Processions and Relations
How are the Persons distinct, if each is fully God?
Main teaching: De fide
The big question
If the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit each possess the whole of the one divine nature, what makes them three? They don’t differ in power, wisdom or goodness. They don’t take up different places. So what distinguishes them?
What the Church teaches
The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. He is “begotten, not made”, from all eternity (Nicaea, 325; Constantinople I, 381; DH 125, 150).
The Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, as from one principle and by one breathing forth (spiration) (Lyons II, 1274, DH 850; Florence, Laetentur Caeli, 1439, DH 1300–1302; CCC 246–248).
The Persons are distinguished only by their relations of origin. In God everything is one, except where there is an opposition of relation (Florence, Decree for the Jacobites, 1442; DH 1330; CCC 255).
Each Person is wholly in the others. The Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit, and so with each (Florence; DH 1331; CCC 255).
How sure is this? De fide. See CCC 238–256.
Where it comes from
Scripture. The Son is “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). Jesus speaks of “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26). He also says the Spirit “will take what is mine and declare it to you”, and that “all that the Father has is mine” (John 16:14–15). St Paul calls the Spirit “the Spirit of his Son” (Galatians 4:6) and “the Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9). The Persons dwell in one another: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:10).
The early Church. St Augustine (died 430), in his great work On the Trinity, looked for some trace of the Trinity in the human mind, made in God’s image. The mind knows itself and loves itself: there is the mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself, one mind and yet three distinct acts. Augustine knew this was only a faint image, but it became the starting point for the Western explanation of the Trinity.
How theologians explain it
Processions inside God. A procession is one coming from another. In God there are two, and both are eternal and stay within God:
- Generation. When a mind knows itself, it forms an inner word, a concept of itself. God knows himself perfectly, and the “Word” he conceives is so perfect that it is a Person, equal to him: the Son (John 1:1). This procession is called generation because the Son is like the Father in nature, as a child is like a parent.
- Spiration. When a will loves the good it knows, love goes out from it. The Father and the Son love each other perfectly, and their love is so perfect that it too is a Person: the Holy Spirit. This procession is called spiration, “breathing forth”.
St Thomas Aquinas built this explanation on Augustine’s analogy of the mind (Summa I, q. 27, aa. 1–4). It does not prove the Trinity; it helps us think about what was revealed.
Relations make the Persons. Each procession gives rise to relations between the Persons. These relations are what distinguish them:
| Person | Comes from | Distinguished by | Traditional name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Father | No one | Fatherhood: begetting the Son | Source without source |
| Son | The Father | Sonship: being begotten | Word, Image |
| Holy Spirit | The Father and the Son | Being breathed forth by both | Love, Gift |
The Father is Father only in relation to the Son; the Son is Son only in relation to the Father. This is why the Council of Florence could say that in God everything is one except where relations are opposed. Aquinas defines a divine Person as a subsistent relation: a relation that is not something a Person has, but what the Person is (Summa I, q. 29, a. 4).
The Filioque. The phrase “and the Son” (Latin Filioque) was added to the Nicene Creed in the West from the sixth century. It became one of the main points of division with the Orthodox churches. The Council of Florence explained that the Greek Fathers’ “from the Father through the Son” and the Latin “from the Father and the Son” express the same truth when rightly understood: the Father is the one source without source, and he gives the Son everything, including being, with him, the one source of the Spirit (DH 1300–1302; CCC 246–248). The Catholic Church permits the Eastern Catholic churches to say the Creed without the phrase.
Each in the others. Because the three share one nature, each Person is wholly present in the others. The Greek Fathers called this perichoresis, “mutual indwelling”.
Philosophy bridge
In the philosophy course’s list of categories, relation is a real feature of things: being a parent or a child is a real fact, not just a way of speaking. In creatures, relations are added to a substance that already exists. In God, Aquinas argues, the relations of origin are identical with the divine nature itself, and so they are subsistent: they are the Persons.
What the Church does not claim
- Not that the Son had a beginning. “Begotten” in God does not mean “born at some point”. The Son is begotten eternally, so there was never a time when the Father was without the Son.
- Not that the Son is made. The Creed says “begotten, not made”. What is made is a creature; what is begotten shares the nature of the one who begets.
- Not two sources of the Spirit. The Filioque does not mean the Spirit has two separate origins. The Father and the Son breathe him forth as one principle.
- Not that Augustine’s analogy proves the Trinity. It is an aid to understanding a revealed truth, and it is far more unlike the Trinity than like it.
Check your understanding
- What are the two processions in God, and which Person results from each?
Show answer
Generation, by which the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; and spiration, by which the Holy Spirit is breathed forth by the Father and the Son.
- According to the Council of Florence, what distinguishes the divine Persons from each other?
Show answer
Only their relations of origin. In everything else they are one: in God all is one except where relations are opposed.
- Explain Augustine’s analogy of the mind.
Show answer
The human mind knows itself and loves itself: there is the mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself, one mind with three distinct acts. Augustine saw this as a faint image of the Father, the Word, and the Spirit as love.
- What does the Filioque mean, and how did the Council of Florence relate it to the Eastern “through the Son”?
Show answer
It means the Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son”. Florence taught that this and the Greek “from the Father through the Son” express the same truth: the Father is the source without source, and gives the Son, with him, to be the one source of the Spirit.
- If the Son is begotten, was there a time when the Son did not exist? Explain.
Show answer
No. The Son is begotten eternally, not at a moment in time. “Begotten” describes his relation of origin to the Father, not a beginning.