Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« Mission in general includes a certain order of the one sent both to the person by whom he is sent and to the term to which he is sent; whence mission in the divine persons includes not indeed a diversity of nature, but both the eternal procession of the one sent from the sender and an efficacy in time and a manifestation of the person; and by reason of the diversity of this efficacy and manifestation, visible and invisible mission are distinguished ».

I. Mission (taken passively) signifies the going forth of one from another according to some ratio of principle (physical or moral) toward some term. It therefore denotes a) a real distinction of the sender and of the one sent; b) some dependence, whether proper or improper, of the one sent on the sender, according to authority, or counsel, or origin (S. Th. I. q. 43. a. 1); c) a relation to a term; whether that term is a place, so that the one sent is there where he was not before, or is there in a new way; or whether it is some effect, so that he works it. Therefore mission necessarily entails a relation of the one sent to a twofold term: to the sender from whom, and to the term or effect to which he is sent.

Since this notion of mission is essential, even in the divine persons mission must be understood according to it, setting aside the imperfections which — not mission in itself, to be sure, but the creature sent — includes. The Arians transferred these imperfections from creatures to mission considered in itself, and thus asserted that the Son is inferior to the Father, and the Holy Spirit even inferior to the Son, because in the Scriptures the Son is said to be sent by the Father, and the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son. Nay rather, because the Father is the Father and the Son is the Son, and the Son can do nothing of Himself, but does in like manner whatever the Father does, from this unity of essence and distinction by origin Christ the Lord Himself infers that the mission of the Son from the Father is such as to demand equality of honor, with which the one sent is to be honored together with the sender: « that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father; he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him » Io. V. 18-23.

The Fathers frequently refute that Arian fallacy; among others, Augustine points out the reason by which those imperfections are excluded in the mission of a divine person. « That the Son is not on this account lesser because He was sent by the Father, nor the Holy Spirit lesser because both the Father and the Son sent Him, has been sufficiently demonstrated. For whether these things are understood to be set down in the Scriptures on account of a visible creature, or rather on account of the commendation of the principle, not on account of inequality, or disparity, or dissimilitude of substance; because, even if God the Father had wished to appear visibly through a subject creature, He would nevertheless most absurdly be said to be sent either by the Son whom He begot, or by the Holy Spirit who proceeds from Him » Aug. Trin. IV. n. 32.; S. Th. I. q. 43. a. 1. ad 1. et 2. Cf. th. XXXIII.

Mission therefore in the divine persons includes two things: as it were the foundation is the origin of the person sent from the sender, while the formal ratio of mission is completed in some external efficacy, by which a person proceeding from another is either manifested, or begins to be present in the creature in a new way. See s. Aug. Trin. IV. n. 27. 28. For unless the person who is said to be sent proceeds from the sender, the order essentially included in the notion of sender and of one sent cannot be understood. For on account of the perfection of the divine person and on account of the unity of nature, the dependence of the one sent on the sender cannot be properly so called, but only, just as a communication of essence, so of virtue, counsel, and operation from one person to another, which is precisely the procession of one from another.

Furthermore, as regards the term to which the mission is made, on account of the same perfection of the person sent there can be no question of a change, whether local or any other, in the person herself, but the change necessarily stops in the creature, to which the divine person is either manifested as present in a special way, or conjoined in a special way. I said that in a special way the person is manifested as present to, or conjoined with, the creature. For mission, like the donation of a divine person, according to the sacred language of Scripture and of the Fathers, is not said — at least in the more proper sense — except for inhabiting and remaining in the creature (Ἐνοίκησις, μονὴ Io. XIV. 16. 23.; 1. Cor. III. 16.; VI. 19.; 2. Cor. VI. 16. etc.); and this inhabitation is that of the loving and beloved God in the supernaturally loved and loving creature. Whence every mission of a divine person has at least an order to this inhabitation and supernatural sanctification. But of this matter we shall speak a little later.

From these things it follows: a) that the foundation of mission is indeed eternal and necessary, but the mission itself takes place in time and is free with the freedom, to be sure, of one numerically single will in the person sending and in the person sent (cf. S. Th. I. q. 43. a. 2); b) that it extends more widely that the divine persons are said to come to, or to be given to, the creature, than that they are said to be sent. For God considered absolutely, or any divine person, can be said to come or to be given according to some effect or some charism, without respect to procession from a principle; but, from what has been said, only a person proceeding from another, who sends¹. Read Suarez l. XII. c. 2. et 3.; Petav. l. VIII. c. 1. Of the ratio by which God is said to come and to depart, we have treated in the Tractatus de Deo, th. XXXIV. c) From what has been said it follows that the mission of a divine person is only to a rational creature, and only according to effects and in order to supernatural effects.

II. We have said that the mission of a person is either through a manifestation of presence or through a special conjunction with the creature. In this very thing the distinction of the twofold mission — visible, namely, and invisible — is indicated.

Visible mission, therefore, takes place when a divine person proceeding from another either becomes visible in a visible nature made proper to herself, or when, with some relation to supernatural inhabitation and sanctification, she is exhibited as specially present through certain outward signs produced to signify that distinct person. Whence visible mission is rightly distinguished into that which can be called substantial, of which sort alone was the Incarnation of the Word: « when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, made from a woman » Gal. IV. 4. etc.; the other, then, can be called mission in symbols or representative, of which sort was, upon the baptized Christ, « the Holy Spirit descending as a dove », and upon the Apostles in « tongues as of fire ».

Augustine discusses at length this visible mission of the divine persons in Trin. II. « If therefore the Son is said to be sent, inasmuch as He appeared outwardly in a bodily creature — He who is always hidden within in spiritual nature from the eyes of mortals — it is already at hand to understand also of the Holy Spirit why He too is said to be sent. For a certain species of creature was made in time, in which the Holy Spirit would be visibly shown, whether when He descended upon the Lord Himself in bodily species like a dove, or when on the day of Pentecost.... there were seen by them divided tongues as of fire.... This operation, visibly expressed and offered to the eyes of mortals, was called the (visible) mission of the Holy Spirit — not that His very substance might appear, by which He Himself is invisible and unchangeable as are the Father and the Son, but that by outward sights the hearts of men, being moved, might be converted from the temporal manifestation of the One coming to the hidden eternity of the ever-present One.... These things appeared, as they ought to have appeared opportunely, the creature serving the Creator and, at His nod — who abides unchangeably in Himself — changed and converted to signify and demonstrate Him, as it behooved Him to be signified and demonstrated to mortals » Aug. l. c. n. 10. 11.; see the rest there. Cf. thesim VI.

Since representative visible mission has an order to invisible mission through sanctification, some theologians therefore teach (cf. Suarez l. XII. c. 4. n. 5. sqq.; Ruiz disp. 109. sect. 8. n. 9. sqq.) that the visible mission is a manifestation of an invisible mission that is present, as when the Holy Spirit was sent to the Apostles; or already made, as when the visible mission was made upon the baptized Christ. For that reason they are reluctant to call the theophanies of the Old Testament — about which we treated in th. VI. — missions of the Son, even if « the Angel of the Lord » is said to be the Word Himself, and prefer to call them apparitions. The reason is that those apparitions were not ordered to signify a sanctification and an invisible mission that would then be made, or had already been made before (cf. S. Th. I. q. 43. a. 7. ad 6.; Suarez l. XII. c. 6. n. 23.; Ruiz disp. 109. sect. 9. n. 10. sqq.). But since the theophanies belonged assuredly to the supernatural order, and so had at least a mediate connection with sanctification, the dispute about the manner of speaking is on this account not of great moment. Rather it must be said that the mission of the Son of God was the principal one in the Incarnation itself, while those theophanies, as we showed l. c., were certain preludes and preparations for this visible mission in a nature hypostatically assumed; for that reason they, in comparison with this, are not called, and without qualification are not to be called, the mission of the Son of God. In almost the same way one would have to speak of the mission of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, if any visible one took place there (cf. p. 90. 91), in comparison with the visible mission of the same Spirit in the New Testament.

Corollary. From what has been said it is understood: a) that the mission of a divine person is not made to that sensible thing by which she is signified as present; for that thing is not the term of the mission, but a medium assumed to render the mission sensible to men — both to those to whom the mission is made, and to others on whose account it is made at least mediately; b) that the visible mission of the Holy Spirit can take place and has taken place without the (passive) mission of the Son, and conversely; although the invisible mission, as we shall say later, is necessarily conjoined to both persons, and the inhabitation belongs to the whole Trinity. For although the efficiency of the visible sign is common to the three persons, the signification can nevertheless be referred to one distinct person (p. 92), just as we have elsewhere demonstrated that in the Incarnation too, viewed efficiently and terminatively, a distinction of operation is needed (Tract. de Incarnat. th. XXXII.). c) That the Sacraments are indeed visible and efficacious signs of sanctifying grace, and consequently of the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit, yet they are not outward signs then effected by God to signify the presence of the Holy Spirit; but things in themselves human or natural are elevated by God to the signification and efficacy of conferring grace (we do not speak of the permanent Sacrament of the Eucharist); for that reason in the Sacraments there cannot be understood a visible but only an invisible mission of the Holy Spirit. Cf. August. Trin. l. II. n. 11.; S. Th. I. q. 43. a. 7.; Ruiz disp. 109. sect. 12. It appears also from all that has been said so far, not only that the invisible mission is principally intended by God, especially in comparison with the representative mission, but also that the latter cannot be fully understood without the former. Wherefore we must now treat of it, the declaration of which is the principal scope of the present disputation.

« That the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit unto our sanctification, and the inhabitation in the sanctified, and thence the participation in the divine nature, is taught in the Scriptures and declared most distinctly by the holy Fathers, so that the formal participation in the divine nature is to be understood as an assimilation through infused grace, as an effect of the indwelling Holy Spirit, whereas the relative participation is a union with the divine person Himself who dwells in us ».

We suppose as certain that sanctification is wrought through the supernatural gifts of created grace, which are something ontological inhering in the soul, ennobling it in itself and in all its faculties, and raising it to a supernatural manner of its own being¹ and to a supernatural state and power of acting, so that the rational creature through these gifts bears a likeness of the divine nature and life above all exigencies and powers of all substantial creatures, namely of the nature both angelic and human. Of these things this is not now the place to speak, but we take them from the Treatise on Justification (see Suarez, de Gratia l. VI. VII.; Ripalda, de Ente supernatur. l. VI. disp. 132. and the others). But that by virtue of sanctifying grace the Holy Spirit Himself is communicated and conjoined in a special manner with the just is likewise beyond doubt from the doctrine of the Scriptures, from the catholic understanding of the holy Fathers, and the consensus of the theologians.

