INDWELLING OF GOD IN MAN. - It is the special permanent presence of the Most Holy Trinity in the soul that is in a state of grace; it must not therefore be confused with the common presence of God in all things.
I. IN HOLY SCRIPTURE
1. The name
In Holy Scripture, to express it, there is found both the compound term ἐνουκείν, "to indwell" (Rom. 8:11; II Tim. 1:14), and the simple term οἰκείν, "to dwell" (Rom. 8:9, 11; I Cor. 3:16). St. John, in the texts fundamental for this whole doctrine, prefers the verb μέκενν (μονή = "dwelling"), "to abide," "to remain" (Io. 14:16, 17, 23). Alongside these terms, which express God's dwelling as actually present in the soul, there are others that rather indicate either its coming to be (the Holy Spirit sent to us: ibid. 14:26; Gal. 4:6; given to us: Io. 7:39; 14:16; Act. 5:32; 8:18; Rom. 5:5; I Thess. 4:8; I Io. 3:24; 4:13; received as a gift: Act. 2:38; I Cor. 2:12), or our transformation, soul and body, into a temple of God (ibid. 3:16 ff.; 6:19; II Cor. 6:16).
2. The first revelation. From the fact that St. Paul in I Cor. reminds the faithful of a doctrine they ought to know ("Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" I Cor. 3:16), one may deduce that the preaching of this doctrine belonged to the primitive Christian catechesis. Indeed, it must have had great prominence there, especially because of the frequent visible descent of the Holy Spirit upon the newly baptized, particularly in the first years of the Church, and also because of the widespread presence of charismatic phenomena among Christians (ibid. 12). Those visible descents of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and upon the first Christians, and the outpouring of his charisms, foretold by Joel (cf. Act. 2:16 ff.), appeared notoriously (ibid. 1:4-8) as the fulfillment of the great promise of Jesus at the Last Supper. Subject to one and the same condition ("If you love me," "He who loves me," "If anyone loves me"), Jesus had promised three things, which, however, are evidently connected with one another: "He will give you another Paraclete," "I will manifest myself to him," "We will come to him and make our dwelling with him" (Io. 14:16, 21, 23). Although Jesus promises the coming and the dwelling of all three divine Persons, nevertheless the coming of the Holy Spirit always had greater prominence. So it was for the Apostles, so it was for the apostolic Church.
II. IN THE PATRISTIC AGE
The doctrine of the indwelling of God in man passed with equal, if not greater, prominence from the apostolic age to the patristic age. Indeed it took a step forward: from the simple affirmations of the Epistula Barnabae, which opposed to the material temple of the Israelites the true temple in which God truly dwells, that is, the soul free from sin (Epist. Barn., 16: PG 2, 774), or of Ignatius of Antioch, who coined the expressive terms θεοφόροι, νεοφόροι, χριστοφόροι, ἀγιοφόροι (Eph., 9: PG 5, 652), one even came to use the universally known fact of the indwelling to prove against the heretics certain fundamental truths of the faith: the resurrection of the bodies that were the temple of God (Hermas, Pastor, III, simil. 5, 6: PG 2, 962; Irenaeus, Ad. haeres., V, cap. 6, 2: ibid. 7, 1139; Novatian, De Trin., 29: PL 3, 973), the incorporeality of the Holy Spirit (Origen, Περὶ ἀρχῶν, I, cap. 1, 3: PG 11, 122), his divinity (Athanasius, I Epist. ad Serap., 24: ibid. 26, 586; Didymus of Alexandria, De Spiritu S., 6: ibid. 39, 1037; Cyril of Alexandria, In Io. Evang., I [cap. 1, 13]: ibid. 73, 158; cf. also IX: ibid. 74, 258; X: ibid. 291; other texts in Petavius, De Trin., I. VIII, cap. 5, nn. VIII-XVI), the divinity of the Word (Athanasius, De synodis, 51: ibid. 26, 783; cf. 53: ibid. 787). Tatian went so far as to subordinate the very immortality of the soul to the indwelling of the Spirit of God (Gratio adv. Graecos, 13: ibid. 6, 834). This shows that a substantial presence was had in mind and testifies to the great prominence and the wide diffusion that this uncontested certainty had in the patristic age. As already in the apostolic age, so also in the patristic age one habitually speaks of the Holy Spirit. But by a simple inferential process one easily passed to the presence in us of the three divine Persons, because of their inseparability (Hilary, De Trinit., VIII, 27: PL 10, 256; Didymus, De Trinit., II, 7: PG 39, 530; John Chrysostom, Hom. XIII in Epist. ad Romanos, 8: ibid. 60, 519; Augustine, Epist. ad Dardanum [Epist. 187 alias 57], 16: PL 33, 837). Moreover it was enough to recall the explicit promise of Jesus concerning the coming of the Father and of the Son (Origen, Περὶ ἀρχῶν, I, cap. 1, 2: PG 11, 122; Cyril of Alexandria, In Io. Evang., X [cap. 14, 23]: ibid. 74, 290). The purpose and the task of this indwelling, on which patristic literature principally insists, is that of sanctifying us, transforming us into a temple of God and preparing us for eternal beatitude. Therefore this presence of God is reserved to those who fulfill its conditions, and cannot be confused with the presence of God in all things. St. Augustine will say this expressly, among others, in the Letter to Dardanus (loc. cit.).
