Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« 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.

«Active spiration and being unbegotten (innascibility, ἢ ἀγεννησία) do not constitute persons. For spiration, distinct from Paternity in the Father and from filiation in the Son not really but only by reason, is included in the fuller concept itself of paternity and filiation. Likewise, being unbegotten, as a notion of the first person, is included in the fuller concept of divine paternity».

Since, from what was demonstrated in Thesis XXIII, the substantial relations themselves, inasmuch as they are really distinct from one another and therefore subsistent, are the divine persons, or formally constitute the persons, it is evident that there are as many really distinct constituting relations as there are divine persons; namely, the formal reason of the Father, and another of the Son, and a third of the Holy Spirit, that is, paternity, filiation, and procession.

But since the internal relations in God are relations of origin, by that very fact in every procession there is necessarily a twofold relation, opposed and distinct through opposition — the relation, I say, of the principle and of the one proceeding from the principle. And therefore, since there are two distinct processions, of the Son by generation from the Father, of the Holy Spirit by spiration from the Father and the Son, there must be four relations; just as to the Son the Father, or to filiation paternity, so to the spirated one the spirator, and to the procession or passive spiration (as they say) active spiration corresponds and is opposed as principle with respect to the one proceeding from the principle. Moreover, both from the general doctrine of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity it follows, and in the special declarations of the Fathers and of all theologians it is expressly proposed, that innascibility or being unbegotten (ἡ ἀγεννησία) is a notion proper to one person alone and by no means common. It must therefore be declared how, besides the three properties or constituting relations, there stand, first, the relation of spiration, and then innascibility.

1. As to the first, then, it is asked why this relation of (active) spiration, or the formal reason of the spirator, opposed and really distinct from the procession or from the formal reason of the spirated one, is not of itself subsistent and constitutive of a person?

1°. According to our imperfect manner of conceiving, the answer could be obvious and (as it seems) easy: active spiration presupposes the persons Father and Son already constituted, and is conceived as supervening upon them like a common act ¹. Moreover, the act itself, or active spiration itself, does not really proceed from the Father and the Son, and so it has no opposition to the persons of which it is the act, and therefore is not really distinguished from them; but by this act of spiration the Holy Spirit really proceeds from the Father and the Son, and therefore the Father and the Son, through this their common act according to the formal reason of the spirator, are referred as principle to the Holy Spirit, and are really distinguished from him. The spirator, therefore, does not express a person distinct from the Father and the Son, but signifies one spirating power, or one act and one relation of spiration common to two persons, and co-signifies confusedly these persons of which it is the act and relation; in almost the way in which the name creator signifies the one divine essence under the formal reason of the creating act, and co-signifies confusedly the persons of which it is the essence ².

2°. Nevertheless, since spiration in the Father is really the same as paternity, and the same spiration in the Son is really the same as filiation, and is distinguished from paternity and filiation only by reason, that concept by which spiration, according to our imperfect manner of understanding through composition, is thought of as supervening upon the constituted persons, can be refined so as to correspond a little more to divine simplicity, as we said of the concept of the constitution of the person through relation and essence. And so, that two relations not opposed to each other, paternity and spiration, may be understood as one person, and likewise one person may be understood as the relation of filiation together with the same spiration not opposed to it, the following consideration will help.

a) That «highest reality, namely the essence or divine nature» under the formal reason of the intellection expressing the Word is God the Father; the same highest reality under the formal reason of the intellection expressed, or as the immanent term produced by the paternal intellection, is the Word or God the Son. But now the intellection, both inasmuch as it expresses the Word and inasmuch as it is the expressed Word, is at the same time the love producing or spirating its immanent term, which is the Holy Spirit. For the paternal intellection has at the same time the formal reason of spirating love, so that under one reason it is referred to the Word, under the other reason it is referred to the spirated one. But because in every spirit, even in the infinite, love presupposes intellection, not however intellection love; and because the intellection expressing the Word, from the intimate nature of the thing, communicates to the Word the essence under all formal reasons (except the formal reason of the expression of the Word, of which the Word itself is the really distinct term); therefore the Word is expressed by communicating the essence also under the formal reason of spirating love. Hence the paternal intellection has the formal reason of spirating love only on the supposition (in the order of origin) of the expression of the Word, and the Word is expressed as having the same formal reason of spirating love; that is, the Father, fecund of the Holy Spirit, expresses by generation the Word fecund of the Holy Spirit.

