Procession in God
Procession in God
One Sentence Summary
There is procession in God without disunity of his being. As an intellectual nature, God has two internal processions of the highest kind - the procession of his intellect and the procession of his will. His intellect can be called generation since it is the begetting of an idea perfectly matching his being, and his will is called procession because it proceeds towards the thing loved.
Question breakdown
Is there procession in God?
Yes. There is procession because God is an intellectual nature, and the intellect 'proceeds' the inner word. This is the highest kind of procession, and is of such a kind which is:
- Internal to the being.
- Identical to the nature of the being if of the highest sort.
Therefore there is procession in God without any destruction of his simplicity.
How many processions are there?
Two - the procession of the intellect and the procession of the will. Since a procession is an act, there must be a procession for every act internal to an intellectual nature - the intellect and the will. Therefore, there is a procession in God which matches these two.
Can these processions be called generation?
The procession of the intellect can be called generation, but not the procession of the will.
Generation can be considered in two ways. Firstly, when something goes from non-existence to existence it is 'generated.' Secondly, when something is generated by something else of the same species or kind. This second way corresponds to how the intellect generates its thoughts. Therefore the generation of the inner Word in God is of the highest kind.
Yet this isn't true for the Will. The intellect is perfect when it is identical to the thing being thought, yet the will is perfect not when it is identical but when it inclines to the thing being desired. Therefore the word for the procession of the will is not generation, but procession or spiration. These words show the inclination of the will towards the object being loved.