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There are two notional acts: generation and active spiration. They
are called notional because they enable us to know the divine persons
better. Their explanation serves St. Thomas [555] as a kind
of final synthesis, a recapitulation of Trinitarian doctrine.
Here we find the most difficult of the objections raised against that
Augustinian conception which St. Thomas defends. The objection
runs thus: [556] The relation called paternity is founded on
active generation, hence cannot precede generation. But the
personality of the Father must be conceived as preceding active
generation, which is its operation. Hence the personality of the
Father which precedes generation, cannot be constituted by the
subsisting relation of paternity which follows generation.
In other words, we have here a vicious circle.
St. Thomas replies [557] as follows: "The personal
characteristic of the Father must be considered under two aspects:
first, as relation, and as such it presupposes the notional act of
generation. But, secondly, we must consider the personal
characteristic of the Father, not as relation, but as constitutive of
His own person, and thus as preceding the notional act of generation,
as person must be conceived as anterior to the person's action."
Hence it is clear that we have here no contradiction, no vicious
circle, because divine paternity is considered on the one hand as
anterior to the eternal act of generation, and on the other hand as
posterior to that same act. Let us look at illustrations in the
created order.
First, in human generation. At that one and indivisible instant when
the human soul is created and infused into its body, the ultimate
disposition of that body to receive that soul—does it precede or does
it follow the creation of the soul? It both precedes and follows. In
the order of material causality, it precedes. In all other orders of
causality, formal, efficient, and final, it follows. For it is the
soul which, in the indivisible moment of its creation, gives to the
human body its very last disposition to receive that soul. Hence,
from this point of view, that disposition is in the human body as a
characteristic deriving from the soul.
Secondly, in human understanding. The sense image precedes the
intellectual idea. Yet that same image, completely suited to express
the new idea, follows that idea. At that indivisible instant when the
thinker seizes an original idea, he simultaneously finds an appropriate
image to express that idea in the sense order.
Again, in human emotion. The sense emotion both precedes and follows
intellectual love, is both antecedent and consequent.
Again, still more strikingly, in human deliberation. At the
terminus of deliberation, in one and the same indivisible instant, the
last practical judgment precedes the voluntary choice, and still this
voluntary choice, by accepting this practical judgment, makes that
judgment to be the last.
Again, look at the marriage contract. The man's word of acceptance
is not definitively valid before it is accepted by the woman. The
man's consent thus precedes the woman's consent, and hence is not yet
actually related to her consent, which has not yet been given. Only
by her consent does his consent have actual matrimonial relation to his
wife.
Lastly, look again at the triangle. In an equilateral triangle, the
first angle drawn, though it is as yet alone, constitutes,
nevertheless, the geometric figure, but does not as yet have actual
relation to the two angles still undrawn.
In all these illustrations, there is no contradiction, no vicious
circle. Neither is there contradiction when we say that the divine
paternity constitutes the person of the Father anteriorly to the
eternal act of generation, although that same paternity, as actual
relation to the Son, presupposes the act of generation.
To proceed. These notional acts, generation and spiration, belong
to the persons. [558] They are not free acts, but necessary,
though the Father.
wills spontaneously to beget His Son, just as He spontaneously wills
to be God. And active spiration proceeds indeed from the divine
will, but from that will, not as free, but as natural and necessary,
like our own desire of happiness. [559] Generative power
belongs to the divine nature, as that nature is in the Father.
[560] "Spiratory power also belongs to the divine nature, but
as that nature is in both the Father and the Son. Thus the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one sole
principle: [561] there is but one Breather (Spirator):
though two are breathing (spirantes)." [562] .
If these two powers, generative and spiritave, belonged to the divine
nature as such, as common to the three persons, then each of the three
persons would generate and breathe, just as each of them knows and
loves. Hence the word of the Fourth Lateran Council: "It is not
the essence or nature which generates, but the Father by that
nature." [563] Hence the formula, [564] common among
Thomists: "The power of generating signifies directly (in recto)
the divine nature, indirectly (in obliquo) the relation of
paternity."
What is the immediate principle (principium quo) of the divine
processions? It is, so Thomists generally, the divine nature, as
modified by the relations of paternity and active spiration. To
illustrate. When Socrates begets a son, the principium quo of this
act of generation is indeed human nature, but that nature as it is in
Socrates. Were it otherwise, were human nature the principium quo,
as common to all men, then all men without exception would generate,
as they all desire happiness. Similarly, the surface of a triangle,
as far as it is in the first angle drawn, is communicated to the
second, and by the second to the third; but as it is in the third it
is no longer communicable. If it were, then we would have a fourth
person, and for the same reason a fifth, and thus on to infinity.
So much on Thomistic doctrine concerning the notional acts. It is in
perfect harmony with the foregoing chapters.
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