TRINITY
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TRINITY
-inrtifying grace; but it is through His presence we
ivrrivp the gift. He is the seal, Himself impressing
nil \is the Divine image. That Divine image is indeed
r :iIizod in us, but the .seal must be present to secure
1 1)1 continued existence of the impression. Apart
from Him it is not found (Origen, "In Joan, ii",
vi, P. G., XIV, 129; Didvmus, "De Spiritu Sancto,"
X, 11, P. G., XXXIX, 1040-43; Athana.sius "Ep. ad.
Serap.'S III, iii, P. G., XXVI, 629). This union
with the Holy Spirit constitutes our deification
{9cowolri<Tit) , Inasmuch as He is the image, of
Christ, He imprints the likeness of Christ upon us;
since Christ is the image of the Father, we too receive
the true character of God's children (.4.thanasius, loc.
cit.; Gregory Naz., "Orat. xxxi", 4, P. G., XXXVI,
138). It is in reference to this work in our regard
that in the Xicseno-Constantinopolitan Creed the
Holy Spirit is termed the Giver of life (fwoiroi6s). In
the West we more naturally speak of grace as the life
of the soul. But to the Greeks it was the Spirit
through whose personal presence we live. Just as
God gave natural life to Adam by breathing into his
inanimate frame the breath of life, so did Christ give
spiritual life to us when He bestowed on us the gift
of the Holy Ghost.
VI. The Doctrine .4S Interpreted in Latin Theologt. — The transition to the Latin theology of the Trinity was the work of St. Augustine. West- ern theologians have never departed from the main lines which he laid down, although in the Golden Age of Scholasticism his system was developed, its detaOs completed, and its terminologj- perfected. It received its final and classical form from St. Thomas Aquinas. But it is necessary first to indicate in what consisted the transition effected by St. Augustine. This may be summed up in three points: —
(1) He views the Divine Nature as prior to the Personalities. Deus is for him not God the Father, but the Trinity. This was a step of the first impor- tance, safeguarding a-s it did aUke the unity of God and the equality of the Persons in a manner which the Greek system could never do. .\s we have seen, one at least of the Greeks, Didymus, had adopted this standpoint; and it is po.ssible that .\ugustine may have derived this method of viewing the mystery from him. But to make it the basis for the whole treatment of the doctrine was the work of Augustine's genius.
(2) He insists that every external operation of God is due to the whole Trinity, and cannot be attrib- uted to one Person alone, save by appropriation (see Holy Ghost). The Greek Fathers had, as we have seen, been led to affirm that the action [Mpteio) of the Three Persons was one, and one alone. But the doctrine of appropriation was unknown to them, and thus the value of this conclusion was obscured by a traditional theology implying the distinct activ- ities of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
(3) By indicating the analogy between the two processions within the Godhead and the internal acts of thought and will in the human mind (De Trin., IX, iii, 3; X, xi, 17), he became the founder of the psychological theory of the Trinity, which, with a very few exceptions, was accepted by every subse- quent Latin writer.
In the following exposition of the Latin doctrines, we .shall follow St. Thomas Aquinas, whoso treatment of the doctrine is now universally accepted by Catho- lic theologians. It should be obser\'ed, however, that this is not the only form in which the psycho- logical theory has been proposed. Thus Richard of , St. Victor, Alexander of Hales, and St. Bonaventure, while adhering in the main to Western tradition, were more influenced by Greek thought, and give us a system differing somewhat from that of St. Thomas.
A. The Son. — Among the terms employed in Scrip-
ture to designate the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity is the Word (John, i, 1). This is understood
by St. Thomas of the Verbum mentale, or intellectual
concept. As applied to the Son, the name, ho holds,
signifies that Ho proceeds from the Father as the term
of an intellectual procession, in a manner analogous
to that in which a concept is generated by the human
mind in all acts of natural knowledge. It is, indeed,
of faith that the Son proceeds from the Father by a
veritable generation. He is, saj-s the Xicajno-
Constantinopolitan Creed, "begotten before all
worlds". But the Procession of a Divine Person as
the term of the act by which God knows His own
nature is rightly styled generation. This may be
readily shown. As an act of intellectual conception,
it necessarily produces the likeness of the object
known. And further, being Divine action, it is not
an accidental act resulting in a term, itself a mere
accident, but the act is the very substance of the
Divinity, and the term is likewise substantial. A
process tending necessarily to the production of a
substantial term like in nature to the Person from
Whom it proceeds is a process of generation. In
regard to this view as to the procession of the Son,
a difficulty was felt by St. Anselm (Monol., Ixiv) on
the score that it would seem to involve that each of
the Three Persons must needs generate a subsistent
Word. Since all the Powers possess the same mind,
does it not follow, he asked, that in each case thought
produces a similar term? This difficulty St. Thomas
succeeds in removing. According to his psychology
the formation of a concept is not essential to thought
as such, though absolutely requisite to all natural
human knowledge. There is, therefore, no ground in
reason, apart from revelation, for holding that the
Divine intellect produces a Verbum mentale. It is
the testimorv of Scripture alone which tolls us that
the Father has from all eternity begotten His co-sub-
stantial Word. But neither reason nor revelation
suggests it in the case of the Second and Third Per-
sons (I, Q. xxxiv, a. 1, ad S^m.).
Not a few writers of great weight hold that there is sufficient consensus among the Fathers and Scho- lastic theologians as to the meaning of the names Word and Wisdom (Prov., viii), applied to the Son, for us to regard the intellectual procession of the Second Person as at least theologically certain, if not a revealed truth (cf. Suarez, "De Trin.", I, v, § 4; Petav., VI, i, 7; Franzelin, "De Trin.", Thesis X-XA-i). This, however, seems to be an exaggeration. The immense majorit}' of the Greek Fathers, as we have already noticed, interpret \6yos of the spoken word, and consider the significance of the name to lie not in any teaching as to intellectual procession, but in the fact that it implies a mode of generation devoid of all passion. Nor is the tradition as to the interpretation of Prov., viii, in anj' sense unanimous. In view of these facts the opinion of those theologians seems the sounder who regard this explanation of the procession simply as a theological opinion of great probabifity and harmonizing well with revealed truth.
B. The Holy Spirit. — Just as the Son proceeds as the term of the immanent act of the intellect, so does the Holy Spirit proceed as the term of the act of the Di- vine will. In human love, as St. Thomas teaches (I, Q. xx\'ii, a. 3), even though the object be external to us, yet the immanent act of love arouses in the soul a state of ardour which is, as it were, an impression of the thing loved. In virtue of this the object of love is present to our affections, much as, by means of the concept, the object of thought is present to our intellect. This experience is the term of the internal act. The Holy Spirit, it is contended, proceeds from the Father and the Son as the term of the love by which God loves Himself. He is not the love of God in the sense of being Himself formally the love