Whence, just as essence and paternity (the formal reason of the intellect expressing the Word) are not two really distinct things, but one highest reality under the twofold formal reason of the absolute and the relative; so paternity and spiration are not two relatives, but under a twofold formal reason one relative to a twofold really distinct term. Because, namely, that twofold formal reason has no opposition of the one to the other, therefore between them there is no real distinction, and there is one relative; yet because that one has an order, under the formal reason of the begetter and the spirator, to a twofold really distinct term (to the Son and the Holy Spirit), paternity and spiration are two relations distinct by reason with a foundation in reality. The relations, I say, are two, not by reason of mutual opposition, which is none; but by reason of the terms to which the relation is. If by mutual opposition they were really distinguished from one another, they would be two persons; but because they are distinguished from one another only by reason, they are one person. «Opposed relations are persons, and they are two persons just as they are two relations; but relations which are in the same person and are not opposed are indeed two relations or properties but not two persons; rather, one person» S. Th. I. dist. 33. a. 2. ad 1.

That the same must be said of the distinction by reason and real identity of the same spiration, as it is communicated to the Son, with the relation of filiation, is evident. For the Son, from the very mode of procession from the Father through intellection, is generated as one principle with the Father, fecund of the Holy Spirit. «For in the infinite Word, representative of infinite good, there is contained quidditatively the power (and the act identified with the power) to produce, together with its speaking principle, the love of the same good. Whence the person producing the Word, by the very fact that it is productive of the Word, is also, together with the Word, productive of love» Ruiz disp. XVII. sect. 6. n. 8. Just as therefore in the Father paternity and spiration, so in the Son the relation of filiation or being begotten and spiration are «two relations but not two persons; rather, one person».

b) From these things, moreover, it is understood how (active) spiration pertains to the inner notion and to the adequate concept (as far as we are able to understand) of the person of the Father and of the Son.

For a) paternity and filiation, if they are considered more fully, include spiration from an inward exigency, and without it they are not fully conceived; accordingly, active spiration pertains to divine paternity and filiation, that they may be such as they necessarily are. Hence Dominicus Viva rightly says of the Son, which holds in like manner of the Father: «The Son, in the chimerical hypothesis that he did not spirate, would have the concept of the Son inadequately, yet in such a way that it would be repugnant that he be found anywhere according to such an inadequate concept» de Trin. disp. V. q. 6. n. 9.

Therefore β) because paternity and filiation, from their intimate reason, are necessarily at the same time active spiration, and because through this formal reason of spiration the Father and the Son are constituted as a principle distinct from the third proceeding person; as to the thing itself it is indubitable, and as to the manner of speaking it has a solid foundation, the doctrine of the theologians who, on the supposition of the distinction of reason and real identity of spiration with paternity and filiation, say that the constitution of the Father and of the Son in their full concept is understood through the formal reason of paternity and filiation, inasmuch as each of these includes active spiration. «The Father and the Son are distinguished from the Holy Spirit by that very property by which they are constituted. Wherefore, just as they are distinguished from the Holy Spirit only radically through paternity and filiation, so also they are not fully and integrally constituted by the explicit concept of paternity and filiation, until active spiration is explicitly understood, by which, just as they are formally distinguished from the Holy Spirit, so also they are ultimately and fully constituted» Didac. Ruiz disp. XVII. sect. 6. cf. disp. 106. sect. 2. n. 1; sect. 3. n. 6. So also Dominicus Viva: «That by which the Son is distinguished from everything that is not himself is not passive generation taken in any way whatever, but passive generation as imbibing spiration.... In that hypothesis, however (that the Son would not be, with the Father, the principle of spiration), such passive generation would not remain; therefore he would not have that by which the Son is now ultimately constituted and first distinguished from everything that is not himself» Viva disp. V. q. 6. n. 8-10. See also Aureolus I. dist. 11. a. 3. Nor does the most certain axiom, that active spiration is a relation not constituting the person but only distinguishing the Father and the Son from the Holy Spirit, contradict the truth of this fuller consideration. For by this axiom the constitution of a person distinct from the Father and the Son is denied; but that spiration pertains to exhibiting the notion of the person of the Father and of the Son in their full concept is not only not denied but implicitly affirmed, because active spiration is called a relation distinguishing the first and second persons from the Holy Spirit.

II. We proceed to the consideration of innascibility, or τῆς ἀγεννησίας, which, besides the four relations, we have said to be a fifth notion proper to one person alone.