III. THEOLOGICAL DEBATES
Thus there is presented to the investigation of theologians a doctrine strongly and clearly affirmed both in Sacred Scripture and in tradition. It will be their task to define its concept precisely and to study its nature. A preliminary question is that of knowing whether the indwelling belongs to all three divine Persons or is proper to the Holy Spirit. Jesus clearly promised the coming of the Father and of himself into the one who loves him; but the insistence with which he promised the Holy Spirit and the prominence that the action of the Holy Spirit has always had both in the early Church and in patristic literature has led some theologians, among them the two founders of positive theology, Petavius and Thomassin, and not a few moderns, to attribute functions proper to the Holy Spirit with regard to the indwelling and the sanctifying action in souls. On the contrary, the vast majority of theologians have appealed to the principle according to which among the Three divine Persons everything is one and undivided, except the relations of origin. For this reason it is held that the indwelling belongs equally to all three divine Persons, and the insistence of the documents on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is explained by the theological doctrine of appropriation, that is, of the attribution to one divine Person of a predicate common to all, on account of a particular analogy with its personal property. In this sense Leo XIII expresses himself in the encyclical Divinum illud, of 9 May 1897, and Pius XII in the Mystici Corporis, of 29 June 1943. More debated is the other question: how to conceive this special presence. According to the explanations that have so far most engaged theologians, the following are indicated:
1. The great Scholasticism, while not forgetting the sanctifying function attributed to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit by patristic literature (Peter Lombard even exaggerated it: I Sent., d. 17), fixed its attention more on its nature as a reward: « If anyone loves me... we will come to him... ». In this order of ideas St. Thomas conceived the plan of creation as a cycle which, making creatures start from God their principle, brings them back to him their ultimate end. This return is fully realized in creatures endowed with intellect and will insofar as they come to possess him through the gifts of Grace and of Glory (In I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 2, c.). One can therefore say that Grace imperfectly here on earth and Glory perfectly in heaven make us possess God as the object of knowledge and love: sicut cognitum in cognoscente et amatum in amante (ibid., ad 2.; Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 8, a. 3, ad 4; q. 43, a. 3).
2. Around this formula a dispute broke out at the end of the 16th century between Vazquez and Suárez. To Vazquez that formula seemed insufficient to denote a real presence of the divine Persons in the soul, for which reason he held that the divine Persons, already present in the soul by immensity, became so in a special way through the production of Grace. Suárez replied that such an explanation reduced the presence by grace to a simple extension of the presence of immensity. According to him, on the other hand, the indwelling must have a formal cause independent of the presence of immensity; and indeed, he said, such is the exigency of love between God and the soul that even if God were not present by immensity, he would become so in order to satisfy these exigencies of love. Suárez lacks the true and proper explanation of the way in which these exigencies are satisfied, because if love tends toward union with the beloved object, it does not realize it by itself.
3. This is the criticism that the Dominican John of St. Thomas opposed to Suárez. According to his explanation, the presence by Grace is integrated with the presence of immensity, in the sense that God, already present in the soul as its principle by immensity, is also reached as end by the knowledge and love derived from Grace. He therefore rejected the famous conditional of Suárez.
4. In our own day the dispute has been brought back to the center of theologians' attention especially through the merit of Fr. Gardeil O. P., who links himself to the thesis of John of St. Thomas, and of Fr. Galtier S. J., who, developing an explanation already hinted at by Petavius (De Trinit., l. VIII, cap. 5, nn. 1-3) and based on certain texts of St. Paul (Eph. 1, 13; 4, 30; II Cor. 1, 22) and of some Fathers, explains the indwelling by a kind of impression of the divine Persons in the soul, as a seal produces its imprint through a real and immediate contact.
The debate, as can be seen, is not yet closed; but the various explanations proposed, besides agreeing on the fact of the indwelling and on its subordination to Grace, agree in giving the greatest prominence to the fruitive aspect of this « gift » that God makes of himself.
IV. IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
God present in the just soul is not only the principle of the spiritual life, but also its goal and object. For that life is nothing other than the realizing and the progressing of our union with God. Hence the "search for God" in the life of contemplation and of love is not directed to a God who is far off or in any case absent from man, but to a God to whom one is united through Grace. Therefore in holy souls progress in the spiritual life is manifested as a process of interiorization, in which intellect and will, contemplation and love, concentrate with ever greater spontaneity upon God present "in the substance of the soul," as St. John of the Cross puts it.
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