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Person in general is a being which has intelligence and freedom. Its
classic definition was given by Boethius: Person is an individual
subject with an intellectual nature. [548] Hence person,
generally, is a hypostasis or a suppositum, and, specifically, a
substance endowed with intelligence. [549] Further, since
person signifies substance in its most perfect form, it can be found in
God, if it be stripped of the imperfect mode which it has in created
persons. Thus made perfect, it can be used analogically of God,
analogically, but still in its proper sense, in a mode that is
transcendent and pre-eminent. Further, since revelation gives us two
personal names, that is, the Father and the Son, the name of the
third person, of the Holy Spirit, must also be a personal name.
Besides, the New Testament, in many texts, represents the Holy
Spirit as a person. [550] .
Now, since there are three persons in God, they can be distinct one
from the other only by the three relations which are mutually opposed
(paternity, and filiation, and passive spiration): because, as has
been said, all else in God is identical.
These real relations, since they are subsistent (not accidental):
and are, on the other hand, incommunicable (being opposed): can
constitute the divine persons. In these subsistent relations we find
the two characteristics of person: substantiality and
incommunicability.
A divine person, then, according to St. Thomas and his school, is
a divine relation as subsistent. [551] Elsewhere the saint
gives the following definition: [552] A divine person is
nothing else than a relationally distinct reality, subsistent in the
divine essence.
These definitions explain why there are in God, speaking properly,
not metaphorically, three persons, three intellectual and free
subjects, though these three have the same identical nature, though
they understand by one and the same intellective act, though they love
one another by one and the same essential act, and though they freely
love creatures by one and the same free act of love.
Hence, while we say: The Father is God, the Son is God, the
Holy Spirit is God, we also say: The Father is not the Son, and
the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the
Son. In this sentence the verb "is" expresses real identity between
persons and nature, and the negation "is not" expresses the real
distinction of the persons from each other.
These three opposed relations, then, paternity, filiation, and
passive spiration, belong to related and incommunicable personalities.
Thus there cannot be in God many Fathers, but one only. Paternity
makes the divine nature incommunicable as Father, though that divine
nature can still be communicated to two other persons. To illustrate.
When you are constructing a triangle, the first angle, as first,
renders the entire surface incommunicable, though that same surface
will still be communicated to the other two angles; and the first angle
will communicate that surface to them without communicating itself,
while none of the three is opposed to the surface which they have in
common.
Here appears the profundity of Cajetan's [553] remark: the
divine reality, as it is in itself, is not something purely absolute
(signified by the word "nature") nor something purely relative
(signified by the name "person"): but something transcending both,
something which contains formally and eminently [554] that which
corresponds to the concepts of absolute and relative, of absolute
nature and relative person. Further, the distinction between nature
and the persons is not a real distinction, but a mental distinction
(virtual and minor): whereas the distinction between the persons is
real, by reason of opposition. On this last point theologians
generally agree with Thomists.
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