Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

«Granted the distinction which we have shown to be indicated in the Old Testament, and especially having instituted the comparison with the clearer revelation of the New Testament concerning the Word begotten by the Father, it cannot be denied that this mystery of the internal procession and of personal distinction is contained expressly in the descriptions of divine Wisdom, as they are set forth in the books of the Old Testament: Prov. VIII; Sap. VII seq.; Eccli. XXIV.»

In these indicated passages three things are to be distinguished. For a) there is speech there also of created wisdom, as a gift and effect and manifestation of uncreated wisdom — whether created wisdom is called metonymically the disposition, order, and beauty of all God's works, or whether it is called the wisdom of the divine law, or whether formally wisdom is a virtue of the created intellect and mind¹. b) There is described the creative and eternal Wisdom, which is God Himself under the formal aspect of substantial and absolute Wisdom. Truly c) that Wisdom cannot be understood solely under the aspect of an absolute attribute is shown by the personal distinction more than once expressed in these very passages. For although, when the clear revelation of the New Testament was not yet presupposed, it might perhaps not be sufficiently established in the cited passages concerning the distinction between the person of him whose Wisdom is said, and the person which is itself called Wisdom; nevertheless, with this mystery now known — that the Word and hypostatic Wisdom is begotten by the Father as a person distinct — no one will deny that the same truth is also enunciated there, who has weighed that not men, but the Holy Spirit, «who searches the depths of God», is the author of the sacred books. With these things premised, let us inspect the descriptions themselves of this creative, omnipotent, omniscient Wisdom, which therefore without doubt is God, so that we may understand to what extent the distinction of persons is indicated.

1. In the book of Proverbs Wisdom speaks thus: «The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning. From eternity I was ordained (Hebr. I was anointed, i.e., as it were consecrated to rule, cf. Ps. II. 6) and of old, before the earth was made» Prov. VIII. 22. 23. The eternity and divinity of Wisdom are manifest; nevertheless, the distinction is already indicated. With the same word Eve, when she bore her firstborn Son, said: «I have possessed (I have acquired by generation, and I have my son) a man through God» Gen. IV. 1. If the signification could be doubtful, it is declared by what follows: «the abysses were not yet (תהום; the same name Gen. I. 2), and I was already conceived... before the hills I was brought forth». In Hebrew in both places the verb is the same, חוללתי, expressing generation in its proper signification. Lest the words possessed me, I was conceived, I was brought forth should seem able to be understood only of a distinction of reason, and Wisdom be said to be conceived in the divine mind as a divine counsel and an absolute attribute, a still more express declaration of distinct personality is added. «When (the Lord) prepared the heavens, I was present.... I was with him composing all things, and I was delighted day by day, playing before him at all times, playing in the orb of the earth, and my delights were to be with the sons of men» ibid. vv. 24-31. That «I was with him» is read in the Hebrew text: I was beside him (אצלו); so too the LXX: ἤμην παρ' αὐτῷ, and the old Latin Fathers: beside him or with him. «Composing all things» Hebr. אמון; the Chaldean Paraphrase has: I was nourished beside him; Aquila: τιθηνουμένη, nursed. The verb I was delighted can be taken actively, as elsewhere too to delight someone occurs (Forcellini); for in Hebrew it is: «and I was the delight (of him)»; the Greeks have: ἐγὼ ἤμην, ᾗ προσέχαιρεν; the old Latin Fathers: «I was, whom he rejoiced in» (see the Itala of Sabatier). It can therefore be rendered word for word: «I was beside him as artificer, or nursling, and I was the delight (of him) all days (always)». Now let these be compared with what is said in the N. T. of the Word: «in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, all things were made through him»; «the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father»; «to which of the angels did he at any time say: You are my Son, today I have begotten you»; «this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased». Truly all things agree in such a way that no other difference can be shown except that in the N. T., since the Word has now been made flesh and is visible in his human nature, the distinct hypostasis is exhibited still more clearly and is preached more insistently, while in the V. T. the transition from Wisdom considered absolutely to Wisdom subsisting in a hypostasis distinct from the Father is less expressed.

The truth of this interpretation is to be retained all the more certainly because the Fathers consented to it in great number; for the Doctors older than the Arian heresy understood it in this way, except that some, as Irenaeus (l. IV. c. 20) and perhaps Tertullian (contr. Hermogen. c. 18), thought that by the name of Wisdom the third hypostasis, the Holy Spirit, was signified; and in the disputation itself against the Arians it was admitted without controversy that Wisdom is here described as hypostatic and the Word as a person distinct from the Father². A more evident argument of how undoubted and common was the persuasion concerning this signification of distinct persons is this: while the Arians constituted this very passage, understood of the Son of God, as the summit of their heresy, the Fathers nevertheless constantly retained the reference of the words to the Son of God; but they refuted their interpretation concerning the creation of the Son. For the Arians read that «The Lord possessed me» as: Κύριος ἔκτισέ με, The Lord created me, as it still is now in the Greek version, and that it was so in the old Latin is established from the Fathers (see Sabatier), and they understood this of the creation properly so called of the Son. The Fathers readily conceded to them that here the speech is about the Son of God, but they denied that the Word is said to be created in the proper sense. For either they showed from other interpreters that for ἔκτισε one must read ἐκτήσατο, «possessed me» (cf. Basil. cont. Eunom. l. II. n. 20)³; or they said that to signify the generation of the Word from the Father the word created is employed, so that the suspicion of passion and imperfection in the Father may be excluded (s. Hilar. de Synod. anathem. 5; cf. S. Th. contr. gent. l. IV. c. 8); or also, more frequently, they answered that the Son is said to be created by reason of the assumed humanity. See the Fathers in Petavius l. II. c. i., although that most learned man afterwards proposes another interpretation of this whole passage, little suitable and not probable from what has been said.

