Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

«Since the essence of the three persons is one, therefore also all absolute attributes are common, and every attribute is one in the three persons not in species but in number. For the same reason no operation ad extra can be proper to one person, but every operation is necessarily common and numerically one and undivided in the three persons, just as the nature of the three is one and undivided».

I. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one God. They are therefore distinguished in no way insofar as they are God; and so the Godhead or essence or absolute perfection, by which God is understood to be and which God is, is altogether one and undivided ¹. The three are distinguished, however, insofar as the Father is formally the one producing the Word or begetting the Son, and insofar as the Son is formally begotten by the Father, and insofar as He is formally spirated by the Father and the Son. And so the real distinction rests solely in the relations of origin of one from another: this one relative to the other relative, the principle to the principiate, are not one, but under this aspect of relative they are really distinct; he who is the Father of the Son is not the Son; and he who is the Son of the Father is not the Father, yet the Son is that absolute which the Father is, and conversely. Hence comes that truest axiom of the theologians, most convenient for readily explaining many not very useful quibbles: «in God all things are one, where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way» ². Surely what we call an absolute attribute is really nothing other than the most simple divine essence conceived by us under the formal aspect of this or that perfection, for example wisdom, justice, etc.; nor indeed does an attribute have a real origin either one from another or from the essence, otherwise it would no longer be absolute (loosed from relation), but as proceeding it would be relative to its principle of procession, and by this very fact there would be as many relatives really distinct among themselves, i.e. as many persons, as attributes were numbered. (Cf. Tract. de Deo th. XIII. XX. XXVI.)

Not therefore only because the attributes are really the divine essence itself, but because they have no real origin either from the essence or from one another, and so «no opposition of relation stands in the way», the same essence, just as it is one in itself, so also viewed under the formal aspect of any absolute attribute is necessarily one and not multipliable. Hence if some absolute attribute were conceived in one person, e.g. in the Father, and the same were denied in the other person, by that very fact the most simple divine essence and the Godhead would be denied to this one: and if an attribute only the same in species but distinct in number in the distinct persons were affirmed, by that very fact distinct essences and several Gods would be introduced. On the contrary, although the relations of origin, i.e. the formal aspect of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirated, are really the divine essence itself, and therefore do not proceed from the essence by a real origin nor are really distinguished from it, nevertheless these relations have (and, which amounts to the same, in the concrete signification of the relative) among themselves the aspect of principle and principiate, one really proceeds from the other, and therefore «the opposition of relation stands in the way», so that the Father of the Son is not the Son, the Son of the Father is not the Father, but under this formal aspect of the relatives and under this alone they are really distinguished among themselves.

To this numerical unity of the essence and of the attributes in the three distinct persons it is no obstacle that the essence in the Father is uncommunicated and communicable, in the Son communicated by the Father, in the Holy Spirit communicated by the Father and the Son, and so seems to be otherwise disposed in one person than in another. For this diverse mode does not affect the essence viewed absolutely, or the absolute Being itself, one altogether and undivided; but that mode is in reality the relation of paternity, of filiation, and of procession. For what does it mean that the essence in the Father is uncommunicated and communicable? Nothing other than that the absolute essence is at the same time a relative, and under this aspect of the relative it is not proceeding from another (ἀγέννητον) but a principle producing the Word or begetting the Son; further, under this aspect of the relative disposing itself as principle toward the Son, the essence is no longer formally the common absolute essence, but is the Father, a hypostasis. Likewise this: the essence in the Son is communicated, signifies nothing other than that the absolute essence is at the same time a relative proceeding through generation as the Word or as the Son from the other relative, which is the generating Father; then, moreover, again under this aspect of the relative proceeding as the Word, the essence is not formally the common absolute essence, but is the Son, a hypostasis; «each one of the three persons is that thing, namely the substance, essence or divine nature... and that thing is neither generating nor generated nor proceeding, but it is the Father who generates, and the Son who is generated, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds; so that the distinctions are in the persons and the unity in the nature» IV Lateran Council, ch. Damnamus. But these things will be better understood where we treat of the proper notion of the divine hypostasis.

