The Summa of Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas volume 1
Let us now move on to this name of the Holy Spirit: “Love”:
1. Is this a proper name of the Holy Spirit?
2. Do the Father and the Son love each other through the Holy Spirit?
Article 1 — Is “Love” a proper name of the Holy Spirit?
Objections:
1. S. Augustine writes: “The name Wisdom is given to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: and all together are one wisdom, and not three wisdoms. I do not see why we would not also give the name of charity to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, all together being, moreover, only one charity. ” But a name which suits each person and all together in the singular, is not the proper name of a person. “Love” is therefore not a proper name of the Holy Spirit.
2 . The Holy Spirit is a subsisting person. Now the word “love” does not evoke a subsisting person, but an action which passes from the lover to the beloved. Therefore, “Love” is not a proper name of the Holy Spirit.
3 . Love is the bond of those who love because, according to Dionysius, it is “a force that unites.” Now the link is an intermediary between those it unites, and not a term which comes from them. Therefore, since the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as has been shown, it appears that he is not the love or bond of the Father and the Son.
4 . Whoever loves has a love. Now the Holy Spirit loves, and therefore has a love. If then the Holy Spirit is love, we will have the love of love, and the spirit of the spirit. This all makes no sense.
On the contrary , S. Gregory said: “The Holy Spirit himself is Love. ”
Answer:
When it comes to God, the term love can be taken in two senses: essential or personal. Taken in the personal sense, it is a proper name of the Holy Spirit, in the same sense that “Word” is the proper name of the Son. To be convinced of this, let us remember that there are two processions in God: one by mode of intelligence, or procession of the Word, the other by mode of will, or procession of Love. The first is better known to us, and we have found proper names to designate each of the elements that can be distinguished there. It is no longer the same with the procession of will: to designate the person who proceeds, we have recourse to circumlocutions; and even the relations born from this procession receive the names of procession and spiration, as we have said, which are, strictly speaking, names of origin rather than names of relation.
And yet we must grasp the similarity between one and the other. From the fact that we know a thing, there arises in the knower a sort of intellectual conception of the thing known, a conception called verb; in the same way, from the fact that one loves a thing, there arises in the heart of the lover a sort of impression, so to speak, of the thing loved, which makes one say that the beloved is in the magnet, as the known is in the knower. So that he who knows and loves himself is in himself, not only by real identity, but also as known in the knower and loved in the magnet.
But when it comes to the intellect, we have found words to designate the relationship of the knower to the thing known, if only the very word “know”; and others have been found to signify the emanation of the intellectual conception, such as “saying” and “verb”. Consequently, in God “to know” is only used as an essential attribute, since it does not expressly evoke a relationship with the Word which proceeds; while “Verb” is used as a personal noun, since it means that which proceeds. As for “saying”, it is a notional term which evokes the relationship of the Principle of the Word to the Word itself. And when it comes to will, we have the verb to love (diligere, amare), which evokes the relationship of the magnet to the thing loved; but there are no proper terms to evoke the relationship that the very affection or impression of the thing loved maintains with its principle, this impression which comes in the magnet from the very fact that he loves, there is no there is also no word to evoke the inverse relationship. Also, for lack of proper terms, we designate these relationships using the terms love or dilection; it is as if we called the Word “thought conceived” or “wisdom generated”.
So, if we consider the original meaning of love and dilection, which simply evokes the relationship of the magnet to the thing loved, we only use love and loving as essential attributes, just as knowledge and " to know ". But, if we use these words to express the relation which relates to its principle that which proceeds by mode of love, or vice versa; that is to say if by love we understand: the love which proceeds, and by “to love”: breathe the love which proceeds, then Love is a name of Person, and to love is a notional verb, like saying or generate.
Solutions:
1 . In the passage cited, S. Augustine uses the word charity in the sense that, in God, it designates the essence.
2.If knowing, wanting and loving are used in the manner of verbs signifying transitive actions, that is to say which pass from the subject to the object, in reality these are immanent actions, connoting moreover in the The agent itself has a relation to the object, as we said above. Also, even in us, love is something that abides in the magnet, and the mental verb is something that abides in the one who says it, while connoting a relationship to the thing expressed or loved. But in God, who suffers no accident, their condition still rises; the Word and Love are there subsisting. Therefore, when we say that the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father “towards” the Son or “towards” anything else, we do not mean anything transitive; we only signify the relationship of Love to the thing loved, just as “Word” connotes the relationship of the Word to the thing expressed in this Word.
3 . It is well said that the Holy Spirit is the bond of the Father and the Son, insofar as he is Love. Indeed, it is by a dilection that the Father loves both himself and the Son, and vice versa; consequently, as Love, the Holy Spirit evokes a reciprocal relationship between the Father and the Son, that of lover to loved. But from the very fact that the Father and the Son love each other, it is necessary that their mutual Love, which is the Holy Spirit, proceeds from both. So, if we consider the origin, the Holy Spirit is not in the middle, He is the third Person of the Trinity. But if we consider the relationship that we have just said, yes, it is between the two other Persons as the link that unites them, while proceeding from each of them.
4. Although the Son knows, it does not become him to produce a verb, because knowledge belongs to him as the Word which proceeds; likewise, although the Holy Spirit loves, in the essential sense, it does not suit Him to breathe love, that is to say, to love in the notional sense; he loves in an essential capacity as Love which proceeds, and not as the productive principle of a love.
Article 2 — Do the Father and the Son love each other through the Holy Spirit?
Objections:
1. S. Augustine proves that the Father is not wise by begotten Wisdom. Now, just as the Son is the begotten wisdom, so the Holy Spirit is the Love that proceeds, as we have already seen. The Father and the Son therefore do not love each other through this proceeding Love which is the Holy Spirit.
