceeded (<logoi spermatikoi>).
The difference between Plotinus' <hypostases> and the Trinity of Christian revelation is evident. These three <hypostases> are distinctly unequal, and in this pantheistic emanation a multitude of beings proceeds from the supreme being not by free creation but by a necessary emanation, or by a necessity of nature. As in all kinds of pantheism, the supernatural order of the life of grace is denied; for here our human nature would be a participation of the divine nature and could not be elevated to a higher order, and human reason would be the seed of eternal life.
Lastly, the doctrine of the Word proclaimed in St. John's Gospel has no resemblance to the Indian trinity, called Trimourti. In this system Brahma is god, the producer of all things; Siva is god the destroyer, the destructive force; and Vichnu was many times born in the flesh for the defense of the good.
The differences are obvious: 1. In the Trinity as revealed by Christ none of the divine persons can be called the destroyer. This idea is an expression of the pessimism and fatalism of the Indians. 2. In the Indian trinity, the three manifestations of God, the producer, the destroyer, and the conserver, are adopted with respect to the things of this world, and they seem rather to be three aspects of the same supreme power; indeed it is often said that there is no distinction in God except in appearance. 3. The Indian system does not transcend pantheism and fails to preserve the idea of a free creation.
Special Testimonies About The Holy Ghost
1. In the Synoptic Gospels the Holy Ghost is less frequently mentioned than the Son of God, because He was not incarnate, and sometimes in Sacred Scripture the expression "Spirit of God" does not clearly designate a special person. Nevertheless, as we pointed out in gathering the testimonies about the three divine persons together in the Synoptic Gospels, the Holy Ghost appears as a divine person, distinct from the others, in the formula of baptism (Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:13). In this formula Father and Son are personal nouns, and therefore the third term should also designate a distinct divine person. This truth appears, although not so clearly, in the words of the archangel Gabriel at the time of the Annunciation, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee" (Luke 1:35), and in the solemn theophany after Christ's baptism when Jesus "saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him" (Matt. 3:16; Luke 9:34).
Father Ceuppens distinguishes the texts in which it is clear from the context that reference is made to the third person of the Blessed Trinity from those in which there is rather reference to some divine virtue and not explicitly to the Third Person.[80]
St. John the Baptist, St. Elizabeth, and St. Zachary are said to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15, 41, 67).
Simeon is said to have "received an answer from the Holy Ghost... and came by the Spirit into the temple" (Luke 2:26 f.).
St. John the Baptist announced a higher baptism to be conferred "in the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 3:11), and "Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert" (Matt. 4:1).
Christ said: "Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him" (Matt. 12:32)."In view of the context," says Father Ceuppens, "we do not think that the Holy Ghost here can be explained as referring to the Third Person of the Trinity.[81]
Announcing to the apostles their imminent persecution, Jesus said: "It shall be given you in that hour what to speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you" (Matt. 10:19 f.). He who speaks is a person and not a divine attribute, and this promise was fulfilled by the sending of the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Trinity, on Pentecost (Acts 2:1, 4).
Thus the Synoptic Gospels reveal the Holy Ghost as a distinct, divine person, to whom are attributed divine operations, in particular prophecy (the prophecy of Simeon), and the sanctification of souls (the sanctification of St. John Baptist). All this will become clearer in the Acts of the Apostles and in the epistles of St. Paul.
2. In the Acts of the Apostles the Holy Ghost speaks as the person who sanctifies men, who in the past inspired the prophets and now inspires the apostles, who directs and rules them and constitutes them bishops. Thus we read: "Now there were in the church which was at Antioch, prophets and doctors,... and the Holy Ghost said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas, for the work whereunto I have taken them... . So they being sent by the Holy Ghost, went to Seleucia: and from thence they sailed to Cyprus" (Acts 13:1-4); "The Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the Church of God" (Acts 20:28); "Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" (Acts 19:2.) St. Paul says: "And now, behold, being bound in the spirit, I go to Jerusalem, not knowing the things which shall befall me there: save that the Holy Ghost in every city witnesseth to me, saying that bands and afflictions wait for me at Jerusalem" (Acts 20:22 f.); and St. Peter said: "Men, brethren, the scripture must needs be fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas" (Acts 1:16). In all these instances the Holy Ghost appears as a person. Again, St. Peter said that to lie to the Holy Ghost is to lie to God: "Ananias, why hath Satan tempted thy heart, that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost?... Thou hast not lied to men, but to God" (Acts 5:3 f.).
On this point the entire second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles about the coming of the Holy Ghost can be cited: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak" (v. 4). Here, as in the other texts, the Holy Ghost speaks as a divine person for only God sanctifies souls.
Father Ceuppens[82] says that the personal character of the Holy Ghost cannot be inferred from some of the texts of the Acts of the Apostles in which He is mentioned, for example, 1:5, 8; 2:4, 41; 8:12; 9:7; but that the Holy Ghost appears explicitly as a person in the following: "And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak" (2:4). This was the fulfillment of Christ's promise to send the person of the Holy Ghost. His personal character is clear when He is said to rule the apostles (5:3, 9); also in the text," or it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us" (15:28); "The Holy Ghost said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas" (13:2), and when He prevented St. Paul from going to Bithynia (16:7), when He foretold St. Paul's sufferings (20:22 f.), and when He "placed you bishops to rule the church of God" (20:28).
3. In the epistles of St. Paul many passages show the Holy Ghost to be a distinct person and true God. He appears as a person when such properties and actions are predicated of Him as pertain only to a person and not to a divine attribute. The Holy Ghost is said to have an intellect," or the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (I Cor. 2:10). To Him are also attributed a will and operations, "but all these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to everyone according as He will" (I Cor. 12:11); graces <gratis datae>, like prophecy and the word of wisdom, are conferred by Him.
The person mentioned here is also true God for He is said to have all knowledge of divine things," or the Spirit searcheth all things,[comprehends them], yea, the deep things of God" (I Cor. 2:10). Only God can know future free things and reveal them to the prophets. To the Holy Ghost are also attributed the works of regeneration and sanctification and these are proper to God, as in "You are washed, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of our God" (I Cor. 6:11).
Lastly, according to St. Paul, the worship of latria is to be given to the Holy Ghost, dwelling in the just soul: "Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you?" (I Cor. 6:19); but temples are built for God. Therefore St. Paul added, "glorify and bear God in your body" (v. 20). Father Ceuppens[83] remarks," some of these texts, taken alone, might be understood as referring to a poetical personification, as was said above about wisdom, but to comprehend the full meaning of these texts we must keep in mind the Trinitarian formulas in St. Paul's writings in which the Holy Ghost is placed on the same level with the Father and the Son."
4. In St. John's Gospel the Holy Ghost clearly appears as a divine person distinct from the other divine persons as was shown above in treating of the three divine persons together: "And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete... . But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost [to pneuma], whom the Father will send in My name, he [ekeinos] will teach you all things" (John 14:16, 26).[84] No one sends himself, and therefore the Holy Ghost, who is sent, is distinct from the Father, who sends Him, and from the Son, who asks the Father to send the Holy Ghost, because the Son was already sent in the Incarnation. Here too (15:26) the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of truth, that is, the source of truth, and He is said to possess perfect knowledge so as to illuminate the apostles and perfect sanctity for the sanctification of souls: "But when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will teach you all truth" (John 16:13). In all these passages the Holy Ghost is revealed as a divine person.
We may conclude, therefore, that the books of the New Testament explicitly reveal the mystery of one God in three distinct and perfectly equal divine persons. This doctrine is completely at variance with the Stoics' pantheistic concept of the <logos>, the world soul; from Neoplatonism, in which the <logos> is a secondary <<hypostasis>> subordinate to the One-Good; and from Philonism, in which the <logos> is either a creature or a divine attribute, depending on whether Philo was speaking as a Jew or as a Neoplatonist. We see, then, that the doctrine of Christ was not altered by the Greek philosophers, but that it is an explicit manifestation of higher truth, which in an obscure manner was already revealed in the Old Testament, as we shall show immediately.
Objections. It has been pointed out before that the Arians and after them the Socinians adduced certain texts of the New Testament to deny the divinity of the Son and the Holy Ghost, for example, "go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28). To this we reply that going to the Father was not predicated of Christ according to His divine nature, for in His divine nature He is always in the Father.
I insist. In I Cor. 15:28 we read: "And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then the Son also Himself shall be subject unto Him that put all things under Him."
Reply. Here St. Paul is speaking of the resurrection of Christ, which is attributed to Christ in His human nature.
I insist. In Matt. 24:36 we read: "But of that day and hour no one knoweth, no not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone."
Reply. St. Thomas,[85] St. John Chrysostom, and many other Fathers say that these words are to be understood of Christ as man, for as man Christ is said to be ignorant of the day of judgment; not absolutely, for St. Peter said, "Lord, Thou knowest all things" (John 21:17), but He was ignorant of the time with regard to revealing it to us.[86]
I insist. In I Thess. 5:19 we read: "Extinguish not the spirit."
Reply. The meaning of these words is: Do not place obstacles in the way of the manifestations of the spirit, such as prophecy and the gift of tongues; do not resist grace.
I insist. The spirit of an individual is not a person distinct from that individual; but the Holy Ghost is often called the Spirit of God; therefore He is not a distinct person.
Reply. I distinguish the major: if the word "spirit" is used to denote an individual's essence or part of his essence or his manner of judging, this I concede; otherwise, this I deny.
Thus, for instance, the spirit of an angel designates his whole essence, and spirit of a man designates his manner of judging. Sometimes, however, spirit is used to denote a person distinct from him of whom it is said to be the spirit; for instance, the angels are called the spirits of God (Apoc. 3:1 ff.). No repugnance arises, therefore, when we say that "Spirit of God" means a distinct person, and from the context it is often clear that such is the case; for instance, when it is said that the "Father sends His spirit," and when this Spirit is said to be another Paraclete, distinct also from the Son.
The Mystery Of The Trinity In The Old Testament
The mystery of the Trinity is obscurely expressed in the Old Testament. We give here certain passages that have a meaning more clearly understood after the revelation of the New Testament.
1. A certain plurality in the one God is indicated, sometimes in the words of God and again in the theophanies.
God's words seem to express a council between several persons in Gen. 1:26,"let us make man to our image and likeness." It might be said that this is the plural of majesty, but this interpretation seems to be excluded by God's words to Adam after the Fall," behold Adam is become as one of us" (Gen. 3:22). The expression "one of us" indicates more than the plural of majesty. We may also cite God's words, provoked by the pride of the builders of the tower of Babel, "come ye, therefore, let us go down, and there confound their tongue" (Gen. 11:7).[87]
The mystery of the Trinity sheds some light on why the seraphim cried to one another: "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of His glory" (Isa. 6:3). Another triple invocation of God is found in the Book of Numbers in the formulas of benediction (6:24 ff.).
Something similar is found in the theophanies. In the opinion of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, Jahve appeared to Abraham in the guise of three men to adumbrate the Trinity: "And the Lord appeared to him in the vale of Mambre... and when he had lifted up his eyes, there appeared to him three men standing near him: and as soon as he saw them he ran to meet them from the door of his tent, and adored down to the ground" (Gen. 18:1 f.). The Roman Breviary in explanation says, "We saw three and adored one."[88] This was also the interpretation of St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, but others, among them St. Hilary, understood this passage in a different sense.
In these words of God and in the theophanies, therefore, a certain plurality is implied as existing in the one God, but it is not expressed so explicitly that the Jews could understand it.
2. The person of the Messias is more explicitly revealed in the Messianic prophecies, 1. as the Son of God, distinct from the Father, 2. as God, 3. when He is called wisdom.[89]
In the psalms we read: "The Lord hath said to me: Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee" (2:7). This psalm is Messianic in the literal sense, for the power that is promised to the new king is universal domination, extending over the universe, and the concept of any universal dominion is essentially Messianic. Therefore the king who is here proclaimed and who is to assume this dominion is the Messias.
To this Messianic king Jahve said, "Thou art My son, this day have I begotten thee." This sentence may be taken in the literal sense as referring to the only-begotten Son, or in a metaphorical sense as referring to a son by adoption. From the text alone it would be difficult to prove that this statement is to be taken in its literal sense as referring to the divine generation and to the eternal Messias. This passage merely states that the Messias is formally constituted a king, but such election as king gave any Oriental king and especially the king of the Jewish theocracy the title of "son of God" in the metaphorical sense. From the text and from the context as well it is difficult to affirm the divinity of the Messias with any certainty, but we can easily conclude that the Messias would be a universal king and in some very special way the son of God.
In the light of a new inspiration, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews determined the meaning of this psalm verse (2:7) when he said: "For to which of the angels hath He said at any time, Thou art My son, today have I begotten thee?" that is, the Son of God is above the angels. Thus the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches us in what sense that most special filiation of the Messias is to be understood: not as some metaphorical or adoptive filiation, but as actual filiation. The argument here is theological, based on the New Testament.[90]
In Psalm 109 (V. I, 3), which the Biblical Commission attributes to David, we read: "The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at My right hand;... with thee is the principality in the day of thy strength: in the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day star I begot thee." David is speaking of a colloquy between Jahve and some person whom David calls his Lord. Who is this person?
In order that David could call him his lord (Adonai), this person must be someone greatly superior to David; he must have dominion over the whole universe; and he must be a priest for all eternity according to the order of Melchisedech. The two last qualities are verified only in the Messias. With regard to the first quality, the superiority over David, we may ask whether this superiority is one of degree only, as when both are human beings and one is higher than the other, or a superiority of nature, as when the Messias is not only a man but God also, the only-begotten Son of God. The point is not clear either from the text or the context. Sometimes the expression, "it thou at my right hand," is used to indicate the divinity of the Messias, but it is also an Oriental figure of speech implying that an individual has been raised to some special dignity, generally to the royal state. From the text and the context alone we can conclude merely that the promised Messias would be greatly superior to David; but what this superiority actually was is not clearly stated. In the second century before Christ the Septuagint version interpreted this superiority over David as one of nature, that is, they understood it as referring to the divinity of the Messias, and later Christ Himself in His disputations with the Pharisees argued His divinity from this text.[91]
In St. Matthew's Gospel we read: "The Lord said to my Lord... . If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word" (22:44 ff.). The full meaning of the text appears from Christ's interpretation in the New Testament.[92] As St. Augustine pointed out,[93] in the expression, "Today have I begotten thee" the word "today" signifies the permanent present moment of eternity, where there is no past or future. Thus this eternal generation of the Son is above time. St. Thomas, too, says that the generation is eternal; it is not a new begetting but one that is eternal. "The 'today' designates what is present; and that which is eternal is always."[94]
In Isaias we read: "For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace" (9:6). The expression "God the Mighty" (El Gibbor) is found in Isa. 10:21, Deut. 10:17, Jer. 32:18, Neh. 9:32 and always refers to Jahve. It is never used with reference to a creature, even the highest, and therefore Catholic exegetes accept this expression as designating the divine quality of the Child.[95]
In these texts we see illustrated what was later said of Wisdom in the Sapiential Books. In Prov. 8:22-31, Wisdom itself says, "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived,... before the hills I was brought forth,... I was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times."
This text is illuminated by Ps. 2:7, "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee," and Ps. 109:3, "Before the day star I begot Thee, " and it proclaims what St. Paul will say to the Hebrews (1:3) concerning the Son, who is "the brightness of His glory, and the figure of His substance." In this text from Proverbs, we find a certain distinction between the persons in the words, "The Lord possessed Me," for no one properly possesses himself. The pronoun "me" also designates a person, and not a divine attribute, for later we read, "I was with Him forming all things and was delighted, " that is, affected by joy, and only a person would be affected by joy, not a divine attribute. In this text also we find some indication that the principle of distinction between the two persons is the fact that one is begotten by the other, begotten not made: "I was conceived, I was brought forth." We find even some indication of the order of procession, and nothing of inequality: "I was set up from eternity."
Thus this text, considered alongside the analogy of faith, or when it is compared with other earlier and later texts, contains much that does not appear at first sight. Gradually the contemplative mind is able to penetrate its full meaning with the aid of the gift of understanding. For all these texts can be studied in two ways: superficially with whatever aid comes from grammar and history, or more profoundly in the light of faith and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Thus we search out the meaning of the word of God, understanding it in that supernatural light in which it was originally written under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. In this way it was that the Fathers read these texts. In our churches the stained-glass windows can be looked at in two ways: from the outside, where the figures cannot be discerned; and from within the church, where all the design of the window can be seen in the light intended by the artist.
Here, too, we should read the text of the Book of Ecclesiasticus (chap. 24): "I [Wisdom] came out of the mouth of the Most High, the first-born before all creatures. I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth... . In me is all grace of the way and of the truth." In this text, the procession is indicated in the words, "I came out of the mouth of the Most High": on the day of the Annunciation the archangel Gabriel called God the Father the Most High and, Jesus the Son of the Most High. The text also declares that Wisdom is begotten not made: "the first-born of all creatures." Finally we find some indication of the order of procession in the words: "there should rise light that never faileth... in which is all grace of the way and of the truth."
It might be raised in objection that verse 14 refers to creation, "From the beginning,... was I created." Father Lebreton replied that this verse is to be explained from the context, in which, a little earlier, it is said that Wisdom "came out of the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before all creatures." Therefore when we read, "From the beginning,... was I created, " the word "create" is to be understood for the production of a thing, as when it is said that children are procreated.[96]
Lastly, we read in the Book of Wisdom (7:25-30) that Wisdom is "a vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh in to her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness... . She can do all things,... and conveyeth herself into holy souls, she maketh the friends of God and prophets... . Being compared with the light, she is found before it. For after this cometh night, but no evil can overcome wisdom."
In the light of the preceding texts, this passage insinuates very probably the existence of a person distinct from the Father, the same as that person referred to in the psalms: "Thou art My son, this day have I begotten Thee" (2:7), and "The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at My right hand" (109:1). Here Wisdom, as "the certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God, appears as God from true God and as light from light." Here Wisdom is called "the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness," that is, His adequate image, not an imperfect representation like the angels and men, who are created to the image of God. Of this perfect and adequate image we read that it "can do all things," because it is God Himself, and that it sanctifies souls, which is an attribute proper to God. It is, therefore, the uncreated light, without spot or blemish.
Many of the Fathers have compared this text with the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by His Son,... who being the brightness of His glory [Wisdom was called 'the brightness of eternal light'] and the figure of His substance [Wisdom was called 'the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of His goodness'], and upholding all things by the word of His power [Wisdom was said to be able 'to do all things'], making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high [Wisdom was said to 'make friends of God and prophets']."
Lebreton, speaking of this chapter 7 of the Book of Wisdom, says: "Wisdom has not all the features of a living personality,... yet in this book we find the most precise presentiment of the Christian dogma. Soon the authentic interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews will show in full light that theology of the Word which we have been able to perceive there only obscurely."[97]
In this passage of the Book of Wisdom, the Holy Ghost delineated what was to appear more brilliantly in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In opposition to all this, Philo's logos was either a creature, when he spoke as a Neoplatonist, or a divine attribute, when he spoke as a Jew.
The Old Testament contains only obscure references to the Holy Ghost. Often, indeed, the Spirit of God is mentioned, and He is represented as the principle of life by which the face of the earth is renewed (Ps. 103:30), and as the distributor of heavenly gifts (Isa. 11:2), the classic text concerning the gifts of the Holy Ghost. But the personal distinction of the Holy Ghost from God the Father can be hardly inferred from these texts of the Old Testament. This is not surprising, since the Old Testament was to announce the coming of the Messias, or of the Son, whereas the New Testament was to bring the Son's announcement of the mission of the Holy Ghost.
We find, however, some indication of this distinction in the Book of Wisdom (9:1 f., 17): "God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things with Thy word, and by Thy wisdom hast appointed man... . And who shall know Thy thought, except Thou give wisdom, and send Thy Holy Spirit from above?"
Some light is thrown on this passage by the words of Isaias: "And there shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of this root. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord" (Isa. 11:1 ff.). Joining these two texts from the Old Testament, we see what Christians understand by the words, "And who shall know Thy thought... except Thou send Thy Holy Spirit from above?" On the feast of Pentecost the Church repeats the words of the Psalmist, "Send forth Thy spirit, and they shall be created" (Ps. 103:30). It should not be surprising that the first lineaments of the mystery of the Trinity should be obscure. Some features of the mystery were announced in the beginning, but that which was to be more fully revealed later on could not then be known. In the natural order the whole river is virtually known in the initial spring of a great stream, but from that spring alone the whole course of the river cannot be known. So also the extraordinary talents of a great genius are virtually found in the mind of the child, but they are not explicit in the beginning.
Conclusion. All that was revealed in the Old Testament about the Messias, Wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the primitive delineation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The Jews, however, apparently were not able to understand these things or to unite them into one body of doctrine, as is evident from the rabbinical and apocryphal writings. Thus it often occurs that the father and the mother of a child who later becomes a great thinker are not able to appreciate the acumen of the child, although later when the child has grown to manhood they can discern his unusual gifts in the light of a maturer mind. It is said of St. Thomas that when he was five years old he often asked his teachers, "Who is God?" Most of his teachers were not able to foresee what would become of the child. St. Albert the Great, however, seems to have foreseen the child's future.
Doubt. In the Old Testament what kind of faith was necessary for salvation with regard to God?
Reply. The answer is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:6): "But without faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him." As St. Thomas explained,[98] it was always necessary to believe something above reason, that is, not only the existence of God as the author of nature but also the existence of God as the author of grace and salvation. Faith in the Trinity is implicitly contained in this supernatural belief. Explicit faith in the Trinity was not necessary for salvation in the Old Testament. "Before Christ the mystery of the incarnation of Christ was explicitly believed by the majority, while a minority believed it implicitly and vaguely; the same was true of the mystery of the Trinity."[99] It was in this sense that St. Thomas says in the same place, "Therefore from the beginning it was necessary for salvation to believe explicitly in the Trinity," at least for the leaders, among whom were the prophets. In the same article in the reply to the first objection, St. Thomas says: "It was necessary at all times and for all to believe explicitly these two truths concerning God (that God is and that He is the rewarder). But these two truths were not sufficient at all times for all."
5. The Blessed Trinity In Tradition
The testimony of tradition on the Holy Trinity is extensively treated in the history of dogma. Here we shall discuss only the more important questions relating to the difference between tradition in the ante-Nicene and post-Nicene periods. These questions have at all times been discussed in the Church, and St. Thomas himself wrote of them at length in his <Commentary on the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel>, where he speaks of Origen's error about the Word, the Son of God, and in the <Summa>, where he says, "The Arians, for whom Origen was the source, taught that the Son was different from the Father by a diversity of substance," and that the Word is said to be divine only metaphorically and not properly.[100]
At the outset it should be noted, as is evident from the New Testament, that from the beginning the Church believed explicitly in the mystery of the Trinity, professing in concrete terms that God the Father sent His only-begotten Son into the world and then the Holy Ghost came to sanctify men. This is the substance of the Apostles' Creed itself. In defining this mystery the Church did not yet make use of such abstract terms as nature, person, and Trinity, but it was already clear that the words "Father" and "Son" were personal nouns. This should be kept in mind lest the earlier sublime simplicity of contemplation, which transcends the later technical terminology, be confused with a later attempt to debase this doctrine by a superficial and spurious simplicity. Some say that at first the faith of the Church was proposed in a popular manner and later more scientifically; it would be better to say that in the beginning the faith was expressed in a concrete manner, which in its sublimity surpassed the abstract technicality of a later age. In the transition from this concrete expression of the faith, particularly in the earliest Creeds, to the abstract expression as formulated against Arianism in the Council of Nicaea in 325, certain difficulties arose which were solved by the Nicene Council itself. Thus in this matter we distinguish two periods: the ante-Nicene and the post-Nicene periods. We see here how slowly man learns to abstract, how he slowly attains to the third stage of abstraction divorced from all matter, how at first his metaphysical notions are confused, and only later become clarified and distinct. Then the danger of the abuse of abstraction arises as in the decline of Scholasticism, when the mind receded too far from the concrete, from the documents of revelation, and from the vital contemplation of divine things.
Ante-Nicene Testimonies
In this period the documents which express the faith of the Church can easily be reconciled with the later definitions of the Council of Nicaea, which state the doctrine of the Trinity more explicitly. The writings of many ante-Nicene Fathers, however, with their mingling of faith and philosophical theory, are correct in their statement of the substance of the mystery, but the explanations they offer often contain inexact expressions, some of which seem to incline to Subordinationism, and others seem to favor Sabellianism or Modalism. We see here how the evolution of dogma is the progressive unfolding of the same truth, from the indistinct and concrete concepts to the more defined and distinct concepts.
We should not be surprised to learn that the early Fathers used such inexact expressions since they were confronted with the problem of refuting heresies which were mutually opposed; to show the real distinction between the persons against the Modalists they sometimes made use of expressions tainted with Subordinationism, and when they were intent on safeguarding the unity of God they sometimes weakened the distinction between the persons. Theologians have at all times carefully distinguished between the documents of faith proposed by the Church, in which tradition is found without any admixture of philosophical theory, and the writings of the Fathers which were more or less exact in their use of abstract and philosophical terminology.
The faith of the early Church about the Trinity was expressed chiefly in three ways: 1. in the manner of baptizing, 2. in the various Creeds, 3. in the doxologies.
1. Baptism was conferred by a triple immersion and with the invocation of the three divine persons. The manner of baptizing is given in the Didache (VII, I ff.): "Baptize in this manner: after you have said all these things, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost with living water. Pour water on the head three times in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." The same instruction is found in Tertullian, writing against Praxeas.[101] Praxeas was a Patripassian, admitting the existence of only one person, the Father, who had become incarnate. In his reply to Praxeas, Tertullian wrote: "We immerse not once but three times at each of the names and for each of the persons." Further, the sign of the cross expresses three mysteries: the Trinity, the Incarnation, when the hand descends to the breast at the words "and of the Son," and the Redemption by the form of the cross.
2. The faith of the Church in the Trinity is expressed in various creeds. St. Irenaeus tells us that in the second century the catechumens before they were baptized read or recited a certain rule of faith or profession of faith in the Trinity, which declared, "In one God, the almighty Father, who made heaven and earth and sea, and all that are in them; and in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Ghost, who by the prophets preached the ordinances of God."[102] This belief was developed in later creeds which can be found in Denzinger.[103]
3. The faith of the primitive Church in the Trinity is also enunciated in the doxologies, which were in use from the earliest times. Many of them are found in the epistles of St. Paul, who in the beginning or at the conclusion invokes and glorifies the three persons of the Trinity.[104]
Later, we read in the Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John, that at his execution St. Polycarp exclaimed: "Lord God almighty, Father of Thy blessed and beloved Son Jesus Christ, I bless Thee,... I glorify Thee through the heavenly and eternal high priest Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, through whom there is to Thee with Him and the Holy Ghost glory now and in future ages. Amen."[105]
As early as the second century the Church used the lesser doxology, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost," still recited in the Divine Office at the end of each psalm, and the greater doxology, "Glory to God in the highest," in which the Church's faith in the Trinity is expressed in greater detail. In the greater doxology we have an example of that sublime contemplation which assuredly will dispose us to an intimate union with the Blessed Trinity no less than many scholastic treatises on the Trinity. Often when celebrating Mass the priest recites this doxology in a mechanical manner as something prescribed by the rubrics. It is, however, an instance of profound contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity of great antiquity, for Pope St. Telesphorus (128-39) commanded that the Gloria be recited on the feast of the Nativity of our Lord.[106]
The greater doxology begins with the song of the angels, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will"; then the one God is adored, "We adore Thee, we glorify Thee"; the in we adore, "God the Father almighty," our "Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father," and finally the Holy Ghost, "together with the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen."
Many contemplative minds have not found a more beautiful expression of this mystery, and yet it is often recited mechanically as something already well known and worthy of no further consideration or contemplation. The result is a kind of materialization of divine worship. The great antiquity of this greater doxology shows how vivid was the early Christian's faith in the Trinity, even though he spoke rather inexactly when he treated of the mystery in abstract and philosophical language.
In spite of some inexact expressions, the teaching of the ante-Nicene Fathers can easily be reconciled with the later definitions of the Council of Nicaea. At all times they held fast to the doctrine expressed in the earliest creeds concerning one God in three persons. Among the apostolic Fathers, St. Clement of Rome in his two letters to the Corinthians[107] says that the Father is the Creator, the Son is more excellent than the angels and is God Himself, and that the Holy Ghost spoke through the prophets. We find like expressions in the epistles of St. Ignatius Martyr to the Ephesians and to the Magnesians.[108] All the Fathers believed in one God in three persons, and those Fathers who opposed Modalism clearly asserted the real distinction between the persons. Thus St. Hippolytus,[109] wrote: "It is necessary that we confess that the Father is God almighty, and Jesus Christ the Son of God, God made man, and the Holy Ghost, and these are really three."
Tertullian (213-25)[110] asserts the unity of substance no less clearly than the Trinity of persons. He says: "We should guard the sacredness of the economy (i. e., the sacred doctrine) which teaches that there is unity and trinity, three directing, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Three, however, not in status but in degree... of one substance and one power, for it is one God from whom these degrees, these forms and species, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, are derived." It was difficult to find the proper abstract terms; the words "degree, form, species" are quite inadequate to express abstractly the distinction between the persons.
In asserting the distinction between the persons, the ante-Nicene Fathers generally avoided the language of the Subordinationists. Some, however, like Origen (202-54), leaned somewhat to Subordinationism, saying that the Son was in some manner inferior to the Father, and the Holy Ghost was inferior to the Son.[111] Misled by his philosophy, Origen seems to have come under the influence of Philo, and in his attempt to confute the Modalists he made use of inaccurate expressions and merited the criticism of later writers.[112]
Similarly St. Dionysius of Alexandria, Origen's disciple, fought Modalism with such zeal that some thought he had fallen into Subordinationism, but in his Apologia addressed to the Supreme Pontiff he stated his position more clearly. On other occasions these Fathers taught that the Son was begotten and not made: Origen speaks of the Son as eternal and homoousios, consubstantial with the Father.[113] They did not, however, at all times avoid the use of Neoplatonic expressions which implied a necessary emanation and some subordination, something between eternal generation in equality of nature and free creation out of nothing. Therefore Pope St. Dionysius in 260, condemning the Modalists and Subordinationists, wrote: "Neither is the admirable and divine unity to be divided into three divinities, nor by the language of division is the dignity and supreme greatness of the Lord to be diminished."[114]
Post-Nicene Testimonies
In 325 the Council of Nicaea defended the true tradition against Arius, who taught that the Father alone was truly God, that the Word was the most excellent of creatures, created in time out of nothing, and that the Holy Ghost was also a creature, inferior to the Son. After long discussion it was defined that the Word was consubstantial with the Father, homousion: "We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten Son of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, as the Greeks say, homousion, by whom all things were made. And in the Holy Ghost."[115]
After this condemnation the heretics tried to cover up their error by teaching that the Son was not properly homousion or consubstantial with the Father, that is, of the same essence, but that He was similar in nature, or homoiousion. Such was the teaching of the Semi-Arians; the Acacians said the Son was homoion, that is, similar with regard to form and accidents. These teachings were refuted by St. Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, and by St. Athanasius.[116]
Note on the evolution of dogma or the progressive understanding of dogma.
The definition of the Council of Nicaea on the consubstantiality of the Word is clearly nothing more than an explanation or more explicit statement of the proposition contained in the prologue of St. John's Gospel: "The Word was God." The consubstantiality is not arrived at by an objectively illative process which deduces a new truth from another, as, for example, when we conclude that man is free from the fact that he is rational. To arrive at the knowledge of this consubstantiality an explicative process is sufficient, or at the most a subjectively illative process, by which the mind proceeds to the deduction of a new truth. By the simple explicative process the second statement is shown to be equivalent to an earlier simpler proposition.
The explicative process is most easy: God is one, but the indivisible and infinite divine nature cannot be multiplied. This monotheism is manifestly based on faith, for we read, "Wear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. 6:4); "See ye that I alone am, and there is no other God beside Me" (Deut. 32:39); "And Jesus answered him:... the Lord thy God is one God" (Mark 12:29); "We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one" (I Cor. 8:4).
On the supposition of monotheism, we read further, "And the Word was God, " or, the Word, the only-begotten Son of God, is God, like the Father. Therefore the Father and the Son are consubstantial, that is, they are not distinct with regard to essence and substance but only by reason of paternity and filiation, which is the opposition of relation. Again, Jesus said, "I am the truth and the life." This process does not attain to a new truth deduced from that revealed truth, "And the Word was God, " but it explains it on the supposition that monotheism is established. Therefore, in spite of what has been said by recent students, the divine consubstantiality is not a theological conclusion sanctioned by definition.
St. Athanasius, from another approach, proves the consubstantiality by a proper illative process from two revealed premises.[117] St. Athanasius declared: Only God deifies, or makes divine by participation. But the Word of God deifies us. Therefore He is God, and consequently homousios with the Father, from whom He proceeds not by creation but by generation in the identity of nature.
Father Marin Sola teaches: "The consubstantiality defined by the Council of Nicaea was a revealed truth. But where and how was it revealed? It was revealed in other truths, which contained it implicitly and from which it was deduced by reasoning. These other truths are: 1. Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God; 2. in God there is simple unity and there can be no division of substance."[118]
At this point we depart from Sola and Batiffol, holding that consubstantiality is not really a theological conclusion but a truth of faith more explicitly stated.
Having posited the revealed proposition, "The Word was God, " no objectively illative process is required to understand consubstantiality. This consubstantiality does not express a new truth, but the same truth in a more explicit manner, as when we proceed from the nominal definition of man to the real and explicit definition, namely, man is a rational animal. If certain theologians, like Bellarmine,[119] say that consubstantiality is deduced, it is deduced by the explicative process, or perhaps, as we have said, by an illative process from two premises already revealed. Here we must also keep in mind the transition from concrete knowledge to abstract knowledge. Abstract knowledge is already contained implicitly, and not only virtually, in the concrete knowledge of the same thing, and the transition is made without any objectively illative process.
In this way St. Athanasius argued to prove the divinity of the Holy Ghost against the Arians and the Macedonians: inasmuch as the Holy Ghost sanctifies us, that is, deifies us by a participation in the deity. Furthermore, St. Athanasius said: "The Father begets necessarily and at the same time freely; and He does not create necessarily but freely." In explanation he said that the Father necessarily and freely loves Himself but not as a matter of choice. It follows that in God generation is eternal since God was always the Father, and similarly spiration is eternal, otherwise neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost would be God, because they would not then be eternal. In refuting the Arians, St. Athanasius concluded: "Nothing created can be found in the Trinity, since it is entirely one God."[120] After the Nicene Council many other councils confirmed this teaching against the Macedonians, who had denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost, particularly the Fourth Council of Rome (380) and the Council of Constantinople, which expressly defined that the Holy Ghost was God. With this we conclude the testimony of tradition, for after the Nicene Council the Church clearly taught the mystery of one God in three distinct persons.
6. St. Augustine And St. Thomas On The Trinity
In his commentaries on the Gospel of St. Matthew and that of St. John and on the epistles of St. Paul, St. Thomas examined all the texts of the New Testament in which the Holy Trinity is mentioned explicitly or implicitly. In his consideration of this subject, he clearly understood how much St. Augustine was able to contribute toward the understanding of these texts. His debt to St. Augustine will become evident from a comparison of the works of St. Augustine with the writings of the Greek Fathers.
1. The method of the Greek Fathers. In their refutation of Sabellius, who had denied the real distinction between the divine persons, and of Arius and Macedonius, who had denied the divinity either of the Son or of the Holy Ghost, the Greek Fathers began with the affirmation of the three persons, as found in Sacred Scripture, and then they tried to show that this Trinity of persons could be reconciled with the unity of nature by reason of the consubstantiality of the persons. This idea of consubstantiality was more and more explicitly stated and then defined in the Council of Nicaea.[121]
Thus the Greek Fathers, especially St. Athanasius, showed that, according to revelation, the Father begets the Son by communicating to Him not only the participation of His nature but His whole nature, and from this it followed that the Son was consubstantial with the Father and true God from true God. This also explained how the incarnate Son of God was able to redeem us from the servitude of sin, because His merits had infinite value.[122] In the same way the Greek Fathers showed that according to Sacred Scripture the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, was God and therefore was able to sanctify our souls. Indeed these processions were looked upon as donations and communications rather than as operations of the divine intellect and will: the Father, in begetting the Son, gave Him His nature. Similarly, the Father and the Son gave or communicated the divine nature to the Holy Ghost, who proceeded from them. But in this concept, the manner in which the first and second processions took place remained inscrutable.[123] In their explanations of this mystery, the Greek Fathers followed the order of the Apostles' Creed, in which the Father is called the Creator, the Son the Savior, and the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier. The explanations proposed by the Greek Fathers contained, it must be said, many obscurities.
2. The difficulties of the Greek Fathers. Why are there two processions and only two? How does the first differ from the second, and why is the first procession called generation? In other words, why is the Son of God only-begotten, and why does the Holy Ghost, although not begotten, receive the whole divine nature?
One other doubt arises: Why, in the Apostles' Creed, is the Father alone called the Creator, whereas in the prologue of St. John's Gospel and in the epistles of St. Paul all things are said to have been made by the Word? The creative omnipotence is an attribute of the divine nature and therefore it is something common to the divine nature and pertains to the three divine persons. The Greek Fathers did not explain in what sense the Father alone is called the Creator in the Creed.
To solve this difficulty, St. Augustine and his successors adopted the theory of appropriation, which is found only implicitly in the Greek Fathers. The Latins explained that the Father is called the Creator, not because He alone created, but by appropriation, that is, by a similitude of propriety, for "the creative power contains the idea of principle and therefore has a resemblance with the heavenly Father, who is the principle in the divinity."[124] In the same way wisdom has a resemblance with the Son inasmuch as He is the Word.
3. St. Augustine's solution of these difficulties. To arrive at a solution of these problems, St. Augustine labored long in the writing of his great work, De Trinitate, in fifteen books; the first seven books explain the biblical texts referring to the Trinity, and the other eight treat of the mystery speculatively, proposing analogies taken from the human soul, inasmuch as the word of the mind proceeds from it by intellection as well as love, which is the inclination or weight of the soul drawing it to the good as loved. St. Augustine laid great emphasis on the fact that according to the Fourth Gospel the Son proceeds from the Father as the Word; "And the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him... ."
The Son, who is called only-begotten (v. 18), proceeds therefore from the Father as the Word, not as the Word produced and delivered exteriorly, but as the Word of the divine mind, for it is said, "The Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Word, then, is God, not the supreme creature, and "all things were made by Him." In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read, "Who being the brightness of His glory, and the figure of His substance[of God the Father], and upholding all things by the word of His power."
St. Augustine explains the intimate manner of the generation of the eternal and only-begotten Son, while the Greek Fathers said that the manner of His begetting was inscrutable. Explaining the prologue of St. John's Gospel, St. Augustine showed that the Father from eternity begets His Son by an intellectual act just as our mind conceives the mental word: in the soul we find the mind, knowledge, and love; in the soul, which is the image of the Trinity, there are memory, intelligence (the act of intellection), and the will. This helps us to understand the fecundity of the divine nature.[125]
But while our word is only an accident of our minds, remaining very imperfect and limited, and multiple to express the diverse nature of things, the divine Word is something substantial, most perfect, unique, perfectly expressing the divine nature and all that it contains. It is therefore truly "light of light, God of God, true God of true God." Thus, by the analogy of our intellectual word, by its similarity and dissimilarity, the intimate manner of the first procession is explained. The manner of the second procession, which appears as the procession of love, is also explained. From our souls, which according to the Scriptures are created in the likeness of God, proceeds not only the word but also love. The human mind not only conceives the true-good but also loves it. If therefore the only-begotten Son proceeds from the Father as the mental Word, the Holy Ghost is to be considered as proceeding from them as love.
Thus it is that there are in God two processions and only two, and the manner of each is explained. St. Augustine, however, did not understand why the first procession is called generation. St. Thomas explains: "The Word proceeds by intellectual action, which is a vital operation, conjoined to the principle, and after the manner of a likeness, because the intellectual concept is an image of the thing understood."[126] The concept of our minds, however, does not deserve the name of generation, because in us the concept is only an accident of our minds, whereas in God the Word is substantial inasmuch as intellection in God is subsisting being. Thus the Father, in producing the Word, begets a Son like to Himself, and does not produce an accidental mental word.
St. Thomas further perfected the doctrine of St. Augustine by showing why the procession of love should not be called generation: "the will is in act, not because some likeness of the thing willed is in the will, but because the will has a certain inclination toward the thing willed."[127] In St. Augustine's words, "My love is my weight."
In the doctrine proposed by St. Augustine we also find an explanation of why the Holy Ghost proceeds not from the Father alone, but also from the Son, because in our souls love proceeds not only from the soul itself but from the knowledge of the true-good, since nothing is loved unless it is also known.
From this it appears that in his thinking about the Trinity, St. Augustine did not begin with the three persons as did the Greek Fathers but rather with the unity of the divine nature, which was already demonstrated by reason, just as he began with the soul itself in his demonstration of its faculties and superior operations.
In these two approaches opposing difficulties arise: in the Greek approach it is difficult to safeguard the unity of nature, while in the Augustinian approach, starting with the unity of nature, it is difficult to safeguard the distinction between the persons and those things which are proper or appropriated to the persons. It is, after all, a transcendent and indemonstrable mystery. But by these two approaches, the first of which is the more concrete and the second is more abstract, the mystery is contemplated under two aspects. And finally, the abstract principles serve to advance a better understanding of what is known beforehand in a concrete manner.
St. Augustine and his followers easily explained what the Greek Fathers were not able to show: why the Father alone is not the Creator, but also the Son and the Holy Ghost, because the creative power is a property of the divine nature, common to the three persons. Gradually was unfolded the meaning of the traditional principle: the three persons are one principle in the operations <ad extra>. This principle was formulated in the condemnations by Pope Damasus in 380, and later councils defined it more accurately.[128] Great progress was thus made in the elucidation of this dogma.
When, in the Apostles' Creed, only the Father is called the Creator, the predication is not proper and exclusive; it is rather by a kind of appropriation, inasmuch as the creative power contains the notion of principle <ad extra> just as the Father is the principle <ad intra.> In the same way, wisdom has a resemblance with the Word, and our sanctification has a resemblance to the Holy Ghost, since it proceeds from God's love for us, and thus the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of love or personal love.
Therefore, while consubstantiality was the terminus toward which the Greek Fathers tended, beginning with the three persons, whose names are found in Scripture, St. Augustine, on the other hand, began with the unity of the divine nature to arrive at the three persons, just as he began with the unity of the soul to determine its superior operations and the various manifestations of its life.
In the Augustinian doctrine, gradually that principle which illumines the whole treatise on the Trinity and was formulated by the Council of Florence in 1441, came to light, "In God all things are one and the same unless there is opposition of relation, " that is, where there is no relative opposition between the persons, all things are one and the same because the divine nature is numerically one with all its attributes.[129]
4. The difficulties of the Augustinian teaching solved by St. Thomas. Two difficulties remained in the Augustinian doctrine. The first arose from the fact that the generation of the Word takes place after the manner of intellection; but the three divine persons have intellect; therefore the three divine persons ought to beget, and then there would be a fourth person, and so on to infinity. This difficulty is solved by the distinction between intellection and the expression of the notional idea inasmuch as the three persons all have intelligence but only the Father expresses the intellection. He alone expresses because the Word is adequate and the most perfect expression of the divine nature and no other Word need be enunciated. Just as in a classroom while the teacher is teaching, both he and the pupils understand, but the teacher alone enunciates. Similarly a difficult question may be proposed to a number of persons; then one discovers and expresses the correct solution, while all the others immediately understand it. This distinction between intellection and enunciation is offered by St. Thomas.[130]
The second difficulty is similar: the second procession takes place after the manner of love; but the three persons love; therefore the three persons ought to spirate another person, and so on to infinity.
The solution of this difficulty depends on the distinction between essential love, which is common to the three persons, and notional love, which is active spiration and corresponds to the enunciation of the Word. It is called notional because it denotes the third person. Thus the three persons all love, but only the first two spirate. We have then three kinds of love in God: essential, notional, and personal. Personal love is the Holy Ghost Himself, who is the terminus of active spiration just as the Word is the terminus of generation and enunciation.[131] According to a rather remote analogy: a saintly preacher loves God and inspires his audience with this love, and the hearers also love God but they do not inspire others with this love. These two distinctions are not explicitly found in St. Augustine, but after his time great progress was made in elucidating the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.
5. The preference of St. Augustine's doctrine over that of the Greek Fathers.
The Augustinian teaching prevailed for three reasons.
1. Because by beginning with the unity of the divine nature, St. Augustine began methodically with what was better known to us. The divine nature was already demonstrated by reason, and from this he proceeded to the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. When the Greek Fathers were writing, the treatise on the one God had not yet been set up as the way to an understanding of the Trinity.
2. Because the Augustinian approach solved those difficulties remaining in the Greek concept, explaining the number and character of the processions after the manner of intellection and love. It also explained the <Filioque>, inasmuch as love presupposes intellection; and finally it explained the distinction between the natural order, of which God as one and the Creator is the efficient principle, and the supernatural order, whose supreme mystery is the divine processions within God.
3. Because whatever difficulties still remained were attributable not to deficiencies of method but to the sublimity of the mystery. Moreover, the Augustinian concept offered whatever was positive in the Greek concept, perfecting it, and thus itself was more perfect. The Greek Fathers began with the concrete; the Latin Fathers and theologians arrived at a more abstract consideration and at the knowledge of principles which cast light both on the whole treatise and on those things known concretely in the beginning.
6. The theory of Richard of St. Victor.[132] This theory is dominated by the Victorine voluntarism, according to which the good is prior and more important than being, and the will and love are more important than the intellect. According to this concept, God would better be defined as the supreme Good rather than as subsisting Being. To which St. Thomas replied that that which first comes to the attention of our intellect is being, and that the notion of good presupposes the more universal and simpler concept of being; good is nothing more than the plenitude of being, desired because it is perfective.[133] We should not be surprised to see these two tendencies among philosophers and theologians, the primacy of being and intellect, and the primacy of good and love, nor is it surprising that two theories should have been proposed by Latin theologians about the Trinity. We will briefly consider here Richard's theory because it was adopted in some form by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, and is quoted by St. Thomas.[134] Indeed, St. Thomas, developed his own doctrine by correcting the theory of Richard of St. Victor, which should therefore be explained first.
Richard, like the Greeks, first considered in God the person and then the nature. He demonstrated the existence of a personal God, possessing all perfections, especially the supreme perfection, which for Richard was the love of benevolence and friendship, or charity.
Charity, however, declared Richard, is not the love of oneself, but the love of friendship, the love of another person, according to the classical passage from St. Gregory the Great: "Charity cannot exist unless there are two persons, for no one can properly be said to have charity toward himself."[135] Hence Richard concluded: "It is fitting that love should tend toward another in order that it be charity. Where there is not a plurality of persons, charity cannot be said to be present."[136] In God, according to Richard, love (good diffusive of itself) begets a second beloved person, without whom the love of friendship cannot come into being. The most perfect love of friendship gives to the other not only something belonging to the lover but the whole nature of the lover. The love of the lover gives whatever it can.
Finally, Richard in order to prove that the most perfect charity, such as is found in God, is most pure without any love of concupiscence, concluded that it not only tolerates but most freely desires a third person, equally beloved by the other persons. When envy appears sometimes in human friendship, it is a sign that the love is not pure. Hence there are in God three persons, who love one another equally without any selfish love or self-interest, and the three loves are identified with subsisting love itself, which is the definition of God Himself.
Objection. But the love of the Holy Ghost is not freely given as is the love of the Father and the Son.
Reply. Richard's reply was that, by reason of His supreme benevolence, the Holy Ghost wishes rather to receive than to give in order that what is more glorious might be attributed to the other two persons.
Such is the brief outline of this theory by which Richard wished to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity from the fact that God is the most perfect personal love.
Criticism.[137] St. Thomas replied that the theory does not demonstrate that God is infinitely fecund ad intra, for the love of the most perfect person does not require the association of another person for his happiness. Further, what becomes of the Word of God in Richard's theory? It seems to disappear, since the first procession is by love and not by intellection.[138] For Richard, as for the Greeks, the Word was something spoken to another person rather than a mental concept of a person. In Richard's mind the Father speaks, the Son is the utterance, and the Holy Ghost hears. Thus the intimate life of God is an intimate conversation, and the same is intellection in the three persons. Briefly, Richard does not understand by the Word or by His production a formal mode of divine generation, for he explains divine generation not by the analogy of intellection but of love.
Hence another objection arises: Richard omits the concept of intellection, but nothing can be loved unless it is known beforehand. As we see from his writings, Richard responded to this objection on the basis of his metaphysical and psychological principles.
1. Metaphysically speaking, according to Richard, the good is superior to being and diffusive of itself by love, as Plato and the Neoplatonists taught. According to the Neoplatonists, the first <<hypostasis>> is the one-good, which by its own diffusiveness and by love generates the second <<hypostasis>>, intelligence, whose object is being, something inferior to the supreme Good.
2. Psychologically speaking, Richard contended that the highest vital activity is not immobile intellection, which is quiescent in itself, but love, especially the love of friendship, which is diffusive of itself. For Richard knowledge was subordinate to love, as a previous condition for a higher perfection. This opinion is continued in Scotism, which is a form of voluntarism. For St. Thomas, on the other hand, the dignity of love is derived from the dignity of knowledge by which love is directed, and the heavenly beatitude is constituted formally by the vision of God. This vision of God is necessarily followed, as by its complement, by the love of God above all things.
Another objection against Richard's theory arises from the difficulty of safeguarding the unity of the divine nature.[139] It is the same difficulty as beset the Greeks; like the Greeks, Richard began with the notion of divine person rather than with the notion of the divine nature. Therefore in his mind the divine nature was rather the act of love, rather a dynamic unity than a static entity. For Richard the same love was identical in the three divine persons, although some special property of this love is found in each person. The matter is left in mystery. The main criticism of Richard's theory is that he seems to lose sight of the teaching of St. John's Gospel, that the Son of God proceeds as the Word, that is, after the manner of intellection.
Alexander of Hales made some improvements on Richard's theory.[140] Alexander was more intent on the metaphysical aspect of the problem; he considered the principle that good is diffusive of itself, rather than the psychological aspect, that the love of charity requires several persons. Thus Alexander and St. Bonaventure, who followed him, looked on the divine processions as the fecundity of the infinite living being, relying on the axiom that good is diffusive of itself, and the higher the nature the more intimate and complete will be this diffusion. But the highest kind of diffusion is the communication of ideas and of love, as when God makes creatures in His own likeness and loves them, and also the communication of His entire divine nature. Whereas we, the adopted sons of God, have received only the participation of the divine nature, the only-begotten Son has received the entire divine nature without any division or multiplication; and this is the supreme diffusion and fecundity of the supreme Good.
As we shall see, this concept was retained by St. Thomas, but a part of Alexander's theory was discarded by him. Alexander had taught,[141] "In God to beget after the manner of intellection is hardly the same as to understand." After lengthy examination, under the title, "Thether begetting is the same as intellection in God, " St. Thomas assigns supporting reasons: "God lives the noblest kind of life, which is intellection"; "Intellection is nothing else than generating a species within oneself." These arguments had already been presented by St. Augustine and St. Anselm, and St. Thomas perfected them.
Yet Alexander concluded: "Begetting in God is not the same as intellection."[142] For this he gives two reasons: 1. "No one begets himself, and yet he understands himself; the Son of God understands but does not beget. Therefore in God begetting is not the same as intellection." St. Thomas replied that begetting is the same as intellectual enunciation. 2. Begetting implies the duality of the begetter and the begotten, but such is not the case in intellection, since anyone can understand himself without this duality. A study of this theory reminds us of Leibnitz's dictum: "In general, systems are correct in what they affirm and false in what they deny." Why? Because reality is more solid than the systems; especially is this true of the supreme reality.
Richard's theory was also accepted by Peter Bles,[143] by William of Auxerre,[144] and partly by St. Bonaventure,[145] but it was refuted by St. Thomas.[146]
St. Bonaventure's theory is mixed because it proceeds from two sources, from Peter Lombard, who gave St. Augustine's doctrine on the Word, and from Richard of St. Victor through Alexander of Hales. Hence we find a difference between St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas.[147] The principal difference seems to be this: for St. Thomas, God is pure act, in the sense of pure actuality; for St. Bonaventure, God is pure activity or the supreme activity. For St. Bonaventure, therefore, the supreme unity is active, rather dynamic than static, and goodness especially is essentially diffusive of itself. Therefore the supreme active unity is not only absolute but it also implies a certain relation to something else by reason of the notion of diffusion or fecundity of a living being.
According to this principle, St. Bonaventure, like Alexander, conceived the first procession as "the fecundity of the divine nature," and the second procession as "the fecundity of the will."[148] St. Bonaventure looked on the Second Person rather as the Son of God than as the Word of God, and he considered the Word, or Logos, mentioned by St. John in his prologue, as a comparison to help us understand who the Son of God is.[149] With Alexander, St. Bonaventure conceded that there must be begetting in God since every nature is communicable and every living being begets specifically like itself. Such fecundity is a noble quality or perfection which must be attributed to God. St. Bonaventure pointed out that there is a notable difference between divine and human generation. In divine generation alone, the communicated nature remains numerically the same with the first nature because it is infinite and cannot be divided. In human generation, man begets in order to preserve the species after the death of the begetter; thus man begets both because of his fecundity and his need.
God the Father almighty begets only because of His fecundity. St. Bonaventure's theory joins the classic theory of St. Augustine with Richard's theory as modified by Alexander of Hales. It is a dynamic concept in which the concept of the good is dominant; the theory is greatly influenced by Dionysius' principle: good is diffusive of itself. This principle, it should be noted, serves to illustrate the fitness of creation, but not that of the Incarnation or of the Holy Eucharist. In all these mysteries God diffuses His goodness.
The question arises whether St. Thomas retained the principle that good is diffusive of itself. In making use of this principle St. Thomas distinguished between the end and the agent. "Good," he said, "is said to be diffusive of itself in the sense that the end is said to move or elicit."[150]
Every agent acts on account of an end, and therefore the good is first of all diffusive of itself as an end, and then effectively it is diffusive through the mediation of the agent. "It pertains to the idea of the good," says St. Thomas,[151] "that it communicate itself to others; and it pertains to the idea of the supreme good that it communicate itself in the highest way to the creature." This takes place ad extra in the Incarnation. Again, under the question: "Whether God wills other things besides Himself, " St. Thomas taught: "The natural thing... has a natural inclination to diffuse its own good to others as much as is possible. Hence we see that every agent, so far as it is in act and perfect, makes something like itself... . Much more it belongs to the divine will to communicate its own good to others by means of a likeness as far as is possible."[152] In the following article, against the Neoplatonists, he says that the divine will most freely wills other things besides itself, "Since nothing accrues to the divine goodness from creatures." St. Thomas also points out the fitness of the Holy Eucharist, which is the sacrament of love.[153]
Thus we see that St. Thomas retains the principle of Dionysius so often quoted by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, although sometimes he proposes it differently in the questions on the Trinity, where the good is not properly speaking the final cause, nor the efficient cause, but the principle. In the <Contra Gentes> in the famous eleventh chapter, he offers this principle to explain the divine generation of the Word: "By how much a nature is higher, by that much what emanates from it is more intimate." Thus, from fire is generated, from the plant another plant, and a vital operation is the more vital the more it is immanent, as, for example, sensation, and intellection is still higher since from it proceeds the word. "That which proceeds ad extra is properly diverse from that from which it proceeds; but that which proceeds ad intra by the process of intellection is not properly diverse, for the more perfectly it proceeds the more it will be one with that from which it proceeds. Thus the Word of God proceeding from the Father, proceeds from Him without any numerical diversity of nature."[154] Even if there had been no creation, the principle, good is diffusive of itself, would be verified in God, and so the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity confirms the dogma of a free creation, in no way necessary.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Thomists in explaining the teaching of St. Thomas frequently make use of that principle so often invoked by St. Bonaventure, that the good is essentially diffusive of itself; although on this point there is some difference between the two doctors. In his treatise on the Trinity, Scheeben also makes use of this principle.
The Division Of St. Thomas' Treatise On The Trinity
IN the prologue (question 27), St. Thomas lays down the order for the whole treatise and the fitness of his distribution of the matter is immediately apparent. He explains: "Since the divine persons are distinguished by the relations of origin (inasmuch as the Son is denominated by His origin from the Father, and the Holy Ghost by His origin from the Spirators), we shall follow the order indicated by the matter itself when we first consider origin or procession, secondly the relations of origin, and thirdly the divine persons."
The treatise, therefore, is divided as follows:
1. Concerning the divine processions (Question 27).
2. Concerning the divine relations (Question 28).
3. Concerning the divine persons (Questions 29 to 43).
Of persons absolutely:
In common: the idea of person, the plurality of persons, the similarities and dissimilarities of the persons, and their knowability by us.
Individually: the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Of the persons comparatively: with regard to their essence, their properties and relations, their notional acts (generation and active spiration); the comparison of the persons with one another with regard to their similarity and equality and their respective missions.
St. Thomas, we see, proceeds according to the genetic method, from that which is better known to that which is less known. For in the Scriptures we read of processions, indicated by the name of the Son, proceeding from the Father, and of the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the spirators, but we do not find the word "person," only the personal nouns, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In this way St. Thomas gradually shows that the relations are founded in the processions (for example, filiation is based on passive generation), and that the persons are constituted by subsisting relations. Beginning with what is explicitly revealed, the processions, he finds something that is implicitly revealed and gradually progresses from the indistinct knowledge of subsisting relations and related persons to a defined and distinct idea. These are, as we shall see, explicative processes, or at least subjectively illative, and not objectively illative processes, except in those instances where a new truth is deduced. In general in these first questions the same truth, which is formally revealed, is extensively explained and unfolded.[155]
In the division of this treatise it should be noted that the first two parts are discussed in Questions 27 and 28: the third part, treating of the divine persons, is treated in Questions 29 to 43.
This third part is subdivided into two parts:
1. The persons considered absolutely: a) in common; b) individually.
2. The persons considered comparatively: a) with regard to their essence; b) their properties; c) their notional acts (active generation and active spiration); d) their equality, similarity, and missions.
At first sight it will appear that in Questions 39, 40, 41, St. Thomas seems to begin the treatise anew, treating of the persons in common with regard to their essence, properties, and notional acts; he seems to be repeating what was already said in Questions 27, 28, and 29, about the processions, the relations of origin, and the persons in common.
He is not, however, repeating himself; for what he said earlier in an analytical exposition he explains later in a synthetical exposition, comparing one truth with another and penetrating more profoundly into the matter of the treatise. Many of St. Thomas' commentators, because of the similarity of the matter treated, explain in their commentary on Question 27 the doctrine offered by St. Thomas in Question 39. They follow this procedure for the sake of clarity and brevity, but the more profound and preferable presentation, we think, is that given by St. Thomas.

CHAPTER I: QUESTION 27 THE PROCESSION OF THE DIVINE PERSONS
This question contains five articles: 1. whether there is a procession in God; 2. whether any procession in God can be called generation, and what is the intellectual manner of this generation; 3. whether besides generation another procession is found in God; 4. whether this other procession can be called generation (the answer will be in the negative); 5. whether there are more than two processions in God.
In general these five articles are simple explanations of the dogma by a conceptual analysis of the terms of the revealed propositions before any new truths are deduced, that is, before any theological conclusions are drawn. Some students have tried to see in these treatises an illative process where there is only an explicative process which is merely the progressive understanding of one and the same revealed truth.
First Article: Whether There Is Any Procession In God
State of the question. The question is proposed in the form of three difficulties. 1. It appears that there are no processions in God because a procession implies motion without; but in God there is no motion, since He is the prime immovable mover and pure act. 2. He who proceeds differs from Him from whom He proceeds, but in God there can be no such difference. 3. To proceed from another is to depend upon another, but this is repugnant to the idea of a first principle. If the Son depends upon the Father, He is not God. Such are the principal difficulties.[156]
Reply. In God the processions are not by local motion, nor by transitive action, but by the intellectual emanation of an intelligible word from Him who enunciates. At the end of the body of the article, St. Thomas says, "And thus Catholic faith holds that there is a procession in God." From this last line it is evident that we are concerned here with an explanation of faith and not with a deduction of a theological conclusion.
Proof. It is clear from the Scriptures that it is of faith that there are processions in God. In his argument St. Thomas quotes the words of our Lord," or from God I proceeded" (John 8:42). In the <Contra Gentes> St. Thomas quotes other texts: Jesus said, "The Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father" (John 15:26). Besides this, in the Scriptures the Son of God is called "His own Son, " that is, of God the Father (Rom. 8:32), and "the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18). It is the Son who is truly "His own" who proceeds from the Father and not the son who is only adopted. Again we read, "The Father loveth the Son: and He hath given all things into His hands" (John 3:35), and the only-begotten Son of the Father is called "the Word, " by whom "all things were made,... and without Him was made nothing that was made" (John 1:3; Heb. 1:1). From this it is clear that the Son proceeds from the Father from all eternity.
This truth is explicitly contained in the creeds. In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed we read: "Begotten of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God"; and of the Holy Ghost: "who proceeds from the Father." In the Athanasian Creed: "The Son is from the Father alone, not made, not created, but begotten; the Holy Ghost is from the Father and the Son, not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding."
Procession (<ekporeusis, probole>) is the origin of one from another, as light proceeds from the sun and a son from his father.
St. Athanasius[157] and St. Augustine[158] explained that the imperfections inherent in human generation are not found in the divine processions. In the divine processions, for example, there is no diversity of nature (the nature remains numerically the same) but only a diversity of persons according to the opposition of relation.
In the body of the article, St. Thomas intended only to explain this truth of faith by a conceptual analysis of the word "procession, " discarding at the same time any false interpretations. His process, therefore, is not illative but explicative. This is clear from the first words of the paragraph, in which he explains the idea of procession, as used by the Scriptures, and from the following article, in which St. Thomas explains the idea of generation.
The body of the article has three parts.
1. Against Arius, it is shown that in God there is no procession of effect from cause, otherwise it would follow, against the Scriptures, that neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost would be God. The Scriptures declare of the Son," his is the true God, " (I John 5:20), and the same is said of the Holy Ghost in I Cor. 6:19.
2. Against Sabellius, it is shown that in God procession is not understood as though there were different effects flowing from one and the same person of the Father: as though the Father were called the Son as incarnate and the Holy Ghost in the sanctification of souls. This would be contrary to the Scriptures which make it clear that the Son is not the Father, for example, "The Son cannot do anything of Himself" (John 5:19). Furthermore, no one begets himself.
3. St. Thomas explains the root of these two errors: these heretics erred because they understood procession as being <ad extra>. He then explains that in God procession is ad intra. As often occurs in the body of the article, the major is given after the minor. If the major were given before the minor, this explicative process would be somewhat as follows:
Since God is above all things, those things which are predicated of God are to be understood in their resemblance to intellectual and not corporeal substances. But in corporeal substances procession is in the manner of action <ad extra>, whereas in intellectual substances it is after the manner of action ad intra, as the concept of a thing or the mental word proceeds from the intellect. Therefore the procession predicated of God is procession ad intra, like that of the intelligible word in him who enunciates. "And in this manner Catholic faith understands procession in God" as opposed to Arius and Sabellius.
This process therefore only explains the true idea of procession in God as it is found in the Scriptures, excluding any false interpretations and giving the analogy of the word which is indicated in the prologue of St. John's Gospel and explained at great length by St. Augustine.[159]
We should note that many commentators, such as Billuart, prove from Question 33, article 4 ad 4, that there are processions in God from the fact that it is of faith that there are several really distinct persons in God. Such was also the method of the Greek Fathers.
The article should be read.
1. The doctrine is confirmed by the divine fecundity which, since it IS a perfection without imperfection, cannot be denied to God. ("Shall not I that make others to bring forth children, Myself bring forth, saith the Lord? Shall I, that give generation to others, be barren, saith the Lord thy God?" Isa. 66:9.)
2. The reply is also confirmed by the solution of the objections.
Reply to first objection. Procession would imply motion in God if it were after the manner of transitive action, but not if it is immanent action, which is in the predicament of quality and not of action.
Reply to second objection. Similarly there would be numerical diversity if the procession were <ad extra>, as when by human generation the son proceeds from the father with consequent multiplication of human nature. But such is not the case with procession <ad intra>. As St. Thomas explains: "That which proceeds <ad intra> by an intelligible process need not be diverse; indeed the more perfect the procession the more that which proceeds will be one with that from which it proceeds. It is clear that the more profoundly a thing is understood the more intimate the intellectual concept will be to him who understands and so much greater will also be the union of both. For the intellect inasmuch as it understands in act will be united with what it understands. Therefore, since the divine intellection is the acme of perfection, as we said above in Question 14, a. 2, it follows necessarily that the divine Word is perfectly united with Him from whom He proceeds, without any diversity, " that is, without any numerical diversity so that there is only a distinction of persons.[160]
This teaching is developed in the second chapter of the fourth book of the <Contra Gentes>, in which St. Thomas illustrates this principle: The higher any particular nature is the more anything that emanates from it will be intimate with it. Thus St. Thomas preserves under another form Dionysius' principle, so frequently enunciated by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure: "Good is essentially diffusive of itself, and the higher the nature is the more fully and intimately it will be so." Good, however, is primarily predicated of a final cause; but the Father is not properly the end or the efficient cause of the Son. Therefore St. Thomas' formula is more acceptable because it rises above both final and efficient causality, although the formula about the diffusion of good could be understood as referring to things above the order of causality.[161] This principle, however, is arrived at inductively.
Thus fire is generated from fire, a plant by another plant, an animal from another animal in the manner of action <ad extra> and the numerical multiplication of nature. But in the higher spheres, life is more and more immanent, for sensation remains in the subject, intellection in the one who understands, as does also the mental word. Human intellection, however, has its beginning from without, that is, from sensible things. In a still higher sphere, "The intellection of the angels does not proceed from something exterior, but knows itself through itself. But the life of the angels does not attain to the ultimate perfection for, whereas the angelic intellection is entirely intrinsic to the subject, the intellectual concept or intention is not identical with the subject's substance because intellection and being are not the same." In order to know himself, the angel requires an accidental mental word because the angel's substance is intelligible of itself in act although it is not actually understood of itself in act. And further, the substance of the angel as it is understood in act and represented in the accidental word is not the angel's substance according to its physical being but only according to the angel's intentional or representative being. The mental word of Michael is not Michael himself because it is an accident and not his substance.
On the other hand, as we read in this chapter of the <Contra Gentes>, "Since in God being and intellection are the same," He does not require an accidental word to know Himself. But if from the divine superabundance there is a Word, as we learn from revelation alone, then "the being of the Word, interiorly conceived, is the same as the divine intellection," God's being itself, not only according to His intellectual being but according to His physical being. Thus the divine Word is not only God as understood, but "true God," as we-learn from the Creed: "true God of true God." Contrariwise the accidental word by which Michael the archangel knows himself is indeed Michael according to his intellectual being but not the actual Michael according to his physical being, because it is an accident and not a substance[162]
Intellectual generation, therefore, when it is most perfect produces not only an accidental mental word but also a substantial word, and it is therefore true generation, because it communicates the entire nature of the generator, as we shall see in article 2.
Our mental word can be called the offspring of our minds only metaphorically. Such is the solution of the second objection: in God He who proceeds is not different in nature from Him from whom He proceeds, but has a nature numerically the same.
Reply to third objection. The third objection was that to proceed from another was repugnant to God as the first principle. In reply we distinguish "proceed" as above, namely, to proceed as something extraneous and diverse, I concede; to proceed as something within and without numerical diversity of nature, I deny. Thus the Son of God is God of God, light of light; He is in some manner like the word in the mind of the artificer with relation to some external artifact.
First doubt. Is it not at least virtually revealed and theologically certain that in God procession is after the manner of an intelligible concept uttered by an enunciator, and that the procession is intellectual?
We are not asking whether the Son of God is rightly called the Word of God, for we know from the Prologue of St. John's Gospel, written under divine and infallible inspiration, that it is of faith that the Son of God is the Word, and that the Word is consubstantial with the Father, as was explicitly defined by the Nicene Council. But we are asking whether these words of the Prologue formally reveal, or at least virtually reveal, the formal manner of the first procession, that is, by intellectual enunciation.
Durandus did not admit this but contended that the Son proceeded from the Father's nature as pre-understood, antecedent to any consideration of intellect and will.
The reply is in the affirmative. It is at least virtually revealed and theologically certain that the Word, or the Son, proceeds from the Father by intellectual generation, from the intellect of the Father. Indeed many recent theologians hold that this proposition is proximately definable.[163] D'Ales gives this proposition as proximately of faith: "The Son proceeds from the Father according to intellectual generation," and he gives the following proposition as common doctrine: "The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son according to mutual love." And this seems to be true.
Proof. In the Scriptures, He who is called the Word is also called the Son. But this is not a question of a word enunciated exteriorly but of an immanent word, as is clear from the context. An immanent word, however, is conceived by the intellect, it is the concept expressed by the intellect, as the Fathers taught.[164]
This doctrine is confirmed by the fact that in the Scriptures the Son of God is called not only the Word, but Wisdom, the image of the Father, and the splendor of His glory and the figure of His substance.[165]
In the reply it was stated that this doctrine is theologically certain because it is at least virtually revealed, but it is more probable that it is implied in a formal revelation, for the required process is explicative rather than discursive when we have a clear understanding of the idea of a mental word. This will become clearer below.
Second doubt. In the body of the article, does St. Thomas intend to say that a word is produced in every intellection?
The reply is in the negative, for manifestly St. Thomas holds that the Son and the Holy Ghost understand and still do not produce a word. The three divine persons understand by the same numerically one essential intellect, but only the Father enunciates, just as in a classroom both the teacher and the pupils understand but only the teacher enunciates. Moreover, St. Thomas holds that in heaven the blessed, seeing God immediately, do not express an accidental word, which would be intelligible by participation and would not be able to represent God as He is in Himself since He is essentially subsisting intelligence itself.[166] St. Thomas did not intend to exclude these instances when in the body of the article he states: "Whenever anyone understands, by the very fact that he understands he produces something within himself, which is the concept of the thing which is understood." But such is the case in every created intelligence of the natural order, as when a man or an angel understands himself and other things besides himself. We still have sufficient analogy here to conceive what the divine Word is as mentioned in the prologue of St. John's Gospel. It is still true to say, therefore, that whoever understands, by the fact that he is an intellectual nature, produces a word in some intellectual act. The analogy offered by St. Thomas is based on the fact that it is a property of an intellectual nature to produce a word. Further, it is a perfection that can be purged of imperfections and can be attributed to God as the highest intelligence.
Objection. In the created intellect a word is required to know an object which is not understood of itself in act. But God is subsisting intelligence itself and therefore He is not only intelligible of Himself in act, but actually understood in act. Therefore no word is required in God.
Reply. I distinguish the major: that an accidental word because of a natural indigence is so required, I concede; that a substantial word is required, I deny. I concede the minor and distinguish the conclusion: therefore in God an accidental word because of a natural indigence is not required, I concede; that a substantial Word because of the divine fecundity is not required, I deny.
I insist. Now the analogy between an accidental word produced because of a natural indigence and the substantial word produced from divine fecundity or superabundance is destroyed.
Reply. . Although the comparison is not univocal, the analogy remains for in creatures the accidental word is not required only because of a natural indigence (inasmuch as the thinking subject is not of itself understood in actu secundo) but because it pertains to the fecundity and perfection of the created intellect to speak vitally and interiorly by expressing a concept. Thus the philosopher rejoices when after a long and difficult search he finally gives birth to the word that solves his difficulty; now he can die for he has found the truth.
I insist. But why do not the Son and the Holy Ghost produce a word by their intellection?
Reply. This is part of the mystery and cannot be explained entirely. But we can say and should say, as do the Thomists, one intellection will have one word when that word is adequate. But in God intellection is infinite, and also the same for the three divine persons. Therefore in God there is one, infinite, and adequate word and no other word need be produced. The three persons understand but only the Father enunciates because He enunciates adequately, or because the Word already enunciated is perfect and without any imperfection. Nothing more need be enunciated in God nor would anything more be needed in the case of men if the teacher would be able adequately to say all that pertained to the matter under discussion. At first sight this distinction between intellection and enunciation may seem too subtle, but it is not without some foundation. Many men, even after years of laborious study, cannot express interiorly and exteriorly the solution of some difficult problem; but when some great genius discovers the solution and gives birth to the word or notion interiorly and expresses it exteriorly others are able often to understand without difficulty. They may not be able to enunciate the solution but they are able to understand without much difficulty. Indeed, if some great mind were to discover the perfect and adequate solution of a question, he would express it in a definitive statement that would need no further emendation or amplification, whereas we are continually obliged to perfect our imperfect and inadequate statements of solutions.
Finally, it is often remarked that loquacious people use innumerable words without reason, whereas wise people, especially in their later years, use few words, words that are effective and almost adequate, like the confident and clear statements of the saints and great doctors, which others are generally able to understand although they would never have been able to discover them. In this way we can understand analogically and without too much subtlety that in the Trinity the three persons understand, but the Father alone enunciates because the Word is adequate. We, on the other hand, make use of many inadequate words.
Objection. In his reply to the second objection, St. Thomas says: "The divine Word is perfectly one with Him from whom He proceeds and without any diversity"; and in the <Contra Gentes>[167] he says: "The being of the Word is the intellect of God itself." But then the Word would not proceed as a distinct person. Therefore the analogy is not valid.
Reply. I deny the minor and the consequent. St. Thomas denies numerical diversity of nature between the Father and the Word, but the diversity of persons as revealed still remains. This diversity is only relative and inasmuch as it is real arises from the procession, for procession, inasmuch as it is real, requires extremes that are really distinct, at least with regard to their mode of being. Such is the reasoning of many Thomists, among them Billuart. Thus the word in our minds is diverse from our intellect both knowing and known, not indeed according to intelligible and intentional being but according to real and entitative being, for the word in us is an accident of our intellects.
I insist. If the Word is a distinct person as a person, if not as a nature, He still depends on the Father. But God cannot depend on another; this is an obvious imperfection. Therefore the Word is not a divine person or God.
Reply. I distinguish the major: He would depend on the Father if He proceeded as from a cause and freely, I concede; if He proceeds from the Father solely as from a principle because of the necessary and infinite fecundity of the divine nature, I deny. Thus, the Father in His intellection is not able not to produce the Word. We have here a communication of nature without efficient causality; this communication is the transmission of something pre-existent without losing it. In the equilateral triangle the first angle constructed does not cause but communicates its own surface area to the other two equal angles, and these two angles are not less perfect than the first. Indeed, the geometrical figure can be inverted so that one of the two angles at the base is placed on top.
I insist. But the necessary and intimate dependence still remains.
Reply. I deny the consequent, because for true dependence it is required that only one of the two in question depend upon the other. But the Father cannot be more without the Son than the Son is without the Father, and yet the Father is not said to depend on the Son. Thus in the equilateral triangle all the angles are equal, and one angle cannot exist without the other.
On the other hand, a human son depends on his father, as from a cause; and the man who is a father is able to be without the son, because he is able not to be a father, since he freely begets. But God the Father is not able to be without being the Father and He is not able to be without the Son.
Wherefore, in order that anything depend on another it is not enough that it cannot be without the other. God the Father is not able to be without the Son and yet He does not depend on the Son, nor is omnipotence able to exist without the possibility of creatures and still it does not depend on this possibility. It follows therefore that, although the Son cannot be without the Father, He does not depend on the Father, since the Father is not the cause but only the principle of origin. It is repugnant to God to derive from another as from a cause, this I concede; that it is repugnant to derive as from a principle of origin, this I ask you to disprove. The possibility of the mystery, therefore, is not disproved or proved; it is merely presented as plausible.
I insist. But the Son receives from the Father, therefore He is passive and in some need.
Reply. I distinguish the consequent: if at any time the Son lacked or could lack anything He has, I concede; otherwise, I deny. Whereas a creature is able not to be, the Son of God is not able not to be, nor is He able to lack the divine perfections.
I insist. Each of the divine persons is the first principle; therefore each excludes the principle of origin.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: each of the divine persons is the first principle <ad extra>, I concede; ad intra, I deny. Thus the Father alone is not from a principle of origin. As St. Thomas says, "To oppose the things that are said against faith, either by showing that it is false or by showing that it is not necessary," it is sufficient to show that the impossibility of the mystery is not definitively proved, for example, the dependence of the Word of God with respect to the Father is not definitively proved. At least these objections are not cogent and therefore they do not destroy faith. The impossibility of the procession of the Word, who is "true God of true God," cannot be proved.
Second Article: Whether Any Procession In God Can Be Called Generation
State of the question. As the first article was a conceptual analysis of the idea of procession, without any illative process, so this second article is a conceptual analysis of the idea of divine generation as found in the Scriptures. We have here a beautiful example of the transition from a confused concept to a distinct concept. This transition takes place by eliminating the false interpretations, from which arise the three difficulties, formulated in the beginning of this article: 1. generation is a change from non-being to being and therefore a divine person cannot be generated; 2. in God procession is after the manner of intellection, but in us such intellectual procession is not called generation; 3. the being of anything begotten is accepted and received and therefore is not divine.
Reply. This is of faith: the procession of the Word in God is called generation, and the Word that pro ceeds is called the Son.
We prove that it is of faith from Ps. 2:7: "The Lord hath said to Me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee." Today, as St. Augustine says, is the ever-present now of eternity, which is above time, above past and future. This text of the Old Testament is illustrated by the New Testament, especially by the prologue of St. John's Gospel. Further proof comes from Ps. 109:1-3: "The Lord said to my Lord:... from the womb before the day star I begot thee, " although this text is less clear in the Hebrew than the preceding text; from Isa. 53:8, in the prophecy of Christ's passion: "who shall declare His generation?"; from Acts 8:33 and John 1:18: "No man hath seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son..., He hath declared Him"; from John 1:14: "and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father"; from John 3:18: "But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only-begotten Son of God"; and from John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, as to give His only-begotten Son."
Similarly the creeds and councils defined that the Son of God was not created (against Arius), not made, but begotten from the nature or substance of the Father, and is therefore called the natural Son and not the adopted son of the Father.[168]
In the body of the article St. Thomas makes a conceptual analysis of the notion of generation, purifying it of every imperfection so that it can be applied to God not only by a metaphorical analogy but also by an analogy of proper proportionality. Thus the idea of generation, found in revelation, passes from a confused state to one more distinct. We do not arrive at a new truth, but the same truth is explained in this manner.
Generation is the origin of one living being from a conjoined living principle in the likeness of nature, as when a man begets a man. But the procession of the Word is the origin of a living being from a conjoined living being, yet without transition from potency to act or to new being. Therefore the procession of the Word is properly generation and not only metaphorically so.
Explanation of the major. The generation of everything that can be generated in the natural order is a change from non-being to being, as when non-living fire is generated from fire. But that generation which is proper to living beings is the origin of a living being from a conjoined living being, that is, from the father and not from the grandfather, through the active communication of the nature of the generator in the likeness of at least the specific nature. The angels therefore cannot properly be called the sons of God because they did not receive the divine nature from God.
Explanation of the minor. The procession of the Word after the manner of intellection is the origin of a living being from a conjoined living being and in the likeness of nature because the concept in the intellect is the likeness of the thing understood. Indeed, in God, since God the Father understands and enunciates Himself, a nature numerically the same is communicated, because in God being and intellection are the same. Thus the Word is not only God as understood according to intentional being but true God according to physical and entitative being, as will be explained more fully in the solution of the second objection.
The theory of the Latins, then, based on the fact that the Son of God is called the Word in St. John's Gospel, explains how the eternal generation of the only-begotten Son is without any imperfection and without transition from potency to act or from non-being to being. This is the correct interpretation of our Lord's words: "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He hath given to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John 5:26), and "I and the Father are one" (10:30). We refer the reader to the article.
This article, therefore, does not deduce a theological conclusion, but explains this truth of faith, that the Son is generated by the Father because He proceeds from the Father intellectually as the Word. And in this generation we see the infinite fecundity of the divine nature, so often mentioned by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure.
The reply is confirmed by the solution of the objections.
1. The first difficulty was: Generation implies the transition from potency to act. But such transition cannot be in God who is pure act. Therefore there is no generation in God.
Reply. I distinguish the major: generation implies the transition from potency to act in the created mode of generation, I concede; in the formal mode of generation, I deny, because formally it is required only that generation be the origin of a living being from a conjoined living being in the likeness of nature. I concede the minor. I distinguish the conclusion: therefore there is no generation in God according to the created mode, I concede; according to its formal mode, I deny. The analogy is one of proportionality, not only metaphorical, but it is an analogy that reason by itself could not have discovered. God has revealed it to us.
2. The second difficulty was: Procession in God is after the manner of intellection. But in us such intellectual procession is not generation; we speak only metaphorically of the parturition of a word in ourselves.
Reply. I concede the major and the minor, but I deny the parity. The disparity arises from the fact that in God alone and not in us to understand is substantial intellection itself. In God alone understanding and the mental concept are something substantial and not accidental, as in us. In us the word proceeds as an accident in which is represented the substance of that which is understood. In God, on the other hand, the Word proceeds as the subsistence of the same nature and therefore He is properly said to be begotten and the Son. The divine Word, therefore, is not only God as understood, or God in a representative or intentional manner, but true God from true God. This matter is explained at greater length in the <Contra Gentes.>[169]
John of St. Thomas explains that our intellect forming within itself a concept of itself or a representation of itself assimilates this term to itself, at least imperfectly. An imperfect intellect, human or angelic, assimilates its word imperfectly, only intentionally, and in a representative or intelligible manner. The perfect intellect, however assimilates its Word most perfectly, not only intentionally, but really in nature and in a nature that is numerically one, so that the divine Word is not accidental but substantial, at the same time living and understanding, because in God being and understanding and being understood are the same. Revelation affirms that this substantial Word is the person of the Son of God. This is true generation, which primarily deserves the name generation; other kinds of generation are generation by participation and secondarily, although they are prior in our knowledge. Therefore St. Paul said," or this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named" (Eph. 3:14 f.).[170]
Our word is called a concept, not something generated. Conception is the initial formation of a living being; generation is its perfect production, including the evolution of the embryo. Our intellection goes as far as the intellectual conception of the word but not as far as the intellectual generation. Thus we speak of our faculty of conceiving, but not of generating intellectually. So also it is with the angels. In God alone, in His intimate life, known only by revelation, conception is at the same time intellectual generation, properly so called.
Conception And Generation According To St. Thomas[171]
In every (animal) conception, according to St. Thomas, "The matter of what is conceived is prepared by the generative power of the mother; the formative force, however, is in the seed of the father."[172] Then follows the development of the embryo, terminating in the generation of the animal. Conception, therefore, is the beginning of animal generation.
The word "conception" was then transferred to signify intellectual conception because our intellect as a passive potency is fecundated by the object or by the impressed species derived from the object, and then our intelligence, fecundated and informed, conceives its mental word to express to itself some extramental thing or the mind itself. And indeed it is a great accomplishment to profoundly conceive something, like a book that we are about to write or the order observed in the Summa theologica. But this intellectual conception in us does not go as far as intellectual generation, because our word is only an accident in our minds and not a living substance like the understanding mind itself. On the contrary, in God, whose intellect is subsisting intellection itself and subsisting being itself and subsisting life itself, the Word, mentioned in revelation, cannot be an accidental word but is the substantial Word, living and understanding. Therefore in God conception, which is the initial step in generation, attains to the perfect generation of the Word, who is true God from true God, not only God as conceived but really God of true God.
John of St. Thomas says, and in this he agrees with Ferrariensis, "The procession of the word, standing precisely in the line of intellection and by the force of its formality,... purified of every imperfection... becomes substantial and generative."[173] This follows not only materially because of the divine subject but also formally because of the procession of the word when it is purged of every imperfection. This helps explain the joy of a great thinker who has found the answer to some great problem and gives birth to a word; in its highest sense this parturition of the word would be generation, not corporeal but spiritual. The reason given by St. Thomas is that, "Since the divine intelligence is of the highest perfection, it is necessary that the divine Word be perfectly one with Him from whom it proceeds without any diversity of nature."[174] In the highest state of perfection the procession of the word is substantial and generative whereas in us it is accidental. The word in us, called rather a concept than something generated, is not a living and intelligent person but only an accident; in God the Word is substantial, living, and intelligent, and, as we shall see, a person relative to the Father. We cannot converse with our word or have communion with it- man remains alone with his ideas. But the Father has communion and lives in society with the Son.
First corollary. We see how the notions of generation and intellectual procession mutually illuminate each other. It is more certain that there is in God a procession after the manner of generation than that there is in God a procession which is properly intellectual. The first is manifestly of faith; the second is at least theologically certain. But without an intellectual procession it would be very difficult to conceive of generation in God and to show that this generation is actual and not simply metaphorical. For this reason St. Thomas speaks in his first article of intellectual procession and in his second article of generation, although the latter is more certain. This is one reason among others on account of which the Latin concept of the Trinity, sometimes called the psychological theory of St. Augustine based on revelation, prevailed over other concepts.
Second corollary. Since this divine generation of the Word is eternal (above the continuous time of men and the discrete time of the angels), it follows that in the ever-present now of eternity the Father always begets and the Son is always born, or as St. Augustine says, the divine generation takes place without any newness of being.[175]
Third corollary. A great joy rises from this eternal generation. Vestiges of this joy are found in the mother when a child is born to her, and in a great scholar when after long labor he perfects his work of making some truth manifest.
Fourth corollary. In God to be begotten, like the begetting, implies no imperfection, nor is it less perfect to be begotten than to beget, nor does it produce less joy, for it is impossible to beget without someone being begotten, and being begotten eternally and necessarily is not a transition from potency to act.[176] But we do not say that paternity or the begetting is a simple perfection properly so called, for although it does not imply any imperfection it is not simply better to have paternity than not to have it. If this were so, some simple perfection properly so called would be denied to the Son, and the Son would not be God.[177] The essence and dignity of the Father and the Son are the same; in the Father we have the relation of the giver, in the Son the relation of the receiver. Here is the mystery, but we see that the divine relations by reason of their concepts do not add any relative perfection that would be virtually distinct from the absolute perfection of the divine essence. Such is the thought of most Thomists, as we shall see below.
We are still confronted with the difficulty proposed in the third objection: "The being of anyone who is begotten is accepted and received, " and therefore it is not divine, for the divine being is self-subsisting and not received.
In his reply to the third objection, St. Thomas says that the being of anyone who is begotten is accepted indeed but not received always in some subject. Thus the entire substance of created things is accepted by God but it is not received in some receptive subject. So also the being of the Word is accepted but not received; it is self-subsisting being itself.
In the perfection of the divine being itself there is contained both the intelligibly proceeding Word and the principle of the Word as well as the other things which pertain to its perfection. From these words of St. Thomas it appears, in the opinion of many Thomists, that the relations in God do not by reason of their concepts add any new relative perfection that is virtually distinct from the absolute divine perfection.
On the other hand, in several places St. Thomas says that the being of any created being is not only accepted from God but also received in the created essence, or more correctly in the created suppositum. "It should be said," says St. Thomas, "that at the same time that God gives being He produces that which receives the being; and thus fittingly He does not act in dependence on some pre-existing being."[178]
This text and many others are quoted against Suarez and his followers to show that for St. Thomas a real distinction exists between the created essence and the created being. For the created being is not only accepted from God, as Suarez admits, but it is also received and therefore limited by the essence in which it is received. The divine being, however, is not received, no more in the Son and the Holy Ghost than in the Father.
Another objection. By reason of the procession the Word proceeds as understood and not as understanding, for it proceeds as the term of the paternal intellection. Therefore because of the procession the Word does not proceed as like to the Father, and therefore this procession is not generation.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: the Word by reason of the procession proceeds as understood and not as understanding notionally or as enunciating, I concede; not as understanding essentially, I deny. Likeness of nature is not dependent on the notional qualities or notional acts like active generation and active spiration, but on essentials. Analogically in men, although the son does not proceed as generating but as generated, the son nevertheless proceeds like the father in nature. So it is proportionally in God.
Doubt. How does the enunciation of the Father differ from the essential intellection which is common to the three persons, as in the statement, "The three persons understand but the Father alone enunciates"?
Reply. The enunciation of the Father differs only by reason from the essential intellection and it is not actually different from the relation of paternity, which in turn is not really distinct from the divine essence.[179] St. Thomas offers a profound explanation: "The origin of motion inasmuch as it begins with another... is called action. If we remove the motion, the action implies no more than the order of origin according to which the action proceeds from some cause or principle to that which is from the principle. Since in God there is no motion, the personal action which produces a person is nothing else than the relation of a principle to the person who is from the principle. These relations are the actual divine relations or notions."[180] No difference exists between them except in the manner of speaking inasmuch as we speak of divine things in the manner of sensible things.
Certain difficulties have been proposed by Durandus and Scotus concerning St. Thomas' first and second articles; but rather than adding anything to the matter they tend to obscure it. We shall not delay in considering them here but content ourselves with a few words about these difficulties at the end of this question. They are all solved by St. Thomas later when he comes to speak of the comparison of the persons with the essence, relations, and notional acts.
Third Article: Whether There Is In God Another Procession Besides The Generation Of The Word
State of the question. According to revelation expressed in the Scriptures and divine tradition there is a third divine person, who is often called the Holy Ghost, as in the formula of baptism, and sometimes the Paraclete from the words para and kaleo, parakletos that is, advocate, intercessor, and consoler. As we see, this is not a simple divine operation, like essential love, but a person to whom are attributed divine operations and divine perfection according to our Lord's words: "And I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete" (John 14:16), and "The Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall give testimony of Me" (John 15:26).
In this article St. Thomas makes a conceptual analysis of this second procession. In stating the question he proposes three difficulties: 1. If a second procession is found in God, why not a third and so to infinity? 2. In every nature we find only one mode of communicating that nature, namely, generation. 3. The procession of love cannot be distinguished from the intellectual procession even in God because in God the will is not different from the intellect.
Reply. The reply is nevertheless that it is of faith that "besides the procession of the Word there is another procession in God," and we add that this is the procession of love, although this does not appear to be of faith but the common opinion.
1. This first part is proved from the Scriptures: "I will ask the Father, and He shall give you another Paraclete" (John 14:16); and "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" (John 15:26).
2. The second procession is explained theologically.
In God procession takes place according to immanent and not transient action. But in an intellectual nature immanent action is twofold: intellection and volition, or love. Therefore, in God, an intellectual agent, it is proper that besides the intellectual procession there be another procession, which is the procession of love.
First doubt. Did St. Thomas intend to demonstrate the existence of the second procession strictly from the first? Even if the second procession were not revealed and if the existence of the Holy Ghost were not revealed, could the second procession be certainly known by a theological process.
Reply. This does not seem to have been St. Thomas' intention, although he uses the words, "In evidence of this." According to his custom, whenever he was treating of essentially supernatural mysteries, St. Thomas wished to show that the mystery is not opposed to reason. He then offers reasons of propriety, which while they are profound, especially to those who contemplate the mystery, are not demonstrative, for this progressive contemplation does not lead to the evidence of demonstration but to the higher evidence of the beatific vision. Such reasons of propriety belong to a sphere that is above demonstrability. If we were to offer these reasons as demonstrative, we would minimize rather than appreciate their force. His argumentation, therefore, does not strictly prove that there is a second procession or that there is the existence of a third person, unless this were revealed.
We may ask, on the supposition that the existence of the third person and of the second procession are revealed, can we strictly prove that this second procession is the procession of love, because it is at least theologically certain that the first procession is after the manner of intellection? The argument could be supported with some difficulty because it is less certain that love has an immanent term than that intellection or enunciation has as its term the expressed word.
The immanent term of love is exceedingly mysterious, for love tends toward the good which is in things outside the mind, whereas the intellect tends to the truth, which is formally in the mind in the likeness of the extramental thing.
In an article entitled <A propos de la procession d'amour en Dieu>,[181] which agrees with Father Chevalier,[182] Penido proposes this correction of St. Thomas' text in <De veritate>: "The operation of the will terminates with things in which there is good and evil, but the operation of the intellect terminates in the mind, in which there are truth and falsehood, as we read in <VI Metaph.>, chap. 8; and therefore the will does not have anything proceeding from itself that is in it, except after the manner of operation; but the intellect has something in itself that proceeds from it not only after the manner of operation but also after the manner of a thing accomplished. Therefore 'the word' signifies a thing that proceeds but 'love' signifies an operation that proceeds."[183] In many editions the word "except" is omitted and the passage appears unintelligible. In the <Contra Gentes>,[184] St. Thomas says: "That which is loved is in the will of the lover (not in the likeness of its species), but as the term of motion in the proportionate moving principle." That which is loved exists in the will of the lover as something that inclines and in a way interiorly impels the lover toward the thing itself that is loved.
It should be said, therefore, that the argument proposed in this article is at least an argument of propriety, explaining the nature of the second procession as the procession of love. This argument is very profound and sublime; it shows that the psychological theory of the Trinity proposed by St. Augustine is in accord with revelation. When we speak of the Word, however, revelation itself indicates the analogy in the prologue of St. John, "In the beginning was the Word...." But with regard to the second procession we do not find in Scripture a similar indication; the Holy Ghost is not called love even by the Greek Fathers. He is indeed called sweetness and benignity, and the word "spirit" has an allusion to the will. At the present time it is the common opinion that the Holy Ghost proceeds as personal love.[185]
Second doubt. What is the relation of the Holy Ghost to this second procession?
Reply. The Holy Ghost is the terminus of the procession of love as the Word is the terminus of the intellectual procession. Therefore St. Thomas, in the body of the article, says: "In the second procession that which is loved is in the lover, as in the conception of the Word the thing enunciated or understood is in him who understands."
The terminus of love has no special name. Cajetan offers the following explanation. "What is loved is not in the lover except as the affection of the lover for that which is loved." We have a certain difference here between intellection and love, for a likeness of that which is loved is not produced in the lover like the likeness of the thing understood which is produced in him who understands. In the lover, however, there is a certain impulse and propensity of the will toward that which is loved, and this impulse is in the lover as the unnamed terminus of love. St. Augustine said, "My love is my weight." In this sense the second procession is to be understood as the procession of love.[186]
Solution of the objections. The first objection is: Therefore we must admit a third procession and so to infinity.
Reply. In the divine processions it is not necessary to go on to infinity, for that procession in intellectual natures which is within is terminated by the procession of the will. Here the psychological theory is in accord with revelation and corroborates it. This theory assigns a reason why there are no more and no less than two processions, and thus offers a reason of propriety, not a demonstration, because we are dealing with an essentially supernatural mystery. That this is not a strict demonstration will appear in the second objection.
Second objection. In every nature we find only one mode of communicating that nature, namely, by generation. Therefore in the divine nature there should be but one mode of communicating the divine nature, that is, by intellection and not by the will.
Reply. We deny the parity between the nature of corruptible things and the divine nature. The disparity arises from the fact that whatever is in God is God, and this is not true of other natures. Therefore the divine nature is communicated by any procession that is not <ad extra>. Hence the divine nature is communicated even in the procession of love, because whatever is in God is God and not a part of God.
In his reply, based on faith, St. Thomas shows that the objection has no force, but he did not intend to prove the second procession from the first so that the second procession would be certain even if it had not been revealed.
I insist. The entire nature is adequately communicated by the first procession, and therefore it is no longer communicable. As there is only one Word, so there should be but one procession.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: that the entire nature is totally communicated in the first procession, that is, in every way that it is communicable, I deny or I ask you to prove it: that it is communicated entire but not totally, that is, in every communicable manner, I concede. For according to revelation we know that not only the Son but the Holy Ghost also proceeds from the Father. According to St. Augustine's theory it appears that the divine nature is communicable and fecund in two ways: by the intellect and by love. Indeed, Richard of St. Victor emphasized this second way to such an extent that he seemed to neglect the first mode by intellection. Neither should be neglected.
I insist. Whatever is infinite is unique and excludes all else. But the first procession is infinite. Therefore it excludes a second procession.
Reply. I distinguish the major: whatever is infinite is unique in its own order and excludes others of the same order, I concede; that it excludes things of another order, I deny. Thus the mercy of God is infinite and excludes another infinite mercy, but it does not exclude infinite justice. The same is true of the processions.
Third objection. In God intellect and will are not distinct. Therefore neither is the procession of love distinct from the intellectual procession.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: that the intellect and the will in God are not really distinct, I concede; that they are not distinct by reason and virtually, I deny; and I distinguish the consequent in the same way. The two processions are not really distinct except with regard to the mutually opposed relations. Thus active spiration is not really distinct from the active generation by the Father, nor from the passive generation of the Son, but it is distinct from the passive spiration of the Holy Ghost.
Moreover, as St. Thomas notes in the same place, "While in God the will and intellect are not different, nevertheless because of the nature of the intellect and will the processions according to the action of each follow a certain order." For nothing is loved unless known beforehand, and therefore there is no procession of love unless there is a process of intellection. Here again we see the propriety of the psychological theory, and an indication that an image of the Trinity is to be found in the soul.
Third doubt. Whether the two divine processions differ in species and number?
Reply. There is a quasi-difference in species, that is, they differ not only in number, otherwise both processions would be generation or spiration. They do not, however, differ in the proper sense in species because in God genus and species do not exist in the strict sense. Speaking analogically with reference to creatures, we can say that the processions differ in a certain sense according to species, not by reason of a diversity of natures but by reason of the personal properties, which are diverse in the one nature. This is not true of creatures. It does not follow from this that the three persons differ in species, for their nature is one not only in species but also in number.
Fourth Article: Whether In God The Procession Of Love Is Generation
The reply is in the negative.
1. Because of faith. The Athanasian Creed tells us: "The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding."
2. Further explanation is found in the psychological theory, which on this point is sufficiently in accord with the teaching of faith. The Greek Fathers and St. Augustine declared that they were not able to discover a reason why the second procession was not generation like the first procession.
St. Thomas offers the following reason.
Generation, in its formal concept, takes place after the manner of assimilation of the begotten to the begetter, who produces something like himself in nature. But such assimilation is found in procession from the intellect, when the Father knows Himself and enunciates, but it is not found in the procession of the will. Therefore the procession of love cannot be called generation.
The major is evident. The minor is proved from the fact that the intellect assimilates a thing to itself when the truth is in the intellect by the likeness of the thing known. But the will by its nature is not an assimilative faculty or power; it is inclining and tends to a thing because the thing is good; it tends to the good as it is in things and not as it is represented in the mind. Thus the will does not produce by its own power a terminus like to itself or to the object; it produces an inclination and a tendency to the thing that is loved.
3. The procession which is not generation remains without a special name; it may be called spiration because it is the procession of the Spirit.
Fifth Article: Whether There Are More Than Two Processions In God
The reply is in the negative and it is of faith.
1. This is known from the Scriptures and from the definitions of the Church, according to which there are only three persons, one that does not proceed and two others that proceed, and hence there are but two processions.
2. This truth is also explained by the psychological theory, which more and more appears as a concept based on revelation; because in every intellectual nature there are only two immanent actions, intellect and will.
The divine nature as good is diffusive of itself and it is diffusive in a twofold manner: through the intellectual procession and through the procession of love, "Inasmuch as God understands and loves His essence, truth, and goodness." Thus St. Thomas, even in this treatise, preserves the principle frequently quoted by St. Bonaventure: good is essentially diffusive of itself, and the higher the nature the more intimately and abundantly is it diffusive of itself. But within God this diffusion is not through final or efficient causality but above the order of causality. Yet there is a completely intimate and superabundant diffusion in the communication of the entire and infinite divine nature through generation and spiration.
Doubts about this whole question.
First doubt. What is the <principium quod> of each procession, considered actively, that is, what is the principle that generates and the principle that spirates?
Reply. It is the Father that generates, and the Father and the Son that spirate. "The divine nature does not beget, is not begotten, and does not proceed; but it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Ghost who proceeds."[187] With regard to the second procession, it has been defined: "The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son."[188] If the divine nature generated, the generation would be in the three persons and the three persons would generate, and so the Holy Ghost would generate a fourth person and so to infinity. Again, if the divine nature were begotten, the three persons would be begotten; if the divine nature proceeded, the three persons would proceed.
Second doubt. What is the principle through which (<principium quo>) each procession takes place actively considered?
Reply. According to revelation each procession terminates with one person who proceeds not from the divine nature taken in itself, but the Son proceeds from the divine nature as it is of the Father (because it is the Father who generates), and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the divine nature as it is of the Father and the Son, since these two spirate.
Therefore we say that the <principium quo> (the principle through which) of each procession actively considered is the intellect and the will in the divine nature as modified by the relations of paternity and active spiration. It is important to add "as modified" because essential intellection and essential love are common to the three persons and thus are not processions. Such is the common teaching of the Thomists. The psychological theory, although it wishes to pluck out the persons from the processions, to a certain extent must suppose the persons and relations in order fully to define the processions. This is part of the obscurity of this theory, and we should not be surprised at it because these notions of procession, relation, and person mutually illustrate each other just as in ontology the notions of being, unity, truth, goodness, and beauty throw light on one another.[189]
From these passages from St. Thomas we see that the <principium quo> of the divine processions implies something absolute and something relative: it is absolute in recto as form, and relative in obliquo as mode. Thus we say that the proximate <principium quo> of the processions is the intellect and the love in the divine nature, but as modified by the relations of paternity and active spiration. The three persons know, but only the Father enunciates by generating or generates by enunciating; the three persons love, but only the Father and the Son spirate. This is sufficiently clear in spite of the obscurity of the mystery.
Third doubt. Is the power of generating in God a perfection?
Reply. The difficulty arises from the fact that this perfection would be lacking in the Son and the Holy Ghost, belonging only to the Father, and thus the three persons would not be equally perfect.
The reply is based on the fact that the power of generating directly
(in recto) signifies the divine nature, but indirectly (in obliquo) the divine relation, as will be more clearly explained below.[190] This is to say that the power of generating pertains to the divine nature as it is in the Father. Wherefore the power of generating in God is a perfection with respect to that which it signifies directly, namely, the absolute, which is the divine nature; but it is not a perfection with respect to that which it signifies indirectly (in obliquo), namely, the relation of paternity, which according to its relative being (<<esse ad>>) abstracts from perfection and imperfection, because it does not involve imperfection nor is it a new perfection superadded to the infinite perfection of the divine nature. Something similar is taught concerning the free act of creation, which is virtually distinct from the necessary act of love, since the act of creation does not involve an imperfection nor does it add a new perfection. Thus God was not improved by the fact that He freely willed to create the universe.
Fourth doubt. Whether the divine processions, actively considered, are true and proper actions or only emanations, like the faculties that emanate from the essence of the soul.
Reply. In their reply the Thomists oppose Suarez. They say that the processions are true actions, but actions that are merely immanent because they are the act of the intellect ad intra, namely, enunciation, and the act of the will, namely, active spiration. This immanent action can be purified of every imperfection, as is indeed the creative act, an immanent action which is virtually transient and transitive.
But we do not say that God the Father as begetting is truly and properly acting, but only truly and properly understanding and enunciating; so also the Father and the Son in active spiration are not properly acting, because in common usage the expression "acting" is taken to mean an efficient cause and not a principle alone. The Father is not the cause of the Son, and the Son is not an effect. Indeed although the Father is the principle of the Word, the Son is not said to be principled, because, as St. Thomas points out,[191] to be principled or derive from a principle implies an imperfection that cannot be attributed to the Son.
The Word is not principled, but He is a principle from a principle. Therefore there is no other distinction between the Father and the Son except the distinction of origin; no distinction exists with regard to nature, dignity, omnipotence, and the like: "All things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine" (John 16:15). For this reason it is better to speak of quasi-active generation and quasi-active spiration, and especially of quasi-passive generation and quasi-passive spiration, for passivity, properly speaking, corresponds to transitive action. Generation and spiration, however, are simply immanent actions above the order of causality; through them the divine nature is not caused but communicated.
Fifth doubt. How does the divine Word differ from our word?
Reply. It differs in many ways.[192] 1. The Word of God is something substantial, living, and intelligent; it is, moreover, a person, but our word is only an accident of our minds. God alone is subsisting intellect. 2. The divine Word exists, not like ours because of a need, but from the infinite abundance and fecundity. 3. The divine Word is co-eternal with the Father, it is immutable, and is begotten perpetually, all of which is not verified in our word. 4. The divine Word is unique because it is adequate; our word is inadequate and therefore multiple, indeed it is more multiple in the inferior created intellects.
Nevertheless an analogy remains between the two words, because both are termini of the enunciating intellect or enunciation, and both are images or representations of the thing that is known; both are conceived by the mind, but only in God does this conception deserve the name of generation in its proper sense; both are simply spiritual, intrinsically independent of matter and the corruption of material things. But, according to the declaration of the Fourth Lateran Council, "The similarity between the Creator and the creature is never so great that the dissimilarity is not always greater."[193] These declarations might serve as a definition of analogy, for, as we have often shown with St. Thomas,[194] things are analogous when they have the same name, but what is signified by the name is the same <secundum quid> and proportionately but simply different in these analogous things.
Recapitulation
In this question 27 we have seen that in God there are processions ad intra, why there are two and only two processions, and why the first procession alone is called generation.
In the first article, in the light of revelation, we saw that in God there is a procession after the manner of intelligible emanation of an intelligible Word from one who enunciates. It is a procession ad intra, not <ad extra>; it is not a procession like a being of the mind, but a real procession.
In the same article we saw that the Word has the same nature as the Father from whom He proceeds. The perfection and propriety of this procession <ad intra> became manifest in the light of the following principle: "that which proceeds <ad intra> by an intellectual process should not be diverse in nature from him from whom it proceeds; indeed the more perfectly it proceeds the more it will be one with that from which it proceeds, like the intellectual concept with the intellect. Thus the Word understood and enunciated by the Father is one with Him in nature; nor is the Word an accidental word—it is substantial, just as the divine intellect is not an accident, since it is subsisting intellect itself.
As St. Thomas says in the <Contra Gentes>, "The higher any nature is, the more intimate with it will be that which proceeds from it."[195] Thus the Angelic Doctor safeguards the principle that good is essentially diffusive of itself, and the higher the nature the more intimately and fully will it be diffusive of itself. In God there is, then, a diffusion <ad intra> transcending the order of efficient and final causality.
In the second article we saw that the procession of the Word is rightly called generation because it is the origin of a living being from a conjoined living being in the likeness of its nature. The concept of the intellect is a likeness of the thing understood; so also the Word is the likeness of the Father knowing Himself, existing in the same nature, since in God intellect and being are the same. That knowledge which is had by means of an expressed likeness of the thing known is essentially assimilative.
In the third article, in addition to the procession of the Word, we learned of the procession of love, inasmuch as the love of the good follows the conception of the good.
In the fourth article it was explained why the procession of love is not generation; because it is through the will, which by its own power is not assimilative and does not assimilate a thing to itself, but inclines toward the thing that is willed, like a weight, in the words of St. Augustine, "My love, my weight."
As a complement to this teaching on the processions, we shall explain below that the three persons understand (by essential intellection), but that the Father alone enunciates and enunciates adequately; as when three persons are confronted by a difficult problem, one discovers an adequate solution and all three equally understand what is enunciated by one of the three.[196] In the same way we shall explain proportionally that, although the three persons love (with essential love), only the Father and the Son spirate the Holy Ghost, who is the terminus of this active spiration.[197]
In this present question, St. Thomas did not intend as yet to solve these various doubts because their solution will be much more patent later on.[198] The holy doctor proceeds without haste, passing gradually from the confused concept to a more distinct concept of the same thing. His commentators, however, are obliged at times to examine these doubts earlier because they are sometimes proposed as objections against the articles under questions 27 and 28.

