THIRD ARTICLE: WHETHER THE RELATIONS IN GOD ARE REALLY DISTINGUISHED FROM ONE ANOTHER

State of the question. This question seems to have been solved if we correctly understand the propositions, "The Father is not the Son," "The Holy Ghost is not the Father nor the Son," for in these negative propositions the verb "is not" denies the identity of the subject and the predicate, and therefore there is a real distinction, one that precedes the consideration of our mind. The question, however, requires further examination because it is not sufficiently clear how the persons are constituted by the relations and because, as we have said in the preceding article, the real relations in God are not really distinct from the essence.

From this arise certain difficulties, which are proposed at the beginning of this third article.

1. Those things equal to a third are equal to each other; but the divine relations are equal to a third, namely, the essence; therefore they are equal to each other. This is the classic objection of the rationalists against the mystery of the Trinity, which is sometimes examined by Thomists in the introduction to this treatise.

2. Paternity and filiation are, of course, distinguished mentally from the essence, as are goodness and omnipotence. Therefore, like goodness and omnipotence, paternity and filiation are not really distinguished from each other.

3. In God there is no real distinction except by reason of origin. But one relation does not appear to originate from another. Therefore the relations are not really distinct.

Reply. The reply is nevertheless in the affirmative, namely, in God a real distinction exists between the relations opposed to each other.

This teaching pertains to faith, since faith teaches that there is a real and true Trinity in which the Father is not the Son, and the Holy Ghost is not the Father or the Son. The Council of Florence declared: "In God all things are one except where there is opposition of relation."[255] At the same council, John, the Latins' theologian, declared: "According to both Latin and Greek doctors it is relation alone that multiplies persons in the divine productions; this relation is called relation of origin, in which only two are concerned: the one from whom another is and the one who is from another."[256] Also at this Council, Cardinal Bessarion, the most learned theologian of the Greeks, averred, "No one is ignorant of the fact that the personal names of the Trinity are relative."[257]

In his argument St. Thomas quoted Boetius. Other Fathers who might be quoted are St. Anselm,[258] St. Augustine,[259] St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. John Damascene, who said: "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are distinct and yet they are one."[260]

In the body of the article St. Thomas explains this doctrine of faith by an analysis of the concept of relative opposition as follows.

The nature of a real relation consists in the reference of one thing to another, according to which something is relatively opposed to another and the two are therefore really distinct.

But in God we have real relations opposed to one another, namely, paternity, filiation, and spiration. Below it will be explained that active spiration, which is opposed to passive spiration, is not opposed to paternity and filiation. Therefore in God there is real distinction according to these real relations opposed to one another.

The major explains something that is already admitted confusedly by the common sense of man and by natural reason, namely, that relative things, inasmuch as the Father and the Son are opposed to each other, are really distinct, since no one begets himself. This analysis of the ideas of relation, opposition, and distinction is found in Aristotle's Postpredicamenta, where he distinguishes the various kinds of opposition.

Opposition properly so called is a definite and determined repugnance; opposition improperly so called is between disparate things, as between different species of things. Thus opposition properly so called requires a determined extreme, to which something is repugnant, as heat to cold, blindness to vision. Proper opposition, therefore, calls for two conditions: the distinction between the extremes and some determined repugnance between these extremes.

Opposition may be of four kinds: relative, contrary, privative, and contradictory. Following Goudin in his work on logic, we may present the division of opposition as follows.

OPPOSITION

between being and non-being

by pure negation: contradictory opposition, e.g., man and no man, knowledge and nescience

by privation in a suitable subject: privative opposition, e.g. sight and blindness, knowledge and ignorance

between being and being

expelling each other from a subject: contrary opposition, e.g., virtue and vice, truth and error

based on mutual reference: relative opposition, e.g., between father and son

Thus, as is commonly taught, relative opposition is the weakest of all; in this kind of opposition one extreme does not destroy the other, rather one requires the other. Hence it can be attributed to God because it does not imply any privation of being but only distinction with a reference, as St. Thomas pointed out.[261] Thus the Father and the Son are really distinct by relative opposition. Relative opposition may be defined as the repugnance between two things arising from the fact that they refer to each other.

On the other hand, contradictory opposition is the strongest of all because one extreme completely destroys the other; not even the subject survives as in privative opposition, nor the genus as in contrary opposition, in which, for example, virtue and vice oppose each other in the same genus of habit. Thus contradictory opposition is the cause of the others and is to a certain extent mingled with them. In a sense we may say that the Father is not the Son, and virtue is not vice.