The proof for this unity of the three persons in all absolute perfections is none other than that by which the Godhead of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and consequently the unity of essence in the three distinct persons has been demonstrated above in many ways. The communication of attributes is formally expressed in the passages of Scripture where the Son in relation to the Father professes: «My Father, what He has given me, is greater than all» Io. X. 29; «as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to the Son also to have life in Himself» ibid. V. 26. «all things which You have given me are from You» ibid. XVII. 7, «all my things are Yours, and Your things are mine» ib. XVII. 10; «all things whatsoever the Father has are mine; therefore I said, because He will receive of mine» ib. XVI. 15.

II. In exactly the same way as the nature of the three persons with all its absolute perfections is one and undivided, so also the operation ad extra of the three persons is one and undivided. The truth is evident from the proper notion of divine operation. For it is nothing other than the divine essence itself under the formal aspect of absolute intellect and absolute omnipotent will, with the connotation of a term to be effected extrinsically. But the divine essence, under whatever absolute formal aspect it is viewed according to our mode of distinguishing, and therefore also under the formal aspect of absolute intellection and volition, is altogether one in number and the same in the three persons. Such, therefore, is the unity of operation in the three persons.

The same is made clear from the very notion of the divine person. The persons in God are distinguished only by the relations of origin, insofar as under the formal aspect of the relative one is a principle disposing itself toward the other as principiate; the Father is distinguished from the Son in no other way than by paternity and filiation alone; the Father and the Son are not distinguished from the Holy Spirit, except that by spiration they dispose themselves as principle toward the one proceeding; paternity therefore (which is at the same time ἀγεννησία, insofar as this is understood as something positive, or as the aspect of a principle without a principle), filiation, procession are substantive relations proper to the individual persons; spiration, common to the Father and the Son, can be called proper only in comparison of the spirating principle with the Holy Spirit proceeding, to whom it is not common. Besides these relations ad intra, therefore, and whatever hypostatic relation ad extra there may be, all the rest which can be conceived of God are absolute and therefore one undivided in the three, just as the three are one God. But the effective operation in God is neither generation nor nativity nor spiration nor procession, nor a hypostatic relation to an external term. Therefore every operation ad extra is one undivided in the three persons, just as the Godhead of the three is one, or just as God is one.

I have said: operation is not a hypostatic relation to an external term (i.e. distinct and diverse from God). A hypostatic relation, neither from faith nor, faith being supposed, from the light of reason, can be understood as other than either ad intra, of a person producing another person or proceeding from another person, or ad extra, of a person having a created nature hypostatically united. A hypostatic relation ad intra indeed cannot be efficient of an external term, but regards the divine person. But the external term, beside this internal relation, can be connoted as nothing other than (prescinding now from the hypostatic union) the manifestation of the person ad extra through some efficiency; generation and spiration with this connotation is the mission of the Son from the Father, and the mission of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. What therefore in mission is proper to one person and not common to the three: on the part of the sending person it is not operation but the relation of the one generating and spirating; on the part of the person sent it is the relation of filiation or procession; but the efficiency ad extra which is connoted in mission is necessarily common to the three persons, as they are one God ³.

There remains therefore only the hypostatic union, which can be proper to one person and not common to the three. For the individual divine hypostases have only their own formal aspect of hypostasis, but whatever pertains to the nature is common and one to them; but the function of the hypostasis, formally as it is a hypostasis distinct in reason from the nature, is known neither by revelation nor by the light of reason as other than that it be a subject having the nature as its own. Hence a function ad extra proper to one hypostasis and not common to the three can be understood as nothing other than that it have an assumed created nature as its own, which we know from revelation both can be done and has been done. But this having of a nature is not an effective operation, but is a hypostatic termination, and a certain state to be understood according to the analogy of a formal cause, not of an efficient cause. Whatever efficiency, however, intervenes in that union, it is all of the one and triune God. In sum, the divine persons do not operate ad extra formally as they are three distinct relatives to one another, but as they are one God. For the principle, or rather the subject, which operates is indeed the hypostasis; but the principle by which the operation is brought about is the nature.

