The Summa of Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas volume 1
1. Should notional acts be attributed to people?
2. Are these actions necessary or voluntary?
3. Does the person come from nothing or from something?
4. Should we posit in God a power relating to notional acts?
5. What does this power consist of?
6. Can notional acts be completed by several people?
Article 1 — Should notional acts be attributed to persons?
Objections:
1. According to Boethius, “all genres, as soon as they are applied to qualify God, turn into the divine substance, with the exception of relative terms”. Now action is one of the ten genres. Therefore, if we attribute an action to God, it will belong to his essence, and not to the notion.
2 . For S. Augustine, everything that is said about God is attributed to him either as a substance or
as a relation. But what belongs to the divine substance is expressed by the essential attributes; what belongs to the relationship is expressed by the names of people and by those of properties. There is therefore no reason to still attribute notional acts to people.
3 . It is a property of action that it carries with it a passion. But we do not admit passions in God. We must therefore not admit notional acts either.
On the contrary , S. Augustine says that “it is proper for the Father to beget the Son.” Now to generate is an act; we must therefore perform notional acts in God.
Answer:
In the divine Persons, the distinction is made according to origin. But an origin can only be properly designated by actions. Therefore, when we wanted to designate the original order between the divine Persons, it was necessary to attribute notional acts to the persons.
Solutions:
1. Every origin is designated by an act. But we can attribute two orders of origin to God. One concerns the procession of creatures; but this is an attribute common to the three Persons. This is why the actions attributed to God to designate the procession of creatures belong to the essence. But we consider in God another order of origin: one person proceeds from another. Also the acts which designate this order of origin are qualified as “notional”: we know that the “notions” of persons are the mutual relationships between these persons.
2. Notional acts and relationships of people differ only in their mode of signifying; in reality, they are one and the same thing. The Master of Sentences thus said that generation and birth “take, in other words, the name of paternity and filiation”. To be sure, we must note this. It is the movement which first allowed us to conjecture an original link between one thing and another; as soon as a thing is pulled out of its state by a movement, it appears to us that it came from some cause. Hence it is that, in its original meaning, the term action evokes the origin of movement. The movement, in fact, insofar as it is in the motive for the effect of another, is called passion; and the origin of the movement itself insofar as it starts from another and ends in what is moved, takes the name of action. Therefore, if we eliminate the movement, action only evokes the original order, insofar as it goes from the cause or principle to what comes from it. And since in God there is no movement, the personal action of the productive principle of a person is nothing other than its relation of principle to the person who proceeds from it. These relationships, moreover, are the very relationships or notions. But, as we can only speak of divine and intelligible things in the manner of sensible things from which we draw our knowledge; and as in these the actions and passions, by reason of the movement which they imply, are distinct from the relations resulting from the actions and passions, it was necessary to signify the relations of persons by two distinct categories of terms: by way of actions, and by way of relationships. So it is clear that in reality it is one and the same thing; there is only a difference in the mode of signifying.
3 . Yes, to the extent that the action evokes the origin of the movement, it itself brings with it a passion. But it is not in this sense that we affirm an action in the divine Persons; therefore, there is nothing “passive”, except from the point of view of grammar, in the verbal expression: as we say that the Father begets, so we say that the Son is begotten.
Article 2 — Are notional acts necessary or voluntary?
Objections:
1. S. Hilaire writes: “It was not under the impulse of a natural necessity that the Father begat the Son. ”
2 . The Apostle says (Col 1:13): “God has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. ” Now, dilection belongs to the will. It is therefore by will that the Son is begotten of the Father.
3 . Nothing is more voluntary than love. Now, it is as Love that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. He therefore proceeds voluntarily.
4. The Son proceeds in an intellectual mode like the Word. But it is voluntarily that every verb is emitted by the speaker. The Son therefore proceeds from the Father by will, and not by nature.
