Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« God, revealing Himself as triune in persons, has also explicitly revealed that, besides the known of God, which is to be contemplated by the intellect through the things that have been made, there are depths of God which, since they are above the power of human understanding, the Spirit of God alone searches, and has revealed to us. That the internal processions and the Trinity of persons belong above all to these depths of God is demonstrated both from the written word of God and from the perpetual profession and catholic understanding; and it follows also from the very proper character of this dogma in comparison with our manner of understanding. The Most Holy Trinity is therefore a mystery in the proper sense, whose truth can neither be known by the light of human reason apart from revelation, nor, granted revelation, be demonstrated from merely rational principles. »

In order rightly to understand the sense of the proposition, one must have before one the notion of a mystery in the proper sense taken universally. 1°. It does not suffice to say that the notion of person, and consequently of the Trinity of persons in God, transcends our concept, so that whether before or after having received revelation we are able to apprehend it not by a proper but only by an analogical notion. For although this is indeed most true, yet it is common to the essence and to all the divine attributes; nor are the existence, omnipotence, wisdom of God, etc. for that reason simply superrational mysteries. For a mystery in the strict sense, in the truths of faith, includes two things: that neither is the existence of the truth (whether it is) understood by the light of reason alone, nor can its internal reason (what it is) be apprehended by us with a proper concept (as proper is distinguished from analogous) even granted faith. We shall say most briefly: in mysteries both the knowledge of apprehension and the cognition of assent — that is, both the idea of the quiddity and the judgment of truth — are above the powers of reason. In this matter the Güntherians deceived themselves not a little, who, claiming for the Most Holy Trinity an understanding acquired by the light of reason alone, that it is and what it is (as they said), nevertheless affirmed that the character of the superrational mystery was sufficiently preserved by confessing that we do not know God as He is, and as God Himself knows Himself. But if we only do not know properly how He is, the Trinity is no more above reason than the existence of the one God; and this very thing subverts the character of the mystery, such as we shall see it asserted in Scripture and by the Fathers. But that we do not know God as He Himself knows Himself — that pertains nothing to the notion of mystery; for such a manner of knowing is comprehension, which altogether repugnates to a creature even in any supernatural elevation to the beatific vision.

2°. Yet the mystery is not such that, granted revelation, we understand nothing about what it is. Indeed, unless we apprehended in some way, at least by analogical notions, what that is which is revealed and proposed for belief, explicit faith in such a truth could have no place; for not the words but the things or truths signified by the words are the (material) object of faith. With regard to the idea of the quiddity, therefore, that is, what we have called the knowledge of apprehension, the mystery seems to be on the same footing as the knowledge even of the absolute attributes of God. But although the difference lies chiefly in the judgment of truth, which with regard to the Most Holy Trinity is altogether superrational, but with regard to the existence of God and the absolute attributes is not so; nevertheless there still remains a great difference in the very knowledge of apprehension. For we attain to the analogical concept of the attributes of God from the adumbrations in creatures by the light of reason, through the way of affirmation, negation, and transcendence (τῆς ὑπεροχῆς), and so we ascend from the lower analogue to the concept of the archetype or (as they say) of the first analogue, in which operation of the mind one arrives not only at the analogical notion of the quiddity, but at the same time at the judgment of truth (Tract. de Deo th. XII.). On the contrary, the very notion of the persons, which are constituted by relations and which under the formal reason of persons, really distinct from one another, are at the same time one essence in number, we would never apprehend unless positive doctrine and revelation preceded. Finally, once revelation is proposed, we seek analogies in created things in order to form some concept; and so, although reason here does something by its own light, that is, from rational ideas, it nevertheless always leans on positive revelation, and thus from the object proposed by revelation reason as it were descends to investigate the adumbrations in creatures — not that the judgment of truth (whether it is) may be demonstrated, for this stands by faith alone; but that some concept analogous to the thing to be believed may be formed.

The root and foundation of this difference is that God, the creator and first cause operating ad extra by understanding and willing, and universally according to the absolute attributes, exhibits these very attributes, « everlasting power and divinity », « to be contemplated by the intellect through the things that have been made » (Rom. I. 19. seqq. see Tract. de Deo Sect. I.); on the contrary, the relative persons, mutually and among themselves really distinct, are immanent relations, nor are generation and procession referred ad extra; and so the persons operate inasmuch as they are one God, not inasmuch as they are referred to one another and distinguished by relations. Thus, then, God according to the absolutes is knowable from His works as cause from effect, that He is, and analogically what He is; but under the formal reason of the relations ad intra He is not the cause of the works ad extra, and therefore He is not knowable as cause from effect, whether He is and what He is.

After those internal processions and distinct persons have been revealed, we can indeed find in creatures, especially in the created spirit, analogies for forming some concept of the processions and divine persons, what they are. And this comes from the fact that the created spirit, as the image of God, exhibits immediately the analogy of divine intellection and volition (love); whence, after we have learned from revelation the processions in God according to intellection and love, we are able to arrive mediately, through the concept of intellection and love, at forming a concept of the processions. Properly, therefore, it should be said: from creatures we immediately apprehend analogically the absolute attributes, and (granted the revelation of the relative things) from the absolute attributes (and so from creatures mediately) we apprehend analogically the processions and internal relations (cf. S. Th. I. q. 32. a. 1. ad 1.). If therefore at times the Fathers, as Athanasius orat. I. contra Arian. n. 11. 12., seem to interpret of the distinct persons that saying of the Apostle Rom. I. 20.: « His invisible things, from the creation of the world, through the things that have been made, are seen understood, His everlasting power also and divinity »; this accommodation of the Fathers must be understood of the immediate knowledge of the absolute attributes from creatures, and of the concept of the persons mediately deduced, granted revelation. Thus St. Cyril, after he had indicated that the everlasting power in that text of Paul can be understood of the Son, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God, immediately subjoins this commentary. « It is written: no one knows the Father but the Son, and him to whom the Son has willed to reveal Him. If, however, the Father is known to the Son alone, and through Him alone is revealed to others, then the Father is not contemplated through a creature nor from the understanding of the things that have been made; but the creature indeed proclaims its creator, God the Word (not as distinct from the Father but as creator); the Word, however (already known through revelation as a distinct person), shows the Father in Himself. Therefore to Philip saying: show us the Father, He does not bid him to understand Him by concluding from the beauty of creatures ¹, but He shows Himself, saying: he who has seen Me, has seen the Father also » Cyrill. Thesaur. T. V. P. I. p. 20. 21.

These things being premised, for the demonstration of the thesis we ask what revelation itself and the catholic understanding of revelation directly teach us about the superrationality of the mystery; then what is to be concluded about the same superrationality, when the dogma itself as revealed is examined, and a comparison is made with our rational manner of knowing.

I. We consider first the doctrine of Scripture on the superrational eminence of the mystery.

1°. That in general there are some supernatural truths, the knowledge of which is necessary to men and which nevertheless exceed reason, nor can they be known except through faith in the present life and through supernatural vision in the future life, is most fully attested in revelation itself. Paul declares this matter in the whole of I. Cor. II., deliberately.

The Apostle distinguishes a twofold objective wisdom, that is, a twofold series of things and truths to be known. The first is « the wisdom which the Apostles speak among the perfect », « the wisdom which none of the princes of this world knew », « the wisdom of God hidden in mystery »; to this there is then opposed « the wisdom of this world », « the wisdom which the Greeks seek » (ib.

I. 22.). To each objective wisdom there corresponds, of course, a twofold and most diverse formal or subjective wisdom: one is « the mind of Christ », through it men are « spiritual » (πνευματικοί); through the other a man is « wise (σοφός); but wise according to the flesh, a scribe (γραμματεύς, a man of letters, as Tertullian renders it, contra idololatr. c. 8), a disputer of this world » ² (ib. I. 20. 26.); by virtue of this wisdom a man still remains « animal » (ψυχικός) ³.

Hence, further, the efficient principle or immediate source of each wisdom differs. Of the wisdom which the Greeks seek, the proximate principle is, of course, human reason, or better, the principle is God through the light of reason and through the works of creation (Rom. I. 19. sqq.). But the principle of the other, higher wisdom is the Holy Spirit in a far different way; and that in two ways. For a) He internally affects the rational soul and renders men « spiritual ». This indeed can happen and does happen even with regard to truths knowable by the light of reason, so that the manner of cognition is not animal or natural but spiritual or supernatural. But b) here the Apostle treats of truths which are altogether unknowable by the light of reason. With regard to these truths he teaches that a twofold operation of the Holy Spirit is necessary, or rather an operation of the Holy Spirit for a twofold effect: first, that the mystery, in itself altogether hidden from and inaccessible to natural human reason, be rendered knowable, which is done by internal or external revelation; secondly, that it be known as it ought to be, which is done by internal grace, rendering men « spiritual ».

We are now concerned with that former way, because in it is contained the superrational eminence of the truths about which we are inquiring.

Thus the Apostle says: the wisdom which we speak among the perfect, that is, objective wisdom, the truth, the doctrine, that thing which is the object of subjective wisdom, is wisdom in mystery. This epithet, in mystery, he declares through another: it is hidden wisdom, and that from eternity; for from eternity God predestined that thing to be brought about (inasmuch as it is contingent, and comes to be in time; for Paul has before his eyes the Incarnation and the whole economy of redemption) and to be supernaturally revealed, ib. II. 6. 7. Whence none of the princes of this world knew this wisdom. The princes of this world are without doubt those who excel among men by the prerogatives of this world or natural gifts, and who, with respect to the subject matter, excel in the wisdom which he called in v. 6. « the wisdom of the princes of this world », who are « the wise γραμματεῖς, the inquirers of this world » (ib. I. 20. 26.) ⁴. This universality of the negative proposition « none of the princes of this world knew » is not restricted by what is added: « for if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory »; but it is only shown that Pilate also, and Gentiles like him, and no less the wise Jews and scribes who rejected the revelation of Christ, are included among all those who did not know the hidden wisdom. Further, how that wisdom is in mystery, hidden, known to none of the princes of this world, Paul still declares in the words of Scripture (Is. LXIV. 4.): « but as it is written: what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it ascended into the heart of man, what God has prepared (cf. v. 7. which God predestined) for those who love Him » v. 9. What God has prepared, from the context (with Chrysostom l. c. n. 3 and Theodoret on this passage also admonishing) are of course the same as what he earlier called the wisdom which God predestined before the ages for our glory; they are, namely, the mysteries of redemption, and of these above all the foundation, the Lord of glory, Christ, the incarnate Word; nor yet for that reason can or ought the goods of heavenly beatitude included in these be less rightly understood as the end and complement of redemption. The phrase, ascended into the heart of man, is most well known in the biblical manner of speaking, signifying the same as to come into the mind, into the thought, into the intellect. When therefore it is said: « it has not ascended into the heart of man », the universal expression designates that wisdom to be above the intellect of human nature. « He speaks of the whole of human nature... Whence it is manifest that, before they were heard, they had not ascended even into the heart of man; for after the Spirit had been given, the heart of the prophets was not the heart of man (by natural human powers), but a spiritual heart, just as he himself says: we have the mind (νοῦν) of Christ » Chrys. ibid. « Since he said that the mystery of the economy (of the Incarnation) was hidden, he necessarily added: which no one ever heard nor saw, nor did the most insatiable mind think » οὔτε ὁ ἀπληστότατος ἐνενοήθη νοῦς Theodoret. ibid.

In what has been said so far — wisdom in mystery, hidden, no one knew, nor did it ascend into the heart of man — there is indeed enunciated the fact of ignorance, but a fact which is from the very nature of the thing, from the nature, I say, of the mystery to be known and of the mind knowing. If you still doubt this, proceed to what follows.

The principle of the knowledge of the mystery is solely the revelation of God through the Holy Spirit: « but God has revealed to us through His Spirit ». Whence the animal man, because the principle of knowledge, namely the supernatural principle, is lacking to him, « does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined » ⁵. Therefore such an entire ignorance is not only a fact as it were per accidens, but from the nature of the thing, from the disproportion of the natural intellect and from the supereminent order of these truths. For the truths pertain to the depths of God, the knowledge of which is natural to God alone. For just as elsewhere creation (see Tract. de Incarn. th. IV.), so here the knowledge of these depths of God is exhibited as an attribute and mark of divinity. « For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who of men knows the things that are of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him? so also the things that are of God no one has known except the Spirit of God » v. 10. 11. This is the apostolic commentary on the passage of Isaiah which he cites. What the Apostle says: « no one has known except

the Spirit of God », the same the prophet says in other words: « from of old they have not heard, nor have they perceived with ears, eye has not seen, O God, besides You » ⁶; that is, no one has known except God. In almost the same way the same prophet speaks of creation and of the supreme governance proper to God alone: « I am the Lord making all things, stretching out the heavens, etc., and there is no one with Me ». Is. XLIV. 24. XXXVII. 16. XLV. 5. sqq.

Wherefore the mysteries are said to be not only above human reason, but simply above the natural knowledge of any created intellect. « What he (the Apostle) says is of this sort: before we enjoyed the Spirit and learned the ineffable things, neither from ourselves nor from the prophets did anyone think them. For how, when not even the angels knew them? For what, he says, is to be said of the princes of this world, when no man, nor the supernal powers, knew them:... Wherefore we had need of that teacher, who knew these things clearly. For the Spirit, he says, searches all things, even the depths of God ». Chrysost. l. c. n. 3. 4.

It is established, therefore, that there are not only infinitely many truths above the finite intellect, and expressly above the human intellect considered in its whole natural perfection; but that there are some superrational truths of this sort revealed by the Holy Spirit, who alone knows them naturally.

2°. These things and truths, which are called by the Apostle « the depths of God », τὰ βάθη τοῦ Θεοῦ, in opposition to « the known of God », τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ (Rom. I. 19.), are in the context directly and explicitly called the mysteries of redemption; among these, however, in the first place Christ Himself, « the power of God and the wisdom of God » (ib. I. 24), as we have already sufficiently declared. Therefore the depths of God which the Spirit alone searches are not only the free counsels and works of sanctification ad extra; but in the inmost root of these sanctifying counsels, the depths of God which « have not ascended into the heart of man », which « from of old they have not heard nor perceived, O God, besides You », which « no one has known, except the Spirit of God », are also and indeed in the first place the internal relations themselves, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This so explicit doctrine of the Apostle on the disproportion of the created intellect to the mysteries must be kept before the eyes, so that the superrational order may be better understood in those places where there is direct speech about the divine relations and persons:

Matth. XI. 25-27. cf. Luc. X. 21-22.

« I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent (ἀπὸ σοφῶν καὶ συνετῶν) (I. Cor. I. 19. 22. 26; II. 8. 14.), and have revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, since such was your good pleasure before you (οὕτως εὐδοκία ἐγένετο ἔμπροσθέν σου) (I. Cor. I. 18. 24. 27. 30; II. 4. 5.). All things have been delivered to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son shall will to reveal him (I. Cor. II. 9. 11.). »

In the same sense St. John I. 18. concludes his doctrine concerning God the Word: « No one has ever seen God (I. Cor. II. 9. 11); the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him » ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο (I. Cor. II. 10). It is clear that, through the clause « no one knows, except him to whom the Son shall will to reveal », just as with Paul through the other parallel « no one has known except the Spirit of God; but God has revealed to us through his Spirit », knowability through the powers of human reason is indeed excluded from the immediate scope; yet from the indication of a natural knowledge which belongs to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit alone, and from the universality of the negation and of the opposition of the divine persons to the whole of creation, the natural knowledge of any created intellect is manifestly excluded. That in the phrase « no one except the Father », « no one except the Son », « no one except the Spirit of God » God is opposed to creatures, not the persons to one another, is evident of itself from the unity of the divine essence in the persons. « If he had said simply "no one," many of the hearers would have thought that this was said only of our nature; but now, since after having said "no one" he adds "except the Son," by this addition of the Only-begotten he excluded every creature... That "no one" is always set for the separation of creatures only; nor, if it is said of the Father, does it remove the Son, nor, if of the Son, does it exclude the Holy Spirit » Chrysost. hom. V. n. 1 de Incomprehens. T. I. p. 481.

II. « That the profound reality of God and the revealed truth of the distinct persons who are one God is above the natural faculty of any created intellect, and specifically above natural human reason, the holy Fathers in every age either presupposed or expressly vindicated as most certain.

1°. The holy Doctors, defenders of the truth against the heretics, and all the heretics themselves agreed that the doctrine of the Trinity, as the catholic Church proposes it, cannot be understood by human reason. But just as the Fathers insisted on revelation, and said that it must be learned from God alone speaking of himself, and that the mystery which is above our reason must be believed by faith, so conversely the heretics denounced what could not be understood by reason as contrary to reason, and for that reason accommodated the sense of revelation to the norm of merely rational notions. The Fathers agreed that human reason and philosophy must be subjected to revelation confirmed, handed on, and declared by authority, according to the doctrine of the Apostle: « destroying reasonings (λογισμούς) and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and leading captive every understanding into the obedience of Christ » (αἰχμαλωτίζοντες πᾶν νόημα εἰς ὑπακοὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ) II. Cor. X. 5. The heretics, if not in words certainly in deeds, contended with inverted order that revelation and faith must be subjected to reason and to philosophy as the supreme norm of interpretation, not only in the negative sense of a demanded non-repugnance, but also in the positive sense of a perceived congruence.

Already in the II. and III. century the cause of the Monarchians for denying three distinct persons was none other than that the unity of God together with the Trinity of persons cannot be understood by reason. But the Fathers demonstrated — not by reason, but solely by appealing to revelation manifest in Scripture, in the creed handed down by the Apostles, in the profession and consensus of the whole Church — that both truths are equally to be believed, because both are equally revealed by God. They conceded, however, that this truth is known to us only with God teaching, and that, even with revelation supposed, it cannot be understood in itself. Thus e. g. the Fathers of the synod of Antioch taught against Paul of Samosata. « We have decreed to set forth in writing the faith which we received from the beginning and have handed down and kept in the catholic holy Church up to the present day according to the succession from the Apostles... Since God is unbegotten, one... whom no man has seen nor can see; whose glory or greatness, as it is, to think or to narrate worthily of the truth is impossible for human nature (ἀνθρωπίνῃ φύσει ἀνέφικτον); but it must suffice for us to have some notion of him, however mediocre, with the Son revealing, as he himself says: no one knows the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son shall have revealed. But this Son, begotten... God not by foreknowledge but by essence and hypostasis, since we have known him in the Old and New Testament, we confess and proclaim. But whoever contradicts, saying that he does not believe and confess that the Son of God is God before the constitution of the world, and says that two Gods are proclaimed if the Son of God is proclaimed God, him we judge alien from the ecclesiastical rule » ep. ad Paul. Samos. (Opp. Dionysii Alex. pag. 281).

But especially in the long war of the whole Church against the Arians and specifically against the Eunomians, the super-rationality of the mystery was handed down and vindicated by the holy Fathers as the foundation for the defense and the genuine explanation of the revealed doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. We have seen in the Tractatus de Deo (th. X.) how sharply the Eunomians claimed for themselves a full knowledge and comprehension of the divine essence, and how carefully all the Fathers demonstrated against this error, from the very nature of the thing, that what God is can be conceived by us only to some extent through analogical notions. It could seem that this dispute pertains in nothing to what we now treat. But in truth the direct aim of the heretics was the exclusion of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. The heretics themselves, no less than the catholic Fathers, perceived that the divine essence cannot be understood by us in such a way that we understand by reason the three persons together, distinct from one another and identified with the same most simple essence. Hence, if we perfectly understood by reason the divine essence as it is in itself, as they asserted, by that very fact nothing else would belong to the divine essence except what we understood in it. But since we in no way understand by reason the one most simple essence in three persons really distinct from one another, the consequence was that not only was the Trinity denied, but the heretics also, from that same principle of the perfect comprehension of the divine nature, drew their arguments to demonstrate that the Trinity of persons such as the catholic Church professes neither is nor can be.

Hence all the Fathers — St. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa in the books against Eunomius, Gregory of Nazianzus in the orations on Theology (specifically in the 1st theological, which is or. 28. al. 34.), Cyril of Jerusalem in Catechesis VI., Epiphanius in haer. LXXVI., Chrysostom in the five homilies on the incomprehensible nature of God, Cyril of Alexandria in the Thesaurus — convince that that assertion about the comprehension of the divine nature is absurd both from the documents of Christian doctrine and from reason itself, in order to smooth the way for the explanation of the revealed doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. For the Fathers agree, as we have said, with the heretics to this extent, that they confess and indeed earnestly contend that the Trinity of persons of one essence cannot be understood by the light of reason. Just as therefore the heretics, from their perfect intellection of the divine essence according to the whole ratio of the divine Being, denied the truth of the Trinity as not comprehended in that rational intellection, and reduced the whole disputation no longer to the doctrine contained in the Scriptures and unfolded in the perpetual tradition and profession of the Church but, as the Fathers complain, « to syllogisms » and to philosophy; so the holy Doctors, with that foundation overthrown, and with the imperfection of our knowledge relative to the divine nature and essence itself demonstrated, brought it about that the super-rationality of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity could no longer be adduced as a cause of denial, nor could the heretics any longer conclude from that which is above intellection that it is against reason. Thus the demonstration that the divine essence is not intelligible to us as it is in itself was at the same time a demonstration that, not from philosophy and merely rational notions with the heretics, but solely from the revelation of God himself, with the Church and from the Church, must be learned what concerning the divine persons is to be believed by faith rather than understood by reason. For the Fathers, therefore, the super-rationality of the mystery is not only certain, but they hold it as a necessary presupposition, without which the integrity of the faith and the sincere explanation of the dogma cannot stand.

2°. For abundance I set down a few special testimonies, so that the opinion of the Fathers, already most certain from what has been said, may appear more distinctly. « Because no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son shall have revealed, therefore the Saints, to whom the Son revealed, handed down to us a certain image from visible things, when they say: the splendor of glory and the figure of his substance; and again: with you is the fountain of life, in your light we shall see light.... But these examples, although they be slight and quite obscure for expressing what we desire, yet from them something can be known that is above human nature, and that the generation of the Son is not like ours.... Since Scripture has these images, it is absurd and very impious to wish to seek from other things knowledge of the Lord, which are neither written nor have any order to piety » Athan. de decret. Nic. n. 12. « This truth is the sacrament of God, this is the name of the inscrutable nature in the Father. God invisible, ineffable, infinite, at whose uttering speech is silent, at whose investigating the mind grows dull, and at whose comprehending the understanding is constrained... Known to the Son alone, because no one knows the Father except the Son... And because no one knows the Father except the Son, let us think about the Father together with the revealing Son, who alone is a faithful witness » Hilar. de Trin. l. II. n. 6. cf. l. 9. 10. « God unbegotten, and from him the begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeding.... He has nothing in common with all things, nor does anyone communicate with him in dignity; for all things fly past and yield (if reason wishes to gather intellection from them), and instead of reasonings they leave the whole cause to the doctrinal word in the divine Scripture, by which it is said: no one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and him to whom he shall have revealed. But he reveals through the Holy Spirit not to those who wish to understand him by syllogisms, but to those who believe in him sincerely and perfectly » ⁷ Epiphan. haeres. LXXVI. ad cap. VII. Aëtii (T. I. p. 943.). « As often as the infirmity of the human condition, about to know itself forthwith, attempts to exceed somewhat the limits of its smallness, and, pregnant with the concept of heavenly illumination (i. e. with revelation and grace supposed), begins to give birth to the inquiry of its creator and redeemer, that immutable sempiternity of the Trinity alone (not of course alone simply, but in comparison with God considered absolutely), as I think, will be found worthy of the miracle of incomprehensibility, which so exceeds everything that we can think or know, as it surpasses everything that we are » Fulgent. ad Trasimund. l. II. c. 1. « But the Trinity alone can reveal itself, because the Trinity alone can fully know itself, and as much as it gives itself to be known, so much it bestows itself to be revealed » ib. c. 10. In sum, if the question is about proper understanding, the sense of the Fathers comes back to this: « concerning the mystery of the Trinity the right confession is the ignorance of knowledge » s. Hieronym. Prooem. ad l. XVIII. in Is.

Cf. Athanas. on that text: all things have been delivered to me n. 5.6. (T. I. p. 107.); Basil. contr. Eunom. l. I. n. 14.; Gregor. Naz. or. 20. (al. 29.) n. 10-12.; or. 29. (al. 35.) n. 8.; or. 31. (al. 37.) n. 33.; Cyrill. Hier. Catech. VI. n. 6.; Chrysost. de Incompreh. hom. V. n. 1.

Moreover, lest we twist the testimonies of Scripture and of the Fathers into another sense, there comes the consensus of the older theologians, who all, with the Master I. dist. 3.; and S. Th. I. q. 32. a. 1., defend the eminence of this mystery above reason — not by opining, but as a certain and constant principle. See on this matter Suarez l. I. c. 11. 12; Vasquez in 1. P. disp. 133. and the theologians cited there.

III. With the theological foundation laid beforehand, we can now show the super-rationality of the mystery from the very mode of our cognition and from the nature of the thing to be known.