1°. As to the force of the name, unbegotten (τὸ ἀγέννητον) can be taken especially in a threefold signification. a) So as to be opposed to created, and to be the same as uncreated. In this signification it should rather be written ἀγένητον, the holy Fathers observed, as Epiphanius haeres. 64. n. 8. and Damascene de Fide orthod. l. I. c. 8.³, and it is an absolute attribute of the divine essence and therefore common to the three persons, by which the imperfection of a created being is denied, and by this very fact the absolute perfection of a necessary being is affirmed. The Arians presupposed this sense in their perpetual cavils, by which they attacked the divinity of the Son of God, because the Father alone is unbegotten.

b) Unbegotten or innascibility is taken hypostatically in opposition to begotten⁴. But the opposition can be taken in two ways: if unbegotten is opposed to begotten precisely according to the mode of procession by generation, then not only of the Father but also of the Holy Spirit it must be denied that he is begotten (S. Th. opusc. I. contr. errores Graecor. c. 8); and so in this more general sense unbegotten is not proper to the Father. «The Father is from no one, neither made nor created (ἀγένητος) nor begotten (ἀγέννητος); the Son is from the Father alone, not made nor created (ἀγένητος) but begotten (γεννητός); the Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, not made nor created (ἀγένητος) nor begotten (ἀγέννητος) but proceeding». But although in comparison with the begotten Son the Holy Spirit can be said to be not begotten; nevertheless the compound unbegotten (ἀγέννητος) in its strict signification is opposed not only to the mode of procession by generation, but simply to procession and origin from a principle. The holy Fathers in their disputes against the Arians are wont indeed to recall explicitly only the opposition of the unbegotten to the begotten Son, because the direct controversy with those heretics was restricted to the dogma of the divinity and consubstantiality of the Son (cf. above p. 51); yet implicitly they always include the opposition also to the procession of the third person; since they hold τὸ ἀγέννητον as proper to the Father, and by this very fact simply as the negation of origin.

Therefore c) the unbegotten, in its hypostatic signification, is opposed to the begotten directly indeed as a negation, but with the negation of any procession included at the same time; and so it is proper to the Father alone. The Father is therefore called unbegotten according to the direct opposition, so that His distinction from the Son may be understood, and according to the included signification, so that we may distinguish Him from each of the two proceeding persons.

Wherefore St. Basil most excellently admonishes that, if there were none, and by that very fact there could not be a proper Son of God, God would never come to be called unbegotten; but rather He would be named uncreated; since in that hypothesis it would not be the Father that would have to be distinguished by us from the Son — which is done by the opposition of the unbegotten to the begotten — but only the task would remain of discriminating the uncreated God from the creature. « If the Father is unbegotten because He is not begotten, but the Son is begotten because He has been generated, then the unbegotten is understood later than the begotten; for it would not have (if nothing were begotten) that before which it would be called unbegotten; for comparisons are instituted among the things that are, not among the things that are not.... If the Son is a creature and not begotten, and if all things that are are creatures, in vain is the Father called unbegotten, when there exists absolutely no begotten one with respect to whom He is called unbegotten; therefore He would with better right be called uncreated than unbegotten » Basil. contr. Eunom. IV. Tom. I. p. 283.

2°. It remains to explain the proper account of the unbegotten, inasmuch as it is the hypostatic notion of the Father.

a) Inasmuch as the name unbegotten designates not a nature but a hypostasis, in God it does not signify the absolute, but is drawn back to a relative signification, or, as St. Thomas says, it is a relation by reduction. How this is so, St. Augustine explains, Trin. l. V. c. 7.: negative names are in the same category in which the opposed affirmative names are, which the holy Doctor shows there through all ten categories. « Just as I affirm according to substance when I say, a man is; so I deny according to substance when I say, a non-man is; and when it is asked how great he is, and I say, he is four feet long, i. e. of four feet, I affirm according to quantity; he who says, he is not four feet long, denies according to quantity. » Hence to the present matter: « if I were to affirm substantially (by predication of the absolute) by saying, Son, I would deny substantially by saying, not Son. But because I affirm relatively when I say, He is the Son — for I refer to the Father — I deny relatively if I say, He is not the Son, for I refer that same negation to the parent, wanting to show that He is not a parent to him. But that which is said to be not begotten amounts to exactly as much as that which is said to be not Son. Moreover, we deny relatively by saying, not Son; therefore we deny relatively by saying, not begotten. Furthermore, what is unbegotten except not begotten? We do not, therefore, depart from the relative category when unbegotten is said » Aug. l. c. cf. S. Th. I. q. 33. a. 4. ad 3. b) But now, a negation in God cannot be a negation of perfection; it is only some mode of ours of conceiving that which in God is positive and is perfection. Yet the negation is disposed in one way in the order of absolutes, and in another way in the order of internal relations.

