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

294 Procession of the Holy Spirit
from which Love comes forth; the divine Word is thus always the ‘Lovebreathing
Word’.117
We have not given an explanation which updates St Thomas’ view in order
to ‘rehabilitate’ him in some way, in response to the criticisms which some
people have made of Latin theology (such as, being separated into two parts,
‘Father–Son’ followed by ‘Father, Son, Spirit’, and obliviousness to the role of
the Holy Spirit in the generation of the Son). Rather, we have proposed one
which touches on a feature which authentically belongs to Thomas’ own
original thought. Thomists have been prompt in pointing it out. At the
beginning of the fourteenth century, confronted by the Scotist school which
tended to disassociate the generation of the Son from the procession of the
Holy Spirit (by conceptually separating the two), the Thomists stressed that
their Master had taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son in so far as
the Son is begotten by the Father: the procession of the Holy Spirit ‘is attached
in itself’ (per se) to the generation of the Son. It is from his begetting as Son of
the Father that the Son derives the ‘virtue’ of breathing the Spirit and thus of
being ‘Spirator’ of the Holy Spirit along with the Father. In the words of one
Durandellus, an ardent defender of St Thomas against Durand de Saint-
Pourçain in the Wrst decades of the fourteenth century: ‘It is as engendered
that the Son is a ‘‘breather’’ or has the virtue of breathing the Holy Spirit: this is
why the Spirit who is breathed proceeds through the Begotten as such.’118 To
put it another way, the procession of the Holy Spirit is attached, implied, or
included in the relation of the Father and Son precisely as Father and Son.119
The paternity of the Father and the Wliation of the Son can thus not be fully
conceived without the procession of the Holy Spirit: the begetting of the Son
is irremovably connected to the procession of the Holy Spirit, and each of the
three persons is present within the others.
7. THE ATTITUDE TO THE EASTERN ORTHODOX
The student of texts relating to the Holy Spirit’s procession encounters a
number of pejorative expressions which add a negative note to the atmosphere
of the discussion and which often present an obstacle to today’s reader,
117 ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2; I Sent. d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3.
118 See our article, ‘La théologie trinitaire des Evidentiae contra Durandum de Durandellus’,
RT 97 (1997), 173–218, esp. 212–214.
119 Durandellus reWnes on this: spiration is ‘virtually’ included in generation, the term
‘virtually’ designating the power or ‘virtue’ of breathing the Holy Spirit which the Father
communicates to the Son through generation. One can make a conceptual distinction between
the power and the act of breathing the Holy Spirit, but this does not relate to two diVerent
realities within God: the power and the act are really identical (Thomas, ST I, q. 41, a. 5, ad 2).