We cannot know the divine perfections, or what God is, by the light of reason, except either by concluding a posteriori from the imperfections and perfections of creatures previously known (both material and spiritual) to God as from effect to cause, or in a certain way a priori ⁸ i. e. by proceeding from the absolute perfection of God previously known in a confused way to the perfections to be known explicitly and distinctly, or (which comes back to almost the same) by proceeding from one previously known perfection to the knowing of another (distinct in our reason or cognition): « whatever natural reason shows about God is had either from the ratio of principle (i. e. insofar as he is the supreme cause), or from the ratio of supreme perfection » (i. e. from the supreme perfection of God pre-understood in a confused way, proceeding to the understanding of the individual perfections) Pallavic. Curs. theol. de Deo c. 1. n. 3. This principle is altogether evident for any mediate cognition of God to be acquired by the light of reason, and hence it holds with regard to the rational cognition of the Trinity in every opinion, whichever you follow concerning the natural cognition of God, unless perhaps the immediate intuition of God, as he is trine in persons, were absurdly said to be natural to our intellect. For, this being set aside, even those who have persuaded themselves of an idea of God innate to our intellect, or of an immediate intuition of the divine Being ⁹ must all confess that by one or the other of the two indicated ways — from creatures previously known, I say, or from the previously known absolute perfections of God — one must arrive at the cognition of the Trinity of persons, if it can be arrived at by the light of reason alone. Indeed the same principle is universal, and is equally evident not only before the human intellect but before any intellect, to which an immediate intuition of the internal relations of God is not natural. But since such an intuition is natural to the divine intellect alone, while it does not belong by its nature to a created intellect — at least to every intellect now existing (angelic and human), as is theologically certain — indeed it seems to be above the nature of any possible creature, as can be deduced from certain principles (Tract. de Deo th. XIV. cf. s. Th. I. q. 12. a. 4.; verit. q. 8. a. 4.; contr. gent. III. c. 52.); it follows that universally, by the natural light of a created intellect, the cognition of the Trinity of the divine persons is to be attained either in no way, or in one or the other of the indicated ways.

But 1°. the internal processions in God and the three distinct persons cannot be known and demonstrated by the light of reason from creatures previously known, or by concluding a posteriori from effect to cause. From the previously known contingent existence of creatures, from their perfections and their order and direction to an end, reason understands the existence of a being necessary in its existence, intelligent and wise, willing and good, omnipotent, etc., because the existence of contingent creatures without such a necessary being existing is understood to be repugnant. Hence, to understand God — one in nature and trine in persons — in this way from the consideration of creatures, it would be necessary to perceive in creatures, whether spiritual or material, whether considered singly one by one or all together, something which would be understood to be repugnant unless three persons are one God. But it is evident that nothing of this kind is or can be in creatures. For creatures exist in act in whatever way and manner omnipotent God, infinitely wise, infinitely good, wills them to exist; nor can anything beyond the absolute attributes be understood by the light of reason as necessary in God, so that he be the cause of creatures. But the absolute attributes are of God insofar as he is one, equally full whether one person is considered, or whether three distinct persons are supposed and considered. In other words the same can be said: God operates ad extra insofar as he is one in essence, not however as ad intra there are processions and mutual relations of the begetter, the begotten, and the one proceeding. But by this very fact it is repugnant to understand from creatures as from an effect that the cause is three persons distinct from one another and not one, just as the essence is one. « Everything that has causality in the divine realities belongs to the essence, since God is the cause of things through his essence. But the proper things of the persons are the relations, by which the persons are referred not to creatures but to one another. Hence by natural cognition we cannot arrive at what is proper to the persons » S. Th. de verit. q. 10. a. 13.; 1. q. 32. a. 1.; 1. dist. 3. q. 1. a. 4.; in Boet. Trin. Prooem. q. 1. a. 4.

2°. It would therefore remain that, from the consideration of the absolute attributes, which « are perceived as understood through the things that have been made », and hence in a certain way a priori, reason would arrive at the intellection and demonstration of the Trinity of persons. In this way the necessary being is for reason the foundation of understanding and demonstrating the fullness of absolute perfection, and thence further is inferred the unity of God and the repugnance of the multiplication of the divine nature, and so on other attributes can be deduced from others pre-understood and be distinctly understood. But as long as we understand the divine essence only by analogical notions derived from the previously known perfections of creatures, i. e. by abstractive cognition, and not as it is in itself, it is repugnant that from the one most simple essence of God and from the absolute attributes, which are that same essence apprehended under one and another of our analogical concepts, one should arrive at knowing and demonstrating three really distinct persons of one essence. Hence it is, as we said above, that the holy Fathers judged that by the same argument by which, against the Eunomians, the divine essence is shown to be not intelligible by the light of reason as it is in itself, the super-rationality of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is at the same time demonstrated. For these two things are mutually inferred: the divine essence is known immediately in itself, and therefore as it is in itself; therefore the Trinity of the persons is known, who really are the divine essence itself. Conversely: the divine essence is not known as it is in itself, but by analogical notions derived from pre-understood created perfections; therefore by the light of reason it is neither understood nor can it be understood that one absolute essence is at the same time three relative persons really distinct among themselves.

Certainly, for the intellection of the three distinct persons, the principle and foundation of cognition would have to be the divine essence previously known either under the formal ratio of the infinite, or under the formal ratio of one or several attributes (say wisdom, goodness, etc.), or under the formal ratio of the acts of the internal life (intellection and dilection), or (lest a defect of full induction be able to be alleged) under any formality whatsoever intelligible by the light of reason. But it is repugnant that the essence under some or under all of these ratios be the principle of cognition demonstrating the distinct persons, as long as the essence is known not as it is in itself, but from the analogy of creatures.

For we understand the infinite Being and whatever absolute attributes, or the formal ratios under which that same Being can be conceived by the light of reason, as one not multiplicable, most simple, and indistinct; but that that same Being, from its internal ratio, requires a trine and indeed relative subsistence, i. e. that the same infinite essence be the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, distinct among themselves by relations alone, and three relative subsistents — this can in no way be deduced from infinity or from any absolute perfection, insofar as it is knowable by the light of reason from creatures. The cause is that there is given, or can be understood by us, no created or creatable perfection exhibiting an analogy of the absolute perfection, which, being one in itself, requires a relative subsistence and a multiplication of subsistents.

What we say about the infinity of the essence and about the attributes holds equally also for the acts, or rather for the act of intellection and dilection, which indeed is a divine attribute and consequently, as we have said, is nothing other than the divine substance itself, or the absolute essence apprehended by us under the formal concept of intellect or will. In created things actual intellection and volition is indeed necessarily something produced by the very spirit that understands and wills; yet from this, by the light of reason alone, we could in no way conjecture, let alone demonstrate, in God the Word and the love produced with a real distinction of three, who are one God. For that intellection and volition in created things is produced by the spirit follows from the limitation of perfection, because the substance of the spirit is not the very understanding and the very loving; but the spirit is in potency to act, and the act is not the substance of the spirit itself, but a perfecting modification of the substance. But where the infinite essence, altogether simple by force of infinity, is the very intellection and volition without any real distinction of act and essence, there indeed we cannot understand by the light of reason that the Word and love are both one supreme absolute thing, i. e. really the essence itself, and under the formal ratio, insofar as they are terms of intellection and dilection, the begotten Word and the love proceeding with a real procession, so that the distinction of the begetter, the begotten, and the one proceeding is real.

3°. Indeed, precisely because the whole created order, from which we ascend to the analogical understanding of the divine perfections, offers no foundation, no analogy (with revelation not supposed) for forming the concept of one absolute substance subsisting in three relations in such a way that there are three distinct ones of one numerically single essence; for this reason, I say, not only is the existence of the thing and its objective truth indemonstrable by natural reason, but we could not even form the concept of the thing as possible.

Hence follows a great difference in the way in which we conceive the absolute attributes and in the way in which, even with revelation supposed, we conceive the persons of one essence, relative to one another and distinct among themselves. God as wise, good, etc. we can conceive by analogical notions from the previously known perfections of creatures, and therefore in the mode of our concept there is indeed an imperfection and as it were a certain composition of the divine essence and of the attribute affecting it; but this imperfection adhering to the concept we easily correct by a judgment from certain principles known also by the light of reason. But when we wish to conceive the divine person by the light of reason alone from previously known created perfections, the concept will always be as of an absolute person, and therefore as of one no less than the essence is one, nor does any merely rational principle present itself by which this mode of conceiving might be corrected by a judgment from the light of reason.

But when from revelation we know that there are three really distinct persons of one absolute essence, and therefore that the persons are relative, distinct of course by relation alone and not by something absolute, we conceive the relative person never under a single but necessarily under a double notion, both of the absolute and of the relative. Hence this imperfect mode of conceiving indeed needs correction by a judgment, by which we judge that the absolute itself is at the same time relative, i. e. that the essence itself is really the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. But just as we have the notion of the relative person from revelation alone, so also this judgment is not from merely rational principles, but is a judgment of faith from those things which become known to us by revelation alone.

From all these things it sufficiently appears that the dogma of the Most Holy Trinity, as it has been revealed by God, is above reason both with regard to the truth of existence (that it is), and with regard to the very analogical concept (what it is). But both of these remain true not only before revelation, but also with the revelation of the mystery supposed, as it is conceded in the present life. « Since the ray of divine revelation reaches us according to our mode, hence although through revelation we are elevated to know something which otherwise would be unknown to us, not however to this, that we know in another way except through sensible things » (or more generally, according to our mode). S. Th. in Boet. lect. II. q. 2. a. 3.

« From the demonstrated property of the mystery it follows that in all reasonings which are vaunted as purely philosophical demonstrations of the mystery, at least the demonstrative force is lacking, or moreover the revealed dogma itself is perverted and twisted into an alien sense; both of which defects are proved to be present in the speculations of certain more recent writers ».

From those things which we demonstrated in the preceding thesis, it is certain that the revealed truth of the Most Holy Trinity is above the power of human understanding, so that neither the knowledge of the truth that it is, nor the concept of the thing what it is, can be drawn from reason alone and from rational principles, but both the concept of apprehension and the judgment of assent rest upon the revelation of the Spirit of God, who searches the deep things of God.

Hence it is easily evident what follows, if men, having denied or neglected this methodological principle (if one may so speak), namely, having denied the eminence of the mystery above the power of understanding, presume themselves to search the deep things of God by their own reason. Either this is undertaken in such a way that, the true concept of the thing to be demonstrated being supposed from revelation, only a demonstration of existence is pretended; or in such a way that both the concept of the thing and the truth of existence are deduced from principles alone perceived by reason. In the first hypothesis, necessarily either the foundations of the demonstration will be revealed truths known from revelation alone, or the consequence will at least be illegitimate, because there are no truths, whether about God or about creatures, knowable by the light of reason alone, from which it may be legitimately inferred that God is one and threefold. In the other hypothesis, necessarily the very notion of the Trinity, as it has been revealed by God, is perverted, because to the concept of persons who are really distinct from one another only by relations and are identified with one numerically single absolute essence, one cannot arrive by the light of reason alone. This, however, comes from the fact that not only in all things which we perceive with our intellect essences are multiplied, at least distinct in number, according to the number of persons or supposits; but also because there is no rational principle from which we might positively understand as possible the multiplication of persons in one numerically single essence.

Therefore that which is pretended to be a demonstration either is not merely rational and philosophical, but is a theological demonstration from revealed principles, of which we shall speak below; or it is no demonstration at all; or moreover (as always necessarily happens, if a merely rational demonstration is presumed, i. e. both as regards the concept of what it is and as regards the truth that it is) the revealed dogma itself is perverted and twisted into an alien sense. It seemed useful to subject both of these to the very eyes by adducing some attempts of more recent writers, so that what is universally established from doctrine and from theoretical principles may also be exhibited more conspicuously in facts, albeit only in particular ones.

I. The lesser defect, therefore, but one inseparable from the nature of the thing in experiments of this kind, is the emptiness of the demonstration. From this, however, follows that which St. Thomas says: « He who strives to prove the Trinity of persons by natural reason derogates from the faith in two ways. First, indeed, as regards the dignity of the faith itself, which is (in mysteries properly so called) to be about invisible things that exceed human reason; whence the Apostle says... 1. Cor. II. 7. we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which is hidden. Second, as regards the usefulness of drawing others to the faith. For when someone adduces in proof of the faith reasons which are not cogent, it turns into the derision of the unbelievers » 1. q. 32. a. 1.

Truly it is a wonder how men, even accustomed to metaphysical meditations, could have persuaded themselves, and sold to others as a « speculative demonstration » of the Most Holy Trinity, the reasons which they adduced. Concerning Raymond Lull one can read Vasquez in 1. P. disp. 33. and Suarez l. I. c. 11. n. 7. seqq. The demonstration which he himself thought evident, Lull found in the immanent act of God. God is most perfect goodness. Most perfect goodness necessarily has a most perfect internal vital act; this Lull calls « bonificativum » in God. The most perfect « bonificativum » necessarily has a most perfect produced term; this term he calls « bonificabile » in God. The most perfect « bonificativum » produces « bonificabile » in the most perfect manner; the most perfect manner of production is generation; therefore « bonificativum » is the Father, « bonificabile » is the Son. Moreover, where there is « bonificativum et bonificabile », both most perfect, there is necessarily the most perfect « bonificare. » This « bonificare », taken actively, must be the common act of the « bonificativo » and « bonificabili, » and such an act must have as its term the « bonificare » objective, that is, terminative, that is, proceeding. Because the most perfect « bonificare » is « amare », this proceeding « bonificare » is proceeding love, i. e. the Holy Spirit. (At least so Lull would have to say in order to avoid a more serious error, if, as seemed to Vasquez, « bonificare » were taken for the production of the « bonificabilis » or of the Son, and the same bonificare were at the same time said to be the Holy Spirit). There are therefore necessarily three persons: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Nor can there be more, because the infinite « bonificativum » cannot be but one, and the same holds of the infinite « bonificabili » and of that which is called the infinite « bonificare ». So far he.

Abstracting from the inept Lullian phraseology, everyone perceives for himself what is to be judged of such a demonstration. That the divine act which is absolute intellection and dilection and the divine essence itself, under which respect it certainly has no term intrinsically produced and distinct, should at the same time be the relative intellection by which the distinct Word is produced, can in no way be understood and demonstrated by the light of reason, but is known only by revelation. The same holds of dilection. But if Lull's argument is not kindly modified and reduced to these terms, that which he himself calls « bonificativum, bonificabile et bonificare, » will not even be the Trinity as it has been revealed to us; and so one would fall into more serious errors.

In more recent times (at the end of the last and the beginning of this century) Marcus Mastrofinius in his Work on the Trinity, which he entitled The Sublimer Metaphysics, exhibited not one only, but altogether three, which he himself called demonstrations of the Most Holy Trinity, in entire books III. IV. V. The first is drawn from the necessary existence of God in the following manner. Whatever exists must have a sufficient reason, that is, a principle, external or internal, of its existence. Therefore in God, a necessary being, there must be a principle, not external but internal, whence the existence of God is. This principle of existence must itself also exist; but whatever exists, exists in a determinate manner; therefore the principle of existence in God has its own manner of existing distinct from every other, that is, the principle of the existence of God is subsistent and a hypostasis. The existence flowing forth from the principle is something distinct from its principle, and for that reason also has its own determinate manner of existing, that is, it itself subsists and is a hypostasis. There are therefore necessarily two hypostases: one a principle (the Father), the other a principiate (the Son).

Moreover, in every substance, and especially in a spiritual substance, and much more in an infinitely perfect substance, there must be a principle of action; « whence it will follow that a certain principle of action must also be admitted in God himself, considered now as having his own existence, namely in that first interior and existing principle, considered together with the second manner of existing, which has the character of existence or of the principiate in relation to that first principle. » And so this principle of action is common to the Father and the Son. Moreover, the principle of action demands for itself a proportionate term; therefore the infinite principle of action demands an infinite term. This term, as a principiate, is distinguished from the first and second hypostasis as from its principle; therefore it is itself the third divine hypostasis, proceeding from the first and second as from one principle, namely it is the Holy Spirit. Therefore the existing principle of existence, the existence flowing forth from it, the term of internal action are understood by the light of reason to be the three divine hypostases. Which was to be demonstrated. Thus l. III. of The Sublimer Metaphysics.

If this argument is viewed logically, apart from its artificial form it seems to have nothing similar to a demonstration. I do not wish to ask how these things cohere with one another: that every existence postulates a distinct principle, and that nevertheless the principle of existence exists without another principle distinct from itself; and how such a foundation without foundation, i. e. one leading to a process to infinity, is not absurd, when it is a question of a being that is necessary from its inmost reason and essence. The obvious consideration of the matter suffices for one to understand that the principle of existence and the existence of God are not distinguished even by reason (a reasoned distinction, i. e. one with a foundation in the thing), much less really, but are absolutely nothing other than the divine essence intrinsically necessary. Whence if the demonstration is viewed theologically, certainly the principle of the existence of God, which cannot be anything but absolute existence and essence, is not the Father; nor is that existence something flowing forth or resulting from another, whether distinct in reality or even by reason alone, and consequently it is not the Son. Concerning the « principle of action » those things suffice which we have already said and demonstrated above: that the production ad intra cannot be understood by the light of reason. Many other absurdities in this whole manner of demonstration will easily appear to anyone who considers it.

To the second demonstration, as the author does not blush to call it, book IV is devoted. He says he deduces it from the « quantity of creative power, which God contains in himself »; but in reality the foundation on which the whole argument rests is an equivocation, by which the infinite of absolute perfection, that is, the fullness of absolute Being (cf. Tract. de Deo Sect. III. c. 2.) is inverted into the infinite of mathematical quantity. The disputation, of marvelous absurdity, is reduced to this sum. There is in God a power of creating substance; this creative power is infinite. Further, there is in God a power of creating an infinite series of species; therefore the creative power is not only simply infinite but infinitely infinite, that is, it is an « infinite of the second order ». Moreover, there is a power of creating in each of the species individuals infinite in number; therefore the creative power, infinitely infinite, is further multiplied by infinity; therefore the creative power is an « infinite of the third order » ¹. The creative power is the very substance of God. Therefore « the divine substance is in itself an infinite of the third order ».

There is no need for us to pursue the sick man's dreams in the manner of declaring how from this foundation the Trinity of persons is to be understood, since the foundation itself is absurd on every side. For absolute Being, that is, the fullness of absolute perfection, admits no degrees, not even distinct in consideration, much less in reality; and the formal reason of omnipotence is one absolute and most simple essence, whatever be the external term to which it is referred. Nor are the divine persons different degrees of infinity, but really they are, both singly and all together, one and the same most simple essence, distinct from one another not as some degrees of quantity or other, but as three relatives, as principle and as proceeding from the principle. And so in that mathematical declaration of the Trinity not only is the demonstration null, but neither do I see how the whole concept proposed in revelation could be preserved, if all the consequences are logically deduced from it.

The third and last demonstration, in book V., is drawn « from the manifestation of divine glory ». The manifestation of divine glory is a good; therefore the infinite manifestation of glory is an infinite good; therefore, lest the infinite good be lacking to God, there necessarily exists an infinite manifestation of glory. The infinite manifestation cannot be ad extra through creatures, but only ad intra. Therefore in the divine substance there must be something which perfectly manifests the glory of God. God, inasmuch as his glory is manifested, « is subsistent, before we consider that which manifests the accumulated glory of God himself in the divine substance ». Therefore that which manifests the glory is the second divine person, distinct from the first, and proceeding from the first as its image. There subsist therefore the Father, and the Son, who is the splendor of the glory of the Father. Moreover, the manifestation of glory requires a third, to whom the glory may be manifested, « otherwise the manifestation would not be a manifestation at all, since there would be lacking one to whom it might be manifested ». A third distinct person is required; for the Son, as the manifestation of glory, « is a means to an end », which end is the knowledge of glory; but a means is distinguished from the end, and the manifestation must be conceived as prior in order than the knowledge; « therefore the Son must differ from him through whom such knowledge is primarily effected, or toward the obtaining of which the expression of divine glory is directed ». The third, therefore, through whom the knowledge of glory primarily is, is distinct from the Son as from the expression of glory, and is distinct also from the Father. « For the Son by natural order precedes him through whom the knowledge of divine glory exactly represented is primarily effected; but the Father is preceded by the Son himself in natural order; much more, therefore, does the Father by natural order antecede him through whom such knowledge is primarily effected ». Therefore this distinct third is the third person primarily cognizing the manifestation of glory made in the second person. This third person proceeds from the first and second; for « this third person arises from the exigency and natural necessity that there be in God a certain third, who is referred to recognizing what the Father is, and how much he accomplished in his subsistent glory, i. e. in producing the Son », therefore the first and second person are the principle « why there is a third person ». This third person is therefore the Holy Spirit, who searches all things, even the deep things of God. These, and several like them, are there in l. V.

Of the demonstration there is not a shadow; the things which are said concerning the person, especially the third, are theologically false. The internal glory of God is the infinite, self-sufficient excellence of the divine essence itself; the manifestation of this glory ad intra (at least inasmuch as it is knowable by reason) is the infinite comprehension of this infinite excellence through the divine intellect, and in this comprehension consists the infinite blessedness of God (Tract. de Deo th. XXVIII. XXIX.). That the Word is produced through the intellect from its inmost reason, and so there is the Father and there is the Word, the figure, the consubstantial image and splendor of the glory of the Father, and so the Son can rightly be called the expression of the paternal glory, i. e. one glory in the Father and the Son, but communicated to the Son by the Father through generation — these things are indeed most true, but in no way knowable by the light of reason. The things, therefore, which I have adduced from the author concerning the first and second person can indeed have a sound sense, but in this sense they are known and believed from revelation alone, not truly demonstrated by reason. But whatever is said by the author about the third person proceeding, lest there be lacking one to whom the glory of God may be manifested — that not only cannot be demonstrated, but, revelation being at least supposed, is demonstrated to be false.

Finally, I shall still mention the « speculative knowledge » of the Most Holy Trinity, which in our age the Güntherians boasted of having discovered from the principles of their philosophy. The Güntherians teach universally that all revealed truths, at least those which are necessary in themselves, are demonstrable by the light of reason, both that they are and what they are ². They affirm this expressly concerning the Most Holy Trinity. The term from which one must proceed, and from which the « cogent argument », as they themselves say, i. e. the evident demonstration for the existence of the three divine persons, is recovered, is for them the philosophically known human spirit. Since these things pertain to the very principles and to the marrow of their doctrine, the same recur everywhere, set forth in many places in their books. Thus, e. g., Günther in the philosophical annals entitled Lydia 1852. p. 411. 442. first expounds his « speculative » concept of the Trinity, namely that « the process of life in the absolute being (in God) and the manifestation of God ad intra are so accomplished, that the Being of God, as the absolute principle, is duplicated »; then further, he says, « from the two members of the opposition (the Father and the Son) breaks forth Being, which is equal to both, unequal to neither in any way » (the Holy Spirit). The source is then indicated from which the demonstration of this matter is derived: « the cogent argument for admitting these three moments (the three persons) in the manifestation of God ad intra is placed in the thought of one's own Ego, that is, in the personality of our spirit ».

Without doubt in the created spirit some analogy can be found, according to which, revelation being supposed and proposed, we understand to some extent what is to be believed by us. The Scriptures themselves indicate it; the holy Fathers, above all St. Augustine, and after him St. Anselm, Hugh and Richard Victorinus, Lombard, St. Thomas and all the other theologians, illustrated this analogy. But so far is it from being able to be a means of demonstration, that the analogy itself can be found and understood only from revelation; and that, revelation being also supposed, serves not for the demonstration of the existence of the Trinity, but only for forming some slightly more distinct concept of the believed truth. The Güntherians wished to demonstrate both — that the Trinity of persons is, and what it is — independently of revelation, from rational ideas alone, and therefore they fell in both. Their « speculative demonstration » of the existence of the Trinity is of no value, and in their concept of what the Trinity is, the errors are much more serious. As regards the demonstration, in it there is almost nothing other than the effort of clearly conceiving (as they thought) the Trinity of persons and the analogy of created personality, and this clarity of concept they sold as a demonstration of existence, in much the same way, but far more absurdly, in which others gave the concept of necessary being for a demonstration of its existence.

«A compelling argument» drawn «from the thought of one's own Ego or of the personality of our spirit», and thus the whole Güntherian demonstration is reduced to this sum. The created spirit is the image of God; from the image, however, the archetype can be known. Therefore from the personality of the created spirit there can be known what and of what kind the divine personality is. The form of personality, i.e. that which formally constitutes substance a person in act, is self-consciousness (the thought of one's own Ego). Therefore in the first place, if the elements of self-consciousness in the created spirit are rightly understood, the elements of self-consciousness in the absolute spirit can also be understood, by excluding of course the imperfections that follow from the notion of a finite being and by applying the perfections according to the exigency and nature of the absolute being. By this very fact, then, it is understood what and of what kind the divine personality is. With these things presupposed, the procedure is as follows: the created spirit, because it is not from itself, cannot even by itself advance to the thought of itself, but only insofar as it is excited by another. For this reason the same spirit immediately perceives only phenomena in itself, i.e. the impression it receives and the action it elicits; but it cannot immediately intuit its own substance itself; rather, it becomes conscious of this its substance only mediately, as of the subject of those phenomena. Because this is from the limitation of the created spirit, this imperfection must be denied in the absolute spirit. Whence the absolute spirit, because it is Being from itself and for that reason also absolute knowledge from itself and about itself, not excited by another but by itself, makes not phenomena but immediately its own substance itself the object of its intuition for itself.

