Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Distinctions

Single Question.

Whether any Person at all may send any Person at all

1. About the fourteenth and fifteenth and sixteenth distinctions I ask whether any divine person at all may send any divine person at all, or be sent by any divine person at all.

And it seems not:

Because whatever is essential in divine reality belongs to the three; sending (mission) - both active and passive - is essential, because it states a relation to the creature; but such respect to the creature is common to the three. Now proof that both sending and being sent state a respect to the creature is that each is said about God from the perspective of time; but nothing is said about God from the perspective of time save what asserts a respect to the creature; therefore etc.

2. Again in John 14.23 the Savior says about the Father (and about himself): “We will come to him;” therefore the Father comes in time to someone. This ‘coming’ asserts some effect of the Trinity, therefore it states that the Father might be sent by the three persons, just as the Son and Holy Spirit are.

3. Again, according to Augustine To Durandus ‘De Praesentia Dei’, each person gives and is given; therefore, by parity of reasoning, each person sends and is sent.

4. On the contrary:

Augustine On the Trinity IV ch.20 n.28: “The Father, when he is perceived by anyone in time, is not said to have been sent; for he does not have one from whom he is or from whom he proceeds.”

Also the Master [Lombard] adduces for this conclusion the authorities from Augustine in the text [Sentences I d.15 ch.9-10, nn.136-137].

I. Opinion of Peter Lombard

5. [Exposition of the Opinion] - On this question it seems to be the opinion of the Master that being sent does not agree with the three persons but only with the two persons that proceed.

For according to Augustine no person is sent save him that has another from whom he is, and in this way ‘to be sent’ asserts a respect to the creature yet with connotation of the respect of eternal procession.

6. But ‘to send’ is common to the three, according to the Master.

His proof is from the authority of Augustine On the Trinity II ch.5 n.8, where Augustine says about the Son that “the Son cannot be sent by the Father without the Holy Spirit,” and his proof is: “because the Father is understood to have sent him by the fact that he made him from a woman, which the Father did not do without the Holy Spirit;” therefore the Holy Spirit sends the Son, - and it is agreed that the Son himself sends himself, as is got from the same Augustine and in the same On the Trinity II ch.8; therefore ‘to send’ belongs to each person.

7. And this point the Master proves by reason, because otherwise one person of the Trinity would do what another does not do, although ‘to send’ is to cause an effect outwardly.

8. [Rejection of the opinion] - An argument can be made against this opinion:

If ‘to be sent’ involves in some way a double respect, eternal and temporal, since it only states a respect either to him for whom he is sent or to him who sends, it is plain that the first is common to the three, because it is a respect of reason outwardly; but the second is either a real respect or a respect of reason; if it is a respect of reason, then it can be in the Father with respect to himself, just as the Father can give and be given, for ‘to be sent’ by way of a mere respect of reason is not repugnant to the Father; if ‘to be sent’ states a real respect to the sender, namely procession from the sender, then ‘to send’ is not an essential feature, because then the Holy Spirit would not send the Son because he does not produce the Son.

9. Besides, ‘to send’ and ‘to be sent’ seem to mean the same thing, although in diverse ways according to their grammatical forms; if then one of them connotes some respect inwardly, the other too will connote it, - if therefore ‘to be sent’ connotes ‘to be produced’, then ‘to send’ connotes ‘to produce’, and so neither is purely essential; or if one of them does not connote a respect inwardly, neither does the other but only a respect outwardly, - and in this way both will be common to the three.

10. And this is what can thus briefly be argued: if ‘to be sent’ includes ‘to be produced’, then ‘to send’ includes ‘to produce’; therefore the Holy Spirit does not send the Son because he does not produce him. - Besides, ‘to send’ and ‘to be sent’ seem to state opposite relations; therefore if ‘to send’ does not include ‘to produce’, then neither does its correlative include the correlative.

II. To the Question

11. It seems possible then to reply otherwise to the question. For it is manifest that, according to the intention of Augustine in On the Trinity IV ch.20, the Father is not said to have been sent, but ‘to be sent’ has to connote - along with its asserting an outward respect - an inward procession [n.5], and it seems reasonable to say the like of ‘to send’, because although it principally states a respect of outward action, yet it connotes a respect of inward active production; and thus neither will be purely essential, but ‘to be sent’ belongs only to the produced person and ‘to send’ only to the producing person; and in this way there are only two persons who send (the Father and the Son) and only two who are sent (the Son and the Holy Spirit), nor does any person send himself, nor does the proceeding person send the producing person.

12. An example of this can be found in something else; for the Father is said to create through the Word, and thus it can be conceded that the Son creates through the Holy Spirit; but not conversely so, for ‘to create through the Son’ does not assert absolutely an outward action but action along with authority, and in this way it connotes active production in the operator with respect to the person through whom he operates as it were with sub-authority. Thus it can be said that ‘to send a person’ is to operate through him and thus to work the effect along with that person by way of an authority that gives action to that person, and it belongs only to the producing person with respect to the produced person, - and ‘to be sent’ would mean the same as to operate with sub-authority, by virtue of the sending person, because it only happens when the operating person receives the power of acting from another.

III. To the Reasons of Peter Lombard

13. Next in response to what the Master adduces on his side, from Augustine, that the Holy Spirit sends the Son and that the Son sends himself [n.6].

