By Henry Aloysius Barry
Text marches after text in the mobilization of the Sacred Scriptures, "The grace of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you." (I. Cor. xiii, 3; II. Cor. xiii, 13.) What thence do we conclude? Is there, I repeat, no significance in this so frequent bringing forward of the Holy Ghost in a manifest, distinct designation? Faintly and dimly portrayed on the Scriptural canvas in the Old brought out in bold lines by the master hand and having its colors re-freshened by the apostles in the New Law, there can be no mistaking the design of heaven to invest the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in the peculiar glories of His own distinct personality as "other" than the Father and the Son, though one in Godhead with Them.
The Holy Ghost is joined with the Father and the Son and "co-numbered" with Them so that His own name and personal or appropriated workings will come right to the foreground and assert themselves. This insistence can only be explained by the positive distinctiveness of the Holy Ghost's personality, the implication of its deep mysteriousness and by the decided purpose, on the part of God, that we shall be amply convinced that the Holy Ghost is not a mere manifestation of Godhead—one in personality—not a figment nor mythical designation of an attribute, but a divine, immense, wondrous and distinct personality, equal in standing and condition to the other divine Persons. The insistence upon this truth implies, I repeat, the pure mysteriousness of it, and reason's absolute incapacity to comprehend it, hence, this constant reiteration or determination to combat and batter down incredulity on the point. Reading the Holy Scripture on any other assumption is confusing and needlessly distracting. It is a breach of simplicity to divide the forces of the mind and to array one person in such diverse forms; and, as we know, God does not aim at confusing us. "You are washed and you are sanctified in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and in the spirit of our God." "It is wicked," says St. Athanasius, "to assert that the Spirit of God was created or made, when we come to view the fact that the Sacred Scriptures, both Old and New, co-numerate and glorify Him with the Father and the Son." (De Incarn. n. 9.) "I am not alone," says Our Lord. (St. John viii, 16.) We encounter, in the development of our theme, Scylla and Charybdis. On the one side, the error of Sabbelianism and the Jews juts out; on the other, Arianism and the Gentile faith. Faith takes a middle course. With the former, the Church preserves oneness; with the latter, distinctiveness of persons. "Between the two opinions, the truth goes on forever." "Retain with the Jews the unity of nature, and with the Gentiles retain the distinctiveness of persons, and in this way the two opinions will be mended," says St. Gregory Naz., (or Catech. C. 3.) Fulgentius says: "The Blessed Trinity is one God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for there is but one nature in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But They are not one in Person. What the Sabbelians state is true, in so far as they believe the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one in nature, but they go astray when they decline to believe in three divine Persons. The Arians are right in so far as they subscribe to three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But They are not one in Person. The Arians are right in so far as they subscribe to three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but they go astray in trying to make out three divine Natures for three Divine Persons." (Eph. viii.) After all, truth prevails in the long run, in the Church and in human lives, with the former, here, the latter, eternally in death. Sabbelius is gone; Arius is dead. They have sunk in the mystery of Godhead, whilst the faithful sail serenely on in ecstatic triumph over its majestic expanse, through its strange mists, in the dear old ship whose keel is red with martyrs' blood, whose magazines are filled with the ammunition of unassailable testimonies, and at whose helm the aged Leo stands in Peter's shoes, wrapped in a storm garb, buckled in the imperishable coat of mail—infallibility, in the shadow of the Holy Spirit. Men and empires, like ships, heeding not the red lantern hung upon her topmast, have perished in collision with her. Returning again to our theme, the unity of Godhead is numeric, not merely specific. Baffled by the mystery, the heretical idea tends always toward the illusion, that there must be as many natures as there are persons, and as many persons as natures in God. In setting forth that there are more persons than one, no wound is dealt to the undivided Trinity—Trinity, say I, not trunity, for there is but one divine Unity. The penal result of upholding the contrary, that is to say, a multiplication of divine Natures, is polytheism. The numeric unity charges the air with denseness of mystery. St. Gregory Nazianzen voices this: "No words are adequate to bespeak the depths of the mystery, how, namely, one and the same thing is numerable and yet defiant of number.— "How distinctiveness is found where we know there is unity, how there is distinctiveness present, such as leaves the subject thereof intact,"—that is to say, the nature which is identified with the distinct hypostasis or person is not affected. —"Furthermore, there is another from whom the Word and the Spirit come forth, yet where you observe distinction in such matters, the unity of nature, on the other hand, admits of no division." (Or Catech. c. 30, T. ii, P. 489.)
