FIRST ARTICLE: WHETHER NOTIONAL ACTS ARE TO BE ATTRIBUTED TO THE PERSONS

State of the question. The difficulty arises 1. because, since God is not an accident, every act pertains to the essence and cannot therefore be attributed to the persons; 2. because St. Augustine seems to confirm this difficulty when he says: "Everything that is predicated of God is predicated either according to His substance or according to a relation, "[553] hence there is no place for notional acts; 3. because it is a property of an act to imply passivity or passion, but nothing passive is found in God, for example, passive generation is something imperfect and not to be attributed to God.

Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative, namely, notional acts are to be attributed to the persons; indeed it is necessary to do so in order to signify the order of origin in the different persons.

The first part of this reply is of faith according to the Scripture as we shall see immediately.

1. The testimony of Sacred Scripture is clear: "The Lord hath said to Me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee."[554] This text, as we have said above, is given added force by the New Testament:[555] "the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father."[556] Our Lord also said: "For from God I proceeded, and came."[557] The first part of this text is accepted in tradition as referring to the eternal procession. The councils quoted these words of Scripture in this sense. In the argument sed contra St. Thomas quotes the words of St. Fulgentius, "It is a property of the Father that He generated the Son."

2. The theological reason is as follows: In the divine persons distinction is attendant on the origin.[558] But origin cannot be conveniently designated except by some act. Therefore generation is properly attributed to the Father and spiration to the Father and the Son. This reasoning is clear, but the difficulties posed in the state of the question must still be solved.

Reply to the first difficulty. How is it that an act like generation, which is not a relation, does not pertain to the divine essence? The reply is that if this were an act ad extra, like creation, it would pertain to the essence, but generation and spiration are acts ad intra belonging to the procession of a person from a person and therefore are attributed to the persons.

Reply to the second difficulty. It is insisted that in God there is nothing besides essence and relation, and therefore the notional acts must be reduced to the relations. But to generate is more than a relation. The reply is rather profound. The notional acts are distinguished from the persons not really but only by reason, because if the idea of action is purified of all created modes, action within God (ad intra) is nothing more than a relation. In the created order transitive action, like active generation, is a movement or mutation as coming from the agent, and the passion is the movement as it is in the recipient. When we prescind from the motion, as no matter is in God, action implies nothing more than the order of origin, according to which it proceeds from a principle to the terminus. Since, then, there is no motion in God, active generation is nothing else than the condition or reference of the Father to the Son, and active spiration is nothing else than the condition or reference of the Father and the Son to the Holy Ghost. According to our method of knowing, which is based on the knowledge of creatures, we distinguish active generation from the Father and thus we have two terms, but there is no real distinction. It would be better to speak of quasi-active generation and quasi-passive generation, and also quasi-spiration. With regard to our concept of creation we must also purify the idea of transitive action since creation is without becoming because there is no preexisting subject. In creation we have causality properly so called, but the Father is not the cause of the Son but only His principle. St. Thomas says: "Creation is not a change (mutatio) except to our way of thinking... for if we prescind from motion and the pre-existing subject we have only the various references (habitudines) in the Creator and in the creature."[559]

So in the Trinity, if we remove the idea of motion, active generation implies nothing more than the order of origin.

Reply to the third difficulty. The other insistence still remains: How can there be in God passive generation, which implies imperfection? The reply is as follows: action, inasmuch as it implies the origin of motion, of itself results in passivity (passio), since action is motion as coming from the agent and motion as it is in a recipient. But such action is not found in the divine persons. When we prescind from the motion, we do not find that passivity (passiones) except in the grammatical sense and according to our method of signification, as when we say that the Father generates and that the Son is generated. This means that the Son is generated not according to a transition from passive potency to act as in human generation but in the sense that the entire uncreated divine nature and subsisting and unreceived being itself are communicated to the Son by the Father. Hence the expression, "The divine nature is communicated," is more proper than, "The Father produces the Son," since active production savors of causality, and passive production savors of the transition from potency to act.

In God, then, to be generated is not less perfect than to generate, and to be communicated is not less perfect than to communicate. Analogically, in the equilateral triangle the angle that is constructed first is not more perfect than the other two, and the three angles have a superficies which is numerically the same. In the beginning this superficies is the superficies of the angle that is first constructed and it is not communicated to this first angle; then this same superficies is communicated to the second angle and, if the second angle is equal to the first, the third angle is equal to the first two, and the third angle receives the same superficies, which is not caused in it but is communicated to it. It is wonderful that between things so remote as the Trinity and the triangle there should be an analogy so intelligible and so clear. In all created things we can find a trace of the Blessed Trinity.