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Article 1. A person is a free and intelligent subject
or an individual substance with a rational nature.
Article 2. Person is the same as the
"hypostasis" of an intellectual nature.
Article 3. Since person signifies that which is most
perfect in all nature, namely, a subsistence with a
rational or intellectual nature, it is proper that this
term be used with reference to God analogically and in the
most excellent manner. Thus in Sacred Scripture the
Father and the Son, as is clear, are personal nouns and
so also is the Holy Ghost, who is mentioned with them.
Article 4. The divine persons, distinct from one
another, are constituted by the three divine subsisting
relations opposed to one another, namely, paternity,
filiation, and passive spiration.
The reason for this is that "there is no distinction in
God except by the relations of origin opposed to one
another." Since these relations are not accidents but
subsisting, we find in them two requisites for a person:
subsistence and incommunicability, or distinction. Thus
the three divine persons are three intelligent and free
subjects, although they understand by the same essential
intellection, love themselves necessarily by the same
essential love, and freely love creatures by the same free
act of love.
Therefore the paternity in God is personality, although
it is relative, as are also filiation and passive
spiration. The divine paternity on its part renders the
divine nature incommunicable, although the divine nature
is still communicable to the other two persons, just as
the top angle of the triangle on its part renders its
surface incommunicable, although this surface can still be
communicated to the other two angles. And as God is His
own deity, so the Father is His own paternity, the Son
is His own filiation, and the Holy Ghost is His own
(quasi-) passive spiration.
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