Forbes on Article I: Of Faith in the Holy Trinity

a The author having at some length gone into the subjects of Arti des I., II., III., IV., V., XI., XVII., XIX., XX., XXVII., in his ” Short Explanation of the Nicene Creed,” would wish it to be understood that what is now put forth is in some sense, but not entirely, supplementary to what he has written in that volume. In some cases it has been neces sary to go over the same ground, but generally the matter is treated from a different point of view.

B

describes His nature. Yet, since man can in an im perfect way know Him, such, descriptions as, The most Perfect Being, the Supreme and Independent Being, the Infinite Being, the Being than whom nothing greater can be imagined, the Being by Himself, or from Himself, are given of Him. Thus in Exod. iii. 14, ” I am that I am. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.”

To be of Himself, to exist by the power of His own Being, therefore, is a constituent idea of God, seeing that to be of Himself belongs only to God, and is the first conception we form of Him.

That God is, is proved by many places in Holy Scripture, and by natural reason itself. The existence of God cannot be proved by d priori arguments15, be cause in that way of proof the effect is proved by its cause, but God has no cause of His existence. But, d posteriori, God’s existence may be proved by the ex istence of His creatures. “The invisible things from the creation of the world are known by those things which are made; even His eternal power and God head c :” or, to follow out the thought more clearly, — it is certain to every man that he exists ; but he does not exist of himself, but of some other being, there fore of God ; or by some other being, who again exists of some other, and so by advance we come to a first being, who is from Himself. There can be no infinity

b We do not here use d priori in the Kantian, but in the Scholastic sense. Kant held that God’s existence is proved a priori from the practical reason. c Rom> j 2Q

in such a process ; for it implies all posterior or middle causes, and a posterior cause cannot be granted unless a prior and then a first be granted also.

Another argument may be adduced from the move ment of creatures. Whatever moves is moved by an other; therefore, it is moved by an unmoving motor, who is God; or by a moving motor, which again is moved by another ; and so, as the process cannot be infinite, we come to the first Motor, who moves and is not moved.

Next, the existence of God is proved by the consent of all nations, the fulfilment of prophecies, miracles, the hankering after the infinite good, the remorse of conscience in case of sin, the wondrous formation and preservation of all things, which distinctly imply the existence of a supremely intelligent Being.

2. Holy Scripture asserts the unity of God : “See, I am alone, there is none other God beside Med.” This also is proved by reason. If there were more Gods than one, either one would be subject to another or not ; if subject, then the one so subject would not be God, the most perfect Being ; if he was not sub ject, then neither would be God, neither would be perfect, the perfection belonging to the one being by so much taken away from the other.

Having proved His Being, we now come to His attributes. An attribute is that which is determined by, and flows from essence ; or, in other words, a divine attribute is a perfection which, in our way of conceiving

d Deut. xxxii. 39.

it, follows as a property the divine essence. Attributes are divided into absolute and relative. Absolute at tributes are they which have no relation to any one else, as simplicity, eternity. Relative attributes are divided again into attributes ad intra, such as pater nity, filiation, spiration ; and attributes ad extra, such as creation, preservation, and the like. Attributes, again, are either positive or negative. Positive attri butes are they which impute to God, wisdom, good ness, &c. ; negative, are they which deny Him imper section, as to be uncreate, incorporeal, infinite, incom prehensible, immutable, immense, invincible, ineffable. All the attributes of God are in reality one with the divine essence, and one with each other, except the relative attributes ad intra, between which there is the opposition of relation, as between paternity and filiation. Thus the justice of God is His mercy, His will is His intellect ; and yet, as we may not say that God punishes men in His mercy, so we must admit a sort of distinction in regard to the fact that our minds, on account of their imperfection and limitation, cannot in one conception grasp the whole perfection of the divine essence, and so we form diverse, imper fect conceptions of God from the analogies of creation, which we correct by faith and reflection, — conceptions which are not erroneous, but imperfect.

