ST. THOMAS DOCTRINE ON THE FILIOQUE[445]

We consider first the theological reason he offers in the Summa[446] and later how he solves the difficulties of the Greeks. In the body of the article we find three reasons: the first from incongruity and the other two from the congruity or conformity with things in the natural order. From the analogy with natural things we can to some degree know the mystery of the Trinity although we cannot demonstrate it.

1. The reason or argument from incongruity is an apodictical argument by reduction to the impossible. It begins with the negation of the position to be admitted: if the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son, He would not be distinguished from the Son, because the divine persons are distinguished only by the relation of origin, which is founded on the processions. We do not delay in considering this argument because it will be developed against the objections of Scotus after an examination of the Greek difficulties.

2. This argument is based on the nature of the processions. The Son proceeds after the manner of intellection as the Word, and the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of the will as personal love. But love proceeds from the word, for we do not love anything unless we have apprehended it by a concept of the mind. Nothing is willed unless first it is known. Therefore the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son. This argument proposed by St. Thomas is sufficiently clear from the foregoing. It is at least a profound argument of congruity. Against it, however, two objections have been raised which are too much concerned with particulars and in this way do not take into consideration what St. Thomas wished to say.

Objection. In the beatific vision there is no word, and yet it is followed by love.

Reply. In the beatific vision there is no accidental created word, but the divine essence takes the place of the expressed species because the divine essence of itself is understood in act and cannot be represented in a created word as it is in itself. We are obliged to express ourselves in this manner because of the imperfect manner of our intellection although there is in our intellection an expressed species (when it exists) which is the vicar of the object and which takes the place of the object, as when the object is not understood of itself in act. Thus what St. Thomas wished to say in this argument stands: nothing is willed unless first known, and love follows vision and proceeds from it in some way. So proportionately the Holy Ghost proceeds as love from the Word, and this procession is understood to take place as intellection from the words of the prologue of St. John's Gospel.

I insist. In created beings the word does not concur effectively in love; it concurs only objectively and as the final object inasmuch as the word proposes the object that elicits love.

Reply. Granting this for the sake of argument, it is still true that love in some way proceeds from the knowledge of the good or from the good as known; it also is still true that the appetitive faculty comes from the essence of the soul as endowed with the intellectual faculty, and the essence is therefore the root of the other faculties. Moreover, according to revelation, the divine Word is a subsisting person and thus can be the principle (principium quod) of notional love and active spiration, whereas our accidental word is not the principium quod but a necessary condition (sine qua non) of love since love tends only to the known good.

We granted for the sake of argument that the word in created beings does not concur effectively in love, because a dispute exists on this point between Thomistic theologians.

Conrad Kollin, Cajetan, and others hold that the intellect moves the will with respect to its specification as an efficient cause inasmuch as the object proposed by the intellect is the cause for eliciting a determined act of love. The particular specification of the act of love, as distinguished from the exercise of the act of love, must have an efficient cause, and the will alone is not a sufficient efficient cause for this specification, otherwise all acts of love would be of the same species. Moreover, as Conrad Kollin and Cajetan point out, in God the subsisting Word effectively produces personal love or the Holy Ghost. Therefore the same thing takes place analogically in the case of the non-subsisting word of our intellect. To support this interpretation they cite certain texts of St. Thomas: "The intellect is prior to the will as the mover is prior to what is moved and as the active is prior to the passive, for the good that is understood moves the will."[447]

Other Thomists, among them Capreolus, Ferrariensis, Bannez, and Gonet hold that the intellect moves the will only as a final and formal extrinsic cause because the object proposed by the intellect to the will is not intrinsic to the will. But even if this second opinion is admitted, our argument still holds because the word in created beings produces love at least in a broad sense because it leads to the eliciting of a definite act of love inasmuch as it specifies the act, and no act can be elicited without being specified.

Further, the subsistence of the divine Word elevates all the conditions of the word to most perfect being and in this state of being the Word actively and properly influences love. Thus the Word of God spirates love.

St. Thomas' argument remains unscathed. He was disinclined, however, to descend to these particulars because as he said: "Our intellect cannot understand the essence of God as it is in itself in this life, but it determines and limits every mode in the things it understands about God and departs from the mode of God's being in Himself. Therefore the more certain nouns are unrestricted and common and absolute, the more properly they are predicated by us of God, as, for instance, the name "Who is," which expresses the vast and infinite ocean of substance itself.

Hence we should not descend to small particulars, to excessive precision and delimitation; these things remove us from the contemplation of God and we cannot understand a free act in God or how the Word spirates love. This is true of many speculative and practical questions. For instance, a certain particular intention virtually lasts for several days, but we cannot say for how many days it lasts since there is a great difference here between a superficial soul and one that is profoundly recollected. Again, it is certainly very laudable to unite our personal offerings often during the day by prayer to the oblation made continually in the heart of the glorious Christ and to the offering of all the Masses celebrated throughout the world. If we wish to descend mechanically to particulars, we might ask how it is possible to unite oneself to all these Masses in particular. This does not mean that it is impossible to unite ourselves to the oblation which perdures in the heart of Christ in glory, which is, as it were, the soul of all these Masses.