It is clear that in these four kinds of opposition, the word "opposition" is used not univocally but analogically, and the analogy is not only metaphorical but proper. The primal analogy contains the greatest opposition, that is, contradictory opposition. Hence it is not surprising that contradictory opposition participates in the other kinds of opposition.[262]

Reply to the first and second difficulties. "Those things which are equal to a third are equal to each other," I distinguish: if they are equal to the third actually and mentally and there is no mutual opposition, I concede; if they are equal to a third actually and not mentally and there exists relative opposition, I deny.

But the divine relations are equal to a third, the divine essence, this I distinguish: they are equal actually but not mentally, and some of the relations are mutually opposed, although they are not opposed to the third, this I concede. Otherwise, I deny.

To put it analogically, according to St. Thomas, transitive action, taken at least terminatively, and passion are really the same as movement, but they are really distinct from each other because of the opposition of relation, since action is the movement as coming from the agent and passion is the movement as received in the recipient.

So also in an equilateral triangle the three equal angles are actually the same as a third, namely, the surface of the triangle, but they are really distinguished from each other because of relative opposition.

First doubt. Are action and passion really and modally distinct from movement?

Reply. According to the common opinion of Thomists they are. Aristotle, however, did not consider precisely this question, and St. Thomas makes reference to his words, which, although they are somewhat vague, throw some light on the present problem, as does the reference to the triangle. Even though the illustration of the triangle may be deficient, the principle enunciated by St. Thomas is nevertheless true. We should remember that it is not necessary for the theologian to show that this objection is evidently false; it is enough if he shows that the objection is not necessary and has no cogency. Thus the revealed mystery remains intact.

Second doubt. Is the principle," hose things equal to a third are equal..." to be understood as a formal predication?

Reply. In order to understand this principle we must distinguish between formal predication and material predication. Thus it is only materially true to say that the divine mercy and the divine justice are the same, because they are not really distinct, and by reason of their subject or matter they are in a sense the same, just as when we say that the humanity of Peter is his individuality. We have here a material predication because the humanity and the individuality are not actually distinct, and by reason of the matter and the subject they are the same. But in these instances we are not uttering a formal predication in which the predicate belongs to the subject according to its formal nature. For example, it does not belong to the divine mercy to punish; the divine mercy pardons, condones, and it is the divine justice that punishes, although these two perfections are really the same, that is, materially the same but not formally.

The laws of the syllogism, however, are not verified except in formal predications, since the process of reasoning does not deal with things in themselves but through the mediation of our concepts. Therefore if we wish to conclude the identity of two things by our reasoning, we must consider these two things from the same formal aspect. Otherwise we do not obey the first law of the syllogism: the term must be threefold: middle, major, and minor. According to this law the middle term must be perfectly distributed, that is, taken in the same sense in the major and the minor. Hence, for example, the following argument is not valid because the major is only a material predication: in God mercy is the same as justice; but justice is the principle of punishment; therefore God inflicts punishment through His mercy. The argument is false because in God mercy and justice are not the same formally although they are the same materially. Again, in the Trinity it is conceded that the Father and the Son are actually the same as the divine essence, but they are not the same formally. Moreover the Father and the Son are relatively opposed to each other, but they are not opposed to the essence. It is clear, therefore, that the following syllogism is not valid: This God is the Father, but this God is the Son, therefore the Son is the Father. Nor is the following true: This divine essence is the paternity, but this divine essence is the filiation, therefore filiation is paternity. In these syllogisms we have merely material predications, and the form of the syllogism is not observed.

Objection. The force of this reply is invalidated when, against Scotus, we say that in God there is not only one being but one formal eminent reason, namely, the Deity, and thus in God every predication is not only material but formal.

Reply. It is true that in God there is but one formal reason as far as God Himself is concerned, but not with regard to us.[263] In other words, the objection would be valid if the Deity identified with itself the attributes and relations without preserving their formal reasons; but the objection has no force if these formal reasons are still found to be in the eminence of the Deity. In God, of course, the relations are not only virtually and eminently, as the seven colors are in white, but formally and eminently; for whereas blue is not white, God is true, good, paternity, and filiation. Formal predication, therefore, must be carefully distinguished from material predication.[264]

In God the formal reasons or aspects of the attributes and relations are identified without being destroyed; they are perfectly preserved in spite of their real identity with the essence. Indeed, they do not exist in the purest state except in this identification. Thus subsisting being itself must be not only intelligible in act but actually understood in act, and it is therefore identified with subsisting understanding. The proper reason or nature of a relation is to be opposed to its correlative and to be distinguished from it.

This is possible because of the eminence of the Deity. Analogically, the body of Christ is present to many consecrated hosts, but these hosts are not present to each other. At first sight this seems to contradict the principle that those things which are united to a third are united to each other, or those things that are present to a third are present to each other. Thus two bodies cannot be present in the same space without being present to each other.

