the works." It is in the light of passages such as these that we must interpret the word "similiter" (poiws) in John V, 19: "Quaecunque enim ille [Pater] fecerit, haec et Filius similiter facit For what things soever he [the Father] doth, these the Son also doth in like manner." "Non ait," comments St. Augustine, "quaecunque facit Pater, facit et Filius alia similia, sed: Quæcunque Pater facit, haec eadem et Filius facit similiter. Quae ille, haec et ipse: mundum Pater, mundum Filius, mundum Spiritus Sanctus-[The Catholic faith] does not say that the Father made something, and the Son made some other similar thing; but what the Father made, that also the Son made in like manner. What the One made, that the Other also. The Father [made] the world, the Son [made] the world, the Holy Ghost [made] the world." 4

This argument is corroborated by the manner in which Sacred Scripture appropriates one and the same operation now to the Father, now to the Son, now to the Holy Ghost, and then again to the Godhead as such. This procedure is intelligible only on the supposition that the Three Divine Persons are absolutely identical in essence and operation. St. Augustine convincingly argues: "Si enim alia per Patrem, alia per Filium, iam non omnia per Patrem nec omnia per Filium. Si autem omnia per Patrem et omnia per Filium, [ergo] eadem per Patrem, quae per Filium. Aequalis est ergo Patri

Tract. in Ioan., 20, 3 sqq.

5 Supra, pp. 29 sq.

Filius et inseparabilis est operatio Patris et Filii - For if some things were made by the Father, and some by the Son, then all things were not made by the Father, nor all things by the Son; but if all things were made by the Father, and all things by the Son, then the same things were made by the Father and by the Son. The Son, therefore, is equal with the Father, and the working of the Father and the Son is indivisible." "

2. THE ARGUMENT FROM TRADITION.—The procedure of deducing the unity of the Divine Nature from the unity of the divine operations, and vice versa, was well known to the Fathers.

Thus St. Cyril of Alexandria tersely observes, that "to attribute individual operations to each separate Divine Person, is tantamount to saying that there are three separate and distinct Gods." A considerable number of the Fathers condense the dogma into a single brief phrase, which, after the manner of a mathematical formula, expresses the whole teaching of the Church in the tersest possible manner, viz.: "Pater per Filium in Spiritu Sancto omnia operatur." This formula duly stresses every essential point of the dogma: the Trinity of the Divine Persons, their succession as to origin, their identity of Nature, and the unity of their operation. The Patristic argument is drawn out in detail by Petavius." It is so overwhelming that we can brush aside as irrelevant and trivial the objection which some writers base on the custom of certain Fathers of representing the Three

8

6 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, I, Haddan's translation, p. 13.

6, 12.

7 Contr. Nestor, IV, 2.

8 Cfr. St. Athanasius, Ep. ad Se

rap., 1, 28. (Migne, P. G., XXVI, 595).

9 De Trinit., IV, 15.

Divine Persons as taking counsel with one another, as agreeing upon some common resolve or decree, or as co-operating in some common cause. St. Cyril of Jerusalem "makes a distinction between the divine operations ad extra, appropriating them to the Three Divine Persons separately, and thus seems to posit a certain scission in the immanent life of the Godhead. But his utterances must be interpreted in accord with the law of Appropriations, especially since he does not consistently carry out the distinction." 10

3. THE THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.-The unity of operation in the Blessed Trinity is really but a simple inference from the dogma that the Three Divine Persons are absolutely identical in essence.

Philosophy teaches that "Operari sequitur esse, i. e., naturam." If the nature of a thing is its "principle of operation," it follows that the number of principles of operation, and their specific manifestations (e. g., intellect and freewill in spiritual natures), depend on the number of active essences or natures. "Tot operationes, quot naturae." As we must distinguish in Christ, the Godman, a twofold operation, the one divine, the other human, corresponding to His double nature, so, conversely, if the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are not three natures, but one, they can have but one common operatio ad extra. To assert that the divine operation is not one, is to teach Tritheism. Had they not harbored Tritheistic conceptions of the Godhead, Raymund Lully and Günther could never have taught that each Divine Person operates separately ad extra. Though from unity of Nature to unity of

10 Jos. Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, Vol. II, 2nd ed., p. 126.

operation in the Blessed Trinity is just as easy a step as from a duality of nature to Dyotheletism in Christ, (because a multiplication of natures always entails a multiplication of operations), the Church did not content herself with laying down the general principle, but by an express definition condemned in advance Günther's error that "When God reveals Himself to His creatures, He must reveal Himself hypostatically, i. e., each separate divine operation must be attributed as opus operatum to a separate Divine Person, to the exclusion of the other two." 11 Günther's lapse into Tritheism convincingly shows how false was the view he took of the relation of the divine operations to the different Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Any attempt to go beyond mere Appropriation is sure to result in a scission of the Divine Essence.

READINGS:-*Franzelin, De Deo Trino, thes. 12.- Kleutgen, De Ipso Deo, 1. II, qu. 5, cap. 2, art. 3.—Hurter, Compendium Theol. Dogmat., t. II, thes. 117.- Kleutgen, Theologie der Vorzeit, Vol. I, 2nd ed., pp. 379 sqq., Münster 1867.- H. Schell, Das Wirken des dreieinigen Gottes, Mainz 1885.- Petavius, De Trinit., IV, 15.

11 Günther, Vorschule zur spekulativen Theologie, 2nd ed., Vol. II, p. 369, Wien 1848.

CHAPTER III

THE UNITY OF MUTUAL INEXISTENCE, OR

PERICHORESIS

I. DEFINITION OF PERICHORESIS. By the Perichoresis of the Three Divine Persons we mean their mutual Interpenetration and Inexistence by virtue of their Consubstantiality, their immanent Processions, and the divine Relations.

In Greek the technical term for this mutual Inexistence is περιχώρησις, or, still more emphatically, συμπεριxwpnois. The Latins call it circumincessio, or, as the later Scholastics wrote it, circuminsessio. Both the Greek and the Latin terms designate exactly the same thing, but they reflect somewhat different conceptions thereof. “While the Greeks conceived the [Divine] Processions more after the manner of a temporal succession along a straight line," says Oswald,1 "the [later] Latins pictured it to themselves after the manner of juxtaposition in space, as extension in a plain. . . . This is why the Latins derived their technical term from circuminsidere, i. e., to sit or dwell in one another, while the Greeks got theirs from πepixwρeiv, which means to go or move within one another." We have already called attention to a similar divergency in the formulas expressing the Procession of the Holy Ghost, with regard to which the 1 Trinitätslehre, p. 191, Paderborn 1888.