All these things contain nothing that has not long since been most well known and conceded and handed down by all the older theologians (except that Günther thinks the created spirit cannot go into act unless it is excited by another spirit already conscious of itself; but this axiom derived from the traditionalists in the present matter neither helps nor hinders the argumentation, and so can safely be passed over). But now let it be heard how, from the most well-known and evident truth that God intuits his own substance itself, Günther, with a huge speculative leap, derives «a compelling argument» for demonstrating that not one but necessarily in the first place two divine persons are understood by the light of reason. Thus he proceeds. «That in the absolute Being the excitation by another is excluded, this nevertheless does not prevent the absolute Being itself from opposing itself to itself, and in this opposition entering into a relation with itself. Whence it follows that God, while he comprehends himself immediately in his substance, i.e. becomes conscious of himself, opposes his own Being to himself, i.e. posits it again. In other words: we can conceive that God makes himself in his essence the object of immediate intuition only in this way, that he opposes himself in himself as a real substance, or duplicates himself through emanation.» To this wonderful «compelling argument» he adds a confirmation from analogy: «so also the human mind can make its (direct) thought the object of reflection, not without a (new) thought, but through a second equally living thought. Here too the (reflex) thought about the (direct) thought is not merely a certain adumbration, but light from light, life from life.»

If this argumentation were accepted with closed eyes, and it were even conceded that two divine persons are demonstrated by the light of reason, it would seem obvious that a deduction of exactly the same form should be set up from the will, by which God wills and loves himself, and so a third person would be demonstrated. Günther, however, in his «speculative theology» seemed to himself to see that for completing in God the self-consciousness, i.e. the intellection of his substance, a third person proceeding from the first and the second necessarily follows and is understood. Whence it does not appear why, after self-consciousness completed in this way — which he himself calls «a single composite out of three moments or elements», i.e. out of the self-consciousnesses of the individual persons (Propaed. II. p. 292.; 537.; Euryst. et Herac. p. 450.; Lydia 1849. p. 240.) — it does not appear, I say, why God, conscious of himself in this way, by now willing himself, or in Güntherian phraseology by making himself the object of volition, should not again oppose himself to himself; and so we shall have not only a «triplicated substance», but at least a quadruplicated one, and we shall at minimum «speculatively» understand still another, a fourth person, proceeding from the three. But evidently, although the author pretends that his «speculation» is from reason alone and not from a presupposed revelation, he nevertheless wanted to find only the three persons whom he knows by revelation; without revelation he would most certainly find neither two nor three. Meanwhile, setting these things aside, let us see how from the divine self-consciousness one arrives at understanding the third person.

In every intellection (so Günther teaches) three things are distinct: the understanding subject, the understood object, and the intellection as the unity or equation of the understanding and the understood. Whence also in the intellection of self the first «moment» is that the spirit makes itself the object of intellection, i.e. it places before itself, or opposes to itself as something to be understood, itself understanding, and discerns itself understanding from itself understood. According to the analogy of this first moment in self-consciousness, the first and second person of the Trinity are demonstrated in the manner described a little before. But through this opposition self-consciousness is not yet complete; for its completion an estimation of the identity between the understanding subject and the understood object is required: I am I. This is the second «moment», by which self-consciousness is completed. Hence also in self-consciousness, as it is that of the absolute spirit, i.e. of God, to the first «moment», by which the subject opposes to itself the object through «emanation» and «duplication of substance», there must be added the second «moment», by which subject and object affirm and exhibit their equality. This affirmation of equality (while the subject affirms itself equal to the object, and the object to the subject) «posits, besides the subject and the object, still a third element in the absolute self-consciousness, which, equally with the two former, is absolute substance, and, proceeding from the subject and the object, exhibits the equality of the two members of the opposition. Thus therefore self-consciousness in God as in the creature is the essential form — there of absolute, here of finite Being — with this only difference according to the diverse quality of the Being itself, that in the consciousness of the absolute the elements of the form, i.e. the moments of the acts of the absolute principle, are not mere phenomena (as the intellections of a creature are), but real moments, i.e. νοούμενα or substances». Propaedeutica I. p. 104. sqq. You have the whole «compelling demonstration» of the Most Holy Trinity from the light of reason alone, which was repeated by Günther in almost all his works, as to the substance of the matter everywhere the same, and was approved by his disciples and commended with wonderful praises (Günther Propaed. I. p. 119. sqq.; Propaed. II. p. 291. sqq. 535-539. 553. sq.; Symposion Peregrini p. 149. 565; Euryst. et Heracles p. 449. sq. 508. sq. 512. sqq.; Thomas a Scrupulis p. 177-181; Viae mediae in philosophia germanica p. 358. 599.; Lydia 1849, p. 245. sq.; Lyd. 1851. p. 166. sqq.; Lyd. 1852. p. 260. sq. etc.).

But in truth not only is it not an evident demonstration; rather, it is evident on every side that it is no demonstration at all. Already in the deduction of the distinction between the first and the second person, things are assumed as certain which either are not understood by reason or are manifestly false. a) From the fact that opposition is not excluded in the absolute Being, i.e. that the repugnance of the opposition (he should have said: of the relation) is not understood, it is absurdly inferred: therefore such opposition exists. b) It is utterly false that the intuition by which God comprehends his essence is understood by us, by the light of reason, as some real distinction. This comprehension, insofar as it is understood by reason, is an infinite intellection, which really is the divine substance itself without any real distinction; but by no means is a distinction or multiplication of the divine substance or essence introduced, which is both certain by faith and evident by reason. Hence c) what is said — «the absolute Being enters into a relation with itself, and the divine substance is duplicated through emanation» — is both certain by faith to be false and understood by reason to be absurd. There is no opposition or relation between the absolute Being, i.e. between essence and essence, absolute substance and substance; for this is one most simple, non-multipliable «supreme thing, which neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds», insofar as it is the absolute essence or substance; the same, however, has the notion of a relative, and thus that one supreme thing «is the Father who begets, and the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds: three persons at once, and each one of them». This neither we nor the Güntherians understand by reason; but we, by seeking the notions in revelation itself and by accommodating to them the analogous concepts previously known by reason, know what is to be believed; they are deceived in this very point, as long as they do not see that in revelation the distinction, and consequently the formal notion of the divine person as one is distinguished from another, is constituted not in something absolute but in something relative. But once they have seen this, they will no longer think about a «compelling demonstration» from the light of reason.

If that whole demonstration of the «opposition between subject and object» is deceitful and false, then there can no longer be any question of a rational deduction of the third person or of the «third element», as he speaks, because this second deduction is wholly founded on the former and presupposes it as a necessary foundation. But let us suppose that the distinction of the two persons has been demonstrated; let us also grant without examination what the author says about the «second moment in self-consciousness», and thus let us inspect the deduction of the third person in itself. What is that «affirmation or objective exhibition of equality», which he also calls the «aequiposition of the two opposed members»? Equality is contained in the distinction of the persons and in the numerical unity of the essence or nature; and so if that «affirmation of equality» or aequiposition of the two persons is taken in a genetic or real-active sense, aequiposition is nothing else than the generation of the Son through the communication of one and the same nature, not however the production of a third person. If that «affirmation» is taken in an ideal sense, for the intellection of an equality already posited, this is the absolute intellection, i.e. the one divine essence in two distinct persons understanding the equality; but in no way can it be conceived as the production of some third person. Günther says: «in the opposition as such perfect identity is not yet contained, because the emanation could be only partial, i.e. it is not necessarily total; and therefore the opposition still remains to be exhibited or affirmed as aequiposition; and this is accomplished solely by this, that both factors through emanation posit a product, in which each one of them finds again himself whole, and neither in producing it is postponed to the other» (Propaed. II. 536.); and «the Holy Spirit is to that extent the objective testimony of the paternal generation (as a total emanation), insofar as the opposition between the Father and the Son becomes in the Holy Spirit an objective real aequiposition» (Thom. a Scrup. p. 177.). But these are empty and absurd words. Of what, I ask, opposition and emanation is there talk, where the divine persons are concerned? The Son cannot proceed from God the Father except through the communication of the whole essence; for the divine essence can neither be produced nor divided. Whence the relation of opposition — that the Father who begets is one, and the Son who is begotten another, yet not another thing — includes consubstantiality and most perfect equality; nor can it be said except most absurdly that by generation equality, or (as Günther speaks) aequiposition, is not yet constituted, but that in the relation of opposition arising from divine generation there is still an inequality, which is to be supplied and raised to equality through the production of a third person ³. And such inventions are hawked as perceived truths demonstrated by «compelling arguments»!

Consubstantiality, i.e. the essential equality of the Father and the Son, does not finally follow from the procession of the Holy Spirit; rather, in the inverse order, from the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father it follows that if a third person proceeds from the Father, the same one also proceeds from the Son — not that equality may be introduced, but because the Son is equal to the Father, i.e. because by generation he receives all things that are the Father's (the formal notion of Paternity alone excepted).

Just as therefore the very foundation itself, I mean the rational demonstration of the generation of the Son from the Father, does not hold together, so this second demonstration of the procession of the third person, even considered in itself, is utterly null. Who now, indeed, looking face to face at this «speculative theology», which wanted to convert into its opposite the principle of the holy Fathers and theologians: «I believe in order to understand», «faith seeks understanding», namely into: «I understand the truth, in order to believe the historical fact of revelation» (Lydia 1852. p. 348-350.; Iani Capita P. II. p. 272-279.), who, I say, taught by experience itself, would not feel the truth of that judgment of St. Thomas: «he who strives to prove the Trinity by natural reason derogates from the faith...... For when someone brings forward for proving the faith reasons that are not compelling (much more, if absurd ones are given as compelling), he falls into the derision of the unbelievers» I. q. 32. a. 1.

II. The second derogation from the faith, commemorated by us at the beginning, is even graver: if the very concept of the thing is constituted by the light of reason alone, independently of revelation, the truth itself and the genuine sense of the dogma is necessarily perverted, because the very concept of the persons — that they are three relative subsistents, distinct among themselves, and at the same time both each singly and all together one absolute essence — is superrational, and can be derived only from revelation. Hence we have seen that in all attempts at demonstration the departure from the genuine sense of the dogma is in direct ratio with the abstraction from positive revelation; for one is deflected from the true concept the more, the more strictly what is pretended is preserved, namely the independence of the demonstration from positive revelation. This ill-fated independence is greater in Günther than in the others of whom we have treated; therefore also his concept or explanation of what the Trinity is, is by an equal degree more remote from the truth.

I°. He affirms that the divine person, insofar as the persons are formally distinct, must be conceived not as a relative but as an absolute. Hence he teaches that «the unity of the divine nature is by no means to be understood in a real numerical sense, but only in a formal sense, i.e. as the absolute relation to one another of three real principles» Propaed. II. 298. For certainly he who posits that the person in God, as in creatures, is an absolute, by admitting three distinct persons admits «three absolute principles» (l. c. 299.). Likewise, he who with a concept partly false, partly inadequate (see Tract. de Incarnat.) posits that the form by which an integral, singular substance is constituted a person is «self-consciousness», in such a way that, as many as the persons are, that many distinct absolute substances and distinct «self-consciousnesses» (i.e. intelligences and wills) are introduced; he, by admitting three divine persons, by that very fact admits three absolute substances, and in each a distinct intellect and a distinct will. But of three «real principles» of this sort, with the numerical unity of nature excluded, a formal unity is affirmed, insofar as through the form of personality, i.e. through self-consciousness, the individual persons are referred to one another. Through this mutual relation, moreover, it is said that «from three self-consciousnesses, as so many individual moments, one absolute self-consciousness is composed» (Propaed. II. 292.; Lyd. 1849. p. 240.), and the individual divine persons are called «individual moments of one absolute personality» (Propaed. II. 537.). You have what «the absolute relation to one another of three real principles» is, and what the «formal unity» arising from it is, opposed to «the real numerical unity» of the divine nature.

That such a concept of unity is most false has been proved in our whole treatise from the documents of revelation; Günther, however, after the light of «speculative theology» had risen, professes that it is most dear to him. «Let it be recalled to memory, he says, the passage from the theological system of Leibniz: there are therefore three singular substances, one absolute relation which embraces them. This passage, if I had once come upon it, I confess, would have created a difficulty for me; now, however, it is most dear and most acceptable to me, because it illustrates a certain passage of Augustine, de Trin. VII. c. 4., where he asks why we do not say three Gods just as we say three divine persons, and he finds the cause in the pedagogical reason of the Church, which, compelled by necessity, introduced and retains this manner of speaking» Propaed. I. p. 119.

Certainly, if that were the concept of the Trinity, that there are three divine substances whose unity consists in mutual relation, no reason would appear why they should not be called three Gods just as much as three such persons. But according to the revealed doctrine the concept is plainly the reverse: the divine relations are the whole reason of distinction, not however of unity; the unity of the persons is in the one and really singular absolute substance itself. And so what Günther says is distinct is altogether one singular thing; but that in which he himself places unity, in that very thing the real distinction is constituted. If Leibniz had said what is adduced, he would have erred before Günther; in very truth, however, he never said it ⁴ nor could he have said it without madness; for according to the manner of speaking of the older theologians, which Leibniz uses expressly in the «theological system», an absolute relation would be a contradiction in terms.

As for Augustine, nothing can be said more false and more contrary to the sense of the holy Doctor than that he judged, as Günther indicates, that by itself and from the very truth of the matter three Gods could be said, unless usage stood in the way, usage introduced and retained for a pedagogical and external reason. Rather, in that passage, which to be understood must be read in its entirety, Trin. l. VII. n. 7. up to 12. (in which number 12. the true solution of the difficulty is contained), he expressly teaches that what is absolute in God is altogether one, and therefore in no way can there be or be said three Gods or three essences, but one God who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Whence it follows, and is taught by Augustine, that these three are distinct among themselves not insofar as they are one absolute and one God, but insofar as they are relatives. The whole difficulty for Augustine is only about the name person and hypostasis. The final solution, however, comes down to this: if the name person were taken as in creatures, as an absolute, it could not be said in the plural in divine matters; but by a certain necessity, that there might be at hand one common name by which the three distinct ones might be named, the Latins employed person, the Greeks hypostasis, to designate that which in God is relative; and thus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called three persons or hypostases ⁵.

2°. Because the real numerical unity of the divine nature was not acknowledged by Günther together with the Trinity of persons, nor could it be known from a merely rational concept, hence beyond that mutual relation of the three absolute substances to one another, of which we have spoken, he could admit no other foundation of unity than the identity of reason and the equality in three distinct essences, which is at length specific unity. This Günther calls the identity of essence, and he opposes it to unity, affirming identity and expressly denying the (numerical) unity of the essence. For he says that there is to be affirmed of the three persons «parity, not unity, in the essence or in the divine Being (sameness, identity, not unity, in the essence, being)» Propaed. II. 537.

To this sense the words of the liturgical Preface are absurdly accommodated: «not in the singularity of one person but in the Trinity of one substance», where, according to Günther, «the word "of one" in the second place is not to be taken in the same sense as in the first place, but for the sake of euphony "of one substance" is said for "of the same substance"; for here there is talk of a ternary or triplicated substance» ib. p. 539. A commentary is added by Günther's disciple Dr. Knoodt (in the published letters T. I. p. 145): «in the Preface it is not said "in the singularity of one substance", but "in the Trinity of one substance", by which words the singularity of the essence is denied, because a Trinity and hence a plurality (of substance) is affirmed». But when substance is not taken for person but for absolute substance, just as in this liturgical profession of faith substance is opposed to persons, and it is not one person but one substance that is predicated, it is most certain from the Catholic faith that the divine substance is one, singular, and not multipliable (see th. I. VII. IX. X.); and so in this very opposition it is altogether evident that in the same real numerical sense in which the unity of the person is denied, the unity of the substance is affirmed. Accordingly the name Trinity does not number substances, as the Güntherians thought, but persons. One God, one Lord, not in the singularity of one person but in the Trinity of one substance is the same as if it were said: there is one God — not in the Sabellian sense, that there is only one person; nor in the Arian sense, that the Father alone is the supreme God, while the Son and the Holy Spirit are inferior substances; nor in the sense of the tritheists, that just as there is not one person, so neither is there one substance, but three equal substances; rather, to exclude all these heresies there is predicated «one God, not in the singularity of one person, but in the Trinity of persons, who are of one substance».

What we have brought forward is enough that it be understood what the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX declared in the letter to Card. de Geissel, Archbishop of Cologne (15 June 1857): «we know that in the same (Güntherian) books not a few things are read which deviate not a little from the Catholic faith and from the sincere explanation of the unity of the divine substance in three distinct and eternal persons» (Acta Pii IX. P. I. T. II. p. 587). At the same time, however, from all that has been said there is set before the eyes that which in this whole exposition we have chiefly regarded, namely that the sincerity of the dogma itself cannot be preserved if, the superrationality intrinsic to it being denied, there is undertaken a conforming of the concept and a demonstration of the truth from the notions and principles of reason alone, independently of revelation. And from this it further appears why it is of so great importance that the superrational character of the mysteries be sincerely and practically acknowledged by Christian philosophers and by theologians.

Scholion. It is customary to ask concerning Plato and the Platonists whether they attained in their philosophy some species of the Trinity, and of what kind and from what source. But in the first place the doctrine of Plato himself must here be distinguished from the commentaries of the later Platonists; and likewise, in judging the doctrine of Plato himself, we shall set aside the books attributed to him by the Neoplatonists or at least suspected, of which sort Plato's epistles are commonly judged by recent critics, namely the second to Dionysius and the sixth to Coriscus.

Now, as regards the master himself, the interpretation of his theology depends on the interpretation of the doctrine of ideas. But his opinion concerning the ideas, and by this very fact concerning God, in many things perhaps not clear to Plato himself, certainly how obscure it is and always has been to all other learned men, can be established even from the mere immense diversity of interpretations, both among the ancients, whether Peripatetics or the Platonists themselves, and among the more recent commentators down to our own age. What things in Plato pertain to the present matter are roughly these. Any immutable truth which is the object of the intellect is called and is an idea or intelligible essence (ἰδέα, νοητὴ οὐσία), in opposition to existing sensible, mutable things, and even to the souls and minds themselves, which are mutable. Wherefore all sensible or material things, and also the spiritual substances which are contained in this universe, have their own ideas and intelligible essences. The whole complex of ideas, or the whole metaphysical order of essences, is that which is called the intelligible world (κόσμος νοητός), in opposition to this concrete world, which is the sensible world (κόσμος αἰσθητός). In that metaphysical order of truths and in the intelligible world there is assuredly a mutual nexus, harmony, and unity, by which a certain supreme beauty and goodness is constituted. The intelligible essences and ideas, the more universal and higher they are, the more orders of inferior ideas they comprehend under themselves and join together into unity. Just as in this sensible world minds alone are what understand and comprehend ideas, so in the intelligible world the mind itself (ὁ νοῦς), of which the minds in the sensible world are participations, comprehends all ideas and unites them in itself, and therefore that mind is the summit of the whole intelligible world, the father and cause of all ideas. Yet, higher still than the mind itself and the supreme of all, is the idea of the good (ἰδέα τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ, τἀγαθόν), in which both the idea of mind and consequently all the others are comprehended. The Good is God; the mind is also God; the intelligible world is also God.

Further, as regards the sensible world, in it itself one must distinguish that which is intelligible by the mind from that which is matter. All intelligible things are ideas and intelligible and immutable essences. When all these have been abstracted, there remains the principle of mutability, which has neither form nor quality, nor is intelligible in itself, and this is called matter (ἄμορφον καὶ ἄτυπον). Therefore, with the ideas acceding and joined with matter, this sensible world arises. Therefore this world, considered both in its complex, inasmuch as it comprehends all singular things, is a participation and express image of the intelligible world, and all singular things are a participation of the special ideas or essences; individual men, e. g., are a participation of the ideal man, who is ὁ ἄνθρωπος. Whence the sensible world is also God, and the son of God and only-begotten (ἔκγονος, μονογενής).

This whole Platonic theory is without doubt sufficiently doubtful and obscure that it admits manifold interpretations; yet it appears most clearly that it has absolutely nothing in common with the doctrine of the Christian revelation concerning the Most Holy Trinity. Several recent scholars, even preeminently Catholic ones, incline to an interpretation in the pantheistic sense. That many elements of pantheism are present can scarcely be denied; nor, however, must it for that reason be conceded that for Plato the Good and the Mind, like the whole intelligible world, were mere abstract ideas, which outside the sensible world have no concrete consistency and actual existence. But if the supreme Good is understood in the theistic sense (in opposition to pantheism) as God, a substantial spirit that understands and wills, which sense even the holy Fathers, as often as they made mention of Plato, seem to have admitted, then room still remains for a twofold or even threefold interpretation.

For first, the supreme mind (ὁ νοῦς) can be understood as the divine mind, so that the Good, without real distinction, is an attribute of God, so that the ideas of things are understood as ideas in the divine mind, and therefore there is only a distinction of reason and of consideration concerning the one God, the supreme exemplar and efficient and final cause, in which sense most of the Fathers, and before all others the famous Dionysius, interpreted or corrected Plato. With this sense admitted, surely there is no trace of the distinction of persons, except that, with revelation already supposed and known, one may proceed from a consideration of the divine mind to some analogical illustration of the paternal Word, as it is known from revelation, in the manner in which we have already said above, th. XVII., and will say more distinctly below in thesis XXVII.

This holds equally still, even if, according to Aristotle's explanation, whether true or false, it be supposed that the ideas, or the ideal and universal essences of things, were held by Plato as, as it were, exemplars of things subsisting per se outside the mind of God, provided that the Good and the Mind (τἀγαθὸν καὶ ὁ νοῦς) are distinguished not really but by consideration alone.

The other interpretation of the Platonic sense can be that in which, just as the ideas in general are supposed to subsist per se, so the Mind, as the supreme idea, is taken as subsisting per se and distinct from the Good or the supreme God. If this is the true sense of Plato, without any doubt he had the Good and the Mind as two essences, one supreme and the other inferior, and his doctrine will be a paradigm of the Arian error, as some Fathers have indicated. Cf. Cyrill. Al. contr. Iul. l. I. p. 34. T. VI. But thus it would differ much more from the revealed truth concerning the distinction of persons in one and undivided essence. In truth, if Plato held the ideal essences of things as so many objectively real exemplars subsisting per se, it can scarcely be doubted that by the same reasoning he posited the supreme ideal mind, and so that distinction of essences which we have mentioned will emerge. But this certainly is not some rational knowledge of the Trinity or at least of a duality of persons, as they are revealed in the Christian dogma, but it would be a new error deduced from an erroneous principle.

S. Thomas I. q. 32. a. 1. ad 1. leaves the option between either interpretation, the monotheistic or the Arian; Maranus (Praefat. ad Opp. s. Iustini P. II. c. 1.) with many recent authors understood it in the former sense, Petavius (de Trin. l. I. c. 1.) with others in the other sense. In actual fact, however, these latter in their judgment had more before their eyes the commentaries of the Platonists than the doctrine of Plato himself.

If, setting Plato aside, we look at the Neoplatonic doctrine of Philo the Jew and of the others who are wont to be called Neoplatonists, they did not constitute their philosophy concerning God and divine things by the guidance and light of reason alone. Concerning Philo the matter is most fully known: the foundation of his philosophical speculation is always the things and the facts and the doctrine, as they lie open in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. In the distinction with which we are dealing, Philo had before his eyes the theophanies, the doctrine of the Angel of the Lord, of the begotten Son of God, of the begotten Wisdom (vid. th. VI.); and these are the things from which he arrived at understanding τὸν λόγον, i.e., the reason proceeding from God, as a distinct person, if indeed he arrived at that. He who appeared to Abraham, to Hagar, to Jacob, to Moses in the bush, to the people of Israel on Sinai, in the cloud, etc., is for Philo ὁ θεῖος Λόγος. The same is called Archangel, supreme Angel, interpreter and minister of God, supreme priest in this universe, firstborn of God, image of God, another God, mediator between the unbegotten God and creatures⁶, idea of ideas, place of the intelligible world, archetypal idea, etc.

From all of Philo's theories this is most clear: that he found in the Scriptures indeed the distinction between God, whose Word it is, and the Word, but, undertaking to explain its reason and mode from the principles of Greek philosophy and especially from the Platonic ideas, he conformed a theology which could be a paradigm for the Gnostics and then for the Arians for their φιλοσοφοῦντα. The following judgment of Grossmann in his « Quaestiones Philoneis » (Lipsiae 1829) seems certainly to be proved by weighty arguments: « That the θεῖον λόγον of Philo is a nature not corporeal, and diverse from God although nearest to Him, but nevertheless inferior to God, sprung from God and dependent on God, which, since it holds the primacy of those things which Philo is wont to call τὰ ἀκόλουθα καὶ μετὰ Θεόν, occupies a certain middle place between God, as the mind of the totality of things (τὸν τῶν ὅλων νοῦν, causally), and the world, just as in the individual nature of man, the little world (τοῦ βραχέος κόσμου), the λόγος is interposed between νοῦν and αἴσθησιν, this I think most fully established. But just as Philo's theology itself is fused together from diverse elements, so the notion τοῦ θείου λόγου which he exhibited, according to the variety of the authors whom he follows, from time to time took on various colors »⁷. For in the divine books the doctrine of the Angel of the Lord offered itself to him; in the philosophy of Plato, the idea of ideas, the exemplar of all things; in the opinion of the Stoics, the soul of the world, κοσμικὸς λόγος ὁ διὰ πάντων ἐρχόμενος (although these two he could have corrected and reduced to a sound sense from the divine books themselves, if as a Jew he had preferred to follow the handed-down faith rather than to pursue interpretations from the Academy and the Porch); finally, from the decrees of the Cabbala of the Jews, the λόγος seemed to him to be « the prince of those three or seven or ten Sephiras (δυνάμεων)⁸, which, as the report was, emanate from God in a perpetual stream and serve God in the creation or administration of all things » Grossman l. c. p. 68.

