Dist. 10, Art. 1, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/10/q/bon-sent-I-d10-a1-q2
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### Question II.
### *Whether a person proceeding by way of love or charity is to be posited in God.*

Second, the question is whether in God it is necessary to posit a person proceeding by way of love or charity. And that it is so, seems to follow.

**Foundations.**

1. There is no perfect knowledge without love, therefore no perfect word without love either; therefore no perfect emanation of the word without an emanation of love; therefore it is necessary to posit an emanation by way of love: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, love is the gift in which all other gifts are given; for nothing is properly given except out of love: if therefore a person proceeds by way of liberality, since that person proceeds not through another but through itself, therefore [it proceeds] by way of love or charity.

3. Likewise, every and the highest perfection of plurality is in unity, therefore also that of distinction is in union; but among all the unions which exist between distinct things, the highest and most delightful is the union of charity; if therefore there is distinction there, there is union; and if union, there is an emanation of charity.

4. Likewise, the Holy Spirit, existing and dwelling in us, makes us like that highest Trinity, as the Lord says, in John seventeen: «That they may be one, as we also [are]»; but the Holy Spirit, existing in us, produces first the love of charity, to the Romans five: «The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts etc.». Therefore it is necessary that in that highest Trinity an emanation of charity be found first.

**On the contrary:**

**To the opposite.**

1. The divine persons are perfect hypostases, as the Father and the Son; but no love expresses a hypostasis, but rather its property or habit: therefore no person in God proceeds by way of love.

2. Likewise, love belongs to that in which the affection comes to rest: therefore it is always taken as tending toward another; but every person is in itself perfectly a being and distinct: therefore no person proceeds by way of love.

3. Likewise, an emanation by way of love is posited in God for no other reason than that the Father loves the Son: since therefore the Son loves the Holy Spirit, by the same reasoning a further person emanating by way of love will have to be posited, and so on to infinity; and this is unfitting: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, since in intellectual nature, on the side of the motive power, one must admit the irascible, which has regard to honor, just as the concupiscible, which has regard to love, the question arises, why in God is a person not taken according to the act of the irascible, as according to the act of the concupiscible?

5. Likewise, since there are other affections in the soul, such as joy, hope, and the like, why is it only by way of love that a person proceeds in God? If you say that love does not have the character of an affection, then I object, because just as divine love is not an affection, neither is joy.

6. Likewise, since there are other habits in the soul carrying completion, of which kind namely are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as understanding and wisdom; why does a person proceed by way of love rather than by way of some other habit? but if not another, neither ought this one to be posited, so it seems.

### Conclusion.

> The Holy Spirit proceeds by way of love, because it proceeds by way of will and liberality.

**I respond:** It must be said that, as has been proved above, it is necessary that some person in God proceed by way of liberality, and that one we call the Holy Spirit. But this person must necessarily proceed by way of love; because, if there is posited in God an emanation by way of will, it is necessary that among all [emanations] it be the first and most noble. Now an emanation by way of love is of this kind, which is clear if we look at the soul. For the affection of love is the first among all affections and the root of all the others, as Augustine shows in many places, especially in the fourteenth [book] *On the City of God*. And this affection is the most noble among all, because it

holds more of the character of liberality. Hence this is the gift in which all other gifts are given, and in which consist all the delights of the intellectual substance. Hence nothing in creatures is to be considered so delightful as mutual love; and without love there are no delights. On account of this the Philosopher says that friendship either is beatitude, or is not without beatitude. If therefore the emanation is by way of liberality in God, it had to be the first and highest; and thus it had to be by way of love.

**To the arguments on the contrary:**

1. To that which is objected, that love names a habit, not a substance; it must be said that to speak of love is either by reason of what it names, and thus it does not signify a substance; or by reason of that about which it is set; and because it is set in God, in whom there is no accident, but everything is substance, therefore it does not signify a habit or property, but rather a substance; and since it expresses an issuing-forth, it signifies a hypostasis or person. The like must be said of the Word.

2. To that which is objected, that the love of charity always tends toward another, and so proceeds into another and does not remain in itself; it must be said that to proceed into another is twofold: either because it has regard to another as object, or because it tends into another and is received [there]. In the first way it well befits a person in God, since it well befits [a person] to have regard to another person; hence the Holy Spirit is the love by which the Father loves the Son. But if it be said to tend in the second way, that has no place in the present case; because, when I love another, love does not go out from me so as to be received in the other, but proceeds only from the will, and because it is an accident, therefore it does not depart but subsists in the will. But in God, because it is a hypostasis, it therefore subsists in itself.

3. To that which is objected, that likewise the Son loving the Holy Spirit would produce another person; it must be said that this is not the sole [reason] which brings it about that the Father and the Son produce another person, namely that there is love by which they love one another, but also that in them the will is most fecund. The reason for this will be stated below, and that [reason] is not in the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless it can be said that there is a stop in the first love. For, the first love having been produced, since it by its very self loves and is loved, there is no need that another love be produced or another person by way of love.

4. To that which is asked, why there is not an emanation as regards the act of the irascible: some answer that this power has no place in a purely spiritual substance; nevertheless, supposing it to be in an intellectual substance, still its act does not befit the production of a person: both because it naturally follows the act of the concupiscible — «for anger is the avenger of injured desire», as Damascene says — and also because its act consists either with respect to a superior, and this cannot be where there is nothing superior; or with respect to an inferior, and this likewise not, because there is no inferiority there; with respect to an equal it likewise cannot be in God, because thus it is with a certain disagreement and victorious repulsion; whereas in the divine persons the highest union and agreement must necessarily exist. And if you object that not every act of the irascible is with respect to something disagreeable, which is clear in hope, and because in the Blessed the irascible will have its act; it must be said that either it consists with respect to a disagreeable thing to be conquered, or with respect to something arduous to be undertaken, and thus it expresses either a degree or a disagreement; but neither can be in the divine persons.

5, 6. To that which is objected concerning other affections and habits, the response is already clear. Because love is the inmost and first and most noble affection, since it is the origin of all the others, therefore it embraces in itself the whole nobility of emanation by way of liberality: therefore no person had to emanate by way of another habit, since such a way is not the principal one.