CHAPTER XI: QUESTION 37 LOVE AS THE NAME OF THE HOLY GHOST


FIRST ARTICLE: WHETHER LOVE IS THE PROPER NAME OF THE HOLY GHOST

State of the question. It seems that love is not the proper name of the Holy Ghost since the three persons love, and love therefore is predicated essentially. Moreover, love is the name of an action, not of a subsisting person, and it is predicated of the Holy Ghost as His operation after He is constituted a person.

Reply. The reply is in the affirmative. Love, used personally and not essentially or notionally, is the proper name of the Holy Ghost.

1. Proof from authority. St. Gregory the Great declared: "The Holy Ghost Himself is love."[475] St. Augustine also frequently uses the name "love" to designate the Holy Ghost. This usage is plainly in accord with the Latin theory of the Trinity, according to which the Holy Ghost proceeds after the manner of love, and the term of such procession can be called love. But we do not have an explicit warrant in Sacred Scripture for the use of this appellation, while on the other hand the Son of God is explicitly called "the Word" in the Scriptures. St. Ambrose calls the Holy Ghost the charity of God, and this thought is also expressed in the liturgy:

Thou who art called the Paraclete,
Best Gift of God above,
The living Spring, the living Fire,
Sweet Unction, and true Love ![476]

The Eleventh Council of Toledo (675)[477] makes reference to this name: "The Holy Ghost is shown to have proceeded from the Father and the Son because He is acknowledged to be the charity or the holiness of both."

In the writings of the Greek Fathers the Third Person of God has one proper name, the Holy Ghost, but He has various appellations: kleseis, that is, energeia, or vital action, the gift of God and certain symbolic names: living spring, chrism, anointment, and spiritual unction. But the Greeks do not distinguish the proper name from the others as the Latins do.[478]

2. Theological proof. In the body of the article St. Thomas argues that love is accepted in three senses: essentially, notionally, and personally. In all three senses it is substantial love. In the essential sense it denotes the condition of the lover with reference to the thing loved and belongs to the three persons like intellection. Notionally love signifies active spiration, by which the Holy Ghost is designated as proceeding from the spirating Father and Son, just as in the first procession the enunciation as distinct from intellection is something notional, as will be explained more fully below in question 41. Personally love denotes the condition of him who proceeds after the manner of love with regard to his principle, and in this sense it is a proper name of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the mutual love of the Father and the Son as a "certain impression of the thing loved in the affection of the lover," as St. Thomas says. This notional love of the Father and the Son is unique if understood substantively, because there is but one spiration and indeed only one spirator; it is also said to be mutual when understood adjectively because there are two spirating.

As we have said in the first article of question 36, the procession of love is not as well understood by us as the procession after the manner of intellection, and therefore we do not have the proper terms to designate what pertains to love. Thus while the term of enunciation in the intellect has a proper name, the mental word, the immanent terminus of love is unnamed. Three reasons are given for this: 1. the intellect knows better what is in itself than what is in the will; 2. good, the object of love, is not formally in the mind as truth, that is, as the conformity of the judgment with the thing, but it is in things outside the mind. A certain terminus of love exists in the affection of the lover, "I certain impression of the thing loved on the affection of the lover" and at the same time "an impulse to the thing loved." In St. Augustine's words, "My love (is) the pressure that is on me." Thus love can be predicated of God not only essentially and notionally but also personally because, although a special name for the immanent terminus of love is lacking, we use the common name of love;[479] 3. a reason why love, the act of the will, is less known than the act of the intellect arises from the fact that a thing is not intelligible except inasmuch as it is in act or determined; but the act of the will or love, tending to the good which is in things, retains something that is potential. We do not understand divine love, which is determined to the highest degree, except from the analogy with our love, whose tending to the good remains somewhat potential and not fully determined. From this difficulty in understanding the things that pertain to love comes this poverty of words, and so we must have recourse to common terms.

Because of this limited vocabulary we often hear preachers speak of the Holy Ghost as if He were the active, mutual love of the Father and the Son, whereas this love is active spiration and if the Holy Ghost were identified with it there would be only two persons in God. Certainly the Holy Ghost is not the active spiration which is in the Father and the Son; He is the terminus of that spiration, a terminus which is opposed to the first two divine persons by the opposition of the relation of procession or of passive spiration.