The Speculative Theological Development of the Dogma of the Trinity — Section 2: Generation by Mode of Understanding and Spiration by Mode of Will (1–3)

SECTION 2: GENERATION BY MODE OF UNDERSTANDING AND SPIRATION BY MODE OF WILL

1. The Generation of the Son by Mode of Understanding

According to the unanimous teaching of Fathers and theologians the proposition that the Father generates His Divine Son by mode of understanding, while not an article of faith, is a sure theological conclusion which is firmly rooted in Sacred Scripture, and cannot be denied without temerity.¹

a) The Bible reveals the Second Person of the Divine Trinity not only as “Filius unigenitus” (i. e., the Only-begotten Son), but likewise as “Verbum” or “Logos” (i. e., the Word of God). The only meaning we can attach to the term “Verbum Dei” is: Immanent terminus of the knowledge of the Father. Consequently divine Generation must signify the knowledge of the Father bringing forth His Son by an act of the understanding. The purely intellectual character of the act of divine Generation may also be inferred from those Scriptural texts which represent the Son of God as the “image² of the Father,” or as “begotten Wisdom.” Like “Logos,” these terms define the mode of generation as purely spiritual, or, more specifically, as intellectual. It is in this sense that the Fathers, so far as they touch upon the subject at all, interpret the Scriptural teaching concerning the “Logos.” Thus St. Gregory of Nazianzus tersely declares: “The Son is called Logos, because His relation to the Father is the same as that of the [immanent] word to the intellect.”³ And St. Basil: “Why Word? In order that it may become manifest that it proceedeth from the intellect. Why Word? Because it is the likeness of the Begetter, which in itself reflects the whole Begetter, even as our word [concept] reflects the likeness of our whole thought.”⁴ St. Augustine goes into the matter even more deeply. He says: “Tamquam seipsum dicens Pater genuit Verbum sibi aequale per omnia; non enim seipsum integre perfecteque dixisset, si aliquid minus aut amplius esset in eius Verbo, quam in ipso — Accordingly, as though uttering Himself, the Father begat the Word equal to Himself in all things; for He would not have uttered Himself wholly and perfectly, if there were in His Word anything more or less than in Himself.”⁵

b) A theological reason may be found in the circumstance that the Processions in the Godhead are only conceivable as purely spiritual and immanent vital processes.⁶ God is a pure Spirit, and there are but two known modes of purely spiritual operation, i. e., understanding and willing. Our own mind, which is in itself infecund and derives its knowledge of generation altogether from the realm of organic life, can scarcely form an idea of the eminent fecundity of the Infinite Intellect, and is consequently inclined to conceive the operation of the divine understanding and will as something exclusively essential and absolute. But once assured by Revelation of the existence of two Processions within the Godhead (generatio and spiratio), we cannot but connect the one with the intellect and the other with the will. Now we know that divine Generation depends on the intellect rather than the will, because the Son of God has been revealed to us as “Logos.”

This immanent process in the Godhead naturally points to the most perfect analogue which the Blessed Trinity has in the intellectual life of man. According to the teaching of St. Augustine,⁷ man’s self-knowledge corresponds to the process of divine Generation, his self-love to the process of divine Spiration. The human Ego unfolds itself, as it were, in three directions. First it duplicates itself in its self-consciousness and, without destroying the identity of the Ego-substance, opposes the thinking Ego to the Ego thought. The thinking Ego, as the terminus a quo, represents the begetting Father, while the thought Ego, as the terminus ad quem, illustrates the Son. Out of the reciprocal comprehension and interpenetration of both — despite the opposition existing between them, they are not really distinct — there spontaneously burgeons forth self-love, which, as the fundamental law of the human will, completes the immanent spiritual process and furnishes a faint image of the Holy Ghost. In thus trying to bring the mystery nearer to our understanding, we must not, however, lose sight of the fact that no real trinity is possible in the spiritual life of the creature, for the obvious reason that the two intrinsic termini of self-knowledge and self-love are no hypostases but mere accidents.⁸

2. The Spiration of the Holy Ghost by Mode of Will

In arguing that the Spiration of the Holy Ghost takes place by way of volition, some theologians content themselves with the argumentum exclusionis. The Generation of the Son having been assigned to the intellect, they say, there remains only the will to account for the origination of the Holy Ghost. These writers seem to overlook the fact that Revelation furnishes positive as well as negative proofs in support of this doctrine.

a) Under the so-called Law of Appropriations, no external operations can be predicated of any Divine Person except such as are intrinsically related to that particular Person’s hypostatic character. This constitutes the Appropriations a sure criterion for determining the personal character of each of the Divine Persons. The attributes of omnipotence and creation are appropriated to the Father, for the reason that, in regard to productions ad intra, He is at the same time ἀρχὴ ἄναρχος and ἀρχὴ τῆς ἀρχῆς. In the same way the works of wisdom are appropriated to the Son, because He is Hypostatic Wisdom. If, then, the works of love are attributed to the Holy Ghost, it must be because He is love, because He proceeds from love as His principle or source; — not, it is true, from that essential Love which is common to all three Divine Persons,⁹ but from the reciprocal notional love of Father and Son, of which the immanent product is Hypostatic Charity, i. e., the Person of the Holy Ghost. Love being the fundamental affection of the will,¹⁰ the Holy Ghost must proceed from the Father and the Son by mode of will (per modum voluntatis).