3. The first attribute predicated in the Article of the one living and true God, is His eternity. That eternity is defined as the entire, simultaneous, and per fect possession of an interminable life. In that it is

defined as entire and simultaneous, the idea of division and succession is excluded : for in eternity there is one instant, ever-present and existent. In that it is perfect, it excludes the thought of the imperfection and transitoriness of an instant of time, though that instant be without divisibility. By the thought of possession, we understand stability and unfailingness. Such eternity as this belongs only to God. ” I live for ever e.” ” Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail f.J> It differs from time in that eternity hath no beginning, no change, either substantial or ac cidental.

When Holy Scripture attributes a past and future to God, it does not mean that the works of God in creation are so described in the way of the action of God, but in the way of results and terms which begin to be and cease. So when in Scripture such a passage occurs as “Before the morning watch I begat Thee s,” it does not signify that the generation of the Son has just passed, for that never has, and never will have an end, being always present, but there is a certain accommodation to the imperfection of man, who has to measure all things by time.

4. Next, God is “without body, parts, or passions.” The uncompounded nature of God is of faith. It is proved, first, by the thought that there is no physical composition of matter or form, for God is a Spirit, therefore immaterial and indivisible. Neither is there

e Deut. xxxiii. 40. f Ps. cii. 27. e Ps. ex. 3, Vulg.

6 ATlTICLE I.

in God metaphysical composition of action and power, for God is the purest act, and therefore in God there cannot be power, to which anything is added by which it may be made perfect ; neither is there composition of essence and existence ; for otherwise essence would be in the power to exist, which may not be said, since essence includes in itself necessary existence, nay is constituted by itself in its own being ; neither is there composition of nature and personality, for in God per sonality is not distinguished from nature.

Neither in Him is there logical composition, because genus is something perfectible and limitable by differ ence, also genus implies some one thing existing in many, whereas whatsoever is in God, is so His, that it cannot in the same sense be held to be shared with any other being.

5. The power of God is the productive principle of all things. In God there can only be admitted one active power, which is the very essence of God in action, or in the divine act itself. In our way of speaking, the power of God is distinguished from His knowledge, providence, or will ; in that by His know ledge He is apprehended as intelligent, by His pro vidence as directing, by His will as governing, by His power as executing. In God the power and the act are not distinguishable. His power is infinite, as illustrated by creation, for the distance between being and not being is infinite.

God is called Omnipotent, for He can do all things that do not involve imperfection ; therefore God can-

not sin, because to be able to sin is to be able to be imperfect in action.

His wisdom and knowledge are perfect : ” The Lord is the Lord of knowledge h ;” and this again is not ac cident or habit, but pure act and the essence of God Himself.

All philosophers of the highest order have demon strated in the same manner the existence of God. All have recognised the existence of a moral obstacle which conceals the light from the spirit, and must be re moved. All have recognised an inner and divine sense, the allurement and charm of the desirable and the intelligible, which, when the obstacle is removed, be comes the resort of the reason. All have found the point of rest, the TTOV crrw of that first start of the reason in the spectacle of things created, either world or soul. All have understood that this point of de parture is in no sense a principle whence the reason can deduce the existence of God ; but simply a point of departure whence the reason raises itself to the principle of all things which contains no point of de parture. All have recognised that the process is not syllogistical, and that it is one of the two essential processes of the reason ; that which seeks the major, not that which draws the consequences ; all have de scribed this process as an operation of the reason, which regarding finite being, either world or soul, sees, by the mournful contrast, in this finite the neces sary existence of the Infinite, and knows the Infinite

h 1 Sam. ii. 3.

-8 ARTICLE I.

“by negation, in denying the limits of every finite being and every limited perfection.