CHAPTER II: QUESTION 28 THE DIVINE RELATIONS
Prologue. "Next in order we consider the divine relations." St. Thomas says "next in order" because according to faith these relations are the relations of origin or procession, inasmuch as the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son. Therefore the processions are the foundation of really distinct relations which, as we shall see in the following question, formally constitute the persons. Hence we are now speaking implicitly of the persons although they are not yet explicitly mentioned.[199]
This question on the divine relations is of the greatest importance because, as we shall see below,[200] the persons are constituted by subsisting relations opposed to one another, which are in God not only virtually but also formally. Since these relations are in God, they cannot involve any imperfection so that, for example, filiation will not involve any dependence. This concept of relation is the philosophical idea developed by Aristotle and it is applied to the divine persons, who are called by relative terms in the Scriptures: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In this fundamental question, therefore, we are still concerned rather with an explanation of the principles of faith than with the deduction of theological conclusions. We are to explain why the Father is so called relative to the Son, why the Son is so called relative to the Father, and the Holy Ghost relative to the Father and the Son. Consequently we consider here the real distinction of the divine persons as revealed and as founded on the opposition of relations. In these articles we shall study the basis of that principle which throws light on the entire treatise of the Trinity and by which the principal objections are answered: "In God all things are one and the same when there is no opposition of relation."[201]
Division of the question. In this question we ask four things:
I. Are there real relations in God?
II. What are these relations? Are they the divine essence itself. or something extrinsically attached to the essence?
III. Can there be in God several relations really distinct from one another?
IV. How many relations are there?
Philosophical Notes On The Idea Of Relation And Its Division
These notes are briefly recalled by St. Thomas in the body of the first article, and it is suggested that the reader consult the first part of the body of the article.
The category of relation is distinguished by Aristotle from the categories of substance, quantity, quality, transitive action, passion, etc. Thus a man is called relatively a father of another and a son of another. Aristotle calls relation <to prosti>, or the <ad aliquid>, or the "to something"; it is also called the reference (to something else), the order (to something else) or the habitude.
Many Nominalists declare that there are no real relations in creatures; that all the relations are relations of reason. On the other hand, moderate realism sees real relations in creatures, for apart from anyone's thinking about it a man is really the father of the son he begets. So also two white things are really alike apart from any consideration of the mind. Paternity and likeness, however, are merely relations; therefore there are real relations in things. St. Thomas explains that the good of the universe, which is something real, consists mainly in relation, namely, in the order of things to themselves and to God, and if this order is removed, all things will be in confusion as when an army is without any coordination and subordination of the soldiers.[202]
Relation is twofold: real and of reason. Real relation is the order in things themselves. Thus, for example, an effect is related to the cause on which it depends, a part to the whole, potency to act, and an act to its object. A relation of reason is the order cogitated by the mind, as the order of the predicate to the subject, and of species to genus. From various texts of Aristotle and St. Thomas[203] we present the following synopsis of the division of relation.
(diagram page 111)
Real relation,
transcendental or essential, such as essence to existence and matter to form, and the relation of faculties, habits, and acts to the specific object.
predicamental or accidental,
according to quantity, as equal, unequal, twofold, threefold
according to quality, as like and unlike
according to action, as paternity
according to passion, as filiation
Relation of reason between things not really distinct as predicate to the subject in a judgment as the relation of real identity of one thing with itself between things really distinct as the knowable to knowledge as God to the creature.
Real relations are divided into transcendental and predicamental. A transcendental relation is the order included in the essence of a thing as, for example, the soul's transcendental order to the body, that of matter to form, essence to being, accident to the subject, science to its object, etc. All these things have these relations by their very essence, and the transcendental relation perdures even when the term disappears. Thus a separated soul continues to be individuated by its relation to the body which is to rise again. It is called transcendental because it transcends the special predicament of relation and is found also in other categories, for example, in substance and quality; indeed there is scarcely anything that is not ordered to something else by its nature.
Predicamental relation, which is also called relation according to being (secundum esse), is defined by Aristotle as a real accident whose whole being is to be ordered to something else.[204] This relation is not included in the essence of the thing, but it comes to the essence as an accident. It is pure order or reference to a term, as, for example, paternity, filiation, the equality of two quantities, likeness.
The real existence of these relations is certain, for, antecedent to any consideration of the mind and apart from anyone's thinking, two white things are really alike and this man is really the father of another. On the contrary, the relation of the predicate to the subject in a sentence is a relation of reason, which does not exist until after the consideration of the mind and as the result of the mind's activity.
The predicamental relation requires a real basis in the subject and a real terminus really distinct from this basis in the subject; this relation does not perdure after the terminus disappears, and in this it differs from the transcendental relation. The basis of the predicamental relation is the reason for the reference or ordering. Thus, in the relation of paternity the man who begets a son is the subject, the son is the terminus, to whom the father has a reference, and generation is the basis of the relation, since the reason why the father is referred to the son is the fact that he begot him.[205]
Whether The Predicamental Relation Is Really Distinct From Its Basis Or Foundation
For example, whether the likeness of two white things is really distinct from their whiteness, and paternity from generation.
Many Thomists, among them Capreolus, Cajetan, Ferrariensis, John of St. Thomas, and Goudin, admit at least a modal real distinction between the relation and its foundation or basis; Suarez denies the distinction and thus aligns himself with the Nominalists. The Thomists prove their stand in the following way. The predicamental relation is an accident whose whole being is to be referred to something else. But the entity of the foundation is not pure order to another but something absolute, as, for example, quantity, quality, and action. Therefore the entity of the foundation of the relation is really distinct from the predicamental relation. For this reason, Aristotle conceived of quantity, quality, action, and relation as distinct predicaments.
Confirmation. The predicamental relation disappears with its terminus whereas the entity of the foundation of the relation survives. When one of two similar things, for instance, is destroyed, the relation to the other also disappears. Moreover, even after the generation of the son, he remains the son of his father.
Whether Existence Belongs To A Predicamental Relation Formally According To Its Being In The Subject Or Its Being With Reference To Its Terminus
The relation's being in the subject (<esse in>) is not the foundation of the relation but it is the relation itself in the general nature of an accident and not under the special aspect of a relation. The reply of the Thomists is that existence does not belong formally to a predicamental relation according to its being with reference to its terminus (<<esse ad>>) because according to this being with reference to another (<<esse ad>>) the relation abstracts from existence and could be a relation of reason. Existence, however, belongs to a predicamental relation according to its being in a subject, that is, its "<inesse>," or its inherence in the subject. Since, however, as we shall see below, in God the <esse in> cannot be an accident, but must be the divine substance, it follows, according to St. Thomas, that there is one being in the Trinity for the different divine relations. Suarez, on the contrary, thought that a relation had its own proper existence and therefore he taught that there were three relative existences in God. Similarly he taught that there were two beings in Christ because he denied the real distinction between the created essence and being. For St. Thomas there was but one being for the three divine persons and one being in Christ.
This distinction between the <esse in> of a relation and its <<esse ad>> is clearly explained by St. Thomas: "The relation itself, which is nothing else than the reference of one creature to another, has one kind of being inasmuch as it is an accident and another being inasmuch as it is a relation or order to another. Inasmuch as it is an accident it has its being in a subject, but not as it is a relation or an order, for as a relation it has being exclusively with reference to another, a something passing over to another and in some way assisting the thing to which it is related."[206] Thus the <esse in>, which is something the relation has in common with all accidents, gives title to reality to the relation's <<esse ad>.>[207]
From various examples, especially in the supernatural order, we shall see that this concept of relation is of great importance. In Christ the hypostatic union is the real relation of the dependence of the humanity of Christ on the person of the divine Word. "The hypostatic union is that relation which is found between the divine and human natures... . This union is not really in God but is only a relation of reason; but it really is in the human nature, which is a kind of creature. Therefore it is proper to say that it (the hypostatic union) is something created."[208]
Similarly, in the Blessed Virgin Mary the divine maternity is a real relation to the person of the incarnate Word, and because of its terminus this real relation belongs to the hypostatic order and transcends the order of grace. Hence it is commonly held that the Blessed Virgin Mary was predestined to the divine maternity before she was predestined to the fullness of glory and grace. It should be noted, however, that the person of the Word does not acquire a real relation to the Blessed Virgin but only a relation of reason because the relation of God to creatures is only a relation of reason. So also St. Joseph's great dignity of foster-father of the incarnate Word is a relation. Finally, our adoptive sonship is a relation to God the author of grace; it is a participation in the likeness of the eternal filiation of the only-begotten Son.
First Article: Whether There Are Real Relations In God
State of the question. It seems that there are no real relations in God and that there are only relations of reason like the relation of identity between a thing and itself, because the terms are not really distinct. Moreover, if a real relation were found in God, it would be the relation of a principle to the principled. But the relation of God to creatures as their principle is not a real relation but one of reason, whereas the relation of creatures to God is real. Neither does that relation which is founded on the intellectual procession of the Word seem to be real since it does not precede the operation of the intellect but follows it.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative and is defined as of faith. This is evident from the condemnation of Sabellius. According to the Sabellian heresy, God is not really the Father and the Son, but only according to our way of thinking. Against this heresy the Church has declared that God is really the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost in such a way that the Father is not the Son but is really distinct from Him.[209] The Father is so called only because of His paternity, which is a relation; the Son is so called because of filiation, which is also a relation, as is also spiration. Therefore in God we find the real relations of paternity, filiation, spiration, and, as we shall see below, of active and passive spiration.
The major of this argument from authority is the affirmation of the dogma against Sabellius. The minor is an analysis of the words, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As found in the Scriptures these nouns are relative: the Father is so called with relation to the Son, and the Son with relation to the Father, and in this way these two persons are really distinguished by the opposition of relation.
This idea of relation was gradually developed by the Fathers; their teaching became more and more explicit on the point that the divine persons are distinguished among themselves by relations alone.[210] St. Gregory Nazianzen said, "Father is not the name of the essence or of an action but it indicates the relation which the Father has to the Son, or that which the Son has to the Father."[211] Among the Greeks, St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John Damascene, and among the Latins, St. Augustine, St. Fulgentius, Boetius, St. Isidore, and St. Anselm, employ similar language.[212]
In his work on the Trinity,[213] St. Augustine had already evolved a theory of relations, as Tixeront points out,[214] explaining that the divine persons are relations which are not something absolute like the divine essence and which are not accidents. St. Augustine wrote: "These things are not said according to the substance, because each one does not refer to Himself, but these things are said mutually and to each other; they are not said according to accidents, because that which is said to be the Father and what is said to be the Son is something eternal and incommunicable. These things are said not as of substances but as something relative, but the relative thing is nevertheless not an accident, because it is not changeable.[215] Thus the Father is so called with regard to the Son, the Son with regard to the Father, and the Holy Ghost with regard to the Father and the Son.
This doctrine of the divine relations was clearly defined by the Eleventh Council of Toledo in 675: "By the relative names of the persons, the Father is referred to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Ghost is referred to the other two persons, and when the three persons are spoken of in a relative sense, we nevertheless believe in one nature and one substance... . For that which is the Father is not referred to Himself but to the Son; and that which is the Son is not referred to Himself but to the Father...; with reference to themselves each person is said to be God." 18 In the Council of Florence particularly the famous dogmatic principle, "In God all things are one where there is no opposition of relation," was proclaimed.[216] At this council, John, the theologian for the Latins, declared: "According to both Greek and Latin doctors, it is relation alone that multiplies the persons in the divine production, and it is called the relation of origin, which has two characteristics: that from which another is and that which is from another."[217] At this same council, the learned Cardinal Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, declared: "No one is ignorant of the fact that the personal names of the Trinity are relative."[218]
St. Thomas treated this question in several of his works.[219] From a study of these various works it is clear how his understanding of the matter became more sublime and more simple as he approached the pure intuition of truth. Later, however, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the thinking of many theologians, among them Durandus and others, became excessively complicated so as to impede the contemplation of divine things.
This and the following articles can be reduced to this simple truth: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are God; but the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Ghost is neither the Father nor the Son. In this article St. Thomas proves from the processions that there are real relations in God. His argument may be reduced to the following.
When anything proceeds from a principle of the same nature it is necessary that both, namely, that which proceeds and that from which it proceeds, should concur in the same order and have real references to each other. But the processions in God take place in the identity of nature (preceding question). Therefore it is necessary that according to the divine processions we accept real relations, namely, of the Father to the Son, of the Son to the Father... . On the other hand, when anything proceeds from God ad extra, such as a creature, that which proceeds is not in the same order as God Himself, the two are not mutually ordered to each other, and the creature alone depends on God, but God does not depend on the creature nor is He ordered to the creature. Hence only the creature has a real relation to God; and God in no way has a real relation to the creature.
Reply to first objection. These real relations, however, do not inhere in God as an accident inheres in a subject. This will be explained in the following article, where it will be shown that in God the "being in" (<esse in>) of the relations is substantial and not accidental.
Reply to second objection. Boetius merges the relations in God with the relation of identity (a relation of reason alone) inasmuch as the divine relations do not diversify the divine substance; but Boetius continued to accept as true that the Father is not the Son and that they are opposed by the opposition of real relation.[220]
Reply to third objection. God the Creator does not have a real relation to creatures because the Creator and creatures are not in the same order and are not ordered to each other. Creatures indeed are ordered to God upon whom they depend, but God is not ordered to creatures. It is in the nature of the creature to depend on God, but it is not in God's nature to produce creatures, since He produced them most freely. On the other hand, the Father and the Son are of the same order and are ordered to each other, just as in men active and passive generation are in the same order and thus are the basis for real mutual relations.
Reply to fourth objection. The relation of filiation in God follows the operation of the divine intellect, but not as a logical entity such as the distinction between the subject and predicate; it follows as something real, namely, as the expressed word, which as the terminus of mental enunciation is something real in the mind.
First doubt. Is the <<esse ad>> of a relation always real? The reply is in the negative. The reason is that many relations are of reason only and each of these relations has its <<esse ad>>; consequently the <<esse ad>> as such is not necessarily a real being or a being of the mind but may be either, depending on whether the foundation of the relation and its <esse in> are real or beings of the mind only.
Second doubt. Are the relations in God real not only according to their <esse in> but also according to their <<esse ad>?> The reply is in the affirmative. The reason is that when the <esse in> is real the <<esse ad>> is also real. Thus in man the relation of paternity to the son is a real accident, existing in the father antecedent to the consideration of our minds. If in God the <<esse ad>> were not real, the real distinction between the persons, which is founded on the opposition of real relation, would be destroyed. It is the reference to (respectus ad) alone that causes the relative opposition.[221] The reason why the <<esse ad>> is real is because the relation really exists in some subject in accord with the real foundation of the relation independently of the consideration of our mind. The <esse in> is the title to reality of the <<esse ad>.> In the <De potentia>, St. Thomas gives the following explanation. "The relation itself, which is nothing more than the order of one creature to another, is one thing inasmuch as it is an accident and something else inasmuch as it is a relation or an order. Inasmuch as it is an accident it has its being in a subject, but not inasmuch as it is a relation or an order, for as a relation it is order to another, as if passing over to another and in some way assisting the related thing."[222]
Second Article: Whether A Relation In God Is The Same As His Essence
State of the question. After asking the question whether a thing is we ask the question what it is. The difficulty arises from the fact that the relative element, the "to another," is not understood as something substantial, for then the essence of God would not be something substantial but relative.
The reply, however, is affirmative and of faith, namely, the relations in God are actually the same as His essence, although they are distinguished by reason from the essence. This truth was defined in the Council of Reims against Gilbert Porretanus: "When we speak of the three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, we say that they are one God and one substance. Conversely, we confess that the divine substance is three persons."[223] "We believe that there are no relations in God that are not God."[224]
In these propositions, as in every affirmative proposition, the verb "is" affirms the real identity of the subject and the predicate, as, for example, the Father is God and the paternity is the deity, because God is His own deity and the Father is His own paternity.[225] The same teaching was defined by the Fourth Lateran Council,[226] and the following proposition of Eckard was condemned, "In God there can be no distinction and none can be conceived."[227]
The most common opinion of theologians is that the divine relations are distinguished from the divine essence only by reason with a foundation in reality, that is, only virtually. To this the Thomists generally add that the distinction is a minor virtual distinction after the manner of that which is implicit and explicit inasmuch as our concept of the divine essence implicitly contains the relations. Before considering St. Thomas' argument, we will briefly explain the meaning of these terms.
A virtual distinction, or a distinction of reason with a foundation in reality, may be minor or major. A major virtual distinction is after the manner of that which excludes and that which is excluded. Such a distinction exists between the genus and the differences extrinsic to it which the genus contains, not implicitly, but only virtually. Thus animality may be without rationality, and with regard to rationality it has a foundation in actuality as something potential and perfectible.
A minor virtual distinction, however, is after the manner of those things that are implicit and explicit. Thus subsisting being itself, according to our concept, implicitly contains the divine attributes, but it does not have a foundation in actuality for these attributes as something potential, or as something imperfect and perfectible by the divine attributes, because subsisting being, according to our concept, is pure act. For when we speak of subsisting being we do not yet speak explicitly of mercy and justice. It must be noted, however, that this minor virtual distinction is more than the verbal distinction between Tullius and Cicero. We cannot equivalently use the names, divine essence, divine mercy, or divine justice in the same way that we equivalently use the names Tullius and Cicero. We cannot say, for instance, that God punishes by His mercy and pardons by His justice.
Lastly, it may be recalled that Scotus held that the distinction between the divine essence, the attributes and the relations was formal actual from the nature of things, because the distinction, in his view, is not real since it is not between one thing and another but between two formalities of the same thing.
To this the Thomists reply that this formal actual distinction based on the nature of the thing either antecedes the consideration of our minds and then, however small it is, it is real; or it does not antecede the consideration of our minds, and then it is a distinction of reason with a foundation in the thing or a virtual distinction. There is no middle point in the distinction between what antecedes and what does not antecede the consideration of our minds.
After these preliminaries we shall consider how St. Thomas proved the commonly accepted doctrine that the real relations in God are not really distinct from the divine essence but are distinguished from it only by reason.
St. Thomas explained this proposition by two arguments: by the indirect argument (sed contra) and the direct argument.
The indirect argument. Everything that is not the divine essence is a creature. But the relations really belong to God. If therefore they are not the divine essence, they are creatures; and the worship of latria cannot be offered to the divine relations.
The direct argument. Whatever in created things has an accidental being in another (<esse in>), when transferred to God has a substantial being in another (<esse in>), because no accidents are found in God. But in created things a relation is really distinguished from its subject solely because it has an accidental being in another (<esse in>) from which it derives the reality of its <<esse ad>> or reference to another. Therefore in God a relation is not really distinct from its subject inasmuch as its <esse in>, or being in another, is substantial from which is derived the reality of its reference to another, its <<esse ad>.> The major is evident from the fact that in God, who is pure act, there can be no accident perfecting something potential and perfectible.[228] The minor is explained by the fact that in creatures a relation places nothing real in the subject except so far as it places in the subject that which is common to all accidents, namely, the <esse in>, which is an accidental being really distinct from substance. According to its own peculiar structure, a relation is not properly in a subject, as are quantity and quality, but it is a reference to something else.
If therefore, for example, the relation of paternity is transferred to God where the <esse in> will be substantial, the relation will not be really distinct from the divine essence; it will be distinguished only by reason since it expresses a reference to something else, namely, of the Father to the Son. Therefore neither by the divine relations nor by the divine attributes is the divine essence something potential and perfectible because of a foundation in its nature. Hence the divine essence, as it is conceived by us, implicitly contains the divine relations, from which it is distinguished by a minor virtual distinction. By this latter term the Thomists have epitomized this present article.
It must be carefully noted that what is the peculiar feature of a relation, namely, the <<esse ad>>, does not properly inhere in the subject as does the peculiar feature of the accident of quality. If the <<esse ad>> properly inhered in the subject, there could be no relative opposition between the real relations without there being at the same time opposition in the very essence of God, which is impossible. This entire article is reduced to this simple thought: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God, and the paternity is the deity because God is His own deity and the Father is His own paternity. In all these statements the verb "is" expresses the real identity of the subject and the predicate.
The difference between St. Thomas and Suarez.[229] The principle that "in God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation" is not understood in the same way by St. Thomas and by Suarez since they do not understand relation in the same way. For St. Thomas being (esse) does not formally belong to accidental or predicamental relation (paternity, for instance) according to its <<esse ad>,> because the <<esse ad>> prescinds from existence; it is found also in a relation of reason (in the relation of God to creatures, for example). Being, however, belongs formally to an accidental relation according to its <esse in>, namely, as it is an accident inhering (at least aptitudinally) in a real subject. If the <esse in> is real, then the <<esse ad>> is real, but it takes its title to reality not from itself but from the <esse in.>[230]
But in God the <esse in> cannot be an accident, since God is pure act and no accident is found in Him. Therefore in God the <esse in> of the divine relations is identified with the one existence of the divine substance; it is identified with subsisting being itself.[231] From this it follows that in the Trinity the divine relations have the same <esse in> since they exist by the one existence of the divine essence itself.[232] "Since a divine person is the same as the divine nature, in the divine persons the being of the person is not different from the being of the divine nature. Therefore the three divine persons have but one being." Similarly in Christ there is one being for the two natures because Christ is one person, and this presupposes a real distinction between created essence and being.
Suarez, on the contrary, did not admit this real distinction and held that there were two existences in Christ and three relative existences in the Trinity. For Suarez the relations have their own proper existence even according to their <<esse ad>.> He found it difficult to solve the objection arising from the axiom that two things that are the same as a third are also the same as each other. But the divine persons are the same as a third, namely, the divine essence. Therefore they are the same as each other.
Suarez did not know how to solve this objection except by denying the major with respect to God.[233] He was aware of St. Thomas' reply that those things which are the same as a third are the same as each other unless there is present the opposition of relation. But because he had a different concept of relation he held that this convenient answer did not solve the difficulty since nothing like this is found in creatures. Therefore he concluded that this axiom taken in its most universal extension, prescinding from created and uncreated being, is false for, while it is true in certain cases, that is, in creatures, it cannot be inferred for the entire extension of being.
This is the same as saying that this axiom does not apply to God. But this axiom is directly derived from the principle of contradiction or identity, which patently must be applicable to God analogically because it is the law of being as being, the most universal law therefore, apart from which there is nothing but absurdity, which would be unthinkable.
The principal difference between Suarez and St. Thomas is that for Suarez the <<esse ad>> of a relation is real by reason of itself, just as he held that the created essence is actual by reason of itself and is therefore not really distinct from its existence. Suarez did not conceive being other than that which is, not as that by which a thing is. He did not admit a real distinction between essence, either of a created substance or accident, and being. This is the foundation of the difference. Whether he wished it or not, Suarez multiplied the absolute in God, and therefore the objection based on the principle of identity remained unanswerable.[234]
Solution Of The Objections
1. What did St. Augustine mean when he contended that the <ad aliquid> of the relation was not intended to refer to the substance?
Reply. St. Augustine's meaning was that the <ad aliquid> is not predicated of God as something absolute but as something relative, but he did not say that the divine relations are really distinct from the substance. In several places he declared that in God the relations are not accidents.[235] St. Thomas points out that in God there are only two predicaments, substance and relations, and the <esse in> of the relations is substantial. We are dealing here not with a transcendental relation but with a predicamental relation (paternity, filiation, etc.), whose <esse in> or "being in" in God, however, is substantial.
2. The term, "minor virtual distinction," is the happiest expression for the relations as they are in God, because the Deity as conceived by our minds actually and implicitly contains the relations.
3. In reply to the third objection, St. Thomas shows that it does not follow from the preceding that the divine essence is something relative.[236]
First doubt. Whether the Deity, not as conceived by us but as it is in itself and is seen by the blessed, contains the relations explicitly or only implicitly.
Reply. The Deity contains the relations explicitly because the virtual distinction is a distinction of reason subsequent to the consideration of our minds, and this distinction is not found in the divine essence so as to be seen by God and the blessed. Similarly the divine nature as imperfectly conceived by us contains the divine attributes implicitly, since we gradually deduce the attributes from the divine essence; but as it is in itself, the Deity explicitly contains the attributes. The blessed in heaven have no need of deduction to know the divine attributes; they see them intuitively as they are formally and eminently in God, not only as virtually eminently, as is the case with the mixed perfections.
In rejecting Scotus' formal actual distinction between the Deity and the relations, Cajetan explains: "There is in God actually, or in the order of reality, only one being, which is not purely absolute or purely relational, neither mixed nor composite, or resulting from either of these, but most eminently and formally possessing that which is relational and that which is absolute. So in the formal order, or the order of formal reasons, in Himself, not in our mode of speaking, there is in God only one formal reason or essence. This is neither purely absolute nor purely relational, neither purely communicable nor purely incommunicable, but most eminently and formally containing both that which is absolutely perfect and that which the relational Trinity demands. We are in error, however, whenever we proceed from the absolute and relational to God because we imagine that the distinction between the absolute and the relational is prior to the divine nature. The complete opposite is true, for the divine essence is prior to all being and all of its differences; it is above being, above one, etc."[237]
And yet the Deity as an essence is really communicated to the Son and the Holy Ghost without any communication of paternity or filiation, just as in the triangle the first angle constructed communicates its whole surface to the other angles without communicating itself. The danger of agnosticism does not arise in this statement; such danger would be present, however, if we said that the divine relations and attributes were in God virtually and eminently, like mixed perfections, and not eminently formally. This doctrine may be reduced to this simple thought: the Father is God, and in this proposition the verb "is" expresses the real identity of the subject and predicate.[238]
Second doubt. Can we safeguard the idea of God as the most pure, most simple, and infinite act if we admit the formal-actual distinction?
Reply. The Thomists reply in the negative.[239] In this hypothesis the divine essence is conceived as having a foundation in itself that is in potency to the relations, that is actuable by the relations, as by something extraneous, like the genus of animality which is actuable by an extraneous specific difference. But it is repugnant to the most pure act that it be conceived as having a basis in itself for further realization; this would be repugnant to the simplicity and infinity of God. In this way the Thomists have adhered to Cajetan's explanation; other equivalent expressions may be found in Billuart's exposition of this article.
Third doubt. Is the concept of the divine essence more extensive than the concept of paternity or of any other relation taken separately?
The reply is in the affirmative, because the Deity as conceived by us implicitly contains the idea of filiation, but the idea of filiation is not even implicitly contained in the concept of paternity, except correlatively since it is opposed to paternity.
Fourth doubt. Does Deity belong to our explicit concept of the person of the Father?
The reply is in the affirmative, for while paternity is only implicitly contained in our concept of the Deity, Deity is explicitly contained in the paternity because Deity is more extensive than paternity, including also filiation. Similarly, in created beings, being is explicit in the concept of substance, while substance is not explicitly in the concept of being because being is more extensive than substance.
Scotus' objection. If Deity is conceived by us as containing paternity in act, it follows that in begetting the Son the Father communicates paternity to Him. Then the Son would be the Father. Or if paternity is not communicated to the Son, then the Deity is not communicated to Him. Further, Scotus argued that if being implicitly contains substance and accidents, then whenever anything is predicated both substance and accidents are predicated.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: if the Deity is conceived by us as explicitly containing paternity, I concede; as implicitly containing paternity, I sub-distinguish: both implicitly and copulatively, I concede; implicitly and disjunctively, I deny. For the Deity is disjunctively either in the Father, or in the Son, or in the Holy Ghost. A virtual distinction is enough to safeguard the truth of the propositions about the communicability of the nature without the communication of paternity, just as it suffices to say that God punishes by His justice but not by His mercy. In the same way the concept of being contains substance and accidents implicitly, not copulatively but disjunctively, and therefore it does not follow that substance is accident.
Many difficulties are solved in this manner, namely, how it is the Father who begets and not the essence with which the Father is really identified; how each divine person is really God and still not the other persons, which are really implicitly included in the Deity.
I insist. But if the Deity, as it is in itself and is clearly seen by the blessed, explicitly contains the paternity, it follows that the Father in begetting the Son communicates paternity to Him, and thus the Son is the Father or He is not God.
Reply. This would be true if in the eminent being of the Deity the absolute and the relative, the communicable and the incommunicable, would be identified to such an extent as to be destroyed, this I concede; otherwise, I deny. Indeed, the absolute communicable and the incommunicable relative are found in God in a formally pre-eminent manner, just as mercy and justice in God are identified without being destroyed, since they are in God not only virtually (like the seven colors in white light) but also formally and eminently. Here is the mystery of the divine pre-eminence. We therefore rightly conceive the divine essence as being communicated to the Son together with all the absolute essential things which it contains and which are communicable, without any communication of the relative (paternity) because of the opposition to the terminus to which the essence is communicated. Thus in the triangle the first angle communicates its entire surface to the second and third angles but not itself.
In a word, the Father communicates the divine essence to the Son with regard to everything except where the opposition of relation intervenes, because a relative cannot be communicated to its correlative opposite. This statement is in accord with Cajetan's explanation: "In God (as He is in Himself) there is but one formal reason, neither purely absolute, nor purely relative, nor purely communicable, nor purely incommunicable, but eminently and formally containing both whatever is of absolute perfection and whatever the relational Trinity demands."[240] Cajetan declared also: "It remains that (God) is both communicable and incommunicable."[241]
Fifth doubt. What is the foundation of the relations of paternity and filiation?
Reply. In created beings the foundation is active and passive generation; this is also true proportionately of God. It should be noted that the <esse in> of the relation is not the foundation of the relation because the <esse in> is something common to all accidents, expressing at the same time the existence of the accident, for the being of the accident is the <esse in> at last aptitudinally.
The foundation of paternity as a relation is active generation, and the foundation of the relation of filiation is passive generation, that is, the actual procession. Similarly, spiration is the foundation of the relations between the Holy Ghost and the Father and the Son, who spirate in one active spiration.
Sixth doubt. Whether the divine relations (or persons) have their own proper relative existences, or whether they exist by the one absolute existence of the essence.
Reply. In opposition to Scotus and Suarez, the Thomists and many other theologians reply in the negative. This reply is based on many texts of St. Thomas; for example, "Since the divine person is the same as the divine nature, the being of the person is not different from the being of the nature. Therefore the three divine persons have but one being; they would have a triple being if in them the being of the nature were other than the being of the persons."[242]
In these texts St. Thomas is clearly speaking of the being of existence and not the being of the essence, particularly in the passage where he inquires whether there is one being in Christ although there are two natures, and answers in the affirmative.[243]
In explaining this answer to Scotus and Suarez we may say that the existence of the relation is nothing more than its <esse in.> But, as we have said, the <esse in> of the relations in God is substantial, the same as the being of the divine nature. Therefore the divine relations do not have their own existences. Just as in God there is not a triple intelligence nor a triple will, so all the more there is no triple being, for in God all things are one and the same except where there is the opposition of relation.
This teaching is confirmed by the Athanasian Creed, which declares, "not three uncreated,... but one uncreated." If there were three uncreated existences besides the absolute existence common to the three persons, there would be three uncreated beings, not only adjectively but substantively, because the form and the subject would be multiplied. We would then have three entities having three uncreated existences. Scotus and Suarez, therefore, are in some danger of tritheism. Fundamentally this is why Suarez was unable to solve the objection arising from the principle of identity: those things which are equal to a third are equal to each other. By multiplying being in God, Suarez multiplied the absolute in God and placed in jeopardy the principle that in God all things are one and the same except where there is the opposition of relation.
Further confirmation is had from the fact that in God essence and being are the same. But the essence is common to the three persons. Therefore being is also common to all three. Being is communicated together with the nature because it is completely identified with the nature. The divine nature is subsisting being itself according to the Scriptures, "am who am."[244] If the same intelligence and will are communicated, all the more the same existence is communicated.
Further, relative existences would be superfluous, for that which is already in existence does not need further existence; by the first existence a being is beyond nothingness and beyond its causes (if it has a cause). To say that what is already beyond nothingness and its causes is once again placed beyond causes and nothingness is to imply a contradiction. It would also imply a contradiction to have two ultimate realities of the same order, for neither would be the ultimate. Existence, however, is the ultimate reality of a thing. When the Fathers said that to be God was different from being the Father, they understood this being God with respect to Himself and the being the Father with respect to some one else. It does not follow from this that there are several existences in God.
Objection. Existence is nothing more than being in act. But the relations are really in act as distinct from the essence. Therefore they have their own existences.
Reply. The Thomists deny the major, for existence is not the thing itself but the actuality of the thing by which it is placed beyond nothingness and its causes. In God, however, essence and being are the same, and since the essence is common to the three persons the divine existence is also common to them. The relations, therefore, are truly in act, but they are so by the absolute existence of the essence.
Objection. All production terminates with existence.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the production of a contingent being terminates in the production of a new existence, I concede; but communication terminates in an existence that is not new but in an existence that is communicated to the person who proceeds. So in some way the uncreated being of the Word is communicated to the assumed humanity since there is only one existence in Christ; so also the being of the separated soul is communicated to the body in the resurrection because there is only one substantial existence in man. Scotus and Suarez, however, deny the real distinction between created essence and being and therefore they multiply substantial being in man, assigning one to the body and one to the soul. They also declare that there are two beings in Christ and three relative existences in the Trinity.
I insist. Each thing that is distinct from others has its own existence. But the divine persons are distinct from one another. Therefore they have their own existences.
Reply. Each thing has its own existence, either proper or common, I concede; that the existence is always proper, I deny. Thus the humanity of Christ does not have its own proper existence, and in us the body does not have its proper existence distinct from the existence of the soul. Our bodies exist by the existence of the soul, which is spiritual. It is not repugnant, therefore, that in God the relations, whose <esse in> is substantial, exist by the existence of the divine nature itself.
I insist. Therefore in God the Father refers to Himself and not to another and not to the Son.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: the Father refers to Himself with regard to His <esse in>, I concede; with regard to His <esse ad>, I deny.
Final objection. Besides the absolute subsistence in God there are three relative subsistences or personalities; therefore there should be besides the absolute existence three relative existences.
Reply. I deny the consequence. The difference arises from the fact that the absolute subsistence confers only the perseity of independence but not the perseity of incommunicability; the three relative subsistences are not superfluous since they are required for incommunicability. On the other hand, the absolute existence, communicated with the nature, places the persons beyond nothingness, so that relative existences are superfluous, as was said above.
Seventh doubt. Whether the divine relations by reason of their <esse ad> add some relative perfection to the absolute perfection of the divine essence virtually distinct from it.
State of the question. It is most certain that the divine relations (which are, as we shall see below, the divine persons) are most perfect since they are identified with the divine essence, which is infinite subsisting perfection itself. Thus the divine relations are necessarily loved by God and must be accorded the adoration of latria on our part. The question is whether the relations by reason of their <esse ad> add some relative perfection, virtually distinct from the absolute perfection of the divine essence, which they include.
The reply is in the negative. This reply is at least the more probable one and is held by such Thomists as Capreolus, Cajetan, Ferrariensis, the Salmanticences, Gonet, and Billuart. But some Thomists (John of St. Thomas, Contenson, and Bancel) hold the contrary opinion.
1. Proof from authority. In his work on the Trinity, St. Augustine says: "The Father is good, the Son is good, the Holy Ghost is good; but there are not three good, only one is good. If goodness and perfection are actually multiplied in the three divine persons, they could be said to be three good and three perfect persons not only adjectively but also substantively because what these words signify both materially and formally would be multiplied inasmuch as there would be three relative perfections really distinct from one another.[245]
St. Thomas declared: "Paternity is a dignity of the Father as is the essence of the Father, for it is an absolute dignity and pertains to the essence. Just as, therefore, the same essence which in the Father is paternity and in the Son is filiation, so the same dignity which in the Father is paternity is filiation in the Son."[246] So analogically in the triangle, the one surface which is the surface of the first angle is the surface of the second and third angles; no relative surfaces are found besides the absolute and common surface.
Billuart and others rightly point out that in these words St. Thomas not only openly asserts our conclusion but proves it, since the dignity or perfection of the Father is absolute and pertains to the essence.
2. Proof from theology. A thing is not good or perfect except inasmuch as it exists or implies an order to being. But the divine relations indeed exist according to their <esse in>, but according to their <esse ad> they are not anything but only in reference to something.[247] Therefore by reason of their <esse ad> the relations do not add a relative perfection virtually distinct from the absolute, infinite perfection of the essence. In other words, the existence, and the perfection too, of the predicamental relation, with which we are now dealing, has reference to the subject and not to the terminus, and therefore the <esse ad> does not imply an order to existence, but prescinds from existence. For this reason it is possible to have certain relations which are not real and are of the mind only, namely, those whose <esse in> is not real.[248]
Here it is that the divine relations differ from the divine attributes, which by their nature look to the essence and have an order, not to something else, but to themselves. Thus the attributes are called absolute or absolutely simple perfections, which it is better to have than not to have. So the divine will is an absolute perfection, virtually distinct from the perfection of God's being and from subsisting intellect itself, although all these are identified without being destroyed in the eminence of the Deity, in whom they are found not only virtually and eminently but formally and eminently.
Corollary. The divine relations, taken formally according to their <esse ad>, are not absolutely simple perfections properly so called because, although they do not involve imperfection, it is not better to have them than not to have them; their <esse ad> is a pure reference, prescinding from perfection and imperfection. So also in God the free act of creation (I am not speaking here of freedom but of the free act) is not an absolutely simple perfection, since God is not more perfect because He created the universe.[249] God was not improved because from eternity He willed to create the world; to create the world is indeed something befitting, but not to have created is nevertheless not unbefitting.
On this point there is agreement, but Cajetan offered a formula that was not acceptable to other Thomists: "For God to will other beings is a voluntary and entirely free perfection whose opposite would not be an imperfection."[250] He expresses it better when he says: "To communicate oneself implies perfection not in him who communicates but in those to whom the communication is made."[251]
In the formula, rejected by other Thomists, as we have noted elsewhere,[252] Cajetan seems to confuse a modal proposition referring to the saying with the modal proposition referring to the thing. It is correct to say that it is befitting that God created, in the sense that it is not unbefitting not to have created; but it is incorrect to say that the free volition to create is a new free perfection in God (virtually distinct from His essential perfection), even though the opposite is not an imperfection. Otherwise God would be more perfect because He willed to create the universe, as Leibnitz wrongly concluded. These observations should throw some light on this present question, namely, that the divine relations with regard to their <esse ad> do not add a new perfection.
Confirmation from the following incongruities.
1. Otherwise it would follow that the Father lacked one perfection, namely, filiation, and also passive spiration. None of the divine persons would therefore be perfect, none would have every perfection, and none would be God. For God must have all absolutely simple perfections, those perfections which it is better to have than not to have.
2. It would follow that all three persons would be more perfect, at least extensively, than any one person, and against this St. Augustine declared: "The Father is as great by Himself as are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost together."[253]
3. The Father and the Son would be more perfect than the Holy Ghost because besides their proper perfection they would have the perfection of active spiration, whereas the Holy Ghost would have but one perfection, passive spiration.
Objection. The Father does not have filiation formally but eminently because of the divine essence. Hence filiation is properly an absolutely simple perfection.
Reply. In that case the Father would not have any absolutely simple perfection formally, and that would be improper.
I insist. The Father has filiation compensatively and terminatively, if not constitutively.
Reply. In that case the Father would not be infinitely perfect; and the Holy Ghost would be less perfect because He would have only one relative perfection and not two. Hence He would not even be compensatively perfect.
Another objection. A relative perfection implies a subject that is perfectible in order to something else, as we see in the case of potencies or faculties and habits. Hence it is wrong to say that a relation with regard to its <esse ad> prescinds from perfection. For the perfection of our intellect arises from its relation to being. Such was Contenson's argument.
Reply. Contenson, as Billuart pointed out, here confuses the transcendental relation of a faculty to its specific object with the predicamental relation, namely, paternity or filiation, which are pure references to a pure terminus and therefore do not consider the subject by reason of itself but by reason of the terminus.
Final difficulty. The created personality implies a perfection really and modally distinct from the perfection of the nature. Therefore for an equal or stronger reason the divine personalities, which are constituted by subsisting relations, imply a perfection distinct from the nature.
Reply. In agreement with many others I distinguish the antecedent. The created personality is a perfection with regard to the perseity of independence, I concede; with regard to the perseity of incommunicability, I deny, because it is not a perfection not to be able to communicate to another. The divine personalities confer incommunicability but not the perseity of independence, which is common to all three persons.[254]
This should suffice in explanation of St. Thomas' second article, in which he teaches that the real relations in God are not distinguished really from the essence, but are only virtually distinct. This truth can be succinctly stated as, "The Father is God." In this statement, as in every affirmative proposition, the verb "is" expresses the actual identity of the subject and the predicate. In other words: the Deity as known by us contains the divine relations implicitly; the Deity as it is in itself contains them explicitly, or formally and eminently without the formal-actual distinction proposed by Scotus. This teaching implies no leaning to agnosticism; such danger would arise if we said that the real relations were in God not formally and eminently but only virtually and eminently like mixed perfections, as when we say that God is angry.
Indeed the divine relations are in God like the divine attributes, to a greater degree than colors are contained in white because the seven colors are contained in white only virtually and not formally. White is not blue; but the Deity is true, it is good, it is also the paternity, although the Deity is communicated by the Father to the Son without a communication of paternity.
Third Article: Whether The Relations In God Are Really Distinguished From One Another
State of the question. This question seems to have been solved if we correctly understand the propositions, "The Father is not the Son," "The Holy Ghost is not the Father nor the Son," for in these negative propositions the verb "is not" denies the identity of the subject and the predicate, and therefore there is a real distinction, one that precedes the consideration of our mind. The question, however, requires further examination because it is not sufficiently clear how the persons are constituted by the relations and because, as we have said in the preceding article, the real relations in God are not really distinct from the essence.
From this arise certain difficulties, which are proposed at the beginning of this third article.
1. Those things equal to a third are equal to each other; but the divine relations are equal to a third, namely, the essence; therefore they are equal to each other. This is the classic objection of the rationalists against the mystery of the Trinity, which is sometimes examined by Thomists in the introduction to this treatise.
2. Paternity and filiation are, of course, distinguished mentally from the essence, as are goodness and omnipotence. Therefore, like goodness and omnipotence, paternity and filiation are not really distinguished from each other.
3. In God there is no real distinction except by reason of origin. But one relation does not appear to originate from another. Therefore the relations are not really distinct.
Reply. The reply is nevertheless in the affirmative, namely, in God a real distinction exists between the relations opposed to each other.
This teaching pertains to faith, since faith teaches that there is a real and true Trinity in which the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Ghost is not the Father or the Son. The Council of Florence declared: "In God all things are one except where there is opposition of relation."[255] At the same council, John, the Latins' theologian, declared: "According to both Latin and Greek doctors it is relation alone that multiplies persons in the divine productions; this relation is called relation of origin, in which only two are concerned: the one from whom another is and the one who is from another."[256] Also at this Council, Cardinal Bessarion, the most learned theologian of the Greeks, averred, "No one is ignorant of the fact that the personal names of the Trinity are relative."[257]
In his argument St. Thomas quoted Boetius. Other Fathers who might be quoted are St. Anselm,[258] St. Augustine,[259] St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. John Damascene, who said: "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are distinct and yet they are one."[260]
In the body of the article St. Thomas explains this doctrine of faith by an analysis of the concept of relative opposition as follows.
The nature of a real relation consists in the reference of one thing to another, according to which something is relatively opposed to another and the two are therefore really distinct.
But in God we have real relations opposed to one another, namely, paternity, filiation, and spiration. Below it will be explained that active spiration, which is opposed to passive spiration, is not opposed to paternity and filiation. Therefore in God there is real distinction according to these real relations opposed to one another.
The major explains something that is already admitted confusedly by the common sense of man and by natural reason, namely, that relative things, inasmuch as the Father and the Son are opposed to each other, are really distinct, since no one begets himself. This analysis of the ideas of relation, opposition, and distinction is found in Aristotle's Postpredicamenta, where he distinguishes the various kinds of opposition.
Opposition properly so called is a definite and determined repugnance; opposition improperly so called is between disparate things, as between different species of things. Thus opposition properly so called requires a determined extreme, to which something is repugnant, as heat to cold, blindness to vision. Proper opposition, therefore, calls for two conditions: the distinction between the extremes and some determined repugnance between these extremes.
Opposition may be of four kinds: relative, contrary, privative, and contradictory. Following Goudin in his work on logic, we may present the division of opposition as follows.
(diagram page 136)
Opposition
between being and non-being
by pure negation: contradictory opposition, e.g., man and no man, knowledge and nescience
by privation in a suitable subject: privative opposition, e.g. sight and blindness, knowledge and ignorance
between being and being
expelling each other from a subject: contrary opposition, e.g., virtue and vice, truth and error
based on mutual reference: relative opposition, e.g., between father and son
Thus, as is commonly taught, relative opposition is the weakest of all; in this kind of opposition one extreme does not destroy the other, rather one requires the other. Hence it can be attributed to God because it does not imply any privation of being but only distinction with a reference, as St. Thomas pointed out.[261] Thus the Father and the Son are really distinct by relative opposition. Relative opposition may be defined as the repugnance between two things arising from the fact that they refer to each other.
On the other hand, contradictory opposition is the strongest of all because one extreme completely destroys the other; not even the subject survives as in privative opposition, nor the genus as in contrary opposition, in which, for example, virtue and vice oppose each other in the same genus of habit. Thus contradictory opposition is the cause of the others and is to a certain extent mingled with them. In a sense we may say that the Father is not the Son, and virtue is not vice.
It is clear that in these four kinds of opposition, the word "opposition" is used not univocally but analogically, and the analogy is not only metaphorical but proper. The primal analogy contains the greatest opposition, that is, contradictory opposition. Hence it is not surprising that contradictory opposition participates in the other kinds of opposition.[262]
Reply to the first and second difficulties. "Those things which are equal to a third are equal to each other," I distinguish: if they are equal to the third actually and mentally and there is no mutual opposition, I concede; if they are equal to a third actually and not mentally and there exists relative opposition, I deny.
But the divine relations are equal to a third, the divine essence, this I distinguish: they are equal actually but not mentally, and some of the relations are mutually opposed, although they are not opposed to the third, this I concede. Otherwise, I deny.
To put it analogically, according to St. Thomas, transitive action, taken at least terminatively, and passion are really the same as movement, but they are really distinct from each other because of the opposition of relation, since action is the movement as coming from the agent and passion is the movement as received in the recipient.
So also in an equilateral triangle the three equal angles are actually the same as a third, namely, the surface of the triangle, but they are really distinguished from each other because of relative opposition.
First doubt. Are action and passion really and modally distinct from movement?
Reply. According to the common opinion of Thomists they are. Aristotle, however, did not consider precisely this question, and St. Thomas makes reference to his words, which, although they are somewhat vague, throw some light on the present problem, as does the reference to the triangle. Even though the illustration of the triangle may be deficient, the principle enunciated by St. Thomas is nevertheless true. We should remember that it is not necessary for the theologian to show that this objection is evidently false; it is enough if he shows that the objection is not necessary and has no cogency. Thus the revealed mystery remains intact.
Second doubt. Is the principle," those things equal to a third are equal..." to be understood as a formal predication?
Reply. In order to understand this principle we must distinguish between formal predication and material predication. Thus it is only materially true to say that the divine mercy and the divine justice are the same, because they are not really distinct, and by reason of their subject or matter they are in a sense the same, just as when we say that the humanity of Peter is his individuality. We have here a material predication because the humanity and the individuality are not actually distinct, and by reason of the matter and the subject they are the same. But in these instances we are not uttering a formal predication in which the predicate belongs to the subject according to its formal nature. For example, it does not belong to the divine mercy to punish; the divine mercy pardons, condones, and it is the divine justice that punishes, although these two perfections are really the same, that is, materially the same but not formally.
The laws of the syllogism, however, are not verified except in formal predications, since the process of reasoning does not deal with things in themselves but through the mediation of our concepts. Therefore if we wish to conclude the identity of two things by our reasoning, we must consider these two things from the same formal aspect. Otherwise we do not obey the first law of the syllogism: the term must be threefold: middle, major, and minor. According to this law the middle term must be perfectly distributed, that is, taken in the same sense in the major and the minor. Hence, for example, the following argument is not valid because the major is only a material predication: in God mercy is the same as justice; but justice is the principle of punishment; therefore God inflicts punishment through His mercy. The argument is false because in God mercy and justice are not the same formally although they are the same materially. Again, in the Trinity it is conceded that the Father and the Son are actually the same as the divine essence, but they are not the same formally. Moreover the Father and the Son are relatively opposed to each other, but they are not opposed to the essence. It is clear, therefore, that the following syllogism is not valid: This God is the Father, but this God is the Son, therefore the Son is the Father. Nor is the following true: This divine essence is the paternity, but this divine essence is the filiation, therefore filiation is paternity. In these syllogisms we have merely material predications, and the form of the syllogism is not observed.
Objection. The force of this reply is invalidated when, against Scotus, we say that in God there is not only one being but one formal eminent reason, namely, the Deity, and thus in God every predication is not only material but formal.
Reply. It is true that in God there is but one formal reason as far as God Himself is concerned, but not with regard to us.[263] In other words, the objection would be valid if the Deity identified with itself the attributes and relations without preserving their formal reasons; but the objection has no force if these formal reasons are still found to be in the eminence of the Deity. In God, of course, the relations are not only virtually and eminently, as the seven colors are in white, but formally and eminently; for whereas blue is not white, God is true, good, paternity, and filiation. Formal predication, therefore, must be carefully distinguished from material predication.[264]
In God the formal reasons or aspects of the attributes and relations are identified without being destroyed; they are perfectly preserved in spite of their real identity with the essence. Indeed, they do not exist in the purest state except in this identification. Thus subsisting being itself must be not only intelligible in act but actually understood in act, and it is therefore identified with subsisting understanding. The proper reason or nature of a relation is to be opposed to its correlative and to be distinguished from it.
This is possible because of the eminence of the Deity. Analogically, the body of Christ is present to many consecrated hosts, but these hosts are not present to each other. At first sight this seems to contradict the principle that those things which are united to a third are united to each other, or those things that are present to a third are present to each other. Thus two bodies cannot be present in the same space without being present to each other.
But this is not true if there is a third member which, remaining the same, is in many distant places as if not being in that place. Thus the same body of Christ is present in the manner of substance in many distant hosts. So in the natural order the head and the foot are present to the same soul and yet they are not parts present to each other and close to each other.
Second objection. A real distinction is not founded on that which prescinds from reality. But the <esse ad> of a relation prescinds from reality. Therefore it does not provide a basis for the real distinction of relations or of the persons.
Reply. I distinguish the major: a real distinction is not founded on that which prescinds from reality and is not real, I concede; on that which is real, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor in the same sense and I deny the consequence and the consequent. The <esse ad> is said to prescind from reality inasmuch as it may be either in a real relation or a relation of reason; but this <esse ad> in a real relation is real, not formally because of itself but because of the real <esse in>, which is common to all accidents. Thus in created beings the <esse ad> of the relation of paternity is something real and not something of the mind; both the father and the son therefore are necessarily distinct, since no one begets himself. The real relations in God are really distinct more as relations than as real, because as relations they are opposed to each other and as real they have the same <esse in> since their <esse in> is not accidental but substantial. Hence in God there are four real relations, as we shall see below, but not four relative realities as if there were four actions, for example. We shall also see below that of these four real relations active spiration is not really distinguished from paternity and filiation because it is not opposed to them.
Third doubt. Why is not the <esse ad> of a real relation real because of itself, as Suarez taught?
Reply. Because, as St. Thomas says,[265] a real relation formally as a relation is not something but to something, and therefore there can be relations that are not real, whose <esse in> is not real. On the other hand there is no such thing as quantity or quality mentally. Suarez, however, held that the <esse ad> of a relation is real because of itself, just as he held that the created essence is actual because of itself and is therefore not really distinct from its existence. Suarez thought of being (ens) only as that which is and not as that by which a thing is, whereas for St. Thomas the essence is that by which a thing is in a certain species. Hence Suarez concluded that the relations of reason (mental relations) are not true relations.[266] From this he went so far as to infer that the divine relations have their own relative existence and perfection, virtually distinct from the infinite perfection of the essence. In this way Suarez to some extent inclined to Scotus' teaching on the formal distinction. It will be seen therefore that the Father is lacking some perfection, namely, filiation and passive spiration. Now it becomes very difficult to safeguard the unity and absolute simplicity of the divine nature, just as when the Greeks in their treatise on the Trinity began with the three persons rather than with a study of the divine nature.
Thus Suarez was not able to reply to the principal objections against the mystery of the Trinity as the Thomists were.[267] How was Suarez to solve the objection: "Those things equal to a third are equal to each other"? At a loss in answering this objection, Suarez declared that the principle of identity (or contradiction), if taken in complete abstraction and analogy of being, prescinding from created and uncreated being, from both finite and infinite, is false. According to Suarez this principle is true inductively only in created beings, and the truth of the principle arises only within the limits of created being. It is a law of finite being, not an analogical law of being itself in common. Henceforth the theologian could not argue about the divine perfections because his argument is based on the principle of identity or contradiction. This is pure agnosticism. According to our teaching, to say that the principle of identity or contradiction is not verified analogically in the mystery of the Trinity is to say that this mystery is absurd, not above reason but opposed to reason. This much we can say: that most eminent mode according to which this principle is verified in the Trinity cannot be positively known by us here on earth; it can be known only negatively and relatively.
Another difference arises between St. Thomas and Suarez from the fact that for St. Thomas the three persons have only one being since, as it is commonly expressed, the being of an accident is being in another.[268] But in God the <esse in> of the relations is substantial and is therefore identified with the divine essence, which is therefore unique. For Suarez, on the contrary, who proceeded from other principles of being, the essence, the being, and the relations are three relative existences in God.[269]
The doctrine of St. Thomas, as Del Prado shows, "Perfectly preserves the supreme simplicity of the divine being because in God there is but one being; the real relations, on the one hand, do not make a composition with the essence, and on the other hand they really distinguish the persons. From this it follows that in the three divine persons there is one divinity, equal glory, co-eternal majesty, and the same absolute perfection. No perfection is found in one person that does not exist in the other." Del Prado continues: "Those who like Suarez deny the real composition of being and essence in creatures are forced to place three beings in God, and they must place in one person a perfection that is not in another, nor can they solve the difficulty arising from the principle of identity."[270] The difference between St. Thomas and Suarez has its roots in their basic philosophy and in their positions about the real distinction between essence and being in creatures. Suarez, as we have said, whether he wishes to or not, multiplies something absolute in God, namely, being, and therefore the objection based on the principle of identity remains unsolved.[271]
Fourth Article: Whether There Are In God Only Four Real Relations
State of the question. Besides paternity, filiation, active and passive spiration, why do we not admit the real relations of equality and similitude? Scotus admitted these other relations. It appears, however, that there are only three real relations just as there are only three divine persons, for the persons are constituted by subsisting relations.
Reply. St. Thomas replied that there are four real relations in God, and this is the common opinion of theologians in opposition to Scotus and the Scotists.
The proof in the body of the article is the following.
Real relations are founded either on quantity, which is not found in God, or on action and passion, and in God there are only two actions ad intra, intellection and love, from which the two processions derive.[272] But each procession is the basis for two relations, one of which is that of the proceeding from the principle and the other the principle itself. Therefore there are in God only four real relations: paternity, filiation, and the two relations founded on the procession of love, called active spiration and the passive procession or spiration, which is rather quasi-passive.
St. Thomas says below: "Although there are four relations in God, one of these, active spiration, is not separate or distinct from the persons of the Father and the Son because it is not opposed to them."[273]
There are therefore not four persons but only three. The reason is always the same: in God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation. But there are only three relations opposed to each other, since active spiration is not opposed to paternity and filiation. Moreover, because of the identity of the principle, active spiration is numerically one and the same in the Father and the Son.[274] We must always return to this principle as to the center of the circle from which all the radii proceed. The repetition of this principle in these articles is not a mere routine repetition but it is frequent recourse to the source of that light which illuminates this entire treatise.
It should be noted that the relations of equality and similitude are not real relations; they are only mental relations. St. Thomas explains this below and the reason he gives is valid against Scotus, who held the opposite opinion.[275] Equality is predicated after the manner of quantity, and similitude after the manner of quality. But in God there is no quantity of the mass but only of virtue, which like quality is reduced to the divine essence and with which it is numerically one and the same. One thing cannot have a real reference or relation to itself. Nor is there in God a real relation of equality because of the relations, since one relation is not referred by another relation, otherwise there would be an infinite process.
Objection. The divine persons are truly and really equal; therefore the equality between them is a real relation.
Reply. I deny the consequence and the consequent. For a real relation it is not required that the equality be taken formally; equality taken fundamentally suffices, such as the unity of an infinite magnitude, which by reason of the divine essence is numerically one. Thus God is really the lord of all creatures without any real relation to them; we have here only the creative action upon which creatures really depend. In God therefore there are only four relations, and these are relations of origin based on the two processions.
Recapitulation Of Question Twenty-Eight
In the first article it was shown that consequent on the two processions there are real relations in God; consequent on the eternal generation are the relations of paternity and filiation, and consequent on the other procession are the relations of active and passive spiration.
In the second article we saw that the relations in God are not really distinct from the essence since the <esse in> of the relations, though it is accidental in creatures, is substantial in God because no accident is found in God.
In the third article we saw that the relations in God are really distinguished from each other because they are mutually opposed. The principle was formulated that in God all things are one and the same unless there is opposition of relation. In the first place the objection, that those things equal to a third are equal to each other, was solved. In the reply the major was distinguished by conceding the proposition when the two things are not more opposed to each other than to the third and denying it if there is such opposition. Thus several relations were found mutually opposed but not opposed to the essence.
In the fourth article the four relations were determined; one of them, active spiration, was not opposed to paternity or filiation. Thus there are three relations in mutual opposition.
As Del Prado points out: "The difference between Suarez and St. Thomas in their explanation of the mystery of the Trinity arises from a difference in their view of primary philosophy. The root is to be found in the fact that Suarez, in the Disputationes metaphysicae 1. does not admit, but rejects as absurd, the real composition of being and essence in creatures; 2. consequently in real created relations he does not distinguish between the <esse ad>, which is the essence or the nature of the relation, and the esse or being which is the actuality of the essence; 3. consequently the three real relations in God, according to Suarez, cannot be defended except as three beings, which he and his followers call relative beings but which are in fact absolute because in God being is the very nature or essence of God and belongs to the absolute predicaments; 4. and consequently these three beings imply three perfections which, like the three beings of the three relations, are in one person in such a way as not to be in another. We have, therefore, three beings and three perfections opposed to each other, and from this follow the difficulties already mentioned and many others."[276]
On the other hand, all these difficulties are removed if with St. Thomas we admit that the being of an accident (distinct from the essence) is its inesse, and that the <esse in> of the divine relations is not accidental but substantial and therefore one in the different relations and persons.

CHAPTER III: QUESTION 29 THE DIVINE PERSONS
IN the beginning we treat of the persons in common, then of the individual persons, and finally of the persons in comparison with the essence and each other. This is the content of the treatise.
Concerning the three persons in common there are four questions:
1. The meaning of the word "person."
2. The plurality of persons.
3. Their differences and similarities.
4. How they can be known by us.
The first question has four divisions: 1. the definition of person; 2. the comparison of person with essence and subsistence; here person is identified with the Greek <hypostasis>; 3. whether the word "person" is used with reference to God; 4. whether in God person signifies relation. The reply will be in the affirmative: person signifies a subsisting relation opposed and incommunicable to others. In the appendix we shall see what is to be said about the absolute subsistence common to the three persons.
In this question it will be made clear that the general idea of person is to be applied to God analogically, not metaphorically but properly, without any distinction or multiplication in the divine nature itself. A great deal of effort was required to make this point clear. In the third century the Latins, like Tertullian, spontaneously declared that there are three persons in God and one substance because the names Father and Son and Holy Ghost are personal. This statement, however, was the source of much difficulty for the Greeks, who used the words ousia and <hypostasis> promiscuously to designate essence, substance, and nature. On other occasions the term prosopon a translation of the Latin persona, designated the mask or theatrical costume which actors donned to impersonate famous personages, and this term was not considered definite enough to express the real distinction between the divine persons. At the time of Origen and St. Dionysius of Alexandria, however, the term <hypostasis> designated a divine person and ousia the divine nature. St. Athanasius also used these terms in this manner.
First Article: The Definition Of Person
State of the question. In this article inquiry is made for the definition of person, and the definition given by Boetius and commonly accepted is defended. St. Thomas, following the Aristotelian method, goes from the nominal definition to the real definition by a division of the genus of substance and by an inductive comparison of the thing to be defined with similar and dissimilar things. These are the principal rules to be followed in the search for a real definition as proposed in the Posterior Analytics.[277]
In the beginning St. Thomas mentions three difficulties against the Boethian definition, "I person is an individual substance with a rational nature."
1. No individual is defined; for example, Socrates is not defined because a definition expresses an essence that is common to many individuals. The reply will be: If this individual is not definable, individuality can be defined, and individuality pertains to a person.
2. It appears that the adjective "individual" is superfluous because the term "substance" stands for first substance which, for Aristotle, is the individual substance.
3. The third and fourth difficulties are of minor importance. The fifth difficulty is that a separated soul is an individual substance with a rational nature and is not a person.
The reply of St. Thomas affirms that Boetius' definition is acceptable for these reasons:
1. Because of Boetius' authority and because the definition has been accepted generally by theologians.
2. The acceptability of the definition can be rationally explained. St. Thomas assumes that the nominal definition of "person," although it is etymologically derived from impersonation or representation of another's features or gestures, nevertheless designates some individual rational being distinct from others, for example, Socrates, Plato, anyone who is able to say, "I am," or "I act," is called a person. So also all peoples in their grammar commonly distinguish between the first, second, and third person: I, you, he. The ancient jurists added that a person is distinguished from things inasmuch as the person is of his own right, and at one time they taught that in the legal sphere a slave was not a person because he was not of his own right. At the inception of this philosophical inquiry it is sufficient to have a general idea of person: an individual rational being, a singular rational being distinct from others; in French un particulier, in Italian, un tale. Briefly a person is a free and intelligent subject. The nominal definition, which tells what the term signifies, contains intimations of the real definition, which tells what the thing really is.
The real definition is not demonstrated; it is itself the foundation of the demonstration of the properties of the thing defined. The real definition is methodically sought out by a division of the genus and by inductive comparison. In going from the nominal to the real definition of a person, therefore, we must consider the supreme genus of the thing to be defined and this genus must be correctly divided. The article should be read carefully.
The genus of the thing to be defined is substance. On this point St. Thomas notes at the beginning of the body of the article that in the genus of substance the individual is a special instance. Substance itself is individuated by itself whereas accidents are individuated by the subject in which they are. Hence individual substances have some special name; they are called hypostases or first substances or supposita, that is, the first subject of attribution of those things belonging to these substances. For example, this tree is a suppositum as is this dog. Aristotle calls individuals first substances (as Peter, Socrates); second substances are the genera and species, as man, animal, living being. Therefore this distinction is a division into individual and universal substances. Aristotle said that second substances are predicated of first substances as of subjects not because they inhere like accidents but because they express the nature of this particular subject.[278]
Aristotle said that individuals subsist per se and that genera and species do not subsist except in individuals. The suppositum is that which exists separately and acts per se. First substance therefore is the same as the suppositum or the subject of attribution of nature, existence, and accidents, for example, this tree and this dog. Thus the person that we are to define is compared with things dissimilar to it, namely, with accidents, and with genus and species.
In the second part of the body of the article, St. Thomas compares person with things similar to it, that is, with other supposita. "The particular and the individual in rational substances is found to have a special and more perfect mode because it has dominion over its acts and acts per se independently. Therefore the individual substance with a rational nature bears a special name, person. A person is defined, then, as an individual substance with a rational nature.
"This real definition expresses that reality which is vaguely contained in the nominal definition, namely, a rational being, individual and distinct from others, such as Socrates, Plato, I, you, and he."
Confirmation. The validity of this definition is confirmed as we solve the objections.
1. This individual or this person, Socrates, is indeed not defined, but the individuality and the person abstractly considered are defined.
2. In Boetius' definition the adjective "individual" is not superfluous since it signifies that we are dealing with first substance, with the individual or suppositum; in other words, with the real subject which cannot be attributed to another subject.
3. The term "individual" is used to designate that mode of existence which belongs to particular substances, which alone are able to subsist separately per se. Hence "individual" means as much as incommunicable to another suppositum; the person of Peter cannot be predicated of another subject or attributed to another subject.
4. In this definition nature signifies essence.
5. A separated soul is not called a person because it is a part of a human species, whereas "person" signifies the complete whole existing separately, for example, Peter and not his soul, which is attributed to him. Having set up the definition of person, we must now examine the nature of personality.
The Nature Of Personality
Methodically we go from the nominal definition of personality to its real definition. Here again we observe the laws for establishing a definition laid down by Aristotle and St. Thomas.[279] We begin with the nominal definition not only of person but of personality itself. According to the common sense of men, personality is that by which some subject is a person, just as existence is that by which some subject exists. This may appear to be somewhat ingenuous, yet we have an intimation here that personality, whatever certain writers may say, is not formally constituted by existence.[280] Philosophically the transition to the real definition is made by comparative induction, by comparing this personality which we wish to define with similar and dissimilar things and by correctly dividing the genus of substance to which personality belongs.
Various opinions of Scholastics, who are divided into those who admit or do not admit the real distinction between what a thing is and its being, and between the created essence and being
Denying this distinction, Scotus said that personality is something negative, namely, the negation of the hypostatic union in an individual nature such as Socrates or Peter.[281] Suarez, likewise rejecting this real distinction between created essence and being, said that personality is a substantial mode presupposing the existence of an individual nature and rendering it incommunicable.[282]
Among those who with St. Thomas admit the real distinction we find three opinions.
Cajetan and many other Thomists say that personality is that by which an individual nature becomes immediately capable of existing separately per se. Others with Capreolus say somewhat less explicitly that personality is the individual nature under the aspect of its being.[283] Lastly, Cardinal Billot reduces personality to the being that actuates an individual nature.[284]
Many moderns abandon the ontological approach to this question and consider it from the psychological and moral viewpoint. They declare that personality is constituted either by the consciousness of oneself or by liberty. Consciousness and liberty, however, are only manifestations of the personality; the subject that is conscious of itself must first be constituted as a subject capable of saying. So also the free subject is indeed morally of its own right by liberty, but it also must first be ontologically constituted as I, you, or he.
The true idea of personality. We are looking for the real ontological definition of personality within the genus of substance, because a person is an intelligent and free substance or subject. We proceed progressively by dividing the genus of substance by affirmation and negation and by comparing the personality which we want to define with similar and dissimilar things.
1. Personality, or that by which anything is a person, is not something negative; it is positive just as the person of which it is the formal constituent. If the dependence of an accident is something positive, a fortiori the independence of the subject or the person is positive, that is, that by reason of which the person exists separately per se. Moreover, since the personalities of Socrates and Peter belong to the natural order, they cannot be defined by a denial of the hypostatic union, which is something essentially supernatural and unique. If this were true, it would follow that the personality could not be known naturally.
2. Personality, as something positive, must be something substantial and not accidental because the person is a substance. Hence personality in the proper sense cannot be constituted by consciousness or liberty. Thus personality is compared with dissimilar things and with accidents; we now compare it with similar and related things in the genus of substance.
3. Personality is something substantial but it is not the nature of substance itself, nor this particular nature, but it is this individual human nature, since nature even as individuated is attributed to the person as an essential part. St. Thomas says: "The suppositum signifies the whole which has nature as a formal part that perfects it."[285] We do not say, "Peter is his own nature," because the whole is not the part; it is greater than the part and contains other things besides.
Nor is personality the nature itself under the aspect of being, since the individual nature, Peter for example, is not that which exists but that by which it is a man. That which exists is Peter himself, the person of Peter. We are now asking for that by which something is what it is. Personality therefore is not the individual nature under the aspect of being; otherwise, since there are two natures in Christ, Christ would have two persons and two personalities.
4. Nor is personality Peter's existence because existence is attributed to Peter as a constituted person after the manner of a contingent predicate. Indeed existence is a contingent predicate of every person that has been created or can be created, for no human or angelic person is its own being. Therefore, as St. Thomas says, "In every creature there is a difference between that which is and its being."[286] He also says: "Being follows nature not as something that possesses being but as that by which a thing is; but it follows the person as something that has being."[287] If, therefore, being follows the person constituted as a person, it does not formally constitute the person.
If being formally constituted the created person, the real distinction between the created person and being would be destroyed, and it would no longer be true to say that Peter is not his own being. In other words, that which is not its own being is really distinct from its being, distinct apart from the consideration of our minds. But the person of Peter, as well as his personality which formally constitutes his person, is not Peter's being. Therefore Peter's person and his personality are really distinguished from his being. We shall see this all most clearly in heaven when we see God, who alone is His own being and who alone can say, "I am who am."
5. Personality, therefore, is something positive and substantial, determining an individual nature of substance so that it will be immediately capable of existing separately per se. More briefly, it is that by which a rational subject is what it is. Existence, however, is a contingent predicate of the subject and its ultimate actuality and therefore existence presupposes the personality, which cannot be, as Suarez would have it, a substantial mode following on existence. Personality is, as it were, the terminal point where two lines meet, the line of essence and the line of existence. Properly it is that by which an intelligent subject is what it is. This ontological personality is the foundation of the psychological and moral personality or of the consciousness of self and dominion of self.
This real definition explicitly enunciates what is vaguely contained in the accepted nominal definition: personality is that by which the intelligent subject is a person just as existence is that by which a subject exists. Therefore personality differs from the essence and from the existence which it brings together.
In order to show that the quid rei is confusedly contained in the quid nominis and that the real definition of personality should preserve what is vaguely contained in the nominal definition, Cajetan says: "The word 'person' and similarly the demonstrative personal pronouns like 'I,' 'you,' and 'he,' all formally signify the substance and not a negation or an accident or something extraneous. If we all admit this, why, when scrutinizing the quid rei, that is, when going from the nominal to the real definition, do we depart from the common admission?"[288] Why do we depart from the common sense of mankind, from natural reason, and forget the nominal definition of the person?
It is not surprising, then, that this opinion is accepted by a great many theologians, by Ferrariensis, John of St. Thomas, the Salmanticenses, Goudin, Gonet, Billuart, Zigliara, Del Prado, Sanseverino, Cardinal Mercier, Cardinal Lorenzelli, Cardinal Lepicier, Hugon, Gredt, Szabo, Maritain, and many others.[289]
Certain texts of Capreolus are quoted to show that the person is the nature under the aspect of being.[290] These texts, however, are not really opposed to Cajetan's stand because for Capreolus personality is properly that by which the individual rational nature becomes immediately capable of existence and it is clear that what exists is not the nature of Peter but his person, that is, Peter himself. In other words, personality is that by which the intelligent and free subject is constituted as a subject possessing its own nature, faculties, existence, operations, consciousness, and the actual free dominion over itself.
Finally this theory, accepted by many theologians, is based not only on the texts of St. Thomas cited above but on many others, such as, "The form designated by the word 'person' is not the essence or the nature but the personality."[291] For St. Thomas, therefore, personality is a kind of form or formality or modality of the substantial order. "The name person is imposed by the form of personality which gives the reason for the subsistence of such a nature."[292] Accordingly personality is that by which the rational subject has the right to being separately per se. Thus personality is a substantial mode, antecedent to being, not subsequent to being, because being is the ultimate actuality of a thing or of the subject.
Moreover, St. Thomas taught: "(In Christ) if the human nature had not been assumed by the divine person, the human nature would have had its own personality, and to that extent the divine person is said to have consumed the human nature, although this is not the proper expression, because the divine person by its union impeded the human nature from having its own personality."[293] Thus, according to St. Thomas, personality is distinguished from the individual nature and also from existence because "being follows the person as something that possesses being," and therefore being does not constitute the person.[294] Lastly he says, "The three (divine) persons have but one being," and therefore "the personality is not the same as the being since there are in God three personalities and one being";[295] and "being is not by reason of the suppositum," for a created suppositum is its own being.[296]
We conclude that a person is a free and intelligent subject and that it is predicated analogically of men and angels, and of the divine persons, and that personality is that by which this subject is what it is, namely, that which determines an individual nature to be immediately capable of existing separately per se.[297]
Corollaries
1. Personality excludes a threefold communicability. 1. It formally excludes the communicability of nature to another suppositum because the nature already exists in a suppositum. 2. By presupposition and materially it excludes the communicability of the universal to the individual because the person is an individual itself and has an individuated nature. This incommunicability properly pertains to the individuation of nature which takes place in us and in corporeal beings by matter determined by quantity inasmuch as a specific form as received in this matter is no longer communicable.[298] 3. Personality excludes the communicability of the part to the whole because the person is a complete substance.[299] Thus a separated soul is not a person but a principal part of a person. Thus we do not say, "Peter is now in heaven," but "the soul of Peter." On the other hand we say, "After the Ascension, Jesus is in heaven; and after the Assumption, the Blessed Virgin is in heaven and not only her soul." The humanity of Christ is not a person for, while it is individuated and singular, it is not a suppositum or a subject, but it pertains to the suppositum of the incarnate Word.
2. In this way we explain that there is but one person in Christ, that is, one intelligent and free subject, although He has two intellects and two wills. So also we see how in God there are three persons and one nature and one being. We say this because there are three free and intelligent subjects although they have the same nature, the same essential intellect, the same liberty, and the same essential love. Contradiction is avoided by the fact that the three divine persons are relative and that they are opposed to each other, as we shall see below.
3. Personality is quite different from that individuation whose principle is matter determined by quantity. Individuation properly excludes the communicability of the universal to the inferior and it takes place through something lower than the universal, that is, by the matter in which the form is received so that the received form is no longer subject to participation.[300]
On the other hand, personality properly and formally excludes the communicability of nature to another subject or suppositum because the nature is terminated and possessed by one subject existing separately per se, for example, by Peter, and now Peter's human nature cannot be attributed to Paul. St. Thomas says: "Person signifies that which is most perfect in all nature, namely, something subsistent (existing separately per se) in rational nature," whereas our individuation derives from something lower than ourselves, namely, matter.[301]
In Christ, although individuation as in us is derived from matter, the personality is uncreated and differs infinitely from matter. The term "individual" designates that which is inferior in man, that which is subordinate to the species, to society, and to the country; person designates that which is superior in man, that by reason of which man is ordered directly to God Himself above society. Thus society, to which the individual is subordinate, is itself ordered to the full perfection of the human person, as against statism, which denies the higher rights of the human person. We thus arrive not only at a concept which is definite and distinct but at a vital concept of the person immediately subject to God loved above all things. Such is the definition of person. For a simple understanding of the dogma it is sufficient to say that the person is a free and intelligent subject and is predicated analogically of man, the angels, and the three divine persons, for each of these is a free and intelligent subject.[302]
Second Article: Whether Person Is The Same As Hypostasis, Subsistence, And Essence
State of the question. In this article we establish the equivalence of the Latin term persona with the Greek term <hypostasis>. St. Thomas, as is clear from his replies to the second and third difficulties, realized the difficulties arising on this point between the Greeks and Latins. The Greeks refused to accept the term "person" because for them it signified the mask which actors in the theater wore to represent famous personages; and since an actor successively wore masks to impersonate different heroes, they sensed the danger of Sabellianism, according to which the divine persons are merely different aspects of God acting ad extra.
On the other hand, the Latins rejected the term "<hypostasis>" because it often designated substance and thus implied the danger of Arianism, which taught that there were in God three substances, some of which were subordinate substances.
These difficulties were eliminated by St. Basil's clear distinction between the meaning of the terms ousia and <hypostasis>. Ousia, he said, signifies the substance which is numerically common to the three persons; <hypostasis> signifies that which is individual and real so that there is a real distinction between the persons. Then the Greek formula of three hypostases was accepted as equivalent to the Latin of three persons. Nevertheless the Greek formula could not be expressed in the Latin translation because the terms "subsistence" and "suppositum" were not yet in use.
These terms, the correlative abstract and concrete forms, did not exist in the fourth century; St. Hilary and St. Augustine did not know them. The term "subsistence" was invented by Rufinus about 400.[303] Rufinus derived the term "subsistence" from subsistere just as "substance" came from substare. This was logical enough because the Latins had said that the divine persons subsist. The word "<hypostasis>" was finally accepted by the Latins, and the union of the two natures in Christ was even called the hypostatic union.[304]
Boethius, writing at the beginning of the sixth century, did not appreciate Rufinus, happy discovery and taught that if the Church would permit it, absolutely speaking we could say that there were three substances in God. In this present article, St. Thomas strove to place a favorable interpretation on Boethius' words, and out of this came the complexity of this article. Thus in explaining Boethius' words, in his reply to the second difficulty, he says: "We say that in God there are three persons and subsistences as the Greeks say there are three hypostases. But since the term 'substance' which in its proper significance corresponds to '<hypostasis>' is used equivocally by us, sometimes meaning essence and sometimes <hypostasis>, the Latins in order to avoid any error preferred to translate '<hypostasis>' by the term 'subsistence', rather than the term 'substance.'" This was happily done by Rufinus.
But Boethius, misunderstanding the matter, distinguished differently between subsistere and substare when he said that substare referred to accidents and therefore only individuals were substances with respect to their accidents, whereas only genus and species, which do not have accidents, could be said to subsist. Here was Boethius, principal error: he inverted Rufinus, formulas and said that in God there were three substances and one subsistence (or substantial nature).
Rufinus, however, had said that in God there were three subsistences and one substance. Thus Boethius gave a false meaning to the word "subsistence" invented by Rufinus. Rusticus, a deacon of the Roman Church, restated the true meaning of the word. From that time "<hypostasis>" has been translated by "subsistence" and later by "suppositum" for the concrete form. Indeed the concrete correlative of subsistentia is not subsistere but suppositum just as the concrete correlative of "personality" is "person."
The complexity of this present article can be attributed to these fluctuating translations and especially to Boethius, unfortunate interference. The first two difficulties proposed at the beginning of the article are therefore not objections, because after explanations are made they conclude as does the article itself. The two arguments in the sed contra are objections taken from Boethius, who misunderstood the meaning of "<hypostasis>."
Reply. In spite of these objections the conclusion of the article is clear: in the genus of rational substances the term "person" signifies what these three terms, <hypostasis>, substance, things in nature (res naturae) signify in the whole genus of substances, namely, the suppositum or the first subject of attribution. We recall that substance is said to be twofold: second substance, or ousia, and first substance, which has four names: suppositum, subsistence, <hypostasis>, and thing in nature.
The first name, "uppositum," signifies the logical relation of the subject of attribution to the predicate; the three others signify the thing itself and not the logical relation. Thus "subsistence," taken concretely, signifies the first substance as existing separately per se; "thing in nature" signifies first substance as it is placed under some common nature; and <hypostasis> as it is placed under accidents. It should be noted that <hypostasis> in the concrete is the same as first substance, and subsistence is now understood in the abstract and corresponds to personality and not to person.
The following should be kept clearly in mind: The concrete correlative of subsistence is the suppositum as personality corresponds to person. Certain authors, attempting to identify subsistence with the existence of substance, say that the concrete correlative of subsistence is to subsist (subsistere), just as to exist is the correlative to existence. This is erroneous because the suppositum, of which subsisting and existing are predicated as contingent predicates, ought to have in itself that by which it is a suppositum, and this is subsistence, or if it is a rational being, personality. Clearly the concrete correlative of personality is not "to subsist" but the person. Actually, the abstract correlative of "to subsist" is the existence of the substance, just as the existence of the accident corresponds to inhering itself.[305]
Briefly this article may be reduced to this: In the genus of rational substances person designates the same as <hypostasis> or suppositum in the whole genus of substances, namely, that which exists separately per se.
St. Thomas' replies to the second, fourth, and fifth difficulties are favorable interpretations of certain texts of Boethius, who wrote rather inaccurately on this question.
Third Article: Whether The Term Person Can Be Applied To God
The reply is in the affirmative as pertaining to faith as is clear from the Athanasian Creed: "For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Ghost."[306]
The body of the article gives the theological argument, which may be presented as follows. Every perfection is to be attributed to God. But "person" signifies what is most perfect in all of nature, namely, a free and intelligent subject, or a subsisting being with a rational nature. Therefore it is proper to speak of God as a person, and this in the most excellent manner. God is subsisting being itself with an intellectual nature and, therefore, whatever pertains to the person belongs to Him formally and eminently. For this reason theistic philosophers speak of a personal God in opposition to the pantheists, who say that God is immanent in the universe in which He operates not freely but necessarily.
In his reply, St. Thomas states that God is the highest and most intelligent being per se. To the second difficulty he replies that the term "person" in its formal being most properly belongs to God since the dignity of the divine nature exceeds every dignity. His third reply shows he understood the difficulty that arose between the Greeks and the Latins. In his reply to the fourth objection, he says: "Individual being cannot belong to God so far as matter is the principle of individuation but only so far as individual being denotes incommunicability." This was also noted by Richard of St. Victor. Thus the person of the Father is incommunicable to the Son; thus also it is explained that the humanity of Christ, which is individuated by matter, is not a person because it is communicated to the suppositum of the divine Word, in which it exists.
From this, however, a problem arises. If the person denotes incommunicability in the divine nature, how can the Father communicate His nature to the Son? This problem will be solved in the following articles.
Fourth Article: Whether In God The Term Person Signifies Relation
State of the question. In this question this article is of major importance. In the foregoing article we saw that in God, who is the most simple being, there can be no plurality except that of real relations mutually opposed. According to revelation, however, there are several persons in God. We must show, therefore, that a divine person can be constituted by a real divine relation. All the difficulties mentioned at the beginning of the article are reduced to this: person signifies something absolute and not relative. This becomes evident from the following considerations. 1. Person is predicated with reference to itself and not to another; 2. in God person is not really distinguished from the essence; 3. person is defined as an individual substance with a rational nature; 4. in men and angels person signifies something absolute and, if it signifies relation in God, it would be used equivocally of God and of men and angels.
Reply. The divine person signifies relation as subsisting. Boethius says," very name referring to persons signifies a relation." Thus Father signifies the relation to the Son, Son signifies the relation to the Father, and Holy Ghost signifies the relation to the Spirators. "By the relative names of the persons the Father is referred to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Ghost to both, for while we speak of the three persons relatively we believe in only one nature or substance... . For that which is the Father is not with reference to Himself but to the Son,... but, on the other hand, when we say God, this is said without reference to another."[307] "In the relation of the persons we discern number... . In this number alone do the persons indicate that they are referred to each other."[308] "In God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation."[309]
In the body of the article St. Thomas presents three opinions and then offers the most acceptable opinion.
1. The opinion of the Master of the Sentences: even in God the term "person" in the singular may be taken to mean something absolute, but in the plural it is taken to mean something relative, contrary to the teaching of the heretics, especially the Arians, who said that the three persons are subordinate substances. St. Thomas replied that if the term "person" even in God in the singular signifies something absolute, we are not sufficiently removed from the error of the Arians. By affirming the plurality of persons we might be multiplying something absolute.
2. The term "person" in God signifies essence directly and relation indirectly, because, as it is said, the person is said to be one per se. This, however, is false etymology. This opinion is corrected by the following.
3. The term "person" in God signifies relation directly and essence indirectly. This opinion, St. Thomas remarks, approaches more closely to the truth.
Then St. Thomas offers proof for his own opinion: the divine person signifies relation as subsisting.
Person in general signifies an individual (or distinct) substance with an intellectual nature, or a <hypostasis> distinct from others. But in God there are no real distinctions except according to the relations of origin, which are subsisting.[310] Therefore in God person signifies a distinct relation as subsisting.
This is to say, in general there are two things in the person: the distinction by incommunicability (I, you, he) and subsistence in the intellectual nature. But these two things are not found in God except in the real relations mutually opposed and thus really distinct, whose <esse in> is substantial and entirely the same as subsisting being itself.
More briefly we may say that person in any nature means a subsisting being distinct from others. But in God there is no distinction except according to the real relations, which are subsisting. Therefore in God person signifies relation not as relation but as subsisting. In this way we preserve the analogy of person in God, namely, a subsisting being distinct from others. In another place St. Thomas says: "The signified relation is included indirectly in the meaning of divine person, which is nothing else than a subsisting being in the divine essence distinct by relation,"[311] or a subsistence distinct by relation in the divine nature.
Difficulty. The person renders a nature incommunicable to another suppositum. But the subsisting relation of paternity does not render the divine nature incommunicable. Therefore this subsisting relation of paternity does not constitute a person.
Reply. I distinguish the major: an absolute person renders a finite nature incommunicable, I concede; a relative person renders a divine nature incommunicable, this I subdistinguish: as of itself, I concede; in other respects, I deny. Thus the divine nature as terminated by paternity is incommunicable and in God there is only one Father and the Father alone enunciates. In an equilateral triangle the first angle constructed renders the surface incommunicable as of itself only, but this surface is communicated to the other opposite angles.
This reply will appear less clear than the objection because the objection arises from our inferior mode of knowledge, whereas the reply is taken from the height of the ineffable mystery and therefore requires profound meditation and mature thought. It is not necessary for theology to show that all the objections made against the mysteries are evidently false; it is sufficient to show that they are not necessary and cogent, in the words of St. Thomas.[312]
At the end of the body of the article several corollaries are presented.
First corollary. As the Deity is God, so the divine paternity is God the Father.[313] In God there is nothing except the Deity for there are no individuating notes from matter, no accidents, nor a being distinct from essence. Hence God and Deity are the same and the Father and the paternity are the same. On the other hand, Socrates is not his humanity, which is only an essential part; the whole is not the part, but it is greater than its part.
It is not perfectly true to say that Michael is his own Michaelity because, although the Michaelity is individuated of itself and not by matter, yet there are in Michael accidents and being besides his essence.
Second corollary. In God person signifies relation directly as subsisting and essence indirectly.
Third corollary. Inasmuch as the divine essence is subsisting per se, it is signified directly by the term person, and relation as relation, not as subsisting, is signified indirectly.
Reply to the first objection. The term "person" even in God refers to Himself inasmuch as it signifies relation, not as relation, but as subsisting; for example, the Father as subsisting refers to Himself although as a relation He refers to the Son.
Reply to the third objection. In our understanding of an individual substance, that is, a distinct and incommunicable substance, we understand a relation in God, as was said in the body of the article.
Reply to the fourth objection. In God the analogy of person is preserved, for it is something subsisting and distinct from others (a free and intelligent subject) which is proportionally predicated of the divine persons, angelic and human persons. But the three divine persons understand by the same essential intellection and they love by the same essential love.
First doubt. Are the divine persons constituted only by the subsisting relations opposed to each other or also by everything that belongs to them?
Against Praepositivus and Gregory of Rimini, the Thomists reply that the divine persons are constituted as persons by the fact that they are distinguished from each other. But they are distinguished from each other by nothing except the opposite subsisting relations, otherwise they would differ by essence and in essence. It has been defined, however, that they are the same in essence. Hence the Council of the Lateran declared: "The Most Holy Trinity is individual according to the common essence and separate according to the personal properties."[314] The Council of Florence says: "The divine persons differ by their properties."[315]
Confirmation. What is common to the three persons cannot constitute a special person distinct from the others. But all things that are absolute in God are common to the three persons.
Second doubt. Are the divine persons constituted by the active and passive origins, as St. Bonaventure thought, or according to the opinion attributed to him?
The reply is in the negative, for by its essential concept person denotes a fixed and permanent being since it is the ultimate terminus of nature, rendering it incommunicable and subsisting. But origin is essentially conceived as becoming; active origin is conceived as the influx and emanation from a principle, and passive origin is conceived as the path or tendency to a terminus. Active origin presupposes the person from which it issues, and passive generation is conceived as something supposed prior to the constitution of the person of the Son, according to our manner of thought.[316]
Third doubt. Is the person of the Father constituted by innascibility, as Vasquez thought?
The reply is in the negative, because innascibility taken formally is merely the negation of a principle and thus cannot constitute the person of the Father, which, since it is real, must be constituted by something real and positive. If, however, innascibility is taken fundamentally, the basis implied is either something absolute, and then it cannot constitute a particular person, or it is something relative, and then it can be nothing else than the relation of paternity. Vasquez had proposed this opinion to solve the following difficulty.
The Special Difficulty In The Latin's Concept
In this present article we can examine a particular difficulty arising from the concept of the Latin theologians. The problem is as follows: The relation which follows upon active generation cannot constitute the person who begets. But the relation of paternity follows upon active generation, for it is founded on it. Therefore this relation of paternity cannot constitute the person of the begetting Father. The person must first exist before it begets, because operation follows being.
This objection is somewhat clearer than the reply because the difficulty arises from our imperfect manner of thinking, whereas the reply must come from the heights of this ineffable mystery.
In examining this difficulty, St. Thomas says: "The special property of the Father, His paternity, can be considered in two ways. First, as it is a relation and as such according to our understanding it presupposes the notional act of generation because the relation as such is founded on the act. Secondly, as it constitutes the person, and as such it is understood as prior to the notional act just as a person in act is understood as prior to the action."[317]
This is to say that the relation, of paternity for example, as a relation actually referring to its terminus does indeed presuppose active generation and is founded on it, just as the relation of filiation is founded on passive generation. But the active generation itself presupposes the begetting person and its personal property, that is, paternity, as it constitutes the person of the Father. There is here no contradiction because this relation of paternity is not considered under the same aspect, but first as a relation actively looking toward the terminus and founded on active generation, and secondly as the proximate principle (principium quo) of active generation or as constituting the begetting person.
As in the equilateral triangle the first angle constructed, while it is alone, is itself a geometric figure, that is, an angle, but it does not yet refer to the other two angles not yet constructed.
In explaining St. Thomas' teaching, Thomists have offered two replies to this objection. Some Thomists reply by distinguishing the major: the relation of paternity, considered as referring to something, follows generation; but considered as in something, it precedes generation. But the difficulty remains since the <esse in> is something common to the divine relations and the three persons and therefore it cannot constitute a particular person as distinct from the others and as incommunicable. The <esse in> does not confer incommunicability; only the <esse ad> does this.
Other Thomists (Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, and Billuart) reply as follows to this important difficulty. Even with regard to the <esse ad> the relation of paternity as that by which the divine essence is modified in actu signato precedes the active generation, although it follows it with regard to the <esse ad> in the actual exercise (in actu exercito), that is, in the actual exercise of that respect after the manner of the actual tendency and attainment of the terminus. Hence these Thomists say that the relation of paternity, as that by which the divine essence is modified in actu signato, constitutes the person of the Father; and the relation of paternity as that which in the exercise of the act (in actu exercito) is founded on active generation supposes the person of the Father as already constituted. Thus the doctrine of St. Thomas is maintained: the persons are constituted by the relations as subsisting and not as relations. And thus the notional act of active generation has its origin in the person of the Father as subsisting and in the relation itself as really incommunicable.
I insist. Relative things are the same in nature and in knowledge. But the Father, as has been said, is understood before generation. Therefore the Son also is understood before generation, which is absurd.
Reply. I distinguish the major: relative things are the same in nature and knowledge in actu exercito, I concede; in actu signato, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: the Father is understood before generation in actu signato as a subsisting person, I concede; in actu exercito with regard to the Son, this I deny.
In other words, the ad as such denotes the respect to another either by the opposition of the terminus or by the attainment of the terminus. In the relation of opposition itself we may consider either the opposition between two persons or the exercised relation of one to another; for example, I refer to you, but I am distinct from you. So the Father refers to the Son, but the Father is not the Son.
I insist. The first thing in the <esse ad> is to refer in act to the terminus rather than being a relative incommunicable entity. Therefore the difficulty remains.
Reply. I deny the antecedent. Just as the first thing is for whiteness to be constituted in itself as that by which something is made white before the wall is whitened (ut quod), for the form precedes its formal effect not by the priority of time but of causality.
I insist. The opposition in a relation arises from the reference, since it is the opposition of one relative thing to the correlative. Therefore the reference in act is prior to the opposition to the terminus. And the difficulty remains.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: the exercised opposition in the relation arises from the exercised reference (in actu exercito), I concede; the entitative opposition arises from the reference in actu exercito, this I deny. The entitative opposition arises in the actu signato. Similarly, whiteness in actu signato is opposed to blackness in actu signato, and whiteness as actually existing in a wall actively opposes blackness existing in another wall. In a word, the form precedes its formal effect not in time but by nature.
The following analogies illustrate this point. Sanctifying grace is thought of first as it is in itself before we think of it as driving out sin and making the soul pleasing to God. The rational soul is thought of first in itself as a nature before we think of it as conferring a specific being and life on the body. Similarly a relation first affects the subject as that by which (ut quo) and later it refers exercite to the terminus, for first a thing must be constituted in itself before it tends toward something else. We cannot conceive of it as attaining its terminus before it is in itself.
In human generation, in that indivisible instant in which the rational soul is created and united to the body, the ultimate disposition of the body in preparation for the soul precedes the creation of the soul in the genus of material or dispositive causality; but it follows the creation of the soul (as a property of the soul) in the genus of formal, efficient, and final causality. For it is the rational soul itself which in this instant of time gives to the body not the penultimate but the ultimate disposition to itself; and this disposition is then a property of the soul. When this property of the soul in its body is destroyed by death, the soul is separated from the body. Here there is no contradiction because the ultimate disposition precedes and follows the form but not in the same genus of causality. Thus the causes are causes of one another but in different classes and thus there is no vicious circle.
In the same way the phantasm precedes the idea in the line of material causes, but the phantasm completely assumed to express sensibly an idea does not exist prior to the idea. When a man succeeds in discovering a new idea, in the same moment he often discovers the appropriate phantasm for the sensible expression of that idea.
So also the motion of sensibility precedes and follows volition under a twofold aspect. Again, at the end of a period of deliberation the final practical judgment precedes the free choice, which it influenced, but at the same time it is the free choice which made the practical judgment final by accepting it.
In the contract of marriage the consent of the man is expressed in a word, but that word has no effect unless it is accepted by the woman. After the woman accepts, the marriage is definitively ratified, but not before. Here the consent of the man precedes as consent and, although it is pronounced relatively to the woman, it does not actively affect the consent of the woman unless later the woman consents and expresses that consent. These analogies are to some extent explicative of the matter.
We return to St. Thomas, teaching. The divine person is constituted by the relation as subsisting and not as a relation. Thus the generation of the Son terminates in the person of the Son but not as that which is the object of the relation. For, as the philosophers say, movement or generation does not terminate per se and directly in a relation. In God, therefore, generation terminates in the person of the Son as subsisting, or in the relation of filiation as it is subsisting being, but not as a relation. Such was St. Thomas, distinction which without too much complication was able to solve this difficulty as much as it could be solved by men.
Fourth doubt. Whether in God, prior to the consideration of relations and persons, there is some absolute subsistence besides the three relative subsistencies.
Theologians are not agreed. The Thomists commonly reply in the affirmative; many other theologians reply in the negative. Durandus taught that an absolute subsistence was sufficient without relative subsistences; but this is rejected by most theologians.
The common opinion of Thomists is that God, considered in Himself, prior to the persons and relations, is subsisting, that He is therefore not only the Deity but also God, subsisting being itself, and for that reason He is understood as having intellect, will, and the power to create ad extra. But God is not said to be subsisting with regard to Himself by a relative subsistence. Therefore He subsists by an absolute subsistence.
Confirmation. Subsistence implies the highest perfection, namely, the most perfect manner of being. But God, prior to our consideration of the persons, possesses every perfection because He is pure act, existing because of Himself. Therefore He derives no perfection from the relations, because if paternity would be a new perfection that perfection would be lacking in the Son and thus the Son would not be God.
Confirmation. Antecedently to the consideration of the persons, God possesses being or the existence of that which is. But such existence presupposes subsistence or that by which something is what it is. In other words, prior to the consideration of the persons God is that which is, indeed He is subsisting being itself. This seems to be the opinion of St. Thomas: "The divine nature exists having in itself subsistence apart from any consideration of the distinction of the persons."[318] On other occasions St. Thomas said, "In God there are many subsisting beings if we consider the relations, but only one subsisting being if we consider the essence."[319] This opinion seems to follow upon the concept of the Latins, who begin, not with the three persons, but with the divine nature.
First objection. If we place an absolute subsistence in God we have a quaternity.
Reply. This I deny because this absolute subsistence confers the perseity of independence from any other sustaining being but not the perseity of incommunicability. Thus there are not four persons. It is certain that, considered in Himself, God is singular, since He is not a universal. In Him, God and the Deity are one. From revelation it is certain that in itself the divine nature is communicable by the Father to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
Second objection. According to the councils and the Fathers subsistence is the same as <hypostasis>. But no theologian admits the existence of an absolute <hypostasis>.
Reply. The councils and the Fathers did not deal with this scholastic question and, when they spoke of the divine persons, they did indeed say that subsistence is the same as the <hypostasis> but they did not intend to exclude the absolute subsistence of which we are now speaking.
Third objection. In order that the divine nature subsist independently and at the same time be incommunicable the personalities or relative subsistences are sufficient. For if in God there were one personality, this would be able to confer both kinds of perseity, of independence and incommunicability. Why cannot this perseity be conferred by three persons?
Reply. If in God there were one personality, this would be an absolute perfection and thus it would confer both the perseity of independence and incommunicability. This one personality would really be that absolute subsistence of which we are speaking and in addition it would confer incommunicability. But such is not the case because it has been revealed that in God there are three persons. Besides it would be incongruous that this most perfect manner of existence in God would depend on the relations which do not add any new perfection.
I insist. In rational creatures personality confers both the perseity of independence and incommunicability. Therefore it should all the more do so in God.
Reply. In rational creatures personality is an absolute subsistence, not relative as in God. In God perfections are derived only from the essence; incommunicability comes only from the relations.
Final objection. That which derives its existence from another does not exist in itself. But the divine nature, prior to the relations or persons, seeks its existence in them. Therefore it does not exist in itself.
Reply. I distinguish the major: that which seeks its existence in another because of its own indigence, I concede; that which seeks its existence in another because of its infinite fecundity, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: the divine nature does not seek existence in the relations or persons because of any indigence, so that it can exist by itself. It is already able to exist by itself because it is subsisting being itself, but because of its infinite fecundity it seeks to exist in the persons as the precise terms of its existence and not as sustainers of its own being.
I insist. The divine nature cannot exist without the relations; therefore it is complemented by them because of its own indigence in existence.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: the divine nature cannot exist without the relations because it is supremely fecund, I concede; because it is deficient, I deny. It is itself subsisting being. In the same way omnipotence cannot exist without the possibility of creatures, not because of its own indigence but because of its fecundity. So also the Father enunciates the Word not because of any need but because of His fecundity.
Final doubt. Why is not the absolute subsistence, modified by the relations, sufficient without relative subsistences, as Durandus taught?
Reply. 1. Because the councils and the Fathers have often stated that each divine person has its proper subsistence. St. Thomas declared: "As we say that in God there are three persons and three subsistences, so the Greeks say there are three hypostases."[320]
2. According to the Catholic faith there are three persons in God. But a person is formally constituted by subsistence, which confers incommunicability. Therefore in God there are three relative subsistences.
3. Otherwise no basis would exist for incommunicability nor would the principle of active generation and active spiration be established.
Confirmation. If there were only one subsistence, modified by the three relations, we could not truly say that there are three persons in God, just as we could not say that there are three gods because there is one nature modified by the three relations. We would have to confess one person alone just as we confess one God. In order to multiply a substantive noun such as person we must also multiply the form, which is the personality. We return then to St. Thomas, statement that the divine persons are constituted by relative subsistences, as they are subsisting and opposed to each other. Thus we have three relative subsistences.
The Father is then the principle quod of active generation; the Son with the Father is the principle quod of active spiration. God, antecedent to any consideration of the persons, is the principle quod of the essential actions, which are common to the three persons, such as essential intellection and essential love as distinct from notional love (active spiration) and personal love (the Holy Spirit).
Confirmation. The humanity of Christ is united to the Word in His personal subsistence, which supplies the place of the created subsistence; otherwise the three divine persons would be incarnate.
From the foregoing we may be able better to solve a difficulty that often comes to mind. Personality renders a nature incommunicable to another suppositum; but paternity does not render the divine nature incommunicable to the Son, on the contrary it communicates it to the Son; therefore paternity cannot constitute the person of the Father, and, therefore, there cannot be three persons in God.
Reply. I distinguish the major: personality renders a nature incommunicable as personified, I concede; personality renders a nature incommunicable in itself, I subdistinguish: in created beings, where personality is absolute, I concede; in God, where personality is relative, I deny. Thus the person of the Father renders the divine nature incommunicable as personified (there is but one Father in God), but it does not render the divine nature incommunicable in itself. Indeed the Father, inasmuch as He implies the relation to the Son, communicates to the Son the divine nature and thus manifests the infinite fecundity of the divine nature.
We have sufficiently examined the questions about the processions of the divine persons (question 27), the divine relations (question 28), and the divine persons considered absolutely and in common (question 29). We now turn to the plurality of the persons, and after this lengthy explanation of the fundamental ideas we may now proceed more rapidly. We shall now study the corollaries that can be inferred from the foregoing and the correct terminology to be used in speaking of these truths. But we will not neglect to gather the precious gems of knowledge which can be found in the following articles.
Recapitulation Of Question Twenty-Nine
Article 1. A person is a free and intelligent subject or an individual substance with a rational nature.
Article 2. Person is the same as the <hypostasis> of an intellectual nature.
Article 3. Since person signifies that which is most perfect in all nature, namely, a subsistence with a rational or intellectual nature, it is proper that this term be used with reference to God analogically and in the most excellent manner. Thus in Sacred Scripture the Father and the Son, as is clear, are personal nouns and so also is the Holy Ghost, who is mentioned with them.
Article 4. The divine persons, distinct from one another, are constituted by the three divine subsisting relations opposed to one another, namely, paternity, filiation, and passive spiration.
The reason for this is that "there is no distinction in God except by the relations of origin opposed to one another." Since these relations are not accidents but subsisting, we find in them two requisites for a person: subsistence and incommunicability, or distinction. Thus the three divine persons are three intelligent and free subjects, although they understand by the same essential intellection, love themselves necessarily by the same essential love, and freely love creatures by the same free act of love.
Therefore the paternity in God is personality, although it is relative, as are also filiation and passive spiration. The divine paternity on its part renders the divine nature incommunicable, although the divine nature is still communicable to the other two persons, just as the top angle of the triangle on its part renders its surface incommunicable, although this surface can still be communicated to the other two angles. And as God is His own deity, so the Father is His own paternity, the Son is His own filiation, and the Holy Ghost is His own (quasi-) passive spiration.

CHAPTER IV: QUESTION 30 THE PLURALITY OF THE DIVINE PERSONS
Articles one and two inquire whether there are several persons in God, and articles three and four inquire in what this plurality consists.
Article 1. In God there are several persons because there are several real subsisting relations opposed to one another. In the reply to the fourth difficulty, St. Thomas notes that each divine person is not a part nor is the divine reality the whole, because the Father is as great as the entire Trinity, as will become clear below,[321] when St. Thomas explains: "All the relations are one according to essence and being, and all the relations are not greater than one alone; nor are all the persons greater than one alone since the entire (infinite) perfection of the divine nature is in each of the persons."[322]
Article 2. In God there are not more than three persons. This truth is revealed in the form of baptism and stated in the creeds. The theological explanation is that the divine persons are constituted by mutually opposed subsisting relations. But these three relations are three in number. One of the four relations, active spiration, is opposed neither to paternity nor to filiation. This active spiration, therefore, belongs to the Father and to the Son. Passive spiration, however, cannot be attributed to the Father and to the Son for then the procession of love would precede the procession of intellection. The reader is referred to the reply to the first difficulty in the text. It should be noted that the fact that no opposition exists between active spiration and filiation is an implicit affirmation of the Filioque.[323]
Article 3. Whether anything is added to God by the numeral terms.
State of the question. Is there any positive significance when we say that God is wise, or any negative significance when we say that God is incorporeal? This is Cajetan's interpretation of the sense of this title.
Reply. The numeral terms do not add anything positive to God since they express not a quantitative but a transcendental plurality, which is not properly speaking a number. The transcendental multitude refers to the many of which it is predicated in the same way that transcendental unity refers to transcendental being. Transcendental unity merely predicates the indivisibility of being without adding any accident. We say not only that the scholastic school of thought is one among many theological schools but that it is also perfectly one and united. So also the Summa Theologica is not only one among many works written by St. Thomas but it is a work that is perfectly one because of the intimate connection between its parts. We refer the reader to the text.
Thus, as was explained elsewhere,[324] transcendental unity differs from the unity which is the principle of number, which is a kind of quantity. St. Thomas in concluding the body of the article says: "When we say that the divine persons are many, this signifies these persons and the indivisibility of each of them since it is of the nature of a multitude that it consist of unities." In his reply to the third difficulty, he says: "Multitude does not do away with unity; it removes division from each of those entities which constitute the multitude."[325]
This may be better understood when we see it verified in several instances. The numerical multitude of individuals does not do away with the unity of the species; the transcendental multitude of species does not do away with the unity of genus; the transcendental multitude of genus does not do away with the analogical unity of being, nor does the multitude of accidents in a suppositum destroy its unity. Similarly the transcendental plurality of persons in God does not destroy the unity of God. But if it were a numerical plurality in God, the divine nature would be multiplied in the three individuals, and there would be three gods.
The unity of God is a unity pure and simple, whereas the specific unity of many men is only a qualified unity, that is, a unity according to the specific likeness of these men, who together are a pure and simple multitude. Wherefore the plurality of the divine persons in the bosom of the simple unity of the divine nature is best compared analogically with the plurality of accidents, such as, for example, the plurality of faculties in one suppositum that is simply one rather than with the plurality of individuals in the same species.
Corollary. Thus there is in God a simple unity and a qualified plurality. The unity is the unity of the divine nature; the transcendental plurality is the plurality of the opposing relations. In a nature numerically one and the same this plurality arises from the opposition of relations of origin. Therefore it cannot be said that there are three gods, but we must say there is one God. Again, as we shall see in the following article, we cannot say that God is threefold, but we say He is triune in order to safeguard the simple unity which is at the same time substantial together with the plurality that arises from the opposing relations. Thus we say that God is one in three persons.
Article 4. Whether the term "person" is common to the three divine persons. It seems that it is not, since nothing is common to the three persons except the divine essence.
Reply. The term "person" is a common noun according to reason because that which is a person is common to the three persons, namely, the subsisting relation opposed to other relations. It is not, however, common to the three persons by a community of the actual thing as is the divine essence, which is one whereas there are three persons. If something were common to the persons actually, there would be but one person as there is one nature.
Even when applied to men, the term "person" is common by a community of reason, not indeed as are genus and species but as an undetermined individual, as some man, that is something subsisting of itself and distinct from others. Analogically this notion is common to the three divine persons since each divine person subsists in the divine nature distinct from the others. The term "person, " therefore, is common to the three divine persons by a community of reason but not actually, as St. Thomas explains in the reply to the third difficulty. It is common but not as genus is a common term, because the three divine persons have one being and are subsisting being itself, which is above all genus.

CHAPTER V: QUESTION 31 OF THE UNITY AND PLURALITY OF THE TRINITY
We are here concerned with the manner of speaking about the Trinity in the following four articles. 1. The name Trinity itself. 2. Whether we can say, the Father is other than the Son. 3. Whether we can say that God is alone or solitary. 4. Whether we can say that one person is alone, as for instance, "Thou alone art most high." In the treatise on the Trinity this question corresponds to the thirteenth question in the treatise on the One God, on the names of God.[326]
First Article: Whether There Is A Trinity In God
The difficulty arises from the fact that everything that is triune is threefold, whereas God is not threefold since He possesses the greatest unity. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative as an article of faith. In the Athanasian Creed we read, "The Unity is to be worshiped in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity."[327]
Theology offers the following explanation. In God there is a transcendental plurality of persons. The term "Trinity" according to revelation limits this plurality to the three persons. Therefore the term Trinity can rightly be used.
Reply to the first objection. Etymologically the term "Trinity" seems to signify the unity of three, but in a special way it signifies the transcendental number of persons of one essence. Thus we cannot say that the Father is the Trinity. The term "Trinity" signifies at the same time the number of persons and the unity of the essence.
Reply to the second objection. St. John declared, "And these three are one" (I John 5:7). Hence we have the name "Trinity."
Reply to the third objection. Nevertheless in God there is no triplicity because triplicity denotes a proportion of inequality as do duplicity and quadruplicity. Thus we cannot say that God is threefold. That which is threefold has in a sense been tripled, as, for instance, a triple crown signifies the union of three crowns.
If God were said to be threefold, the three persons together would be more than one alone, and one person would not have infinite perfection. But we can say that the persons are threefold and the processions are twofold, because by adding person and procession we exclude sufficiently the multiplicity of nature.
Reply to the fourth objection. Unity in Trinity signifies that there is one nature in three persons, and Trinity in unity signifies three persons in one nature.
Reply to the fifth objection. We cannot say that the Trinity is threefold for this would mean that there were three supposita of the Trinity, whereas there are only three supposita of the Deity.
First corollary. From the foregoing the Thomists, especially Gonet, conclude that those things that belong to the persons by reason of the essence alone are predicated only singly. Those things, however, that belong to the persons by reason of the persons alone are predicated only in the plural. Those things that belong to the persons by reason of the essence and the relations are predicated both in the singular and in the plural.
The reason for this rule is that in God all things are one and the same except where there is the opposition of relation; only the relations are multiplied in God, the essence is not. This was defined by the Council of Toledo: "Number is discovered in the relation of the persons; but we find nothing that is numbered in the substance of the divinity. Thus number is indicated only in this, that they are mutually related; and they lack number in this, that they are in themselves."[328]
From this rule it follows that it is correct to say that there are three persons or three hypostases in God but not three individuals because the nature is multiplied in individuals. In its formal signification person denotes personality; in its material signification it denotes nature. On the other hand, the individual in its formal signification denotes nature; in its material signification it denotes personality.
Thus we do not say that there are three individuals or three gods, because in the three persons God is numerically one. According to the Fourth Lateran Council, we may say that there are three divine beings, three co-eternal and omnipotent beings if these terms are used adjectively because the multiplication of the suppositum is sufficient for the multiplication of the adjective term without a multiplication of the form. Thus "three divine beings" signifies three that possess the Deity.
It is wrong, however, to say three divine beings if this expression is taken substantively. It is in this sense that the Athanasian Creed declares, "And yet they are not three eternals, but one Eternal," for the plural substantive requires the multiplication of both the form and the suppositum. We can say, "In God there is one thing (res)" which is the essence, and several relative realities inasmuch as the divine relations are something real and not fictitious. We can then predicate reality of God both in the singular and plural number according to the aforesaid rule because reality belongs to the persons both by reason of the essence and the relations.
Second corollary. As Cajetan declared: "In God according to actuality or in the real order there is one being, neither purely absolute nor purely relational, not mixed or composed or resulting from these two, but eminently and formally possessing both that which is relational (with several relational beings) and that which is absolute."[329] This is generally admitted even by the Scotists.
Third corollary. In opposition to the Scotist formal-actual distinction on the part of the thing, Cajetan also declared: "Even in the formal order or the order of formal reasons in themselves, not in our manner of speaking, there is in God one formal reason, neither purely absolute nor purely relational, neither purely communicable nor purely incommunicable, but eminently and formally containing both whatever is of absolute perfection and whatever the relational Trinity demands." In God there is no distinction antecedent to our consideration except between the divine relations that are opposed to each other. Still the divine nature is actually communicated to the Son without a communication of paternity. So also with regard to the Holy Ghost the divine nature is communicated without a communication of paternity, filiation, or active spiration, as in the triangle the entire surface of the first angle is communicated to the second and third angles without a communication of the first angle. Paternity cannot be communicated to the Son, because it is opposed to filiation, as spiration is also opposed to procession.
Fourth corollary. The unity of God is more clearly manifested after the revelation of the Trinity than before, because it now appears as that simple unity which exists notwithstanding the real distinction of the persons and which contains in itself eminently and formally whatever is absolute and relational. These are the lights and shadows in our view of the Trinity.
Second Article: Whether The Son Is Other Than The Father
The difficulty arises from Christ's words, "I and the Father are one." The reply nevertheless is that the Son is other than the Father but not another being. This is an article of faith according to the Fourth Lateran Council: "That being (the divine nature) does not beget, nor is it begotten, nor does it proceed, but it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Ghost who proceeds, because the distinctions are in the persons and the unity is in the nature. Although the Father is another, the Son another, and the Holy Ghost another, each is not another being but that which is the Father is the Son and the Holy Ghost, entirely the same, "[330] that is, they are one according to nature and are consubstantial.
This statement of the Council was taken from the writings of St. Gregory Nazianzen.[331] St. Fulgentius, quoted by St. Thomas in his argument sed contra, used the same language. In this way the words of our Lord are safeguarded: "I and the Father are one." The Son and the Father are one; the Son is not another being, although He is other than the Father because He was begotten by the Father.
In the body of the article St. Thomas explains this point by comparing the masculine pronoun, which signifies a person, with the neuter pronoun, which signifies the nature. The reader is referred to the reply to the fourth difficulty, "The neuter gender is unformed, and so conveniently signifies the common essence, whereas the masculine gender signifies a determined person." In the body of the article St. Thomas determines the vocabulary to be used in order to avoid the dangers of Arianism and Sabellianism. To avoid any confusion with Arianism, in speaking of the divine persons we do not use the terms diversity and difference but distinction, because diversity implies a distinction in genus and difference implies a distinction in species. Thus we do not say, the nature is divided into three persons, the person of the Father is separated from the person of the Son, a disparity exists between the persons, nor that the Son is alien to the Father, because the Son is perfectly similar and united to the Father but distinct from Him.
To avoid Sabellianism, we do not say that God is unique, but one in three persons, nor do we say that God is singular or that He is solitary.
Third Article: Whether We Can Say That God Is Alone
Reply. 1. We cannot say that God is alone if the word alone is taken categorematically or absolutely, inasmuch as the meaning of the word is attributed absolutely to the subject, in this case solitude or aloneness. This would be tantamount to saying that God is solitary and without any consort and would deny the society of the divine persons.
2. But if the word alone is taken syncategorematically, denoting only the order of the predicate to the subject, it would be correct to say that God alone is eternal, God alone is His own being, or to God alone belong honor and praise.
Fourth Article: Whether We Can Say That God The Father Is Alone
Reply. We cannot say that the Father is alone categorematically because the Father is not solitary; but syncategorematically we can say, for instance, that in God the Father alone enunciates or begets.
When the Church proclaims, "Thou only, O Jesus Christ, art most high," she does not wish to say that the Son alone is most high but that the Son alone is most high with the Holy Ghost in the glory of the Father.[332] When Jesus said that no one knows the Son except the Father, He did not wish to say that the Son and Holy Ghost do not know the Son, because the persons are not excluded unless there is relative opposition, as when we say, the Father alone begets.
In this brief examination of the correct mode of speaking about the Trinity, we see how amazing it is that human language with all its limitations and inadequacies is able to develop such precision in enunciating a mystery that is in itself ineffable.

