Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« 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.