It is clear that this being granted, the process gives a demonstration of the existence of God and a know ledge of His attributes. For God can be demonstrated only so far as He is demonstrated as endowed with His essential attributes, without which there would be the demonstration of the existence of something else, not God. The demonstration of the existence of God gives His attributes at the same time, and furthermore reason can enlighten and dev elope the idea of God in two ways, as well as know His attributes. It can either obtain them at starting, from the consideration of cre ation, on the principle that the perfections of God are those of His creatures, only without limit; or, grant ing but one of the attributes of God, it can deduce the rest by way of identity. The Schoolmen held that what they termed the metaphysical essence of God was the attribute which implied all the rest, but we saw just now that there is no real distinction between God and His attributes, therefore reason may take any one, and argue to the absolute identity of all that is in God, a principle which belongs to Him alone, and not to Him with His creatures.

Granted one attribute of God, one can take it as a principle, and by way of syllogistic consequence and algebraic identity, deduce the others. Thus to start from the attribute of God implied in the words ” I am that I am.” From the idea of ‘Being/ as from the proposition ‘Being is/ we can deduce the metaphysical

attributes of God. We suppose that it is purely, simply, and absolutely true that Being is, and it is equally clear that when we thus speak of Being we mean the ab solute Being, not relative beings.

i. This granted, if the Being is simply and abso lutely, it is not a finite Being, because a finite being is only to a certain point and not further. It has its limits and conditions : it is not simply and absolutely. Therefore, if the Being be not finite, it is infinite.

ii. Again, if the Being be infinite, it must be infinite in all senses, because if it ceased to be infinite in one sense, in that sense it would be finite, and therefore not infinite. In the sense it was limited, in that sense it would cease to be the Being.

iii. If Being is, it is all that is possible, otherwise it would not be absolute. It is all that is possible, and that infinitely so, for if it were not so, there would be, in that manner of being and in that sense, a limit in which it would not be so. If it is, it is infinitely all- possible.

iv. The same reasoning applies to immensity and eternity. If it was not eternal, there would have been a time when it was not : if it was not immense, there would be a place where it was not. It therefore would not le purely, simply, absolutely.

v. Furthermore, if Being is, it must be necessary. If it is, it cannot not be. There never has been a choice between Being and not being, for Being is eternal. An absolute being must always have been. To con ceive a doubt as to the non-existence of the Being is

not to have the idea of it : it is not to know the value of the word. Hence it follows that all that is not the Being, might not have been. All that has not been from eternity might not have been, and is contingent.

vi. If the Being is, it is by itself, otherwise it would be a relative, not an absolute Being. To be necessary, and to be by itself, is the same idea under two differ ent forms.

vii. It is rigorously true, though truly inconceivable, as are many algebraic deductions in their application to geometry, that the Being, because It is eternal and im mense, is really present in all points of time and space. We can conceive to a certain point His immensity in space, but we cannot conceive His omnipresence in all time. And yet this is the case. For God there is no past or future : He sees and contains all things in an eternal present. The past, present, and future co exist in the infinite, as in a single point unextended and simple, the two extreme points in the centre of an infinitesimal element.

viii. If God is absolutely, He is simple and uncom- pounded. “Were He not simple, He would be composite. If He was composite, He would have parts. These parts might be physical or spiritual. If He had physical parts, He could not be wholly in one point. He could not be so absolutely. If He had spiritual parts, they would be separate attributes, of which the one would not be the other, nor would they be in Him entire, but limited by each other. If, then, God is not composite, He is absolutely simple, and therefore His attributes

are identical with each other and with His essence. God is His own essence. In God, Being and Essence are one. His will is His Essence. God is His Life. God is His own Beatitude.

ix. God, then, being absolutely simple is one-^nay, unity itself. All created things have their unity in Him, an approximative unity, an image of unity, but the Infinite is alone One, He is the only concrete unity.

x. Nay, He is so simple and one in Himself, that in a sense there is but one absolute Being. There cannot be two absolute beings, for there cannot be two in finites. Infinity + infinity has no sense in algebra, or means exactly infinity also. Infinity + infinity = infinity.

