Dist. 15, Part 1, Art. 1, Q. 4
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/15/q/bon-sent-I-d15-p1-a1-q4
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### QUESTION IV.

*Whether mission, taken actively, belongs to the whole Trinity.*

Fourth and last it is asked of whom mission belongs as the one sending. And that it belongs to the whole Trinity is shown thus.

1. Mission is the same as temporal donation; but to give temporally belongs to the whole Trinity, since the whole Trinity gives the Holy Spirit, as Augustine says: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, Augustine, *On the Trinity* II: «The Son could not be sent by the Father without the Holy Spirit»; therefore the mission of the Son belongs to the Holy Spirit: therefore by the same reason [also] the mission of himself. If you say, as some do, that this is to be understood of mission according to human nature — by which he was sent to preach, according to Isaiah 61: *He sent me to announce to the meek*; and not of mission according to divine nature; *on the contrary*: mission according to divine nature is mission into the mind, or into the flesh; but Augustine understands of mission into the flesh, whence immediately is added: «Because the Father is understood to have sent him when he made [him] from a woman»: therefore it is plain that he is speaking of mission according to divine nature.

3. Likewise, the Master makes such an argument: if the Father can give or send the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit cannot, then the Father can do something which the Holy Spirit cannot. Likewise if the Father gives and sends the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit does not do this, then the Father does something which the Holy Spirit does not: therefore the works of the Trinity are divided.

**On the contrary:**

1. *Given* is said relatively to *the giver*, as Augustine says in *On the Trinity* V: therefore the Holy Spirit is not given except by those to whom he is said relatively; but he is not said relatively to himself: therefore he does not give himself, therefore he does not send himself.

2. Likewise, just as the Father is the first person in the Trinity, before whom there is no other, so the Holy Spirit, after whom there is no other; but the Father, because he has no person from which he is, is in no way said to be sent: therefore since the Holy Spirit has no person emanating from himself, he is in no way said to send.

3. Likewise, wherever there is passive mission, there is *subauthority* with respect to some principle in the one sent, as is said by Augustine and the Master: therefore where there is active mission, there authority is noted with respect to a person; but the Holy Spirit has no authority with respect to himself nor to any other person: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, wherever there is mission, there distinction is truly noted, just as separation [is noted] in creatures; but the person of the Holy Spirit is not distinguished from himself: therefore he is not sent by himself, nor does he send the Son, since he has no authority over him: therefore he does not send.

5. Likewise, every act according to which a person is reflected upon himself is essential and essentially predicated; if therefore the Son sends himself, or the Holy Spirit himself: therefore *to send* or *to be sent* is said essentially; but every such act is said of the three; therefore the Father sends himself.

### CONCLUSION.

> The expression that the Father, or the Trinity, sends himself is improper; that the producing person sends the produced is wholly proper; and finally that the proceeding persons send themselves is less proper, but still to be sustained.

**I respond:** It must be said that on this question wise men hold opposing views to wise men. For the Master says expressly, and tries to prove by authority and reason, that the Holy Spirit sends himself and gives himself; nor is it necessary, according to him, that personal distinction should fall between the one sending and the one sent, but only [a distinction] with respect to the manner of understanding — so that the same one is the sender insofar as he is God, and the same one is the one sent insofar as he is gift.

The position of other and older masters was that *to send* and *to be sent* import, by the very meaning of their name, *subauthority* and authority and distinction; and therefore it can in no way be said that one person sends himself or is sent by himself. Whence those expressions which seem to say this are improper and to be expounded otherwise. And they confirm their position from Augustine, who says that the Father is in no way sent, nor is read to have been sent: this is for no other reason than that *to be sent* imports *subauthority*: therefore conversely *to send* imports authority, and one person does not have authority over himself. And they reply to the Master's reasonings that *to give* and *to send* are not alike. For *to give* in one mode is to communicate from liberality or love; and so it is wholly essential and connotes no distinction, and so it is granted that the whole Trinity gives itself, and the Father likewise. In another mode, *to give* is to communicate a gift to someone, not only from liberality, but also from authority; and so *to give* asserts a notion or is held notionally, and in this mode those reasonings do not hold: if the Father gives the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit does not give himself, then the Father does something which the Holy Spirit does not; for it asserts a notion, and in this sense it is equivalent to *to send*, and similarly passive donation is equivalent to *to proceed*. — Similarly, to the parallel which the Master draws regarding the Son, they say that it is not parallel, because in the Son there is a twofold nature — namely, divine and human — and with respect to the human nature he can be sent and is sent by the whole Trinity, since he is less than God and inferior, and has not only *subauthority* but also servitude, since he is the servant of God, although by union he is God. With respect to the divine nature, however, he is sent only by the Father, because he is produced only by the Father. Therefore since the Holy Spirit is produced both by the Father and by the Son, and not by himself, hence it is that he is sent only by the Father and the Son. And on this account the Master's reasonings do not hold, for all the authorities which say that the Son is sent by the Holy Spirit or by himself are understood according to human nature.