5 . What is not voluntary is necessary. Therefore, if the Father did not generate the Son by will, it follows that he generated him by necessity. But S. Augustine teaches the opposite in the work he addressed to Orosius.
On the contrary , in this same work, S. Augustine declares that the Father generated the Son neither by will nor by necessity.
Answer:
The proposition: “This exists or occurs voluntarily”, which translates the ablative uoluntate, can firstly mean a pure concomitance; I can thus say that I am a man voluntarily, since I want to be a man. In this sense we can say that the Father generated his Son voluntarily, just as he is God voluntarily; for he wants to be God, and he wants to beget his Son. The adverb (or ablative) can also evoke a principle: for example we say that the worker operates voluntarily, because his will is the principle of the work. In this last sense, it will be necessary to say that the Father did not generate the Son voluntarily; what he produced by will is the creature, as emerges from this canon reported by S. Hilaire: “If anyone says that the Son was made by the will of God, like any of his creatures , let him be anathema. ”
Here is the reason. Between the causality of will and that of nature, there is this difference that nature is determined to a single effect, while the will is not. For the effect is assimilated to the form by which the agent operates; and, as we know, a thing only has a natural form which gives it being. Hence the adage: As we are, so we do. But the form by which the will acts is not unique; there are as many as there are ideas conceived by the intellect. What is accomplished by will is therefore not such as the agent is in himself, but such as the agent willed and conceived it. Thus the will is the principle of things which can be other than what they are; on the contrary, things which cannot be other than they are have nature as their principle.
Now, what is capable of being thus or otherwise, far from belonging to the divine Nature, can only be created; for God is the self-necessary Being, while the creature is made of nothing. Also the Arians, wanting to lead us to this conclusion that the Son is a creature, said that the Father begat the Son voluntarily, that is to say by will. For us, we must say that the Father begat the Son by nature, and not by will. Also we read in S. Hilaire: “It is the divine will which grants being to all creatures; but it is a perfect birth from the immutable and unbegotten substance, which gave the Son his nature. All things were created as God intended them to be; but the Son born of God subsists as God himself is. ”
Solutions:
1 . S. Hilaire targets the heretics who went so far as to refuse to the generation of the Son the concomitance of the will of the Father. According to them, the Father generated the Son naturally, in the sense that he did not have the will to generate, just as we suffer by natural necessity many evils contrary to our will: death, old age and others afflictions. This intention of the author emerges clearly from the context, where we can read: “It was not against his will as if forced or pushed by a natural necessity when he did not want it, that the Father generated the Son. ”
2 . If the Apostle calls Christ “Darling Son” of God, it is because he is superabundantly loved by God, but not because love would be the principle of the generation of the Son.
3 . The will also, insofar as it is a certain nature, wills something naturally; for example, the will of man naturally tends towards happiness. Likewise, God wants himself and loves himself naturally, while the divine will is in some way indifferent to other things, as we have said. Now the Holy Spirit proceeds as Love insofar as God loves himself; that is to say that he proceeds naturally, while proceeding by way of will.
4 . In conceptions of the intellect, too, one must go back to the first principles, which are known naturally. Now it is naturally that God knows himself: and, on this account, the conception of the Word is natural.
5. There is what is necessary for oneself, and what is necessary for another. Necessary by another can be done in two ways. First, because of its efficient and compelling cause; we thus call what is violent necessary. Then, because of its final cause; thus in things posed with a view to an end, we will say “necessary” that without which the end cannot be achieved, or be achieved under good conditions. But none of these modes of necessity is suitable for divine generation; for God is not ordained to an end, and no constraint has power over him. What is necessary in itself is what cannot not be; thus it is necessary that God exists. And this is in what sense it is necessary that the Father begets the Son.
Article 3 — Does the person come from nothing, or from something?