xi. He who is, is unchangeable. To change is to be what one was not, or to cease to be what one was. To cease to be implies some loss, therefore Being is not absolute. If God is, He is unchangeable. There is no increase in Him. He is not like us, partly in act, partly in power. He is all act, actus purissimus. If so, He is all His possible unfolded. He is all actually present. He is living.

xii. Lastly, if we only grant that there are outside of the Absolute Being finite and relative beings, it is true that they could not become such of themselves alone, nor commence if nothing was yet, nor be but by the Being that was already. Therefore the Being had the power to produce all that is produced : and as the beings which are were not, it follows that He made them out of nothing, or created them : which implies

infinite power. No finite power could create things out of nothing. Therefore God is almighty.

6. So far we have deduced from the idea of Being what are termed the metaphysical attributes of God ; but there are beside these, moral attributes and intel lectual attributes, and here we come to the question between atheists and ourselves. Atheism will allow a physical, geometrical, mechanical God, who is to the Infinite all that one meets with in nature and its laws ; but between such a God and an Infinite Intelligence there is a gulph fixed. Intelligence is another face, another dimension of Being.

But this is not the only gulph which reason en counters. Given an absolute Being, eternal, immense, immutable; given intelligence, given infinite power, there still lack liberty, will, goodness. Is this in finitely powerful and intelligent Being free ? wills He ? loves He? If we look into ourselves, we find these powers, and we justly carry them on to God, and attri bute them to Him in an infinite degree ; or, if we reason from what we know of Him, we say He is infinite 5 whence it follows that all perfections everywhere found in created things must be superabundantly and ori ginally found in Him. If all perfections of every sort pre-exist in Him, needs must be that He is intelligent, free, with the power of will and love. Thus the intel lectual attributes are revealed to the understanding by the understanding, and the moral attributes by the heart and by the conscience; and our conception of these first is only limited by the imperfections of these last.

For to continue the development of the idea of Being, we come to find it identical with power, intel ligence, will, liberty, love. Take away one of these and you destroy Being. You take the heart out of that which is. You say in so many words, There is no Being above us. We are better ourselves than such a ruined God. He is no longer the Absolute. There fore —

God is free, good, and He loves : and this with refer ence to the world implies Providence, the paternal government of the world.

7. He must have a distorted vision who in the visible creation sees not the hand of God. Such, alas ! there have been, and will be to the end, but they have not been the highest intelligences. One must lose one’s reason, and abdicate one’s senses, not to acknowledge that the eye was given to see with, the members to move with : not to comprehend that a profound know ledge and goodness, sustained by infinite power, has made our bodies and the world, and left its mark and signature, not only on the whole, but on each detail. Who can study the infinite strength, delicacy, and beauty of the structure of any of these parts of our own constitution and not say, This is the work of God ? or take the world and think how out of nebula it has gradually, through countless ages, been prepared for the habitation of man, ages passing and yet a constant advance to perfection, without confessing, not merely the cold abstraction of an overruling Providence, but the work of a tender Father, who made me, loves me,

guards me, who reads my secret thoughts, rules the beatings of my heart, trains me for heaven, even in the smallest details of my life? Thus it is with all men. Such is the providential work of God in the history of humanity. He awaits the harvest. Even death, in His hands, is the light that transfigures all here be low, and gives it an eternal sense, for it is the pre lude of eternal life in the presence and enjoyment of God.

8. Having said thus much on the triple distinction of God’s attributes into metaphysical, intellectual, and moral, one must remark that they seem to correspond with the Divine Persons in the adorable Trinity, if it be true, as we believe, that the Holy Trinity is dis tinguished, according to a procession of the Word from Him who uttered it, and of Love from both. Pantheists may have perverted this into a support of their system, but still there is a true philosophical side to the doc trine, and it has applications which bear upon the science of humanity and of the world. As Christian philosophy developes itself, men will come to know that power, intelligence, and love, being three radical distinctions, are to the absolute Being what the three dimensions, breadth, height, and length, are to the body, and that they constitute an unity, as the product of the three unities of dimension constitute the unity of solidity : that they no more destroy simplicity, than the simplicity of the infinitesimal element of solidity is destroyed, because one ought there to distinguish the elements of the three dimensions : and that, finally, if

