RECAPITULATION OF QUESTION 32

In the first question on the Trinity St. Thomas began with the unity of the divine nature and the revealed existence of the processions. He showed that the processions were immanent or ad intra and he explained them according to St. Augustine by analogy with the intellectual enunciation of the word and with love. Thus the processions were seen to be after the manner of intellection and of love. This is based on revelation since it is clear from the prologue of St. John's Gospel that the Son of God proceeds as the intellectual word of the Father.

In the second question he showed how these real processions, namely, generation and spiration, are the bases of real relations according to which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are denominated in Sacred Scripture. These real relations are not really distinguished from the essence, but they are really distinct from one another if relative opposition exists between them. For it is not repugnant that the relations be mutually opposed; they are indeed not opposed to each other in their "esse in" (for in this they are identified with the essence) but according to their "esse ad", which does not properly inhere in the essence. If, on the contrary, that which is proper to a relation inhered in the subject, as the property of quality, the opposition of relation could not exist between the relations unless at the same time there should be opposition in the divine essence itself. We saw also how St. Thomas solved the objection based on the principle that those things which are the same as a third are identical, whereas Suarez held that the principle of identity does not apply to the Trinity.

In question 29 St. Thomas showed that the divine persons are formally constituted by subsisting relations opposed to one another. Thus he safeguards the analogical notion of person as something subsisting and incommunicable. Hence the divine essence is communicable but the paternity is not.

Then St. Thomas treats of plurality in God, the proper manner of expressing this plurality, and the knowability of this mystery.

St. Thomas thus begins with the unity of the divine nature and the two processions as they are revealed and proceeds to the three divine persons mentioned in revelation. Thus without detracting from the sublimity of this mystery he explains it to some extent by showing that, even after the unity of the divine nature is established, the Trinity of persons is not repugnant. The possibility of the Trinity is not properly and positively demonstrated, but congruent reasons are given to show that the divine nature ought to be fecund, even infinitely, after the manner of intellectual generation and the spiration of love. In this way St. Thomas retained what earlier theologians, like Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, had taught: that the good is diffusive of itself, and that it seems that the higher the good the more intimately it will be diffusive of itself. St. Thomas expressed this idea in his own words: "the higher any nature is, the more intimate with it will be that which proceeds from it."[374]

But, as has been said, with respect to creatures the good is diffusive of itself primarily in the order of final causality and consequently in the order of efficient causality, since everything that acts does so because of some end. The divine processions, however, are above the order of causality, both final and efficient. The Father is not the cause of the Son; He is only the principle. The same is true of the Father and the Son with regard to the Holy Ghost. Hence St. Thomas makes little use of the formula, "Good is diffusive of itself," in this treatise on the Trinity; and in order to express the fecundity of the divine nature he prefers the statement, "My how much higher a nature is so much more intimate will be that which proceeds from that nature," and "By how much greater the understanding so much more intimate will be the intellectual concept with the intellect... . Hence, since the divine intellect is at the apex of perfection, we must say that the divine Word is perfectly one with Him from whom it proceeds without any diversity of nature."[375]

The divine Word is not something accidental; it is substantial because intellection in God is not an accident but something subsisting. The first procession, then, is not the conception of an accidental word but the true generation of the substantial Word. Thus to some degree the mystery is explained notwithstanding its supernatural sublimity. We now turn to the divine persons in particular.