SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTIES

In article I, in the reply to the second objection, St. Thomas says that in God love can be a divine person inasmuch as it is subsisting and also incommunicable as the terminus of the second procession.

The third objection: Love is a nexus between lovers; but the nexus is the medium between those things which it joins and therefore it is not a terminus or something that proceeds.

Reply. The Holy Ghost is at the same time a nexus and a terminus, since He is the terminus of the mutual love of the Father and the Son. This mutual spirating love is notional love, and the Holy Ghost is personal love. The Holy Ghost is said to be the terminus of mutual love inasmuch as He proceeds from two spirators, but the love of the two spirators is unique since there is only one spiration.

In the reply to the fourth objection we learn that the Holy Ghost loves with an essential love like the Father and the Son. We should note how St. Thomas safeguards the proper meaning of the terms. "The word," he says, "onnotes the condition of the word with respect to the thing expressed by the word."[486] That which is really understood is the thing understood in the word; that is, what we first understand in direct intellection is not the mental word of the extramental thing but the nature of the extramental thing expressed by the mental word. We know the extramental thing in the word but not in the word first seen or known in itself. On the other hand we know a man in his reflection, and the reflection is that which is first seen or known, and God knows all creatures in Himself and He knows and sees Himself first, for what is first known by the divine intellect is the divine essence itself and not possible or actual creatures.