|
The reply is in the affirmative as pertaining to faith as
is clear from the Athanasian Creed: "For there is one
person of the Father, another of the Son, another of
the Holy Ghost."[306]
The body of the article gives the theological argument,
which may be presented as follows. Every perfection is to
be attributed to God. But "person" signifies what is
most perfect in all of nature, namely, a free and
intelligent subject, or a subsisting being with a rational
nature. Therefore it is proper to speak of God as a
person, and this in the most excellent manner. God is
subsisting being itself with an intellectual nature and,
therefore, whatever pertains to the person belongs to Him
formally and eminently. For this reason theistic
philosophers speak of a personal God in opposition to the
pantheists, who say that God is immanent in the universe
in which He operates not freely but necessarily.
In his reply, St. Thomas states that God is the
highest and most intelligent being per se. To the second
difficulty he replies that the term "person" in its
formal being most properly belongs to God since the
dignity of the divine nature exceeds every dignity. His
third reply shows he understood the difficulty that arose
between the Greeks and the Latins. In his reply to the
fourth objection, he says: "Individual being cannot
belong to God so far as matter is the principle of
individuation but only so far as individual being denotes
incommunicability." This was also noted by Richard of
St. Victor. Thus the person of the Father is
incommunicable to the Son; thus also it is explained that
the humanity of Christ, which is individuated by matter,
is not a person because it is communicated to the
suppositum of the divine Word, in which it exists.
From this, however, a problem arises. If the person
denotes incommunicability in the divine nature, how can
the Father communicate His nature to the Son? This
problem will be solved in the following articles.
|
|