In the absolutes, the negation exhibits the absolute perfection by excluding imperfection or, what comes to the same thing, by denying a perfection limited by the defect of further perfection, of which sort is created perfection; and so it is a negation of negation, and consequently an affirmation of absolute perfection, which is conceived by us inadequately and confusedly through comparison with limited perfections; of which sort are the attributes: the infinite, the uncreated, or the unbegotten in the absolute signification indicated by us in the first place, eternity, immensity, etc. (See on the so-called negative attributes Tract. de Deo th. XXI). But absolutes cannot be denied of one another as regards the thing itself, because they are not really distinguished among themselves. Hence it is false if it is said: in God justice is not mercy; although the concept of justice is one and the concept of mercy another, and therefore it can and should be said: the concept of divine justice is not the concept of divine mercy.

But relatives, under the formal account of relatives, are really distinguished among themselves; for really the Father is one and the Son another, the Holy Spirit another; hence they are denied of one another. The Father is not the Son and not the Holy Spirit, and so the Son is not the Father and not the Holy Spirit, etc. Hence it could seem to someone that, no less than the notion of the unbegotten, several other negative notions should be posited — that the Father is not the Son and not the Holy Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. But negations conceived in this way present no other notion and formal account of a person than the affirmation that there is one Father, i. e. this one under the formal account of Father related to the Son and distinct from the Son, and, under the formal account of the one spirating included in paternity, related to and distinct from the Holy Spirit; and the same must be said of the Son's relation to the Father and of the Holy Spirit's relation to the Father and the Son. In the Son, therefore, and in the Holy Spirit, besides these, no other notion is found distinct in reason, by which each is opposed through negation to the other persons; in the Son namely filiation, h. e. being begotten, and, included in filiation, the active spiration common with the Father; in the Holy Spirit, procession or being spirated — these are the only formal accounts really distinguishing, so that one is one and the other another. But in the first person the negation of procession from another, by which He is called unbegotten in opposition to the begotten Son and to the proceeding Spirit, has another formal account, distinct by mental consideration from paternity and active spiration.

Moreover, as regards the signification of that negation: procession from a principle is surely not an imperfection in the Son and in the Holy Spirit; but procession would be an imperfection, and indeed the negation and destruction, of the first person of the Trinity. Hence the negation of the relation of the begotten and of the proceeding in the Father is an affirmation of relative or personal perfection: just as God essentially is unbegotten Being in the absolute signification, h. e. a being from itself, so the first person of the Trinity is, by the internal necessity of nature, a person from itself, which hypostatic perfection we conceive and explain by the negation of origin. « The Father is unbegotten, for He is not from anyone; for He has from Himself that He is, and of the things He has He has nothing from another; but He Himself rather is the principle and cause to all, that they be and naturally be in a certain way » Damasc. F. O. l. I. c. 8. cf. other Fathers in Petav. l. V. c. 5. n. 14. We need negation, just as in explaining other most simple concepts, so also in this concept of the first and self-subsisting one. « The account of the first, which is most simple, is not explained by us without negation. The first person, therefore, in the account of the first producer ad intra, is not explained except by the negation of production terminated at Himself, and this negation is innascibility » Suarez l. V. c. 10. n. 4.

c) Yet this property of the unbegotten is not really distinguished from paternity, which is already evident from this, that there is there no origin of one from the other and no opposition. But it can easily be understood how this account of the first person of the Trinity, and therefore of the person from itself, is the same thing under the less full concept, which is paternity, and includes spiration under the fuller concept. For that which is the first person of the Trinity, and therefore the person from itself, by that very fact, from the innate nature of the thing, is the principle of the remaining persons, h. e. the Father of the Son and, with the Son, the spirator of the Holy Spirit. St. Basil indicates this connection of the notions of the unbegotten and of the Father, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa vindicates it at length, l. I. contr. Eunom. (ed. Gretzer p. 136. seqq.), in which Basil speaks thus: « For he who truly (ὄντως) and alone is Father (in the divine manner) is from no one; but he who is from no one is unbegotten ». Most aptly Suarez: « by that negation (by unbegotten) we intend to explain the dignity of the first person. We say, moreover, that this dignity is not other than paternity itself, which in our mode of conceiving, by force of its account, includes two things. One is that it is through itself or from itself by immediate conjunction with the essence (because without a real production of the person the nature immediately brings with itself such a personality), and this we declare by this negation (unbegotten). The other is that it is constitutive of the principle of generating, which is named Father » Suarez l. VIII. c. 2. n. 12. cf. l. V. c. 10. n. 2. 4.