The Neoplatonists succeeded one another from the beginning of the third century up to the sixth: Numenius, called a Pythagorean by the ancients, Ammonius Saccas, who is wont to be held the author of this Neoplatonic school, Plotinus, Porphyry, Amelius, Iamblichus, Aedesius, Maximus of Ephesus, Julian the Apostate, Proclus, Isidorus of Gaza, Damascius, under the last of whom the schools of philosophers, opposing the Christian religion, were at length proscribed by the edict of Justinian in the year 529. But now to all these Platonists not only the meletemata of Philo but the Scriptures and doctrine of the Christians were well known; some of them had even been Christians, as is handed down concerning Ammonius himself. There is therefore no doubt that they took up into their eclectic philosophy something more or less distorted from the Christian doctrine. Whence it is no wonder if with these men something occurs concerning the procession of the Word a little more akin to the Christian doctrine than with Plato himself. The Fathers also noticed this matter. Thus Theodoret, when he recalls that certain things analogous to the Christian dogma were said by Plutarch, Numenius, Plotinus, Amelius « who was the prince of the school of Porphyry », and « by others of the same sect », adds the declaration: « for these, since they existed after the advent of our Redeemer, mingled many things of Christian theology with their discourses » (Theodoret. de graec. affect. curat. Serm. II. T. IV. p. 500.)

Besides, the Fathers, dealing with the gentiles by a certain oeconomical manner of disputing and as it were arguing ad hominem, willingly assumed those things which are found said, whether in Plato or among the Platonists, concerning the Mind and the Word according to some likeness to the revealed dogma. But then they warn of two things, a) that the whole truth is found among Christians, because they have been taught by God Himself, but among the philosophers there is some particle of truth mixed with many errors. b) Having made a distinction between those things which are per se accessible to reason and the superrational truths, concerning these latter they concede indeed, in the way in which we have said, that something indicated is found among the Platonists and Plato himself, whose doctrine, however, the Fathers of the IVth and Vth centuries are wont to estimate almost from the commentaries of the Neoplatonists; but at the same time they affirm that this knowledge, of whatever kind it is, has been drawn from revelation, which came from the Hebrews to the Egyptians, and thence to Pythagoras and Plato, so that what there is of truth in their books concerning mysteries of this kind is to be referred back to revelation as to its source, while the errors mixed in are those of the philosophers themselves. Cf. Iustin. Cohortat. ad Graec. p. 8-13. 29; Clem. Alex. Strom. VI. p. 768. (ed. Potter); Euseb. Praep. Evang. l. XI. p. 551. et passim; Theodoret. de affect. graec. curat. Serm. II. p. 498. 505; Cyrill. Alex. contr. Iulian. l. I. T. VI. p. 35. et alibi; Augustin. Doctr. Christ. l. II. n. 43. (cf. Civ. Dei l. VIII. c. 11. et alibi). Those things which Augustine celebrates in Confess. VII. n. 13. sqq. concerning the Word are referred not to Plato but to the Platonists; with the sayings of Augustine are to be compared those which Theodoret has concerning Amelius, the disciple of Plotinus or Porphyry, l. c. p. 500.

Those ancient ecclesiastical writers attribute much to the opinion of Numenius the Pythagorean (at the beginning of the third century): τί γὰρ ἔστι Πλάτων ἢ Μωυσῆς ἀττικίζων; Theodoret, speaking to the gentiles about the Trinity: « These things, he says, cannot be exactly perceived except by him who has been versed in the sacred letters and has received the light of knowledge from divine grace. He who has seen the concord of the theology of the Old and New Testaments... will detect and praise those things of Plato and of those like Plato which they stole from the divine Scriptures; but what they mixed in as false he will scrape off and reject like filth. And, the hiding-places of the furies having been detected, he will believe the Pythagorean Numenius as he says: for what else is Plato than a certain Atticizing Moses? For by these words Numenius openly shows that whatever Plato piously said, he stole it from the theology of Moses... Thus it befits you, when you have heard the discourses of Anaxagoras and of Pythagoras and of Plato and thereafter of Numenius and of Plutarch and of Plotinus and of the rest, to seek out the source from which they, drawing a few drops of the divine streams, adorned their books, and, having spurned their poverty, to embrace the abyss of wisdom » Theodoret. l. c. p. 505. cf. Euseb. Praepar. Ev. l. XI. p. 527.

From all that has been said it is altogether certain that Plato's doctrine of ideas and of the divine mind pertains in nothing to the mystery of God, who is one in essence and three in persons. But if any things concerning the distinction of persons occur in Philo and, after the Gospel was already propagated far and wide, among the Neoplatonists⁹, they came to these philosophers from revelation, and were still by them, by an interpretation from merely philosophical principles, distorted into a false sense.

Here too it may be noted in passing what is to be thought of the so-called Platonism of the Fathers. The Fathers indeed, as we have often shown elsewhere, did not subject the revealed word to philosophy, nor ever brought themselves to accommodate it to the theories of the philosophers, but in the inverse order subjected philosophy to the truths of revelation understood according to tradition and the universal faith, and judged philosophy from them; and not rarely, especially when dealing with the gentiles, from the previously known revealed truth they bent certain theories of the philosophers to some true or more tolerable sense.

« Although both the truth of existence (that it is) and the truth of essence (what it is) in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity must, from what has been said, be judged to be above human reason: nevertheless 1° from presupposed faith there can be sought some understanding and a more distinct analogical concept of the essence of the mystery, what it is; and likewise 2° from the root of the revealed and believed truth one can arrive at some understanding of the existence of the mystery, why it is so. Hence this understanding and theological demonstration proceeds from principles that are believed by faith and is wholly grounded upon them, not, however, a philosophical one, from principles perceived by the light of reason ».

1°. In order that we may be able to believe with explicit faith the things that God reveals to us, a proper notion of the things to be believed, as they are in themselves, is not indeed required; nevertheless it is altogether necessary, or rather it is contained in the very act of explicitly believing, that we conceive at least some analogical notion of the thing believed. But this (setting aside the manifestation of the thing through immediate intuition and in itself, where there would no longer be faith but vision) is accomplished in three ways: either, namely, by supernatural intellectual light alone, through infused ideas and intellections; or by prophetic vision, by exhibiting signs of things (whether real, whether verbal, whether to be perceived extrinsically even by the senses or only intrinsically by the imagination), from which the intellect, under divine illumination, may be led to conceive the notions of the things signified, and to form a judgment about the truth; or finally by God the Word incarnate Himself, who, subsisting in the bosom¹

of the Father, testifies what He has seen (Io. 1. 18; III. 11.); or at least through men, God's legates (with the necessary and opportune manifestation of mission and authority), the things and truths to be believed are set forth extrinsically by word and doctrine, and intrinsically grace illuminates, excites, and elevates to the conceiving of supernatural faith (cf. S. Th. 2. 2. q. 173. and 174.; de Veritate q. 12. a. 7. sq.).

Although, as far as concerns the present matter, what we are about to say of the third mode holds with proportion almost the same for the first and second modes of revelation, which are prophetic modes; nevertheless now we treat only of this third mode of revelation, which in the present providence of God is the ordinary one. We shall consider therefore, first, how the understanding to be sought relates to revelation and to faith; then, with the holy Doctors leading the way, we shall illustrate this very thing with several examples.

1°. In the mode of revelation of which we have spoken, the internal light of grace does not of itself pertain to infusing the concepts themselves into the mind, but presupposes an external proposition of the things to be believed, suited to the character of the human mind; « faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ » Rom. X. 14. sqq. But the word is not heard by us, or the doctrine is not intelligible to us, nor could we conceive any ideas of the things proposed from it, and hence also give no explicit assent to the proposed truth, unless revelation were in some way connected with the notions of our mind already pre-held and with truths previously known. Here too that holds which Augustine says (ep. 120. n. 3.): « we could not even believe, unless we had rational souls ». With regard, therefore, to this connection of ideas, so that from things known one may arrive at things unknown, our mind, in the conception of ideas about revealed super-rational things, conducts itself in a manner similar to the attainment of the knowledge of God through the light of reason.

Namely, we first form the notions of perfections, wisdom, goodness, etc. from creatures, and thence, concluding from effects to cause, we know the perfections of God by the way of negation and supereminence (τῆς ὑπεροχῆς), removing the imperfection by which perfections are limited in creatures; nor except by this way of conclusion, and thus through likeness (ἀναλόγως Sap. XIII. 5.), as in a mirror and in an enigma, can we attain by the light of reason the idea and knowledge of the divine perfections. By this very fact we indeed evidently know God, if it is asked whether He is; but only with ideas derived from elsewhere and by comparison, and hence with analogical notions — not, however, with ideas formed from the intuition of the object in itself, and hence not with proper notions — do we conceive what God is (Tract. de Deo sect. II. c. 1.). So also when it is no longer the invisible things of God, understood through the visible works of God, that are to be contemplated, but the words of God are proposed to be believed, these words of God must be signs of ideas, of which we have already preconceived in the mind some analogical notions primarily derived from creatures; otherwise the words would not be signs for us to conceive the ideas signified by them, but a mere sound of words. In the present matter, while it is taught that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are one God, one Godhead, and three distinct among themselves, who both individually and three together are one God; there are presupposed in our mind many at least confused notions of perfections, without which God cannot be conceived; then the notions of essence, person, generation or origin of one from another, identity, distinction, etc., without which the mind will not be able, and with which pre-held it will be able, to form at least some confused concept of the thing proposed for belief, removing (as has been said of rational concepts) by the way of negation and supereminence the imperfections which adhere in creatures to these very things, whether absolute perfections or relations.

The distinction, therefore, between rational and super-rational concepts about God, as I have already indicated above (th. XVII.), is not in this, that we conceive the super-rational truths in no way, or that we conceive the rational ones by proper ideas and the super-rational ones by analogical ones; for on both sides the concepts are analogical, formed from perfections previously understood, as they are in creatures; but the distinction is another and a twofold one. For a) in the rational truths about God, as regards the concepts themselves, we proceed by the way of causality, by which we understand of God that He is; then by the way of negation and supereminence, by which we conceive somewhat more distinctly what He is, although only analogically and not properly, as God is in Himself. But in the super-rational truths there is no place for a conclusion from effects to cause, and therefore in place of the way of causality there is necessary there a positive revelation through the word of God, without which we would never arrive at those concepts. But because revelation does not change the mode of knowing connatural to us, it itself exhibits the super-rational perfections and internal relations of God according to the analogy and from the analogy of the rational notions which we have preconceived from creatures ². Wherefore, with revelation presupposed (just as in rational matters the way of causality is presupposed), we can already use, and necessarily do use, the way of negation and supereminence for a more distinct analogical concept of the super-rational truth or revealed object, what it is.

b) As is already evident from what has been said, the distinction is with regard to the judgment of assent (that it is). For this judgment, in so far as God is understood by reason, arises from the perceived connection of effects with their supreme cause; but in the revealed super-rational truths it rests solely on the authority of God revealing. Nevertheless, just as in the rational notions about God the mode of conceiving analogically what He is is referred to the perfections, not by abstracting from their existence but formally as understood in necessary existence; so in the super-rational objects of faith themselves the mode of conceiving is engaged with them in so far as their existence is most certainly established by faith. Hence the movement and striving to conceive things more distinctly from the analogies tends not to the understanding of things as possible but as existing, and therefore also to the understanding, in some measure, of the intimate reason of necessary existence.

In one word we can say: what is known of God (the rational truth Rom. I. 19.) can be understood by reason from the created perfections — that He is, and analogically, what He is; the deep things of God (the super-rational truths 1. Cor. II. 10.) are revealed by the Spirit of God — that they are, and in this very revelation there is exhibited to our spirit the analogy from the created perfections, so that we may apprehend analogically what they are, and by what intrinsically necessary reason they are.

Thus, therefore, in these truths the principle of the holy Fathers is altogether most certain: « unless you believe, you will not understand » (from Is. VII. 9. according to the LXX.) For although faith itself (explicit) could not exist, unless some understanding preceded — not only of the motives of credibility, about which we now ask nothing, but of the very thing to be believed ³ — nevertheless the object of this preceding understanding is exhibited by revelation itself, and (in super-rational matters) only it can exhibit it. Moreover, faith being now presupposed, faith itself, in so far as there is included in it the highest religious veneration and intimate love of the thing believed, seeks a further understanding, as it were a middle between faith and vision ⁴, whose root and seeds are already contained in the very mode of revelation and in faith itself.

Consentius had asked of St. Augustine that « discussing the question of the Trinity, i.e. of the unity of the divinity and the distinction of the persons, cautiously and prudently, he would so wipe away the cloud of his mind that what he previously could not think, being declared by the light of understanding, he could in some way see with his eyes ». On the other hand, the same Consentius had maintained: « reason is not so much to be sought as the authority of the saints is to be followed; for if the faith of the holy Church were grasped by the reason of disputation and not by the piety of believing, no one besides philosophers and orators would possess beatitude ». Now Augustine in his response showed that these two things posited by Consentius, if taken absolutely, mutually exclude one another. Wherefore, he says, since both are most true — both that faith is to be followed on authority, and that nevertheless understanding of the things believed is to be sought — those two are to be taken in such a way that faith precedes and that from faith one strives to some understanding of the thing believed, which however will not be perfect until we arrive at vision face to face. « If you not unreasonably demand of me or of any teacher reason, that you may understand what you believe, correct your definition, not so that you reject faith but so that you may see by the light of reason also those things which you already hold with the firmness of faith. For far be it that God should hate in us that by which He created us more excellent than the other living beings. Far be it, I say, that we should believe in such a way as not to receive or seek reason, since we could not even believe, unless we had rational souls. Therefore, that in certain things pertaining to salutary doctrine, which we are not yet able to perceive by reason but will one day be able, faith should precede reason, by which the heart is cleansed, so that it may take up and bear the light of great reason — this is certainly of reason. And therefore it was said reasonably through the prophet: unless you believe, you will not understand. Where without doubt He distinguished these two, and gave counsel that we believe first, so that we may be able to understand what we believe. Accordingly, that faith should precede reason, seemed reasonable... If a believer already demands reason, that he may understand what he believes, his capacity is to be regarded, so that, reason being rendered according to it, he may take as much understanding of his faith as he can — more, if he takes more; less, if less — provided, however, that until he arrives at the fullness and perfection of knowledge, he does not depart from the way of faith... Now therefore if we are faithful, we have arrived at the way of faith; which if we do not abandon, not only to as much understanding of incorporeal and immutable things as can be taken in this life, not by all, but even to the summit of contemplation, which the Apostle calls face to face, we shall without doubt arrive » Aug. ad Consent. ep. 120. n. 2-4.

The same principles, both elsewhere often in Augustine and in the other Fathers, are enunciated theoretically and brought into practical use. Indeed, on these principles all genuine theology, in so far as it is speculative, and its elaboration rest. Wherefore just as with the Fathers — Gregory Naz. and Nyssenus, Basil, Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, etc. — so with Anselm, the Victorines, Peter Lombard, Alexander, Albert, Thomas, Bonaventure, and all the other masters of the school, both the treatment of the other dogmas and specifically the doctrine of the Trinity (with which we are now concerned) is constituted in no small part in the inquiry of understanding from faith. Thus Anselm: the mystery of the Trinity

must not be proved to the Christian by reason, he says, but believed by faith; but from faith and in faith, as far as can be done, one must advance to understanding. « I hear that the cleric Roscelinus ⁵ says that in God the three persons are three things separated from one another, as there are three angels, yet in such a way that there is one will and power... Whoever asserts as truth the blasphemy which I have set down above that I heard said by Roscelinus, whether man or angel, is anathema... for he is altogether not a Christian. But if he is baptized and has been nourished among Christians, he is in no way to be heard; nor is any reason either to be demanded from him for his error or to be exhibited to him of our truth (because namely the proposition of faith is most clear)... For it is most foolish and insipid, on account of anyone not understanding, to call into the doubtfulness of wavering questions what is founded most solidly upon the firm rock... For a Christian ought to advance through faith to understanding, not come to faith through understanding, or, if he cannot understand, depart from faith. But when he is able to attain to understanding, he delights; when truly he cannot, he venerates what he cannot grasp » Anselm. l. II. ep. 41. ad Fulconem Episc. Belovac. « I do not attempt, Lord, to penetrate Your height, because I in no way compare my understanding to it, but I desire in some measure to understand Your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this too, that unless I believe, I will not understand » Id. Proslog. c. 1.

2°. The analogies under which the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is exhibited to us to be conceived, in the Scriptures themselves and thenceforth in the whole ecclesiastical preaching, are chiefly three. When a) it is taught: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, proceeding from the Father and (because all things that are the Father's are also the Son's) receiving from the Son; here there is included the fundamental analogy ⁶, without which we could form no concept, and under which, according to the notions pre-held from creatures, we conceive three distinct persons and the unity of nature.

Then we conceive the origin of the second person from the first, indeed also the mode of origin, through generation, i.e. a procession in the likeness of nature, i.e. from an internal vital principle the communication of the divine nature, in such a way that the second person, existing thence by the force of the mode of procession, is the substantial image of the first person; for this is what we understand to be expressed by the names Father, Son, generation, image, figure or character of the substance of the Father, under which the mystery is revealed.

Likewise we conceive the procession of the third distinct person from the first and the second, in so far as they have all things in common, i.e. in so far as they are one principle; and at least negatively we understand the mode of procession to be diverse from generation, because the third person is not the Son.

Moreover, we learn to correct the notion of the unity of nature and of the distinction of persons, as we have preconceived it from creatures, by the other dogma, that the three are one God, not three distinct Gods. For thence we understand that the unity of nature and of the whole absolute perfection is not specific, as in creatures, but numerical; and that the distinction of the persons is not according to absolute substance, but according to formal relative reasons, which are expressed by the names Father, Son, and Spirated. God is spirit; therefore all the imperfections which adhere in creatures to the notions of father, son, generation are to be denied.

« Neither son nor generation is a property proper to the deity, but is taken from human likeness; likewise the appellation spirit. Sacred Scripture, therefore, used this appellation of the divine Spirit, showing that He is from God in another way (than the Son); since, as was said before, it was not fitting that He also be signified through the same likeness. But you (heretic) ... holding in contempt (καταφρονῶν or περιφρονῶν) the human examples (παραδείγματα), you subvert the divine dogmas which are understood from them.... God begets not as a man; yet He begets truly, and brings forth a progeny from His very self, the Word (ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἐκφαίνει, Λόγον), not a human one; but He brings forth the Word truly from His very self. And He emits the Spirit through the mouth (ἐκπέμπει), not as it were in human fashion, since neither is the mouth of God corporeal; but from Him Himself is the Spirit, and from no other source » Basil, cont. Eunom., l. V, p. 306.

The manner, therefore, of positively conceiving these things is exhibited in the second analogy, taken from the spiritual and intellectual order.

For b) the same one who is the Son is the Word, God, ὁ Λόγος. When this analogy is joined with the former, they perfect one another, as it were, and what is lacking in the one is supplied from the other. In the former, both the substantially and the real distinction of the persons from one another are exhibited more distinctly; in the latter, both the mode of the intellectual, immanent, necessary, and eternal generation and the unity of essence and the mutual immanence of the persons, that is, the περιχώρησις, are conceived more clearly.

« John himself, when he was about to teach that this Word is the only-begotten Son of God, lest anyone suspect a passible generation, by prefixing the appellation of Word takes away every unjust suspicion, declaring that the Son is from Him (the Father) and is so impassibly... But if neither do these adumbrations (παραδείγματα) suffice to set forth the whole matter, do not wonder; for the discourse is about God, whom we can neither utter nor think according to His dignity » Chrysost., in Io., hom. II, n. 4.

Thus also do the other Fathers speak with common consent. « When he spoke of the Only-begotten, he said the Word itself... Why Word? That it may be clear that He proceeded from the mind. Why Word? Because He was begotten without passion. Why Word? Because He is the image of the Begetter, showing the whole Begetter in Himself, separating nothing from Him, and existing perfect through Himself; just as our word also bears the image of our whole thought... He said Word, therefore, to show you that the Father's generation is not subject to passion, and to teach you the perfect existence (subsistence) of the Son, who is of course God, and to show you through these things the eternal conjunction of the Son with the Father. For our word too, the offspring of the mind, is begotten without passion; for it is neither cut nor divided nor flows away, but the whole mind, remaining in its own substance, produces the whole and perfect word; and the word proceeding embraces in itself all the power of the begetting mind. After, therefore, you shall have derived from the name of the Word as much for the theology of the Only-begotten as is pious, then whatever you find to be alien and dissonant, avoid it and pass it by with all diligence » Basil, hom. in illud: « in principio erat » etc., n. 3, T. II, p. 136.

From this concept of the origin and relation between the first and second person according to the analogy of the mind and of the proceeding word, it is easy to advance to the notion of the third person as the term, that is, of the love produced through dilection, insofar as the one dilection is common to the Father and the Son. c) The third analogy can be said to be in some way intermediate between each of the preceding ones, taken of course from the material procession of splendor from light, that is, of light from light, which nevertheless is itself a sensible image of the intellectual procession.

It is set forth in the Scriptures: Heb. I. 3 (ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης); Sap. VII. 25 (ἀτμὶς γὰρ τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ δυνάμεως, καὶ ἀπόρροια τῆς τοῦ παντοκράτορος δόξης εἰλικρινής). It is cultivated in many ways by the holy Fathers. See Athanasius, de decretis Nic., n. 23, and in the same place n. 25, the doctrine of Theognostus; Gregory of Nazianzus, ep. 143 ad Evagr. (or or. 45), T. II, p. 199; Basil, contr. Eunom., l. II, n. 16; l. IV, n. 1; Cyril, thesaur., T. V, P. I, p. 47; Dialog. II, ibid., p. 453; Damascene, Fid. orth., l. I, c. 8, pp. 134. 136.

He who considers both the matter itself and the testimonies of the Fathers will easily see the great difference of this analogy from the preceding ones.

Just as in man, and especially in the spirit, there is the image of God, while in material things there is only a more remote adumbration and vestige of God (S. Th. I. q. 93.), so Father, Son, Word, Holy Spirit — names which have an analogy in man and in the understanding and willing spirit — are and are said properly in divine things, if the perfection signified is considered in itself; on the contrary, light, splendor, etc., which are drawn from material things, can never be said of divine things properly but only metaphorically. Hence in this last analogy nothing else is set forth than a comparison and metaphor to aid our intellect by some sensible thing, under which metaphor is supposed the image of the Most Holy Trinity, the supreme Spirit, drawn from the created spirit, as in itself nearer and far more expressive (because spiritual), so that from it we may ascend to some more distinct concept of the ineffable mystery ⁷. Cf. S. Th. contr. gent., l. IV, c. 12.

Thus the speculative theology of the Trinity rests almost entirely — both of the other Fathers and above all of St. Augustine, and from Augustine of the subsequent theologians, St. Anselm, the Victorines, Lombard, Alexander of Hales, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and the rest — upon the revealed intellectual procession of the Word and of love, insofar as this concept of the depths of God, proposed by the Holy Spirit revealing, can be apprehended by us from the analogy of the created spirit. For according to this same analogy, and within the limits of analogical cognition, keeping the revealed principles before the eyes, the understanding of the internal relations, distinctions, and unity has progressed and progresses, as much as God deigns to illumine the holy Doctors of the Church, and through their doctrine each one of us, with external and internal light.

II. Now it is also evident in what sense there are, and in what sense there are not, « necessary reasons » for proving the truth of the existence of the mystery. For St. Anselm and Richard the Victorine seem to appeal to « necessary » reasons by name no less in proving the Most Holy Trinity than in demonstrating the rational truth of the existence of God and of the absolute attributes.

Those at whose request St. Anselm wrote the Monologium «prescribed this form, that in that meditation nothing at all should be persuaded by the authority of Scripture; but whatever the end should assert through the individual investigations (that is, whatever it was proposed to demonstrate and was contained in the conclusion), that it is so — the necessity of reason should briefly compel, and the clarity of truth should openly show» Praefat. ad Monolog.

Richard, however, in his books on the Trinity professes these things. « It will be our intention in this work to adduce for those things which we believe, insofar as the Lord shall have given, not only probable but even necessary reasons, and to season the documents of our faith with the unravelling and explanation of truth. For I believe without doubt that for the explanation of whatever things must be, not only probable but even necessary arguments are not lacking, although in the meantime it may happen that they escape our industry » De Trin., l. I, c. 4. And indeed both of them, Anselm no less than Richard, seem to pursue consistently, in the matter itself and in the manner of treatment, a purely rational demonstration. Nor does the interpretation of St. Thomas seem sufficient for the true sense of Richard, who says: « the meaning of that expression (about necessary arguments for demonstrating all necessary truths) appears from this, which follows (in Richard): although it may happen that they escape our industry » S. Th., in Boet. Trin., Prooem., q. 1, a. 4, ad 7. For although necessary arguments may escape some, and at times, Richard nevertheless does not think that they cannot be found by human reason, or that they are lacking to himself in the mystery of the Trinity; nay, he says that it is his intention « to adduce necessary reasons » for those things which we believe about the Most Holy Trinity. Hence theologians are also wont to cite Richard (and they could have said the same of Anselm with equal right) for the opinion of those who have said that the truth of the mystery, with revelation presupposed, can be demonstrated by necessary reasons. See Suarez, Trin., l. I, c. 12, n. 8. 9; Ruiz, disp. 41, sect. 2.

