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August 08, 2005
Ch.X. Q.66. Divine Notions
THE Divine Notions, notiones, by which the Persons are described and discriminated, are five; viz., innascibility, paternity, filiation, spiration, and procession.1
2. Innascibility, paternity, and spiration pertain to the Father, Who is unoriginate, begets, and spirates. Filiation and spiration pertain to the Son, Who is begotten and spirates. Procession pertains to the Holy Ghost, Who is spirated.
3. All of these notions except innascibility are called RELATIONS, relationes , because they express the manners according to which the Divine Persons subsist with reference to each other. Paternity and filiation express respectively the active and passive relations existing between the Father and the Son. Spiration and procession express respectively the active and passive relations existing between the Father and the Son on the one hand and the Holy Ghost on the other. A further distinction should be made in spiration and procession, for the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son in the same manner in which He proceeds from the Father.2
4. Three of these Relations are called PROPERTIES (proprietates); by which is meant the several characteristics which are peculiar to each, and by which each can be distinguished. They are Paternity, filiation, and procession. In other words we distinguish the Father as the unoriginate source of the Godhead; the Son as begotten; the Holy Ghost as proceeding.3
5. It may aid the memory to notice that there are one Divine Nature, two processions, three properties, four relations, and five notions.
1 St. Thos. Summa, I., xxxii. 2-4; Schouppe, Elementa, Tr. VI., §161; Forbes, Creed, p. 124; Wilhelm and Scannell, Manual, Vol. I., pp. 312-315.
2 Wilhelm and Scannell, p. 314.
3 Schouppe, §§159, 160; St. Thos., I., xl.; Owen, Dogmatics, ch. v. § 8; Hooker, Eccles. Polity, V., li. 1; Ottley, Incarnation, Vol. II., pp. 253, 254.
Posted by Debra Bullock at August 8, 2005 06:24 PM
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