FOURTH ARTICLE: WHETHER IN GOD THE PROCESSION OF LOVE IS GENERATION

The reply is in the negative.

1. Because of faith. The Athanasian Creed tells us: "The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding."

2. Further explanation is found in the psychological theory, which on this point is sufficiently in accord with the teaching of faith. The Greek Fathers and St. Augustine declared that they were not able to discover a reason why the second procession was not generation like the first procession.

St. Thomas offers the following reason.

Generation, in its formal concept, takes place after the manner of assimilation of the begotten to the begetter, who produces something like himself in nature. But such assimilation is found in procession from the intellect, when the Father knows Himself and enunciates, but it is not found in the procession of the will. Therefore the procession of love cannot be called generation.

The major is evident. The minor is proved from the fact that the intellect assimilates a thing to itself when the truth is in the intellect by the likeness of the thing known. But the will by its nature is not an assimilative faculty or power; it is inclining and tends to a thing because the thing is good; it tends to the good as it is in things and not as it is represented in the mind. Thus the will does not produce by its own power a terminus like to itself or to the object; it produces an inclination and a tendency to the thing that is loved.

3. The procession which is not generation remains without a special name; it may be called spiration because it is the procession of the Spirit.