CHAPTER VI: QUESTION 32 THE KNOWABILITY OF THE DIVINE PERSONS
At this point St. Thomas discusses the knowability of the divine persons because he considers their knowability a property of the divine persons that has a reference to us, just as in the treatise on the one God he treats of the knowability of God in the twelfth question. This question contains four articles: 1. Whether the divine persons can be known by natural reason; 2. Whether certain notions are to be attributed to the divine persons; 3. The number of these notions; 4. Whether we can entertain different opinions about the divine persons.
First Article: Whether The Unity Of Divine Persons Can Be Known By Natural Reason
St. Thomas takes up this problem after the first five questions. Recent theologians generally treat of it in the beginning of the treatise to support the validity of their investigations into the divine processions. The order adopted by St. Thomas is excellent in itself, although from our standpoint it is useful to consider the indemonstrability of this mystery at least briefly in the beginning. We will here consider the problem at some length.
State of the question. The question is well put by St. Thomas in the three difficulties proposed at the beginning of the article. 1. Many Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophers admitted a certain kind of Trinity with three hypostases, namely, the One, the Logos, and the world soul. 2. Richard of St. Victor tried to demonstrate the Trinity from the infinity of the divine goodness, which communicates itself infinitely in the procession of the three divine persons and from the fact that there can be no joyous possession of any good without some consort or association in that enjoyment. In a similar way, St. Augustine proceeded to show the Trinity of persons from the procession of the word and of love in our human minds. 3. If the mystery of the Trinity had no relation to our reason, its revelation would seem to be superfluous.
We might add that Abelard tried to demonstrate the Trinity.[333] St. Anselm frequently attempted to construct demonstrations to prove the Trinity and sometimes indulged in what were at least wordy extravagances. In recent times Guenther also wished to demonstrate this mystery,[334] as did Rosmini, who brought down on himself the Church's condemnation.[335] More recently Schell, in opposition to the rationalists and Unitarians, who said this mystery was openly opposed to reason, tried to prove the Trinity from the nexus between aseity and immanent processions.[336]
The reply, however, is in the negative: the Trinity of the divine persons cannot be known by natural reason, that is, it cannot be understood or demonstrated. This statement does not depress but rather pleases the theologian.
The proof is from 1. Scripture; 2. the authority of the Fathers; 3. the definitions and declarations of the Church;[337] 4. theological reasoning.
1. The authority of the Scriptures. From our Lord's words, "No one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth anyone know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him" (Matt. 11:27), it is clear that the Trinity of the divine persons is above created natural knowledge, even that of the angels. This is confirmed by our Lord's words to St. Peter, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 16:17). The second text, it is true, refers directly to the mystery of the Incarnation, but if the incarnation of the Son of God is above natural reason, the mystery of the Trinity is all the more above human reason. Hence Pope Hormisdas in writing to the Emperor Justin said: "No visible or invisible nature is able to investigate the secret of the Trinity."[338]
2. The authority of the Fathers. In his argument sed contra St. Thomas quotes St. Hilary and St. Ambrose. He also adduces the authority of St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Fulgentius, and St. Jerome.[339] He quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa's words, "No words can express the ineffable depth of this mystery."[340]
3. The authority of the Vatican Council: "The mysteries hidden in God are proposed for our belief and if they had not been divinely revealed they could not be known... . These divine mysteries by their very nature exceed the created intellect and even when they are handed down by revelation and received by faith remain covered with the veil of faith and wrapped up in obscurity for us as long as we are journeying in this life toward the Lord, for we walk not through the species of things but by faith."[341] The same Council declared: "If anyone shall say that the divine revelation does not contain true and proper mysteries, but that all the dogmas of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles by the efforts of reason, let him be anathema."[342]
The Church did not in these words define that the mystery of the Trinity is a mystery properly so called, but it is commonly believed in the Church that the Trinity is supreme among all mysteries, since it is the mystery of God's intimate life, and if this mystery is not essentially supernatural, the other mysteries, of the incarnation of the Son of God, our redemption, the sending of the Holy Ghost, would not be essentially supernatural mysteries. Then these mysteries would not be indemonstrable except for their contingency, since the physical world was not created from eternity but in time, and they would not be indemonstrable by reason of their essential supernatural nature. However, the Council declared: "The divine mysteries are above the created intellect by their very nature to such a degree that even when they are handed down by revelation and received by faith" they cannot be demonstrated. This truth was affirmed against the semirationalists Guenther and Frohschammer.
Several declarations were made by the Church against Guenther.[343] The following propositions by Rosmini were condemned by the Church: "After the mystery of the Trinity had been revealed, its existence can be proved by purely speculative arguments, although these arguments are negative and indirect, and these arguments can reduce this truth to the realm of philosophy so that it becomes a scientific proposition like others in philosophy. If this proposition were denied, the theosophic doctrine of pure reason would not only be incomplete but it would be destroyed because of consequent absurdities."[344] Rosmini's teaching that there are "three supreme forms of being, namely, subjectivity, objectivity, and holiness and, when these forms are transferred to absolute being, they cannot be conceived as anything else than living and subsisting persons," was also condemned.[345]
Guenther taught something like this when he defined personality as the consciousness of oneself. "Consciousness," he said, "presupposes the duality of the subject and the object and the knowledge of their identity. The subject is the Father, the object is the Son or the Word, and their substantial identity is the Holy Ghost." Further he declared, "If in God there were but one person, God would not be conscious of Himself."[346] This last statement is obviously false since God is subsisting intellect itself. Moreover, according to Guenther's theory, there should be not only three who are conscious of themselves but also three consciousnesses in order that there be three personalities, and then in God there would be three intellects. This would be tritheism, and something essential in God would be multiplied.[347]
Because of these different authoritative statements it is clear that the Holy Trinity cannot be known naturally, even after its existence is known by revelation. It is also clear that the real possibility of this mystery cannot be positively demonstrated even after revelation. If once the possibility could be proved, the actual existence would also be proved because in necessary things existence follows possibility, and the Trinity is not contingent as are the Incarnation and the Redemption.
4. The theological proof. In God only that can be known naturally which is necessarily and evidently connected with creatures.
We can know nothing about God naturally except through created effects, as was shown above,[348] and the natural principles which are known from a consideration of created being. But from these created effects, at least those that are natural, we cannot arrive at the knowledge of the Trinity because these effects proceed from the creative power or God's omnipotence, which is common to the entire Trinity and, like the divine intelligence and the divine will, pertains to the unity of the essence and not to the distinction of the persons. Therefore it is impossible to come to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason.
The major of this argument is philosophically and theologically certain.[349] The minor is of faith according to the Fourth Lateran Council, which said that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are "co-omnipotent and co-eternal, one principle of all things."[350] By philosophy and theology it can be shown that omnipotence pertains to the divine nature as it is one and not as it is threefold in the persons, since each person does not have its own proper and distinct omnipotence. Thus created effects do not per se proceed from God as triune but only concomitantly inasmuch as the creative power is one and the same in the three persons. The reader is referred to St. Thomas' article, in which he clarifies this truth more than did his predecessors.
Objection. If created effects were known more perfectly, as they are known, for instance, by the angels, perhaps the Trinity could be known from them.
Reply. An effect, no matter how perfectly it is known, will not lead to the knowledge of the cause except under that aspect by which it proceeds from the cause and according to the dependence of the effect on the cause. Thus a painting makes known the painter, but it does not tell whether the painter was large or small, fat or lean. Created effects, at least natural effects, do not depend on God as triune but only as He is one.
Confirmation. In the body of the article St. Thomas adds two theological arguments. "Anyone who tries to prove the Trinity of persons by natural reason derogates from faith in two ways. 1. He derogates from faith because it is concerned with things that do not appear and are hidden in God... . 2. Such an attempt arouses the derision of non-believers since they are led to believe that we depend on human reasonings and believe because of them." The holy doctor concludes: "We should not try to prove the things that are of faith...; it is enough to make a defense by showing that what faith proclaims is not impossible." He says "make a defense," that is, by solving objections and offering reasons of convenience.
Reply to the first objection. The philosophers did not know a Trinity of persons, but the attributes which were later attributed to the persons. The Neoplatonists spoke of three subordinate hypostases which were not equal and which were quite different from the three equal divine persons. They spoke of 1. the one, which is also the supreme good (the god of Plato); 2. the first intelligence (the god of Aristotle); 3. and the world soul (the god of the Stoics).
Reply to the second objection. Concerning the Trinity, reason can offer non-demonstrative reasons, arguments of convenience. Thus from the infinite goodness of God we are persuaded by an argument of convenience to accept God's fecundity within Himself, but this is no proof. In the same way from the fact that our intellect produces a word we cannot prove that there is a word in God; in us the word is a result of need, in God the word is from superabundance.
Reply to the third objection. Nevertheless the revelation of the Trinity is not without relation to the truths of the natural order, which it confirms. The Trinity confirms the freedom of creation, for if God made all things by His Word, He did not create by a necessity of nature or of knowledge; since He is already fecund within Himself He does not need to create in order to be fecund.[351] The revelation of the Trinity was especially necessary for a correct understanding of the salvation of the human race, which is accomplished by the incarnate Son and by the gift of the Holy Ghost. These two mysteries presuppose the mystery of the Trinity.
First doubt. Whether after the revelation of this mystery it can be clearly demonstrated by reason alone. The reply is in the negative: 1. from the authority of the councils, according to which mysteries in the strict sense cannot be demonstrated even after they are revealed; 2. from theological reason because divine revelation does not indicate that creatures depend and proceed per se from God as triune
Second doubt. Whether the possibility of the mystery of the Trinity at least can be apodictically proved by reason after it has been revealed. The reply is in the negative: 1. because, as has been said, only that can be known naturally in God which necessarily is connected with creatures. But the possibility of the Trinity is no more clearly connected with creatures than its existence, because the creative power is common to the three persons. 2. Moreover, in necessary things existence follows from a real intrinsic possibility as, for instance, if it is true that God can be wise then He is indeed most wise. But the Trinity is not something contingent but necessary. Therefore, if by reason alone we can prove conclusively that the Trinity is intrinsically possible, we would also prove its existence. Such is the reasoning of many Thomists, among them Gonet and Billuart.
Objection. Whatever can be shown to involve no contradiction is proved to be possible. But by reason alone it can be shown that the Trinity involves no contradiction. Therefore it can be proved to be possible, for intrinsic possibility is simple non-repugnance to being.
Reply. I distinguish the major: if it can be shown positively and evidently to involve no contradiction, I concede; if only negatively and probably, I deny.[352] Thus St. Thomas says: "Theology makes use of philosophy to counter those things which are said against the faith by showing either that these things are false or that they are not necessary."[353] This means, Billuart notes, when we solve the objections from reason and the contradictions which oppose the possibility of this mystery, we show that these arguments are at least not necessary or cogent. It suffices that this mystery be not judged to be impossible, but not that it is evidently possible.[354] We have shown that the possibility of this mystery cannot be disproved, nor can it be strictly proved because we have here a mystery in the strict sense, which has no necessary and evident connection with creatures that are naturally knowable. The reason given by St. Thomas in the body of the article is entirely formal. In order to understand the possibility of this mystery we must be able to see that if God were not triune He would not be God just as we see that if God were not omnipotent He would not be God. This truth is not manifest even in the extraordinary intellectual visions which are granted by means of infused species such as the angels possess; this truth cannot be seen except when the essence of God itself is seen, and God's essence cannot be known as it is in itself by any created species.[355]
I insist. No middle exists between the possible and the impossible. But the rationalists cannot prove that this mystery is impossible. Therefore the theologians can prove that it is possible.
Reply. I deny the consequence. Although no middle exists between the possible and impossible, a middle does exist between the demonstration of possibility and the demonstration of impossibility, for the possibility of the Trinity is plausible although it cannot be proved. So it is with all mysteries that transcend demonstration; they are not contrary to reason, they are above it. Their possibility cannot be positively proved or disproved; it is only plausible. Such is the possibility of the Incarnation, of eternal life, of the beatific vision, of the light of glory, and the possibility of grace, which is the seed of glory.
I insist. In the treatise on the Trinity it is at least shown that the Trinity implies no contradiction. Therefore it is possible.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: that we see clearly that the Trinity implies no contradiction, this I deny; that it appears plausible, this I concede. We say, for instance, that in God to be begotten is not less perfect than to beget, that to be spirated is not less perfect than to spirate, but this is not evident. We cannot prove conclusively that passive generation imputes no imperfection in the Son of God; we only indicate it with some probability while it is revealed elsewhere.
I insist. God as one is no less supernatural than as triune. But God as one can be naturally known. Therefore He can be known naturally also as triune.
Reply. I distinguish the major: God as one is no less supernatural in being as He is in Himself, I concede; as a knowable object with regard to creatures, I deny. I distinguish the minor: God is known in this way by creatures, I concede; otherwise, I deny.
Third doubt. Whether reason by itself alone can find analogies to make known the divine processions. For example, if the Son of God had not been called the Word of God in St. John's Gospel, would St. Augustine have been able to discover the analogy of our mental word with the Word of God?
We reply with St. Thomas.[356]
1. St. Augustine would not have been able, before the revelation of the Trinity, to propose this analogy in such a way that it would have led him to certitude about the existence of the Trinity.
2. But after the Trinity was revealed he would have been able to propose the analogy as probable. Indeed, it is more than probable that the analogy was not discovered by St. Augustine, but that it is to some extent revealed in the prologue of St. John's Gospel.
Explanation. In his reply to the second difficulty, St. Thomas says concerning the arguments of fitness given by St. Augustine and Richard of St. Victor: "Once the Trinity has been established, these arguments show its congruity but not in such a way that they would be able to prove the Trinity of persons... . So, in astronomy, in order to explain the movement of the planets, a system of eccentrics and epicycles is adopted in order to explain the sensible appearances of heavenly movements, but these theories are not sufficient to prove anything, because these appearances could be proved by some other theory."
St. Thomas adds that this is clear in these individual instances.
1. With regard to the divine goodness being diffusive of itself. It is proposed as an argument of fitness that good is essentially diffusive of itself and the higher the good the more intimately and abundantly is it diffusive. Hence it is congruous that God the Father should beget the Son and with Him spirate the Holy Ghost in the unity of nature. But this is only an argument of congruity, for, as the Angelic Doctor says: "It is not necessary, if God is to communicate Himself in His infinite goodness, that some infinite being should proceed from God, but that some being should receive the divine goodness according to its own mode of being." Thus it was that God created from nothing finite beings because of His infinite goodness. By this argument it cannot be demonstrated that God is infinitely fecund within Himself by that certain diffusion of goodness which exceeds the order of efficient and final causality and takes place by the communication of the divine nature itself to two uncreated persons.
2. Richard of St. Victor declared that there can be no joyous possession of any good without friendship or association, and from this argument of fitness he showed that there should be in God some association between distinct persons. This argument is not demonstrative because the alleged principle applies when perfect goodness is not found in one person and therefore this person requires the good of another person associated with itself in order to enjoy goodness fully. But God is essentially goodness itself and He possesses it fully and thus He differs entirely from a created person who needs the association of friends. If there is any association in God, it exists not because of a need but because of superabundance. Thus this argument is only an argument of congruity and not demonstrative.
3. Nor from the fact that our intellect enunciates a mental word does it follow necessarily that the Word is in God. Intellect is not found in God and in us univocally, and we have seen above that God, who is subsisting intelligence itself, does not need an accidental word for intellection.[357] Hence, if the Word is in God, it is not accidental but substantial; moreover the Word is not because of need but because of superabundance, and this can be known only by revelation.
Hence, according to St. Thomas, reason of itself alone did not discover these congruities, but after revelation it could propose such arguments. This mystery is properly speaking essentially supernatural, transcending the spheres of demonstration and demonstrability. In this essentially supernatural order we cannot penetrate farther than to those things that are formally or virtually revealed; beyond that we are in the realm of probability.
Fourth doubt. Whether, after revelation, these arguments of congruity can explain with some probability the divine processions as they are in themselves, or are they only convenient and useful representations without any foundation in the divine reality.
Reply. Perhaps many would reply by taking the stand that many modern critics take with regard to physical science: that these theories do not intend to explain how things are in reality, that they are only convenient representations useful in classifying known phenomena which are subject to change when other phenomena are discovered, as, for instance, in the case of radioactivity.
Following St. Thomas, we reply that these arguments of congruity with respect to the Trinity are not only convenient representations, but they explain reality with some probability, or rather they explain what is not in God. Such explanations are the more valid the more they are based on revelation. Indeed it appears that the formal mode of the first procession by intellectual diction, if not formally revealed by the fact that the Son of God is called the Word, is at least certain as a virtually revealed theological conclusion. But many of the other conclusions remain only probable.
Fifth doubt. Whether these arguments of congruity about the Trinity are simply superior or inferior to the demonstrations given in the treatise on the one God.
Reply. With regard to us, that is with regard to the mode and certitude of our knowledge, they are inferior; but in themselves they are superior with regard to the dignity of the object, because they are not beneath but above the sphere of demonstrability, and in the essentially supernatural order we cannot ascend higher than those things that are either formally or virtually revealed except in the sphere of probability.
Hence it is that semirationalists, like Guenther and Rosmini, who wish to transform these arguments of congruity into demonstrations really weaken rather than elevate them. This is clear from Rosmini's condemned proposition: "By these arguments the truth of the Trinity is brought within the scope of philosophy."[358]
Against this view St. Thomas remarks: "It is useful for the human mind to exercise itself in arguments of this kind, however weak they may be, as long as there is no presumption of comprehending or understanding, because it is a great satisfaction to behold these sublime matters even if our consideration is slight and weak."[359]
Thus our natural and inefficacious desire of seeing God in His essence is not a demonstration but it forcefully insinuates the possibility and congruity of eternal life, of the beatific vision, of the light of glory, and of inchoate and consummated grace. This possibility cannot be demonstrated because it is the possibility of something that is essentially supernatural, of a mystery in the strict sense, which transcends reason and demonstrability.[360]
These arguments of congruity are related to evidence and certitude in the same way that a polygon is related to the circumference of a circle. The sides of the polygon can be multiplied to infinity, but the polygon will never be identified with the circumference because it will never be as small as a point. In geometry we say that the polygon will be the circumference at the limit of multiplication, but multiplication is indefinite. Great theologians and the angels, by their natural cognition, can penetrate deeper and deeper into the arguments of congruity about the Trinity and never attain to evidence, because the evidence which-is beyond the limit of this progressive penetration is not the natural evidence of demonstration but the supernatural evidence of the beatific vision. These arguments are like the element of cogitation in faith, if we define the act of faith as, "No believe is to think with assent."[361] Such thinking in this life never reaches evidence; only in heaven, where faith ceases because it cannot exist alongside vision.[362]
Recapitulation of the solution of the principal objections against the Trinity.[363]
According to the rationalists the dogma of the Trinity is a violation of the principles of contradiction and causality.
The first objection often proposed by the rationalists is the following. Those things which are the same as a third are identical. This is a form of the principle of contradiction or identity and is called the principle of comparative identity, on which the validity of the demonstrative syllogism is based. But the three persons are identified with the divine essence (since each one is God). Therefore the three persons cannot be really distinct from one another.
Reply. I distinguish the major: those things which are the same as a third in fact and in reason are identical, I concede; which are the same as a third in fact but not in reason, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: but the three persons are the same as the divine essence in fact and in reason, I deny; the three persons are the same in fact but not in reason, I concede. I deny the consequent and the consequence.
I insist. Those things which are the same as a third in fact but not in reason are then identical in fact but not in reason. Thus the persons are distinct from each other only in reason but not in reality.
Reply. I distinguish the major: those things which are the same as a third in fact but not in reason are identical in fact but not in reason if they are no more opposed to each other than to the same third, I concede; otherwise, I deny. They are indeed opposed to each other by relative opposition. Just as the three angles of the triangle, although they have the same triangular surface, with which they are identified, nevertheless are really distinguished from each other because between them there is opposition of relation.
I insist. But it seems to be repugnant that the same thing (the essence) should in reality be identical with relations that are distinct from each other and opposed to each other.
Reply. An evident contradiction would exist if the extremes which are opposed to each other were absolutes, because each of the extremes would in itself imply an absolute reality which would be lacking in its opposite. But the contradiction does not appear when the extremes, as in God, are relative. We have seen that the divine persons are constituted by subsisting relations that are opposed to one another; but these relations have one <esse in> and are opposed only with regard to their real <esse ad>.
This reply is based on the application of that principle, admitted by the Greeks and the Latins, which illuminates this entire tract, namely, in God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation.[364] Indeed those things that are the same as a third are identical if they are no more opposed to each other than to the third, I concede; otherwise, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor, as follows: but the three persons are the same as the essence and besides this they are opposed to each other by the opposition of relation, this I concede; otherwise, I deny. Therefore I deny the consequent and the consequence.
As in the natural order, "While transitive action is the same as motion and the reception of motion (passio), it does not follow that motion and its reception (actio and passio) are the same, " because they are mutually opposed by the opposition of relation, for transitive action, at least terminatively taken, is motion as from the mover, whereas passio (the reception of motion) is motion as in the one moved. In the words of St. Thomas," assio and actio imply opposite references." Similarly, paternity and filiation, although they are in reality the same as the divine essence, "My their proper natures imply opposite references."[365]
A second objection frequently made is the following. The dogma of the Trinity is a violation of the principle of efficient causality, according to which nothing produces its own being. But in this dogma the person who produces, the Father, and the person produced, the Son, have the same divine essence. Otherwise the Son would not be God.
To put it more briefly: Nothing produces its own being. But the Father in begetting the Son would be producing His own being since it is the same as that of the Son. Therefore the Father cannot beget the Son. This objection is made by many rationalists, by the Unitarians and the Socinians.
Reply. I concede the major. I distinguish the minor: if the divine being were caused in the Son, I concede; if it is communicated to the Son, I deny. The conclusion is distinguished in the same way. Thus begetting in God is not a change from non-being to being, but implies the origin of one living being from a living principle conjoined to it. This principle is not a cause.[366] Aristotle pointed out that a principle is more general than a cause.[367] Thus the point is the principle of the line, but not its cause; the aurora is the principle of the day, but not its cause. So in God the principle does not signify priority, but origin, and the Father does not produce His own being; He communicates it only.
The term "communicate" transcends efficient and final causality. Thus in God to beget is not more perfect than to be begotten because in God begetting is not causing. That which is caused does not exist before in act, whereas that which is communicated exists before in act. For example, the first angle of the triangle communicates its surface, already existing in act, to the other two angles.
The third objection (by way of insistence) states that this dogma distorts the notion of person. For personality renders a nature incommunicable to another suppositum. But the nature which is in the person of the Father is communicated to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. Therefore this dogma distorts the very idea of personality.
Reply. I distinguish the major: absolute personality renders the nature incommunicable, I concede; relative personality renders the divine nature incommunicable, I subdistinguish: nature in itself, I deny; nature as personified, I concede. I contradistinguish the minor: the nature which is in the Father is communicated as nature in itself, I concede; as personified, namely, the divine nature in the mode of the Father, I deny. Thus there cannot be two Fathers or two Sons in the Trinity. Similarly in an equilateral triangle the first angle constructed renders the area of the triangle incommunicable inasmuch as it belongs to that first angle; nevertheless this same area remains communicable and is communicated to the other two angles.
I insist. But the person renders incommunicable a nature that is numerically the same even considered in itself. But this would not be true in God. Therefore.
Reply. A person absolutely renders a finite nature incommunicable which, since it is finite, is filled by the one personality. On the other hand, a relative personality, for example, the person of the Father, does not render an infinite nature incommunicable to other persons. The divine nature, being infinite and infinitely fecund, is not adequately filled by one relative personality; or, I say please prove the contrary. Personality in God differs from human personality inasmuch as it is not something absolute but something relative, and it is of the nature of relative things that they have a correlative. The Father cannot be without the Son, to whom He communicates His nature, not by causality but by the principle of origin.[368]
Second Article: Whether There Are Notions In God
In this article St. Thomas explains in opposition to Praepositivus of Cremona that it is necessary to express the relations in the abstract, and that the relations in the abstract are called personal properties or notions. Thus paternity is said to be a notion or the objective reason denoting the person of the Father, and filiation likewise is the notion or the proper reason denoting the person of the Son, and similarly procession is the notion denoting the third person.
The reason for having recourse to the abstract notions of paternity, filiation, etc., is that our intellect apprehends God not as He is in Himself as a most simple being, but in the mirror of sensible things, that is, according to our method of knowing sensible things. The simple forms of sensible things are signified by abstract terms, for example, animality, humanity, whereas the suppositum is signified by concrete terms, such as this animal, and this man.
As St. Thomas says,[369] because of their simplicity we designate divine things by abstract terms, and by concrete terms because of their subsistence. Thus we speak of God and, the Deity, of wisdom and a wise man, of paternity and the Father. But we add that God is His own Deity and the Father is His own paternity. Otherwise we would not be able to reply to the heretics who ask how the three persons are one God and how they are three. For the person of the Father there is a special reason since the person of the Father is actively referred to the two other persons by the two relations of paternity and active spiration. These two relations cannot be reduced to one, otherwise filiation and passive spiration would be identified and thus there would be only two persons. Thus we must admit two notions for the Father, namely, paternity and active spiration, and the latter is common to Him and to the Son.
Third Article: Whether There Are Five Notions In God
This article justifies the accepted mode of speaking of the Trinity. The reply is in the affirmative: five notions are commonly given, namely, innascibility, paternity, filiation, common (active) spiration, and procession.
Such is the general usage of theologians, but Scotus added a sixth, the infecundity of the Holy Ghost. This notion is not acceptable because it does not pertain to the dignity of the Third Person.
In the body of the article St. Thomas shows why there are no more and no less than five notions. A notion is that which is the proper reason for knowing a divine person. But the divine persons are multiplied according to their origin (both active and passive). Therefore according to origin (active and passive) we derive the notions denoting the persons. Thus we have paternity, filiation, common active spiration, passive spiration, to which we add innascibility, because the person of the Father is known not only by paternity but also by the fact that He is from no one and that He is the principle without a principle. This notion is in conformity with the dignity of the Father, but the infecundity of the Holy Ghost is not an expression befitting the dignity of the Third Person.[370]
First corollary. Of these five notions only four are relations, since innascibility is not a relation but the negation of the relation of origin in the Father.
Second corollary. Only four of the notions are properties since common spiration belonging to two persons is not a property.
Third corollary. Of these five notions only three are personal notions, that is, notions constituting persons, since common spiration and innascibility are not personal. As we shall see below, innascibility does not properly constitute the First Person.[371] We shall also see that there are two notional acts, that is, the processions in their active sense, namely, generation and active spiration.
Objection. Innascibility seems to be pure negation and is therefore not a distinct notion because negation adds nothing to the dignity of the person.
Reply. Innascibility signifies that the Father is the principle without principle, and this is a great dignity. On the other hand, infecundity does not pertain to the dignity of the Third Person.[372]
Fourth Article: Whether We May Have Contrary Opinions About The Notions
This article was written because the Greeks held other opinions about common spiration when they denied the Filioque.
St. Thomas replies that it is lawful to have other opinions about the divine notions provided that no conclusions are reached contrary to the faith proposed by the Church. With regard to the Filioque, we shall learn the doctrine of the Church when we treat in particular of the Holy Ghost as He proceeds from the Father and the Son. This doctrine was defined as early as 381 in the First Council of Constantinople.[373] This concludes the questions concerning the divine persons in common.
Recapitulation Of Question 32
In the first question on the Trinity St. Thomas began with the unity of the divine nature and the revealed existence of the processions. He showed that the processions were immanent or ad intra and he explained them according to St. Augustine by analogy with the intellectual enunciation of the word and with love. Thus the processions were seen to be after the manner of intellection and of love. This is based on revelation since it is clear from the prologue of St. John's Gospel that the Son of God proceeds as the intellectual word of the Father.
In the second question he showed how these real processions, namely, generation and spiration, are the bases of real relations according to which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are denominated in Sacred Scripture. These real relations are not really distinguished from the essence, but they are really distinct from one another if relative opposition exists between them. For it is not repugnant that the relations be mutually opposed; they are indeed not opposed to each other in their <esse in> (for in this they are identified with the essence) but according to their <esse ad>, which does not properly inhere in the essence. If, on the contrary, that which is proper to a relation inhered in the subject, as the property of quality, the opposition of relation could not exist between the relations unless at the same time there should be opposition in the divine essence itself. We saw also how St. Thomas solved the objection based on the principle that those things which are the same as a third are identical, whereas Suarez held that the principle of identity does not apply to the Trinity.
In question 29 St. Thomas showed that the divine persons are formally constituted by subsisting relations opposed to one another. Thus he safeguards the analogical notion of person as something subsisting and incommunicable. Hence the divine essence is communicable but the paternity is not.
Then St. Thomas treats of plurality in God, the proper manner of expressing this plurality, and the knowability of this mystery.
St. Thomas thus begins with the unity of the divine nature and the two processions as they are revealed and proceeds to the three divine persons mentioned in revelation. Thus without detracting from the sublimity of this mystery he explains it to some extent by showing that, even after the unity of the divine nature is established, the Trinity of persons is not repugnant. The possibility of the Trinity is not properly and positively demonstrated, but congruent reasons are given to show that the divine nature ought to be fecund, even infinitely, after the manner of intellectual generation and the spiration of love. In this way St. Thomas retained what earlier theologians, like Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, had taught: that the good is diffusive of itself, and that it seems that the higher the good the more intimately it will be diffusive of itself. St. Thomas expressed this idea in his own words: "the higher any nature is, the more intimate with it will be that which proceeds from it."[374]
But, as has been said, with respect to creatures the good is diffusive of itself primarily in the order of final causality and consequently in the order of efficient causality, since everything that acts does so because of some end. The divine processions, however, are above the order of causality, both final and efficient. The Father is not the cause of the Son; He is only the principle. The same is true of the Father and the Son with regard to the Holy Ghost. Hence St. Thomas makes little use of the formula, "Good is diffusive of itself," in this treatise on the Trinity; and in order to express the fecundity of the divine nature he prefers the statement, "My how much higher a nature is so much more intimate will be that which proceeds from that nature," and "By how much greater the understanding so much more intimate will be the intellectual concept with the intellect... . Hence, since the divine intellect is at the apex of perfection, we must say that the divine Word is perfectly one with Him from whom it proceeds without any diversity of nature."[375]
The divine Word is not something accidental; it is substantial because intellection in God is not an accident but something subsisting. The first procession, then, is not the conception of an accidental word but the true generation of the substantial Word. Thus to some degree the mystery is explained notwithstanding its supernatural sublimity. We now turn to the divine persons in particular.

CHAPTER VII: QUESTION 33 THE DIVINE PERSONS IN PARTICULAR—THE PERSON OF THE FATHER
In this question four things are explained in particular: 1. in what I sense the Father is a principle, 2. when the Father is so called personally, 3. when He is so called essentially, 4. the nature of innascibility. These questions explain the Trinity in a more concrete manner and in them we find an admirable application of the principles which were abstractly enunciated in the preceding questions.
First Article: Whether The Father Is A Principle
State of the question. The difficulty arises because the Father is not the cause of the Son and therefore it seems that He cannot be the principle of the Son. It would also follow that the Son proceeded from a principle and would therefore be created, or at least that there were priority and posteriority in God. That which is later depends on that which is earlier, and dependence implies imperfection, which cannot exist in a divine person.
Reply. Nevertheless the Father is a principle. This is of faith since the Father is defined by the Council of Florence as "the principle without principle."[376] In many earlier councils, especially in the Sixth Council of Toledo, the same doctrine was defined: "We confess the unbegotten and uncreated Father, the font and origin of the entire Trinity, with whom there is not only paternity but also the principle of paternity." St. Augustine says: "The Father is the principle of the entire Deity."[377]
St. Thomas explains the meaning of the word "principle" in the body of the article and in the reply to the first objection. A principle is nothing other than that from which something proceeds. For example, a line proceeds from the initial point, a series of numbers proceeds from unity, the light of day proceeds from the aurora. But the Father is He from whom the Son and the Holy Ghost proceed in God. Therefore the Father is a principle and this not in a metaphorical but the proper sense. This is a simple explanation of the meaning of "principle."
Reply to the first objection. This will be made clearer by contrast with the meaning of cause, for as Aristotle himself remarks, "The meaning of principle is more general than cause."[378] Thus we say that the point is the principle of the line and not its cause. For the term "cause" (especially an extrinsic cause) seems to imply the diversity of substance and dependence of one on another, but this is not implied in the term "principle." Hence, although the Greeks in speaking of God used the two terms 'arche' and 'aitia' the Latin doctors never use the word "cause," restricting themselves to the term "principle." The reader is referred to the reply to the first objection.
Reply to the second objection. The Latins do not even use the expression "principle" of the Son and the Holy Ghost because this implies a certain subordination. The Son is said to be the principle from a principle, light from light, and the Holy Ghost is similar in His own way. The beautiful text of St. Hilary is quoted here: "The Son is not less because the one being is given to Him." The Father and the Son both possess subsisting being itself, yet the Father communicates this being to the Son. Analogically, two brothers possessing something in common communicate to each other certain gifts.
Reply to the third objection. Here the objection that principle is derived from priority is solved. But in God there is no priority and no posteriority. I distinguish the major: principle is derived from priority according to the use of the word, let it pass; according to its formal significance, I deny; for principle does not denote priority but origin. In God, however, there is the relation of origin without priority.[379] Certainly there is no priority of time because the processions are eternal; nor is there priority of nature because the divine nature is numerically the same in the Father and the Son and the relation of paternity is not conceived without the opposing relation of filiation. Relative things are simultaneous in nature and in the intellect since one is in the definition of the other. The Father is not constituted by something absolute, as is the man who begets before he begets. In God, the Father does not become the Father, but of Himself and from all eternity He is the Father and He is formally so constituted by the subsisting relation of paternity, whose correlative is filiation, by which the Son is constituted. So it is with the three angles of an equilateral triangle.
In question 42,[380] speaking of the equality of the divine persons, St. Thomas says: "(In God) dignity is absolute and pertains to the essence. As the same essence which is paternity in the Father is also filiation in the Son, so the same dignity which is paternity in the Father is filiation in the Son. But in the Father this dignity is according to the relation of the giver; in the Son it is according to the relation of the receiver." But to receive subsisting and infinite being in itself is not something less perfect than giving it. In the equilateral triangle the second angle constructed is not less perfect than the first, and for the second angle to receive the total area is not less perfect than for the first angle to communicate it. Hence the term principle notionally belongs to the Father. The term principle, however, is also used essentially with respect to creatures, and in this case it is common to the three persons.
Second Article: Whether The Name Father Is Properly The Name Of A Divine Person
This is to say, whether the name "Father" is used not metaphorically but properly of the First Person and not of the others. The reply is in the affirmative for so the name is used in the Gospels, for example, in the formula for baptism, in the creeds, and by the councils.
This can be explained easily as follows. The proper name of any person signifies that by which that person is distinguished from others. But that by which the person of the Father is distinguished from the other persons is paternity.
Reply to the first objection. "Father" is indeed the name of a relation, but in God since relation is subsisting it can be the constitutive of a person.
Reply to the third objection. The divine Word is not metaphorically called the Son, because He is the mental concept, not accidental but substantial. Therefore the Father is so called not metaphorically but properly.
Reply to the fourth objection. The name "paternity" as it is used in its proper sense of God the Father has a prior significance than when it is used as designating an earthly father, at least with regard to the thing signified if not with regard to the manner of signification. For divine generation is the most perfect of all because it generates not only that which is similar in species but a Son whose nature is numerically the same as the nature of the Father. The earthly father, moreover, in generation does not produce the spiritual soul of his son, but only a disposition for it, nor does he produce a son in adult age. God, on the other hand, communicates to His Son His infinite nature, numerically the same as His own, so that His Son is immediately and eternally as perfect as the Father.
More and more it appears that the first procession is truly and properly generation, a generation that is spiritual in the full meaning of that word. It is not only conception, as when we say we conceive a mental concept; conception is only the initial stage of generation.
In God, the Father not only spiritually conceives His Son; He truly and properly generates Him spiritually, that is, He communicates to Him His nature in its entirety and numerically one with His own nature, which nature cannot be multiplied or divided. The Father communicates His nature to the Son from all eternity so that the only-begotten Son is from all eternity most perfect, an adult, if I may say so, in His divine age and entirely equal to the Father. From the height of his mystery light falls on the words of St. Paul to the Ephesians (3:15): "I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named." For from the divine paternity is derived that spiritual paternity by which the Supreme Pontiff is the Father of the Christian people, by which the founder of a religious order is the father of his sons, by which the bishop is the father of his diocese, and by which the priest is the father of the souls committed to his care. From this divine paternity, too, is derived that earthly paternity, which is something noble and excellent in the good Christian father, who like a patriarch gives his sons and daughters not only corporal life but heavenly blessings as did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Third Article: Whether In God The Name Father Is Primarily Used With A Personal Significance
State of the question. In God the word "Father" has a twofold significance: first it is used essentially with reference to creatures, as when we say in the Lord's Prayer," ur Father"; secondly it is used personally with reference to the only-begotten Son.
Reply. St. Thomas says: "In God the name 'Father' is used primarily in its personal meaning, rather than essentially."
The name "Father" in God refers primarily to the person because: 1. it is used personally from all eternity and necessarily with relation to the only-begotten Son, and essentially with relation to creatures only in time, presupposing the free divine decree, which could not have been; 2. the perfect example of paternity and filiation is found in God the Father and God the Son, whose nature is numerically one. On the other hand, God is called essentially the Father of intellectual creatures, not according to the communication of His entire nature but according to the participation of the divine nature, that is, in the likeness of grace and glory. Thus adoptive filiation is the image of eternal filiation by nature, and this adoptive filiation is obviously much more imperfect. In a still less perfect manner God is called the father of irrational creatures, in which instead of His image only a mere trace is found.
Reply to the first objection. Common absolute terms are predicated prior to personal terms. But common terms which relate to creatures, like creator, are predicated after the personal names because they are predicated not from eternity but in time. In other words, the Son proceeds from the Father before creatures.
Hence, when we say in the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father," "Father" is predicated essentially of the three persons; so also "Thy kingdom come" refers not to the First Person but to the three persons. But in St. Paul's words to the Ephesians (3:15), "I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named, " and in Christ's words, "My Father," the name "Father" refers personally to the Father, and therefore Christ made the distinction, saying, "I ascend to My Father and to your Father" (John 20:17).
Fourth Article: Whether To Be Unbegotten Is Proper To The Father
The reply is in the affirmative: innascibility is a property of the Father since the Father is the principle without principle. Thus He is known by the fact that He is not from another. Of the Father it is generally said that "He was not made, nor created, nor begotten, nor proceeding."[381] He is the principle without principle.[382]
Reply to the first objection. Primary and simple things are denoted by negations, as when we say that a point is that which has no parts.
Reply to the second objection. In another way the Holy Ghost may be said to be unbegotten since He does not proceed by generation. But the Father is properly said to be unbegotten because He does not proceed from any other and is the principle without principle whereas the Son is the principle from a principle and the Holy Ghost is the principle from both persons.
Reply to the third objection. In this way the relation of the Son is denied in the Father.
First doubt. Whether the Unbegotten is constituted as a notion by something positive or something negative.
Reply. Following the principle laid down in the reply to the first objection: the Unbegotten directly implies the negation of passive generation. But this negation denotes a great dignity, for from the fact that the Father is not from any principle it follows that He is the origin of the other persons, and this is something positive.
All these things can be illustrated by the commentaries on Christ's sacerdotal prayer, in which the Father is addressed personally. In this prayer frequently and it seems with insistence the Son of God says that His Father has given all things to Him: "Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He may give eternal life to all whom Thou hast given Him... . And now glorify Thou Me, O Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee" (John 17:1-5).
Second doubt. Why has not a special feast been instituted in honor of the Father?
The reply is found in the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Divinum illud munus[383] (namely, the Holy Ghost): "A danger might arise in belief and worship that the divine persons would be confused with each other and that the one nature would be separated... . Wherefore Innocent XII, our predecessor, refused the request of those who had asked for some solemnities proper to the honor of the Father." The faithful might attribute to the principle of origin priority of dignity, which would be in opposition to the identity of nature.
(See next part of document)

CHAPTER VIII: QUESTION 34 THE PERSON OF THE SON 
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.
First Article: Whether The Word In God Is A Personal Name
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.
Second Article: Whether The Word Is The Proper Name Of The Son
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.
Third Article: Whether The Name Word Implies A Reference To Creatures
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.

CHAPTER IX: QUESTION 35 THE IMAGE
First Article: Whether "Image" In God Is Predicated Personally
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.
Second Article: Whether The Name Image Is Proper To The Son
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]

CHAPTER X: QUESTION 36 THE PERSON OF THE HOLY GHOST
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.
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."[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.
Second Article: 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 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]
St. Thomas Doctrine On The Filioque[445]
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.
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, "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.
Third Article: 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.[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.
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 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.

CHAPTER XI: QUESTION 37 LOVE AS THE NAME OF THE HOLY GHOST
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.
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.
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.[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.
Solution Of The Difficulties
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.
Second Article: 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.[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.

CHAPTER XII: QUESTION 38 THE GIFT AS THE NAME OF THE HOLY GHOST
Preliminary Remarks
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.
First Article: Whether "The Gift" Is A Personal Name
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.
Second Article: Whether "Gift" Is A Proper Name Of The Holy Ghost
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]

CHAPTER XIII: QUESTION 39 THE DIVINE PERSONS IN COMPARISON WITH THE ESSENCE
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.
Division Of Question 39
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.
First Article: Whether In God The Essence Is The Same As A Person
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]
Second Article: Whether We May Say That The Three Persons Are Of One Essence
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.
Third Article: Whether The Essential Names Can Be Predicated Singly Of The Three 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, "is also they are not three uncreated, nor three infinites: but one Uncreated, and one Infinite."
Reply to the second objection. St. Thomas notes that in the Hebrew "Eloim" is used in the plural. But we do not say in the plural, Gods or substances, lest the plurality refer to the substance.
Reply to the third objection. That which pertains to a relation is predicated in the plural; that which refers to the substance is predicated in the singular. It is better to say three real relations than three relative realities, because the relations in God are not multiplied according to their <esse in> but according to their <esse ad>. St. Augustine is quoted here as saying, "The very Trinity is the highest thing."
Fourth Article: Whether Concrete Essential Terms (God, Not Deity) Can Be Substituted For Person
The question is whether concrete essential names can be used as the subject of a proposition in place of the name of any person, for example, can we say God generates as we say the Father generates?
The difficulty arises from the fact that these concrete essential terms seem to signify the essence, since Deity and God are the same, and it is not the divine essence that generates, but the Father. Thus we could also say that God does not generate if "God" can be substituted for "the Son."
The reply nevertheless is in the affirmative, with some explanation. God in the concrete signifies Deity in the suppositum and therefore God may express either the principle of operation common to the three persons, for example, God created heaven and earth, or one of the three persons. The particular signification must be determined by the exigencies of the predicate. Thus when we say God created heaven and earth, "God" stands for the three persons who have the same nature and omnipotence. On the other hand when we say, God generates, "God" stands for the Father alone because He alone generates. But we cannot say the Deity generates, as will be explained in article five.
Fifth Article: Whether Essential Terms Taken In The Abstract Can Be Substituted For Person
The reply is in the negative from the Fourth Lateran Council,[536] which declared against the error of Abbot Joachim: "The divine essence does not generate, nor is it generated, but it is the Father who generates and the Son who is generated." Abbot Joachim did not advert to the fact that the truth of a proposition depends not only on the thing signified but also on the manner of signification; the mode must also conform to the truth.
The reason for this reply is as follows: although the Deity is God without any real distinction, we cannot say that the Deity generates although we can say that God generates, because the formal signification is not the same. "Deity" signifies the divine essence in itself, but "God" signifies the divine essence in the suppositum or in a person that possesses the divine essence. Only by reason of the suppositum of the Father is this proposition true: God generates, that is, inasmuch as "God" is substituted for "the Father."
To say that the Deity generates and that the Deity is generated is to imply in the Deity a real distinction, which can exist only between the persons according to the opposition of relation, since no person can generate himself.
Reply to the fifth objection. But we can say that the divine essence is God generating or that which generates because here the predicate is used in place of the name of the person, and, as we shall see in the following article, we can say that the divine essence is the Father according to an identical predication.
Sixth Article: Whether The Persons Can Be Predicated Of The Essential Names
The question is whether, for instance, we can say, the divine essence is the Father, God is the Father, as we say that the Father is God.
The reply is in the affirmative. This proposition is true: the Deity is the Father. The reason is that personal substantive names, like Father, can be predicated of the essence because of the real identity of the essence and the person. Thus we can say, the divine essence is the Father, and the divine essence is the Son; but we cannot say that the divine essence generates or is generating or spirating, because these are adjective names, which are attributed to persons but not to the three persons.
Cajetan notes that this proposition, "The divine essence is the Father, " is true and necessary, not by formal predication but by identical predication, that is, solely because of the identity of the subject but not by reason of the thing signified. In the same way when we say the divine will is the divine intelligence, this is true identically but not formally. If it were formally true, we could substitute divine will for divine intelligence in every instance, just as we can substitute Tullius wherever we find Cicero. Then we could say that God knows by His will, that He pardons by His justice, and punishes by His mercy.
The proposition, "The divine essence is the Father, " is true identically, while the proposition, "The essence generates, " is false. It is also false to say that the divine will understands, for the adjective signifies the form in the subject, and in this last statement there can only be a formal predication and not an identical predication because the divine will is a form and not the subject of a form. The divine subject does indeed understand but not by the will. The willing God understands, but it is not God's will itself that understands.
Seventh Article: Whether Essential Terms Are To Be Propriated To The Persons
State of the question. This is the difficult question of appropriation. To solve it the theologian should preserve the "sense of the mystery," and he should not try to reduce the mystery in every instance to clear and univocal ideas. This theory of appropriation is found at least explicitly only among the Latins. The Greeks use the proper names of the persons, and besides this they speak only of appellations, kleseis, which are found in the Scriptures. As De Regnon[537] points out, the Greeks have but one proper name for each of the divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Besides this they have especially for the Son many appellations: thus in the Scriptures the Son is called Logos, Wisdom, Truth, Image, Justice, Sanctification, Redemption, and Resurrection. According to the Greeks, these appellations are conducive to a better knowledge of a divine person, but they did not arrive at an explicit concept of appropriation. Indeed they had less need for this theory because they began their study with the three persons rather than with the unity of nature.
The Latin theologians, particularly the Scholastics, desired to perfect the doctrine of the Trinity by a precise classification of all terms and concepts. Thus they distinguished exactly, in the case of each divine person, the proper names from the other appellations found in Holy Scripture, and in making these distinctions they relied on St. Augustine's psychological theory, according to which the Son proceeds as the Word after the manner of intellection or rather enunciation, and the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of love.
Thus, as we have seen above, St. Thomas showed that the proper names of the Son are, the Son, Word, and Image, and the proper names of the Holy Ghost are Holy Ghost, Love, and Gift. The other appellations found in Scripture are not proper names, but they are appropriated to one person rather than to another because of the affinity they have for one person rather than for another. Thus Wisdom is appropriated to the Son.[538]
In presenting the question in this article, St. Thomas poses three difficulties against the theory of appropriation accepted by the Latin theologians.
1. A difficulty arises because this theory may lead to an error in faith since it is possible that essential terms, like wisdom, could be understood as belonging to one person alone, or to that person in a greater degree. This would be erroneous since the Father and the Holy Ghost are equally wise with the Son.
2. Another difficulty arises from the fact that abstract essential terms, like wisdom as distinct from a wise person, cannot be appropriated to any one person, for then the Son would be the wisdom of the Father or the form of the Father. But no person is the form of another person. Like the first difficulty, this one confuses an appropriation with a proper name.
3. That which is proper is prior to that which is appropriated. But the essential attributes are prior to the persons, at least according to our method of understanding, just as that which is common is prior to that which is proper. Therefore the essential attributes should not be appropriated to the persons.
This statement reveals the difficulties inherent in the theory, whether the appropriation is not adequately distinguished from the property or whether it is explicitly distinguished from it. The importance of this problem arises particularly from our manner of speaking of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the soul by appropriation, although the Father and the Son also dwell in the souls of the just, according to our Lord's words, "If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him."[539] We shall see that a mission means more than an appropriation, although the appropriation is not merely something verbal.
Reply. St. Thomas replied: "For the manifestation of the faith it is fitting that essential attributes be appropriated to the persons." Such is the common answer of Latin theologians.
1. The reply is proved by the authority of St. Paul, who said, "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."[540] In this passage wisdom, which is an attribute common to the three persons, is appropriated to the Son. In the following article we shall see other appropriations indicated by Holy Scripture.
2. The theological proof may be thus summed up. Although the Trinity of persons cannot be demonstrated, yet it can be fittingly explained by such truths as are clearer to us. But the essential attributes, known to us from creatures, are more clear to us than the properties of the three persons. Therefore it is fitting that the essential attributes be appropriated to the persons, especially when there is a similarity or affinity, as when wisdom is appropriated to the Son. The reader is referred to the article.
In reading the article the following difficulty comes to mind: if the essential attributes, known from creatures, can manifest the divine persons, then the divine persons can be known from creatures. St. Thomas replies to this difficulty in the body of the article. He recalls what was said earlier, that creatures are the effects of the creative omnipotence, which is common to the three persons, and from creatures therefore we cannot demonstrate the Trinity of persons.[541] On the other hand Scripture tells us that there are traces of the Trinity in creatures, indeed even an image of the Trinity in the human soul.[542] Hence the divine essential attributes, known from creatures with rational certitude, can in some way manifest the divine persons, although the Trinity cannot be demonstrated by them and can be known only through revelation.
This is to say, that the theory of appropriation is not something merely verbal, like the difference between Tullius and Cicero, nor is it merely a fiction in the theologians, minds, but it has according to the Scriptures a foundation in reality, at least a foundation of trace and image, although it is difficult to determine in what this foundation consists.
In general this appropriation is made because of likeness or affinity, but sometimes it is because of dissimilarity, as when power is appropriated to the Father, as St. Augustine said, because among men fathers are weak because of their age, and we should not insinuate anything like this about God.
Reply to the first objection. No error follows from this theory because a clear distinction is made between a property and an appropriation. At least in the tract on the Trinity appropriation does not signify that something becomes a property, because the essential attributes cannot become proper to any one person, nor is the Son wiser than the Father and the Holy Ghost. Appropriation signifies adaptation or accommodation, as the doctors of the Church were accustomed to do when they attributed wisdom to the Son because He is the Word. We have therefore no error but rather more light on the truth.
Properties can easily be distinguished from appropriations. Properties are those things which are attributed to one person and cannot be attributed to another; appropriations are those things which of themselves are common to the three persons but for greater clarity are attributed to one person. Such was Cajetan's argument.
Abelard, however, ignored this distinction and fell into error. According to St. Bernard, he taught that power was proper to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the Holy Ghost.[543] Hence the following proposition was condemned: "The Father is full of power, the Son is a certain power, and the Holy Ghost has no power."[544]
Reply to the second objection. If wisdom when appropriated to the Son would become proper to Him, the Son would become the form of the Father. But to be appropriated does not signify becoming a property. Hence when St. Paul said, "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God, " he meant that the Son is the wisdom of the Father in the sense that the wisdom is from the wisdom of the Father as when we say Light of Light. Hence the Father is not wise by the wisdom which He generates but by the wisdom which is His essence.
Reply to the third objection. An essential attribute like wisdom is in itself prior to a person, but as appropriated it follows the property of a person. So color is consequent on the body but it is prior to a white body. Such is the solution of the difficulties although the idea of appropriation remains confused and we cannot arrive at a perfect distinction according to our manner of understanding. We must always retain the "sense of the mystery" and not attempt the clarification of every detail in this dogma.
Eighth Article: Whether The Holy Doctors Properly Attributed Essential Attributes To The Persons
State of the question. This question is concerned with the application of the theory of appropriation and the solution of certain special difficulties.
1. St. Hilary appropriates eternity to the Father; the reason is not apparent, for the three persons are co-eternal.
2. St. Augustine appropriates unity to the Father, equality to the Son, and concord or harmony to the Holy Ghost, whereas the three persons are co-equal.
3. St. Augustine also appropriates power to the Father; St. Paul appropriates it to the Son when he says, "Christ, the power of God."[545]
4. St. Augustine appropriates the following words to the three persons: "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things,"[546] in this way: of the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Ghost. The reason for this attribution is not apparent.
5. Truth is appropriated to the Son but it seems to be proper to the Son.
Reply. To solve these difficulties and to show the fitness of these appropriations of the doctors, St. Thomas invokes this principle: God as known from creatures, just as creatures themselves, can be. considered in four ways: 1. as He is a being; 2. as He is one; 3. as He has the power of operation; 4. as He has a relationship to His effects.
This principle presents no difficulties, and St. Thomas shows that the appropriations made by Scripture and the Fathers were made according to these various considerations.
1. When God is regarded as the supreme being, eternity is appropriated to the Father, brightness to the Son, and use or fruition to the Holy Ghost. Thus St. Hilary. Why? Because the eternal is not from a principle, brightness or beauty belongs to the Son as the perfect image and splendor of the Father, and, use in the broad sense includes fruition and belongs to the Holy Ghost since the Father and the Son love each other and mutually enjoy the Holy Ghost. Such is the explanation of the appropriations made by St. Hilary.
2. When God is regarded as One, according to St. Augustine, unity is appropriated to the Father, equality to the Son, and concord to the Holy Ghost. Why? Because these three concepts imply unity in different ways. For unity absolutely speaking does not presuppose anything else and is therefore appropriated to the Father; equality implies unity with reference to another and thus is appropriated to the Son; and concord implies the unity of two according to the heart and is therefore appropriated to the Holy Ghost.
3. When God is regarded as having the power for operation, according to St. Augustine and others, power is appropriated to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the Holy Ghost. Why? Because power has the nature of a principle and thus has a likeness to the Father, who is the principle without principle. Wisdom has a similarity to the heavenly Son inasmuch as the Son is the Word or the concept of wisdom. Goodness, finally, is the basis and object of love and thus has a similarity with the Holy Ghost, who is personal love since He proceeds after the manner of love.
This appropriation, then, more commonly accepted by the Latin theologians than others, is based on the concept proposed by St. Augustine, according to which the Son proceeds after the manner of intellection or enunciation, and the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of love. A second reason of lesser importance is also given, based on dissimilarity, for as the earthly father as an old man is weak, the earthly son as young is not yet wise, and the earthly spirit is often evil and implies violence.
First corollary. The divine operations especially marked by power, as the creation of the world, are appropriated to the Father. Thus we read in the most ancient form of the Apostles, Creed, "I believe in God the Father almighty, "[547] and in the Nicene Creed, "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker... of all things visible and invisible."[548]
Second corollary. The operations which are particularly marked by wisdom are appropriated to the Son. Thus the Nicene Creed says, "My whom all things were made, " since they were made according to God's wisdom, which orders the world. Besides this, the visible mission of the Son in the redemptive Incarnation is attributed to the Son properly and not by appropriation.
Third corollary. The operations which are especially marked by goodness are appropriated to the Holy Ghost, as the conferring of grace. Thus we read in the Constantinopolitan Creed, "And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and vivifier... who was spoken of by the prophets."[549]
The Greek Fathers had little need for this theory of appropriation because in their exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity, as we have said, they began with the three persons, who are clearly distinguished in the New Testament, rather than with the unity of nature, which incidentally they had difficulty in safeguarding. On the other hand, the Latin Fathers, especially after the time of St. Augustine, since they began with the unity of nature had difficulty in showing the distinction between the persons. In order to explain this distinction between the persons they used the theory of appropriation, especially the appropriations of power, wisdom, and goodness, which have a valid foundation in the Apostles' Creed even in its primitive form.
It is interesting to observe that the Greek Fathers, without any explicit theory of appropriation, explain how the creative omnipotence is attributed to the Father and sanctification is attributed to the Holy Ghost, although they were certain that in the operations ad extra the three persons act as one principle because they act by the divine intellect, will, and omnipotence, which are essential attributes and common to the three persons. In the introduction to this treatise, comparing the two theories, we said that among the advantages of the Latin theory was its ability to explain how the three divine persons are one principle of the operations ad extra, namely, creation, conservation, motion, providence, and divine governance. One of the difficulties of the Greek theory is that it does not clearly explain this point. This is not surprising for, when this latter theory starts out with the three persons rather than with the unity of nature, we expect that the difficulties would be the opposite of those in the Latin theory. The Greeks had difficulty in explaining the unity of nature, while the Latins had difficulty in explaining the real distinction of the persons. The mystery is simply infinite and impenetrable.
Finally St. Thomas presents a fourth appropriation based on St. Paul's words, "If Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things."[550] The "of" (ex) denotes the condition of an efficient cause, which belongs to the Father by reason of His omnipotence. The preposition "by" (per) designates the form by which the agent acts, as when the artist is said to work by his art, and this meaning is appropriated to the Son. The "in" denotes the condition of a container; God contains things inasmuch as He conserves them in His goodness and therefore this meaning is appropriated to the Holy Ghost as goodness is.
At the end of the article St. Thomas explains why truth and the "book of life" are appropriated to the Son, and also why the name "Who am." This last is appropriated to the Son because when God spoke to Moses he prefigured the liberation of the human race, which was accomplished by the Son.
We will return again to the theory of appropriation in question 43, when we treat of the indwelling of the Holy Trinity, which is appropriated to the Holy Ghost because this indwelling takes place by charity. By charity we are more closely assimilated to the Holy Ghost than we are assimilated by faith to the Son; we are not perfectly assimilated to the Son except by the light of glory, and then the Son will assimilate us to the Father.[551]

CHAPTER XIV: QUESTION 40 THE PERSONS IN COMPARISON WITH THE RELATIONS
Many commentators (e. g., Billuart) present the doctrine of this question as a commentary of question 29, article 4, namely, whether a divine person is constituted by a relation, to which the reply is in the affirmative: a divine personality is a relation as subsisting and incommunicable. The same doctrine is now taken up again to be considered synthetically and not analytically, as earlier.
First Article: Whether A Relation Is The Same As A Person
St. Thomas recalls that an incommunicable relation as subsisting is the same as a person, which is something subsisting and incommunicable. Moreover, in his reply to the first objection he shows that personal properties, like paternity and filiation, are not really distinct from the persons because as God and the Deity are the same (God is His own Deity), so the Father and paternity are the same. In God the abstract is not distinct from the concrete because there is no matter in God; on the contrary, humanity is only an essential part of the concrete man, who besides has individuating notes. God, however, is pure form without matter, and He is His own being and His own act. Properties that are not personal, such as active spiration, are not really distinct from the persons to whom they are attributed, because the simplicity of God excludes every real distinction except where there is opposition of relation.
Second Article: Whether The Persons Are Distinguished By The Relations
St. Thomas replies affirmatively, as above in question 30, and also refutes the opinion of Alexander of Hales, attributed to St. Bonaventure, according to which the persons are constituted by the active and passive origins, for example, the Father is constituted by active generation and not by the relation of paternity.
To this St. Thomas replies that a person should be constituted by something intrinsic to the person itself that is stable and permanent in actual being. But the active and passive origins are rather extrinsic to the persons and they are conceived as in the state of becoming. Moreover, an active origin, like active generation, cannot formally constitute the person which it presupposes, since it is the Father who generates. Hence, according to our mode of conception it is better to say that the divine persons are constituted by the subsisting relations. Thus the Father signifies the First Person, and the generator is the property of this person.
Objection. That which presupposes a distinction cannot be the first principle of the distinction. But relation presupposes the distinction of the things that are related, since to be related means to have a reference to another. Therefore relation cannot be the first principle of distinction in God.
Reply. I concede the major. I distinguish the minor: a relation that is an accident presupposes the distinction of the supposita, I concede; a relation that is subsisting, I deny, because such a relation constitutes the persons and brings the distinction with it. So the reply to the third difficulty. Moreover, in proof of the minor it should be said that a relation has a reference to the correlative that is prior, this I deny; to the correlative that is simultaneous in nature, this I concede.
I insist. This was examined above. The relation which follows on active generation cannot constitute the person who generates. But the relation of paternity follows active generation since it is founded on active generation. Therefore the relation of paternity cannot constitute the person of the Father.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the relation as actually referring to the terminus, or that which in the exercise of the act refers to the Son (follows the person), this I concede; the relation which in the signified act modifies the divine essence (follows the person), this I deny. And I contradistinguish the minor.
Thus the first angle constructed in the triangle is a geometric figure even before it actually has a reference to the two other angles. So we can conceive whiteness in itself as that by which (ut quo) before we conceive it as modifying the wall (ut quod). Similarly habitual grace is conceived in itself before it is conceived as expelling sin; essence is conceived first in its formal act (in actu signato), as that which is capable of existence, before it is conceived as in the exercise of the act as having reference to a produced existence.
This distinction is not futile or without an analogy, but it must be said that relation, which is a predicamental in creatures, has a substantial <esse in> only in God and only in God can it constitute a person. Relation constitutes a person in God inasmuch as it is incommunicable and subsisting, and it constitutes a relative personality inasmuch as it is a relation.
In the third article of this question St. Thomas insists on the identity of the persons with the relations by which they are constituted, and he shows that the intellect cannot abstract the relations from the persons. This is contrary to the opinion attributed to St. Bonaventure. In explanation St. Thomas distinguishes between total abstraction, or logical abstraction, in which the entire universal (as genus or species) is abstracted from the particular, as, for example, animal from man, and formal abstraction, in which form is abstracted from matter, as, for example, when the form of the circle is abstracted from all sensible matter.
With respect to God we cannot use total or logical abstraction because God is not in any genus; hence we cannot abstract the relations from the persons. Nor can we by formal abstraction abstract the personal relations from the persons, for example, paternity from the Father, because there is no matter in God. The Father is His paternity and if we abstract the paternity nothing remains of the Father. On the other hand the form of the circle can be abstracted from all sensible matter, for example, from wood or stone.
Third Article: Whether The Notional Acts Are Understood Prior To The Properties
St. Thomas disagrees with the opinion of Alexander of Hales, attributed to St. Bonaventure, according to which the notional acts, for example, generation, constitute the persons in such a way that active generation is antecedent to paternity according to our method of conception.
Reply. In St. Thomas' view the notional acts taken actively, such as to generate and to spirate, presuppose the persons from which they proceed as already constituted, and the persons are constituted by the subsisting relations, as was said above. Hence active generation, or enunciation, proceeds from the divine intellect as modified by the relation of paternity. And yet these notional acts are the bases of the relations inasmuch as the relations actually have a reference to their termini. In our method of conceiving these things the matter is rather obscure with regard to the active origins; this obscurity, however, does not arise with regard to the passive origins since a passive origin, such as passive generation, according to our method of conception precedes the filiation for which it is a basis.
Toward the end of the body of the article St. Thomas replies that a relation (for example, paternity) as a relation actually referring to the Son presupposes active generation; but active generation presupposes the person who generates and the personal property, paternity, as constituting the person. Here there is indeed a mystery but no contradiction. Similarly, in an equilateral triangle the first angle constructed, while it is alone, is a geometric figure but it does not yet refer to the other two angles not yet constructed.
The reader is referred to the article in the Summa.
In question 27 we have examined the difficulty presented by the Latin theory with regard to the proximate principle quo of the divine processions. We concluded that this principle is the divine intellect and will, not in themselves, but as they are modified by the relations of paternity and active spiration.[552]
Nevertheless the relation of paternity as actually and actively terminated in the Son presupposes active generation. In this most difficult expression of the mystery we find something similar to the principle that causes are mutually causes of each other but in different genera. By reason of this principle, for example, the ultimate disposition for a form precedes the form in the order of material cause and afterward follows the form as a property in the order of formal cause. If we have difficulty in expressing this mutual relationship between the material and formal disposition of corporeal beings, it is not surprising that we should find it difficult to express the mutual relationships between the divine relations, such as paternity, and the notional acts, such as active generation.
Generation presupposes the Father and is the foundation for paternity, but not under the same aspect. The matter is somewhat similar to the form which presupposes the disposition and also affords the basis for the disposition inasmuch as the disposition is also a property. An example is the ultimate disposition for the rational soul, whatever it may be, whether it is a movement of the heart or something similar. When this property is destroyed by death, the soul separates from the body, because this property is seen under two aspects at the same time: it is a property and a disposition for the production and conservation of the form in the matter. If this is a mystery in the order of sensible things, we do not wonder that it is difficult to express how these things are in God.
First corollary. As stated in the reply to the first difficulty, both these statements are true: because He generates He is the Father, and because He is the Father He generates. In the first statement the name "Father" is taken as designating the relation alone, or the simple reference to the terminus; in the second statement the name "Father" is taken as designating a subsisting person.
Second corollary. The relation of active spiration, since it does not constitute a person but is merely a reference to a terminus, is posterior in our minds to the notional act of spiration, which is attributed to the Father and the Son.

CHAPTER XV: QUESTION 41 THE PERSONS IN COMPARISON WITH THE NOTIONAL ACTS
In this question we consider expressly the notional acts, generation I and spiration, which are called notional because they denote persons. In this question six articles are proposed for our profound and diligent consideration: 1. whether notional acts can be attributed to the persons; 2. whether the notional acts are necessary or voluntary, and then whether God has power with regard to these acts.
First Article: Whether Notional Acts Are To Be Attributed To The Persons
State of the question. The difficulty arises 1. because, since God is not an accident, every act pertains to the essence and cannot therefore be attributed to the persons; 2. because St. Augustine seems to confirm this difficulty when he says: "Everything that is predicated of God is predicated either according to His substance or according to a relation, "[553] hence there is no place for notional acts; 3. because it is a property of an act to imply passivity or passion, but nothing passive is found in God, for example, passive generation is something imperfect and not to be attributed to God.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative, namely, notional acts are to be attributed to the persons; indeed it is necessary to do so in order to signify the order of origin in the different persons.
The first part of this reply is of faith according to the Scripture as we shall see immediately.
1. The testimony of Sacred Scripture is clear: "The Lord hath said to Me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee."[554] This text, as we have said above, is given added force by the New Testament:[555] "the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father."[556] Our Lord also said: "For from God I proceeded, and came."[557] The first part of this text is accepted in tradition as referring to the eternal procession. The councils quoted these words of Scripture in this sense. In the argument sed contra St. Thomas quotes the words of St. Fulgentius, "It is a property of the Father that He generated the Son."
2. The theological reason is as follows: In the divine persons distinction is attendant on the origin.[558] But origin cannot be conveniently designated except by some act. Therefore generation is properly attributed to the Father and spiration to the Father and the Son. This reasoning is clear, but the difficulties posed in the state of the question must still be solved.
Reply to the first difficulty. How is it that an act like generation, which is not a relation, does not pertain to the divine essence? The reply is that if this were an act ad extra, like creation, it would pertain to the essence, but generation and spiration are acts ad intra belonging to the procession of a person from a person and therefore are attributed to the persons.
Reply to the second difficulty. It is insisted that in God there is nothing besides essence and relation, and therefore the notional acts must be reduced to the relations. But to generate is more than a relation. The reply is rather profound. The notional acts are distinguished from the persons not really but only by reason, because if the idea of action is purified of all created modes, action within God (ad intra) is nothing more than a relation. In the created order transitive action, like active generation, is a movement or mutation as coming from the agent, and the passion is the movement as it is in the recipient. When we prescind from the motion, as no matter is in God, action implies nothing more than the order of origin, according to which it proceeds from a principle to the terminus. Since, then, there is no motion in God, active generation is nothing else than the condition or reference of the Father to the Son, and active spiration is nothing else than the condition or reference of the Father and the Son to the Holy Ghost. According to our method of knowing, which is based on the knowledge of creatures, we distinguish active generation from the Father and thus we have two terms, but there is no real distinction. It would be better to speak of quasi-active generation and quasi-passive generation, and also quasi-spiration. With regard to our concept of creation we must also purify the idea of transitive action since creation is without becoming because there is no preexisting subject. In creation we have causality properly so called, but the Father is not the cause of the Son but only His principle. St. Thomas says: "Creation is not a change (mutatio) except to our way of thinking... for if we prescind from motion and the pre-existing subject we have only the various references (habitudines) in the Creator and in the creature."[559]
So in the Trinity, if we remove the idea of motion, active generation implies nothing more than the order of origin.
Reply to the third difficulty. The other insistence still remains: How can there be in God passive generation, which implies imperfection? The reply is as follows: action, inasmuch as it implies the origin of motion, of itself results in passivity (passio), since action is motion as coming from the agent and motion as it is in a recipient. But such action is not found in the divine persons. When we prescind from the motion, we do not find that passivity (passiones) except in the grammatical sense and according to our method of signification, as when we say that the Father generates and that the Son is generated. This means that the Son is generated not according to a transition from passive potency to act as in human generation but in the sense that the entire uncreated divine nature and subsisting and unreceived being itself are communicated to the Son by the Father. Hence the expression, "The divine nature is communicated," is more proper than, "The Father produces the Son," since active production savors of causality, and passive production savors of the transition from potency to act.
In God, then, to be generated is not less perfect than to generate, and to be communicated is not less perfect than to communicate. Analogically, in the equilateral triangle the angle that is constructed first is not more perfect than the other two, and the three angles have a superficies which is numerically the same. In the beginning this superficies is the superficies of the angle that is first constructed and it is not communicated to this first angle; then this same superficies is communicated to the second angle and, if the second angle is equal to the first, the third angle is equal to the first two, and the third angle receives the same superficies, which is not caused in it but is communicated to it. It is wonderful that between things so remote as the Trinity and the triangle there should be an analogy so intelligible and so clear. In all created things we can find a trace of the Blessed Trinity.
Second Article: Whether The Notional Acts Are Voluntary
State of the question. The sense of the question is whether the Father voluntarily generates the Son and whether the Father and the Son voluntarily spirate the Holy Ghost.
As is clear from the texts cited from the Fathers at the beginning of this treatise, the difficulty arises because on the one hand we cannot say that the Father freely generates the Son, for then the Son would be a creature, as the Arians taught; and on the other hand we cannot say that the Father involuntarily generates the Son as if forced to do so. From the words quoted in the argument sed contra we see that St. Augustine was aware of this difficulty: "The Father generates the Son neither by His will nor by necessity (by force)."
Reply. St. Thomas solves the difficulty by a distinction between the concomitant will and the antecedent will, which latter is subdivided into necessary and free. It should be noted that the antecedent will is in opposition to the concomitant will and to the consequent will but not in the same way.[560] With respect to the consequent will, the antecedent will is inefficacious;[561] with respect to the concomitant will it may be efficacious. St. Thomas' division may be reduced to the following.
(diagram page 290)
The will
Antecedent, as an effective principle
as nature: that is, as a natural and necessary principle. Thus man naturally wills happiness in general
as free: as a principle acting indifferently as to judgment. Thus God freely wills creatures.
Concomitant, not as an effective principle
In this way I will to be a man and I am pleased to be a man, but the fact that I am a human being does not depend on my will
Having made this division, we draw three conclusions.
1. The notional acts, to generate and to spirate, are voluntary by a concomitant will. Thus the Father voluntarily generates the Son, just as He wills Himself to be God; the Father does not generate the Son involuntarily nor do the Father and the Son spirate the Holy Ghost unwillingly.
As we read in the reply to the first objection, St. Hilary wrote: "The Father does not generate the Son induced by a natural necessity. He is not forced to generate the Son."[562] Such was also the declaration of the Council of Sardinia, and St. Augustine rightly says, "The Father generates the Son not by the necessity of force."[563]
2. The notional acts are not voluntary by an antecedent will as free, because what proceeds in this way from the free will is able not to be, and the notional acts are not able not to be. Otherwise it would be possible for the Son and the Holy Ghost not to be. St. Thomas might have been content with this explanation, but in the body of the article he recalls the roots of liberty explained earlier[564] in the question, "Whether God freely wills things other than Himself." He explains that, whereas the form by which a natural agent acts is one (the natural form), it follows that in the same circumstances such an agent always produces the same effect (by the principle of induction), since it is determined to one effect. On the other hand, the form by which the will as free acts is not one only but consists of many reasons in the intellect and many possible judgments, and therefore in the deliberation there is an indifferent mistress of judgments and also of choice. Therefore what is freely willed can be either one or another. But this cannot be in God or in the processions, otherwise it would be possible for the Son and the Holy Ghost not to be and then they would be creatures, as the Arians thought.
3. Active spiration is by an antecedent will as nature; generation, however, which, as enunciation, proceeds not from the will but from the intellect, proceeds prior to the will. God therefore understands the generation before He wills it. Spiration proceeds from the antecedent will because the Holy Ghost proceeds as love; consequently He proceeds by the will, namely, as the terminus of that volition by which the Father and the Son naturally and necessarily love each other. In this same way man naturally loves happiness in general, at least by a necessity of specification; in this way also the blessed love God by an act of the will which is entirely spontaneous but also necessary, an act of the will that is not inferior to liberty but above it, because the will of the blessed is invincibly drawn to God's goodness when they see Him clearly.[565] In this beatific love there is no liberty of specification or freedom of exercise and yet this love is most spontaneous; it is therefore an excellent example of the non-free and spontaneous active spiration. Thus the Holy Ghost proceeds not after the manner of nature, because He is not begotten, but from the will as nature.
Scotus, who in this question seems to follow St. Bonaventure and Richard of St. Victor, held that the procession of the Holy Ghost is an act that is free by an essential freedom. To this the Thomists reply that this essential liberty cannot be a liberty by necessity or a liberty of indifference for then it would be possible for the Holy Ghost not to be and then He would be a creature. The term, "essential liberty," then, can be understood only as liberty by compulsion, which is simply the spontaneity of natural and necessary volition. The difference is really only nominal, because the Thomists readily admit such spontaneity, as in the beatific love, which is not in any way free yet is most spontaneous. Scotus found himself obliged to say that active spiration, although free by an essential freedom, was necessary inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is necessarily spirated and necessarily exists, but he did not wish to call the spirating will natural.[566]
Third Article: Whether A Person Proceeds From Something Or From Nothing By The Notional Acts
This article explains the words of the Creed about the Son, who is begotten but not made from nothing, in opposition to the Arians, who taught that the Son was a creature. St. Thomas showed that the processions, generation and spiration, are emanations and not creations from nothing. This is the difference between being begotten and being made: he who is begotten is from the substance of the generator. For even in human generation the son is from the seed of the father, although here we have a multiplication of natures; in divine generation the Son is of the substance of the Father, but here the entire indivisible divine nature is communicated to the Son without multiplication of the nature. That, however, which is made, for instance by a mechanic, is not of the substance of the workman, but it is produced by a transformation of matter, or if it is made without any pre-existing subject it is said to be made from nothing. This explains why the Scriptures speak of the Son of God not only in the broad sense, as an adopted son, but as "His own Son, "[567] and as "the only-begotten Son."[568]
Fourth Article: Whether In God There Is Potentia With Regard To The Notional Acts
State of the question. It is asked whether there is a potentia of generating and spirating in God. Following St. Augustine, St. Thomas replies in the affirmative because potentia is nothing else than the principle of some act, and in this instance the potentia is active. As he says in the reply to the second difficulty, passive potentia cannot exist in God, nor can there be any power which is necessarily opposed for then the potentia would be passive.
A difficulty is raised in the third objection. Potentia is predicated of God with respect to certain effects (in this way we speak of God's omnipotence); but power is not predicated of God with respect to the divine operations, divine intellection and will, because God is pure act. Therefore in God there is no intellective faculty but only intellect subsisting per se, nor is there a volitional faculty. Indeed, the divine persons are not effects of God, and therefore we cannot speak of the potentia of generating or spirating in God.
Reply. According to St. Thomas' reply the potentia of generating is not properly the principle of active generation but the principle of the begotten person, just as the creative power is not the principle of the creative action, which is not an accident in God, but the principle of the created effect.
As Billuart points out, these notional powers, that is, the powers of generating and spirating, are not virtually distinct from the acts because there is no foundation in God for conceiving Him as being in potency to anything since He is pure act.
Thus in God the intellect is not virtually distinct from intellection since God's intellect is intellection subsisting per se, noesis noeseos Similarly God's will is not virtually distinct from His love, by which He loves Himself necessarily, and loves other things freely. This unique act of love is the indifferent mistress of those goods which are able not to be.
Fifth Article: Whether The Power To Generate Signifies The Relation And Not The Essence
Reply. The power of generating signifies directly the divine nature and indirectly the relation of paternity. This is another way of saying what was said at the beginning of this treatise in the question on the processions, namely, the proximate principle quo of the processions is the divine nature itself as modified by the relations of paternity and spiration. In the present article this principle quo is called the notional power of generating or spirating.
St. Thomas offers proof for this for the power of generating, which is more easily understood than the second power: In the created order every agent produces what is like to itself according to the form by which it acts inasmuch as it determines its production according to its own proper determination. Thus a cow generates a cow, a horse generates a horse, and everything that generates produces something like itself according to its species or nature. Hence in the one who generates, the nature is the principle quo of generation; thus Socrates generates as a man and generates a man. If Socrates generated as Socrates he would generate Socrates. Therefore the active principle of generation is directly the nature of the generator and indirectly it is the personality of the generator, for when Socrates generates, the principle quo of generation is human nature as it is in Socrates; so also in God the principle quo of generation is the divine nature as it is in the Father. Similarly the superficies of the triangle is communicated to the second and third angles as it is in the first angle. Particular attention should be given to what St. Thomas says at the end of the body of the article: "In created things the individual form constitutes the person of the generator, but it is not that by which the generator generates, otherwise Socrates would generate Socrates. Hence paternity cannot be taken as that by which the Father generates, but it must be understood as the form that constitutes the person of the generator, otherwise the Father would generate a Father."
According to St. Thomas, then, the personality of Socrates is the individual form, namely, that by which something is what it is, or the first subject of attribution.[569] But this individual form of Socrates is not matter marked by quantity, or the individuating conditions, since it is called the individual form; nor is this form Socrates' existence, which is a contingent predicate in Socrates.[570]
Sixth Article: Whether A Notional Act Can Terminate In Several Persons
In other words, it is asked whether several persons can be generated or spirated in God, as one man can beget several sons.
Reply. The reply is in the negative.
1. In God being and possibility are not different. Therefore if it were possible to have several sons of God, there would actually be several sons of God; and this conclusion would be heresy.
2. Such plurality of sons could arise only from matter, which does not exist in God. It would also presuppose several numerically distinct generations. This is impossible because generation and spiration are acts naturally determined to one terminus and the terminus is, as it were, an adequate fruit (result). Thus the Son is the perfect Son, in whom the entire filiation and the entire divine nature is contained without multiplication. We should note what St. Thomas says in this sixth article (as everywhere else): "The forms of one species are not multiplied except according to matter, " and therefore a form that is not received in matter cannot be anything but one.
Recently some Thomists have said that God could miraculously make several angels in the same species, that is, many Michaels multiplied without matter. According to St. Thomas this is impossible because we are dealing here with a metaphysical principle in which there is no place for a miracle.[571] It is not merely a natural law but a metaphysical principle that an act that is not limited in itself is not limited or multiplied except by the potency or real capacity in which it is received. Therefore a form is not multiplied except by matter, or by an order to matter, and it is this order to matter that remains in the separated soul. In this metaphysical principle, if it is really metaphysical, that is, absolutely and not only hypothetically necessary, there is no exception by way of a miracle.

CHAPTER XVI: QUESTION 42 THE EQUALITY AND SIMILARITY OF THE DIVINE PERSONS
THIS chapter treats of the comparison of the divine persons with one another. Six articles are presented about their equality and on the order between them and on circumincession, inasmuch as one person is in the other.
First Article: Whether The Divine Persons Are Equal
Reply. The reply is affirmative and of faith according to the Athanasian Creed, which professes that the divine persons are "coequal, " and the same doctrine is defined by many councils.[572] In the Scriptures it is said of the Son, "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God."[573] The explanation given in the body of the article is this: things are said to be unequal according to a difference in quantity. But in God quantity is the perfection of divine nature, which is numerically the same in the three persons. Therefore the three persons are not unequal but all three are coequal.
In the reply to the first difficulty, St. Thomas explains that quantity is twofold: quantity of amount (molis) and quantity of power (virtutis). The latter is predicated according to perfection of nature or form. To be one in nature is to be the same; to be one in quantity is to be equal; and to be one in quality is to be similar.[574] Corollaries are presented in the following articles.
In the reply to the second difficulty, it is noted that the three persons are similar because we have here equality not of amount but of power, according to communication in one form.
Second Article: Whether The Proceeding Person Is Coeternal With His Principal
State of the question. The difficulty arises because no eternal being has a principle and that which is generated begins to be. In the first difficulty St. Thomas quotes the objection of the Arians, who enumerated twelve kinds of generation in which there is no consubstantiality or coeternity.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that the three persons are coeternal. This is of faith according to the Scriptures: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard";[575] "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."[576] In the Athanasian Creed we profess, "The whole three persons are coeternal together and coequal." The Fourth Lateran Council also declared that the three persons are "consubstantial and coequal and co-omnipotent and coeternal."[577]
The theological explanation throws a great deal of light on this somewhat obscure doctrine. The explanation is as follows: The proceeding persons are coeternal with their principles because they proceed from a principle whose active power is always perfect by instantaneous action in the one unique instant of eternity. The intellect and the will of God are, of course, always in act. Therefore the divine intellect is never without the Word nor is the divine will ever without personal love, or the Holy Ghost.
Reply to the first objection. A vestige of this coeternity is found in the sun inasmuch as the sun never lacks its brightness.
Reply to the second objection. Unparticipated eternity properly so called excludes the principle of duration but not the principle of origin. Thus the Son originates from the Father in the one instant of immobile eternity. This truth is expressed in the words, "Thou art My son, this day have I begotten Thee."[578] "Today, " that is, in this one unique instant of eternity, which is the stable now (nunc stans) and which is not fluent.
Reply to the third objection. The following principle, "Everything that is generated begins to be," is not verified in the Son of God because divine generation is not a transmutation, nor is it a change from non-being to being, but it takes place by the communication of uncreated being itself.[579] Hence the Son is always generated and the Father always generates, since the "now" of eternity is not fluent but is immutably stationary.
Reply to the fourth objection. In time the perduring time is different from the indivisible fleeting point, which is the fluent instant, for time is the successive continuum which is divisible in infinity, whereas the instant is indivisible like the point that terminates a line. In eternity, however, this indivisible "now" is always stable or stationary and therefore there is no difference between the perduring eternity and this indivisible point.[580] Since the generation of the Son is in the "now" of eternity, we can say that the Son is always being born, or still better that the Son is always born because the "born" signifies the perfection of him who is begotten, whereas being born signifies that which is becoming and is not yet perfect.
A beautiful thesis could be written about this "now" of eternity in comparison with continuous time, which is the measure of the apparent movement of the sun, and with the discrete time of the angels, which is the measure of the angels' successive thoughts and affections.[581] Such a thesis could be combined with the doctrine concerning the life of God inasmuch as eternity is defined as "the perfect, complete, and simultaneous possession of interminable life."
Third Article: Whether There Is An Order Of Nature In The Divine Persons
State of the question. The precise state of the question appears in the second difficulty. This difficulty is as follows: In those things where there is an order of nature one thing is prior to another, if not in time at least in nature or intellection. But in the divine persons nothing is earlier or later, as we learn from the Athanasian Creed. Moreover, in God the nature is most simple and numerically the same in the three persons and hence there is no order in the divine nature.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that there is an order of nature in the divine persons, an order not according to earlier and later but according to origin.
1. This is proved from general principles in the argument sed contra as follows: Wherever there is plurality without order we have confusion. But in God there is no confusion; therefore there must be order.
2. It is also proved from particular principles. Order is always predicated with regard to some principle, for example, with regard to the principle of the line, the principle of number, the principle of demonstration, the principle of causal influence, or the chief end. But in God we predicate the principle of origin without any priority. Therefore in God there is the order of origin without priority or posteriority.
The minor was explained above:[582] "Although the term 'principle' with regard to that from which its significance is derived seems to come from priority, it does not signify priority but origin. For that which a term signifies is not the same as that from which the term is derived, as was explained above."[583] Thus the Latin word for stone, lapis, seems to be derived from some action of the stone, namely, to injure the foot, laedit pedem.
Reply to the second objection. In created beings order is a disposition with regard to priority and posteriority in view of some principle, for example, the principle of the line or of motion, the principle of demonstration, or the principle of causality in any one of the four kinds of causes. But in God the concept of order is preserved analogically in view of the principle of origin without priority or posteriority, because posteriority either in duration or being would be an imperfection, which cannot be predicated of the Son or of the Holy Ghost. More briefly: whatever is posterior to another in nature must depend according to its own nature upon the nature of the other (as the nature of the ray depends on the nature of the sun). But we cannot speak of God in this way because there is but one nature in God. In this reply to the second difficulty St. Thomas shows that where there is no priority of time in created beings there is still a priority of nature, for example, the sun is prior to its brightness. But he adds: "If we consider not the entity of the cause but the relations themselves of the cause and that which is caused, of the principle and that which is principled, it is evident that the relatives are simultaneous in nature and intellect inasmuch as the one is contained in the definition of the other. But in God the relations are subsisting persons in one nature. Therefore one person is not prior to another either on the part of the nature or on the part of the relations. Nor is one person prior to another in intellection.
We have then an order of origin without any priority, even that of nature. This is, of course, quite mysterious. Cajetan notes that many theologians admit a "priority and posteriority of origin." His reply was: "Let them have this opinion, but let them be quiet about it." He probably meant that they could hold this opinion inasmuch as there is a kind of priority and posteriority according to our imperfect method of understanding but not in fact, and that as far as possible we ought to try to correct our imperfect method of knowledge. To safeguard the words of the Athanasian Creed, "In this Trinity there is nothing before or after," we ought to say with St. Thomas, "nothing is before or after, either in time or nature or honor." We preserve the analogy by noting that "between God and creatures there is no similarity so great that there is not always a greater dissimilarity.[584]
A trace of this truth is found in the equilateral triangle, in which the three angles are entirely similar and equal. We can say that the angles are without any priority in this sense, that in constructing the triangle we can begin with any angle, and we can invert the triangle so that the apex becomes the extremity of the base.
Reply to the third objection. "The order of nature is predicated not in the sense that the divine nature itself is ordered but that the order among the divine persons follows according to natural origin, " for the Father generates according to His own nature, and the Father and the Son spirate the Holy Ghost by the will as it is the divine nature.
Reply to the fourth objection. It is called the order of nature rather than the order of the essence because nature to a certain extent implies the idea of principle.
Fourth Article: Whether The Son Is Equal To The Father In Greatness
State of the question. We are dealing here with the equality of perfection for the purpose of explaining Christ's words, "The Father is greater than 1."[585] The difficulty arises because paternity pertains to dignity and does not belong to the Son. This is a statement of the question on which we touched earlier, namely, whether paternity is a simply perfect perfection properly so called, although the Son does not possess it. It is the same question as in the first article with the special difficulty that arises from the fact that paternity appears to be a special dignity.
Reply. The reply is in the affirmative: the Son is equal to the Father in perfection. This doctrine is of faith from the Scriptures: "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God."[586]
The theological reason is as follows: It is of the nature of paternity and filiation that the Son by generation attains to the possession of that perfect nature which is in the Father as it is possessed by the Father. And the Son attains to that perfect nature unless the power of generation is defective. But in God the power of generation is not defective; it is exercised most perfectly from all eternity. Therefore the Son possesses the entire perfection of the Father from all eternity.
Reply to the first objection. Only as man did Christ say, "The Father is greater than 1."
Reply to the second objection. The difficulty is that the Son lacks the dignity of paternity. St. Thomas replied: "Paternity is the dignity of the Father just as the essence is the dignity of the Father, since the dignity is absolute and pertains to the essence. Just as the same essence which is the paternity in the Father is filiation in the Son, so the same dignity which is paternity in the Father is filiation in the Son. But in the Father this dignity is according to the relation of the giver, and in the Son it is according to the relation of the recipient." But the divine generation is without the imperfection of the transition from potency to act since divine generation is not a mutation but the communication of uncreated being itself. Similarly, in the equilateral triangle the superficies is the same in the first angle and in the second, but in the first it is according to the relation of the giver and in the second according to the relation of the recipient. That is, as we have said above, the relations as such, according to their <esse ad>, prescind from perfection and imperfection. Hence they are not simply simple perfections properly so called; for, although they do not involve any imperfection, it is not better to have them than not to have them. Otherwise the Son would lack some perfection and so would not be God.
St. Thomas points out that "a relation, inasmuch as it is a relation, does not have that which makes it something but only that by which it has a reference to something."[587] In this reply he says, "The thing in the something to which the reference is, is changed, " since the same dignity which in the Father is paternity is filiation in the Son. Thus divine filiation is not less perfect than divine paternity, just as in the triangle either angle at the base is not less perfect than the angle at the apex.
Reply to the third objection. The three persons together do not constitute greater perfection than one person alone, because the entire, infinite perfection of the divine nature is in each person, just as the superficies of the equilateral triangle is in each of the angles.
St. Thomas also points out in this article that in God relation and person are not something universal because all the relations are one according to essence and being. Humanity, however, is something universal, that is, it is apt to be in many through the multiplication of the form received in different parts of matter.
Fifth Article: Whether The Son Is In The Father And The Father Is In The Son
This article deals with circumincession, which is the mutual coexistence of the divine persons in each other so that the Father is in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both in the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost in both.
The difficulty arises because what goes out of another is not in the other. But the Son goes out of the Father from all eternity. Moreover, one of two opposites is not in the other opposite.
Reply. The affirmative reply is of faith according to the Scriptures, for Christ said: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?"[588] Such was the interpretation of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine.[589]
The theological argument is in three parts: the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son:
1. according to essence, which is numerically the same in the persons;
2. according to the relations, because they mutually involve each other, although they are opposites;
3. according to the procession, because it is immanent or ad intra and not ad extra.
Circumincession signifies consubstantiality, the immanence of the processions, and the reciprocity of opposite relations. An analogy can be seen in the equilateral triangle, where each angle is in the other two.
Objection. One of two opposites is not in the other opposite, because the opposites are really distinct. Therefore the Father is not in the Son.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: one of the opposites formally as an opposite is not in the other opposite, I concede; nevertheless by reason of the same essence the relations have the same <esse in> and according to the <esse ad> they mutually refer to each other and are inseparable, although really distinct. Thus, by circumincession the Father and the Holy Ghost are with the incarnate Son in the Holy Eucharist.[590]
Sixth Article: Whether The Son Is Equal To The Father In Power
This article explains the following words of our Lord: "The Son cannot do anything of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing, "[591] and," or whatsoever He[the Father] doth, these the Son also doth in like manner."[592]
Reply. The affirmative reply is of faith. The reason is that the power of acting follows the perfection of the nature, which is numerically the same in the Father and in the Son.
Reply to the first objection. But the Son has this power as He has His nature from the Father.
Reply to the third objection. St. Thomas recalls what was said in the reply to the second objection in the fourth article.

CHAPTER XVII: QUESTION 43 THE MISSION OF THE DIVINE PERSONS
THIS last question of the treatise takes up the comparison of the I divine persons with one another with regard to their missions ad extra. We have already touched on this matter in question 38, where we treated of the Gift as the name of the Holy Ghost, that uncreated gift, personal love, which is the first of all the gifts that proceed from love. This question about the missions of the divine persons is the principal foundation for that event which is essentially supernatural ad extra, namely, the redemptive Incarnation and the life of grace within us. Under that aspect this question is connected with the question on the love of God, where the principle of predilection is enunciated: No one would be better than another if he were not loved more by God,[593] and with the question of the universal salvific will.[594]
These articles are, therefore, of great importance and should be studied carefully. The doctrine contained in them was the frequent object of contemplation for the saints and it ought to be effectively presented in our sermons. It would become the subject matter of our preaching if our preaching were preceded by diligent contemplation of this matter.[595]
This question is divided into two parts. The first part treats the matter in general and is divided into the first three articles: 1. whether any divine person is sent; 2. whether the mission is eternal or only temporal; 3. in what manner a divine person is sent invisibly; and the reply: according to grace gratum faciens. This is the principal article of the entire question.
The second part of this question consists of the special application of-these truths to the three divine persons: 4. the Father is not sent because there is no person to send Him, but He comes and dwells in us; 5. whether the Son as well as the Holy Ghost is sent invisibly, and the reply is affirmative; 6. to whom is the mission made? and the reply: to all the just in whom the divine persons become present in a new way or in a higher way; 7. whether it belongs to the Holy Ghost to be sent visibly, as on Pentecost; 8. whether it can be said that the Son is sent by the Holy Ghost; and the reply is affirmative with the qualification that the sending is improperly so called.
The basis of this doctrine of the missions of the divine persons is found in many places in Holy Scripture. We cite here the texts of the New Testament.
From the Synoptics: "Whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me";[596] "And I send the promise of My Father upon you."[597] The Greek for "send" is apostello, hence apostolos, one sent, or a legate from God.
From St. John's Gospel: "For God sent not His Son into the world, to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by Him";[598] "And the Father Himself who hath sent Me, hath given testimony of Me";[599] "because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me."[600] Concerning the Holy Ghost: "But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things";[601] "But if I go, I will send Him to you."[602]
In St. Paul: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent His Son."[603]
From the councils: "The Holy Ghost is said to be the Spirit not only of the Father but of the Father and the Son together. This Holy Ghost is believed to be sent by both as the Son is sent by the Father; but He is not less than the Father; and the Son as the Son, because of the flesh He assumed, testified that He was less than the Father and the Holy Ghost."[604]
In the creed of St. Epiphanius we read: "I believe in the Holy Ghost, who was proclaimed by the prophets, who descended on the Jordan (in Christ's baptism), who spoke through the apostles (on Pentecost), and who dwells in the saints."[605]
The Council of Trent declared that the Holy Ghost is received with sanctifying grace;[606] and earlier St. John Damascene said that the Holy Ghost gives seven gifts.[607]
The most complete and extensive document of the Church on the divine missions and on the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in the just is Pope Leo XIII's encyclical on the Holy Ghost, which Denzinger should have listed.[608] In almost the same words used by St. Thomas it gives a beautiful presentation of the doctrine of the missions, the indwelling, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.[609]
First Article: Whether It Is Fitting For A Divine Person To Be Sent
State of the question. It seems that no divine person is sent because the one who is sent is less than the sender, and because whatever is sent is separated from the sender. Moreover, the divine persons are already present everywhere and hence they cannot be sent where they already are. The expression "mission" is, therefore, not proper but only metaphorical, as when we say, God is angry.
Reply. The reply is in the affirmative: it belongs to some persons to be sent, that is, analogically, not only metaphorically and analogically, as when we say, God is angry, but by a proper analogy.
This reply is of faith according to the Scriptures, which often use this expression.[610]
The body of the article contains a conceptual analysis of the idea of mission, and the argument is therefore not an illative but an explicative syllogism: the idea of mission implies the twofold reference of the one sent: to the sender and to the terminus of the sending.
One is sent by the sender either by command, as the servant by his master, or by counsel, as a king by his councilor, or by origin, as the flower is sent out by the plant. One is sent to the terminus of the sending either in the sense that the one sent begins to be there, or at least begins to be there in a new way.
Hence a mission can be predicated of a divine person by a proper analogy inasmuch as this divine person proceeds from the sender and begins to be in another in a new way. Thus the Son is said to be sent by the Father into the world inasmuch as the Son began to be in the world in the flesh assumed by Him, and yet the Son was in the world before this as the Word not yet incarnate. "That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him."[611] Obviously, this syllogism is not objectively illative because we do not arrive at a new truth but only explain a truth already revealed: "For God sent not His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world may be saved by Him."[612]
The reply is confirmed by the solution of the objections.
Reply to the first objection. The one sent is less than the sender if he is sent by command or even by counsel, but not if he is sent according to a procession that is only of origin, which takes place on the plane of equality.
Reply to the second objection. In a divine mission the one sent is not separated from the sender because the one sent does not move locally to a place where he was not before but only begins a new manner of being in one where he had not been before.
Reply to the third objection. Thus a divine person does not leave a place, because God in Himself is not in any place, and the divine person was already present by the general presence of His immensity where now He begins to be in a new way. This will be explained at greater length in the third article.
From this article we obtain the definition of a divine mission: essentially it implies the procession of origin of one person from another with a new mode of existence in another. According to his custom, St. Thomas thus passes from the nominal, or commonly accepted, definition to the real definition, dividing the various kinds of missions, comparing them in order to discover how they agree and differ analogically so that no imperfection will be posited in God. Indeed this idea of mission in its formal analogical meaning posits no imperfection in God; on the other hand the concept of anger does imply imperfection. Hence we say that God is angry only metaphorically, but that the Son of God is sent by the Father in the proper sense, as is also the Holy Ghost by the Father and the Son.
First corollary. A mission is more than simple appropriation, for the Son of God is said to be sent in the Incarnation; and He is said to be incarnate not only by appropriation but properly and personally so that the Father and the Holy Ghost are not incarnate.
Similarly the mission of the Holy Ghost is more than simple appropriation, although the Holy Ghost is not united personally with the just, and although the three persons dwell in the just. Mission implies a procession of origin which is more than simple appropriation, and it pertains to the person that proceeds. Thus, as we shall explain below, it cannot be said that the Father is sent, although He dwells in the just with the other two persons.
Second corollary. According to tradition the words," or from God I proceeded and came; for I came not of Myself, but He sent Me, "[613] express not only the visible mission which took place in the Incarnation but likewise the eternal procession. Thus Jesus said, "I proceeded and came."[614] Although this interpretation, making a distinction between "proceeded" and "came, " does not appear at once from the context, it does result from a comparison with other texts about the processions. Indeed, in this very place, Christ says, "I came not of Myself, but He sent Me, " while the Father came of Himself and was not sent, because He does not proceed from another person.
Second Article: Whether A Mission Is Eternal Or Only Temporal
State of the question. The difficulty arises because, as we have said, a mission implies a procession, and the processions are eternal. Moreover, whenever anything belongs to another temporarily and not from eternity, that one is changed; but a divine person is not changed.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that mission and giving in God are predicated only temporarily.
1. This is proved from the Scriptures: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent His Son."[615]
2. The theological reason is merely an explanation of the idea of mission: for a mission, besides the reference to the eternal principle, has a reference to the temporal terminus by which the idea of mission is completed. Therefore it must be said to be temporal, even though its principle is eternal, because the effect which it connotes and by which it is denominated is temporal.
In the same way God is said to have created not from eternity but in time. Similarly, the Incarnation and the sending of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost are not from eternity but in time.
On the other hand, generation and spiration are said to be from eternity, because they do not imply a reference to a temporal terminus. Procession and exitus in God, however, are said to be both eternal and temporal, since the Son proceeds eternally as God and temporally as man.
In his conclusion St. Thomas joins mission and giving (datio), not because they are entirely the same but because they are in a certain way in agreement. They agree in this, that both imply a new mode of existence in creatures. They differ inasmuch as mission implies that the person who is sent proceeds from another, whereas the giving does not imply this procession. Thus the Father, who cannot be sent, gives Himself, and the divine essence can be given to the Son and the Holy Ghost by communication.
Reply to the second objection. Why is the person who is sent not changed by the fact that the person becomes present in a new way in another? The reason is that this is solely because of the change in the creature, just as God is said to be the Lord of all things in time not because God is changed but because things arrive at existence. In the same way any object is said to be actually seen now and not before, not because there is a change in the object but because of the change in vision, which is now terminated to this object. Thus the Word is not changed by the visible mission of the Incarnation, that is, by the fact that the humanity of Christ terminates in the Word.
Reply to the third objection. Mission includes the eternal procession and adds a temporal effect. We have then a twofold procession, eternal and temporal; twofold, not with respect to a twofold principle but to two termini, of which one is eternal (and so the procession is eternal) and the other temporal (and so the procession is temporal, which is the mission itself).
Hence "mission" can be defined as "the procession of origin of one person from another with a new mode of existence in another." Mission, therefore, is more than appropriation, and is distinguished both from creation and from eternal procession. It is distinct from creation because its eternal principle is the person that sends and not the entire Trinity, which is the one principle of operation ad extra. It is distinct from eternal procession because of its temporal terminus and also because it is somewhat similar to creation. Mission is, therefore, a kind of middle between eternal procession and creation.
Doubt. Does mission principally and directly imply the eternal origin of the person sent or the new effect produced in the creature? With John of St. Thomas[616] and Gonet,[617] it should be noted that there are two concepts of mission held by Scholastics: the one proposed by St. Bonaventure and Scotus, the other by St. Thomas, the Thomists, and others. This question, which seems to be rather subtle, is necessary to distinguish the divine mission from simple appropriation, inasmuch as mission is more than appropriation.
For St. Bonaventure and Scotus, mission is principally not the procession itself but the production of the temporal effect for which the person is said to be sent. Their reason is that the person pre-existed by eternal procession before the free and temporal procession.
The Thomists, like Gonet, say that mission is not the production of the temporal effect, but that it implies directly the eternal origin of the persons, and indirectly the new effect produced in the creature.
1. This is proved by the authority of St. Augustine, "Now go forth from the Father and to come into the world is to be sent."[618] St. Thomas says: "Mission includes the eternal procession but it adds something, namely, the temporal effect."[619] Besides this, St. Thomas held in the eighth article that the Son is not as properly sent by the Holy Ghost as the Holy Ghost is sent by the Son, although the Holy Ghost together with the Father and the Son produces the temporal effect on account of which the Son is said to be sent.[620]
2. Proof from reason. The mission of a divine person essentially implies the going forth of the person sent. But this going forth can be nothing else than the eternal origin, because the mission of the divine person cannot take place by either command or counsel. Therefore the mission essentially implies such origin, and therefore it is not only the temporal operation of God ad extra, but the eternal origin of the person sent with the connotation of the operation ad extra and the temporal effect.
First confirmation. Otherwise the Father would also be sent, since sanctifying grace is produced in the just, according to which the Father also dwells in the just.
Second confirmation. Our view is confirmed by a comparison of the divine mission with a free act of God, for example, creation, for this free act of creating in God is nothing else than the one unique act of the divine will by which God necessarily loves Himself, with the added connotation of the good that is not necessarily loved.
Third confirmation. The Thomistic view seems more in conformity with the Scriptural language: "From God I proceeded, and came";[621] and "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world."[622]
The Greek Fathers regarded the missions as prolongations of the processions ad extra; thus they distinguished the missions from creation. They said that the sending of the persons of the Son and the Holy Ghost differs from creation as to live differs from to command. And they based the communication of divine life, by which we are elevated to the order of grace, not on creation but on the divine missions. In this way they distinguished between the natural order and the order of grace as they distinguished between creation and the missions of the divine persons. Naturally they placed great emphasis on the invisible mission of the Holy Ghost, and this characteristic of the Greek theory should not surprise us, because the Greeks began with the three persons rather than with the unity of nature. St. Augustine, however, preserved the essential point in the doctrine of the Greeks when he said: "To go forth from the Father and to come into the world is to be sent."[623]
The mission is said to be temporal, however, inasmuch as it connotes a temporal effect by which it is denominated; just as creation is said to be temporal by reason of its effect, although the free creative action is eternal.
Third Article: Whether The Invisible Mission Of A Divine Person Is Merely According To Grace Gratum Faciens
State of the question. This is the principal article of this question, at least with regard to ourselves and our life of grace, for it treats of the principal foundation of this life. Here is presented matter for preaching and contemplation. We will, therefore, examine this truth at some length. Proceeding methodically, we see that there are six points that claim our attention. We shall note: 1. the difference between visible and invisible missions; 2. the crux of the difficulties proposed at the beginning of the article; 3. the testimony of Sacred Scripture and tradition; 4. the point where theologians are generally in agreement; 5. the body of the article; 6. three interpretations, namely, a) the more common interpretation of the Thomists, b) Vasquez's interpretation, c) Suarez' interpretation. We shall thus be proceeding in an orderly fashion from what is better known to what is less known, from the revealed foundation of the doctrine to its explanation.[624]
1. The Difference Between The Visible And Invisible Missions
They differ according to the terminus or the temporal effect connoted by the mission. The visible mission connotes an effect that is at least in some way sensible, by which the person sent is sensibly manifested; thus the visible mission of the Son took place in the Incarnation and the visible mission of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost took place under the species of fire and the gift of tongues. An invisible mission is one which connotes an effect of the spiritual order and which is not sensible. Thus the Holy Ghost is said to be sent to the soul of the just man at the moment of invisible justification, which is accomplished by the infusion of habitual grace.
In explaining these articles we shall see that because of this there are two differences between the two kinds of missions. By the visible missions of the Incarnation and of Pentecost only one person is sent and manifested, while in the invisible mission two proceeding persons are sent and the Father gives Himself. The second difference is that the visible mission takes place through some visible effect designed to manifest the divine person who is sent; thus the Holy Ghost is sent in the appearance of fire on Pentecost and in the appearance of a dove at the baptism of Christ, according to the words of St. Matthew, "Wesus... saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him."[625]
On the other hand, the invisible mission cannot take place except by some supernatural gift, as is shown in this third article. We must determine what this supernatural gift is; whether it is habitual grace (or grace gratum faciens), or actual grace, or by infused faith alone, or hope, or finally by the graces gratis datae, which sinners can receive for the benefit of their neighbors. In this way we will determine the state of the question.
2. The Difficulty Inherent In The Question
This appears from the objections placed at the beginning of the article. First we must explain that it is not only created grace but also a divine person that is given; secondly, we shall see that the grace is according to the Holy Ghost, because grace is given us through Him; and lastly, we ask why the Son and the Holy Ghost are not said to be sent according to the graces gratis datae.
3. The Teaching Of The Scriptures
When we seek the teaching of the Scriptures on the invisible mission of the Holy Ghost and the Son, we see that Scripture frequently speaks of the general presence of God the author of nature in all things, which God immediately conserves in being, inasmuch as being is the proper effect of God. Thus we read: "If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I descend into hell, Thou art present."[626] St. Paul speaking on the Areopagus, said: "For in Him we live, and move, and are."[627]
This general presence of God in all created things, which God preserves in being, is explained by St. Thomas as the preserving action which is a continuation of the creative action that produces things in being immediately and not through any instrument.[628] Thus God, as the efficient cause, is effectively present in all things inasmuch as He preserves in them what is most intimate, their being, which is the most formal thing of all since it actuates everything in created beings. God also immediately preserves the matter that is produced from nothing as well as the souls produced from nothing.
Sacred Scripture speaks not only of this general presence, which is called the presence of immensity, but also of a special presence of God, which is in the souls of the just and not in all things. Thus we read in the Book of Wisdom: "For wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins. For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful, and will withdraw Himself from thoughts that are without understanding."[629] From the context it seems that these words refer not only to created wisdom but also to the Holy Ghost, who is uncreated wisdom. Any doubt that may arise, however, is removed by Christ's words: "If any one love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him."[630]
In this text every word should be noted, especially the words, "We will come to him." Who comes? Is it only some created effect, like created grace or created wisdom? No. Those who come are the same as love, the Father and the Son, from whom the Holy Ghost is never separated. Besides this, the Holy Ghost is promised by the Son. Lastly we read not only that They will come but also that They will make Their abode with him, that is, they will not come only transitorily but permanently to abide in the just man as long as he remains just. Thus we read, "God is charity, and he that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him."[631]
Obviously mention is made here of a special presence entirely distinct from God's general presence in all things. The condition of this special presence is charity, or the state of grace, by which a man is constituted as just. The just man, then, possesses God in his heart, or perhaps it would be better to say that God possesses the just man inasmuch as God preserves him not only in nature but also in grace and charity.
St. Paul, writing to the Romans, said: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us."[632] We receive, therefore, not only the gift of charity but also the Holy Ghost, the giver of charity. Again St. Paul says: "Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"[633] That is to say, the Holy Ghost dwells in you, in your souls, as He dwells in a temple where He ought to be known, loved, and adored." Or know you not, that your members are the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body."[634] These words recall what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: "Woman, believe Me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth... . God is a spirit; and they that adore Him, must adore Him in spirit and in truth."[635] The Scriptures therefore clearly distinguish between God's general presence and His special presence, which is often attributed to the Holy Ghost.
Tradition. From documents of the primitive Church we see that this doctrine was admirably preserved from the beginning.
St. Ignatius of Antioch in his epistles often calls Christians "Godbearers" ("theophoroi"), according to St. Paul's expression, "Wear God in your body."[636]
This doctrine was explicitly known by the faithful in the early Church and was proclaimed by the martyrs before their judges. St. Lucy said to Paschasius: "Words are not lacking to those who have the Holy Ghost within themselves." "Is not therefore the Holy Ghost in you?" "Indeed, all those who live piously and chastely are the temples of the Holy Ghost."[637] The Greek Fathers often say that by the Holy Ghost Christians are made partakers of God and are deified.[638] St. Basil said that our union with the Holy Ghost is founded on the fact that the Holy Ghost dwells in us and makes us spiritual and conformed to the image of the Son of God.[639] St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches the same thing.[640] St. Ambrose says that the Holy Ghost is given to us first in baptism and then in confirmation so that we might be able to possess His splendor and His image and His grace.[641] St. Augustine testifies that the Fathers are in great accord in teaching that God gives Himself as a gift to the just.[642]
This doctrine has often been affirmed by the Church: in the Creed of St. Epiphanius, "The Holy Ghost, who spoke through the apostles and dwells in the saints."[643] The Council of Trent declared: "The efficient cause of justification is the mercy of God, who gratuitously cleanses and sanctifies, signing and anointing with the Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance."[644] Lastly, Leo XIII in his encyclical Divinum illud munus[645] quotes these texts of Sacred Scripture, and in explaining the special presence of the Holy Trinity in the just he quotes the words of St. Thomas.[646]
Pope Leo XIII writes in the encyclical: "God is in all things; He is in them by His power since all things are subject to His power; by His presence since all things are naked and open to His eyes; by His essence since He is present in all things as their cause of being.[647] But in man God is present not only as He is in things, but more so because He is known and loved by man, since by our nature we spontaneously love and desire and acquire the good. Besides this, God resides in the souls of the just by grace as in a temple in a singular and intimate manner; and from this it follows by force of charity, by which God is most closely conjoined to the soul, that He is completely and most sweetly enjoyed more than a friend is loved by his dearest friend. This wonderful union, which is called inhabitation, differs only in status from that by which God embraces the blessed in heaven, although it is effected by the very real presence of the entire Trinity, according to the words, 'We will come to him and make Our abode with him,' nevertheless this union is predicated in a special way of the Holy Ghost.[648] Even though traces of God's power and wisdom appear in the unjust man, no one except the just man is a partaker of that charity which is the special note of the Holy Ghost. A wealth of heavenly gifts of various kinds follows the Holy Ghost when He inhabits the souls of the just."[649]
The encyclical explains that this special presence of the Holy Trinity is appropriated to the Holy Ghost inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is sent by the two other persons and since charity assimilates us to the Holy Ghost, who is personal love, more than faith assimilates us to the Word. Because of its obscurity, faith is essentially imperfect and thus differs from charity, which alone of the three theological virtues remains in heaven. Our perfect assimilation with the Word takes place only when we receive the light of glory and when we see the Word, by which we are assimilated to the Father inasmuch as the Son is the splendor of the Father.
Thus the special presence of the Holy Trinity is appropriated to the Holy Ghost, although His mission, as we have said, is more than this appropriation. It is also certain that the Son, not by reason of His humanity, but as the Word, is specially present in us and is invisibly sent to us; the Father Himself is present, but He is not sent since He gives Himself to the just.
The encyclical of Pope Leo, therefore, does not favor the opinion of Petavius, according to which the special union of the Holy Ghost with the just is more than appropriation. Petavius does not offer an adequate explanation of our Lord's words: "If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him."[650] Obviously not only the Holy Ghost but also the Father and the Son dwell in the just by this special presence distinct from God's general presence. No great effort will be required to distinguish clearly between these kinds of presence according to their formal constituent.
4. The Common Teaching Of Theologians
Theologians commonly teach about this inhabitation: a) that this union is not hypostatic or personal and substantial, but that it is accidental and moral, although real; b) that the Holy Ghost is in the souls of the just not properly as a formal cause but as an efficient and exemplary cause, and as an object that is known and loved; c) that this habitation belongs to the three persons but is appropriated to the Holy Ghost.
a) This inhabitation is entirely distinct from a hypostatic union, since the just man retains his own personality, and the soul is not only a substance distinct from the Holy Ghost but it retains its own proper being. It is therefore a union that is not personal or substantial but accidental through knowledge and love; thus it is a moral union. Nevertheless it is a real union because the Holy Ghost is present not only as the effect of a divine operation but also by the divine substance; that is, without any change in Himself, the Holy Ghost is infused into the soul according to the degree by which He elevates the soul to grace and charity.
b) The Holy Ghost living thus in the soul sanctifies it not as a formal cause but as an efficient and exemplary cause; not as a formal cause, because infused charity is something created and is not uncreated charity.[651] The Council of Trent declared: "The one and only cause of justification is the justice of God, not the justice by which God is just but that by which He makes us just,"[652] namely, created grace. If the Holy Ghost were the formal cause of our justification, the soul would have to be considered the material cause, in which the Holy Ghost inheres intrinsically; and by these two as parts there would be constituted a third being more perfect than the parts, which is impossible. This would open the way to pantheism.[653] Hence the Holy Ghost is called only "the quasi-soul of our soul and the quasi-life of our interior life." But together with the Father and the Son the Holy Ghost is properly the efficient cause of grace and charity inasmuch as He infuses, conserves, and increases them. The Holy Ghost may also be called the exemplary cause, since He imprints on the soul the divine likeness,[654] and at the same time He is also the ultimate end. In the explanation of St. Thomas' articles we must explain how the Holy Ghost is in us as the known and loved object.
c) This indwelling in the soul, as Pope Leo remarks,[655] is common to the three persons but it is appropriated to the Holy Ghost, because it takes place by charity, which assimilates us more to the Holy Ghost than faith assimilates us to the Son. By the light of glory we will be perfectly assimilated to the Son, who will perfectly assimilate us to the Father, of whom He is the image.
This is the common teaching in opposition to Petavius, Scheeben, and Jovene, who believe that the indwelling is common to the three persons, but, citing certain texts of the Greek Fathers, they hold that the union belongs properly to the Holy Ghost, who is united to us by reason of His person rather than by reason of the divine nature. This opinion is generally rejected because "in God all things are in common except where there is opposition of relation." And not only the indwelling but the union of God with the soul by grace can be attributed to the three persons as long as there is no opposition of relation. This union of the Holy Ghost with the soul of the just man is not personal because it is not hypostatic, and thus it cannot be more than appropriation. This was the teaching of Pope Leo, namely, the presence is "that of the entire Trinity, although it is predicated as peculiar to the Holy Ghost."[656]
5. St. Thomas Teaching In The Body Of The Article
St. Thomas' argument is an explanation of the doctrine of faith and not a theological conclusion; or it may be said to be a deduction of an explicitly revealed proposition from two truths of faith.
A person is sent inasmuch as He exists in a new way in another and is possessed by that other.[657] But a divine person, already present in the ordinary way in all things as the efficient cause (preserving their being) does not exist in man in a new way except inasmuch as He is known and loved by man, by an operation which attains to Him and which cannot take place without habitual grace and charity. Therefore a divine person is not sent invisibly except according to grace gratum faciens, which is connected with charity. The reader is referred to the article.
The whole force of this explanation of the doctrine of faith lies in the distinction between the general presence of immensity, by which God is present as the efficient cause (preserving the being of creatures) by the continuation of the creative action, which is immediate, namely, without any instrument (thus there is an immediacy of power and the suppositum), and that special presence by which God is present in the just man, not only as an efficient cause but also as the object that is known and loved.
The difficulty arises because the humanity of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary are known by the just through faith and they are loved by charity and yet they are not said to be really present in the just; indeed they are physically distant, for according to their natural being they are in heaven. The humanity of Christ is not really present except in heaven and in the Holy Eucharist. In the Eucharist it is really present sacramentally.
God is not said to be especially present in the philosopher who in the state of mortal sin knows the existence of God and some of His attributes by demonstration. Neither does God dwell in the Christian who preserves faith and hope without charity.
To solve this difficulty, St. Thomas, in the body of the article, says that it is by the knowledge and the love of God that the just man attains to God Himself. These words require explanation, and St. Thomas seeks to throw light on them from the words of Sacred Scripture. This supplementary explanation is found in the last paragraph of the body of the article and in the replies to the objections.
In the second paragraph we read: "Similarly, we are said to possess only that which we can freely use and enjoy (we use creatures and enjoy God). The possession of the power to enjoy a divine person is vouchsafed only according to grace gratum faciens (and charity). But in the very gift of grace gratum faciens the Holy Ghost is possessed and through it He dwells in the soul. Hence it is the Holy Ghost Himself who is given and sent. It follows from this that we are dealing not with any kind of knowledge of God but with a quasi-experimental knowledge, by which we enjoy God really present within us and not removed from us. That is to say that natural philosophic knowledge, or the knowledge of faith, especially unformed faith, or prophetic knowledge, is not sufficient; the knowledge of a living faith, of a living faith endowed with gifts, is required, as we shall explain below.
That the three persons be present in a special way in the just man it is not necessary that this knowledge be actual; it is sufficient that it be habitual, because the indwelling perdures as long as the just man remains just, even in sleep. But it is necessary that God be in the just man not only as the efficient cause preserving his being but also as an object that is experimentally knowable (if not actually known) and lovable (if not actually loved) and enjoyable. St. Thomas states these truths more explicitly in the replies to the objections. In the reply to the third objection he says: "Although the Son can be known by us by certain other effects (besides habitual grace), He does not dwell in us nor is He possessed by us by these other effects." St. Thomas is speaking here of that knowledge and love by which we enjoy the divine person.
In another place St. Thomas said: "Not every kind of knowledge is sufficient for this mission (of a divine person) but only that knowledge which is received from some gift appropriate to the person, that is, from the gift by which the conjunction with God is effected in us, and this must be according to the proper mode of that person. Thus, when the Holy Ghost is given, it must be according to love, and hence this knowledge is quasi-experimental."[658] This is the basis of mystical contemplation, which is experienced as something eminent on the normal road to sanctity.[659]
Experimental or quasi-experimental knowledge concerns an object that is not absent or distant but that is really present, not only effectively, as an efficient cause, but also as an object experimentally known.[660]
Commenting on the words, "For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God,"[661] St. Thomas says that He gives testimony through the effect of filial love which He produces in us, that is, as the soul experimentally knows itself through its acts, so proportionally the soul quasi-experimentally knows God present within itself inasmuch as God is the principle of filial love, which proceeds under God's special inspiration. This is expressed in the words of the disciples on the way to Emmaus, "Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way?"[662] Although the just man does not have absolute certainty that he is in the state of grace, under God's special inspiration he knows quasi-experimentally that God is present within him.
As John of St. Thomas explains,[663] this knowledge proceeds from a living faith illumined by the gift of wisdom, as St. Thomas says:[664] "From the quest of reason about divine things a right judgment may be reached which leads to wisdom, which is an intellectual virtue. But reaching a right judgment about divine things through a state of being connatural with them belongs to that wisdom which is the gift of the Holy Ghost, as Dionysius said, 'Hierotheos is perfect in divine things, not only learning them but also experiencing them (that is, by being connatural and sympathetic with them under the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost). This sympathy or connaturality with divine things takes place through charity, which unites us to God, according to the words, But he who is joined to the Lord, is one spirit.'"[665] This gift is possessed by all the just.[666]
In the reply to the third objection, St. Thomas says that the prophetic spirit is not enough, because it does not unite us to God and to His inner life; it only manifests something announced by God. With regard to the reply to the second objection, it should be noted that grace and charity are, as it were, the disposition for receiving the Holy Ghost Himself, and that the Holy Ghost is the efficient cause of grace. Thus in the same moment in the order of efficient causality the Holy Ghost first infuses charity, and in the order of material causality charity is first in disposing the soul to receiving the Holy Ghost. Thus charity is the disposition for the form, and later it becomes the property of that same form.
Doubt. Does this special presence of the Holy Trinity as an object necessarily presuppose the other presence of God as the efficient cause that preserves us in being; and even if it presupposes this other presence, is the special presence real of itself like an accident, which is real of itself although it presupposes a substance, or is it only representative, as when something physically distant is represented?
According to the common opinion of the Thomists, especially John of St. Thomas, this special presence of God as an object necessarily presupposes the other presence of God as the efficient cause that preserves us in being. But even of itself this special presence is real and not merely representative as of some distant thing. To explain this reply we present two mutually opposed interpretations, proposed by Vasquez and Suarez.
According to Vasquez,[667] God's special mode of existence in the just by grace does not of itself require the real presence of God, so that, if God were not really present by His general presence, He would not be really present by charity but He would be present affectively, as a distant friend, or as the humanity of Christ or the Blessed Virgin, who are physically distant. Vasquez lost sight of the fact that the Blessed Trinity is in the just as an object that is quasi-experimentally knowable, namely, as an object really present and not distant.
Suarez,[668] on the other hand, held that the mission of the divine persons so gives the divine persons that they are really present in the just even if God were not present in them causally and physically present as preserving them in being. And this real, special presence of God in the just, according to Suarez, is based on that exigency of created charity of the just, even here on earth, which demands that God be really present as a friend and not only affectively present.
The reply of the Thomists given above appears to be between these two mutually opposed opinions. For, in opposition to Vasquez, the Thomists hold that this special presence of God is not only the affective presence of a loved and distant friend, but that it is the presence of God quasi-experimentally knowable as present, and as sometimes experimentally known in act.
To depart from this view is to minimize the words of Scripture and depart from their obvious sense. Our Lord said: "If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him,"[669] that is, we will really come. This would not be true of a person who is distant and who becomes present only affectively and by representation as by a letter or by memory. Again the sense of St. Paul's words would not be preserved: "The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us,"[670] but who is not given to the unjust, in whom God is already present by His general presence. Again, St. Paul would not be speaking the truth: "Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth ill you?"[671] that is, really dwells in you. This is not said of the Blessed Virgin, although she is venerated by the faithful as their spiritual mother.
Finally, in opposition to Vasquez we should say that, if his opinion were true, this special presence, minimized in his sense, would be verified not only in the just but also in believing sinners, in whom God, already present by His general presence, is present as the known object of unformed infused faith and as the object of hope and of inefficacious love. According to Vasquez' opinion we would not be able to explain St. Thomas' texts: "The invisible mission takes place according to the gift of grace gratum faciens, and yet the divine person Himself is given," and "the just man enjoys the divine person Himself."[672]
St. Thomas also says: "Besides grace, no other perfection added to the substance makes God to be present in another as the known and loved object, and therefore grace alone brings about this singular mode of God's presence in creatures."[673] Therefore, according to St. Thomas, by grace and charity the Trinity is not only objectively and affectively present as a distant friend, but the Trinity is also really objectively present as an object quasi-experimentally knowable and as sometimes actually known in some such manner as the soul is really and objectively present to itself, as an object quasi-experimentally knowable through its actions. Hence we cannot admit the opinion of Vasquez.
What are we to think of Suarez' opinion? According to him the charity of the Christian here on earth requires not only the affective but the real presence of God, who is therefore really in the soul even if He had not already been present as the efficient cause.
In reply many Thomists, especially John of St. Thomas, say that the love of friendship, even when it is supernatural, effects a formal effective union, which exists between distant friends, but it does not effect a real union, which cannot be had without experimental knowledge of the object really present.[674] Thus St. Thomas says that love formally produces a union according to affection and desires a union in fact, or a real union.[675] Moreover, the fact that by charity we love the humanity of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary does not make them really present in us but only affectively present.
Finally St. Thomas says: "Bliss, which is the attainment of the last end, formally consists in the beatific vision and not in love."[676] He goes on to say, "The attainment of the last end does not consist in the act of the will itself. The will is directed to the end when it is absent, and then it desires the end, and also to the end when it is present, and then the will rejoices in the possession of the end. We attain the end, however, when it becomes present to us by the act of the intellect, and then the will rests in the fruition of the end." Hence John of St. Thomas and other Thomists conclude that the real presence of the three divine persons is a prerequisite for their special presence, and that the real presence takes place by efficient causality, according to which God preserves us in being (by contact with His power), whether this be the being of nature or the being of grace.
Nevertheless this special presence is in its own right real because we are speaking here of God as quasi-experimentally known. Analogically, an accident, in order that it be real, presupposes a substance, at least the accident inheres in a substance according to its aptitude, and yet the accident in its own right is something real, that is, being is intrinsically found in it. Somewhat similar to this is the dependence of the special presence of God on His general presence, and both presences are real, although in a different manner. The general presence is formally the presence of the efficient cause preserving us in being, whereas the special presence is the presence of an object quasi-experimentally knowable and enjoyable and sometimes actually known and enjoyed.
We may add with the Salmanticenses[677] that, if by an impossible hypothesis God were not already present in the soul of the just man as preserving his natural being, in the instant when grace and charity are infused God would begin to be really present as preserving grace and charity, which are His most proper effects, and at the same time God would be present as the object quasi-experimentally knowable and sometimes actually known and loved.
This may be illustrated by two analogies. 1. When God is clearly seen He is present in the saints in two ways: a) as preserving them in their natural and supernatural being; b) as the object clearly seen and experimentally known and continually loved above all things. 2. Our souls are really present to themselves, a) as the radical, physical principle of the soul's own actions; b) as an object that is not distant and that is experimentally knowable in its operations. This opinion of John of St. Thomas has recently been presented again as the true interpretation of St. Thomas' doctrine by Father Gardeil.[678] Thus the triune God is the principle and the efficient cause of our supernatural life, especially with regard to those acts which are not produced without God's special inspiration; and thus sometimes God manifests Himself in the shadows of faith as an object that is quasi-experimentally known.
Doubt. Does Sacred Scripture speak of this quasi-experimental knowledge of God dwelling in the souls of the just? The reply is in the affirmative. Sacred Scripture frequently mentions it: "For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God";[679] "His unction teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie";[680] "But you shall know Him; because He shall abide with you, and shall be in you";[681] "To him that overcometh, I will give the hidden manna,. . . which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it";[682] "He that loveth not, knoweth not God,"[683] that is, does not know God quasi-experimentally, although he may know Him by reason or faith.
Doubt. Why does St. Thomas call this knowledge quasi-experimental?[684] For two reasons: 1. because this knowledge does not attain to God altogether immediately but only in the filial affection which God excites in us;[685] 2. because we are not able with complete certitude to distinguish this supernatural filial affection from a similar natural and inefficacious affection which comes from sentiment. Therefore we have no absolute certainty that we are in the state of grace. But still amid the shadows of faith the just man here on earth under the special inspiration of the Holy Ghost can sometimes say with the disciples on the road to Emmaus: "Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way?"[686] St. Thomas remarks: "He who truly receives grace knows it by experiencing a certain sweetness, which he who does not receive grace does not experience."[687] In this way St. Thomas explains the words of the Apocalypse,[688] "To him that overcometh, I will give the hidden manna,. . . which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it."[689]
Finally the effects and signs of the indwelling of the Holy Trinity are described by St. Thomas in the Contra Gentes[690] and also in the following articles of this question. The signs listed in the Contra Gentes are as follows: 1. the testimony of a good conscience; 2. the frequent hearing of the word of God; 3. an inner taste for divine wisdom; 4. conversation with God; 5. joy in God by fully assenting to Him even in adversity; 6. the liberty of the sons of God, by which the just are freed from inordinate passions; 7. conversation about divine things from the fullness of the heart. It would be a great mistake to confuse these signs with sentiment, which is nothing more than an affectation of the love of God, where there is actually no love of God or where it is only cold and indifferent.
Fourth Article: Whether The Father Is Sent
Reply. It is not congruous for the Father to be sent, since mission implies procession from another according to origin. But the Father is not from another. Therefore He is not sent.
Reply to the first objection. The Father gives Himself inasmuch as He liberally communicates Himself to be enjoyed by creatures, and He dwells in creatures by grace, according to our Lord's words: "If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him."[691]
Fifth Article: Whether The Son Is Invisibly Sent
Reply. The Son was sent visibly by the Incarnation, but He is also sent invisibly, for He said: "And We will come to him, and will make Our abode with him";[692] and besides this the Son has His origin from the Father. Thus He is sent invisibly according to the gift of grace gratum faciens.
Reply to the first objection. Certain gifts are appropriated to the Son, namely, those which pertain to the intellect and incline to love, as the gift of wisdom, which is a kind of taste for knowledge and is called a kind of experimental knowledge.
Reply to the second objection. We treat here only of the knowledge which inclines to love, since the Son of God is the Word spirating love.
Reply to the third objection. We distinguish two invisible missions, which are inseparable: "the one cannot be without the other, because neither takes place without grace gratum faciens, nor is one person separated from the other."
Sixth Article: Whether The Invisible Mission Is To All Who Participate In Grace
Reply. The reply is affirmative according to St. Augustine, for this mission takes place through sanctifying grace.
Reply to first objection. The Holy Trinity dwelt in the Fathers of the Old Testament by the fact that they were in the state of grace, and the Son and the Holy Ghost were invisibly sent to them. But the Holy Ghost was not sent visibly except at our Lord's baptism and on Pentecost.
Reply to second objection. It is noted that "the invisible mission takes place even in the progress of virtue or in the increase of grace. . . especially when anyone progresses to some new act or new state of grace. For example, when a person offers himself in martyrdom out of the fervor of charity, or renounces his possessions, or undertakes some arduous work."
An invisible mission also takes place after the passive purification of the senses, which is a kind of second conversion, in the transition from the state of the beginner to the age of spiritual proficiency or to the illuminative way. The Holy Ghost is sent invisibly a fortiori after the passive purification of the soul, when a profound transformation of the soul takes place at the moment when the soul enters into the perfect life of union, as occurred to the apostles on Pentecost.
Reply to third objection. The Holy Ghost is sent to the blessed in the exact instant when the beatific vision begins; then the three divine persons are present in the just soul as in a living temple, no longer shrouded by the shadows of faith, but appearing in a bright vision, which is called the splendor of the saints. Then the soul is perfectly assimilated not only to the Holy Ghost but also to the Word, by whom the soul is assimilated to the Father, inasmuch as the Word is the figure of His substance. The reader is referred to this third reply.
Reply to fourth objection. A mission of a divine person is not made to the sacraments, because the missions do not take place except with regard to a terminus, that is, to those who receive grace through the sacraments.
Seventh Article: Whether The Holy Ghost Is Sent Visibly
In this article St. Thomas explains the congruity of the visible mission of the Holy Ghost descending on our Lord at His baptism in the figure of a dove and on Pentecost in the figure of fire.
Reply. This visible mission is fitting, because it is connatural to man to be led by visible things to the invisible. These visible missions are to the Trinity of persons as creatures are to the one God, that is, God manifests Himself as triune in these visible events, namely, in the incarnation of the Son and in the heavenly fire of Pentecost.
The difference between the two visible missions is that the Son is sent as the principle of sanctification, and therefore as a person united to human nature to perform a work as the Redeemer, and the Holy Ghost is sent as the sign of sanctification through some symbol, as the dove and fire.[693]
Reply to second objection. With St. Augustine, St. Thomas holds that the dove that descended on Jesus was not merely the object of an imaginary vision, but something real and extramental; so also with the fire on Pentecost. The reason is that "those who saw this dove and this fire saw them with their eyes," that is, all the witnesses present saw them.
Reply to fifth objection. These creatures (the dove and the fire) were formed externally by the ministry of the angels.
Reply to sixth objection. St. Thomas explains the different visible missions which took place in the early Church to propagate the faith. Thus the Holy Ghost manifested Himself in the guise of fiery tongues to make known the office of teaching.
Eighth Article
In this last article St. Thomas shows that a divine person is properly sent by that person from whom He proceeds. Thus the Holy Ghost is sent by the Father and the Son, and the Son is sent by the Father. But in a less proper sense we may say that the Son is sent by the Holy Ghost inasmuch as the person sending is understood as the principle not of the person who is sent but of the effect for which the mission takes place. Thus we read in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, "And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man."[694]
Thus we conclude the treatise of the Trinity with a consideration of the manifestation of this mystery ad extra. By way of conclusion we may briefly speak of the importance of this supreme mystery, having in mind particularly the relation of the mystery to the two orders of nature and grace and to the life of grace.
Epilogue: The Importance Of The Supreme Mystery Of The Trinity
1. The distinction between the two orders of nature and grace appears more clearly from the fact that the mystery of the Trinity is entirely indemonstrable. Indeed, as has been said, the possibility or repugnance of this mystery cannot be proved or disproved; it can only be set forth as plausible. If the possibility of this mystery could be proved, by this very fact the existence of the Trinity would be proved, because the existence of the Trinity is not contingent but necessary.
By the revelation of the Trinity the dogma of the freedom of creation is confirmed, and a clear solution is offered to the objection presented by the absolute optimism of Plato, Leibnitz, and Malebranche. This objection is clothed in the following syllogism: good is essentially diffusive of itself; but God is the highest good; therefore He is essentially diffusive of Himself by creation, which is, therefore, at least morally necessary so that the actual world must be the best possible world. Leibnitz said: "If God had not created, He would not be good or wise." To which Bossuet replied: "God is not any greater for having created the universe."
The Vatican Council defined the absolute freedom of creation in these words: "By His most free counsel God created all things. . . . not for the sake of increasing His happiness or acquiring it, but to manifest His perfection by the good things which He bestows on creatures."[695] Therefore creation is an expression of God's most voluntary liberality and generosity.[696]
To the objection based on the principle, "good is diffusive of itself," we reply by making a distinction: good is diffusive either according to nature, as the sun diffuses its light, or according to the will and liberality. "Since the goodness of God is perfect and can exist without any other, and since nothing of perfection accrues to Him from others, it follows that it is not absolutely necessary for God to will other things besides Himself."[697]
This reply is confirmed by the revelation of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, for in this mystery is verified completely and necessarily the aforesaid principle, "good is essentially diffusive of itself." This principle is verified in the infinite fecundity of the divine nature. In the Contra Gentes St. Thomas states: "The higher a nature is the more that which emanates from that nature is intimate to the nature."[698] Thus in generating the Son, God the Father communicates to Him not only His ideas as in the creation of things, not only grace and charity as in our justification, but His entire nature.[699] If the necessary diffusion or the necessary fecundity is such in the Trinity, it follows that creation, which is diffusion ad extra, is free and in no way necessary, since the principle, "good is diffusive of itself," is verified in God before the creation. And the principle is verified on a plane which is above the order of causality whether efficient or final by the communication of the entire divine nature to the Son after the manner of intellection and likewise to the Holy Ghost after the manner of love.
2. This mystery shows that the intimate life of God is the perfect life of intellection and of love.
It is the perfect life of intellection, in which not only a multiple and accidental word is conceived but in which the unique and substantial Word is conceived, in whom in one instant all possible and future things are known. The reason is that in God intellection is not an accident but the same as substantial being, and the terminus of the intellection, the Word, is likewise substantial.[700] In this perfect life of intellection the three divine persons live by the one intellection out of the same infinite truth in the perfect comprehension of their own intimate life.
The mystery of the Trinity also shows that God's intimate life is the perfect life of love, so that the three persons, by one and the same essential love, love the supreme good, with which they are identified. In this love there is a perfect union of the three persons without any inordination of love, without any egoism; indeed the entire personality of the Father is the relation to the Son, the entire personality of the Son is the relation to the Father, and the entire personality of the Holy Ghost is the relation to the Father and to the Son.
This mystery may be summed up as follows: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God, but the Father is not the Son, because no one generates himself, and the Father and the Son are not the Holy Ghost. All this remains hidden to us, but in speaking of the mystery we avoid contradictions, although we are unable to demonstrate the possibility or non-repugnance of the mystery. This possibility is neither proved or disproved; it is only set forth as plausible, as is the fitness of the Trinity or the fecundity of the divine nature ad intra. Again and again we can return to the study of the reasons for the fitness of the Trinity since these reasons are most profound, although they are not demonstrative; they tend to the evidence not of demonstration but of the beatific vision, as the polygon inscribed in a circle tends to the circumference of the circle as its sides are multiplied in infinity.
3. In the revelation of the Blessed Trinity the intimate life of God appears as the supreme exemplar of the life of grace, especially since our adoptive filiation is an analogical likeness participating in the eternal natural filiation.
As God communicated to His Son His entire nature so He communicates to us a participation of His nature, or the principle of operation by which we are able to see God directly as He sees Himself and to love Him as He loves Himself. Speaking of the similarity of these two filiations, St. Thomas said: "The adoptive filiation is a certain likeness participating in the natural filiation; but it takes place in us as appropriated to the Father, who is the natural principle of filiation, and through the gift of the Holy Ghost, who is the love of the Father and the Son."[701] St. Thomas refers to this adoptive filiation in explaining the following texts: "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born among many brethren";[702] "That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ";[703] "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect."[704]
The procession of the Holy Ghost is also a supreme exemplar of our charity, for, as St. Thomas says, "The Son is not any Word but the Word that spirates love."[705] Therefore all our knowledge of God should spirate charity toward God and our neighbor. St. Thomas defines a devil as "one who does not love." This similarity between Gods love and ours was expressed by our Lord Himself: "Holy Father, keep them. . ., that they may be one, as We also are. . . . As Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in US."[706] That is, as the Father and the Son are one in the unity of nature and as they love each other in the Holy Ghost, who is personal love, the terminus of notional love, so Christians should be one in God and among one another by grace, which is the participation of the divine nature.
In this way the image not only of the one God but of the triune God will be perfected in the soul, for as God the Father knows Himself in the Word and loves Himself and the Son in the Holy Ghost so the Christian soul should not only know itself but God Himself quasi-experimentally and continuously and to love Him always. In heaven this image of the Trinity will be definitively perfected, for there the blessed continually and directly know God as He knows Himself and they love Him as He loves Himself.
With regard to the special relations of the sons of God with each divine person, it should be noted: 1. that the three persons are one principle of operation ad extra,[707] because they operate through the intellect, the will, and the omnipotence, which are common to all three; further, the adoption of men belongs to the entire Trinity, and therefore in the Our Father, "Father" is predicated essentially and not personally of the first person alone;[708] 2. nevertheless the adoption is appropriated to the Father as the author, to the Son as the exemplar, and to the Holy Ghost as to the one who imprints the character on the soul. St. Thomas says: "The adoptive sonship is a certain likeness participating in the (divine) natural filiation, but it takes place in us as appropriated to the Father, who is the principle of natural filiation, and through the gift of the Holy Ghost, who is the love of the Father and of the Son";[709] "Although this adoption is common to the entire Trinity, it is appropriated to the Father as the author, to the Son as the exemplar, and to the Holy Ghost as the one who imprints on us the likeness of the exemplar."[710] This adoption is imperfect by grace in this life and perfect in glory. God, dwelling in the saints, in the one immobile instant of eternity generates the Son in the saints and spirates in them the Holy Ghost, and He assimilates the saints to Himself by preserving in them consummated grace, the light of glory, and charity that can never be lost, so that the prayer of Christ will be verified in them: "That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me."[711]

GOD THE CREATOR
THE PLACE OF THIS TREATISE IN THEOLOGY
To understand this treatise we should first consider the place it holds in St. Thomas' now classical synthesis. The first part of the Theological Summa, which treats of God, the primary and formal object of theology, is divided into three parts: 1. the one God or the divine essence (questions 2-26); 2. the Trinity of persons (questions 27-43); 3. God the creator and governor of the universe (questions 44-119)
The reason for this division is that sacred theology, which is the science of God based on revelation, should in the light of revelation first treat of its formal object, namely, God in Himself, in His essence and in the Trinity of persons, before it treats of God's operation ad extra, which is the creation and governance of the universe, because operation follows being, and the mode of operation follows the mode of being.
Here we see the difference between the method of metaphysics and that of sacred theology. Metaphysics, which is the science in the natural order which treats not of God but of being as such and of being as known by man, that is, in the mirror of sensible things, ascends gradually from the sensible to the spiritual and divine. Therefore Aristotle, after his physics or natural philosophy of mobile being and his psychology of animated being, began his metaphysics concerning being as such, namely, the metaphysical critique of the value of reason and of being as knowable (IV Metaphysica); then he considered being in itself in his ontology; and finally he undertook the demonstration of the existence of the first mover and pure act (XII Metaphysica). Metaphysics, therefore, the science of being as being, primarily considers being as such as it is knowable naturally, that is, by ascending from sensible things to the supreme cause of being, to God, the author of nature.
Sacred theology, on the other hand, being a supernatural science not of being as being but of God as God from the viewpoint of the Deity or of the intimate life of God as knowable by revelation, begins in the light of revelation with the consideration of God not only as the author of nature but also of grace. Theology therefore treats of God before creatures, it treats of God in His essence and in the Trinity of persons before it turns to God the creator and governor of the universe. St. Thomas explains this important difference between the metaphysical and theological methods: "The two sciences do not proceed in the same way. In the discipline of philosophy, which considers creatures in themselves and from them goes to the knowledge of God, the first consideration is of creatures and the last of God; in the doctrine of faith, however, which considers creatures only in their ordination to God, the first consideration is of God and then it turns to creatures. Thus theology is more perfect since it is more like the knowledge of God, who knowing Himself sees all other things in Himself. Hence, according to this method, after having treated of the things that concern God in Himself in the first book, it remains to treat of those things that come from God."[712]
St. Thomas follows this order not only in the Summa theologica but also in the Summa Contra Gentes, which is not really a philosophical Summa, since it begins with God, although it deals first with the truths that can be known naturally and treats of the Trinity only in the fourth book.
This distinction between the metaphysical and theological methods applies also to the theological treatise on man and the philosophical treatise on man as presented by Aristotle in his De anima. The philosophical treatise on man begins with the sensible manifestations of the life of the soul, of vegetative, sensitive, and intellective life, and only at the end is there mention of the spirituality and incorruptibility of the human soul. This is the method of discovery and ascent. On the other hand, the theological treatise on man descends from God to the spiritual soul created by God, and therefore the first question is about the spirituality and incorruptibility of the soul (Ia, q. 75, a. 1, 2, 4, 5); then follow questions on the union of the soul with the body (q. 76), the powers of the soul both common and special (q. 77), the intellective operations, which alone with the help of grace can attain to God, particularly the knowledge of the separated soul, about which the philosopher knows little (q. 84), and finally the questions on the first production of man as the image of God (q. go) and the state of justice and original sanctity (q. 93).
This difference between the philosophical and theological methods should be noted in the beginning, since St. Thomas as a speculative theologian makes extensive use of philosophy in treating of God. Many have thought that he was too much addicted to philosophy in theological matters, but St. Thomas carefully observed the distinction between the two disciplines. Theology makes use of philosophy as a superior uses an inferior for a higher end, and thus before theology makes use of a philosophical proposition it examines it in a higher light and approves it at least negatively as not contrary to revelation; then it uses the philosophical proposition as an instrument and confers on it a higher certainty so that the theological conclusion, derived from the major of faith and the minor of reason, although less certain than faith, is still more certain than a philosophical conclusion because it enjoys the approbation and confirmation of the superior light of virtual revelation, which is the formal object of theology.
Division Of The Treatise On God The Creator
The treatise on God the creator is divided into three parts:
1. the production of creatures.
2. the distinction of things in general and in particular. This part has three treatises: a) the angels, b) corporeal creatures, c) man.
3. the conservation and governance of things in general and in particular.
The order of this division is logical. First we treat of the production of being created from nothing, clearly distinguishing between creation and every other production of things; secondly, we treat of the distinction between created things, and here we take up the problem of how a multitude can proceed from the supreme unity. Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus were unable to solve this problem. The first two did not attain to an explicit notion of creation from nothing, and Plotinus substituted pantheistic emanationism for creation. In this second part we also consider the distinction between good and evil. Finally, we logically treat of the governance of all these creatures, both spiritual and corporeal, inasmuch as their actions are ordered by divine direction and motion to the end of the whole universe.

