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

240 The Person of the Holy Spirit
necessary that he proceeds from two who love one another’83; ‘the Holy Spirit
proceeds from them [the Father and Son] as the Love who unites them
both’.84
On the other hand, since within the Trinitarian order the Holy Spirit does
not play the role of principle in relation to Father or Son, St Thomas
highlights the fact that the Holy Spirit is not the principle of the union of
Father and Son, but is rather the one who proceeds from the Father and Son in
their union. In order to show this, he uses the illustration of a bloom coming
forth from a blossoming tree: ‘one can say, ‘‘A Wre is a heating agent by its
heating’’, even though the heating is not the warmth that is the Wre’s form, but
the action issuing from the Wre; we say, ‘‘By its Xowers a tree is blossoming’’,
even though the blooms are not the tree’s form, but eVects coming forth from
it.’85 In this illustration, the action of blooming is named after that which
proceeds from its act—the blooms. It is from this analogy that one understands
the procession of the Holy Spirit as the mutual Love of Father and Son:
the Holy Spirit is Love (as the imprint and aVection of love) in that the Father
and the Son’s loving one another is that from which he proceeds. Just as the
blooming of the tree is named after the blooms which it produces, so the act
of Father and Son in sharing their love for one another is named or conditioned
by that which their common act achieves: the Holy Spirit. Thomas
writes that,
If one takes the act of loving [as pertaining to Father and Son] in a notional sense, it
means exactly to breathe love. It is just in this way that speaking is producing a word
and blossoming is producing a bloom. In the same way that we say that a tree blooms
through its blooms, so likewise one says that the Father speaks himself and creatures by
his Word, or his Son. And again, it is thus that one says that by the Holy Spirit or Love
proceeding, that the Father and the Son love each other and us.86
One can see from these analyses what has been gained by the earlier discussion,
inviting us to think of the Holy Spirit as the imprint or aVection of the
love which proceeds in a will. St Thomas does not consider the Holy Spirit as
an action which proceeds (that had been his original idea, in his Commentary
on the Sentences), but as the imprint of love which blossoms from the unity of
Father and Son. In this sense, to love is to breathe Love; and the bloom of
Love is the Holy Spirit.87 It is as proceeding from the Father and Son that the
83 De potentia, q. 9, a. 9, ad 3 (second series).
84 ST I, q. 36, a. 4, ad 1; cf. q. 37, a. 1, ad 3. One could multiply such passages.
85 ST I, q. 37, a. 2. When it comes to the Holy Spirit, one cannot keep the word ‘eVect’, just as
one cannot really name the Father or the Son as ‘cause’ in relation to the Holy Spirit. On this
exclusion of the terminology of ‘cause’ and ‘eVect,’ see above, in Chapter 8, ‘The Father:
Principle and Source’.
86 ST, q. 37, a. 2. 87 Ibid., ad 2.