Objections:
1 . It seems that notional acts do not come from something. Indeed, if the Father generates the Son by drawing him from something, it is either from himself or from something else. If it is something else that he generates: since what we are made of is in us, it follows that there is in the Son something foreign to the Father. Now this goes against the teaching of S. Hilaire: “There is nothing different or foreign between them. ” But, if the Father generates it by drawing it from himself, another difficulty: the substance from which a production is drawn, if it continues to exist, receives the attribution of the form produced. We thus say that “man is white”, because man does not cease to exist when, from being non-white, he becomes white. It follows either that the Father ceases to exist, once the Son is begotten; or that the Father is the Son: but this is false. The Father therefore does not generate the Son “from something”, but “from nothing”.
2 . That from which one is begotten is a principle of the begotten. Therefore, if the Father generates the Son by drawing him from his substance or nature, it follows that the substance or nature of the Father is the principle of the Son. But it cannot be the material principle, because there is no matter in God; it will therefore be a sort of active principle, as the begetter is the principle of the begotten. From which it follows that essence generates; conclusion that we rejected above.
3 . S. Augustine says that the three Persons are not “of” the same essence, because the essence is not something other than the person. Now the person of the Son is not another thing than the essence of the Father. Therefore the Son is not “of” the essence of the Father.
4. Every creature comes from nothing. Now in Scripture, the Son is called a creature: Ecclesiasticus (24, 5) makes the begotten Wisdom say: “I came out of the mouth of the Most High, begotten first before every creature”; and further: “I was created from the beginning and before the ages.” The Son is therefore not begotten of something, but of nothing. We can raise the same difficulty with regard to the Holy Spirit, from this text of Zechariah (12,1): “Thus says the Lord who stretched out the heaven, who founded the earth and created the spirit of the man within him”; or from this text from Amos (4.3) in a different version from the Vulgate: “It is I who form the mountains and who create the Spirit. ”
In the opposite sense , S. Augustine writes: “God the Father alone has generated from his own nature and without beginning a Son equal to himself. ”
Answer:
The Son is not generated from nothing, but from the substance of the Father. Indeed, we have shown above that in God there is truly and properly paternity, filiation and birth. Now, between truly “generating”, the act by which a son proceeds, and “making”, there is this difference, that we make a thing with an external matter; the carpenter makes a stool out of wood, but it is from his own substance that man begets a son. And while the created artist makes something out of a given material, God makes something out of nothing, as we will show later; not because nothingness passes into the substance of the thing, but because the whole substance of the thing is produced by God without anything being presupposed. Therefore, if the Son proceeded from the Father as if drawn from nothing, his relationship to the Father would be that of the work to the artist; and it is too clear that the work cannot take the name of son in the literal sense, but only by way of comparison. It follows that if the Son of God proceeded from the Father as if drawn from nothing, he would not be a Son truly and in the literal sense. Which goes against the affirmation of S. John (1 Jn 5, 20 Vg): “That we may be in his true Son, Jesus Christ. ”The true Son of God is therefore not taken from nothing; it is not made, but only generated.
And if some beings made from nothing by God are called “sons of God”, it is by metaphor, because of a certain assimilation to Him who is truly Son. This one, as he is the only true and natural Son of God, takes the name of “Only Son”, according to this word of St. John (1, 18): “The only Son who is in the womb of the Father, he himself made him known to us. ” As others are called “adopted sons” by resemblance to him, he is given by a sort of metaphor the name “firstborn Son”, according to the words of St. Paul (Rm 8:29): “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. ”
Ultimately, the Son of God is indeed begotten from the substance of the Father. In truth, it is in another way than the son of a man. A particle of the substance of the man who generates passes in fact into the substance of the begotten. But the divine nature is indivisible. It is therefore necessary that the Father, in generating the Son, instead of transmitting to him a portion of his nature, communicates it entirely to him and is distinguished from him only by a pure relation of origin, as we have shown.
Solutions:
1. In the expression “the Son is born of the Father”, the preposition designates a consubstantial generating principle, and not a material principle. For that which is drawn in a prior manner is produced by a transmutation of that matter into a certain form; whereas the divine essence is immutable and cannot receive another form.