it be true that in living organisms, the highest per section consists in the maximum of individuality, or in unity, joined to the maximum of distinction of organs, in the absolute life, perfection consists in ab solute unity united to absolute distinction. But abso lute unity is simplicity, and absolute distinction is the distinction of person from person, so that one under stands what theologians mean when they say that the distinction of the Persons, in Gfod, is the condition, not the negation, of simplicity. In God, transcendental unity and transcendental plurality are identical. Our God is not solitary, though He be One, is the teach ing of S. Hilary of Poitiers. And in thus seeking by study and contemplation to sound the unfathomable depths of the mystery, let us above all dwell on the adoration and worship which it calls forth. Here is the source of all knowledge, all virtue, even life and immortality. Here is the heart of Christianity, the last prayer of our Lord, “that they may be one, as we are.” Here is the perfection of each soul, the organization of the world to come, and of the ideal society of heaven, which will be, according to that prayer, a plurality of persons in one1.

The Holy Trinity is the Substance of three divine Persons in one and the same nature. The Holy Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, three Persons, one God. In dwelling upon It, we have to consider : —

The question of Procession, which is nothing else

than the production or emanation of one Person from another, as the river flows from the source. It is either ad extra, or ad infra. Procession ad extra is transient, as when that which is produced is placed outside its principle ; thus, the child proceeds from its father. In this sense, all creatures proceed from God. The other procession is immanent, where the term produced abides within its principle, as an act of understanding re mains in the faculty of the understanding. Of this kind is the Procession in God, which may be theo logically defined as the emanation of one Person from another, as from a productive principle, not a produc tive cause, which would imply that it had a being dis tinct from that whence it proceeds, that it depended on it, and that it was posterior to it ; thus, ” Thou art My Son ; this day have I begotten Thee k ;” ” I came forth from God1.” The divine essence, whereby God is of Himself (a se}, is numerically the same in the three Persons, and therefore each Person by reason of its being, though not by reason of its Person, is a se and God.

In God there are only two processions ad intra, the one by the understanding, whereby the Son proceedeth from the Father, the other by the will, whereby the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son, according to the two immanent actions in God, which are to know and to will.

There is a double principle of action, the principium quod, which is the operating Person, and the princi- k Ps. ii. 7. l St. John viii. 42.

piwn quo, whereby the Person worketh. This, again, is divided into the principium quo remotum, whereby He worketh mediately, and the principium quo proximum, by which He worketh immediately. Thus when a man understandeth, the principium quod is man ; the prin cipium quo remotum is his intellectual nature, and the principium quo proximum is the intellect itself; in God the principium quod of the processions are the pro ducing Persons; that is, the Person of the Father in respect of the Son, and the Persons of the Father and Son in respect of the Holy Ghost. The principium quo remotum is the divine Nature understanding and will ing. The principium quo proximum are the intellect and will, as the relations of paternity and active spira- tion indicate them as necessary conditions.

The Son does not produce another Son, because intellect in the Son is no longer fertile, because it is expended in the production of the Son by the pro duction of an infinite term, for one action can produce but one adequate term. Therefore the Holy Ghost cannot generate ; and so the Holy Ghost, though hav ing the same will with the Father and the Son, does not produce another Spirit, for to will in Him has not the character of spiration or fertility, seeing that in the Father and the Son, it has produced its adequate and complete term, i. e. the Holy Ghost Himself.

While we call the Procession of the Son from the Father, Generation, we do not give that name to the Procession of the Holy Ghost, because production by will differs from production by intellect inasmuch as-

it is not formally assimilative, which is the essence of the other.