But although this position seems more reasonable and easier to sustain, nevertheless — because we ought not to drag the authorities of the saints into our reasoning, but rather conversely to subject our reasoning to the authorities of the saints, where they do not contain manifest absurdity; and the saints say, and the Master says, and especially Augustine — who has spoken most on this matter — that the Son is sent by the Holy Spirit and even by himself, which they cannot expound according to human nature — therefore the other position, both out of reverence for the saints and out of reverence for the Master, seems rather to be held. For that statement of Augustine — who says that the Son is sent into the flesh by the Holy Spirit — cannot in any way, as it seems, be understood according to human nature, because this mission was *for the assumption of humanity* or of flesh: therefore according to the manner of understanding it precedes human nature as already united: therefore if the Son is said to be sent in this mode, he must be attributed to the divine nature, and so by reason of the divine nature he is sent by the Holy Spirit; much more strongly therefore also by himself, and by this also the Holy Spirit by himself.

And accordingly, for the understanding of the objections to the contrary, it must be noted that mission of itself imports two things — namely, emanation and manifestation — and principally, by the nature of its signification, it imports manifestation. And this is plain through Augustine in *On the Trinity* IV, who says that *to be sent* is *to be known to be from another*, and it is held in the present distinction that «then the Son is sent when from time he is perceived in someone's mind». Therefore, since it principally imports manifestation and connotes in the one sent emanation, manifestation is signified through *to send* by the mode of action, and through *to be sent* by the mode of passion, but emanation in both uniformly. Whence the sense is: *the Father sends the Son* — that is, declares or manifests the emanation of the Son, or [manifests] the Son to be emanating. In the passive, the sense is: *the Son or the Holy Spirit is sent* — that is, is manifested as emanating from another.

And since the ablative with respect to the passive, and the nominative with respect to the active verb, import the character of *principle*, and the signification of this verb *to send* and *to be sent* is *manifestation* and *emanation*, therefore that [expression] is most proper when the ablative or nominative imports the relation of principle with respect to both — as when it is said: *the Father sends the Son*, and *the Son is sent by the Father*, since the Son emanates from the Father and is manifested by the Father.

But because the principal signification of these verbs is *manifestation*, not *emanation*, when the nominative or ablative is the principle of manifestation, although not of emanation, [the expression] is proper, but less so than the foregoing; and in this sense the following are conceded:

*The Son sends himself*, and *the Holy Spirit sends himself*.

But because both *to send* and *to be sent* import emanation regarding the one sent, and the person of the Father does not emanate from anyone, similarly neither does the Trinity: therefore the person of the Father is nowhere read to have been sent, nor is the Trinity itself.

From this it is plain that this is simply and wholly proper: *the Father sends the Son*; this is less proper, yet does not depart from propriety: *the Son sends himself*; but this is wholly improper: *the Father sends himself, or the Trinity itself*.

**1.** To what is objected to the contrary about *given*, that it is said relatively; it must be said that this is true insofar as *to give* asserts to communicate by a certain authority; the Master does not take it in this mode, but insofar as *to give* is the same as to communicate liberally and voluntarily.

**2.** To what is objected — that the Father is not sent because he is not from another — it must be said that it is not parallel, since both *to send* and *to be sent* import emanation in the one sent, as is plain to one who expounds. For the sense is: *this person sends that one* — that is, manifests his emanation; and: *this one is sent by that one* — that is, his emanation is manifested by that one. But this emanation is not always imported with respect to every person sending, since manifestation of emanation can be from someone from whom nevertheless the emanation itself is not; and therefore production is not posited in the one sending in the same way as emanation [is posited] in the one sent; and therefore it does not follow that, if the Father is not sent, the Holy Spirit does not send.

**3.** To what is objected — where there is passive mission, there is *subauthority* — it must be said that this is true, not by reason that it is passive, but by that reason by which both passive and active note emanation in the one sent, as appeared in the exposition. And because emanation is not always with respect to the one sending, therefore it is not necessary that authority always be imported in the one sending; but that reasoning would hold well, if it were the case that the principal signification of *mission* were emanation or production.

**4.** To what is objected — that *to send* imports distinction — it must be said that *to send* in one mode imports substantial difference, as when it imports lordship, as when it is said: *God sends an angel*; in another mode personal distinction, as when it imports authority in the one sending and *subauthority* in the one sent with respect to the one sending, as when it is said: *the Father sends the Son*. In the third mode it imports distinction only as far as the manner of understanding — just as when it is said: *the will is an instrument moving itself* — since the same is mover and moved — so, when it is said: *the Holy Spirit sends himself*, the same is the one sending and the one sent, differing in account: the one sending, I say, insofar as he is God, but the one sent insofar as he is gift, as has been said before.

**5.** To what is objected last about the reflection of the act, it must be said that it is true with respect to the principal signification, but not necessarily with respect to what is connoted; and by reason of the principal signification there is reflection of the person sending upon himself, so that it may be said: *the one sending is the one sent*.