The Father and the Son

Consider that one were to “collect” together all of one’s thoughts, every single thing one knew, every memory, hope and longing, every theory and concept one might possess. What the mind then beholds would be the SELF or the “I”. Yet although we are considering ourselves in this, there remains the distinction between that which is considering and what is being considered. The “self” is regarding “itself”. Further the act of thinking has not brought about a disastrous split in ourselves caused us to fall apart. Conceiving one’s word does not split the mind, rather, it is the natural activity of the mind (unless one’s thoughts are conflicting!).  Indeed the ancient text of Genesis rightly states that man is made “in the image and likeness of God” (1:26). This is why, in all of creation, it is the humble human intellect that reflects, even if only in analogy, the Divine Being itself and the Divine Life. Kierkegaard’s definition is well-known: “the self is that which relates the self to itself”. We are conscious of such a duality in times of self-reflection when the self is addressed directly: “What must I do!” etc. Through this analogy we can understand how the Father which “begets” the Son, as you also “conceive” yourself, or “conceptualize”. In doing so the mind is not divided, so also there is no division in God.

Thoughts are words, but God’s thoughts are not separate words, sequentially constructed into sentences and propositions, but rather one Eternal Word which perfectly conveys all Wisdom and Grace. The Word…the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Thus the Persons of God do not “speak” to one another in the manner of a human speech in which where communications between individuals result in the exchange of information (which is the purpose of human speech). The Second Person of God “is” the Speech of God, that speech which is so Perfect as to be a Person constituting “all grace and wisdom”, and in so being, completely Beloved in the Holy Spirit. Further we must also say that with regards to this knowledge, God is perfect, God knows himself perfectly. God is perfectly Omniscient of Himself, the infinite Omnipotent.

There is nothing in the Father that is not the Son and there is nothing of the Son that is not the Father except that he is the Son. As St Thomas says, only the distinction of origin remains. The Father is the one that begets and the Son is the one that is begotten. (In the same sense one can also say that that which is known conceptually “belongs” to the knower rather than the other way round, as is said in Jn 17:10 “all I have is yours”, and 1 Cor 3:23 “Christ is of God”.  St Thomas describes how if one’s word is contemplated completely then the union too rather than being divided, is a perfect union:

“…indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds, the more closely it is one with the source whence it proceeds. For it is clear that the more a thing is understood, the more closely is the intellectual conception joined and united to the intelligent agent; since the intellect by the very act of understanding is made one with the object understood. Thus, as the divine intelligence is the very supreme perfection of God, the divine Word is of necessity perfectly one with the source whence He proceeds, without any kind of diversity.” [STI, Q27. Art.1 ad2]. God speaks a perfect Word, and that Word, as St. Paul says, is the perfect expression of the Being of God (Heb. 1:3) “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” -what is an exact representation of God is either a second God, or God himself, else how might there be such an “exact representation” of that which can never be represented, or reproduced? Jesus says (Jn.10:15) “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father…”, “…Your name that you have given me” (John 17:11) “the glory that you have given me” (John 17:22) “the words you gave me I have given to them” (John 17:7) “…everything that I have heard from the Father” (John 15:16) “you have sent me into the world…you have sent me” (John 17:18,20) And contemplating his word God loves his word, and the Love of God for his Word is the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

St. Thomas Aquinas states (SCG Bk. 4 Ch.11:5-8) (in my own words) that only part of human intellection is truly “within” us i.e. that which is gleaned from “first principles” (“a priori” knowledge). For everything else we are dependent on observation of that which is outside us. God however is not dependent for his understanding on anything that is outside him and so both the “intellect” and the “word” which is his understanding of himself, lie within him. St Thomas further asserts that the word proceeds “naturally” from God:

“Consideration must, furthermore, be given to this: Since in any nature the procession of the son from the father is natural, from the fact that the Word of God is called the Son of God He must proceed naturally from the Father. This is in agreement with the things said above, as one can perceive from what takes place in our intellect. For our intellect knows some things naturally; thus the first principles of the intelligibles, whose intelligible conceptions—called interior words—naturally exist in the intellect and proceed from it. There are also certain intelligibles which our intellect does not know naturally; rather, it arrives at the knowledge of these by reasoning. The conceptions of these last do not exist in our intellect naturally, but are sought after by study. Manifestly, however, God understands Himself naturally just as He is naturally, for His act of understanding is His being (as was proved in Book I). Therefore, the Word of God understanding Himself naturally proceeds from Him….In this way the falsity of what the Arians (who held that Jesus is created being) maintained is clear, that the Father generated the Son by His will. For things which are by will are not natural things.

“…according to Augustine, there are ‘vestiges’ of the Trinity everywhere, for in so far as creatures exist at all they exist by participating in the ideas of God; hence everything must reflect, however faintly, the Trinity which created it. For Its veritable image, however, a man should look primarily into himself, for Scripture represents God as saying, ‘Let us [i.e. the Three] make man in our image and our likeness’. Even the outer man, i.e. man considered in his sensible nature, offers ‘a kind of resemblance to the Trinity’ (quandam trinitatis effigiem). The process of perception, for example, yields three distinct elements which are at the same time closely united, and of which the first in a sense begets the second while the third binds the other two together, viz. the external object (res quam videmus), the mind’s sensible representation of it (visio), and the intention or act of focussing the mind (intentio; voluntas; intentio voluntatis). Again, when the external object is removed, we have a second trinity, much superior because located entirely within the mind and therefore ‘of one and the same substance ‘, viz. the memory impression (memoria), the internal memory image (visio interna), and the intention or setting of the will.

For the actual image, however, of the Triune Godhead we should look to the inner man, or soul, and in the inner man to his rational nature, or mens, which is the loftiest and most God-like part of him. It has often been assumed that Augustine’s principal Trinitarian analogy in the De trinitate is that disclosed by his analysis of the idea of love (his starting-point is the Johannine dictum that God is love) into the lover (amans), the object loved (quod amatur), and the love (amor) which unites, or strives to unite, them.

(…) he considers his all-important analogy, based on the inner man, viz. the mind’s activity as directed upon itself or, better still, upon God. This analogy fascinated him all his life, so that in such an early work as the Confessions (397-8) we find him pondering the triad of being, knowing and willing (esse, nosse, velle). In the De trinitate he elaborates it at length in three successive stages, the resulting trinities being (each is a trinity here- my addition): (a) the mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself; (b) memory or, more properly, the mind’s latent knowledge of itself; understanding, i.e. its apprehension of itself in the light of the eternal reasons; and the will, or love of itself, by which this process of knowledge is set in motion; and (c) the mind as remembering, knowing and loving God Himself. Each of these, in different degrees, reveals three real dements which, according to Augustine’s metaphysic of personality, are coordinate and therefore equal, and at the same time essentially one; each of them throws light on the mutual radiations of the divine Persons. It is the last of the three analogies, however, which Augustine deems most satisfactory. The three factors disclosed in the second ‘are not three lives but one life, not three minds but one mind, and consequently are not three substances but one substance’; but he reasons that it is only when the mind has focussed itself with all its powers of remembering, understanding and loving on its Creator, that the image it bears of Him, corrupted as it is by sin, can be fully restored.” (Kelly)

The Holy Spirit of God

So the third term in our analogy of the mind is the “affection” for the self. If one’s “self-awareness” is described as the sum of all one’s thoughts and experiences, what can be called as one’s all-encompassing “experience of existence”, then one engenders an affection for that which is contemplated, oneself. (The waxing and waning of such an affection are well described in the medical conditions of depression, mania, megalomania, narcissism pervasive personality disorder etc.) St Thomas says, “First the object is known by the intellect, and knowing it, the intellect tends towards it, or wills it. This is the movement of love.” [ST I, Q.27 Art.3 co.]. Thus it is that Christian theologians propose the existence of three terms in God, “knower”, “known” and “love”: God contemplates his thoughts, and loves that which is contemplated. ) “…you have loved me” (John 17:23,24,25)