II. When it is now established that Prov. VIII. describes the distinct hypostasis of begotten Wisdom, i.e., of the Word, the same doctrine must also be recognized in the parallel passages Sap. VII. 21. seq. and Ecclesi. XXIV. 5. seq. But let the distinction be observed here even more than in Prov., between when the hypostasis of Wisdom is described in itself and when it is considered as dwelling in the people of God, in Solomon, in the saints and prophets, through the law and through the wisdom and charisms which are effects of the hypostatic Wisdom, lest the descriptions of the effects seem to contradict those things which pertain to the hypostasis of the divine Wisdom in itself. It will help not a little toward the understanding of these passages to have kept before one's eyes the manner in which the Fathers, as Justin and others (cf. Tract. de Deo), proceed from the hypostatic Word, who is ὁ λόγος simply, to λόγον σπερματικόν, the seminal word, which is a certain participation of the Word himself — both natural and supernatural — in created minds, or even his effect in the wise disposition and magnificence of the whole created universe.

As for the hypostatic Wisdom in itself, it is described, as in Prov., so also in Sap. and Ecclesi., above all as eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, creatrix and governess of all things. «Being one, it can do all things, and remaining in itself it renews all things»; «it reaches mightily from end to end and disposes all things sweetly»; «of the things that are, it is the artificer» (τῶν ὄντων τεχνῖτις); «it knows all those things and understands»; the same guarded and governed all the patriarchs, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, Moses; the same led the people of Israel out of Egypt, «and it was to them for a covering by day and for the light of stars by night, it carried them through the Red Sea, but their enemies it drowned in the sea» Sap. VII. 21. 27; VIII. 1. 6; IX. 11; X. 1-19. In this chapter X. Wisdom already coincides with the Angel of the Lord, i.e., with the Lord, who appeared and was sent in the V. T. distinct from the one sending. But, leaving this aside, the personal distinction is also indicated expressly and immediately.

Wisdom is said to stand by the throne of God, to have created the heavens with God: «(your holy tabernacle) you prepared from the beginning, and with you (μετὰ σοῦ) your Wisdom, which knows your works, which was present also then, when you made the orb of the earth (παροῦσα, ὅτε ἐποίεις τὸν κόσμον), and knew what was pleasing in your eyes» Sap. IX. 4. 8. 9. Then the same Wisdom, the artificer of all things, having all power, foreseeing all things, reaching everywhere, is declared more expressly as proceeding and begotten from God. «For it is a vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the clarity of the almighty God... for it is the brightness of eternal light and the unspotted mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of his goodness. And being one, it can do all things, and remaining in itself it renews all things» Sap. VII. 25-27. All these predicates — «vapor of the power of God, emanation of clarity, brightness of light, mirror of majesty, image of goodness» — evidently signify the same thing under different analogies; but the signification, where these are said of eternal and omnipotent Wisdom, cannot be other than that of origin; and, this being posited, the distinction is understood through the opposition of relation between the principle and the one proceeding from the principle. The clearest argument for the truth of this explanation is sought from the fact that the unity of nature and the distinction of persons is declared in the N. T. in exactly the same way. The Son of God is «the splendor of glory and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power» Heb. I. 3⁴. Hence also the Fathers, both before and after the Council of Nicaea, most frequently used this similitude of light and of the splendor from light to declare the distinction and consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. Thus Athanasius, to confirm the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, cites the words of Theognostus, who had presided over the catechetical school of Alexandria from the year 250: «the substance of the Son was not devised from without nor drawn from non-existent things, but is from the substance of the Father, as the splendor of light, as the vapor of water (ὡς τοῦ φωτὸς τὸ ἀπαύγασμα, ὡς ὕδατος ἀτμίς); for neither is the splendor or the vapor the water itself or the sun itself, nor again is it something alien, but it is an emanation (ἀπόρροια) of the substance of the Father, in such a way, however, that the substance of the Father has suffered no division» Athan. de decret. Nic. n. 25. See s. Pamphilum, Apolog. c. 3. and 5. (Galland. IV. P. 16. 24), and the other Fathers in Petav. l. V. c. 8. n. 11. sq.

According to these things must also be understood what is read in Ecclesi. XXIV., if perhaps there the sense should seem in itself less expressed. Wisdom, through which the universe was created, from which all the wisdom of the nations, from which especially the Law and the Testament and the ceremonies and the wisdom of the people of God — this divine Wisdom says of itself: «I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, firstborn before every creature... from the beginning and before the ages I was created, and unto the future age I will not cease» Ecclesi. XXIV. 5. 14., which are manifestly parallel to the celebration of Wisdom Prov. VIII. 22: «The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways.... before the hills I was brought forth». In the same way, therefore, they are to be understood of the hypostatic and begotten Wisdom.