2.In the statement: “The Father and the Son love each other through the Holy Spirit,” the verb to love can be understood either in the essential sense, or in the notional sense. In the essential sense it is impossible for the proposition to be true, for it might as well be said that the Father knows through his Son. In the notional sense, it is not more so, because we should also be able to say: “The Father and the Son breathe by the Holy Spirit”, or again: “The Father begets by his Son. ” So many unacceptable formulas. So, in whatever sense it is taken, the above proposition is false.
3. It is by the same and unique love that the Father loves his Son, himself and us. But it is not true that “the Father loves himself through the Holy Spirit.” Because no notional act reflects on the principle of this act; we cannot say that the Father generates or breathes himself. We cannot say either that “the Father loves himself through the Holy Spirit” by understanding loving in the notional sense of breathing. Moreover, the love with which He loves us is not the Holy Spirit, at least as it seems; because this love speaks of a relationship with the creature, and therefore relates to the essence. Therefore, it is false that “the Father loves the Son through the Holy Spirit”.
In the opposite sense , according to St. Augustine, “it is through the Holy Spirit that the Son is loved by the Father and that he loves the Father.”
Answer:
Here is where the difficulty lies. We use the ablative to designate a cause; and by saying: “The Father loves the Son through the Holy Spirit (Spiritu Sancto)”, we seem to make the Holy Spirit a principle of love in the Father and in the Son, which is perfectly impossible. For some therefore, the proposition in question is false; according to them, S. Augustine virtually retracted it by retracting this similar proposition: “The Father is wise by begotten wisdom. ” Others say that it is an improper formula, to be explained as follows: “The Father loves the Son by the Holy Spirit”, that is to say by the essential love which is appropriated to the Holy Spirit. Others say that we have here an ablative of a sign, giving the following meaning: the Holy Spirit is the sign that the Father loves the Son, since he proceeds from them as love. There are some who see in this an ablative of formal cause: because the Holy Spirit, they say, is the love with which the Father and the Son formally love each other. Finally, others say that it is an ablative with a formal effect; in which, they approach the truth more closely.
To clarify this question, it should be noted that things are usually named because of their shape. This is called “white” because of its whiteness; that of “man”, because of his humanity. Consequently, everything that establishes a name for the thing acts as a form for it. Thus in the expression: “this man is covered with a garment”, the indirect complement, that is to say the ablative indumento, evokes the role of formal cause, although the garment is not a form. Now it happens that we name a thing by what proceeds from it, not only by qualifying the agent by the action, but also by qualifying it by the very term of the action, namely by the effect, if of the less the effect itself enters into the definition of the action. We say thus: fire heats “by heating”, although heating is not the true form of fire (the form of fire is heat), but only the action emanating from the fire. And it is also said: “The tree is flowered with magnificent flowers”, although the flowers are not a form of the tree, but effects or products which proceed from it.
That being said, here is our solution. “Love” having two meanings in God, one essential and the other notional, if we understand it as an essential attribute, we must then say that the Father and the Son love each other, not through the Holy Spirit. , but by their own essence. This is why S. Augustine writes: “Who then will dare to say that the Father loves himself, the Son and the Holy Spirit only through the Holy Spirit? ”And this is what the first opinions had in mind. If, on the contrary, we take “to love” in the notional sense, it means nothing other than “to breathe love”, just as “to say” means to produce a verb, and “to flower”: to produce flowers. Just as we say of the tree: “It is full of flowers”, so also we say that “the Father speaks through his Word or through his Son himself and the creature”; and it is said that “the Father and the Son love, by the Holy Spirit, or by the Love which proceeds, themselves and us”.
Solutions:
1. We have said the different condition of the terms concerning intelligence, and those concerning will. Being wise or knowing are purely essential attributes in God; therefore we cannot say that the Father is wise or knowing through his Son. Whereas loving is used not only as an essential term, but also as a notional term: and it is in this latter sense that we can say that the Father and the Son “love each other through the Holy Spirit”.
2. When the action evokes in its very notion a determined effect, the principle of the action can be qualified by the action and by the effect: we can thus say that the tree is flowering with (early) flowering, or blooming with (magnificent) flowers. But when the action does not evoke a specific effect, its principle cannot be qualified by the effect: it is qualified only by the action. We do not say that the tree “produces the flower by the flower”, but “by the production of flowers”. Now the verbs spirer and generate purely evoke the notional act; we cannot therefore say that the Father “breathes by the Holy Spirit”, nor “begets by the Son”. But we can say: “the Father speaks (himself and all things) by his Word”, “Word” here designating the Person who proceeds; we will just as easily say that “he says by a diction”, a diction designating the notional act. This is because saying evokes a specific Person, since it means: producing the Word. Likewise, loving in the notional sense means: producing Love. This is why we can say that the Father loves the Son “through the Holy Spirit”.
3. It is not only his Son whom the Father loves through the Holy Spirit, but also himself and us; because, as we have said, “to love” in the notional sense does not only evoke the production of a divine person, it evokes the person produced by a mode of love; and love says relationship to the thing loved. Therefore, just as the Father says, through the Word which he generates, himself and every creature, since the Word generated by him is sufficient to represent the Father and every creature; in the same way also, he loves himself and every creature through the Holy Spirit, since the Holy Spirit proceeds as love from that first goodness by reason of which the Father loves himself and every creature. We also see that there is evoked as secondly, in the Word and the proceeding Love, a relationship with the creature, insofar as truth and divine goodness are the principle of the knowledge and love that God has. of any creature.