Summa I, q.36, a.2: Does the Holy Spirit Proceed from the Son? The Filioque, Distinction by Opposed Relations, and the Creeds

Orientation #

He says “that’s I think where we’re up to, the second article,” and at the end of reply 6 points ahead: “there’ll be an article here on there being one beginning … that’s with the fourth article.” Verified sources place the whole class on Summa Theologiae I, q. 36, a. 2. The previous class treated the names “Image” and “Holy Spirit”; the next treats articles 3 and 4 (through the Son, one principle).

The class, in order #

1. Why this article matters (“the persons are distinguished by relations of origin”) #

Opening aside: the Pope’s general audiences this year, five on Augustine; one quotes a letter (169, “to Vodus” [ed.: Evodius]) on the books on the Trinity, whose first twelve books were published without Augustine’s approval and later revised: “there are very few who are able to understand these things,” so Augustine turns to books more useful to the many.

The point: the article is central because the persons are distinguished by relations of origin.

1. If the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, he is distinct from the Father but not from the Son.
2. Then Son and Holy Spirit would be the same person, “just as the Father and the Breather” are the same person. A student asks whether this would differ from saying there are two sons: no, they would be the same person; a real distinction needs something, “material or something like that,” and there is none.

2. The seven objections (“this is the big bone of contention”) #

1. Dionysius: dare nothing about the substantial divinity beyond what Scripture says; Scripture (John 15) says only “who proceeds from the Father.” He notes “Spirit of Truth” is a kind of reference to the second person, but not as explicit.
2. The creed of the council of Constantinople: “proceeding from the Father”; nothing about the Son, so nothing should be added to “our symbol” [the transcript has “from the Father”; the sense is “from the Son”], and those who added it seem anathema. Digression on symbolo: Greek “thrown together”; “symbol” in Scripture is metaphor (hence “symbolic theology” = metaphorical theology), but also the bringing together of the articles of faith, hence the creed. Some Greek Orthodox think the West heretical for the addition.
3. Damascene: “We say the Holy Spirit is from the Father … we do not say the Holy Spirit is from the Son, but we name him the Spirit of the Son.” He remarks these words “could almost be used against him”: if Spirit of the Son as of the Father, why not from the Son?
4. Nothing proceeds from that in which it rests; the legend of blessed Andrew: “proceeding from the Father and remaining in the Son.” He anticipates: the Son remains in the Father yet proceeds from him.
5. The Son proceeds as the Word, the thought, but our spirit (breath) does not proceed from our word. He anticipates the reply: if the first cause of love is the good as known, then the one proceeding by love proceeds from the one proceeding as thought.
6. The Spirit proceeds perfectly from the Father, so “from the Son” is superfluous. Anticipated: he proceeds perfectly from both, as from one principle.
7. In eternal things to be and to be able to be do not differ (Physics III: everything there is actual), still less in divine things; and the Spirit can be distinguished from the Son without proceeding from him, as Anselm says (born vs. proceeding; “through this alone they would be diverse, that they proceed in diverse ways”). He puts the question sharply: is it enough that one proceeds by way of God understanding himself and the other by way of God loving himself? “As Thomas will point out, God’s understanding and his loving are really one and the same thing,” so why not one person proceeding in both ways, differing only in definition, not in reality? That is what Thomas will deny. Aside: Thomas was on his way to the council (for the Greeks) when he died; hence a number of works about the Greeks.

3. Sed contra and the first reason (“only by relations are the divine persons distinguished”) #

Sed contra: the Athanasian creed, “from the Father and the Son … not made, not created, not generated, but going forth.” Student: the Greeks must not accept it as Athanasius’s; he does not know the creed’s exact origin, only that it is attributed to him.

Thomas’s answer: it is necessary to say the Spirit is from the Son; otherwise he would in no way be distinguished from him as a person.