Very often excessive and pseudo-scientific exactitude in spiritual things removes us from the contemplation of God. Such concern with particulars detracts from the beauty of St. Thomas, argument that love proceeds from the knowledge of good, and therefore it appears right to say that in God personal love proceeds from the Word. In the light of this argument we understand those beautiful words of tradition: The Word spirates love. The same is true with regard to our understanding of the mystery of the cross or of the Redemption: too much concern with details impedes us in contemplation of the mystery.

The third argument of congruity may be stated as follows: When several things proceed from one, they are distinct only by number and matter unless they are distinguished because of the orders of origin or causality. But the Son and the Holy Ghost proceed from one and the same Father and they are distinct by more than number and matter, that is, by the two processions of intellect and love, which are more than numerically distinct. Hence there must be between them some order; not the order of causality or of greater or less perfection, but of origin. And since the Son does not proceed from the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost must proceed from the Son.

The major of the argument is based on the fact that when several things that are distinct by more than number and matter proceed from one thing they proceed according to some order, and in created beings according to some kind of subordination. When several things proceed from one thing and are distinguished only by number and matter, they may proceed without any definite order as, for instance, when a workman makes many knives distinct from one another only numerically and materially, they have no order to each other. Such is not the case, however, with the species of number and the figures of geometry in the order of quantity; all numbers proceed from unity according to a definite order. So also in the order of quality: for example, the different degrees of heat and light, the various colors of the spectrum. The various species of minerals, plants, and animals are subordinated according to their greater or lesser perfection; such subordination is also found among the angels.

This gives us an analogy of the divine processions. But in God there can be no order of greater or lesser perfection and so there can be no subordination or coordination, which implies subordination. Nor can there be an order of causality since each divine person is uncreated, uncaused, and entirely equal to the others. In the divine persons there is an order of origin as we know exists between the Father and the Son, and between the Holy Ghost and the Father, and equally between the Holy Ghost and the Son, otherwise there would be no more order in the divine persons than between those things that are distinguished only numerically and materially.

If there were no such order the analogy with intellect and will would break down, for the will, as the rational appetite, does not come from the essence of the soul except through the mediation of the intellective faculty, otherwise the appetite would not be properly rational in its root nor would it be under the direction of reason. In other words it is impossible that the intellect and the will should be equal (ex aequo) as Suarez thought; there must be some order between them as there must be order between vision and love.

Suarez failed to see that all coordination supposes subordination and that the intellect and the will cannot be coordinated on an equal plane (ex aequo) nor can vision and love.

Order is a disposition by way of earlier and later with respect to some principle, and thus order is discovered in subordination before it is found in coordination. Two soldiers are not coordinated in an army unless they are first subordinated to the leader of the army.[448] St. Thomas asks whether the inequality of things is from God, and he replies in the affirmative, saying that the subordination or hierarchy of things serves to manifest in many ways the divine goodness, which in itself is most simple and would not be fittingly manifested if all things were entirely equal. Then there would be no reason for multiplying created things.[449]

Thus, as Leibnitz said, no one would place in his library several identical copies of the same edition of Virgil. The variety of species necessary for the subordination of created things is a better manifestation of the divine goodness, which is in itself most simple.

In God's intimate life there is no subordination or hierarchy, but there is an order of origin that transcends coordination and subordination.

In the body of the article St. Thomas notes that the Greeks concede that there is an element of truth in this argument; they concede that the Holy Ghost is from the Father through the Son. This formula will be examined in the next article. St. Thomas also notes that some Greeks are said to concede that the Holy Ghost flows from the Son but does not proceed from Him. To which St. Thomas replied: everything that flows from another proceeds from it, as the brook from the spring and the ray of light from the sun. The Greeks insisted that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father as the brook from the spring and through the Son as through the channel in which the brook flows.

The fourth argument is taken from the general principle that in God all things are one and the same except where there is opposition of relation. But between the Father and the Son there is no opposition of relation in active spiration. Therefore active spiration is common to both. This commonly accepted principle was expressly formulated in the Council of Florence,[450] and as Denzinger notes, it was at this Council that the learned Cardinal Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, the theologian of the Greek party, proclaimed: "No one is ignorant of the fact that the personal names of the Trinity are relative." It is on this accepted principle that the argument is based.

The fifth reason is drawn from the words," ll things whatsoever the Father hath, are Mine. Therefore I said, that He shall receive of Mine."[451] If the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son, the Son would not have whatsoever the Father has (excepting paternity), and the divine will would be less fecund in the Son for active spiration than in the Father. Nor should it be said that the Holy Ghost has the same will as the Father and still does not spirate actively because the Holy Ghost, proceeding not by intellection but by the will, exhausts the will as its adequate terminus. In other words, the Holy Ghost exhausts the entire fecundity of the divine will within itself (ad intra), just as the divine Word proceeding by intellection ad intra, exhausts the entire fecundity of the divine intellect as its adequate terminus.

The sixth reason is found in the Contra Gentes.[452] In God, since He is necessary, there is no difference between being and possibility, that is, being follows immediately on possibility. But it is not the impossibility but rather the possibility that appears that the Son should be the principle of the Holy Ghost, for that which is from a principle in the first procession can be the principle in the second procession. Therefore the Son is a principle of the second procession together with the Father.