The Speculative Theological Development of the Dogma of the Trinity — Section 2: Two Speculative Problems (4)

4. Two Speculative Problems

There is a subtle and purely speculative question as to what are the objects of notional, in contradistinction to essential, understanding and love. Is the Logos merely the utterance of the divine self-knowledge? or is He also the expression of God’s knowledge of His creatures? And further: Is the Holy Ghost the personal expression of God’s love for Himself only? or is He also the expression of God’s love for the created universe?

a) The problem involved in the first question must be solved along these lines: If it is true that all essential knowledge, and hence the very nature of God, would cease to be if God had no divine self-comprehension (cognitio comprehensiva sui) embracing His Essence and attributes, or no knowledge of all the possibles (scientia simplicis intelligentiae),¹ among which must be reckoned all created things before their realization; then the notional cognition of the Father must have its essential and necessary object chiefly in these two kinds of divine knowledge. For whatever is essential and absolutely necessary to the very being of the Godhead, cannot play a purely subordinate and unessential part in the generation of the Logos. Theologians all admit this principle in the abstract; but in explaining and interpreting it there is no real agreement among the different schools beyond the proposition that the Logos proceeds from the notional cognition of the primary and formal object of the Divine Intellect, viz.: the Essence and attributes of God.²

Extreme views on the subject were held by Scotus and Gregory of Valentia. Scotus limits the notional understanding by which the Father begets the Logos, strictly to the absolute essence of God. According to Gregory of Valentia it includes as a necessarily co-operating factor the contingent universe with all its creatures. Both are wrong. Scotus forgets that one of the essential factors in the production of the Logos is a knowledge of all possibles as well as of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Gregory of Valentia does not distinguish with sufficient clearness between God’s necessary and His free knowledge. The contingent and accidental world of creatures, which undoubtedly forms one of the objects of divine omniscience, must assuredly be reflected in the Hypostatic Conception or Logos, as object of the “scientia libera”; but in such manner that the adequacy and perfection of the Logos would suffer no impairment even if the created universe did not exist. Indeed it is through the eternally pre-existing Logos that all existing things were made.³

Scotus, on principle, excludes from the paternal act of Generation all creatural being, including the purely possible. Puteanus holds that Paternity, Vasquez that Paternity and Filiation, and Turrianus that, besides these, passive Spiration is comprised as a supplementary object in that notional act by which the Father utters Himself adequately in His “Word.” The Thomists extend the scope of God’s notional understanding to the whole realm of His essential knowledge. St. Augustine taught that the essence of the Logos comprises precisely the same wisdom that is comprehended within the essential knowledge of the Triune God,⁴ and St. Thomas expressly declares: “The Father, by understanding Himself, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all other things contained within His knowledge, conceives the Word, and thus the entire Trinity and every created being are uttered in the Word.”⁵ The Angelic Doctor, as Billuart⁶ points out, in this passage does not refer to the actually existing creatures, but only to the purely possibles (as objects of the scientia simplicis intelligentiae), in as much as they are reflected in the world of divine ideas as necessary, not as free objects of divine knowledge. As free objects of divine knowledge they are, de facto, also contained in the “Word of God,” but only concomitanter et per accidens. “Quia Pater principaliter dicit se,” observes St. Thomas, “generando Verbum suum, et ex consequenti dicit creaturas [existentes], ideo principaliter et quasi per se Verbum refertur ad Patrem, sed ex consequenti et quasi per accidens refertur ad creaturam; accidit enim Verbo, ut per ipsum creatura dicatur — Since the Father, in begetting His Word, utters Himself principally, and the [existing] creatures incidentally, the Word is principally, and as it were per se, referred to the Father, and only consequently, and as it were by accident, to the creature; for it is only by accident that the creature is uttered through the Word.”⁷

St. Augustine says: “The Father spake nothing that He spake not in the Son. For by speaking in the Son what He was about to do through the Son, He begat the Son Himself by whom He should make all things.”⁸ This passage does not contradict what we have asserted, because the archetype and exemplar of the universe about to be created was eternally present in the Logos as the living concept of creation.⁹

Another difficulty has been formulated thus: The Logos owes His existence to the generative knowledge of the Father; consequently He cannot be conceived as existing prior to the act of paternal Generation. Similarly, the Person of the Holy Ghost does not exist logically without the Father and the Son, and consequently the Holy Ghost cannot contribute to the production of the Logos.

This difficulty, which is considered unsolvable by some divines, arises from confusing temporal succession with succession as to origin. The Three Divine Persons are absolutely coeternal. Hence the Logos and the Holy Ghost, despite their “posterioritas originis,” can form essential ingredients of the Father’s intellectual act of Generation from everlasting. For the rest, as Suarez justly remarks, “Potest esse prior existentia visionis, quam rei visae; nam si Deus potest intueri futuras creaturas prius duratione, immo aeternitate, quam ipsae existant, cur non poterit Deus ut sic videre personas prius ratione vel origine, quam producantur? — A vision may exist prior to the object seen; for if God is able to envisage future creatures temporally and even eternally before they exist, why should He not also be able to see the Persons in [their] relation or origin before they are produced?”¹⁰

b) Following out the analogy, it may be asked: Which are the objects embraced by the love of Father and Son that produces the Holy Ghost? According to Billuart,¹¹ the Holy Ghost proceeds from the notional love of all that is necessario et formaliter lovable in the Godhead; that is, first of all, from the love which the Spirator bears for His own essence, i. e., the Supreme Good; secondly, from the love He has for His attributes, which are really identical with the Divine Essence, and, lastly, from His love for the individual Divine Persons themselves. Although the real principle of the production of the Holy Ghost is the mutual love of the Father and the Son, we are not free to reject the love of the Spirator for the Person Spirated (the Holy Ghost), as an essentially co-operative factor on the ground that the Holy Ghost cannot possibly furnish the subject-matter of an act of which He is the result or product. Some theologians exaggerate this difficulty, but it is as easily solved as the one we have considered a little farther up. The Spirator’s love for creatures (irrespective of whether they are already created, or, as mere possibles, remain to be created in the future), can add its quota in the production of the Holy Ghost only concomitanter et per accidens, because the notional love which produces the Holy Ghost is an essential and necessary love, whereas God’s love for His creatures is entirely free, quite as free as His determination to give them being.¹² As regards God’s love for merely possible creatures (i. e., such as will never come into being), many divines hold that their essential goodness coincides with the Divine Essence, which is their exemplary cause; and that, consequently, since they seem to lack a proper, independent goodness and amiability of their own, these possible creatures do not contribute towards the production of the Holy Ghost.¹³ We can not share this view. Having previously espoused the opinion that the goodness proper to creatures is not identical with God’s own goodness,¹⁴ consistency compels us to adhere to the view that love for the purely possible also enters into that notional act by which the Father and the Son breathe the Holy Ghost.

Readings

St. Thomas, S. Theol., Ia, qu. 27 sqq., and the commentators; Idem, Contr. Gent., IV, 11 (Rickaby in his English version of the Summa contr. Gent. omits this chapter); Franzelin, De Deo Trino, thes. 26–31; Kleutgen, De Ipso Deo, l. II, qu. 4, art. 2–3, Ratisbonae 1881; Oswald, Trinitätslehre, § 12, Paderborn 1888; Scheeben, Handbuch der kath. Dogmatik, Vol. I, §§ 116–127, Freiburg 1873 (contains a wealth of speculative thoughts).