Theologians in treating of the three Divine Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, are accustomed to speak of the Father as the first, the Son as the second, and the Holy Ghost as the third Person of the Holy Trinity, and this not because one Person “is afore or after other,” either in time or duration, but because there is in the nature of the Godhead a certain order of source or origin; an order, as St. Augustine says, “not by which one may be before the other, but by which one is from the other m.” Hence it is not allowable to speak of any of the divine Persons having a prin ciple or beginning as to time, though we may speak of the second and third as having a principle of produc tion, i. e. they do not exist from nothing, but have from all eternity had their being communicated to them. Hence, too, we may not call the Father “be fore ” the Son in nature, but ” before ” Him in source or origin. All three Persons are equally wise, power ful, and eternal, for the whole perfection of the divine nature is in each.

Some persons stumble at the words of our Lord, “My Father is greater than In;” but St. Thomas0, with many other theologians, maintains that the pre vious words of the text, ” I go unto the Father/’ make it sufficiently clear that our Lord was speaking simply of His sacred humanity. Neither do our Lord’s words,

m St. Aug., cont. Max., c. 4. n St. John xiv. 28.

“The Son can do nothing of Himself p,” oppose this doctrine, for they merely signify that the Son having, by His generation, the same power and essence with the Father, can do nothing to the exclusion of the Father ; every power which the Father has, the Son has likewise with Him, though sometimes with a dif ferent relation ; e. g. the power by which the Father generates, is in the Son, the Father having it as giving, the Son as receiving.

The mutual inexistence of the divine Persons, one in the other, of which our Blessed Lord speaks % is called by theologians, Circuminsession and Co-inherence.

In speaking of ” mission ” with reference to the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, theologians are to be understood to mean, the ” procession ” of one Person from another, having relation to some temporal effect. Two things are required in “mission” thus understood;

1. That the Person sent proceed from Him who sends ;

2. That the Person sent stands in a new relation to the object to which (terminus ad quern] He is sent. Hence we gather; —

That the Father can be sent of none, for He proceeds from none.

That the Son is sent of the Father only r.

That the Holy Ghost is sent by the Father and by the Son s.

That the Holy Ghost, as neither of the Persons pro ceeds from Him, so neither of them are sent by Him.

P St. John v. 19. i Ibid. xiv. 11 ; xvii. 21.

r St. John vi. 57. s Compare St. John xiv, 26, with xv. 26.

Although we cannot speak of the Father as sent, yet it is lawful to speak both of Him and of the whole Trinity as “given” to men, to dwell in them by grace1. When we speak of “mission” putting one of the Divine Persons in a new relation, we must remem ber that the dicing e is in the relation of the creature to whom the Person is sent, and not in the Person ; ” mis sion,” be it also remembered, is the term specially used to denote not the eternal generation or spiration, but the “sending forth” of one of the Persons to work certain effects in time.

Mission is — 1. Invisible, when the effect to work which the Person is sent is invisible and not seen out wardly ; thus, as by grace our souls are conformed to the image of the Son, the Son may be said to be in visibly ” sent” to us. St. Augustine11 says, “the Son is then invisibly sent to any one, when He is known and apprehended by him;” so also the Holy Ghost is in visibly sent, when by hallowing grace He comes to dwell in the hearts of the just v.

2. Visible, when it is accompanied by some effect sensibty appearing, and representing the Person sent ; thus the Son was visibly sent in the Incarnation x ; we frequently read of the Holy Ghost being visibly sent, as a Dove r ; as a bright Cloud z ; as a Breath a ; as Tongues like as of fire b ; nor should the missions to the

iv. 6. * St. John iii. 17 ; St. Luke iv. 18; Rom. viii. 3.

y St. Matt. iii. 16. « St. Matt. xvii. 5. a St. John xx. 22.

b Acts ii. 3.

Notes

• Cf. Gratry, de la Connaissance de Dieu, torn. ii. p. 135.
• St. Thomas, Part I. 9, xlii. qu. &c.
• Vide St. John xiv. 23. u lib. iv. de Trin., c. 20. v Gal.