CHAPTER XVIII: QUESTION 44 THE FIRST CAUSE OF ALL BEING
This question is divided according to the four kinds of causes, since God is the efficient, exemplary, and final cause of all things, and since He is the efficient cause of matter itself, the causality of which is entirely imperfect and cannot be attributed to the supreme principle. We treat here especially of the efficient cause and in the following question of its mode. Final causality, or God as the ultimate end, is considered at length in the first part of the second part of the Summa, while exemplary causality was considered in the first part under the divine ideas.[713]
First Article: Whether It Is Necessary That Every Being Be Created By God
In other words, as St. Thomas himself says in the prologue, whether God is the efficient cause of all being.
State of the question. The title is clear. Every being stands for everything that can properly be called being, namely, every substance and every suppositum of which we can say that it is what it is. In the following question we will ask whether prime matter is from God, because prime matter is not properly being or that which is; it is a part of material being, namely, that by which a thing is material.
At the moment the word "created" in the title signifies only what is effectively caused, because we are not yet considering the mode of this production, namely, from nothing; this will be considered in a following article. The question now is, whether God is the efficient cause of all being.
The state of the question will become clearer from the difficulties proposed at the beginning of the article: it appears that there are many things absolutely necessary in the world, for example, the circle is a circle of itself and of itself possesses such properties. But what is absolutely necessary requires no efficient cause.
Reply. The reply is in the affirmative: God is the efficient cause of all being. This truth is of faith.
1. Sacred Scripture clearly affirms it: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[714] Here the word "heaven" includes all heavenly beings, and "earth" includes all inferior beings. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them";[715] "I am the Lord that make all things, that alone stretch out the heavens, that establish the earth";[716] "Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them";[717] "All things were made by Him";[718] "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things";[719] "God, who made the world, and all things therein."[720]
2. In the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds we read: "I believe in one God,. . . maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible."[721] "We believe that the one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are one principle of all things, the creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporal."[722]
3. Theological proof. Before we begin this proof it should be remembered that this problem has received three solutions: dualism, pantheism, and the revealed doctrine of creation.
Dualism says that the world came from an eternal prime matter, which is necessary, as God is, and which is coordinated to God rather than subordinate to Him.
Pantheism holds that God is one and the same substance with the world so that the things in the world are quasi-accidents or finite modes of God, whether the world became God by ascending evolution, as modern pantheists say, or whether God became the world by descending evolution, which the Neoplatonists have in mind when they talk about emanation.
The revealed doctrine of creation holds that the world and whatever is in it is the effect of God.
We have already refuted pantheism above,[723] by showing that God must be the first, immovable, most simple, efficient cause since He is His own action and also His own being, and therefore He is distinct in fact and in essence from the mutable and composite world. Moreover, an efficient cause is extrinsic and does not enter into the composition of its effects. Again, as has been said,[724] God cannot have accidents, for He would be perfected and actuated by them and this is impossible, since He is pure act, subsisting being itself, the ultimate unreceived actuality, to which no addition can be made; God is indeed the fullness of being. Dualism will be refuted in the second article.
The demonstration given in the body of the article is the fourth argument for demonstrating the existence of God,[725] but in reverse, that is, the argument does not ascend but it descends. Hence this article is a commentary of the fourth argument for God's existence. The fourth argument can be reduced to the following.
Whatever is in anything by participation is caused by that being to whom this thing belongs essentially. But in things we find participated being, for being is predicated of them in a greater or lesser degree. Therefore there exists a being who is such essentially, the cause of all things, and this being we call God.
The major is the very principle of causality, namely, whatever is such not of itself is such by another that is such essentially. The minor is evident from the grades of perfection in the world, for every multitude presupposes a superior unity, because the multitude does not account for the unity of likeness that is in it; as St. Thomas says, "those things that are diverse among themselves do not agree in any one thing except by some cause that unites them."[726] Thus every imperfect thing is composed from perfection and the restricted capacity for this perfection, and every composite requires a cause for this same reason, since those things that are diverse among themselves do not agree in any one thing except by some cause that unites them. In other words, the union that is found in the composition of two things and in the multitude of diverse and similar things depends on a superior unity. The union participates in the unity, and the unity, therefore, is the principle of the union, as St. Thomas frequently points out. We cannot conceive a union unless we first have the concept of the unity; the converse is not true. Unity is the most simple of ideas; but in the union we already have composition or multitude. Hence the principle: an uncaused union of diverse things is impossible.[727]
In this article we use the same argument in reverse. That which is in anything by participation is efficiently caused in it by the being that has this thing essentially. But God and God alone is being essentially, since He is subsisting being itself, which cannot be other than one. Therefore God is the efficient cause of all being.
The major is evident since it is a form of the principle of causality. Cajetan notes that "this proposition is accepted both by the Platonists and by the Peripatetics, if the participated thing is found to exist essentially, "as without repugnance." For sometimes there is a repugnance, for example, man as an essence, separate from individuals cannot exist, since man by his very definition must have common matter, bones and flesh. But bones and flesh cannot exist unless they are these bones and this flesh, because they imply quantity whose parts extend beyond other parts and are individuated.[728] Man can be conceived essentially as an idea but he cannot exist as an essence; thus the idea of man is in God, and the divine essence contains man only virtually, inasmuch as it can produce a man. But the major is to be understood of a participated perfection which in its concept does not involve common matter or an imperfection, that is, some perfection like being, living, and intellection.
On the supposition that God is subsisting being itself, the minor is evident, as was proved elsewhere,[729] as follows: the first mover must be His own action and His own being. For, since being is predicated with respect to the actual being and since it is that whose act is being, if God is subsisting being itself it follows that God is being essentially. Moreover, being itself, if it is received, is received in some essence, for example, in man, a plant, a stone; but if the being subsists as unreceived then it is being essentially and it is also unique, just as whiteness, if it were subsisting, would be the one and only whiteness. A perfection is never multiplied except by the capacity for perfection in that in which it is received. Thus St. Thomas resolves the question from an analysis of the things involved in the question, because a more proper cause of beings inasmuch as they are beings cannot be assigned than that which is being essentially. We are certainly dealing with the efficient cause, since that which is by participation is efficiently from that which is being essentially.
Reply to first objection. Relationship to a cause is a property of contingent being, which is defined as being which is able to be or not to be. Therefore it follows that contingent being does not exist of itself but by another.
Reply to second objection. The objection is that many things exist in the world that are absolutely necessary and do not require an efficient cause. The reply is that there are in the world certain absolutely necessary things which still have a cause for necessity, like demonstrated conclusions.
Reply to third objection. The objection is that those things that are mathematically true do not require an efficient cause. Reply. The science of mathematics abstracts from an efficient cause but it does not deny it. It abstracts from an efficient cause only because it considers the essence and not the existence of numbers and geometric figures, nor does it consider motion but only the formal cause of numbers and figures.
On this matter the reader is referred to St. Thomas' article in the De potentia.[730] The article in the Theological Summa is shorter but more sublime in its simplicity. Its sublimity does not appear until we study the complex article in the De potentia; then we understand the superior unity and what it contains in its virtuality.
In this first article we consider the historical question, whether Plato and Aristotle, who are quoted by St. Thomas, affirmed that the multitude of beings in the world depend on God as on an efficient cause or that the dependence is only on a formal and final cause. St. Thomas replies to this question in the following article. We shall see that these great philosophers explicitly affirmed the formal and final dependence, but much less explicitly did they speak of a dependence on an efficient cause, because they had not yet attained to an explicit idea of creation from nothing and a fortiori they had not understood free creation or creation from eternity.
When St. Thomas quotes Plato and Aristotle he does not intend to imply that they formulated the conclusion of the article but that they laid down the principles, showing that the multitude does not account for the unity of likeness that is found in the multitude; that is, the multitude presupposes a superior unity, and perfection with an admixture of imperfection presupposes a pure unparticipated perfection, for, as St. Thomas says, "those things that are diverse among themselves do not agree in some one thing except through some cause that unites them."[731] That is, many things do not agree in some perfection except through some cause that unites them, and the diverse things that constitute a composite, as a perfection and the capacity in which it is received, do not agree and become one except through some cause uniting them.
Pantheistic Objections
First objection. If whiteness were subsisting it would be one alone. Therefore if being is subsisting there is but one being.
Reply. In the antecedent it is supposed that whiteness cannot be participated in; on the contrary, being is shared.
I insist. There is a certain participation but it is after the manner of the emanation of an accident from a substance.
Reply. We reply in two ways: a posteriori and a priori.
A posteriori. From an experience illuminated by the light of reason we know that there are many substances in the world, for example, the substance of water is distinct from the substance of hydrogen and the substance of oxygen of which it is composed, for it has entirely different properties. Again, the animal is substantially different from the inanimate food that it assimilates. We note particularly in the world about us the individuality of the higher animals, especially the individuality of man, which is confirmed by the testimony of consciousness, according to which each one of us is substantially distinct from others, as the just man is distinct from the criminal, and Jesus from Barabbas. Moreover, in proving the existence of God, the first mover, first cause, and supreme being, it was not necessary to show first that there was a multiplicity of substances in this world. It was sufficient to show that the substance of the world changes, and then to point out that every movement required a mover and in the final analysis an immovable mover, who is his own action and consequently his own being. It was clear then that this first immovable mover was really distinct from the mobile substance of the world. It was sufficient to show that every multitude presupposed a superior unity, and that every imperfect being or composition of perfection and imperfection presupposed a perfect, pure, and simple being, which was really and essentially distinct from the changeable and composite world. "God, who is unique and singular, a completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, must be said to be really and essentially distinct from the world and ineffably exalted above all things which are by Him and which can be conceived."[732]
A priori. Supposing the existence of the first being as proved, it is evident that the world is not related to God as an accident to a substance. It was proved earlier[733] that a substance is compared to an accident as potency to act, since the substance is in some way perfected by the accident. But subsisting being itself is in no way in potency to anything, it cannot be perfected, it is pure act, the ultimate actuality, a being to which no addition can be made, since it is already the fullness of being. Hence Spinoza was able to deduce from God infinite attributes but no finite modes. Hence if God alone exists, as Parmenides taught, there is no change anywhere, no multitude.
I insist. But Spinoza thought that the world needed neither an efficient nor a final cause, being like the circle which in itself does not require these extrinsic causes, for the circle is a circle of itself.
Reply. Spinoza here made use of the mathematical method, which abstracts from the existence of the circle and considers its essence and which abstracts from the existence of all things, from movement, for instance, and therefore from efficient and final causes, and which considers only the formal cause of numbers and geometrical figures, as St. Thomas explains in this article. But the mathematical method is a special method which is valid in the study of the essence of quantity, whether continuous or discrete, but it is not a universal method which is valid in the study of beings, particularly with regard to their existence. For if anything comes into existence which did not exist before, as this plant, this animal, this recently generated man, it requires not only a formal cause but also an efficient and a final cause. The mathematical method is not adequate in physics or in metaphysics. Spinoza's theory is an abuse of the mathematical method, which in its own order prescinds from efficient and final causes. Metaphysics, however, cannot prescind from these causes in this way, since it is the science of being as being through the highest causes, as Aristotle explained at length in the beginning of his metaphysics.
I insist. The essences of things are eternal and absolutely necessary and they do not depend on God, for example, man is a rational animal eternally and independently of God. Therefore not every being depends on God.
Reply. The essences of things are eternal negatively, that is, inasmuch as they prescind from the here and now, I concede; positively eternal, as always existing, I deny, or I ask you to prove it. Again I distinguish: the essences as absolutely necessary do not depend on God, if their necessity is not participated, I concede; if it is otherwise, I deny. These essences do not indeed depend on God effectively unless they are produced here and now, but they do depend formally on God, since they are the divine essence as imitable ad extra in a participated likeness.[734] Just as every existence presupposes the first existence, so every essence presupposes the first essence, of which it is an analogical imitation, at least in the nature of being, and so also every truth presupposes the first truth. As St. Thomas says in this article, "certain necessary things have a cause for their necessity, as necessary conclusions."
In the Contra Gentes,[735] St. Thomas says: "From the fact that the truths that we understand are eternal with regard to what is understood, we cannot conclude that the soul is eternal, but that the understood truths are based on something eternal. They are in fact based on the first truth itself as in a universal cause containing all truth."
I insist. Spinoza also objected that one substance cannot produce another substance, since the second substance would have the same essential attributes and therefore it would not be distinct from the first substance.
Reply. I distinguish: the second substance would have the same attributes at least analogically, I concede; the same attributes numerically, I deny.
I insist. By substance we understand that which subsists per se. But that which subsists per se is the one subsisting being itself. Therefore there is only one substance.
Reply. I distinguish the major: a substance subsists independently of a subject in which it inheres, I concede, for example, man is a substance, whiteness is not; independently of the cause of its existence, I deny. I distinguish the minor: that which subsists per se independently of the cause of existence, I concede; merely independently of a subject of inherence, I deny. Hence we cannot define substance, as Spinoza did, as being of itself but as being in itself and not in another, although it can be from another.
I insist. Besides the infinite there can be nothing. But the substance of God is infinite. Therefore there is nothing besides God.
Reply. I distinguish the major: nothing that is infinite and of itself, I concede; nothing that is finite and of another, I deny.
I insist. Neither can there be anything finite besides God. A finite substance added to the infinite makes it something more. But this is absurd.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the infinite would become something more intensively, I deny; extensively, I concede. There would be not a major entity but more entities. After the creation there is not more of being but there are more beings, not more of wisdom but more wise persons. We have the same thing when a student understands St. Thomas: another understands, but there is not more wisdom.
I insist. That which contains another is not really distinct from it. But the infinite God contains the world, otherwise He would not be infinite. Therefore God is not really distinct from the world.
Reply. I distinguish the major: that which contains another formally or materially, I concede; that which contains another eminently and virtually, I deny. I distinguish the minor: God contains the world formally or materially, I deny; eminently and virtually, I concede, inasmuch as God can produce the world, and all the perfections in the world pre-exist eminently in the subsisting being itself, who is the plenitude of being.
Second Article: Whether Prime Matter Is Created By God
State of the question. This article is not without value after the preceding article, for prime matter is not some kind of being, nor is it that which exists, but that by which something is material; it is a part of material being.
The question of this second article coincides materially with the question of creation, because prime matter cannot be produced except from nothing. Neither has it anything to do formally with the mode of creation, which we will treat in the next question. We are now not considering the mode of production but that part of material things which is prime matter. The state of the question will appear more clearly from the difficulties posed at the beginning of the article. These difficulties are the arguments of dualism.
First difficulty. Averroes argued: nothing is produced from nothing, for everything that becomes is produced from some subject. But prime matter has no subject from which it is produced. Therefore it cannot be produced. As Aristotle said, prime matter is ingenerable and incorruptible, for all generation presupposes it and all corruption ends with it.
Second difficulty. There cannot be an active principle without a passive correlative. But God is the first active principle. Therefore matter must be coordinated to God, as the first passive principle.
Third difficulty. Every agent produces its effect in act. But prime matter is pure potency. Therefore prime matter cannot be produced by God. From this we see the difficulties inherent in the present question.
Reply. The reply is that prime matter is created by God. This doctrine is of faith, since it is of faith, as we shall see below,[736] that the creation of the world was a production of the world out of nothing of itself or of any subject. In the argument sed contra St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine's classical text, "Thou hast made two things, O Lord, one close to Thee, namely, the angel, and the other close to nothing, namely, prime matter."[737] We should point out, however, that St. Augustine did not speak as precisely about prime matter as the Peripatetics. He was speaking here perhaps of elementary matter, of the empty earth, which could exist without any form, because it already had an elementary form. For the Peripatetics prime matter is not something, it has no quality and no quantity, it is pure potency or the real capacity for that perfection which is the specific form of material things. Hence for the Peripatetics prime matter was not burnable wood, or transformable land, or air, or water, but that which is determinable by the forms of things. Therefore it is not that which is but that by which a thing is material, and therefore, as St. Thomas says,[738] it cannot exist without a form.
Scotus and Suarez did not clearly understand this prime matter; they thought that it was not pure potency and that it had an essential actuality and could exist without a form. This is a different kind of metaphysics from ours, for with them potency is most imperfect act, as if the potency which is presupposed in motion were the beginning of the motion.
The body of the article has two parts, one historical, the other theoretic, beginning with hoc igitur.
In the historical part St. Thomas distinguishes three classes of philosophers.
1. In the first group are those who list only the causes of accidental changes: Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and even Anaxagoras, although Anaxagoras said that a separate intelligence existed which ordered all things.
2. In the second group are those who assign causes of substantial changes or the causes of being inasmuch as it is a particular being, as this being individually (this animal), or such a being specifically (cow, bovinity). Plato gave as causes the separated ideas, and Aristotle said that substantial generations did not take place in the winter but in the spring under the influence of the stars and especially under the influence of the oblique circles, that is, the ecliptic.
3. In the third group are those who assign the cause of being not only as this being individually or specifically, but of being as being. Among these are the Christian philosophers, who benefited by the light of revelation and learned of creation from the words of Scripture, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[739]
Hence we have this division:
(diagram page 351)
Philosophers who assign cause of being
of substantial being
as it is being, hence all parts of being
God, subsisting being itself, the cause pouring out the entire being and not only changing it.
As it is
Such being specifically: the idea of cow or oblique circle.
This being individually: this cow;
uncreated matter, coordinated to God
of accidental being: local motion or fire
Only the supreme cause pours out the whole being; others are only causes changing some subject. With regard to this classification it should be noted that St. Thomas did not always present it in the same way.
In the second book of the Sentences, St. Thomas classifies the philosophers as above.[740]
In the De potentia[741] he places Plato and Aristotle in the third group since they say at least implicitly that all being depends as being on God.
In the eighth book of the Physica,[742] while refuting the dualism of Averroes, St. Thomas said that creation out of nothing "is not contrary to Aristotle's intention," that is, not contrary to his principles, and that it is rather virtually contained in his principles,[743] although Aristotle had not attained to the explicit notion of creation from nothing. Aristotle did say that "nothing comes from nothing," but he was speaking of production in the proper sense out of a subject, whereas creation is not production in the proper sense, as we shall explain below.
In the first part of the Theological Summa St. Thomas places Plato and Aristotle in the second group because he was speaking here of what these great philosophers taught explicitly.
The theoretical part of the article can be reduced to the following.
The efficient cause of beings inasmuch as they are beings is their cause with respect to everything that pertains to their being. But God is the cause of all beings inasmuch as they are beings, and, if they are material beings, prime matter pertains to their being. Therefore God is the efficient cause of prime matter.
This argument is an application of the conclusion of the preceding article to that part of things which is prime matter. The major is evident from a comparison of the cause of being itself as being and the cause of being as this being individually or such being specifically. The minor is clear from the preceding article. This is a demonstration based on an analysis of the ideas involved and not from general principles, that is, from a formal demonstrative middle.
Let us turn to the solution of the objections of dualism and the objections based on the Cartesian concept of matter or space.
The objections raised by dualism are placed at the beginning of the article.
First objection. Everything that is produced is produced from some subject. But prime matter has no subject. Therefore prime matter cannot be produced.
Reply. Everything that is properly produced, I concede; improperly, in the sense of being produced in any way whatsoever, I deny. I concede the minor and distinguish the conclusion.
Second objection. The active cannot be without the passive. But God is the first active principle. Therefore prime matter ought to be eternal as the passive principle.
Reply. I distinguish the major: there cannot be an active principle transforming a subject without a correlative passive principle, I concede; there cannot be an active principle which does not transform a subject but produces the whole being without a correlative passive principle, I deny; I contradistinguish the minor and deny the conclusion.
Third objection. Every agent produces an effect in act. But prime matter is pure potency. Therefore it cannot be produced.
Reply. I distinguish the major: every agent produces its effect in act and also whatever pertains to it, I concede; without also producing whatever pertains to the effect, I deny. I concede the minor and distinguish the conclusion: prime matter cannot be produced as something pertaining to the material thing, I deny; that it cannot be produced without a form, I concede. Hence prime matter is not properly created, it is concreated while the material suppositum, of which it is a part, is created. Hence St. Thomas says: "Matter has an idea in God but the idea is not other than the idea of the composite, since matter in itself neither has being nor is it knowable."[744]
Doubt. Whether transforming causes, those that produce substantial or accidental changes, are in some way causes of being as it is being?
Reply. They are not per se but per accidens, that is, by reason of another inasmuch as they produce this being or such a being. Cajetan points out that a cow generating a cow produces a certain being simpliciter, that is, some suppositum, by a transmutation of matter but it does not produce being as such per se, because the act of the generator presupposes the matter which already existed in the other composite. Further, in generation being is not produced per se as being, because prior to this the being was in potency, but per accidens being IS produced as being inasmuch as this being is produced per se that is, this individual cow. So from black, white is produced per se, and per accidens something colored is produced, because the color already was in the black.
An objection against this article can be made on the basis of the Cartesian idea of matter as understood by Spinoza. According to Spinoza, matter is nothing else than the threefold extension of length, width, and depth, which is space, having no limits, and so all imaginary space is already filled and a vacuum is impossible. But space conceived in this way appears to be something existing of itself independently of God, or it is a divine attribute. Therefore matter is uncreated.
More briefly Spinoza's objection based on the Cartesian idea can be stated as follows: Infinite space is something uncreated. But matter is infinite space. Therefore matter is something uncreated, a divine attribute.
Reply. I distinguish the major: imaginary space as the possibility of placing a body, that this possibility is not something created, I concede; that real space or the real extension of some body is something uncreated, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: matter is imaginary space, I deny; that it is really extended in bodies, I concede, and I deny the conclusion.
Further, space cannot be a divine attribute, because it belongs to the corporeal order and hence is less perfect than a spirit. But in God there is nothing imperfect, because God is subsisting being itself per se; He is subsisting perfection itself. Moreover, space is divisible and divided, and it has parts beyond parts, of which some are not as perfect as others. Finally, space is arranged in parts up and down, right and left, according to the three dimensions. But that which is arranged itself is not the first principle of order.
Third Article: Whether God Is The Exemplary Cause Of Things, Or Whether There. Are Other Models Besides Him
We are concerned here not with artificial but natural things. St. Thomas himself formulated the title as given above; later certain editors abbreviated the title.
State of the question. The state of the question appears from the arguments advanced by Plato to prove the existence of the ideas which correspond to the uncaused matter which, according to Plato, is "a certain non-being that somehow exists," in which these ideas are received.
First objection. That which is modeled possesses the likeness of the model. But creatures are far removed from the divine likeness. Therefore other subordinate models are required besides God, for example, models of cows, roses, lilies, etc.
Second objection. Everything that is by participation is finally reduced to that which exists per se. But this rose is a rose by participation, since there are many other roses. Therefore there ought to exist a rose essentially so, an essential lily, and an essential cow.
Third objection. The sciences are concerned not with individuals but with universals, for example, psychology deals not with this individual man but with man in general. But these sciences have objective and ontological validity. Therefore the universals ought to exist formally outside of the mind. Indeed, it seems that Dionysius spoke in this way because he seems to say that subsisting being itself is prior to subsisting life itself.
Reply. The reply is that the models of natural things are not outside of God.
In the argument sed contra this is proved by the authority of St. Augustine, who held that the models of things are the divine ideas existing in the divine mind. St. Augustine thought that this was the teaching of Plato himself. Such was also the opinion of Dionysius or Pseudo-Dionysius. On the other hand, Aristotle[745] thought that according to Plato the models were outside God, that they were like separate subsisting forms. Aristotle refuted this teaching, because the separated man, not as a separated soul but as man separated from individuals, ought to have some matter, not individually, but common matter as common bones and flesh. But bones and flesh in themselves imply quantity whose parts are beyond parts and are individuated and therefore bones and flesh cannot exist without being these bones and this flesh.[746]
In the body of the article St. Thomas supports the validity of Platonic exemplarism when it is understood, as St. Augustine understood it, as referring to the divine ideas existing in the divine mind.[747] The argument of the article can be summed as follows. A model is necessary for the production of anything so that the effect will attain a determined form. But it is evident that the things that are produced naturally attain determined forms, for example, the form of a rose, a lily, a lion, etc. Therefore they have an exemplary cause in the divine wisdom, which planned the order of the universe.
This argument coincides to some extent with the proof for the existence of God from the order of the universe, but here we are considering rather the model of all things rather than their ordination to an end, rather their form than their end, but the form of the thing generated is the end of the generation. The minor is evident; the major requires explanation. The major is illustrated in the example of the artificer. But it is not only empirically true; it is evident of itself and necessary and is proved by an explanation of the terms and by a reduction to absurdity, just as the principle of finality, "every agent acts for some end," is proved. St. Thomas proved the truth of the principle of finality[748] by explaining the terms, for every agent tends to something agreeable to itself, but an end is nothing else than an agreeable good to which the agent tends. Further, he defends this principle by a reduction to absurdity, saying: "An agent does not move except with an end in mind. If the agent were not determined to some effect, it would not do this rather than that. In order that it will produce a determined effect it is necessary that the agent be determined to something definite that has the nature of an end." That is, if the eye were not ordered to vision it would not see rather than hear; if the foot were not ordered to walking it would not serve for walking rather than for flying, etc.
This passive ordering of the eye to vision, of the foot to walking, presupposes an active ordering. But ordering is the function of a wise person, because in order that anyone can order different things he must know the relationship of means to an end, and the intellect alone, not the senses or the imagination, can know the nature of things.
Therefore, in spite of what Kant says, a supreme intelligence which is subsisting intelligence itself is required, for every intelligence that is not subsisting intelligence itself is itself ordered to intellection, and this passive ordering presupposes an active ordering which cannot come from anything except subsisting intelligence itself, in which are the ideas of things as something seen by this intelligence in itself without any real plurality.
The major of our proof is therefore the same as the major of the proof for the existence of God from the order in the universe, and it is defended in the same way by a reduction to absurdity. For if in the production of a natural thing a directing idea or model were not necessary, the natural thing would not attain a determined form and it would not rather become this than that. For example, if there were no directing idea in the development of the germ of a nut, the nut would indifferently produce an oak or a pear tree.
Objection. But it suffices that there be a directing idea immanent in the evolution itself. Such was Hegel's opinion in his pantheistic evolution.
Reply. The immanent directive idea is like the passive ordering of this nut to an oak, but every passive ordering presupposes an active ordering, and only the wise being knows the natures of the being of things, and the nature of means to an end. In ascending evolution without a supreme ordering and directing cause more is produced from a minor being than is in it, more perfect beings are produced from imperfect ones, and by this evolution not only more beings but more of being is produced. This is less acceptable than the dogma of creation according to which more does not come from the lesser; in creation, moreover, there are, of course, more beings but there is not more of being or more of wisdom. To be consistent, Hegel should deny the validity of the principle of contradiction and say the radical absurdity is the principle of all things. It is to this state that the mind comes when it rejects creation. Earlier[749] St. Thomas showed that the plurality of ideas in God was only objective inasmuch as God understood the imitability of His essence ad extra, or rather the relation of the imitability of something, for example, a lion, to His essence inasmuch as a lion participates in life and knowledge.
The replies to the objections confirm the conclusion.
Reply to first objection. Humanity is not formally but only virtually in the divine nature, but the idea of man is formally and eminently in God as the terminus of intellection. So also the objective multitude of ideas is formally and eminently in God, whereas it is formally but not eminently in the angel, in whom there are many subordinate ideas. Hence the notion of idea is an analogical notion which is predicated only according to a similarity of proportion of the human idea, the angelic idea, and the divine idea, for, as Dionysius often says, "those things that are divided in inferiors are united as in one in superior beings."
Reply to second objection. Man subsisting per se implies matter and therefore he cannot be without at least common matter, and this common matter cannot exist without individual matter. Bones and flesh by the very fact that they exist are these bones and this flesh.
Reply to third objection. Universals do not exist formally outside the mind as real but only fundamentally in individuals, that is, according to their specific or generic likeness, which can be abstracted from the individuals. But the mode of abstraction and the mode of universality do not exist formally except in the mind.
Spinoza, on the contrary, held that the substantial universal being exists formally in reality and thus the universal being is pantheistically confused with the divine being. Malebranche inclined to the same conclusion because he thought that the first principles of reason were not only in the abstract intelligible being but also in God. Then our natural will would be specifically determined not by the universal good but directly by God Himself as in the case of infused charity. Here we have a pantheistic confusion of the orders of nature and grace, for our nature itself, like sanctifying grace, would be a participation of the divine nature.
Reply to fourth objection. When Dionysius said, "Being itself is prior to that which is life itself and to that which is wisdom itself,"[750] he either meant that we first conceive God as first being before we conceive Him as the first living being, or he was speaking of participated being, which is in all creatures, even in the lowest, whereas life and intelligence are only in the higher beings.
Fourth Article: Whether God Is The Final Cause Of All Things
State of the question. This was affirmed by Aristotle, namely, that pure act is the end of all things and immovably moves to attract all things and moves as the supreme desirable end.[751]
Many have denied that God is the final cause. For example, Spinoza simply denied final causes, saying that the end does not move the agent because the end does not yet exist or is not obtained while the agent is acting, as if there were no foundation for the distinction between the intentional order, in which the end is first, and the order of execution, in which the end is later. Kant averred that God did not create us on account of Himself but on account of us, for otherwise there would be transcendental egoism in God.
The objections placed at the beginning of the article indicate how difficult is this question of the motive of creation.
First objection. To act for an end seems to indicate the need of an end. But God in no way needs anything.
Second objection. In generation the agent and the end are numerically distinct. But God is the first agent. Therefore He cannot be the ultimate end.
Third objection. Not all things desire God because not all things can know Him.
Fourth objection. The end is the first of all causes. If therefore God is both agent and end, there is in Him priority and posteriority
Reply. The reply is nevertheless affirmative and of faith according to the Vatican Council: "This only and true God by His goodness and omnipotent power, not for the sake of acquiring or increasing His own happiness, but to manifest His perfection through the gifts which He bestows on creatures, by a most free counsel established creatures" (Denz., no. 1783). The meaning of this definition is that God created not because of some finite end, or because of His external glory, if we understand this to mean something created, as that clear knowledge of God with praise which the blessed have in heaven. This clear knowledge of God is itself ordered to God as the ultimate end. Thus we read in the Scriptures; "The Lord hath made all things for Himself."[752]
Hence God created all things for an uncreated end, but every end has the nature of good, and therefore God created on account of His uncreated goodness, not indeed to increase it, since it is already infinite, nor to acquire anything, since He is subsisting being itself, but to manifest His uncreated perfection through the good that He imparts to creatures. In almost the same words this thought of the Vatican Council is found in the body of this article.
This truth is proved from reason by the fact that God is the supreme agent,[753] because according to the theory of the four causes the order of those who act should correspond to the order of the ends. By virtue of this correspondence we can prove conversely from the fact that God is the ultimate end of all things (which Aristotle clearly affirmed) that He is the first efficient cause (this the Philosopher stated less explicitly). Thus from the fact that Aristotle expressly said that God is the ultimate end of all things he should have had some understanding that God is the efficient cause of all things. This conclusion is called for according to the theory of the four causes and also according to the Aristotelian principle that there is no process in infinity in any genus of causes.[754]
The argument of the article can be stated as follows. Every agent acts for an end, and the end of the agent is the same as the end of the patient inasmuch as the patient acquires what the agent imprints. But the supreme agent, who is in no way passive, can have no other end than to communicate His goodness, which other beings seek to participate in. Therefore the divine goodness, which is to be communicated, is the end of all things.
The major is the principle of finality, which can once more be demonstrated by a reduction to absurdity: "for otherwise the action of the agent would not result in one thing rather than another," for example, from the structure of the eye vision would not result rather than hearing, from the acorn there would not be produced an oak rather than a pear tree. Some modern Scholastics say that these demonstrations by a reduction to absurdity both of the principle of efficient causality and the principle of finality contain a vicious circle. They say this because they are unable to distinguish between an indirect demonstration and a direct demonstration in which intrinsic evidence is revealed. These demonstrations by way of absurdity are recognized by all Scholastics as well as by Kant and Suarez, but these modern philosophers are under the influence of empiricism and Kant. In such demonstrations St. Thomas did not try to deduce the principles of efficient causality and finality from the principle of contradiction; he wished merely to show that these subordinate principles could not be denied without denying the supreme principle of reason, namely, the principle of contradiction which is founded immediately on the idea of being and on its opposition to nothing. If these demonstrations by absurdity are not valid, we ought to say that an uncaused contingent being is neither impossible nor absurd, and tendency without finality is also neither impossible nor absurd. This would be pure empirical nominalism, a negation of all of our metaphysics and of the proofs for God's existence. Moreover, the principle of finality itself is immediately evident if the terms are clearly understood, for every agent as such tends to produce something determined agreeable to itself, and this thing is the end. Chance, however, cannot be the first cause of the ordering of beings, because chance is a cause only per accidens which presupposes a cause per se ordered to its effect.
In our major we add that the end of the agent is the same as the end of the patient but in a different way, inasmuch as the patient acquires that which the agent imprints, for example, the generator tends to confer the specific likeness of its form, which the patient receives.
The minor is evident from what was said above. God is agent only and not patient, since He is, as first mover, both His own action and His own being; He is being itself and pure act. Therefore it is not fitting that God should act to acquire some end, or to increase His goodness, which of itself is infinite, but God acts to communicate this goodness, as the Vatican Council declared.
Corollary. The love of God gives; it does not properly receive, because it is not perfected. So with man, the higher he is elevated the more his love for his neighbor is active; so the Apostle was more active and higher in love, whereas those who marry not only give but also receive.
Since, then, the end of the agent and the patient is the same, all other beings strive to attain the perfection of the first agent, which is the participated likeness of this divine goodness. Thus, as St. Thomas says in the reply to the third objection, "all things desire God as their end, by desiring whatever is good by the intelligible appetite, or sensible appetite, or even the natural appetite, which is without knowledge, because nothing has the nature of good or desirable being except so far as it participates in God's likeness. Aristotle is sufficiently explicit on this matter,[755] although he is less explicit in affirming that God is the efficient cause of all things.
Indeed, St. Thomas says farther on: "Because every creature, inasmuch as it is, is naturally of God, it follows that every creature in its own way naturally loves God more than itself."[756] All things tend to a certain likeness with God: the stars in the universal and necessary attraction which holds the universe together, the earth moving about the sun, the plants that strive for their own preservation and propagation, as also the animals and the birds, the hen that gathers her young under her wings against the attack of the hawk and loves the good of the species more than herself, the eye that sees, the ears that hear, the bee that builds its hive and makes its honey, man who tends not only to the enjoyable and useful good but also to the moral good, which is found especially in the supreme good. In the canticle of the three young men we read: "All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord. . ., the heavens bless the Lord." The goodness of God, therefore, is the end of all things.
First doubt. Whether the divine goodness is really the final cause with reference to the creative action. The difficulty arises because this action is never an effect, not even in the order of finality.
Reply. The goodness of God is not a final cause really distinct from the creative action, nor is it an end to be produced or acquired. But analogically the divine goodness has the aspect of an end with respect to the creative action. As St. Thomas says: "The first principle of all things is one in reality, but there is nothing to prohibit us from considering many things in it according to reason, of which some will in our intellect be prior to others."[757] The Thomists point out: "The divine goodness is not properly and strictly the final cause of the immanent divine operation, because between a cause properly so called and an effect there is necessarily a real distinction and a real dependence of the effect on the cause. Rightly we should say that the divine goodness is the reason for the divine operation or the reason why God wills and acts." For this a distinction of reason is sufficient, nor is a real dependence of one on another needed. As St. Thomas said earlier: "The immutability of God is the reason for His eternity, and His immateriality is the reason for His intellection."[758] Hence because God perfectly loves His goodness He freely wills to communicate it by participation to others.
Second doubt. How is the creative action itself ordered to the creature and to the production of created goodness?
Reply. Not as a means to an end, for then God would be subordinated to the creature, but the creative action is ordered to the creature as the eminent cause to an inferior effect without any real relation to the creature, since the real relationship is only of the creature to God and not conversely. Thus the Incarnation is ordered to the Redemption, not as a means, but as an eminent cause. The creature is in no way the end of the act of uncreated love, but the creature is the end of the good which God wills to give it. It is in this way that we interpret the words, "The Lord hath made all things for Himself."[759]
Kant objected that this would mean there was in God a transcendental egoism.
Reply. When this egoism is defined, it appears that it is not a simply perfect perfection that can be predicated of God, even with the adjective "transcendental," nor is egoism a perfection secundum quid. Egoism is an inordinate love of oneself by which one loves himself more than the good of the family, or the good of his country, or the supreme good. God, however, cannot love Himself more than the supreme good, with which He is identified. Therefore there is in God no egoism, not even transcendental.
Indeed, if God did not love Himself, that is, His own goodness, above all things, He would love some created good more, for example, our dignity. Then there would be mortal sin in God and this would be the supreme absurdity, since mortal sin consists in the aversion from the supreme good, to which some changeable and finite good is preferred. Finally, our own happiness would be decreased, because then the creature would have for its last end some finite good, for example, its own dignity and not the ultimate infinite end.
Corollary. On the contrary, instead of egoism there is the highest liberality in God, because God made all things without any need for them, since He was infinitely happy before the creation, and He made all things to manifest His goodness. This is the characteristic of the highest liberality. "God Himself alone is most liberal, because He acts not on account of His own needs but only to communicate His goodness."[760] "Give glory to the Lord, for He is good."[761] Thus we conclude that God is the efficient cause of all things, and the model and final cause of all things, so that all things, so far as their being is concerned, even prime matter, are caused by Him.

CHAPTER XIX: QUESTION 45 THE EMANATION OF THINGS
THIS question is divided into two parts of four questions each. The first part, including the first four questions, is a search for the real definition of creation. It begins with the nominal definition of creation and considers 1. the terminus a quo, namely, nothing; 2. the efficient cause, that is, whether God can create; 3. the formal cause of creation, or what is meant by creation as considered passively in creatures; 4. the terminus ad quem, or whether creation is proper to composites.
The second part of the question determines the conditions of creation on the part of the efficient cause. The fifth article asks whether God alone can create and studies the doctrine proposed in the second article; the sixth article asks whether creation is proper to the Father or common to the Trinity. The seventh and eighth articles treat of the conditions of creation on the part of the effect, that is, whether a vestige of the Trinity is found in creatures (art. 7), and whether there is a mixture of creation in the works of nature (art. 8).
First Article: Whether To Create Is To Make Something From Nothing
This article is a search for the real definition of creation with respect to the terminus a quo and it is an application of the conclusions arrived at in the first and second articles of the preceding question.
State of the question. It seems that to create is not to make something out of nothing, 1. because to create is sometimes used in another sense, for example, to create a bishop or elevate him to a higher position; 2. because the "from nothing" designates a material cause, and nothing cannot be a material cause.
Reply. The reply is in the affirmative.
1. Proof from Scripture. We read, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth."[762] The word bara (created) in the forms kal and niphal in Sacred Scripture is never used except for the operation that is proper to God, and therefore it is best suited to designate production from nothing, that is, from no presupposed subject, and this is an action proper to God.[763] The fact that this word bara in this instance signifies creation in the proper sense is clear from other words in the text, namely, "in the beginning," which indicate that the text refers to the first origin of all things, and "heaven and earth" signify the universe of things. No pre-existing matter is mentioned from which all things were made, whereas somewhat later we read that man was made "of the slime of the earth."
In speaking of the creative power of God, the prophets exclude any kind of dualism,[764] and the Psalmist says that all things were made simply by the word of God.[765] The same teaching is found in the Sapiential Books.[766] Lastly, the mother of the Machabees, prompted by the spirit of God, says to one of her sons, "I beseech thee, my son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them: and consider that God made them out of nothing."[767] And only God is able to say, "I am who am,"[768] that is, not from another.
In the New Testament we read, "All things were made by Him (the Word): and without Him was made nothing that was made."[769] Therefore, all things have their origin from God and are out of nothing, not out of pre-existing matter that was not produced, otherwise things would be something out of themselves, they would not be totally from God and to God, nor would they be totally subject to God's dominion.
The first Christians professed, "Lord, thou art He that didst make heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them."[770] St. Paul declares, "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things";[771] "One God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him";[772] "For in Him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and in Him. And He is before all, and by Him all things consist."[773] Finally, God is "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," of all things.[774] Such was the consistent Judaic and Christian tradition. Nor is there any contradiction in the words, "For Thy almighty hand, which made the world of matter without form,"[775] since from the context it is clear that God made the sensible world out of unformed matter which He himself had produced before.
The Fathers of the early Church say without hesitation that God is the one and only Creator of all things;[776] and against the heretics they reject any unproduced or eternal matter,[777] asserting that things were produced from nothing,[778] and that this doctrine pertains to faith.[779]
Journel arranges the texts of the Fathers under the following headings: "God created all things," "out of nothing," "He alone created," "He created freely," "according to, the divine ideas," "out of His goodness," "that He might make known His perfections," "the Trinity creates," "the world (matter) is not eternal," and "God is not the author of evil."[780]
St. Augustine in particular says: "The angels can in no way create a nature; the one and only Creator of every creature, whether it be great or small, is God."[781] He explains that God created all things out of nothing, saying: "not of Himself, for then (created being) would be equal to the only-begotten Son,"[782] "but out of nothing" He made that which He created.[783]
The councils often define that the triune God created the world out of nothing, when He willed and not from eternity, but freely because of His goodness.[784]
Errors. In the judgment of the Church creation was erroneously explained by the following.
The Origenists,[785] who taught the pre-existence of the human souls prior to the generation of the bodies with which the souls were united; Eckhard, who admitted creation from eternity;[786] the ontologists,[787] Rosmini,[788] the pantheists,[789] and the emanatists.[790]
The Gnostics also erred by saying that matter is eternal; the Manichaeans, who admitted a twofold principle of things, one good the other bad; and the Albigenses revived this error. Abelard held that God created things neither freely nor for His own glory, and this error was accepted by Wyclif, Hermes, Guenther, and Rosmini.[791]
In recent times the theosophists taught an evolutionistic pantheism, and Bergson thought he could explain everything by a creative evolution. According to this theory nothing is (exists) properly speaking, all things are becoming, all things and all minds are in a perpetual flux or in a perennial evolution, and Bergson often speaks as though God Himself were becoming.[792]
2. Proof from reason. The body of the article does not contain an illative process, that is, one that deduces a new truth from another, but an explicative process, in which there is a transition from the confused notion of creation to an explicit notion with respect to the terminus a quo. Hence we do not arrive at a new truth, but the same idea and the same truth is explained. This explicative argument is an example of the evolution of dogma or the evolution of some revealed truth. The argument can be reduced to the following.
The production of the entire being of any thing is from no being just as the production of a man is not from a man. But by creation we understand the production of the entire being of some thing.[793] Therefore by creation we understand the production of a thing out of nothing.
We have here not only a verbal advance but a conceptual advance, not however from one concept to another but from a confused concept to a clear concept, for the concepts in our minds are representative qualities or habits, which can be vitally augmented, as a plant grows.
The primitive concept of creation is expressed in Sacred Scripture, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[794] Hence God produced whatever is outside Him, the whole being of all things that are produced. Therefore this production was out of no presupposed subject but out of nothing, just as the generation of man is out of no man, that is, out of the seed, which is not yet man. For if a man were already generated then he would not now be generated, because that which is generated was not before. The same notion of creation is developed, the same truth, "God created all things," is explained; now we add "from nothing." This is not the deduction of a new truth but an explanation of the same truth, as in the search for a real definition which begins with the nominal definition, since the question, "What is it called, what is its name?" tells vaguely what the thing is without determining the genus and difference.
This inquiry into the real definition is not, therefore, a demonstration. As Aristotle explained, the definitions of things are not demonstrated; they are sought out by a descending division of the highest genus and by an ascending comparative induction of the specific difference. The direction of this search is from the confused concept expressed in the nominal definition to a distinct statement.[795] Sometimes the definition of a thing is from the aspect of the end from which a definition can be deduced defining the form; thus if a saw is intended to cut, it should be made with teeth from some durable metal. If we are dealing with a definition based on the formal cause, which is at first confused and later becomes distinct, the transition is not a demonstration, nor is it an objectively illative syllogism, although there may be a noticeable conceptual advance in the same concept, for example, from the vulgar concept of the human soul to the explicitly defined concept found in the Council of Vienne: the human soul is truly per se and essentially the form of the body.[796] The same progress can be made in the concept of the personality of Christ, of the consubstantiality of the Word, and now in the idea of creation.
Hence in the first four articles of this question we have the search for the real definition of creation, beginning with the nominal definition.[797] This search is confirmed by the solution of the objections.
Reply to first objection. Sometimes St. Augustine uses the word "creation" equivocally, for example, to create a bishop. But in its proper sense "creation" signifies the production of a thing from nothing.
Reply to second objection. A change receives its species and dignity not from the terminus a quo but from the terminus ad quem, for it has a reference to that toward which it tends. Thus creation, which produces the total being of a thing, is more perfect than generation, which produces the one begotten from a presupposed subject.
Reply to third objection. "Out of nothing" can be understood in two ways: 1. as "after nothing" and then it does not designate a material cause but only an order; 2. "more profoundly," as out of no presupposed subject, and then it designates a negated material cause, that is, something is created when it is produced not out of anything. In this second acceptation, St. Thomas points out, the expression "out of nothing" implies the condition of a material cause, which is denied.
If Bergson had studied the teaching of St. Thomas, he might perhaps have refrained from saying that the concept of creation out of nothing was a pseudo-idea, because we cannot have an idea of nothing. We cannot, of course, positively conceive nothing, but it can be conceived negatively with reference to being as the absolute negation of being. In order to conceive creation we need not first conceive nothing and later the appearance of the thing produced; it is more profound to conceive creation as the production of a thing out of no presupposed subject, and this concept is verified even though creation from nothing should be from eternity.
Before this man is generated he was not and therefore he is generated from no man; similarly the entire being of things is produced; the things were not and therefore they are produced from no thing or from nothing. This is not a pseudo-idea but the true idea of nothing, a negative idea, it is true, obtained by the negation of being.
First doubt. Why do the Scholastics say that creation is the production of a thing "out of nothing of itself or of a subject"? They mean that what is properly created, before it was created was entirely nothing in itself and moreover did not have a subject out of which it became. On the other hand, what is created, before it was generated was nothing in itself, as the generated cow, but there was a subject from which it became.
Objection. But before creation, at least the possibility of the thing to be produced is presupposed, and this possibility is not only something logical or a being of the mind, which can be conceived but not realized, as a predicament, a universal, a syllogism, or the syllogistic laws, but it is a possible real being or a being really possible outside the mind.
(diagram page 370)
Being is divided into
real being
actual
by itself
by another
in itself
in another
really possible
mental being, that can be conceived but not realized
Reply. The possibility prerequisite to creation is not only a being of the mind, or of second intention like the laws of the syllogism, which cannot be effected or really produced but only conceived, I concede.
But this possibility is not something existing outside of God; it expresses that which can be produced by God ad extra. Hence that which is outside the mind is only a real possibility, not a real entity or a real potency like prime matter. This point is important inasmuch as the principle of contradiction is not only a law of the mind but also a law of being, for example, a square circle is not only unthinkable but really impossible, whatever the subjectivists say about it. The essences of things do not depend on the liberty and omnipotence of God, whatever Descartes says when he asserts that the principle of contradiction is true because God wills it that way; in that case this principle would be a contingent truth. The supposition underlying creation is the divine ideas, and thus creation is from the material nothing but not from the ideal nothing. Hence when we say that creation is out of nothing we do not mean out of the nothing of its own possibility, for this itself would be impossible, but out of no presupposed, preexisting subject.
Second doubt. What was Rosmini's error about creation? Rosmini erred in thinking that real being taken indeterminately (that which our intellect first apprehends and predicates of all things) is in itself something divine and that it has the same essence as God. He spoke as if a possible real being (not created) were already some kind of initial being common to God and creatures. Hence he said that this initial being is not created and that the essences of created things are not something positive but something negative, consisting in limits which God adds to the initial being. For Rosmini this limiting action of God is creation. (Cf. Denz., nos. 1903 f.) This initial being is for him the univocal minimum in the analogy between God and creatures, and it is positively determined by God and negatively by the created essence, which is a limitation or negation. The Deity is like a white light, and creatures are like the colors. For Rosmini the created essence is something negative, for us it is something potential.
Reply. Creation, as we have said, presupposes nothing else than the real possibility of creatures and this possibility is not a kind of initial being, it is merely the non-repugnance to being. Rosmini's teaching is an immoderate realism, which confuses being in common with the divine being.
Third doubt. In what did Victor Cousin's error on creation consist?[798] Cousin said that "we create whenever we produce a free act, that is, we produce this act from our real potency. Similarly, God in creating the universe educed it from Himself because He was not able to produce it from nothing since nothing is not, cannot be, and is purely a name." Bergson said almost the same thing: "creation out of nothing is a pseudo-idea, like the idea of nothing, and in its place we must have creative evolution."
Reply. Cousin and Bergson after him confuse creation with the production from some presupposed real potency, either material or spiritual, as when we produce a free act inasmuch as the will actually willing an end reduces itself to the act of willing the means. In the body of the article St. Thomas replies that as the eduction of the generated cow is from no generated being (but out of matter), so the production of total being is from no being, that is, from no presupposed subject. And for this it is not necessary that nothing be something or could be something.
Moreover, if God educed the universe not from nothing but from Himself in the same way that our will, actually willing an end, reduces itself to the act of the free choice of the means and thus educes a free act from itself as it is a determinable potency, then God would be in potency to another act and He would not be pure act.[799] Bergson's creative evolution is also objectionable because it posits a reality in potency until it is perfected by itself, and in this theory more is produced by less, the more perfect by the less perfect. There would also be motion without a mobile subject, without an extrinsic mover, and without an end understood beforehand, whereas every movement requires a mover and in the final analysis the prime mover who is his own action and consequently his own being, that is, pure act in no way in potency. Cousin, and Bergson to some extent, confused the material cause with the efficient cause. God, however, cannot be the material cause and therefore He did not make the world out cf Himself or of Himself but out of no presupposed subject. The Son of God, however, was begotten, not made from nothing.
Final conclusion. Such is the explanation of creation with regard to the terminus a quo; it is the production of a thing from nothing, that is, from no presupposed subject and from no real potency; it presupposes only a real possibility, which is entirely different from real potency, because a real possibility is merely the non-repugnance to being; real passive potency is the real capacity of receiving an act, for example, prime matter is real capacity for receiving the substantial forms of material things. Such real capacity, however, cannot exist without some form which is received and which limits and individuates the real capacity.
Objection. We read, "For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things."[800] Therefore God created the world not from nothing but from Himself.
Reply. The "of Him" signifies not from God as from a material cause but by God's power.
Second Article: Whether God Can Create Anything
State of the question. We now explain the idea of creation with respect to the efficient cause.
First objection. It appears that God cannot create anything because, as the ancient Greek philosophers said, nothing is made of nothing, and God cannot do the impossible. The axiom, nothing is made of nothing, was formulated by Parmenides and from his time it was accepted by the Greek philosophers. This axiom can be understood as meaning that nothing is made without an efficient cause and then it is a formula of the principle of causality, namely, nothing is made except from some subject.
Second objection. Averroes objected that if creation is to make something out of nothing, to be created is to become something. But all becoming is a change presupposing a subject.
Third objection. Averroes insisted that what becomes is not yet made. In other words, whatever is made must first become, and all becoming presupposes a subject.
Fourth objection. An infinite distance cannot be crossed. But between nothing and being there is an infinite distance.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative and of faith, as was said above. In the body of the article St. Thomas shows that it is not only possible but necessary that all things are created by God from nothing. He presents an explicative process of reasoning which resembles a reduction to absurdity:
If God acted only from some presupposed subject, it follows that that subject would not be caused by Him. But there can be nothing outside God that is not caused by Him.[801] Therefore we must say that God produces things in being from nothing.
Creation on the part of God is explained by showing not only that God actually created heaven and earth but that heaven and earth could not exist except by creation from nothing.
Reply to first objection. How can this ancient axiom, nothing is made from nothing, be reconciled with creation. If we understand the axiom to mean that nothing is made from no cause, it remains true for creation, because there is a creative cause. If it is understood to mean that nothing is made from no subject, this is true of both substantial and accidental change but not of the production of the total being of any thing.
Reply to second objection. St. Thomas points out that creation is not a change, because every change presupposes a subject which is different now than it was before. This will be explained at greater length in the following article.
Reply to third objection. Where there is neither change or movement there is no priority of time of the becoming with respect to the actual making. But, as St. Thomas says, in those things that are made without movement, that is, in an instant, the becoming and the making are simultaneous. For example, the mental word is forming and it is instantly formed, something is being created and it is instantly created, a dead man rises and he is instantly resuscitated. The ancients thought that illumination took place in an instant and therefore St. Thomas said, a thing is lighted and it is instantly illuminated. We now know that the movement of light is not instantaneous but that it is extremely swift in comparison with the velocity of the transmission of sound.
Reply to fourth objection. Is there an impassible distance between nothing and the finite thing that is produced? There would be an infinite distance if nothing were a positive terminus and if there were an infinite middle between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem. But nothing is a negative terminus and the distance is negatively infinite and can be overcome by an infinite active potency, as will be explained later[802]
Doubt. What is creation taken actively? It is a divine action, formally immanent and virtually transient, as will be explained in the third article, when we consider creation taken passively.
Such is the explanation of creation on the part of the efficient cause. We are still explaining the same notion and the same revealed truth, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." We have not gone on to a new truth by any illative process but we are only explaining the word "created" by stages with respect to the terminus a quo, the agent, and the terminus ad quem.
Third Article: Whether Creation Is Anything In The Creature
State of the question. We are inquiring what is the formal cause of creation taken passively in the creature and here we will show what creation is, taken actively.
First difficulty. Creation taken passively does not appear to be anything, because creation taken actively is not anything, for if it were it would be something temporal in God.
Second difficulty. If creation taken passively were anything, it would be created, that is, a creature, and to produce it we would have to posit another creation and so on to infinity
Third difficulty. If creation taken passively were something, it would be an accident of a created substance. But this is impossible, because the created substance is prior to the accident and it cannot be prior to passive creation, of which it is the terminus.
The argument sed contra is rather an argument in the opposite sense than a proof. St. Thomas says that if generation taken passively is something in the one generated, then creation taken passively is something in the creature. The difficulty remains, however, for generation is a change and, as we have said, creation is not a change.
Reply. Creation in the creature is nothing more than a certain relation to the Creator, namely, a real relation of dependence.
This is proved in the body of the article and in the reply to the third difficulty. St. Thomas says that "the creature is the subject of creation inasmuch as it is a relation and prior to the relation in being as the subject is prior to an accident." The proof in the body of the article can be reduced to the following. If we prescind from motion in action and passion, nothing remains but the relation of the effect to the agent.[803] But creation, since it is out of no presupposed subject, is without motion or change. Therefore creation in the creature is nothing but a certain relation to the Creator
This syllogism may be said to be illative and not only explicative inasmuch as we are no longer treating of the definition of active creation and inasmuch as the major of the syllogism is from reason and not from revelation. The minor is clear from what we have said earlier. The conclusion, however, is not admitted by all theologians. The major is verified in the Incarnation[804] and is explained in the reply to the second difficulty of the preceding article, where it is said: "Since action and passion agree in the one substance of motion (that is, in the one reality of the motion itself) and since they differ only with regard to different relationships, it is proper that, after we have subtracted the motion, nothing remains except different relationships in the Creator and the creature."[805]
This is to say that "motion is the mobile act as mobile, for example, the motion of heating is the act of the wood, not inasmuch as it is wood but as it is heatable and not yet heated."[806] The transitive action inasmuch as it is received terminatively in the patient is the motion proceeding from the agent, and the passion is the motion as it is in the patient. Action is the motion as from this one and passion is the motion as it is in this one with a relation of dependence on the agent. This is Aristotle's reasoning.
If, then, we subtract the motion from action and passion, nothing remains except the relation of dependence on the agent.
Objection. Durandus and Suarez, on the other hand, held that creation is an influence received in the creature, something as actual grace is a created influence received in the will so that the will can vitally elicit its act.
Reply. The difference is that when God gives actual grace the soul and the will pre-exist as the subject which God applies to action; such also is the action and passion by which the will is applied to elicit its act. Hence actual grace is received as an accident in the soul and it preceded the salutary act by a priority of causality. On the other hand, in creation no subject pre-exists, and therefore no influence is received in the creature to produce it. Such an influence ought to precede the created substance and still be received in it as an accident. This is impossible.
St. Thomas' solution, which is accepted by all Thomists and many other theologians, is confirmed by the solution of the objections.
Reply to first objection. St. Thomas explains that creation taken actively is an action formally immanent in God and virtually transient. It is called formally immanent inasmuch as it is identified with the divine substance, since it is not an accident and it certainly is not a temporal accident in God, who is subsisting being itself, the ultimate actuality, to which no addition can be made. Nothing is made from the divine entity; Parmenides understood this somewhat vaguely, when he said that being is not made of being, confusing universal being with divine being.
The creative action is said to be virtually transient inasmuch as it posits an effect ad extra, and thus this action has the perfection of a formally transient action without its imperfections. The imperfection of a transient action arises from the fact that it is an accident proceeding from the agent and received terminatively in the patient.
But it still remains a mystery how this action, which is eternal, has an effect only in time. St. Thomas explains this to some extent in the Contra Gentes,[807] as follows: "God acts voluntarily in the production of things but not in such a way that He has a mediating action, as in our case the action of the motive power is the middle between the act of the will and the effect, as has been shown in the preceding—but (with God) it is fitting that His intellection and willing be His acting An effect, however, follows from the intellect and the will according to the determination of the intellect and the command of the will. Now, when the making of a thing is determined by the intellect, the intellect prescribes all the conditions and also the time of the making; in art not only is it determined that a thing shall be thus but also that it shall be then, just as the doctor prescribes not only that this medicine be taken but also that it be taken then. If God's will is per se able to produce an effect, a new effect could follow from the former (and continuing? will of God without any new action (of the will). Nothing prohibits us from saying that God's action is from eternity and that the effect is not from eternity but at that time when God from eternity arranged and freely disposed it to be. Hence there is a newness of effect without a newness of action. Aristotle did not understand this because he did not consider the divine liberty.
According to revelation,. God said, "Be light made. And light was made."[808] He said from eternity, "Be light made," and the light was made at the time determined from eternity so that there was a new effect but no new action. We should add that God is the most free cause of the creature, of its movement, and of its time, because time is the measure of the movement with regard to earlier and later, for example, time is the measure of the apparent movement of the sun according to the succession of days.
In the reply to the first objection, St. Thomas says that there is no real relation of God to the creature, whereas there is a real relation of the creature to God. Why? As was explained earlier,[809] all creatures are ordered to God and depend on Him, but God is in no way ordered to creatures nor does He depend on them. Thus the senses are ordered to a sensible thing, but sensible things are not ordered to the senses; so also our science is ordered to knowable things, but the things are not ordered to science, and therefore the things do not acquire anything by the fact that they are seen or known, whereas the cognitive faculty is perfected by things when they are known.
Objection. But the father does not depend on the son, and yet there is a real relation of the father to the son.
Reply. This is so because active generation is a formally transient action which is ordered to the passive generation of the son. On the other hand, active creation is not a formally transient action ordered to created being. God is in no way ordered to creatures, but creatures are ordered to God.
Reply to second objection. Creation taken passively is a real relation in creatures, but this relation does not require a special passive creation to exist, because "the relations, since the very thing that they are is predicated to another, are referred by some other relations," that is, there is not a relation of the relation itself.
Reply to third objection. "In creation, inasmuch as a change is signified (although there is no change in creation), the creature is the terminus; but inasmuch as it is a relation, the creature is the subject of creation and prior to the relation in being, as the subject is prior to the accident. But creation has a certain aspect of priority on the part of the object of which it is predicated, which is the principle of the creature." Hence this relation according to its <esse in> follows the substance, and according to its <esse ad> in some sense precedes it.
First doubt. This doubt concerns the last reply. Is creation, taken passively, a predicamental relation and an accident or is it a transcendental relation, that is, the created substance itself as related to God the Creator, just as a science is essentially and transcendentally referred to the knowable?
Scotus held that it is a transcendental relation, because it could not be conceived as an accident, for, while a created substance can be conceived without an accident, it cannot be conceived without the dependence on the Creator. Thomists, like Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, commonly hold that passive creation is a predicamental relation and an accident and inseparable from the creature, namely, a predicamented accident (like the intellective faculty in the rational soul), and not a predicable accident (like the color of the hair), that is, it is a property of an existing creature.
The Thomists hold this opinion for the following reasons. 1. St. Thomas in this article says that "creation is truly a relation, the creature is the subject of the relation and prior to the relation in being as the subject is prior to the accident."[810] 2. Moreover, a contingent being is defined, not as a being caused by God, but as a being that can be or not be. St. Thomas says: "Although the relationship to the cause does not enter into the definition of the being that is caused (man, for instance), yet this relationship follows those things that are of the nature of the being. . . . Such a being cannot be unless it is caused, just as there cannot be a man unless he possesses the quality of risibility."[811] Therefore passive creation is a property and not the essence of the existing creature. A science, however, is related by its essence to what is knowable by a real transcendental relation; so also is matter to the form, the form to the matter, and essence to being.
Second doubt. But what is the foundation for this predicamental relation? John of St. Thomas replies: "it is the creature's existence as participated, just as the movement in a mobile being is the foundation of the mobile being to the mover. This existence, however, as produced by God, depends essentially on God the Creator.
Fourth Article: Whether To Be Created Is Proper To Composite And Subsisting Beings
State of the question. It appears that what is properly created is prime matter, which is presupposed by generation, for the composite subsistences, like plants and animals, are generated now and are not created.[812]
Moreover it appears that sanctifying grace is created in the baptized child, just as the spiritual soul is created in the body. Indeed, St. Thomas says, "When grace is destroyed it returns at once to nothing."[813] And what ceases by annihilation begins by creation. Therefore it appears that grace is created, although it is an accident.
Reply. The things that are properly created are subsisting beings, not accidents, or prime matter, or the forms of sensible things.
1. Proof from Sacred Scripture. "In the beginning God created heaven and earth,"[814] that is, subsisting beings. We are still explaining the same text, the same truth, not a new truth.
2. Proof from reason. Being properly belongs to subsistences whether they are simple or composite. But becoming and creation belong to those things to which being belongs. Therefore becoming and creation properly belong to subsistences, whether they are simple or composite.
Explanation of the major. A subsisting being is that which is, or that which has being; forms and accidents are not that which is but that by which something is such, for example, that by which something is the earth or that by which something is hot.
Explanation of the minor. Becoming is ordered to the being of a thing, and what becomes is that which will be, for example, this cow, not the form of the cow.[815] To be created is in a sense a becoming, or being produced, although properly it is not a becoming, which presupposes a subject.
Corollary. We should say that forms and accidents are concreated rather than created, just as they are rather coexistences than beings.
Reply to third objection. Prime matter cannot be produced except by creation, but it is not created without a form, for creation is the production of the whole being and not of matter alone. Hence matter is concreated.
Indeed, according to St. Thomas, prime matter cannot exist without a form because prime matter is not that which is but that by which something is material. That which exists is the composite of matter and form, and here we see the real distinction between essence and existence, for the essence of a sensible thing is composed of matter and form, while its being or existence is not a composite.
Scotus and Suarez, on the contrary, held that prime matter could exist without the form, because they conceived prime matter not as pure potency but as the most imperfect kind of act. This is a distortion of the idea of potency. Potency is not even the most imperfect kind of act; for example, before the movement there is a real potency to movement, and not until the movement begins is there even an imperfect act, which presupposes potency. Potency is merely the real capacity for producing or receiving inasmuch as the potency is active or passive. Moreover, what would this matter without the form be? It would not be something spiritual because it is matter nor would it be corporeal because the corporeity is a determination depending on the form.
First doubt. Is the human soul properly created? The human soul is created in the proper sense because it is a subsisting form, that is, intrinsically independent of the copy in its specific act of intellection and therefore also in its being and becoming.[816]
Second doubt. Whether grace is created in the soul?
Reply. Grace is not created in the soul because it is an accident by which a person is pleasing to God; to be created is a property of a subsisting being. The infusion of grace presupposes a subject upon which grace, as an accident, depends in its becoming and later in its being. Hence St. Thomas says that grace and the infused virtues are educed from the obediential potency of the soul.[817]
The difference between St. Thomas and Suarez on creation. The truth of creation is demonstrated by St. Thomas from the fact that no being existing outside of God is its own being, or from the fact that everything outside of God is really distinct from its being. "God is being subsisting in itself, and subsisting being can only be one. It follows, then, that all other beings besides God are not their own being but participate in being,"[818] and are caused according to their whole being by God. Here we see the connection between the doctrine of creation and the real distinction between created essence and being.
Those who deny this real distinction are forced to find another way to prove the truth of creation, namely, by induction, as Suarez did, by showing the contingency of things.[819] But if this contingency is shown from experience from their generation and corruption, it will be quite difficult to show by induction that the angels were created and do not exist of themselves from eternity. How can this be proved conclusively if we deny in the angels the real distinction between essence and being and if therefore the angels' essence is their being?[820]
When we deny the real distinction between created essence and being, and between a created person and being, we deny what St. Thomas laid down as the basis for the infinity of God and for the distinction between God and creatures. If we say, "The being in creatures is the essence and substance itself," how shall we reply to Spinoza when he says, "Existence pertains to the nature of the substance," since then there can be but one substance as there is only one subsisting being, as Parmenides taught?
Fifth Article: Whether Only God Can Create
State of the question. Why cannot the highest angel create a grain of sand? Avicenna said that God created the first separated substance, and this substance created the soul of the world. In the difficulties presented at the beginning of the article, St. Thomas says: 1. It seems that one angel can produce another just as man produces a man. But the angel cannot be produced except by creation. 2. A creature can make something from its contrary, for example, hot from cold. A fortiori therefore the creature can make something out of nothing because there is more resistance from the contrary than from nothing. 3. Since created being is finite, no infinite power is required for its production. Peter Lombard affirmed that a creature can create instrumentally.[821]
Reply. Creation belongs to God alone to such an extent that no creature can create, whether by its own power or instrumentally.
Proof from authority. It is a dogma of faith that <de facto> God alone created the universe. We read in the Scriptures, "He that created all things is God."[822] The same teaching is found in the Apostles' Creed and in the Council of the Lateran under Innocent IV.[823]
The Fathers wrote in the same sense. Here St. Augustine is quoted as saying, "Neither the good angels or the bad angels can be the creators of any thing."[824]
Proof from reason. First we prove the first part of the conclusion: no creature can create by its own power.
Being taken absolutely, not as this specific being, is an effect proper to God. But to create is to produce being absolutely, not as this specific being.[825] Therefore to create is an act proper to God, that is, no creature can create by its own power.
Proof of the major. The more universal effects are to be reduced to the more universal and primary causes as belonging to them. But absolute being is the most universal effect. Therefore absolute being is the proper effect of the most universal cause, which is God.
St. Thomas confirms this teaching by the authority of Proclus, the author of the book De causis. He offers a benign explanation of Proclus' text. Proclus, himself a Neoplatonist, seems to be talking about the second <<hypostasis>> which Plotinus posited beneath the One Good, namely, the intelligence in which duality of subject and object appears (the intelligence and the intelligible thing), as if the One were above being and intelligibility and intelligence.
What is the sense of the second major? Cajetan said the sense is that the more universal effects (in predication) are to be reduced to the more universal causes (according to perfection in being and causing), that is, these effects depend on such causes <per se>, necessarily and immediately. This principle is mentioned by Aristotle,[826] at least in the order to the universal cause. For example, Polycletus is the proper cause of this statue, and the sculptor is the proper cause of the statue as such a statue. Aristotle also applies this principle to the most universal extrinsic causes and says that pure act attracts all things to itself.[827] St. Thomas applies this principle explicitly to the first most universal efficient cause. Hence he was able to state against Averroes that the dogma of creation is not contrary to the mind of Aristotle, that is, not contrary to his principles, and that it is virtually contained in them. Therefore being as being, or a being inasmuch as it is a being, is the proper effect of God, as passive illumination is the proper effect of light and heat is the proper effect of fire. God produces being as light produces illumination, as fire produces heat, except that God does this most freely.
Scotus admitted the conclusion of the article but he attacked the method of the proof. His objection is as follows: God's proper effect is from Him alone. But the being of a cow that is generated is not from God alone but also from the generating cow. Therefore the being of the cow that is generated, as being, is not the proper effect of God.
Reply. With Cajetan I distinguish the major: God's proper effect is from Him alone as from the proper cause, from which the effect depends primarily and <per se>, I concede; as from a unique cause, that is, the only cause, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: the being of the cow generated is not from God alone as the unique cause, I concede; as from a proper cause, I deny.
Scotus' insistence is as follows: What is in imperfect effects can be from an imperfect cause. But the most universal effect (being) is in imperfect effects. Therefore this most universal effect can come from an imperfect cause.
Reply. (According to Cajetan.) I distinguish the major: from an imperfect cause <per accidens> which produces by reason of another, I concede; from a proper cause from which the effect depends primarily and <per se>, or necessarily or immediately, I deny. I concede the minor and distinguish the conclusion: this effect is from an imperfect cause as from a cause <per accidens>, I concede; as from the proper cause, I deny.
Manifestly this cow generating this cow is the proper cause of this particular cow, not as the proper cause of the bovinity, or of the cow as cow, nor is it the proper cause of this cow as being. If bovinity and entity depended necessarily and immediately on this cow, it would be its own cause and the reason for its own being. The owner of this cow would then be the possessor of the whole bovine race on earth. Hence St. Thomas says: "It is manifest that where there are two of the same species, one cannot per se be the cause of the form of the other inasmuch as it is such a specific form (for example, the bovine form), because then it would be the cause of its own form since both have the same nature. But one individual can be the cause of this form as it is in matter, that is, inasmuch as matter acquires this form. This is being a cause according to becoming and not the proper cause of the very being of the thing that is produced."[828]
Scotus' final objection. If God is the proper cause of being as such, creation is mixed in every operation of nature. But St. Thomas says the opposite. Therefore God is not the proper cause of being as such.
Reply. (According to Cajetan.) I distinguish the major: if God is the proper cause of being by an action at all times totally new, I concede; otherwise, I deny. I concede the minor, and distinguish the conclusion: by an action at all times totally new, I deny; otherwise, I concede.
Explanation. When in the beginning God created heaven and earth the action was totally new; now when a cow is generated, the being as being depends primarily per se on God but not by an action that is totally new, for this generation of a cow presupposes the matter preserved by God and not produced anew.
(diagram page 385)
The proper cause of the generating cow
as being is essential being
as cow is the divine idea of cow, or bovinity
as this cow is another generating cow
Thus the cow when it generates a cow actually and necessarily depends on universal causes, on the sun, without which there would be no animal life on earth, and on God the author of nature, the first being and the first living being. And there cannot be an infinite process through causes that are <per se> subordinate. On the other hand there is no repugnance in an infinite process through causes that are <per accidens> subordinate. For example, this cow generating here and now, in this generative act does not depend <per se> on its sire, who is perhaps dead, or on its grandsire. This cow generates here and now not as the offspring of another but inasmuch as it has a bovine nature.
But by revelation we hold that creation is not from eternity and that the world had a beginning. Hence St. Thomas' argument is valid; it is a most simple argument based on the relation between a proper effect and a proper cause. This proper effect is a quasi-property <ad extra> of this proper cause because it depends necessarily and immediately on the cause as the property of the circle depends on the essence of the circle. Examples of proper causes are: the singer sings, the killer kills, the doctor cures, light illuminates, fire heats, God produces and preserves the being of things and is the efficient cause of their being and He alone creates.[829]
St. Thomas' first argument is confirmed by the solution of the objections against the first conclusion of the article.
First reply. Why cannot an angel make a being like himself and create another angel? Because the angel, who is a pure spirit, cannot be produced except by creation, and if an angel created another angel, he would be the proper cause of the whole being of the second angel, and he would also be his own cause, since both have the same nature of being. Thus if a cow were the cause <per se> of the whole bovine race, namely, the divine idea of cow, it would be its own cause.[830]
Second reply. The second objection, which is a difficult sophism, may be presented in the following form. More power is required to make something from an opposite than from nothing. But a created cause makes something from an opposite. Therefore a created cause can make something from nothing.
Reply. I distinguish the major: if the thing is made from an opposite <per se>, I concede; if it is made <per accidens> from an opposite, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: <per accidens>, I concede; <per se>, I deny. The reason is that a thing is made <per se> not from an opposite but from a passive potency; and the opposite offers resistance inasmuch as it impedes the actuation of the potency or binds the potency. But it is more difficult to make something from no potency at all than from a bound potency.
Third reply. The third objection is that the power of the maker is judged according to the measure of what is made. But created being is finite and it can be very small, as a grain of sand. Therefore for its production the infinite power of God is not necessary.
Durandus and the nominalists seem to think that this argument cannot be answered apodictically, and that the archangel Michael could create, if not the universe, at least a grain of sand.
St. Thomas replies apodictically: I distinguish the major: the power of the maker is judged according to the measure of what is made and by that alone, I deny; and also by the method of the making, I concede. I concede the minor and distinguish the conclusion: if we consider only what is made, I concede; if we consider the method of the making out of nothing, I deny.
At the end of this third reply, St. Thomas adds a confirmation of the first argument of the article: "If so much more power is required in an agent when the potency is far removed from the act, it is fitting that the power of the agent who acts with no presupposed potency, as does a creative agent, should be infinite." For example, the more arid the earth is the more the farmer must cultivate, etc.; but if the earth is not only arid but non-existing, the farmer will need an active infinite power to produce. When pupils are less intelligent and less industrious, more effort is required in the teachers, as is evident in the education of abnormal, deaf, dumb, or blind children. Great Christian charity is needed in these cases; but if the subject were nonexistent infinite active power would be needed.
These observations show vividly that the argument in the body of the article is apodictical, in spite of what Durandus says. To understand this it is sufficient to recall how the effect of creation, namely, the entire being of a thing, even of a grain of sand, differs from the effect of any other production, of generation for example.
To produce the smallest grain of sand from nothing requires the same infinite power as far as the method of operation is concerned as to produce the universe and all the angels. If the highest angel could create a grain of sand from nothing, he would be able to produce the most universal effect, namely, being as being, and he would therefore be able to produce all contingent beings inasmuch as they are beings, and thus he would be his own cause, which is repugnant.
Second part of the article: a creature cannot create even instrumentally.
St. Thomas recalls that Avicenna and Peter Lombard thought this to be possible. Avicenna explained that the first separated substance created by God creates another substance either instrumentally or by its own power (the text is not clear on this point). This second created substance is lower than the first. This substance itself creates a still lower substance somewhat in the manner of Plotinus' emanatism. Peter Lombard spoke rather of the possibility of creation through an instrument than of the fact. Durandus and a few others followed Peter Lombard.
St. Thomas' conclusion is admitted at least as probable by almost all later theologians, even by Scotus, although all do not adopt the same method of proof. In his commentary on the <Sentences>,[831] St. Thomas held that Lombard's opinion was probable, but now he rejects it.
It should be noted that the fact of creation by an instrument with regard to the first production of things cannot be admitted without danger to the faith, for the Fourth Lateran Council declared: "God by His omnipotent power at the beginning of time established from nothing both the spiritual and the mundane creature."[832]
The Fathers defended the dogma, "God alone is the creator of all things," against the Arians, who taught that God the Father directly created the Son and that the Son ministerially created other things. St. Augustine[833] refuted certain Platonists, who said that God created separate intelligences, which created the inferior beings. Estius held that it was not of faith that God now creates souls without an instrument.
Among theologians there is no dispute about the fact but only about the possibility of creation by an instrument, and almost all theologians, with St. Thomas, deny the possibility.
St. Thomas' argument can be reduced to the following.[834] An instrumental cause does not participate in the action of the principal agent unless it operates dispositively toward that effect by something proper to itself. But no creature can operate dispositively toward the effect of the Creator because there is no subject to be disposed. Therefore no creature can create instrumentally.
St. Thomas proves the major in two ways: by a reduction to absurdity and by induction.
By a reduction to absurdity as follows: If the instrument did nothing that was proper to it, it would be futile to use the instrument, nor would there be any reason to have particular instruments for particular actions. I would then be able to write with a lute.
Inductively it is clear that instruments have a proper effect, for example, a saw cuts wood, and by cutting the saw disposes toward the effect of the workman, that is, to make a bench. And this proper effect of the instrument has a certain priority with regard to the effect of the principal agent toward which it disposes; it is at least a priority of dispositive causality.
The minor is proved as follows: Creation is from no presupposed subject. Hence there is no subject to be disposed. Moreover, the effect of God creating is the whole being of a thing, which presupposes no other effect.
We note that St. Thomas says, "the instrument must operate dispositively toward the effect of the principal agent." He does not say that the instrument must effect the disposition for the effect. Man has certain instruments which effect the disposition, for instance, a pen which leaves the ink on the paper. Other instruments, however, operate only dispositively, as the trumpet in the transmission of sound by preventing the dispersion of the sound but not by producing any special disposition in the ears of the listeners.
Nevertheless in the instrument the instrumental movement is always an accident and the instrumental action is formally transitive, proceeding from the instrument as from a subordinate agent and existing terminatively in a pre-existing subject. In creation, however, there is no pre-existing subject to be disposed. Hence creation can proceed from God alone, whose action <ad extra> is not an accident but is formally immanent and only virtually transitive inasmuch as it produces an effect <ad extra> without any of the imperfections of a formally transitive action.
Let us consider Suarez' objections to this argument. Suarez says that St. Thomas' major is true of the instruments which created agents use, since created agents need apt instruments, for example, a man cannot write with a lute or make music with a pen. But God does not need an apt instrument; He can produce the baptismal grace not with water but with fire. It is sufficient that the instrument God uses have obediential potency. Therefore St. Thomas' major is not certainly verified in God the Creator.
To this objection the Thomists generally reply as follows: When God makes use of instruments, for example, to produce baptismal grace, it is not because He needs the instrument. But if <de facto> God uses a physical instrument, St. Thomas' major is verified, that is, the instrument, to be a true instrument, operates dispositively toward the effect of the principal agent. Otherwise the true notion of an instrument would not be verified and what is called an instrument would be only a means of transmission, as the air is a means for transmitting sound, and not an instrument, as the trumpet which transmits sound.
More briefly we can reply to Suarez' argument as follows: It is conceded that St. Thomas' major is true of the instruments which a created agent needs inasmuch as they are instruments; it is denied that the major is true only inasmuch as the created agent needs the instruments. The minor is conceded. With regard to the conclusion, it is conceded that no creature can create instrumentally if the major is true by reason of the need of the principal agent; it is denied if the major is true by reason of the instrument itself.
Suarez insists. The difficulty remains because St. Thomas' argument is not proved by the nature of the instrument itself. For the nature of the instrument it is not necessary that it effect the disposition in the subject; it is sufficient if it operate dispositively, as a trumpet, strengthening the voice, does not produce a previous disposition in the ears of the hearers, or as the water of baptism in the soul of the one to be baptized. But an instrument can operate dispositively without a preexisting subject.
Reply. I distinguish the major: it is sufficient for the nature of the instrument that it operate dispositively by an immanent action, I deny; by a transitive action, I concede. I contradistinguish the minor: the instrument can operate dispositively without a subject in an immanent action, let it pass; by a formally transitive action, I deny, because this action is an accident that proceeds from the instrumental agent and it ought to be terminatively in the patient. This is required for the nature of a physical instrument in which the instrumental motion is received as traveling accident, and therefore the instrument cannot operate except in a pre-existing subject.
I insist. But the immanent acts of Christ are physical instruments for producing grace and they produce grace by an action only virtually transitive.
Reply. These acts are indeed immanent but the instrumental motion in them is an accident which must be terminatively in the patient, for example, in the just man in whom the grace is produced.
It is clear that the supernatural instrumental motion educed from the obediential potency of that thing which is an instrument is a kind of <accidens viale>, a transient thing, like the light in the air that is illuminated in passing. But this motion, if it is an accident, is not only from the agent but must be terminatively in the patient or in the preexisting subject to be disposed. In other words, this instrumental motion precedes the effect of the principal agent, as becoming precedes the actual making, and therefore the instrumental motion requires a pre-existing subject. Therefore there can be a physical instrument of God to produce transubstantiation inasmuch as the body of Christ comes from bread,[835] but there cannot be a physical instrument in creation.
In another article,[836] the idea of creation is illustrated by comparison with natural transmutation and transubstantiation. An instrument can be present in the production of grace from the obediential potency of the soul since grace as an accident depends on the soul as its subject.[837] Considering the method of operation out of nothing, creation is a greater work than justification, but considering the effect produced, justification is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth.
Last insistence. Why cannot there be an instrument in the creation of the soul since matter pre-exists as a subject?
The Thomists reply that matter does exist, but they deny that it exists as the subject ex quo. In the daily creation of souls there is no real terminus <a quo> and therefore no subject, for the spiritual soul is not educed from the potency of matter. The terminus <a quo> is nothing, and the human soul is produced from no presupposed subject. On the other hand, in transubstantiation there is a certain real terminus <a quo> inasmuch as it is true to say that the body of Christ is produced from bread, that is, by the conversion of the entire substance of bread (namely, the matter and form of bread) into the body of Christ. It is evident, therefore, that there can be no instrument in creation. Therefore only God can create, and the creature cannot create even instrumentally.
Sixth Article: Whether Creation Is Proper To Any Per Son Whatever
State of the question. It seems that creation is proper to one person. 1. The procession of the creature from God <ad extra> presupposes the procession of the divine persons ad intra, and that which is prior and more perfect is the cause of that which is later and less perfect. 2. In the creeds the creation of all visible and invisible things is attributed to the Father, and of the Son it is said only that all things were made through Him, and the Holy Ghost is called the vivifier. 3. In these different statements it does not seem correct to say that they are only appropriations and to say that creation is appropriated to the Father, because every divine effect is caused by the three attributes which are appropriated to the divine persons, namely, by the power which is appropriated to the Father, by the wisdom which is appropriated to the Son, and by the essential love which is appropriated to the Holy Ghost, who is personal love.
Reply. The reply is in the negative and of faith.
Proof from authority. St. Thomas cites the authority of Dionysius, who said: "All the causal things are common to the entire Trinity."[838] These words of Pseudo-Dionysius witness the tradition of the time when he wrote.
In Sacred Scripture the work of the creation is attributed equally to one or the other of the persons: "All things were made by Him (the Word)";[839] "The same God, who worketh all in all. . . . But all these things one and the same Spirit worketh";[840] "For in Him (the Word) were all things created in heaven and on earth."[841]
In the definitions of the Church the work of creation is equally attributed to the three persons; for example, in the Creed: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in one Lord Jesus Christ. . . by whom all things were made." And the Church chants, "Come, Holy Ghost, Creator."
Finally there are many definitions and declarations of the Church,[842] particularly the declaration of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) against the Albigenses and the Waldensians: "We firmly believe that one alone is the true God. . . the Father generating, the Son begotten, the Holy Ghost proceeding: consubstantial, coequal, co-omnipotent, and coeternal, one principle of all things, the creator of all visible and invisible things."[843] Earlier the First Council of the Lateran (649) declared: "If anyone does not confess that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are a Trinity in unity. . . the creator and protector of all things, let him be condemned."[844] The Eleventh Council of Toledo: "These three persons are inseparable in their action and in what they make," even in the work of the Incarnation.[845] In the decree of Pope Eugenius IV for the Jacobites we read: In the Trinity "all things are one where there is no opposition of relation";[846] "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not three principles of the creature but one principle."[847]
The opinion of Lulle that the three persons can be known certainly and clearly by natural reason because in created effects something is found that is produced by the Father alone, something produced by the Son alone, and something produced by the Holy Ghost alone, must be judged heretical. St. Thomas proved[848] against many earlier theologians (Abelard, Richard of St. Victor) that the mystery of the Trinity cannot be demonstrated from creatures because the creative power is common to the entire Trinity and pertains to the unity of the essence and not to the Trinity of persons.
<Proof from reason.> Since every agent acts in a manner similar to itself, the principle of an action can be known from the effect. But to create is to produce the being of things as being. Therefore creation belongs to God according to His being, which is His essence and is common to the three persons.
Explanation of the major. Is this principle, "every agent acts in a manner similar to itself," only an experimental law, as when, for instance, light illuminates, the cow generates a cow, etc., or is it a necessary principle, evident in itself from an analysis of the involved notions? We reply that it is a necessary and evident principle, since to act is to determine or actuate something, and an agent cannot determine except according to its own determination or form. Hence we say that an agent acts inasmuch as it is in act. But the subject on which the agent acts is sometimes able to receive a form similar in species to the agent, for example, when the cow generates a cow; but sometimes the subject can receive only an imperfect and analogical likeness of the agent, and thus creatures agree only analogically with God, either in being, or living, or intellection. St. Thomas says:" Since every agent acts in a manner similar to itself, for it acts always according to its form, it is necessary that there be a likeness of the form of the agent in the effect,"[849] or at least an analogical likeness inasmuch as the effect may or may not attain to the perfect likeness of the agent. For example, when St. Thomas was teaching he did not communicate the fullness of his wisdom to all his disciples, but they received his wisdom according to their capacities.
This principle is not merely an experimental law but a principle of natural philosophy; at first we recognize it in the sensible order and later we apply it metaphysically to all agents, and finally to the supreme agent in a fitting analogy. By virtue of this law, then, the principle of an action is known in its effect. But to create is to produce the being of things as such. Creation therefore belongs to God according to His being, which is His essence and is common to the three persons. That is, God produces the being of things inasmuch as He is subsisting being <per se>; but He produces created being most freely and not by any necessity of nature.
Corollary. Creation is predicated of God not personally but essentially.
Doubt. In the Our Father we say, "Our Father,. . . Thy kingdom come." Are these words addressed to God personally or essentially? According to St. Thomas they are used essentially,[850] because the three persons operate <ad extra> as one principle, for example, in the justification of man, who thereby becomes a son of God by participation in the divine nature, which is common to the three persons. Thus when we say, "Thy kingdom come," we are speaking not only of the kingdom of the Father, but also of the kingdom of the Son and the Holy Ghost. The same is true when we say, "Thy will be done."
Doubt. When Jesus addresses the Father, as, for example, "I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,"[851] is He speaking essentially or personally? He is speaking primarily personally because it is the person of the Son speaking to the Father ad intra, as when the Father said, "Thou art My son, this day have I begotten Thee."[852] But the address "Father" may be used essentially by Christ when He speaks according to His human nature.
The body of the article contains a second conclusion which pertains to appropriation. It may be stated as follows: The processions of the divine persons so far as they include essential attributes appropriated to the persons are reasons for the production of creatures, or more briefly: each person is said by appropriation to have a special causality with regard to creatures.
The proof is as follows: God operates through intelligence and will. But the Son proceeds as the Word in an intellectual manner, and the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of love. Therefore we may say that God creates through His Son and through the Holy Ghost.
In the reply to the second objection, St. Thomas says: "Being the Creator is attributed to the Father as not having the creative power from another. Of the Son we say, 'by whom all things were made, ' inasmuch as He has power from another (or as the principle from a principle). But to the Holy Ghost, who has the same power from the first two persons, is attributed the position of governing and vivifying the creatures of the Father and the Son by dwelling in them." At the end of this reply St. Thomas recalls the theory of appropriation: to the Father is appropriated power, to the Son wisdom, and to the Holy Ghost goodness. In the reply to the third objection, he says, "Thus creation is reduced to power, ordering is reduced to wisdom, and justification to goodness."[853]
Appropriation is generally defined as the attribution of some essential property to one person for that person's manifestation. Hence a property is not an appropriation. A property is attributed to one person and cannot be attributed to another; an appropriation, however, is common to the entire Trinity, but for the sake of the greater manifestation of that person it is attributed to one person because of some similarity. For instance, those things that pertain to the intellect are appropriated to the Son, because the Son proceeds by intellection.
Thus the Latin Fathers, proceeding in their speculations about the Trinity from the unity of nature to the Trinity of persons and attaining to this Trinity only with difficulty, tried to throw as much light as possible on the three persons. The Greek Fathers, on the other hand, proceeded from the three persons to the unity of nature and thus found no difficulty in distinguishing the persons and had little need for the theory of appropriation, found among most of the Latin Fathers. But the Greek Fathers had difficulty in explaining the unity of nature, and these difficulties were solved later by St. Augustine and St. Thomas. At the beginning of the treatise on the Holy Trinity we explained why the concept of the Latin Fathers prevailed, because it solved the difficulties that remained in the Greek concept.
Seventh Article: Whether It Is Necessary To Find A Vestige Of The Trinity In Creatures
A vestige or trace differs from an image inasmuch as it represents in some way the causality of the cause and not its form, as for example, smoke represents fire. Thus there is in creatures a vestige of the Trinity on the supposition that the Trinity has been revealed, since everything is a substance in a particular species and ordered to a good end.
Eighth Article: Whether Creation Is Mingled In The Works Of Nature And Art
We are dealing not with the creation of the human soul but with the generation of brute animals and plants. St. Thomas replied that the answer depends on the manner of conceiving the pre-existence of forms in matter.
If we say that forms pre-exist actually in matter, as the atomists and Anaxagoras (theory of the involution of forms), there is no substantial becoming or substantial change. This opinion reveals an ignorance of the nature of matter because those who hold it were not able to distinguish between potency and act.
If we say that forms in no way pre-exist in matter but are caused by some superior agent, then they are created. This seems to have been the opinion of Avicenna, and it is based on an ignorance of the nature of form, as though the form were that which is and not that by which a thing is.
But if forms really pre-exist in the potency of matter, they are not created but educed, and that which becomes is not the form but the composite. The form, as we know, is that by which something is such a being or in such a species.
Hence St. Thomas concludes: Creation is not mingled in the works of nature and art; it is found nowhere except in the production of the spiritual soul, which, as spiritual, is not in the potency of matter and cannot be educed from matter. The soul is intrinsically independent of any organism in its specific act, and therefore it is also independent of the organism in its being and its becoming because operation follows being.[854]
By way of an appendix some commentators explain:
1. that many worlds are possible,[855] because the creation of one world does not exhaust the infinite power of God;
2. that actually there is but one world, one by unity of coordination and subordination;
3. that the world is perfect, not the best of all possible worlds, but perfect in the sense that whatever imperfections are in the world exist for the perfection of the universe, as the shadows in a painting serve to accentuate the colors.[856] Moreover, things that are harmful in one way are useful in another, as, for example, certain poisons like arsenic, which in moderation serve as medicine.[857]

CHAPTER XX: QUESTION 46 THE DURATION OF CREATED BEINGS
AFTER our consideration of the first cause of being and their production from nothing, we turn to the principle of the duration of things, which is treated in three articles: 1. whether creatures were always; 2. whether it is an article of faith, or a demonstrable conclusion that they began to be; 3. how God is said to have created heaven and earth in the beginning.
First Article: Whether The World Of Creatures Was Always
State of the question. In the <Contra Gentes> and the Opus de aeternitate mundi, St. Thomas wrote at length on this question. To show the difficulties connected with this question, he presents the arguments of Aristotle and Averroes for the eternity of the world.[858]
The principal objection is: Everything that is made is made from prime matter, which cannot exist without a form. Therefore the world was from eternity. This difficulty is proposed in different ways in the first and third objections: in the first, real potency and the real possibility presupposed by creation are identified; in the third objection it is stated that matter as the first subject of generation is ungenerated and ungenerable and is therefore eternal.
In the second objection it is stated that there are in the world incorruptible beings, at least the intellectual substances if not the heavenly bodies. But an incorruptible being has the power to be always, it will always be in the future. Then, why not always in the past? It appears to be its nature to be above time. The other difficulties pertain more to the imagination.
The fourth objection points out that the vacuum was always, and vacuum appears to be something real, as Spinoza said, space is something real, existing from all eternity.
Fifthly it is objected that motion was always because anything that begins to move is moved by another who began to move and this mover began to move when it was moved, and so on. Hence the absolutely immovable cause cannot of itself alone produce the initial movement but only permanence, or the sempiternal duration of movement. Thus Aristotle thought that every man was generated and presupposes a generator and so into the past. He was not able to understand that there could be a new effect without a new action in any mover. In Aristotle's mind the first mover moves from eternity always in the same way, drawing all things to Himself, just as the sun always illuminates and heats; any variety in movement was explained by subordinate movers, especially by the successive generations of plants and animals.
Sixthly: if the first eternal mover moves by a necessity of nature, he moves from eternity; if he moves through his will, why does he begin to move at this particular moment rather than earlier or later? Such a choice seems to have no reason, no motive, and therefore the movement is from eternity.
Seventhly: time cannot have a beginning because its entire reality is the instant, the present fluent instant which is the terminus of the past and the beginning of the future.
Eighthly: if God is prior to the world according to duration, then time was before the world because time is that duration in which earlier and later are distinguished.
Ninthly: if you posit a fully sufficient cause, the effect will follow accordingly; but God, the cause of the world, is eternal and therefore His creative action is eternal. So also His effect is eternal because there is no new effect without a new action.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the negative and it is of faith. It is of faith that the universe was not created from eternity. The Fourth Council of the Lateran declared: "By His omnipotent power in the beginning of time and at the same time God made from nothing both the spiritual and corporeal creature, namely, the angelic and mundane creature, and then He made the human creature, as it were, a composite creature composed of spirit and body."[859] The same expressions are used by the Vatican Council.[860] Many of Eckhard's propositions have been condemned in this matter, such as the following: "As soon as God was He created the world"; "It can be conceded that the world was from eternity"; "At one time and only once, when God was and when He generated His Son, coeternal and coequal in all things to God, He also created the world."[861]
The foundation for this doctrine is found in Sacred Scripture: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth."[862] These words are generally understood as referring to the beginning of time."[863] "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His ways, before He made anything from the beginning. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived, neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out:. . . before the hills I was brought forth. He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the earth."[864] "And now glorify Thou Me, O Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee. . . . Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world."[865] "As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world."[866]
With regard to the declaration of the Fourth Lateran Council, some discussion exists whether the words "at the same time" signify simultaneity of time, which is commonly accepted, or only a simultaneity of ordering, as some Fathers thought who held that the angels were created before matter.[867] St. Thomas replies that it is more probable that the angels were created at the same time as bodies.[868]
In the body of the article St. Thomas does not prove from reason that the world began to be or that it ought of necessity to begin; he merely proves this negative proposition: it is not necessary that the world be always and therefore it is not impossible that the world began, as we are taught by revelation. The argument is apodictical.
The possibility of mysteries that are essentially supernatural cannot be proved apodictically, it is true, but we are here concerned with the non-repugnance of a contingent fact which does not pertain to the order of grace.
The proof may be reduced to the following. Since the will of God is the cause of things, it is not necessary that anything be unless it be necessary that God wills them. But it is not necessary that God will anything except Himself. Therefore it is not necessary that the world be always, but only at that moment which God determined from eternity.
The major and the minor were proved in the question on the free will of God.[869] There it was shown that God wills other things besides Himself freely since His goodness can be without other things and since nothing of perfection accrues to Him from other things. It was also shown that God is the cause of things by His will and that He differs from man, who generates freely indeed but not by his will but by his generative faculty inasmuch as he possesses a certain nature, and therefore man can generate only a man because his generative power is determined to one result.
Hence if God acts with the greatest freedom <ad extra> and through His will by saying, "Let the world be," it follows that the world began at that moment which God had determined from eternity, or as revelation teaches, in the beginning of time.
Among the modern philosophers, Leibnitz admitted this teaching, but he sought for some morally necessary motive on account of which God willed the world to begin at this time rather than earlier. In this he was limiting the liberty of God.
For St. Thomas particularly the beginning of the world depends simply on the will of God. St. Thomas says: "Why this part of matter is under this form and that matter under another form depends on the simple will of God just as the fact that this stone is in this part of the wall and that stone in another part depends on the will of the workman, although it is of the nature of the art that some stones be here and others there."[870] Hence the Vatican Council declared: "By His omnipotent will in the beginning of time and at the same time God made from nothing both the spiritual and corporeal creature,"[871] and "God created by a will free from all necessity,"[872] that is, without any metaphysical, physical, or moral necessity.
In the second part of the article St. Thomas tries to show that Aristotle did not intend to give demonstrative reasons for the eternity of the world, because in another place Aristotle says expressly, "There are certain dialectic problems for which we have no reasons, as whether the world is eternal," or rather sempiternal.[873] In yet another place, however, it seems that Aristotle tried positively to prove the sempiternity of movement and of time and from this the infinite power of the first mover.[874]
The conclusion of the article is confirmed by the solution of the difficulties, of which these are the more important.
Reply to first difficulty. Before the world was it was possible, but this real possibility is not real passive potency, like prime matter. It is only a non-repugnance to being.
Reply to second difficulty. When incorruptible beings exist they are always, but they receive their existence from God's free will.
Reply to third difficulty. It is true that prime matter is ungenerated and cannot be generated, like an incorruptible being, and thus it begins not by generation but by creation and can be annihilated.
Reply to fourth difficulty. Before creation there was no vacuum because the vacuum is a place for a body; even a vacant place supposes certain corporeal beings between which there are unoccupied places. Hence before creation there was only a real possibility of corporeal beings as there was a real possibility of spirits; but this real possibility is not some being outside of God, it is merely a non-repugnance to being. This non-repugnance to being, however, is distinguished from simple conceivability, for the being of the mind is conceived but it cannot be produced outside the mind; it is conceivable but not realizable.
Reply to fifth difficulty. Is it true that every movement presupposes another movement, that every man presupposes a man who generates, and that the first immovable cause cannot of itself produce incipient movement so that a new effect follows without a new action in God?
St. Thomas replies that the first mover is always the same (that is, he has no new actions), but the first thing moved begins to move not by movement but by creation. Thus the first man was created, not generated. St. Thomas explains: "If the first mover were an agent acting only through his nature and not by intellect and will, the effect would follow necessarily; but because the first mover acts through his will, he can by his eternal will produce a non-eternal effect just as with his eternal intellect he can understand a non-eternal being."[875] "From the eternal free action of God there does not follow an eternal effect, but whatever effect God wills."[876]
This eternal divine action, formally immanent and virtually transient and transitive, is at once most free and of itself and immediately efficacious; therefore it produces its effect when it wills, that is, at the time determined from eternity. This is somewhat similar to the physician who in the morning prescribes a dose of medicine to be taken in the evening; if the doctor were able to administer the medicine without any intermediate action, the will he had in the morning would be like God's will. The will of God created the world without any intermediary through His omnipotence, which is not really distinct from God, and thus the eternal and free action of God produces its effect in time so that there is a new effect in time without any new action in eternity. Eternity is to time as the stationary apex of a cone is to the circular base of the cone, which is described successively, and as the apex goes around and is above the base so eternity is above time.
Reply to sixth difficulty. "A particular agent presupposes time as it presupposes matter..., but the universal agent produces both the thing and the time…. And the world more clearly leads to the knowledge of the divine creating power if it is not always," for in this way it is manifest that a world that has a beginning needs a cause.
Reply to seventh difficulty. When the world began, the beginning of movement and the first present moment were not the terminus of time past, for the time began with the movement itself of which it is the measure, then, for example, the first circular movement of the sun began.
Reply to eighth difficulty. Before this first instant there was nothing but imaginary time just as above the sky there is nothing but imaginary place, that is, something that can be imagined, the mere non-repugnance to the localization of corporeal beings. The conclusion, therefore, stands that it is not necessary that the world be always.
Doubt. Is it congruous that the world began, in the sense that it would be incongruous that the world was created from eternity?
Reply. It is congruous that it might appear more clearly that God alone is eternal and that God most freely created the world. Nevertheless, as we shall see in the following article, creation from eternity does not seem to be positively incongruous; God is most free to have created eternally, and in those things which God does freely the thing which God actually did is, of course, congruous but the opposite would not be incongruous.
Second Article: Whether It Is An Article Of Faith That The World Began
State of the question. As we see from the first difficulty, the title asks whether it is an article of faith or a preamble of faith that the world had a beginning. A preamble of faith is a demonstrable conclusion, as for instance that God is the efficient cause of all being and thus the Creator; such a preamble of faith can be demonstrated. An article of faith differs from a preamble of faith, for, as St. Thomas says, "Where something is found not seen by a special reason, there we have a special article (of faith)."[877] "Thus there are twelve articles of faith (or according to another listing, fourteen) and among these is the article on creation: 'I believe in one God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.'"[878]
The question is, then, whether it is repugnant that God created the world from all eternity, in the sense that God would precede the existence of the world by a priority only of nature and causality and not by a priority of duration, just as if a foot were on the sand from all eternity it would precede the footprint not by duration but by causality.
This question should be proposed with a restriction: whether some creature, at least one that is permanent and immobile like an angel, could be created from eternity even though movement and time must have a beginning.
St. Albert, St. Bonaventure, and Petavius and many more recent writers hold that eternal creation is repugnant; St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Capreolus, Francis Sylvester (Ferrariensis), Cajetan, Suarez, and almost all Thomists and Scholastics hold that it is not repugnant.
The question is not of great importance, although it is important to show that the proofs for the existence of God, in particular St. Thomas' five proofs, are still valid even though the world was from all eternity.
Of the difficulties proposed at the beginning of the article the sixth and seventh are the most important: "If the world was always, an infinite number of days would have preceded this day. But the infinite cannot be crossed. Therefore this day would never have arrived." "If the world were eternal, man would be generated by another and so to infinity, and thus there would be an infinite succession of subordinate efficient causes, and therefore it would be impossible to demonstrate the existence of the first cause." Moreover, according to the eighth difficulty, there would now be an infinite multitude of the souls of the deceased.
Reply. The reply is that it is an article of faith and not a demonstrable conclusion that the world began.
1. Proof from authority. That God is the Creator, in the sense that "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" is an article of faith in the proper sense. But articles of faith are distinguished from the preambles of faith by the fact that they cannot be demonstrated. With regard to creation natural reason can prove that all things outside of God are from God, and from this it follows that God produced these things from nothing.[879] It can also be proved that God created most freely and not from a necessity of nature.
But, according to St. Thomas, we know only by faith that God did not create the world from eternity. The idea of creation contains three truths: 1. God created the universe from nothing, 2. most freely, 3. and not from eternity. The third truth is not demonstrable.
Objection. But this is not a supernatural mystery and therefore it can be known by reason alone.
Reply. This is not a mystery because the matter is essentially supernatural, I concede; but it is a mystery because of the contingency of the matter, like a future contingent of the natural order. This is, however, a past contingent.
2. Proof from reason. The conclusion which we wish to prove is that it is impossible to demonstrate that the world began.
The beginning of the world cannot be proved except on the part of the world or on the part of God. But in neither way can it be demonstrated. Therefore it is entirely indemonstrable.
Proof of the first part of the minor: the beginning of the world cannot be proved on the part of the world.
The principle of demonstration is the definition of the thing. But the definition of any created thing abstracts from here and now. Therefore the beginning of the world is indemonstrable on the part of the world.
Objection. The definition of the thing is the principle of the <a priori> demonstration from the properties of the thing. But besides this there is a demonstration <a posteriori>. Hence perhaps the beginning of the world can be demonstrated <a posteriori>.
Reply. If the world could not be from eternity, its beginning would be a property and could therefore be demonstrated from the definition of the world or of the things in the world. In other words, the beginning of the world, like the end of the world, is a contingent fact not included in the definition of the world, and it cannot be known except by experience, that is, <a posteriori> and not as the existence of the cause is demonstrated by the effect.
I insist. If the universals are always and everywhere, it is necessary that individuals be not always and everywhere. But the world is composed of particulars and individuals. Therefore the world could not be always.
Reply. The universals are always and everywhere negatively inasmuch as they abstract from here and now. Thus individuals cannot be always negatively because they do not abstract from here and now but are positively here and now. But it does not follow that they cannot be always positively. If the movement of the heavens was from eternity it would always be true to say that the heavens are in motion.
I insist. The beginning of the world can at least be proved <a posteriori> by the law of the diminution of energy, according to which the energy of the world is qualitatively diminished, as, for instance, the heat produced by local motion cannot in turn produce an equal amount of local motion. Hence the world is tending to a state of immobility and frigidity.
Reply. God could renew the physical energy of the world as He daily renews the spiritual energy of the world by creating souls. Moreover, even if this demonstration were valid it would prove at most the beginning of motion and not the beginning of a permanent and immobile creature such as the substance of the angel.
Proof of the second part of the minor, namely, the beginning of the world cannot be proved on the part of God, the cause.
The most free will of God when it is not manifested in act cannot be investigated by our reason. But God most freely created the world and at a time when He most freely willed. Therefore the beginning of the world, depending in this way on God's free will, cannot be demonstrated and can be known only by faith.
The major is clear. The free will of God can be manifested by a fact, for example, when the end of the world comes. This fact will make known God's free will about the end of the world. But in the first part of the article it was said that the beginning of the world is not made manifest either in the definition of the world or by any fact. Hence by reason of the contingency and not of the supernatural character of the matter the free will cannot be investigated. Hence it is that we cannot know with any certainty contingent futures, which depend on God's free will.
The minor is certain from what we have said earlier:[880] God operates most freely <ad extra>, not by a necessity of nature, or a necessity of wisdom, whatever Leibnitz says, because the infinite goodness of God exists without creatures, and God's perfection is not increased by creatures.
From what he says at the end of the article, we see that at the time of St. Thomas many believed there could be a demonstration of this matter, and some thought that the demonstrations of the existence of God depended on a non-eternal world. St. Thomas, however, understood that the position of the Averroists on the eternity of the world was against faith and not against reason, at least if it is admitted that the being of things depends efficiently on God.
Reply to first difficulty. If creation were from eternity, God would have a priority only of nature and causality but not of time with reference to the world, just as in the case of the foot which is impressed on the sand always, as St. Augustine says.[881]
Reply to second difficulty. It would still be true to say that God created the world from nothing, that is, from no presupposed subject, although creation would not be after nothing.[882]
Reply to fourth difficulty. Those who admit the eternity of the world must perpetually look for new sciences and new civilizations, that is, the civilization which appears to be primitive is perhaps not the first of all, and if the world is from eternity we cannot determine the first race, or the first movement of the sun, or the first day.
Reply to fifth difficulty. If the world were always it would not be equal to God in eternity because in the life of the world there would be a succession and the existence of the world would not be entirely at the same moment.
Reply to sixth difficulty. There would not be a first day or a first movement of the sun. In the <Contra Gentes> St. Thomas says that this argument is not cogent: "if the world were always there would not be a first movement of the sun and thus not transition (from the first day to today because such transition always requires the two extremes)."[883]
I insist. It would then follow that a new day would be added to infinity.
Reply. To the prior part of the infinite an addition can be made from the posterior part of infinity, and thus time would be longer under the finite aspect, that is, in the posterior part although it is infinite in the prior part.
I insist. But this multitude of days would be an infinite number, which is repugnant.
Reply. It would be an innumerable multitude but not a number, for number adds to the multitude a determined relation to unity inasmuch as numbers begin with the first one. Hence an infinite number is repugnant but not an innumerable multitude, as would be the multitude of acts of the intellect and will of a separated soul in the future without end.
I insist. If there were no first day, or second, or third, there would be no actual day.
Reply. I concede the antecedent: if there were no first day, there would be no second or third. I deny the consequence: because it is not necessary that the multitude of days past be numerable or numerated. In Aristotle's hypothesis there would be an innumerable multitude. As St. Thomas says: "Number adds to multitude the idea of mensuration, for a number is a multitude measured by one."[884] Hence it is conceded in Aristotle's hypothesis that there would not be a first day, or a second, etc., namely, because there could not be a progressive numeration of days but only a regressive numeration, going back to the most ancient times and never arriving at the most ancient day. Such was St. Thomas' reply to the sixth difficulty.
Eternity, whose now is always stable and not fluent, would be to infinite time in its prior part as the apex of the cone is to the circular base of the cone, which is continually described as without beginning or end; in the apex there is but one point whereas in the circle of the base there is a perpetual succession.
I insist. But if time were from eternity, the infinite and innumerable multitude of hours would be much greater than the infinite multitude of days. But one infinite multitude cannot be greater than another equally infinite.
Reply. I distinguish the minor: the infinite multitude cannot be greater considered as infinite, I concede; considered as finite, I deny. Thus to the infinite multitude in its anterior part there can be an addition from the posterior part and thus it is greater considered as finite.
Reply to seventh difficulty. There cannot be an infinite process of efficient causes that are subordinate <per se>, but there seems to be no repugnance in an infinite process of causes subordinate <per accidens> in which the causality of the posterior does not depend on the causality of the antecedent, for example, "it happens that this man who generates is generated by another, but he generates inasmuch as he is a man and not inasmuch as he is the son of another man."
Reply to eighth difficulty. It is objected the souls of the dead would constitute an infinite multitude in act.
Algazel replies that this would be infinite only <per accidens> and only with regard to the posterior part. St. Thomas refuted this objection earlier,[885] remarking that "every multitude must be in some species of multitude," but it is disputed whether his refutation is apodictical since St. Thomas himself says that this argument is only probable because an innumerable multitude does not seem to be repugnant.[886] On another occasion St. Thomas wrote, "It has not yet been demonstrated that God cannot make infinite things in act,"[887] and "To make something infinite or infinite things in act is not repugnant to the absolute divine omnipotence."[888] At the end of the reply to the eighth difficulty St. Thomas notes that, even though human generations cannot be from eternity, it does not follow that the physical world cannot be from eternity and that the series of brute generations had a beginning.
Last objection. If a thing is created, we must be able to say that at some time it is created. But that which does not have a principle of duration cannot be said to be created at some particular time.
Reply. In this case it would be true to say that the world is created always, just as if the foot were on the sand from eternity, it would be true to say that the footprint was always imprinted.
I insist. But then there would be no difference between creation and conservation, for creation is the first production of a thing and conservation is the continuation of that production. That is to say, creation must take place in some instant.
Reply. The concept of creation from eternity is difficult because we conceive a divine action analogously to created action, which has a beginning. Nevertheless I deny the inference and distinguish in this way: creation in time is the first production of a thing, I concede; creation from eternity, I deny. Actually creation and conservation are one single act which is called creation inasmuch as it confers being, and is called conservation inasmuch as it continues that being either in finite or infinite duration. This distinction remains even if creation were from eternity. Although this cannot be represented to the imagination, it does not seem to involve any repugnance, just as in the example of the foot on the sand from eternity. It is therefore at least probable that the world could be from eternity.
Doubt. Is this theory more probable with regard to permanent beings, like the angel, the rational soul, a stone, the sky, than with regard to successive things which consist in a certain flux, like movement and time?
Many Thomists, among them John of St. Thomas and Billuart, say that this theory is more probable with regard to permanent beings, and that it is probable that the world could not be from eternity with regard to successive beings, like movement and time, although Aristotle thought that movement and time were from eternity.
According to these Thomists the second part of the argument is not apodictical, and to many others it does not seem to be more probable. They say that if the movement of heavenly bodies were from eternity it would perdure in an infinite duration without the flux of the earlier part that ceases and the later part that begins, and therefore this movement would at the same time be something permanent and something successive, which is impossible. Other Thomists, like Cajetan, Capreolus, Ferrariensis, and the Salmanticenses, concede the possibility of movement from eternity.
Reply. If the movement of the heavenly bodies were from eternity, there would be no first circular movement of the sun, as St. Thomas says earlier, and the movement would always have been something successive, that is, always in the flux of the earlier part that ceases and the later part that begins. The movement, therefore, would not be successive and permanent under the same aspect; it would be successive with regard to the parts that ceased and permanent with regard to the whole. It is sufficient to note that if movement had no beginning, there would be in movement no part that was the first of all, for example, there would be no first movement of the sun. Moreover, St. Thomas holds that it is not repugnant for the world to be from eternity in the same way as Aristotle, and Aristotle held that the world was from eternity even with regard to successive beings.
Finally if the angel were created from eternity, he would have no first cogitation. At least this cannot be demonstrated to be impossible. If it is probable that time should have a beginning, this is because it seems that creation, as distinct from conservation, ought to take place in some instant which is the beginning of time. But our explicit distinction between creation and conservation can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to creation from eternity.
This problem appears again in Kant's writings. Kant presents the first antinomy, whose thesis is: the world began in time and is limited in space, and the antithesis is: the world is infinite in time and space.
In the thesis it is proved that the world began because, as Kant says, it is repugnant that an infinite series of days should be terminated now by the present day. We reply that if this series were infinite in its anterior and posterior part it would be repugnant, but if the series is infinite only in the anterior part, it would not be repugnant.
Kant demonstrates the antithesis as follows: If the world began, it was preceded by vacant time and there is no reason why the world should begin now rather than earlier or later. St. Thomas would have replied: the world began at that moment determined by God's free will. From his antinomies Kant concluded that metaphysics was impossible and that time and space are e priori forms of sensible knowledge and that causality is an <a priori> form of our intellects.
Hence St. Thomas would have said there is no antinomy because an antinomy is a contradiction whose two parts are proved apodictically, and thus metaphysics is impossible. But actually neither part is proved because this matter depends on God's free will, and God could, if He wished, create the world from eternity just as He created it in time.
The second antinomy concerns the substance composed of simple parts or parts divided in infinity; but a continuum cannot be constituted by indivisible points. The reply is that the continuum is divisible in infinity but not divided in infinity.
The third antinomy concerns free will in the sense that free choice is against the principle that the same cause in the same circumstances produces the same effect. Reply: the same cause determined to one effect, I concede; not determined to one effect, I deny.
The fourth antinomy concerns the existence of the first cause. Kant says that if God began to act He would be measured by time. Reply: an eternal action produces its effect in time whenever it wills.
Third Article: Whether The Creation Of Things Was In The Beginning Of Time
This article seeks to determine the meaning of the words, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." St. Thomas points out that these words are explained in three ways:
1. In the beginning of time, according to St. Basil and St. Ambrose in opposition to the older philosophers.
2. In the principle, that is, in the Son, who is the exemplary principle, according to St. Augustine and St. Jerome against the Manichaeans.
3. Before all things, that is, in the beginning of time all things, including the angels, were created at one time.
The first and third explanations are literal; the second is mystical or spiritual. St. Augustine tried to see a twofold literal sense in the words, "in the beginning," and also in the word "heaven," that is, a corporeal heaven and a spiritual heaven.[889] This is not repugnant because these words are analogical, and God and the sacred writer, who was illuminated by divine inspiration, could have had in mind both the lower and the higher analogy, as when Christ taught us to say, "give us this day our daily bread," He understood ordinary bread, and the "supersubstantial bread" mentioned by St. Matthew.[890]

