Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« 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.