7. THE PREFERENCE OF ST. AUGUSTINE'S DOCTRINE OVER THAT OF THE GREEK FATHERS.

The Augustinian teaching prevailed for three reasons.

1. Because by beginning with the unity of the divine nature, St. Augustine began methodically with what was better known to us. The divine nature was already demonstrated by reason, and from this he proceeded to the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. When the Greek Fathers were writing, the treatise on the one God had not yet been set up as the way to an understanding of the Trinity.

2. Because the Augustinian approach solved those difficulties remaining in the Greek concept, explaining the number and character of the processions after the manner of intellection and love. It also explained the "Filioque", inasmuch as love presupposes intellection; and finally it explained the distinction between the natural order, of which God as one and the Creator is the efficient principle, and the supernatural order, whose supreme mystery is the divine processions within God.

3. Because whatever difficulties still remained were attributable not to deficiencies of method but to the sublimity of the mystery. Moreover, the Augustinian concept offered whatever was positive in the Greek concept, perfecting it, and thus itself was more perfect. The Greek Fathers began with the concrete; the Latin Fathers and theologians arrived at a more abstract consideration and at the knowledge of principles which cast light both on the whole treatise and on those things known concretely in the beginning.

6. The theory of Richard of St. Victor.[132]

This theory is dominated by the Victorine voluntarism, according to which the good is prior and more important than being, and the will and love are more important than the intellect. According to this concept, God would better be defined as the supreme Good rather than as subsisting Being. To which St. Thomas replied that that which first comes to the attention of our intellect is being, and that the notion of good presupposes the more universal and simpler concept of being; good is nothing more than the plenitude of being, desired because it is perfective.[133] We should not be surprised to see these two tendencies among philosophers and theologians, the primacy of being and intellect, and the primacy of good and love, nor is it surprising that two theories should have been proposed by Latin theologians about the Trinity. We will briefly consider here Richard's theory because it was adopted in some form by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, and is quoted by St. Thomas.[134] Indeed, St. Thomas, developed his own doctrine by correcting the theory of Richard of St. Victor, which should therefore be explained first.

Richard, like the Greeks, first considered in God the person and then the nature. He demonstrated the existence of a personal God, possessing all perfections, especially the supreme perfection, which for Richard was the love of benevolence and friendship, or charity.

Charity, however, declared Richard, is not the love of oneself, but the love of friendship, the love of another person, according to the classical passage from St. Gregory the Great: "Charity cannot exist unless there are two persons, for no one can properly be said to have charity toward himself."[135] Hence Richard concluded: "It is fitting that love should tend toward another in order that it be charity. Where there is not a plurality of persons, charity cannot be said to be present."[136] In God, according to Richard, love (good diffusive of itself) begets a second beloved person, without whom the love of friendship cannot come into being. The most perfect love of friendship gives to the other not only something belonging to the lover but the whole nature of the lover. The love of the lover gives whatever it can.

Finally, Richard in order to prove that the most perfect charity, such as is found in God, is most pure without any love of concupiscence, concluded that it not only tolerates but most freely desires a third person, equally beloved by the other persons. When envy appears sometimes in human friendship, it is a sign that the love is not pure. Hence there are in God three persons, who love one another equally without any selfish love or self-interest, and the three loves are identified with subsisting love itself, which is the definition of God Himself.

Objection. But the love of the Holy Ghost is not freely given as is the love of the Father and the Son.

Reply. Richard's reply was that, by reason of His supreme benevolence, the Holy Ghost wishes rather to receive than to give in order that what is more glorious might be attributed to the other two persons.

Such is the brief outline of this theory by which Richard wished to demonstrate the mystery of the Trinity from the fact that God is the most perfect personal love.

Criticism.[137] St. Thomas replied that the theory does not demonstrate that God is infinitely fecund ad intra, for the love of the most perfect person does not require the association of another person for his happiness. Further, what becomes of the Word of God in Richard's theory? It seems to disappear, since the first procession is by love and not by intellection.[138] For Richard, as for the Greeks, the Word was something spoken to another person rather than a mental concept of a person. In Richard's mind the Father speaks, the Son is the utterance, and the Holy Ghost hears. Thus the intimate life of God is an intimate conversation, and the same is intellection in the three persons. Briefly, Richard does not understand by the Word or by His production a formal mode of divine generation, for he explains divine generation not by the analogy of intellection but of love.