1. The persons cannot be distinguished by anything absolutum (absolute = ad se, in contrast with relative = ad aliud), for then there would not be one essence, nature, substance of the three; whatever is said absolutely in God pertains to the unity of essence. Example: “in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit” is singular, because the name of God is “I am who am” (God to Catherine of Siena: “I am who am, and you are she who is not”).
2. So only relations distinguish them. “Kind of subtle”: the relations constitute a person by being the same thing as the divine substance, but distinguish insofar as they are relations (relation is a different genus from substance).
3. Relations distinguish only as opposites. Here Thomas is taught by Aristotle’s four opposites: contradictories, having and lacking, contraries, relatives. “I am who am” cannot be distinguished by being and unbeing, nor by having and lacking, nor by contraries (where one lacks what the other has); only relatives remain, “unless you had a material distinction, but there’s no matter in God.”
4. The Father has two relations, fatherhood (to the Son) and — hard to name — “breather” (to the Holy Breath). Father and Son are opposed relatives; Father and breather are not, so they do not make two persons but belong to the one Father.
5. If the Son and the Spirit each had only a relation to the Father, those two relations would not be opposed to each other, just as the Father’s two are not; so, as the Father is one person with two relations, Son and Spirit would be one person with two relations opposed to the Father’s two. “But this is heretical,” a choosing (heresy) rather than following.
6. So Son and Spirit must be referred to each other by opposed relations; the only opposed relations in God are of origin, taken by principle and by what is from it; hence either the Son is from the Spirit, “which no one says,” or the Spirit is from the Son, “which we confess.” Textual note: the edition prints non confiteamur for nos confiteamur; his teacher’s story of the pious nun who edited the text and kept the mistake. Aside on step 5: a recent Vatican ruling that baptism without the Trinity (“Creator, Sanctifier” to avoid sexist language) is invalid; a case in Boston over ten years ago (Jesuit chapel, Cardinal Law); those so baptized are “to be categorized as non-Christians.”

4. The second reason: love from the word (“we do not love something except according as we grasp it”) #

Consonant with this is the ratio of each procession: the Son by way of understanding as thought/word, the Spirit by way of will as love; love must proceed from the word, since we love only what we grasp by a concept of the mind. Recalls the earlier class on Thomas on love: the first cause of love is the good as known. He calls this “a second reason, or confirmation of the first.”

5. The third reason: order (“the very order of things teaches this”) #

“A little more subtle.” Many never proceed from one without some order, except things that differ only materially (one makes many nails, materially distinct, no order among them); where the distinction is not merely material, a multitude produced always has order, whence the beauty of divine wisdom is known in the order of creatures. Digression on wisdom and order: Thomas’s proemium to the Ethics commentary quotes Aristotle, “it belongs to the wise man to order,” and gives the reason: wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and reason characteristically looks for order. Shakespeare’s definition of reason, “the ability for a large discourse, looking before and after,” culminates in “before and after,” which is like the definition of order. Thomas then distinguishes the knowledge of reason by the order it considers; God’s wisdom “orders all things sweetly from beginning to end”; Aristotle in “the 15th book, I guess it is, of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics] makes order one of the main forms of the beautiful. Argument: if Son and Spirit proceed from the one Father they must have some order to each other; the only order assignable is what Augustine calls the order of nature, “by which one is from the other”; so it cannot be that neither proceeds from the other, unless one posited a material distinction, impossible in God. Material distinction comes from the continuous: Euclid’s first theorem (construct an equilateral triangle on a straight line) uses two circles, and “what’s the distinction between these two circles? One’s here, one’s there”; the two centres likewise; no such distinction in God, who is not continuous, “otherwise he would not be actual.” So the third reason; “Aristotle says in the first book of Natural Healing [ed.: Physics] three is enough.” Aside: reading SCG I ch. 42 (God is one) that morning, sixteen arguments; his habit of recalling how many he can remember, and “more joy” over the one forgotten argument than the fourteen remembered.