What, then, does it mean, that with faith alone presupposed, but not apart from revelation, « necessary reasons can be adduced », and a « compelling necessity of reason » can be shown? Necessary reasons can be taken here in two ways: first, so that only the historical knowledge of the Trinity is presupposed, but otherwise the Trinity of distinct persons is demonstrated uniquely from rational principles, without any principle of demonstration known from revelation alone being necessarily presupposed — namely, from the pre-known image, say, of the created spirit and of its immanent acts, concluding to God, the uncreated Spirit, and to the immanent processions of the divine persons. This was the error of the Güntherians, of Frohschammer, and of others (S. P. Pius IX, ep. ad Archiep. Monac., II. Dec. 1862); but St. Anselm and Richard exclude this sense no less expressly than do all the other preceding Fathers and subsequent theologians. For they most expressly require a preceding faith, that some understanding may be reached of the things we believe ⁸. Necessary reasons, therefore, are to be understood in another sense according to these Doctors.

If, namely, the revealed truth is presupposed as a principle — that just as our mind produces an immanent intellectual word and an immanent volition, so in the infinite Spirit there is a true immanent production, and hence a real procession both under the aspect of intellection and under the aspect of volition; this revealed principle, I say, being presupposed, certainly not only probable but necessary reasons, intelligible even to us, demonstrate that those processions are immanent, not from free production but from the necessary intimate perfection of the intellect and will in God, and therefore that they are eternal; moreover, that the begotten Word in God is not an accident but a substantial being (what is said of the Word holds equally of the proceeding love); likewise, that there is a distinction between the principle from which the Word is generated and the begotten Word, and therefore also that there are distinct persons, and the rest that pertains to the unity and distinction of the persons. But this is not a demonstration of the Trinity from the sole light of reason; rather, it is a theological deduction from the revealed truth, and a somewhat more distinct analogical understanding of the same truth from the analogy of the created spirit.

Thus St. Thomas explains more fully the sense in which the « necessary arguments » of Richard the Victorine for demonstrating the Trinity are to be understood. « Reason is brought to bear on something in two ways: in one way, to prove the root sufficiently.... in another way, reason is brought to bear not as one that sufficiently proves the root, but as one that shows the consequent effects to agree with the root already posited... In the first way, therefore, reason can be brought to bear to prove that God is one, and similar things; but in the second way stands the reason which is brought to bear for the manifestation of the Trinity, because, namely, once the Trinity is posited, such reasons agree, yet not so that through these reasons the Trinity of persons is sufficiently proved.... And hence it is, that.... through faith one comes to knowledge, and not conversely » I. q. 32, a. 1, ad 2.

« That the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, although it is above reason and the human power of understanding, is nevertheless not against reason, is assuredly evident, granted divine revelation. Against those, however, who deny revelation, it can be shown in a twofold way that there is no evident repugnance against reason: 1° namely, indirectly, from the very fact that the intimate ground of the divine essence and of the divine person (as it is in itself) surpasses our power of understanding; 2° directly, by showing that there is no evident truth which is understood to be evidently repugnant to this dogma, in the sense in which it has been revealed and is proposed as to be believed by faith. »

When it must be shown that the revealed doctrine does not repugn to reason — namely, that the one God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three really distinct from one another — this can be understood in a threefold way. For either a) it is demanded that the very truth of the matter be perceived by reason and be able to be demonstrated, namely that the divine nature, from its own infinite perfection, necessarily subsists in three distinct persons, as the Güntherians said, that non-repugnance is congruity with reason; and therefore that the former cannot be shown without the latter being demonstrated at the same time, and that in such a way that the very internal truth of the matter is perceived ¹. That in this way a rational demonstration of the mystery cannot be made, and that in this sense the truth is above reason, has been proved by us above (th. XVII.). Or b) a demonstration of non-repugnance is demanded, such that reason positively perceives and evidently understands the internal possibility of the matter. But that one most simple, undivided essence can at the same time be three relative subsistents really distinct from one another cannot be demonstrated by comparison with the ideas and rational truths pre-understood from creatures; and so such a possibility could only be understood by immediately knowing that essence and those hypostases in themselves, as they are in themselves. But then not only the bare possibility, but the very truth and necessary existence would be understood. Therefore c) it is one thing to demonstrate non-repugnance positively from internal grounds, and another that we understand even negatively, by reason, that a repugnance cannot be demonstrated. For that former there would be required to have seen into the truth intrinsically, which cannot be done in superrational mysteries; for the latter it suffices to have shown that the arguments which are opposed as demonstrating repugnance are either not evident truths, or do not evidently repugn to the true sense of the mystery.

This last point can always be shown. For indeed a rational truth cannot, objectively and in itself, repugn to a revealed truth; otherwise the same thing would at once be true and false. Hence it is impossible that reason understand anything as an evident truth evidently opposed to revelation understood in its genuine sense; otherwise reason would understand as an evident truth that which is false; and so the very light of reason, made for truth, would by its own nature incline toward it, and consequently God Himself, the author of reason, would lead us to judge as true that which is false. But these are evidently contradictory. Therefore by the very fact that the truth of the mystery is certain to us by infallible faith, it is no less certain that what is said to repugn to it is either not a truth, or does not truly repugn, or repugns only to a sense of the dogma foreign to it, in which sense the mystery is neither revealed nor true.

« The gifts of grace are added to nature in this way, that they do not take it away but rather perfect it. Hence the light of faith, which is infused into us gratis, does not destroy the light of natural cognition naturally implanted in us. Although, however, the natural light of the human mind is insufficient for the manifestation of those things which are manifested through faith, nevertheless it is impossible that those things which are divinely handed on to us through faith be contrary to those which are implanted in us through nature; for then one of the two would have to be false; and since both are for us from God, God would be for us the author of falsehood, which is impossible.... Just as, however, sacred doctrine is founded upon the light of faith, so philosophy is founded upon the natural light of reason. Hence it is impossible that those things which are of philosophy be contrary to those things which are of faith; but they fall short of them. They contain, nevertheless, certain likenesses of them and certain preambles to them, just as nature is a preamble to grace. But if anything is found in the sayings of the philosophers contrary to faith, this is not philosophy, but rather an abuse of philosophy and a defect of reason. And therefore it is possible from the principles of philosophy to refute an error of this kind, either by showing it to be altogether impossible, or by showing it not to be necessary. For just as those things which are of faith cannot be demonstratively proved, so certain things contrary to them cannot be demonstratively shown to be false, but it can be shown that they are not necessary. Thus, therefore, in sacred doctrine we can use philosophy in a threefold way: first, to demonstrate those things which are the preambles of faith... second, to make known through certain likenesses those things which are of faith... third, to resist those things which are said against the faith, either by showing them to be false, or by showing them not to be necessary » S. Th. in Boet. Trin. Prooem. q. 2. a. 3. cf. I. q. 1. a. 8.

I. Now, in order that it be shown that the opposing arguments are false or not necessary, speaking per se and absolutely, there is no need to compare those arguments one by one with the revealed dogma; but a certain general comparison of the divine eminence and infinite perfection with the imperfection and limitation of our intellect suffices. This general solution of the difficulties, indeed, will be only indirect; yet it is not therefore less valid in itself. For from this very general comparison it is altogether evident that there can be many things in the infinite essence which cannot be understood by the light of finite reason, restricted within certain limits of truths. We understand many things in God by the very light of reason, because they are; yet we do not understand how they are and how they do not repugn to one another; for example, that the essence itself is one immutable volition and yet free in its operations ad extra, and many other things. If, therefore, on account of the infinity of the essence, predicates of this kind do not repugn — which would involve an evident contradiction in finite natures — then without absurdity it cannot be asserted that such a communication of the infinite nature, that there be several really distinct from one another of one numerically single essence, evidently repugns, because such distinction and unity would repugn in finite natures and hypostases. For although someone might assert that the intimate ground of a finite essence and hypostasis is so fully seen by him that he evidently understands the metaphysical repugnance of the unity of nature in distinct persons, no one can claim for himself, without enormous arrogance and ignorance, such an evident understanding of the divine essence and hypostasis. Because, namely, the divine essence stands above the whole order of created and finite being, and we do not understand it as it is in itself, it cannot be evident to the light of reason whether there is or is not one formal ground of that infinite spiritual nature and another of the divine hypostasis, such that the nature, remaining one, requires its communication through internal vital acts, and therefore under the formal ground of nature there is unity, while under the formal ground of hypostasis there is plurality.

In this sense can be understood what Suarez says, l. I. c. 12. n. 20: « that principle, things which are the same as one and the same third are the same as each other, although it is universally true in finite things, in an infinite reality cannot be demonstrated by natural reason; and therefore in the way in which it is evident, it is not contrary to this mystery ».

Namely, in finite things there are never two who are really distinct from each other under some ground and really and numerically one under another ground, but they are only one in species. But the truth has been revealed that the infinite essence is so identified with one relative that, from its infinite eminence and communicability, it is at the same time identified with the other relative, and therefore there are two really distinct under the ground of the relatives, and the same are one under the ground of the absolute essence (all of which, as is plain, holds equally of the third person as well).

But in such communicability of the infinite essence, whose intimate ground, as it is in itself, we do not understand, to assert an evident repugnance is evidently absurd. « If, because he does not see this in other things, he is unable to understand it in God either, let him bear for a little while that there is in God something which his intellect cannot penetrate » s. Anselm. de fide Trin. c. 7. Moreover, that principle, « things which are the same as one and the same third, etc., » has metaphysical truth, and so holds in any order of infinite things no less than of finite ones, provided it be understood in its true sense, about which we shall speak shortly.

This somewhat indirect solution of the difficulties by which the adversaries of the faith wish to demonstrate a contradiction is not an appeal to the superrationality of the mystery, so as to evade demonstrations of an evident contradiction, as Bayle said with cunning but quite clear words in his Dictionary², and after him other unbelievers said; but it is a demonstration deduced from the very natures of the things themselves of the impossibility of demonstrating an evident contradiction between the Trinity of relative hypostases and the unity of the essence or absolute perfection, when the proper internal ground both of the hypostasis and of the divine essence stands above our intelligence, and cannot be understood by us as it is in itself. For if the contradiction between the Trinity of hypostases and the unity of essence were evident, as the hypostases and the essence are conceived by you, by that very fact it will not be, and cannot be, evident that that concept of yours is genuine and proposed in revelation; indeed for Christians it will be evident, if not immediately, at least mediately from the revealed truth, that such a concept of yours, whether the one or the other or both, is foreign to revelation and is false. Conversely, if the concept is genuine as it is contained in revelation, it is at least mediately evident from infallible faith that a proof by which the showing of a contradiction would be pretended is necessarily fallacious, and therefore can also be shown by the light of reason to be either false or not evident, and by this very fact altogether empty for the purpose for which it is brought forward. « Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and it is impossible that the contrary be demonstrated of the true, it is manifest that the proofs which are brought against it are not demonstrations but soluble arguments » S. Th. I. q. 1. a. 8.

Indirect solutions of this kind show indeed sufficiently that the objections are not valid, but they do not show from an intrinsic ground why they are not valid. They occur, however, frequently among the Fathers, because they are most suitable both in themselves and for preparing minds for the direct solutions, and because most are not suited for grasping these latter. « Sometimes we bring them a reason, not the one they seek when they ask about God, because neither can they take it in, nor perhaps can we either apprehend or utter it; but one by which it is shown to them how unfit and utterly unsuited they are for perceiving what they demand » s. Aug. Trin. I. n. 3.

II. Yet in theology, where faith seeks understanding, what Augustine pursues in that same place must be attempted, « that as much as we can, we render a reason that the Trinity is the one and only true God ». But this very reason rendered, as Augustine speaks — namely, a more distinct concept, although only analogical, of the Most Holy Trinity deduced from revelation — supplies the direct solution of all the difficulties by which the adversaries would wish to demonstrate a contradiction in the concept of the mystery. A fuller direct solution of objections of this kind will therefore spontaneously follow below from the very explanation of the genuine concept. Here only some general consideration will suffice.

1°. It cannot be demonstrated that there is an evident repugnance in the fact that in God, an infinite spirit, the immanent Word really proceeds through intellection, or is eternally truly produced. For a repugnance of this kind is not evident from the very nature of intellection considered universally; indeed, we conceive intellection in act without an immanent word with more difficulty than intellection with a word as immanent term. The repugnance is not evident in intellection insofar as it is divine and infinite; for from that alone it is evident that the Word cannot be an accident; but if it is something, it is necessarily substantial, because divine intellection is a substance. Finally, that repugnance is not evident by reason of the non-multipliable unity of the divine essence; for from that alone it is evident that the principle producing the Word by intellection and the Word as the immanent term of this intellection are one absolute essence. To be sure, the production of the divine essence repugns; for that would be both a multiplication of the essence and its production out of nothing; but it cannot be shown to be an evident repugnance that from the inborn perfection of the divine intellect there is required the eternal necessary procession of the immanent Word, which is distinguished under the formal ground of the Word, namely of the relative, from the producing principle likewise viewed under the formal ground of the producer and of the relative, but in such a way that the formal ground of the Godhead and of the absolute essence is one, common in the begetter of His Word and in the Word of His begetter.

The truth, therefore, of the production of the divine Word is indeed above reason, because by reason it cannot be understood and demonstrated that in the divine intellect there is, as immanent term, and necessarily is, a produced Word (th. XVII.); but it is not a doctrine against reason, because there is no notion of reason, nor can there be, evidently true and evidently repugnant to this doctrine. When, however, the Spirit of God, who searches the depths of God, has revealed to us, and the Only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, has Himself declared this mystery: « in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word »; when, I say, it is established by divine revelation concerning the procession of the immanent Word, from this posited principle and from this « root of truth » (S. Th. I. q. 32. a. 1.), as was said in the preceding thesis, we understand the remaining consequences through « necessary reasons »; namely, that the begotten Word is distinct from the begetter, that it is substantial, and therefore (according to the analogy of a person in created things compared with the common nature) that it is a subsistent person distinct from the Father, but that the distinction is not according to essence but according to the formal ground of the relative. For all these things (supposing the real procession of the Word) are necessarily connected with the infinity, unity, and simplicity of God, which attributes are understood even by the light of reason. Moreover, these same things hold of the real production of an immanent term through an act of willing or of loving, and therefore of the third person, whose notion is shown in the same way to be above reason, but not against reason.

2°. Let judgment now be passed on the Socinian hay, which the Rationalists of our age continue to chew over again (Christianus Baur, Fridericus Strauss, Fridericus Schleiermacher and others, in D.num Ioan. Kuhn de Trinit. p. 522. seqq.). One, they say, is not equal to three; we evidently understand that 1=3 repugns. The mathematical axiom is evident: things which are not distinguished from one and the same third are not distinguished from one another; A=B; B=C; therefore A=C. The divine persons, according to Christian dogma, are not distinguished from the essence; therefore they are not distinguished from one another.

We answer: these mathematical axioms are evident, and their altogether necessary truth so little contradicts the revealed mystery of God one in nature and three in persons, that unless the truth of these axioms were absolutely certain to us, we could neither understand the revelation of the mystery itself nor know what is to be believed. « For unless we had rational souls, we could not believe at all » (Aug.). Indeed revelation itself presupposes, and we presuppose in believing revelation, as evidently true that one is not three; otherwise revelation and faith in the Trinity, proposing one essence and three persons, would not render us certain that there are not three essences and one person. In general, just as we could be certain of no truth, so neither could we be certain of a revealed truth, because we would not have rational souls.

Likewise, revelation and faith in God one in nature and three in persons presupposes as evidently true the other axiom: wherever two things are said not to be distinct from one third, there under that formal aspect under which they are not distinct from that said third, they are really neither two nor a third, but altogether one undivided thing. Without this evident principle we would not understand the one undivided Godhead, while it is revealed and believed that the Father is God and the Son is God and yet there is one God. For while it is revealed that the Father is God and the Son is the same God, the two under the formal aspect of deity are said to be one, i.e., not distinct from one third (as is objected), namely from the deity; and therefore from that evident principle we understand that the two are not distinguished from one another but are altogether one in deity, although at the same time they are revealed as distinct from one another under another formal aspect (namely under the formal aspect of relatives, i.e., of Father and Son): « I and the Father are one; there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one ».

The evident truth enunciated in both of those mathematical principles therefore in no way opposes the mystery of the Catholic faith, but rather is presupposed in it; those axioms indeed contradict only a heresy — such as has never existed nor can be conceived by the mind — if it were said that the one God is three Gods, and that the three persons, who under the aspect of deity are one and undivided, are nevertheless, under the same aspect, the deity I mean, really distinguished among themselves³ Let the Rationalists, therefore, who continue to swear by the most foolish words of the Socinians, hold fast the simplest answer: the one, under that aspect under which it is one, is evidently not three, and therefore one divine essence, one God, is not three essences and not three Gods; and conversely, three persons are not one person, one Father is not three Fathers, one Son is not three Sons, etc. Likewise, things that are really one under some aspect are evidently not many under that aspect, or, as it is said in the objection in less fitting words: things that are under some aspect the same as one third are under that aspect the same among themselves. For this reason the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, because they are one under the aspect of deity, i.e., inasmuch as they are God, are not three Gods but one God; or, because they are the same as the deity and are one deity, therefore under the aspect of deity they are not distinguished among themselves.

A far different opinion would contradict the mystery of faith — one that is in no way evident, cannot be demonstrated true, indeed, enunciated in general terms, is evidently false. For one would have to say: things that are several really distinct from one another under one aspect cannot be one under another aspect; and things that are one under some aspect (or, less properly speaking, things that are the same as one third under some aspect) are the same among themselves under every aspect, i.e., are distinguished among themselves under no aspect. But who does not see that, where in one thing there are several different aspects and functions, it is absurd to say that what is verified in it according to one aspect must necessarily also be true according to another, different aspect? In man life is rational and animal and vegetative; does he therefore, according to the same aspect according to which he digests food and vegetates, also think, and will and choose with free will? On the matter at hand St. Thomas answers thus: « That argument holds — that whatever things are the same as one and the same thing are the same as one another — in those things which are the same in reality and in notion, like a tunic and a garment, but not in those which differ in notion... Although paternity is the same in reality as the divine essence, and filiation likewise, nevertheless these two import opposite respects; whence they are distinguished from one another » S. Th. I. q. 28. a. 3. ad 1. That is to say, they are not really distinguished among themselves because they are distinguished from the essence according to reason; for in that way even the absolute attributes are distinguished both from the essence and from one another only by reason. But that the infinite divine nature has diverse aspects of the absolute and the relative, i.e., that nature and hypostasis in God are distinguished by reason and virtually — this is the condition without which there could be no real distinction of the hypostases among themselves. But the formal reason of this distinction actually existing is that the divine hypostases are relative through relations of origin, and therefore are opposed to one another as principle and as really proceeding from the principle.

Mathematical formulas do not pertain to this; for there the terms cannot be the same as a third under one aspect and not the same among themselves under another aspect, because abstract quantities have only one aspect, not one and another. In the physical and metaphysical order of finite substances there is a distinction under the aspect of hypostasis (another and another), and some unity under the aspect of nature (not another and another), although only a specific unity. Peter, formally as this one individual, is other than Paul; if the nature contained in the definition is regarded formally, Peter has a greater unity with Paul than with animal (in general), and with animal greater than with substance in general (e.g., with a stone); but the greatest, indeed numerical, unity would be according to the notion of man, if — as some philosophers and even Catholic theologians thought — humanity, i.e., the formal notion of nature, on the side of the thing really and numerically one, constituted Peter and Paul one man (see above the Scholion to th. IX.).

Now if the divine intellect really produces the immanent Word, evidently the essence or nature, one in number, is that of the producer and of the Word (and the same holds for the immanent term of volition or love). Then indeed, under the formal aspect of the producer of the Word and of the Word produced, they are two relatives really distinct from one another; but under the formal aspect of nature or deity there is one in number, and therefore one God. Both this unity under the aspect of the absolute and this distinction under the other aspect of relatives evidently follow from the supposed production of the Word. Ridiculous sophisms drawn from the mathematical axiom are therefore to be dismissed, if the Rationalists do not wish to contradict evident reason; and so there will remain for them only this: to test the strength of their unbelief solely in demonstrating an evident repugnance in the fact that infinite intellection produces the Word as the immanent term of intellection. All attempts of this kind will necessarily come to nothing, because, as we have said, neither from intellection in itself, nor from intellection inasmuch as it is substantial and infinite, nor from the divine nature is there available any evident principle evidently repugnant to this revealed truth. Nor can such a repugnance be deduced from anywhere else; indeed, it is evident by the light of reason from the very infinity of the divine intellection, and most certain by revealed faith, that there can be no such evident principle repugnant to it.

3°. From these things an answer has now also been given to the remaining difficulties, which the same Rationalists — Schleiermacher, Strauss, and the rest of suchlike traffickers walking in darkness (see Fol. trimest. Theolog. Tubing. 1843. fasc. 1.) — repeat from the ancient heretics in order to demonstrate a contradiction in the concept of three persons who are one God. They say, namely: three persons would necessarily be three essences, because a person is not distinguished from the singular intellectual substance (from the first substance). Moreover, if the persons are really distinguished, necessarily there is some perfection in one that is not in another, and accordingly the three persons would also be something more perfect than each one singly. Finally, if one person is the principle of another, this latter depends on the first, and by that very fact is inferior and less perfect.

In the reheating of such difficulties, which are exhibited by those pettifoggers as though new lights had arisen in their own philosophy, one thing is perfectly clear: that either their own notable ignorance or the presumption of ignorance in their readers renders men foolishly overconfident. For these objections — proposed since the third century by the ancient heretics in almost the same words, refuted by the holy Fathers, crushed by all the Scholastic theologians — could neither prevent the ruin of the Sabellian, Arian, and Tritheist heresies, nor of Roscelin, Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Abbot Joachim, and the Socinians, nor in the least weaken the universal faith of the whole Church in the one and triune God or the theological illustration of the dogma promoted by the Catholic doctors; indeed, they were the external occasion for a more ample and at the same time more subtle Catholic explanation. « The Catholic truth was asserted from the heretics ... when the heretics had been cut off, they agitated the Church of God with questions; what lay hidden was laid open, and the will of God was understood... For was the Trinity treated of perfectly before the Arians barked? » Aug. in Ps. 54. n. 22.

a) We concede that even in created and finite beings the connatural hypostasis does not differ from the singular and complete substance by some superadded reality; but we say that it is distinguished by reason with a foundation in the thing, i.e., that the same thing under one aspect is a singular and complete substance (first substance), inasmuch as it is this such οὐσία or entity, and under another aspect is a hypostasis, inasmuch as it is wholly in itself and not, whether after the manner of a part, the nature of another, or a nature common to several. Because of this diverse aspect of one and the same thing, a created nature, without ceasing to be a singular and complete substance, can not be in itself a hypostasis — and this by the sole union after the manner of a part with a superior hypostasis, of which it becomes the proper nature, and so not by detraction but by superaddition of reality — which has been demonstrated at length in its place concerning the human nature of the God-man (in the treatise on the Incarnation, th. XXXI.). Much more do we not only concede but hold by faith that the divine essence or substance itself is really a hypostasis: « a certain supreme thing, which is really the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, the Holy Spirit who proceeds ». But the same thing under one aspect is the absolute, and so an essence one in number, not multipliable; and under another aspect it is relative, and so there are three hypostases. For since a relation is of one to another, inasmuch as one proceeds from another by an immanent act, by which the Word is expressed as the immanent term of substantial intellection, and the Holy Spirit proceeds as the immanent term of substantial love, under this formal aspect of relatives to one another, i.e., of the producer and of the one proceeding by way of intellection and love, there are three relatives really distinct among themselves, but the absolute entity, i.e., the divinity of the three, is one in number.

Now, according to the analogy derived from creatures, we call the one common absolute reality the essence, nature, or substance; the three distinct subjects of one intellectual nature we call persons (intellectual hypostases). None of us affirms that this distinction of the three can be demonstrated by reason alone; but rather, just as we believe it by faith, because God Himself revealed it, so also we believe that it cannot be demonstrated by the light of reason (th. XVII.). But if it is already established that by intellection and love the immanent terms, the Word and the Holy Spirit, are really produced, the rest concerning unity and distinction is demonstrated from this very dogma of the processions « by necessary reasons ». Therefore we again recall the adversaries to that one point, that they evidently demonstrate a repugnance in this, that the infinite intellect produces the Word, and the infinite will produces love as an immanent term; which repugnance we not only deny can be demonstrated, but we demonstrate that it cannot be demonstrated.

b) Those who imagine the immanent relations and relatives in God after the likeness of three men — as absolutes and persons mutually separated, each of which has its own numerically distinct nature — will surely find an evident contradiction in the notion of the one and triune God; but no less than reason itself, revelation contradicts such a concept. And yet from that utterly false concept proceeds the objection mentioned in the second place. For if one infinite essence simultaneously has the aspect of the absolute and of the relative, and if the same infinite essence is identified with the three relatives, it is repugnant that more perfection be understood under the aspect of either one or several relatives than under the aspect of the infinite absolute essence. Of this matter we have said enough in th. XV.

c) In what they also object concerning dependence, from which the inequality of the persons is supposed to follow, there is presupposed the production of a nature, and hence distinction, and by that very fact a diversity of natures, and from these further a production through action, which, producing another nature, is a most true production ad extra. In one word, the Arian opinion about the production of the Son is presupposed, in which indeed the dependence, and the inequality of the Son included in it, is evident. But the revealed doctrine is altogether different. The infinite act of divine intellection, from the intimate perfection and exigency of its nature, by understanding itself produces the Word of itself as the immanent term of intellection, so that in the Word there is communicated the whole same absolute perfection, one in number, which is in the producer. « It is necessary, therefore, that God be in Himself as the intellect is in the one understanding; but the thing understood in the one understanding is the understood intention (concept) and the word. Therefore in God understanding Himself there is the Word of God, as it were God understood » S. Th. contr. gent. IV. c. 11. But from the same exigency of necessary perfection by which God is, in understanding, expressing the Word, the Word also exists as God understood.

