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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.
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