I. The Scripture teaches expressly: 1.° that the person of the Holy Spirit Himself is communicated to us. For on the one hand it exhibits a Paraclete distinct from the Father and the Son, who is given to us that He may remain in us; on the other hand it shows the internal communication of the Holy Spirit as cause and the communication of the gifts of grace as effect, conjoined indeed but distinct. « And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you forever.... you shall know Him, because He will abide with you and will be in you (παρ' ὑμῖν μένει καὶ ἐν ὑμῖν ἔσται) » Io. XIV. 16. « The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who is given to us » (ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκκέχυται ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν διὰ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου τοῦ δοθέντος ἡμῖν) Rom. V. 5. Although therefore spirit often signifies the habitual disposition of the soul, and good spirit the supernatural disposition through the gifts of grace, nevertheless in these places it evidently signifies the person Himself who is the author of graces, communicated to us. Moreover, in all the places to be adduced let it be kept before the eyes, what has been shown elsewhere, that the Spirit with the epithets Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Father, Spirit of the Son, etc. is a name not absolute but personal and proper to the third person in the Trinity (above p. 11. 365).

2°. This mission into our hearts and communication is of such a kind that the divine person makes His abode in us and dwells in us as lover and beloved in the beloved and the lover, as protector and guardian and bestower of the gifts of grace, as the Spirit of our adoption unto sons of God, as cause and fountain of supernatural life, as seal and pledge of the promised full and beatific possession of God, as God in a rational temple consecrated to Himself according to the whole nature of man. « But he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him ». The manner of this love and manifestation Christ the Lord, questioned by the Apostles, declares thus: « My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make our abode with him » (καὶ μονὴν παρ' αὐτῷ ποιησόμεθα) Io. XIV. 21. sqq.; 1. Io. III. 24. (cf. above p. 12. see Athanas. ad Serap. I. n. 31.; Cyrill. in Io. p. 830. 831). « But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you (οἰκεῖ ἐν ὑμῖν).... But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you.... He will quicken also your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwells in you (διὰ τοῦ ἐνοικοῦντος αὐτοῦ Πνεύματος ἐν ὑμῖν).... For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.... you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in which we cry: Abba (Father); for the Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God.... Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmity; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself asks for us with unspeakable groanings » Rom. VIII. 9-27. « And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father » Gal. IV. 6. « In whom (Christ) believing, you were signed with the holy Spirit of promise (ἐσφραγίσθητε τῷ Πνεύματι τῆς ἐπαγγελίας τῷ Ἁγίῳ), who is the pledge (ἀρραβών)² of our inheritance » Eph. I. 13. 14.; 2. Cor. I. 22.; V. 5. « Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God (τοῦ ἐν ὑμῖν Ἁγίου Πνεύματος, ὃ ἔχετε ἀπὸ Θεοῦ), and you are not your own? » 1. Cor. VI. 19. « You are the temple of the living God, as God says: Because I will dwell in them and will walk among them (ὅτι ἐνοικήσω ἐν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐμπεριπατήσω), and I will be their God and they shall be My people.... and I will be a Father to you and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty » 2. Cor. VII. 16. sq.; 1. Cor. III. 16. 17.

3°. Now if these things are so, if the Holy Spirit communicated to us is distinguished from the gifts of grace as author from effect, and if He is the divine person Himself in Himself, who in the manner which the Scriptures themselves declare is given and sent to us and dwells in us, from these very things our participation (κοινωνία) in the divine nature is understood, which the Scriptures also expressly declare: « by whom (δι' ὧν) He has given us most great and precious promises, that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature » (ἵνα διὰ τούτων γένησθε θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως) 2. Pet. I. 4. The communication and participation, κοινωνία, μετοχή, μέθεξις, as far as the present matter is concerned, is to be considered in a threefold way. a) Communication is said of the intimate union and possession of some thing in the manner in which it can be possessed by its own nature, as is the communication κοινωνία of the body and blood of Christ in the faithful, 1. Cor. X. 16.; in an analogous sense friends, and more closely husband and wife, are called κοινωνοί: « thy partner and the wife of thy covenant » LXX. κοινωνός σου³ καὶ γυνὴ διαθήκης σου Mal. II. 24. Next follows the signification by which b) κοινωνία is called a participation in the goods of another. Every created being is in some sense a participation in the divine being, inasmuch as it is from God as exemplary and efficient cause, or inasmuch as it both has its origin from God by creation and is some adumbration of divine perfection; but, with such natural participation supposed, and indeed the supreme one which is in created spirits, revelation manifests to us a participation above all dignity and exigency of created substances. Such supernatural participation is a perfect assimilation to the divine nature itself through sanctifying grace, which affects the soul and transforms it as a supernatural quality. « The participation in the divine nature » therefore embraces two things: the formal but analogical participation in the divine nature, i.e. the supernatural assimilation to the divine nature⁴, and, with this disposition supposed and thereby as it were the bond, the participation συγγενικήν (Cyrill. dialog. VII. T. V. P. I. p. 643), namely the intimate union with the very substance of the divine nature. « Deification, says Dionysius, is the assimilation and union with God, as far as is possible » ἡ πρὸς Θεὸν ἀφομοίωσις τε καὶ ἕνωσις Hierarch. eccles. c. 1. § 3.; c. 2. § 1. In both these senses, just as we are partakers κοινωνοὶ of the divine nature, so the communication κοινωνία of the Holy Spirit is spoken of, 2. Cor. XIII. 13; and we are called partakers μέτοχοι of the Holy Spirit, Heb. VI. 4.

A clearer declaration of the matter is that, just as the face of Moses sensibly took on splendor from his converse with God, so we through the Holy Spirit are transformed into the image of God, 2. Cor. III. 7. 18.; and that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is, and then our divine filiation, which does not yet appear, shall be made manifest, 1. Io. III. 2. To the same also belongs the sealing and expression of the image of God through the Holy Spirit, which we mentioned a little before. See Athanas. ad Serap. ep. I. n. 23. To these can be added c) the signification that many, namely all the holy, are partakers of the divine nature in the said manner, and are so united among themselves with God and in God, that the principle of unity is God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit dwelling in the faithful as living members of Christ, Io. XVII. 21. 23. See Gregor. Nyss. T. I. p. 849. 850; cf. s. Bonavent. comp. theologicae verit. c. 9.

In all the places of Scripture the inhabitation of the sanctifying Spirit is indeed exhibited as connected with the sanctifying gifts, but as distinct from them, as the supreme summit of the love of God toward His creature. Moreover, the inhabitation and abiding of God, or of the divine person considered distinctly, in His creature does not simply designate the presence of God, but (omnipresence being supposed) always signifies a special relation and union of God with the creature, which union places something real not indeed in God but in the creature (cf. de Incarn. th. XXXIII). Omnipresence, on the hypothesis of an existing creature, follows necessarily from the divine immensity; inhabitation, however, is from free love.

II. With the Scriptures there is now to be compared the explanation of the holy Fathers and the catholic understanding of the truth with which we are dealing. We shall adduce a few things out of many, not so much to prove the matter itself confusedly, as to lay foundations, as hitherto from the testimonies of Scripture so also from the doctrine of the Fathers, for some understanding of this inhabitation and union.

Frequently the holy Fathers teach in the sanctified a participation in the Holy Spirit and a participation in the divine nature. Indeed they expressly distinguish the participation of the divine person Himself, considered as it were terminatively, which is a special union and relation to the divine person, from the formal but analogical participation in the divine nature through the inherent gifts of grace, which flow from the indwelling Spirit into the soul and adorn it, and are both the effect and the binding bond of the same indwelling Spirit⁵. On the text of Paul adduced, 1. Cor. XII. 4: « there are divisions of graces, but the same Spirit » etc., Athanasius comments thus. « The things which the Spirit distributes to each one are given by the Father through the Word; for all things which are the Father's are also the Son's, whence those things which are given by the Son in the Spirit are the Father's gifts. And when the Spirit is in us, the Word giving Him is also in us, and in the Word is the Father, and so that saying comes to pass: We will come, I and the Father, and will make our abode with him, as has been said. For where light is, there also is its splendor (ἀπαύγασμα); and where splendor is, there also is its power and splendid grace (ἡ τούτου ἐνέργεια καὶ χρυσοειδὴς χάρις). Which Paul again teaching wrote in the epistle 2. Cor.: the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the charity of God and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with you all. For grace and the gift which is given in the Trinity is given by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. For just as grace given is from the Father through the Son, so the communication of the gift cannot be made in us except in the Holy Spirit. Made partakers of Him (τούτου γὰρ μετέχοντες), we have the Father's charity and the Son's grace and the Spirit's communication. From these things therefore one power (ἐνέργεια) of the Trinity is shown. For the Apostle does not signify that gifts are given as diverse and divided from the individual persons, but that the gifts are given in the Trinity, and all things are from the one God..... Indeed when the Lord says: We will come, I and the Father, the Spirit comes at the same time, in no other way than as the Son is to dwell in us (συνέρχεται τὸ πνεῦμα οὐκ ἄλλως ἢ ὡς ὁ υἱὸς ἐν ἡμῖν οἰκήσων).... But when the Son is in us, the Father is also present at the same time, the Son saying: I am in the Father and the Father in Me » Athanas. ad Serap. ep. I. n. 30. 31.

Here you have described both the inhabitation of the persons and a certain order of the inhabiting persons (for the participation of the Holy Spirit is proximately said to be in us), of which we shall speak a little later, and, distinctly, grace and the gifts as the effect of one common efficiency of the three persons.

Still more clearly does St. Basil describe the connection of the indwelling Spirit and of infused grace. « The power and nature of the Spirit, of what sort it is, will become more manifest and more open, if we consider how He contains and by His own will moves the saints and the whole rational nature. For He gave Himself to the whole multitude of the heavenly Virtues and to the multitude of the just, and every hypostasis of the just, both the great and the small, both angels and archangels, has been sanctified... And through Him each of the saints is a god; for it was said to them by God: I said, you are gods.... But He who is the cause to the gods that they are gods must needs be the Spirit, divine and from God. For as that which is the cause to burning things that they burn must needs be burning, and that which is the cause to saints that they are saints is necessarily holy; so too He who is the cause to gods that they are gods must needs be God ⁶. Thus indeed so great a good and divine possession is the Spirit (θείου κτήματος ὄντος τοῦ Πνεύματος).... And the life which the Spirit imparts into the hypostasis of another is not separated from Him. But just as the heat of fire is one thing, that which inheres in the fire itself, and another, that which it imparts to water or to another thing of this sort, so too the Spirit both has in Himself life itself (τὴν ζωήν); and those who are partakers of Him live divinely (θεοπρεπῶς), having divine and heavenly life (ζωὴν)..... The Spirit has nothing adventitious in Himself, but has all things sempiternally as the Spirit of God and shining forth from Him (πεφηνώς), having the principle itself as His fountain, and gushing forth from it (πηγάζον). But He Himself is also the fountain of the aforesaid goods (the gifts of grace); yet He, gushing forth from God (πηγάζον), is in Himself subsisting (cf. th. XL.); and the things which flow forth from Him are His efficiencies. This Holy Spirit God poured out upon us abundantly through Jesus Christ; He poured out, He did not create; He bestowed, He did not make; He gave, He did not found » St. Basil. contr. Eunom. l. V. T. I. p. 321. sq. He has similar things elsewhere.