CHAPTER XXI: QUESTION 47 THE DISTINCTION OF THINGS IN GENERAL
After considering the production of creatures in being we proceed to the distinction of things. Why? Because the first property of being is unity, to which is opposed multitude, which implies the distinction of things. Hence we treat first in question 47 of the distinction of things. Here we do not institute a search, as in the fourth proof for the existence of God, but we proceed synthetically from first principles, considering that vast problem, discussed at great length by the Greek philosophers, especially by Plato, of how the multitude can proceed from the one, most simple, supreme principle. The Greek philosophers were not able to solve the problem, and it appears again in evolutionism. In question 48 we treat of the distinction between good and evil. Why? Because good is another property of being. In this question we are given the definition of metaphysical evil. Finally, in question 50 we consider the distinction between spiritual and corporeal creatures. In these three questions, then, we have a treatise on the properties of created being. As a complement to these considerations, we have the treatise on the angels, where St. Thomas also treats of the creature as such, that is, whether the created substance is immediately operative or whether it requires a faculty or an operative potency.[891]
In the Parisian Codex (in the National Library) question 47 has only three articles: 1. the multitude and the distinction of things; 2. their inequality; 3. the unity of the world. The Cassinese Codex, however, has a fourth article inserted between the second and third of the Parisian Codex, entitled, whether there is an order of agents among creatures. This article was written either by St. Thomas himself or by one of his disciples and it is based on what is said on this matter in the <Contra Gentes> (Bk. II, chap. 42). The Leonine edition gives this article in small type. At any rate, this article is a complement to the present question, serving as a preamble to the last article, and it contains the true teaching of St. Thomas.
First Article: Whether The Multitude And Distinction Of Things Is From God
State of the question. The meaning of the title is: whether the multitude and distinction of things is from God, not in any way whatsoever, but as intended by Him. This is the great problem of the origin of multitude. In the fourth proof for the existence of God it was easy enough to ascend from the multitude of things, which we know from experience, to the one supreme being, because the multitude does not itself give an adequate reason for the unity of similitude and composition which we find in it. Hence we must posit unity prior to every multitude. Such was Plato's dialectic ascent which attained to the idea of the supreme good; and in similar language Aristotle says that every truth and every being presupposes the greatest truth, which is the greatest being.[892]
But if it is easy to ascend from the multitude of things to the supreme unity, it is very difficult to descend from the one supreme being to the multitude, that is, to explain how the one supreme being can be the cause of the multitude. For us who have from revelation the idea of free creation this is easy, but for those who do not possess this idea or reject it, as do the modern evolutionists, the problem is insoluble.
In ancient times Parmenides began with the idea of being and unity and concluded that multitude was unintelligible. Why? Because he could not understand how anything could be added to being to diversify it.[893] In other words, being is being and it cannot be diversified except by something other than being. But that something other than being is non-being, which is nothing. Therefore being cannot be diversified; from eternity it is one, and always remains one and immutable. It is God. Hence Parmenides concluded that multitude is an illusion of the senses.
In the same way, Zeno's arguments (for example, that Achilles could never catch the tortoise) were intended to show the absurdity of the theory of plurality. Indeed, if the continuum were composed of indivisible points and not of divisible parts, Zeno's arguments would be irrefutable.
In the beginning of this article St. Thomas presents similar difficulties, but on the part of God. The first and second objections are: every agent acts similar to himself, inasmuch as he determines according to his own proper determination. But God is the greatest unity. Therefore God's effect is one only and not multiple. The third objection: so also the end of creatures is one, the manifestation of the divine goodness. In our day the evolutionists are trying to explain how the multitude of beings arises from some homogeneous primitive being.
In the <Contra Gentes> St. Thomas considers these difficulties at great length from chapter 39 to chapter 45 of the second book: that the distinction in things is not by chance, against Democritus (chap. 39); that prime matter is not the first cause of the distinction of things, against the dualism of Plato and many others (chap. 40); that the distinction of things does not arise from a diversity or contrariety of agents, against Avicenna (chap. 41); that the first cause of the distinction of things is not the order among secondary agents (chap. 42); that the distinction of things is not by an angel inducing diverse forms into matter (chap. 43); nor does this distinction proceed from the diversity of merits and demerits, against Origen (chap. 44), but this distinction is intended <per se> by God, the most free Creator, so that the likeness of the Creator may be found in creatures to the extent that creatures can be assimilated to God.[894]
This problem of the origin of multitude, discussed by Plato in the dialogue entitled Parmenides, reappears in modern evolution in the following form: How did the distinction of things, mineral, vegetative, animal, and human, arise from the primitive, homogeneous being? How did vegetative life, sensation, and intellection arise? The evolutionists try to conceal the difficulty by saying that the distinction of things appeared only slowly and progressively. But metaphysically speaking it makes little difference whether these distinctions appeared slowly or suddenly, whether they appeared only after a thousand years, or six days, or suddenly. This question of time, as also with regard to creation, is of minor consequence. The important question, abstracting from time, is how a multitude can originate from the primitive unity. This question is similar to that other important question asked in the next article: If God is infinitely good and the cause of all things, what is the cause of evil?
Reply. St. Thomas shows that this problem of the origin of the multitude of things is insoluble without the idea of free creation. His reply is that the distinction of things and multitude are from the intention of the first agent, who is God.
Proof from authority. "In the beginning God created heaven and earth. . . . And He divided the light from the darkness. . . . And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament."[895] This is a popular expression of the truth, accommodated to the intelligence of the Israelites, who thought of the heavens as a solid firmament. But when it is revealed that the heavens (which you think of as a solid firmament) are created by God, it is not revealed that the heavens are a solid firmament, for in the revealed proposition the verb "is" refers to "created" (the heavens are created) and not to "solid." Hence it may be that some error is mingled in the subject of the proposition without making the proposition erroneous in its formal meaning, that is, with regard to the verb "is" and those things to which "is" refers. On other occasions it is more clearly stated that God created visible and invisible beings[896] and that God "ordered all things in measure and number and weight."[897]
In the body of the article St. Thomas presents and then refutes two theories: the ascending evolution of the materialists and the descending evolution of Avicenna.[898]
The theory of the ancient materialists was that the distinction of things arises by chance according to the movement of matter. This opinion was held by Democritus and later by Epicurus. Modern materialists with their theory of evolution were unable to add anything to this ancient theory; they were unable to explain how the first nebulae, the incandescendent stars, the habitable earth could come from primitive homogeneous matter except by chance or by the activity of some unknown forces, and the appearance of vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life remained for them an insoluble enigma. They would be forced to admit that more proceeds from less and that the perfect proceeds from the imperfect, and they find themselves at a loss how to explain the multitude and diversity of organisms except by chance. But to say that these things are by chance is no explanation, but rather an absence of explanation, for chance is a cause <per accidens> which presupposes a cause ordered <per se> to one effect, and if there is no cause <per se> there can be no cause <per accidens>. A man digging a grave could not accidentally find a treasure if he were not <per se> digging in the earth and if some one else had not buried the treasure.
St. Thomas points out that Anaxagoras approached a solution of this problem when he admitted an intelligent cause that orders the universe, but at the same time Anaxagoras thought that a distinction pre-existed in eternal matter, that is in the homeomeriae.
Reply. In his reply to the materialists St. Thomas presents two arguments which apply equally to the ascending evolutionism of modern materialists.
1. If there is any distinction from matter, this distinction should be referred to some higher cause. Why? Because matter is created by God, as we have said above, for matter is not a being in itself. Matter is moved and perfected and therefore it is moved and perfected by another; matter does not move or perfect itself, it does not confer on itself vegetative, sensitive, or intellectual life; it is not its own action or its own being. Matter is always in potency to other determinations and it is not related to being, the ultimate actuality of all things, as A is to a. This argument also applies to Plato's dualism.
2. Matter is because of the form, and the form is not because of the matter. But the distinction of things takes place through the specific forms. Therefore the distinction is not on account of matter but conversely matter is on account of the distinction of things. Matter is the principle of individuation and is ordered to the multitude of species.
This second argument applies also to evolutionism, for there can be no evolution with a tendency to something definite and congruous without some finality. Otherwise the direction of such a tendency would be without any reason, and no tendency would ever attain to the constitution of any of our organs, the heart, the head, the eye, etc. John of St. Thomas restates these two arguments against materialism as follows:
1. Act is simply prior to potency, and therefore matter, which is the potency to a higher act, is not uncreated, nor is it therefore the first cause for the distinction of things, for example, the distinctions of vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life, which matter cannot produce because it is inferior to them. Matter is merely the real capacity for receiving a perfection.
2. Potency is referred to act and is because of act, or matter is because of the form and on account of the diverse forms, and therefore it is not the cause of the specific distinction of the forms. Matter is because of the distinction of these forms.
The first conclusion therefore is that the specific distinction of things cannot be explained by a material cause.
2. The second theory refuted by St. Thomas might be called descending evolutionism. It calls to mind Plotinus' emanatism. This second theory was advanced by Avicenna, who tried to explain the specific distinction of things by efficient causes. Avicenna declared that God in understanding Himself produced the first intelligence (Plotinus' <logos>, the second <<hypostasis>>); then, when the first intelligence understood itself, it produced the soul of the world (Plotinus' third <<hypostasis>>, the god of the Stoics).
Modern pantheists, who support a descending evolution rather than an ascending evolution, try to explain the distinction of things in almost the same way. Spinoza tried to derive two infinite attributes from the divine substance: cogitation and infinite extension, besides the finite modes of cogitation and extension. But because he rejected free creation he was unable to derive the finite modes from an infinite substance, and therefore he simply stated without proof that these finite modes come into being successively from eternity in some necessary way.
In trying to explain the distinction of things Schelling began with the Absolute, but because he rejected the revealed truth of free creation he spoke of a fall of the Absolute by which the Absolute became the world in some kind of descent. Hegel, who supported an ascending evolution, ridiculed Schelling's dream of the fall of the Absolute, but Hegel's position is no less ridiculous, for according to Hegel God is becoming in the world but He does not yet exist and will never properly be, as Renan said.
Reply. To this second theory of the emanatists, St. Thomas replied that creation belongs to God alone and the total being of anything cannot be produced except by creation from nothing, and creation is not emanation, for in creation God is the sole efficient and final cause, but in no sense the material cause. Hence God does not become the world nor is the world made from God. Avicenna's second <hypostasis>, therefore, if it is created, cannot create a third, and the third cannot create something inferior to itself.
Furthermore, St. Thomas replies, according to Avicenna the totality and distinction of things would not derive from the intention of the first agent but from a concourse of many active causes. This concourse of causes, however, must come about by chance if it does not come from the intention of the first cause. But chance, since it is a cause <per accidens>, presupposes a cause ordered <per se> to its effect and therefore it cannot be the first cause of the specific distinction of things. Manifestly the distinction between vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life in the world does not come from chance. In other words, there would be no finality in the world, and natural agents would tend to something determined and fitting without any reason, the order in things would be derived from an absence of order, more would come from the less, and the more perfect would come from the imperfect. Nor can it be said that the distinction in things comes from the form of secondary causes, for these forms do not exist of themselves and they themselves are distinct from one another and thus their own distinction must be explained.
Nor can it be said that the cause of the distinction in things is God inasmuch as He operates by a necessity of His nature. This argument was answered in the reply to the first difficulty and was refuted above: "It is of the nature of a natural agent that it produces one effect, because a nature (determined to one thing) operates in one and the same way unless it is impeded (for example, the vital principle in a plant operates in the same way in the same circumstances). This is because a natural agent acts according to its specific being, and as long as it is such a being it acts only in this one way. Since the divine being is infinite. . ., it cannot be that it acts by a necessity of nature unless it were to cause something infinite in being, which is impossible. The divine being, therefore, does not act by a necessity of nature, but the effects determined by its infinite perfection proceed according to the determination of its will and intellect."[899]
The second conclusion, therefore, is that the distinction of things does not come from God as acting by a necessity of nature.
Until this point St. Thomas has not considered the opinion that the distinction of things comes from God as operating by a necessity of wisdom, an opinion espoused by the absolute optimism of Plato and by Leibnitz in modern times. Here is an attempt to explain the distinction of things, which is assumed to be necessary, by a final cause. In this instance the necessity of the distinction of things is not metaphysical or physical but moral. St. Thomas says: "Plato supposed that it was due to the goodness of God as understood and loved by God Himself that He should produce the most perfect of worlds. This could, of course, be true if we consider only those things that are and not those things that could be. This universe is the best of those that are, and the fact that it is the best is due to the goodness of God. But the goodness of God is not obligated to this universe in such a way that God could not make a better or worse universe."[900] "Whenever the end is proportionate to the things that are made on account of that end, the wisdom of the maker is limited to some determined order. But the divine goodness is an end disproportionately exceeding created things. Therefore the divine wisdom is not determined to some order of things."[901]
The third conclusion, therefore, is that the distinction of things does not come from God operating by a necessity of wisdom.
By eliminating the material cause, natural efficient causes, and the final cause that implies the necessity of the production of things, we come to the positive conclusion: the distinction of things arises from the free intention of God the Creator.
The proof may be somewhat easier if we join this last section of the article with the reply to the first difficulty, in which the divine liberty is affirmed.
A free agent can produce distinct effects according to whatever distinct forms he understands. But God, as a free agent, wished to manifest His goodness through diverse creatures. Therefore the distinction of things is explained by the intention of God the free Creator. and this distinction can have no other cause.
Explanation of the major. An agent that acts by its nature acts by the form by which it is, and this form is only one for each agent. Therefore such an agent acts only in one way. A free agent, however, acts according to a form received in the intellect.
Explanation of the minor. God is a voluntary and free agent.[902] It does not conflict with God's unity and simplicity that He understands many things, for the multitude of things understood by God do not effect a real distinction in Him.[903] Since God can understand many things, He can also make many things.
God, however, wished freely to manifest His goodness by diverse creatures. Why? St. Thomas explains in the last section: "Because by one creature the divine goodness cannot be adequately represented, God made many different things so that whatever is lacking in one to represent the divine goodness will be supplied by another."[904]
The validity of this solution. This solution is of faith. From the philosophical viewpoint it is necessary, for the ascending evolution of the materialists and even of Hegel is repugnant both to the principle of causality (more cannot be produced by the less) and to the principle of finality (every agent acts according to the end to which it is ordered) and, moreover, ascending evolution does not explain the distinction of things. Similarly, descending evolution fails to explain the distinction of things for, if God operates by a necessity of nature, He will necessarily produce only one effect.
Similarly the absolute optimism of Plato and Leibnitz does not take into account the disproportion between any created universe and the divine goodness, which is to be manifested. We must, therefore, have recourse to the liberty of God the Creator, or we must, with Parmenides, deny all multitude and all distinction in things. In the end the solution is that the most eminent unity of God virtually contains the infinite multitude of possible things, from which God freely chose the things He wished to create.
The higher unity differs from the lower unity in the fact that it virtually contains the multitude; the higher the unity the richer its content, for, as Dionysius said, "those things that are divided in inferior beings are united in the higher beings." This is especially clear when we ascend from one order to another; the vital principle of the plant virtually contains all the acts of agents lower than itself. Similarly, the faculty of vision, which in itself is simple, extends itself to a spreading panorama; the central sense in the common sense unites the objects of the particular senses; the intellect knows the universal, which virtually contains the individual. Great musicians, like Mozart, hear the melody they are composing completely at one time and they often express the whole theme virtually in the prelude of the composition. Great philosophers reduce the whole of philosophy to a few sublime principles. When the saints arrive at the unitive way they unite in this unity various virtues. In a still higher plane, the unity and simplicity of God virtually contain the infinite multitude of possible beings, and from this multitude God chooses those that He wishes to create. By the divine liberty, then, we are able to solve the problem of how a multitude proceeds from the supreme and most simple principle. Plato and Aristotle were not able to offer a solution because they had not attained to the idea of free creation.
Second Article: Whether The Inequality Of Things Is From God
State of the question. Many men cannot understand how the inequality in things can come from God. The Manichaeans tried to explain this inequality by two, opposite principles, and Origen, trying to rectify their error, explained that in the beginning God created only intellectual beings and that all these beings were equal. Some of these sinned and as a punishment they were united to bodies. In modern times some thinkers have declared that that great inequality among animals, whereby the strong devour the weak, cannot come from God. They ask why there should be such a great inequality in the intellectual and moral aptitudes of men. This is the language of egalitarianism. As we shall see in the body of the article, it is a materialistic theory that does not take into account the subordination of the forms of agents and ends.
These unfortunate inequalities, says Schopenhauer, cannot come from a good and omnipotent God, and he concludes that God is not omnipotent and that the principle of all things is some kind of will that is always trying to persevere in being. This attempt is always associated with sorrow and is like an insatiable thirst. Therefore in his pessimism he concluded, that this desire for life must be eradicated so that we may come to that negative bliss which is the ending of all sorrow.
Schopenhauer's difficulties can be reduced to the difficulties proposed at the beginning of the present article: the best God should have made the best things, and therefore all equal, otherwise, according to the third objection, it would be an injustice for God to distribute His gifts unequally to creatures.
Reply. The reply is that the divine wisdom is the cause of the distinction of things for the sake of the perfection of the universe, and therefore the divine wisdom is also the cause of inequality.
1. Proof from authority. "Why doth one day excel another, and one light another, and one year another year, when all come of the Lord? By the knowledge of the Lord they were distinguished."[905] In the canticle, "All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord,"[906] we see the inequality of creatures, each of which in its own way praises the Lord. The description of the creation in the Book of Genesis shows the inequality of creatures, and the Fourth Council of the Lateran declared that "God at one time and in the beginning of time established both creatures, the spiritual and corporeal, and then the human creature, as it were a common being constituted by spirit and body."
2. Proof from reason: a) by the refutation of Origen's theory; b) positively.
a) In opposing the Manichaeans, Origen declared that God in the beginning had created spiritual beings, who were all equal. Those that sinned were bound to bodies, and the greater the sin the closer the union with matter. Some of these beings did not sin, and these now constitute the different grades of angels according to their different merits. In this way Origen combined the doctrine of original sin with the Platonic myths about the pre-existence of souls.[907]
St. Thomas replies: "The totality of corporeal beings would then not be because of the communication of God's goodness to creatures but for the punishment of sin. But this is contrary to the words of Genesis, "And God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good."[908] St. Augustine exclaims: "What could be more stupid than to say that by this sun, as there is but one in the world, God was concerned not with the splendor of beauty or the welfare of corporeal things, but that this sun came to be because one soul sinned?"[909]
What could be more stupid than to say that the stars are in the sky, that the pure air exists, that the rose, the lily, the dove, the lamb were made because someone sinned? St. Augustine is speaking formally when he says, "what could be more stupid," for it is stupidity, opposed to the wisdom which explains the beauty of even the sensible world as a manifestation of God's goodness, while this theory explains all this by sin, not by the highest cause but by something that is less than nothing. Schopenhauer's doctrine is even greater folly when he speaks of a fall of the Absolute or of God. He tries to explain the inequalities and sorrows of the world by a primitive, non-omnipotent, or rather impotent will. The first cause is subsisting being itself and therefore omnipotent, because operation follows being, and anything that is able to possess the nature of being is comprised in the object of divine power, which can effect anything that has no repugnance to being.[910]
b) The positive proof is from the principle of finality, out of which is drawn the corollary of the principle of the subordination of ends, forms, and agents, against materialistic egalitarianism. Leibnitz adopted St. Thomas' argument but exaggerated it, as we shall see. St. Thomas' argument can be reduced to the following: The specific or formal distinction is more important than the material or numerical distinction, because matter is on account of the form and the individuals in any species of corruptible beings are for the conservation of the species. But the formal distinction always requires inequality, since the forms of things are subordinate like numbers, ascending from the elements to mixed beings, to plants, and to animals, and in each instance one species is found more perfect than the others, for example, the diamond or radium among minerals, the rose among the flowers, and man among the animals. Therefore the inequality of beings is required for the perfection of the universe so that in different ways the wisdom of God might make known His goodness.
The major is evident, since matter is because of the form, according to the principle of finality that the imperfect is on account of the perfect. In the same way the many individuals of the same species of corruptible being are for the conservation of the species. Excluding the subsisting spiritual soul, individuals are ordered to the preservation of the species. Thus individuals pass away but the species remains; it is negatively eternal in the sense that it prescinds from the here and now, and thus it is somehow above time, representing the divine idea, the idea of rose, of lily, of lion, etc. Therefore, St. Thomas says, the hen gathers the chicks under her wing and defends them against the hawk because the hen naturally loves the good of its species more than its own good.[911]
The major therefore is certain, namely, the formal or specific distinction is more important than the material or numerical distinction; any material individual of this or that species is of minor importance. This, however, is not true of a person, because the soul of the person is subsisting and immortal and thus is of greater value than the species of lion or horse.
The minor. But the formal distinction requires the inequality or subordination of forms. This is affirmed with a serene mind and not lugubriously as was the case with Origen. On this point St. Thomas differs entirely from the pessimism of Schopenhauer. But it should be noted that the holy doctor is speaking here of the primary distinction and inequality existing prior to sin; he is not now speaking of how after original and actual sin this inequality is often increased and causes that miserable state of servitude in which so many men spent their entire lives before the spread of Christianity.
The primary inequality of things pertains to their natures independently of sin, for, as Aristotle says, "the species of things are subordinate like numbers."[912] For numbers vary by the addition or subtraction of unity and the species of things differ by the addition or subtraction of a specific difference. for example, a substance is incorporeal or corporeal, and here there is inequality; similarly, the corporeal substance is living or inanimate; if living, it is sensitive or not; if sensitive, it is rational or not. Everywhere we find the inequality and subordination of forms as with numbers.
Hence St. Thomas says, "In each of these we find one species more perfect than the others," for example, man among the animals, and the animals that have both internal and external senses are superior to the animals that do not possess all the senses, as the oyster and the sponge, which appear to have only the sense of touch. So there is also a certain subordination among plants and flowers and among minerals; the diamond, or perhaps radium, seems to be the most precious of minerals.
These considerations are valid against materialism and mechanism, which take into consideration only quantity and not quality. If quality is something prior to quantity, the variation of heat from the tenth to the twentieth degree is perhaps greater than between the twentieth and thirtieth degrees. Materialism looks at everything as if it were in the same horizontal plane, as if, for instance, animals were machines and as if the human soul were not essentially superior to the soul of the brute. This is absolute egalitarianism, which reduces everything to the lowest plane.
Spiritualism, on the other hand, considers everything as in a vertical line, inasmuch as the species of things are subordinated in a hierarchy for the splendor of the universe, because those things that are united in God can be only divisively in creatures and because the formal distinction requires inequality. Many modern writers do not understand this subordination, confusing it with coordination, for example, when they compare the first cause and the second cause with two men rowing a boat.
The conclusion is confirmed by the solution of the objections.
Reply to first objection. The most perfect agent produces his perfect total effect, but he produces it with a subordination of parts, for example, with the subordination of organs and functions in the plant and animal organisms. The animal would be less perfect if all its parts were equal, if all, for instance, had the dignity or importance of the eye.
Thus the universe is more perfect with angels, men, animals, plants, minerals than if there were only angels and all the angels were equal. Here was Origen's error. According to St. Thomas the angels could not be equal, for in the angels there is a particular subordination of forms since the angels are pure subsisting forms. Since individuation takes place through matter, there can be only one individual in each angelic species. Michael is the only individual in his species. Hence among the angels we have a perfect hierarchy or subordination.
Reply to second objection. In the Blessed Trinity there is equality according to the processions <ad intra> by which the entire divine nature is communicated. The Word and the Holy Ghost are equal to the Father. On the other hand there must be inequality in the procession <ad extra> because the creature is an inadequate manifestation of the divine goodness and many subordinate creatures are required.
Reply to third objection. The primitive inequality is not unjust since it is because of the perfection of the universe. This Origen was not able to understand.
Thus some are born inclined to fortitude and must acquire meekness, others inclined to meekness must acquire fortitude. Each must ascend the mountain of perfection by traversing the various parts of the mountain. The justice of God is not commutative, regulating the changes among equals, but it is distributive according to the requirements of the common good.[913] God is His own law.[914] Cajetan remarks: "Therefore God is just in condescension in order to manifest His goodness."
Leibnitz exaggerated this doctrine of inequality when he denied matter in his monadology and reduced all substance to spiritual monads which are subordinated as are the angels in St. Thomas' doctrine. Leibnitz held that there could not be in the world two beings absolutely similar because God would have created these perfectly similar beings without reason, just as a man would have two perfectly similar copies of the same edition of Virgil in his library without reason.
Reply. Two perfectly similar individuals can exist, especially in succession, for the preservation of the species and they are distinguished from each other by matter marked by quantity, as in the case of two drops of water or two perfectly identical twins. We concede only that there cannot be two angels perfectly similar in species, and this would also be true of men if they were monads without matter.
St. Thomas does admit a certain individual inequality of souls in the same human species: the soul of Christ is higher even in the natural order than the soul of Judas, but this inequality is not unrelated to the body, although on the other hand a body is better disposed because of a higher individual soul, since causes are mutually causes to each other in different genera of causes.
Third Article: Whether There Is An Order Of Agents In Creatures[915]
If this article was not written by St. Thomas, it was composed by one of his disciples from what St. Thomas says on this matter elsewhere.[916] This article completes the question and serves as a preamble to the fourth article: whether there is only one world.
In this article it is asked whether the subordination of agents is not only formal but also dynamic. It appears that it is not dynamic: 1. because the omnipotent God can act without an intermediate subordinate agent; 2. because this dynamic subordination would be a return to the separated ideas of Plato, for the subordinate agents would at the same time be exemplary ideas; 3. if one creature were the active cause of another, it would also be its final cause; and God alone is the end of all things.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative, that is, in creatures the subordination of agents corresponds to the subordination of ends.
Proof from authority. "There is no power but from God; and those that are, are ordained from God."[917] As Dionysius said, in this way God rules the lower through the higher.
Proof from reason. The proof is twofold: indirect and direct.
a) The indirect proof is a refutation of the doctrine of occasionalism, already proposed in St. Thomas' day, according to which it is not the fire that heats but God in the fire.[918]
Reply. The active powers, as well as the qualities and forms, attributed to things would be futile if they effected nothing. St. Thomas says: "Indeed all created things would seem to be somehow futile if they were stripped of their proper operation, because all things are because of their operation,"[919] or as Cajetan says, because of themselves as operating. "It is not due to some lack of power that God acts through the mediation of creatures, but because of the abundance of His goodness inasmuch. . . as He communicates the dignity of causality to creatures."[920] This causality is explained by the distinction between potency and act, which Malebranche and Leibnitz failed to recognize and therefore they fell back on occasionalism when they were unable to explain the transitive activity of creatures.
b) The conclusion is proved directly from the inequality required in creatures to manifest the divine goodness, as we stated in the preceding article. The proof may be reduced to the following: The more perfect is compared to the less perfect as act to potency, and it is the nature of what exists in act that it act on that which is in potency. But there is inequality in creatures inasmuch as one is more perfect than another. Therefore it is necessary that one creature act on another, by the power of God, the first agent. We have in mind here agents that are <per se> subordinate, not univocal causes, subordinate <per accidens>, such as men who are successive by the succession of generation.
Explanation of the major. If in nature some inferior being is in potency to receive some perfection, it is of the nature of a superior being in act that it act on that which is in potency, for example, if the fruits of the earth need warmth to ripen, it is in order that the sun, which is hot in act, should provide heat for the earth. The minor is evident. Therefore there must be a subordination of agents.
Corollary. The order or subordination of agents corresponds to the subordination of ends, as St. Thomas frequently pointed out: "It is necessary, since every agent acts for an end, that every cause direct its effects to its end, and therefore, since there is an order of ends according to the order of agents or movers, it is necessary that man be directed to the ultimate end by the movement of the first mover."[921] Hence St. Thomas says also in this article, "matter is ordered to the form, the elements to mixed beings, plants to animals, and animals to man." We see then that the order of the universe arises from the fact that one creature acts on another and that one creature is made to the likeness of another (for every agent acts in some way similar to itself) and that one creature is the end of another. Thus minerals are assimilated by plants, plants by animals, and animals by men. We see here an external finality of the inferior being to the superior which can be corroborated by the internal finality of the superior being, for example, the animal acts for an end and in assimilating the plant for its own sustenance it uses an appropriate means to the end of sustaining itself and thus it appears that according to external finality plants are because of animals.[922]
First corollary. Man is a microcosm, a sort of compendium of the universe inasmuch as he reflects this subordination of agents and ends. The intellective part of the soul moves the sensitive faculties and members and uses them for its higher end, because the end of the agent and patient is the same but in different ways. So also the sensitive part uses the vegetative part, and the vegetative part uses the lower aliments which it assimilates through the nutritive function and by respiration.
In this microcosm we see the dynamic order of the whole universe, the threefold subordination of agents, ends, and forms inasmuch as the superior agent in acting in a manner similar to itself is also a kind of exemplar of the effect produced in the inferior being. St. Thomas says: "God is the prime exemplar of all things, but secondarily the creature is an exemplar of another creature." For example, our reason is modified by prudence, and this is an exemplar of the rectitude of the sensitive appetite governed by temperance.
Second corollary. The pantheists look for a substantial unity in the universe and without reason deny the two extrinsic causes of the world, the efficient and final causes, while evidently the world has a dynamic unity which participates in efficient and final causality.
Third corollary. From all this it appears that the principle of finality (every agent acts for an end) is no less necessary and no less evident than the principle of efficient causality (every thing that is made has an efficient cause). Indeed there can be no efficient causality without finality, nor can there be a tendency which does not tend to an end. The end is the first and supreme of the four causes and thus, at least in itself, the principle of finality is prior to the principle of efficient causality and better known <per se>.
Fourth (Third) Article: Whether There Is Only One World
State of the question. We are inquiring here about the fact, not the possibility, of the numerical unity of the world. It seems that there are many worlds: 1. because God could create many worlds; 2. because many worlds would be better than one, since many goods are better than a few; 3. as man is multiplied, the world ought also be multiplied. Democritus thought that many worlds resulted from the concourse of the atoms. The question asked here is not the same as that about the plurality of worlds in the sense of the stars being inhabited. The opinion that the stars or plants are inhabited is not contrary to the conclusion of this article, since the stars and planets and everything that moves in them constitute one universe.
Reply. St. Thomas' reply is that the world is unique.
1. This is proved from the language of the Scriptures: "The world was made by Him."[923]
2. It is proved also from the divine ordination to one and the same end. All the things that are from God have a relation to one another and to God Himself, that is, all things are coordinated and subordinated and thus constitute a complete whole, which is called the universe. The unity of the world, therefore, is a unity of order.
Reply to first objection. From the unity of order existing in things, Aristotle reached the conclusion that God the governor is one: "Beings are averse to being ill disposed, and a plurality of principles is not good. Therefore there is but one principle."[924] This text of Aristotle is adduced to prove that for him God is not only the ultimate end of the world, attracting all things to Himself, but also the governor, at least of the genera and species if not of individuals, as Averroes contended. From this argument it also follows that by His ordered power God cannot make many worlds without some relation to one another; they must at least be coordinated with regard to the same ultimate end, since it is the part of a wise being to put things in order.
Reply to second objection. No agent intends a material plurality as an end because a material multitude does not have a definite terminus and because it can always be increased; the material multitude must be ordered to something higher as matter is ordered to the form. From this it follows that there would be no reason for God to create two similar worlds only numerically distinct. We may ask why two worlds rather than three or four or more?
Reply to third objection. St. Thomas says: "It is not possible that there be another earth besides this one because every earth would be borne naturally to the same middle point," that is, to the center of the world. This is the opinion of the ancients proposed by Aristotle, but it was not proved.[925] Cajetan says that St. Thomas was speaking not of an absolute impossibility but of a physical impossibility under the present laws of the universe according to the Ptolemaic system.
Doubt. Whether God could create two unequal worlds? This does seem to be impossible because such worlds would be subordinated by reason of their inequality.
Brief review. The distinction of things in general.
We see, therefore, that the origin of multiplicity and of the distinction of things depends on the divine liberty and the divine ideas, that is, in the ultimate analysis on the divine unity, which virtually contains an infinity of possible beings. In this multiplicity and distinction we see a unity of order or subordination of forms, agents and ends, a unity that is at once static and dynamic. Plato and Aristotle prepared the way for this solution by answering Parmenides' arguments against the existence of the multitude, but since they had not attained an explicit notion of free creation from nothing, their teaching remained confused about the origin of multitude and the distinction of things in general. We see here the superiority of Christian philosophy and especially of Christian theology.

CHAPTER XXII: QUESTION 103 THE GOVERNANCE OF THINGS IN GENERAL
After considering creation and the distinction of things in general, we consider the divine governance before taking up creatures in particular. As was said earlier in treating of divine providence,[926] the governance of things is the execution of providence. It is part of divine providence to order things to their end, and the execution of this order is divine governance. Similarly, in human affairs we distinguish the executive power from the legislative power.[927]
St. Thomas considers the divine governance according to the four kinds of causes: 1. whether there is divine governance and what it is formally; 2. what is its end; 3. why the divine governance must proceed from one supreme efficient cause alone; 4. what the divine governance effects and how (that is, its efficacy). In this way we consider whatever belongs <per se> to the divine governance. Human society, and the Church as well, ought to be studied according to these four causes if we wish to know everything that pertains to them of necessity.
First Article: Whether The World Is Governed By Anyone
State of the question. The materialists, pessimists, and all who reject divine providence deny any governance of the world. They hold, as we shall see in the third difficulty, that in their movements the principal parts of the world are determined to one end by some necessity and therefore do not need any governance.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that the world is governed, and this truth is of faith. All the texts of Scripture that affirm the existence of divine providence can be offered as proof. St. Thomas cites the text, "But Thy providence, O Father, governeth it."[928] God is considered the Father who gives life, and who nourishes, elevates, and governs His children with knowledge and benevolence.
The divine governance is proved <a posteriori> as follows: Means are not ordered to an end except by a governing intellect which understands the nature of the means. But in the world there are many means excellently ordered to a good end. Therefore the world is governed by one intelligence. Moreover, in opposition to Kant, this intelligence must be its own being and intellection, wisdom and truth itself, for otherwise this intelligence itself would be ordered to intellection and to truth by some higher governor.
The existence of the divine governance can also be proved <a priori> to a certain extent from a consideration of the divine goodness inasmuch as it produces things in being, so it also pertains to it to lead things to their end, which is to rule. To govern, properly speaking, is to lead things conveniently to their proper end as the arrow is directed by the archer.[929]
Reply to third objection. In natural things we find a certain necessity by which they are determined to one end; thus the eye is determined to seeing, the ear to hearing, the foot to walking, so that this end constitutes the reason for the existence of these means that are ordered to itself. But this ordering presupposes an ordering intellect in the Author of nature. Otherwise the intelligibility in things would come from non-intelligence, from a blind and material necessity; order would come from the privation of order, the more perfect from the less perfect in opposition to the principle of causality, and all things would be without a reason for their existence, that is, without any reason for being rather than not being.
Second Article: Whether The End Of The Governance Of The World Is Something Out Side The World
State of the question. It seems that the end of the world is its order and peace, that is, something intrinsic to the world for the good of the multitude is its peace.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that God Himself is the final end of the governance of the world.
Proof from Scripture. "The Lord hath made all things for Himself";[930] "To make thee higher than all nations which He hath created, to His own praise and name and glory."[931] This thought is frequently repeated in the psalms, namely, that God made all things to manifest His goodness. This truth was defined by the Vatican Council: "If anyone shall deny that the world was established for the glory of God, let him be anathema";[932] and in another chapter, "God, by His goodness and omnipotent power, not to increase His happiness or to acquire it, but to manifest His perfection by the goods which He imparts to creatures, by His most free counsel made all things."[933]
Proof from reason. Since every agent acts for a proportionate end, the end corresponds to the principle. But the efficient principle of the world is a cause extrinsic to it. Therefore the final end of the world is also some good extrinsic to it. In other words, and this is a corollary of the principle of finality (every agent acts for a proportionate end): the order of subordination among agents must correspond to the order of ends. Therefore corresponding to the supreme and most universal agent we have a most universal ultimate end, namely, the manifestation of the supreme goodness through the good imparted to things.
Reply to second objection. "To this one thing every thing tends, namely, to partake of the good and to be assimilated to the supreme good as much as is possible."
Reply to third objection. The order of the universe is its proximate end, but its ultimate end is God Himself, or the manifestation of the divine goodness. Similarly, the order of an army is ordered to something higher, to victory and the defense of the country. Inferior creatures cannot know and possess God, but intellectual creatures can, especially when they are elevated to the order of grace.
"God wills Himself as the end; He wills other things as the means to the end."[934] If God were to act on account of a created good as His ultimate end, the act would be inordinate and absurd, something like a mortal sin in God, and the creature thus inordinately desired would be most unfortunate because it would be ordered to itself and not to God the highest good. Here we see the inanity of the doctrine according to which God created us ultimately for ourselves and not to manifest His own goodness. Evidently, if every agent acts for a proportionate end, the subordination of agents must correspond to the subordination of ends.
Third Article: Whether The World Is Governed By One
State of the question. The second objection states the difficulty of the Manichaeans: created things often are opposed to each other as if some proceeded from a good principle and some from an evil principle.
Reply. The reply is in the affirmative and of faith according to the words of St. Paul: "Yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him."[935]
Proof from reason. It is necessary that the governance of the world ordered to the supreme good should be the best. But the best governance is that which is through one being. Why? Because governance is the direction of those who are governed to a good, which supposes unity as against dissolution. The cause of unity, however, is one <per se>, since several beings cannot agree unless they are united in some way. Therefore the governance of the world, since it is the best, is by one governor.[936]
This is a strict demonstration and it is found to be true even in human affairs. And this best kind of government by one supposes a wise and good governor, capable of leading his subjects to unity and to their end.[937]
Such governance is necessary particularly when the end to be attained is arduous and involves a complexity of problems that are difficult of solution, and when the multitude is incapable of attaining its end, as often happens in great masses of people where it is difficult to establish order. If, however, those who are ruled are close to perfection, there is less need of a strong rule, for here the words are verified, "these. . . are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts."[938] Thus an imperfect rule suffices for perfect subjects, but a perfect rule is needed for the imperfect and for the multitude, which in itself remains imperfect. We read in the Scripture: "Where there is no governor, the people shall fall; but there is safety where there is much counsel."[939] Therefore a king should have about him the wisest counselors, reserving the final judgment to himself. Hence we see that the same principles by which the universe is ruled are applied, with some modifications, to human society.
Reply to second objection. In reply to the objection of the Manichaeans, St. Thomas says: "Contrary things, although they are in disagreement with regard to proximate ends, nevertheless agree inasmuch as they are coordinated in the one order of the universe and ordered to the final end." That is, created things frequently are at variance with one another with regard to proximate ends, but this does not prove the existence of some evil principle, for, as St. Augustine says: "God, who is the highest good, would in no way allow anything evil in His works unless He were so omnipotent and so good that He could make good things even from evil."[940]
Fourth Article: Whether The Effect Of Divine Governance Is One Only Or Plural
Reply. The principal effect of the divine governance, through the conservation and movement of things, is that creatures are assimilated to God through the participation in good and inasmuch as creatures move other creatures to good. The particular effects of the divine governance, however, are innumerable.
Fifth Article: Whether All Things Are Subject To The Divine Governance
State of the question. It appears that all things are not subject to God's governance, for, as we read in Ecclesiastes, many things are fortuitous. Moreover, we read, "Doth God take care for oxen?"[941] and even of the rational creature Sacred Scripture says: "God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel."[942]
Reply. It is of faith that all things are subject to the divine governance. The Vatican Council declared: "All things that He established God guards and governs by His providence, 'reaching from end to end mightily, and ordering all things sweetly.'"[943] "All things are naked and open to His eyes,"[944] even those things that are in the future by the free action of creatures.
Proof from reason. "Just as there can be nothing that is not created by God, so there can be nothing that is not subject to His governance." Again, "as there is nothing that is not ordered to the divine goodness as to its end, so it is impossible that any being should be outside the divine governance."
Therefore, both from the viewpoint of the supreme agent and from the viewpoint of the ultimate end it is clear that all things are subject to the divine governance. The opposite opinion is rightly called "stupid," since stupidity makes a judgment about things on the basis of the lowest kind of cause, that is, chance, and opposes wisdom, which judges all things on the basis of the highest cause and the ultimate end.
Reply to first objection. Many things, indeed, happen beyond the intention of nature and are said to happen by chance. But in these cases chance would not exist beyond the intention of nature if the things of nature did not tend to an end under the divine governance. "By the very fact that something casual is found in these things it is demonstrated that these things are subject to the divine rule." Moreover, nothing happens by chance or fate from God's viewpoint; the casual takes place only in view of other causes.
Ecclesiastes[945] does not teach the opposite. The sacred writer also holds that many things are hidden from us: "As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones are joined together in the womb of her that is with child; so thou knowest not the works of God, who is the maker of all."[946] Hence Ecclesiastes concludes: "Let us all hear together the conclusion of the discourse. Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is all man. And all things that are done, God will bring into judgment for every error, whether it be good or evil."[947]
Reply to second objection. When it is said that "God does not have care for oxen," this means that He does not care for them in the same way that He cares for rational creatures, to whom He gives precepts, counsel, and rewards, and whom He punishes.
Reply to third objection. The rational creature as a secondary cause governs itself, but over and above this it is governed by God, the first cause.
Sixth Article: Whether All Things Are Directly Governed By God
State of the question. It seems that God governs all things directly because through Himself without mediate causes He can govern all things. In this God differs from an earthly ruler, who because of the imperfection of a creature cannot do all things or be present everywhere and therefore needs helpers.
Reply. Providence, which is the plan or order of divine governance, extends directly to all things, but with regard to the execution of divine providence God governs inferior beings through superior beings.
The reason is as follows: "The most desirable thing in all practical knowledge is that every particular which is effected should be known, as, for instance, in the science of medicine. Hence God knows even the smallest things. But on the other hand, that government is better which communicates to certain things the dignity of causality with regard to other things, just as that teacher is better who not only makes his students learned but also develops teachers. It is therefore pertinent to God's dignity as the supreme governor that He govern inferior beings through superior beings although His providence directly knows and orders even the lowest beings.
Seventh Article: Whether Anything Can Happen Beyond The Order Of Divine Governance
Reply. The reply is in the negative and of faith according to the Scriptures, where we read: "O Lord, Lord, almighty king, for all things are in Thy power, and there is none that can resist Thy will, if Thou determine to save Israel."[948]
The reason is that, since God is the first and most universal cause (without whom second causes cannot act), it is impossible that anything can happen beyond the order of the divine governance.
Evil cannot happen without the divine permission, and God permits evil for some greater good, as He permits persecution for the sake of the patience and glory of martyrs. Moreover, from God's viewpoint nothing happens by chance, for from eternity God willed or permitted the accidental conjunctions of second causes. Similarly, two servants of the same master meet each other by chance, but it is not a matter of chance for the master who sent the servants to the same place.
Eighth Article: Whether Anything Can Work Again St The Order Of The Divine Governance
Reply. Nothing can resist the order of the divine governance as it proceeds from God, the most universal cause of the good of the whole universe, but a being may well resist this order as it proceeds from a particular cause. Thus those who sin oppose some determined good according to the law of God and therefore they are justly punished by God. Cajetan points out in connection with the reply to the first objection that "those who sin mortally look at two things: first, what they intend to do, and this is good in a sense; and secondly, something beyond their intention, and this is the deformity of the act, consisting in the privation of the proper order. Here sinners depart from a certain order of good and act against this order." But even this deformity is permitted by God for the sake of a greater good, at least with regard to the end of the whole universe, and thus sinners do not oppose the divine governance in general but only in a particular instance.

CHAPTER XXIII: QUESTION 104 THE CONSERVATION OF CREATURES
The first effect of the divine governance is the conservation of creatures; the second effect is the movement of creatures either directly by God or through the mediation of superior creatures.
First Article: Whether Creatures Need To Be Con Served In Being By God
State of the question. It seems that creatures need not be conserved by God in being because: 1. many creatures are incorruptible; 2. a builder can erect a structure that will last for many ages, and a fortiori God can do the same with beings; 3. in no creature do we find a positive tendency to non-being; 4. divine conservation would be an action without a positive effect, because whatever is does not become.
Reply. The reply is that creatures need divine conservation and this truth is of faith. Of the Son of God we read in the Scriptures, "upholding all things by the word of His power";[949] in the language of the Bible "uphold" signifies the same as "conserve," and the same interpretation is accepted by the Septuagints, Philo, and in Christian tradition. We read further, "For in Him we live and move and are,"[950] "For of Him and by Him and in Him are all things,"[951] "And He is before all, and by Him all things consist."[952] St. Thomas says, "Both according to faith and according to reason we must say that creatures are conserved in being by God."
Proof from reason. 1. God indirectly conserves corruptible things by removing from them corruptive principles. 2. Directly and <per se> God conserves all creatures even those creatures that are incorruptible.
Every effect that depends on a certain cause not only according to its becoming but also directly according to its being needs to be conserved directly by that cause. But every creature depends directly for its being on God, who alone is being itself in essence. Therefore every creature needs to be conserved directly by God.
Proof of the major. Every effect depends on its cause in the way it is caused. Just as the becoming of a thing cannot perdure when the action of the agent which is the cause of the becoming ceases (for example, the passive erection of the house ceases when the builder does not work), so the being of a thing does not perdure when the action of the agent which is the cause of its being ceases.
Proof of the minor. God alone is being by essence because His essence is His being, whereas the creature is being by participation, and its essence is not its being.
Hence, if the conserving action of God were to cease, every creature would be annihilated, just as, says St. Augustine, "the atmosphere would be continually darkened" if the illuminative action of the sun were to cease.[953]
To understand this reasoning we must note the opposition between the cause of the becoming and the direct cause of the being of a thing. When a father begets a son he is the direct cause of the passive generation of his son but not of the son's being. Thus the son often remains alive after the death of the father. Indeed, if the father were the direct cause of the very nature and the very being of his son, he would be his own cause since nature and being are found in the father and the son in the same way, inasmuch as they belong to the same species.
On the other hand, since God is being by essence He is the direct cause of the very being of every creature, and the creature is being by participation, depending on essential being as long as it perdures, just as the diffused light in the air depends on the illumination of the sun and ceases with the cessation of this illumination.
We may understand this more readily if we recall that there are causes in the world upon which the permanence of their effects depends after the effects are produced.[954] For example, atmospheric pressure and solar heat are required for the conservation of a living animal as well as for its production; the object of sensation not only objectively causes sensation but also conserves it, and when the object is removed the sensation ceases. In the intellectual order, too, the knowledge of principles is necessary not only for acquiring the knowledge of the conclusions but also to conserve that knowledge, and similarly if the desire for the end ceases, the desire for the means to that end also ceases.
From this we may be able better to understand St. Thomas' words: "It is manifest that if two things are of the same species, one cannot be the cause of the form of the other inasmuch as the form is such a form because it would then be the cause of its own form; it can, however, be the cause of this form inasmuch as it is in matter, that is, inasmuch as this matter acquires this (individuated) form. This is a cause according to becoming, as when a man begets a man, or when fire kindles fire.
Evidently, a cow, however perfect it may be, cannot be the cause of bovinity or of the bovine race, for then it would be its own cause. The cause of the bovine race is the divine idea of cow, or the idea of this species.
Hence if a cause is of the same species as its effect, it is a direct cause only of the becoming. If, on the other hand, the cause is of a higher nature than its effect, it not only produces the effect but also conserves it. Thus God, who is being by essence, conserves every creature, which is being by participation.
Reply to first objection. The potency to non-being is not positively in incorruptible beings, but God can remove from such creatures His conserving influence.
Reply to second objection. God cannot communicate to a creature that it continue in being after the divine action ceases, just as He cannot communicate to a creature that He should not be its cause.
Reply to third objection. In corruptible creatures there is a tendency to non-being inasmuch as the matter of these beings desires another form; and these beings need to be conserved even indirectly by the removal of that which may corrupt them.
Reply to fourth objection. "God's conservation is not a new action, it is a continuation of the action which confers being. This action, however, is without movement or time," that is, it is a continuation of the creative action above time by which God creates without any instrument and without any intermediary matter and those things that cannot be produced except by creation, namely, the angels and spiritual souls. Therefore God directly conserves matter, the soul, and the angels, in being, and He is therefore intimately present in these creatures.[955]
Several corollaries may be deduced from the principle that St. Thomas lays down in this article: "When an effect that is not born is to receive the imprint of the agent in the same manner as the imprint is in the agent...., then the cause of this effect is the cause not only of the becoming but also of the being." Thus the influence of Christ is as necessary for the conservation of the Church as it was for its institution; the same is true of the influence of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the same way the influence of the founders of religious orders perdures even in heaven so that their orders may continue in being. St. Thomas' influence also perdures that the true spirit of his doctrine may be conserved.[956]
We see, then, that there are, under God's conservation, subordinate conserving causes but always in the sense that the most universal effect, namely, being, must be attributed to the most universal cause. The proper effect, according to the fourth mode of predication <per se>, necessarily and directly depends on the proper cause, just as in the second mode of predication the properties depend on the essence from which they are derived.[957] As illumination depends on light, so the being of things depends on God, who is subsisting being itself.
Second Article: Whether God Conserves Every Creature Directly
Reply. God directly conserves the very being of things inasmuch as it is being, but other agents, subordinate to God, conserve being as such being, for example, the sun conserves the light in the atmosphere. Similarly the influence of other subordinate causes is necessary for the conservation of vegetative and sensitive life on the surface of the earth; and the succession of day and night and of the four seasons, without which there would be no generations or conservation of life, depends on the regular movement of the stars.
In the spiritual order God directly conserves spiritual souls in being, and under God the angels and the saints in their way illumine souls and assist them to know and love divine things and to conserve the principles of the spiritual life.[958]
Third Article: Whether God Could Reduce Anything To Nothing
Reply. As God most freely created and conserves all things, according to the words of Scripture, "Whatsoever the Lord pleased He hath done,"[959] so He could cease to supply being to creatures, which would reduce them to nothing. Annihilation would not be an action; it would be the cessation of conservation.
Reply to second objection. Without prejudice to His goodness, God could have refrained from creating. Erroneously Leibnitz asserted the contrary: God would not be infinitely good and wise if He had not created, and if He had not created the best of all possible worlds. To which Bossuet replied: "God is in no way greater for having created the universe."[960]
Fourth Article: Whether Anything Is Ever Reduced To Nothing
Reply. The reply is in the negative, based on the words of Holy Scripture, "I have learned that all the works which God made, continue forever."[961]
By His ordinary power God annihilates neither material beings, whose corruption is not annihilation since their matter remains, nor immaterial beings, in which there is no potency for non-being since they are incorruptible.
Neither by His extraordinary power, that is, miraculously, does God ever annihilate anything, because such annihilation does not pertain to the manifestation of His glory and grace. Hence there is never a motive for annihilation on the part of the end.
Some theologians, like Scotus, thought that by the Eucharistic consecration the substance of bread is annihilated when the body of Christ becomes present; but to preserve the proper use of the terms, the Councils of Florence and of Trent taught that the substance of bread is not annihilated but is changed into the body of Christ.
Reply to second objection. St. Thomas noted: "Those things that do not have a contrary, although they may have a limited power, perdure in eternity." Some thinkers have used this text to defend the principle of inertia, or the inertia of movement, namely, if some mobile thing, actually in motion, were to be deprived of every influence, it would persevere always in motion if it did not meet an obstacle. This cannot be proved <a posteriori> because we cannot isolate any mobile thing from every influence, especially every invisible influence, nor can we verify the statement that the movement would always perdure unless there were an obstacle. This principle of inertia is a postulate suggested by experience, but it is not evident, and it cannot be demonstrated <a priori> or <a posteriori>, as the better physicists admit today.[962]
Reply to third objection. The forms of corporeal things, which cease to exist by the corruption of the composite, are not annihilated; they remain in the potency of the matter.
It is evident, then, that the conservation of things is the continuation of free creation from nothing. If the world had been created from eternity, God would have only a priority of causality and not of duration with regard to the world, but the unique, immobile instant of eternity would always be infinitely above time and it would embrace all time including that which might be infinite in its prior part.

CHAPTER XXIV: QUESTION 105 THE CHANGE OF CREATURES BY GOD
Although this question is in itself of great importance, we will not consider it at length because we have already solved the principal difficulties arising from it.[963]
First Article: Whether God Can Directly Move Matter To The Form
State of the question. It seems that the most universal cause can directly produce only the most universal effect, that is, the being of all things inasmuch as it is being, but not the most particular effect, for example, forming this particular body out of matter.
Reply. The reply is in the affirmative, for we read in the Scriptures: "The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth."[964] The reason is that a being in passive potency can be reduced to act by that active potency which has this being in its power. But matter is under the power of God inasmuch as it is produced by God. Therefore matter can be reduced to act by the divine power.
Reply to first objection. An angel cannot do this because matter is not in its power.[965] An angel cannot directly change water into wine by a direct action on the matter itself to educe the form of wine without preliminary alterations. The angel can only move bodies locally, but it can do this quickly and skillfully.[966]
Reply to second objection. If God acted by a necessity of nature, He could produce but one effect, but God acts freely, not only with the freedom with which man freely begets only a man, but God acts directly by His will and intellect and He knows not only the universal natures of things but also this particular form which is to be imprinted on the slime of the earth.
Second Article: Whether God Can Directly Move A Body
The reply is in the affirmative, for the same reason as given in the preceding article. The contact of God moving with the body that is moved is not quantitative contact, but rather a contact of power or a dynamic contact. Thus God touches but He is not touched because the natural power of no creature can reach Him.
Third Article: Whether God Directly Moves The Created Intellect
The reply is in the affirmative. God moves the created intellect: 1. because, as the first intelligence, He gives the creature the power of intellection; 2. because He is the supreme intelligible, in whom other intelligibles pre-exist intelligibly and from whom these intelligibles are derived for other intellects. Thus God causes the intelligible species in angels directly, and in our intellect by means of the abstraction from sensible things.
Fourth Article: Whether God Can Move The Created Will
State of the question. It appears that God cannot move the created will because whatever is moved extrinsically is forced; because to move voluntarily is to be moved from within and not by another; and because voluntary deeds would not be imputed to man for merit or demerit. These objections were revived by Molinism.
St. Thomas replies that it belongs to God to move the will objectively and efficaciously, and especially interiorly by inclining it. Proof from Scripture. "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish."[967] Other texts were cited above.[968]
Proof from reason. 1. On the part of the object the will is not adequately or efficaciously moved except by God because God alone is the universal good in being, which adequates and exceeds the capacity of the will. Thus God alone, clearly seen, irresistibly attracts our will.[969] 2. Further, God alone can move the will by inclining it interiorly, just as He alone is the cause of the power of willing. The order of agents must correspond to the order of ends, and therefore only the supreme agent can move beings to the final end, to the universal good.
Reply to first objection. In moving the will, God does not force it, because He gives the will an inclination that is proper to it, and in accord with this inclination He moves the will from within. Thus God also moves the will to some particular good according to its inclination to the universal good.
Reply to second objection. To be moved voluntarily is to be moved of oneself, that is, by an intrinsic principle. But that intrinsic principle is a second cause, which is moved by the first cause.
Reply to third objection. If the will were to be moved by God in such a way that it did not move itself as a second cause, the acts of the will would not be imputed for merit or demerit. But such is not the case." Since the divine will is most efficacious, it follows not only that those things take place which God wishes, but that these things take place in the manner that God wishes. But God wishes certain effects to take place contingently (some even voluntarily) and therefore He has prepared contingent (and voluntary) causes for these effects"[970] and He moves these causes in accord with their condition.[971]
Fifth Article: Whether God Operates In Every Operation
The reply is in the affirmative according to the words of Scripture, "Thou hast wrought all our works for us,"[972] "For in Him we live and move and are,"[973] "The same God, who worketh all in all."[974] In this article St. Thomas rejects two errors which are opposed to each other. According to nominalism, no created power operates in things; God alone directly does all things, for example, fire does not heat, it is God operating in the fire. On the other hand, others say that the creature can act without divine movement and thus the creature is not subordinate to the first cause; God and the creature are two coordinate causes, like two men rowing a boat.
St. Thomas takes a position above these opposing views. The operation always follows being, and the mode of operation follows the mode of being. Therefore God alone, who is being <per se>, operates of Himself without any superior movement, whereas the creature, which is being by participation, does not operate except dependently on the divine movement. That is, "God not only gives forms to things but He conserves them in being, and He applies them to action, and is the end of all actions."[975]
If the creature were to pass from potency to act, or to action, without the divine movement, more would proceed from less, the perfect from the imperfect in opposition to the principle of causality, and the proofs for the existence of God based on motion and on efficient causes would lose their force. "Thus God is the cause of every action inasmuch as He gives the power to act, inasmuch as He conserves that power, inasmuch as He applies the power to action, and inasmuch as every power acts by His power."[976] "God could not have made a natural thing so that it could operate without the divine operation."[977] Nothing has been more explicitly stated by the Thomists.
Molina, however, found himself at variance with this teaching of St. Thomas. He said: "Two things in this doctrine of St. Thomas cause me difficulty. The first is that I cannot see or understand that movement and that application in second causes by which God moves these causes to act."[978] For Molina the influx of God's general power is simultaneous, it does not flow into the second cause and apply it to action but flows directly into the effect of the second cause, "not unlike two men rowing a boat."[979] Suarez maintained the same view.[980] The Thomists reply that if this were true the second cause would be coordinate with the first cause and it would not be properly subordinated in causality, and the transition from potency to act would not be explained. On the other hand, we must say that the second cause is subordinated to the first cause in such a way that the whole effect is from God as from the first cause and from the creature as from the second cause, just as the fruit of the vine is entirely from the branch as the proximate cause and from the whole vine itself as from the radical cause.
God, therefore, actuates the vital functions of plants and animals, just as He actuates the vitality of our intellects and the liberty of our wills without any violence being inflicted. For God moves our will according to the inclination of the will, which He conserves, and so God is more intimately present in our liberty than this liberty is to itself. God, however, never causes the disorder in a sinful act; this inordination proceeds solely from a defective cause. Our liberty is a secondary liberty which depends on the first liberty, and the idea of liberty is predicated only analogically of uncreated and of created liberty.
Sixth Article: Whether God Can Do Anything Out Side The Order Found In Things
The reply is in the affirmative. St. Thomas' demonstration may be summed up as follows: That higher free cause upon which the application of hypothetically necessary laws depends and which is not bound by such laws is able to act without regard to these laws. But God is the omnipotent free cause upon whom the application of all hypothetically necessary laws depends (these laws constitute the order of action of all created nature), and the divine liberty is not bound by this order of action. Therefore God can act without regard to the order of action established in created nature, or in other words, God can work a miracle.
The following is an example of a hypothetically necessary law: when only natural causes are active in natural conditions, the resurrection of a body is impossible. But in the miracle of resurrection a supernatural free cause intervenes, namely, God. On the other hand, God cannot act without regard to metaphysical and mathematical principles (for example, make a square circle), because these principles are not hypothetically but absolutely necessary.
Just as a man can act without regard to his usual custom, so God is free to act without regard to the laws of nature, which are His customs in moving creatures.
We delay no longer in this argument, which we have defended and explained at length in another place.[981]
Seventh Article: Whether Everything That God Does Outside The Natural Order Of Things Is A Miracle
The reply is in the affirmative, because a miracle is properly defined as a sensible fact produced in the world by God outside the order of action found in created nature.
Eighth Article: Whether One Miracle Is Greater Than Another
St. Thomas divides miracles according to the degree in which they exceed the powers of nature: 1. those that go beyond the powers of nature with regard to the substance of the fact, as the glorification of the body, which nature can in no way accomplish; 2. those that exceed the powers of nature with regard to the subject in which they take place, as the resurrection of the body, for while nature can cause life it cannot do so in a corpse; 3. those that exceed the powers of nature with regard to the manner in which they take place, as the instantaneous conversion of water into wine, which nature can bring about only gradually through the fermentation of the grape.
In a later question St. Thomas explains that fate is a certain disposition of natural causes to produce a determined effect; but this disposition depends on divine providence and does not preclude either the intervention of the divine liberty or human intervention. Neither does fate exclude chance, which exists in second causes (for example, when a man digs a grave and by chance comes on a treasure); but chance does not exist with regard to God, who orders even those things that are said to be casual or fortuitous.
Having disposed of these questions related to the question on creation, we turn now to the distinction of things in general and in particular.
(See next part of document)

CHAPTER XXV: QUESTIONS 48, 49 THE DISTINCTION OF THINGS IN PARTICULAR 
The Distinction Between Good And Evil
We consider first the distinction between good and evil and then the distinction between the spiritual and corporeal creature.
St. Thomas proceeds methodically by considering first created being as being in the question on creation, then being as one and multiple in the question on the distinction of things in general, and now being as good and the evil that may be in it.
Thus St. Thomas considers creatures with regard to the transcendental properties of being before he considers genera and species. He does not treat of being expressly as true because truth is formally in the intellect, as was already explained in the question on truth in God.[982] In the present question St. Thomas treats rather of evil than of good, because the good in general was already discussed in the question on the divine goodness.[983]
On the subject of evil there are two questions: on evil itself with relation to being and to good (question 48); on the cause of evil, having in mind especially the problem of God's relationship to evil and whether God is in any way the cause of evil.
Question 48 is divided into two parts: 1. the nature of evil; 2. the kinds of evil. The first part, on the nature of evil, has four articles: 1. whether evil is some kind of nature; 2. whether evil is found in things; 3. whether the good is the subject of evil; 4. whether evil completely corrupts the good. The second part, concerning the kinds of evil, has two articles: 5. the division of evil into that of punishment and guilt; 6. which is more evil, punishment or guilt. St. Thomas explained these questions at great length in his <De malo.>
Errors. In these questions we find an exposition of the doctrine of St. Augustine and Dionysius as developed in their controversies against the Manichaeans, who posited two principles, one beneficent, the other malevolent, and against the Neoplatonists, especially Plotinus, who taught that matter was the ultimate terminus of emanation, a kind of non-being and the cause of both physical and moral evil.
The following is an outline of Manichaeism and Plotinus' doctrine on evil. Reviving the errors of the Marcionites, the Gnostics, and of Zoroaster, the Manichaeans posited two supreme principles, one beneficent, the other evil, in order to explain the evil found in the world, since evil cannot come from God, the good principle. They also taught that matter and the flesh are from the evil principle, as is also the inferior or sensitive soul in man, whereas the spiritual soul is derived from the good principle. Thus they said that the concupiscence of the flesh against the spirit, and the war of the spirit against the flesh is nothing more than the battle between two souls. They execrated generation and condemned marriage, but not an infecund sexual union. Hence their peculiar immorality. They also taught that Christ did not assume true flesh. Finally, according to their theory, the end of the world will be the separation of the good kingdom from the evil kingdom inasmuch as the good souls will be separated from matter for all eternity while the other souls will be bound to matter forever.
This theory reduces Christianity to a natural philosophy and confuses evil with matter.[984] As descendants of Manichaeism we find the Priscillianists in Spain in the fifth century and the Bulgarians in Bulgaria in the eleventh century, who, when they migrated to the west, originated the sects of the Albigenses and the Cathari. Many of their errors are also found in the teachings of Huss, Wyclif, and Luther on original sin and the fall of man.
Plotinus posited only one principle, the One-Good, but he also taught that an intimate connection existed between matter and evil. In his view the world is explained as a necessary emanation from the One-Good principle; he held a descending evolution, in which through a series of divine generations a gradual descent is made from the perfect to the imperfect, and finally the primitive energy became so weak by these successive emanations that it was no longer able to bring forth real being and in the end there came forth a kind of non-being, that is, matter, which existed somehow, which was said to be the root of all evil and the principle of all corruption. Thus the supreme good by a necessity of its nature produced the root of every evil. Such is the paradox of this emanatism. For Plotinus, matter is evil; it is the primary evil inasmuch as it is the privation of being and good. Thus it is the root of all evils, both physical and moral, for physical evils, such as disease and death, are a kind of corruption inasmuch as matter tries to escape the domination of the form. The spiritual soul, however, is good in itself but it becomes evil as the slave of the body by intemperance and ignobility. From this teaching arose many errors.[985]
St. Augustine attacked Manichaeism and the Neoplatonic doctrine on evil in his <De civitate Dei.>[986] He admitted that the body accidentally weighs down the soul, but he showed that matter is not evil, that the flesh in its rightful place is good, and that there will be a corporeal resurrection. Hence we cannot attribute our sins to our flesh and indirectly to God, who is the author of our bodies; nor do all sins come from sensuality, for example, the spiritual pride of the devils. Further, St. Augustine insisted that the condition of moral evil is our liberty, which is not its own rule and can, therefore, deviate from the rule. In his work, <De natura boni>, written against the Manichaeans in 405, he demonstrated that prime matter is not evil: "Nor is that matter to be called evil, which because of the complete privation of species can hardly be conceived. For it possesses the capacity for forms. Therefore, if a form is some kind of good, without doubt the capacity for a form is also some kind of good."[987] St. Thomas adopted and developed this doctrine.
Finally, in his <Enchiridion>,[988] St. Augustine gave the definition of evil, which later became classical and offered a solution for the problem of evil which was accepted and explained by all theologians. St. Augustine said that evil is nothing more than the privation of good, and from this came the classic definition, evil is the privation of some good that is owing, for example, sickness is the privation of health, and moral evil is the privation of moral rectitude. St. Augustine points out that sickness is not a substance but the privation of health in the body, which itself is the substance and something good.
He affirms that all natures are good since the author of all natures is the highest good, but in these natures the good can be decreased, and this decrease is evil. Then he solves the problem of evil, as follows: "God, since He is the highest good, would in no way allow any evil in His works, unless He were so omnipotent and so good that He could turn evil into good."[989]
St. Thomas frequently quotes these words of St. Augustine as a solution of the problem of evil, for example, "God does not permit evil except for some greater good."[990] This truth had already been stated by Plato and is expressed in different ways in Holy Scripture. The divine permission of evil would not be good and holy unless it were ordered to some good and all things in the universe would not cooperate to good.
St. Thomas also perfected Dionysius' doctrine on evil in his work, "<Expositio in Dionysium de divinis nominibus.>" In several instances Dionysius corrects the teaching of Plotinus by showing that matter is not evil.[991]
In the beginning he shows that "evil is neither existing being, nor from some existing being, nor in existing beings."[992] These last words mean, as St. Thomas says,[993] that evil is not something positive in existing beings as a part or an accident; that in creatures evil is not something positive;[994] that "in the devils and in souls evil is not as something existing but like the defect of the perfection of proper goods."[995]
In a later passage,[996] in opposition to Plotinus, he shows that matter is not evil. He offers a threefold proof: 1. with regard to form; 2. with regard to God the creator of matter; 3. and with regard to the good of the whole universe.
1. Under the form, matter participates in being and beauty, and therefore it is not evil. Indeed, even without the form it is not evil or the principle of all evils because without the form matter is not a principle of action, because matter cannot destroy or corrupt anything, and because matter is the receptive capacity of the form, and therefore good, as St. Augustine said.
With regard to God. The matter which the Neoplatonists call non-being either is or it is not; if it is not, it is neither good nor bad; if it is, it is produced by a good God, and therefore it cannot be bad, as St. Augustine again pointed out.
3. With regard to the good of the universe. Matter is necessary, for example, it is necessary for the generation of plants and animals and for their nutrition, and thus inasmuch as it enters into the order of the universe it is good.
In his commentary on this book of Dionysius,[997] St. Thomas notes that when many of the ancient philosophers, like Plato, say that matter is evil and the principle of evils this was because they were unable to distinguish between privation and matter, and therefore, like Plato, they called matter non-being and consequently non-good.
But Aristotle showed that it is only <per accidens> that matter is non-being, that is, matter is non-being not by its nature but by reason of the privation that is in it. Indeed, matter is something positive, namely, the real capacity for receiving a form, or passive potency, and therefore it is not evil.
Finally Dionysius showed that matter is not the cause of malice in the soul, necessarily drawing the soul to evil, for many souls are not drawn to evil and have a tendency to good. He adds that the malice comes from the inordinateness of free will. These teachings of St. Augustine and Dionysius were stated metaphysically by St. Thomas, as we see in the beginning of the present question.
First Article: Whether Evil Is Any Kind Of Nature
State of the question. 1. Aristotle says that evil is a genus; therefore it is some kind of nature; 2. evil is a constitutive difference in moral matters, for example, we speak of an evil habit, or an evil act; 3. Aristotle says that good and evil are opposed as contraries, that is, as positives; 4. evil acts and it corrupts, therefore it is something; 5. evil pertains to the perfection of the universe because in its own way it enhances the good.
Moreover, as Renouvier says:[998] "According to experience, physical pain is something else than imperfection or privation, and according to our consciences moral evil is something else than ignorance. There is therefore a positive evil."
The pessimists hold that physical evil, such as pain, is not only something positive but something primitive, in the sense that pleasure is only secondary and negative, namely, the cessation of pain. Schopenhauer tried to prove this point by the following argument: Man always requires something, he always desires something. This perpetual desire is not without pain. Therefore the normal state of man is sad and painful. The pleasure that comes from the satisfaction of this desire is simply the cessation of pain. Pain, therefore, is something primitive and positive.
Before Schopenhauer's time, Kant said that punishment preceded pleasure because pleasure is the consciousness of the vital striving and all striving presupposes an obstacle or punishment. Montaigne said: "Our well-being is nothing else than the absence of ill-being."[999] Similarly the Epicureans declared that pleasure is the absence of pain or perturbation, ataraxia.[1000]
The reply of the article is, however, that evil is not anything but it is the privation of good.
Proof from authority. Dionysius said, "Evil is not existing." St. Augustine says the same thing.[1001]
Proof from reason. This proof begins with the nominal definition of evil, which according to all thinkers is opposed to good and is known through this opposition to good. Going from the nominal definition to the real definition and from the confused concept to a distinct concept, we arrive at this explicative syllogism.
Good and being are convertible.[1002] But evil is opposed to good. Therefore evil is not something positive but the negation or rather the privation of good.
Proof of the major. Good is everything that is desirable. But every nature desires to preserve its being and its perfection. Therefore all being and every perfection is something good, and therefore, too, evil is not some being or some positive nature, but it is either the negation or the privation of good. St. Thomas says below more explicitly that evil is the privation of some owing good, that is, in an apt subject, when and where this good is owing.
Reply to first objection. In what sense does Aristotle say that evil is a kind of genus?[1003] St. Thomas replies that in his book on logic Aristotle offered examples which appeared probable in his time, and that he took this example from the Pythagoreans. Or, perhaps, Aristotle meant that the primary contrariety was habit, or the having of a thing, and privation, because this contrariety is found in all contraries. Elsewhere[1004] Aristotle, treating professedly of the four modes of opposition, distinguishes between privation and contrariety.
(diagram page 462)
opposition between
being and being
opposition of relation, as between father and son
opposition of contrariety
pleasure and pain
virtue and vice
true and false judgments
being and non-being
opposition of contradiction, as between man and non-man
opposition of privation
sight and blindness
light and darkness
knowledge and ignorance
good and evil[1005]
From this division of various kinds of opposition it appears that evil is not the negation but the privation of good. No one will say that it is evil for a stone or a tree not to know, nor does anyone say that wood is ignorant. Similarly we do not say that it is an evil that man does not have the strength of a lion. These are negations, not privations. We see, then, that evil is the privation of some owing good and not only a negation of good.
This point is of great importance, for we say that the non-preservation of our will in good here and now is not something good, because it is not being, nor is it something evil, because it is not the privation of some owing good; it is merely the privation of a good that is not owing. God is not obliged to preserve all created wills in good or to prevent every sin. Thus the non-preservation of our wills in good differs from the subtraction of divine grace. This withdrawal of divine grace is the evil of punishment and presupposes the evil of guilt.
Corollary. A lesser good is not an evil, although it implies the negation of a greater good, which, however, is not the privation of an owing good. In the same way, a lesser evil is not a good. In this sense many theologians distinguish between an imperfection and the smallest venial sin, as for instance, between a diminution of generosity (some remissness in an act of charity) and negligence. In the concrete, however, it is extremely difficult to say where the lesser good ceases and where the lesser evil begins, just as it is difficult to say when is the lowest degree of sensitive life and when is the highest degree of vegetative life. Nevertheless the order of things must not be confused.
All ethics would be destroyed by a relativism which teaches that a lesser evil, not only physical (as the amputation of a member) but also moral evil (as a lie) would be lawful to avoid some greater evil. Such action would be against reason; such lesser moral evil can be tolerated but it cannot be positively chosen.[1006]
Reply to second objection. Good and evil are not constitutive differences, except in moral matters, for instance, a bad habit, an evil deed. But even in moral matters evil does not constitute a species, except in the sense that the privation of a proper end is annexed to an improper end. Thus the end of the intemperate man is not to deprive himself of the good of reason, his aim is a pleasurable thing according to the senses outside the order of reason. Hence even in moral matters evil, as evil, is not a constitutive difference.
Consequently a sin of commission is a positive act, tending to a changeable good as out of harmony with the rules of morals; thus a good act and an evil act are contrary, as are virtue and vice. But in the contrary positive that we call vice we find the privation of an owing end. Scotus held that good and evil are contrary opposites, but according to St. Thomas this is not true except of good and evil in morality, that is, when we speak of an evil act or a bad habit.
Reply to fourth objection. Evil acts in corrupting the good, but it does not act efficiently, nor does it act for an end except by reason of a connected good; evil is said to corrupt the good by reason of some privation, because it is the privation of good.
Reply to fifth objection. Evil does not pertain to the order of the universe except by reason of some connected good. Thus the corruption of one being disposes to the generation of another. Nevertheless evil as opposed to good, commends the good, as, for example, some lamentable injustice shows forth more clearly the beauty of justice.[1007]
On Pain
What reply can be given to the objection that pain is something positive and not merely privation, as when we speak of a painful toothache?
The reply is given by St. Thomas: "Just as two things are required for pleasure, namely, the union with some good and the perception of this union, so two things are required for pain, namely, the union with some evil, which is evil because it deprives of some good, and the perception of this union....Thus pain, like pleasure, is a movement in the intellective or sensitive appetite. Hence pain, when it is in the sensitive appetite, is properly said to be the passion or suffering of the soul."[1008]
Pain and pleasure are contraries, and as pleasure is connected to some good act easily exercised, such as the grace of youth, so pain is connected with some act more or less impeded, or some immoderate act which produces fatigue. Hence pain is not something privative, but it is connected with privation and arises from the perception of the union with some evil.
What is to be said about the pessimists, who say that pain is something primitive, and that pleasure is secondary and negative, that is, the cessation of pain?
We reply with Aristotle, whom Descartes and Leibnitz follow on this point, that there are certain pleasures that precede all pain, and therefore pleasure is not essentially the cessation of pain. For example, the pleasure of seeing a beautiful scene or hearing a beautiful symphony can precede any pain; so also the pleasures of taste can precede any pain of hunger or thirst. Nor is every desire accompanied by pain; for example, the desire for food at the opportune time is often experienced without the pain of hunger. And in reply to Kant, it may be said that not every effort is painful, indeed moderate exercise which is proportionate to our strength is pleasant, such as a brisk walk, a ride, or a hunt.
On those occasions when pleasure comes after pain, there is not only a cessation of the pain. This cessation of pain is the condition of the delight, but the cause of the pleasure, as St. Thomas says,[1009] is the union with some good and the perception of that union.[1010] The desire for the pleasure is greater than the flight from pain because the good is desired for itself, whereas the evil is fled only as the privation of good.
Hence pleasure is not negative but positive. Pain, too, is something positive, but it is joined with the perception of some privation, and therefore pain is in itself something posterior, just as privation presupposes the good that is denied, and just as darkness cannot be conceived unless the light is first known which is denied by the darkness. Pleasure follows a good act easily performed even before pain follows an impeded act.
All this is in agreement with common sense, or natural reason, and exemplifies the transition from natural reasoning to philosophical reasoning. Common sense would say it was ridiculous to assert that pleasure is the cessation of pain, as it would be ridiculous to say that light is the cessation or privation of darkness.
The principal conclusion of our article therefore stands: Although good and evil are opposed to each other by the opposition of privation, yet the following are contraries: pleasure and pain, true and false judgment, virtue and vice, as well as a virtuous and evil act, such as a sin of commission which, as many Thomists hold, is formally constituted by something positive, which supplies the basis for the privation, namely, the tendency to some changeable good which is out of harmony with the rules of morals.[1011] Therefore that which makes a sin of commission evil is the privation of the rectitude that is owing to the act.
Second Article: Whether Evil Is Found In Things
State of the question. This article seeks to offer a more precise real definition of evil, inasmuch as privation differs from negation. It appears that evil is not in things, because then something would be in them and God would not always make that which is better.
Reply. The reply is that evil is found in things, indeed the perfection of the universe requires that there be certain things which can be deficient in goodness, and from this it follows that some things are deficient in goodness.
1. This is proved from the fact that there are prohibitions and penalties, which would not exist except because of evils.
2. An <a priori> proof can be found by reducing this problem to the preceding question about the multiplicity and inequality of beings. The argument may be reduced to the following. The perfection of the universe requires that there be inequality in things, namely, a degree of indefectible goodness and a degree of defectible goodness, that is, corruptible being, which can be defective and sometimes is defective. But the nature of evil is that some being is deficient of some good. Therefore in things we find evil, like corruption, and this is in agreement with the perfection of the universe, or serves to manifest the divine goodness in the various grades of goodness, since, as was said above,[1012] "the divine goodness cannot be adequately represented by one creature and therefore God made many subordinate beings."
This article explains the meaning of the statement often made by St. Thomas: "it follows that what is defectible is sometimes deficient," that is to say, it is not surprising that a being is sometimes deficient. The expression, "it follows," is explained in this article in this way: "The perfection of the universe requires that there be some beings that can defect from goodness, and it follows from this that some beings sometimes are deficient."[1013]
This expression does not mean that it is congruous that a being should sometimes be deficient, for such deficiency is actually not agreeable to that being, but it is congruous for the good of the universe; for instance, the corruption of one being is the generation of another, and this corruption is agreeable for the generation of the other.
This article more than any other on evil offers an opportunity to explain St. Augustine's and St. Thomas' teaching on the greater good on account of which God permits evil.
Reply to first objection. Evil is not pure negation but the privation of an owing good in an apt subject. Thus we do not say that a piece of wood is ignorant, but that wood has no knowledge. For this reason the Scholastics reject Leibnitz's expression, metaphysical evil, which he used to designate the imperfection of any creature inasmuch as it did not possess every perfection.
Reply to second objection. This privation of an owing good is in things as in an apt subject, for example, blindness is in the eye, not indeed as something positive but as a privation. And when we say that there is blindness, the word "is" does not signify a real entity but the truth of the proposition, namely, that it is true that this man is blind, or deprived of vision.
Reply to third objection. St. Thomas explains that, although there is evil in things and God does not make what is better in every part of the universe, God makes that which is better in the whole, and in the parts with relation to the whole of the universe. He does not mean that the actual world is the best possible of all worlds, for above he said: "God is able to make a being better than any being He has made...., that is, He can always make something better if the better is understood substantively...., but He cannot make something better if the "better" is understood adverbially, that is, with greater wisdom and goodness."[1014] In another place he shows that the inequality in creatures manifests the divine goodness.[1015]
Now St. Thomas explains the congruity of the divine permission of evil in two ways.
1. On the part of the material cause or the subject. He says: "It is of the very nature of things that those things that can be deficient are sometimes deficient." It is fitting, therefore, that God does not interfere or that he permits this deficiency.
2. On the part of the end. This divine permission is fitting because it is for a greater good. As St. Augustine says: "God, since He is the highest good, would in no way allow anything evil in His works unless He were so omnipotent and so good that He could make good come from evil."[1016] For example, the life of the lion would not be preserved unless the ass were killed, nor would there be the patience of martyrs unless there were the iniquity of the persecutor.
This is the solution of the problem of evil, which is at once clear and obscure; it is clear in principle, in the abstract and formally, but it is obscure in the particular, in the concrete and materially. The solution is clear inasmuch as it shows that the most holy and omnipotent God cannot permit evil except for some greater good, otherwise the divine permission would not be holy. But on the other hand this solution remains obscure in the particular and in the concrete because this greater good is generally not clearly understood until we see it in heaven. Nevertheless it sometimes happens that this greater good on account of which God permits evil is clearly seen.
1. In the mineral kingdom we see that the corruption of one being is the generation of another; indeed, of the four elements distinguished by the ancients, the highest, fire, originates from the corruption of the others, especially air. Fire devours and destroys all things, but fire itself has the higher properties, and many things are made through fire.
2. In the animal kingdom, the slaying of inferior animals furnishes food for the higher animals, such as the lion, the eagle; and man.
3. In the human race itself, pain is the stimulus or the goad that urges men on in the intellectual, moral, social, and religious order.
In the intellectual order pain and poverty and need make man inventive and skillful in the arts; a high state of civilization arises in part from the struggle against pain. This accounts for the rise not only of medicine and surgery but also of legislation. In the speculative order higher systems of thought arise from the painful conflict of other systems, and thus a thesis provokes the antithesis before the human mind attains the superior synthesis. In general, as soon as one force appears another opposing force appears, and from the conflict frequently comes equilibrium and harmony. In this struggle for life each individual works with his greatest energy, and sometimes the result is a higher synthesis.
In the moral order, the most painful injustice emphasizes the beauty of justice; the innocent man who suffers a great injustice either desires revenge, and thus becomes evil, or he feels within himself the thirst and hunger for justice and thus becomes holy, according to our Lord's words: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill" (Matt. 5:6). If they had not seen these great injustices, many would never thirst and hunger in this way for justice.
Similarly, out of the knowledge of our own misery arises the desire for a good life. Good exists scarcely anywhere in the world except as the result of struggle. In the social order, the need and suffering of our neighbor arouses sympathy, charity, and benevolence. An unjust war prompts men to make greater sacrifices to defend their country. In the religious order, God permits sin in the lives of the saints, for example, St. Peter's triple denial, so that the saints may attain greater humility and that God Himself may manifest His mercy and justice.
The insufficiency of sensitive life prompts the desire and aspiration for the rational life, and the insufficiency of the rational life prompts men to aspire to a still higher life. Finally, although pain seems to be altogether futile, in the sacrifice of reparation pain is used as the supreme test of love for God and men, and thus pain becomes most fruitful. Indeed, this principle, "God does not permit evil except for some greater good," appears in splendor in the mystery of the cross and in the life of Christ the Redeemer; it appears participatively in the lives of the saints, who can say with St. Paul, "I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church."[1017]
St. Thomas also states clearly that God permitted original sin because of the greater good of the redemptive Incarnation. He says: "Nothing stood in the way that after sin human nature should be led to something higher. God permitted evil to happen that some thing better might come of it. Hence St. Paul said, 'And where sin abounded, grace did more abound.'"[1018] And in the blessing of the paschal candle, we sing, "O happy fault, that merited so great a Redeemer."
This providential law finds its highest expression in the fact that from something that was not only useless but also harmful, the torment of crucifixion, Christ established the font of all spiritual goods. God permitted this most grievous sin of deicide so that Christ by His heroic death might save us from sin. Hence we address the cross, "O Cross, our one reliance, hail!"
This is the Christian solution of the problem of evil, which cannot be comprehended except by faith that is illumined by the gifts of understanding and wisdom. In the chapter on "The Royal Way of the Holy Cross," the Imitation of Christ says: "In the cross is salvation, in the cross is life,....in the cross joy of the spirit, in the cross the perfection of holiness....; if you willingly carry the cross, the cross will bear you up."[1019] "Though our outward man is corrupted, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."[1020]
This is the true law of progress and ascent, which cannot be understood according to the dicta of determinism and pantheism, for there are many setbacks in the world, there are many crosses that are unfruitful to him who bears them with ill will, like the bad thief. But still they serve to manifest God's justice and the love of God as the supreme good that is to be loved above all things.
Thus we explain evil according to its three causes: 1. according to its formal cause it is the privation of an owing good; 2. according to the material cause it is in a defectible subject, which at times is defective; 3. according to its final cause, it is not impeded by God, but is permitted for some greater good. Finally, in question 49 we shall see that evil does not have an efficient cause <per se>, but merely either an efficient cause <per accidens>, when evil follows on the production of some form, or a defective cause. From this we shall see that the divine permission of evil is nothing but a condition <sine qua non> of evil and in no way the cause of evil.
The concept of the divine permission of evil. From the reply to the third objection we see that the fact that God does not impede evil is the same as the permission of evil; this is especially true in the case of moral evil of which God is not even the indirect or accidental cause. St. Thomas explains the nature of this divine permission in his commentary on St. Matthew:[1021] "There are five kinds of permission," and in his enumeration of these five kinds of permission, the object of the first four is not sin, and the object of the fifth is sin. He says: "It should be noted that there are several kinds of permission. The first is the concession of a licit thing, as when the prior grants you permission to visit your parents, which is no sin. The second kind is dispensation, when the superior allows you to eat what is not lawful for you, as eating meat, which is not a sin but would be against the rule unless you were dispensed. The third kind of permission is tolerance, as when the lesser of two evils is permitted to avoid the greater evil; such was Moses' permission to write a bill of divorce. He is said to have granted permission because he tolerated divorce lest a greater evil, namely, murder, follow. This divorce would have been a sin if Moses had not tolerated it, and it is said that Moses did this because of the hardness of their hearts. The fourth permission is indulgence, that is, when something is permitted whose opposite is better, as when the apostles permitted second marriages,[1022] when continence of the marital survivor would have been better. The fifth kind of permission is sustaining, as when God permits evil that He may elicit good things," that is, God does not impede and does not wish to impede evil, but this He does on account of a greater good.
We must not confuse this last kind of permission with the others, with which it has not affinity, except with the third. This last kind of permission is called permission only analogically.[1023]
Third Article: Whether Evil Is In The Good As In A Subject
State of the question. We see that evil is found in things, indeed in every part of the universe, from the mineral to the spiritual and moral order. We are asking now what is the immediate subject of evil. Is evil in the good as in a subject? It seems that it is not, as we see in the third and principal objection given in this article. One contrary thing is not the subject of the other contrary. The fourth difficulty is that it would follow that good would be evil, contrary to the warning of Isaias, "Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil."[1024] This is the language of the perverse man, who inverts the order of morality.
Reply. The reply is that good is the subject of evil.
Proof from authority. St. Augustine says, "Evil is nowhere except in the good."[1025]
Proof from reason. In the body of the article, St. Thomas begins with the minor. If we begin with the major, the argument is as follows:
The privation, just as the form of which it is the privation, is in some subject which is in some way being and good. But evil is the removal of good not only negatively but also privatively. Therefore evil is in the good as in a subject.
The major is clear. The subject of privation, like the form, is being in potency, either being in simple potency, as prime matter, or being in potency <secundum quid>, as a diaphanous body, which is the subject of light and darkness. But being in potency is some kind of good, since it is ordered to the good or to a form, which is a kind of perfection.
The minor is the definition of evil, namely, the privation of an owing good; it is not evil if it is only the negation of good. Imperfection is not good, but it does not follow that it is evil except when there is an absence of an owing perfection. This was Leibnitz's error; because a creature did not have the perfections of other creatures, he called it a metaphysical evil. St. Thomas, on the contrary, notes that man is not evil because he does not possess the swiftness of a goat or the strength of a lion. Common sense should be used not only by the farmer and the merchant; it is useful also for the philosopher, because this common sense is nothing else than natural reason, which is in a way the mother of philosophical reasoning. William James said: "The reasoning of the schools is that sister of common sense which attended the university for some years." He might have said: "Philosophical reasoning is the daughter of natural reason, or common sense, and during the Middle Ages it not only attended the great universities but it established them." In these universities, such as those of Paris and Bologna, St. Thomas shows how the transition is made progressively from natural reason to philosophical reasoning, beginning with the nominal definition and arriving at the real definition and at the properties to be deduced from it. The present article is an example of this process; it demonstrates the complete conformity of philosophical reasoning with natural reason.
Corollary. Hence the good whose privation is evil is not the same as the good in which it is as in a subject; for example, blindness is the deprivation of sight and it is in an animal. This is the solution of the problem that one contrary cannot be the subject of the other contrary. This is, of course, true, but one good, for example, animal life, can exist together with the privation of another good, for example, sight. A dog can be blind.
The final difficulty is rather subtle. The subject of evil is said to be evil just as the subject of whiteness is said to be white, But according to the reply above, the subject of evil is good. Therefore, in opposition to Isaias, something is said to be good and evil at the same time.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the subject of evil is evil by reason of itself, I deny; by reason of the deprivation of some owing good, 1 concede. I contradistinguish the minor: the subject of evil is said to be good by reason of itself, I concede; by reason of the deprivation of some owing good, I deny.
From this it follows that even physical pain as it is something, namely, the passion of the soul, has a certain goodness, but it displays a connection with some evil, and often it is important to recognize the existence of such an evil, for instance, a cancer, so that a remedy may be used in time. So also a sin of commission, inasmuch as it is being and a physical act is something good physically, and thus can be produced by God who, however, prescinds from the malice or privation of the owing righteousness. Such malice does not come under the adequate object of the divine omnipotence, just as sound does not come under the subject of vision. Hence if by an impossible hypothesis God wished to be the cause of sin as such and not only of the physical entity of sin, He would not be able to cause a sin, because sin is outside the adequate object of His omnipotence. All this is quite clear, but the exact manner in which God moves in the act of sin remains a great mystery.
Evil, therefore, is in the good as in the subject. There is no perversion of the truth here; it would be wrong to say that the subject of evil was evil by reason of itself, or that the privation of moral rectitude, for example, in pride, cunning, presumption, or luxury, is good. It is also wrong to say that what is good <secundum quid>, as something that is pleasing to the senses, for example, adultery, is a simple and unqualified good here and now. This is the monstrous perversion found in the practical judgment in which a criminal choice is made out of malice.
It is also wrong in the speculative order to say with Hegel that there is no good pure and simple and no evil pure and simple; that there is only qualified good, that is, something good according to the actual concepts of our time which tomorrow may be considered relatively evil. Thus patriotism is not a simple good, but only a good with reference to the ideals of our time; in time to come, perhaps, when some internationalism may prevail, patriotism would be regarded as obsolete. This is the language of absolute evolutionism condemned at the time of the Modernists. This proposition was condemned: "Truth is no more immutable than man himself; indeed truth is evolved with and through man."[1026] If this were true, there would be no absolute goodness, only a qualified goodness, or a relative goodness according to the changing ideas of a particular age. The first proposition condemned in Pius IX's Syllabus was: "God actually becomes in man and in the world,....and God and the world are one and the same thing, as are also spirit and matter, necessity and liberty, truth and falsehood, good and evil, the just and the unjust."[1027] It was against such pantheistic evolution that Isaias warned when he said, "Woe to you that call evil good and good evil."[1028]
Fourth Article: Whether Evil Corrupts Good Completely
State of the question. If the subject of evil is good, as we have said, can this subject be completely corrupted by the evil that is in it, or be totally destroyed? It seems that it can be; this is the opinion of some pessimists. The reason, as given in the third difficulty, is that the evil, as long as it lasts, harms and destroys the good. But a finite good from which something is always being taken away will in some time be destroyed. Thus after a serious illness comes death, and venial sins dispose to mortal sin, which takes away grace.
This question is not of minor importance and it arises again when we speak of original sin and its consequences, under the question, "whether all the good of human nature is destroyed by sin."[1029] The Protestants and Jansenists said that by original sin man's liberty was destroyed. On the other hand, most of the theologians of the Society of Jesus say that in the state of fallen nature man's powers are no weaker with respect to moral good than in the state of pure nature; the Thomists and Augustinians teach that man's powers are weakened although his freedom is not extinguished.[1030]
Reply. In reply St. Thomas says that good is threefold: the first is opposed to evil and is totally removed by the evil; the second is the subject of evil and it is not even decreased by the evil; the third is the aptitude of the subject to good, and this aptitude is decreased but is never completely removed. Hence, St. Augustine said, "Evil cannot completely consume the good."[1031]
This proof is founded on the division of good as given above. In the preceding article it was stated that the good which is a privation is different from the good in which the evil is as in a subject; to this a third kind of good is added, namely, the aptitude of the subject to good, for example, the aptitude of human nature to virtue.
The first two parts of the conclusion present no difficulty.
1. The good that is opposed to the evil can be completely destroyed by the evil; this is evident from an explanation of the terms when the privation is complete for then the good is entirely removed. This is clear from experience: light is completely destroyed by darkness, sight by blindness, corporeal life by death, and the life of grace by mortal sin.[1032] So also the good of original justice, freely conferred on all human nature in the first man, was completely taken away by the sin of our first parents.
2. The good that is the subject of the evil is not even diminished by the evil. In the physical order prime matter at least remains, and in the spiritual order the spiritual human soul at least remains. The reason is that the privation cannot take place except in an apt subject, and therefore the nature of this subject must remain, otherwise the same subject would no longer remain, that is, the subject that is apt for the particular privation. If the subject is destroyed, there is no longer any privation, for example, the subject of sickness is a living animal, and the subject of death is a corpse. We do not say that the corpse is blind; blindness is predicated of the living animal.
Hence St. Thomas speaks of the proper subject with respect to the proper privation, and he also speaks of the immutable nature of the subject. This is clear from the example: the substance of the air is not diminished by darkness; darkened air still remains air.
In another place, St. Thomas says: "The principles of human nature, by which the nature itself is constituted, and the properties, such as the powers of the soul, are not destroyed or diminished by sin."[1033] Hence the freedom of the will is not extinguished by original sin, otherwise fallen man would no longer be truly man. Fallen man is truly man by his specific difference, which is indivisible, that is, it is not subject to increase or decrease. Either someone has or has not the capability of producing rational acts; even a demented person preserves his nature although he does not have the use of his reason, and as long as a man retains the use of reason he retains proportionately the use of deliberation and of his free will.
Therefore what can be taken from a subject while the subject remains is its integrity. For example, a man can lose his arm or his eyes but not his essence nor the essence of his faculties; the very nature of our will cannot become evil, not even in the damned, for the will preserves its ordination to the universal good by which it is specified. Either it is the will or it is not; in the very nature of the will there is no increase or decrease with regard to the specific object. The will, however, may receive both acquired and infused virtues, by which it is perfected, and it can also lose these virtues.
3. The aptitude of the subject to a good act is diminished but it is never completely removed. For example, in man the natural inclination to virtue, which is increased by virtuous acts and diminished by evil acts, is never entirely destroyed as long as the human nature remains, because this aptitude is founded on this nature.[1034]
The proof of this third part of the conclusion is somewhat complex in the body of the article. The argument can be reduced to the following.
The diminution of the subject's aptitude to good is not quantitative, but it is a qualitative loss by contrary dispositions. Such contrary dispositions, however, even when multiplied to infinity, do not destroy the nature of the subject as long as the subject remains, nor do they therefore destroy the root of this aptitude of the subject to good. Therefore this aptitude is never destroyed.[1035]
Explanation of the major. What is meant by a qualitative loss of this aptitude by contrary dispositions? Is it an intrinsic diminution or only extrinsic?
We must judge the diminution of this aptitude to virtue by its positive opposite, that is, by the qualitative intensification. We must not confuse the intensification and diminution of this capability with the intensification and diminution of a habit, for an acquired habit is increased intrinsically by the repetition of acts and intrinsically diminished by the cessation of the acts or by contrary acts, so that in the end the habit is completely destroyed, while the natural aptitude to virtue is never completely destroyed. The aptitude to virtue is something else than the virtue itself.
We say, then, that this natural aptitude to virtue is not increased or diminished intrinsically, that is, in itself, on the part of the subject or the root of this aptitude, which is the very nature of the soul or the faculty. This nature is not subject to increase or decrease. Hence this aptitude is increased or decreased, as it were, extrinsically, not on the part of its principle but with regard to the terminus.
In the reply to the second objection, St. Thomas says: "This aptitude is between the subject and act. Hence inasmuch as it touches on the act it is diminished by evil, but inasmuch as it is identified with the subject it remains." Thus the aptitude of wood to burning is diminished by humidity, and the aptitude of the soul to virtue is diminished by contrary dispositions or by venial and mortal sins, both actual and habitual. In this way this aptitude was diminished by original sin, which implies directly a habitual aversion to the final supernatural end and indirectly a similar aversion to the final natural end, for every sin that is directly opposed to the supernatural law is indirectly against the natural law, which commands us to obey God in whatever He commands us. Hence this natural aptitude to virtue is diminished by original sin, not intrinsically, on the part of the principle, but extrinsically, with regard to the facility of eliciting a virtuous act, because of the obstacles placed between the faculty and the virtuous act for which it was intended.
St. Thomas explains this at greater length in his book, <De malo>, where he shows that this aptitude cannot be diminished by the subtraction of parts (intrinsically) but by the addition of contraries (extrinsically). We now ask whether these contraries are able to corrupt or destroy the subject; whether, for instance, humidity corrupts the wood and whether sin destroys the soul or the nature of man.[1036]
St. Thomas makes the following distinction. By continual diminution every finite being can be totally removed, this I distinguish: by the intrinsic subtraction of parts, I concede, unless it be a division to infinity, by the extrinsic addition of contraries, this I subdistinguish: of contraries that can corrupt the subject, I concede; of contraries that cannot corrupt the parts, I deny.
The minor requires explanation, namely, why contrary dispositions can never completely remove or destroy the aptitude mentioned above. St. Thomas says that these contrary dispositions can be increased either to infinity or not. If they are not increased to infinity, neither is this aptitude decreased to infinity. Thus, for example, wood becomes less combustible by humidity to a certain stage, and beyond this the wood is corrupted. As long as the nature of wood perdures, its combustibility or the aptitude to combustion remains, but when the nature of the wood is corrupted the aptitude is removed. "If the contrary can corrupt the subject, the aptitude can be completely removed."[1037]
If, however, the contrary dispositions can be increased to infinity, the aforesaid aptitude is likewise decreased to infinity but it is never entirely removed as long as the nature of the subject remains. "If by the addition of a contrary, the subject is not corrupted, no matter how much the contrary is multiplied, the aptitude is always decreased as the added contrary increases, but it is never entirely removed."[1038] The reason is that the nature is the root of this aptitude. Thus it is with man in the moral order; the man who sins continually retains, together with the incorruptible nature of his soul and his faculties, a certain aptitude to virtue, but this aptitude is decreased to infinity by the multiplication of obstacles between his faculties and the virtuous act to which the faculty is ordered. Thus air can always be illuminated by the sun even though opaque bodies to infinity are placed between the air and the sun.
This is to say, against the Manichaeans, that no created being is evil and that no created nature can become absolutely evil, or completely lose its aptitude to good.
Corollary. In spite of inveterate depraved habits a man still can reform his moral character and arrive at the judgment that God's commandments are in conformity with the basis of his human nature.
Even in the devils a nature remains, which as nature is good, but it can no longer go on to a good act. "Even in the damned there is a natural inclination to virtue, otherwise the devils would not have remorse of conscience."[1039]
In the reply to the third objection it is noted that some have offered a faulty proof of this conclusion, saying that the matter is as in the case of the division of quantity where something smaller is always subtracted, for example, first half the whole quantity, then half of the half, so that there is always something remaining to be divided. St. Thomas replies that this is true with regard to quantity but that there is not parity here with sin because the second sin can be more serious than the first, indeed succeeding sins are generally more grave.
This doctrine can be expressed by the following synopsis taken from St. Thomas' De malo.[1040]
(diagram page 479)
Diminution of good
qualitative
extrinsic by addition of a contrary
which cannot corrupt an incorruptible subject, as sin with regard to the soul;
which can corrupt the subject and its aptitude, as humidity which finally corrupts wood
intrinsic, which can completely destroy virtue
quantitative,
by the subtraction of parts; this can completely remove the good, for example, a sum of money
Napoleon once said, "I prefer a good synopsis to a long report." But for a synopsis to be good it must be adequate and the divisions must be founded on the nature of things. These divisions must be necessary, not accidental, that is, they must be made according to the formal reason of the whole to be divided, and they must be made in such a way that the members are really opposite so that no member will be overlooked.
We conclude, then, that the natural aptitude to virtue always remains, as long as the soul remains, even though this aptitude is diminished extrinsically by actual sin, especially by actual sin repeated so often that it becomes habitual sin.[1041]
In this light St. Thomas explains the wounds which are the consequences of original sin, which is the deprivation of the gift of original justice. "The natural inclination of virtue is not diminished on the part of the root but on the part of the terminus inasmuch as an obstacle is placed in the way of attaining the terminus."[1042] Thus in the state of fallen nature man's powers for virtue are weaker than in the state of pure nature because now he is born with a habitual aversion to his final natural end, whereas in the state of pure nature he would have been born neither habitually averse nor converted to moral good; he would have been simply capable of aversion or conversion. Now he is born with a certain weakness for the natural moral good, but his natural aptitude to virtue remains. After baptism these wounds are on the way to being healed.
Fifth Article: Whether Evil Is Completely Divided Into That Of Penalty And Guilt
State of the question. The traditional division is into evil of guilt and penalty but we must now prove that this division is legitimate. We are confronted with the following difficulties. 1. The death of brute animals is something evil for them, yet it does not appear to be either guilt or penalty. 2. The diseases of animals are something evil, yet they are neither guilt nor penalty. 3. In us temptation is something evil, yet it is not guilt if it is immediately resisted, indeed it is an occasion for exercising virtue; neither is temptation a penalty, since it precedes sin. Indeed temptation preceded the first sin of the first man. Further, the trials of the just are something evil, yet they are not always penalties for sins.
In the argument <sed contra>, the objection is given in the opposite sense, namely, every evil is a penalty because every evil is harmful. Therefore guilt is not distinct from penalty.
Reply. In voluntary beings every evil is either a penalty or guilt, that is, it is guilt arising from an inordinate will or the penalty against a culpable will.
What is the meaning of this reply? It refers to "voluntary beings," not all things, not brute animals, not even men, because the trials of the just are neither sin nor a penalty for the sins of the just, nor are they something inflicted on a culpable will.
This difficulty is explained above in the article in the treatise, The One God, "whether God wills evils."[1043] Here a distinction is made between the evil of guilt (moral evil) and the evil of nature (physical evil), which can be a penalty if it is inflicted for sin or not a penalty if it exists where no sin is to be punished.
(diagram page 481)
Evil
of sin (moral
mortal
venial
of nature (physical)
because of sin:
penalty of loss, penalty of senses
without sin:
as merely physical evil (blindness)
or the trials of the just
Here we approach the great problem proposed in the Book of Job: whether all human trials are inflicted because of sin.
What proof can be offered for St. Thomas' conclusion given above? It should be noted that the division of evil is based on its definition, and by two syllogisms it is shown that St. Thomas' division as given in the conclusion is legitimate.
In his argument St. Thomas, as in many other instances, begins with the minor, a method that is sometimes more natural in the search for truth. But if we follow the formal method and begin with the major, the syllogism would be as follows:
Good consists in perfection, in first act, that is, in the form and integrity of a thing, or in second act, that is, in proper operation. But evil is the privation of an owing good. Therefore evil consists either in some subtraction from the form or the integrity (blindness) or in the subtraction of some proper operation.
This first syllogism does not yet give the distinction between guilt and penalty, which, as was stated in the reply to the second objection, do not present a division of simple evil, but a division of evil in voluntary things. Thus in brute animals there are evils, such as blindness, which are neither guilt nor penalty. This is also true of men, for instance, when our Lord was asked, "Who hath sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?" our Lord replied, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."[1044] Hence blindness in itself is neither guilt nor penalty. How do we then reach the conclusion that evil is either guilt or penalty? We must remember that the conclusion is limited to voluntary beings. We have therefore the following syllogism.
Evil, like good, is the object of the will; it has a special reference to the will. But with reference to the will we correctly divide evil into that evil which is from the will, namely, a disorder of the will's operation or guilt, and that evil which is against the will, namely, the privation of the form or the integrity of the (culpable) voluntary agent, that is, penalty, for instance death or mutilation. Therefore evil in voluntary things is correctly divided into the evil of guilt or sin and the evil of penalty.
Difficulty. In what sense does St. Thomas say that the evil of penalty can be through the subtraction not only of the integrity but also of the form of the agent, for in the latter case not even the subject of the evil would remain?
Reply. The penalty by the subtraction of the integrity is mutilation; the penalty by the subtraction of the form is death. It is true that in the latter case the subject (man) does not remain, but the soul does; and by this penalty man does not become evil, indeed in this way he makes reparation for his sin.
Another difficulty remains. The trials of the just are against their wills, as we see from the Book of Job, and Christ Himself said, "Let this chalice pass from Me." On the other hand, a guilty man sometimes freely accepts the penalty that is justly imposed on him. Hence not every evil that is against the will is a penalty, for example, the tribulations of Job, the blindness of one born blind; nor is every penalty opposed by the one who is punished.
To solve this difficulty we should point out that, although the division of evil into the evil of guilt and the evil of penalty given in the body of the article is legitimate, we do not yet have an explicit statement of the specific difference of penalty by which it is distinguished from the trials of the just. We have clearly stated the proximate genus of penalty (an evil opposed to the will of the one punished), but to ascertain the specific difference the penalty must be compared with guilt. According to common sense every penalty presupposes guilt.
This explanation will be found partly in the reply to the third objection, where it is stated that temptation is not guilt except in the tempter when it is resisted, and partly in the following article in the reply to the objections, and particularly in the <Summa theologica>, in the question on penalty as the effect of sin.[1045] The seventh article of this question asks, whether every penalty is inflicted because of some guilt, and the reply is, "If we are speaking of penalty <simpliciter>, in the sense that it has the nature of punishment, then it always has a reference to guilt, either personal, actual, or original..... But it sometimes happens that a man suffers some loss in a minor good in order that he may gain a greater good, for example, for the salvation of his soul or for the glory of God. Such loss is not an unqualified evil for the man, but an evil <secundum quid>, and therefore it is not an unqualified penalty (<simpliciter>), but it is rather medicinal." Such were the tribulations of Job and the blindness of one born blind. Moreover, "sometimes one who has not sinned voluntarily undergoes punishment for another," as Christ did for us.
What, therefore, is the definition of penalty as it differs from the trials of the just and also from voluntary mortification? The answer is given in <De malo>,[1046] where St. Thomas enumerates three things that belong to the nature of penalty: 1. it is an evil inflicted for committed sin (St. Thomas says this is the tradition of faith), and in this it differs from the trials of the just; 2. it is something repugnant to the will, either actual or habitual or radical, that is the natural inclination which tends to the proper good (in this way this explains that a culpable man sometimes freely accepts a just penalty, which however is still repugnant to the inclination of his nature); 3. it is from an extrinsic principle, which inflicts an afflictive suffering (thus it is distinguished from the mortification which a man inflicts on himself).
Hence penalty in itself is defined as an evil inflicted for some committed fault or guilt by an extrinsic principle against the natural inclination of the culpable agent.
It is enough, says St. Thomas, that the penalty be against the natural inclination of the will, "as when an individual is deprived of the habit of virtue when he does not wish to have the virtue; nevertheless the natural inclination of the will is to the good of the virtue."[1047]
From this definition of penalty we learn its division, namely, the penalty of the senses, inflicted on the sensible part, and the penalty of loss, or the absence of the divine vision. The first is owing to the fault because of the inordinate turning to some changeable good, the second is owing to a grave sin because of the aversion or turning away from the ultimate end.[1048]
First corollary. The trials of the just do not always arise from their sins. From the foregoing definition we can see Baius' error in his seventy-second proposition: "All the afflictions of the just are punishments for their sins; hence Job and the martyrs underwent whatever they suffered for their sins."
This statement is against the tradition of faith and of the Scriptures. For example, "Now this trial the Lord therefore permitted to happen to him, that an example might be given to posterity of his patience, as also of holy Job";[1049] "And because thou wast acceptable to God, it was necessary that temptation should prove thee";[1050] of the man born blind our Lord said, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."[1051]
Second corollary. Hence not every purification of the just is properly penalty; it may be a purification from some imperfection distinct from sin. "In the Blessed Virgin the Holy Ghost effected a twofold purgation. The first was preparatory to the conception of Christ, and this was not a purification from any impurity of guilt or sin but it served to recollect her mind and lift it above the multitude. For the angels, too, are said to be purified and no impurity is found in them. Thus there is a twofold purgation: the purgation from guilt by grace and the purgation from ignorance by the light of doctrine.[1052]
The principal differences between guilt and penalty are clearly given in St. Thomas' <De malo>.[1053] The difference is threefold:
1. The guilt is the evil of the voluntary action itself; the penalty is the evil of the voluntary agent consequent on the evil of the action, for example, the privation of the form or the penalty of death, or the privation of integrity or the penalty of mutilation.
2. The guilt is according to the will, whereas the penalty is against the will.
3. The guilt is in the acting, the penalty is the suffering.
Moreover it should be noted that the evil that is a disorder in action can be not only in the will but also in the intellect, for example, a speculative error, and in this latter instance the evil is sometimes voluntary and sometimes not. So also with regard to the will we can have a material and involuntary sin, which is not guilt because of the defect of attention.
Doubt. Can all the divisions of evil be reduced to the foregoing, namely, the division between guilt and penalty?
Reply. All the divisions of guilt cannot be reduced to these two because this division refers only to evil in voluntary things. Evil has other divisions inasmuch as it is opposed to transcendental good, which under the aspect of being is divided into the ten categories of being,[1054] and thus we have an evil man, an evil fruit, an evil quantity, quality, action, passion, or relation.
Evil is again divided as it is opposed to good in general, which, under the aspect of good, is divided into the honest, delightful, and useful.[1055] Thus evil is divided into the dishonest or base (which conforms to guilt), the painful (which conforms to penalty),[1056] and finally the harmful, which conforms to both guilt and penalty, but more with guilt, as we shall see in the following question, because a just penalty in itself is something good, and evil only <secundum quid>.[1057]
St. Thomas gives another division into the evil of guilt, or moral evil, namely the privation of moral rectitude, and the evil of nature, namely, the privation of the good of nature, which can be a penalty if it is inflicted for guilt, or it may not be a penalty if not inflicted for guilt, as the blindness of one born blind, as mentioned in the Gospel.[1058]
(diagram page 486)
evil as the privation of an owing good
of guilt, or moral
mortal: the privation of the order to God, the ultimate end
venial: the privation of the order in means to the end
of nature, or physical
for guilt: penalty
of loss
of the senses
without guilt:
as a mere physical evil, for example, the blindness of one born blind
In these instances evil is predicated analogically. So also sin is predicated analogically when we speak of mortal and venial sin. According to the Thomistic definition of analogy as distinct from Suarez' definition, venial sin is farther removed from mortal sin for St. Thomas than for Suarez. According to Suarez, in an analogy things are the same <simpliciter> and diverse <secundum quid>; for St. Thomas analogical things are diverse <simpliciter> and the same <secundum quid>, or proportionately the same. For instance, animality, which is univocal, is the same <simpliciter> and diverse <secundum quid> in man and in the worm.
Sixth Article: Whether Penalty Has More Of Evil Than Guilt Has
State of the question. It appears that this is true because: 1. reward has more of good than merit, and similarly penalty has more of evil than guilt; 2. the agent is better than the action, and therefore the evil of the agent, namely, the penalty, is worse than the evil of the action; 3. the penalty of loss is the privation of the vision of God and therefore worse than the privation of moral rectitude. These are clever sophisms.
Reply. The reply is that guilt partakes more of the nature of evil than any penalty, whether it be the penalty of the senses or of loss or of damnation.
1. In the argument <sed contra> this is proved from the reference to the wise being who inflicts the penalty. In His wisdom God inflicts the penalty that the guilt may be averted, that is, He induces a lesser evil that a greater may be avoided, just as the surgeon amputates a member to save the rest of the body from corruption. This argument of St. Thomas applies also for the penalty of eternal damnation, as he explains in the body of the article. Indeed the punishment of hell is medicinal, if not for the damned at least for those still on earth, since it induces a salutary fear. So in society the penalty of capital punishment inspires a healthy fear in the criminal.[1059]
2. The proof in the body of the article is twofold: a) from the formal cause and the formal effect of both guilt and penalty; b) from the efficient cause of the penalty, namely, God, who as the author of the penalty cannot be the author of the evil of guilt.
a) The argument may be presented in this form. That by which a man becomes evil in his will is a greater evil than the privation of any one of the things he uses. But it is by guilt that man becomes evil in his will. Therefore guilt is a greater evil than penalty.
Proof of the major. Evil is the privation of an owing good, and the greater evil is the privation of a greater owing good. But good consists essentially in act, and a man's ultimate act is his operation, and moreover it is the will that moves all his other faculties to operation. Thus a man is said to be good by reason of his good will, by which he makes good use of what he has; and he is evil because of an evil will. For it is the will that tends to good, and directs not only to the good of some particular faculty but to the good of the whole man. Hence the will tends to the good of the whole man and averts evil from him. A man who is good without qualification is a man of good will and not the man with a good intellect alone, for knowledge is ordered to the truth, which is the good of the intellective faculty, but the truth is not the good of the complete man. A philosopher or a scientist may, as we know, put his knowledge to evil uses.
It follows that by the deprivation of knowledge or art, by the loss of an arm, a man is rendered evil not completely but only in certain respects. He may be a bad scientist, a poor artist, or a poor musician; But by the privation of good will a man is rendered completely evil.[1060]
Elsewhere St. Thomas says: "The subject of the habit that is called virtue can be nothing else than the will or some faculty that is moved by the will. The reason is that the will moves all the other faculties which are in some sense rational to their acts. And therefore the fact that a man actually acts well arises from the fact that the man has a good will."[1061]
b) This argument is based on the fact that God, the efficient cause of penalty, cannot be the author of the evil of guilt. It may be stated in the following form. That is the greater evil which is opposed to the greater good and cannot be caused by God. But the evil of guilt is directly opposed to the uncreated good and cannot be caused by God, whereas the evil of penalty is opposed to the uncreated or created good of the creature and is caused by God.
The major is evident. The minor is proved as follows: The evil of guilt is opposed not only to the uncreated good of the creature, as in the case of the privation of the beatific vision, but directly to the uncreated good itself. In what way?" Sin is opposed to the fulfillment of the divine will and the divine love by which the divine good is loved in itself and not only as it is participated in by the creature." That is, as St. Thomas explains in the treatise on charity:[1062] "We must love God more than ourselves and we must love Him on account of Himself, formally and finally, as He is infinitely good in Himself and our final end, infinitely better than ourselves and better than all His gifts." Mortal sin, on the other hand, is a turning away from God our last end, and this is denying to God the infinite dignity of the last end. Cajetan offers this formula: "the evil of guilt is directly opposed to the uncreated good, not as it is in us but as it is in itself."[1063]
But a difficulty arises from the fact that mortal sin takes nothing from God since God is infinitely simple and can lose nothing.
"To this we reply briefly," says Cajetan in the same place, "that the opposition of evil to the uncreated good can be understood in two ways, formally and objectively. Formally such opposition is impossible....since God is pure act who can lose nothing. Objectively, however, the evil of guilt opposes the divine good in itself. This is explained in the place referred to (and in the present article) by the object of charity. Whoever sins mortally wishes explicitly or interpretatively as much as he can that God should not be his ultimate end. This is opposing God objectively as He is in Himself, just as he who loves in charity wishes for God whatever belongs to Him."
St. Thomas' article may be reduced to the following.
(diagram page 489)
privation
of the uncreated good
formally; this is impossible
objectively; by mortal sin
of the good of the creature
of the uncreated good: pain of loss
of a created good: pain of senses
Anyone who sins wishes explicitly or interpretatively as much as he can to deprive God of the infinite perfection of the last end, that is, that supreme good on account of which all things were made. Mortal sin practically denies to God the dignity of the highest good, and the sinner places his last end in himself and loves it above all things. Hence St. Thomas says: "A sin committed against God has a certain infinity because of the infinity of the divine majesty. The offense is judged to be graver by how much higher he is against whom the offense is committed. Hence, for condign satisfaction, the act of satisfaction must have infinite efficacy, as belonging both to God and man."[1064] The conclusion of the present article is borne out therefore especially for mortal sin, namely, that mortal sin is more evil than any penalty.
Doubt. Does this conclusion apply also to venial sin? The reply is in the affirmative. The term sin is predicated analogically of venial sin, but the analogy is proper and not metaphorical, and therefore the conclusion applies also to venial sin, that is, even venial sin, as something purely evil, is a greater evil than the evil of penalty, because a just penalty, even the penalty of damnation, is not purely evil since in its own way it restores the order of justice. The penalty is, then, merely something evil, as the privation of the good of the creature, and damnation itself is privation of the uncreated good to the creature, which is less than the denial of the uncreated good in itself.[1065] Below we shall see that God can in no way be the cause of even venial guilt because even venial sin is something essentially disordered.[1066]
Solution Of The Objections
Since the objections are difficult, we present them formally.
First objection. Reward is a greater good than merit. But guilt is related to penalty as merit is to reward. Therefore guilt is less an evil than penalty is.
Reply. I concede the major. I distinguish the minor: inasmuch as guilt terminates in penalty, I concede; inasmuch as guilt is intended on account of penalty as merit is on account of reward, I deny. I distinguish the conclusion: if guilt were intended on account of penalty as merit is intended on account of reward, I concede; if otherwise, I deny.
Second objection. That is the greater evil which opposes the greater good. But the penalty opposes the good of the agent, which is a greater good than the good of the action, to which guilt is opposed.
Reply. I distinguish the minor: if by the good of the action is meant the good of the action of the speculative intellect or of the members, I concede; but if the good of the action is the good of the action of the will, which tends to the good of the whole man, I deny, because by an evil will a man becomes purely evil.
The difficulty in this reply to the second objection arises from the fact that a second perfection, which is an accident, is said to be better than a first perfection, which is the substance. How can an accident be more perfect than the substance?
Cajetan replies that the accident is not more perfect than the substance but that the substance as operating is more perfect than a substance that is not yet operating. Only in God is it true that the substance operating <ad extra> is not more perfect than the substance as not operating <ad extra>. Hence we say that every created being is because of its operation, in the sense that it is because of itself as operating.
Third objection. The privation of the order to an end is less than the privation of the end itself. But guilt is the privation of the order to the end, and the penalty of damnation is the privation of the end itself. Therefore guilt is less an evil than the penalty is.
Reply. Let the major pass. I distinguish the minor: the penalty of damnation is the privation of the end itself inasmuch as man is removed from the end, I concede; inasmuch as the infinite dignity of the ultimate end is denied to God, I deny. I distinguish the conclusion: if guilt were only the privation of the good of man, I concede; if it opposes the uncreated good in itself, I deny. Here is subject matter for a sermon: it is guilt alone that makes man evil and is opposed to the divine goodness.
We should note that this doctrine, that guilt is a greater evil than any penalty, even death, was clearly understood in pagan antiquity, particularly in Plato's dialogue, entitled Gorgias.
The thesis which Plato is defending in this dialogue is that it is a greater evil to do injustice than to suffer it, and that it is a greater evil for the criminal to go unpunished than to be punished.
This dialogue is a conversation between Socrates and the three Sophists, Pollus, Callicles, and Gorgias, the rhetorician.
Plato asked Gorgias, "What is rhetoric? What is its object?"
"Orations, speeches, and discourses," replied Gorgias.
"Is it every discourse on any subject, even on the kitchen?" asked Plato.
"It is the discourse intended to persuade men so that the opinion of the rhetorician will prevail," answered Gorgias.
"Is it intended to persuade men of what is really true and just, or that which only appears true and just, or even something purely unjust?" asked Plato. "If this is the object of rhetoric, then the rhetorician acts against right reason, he is immoral, and rhetoric is not even an art but simply an empty exercise."
Gorgias was silent. Pollus tried to defend him, and said, "This is the force of rhetoric: that by his art the rhetorician can persuade men to do what he wishes."
Socrates replied: "What is it he wishes to do? Is it wishing and effecting what is good, what is right for us, and not what is only apparently right; what is really right for us, namely, what is actually good and true?"
"Does the rhetorician," asked Socrates, "do what he wishes when he brings it about that a good citizen is sent into exile? Indeed, he wishes and does something that is not good, something unjust, and therefore something that is not good even for himself. Then this rhetorician is not happy, because that man is happy who wills and does the good."
At the end Socrates stated what the criminal and his defender should do. In order that he may will his own true good, the criminal should go to the judges and say, "I committed a crime," just as a sick man goes to the physician to be cured. And the criminal should willingly submit to the penalties imposed for his crime so that he will once again be reinstated in the order of justice and the good and thus find happiness.
Thus Socrates supports the teaching that it is a greater evil to do injustice than to suffer injustice, and for the criminal it is a greater evil to go unpunished than to be punished, especially if he submits willingly and accepts the punishment justly imposed on him.[1067]
The truth that the evil of penalty is something just and that it repairs the evil of guilt appears in its splendor in the supernatural order in the sacrament of penance when the criminal, whose crime is hidden, willingly accuses himself and makes satisfaction in union with Christ the Redeemer.