If, therefore, dependence is said improperly, namely that one cannot be without another from the inborn exigency of perfection, in this sense the dependence is mutual, because the paternal intellection cannot be without the immanent Word produced, and the Word cannot be without the producing intellection. But this is not dependence properly so called including imperfection; rather, it is an internal necessary perfection, so that the one God is — just as He is the necessarily existing infinite intellection of Himself expressing the Word, so the Word of infinite intellection necessarily existing; « in the beginning was the Word with God, and God was the Word ».

Dependence properly so called is the negation of necessary Being and of necessary perfection, and the affirmation of some Being and some perfection through the influx of another as cause (in some genus of causality: material, formal, final, efficient). This dependence is neediness and denies necessary Being, and consequently denies divine Being⁴ The procession of the Word, therefore, necessary from the necessary perfection of the divine nature, is not a dependence of neediness and imperfection; rather, it is the inborn exigency of perfection in the infinite spirit, so that one and the same spirit in one essence that is not multipliable but nevertheless communicable is both the producer of the Word and the Word. All of which, as is evident, applies equally to the procession of love, i.e., to the necessary immanent term of the infinite love of the Father and of the Son. This necessary procession according to the natural exigency of perfection is to be understood when the Fathers say that the Son depends on the Father, the Holy Spirit on the Father and the Son. See Didac. Ruiz disp. X. sect. 1. 2. 3; Suarez l. II. c. 2.

« One supreme reality which is God has at once both the aspect of the absolute, in that it is one divine essence, and the aspect of things relative to one another, which are really distinguished among themselves; for the internal divine relations, both all together and each singly, are by the doctrine of faith really the very infinite essence of God. Nevertheless the revealed truth of the mystery requires that the divine essence and relation, as they can be conceived by us only inadequately, be understood as distinct by reason with a foundation in the reality, and virtually. »

For explaining the concept of distinct persons in one essence, the first foundation from which we proceed is the definition of the Fourth Lateran Council, cap. Damnamus. « There is one supreme reality, incomprehensible indeed and ineffable, which is truly the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three persons together and each one of them singly; and therefore in God there is only a Trinity, not a quaternity, because each of the three persons is that reality, namely the substance, essence, or divine nature, which alone is the principle of all things... And that reality is not begetting, nor begotten, nor proceeding, but it is the Father who begets, and the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds; so that the distinctions are in the persons and the unity in the nature ».

According to this definition, therefore, a) the divine essence itself is really the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three persons together and each one of them, or the divine essence is identified with the three persons distinct among themselves and with each single one of them. b) Insofar as that supreme reality is formally the essence or divine nature, it is altogether one and not multipliable, although it is identified with the three mutually distinct persons, or (as is usually said) is common to three persons mutually distinct. Therefore by this very fact, because it is one and not multipliable, under this formal aspect of common nature it neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds. But c) the same supreme reality is the Father, and under this formal aspect, as Father, it begets the Son; the same is the Son, and under this formal aspect, as Son, it is begotten by the Father; the same is the Holy Spirit, and under this formal aspect, as Holy Spirit, it proceeds from the Father and the Son. Therefore d) evidently the same one supreme reality has the formal aspect of the absolute (as absolute is said in opposition to relative)¹, because under the formal aspect of essence it neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds, and therefore has no distinction, and by this very fact no (real) relation ad intra; but at the same time the same one supreme reality has the formal aspect of the relative, or better, of the relatives (for a relative cannot really be or be conceived without a real distinction and multiplication of relatives), and under this aspect it is itself the Father begetting and the Son begotten and the Holy Spirit proceeding; and so the supreme reality, which under the formal aspect of the absolute is one, one essence, one God, the same under the formal aspect of the relatives is three, which three are distinguished among themselves solely under this formal aspect of the relatives. But these distinguishing relations, by force of the real immanent processions, are relations of origin expressed in revelation by the name and reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The same doctrine is contained in Scripture, in the creeds, in the definitions of the Councils, in the declarations of the Fathers, and in the whole ecclesiastical preaching, from which we have demonstrated the revealed doctrine: that one God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; that the essence, one in number, is not multiplied, but is common to three things distinct and relative to one another; that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not one thing and another, but one and the same altogether, although there is one person and another and so not one but three; and therefore in this sense the three persons are most perfectly consubstantial. « Nor is the Son the Father, for the Father is one; but he is what the Father is; nor is the Holy Spirit the Son, because he is from God; for he is the one only-begotten; but he is what the Son is. These three are one in deity, and this one is three in properties » ἓν τὰ τρία θεότητι, καὶ τὸ ἓν τρία ταῖς ἰδιότησι Gregor. Naz. or. 31 (al. 37) n. 9. In properties they are three, namely under the formal aspect of the Father begetting, of the Son begotten, of the Holy Spirit proceeding, which aspects are relative to one another, as Gregory had said a little before: « the difference of the mutual relation made their appellation different ». In the baptismal formula the Savior « shows that it is enough, if we remain in the appellation of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, for the perception of that which is essentially; which indeed is one and not one. For by reason of essence it is one; therefore the Lord established by his law that we look to one name (baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit); but by the notional properties of the hypostases the faith in Father and Son and Holy Spirit is discerned, indivisibly distinguished and unconfusedly united »² Gregor. Nyss. contr. Eunom. l. I. T. II. p. 3. But the doctrine belonging to this matter, both of the Fathers and of Scripture, is to be recalled from the foregoing; here we are concerned only with deriving from it and declaring the concept.

As is evident, this whole doctrine and especially the Lateran definition can be reduced to a twofold dogma. One, which is presupposed as a foundation and is known both by the light of reason and by revelation, namely the dogma of the unity and simplicity of God: that the infinite divine essence is necessarily one, both with the unity which is opposed to multiplication, and with the unity which is opposed to any composition — not only physical composition from real parts, but also metaphysical composition, such as would arise from diverse grades of entity distinct from one another by objective precision. The other dogma, knowable directly from revelation alone, is directly enunciated: that one God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three persons really distinct among themselves.

The simplicity of the divine Being in the Lateran definition is presupposed as a foundation for declaring that the divine essence itself is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that therefore it is not the absolute essence that is distinguished from the persons relative to one another, but only the persons are really distinguished among themselves. Because of this identity of the one essence with the three persons, the Council teaches that there is not a quaternity (as Joachim, Abbot of Flora, had objected to Lombard), but only a Trinity of persons. From the same infinite simplicity, as it has been proposed anew in the whole doctrine of Scripture and of the Fathers and by the Council, it further follows that we cannot by consideration of the mind distinguish any perfection or formal aspect of God without the same, objectively and as it is in itself, including — or rather being itself — really the infinite divine Being and the fullness of absolute entity.

Therefore it must be held that in God essence and relation are not one reality and another reality, but altogether the same reality; nevertheless the formal aspect of essence is one thing and that of relation another, and this distinction is with a foundation in the reality. This distinction of reason — first, what it is and what its truth is, and then its necessity — requires declaration.

I°. Because we, by our imperfect mode of knowing, cannot embrace the whole fullness of being in one concept except altogether confusedly, therefore, in order to form a somewhat more distinct understanding of God, we try to attain the one most simple infinite Being itself as it were by parts, under diverse inadequate concepts of essence, intellect, will, wisdom, goodness, and the other perfections, to all of which concepts there corresponds one infinite Being; for really it is essence and intellect and will and every perfection. But it is all these not by distinct realities in God himself; rather it is one infinite entity equivalent to all these perfections according to diverse functions, as it were. What we conceive under the idea, e. g., of infinite wisdom is truly in God and is God himself; or the same objective reality corresponding to this concept of wisdom is also the divine essence, goodness, omnipotence, justice, etc., because that reality is the very fullness of absolute being. Now what we explicitly conceive under the ideas of wisdom, goodness, omnipotence, and the other attributes, that we call objective formal aspects; but the operation of our mind in this distinction we call a distinction of (subjective) reason. Those formal aspects, as is now evident, are not really distinct in God, but are one most simple entity apprehended by us through distinct and inadequate concepts of the perfections. Nevertheless the very infinity of divine perfection, equivalent and supereminent in its one most simple Being to all these perfections, as they are distinguished by us by consideration or reason (ἔννοια), provides the foundation why from the truth of the matter we can conceive the divine Being under diverse formal aspects; and this is what is called the distinction of reason with a foundation in the reality. Cf. S. Th. I. dist. 33. qu. 1. a. 1. ad 3. (Recall these things, which we disputed in the Tract. de Deo th. XII. XII. XXVI. XXVI.)

But now from the same principle of infinity and the consequent simplicity of the divine Being it is understood in exactly the same way as was said of the absolute attributes, that there is no real distinction between the same Being under the formal aspect of the absolute and under the formal aspect of the relative. For the same entity is both absolute and relative; but we can apprehend these diverse formal aspects only by distinct concepts, and this distinction of ours is surely with a foundation in the reality, because objectively and really one infinite entity is at once both absolute and relative, and has the functions both of the absolute and of the relative. In one word it can be said: the distinction of the many aspects, and so also of the absolute and of the relative, is not real; but that which corresponds to those many aspects, the absolute and the relative themselves, is a reality in God, but one reality most simple in itself.

This whole explanation of the Lateran definition which we have given is that of the Angelic Doctor. « The aspect of substance and of relation is one thing, and to each (to our subjective aspect or concept) there responds something (an objective aspect) in the reality which is God, yet not some diverse reality but one and the same... Although relation adds to essence not some reality but only an aspect (i. e., the same reality truly is under one aspect essence and under another aspect relation, and hence is conceived under a twofold aspect with a foundation in the reality), nevertheless relation is some reality, just as goodness also is some reality in God, although it does not differ from essence except by reason, and so likewise is it with wisdom. And therefore just as those things which pertain to goodness or wisdom truly belong to God, such as understanding and other things of this kind: so also that which is proper to real relation, namely to be opposed and to distinguish (i. e., that the relatives be really referred to one another, and by this very fact under the formal aspect of the relatives be distinct among themselves), is really found in divine things » S. Thom. de Potent. q. 8. a. 2. ad 2. 3. et I. q. 28. a. 2.

Cardinal Cajetan expressed this same thing most lucidly, as far as the depth of the mystery permits, in I. q. 39. a. 1. « In God, he says, according to reality or in the real order there is one reality (as all Catholics must confess), not purely absolute nor purely respective, nor mixed or composed or resulting from both, but most eminently and formally having what is of the respective — indeed of many respective realities (of three really relative to one another and by this very fact really distinct among themselves) — and what is of the absolute. So in the formal order, or of the formal aspects in themselves (as it is in God), not speaking as regards us (who conceive that one thing by many distinct inadequate notions), there is in God a single formal aspect, not purely absolute nor purely respective, not purely communicable nor purely incommunicable, but most eminently and formally containing both whatever there is of absolute perfection and whatever the respective (relative) Trinity requires....³. The Father does not understand essence and paternity as two formal objects in themselves, but as one formally and many virtually — not in such a way that in that supreme reality and formal aspect paternity and essence are (only) virtually, but in such a way that they are formally and really (i. e., that one reality and one formal aspect is in fact both the absolute essence and the relative paternity toward the Son as toward a term); but their distinction is virtual, because they are so there as if they were distinct, and again because in this way (one reality and formal aspect) it exercises the function of both, as if they were distinct ». These things there.

In few but clear words Suarez says this very thing. « There is there one reality truly absolute and truly relative without distinction between them, because as such (as absolute and at the same time relative) they do not involve opposition nor repugnance; because it is not of the essence of an absolute thing that under no aspect can it have a respect, but only that, insofar as it is absolute, it does not express it » Suarez de Trin. l. IV. c. 3. n. 19. Cf. Didacus Ruiz disp. XI; Molina in I. q. 28. disp. III.

2°. It is easily apparent that the foundation is different and the necessity far greater of the distinction between the formal aspect of the absolute and of the relative, than between the formal aspects of the absolute attributes. For this latter distinction is neither founded in any real distinction, nor does a real distinction follow from it; but it is only necessary, so that by our inadequate notions we may conceive the one absolute divine Being a little more distinctly (Tract. de Deo). But the matter is not so in the distinction of the absolute and the relative. It is indeed most true that one supreme reality, without any actual distinction in the thing itself, is no less the absolute essence and the relative (the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit), than one reality is essence and absolute wisdom and goodness; but the absolutes are distinguished by us either solely or certainly chiefly according to diverse relations of reason and functions of the infinite Being ad extra, without any real distinction following therefrom; on the contrary, the distinction between the absolute and the relative is according to a diverse function ad intra in such a way that under the formal aspect of the absolute there remains one undivided, but under the formal aspect of the relative there are three really distinct among themselves. Thus, therefore, one supreme reality contains in itself both the aspect of the absolute and of the relative, and really has the functions of both, as if those two aspects were distinct realities. For this reason this distinction between the absolute and the relative, just as also between intellect and will in relation to the diverse processions of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, is called virtual more properly than the other distinction between the absolute attributes, i. e., with a foundation according to the diverse functions of one and the same infinite reality, no otherwise than if they were two distinct realities, as we saw a little before declared by Cajetan. In this sense also must those theologians be understood who say that the distinction between essence and person is greater than between essence and attributes (cf. Petav. de Deo l. I. c. 10. n. 10.).

The simplicity and unity of God being thus presupposed, just as the real distinction of the persons among themselves evidently shows that the one most simple supreme reality is at once absolute and relative not only in our concept but in itself; so the same real distinction not only provides the foundation but renders altogether necessary that we conceive the same supreme reality under the distinct notions of the absolute and of the relative.

This necessity is so great that, once the distinction of both formal aspects is removed, the very dogma of the Trinity of persons in one most simple and non-multipliable essence is subverted. For the dogma consists in this very fact: that God, according to the aspect of absolute Being and of every absolute perfection which we can distinguish by consideration of the mind, is one most simple infinite Being; but according to the aspect of things relative to one another through the relations of origin or procession of one from another, that same one Being is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, who are really distinct among themselves. Hence the heretics — both those who in the unity of the essence admitted only one truly divine person (as the Arians), and the Tritheists who introduced three divine essences in the three persons (as also Abbot Joachim) — in order to impugn the Catholic doctrine assumed the negation of the diverse aspect and the affirmation of an exaggerated identity between the absolute essence and the relative properties; and therefore the holy Fathers in turn placed no small part of the Catholic defense in demonstrating the diverse formal aspect of the absolute essence and of the person and relative property, so that, in accordance with the most explicit revelation, the unity and real communion according to the formal aspect of essence, and the real distinction and incommunicability according to the formal aspect of the relatives or persons, might be kept safe and sound. Long disputes about the distinction according to the twofold aspect of essence and of the relative properties are found in St. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa his brother in the books against Eunomius, in Greg. Nazianz. or. 29. al. 35, in Epiphanius haeres. 76, in Cyril in the Thesaurus, in Augustine especially l. V. de Trin., and in others, where they respond to the perpetual cavil of the Arians, which Gregory Nazianzen calls (or. 31. l. 23) « the citadel and wall of the heretics », and Augustine (Trin. V. c. 3.) « a most cunning device » — namely, that the unbegotten and the begotten are diverse, and therefore the essence of the Father and of the Son is diverse; for whatever is said of God, they maintained to be said according to essence, having rejected the virtual distinction between essence and hypostasis. Whence, together with others, Greg. Naz. responds to the Arian objection in or. 29. n. 16: « Father is not a name of essence, o most acute men, nor of action, but it indicates that relation which the Father has to the Son or the Son to the Father. For as among us (in human things) these names signify a kindred bond (τὸ γνώρισμα καὶ οἰκεῖον), so there too they indicate the relation of the begotten to the begetter in the communion of nature » (τὴν συγγένειαν). Likewise Augustine in Trin. l. V. poses that Arian difficulty: « whatever is said of God or understood is said not according to accident but according to substance; wherefore for the Father to be unbegotten is according to substance, and for the Son to be begotten is according to substance. But to be unbegotten and to be begotten are diverse: therefore the substance of the Father and of the Son is diverse ». The sum of Augustine’s rather long response is contained in this conclusion: « although to be the Father and to be the Son is diverse, the substance (absolute essence) is nevertheless not diverse, because these are said not according to substance but according to the relative, which relative is nevertheless not an accident, because it is not changeable ». Declaring the same, he proceeds concerning the unbegotten and the begotten: « just as begotten is not said with reference to itself, but that it is from a begetter; so when unbegotten is said, it is not said with reference to itself, but it is shown that it is not from a begetter. In the same predicament, however, which is called relative, both significations (of the begotten just as of the unbegotten) are turned; but what is pronounced relatively does not indicate substance: so although begotten and unbegotten are diverse, it does not indicate diverse substance » Aug. ib. c. 3-7. See Petav. de Deo l. I. c. 7-11; Trin. l. V. c. 1-3.

« From what has been said it follows that these divine relations are not only respects according to a manner of considering, but are real relations. Therefore 1° they are substantial relations, because in God there is no accident; yet they must be considered not as realities superadded to the essence, but as the very reality of the essence under the formal aspect and function of relatives. That both points, 2°, is confirmed and illustrated from the doctrine of St. Thomas. »

I. If, from what has been demonstrated and in particular from the Lateran definition, just as the one supreme thing is the absolute, under which formal aspect the one divine essence is said, so also the same supreme thing is the relative, under which formal aspect the three are mutually distinct; it is now evident both that the divine relations are substantial and that they superadd nothing of reality to the infinite essence. A real relation in creatures is an accident in a subject, by virtue of which the subject has an order to another real term. If, therefore, relation is said to be the very order to another — a respect which, considered so abstractly, the ancients call the being-to (the term) of the relation — that respect is not an entity distinct from the term (to which it is referred) and from the accident that founds such an order, and which is therefore called the foundation of the relation, or by the ancients also the being-in (the subject) of the relation. Hence relations viewed according to their foundation, i.e. according to being-in a subject, are inherent; viewed according to the mere being-to a term they are called assisting, i.e. placing nothing of reality in the subject. Hence, further, it is evident that all real relations necessarily have their being-in a subject; for this signifies nothing other than that they are a reality, or are founded in a reality inhering in the related subject. On the contrary, relations which are conceived merely as being-to a term without the reality of a foundation in the subject, i.e. which are merely assisting and in no way inherent, are not true reality; but they are conceived only as reality (the ancients used to say: they are a being not of first intention but of second intention), and therefore they are relations of reason and not real relations.

Now according to this more probable theory of relations in creatures, which a little later we shall confirm also from the doctrine of St. Thomas, the divine relations are in some way explained by us. They are without doubt real (we are speaking of the internal relations), and so they are some entity in the very term which is referred, not a mere respect externally assisting, as Gilbert Porretanus maintained. For if this were so, the divine persons themselves would either not be really distinguished or would be distinguished not by the relations alone but also by absolutes; of which the former pertains to the heresy of the Sabellians, the latter to the Arian or Tritheist heresy. But, the reality of the divine relations being supposed, both the things that we say in the thesis — namely the substantiality of the same relations as well as their identity with the divine essence — after those things which have been proved above require not a new demonstration but only a declaration.

1°. That entity or relation according to being-in a subject is not in God an accident inhering in a subject, but is the very divine substance formally as relative. Namely, the divine substantial intellection itself is not only an absolute intellection but has from its inmost nature a necessary order to its Word as to a term eternally and necessarily produced; likewise the Word is the very same absolute substantial intellection, but one which, under the formal aspect of the produced Word, has a necessary order to the one producing. The same holds of the Holy Spirit as substantial love and immanent term of the love of the Father and the Son. Therefore the entity of the relation is the divine substance itself, not indeed as this is formally absolute, but formally inasmuch as from its intrinsic perfection it expresses the order of the one producing to the immanent produced term; therefore each term, both the producing and the produced, since it is not another existing entity nor has another reality than that of the divine substance, is assuredly substantial.

2°. The respect or order to the term, or (as they say) the being-to, we can indeed consider abstractly by itself, and the relation as assisting; but the respect so considered, or the formal being-to, superadds nothing of entity beyond the reality of the relation viewed according to being-in. I do not say that the relation according to being-to is not a reality — which Ruiz, disp. IX, sect. 6, n. 14, says is dangerous and close to error; but I say with St. Thomas, Card. Pallavicino in the places soon to be cited, and with Card. Cienfuegos, that being-to does not superadd any reality, even one distinct by reason alone, to the reality which the relation has according to being-in. «The concept of the relation as superadded cannot be real but is purely of reason (in divine things), although, if the formality of being-to is not conceived as superadded, it is by itself simply real, i.e. formally the same entitatively as the divine absolute predicate. It is therefore real if that formality of being-to is conceived according to itself and as it exists on the side of the thing; it is, however, of reason only if it is conceived as accruing to or as added to the absolutes» Cienfuegos, Aenigm. theol., disp. V, sect. 3, n. 9. There remains, therefore, the entity of the relation according to being-in, and this entity itself is none other than the entity of the absolute essence, which on account of its eminence has in its most simple Being the aspect of both the absolute and the relative. Therefore nothing is superadded by the relations to the infinite essence, both because this necessarily comprehends every divine reality, absolute and relative, and considering the very nature of the relations themselves.

To embrace the whole in few words, a) just as in creatures a real relation is an accident inhering in a subject, so in God (since God is the most simple Being) the relation is the divine substance. b) As in creatures the relation is not an accident in any manner whatsoever, but an accident by which the subject has an order to a real term; so in God the relation is substance, formally inasmuch as this intrinsically has an order to a real term. But c) in creatures, by the very fact that the relation is an accident, the terms to be mutually related are presupposed as distinct from one another as substances; in God, on the contrary, because the relation is substance, the relation itself is the term, which by itself has an order to the other, i.e. is referred by itself; and because the absolute in God is entirely one, the terms are distinguished from one another under the sole formal aspect of the substantial relations.

II. The doctrine thus far expounded concerning the substantial divine relations and the manner of considering them according to being-in and being-to is most expressly handed down by St. Thomas, 1, q. 28, a. 2; Potent., q. 8, a. 2; 1, dist. 33, q. 1, a. 1. I shall transcribe the words of De Potentia, loc. cit.

«Supposing that the relations are in divine things, it must of necessity be said that they are the divine essence, otherwise one would have to posit composition in God, and that the relations in divine things would be accidents, because every thing inhering in something besides its own substance is an accident; it would also have to be that some thing would be eternal which would not be the divine substance; all of which are heretical. For the evidence of this, therefore, it must be known that among the nine genera which are contained under accident ¹, some are signified according to the notion of accident; for the notion of accident is to be in (another), and therefore I say those are signified in the manner of accident which are signified as inhering in another, such as quantity and quality... But relation (the category πρός τι, i.e. of relation) is not signified according to the notion of accident; for it is not signified as something of that in which it is, but as toward that which is outside.... Whence some, attending to the manner of signifying in relatives, said that they are not inhering in substances, namely as it were assisting them, because they are signified as a certain medium between the substance which is referred and that to which it is referred. And from this it followed that in created things relations are not accidents, because the being of an accident is to be in (another). Whence also certain theologians, namely the Porretans, extended an opinion of this kind even to the divine relation, saying that the relations are not in the persons but as it were assist them. And because the divine essence is in the persons, it followed that the relations are not the divine essence; and because every accident inheres, it followed that they would not be accidents..... But to this opinion it follows that relation is not some thing, but only according to reason; for every thing is either substance or accident. Whence also certain ancients posited that relations are among the second intentions (beings of reason, i.e. of second intention). And therefore the Porretans too must say this, that the divine relations are only according to reason; and so it will follow that the distinction of the persons is not real, which is heretical. Whence it must be said that nothing prevents something from being inhering which nevertheless is not signified as inhering...... Although relation is not signified as inhering, nevertheless it must be inhering, and this when the relation is some thing; when however it is only according to reason, then it is not inhering. And just as in created things it must be an accident, so it must be substance in God, because whatever is in God is His substance. The relations must therefore be in reality the divine substance, which however do not have the manner of substance, but have another manner of predicating» S. Th., loc. cit.

For a better declaration the Angelic (Doctor) objects to himself: a) no substance is a relation; b) if the relation is the divine substance in the very reality itself, and is only another formal aspect of it, the relation seems to be nothing real. Whence, if the relation superadds nothing real to the substance, it seems further to follow that the divine persons, since they cannot be distinguished except under the formal aspect of the relations, are not really distinguished among themselves, which is the Sabellian heresy.

The holy Doctor answers the first. «No substance which is in a genus (i.e. finite and limited according to being, including only some certain degree of being) can be a relation, because it is determined to one genus... But the divine essence is not in the genus of (restricted) substance, but is above every genus, comprehending in itself the perfections of all genera (and consequently also of relatives); whence nothing prevents that which is of relation from being found in it» (ib. ad 1um).

