CHAPTER III: THE PRINCIPLE OF THE BLESSED TRINITY, OR THE DOCTRINE OF THE IMMANENT PROCESSIONS IN THE GODHEAD

Divine Revelation tells us that there are Three Persons in the Godhead. It also points out the cause of this difference, viz.: the fact of the Divine Processions.

It is these Processions that properly constitute the mystery of the Blessed Trinity and furnish the basis for the distinction of three real Hypostases, — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

By “Procession” we understand “the origination of one Divine Person from another.”

There are two such Processions, viz., Generation (generatio, γέννησις) and Spiration (spiratio, πνεῦσις).

We shall treat them separately.

SECTION 1: THE PROCESSION OF THE SON FROM THE FATHER BY GENERATION

1. The Scriptural Argument

The Nicene Council having incorporated the notion of γέννησις into the dogmatic definition of the Blessed Trinity, there can be no doubt that Christ’s generation by the Father is as much an article of faith as His Divine Sonship. This can be demonstrated from Holy Scripture in a twofold manner.

a) Indirectly, by arguing from the fact of the Divine Paternity and Sonship, which we have already proved from Holy Scripture. The relation of Father and Son is conceivable only on the assumption of a real and true γέννησις in the proper sense of the term.¹ Consequently there is in the bosom of the Godhead a first Procession, which is true Generation. If, as St. Paul tells us,² all paternity in heaven and on earth is a weak imitation of the paternity of “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and if the supernatural adoption of the just is but an analogue of Christ’s true Sonship,³ it follows, not indeed that the divine generation must be conceived figuratively after the manner of creatural generation, but, contrariwise, that the latter is merely an imperfect representation of the former.

The only true generation, in the highest sense, therefore, is the divine γέννησις, as the Godhead alone is Being in its truest and highest sense. Holy Scripture frequently intimates the genuineness of the divine γέννησις by applying to Christ such epithets as “the Only-begotten of the Father,”⁴ and “the Only-begotten Son of the Father.”⁵

b) Holy Scripture, moreover, distinctly teaches that the Son proceeds from the Father by eternal generation. Heb. I, 5: “Cui enim dixit aliquando angelorum: Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te (γεγέννηκά σε)? — For to which of the angels hath he said at any time: Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee?”

Most clearly perhaps this divine Procession is taught in Psalm CIX, verse 3. “Tecum principium in die virtutis tuae in splendoribus sanctorum: ex utero ante luciferum [= ab aeterno] genui te — 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.” It is true, the Masoretic text, as we have it, renders this passage differently. Inasmuch, however, as (aside from the Itala and the Vulgate) the Septuagint⁶ and the Syriac Peshitta, which were both made directly from the original Hebrew, give the passage as above quoted, the Masoretic variation can safely be attributed to a mistake made by the Jewish writers who some time previous to the tenth century drew up that collection of criticisms and marginal notes which forms the basis of our present Hebrew Old Testament. This theory is all the more plausible in view of the fact that the elimination of two small words, and a change in the punctuation of the remainder of the text, would make the seemingly corrupt passage conform with the Vulgate. Another important consideration in clearing up this difficulty is that for several centuries the Fathers employed this particular text to prove the Consubstantiality of the Logos with the Father by virtue of His eternal Generation.⁷ Thus St. Basil, or rather the author of the fifth Book against Eunomius found among St. Basil’s works, writes: “Propterea generando habere se in uterum dixit Deus ad confusionem impiorum, ut vel sua ipsorum natura considerata discant, Filium fructum esse Patris genuinum, utpote ex eius utero emergentem — God speaks of His womb for the purpose of confounding the impious, that they may learn by a consideration of their own nature that the Son is the genuine product of the Father, as if He had emerged from His womb.”⁸

A parallel passage to Ps. CIX, 3, is John I, 18: “Unigenitus Filius, qui est in sinu Patris (ὁ μονογενὴς υἱὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρός) — The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.” Taken in connexion with certain pregnant terms found in the Sapiential Books, such as “parturiebar” and “concepta eram”⁹ and passages like Ecclus. XXIV, 5,¹⁰ these texts seem to remove all doubt as to the scripturality of the doctrine of the divine γέννησις.

2. The Argument from Tradition

The dogma of the Son’s generation was brought prominently forward by all the Fathers and ecclesiastical synods of the fourth century, because it is the foundation and logical antecedent of the dogma of the Consubstantiality of Son and Father.

a) St. Hilary tersely declares: “Ignorat Deum Christum, qui ignorat Deum natum; Deum autem nasci non est aliud quam in ea natura esse, qua Deus est — He knows not the God-Christ, who knows not that God is begotten; but to say that God is begotten, is tantamount to saying that He is of the same nature as God.”¹¹ And St. Augustine: “Ideo quippe Filius, quia genitus, et quia Filius, utique genitus — For He is therefore a son, because begotten, and because a son, therefore certainly begotten.”¹² This unanimous teaching of the Fathers faithfully echoes all the ancient creeds, from the Apostles’ to the Athanasian, — the latter sharply emphasizes the fact that “Pater a nullo est factus nec creatus nec genitus; Filius a patre solo est, non factus nec creatus, sed genitus — The Father is made of none, neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created, but begotten.”¹³ We must also mention in this connection the eleventh of the “Anathematismi” of Pope St. Damasus I (A. D. 380). It reads as follows: “Si quis non dixerit Filium natum de Patre, id est de divina substantia ipsius, anathema sit — If any one will not profess that the Son is begotten by the Father, that is to say, from the Divine Substance of the Father, let him be anathema.”¹⁴

b) The Fathers and Catholic theologians generally are one in teaching that the process of divine Generation is a relation involving only the Father and the Son. Various attempts at positing in the Godhead other such relations, as, e. g., maternity, were indignantly rejected by the Fathers as blasphemous.¹⁵ Since the divine γέννησις must be conceived as a purely intellectual process, there is no need of postulating in the Godhead a special principle of conception and parturition. The Father generates His Divine Son by way of understanding,¹⁶ as the adequate likeness of His Essence. When the Patristic writers speak of the “conception” and “birth” of the Son of God, or advert to the “bosom” of the Father, they merely mean to emphasize the truth of the divine Generation as such.

The Sapiential Books of the Old Testament sometimes refer to Hypostatic Wisdom as the “First-born” or as “Mother of fair love.” But these phrases offer no serious difficulty. The epithet “Mother of fair love” is merely meant to intimate the maternal tenderness of God’s love for us, and the feminine form “primogenita” (instead of “primogenitus”) is due to the grammatical accident that in Hebrew ḥokmah (i. e., sapientia), like σοφία in the Greek Septuagint, is of feminine gender.¹⁷

Readings

St. Anselm, Monologium, c. 39–43; Ruiz, De Trinitate, disp. 4 sqq.; Hurter, Compendium Theol. Dogmat., tom. I, thes. 107 (Hunter, Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, II, pp. 176 sqq., 2nd ed.); Kleutgen, De Ipso Deo, l. II, qu. 4, c. 1 sqq.; Franzelin, De Deo Trino, thes. 30; Heinrich, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. IV, § 241; G. B. Tepe, Instit. Theol., Vol. II, pp. 293–325, Paris 1895; Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 158 sqq., New Impression, London 1901; Idem, Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, Vol. II, pp. 287 sqq., 337 sqq.; 9th ed., London 1903; A. Studle, De Processionibus Divinis, Frib. Helv. 1895.