SECOND ARTICLE: WHETHER A MISSION IS ETERNAL OR ONLY TEMPORAL

State of the question. The difficulty arises because, as we have said, a mission implies a procession, and the processions are eternal. Moreover, whenever anything belongs to another temporarily and not from eternity, that one is changed; but a divine person is not changed.

Reply. Nevertheless the reply is that mission and giving in God are predicated only temporarily.

1. This is proved from the Scriptures: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent His Son."[615]

2. The theological reason is merely an explanation of the idea of mission: for a mission, besides the reference to the eternal principle, has a reference to the temporal terminus by which the idea of mission is completed. Therefore it must be said to be temporal, even though its principle is eternal, because the effect which it connotes and by which it is denominated is temporal.

In the same way God is said to have created not from eternity but in time. Similarly, the Incarnation and the sending of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost are not from eternity but in time.

On the other hand, generation and spiration are said to be from eternity, because they do not imply a reference to a temporal terminus. Procession and exitus in God, however, are said to be both eternal and temporal, since the Son proceeds eternally as God and temporally as man.

In his conclusion St. Thomas joins mission and giving (datio), not because they are entirely the same but because they are in a certain way in agreement. They agree in this, that both imply a new mode of existence in creatures. They differ inasmuch as mission implies that the person who is sent proceeds from another, whereas the giving does not imply this procession. Thus the Father, who cannot be sent, gives Himself, and the divine essence can be given to the Son and the Holy Ghost by communication.

Reply to the second objection. Why is the person who is sent not changed by the fact that the person becomes present in a new way in another? The reason is that this is solely because of the change in the creature, just as God is said to be the Lord of all things in time not because God is changed but because things arrive at existence. In the same way any object is said to be actually seen now and not before, not because there is a change in the object but because of the change in vision, which is now terminated to this object. Thus the Word is not changed by the visible mission of the Incarnation, that is, by the fact that the humanity of Christ terminates in the Word.

Reply to the third objection. Mission includes the eternal procession and adds a temporal effect. We have then a twofold procession, eternal and temporal; twofold, not with respect to a twofold principle but to two termini, of which one is eternal (and so the procession is eternal) and the other temporal (and so the procession is temporal, which is the mission itself).

Hence "mission" can be defined as "the procession of origin of one person from another with a new mode of existence in another." Mission, therefore, is more than appropriation, and is distinguished both from creation and from eternal procession. It is distinct from creation because its eternal principle is the person that sends and not the entire Trinity, which is the one principle of operation ad extra. It is distinct from eternal procession because of its temporal terminus and also because it is somewhat similar to creation. Mission is, therefore, a kind of middle between eternal procession and creation.

Doubt. Does mission principally and directly imply the eternal origin of the person sent or the new effect produced in the creature? With John of St. Thomas[616] and Gonet,[617] it should be noted that there are two concepts of mission held by Scholastics: the one proposed by St. Bonaventure and Scotus, the other by St. Thomas, the Thomists, and others. This question, which seems to be rather subtle, is necessary to distinguish the divine mission from simple appropriation, inasmuch as mission is more than appropriation.

For St. Bonaventure and Scotus, mission is principally not the procession itself but the production of the temporal effect for which the person is said to be sent. Their reason is that the person pre-existed by eternal procession before the free and temporal procession.

The Thomists, like Gonet, say that mission is not the production of the temporal effect, but that it implies directly the eternal origin of the persons, and indirectly the new effect produced in the creature.

1. This is proved by the authority of St. Augustine, "Now go forth from the Father and to come into the world is to be sent."[618] St. Thomas says: "Mission includes the eternal procession but it adds something, namely, the temporal effect."[619] Besides this, St. Thomas held in the eighth article that the Son is not as properly sent by the Holy Ghost as the Holy Ghost is sent by the Son, although the Holy Ghost together with the Father and the Son produces the temporal effect on account of which the Son is said to be sent.[620]

2. Proof from reason. The mission of a divine person essentially implies the going forth of the person sent. But this going forth can be nothing else than the eternal origin, because the mission of the divine person cannot take place by either command or counsel. Therefore the mission essentially implies such origin, and therefore it is not only the temporal operation of God ad extra, but the eternal origin of the person sent with the connotation of the operation ad extra and the temporal effect.

First confirmation. Otherwise the Father would also be sent, since sanctifying grace is produced in the just, according to which the Father also dwells in the just.

Second confirmation. Our view is confirmed by a comparison of the divine mission with a free act of God, for example, creation, for this free act of creating in God is nothing else than the one unique act of the divine will by which God necessarily loves Himself, with the added connotation of the good that is not necessarily loved.

Third confirmation. The Thomistic view seems more in conformity with the Scriptural language: "From God I proceeded, and came";[621] and "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world."[622]

The Greek Fathers regarded the missions as prolongations of the processions ad extra; thus they distinguished the missions from creation. They said that the sending of the persons of the Son and the Holy Ghost differs from creation as to live differs from to command. And they based the communication of divine life, by which we are elevated to the order of grace, not on creation but on the divine missions. In this way they distinguished between the natural order and the order of grace as they distinguished between creation and the missions of the divine persons. Naturally they placed great emphasis on the invisible mission of the Holy Ghost, and this characteristic of the Greek theory should not surprise us, because the Greeks began with the three persons rather than with the unity of nature. St. Augustine, however, preserved the essential point in the doctrine of the Greeks when he said: "To go forth from the Father and to come into the world is to be sent."[623]

The mission is said to be temporal, however, inasmuch as it connotes a temporal effect by which it is denominated; just as creation is said to be temporal by reason of its effect, although the free creative action is eternal.