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 ».