« The union of the Spirit with the soul (οἰκείωσις πρὸς ψυχὴν) does not come about by approaching according to place... This One, shining upon those who have been cleansed from every stain (ἐλλάμπων), renders them spiritual through communion with Himself; and just as bodies that are bright and translucent, when a ray falls upon them, become themselves also resplendent and pour forth another gleam from themselves; so souls which have the Spirit in themselves (πνευματοφόροι) and are enlightened by the Spirit become themselves also spiritual, and emit grace into others (in their own way): hence foreknowledge of future things, comprehension of hidden things, distributions of gifts (ministerial), heavenly conversation, the dance with angels, joy never to be ended, abiding in God, assimilation to God, and that which is the supreme of desirable things, that you become a god (analogically) » on the Holy Spirit c. 9. n. 23. cf. ibid. n. 22. 38.

Indeed Basil compares the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as He is in us and perfects us and renders us spiritual, with a form, although there he regards rather the operations and effects of the Holy Spirit, which truly inhere in us as forms. « Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit has the power of perfecting rational creatures, completing the summit of their perfection (τὴν ἀκρότητα cf. Cyrill. dial. VII. p. 666. τὸ ἀκρότατον τῆς εὐλογίας), He has the account of a form. For he who now lives not according to the flesh, but is led by the Spirit of God and is called a son of God and has been made conformed to the image of the Son of God, is called spiritual. And just as the power of seeing is in a sound eye, so is the efficacy of the Spirit (ἐνέργεια τοῦ Πνεύματος) in a clean soul.... The grace flowing from Him, while the Spirit dwells in the worthy and works His own things there, is rightly said to be in those who are capable of the Spirit.... But where the grace which is from Him can come and again withdraw, it is said to inhere properly and truly » on the Holy Spirit c. 26. n. 61. 63.

St. Cyril speaks in many places of this participation, but he too no less clearly distinguishes a participation συνετικὴν, that is, the union of friendship, by which the divine person Himself is united to us, and a formal but analogical participation of the divine nature through the gift of inherent grace. The Pneumatomachi, denying the divinity of the Holy Spirit, by that very fact denied that the person Himself of the Holy Spirit is communicated to us in such a way that by reason of this union we can be called partakers of the divine nature, i. e., united to God, in that we are united to the Holy Spirit; they denied also that grace and sanctification are from the Spirit as essentially Holy, and so as from a principal cause; but they affirmed that only grace is communicated to us, and communicated by the Holy Spirit as by an external cause and one not inhabiting us, and as by a ministerial cause. Against them Cyril in the whole of dialogue VII and elsewhere by no means denies the communication of grace; but he proves that the person Himself of the Holy Spirit inhabits us, and that through this inhabitation we are συνετικῶς partakers of the divine nature, i. e., united with God Himself, and that our sanctification is from the indwelling Holy Spirit out of the Spirit's own virtue, not indeed as from a ministerial cause.

The interlocutors are Cyril A and Hermias B, who among other things dispute in this way. « A. That which imprints on us the divine image and, after the manner of a seal, insinuates the supramundane beauty ⁷, is it not the Spirit? B. But they say, not as God, but as a subminister (ὑπουργός) of divine grace. A. Therefore not He Himself but the grace which is through Him is imprinted on us? B. So it seems. A. Then man must be called the image of grace, not the image of God! » He then interprets that passage of Gen. II. 7: « He breathed the breath of life » of the communication of the Holy Spirit, and compares to it Io. XX. 22: « He breathed upon them and said, receive the Holy Spirit ». Then he proceeds: « A. But if the grace which is through Him were disjoined from the substance of the Holy Spirit ⁸, why did not blessed Moses clearly say, when the animal had been brought forth into light, that the creator of the universe breathed grace into it through the Spirit of life; and Christ to us: receive grace through the ministry of the Holy Spirit? And yet it was named there indeed (in Genesis) the Spirit of life... but by the voice of the Savior it was called the Holy Spirit, because He makes the Spirit Himself truly inhabit the souls of believers and sends Him in, and through Him and in Him reforms into the primitive form, that is, into Himself, or into His own likeness through sanctification, thus recalling us to the archetype of the image, that is, to the character of the Father. For the true character perfectly expressing the likeness is the Son Himself; the pure and natural likeness of the Son, however, is the Spirit, to whom (the Spirit) we too, being configured through sanctification, are configured to the very form of God. The apostolic discourse will persuade us of this: little children, he says, whom I again bring forth in travail, until Christ be formed in you Gal. IV. 19. But He is formed through the Spirit, who reforms us to God (like to God) through Himself. When therefore we are formed to Christ, He Himself is imprinted on us and is formed with a beautiful likeness (in us), inasmuch as through the Spirit naturally like to Him ⁹; God therefore we are reformed to the image of Christ, the ointment by which we are anointed and consecrated, the fragrance by which we are made the good odor of Christ.

is the Spirit and conforming to God, not as through ministerial grace but as giving in Himself to those who are worthy a participation of the divine nature... We are reformed into the likeness which is to the Holy Spirit or to God, through faith and sanctification and relation to Him; but, as is clear, by a relation according to participation and adventitious, although we are named partakers of the divine nature ¹⁰..... But we are called and are temples of God, nay even gods. Ask the adversaries why this, after all, if we are truly partakers of a naked grace lacking subsistence? But it is not so. For we are temples of a truly existing and subsisting Spirit; but we have been called gods also on account of Him, inasmuch as we are partakers of the divine and ineffable nature through conjunction to Him » ¹¹ Cyrill. dial. VII. T. V. P. I. p. 638. sq. See ibid. p. 594. 644. 657. 669. 672. 673.; in Io. p. 93. 810. 832.; Thesaur. 352. Most briefly does Cyril embrace the same doctrine: « that He transforms into a certain other habit (εἰς ἑτέραν τινὰ ἕξιν) those in whom He has been and has dwelt, and restores them into the newness of life — is it not easy for anyone to show from the testimonies of both the old and the new Scripture? » in Io. pr. 919.

Cyril therefore, no otherwise than the other Fathers, uses this argument to demonstrate the divinity of the Holy Spirit, namely a) that not only grace and the effects of the Holy Spirit are produced in us; but the Holy Spirit Himself is intimately and in a special manner united to the just, so that on account of the union with the Holy Spirit they are called and are, by the relation of conjunction, partakers of the divine nature. b) He proves the divinity from this, that the indwelling Spirit confers grace and sanctifies not as a minister (ὑπουργός) but by His own virtue (αὐτουργός). « What therefore is perfect grace, if not the infusion of the Holy Spirit wholly made in our hearts, according to Paul's saying? How therefore will grace be true in us, if sanctification has been supplied to us through a creature, as the law also was through angels? For if the Holy Spirit does not work in us by His own virtue (αὐτουργεῖ), but, filled with sanctity from the divine essence by participation, emits into us the grace given to Him, it is manifest that the grace of the Holy Spirit is conferred on us through a creature. But this is false... The Holy Spirit therefore works in us by His own virtue (αὐτουργὸν ἄρα τὸ Πνεῦμα ἐν ἡμῖν), truly sanctifying and uniting us to Himself through conjunction to Him (ἑνοῦν ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ διὰ τῆς πρὸς αὐτὸ συναφείας), and rendering us partakers of the divine nature » Thesaur. T. V. P. I. p. 352. Therefore c) it can be said in the truest sense that « the Holy Spirit makes us holy through Himself and through the communication of His substance », as Petavius speaks l. VIII. c. 4. n. 8. ¹² This, however, must be understood in such a way that the Holy Spirit first sanctifies efficiently through the diffusion of the charity of God in our hearts, and that He Himself is then, as it were, terminatively the one to whom we are united by the bond of grace, charity, and friendship; and so the indwelling Holy Spirit is the supreme and divine summit of our sanctification, as SS. Basil and Cyril speak ¹³. Yet one must beware in our age, lest by an obscure manner of speaking an occasion be given for considering the Holy Spirit Himself as our formal sanctification. Of justification the cause « is, as efficient, the merciful God who freely washes and sanctifies, sealing and anointing with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance... finally, the unique formal cause is the justice of God, not that by which He Himself is just, but that by which He makes us just; namely, by which, being gifted by Him, we are renewed... each one receiving his own justice in ourselves » Conc. Trid. sess. VI. c. 7. Moreover, from all that has been said thus far it easily appears in what sense that is to be understood which the Fathers too sometimes say, that the Holy Spirit dwells in the just οὐσιωδῶς, i. e. substantively, and is united to them. See Basil. contr. Eunom. V. p. 297. cf. Gregor. Naz. or. 41. al. 44. n. 11. This is said most truly when the adverb is referred to the subject, or by reason of the terms which are united; but it would be false if it were referred to the very mode of the union; for in this sense a substantive union is nothing other than a union of substances to the unity of nature, a conjunction of which sort is repugnant for a creature with God, or to the unity of hypostasis, of which sort is the union of the human nature with the Word (cf. Tract. de Incarn. th. XX). For other Fathers see Petav. l. VIII. c. 4-7.; Thomassin de Incarnat. l. VI. c. 10-20.

The scholastic theologians hand down this doctrine with common consent and explain it more distinctly. Among others there may be consulted s. Thom. 1. q. 43. a. 3. and especially I. dist. 14. q. 2; Alexander Halens. 1. q. 73. m. 4.; s. Bonavent. I. dist. 14. a. 2.; Compend. theolog. veritat. c. 9.; then Molina in 1. q. 43. a. 3.; Suarez l. XII. c. 5., who explains this matter excellently; Lessius de perfect. divin. l. XII. c. 11.; de summo bono l. II. c. 1. n. 4.; Ruiz disp. 109. sect. 1. sqq.; Ysambert in 1. q. 43. a. 3.; Cornel. a Lapide in 2. Pet. I. 4. and in the epistles of Paul passim.

