The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas - El Camino ...

222 The Person of the Holy Spirit
particular diYculty of the name Holy Spirit is that the words by themselves do
not give us an adequate or suYcient basis for pinpointing the personality of
the Spirit. SanctiWcation—Holy Spirit—might give us an avenue for thinking
it through, and Basil of Caesarea saw this as the rightful property of the
Spirit,12 but St Thomas is not satisWed by it, since, as he says, all three divine
persons have the same power to sanctify. So this does not suYce to characterize
the Holy Spirit as a distinct person. In addition, sanctiWcation is one of
God’s works within this world, whereas the Wrst thing Thomas is looking for is
an intra-Trinitarian property, a typifying relation between one divine person
and another. One could also hypothesize that the notion of procession or
ekporeusis, put forward to this end by Gregory of Nazianzus, might help us
out here, but, as we have seen, it creates another diYculty: according to
Thomas, the word procession refers not only to the origin of the Spirit, but
also to that of the Son.13 When he Wrst considers the question, Thomas draws
together the results of his previous enquiry:
As we have already seen (q. 27, a. 4), there are two processions in God, and the one
which is accomplished by way of love has no proper name. In consequence, as we have
also noted (q. 28, a. 4), the relations which one can consider in it are nameless. For
that reason, the person who proceeds by love has no proper name. However, common
usage has adapted certain names to signify the relations in question: we call these
names procession and spiration, terms which in their correct meaning indicate characteristic
acts rather than relations; likewise, to designate the divine person who
proceeds by way of love, Scriptural usage, by a kind of accommodation, sets aside
the name Holy Spirit.14
Here Thomas is reverting to his own earlier study of processions and
relations (qq. 27–28). He had observed there that our own created world
indicates to us an analogous reality which enables us authentically to name
how the Son originates: that is, generation. Our grasp of the distinct origin of
the Holy Spirit is made possible by referring to procession in the mode of love.
Even though we do not have a proper name with which to designate it, we can
12 St Basil: ‘The substantial principle is common, as with goodness, divinity, or any of the
attributes like this, whereas the hypostasis is considered as the special property (idioma)
of paternity, or sonship or of the power of sanctiWcation’ (Letter 214.4, St Basil, Lettres,
ed. Y. Courtonne, vol 2, Paris, 1961, p. 205; cf. Letter 38).
13 See above, in Chapter 4: ‘The word ‘‘procession’’ ’. We can add that, if one sets aside the
word ekporeusis for the Holy Spirit, a problem remains, for we have hardly any analogy within
this world which enables us to distinguish an ‘ekporeusis’ from another spiritual origin. And, in
order to disclose the faith to our minds, it is precisely such an analogy that Thomas is looking
for, so that we can grasp something of the content of the profession of faith, by putting it in the
light of the knowledge of something whose object is proportioned to what we can know through
our own human experience.
14 ST I, q. 36, a. 1.