"There is no principle of reason by which one can possibly penetrate the multiplicity of persons in a numerically unique essence." (Franz. De Deo Trino. p. 279.) St. Thomas has well said, "If one were to start out to prove the Trinity, by natural reason, he would commit a two-fold offence. In the first place he would err against the dignity of faith itself, which has to do, in mysteries properly so called, with invisible things, which transcend human reason."— The apostle says. (I Cor. ii, 7): "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a mystery which is hidden." In the second place, one would impair his usefulness in bringing over others to the faith, because when a man struts out with reasons that have no cogency in them, he becomes the laughing stock of the unbelieving." (1 q. 32 a, 1.) The world grasps specific unity. It understands, for example, how humanity is one, and realizes, at the same time, that there must be many men. St. Gregory observes: "Under headship, a community has unity only after a fashion, so to speak. Coming right down to fact, they are, for the most part, disunited from each other— each divine Person, however, in so far as identity of essence and power is concerned, has not less unity taken by Himself than when coupled with another." (Greg. Naz. or. 81.)
The unity of Godhead is so divine in its character, so complete, so simple, so marvelous, that in one person, just as in three, there is the same, incomparable unity of Godhead.
Another step upward toward Sion's summit. Our work has not been a daydream. We see and we see not, yet we believe that there are three persons in one God. The Third Person is not a nuance, a color-tone, but a distinct personality. Alas! we have not realized these tremendous, mystic phenomena before; why should we when we have been at no pains to explore them. Oh, yes, we have read of them in Sunday School literature and prayer books
and learned them in their briefest, tabloid form by heart, but, they have been waxen flowers in our lives, they have been lifeless, juiceless realities. Irreverent?—well, yes, there is a disrespect and a very wasteful unconsciousness of the infinitude of treasures that lie within the reach of our souls, of our mind and will, were we up and doing and not merely dreaming or vegetating. Earth would become a vestibule of heaven; we should be richer than kings if, instead of floating on the surface, we would dive down and gather the precious pearls that lie only at the bottom of the sea.
Text marches after text in the mobilization of the Sacred Scriptures, "The grace of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you." (I. Cor. xiii, 3; II. Cor. xiii, 13.) What thence do we conclude? Is there, I repeat, no significance in this so frequent bringing forward of the Holy Ghost in a manifest, distinct designation? Faintly and dimly portrayed on the Scriptural canvas in the Old brought out in bold lines by the master hand and having its colors re-freshened by the apostles in the New Law, there can be no mistaking the design of heaven to invest the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in the peculiar glories of His own distinct personality as "other" than the Father and the Son, though one in Godhead with Them.
The Holy Ghost is joined with the Father and the Son and "co-numbered" with Them so that His own name and personal or appropriated workings will come right to the foreground and assert themselves. This insistence can only be explained by the positive distinctiveness of the Holy Ghost's personality, the implication of its deep mysteriousness and by the decided purpose, on the part of God, that we shall be amply convinced that the Holy Ghost is not a mere manifestation of Godhead—one in personality—not a figment nor mythical designation of an attribute, but a divine, immense, wondrous and distinct personality, equal in standing and condition to the other divine Persons. The insistence upon this truth implies, I repeat, the pure mysteriousness of it, and reason's absolute incapacity to comprehend it, hence, this constant reiteration or determination to combat and batter down incredulity on the point. Reading the Holy Scripture on any other assumption is confusing and needlessly distracting. It is a breach of simplicity to divide the forces of the mind and to array one person in such diverse forms; and, as we know, God does not aim at confusing us. "You are washed and you are sanctified in the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, and in the spirit of our God." "It is wicked," says St. Athanasius, "to assert that the Spirit of God was created or made, when we come to view the fact that the Sacred Scriptures, both Old and New, co-numerate and glorify Him with the Father and the Son." (De Incarn. n. 9.) "I am not alone," says Our Lord. (St. John viii, 16.) We encounter, in the development of our theme, Scylla and Charybdis. On the one side, the error of Sabbelianism and the Jews juts out; on the other, Arianism and the Gentile faith. Faith takes a middle course. With the former, the Church preserves oneness; with the latter, distinctiveness of persons. "Between the two opinions, the truth goes on forever." "Retain with the Jews the unity of nature, and with the Gentiles retain the distinctiveness of persons, and in this way the