b) The fact that Holy Scripture attributes the proper name “Spiritus” and the epithet “Sanctus” to the Holy Ghost, will serve to confirm this conclusion. As a personal appellation the term “Holy Spirit,” like “Father” and “Son,” must be taken in a relative sense, as “spiratus” or “spiratione productus.” In its absolute sense “Spirit” is predicable of the Godhead as such. Cfr. John IV, 24: “God is a spirit.” But in a nature which, like God’s, is purely spiritual, Spiration, as opposed to intellectual Generation, can signify nothing else than an act of the will. This becomes still clearer when we consider that Spiration is an analogous term derived from the realm of nature, in which breath or wind is indued with motive power, which in the spiritual realm has its counterpart in the operation of the will. If, therefore, the Holy Ghost is called “breath of God” (halitus Dei), the reason is that Father and Son breathe the Holy Ghost per modum voluntatis. Since “the emission of the breath from the heart, notably in the act of kissing, gives a most real expression to the tendency of love towards intimate and real communion of life and an outpouring of soul into soul,”¹¹ we can well understand why St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux ventured to refer to the Holy Ghost as “osculum Patris et Filii.”¹²

Analyzing the epithet “Sanctus,” we find that it does not designate the absolute sanctity of the Blessed Trinity as such, but, relatively, the personal character of the Third Person; in other words it is synonymous with “procedens ex principio sancto.” Now, sanctity is an attribute of the will, as wisdom is an attribute of the intellect. Divine sanctity formally consists in “God’s love for Himself.”¹³ Hence “Holy Ghost” is synonymous with “Hypostatic Love.” The Eleventh Synod of Toledo (A. D. 675) formally identifies sanctity with love when it says: “Spiritus Sanctus … simul ab utrisque processisse monstratur, quia caritas sive sanctitas amborum esse agnoscitur — The Holy Ghost is shown to proceed from both, as He is acknowledged to be the love or sanctity of both.”¹⁴ The Fathers express themselves in a similar manner. Thus St. Augustine says: “Cum Pater sit spiritus et Filius spiritus, et Pater sanctus et Filius sanctus, proprie tamen ipse vocatur Spiritus Sanctus, tamquam sanctitas substantialis et consubstantialis amborum — Though the Father is a spirit and the Son is a spirit, and though the Father is holy and the Son is holy, yet He [the Third Person] is properly called Holy Spirit, because He is the substantial and consubstantial holiness of both [the Father and the Son].”¹⁵

The Greek Fathers compare the act of divine Spiration to “a special form of substantial emanation, analogous to the emanation which takes place in plants side by side with generation, and is effected by the plants themselves and their products, viz., the emission of the vital sap or spirit of life in the form of fluid oily substances in a liquid or ethereal state, such as balsam and incense, wine and oil, and especially the odor or perfume of the plant, which is at the same time an ethereal oil and the breath of the plant.”¹⁶

c) The epithet “gift of God” (donum Dei, δωρεὰ θεοῦ), which, following the lead of Sacred Scripture, many Fathers ascribe as a personal attribute to the Holy Ghost, also plainly indicates the mode of His procession. A gift supposes as its principle love of pure benevolence on the part of the giver, and consequently the Holy Ghost, considered in His personal attribute of “donum Dei,” cannot originate in the Intellect, but must spring from Love, that is, from the Divine Will. St. Thomas explains this luminously as follows: “Donum proprie est datio irreddibilis, id est, quod non datur intentione retributionis et sic importat gratuitam donationem. Ratio autem gratuitae donationis est amor; ideo enim damus gratis alicui aliquid, quia volumus ei bonum… . Unde cum Spiritus Sanctus procedat ut amor, … procedit in ratione doni primi — A gift, properly speaking, is something given without expectation of a quid pro quo; but the reason why one gives freely is love; for if we give something to some one without expecting an equivalent, it is because we wish him well… . Therefore, since the Holy Ghost proceeds by mode of love… . He proceeds after the manner of the first gift.”¹⁷ St. Augustine says: “Non dicitur Verbum Dei nisi Filius, nec donum Dei nisi Spiritus Sanctus — The Son and none other is called the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit and none other the gift of God.”¹⁸ He founds upon this distinction the thesis that the Holy Ghost cannot be identical with the Son: “Exiit non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus, et ideo non dicitur Filius — For the Spirit came forth not as born, but as given; and so He is not called Son.”¹⁹

3. The Essential Difference Between Generation and Spiration

There is between Generation and Spiration a marked distinction, similar to the one between intellect and will.