Scholion. For the clarification of the matter itself, and especially of the manner of speaking, we can now, after the things that have been said, briefly embrace in a few words what is customarily handed down by comparing the properties, relations, and notions of the divine persons.

Proper here is opposed not only to foreign or superadded, in which sense even the absolute properties common to the three persons are proper (cf. Tract. de Deo th. XXI. n. 3.); but proper in the sense in which we now speak is opposed to common. In the stricter sense, therefore, properties are those formal accounts which belong to one person only and are not common to several. Thus there will be four properties: paternity, innascibility, filiation, passive spiration or being spirated. S. Th. I. q. 32. a. 3. If, however, that is called proper somewhat more loosely which is not common to all three persons, even active spiration, common to the Father and the Son but not to the Holy Spirit, can be counted among the properties.

The real relations are four: paternity, filiation, active spiration, being spirated. Yet the unbegotten can be numbered among them reductively, as is usually said, both because it is a negation of a relation and because it designates a person, which in God cannot be anything other than a relative. S. Th. I. q. 33. a. 4. ad 3. Therefore every property is a relation or is reduced to a relation, and conversely every relation is a property at least in the looser sense, because it is not something common to all persons. The reason is evident, because whatever in God belongs not to the order of the relative but to the absolute is common to the three persons.

The notion of the persons (γνώρισμα) is the character or formal account by which a person becomes known to us as distinct from the others. Hence it is clear that a notion must necessarily be a property at least in the looser sense, and by that very fact pertain to the order of relatives; for neither can a distinct person become known to us through that which is common and one in the three persons. As to the number of notions, we could indeed also say here that in the stricter sense there are only four notions, just as there are four properties; for active spiration, by the very fact that it is common to the Father and the Son, neither distinguishes them from one another nor, consequently, manifests these persons as distinct from one another. Nevertheless, because through that relation these two persons, although not from one another, are yet distinguished from the third person and become known as distinct from it, all theologians — even those who count only four properties — agree that the notions are five (cf. Suarez. l. V. c. 9. n. 5.).

Assuming, therefore, the distinction between the stricter and the less strict sense, we shall say with St. Thomas: « there are five notions in God, namely innascibility, paternity, filiation, common spiration, and procession. Of these, however, only four are relations; for innascibility is not a relation except by reduction. But only four are properties (in the strict sense); for common spiration is not a property, because it belongs to two persons. Three, however, are personal notions, i. e. constituting the persons, namely paternity, filiation, and procession. For common spiration and innascibility are called notions of the persons, not however personal »⁵ S. Th. I. q. 32. a. 3.

The constituting properties, or relations, or notions are three, as was shown above and as we have just heard said by St. Thomas. Aureolus seems to oppose this common and certain doctrine somewhat, although the difference is not about the thing itself, but rather in the manner of considering the same thing. « Filiation, he says, does not precisely constitute the personality of the Son, because on that account active spiration would be adventitious and outside the personality of the Son, as something extrinsic and without which the person would remain; therefore it is impossible to hold that he is personally distinguished by filiation alone...... Both the essence and active generation and likewise active spiration concur intrinsically to the personality of the Father; but being generated and spirating and the essence, to the personality of the Son; moreover being spirated and the divine essence alone, to the personality of the Holy Spirit » Aureol. I. dist. 11. a. 3. In this doctrine this indeed is true, that on the side of the thing and according to the fuller concept paternity involves spiration and being unbegotten (and likewise filiation, more fully conceived, includes spiration), as we declared in the thesis; but when these formal accounts are distinguished by mental consideration, and then it is asked under which of them we first conceive the Father and the Son as distinct persons, without doubt it must be answered that paternity is conceived as the formal account of the Father, which person is then understood at the same time as unbegotten and spirating the Holy Spirit; say the same of filiation in comparison with spiration. Simply, therefore, with St. Thomas and according to the common consensus of theologians, it must be said that the constituting properties are the three which we have recalled. « It must therefore be understood that, of the several properties or notions belonging to one person, that one which proceeds (precedes?) according to the order of nature constitutes the person, while the others are understood as inhering in the person already constituted. It is manifest, moreover, that innascibility cannot be the first notion of the Father...... Common spiration, however, by the order of nature presupposes paternity and filiation, just as the procession of love presupposes the procession of the Word. Hence neither can common spiration be the first notion of the Father, nor even of the Son. It remains, therefore, that the first notion of the Father is paternity, of the Son however filiation, and of the Holy Spirit procession alone is the notion. It remains, therefore, that there are three notions constituting the persons, namely paternity, filiation, and procession » S. Th. Compend. Theol. (opusc. III. al. II) c. 60.