The Holy Trinity: Procession of Persons

  1. Introduction
    • A Complementary Perspective
      • This article is a supplement to the exposition on the Blessed Trinity found in “Theology and Sanity.” It is based on Sheed’s exposition of the Holy Trinity, but it presents some aspects of his exposition in a modified or expanded form in the hope that the reader will be aided in grasping that which has been revealed of the mystery.
    • The Divine Processions
      • Scripture speaks of the divine procession of persons by using variations of the word “send.” In the Gospels, we find references to the sending of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit. There is no reference to the sending of the Father, which indicates that the processions have their origin in Him.
      • The “causes” of the divine processions of persons are found in the principal faculties of spirit, the intellect and the will, from which proceed the operations of knowing and loving, respectively. These are the supreme operations of every rational spirit.
      • There is a necessary operational order for the faculties of intellect and will; the former precedes the latter in order of operation, with respect to a particular object, for loving is contingent upon knowing, as Augustine says:
        • “No one can love a thing that is quite unknown” (“De Trinitate,” X, 1).
      • For this reason, our exposition of the divine processions will begin by a consideration of the divine intellect, which is later followed with a consideration of the divine will.
      • Before embarking on the exposition, it should be noted that a “principle of adequate object” underlies the operations of the divine intellect and will. The principle states that “the finite can never be an adequate object of infinite knowledge [or infinite love]” (Sheed, “Theology and Sanity,” p. 103). It is necessary to understand this principle, for it is called upon in the exposition of the divine procession of persons that follows below.
  2. The First Procession
    • Sent by the Father
      • Following the operational order of the principal faculties of spirit, we first consider the procession of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son. Scripture speaks of Him as being sent exclusively by the Father.
        • “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (Mk 9:37).
        • “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (Jn 5:23).
        • “The Father who sent me bears witness to me” (Jn 8:18).
        • “For I have not spoken on my own authority; the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment what to say and what to speak” (Jn 12:49).
        • “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Mt 10:40, Lk 10:16).
        • “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” (Jn 4:34).
        • “I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life” (Jn 5:24).
        • “I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (Jn 5:30).
        • See also: Jn 5:36, 37, 38; 6:29, 38, 39, 44, 57.
      • We speak of this “sending by the Father” as the first procession because the second procession entails a dependency on the first, as will be seen below. This first procession must be associated with knowing due to the order of the principal operations of spirit: knowing and loving.
      • Considering the Father as “Infinite Knower,” we see there is no adequate object upon which He can exercise His infinite knowing power other than His own being, according to the aforementioned principle of adequate object. Because the Infinite Knower necessarily knows Himself infinitely, the infinite self-knowledge generated by His act of knowing lacks nothing that is found in the Infinite Knower.
      • However, the infinite self-knowledge and the infinite knower cannot be one and the same thing, for it is evident that there is necessarily a distinction between the knowledge of an object and the object known.
      • Consequently, the Father’s self-knowledge must be a person because in the Father we find personality and the Father’s infinite self-knowledge can lack nothing that is in Himself. It follows that the Father’s self-knowledge is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, equal to the Father, but distinct from Him.
        • “The Father and I are one” (Jn 10:30).
    • The Divine Nature Received
      • The knowledge of an object necessarily follows the existence of the object known, for there could be no knowledge of an object if the object did not exist, and this knowledge is received from the object.
      • It follows that even in the special case where an object and the knowledge of that object are both infinite and, thus, necessarily equal in substance, as is the situation with the First and Second Persons of the Blessed Trinity, there remains a distinction between the two because the knowledge of an object is not the object itself, as was noted above. In the case of infinite persons, that distinction lies in the manner by which they possess their being.
      • As was stated earlier, in Scripture there is no reference to the sending of the Father, whereas there are many references to the sending of the Second and Third Persons, all of which have their origin in the Father.
      • Hence, we conclude that the Father is origin of the divine processions and that He possesses the divine nature unreceived, whereas the Second Person, according to John’s Gospel has received all things from the Father:
        • “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).
      • Consequently, the Second Person possesses all that the Father possesses as received from the Father, for the “Father . . . has given all things into his hand,” and He possesses all that is in the Father, for the “Father . . . has given all things into His hand.”
    • Summary Statement of the First Procession
      • In summary, the first divine procession consists of the Father’s eternal generation of the Second Person by way of knowledge; the Second Person is the Father’s knowledge of Himself. There is nothing in the Father that is not also in the Second Person.
        • “All that the Father has is mine” (Jn 16:15).
      • Though equal, the persons are distinct, for the knowledge of an object is necessarily distinct from the object known. Hence, the Father, as origin of the divine processions, possesses the divine nature unreceived, whereas the Second Person possesses the divine nature as received from the Father. Hence, the Second Person is eternally begotten of the Father and has revealed Himself as the Father’s Son.
        • It should be noted that for man, a son is necessarily preceded in time by his father, but this is due to a limitation of human nature. In the divine nature there is no such limitation. Hence, the Father does not in any way precede the Son, and the Father has never existed apart from the Son. Rather, the Father eternally generates the Son.
  3. The Second Procession
    • Sent by the Father and the Son
      • Having discussed the procession of the Son from the Father, the way is now open for us to consider the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Scripture speaks of Him as being sent by the Father and the Son.
        • “How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Lk 11:13).
        • “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever” (Jn 14:16).
        • “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (Jn 14:26).
        • “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me” (Jn 15:26).
        • “And when [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (Jn 20:22).
        • “If I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7).
        • “And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high” (Lk 24:49).
        • “Jesus . . . being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit . . . has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:32-33).