While the Son is said to be “begotten” of the Father, as the word is “conceived” in the mind, the Holy Spirit is said to be “spirated”, as love proceeds from the heart in a spirited manner or a “passion”. Now as we alluded to before, in the intellectual operations, knowing is the more readily understandable, precisely because it is knowing. Love is not as easily understandable, and may we say that it is easily lovable for the same reason. (For did we need to mentally comprehend every nuance of that which we loved, we should never fall in love!) St Aquinas describes this difficulty by saying that there is a term for “to speak”, or “to speak a word” which signifies and with which we are able to represent what has proceeded from the intellect and appreciated by it, or that is spoken of in words. But for what proceeds as love there is no such term, and for this procession St Thomas proposes we use the term “spiration”. Thus with reference to the Holy Spirit, “spiration” is indeed perhaps a more useful word than “procession” since as St Thomas notes, the word “spirit” conveys also a certain “passion” which is true of love. Thus he says that we may also state that in the operation of the “will” it is the Spirit that proceeds, while in the operation of the intellect it is the Word that proceeds, or that in a manner of speaking, the Word proceeds as from the Intellect of God, while the Spirit proceeds as from the Will of God just as love is the desire of the will for the beloved. Thus it is that we have three terms: That which knows, that which proceeds as Word, and that which proceeds as Love. [STI, Q37,Art1,co.]

There is one more consideration which is rather a point of technicality which on the surface seemed to have caused the great schism in the Church in the 11^th century: in that the Holy Spirit “spirates” (or “proceeds”) from both Father and Son. St Thomas explains this technically in that for the Persons in God to be distinct there must be an oppositional relationship between them. “Father” and “Son” for example are clearly opposite relations and cannot be conflated. Spirit processing so also is an opposite relation. In order for the Son to be distinct form the Spirit He must also bear an opposite relation to it. Were both Son and Spirit processing opposite terms from “Father”, then as opposites coincide so the Son and the Spirit would bear no distinction.

(Kelly 274) “ (Augustine says) The Spirit is distinguished from Father and Son inasmuch as He is ‘bestowed’ by Them; He is Their ‘common gift’ (donum), being a kind of communion of Father and Son (quaedam patris etfilii communio), or else the love which They together pour into our hearts…’The Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of one of Them, but of both’…The Father is the author of the Spirit’s procession because He begot such a Son, and in begetting Him made Him also the source from which the Spirit proceeds.’ The point is that, since the Father has given all He has to the Son, He has given Him the power to bestow the Spirit.”

In Summary

In God, the three terms complete what can be called a perfect operation: That which is known perfectly is, desired/loved as one might say in human colloquialism: “with one’s whole being”. The operations of the mind as St Thomas says, “remain in the intellect”. 

“…But for all this, no matter how good an explanation of the Trinity that can be given, and no matter how clearly we can understand it, it is still a mystery to us…He who is the core of all reality, is eminently logical, but infinitely more so than a finite mind can understand.” Jim McCrea from his blog.

For the Persons of the Trinity what you are dealing is distinct terminations of the divine Essence or the Father is infinite in act, possesses the fullness of the divine Being, and through his active generation via the essential energies that he has, he communicates the entirety of the divine Being in an infinite act to the Son. So the son as a termination of a perfect act of a Divine Being ad intra will also then be a distinct term with a unique different mode possession of the Divine Being (a different mode of possession). Same will hold mutatis mutandis for the Person of the Trinity. reason why they’re really distinct is because they are distinct independent subsistences of the one Divine Being. Now the reason why you don’t have a multiplication of entities is because the divine being is infinite. So if the if the divine being is communicated perfectly then the term will possess the divine Being as a distinct term without a multiplication of natures.” – Dr. Jared Goff on Reason and Theology YouTube channel.