CHAPTER XXVI: QUESTION 49 THE CAUSE OF EVIL
Thus far we have determined the definition of evil, the privation of an owing good; the subject of evil; and the division of evil. We now turn to the cause or origin of evil.
In the second article of the preceding question we stated that God could impede evil, and that He nevertheless wills to allow it because of some greater good. We thus assigned the final cause of the divine permission of evil, but not the cause of evil itself. In treating of the cause of evil itself, St. Thomas asks three things: 1. whether good can be the cause of evil; 2. whether the highest good, which is God, is the cause of evil; 3. whether there is some supreme evil which is the cause of all evils. In this last article he refutes the Manichaeans.
First Article: Whether Good Can Be The Cause Of Evil
State of the question. In this title cause is understood in its most general sense, without any determination of the kind of cause.
It seems that good cannot be the cause of evil:
1. because "a good tree cannot bear evil fruit," as our Lord said;
2. because one contrary cannot be the cause of another contrary, for every agent acts in a manner similar to itself, that is, it acts in accord with its own determination;
3. because evil is a deficient effect; which can proceed only from a deficient cause as such, that is, from a cause that is not good but evil, for the cause that is deficient is evil;
4. finally, Dionysius declared, "evil does not have a cause."[1068]
But on the other hand, St. Augustine said: "There was absolutely nothing from which evil could arise except out of good."[1069]
Reply. The reply has four parts:
1. it is necessary to point out that every evil has some kind of cause;
2. evil has neither a formal nor a final cause;
3. evil has a material cause, namely, the good in which it is;
4. evil has an efficient cause <per accidens>, which is some good. Thus good is the material cause and the accidental efficient cause of evil.
First conclusion. It is necessary to point out that evil has some kind of cause. In his proof St. Thomas enunciates first the minor; but we begin with the major as follows:
The fact that anything is deficient in its natural and due disposition can arise only from some cause that draws the thing outside its disposition; for example, an agent does not defect in its action except by reason of some impediment. But evil is the deficiency of some good that is due. Therefore evil has some kind of cause, and nothing can be a cause unless it is being and good in some way.
The major of this syllogism illustrates the entire article, as we shall see. Up to this point there is no difficulty, and the foregoing argument will appear even clearer at the end of the article when we distinguish between evil in action and evil in effect.
Second conclusion. Evil has neither a formal nor a final cause; this is evident because evil is the privation of form and the privation of the right ordination to an end.
The divine permission of evil takes place because of a greater good, but the evil itself is not useful nor is it of itself ordered to the greater good; if it were, it would be something good as matter ordered to the form. Evil, however, is only the occasion and the condition <sine qua non> of some greater good, as, for example, persecution is the occasion of the great constancy of the martyrs. A condition and an occasion differ from a cause inasmuch as they have no influence on the effect, neither efficiently nor finally nor formally nor materially.
Third conclusion. That evil has a material cause is evident because evil is privation in an apt subject, and thus it is in good as in a subject.
Fourth conclusion. This conclusion is more difficult. Evil cannot have an efficient cause <per se> but only an efficient cause <per accidens>, and this is something good.
The proof is rather complex. The following synopsis may be helpful.
Obviously evil does not have an efficient cause <per se>, for such a cause is in some way being and good, which <per se> produces some good, for example, fire produces fire and motor power produces movement.[1070] Hence evil can have an efficient cause only <per accidens>. But accidental causes are of many kinds; likewise evil is of many kinds, and therefore this subdivision is necessary.
(diagram page 495)
Good is the efficient cause of evil
not <per se>; for a cause <per se> is some being and some good, which <per se> produces something like itself, that is, something good; for example, fire produces fire, motive power produces motion
<per accidens>
in action, from the defect of the agent
principal: e.g., weakness in walking.
instrumental: lameness
in the effect
from the power of the agent <per se> producing an opposite form; thus the sun dries up some fruits
by defect
of the agent and the action: e.g., poor speech;
of the matter: e.g., a monstrosity.
1. Evil in action, for example, weakness in walking or lameness is caused by the defect of the principal cause (a weakness of the motive power) or by a defect of the instrumental cause (curvature of the leg bones).
2. Evil in anything is of three kinds: a) from the power of a contrary agent, for example, the form of wood or of a house is destroyed by the power of fire; b) from the defect of an action followed by a proper deficient effect, for example, poor hearing is the effect of poor pronunciation; c) from the indisposition of the matter, for example, the birth of a monstrosity.
This enumeration is complete because evil in a thing cannot be produced except by the agent or the matter as considered with regard to the form and the end. Thus the four kinds of causes are included. And evil cannot come from the agent except by reason of the power of a contrary agent or from the defect of the proper agent.
Finally it is clear that in these three cases the efficient cause is only an accidental cause, but the difficulty arises from the fact that causes are said to be accidental in different ways.
It is accidental that a proper agent be defective, for example, that a man speaks poorly because of the presence of some impediment. The deficiency happens to a good thing which <per se> has the power to act.
So also it is accidental that matter be indisposed to properly receive the action of an agent. Lastly it is only by accident that the privation of a form takes place, for example, the destruction of wood or of a house by the force of a contrary agent, namely, fire. Per se this contrary agent tends to induce its proper form; fire produces something similar to itself, it produces fire, and it does not <per se> tend to the privation of an opposite form. This privation, however, follows necessarily. It is true that this is not the first but the second acceptation of the term "accidental cause," as explained by Aristotle.[1071]
Aristotle divides accidental causes as follows.[1072]
The division of quasi- <per accidens> and not contingently will appear obscure to many. It is difficult at first to conceive of a contrary agent producing a physical evil <per accidens> and of necessity; the terms "<per accidens>" and "necessarily" seem to be irreconcilable to those who do not clearly understand the difference between a cause that is absolutely <per accidens>, like chance, and an accidental cause that always produces the accidental effect. Such a cause is nevertheless a cause <per accidens> even though the accidental effect follows always and of necessity, because this cause is not <per se> ordered to this effect. Fire acts in a way similar to itself; <per se> it does not tend to the destruction of wood or of a house, but to the production of fire. The terms "<per accidens>" and "<of necessity>," at first sight irreconcilable, can be reconciled.
Doubt. With regard to a voluntary agent, is the accidental effect separated from the intention of the agent?" Sometimes the accidental effect is connected with the principal effect rarely and in few instances, and in this case when the agent intends the effect <per se> it is not necessary that the agent intend the accidental effect. But sometimes the accidental effect accompanies the principal effect at all times or in the majority of instances, and then the accidental effect cannot be said to be separate from the intention of the agent. If therefore the good intended by the will is joined to some evil in rare instances, the will can be excused from sin, as in the case of accidental homicide which occurs beyond the intention of the will. But if at all times or in most instances the evil is joined to the good which the will intends <per se>, it is not excused from sin, even though the will does not intend this evil <per se>. Even though the sinner does not will the evil in itself, yet he wills to fall into this evil rather than go without the connected good."[1073]
3. Thus good is the material cause and <per accidens> the efficient cause of evil. For this reason we say, for instance, of a conflagration or of a fractured bone, it was an accident.
The conclusion of the body of the article will appear clearer in the light of this principle, "The fact that a thing is deficient in its natural and proper disposition can arise only from some cause that draws it away from that disposition."[1074]
The evil of an action arising from the defect of the agent and the evil in a thing arising from the defect of the agent or from the defect of the matter in the final analysis arise from some cause that draws the thing or the agent away from its disposition. This disturbing cause is a cause <per accidens> because <per se> it tends to its proper effect; for example, fruits are dried up owing to an excessive influence from the sun, and on the other hand fruits do not ripen from an insufficient influence from the sun. Physical evil, as Leibnitz says, happens because of the interconcurrence of the laws of nature. But each of these laws is good. The evil follows accidentally, and it is the condition of a greater good according to the disposition of Providence. And while we deplore these accidental evils, we unconsciously confess that the things that happen ordinarily are well ordered by divine Providence.
Solution Of The Objections In The Article[1075]
First objection. Good is like a good tree. But a good tree cannot bear evil fruit. Therefore good cannot be the cause of evil.
Reply. I distinguish the major: a good tree is a figure of the will that is morally good, I concede; of the natural will that is physically good, I deny. I distinguish the minor: the good tree, or the will that is morally good, cannot bear evil fruit, I concede; the natural will that is physically good cannot bear evil fruit, I subdistinguish: <per se>, I concede; <per accidens>, I deny. Hence good can be the cause of evil <per accidens>.
Second objection. One of two contraries cannot be the cause of the other. But evil is contrary to good. Therefore good cannot be the cause of evil.
Reply. One of two contraries cannot <per se> be the cause of the other, I concede; <per accidens>, I deny. Thus the goodness of fire can cause the evil of the wood's destruction or the burning of a house.
Third objection. An evil or deficient effect does not proceed except from a deficient cause. But a deficient cause is evil. Therefore evil comes only from evil.
Reply. I distinguish the major: in voluntary things, I concede; in physical things, I deny, because sometimes evil proceeds from the power of a contrary agent. Moreover, a deficient cause is not evil as cause but only as deficient.
In his reply to the third difficulty, St. Thomas points out that the defect of a voluntary action proceeds "from the fact that the will does not subject itself in act to its rule. This defect is not indeed a fault or guilt, but it is followed by guilt because the will operates with this defect or fault."
In his work, <De malo>, St. Thomas says: "The fact that the will does not in act attend to such a rule considered in itself is not evil and it is neither guilt nor penalty, because the soul is not bound nor can it attend to a rule of this kind always in act. But it takes on the first aspect of guilt when without actual consideration of the rule it proceeds to a particular election..... Man sins by the fact that he does not have a rule, or does not attend to one, and thus proceeds to making a choice. For this reason St. Augustine said that the will is the cause of sin inasmuch as it is deficient."[1076] And the will is deficient inasmuch as it recedes from a worthy good under the influence or attraction of some delectable unworthy good. Thus even in moral matters the major of the first argument of this article is verified: "The fact that anything departs from its natural and due disposition comes only from some cause that draws the thing away from its proper disposition." Hence evil always has some cause <per accidens> in the good.[1077]
The fifteenth objection in <De malo>. An accidental cause does not intend the effect that follows <per accidens>. But evil has only an accidental cause. Therefore no one who does evil sins.
Reply. An intelligent cause does not contemplate the accidental effect that rarely follows, I concede; the accidental effect that is always joined to the principal effect, I deny.
The seventeenth objection. Whatever follows accidentally happens in rare instances. But evil follows in many instances, as we read, "The number of fools is infinite."[1078] Therefore the cause of evil is <per se> and not <per accidens>.
Reply. A thing is said to follow <per accidens> not only if it follows in rare instances but because it follows, though not intended <per se>, even if it follows in the majority of instances. St. Thomas says: "The accidental thing does not always take place in rare cases, sometimes it follows in all cases or most cases, for example, the adulterer intends a certain sensible good to which an evil is always joined and he always falls into that evil..... The evil of guilt happens so often in the human race (and in it alone) because there are so many more ways to deviate from the middle than holding the middle path, as we read, 'the sensible goods are better known by many than the goods of the mind.'"[1079]
On a higher plane and with clearer distinction St. Thomas proposes this doctrine in a manner that seems to oppose the theory of optimism: "The good that is proportionate to the common state of nature occurs in most instances, and the defect from this good occurs in fewer instances. But the good that is above the common state of nature is found in fewer instances..... It is evident that many men have sufficient knowledge to govern their own lives....: but very few men attain to a profound knowledge of intelligible things."[1080]
This limitation of optimism is owing to the human composite and to original sin.
1. The lowest kind of intelligence has for its object the lowest of intelligible things, namely, the intelligible thing in sensible things, and thus this intelligence must be united with sensible things. First, therefore, we know sensible things and we live according to the senses, and many men are attracted rather to the good of the senses than to the good according to right reason.
2. "Some signs of original sin probably appear in the human race. Since God takes cognizance of human acts in such a way that He fixes a reward for good acts and penalties for evil acts,....we can certify the guilt from the penalty. It is evident that the human race suffers various kinds of penalties, both corporal and spiritual..... Among the spiritual penalties the greatest is the weakness of reason, and because of this penalty man has difficulty in knowing the truth, he easily falls into error, he cannot entirely overcome his bestial appetites, and he is often overwhelmed by these lower impulses. Someone might say that these defects are not penal, but natural defects arising necessarily from matter..... But if we study the matter carefully, we can conclude with sufficient probability that divine providence, which has conjoined congruous perfectibles to the particular perfections, united the higher nature (the soul) to the lower (the body) so that the soul would be dominant, and if any impediment should arise against this dominion from the defect of nature, God would have removed it by a special and supernatural act of beneficence."[1081]
Pascal said: "Without this mystery man would be more incomprehensible than this mystery is incomprehensible to man." The doctrine of original sin offers the solution to the puzzling problem of the coexistence in man of such great weakness and misery and such strong aspirations to the sublime.[1082] But, as St. Thomas says, "God permitted evil to happen that something better might come of it."[1083] Hence we read, "And where sin abounded, grace did more abound,"[1084] and in blessing the paschal candle we chant, "O happy fault that merited so great a Redeemer!"
Indeed, according to revelation: "For if by one man's offense death reigned through one; much more they who receive abundance of grace, and of the gift, and of justice, shall reign in life through one, Jesus Christ."[1085] Thus the motive of the Incarnation was formally a motive of mercy, for the reason behind mercy is the alleviation of misery.[1086] God predestined Christ to the glory of the Redeemer and permitted Adam's sin that Christ might be the Redeemer of the human race.
But while we clearly see the sensible existence of evil in the world, the existence of the concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes, and the pride of life, we do not clearly understand the spiritual heights and the infinite value of the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, and we do not appreciate the price of all the graces that flow invisibly from this mystery to the souls of all generations. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us,....that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh."[1087]
The solution of this problem, that God permits evil only for some greater good, is at once clear and obscure; it is clear in the abstract and in general but obscure in the concrete and in particular, because only in heaven shall we see this greater good because of which God permits evil. We are loved by God much more than we think, just as St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, did not understand the greatness of the blessing which her daughter had received. Grace is the seed of glory, and our trials and tribulations can obtain for us the eternal reward of glory.
But this solution of the problem of evil will not bring peace and quiet to anxious souls in this life without the influence of the gifts of the Holy Ghost and without the special inspiration of the gifts of understanding and wisdom, from which we obtain a quasi-experimental knowledge of the good things promised to those who believe. Hence St. Thomas says that these gifts are necessary for salvation.[1088]
It is true, therefore, that good is the efficient cause of evil only <per accidens>. And if this occurs frequently, it is only so in the human race because of the union of the soul with the body and because of original sin. Such is not the case with the angels. St. Thomas says that the multitude of angels is very great,[1089] like the multitude of the stars,[1090] and that more angels remained constant than sinned. In the angels there is only the intellectual nature; there is no attraction to sensible things, and there is no original sin in them. St. Thomas wrote these words in explanation of the passage, "Thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him."[1091] Thus the number of all the elect, if the angels are included, is greater, according to St. Thomas, than the number of the damned.
Second Article: Whether The Highest Good, Which Is God, Is The Cause Of Evil
State of the question. It seems that God is the cause of evil because:
1. We read in the Scriptures, "I am the Lord and there is none else: I form the light, and create darkness, I make peace, and create evil" (that is, the evil of penalty);[1092]
2. If good is the cause of evil, as we have said, God, who is the cause of all good things, is also the cause of evil;
3. Aristotle says that the cause of the ship's safety and the cause of the shipwreck are the same, that is, the pilot according as he is vigilant or negligent. But God is the cause of the safety of all things. Therefore it seems that He is the cause of every loss and every evil, that is, because of insufficient care or lack of help. This last objection implies negligence in God, but divine negligence is a contradiction in terms and a denial of providence.
On the other hand, St. Augustine says: "God is not the author of evil (that is, of guilt), because He is not the cause of the tendency to non-being."[1093]
The conclusion of the article is in two parts: 1. God is not the cause of the evil that consists in defect of action, that is, the evil of guilt; 2. God is <per accidens> the cause of the physical evil of natural things and of the evil of penalty.
First conclusion. God is in no way the cause of the evil of guilt.[1094]
a) Proof from Scripture. We read, "The works of God are perfect, and all His ways are judgments: God is faithful and without any iniquity, He is just and right";[1095] "Is there injustice with God? God forbid";[1096] "Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and He tempteth no man";[1097] "He that committeth sin is of the devil";[1098] "For thou hatest none of the things which Thou hast made";[1099] "But to God the wicked and his wickedness are hateful alike";[1100] "Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in Me."[1101]
Against the Calvinists the Council of Trent declared: "If anyone shall say that it is not in man's power to go his evil ways, but that God does the evil works as He does the good works, not only permissively but properly and <per se>, so that the treason of Judas and the calling of Paul are equally God's work, let him be anathema."[1102] Against the Predestinationists the Council of Carisiac declared: "When some are saved it is because of the gift of salvation; when some are lost it is because of those who are lost"[1103]; "Destruction is thy own, O Israel." And the Third Council of Valencia clearly affirmed against Scotus Eriugena that God is the author of penalties but not of guilt.[1104]
From these definitions it is clear that God is neither the direct nor the indirect cause of sin. He is not the direct cause of sin, by moral or physical movement to sin; nor indirectly, that is, by negligence, because of insufficient assistance, as the negligent pilot is the indirect cause of the shipwreck. This last point has been expressly defined by the Church against the Protestants and the Jansenists, who held that God is in some way the cause of sin because of insufficient assistance. In its definition,[1105] the Council of Trent quotes the words of St. Augustine: "God does not command the impossible, but when He commands He admonishes us to do what we can and to petition for that which we cannot do."[1106] We learn the same from the condemnation of the first proposition of Jansenius:" Some of God's precepts are impossible for just men who will and try (to fulfill them) with the powers that they now have: besides they lack the grace that would make these precepts possible of fulfillment."[1107]
St. Thomas explains the divine permission of sin by enumerating the various ways in which the term "permission" is understood.[1108] His enumeration may be reduced to the following synopsis.
(diagram page 505)
permission
of good
of a simple good: the permission of a licit concession; for example, for a religious to visit his parents
of a lesser good
permission of indulgence; for example, second marriages
permission of dispensation; for example, for a Dominican to eat meat
of evil
of a lesser evil
permission of tolerance; for example, giving a bill of divorce to avoid homicide
of a simple moral evil:
the permission of support, in this way God permits even serious sins for some greater good
We see that permission is not used univocally in all these instances. In the last case the will of the one permitting intervenes to a much smaller degree than in the first, and the will to permit is the same as the will not to impede. Hence God is in no way the cause of sin.
b) Proof from reason. The evil which consists in the defect of the action is always caused by the defect of the agent. But God is the agent who is absolutely indefectible and never deficient. Therefore God can in no way be the cause of the evil of action or of guilt.
The major is clear from the preceding article, where it was shown that the evil of action does not have a cause <per se> but only <per accidens>, as coming from the defect of the agent, whether it be the principal agent, as weakness in walking, or the instrumental agent, as lameness on account of a curvature of the leg bone. In physical things, of course, this defect of the agent comes from some disturbing cause or from some impediment, that is, from some power of a contrary agent.
But in free agents the evil of a voluntary action comes only from the defect of the operator. "In voluntary things the defect of the action proceeds from a will deficient in act, inasmuch as the will does not subject itself in act to its rule. This defect is, however, not guilt, but guilt follows upon it because the will operates with this defect." That is to say that the non-consideration of the rule is only a negation before the agent operates, but it becomes privation and is called in consideration when the agent begins to operate without consideration of the rule. As St. Thomas says: "The will takes on the first aspect of guilt from the fact that the will proceeds to this kind of choice without actual consideration of the rule."[1109] Further, this inconsideration becomes at least virtually voluntary and culpable when a man in a state of alertness should and could consider the rule of right reason in his operation. God does not command the impossible. Therefore every venial sin is avoidable, although without a very special help all venial sins cannot be avoided continuously.
The minor is clear. God is absolutely indefectible, that is, He cannot be the author of a defect either directly or indirectly. Not directly, because He cannot move either morally or physically to sin as sin, that is, to something inordinate under the aspect of privation; not indirectly, that is, through neglect or carelessness, because divine negligence implies a contradiction. This is quite clear in the abstract and in general, although in concrete and particular cases it is difficult to explain the divine movement in the direction of sin.
Therefore, if God were to command the impossible, sin would be unavoidable, and then it would not be sin, nor could man be justly punished especially for all eternity; that would be the greatest injustice. For this reason Jansenius eventually arrived at the denial not only of mercy but also of divine justice.
Moreover, if by an impossible hypothesis God were to wish to be the cause of sin, He could not be because sin is outside the adequate object of the divine omnipotence, which is indefectible and cannot produce what is the privation of being and goodness but can produce only what has the nature of being and goodness. Thus when God moves toward the physical entity of sin He necessarily prescinds from the malice involved. Nothing is more exactly defined than the adequate object of a potency or power; as sight cannot see sounds, so God cannot be either the direct or the indirect cause of sin.[1110]
In another place St. Thomas explains this conclusion more clearly in two ways by distinguishing between direct and indirect causality.[1111]
1. God cannot be the direct cause of sin. To be the direct cause of sin is to incline one's own will or that of another to sin. But God cannot incline His will or that of another to sin. Therefore God cannot be the direct cause of sin.
The major is clear.
Proof of the minor. God inclines and converges all things to Himself as to their last end, for every agent acts for a proportionate end, and the order of actions corresponds to the order of ends. Hence God cannot be the direct cause of any sin, since every sin is a departure from the order to God as to an end.
This reason is in conformity with the reason given above in the article, whether God wills evils: "God cannot be author of the evil of guilt,....because the evil of guilt is directly opposed to the uncreated good; it is contrary to the fulfillment of the divine will."[1112] "Evil is never desired except <per accidens>, that is, when the good to which the evil is joined is desired more than the good that is deprived by the evil. But God wills no good more than His own goodness..... Hence God in no way wills the evil of guilt, which denies the order to the divine good."[1113]
To put it briefly: God, as the indefectible cause, cannot be the cause of the evil of guilt, because this evil denies the order to the divine good, which God wills above all things. Otherwise God would be a defective cause and He would depart from Himself, from truth and goodness, which is obviously impossible since God is essential goodness itself.
What, then, is the direct cause of sin? It is the sinner, inasmuch as he tends to an object out of harmony with the rules of morals; the sinner wills <per se> some changeable good and consequently he wills the inordination of his act.
2. God cannot be the indirect cause of sin. To be the indirect cause of sin is to refrain from preventing it when we can and should prevent it. But according to His wisdom and justice God is not bound to prevent the sins which He permits. Therefore, when God does not provide the help to avoid sin, He is not the indirect cause of the sin.
The major is certain; it is the definition of the indirect voluntarium; for example, the pilot is the indirect cause of the shipwreck when he neglects to guide the ship and is able and obliged to do so.
The minor is proved as follows: "The universal provider allows a certain defect to occur in some particular instance lest the good of the whole be impeded..... The corruption of one individual is the generation of another and so the species is preserved. Since God is the universal provider of all being, it pertains to His providence that He permit certain defects in particular things lest the perfect good of the universe be impeded. If all evils were to be impeded, the universe would lose many good things; it would lose the life of the lion, the patience of the martyrs, if animals would not be killed or if tyrants would not persecute."[1114]
Before we consider the second conclusion concerning physical evil, we reply to the objections to the first conclusion.
Solution Of The Objections
In the solution of these objections we must keep in mind the manner in which God moves toward the physical act of sin.[1115] These points should be carefully noted.
1. We presuppose that there is in God an eternal positive and effective decree with regard to the entity of sin, and a permissive decree with regard to the defect of sin proceeding solely from the deficient cause. Hence from eternity there was a twofold decree with regard to the sin of Christ's enemies at some determined hour.
2. The divine motion is previous, since God is the cause of the act of sin and not only of the sin as being. The cause always precedes the effect, at least by nature and causality; the will needs to be moved so that it can act, because the will is not its own action just as it is not its own being.
3. This divine motion is predeterminative, but not in the same way as the divine motion by which we are moved to a good act; in the case of evil the divine motion is predeterminative as executing the divine will, but for an evil act there is a twofold decree instead of a single decree: the positive decree with regard to the entity of the sin and the permissive decree with regard to the lack of moral rectitude, or with regard to the malice.
4. This divine motion in its execution follows upon, at least by nature if not in time, the moral or objectively defective motion, which as such is not from God but from the devil, from an evil man, or from concupiscence. On the other hand, the moral motion which is a prerequisite to a good act is from God, at least as from the first cause, because it is good.
Once this defective moral motion is posited and after the intervention of some inconsideration on the part of man, the physical influx of God begins to flow into the will itself and effects the entity of the act of the will, but it prescinds from the malice; the freedom remains as in other acts because God moves not only toward the act but also that the act be free.
5. God does not determine the material part of the sin before the creature has in some way determined itself to the formal part of the sin. As the universal provider, God moves only that will to sin which is in itself evilly disposed and which thus disposed needs to be moved. Thus Christ said to Judas: "That which thou dost, do quickly."[1116] That which on the part of God precedes the determination of the will to the formal part of sin is only the permission to sin, which is a penalty, not for the first sin but for the other sins.
6. The inconsideration, which is the beginning of the sin, is voluntary and culpable, at least virtually, inasmuch as a rational agent can and should consider the rule of right reason in his action, and if he does not consider it, he is culpable; this is the beginning of the sin. Finally, since the will is naturally inclined to the good, it does not turn to the evil or the apparent good without first virtually turning itself away from the true good, at least by not considering the law when it could and should. This predetermination to the act of sin is not something primary in Thomism; it is secondary, something consequent and merely philosophical.
First objection. (The second objection in the article.) This objection, which attempts to show that God is the direct, although not the immediate, cause of sin, is stated as follows: The effect of a second cause is referred to the first cause. But the evil of guilt is sometimes the effect of a second cause. Therefore the evil of guilt is referred to the first cause.
Reply. I distinguish the major: with regard to the entity and perfection, I concede; with regard to the effect, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: as a defect, I concede; as being, I deny; for example, whatever there is of motion in lameness is caused by the motive power, but whatever there is of deformity is not of the motive power but from the curvature of the bone. That is to say, the divine motion prescinds from malice.
I insist. But God moves the will to the act as it issues from the will itself. But the act of sin as it issues from the will does not prescind from malice. Therefore God in moving to this act does not prescind from malice.
Reply. I distinguish the major: as the act issues effectively from the will, I concede; defectively, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: as it issues from the will defectively, I concede; effectively, I deny.
I insist. The cause of anything is also the cause of that which essentially belongs to it. But some physical acts are essentially evil in a moral sense, as hatred of God. Therefore in moving toward these acts God cannot prescind from their malice.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the cause of anything in the physical order is also the cause of that which essentially belongs to it in the same order, I concede; in the moral order and outside the adequate object of its causality, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: and the malice is in the physical order and is within the adequate object of the divine omnipotence, I deny; and the malice is in the moral order and outside the adequate object of the divine omnipotence, I concede.
Thomists commonly point out that nothing is more clearly delimited than the causality of a potency or power, which is so completely concerned with its object that it touches on nothing else, no matter how closely anything else may be conjoined to its object. Thus in the same apple three things, color, taste, and smell, are intimately connected, and yet sight takes in the color but not the taste and smell. Sight cannot see sounds. Indeed, a distinction of reason is sufficient to delimit a potency; thus the good and true are distinguished only by reason, for example, in the true goodness of virtue, and yet the true is known and the good is loved. The intellect touches the good under the aspect of truth but not under the aspect of the good. Similarly, in God the paternity is distinguished from the divine nature only by reason, and the divine nature alone is communicated to the Son, without the communication of the paternity. In sin, however, the act taken physically and the moral malice are much more distinct from each other; these things pertain to two different orders, and the malice is outside the adequate object of the divine omnipotence, for every agent acts in a manner at least analogically similar to itself, and between God and the malice of guilt there is not even an analogical similarity. Hence, even if God willed to be the cause of sin, He could not, just as a man who willed to see sound could not.
I insist. But the formal constituent of a sin of commission is a positive element, according to St. Thomas and many Thomists. But God causes whatever is positive in sin. Therefore God causes the formal constituent of a sin of commission.
Reply. I distinguish the major: it is a positive element under the aspect of defectible being, or as forming the basis of the inordination, I concede; under the aspect of effectible being, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: God causes whatever is positive under the aspect of effectible being, I concede; under the aspect of defectible being, I deny. Thus, as defectible being the sin does not come within the adequate object of the divine omnipotence.
I insist. Whatever causes a form, <per accidens> produces the annexed privation. But the privation of moral rectitude is annexed to the act of sin. Therefore God, causing the act of sin, <per accidens> produces the privation of rectitude.
Reply. I distinguish the major: if this privation follows from the very nature of this form, I concede; in this way God is the cause <per accidens> of the physical evil of penalty or of the death of an animal because He wills the life of the lion; but if the privation proceeds from a defective principle, I deny. In this latter instance the privation is not even <per accidens> from an indefectible principle.
Thus we say that the sinner himself is <per accidens> the cause of the malice of his act, inasmuch as he tends <per se> to some unworthy good; but God is not even <per accidens> the cause of this malice, because this malice is outside the adequate object of omnipotence.
Other objections attempt to prove that God is at least indirectly the cause of sin.[1117]
The same pilot is the cause of the safety of the ship and of the shipwreck. But God is the cause of the safety of all things. Therefore God is the cause of moral shipwreck, or sin.
Reply. I distinguish the major: inasmuch as the pilot is defective, or does not guide the ship when he can and should, I concede; otherwise, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: and God is deficient in doing what is necessary for salvation, I deny; and God is still indefectible, I concede.
I insist. But he who does not prevent a sin when he can do so is still the indirect cause of the sin. But God does not prevent sin when He is able. Therefore God is the indirect cause of sin.
Reply. I distinguish the major: when he can and should, I concede; when he can and is not obliged to do so, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: God is able not to prevent, or permit, that a defectible agent fails, or sins, because of a greater good which is occasioned by a sin.[1118] Thus God is not obliged to prevent sin.
I insist. St. Thomas says:[1119] "If affirmation is the cause of affirmation, negation is the cause of negation, as Aristotle says; for example, the rising of the sun is the cause of the day, and the non-rising of the sun is the cause of darkness. But the conferring of grace is the cause of a salutary act. Therefore the non-conferring of grace, included in the permission of even the first sin, is the cause of the omission of the salutary act."
We see that St. Thomas was not ignorant of this objection with which Thomists have been always confronted in almost the same terms.
Reply. I distinguish the major: if we are dealing with one cause alone, as the sun rising or not rising, or the pilot watching or not watching, I concede; but if we are dealing with two causes of which one is indefectible and the other defectible, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: and the omission of the salutary act proceeds from one and the same cause as that which confers grace, I deny; from another defectible and deficient cause, I concede.[1120]
I insist. He who denies grace apart from antecedent guilt is the indirect cause of sin. But God, by permitting the beginning of the first sin (for example, in a baptized person), denies grace apart from antecedent guilt. Therefore God is the indirect cause of the beginning of the first sin.
Reply. The reply is contained in St. Thomas' words concerning the principle, "mutual causes are causes in different genera," which is applied inversely in justification and the loss of grace by sin. I distinguish the major: apart from guilt antecedent by a priority of nature, I concede; by a priority of time, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: apart from guilt antecedent by a priority of time, I concede; by a priority of nature, I deny.
Explanation. The denial of grace is indeed a penalty, which can be inflicted only for guilt. Thus the denial of grace implies more than the simple divine permission of sin, which simply antecedes sin as a condition <sine qua non>. It is true that the permission of the second sin is a penalty for the first sin, as St. Thomas says,[1121] but the permission of the first sin, for example, in the angels, or in the innocent Adam, or in a baptized person, does not have the nature of penalty.
God does not deny grace except for some antecedent guilt, but this guilt can be antecedent by a priority not of time but of nature only, in the genus of material cause, or of a defectible and deficient cause.
This is illustrated by the principle proposed by St. Thomas,[1122] mutual causes are causes in different genera, without there being a vicious circle. Thus in the same instant, on the part of the sun, illumination is prior to the removal of darkness, but on the part of the atmosphere to be illuminated the removal of darkness is first in the order of nature, although the two things are simultaneous. Since the infusion of grace and the remission of guilt are considered on the part of God as justifying, the infusion of grace is prior to remission of guilt in the order of nature. But if these things are considered on the part of man who is justified, the converse is true: liberation from guilt (we do not say remission of guilt) is prior in the order of nature to the attainment of justifying grace (we do not say infusion of grace because this expression views the matter from the viewpoint of God and not from the viewpoint of man, who is justified).
Speaking absolutely, the infusion of grace is prior to the remission of guilt, because these things are predicated on the part of God.
On the other hand, the loss of grace and the commission of sin are predicated of man sinning, and absolutely speaking from the viewpoint of the material cause, or of man losing grace, it is true that the beginning of the first sin is prior to the denial of divine grace, that is at least initial guilt is absolutely prior to penalty. The only thing that precedes this beginning of the first sin is the divine permission, which is a condition <sine qua non> of the sin. The denial of grace implies more than the simple permission of sin, which is not a penalty especially in the case of the first sin.
I insist. The Council of Trent declared: "God does not desert by His grace those who are once justified unless He is first deserted by them."[1123]
Reply. This statement was made by St. Augustine, who nevertheless solved the problem of evil.[1124] The statement means that God does not withdraw habitual grace except for some antecedent sin. In the case of actual grace, however, there is a desertion properly so called, which is the denial of actual grace by God. But this is not true of the simple divine permission for the beginning of the first sin, because God is not bound to preserve even the just man from sin by a special and efficacious help which is not due to man. But God does not refuse sufficient grace by which, if man does not resist it, he can attain to good; but if man resists sufficient grace, God can justly deny him efficacious grace.
I insist. As the best friend, God should always give man efficacious grace to avoid sin. But God is the best friend of every man. Therefore God should always give all men efficacious grace to avoid sin.
Reply. I ask you to prove the major, namely, that God as Adam's best friend was bound to offer him at all times not only sufficient grace but also efficacious grace, that is, by preventing Adam's resistance to sufficient grace.
I insist. But sufficient grace is required for the fulfillment of the commandments. And God because of the abundance of His goodness owes it to Himself to give us more help than is required to make the commandments possible of fulfillment.[1125] Therefore because of the abundance of His goodness God owes it to Himself to give us more than sufficient grace, namely, efficacious grace.
Reply. I distinguish the minor: frequently for the human race and also for the just man, I concede; always unto the end, this I ask you to prove.
I insist. God owes it to Himself at all times to unite mercy and justice in all His works.
Reply. I distinguish: by abundant sufficient graces, by sermons, good examples, let it pass; by graces that are always efficacious, this I ask you to prove. Even when God punishes, His mercy is united to justice, because even in hell the punishment is less than condign.
I insist. He who does not preserve a man in good is the indirect cause of the sin of a man who needs this preservation. But, by permitting the beginning of the first sin, God does not preserve a man in good. Therefore God is the indirect cause of sin.
Reply. I distinguish the major: he who does not preserve a man in good when he is able and obliged to do so, I concede; when he is able but not obliged to do so, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor. God is not obliged to preserve all defectible things in good, otherwise defectible things would never fail, and preservation from sin would not have been a most special privilege for the Blessed Virgin, but it would be something most common. God actually gives more than justice demands because of the superabundance of His goodness;[1126] He does this even for each person frequently, but not always to the end, that is, He does not conduct each person to his last end.
If it is said that man needs to be preserved in good so that he might remain in the good, the reply is: that man requires and has a right to be preserved in good and that God owes it to Himself to preserve man in good, this I deny; that man requires this preservation without having the right to it, I concede. In himself man is defectible and from this it follows that he sometimes fails; he fails sometimes physically and without guilt, like the agents inferior to him, and sometimes he fails morally and voluntarily with guilt, and God is not obliged to prevent this guilt. If God were so bound, no sin would ever be committed and defectible things would never fail. To no one, not even to the elect, is owing the efficacious election to glory, otherwise all men would be saved.
St. Thomas expresses this thought in these words:[1127] "It happens that God does not extend to some that help to avoid sin which, if it were extended, would prevent them from sinning. But God does all this according to the order of justice and wisdom, since He Himself is justice and wisdom. Hence it cannot be imputed to God that someone sins, as if He were the cause of sin, just as the pilot is not the cause of the shipwreck because of the fact that he does not steer the ship unless when he withdraws his guidance he could and should be steering the ship." The pilot is blamed only for negligence, and divine negligence is a contradiction in terms. This objection is indeed difficult, but it is not cogent.
I insist. St. Thomas says: "Out of the abundance of His goodness God dispenses those things that are owing to some creature more generously than the importance of the thing demands."[1128]
Reply. This is often true, but God does not always lead every man to the last end, preserving him and elevating him above sin. We are here face to face with a profound mystery, indeed the mystery of iniquity is more obscure than the mystery of grace since it is obscure not only with regard to us but also in itself. But the apparent contradiction will be obviated if we keep clearly in mind the following two most certain principles:
1. "God does not command the impossible, but when He commands He admonishes you to do what you are able and to ask for what you cannot do."[1129] This principle was invoked against the Protestants by the Council of Trent.[1130]
2. In the article, "Whether God loves all things equally,"[1131] St. Thomas formulated this principle: "Since the love of God is the cause of the goodness of things, one thing would not be better than another if God had not willed a greater good for one thing than for another." This is the principle of predilection as found in revelation: "For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to His good will,"[1132] "For who distinguisheth thee? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?"[1133]
These two principles were promulgated by the Council of Carisiac in the words of St. Prosper: "The omnipotent God wills all men without exception to be saved, even though all are not saved. The fact that some are saved is owing to the gift of Him who saves them; the fact that some are lost is owing to themselves."[1134]
Taken separately, these two principles are most certain according to revelation; even in the natural order they are evident. But their intimate reconciliation remains obscure, and no created intelligence by its own powers can make this reconciliation, because it would be necessary to see how the infinite mercy, the infinite justice, and supreme liberty are intimately reconciled in God. No one can see God in this way except in the light of glory. In the words of Bossuet: "In this state of captivity we must humble our intelligence before the divine mystery and admit these two graces, one that leaves our will inexcusable before God, the other that prevents us from glorying in ourselves."[1135]
Hence St. Paul says: "He that glorieth, may glory in the Lord";[1136] "For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man may glory. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them."[1137]
An article could be written comparing false evidence with the obscurity of true faith to illustrate why so often, especially in this question of evil, the objections at first sight seem clearer than the replies. This matter might at least be considered in a chapter on faith as illumined by the gifts of the Holy Ghost. The principal reason is that the objections are taken from the superficial appearances of reality, whereas the replies are taken from that highest reality which is with God and which is so profound for us because of our defectibility and therefore remains so obscure.
Indeed in this present problem there are two obscurities opposed to each other: the higher obscurity of the divine reality which is translucent and the lower obscurity of sin itself, which is itself the privation of light, truth, and goodness. Between these two opposing obscurities is the true clarity of these certain principles: "God does not command the impossible," and "no one would be better than another if he were not loved more by God." The reconciliation of these principles is a mystery, but the evidence of the principles themselves indicates that the objections are superficial and false. In the objections we always find some sophistic falsehood, and none of the objections is either cogent or necessary.
These objections are useful because they arouse in the just a desire to contemplate the mystery of the Deity on a plane above every distinct idea. Such contemplation when it proceeds from faith illumined by the supernatural gifts with a certain experimental knowledge of God remains obscure with a translucent obscurity of which St. John of the Cross spoke so eloquently.[1138]
Second conclusion. God wills and causes <per accidens> physical evil and the evil of penalty.
An agent that by its power <per se> produces some form as a consequence and quasi- <per accidens> causes the privation of the opposite form. But God wills and causes <per se> and principally the good of the universe, which requires defectible things that are sometimes deficient, and God wills and causes the order of justice, which requires that penalty be inflicted on sinners. Therefore God wills and causes as a consequence and quasi- <per accidens> physical evil and the evil of penalty.
It should be noted that St. Thomas bases this proof not only on efficient causality but also on the divine intellect and will, because whatever God causes <per accidens> He also wills in the same manner; from eternity God willed and foresaw whatever He would do even <per accidens> in these or other circumstances. We, however, sometimes produce <per accidens> certain evils which we do not will or foresee. Such is not the case with God.
St. Thomas returns to the proof which he had already given above in the article, "Whether the will of God is concerned with evil," where he says: "God wills the evil of natural defect or the evil of penalty by willing some good to which such evil is joined."[1139] But God can in no way will the evil of guilt, which negates the order to the divine good willed by God above all things.
Doubt. Is the following proposition true: "While evils are not good, nevertheless it is good that there be evils, because those things that are evil in themselves are ordered to some good"? If this proposition is true, then the following is also true: "It is good that there are sins."
St. Thomas replies in the negative: "Some say that, although God does not will evils, nevertheless He wills that evils should be and should come into being..... But this is not a correct statement, because evil is not <per se> ordered to good but only <per accidens>. The fact that some good ensues from a sin is beyond the intention of the sinner, just as it is beyond the intention of tyrants that the patience of martyrs is glorified in persecution."[1140] Hence we should say that <per accidens> and as a consequence God wills physical evil and the evil of penalty, and that He wills to permit sin by not preventing them and occasionally deriving some good from them. Only in this sense do we say, "O blessed fault which merited so great a Redeemer.!"
This entire article can be reduced to the following synopsis. God in no way wills or causes the evil of guilt, neither on the part of the end, because sin negates the order to the divine good loved by God above all things; nor on the part of the efficient cause, because sin is from a deficient voluntary agent, at least by inconsideration, and this defect cannot be predicated of the indefectible God. God wills physical evil and penalty <per accidens>, on the part of the end, because He wills the good of the universe and justice, and from this evils sometimes follow; on the part of the efficient cause, because these evils proceed from the power of the agent producing a form which entails the privation of the opposite form.
Third Article: Whether There Is One Supreme Evil Which Is The Cause Of All Evil
State of the question. This article is in direct opposition to the Manichaeans, Albigenses, and other heretics who taught a system of dualism. The title inquires directly about the efficient cause of evil. It was in the thirteenth century that the Albigenses were spreading their doctrines in southern France. In the beginning of his article St. Thomas collected the arguments that might be proposed in support of dualism.
First objection. In things we almost everywhere find contrariety; for example, life and death, good and evil, true and false, noble and base. Therefore two contrary principles must be postulated. The reply will be that contraries agree in being.
Second objection. If one of the contraries is in the nature of things, so also is the opposite. But the supreme good exists. Therefore supreme evil also exists. Reply: evil opposes that good which it negates, not that good in which it is.
Third objection. Grades of perfection are judged according as they approach the best or that which is good by essence. So also it should be with grades of evil with regard to the supreme evil. The reply will be that bad and worse are judged according as they recede from good, not as they approach the supreme evil.
Fourth objection. Evil by participation must eventually lead to evil by essence. Reply: there is no evil by participation, but beings that are deprived of some due good.
Fifth objection. Everything that is <per accidens> is ultimately reduced to that which is <per se>, and since evil exists in many instances, it must have a cause <per se>, namely, the supreme evil. The reply will be that, although evil occurs in many instances in the human race, it is not intended <per se>.
Sixth objection. The evil of an effect is traced to the evil in the cause, namely, a deficient cause. But there cannot be an infinite process, and we must eventually come to the first evil cause. The reply will be that evil is traced to some good cause from which the evil ensues <per accidens>.
Conclusion: there is not nor can there be a first principle of evil.
This proposition is of faith. (cf. Denz., nos. 234 ff.) St. Thomas' argument <sed contra> refers to the dogma of the creation, according to which God is the cause of all being.
The body of the article contains two parts: the first is strictly theological and proves the conclusion; the second is historical, explaining why the Manichaeans postulated two principles.
The conclusion is proved in three ways:
1. from the notion of good;
2. from the notion of evil;
3. from the notion of the first principle.
1. From the notion of good. Good and being are convertible. But the first evil principle would be evil in essence and in no way good. Therefore this first principle of evil would not be being and would not exist.
The proof of the major was given above.[1141] Every being as being in act is a certain perfection and a good desirable to itself, and thus every being strives to preserve its being. As matter is being in potency, so it is good in potency. Hence no being is said to be being inasmuch as it is evil but inasmuch as it lacks some being. And therefore evil exists only in the good as in a subject.[1142]
2. From the notion of good. If evil were integral being, or if it completely corrupted the good in which it is, it would destroy itself, as Aristotle pointed out, for evil cannot be except in a subject.[1143] But the supreme evil would be integral being.
3. From the notion of first principle. A first principle cannot be caused <per accidens> by another, nor can it be a mere accidental cause. But evil is caused <per accidens> by good, that is, by a defective agent or by a contrary agent, and evil can be a cause only <per accidens>, that is, by reason of an annexed good. Therefore the notion of evil is repugnant to the notion of a first principle. And therefore the dualistic position of Manichaeism involves contradictions on all sides.
In the second, historical part of the article St. Thomas explains how the Manichaeans arrived at this solution of this problem of evil. These heretics failed to consider the most universal cause of being as being, that is, the creative cause, and only considered particular efficient and final causes. They did not understand that what is harmful with regard to some particular being, as a viper with regard to man, may be useful with regard to the universal good of the entire universe. Nor were they able to rise above mutually contrary causes to the most universal cause.
In his reply to the fifth difficulty St. Thomas says that the corruptible beings in which there is an evil of nature are a small part of the universe. He reasoned in this way because he thought that the heavenly bodies were incorruptible, but today spectral analysis has shown the opposite to be true. At any rate, after the resurrection of the dead there will be no more corruption.[1144] In this reply he affirms that only in men does evil seem to be in the majority of instances, because there are more who follow the senses than follow reason.
This concludes the questions on evil: what evil is, its kinds, and its cause.
Appendix: The Trials Of The Just And Their Motives[1145]
In the Gospel our Lord said: "I am the true vine; and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me, that beareth not fruit, He will take away; and every one that beareth fruit, He will purge it, that it may bring forth more fruit."[1146] Commenting on this, St. Thomas says: "In order that a vine may be more fruitful, the growers cut away the superfluous shoots. So it is in man. For when a man who is well disposed and united with God allows his affections to incline to other things, his power to do good is weakened and made less efficacious. Hence it is that God, in order that man may be more fruitful, often cuts away such obstacles and purges him, sending him trials and temptations, by which he becomes stronger. And therefore our Lord says, "He will purge it," even though the man is pure, because no one in this life is so pure than he cannot be made purer. St. John says: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."[1147] God tries a man "that he may bring forth more fruit," that is, increase in virtue, that being purer he may be more fruitful, as the Scripture says: "He that is just, let him be justified still; and he that is holy, let him be sanctified still";[1148] The word of the truth of the Gospel "bringeth forth fruit and groweth";[1149] "they shall go from virtue to virtue."[1150]
Thus the just man who is purified brings forth more fruit. St. Thomas explains: "He bears a threefold fruit in this life. The first is to abstain from sin..... The second is to give himself to works of holiness..... The third is to work for the sanctification of others. He brings forth a fourth fruit in eternal life." The reason for this efficacy is that the just man remains in Christ, who said, "without Me you can do nothing." This is the first reason for the trials of the just.
The second reason for these trials is that the just man is united with Christ, and by the same means as Christ used he cooperates in the salvation of others. St. Paul said: "And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come, that shall be revealed in us."[1151]
Commenting on the words, "yet so, if we suffer with Him," St. Thomas says: "Christ, who is the principal heir, came into the inheritance of glory by His sufferings. 'Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory?'[1152] We cannot come into the possession of our inheritance by an easier way, and so we also must attain our inheritance by suffering. In the Acts of the Apostles we read, 'through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.'[1153] Hence he says, "yet so, if we suffer with Him, that is, suffering with Christ, we undergo the tribulations of this world that we may be glorified with Christ. 'For if we be dead with Him,....we shall also reign with Him.'"[1154]
Therefore our Lord said: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me";[1155] and, "he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me."[1156] In his commentary St. Thomas says: "This was said because he who loves father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. So also he who loves himself more than Me is not worthy of Me, because God alone can completely satisfy man's affections..... Hence he who is not prepared to suffer death for the truth, and especially that cruelest death, the death of the cross, is not worthy of Me. Indeed a man should glory in the cross, as St. Paul said, 'God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.'[1157] He takes up the cross who mortifies his flesh, as we read again, 'And they that are Christ's, have crucified their flesh, with the vices and concupiscences.'[1158] The cross is also borne in the heart when a man is contrite for his sins, as the Apostle says, 'Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire?'"[1159]
This was verified in the apostles. St. Paul wrote: "With Christ I am nailed to the cross. And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me";[1160] and, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."[1161] Commenting on these words, St. Thomas writes: "Behold, where the philosopher of this world is ashamed, the Apostle found a treasure. What appeared to be foolishness to the philosopher, became wisdom and glory for the Apostle, as said St. Augustine. Everyone glories in that by which he becomes great, for example, riches. The Apostle gloried in nothing except in Christ, especially in the cross of Christ, because in the cross are found all things about which men glory. Some men glory in the friendship of the great, but in the cross is the sign of divine friendship. Some glory in knowledge, but the Apostle found the most sublime science in the cross: 'For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.'[1162] For in the cross is the perfection of the whole law and the complete art of living well. Some men glory in power, and St. Paul found the greatest power in the cross: 'For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God.'[1163] So the Apostle glories in the cross for the liberty he has received, for his acceptance into the heavenly kingdom, and for the victory over the devil and sin."[1164]
According to St. Thomas, therefore, the tribulations of the just are explained by two reasons: 1. that the just may be purified and bring forth more fruit; 2. that they may cooperate with Christ in the salvation of souls.[1165] Tribulation is the fire that tries the elect; in this fire evils are confounded because the temporal allurements are destroyed, but not the elect.[1166] The tribulations of the impious, however, are more grievous, because the impious do not have the love of God to support them.[1167]
Some philosophers have objected that this doctrine of the cross and of the trials of the just is not only above reason but contrary to reason.
To this we reply that this doctrine contains something that is entirely in agreement with good reason, namely, tribulation shows the absolute insufficiency of a life lived according to the senses and passions, as Spinoza explains in his Ethics. Man, he says, living according to the senses and his passions wants to be the center of all things, and he becomes the slave of all, he becomes a slave, and finds himself in contradiction with himself and with others. The tribulation which we find in the sensual life arouses the desire to live according to right reason, and there we find freedom. The sensual man becomes the slave of external circumstances, of his passions, and of other men. On a higher plane, the tribulations which we find in the rational, intellectual, and moral life, excite the desire of living according to the divine life.
The philosophy of pessimism, according to Spinoza, is the result of sensualism, whereas right reason rising above the senses disposes us to optimism, for the senses know nothing but particulars, but reason considers the good of the universe on account of which evils are permitted. But a higher optimism is found in the supernatural life, according to St. Paul, "To them that love God, all things work together unto good."[1168] Better than the ancient Greek philosophers, Christianity knows that perfect happiness is not found in this valley of tears but in the life to come.
On the other hand, he who does not wish to live supernaturally descends from the spiritual life to a merely intellectual life. There he is met with difficulties and if wishes to overcome them he must ascend. If he does not ascend, he descends to bitter pride and a sensual life. He who does not conquer is conquered; he who does not ascend, falls.
St. John Chrysostom enumerates these eight reasons for the trials of the just, taken from St. Paul.
1. The remedy against pride: "Lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a sting of my flesh."[1169]
2. The remedy against vainglory: "Lest any man should think of me above that which he seeth in me, or anything he heareth from me"[1170]
3. That the virtue and power of God might shine forth in weak men: "Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me."[1171]
4. That the patience of the just might be manifested in persecution and that the purity of their intentions might be made known, as in the case of Job.[1172]
5. That the just man might fix his thoughts on the life to come and his eternal reward when he sees that he has almost no reward in this life. Amid persecution and incessant contradictions, St. Paul wrote: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."[1173]
6. That those who mourn may have consolation when they see the tribulations of the saints and their steadfastness. In his Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul exhorts the Hebrews to remember the heroic examples of faith in adversity in the Old Testament.[1174]
7. That we might understand that the saints, whom we are to imitate, had natures like ours: "Elias was a man passible like unto us."[1175]
8. That we might distinguish the true evils and the true good from the false: "For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth; and He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth";[1176] "We are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it..... We are made as the refuse of this world, the offscouring of all even until now."[1177]

CHAPTER XXVII: QUESTION 50 THE EXISTENCE AND THE SUBSTANCE OF THE ANGELS
By the word "angel" is understood a created substance, purely spiritual (in no way ordered to inform a body), and hence intellectual (but not rational). Thus the angel is subsistent and possesses a personality, for it is a substance that is complete, existing and operating <per se> and separately and of its own right (sui juris) and has dominion over its own actions.
First Article: The Existence Of The Angels
The existence of the angels was denied in ancient times by the Epicureans and the Sadducees, and in our time it is denied by atheists, rationalists, and liberal Protestants, who assert that the angels, mentioned in Sacred Scripture, are either divine inspirations or men sent by God to instruct other men.
The testimony of Scripture. a) The Old Testament teaches the existence of the angels, both good and bad.[1178] From the Old Testament it is also clear that the angels are intelligent creatures, that their number is great, that there is an order among them,[1179] and that the good angels under God's command assist and guard good men.[1180] On the other hand, the bad angels, with God's permission, attack men.[1181]
b) This doctrine of the Old Testament is confirmed by the New Testament.[1182] St. Paul enumerates the orders of angels, "whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers."[1183] He also mentions the bad angels.[1184]
Even if Pseudo-Dionysius had not written his De caelesti hierarchia, St. Thomas would have been able to write his treatise on the angels, relying on the testimony of Scripture and tradition.
Concerning the angels the Church teaches: 1. that they exist, that they were created but not from eternity, and that they are spiritual;[1185] 2. that they are not propagated;[1186] 3. that the devil was good when he was created.[1187]
Besides this, the ordinary magisterium of the Church has everywhere taught the doctrine of the guardian angels, and theologians consider this truth to be of faith. Finally, according to Suarez, it is of faith that the angels are not equal in dignity, as is clear from many texts, especially from St. Paul.
The teaching of all of the Fathers is that the angels are created by God, and endowed with intellect and free will. The absolute spirituality of the angels, however, is not clearly affirmed by all the Fathers prior to the fourth century. Without the angels the ascending series of creatures appears to be incomplete.[1188] After the twelfth century the theologians commonly teach that the angels are absolutely incorporeal, although Scotus thought that there was an incorporeal matter in the angels.
Second Article: The Teaching Of St. Thomas Compared With That Of Scotus And Suarez
1. St. Thomas affirms the absolute spirituality of the angels and therefore that there cannot be two angels of the same species, because the principle of individuation is matter marked by quantity. Scotus taught the opposite. As an eclectic, Suarez held with St. Thomas that the angels were absolutely spiritual, and with Scotus that there could be two angels of the same species.
2. For St. Thomas the proper object of the angel's intellect is the essence of the angel itself, whereas the proper object of our intellect is the essence of sensible things. Therefore, whereas the human idea is abstracted from sensible particulars, the angelic idea is not abstracted but is naturally impressed on the angel and it is at the same time universal and concrete, that is, it represents at the same time the species, for example, of a lion, and the individuals, both the actual and the past of which the angel has memory.
Hence the angelic ideas are participations in the divine ideas, according to which God is the cause of things. Therefore the angels do not have discursive but simply intuitive knowledge. They know not by composition and division, but they see the properties of things in the essence of things by one simple intuition. In the same way they see conclusions in the principles and means in the ends.
Therefore the angels cannot err with regard to the things that belong or do not belong naturally to things, but they can err about those things that are entirely contingent and free, such as, the secrets of the heart and future free acts.
Scotus, on the other hand, held that an angel, although it does not have senses, can receive ideas from sensible things. Scotus was unwilling to designate the proper and specific object of the angelic intellect, and he concluded therefore that the angel had discursive knowledge. With St. Thomas, Suarez admitted this innatism in the angels, and with Scotus he held that the angels could reason.
3. With regard to the will of the angels, St. Thomas admitted that in the angelic will there were certain necessary acts, such as the natural desire of happiness in general. Moreover, since nothing is willed unless first known as agreeable, the angel's free choice is always con formed to the ultimate practical judgment by which it is regulated, but the will executes this ultimate judgment, while it freely accepts it. Scotus, however, held that every act of the will is free and that a free choice could be not conformed to the ultimate practical judgment. Here we see evidence of Scotus' voluntarism.
Because of these viewpoints many differences arose between St. Thomas and Scotus about the angelic will.
According to St. Thomas, the angel loves by a natural love not only happiness in general but also God the author of its nature more than itself,[1189] and therefore probably the angel cannot sin directly and immediately against its natural law, which it sees intuitively inscribed on its own essence.[1190] When Satan sinned directly and immediately against the supernatural law, he sinned indirectly against the natural law
St. Thomas held that during the time of probation the angel could not sin venially but only mortally, because "the mind of the angel (which is simply intuitive) does not comprehend those things which are ordered to an end except as they are placed in the order to the end."[1191] The angel sees the means in the end as it sees conclusions in the principles. Thus the angel cannot turn itself away from the proper means to an end without turning away from its ultimate end and sinning mortally. Further, according to St. Thomas, because of the superiority of the angelic intellect the angel's free choice is immutable; it is a participation in the immutability of the divine choice. From this it follows that the angel's mortal sin is unforgivable, or that the angel wills irrevocably what it freely chooses with full and intuitive advertance, that is, a choice made not after successive consideration, like ours, but after a simultaneous consideration of all the things that pertain to the choice without any influence of the passions. Hence if someone would say to the devil after he had made his choice, "You did not consider this point," the devil could answer, "This also I considered." This explains the obstinacy of the devils, since before their choice they considered everything and then cannot change their choice. The only way that the devil could recall his decision would be by humility and obedience, and this the devil did not wish to do and does not wish to do.[1192]
Because of his voluntarism, Scotus held that the choice of the angels is not always in conformity with the final practical judgment, and that the devil's first mortal sin, as such, is not irrevocable or unforgivable. The demons, he thought, committed many sins before they became obstinate, and after each sin they could have returned to God. Hence the diabolical obstinacy is only extrinsic, that is, it is owing to the fact that after many sins God declared that He would no longer grant them the grace of conversion.
In his eclecticism Suarez held with St. Thomas that the angelic will did not have concupiscible and irascible parts, but with Scotus he held that, since the angel could reason, it could sin directly against the natural law and could also sin venially. He also thought that after the first mortal sin the angel could return to God, because the angel's choice need not be in conformity with the final practical judgment.
Finally Suarez thought that the devil's obstinacy was a consequence of that miserable state to which he saw himself condemned. St. Thomas would have replied that it is precisely damnation itself and the immutability of this state that must be explained, either intrinsically because of the intuitive mode of the knowledge that directs the choice, or extrinsically because God no longer offers the grace of conversion.
These three doctors teach that the angels were elevated to the order of grace, and that most probably they were created in grace. But there are certain differences in their teachings. St. Thomas denies that the angels could have sinned in the first instant. He held that their probation lasted for one instant. He denied that the angels received essential grace and glory because of the merits of Christ, because the merits of Christ are the merits of the Redeemer, and the angels were not redeemed. On these points Scotus, and Suarez to some extent, differ from the Angelic Doctor because of the principles mentioned above.
From this brief review it is apparent that St. Thomas is more definite in affirming the specific distinction between angels and men because of the proper and specific object of their intellects. He affirms that the angels are purely intellectual and intuitive spirits, not rational or discursive. He maintains intact the principle that nothing is willed unless first known as agreeable. All the differences with Scotus and Suarez flow from these two principles.
Third Article: The Creation And Substance Of The Angels Question 61, A. 2 And 3; Question 50
The angels were not created from eternity; they were probably created with corporeal creatures, because they are part of the universe, and no part is perfect separated from the whole.[1193] They were probably created in the empyrean heavens. They are a very great multitude, "Thousands of thousands ministered to Him (God), and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him."[1194] Their number exceeds the number of the species of material substances and is comparable to the number of the stars. A greater number of the more perfect things was created for the perfection of the universe.[1195] This principle refers to the more important parts of the universe which God produced without the intervention of secondary causes, the stars, the constellations, and the angels. It does not follow from this principle that there is more gold than silver, or more silver than lead in the universe.
They were created that they might attain eternal happiness and glorify God, and that they might assist and guard men and rule over corporeal creatures. This second reason is not an end but result of their superiority, since it is fitting that inferior beings be ruled by superior beings.
Fourth Article: The Angels Are Pure Spirits Without A Body Question 50, A. 1
The Scriptures never speak of the body of an angel, and frequently call the angels spirits. When spirit is predicated of intellectual creatures, it is used in opposition to body.[1196]
The Fourth Lateran Council declared: "At the same time in the beginning God established from nothing both creatures, the spiritual and corporeal, that is, the angelic and the mundane, and finally the human creature as a common creature constituted from spirit and body."[1197]
In this definition is clearly defined: 1. the existence of the angels; 2. their real distinction from corporeal creatures and from man, who is both spiritual and corporeal. This is equivalent to stating that the angels are incorporeal. This, however, is not properly defined but merely declared; what the Council was expressly defining was the unity of the first principle against the Manichaeans.
After the Fourth Lateran Council it was considered temerarious to attribute to the angels a body however subtle, and after the twelfth century theologians commonly taught that the angels were absolutely incorporeal.
St. Thomas shows that the perfection of the universe requires intellectual creatures, who are able to know God. "Since intellection is not an act of the body nor of any corporeal power, the union of a body is not part of the nature of the intellectual substance as such; it is an addition,....because it is imperfect, inasmuch as the object (of the corporeal being) is the lowest intelligible of sensible things. In any genus where something imperfect is found, it is fitting that the corresponding perfection in that genus pre-exist."[1198] Otherwise creation would be truncated and, as it were, mutilated.
As Cajetan points out, a more perfect creature can always be produced, but it is reasonable to infer that the perfection of the universe requires a purely intellectual creature as one genus of being.
Fifth Article: The Angels Are Absolutely Immaterial Question 50, A. 2
Avicebron held that matter was common to spirits and bodies because, as he said, there is something which they have in common. But the thing they have in common is nothing more than created essence as something capable of existence and limiting being. According to St. Thomas, it is impossible that a spiritual substance have any kind of matter. The operation of anything is after the manner of its substance, or operation follows being, or the mode of operation follows the mode of being. But intellection is an operation entirely immaterial, that is, intrinsically independent of matter, because it is specified of a universal object, by intelligible being, which abstracts from all matter. Thus the intellect is able to know the first principles of being, which are absolutely necessary and universal, above all contingent and particular being, and hence it can know the reasons for the being of things. Therefore a spiritual and intellectual substance is entirely immaterial.
Sixth Article: How The Angels Assume Bodies
Sometimes angels assume bodies, as the angels who appeared to Tobias and Abraham. In these instances the angels are accidentally united to such bodies, which they move but do not inform vitally.
Thus the angel said to Tobias: "I seemed to eat and to drink with you: but I use an invisible meat and drink, which cannot be seen by men."[1199]
Seventh Article: Whether The Angels Differ In Species Question 50, A. 4
The Church has defined nothing on this point, but from the various names used in Sacred Scripture it appears that there is a hierarchy of angels, for example, "Whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers,"[1200] and in the Old Testament the angels are distinguished and subordinated into seraphim, cherubim, angels, and archangels. From this it is certain that the angels are not different only in number, which theologians commonly admit.
St. Thomas holds that all the angels differ in species; this is denied by Scotus. In agreement with St. Thomas, the Thomists generally admit that there cannot be two angels of the same species. The reason is that those things that are of the same species and differ in number are the same in form and different with regard to matter, since an act is not multiplied except by the potency in which it is received. Thus two perfectly similar drops of water are two by reason of the matter in which their specific forms are received. But the angels are not composed of matter and form. Therefore it is impossible that there be two angels of the same species. That is to say, according to many Thomists, that this is intrinsically impossible, or intrinsically repugnant, and not only extrinsically by reason of the end, as, for example, the annihilation of some blessed soul, which never happens but is still not intrinsically repugnant.
Confirmation. If whiteness were separated from matter, it would be unique. By a similar argument the unicity and infinity of God are apodictically proved, namely, because God, who is pure act, is not received in matter, or unreceived subsistent being.[1201]
In the question, "Concerning spiritual creatures" (a. 8), St. Thomas says: "If the angel is a simple form apart from matter, it is impossible to imagine that there are many angels in the same species." In another place he says: "We cannot understand that any separated form is anything but one of one species."[1202] He also shows that the separated human soul is individuated by the transcendental relation to its body, which will rise again, while the substance of the angel has no relation to a body which it is to inform.[1203] Hence there cannot be two angels of the same species. It is not enough to have recourse to the thisness (haecceitas) of the angel, as Scotus did, for the question arises, whence does it come that in the same species one nature is this as distinct from that. This difference can come only from matter.
The principle of numerical multiplication within the same species must be intrinsic and substantial. But Scotus implies that this can happen without matter marked by quantity or without a relation to such matter. Therefore in the angels, in which there is no matter, there can be no numerical multiplication. Nor can this multiplication be explained by some supernatural addition, since this would be extrinsic to the substance of the angel, which is supposed to be already constituted.
If God were to annihilate the archangel Michael and then create him again, he would be the same Michael with the same essence, the same existence once more produced and received in the same essence. Moreover, even if it were possible to have two angels of the same species successively (by annihilation and a second creation), it would not follow that there were two angels of the same species at the same time. The principle remains that an act cannot be multiplied except by the potency in which it is received.
According to St. Thomas, all angels differ in species according to the different grades of intellectual nature, according to intellectual power, and sometimes, like the birds, the angels have a stronger or weaker visual power. In the same way the seven colors of the rainbow and the seven notes in the scale are distinguished.
Eighth Article: Whether An Angel Is In A Place Question 52, A. 1
Since an angel is absolutely incorporeal and immaterial, it is not in a place according to its substance, that is, by quantitative contact, since it does not have quantity. But the angel is said equivocally to be in a place inasmuch as it locally moves some body by dynamic contact, or the contact of its power, that is, by a virtually transient operation. In this way our will, which is spiritual, moves the members of our body, but it is not in a place by quantitative contact (as when my hand touches the page), but by dynamic contact. Besides this, the human soul, as informing its body, is definitively in the place of the body and nowhere else.

CHAPTER XXVIII: QUESTION 54, A. 1 THE ANGELS COGNITIVE FACULTY
First Article: Whether The Angels Intellection Is Its Substance
The reply is in the negative.
Indirect proof. The action of a thing differs more from the substance than the being of the thing for the operation follows the being. But the being of no creature is its substance; this is true only of God. Therefore a fortiori the intellection of the angel is not its substance.
Direct proof. 1. From the fact that action is the ultimate actuality of an agent. Action is the ultimate actuality of an operative power just as being is the ultimate actuality of an essence. But only pure act, namely, God, is His own ultimate actuality. Therefore only God, pure act, is His own action just as He is His own being.
The major is clear because the operative faculty is ordered to action, for example, the intellect is ordered to intellection as its ultimate perfection.
The minor is evident from the opposition between the word "to be" and the word "to have." Pure act not only has its own ultimate actuality, namely, its being and its action, but it is its own ultimate actuality.
2. From a consideration not only of action itself but also of intellection. If the intellection of the angel were its substance, it would be as subsistent as its substance. But subsisting intellection can be only one, it is unique (as, for instance, whiteness, if it subsisted). Therefore the substance of the angel would not be distinct from the substance of God or from the substance of the other angels.
Objection. That which is not pure act cannot indeed be every actuality but it can be some actuality with an admixture of potentiality. Therefore the reasoning is not valid.
Reply. I distinguish the antecedent: that which is not pure act can be some actuality that is not ultimate, I concede; thus Michael is his own Michaelity; that which is not pure act can be ultimate actuality, I deny.
Action is the ultimate actuality in the order of operation just as being in the order of being. If the angel were its own action, this ultimate actuality in the angel would be unreceived and moreover as ultimate it would be irreceptive, and thus it would be pure act.
I insist. If Michael's intellection were subsistent, it would be unique in his species but not simply unique, for there could be other subsisting intellects. Therefore the difficulty remains.
Reply. I deny the antecedent. Such intellection would not be delimited, either by the subject in which it is received because it is not received, or by the object to which it is ordered because a substance cannot be specified by something extrinsic to itself. Therefore subsisting intellect cannot be unless it has its formal object in itself, that is, unless it is subsisting being itself at all times and of itself intellection in act.
I insist. But this subsisting intellect of Michael could be specified by itself as in divine intellection.
Reply. This I deny, because intellection must be specified by intelligible being as by its formal and adequate object. And if Michael's intellect were specified by itself, it would not be able to know anything except itself and that which could be known through itself, and hence it would not be able to know other substances except confusedly.
This reply of John of St. Thomas is taken from the following article. Without anticipating the following article, Cajetan replies as follows: If the intellection of the angel were of such great perfection that it would be a substance, it would be one, because it would identify in itself three absolutely simple perfections, namely, a spiritual nature, intellection, and subsistence in itself. These perfections, however, cannot be identified in anyone but God, and because of this these perfections are identified with the other absolutely simple perfections, with subsistent will, with love, mercy, and justice.
Objection. For living beings to live is to be, as Aristotle said. But to understand is to live. Therefore the intellection of the angel is its substantial being.
Reply. I distinguish the major: to live in actu primo is substantial being, I concede; to live in actu secundo, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: to understand is to live in actu secundo, I concede; to understand is to live in actu primo, I deny.
I insist. In us the acting intellect is its action, and yet it is not God. Therefore the angel can be its own action.
Reply. Our acting intellect is always in act and then it is its own action improperly, not essentially but concomitantly. Thus the sun is always actually giving light, but the sun is not essentially this action. In the same way the heart is always beating but it is not its own movement.
I insist. If the extremes are one, the middle is not really different from the extremes. But when the angel understands itself, the subject and the object are one, and the intellection is the middle. Therefore the intellection does not differ from the angel.
Reply. Let the major pass without comment. I deny the minor: intellection is not really a middle; it follows the union of the subject with an object that is intelligible in act, for intellection follows the union of the faculty with an impressed species. When the angel understands itself it does not require an impressed species, it requires only an expressed species because it is itself intelligible in act, but not understood in act.
Second Article: Whether The Intellection Of The Angel Is Its Being
The reply is in the negative, because its being is limited, whereas its intellection is infinite intentionally and extends to every intelligible being as its adequate object.
Third Article: Whether The Angels Intellective Faculty Is Its Essence
The reply is in the negative, because a faculty is understood with reference to the act, and because of the different acts there are different faculties which are essentially ordered to these acts. But the essence is ordered to being or existence, whereas the intellect is ordered to intellection, which in the angel is distinct from being since it presupposes being. In the same intellective faculty and within the same specific and adequate object there may be many acts of intellection, either simultaneous and subordinated or successive.

CHAPTER XXIX: QUESTION 55 THE MEANS OF ANGELIC COGNITION
First Article: Whether The Angels Know All Things By Their Essence As God Does
The reply is in the negative, because only the essence of God as infinite comprehends all things in itself. Only God, in knowing Himself, knows all possible and actual things because this is the same as knowing what He is able to do and what He has done and does. The angel cannot do all things, and therefore its intelligence must be perfected by some species or representative likenesses of things.
Second Article: Whether The Angels Understand Through Species Taken From Things
St. Thomas invokes the authority of St. Augustine, who taught that sensible creatures were first produced by God as intelligible beings in the mind of the angels and then in the nature of things. St. Augustine came to this conclusion because of his Platonic philosophy, in which even our ideas are derived from a supersensible divine illumination.
St. Thomas shows why this innatism should be admitted in the case of the angels but not in man. His reasoning: operation follows being, and the mode of operation follows the mode of being. But the angel's mode of being is absolutely immaterial and independent of the body. Therefore the angel's mode of operation and of understanding is also without any acceptance from a body; it is by an intelligible influx from God the author of nature. On the other hand, the intellective soul would be united to a body without any reason if the soul did not obtain its intellective perfection from the body.[1204] Thus the imagination is the highest point of the lowest order of sensible knowledge, and our intellect is the lowest point of the highest order of intelligence. Hence the adage: the highest of the lower order touches on the lowest of the higher order, even though, absolutely speaking, there is a vast difference between the two. Here we see the subordination of beings and we conclude that man, a rational animal, is not a genus but a determined species, in the sense that there cannot be many species of rational animals. Rational animal implies the meeting point of the highest in the lowest order and the lowest in the highest order.
Objection. If from the instant of their creation the angels receive from God ideas of things, including those of individuals, the angels naturally know future contingents, which is against the opinion commonly held.
Reply. Actually these ideas represent only existences and they are suited to represent futures inasmuch as these futures are derived from the divine ideas and when they will be according to the divine will. Even God Himself does not know from eternity future contingents except as they are dependent on the decree of His will.
Third Article: Whether The Higher Angels Know By More Universal Species Than The Lower Angels
In other words: Does the perfection of the angel's knowledge depend on its universality? St. Thomas replies affirmatively.
He derives his first proof from the authority of Dionysius: "That which is divisively in inferior beings is united in superior beings."[1205]
Proof from reason <a priori>. The superior beings are those that are closer to and more like God. But God knows all things by one eternal intuitive act in His essence. Therefore among the superior intellects those are the higher which know by means of fewer and more universal species.[1206]
The <a posteriori> proof is confirmed in the saying: just a few words for the one who knows, that is, the man who knows does not need many words.
First objection. The universal is obtained by abstraction. But the angels do not abstract from things.
Reply. I distinguish the major: if the knowledge is obtained from individual things, I concede; if it is obtained from the divine ideas, I deny.
Second objection. Universal knowledge is confused. But the higher angels do not have the more confused knowledge.
Reply. I distinguish the major: universal knowledge on the part of the thing known, I concede; universal knowledge on the part of the means, I deny. That is, by these more universal and fewer ideas the higher angels know many things very distinctly and without confusion.
Scotus says that the perfection of the higher angels' knowledge consists in its clarity.
Reply. I distinguish: in an empiric and material clarity, I deny; in the clarity that comes from the higher and more universal principles, I concede.
Corollary. In the sciences the following principle of economy is to be observed: matters should be explained by few principles. That is, principles should not be multiplied without reason. Thus St. Thomas explains the principal questions about predestination with this principle: Since the love of God is the cause of the goodness of things, no one thing would be better than another if it were not loved more by God.[1207]
Fourth Article: Whether The Angels Naturally Know Future Contingent Beings And The Secrets Of Hearts (Q. 57, A. 3, 4)
The reply to the first question is in the negative. This is the common opinion and seems to be of faith because of the testimony of Sacred Scripture and of the Fathers.[1208] Special reference is made to the words, "Show the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods."[1209] Thus prophecy is the proper sign of divinity and a motive of credibility, "amply demonstrating the infinite knowledge of God," just as a miracle "demonstrates His omnipotence," in the words of the Vatican Council.[1210]
Proof from reason. Future contingent beings cannot be known certainly by the angels either in their causes or in themselves; not in the created causes because these are contingent and indifferent; not in the uncreated cause, that is, in God's free decree, which is naturally inaccessible to every created intellect; not in themselves, for in this way future contingents are known only by God inasmuch as God's knowledge alone is measured by eternity, which embraces all time.[1211] Hence the angels cannot naturally know future contingent beings; unless at the most they may have some conjectural knowledge.
The reply to the second question is also in the negative because of the testimony of the Scriptures.[1212] The reason is that such secrets of the heart are not parts of the universe. As free they are not necessarily connected with our wills, and as immanent they are not connected with exterior beings. They have therefore no connection with the parts of the universe and thus are not properly parts of the universe. They belong to a higher order known only to God and if they are sacred secrets they belong properly to the kingdom of God. Such is the privileged character of the interior life, "hidden with Christ in God," which the angels cannot know naturally. St. John of the Cross emphasizes this point in his teaching that the demons cannot know the secrets of our hearts.

CHAPTER XXX: QUESTION 60 THE LOVE OF THE ANGELS
First Article: The Will And The Liberty Of The Angels
The angels have a will, which is the appetite following on intellection, as the inclination to the good intellectually known. Like the intellect, the will of the angels is a faculty distinct from their substance, and the angelic will is free, that is, it can choose one thing in preference to another. The angel's liberty of choice follows the intellect inasmuch as the intellect is able to judge the universal nature of good and this judgment remains undetermined with regard to an object here and now which is not good in every part. The angels do not have a sensitive appetite.
Second Article: The Angels Natural And Elective Love
In the angels the natural love is always right, and this love is an inclination conferred on the angel by the author of nature. The angels also have an elective love which is consequent on the natural love and is concerned with an object here and now that is not good in every part.[1213]
Like man, the angel naturally loves itself inasmuch as it desires some good for itself with its natural appetite. When the angel desires some good for itself by election it loves itself by elective love.[1214]
The angel loves itself by a natural love that is necessary with regard to the specification of that love because the angel cannot consider anything in itself (or in God the author of its nature) that would move it to a hatred of itself (or to hatred of God the author of its nature). Indeed, according to Bannez, Sylvius, Gonet, and Billuart, the angel loves itself necessarily even with regard to the exercise of that love just as it knows itself necessarily with regard to the exercise of that knowledge. This love is a property that flows from the angel's nature just as the movement of the heart flows from the nature of the animal.
Objection. But the bad angels desire non-being and therefore they do not necessarily love themselves.
Reply. They love non-being directly and by its very nature, this I deny; for this is impossible since the aspect of good is not present in non-being. They love non-being indirectly and by reason of something else, I concede; because they desire non-being in their torments and thus they desire non-being by reason of their self-love and not by reason of any hatred for themselves.
Third Article: Whether By Its Natural Love The Angel Loves God More Than Itself
We have treated of this question at great length in another place;[1215] here we will refer only to the essential points. This problem refers not only to the angel but also to man and analogically to every creature. St. Thomas shows that the fundamental natural inclination found in every creature is right and remains right, although it has been weakened in us by original sin and by our personal sins and must be perfected by infused charity. Thus we see in this article that grace does not destroy nature but perfects and elevates it. St. Thomas' reply in this article is therefore in the affirmative, and he offers the following proof.
Everything that naturally, according to its nature, belongs to another inclines more to that to which it belongs than to itself, as is true of any natural part, for example, the hand is inclined to the defense of the body even though the hand may suffer mutilation. But every creature naturally, according to its nature, belongs to God. Therefore every creature naturally inclines to the love of God, the author of its nature, more than to the love of itself.[1216]
If this were not so, the natural inclination would be perverse and would not be perfected by infused charity; indeed infused charity would destroy the natural inclination.[1217]
First doubt. Does this apply to the innate natural inclination or to the elicited natural inclination?
Reply. To both.
Second doubt. Is this natural love of God necessary or elective when it is elicited?
Reply. It is necessary at least with regard to its specification, because in God the author of nature nothing can be found to move the angel to the hatred of God.
Third doubt. Whether this natural love of God when it is elicited is necessary even with regard to its exercise?
Reply. Bannez, Gonet, and Billuart think that the affirmative is more probable,[1218] because the angel cannot desist from the consideration of itself or from the consideration of God, whom it knows in the mirror of its own essence. The love of itself and the love of God preserving its natural life are natural movements, just as in the animal the movement of the heart is, as it were, a natural property.
Fourth doubt. Does this natural love of God above all things exist in some way in all creatures?
Reply. It exists even in the stone, which tends to the center of the earth because of the cohesion of the universe and thus contributes to the good of the universe to manifest God's goodness. So the hen gathers her little ones under her wings to protect them from the hawk because it tends to the preservation of its species for the good of the universe, and it would sacrifice itself if it were necessary for the good of the species. The canticle, "All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord,"[1219] expresses the thought that every creature in its own way tends toward God, or to the good of the universe to manifest the goodness of God. There is here no pantheism; the creature is considered not as a part of God but as a part of the universe, which is ordered to the glorification of its author and to the manifestation of His goodness.
First objection. Natural love is based on natural union. But the angel is naturally united rather to itself than to God. Therefore the angel naturally loves itself more than God.
Reply. I distinguish the major: natural love is founded on a natural union and on a natural dependence on God, I concede; on a natural union without this dependence on God, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: the angel is more naturally united to itself and depends on God more than on itself, I concede; that the angel does not depend more on God than on itself, I deny.
I insist: in spite of this dependence the angel loves itself more naturally. Whoever loves anything naturally loves it inasmuch as it is good for itself. But in loving anything as good for itself the lover loves the object for its own self. Therefore whoever loves God naturally loves Him for the lover's sake and less than the lover himself.
Reply. I distinguish the major: whoever loves anything naturally loves it inasmuch as it is good for itself as the subject for which it is desired, I concede; loves it for itself as the permanent end, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor: whoever loves something as a good for the lover, loves it for the sake of the object if it is a good subordinate to the lover, I concede; but if it is a good that is superior to the lover, I deny.
The angel desires God for itself but on account of God, its natural ultimate end. The end for whose sake a thing is desired and the subject for which a thing is desired are not the same. On the other hand, I desire a piece of fruit for myself and on account of myself because the fruit is inferior and subordinate to myself. When the angel, and man too, rightly loves God even naturally, it subordinates itself to God and does not subordinate God to itself.
Second objection. Nature reflects on itself and first tends to its own preservation. But nature would not be reflecting on itself if it tended to something other than itself. Therefore by its natural love the angel loves itself more.
Reply. I distinguish the major: nature reflects on itself not only with regard to its own individuality but rather with regard to the universal in itself as a part of the universe ordered to the good of the universe and for the manifestation of God's goodness, I concede; otherwise, I deny.
I insist. If this is true, the brute animals tend to some ethical good. As a matter of fact, however, they tend only to some pleasurable good or some useful good.
Reply. The brute animals tend to some ethical good not explicitly or consciously but implicitly and unconsciously, just as the hen that gathers its chicks under its wings loves its species more than itself.
I insist. The error of this thesis is apparent from the consequent incongruity, namely, that charity would be useless. The characteristic of charity is that by it one loves God more than oneself. But charity is not a natural but an infused love. Therefore by its natural love the angel does not love God more than itself.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the characteristic of charity is loving God more than oneself as the author of grace, I concede; as the author of nature, I deny.
I insist. At any rate this thesis cannot explain the sin of the angels, since this natural love of God will perdure as long as the nature perdures. But the love of God does not remain in the sinning angel, which hates God. Therefore loving God as the author of its nature more than itself is not natural to the angel.
Reply. I concede the major. I distinguish the minor: the angel's love of God as the judge does not perdure, I concede; the angel's love of God as the author of nature does not perdure, I deny. For as a judge God commands the angel to do something that is displeasing to the angel, whereas God as the author of the angel's nature is the cause that preserves the life of the bad angel in a kind of physical manner, something like the physical premotion that we speak of in the spiritual order.
I insist. But a devil cannot at the same time be turned to God as the author of its nature and turned. away from God as the author of grace because a sin against God the author of grace is at the same time indirectly against God the author of nature.
Reply. A devil is turned away from God the author of grace and from God the author of the law of nature freely and morally; nevertheless the devil at the same time remains necessarily and physically turned to God the author of his nature in its physical aspect. This lamentable opposition in the devil pertains to his damnation.
How does man naturally love God more than himself? By an innate love and by an implicit elicited love; in this way man loves God under the aspect of happiness in general.

CHAPTER XXXI: QUESTION 62, A. 4, 5, 6 THE MERITS OF THE ANGELS
First Article: Whether The Good Angels Merited Their Happiness
Reply. The ultimate end must be obtained by merit. But happiness for the intellectual creature is the ultimate end that is not effected but (attained), which consists in the supernatural vision of God. Therefore the angels merited happiness.
When did they merit their happiness? Certainly before they attained it since merit has the nature of a road leading to an end. As St. Thomas remarks: "He who is already at the terminus is not moved toward that terminus, just as no one merits what he already has," and "Free will cannot be informed at the same time by imperfect grace, which is the principle of meriting, and perfect grace, which is the principle of fruition."
Second Article: Whether The Angels Merited In The First Instant
The question is whether the angels merited happiness in the first instant of creation, if they were created in the state of grace? What is angelic time? Is it continuous or discrete? Is it the measure of some movement? It is the measure of the succession of the thoughts and affections of the angels. One angelic instant may perdure as long as several hours and days of our time, just as the contemplation of the same object by the saints in an ecstasy lasts for several hours.
"In all the angels the first operation was good," because this first operation was under the special inspiration of God. But in this operation there was as yet no full merit because the angels were moved by God and they did not yet move themselves. Immediately after this some of them turned to God the author of grace with full merit, while others inflated by pride turned away from God the author of grace.
In this second instant why was one act in the angels sufficient for merit or demerit?[1220]
Reply. Because grace perfects nature according to the mode of the nature. It is a characteristic of the angelic nature that it acquires a natural perfection not discursively but immediately in one act. Therefore immediately after one fully meritorious act the angels attained supernatural happiness, which the devil would also have attained if he had not immediately placed the obstacle of sin.[1221]
Third Article: Whether The Angels Attained Grace And Glory According To The Quantity Of Their Natures
The affirmative reply seems the more reasonable because in the angel the movement of the will cannot be impeded or retarded by an inordinate passion, and when there is nothing to impede or retard it a nature. is moved according to its entire power. Hence it seems reasonable that the angels that have a better nature turned to God with more power and more effectively.
On this point we have a certain analogy with men. "This also occurs in men, because greater grace (habitual) and glory is given to men according to the intensity of their conversion to God." This does not imply any taint of Pelagianism with regard to the angels, because the angelic nature is not a disposition proportioned to a purely gratuitous gift of grace. Moreover, just as the grace is entirely from the will of God so also is the nature of the angel.[1222] "Therefore it seems that grace is given rather according to the degree of nature than because of works."[1223] In man, however, when he disposes himself under the influence of actual grace for habitual grace, this habitual grace is given not in proportion to his natural attempt but in proportion to the supernatural disposition which comes from prevenient grace.

CHAPTER XXXII: THE GUILT AND OBSTINACY OF THE DEVILS
First Article: Whether The Evil Of Guilt Can Be In The Angels (Q. 63, A. 1)
The affirmative reply is of faith, because many angels sinned; therefore they are able to sin.
That the angel can sin, St. Thomas proves as follows:
Only that will which is the rule of its own action is unable to depart from the proper rectitude. But only God's will is the rule of its own action because it has no superior end. Therefore any created will is able to sin.
Can the angels sin directly against the natural law, and could they have sinned if they had been created simply in the natural order? According to the more common opinion of the Thomists the negative reply is more probable.
1. Because at all times the angels see intuitively the natural law in their own essence, even with regard to singular instances, and therefore they cannot be in error, or be ignorant, or lack consideration about the natural law, consequently they cannot sin against the natural law.
2. Because the angel naturally and efficaciously loves God as the author of nature more than itself, and this love virtually contains the fulfillment of the entire natural law. This love remains in the devil to the extent that the devil loves God as the author of his physical life although he does not love God as the author of the moral law and as the judge.
Can the angel sin indirectly against the natural law?
Reply. He can by sinning directly against the supernatural law.
How can the angel sin against the supernatural law?
Reply. Because the angel knows the supernatural law not with intuitive evidence but in the obscurity of faith, and inasmuch as this law commanded something that could be displeasing to the proud angels.
Is every direct sin against the supernatural law indirectly against the natural law?
The reply is in the affirmative, because the natural law already commands that God is to be obeyed in whatever He commands.
Objection. Then the angels' elevation to the order of grace was the cause of their sin.
Reply. It was not the cause but the occasion, just as the redemptive Incarnation was an occasion of sin for the Jews.
Objection. But the angels could not have sinned even against the supernatural law.
Proof. Sin, or a defective choice, supposes an erroneous judgment. But there can be no error in the angels, at least not prior to sin, since they have no passions or any inordinate precipitation of the will.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the angels have no defective choice with regard to the object willed, I concede; with regard to the manner of tending toward the object good in itself, I deny.
What does this sin of the angels presuppose on the part of the intellect?.
Reply. A lack of consideration of the supernatural law to be observed here and now.
Is this lack of consideration a negation or a privation?
Reply. It is a privation since the angel begins to operate without consideration of the rule.
Was this lack of consideration voluntary?
Reply. It was at least indirectly voluntary inasmuch as the angel could have and should have considered the rule.
Was this lack of consideration more voluntary in the angel than in man?
Reply. Many Thomists say that this lack of consideration was interpretatively voluntary.
What is the meaning of interpretative in this connection?
Reply. It does not mean that the consent was such as would be given if there were sufficient attention; in this case it means something willed virtually or implicitly, by an implicit act rather than an explicit act. If it had been an explicit act, such as, "I do not wish to consider," this act of unwillingness would presuppose not only lack of consideration but also an error, which could not have been in the angels before sin.
How then did the angels sin?
Reply. They sinned by inordinately desiring their own excellence, or their natural happiness as derived from the power of their natures, and refusing the supernatural happiness that comes from the gratuitous gift of God, the supernatural happiness that they have in common with men, the happiness that is to be had by way of humility and obedience.[1224]
Were there two acts, one concerning natural happiness and the other concerning supernatural happiness?
Reply. There was but one act, preferring natural happiness to the other.
How could such stupidity enter the mind of the higher angels?
Reply. In the same way that some men prefer the study of mathematics or physics to the study of the Gospel.
Second Article: Whether The Angels Could Sin In The First Instant
Reply. They could not because in the first instant the angel operated under a special divine inspiration. Since nothing is willed unless first known, the first cognition was not from the application of the created will but from the special inspiration of God, and under this influence the creature does not sin. The angels sinned in the second instant, in which they fully deliberated. The third instant was the instant of damnation, in which there was no longer any demerit or possibility of merit.[1225]
Third Article: Whether The Angels Could Have Sinned Venially
According to St. Thomas they could not have sinned venially.[1226] The reason is that the angelic intellect is not discursive; it sees conclusions in principles intuitively, and it beholds means as they are in the order to an end. Therefore in the angels there cannot be a deordination with regard to the means (venial sin) unless there is also a deordination with regard to the end.
Scotus and Suarez hold the contrary opinion, that the angels have discursive knowledge.
Fourth Article: The Obstinacy Of The Devils[1227]
It is of faith that the devils are in fact obstinate in evil. We read: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels."[1228] The words of the Psalmist are referred to the bad angels: "The pride of them that hate thee ascendeth continually,"[1229] that is, this pride always produces new effects.
St. Thomas, Scotus, and Suarez differ in their explanations of the obstinacy of the devils' will.
Scotus explains this obstinacy by an extrinsic cause alone, namely, because God denies the devils grace.
St. Thomas assigns also an intrinsic cause, namely, the connatural mode according to which the angel judges irrevocably and adheres to an end in such a way that its decision is inflexible.
Suarez explains that because of the angel's nature it is merely difficult to retract what the angel has once willed deliberately.
St. Thomas proves his opinion as follows: the appetitive faculty is in all things proportionate to the apprehending faculty, by which it is moved. But the angel apprehends immovably and intuitively those things that we apprehend discursively. This is particularly true when the angel judges something to be an end to be loved above all things. The angel sees intuitively and not successively all those things that pertain to the choice of a thing, and once the choice has been made the angel can say, "I have already considered everything." Therefore the will of the angel is affixed immovably to the end. St. Thomas remarks in this article that it was customary to say that man's free will was flexible with regard to opposites both before and after the choice, but that the angel's free will was flexible to the opposites before the choice but not after it.
Objection. But the angel remains free after the choice and is therefore not inflexible.
Reply. Liberty does not require the possibility of changing a proposition, for example, the most free decrees of God are immutable.
Objection. It appears then that free will is predicated univocally of God and of the angels.
Reply. The predication is only analogical, for in God alone is this immutability from eternity, and in God it is never in evil.
Objections Based On The Idea Of The Indifference Of Freedom After The Choice
Freedom excludes inflexibility and immutability. But after the choice the angel remains free. Therefore the angel is not immutable.
Reply. I distinguish: freedom excludes absolute immutability, I concede; hypothetic immutability, I deny. Thus God's free decrees are immutable. I concede the minor and distinguish the conclusion.
I insist. When the object remains indifferent the choice is mutable. But after the sin of the angel the object of its choice remains indifferent.
Reply. I distinguish the major: when the object remains indifferent the choice is mutable on the part of the object, I concede; on the part of the subject, that is, on the part of the angel's connatural mode of acting intuitively, I deny. I concede the minor, and distinguish the conclusion.
Objections Based On The Idea Of A Retracted Judgment
According to St. Thomas the devil sinned because of lack of consideration of a higher rule. But the devil can now give that consideration especially since he has learned through his misery. Therefore the devil can change his judgment.
Reply. I distinguish the major: the devil sinned from lack of consideration that was voluntary, I concede; he sinned from a lack of consideration arising out of ignorance, I deny.
The devil was not ignorant that in thus proudly refusing supernatural happiness he would bring on himself damnation. He was certainly more certain than we theologians that turning away from his final supernatural end was for him an unforgivable mortal sin which implied indirectly an aversion from his final natural end.
I insist. But it seems incredible that any intelligence would refuse supernatural happiness, especially when such refusal brought with it future damnation.
Reply. Nevertheless this is a characteristic of unbounded pride: to cling to one's own individual good and pride one's self on it rather than accept supernatural happiness from the goodness of another and to possess that happiness in common with men. The devil closed the eyes of his mind to the light of grace and haughtily refused to follow that light. Doellinger wished to defend the Church, but he wished to defend it in his own way and not under the direction of the Supreme Pontiff.
I insist. But the devil foresaw his damnation only speculatively; now he knows damnation experimentally and therefore because of this new experience he can change his judgment.
Reply. If the devil now practically understands his crime of pride as a moral evil that must be rejected, I concede; if he only speculatively understands this pride as an evil, I deny.
In order that the devil could practically understand his crime of pride as an evil that should be rejected he should also incline to humility, to obedience, and to prayer for mercy. But the devil's pride "ascends continually," not intensively, but by always producing new effects. The damned do not ask for pardon. For them there could be but one way to retract their judgment, namely, the way of humility and obedience, and they do not will to follow this way.
We find a similar state of mind in some of the apostates, in Lamennais and Loisy. They strove for an object that was apparently the object of magnanimity; they strove for excellence but they strove for it in the spirit of pride. Magnanimity is the well-ordered love of excellence; pride is the inordinate love of one's own excellence without subjection to God.
Objection. According to St. Thomas some remorse of conscience remains in the damned because of synteresis, and therefore it seems that they are able to change their judgment.
Reply. Such remorse of conscience does remain because of synteresis, but it is without the least attrition or hope, indeed it is the remorse of desperation, without the least veleity of true repentance.[1230]
For the damned, sin is a bitter thing but not because of any repentance. Although they still have synteresis and remorse of conscience, they do not have infused faith, hope, prudence, or fear of sin; their minds are overwhelmed by pride, of which it is said that it "ascendeth continually." The damned do not repent of their evil deeds because of the guilt; they rue their deeds only because of the punishment. More than this, they wish all others to be damned, because they are filled with unbounded hatred for all good things, and they are grieved by every good, by every deed done according to God's will, and especially by the happiness of the blessed.
I insist. But the damned still have a desire for happiness, at least for natural happiness, which they do not possess, because they are turned away not only from their final supernatural end but also from their natural end. Therefore because of this desire for happiness they are able to change their judgment.
Reply. In order to change their judgment practically they would have to follow the way of humility and obedience, but because of their unremitting pride they do not will to follow this road. They are therefore confirmed in evil. In the damned the desire for the happiness they have lost is filled with envy; indeed this is part of damnation. The damned persevere in the hatred of God, for although the devil naturally loves God as the author of his nature in its physical aspect, he hates God as the author of the law that commands obedience, he hates God as the judge, as the author of grace, because under these three aspects God commands something that displeases the devil.
Practically then the devil does not apprehend his crime of pride as a moral evil that must be rejected; only speculatively does he apprehend it as evil. At the same time pride rules him completely and in this pride the devil loves himself above all things with the bitterness of desperation and hatred of God.[1231]
How is man's obstinacy explained? Can we say with Cajetan that man is made immovable in good or evil by a meritorious or demeritorious act elicited in the first moment of non-being (<in primo non esse viae>), that is, in the first instant of the separation of the soul from the body? Some Thomists reject this idea, since it would not be man but a separated soul that would be meriting. Our Lord said, "The night cometh, when no man can work."[1232] In the final chapters of <Contra Gentes> St. Thomas explains that after the separation from the body the soul is no longer on the road to salvation (in via), since the body is for the perfection of the soul that the soul may reach its end, and the separated soul therefore is no longer on the road to its perfection, and that final merit or demerit is rendered definitive by the soul's separation from the body.[1233]

CHAPTER XXXIII: QUESTION 106 THE ILLUMINATION OF THE ANGELS
The higher angels illuminate the lower angels. According to St. Thomas, to illuminate is not only to make manifest a truth, which may be done by simple speech even when an inferior being speaks to a superior being, but to manifest a truth with authority, referring the truth to higher principles and to the first truth, that is, arranging truths so that another will understand them more clearly than he would be able to do by his own powers. This the higher angels are able to do because they possess more universal species which represent greater areas of the intelligible world in a more simple manner. Thus the higher angels have a higher understanding of truth and are able to explain their more perfect concepts.
The higher angels, however, cannot infuse a new light of nature or grace as God does. The higher angels, like a teacher, propose the object and illuminate an inferior angel by shedding their higher light on the object proposed. A human teacher, in proposing a demonstrative middle to his pupils, objectively supports the thinking of his pupils without infusing a new light. A higher angel can a fortiori do this because it is of a higher species with regard to a lower angel. The higher angel therefore not only strengthens the lower angel's intellect in the degree of knowledge but it also elevates the lower angel to a more perfect manner of intellection. The angel that is illuminated, as well as a man who is illuminated by an angel, is to some extent elevated to the mode of intellection of the superior being, and thus attains to something that is <per se> unknown to him, something beyond the light of his own intellect. Such is not the case with a pupil illuminated by a human teacher who makes manifest only what is <per accidens> unknown.
The higher angels illuminate the lower angels about all those things which pertain to the state of nature, the state of grace, and accidental glory, since good is essentially diffusive of itself.
The devils direct the manifestation of truth to their own iniquity, and therefore they do not illuminate but rather darken the truth.[1234]

CHAPTER XXXIV: QUESTIONS 108-112 THE HIERARCHIES OF ANGELS
Hierarchy is a multitude ordered and arranged under a leader, and it is said to be one inasmuch as the multitude is able to perceive the government of the leader in one and the same way. The mode of cognition and illumination in the angels, however, is threefold. Some angels draw the light of truth immediately from God, as ministers sitting beside the king; others draw the light of truth from the more universal created causes, as senators and governors of provinces; others draw this light from particular causes, as presiding officers of particular cities. In the first hierarchy there are three orders: seraphim, cherubim, and thrones; in the second, there are dominations, virtues, and powers; in the third, there are principalities, archangels, and angels.[1235] These orders are named according to their properties and duties. In the fallen angels, since these retain their natures, a subordination remains, not because of any friendship between them, but because of their common wickedness, and to be pre-eminent in evil is to be more miserable.

CHAPTER XXXV: QUESTION 113 THE GUARDIAN ANGELS
First Article: The Guardianship Of The Angels
That men are under the guardianship of the angels is of faith: "For He hath given His angels charge over thee: to keep thee in all thy ways."[1236] Christ Himself commanded that children should not be scandalized because "their angels in heaven always see the face of My Father."[1237]
The. testimony of tradition is confirmed by the institution of the feast of the Guardian Angels. The theological reason for the guardianship of the angels is that God usually governs the lower beings through the higher. Besides this, man is a pilgrim and there are many dangers along the way, both interior and exterior. Just as protection is given a man on a dangerous road, so God gives every man a guardian during this life. When a man arrives at the end of his journey he will not have a guardian angel but an angel who will rule with him. It is certain that each of the faithful has his own guardian angel.[1238] It is also commonly held that sinners and infidels have guardian angels so that these sinners may do less harm. It is also very probable that an angel is specially deputed to assist every priest celebrating Mass.
Second Article: The Duties Of Guardian Angels
The guardian angels illuminate the intellect not by infusing species but by adapting truths to our understanding, by representing truths by likenesses of sensible things, by suggesting good thoughts, and they excite the will to good by admonition and persuasion. They supply occasions for good and remove occasions for evil; they offer our prayers and sacrifices to God; they ward off exterior evils, they help us in worldly affairs, they do battle with evil spirits, they inflict remedial penalties, they help us particularly in the hour of death, and lead our souls to heaven or purgatory. We in turn owe them reverence, loyalty, and confidence.

CHAPTER XXXVI: QUESTION 114 THE ASSAULTS OF THE DEVILS
Art. 1. Men are attacked by the devils,[1239] who try to impede the progress of men because of envy. By reason of their pride the devils assume the appearance of the divine majesty. But the order of these attacks on men is from God, who wills to make use of evils in order that good may come of them.
The devils attack men: 1. by instigating them to sin (with God's permission), 2. in order to punish men, and in this way they are sent by God as was the evil spirit that punished Achab the King of Israel.[1240] But those who are tempted are always assisted by God by His own power and through the good angels. All this is ordered to the glory of the elect.
Art. 2. To tempt others is a characteristic of the devil,[1241] and whenever the devil tempts others he does it to harm them by precipitating them into sin. Although the devil cannot move the will, he can to some extent affect man's lower powers by which the will is inclined, although it is not compelled.
Art. 3. All sins are not to be attributed to the temptation of the devil; some sins arise from the concupiscence of the flesh or of the eyes, or from our own pride.
Art. 4. The devils can seduce men, not by true miracles, but by cunning and deception.[1242]
With regard to spiritualism the Holy Office has decreed (1917) as follows: "It is not lawful to be present at any spiritualistic seances or conferences, with or without a so-called medium, with or without hypnotism, even under the guise of piety, for the purpose of interrogating souls or spirits, of hearing replies, or even of observing such things with the tacit or expressed protestation of having nothing to do with evil spirits."[1243]
All these assaults by the devil are permitted for the glory of the elect. Christ has already obtained a perfect victory over the devils, over sin and death, on Calvary and by His resurrection.