2. By saying that the Son is begotten “from the essence of the Father”, we call into question a quasi-active principle: this is at least the explanation of the Master of Sentences, who adopts the following translation: “The Son is begotten of the essence of the Father that is to say of the Father Essence. ” He invokes this passage from S. Augustine: “When I say of Patre Essentia, it is as if I were saying in more formal terms: of the essence of the Father.” But this does not seem sufficient to give this formula a satisfactory meaning. Because we can say that the creature proceeds “from God's Essence”, and yet we do not say that it is “from the essence of God”. We can therefore propose another solution.
The Latin preposition always denotes a consubstantial principle. Thus we do not say that the house is made “by” the builder, because the latter is not the consubstantial cause; on the other hand, we say that one thing is made “of” another, as soon as the latter presents itself, in any capacity, as a consubstantial principle. Active principle: the son, it is said, is born “from” his father. Material principle: an “iron” knife. Formal principle, at least if it concerns beings in which the form is itself subsistent and does not happen to a distinct subject; of an angel, we can say that he is “of” an intellectual nature. It is precisely in this sense that we say: “The Son is begotten of the essence of the Father,” because the essence of the Father, communicated to the Son by generation, subsists in him.
3 . In the statement: “The Son is generated from the essence of the Father”, there is a complement with respect to which the distinction (namely: from the Father) can be verified. But in the other statement: “the three persons are “of” the divine essence”, there is nothing in relation to which the distinction evoked by the preposition “de” can be established. The case of the two formulas is therefore not the same.
4 . When the Scripture says that wisdom is created, we can understand it not of the Wisdom which is the Son of God, but of the created wisdom which God infuses into creatures. The Ecclesiasticus (1, 9 Vg) says in fact: “He created it (namely: wisdom) in the Holy Spirit, and he poured it out on all his works. ”Moreover, there is no harm in the fact that, in the same passage, Scripture speaks of both the two wisdoms, begotten and created, because created wisdom is a participation of uncreated Wisdom. Or this expression can relate to the created nature assumed by the Son: the meaning is then this: “From the beginning and before the ages, I was created”, that is to say: “He was intended that I would be united with the creature. ” Or else, by describing Wisdom as “created” and “begotten”, we are insinuated to the eminent mode of divine generation. In generation, in fact, the begotten receives the nature of the begetter; and it is for its perfection. In creation, on the other hand, the creator does not change; but the created does not receive the nature of the creator. We therefore qualify the Son as both “created” and “begotten”, to help us grasp through this term “creation” the immutability of the Father, and through that of “generation” the unity of nature between the Father and Son. This is the explanation given by S. Hilaire.
The other passages invoked do not speak of the Holy Spirit, but of a created “spirit”: this term designates sometimes the wind, sometimes the air, or the breath of man, even the soul, or an invisible substance any.
Article 4 - Should we posit in God a power relating to notional acts?
Objections:
1. Every power is active or passive, and neither is appropriate here. There is no passive power in God, as we have already seen; no more active power of one person vis-à-vis another, since divine persons are not “made”, as we have just shown. There is therefore no power in God concerning notional acts.
2 . We talk about power in relation to what is possible. But divine persons are not among the possibilities; they belong to necessary realities. We must therefore not posit in God any power relating to notional acts, that is to say to the acts by which the divine Persons proceed.
3 . The Son proceeds as Word, that is to say as conception of the intellect; the Holy Spirit proceeds as Love, which comes from the will. Now, in God, we speak of power in relation to its effects, but not in relation to thought or its will, this has been established above. We must therefore not speak in God of power relating to notional acts.
On the contrary , S. Augustine writes: “If God the Father could not generate a Son equal to himself, where then is the power of God the Father? “There is therefore in God a power corresponding to notional acts.
