The Speculative Theological Development of the Dogma of the Trinity — Section 3: The Divine Relations and Divine Personality (2. The Four Relations; 3. The Fundamental Law of the Trinity; 4. The Relationes Personificae)

2. The Four Relations in God

The origin of the Divine Persons from one another forms the basis of a double set of Relations: one between active and passive Generation, and another between active and passive Spiration. Both classes of Relations are real and mutual. This gives us four real Relations (relationes, σχέσεις) in the Godhead: active and passive Generation (generare, generari), and active and passive Spiration (spirare, spirari). By passive Generation and Spiration we do not, however, understand passio in the sense of the Aristotelian category of πάσχειν. Properly speaking, there can be no πάσχειν in God, because He is purest actuality (actus purissimus) in being and life, Essence and Persons. Passive Generation means that the Son, by virtue of active Generation on the part of the Father, (not so much comes into being as) exists from all eternity. Passive Spiration signifies that the Holy Ghost possesses His subsistence and personality solely in virtue of a joint act of Spiration performed by the Father and the Son, of which act He is the immanent terminus. It is an article of faith that these Relations, i. e., of the Father to the Son (generare), of the Son to the Father (generari), of the Father and the Son to the Holy Ghost (spirare), and of the Holy Ghost to the Father and the Son (spirari), are not purely logical or imaginary. Thus we read in the Decretum pro Iacobitis, promulgated by the Council of Florence, A. D. 1439: “Hinc damnat ecclesia Sabellium personas confundentem et ipsarum distinctionem realem penitus auferentem — Hence the Church condemns Sabellius, who confounds the [Three Divine] Persons and denies that there is any real distinction between them.”¹ The Church has not, however, formally defined that these relations are four in number.

It is easy to see that the dogma of the Trinity stands and falls with the reality of the Four Relations just described.² Since the Father is a different Person from the Son, and the Son a different Person from the Holy Ghost, the relation of the Father to the Son (and vice versa), and the relation of both to the Holy Ghost (and vice versa), must evidently be quite as real as are the three Divine Persons themselves. If these Relations were merely logical (either rationis ratiocinantis or rationis ratiocinatae), the distinction of Persons in the Godhead would evaporate into a purely logical, or at most a modal trinity, as taught by the Monarchians and the Sabellians.³ To say that the divine Relations are real, therefore, is but a different way of formulating the Trinitarian dogma itself.

3. The Fundamental Law of the Trinity

The most important corollary that flows from the doctrine of the divine Relations is the so-called fundamental law of the Trinity. This law was formulated by St. Anselm⁴ and solemnly approved by the Council of Florence, A. D. 1439. It is as follows: “In Deo omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio — In God all things are one except where there is opposition of relation.”⁵ The Father differs from the Son only because there is a perfect opposition of Relation between active and passive Generation. Where no such perfect relative opposition intervenes, everything in God is one and indistinct. Consequently, all the divine attributes in general are really identical with the divine Essence and with one another, and this is true in a special manner of those attributes which, like justice and mercy, are in logical opposition to one another. This opposition is purely logical. How sharply the oppositio relationis in the Holy Trinity must be defined, appears from the fact that since generare and spirare do not imply a relative but only a disparate opposition, both functions are simultaneously performed by the same Person (i. e., the Father), without His thereby becoming two Hypostases. Though at the same time generator and spirator, He is but one Hypostasis. For the same reason the Son must not be excluded from the act of Spiration, because generari and spirare do not involve a complete relative opposition, such as exists between generare and generari, spirare and spirari. Guided by this important rule, the Latin theologians, with the exception of the Scotists, have always contended against the Greek schismatics, that if the Son were excluded from the function of active Spiration, there would remain no basis for a Hypostatic distinction between the Second Person and the Holy Ghost. For it is only in virtue of the relationis oppositio, or relative opposition between spirare and spirari, that the Son is a different Person from the Holy Ghost.⁶ It follows that the Logos differs from the Holy Ghost not because He is begotten by the Father, but because He breathes the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost is breathed by Him.