CHAPTER XXXVII: QUESTIONS 65-74 THE CORPOREAL CREATURE
As a beginning we present what is of faith concerning corporeal creatures according to Sacred Scriptures and the declarations of the Church.
The biblical narrative. What is the literary character of the first three chapters of Genesis, in which the creation of corporeal creatures and of man is described? This question was considered by the Biblical Commission, and on June 30, 1909, the Commission issued a decree on the historical character of the first chapters of Genesis.[1244]
From this decree we arrive at the following conclusion: In the first three chapters of Genesis the constitution of things and the complete order of creation is not described in a scientific manner;[1245] these chapters present a historical-popular narrative[1246] adapted to the understanding of the people of the time.[1247]
In accordance with the response of the Biblical Commission, this thesis is explained as follows.
1. The first three chapters of Genesis are historical since "they contain the narrative of things that actually happened, and this narrative corresponds to objective reality and historical truth."[1248]
As the decree says: a) This is clear from the style and historical form of the Book of Genesis, for if the events related in Genesis about the sons of Adam, Noah and his sons, of Abraham, Isaac, Esau, of Jacob and his sons are historical, as all admit, why should that part of the book which deals with the first origin of things be considered a fable? b) It is clear from the peculiar connection between these three chapters themselves and between them and the following chapters. In this narrative the origin of the entire human race is connected with the origin of the Jewish people, which is explained in the following chapters. c) It is clear from the frequent testimony of both the Old Testament and the New Testament and from the almost unanimous opinion of the Fathers, in which the events related in the first chapters of Genesis are cited as historical.[1249] Moreover, this historical sense was traditional among the Israelites and was always held by the Church.
2. However, this historical narrative is not scientific but popular,[1250] "for in writing the first chapter of Genesis it was not the intention of the inspired writer to teach the inner constitution of visible things or to present the complete order of creation in a scientific manner but to give to the people of his time a popular presentation, in the language of the time, adapted to the understanding of the time." St. Thomas said: "Moses adapted himself to the uneducated people and spoke of what appeared to the senses."[1251]
The inspired writer, therefore, had no intention of teaching the sciences of physics, astronomy, geology, or biology; he was simply teaching truths necessary for salvation. For example, the nature of the firmament, or the heavens, is not given in scientific terms; the author merely affirms that the firmament was created by God. In order to discover what is properly revealed in this narrative we must carefully determine what is formally embraced by the word "is" in the revealed proposition. What, for instance, is revealed in the following sentences? "And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters: and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament, Heaven."[1252] Is this a revelation that the firmament is something solid? No. Because the verb "is" does not refer to the solid. What is revealed is that the heavens (which the ancients thought was a solid firmament) were created by God. The verb "is" formally refers to what was created by God and not to the adjective "firm." The proposition, "the heavens are a solid firmament," is not a revealed proposition.
In the biblical narrative we need to determine what the author wished to teach and to avoid confusing the phrasing with the proposition itself. The proposition formally contains the subject, the verb "is," and the predicate, for example, the heavens were created by God. The phrasing frequently contains modifications to describe the subject as it was conceived by the ancients, for example, the heavens, which the ancients understood to be something solid, were created by God. As the Biblical Commission says: "Not every word and phrase found in the aforesaid chapters must always and necessarily be accepted in its proper sense."[1253] Similarly, these chapters of Genesis do not deal with the nature of light, geological strata, or biological laws in a scientific manner. Nor did the author of Genesis intend to give the complete order of creation; he merely spoke of things that were better known to the people. He does not always follow a chronological order, for example, we cannot infer from Genesis that light preceded the formation of the sun, although we are told that light was made on the first day and the "lights in the firmament of heaven" were made on the fourth day.[1254]
First doubt. About what facts must the literal historical sense not be called into doubt?
Reply. "In particular about the facts that refer to the foundation of the Christian religion, such as, among others, the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time; the special creation of man; the formation of the first woman out of man; the unity of the human race; the original happiness of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality; the precept given by God to test man's obedience; the transgression of the divine commandment prompted by the devil under the guise of the serpent; the fall of our first parents from that primal state of innocence; and the promise of the future Redeemer."[1255]
Second doubt. "Presupposing this literal and historical sense, can an allegorical and prophetic interpretation be given wisely and fruitfully to certain passages of these chapters?" The Biblical Commission answered in the affirmative.[1256] In this the Commission followed the precedent of many of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, and of the Church itself.
St. Augustine and the Alexandrian school held that the whole universe had been created in one instant and that Moses had distinguished between six days merely to give his narrative a logical plan.[1257] Others have held that Moses presented in logical order six prophetic visions in which the creation of the world was revealed. This latter theory is admissible if these visions are held to contain a popular historical description of the works of God. According to St. Thomas, the Mosaic narrative logically distinguishes between a threefold operation, namely, that of creation, of distinction, and of ornamentation. This does not militate against the popular-historical character of the narrative.
Third doubt. Whether in this distinction of six days the word "Yom" (day) can be taken in its proper sense, as a natural day, or in an improper sense, as a period of time?
Following the reply of the Biblical Commission,[1258] exegetes are permitted to dispute freely on this point.
The Concordists hold that the six days represent six periods of indefinite duration, as philology allows and as paleontology requires. Thus, according to the Concordists, the geological phases are in accord with the Mosaic narrative, at least in broad outline. But many scholars question whether this agreement can be supported today. No need exists to establish a positive harmony between the Mosaic narrative and the natural sciences since there is no proof that Moses wished to follow a chronological order.
In the words of St. Thomas: "In questions of this kind two things must be observed. First, the truth of Scripture must be maintained inviolate. Secondly, since Sacred Scripture may be explained in many ways, no one should hold so tenaciously to a particular interpretation that if it turned out that what he thought was the true sense of the Scriptures was certainly wrong he would nevertheless assert his own interpretation, so that the Scriptures would not be exposed to ridicule by infidels and the infidels themselves kept from believing in the Scriptures."[1259]
We should note the important truths that are defended in questions 65 to 74: God created all things, visible and invisible; the divine goodness is the end of all corporeal things; the corporeal forms which bodies have in their original production were produced immediately by God; matter was never without a substantial form, otherwise being would be in act without act, which is a contradiction;[1260] time began with movement, of which it is the measure. The ancients thought that the heavenly bodies were incorruptible and that they were not composed of the same matter as sublunary bodies. Spectral analysis, however, has shown that the same chemical combinations exist in the stars as in terrestrial bodies. Modern scientists, however, admit the existence of the ether, which appears to be incorruptible.
Transformism And The Origin Of Life
State of the question. The question of the origin of life and of the different species of living things is one of the most important of those that pertain to the creation of corporeal things. The modern theory of transformism was scarcely mentioned among the ancient philosophers, although St. Thomas sometimes spoke of the hypothesis of the appearance of new species.[1261] This problem is in some way connected with the old question of universals: whether the universals are fundamentally in individual beings according to their unchangeable nature.
Transformism may be either absolute or moderate.
Absolute transformism holds that matter is uncaused, that it exists of itself from eternity, and that from it by successive transformations have issued different living beings, that is, vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life. (Huxley and Darwin.)
Moderate transformism holds that matter is not uncaused but is created by God, that it is not eternal, that the first living beings were created by God, and that God intervened in a special way to produce sensitive life, in the formation of the human body and in the creation of the spiritual soul. This moderate transformism refers to the production of various species of plants and animals which derive by successive transformations from the first living beings. Some of those who hold a moderate transformism think that all plants and animals come from different species created by God; others think that all plants came from one species and all animals came from one species of animal. Those who support the theory of transformism are not agreed on the definition of species; what one calls species another may call a variation.
Absolute transformism. This theory manifestly contradicts faith and reason inasmuch as it denies all intervention by God. It is directly opposed to the dogma of creation ("In the beginning God created heaven and earth"), since it teaches that matter has no cause and is eternal. This theory is opposed to all the proofs for the existence of God, and it implies that more is produced by less, the more perfect by the imperfect. This is at the same time against the principle of contradiction or identity, against the principle of the reason of being, the principle of efficient causality, and the principle of finality. It implies an ascending evolution, in which something more perfect appears without any reason, without any efficient cause, without an end, and without order. This theory destroys all intelligibility of things, as we have explained at length on another occasion.[1262] Such an evolution of species would be entirely fortuitous, without any preconceived idea or finality, and no reason is supplied for the wonderful subordination and coordination of things in nature.
In even the most ancient species, as we know from fossils, the organs are adapted to an end, coordinated with one another, and subordinated to the preservation of the individual and the species. All this cannot be attributed to chance; it presupposes an intelligent cause. Chance is a cause <per accidens>, a cause that is accidentally connected with a cause <per se>, and therefore an accidental cause cannot be the first cause of the order in things, for then order would come from the privation of order, and intelligibility would come from unintelligibility. What would be more absurd than to say that the intellects of the great doctors and the charity of the saints derived from a blind and material fate? The greater cannot be produced by the lesser. Hence absolute transformism substitutes the most patent absurdity for the mystery of creation.
This refutation of absolute transformism is confirmed by experience, which shows that every living thing comes from another living being and that there is no spontaneous generation. Pasteur and Tyndall demonstrated that no living beings are generated where all ova and seed have been destroyed. Such bacteria as are said to be generated in the atmosphere do not come from inanimate matter but from ova existing in the atmosphere. Huxley himself admitted Pasteur's conclusions.
St. Thomas held that certain animal life was generated by putrefaction under the influence of the sun. His explanation was as follows: "A heavenly body, since it is a moving thing that is moved, has the nature of an instrument which acts with the power of the principal agent; and therefore it can cause life by virtue of its mover, which is a living substance."[1263] St. Thomas never admitted that the more perfect being can be produced by the less perfect.
Moderate transformism. This theory does not oppose the teaching of faith. The words of Genesis ("And God said: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind") show that there was some difference among the species that God created, but they do not assert that all species were immediately created by God. St. Thomas himself said: "If certain new species should appear, these have existed previously in certain active forces; in this way what is generated by animal putrefaction is produced by the power of the stars and the elements," that is, "by the power of the mover (of the stars), which is a living substance."[1264] Thus St. Thomas maintains inviolate the principle of causality, according to which the more perfect cannot be produced by a less perfect being as a fully sufficient cause.
Lastly, it is difficult to say where true variation begins and where species leaves off in the ontological sense. Generally interfecundation is held to be the sign of membership in the same species. If it is pointed out that the horse and the ass generate the mule, it should be remembered that the mule is sterile, that is, it does not propagate a species. Here we have confirmation of the principle that operation follows being, and the mode of operation follows the mode of being; from this it follows that every animal generates offspring similar to itself in species. Ontological species therefore are immutable. But it is difficult to say when two animals belong to the same species properly so called or to two similar species. We do not have a clear enough understanding of the specific difference between living sensible beings; their specific forms are deeply immersed in matter and hardly intelligible to us. We know them only in a descriptive manner, empirically.[1265]
But when we come to man, we clearly understand his specific difference because it is not immersed in matter. Man's reason or rationality is a form of intellectuality, and intelligence is distinctly intelligible to itself because it is essentially ordered to the cognition of intelligible being itself and the reasons for the being of things.
It is clear, then, that the human soul cannot be educed from the potency of matter; on the other hand the specific form of plants and animals is educed from matter by way of generation.[1266]

CHAPTER XXXVIII: MAN
Prologue
In its consideration of the nature of man theology treats only of I man's soul, and of his body only with regard to the relationship of the body to the soul. Therefore St. Thomas considers the human soul in its essence, in its union with the body, and then he considers the faculties of the soul. In this treatise he considers acts of the intellective faculty, leaving the acts and habits of the appetitive faculty to moral theology. Finally St. Thomas considers the first production of man and the state of the first man.
Today many of the questions of the first part of this treatise are dealt with in rational psychology, and therefore we select only the more important questions that pertain to dogmatic theology and present them in two sections.
I. The human soul. 1. The spirituality and immortality of the human soul (q. 75). 2. The union of the soul with the body (q. 76). 3. The faculties of the soul (q. 77-83). 4. The manner in which the soul knows itself (q. 87). 5. The separated soul (q. 89).
II. The first production of man (q. 90-102). 1. The origin of man. 2. The elevation of man to the supernatural state. 3. The fall of man.
The theological character of this treatise. St. Thomas does not here follow the ascending order of the philosophical treatise <De anima>. The philosopher ascends progressively from sensible things to the spiritual and the divine, from vegetative life to sensitive life and then to the intellective life, whose acts reveal the spirituality and immortality of the soul. Theology, on the other hand, having God in His intimate life as its proper object, first considers man as God's creature. Therefore, after the treatise on God, on creation in general, on the angels, theology treats of the human soul. This begins with the soul's spirituality and immortality, proceeding then to the soul's union with the body, the soul's faculties and acts, the separated soul, the production of the first man, and the state of the first man.
Besides this, in these questions St. Thomas follows the doctrinal method, which is a departure from the methods of the Averroistic philosophers and the Augustinian theologians, who preceded him.
Averroes held that the human intellect was the lowest of the intellects, but that it was an immaterial form, eternal, separate from individuals, and numerically one.[1267] In his view this human intelligence was at the same time the intellectus agens and the intellectus possibilis, and human reason was impersonal but it illumined individual souls. Hence Averroes denied the personal immortality of individual souls and their liberty. This doctrine was taught in the thirteenth century by the Latin Averroists, Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia, against whom St. Thomas wrote his treatise, <De unitate intellectus> contra averroistas.
On the other hand, the Augustinian theologians who preceded St. Thomas, among them Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, admitted a plurality of substantial forms in man and held that there was spiritual matter in the human soul. They insisted on this conclusion because the intellective soul is independent of the body and because they were unable to explain the natural unity of the human composite.
In opposition to these mutually opposing theories, St. Thomas sought to prove that the rational soul is purely spiritual, without any matter, that it is therefore incorruptible, but that it is nevertheless the one and only form of the human body, intrinsically independent of matter in its intellective and voluntary operations, and therefore after its separation from the body it is individuated in its being by its natural relation to one body rather than to another.
Scotus and Suarez, however, sought to retain certain propositions taught by the older, pre-Thomistic Scholasticism.
The Spirituality And Immortality Of The Soul: Question 75
The spirituality of the soul is often affirmed in Sacred Scripture. 1. God is said to have formed the body of Adam from the slime of the earth, and into this body He breathed the breath of life, that is, the soul, which is spiritual since man was made to the image of God, who is a spirit.[1268] 2. Those things predicated of the sheol presuppose the immortality of the soul, as does also the resurrection of certain human beings. 3. The spirituality and immortality of the soul are expressly stated in the prophetical[1269] and sapiential books,[1270] and in the Books of the Machabees.[1271] 4. In the New Testament the human soul is said to be entirely distinct from the body, immortal, and capable of eternal life: "Fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell";[1272] "For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?"[1273]
The Fathers frequently affirm the spirituality and immortality of the soul; in general their teaching is that the soul is incorporeal, immortal, and created by God.[1274]
The Fourth Council of the Lateran declared that the human creature "is constituted of a spirit and a body."[1275]
As Denzinger notes at the end of his systematic index, the Church has declared that the human soul is not generated by the parents, that the intellective soul is not evolved from the sensitive soul, that the soul is substance, not numerically one in all but one in each individual, that it is created by God from nothing, that it does not pre-exist, is not a part of the divine substance, and is immortal.[1276]
St. Thomas proves the spirituality of the soul from reason as follows: "It is clear that whatever is received in another is received after the manner of that in which it is received; thus whatever is known is known according to the form it has in the one who knows. The intellective soul, however, knows a thing in its absolute nature, for example, a stone, which is known absolutely as a stone. In the intellective soul the form of the stone is absolute according to its formal nature. Therefore the intellective soul is an absolute form, not something composed of matter and form. If the intellective soul were composed of matter and form, the forms of things would be received in it as individuals, and the soul would know only the individual, as is the case with the sensitive powers, which receive the forms of things in a corporeal organ."[1277]
This demonstration becomes clearer the more our knowledge abstracts from matter. Following Aristotle, St. Thomas distinguishes three degrees of abstraction. In the first degree our intellect abstracts only from individual matter, knowing, for example, not this mineral, this plant, or this animal, but the nature of the mineral, plant, or animal and the reason underlying their functions. In the second degree our intellect abstracts from sensible matter, or from all sensible qualities and considers the nature of the triangle, circle, sphere, or of numbers, and deduces the necessary and universal laws of their properties, which thus become intelligible and not merely imaginable. Now it becomes clear that the idea of the circle is not only a composite image or the average of individual circles, but expresses the nature of the circle which is verified either in the small, or large, or average circle, and this nature contains the reason for the properties of the circle, which thus become truly intelligible, whereas the image of the circle contains only the sensible phenomena without any intelligibility. Finally in the third degree of abstraction our intellect abstracts from all matter and attains to intelligible being, which is not accessible to the senses or to the imagination, either as a sensible property (color, sound, etc.) or as something sensible in common (as size, figure), but is accessible only to the intellect. Such reasons for the being of things as well as the properties of being, namely, one, true, and good, can also be attributed to pure spirits.
Only the intellect, not the senses or the imagination, can know the intelligible being of things and the first necessary and universal principles of being; the senses and the imagination know only the sensible qualities of things and the individual, not the absolutely necessary and universal principles of contradiction, identity, the nature of being, efficient causality, finality, etc., by which all things gradually become intelligible and by which we demonstrate the existence of the first cause and the first intelligence, which orders all things.
In this third degree of abstraction our intellect knows itself as essentially related to the immaterial, and therefore it must itself be immaterial. Its object is not color or sound or the different sensible phenomena, but the intelligible being of things, and therefore all its concepts presuppose the most universal concept of being. So also in all its judgments the verb is reduced to the verb "is," which is, as it were, the soul of the judgment, and every ratiocination assigns the reason for the being of the conclusion.
Our intellect is therefore essentially related to intelligible being and to the absolutely necessary and universal principles of being because of the abstraction from all matter, and therefore our intellect itself is immaterial. Consequently the intellective soul also is entirely immaterial and intrinsically independent of the organism, since operation follows being and the mode of operation follows the mode of being.
This is the principal proof for the spirituality of the soul, which St. Thomas adopted from Aristotle.[1278]
The imagination cannot attain to the knowledge of a necessary and universal principle, for example, the principle of causality, nor to the first principle of ethics, that the moral good (transcending the sensible, delectable, or useful good) is to be done and evil is to be avoided. In this, man is essentially superior to even the higher animals.
This argument is corroborated by several subordinate arguments.
1. The spirituality of the soul is also proved by the fact that it is able to know the nature of all bodies. "When a thing is able to know other things, it is fitting that it have nothing of these things in its nature, because that which might be in it naturally would impede the knowledge of the other things, just as the tongue that is infected with a bitter taste finds all things bitter."[1279]
Much has been written about the validity of this argument. If it is offered independently from the preceding argument, it is rather difficult,[1280] but it is comparatively simple as a confirmation of the preceding argument.[1281] These two arguments are taken from direct intellection.
2. The spirituality of the soul is also proved from reflex intellection. "The action of no body is reflected back on the agent; as was shown in Physica (Bk. VII, chap. I); no body is moved by itself except with respect to a part, so that one part of the body moves and another is moved. Our intellect, however, acting on itself reflects back on itself by complete reflection, it understands itself not only with regard to a part but with regard to its totality. Therefore it is not a body."[1282] In other words, the intellective soul is entirely devoid of integrating parts and extension.
Moreover, as St. Thomas says: "Our intellect reflects on its own act, not only inasmuch as it knows its act but also inasmuch as it knows its relation to the thing (the extramental thing that is known), which is something that cannot be known unless the nature of the act itself is known together with the nature of the intellect itself."[1283] Thus our intellect knows itself as ordered to the cognition of truth, just as the feet are ordered to walking and wings are ordered to flying. But the cognition of truth is not something corporeal like walking; it is spiritual, revealing the spirituality of the soul.
3. Through the intellect the soul conceives immaterial and spiritual things, among these the eternal, infinite, holy God, the first cause of all being; it conceives even revealed mysteries, which entirely transcend the capabilities of the sensitive faculties, such as the infinite value of the Redemption and of the love of the Son of God, dying on the cross.
4. The spirituality of the soul is confirmed by the object of the will, inasmuch as the will follows the intellect. Our will, specified by the universal good as known by the intellect, is ordered not only to the delectable or useful sensible good but also to the moral, or reasonable, or spiritual good, according to the various virtues of temperance, fortitude, justice, and equity. We know from experience that, while the same material goods, the same house, the same field, cannot be possessed entirely at the same time by many persons, the same spiritual goods, such as the same truth or the same virtue, can be possessed entirely and at the same time by many persons, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas frequently point out. Lastly, our souls by their natural desires are attracted more to spiritual objects than to corporeal things; indeed the soul naturally is drawn to God the author of nature, the principle of truth, of goodness, and of beauty, who is to be loved above all things and even more than ourselves.[1284]
5. Further confirmation is had from human freedom inasmuch as our will, specified by the universal good, remains free with regard "to every object that is not good in every respect."[1285] This reveals the universal scope and immeasurable depth of our will, which cannot be filled except by the clear vision of God.[1286]
6. In man we find a moral conscience, which threatens him when he is about to do wrong and torments him with remorse if he commits the wrong. Only an immaterial and spiritual nature is capable of such a conscience. Moral laws are not imposed on blind matter.
From all this we conclude that, although the human soul is dependent on the senses for the presentation of its proper object, which is the intelligible being of sensible things, it is not dependent on an organism in its specific operation, or in its being (since operation follows being, and the mode of operation follows the mode of being), or in its production, that is, the soul is not educed from matter.
Therefore, as we shall see in the next chapter, the human soul and the body unite in the one being of man in such a way that the soul does not depend on the body in being but communicates its being to the body.
The incorruptibility of the soul follows from the spirituality of the soul, or its intrinsic independence of matter.[1287] Every simple and subsisting form (that is, immaterial and intrinsically independent of matter) is incorruptible <per se> and <per accidens>. But the human soul is not only simple, like the soul of the animal, it is also subsisting and intrinsically independent of matter. Therefore it cannot be corrupted either <per se> (because of its simplicity) or <per accidens> when the composite is corrupted (because of its intrinsic independence of matter both in being and in its specific operation).
By God's absolute power, of course, the soul can be annihilated, since annihilation is not repugnant and since the soul needs to be preserved by God. But by His power as directed by His wisdom God does not annihilate a creature which is both <per se> and <per accidens> incorruptible according to the laws established by God Himself. God does not annihilate the soul even miraculously or by an extraordinary use of His power, because, from the viewpoint of the end, there is no motive for such action; such an action is not good in itself, nor can it be directed to a greater good. On the other hand God can permit sin for a greater good, namely, for the manifestation of mercy and justice. The soul, therefore, is immortal by its very nature.
We see from this, in opposition to Scotus, that the immortality of the human soul is not only known by faith but can also be demonstrated by natural reason.
St. Thomas adds the following argument: "In cognitive beings desire follows knowledge. The senses know being only under the aspect of the here and now, but the intellect understands being absolutely and as it is in all time. Hence every being that possesses an intellect naturally desires to be at all times. A natural desire cannot be futile. Therefore every intellectual substance is incorruptible."[1288]
The brute animal does not desire to be always but only here and now, for example, at the moment when it is threatened with death, because the animal does not know being absolutely in all time. Man himself does not naturally desire the immortality of his body, which is naturally mortal, but the soul of man, which knows being absolutely as in all time, naturally desires to be always, and this is a sign that the soul is naturally immortal. This desire of the soul is not a conditional and inefficacious desire, like the desire for the beatific vision, which is essentially supernatural and gratuitous; this desire is for the natural being of the soul to be preserved continually.
Finally, from the fact that the human soul is spiritual it follows that it is not in the potency of matter like the soul of the animal, nor can it be produced by generation. It can be produced only by God by creation from nothing, that is, from no pre-existing subject.[1289] That which operates independently of matter also exists and becomes, or rather is produced, independently of matter. Hence we find among the twenty-four propositions approved by the Sacred Congregation of Studies (1914): "Intellectuality necessarily follows immateriality, and the degree of intellectuality depends on the degree of remoteness from matter" (no. 18).
The human intelligence, therefore, is the lowest of all the intelligences, and correspondingly its proportionate object is the lowest intelligible being, namely, that of sensible things, in which as in a mirror the human intelligence knows higher things.

CHAPTER XXXIX: THE UNION OF THE SOUL WITH THE BODY
This an article of faith that the intellective soul is <per se> and essentially the form of the body. This truth was defined by the Council of Vienne (1311-12): "We define that if anyone shall presume to assert, defend, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not <per se> and essentially the form of the human body, he shall be considered a heretic."[1290] In these words the Council of Vienne condemned the error of Olivi, who taught that the rational soul informed the body not <per se> but that it did so through the vegetative and sensitive faculties.
This definition states three things. 1. The human soul is the form of the human body, or the soul is substantially united to the body as form to matter, not like a mover to a thing that is moved, but constituting one nature with the body. 2. This union is <per se> and not through another, not through the mediation of a sensitive or vegetative principle, but directly and immediately through the soul. 3. The union is essential, that is, by the essence of the soul and not through some faculty, or consciousness of operation, or some accidental influx, so that the essence of the soul is the radical principle of the vegetative and sensitive operations together with the body with which it is united.
Among the condemned propositions of Rosmini we find: "The union of the soul and the body properly consists in an immanent perception by which the subject, comprehending an idea, affirms the sensible part, after having comprehended its own essence in the idea."[1291]
In a declaration against the false doctrine of A. Guenther, Pius IX said: "The rational soul is the true form of the body, <per se> and immediate."[1292]
Cardinal Zigliara concludes: "The fathers of the Council of Vienne used the word 'form' in its strict scholastic sense,"[1293] which was the sense commonly accepted by those to whom the Council addressed itself. The Council, however, as Zigliara points out, did not wish to condemn Scotus' thesis which admits the form of corporeity besides the rational soul. Hence the Council did not define that the rational soul was the only form of the human body, but rather that it is the substantial form and the principle of the vegetative and sensitive life of the human body.
Corollary. Hence, as Vacant points out,[1294] it cannot be admitted that there are several souls in man, as the Gnostics, Manichaeans, Apollinaris, and Guenther said. We must hold that the intellective soul is the only soul in man and the principle of the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life of man, even though it has not been defined that it is the only form. Indeed, Palmieri was able to make a defense for his atomism, according to which the rational soul is still the principle of even vegetative life.
St. Thomas, however, proves from reason that the rational soul is not only the form of the human body and the only soul in man but also that it is the only form because if any other substantial form existed beforehand it would follow that the soul was only accidentally united to the body.
St. Thomas wrote: "That by which anything is primarily operated is the form to which the operation is attributed..... But it is evident that that by which the body lives primarily is the soul....For it is the soul by which we are nourished, feel, move in place, and by which also we primarily think..... For it is the same man who perceives that he thinks and feels; and feeling cannot take place without the body..... If the intellect is not united to Socrates' body, except as the mover of the body, Socrates would not be absolutely one, and consequently he would not be a simple being."[1295]
Nevertheless the rational soul is not immersed in matter, for as St. Thomas says: "The more noble a form is the more it dominates the corporeal matter and the less it is immersed in it, and the more it excels the matter by its operation and power."[1296] "The soul communicates that being in which it subsists to the corporeal matter..... For this reason, when the body is destroyed, the soul retains its own being, which is not true of other forms."[1297]
The intellective principle is multiplied as the human bodies are multiplied; otherwise Socrates and Plato would be one intelligence. "If there were but one intellect in all men, the variety of phantasms found in this man and that could not cause the variety of intellectual operations of this or that man."[1298] When it is separated from its body the soul remains individuated, because it preserves its natural relation to this particular body rather than to another.
Nor are there other souls in man, because then man would not be simply one, "for nothing is simply one except by one form."[1299] "The intellective soul contains the sensitive soul of the animal and the nutritive soul of the plants, just as the pentagon contains the tetragon."[1300]
Nor is the form of corporeity in man distinct from the intellective soul "because the substantial form confers being absolutely. If besides the intellective soul some other substantial form existed beforehand in matter by which the subject of the soul would be in act, it would follow that the soul would not confer being absolutely and that consequently it would not be the substantial form."[1301] This was the opinion held by Thomists at all times in opposition to Scotus and his followers. "That which is <per se> one, namely, one nature, does not come into being out of two acts but out of potency and act. This was Cajetan's conclusion from the words of Aristotle himself.
Finally, it is fitting that the intellective soul be united to a proper body for the purpose of sensation to become a human body, because "the intellective soul is the lowest grade of intellectual substances," and therefore its proportionate object is the lowest intelligible being of sensible things, knowable through the senses. "Hence it is proper that the intellective soul have not only the power of intellection but also the power of sensation. The action of the senses, however, does not take place without a corporeal instrument. It is proper, therefore, that the intellective soul be united to a body which can be a proper organ for the senses."[1302]
Thus man is a microcosm in which there is the being of the stone, life as we find it in plants and animals, and intellection as it is in the angels. And in man we see the highest degree of the lowest form of life, namely the highest degree of sensitive life as found in the imagination, and at the same time the lowest degree of the highest kind of life, namely, the lowest degree of intellection. The human species appears, therefore, as a unique species, that is, there cannot be several ontologically distinct species of rational animals. In this one species the highest degree of the lowest life unites with the lowest degree of the highest life, while an immeasurable distance remains between sensitive and intellective life.
Solution Of The Objections
The principal objection against the doctrine that the intellective soul is the only form of the body is the following. An intellective power cannot be the form of a body. But an intellective substance is more noble than its power. Therefore an intellective substance cannot be the form of a body.
St. Thomas replied: "The human soul is not a form immersed in corporeal matter, or completely comprehended by matter, because of the perfection of the soul, and therefore there is nothing to prohibit some power of the soul from being the act of the body, although the soul by its essence is the form of the body."[1303]
In other words, the intellective soul is the form of the body inasmuch as it is eminently and formally vegetative and sensitive, or inasmuch as the intellective soul does for the human body what the sensitive soul does for the animal and what the vegetative soul does for plants. In this manner the intellective soul is virtually multiple.
This teaching is sometimes misunderstood to mean that the intellective soul is virtually sensitive and vegetative. On the contrary, according to the interpretation of Cajetan, Ferrariensis, and John of St. Thomas, the intellective soul is eminently and formally vegetative and sensitive. It is God alone who virtually possesses vegetative and sensitive life, as He possesses other mixed perfections which He can produce, and God cannot be the form of the human body.
The intellective soul contains vegetative and sensitive life eminently and formally, just as God in the sublimity of the Deity formally contains the absolutely perfect perfections, such as being, intellection, love. The soul therefore can be the form of the human body, but this would be impossible if the soul were only virtually and not formally vegetative and sensitive.
But, as in God the absolutely perfect perfections are only virtually distinct, so the sensitive, vegetative, and corporeal forms are only virtually distinct in the intellective soul. This is the clear teaching of St. Thomas. Some have caused confusion on this point by saying that the vegetative and sensitive parts are only virtually in the soul because St. Thomas said that the intellective, sensitive, and vegetative parts are only virtually distinct. The term "virtually" refers to "distinguish" and not to the verb "is," as when we speak of the absolutely perfect perfections in God.
Moreover, it would be repugnant for the soul to be the immediate principle of such diverse operations as those of vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life, but it is not repugnant that the soul produce these operations through the mediation of various subordinate faculties. No created substance, not even the angel, is immediately operative; it cannot understand except through the intellective faculty, nor can it will except through the will. The created essence is ordered to being, but the operative faculties are ordered to operations and are specified by the formal object of these operations.[1304]
The twofold principle for the solution of the objections against this traditional doctrine is: the intellective soul is the form of the body, and yet it is in no way immersed in matter. This teaching is well stated as the sixteenth of the Thomistic propositions approved by the Sacred Congregation of Studies (1914): "This same rational soul is united to the body in such a way that it is the only substantial form of the body, and through this form man is man, animal, living, a body, substance, and being. This form therefore confers on man every essential degree of perfection; besides this the soul confers on the body the act of being by which it itself is." For the Thomists this proposition is certain according to the principles that refer to the distinction between potency and act, and between essence and being. Suarez, on the contrary, who conceived these principles otherwise, held that it was only probable that the rational soul is the only form of the body.[1305] Denying the real distinction between created essence and being, he said that the substantial being of man cannot be one, but that there is a twofold being just as there are two parts in the essence of man, namely, matter and form. As in the question of creation, so here also Suarez differs considerably from St. Thomas.
From St. Thomas' principles concerning the distinction between potency and act it follows that the human soul and body unite in the one being of man in such a way that the soul does not depend on the body for being, but communicates its being to the body; and after the separation from the body, the soul can again communicate its being to the body, as happens in the resurrection of the dead. From the same principles it follows that there is one being in Christ, namely, the being of the Word, communicated to the human nature, which does not subsist except in the Word.[1306]
This doctrine of the spirituality and personal immortality of the soul shows how St. Thomas Christianized that Aristotelianism which the Averroists interpreted in a pantheistic sense. We see this likewise in the question of free creation from nothing. In these two questions the holy doctor shows how the principles supporting the preambles of faith are demonstrated and explained by the Aristotelian teaching on potency and act.[1307]

CHAPTER XL: QUESTIONS 77-83 THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL
The questions in the <Summa theologica> from seventy-seven to eighty-three, treating of the distinction and subordination of the faculties of the soul, are governed by the principle that "the faculties, acts, and habits are specified by the formal object to which they are essentially ordered, that is, by the formal object which they touch on immediately and by the formal motive under which they attain their object." More briefly: the relative is specified by the absolute to which it is essentially ordered. In his work, De tribus principiis doctrinae S. Thomae, A. Reginaldus enunciates this principle as the third. The other two principles are: being is transcendental and analogical, and God is pure act. Indeed this third principle illumines all psychology and ethics, as well as all moral theology and the theological treatises on the angels and man.
From this principle it follows first that the faculties are really distinguished from the soul, because as the soul is ordered to its own being the faculties are ordered to operation, and operation presupposes being and is distinct from it. Moreover, no creature is immediately operative; to operate it requires an operative faculty. Hence the human soul, like the angel, cannot understand except through the intellective faculty, nor can it will except through the will. When we speak in this way it is not because of the usages of language but because the very nature of things requires it. As the essence of the soul is the real capacity for existence, so the intellect is the real capacity for knowing truth, and the will is the capacity for willing what is proposed as good. Hence by reason of this principle the faculties of the soul are really distinct from each other according to their formal objects.
Only in God are essence, existence, intellect, intellection, will, and love identified without any real distinction. Even in the angel there is a real distinction between essence and being, between the essence and the faculties, between the faculties themselves, between the intellect and successive intellections, and between the will and successive volitions. Such is also the case with the human soul.
Instead of a real distinction Scotus introduced his formal-actual distinction derived from the nature of the thing as a middle between the real distinction and the distinction of reason. To this the Thomists reply that either this new distinction is antecedent to the consideration of our minds, and then it is real, or it is not antecedent to the consideration of the mind, and then it is a distinction of reason based on the nature of the thing, that is, a virtual distinction.
Suarez, an eclectic in these questions as in others, sought a middle way between St. Thomas and Scotus by saying that the distinction between the soul and its faculties is not certain but only probable. Here again it is evident that Suarez did not understand the distinction between potency and act as St. Thomas did.[1308]
From this same principle, that the faculties are specified by their formal object, we learn of the distinction and the immeasurable distance between the intellect and the sensitive faculties. These latter, no matter how perfect they may be, never attain to anything but sensible being, that is, sensible and imaginable phenomena; they do not penetrate to intelligible being, to the reasons for the being of things, or to the universal and necessary principles of contradiction, causality, finality. Nor do they attain to the first principle of ethics: Good is to be done and evil is to be avoided. This immeasurable distance between the intellect and the sensitive faculties is the foundation for the proof of the spirituality of the soul.[1309]
For the same reason the will, the rational appetite, is distinguished from the sensible appetite, both irascible and concupiscible.[1310] For the will, directed by the intellect, is specified by the universal good, which is known only by the intellect, whereas the sensitive appetite, which is immediately directed by the cognitive sensitive faculties, is specified not by the universal good but by the sensible, delectable, and useful good. Therefore the sensitive appetite, as such, cannot will the rational or moral good which is the object of virtue. However, under the direction of prudence, the virtues of temperance and fortitude, which are in the sensitive appetite disciplined and regulated by reason, are specified by the moral good as demanding preservation in circumstances of enjoyment or attack.
This profound distinction between the will and sensibility is not acknowledged by many modern psychologists, particularly after J. J. Rousseau.
From what we have said it follows that the sensitive faculties are in the human composite as in their immediate subject as well as in the particular animated organ, whereas the intellect and the will, which are intrinsically independent of the organism, are not in the human composite but in the soul alone as in their immediate subject.[1311]
The definition of liberty. From this doctrine on the intellect and the will is derived what St. Thomas teaches about liberty.[1312] We have explained and defended this teaching on another occasion.[1313] Here we wish to point out the difference between the Thomistic definition of liberty and the definition proposed by Molina. According to Molina "that agent is said to be free which, when all the requirements are present for acting, is able to act or not act."[1314] What is the meaning of the words, "when all the requirements for acting are present"? They include not only those things that are prerequisite in time but also by the simple priority of nature and causality, such as actual grace received in the same instant in which the salutary act is elicited and the ultimate practical judgment is placed. Moreover, Molina's definition means not only that under the influence of efficacious grace liberty retains the ability to resist although it actually never resists, but that grace is not efficacious in itself but only that our consent is foreseen by scientia media prior to the divine decree.
According to the Thomists, Molina's definition is not sound because it does not take into consideration the object by which the free act is specified and in this way neglects the principle that acts are specified by their formal objects.
But if we take this specifying object into consideration, we must say with St. Thomas: "If an object is proposed to the will that is not good from every viewpoint, the will is not necessarily drawn to it."[1315] In other words, the Thomists say: "Liberty is that dominating indifference of the will with regard to an object proposed by reason as not good in every way."
The essence of liberty consists in the dominating indifference of the will with regard to every object proposed by the reason as good here and now under one aspect and not good under some other aspect. We are concerned first with the indifference of the exercise of the will with regard to willing or not willing this object. This indifference is potential in the free faculty and actual in the free act. For while the will actually wills this object and while it is determined to willing the object, it still wills it freely with a dominating indifference that is now not potential but actual. In God, however, who is most free there is no potential or passive indifference but only an active and actual indifference. Liberty therefore arises from the disproportion that exists between the will specified by the universal good and the will specified by some particular good, some good under one aspect and not good or insufficient under another aspect.
The Thomists add that even by His absolute power God cannot force the will to will a particular object proposed with indifference of the judgment. Why? Because it implies a contradiction for the will necessarily to will an object proposed by the intellect as indifferent, that is, good under one aspect and not under another, or an object that is absolutely out of proportion to the unlimited capability of our will specified by the universal good.[1316]
The relation of choice to the final practical judgment. From the foregoing is derived the twenty-first of the twenty-four propositions approved by the Sacred Congregation of Studies: "The will does not precede but follows the intellect, and the will necessarily desires that which is presented to it as good in every way and thus satisfying the (rational) appetite. But the will freely chooses among several goods that are proposed as desirable to the changeable judgment. The choice therefore allows the final practical judgment, and the will effects that which is final." The choice follows freely upon the final practical judgment by which it is directed, and the will does that which is final by accepting the direction of the judgment. But the will is able to apply the intellect to another consideration which would lead to the opposite practical judgment. Here we see the influence that the intellect and the will have on each other; it is, as it were, the marriage of the intellect and will. Thus the consent of the will does whatever accepted practical judgment remains as final.
This intellectual direction is necessary because the will itself is blind, and nothing is willed unless first known as acceptable. This is an application of the principle that causes are causes with regard to each other but in different genera of causes. The intellect directs with respect to the specification of the act, and the will applies the intellect with respect to the exercise of its act, and it applies the intellect to a certain consideration as it is inclined to it.
Scotus and Suarez however held that it was not necessary that the choice be directed immediately by the final practical judgment. According to Suarez,[1317] the will is able to choose one of two equal or unequal goods even though the intellect does not propose it to us as better here and now. To this the Thomists reply that nothing is willed here and now unless it is first known as more acceptable to us here and now; each one judges according to his actual inclination, which however does not force us and can be removed.[1318]
The intellect and the will are not coordinated; the will is subordinated to the direction of the intellect in such a way however that the final practical judgment about an object that is not good under every aspect is free and not compelling. This is the indifference of the judgment which is followed by the dominating indifference of the will.[1319]

CHAPTER XLI: THE ACTS OF THE INTELLECTIVE PART OF THE SOUL; HOW THE SOUL KNOWS ITSELF
In questions eighty-four to eighty-eight of the first part of the <Summa theologica>, St. Thomas treats only of the acts and habits of the intellective part of the soul, because the acts and habits of the appetitive part are considered in moral theology and because the operations of the sensitive part do not directly pertain to theology. St. Thomas asks: 1. how the soul joined to the body understands corporeal things (q. 84); by what means it knows them (q. 85); what it understands in them (q. 86); 2. how the soul knows itself and the things that are in itself (q. 87); 3. how the soul knows the things that are above, that is, immaterial substances (q. 88).
It should be noted particularly that for St. Thomas the adequate object of our intellect, as intellect, is intelligible being in the entire extent of being. Hence we are able to know God naturally as the first cause, and supernaturally we can be elevated to the direct vision of the divine essence, which is not outside the full extent of being.[1320]
But the proper or proportionate object of the human intellect, as human, is the essence of sensible things, since the lowest intelligible being of sensible things, knowable by means of the senses, corresponds to the lowest intellect. Hence our intellect is united to the senses.[1321] Hence also we know God and spiritual substances naturally only by analogy, in the mirror of sensible things. In the state of union with the body our souls do not know spiritual things directly as does the angel, and therefore it conceives spiritual being as immaterial, and this is a sign that the soul first knows the nature of material things, such as the nature of stones, plants, and animals.
In particular it is asked whether the soul as united to the body knows itself through its essence. In <De veritate>[1322] St. Thomas examines the arguments pro and con at great length, and in the <Summa theologica>[1323] he proceeds in a simpler way and says: "Whatever is knowable is knowable as it is in act..... For sight does not perceive the colored thing in potency but only in act. And so it is with the intellect..... Thus it is that we do not know prime matter except in its relation to the form. Hence in immaterial substances, just as each one is in act by its essence so each one is intelligible by its essence..... God, who is pure act and from whom all things proceed, not only knows Himself but all things through His essence. The essence of the angel is in the genus of intelligible being as it is act, but not pure act..... Hence the angel knows itself through its essence, but the angel does not know everything through its essence; it knows some things through their representations. The position of the human intellect in the scale of intelligible beings is that of a being in potency, similar to the position of prime matter in the scale of sensible being, and therefore the human intellect is called possibilis. Considered in its essence, therefore, the human intellect is a cognitive potency. Of itself it has the power of intellection but it does not have the power of being known except when it is in act. But because it is connatural for our intellect in its present state to be concerned with material and sensible things, it follows that our intellect knows itself inasmuch as it is in act by means of the species abstracted from sensible things by the light of the intellectus agens, which is the act of these intelligible beings, and through the mediation of these intelligible species the intellectus possibilis understands. Our intellect therefore knows itself not through its essence but by its act.[1324]
This happens in two ways. First, in the particular when Socrates or Plato perceives that he has an intellective soul from the fact that he perceives that he understands. Secondly, in the universal when we study the human mind through the act of the intellect. But it is true that the efficacy of this knowledge, by which we understand the nature of the soul, is based on the light which our intellect derives from divine truth, in which the natures of all things are contained.
St. Thomas therefore arrives at the same conclusion that he reached in the <De veritate>: "Hence our mind cannot understand itself in the sense that it understands itself directly or immediately."[1325] If the soul knew itself immediately through its own essence, its spirituality would be fully evident to the soul, and there would be no materialists, just as there are no materialists among the angels. But when the soul is separated from the body, in the exact instant of the separation when the soul is no longer existing in the body, the soul will know itself through itself.

CHAPTER XLII: THE SEPARATED SOUL
In question 89 St. Thomas asks how the separated soul knows. The subjects of purgatory, heaven, and hell are treated in the treatise on the Last Things. Here we consider: 1. the subsistence of the separated soul; 2. its knowledge; 3. its unchangeable will, either in good or bad.
First Article: The Subsistence Of The Separated Soul
The subsistence of the soul separated from the body is demonstrated by this principle: Every simple form that is intrinsically independent of matter (in its operation, its being, and in its production) subsists independently of matter and perdures after separation from the body. But the human soul is a simple form and is intrinsically independent of matter. Therefore the human soul subsists after the dissolution of its body.
The Averroists object that since the human soul is individuated by matter, or by its body, when it is separated from the. body it is no longer individuated, and hence nothing subsists except one soul for all men. Others went on to say that if the soul of St. Peter is saved, my soul is also saved, because after separation from the body my soul is not distinct from the soul of St. Peter.
Replying to the Averroists St. Thomas said that, just as the human soul has an essential (or transcendental) relation to the body of a man and not to that of a lion, so this human soul has an essential (or transcendental) relation to this particular body. And this relation remains in the soul even though the terminus of the relation no longer exists, and thus the separated soul remains individuated. If this relation were predicamental or accidental, like paternity, it would disappear with its terminus. But such is not the case with a non-accidental relation, which is founded directly on the very substance of the soul. In the same way the essential relation of the faculty of sight reaches out to a colored object even though all colored things should be destroyed. The individuation of the rational soul therefore depends on the body in its becoming but not in its being, and thus there can be no question of metempsychosis.[1326] The human soul cannot inform the body of a brute animal, nor can the soul of Socrates inform Plato's body; each soul preserves its relation to its body and in this way remains individuated.[1327]
If the human soul were united only accidentally to the body, this particular soul would have only an accidental relation to this particular body, and this relation would disappear when the terminus is destroyed, that is, when the body is dissolved. But this is not true since the human soul is united to the body by its very nature, and together with the body the soul constitutes a being that is one <per se>, that is, one nature. Thus St. Thomas is always faithful to the principle of economy, according to which a question should not be explained by many principles if it can be explained by fewer principles. In this treatise, as in others, all the conclusions are deduced from a few exalted principles, and this makes for a greater unification of our science.
From the foregoing it follows that it is more perfect for the rational soul to be united to the body than to be separated from it, for this lowest intellect has for its proportionate object the lowest intelligible being, placed in the shadows of sensible being, and in order to know this kind of being the soul needs the senses, and therefore the body, which exists on account of the soul. Thus, <per se> the body is useful for the soul, although at times it may be a hindrance.[1328] The state of separation from the body, therefore, is preternatural for the soul;[1329] and the soul naturally desires to reinform its body, all of which is in full accord with the dogma of the general resurrection.[1330] The separated soul, however, cannot at will reassume its body, because it is the form of the body not by an action that is dependent on its will, but it is the form of the body by its nature. Operation follows being, and the soul does not have power over its own being; the being of both soul and body are under the power of God alone, and God alone can revive the body and He alone as the author of life can restore life to a corpse.[1331]
Second Article: The Knowledge Of The Separated Soul
The guiding principle in this entire question is still that the human intellect is the lowest of the intellects although it is purely spiritual.
It is certain that the sensitive operations of the internal and external senses do not remain in the separated soul; indeed the sensitive faculties are only radically in the soul. As they are in the soul they are not in act since they are in act only in the human composite. Similarly the habits of the sensitive faculties (for example, the habitual recollections of the sensitive memory) remain in the separated soul only radically.
On the other hand, the separated soul retains its higher faculties, which are purely spiritual, namely, the intellect and the will, as well as the habits of these faculties, both those that are acquired, as the sciences and virtues, and those that are infused, such as faith, hope, charity, prudence, religion, justice, penance, etc. Similarly the separated soul retains the acts of these superior faculties and their habits. The exercise of these faculties is, however, impeded to some extent because after separation the soul is without the cooperation of the imagination and the sensitive memory, which is helpful in the knowledge that is obtained from the species abstracted from sensible things.
Theologians commonly hold that the separated soul receives from God certain infused species in the instant of separation to overcome this impediment. These species are similar, although of a lower kind, to the angels' species, and are used by the soul without the assistance of the imagination. This procedure has an analogy in the case of an aging theologian. Because of his failing sight he can no longer peruse theological periodicals or new books on theology but he now becomes a man of prayer and enjoys more abundant inspirations from the Holy Ghost to enable him to arrive at a more profound understanding of theology. The separated soul, therefore, understands according to the mode of other spiritual substances that are separated from matter.[1332]
That the state of the separated soul is preternatural is evident from the fact that these infused ideas, although inferior to those of the angels, are too sublime for the capacity of the human intellect, which is the weakest of all intellects. The state of the separated soul is somewhat like that of a student uninitiated in the science of metaphysics who finds the lectures far above his comprehension; the newcomer in metaphysics prefers conventional argument based on common sense.
A twofold difficulty attends cognition by the separated soul: when it seeks to make use of acquired ideas it lacks the helpful cooperation of the imagination, and when it seeks to use infused ideas it finds them too sublime for its capabilities. But for this twofold difficulty some compensation is derived from the fact that the separated soul sees itself intuitively.[1333] Hence it clearly sees its own spirituality, immortality, and liberty, and in the reflection of its own essence it knows God the author of nature with perfect certitude. Thus the greatest philosophical problems are solved in a higher light. St. Thomas says, "to some degree the separated soul is freer in its intellection."[1334]
The separated souls also naturally know each other perfectly although less perfectly than the angels, "and the separated soul knows the angels through divinely imprinted likenesses which, however, fail to be perfect representations because the nature of the human soul is inferior to the angel."[1335]
St. Thomas shows that separated souls know individual things through infused species;[1336] but they do not know all of them as do the angels, only "those to which they are in some way determined either by previous knowledge, by some affection, by some natural relation, or by divine ordination, because everything that is received is received according to the mode of the recipient." Local distance does not impede the soul's knowledge of individuals, because this knowledge is derived from infused ideas and does not depend on the senses or on local distance.
Do the separated souls know what is happening here on earth? St. Thomas replies: "According to their natural knowledge the souls of the dead do not know what is happening here on earth. The reason is that the separated soul knows individual things inasmuch as it is determined to them by some vestige of previous knowledge or affection or by divine ordination. But the souls of the dead, by divine ordination and by the mode of their being, are segregated from intercourse with the living and joined in intercourse with spiritual substances, which are separated from the body. Hence they are ignorant of the things that happen among us."[1337]
It is probable, however, that the souls of the blessed know all that is happening here on earth. They are equal to the angels, and, as St. Augustine says, the angels are not ignorant of what is happening among us. "But because the souls of the saints are most perfectly in accord with divine justice, they are not saddened nor do they interest themselves in the affairs of the living except when the disposition of divine justice requires it."[1338]
St. Thomas also points out that "the souls of the dead (in purgatory) can be solicitous about the living, even though they are ignorant about the condition of the living, just as we are solicitous about the dead, offering our suffrages for them, although we are ignorant about their (particular) state. The souls of the dead cannot know through themselves what the living are doing, but they may have this knowledge either through the souls of those who join them from here below, or through the angels, or through the revelation of the spirit of God."[1339]
The duration of the separated soul that is not yet in the bliss of heaven is twofold, namely, aeviternity and discrete time.[1340] Aeviternity is the measure of their immobile substance and their immobile knowledge of themselves and of God, as well as of their immobile love, which results from this knowledge. Thus aeviternity does not imply the change of succession; it is simultaneously whole, but it is still not eternity, because it has beginning, at least in fact, and because it is compatible with before and after, that is, it has discrete time annexed to it.
In the separated souls and in the angels discrete time is the measure of successive thoughts and affections; each thought perdures for one spiritual instant, and the following thought is measured by another spiritual instant. Thus discrete time is the measure of the succession of the thoughts and affections of these souls and of the angels just as continuous time is the measure of continuous motion, for example, of the apparent movement of the sun. It should be noted that one spiritual instant, which is the measure of one thought, can last for several hours or days of solar time, as, for example, even here on earth a person in ecstasy may be absorbed for several hours in one and the same contemplation. The duration of that contemplation is one spiritual instant for that person.
The souls of the blessed in heaven have another duration, namely, participated eternity, which is the one stationary now of eternity by which the beatific vision and beatific love are measured, since these two acts last for eternity without interruption. We have then four kinds of duration; these may be represented symbolically by a pyramid or perhaps better by a cone whose apex represents eternity. The base represents continuous or solar time; half way up a conic section parallel to the base represents aeviternity, and on this section a polygon is drawn to represent the discrete time of the successive thoughts of those beings that are in aeviternity.
Third Article: The Immutable Will Of Separated Souls
According to the teaching of faith, a soul separated from the body enters into the particular judgment immediately after death, and then God "renders to every man according to his works."[1341]
The Second Council of Lyons declared that "soon after death" the souls of men either enter heaven, or go down to hell, or are placed in purgatory. This presupposes a particular judgment.[1342] Benedict XII on two occasions makes use of this formula, "soon after death according to their different merits,"[1343] which likewise presupposes a particular judgment. This truth, taught by faith, is expressed in various ways in Holy Scripture: "For it is easy before God in the day of death to reward every one according to his ways..... And in the end of a man is the disclosing of his works."[1344] "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment."[1345] "I must work the works of Him that sent me, whilst it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work."[1346] Hence retribution follows immediately on death. Patristic tradition also supports this teaching that the soul is subjected to the particular judgment when it leaves the body.[1347]
Out of this particular judgment the elect receive the certainty of salvation and confirmation in grace even though they must first pass through purgatory; the rest receive the certainty of perdition.
How can we explain the immobility of the separated soul from the instant of separation from the body without the beatific vision for all souls, even those that are not among the elect?
Scotus and Suarez teach that this immobility is only extrinsic, inasmuch as God no longer offers the grace of conversion to the souls that leave the body in the state of sin, and inasmuch as He grants the souls in purgatory a special protection that wards off sin, both mortal and venial, so that these souls do not recede any farther from heavenly bliss.
St. Thomas and the Thomists assign an intrinsic reason,[1348] namely, by the fact that the soul is separated from the body it becomes subject to the normal conditions of intellectual life of a pure spiritual creature.[1349] St. Thomas says: "The apprehension of the angel differs from the apprehension of man in this, that the angel apprehends immovably through the intellect just as we apprehend first principles, with which the intellect is concerned. Man (in this life), however, apprehends movably through reason, proceeding from one thing to another, since for him the way is open to proceed to both opposites. Hence the will of man (in this life) adheres to a thing movably, being in a position to abandon one thing and adhere to the contrary. The will of the angel, however, adheres fixedly and immovably. And therefore, if we consider the angel's will before it adheres to a thing, it is able to adhere freely to one thing or to the opposite in those matters which it does not will naturally, but after it has adhered to a thing it adheres to it immovably. Hence we say customarily,....the free will of the angel is flexible with regard to either opposite before the choice is made but not after."[1350]
This follows from the purely intuitive mode of cognition as contrasted with the abstractive and successive mode of cognition. The intellect that knows by abstraction sees the various aspects of the decision to be made at the end of the deliberation only successively and therefore it is able to change its free judgment and its voluntary choice. On the other hand, the intellect that knows in a purely intuitive manner sees all the aspects, both for and against, of the decision to be made not successively but at one time, and afterward it does not change its final practical judgment or its voluntary choice. If some one were to say to the intuitive intellect, "You did not consider this aspect," it would reply, "I considered even this aspect." Hence for the devil there is no way to return except the road of humility and obedience, which the devil did not accept and does not now accept.
This immutability of choice in created spirits is a participation in the immutability of the divine choice, which remains most free even though it is entirely immutable since from eternity God considered everything that was to be considered. And the separated soul is like the angels in their mode of knowledge.
Doubt. In the very instant of separation from the body is a final merit possible for those souls that remained in mortal sin in the final moment of their union with the body?
Cajetan takes the affirmative view. He said: "The soul becomes obstinate by the first act that it elicits in the state of separation; at this point the soul merits not as here on earth but as in its terminus."[1351] This instant is the first moment when it is no longer in via, the first instant of its separation from the body. Immediately before this, time is divisible in infinity.
Other Thomists reject this solution as contrary to Scripture and tradition and to the teaching of St. Thomas in the <Contra Gentes>: "As soon as the soul is separated from the body it receives the reward or punishment for what it has done while in the body."[1352] There is therefore no possibility of final meriting in the separated soul by which it can repair the sin in which it perdured to the last moment of its union with the body.
The Salmanticenses declared: "This manner of speaking (proposed by Cajetan) is commonly rejected because of the testimony of Scripture, which expressly says that men can gain merit or demerit only before death and not in death. This is the sense of the words, 'I must work....whilst it is day; the night cometh, when no man can work.'[1353] Moreover, if in this first instant after the separation of the soul from the body a final meriting is possible, it would also be possible that the souls that were in the state of grace in the last moment of union with the body could lose their merits, which no one is willing to admit, as Suarez says."[1354]
In rejecting Cajetan's opinion, Ferrariensis points out that there is an element of truth in it, "While in the instant of separation the soul has an immutable apprehension and in that instant begins to be obstinate, nevertheless it does not in that instant merit or lose merit, as some say, because merit and demerit are not gained by the soul alone but by the composite, that is, by man. In that instant (of separation) man is not in being; this is the first instant of his non-being, the first instant in which the soul is separated and obstinate (or confirmed in good). Man does not continue so that he can merit."[1355] Hence, Ferrariensis concludes, the obstinacy in man is caused inchoatively by the mutable apprehension of some end while here on earth, and the obstinacy is completed by the immutable apprehension existing in the soul while it is separated.
The element of truth in the inadmissible opinion of Cajetan is that in the first instant of separation from the body the merit or demerit of the last moment of union with the body becomes definitive because of the mode of consideration, not only extrinsically, as Scotus and Suarez thought, inasmuch as God no longer grants the grace of conversion.[1356]
St. Thomas' solution therefore appears to be between and above the opposing opinions of Scotus and Cajetan. In the words of Ferrariensis, "In man obstinacy is caused inchoatively by the mutable apprehension of some end while here on earth, and the obstinacy is completed by the immutable apprehension existing in the soul while it is separated."[1357]
Objection. The immutability of the free will of the separated soul is not sufficiently explained by the separation from the body because this separation is too extrinsic with regard to the free will; nor is it explained by the immobile apprehension of the intellect, unless we admit with Cajetan that in man, as in the angel, the final free choice is elicited in the first instant of the separation and depends on that immobile apprehension, which considers everything that is to be considered.
Reply. Obstinacy, as Ferrariensis says, is caused inchoatively by the mobile apprehension of an end here on earth and is completed by the subsequent immobile apprehension. If we give careful consideration to the reason offered by St. Thomas,[1358] this is sufficient to explain the immobility of the disposition of the will of the separated soul. St. Thomas says: "According to the kind of individual, such will be the end, that is, each one makes a practical judgment about an end according to his own inclination..... (Therefore) when the disposition remains by which something is desired as a final end, the desire of that end cannot be moved, because the final end is desired above all things. Hence a person cannot be withdrawn from the desire of an ultimate end by something more desirable. This is the major of the argument; the minor follows. The soul, however, is in a mutable state as long as it is united to the body. Thus the transitory disposition of a passion can be removed; even the disposition of a habit can be removed, and a vice can be eradicated. Since the body serves the soul in its proper operations, it was given to the soul that the soul, existing in the body, might be perfected in its movement to perfection. The conclusion is as follows: When therefore the soul is separated from the body it is not in the state of movement to the end, but now it quiesces in the attained end. The will then will be immobile with regard to the desire of the ultimate end, because that disposition by which this or that is desired as the ultimate end will remain immobile."
That is to say that while the internal disposition by which something is desired as the ultimate end remains, this desire is immutable. But when the soul is separated from the body this disposition in the soul remains immovable, because the soul no longer apprehends mutably as when it was in the body but immutably like a pure spirit. Hence the final merit or demerit here on earth, while the soul was united to the body, becomes definitive by reason of the soul's intuitive manner of consideration, and not only extrinsically, inasmuch as God no longer grants the grace of conversion. The obstinate soul then cannot return to God except on the road of humility and obedience, and the soul does not will to take this road. The obstinate soul should not be regarded as desirous of returning to God if God were to grant the grace of conversion but rather as not willing the way of conversion by humility and obedience. Hence it is generally said of the damned that they do not repent of the evil they have committed because of the guilt but because of the penalty. The damned are grieved because the will of God is fulfilled and they desire that all souls be damned because they are saddened by every good, especially by the happiness of the blessed, because of their profound and perfect hatred.[1359]
The souls in purgatory after the particular judgment, which takes place in the instant the soul is separated from the body, possess the certitude of salvation and are confirmed in grace.[1360] Hence we refer to them as the holy souls. This confirmation in grace prior to the beatific vision is explained by St. Thomas and the Thomists not only by God's special protection which wards off sin, as Suarez taught, but by the fact that the separated soul accepts the normal conditions of the intellectual life of a purely spiritual being, which apprehends immutably by its intellect and adheres immutably to the final end even though this end is not yet clearly seen. After this, when in the light of glory the final end, which is God in His infinite goodness, is clearly seen, the love the soul has for God is no longer free but above freedom. It is at the same time spontaneous and necessary, like the love that God has for Himself, and then the soul is no longer able in any way to turn itself away from God or to interrupt the act of loving God or the act of beatific vision. "It is impossible that anyone beholding the divine essence would wish to not see it..... The vision of the divine essence fills the soul with all good things since it unites the soul with the font of all goodness."[1361]
Thus the immutability of the separated soul, in good or evil, is explained not only extrinsically but also intrinsically by the soul's manner of immutably considering the final end.

CHAPTER XLIII: THE ORIGIN OF MAN
These final three chapters treat of man's origin, man's elevation to the supernatural order, and man's fall.[1362] The present chapter considers the question of man's origin.
First Article: The Creation Of Our First Parents
State of the question. The materialists and positivists try to explain the origin of man, with regard to body and soul, by the natural laws of evolution without any intervention from God the first cause. This theory proposed by Huxley and Darwin, called absolute transformism, is, as we have shown earlier in considering the production of the corporeal creature, in open contradiction to both faith and reason. According to it more is produced by less, and the more perfect comes from the less perfect in opposition to the principle of causality. Be, sides this, the order of the world and the finality of beings demands that there be a first intelligent cause and that this cause should intervene in the production of matter, of vegetative life, of sensitive life, and of intellective life. Mitigated transformism admits all this, but many of its supporters do not admit God's special intervention in the formation of man's body to make it fit for supersensitive life, as if natural evolution were sufficient to account for the formation of man's body.[1363]
The Catholic teaching. The direct creation of the soul from nothing is a dogma of faith according to the universal teaching of the Church;[1364] and according to the common teaching of the Fathers and theologians the body of the first man was formed by a special action of God directly from the slime of the earth without any transformation of species. On June 30, 1909, the Biblical Commission declared that the literal sense of the first three chapters of the Book of Genesis cannot be called into doubt With regard "to the peculiar creation of man and the formation of the first woman from the first man."[1365]
Sacred Scripture tells US: "And God created man to His own image: to the image of God He created him: male and female He created them";[1366] "And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life";[1367] "He took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman" (Gen. 2:21 f.). The Hebrew text conveys the same sense. The obvious meaning is that Adam's body was formed directly from the slime of the earth, not through succeeding periods by the transformation of species, and that the body of Eve was formed from Adam's rib. Moreover, the words "breathed into his face the breath of life" refer to direct action by God, without the interposition of the progressive evolution of plants and animals. Hence Leroy, Bonomelli, and Zahn, who defend the opposite opinion as probable, are not on firm ground.
The Fathers and theologians, with the exception of Origen, Cajetan, and a few others, are almost unanimous in their interpretation of the teaching of the Bible on the formation of the bodies of our first parents.[1368]
Confirmation of reason. Between man and the animals close to him, such as the ape, we find essential differences not only with respect to the soul but also with respect to the body. Beings that are essentially so diverse cannot come from the same parent.[1369] Physically, the apes are equipped with four hands (quadrumanual), whereas man has only two, and because of this men and apes do not walk in the same way. We also find a great difference in the facial angle of men and apes; similarly the brain is differently evolved in man and ape. Man enjoys the faculty of speech for the clear and distinct expression not only of sensations and emotions but also of ideas and judgments; the ape lacks this faculty. Above all things, man alone of all animals possesses reason, he knows necessary and universal principles, the ideas of being, truth, goodness, justice, moral beauty, religion, and holiness, which are manifestly above the senses. Animals know only the individual and they are incapable of intellectual, moral, and religious life.
For these reasons many transformists today admit that man did not come from the ape, but that both descended from some remote common parent. Such a common parent, however, left no trace in the geological strata.
It does not seem absolutely repugnant that God should infuse into an animal organism the power by which it might gradually be changed into the human organism. But that is a purely gratuitous hypothesis, destitute of any basis in fact, and contrary to the literal sense of the biblical narrative.[1370]
St. Thomas shows that the human body was produced directly by God and admirably equipped to serve the rational soul and its operations, that is, the human body is excellently equipped for sensitive life, which in turn serves the intellectual life.[1371] Although man lacks horns, claws, and the furry covering of the animal, he has in their stead reason and hands. So also man's posture is erect with face uplifted to consider all things; the animal is inclined to the earth as if its only concern were the quest for food.
St. Thomas also points out why man is said "to be made to the image of God."[1372] Man is the true image of God by reason of his intellectual nature. He was made by God Himself in the image of God's intellectual life and thus he is able to know and love God as God knows and loves Himself. This image is, of course, imperfect; only the Son of God is the perfect image of the eternal Father. Properly speaking, irrational creatures are not made to the image of God, for although they resemble God in their being or in living, they are not like God in intellection. More perfectly than man, the angels are images of God.
God's image can be seen in man in three ways: 1. inasmuch as man possesses the ability to know God; 2. inasmuch as man knows and loves God supernaturally by faith and charity; 3. inasmuch as man perfectly knows and loves God in the light of glory and in the charity of heaven.
When some of the Fathers say that the image of God is destroyed is man by sin, they are referring to the image that was produced in the re-creation of grace.
Lastly, man is an image of God even with regard to the Trinity of persons, inasmuch as man in understanding himself produces a word and by loving himself produces love, and this image is enhanced in man when by knowing God he produces a word and by loving this word produces love.[1373]
Second Article: The Unity Of The Human Race
State of the question. In opposition to the Scriptures and tradition, the Preadamites, led by Isaac de la Peyrere (1655), denied the unity of the human race and taught that some men existed before Adam, and that Adam was the father of the Jews but not of the Gentiles.[1374] The Coadamites held that many human families existed contemporaneously with Adam.
The revealed doctrine. According to Holy Scripture the entire human race had its origin in the one protoparent, Adam. This truth is an article of faith.
We are speaking here of our earth and of the human race that is on this earth. If some indulge in the hypothesis that there are rational creatures on the stars or planets, or that other men existed on our earth before Adam and were extinct before his creation, many theologians hold that such gratuitous assumptions do not affect the teaching of faith.
According to Genesis no men existed when Adam was created: "And there was not a man to till the earth..... But for Adam there was not found a helper like himself."[1375] Eve is called the mother of all the living;[1376] and Adam is called the father of the human race.[1377]
St. Paul says: "And hath made of one, all mankind, to dwell upon the whole face of the earth";[1378] "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned."[1379] That is: all men are born with the stain of original sin because all derive the same nature infected with sin from the same head.
This is the common teaching of the Fathers, especially of Lactantius, St. Ephrem, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine.[1380]
Confirmation by reason. We find various signs of specific identity in all men of whatever race or color. As Quatrefages points out,[1381] we find the same anatomical structure, the same physiological functions, the same laws of generation, unlimited fecundity in the marriages contracted between various races of men, the same faculty of speech, the same power of reasoning, and the same moral and religious sense. Differences in color, brain capacity, facial angles, or idiom, are not substantial but only accidental, as ethnographers admit.[1382]
From paleontology and geology we now know that man is much older than was thought formerly, but there is still a great difference of opinion about the precise epoch when man appeared on earth. On this point the Scriptures are silent, and the Church has made no declaration.
Third Article: The Production Of The Human Soul
State of the question. With regard to the body the human race is propagated by generation. But what is the origin of the intellective soul of the infant? Some say that the soul emanates from God; others like the Origenists and Priscillianists, teach the pre-existence of human souls, or that the human soul is a spirit <per se> and that God created all souls in the beginning. According to the traducianists, the human soul is produced from the substance of the parents; according to some from the corporeal semen, according to others directly from the souls of the parents. This latter theory is called generationism, taught by Tertullian. At one time St. Augustine inclined to this theory. In our day Frohschammer held that the soul is created by the parents by a special power given them by God; Rosmini held that the sensitive soul is created by the parents and that this soul by the illumination of being later becomes intellective.
The Catholic doctrine, called creationism, is that human souls are created by God when they are infused in the body. Peter Lombard said: "The Catholic Church teaches that souls are infused in the bodies and are created in the infusing."[1383] St. Thomas, in presenting three opinions: generationism, pre-existentianism, and creationism, said: "The first two were condemned by the judgment of the Church and the third was approved."[1384] Other Scholastics use similar language.
Sacred Scripture supplies the basis for this teaching: "And the dust return into its earth, from whence it was, and the spirit return to God, who gave it."[1385]
The Fathers in general hold the doctrine of creationism.[1386] Their teaching is that the soul does not exist prior to the body, that it is not educed by generation, but that it is created by God.
The Church condemned as heretical the teaching that the soul is produced by the parents from the seed,[1387] as well as the doctrine that "the human soul of the son is propagated from the soul of his father."[1388] Origen's teaching of the pre-existence of the soul was condemned by the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (553): "If anyone shall assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls, let him be anathema."[1389] Finally Frohschammer's opinion was condemned by Pope Pius IX on December 11, 1862, and Rosmini's teaching was condemned by Pope Leo XIII.[1390]
Taking these declarations together we see that the human soul is not derived from the substance of God, is not generated by the parents, does not evolve from a sensitive soul to an intellective one, but is created by God from nothing, not prior to the formation of the body but when it is infused into the body. The Church has also declared that the human soul is a substance,[1391] that it is not one in all individuals,[1392] but one in each individual,[1393] and that it is not naturally good or evil.[1394]
Proof from reason.[1395] I The soul is not a part of the divine substance. Some have advanced the theory that God is a certain corporeal light and that a part of that light is the soul bound to the body. This is impossible because God is pure act and purely spiritual, having no diversity in Himself, and therefore there is nothing in Him from which the soul could be produced as from a material cause. God cannot be a material cause to be perfected, nor an informing and participated formal cause; He is only an extrinsic cause, that is, an efficient and final cause.[1396]
2. The soul cannot come from the human seed. "It is impossible that the active power that is in matter can extend its activity to produce an immaterial effect. It is obvious that the intellective principle in man is a principle that transcends matter, for it has an operation in which the body does not communicate."[1397] In other words, the human soul is intrinsically independent of the organism in its specific operation, and therefore in its being, and also in its own production.
3. The soul of the infant cannot come from the souls of the parents by emanation because the soul is a simple substance, without parts, from which nothing can be taken. Nor can the soul come from the parents by creation because the creative power belongs to God alone.[1398]
4. The soul of the infant therefore is directly created by God from nothing, that is, from no presupposed being, at the time it is infused.[1399] The parents are not even the instrumental cause of this special creation; they only dispose the matter of the embryo to receive the spiritual soul. The ultimate disposition is produced in the instant when the soul is created and infused, and this ultimate disposition is from God. But the parents are rightly said to generate a human being because from their own substance they produce the body of the infant disposed in such a way (the penultimate disposition) that by virtue of a law of nature the creation and infusion of the soul necessarily follow. The parents are said to generate a human being because in this way by generation they transmit human nature.
Nor can it be admitted that intellective souls were created at the beginning of the world and that the soul is accidentally united to the body as a punishment for some fault. As St. Thomas says: "From this it would follow that man constituted by such a union would be a being <per accidens>, or that the soul is the man, which is false.[1400] That the human soul is not the same in nature as the angels is seen from the fact that they have different modes of intellection."[1401] The human soul has the lowest kind of intellection, corresponding to the lowest kind of intelligible being, namely, that which is in the shadow of sensible things.

CHAPTER XLIV: MAN'S ELEVATION TO THE SUPERNATURAL STATE
First Article: What Is Meant By The Supernatural
This subject is treated at length in another place.[1402] Here we will consider only the essentials.
According to the nominal definition, supernatural denotes that which is above nature. The term "nature" commonly has two meanings: it means either the essence of a thing considered as the root of the specific activity (in this sense we speak of the nature of gold, of silver, of a man), or the complexus of all things in the universe as they are interdependent according to certain laws. Supernatural therefore commonly means that which is above nature taken collectively, that is, what is above the laws of nature. Hence a supernatural effect is one that cannot be produced according to the laws of nature, and a supernatural truth is one that cannot be known according to the natural laws of our intellect.
For the Catholic Church, as we see from her definitions, the supernatural is that which is above every created nature, as exceeding the powers and exigencies of every created nature, although it does not exceed the passive and perfectible capacity of our nature, nor is it incongruous to our nature.
Moreover, according to the Church, supernaturalness is at least twofold: 1. the supernaturalness of miracles, which exceed the efficient powers (or causality) and exigencies of any created nature, but do not exceed the cognitive powers of man's nature; 2. the supernaturalness of mysteries strictly so called, and the supernaturalness of grace and glory, which exceed not only the efficient powers and exigencies of any created nature but the cognitive and appetitive powers of any created intellectual nature as well.[1403]
Hence the supernatural is that which exceeds the properties (the powers and exigencies) of nature and is able to perfect nature gratuitously. The relative supernatural is that which exceeds the properties of only some particular created nature, but not of all created nature, for example, that which is natural and specific for an angel is relatively supernatural for man. Such would be the cunning and tricks of the devils, which are imitations of miracles. The absolute supernatural is that which exceeds the properties of all created and creatable nature, namely, that which exceeds the powers and exigencies of every created nature.
How is the absolutely supernatural divided? According to the Church, as we said above, supernaturalness is at least twofold: a) the supernaturalness of the miracle, which exceeds the efficient powers and exigencies of every created nature but does not exceed the cognitive powers of human nature; b) the supernaturalness of mysteries strictly so called and of the life of grace and glory, which exceeds not only the powers and exigencies of every created nature but also the cognitive powers, and consequently exceeds also the appetitive powers and the natural merit of every created intellectual nature. We see this distinction in the miracle of resurrection, in which natural life is supernaturally restored to a corpse, but in which there is no restoration of life that is essentially and intrinsically supernatural.
To explain this distinction the Thomists point out that the absolutely supernatural is that which exceeds the powers and exigencies of every created nature. But this transcendency can be founded only on the intrinsic formal cause of the thing that is called supernatural, and then the thing is substantially (or entitatively or intrinsically) supernatural, or on causes extrinsic to the thing that is said to be supernatural, and then the thing is supernatural with regard to mode. This transcendency cannot be founded on the material cause since the material cause is the subject in which the supernatural forms are received, namely, the soul and its faculties.[1404]
With regard to the formal cause, a being is said to be supernatural as to essence or substance, whether it be the uncreated supernatural, namely, God, the Trinity, the person of the Word subsisting in the human nature of Christ, or a created supernatural being by reason of the specifying formal object, such as the light of glory, habitual grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and actual graces of this order.
With regard to the efficient cause, a being is said to be supernatural as to the mode of its production, namely, a miracle. But miracles are divided into those that are supernatural as to the substance, for example, the glorification of the body, which can in no way be effected by nature, and those that are supernatural with regard to the subject in which they happen, for example, a resurrection that is not glorious, since nature can produce life but not in the dead, and those that are supernatural as to mode, for example, the sudden cure of a fever, since a fever can be cured by nature or by science but this cannot be done suddenly.
We should try to avoid the confusion arising from the terms "supernatural as to substance" and "miraculous as to substance," since in the first term "substance" means formal and intrinsic, but in the second it means efficient and extrinsic. With regard to the preternatural privileges of the state of innocence, it should be noted that the preservation or immunity from death implies a miracle of the same order as a resurrection that is not glorious, for just as nature cannot restore life to a corpse so it cannot permanently preserve man's body from death.
With regard to the final cause, a being is said to be supernatural as to the mode of its ordering, for example, the act of natural acquired temperance directed to a supernatural end, that is, to life eternal, under the influence of charity. This act of acquired temperance differs essentially from the act of infused temperance, which is supernatural as to substance and essence by reason of the specifying formal object.
This classic division may be presented as follows:
Supernatural knowledge can be either supernatural as to substance, as the act of infused faith, or supernatural as to mode, and this latter, like miracles, has three divisions:
1. the prophetic knowledge of some future, natural, contingent event, which is distant in time;
2. the knowledge of a natural object already existing but remote in space;
3. the instantaneous knowledge of some language, which can be learned naturally but not in a moment.
(diagram page 619)
the absolutely supernatural
as to substance
uncreated
God under the aspect of the Deity, the Trinity, the person of the Word united to human nature
created
the light of glory, habitual and actual grace, infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Ghost
as to mode
on the part of the end
a natural act supernaturally ordered to a supernatural end
on the part of the agent
a miracle as to substance (as the glorification of the body)
a miracle as to the subject (as non-glorious resurrection)
a miracle as to mode (the sudden cure of a fever)
What is the natural order? In general, order is the disposition of things with regard to before and after in relation to some principle.[1405] The natural order therefore is the disposition of the various created natures with regard to before and after in relation to God as the author and end of these natures. This natural order comprises, on the part of the efficient cause, creation, conservation, and the divine cooperation necessary for the natural acts of creatures. In the case of man the natural final end is the possession of God, not in the beatific vision, but as known discursively through reason and loved naturally above all things.
What is the supernatural order? It is the fitting disposition of those things that exceed the properties of created nature in relation to God as He is their author and end. We must distinguish between the essentially supernatural order, which is purely supernatural, from that which is only effectively supernatural, as for example, a miracle, and which is often referred to as preternatural.
For man the essentially supernatural order is constituted by the following:
1. the end, or the possession of God by intuitive vision;
2. the first agent, or God the author of grace and glory, and the second agent, or man elevated by grace;
3. the objective means, such as the external revelation proposed by the Church and the sacraments;
4. the subjective means, such as the infused virtues, the gifts, actual grace;
5. the law, or the system of precepts by which the supernatural end is to be reached.
God, therefore, can be considered in two ways:
1. as the author and end of the natural order;
2. as the author and end of the supernatural order.[1406]
First corollary. That which is only effectively supernatural (as a miracle) can be produced by God as the author and lord of nature, but not that which is supernatural as to substance or essence.
Second corollary. No opposition, but rather harmony exists between the order of nature and the order of grace because both have their origin in the same immutable font of truth, God the best and greatest being. "Thus," says St. Thomas, "faith presupposes natural knowledge just as grace presupposes nature, and perfection presupposes the perfectible."[1407]
Second Article: The Different States Of Human Nature In Relation To Grace
This question is generally considered at the beginning of the treatise on grace. We present here the principal truths relating to this matter.
Theologians commonly distinguish several states of nature.[1408]
1. By the state of pure nature is meant nature itself with its intrinsic principles and those that follow or are due nature, but without grace and the preternatural gifts. In this state man would have a natural end, the natural means to attain this end, helps of a natural order sufficient for all and efficacious for some. He would also have the natural law, but he would be subject to ignorance, concupiscence, infirmities, and death.[1409]
2. The state of integral nature, besides including the perfections of pure nature, consists in the perfect subjection of the body to the soul by reason of the immunity from infirmities and death and in the perfect subjection of the sensitive appetite to reason because of the immunity from concupiscence and ignorance. Nature is said to be integral when there is no division between its parts or any defection from its perfection. Integrity is a certain perfection of nature in the natural order which, though it does not elevate the nature to the supernatural order of grace, is still gratuitous and preternatural. In Adam, however, this state of integrity was joined with his elevation to the order of grace.[1410]
3. The state of holiness and original justice is that in which grace and the preternatural gifts of integrity are conferred together; it is the state in which Adam existed <de facto.>[1411]
4. The state of unredeemed fallen nature is that in which human nature was, by Adam's sin, despoiled of sanctifying grace, and the infused virtues together with the gift of integrity, the state that bears the four wounds of ignorance in the intellect, malice in the will, concupiscence in the concupiscible appetite, and weakness in the irascible appetite.[1412]
5. The state of redeemed nature is that in which we now find the just man redeemed by Christ, endowed with sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, and the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, but without the gift of integrity in the present life.[1413] Human nature will not be completely repaired until it is in glory, when it will again receive the gift of integrity in the resurrection from the dead.
Third Article: Whether Our First Parents Were Constituted In The State Of Holiness And Justice, And Whether This State Was Supernatural
State of the question. The supporters of naturalism deny the existence of truly supernatural grace in Adam; among these are the Pelagians, and in modern times the Unitarians, the liberal Protestants, the positivists, and also the Modernists, who speak of a principle of religious immanence because of which even the Christian religion is not above the exigencies of our nature and which, according to some, is merely a development of a germ seated in our nature.[1414] Naturalism also denies original sin and therefore, especially in its pantheistic form, it exaggerates the powers of nature to such an extent that nothing is beyond the capacity or powers of human nature. This is a form of absolute optimism.
Pseudo-supernaturalism, on the other hand, has a pessimistic bent and exaggerates the consequences of original sin and also succeeds in confusing the orders of grace and nature. It holds that grace and the gifts conferred in the state of innocence are essentials of human nature (Luther), or were owing to nature (Baius and Jansenius), or that they were complements of human nature (Calvin).
With regard to the terminology used in this question it should be noted that, while the word "natural" means the same as "original," it has been used in an improper sense to designate a truly supernatural gift connected with man's origin. For example, some of the Fathers have called the original holiness given to Adam when he was created natural; similarly, the gift of integrity, which perfects nature in the natural order, has been called natural although it is gratuitous. This improper use of terms should be avoided because of the danger of confusion.
The Catholic doctrine is above these extreme and mutually opposed positions of naturalism and pseudo-supernaturalism. The Church teaches that our first parents were constituted in the state of holiness and justice and that this state was entirely gratuitous and supernatural. The Council of Trent declared, "If anyone does not confess that Adam the first man....lost that holiness and justice in which he was constituted, let him be anathema," and "that he lost (this state) for himself alone and not for us, let him be anathema."[1415]
These two propositions of Baius were condemned: "The sublimation and exaltation of human nature to fellowship with the divine nature was owing to the integrity of the first condition and therefore it should be considered natural and not supernatural";[1416] "The integrity of the primary creation was not an undeserved exaltation of human nature but its natural condition."[1417]
From these declarations it follows that the first man was created without sin, that he had free will, that he was endowed with the supernatural gifts of integrity[1418] and immortality;[1419] it follows too that God could have created man without supernatural grace,[1420] such a man as is born now.[1421] To preserve his primitive state man needed grace,[1422] and his merits were not purely human and natural.[1423]
This doctrine is revealed in Sacred Scripture. From the Old Testament it is clear:
1. that prior to sin a certain familiarity existed between God and man;[1424]
2. that man was made to the image of God,[1425] an expression that is clarified later;
3. that man was created righteous in a state of friendship with God, that is, loving God above all things, otherwise there would be no righteousness or rectitude. These texts must be understood according to the analogy of faith; their meaning becomes clearer in the light of the New Testament.
In the New Testament, however, when men are justified by sanctifying grace they are said to be regenerated, renewed, and restored to the state of the first man, who therefore was created and constituted in the same grace.[1426] Lastly, the grace we receive is truly supernatural, for by it "we are made partakers of the divine nature," adopted sons of God, and enabled to see God as He is.[1427] Therefore Adam too was created in the same supernatural grace.
This truth is confirmed in tradition. De Journel has collected the important texts in which it is expressly stated that prior to the Fall our first parents were endowed with gifts beyond the requirements of nature, such as original justice, immunity from concupiscence, freedom from the necessity of dying, and brilliant knowledge, and that they lived a most happy life.[1428]
This doctrine is proved by theological reason, as St. Thomas shows.[1429] According to the Scriptures, "God made man right,"[1430] that is, just, for in the Scriptures the righteous are called just.[1431] This righteousness or justice in which man was created consisted in this: that reason was subjected to God, by reason of the immunity from concupiscence the lower powers were subject to reason, and because of the immunity from pain and death the body was subject to the soul. St. Augustine explains that the first subjection was the cause of the second and the third, and that these were not natural otherwise they would have remained after sin.[1432] Hence the first subjection was not natural but gratuitous, because the effect cannot be greater than the cause.
Nor can it be said that this first subjection referred only to the higher part of the gift of integrity, since it is called holiness and justice, in which the just are now regenerated by a truly supernatural grace. This will be made clearer in the following article, when we treat of the gift of integrity and the twofold subjection which this integrity implies and of the threefold harmony of the state of original justice.
Besides this, it seems repugnant that the entire human race should be deprived of the perfection necessary to attain its natural end by the sin of one man. Hence this perfection was not owing to nature but was supernatural, as defined by the Church.
Corollary. As St. Thomas shows,[1433] Adam consequently had all the virtues in the state of innocence, that is, all the virtues by which reason is ordered to God and by which the lower powers are disposed according to the rule of reason. For sanctifying grace, in which the first man was created, is the root of all virtues, which flow from it as properties from the essence; and by these infused virtues our first parents were elevated to elicit supernatural acts and, with the help of actual grace, to merit their last end.[1434] The Holy Trinity dwelt in their souls and they received the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, which are derived from charity. As St. Augustine said of the angels, "For them God at the same time established their nature and granted grace."[1435]
Fourth Article: The Gift Of Integrity
State of the question. Besides sanctifying grace our first parents received the gift of integrity, by which they were perfected beyond the requirements of the order of nature. This gift of integrity comprises four preternatural gifts, namely, with regard to the body immunity from death and pain and some dominion over animals and the forces of nature, and with regard to the soul immunity from concupiscence and ignorance. We shall consider these four gifts separately with regard both to their essence and to their gratuitousness, beginning with those that are more certain according to revelation, that is, with the immunity from death and pain and then ascending to the higher gifts, for if God made the body of the first man perfect, He certainly also perfected his soul. Gradually we shall see the threefold harmony found in the state of original justice, namely, the threefold subjection of the soul to God by grace, of the lower powers to the soul illumined by faith and to the will elevated by charity, and of the body to the soul. We shall also see, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas have shown, how the two other subordinations depend on the higher harmony between God and the soul, and how, when the first is destroyed by sin, the other two also are lost.
By a privilege our first parents were constituted immune from death. Although they were naturally mortal, they. were immune from the necessity of dying, that is, they would be preserved from death if they remained in grace and after the period of their probation they would have entered alive into heavenly bliss, as would also their posterity.
This doctrine is of faith according to various councils.[1436] The Council of Trent declared that the first man had incurred "the anger and indignation of God and consequently that death which God had threatened."[1437]
Sacred Scripture explicitly affirms the existence of this gift. We read that the death of the body is the punishment for sin: "For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death";[1438] "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return."[1439] We read further: "For God created man incorruptible, and to the image of His own likeness He made him. But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world."[1440] Finally, the New Testament frequently affirms that death is the penalty for sin.[1441] Sacred Scripture emphasizes this privilege more than the other privileges since its loss is more keenly felt by all, and thus this privilege throws light on the other privileges.
Tradition also unanimously affirms that our first parents were immune from the necessity of dying.[1442] St. Augustine says of the first man: "He was therefore mortal because of the condition of his animal body, but he was immortal through the beneficence of the Creator."[1443]
St. Thomas explains the congruity and gratuity of this gift as follows: As long as the soul remained perfectly subject to God "it was fitting that in the beginning a power should be given the soul by which the body could be preserved better than the nature of corporeal matter." As a material composite the body was by nature mortal, like the bodies of the animals; death would follow naturally either from some extrinsic cause or by age or natural corruption. Hence corporeal immortality was gratuitous and not owing to the nature of the body. Hence St. Thomas says: "His (Adam's) body was not indissoluble by some force of immortality existing in him, but there was in the soul a certain supernatural power, divinely given, by which the soul was able to preserve the body from all corruption as long as the soul remained subject to God."[1444]
Perpetual preservation from bodily death was a miracle like the resurrection of the body, by which the natural life of the body is supernaturally restored; nature can of course produce life by generation but it cannot preserve the body, in itself corruptible, from death. This immunity from death, however, was not as perfect as in the glorified body, for Adam still required nourishment, which the glorified body does not need.
The gratuity of this gift is more explicitly affirmed in the condemnation of many of Baius' propositions.[1445]
By a privilege our first parents were immune from pain and the miseries of this life. This teaching is generally regarded as theologically certain.[1446]
We find it expressed in Sacred Scripture, according to which our first parents enjoyed an abundance of good things in the terrestrial paradise, were active without becoming weary, ruled over animals and inferior beings,[1447] and were untouched by all those sorrows that are explained as the penalty of sin.[1448] Moreover, immortality presupposes the immunity from the pain and disease that dispose to death.
This teaching is affirmed by tradition.[1449]
The congruity of this doctrine is explained by St. Thomas as follows: Man's body, since it is a material composite, is by its nature passible and mortal, like the bodies of brute animals, but as long as the soul remained subject to God "divine providence protected his body so that nothing unforeseen should occur to harm it."[1450]
According to St. Thomas[1451] it is sufficiently clear from the first chapter of Genesis that the first man had dominion over all animals, not only with regard to right and power but also with regard to the exercise and use of that power, so that he was able to command them and they would obey. As less perfect beings, all animals are naturally subject to man. But now, after sin, the exercise and use of this dominion has been greatly weakened, and man is able to rule over only a few animals, and these obey only with difficulty.
By a special privilege our first parents were immune from inordinate concupiscence. This is theologically certain. The Council of Trent declared that the Apostle often calls concupiscence sin,[1452] because "it comes from sin and inclines to sin," but that concupiscence is not truly and properly a sin in those who are reborn.[1453]
Sacred Scripture tells us that our first parents did not blush before the Fall, but afterward they were aware of their nakedness because of their disobedience.[1454]
The Fathers of the Church, especially St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and St. Cyril of Alexandria, explain these passages from Holy Scripture as follows: Before the Fall our first parents were immune from concupiscence and from the tumult of inordinate passions.[1455]
St. Thomas explains the congruity and gratuitousness in these words: "As long as reason remained subject to God, the lower powers were subject to it, as Augustine says.[1456] It is clear however that the subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower powers to reason was not natural, otherwise this subjection would have remained after man sinned."[1457] The gratuitousness of this gift is made more manifest by the fact that "reason is influenced by the political dominion of the irascible and concupiscible parts, because the sensitive appetite has its own nature and is therefore able to resist the command of reason. The sensitive appetite is moved not only by the knowledge that is under the direction of universal reason but also by the imagination and the senses. Hence we have the experience that the irascible and concupiscible parts oppose reason because we feel and imagine something delectable, which reason forbids, or something unpleasant, which reason commands."[1458]
Hence it is a privilege if man is preserved from the inordinate movements of sensibility.
By a special privilege our first parents were immune from ignorance. This too is theologically certain.[1459]
State of the question. Ignorance is the privation of that knowledge that one should have in view of his age and state in life. From the preceding article it is clear that Adam had infused faith and the necessary supernatural knowledge to attain his supernatural end. We now ask whether he had natural knowledge proportionate to his state for the perfect government of himself and for the easy instruction of his children. In other words, did he have, as one created in adult age and as the head of the human race, adequate natural knowledge, acquired not by experience and study but infused <per accidens>, although such knowledge is <per se> acquirable? That he had such knowledge is commonly admitted.
From its mode of speaking, Sacred Scripture indicates that Adam was created not as an infant but as an adult, and therefore with a formed intellect. We read, "And the Lord God....brought them (all the animals and birds) to Adam to see what he would call them: for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name. And Adam called all the beasts by their names."[1460] At least, therefore, Adam had sufficient knowledge to distinguish the various animals and give them a fitting name. He did not, however, acquire this knowledge gradually by experience; it was therefore infused.
Similarly Adam knew the meanings of the parts of speech, the proper meaning of noun, verb, and adjective, and thus he had rather advanced knowledge not only of grammar but also of philosophy if he was able to make the distinction between the meaning of the verb "to be" and "to have," and so he could understand that God alone is His own being and subsisting being itself, whereas a creature, no matter how perfect, had being but was not its own being. He would also have had a rather advanced knowledge if he understood the meaning, the necessity, and universality of the first principles of reason and being, namely, the principles of contradiction, efficient causality, and finality, by which the human mind naturally ascends to the knowledge of the supreme cause and the ultimate end.
Finally, as the head of the human race, and living in familiar friendship with God, as the biblical narrative tells us, he should have had a certain knowledge of moral and religious matters in order to impart the necessary instruction to his children. Sacred Scripture tells us, "He gave them counsel,....and a heart to devise: and He filled them with the knowledge of understanding. He created in them the science of the spirit, He filled their heart with wisdom, and showed them both good and evil. He set his eye upon their hearts to show them the greatness of His works, that they might praise the name which He hath sanctified: and glory in His wondrous acts."[1461]
Tradition affirms the truth that Adam's knowledge was of the highest order.[1462]
St. Thomas explains the congruity and gratuitousness of this gift in this way: "Since the first things were established by God not only so that they might exist in themselves but that they might be the principles for other things, they were produced in such a perfect state that they might be the principles for other things. Therefore the first man was established in a perfect state with regard to his body....and with regard to his soul, so that he would be able immediately to instruct and rule..... The first man received such knowledge of supernatural things as was necessary to govern the human race in that perfect state."[1463] This knowledge was beyond what was owing to nature. But Adam did not see God or the angels in their essences, nor did he know future contingents or the secrets of hearts.
St. Thomas says further: "The righteousness of that first state was not compatible with any deception in the intellect,"[1464] and "the seduction (or deception) of the woman, even though it preceded the sin in deed, nevertheless followed the sin of internal elation" which the woman conceived immediately after hearing the words of the serpent.[1465] Further, if the innocent Adam was created so perfect with regard to his body as to be preserved from death, it is all the more true that he was created perfect with regard to his intellect.
According to St. Thomas, Adam foreknew the incarnation of God, although he did not know he was to sin; he had a more excellent knowledge of God and the angels than we have; his knowledge was midway between our knowledge and that of the blessed. In his knowledge Adam needed the phantasm.[1466]
Conclusion. With regard to the gratuitousness of these four privileges of the state of innocence we can easily understand why the following propositions of Baius were condemned: "The integrity of the first creation was not an undeserved exaltation of human nature but its natural condition"; "God could not have created such a human being in the beginning as is now born."[1467] This second proposition was condemned in Baius' sense, that is, a human being without grace and the gift of integrity. By this the Church affirms that God could have created a man without grace and the gift of integrity, that is, with some ignorance, concupiscence, certain weaknesses, and subject to death.
Corollary. A state of nature, without grace, without the gift of integrity, and without sin, is therefore possible. This follows from the condemnation of Baius' propositions.[1468] Theological reason supports this conclusion, as Billuart explained at great length.[1469] St. Thomas explains, "In the beginning, when God made man, He could also have made another man out of the slime of the earth, leaving him in the condition of his nature, so that he would be passible and mortal, knowing the war of concupiscence against reason; and in this man there would be no derogation of human nature, because these things follow from the principles of his nature."[1470] God was not obliged to give man anything more, because grace and the preternatural gifts are not owing to man.[1471]
The Augustinians Noris and Berti were akin to Baius when they said that the state of pure nature is possible by God's absolute power but not God's power as ordered by wisdom and goodness. If this were true, the grace given our first parents was due them from the Creator in propriety. This teaching has not been condemned by the Church, but it seems to approach too closely to Baius' doctrine.
We conclude with St. Thomas: "If anyone considers this matter carefully, he can at least probably conclude that if there is a divine providence that adapts suitable perfectibles to each of the perfections, God joined the higher nature of the soul to the lower nature of the body that the soul might rule the body, and, if some obstacle to this rule should arise from the defect of nature, it would be removed by God's special and supernatural beneficence."[1472]
Fifth Article: The Condition Of The Offspring In The State Of Innocence
With regard to the body, children born in the state of innocence would enjoy perfect subjection of the body to the soul and they would be equipped for the acts suitable to childhood, because their parents would transmit human nature as they had received it.
With regard to the soul, if men persevered in the state of innocence, would they be born with original justice and sanctifying grace even though neither the soul nor grace are carried over by generation?
St. Thomas replies by quoting these words of St. Anselm: "If man did not sin, those whom he generated would be just at the same time that they received a rational soul."[1473]
St. Thomas explains: "I reply by saying that man naturally generates a being similar to himself in species. Hence in the case of whatever accidental things follow upon the nature of the species it is necessary that the children resemble their parents, unless some error take place in the operations of nature, which would not have happened in the state of innocence. In particular accidents however, it is not necessary that the children be like the parents. But original justice, in which the first man was established, was an accident belonging to the nature of the species, not indeed caused by the principles of the species but as a certain gift divinely conferred on the entire nature. This is clear when we recall that opposites belong to the same genus. But original sin, which is the opposite of that original justice, is said to be the sin of the nature, and hence is carried on by the parents to the offspring. Because of this the children were like the parents with regard to original justice."
"In replying to the second objection, in which some say that the children were not born with gratuitous justice (grace), which is the principle of meriting, but only with original justice: since the root of original justice, in whose righteousness man was created, consists in the supernatural subjection of reason to God, which makes man pleasing by grace, it is necessary to say that if the children are born in original justice, they are also born in grace, as we said above about the first man, who was established in grace. But this did not make it a natural grace, because it was not transmitted by virtue of the seed but was conferred on man as soon as he received a rational soul, just as, when the body is disposed, God infuses the rational soul, which similarly is not passed on by the parents."
In the state of innocence men were not confirmed in grace when they were born, because the children at the time of their birth had no more in the way of perfection than their parents.[1474] Children born in the state of innocence were not perfect in knowledge, but in time they easily acquired perfect knowledge.[1475]
Sixth Article: Whether Sanctifying Grace Was A Gift Of Nature Or A Personal Gift In Adam
Some modern writers hold that in Adam sanctifying grace was not an endowment of nature but purely a personal gift.[1476] They admit that the gift, of original justice was an "accident of nature," to be transmitted with nature itself by generation, but they say that sanctifying grace has no intrinsic connection with original justice and was only the efficient cause or a condition <sine qua non> of original justice. From this it would follow that sanctifying grace was not transmitted with the nature and original justice by generation but that God immediately granted this grace to the person when he was generated, because of the disposition of the integrity of human nature. Finally, it would be inferred from this that original sin is not the privation of sanctifying grace but only the privation of integrity of nature.
Indeed, according to these writers, this doctrine is found not only in the works of many Scholastics who before the time of St. Thomas held that Adam received sanctifying grace after his creation and in view of his personal disposition, but these writers say that this is the definitive teaching of St. Thomas himself as found in the Theological Summa.
We shall inquire first whether this thesis is true according to the obvious sense of the Church's definitions, and secondly whether it is the teaching of St. Thomas.
1. The Church's Teaching On The Gift Of Original Justice And On Original Sin
1. The Council of Trent declared: "If anyone shall assert that Adam's sin injured himself alone and not his posterity, and that Adam forfeited for himself alone and not for us also the holiness and justice which he had lost; or that the sin of disobedience transmitted to the whole human race only death and the punishment of the body but not the sin which is the death of the soul, let him be anathema, because he contradicts the Apostle, who said, 'Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.'"[1477]
The words "holiness and justice which he had lost" clearly indicate not only integrity of nature but also sanctifying grace, and therefore we may construct the following argument against the aforesaid thesis.
Adam lost for himself and for us "holiness and justice," that is, sanctifying grace and not merely the integrity of nature. But what he lost for himself and for us he had not received purely as a personal gift. Therefore Adam received sanctifying grace not only as a personal gift but also as a hereditary gift of nature.
If it should be objected that Adam lost the integrity of nature directly for us and indirectly lost sanctifying grace, this would no longer be the obvious meaning of the Council, for the obvious meaning is that which is understood apart from any implied distinction. Indeed what the Council primarily proposes as received for us and lost for us is holiness itself, which in the accepted language of the Church most certainly means more than the integrity of nature, and specifically, means sanctifying grace. Hence the doctrine that holds that grace in Adam was a gift of nature is at least more conformable to the declarations of the Council of Trent than the other.
2. A similar argument may be drawn from the definition of original sin given by the Council. The Council of Trent declared that original sin is the "death of the soul."[1478] But in the language of the Church the "death of the soul" is essentially the privation of the spiritual life of grace. Therefore original sin is the privation of original justice, since sanctifying grace is intrinsically related to this justice.
In the thesis which we are opposing, original sin cannot be called the death of the soul except dispositively, for in that thesis original sin is only the privation of the integrity of nature and the disposition for the privation of sanctifying grace. But this is not the obvious sense of the Council. According to the fathers of the Council, the holiness which Adam lost for himself and for us was grace, and original sin is transmitted in generation with human nature and without God's grace.[1479]
3. This doctrine is confirmed by the Church's teaching about the principal effect of baptism. By baptism original sin is remitted. But baptism directly and immediately confers grace but it does not restore the integrity of nature. Therefore if original sin consisted formally in the privation of the gift of integrity, it would not be forgiven in baptism, because concupiscence remains in those who are reborn in baptism.[1480]
If it should be said that the gift of integrity is restored with regard to the subjection of the mind to God through the healing effect of grace, we reply that even in the will of the baptized person the good is still difficult and the inclination to evil remains, and this was not true of man in the state of integral nature.[1481] Here again this thesis departs from the obvious sense of the Council of Trent.
4. In the schema of the Vatican Council we read: "Under anathema we proscribe the heretical doctrine of those who have dared to say that in Adam's posterity original sin is not truly and properly a sin unless by actual consent they approve this sin by sinning, or who deny that the privation of sanctifying grace belongs to the nature of original sin, which grace our first parent lost for himself and his posterity by voluntary sin."[1482] Later on the Council explained as follows: "It is not said that this privation of grace is the essence itself of original sin,....but that it pertains to the nature or original sin, which is still true as long as it is not denied that this privation is necessarily connected with original sin."[1483] This explanation was added in view of the opinion of certain ancient Scholastics, which was not rejected as erroneous. But according to the obvious sense of the Council of Trent the Vatican Council declared, "Adam....by his voluntary sin lost grace not only as it was personal to himself but as it was to be derived from God's institution by all of his posterity. That which is said to pertain to the nature of original sin is not only the negative lack of sanctifying grace but the privation of grace, that is, the lack of holiness, which according to God's ordination was to be in all of Adam's posterity, since in the beginning it elevated the whole human race in its root and in its head to the supernatural order of grace; now however Adam's descendants are deprived of this grace."[1484]
This is saying equivalently that in the innocent Adam sanctifying grace was not only a personal gift but a gift to human nature to be transmitted with that nature, and this grace Adam lost for himself and for his posterity, as the Council of Trent has declared.
Otherwise Catholic theologians of almost every school who at least since the time of Baius taught this doctrine would have been in error about the very definition of original sin and original justice. This would be hard to admit, but this is precisely what is affirmed in the defense of the aforesaid thesis.[1485]
2. The Doctrine Of St. Thomas On This Matter
St. Thomas was certainly not ignorant of the second canon of the Council of Orange, in which original sin is called the death of the soul, that is, the privation of the spiritual life of grace.[1486] He must also have read similar expressions in the works of St. Augustine, when St. Augustine explained that prior to baptism there is in concupiscence the guilt of sin, although concupiscence is not in itself culpable, nor does it remain culpable in the baptized. Nor was St. Thomas unaware of the teaching of St. Anselm, who wrote: "(Adam) lost that grace which he had been able to preserve for those who were to descend from him," "he lost that grace which he had always been able to preserve for his descendants."[1487] "Because therefore, having been placed in the high position of such a great grace, he of his own will abandoned the good things which he had received to be preserved for himself and them (his posterity), and thus his children lost what the father might have given them by preserving it and what he abandoned by not preserving it."[1488]
Some of the aforesaid writers think that St. Anselm is here speaking of grace in the broadest sense, inasmuch as creation itself is a certain grace.[1489] From the context, however, it is clear enough that St. Anselm is speaking of grace in the proper sense and of preternatural gifts.[1490]
St. Thomas' definitive doctrine on this question is found not in the Commentary on the <Sentences>, but in the works that he wrote toward the end of his life, especially in the Theological Summa. The opinion St. Thomas gives in the Commentary on the <Sentences> was regarded by himself as less probable, and later he receded from it more and more. No clear text to support it can be found in the Theological Summa; indeed in the work <De malo> many opposing passages can be found.
In the Commentary on the <Sentences> St. Thomas does present the opinion that in the innocent Adam sanctifying grace was only a personal gift and not a gift to human nature, but even then he considered the opposite opinion probable, and later in the Theological Summa he defends only this opposite opinion.
In the Commentary on the <Sentences> St. Thomas asks, Whether in the state of innocence children are born in grace? The holy doctor then presents two opinions: "Some say that the first man was created with only natural gifts and not with gratuitous gifts, and from this it seems that for such justice some preparation by personal acts would be required. Hence according to this view such grace would be a personal property belonging to the soul, and thus it would be in no way transmitted, except as an aptitude. Others, however, say that man was created in grace, and according to this view it seems that the gift of gratuitous justice was conferred on human nature itself, and hence grace would be infused at the same time that human nature was transmitted."[1491]
In the Commentary on the <Sentences> St. Thomas defends this second opinion as more probable: "This however is more probable: since man was created with integral natural gifts, which could not have been given without a purpose, turning to God in the first instant of his creation, man obtained grace, and this opinion should be supported."[1492]
In the Theological Summa St. Thomas speaks more confidently: "Some say that the first man was not created in grace..... But as others say, he was established in grace, and this seems to be required by that righteousness of man's first state in which God made him, according to the words, 'God made man right.'[1493] This righteousness consisted in the fact that reason was subject to God, the lower powers were subject to reason, and the body was subject to the soul. The first subjection is the cause of the second and the third. As long as reason remained subject to God, the lower powers were subject to reason, as St. Augustine said. It is clear, however, that this subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower powers to reason was not natural..... Hence it is also clear that that first subjection of reason to God was not only according to nature but according to the supernatural gift of grace, for the effect cannot be more powerful than the cause."[1494]
As St. Thomas' teaching developed, the corollary of the opinion referred to earlier became more firmly established: "Others say that man was created in grace, and from this it seems that the gift of gratuitous justice was conferred on human nature itself, and hence grace would be infused at the same time as human nature was transmitted."[1495]
In the Theological Summa, considering the same question, whether men were born with justice, he says, "Original justice, however, in which the first man was established, was an accident of the nature of the species; not as if it were caused by the principles of the species but only as a gift divinely conferred on the whole nature." "In reply to the second difficulty, in which some say that children were not born with gratuitous justice, which is the principle of meriting, but with original justice: since the root of original justice, in whose righteousness man was created, consists in the supernatural subjection of the reason to God, which by grace makes man pleasing to God, it is necessary to say that, if children were born in original justice, they were also born with grace, just as we said above[1496] that the first man was established with grace."[1497]
Nor can it be said, according to St. Thomas' definitive teaching, that sanctifying grace was the extrinsic root of original justice.
In <De malo> St. Thomas says, "Original justice includes grace gratum faciens."[1498] In the same work, replying to the objection: "But the divine vision is not owing to one who has original justice, since he is able not to have grace. Therefore the perpetual lack of the divine vision does not correspond to original sin," St. Thomas replied: "In reply to the thirteenth difficulty I say that this reasoning is in accord with those who say that grace gratum faciens is not included in the idea of original justice. This I believe to be false, because, since original justice consists primordially in the subjection of the human mind to God, which subjection cannot be permanent without grace, therefore original justice cannot be without grace."[1499]
Hence, according to St. Thomas grace gratum faciens is included in the idea of original justice. But what is included in the idea of a thing is not an extrinsic efficient cause, otherwise God would be included in the idea of the creature. Nor is this grace merely an extrinsic condition <sine qua non>, because the subjection of the mind to God "cannot be permanent without grace." Thus grace and charity, which flows from grace, are more than conditions <sine qua non> of this primordial subjection because they positively influence it. This habitual primordial subjection is the formal effect of infused charity.
Moreover, according to this text, original justice implies the subjection of the mind to God as the author of grace, because from the integrity of nature with proportionate natural helps alone there results the efficacious love of God as the author of nature.[1500] If therefore the subjection of the mind to God required for original justice "cannot be permanent without grace," it must be a subjection of the mind to God as the author of grace and not of nature alone.[1501]
This conclusion reached in <De malo>[1502] is the same as that found in the Theological Summa: "Since the root of original justice, in whose righteousness man was created, consists in the supernatural subjection of the reason to God, which by grace makes man pleasing to God, as we said above,[1503] it is necessary to say that if children were born in original justice, they were also born in grace, just as we said above that man was established in grace."[1504] Because, as he had said earlier,[1505] "man was created in grace, and according to this view it seems that the gift of gratuitous justice was conferred on human nature itself, and hence grace would be infused at the same time as human nature was transmitted."
Nor can it be said that sanctifying grace in the innocent Adam was only the intrinsic root of original justice, as infused faith is the root of sacred theology, which is acquired by human study. St. Thomas says: "Original justice belonged primordially to the essence of the soul, for it was a divine gift conferred on human nature, which refers rather to the essence than to the potencies of the soul. The potencies seem to belong rather to the person inasmuch as they are the principles of personal acts. Hence the potencies are the proper subjects of actual sins, which are personal sins."[1506] If therefore "original justice belonged primordially to the essence of the soul," there was nothing primordially besides the entitative habit of sanctifying grace. For there were not in the essence of the soul two entitative habits, namely, the habit of the integrity of nature and the habit of sanctifying grace, just as there are not two distinct habits of healing habitual grace and elevating habitual grace.
Nor is the aforesaid opinion supported by the fact that St. Thomas frequently said that grace gratum faciens is the root of original justice. A root is not necessarily extrinsic, for example, the root of a tree is a part of the tree. Moreover, as the essence of the soul is the root of the faculties, so sanctifying grace is the root of the infused virtues, and a fortiori sanctifying grace, which is included in original justice, is the root of original justice, inasmuch as "original justice belonged primordially to the essence of the soul,"[1507] and consisted in the threefold subjection of the mind to God, of the lower powers to reason, and of the body to the soul (by the privilege of immunity from pain and death).
This was Cajetan's understanding of the word "root."[1508] Cajetan also remarked: "According to him (St. Thomas), grace gratum faciens belongs to the idea of original justice."[1509]
Capreolus pointed out against Durandus: "Grace gratum faciens alone was not original justice, which included something more than grace; baptism restores this grace but not those other things that belong to this kind of justice. Hence baptism does not restore original justice completely but only a part of it."[1510]
Ferrariensis wrote: "From this we can see that original justice included grace as its root because, just as the subjection of the body and the lower powers was supernatural through original justice, which was a grace gratis data, so the subjection of reason to God had to be supernatural, through grace gratum faciens, whose function it is to subject the soul supernaturally."[1511]
We see, therefore, that there are no texts, at least no clear texts in the Theological Summa, to support the contention that the aforesaid opinion represents the definitive doctrine of St. Thomas. Indeed there are many contrary texts. Perhaps for this reason one of the recent exponents of this theory cited no texts from the Theological Summa, but instead injected his theory of adoption, according to which sanctifying grace can only be personal and not a gift to human nature to be transmitted with that nature.[1512]
This theory, however, is without any foundation. When a rich man adopts a poor man he can give him a hereditary title of nobility. Why cannot God do the same for Adam and in him elevate the human race to the order of grace, as the Vatican Council declared, "God in the beginning elevated the whole human race in its head to the supernatural order of grace"?[1513] This is what St. Thomas said: "Others say that man was created in grace, and according to this view it seems that the gift of gratuitous justice was conferred on human nature itself, and when human nature is transmitted grace is transmitted at the same time."[1514] At that time St. Thomas held this view to be the more probable and in his later works he defended it more and more.
Objection may be made that St. Thomas wrote: "The first sin of the first man not only deprived the sinner of his own personal good, namely, grace and the proper order of the soul, but also of the good that belonged to the common nature."[1515] From this and similar passages it seems at first that in the innocent Adam sanctifying grace was only a personal gift.[1516] But if we study these texts carefully we see that sanctifying grace was a personal gift as conferred on a person, but not to one single person alone, but to that person as a part and the head of the community which is the human race. This is clear from what St. Thomas says in <De malo> when he asks, whether any sin is contracted by origin: "We must say absolutely that sin is transmitted from the first parents to his posterity by origin. In support of this we must consider that an individual man can be considered in two ways. In the first place a man is a certain single person; in the second place he is part of a group (collegium). Thus the entire multitude of men receiving human nature from the first parent should be considered as one group, or as the one body of one man, and in this multitude each man, even Adam himself, can be considered as one individual person or as a member of this multitude, which by natural origin is derived from one man. To the first man at the time of his creation God gave a certain supernatural gift, original justice, by which the reason was made subject to God, the lower powers were subjected to the reason, and the body was made subject to the soul. This gift, however, was not given to the first man as a single person alone but as the principle of all human nature, which was to be derived from him through origin by his posterity. Having received this gift, the first man, when he sinned voluntarily, lost it under the same aspect as that under which he had received it, namely, for himself and for all his posterity."[1517]
From all this it is sufficiently clear that sanctifying grace was, according to St. Thomas and also according to reason, not merely a personal gift to the innocent Adam, but an endowment of nature, since "original justice includes grace gratum faciens."

