Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« 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.