The councils of Lyons and Florence defined it as an article of faith that active Spiration must be attributed to the Father and the Son per modum unius, that is, as one really identical act. This definition is ultimately based upon the axiom of the relationis oppositio. Whatever does not include relative opposition in the Godhead, appertains to the indistinct identity of the Divine Being and Essence. Hence active Spiration must be identical with Paternity and Filiation, or, in other words, Father and Son are necessarily one Spirator, even as the product of their Spiration, the Holy Ghost, is one. This unica spiratio was interpreted by the rule of St. Anselm, which we have called the fundamental law of the Trinity, in the Decretum pro Iacobitis, which emphatically declares that the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Ghost in the same sense in which the Blessed Trinity, as the Creator of the physical universe, is the one sole principle of the creature.⁷

4. The Three “Relationes Personificae”

If, as we have said, the Divine Nature subsists in three Hypostases or Persons, only three of the four real Relations existing in the Godhead can be “relationes personificae,” that is to say, only three constitute Persons. These three are: Paternity (paternitas, πατρότης), Filiation (filiatio, υἱότης), and Passive Spiration (processio, ἐκπόρευσις).

a) It is easy to perceive that, concretely, these three Relations are the three Divine Persons themselves: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It follows, — and this is a most important truth, — that the three Divine Persons, as such, are Subsistent Relations; and since there are no accidents in God, they must be conceived as Substantial Relations. Hence the Scholastic axiom “Personae divinae sunt relationes subsistentes et substantiales.” The concept of Hypostasis or Person is most perfectly realized in Paternity, Filiation, and Passive Spiration, because it is to these “relationes personificae,” in virtue of their exclusive opposition, that the distinctive note of “totietas in se” appertains. The mystery of the Divine Trinity consists in this, that the one concrete Nature of the Godhead culminates in three distinct Hypostases, who, as three perfect Persons, possess one and the same Nature in common.

Some theologians teach that the Divine Persons are constituted by their origins rather than by their Relations. This opinion does not differ substantially from the one set forth above. For as the origin of the Son by Generation and of the Holy Ghost by Spiration forms the fundamental basis of the divine Relations, there is no objective difference between origins and Relations. They differ only to our imperfect mode of thinking, which conceives the Processions as expressing primarily the “fieri” (via ad personas), and the Relations as denoting the complete state (in facto esse, forma permanens). Since, however, in our human conception of the Divine Persons, the point of prime importance is not their genesis, but their permanence, theologians are wont to say that the Divine Persons are constituted by their Relations rather than by their origins.⁸

b) We have still to answer the important question, why, despite the fact of its being a real Relation, the spiratio activa does not produce a separate Divine Hypostasis. If Paternity, Filiation, and passive Spiration are the only “relationes personificae,” active Spiration must manifestly be cancelled from the list of “subsistent” relations; because else we should have a quaternity instead of a trinity. Consequently, the Spirator, as such, must be impersonal.

The objective theological reason for the impersonal character of the Spirator is the fact that active Spiration is a function common to both Father and Son. In other words, the “unus Spirator” presupposes two complete Hypostases, constituted by the relations of Paternity and Filiation. Consequently there is no room left for a fourth person.

It follows from what we have said that Spiration in its active sense (spiratio activa) constitutes an essential note of the definition of Paternity and Filiation. In other words, the Father cannot be conceived adequately, unless He is conceived as Spirator; and the same holds true of the Son. The complete concept of both Father and Son contains spirare as a logical ingredient. There is this difference, however. With the Father spirare takes the form of giving, while with the Son it takes the form of being received: because the Father has the power of Spiration from Himself, whereas the Son possesses it only in virtue of His Generation by the Father. In defining as an article of faith the unica spiratio by which the Father and the Son produce the Holy Ghost, the Church has therefore erected a strong rampart around the dogma of the Blessed Trinity, effectively preventing its transformation into a quaternity.

It is easy to see how the Greek schism, “the greatest and most enduring of all the schisms that have rent the Church,” affects the dogma of the Blessed Trinity. (a) It denies the immediate and direct union of the Holy Ghost with the Son, which can consist only in a relation of origin. At the same time it deprives the Holy Ghost of His attribute of “own Spirit of the Son.”⁹ (b) It denies the perfect unity of Father and Son, in virtue of which the Son possesses everything except Paternity (and therefore also the virtus et actus spirandi) in common with the Father. (c) It denies the indivisible unity of the Father, since the character of Spirator no longer appears as contained in and founded on Paternity, but standing independently alongside of it, must, like Paternity, constitute a Person, and so give the Father a double personality.¹⁰