SECTION 2

GENERATION BY MODE OF UNDERSTANDING AND SPIRATION BY MODE OF WILL

I. THE GENERATION OF THE SON BY MODE OF UNDERSTANDING.-According to the unanimous teaching of Fathers and theologians the proposition that the Father generates His Divine Son by mode of understanding, while not an article of faith, is a sure theological conclusion which is firmly rooted in Sacred Scripture, and cannot be denied without temerity.1

a) The Bible reveals the Second Person of the Divine Trinity not only as "Filius unigenitus," (i. e., the Onlybegotten Son), but likewise as "Verbum" or "Logos" (i. e., the Word of God). The only meaning we can attach to the term "Verbum Dei" is: Immanent terminus of the knowledge of the Father. Consequently divine Generation must signify the knowledge of the Father bringing forth His Son by an act of the understanding. The purely intellectual character of the act of divine Generation may also be inferred from those Scriptural texts which represent the Son of God as the "image" of the Father," or as "begotten Wisdom." Like "Logos," these terms define the mode of generation

1 Prominent among those who denied it were Durandus and Hirscher. 2 Imago, εἰκών,

66

as purely spiritual, or, more specifically, as intellectual. It is in this sense that the Fathers, so far as they touch upon the subject at all, interpret the Scriptural teaching concerning the "Logos." Thus St. Gregory of Nazianzus tersely declares: "The Son is called Logos, because His relation to the Father is the same as that of the [immanent] word to the intellect." And St. Basil: Why Word? In order that it may become manifest that it proceedeth from the intellect. Why Word? Because it is the likeness of the Begetter, which in itself reflects the whole Begetter, even as our word [concept] reflects the likeness of our whole thought." St. Augustine goes into the matter even more deeply. He says: Tamquam seipsum dicens Pater genuit Verbum sibi aequale per omnia; non enim seipsum integre perfecteque dixisset, si aliquid minus aut amplius esset in eius Verbo, quam in ipso - Accordingly, as though uttering Himself, the Father begat the Word equal to Himself in all things; for He would not have uttered Himself wholly and perfectly, if there were in His Word anything more or less than in Himself.” 5

66

4

b) A theological reason may be found in the circumstance that the Processions in the Godhead are only conceivable as purely spiritual and immanent vital processes. God is a pure Spirit, and there are but two known modes of purely spiritual operation, i. e., understanding and willing. Our own mind, which is in itself infecund and derives its knowledge of generation altogether from the realm of organic life, can scarcely form an idea of the eminent fecundity of

3 Or. 30, apud Migne, P. G., XXXVI, 129.

14,

4 Hom., 16, 3.

St. August., De Trinitate, XV, 23. Haddan's translation, p.

407. Many additional Patristic texts in Petavius, De Trinitate, II, 11; VI, 5 sqq.

Cfr. S. Thom., S. Theol., 1a, qu. 27, art. 1.

the Infinite Intellect, and is consequently inclined to conceive the operation of the divine understanding and will as something exclusively essential and absolute. But once assured by Revelation of the existence of two Processions within the Godhead (generatio and spiratio), we cannot but connect the one with the intellect and the other with the will. Now we know that divine Generation depends on the intellect rather than the will, because the Son of God has been revealed to us as "Logos."

This immanent process in the Godhead naturally points to the most perfect analogue which the Blessed Trinity has in the intellectual life of man. According to the teaching of St. Augustine,' man's self-knowledge corresponds to the process of divine Generation, his selflove to the process of divine Spiration. The human Ego unfolds itself, as it were, in three directions. First it duplicates itself in its self-consciousness and, without destroying the identity of the Ego-substance, opposes the thinking Ego to the Ego thought. The thinking Ego, as the terminus a quo, represents the begetting Father, while the thought Ego, as the terminus ad quem, illustrates the Son. Out of the reciprocal comprehension and interpenetration of both despite the opposition existing between them, they are not really distinct there spontaneously burgeons forth self-love, which, as the fundamental law of the human will, completes the immanent spiritual process and furnishes a faint image of the Holy Ghost. In thus trying to bring the mystery nearer to our understanding, we must not, however, lose sight of the fact that no real trinity is possible in the spiritual life of the creature, for the obvious reason that

7 Supra, p. 197.

the two intrinsic termini of self-knowledge and self-love are no hypostases but mere accidents.

2. THE SPIRATION OF THE HOLY GHOST BY MODE OF WILL.-In arguing that the Spiration of the Holy Ghost takes place by way of volition, some theologians content themselves with the argumentum exclusionis. The Generation of the Son having been assigned to the intellect, they say, there remains only the will to account for the origination of the Holy Ghost. These writers seem to overlook the fact that Revelation furnishes positive as well as negative proofs in support of this doctrine.

a) Under the so-called Law of Appropriations, not external operations can be predicated of any Divine Person except such as are intrinsically related to that particular Person's hypostatic character. This constitutes the Appropriations a sure criterion for determining the personal character of each of the Divine Persons. The attributes of omnipotence and creation are appropriated to the Father, for the reason that, in regard to productions ad intra, He is at the same time ȧpxǹ ävapxos and ἀρχὴ τῆς ἀρχῆς. In the same way the works of wisdom are appropriated to the Son, because He is Hypostatic Wisdom. If, then, the works of love are attributed to the Holy Ghost, it must be because He is love, because He proceeds from love as His principle or source; not, it is true, from that essential Love which is common to all three Divine Persons, but from the

11.

8 Cfr. S. Thom., Contr. Gent., IV,

9 Cfr. John IV, 8: "He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is charity."

reciprocal notional love of Father and Son, of which the immanent product is Hypostatic Charity, i. e., the Person of the Holy Ghost. Love being the fundamental affection of the will,10 the Holy Ghost must proceed from the Father and the Son by mode of will (per modum voluntatis).

b) The fact that Holy Scripture attributes the proper name "Spiritus" and the epithet "Sanctus" to the Holy Ghost, will serve to confirm this conclusion. As a personal appellation the term "Holy Spirit," like "Father" and "Son," must be taken in a relative sense, as "spiratus" or "spiratione productus." In its absolute sense "Spirit" is predicable of the Godhead as such. Cfr. John IV, 24: “God is a spirit.” But in a nature which, like God's, is purely spiritual, Spiration, as opposed to intellectual Generation, can signify nothing else than an act of the will. This becomes still clearer when we consider that Spiration is an analogous term derived from the realm of nature, in which breath or wind is indued with motive power, which in the spiritual realm has its counterpart in the operation of the will. If, therefore, the Holy Ghost is called "breath of God" (halitus Dei), the reason is that Father and Son breathe the Holy Ghost per modum voluntatis. Since "the emission of the breath from the heart, notably in the act of kissing, gives a most real expression to the tendency of love towards intimate and real communion of life and an outpouring of soul into soul," 11 we can well understand why St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux ventured to refer to the Holy Ghost as osculum Patris et Filii." 12

66

10 Cfr. S. Thom., Contr. Gent., IV, 19.

11 Scheeben. Cfr. Wilhelm-Scannell's Manual, I, 331-332.

12 Cfr. also St. Bonaventure: "Spirare in spiritualibus solius est amoris; et quoniam amor potest spirari recte et ordinate, et sic est