Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« From the foregoing it follows that in the words of Christ affirming Io. XV. 26: « the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father », not only is the Son not excluded, but, when the whole doctrine of the Scriptures is brought together, the Son is most manifestly included as one with the Father the principle of the Holy Spirit; which moreover is indicated more expressly in this very passage, when the Son is said to send the Paraclete from the Father ».

I. If the expression, who proceeds from the Father, is considered alone by itself, it is an affirmative expression and enunciates the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, which indeed all Catholics believe and confess; but it is not an expression excluding procession also from the Son, but rather including it.

1°. If the words « the Spirit proceeds from the Father », abstracting from the whole remaining doctrine of the economy of the most Holy Trinity, are viewed as it were materially alone by themselves, they teach that the Father is the principle of the Holy Spirit, but they do not teach under what formal reason He is the principle, whether He is the Spirator insofar as the Father is one with the Son, or insofar as He is distinguished from the Son. Thus it is most truly said « the Spirit of the Father »; but the Spirit is of the Father, not insofar as the Father is distinguished from the Son, but insofar as He is one with the Son; and so the relation expressed by these words, Spirit of the Father, is not proper to the Father alone, but common to the Father and the Son, though not common to the Holy Spirit, to whom through that relation the Father and the Son are opposed. Whence the Spirit is called the Spirit of the Son no less truly nor in another sense than the Spirit of the Father (th. XXXII). Just as therefore from the fact that He is called the Spirit of the Father one would ineptly infer that He is the Father's alone in such a way that He is not equally the Spirit of the Son; by the same reasoning the Photinians argue absurdly that the Holy Spirit, because He is predicated and believed to proceed from the Father, does not equally proceed from the Son.

Indeed, as s. Thomas (I. q. 36. a. 2. ad 1.), the patriarch Beccus (de Process. Spiritus Sancti c. 12. ed. Allatii p. 331. sqq.; et in dictis Sanctorum inter Opusc. aur. ed. Arcudii p. 155) and Bessarion (ep. general. ad Graecos ibid. p. 341) have rightly observed, even if it were written, which nowhere is written, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, neither should it be understood in such a way that procession from the Son is excluded.

For it is a general principle often inculcated by the Fathers that, except for the relations of origin opposed to one another and therefore really distinct, by such excluding particles it is not one divine person that is opposed to another, but God to creatures. « Many things are said to belong to the Father alone, although the Son is not without all of them, since it is written: the only true God the Father,.... and Paul somewhere says: to the immortal, invisible, only wise God.... The Son therefore will nonetheless be naturally the same as the Father, although some things are predicated of the Father alone; for all things that belong to the Father naturally and necessarily are likewise communicated to the Word proceeding from Him » s. Cyrill. Thes. p. 142. (cf. th. III. coroll. 2; and see the general principle in the words of Chrysostom, which we cited p. 243).

2°. If the revealed doctrine of the unity and distinction that exists between the divine persons is kept before one's eyes, the procession of the third person, whether from the first or from the second, necessarily includes procession from both. For whatever belongs to one person is understood to be common to all divine persons on account of the unity of essence and the total simplicity, except only the formal relative reason according to which one person is the principle of another: « all things are one, where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way » (supra p. 188). But the Father by spiration is not the principle of the Word; or otherwise: the Father under the formal reason of begetter is referred to the Son as a principle to the one proceeding from Himself, but under the formal reason of spirating the Holy Spirit, that is, of producing love by loving, He has the relation of principle not to the Son but to the Holy Spirit alone; by this very fact therefore the Father as Spirator is distinguished not from the Son but from the Holy Spirit. Therefore when the Father is named, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, the Father is understood as the principle of the Holy Spirit not by the property by which He is distinguished from the Son, but insofar as the Father and the Son are one by the spirating power, that is, by the love productive of subsistent love; just as when the Father is called creator, He is understood as creator insofar as by the creating power He is one with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

II. In the words themselves: « whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father », the Son is exhibited as one with the Father, insofar as the Father is the principle of the Holy Spirit proceeding from Himself. This is demonstrated first from what was said in the preceding thesis, where we showed that the mission of one divine person by another is a manifestation of the procession of the person sent from the sender, and that procession ad intra is the necessary foundation of mission ad extra. Then let the proposed words be weighed specifically.

1°. In the first clause: « I will send to you from the Father », the mission of the Holy Spirit ad extra is expressed, and the principle of this mission is declared to be the Father and the Son, the Son in the nominative, the Father in the oblique: I will send from the Father; just as elsewhere the Father is put in the nominative, the Son in the oblique: « whom the Father will send in my name » Io. XIV. 26. Likewise elsewhere the Father alone is expressed, elsewhere the Son alone as sending: « the Father will give you another Paraclete » ib. XIV. 16; « if I go away, I will send him to you » ib. XVI. 7. In these places therefore the Son is understood together with the Father, the Father together with the Son, as principle of mission, the Father as communicating to the Son, the Son as having from the Father the power and act of mission communicated. Hence the propositions: the Father sends, the Son sends, the Father sends in the name of the Son, the Son sends from the Father, are contracted into the complex proposition: « God gave His Holy Spirit in us » I. Thess. IV. 8; 2. Cor. I. 22; V. 5; just as we saw the appellations Spirit of the Father, Spirit of the Son to be simultaneously comprehended by the other, Spirit of God.