      • The mutual sending of the Holy Spirit, presented by these Scripture verses, directs us to speak of the procession of the Holy Spirit as the second procession, for there could be no mutual sending of the Holy Spirit without there first being a procession of the Son.
      • This second procession must be associated with loving, the second principle operation, because the first procession was associated with knowing, the first principal operation, and there cannot be two infinite processions from the same faculty.
    • The Properties of Charity
      • In order to discuss the nature of the second procession, we must first note that the word “love,” in this context, refers to the theological virtue of charity (“caritas” in Latin; “agape” in Greek) rather than the emotion or passion that is also known as love, but is, in reality, more akin to the word “like.”
      • There are two properties of love (i.e., charity) that need to be considered here:
        • First, the essence of love is self-giving such that the degree of love is measured by the degree of self-gift:
          • “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
        • Second, love is a force that binds the lover to the beloved:
          • “Love is a binding force, since it aggregates another to ourselves, and refers his good to our own” (Summa, I, q. 20, a. 1, ad. 3).
      • These two properties of charity play a central role in the exposition of the second divine procession, as will be seen.
    • Mutual Self-Gift of Father and Son
      • Considering the Father as “infinite lover,” we recall that, according to the principle of adequate object, the infinite Son alone can be an adequate object upon which the Father can exercise His infinite loving power, that is, His infinite self-gift.
      • Further, we know that the Father loves the Son and we know that the Father has given Himself completely to the Son by way of knowledge, as was shown above:
        • “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).
      • Consequently, the infinite Father, in His love for the infinite Son, gives Himself completely to the Son; He makes of Himself an infinite self-gift to the Son, which is an infinite act of charity.
      • Considering the Son, we note that He is the perfect image of the Father:
        • “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1:3 NRSV).
        • “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col 1:15).
      • As perfect image of the Father, whatever is in the Father must also be in the Son.
        • “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).
      • Similarly, whatever the Father does the Son does:
        • “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise” (Jn 5:19).
      • It follows that the infinite self-gift of the Father to the Son is necessarily mirrored in the infinite self-gift of the Son to the Father, which is also an infinite act of charity.
      • Recalling that “nature is the source of our operations, person does them” (Sheed, “Theology and Sanity,” p. 94), that is, operations are done by a person through that person’s nature (Ibid., 93), and that the Blessed Trinity is “one divine nature [in which] there are three [divine] persons” (Ibid., 91) we see that the Father and Son’s infinite acts of charity are the mutual self-giving of two divine persons expressed through one mutually possessed divine nature.
    • The Binding Force of Charity
      • We are familiar with the concept of bonding that occurs when a bonding agent is placed between two objects that would not be bound together naturally. For example, if glue is chosen as the bonding agent for two objects, a bond is formed between the objects once the glue has been applied and has had time to cure. This bond is properly called a glue-bond, its source being glue. It should be clear from this example that a bond, in general, is necessarily distinct from the objects bonded; it is something in and of itself.
      • We stated above that charity has the property of binding; it is a bonding agent capable of producing a bond. Because charity is a virtue, it has a spiritual rather than a material nature, and the bond it produces is likewise spiritual in nature. It is real, but not directly accessible to the senses. The bond is properly called a love-bond, its source being charity.
      • Let us consider this bonding agent in the familiar case of a man and a woman bound together by a marriage bond.
        • Notice that although it is referred to in the Code of Canon Law as a “marriage bond,” it is actually a special case of a bond of charity, as can easily be seen from one of the options for taking the marriage vow:
          • “I (name) take you (name) to be my wife/husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life” (Source: USCCB web site, “The Marriage Vows”).
      • That such a bond is external to the man and woman bound in marriage can be seen from the permanency of the bond. Even if both parties involved intensely desire that the bond be broken, it is not possible to do so according to the words of Our Lord Himself, for the “bonding agent,” charity, has its primary source in God:
        • “So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mt 19:6).
      • However, because the marriage bond has as secondary sources human persons, it is necessarily finite, that is, limited. It ends with the death of one or the other of the spouses, and during the life of the bond it is susceptible to the whims of human nature. Hence, such a bond waxes and wanes with respect to its external expression; it is capable of growth but it is also capable of being diminished to the point where it is not manifested externally at all. Nevertheless, the bond remains because of its permanent character.
    • Infinite Love-Bond
      • In order to bring together all of what has been said above so as to arrive at our intended destination, we need to recall two items:
        • First, the Father’s infinite act of self-gift is necessarily directed toward the Son, according to the principle of adequate object and the fact of the Son’s procession from the Father being first in the order of processions.
        • Second, this act of the Father is necessarily mirrored in the Son by His infinite act of self-gift directed to the Father, for the Son is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15).
      • These acts of infinite self-gift are, by definition, infinite acts of charity, for the persons acting are infinite, the objects of the acts are infinite and the acts are expressed through one mutually possessed infinite nature.
      • Because charity is a binding force, infinite acts of charity expressed through the infinite divine nature necessarily produces an infinite love-bond, and as infinite love-bond it does not suffer from the limitations necessarily found in finite love-bonds.
      • This infinite love-bond lacks nothing that is in the Father, for He makes a complete self-gift to the Son, and the love-bond lacks nothing that is in the Son, for He makes a complete self-gift to the Father. It follows that the love-bond is a person, for personality is found in both the Father and the Son, and the love-bond is their complete mutual gift of self.
      • As shown above, a love-bond is necessarily distinct from the objects bonded. Therefore, the love-bond that proceeds from the mutual self-gift of Father and Son is distinct from the Father and the Son.
      • Consequently, this love-bond is infinite, possesses personality, is distinct from the Father and the Son, possesses the divine nature as received from the Father and the Son and is, therefore, equal to the Father and the Son. This Love-Bond is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit.