SECOND ARTICLE: WHETHER THE FATHER AND THE SON LOVE EACH OTHER BY THE HOLY GHOST

State of the question. In the sed contra St. Augustine is quoted as saying that the Father and the Son love each other by the Holy Ghost.[487] But the difficulty arises because the Father and the Son cannot love each other by the Holy Ghost either by essential love or by notional love, just as we do not say that the Father understands the Son by the Son or begets by the Son. But the Father and the Son have no other love than essential and notional love.

Reply. Nevertheless the reply is in the affirmative: the Father and the Son love each other by the Holy Ghost with notional love as a tree is said to flower with flowers.

1. Proof from authority. The text of St. Augustine, quoted in the argument, had been explained in several ways by Scholastics prior to St. Thomas as is indicated in the beginning of the body of the article.

2. Theological proof. A distinction is made between essential and notional love. If love is understood essentially, the Father and the Son do not love each other by the Holy Ghost but by the divine essence because the Holy Ghost is not essential but personal love. By essential love the three divine persons love one another in one and the same act of the divine will, and this act of essential love is identified with the divine essence. But if love is understood notionally, that is, as denoting the third person, then love is nothing else than the spiration of personal love just as enunciation is the production of the word and flowering is the production of flowers. So as we say that a tree flowers with flowers and the Father understands Himself and creatures by the Word, so the Father and the Son are said to love themselves and us by the Holy Ghost, that is, by proceeding love. As we have said, this notional love is mutual although there is but one active spiration and one spirator with two who spirate.

St. Thomas, explanation is more satisfactory than those proposed by earlier Scholastics who understood the ablative "spiritu Sancto" (by the Holy Ghost) either as a sign of mutual love and thus weakened the sense of the expression; or as a formal cause, as if the Holy Ghost were the mutual love of the Father and the Son and thus identified the Holy Ghost with active spiration and then there would be no third person; or as the formal effect, and this last approaches closest to the truth.

Therefore we must say that the Father and the Holy Ghost love each other by notional love inasmuch as the Holy Ghost is the terminus of this love. Confirmation is found in a rather remote analogy: parents are said to love each other by their son since the son is the terminus of their love in the sense that we say that a tree flowers with flowers. We refer the reader to the third paragraph of the body of the article.

Reply to the second objection. "Whenever the understanding of any action implies a determined effect, the principle of the action can be denominated by the action and the effect."

Reply to the third objection. "The Father loves not only the Son but also Himself and us by the Holy Ghost as He enunciates Himself and every creature by the Word which He generates." This is so "because the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the first goodness according to which the Father loves Himself and all creatures." Hence the Holy Ghost proceeds not only from the mutual love of the Father and the Son but also from the love of the first goodness, which the Father loves in Himself and in the Son and which the Son loves in Himself and in the Father. In this way many difficulties proposed recently on this point are solved.

Doubt. From the love of which things does the Holy Ghost proceed?

Reply. The Holy Ghost proceeds per se from the love of all the things that are formally in God, and per accidens and concomitantly from the love of creatures. This is because the Holy Ghost proceeds from the most perfect love. By this love whatever is in God is necessarily loved and by it God freely loves creatures. But the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the love of possible creatures since God is not said to love possible creatures because He does not will for them the good of existence. This suffices to explain why the Holy Ghost is properly called love, namely, personal Love.

Corollary. The expression sometimes heard, "incarnate love," is not admissible as is "incarnate Word," because it seems to imply the incarnation of the Holy Ghost.

We may recall here how beautifully the liturgy makes use of metaphors to express this doctrine, particularly in the hymn Veni Creator:

Thou who art called the Paraclete,
Best gift of God above,
The living spring, the living fire,
Sweet unction, and true love!

O guide our minds with Thy blest light,
With love our hearts inflame,
And with Thy strength, which ne'er decays,
Confirm our mortal frame.[488]

Since, as St. Thomas says, those things which pertain to love are unnamed, the liturgy has recourse to various metaphors, some of them opposed to the others, as the spring of living water and fire, but whatever is said dividedly is finally united in spiritual love.

In the sequence, Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the liturgy amasses antithetic metaphors about the Holy Ghost:

Thou in labor rest most sweet,
Thou art shadow from the heat,
Comfort in adversity.

What is soiled, make Thou pure;
What is wounded, work its cure;
What is parched, fructify;

What is rigid, gently bend;
What is frozen, warmly tend;
Strengthen what goes erringly.[489]

In the preparation for Mass among the seven prayers to the Holy Ghost we read: "Inflame, O Lord, our reins and our hearts with the fire of the Holy Ghost; that we may serve Thee with a chaste body and please Thee with a pure mind."[490] As we have a consecration to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin Mary we should also consecrate ourselves to the Holy Ghost.