To the other difficulty this is the clearest response. «Although relation does not add above the essence some thing but only an aspect, nevertheless relation is some thing, just as goodness also is some thing in God, although it does not differ from the essence except by reason, and so likewise is it with wisdom. And therefore, just as those things which pertain to goodness or wisdom really belong to God, such as understanding and other things of this kind; so also that which is of a real relation, namely to be opposed and to be distinguished, is really found in divine things» (ib. ad 2um et 3um). Further he says: «In no way is it to be conceded that the being of relation in divine things is one thing and the being of the essence another. But reason does not signify being, but being-what, i.e. what something is. Whence two aspects of one thing do not demonstrate a double being of it, but demonstrate that it can be said in two ways what it is, just as of a point it can be said what it is, as principle and as end, on account of the diverse aspect of principle and end» (ib. ad 1um). You have this doctrine of St. Thomas also declared in Card. Pallavicino (Curs. theolog. l. VIII. c. 52), from whom I shall cite a few things for the sake of a specimen. «If that predicate which is the principle of distinction between the producing and the produced (paternity, filiation, etc.) is added to the infinite being, it adds nothing of entity to it; for infinite being has by itself every entity and every perfection (i.e. the infinite essence includes every reality, even that which can be conceived under the formal aspect of relation). Therefore, as St. Thomas most acutely saw, 1, q. 28, a. 2, it superadds nothing pertaining to the complement of it and to being-in, but adds a pure being-to, i.e. a respect to another. Which respect, according to itself and above being-in, expresses no entity; for a being is either something absolute, i.e. substance, or something inhering in the absolute itself, i.e. accident; but that which is neither substance nor inheres in substance but is a mere respect to something else does not have the notion of being... But the respect which is given in God of the producing to the produced or of the produced to the producing cannot really and identically not be a being, because ... this respect constitutes and formally distinguishes the one from the other; therefore it is a real being. Yet this respect is not really distinguished from the divine essence itself (because, as we have declared, the essence itself, besides the aspect of the absolute, has the aspect of the relative)... Since no relative can be only relative but must either be received in some absolute or be identified with it, and since the received relation is accidental, the divine relation, as substantial and not accidental, must therefore not be received but identified with the absolute essence» Pallavicin. l. c. n. 385. 386.

« Taking as presupposed the notion of hypostasis and person, from what has been demonstrated concerning the real identity and virtual distinction between the absolute and the relative in God, it is declared that the divine persons are formally constituted by relations. For if 1° the essence and the relations are compared with one another, relation alone distinguishes those having one common essence, and on that account relation is the same formal reason of the divine hypostasis or person; but if 2° the substantial relation is regarded more fully, the divine relation itself, inasmuch as it is identified with the substance, is the divine person. Further, 3° in the comparison of origin and relation, on account of the identity of the thing, the divine persons can be understood as constituted equally by origins and by relations; there is, however, a reason in our mode of conceiving why they are said to be formally constituted rather by relations than by origins ».

I. First of all, it is altogether necessary here to keep before one's eyes what has been most amply demonstrated in the Treatise on the Incarnation (sect. III. c. 3.) concerning the proper notion of hypostasis and person in comparison with substance or nature. Hypostasis is « an individual substance », insofar as the apposite word individual determines substance not only as singular in opposition to universal (of which sort are genera and species), not only as an integral substance in opposition to a part (of which sort is body or soul in man), not only as a substance whole in itself contradistinguished from a substance which, although singular and whole, is made after the manner of a part the nature of another hypostasis (of which sort is the human nature of Christ); but substance is called individual also insofar as it is wholly in itself incommunicable in opposition to a real communication or identification with several things really distinct among themselves. In the first three ways, even by the light of reason the Godhead, that is, the absolute divine essence, is understood to be essentially an individual substance (πρώτη οὐσία); namely, of itself, from its intimate absolute perfection, it is this one substance, distinct, indeed infinitely diverse, from all others which besides it are or can be (undivided in itself, divided from all others, as the notion of individual is wont to be explained). In this sense we saw in th. IX. n. II. that quite a number of the Fathers said that in God there is one hypostasis of first substance; and in the same sense we shall show below (th. XXIV.) that some scholastic theologians taught one absolute subsistence in God. But that this one absolute essence, one in number, is at the same time three distinct among themselves, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit — this we know by revelation alone; for it has been revealed that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three distinct, are one God. By this very fact the quiddity by which God is [God], namely the Godhead, that is, the absolute essence, is really common to three distinct among themselves, who both singly and three together are one God, inasmuch as they are one infinite essence that cannot be multiplied. Hence, with this revealed truth presupposed, we understand that the absolute essence under this formal reason of the absolute is not an individual substance in that sense in which an individual substance is conceived in the fuller notion of hypostasis; for neither under that formal reason of the absolute is the essence incommunicable, but rather it is the nature of the Father in such a way that it is at the same time the nature of the Son, who is other than the Father, and at the same time the nature of the Holy Spirit, who again is other than the Father and the Son. On the contrary, however, under the formal reason [of the relative], insofar as the same essence is this relative, e. g. the Father, it is an individual substance; for the divine substance itself has the formal reason of the relative, whence the relation is substantial, as we have seen; and this relative, the Father, identified with the divine essence, or (as we are wont to speak in our mode of conceiving) having the divine nature, is under this formal reason of the relative one in himself and distinct from all others of the same nature (from the Son and the Holy Spirit), and so is an individual substance in the sense of incommunicability. This very incommunicability, or, under a positive concept, this being wholly in oneself (totality in oneself), is the formal reason by which a singular and integral substance is understood to subsist in itself, or, what comes to the same thing, is understood to be a hypostasis (see altogether the Tract. de Incarnat.).

In created things the matter is evident; for the quiddity of man, namely humanity, considered as common or communicable to many, is not a hypostasis but is a common nature; and this not only because humanity considered in that way as a species is not a singular substance, but by the very force of its community it would not have the notion of hypostasis, even if universal humanity were objectively one really existing thing (as some philosophers and even theologians, albeit in error, judged); the hypostasis, however, is this man Peter, whose quiddity is the human nature, and who is distinct from all others of the same nature; or the hypostasis is this singular humanity in the concrete, identified with this man Peter.

After this manner and according to this analogy, in the divine [realms] the essence, insofar as it is regarded under the formal reason of the absolute, under which reason it is really common to three distinct among themselves, is understood as a common nature and not as a hypostasis; but insofar as the same essence under the formal reason of the relative is this one Father in a necessary eternal relation to the Son, and under this formal reason of the relative is distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit, in this way the Father is and is understood as a hypostasis, and consequently (by reason of the intellectual nature) as a person. The same is to be judged of the Son under the formal reason of the Son, relative to the Father and distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and likewise of the Holy Spirit (or the spirated one), who under the formal reason of the spirated or proceeding one is relative to the Father and the Son and is distinct from both. For since God is one, and consequently one divine essence that cannot be multiplied, the distinction of the three among themselves cannot be under the formal reason of the absolute, according to which the three are one; but it is necessarily only under the formal reason of the relatives, which reason is manifested by the revealed names themselves of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Therefore the divine person is the divine essence itself under the formal reason of the relative ad intra, under which reason there are three distinct among themselves; not, however, under the formal reason of the absolute, under which reason it is one undivided essence or nature. In this sense Augustine disputes. « Every essence which is said relatively is also something apart from the relative.... If He were not a man, that is, some substance, there would not be one who would be called relatively lord.... Wherefore if the Father also is not something in respect of himself (if He is an abstract relation including nothing of the absolute), there is altogether no one who is said relatively to something.... The Father and the Son, both substance and both one substance (absolute)... And when these two are said, that is, begotten wisdom, in the one of them by the very fact that it is begotten, the Word and the image and the Son are understood, and in all these names the essence (absolute and common) is not shown, because they are said relatively; but in the other, which is wisdom, since it is also said in respect of itself, for it is itself wise, even the essence is shown.... Wherefore it is not because the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Father, or that the one is unbegotten and the other begotten, that therefore they are not one essence, because by these names their relative [properties] are shown. Both, however, are at the same time one wisdom and one essence, where to be is the same as to be wise (each is absolute and therefore one without multiplication or real distinction); but both are not at the same time the Word or the Son, because to be is not the same as to be the Word or the Son, as we have already sufficiently shown that these are said relatively » (i. e. the formal reason of the absolute Being is virtually distinguished from the relative formal reason of the Father and of the Word or Son, so that under the reason of the relatives they are really distinguished among themselves, while under the reason of the absolute they are one Being, one essence, one wisdom) s. Aug. Trin. VII. n. 2. 3.

With this doctrine now presupposed, we can conceive the divine person and the constitution of the person in two ways: first, indeed, more complexly and according to our mode of understanding, with a certain sort of composition, and then more simply and, as far as can be done by us, by withdrawing from that composition in concept. In either way, however, the divine persons are understood to be constituted by relations.

II. Since in the divine person there is a twofold formal reason virtually distinct — namely, the reason of the absolute essence and the reason of the relative — each of which corresponds to a twofold inadequate concept of ours, according to our mode of understanding all things by composition we can conceive the person as this one, under the reason of the relative distinct from others of the same nature, who has the nature, or of whom the divine nature is [his] as a metaphysical form (ἐν μορφῇ θεοῦ ὑπάρχων Phil. II. 6); thus the relative is conceived in recto, the absolute in obliquo. Or, what comes to the same thing, we can conceive the essence as affected, as it were, by a relation, whether of paternity or of filiation or of procession, and thus formally, as affected by such a determinate relation, it is this one distinct from others by the relation, or it is a distinct subsistent; thus the essence is regarded in recto, the relation as affecting in obliquo. From the very infinity of the essence and the simplicity of the divine person it is evident that the relation is not some reality distinct from and superadded to the essence, nor that the essence is properly a form or really distinct from the relative; but we apprehend only a most simple thing under the twofold reason of the absolute and the relative, to each of which one and the same thing truly corresponds, and we join this twofold reason after the manner of a composition according to notions previously had from creatures. This mode of conceiving John, the theologian of the Latins, declared thus at the Council of Florence: « But we say that the essence (οὐσίαν) and the person or hypostasis are the same in reality, but differ according to our mode of understanding, so that the person consists of the essence and the properties. Now therefore, since they are distinguished by intelligence and reason, the essence indeed is communicated to the persons, but the persons are in no way communicated to one another, and this comes about from the force of the relation..... But according to the doctors both Greek and Latin, it is relation alone which multiplies the persons in the divine productions, which is called the relation of origin, to which only two things pertain, from whom another and who from another » ibid. sess. XVIII (Harduin. T. IX. p. 202. 203.). See the holy Fathers who consider the persons in this way, in Didac. Ruiz de Trin. disp. 86-90; Petav. de Deo l. II. c. 3; Trin. l. IV. c. 10.

Now if we speak according to this mode of understanding of ours about the constitution of the divine person, the divine person is understood indeed as a relative informed, as it were, by the essence, or as the essence affected, as it were, by the relation; but the person is not merely a relation conceived so abstractly and with a distinction of reason from the essence. Rather the person is formally [a person] insofar as it is this one subsistent, i. e. incommunicably wholly in itself and distinct from others of the same nature, not, however, something common to many; wherefore, since it is incommunicable and distinct and therefore subsistent only under the formal reason of the relative, while the essence and whatever is absolute is altogether one thing common to the three distinct and in no way distinguishing, the divine person is rightly said to be formally constituted by the relation. For although, as I have said, in this mode of conceiving the divine person is not relation alone, still the distinguishing reason and hence the formal reason of the person ¹ is not the absolute but relation alone; the Father is not distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit by reason of the divinity or the essence but by reason of paternity alone; by this very fact, therefore, paternity is the formal reason constituting the person.

Cardinal Bessarion explained these things clearly in the oration delivered to his Greeks at the Council of Florence. « Because in any plurality in which there is something common there is also something distinctive, in this Trinity also of divine persons, which agree with one another in the unity of essence, that [thing] must be sought which distinguishes them. And since that is not the essence — for in it they agree supremely — and in the divine [realms], besides the essence and the relations and the diverse mode of processions, which the Latins call origin, nothing else can be understood, it remains that either origin or relation or both distinguish the divine persons. But since relation and origin, although they differ according to the mode of understanding, inasmuch as origin is signified after the manner of an act, as generation, but relation after the manner of a form, as paternity, nevertheless do not differ in reality; therefore the divine persons are distinguished indeed in both ways, but first and principally according to the mode of understanding through the relations, through which also the divine persons are constituted » ² (Hard. T. IX. p. 347). See S. Th. 1. q. 29. a. 4.

III. But although these things are so, still that distinction of ours between the divine essence and relation, and that composition, as it were, of the divine hypostasis from both reasons, is only according to our inadequate concepts and imperfect mode of understanding, although the distinction has a foundation in the thing, which in itself most simple is at once the absolute and the relative. Indeed, although we conceive the relation without expressly conceiving it as substance, nevertheless the thing conceived under the notion of the divine relation is essentially substance; and therefore, in the truth of the matter, the divine relation cannot be conceived with an objective precision from the essence (see th. XV. n. III.). For the person, the Father, is the divine essence not indeed under the formal reason of the absolute, but insofar as the essence, as an intellection, has from its intimate necessary exigency the reason of the relative to the Word produced; and the same is to be judged of the Word and of the Holy Spirit. Cardinal Pallavicinus noted this matter excellently. After he has spoken of the mode of conceiving the divine person as substance in recto with the relation in obliquo, or as the relative in recto with the essence in obliquo, he adds: « besides, this doctrine holds only of the second intentional concept, i. e. insofar as that simple [thing] is conceived by us which on the part of the object responds to this notion, divine person, now by way of the enigma of created essence (through the idea of essence derived from creatures), now by way of the enigma of created relation. But first intentionally (i. e. if the thing itself is conceived as it is objectively), since the divine relation cannot prescind even objectively from identity with the essence, certainly the divine person says the integral concept of the relation (i. e. the relation itself is at the same time the divine substance and therefore a substantial relation) as something simple and perfect » Pall. Curs. theol. 1. VIII. c. 54. n. 412.

According to these notions the constitution of the divine person through the relation can be conceived a little differently. Provided only that the names are rightly understood from the principles laid down, the divine person is nothing other than the real divine relation. I do not say [that it is] nothing other than a relation, but I say nothing other than a divine relation. For the divine relation is not an accident nor something abstracted from the divine substance, but it is the divine essence or substance itself, substance, I say, not indeed under the formal reason of the absolute but under the formal reason of the relative; inasmuch as, as we have often already enunciated this fundamental principle, the most simple divine entity itself has at once both the reason of the absolute (under which it is and is called one communicable essence) and the reason of the relative, and indeed of three relatives distinct from one another under this formal reason. Thus, however, the essence under the formal reason of a substantial relation is the divine person; under the reason of one determinate substantial relation it is one person, under the reason of another determinate substantial relation it is another person: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The whole declaration, namely, regresses to the defined principle of faith from which it set out: « the essence (under the formal reason of the essence) is not generating nor begotten nor proceeding, but (under the formal reason of the relative) is the Father who generates, and the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds ». Wherefore, since the divine person is nothing other than the divine substantial relation, or the relation identified with the essence, or the essence under the formal reason of relation, certainly the divine person is rightly said to be constituted by a relation ³.

You will hardly find this mode of conceiving, which is closer to the thing itself, better explained anywhere else than in s. Thomas 1. q. 28. a. 2; Potent. q. 8. a. 2; 1. dist. 33. q. 1. a. 1.; to which places we have already also appealed above in th. XXII. n. II. There the Angelic [Doctor] shows that the relation in God is in reality the divine essence itself, although we conceive the same thing under the twofold diverse reason of the absolute essence and of the relative, that is, of the relation, because the significate through the abstract and through the concrete is the same in God ⁴. The doctrine, namely, of 1. q. 28. a. 2. is this. A relation according to its real being in creatures is an accident, and thus inheres in the substance, which indeed it has in common with all accidents. But according to its proper reason, by which it is such an accident distinct from the other genera of accidents, a relation says a respect to another term. And so in creatures too every real relation, besides the respect to another, is also something absolute, insofar as it inheres in the substance. But a relation which in no way inheres is conceived only as a respect to another, while in the thing itself objectively it is nothing real, and so it is a relation of reason only, as right or left in a column. Now in God the relations are real, as is certain by faith; for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit really are. The divine relations are therefore some thing with a respect to a term. But they cannot be an accident nor some thing superadded to the essence; for in God, on account of the highest simplicity, there is no accident, and to the infinite essence, which as the fullness of being comprehends every reason of perfection, no reality can be superadded; therefore the relations are necessarily in reality the divine essence itself. But the essence under the formal reason of absolute essence does not say a real respect to an immanent term; for under that reason it is altogether one and undivided; therefore that same most simple thing which has the reason of the essence has from its intimate nature also the reason of the relative. « Whatever in created things (he says) has accidental being, insofar as it is transferred to God, has substantial being; for nothing is in God as an accident in a subject, but whatever is in God is His essence. Thus, therefore, from that part by which a relation in created things has accidental being in a subject, a relation really existing in God has the being of the divine essence, being altogether the same for it... And thus it is manifest that a relation really existing in God is the same as the essence in reality, and differs only according to the reason of the intelligence (with a foundation in the thing), insofar as in the relation a respect to its opposite is imported, which is not imported in the name (and formal reason) of the essence. It is clear, therefore, that in God the being of the relation and of the essence is not other, but one and the same » S. Th. ibid.

Wherefore there are not there two things or at least two reasons objectively precisely distinct, the absolute and the relative, which concur to compose one thing; but one highest thing, which we conceive under the reason of the divine relation, e. g. of paternity or in the concrete of the Father, is in reality at the same time the absolute essence; just as conversely the same thing, while it is conceived under the reason of the essence, is at the same time the three relatives and each of them, who are distinguished among themselves not under the reason of the essence but under the reason of the relatives. But our concept of the relative, derived from creatures, does not express at the same time the absolute, just as the concept of the absolute does not express at the same time the relative; therefore that twofold reason, which the highest thing has in its eminence according to the function both of the absolute and of the relative, is conceived by us under a twofold inadequate notion. Nevertheless, just as that which we apprehend under the notion of an attribute, e. g. of divine wisdom, is on the part of the thing the absolute being itself, infinite in every line of perfection, and consequently the true God, so that which we apprehend by an inadequate notion under the reason of the relation, e. g. of paternity, is on the part of the thing at once both paternity and the absolute being, and the true God subsisting in the absolute nature.

Answering the objection that, according to Augustine, « every thing which is said relatively is also something apart from the relative », s. Thomas speaks thus: « As in created things, in that which is said relatively, not only a respect to another is to be found, but also something absolute, so also in God; but nevertheless in a different way in each case. For that which is found in a creature besides that which is contained under the signification of the relative name is another thing (namely, the substance in which the relation inheres as an accident); but in God it is not another thing but one and the same (at once absolute and relative), which is not perfectly expressed by the name of the relation, as if comprehended under the signification of such a name. For it was said, when the divine names were being treated, that more is contained in the perfection of the divine essence than can be signified by any name. Whence it does not follow that in God besides the relation there is something else in reality (another thing than that which responds to the notion of the divine relation), but only considering the reason of the names » (only that one thing is conceived under diverse reasons, which diverse reasons, conceived by us, are to be expressed also by diverse names) S. Th. ibid. ad 2.

Further, the Angelic [Doctor] considers in the divine relation these two [things]: that it is both substance and a relation to another. Insofar as the relation is identified with the essence, it is a substantial relation: insofar as it is referred and has a respect to another relative term, it is this one distinct from the other relatives of the same essence. And so the divine relation itself, identified with the essence, and under both reasons of the absolute and the relative one most simple thing, is understood to be the subsisting divine person. « The relations in the divine [realms], he says, although they constitute the hypostases and thus make them subsisting, nevertheless do this insofar as they are the divine essence (insofar as they are substantial relations). For a relation, insofar as it is a relation (abstractly regarded), does not have [that by which] it subsists or makes [something] subsist; for this belongs to substance alone. But the relations distinguish insofar as they are relations (not under the formal reason by which they are the common essence, but under the formal reason of a relation to the other term); for thus they have opposition » S. Th. Potent. q. 8. a. 3. ad 7. Namely, since the hypostasis is an individual substance, or this one substantial [being] distinct from all others, even of the same essence, a twofold reason is required for the hypostasis: substantiality and distinction; whence unless the divine relations were at the same time substance, that is, the divine essence, the very foundation of the hypostasis would be lacking; unless they were formally relations, under which sole reason they are opposed and distinguished, the formal reason of the hypostasis would be lacking ⁵. Hence further he says: « in the divine [realms] the relations are subsistent; therefore, according as they have opposition to one another, they can distinguish the supposits (or they themselves, as substantial and subsistent, are distinct supposits 1. q. 40. a. 3); nor yet is the essence distinguished, because the relations themselves are not distinguished from one another, according as they are really the same with the essence » (they are not distinguished under the formal reason of the essence) ibid. 1. q. 39. a. 1. ad 1. Cf. Card. Cienfuegos disp. V. sect. 3. § 1; Franc. de Lugo disp. XI. c. 3. n. 8.

From this doctrine, therefore, of s. Thomas, the divine relation itself — not indeed under the common concept of relation derived from creatures, but formally as divine relation ⁶, i. e. as a substantial relation, or one identified with the essence, and therefore as subsistent — is understood to be the divine person; absolutely, therefore, the divine persons are constituted by the divine relations. It is, however, self-evident that the name of constitution is taken here in that metaphysical sense in which the concrete significate is said to be constituted by the whole formal reason of itself, which is signified in the abstract, as God is said to be constituted by the Godhead, man by humanity; the name is not, however, taken in the physical sense, in which one third thing is said to be constituted out of two distinct concurring [things], as a man is constituted from soul and body. Cf. Ruiz disp. 86. sect. 4. n. 5. seqq.

IV. To complete the doctrine we here add a question which pertains more to the manner of speaking than to the matter itself: whether and in what way the divine persons can be said to be constituted by origins just as by relations. Certainly, if one attends to the identity of origin and (real) relation in God, it is of no great importance in which of the two ways we speak. Insofar, however, as one attends to the different manner in which we conceive origin and relation, the persons are understood to be constituted more properly by relations than by origins. Origin in the divine, as far as the present matter is concerned, is said both as active origin (to beget and to spirate, that is, generation and active spiration, which also are and are called notional acts⁷ cf. Suarez 1. VI. c. 1. n. 2. 3) and as passive origin, as it were (to be begotten and to be spirated, that is, nativity and procession)⁸; so that origin is the same as production in the active and passive sense, that is, the producing and the being produced of the divine persons. Since we are speaking of the constitution of the persons, setting aside active spiration, which does not constitute a person, as we shall declare later, there come into consideration here generation (active origin), nativity and procession (the twofold passive origin).

1°. Now what we have said — that origin and the corresponding relation in the divine are really altogether the same — is easily understood. The divine intellect is not a potency distinct from act, but from its inmost nature is pure act and substantial intellection; hence the intellect also, insofar as it produces the Word as its internal term, is not a potency passing into the act of producing the Word, but is a pure substantial act of intellection, from its nature (and in this sense essentially) productive of the Word. Whence this eternal necessary producing or begetting, whose immanent term, equally necessary, is the Word, is not a transient action, but is the very substantial, eternal, immutably abiding and subsisting intellection relative to its Word. Just as, therefore, the divine relation of paternity is not something abstract, but is this very substantial understanding productive of the Word and therefore from its nature related to the Word, so active origin, which is nothing other than this understanding productive of the Word, is the very eternal, immutably abiding relation of paternity to the Word as its immanent term.

Conversely, as is already clear from the formal notion of the producing intellection just described, the eternal being produced, or being begotten, of the immanent Word is not something transient; rather, from its inmost exigency it is a necessarily and eternally abiding being produced by the paternal intellection. For just as the substantial divine understanding, considered absolutely, is the one undivided divine essence, but taken relatively and as it were actively, insofar as to understand is to express one's Word in understanding, it is the subsisting Father distinct from the Word expressed or produced; in like manner the understood that is immanent in God, considered absolutely, is the divine essence, but in a sense as it were passive, insofar as the understood is said to be expressed by the paternal intellection, it is the Word distinct from the producing Father⁹, which is intrinsically constituted by the relation to the producing Father insofar as it is produced, and is constituted by passive origin insofar as it is conceived to be produced by an eternal act. In short, because in the Word the being eternally produced and the eternally being produced are one and the same, and the former founds the relation while the latter expresses origin, therefore, just as the Father, so also the Son can be understood to be constituted no less by eternal origin than by relation. The same things are to be repeated if one considers the eternal being produced and having been produced, that is, the eternal origin and relation of the Holy Spirit, who as immanent term is eternally spirated and has been spirated through the common love in the Father and the Son. See the Holy Fathers in Ruiz disp. 84. sect. 2.

