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Numeric unity of nature and existence makes the three persons perfectly
equal. And unity of existence means unity of wisdom, love, and
power. Thus, to illustrate, the three angles of an equilateral
triangle are rigorously equal. Hence, in God, to generate is not
more perfect than to be generated. The eternal generation does not
cause the divine nature of the Son, but only communicates it. This
divine nature, uncreated in the Father, is no less uncreated in the
Son and in the Spirit. The Father is not a cause on which the Son
and the Spirit would depend. He is rather a principle, from which,
without dependence, the Son and the Spirit proceed, in the numerical
identity of the infinite nature communicated to them.
Again to illustrate. In the equilateral triangle we have an order,
of origin indeed, but not of causality. The first angle drawn is not
cause, but principle, of the second, and the principle also, by the
second, of the third. Each angle is equally perfect with the others.
The illustration is deficient, since you may start your triangle with
any angle you choose. But illustrations, however deficient, are
useful to the human intellect, which does not act unless imagination
cooperates.
This perfect equality of the divine persons expresses, in supreme
fashion, the life of knowledge and love. Goodness, the higher it
is, the more is it self-diffusive. The Father gives His infinite
goodness to the Son and, by the Son, to the Holy Spirit. Hence
of the three divine persons each comprehends the other with the same
infinite truth and each knows the other with the same essential act of
understanding. Of their love the same must be said. Each embraces
the other with infinite tenderness, since in each the act of love is
identified with infinite good fully possessed and enjoyed.
The three persons, purely spiritual, are thus open to possession one
by the other, being distinguished only by their mutual relations. The
Father's entire personality consists in His subsistent and
incommunicable relation to the Son, the ego of the Son is His
relation to the Father, the ego of the Holy Spirit in His relation
to the first two persons.
Thus each of the three persons, since He is what He is by His
relationship to the others, is united to the others precisely by what
distinguishes Him from them. An illustration: recall again the three
angles in a triangle. How fertile is that fundamental principle that
in God everything is identically one and the same except where we find
opposition by relation!
The three divine persons, lastly, are the exemplar of the life of
charity. Each of them speaks to the others: All that is mine is
thine, all that is thine is mine. [565] The union of souls in
charity is but a reflection from the union of the divine persons:
"That all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee,
that they also be one in Us." [566] As Father and Son are
one by nature, so the faithful are one by grace, which is a
participation in the divine nature.
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