Answer:
Just as we posit notional acts in God, we must posit a power concerning the acts in question. “Power” means nothing other than “principle of an act”; and since we grasp the Father as the principle of generation, the Father and the Son as the principle of spiration, we must clearly attribute to the Father the power to generate and to the Son the power to breathe. In fact, the power to generate is that by which the progenitor generates; and whoever begets, begets by virtue of some perfection. It is therefore necessary, in everything that generates, to posit a power to generate; and in him who breathes, a power to breathe.
Solutions:
1 . In notional acts, no Person proceeds as “done.” Therefore, when we speak in God of power relating to notional acts, we do not posit as a term a made person, but only a person who proceeds.
2. The possible which opposes the necessary comes from passive power; this does not exist in God; therefore there is no such possibility in God. In him there is only the possible included in the necessary. In this second sense, we will say very well: that God exists, it is possible; and likewise: that he begets a Son, it is possible.
3. Power means principle; and “principle” implies distinction from that which proceeds from this principle. Now, in what we attribute to God, we consider two kinds of distinction: one is real, and the other is pure reason. God is truly and essentially distinguished from the things of which he is the principle, by creation; similarly, a person is truly distinguished from the one of whom he is a principle by notional act. But in God, the action is not distinguished from the agent, except by a distinction of reason; otherwise the action would be an accident in God. This is why, regarding the divine actions which give rise to the procession of realities distinct from their principle (either according to the essence or according to the hypostasis), we can attribute to God a power, in the proper sense of principle: we place in it a power to create, and we can likewise place in it a power to generate or breathe. But knowing and willing are not among those acts which denounce the procession of a reality distinct from God, either according to essence or according to hypostasis. We cannot therefore verify in him a power concerning these two acts, except according to our mode of thinking and expressing his mystery, because we still speak in God of intellect and intellection, although divine intellection is his essence. even, and has no principle.
Article 5 — In what does this power consist?
Objections:
1 . Who says power, says principle, by definition: active power, according to Aristotle, is the principle of action. Now in God “principle of a person” is a notional term. So in God power does not mean essence, but relationship.
2. In God, no difference between power and action. But generation, in God, means relationship. The power to generate therefore also signifies it.
3 . The attributes which signify the essence in God are common to the three Persons. But the power to generate is not common to the three Persons. It is specific to the Father. It therefore does not mean essence.
On the contrary , just as God can generate a Son, so also he wills it. But the will to generate means the essence. The power to generate therefore also signifies it.
Answer :
For some, the power to generate would mean relationship in God. But this cannot be. What we properly call power, in any agent, is that by which the agent acts. On the other hand, whoever produces something by his action assimilates this thing to himself, and precisely to the form in virtue of which he acts. For example, the begotten man resembles his progenitor precisely in human nature, by virtue of which man can beget a man. Therefore, in every begetter, what constitutes its generative power is that very thing in which the begotten resembles the begetter. Now, the Son of God is similar to the Father who begets him, precisely with regard to his divine nature. It is therefore the divine nature in the Father, which is for him his power to generate. Also we read in S. Hilaire: “It is impossible that divine birth does not preserve the very nature from which it comes; for that which draws its substance from God himself and not from elsewhere, cannot be other than God. ”
It must therefore be said with the Master of Sentences that the power to generate mainly signifies the divine essence and not the relationship only. And even, it does not mean the essence as identical to the relation, which would mean both in the same way. Without doubt paternity presents itself as a form of the Father; but it is a personal property which plays, for the person of the Father, the role of the individual form for the created individual. Now, in created beings, the individual form indeed constitutes the person who generates; but it is not that by which the person generates, otherwise Socrates would generate Socrates. Consequently, paternity cannot be considered as that by which the Father generates, but rather as that which constitutes the person of the progenitor: otherwise the Father would generate a Father. That by which the Father generates is the divine nature in which the Son is assimilated to him. We also see that Damascene calls generation “a work of nature”, not that it generates, but it is through it that the progenitor generates. Therefore, the power of begetting signifies directly the divine nature, and the relation only jointly.