CHAPTER XLV: THE FALL OF MAN
First Article: The Sin Of Our First Parents
State of the question. We suppose that a sin is a defection from the order to a right end, something contrary to the rule of reason, of nature, and the eternal law.[1518] sin, however, is not predicated univocally of mortal and venial sin; mortal sin turns away from the final end; venial sin maintains the order to the final end but turns to means that are not ordered to the end.[1519] Besides this, sin can be considered either in act or in habit. In the latter sense it is a disordered habit remaining in the soul until the sin is remitted. Thus after an actual mortal sin a man remains turned away from his final end. Hence habitual mortal sin is a state of sin consisting in the privation of sanctifying grace caused by a gravely culpable turning to creatures.
Adam's sin and its consequences for the human race are denied by the rationalists and liberal Protestants, according to whom the biblical narrative of Adam's Fall is merely allegorical and mythical. The rationalists object because of the disproportion between the eating of the forbidden fruit and the penalty inflicted, as described in the Book of Genesis.
The Catholic doctrine was defined by the Council of Trent: "If anyone does not confess that the first man Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted, and by the offense of such transgression incurred the anger and indignation of God, and therefore death, with which God had threatened him, and with death captivity under the power of him who from then on held the empire of death, that is, the devil, and that the whole Adam by the offense of this transgression was changed for the worse in body and soul, let him be anathema."[1520]
With regard to Adam's sin the Biblical Commission teaches that the literal historical sense of Genesis cannot be doubted, especially with regard to the facts narrated in those chapters "which refer to the foundations of the Christian religion, such as, among others, the original happiness of our first parents in the state of justice, integrity, and immortality, the commandment given by God to man to test his obedience, the transgression of that divine commandment with the persuasion of the devil under the guise of a serpent, the eviction of our first parents from that primeval state of innocence, and the promise of the future Redeemer."[1521]
Sacred Scripture affirms the existence of this grave commandment and its violation: "And He commanded him, saying:....but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death..... And the woman....took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat."[1522]
From these words it is clear that our first parents sinned gravely, because of the purpose of the commandment, namely, the testing of their obedience, because of the grave punishment, namely, the loss of grace and their privileges, because of the consequences of the sin for the human race, and because of the perfection of this first state in which it was most easy to avoid sin.
The gravity of this sin is asserted in other places in Scripture: "From the woman came the beginning of sin, and by her we all die";[1523] "But by the envy of the devil, death came into the world";[1524] "For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just."[1525]
The Fathers, in explaining these texts, commonly assert that when our first parents committed this grave sin they lost their pristine justice, that death is the effect of Adam's sin, that by his sin Adam lost the preternatural gifts but retained free will, and that Adam's sin passed on to all men.[1526]
Theological proof. St. Thomas proves that the sin of our first parents was the sin of pride, because they inordinately desired to be like God in the knowledge of good and evil and wished to govern themselves by reason alone instead of obeying the divine commandments received by faith.[1527] Thus disobedience arises from pride. And although this sin was not more grave than all others according to species, "it took on the greatest gravity because of the perfection of the state of the persons who committed the sin."[1528] Thus the Scriptures say frequently that "pride is the beginning of all sin."[1529]
St. Thomas points out in the same place that at that time the sensitive appetite was completely subjected to the reason and the will. Therefore this inordination could have its beginning only in the will, by an inordinate desire of one's own excellence. At the same time there was in Eve curiosity and disloyalty and in Adam an inordinate love for his wife. Hence, as St. Thomas says, the eating of the forbidden fruit was entirely secondary, and therefore the objection of the rationalists about the disproportion between the sin and the punishment is without basis.
It is commonly admitted that our first parents obtained salvation by penance, according to the words: "She (wisdom) preserved him, that was first formed by God the father of the world, when he was created alone. And she brought him out of his sin, and gave him power to govern all things."[1530] Indeed, the Greek Church celebrates the feast of Adam and Eve on the Sunday before Christmas.
Second Article: The Existence Of Original Sin And Its Effects On Adam's Posterity
State of the question. Those who attempt to explain all the evils of this life as the effects of an evil principle, like the Gnostics and Manichaeans, indirectly deny the existence of original sin. In early times Theodore of Mopsuestia, Rufinus, and the Pelagians directly denied original sin; in the Middle Ages, Abelard and the Albigenses took the same position; in modern times the Socinians, the Unitarians, and the liberal Protestants also denied original sin, teaching that Adam injured only himself and not the entire human race, except inasmuch as he gave a bad example. The rationalists and pantheists deny original sin a fortiori as something absurd. The Modernists say that the doctrine about original sin is merely a theory invented by St. Augustine.
Luther and the early Protestants, on the other hand, exaggerated the consequences of original sin when they said that "free will is merely a name, and when man does what he wishes he sins mortally."[1531]
The Catholic doctrine is stated by the Council of Trent: "If anyone shall say that by his transgression Adam injured only himself and not his progeny, and that the holiness and justice which he received from God and which he lost, was lost only for himself and not also for us; or that the guilt of that sin of disobedience transmitted merely death and the punishments of the body to the human race but not the sin, which is the death of the soul, let him be anathema, since he contradicts the Apostle, who said, 'By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.'"[1532]
Moreover it has been defined that original sin is transmitted not by imitation but by propagation or generation from the seed of Adam;[1533] that it is a true sin, bringing with it the privation of sanctifying grace and the gift of integrity,[1534] that it is proper to each individual,[1535] although it is not personal,[1536] that it is found in infants,[1537] in Christians as well as infidels,[1538] that it is voluntary, not by the habitual will of the infant,[1539] but by reason of its origin from the will of the first man, the head of the human race,[1540] that it differs from actual sin by reason of the consent,[1541] and by reason of the penalty, which in the case of original sin is only the lack of the vision of God,[1542] but in a manner different from that in the other damned souls,[1543] since non-baptized infants are indeed condemned (to the penalty of loss) but do not actually hate God,[1544] nor do they suffer the punishment of fire.[1545] Original sin is remitted in the baptism of regeneration,[1546] which must be received at least in desire.[1547]
This doctrine may be summed up as follows: All men naturally born of Adam, with the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by their conception contract some sin, which is correctly called original sin or "the sin of nature," and which brings with it the privation of sanctifying grace and the gift of integrity. Prior to the Council of Trent, this doctrine was formulated in the Council of Milevum (416)[1548] and the Second Council of Orange.[1549]
Sacred Scripture. The testimony is found as early as the beginning of the Old Testament and more explicitly in the New Testament. From the Book of Genesis it is clear that the fall of our first parents injured all their posterity; all men lost the friendship of God, the gifts of immortality and immunity from pain and concupiscence. Besides, the promise of the Redemption included all of Adam's posterity and therefore presupposed that all men had fallen in their first parents.[1550] The words, "Who can make him clean that is conceived of unclean seed?"[1551] have been understood in Jewish and Christian tradition as referring to the sin contracted in conception. The words, "For behold I was conceived in iniquities: and in sins did my mother conceive me,"[1552] without the aid of tradition do not prove the existence of original sin, because it may be said that they refer to concupiscence, which, according to the Council of Trent, may be called sin in an improper sense.[1553]
The entire Old Testament announces the promised Redeemer and thus supposes the fall of the human race. We read, "From the woman came the beginning of sin, and by her we all die,"[1554] since in some way the sin of our first parents came down to us. Finally, according to the Fathers, circumcision remitted original sin.[1555]
This doctrine is more explicitly revealed in the New Testament. Of Christ it is said, "For He shall save His people from their sins,"[1556] and "Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who taketh away the sin of the world."[1557] Christ said: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."[1558] No one is able to be spiritually reborn unless he has been spiritually dead by a common habitual sin, because infants are not capable of actual sin. "We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest,"[1559] that is, from birth, and therefore not by actual sin but by a sin contracted in conception. This is the sense in which many understand this text.[1560]
The doctrine of original sin is more explicitly expressed by St. Paul: "By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom (or because) all have sinned";[1561] "For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just."[1562] As St. Augustine explained against the Pelagians, St. Paul is here affirming that all men have died because all have sinned through Adam or in him, just as all are vivified in Christ. This sin is truly a sin and not merely that concupiscence which remains in the baptized, because it is opposed to justice and grace and leads "unto condemnation."[1563] St. Paul is not speaking of actual sin, because this sin is also "in them who have not sinned after the similitude of the transgression of Adam."[1564] Hence it is a sin committed by Adam alone, the head of the human race, a sin which passed on to all his posterity not by imitation but by propagation as the Council of Trent declared.[1565] Here we see the parallel between Christ and Adam, who as the head of the human race was the "form of the future."[1566]
Objection. We read, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father."[1567]
Reply. This refers to the punishment due a father, which should not be inflicted on an innocent son, while original sin is transmitted. to us and is in each of us together with the privation of the preternatural gifts of nature.
Tradition. During the first four centuries, before the rise of Pelagianism, the belief in original sin was expressed by the Church's universal practice of baptizing infants for the remission of sin and to drive out the devil; hence the exorcisms in baptism. De Journel quotes Hermas: "Before a man bore the name of the son of God, he was dead; but when he received the seal, he cast off mortality and resumed life. The seal therefore is water; the dead descend into the water and ascend from it alive."[1568] St. Irenaeus, also in the second century, said, "We have indeed offended God in the first Adam by not obeying His precept, but in the second Adam we were reconciled, being made obedient unto death."[1569] Similar testimony comes from St. Justin,[1570] Theophilus of Antioch;[1571] in the third century from St. Cyprian, Origen, and Tertullian;[1572] and in the fourth century from St. Basil, Didymus, St. Ambrose,[1573] and St. John Chrysostom.[1574] Mary is called the new Eve, who cooperated in the mystery of the Redemption as the first Eve cooperated in the fall of the human race.[1575]
Lastly, St. Augustine defended the existence of original sin against Pelagianism, basing his arguments on Sacred Scripture and reason.[1576] The Pelagian denial of original sin was condemned by the Councils of Carthage[1577] and Ephesus[1578] and by St. Celestine.[1579]
Theological proof. Reason alone, from the miseries of this life, which affect even infants, cannot prove the existence of original sin, which remains a mystery in the proper sense, just as the elevation of the human race to the life of grace is a mystery, for God could have created man in the state of pure nature, in which he would not be immune from pain, death, ignorance, and concupiscence. These miseries, therefore, are only a probable sign of the existence of original sin, as St. Thomas said.[1580]
After revelation, however, especially as it is expressed in the Epistle to the Romans,[1581] St. Thomas was able to explain by an analogy how the first sin of our first parents is transmitted by origin to their posterity: "All men who are born of Adam can be regarded as one man inasmuch as they are one in nature, which they have received from their first parent, just as in society all the men of one community are considered one body, and the whole community is considered one man..... Thus many men are derived from Adam as the several members of one body. The action of one bodily member, such as the hand, is not voluntary by the will of the hand but by the will of the soul which moves the member..... Thus also the inordination which is in this man generated from Adam is not voluntary by his will but by the will of the first parent who moves by the movement of generation all the men who are derived from him by origin..... Therefore original sin is not the sin of this particular person except inasmuch as this person receives his nature from the first parent. Hence it is called the sin of nature."[1582]
In his reply to the first difficulty, St. Thomas says, "The sin is derived by origin from the father to the son."
In the reply to the second difficulty, he says: "Human nature is transmitted by virtue of the seed and together with it the infection of nature." Thus Adam's first sin (not his other sins) is passed on to this posterity, that is, to all men, who all therefore need redemption.[1583] The force of this argument, as Cajetan explains, is in the analogical proportion between our will and our members on the one hand, and the will of Adam and other men, who are as it were his members, since they proceed by generation from him as from the head of human nature, which was once elevated and then despoiled of its supernatural gifts.
This is not a proof of the mystery by reason; that is impossible. But from this reasoning we have some insight into the mystery, according to the words of St. Paul to the Romans,[1584] "both from an analogy of those things that we know naturally, and from the connection between the mysteries and their relation to man's final end," as the Vatican Council said.[1585] Thus light is thrown on the mystery of original sin from its relationship to the mystery of the Redemption, for God did not permit such a great offense except for the greater good of the redemptive Incarnation, that is, in order that grace might superabound.[1586]
Some theologians, among them Salmeron, Toletus, Lugo, the school of Wurzburg, teach that Adam's sin was morally committed by his posterity through the moral inclusion of our wills in the will of our first parent. This has not been proved nor does it appear admissible. Original sin is not an act but a sinful state that directly affects the nature and only indirectly the person. Adam accepted for himself and his posterity holiness and justice as a gift to human nature, or as an accident to nature,[1587] and he lost it for himself and for us, as the Council of Trent declared.[1588]
Nor can it be admitted that a compact existed between God and Adam whereby his sin should be transmitted to his posterity. We have no indication that such a pact was made, nor was Adam's consent necessary that his sin be transmitted to his posterity.
Adam, therefore, was not only the physical head of the human race by whom the life of the body was transmitted, but he was also the head of elevated nature.[1589] Under this aspect Adam was the moral head of the human race for, if he had not sinned, he would have communicated human nature together with the gifts of nature when he communicated natural life, as St. Thomas explains: "Children would have been born with grace..... But the grace would not have been transfused by virtue of the seed but it would have been conferred on a man as soon as he had a rational soul, just as the rational soul is infused by God as soon as the body is disposed to receive it."[1590] Now, however, after Adam's sin, original sin, which is opposed to that original justice, is called the sin of nature, and hence is transmitted by the parents to their children.[1591]
Third Article: The Nature Of Original Sin
State of the question. The early Protestants said that original sin consists in a vehement concupiscence which extinguishes free will.[1592] Baius and the Jansenists taught a similar doctrine with some qualifications; according to them free will is so weakened that it is necessarily drawn to earthly pleasures unless it is strengthened by efficacious grace.[1593]
Shortly before the Council of Trent, Catharinus and Albert Pighius, in their opposition to the Protestants went to the extreme opposite. They said that original sin was formally the actual sin of Adam extrinsically imputed to his posterity, and that the privation of grace did not belong to the essence of original sin but was simply the penalty for original sin.
The Catholic doctrine was stated by the Council of Trent, which defined as follows: "In baptism all that has the true and proper nature of sin is taken away" and "there remains in those baptized concupiscence....left for the struggle..... The holy Synod declares that this concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes called sin, the Catholic Church has never understood to be truly and properly a sin in those who are reborn, but that it is from sin and inclines to sin. If anyone should believe otherwise, let him be anathema."[1594] Hence original sin does not consist in concupiscence, which is called sin in an improper sense.
On the other hand, according to the Council of Trent, original sin implies the privation of sanctifying grace (hence it is remitted by baptism), death is a consequence of original sin,[1595] and free will is not destroyed although it is weakened.[1596] The Council of Trent did not, however, determine in what the essence of original sin consisted, nor did it condemn the theory of Catharinus and Pighius. Their theory, however, can hardly be reconciled with the Catholic doctrine, for that which is extrinsically imputed cannot be said to be properly in each individual as "transmitted by propagation,"[1597] nor is it remitted by baptism.
The Schema of the Vatican Council proscribes the heretical doctrine of those "who have dared to say that original sin is not truly and properly a sin in Adam's posterity except in those individuals who have approved this sin by their actual consent; or those who deny that the privation of sanctifying grace, which our first parent by sinning voluntarily lost for himself and his posterity, belongs to the nature of original sin." This council adopted the following canon: "If anyone shall say that original sin is formally concupiscence itself or some physical or substantial disease of human nature, and deny that the privation of sanctifying grace belongs to the nature of original sin, let him be anathema."[1598]
Various opinions of the doctors. According to St. Augustine, original sin consists in the disordered habitual concupiscence found in the soul despoiled of grace because of Adam's sin. According to him this concupiscence has two things: the guilt of sin, which is remitted by baptism, and the penalty of sin, which remains in those who are baptized.[1599] We see, therefore, a great difference between St. Augustine's opinion and the Protestant error.[1600]
According to St. Anselm, original sin consists in the privation of original justice or of the rectitude of the will. "Because of his disobedience Adam was denuded of proper justice and because of this all are children of wrath."[1601] "All men were, as it were, causally or materially in the seed of Adam."[1602]
Attempting to reconcile St. Augustine's opinion with that of St. Anselm, St. Thomas held that original sin is materially in concupiscence and that it is formally the privation of original justice.[1603]
St. Thomas asks the question: Whether original sin is concupiscence? His argument is as follows: "I reply by saying that everything takes its species from its form. It was said above (in the preceding article) that the species of original sin is taken from its cause. Hence it follows that what is formal in original sin is taken from the cause of original sin. (This is the major of the argument.) The causes of opposite things, however, are opposite. The cause of original sin therefore must be considered together with the cause of original justice."
"The whole ordination of original justice, however, consists in the fact that the will of man is subject to God. This subjection is found primarily and principally in the will, whose function it is to move the other parts to their end. Hence from the aversion of the will from God there followed the inordination in all the other powers of the soul. Hence the privation of that original justice by which the will is subject to God is the formal element in original sin, and every other inordination in the powers of the soul is the material element in original sin..... Thus original sin is materially in concupiscence, and formally original sin consists in the lack of original justice."[1604]
This argument may be stated briefly as follows: "The formal constituent of a thing is the root of the other things that pertain to it But the privation of original justice which implies the subjection of the will to God is the root of the inordination of the lower powers and of the penalties that pertain to original sin. Thus when grace was removed, the rebellion of the flesh followed. Therefore the formal constituent of original sin is the privation of original justice with its subjection of the mind to God, and therefore it is essentially the death of the soul, as the Second Council of Orange declared." This argument is based on causality.
When St. Thomas says that "original sin is materially in concupiscence," he most probably means to use the term materially in an improper sense, as many commentators have noted. Shortly before this he uses the expression "like some kind of material." In his <De malo> he says "quasi-material."[1605] Properly speaking, the material is presupposed for the formal; concupiscence, however, is not presupposed prior to the privation of original justice but follows it as an effect; as St. Thomas himself says, concupiscence "is a consequence of original sin," inasmuch as the rebellion of the flesh follows the termination of the will's subjection to God.[1606] Later on (q. 85, a. 3) St. Thomas enumerates concupiscence as one of the wounds or consequences of original sin.
From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century many theologians held that the essence of original sin consisted in the privation of sanctifying grace alone, and no more mention was made of concupiscence as the quasi-material element.
More recently Bittremieux and Kors held that the formal element of original sin is the privation of original justice or natural integrity, and that this privation necessarily implies as a consequence the privation of sanctifying grace since, as they say, original justice originates from sanctifying grace. In the preceding chapter we have examined this opinion and we have seen that it is not in accord with St. Thomas' teaching in the Theological Summa.
Hence for many Thomists the formal element of original sin is the privation of sanctifying grace itself, which is the intrinsic root and the intrinsic formal cause of original justice. Such is the teaching of the Salmanticenses, Gonet, Billuart, Pegues, Hugon, Billot, and Michel.[1607]
This more common teaching is truly in accord with the passages from St. Thomas cited above, such as, "the supernatural subjection of reason to God takes place through grace gratum faciens."[1608]
Hence the formal element of original sin is the privation of sanctifying grace, by which we are turned away from God our supernatural end, and in us it is the effect of a voluntary and culpable act committed by Adam our head. Original sin, therefore, is not an act but a sinful state which directly infects our nature and indirectly infects the person. For in Adam grace was a gift to nature, and Adam lost this grace for himself and for us. Now there is transmitted to us a nature deprived of the gift of grace which by the positive ordination of God ought to be in us.[1609] All this is derived from the principle explained earlier that Adam was the head of an elevated nature and, if he had not sinned, "men would be born with grace."[1610]
Confirmation. 1. This traditional opinion is confirmed by the effect of baptism. As pointed out by Soto,[1611] original sin ought to consist in the privation of that which is restored by baptism, for this sin is entirely remitted by baptism. But that which baptism confers is sanctifying grace. Therefore original sin consists formally in the privation of grace.
2. Original sin, called by the councils the "death of the soul," belongs to the genus of habitual sin, not actual sin. But habitual mortal sin consists in the privation of sanctifying grace, and it is voluntary by the will of the particular person. Therefore original sin consists in the privation of the same grace, as voluntary by the will of the head of the human race.
Corollaries. It should be remembered that guilt precedes the penalty, and therefore the aforesaid privation of nature is prior to us by the voluntary will of the head of the human race, prior to the deprivation of the preserving help of grace. For God deserts no one except those who desert Him, nor does He take away original justice except for the reason that Adam wished to deprive himself and us of it.
In its formal aspect original sin is the habitual turning away from the ultimate supernatural end as voluntary by the will of the head of the human race. In its formal aspect original sin cannot be more in one than in another because the privation of original justice is equal in all. Concupiscence, however, may be stronger in one than in another because of the constitution of the body.[1612]
Original sin is primarily in the essence of the soul, rather than in the powers of the soul, because it is transmitted by generation, and the terminus of generation is man, whose soul is the substantial form. Sanctifying grace, too, is in the essence of the soul as is also the privation of sanctifying grace.[1613]
Original sin first infects the will, among the powers of the soul, and then passes to the lower powers, which are infected in special ways, inasmuch as original sin is transmitted by generation.[1614]
Fourth Article: The Consequences Of Original Sin[1615]
1. By original sin man was despoiled of the gratuitous gifts. This doctrine is of faith. Man lost sanctifying grace and the annexed gifts. This privation of grace as the habitual aversion from God and as voluntary by the will of the head of the human race has the nature of guilt, but when it is inflicted by God it is a penalty.
Man lost also the four preternatural gifts that belong to integrity: immunity from death, from pain, from concupiscence, and from ignorance. He was reduced to the servitude of the devil and sin, from which he cannot be freed except by grace.
2. Man was wounded in his natural endowments, although he preserved his nature and the nature of his faculties. The Second Council of Orange[1616] and the Council of Trent[1617] say that "in body and soul man was changed for the worse"; and the Council of Trent adds that his "free will was weakened and deformed in its exercise."[1618]
St. Thomas and theologians in general enumerate four wounds of the soul: "Inasmuch as reason was deprived of its order to truth we have the wound of ignorance; inasmuch as the will was deprived of the order to good we have the wound of malice; inasmuch as the irascible appetite was deprived of its order to the difficult we have the wound of weakness; inasmuch as concupiscence was deprived of the order to the delectable moderated by reason we have the wound of concupiscence."[1619]
Doubt. Whether man is weaker to accomplish moral good of the natural order in the state of unredeemed fallen nature than he would have been in the state of pure nature. In other words, does the wounding of nature consist only in the loss of the gratuitous gifts, or does it include the weakening of the natural powers?
There are three principal opinions.
1. Some theologians hold that the powers of fallen man have been intrinsically reduced by his positive habit of being inclined to changeable goods. Such is the opinion of Henry of Ghent, Gabriel Biel, and certain ancient writers. The Jansenists held an exaggerated form of this opinion.
2. Others hold that man's powers for moral good have in no way been diminished. This view is held by Suarez, Bellarmine, and by the theologians of the Society of Jesus, among them, Mazzella, Palmieri, and Pesch.
3. Others teach that the natural powers of fallen man have been weakened, not intrinsically,—but extrinsically, because of the placing of an obstacle. This is the opinion of Thomists in general: Alvarez, Lemos, John of St. Thomas, Contenson, the Salmanticenses, Goudin, Billuart, Gonet in his Clypeus, in which he amended what he had taught earlier in his Manual, St. Alphonsus, and Tanquerey.
This last opinion seems to be more in accord with the doctrine of St. Thomas; the first opinion sins by excess, and the second by defect. St. Thomas proposes the question, whether sin diminishes the good of nature. He replies by explaining the words of Venerable Bede, "Man was despoiled of the gratuitous gifts and wounded in his natural powers." "The good of nature," St. Thomas says, "is threefold. First, the principles of nature, by which are constituted the nature itself and the properties caused by these principles, such as the powers of the soul. Secondly, because man has from nature an inclination to virtue, as we said above,[1620] the inclination to virtue is itself a certain good of nature. Thirdly, the gift of original justice, which was given to the whole human race in the first man, can be called a good of nature."
"The first good of nature is not lost nor is it diminished by sin. The third good of nature is completely lost by the sin of our first parent. But the second good of nature, the natural inclination to virtue, is diminished by sin."[1621] Following this, St. Thomas treats of the four wounds "inflicted on all human nature by the sin of the first man."
What is the extrinsic impediment which diminishes the powers of the soul? Many Thomists reply as follows: The faculties of the soul and its properties, like the essence of the soul itself, do not admit of reduction or increase, because they are entirely spiritual and therefore incorruptible and unalterable. They cannot therefore suffer intrinsic diminution. But in the state of fallen nature man is born habitually and directly averse to God his supernatural end, and indirectly averse to God his ultimate natural end, since every sin that is directly opposed to the supernatural law is indirectly opposed to the natural law, commanding us to obey God in everything. When Adam sinned, he turned all his posterity away from God the author of nature.
In the state of pure nature this aversion would not have existed because there had been no sin and man would have been born capable of positive conversion to God and of aversion to God. Hence in the state of pure nature man would have been more capable of turning to God than the man who is born with an aversion to God. This aversion is a wounding of the will, which, as St. Thomas says, "is deprived of the order to good."[1622] Thus we see how man's free will is "weakened in its powers and inclined (to evil)," in the words of the Council of Trent. From this follows the wound of ignorance, particularly in the practical intellect, because everyone arrives at a practical judgment according to his inclination. If this inclination is not right, the intellect is inclined to error. Similarly the wounds of weakness and concupiscence follow in the sensitive appetite, because the higher faculties are not strong enough to direct the sensitive appetite as they should. Hence fallen man is compared to man in the state of pure nature not only as a stripped man to a naked man but as a wounded man to a healthy man.[1623]

Conclusion
We are now better able to solve the objections against original sin. 1. Original sin is not repugnant to divine justice, because it is the privation of grace and the preternatural gifts, which were not owing to our nature. The just God could grant these gratuitous gifts to the human race on the condition that Adam, the head of elevated nature, should not sin and not forfeit these gratuitous gifts for himself and for us.
2. Original sin is not repugnant to God's wisdom or goodness. As St. Thomas explains, "Nothing prohibits human nature from being brought to something higher after sin. God permits sin and evil that He may elicit something better. Hence it is said, 'Where sin abounded, grace did more abound.'"[1624] And in the blessing of the paschal candle the Church chants, "O happy fault, that merited so great a Redeemer.!"
God could not permit evil except for some greater good, but we cannot say <a priori> for what good God permitted original sin. After the Incarnation took place, however, it is sufficiently clear that God permitted the abundance of sin that grace might more abound. He permitted this universal evil in the human race so that He might give us something better and more efficacious for salvation through the redemptive Incarnation. Christ, the head of the Church, infinitely excels Adam. The Blessed virgin Mary is incomparably more perfect than Eve, and the Eucharistic sacrifice offered in every church immeasurably exceeds the divine worship offered in the terrestrial paradise.
Once the existence of original sin has been admitted, we can more easily explain the present condition of the human race. This doctrine solves the enigma of the coexistence in man of such great frailty and misery and such strong aspirations for the sublime. "Some signs appear," says St. Thomas, "of original sin in the human race."[1625] In Pascal's words, "Without this mystery man is more incomprehensible than the mystery is to man."[1626] From experience, therefore, man is able to know his profound need for the Redemption that would elevate him again to the life of grace, which is the seed of eternal life.

Endnotes:
1 Adversus Praxeam, chap. 31
2 De Trinitate, Bk. VIII.
3 Contra Arianos
4 Contra Eunomium
5 V orationes theologicae
6 Contra Eunomium
7 De Trinitate
8 De Trinitate
9 De S. Trinitate
10 De Trinitate
11 De fide Trinitatis
12 De Trinitate
13 De Trinitate
14 De unitate Trinitatis
15 Dogmatik, De SS. Trin., in fine
16 De Regnon, Etudes de theologie positive sur la Trinite
17 Origines du dogme de la Trinite (Paris: Beauchesne, 1910, 1927).
18 Martinus Jugie, A. A., De processione Spiritus Sancti
19 cf. the treatises on the Trinity by Billot, Billuart, Delatte, Diekamp, Franzelin, Hugon, Janssens, John of St. Thomas, Jungmann, Lepicier, Pesch, Salmanticenses, Suarez, Tanquerey, Van Noort, and Van der Meersch; the articles, "Processions divines," "Relations et personnes divines," "Pere," "Fils de Dieu," "Filioque," "Esprit Saint," in Dict. theol. cath.
20 cf. Scheeben, De Trinitate, no. 1086
21 Ia, q. 39, a. 1
22 Denz., no. 2026
23 Summa, Ia, q. 32, a. 2 ad 3
24 ibid., q. 19, a. 2
25 Contra Gentes, Bk. I, chap. 3
26 Summa, Ia, q. 1, a. 6
27 ibid., IIIa, q. 3, a. 5 ad 2; q. 23, a. 2 ad 3. Garrigou-Lagrange, "La grace est-elle une participation de la Deite telle qu'elle est en soi?" Revue thomiste, July, 1936, pp. 470-86.
28 Rom. 8 29
29 Summa, IIa, q. 99, n. 1, a. 1
30 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 1.
31 Ethica, Bk. X, chap. 7
32 Contra Gentes, Bk. I, chap. 5
33 John 15:15
34 Summa, IIa IIae, q. 28, a. 1, 3, 4
35 Col. 2:2.
36 Denz., no. 1021.
37 Rom. 8:29; cf. Summa, IIIa, q. 3, a. 5 ad 2; q. 23, a. 2 ad 3.
38 Summa, Ia, q. 32, a. 1 ad 3
39 I Cor. 2:6-9
40 Denz., Index systematicus, n. V, a, b.
41 Denz., nos. 428, 432
42 ibid., nos. 281, 431, 523, 703
43 ibid., no. 428
44 ibid., no. 691
45 ibid., no. 279
46 Summa, Ia, q. 13, a. 12
47 Page 96
48 Catechismum Conc. Trid. ad parochos, Part I, chap. 4, no. 3; chap. 2, no. 14
49 cf. Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes, I, 127 f., 179 f., 313, 406; II, 22; III, 107
50 Denz., Damnatio Sabellianismi, nos. 48, 60, 85, 231, 271, 705.
51 cf. Mainage, Les principes de la theosophie
52 John:1.
53 Denz., no. 54
54 Tixeront, op. cit., II, 67-76
55 For the principal declarations against Arius and the Arians, cf. Denz., nos. 54, 57, 61, 223, 271, 708, 1460
56 Denz., nos. 74, 85, also 58, 62, 85, 223, 271, 705, 1461
57 Hurter, Nomenclator 3, I, 466, no. 2
58 St. Anselm, De fide Trinitatis, PL, CLVIII, 259-84.
59 Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 2.
60 Denz., no. 389.
61 Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 2
62 Denz., no. 432
63 ibid., no. 703
64 ibid., no. 1655
65 ibid., nos. 2022 f., 2026, 2054
66 Lib. de persona et de duabus naturis
67 cf. St. Basil, Epist. 38, 1, 3, 4; PG, XXXII, 325 f.
68 cf. Leontius, Contra Nestorium et Eutichet, PG, LXXXVI, 1280 f.
69 Summa, Ia, q. 29, a. 1, 2; IIIa, q. 2, a. 2 ad 3; Quaestiones disp., De potentia, q. 9, a. 1, 4
70 Summa, IIa IIae, q. 2, a. . 2
71 cf. Tanquerey, Herve, and Scheeben
72 cf. P. F. Ceuppens, Theologia biblica (Rome, 1938); Mysterium SS. Trinitatis in A. T., pp. 1-53; Mysterium SS. Trinitatis in N. T., in Synopticis, pp. 54-97; in Actibus Apostolorum, pp. 98-110 apud S. Paulum, pp. 111-54 apud S. Joannem, pp. 154-244
73 Ceuppens, op. cit., p. 57
74 ibid
75 For the authenticity of this text in this controversy, cf. Ceuppens, op. cit., pp. 60 f. cf. Lebreton, Les origines du dogme de la Trinite (1927), I, 600. Loisy was forced to admit: "L'emploi de cette formule est atteste dans la Didache, VII, 1, et l'on peut croire qu'elle etait universellement recue dans les Eglises au commencement du IIe siecle" (Les EvangiIes Synoptiques, II, 751).
76 Denz., no. 2198
77 Harnack says 78-83 or even 60-70. cf. Die Apostelgeschichte (1908), p. 221
78 cf. the commentaries of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Maldonatus, Calmes, and Voste, Studia Joannea (Rome, 1930), pp. 29-100; Lebreton, op. cit. (6th ed., 1927).
79 cf. Knabenbauer, Calmes, Sales
80 cf. Ceuppens, op. cit., pp. 95-97, 108-10, 147, 166, 228
81 ibid., p. 97
82 ibid., p. 109
83 ibid., p. 150
84 Lebreton, op. cit., p. 423: "Malgre la proximite du nom neutre to pneuma, S. Jean se sert toujours du pronom masculin ekeinos pour designer le Saint Esprit..... Il perd de vue le terme grammatical qu'il a choisi, et ne voit que la personne qu'il decrit."
85 Summa, IIIa, q. 10, a. 2 ad 1.
86 Denz-, no. 248
87 cf. the testimonies of the Fathers in Petavius, Bk. II, chap. 7; Lebreton, op. cit., pp. 441 f.; Lagrange, Revue biblique (1896), p. 387: "Le mystere de la Trinite n'est pas expressement indique, mais il donne la meilleure explication de cette tournure de ce pluriel, surtout de: nus ex nobis."
88 Roman Breviary, second response, Quinquagesima Sunday
89 cf. Ceuppens, De prophetiis messianicis in A. Test. (Rome, 1935), pp. 135f., 145 f., 163 f., 235 f.; Theologia biblica SS. Trinitatis (1938), pp. 16-42
90 Ceuppens, De prophetiis messianicis, pp. 135 f., 145 f.
91 Mark 12:36; Matt. 22:44; Luke 20:42 f
92 Ceuppens, De prophetiis messianicis, pp. 163 f.
93 St. Augustine, Enarr. in Psalm. II, 6
94 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Psalmum II, 5; Commentarium in Matt. XXII, 43, with reference to psalm 109.
95 Ceuppens, op. cit., pp. 235 f.; see also Condamin, Feldmann, Hoonacker, Lagrange, Desnoyers
96 Lebreton, op. cit., pp. 110 f.; Contra Gentes, IV, 8
97 Lebreton, op. cit., p. 118
98 Summa, IIa IIae, q. 2, a. 3.
99 ibid., a. 8
100 ibid., Ia, q. 34, a. 1. ad 1. cf. such commentators on St. Thomas as Gotti, Billuart, and Hugon. cf. also Dict. de theol. cath., articles "Pere," "Fils de Dieu," "Filioque," "Esprit Saint, Divinite," "Procession divine," "Relations et personnes divines."
101 Adversus Praxeam, chap. 26
102 Contra haereses, I, x, 1
103 Denz., nos. 1 f., 13 f.
104 Eph. 1:1-14
105 Ed. Funk
106 Ed. Duchesne, I, 129
107 Nos. 24, 26.
108 Ad Eph., IX, 1; ad Magnesios, XIII, 1.
109 Contra Noetum, 8
110 Tertullian, Adversus Praxeam, chaps. 2, 13
111 Origen, In Joannem, II, 6; XXXII, 18, PG, XIV, 132, 821.
112 St. Thomas, In Prologum Ev. sec. Joannem, on the first verse
113 Origen, Selecta in psalmos, hom. XIII, 134; In Matt., XIV, 7; In Epistolam ad Hebraeos, PG, XIV, 1308, quoted by Tanquerey, Synopsis major, p. 383.
114 Denz-, nos. 48-51
115 ibid., no. 54
116 St. Athanasius, Adversus Arianos rationes; cf. Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., nos. 675 f., 753, 760 f.
117 St. Athanasius, Contra Arianos, I, 16, 39; II, 69; I Epist. ad Serapion, 17 (Tixeront, Hist. dogm., II, 67-96).
118 Marin Sola, Evolution homogene du dogme catholique, I, no. 202
119 St. Robert Bellarmine, De Verbo Dei, III, 10.
120 I, Ep. ad Serapionem, 17. Denz., nos. 74, 86
121 cf. de Regnon, S.J., Etudes de theologie positive sur la Sainte Trinite (1892-98) Part I, 251, II; P. Jugie, Theologia dogmatica Christianorum orientalium, III, 221 f.; A. d'Ales, De Trinitate; Penido, Role de l'analogie en theol. dogm. (1931), p. 295, Galtier, De Trinitate, p. 164, n. 1
122 St. Athanasius, Adversus Arianos, III, 35 ff.
123 ibid., 35 f.; St. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa, I, 8.
124 Summa, Ia, q. 39, a. 8
125 De Trinitate. Bks. IX, X.
126 Summa, Ia, q. 27, a. 2.
127 ibid., a. 4.
128 Denz., nos. 77 ff., 254, 281, 284, 421, 428.
129 ibid., no. 703; cf. St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XV, chap. 4, n. 5
130 Summa, Ia, q. 34, a. 1 ad 3
131 cf. below, question 37, article 2.
132 De Regnon, op. cit., II, 235-332, 308 f., 313
133 Summa Ia, q. 5, a. 2
134 Richard, De Trinitate, III, PL, CXCVI, 916 f.
135 St. Gregory the Great, Hom. 17.
136 Richard, loc. cit.
137 Summa, Ia, q. 32, a. 1 ad 2; De veritate, q. 10, a. 4; De potentia, q. 8, a. 3
138 De Regnon, op. cit., II, 287
139 ibid., II, 326
140 Alexander of Hales, Summa theologica, Ia, q. 42, m. 1; De Regnon, op. cit., II, 373 f.
141 Alexander of Hales, op. cit., Ia, q. 42, m. 2
142 De Regnon, op. cit., II, 382
143 Peter Bles, PL, CCVII, 933
144 William of Auxerre, Summa, I, chap. 2
145 St. Bonaventure, I Sent., dist. 10, a. 1, q. I; cf. Rousselot, Pour l'histoire du probleme de l'amour au Moyen-Age, p. 65.
146 Summa, Ia, q. 32, a. 1 ad 2; De veritate, q. 10, a. 4; De pot., q. 8, a. 3
147 St. Bonaventure, op. cit., Ia, dist. 9, a. 1, q. I; De Regnon, op. cit., II, 457
148 De Regnon, op. cit., II, 461, 467 f., 493, 506
149 St. Bonaventure, op. cit., Ia, dist. 9, a. 1, q. I; De Regnon, op. cit., II, 507
150 Summa, Ia, q. 5, a. 4 ad 2; Ia IIae, q. 1, a. 4 ad 1.
151 ibid., IIIa, q. 1, a. 1
152 ibid., Ia, q. 19, a. 2.
153 ibid., IIIa, q. 73, a. 5 ad 3.
154 ibid., Ia, q. 27, a. 5 ad 2; Ia, q. 27, a. 1 ad 2.
155 cf. especially q. 27, a. 1. ad 2.
156. De potentia, q. 10, a. 1. and Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II.
157 Contra Arianos, 1, 21-28
158 De Trinitate, V, 4
159 Ibid
160 Cf. a. 2 ad 2
161 Cf. a. 5 ad 2.
162 Cf. q. 42, a. 2, 4, 6
163 D'Ales, De Deo Trino (1934), p. 183.
164 Lagrange, Evangile selon Saint Jean (1927), p. clxxxi; l'Evangile de Jesus Christ, p. 634; St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XV, 14, 16, 17; PL, XLII, 1069-79; St. Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. theol., 4, PG, XXXVI, 129; St. Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus, 19; PG, LXXV, 314: "St. John calls the Son the Word and he gives Him this more appropriate name because it best expresses His essence"; and In Joannem, I, 5; PG, LXXV, 82: "The Word is called wisdom because it is of the mind and in the mind intimately and without any separation." St. Basil, Homil. in Prol. Joannis, PG, XXXI, 475: "What was in the beginning? He says the Word..... Why the Word? So that it would be clear that He proceeded from the mind." Cf. Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theologicus, no. 161: "The Word is the proper name of the Son," no. 163, "The Son proceeds from the Father by intellectual generation"; see also the references to the Greek and Latin Fathers, especially St. Theophilus of Antioch, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Hippolytus, St. Dionysius of Alexandria, St. Athanasius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Augustine, De Trinitate, XV, 23, and In Joannem, 14, 7. Cf. also E;. Cayre, Precis de patrologie, 1, 629-31, 658.
165 Heb. 1:3
166 Summa, Ia, q. 12, a. 2.
167 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II, no. 3
168 Denz., nos. 3, 19 f., 54, 275 f.
169 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II
170 Cf. below, q. 33, a. 2 ad 4
171 Cf. III Sent. d. 8, 1, 6; dist. 3, q. 2, a. 1, c. 5; Quodl., VIII, a. 5 ad 3
172 Quodl., loc. cit.
173 John of St. Thomas, De Trinitate, XII, a. 6, no. 15
174 Summa, a. 1. ad 2; a. 2
175 Ep. 174
176 John of St. Thomas, loc. cit., no. 45
177 Summa, Ia, q. 42, a. 4 ad 2.
178 De potentia, q. 3, a. 1 ad 17.
179 Q. 41, a. 1.
180 Summa, Ia, q. 41, a. 1 ad 2.
181 M. T. L. Penido, in Ephemerides theol. Lovaniensis (May, 1938), pp. 338 f.
182 Irenaeus Chevalier, O.P., in Divus Thomas (Piacenza, January, 1938), pp. 63-68.
183 De veritate, q. 4, a. 2 ad 7.
184 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 19
185 A. D'Ales, De Deo Trino (1934), p. 183
186 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 19
187 Denz., no. 432
188 Ibid., nos. 86, 691.
189 Summa, Ia, q. 40, a. 4; q. 41, a. 3 ad 5.
190 ibid., q. 41, a. 5
191 Ibid., Ia, q. 33, a. 1 ad 2
192 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 1.
193 Denz., no 432
194 Summa, la, q. 13, a. 1-5.
195 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II
196 Summa Ia, q. 34, a. 1 ad 3
197 Ibid., q. 37, a. 1
198 Ibid., q. 34, 37, 40, 41
199 A. Michel, "Relations et personnes divines" in Dict. theol. cath.
200 Question 29, art. 4.
201 Council of Florence; cf. Denz., no. 703
202 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 9.
203 Categ., chap. 5; Met., V, 15.
204 Categ., chap. 5
205 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 14
206 De potentia, q. 7, a. 9 ad 7
207 Every accident inheres at least aptitudinally in the subject. This aptitude remains in the Eucharistic accidents, which are without any subject. According to the laws of nature, however, an accident is also actually in the subject. Miraculously this is not verified in the Eucharistic accidents.
208 Summa, IIIa, q. 2, a. 7.
209 Denz., nos. 40, 60, 85, 231, 271
210 Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theologicus, no. 178, where a collection of references to the Greek and Latin Fathers will be found
211 Orat. 30, no. 16; Journel, no. 990
212 Journel, Index theologicus, no. 178
213 See especially De Trinitate, V, 6.
214 Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes (8th ed.; 1924), II, 365 f.
215 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, V, vi, 16; ibid., VII, xxiv; De civitate Dei, XI, x, 1. 18 Denz., nos. 278, 280, 281. Similarly in the Council of Reims (1148), Denz., no. 389; the Fourth Lateran Council, Denz., no. 432; the Council of Florence, Denz., no. 703.
216 Denz., no. 703
217 Cf. Harduin, Concil. Collectio, IX, 203
218 Ibid., IX, 339. Cf. St. Anselm, De proc. Spir. Sancti, chap. 2
219 St. Thomas, I Sent., 26, 33; Contra Gentes, IV, 14; De potentia, q. 2, a. 6; q. 8, a. 1
220 Boetius, De Trin., chap. 6. Cf. art. 3 below
221 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 2, a. 2 and 5
222 Ibid., q. 7, a. 9 ad 7.
223 Denz., no. 390
224 Ibid., no. 391
225 Summa, Ia, q. 13, a. 12; q. 3, a. 3.
226 Denz, no. 431
227 Ibid., no. 523
228 Summa, Ia, q. 3, a. 6.
229 Billot. th. 8
230 St. Thomas, Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 1; De potentia, q. 7, a. 9, no. 7.
231 Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 2
232 Summa, IIIa, q. 17, a. 2 ad 3
233 De mysterio Sanctissimae Trinitatis, Bk. IV, chap. 3.
234 Cf. a. 3 ad 2, 3 below
235 Loc. cit.
236 Cf. Cajetan, Ia, q. 39, a. 1, no. 8
237 Ibid., no. 7
238 Summa, Ia, q. 27, a. 2 ad 3; q. 28, a. 2 ad 3
239 Cajetan, op. cit., Ia, q. 39, a. 1
240 Ibid., Ia, q. 39, a. 1, no. 7.
241 Ibid., no. 8.
242 Summa, IIIa, q. 17, a. 2 ad 3; De potentia, q. 8, a. 2 ad 11; q. 9, a. 5 ad 10
243 Summa, IIIa, q. 17, a. 2.
244 Exod. 3:14
245 St. Augustine, De Trin., V, 8
246 Summa, Ia, q. 42, a. 4 ad 2.
247 De potentia, q. 2, a. 5.
248 Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 2
249 Cf. Bossuet, "Dieu n'est pas plus grand pour avoir cree l'univers."
250 Cajetan on Ia, q. 19, a. 2, no. 3
251 Cajetan, IIIa, q. 1, a. 1, no. 6
252 Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, p. 500
253 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Bk. VI, chap. 8; Bk. VIII, chap. 1
254 Cf. below, p. 170
255 Denz., no. 703
256 Harduin, Conciliorum Collectio, IX, 203.
257 Ibid., IX, 339. For earlier councils, cf. Eleventh Council of Toledo and Fourth Council of the Lateran, Denz., 39, 231, 281, 523 f
258 St. Anselm, De process. Spiritus Sancti, chap. 2 (Migne, PL, 158, 288).
259 De Trinitate, V, XV
260 Cf. Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theologicus, no. 148. Many references to the texts of the Greek and Latin Fathers quoted in this work will be found here
261 De potentia, q. 7, a. 8 ad 4.
262 The term "opposition" often causes equivocations. Thus the rationalists say that reason and Christian faith are opposed, by which they mean that Christian faith is against reason. Actually faith is above reason, and a mutual relation exists between faith and reason, as the Vatican Council explains. Cf. Denz., nos. 1795, 1800
263 Cajetan, Ia, q. 39, a. 1, no. 7.
264 St. Thomas, In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 5 ad 4
265 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 2, a. 5
266 Cf. Disp. metaph., Dist., X, 3, 14
267 Suarez, De Trinitate, Bk. IV, chap. 3, no. 7
268 Summa, IIIa, q. 17, a. 2 ad 3
269 Suarez, De myst. SS. Trinitatis, Bk. III, chap. 5. For a criticism of Suarez' position, see L. Billot, S.J., Th. VIII, Epilogus, and N. del Prado, O.P., De veritate fundamentali philosophiae christianae (1911), pp. 529-44.
270 Del Prado, O.P., ibid., p. 540
271 See below, the recapitulation of this question
272 It is true that relation may refer to quality, as for instance in the relation of similarity. But in God quality is reduced to the divine essence, which is numerically the same in the three persons
273 Summa, Ia, q. 30, a. 2 ad 1.
274 Ibid., q. 36, a. 3 ad 2
275 Ibid., q. 42, a. 1. ad 4
276 Del Prado, op. cit., p. 543
277 St Thomas, Posterior Analytics, Bk. II.
278 Aristotle, De categoriis, chap. 2
279 St. Thomas, Post. Analyt., Bk. II, chaps. 12 f.
280 St. Thomas frequently points this out as, for example, in Contra Gentes, Bk. II chap. 52: "In every substance besides God the substance itself, or that which is, is different from the existence. -" Thus personality is that by which something is what it is, namely, a suppositum with a rational nature, whereas existence is that by which a thing exists
281 Scotus, in III Sent., 1, q. 1, nos. 5 f
282 Suarez, Disp. met., disp. 34, sect. 1, 2, 4, etc.; De Incarnatione, disp. XI, sect. 3.
283 Cajetan, on IIIa, q. 4, a. 2, nos. 8 f.; cf. Capreolus, III Sent., V, q. 3, a. 3, no. 2
284 L. Billot, De Verbo Incarnato (5th ed.), q. 2, pp. 75, 84, 137, 140.
285 Summa, IIIa, q. 2, a. 2.
286 Contra Gentes, Bk. 11, chap. 52.
287 Summa, IIIa q. 17, a. 2 ad 1.
288 Cajetan, on IIIa, q. 4, a. 2, no. 8.
289 Objection. One per se does not result from one or more acts. But the suppositum is one per se. Therefore it cannot be constituted by three acts, namely, essence, subsistence, and existence.
Reply. One nature does not result from several acts, this I concede; one suppositum does not result from several acts, this I deny. The suppositum is indeed per se subsisting, but the created suppositum and its existence are not one per se, and they are not one nature, since the existence does not pertain to the nature but is only a contingent predicate. Moreover, in Christ there are one suppositum and two natures.
290 "Person adds something over and above the individuated nature, as an act of the nature, but not as a substantial form or an accident, but in the manner that the being of an actual existence is said to be the act of the essence by which it exists and by which the suppositum is what it is..... The suppositum is the same as the individual having being per se." Capreolus, loc. cit.
291 Summa, Ia, q. 39, a. 3 ad 4.
292 St. Thomas, I Sent. d. 23, q. 1, a. 4 ad 4; cf. I Sent., d. 4, q. 2, a. 2 ad 4: "The term 'person' is imposed by the personal propriety, which is the form signified and determined by the terminal being."
293 Summa, IIIa, q. 4, a. 2.
294 Ibid., q. 17, a. 2 ad. 1
295 Ibid., ad 3.
296 St. Thomas, Quodl., II, q. 2, a. 4.
297 Cf. Revue thomiste, March 1933, "La personnalite, ce qu'elle est formellement," Garrigou-Lagrange
298 Summa, IIIa, q. 77, a. 2.
299 Ibid., q. 2, a. 2.
300 Ibid., q. 77, a. 2.
301 Ibid., Ia, q. 29, a. 3. St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 1, 2.
302 An ontological personality, therefore, is that by which a thinking subject is a subject; a psychological personality is that by which this subject is conscious of itself; a moral personality is that by which this subject is of its own right (sui juris). The intellectual personality is manifested in its courage, nobility, and universality of judgment; the moral personality appears in the degree that the interrelated virtues which constitute character are able to prevail over the physical temperament. The religious personality manifests itself in the degree that a man is intimately united to God
303 Cf. De Regnon, op. cit., I, 227.
304 Denz., nos. 115, 216
305 [diagram page 159]
The correlation of abstract and concrete terms is as follows:
Concrete Terms / Abstract Terms
person / personality
suppositum / subsistence
subsisting in itself / existence of the substance
inhering / existence of the accident
Cf. Post. Analyt., Bk. I, chap. 4, lect. 10
306 Cf. Fourth Lateran Council.
307 Boethius, De Trin., chap. 6, in sed contra. Cf. Eleventh Council of Toledo (675), Denz., no. 278
308 Denz., no. 280
309 Ibid., no. 703; cf. Petau, De Trinitate, IV
310 Summa, q. 27
311 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 4
312 Boethius, De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3
313 Summa, Ia, q. 3, a. 2
314 Denz., no. 428
315 Ibid., no. 703
316 Summa, Ia, q. 40, a. 2
317 Ibid., a. 4
318 St. Thomas, I Sent., d. 21, q. 2
319 Contra Gentes, Bk IV, chap. 14; De potentia, q. 9, a. 5 ad 15.
320 Summa, Ia, q. 29, a. 2 ad 2
321 Summa, Ia, q. 42, a. 4 ad 3
322 Objection In a most simple being no real distinction can be found. But God is most simple being. Therefore in God there is no real distinction.
Reply. I distinguish the major: in a most simple being there is no real distinction between parts, this I concede; between real relations, this I deny; and in the same sense I distinguish the conclusion. As St. Thomas says in his reply to the fourth difficulty: "In created things one is a part of two, two is a part of three, as one man of two men and two men of three, and here the human nature is multiplied. But it is not so with God because the Father is as much as the whole Trinity.," The Deity is not multiplied in the three persons just as the surface is not multiplied in the three angles of the triangle; thus the three angles are not more than one angle alone.
323 A difficult objection arises. Because of the infinite goodness of the Father He communicates Himself infinitely in producing a divine person. But the infinite goodness is also in the Holy Ghost. Therefore the Holy Ghost also produces a divine person, namely, a fourth person, and this fourth person produces another, and so on to infinity.
Reply. I concede the major. I distinguish the minor: the infinite goodness in the Holy Ghost is numerically the same as the infinite goodness in the Father, which was adequately communicated after the manner of enunciation and of love, this I concede; that there is in the Holy Ghost another infinite goodness to be communicated as it was in the Father, this I deny. In the same way I distinguish the conclusion. The reader is referred to St. Thomas' reply to the fourth difficulty. This objection is shown to be neither necessary or cogent.
324 Summa, Ia, a. 11, a. 1, ad 1
325 Ibid., and a. 2 ad 4
326 Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 382-415
327 Cf. the Councils of Toledo and the Lateran, Denz., nos. 280, 296, 432
328 Denz., no. 280
329 Ia, q. 39, a. 1, no. 8
330 Cf. the chapter "Damnamus," Denz., no. 432
331 Epist. I, PG, XXXVII, 179
332 Cf. below, q. 36, a. 2 ad. 1
333 Theologia christiana, I, 5
334 Cf. Vacant, Etudes sur le Concile Vatican, I, 130
335 Denz., no. 1915
336 Pesch, Dogmatica, p. 274
337 Denz., nos. 1655, 1915 f.
338 Epist. 79
339 Pesch, op. cit., 1.
340 Or. Catech. III; St. Athanasius, Ep. ad Serapionem, I, no. 18; Rouet de Journel, Enchir. patr., index theol., no. 150.
341 Denz., nos. 1795 ff.
342 Ibid., no. 1816
343 Ibid., nos. 1655, 1915
344 Ibid., no. 1915.
345 Ibid., no. 1916
346 Pesch, op. cit., p. 256.
347 Guenther also, in defining personality as the consciousness of oneself, had to admit two personalities in Christ, for in Christ were the divine consciousness and the human consciousness
348 Summa, Ia, q. 1, a. 6; q. 12, a. 4 and 12
349 Denz., no. 1816
350 Ibid., no. 428
351 Summa Ia, q. 19, a. 3.
352 Cf. Billuart, Cursus theol., De Trinitate, diss. prooem, a. 5.
353 In Boetium De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 3.
354 Billuart, loc. cit.
355 Summa, Ia, q. 12, a. 2.
356 Ibid., Ia, q. 32, a. 1 ad 2.
357 Ibid., q. 14, a. 4
358 Denz., no. 1915
359 Contra Gentes, Bk. I, chap. 8
360 Cf, Garrigou-Lagrange, "La possibilite de la vision beatifique peut-elle se demonstrer?" Revue Thom., December, 1933, pp. 669-89
361 De veritate, q. 14, a. 1
362 Summa, IIa IIae, q. 1, a. 4, 5
363 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV. chaps. 10, 14.
364 Denz., no. 703
365 Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 3 ad 1
366 Ibid., q. 27, a. 2; q. 33, a. 1. corp. and ad 3
367 Metaphysica, V, 1.
368 In the Contra Gentes St. Thomas mentions and solves many objections. See chaps. 10 and 14. See also St. Robert Bellarmine, De Christo, I, I, and John of St. Thomas, De Trinitate, disp. 12, a. 12 ad 3 and 4.
369 Summa, Ia, q. 3, a. 3 ad 1; q. 13, a. 1.
370 Ibid., q. 33, a. 4
371 Ibid., q. 40, a. 1 ad. 1.
372 Ibid., q. 33, a. 4.
373 Denz., no. 86 and frequently thereafter, nos. 277, 428, 460, 691, etc. Cf. Summa, Ia, q. 36, a. 4.
374 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II
375 Summa, Ia, q. 27, a. 1 ad 2.
376 Denz., no. 703
377 De Trinitate, IV, 20, quoted in the sed contra
378 Metaphysica, V, 1.
379 Cf. below, q. 42, a. 3
380 Cf. a. 4 ad 2
381 Denz., nos. 3, 19, 39, 275, 345 ff.
382 lbid., nos. 703 ff.
383 March 9, 1897
384 Denz., no. 70
385 Ibid., no. 214
386 Ibid., no. 255
387 Ibid., no. 283
388 Summa, Ia, q. 85, a. 2 in c., ad 2 and 3.
389 Ibid., q. 55, a. 3
390 Ibid., q. 12, a. 7
391 Ibid., a. 9
392 Ibid., a. 1
393 John 1:18
394 Wisd. 7:26
395 II Cor. 4:4
396 Col. 1:15
397 Heb. 1:3.
398 Col. 1:15.
399 Heb. 1:3
400 Cf. Summa, Ia. q. 35 a. 2 ad 1, 2
401 Bossuet, Elevations sur les mysteres, VII, VIII, IX, X.
402 Matt. 12:28
403 Matt. 28:19; John 14:16 f.; 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. 2:10ff.; 3:16; 6:19f.; II Cor. 13:13.
404 Summa, Ia, q. 27, a. 4 ad 3; q-28, a. 4.
405 Thus 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 IIae, q. 112, a. 5 ad 2
406 Summa, Ia, q. 28, a. 4.
407 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 3, a. 4.
408 Cf. Cajetan on Ia, q. 27, a. 3, nos. 5, 6
409 Summa, Ia, q. 82, a. 3.
410 Ibid., Ia, q. 18, a. 3. See also Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 485f
411 Cf. Cajetan on Ia, q. 27, a. 3, nos. 5, 6
412 Denz., nos. 277, 345
413 Ibid., no: 691
414 Ibid., 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).
415 Ibid., no. 3035
416 Ibid., no. 460 (Council of Lyons).
417 Ibid., no. 691 (Council of Florence).
418 Ibid., no. 704 (Council of Florence).
419 John 15:26
420 Matt. 10:20
421 John 14:16
422 Ibid., 14:26
423 Ibid., 15:26
424 Ibid., 16:7.
425 Summa, Ia, q. 43, a. 1
426 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, IV, 20
427 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Joan., 15:26, 16:7.
428 John 16:13 ff.
429 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Joan., XVI, 14
430 Gal. 4:6.
431 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Epist. ad Gal., IV, 6
432 Rom. 8:9
433 John 15:26
434 Acts 16:7
435 St. Augustine, In Joannem, 99, 6, 7.
436 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'Ales, S.J., De Deo Trino (1934), VII, VIII, and the index, which treats of Photius; M. Jugie, Theologia dogmatica Christianorum orientalium (1926), I, 154-79
437 Ad Serapion, epist., III, 1.
438 De Incarnatione, 9
439 Oratio, 31, no. 2.
440 Thesaurus, assert. 34, PG, LXXV, 585. Cf. also A. A. Cayre, Precis 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).
441 Denz., no. 691
442 PL, LVIII, 219
443 Denz-, no. 428
444 Ibid., no. 691. See also the definitions of the Church against the errors of Photius and the Photians at the beginning of this article
445 St. Thomas treats this question in several places: I Sent. II, 1; Summa, Ia. q. 36, a. 2 ad 3; Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 24, 25; De potentia, q. 10, a. 4, 5; Opusculum contra errores Graecorum, II, chaps. 27-32; Compendium theol., chap. 49; Contra Graecos, Armenos, chap. 4; In Joannem, chap. 15, lect. 6; chap. 16, lect. 4.
446 Summa, Ia, q. 36, a. 2
447 Ibid., q. 82, a. 3 ad 2; cf. also, Ia IIae, q. 22, a. 3 ad 2.
448 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 100, a. 6.
449 Ibid., Ia, q. 47, a. 2
450 Denz., no. 703
451 John 16:15
452 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 24
453 John 16:14
454 Denz., no. 86 (note).
455 Ibid., nos. 460, 691
456 De fide orthodoxa, I, chap. II
457 Cf. Gotti; Petavius, De Trinitate, VII, chap. 17
458 A. d'Ales, De Deo Trino, p. 162; index," St. John Damascene."
459 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 theol. 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."
460 Chap. 18
461 De Trinitate, XII
462 St. Augustine, In Joannem, 39
463 Contra Eunomium
464 De processione Spiritus Sancti, chap. 3
465 Denz., nos. 691, 703
466 De Trinitate, 12
467 De Trinitate, V, chap. 14, no. 21.
468 Contra Eunomium, II, 33 f. (PG, XXIX, 649-52).
469 De Spiritu Sancto, I, II, 120 (PL, XVI, 733, 739); cf. D'Ales, De Deo Trino, pp. 158, 163.
470 Denz-, no. 460
471 Ibid., nos. 691, 704
472 Rom. 8:26
473 Summa, Ia IIae, q. III, a. 2
474 Rom. 8:26.
475 In Hom. Pentecostes, 30
476 Roman Breviary, Hymn for Vespers on Pentecost
477 Denz., no. 277
478 Cf. De Regnon, op. cit., IV, 352
479 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 19; Cajetan, on Ia, q. 27, a. 3, nos. 5, 6
480 Cajetan, on Ia, q. 27, a. 3, no. 6.
481 Summa, Ia, q. 82, a. 3
482 Cant. 4:9
483 Phil. 3:12
484 Acts 9:3.
485 Summa, Ia IIae, q. 28, a. 5. Cf. ibid., a. 3; III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1. ad 4
486 Summa, Ia, q. 85, a. 2.
487 De Trinitate, VI, chap. 5.
488 Roman Breviary, Hymn for Vespers on Pentecost
489 Roman Missal, Mass for Pentecost
490 Roman Missal, Preparation for Mass
491 Cf. De Regnon, op. cit., IV, 470
492 II Pet. 1:4
493 In Joannem, II, 6.
494 De Spiritu Sancto, chaps. 11, 22
495 Cf. St. Athanasius, Ad Serapionem, III, 3
496 Rom. 5:5. Cf. De Regnon, op. cit., IV, 485, 555
497 Cf. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio, 34, no. 12
498 John 4:10, 14
499 Ibid., 7:37 ff. Cf. St. Thomas, In Joannem, IV, 10 ff.; VII, 37 ff.
500 Rom. 5:5.
501 Cf. De Regnon, op. cit-, IV, 397
502 Jer, 2:13
503 Encyclical Providentissimus, on the study of Sacred Scripture
504 Isa. 11:2.
505 Ibid
506 Ibid., 43:11
507 Joel 2:28 f.
508 Acts 2:15-18
509 Ps 35 10
510 Ibid., 148:18.
511 Ibid., 45:5
512 John 14:16
513 Ibid., 20:22; Acts 2:38; Luke 11:13
514 Cf. infra, q. 43, a. 2
515 cf Ia IIae, q. 69, a. 2; in Mathhaeum, v, 3
516 Isa. 9:6.
517 John 3:16.
518 De Trinitate, IV, chap. 20
519 Cf. Summa Theol., q. 37, a. 1
520 Cf. ibid., q. 43
521 John 7:37 ff.
522 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 22
523 Cf. Summa Theol., q. 43, a. 7
524 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 180, a. 6.
525 Denz., no. 432.
526 De Trinitate, VII, 6
527 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 52, no. 1
528 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 28, a. 2; q. 29, a. 4.
529 Cf. ibid., q. 29, a. 4
530 Ibid., q. 28, a. 2
531 Billuart, De Deo uno, II, 3.
532 Cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 465 f
533 Cajetan, Commentarium, in q. 39, a. 1
534 Blessed Angela of Folgino, Liber ejus visionum et instructionum, chap. 25
535 Eleventh Council of Toledo (675), Denz., no. 275
536 Denz., no. 432
537 De Regnon, op. cit., IV, 386
538 I Cor. 1:24
539 John 14:23
540 I Cor. 1:24
541 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 32, a. 1.
542 Ibid., q. 93, a. 1, 5, where St. Thomas explains the text of Genesis (1:26), "Let Us make man to Our image and likeness."
543 In Epist. ad Innocentem II, 199
544 Denz., no. 368
545 Loc. cit
546 Rom. 11:36.
547 Denz., no. 1
548 Ibid., no. 54
549 Ibid., no. 86; also in the Tridentine Creed. Denz., no. 994
550 Rom. 11:36
551 Cf Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on the Holy Ghost, Divinum illud munus, May 9, 1897
552 Cf. De Regnon, op. cit., II, 494
553 De Trinitate, V, chap. 4, 5.
554 Ps. 2:7.
555 Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; 5:5.
556 John 15:26
557 Ibid., 8:42.
558 Cf. above, q. 27
559 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 45, a. 2 ad 2
560 With regard to the consequent will, the antecedent will is so called inasmuch as it is founded on the first consideration of good taken absolutely and not on the second consideration of the same good to be produced here and now. For example, for the merchant caught in a storm it is a good thing to save his goods taken absolutely, but here and now it may be a good thing to throw his goods overboard. The good does not exist except here and now and hence is not affected by the antecedent will as distinct from the consequent will
561 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 6 ad 1
562 De Synodis, I, 25
563 In the argument sed contra
564 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 3
565 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 5, a. 4
566 Cf. Cajetan, op. cit
567 Rom. 8:32.
568 John 1:18
569 Cajetan, Commentary on IIIa, q. 4, a. 2
570 This text ought to be quoted in support of Cajetan's doctrine on personality; cf. ibid
571 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 50, a. 4. Cf. the Commentary of John of St. Thomas and of Gonet, De unitate intellectus (ed. Lethielleux, 1875), p. 465.
572 Fourth Lateran Council, chap. "Firmiter."
573 Phil. 2:6
574 Aristotle, in V Metaphysica, chap. 6
575 I John 1:1.
576 Apoc. 22:13
577 Denz., no. 428.
578 Ps. 2:7
579 Cf. above, q. 27, a. 2
580 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 10, a. 4
581 Cf. ibid., q. 62, a. 4.
582 Cf. ibid., q. 33, a. 1. ad 3
583 Cf. above, q. 13, a. 8
584 Denz., no. 432
585 John 14:28
586 Phil. 2:6
587 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 2, a. 5.
588 John 14:10.
589 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, VI, last chapter.
590 Cf. Dict. theol. cath., art. "Circumincession" (A. Chollet).
591 John 5:19.
592 Ibid
593 Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 598-605.
594 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 6 ad. 1.
595 Ibid., IIa IIae, q. 188, a. 6.
596 Mark 9:36; Luke 9:48.
597 Luke 24:49.
598 John 3:17
599 ibid., 5:37.
600 ibid., 8:16
601 ibid., 14:26
602 ibid., 16:7; cf. John 17
603 Gal. 4:4; Eph. 3:17; I Cor. 2:12; Rom. 8:3; I John 4:9-14; I Pet. 1:12
604 Eleventh Council of Toledo (675), Denz., 675
605 Denz., no. 13
606 ibid., 799
607 ibid., 83
608 The encyclical Divinum illud munus, May 9, 1897
609 Among St. Thomas' commentators, consult especially John of St. Thomas, on Ia, q. 43, and Gonet, Clypeus, tractatus De Trinitate.
610 Cf. in particular John 3:17; 8:16; 14:26; and the Eleventh Council of Toledo, Denz., no. 277
611 John 1:9.
612 ibid., 3:17
613 ibid., 8:42
614 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Joan
615 Gal. 4:4
616 Commentarium, a. 1, no. 12
617 ibid., nos. 3, 4
618 De Trinitate, II, chap. 5
619 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 43, a. 2 ad 3.
620 In the Commentarium in Sent., I, d. 15, q. 1, a. 2, St. Thomas is less clear
621 John 8:42
622 ibid., 16:28.
623 De Trinitate, II, chap 5
624 On this point we follow John of St. Thomas, who seems to have penetrated deeply into the teaching of St. Thomas. Cf. P. Gardeil, C. P., La structure de lame et l'experience mystique (1927), II, 6-60; Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., L'amour de Dieu et la croix de Jesus (1929), I, 163-206; P. Galtier, S.J., L'habitation en nous des trois Personnes (1928).
625 Matt. 3:16
626 Ps. 138:7.
627 Acts 17:28.
628 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 8, a. 3
629 Wisd. 1:4.
630 John 14:23.
631 I John 4:16
632 Rom. 5:5
633 I Cor. 3:16
634 ibid., 6:19 f
635 John 4:21-24
636 I Cor. 6:20
637 Cf. Froget, De l'habitation du S. Esprit dans les ames justes (1900, 3rd ed.), p. 97; Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., pp. 290, 871, 2040, 2126.
638 Cf. Rouet de Journel, op. cit., pp. 1011, 1144, 1216, 1228, 1468, 2107, 2109, 2115, 2193, 2286
639 De Spiritu Sancto, chap. 9, nos. 22 f.; chap. 18, no. 47
640 Dialog. VII
641 De Spiritu Sancto, I, chaps. 5, 6
642 De fide et symbolo, chap. 9.
643 Creed of St. Epiphanius, Denz., 13.
644 Council of Trent, Denz., no. 799. Cf. Eph. 1:13; also above, q. 38
645 May 9, 1897
646 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 8, a. 3
647 ibid
648 This is to say: the three divine persons dwell in the soul of the just man, but the indwelling is appropriated to the Holy Ghost; appropriation is nothing more than predicating something of a person as peculiar to him.
649 Here the traditional doctrine of the seven gifts is given, following St. Augustine and St. Thomas
650 John 14:23
651 Peter Lombard was refuted on this point by St. Thomas; cf. Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 23, a. 2
652 Denz., no. 799
653 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 8.
654 ibid., IIIa, q. 3, a. 5 ad 2
655 Leo XIII, op. cit.
656 ibid
657 Cf. above, a. 1, 2
658 Commentarium in I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 2 ad 3.
659 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 43, a. 5 ad 2.
660 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 28, a. 1.
661 St. Thomas, Commentarium in Ep. ad Rom. 8:16
662 Luke 24:32
663 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 43, a. 3, no. 10
664 ibid., IIa IIae, q. 45, a. 2
665 I Cor. 6:17. Cf. Dionysius, De div. nom., chap. 2.
666 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 8, a. 3, 4; q. 45, a. 5.
667 Vasquez, Com. in Iam, q. 43, a. 3
668 Suarez, De Trinitate, XII, chap. 5.
669 John 14:23.
670 Rom. 5:5.
671 I Cor. 3:16
672 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 43, a. 3 ad. 1.
673 ibid., q. 8, a. 3 ad 4
674 John of St. Thomas, Com. in Iam, q. 43, no. 3
675 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 28, a. 1.
676 In Iam, q. 43, a. 3, dub. V, nos. 96, 99
677 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 43, a. 3.
678 P. Gardeil, op. cit., II, 6-60
679 Rom. 8:16
680 I John 2:27
681 John 14:17
682 Apoc. 2:17
683 I John 4:8.
684 St. Thomas, Com. in I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 2 ad 3
685 St. Thomas, Com. in Ep. ad Rom. 8:16.
686 Luke 24:33.
687 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 112, a. 5
688 Apoc. 2:17
689 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 45, a. 2
690 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 21 f.
691 John 14:23
692 ibid
693 Cf. the reply to the fourth objection
694 Denz., no. 86
695 Denz., no. 1783
696 Cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 508-18
697 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 3.
698 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. II
699 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 27, a. 1 ad 2; q. 42, a. 2, 4, 6.
700 ibid., q. 27, a. 1 ad 2
701 ibid., IIIa, q. 3, a. 5 ad 2.
702 Rom. 8:29; cf. Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 3, a. 8
703 I John 1:3; cf. Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 23, a. 2 ad 3.
704 Matt. 5:48; cf. Commentarium In Joannem, III
705 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 43, a. 5 ad 2
706 John 17:11, 21
707 Denz, no. 703
708 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 33, a. 3.
709 ibid., IIIa, q. 23, a. 5 ad 2.
710 ibid., a. 2 ad 3.
711 John 17:21
712 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 4
713 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 15
714 Gen. 1:1.
715 Exod. 20:11
716 Isa. 44:24
717 Ps. 145:6.
718 John 1:3
719 Rom. 11:36
720 Acts 17:24
721 Denz., nos. 54, 86. Fourth Lateran Council
722 Denz., nos. 428, 461, 706, 1782, 1801, 1805
723 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 6, 8
724 ibid., a. 6
725 ibid., q. 2, a. 3
726 ibid., q. 3, a. 7
727 Contra Gentes, Bk. I, chap. 15, 1, 2; De potentia, chap. 3, a. 5; Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 5
728 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 75, a. 4; VII Metaphysica, lect. 9, 10
729 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 4.
730 De potentia, a. 3, a. 5
731 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 7
732 Cf. Vatican Council, Denz., no. 1782
733 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 6
734 ibid., q. 15, a. 2
735 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 84
736 Cf. infra, q. 45, a. 1.
737 St. Augustine, Confessiones, Bk. XII, chap. 7
738 Cf. infra, reply to third objection
739 Gen. 1:1.
740 Cf. in II Sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 1. (about 1253).
741 De potentia, q. 3, a. 5 (about 1260).
742 In VIII Physic., lect. 2 (about 1264).
743 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 45, a. 5
744 ibid., q. 15, a. 3 ad 3.
745 Cf. VII and VIII Metaphysica
746 Cf. VII Metaphysica, lect, 9, 10; ad 2um; Summa Theol., Ia, q. 84, a. 1. ad 2.
747 Cf. above, Ia, q. 15
748 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 1, a. 2
749 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 15, a. 2.
750 De div. nom., chap. 5
751 Cf. XII Metaphysica, chap. 7
752 Prov. 16:4.
753 Cf. above, q. 6, a. 1
754 Cf. II Metaphysica, Bk. I, chap. 2
755 Cf. XII Metaphysica, chap. 7
756 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 60, a. 5.
757 Cf. ad 4; Ia, q. 19, a. 2 ad 2
758 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 10, a. 1
759 Prov. 16:4
760 Cf. ad. 1
761 Ps. 105:1
762 Gen. 1:1
763 cf. Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israel (Berlin, 1883), p. 321.
764 Amos 4:13; Jer. 10:12-17; Isa. chaps. 40-56
765 Ps. 32:6, 9; 103; 113:3; 135:5-10
766 Prov. 8:22-32; Eccles. 39:30-39
767 II Mach 7:28
768 Exod. 3:13, 15; 6:2 f.
769 John 1:3
770 Acts 4:24; 14:14.
771 Rom. 11:36
772 I Cor. 8:6
773 Col 1:16f
774 Isa. 41:4; 48:12; Apoc. 1:8
775 Wisd. 11:18
776 Cf. Hermas, Mand., I, I; Ep. ad Diogn., VII, 2; Aristides, Apol. I; St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., II, XXX, 9; xxiv, 3; R. de Journel, op. cit., nos. 85, 98, 110, 205, 207
777 Cf. R. de Journel, op. cit., nos. 154, 161, 171, 178, 267
778 Cf. ibid., nos. 85, 179, 199, 275, 323, 328
779 Cf. ibid., Index theol., nos. 188 f
780 Cf. Dict. theol. cath., "Creation," Epoque patristique
781 St. Augustine, De Gen. ad litt., Bk. IX, chap. 15
782 St. Augustine, Confessiones, Bk. XII, chap. 8
783 Cf. Dict. theol. cath., "Creation."
784 Cf. Fourth Lateran Council, Denz., no. 428; Council of Florence, Denz., no. 706; Vatican Council, Denz., nos. 1782 f.
785 Denz., no. 203
786 ibid., nos. 501 ff.
787 ibid., no. 1665
788 ibid., no. 1905
789 ibid., nos. 1803 f
790 ibid., nos. 34, 232, 1665 1804
791 ibid., nos. 374 f.; cf. Vacant, Etudes sur le Concile du Vatican, I, a. 21 f
792 H. Bergson, L'evolution creatrice (1907), pp. 10, 270, 341 f
793 Cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 44, a. 2
794 Gen. 1:1.
795 Aristotle. II Post. Analyt
796 Denz., no. 480
797 Cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 17-20.
798 Cousin, Introd. a l'hist. de la phil. (4th ed.), p. 10
799 Cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 90., a. 1: whether the human soul is of the substance of God; Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 84. Cousin's teaching revives the doctrine of emanatism condemned by the Vatican Council, Denz., no. 1783: "If anyone shall say that finite things emanate from the divine substance, or that the divine substance by its manifestation and evolution becomes all things,....let him be anathema." God does not act by a necessity of nature for then He would cause something infinite in being. Nor can He produce anything except by the determination of His will and intellect. And God produces freely, not by generation but by creation
800 Rom. 11:36
801 Cf. first article of the preceding question
802 Cf. a. 5 ad 3
803 Cf. preceding article ad 2
804 Cf. Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 2, a. 7
805 III Phys., chap. 3
806 ibid
807 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 35.
808 Gen. 1:3.
809 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 13, a. 7.
810 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 3 ad 3: "This relation is an accident and considered in its being, as it inheres in a subject, it is posterior to the thing created, just as an accident is posterior to the subject in intellect and nature, even though it is not such an accident as is caused by the principle of the subject. But, considered according to its nature, inasmuch as it is engendered by the action of the agent, it is in some sense prior to the subject."
811 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 44, a. 1. ad 1
812 cf. third objection
813 St. Thomas, in II Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2 ad 5
814 Gen. 1:2
815 Aristotle, Met. VII, chap. 1
816 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 90, a. 2
817 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 113, a. 9.
818 ibid., Ia, q. 44, a. 1
819 Suarez, Disp. Met., 20, sect. 1.
820 cf. Del Prado, De veritate fundamentali philosophiae christianae (1911), pp. 199, 203
821 Peter Lombard, IV Sent., d. 5
822 Heb. 3:4
823 Denz., no. 428
824 cf. Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theol., no. 190; St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. John Damascene.
825 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 44, a. 2
826 Aristotle, Met., V, chap. 2
827 ibid., XII, chap. 7
828 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 104, a. 1
829 cf. Aristotle, Post. Analyt. I, lect. 10: the four ways of predication per se: 1. definition; 2. property; 3. per se subsisting; 4. the proper cause with reference to the proper effect
830 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 104, a. 1
831 St. Thomas, in II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 3; IV, d. 5, q. 1, a. 3
832 Denz., no. 428
833 De civitate Dei, Bk. XIII, chap. 24
834 Molina, Vasquez, and Suarez consider this argument only probable.
835 Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 75, a. 8.
836 ibid
837 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 113, a. 9.
838 De div. nom., Bk. II, chap. 1
839 Wisd. 1:7; John 1:3.
840 Col. 1:16
841 Heb. 1:10
842 Denz., nos. 19, 48, 77, 79, 281, 284, 421, 428, 461, 691, 703
843 ibid., no. 428
844 ibid., no. 254
845 ibid., nos. 281, 284, 429
846 ibid., nos. 703 f
847 ibid., no. 704
848 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 32, a. 1
849 ibid., q. 4, a. 3.
850 Ibid., q. 33, a. 3 ad 1
851 Matt. 11:25.
852 Ps. 2:7.
853 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 39, a. 8.
854 ibid., q. 118, a. 1. ff.
855 ibid., q. 25, a. 5; q. 47, a. 3
856 ibid., q. 22, a. 2
857 ibid., q. 48 f.
858 cf. Revue thomiste (1897), the series of articles by P. Sertillanges: "La prevue de l'existence de Dieu et l'eternite du monde"
859 Denz., no. 428
860 Ibid., no. 1783
861 ibid., nos. 501 ff.
862 Gen. 1:1
863 Gen. 1:1
864 Prov. 8:22 ff.
865 John 17:5, 24
866 Eph. 1:4
867 St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Chrysostom, St. John Damascene, St. Ambrose, St. Hilary
868 Summa Theol., Ia. q. 61, a. 3.
869 Ibid., q. 19, a. 3, 4
870 Ibid., q. 23, a. 5 ad 3
871 Denz., no. 1783
872 ibid., no. 1805
873 Aristotle, I Topicorum, chap. 9.
874 Physica, VIII
875 ibid
876 cf. replies to ninth and tenth difficulties
877 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 1, a. 6.
878 ibid., a. 8
879 ibid., Ia, q. 45, a. 2
880 Ibid., q. 19, a. 3
881 De civitate Dei, Bk. X, chap. 31
882 De potentia, q. 3, a. 14 ad 8
883 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 38
884 Physica, Bk. III, chap. 8
885 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 7, a. 4
886 Physica, loc. cit.
887 De aeternitate mundi (written 1264).
888 cf. Quodl., 12, q. 2. We have explained this at length in Dieu, son existence et sa nature (7th edition) no. 78 ff.
889 De civitate Dei, Bk. XI, chap. 6.
890 Matt. 6:11
891 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 54, a. 1, 2, 3
892 Aristotle, Metaphysica Bk. II, chap. 1
893 cf. St. Thomas, In I Metaph., lect. 9
894 cf. De potentia, q. 3, a. 16
895 Gen. 1:1-7.
896 Col. 1:6
897 Wisd. 11:21
898 De potentia, q. 3, a. 16
899 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 4
900 De potentia, loc. cit
901 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 25, a. 5
902 ibid., q. 19, a. 3, 4
903 Ibid., q. 15, a. 2
904 De potentia, loc. cit
905 Eccles 33:7 f.
906 Dan. 3:57
907 cf. Phedr., Time., De republica, X
908 Gen. 1:31
909 De civitate Dei, Bk. II, chap. 23
910 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 25, a. 3
911 ibid., q. 60, a. 5 ad 3
912 Aristotle, Metaphysica, Bk. VIII, chap. 3
913 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 21, a. 1
914 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chaps. 28 f.
915 This third article is found in the codex of Monte Cassino as published in the Leonine edition
916 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 45; Bk. III, chap. 97
917 Rom. 13:1.
918 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 105, a. 5. 919 ibid
920 cf. reply to the first difficulty
921 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 109, a. 6.
922 cf. p, Janet, Les causes finales, p. 497
923 John 1:10
924 Aristotle, Metaphysica, Bk. XII, chap. 10
925 Aristotle, De caelo et mundo. St. Thomas says: "An explanation or reason for a thing may be given in two ways. In the first place an explanation may be given to prove adequately some theory, as when in the natural sciences an adequate reason is given to prove that the movement of the heavens is always of uniform velocity. In the second place an explanation may be given which does not adequately prove the theory but which shows that certain effects are congruous to the established theory as when in astronomy the theory of eccentrics and epicycles is established because according to this theory certain phenomena of the heavenly movements can be explained. This theory is not adequate proof because it may be that these phenomena can be explained by some other theory" (Summa Theol., Ia, q. 32, a. 1. ad 2).
926 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 22, a. 1. ad. 2
927 On these questions about the divine governance, cf. the Commentarium of Dominic Bannez
928 Wisd. 14:3
929 cf. reply to the first difficulty
930 Prov. 16:4.
931 Deut. 26:19
932 Denz., no. 1805
933 ibid., no. 1783
934 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 2
935 I Cor. 83
936 cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, Bk. XII, chap. 10
937 cf. Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 105, a. 1. ad 2
938 Rom. 2:14
939 Prov. 11:14
940 Enchiridion, chap. 11.
941 I Cor. 9:9
942 Ecclus. 15:14
943 Wisd. 8:1.
944 Heb. 4:13
945 Eccles. 9:11
946 ibid., 11:5
947 ibid., 12:13 f
948 Esther 13 9.
949 Heb. 1:3
950 Acts 17:28
951 Rom. 11:36.
952 Col. 1:17
953 Super Gen. ad litt., Bk. VIII, chap. 12
954 St. Thomas offers examples from the ancient physics, according to which light belonged essentially to the sun; we now know that the sun is only one among innumerable similar stars. But there are other examples: heat is not only necessary to produce the expansion of metals but to maintain that expansion. Similarly, the good proposed by the cognitive faculty is not only necessary to excite the desire for it but also to maintain that desire
955 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 8, a. 1.
956 Thus St. Thomas excels his commentators. Not only does he beget us intellectually but he also preserves us in his teaching, while the professor who transmitted to us the teaching of St. Thomas was only the cause of our formation with regard to the becoming, not directly with regard to the being. cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 117, a. 1: "Whether one man can teach another. The teacher is the cause of knowledge in the learner, since he reduces the learner from potency to act..... Every teacher, teaching on the basis of what the pupil knows' leads him to the knowledge of the things he did not know." But great geniuses, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas, not only propose the subject matter in a methodical way, but they also strengthen the intellect of the student since they had such a deep understanding of higher principles and of the things that are virtually contained in these principles. Thus they are in a way like the illuminating angels. cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 106, a. 1.
957 cf. Aristotle, Post. Analyt., Bk. I, chap. 4, lect. 10
958 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 106-14, on the illumination of the angels, etc.
959 Ps. 134:6.
960 "Dieu n'est pas plus grand pour avoir cree l'universe."
961 Eccles. 3:14
962 H. Poincare, La science et l'hypothese, 112-19; cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son existence et sa nature (7th edition), pp. 774-79
963 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 8
964 Gen. 2:7.
965 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 110, a. 2. The same universality is required in a cause to produce a thing as to change it directly without the mediation of an inferior effect. Thus the imagination, which cannot produce an intellectual judgment, cannot directly change an intellectual judgment directly; it can do so only through the mediation of another phantasm. God alone can produce matter, which can be produced only by creation from nothing since it is the ultimate subject of change. Therefore God alone can directly move matter to a form without any previous accidental dispositions for example, God alone can change water directly into wine, whereas nature does it progressively by the fermentation of the grape
966 cf. ibid., a. 3, 4
967 Phil. 2:13
968 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 8
969 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 4, a. 4.
970 Ibid., Ia, q. 19, a. 8.
971 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 10, a. 4
972 Isa. 21:12
973 Acts 17:28
974 I Cor- 12:6
975 cf, reply to the third difficulty
976 cf. Contra Gentes, Bk. III, chap. 67; De potentia, q. 3, a. 7.
977 ibid., ad 7
978 Molina, Concordia (Paris, 1876), p. 152.
979 op. cit., p. 158
980 Disp. met., XXII, sect. 2, no. 51; sect. 3, sect. 12.
981 For false miracles and portents caused by demons, cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 110, 114. cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione, chap. 19, a. 2, on the possibility of miracles.
982 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 15
983 ibid., q. 5, 6
984 cf. Denz., nos. 58, 62, 85, 223, 271, 705, 1461
985 cf. Enneades, I, 8, 3; III, 6, 7, 14f
986 cf. De civitate Dei, Bk. IX, chap. 10; Bk. X, chap. 29; Bk. XIV, chaps. 3, 5 f.
987 cf. De natura boni, PL, XLII, 18
988 cf. Enchiridion, PL, XL, 10-12
989 Ibid., col. II
990 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 2, a. 3 ad 1.
991 cf St. Thomas, Expositio in Dionysium de divinis nominibus, chap. 4, lect. 13-22
992 ibid., lect. 13
993 ibid., lect. 17
994 ibid., lect. 18
995 ibid., lect. 20
996 Ibid., lect. 21
997 ibid
998 cf. Renouvier, Histoire et solution des probl. metaphysiques, p. 164.
999 cf. Montaigne, Essais, II, 12, "Notre bienetre n'est que la privation d'etre mal." cf. Cicero, De finibus, I, II.
1000 On the other hand some philosophers denied the existence of evil, whether moral or physical. Thus Socrates and Plato, when they reduced virtue to the knowledge of good, reduced moral evil to ignorance or error, as if malice did not properly exist.
The Stoics held that death, sickness, and poverty are indifferent things and not evil. In his determinism, Spinoza denied the existence of both moral good and moral evil. He reduced moral evil to foolishness and held that the fool is not obliged to observe the law of reason, of which he is ignorant.
So also with regard to the distinction between moral good and moral evil, contradictory opinions have been proposed. Some have denied the distinction by confusing the real good with the apparent good. In antiquity as well as in modern times the hedonists and utilitarians have reduced the honorable good to that which is delightful or useful. Luther did the same thing in his theory of extrinsic justification by fiducial faith without good works; for Luther the just man was still unjust. Similar theories were held by the quietists, who denied the necessity of asceticism, by Rousseau, many of the Romanticists, and by the revolutionaries, who idealized violence and destruction.
On the other hand, those who defend what they call order against violence admit an absolute distinction between good and evil, but sometimes order for them represents not only the order based on the nature of things but also that traditional order which suits their purposes, and in this way they shut their eyes to the needs of the poor.
1001 St. Thomas, De malo. q. 1, a. 1
1002 The good and being are convertible, that is, every good is being, and every being is good, at least to the being itself inasmuch as every being strives to conserve its being. Thus good is a property of being just as risibility or the faculty of laughing is a property of man; these things are convertible since every man is risible and every risible being is a man.
1003 cf. De praedicamentis, chap. 10.
1004 cf. Metaphysica, Bk. V, chap. 10.
1005 ibid. See the index under Opposita and Privatio
1006 St. Thomas, De mendacio, Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 110, a. 3 ad 4
1007 cf. De malo, q. 1, a 1 ad 14
1008 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 35. a. 1.
1009 ibid
1010 ibid., a. 6
1011 cf. Capreolus, Ferrariensis, Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, the Salmanticenses, Massoulie, and Gonet
1012 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 47, a. 1.
1013 ibid., ad 3.
1014 ibid., q. 25, a. 6
1015 ibid., q. 47, a. 2
1016 St. Augustine, Enchiridion, chap. 11
1017 Col. 1 24.
1018 Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 1, a. 3 ad 3
1019 The Imitation of Christ, Bk. II, chap. 12
1020 II Cor. 4:16f
1021 Matt. 5:31
1022 I Cor. 7.
1023 cf. other passages in St. Thomas' works indicated in the Tabula aurea under permissio. cf. below, Ia, q. 49, a. 3 ad 5
1024 Isa. 5 20
1025 St. Augustine, op. cit., chap. 14
1026 Denz., no. 2058
1027 Ibid., no. 1701
1028 Isa. 5:20
1029 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 1. ad. 2
1030 cf. the beginning of the treatise on grace: The states of nature with regard to grace and original sin
1031 St. Augustine, op. cit., chap. 12
1032 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 1
1033 ibid
1034 ibid
1035 ibid., ad 2, 3
1036 ibid., ad 1.
1037 St. Thomas, De malo, q. 2, a. 12
1038 ibid
1039 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3
1040 St. Thomas, De malo, loc. cit
1041 ibid., a. 2, a. 9, II f
1042 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 2, 3.
1043 Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 586 ff.
1044 John 9:2
1045 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 87.
1046 De malo, q. 1, a. 4.
1047 ibid
1048 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 87, a. 4
1049 Tob. 2:12
1050 Ibid., 12:13
1051 John 9:3; cf Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 87, a. 6, 7, 8; Commentarium in Job, chaps. 4, 6, 8; De malo, q. 5, a. 4
1052 On the trials Of the just, cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Job, chaps. 4, 6, 8; De malo, q. 5, a. 4; Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 87, a. 7, 8.
1053 St. Thomas, De malo, q. 1, a. 4
1054 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 5, a. 6 ad 1.
1055 ibid
1056 De malo, q. 1, a. 4 ad 12
1057 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 19, a. 1.
1058 Ibid., Ia, q. 19, a. 9
1059 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 87, a. 3 ad 3.
1060 Ibid., Ia, q. 19, a. 1; q. 80, a. 1. ad 3; cf. Cajetan's commentary on this passage; Ia IIae, q. 56, a. 3; q. 57, a. 1
1061 ibid., Ia IIae, q. 56, a. 3
1062 ibid., IIa IIae, q. 27, a. 3
1063 cf. Cajetan, commentary on the following question, a. 3, no. 4.
1064 Summa Theol. IIIa, q. 1, a. 2 ad 3
1065 Ibid., IIa IIae, q. 19, a. 1
1066 ibid., the following question, 49, a. 3
1067 cf. Opera Platonis (ed. Didot), I, 342-46. "It is worse to do injustice than to receive it, and to flee punishment than to submit to it," I, 346
1068 St. Thomas on Dionysius, De div. nom., chap. 4, lect. 22
1069 St. Augustine, Contra Julianum, Bk. 1, chap. 9.
1070 cf. De malo, q. 2, a. 3. St. Thomas gives these three reasons why evil cannot have a cause per se.
1. since everything that is desirable has the nature of good, evil cannot be intended per se; that which is not intended per se is an effect per accidens. Thus no one does any evil without intending some good, at least a sensible good.
2. Because every agent acts in a manner similar to itself and thus tends to produce per se a good similar to itself. Thus fire produces fire, heat produces heat, but the conflagration follows per accidens.
3. Because every cause per se has a certain and definite order to its effect, and that which results according to this order is not evil. Thus the weight of bodies is good for the cohesion of the universe, although per accidens it may happen that someone falls from a roof.
1071 Aristotle, Metaphysica, Bk. V, chap. 2, lect. 3.
1072 St. Thomas, De malo, q. 1, a. 3 ad 14
1073 ibid., q. 1, a. 3 ad 15
1074 "It happens that the evil which is a defective good is the cause of evil; but this is so because the first cause of evil is not evil but good. Therefore there are two ways in which evil is caused by the good. The first way is when the good is the cause of evil inasmuch as it is defective; the second way is inasmuch as the good is a cause per accidens, or when it produces an opposite form" (De malo, q. 1, a. 3).
1075 Ibid., q. 1, a. 3
1076 ibid
1077 ibid., ad 10, 14 f.
1078 Eccles. 1:15.
1079 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, a. 49, a. 3 ad 5; q. 63, a. 9 ad I; Ia IIae, q. 71, a. 2 ad 3; de malo, q. 1, a. 5 ad 16; and the references under malum, no. 37 in the Tabula aurea.
1080 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 23, a. 7 ad 3
1081 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52
1082 Bossuet, Sermon pour la profession de Mad. de la Valliere.
1083 Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 1, a. 3 ad 3
1084 Rom. 5:20
1085 Ibid., 5:17
1086 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 30, a. 1
1087 II Cor. 4:7, 11
1088 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 68
1089 ibid., Ia, q. 50, a. 3
1090 ibid., q. 63, a. 9
1091 Dan. 7:10
1092 Isa. 45:6 f.
1093 St. Augustine, Liber octoginta trium quaest., q. 21
1094 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 79, a. 1
1095 Deut. 32:4
1096 Rom. 9:14
1097 Jas. 1:13
1098 I John 3:8
1099 Wisd. 9 25
1100 ibid., 14:9
1101 Osee 13 9
1102 Denz., no. 816
1103 ibid., nos. 316, 318
1104 ibid., no. 322
1105 ibid., no. 804
1106 St. Augustine, De natura et gratia, chap. 43
1107 Denz., no. 1092. 1108 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Matt., V, 31
1109 St. Thomas, De malo, q. 1, a. 3.
1110 cf. replies to second and third difficulties in this article
1111 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 79, a. 1
1112 Ibid., Ia, q. 19, a. 9; cf. De malo, q. 1, a. 5
1113 Summa Theol., Ia. q. 19, a. 9.
1114 ibid., Ia, q. 22, a. 2, ad 3
1115 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 79, a. 2
1116 John 13:27
1117 cf. third objection of this article
1118 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 22, a. 2 ad 2
1119 St. Thomas, Sent., I, d. 40, q. 4, a. 2, no. 3
1120 "It must be said that the effect does not follow unless all the causes concur; by the defect of one a negation of the effect follows. I say therefore that the cause of grace as active is God, and as receiving is the soul itself, after the manner of subject and matter..... It is not necessary that every defect occur on the part of the agent; it may occur on the part of the recipient, and such is the ease in this proposition" (Liber Sententiarum, I, d. 40, q. 4, a. 2 ad 3).
1121 Summa Theol. Ia, q. 47, a. 3, 4
1122 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 113, a. 8 ad 1
1123 Denz., no. 804
1124 St. Augustine, op. cit., chap. 26, no. 29
1125 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 21, a. 4
1126 Ibid
1127 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 79, a. 1.
1128 Ibid., Ia, q. 21, a. 4.
1129 St. Augustine, op. cit., chap. 43, no. 50
1130 Denz., no. 804
1131 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 20, a. 3
1132 Phil. 2:13
1133 I Cor. 4:7
1134 Denz., no. 318
1135 "Il faut captiver nos intelligences devant l'obscurite divine du mystere de la grace, et admettre deux graces, dont l'une (la suffisante) laisse notre volente sans excuse devant Dieu, et dont l'autre (l'efficace) ne lui permet pas de se glorifier en elle-meme." Bossuet, OEuvres completes (Paris, 1845), I, 643
1136 I Cor. 1:31
1137 Eph. 2:8 ff.
1138 St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night, II, chap. 17 f
1139 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 19, a. 9
1140 Ibid., ad 1
1141 Ibid., q. 5, a. 3; q. 48, a. 3.
1142 Ibid., q. 48, a. 3
1143 Aristotle, Ethica, Bk. IV, chap. 5
1144 cf. St. Thomas, Supplementum, q. 82, 86, 91.
1145 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Joan., XV, 2; in Matt., X, 38; in Job; see also Tabula aurea, under tribulationes. St. Gregory, in Job; St. John Chrysostom, Homilia 1
1146 John 15:1 f
1147 Ibid., 1:8
1148 Apoc. 22:11
1149 Col. 1:6
1150 Ps. 83:8
1151 Rom. 8:17f
1152 Luke 24:26
1153 Acts 14:21
1154 II Tim. 2:11 f.
1155 Luke 9:23
1156 Matt. 10:38.
1157 Gal. 4:14
1158 Ibid., 5:24
1159 II Cor. 11:29
1160 Gal. 2:19 f.
1161 Ibid., 6:14.
1162 I Cor. 2:2
1163 Ibid., 1:18.
1164 cf. II Thess.; Heb. 10
1165 cf. St. Thomas' Commentarium in Job, chaps. I, 4, 7, 21
1166 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Ps. 36
1167 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Job, chap. 21
1168 Rom. 8:28
1169 II Cor. 12:7
1170 Ibid., 12:6
1171 Ibid., 12:9
1172 Tob 2:3
1173 I Cor. 15:19
1174 Heb. chap. 11.
1175 Jas. 5:17
1176 Heb. 12:6
1177 I Cor. 4:12 f.; cf. St. John Chrysostom, Consolationes ad Stagir., III
1178 cf. Gen. 2:1; 3:24; 28:12; 32:1; Exod. 22:34; 33:2; Deut. 32:18; Ps. 77:49; 105:37; Job 1:6; 2:7; Zach. 3:1; Eccles. 5:5; Tob. 3:8; 6:8; 8:3; 12:15; Isa. 6:2; 37:36; III Kings 19:5; Dan. 3:49; 7:10; 9:21; 10:1; II Mach. 10:29.
1179 Dan. 10:13
1180 Ps, 23 8; Tob
1181 Deut. 32:17; Ps. 105:37; Tob. 3:8; 6:14.
1182 Luke 1:11, 26; 2:13; Matt. 1:20; 2:13, 19; 4:11; 18:10; 24:31; 26:53; 28:1-7; 13:41, 49; Luke 20:36; Acts 5:19; 8:26; 12:7-15, 23; 27:23
1183 Col. 1:16
1184 II Cor. 4:4; 11:14; Heb. 1:4-7, 14
1185 Denz., no. 428
1186 Ibid., no. 533
1187 Ibid., no. 237. The principal definition by the Fourth Lateran Council, cf. Denz., no. 428
1188 Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theol., nos. 198-210
1189 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 60, a. 5
1190 ibid., q. 63, a. 1 ad 3; De malo, q. 16, a. 3
1191 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 89, a. 4.
1192 Ibid., Ia, q. 62, a. 4, 5; q. 63, a. 5, 6; q. 64, a. 2
1193 cf Fourth Lateran Council, Denz., no. 428
1194 Dan. 7:10; Apoc. 5
1195 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 50, a. 3
1196 Tob. 12:19; Luke 24:37 ff.
1197 Denz., nos. 428, 1783 (Vatican Council).
1198 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 51, a. 1
1199 Tob 12:19; cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 51, a. 3
1200 Col. 1:16
1201 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 7, a. 1, 2; q. 11, a. 3, 4.
1202 Ibid., q. 75, a. 7
1203 Ibid., q. 76, a. 2 ad 1
1204 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 76, a. 5
1205 De cael. hier., chap. 12
1206 It should be noted that the divine ideas are neither infused nor acquired species; they are the divine essence as imitable by creatures and as the terminus of the relation of imitability of creatures to the divine essence. cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 15, a. 2
1207 Ibid., q. 20, a. 3
1208 cf. Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theologicus, no. 202
1209 Isa. 41:23
1210 Denz., no. 1790
1211 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 14, a. 13
1212 III Kings 8:39; Jer. 17:10; cf. Journel, loc. cit
1213 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 60, a. 2
1214 Ibid., a. 3.
1215 Garrigou-Lagrange, L'Amour de Dieu et la croix de Jesus, "Le probleme de l'amour pur," I, 61-150
1216 If it should be said that it is not the hand that exposes itself to defend the body but the body that exposes the hand, we may reply that this is indeed true, but that it is nevertheless according to the natural tendency of the hand, which loves the whole of which it is a part more than itself. As St. Thomas says: "The end of the agent and the patient is one and the same. although the mode is different. What the agent tends to imprint and what the patient tends to receive is one and the same" (Summa Theol. Ia, q. 44, a. 4
1217 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 26, a. 3.
1218 Among those who deny is Ferrariensis
1219 Dan. 3:57-90
1220 Summa theol, Ia, q. 62, a. 5
1221 Ibid., q. 63, a. 6
1222 Ibid., a. 6 ad 1.
1223 Ibid., ad 2
1224 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 63, a. 3.
1225 Ibid., a. 5, 6
1226 Ibid., IIa IIae, q. 89, a. 4.
1227 Ibid., Ia, q. 64, a. 2; De veritate, q. 24, a. 10, 11.
1228 Matt. 25:41
1229 Ps. 73:23
1230 cf. Tabula aurea, under "remorsus."
1231 This comprehension of the devil is said to be quasi-speculative even though it proceeds from synteresis and deals with guilt as individual, because this comprehension does not lead to a practical judgment in the proper sense since it is clouded over and suppressed by another contrary practical judgment which is in conformity to the devil's all-pervading pride
1232 John 9:4.
1233 cf. below in the treatise on man, the chapter on the separated soul.
1234 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 109, a. 3
1235 cf. Isa. 6; Ezech. 1; Col. I; Eph. 1.
1236 Ps. 90:11
1237 Matt. 18:10. For the testimony of the Fathers, cf. Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist., Index theol., nos. 209 f.
1238 cf. St. Basil, Contra Eunomium, III, 1.
1239 Eph. 6:12.
1240 III Kings, chap. 22
1241 I Thess. 3:5
1242 For diabolical possession and obsession, cf. Rituale Romanum.
1243 Denz., no. 2182
1244 Denz., nos. 2121-28
1245 Ibid., 2127
1246 Ibid., nos. 2121 f.
1247 Ibid., no. 2127
1248 Ibid., no. 2122
1249 The Scriptures often praise God's work of creation: Gen. 14:19; Isa. 42:5; 45:18; Prov. 3:19; 8:22; Wisd. 9:9; Ps. 32:9; 111:5; II Mach. 7:28; and Adam's formation and fall are mentioned in Wisd. 10:1 f.
1250 Denz., no. 2127
1251 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 67, a. 4; q. 70, a. 1 at 3
1252 Gen. 1:6ff
1253 Denz., no. 2125
1254 cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Ia, q. 70, a. 1. ad 3; Sent. II, dist. XII, q. 1 ad 2; St. Augustine, De Genesi ad litt., II, q. 22; Leo XIII, Encyclical Providentissimus
1255 Denz., no. 2123
1256 Ibid., no. 2126.
1257 cf. Rouet de Journel, Ench. patrist. Index theol., nos. 211-15: St. Augustine's doctrine on the creation of the world. According to St. Augustine God created all things at the same time; He implanted seminal reasons in creatures; the days in Genesis are different from natural days; caution is to be exercised in interpreting the first chapters of Genesis
1258 Denz., no. 2128
1259 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 68, a. 1.
1260 Ibid., q. 66, a. 1. With many of the Fathers we can admit a prior amorphous state of matters as long as we understand that this is not a state of absolute amorphousness
1261 Ibid., q. 73, a. 1 ad 3; q. 115, a. 2. "Whether there are any seminal reasons in corporeal matter."
1262 Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione I, 233-76.
1263 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 70, a. 3 ad 3.
1264 Ibid., q. 73, a. 1 ad 3; q. 115, a. 2
1265 cf. Dict. apol., art. "Transformism."
1266 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 118, a. 1, 2.
1267 Averroes, De anima, III, 165.
1268 Gen. 2:7; 15: 15; 25: 8; 35: 28
1269 Ezech. 37:10
1270 Wisd. 9:15; 3:1-4; 5:16; Prov. 12:28; 14:32; Eccles. 12:7; Ecclus. 3:19ff
1271 II Mach. 7:23; 6:26; 12:43-46
1272 Matt. 10:28.
1273 I Cor. 2:11
1274 Rouet de Journel, op. cit., Index theol., nos. 216 f
1275 Denz., no. 428; cf. ibid., nos. 255, 1783.
1276 Ibid., nos. 2 ff., 16, 40, 86, 738
1277 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 75, a. 5; cf. ibid., IIa IIae, q. 8, a. 1
1278 Post. Analyt., II, final chap., lect. 20.
1279 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 75, a. 2
1280 The argument was presented in this way by St. Thomas against the Averroists who always based their arguments directly on the text of Aristotle
1281 Pascal, speaking of the three orders (of bodies, spirits, and charity), in a celebrated passage of his Les Pensees, says: "Tous les corps, le firmament, les etoiles, la terre et ses royaumes, ne valent pas le moindre des esprits; car il connait tout cela, et soi et les corps, rien."
1282 Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 49, no. 7
1283 St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 9
1284 cf. Plato, Convivium; Summa Theol., Ia, q. 60, a. 5; IIa IIae, q. 26, a. 3
1285 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 10, a. 2
1286 cf. ibid.
1287 cf. ibid., Ia, q. 75, a. 6
1288 cf. ibid
1289 Ibid., q. 118, a. 2
1290 Denz., no. 481; cf. Fifth Council of the Lateran, Denz., nos. 738, 1655, 1911, 1914.
1291 Denz., no. 1914
1292 Ibid., no. 1655
1293 cf. Card. Zigliara, De Mente Concilii Viennensis (1878), no. 136; Liberatore, S.J., De composito humano (1865).
1294 Vacant, Etudes sur le Concile du Vatican, I, 246
1295 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 76, a. 1
1296 Ibid
1297 Ibid
1298 Ibid., a. 2
1299 Ibid., a. 3
1300 Ibid
1301 Ibid., a. 4
1302 Ibid., a. 5.
1303 Ibid., a. 1 ad 4
1304 Ibid, q. 54, a. 1, a, 3.
1305 Disp. met. XIII, sect. 13 f.
1306 cf. Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 17, a. 2
1307 cf. Cajetan's profound commentary on Ia, q. 75, 76, in which he defends this doctrine against Scotus
1308 cf. Disp. met., XIV, sect. 5
1309 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 77, a. 4, 5; q. 79
1310 Ibid., q. 80, a. 2
1311 Ibid., q. 77, a. 5.
1312 Ibid., q. 83; Ia IIae, q. 10, a. 1, 2, 3, 4.
1313 cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 508 ff.
1314 Concordia, q. 14, a. 13, disp. II.
1315 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 10, a. 2.
1316 cf. St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 5
1317 Disp. met., XIX, sect. 6
1318 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 83, a. 1 ad 5
1319 cf. Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God, pp. 559 79
1320 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 12, a. 1
1321 Ibid., q. 76, a. 1.
1322 St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 10, a. 8
1323 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 87, a. 1
1324 Ibid., q. 84, a. 7; q. 86, a. 4 ad 2
1325 De veritate, q. 10, a. 8
1326 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 76, a. 2 ad 2; Contra Gentes, Bk. II, chap. 80
1327 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 118, a. 3.
1328 Ibid., q. 76, a. 5
1329 Ibid., q. 89, a. 1; q. 1 18, a. 3
1330 cf. Supplementum, q. 75
1331 De potentia, q. 6, a. 7 ad 4
1332 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 89, a. 1; De veritate, q. 24, a. 11
1333 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 89, a2
1334 Ibid
1335 Ibid
1336 Ibid., a. 4.
1337 Ibid., a. 8; So also St. Augustine and St. Gregory, quoted by St. Thomas
1338 Ibid
1339 Ibid., ad 1
1340 Summa Theol., q. 10, a. 4 ff.
1341 Rom. 2:6
1342 Denz., no. 464
1343 Denz., nos. 530 f
1344 Ecclus. 11:28f
1345 Heb. 9:27
1346 John 9:4
1347 Thus Lactantius, St. Hilary, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine; cf Rouet de Journel, Ench. Patrist., nos. 646, 886, 956, 1200, 1880
1348 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 94f.; Summa Theol., Ia, q. 64, a. 2. De veritate, q. 24, a. 11; cf. Dict. theol. cath., article, "Mort."
1349 St. Thomas says: "After the state of this life the separated soul does not understand by receiving from the senses, nor is it in act with regard to the sensitive appetitive powers; and so the separate soul is made like the angels both with regard to the manner of intellection and the indivisibility of the appetite, which were the causes of obstinacy in the sinning angels. Hence obstinacy takes place in the separated soul for the same reason" (De veritate, q. 24, a. 11).
1350 Summa theol, Ia, q. 64, a. 2.
1351 Commentarium on Ia, q. 64, a. 2, no. 18
1352 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 91-95
1353 John 9:4
1354 cf. Salmanticenses, De gratia, De merito, disp. I, dub. IV, no. 36.
1355 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 95.
1356 Commentarium, on IIIa, q. 50, a. 6, no. 3
1357 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chaps. 91-95; De veritate, q. 24, a. 11.
1358 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 95
1359 cf. St. Thomas, Tabula aurea, "damnatio."
1360 Denz., no. 779
1361 cf. Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 5, a. 4; q. 10, a. 2
1362 Summa Theol. Ia, q. 90-102; Ia IIae, q. 81 ff.
1363 Thus Mivart and some others; cf. Guibert and Chinchole, Les origines (Paris, 1923); Dict. de la Bible et supplement, art. "Adam"; Dict. apol., art. "Homme et Transformisme"; Dict. theol. cath., art. "Adam et justice originelle."
1364 Denz., nos. 428, 1783, 1801
1365 Ibid., no. 2123
1366 Gen. 1:27
1367 Ibid., 2:7
1368 Ibid., 2:21 f cf. Rouet de Journel, op. cit., index theol. nos. 225 f. for texts from St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Aphraates, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Augustine
1369 cf. De Quatrefages, L'espece humaine (1878); Dict. Apol., art. "Transformisme."
1370 cf. Dict. de la Bible, Supplement, art. "Adam et la Bible
1371 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 91, a. 1, 2, 3
1372 Ibid., q. 93; Gen. 1:26
1373 ibid., a. 6, 7, 8
1374 cf. Dict. theol., art. "Isaac de Ia Peyrere"
1375 Gen. 2:5, 20
1376 Ibid., 3:20
1377 Wisd. 10:1
1378 Acts 17:26.
1379 Rom. 5:12
1380 cf, Rouet de Journel, op. cit., index theol., no. 227
1381 Quatrefages, op- cit
1382 Dict. apol., art. "Homme"; Goury, L'origine et revolution de l'homme
1383 Peter Lombard, Sent., II, disp. 18, no. 8.
1384 St. Thomas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 9
1385 Eccles. 12:7
1386 cf. Rouet de Journel, op. cit., index theol., nos. 222 ff. for texts from Lactantius, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Hilary, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Cyril of Alexandria
1387 Denz., no. 170
1388 Ibid., no. 533
1389 ibid no. 203
1390 Ibid., no. 1910
1391 Ibid., nos. 285, 295.
1392 Ibid., no. 738
1393 Ibid., no. 338
1394 Ibid. nos. 236, 642
1395 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 90 a. 1, 4; q. 118, a. 2.
1396 ibid., q. 3, a. 8
1397 Ibid., q. 118, a. 2
1398 Ibid., q. 45, a. 5
1399 Ibid., q. 118, a. 2
1400 Ibid., q. 75, a. 4
1401 Ibid., q. 118, a. 3.
1402 Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione, I, 191-218
1403 Cf Vatican Council: Denz., nos. 1790, 1795 ff., 1803 ff., 1808, 1816, 1818; cf. also 176 f., 1021, 1926, 1928, 2103.
1404 cf. John of St. Thomas, De gratia, disp. XX, a. 1; Salmanticenses, De gratia, disp. III, no. 24; Suarez, De gratia, II, chap. 4
1405 St. Thomas, Metaphysica, V, lect. 13.
1406 Denz., nos. 1034, 1173, 1926, 1928
1407 Ibid., no. 1797; Summa Theol., Ia, q. 2, a. 2 ad 1.
1408 cf. Billuart, De gratia, diss. II, praeambula, a. 1
1409 cf. Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52
1410 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 97, a. 1, 3
1411 Ibid., q. 95, a. 1
1412 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 83, 85
1413 Ibid., IIIa, a. 69, a. 1-6
1414 Denz. . nos. 2074, 2103
1415 Ibid., no. 788; cf. ibid., nos. 316, 793
1416 Ibid., nos. 1021, 1026
1417 Ibid., nos. 1008, 1023 ff., 1385, 1516
1418 Denz., nos. 1008, 1024
1419 Ibid., nos. 192, 1026.
1420 Ibid., nos. 1021, 1023f., 1079
1421 To be understood in the sense in which Baius' proposition was condemned, namely, "In the beginning God could not have created a man such as is now born," that is, without grace and the gift of integrity. cf. Denz., nos. 1055, 1516
1422 Denz., nos. 192. 1001 ff.
1423 Ibid., nos. 1001 ff., 1007, 1009, 1384
1424 cf. Gen. 2:18-24; 3:8.
1425 Gen. 1:26
1426 cf. Rom. 3:24 f.; Eph. 4:23; II Cor. 5:18 f.; Col. 1:13 f.
1427 cf. I John 3:1ff.; I Cor. 2:6-12; II Pet 1:4.
1428 Rouet de Journel, op. cit., index theol., 229-34: a collection of texts from St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine. St. Irenaeus says that Adam "by disobedience lost that holiness which he had received from the Spirit" (Adv. haeres. III, xxiii, 5); St. Augustine says: "How can we therefore be said to be renewed if we do not receive that which the first man lost, in whom all die?....We receive justice from which man fell by sin" (De Gen. ad litt., VI, 24, 35). cf. Denz., no. 105 (Council of Carthage); nos. 175, 192 (Second Council of Orange).
1429 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95, a. 1
1430 Eccles. 7:30.
1431 cf. Cant. 1:3; Ps. 7:11; 32:1
1432 De civitate Dei, Bk. XIII, chap. 13
1433 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95, a. 2, 3.
1434 cf. Ibid., a. 4
1435 cf. De civitate Dei, Bk. XII, chap. 9; Summa Theol., Ia, q. 94, a. 1-4.
1436 cf. Denz., nos; 101, 175
1437 Ibid., no. 788; cf. declarations against Baius on the gratuity of this gift, ibid., nos. 1000, 1078, and the Synod of Pistoia, ibid., no. 1517
1438 Gen. 2:16.
1439 Ibid., 3:19
1440 Wisd. 2:23 f
1441 Rom. 5:12-17
1442 cf, Rouet de Journel, op. cit., index theol., 231 for texts from St. Theophilus of Antioch, St. Cyprian, St. Methodius, St. Athanasius, St. Hilary, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Augustine
1443 St. Augustine, De Gen. ad litt., Bk. VI, chap. 25, no. 36
1444 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 97, a. 1.
1445 Denz., nos. 1021, 1026, 1055; cf. Dict. theol., art. "Baius."
1446 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 97, a. 2
1447 Gen. 2:8, 15; 1:26; Eccles. 17 3 f
1448 Gen. 3:19 1449 48 St. Augustine in particular explains this gift, De civitate Dei, Bk. XIV, chap. 26. cf. St. Cyril of Alexandria, In Ep. ad Rom., V, 18; Rouet de Journel, op. cit., nos. 1762, 1962, 2013, 2122
1450 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 97, a. 2 ad 4
1451 Ibid., q. 96, a. 1
1452 Denz., no. 792
1453 Rom. 6:12
1454 Gen. 2:25; 3:7, 11
1455 Rouet de Journel, op. cit., index theol., no. 230
1456 De civitate Dei, Bk. XIII, chap. 13
1457 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95, a. 1
1458 Ibid., q. 81, a. 3 ad 2.
1459 Ibid., q. 94, a. 3, 4.
1460 Gen. 2:19f
1461 Ecclus. 17:1-8.
1462 cf. Rouet de Journel, op. cit., Index theol., no. 232 for texts from St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and St. John Damascene
1463 Summa Theol., Ia. a. 94. a. 3
1464 Ibid., a. 4
1465 Ibid., a. 4 ad 1
1466 Ibid
1467 Denz., nos. 1026, 1055
1468 Ibid., nos. 1021, 1023 f., 1079, 1055, 1516
1469 Billuart, De gratia, diss. II, a. 2.
1470 St. Thomas, Sent. II, d. 31, q. 1, a. 2 ad 3
1471 cf. Billuart, loc. cit
1472 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52
1473 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 100, a. 1; St. Anselm, De conceptu virg., chap. 10.
1474 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 100, a. 2
1475 Ibid., q. 101, a. 1, 2.
1476 cf. Kors, O.P., La Justice primitive et le peche originel d'apres S. Thomas, Bibliotheque thomiste, Kain 1922, p. 139; Bittremieux, "La distinction entre la justice originelle et la grace sanctifiante d'apres S Thomas d'Aquin," Revue thomiste April-June, 1921; Michel, "La grace sanctifiante et la justice originelle," Revue thomiste, 1922, p. 424; Jos. van der Meersch, "De distinctione inter justitiam originalem et gratiam sanctificantem," Collationes Brugenses, XXII; P. E. Hugon, O.P., "De gratia primi hominis," Angelicum, 1927, pp. 361-81; Dict. theol. cath., "Justice originelle."
1477 Rom. 5:12; Denz., no. 789.
1478 Loc. cit.; cf. Council of Orange, Denz., no. 175
1479 cf. Acta Concil. Trid., Stephen Ehses, pp. 118-218; 208.
1480 cf. Council of Trent, Sess. V, chap. 5; Denz., no. 792
1481 Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 69, a. 4 ad 3.
1482 Vatican Council, Collectio Lacensis, VII, 517
1483 Ibid., 549
1484 Ibid
1485 cf. Kors, op. cit., p. 139.
1486 cf. Denz., no. 175: "If anyone shall assert that Adam's transgression harmed himself alone and not his progeny, or say that only the death of the body, which is the penalty of sin, and not the sin, which is the death of the soul, was transmitted to the whole human race by one man, he does an injury to God by contradicting the Apostle, who said, 'By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned' (Rom. 5:12)."
1487 De conceptu virginali, chap. 10
1488 Ibid., chap. 23.
1489 cf. Kors, op. cit
1490 St. Anselm, op. cit., chap. 10; PL, CLVIII, 444
1491 St. Thomas, Sent., II, d. 20, q. 2, a. 3
1492 Ibid., d. 29, q. 1, a. 2.
1493 Eccles 7:30
1494 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95, a. 1.
1495 St. Thomas, Sent., II, d. 20, q. 2, a. 3.
1496 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95, a. 1.
1497 Ibid., Ia, q. 100, a. 1
1498 De malo, IV, a. 4, a. 2 ad 1.
1499 Ibid., q. 5, a. 1 ad 13; q. 4, a. 6 ad 4.
1500 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 109, a. 3.
1501 cf. Jos. van der Meersch, op. cit., p. 9.
1502 De malo, q. 5, a. 1 ad 13
1503 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95. a. 1
1504 Ibid., q. 100, a. 1 ad 2
1505 St. Thomas, Sent., II, d. 20, q. 2, a. 3
1506 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 83, a. 2 ad 2
1507 Ibid
1508 Cajetan, In Iam IIae, q. 83, a. 2 ad 2.
1509 Ibid., q. 109, a. 2, no. 9.
1510 Capreolus, In Sent., d. XXXI, a. 3.
1511 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52.
1512 Kors, op. cit., p. 126
1513 Vatican Council, Collectio Lacensis, VII, 549
1514 St. Thomas, Sent., II, d. 20, q. a, a. 3
1515 Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52
1516 Bittremieux, art. cit., Revue thomiste, April-June, 1921, p. 127
1517 De malo, q. 4, a. 2 ad I; Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 81, a. 2; q. 85, a. 3.
1518 cf. Summa Theol., Ia, q. 63, a. 1; Ia IIae, q. 21, a. 1, 2.
1519 cf. ibid., Ia IIae, q. 88, a. 1 ad 1.
1520 Denz., no. 788; cf. Dict. theol. cath., "Peche originel, dans l'Ecriture, chez les Peres et les theologiens. Les a, affirmations de l'Eglise en face du naturalisme contemporain," col. 275-606; J. B. Frey, "L'etat originel et la chute de l'homme d'apres les juives au temps de Jesus-Christ," in Revue de Sc. phil. et theol. (1911), pp. 507-45; F. Prat, La theol. de S. Paul (7th ed.), pp. 252-64; M. J. Lagrange, Ep. aux Rom. (1916), pp. 104-13
1521 Denz., no. 2123
1522 Gen. 2:17; 3:6
1523 Ecclus. 25:33
1524 Wisd. 2:24.
1525 Rom. 5:19; cf. I Cor. 15:21 ff.; I Tim. 2:1, f.; John 8:44; Apoc. 12:9.
1526 cf. Rouet de Journel, op. cit., Index theol., nos. 298-302, for many passages from the Latin and Greek Fathers; also following article on the existence of original sin in Adam's posterity
1527 Summa Theol., IIa IIae, q. 163, a. 1. ff.
1528 Ibid., a. 3; cf. Bossuet, Elevations sur les mysteres, 6e semaine, 5e elevation
1529 Ecclus. 10:15; Tob. 4:14
1530 Wisd. 10:1 f.
1531 Denz., no. 776; cf. Council of Trent, Denz., no. 815; for Baius' teaching, ibid., no. 1065; for Jansenism, ibid., no. 1298
1532 Denz., no. 789; Rom. 5:12; cf. Card. Billot, De personali et originali peccato (4th ed., 1910), pp. 160 ff.
1533 Denz., nos. 711, 790 f., 795
1534 Ibid., nos. 101, 174f., 795.
1535 Ibid., nos. 790, 795.
1536 Ibid., no. 532
1537 Ibid., nos. 102, 410, 532, 753, 791
1538 Ibid., no. 534
1539 Ibid., no. 1048
1540 Ibid., no. 1047
1541 Ibid., no. 410
1542 Ibid
1543 Ibid., nos. 321, 410, 464, 693
1544 Ibid., no. 1049
1545 Ibid., nos. 1526, 3049
1546 Ibid., nos. 101 f., 329, 348, 790 f., 3026
1547 Ibid., nos. 388, 413
1548 Ibid., no. 102
1549 Ibid., no. 175.
1550 Gen. 3:14-24
1551 John 14:4.
1552 Ps. 50:7
1553 Denz., no. 792
1554 Ecclus. 25:33
1555 Gen. 17:14; Rom. 4:11; cf. Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 70; Dict. theol. cath., art., "Circumcision." St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, Bk. XVI, chap. 27. Many modern exegetes see in circumcision only a sign of a compact or of friendship between God and Israel. But we read in the Scriptures, Abraham "received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the justice of the faith....; that he might be the father of all them that believe, being circumcised, that unto them also it may be reputed to justice" (Rom. 4:11). Thus, as St. Thomas says, "grace was conferred in circumcision, not by virtue of circumcision, but by virtue of the passion of Christ, whose sign was circumcision" (Summa theol-, IIIa, q. 70, a. 4).
1556 Matt. 1:21
1557 John 1:29
1558 Ibid., 3:5
1559 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Ep. ad Ephesios, 2:3
1560 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Ep. ad Romanos, 5:12.
1561 According to the Latin Fathers and many Catholic doctors, the Greek is translated in quo, that is, in Adam; according to the Greek Fathers and some recent writers the rendering is eo quod or "because." From the context the meaning is still that sin and death were transmitted to us through Adam, especially from v. 12 and v. 19. cf. Bossuet, Defense de la tradition et des SS. Peres, VII, chap. 12-20.
1562 Rom. 5:19
1563 Rom. 5:12, 16, 18f
1564 Ibid., v. 14
1565 Denz., no. 790
1566 cf. St. Thomas, Commentarium in Ep. ad Romanos, 5:12-20, for solution of the Pelagian objections; cf. also M. 1. Lagrange, Epitre aux Romains (1916), pp. 104-13 F. Prat, La theologie de S. Paul, I, 253 ff.; Dict. theol. cath., art. "Peche originel", 1. M. Voste, Studia paulina (1928), pp. 75, 84.
1567 Ezech. 18:20; Deut. 24:16
1568 Rouet de Journel, op. cit., Index theol., nos. 302 ff.; ibid., no. 92
1569 St. Irenaeus, Adversus heres., V, xiii, 3; Journel, op. cit., no. 255
1570 Rouet de Journel, op. cit., no. 140.
1571 Ibid., no. 183
1572 Ibid., nos. 146, 286
1573 Ibid., nos. 967, 1077, 1291
1574 Ibid., nos. 1184 ff.
1575 cf. Dict. theol. cath., art. "Le peche originel," col. 353: "S. Jean Chrysostom proclame la necessite absolue du bapteme pour avoir art d l'heritage Celeste"; cf. De poenitentia, hom. I, 4, PL, XLIX, 282 ff.
1576 cf. Rouet de Journel, op. cit., no. 1899 (Contra Julianum, II, chap. 10; VI, 67f.; Contra Julianum op. imp., 1, 27, 29, 49; II, 87, 119; V, 48, 64; VI, 36; De civitate Dei, XXII, chap. 22, 1-3).
1577 Denz., nos. 101 f.
1578 Ibid., no. 126
1579 Ibid., nos. 129-42
1580 St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV, chap. 52
1581 Rom. 5:12-21
1582 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 81, a. 1.
1583 Ibid., cf. Dict. theol. cath., "Peche originel," col. 478
1584 Rom. 5:12-21
1585 Denz., no. 1796
1586 cf. Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 1, a. 3 ad 3.
1587 Ibid., Ia, q. 100, a. 1.
1588 Denz., no. 789; cf. Card. Billot, De peccato originali
1589 cf. P. E. Hugon, Tract. theologici (1926), I, 808-18
1590 Summa Theol., la, q. 100, a. 1
1591 Ibid.; thus Adam was the head of elevated nature by some divine decree and therefore, if Adam had not sinned, he would have transmitted to us original justice; if he sinned he would transmit to us the privation of this justice. It is not necessary that Adam should have consented to this decree. He knew the decree, and that was sufficient. His knowledge of moral and religious matters certainly included something as important as this both to himself and the whole human race. In the same way a man who loses his fortune and his hereditary title knows he is losing these things for himself and for his children. Hence original sin is voluntary only with regard to Adam's will inasmuch as he was the head of elevated nature, and the sin passes on to his posterity, not as a demerit, but as a consequence transmitted to nature Under this aspect, therefore, original sin is the least of all sins because it has the least amount of voluntarium.
1592 Denz., nos. 776, 792
1593 Ibid., nos. 1065, 1298
1594 Ibid., no. 792
1595 Ibid., nos. 788, 793
1596 Ibid., no. 793
1597 Ibid., no. 790
1598 cf. Acta Concilii Vaticani, Collectio Lacensis, VII, 517, 549
1599 cf. St. Augustine, De nuptiis et conceptione, Bk. I, chap. 24, no. 27; chap. 26, no. 29; Journel, op. cit., nos. 1872 f., 1877; De peccat, meritis et remiss., II, chap. 28, no. 46; Journel, op. cit., no. 1726
1600 cf. Dict. theol. cath., art. "Augustin," cols. 2933, 2935 f.; Tixeront, Hist. dogm., II, 463 ff.
1601 St. Anselm, De conceptu virginali, chaps. 23, 27
1602 Ibid., chap 23
1603 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 82. a. 3.
1604 ibid.
1605 St. Thomas, De malo, q. 4, a. 2.
1606 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 83, a. 2 ad 4.
1607 cf. Dict. theol. cath., art. "Justice originelle."
1608 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 95, a. 1; q. 100, a. 1 ad 2
1609 St. Thomas, De malo, q. 4, a. 1.
1610 Summa Theol., Ia, q. 100, a. 1. ad 2.
1611 D. Soto, De natura et gratia, I, 5.
1612 cf. Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 82, a. 4
1613 Ibid., Ia IIae, q. 83, a. 2
1614 Ibid., a. 3 f
1615 cf. ibid., Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 1-4
1616 Denz., no. 174
1617 Ibid., no. 788
1618 Ibid., no. 793
1619 Summa Theol., Ia IIae, q. 85, a. 3
1620 Ibid., a. 1; q. 63, a. 1
1621 Ibid, q. 85, a. 3
1622 Ibid
1623 cf, Billuart, De gratia, diss. II, a. 3
1624 Summa Theol., IIIa, q. 1, a. 3 ad 3
1625 St. Thomas, Contra Gentes, Bk. IV chap. 52
1626 cf. Pensees; Bossuet, Sermon pour la profession de Aladame de la Valliere
	
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