6. Order in definition and syllogism (“you don’t want to confuse the grammatical order with the logic order”) #

Illustration of the third reason from “the two main things in the life of reason,” where there is no material distinction. Definition: square = equilateral, right-angled quadrilateral; grammatical order (adjective before or after) vs. logical order, where the genus “quadrilateral” tells what it is and the differences tell how; genus is fundamental, differences complete. Syllogism (every B is A; every C is B): the minor “contracts” the universality of the major, as one can contract it differently (every D is B, so every D is A); major is analogous to genus, minor to differences, just as “quadrilateral” can be narrowed by differences to oblong, rhombus, rhomboid, trapezium. Counter-case: “I’m white and I’m healthy”: no order, no fundamental one, so no definition. Passing mention: the proposition “God is pure act” used by Thomas. Aside: Monsignor Dionne and Father Boulay, native French speakers, held English better than French for philosophy and poetry (larger vocabulary, more concrete); André Gide, editor of the Pléiade Shakespeare, called French presque antipoétique; “I’m doing like Thomas, quoting them”; Mark Twain: “God created man somewhere between the angels and the French.”

7. Reply 1: Scripture by sense as well as by words (“through words, or through the sense”) #

Standard objection (raised before over the word “person”). We may say nothing of God not found in Scripture by words or by sense; the Spirit’s procession from the Son is found by sense, especially John 16: “He will clarify me because he is taken from me.” Rule: what is said of the Father is to be understood of the Son, even with an exclusive word added, except where Father and Son are distinguished by opposite relations. Matthew 11, “no one knows the Son except the Father,” does not exclude the Son knowing himself; so “from the Father alone” would not exclude the Son, since as principle of the Spirit the Father and Son are not opposed, only as Father and Son; being breather does not pertain to their distinction. Student: does it exclude the Holy Spirit from knowing? No, same principle. Student: is this from Augustine or the Fathers generally? It is in Augustine as well as Thomas, and it arises right from the texts.

8. Reply 2: councils and creeds (“in each council there was instituted some symbol”) #

Council is the Latin word, synod the Greek. Each council instituted a creed against some error condemned there; a later council does not make a different creed but explains what was implicit in the first against new heresies (Chalcedon on Constantinople’s teaching about the Spirit: not that it was less in the earlier ones, but declared against heretics). His example: “true God and true man” implicitly contains a human and a divine will, made explicit later against the one-will heretic (“mono—”, left unfinished). In the ancient councils the error had not yet arisen [transcript: “does not proceed from the Father”; sense: from the Son]; later, in a council in the Western parts, it was made explicit by the authority of the Roman Pontiff, by whose authority even the ancient councils were congregated and confirmed; implicitly contained in “from the Father,” as the Son’s self-knowledge in Matthew 11. Aside: Augustine says heresy is necessary for theology to develop, in councils and in the Fathers; Thomas notes Augustine’s understanding of grace grew against the Pelagians, so that the Church said his mind on grace is the Church’s mind on grace.

9. Reply 3: the authority of Damascene (“one ought not to stand in his judgment”) #

The denial was first introduced by the Nestorians, in a Nestorian creed condemned at the Synod (Council) of Ephesus; Theodorus the Nestorian followed it, and many with him, among whom Damascene: in this one should not stand by his judgment. Then softening: some say Damascene, as he does not confess the Spirit from the Son, so neither denies it, by the force of his words. Student: Thomas does not dismiss him after one error; compare Paul VI on Theodore of Mopsuestia, singled out for one statement on the Eucharist. He is surprised how Thomas in the Catena Aurea quotes Origen, yet elsewhere is “very rough on him” (origin of the Arian heresy); Origen still quoted some nine times in the catechism. The Pope’s talks: one on Origen (an example “of the danger of pride and intellectual freedom”; hyper-ascetic, lack of balance; weird Eastern doctrines: hell not lasting, praying for the demons), one on Boethius and Cassiodorus; Benedict XVI on Augustine’s influence on him and on Augustine’s humility in the Retractions, which “most academic people should be forced to” write.