Solutions:
1. The word “power” does not designate the relation itself of principle, otherwise this term would belong to the genus relation; it designates the reality which functions as a principle and again not as an agent (principium quod) but as the form by which the agent acts (principium quo). Now the agent is undoubtedly distinguished from what he does, the progenitor is distinguished from the begotten; but that by which the progenitor begets is common to the begotten and to his progenitor, and all the more perfectly as the generation is more perfect. Also, since the divine generation is sovereignly perfect, that by which the progenitor begets is common to the begotten and to the begetter; common by numerical identity, and not just specific as in creatures. Therefore, when we say that the divine essence is the principle by which the progenitor generates, it does not follow that the essence is distinguished from the begotten; this would follow if one said that the divine essence generates.
2 . In God, between the power to generate and the act of generating, the identity is of the same order as between the divine essence and generation or paternity: real identity, with distinction of reason.
3 . The expression “power to generate” evokes power in the direct term and generation in the complement, as when we speak of “the essence of the Father”. Therefore the essence directly signified in this expression is common to the three Persons; as for the notion it connotes, it is specific to the person of the Father.
Article 6 — Can notional acts be completed by several people?
Objections:
1 . It seems that notional acts can end in several persons, so that there are in God several begotten or spirated persons. Indeed, whoever has the power to generate can generate. Now the Son has the power to generate. So it can generate; and certainly not himself. So he can father another son. So there can be several Sons in God.
2. S. Augustine says: “The Son did not beget a Creator. It's not that he couldn't have done it, but he didn't have to. ”
3 . To generate, God the Father is more powerful than a created Father. Now a man can father several sons. So God too, especially because the power of the Father is not diminished when he fathered his Son.
On the contrary , there is no difference in God between being and power. So if there could be many Sons in God, in fact there would be many. There would thus be more than three persons in God, and this is heresy.
Answer :
As the Creed attributed to Saint Athanasius says, there is in God one Father, one Son and one Holy Spirit. Four reasons can be given. The first comes from the relationships which alone distinguish people. Since the divine persons are the subsisting relationships themselves, there could only be several Fathers or several Sons in God if there were several paternity and several filiations. This, moreover, would only be possible by material distinction between these filiations, because, in the same species, the forms are only multipliable because of matter, which does not exist in God. There can therefore be in him only one surviving filiation, just as subsisting whiteness, if it could exist, would be unique.
The second reason is processions. God knows and wills all things through a single, simple act. There can therefore be only one person proceeding as the verb, and that is the Son; only one person proceeding as love, and that is the Holy Spirit.
The third reason concerns the method of proceeding. People proceed naturally, as we have said. But nature is determined to a single effect.
The fourth reason is drawn from the perfection of the divine Persons: if the Son is perfect, it is because the divine filiation is entirely contained in him, and there is only one Son. The same would be said of other People.
Solutions:
1 . Certainly, we must concede purely and simply that the Son possesses the power that the Father possesses. But we will not concede the Latin formula Filius habet potentiam generandi if at least we understand generandi as the gerund of the active verb, which would mean: The Son has the power to generate. The Father and the Son also have one and the same being, and yet we will not say that “the Son is the Father”, because of the personal predicate which is added here to “is”. However, if the word generandi is gerund of the passive verb, then, yes, there is in the Son a potentia generandi: the power to be begotten (by the Father). We will still concede it, if it is the gerund of the impersonal verb, in other words: the power of being generated by any person.
2 . In this passage, S. Augustine does not mean that the Son could beget a son; but that, if it does not generate, it is not through impotence, as we will see later.
3 . Divine immateriality and perfection require that there cannot be several Sons in God. The fact of having only one Son therefore does not imply in the Father any impotence to generate.
It is now a matter of comparing people with each other. We will first consider their equality and their similarity (Q. 42), then their mission (Q. 43).