Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« The catholic doctrine of the Greek Fathers agreeing with the Latin Fathers shines forth most clearly from the comparison which they institute between the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son and the relation of the Son to the Father; for 1° they teach that the Son alone has origin from the Father alone and proximately from the Father, whereas the Holy Spirit has origin not from the Father alone, but with the Son interposed and through the Son; 2° with all the same names and locutions by which the relation of origin of the Son to the Father is expressed, they also describe the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son, with almost only the appellation of Son, of begotten, and of generation excepted ».

I. As the distinguishing character of the person of the Son is handed down by the Fathers, that He alone is from the alone, i.e., proceeding from the one person of the Father. Whence they say that the personal character of the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the property of the Son by this very fact, that the Spirit proceeds not already from the Father alone, but from the Father through the Son. St. Basil, where he expressly declares the distinguishing notions of the persons, beginning from the third person, speaks thus. « Since the Holy Spirit..... depends on the Son ¹, with whom He is conceived inseparably, but from the Father He has to depend (subsist) as from a cause, whence also He proceeds; this is the notional character of that hypostatic property, that He is manifested after the Son (cf. above th. XXXIII.) and with Him, and has subsistence from the Father. But the Son, who manifests through Himself and with Himself the Spirit proceeding from the Father, alone shining forth unigenerately from the unbegotten light ² has no community with the Father or with the Holy Spirit in the property of the notions. But He who is God above all (the Father, see above p. 154) has a certain preeminent mark of His hypostasis, that He alone has to be Father and to subsist from no cause » Basil. ep. 38. al. 43. n. 4.

We have a commentary on this doctrine of Basil from his brother Gregory of Nyssa, both in l. I. cont. Eunom. and in ep. ad Ablab., at the places described above p. 431. There Gregory teaches expressly that the distinction between the divine persons, and in particular between the Son and the Holy Spirit, is none except by reason of the principle, in that one has origin from the other; and so the Holy Spirit depends on the Son in the sense in which the Son has being from the Father. Then the difference between the procession of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit from the Father is taught to be this, that the second person, the Son, is from the first person proximately (προσεχῶς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου), i.e., with no other person interposed, and therefore the Son is only-begotten, i.e., begotten from the one first person; on the contrary the Holy Spirit, the third person, is indeed also from the first person, but not proximately, i.e., not from the first person alone, but through the second from the first, or, as Nyssenus says, with the second person interposed, which Basil had said by the manifestation of the Holy Spirit « after the Son ». Elsewhere Nyssenus declared the same thing by a comparison. The Trinity, he says, is « as it were one flame distinguished in three lamps, yet in such a way that we suppose the first flame to be the cause of the third light, kindling the farthest through the succession of the middle light ³ (namely that the Father is the principle of the third person, in that through the second person, the Son, He communicates the same nature to the third person, the Holy Spirit) Nyss. orat. de Spir. S. n. 6. edit. Card. Mai (VV. PP. Nova Bibl. T. IV. Migne T. XLV. p. 1307).

Hence it comes about, say both Gregory and Basil, that a) only the Son is from the one person (τὸ μονογενὲς ἐπὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ μένει = μόνος μονογενῶς ἐκλάμψας); for the Spirit is now not from one but from two persons. Whence b) as Nyssenus speaks, the third person is also from the first, but from the first through the second who is intermediate (ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου διὰ τοῦ προσεχοῦς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου, τῆς τοῦ Υἱοῦ μεσιτείας ὡς ἀπεργασθείσας τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς οὐσιώδους πρὸς τὸν πατέρα σχέσεως — ἅπτεται τοῦ τρίτου φωτὸς εἶναι τὴν πρώτην φλόγα, ἐκ διαδοχῆς διὰ τοῦ μέσου τὸ ἄκρον ἐξάψασαν). Athanasius had said the same: « The Spirit is said to proceed from the Father, because He shines forth from the Word, which is confessed to be from the Father »; and Basil: « The Spirit is conceived inseparably with the Son, and the Son manifests through Himself and with Himself the Spirit proceeding from the Father, alone shining forth unigenerately ».

To me certainly, by this comparison of Athanasius, Basil, and Gregory between the relation of the Son to the Father alone as to His principle, and the relation or, as they say, dependence of the Holy Spirit not from the Father alone, but from the Father through the Son and with the Son interposed (τῆς τοῦ Υἱοῦ μεσιτείας), the Father and the Son seem to be proposed as one principle of the Holy Spirit no less clearly, and in part even more distinctly, than when it is simply taught by Epiphanius, Cyril, and the other Fathers, and by Basil and Gregory themselves (above p. 477. sqq.), that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and has being from the Son as from the Father.

