Chapter 040 - Of Persons as Compared with Relations or Properties
Properties are of the Persons and in the Persons. For as it is of the nature of form to be in that of which it is the form, it is necessary that the properties be in the Persons, as in some sense Their form; and as we speak of the Divine Essence as in God which nevertheless is God, so also of the properties, which, being in the Persons, are also the Persons Themselves. Not that there exists in God composition of subject and accident, for whatever can belong to Him is His Essence; and since in Him there is no composition of form and matter, the abstract and the concrete are the same; as Deity and God; thus Relation is really the same as Person.
And the Divine Persons are distinguished by Relation rather than by Origin; for origin does not signify anything intrinsic, but stands in some sort as the way to or from the thing; as does generation. And since, in the Divine Persons, Understanding is no other than Essence, in which All unite, it is necessary that They be distinguished One from Another by the Relations or properties which constitute the Hypostases or Persons, inasmuch as they are these very Persons subsisting.
Thus Paternity is the Father, and Filiation the Son. But it is contrary to the conception of origin that it should constitute Hypostasis or Person; for origin, understood actively, means a going forth from the person subsisting, and therefore presupposes it; and understood passively, as birth, it expresses the way to the person subsisting, but by no means constitutes the person. Hence the Divine Persons or Hypostases are distinguished, according to our mode of understanding, by Relation, not by Origin.
Abstraction may be made by the intellect in a twofold manner: either the universal may be abstracted from the particular, as animal from man, or else form may be abstracted from matter. According to the first mode, that of the universal from the particular, when the properties are removed there remains in the Intellect, not the Hypostasis of the Father, which is, so to say, particular, but the Essence of the Three Divine Persons; as, abstraction made of rational differences in man, nothing remains except the universal term "animal." But according to the abstraction of form from matter, if those properties which are not Personal be removed, there remains the Intellect of the Persons; and if we remove from the Father that which makes Him Unbegotten, or which signifies Spiration, there remains the Hypostasis or Person of the Father; but if intellectual abstraction be made of the Personal properties, the Hypostasis will be taken away. Since, then, it is Relation which distinguishes and constitutes Hypostasis, it follows that if the Personal properties be removed the Hypostases cannot remain.
Since, therefore, in the Divinity, Relations distinguish and constitute Hypostases, it follows, that in Origin, passively understood, they precede, according to our intellectual conception, the properties of the Persons; for origin, understood passively, is as the way to the Person constituted by the property. In like manner, if origin be considered as active, that which is not Personal is prior, according to our conception, to the Relations of the Persons originating. Thus the notional act of Spiration precedes the unnamed property common to the Father and the Son.
The Personal property of Paternity may, indeed, be considered in a twofold manner: first, as Relation, which presupposes a notional act; for, as regards this mode, relation is founded upon act; and secondly, as constituting the Person; which requires that the relation be understood before the intellectual act, inasmuch as the person acting is pre-understood to the act.