minishes in proportion to the value or dignity of its object; which explains the ennobling influence of the love of God as the supreme good, and the degrading effects of sinful love. St. Thomas describes the difference between understanding and willing with his usual clearness as follows: "There is this difference between the intellect and the will, that the intellect is actuated because the object known is in the intellect according to its likeness. The will, on the other hand, becomes actuated, not because it contains within itself any likeness of the object willed, but because it has a certain inclination towards that object." 23

c) In respect of the second mode of procession, i. e., Spiration, it must first of all be observed that the Holy Ghost, too, is a living Person, who derives His origin from a living Spirator; that He has His essence by a vital process from the Divine Substance itself; and, lastly, that by virtue of His consubstantiality (dμoovσía) He is a perfectly adequate likeness of the two Divine Persons by whom He is breathed. The fourth and discriminative mark of generation - namely an immanent essential tendency or inclination to produce a being of like nature does not, however, apply to Spiration. For since Spiration is not understanding but love, it lacks that assimilative tendency which is the essential note of generation. Consequently Spiration is not Generation.24

23" Haec est differentia inter intellectum et voluntatem, quod intellectus sit in actu per hoc, quod res intellecta est in intellectu secundum suam similitudinem. Voluntas autem fit in actu, non per hoc quod aliqua similitudo voliti sit in voluntate, sed ex hoc quod voluntas habet quandam inclinationem in rem volitam." S. Theol., 1a, qu. 27, art. 4.

24 Cfr. S. Thom., De Pot., qu. 2,

art. 4, ad 7: "Cum Filius procedat per modum verbi, ex ipsa ratione suae processionis habet, ut procedat in similem speciem generantis, et sic quod sit Filius et eius processio generatio dicatur. Non autem Spiritus Sanctus hoc habet ratione suae processionis, sed magis ex proprietate divinae naturae: quia in Deo non potest esse aliquid, quod non sit Deus; et sic ipse amor divinus Deus

d) From all of which it is plain that there can be in the Godhead but one Son and one Holy Ghost. The Logos-Son, as the adequately exhaustive Word of the Father, utters the Father's infinite substance so perfectly that the generative power of the Paternal Intellect completely exhausts itself, and there is no room left for a second, third, etc., Son or Logos. Similarly, Father and Son mutually love each other in a manner so absolutely perfect that the Holy Ghost represents the infinite, and therefore exhaustive, utterance of their mutual love. This cuts the ground from under the feet of the Macedonians, who sophistically charged the Catholic dogma of the Trinity with absurdity by alleging that it implies the existence of a divine grandfather, a divine grandchild, and so forth.25

4. TWO SPECULATIVE PROBLEMS.-There is a subtle and purely speculative question as to what are the objects of notional, in contradistinction to essential, understanding and love. Is the Logos merely the utterance of the divine self-knowledge? or is He also the expression of God's knowledge of His creatures? And further: Is the Holy Ghost the personal expression of God's love for Himself only? or is He also the expression of God's love for the created universe?

a) The problem involved in the first question must be solved along these lines: If it is true that all essential knowledge, and hence the very nature of God, would cease to be if God had no divine self-comprehension

est, inquantum quidem divinus, non inquantum amor."

25 Cfr. S. Thom., S. Theol., 18, qu. 30, art. 2.

(cognitio comprehensiva sui) embracing His Essence and attributes, or no knowledge of all the possibles (scientia simplicis intelligentiae),26 among which must be reckoned all created things before their realization; then the notional cognition of the Father must have its essential and necessary object chiefly in these two kinds of divine knowledge. For whatever is essential and absolutely necessary to the very being of the Godhead, cannot play a purely subordinate and unessential part in the generation of the Logos. Theologians all admit this principle in the abstract; but in explaining and interpreting it there is no real agreement among the different schools beyond the proposition that the Logos proceeds from the notional cognition of the primary and formal object of the Divine Intellect, viz.: the Essence and attributes of God.27

Extreme views on the subject were held by Scotus and Gregory of Valentia. Scotus limits the notional understanding by which the Father begets the Logos, strictly to the absolute essence of God. According to Gregory of Valentia it includes as a necessarily co-operating factor the contingent universe with all its creatures. Both are wrong. Scotus forgets that one of the essential factors in the production of the Logos is a knowledge of all possibles as well as of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Gregory of Valentia does not distinguish with sufficient clearness between. God's necessary and His free knowledge. The contingent and accidental world of creatures, which undoubtedly forms one of the objects of divine omniscience, must assuredly be reflected in the Hypostatic Concep

20 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attri butes, pp. 329 sqq.