It alone remains to be declared, what that interposition (μεσιτεία) of the Son between the Father and the Holy Spirit is, and in what sense the procession, as it were mediated, from the Father is to be understood. If the procession from the Father were said to be mediated in the sense that the Son is from the Father, and then the Holy Spirit from the Son alone, this would surely be a most grave error subverting the whole economy of the most Holy Trinity, and finally coinciding with the heresy of the Pneumatomachi, who in this way asserted the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son alone, and by this very fact partly expressly denied the unity of nature of the three persons, partly, once those principles were laid down, could no longer defend it consequentially. And so the Fathers, who directly attacking this very heresy defended that order among the persons so solicitously in order to declare the unity of nature, would surely be understood absurdly in that sense.

But indeed the genuine sense in those locutions is not obscure. Just as nature, so every operation ad extra is one, undivided, and common to the three persons; nevertheless the Father is called the primordial cause, the Son the one working, the Holy Spirit the one perfecting; the Father is said to work through the Son in the Holy Spirit. All these locutions suppose the undivided unity of operation and enunciate only the distinction between the persons, in that the nature and consequently the power and operation is in the Father not communicated, in the Son communicated by the Father, in the Holy Spirit communicated by both. Thus therefore also spiration ad intra is one, common to the Father and the Son, but communicated by the Father to the Son. Whence, just as the three persons do not create inasmuch as they are distinct, but inasmuch as they are one God and therefore one creator, and so God the Father could not be said, without Gnostic or Arian error, to be a creator only mediated through the Son; so also the Father and the Son, not inasmuch as they are distinct, but inasmuch as they are one in nature under the formal reason of the spirative power or fecund love, breathe the Holy Spirit, and therefore are one spirator; nor consequently is the Father less immediate a principle of the Holy Spirit than the Son.

But if not the spiration itself, one and common, but the distinction and order of the persons is attended to, whose spiration it is, the Father does not breathe the Holy Spirit except with the generation of the Son presupposed. For the Holy Spirit is by a fixed ontological order the third, not together with the Son the second, person, and therefore the Son, eternally begotten, is pre-understood to the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. Since therefore by the order of origin the generation of the Son from the Father alone is understood first, with this order attended to, the Son can rightly be said to be « proximately from the first »; and since the Father does not breathe the Holy Spirit except with the communication of the spirative power into the second, begotten person presupposed, therefore again by reason of this order of persons the Holy Spirit can rightly be said to proceed « through him who is proximately from the first » (διὰ τοῦ προσεχοῦς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου). (See the mode of conceiving above th. XXVI. n. I; XXVII; XXIX. n. II.) ⁴

Hence it is understood how ll. cc. the Son is called the middle between the Father and the Holy Spirit, while elsewhere the Holy Spirit is frequently predicated by the Fathers as the middle between the Father and the Son (Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον ἐν μέσῳ Πατρὸς καὶ Υἱοῦ s. Epiphan. Ancor. n. 8). Namely, if the order of persons is regarded, the Son, the second person, is the middle between the first, from whom He is generated, and the third, which proceeds only with the Son presupposed and from the Father through the Son; and thus the Fathers say, « not the Word through the Spirit, but the Spirit through the Word is conjoined to the Father, because He receives from the Son » Athanas. contr. Arian. or. III. n. 24. But if the one spiration common to the Father and the Son is considered, or the one love of the Father toward the Son and of the Son toward the Father, whose immanent produced term is the Holy Spirit; the subsisting love, that is, the Holy Spirit, can be said and is said by the Fathers to be the middle between the Father and the Son, and in the same sense is called by Augustine and the other Fathers « the unity of both » (above p. 366. 367. 455), by St. Bernard « the common kiss » of the Father and the Son, « unperturbable peace, firm glue » (above p. 364), and « that which proceeds from both, the indissoluble bond of the Trinity » s. Bernard. in Pentec. serm. 3. n. 2.

II. In Scripture and the Fathers there are many names of the Son of God relative to the Father, by which indeed His origin from the Father is directly signified and the mode of origin through generation is co-signified; thus He is called the Word, Wisdom, figure (χαρακτήρ), image, power, splendor of the Father. There are other names by which the mode of procession through generation is directly and expressly signified, as the names themselves, Son, only-begotten, generation. But now all those former names are transferred by the Fathers, namely the Greek ones, to signify the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son, where it is manifest and is indicated by the Fathers themselves that only the direct signification of origin is retained, the signification of the mode of origin being set aside. Since this cannot be done in the names mentioned in the second place, therefore they remain proper to the second, begotten person alone, and are never used to express the relation of the Holy Spirit.

a) The Fathers teach as a general principle: « the Spirit has such an order and such a nature toward the Son as the Son has toward the Father » ⁵ Athanas. ep. I. ad Serap. n. 21.; Basil. cont. Eunom. l. V. T. I. p. 304.

b) Then in particular, excepting, as I said, the names of Son, begotten, only-begotten, which remain proper to the second person from the peculiar mode of procession through generation, all the remaining appellations designating the relation of origin of the Son to the Father, or the procession of the Son from the Father, the same Greek Fathers take up to express the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son.

