Dist. 12, Art. 1, Q. 3
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/12/q/bon-sent-I-d12-a1-q3
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### Question III. *Whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father with the Son as medium.*

Thirdly it is asked whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father with the Son as medium.

**Foundations:**

1. And that He does, [it] seems [to follow] from Hilary, *On the Trinity* XII, who, addressing the Father, says: «May I merit Thy Holy Spirit, who is from Thee through Him»: therefore the Holy Spirit is from the Father through the Son, therefore with the Son as medium.

2. Likewise, Richard says that in the divine being there is procession *immediate only*, and *both mediate and immediate* — *mediate only* cannot be — and he says that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father is *both mediate and immediate*: therefore since no medium can fall save the Son, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father with the Son as medium.

3. Likewise, the procedure in that Trinity is similar to the procedure of the *created image*; but love proceeds from mind through the medium of intellection: therefore the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. If you say there is no likeness in this respect, then the formal character of *image* is destroyed, because an image must represent the *order* and *origin* of the persons, not only the number in the persons, since this is found also in a *vestige*.

4. Likewise, if the Son alone were to spirate in such wise that the Father did not, then the Father would be said to spirate, but with the Son as medium, in such wise that there would be procession *mediate only*: therefore since spiration belongs to the Father *per se* and belongs to Him *through this, that He is the principle of the spirating Son*, therefore it belongs to Him both mediately and immediately; but if so, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father with the Son as medium.

**On the contrary:**

1. An *immediate* principle is more noble than a *mediate*; but everything more noble is to be attributed to God: therefore if the Father is the most noble principle of the Holy Spirit, He produces Him only immediately, not mediately. If you say that He produces both mediately and immediately at once; on the contrary: *mediate* and *immediate* are opposites; but opposites are not at once true of the same thing and with respect to the same: therefore it is impossible that He produce both mediately and immediately at once.

2. Likewise, as *per se* is to *per accidens*, so *mediate* to *immediate*; but God is *per accidens* cause of nothing of which He is *per se* cause: therefore He is *mediate* principle of nothing of which He is *immediate* principle.

3. Likewise, that is more immediate which in no way receives a medium, than that which receives a medium; but the Son receives no medium in spirating: therefore He produces more immediately than the Father produces: therefore the Father and the Son do not altogether uniformly produce the Holy Spirit.

> **Conclusion.** *The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father both immediately and with the Son as medium.*

**I respond:** It must be said that, as Richard intends, the production of the Holy Spirit is *both mediate and immediate*: *mediate*, insofar as He is from the Son, and the Son from the Father; but *immediate*, insofar as the Holy Spirit Himself is spirated by the Father Himself.

*Example.* And an example of this is given in the going-forth of Abel from Adam. For Abel went forth immediately from Adam, because he himself begot him from his loins; nonetheless he went forth mediately, because he came forth from Eve, who was led from Adam or out of Adam. And this mode had to be in God, on account of the *highest kinship*.

*The reason.* For if the procession of the Holy Spirit were *mediate only*, so that He were only from the Son, there would not be the highest kinship of the Holy Spirit with the Father. Likewise, if [the procession were] altogether immediate, so that He were from the Father only, there would not be the highest kinship with the Son. And so it must be conceded that [He proceeds] with the Son as medium.

**To the arguments to the contrary:**

*To 1.* To that, then, which is objected to the contrary — that the immediate principle is more noble — it must be said that *mediation* is in three modes. *Three modes of mediation.* For there is a mediation which *excludes* immediation altogether, as when the ultimate effect is not continued from the influence of the prior cause but is wholly produced through the medium, the prior not co-operating; and this kind says *order* and *diversity* of agents and *separation*. In another way, mediation is said insofar as it says *order* of causes among themselves, *not separation* in acting, but only *diversity* of agents and order. In a third way, insofar as it says *order*, but not separation of the powers of the agents nor diversity.

*Conclusion 1.* The first mediation does not fall in God, because God is simply the first cause, whose influence is so great that no creature does anything if His influence is removed; and therefore nothing goes forth from God *mediately only*.

*Conclusion 2.* The second mediation falls in God with respect to an effect produced by a created cause, because there is order of causes and diversity of powers; yet there is no separation, because God acts *intimately*, because by Himself; He acts nonetheless through the created power, which is from Him.

*Conclusion 3.* The third mediation falls in the divine operation, in which the persons are agents, in whom an order is observed, because the one has from the other that He acts, but yet there is no diversity of powers nor separation or any distance, but rather they act by one power and equally intimately. And so the Father, with the Son as medium, produces the Holy Spirit — not because [the Son] is a medium of *distance* or *difference*, but because, that the Son produces, this He has from the Father, in such wise that there is here a certain *order*. And so the response to what follows is plain, when it says that *mediate* and *immediate* are opposites: this is true in the first mode, but not in the second nor the third.

*To 2.* To what is objected, that God is cause of nothing *per accidens*, therefore neither mediately; it must be said that to cause something *per accidens* derogates from the truth of the supreme cause. For something is said to be cause of something *per accidens* whose cause it is *through something else*, which is not from itself but from elsewhere; if therefore God were cause *per accidens* of anything, He would not be the most universal and first cause, and so neither the most noble. But mediation does not repugn the nobility of the supreme cause. For to cause something *per se* and *per that which is from Him* does not say unworthiness, but rather worthiness, because it is worthiness not only to be able [to do] something by oneself, but to be able to communicate [it] to another, in such wise, however, that that one without [the first] could do nothing.

*To 3.* To what is objected last, that the Son is a more immediate cause; it must be said that [the argument] does not hold, because the mediation which has been described does not repugn immediation, and therefore does not diminish it.