« If, for some understanding of this marvelous union, regard be had above all to the term of mission and inhabitation: inhabitation must be called the union of friendship of the soul elevated by grace with God, unto fruition begun here and consummated in the other life through knowledge and love (through charity in faith, through charity in vision), so that God by loving makes the lover, and is possessed by charity; and on that account in the sanctified soul God remains according to essence under a new title of friendship, according to power and presence in a new manner ».

Following the theologians who have gone before us, we can deduce a more distinct understanding of this inhabitation and union from Sacred Scripture and the declarations of the holy Fathers and from the analogy of faith; in which matter, keeping before our eyes the certain norm of Catholic doctrine, we can indeed and ought to attain so far that nothing be said which is not true; but we shall not attain so far that we understand the whole depth and height of this mystery of divine love, and are able to explain the whole truth, so long as it is said to us: now we are the sons of God, and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be (1. Io. III. 2).

By reason of the immensity of the one and triune God, the intimate inexistence in all creatures according to essence, power, and presence is presupposed. But from this necessary inexistence God is not said to dwell in a creature in the manner in which Scripture and the PP. present the inhabitation to us, nor can this be called a union of the creature with God. Besides the hypostatic union, a union with God properly so called on the part of the creature is only the possession of God unto enjoying God as the ultimate end. For complete fruition indeed we shall possess the one and triune God in the light of glory, which presupposes sanctifying grace; but now in this life, sanctified by grace and charity, we possess God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit unto fruition begun and dispositive. As therefore according to natural gifts we proceed from God as from a principle, which is not a proper union with God; so through the supernatural gift of grace and charity and finally of glory we are brought back to God as the ultimate end, and we are truly united to the one and triune God as unto enjoyment. « In the going forth of creatures from the first principle there is noted a certain circulation or reversion, because all things return as unto an end to that from which as from a principle they proceeded... According to this therefore the procession of the divine persons into creatures can be considered in two ways: either inasmuch as it is the reason of going forth from the principle, and thus such a procession (into creatures) is considered according to natural gifts, in which we subsist...; it can also be considered (the procession into creatures) inasmuch as it is the reason of returning unto the end, and it is according to those gifts only which conjoin us most closely to the ultimate end, namely God, which are sanctifying grace and glory... For in the participations of divine goodness there is not an immediate conjunction with God through the first effects, by which we subsist in the being of creatures; but through the last ones, by which we adhere to the end, and therefore we concede that the Holy Spirit is not given except according to the gifts that make one pleasing... For the giving of the Holy Spirit it does not suffice that there be a new relation, of whatever sort, of the creature to God; but it is necessary that it refer to Him as to something had, because what is given to someone is had in some way by him. But a divine person cannot be had by us except either unto perfect fruit, and thus it is had through the gift of glory; or according to imperfect fruit, and thus it is had through the gift of sanctifying grace » S. Th. I. d. 14. q. 2. a. 2.

Moreover, this possession and fruition of God the ultimate end is through habit and act together, or at least through the habit of knowledge and love (conjointly, of course, not divisively — through knowledge alone, which does not suffice for enjoying, nor through love alone, which cannot be separated from knowledge). Whence « above the common manner in which God is in all things, there is one special manner which befits the rational nature, in which God is said to be as the known in the knower and the beloved in the lover; and because by knowing and loving the rational creature attains by its operation to God Himself, according to that special manner God is said not only to be in the rational creature, but also to dwell in it as in His temple » S. Th. I. q. 43. a. 3.

But in order that this may be rightly understood, it must be attended to that this love is of mutual and most perfect friendship, by which the Lord God, as s. Ignatius speaks (Contemplat. ad amor. spiritual.), « not only gives from those things which He has but also Himself, as much as He can, according to His divine ordinance »; but the creature through the charity given to it attains God by love unto enjoyment. Whence this love of friendship is not only a union according to affection, but of itself it also demands and desires a real union, as s. Thomas explains 1. 2. q. 28. a. 1: « a certain union is an effect of love, and this is the real union which the lover seeks with the beloved thing ». Since now charity, omnipotent on the part of God, also does what it desires; it can rightly be said that sanctifying grace, which either includes charity or is charity itself, « as a kind of joining which couples two things or desires to couple them » (Aug. Trin. VIII. c. 10; S. Th. 1. c.), is as a new title which demands the conjunction of God with the sanctified soul in such a way that, if God by reason of immensity were not present everywhere, He would become present according to essence and would be conjoined with the sanctified (Suarez 1. c. n. 12. 13). But this very thing has its foundation in this, that love is ordered unto enjoying God.

If therefore this union be compared with the existence of God in all creatures according to essence, power, and presence: the union and inhabitation, as we have already deduced above from the Scriptures, is from a new title and a moral exigency demanding the presence of God according to essence not as immense but as loving and loved, communicating Himself to the beloved unto enjoyment; it is then a new mode of inexistence according to power and the operation of supernatural effects, and a new mode according to presence through the tutelage and supernatural providence of a father toward an adoptive son. « For enjoying that which is to be enjoyed, there is required the presence of the enjoyable thing and also the due disposition of the enjoyer; whence there is required the presence of the Holy Spirit and His gift, namely the love by which one clings to Him. Nevertheless, when the Holy Spirit is given to us, He does not begin to be in a new place, but in a new manner through the production of a new effect and a new respect, by which the creature is otherwise related to the Holy Spirit than before, on account of which He Himself is also said to be otherwise in the creature than before, because He is in it as in one knowing and loving Him, which was not the case before. From what has been said it is clear that in justification a twofold charity is given to us, namely created and uncreated, that by which we love, and that by which we are loved... From these things it is gathered that although God is in all things by essence, presence, and power, He is not however had by all men through grace » s. Bonavent. compend. theol. verit. c. 9.

It follows from what has been said after the manner of a corollary that a) the union of which we speak is a new relation of the creature to God, on the part of the creature most real, founded in the gifts of grace and a supernatural ontological elevation; but in God, the unchangeable good, it posits nothing real indeed, yet it is a true union through a change not in both but only in the other of the terms united, which is the creature. Which unchangeableness of God is here far more easily understood than in the hypostatic union, where nevertheless it is equally certain and is to be reconciled from the same principle through the change made in the united human nature (de Incarn. th. XXXIII.). It follows b) that it is false what some of the Scholastics said, that the Holy Spirit can be invisibly sent without supernatural gifts conferred upon the creature. The invisible mission is unto the union and inhabitation of the proceeding person; but this union and inhabitation cannot be conceived without a supernatural change in the united creature.

« If the divine persons who dwell in the saints are considered in the light of the intimate economy itself of the Most Holy Trinity, which the Catholic faith teaches, and in the light of the explicit teaching of Scripture and of the Fathers, this inhabitation of the persons is that they are one, and therefore it is altogether one and common to the three persons. Hence what a few theologians gathered from certain opinions of the Fathers, especially of St. Cyril, does not seem to be worthy of assertion: that there is a peculiar mode proper to one person and not common to the three persons, by which the Holy Spirit sanctifies us through the union of his person. »

Here we undertake to declare how the union of the Holy Spirit with the sanctified, which we have demonstrated, stands in comparison with the inhabitation of the other divine persons. It is contradictory that one person should inhabit in the way that has been said, without its being the inhabitation of the one and triune God, and consequently of all three persons.

1°. This is evident universally from the internal economy of the Most Holy Trinity. For not only by virtue of the unity of essence are all the persons in each one according to what we have said about circumincession (th. XIV.); but also the operation ad extra is necessarily one of the three, just as the nature is one (th. XII.). Hence, just as ad intra all attributes and all formal reasons are one thing common to the three persons, except for the mutually opposed relations by which the persons are constituted and distinguished; so all relations ad extra are common to the three persons, that is, they belong to the one and triune God, except only that relation which is founded in the hypostatic function; for that can be proper to one person, because the persons formally as persons are really distinguished from one another. But the hypostatic function, under the formal reason of hypostasis, according to which there is the real distinction, is neither known by faith nor, faith being presupposed, is understood as anything other than sustaining a nature, as is commonly said, that is, having a nature as one's own. Thus the incarnation of the Word, considered efficiently, belongs to the one and triune God, but terminatively it belongs to the Word alone, because, as I have said, the very having of a nature as one's own is the function of a hypostasis under the formal reason insofar as it is a hypostasis; but the Word under this formal reason of hypostasis is really distinguished from the Father and the Holy Spirit. In sum: one divine person cannot be related ad extra by a function proper to itself and not common to the three, unless that function be hypostatic, because under the formal reason of hypostasis alone is one person distinguished from the others in the Most Holy Trinity; but no other hypostatic function ad extra has been revealed to us nor can it be understood, except as it were an extension of hypostatic power to sustaining a created nature, which is the hypostatic union (see above th. XII. n. II.; de Incarnat. th. XXXIII.). But plainly the conjunction of the Holy Spirit with the just, of which we are treating, is not a hypostatic union; therefore the conjunction is necessarily the same for the Father and for the Son.