The Son is the Word, the expressed mind (ὁ νοῦς) and reason of the Father (above p. 165. sqq.); likewise the Holy Spirit is called by Sts. Basil and Cyril the Word of the Son, the mind of the Son (above p. 410. 430).

The Son is the image of the Father, the figure (χαρακτήρ) of His substance; in turn the Holy Spirit is called by Gregory Thaumaturgus, Athanasius, Basil, Cyril the image of the Son, the natural image, the seal of the nature of the Son, the form of the Son ⁶ (above p. 409. 427. 447. 471).

The Son is the splendor of the Father, light from light; the Holy Spirit is the splendor of the Son, the third light (p. 427. 473). Likewise the Son is the face of the Father as the expression of the same; in turn the Holy Spirit is called the face of the Son (Cyrill. in Io. p. 787. see Petav. VIII. c. 7. n. 6. 7). The Son is called the Wisdom and power of the Father: the Holy Spirit is called by Athanasius (ad Serap. I. n. 25.), Cyril (dialog. VII. p. 593) the Spirit of wisdom and power, as it were the odor from the flower, the living power of the living Son. The Son, both in Sap. VII. 25 and by the Fathers (above p. 289), is described as « the vapor (ἀτμίς) of the power of God and a certain emanation of clarity »; likewise by Cyril (Thesaur. p. 338) the Holy Spirit is said to proceed « from the essence of the Son as a vapor from water » (ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Υἱοῦ ὥσπερ ἐξ ὕδατος ἀτμίς).

Of the relation of the consubstantial Son to the Father as to His principle, that saying of Christ is understood by very many Fathers: the Father is greater than I (Io. XIV. 28). « He did not say, He is better than I.... but greater, not by any magnitude or time, but on account of the nativity from the Father Himself » Athanas. contr. Arian. or. I. n. 58. But the same Athanasius in the same sense of origin ibid. n. 50 declares the Son greater than the Holy Spirit. Before the Jews, he says, Christ, speaking as the Son of man, indicated the Holy Spirit greater than Himself, considered according to His humanity; but « showing to His disciples His divinity and majesty, signifying that He was no longer less than the Holy Spirit, but greater and equal ⁷ He gave the Holy Spirit, and said: receive the Holy Spirit ».

Certainly when these things are said to express the order of the Son to the Father, no one doubts that the relation of origin is signified and the procession of the Son from the Father; therefore when the Greek Fathers transfer all the same things to describe the order of the Holy Spirit to the Son, they can signify nothing other than the procession from the Son.

c) Hence also the Eunomians and the other Arians objected, and the Fathers themselves ask, if all these things are said no less truly of the relation of the Spirit to the Son than of the relation of the Son to the Father, why is not the Holy Spirit the Son of the Son? Which indeed even the question itself would be absurd, unless the heretics had understood, and the Fathers had held ratified and fixed, the catholic doctrine in this sense, that the Son is the principle of the Holy Spirit. This the Fathers also render most manifest in their response; for they do not answer by denying the supposition, namely that the Son is the principle of the Holy Spirit; but rather they insist that the reason why He is not the Son of the Son is certainly not from a defect of procession, « not that the Spirit is not from God through the Son, as the Word of the Son and the image of the Son » Basil. above p. 430.; « not begotten, not called by the name of Son, but nevertheless the Holy Spirit is from the same essence of the Father and of the Son » Epiphan. Ancor. n. 7. 8.; « the Holy Spirit is from the Father through the Son, yet not in the manner of filiation » Damasc. ep. ad Iordan. n. 28 (cf. Athanas. ad Serap. I. n. 25.; Gregor. Naz. or. 31. al. 37. n. 7-9): but they say that either no other reason is to be given for this thing than that in Scripture and in the whole of revelation the proceeding Spirit is not called Son; or they give the reason, because He proceeds not from one but from two, but a son of two is not given even in human affairs (as Augustine usually disputes); or they say generally that besides generation there exists another mode of procession, and because the Spirit proceeds by this other and not by the mode of filiation, therefore He is not, nor is He called, the Son of the Son ll. cc.