Sunday, July 09, 2006

Q27 A3: Whether any other procession exists in God besides that of the Word?

Yes. Besides the procession of the Word in God, there exists in Him another procession called the procession of love (The Holy Ghost) because procession exists in God only according to an action which does not tend to anything external but remains in the agent itself: such an action in an intellectual nature is that of the intellect (whereby the object spoken of or understood is in the intelligent agent) and that of the will (whereby the object loved is in the lover).

Though will and intellect are not diverse in God, nevertheless the nature of will and intellect requires the processions belonging to each of them to exist in a certain order. For the procession of love occurs in due order as regards the procession of the Word; since nothing can be loved by the will unless it is conceived in the intellect. So as there exists a certain order of the Word to the principle whence He proceeds, although in God the substance of the intellect and its concept are the same; so, although in God the will and the intellect are the same, still, inasmuch as love requires by its very nature that it proceed only from the concept of the intellect, there is a distinction of order between the procession of love and the procession of the Word in God.