Hence among the holy Fathers and in the Councils there is an axiom of the greatest moment in the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity and of Christ: operations are not hypostatic but natural, i.e. the distinction of operation according to species and number does not follow the number of hypostases but the species and number of natures. Where therefore the nature is one in number, even if there are several hypostases, the operation is one in number, as in the Most Holy Trinity; on the contrary, where the natures are several in number, and where the natures are not only several in number but also diverse, even if there is one hypostasis, as in Christ, there also the order of operations is manifold and diverse according to the multiplicity and diversity of the natures. This principle the Fathers assume as altogether evident and conceded by all, when the question concerns God, because the divine operation is the divine essence itself and therefore, another operation in the Father and another in the Son being admitted, by that very fact another and another essence would be asserted. From this indeed, against the Monothelites, they demonstrate that in Christ the twofold diverse order of divine and human operation cannot be denied, without by that very fact one nature alone being admitted and consequently the heresy of the Monophysites being introduced. Thus in the case of the Monothelites, from the unity of the operation of the three persons argues St. Agatho the Pontiff, in the epistle to the Emperors read in the VI Council (Harduin. T. III. p. 1083). «According to the rule of the holy catholic and apostolic Church of Christ, (the same Church) confesses and preaches that there are also two natural wills in Him and two natural operations. For if anyone understand a personal will (which would follow the number of persons), while three persons are said in the holy Trinity, it is necessary that three personal wills and three personal operations also be said, which is excessively absurd and profane. But if, as the truth of the Christian faith contains, the will is natural (from the nature as principle by which, and following the number of natures), where this one nature of the holy and inseparable Trinity is said, consequently also one natural will and one natural operation must be understood». (See Tract. de Incarnat. th. XL.)

Now indeed both in Scripture and in the preaching of the Fathers the unity of action is proposed, as closer and better known to our understanding, as a principle from which the unity of nature of the three persons is deduced. Thus the Son of God adduces the unity of His power and action and that of the Father for keeping the faithful and for giving eternal life as a declaration, and in general that He Himself does the works of His Father, as a demonstration of the mystery announced: «I and the Father are one; the Father is in me, and I in the Father» Io. X. 28. seqq. (above p. 20. sq.). The unity of testimony is joined with the unity of essence, and the testimony of the three is the testimony of the one God: «there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one... the testimony of God is greater» 1. Io. V. 7. 9. (above th. V.). Likewise the Son affirms that every operation of the Father from the beginning is His operation, and denies that His power is other than the Father's power: «My Father works until now, and I work... whatsoever He has done, these the Son also does in like manner (ταῦτα καὶ ὁ Υἱὸς ὁμοίως ποιεῖ).... As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom He will». «The Son cannot do anything of Himself, except what He has seen the Father doing» Io. V. 17. 19. 21. From this unity of action the Jews themselves understood that the proper filiation of God and equality with God were being asserted: «because He called God His own Father (πατέρα, ἴδιον), making Himself equal (ἴσον) to God» ib. v. 18.

To the same point pertains that in the Scriptures the divine operation is sometimes attributed to the one God viewed absolutely, besides whom there is no other, sometimes to the individual persons, sometimes to the persons jointly. «I am the Lord making all things, stretching out the heavens alone, establishing the earth and no one with me» Is. XLIV. 24. «I confess to You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth» Matth. XI. 25. «But to the Son (concerning the Son) He says: You, Lord, in the beginning founded the earth, and the works of Your hands are the heavens» Heb. 1. 8. 10. «You will send forth Your Spirit, and they will be created» Ps. CIII. 30. «The Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world, and that which contains all things (Πνεῦμα Κυρίου τὸ συνέχον τὰ πάντα), has knowledge of the voice» Sap. I. 7: (cf. Ambros. de Spiritu Sancto l. II. c. 5; Cyrillus Alex. Dialog. VII. p. 649, and elsewhere). «God made the ages through the Son» Heb. I. 2. «For us there is one God the Father, from whom all things... and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things» 1. Cor. VIII. 6.