Hence another objection arises: Richard omits the concept of intellection, but nothing can be loved unless it is known beforehand. As we see from his writings, Richard responded to this objection on the basis of his metaphysical and psychological principles.

1. Metaphysically speaking, according to Richard, the good is superior to being and diffusive of itself by love, as Plato and the Neoplatonists taught. According to the Neoplatonists, the first "hypostasis" is the one-good, which by its own diffusiveness and by love generates the second "hypostasis", intelligence, whose object is being, something inferior to the supreme Good.

2. Psychologically speaking, Richard contended that the highest vital activity is not immobile intellection, which is quiescent in itself, but love, especially the love of friendship, which is diffusive of itself. For Richard knowledge was subordinate to love, as a previous condition for a higher perfection. This opinion is continued in Scotism, which is a form of voluntarism. For St. Thomas, on the other hand, the dignity of love is derived from the dignity of knowledge by which love is directed, and the heavenly beatitude is constituted formally by the vision of God. This vision of God is necessarily followed, as by its complement, by the love of God above all things.

Another objection against Richard's theory arises from the difficulty of safeguarding the unity of the divine nature.[139] It is the same difficulty as beset the Greeks; like the Greeks, Richard began with the notion of divine person rather than with the notion of the divine nature. Therefore in his mind the divine nature was rather the act of love, rather a dynamic unity than a static entity. For Richard the same love was identical in the three divine persons, although some special property of this love is found in each person. The matter is left in mystery. The main criticism of Richard's theory is that he seems to lose sight of the teaching of St. John's Gospel, that the Son of God proceeds as the Word, that is, after the manner of intellection.

Alexander of Hales made some improvements on Richard's theory.[140] Alexander was more intent on the metaphysical aspect of the problem; he considered the principle that good is diffusive of itself, rather than the psychological aspect, that the love of charity requires several persons. Thus Alexander and St. Bonaventure, who followed him, looked on the divine processions as the fecundity of the infinite living being, relying on the axiom that good is diffusive of itself, and the higher the nature the more intimate and complete will be this diffusion. But the highest kind of diffusion is the communication of ideas and of love, as when God makes creatures in His own likeness and loves them, and also the communication of His entire divine nature. Whereas we, the adopted sons of God, have received only the participation of the divine nature, the only-begotten Son has received the entire divine nature without any division or multiplication; and this is the supreme diffusion and fecundity of the supreme Good.

As we shall see, this concept was retained by St. Thomas, but a part of Alexander's theory was discarded by him. Alexander had taught,[141] "In God to beget after the manner of intellection is hardly the same as to understand." After lengthy examination, under the title, "Thether begetting is the same as intellection in God, " St. Thomas assigns supporting reasons: "God lives the noblest kind of life, which is intellection"; "Intellection is nothing else than generating a species within oneself." These arguments had already been presented by St. Augustine and St. Anselm, and St. Thomas perfected them.

Yet Alexander concluded: "Begetting in God is not the same as intellection."[142] For this he gives two reasons: 1. "No one begets himself, and yet he understands himself; the Son of God understands but does not beget. Therefore in God begetting is not the same as intellection." St. Thomas replied that begetting is the same as intellectual enunciation. 2. Begetting implies the duality of the begetter and the begotten, but such is not the case in intellection, since anyone can understand himself without this duality. A study of this theory reminds us of Leibnitz's dictum: "In general, systems are correct in what they affirm and false in what they deny." Why? Because reality is more solid than the systems; especially is this true of the supreme reality.