2°. In the Scriptures the inhabitation of one of the distinct persons is explicitly taught. « We will come to him and make our abode with him » Io. XIV. 23. etc. Just as from the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, as we saw in thesis XLIII., so from the commonness of this inhabitation with the Father and the Son the holy Fathers prove the divinity of the Holy Spirit, namely that the inhabitation and participation of one person is, by reason of the unity of nature, necessarily common to the three. « As we are the temple of the Father and of the Son, so also of the Holy Spirit, not many temples but one temple, because it is the temple of one power » s. Ambros. de Spiritu Sancto l. III. c. 12. n. 91.; c. 16. n. 112. see there the rest. St. Cyril, whom Petavius judged to have taught above all a not indeed separate but nevertheless other and different inhabitation of the Holy Spirit than the inhabitation of the Father and of the Son, teaches no less clearly the inhabitation of the divine persons, as they are one God by unity of nature. « We will come, says Christ, to him, I and the Father, and we will make our abode with him. For when our Savior Christ dwells in us through the Holy Spirit, the Begetter also will be altogether with us, for the Spirit of Christ is the same as that of the Father... When, therefore, the Only-begotten dwells in our hearts, the Father is by no means absent; for the Son has the Begetter in himself, being of one substance with him, but he himself is also in the Father naturally... I would gladly ask those who, out of great ignorance, having embraced heresy, arm their tongue against the glory of the Spirit... if the Spirit is created and alien from the substance of God, as you wish, how does God dwell in us through him?... Therefore the Spirit is not created. But if this is true, as it certainly is, the Spirit is God and from God, as we have said; for nothing will ever be thought uncreated except God alone by nature, from whom, clearly, the Holy Spirit ineffably proceeds, and just as he himself, from whom he is, dwells in us; for he is proper to his substance, and as it were a quality of his holiness ¹. But against the Anomoeans, who declared war on the Son... I shall say something opportune. We will come to him and make our abode with him... If the Son is altogether different in nature and is understood in some nature proper to himself, how is it not necessary for those who keep the commandments to believe that there are two Gods in us? But if we are called temples of one, not of two Gods, while the Father and the Son dwell in us, what reason reduces those two into unity in us, when according to your madness there is no place for identity of substance! For either it is necessary to say that Christ spoke falsely to us, and that only the Father dwells in us through the Spirit, or that he himself (Christ) indeed dwells, but the Father is absent. But this is absurd; for one God is in us, when we have received both.... And indeed the divine Paul did not call us temples of two Gods but of one: you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. You see how he says that when the Father and the Son are brought together in identity of substance, we are made temples not of Gods but of God » Cyrill. in Io. XIV. 23. T. IV. p. 831. 832. He speaks most expressly in dialog. VII., which is about the divinity of the Holy Spirit. After many cited testimonies of Scripture he concludes: « is it not at last manifest that by us, at any rate, it is acknowledged what the Father is, what the Son, what the Spirit, by hypostatic distinction; nevertheless, by the bond of natural unity all things are altogether common to all: the coming (παρουσία), the words, the participation (μέθεξις), the operation (ἐνέργεια), and the glory, and whatever adorns the divine nature » T. V. P. I. p. 642. See also Cyrill. in Thesaur. p. 336.; and Athanasius ad Serapion. ep. I. n. 20. 30. 31.; ep. III. n. 6.; ep. IV. n. 4.

3°. Therefore, since the inhabitation arises from gratuitous love ², as we have declared above, the one and triune God dwells under the formal reason insofar as God is charity, under which, as under any absolute attribute, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not distinguished; but this charity is really the three persons together and each one of them. Hence we indeed (saving the authority of so great a man as Dionysius Petavius) can neither find it demonstrated from Scripture and the Fathers nor reconcile it with certain principles, that there is a special mode of union of the Holy Spirit with the just which is proper to the third person alone and not common to the three.

Petavius (1. VIII. c. 6. n. 5-8) undertook to prove this union with the just as proper to the one person of the Holy Spirit; what sort it is and how it can be conceived, he himself was unwilling to say, because, as he says, he did not yet have the matter sufficiently ascertained (ib. n. 6). His fundamental argument is that the Holy Spirit personally is and is called the gift and the sanctifying power. But since these signify nothing other than the proceeding love, they show indeed a certain peculiar exigency, as it were, in the personal character of the Holy Spirit, but not a mode of union proper to him alone, as we shall soon declare; otherwise we shall also devise that the Word is united with our intellect in a mode proper to himself alone, and many other things little consistent with the unity and simplicity of God. He adds the remaining arguments from St. Cyril, namely that the Spirit is called αὐτουργὸς of our sanctification; the gold by which we are gilded; and finally as it were a quality in us, as indeed Petavius interpreted the holy Doctor.

But all these things do not seem to prove what that most learned man had proposed to himself. That a) he understands the Holy Spirit in us as αὐτουργὸς, as sanctifying through the application of his very substance, this does not seem to be at least the immediate sense of Cyril; for Cyril opposes αὐτουργεῖν, i.e. operating by one's own power, to the heretics' ὑπουργὸν τῆς χάριτος, as if the Holy Spirit were only the ministerial cause of grace. Much less does αὐτουργεῖν signify a sanctification distinct from that of the Father and of the Son, as Petav. c. 6. n. 7. wishes. b) That Cyril in Thesauro p. 352. and elsewhere says that our sanctification is not through another created medium, but that we are sanctified immediately by God through the Holy Spirit, he does not say this in comparison with created grace, but in order to deny that the Holy Spirit is a middle creature between us and God, through whose ministry we are sanctified. (Cf. Petav. c. 4. n. 10). c) That Petavius says that according to Cyril's doctrine the Holy Spirit « inheres in the saints as it were as a quality » is not to be too strongly pressed. Cyril often says that the Holy Spirit is « as it were a quality of God » (of the Father and of the Son); just as he sometimes calls him a fragrance from the substance of God, in order to signify his divinity and to signify along with it the procession and the distinction. See dialog. VII. p. 673. 674.; in Io. p. 810. 832. etc. If at some time he compares the Spirit in us with the life-giving moisture in the branch and with a quality; there either by the name of spirit is understood not the person but the grace of the Holy Spirit, or in the context it is explained without difficulty of the indwelling Spirit as the efficient cause of the supernatural life, in which respect of efficiency the Spirit is not distinguished from the Father and from the Son.

Both explanations are admitted by the words of Cyril in Io. p. 867. 868. If, he says, as unfruitful branches we are cut off from the vine, Christ, we shall be delivered to the fire, « having lost the life-giving moisture which we once had from the vine, that is, the Spirit. For just as the talent is taken away from him (who had buried it in the earth), so I think the Spirit is taken away from the branch too, after the manner of moisture or of a quality ». Those who are punished by princes are first stripped of their dignities; so also the soul to be punished by the supreme judge « must first be deprived and stripped of the grace of the Spirit ». d) That Petavius c. 4. n. 10. says that according to Cyril « the just are as it were gilded with the Holy Spirit », is indeed most true and most beautifully said in the sense set forth above, provided it is not understood of a formal cause of justification properly so called; but Cyril in the place cited by Petavius from dialog. VII. does not say « we are gilded by the Holy Spirit »; but he says: the Holy Spirit « gilds us with the glory of sonship ».

« According to the doctrine of the Fathers deduced from the Scriptures, the proper personal character of the Holy Spirit must be held to be this, that He proceeds as giftable, and therefore in some peculiar manner is a gift; which manner is ultimately reduced to procession in the mode of subsistent love ».

There are two distinct questions: whether the person of the Holy Spirit is united with the saints in some manner proper to Himself alone and not common to all three persons, and whether in the person of the Holy Spirit, according to His proper personal character, there is a peculiar manner and, as it were, a relation (in root) to this sanctifying union. This latter can be, and is demonstrated to be, true, without its following from this that the truth of that proper mode of union is also true, which we said in the preceding pages must be denied. Thus in the mystery of the incarnation, with which this divine inhabitation has an analogy, it is a far different thing to ask whether in the personal property of the Word there is some reason why it befitted Him rather than another person of the most Holy Trinity to become man by the hypostatic union with human nature — which the holy Fathers and theologians affirm (Petav. de Incarnat. 1. II. c. 15; S. Th. 3. q. 3. a. 8) — and another thing to ask whether, on account of that personal property, the union of the Word with human nature has a mode so proper that, if another divine person became man, the mode of the union would be other than the hypostatic union of the Word is; to which the answer must be negative.

Nay rather, in the distinct personal properties there is a peculiar analogy and, as it were, a relation of one person before the others to certain external operations, on which the appropriation of works to one person before the others is founded (th. XIII.); yet for that reason it is not lawful to attribute to one person before the others a peculiar and proper mode of operation, which is altogether one of the three and indistinct, just as the divine nature itself (th. XII.).

After we have therefore considered the inhabitation common to the three persons, we now ask whether and how there is some peculiar manner of this conjunction with the sanctified in the proper personal character of the Holy Spirit. The affirmation of this peculiar manner, indeed even its declaration, is contained in this, that the third person of the Trinity is taught to proceed as a gift.

That the Holy Spirit has from His very personal character the proper manner of gift can be deduced from the Scriptures not so much from the fact that He is often said to be given (cf. S. Aug. Trin. XV. c. 19), as rather from those arguments by which we showed His procession in the mode of love terminating the love in the Father and the Son (th. XXVI.); for these two — that the Holy Spirit proceeds in the mode of love as the term of the producing love, and that He is a gift from His proper personal character — do not differ save as definition and thing defined, as will be evident in the progress of the declaration.

Whence Augustine, that which he very often teaches, that the Holy Spirit proceeds as the love of the Father and of the Son, he says in other words: « He went forth not as born but as given, and therefore He is not the Son » Trin. V. c. 14.

The Fathers long before Augustine understood this property of the Holy Spirit; indeed Augustine himself testifies that by this character the distinction of the Holy Spirit is declared « by the learned and great expositors of the divine Scriptures, in that they proclaim Him to be the gift of God » Aug. de fid. et symbol. n. 19. (T. VI.). Surely the most ancient Fathers designate the Holy Spirit by this name as proper in the enumeration of the persons of the most Holy Trinity, as Justin, cohortat. ad Graec. n. 32.; Hippolytus contra Noet. n. 14. See others in Ruiz disp. 75. sect. 1. and Petav. 1. VIII. c. 3.

The Fathers themselves demonstrate the matter, whose opinions we adduced where we treated of the procession through love. Yet Augustine declared this property more lucidly in many places, and after Augustine then other Fathers and all the theologians of the School in I. dist. 18.; and in S. Th. I. q. 38. Augustine among other things discourses thus. « In that which is properly called the Holy Spirit, He is spoken of relatively, since He is referred both to the Father and to the Son, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. But the relation itself does not appear in this name; it appears, however, when He is called the gift of God. For He is the gift of the Father and of the Son, because He proceeds also from the Father, as the Lord says; and what the Apostle says, he who has not the Spirit of Christ is none of His, he says this certainly of the Holy Spirit Himself. Gift, therefore, of the giver, and giver of the gift, when we say them, we say both relatively to each other. Therefore the Holy Spirit is a certain ineffable communion of the Father and of the Son... So that therefore from the name which befits both (i. e. the Father and the Son, each is both spirit and holy), the communion of both may be signified, He is called the gift of both (He who is the gift of both), the Holy Spirit... Further, however, it is asked, whether just as the Son has this not only by being born, that He be the Son, but altogether that He be, so also the Holy Spirit, by that by which He is given, has not only that He be a gift but altogether that He be?... Or does the Holy Spirit always proceed, and proceed not in time but from eternity; but because He so proceeded that He might be giftable, He was already a gift, even before there was one to whom it would be given? For it is understood otherwise when He is called gift, otherwise when He is called given; for a gift can be even before it is given; but 'given' cannot in any way be said unless it has been given... The Spirit is eternally a gift, but temporally He is given ». Aug. Trin. 1. V. n. 12-17.