It can be expounded first of the Son incarnate, not of the Son as he is to be incarnate, in the way that Ambrose says in On the Holy Spirit III ch.1 nn.1, 2, 6, that the Spirit of God sent the Son, - as we read in Isaiah 61.1 “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me” etc.; “well did he say,” says Ambrose, “‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach’, because he was sent and anointed as son of man, for according to his divinity the Holy Spirit is not upon Christ but in Christ.” This authority, then, of Isaiah, which says that Christ was sent by the Holy Spirit, is understood of Christ as man, but not of the sending of the eternal Word as he is to be incarnate. - In like manner can be expounded the authority that says the Son sent himself.

14. To the argument of the Master it can also be said that the consequence is not valid [sc. that if ‘to send’ did not belong to the three, something would be brought about by one person that was not brought about by another, n.7], because there is a change from ‘in what way’ to ‘what’. For the consequence is not that ‘the Son does not operate through the Son as the Father operates through the Son, therefore the Father does something that the Son does not do’, but the consequence is: ‘therefore the Son in a certain way does not operate’, because not through authority, - and this is true; or also ‘if the Father send the Son and the Son does not send himself’, one should infer ‘because the authority of bringing about an effect in the creature is in the Father, not in the Son’, - and this too is true.

IV. How the Opinion of Lombard might be Held

15. Although this way [nn.11-12] seem probable, yet because the authorities of Augustine seem to speak not only of Christ sent as man but of the sending of the Word of God ‘because he is to be incarnate’ (the incarnation itself, as Augustine himself says, is understood as the sending), therefore the opinion of the Master can be held in this way, according to Augustine On the Trinity IV ch.20 n.28: “when he is conceived in time by anyone’s perfect understanding, he is said to be sent;” and more clearly n.29: “To be sent is for the Son to be known that he is from the Father, - so to be sent is for the Holy Spirit to be known that he proceeds from the Father.”

16. ‘To be sent’ then is a person shown to proceed, and ‘to send’ is to show a person proceeds. This ‘to show’ is purely common, because the whole Trinity manifests that the proceeding person proceeds; but ‘a person shown to proceed’ connotes that a person proceeds. And, if these are what these terms signify (because things signified are to be taken according to the usage of authors), it follows that ‘to send’ is purely essential and does not connote a real eternal respect in the sender; but ‘to be sent’ connotes a respect in the person sent insofar as his eternal procession is manifested. And indeed another word might be imposed which would signify ‘to show a person produces’, and its passive form would signify ‘a person shown to be produced’, - and the active form would be common to the three, but the passive form would belong only to the two persons who are produced.

V. To the Arguments against the Opinion of Lombard

17. One must respond accordingly [n.16] to the arguments that are against the opinion of the Master [nn.8-10].

To the first [n.8] I say that ‘to be sent’ states a respect of reason to the sender formally; but it connotes an eternal respect, not indeed to the sender because he sends, but to someone indistinctly. Hence the following proposition is to be denied, that “‘to be sent’ only states a respect to him to whom he is sent, or to the sender’,” if he be understood insofar as he is sender, and this both as to the principal thing signified and to the connoted thing; for the proposition states by connoting a respect of the one proceeding, and this in relation to the one producing - not insofar as he is sender, because a person that is not producer can be a sender, although a producer is always a sender.

18. To the second [nn.9-10] I concede that the active and the passive voices signify the same thing under opposite grammatical forms, although something the same that is not diversified by those forms could be connoted in each; ‘to show’ indeed and ‘to be shown’ - which are what is principally implied - are diversified by those forms, but not so as regard ‘person proceeds’; for the latter is what is connoted uniformly, both by the active and by the passive voices. There is an example of this in other things: for I know fire heats, and fire is known to heat. Although there is here a grammatical variation as to the ‘know’ and ‘to be known’, yet not as to that which is indicated to the term ‘to know’ and ‘to be known’, because that is uniformly the same in both cases; and if one active form were imposed to signify the whole phrase ‘to know fire heats’, its passive form would not connote ‘fire known to be heated’ but only that the ‘to be known’ is in the passive form and that the thing connoted is in the active form, namely ‘fire heats’.

19. Hereby things are made plain for the confirmation ‘to send and to be sent are correlatives’. This is true as to the things formally signified, and each states per se a respect of reason; however it is possible for one of them to include, as a thing connoted, some extreme of the relation and for the other of them not to include that extreme’s correlative, as is clear in the example given, because the verb thus imposed would include ‘to heat’ and the passive verb corresponding to it would not include the ‘to be heated’.

VI. To the Principal Arguments

20. To the principal arguments [nn.1-3].

To the first [n.1] I say that not everything said in time of God is common to the three when it involves not only a respect to creatures but also connotes along with it an intrinsic respect, as is the case with ‘to be sent’.

21. To the second [n.2] I concede that the Father invisibly comes and indwells, but yet he is not said to be sent because he does not have one from whom he is [n.4]; for he is not shown to proceed unless he proceeds. However, he can well be shown absolutely or shown to produce, but this way of being shown is not indicated by ‘to be sent’ [n.16].

22. To the third [n.3] I concede that any person at all gives any person at all, because to give is to communicate freely; but any person, by the will as it belongs to him, communicates himself freely; nor does it follow from this that any person sends any person, because it is now plain that ‘to give’ does not include such an intrinsic respect as ‘to be sent’ includes.