2°. Nevertheless it is established, as we said in the second place, that the divine persons are understood to be constituted more aptly by relations than by origins, if one considers the manner in which we apprehend relation and origin by distinct concepts. For, as Bessarion argued in the Council of Florence (Hard. IX. p. 347), « relation and origin, although they differ according to the mode of understanding — since origin is signified after the manner of an act (κατὰ τὸν τῆς ἐνεργείας τρόπον), as generation (ἡ γέννησις), whereas relation is signified after the manner of a (permanent) form (κατὰ τὸν τοῦ εἴδους τρόπον) — do not however differ in reality; therefore the divine persons are distinguished indeed in both ways, but first and principally, according to the mode of understanding, by relations ». Namely, to explain the matter in the words of Didacus Ruiz disp. 87. sect. 5. n. 5, « according to the correct mode of understanding a thing abiding in its accomplished state, that is, in its produced being, what is constitutive must be conceived as a permanent form and as it were in accomplished being, already having fixed being, not as a way and tendency toward that being. This condition, however, does not belong to origin; for it is conceived as a way tending toward being and as it were a becoming¹⁰, for it is the very being actually produced. Therefore origin cannot formally and intrinsically constitute the produced person, but only relation ». These things indeed are understood immediately only of passive origin; for the first person is in no way produced. Nevertheless the reason adduced — that origin, in our mode of understanding, by which alone it is distinguished from relation and according to which this whole question is treated, is not conceived as a permanent form — holds equally for active origin, as it is generation. Rightly, therefore, for the same reason the first person also is conceived to be constituted by relation and not by origin, according to that mode in which we apprehend origin as something flowing and distinct in reason from relation. « The Father must be constituted by a fixed and permanent form, such as paternity is, not however by the formality of a flowing way tending toward some term to be constituted (such as generation is conceived to be) » Ruiz ibid. n. 7. cf. S. Th. 1. q. 40. a. 2; Suarez 1. VII. c. 6. n. 12.

But setting aside this distinction between a permanent form and an act conceived after the manner of a flowing thing — a distinction which, as it were by way of a subsequent correction, stands in need of correction, lest it contain error — the same point can be set forth in another way. The distinction between origin and relation is transferred from created things to God, so that we may in some way conceive the procession and real distinction of the persons. In created things, however, relation does not indeed constitute the person, but still we do not conceive the incommunicability and distinction of one person from another without relation; origin, on the other hand, enters in no way into either the constitution or the concept of the incommunicability of a created person; therefore, if we distinguish origin and relation in the divine person according to the analogy of the created person, we conceive the person as constituted more aptly by relation than by origin. This explanation is Cardinal Pallavicini's: « It must be found out what that fundamental concept is from which, most formally, incommunicability in the divine persons is drawn according to our mode of knowing — whether the concept of relations or of origins... As regards truth, both are the same in the divine and so constitute the persons, and neither in us pertains to the substance and constitution of the persons; wherefore on these heads they are equal. Nevertheless this does not stand in the way of the aptness of this puzzle (namely this concept of relations, which is derived from creatures as distinct from the concept of origins), such as can be had by us. For among creatures we cannot conceive incommunicability and distinction itself without a relative concept, whereas the origins, neither really nor according to concept, pertain in creatures to constituting the incommunicability of the persons; and therefore the concept of relations is the more accommodating » Pallav. Curs. theol. 1. VIII. c. 54. n. 414.

Corollary. From what has been set forth in this thesis it follows what is to be thought about the priority of reason between the notional acts or origins, on the one hand, and the persons or personal properties, on the other. This question, like the preceding ones, can again be taken in two ways; namely, either it is asked about the thing itself as it is in itself, insofar as it can be understood by us, or about the order among the notions as it were partial, by which we in our imperfect way are wont to conceive the same thing through the manifold distinctions derived according to the analogy from creatures.

1°. According to that former consideration, it is most easily understood that there is no priority, not even of reason, between the notional act and the personal property. For eternal active generation and paternity; likewise nativity, that is, the eternal procession through generation, and filiation; and again the eternal procession through spiration and the having been spirated — these, on the side of the thing, are altogether the same, without any distinction and therefore without any priority. These things stand firm from what was said in the thesis about the identity of divine origin and relation. In particular, as regards the first person, about whom the greater difficulty usually exists: he is not prior in reason as Father, and consequently not prior in reason as a constituted person who should then in a later sign beget; for the Father, and consequently the person, is constituted by the very eternal necessary relative act of generation; or, to speak still more precisely, this very necessary substantial act — the substantial intellection, I say, from its inmost nature eternally producing and having as produced the immanent Word — is itself the Father. And so, conversely, generation is not prior in reason and paternity afterwards in a later sign; for the Father himself, under the formal notion as Father and as this person, begets, and through this very eternal necessary relative act of generation he is a distinct person, namely the Father; it is not some indeterminate person that precedes, which should then by the act of generation be constituted the Father and this determinate person. Didacus Ruiz says the same in other words (disp. 91. sect. 2. n. 1.): « paternity and generation under a full and explicit concept are simultaneous, so that neither can be understood as prior in reason to the other. Understand the same of filiation compared with nativity, and of the relation of the Holy Spirit compared with its passive origin, namely with procession ».

Provided the declared real identity of the notional act, that is, of origin, with the personal relation is duly kept before one's eyes, the emptiness of the objection will easily appear, by which someone would wish to prove the person of the Father prior in reason to the notional act of generation, or on the contrary the act of generation prior to paternity. For it is wont to be said on the one side: actions belong to supposits; therefore it is repugnant that an act of generation be conceived without a person being pre-understood as prior in reason; and if it were not so, not a person but the nature would be the one begetting, contrary to what was defined in the Council of the Lateran (cap. Damnamus). On the other side it is objected: the first person cannot be understood under the formal notion of Father except because he begets; therefore active generation is necessarily pre-understood, and from it paternity, that is, the formal notion of Father, is understood.

We answer: in both of these objections the concept of the person of the Father is first taken inadequately and in confusion, to which the explicit notion of paternity is then added; and in this manner of considering, instituted according to the analogy found in created persons, we do not deny that the object represented by the inadequate concept can be viewed as prior in reason, and the same object represented under the explicit notion of paternity as posterior in reason — about which we shall speak shortly. Now, however, we are speaking of the person of the Father and of the notional act according to their perfection, insofar as, with faith shedding light, we can understand them as they are in themselves on the side of the thing. Thus, first of all, the intellection producing the Word is not an elicited action of some supposit, as intellection is in creatures; but the divine intellection is a pure substantial act which, formally as from its necessary perfection it is relative to the eternally produced Word, is God the Father; whence that relative act is not as it were inhering in some pre-understood person, but is itself this determinate divine person, distinct from the Word and from the Holy Spirit.

To the former objection, therefore, we say: not only is it not repugnant that the substantial relative act be conceived without a person being pre-understood as prior in reason, to which it inheres or from which it is elicited; but rather that imperfect manner of conceiving it, according to the analogy of creatures, as an elicited act, stands in need of this correction, that the substantial relative act itself be understood to be the divine person. Hence, further, it is indeed the person under the formal notion of person, that is, under the formal notion of a distinct relative, and not the nature under the notion of the absolute and common, that begets; but the divine person is not a supposit eliciting an act distinct from itself, but (as I have said) the substantial relative act itself is the person.

From these things too the answer to the other objection, contrary to the former, is manifest. Active generation as it is in God is a relative act always complete from an inborn necessity, having as its internal term the eternally produced Word. Whence that complete act of generation is not prior in reason in such a way that paternity follows from it; but rather that relative act itself, entirely without priority of reason — indeed with the mind's consideration of both at once — is paternity. It can indeed be said: the Father is because he begets, and conversely he begets because he is the Father; not as if the one were to be conceived before the other, but because the one concept includes the other as its formal notion, just as the defined includes the definition, and conversely the definition includes the defined.

2°. Although these things are so, we can nevertheless, according to the analogy of creatures, view the person, the relation, and the notional act in confusion; and, comparing the formalities thus conceived with one another, we can indeed conceive the one as prior in reason to the other.

First, as regards the proceeding persons, that is, the Son and the Holy Spirit: if being begotten, that is, nativity, and being spirated, that is, passive spiration, are viewed, as St. Thomas speaks, as a way to the person — whereas on the contrary the person, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is the term and the person itself — then without doubt the origin (being begotten and being spirated) is conceived as prior in reason, and the begotten and spirated person as posterior in reason.

Then, as regards the person of the Father, about whom the present question especially turns, we can conceive the begetting person in such a way that the first person, that is, the unbegotten, is first conceived in confusion without the explicit concept of paternity, and this person is understood as posterior in reason as begetting: thus the confused notion of the person is prior in reason, the notional act posterior. In another way again we can view paternity merely as a relation, prescinding from the fact that the divine relation is itself the divine substance and therefore a person. Whence, because in creatures the relation of paternity follows upon generation, according to this analogy we can conceive in God generation as the foundation of the paternal relation, and so as prior in reason to paternity thus inadequately viewed.

This analogical manner of conceiving, although imperfect and in need of correction — lest we judge that in reality the person first exists and then the act of generation, by which the Father is at length constituted — must nevertheless be noted, because on it rests a frequent and quite convenient usage of speech, and because the Scholastics almost always institute from it their comparisons between the persons and the origins of the persons. See S. Th. 1. q. 40. a. 4. and especially de Potent. q. 10. a. 3. Cf. Suarez 1. VII. c. 7. n. 11; Ruiz disp. 91. sect. 2.

« The name person signifies a subsistent in a rational or intellectual nature. Hence, 1°. person does not indeed, from its mode of signifying, express a relation, but in God, on account of the thing signified, it supposits for relatives, and therefore persons are to be predicated of God in the plural; with this doctrine the discussion of s. Augustine (Trin. VII. c. 4. seqq.) is very well reconciled. 2°. For this reason, no absolute subsistence is to be admitted in God, if the name subsistence be taken in the fuller and, from ecclesiastical usage, proper signification ».

I. From what has been said in the preceding thesis there can first be settled that question which, after s. Augustine (Trin. 1. VII. c. 4. seqq.), s. Thomas 1. q. 29. a. 4; Potent. q. 9. a. 4; 1. dist. 23. a. 3. and most other Scholastics discuss: what the name person properly signifies in God, and how it comes about that a name which is said not relatively to another but with respect to itself, and hence seems to signify something absolute, is nevertheless said of God in the plural.

1°. The name person signifies a subsistent in a rational or intellectual nature, distinct from others even of the same nature; hence if it is transferred to God, it signifies a distinct subsistent in the divine nature. Moreover, it is established by revelation that the subsistents in the divine nature are three, distinct from one another under the formal ratio of relatives, who, however, under the formal ratio of the absolute are altogether one undivided essence.

Hence, in those three distinct subsistents two things are to be considered: a) each one is something really distinct from the others, and thus incommunicable, and consequently subsisting in itself; this is expressed by the name person. b) It is to be considered that they are thus distinct and subsisting in themselves only under the formal ratio of a substantial relation. This ratio of the relative is not explicitly expressed by the name person; for neither does it, from its mode of signifying, designate the relative. Thus, by the name divine person there is formally signified the distinct subsistent in the divine nature; this distinct subsistent, however, in God is in reality a relative, although the ratio of the relative is not expressed by that name from its mode of signifying (as I have said). It can be said most briefly: the name person in God formally signifies the distinct subsistent, materially signifies the relative; or also: it signifies the distinct subsistent, it supposits for the relative (cf. supra p. 27.).

«The proper ratio of a name is (says s. Thomas) what the name signifies; but that to which the name is attributed, if it be rightly taken under the thing signified by the name, as the determinate under the indeterminate, is said to be supposited for by the name (as by the name man Peter can be supposited)… But it must be known that something is signified in two ways: in one way formally and in another way materially. Formally, indeed, there is signified by the name that for which the name was principally imposed, which is the ratio of the name, as this name man signifies something composed of body and rational soul. Materially, however, there is signified by the name that in which such a ratio is realized; as this name man signifies something having a heart and a brain and parts of this sort, without which a body cannot be animated by a rational soul. According to this, therefore, it must be said that this name person, taken commonly, signifies nothing other than the individual substance of a rational nature. And because under the individual substance of a rational nature there is contained the individual substance, that is, the incommunicable and from others distinct substance, of God as well as of man as also of angel, the divine person must signify the distinct subsistent in the divine nature, just as the human person signifies the distinct subsistent in the human nature; and this is the formal signification both of the divine person and of the human person… But the distinct incommunicable subsistent in the divine nature cannot be anything except a relation, because everything absolute is common and indistinct in divine things… It is clear, therefore, that person taken commonly signifies the individual substance of a rational nature, but the divine person by formal signification signifies the distinct subsistent in the divine nature; and because this cannot be anything except a relation or a relative (which in God are the same), therefore by material signification it signifies a relation or a relative » S. Thomas Potent. q. 9. a. 4. cf. I. q. 29. a. 4.

Therefore, although also in God the name person is in some sense said with respect to itself, and is not said relatively to another, nevertheless that which is designated by this name is not something absolute but something relative.

To be said with respect to itself is taken in a twofold sense: either so that the formal ratio of the absolute is signified, in which sense essence, wisdom, goodness and all absolute attributes are said with respect to themselves; or something is said with respect to itself so that it is signified to be in itself incommunicable and hence subsisting, without the formal ratio of the relative being denied of it; in this sense the divine person is said with respect to itself and is such. For indeed the Father is in himself this one incommunicably, and consequently really distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit (which holds the same for the second and third person); this, however, is under the formal ratio of the relative.

The difference, therefore, between the proper appellation of each one of the three distinct subsistents — between the names, I say, Father, Son, Holy Spirit — and the common name person is this: that those proper names express both the subsistent and the ratio of the relative, and indeed each one expresses one determinate subsistent and relative: one Father, not three Fathers, and Father of the Son; one Son, not three Sons, and Son of the Father etc.; whereas the name person, of itself and from its mode of signifying, signifies only the subsistent indeterminately, whence it can be said of each one, and because the subsistents are three, really distinct from one another under the formal ratio of subsistents, they can be numbered together in the plural as persons. But the formal ratio of the relative, or the relation of origin of one from another, as we have said, this name does not signify but supposits; and hence the Father is a person in himself, i.e. subsisting in himself, but he is not, nor can be called, the person of the Son; for that would signify that under the formal ratio of the subsistent the Father and the Son are one and the same, which is the Sabellian error. In brief, the name person in God does not signify something absolute, but a distinct subsistent subsisting in itself; the subsistents in themselves, however, in God are relatives and are three; therefore the name person in God does not indeed from its mode of signifying designate the relative, but on account of the thing signified supposits for the relative, and in the plural three persons are to be said.

2°. As to the substance of the matter, this same doctrine of s. Thomas seems to us to have been handed down by s. Augustine in the celebrated passage Trin. VII. n. 7-12. There Augustine asks why, since three divine essences neither are nor can be said, because God is one, yet three substances, i.e. hypostases, are said by the Greeks, and three persons by the Latins? The difficulty which the holy Father presses is as follows. In God, whatever is absolute and in this sense is said with respect to itself is altogether one and undivided; but the three distinct subsistents are only under the formal ratio of relatives to one another: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

But if now a created person is considered, it is something absolute, namely a singular substance of an entire rational nature wholly in itself; whence there are always as many persons there as there are singular entire rational natures subsisting connaturally, and the distinct persons each have also a numerically different essence. If, therefore, person were said of God in this sense, no less one person in number than one essence would have to be said; for there is one singular, entire, intellectual substance. Wherefore, says Augustine, when some common name was sought by which not now the one absolute in the three would be signified, but by which the three insofar as they are distinct would be numbered together, the name person was taken up not in that signification of the absolute, but to designate several subsistents distinct by relation, although the name itself of itself does not have the form of a relative signification, as the names Father, Son, Holy Spirit have ¹.

«While human poverty strove in speaking to bring forth to the senses of men what it holds by its capacity concerning the Lord God its creator in the secret chamber of the mind… it feared to say three essences, lest some diversity be understood in that supreme equality; again, that they are not three somethings, it could not say, because Sabellius, since he said this, fell into heresy. For most certainly it is known from the Scriptures… that the Father is, and the Son and the Holy Spirit; nor that the Son is the same as the Father is… It sought what it should call the three, and it said substances (hypostases) or persons; by which names it wished not diversity to be understood, but refused singularity; so that not only unity be understood there from the fact that one essence is said, but also Trinity from the fact that three substances or persons are said… And so let him say one essence, so as not to think that one thing is greater or better than another or in some part different; yet not so that the Father himself is the Son and the Holy Spirit, and whatever else is said of them mutually (relatively)… on account of which they also admit the plural number, as it is written in the Gospel: I and the Father are one. Or if it now pleases, on account of the necessity of disputation, even setting aside the relative names, to admit the plural number, so that it be answered with one name when it is asked what the three are, and to say three substances (hypostases) or three persons, let no masses or intervals be thought, no distance of however small a dissimilarity… so that there be neither confusion of persons, nor such a distinction by which something is unequal » Aug. ib. n. 9. 12.

Augustine, therefore, not only does not say — as Güntherus twisted this passage — that three Gods and three essences can be predicated, unless external reasons stood in the way; but rather he says that because God is altogether one and there is one essence, neither can three persons be said in the signification of the absolute, but only three persons be numbered, insofar as that which is designated by this name in God is relative (cf. supra p. 269. 270.).

We think also that, according to what we have said, what Petavius wrote in l. IV. c. 11. needs some mitigation, where he strove to refute the opinion of Augustine, which he himself interpreted as if the holy Father had simply taught that in God «person is said with respect to itself, not to another, which itself is to be said absolutely and according to essence or substance, not according to relation,» as Petavius speaks. Augustine indeed says: «as the substance of the Father is He himself

the Father is, not insofar as He is the Father, but insofar as He is; so also the person of the Father is nothing other than the Father himself; for person is said with respect to itself, not to the Son or the Holy Spirit; just as God and great and good and just are said with respect to themselves » l. c. n. 11. But in this very fact that it is said «the person of the Father is the Father himself», it is not denied that he for whom the name person supposits is relative to the Son and the Holy Spirit; but it is only said that by the name person there is signified a subsistent in himself, not however the subsistence of another, which is also clear from the added explanation of Augustine, in what sense person is said with respect to itself and not relatively to another: «what then, he says, does it please that we say the Father is the person of the Son and of the Holy Spirit?» All of which at length are reduced to the sense of s. Thomas, the most distinguished interpreter of Augustine.

II. The question of the absolute subsistence of God, about which the Scholastics once disputed, is from what has been said so clear that among Catholics the controversy can almost only be about the name. Durandus in 3. dist. I. q. 2. a. 7. and some other old Thomists taught that «to subsist in divine things is something unique and absolute, belonging to all the persons by reason of the essence». For, they said, in divine things «the formal ratio of the supposit (hypostasis) is not per se subsistence but is something else; for the supposit is formally constituted by the relative property, but it subsists not by the relative property but by the essence or substance» ibid. Some others affirmed — among whom first Cajetan (in I. q. 39. a. 4; 3. q. 2. a. 2. ad 3.; q. 3. aa. 2. 3.) and afterwards Suarez (de Incarnat. T. I. disp. XI. sect. 3.; de Trin. l. III. c. 4; l. IV. c. 11.) — that in God there is one absolute subsistence and three relative ones. But the common way of thinking and speaking, confirmed by the consensus of the Fathers and Councils, is that three subsistences are said to exist in God under the formal ratio of relatives, not however some absolute subsistence common to the three persons. See Vasquez in P. I. disp. 125.; Gregory of Valencia de Trin. (T. I. disp. II.) q. 13. puncto 3.; Ruiz disp. XXXIV.; Franc. de Lugo Trin. disp. XI.; Petav. l. IV. c. 12. n. 1-4.

The name subsistence, in its proper signification consecrated by ecclesiastical usage through many centuries, has no other notion than that which we have stated; namely, a subsistent (from which subsistence is derived) is this one existing incommunicably in itself, and by this very fact distinct from all others even of the same essence or nature. Three things, therefore, are required for the proper ratio of subsistence: that it be a singular, entire substance; that it be not after the manner of a part, or after the manner of a nature held in another higher hypostasis (as the human nature in the Word); that it be not common or identified with several things distinct among themselves. In this sense, therefore, both etymologically and by the ecclesiastical usage of the Fathers and Councils, subsistence is altogether the same as that which in Greek is called hypostasis; for subsistence among the Fathers and ancient theologians is not taken in an abstract signification, but concretely in the same way as hypostasis. But if, as it prevailed among the Scholastics after Cajetan ², it is taken abstractly, subsistence will be that formal ratio of incommunicability in itself, under which substance is understood to be a hypostasis.

In whichever way you regard subsistence, no absolute, but three relative subsistences are to be predicated in God; for whatever is absolute there is one common thing, or identified with the three distinct persons; but the distinct persons are only under the formal ratio of relatives. By this very fact the absolute is not subsistent, i.e. incommunicable, under the formal ratio of the absolute, but under the formal ratio of the three relatives and of each one of them.

But if subsistence is taken in a twofold diverse signification: first more loosely, under only the two former notes, so that it be a singular, entire, existing substance, and not assumed after the manner of a nature by a higher hypostasis; then more strictly, with the added third note of incommunicability: thus indeed in that former, less full signification the divine absolute essence can be called subsistence, or (taking the name abstractly) an absolute subsistence can be ascribed to the essence, just as by several of the ancients, before the fourth century drew to a close, one hypostasis was predicated in God, i.e. one singular, most perfect, really existing absolute substance in three distinct persons (see supra th. IX. n. II. and de Incarnat. th. XXVI. XXVII.). Whence if it be said that in God there are one absolute subsistence and three relative subsistences, taking the name according to that twofold diverse signification, as Suarez explained his mind ll. cc., nothing indeed will be said that is dissonant from the truth as regards the thing itself; but without any fruit the name is deflected from its solemn signification to another sense; and thus, while it is used in an ambiguous sense in explaining one and the same mystery, clarity is certainly not served, but occasion is given for the perturbation of concepts not only in the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, but also in the explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation.

But those who by that absolute subsistence understand something more than what has been said are without doubt deceived also as regards the thing itself. Thus Cajetan ll. cc. insists that, prescinding from the persons, there is and must be understood not only God but (as he says) this God, namely one having the divine nature; whence he thinks that God thus conceived is a supposit and a person, although not altogether completely, because he is something common to the three distinct persons. But in truth, whether God or this God be said, he is not other than the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, the three persons together, and each one of them. And hence, granted the revelation of the three divine persons, the name God or this God signifies nothing other than the one divine nature, not multipliable, with a connotation of subsistence either indeterminately and confusedly, or of a threefold subsistence, or determinately of the subsistence of one of the three.

But in whatever way subsistence be connoted, it always has the formal ratio of the relative; the only difference is something in our mode of conceiving: in the second and third mode we expressly conceive subsistence as relative; in the first mode we can conceive it confusedly, without an express notion of the relative; nevertheless, even confusedly, according to the truth of the thing the divine subsistence cannot be conceived with the exclusion of the relative and under the express ratio of the absolute, since objectively and on the part of the thing it is not except under the formal ratio of the relative.

That Durandus affirms one absolute subsistence, and denies relative subsistences, took its origin from the perverse interpretation of the doctrine of S. Thomas, which we have described above, concerning substance as the foundation of subsistence. «Relations in divine things, says the Angelic Doctor, although they constitute the hypostases and thus make them subsistent, yet they do this insofar as they are the divine essence; for a relation insofar as it is a relation does not have that it subsist or make anything subsist, for this belongs to substance alone» Potent. q. 8. a. 3. ad 7. Whence Durandus and some others concluded thus: the absolute essence gives subsistence to the relations, but the relations do not give subsistence to the essence; and therefore one absolute subsistence common to the three is to be said, but there is no relative subsistence. But from what has been said it is clear that this inference is in itself absurd, if subsistence be taken in the fuller sense of incommunicability according to the usage of the Councils and the Fathers. As regards the doctrine of s. Thomas, this one thing is said with perfect truth: relations cannot be subsistent except insofar as they are substantial; and hence relations are subsistent, not because they are relations in the common signification, but because they are such relations, namely identified with the essence and therefore substantial.

In the more proper mode of conceiving and speaking, neither should the essence be said to give subsistence to the relations, nor the relations to the essence; for neither are the relations really distinguished from the essence, nor is subsistence a superadded reality, whether to the essence or to the relations; but the most simple and infinite essence, from internal exigency and through itself, is really the subsisting Father, Son, Holy Spirit; and in turn the relation, e.g. paternity, is through itself God the Father, filiation God the Son, the spirated (passive spiration) God the Holy Spirit. Therefore it will be said more properly that the one most simple essence has at once the formal ratio of the absolute and of the relative, so that under the ratio of the absolute there is understood the essence common to the three distinct persons, under the ratio of the relative it is the Father distinct from the Son, the Son distinct from the Father etc., and therefore incommunicably subsisting as Father, as Son, as Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, because essence and relations are distinguished by reason, and one is the function under the formal ratio of the essence, another under the formal ratio of the relative, in our inadequate mode of conceiving we can say: the essence gives to the relations that they be substantial, which ratio of substance is the necessary foundation for the ratio of subsistence; the relations give to the highest reality, which is the essence, incommunicability, which is the formal ratio of subsistence properly so called ³. Whence subsistence in the concrete signification is not the formal ratio of the essence alone nor the formal ratio of the relation in common alone, but is complexly a substantial relation or substantial relative; accordingly subsistence in the abstract signification is conceived as the mode in which the substantial relative is (see supra p. 330.).

Corollary. The name person does not signify a universal or an abstract note common in the proper sense to several individuals, but designates even in God indeterminately this one distinct from others, the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit; and hence it is not the name of a species comprehending individuals under itself, but is related as the denominations of a vague individual are: some one, some man. Against this the objection is inept that to these appellations the partitive someone cannot be added, although yet some person can be said. For first, it could very well be said: someone who is some man; then, although the vague individual already expressed indeterminately by the particle someone could not admit the repetition of this particle, yet the name that by itself designates the indeterminate individual, of which sort the name person is, can admit the particle. See S. Th. I. q. 30. a. 4.