10. Replies 4 and 5: rests in the Son; breath and word (“as the love of the one loving rests in the loved”) #

Reply 4: “rests in the Son” does not exclude proceeding from him, since the Son remains in the Father yet proceeds from him; earlier point that the proceeding giving rise to the Trinity remains within the one, as my thought remains in the mind that thinks it, unlike the chair I make. Two further ways: as the love of the lover rests in the beloved (“I left my heart in San Francisco”; “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be”), or as regards Christ’s human nature (“the one upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining … this is the one who baptizes”). Reply 5: the Word in God is not taken by likeness to the vocal word, from which breath does not proceed (that would be merely metaphorical), but to the mental word, from which love proceeds. Distinction: vocal word is more like the incarnate Word, and there breath is prior, as the Spirit overshadows the Blessed Virgin; within the Trinity the Word is like the thought, and the thought of God’s goodness gives rise to love.

11. Replies 6 and 7: not superfluous but necessary; distinction by origin (“not only is it not superfluous”) #

Reply 6 (objection likened to a human father needing the woman to generate): “notice how he’s turning it around”: because the Spirit proceeds perfectly from the Father it is not superfluous but altogether necessary that he proceed from the Son, for the power of Father and Son is one; whatever is from the Father is from the Son, except where repugnant to the Son’s property (the Son is not from himself, though from the Father). The one beginning: article 4. Reply 7 (Anselm): the Spirit is distinguished as a person from the Son in that the origin of one differs from the origin of the other; that difference is that the Son is only from the Father, the Spirit from both as their mutual love; in no other way are the processions distinguished. Break.

His words #

• symbol: Greek “thrown together”; in Scripture metaphor (symbolic theology = metaphorical), also the creed as bringing together the articles of faith
• absolute vs. relative: absolute = ad se, not to another; relative = ad aliud, to another
• breather / Holy Breath: his name for the Father’s relation to the Spirit (spirator, spiratio) [ed.: spirator; spiration]
• heresy: “choosing rather than following”
• the four opposites: contradictories, having and lacking, contraries, relatives
• order of nature (Augustine): “by which one is from the other”
• material distinction: distinction “from the continuance” [ed.: the continuous], “one’s here, one’s there”
• reason (Shakespeare): “the ability for a large discourse, looking before and after”
• Natural Healing [ed.: Physics]; “the 15th book of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics]
• contract: the minor premise contracts the universality of the major
• council vs. synod: Latin vs. Greek word
• by words or by sense: the two ways a thing is “found in Scripture”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 36, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1-7)
• John 15 (“Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father”); John 16 (“he will clarify me because he is taken from me”); Matthew 11 (“no one knows the Son except the Father”) Mentioned
• Augustine, letter (169, to Evodius) on De Trinitate; Augustine, Retractions; Augustine, De Trinitate and City of God (via the Pope’s audiences)
• Creed of Constantinople; Athanasian creed; Chalcedon’s determination; Damascene; the legend of blessed Andrew; Anselm, on the procession of the Holy Spirit; Dionysius
• Aristotle, Physics III (eternal things: to be and to be able to be); Physics I (“three is enough”); the four opposites; Metaphysics on order and the beautiful
• Thomas, proemium to the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics; Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. 42; Catena Aurea
• Euclid, Elements I, prop. 1; Shakespeare on reason; André Gide on translating Shakespeare; Mark Twain

His questions #

• If the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son, would it be like saying there are two sons? No: Son and Spirit would be one and the same person.
• What does symbolo mean in Greek? Thrown together; hence metaphor, and hence the creed.
• Is it enough to distinguish Son and Spirit that one proceeds by understanding and the other by love? No: God’s understanding and loving are really one, so it would be one person differing only in thought.
• Is Father opposed to breather, as Father is to Son? No; so they make one person, not two.
• What is the distinction between the two circles, or the two points, in Euclid’s first theorem? None but “one’s here, one’s there”: a material distinction, impossible in God.
• Which is the fundamental part of the definition of square: quadrilateral or equilateral and right-angled? Quadrilateral, the genus, which tells what it is.
• Does “no one knows the Son except the Father” exclude the Son knowing himself, or the Holy Spirit knowing? Neither; exclusive words exclude only where there is opposition of relation.
• Is English superior to French just because of its larger vocabulary? Partly; it is also more concrete.