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State of the question. The difficulty arises 1.
because, since God is not an accident, every act
pertains to the essence and cannot therefore be attributed
to the persons; 2. because St. Augustine seems to
confirm this difficulty when he says: "Everything that
is predicated of God is predicated either according to
His substance or according to a relation, "[553]
hence there is no place for notional acts; 3. because it
is a property of an act to imply passivity or passion, but
nothing passive is found in God, for example, passive
generation is something imperfect and not to be attributed
to God.
Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative,
namely, notional acts are to be attributed to the
persons; indeed it is necessary to do so in order to
signify the order of origin in the different persons.
The first part of this reply is of faith according to the
Scripture as we shall see immediately.
1. The testimony of Sacred Scripture is clear: "The
Lord hath said to Me: Thou art My Son, this day have
I begotten Thee."[554] This text, as we have
said above, is given added force by the New
Testament:[555] "the Spirit of truth, who
proceedeth from the Father."[556] Our Lord also
said: "For from God I proceeded, and
came."[557] The first part of this text is accepted
in tradition as referring to the eternal procession. The
councils quoted these words of Scripture in this sense.
In the argument sed contra St. Thomas quotes the words
of St. Fulgentius, "It is a property of the Father
that He generated the Son."
2. The theological reason is as follows: In the divine
persons distinction is attendant on the origin.[558]
But origin cannot be conveniently designated except by
some act. Therefore generation is properly attributed to
the Father and spiration to the Father and the Son.
This reasoning is clear, but the difficulties posed in
the state of the question must still be solved.
Reply to the first difficulty. How is it that an act
like generation, which is not a relation, does not
pertain to the divine essence? The reply is that if this
were an act ad extra, like creation, it would pertain to
the essence, but generation and spiration are acts ad
intra belonging to the procession of a person from a person
and therefore are attributed to the persons.
Reply to the second difficulty. It is insisted that in
God there is nothing besides essence and relation, and
therefore the notional acts must be reduced to the
relations. But to generate is more than a relation. The
reply is rather profound. The notional acts are
distinguished from the persons not really but only by
reason, because if the idea of action is purified of all
created modes, action within God (ad intra) is nothing
more than a relation. In the created order transitive
action, like active generation, is a movement or mutation
as coming from the agent, and the passion is the movement
as it is in the recipient. When we prescind from the
motion, as no matter is in God, action implies nothing
more than the order of origin, according to which it
proceeds from a principle to the terminus. Since, then,
there is no motion in God, active generation is nothing
else than the condition or reference of the Father to the
Son, and active spiration is nothing else than the
condition or reference of the Father and the Son to the
Holy Ghost. According to our method of knowing, which
is based on the knowledge of creatures, we distinguish
active generation from the Father and thus we have two
terms, but there is no real distinction. It would be
better to speak of quasi-active generation and
quasi-passive generation, and also quasi-spiration.
With regard to our concept of creation we must also purify
the idea of transitive action since creation is without
becoming because there is no preexisting subject. In
creation we have causality properly so called, but the
Father is not the cause of the Son but only His
principle. St. Thomas says: "Creation is not a
change (mutatio) except to our way of thinking... for
if we prescind from motion and the pre-existing subject we
have only the various references (habitudines) in the
Creator and in the creature."[559]
So in the Trinity, if we remove the idea of motion,
active generation implies nothing more than the order of
origin.
Reply to the third difficulty. The other insistence
still remains: How can there be in God passive
generation, which implies imperfection? The reply is as
follows: action, inasmuch as it implies the origin of
motion, of itself results in passivity (passio), since
action is motion as coming from the agent and motion as it
is in a recipient. But such action is not found in the
divine persons. When we prescind from the motion, we do
not find that passivity (passiones) except in the
grammatical sense and according to our method of
signification, as when we say that the Father generates
and that the Son is generated. This means that the Son
is generated not according to a transition from passive
potency to act as in human generation but in the sense that
the entire uncreated divine nature and subsisting and
unreceived being itself are communicated to the Son by the
Father. Hence the expression, "The divine nature is
communicated," is more proper than, "The Father
produces the Son," since active production savors of
causality, and passive production savors of the transition
from potency to act.
In God, then, to be generated is not less perfect than
to generate, and to be communicated is not less perfect
than to communicate. Analogically, in the equilateral
triangle the angle that is constructed first is not more
perfect than the other two, and the three angles have a
superficies which is numerically the same. In the
beginning this superficies is the superficies of the angle
that is first constructed and it is not communicated to
this first angle; then this same superficies is
communicated to the second angle and, if the second angle
is equal to the first, the third angle is equal to the
first two, and the third angle receives the same
superficies, which is not caused in it but is communicated
to it. It is wonderful that between things so remote as
the Trinity and the triangle there should be an analogy so
intelligible and so clear. In all created things we can
find a trace of the Blessed Trinity.
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