b) While theologians are unanimous in accepting the doctrine of the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the just as clearly contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, they differ in explaining the manner in which He dwells in the soul.
α) The great majority hold that the Holy Ghost can not dwell in the soul, as the human soul dwells in the body, per modum informationis, nor yet by a hypostatic union, as godhead and manhood dwell together in the Person of Christ; and that consequently His indwelling is objectively an indwelling of the whole Trinity, which is appropriated to the Third Person merely because the Holy Ghost is “hypostatic holiness” or “personal love.” This view is based on what is called “the fundamental law of the Trinity,” viz.: “In God all things are one except where there is opposition of relation.”[1144] Sacred Scripture speaks of the personal indwelling of the Father and the Son as well as of the Holy Ghost. Cfr. John XIV, 23: “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.”[1145] St. Athanasius [pg 375] concludes from these words that “the energia of the Trinity is one.... Indeed when the Lord says: I and the Father will come, the Spirit also comes, to dwell in us in precisely the same manner in which the Son dwells in us.”[1146] And St. Augustine teaches: “Love, therefore, which is of God and is God, is properly the Holy Spirit, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts,—that love by which the whole Trinity dwells in us.”[1147] Accordingly, the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost consists in the state of grace as bearing a special relation to the Third Person of the Trinity; the “higher nature” which sanctifying grace imparts to the soul is not an absolute but a relative form (σχέσις), by which the soul is mysteriously united with the Three Divine Persons and, by appropriation, with the Holy Ghost, thereby becoming a throne and temple of God. It is in this sense that the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the soul is called the climax of justification.[1148]
β) Other eminent theologians (Petavius, Passaglia, Schrader, Scheeben, Hurter, et al.) regard the explanation just given as unsatisfactory. They contend that the Fathers, especially those of the East, conceived the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of the just, not as an indwelling (ἐνοίκησις) of the Trinity, appropriated to the Holy Ghost, but as a union (ἕνωσις) of the Holy Ghost Himself with the soul.[1149] This union, they say, is [pg 376] neither physical nor hypostatic, but an altogether unique and inexplicable relation by which the soul is morally, accidentally, and actively united to the person of the Holy Ghost.[1150]
γ) Unfortunately this exalted and mystic theory cannot be squared with the theological principles underlying the Catholic teaching on the Trinity, especially that portion of it which concerns the appropriations and missions of the three Divine Persons.[1151] It is true that sanctifying grace culminates in a communication of the Divine Nature, and that this θείωσις is effected by imprinting upon the soul an image of the divine processes of generation and spiration,—the first by adoptive filiation, the second by an indwelling of the Holy Ghost.[1152] In fact all the Trinitarian relations are reflected in the justification of the sinner. Thus regeneration corresponds to the generation of the Logos by the Father; adoptive sonship and the accompanying participation of the soul in the Divine Nature corresponds to our Lord's natural sonship and his consubstantiality with the Father; the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and His union with the soul, on the other hand, corresponds to the divine process of Spiration, inasmuch as it is preëminently a supernatural union of love and effects a sort of mutual inexistence or perichoresis of the soul in the Holy Ghost or the three Divine Persons respectively.[1153] Since, however, this union of the [pg 377] soul with the substance of the three Divine Persons in general, and the Holy Ghost in particular, is not a substantial and physical but only an accidental and moral union, the regeneration of the sinner must be conceived as generation in a metaphorical sense only, divine sonship as adoptive sonship, the deification of man as a weak imitation of the divine homoousia, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul as a shadowy analogue of the Divine Perichoresis.[1154]
Readings:—Deharbe, Die vollkommene Liebe Gottes nach dem hl. Thomas von Aquin, Ratisbon 1856.—Marchant, Die theologischen Tugenden, Ratisbon 1864.—Mazzella, De Virtutibus Infusis, 4th ed., Rome 1894.—G. Lahousse, S. J., De Virtutibus Theologicis, Louvain 1890.—S. Schiffini, S. J., Tractatus de Virtutibus Infusis, Freiburg 1904.—J. Kirschkamp, Der Geist des Katholizismus in der Lehre vom Glauben und von der Liebe, Paderborn 1894.—C. Weiss, S. Thomae Aquinatis de Septem Donis Spiritus Sancti Doctrina Proposita et Explicata, Vienna 1895.
On the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of the just see A. Scholz, De Inhabitatione Spiritus Sancti, Würzburg 1856.—*Franzelin, De Deo Trino, pp. 625 sqq., Rome 1881.—Oberdörffer, De Inhabitatione Spiritus Sancti in Animabus Iustorum, Tournai 1890.—* B. Froget, O. P., De l'Inhabitation du S. Esprit dans les Âmes Justes d'après la Doctrine de S. Thomas d'Aquin, Paris 1901.—De Bellevue, L'Oeuvre du S. Esprit ou la Sanctification des Âmes, Paris 1901.
On the historic development of the dogma see Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed., Vol. II, § 56-75, Freiburg 1895.