Richard's theory was also accepted by Peter Bles,[143] by William of Auxerre,[144] and partly by St. Bonaventure,[145] but it was refuted by St. Thomas.[146]

St. Bonaventure's theory is mixed because it proceeds from two sources, from Peter Lombard, who gave St. Augustine's doctrine on the Word, and from Richard of St. Victor through Alexander of Hales. Hence we find a difference between St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas.[147] The principal difference seems to be this: for St. Thomas, God is pure act, in the sense of pure actuality; for St. Bonaventure, God is pure activity or the supreme activity. For St. Bonaventure, therefore, the supreme unity is active, rather dynamic than static, and goodness especially is essentially diffusive of itself. Therefore the supreme active unity is not only absolute but it also implies a certain relation to something else by reason of the notion of diffusion or fecundity of a living being.

According to this principle, St. Bonaventure, like Alexander, conceived the first procession as "the fecundity of the divine nature," and the second procession as "the fecundity of the will."[148] St. Bonaventure looked on the Second Person rather as the Son of God than as the Word of God, and he considered the Word, or Logos, mentioned by St. John in his prologue, as a comparison to help us understand who the Son of God is.[149] With Alexander, St. Bonaventure conceded that there must be begetting in God since every nature is communicable and every living being begets specifically like itself. Such fecundity is a noble quality or perfection which must be attributed to God. St. Bonaventure pointed out that there is a notable difference between divine and human generation. In divine generation alone, the communicated nature remains numerically the same with the first nature because it is infinite and cannot be divided. In human generation, man begets in order to preserve the species after the death of the begetter; thus man begets both because of his fecundity and his need.

God the Father almighty begets only because of His fecundity. St. Bonaventure's theory joins the classic theory of St. Augustine with Richard's theory as modified by Alexander of Hales. It is a dynamic concept in which the concept of the good is dominant; the theory is greatly influenced by Dionysius' principle: good is diffusive of itself. This principle, it should be noted, serves to illustrate the fitness of creation, but not that of the Incarnation or of the Holy Eucharist. In all these mysteries God diffuses His goodness.

The question arises whether St. Thomas retained the principle that good is diffusive of itself. In making use of this principle St. Thomas distinguished between the end and the agent. "Good," he said, "is said to be diffusive of itself in the sense that the end is said to move or elicit."[150]

Every agent acts on account of an end, and therefore the good is first of all diffusive of itself as an end, and then effectively it is diffusive through the mediation of the agent. "It pertains to the idea of the good," says St. Thomas,[151] "that it communicate itself to others; and it pertains to the idea of the supreme good that it communicate itself in the highest way to the creature." This takes place ad extra in the Incarnation. Again, under the question: "Whether God wills other things besides Himself, " St. Thomas taught: "The natural thing... has a natural inclination to diffuse its own good to others as much as is possible. Hence we see that every agent, so far as it is in act and perfect, makes something like itself... . Much more it belongs to the divine will to communicate its own good to others by means of a likeness as far as is possible."[152] In the following article, against the Neoplatonists, he says that the divine will most freely wills other things besides itself, "Since nothing accrues to the divine goodness from creatures." St. Thomas also points out the fitness of the Holy Eucharist, which is the sacrament of love.[153]

Thus we see that St. Thomas retains the principle of Dionysius so often quoted by Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, although sometimes he proposes it differently in the questions on the Trinity, where the good is not properly speaking the final cause, nor the efficient cause, but the principle. In the "Contra Gentes" in the famous eleventh chapter, he offers this principle to explain the divine generation of the Word: "By how much a nature is higher, by that much what emanates from it is more intimate." Thus, from fire is generated, from the plant another plant, and a vital operation is the more vital the more it is immanent, as, for example, sensation, and intellection is still higher since from it proceeds the word. "That which proceeds ad extra is properly diverse from that from which it proceeds; but that which proceeds ad intra by the process of intellection is not properly diverse, for the more perfectly it proceeds the more it will be one with that from which it proceeds. Thus the Word of God proceeding from the Father, proceeds from Him without any numerical diversity of nature."[154] Even if there had been no creation, the principle, good is diffusive of itself, would be verified in God, and so the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity confirms the dogma of a free creation, in no way necessary.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Thomists in explaining the teaching of St. Thomas frequently make use of that principle so often invoked by St. Bonaventure, that the good is essentially diffusive of itself; although on this point there is some difference between the two doctors. In his treatise on the Trinity, Scheeben also makes use of this principle.