But this is not true if there is a third member which, remaining the same, is in many distant places as if not being in that place. Thus the same body of Christ is present in the manner of substance in many distant hosts. So in the natural order the head and the foot are present to the same soul and yet they are not parts present to each other and close to each other.

Second objection. A real distinction is not founded on that which prescinds from reality. But the "esse ad" of a relation prescinds from reality. Therefore it does not provide a basis for the real distinction of relations or of the persons.

Reply. I distinguish the major: a real distinction is not founded on that which prescinds from reality and is not real, I concede; on that which is real, I deny. I contradistinguish the minor in the same sense and I deny the consequence and the consequent. The "esse ad" is said to prescind from reality inasmuch as it may be either in a real relation or a relation of reason; but this "esse ad" in a real relation is real, not formally because of itself but because of the real "esse in", which is common to all accidents. Thus in created beings the "esse ad" of the relation of paternity is something real and not something of the mind; both the father and the son therefore are necessarily distinct, since no one begets himself. The real relations in God are really distinct more as relations than as real, because as relations they are opposed to each other and as real they have the same "esse in" since their "esse in" is not accidental but substantial. Hence in God there are four real relations, as we shall see below, but not four relative realities as if there were four actions, for example. We shall also see below that of these four real relations active spiration is not really distinguished from paternity and filiation because it is not opposed to them.

Third doubt. Why is not the "esse ad" of a real relation real because of itself, as Suarez taught?

Reply. Because, as St. Thomas says,[265] a real relation formally as a relation is not something but to something, and therefore there can be relations that are not real, whose "esse in" is not real. On the other hand there is no such thing as quantity or quality mentally. Suarez, however, held that the "esse ad" of a relation is real because of itself, just as he held that the created essence is actual because of itself and is therefore not really distinct from its existence. Suarez thought of being (ens) only as that which is and not as that by which a thing is, whereas for St. Thomas the essence is that by which a thing is in a certain species. Hence Suarez concluded that the relations of reason (mental relations) are not true relations.[266] From this he went so far as to infer that the divine relations have their own relative existence and perfection, virtually distinct from the infinite perfection of the essence. In this way Suarez to some extent inclined to Scotus' teaching on the formal distinction. It will be seen therefore that the Father is lacking some perfection, namely, filiation and passive spiration. Now it becomes very difficult to safeguard the unity and absolute simplicity of the divine nature, just as when the Greeks in their treatise on the Trinity began with the three persons rather than with a study of the divine nature.

Thus Suarez was not able to reply to the principal objections against the mystery of the Trinity as the Thomists were.[267] How was Suarez to solve the objection: "Those things equal to a third are equal to each other"? At a loss in answering this objection, Suarez declared that the principle of identity (or contradiction), if taken in complete abstraction and analogy of being, prescinding from created and uncreated being, from both finite and infinite, is false. According to Suarez this principle is true inductively only in created beings, and the truth of the principle arises only within the limits of created being. It is a law of finite being, not an analogical law of being itself in common. Henceforth the theologian could not argue about the divine perfections because his argument is based on the principle of identity or contradiction. This is pure agnosticism. According to our teaching, to say that the principle of identity or contradiction is not verified analogically in the mystery of the Trinity is to say that this mystery is absurd, not above reason but opposed to reason. This much we can say: that most eminent mode according to which this principle is verified in the Trinity cannot be positively known by us here on earth; it can be known only negatively and relatively.

Another difference arises between St. Thomas and Suarez from the fact that for St. Thomas the three persons have only one being since, as it is commonly expressed, the being of an accident is being in another.[268] But in God the "esse in" of the relations is substantial and is therefore identified with the divine essence, which is therefore unique. For Suarez, on the contrary, who proceeded from other principles of being, the essence, the being, and the relations are three relative existences in God.[269]

The doctrine of St. Thomas, as Del Prado shows, "Perfectly preserves the supreme simplicity of the divine being because in God there is but one being; the real relations, on the one hand, do not make a composition with the essence, and on the other hand they really distinguish the persons. From this it follows that in the three divine persons there is one divinity, equal glory, co-eternal majesty, and the same absolute perfection. No perfection is found in one person that does not exist in the other." Del Prado continues: "Those who like Suarez deny the real composition of being and essence in creatures are forced to place three beings in God, and they must place in one person a perfection that is not in another, nor can they solve the difficulty arising from the principle of identity."[270] The difference between St. Thomas and Suarez has its roots in their basic philosophy and in their positions about the real distinction between essence and being in creatures. Suarez, as we have said, whether he wishes to or not, multiplies something absolute in God, namely, being, and therefore the objection based on the principle of identity remains unsolved.[271]