Therefore the gift, inasmuch as it is the proper and personal name of the Holy Spirit, is relative to the giver, the Father and the Son, whose gift He is not as by the dominion of a possessor, but as of the principle from which He proceeds; but the procession is designated not only indeterminately but in such a way that the one proceeding has from the very mode of procession the manner of giftable. Now indeed every gift has the proper manner of gift from the gratuitous liberality by which it is given or is giftable ¹, and so from love; whence love from its inmost manner is the first gift, from which all the rest are given, which have the manner of gift not from themselves but as it were extrinsically, inasmuch as they are given from love. Hence in the most Holy Trinity the Son indeed proceeds from the Father and is also giftable; but because He is giftable not from His internal personal character, by which He is the Word of the paternal intellect, but only inasmuch as in God there is love, from which also the Son is given; « so God loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son » Io. III. 16.; therefore the name of gift does not designate the proper personal character of the Son (cf. S. Th. I. dist. 18. q. 1. a. 3. ad 3). But the Holy Spirit, whose constituting personal character is that He be love produced by the love of the Father and of the Son, from this very personal character of His is the gift of the Father and of the Son.

From these things it appears that the name of gift, taken relatively and strictly, coincides in signification with the appellation of proceeding love, and this again with the sanctifying power (δύναμις ἁγιαστική), which many Fathers exhibit as the proper character of the Holy Spirit (th. XXVI. n. II.), except that gift and sanctifying power express more clearly the respect (of reason) to creatures. « The love which is from God and is God, properly ² the Holy Spirit is, through whom the charity of God is diffused in our hearts, through whom the whole Trinity inhabits us. Wherefore most rightly the Holy Spirit, since He is God, is called also the gift of God. What gift is properly to be understood but charity, which leads to God ³, and without which any other gift of God does not lead to God? » Aug. Trin. 1. XV. c. 18.

Since however the name of gift is not always taken in this strict signification, a) in a sense not relative to a distinct person from whom it is given, even the Father and God absolutely regarded, that is, the divine essence, can be called gift, because both the Father and God absolutely regarded gives Himself; for neither does the word give nor the donation express with the same rigor as mission a real distinction between the giver and the given ⁴, which we already noted above. b) More properly and in a relative sense gift is said with a real distinction of giver and given, but without the determination of a personal character by which it is giftable. In this sense the manner of the given and of the sent is the same, and hence the Son can be called the gift of the Father, the Holy Spirit the gift of the Father and of the Son. Finally c) it is taken in a stricter sense designating both the personal distinction and the proper manner of procession in the mode of the first gift, i. e. in the mode of love; in this sense of notional property, as we have declared, the Holy Spirit alone is gift. Cf. Ruiz disp. 75. sect. 2. num. 8.

« That, therefore, which Scripture and the Fathers seem to attribute in a singular way to the Holy Spirit — the indwelling in the sanctified — must be explained from His very personal property. For since God dwells as uncreated charity, 1° in the property of proceeding love there is a peculiar ground for this indwelling, which nevertheless, on account of the unity of nature, is common to the whole Trinity; 2° from the same property the Father and the Son are said, just as to love, so to dwell by the Holy Spirit as the immanent term of their love, which designates not a diverse relation of union ad extra but the order of the persons ad intra; 3° although the efficient and exemplar cause of sanctification is God the Trinity according to the absolute attributes, nevertheless, with the distinct persons considered, in the personal character of the Holy Spirit there is a more express exemplar of participated holiness than in the property of the other persons, and through this very fact there is constituted a ground in the order of efficient cause for appropriating to the Holy Spirit the effects of grace and of sanctification ».

Although the indwelling itself and the mode of union are common to the three persons, there can nevertheless be in the personal character of one person a special ground requiring such a union, which ground is not in the personal character of the other persons, as was said a little earlier.

Indeed, for the distinction of the personal characters, Scripture indicates and the Fathers frequently say that the Father and the Son dwell in us by the Holy Spirit, and that in the Holy Spirit we are made partakers of the Father and of the Son, and through the Spirit are conjoined to the Father and to the Son.

« Any creature (a sanctified rational one) becomes a partaker of the Word in the Spirit. We are all likewise said to be partakers of God through the Spirit... But now, since we are said to be partakers of Christ and of God, it is certainly evident that the unction and the seal which is in us belongs not to things made but to the nature of the Son, who conjoins us to the Father through the Spirit who is in Him » Athan. ad Serap. cp. I. n. 23. 24.

Nearly the same is found at Basil, de Spiritu Sancto n. 47. Likewise St. Cyril: « how is the Spirit created, if we are made partakers of the Father and of the Son through Him?... Therefore God is in us through God the Spirit » Cyrill. append. ad dialog. VII. p. 666. Indeed St. Basil also says with a negating expression that God (the Father and the Son) does not dwell in us except through the Spirit. « I see the presence of both God and the Spirit converging into one and the same thing, when it is said to be universal in all. But you (Eunomius), since in such matters you cannot but understand or call the Spirit uncreated, you say that God Himself (the Father) is called the Spirit. But God does not dwell in a creature by Himself, nor could anyone understand God (the Father) for the Spirit of God, since he clearly hears the Apostle writing such things about Him who dwells in us: God has revealed to us through His Spirit;... but we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God » Basil. cont. Eunom. 1. V. T. I, p. 309. Sayings of this kind are frequent among the Fathers, and the universal doctrine of Scripture and of the Fathers on the union of the Holy Spirit with the just, which was set forth in th. XLIII-XLVI., without doubt shows that there is something proper and personal to the Holy Spirit which is referred to the sanctifying union and indwelling. On the other hand, however, this proper something cannot be of such a kind that the unity of the three persons in operation and in relations ad extra is violated, which must be understood according to what was declared in th. XLV. The reconciliation seems to us to be the following, certainly true, although in such profundity of mystery it cannot be full.

In the Holy Spirit, from His personal character, insofar as He is proceeding love, we understand a proper and personal ground — not that the Holy Spirit alone, nor in a mode proper to Himself, but that the Trinity in one undivided mode dwells in and is united to the saints, for the diffusion of charity, and with charity diffused in their hearts.

« The love which is from God and is God, properly (i. e. by personal property) is the Holy Spirit, through whom (not indeed separately but unitedly with the Father and the Son) the charity of God is diffused in our hearts (substantial for dwelling, accidental for informing), through which the whole Trinity dwells in us » Aug. Trin. XV. 18. Namely, the Holy Spirit, as we have previously demonstrated, is the immanent term of the common love in the Father and the Son, as produced love, and so the ground of love, or, as Augustine puts it, properly charity, is the personal character of the Holy Spirit; but since love has as it were in its root a respect ad extra, namely to sanctifying the rational creature, on that account the Holy Spirit is said by the Fathers to proceed not only as subsisting love but as gift and as sanctifying power (th. XLVI.).

These things being posited, 1° it can rightly be said that in the personal character of the Holy Spirit there is a special ground for the sanctifying indwelling, which is the indwelling of God insofar as God is charity. Whence, just as Suarez, Lessius ll. cc. and other theologians declare indwelling universally — that if God were not everywhere by immensity, nevertheless the presence of God in the saints would be required by reason of charity and friendship — we can similarly explain this personal exigency: if by reason of the unity of nature the indwelling were not indivisible for the three persons, and if the Father and the Son did not dwell, there would nevertheless be a special ground for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in His very personal character, by which He is subsisting love and therefore gift and sanctifying power.

2° Since the Most Holy Trinity dwells in the just as charity by loving, and since the Father and the Son, as one mutual love, eternally always in act spirate the produced love which is the Holy Spirit; the Father and the Son by spirating the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit being spirated, can be said to be conjoined to and to dwell in the just; which is equivalent to when the Father and the Son are said to send the Holy Spirit to us, and it signifies not a diversity of conjunction but the distinction and internal order of the persons with whom we are conjoined. This can be further declared:

3° Divine love, insofar as it is in the Father and the Son, necessarily produces the immanent term, the love which is the Holy Spirit, and without this it cannot be love in act, and consequently cannot be at all. For, as Ruiz declares the matter, disp. 109. sect. 2. n. 6., the person of the Holy Spirit is required for any transient operation, insofar as from His personal quiddity He so terminates divine love that God the spirator cannot be a complete and perfect giver with respect to creatures, except by producing the Holy Spirit, who is personally gift; indeed neither could love itself exist, if it lacked the intrinsic term which is the Holy Spirit ».

In this sense we have said elsewhere that the Father and the Son love all the things they love by the Holy Spirit (see th. XXIX.); not as if the Holy Spirit were the formal love by which the Father and the Son love, but they love by the Holy Spirit as the immanent term of the love, as a tree blossoms with flowers (S. Th. I. q. 37. a. 2.) But the Holy Spirit, the term of love and proceeding love, does not, by loving, produce yet another proceeding love (th. XXVIII.). Whence the Father and the Son love formally by their own essence, and love by the Holy Spirit as the love terminating the act of their love; the Holy Spirit loves by His own essence and by Himself as subsisting love.

Now if we speak of the indwelling of the one and triune God in the saints by way of love, it is clear that in the same sense the Father and the Son dwell by themselves, as they are absolute charity, and dwell by the Holy Spirit as the produced term of their love, who proceeds through the one love of both as subsisting love, and therefore as gift and sanctifying power. But the Holy Spirit, on the contrary, cannot be said to dwell in the saints by the Father and the Son, but He dwells by Himself both as absolute charity (insofar as He is one with the Father and the Son) and as proceeding love. The sanctified soul is therefore united to the one God as to absolute charity; and since the loving God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is united to the loving persons both all together and each singly — to the Father and the Son as by loving spirating subsisting love, to the Holy Spirit as to the spirated love. This, however, signifies that the persons also in the union of which we speak remain distinct among themselves, and that the notional characters of the spirator through love and of the spirated love are not confused; but it is not therefore the case that the Spirit alone is united to the sanctified soul in some mode in which the Father and the Son are not united to it.