two opinions will be mended," says St. Gregory Naz., (or Catech. C. 3.) Fulgentius says: "The Blessed Trinity is one God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for there is but one nature in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But They are not one in Person. What the Sabbelians state is true, in so far as they believe the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one in nature, but they go astray when they decline to believe in three divine Persons. The Arians are right in so far as they subscribe to three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But They are not one in Person. The Arians are right in so far as they subscribe to three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but they go astray in trying to make out three divine Natures for three Divine Persons." (Eph. viii.) After all, truth prevails in the long run, in the Church and in human lives, with the former, here, the latter, eternally in death. Sabbelius is gone; Arius is dead. They have sunk in the mystery of Godhead, whilst the faithful sail serenely on in ecstatic triumph over its majestic expanse, through its strange mists, in the dear old ship whose keel is red with martyrs' blood, whose magazines are filled with the ammunition of unassailable testimonies, and at whose helm the aged Leo stands in Peter's shoes, wrapped in a storm garb, buckled in the imperishable coat of mail—infallibility, in the shadow of the Holy Spirit. Men and empires, like ships, heeding not the red lantern hung upon her topmast, have perished in collision with her. Returning again to our theme, the unity of Godhead is numeric, not merely specific. Baffled by the mystery, the heretical idea tends always toward the illusion, that there must be as many natures as there are persons, and as many persons as natures in God. In setting forth that there are more persons than one, no wound is dealt to the undivided Trinity—Trinity, say I, not trunity, for there is but one divine Unity. The penal result of upholding the contrary, that is to say, a multiplication of divine Natures, is polytheism. The numeric unity charges the air with denseness of mystery. St. Gregory Nazianzen voices this: "No words are adequate to bespeak the depths of the mystery, how, namely, one and the same thing is numerable and yet defiant of number.— "How distinctiveness is found where we know there is unity, how there is distinctiveness present, such as leaves the subject thereof intact,"—that is to say, the nature which is identified with the distinct hypostasis or person is not affected. —"Furthermore, there is another from whom the Word and the Spirit come forth, yet where you observe distinction in such matters, the unity of nature, on the other hand, admits of no division." (Or Catech. c. 30, T. ii, P. 489.)
"There is no principle of reason by which one can possibly penetrate the multiplicity of persons in a numerically unique essence." (Franz. De Deo Trino. p. 279.) St. Thomas has well said, "If one were to start out to prove the Trinity, by natural reason, he would commit a two-fold offence. In the first place he would err against the dignity of faith itself, which has to do, in mysteries properly so called, with invisible things, which transcend human reason."— The apostle says. (I Cor. ii, 7): "But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a mystery which is hidden." In the second place, one would impair his usefulness in bringing over others to the faith, because when a man struts out with reasons that have no cogency in them, he becomes the laughing stock of the unbelieving." (1 q. 32 a, 1.) The world grasps specific unity. It understands, for example, how humanity is one, and realizes, at the same time, that there must be many men. St. Gregory observes: "Under headship, a community has unity only after a fashion, so to speak. Coming right down to fact, they are, for the most part, disunited from each other— each divine Person, however, in so far as identity of essence and power is concerned, has not less unity taken by Himself than when coupled with another." (Greg. Naz. or. 81.)
The unity of Godhead is so divine in its character, so complete, so simple, so marvelous, that in one person, just as in three, there is the same, incomparable unity of Godhead.
Another step upward toward Sion's summit. Our work has not been a daydream. We see and we see not, yet we believe that there are three persons in one God. The Third Person is not a nuance, a color-tone, but a distinct personality. Alas! we have not realized these tremendous, mystic phenomena before; why should we when we have been at no pains to explore them. Oh, yes, we have read of them in Sunday School literature and prayer books
and learned them in their briefest, tabloid form by heart, but, they have been waxen flowers in our lives, they have been lifeless, juiceless realities. Irreverent?—well, yes, there is a disrespect and a very wasteful unconsciousness of the infinitude of treasures that lie within the reach of our souls, of our mind and will, were we up and doing and not merely dreaming or vegetating. Earth would become a vestibule of heaven; we should be richer than kings if, instead of floating on the surface, we would dive down and gather the precious pearls that lie only at the bottom of the sea.