27 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, op. cit., pp. 338 sq.

tion or Logos, as object of the "scientia libera"; but in such manner that the adequacy and perfection of the Logos would suffer no impairment even if the created universe did not exist. Indeed it is through the eternally pre-existing Logos that all existing things were made.28

Scotus, on principle, excludes from the paternal act of Generation all creatural being, including the purely possible. Puteanus holds that Paternity, Vasquez that Paternity and Filiation, and Turrianus that, besides these, passive Spiration is comprised as a supplementary object in that notional act by which the Father utters Himself adequately in His "Word." The Thomists extend the scope of God's notional understanding to the whole realm of His essential knowledge. St. Augustine taught that the essence of the Logos comprises precisely the same wisdom that is comprehended within the essential knowledge of the Triune God,29 and St. Thomas expressly declares: "The Father, by understanding Himself, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all other things contained within His knowledge, conceives the Word, and thus the entire Trinity and every created being are uttered in the Word." 30 The Angelic Doctor, as Billuart 31 points out, in this passage does not refer to the actually existing creatures, but only to the purely possibles (as objects of the scientia simplicis intelligentiae), in as much as they are reflected in the world of divine ideas as necessary, not as free objects of divine knowledge. As free objects of divine knowledge they are, de facto, also contained

28 Cfr. John I, 3, 10.

29 Supra, p. 203.

"

30 Pater enim intelligendo se et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum et omnia alia, quae eius scientia continentur, concipit Verbum, ut sic tota

Trinitas Verbo dicatur,' et etiam omnis creatura." S. Theol., 1a, qu. 34, art. 1, ad 3.

81 De SS. Trinitatis Mysterio, diss. 5, art. 3.

in the "Word of God," but only concomitanter et per accidens. Quia Pater principaliter dicit se," observes St. Thomas, "generando Verbum suum, et ex consequenti dicit creaturas [existentes], ideo principaliter et quasi per se Verbum refertur ad Patrem, sed ex consequenti et quasi per accidens refertur ad creaturam; accidit enim Verbo, ut per ipsum creatura dicatur - Since the Father, in begetting His Word, utters Himself principally, and the [existing] creatures incidentally, the Word is principally, and as it were per se, referred to the Father, and only consequently, and as it were by accident, to the creature; for it is only by accident that the creature is uttered through the Word." 32

St. Augustine says: "The Father spake nothing that He spake not in the Son. For by speaking in the Son what He was about to do through the Son, He begat the Son Himself by whom He should make all things.” 33 This passage does not contradict what we have asserted, because the archetype and exemplar of the universe about to be created was eternally present in the Logos as the living concept of creation.34

Another difficulty has been formulated thus: The Logos owes His existence to the generative knowledge of the Father; consequently He cannot be conceived as existing prior to the act of paternal Generation. Similarly, the Person of the Holy Ghost does not exist logically without the Father and the Son, and consequently

32 S. Thom., De Veritate, qu. 4,

art. 4.

88" Nihil dixit Deus, quod non dixit in Filio. Dicendo enim in Filio, quod facturus erat per Filium, ipsum Filium genuit, per quem faceret omnia." Tract. in Ioa., 21, n. 4. Browne's translation, Homi

lies on the Gospel according to St. John, Vol. I, p. 327.

34 For a more detailed development of this thought we must refer the reader to the dogmatic treatise on God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural, which will form the third volume of the present se ries of dogmatic text-books.