4° Finally, if we consider the formal and analogical participation of the divine nature, that is, the supernatural assimilation to the divine nature, which is the necessary disposition and foundation of the real relation to the indwelling God (th. XLIV.), and is therefore said to be as it were the bond uniting the loving and beloved God with the loved and loving soul; in this participation two things are to be distinguished, namely God as He is the effector of sanctification and of grace, and as He is the exemplar to which we are assimilated through infused grace. For formal participation includes these two, that the participated thing be exemplar and efficient cause, and that in the participant there be origin and assimilation. All efficiency is of God insofar as He is one by nature; therefore the effect of the gifts of grace is not from the Holy Spirit either properly or singularly or more or in another mode than from the Father and the Son, because God operates ad extra under the formal reason of the absolute, not indeed insofar as He is the Father generating, the Son begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeding (th. XII.). But the exemplar to which the creature is supernaturally assimilated, God is both under the reason of the absolute nature and under the reason of the distinct hypostases and personal characters. Whence through the charity diffused in our hearts He is assimilated to God both insofar as He is absolute charity and thus the one and triune God, and insofar as (according to Augustine's expression) He is properly charity, i. e. proceeding love and therefore, from His own personal character, holiness (th. XXVI. n. II.). Therefore if the distinct persons are considered, the Holy Spirit is the exemplar to whose personal character the sanctified are more expressively assimilated through grace than to the character of the Father and of the Word.

« God sends into the souls of the saints that participation of His own property through the Spirit » τῆς ἰδίας ὑποστάσεως τὴν διὰ Πνεύματος μέθεξιν Cyrill. Dialog. VII. p. 644. But this very ground of exemplar and assimilation provides the foundation that even in the order of efficient cause all the effects of grace be appropriated to the Holy Spirit (th. XIII.).

« Those things which are in us from God are reduced to God as to an efficient and exemplar cause; to the efficient cause indeed, insofar as something is effected in us by the operative divine power; but to the exemplar cause, according as that which is in us from God in some way imitates God. Since therefore the power of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is the same, just as also the same essence, it is necessary that what God effects in us be, as from an efficient cause, at once from the Father and from the Son and from the Holy Spirit. The word of wisdom, however, by which we know God, has been sent to us by God as properly representative of the Son, and similarly the love by which we love God is the proper representative of the Holy Spirit. And so the charity which is in us, although it is an effect of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, is nevertheless said, by a certain special ground, to be in us through the Holy Spirit » S. Th. contr. gent. IV. c. 21. Cf. s. Bonavent. I. dist. 17. P. I. q. 1.; Compend. theol. verit. c. 9.

« According to the diversity and perfection of the sanctifying gifts, diverse degrees are also to be admitted in the visible mission and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit. According to this diversity of degrees, some of the holy Fathers distinguished the mission and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit for the New Testament, namely in those sanctified by the grace of baptism, from the participation of the same Spirit in the saints of the Old Testament; but it cannot be admitted that, by the common opinion of the holy Fathers, the inhabitation of the Spirit and the adoption of sons was simply denied for the time of the Old Testament ».

In this thesis, which we wish to be regarded as a kind of appendix, we ask whether and how a distinction between sanctification in the Old and in the New Testament must be admitted. The inquiry, moreover, seemed opportune on account of the opinion of Petavius, a certainly most weighty theologian, who thought that the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit and — what is still harsher — the adoption of sons in the just of the Old Testament must be denied. This opinion, already in itself scarcely reconcilable with the nature and character of sanctifying inhabitation, we shall refute by an explanation of the testimonies on which Petavius alone rests.

Just as in the natural omnipresence of God, which follows from the attribute of immensity, the inexistence in all creatures, if it is considered simply according to the divine essence, can be said to be the same; but the inexistence is most diverse according to power and presence, that is, according to operation and governance; so the supernatural inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in those sanctified by grace is indeed in all of them; but it has degrees as diverse as the degrees of holiness and of the gifts of grace are diverse. Both of these are evident from the very nature of inhabitation which we have set forth.

For how great indeed is the diversity, not only between the inhabitation of God in the blessed comprehensors, unto vision and fruition now complete, and in the wayfarers, unto fruition begun and in disposition; but also in the manifold degrees of the beatific vision, and in the wayfarers, from the lowest degree of sanctifying grace up to a greater and greater perfection of holiness and of charisms without limit?

Hence, 1°. The Holy Spirit is invisibly sent not only in the bestowal of first grace, that is, in the justification of the sinner, but also in the bestowal of second grace, that is, in the increase of sanctifying grace. For in second grace there is a new title and, as it were, a new bond of the presence of the lover in the beloved (Suarez l. XII. c. 5. n. 16. sq.). That this mission in the simple increase of grace is properly so called, some indeed deny (Ruiz disp. 109. sect. 4); but all acknowledge that in a peculiar second sanctification too, by which one, although already an adoptive son of a lower degree, is constituted in a new, as it were, order and state of the sons of God and of the kingdom of grace, the Holy Spirit is properly sent and inhabits in a new manner ¹. Hence, namely in the sacraments, which are called by Dionysius consecratory, by which Christ specially consecrates and constitutes in a peculiar dignity as member, soldier, minister of Christ the priest, and therefore seals with an indelible character (see Tract. de Sacram. in genere th. XIII.), there is a peculiar mission and a new inhabitation of the Holy Spirit through sacramental grace. Therefore the Fathers acknowledge that in those regenerated and illuminated through baptism the Holy Spirit inhabits in a certain manner in which He does not dwell in catechumens, although they would already have been justified; and in which He did not dwell even in the saints of the Old Testament. In the sacrament of Chrism, moreover, there is a certain continuation of the mission of the Holy Spirit first made to the disciples at the first Pentecost of the New Testament. In sacred Ordination there is a mission of the Holy Spirit from the principal end indeed of the sacrament unto priestly power, but by this very fact also unto inhabitation through the corresponding sacramental grace. From this foundation of the diversity of degrees and gifts we can explain the inhabitation in the saints of the Old Testament and reconcile certain sayings of the holy Fathers, from which the inhabitation of the Spirit and the adoption as sons for the Old Testament seemed to Petavius to have to be simply denied.

2°. It is true indeed that the mission and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit pertain to the New Testament, to the law of grace, in the same way as grace pertains to the New Testament, and not to the Old, if this is regarded precisely as the Sinaitic economy, which was « generating unto servitude » and only a « pedagogue » unto the law of grace (Gal. III. 24.; IV. 24.); but it is plainly false that in the time of the Old Testament grace pertaining to the proper character of the New Testament was not prepared and given to those hoping in Christ in view of the future merits of Christ; and therefore it must also be entirely conceded that the Holy Spirit was sent by an invisible mission and inhabited the saints of the Old Testament ². Likewise it is true that grace in the Old Testament, as it were, granted beforehand before the price actually paid and before the merit completed by the sacrifice of the cross, was, generally speaking, more sparing and less universal than after the merit now actually completed; and therefore, speaking universally too, it can be said that the communication and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, according to the measure of the gifts of grace, was of a lower degree than in the New Testament. In particular, there was certainly not there a mission and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit through regeneration and consecration by sacramental grace ex opere operato. But we cannot concede that the distinction consists in this, that in the Old Testament only the effects of the Holy Spirit were in the saints, but the person itself, that is, the Holy Spirit Himself, was not joined to them οὐσιωδῶς, as He inhabits the saints of the New Testament.

Petavius, l. VIII. c. 7. n. 1-11, tries to persuade that, from the opinion of the holy Fathers that is scarcely not universal, the distinction is this, that « before the advent and death of Christ the Holy Spirit was in the saints κατ' ἐνέργειαν, i. e. only as far as operation, but afterwards οὐσιωδῶς, i. e. substantially ». Hence, from that opinion of his mentioned above, that not created grace but the substance of the Holy Spirit joined to us is the formal cause of adoptive filiation, he further judges that, according to the doctrine of the Fathers, the saints of the Old Testament were not adoptive sons of God. All of which indeed seems very difficult.

Truly, if the discourse be of the common opinion of the Fathers, neither Petavius nor anyone else has demonstrated that they acknowledged any other real distinction between the inhabitation in the saints of the Old and of the New Testament besides that which we have stated, according to the diversity of degrees and according to the properties and measure of the gifts. « When on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit filled the disciples of the Lord (doubtless οὐσιωδῶς, according to Petavius's expression), it was not the beginning of the gift but the addition of liberality; since the patriarchs and the prophets and the priests and all the saints who were in the earlier times were quickened by the sanctification of the same Holy Spirit.... so that the power of the charisms was always the same, although the measure of the gifts was not always the same » s. Leo M. serm. II. de Pentec. c. 3. Augustine asks how that is to be understood which is said in Io. VII. 39: the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified? « How is it understood, unless because that certain giving or mission of the Holy Spirit was to be after the glorification of Christ, of a kind which had never been before? For it was not that there was none before, but it had not been of such a kind. For if before the Holy Spirit was not given, filled with whom did the prophets speak?... since also of John the Baptist it was said: he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb; and Zacharias his father is found filled with the Spirit... and Mary with the Holy Spirit... Simeon and Anna with the Holy Spirit ». Will Petavius say that in all these not the person itself is understood but only the effect of the Holy Spirit, and that on the day of Pentecost at last the person itself was first sent? But Augustine knows nothing of this distinction, but recalls solely the diversity of gifts: « that giving or donation or mission of the Holy Spirit (compared therefore with the givings or donations or missions of the Holy Spirit which were even before) was to have a certain property of its own in that very advent, such as was never before; for nowhere do we read that men spoke with tongues which they did not know, the Holy Spirit coming upon them, as was then done » Aug. Trin. IV. n. 29. See Athanas. contra Arian. or. IV. al. V. n. 29. (whom Petavius himself cites n. 9. and tries in vain to explain in another sense); Hieronym. ad Hedib. q. 9. etc.

Among the Fathers on whose testimonies Petavius leans, Athanasius or. 2. contr. Arian. (in the Maurine edition or. I. n. 47. 50. T. I. p. 451. 455.); Chrysostom in Act. hom. 4. n. 2.; in Rom. hom. 14. n. 2. 3.; Augustine in Ps. 81. n. 1.; serm. de tempore 126. 182. 185. (which sermons, moreover, are all now rejected as spurious into the appendix) say absolutely nothing other than that we could not receive the Holy Spirit except through the merits of Jesus Christ, that He was communicated more abundantly to the Apostles than to the prophets, that adoptive filiation does not pertain to the synagogue, to the Jewish people, namely by force of the old law, but to the grace of the New Testament, which grace itself, however, was not wanting in the time of the Old Testament. Gregory Nazianzen, or. 41. al. 44. n. 11., by no means « expressly proclaims », as Petavius says, that before Christ the Holy Spirit was communicated « only as far as operation, now however οὐσιωδῶς, i. e. substantially ». But Gregory's words are these. « The Holy Spirit always indeed was and is and will be... He was therefore always participated, not participating; perfecting, not perfected by another; filling, not filled; sanctifying, not sanctified; deifying, not deified ³, Himself always one both with Himself and with those with whom He is numbered (with the Father and the Son).... goodness itself and the fount of goodness, the right, principal Spirit (Ps. 50.)... distributing graces, the Spirit of adoption, of truth, of wisdom, of understanding, of knowledge, of piety, of counsel, of fortitude, of fear, as they are enumerated (Is. XI. 12)... This Spirit first indeed worked (ἐνήργει) in the angelic and heavenly powers, and in as many as are first after God and beside God; for not from elsewhere do they have perfection and illumination and a change to malice difficult or impossible, than from the Holy Spirit; then in the patriarchs and prophets, of whom some saw God in images or knew Him, others also foresaw future things in their mind, sealed with the Holy Spirit ⁴... afterwards in the disciples of Christ, for I pass over Christ, to whom He was present not as working (οὐχ ὡς ἐνεργοῦν) but as an equal accompanying; and in these (the disciples of Christ) in a threefold way, as much as they could receive, and according to the three times ».