Therefore the Son sends from the Father the Holy Spirit with one power, one mission common to the Son with the Father, and therefore the Father and the Son are one principle of mission. Now why this is a mission from the Father, the definitive declaration and necessary foundation is given in the second clause: who proceeds from the Father. There would not therefore be, nor could there be, a mission of a divine person from the Father, unless He proceeded from the Father. But the mission of the Holy Spirit from the Son is one and the same. Therefore also the necessary foundation, without which the mission could not be, is one in the Son sending as in the Father, namely the power and act by which they spirate the spirit to be sent and sent, with one mission common to both.

Where it is said: « the Father will give you the Paraclete », the Father is understood as simultaneously communicating to the Son the act of mission, which the Photinians themselves cannot deny without Arian heresy. This communication of mission is explicitly expressed in our first clause: « I will send from the Father ». Therefore while in the second clause: « who proceeds from the Father », the foundation of the mission is declared, the Father is necessarily understood as communicating to the Son that very foundation of mission, which the Son in the first clause is said to have from the Father, that is, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father as communicating to the Son just as the mission so also the power and act of spiration. And so the Spirit proceeds from the Father formally as from the One having the Son, and by that very fact as communicating to the Son the act of spiration ¹. « He did not say, whom the Father will send from me, just as He said, whom I will send from the Father; evidently showing that the Father is the principle of the whole divinity, or, if it is better said, of the deity. He therefore who proceeds from the Father and the Son is referred to Him (as to the primordial principle) from whom the Son was born » Aug. Trinit. IV. n. 29.

2°. Assuming those things which we said in the preceding thesis about the relative signification of the name Spirit of Christ, Spirit of the Son, we can show that in the way in which here the mission of the Holy Spirit from the Son is connected with procession from the Father, elsewhere the mission from the Father is joined with procession from the Son in the inverse order. « God (the Father) sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts » Gal. IV. 6. Evidently, with Paul, in the subject God the Father the Son is included; for the active donation or mission of both is one; likewise in the predicate the Spirit of His Son the relation of the Spirit to the Father is included; for just as the Spirit is of the Son so also of the Father. The full sense therefore of the Apostle's words is: God the Father, and therefore the Son with the Father, sent the Spirit of His Son and by that very fact the Spirit of the Father. Whence also in the words of Christ according to John, in the first clause indeed the Son with the Father is expressly expressed as one principle of mission, that is, the mission through the Son from the Father is expressed; in the other clause, however, the relation of the Spirit to the Father is explicitly declared (who proceeds from the Father), and the relation to the Son is included; just as with Paul conversely the relation to the Son is explicitly declared (He sent the Spirit of His Son), and the relation to the Father is included ².

As for the consignification, so to speak, of the Son with the Father, another saying of Christ can be compared with our passage, although in a different matter. « That they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent ». Here in the appellation the only true God the Son is not excluded but included as the only true God (cf. supra th. III. coroll. 2); nevertheless still for greater clarity the Son is further joined with the Father in the same order ³.

In the same way also in the words of which we treat: « the Spirit proceeds from the Father », the Son is already included with the Father as principle of the Spirit, and this is signified still more expressly by joining the Son with the Father in the same relation to the Holy Spirit: « I will send to you from the Father ».

When therefore it is said: the affirmative revelation that the Spirit proceeds from the Father is equivalent to the exclusive one, that He proceeds from no other; a distinction is needed: that affirmation is an exclusion of all who are not one with the Father, I concede; it is an exclusion of another divine person from the reason of principle of the Holy Spirit, I distinguish: it is the exclusion of the person who proceeds by spiration, that is, of the Holy Spirit, I concede; it is the exclusion of the person pre-understood, who is not distinguished from the Father by spiration, that is, of the Son, I deny. Unless it were so, and if that objection of the schismatics held, other divine persons would have to be said to be excluded as often as the Father is individually called God, or any divine attribute is predicated of Him; and so at last this whole schismatic wisdom is reduced to the Arian principle ⁴.

Why the Son explicitly refers the procession of the Holy Spirit to the Father, although the reason of principle is common to the Son with the Father, the cause is the same for which He is accustomed to refer all His things to the Father; namely that the Father may be understood as principle without principle (αἰτία προκαταρκτική), the original source of the Trinity, from whom the Son also, just as essence with all perfections, so also the spirating power (or the essence under the formal reason of the spirating power and of the love producing love) has communicated by generation.

« If therefore the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, why did the Son say, He proceeds from the Father? Why, do you think, unless as He is accustomed to refer to the Father even that which is His own? Whence is that which He says: my doctrine is not mine, but His who sent me. If therefore here His doctrine is understood, which nevertheless He said was not His but the Father's; how much more there is the Holy Spirit to be understood to proceed also from Him Himself, where He so says that He proceeds from the Father, that He would not say: He does not proceed from me? From whom however the Son has it that He is God, for He is God of God, from Him He has it that also from Him proceeds the Holy Spirit; and through this the Holy Spirit has from the Father Himself that He also proceeds from the Son, just as He proceeds from the Father » Aug. in Ioan. tract. 99. n. 8.

He explains the reason itself still more diffusely in another place. « Not in vain in this Trinity is the Word of God not called unless the Son, nor the gift of God unless the Holy Spirit, nor that from which the Word was begotten and from which the Holy Spirit principally proceeds unless the Father. I added, however, 'principally' for this reason, because the Holy Spirit is found to proceed also from the Son; but this also the Father gave Him, not as already existing and not yet having; but whatever He gave to the only-begotten Word, He gave by begetting. If therefore He begot Him, that also from Him the common gift should proceed, and the Holy Spirit should be the Spirit of both » Aug. Trin. l. XV. c. 17. n. 29. See also ibid. c. 26. n. 47; contra Maximin. l. II. c. 5.