I. To the Question

9. On this question the Greeks are said to disagree with the Latins, as the authorities from Damascene [nn.1-3] seem to indicate. But about this disagreement [the Bishop of] Lincoln [Robert Grosseteste] says (in a certain note on the end of the letter On the hymn the Thrice Holy [ms. in Magdalen College, Oxford, 192, f. 215rb]) that “the opinion of the Greeks is that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son but does not proceed from the Son, but only from the Father, although through the Son; and this opinion seems contrary to ours where we say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But perhaps, if two wise men - one Greek and the other Latin - each a true lover of truth and not a lover of his own way of speaking, insofar as it is his own, were to inquire into this contrariety, it would eventually be plain to each that the contrariety is not truly real as it is verbal; otherwise either the Greeks themselves or we Latins are truly heretics. But who dares accuse this author, namely John Damascene, and blesseds Basil, Cyril, and other like Greek fathers, of being heretics? Who indeed will accuse again blesseds Jerome, Augustine, and Hilary and other like Latins of being heretics? It is likely then that there is not, under the said contrary words, an opinion of contrary saints; for the thing is said in many ways (just as here ‘of this’, so there ‘out of this’ or ‘by that’ of ‘from that’), in which multiplicity of contrary words perhaps, when it is more subtly understood and distinguished, no opposed opinion would appear.”

10. However it may be with these matters, from the time when the Catholic Church declared that this is to be held as of the substance of the faith (as is plain [in the Decretals of Gregory IX bk.1 tit.1 ch.1], ‘About the Supreme Trinity and the Catholic Faith’: “We firmly believe”), one must firmly hold that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from both”.

11. For this there is the following sort of reason: that which first has a perfect productive principle before it is understood to have a product can produce by that principle, namely when the principle is so perfect that it does not depend on something passive nor can be impeded by anything; the Son has will, which is a principle productive of adequate love, and he has it as it is pre-understood to ‘the produced act of the will’; therefore he can produce it, therefore also he does produce it.

12. I prove the minor [n.11]: generation and inspiriting have a certain order, so that in some way generation is prior to inspiriting; in that prior stage there is communicated to the one generated all the divine perfection that is not repugnant to it, and so the will is communicated; therefore the generated then has will as prior ‘to what is produced by act of will’, because there is not yet understood any production made by way, or by act, of will.

13. Also, the assumption about the order of these productions [n.12], although it seem to be manifest from the order of the powers, is however proved from the fact that when first acts have an order in something - provided each is perfectly active - they will also have a like order in eliciting their acts. But I have added the phrase ‘perfectly active’ to exclude substantial form and quality in the case of corruptible things, where, although the substantial form is active, and the quality likewise, and the substantial form is prior to the quality, yet the quality has its act first; but this comes from the imperfection of the activity of the substantial form. Now in the Father intellect and will are perfectly active principles, and they have a certain order, because the fecundity of the intellect has constituted the Father but not the fecundity of the will. Therefore the fecundity of the intellect will in some way have its act before the fecundity of the will has its act.

14. Others prove this order of production to the product by the fact that, as understanding is to willing, so saying is to inspiriting.

15. But this proof [n.14] seems defective: for willing presupposes understanding, because the object, about which there is to be a love, is through this ‘understanding’ sufficiently present, and without this intellection it would not be sufficiently present to the will so that it might will; but through the act of speaking there is not present to the will precisely the object of which the love is inspirited, because, although the Father inspirits by the will as it is in him, yet he does not have the object formally present through generated knowledge (because he knows nothing by generated knowledge, as

Augustine says On the Trinity VII ch.1 n2), but by the intellection ungenerated in him does he have the object present to him, and this is the knowledge presupposed to the act of inspiriting; therefore there is not the like necessity for generation to be presupposed to inspiriting as there is for intellection to be presupposed to volition.

16. I concede that this instance [n.15] well proves that there is not altogether a like necessity, but there is an order between intellection and will for two reasons: one is because of the presence [of the object] already stated [n.15], the other is because of the order of these powers in operating, because these powers are such that one is naturally ordered to operate after the other. The first reason is not the reason for the priority of generation to inspiriting, but the second is; for just as, to the extent they are operative powers, there is some order between their operations, so there, to the extent they are productive powers, there is some order between their productions, although no order of necessity is required by the need to have such a presence of the object.

17. An example of this: if in fire heat and dryness are active causes, yet of a nature to elicit their acts in ordered fashion such that dryness cannot dry unless heat first heats, the order of necessity is not because the dryable object is, by the heating, made present to the dry so that it might be dried, but it is because of the nature of these active powers; and if in the prior stage in which the hot heats by heat it should communicate to the heated, or produce in the heated, not only the heat but also the dryness which it had, the heated would be dried by the same dryness as is in the heater, because in the instant of nature in which there is drying, there is one dryness in the heater and in the heated.

18. So must it be understood here, that in the moment of origin in which the Father produces by an act of will, there is the same productive principle in the Father and in the Son, and therefore the Son produces the Holy Spirit with the same production as the Father does.