He distinguishes then the time before the passion of the Lord, where the Spirit was present to the Apostles for driving out diseases and demons; after the death and resurrection, when Christ breathed upon the Apostles saying: receive the Holy Spirit; finally third, « there is today's division of fiery tongues (namely on this day of Pentecost, when Gregory delivered the oration), which we celebrate. First obscurely, second more expressly, today however more perfectly, no longer present by operation as before (in healing diseases, and in the breathing of Christ); but substantially, as one might say, He came and converses. For it was fitting that, after the Son had conversed with us corporally, He (the Spirit) also should appear corporally » ⁵. Truly Nazianzen says nothing about a different mode of sanctification through the Holy Spirit in the Old and in the New Testament; rather he indicates that this mode was always the same through participation of the Holy Spirit; that the operation of the same Spirit was in the angels, in the patriarchs of the Old Testament, and in the Apostles. Then he declares the difference not between the communications in the Old and in the New Testament, but between the two earlier communications made to the Apostles for expelling demons and for remitting sins; and the third on the day of Pentecost. He says the earlier ones were such that the Spirit was present by operation, the other that in a certain way He came οὐσιωδῶς and conversed with the Apostles; but this he declares himself to mean, that the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost came σωματικῶς, i. e. in corporeal appearance and by a visible mission. He distinguishes therefore between the mission manifested only by subsequent effects, and the visible mission in fiery tongues. All of which certainly has nothing to do with the denial of the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in the just of the Old Testament.

Rupert the Abbot of the XIIth century, whose words Petavius cites from l. I. cc. 11. 18. 19.; l. II. c. 6. de glorificatione Trin. et process. Sancti Spiritus (Opp. T. III.), we could pass over; for however he may be understood, it will never be demonstrated from him that the opinion which we attack was the opinion of the holy Fathers. But let us see what he finally teaches. He says that there is a threefold procession of the Holy Spirit ad extra: unto creation, unto charisms freely given, namely unto prophecy, unto the remission of sins. « Before the advent of the Son of God He was given indeed in the distribution of graces (of prophecy etc.), but not also in the remission of sins ». How is that now to be understood? For plainly it is evidently false that in the Old Testament no sins were remitted, or that they were not remitted through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Rupert's sense is gathered from the three things which he teaches there. a) « Without the Holy Spirit given, no man was ever able or will be able to be saved » c. 18. Then b) not only to men living in the New Testament but also to the just who died in the Old Testament the Spirit was given in the remission of sins only when the passion of Christ was at length completed. « When Christ says: for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you, He wishes it to be understood as if He had said: for if I do not pass through the passion of death out of this world, neither to you, nor to the more ancient ones, nor to those who are to come after you, will the Holy Spirit be given according to this gift, which is the remission of sins » l. 19. Finally c) this donation of the Holy Spirit proper to the New Testament, which is unto the remission of sins, he proves from the words of Christ: « after He went away, returning and standing in the midst of His disciples, breathing and saying: receive the Holy Spirit, He immediately added: whose sins you shall remit, they are remitted to them » c. 19. Rupert therefore does not say that in the Old Testament no one's guilt was remitted, or that this was done otherwise than with « the Holy Spirit given », but he says the contrary. But after the merit of Christ actually completed, the Holy Spirit is given in the remission of sins in a twofold way in which He was not given before; first, unto the remission of all the privations of good and of the punishments which followed from sin; thus He was not given except after the completed passion and death of Christ, even to the more ancient just, who until then were exiled from the homeland of the beatific vision of God cf. S. Th. I. dist. 15. q. 5. a. 2. ad 2. Then the Holy Spirit is given in the New Testament to the Apostles and their successors unto the power of remitting sins, and so unto the remission of sins as it were active. But what has this to do with the matter of which we treat?

Of all the Fathers brought forward by Petavius, there remains one, s. Cyril, in Io. T. IV. p. 474. 475.; Thesaur. T. V. P. I. p. 104-106. I confess that Cyril alone, if he is read separately without a prudent comparison and some of his words are taken more strictly, seems to say that which Petavius urges as the common opinion of the Fathers. Nevertheless, from the hermeneutical canon demonstrated by us elsewhere (Tract. de Tradit. th. XV.), that we should not easily interpret the Fathers in a sense alien to the common doctrine, the context of the holy Doctor is to be inspected more deeply; especially since, if the individual words of the cited places were pressed too hard, a not inconsiderably absurd sense would follow. The context is this. « After the Holy Spirit fled and flew away from humanity (nature corrupted through the sin of the first parent), He who could conform and preserve us unto the divine character, the Savior again bestows Him upon us, restoring us unto that primitive dignity, and transforming us into His own image (μετατύπτων εἰς εἰκόνα τὴν ἑαυτοῦ)... But if the matter stands thus, how was it in the prophets? Let us consider therefore, that in the holy prophets there was a certain abundant, as it were, irradiation and pre-illumination of the Spirit, which could lead unto the comprehension of future things and the knowledge of hidden things; but in those who believe in Christ we trust that not simply an illumination, which is from the Spirit, but the Spirit Himself inhabits and dwells. Whence we are rightly called temples of God, although no one of the holy prophets was ever called a temple of God ». Evidently here he establishes a distinction between the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in the faithful of the New Testament and the irradiation in the holy prophets of the Old Testament. But this he urges and confirms more strongly by the comparison of the faithful regenerated by the baptism of Christ with John the Baptist, from the words of Christ: « there has not arisen among those born of women a greater than John the Baptist, but he who is lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he » Matth. XI. 11. The kingdom of heaven, he says, « is the donation of the Holy Spirit according to that: the kingdom of heaven is within you; for the Spirit inhabits in us through faith ». Whence although in perfection of justice there was not among those born of women a greater than John, yet there was wanting to him a certain mode of sanctity, which is through regeneration from water and the Holy Spirit; and to that extent the lesser among the baptized and, through the laver of regeneration, born of God, is greater than John born of woman. « Great indeed was the blessed Baptist, most outstanding in every virtue even to the very limits, so that there was nothing more, reaching unto the justice which is in us; but although he was so, yet he asked Christ saying: I ought (χρείαν ἔχω) to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? You see how, although perfect, as far as fell to men and to those born of women, he asks to be recreated (ἀναπλασθῆναι) in a certain way and regenerated through the Holy Spirit? You see how he professes something greater in the regenerated, when he says that he still needs this... Christ says therefore that even the least of the kingdom of heaven is greater than John himself, that is, even one recently baptized and not yet outstanding in works, by this alone, inasmuch as the blessed Baptist was born of woman, but this one is born of God according to the Scripture, and is made a partaker of the divine nature, having the Holy Spirit inhabiting in himself, and is called the temple of God... When therefore the divine Evangelist tells us: for the Spirit was not yet (given), because Jesus was not yet glorified (Io. VII. 39), the entire inhabitation of the Holy Spirit in men, complete in all respects ⁶ let us gather that he signifies ». Thus in Io. l. c. and in the same sentences in Thesaur. l. c.

We note the following. a) Nowhere does Cyril say that in the Old Testament the Holy Spirit Himself did not inhabit the sanctified. Rather b) in these very places he teaches the contrary. « Since the Baptist was a partaker of the Holy Spirit (Πνεύματος Ἁγίου μέτοχος ὢν) and was filled with prophetic grace even from his mother's womb.... he strove to confirm his disciples in faith in Christ the Savior » Thesaur. p. 102. « It is easy to understand that the kingdom of heaven was prepared even for the ancient fathers, inasmuch as they are conformed to the image of His Son (Rom. VIII. 29), and therefore foreknown by God and the Father » ibid. p. 106. Likewise he proves the inhabitation of the Spirit and the transformation through the Spirit at once from 1. Reg. X. 6.: « the Spirit of the Lord shall leap upon you and you shall be changed into another man », which pertains to the Old Testament, and in the same context from 2. Cor. III. 18.: « we are transformed into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord », which was said for the New Testament. Cyr. in Io. p. 919. 920.

But now, Cyril acknowledges no conformity to the image of the Son, such as is named in Rom. VIII. 29., except through the inhabiting Holy Spirit; rather he judges that the image of the Son named by the Apostle is the Holy Spirit Himself, and that thus, with the Holy Spirit inhabiting the just and, as it were, imprinting a seal, they are conformed to Christ. « The pure and natural likeness of the Son is the Spirit, to which we also, configured through sanctification, are configured unto the very form of God... But that the true likeness of the Son is the Spirit, hear Paul writing: whom He foreknew and predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son (Rom. VIII. 29) » Dialog. VII. T. V. p. 639. See the rest described by us (above p. 578. sq.). Certainly therefore Cyril thought that the Holy Spirit Himself inhabited the patriarchs and the prophets and John the Baptist unto sanctification and the impression of the image of the Son.

Nevertheless c) Cyril acknowledges a special mission and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit through the regeneration and consecration of the faithful in baptism, of which we spoke a little before, and according to this special consecration he thinks that only the saints of the New Testament are called the temple of God. Whence in the comparison of the just of the Old Testament and of those regenerated by baptism in the New Testament, Cyril does not simply deny that the person of the Holy Spirit inhabited the ancient just, nor does he simply deny to them the dignity of the sons of adoption; but nevertheless he acknowledges in those regenerated through the baptism of Christ a special dignity of grace and a special title unto that inhabitation and adoption. Which at length is reduced to the distinction of inhabitation according to the diverse degrees, and according to the diverse not only measure but also property of graces and gifts; but it does not pertain to establishing a distinction of conjunction through operation alone for the time of the Old Testament, and of inhabitation according to substance for the economy of the New Testament. Cf. S. Th. I. dist. 15. q. 5. a. 2.

THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE CHARITY OF GOD AND THE COMMUNICATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT BE WITH US ALL. AMEN.