a) To enable the human mind to penetrate as deeply as possible into the sublime mystery of the Blessed Trinity, the Schoolmen raised the question: In how far can the notional cognition of the Father be conceived as generation in the strict sense of the term? Can it be said that “knowing” is synonymous with “begetting”? Modern authorities on the philosophy of language have made the interesting discovery that, in the parent language from which the Indo-Germanic family derives its descent (viz.: Sanskrit), GEN is the root of two distinct word-groups, which denote “knowing” and “begetting.” Compare, e. g., in Greek, γίγνομαι and γεννάω with γιγνώσκω; in Latin, gigno with cognosco. “Conceptus” may signify either “concept” (idea) or “conception” in the physiological sense. Our English word “conception,” too, is used to describe both the act or process of forming an idea or notion of a thing, and the impregnation of an ovum. In the Semitic family of languages these two notions are also closely related and expressed by the same verb; cfr., e. g., “Adam vero cognovit uxorem suam Hevam — And Adam knew Eve his wife.”²⁰ A still surer way of arriving at the point we are trying to make, is to analyze the concepts underlying these various terms. Generation is defined as “origo viventis a principio vivente coniuncto in similitudinem naturae ex vi ipsius productionis,”²¹ which may be rendered into English as follows: Generation is the production of one living being by another living being, by communication of substance, resulting in a similarity of nature in progenitor and progeny vi productionis, i. e., from the very mode of production.²² The concept of generation, therefore, contains four essential marks: (1) The origin of one living being from another living being. Consequently the inanimate exudation of plants and animals, the growth of hair and nails in corpses, etc., cannot be called “generation.” (2) The vital process of nature by which that which is generated proceeds from the substance of the generative principle. Hence such processes as the creation of the universe and the origin of Eve cannot be called “generation.” (3) Similarity of nature in the being which is begotten and the being which begets. This eliminates spontaneous generation, so-called, or heterogeny. (4) An immanent tendency in the progeny to resemble its progenitor. Hence, e. g., the likeness which a child bears to his father is not accidental, but results from the act of generation itself.

b) The notional understanding of God the Father possesses all of these distinctive momenta. In the first place, the begetting Father and the begotten Son are both living persons, identical in nature with the absolute divine life. The communication of life takes place in the vital mode of nature, as the Divine Nature itself constitutes the “principium quo” and the Father the “principium quod” of generation. Thirdly, as both Sacred Scripture and Tradition attest, the Son is the most perfect likeness of the Father and His most adequate utterance. And since this absolute essential likeness is rooted in the very mode of origination itself, viz.: an assimilative tendency in the notional understanding of the Father, the fourth condition, too, is verified. This last-mentioned note is by far the most important, for it alone ultimately differentiates divine Generation from Spiration. It is peculiar to the act of understanding, and to that act alone, that it tends to assimilate the object of knowledge with the knower, and thereby elevates even the lowest and basest object of cognition, (e. g. matter), to the spiritual plane of the cognizing principle. Thus the concept “tree,” for example, is as spiritual as the conceiving intellect itself. Hence the well-known Scholastic axiom: “Cognitum est in cognoscente non per modum cogniti, sed per modum cognoscentis — Whatever is received by the intellect, is received in the manner, not of the thing known, but of the knowing intellect.” Volition or love, on the other hand, is ecstatic in its effect, that is, it transports the lover as it were beyond himself and transforms him into the object of his affection. It is for this reason that the intrinsic value of love increases or diminishes in proportion to the value or dignity of its object; which explains the ennobling influence of the love of God as the supreme good, and the degrading effects of sinful love. St. Thomas describes the difference between understanding and willing with his usual clearness as follows: “There is this difference between the intellect and the will, that the intellect is actuated because the object known is in the intellect according to its likeness. The will, on the other hand, becomes actuated, not because it contains within itself any likeness of the object willed, but because it has a certain inclination towards that object.”²³

c) In respect of the second mode of procession, i. e., Spiration, it must first of all be observed that the Holy Ghost, too, is a living Person, who derives His origin from a living Spirator; that He has His essence by a vital process from the Divine Substance itself; and, lastly, that by virtue of His consubstantiality (ὁμοουσία) He is a perfectly adequate likeness of the two Divine Persons by whom He is breathed. The fourth and discriminative mark of generation — namely an immanent essential tendency or inclination to produce a being of like nature — does not, however, apply to Spiration. For since Spiration is not understanding but love, it lacks that assimilative tendency which is the essential note of generation. Consequently Spiration is not Generation.²⁴

d) From all of which it is plain that there can be in the Godhead but one Son and one Holy Ghost. The Logos-Son, as the adequately exhaustive Word of the Father, utters the Father’s infinite substance so perfectly that the generative power of the Paternal Intellect completely exhausts itself, and there is no room left for a second, third, etc., Son or Logos. Similarly, Father and Son mutually love each other in a manner so absolutely perfect that the Holy Ghost represents the infinite, and therefore exhaustive, utterance of their mutual love. This cuts the ground from under the feet of the Macedonians, who sophistically charged the Catholic dogma of the Trinity with absurdity by alleging that it implies the existence of a divine grandfather, a divine grandchild, and so forth.²⁵