When the Father is said to create and operate in the Holy Spirit, both the relation of origin of the persons is indicated and the unity of operation is preeminently expressed, namely that just as the nature is one, so also the same power and operation is communicated from the Father to the Son, and from the Father through the Son (from the Father and the Son) to the Holy Spirit. Therefore both in the Scriptures and most frequently among the Fathers, when the relation to the works is to be expressed together with the internal relations of the persons, the Son and the Holy Spirit are called the power of the Father, and the Father is said to operate through the Son and the Holy Spirit as through His power, through His arm, through His hands: at the same time, however, insofar as the power and operation is one, this same thing is declared, as if it were said that the Father operates through Himself (above p. 136. 163; see Petav. de Deo l. V. c. 8. and 9.).

Among the Fathers the demonstration of the one essence from the unity of operation, or conversely of the latter from the former, is everywhere to be met with. «The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are three hypostases, since the subsistence of each one is distinct; but when the persons do not each will and operate in a manner proper to themselves, nor by a choice proper to themselves, and singly and separately, but as they are one (ἀλλ' ἑνάς), not three Gods but one God is» Damasc. de duabus volunt. n. 7. See the luculent doctrine of the Fathers in Petav. Trin. l. IV. c. 15.

Hence it is clear that nothing other than the unity of nature is signified when the three persons are said to be one in will, counsel, power, etc. Not rarely, however, these absolute attributes are expressed by the Fathers in such a way that the distinction of the persons is at the same time signified. Thus when the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are said to consent among themselves, to take counsel, one person to cooperate with another, the consent, the counsel, the cooperation must be understood in the manner in which consubstantiality is understood. For, as Cyril of Alexandria says in another matter, «the particle with, when added, always signifies one with another» (Anathemat. VIII. contra Nestor. cf. Apolog. ibi contr. Orientales); namely, through that particle with the distinction of the persons is expressed, not however also by itself that of the nature, or, which amounts to the same, of the operation (ad extra).

Corollary 1. Not only must the common operation ad extra of the three persons be believed as a revealed fact, as if indeed absolutely speaking there could be an operation proper to one person, without its being the same for all three hypostases; but every operation ad extra must be understood as so necessarily one in the three persons without any distinction, as the nature of the three is necessarily one and the three are one God.

Corollary 2. Just as in the declared sense no one can confess one common operation of the three persons without by that very fact affirming the nature of the three to be one in number and undivided, so conversely the negation of this unity in operating is a certain argument of a unity of nature either denied or not rightly understood. The Güntherians, affirming that by the very fact that the divine hypostases are really distinguished, the operation ad extra also cannot be common to the three and one in number, but that there is one operation proper to one person, another proper to another, are convicted by this even alone, as the clearest indication, that by them three substances or divine essences really distinct in number are admitted no less than three distinct hypostases. But that Günther was in the error which we have mentioned with regard to the divine operations is most certain. «The question must be solved, says Günther, which one of the three divine and personal substances has brought the idea of God concerning the universe and concerning the creature to reality, if it has not been brought to reality by all three together. This last no one will surely affirm, who has understood the distinction between the real theogonic process in the life of the absolute (i.e. between the processions of the substantial persons) and the formal process of the individual hypostases in that life (i.e. between the mode in which the individual persons know themselves and understand themselves as distinct from others)... In the manifestation of God ad extra all things are personal, i.e. to be attributed as operation and completed work to one determinate person and to no other, and much less to all three together.» He then teaches that creation must be predicated «of no other person than of the second, of the Son»; but that the union of the creature with God is effected by the third person. Propaedeut. T. II. p. 369-372; Symposion Peregrini p. 388. 396. He acknowledges no other community of operation, except that in certain works one person performs one part, another another. Thus he says that in the incarnation of the Word the Holy Spirit produced the body, the Father created the soul of Christ, or at least effected the union of the soul with the body. Propaed. ib. p. 371; Sympos. p. 396. That the Catholic doctrine is altogether contrary to all these things abundantly appears from what has been demonstrated in the thesis.