INDWELLING, DIVINE

In the commonly accepted meaning of the phrase, the divine indwelling designates the special permanent presence of God in the just, a presence different from God's omnipresence by virtue of creation. The revealed doctrine on the life of grace, as attested in Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, states the fact of this special presence without explaining how it takes place. Theology endeavors to explain the manner of this presence.

Revealed Doctrine

We shall first of all briefly state the fact of the divine indwelling as taught in Sacred Scripture, the Fathers, and the documents of the Church.

Holy Scripture. We see, with Y. M. J. Congar (The Mystery of the Temple ), the mystery of the divine indwelling gradually revealed in the message of salva tion and of the economy of God's presence with His chosen people, first in the Old and then in the New Testament; it evolves from an external and social presence with the community to an interior and personal presence with each one. In the Old Testament Yahweh's dwelling with His people, both before and after the building of the Temple, is but a figure of the divine indwelling in the just.

In the New Testament the fulfillment of the messianic times, the same presence of God among the people of God is realized in a new way with the very coming of Christ and the advent of the kingdom of God (Mt 3.2;4.17), and after Christ's glorification, with the sending of the Spirit, who dwells in His Church (1 Cor 3.16; 2 Cor6.16). Already here there is a difference: Christ insists on the interiority of the kingdom of God (ch. 5 and 6 of Matthew) and on the newly revealed communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Mt 23.9; Lk 10.22) begun in Baptism (cf. Mt 28.19). He promises His permanent presence in the Church (cf. Mt 28.20). This interiorization of God's presence leads up to the mystery of the divine indwelling in each of Christ's followers. St. John is explicit on this new communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: "If anyone love me … we [the Father and I] will come to him and make our abode with him" (Jn 14.23), and "the Advocate, the Holy Spirit … the Father will send in my name" (Jn 14.26; cf. 1 Jn 1.3; 2.23; 3.24). St. Paul speaks of the proper role of each of the three Persons in the sanctification of Christ's members: We are "sons of God [the Father]," by the "Spirit of God" who "dwells" in us, the "Spirit of Christ" by which Christ is "in" us and we are His, having received the "spirit of adoption as sons, by virtue of which we cry: ‘Abba! Father!"' (cf. Rom 8.9–16; also 1 Cor 3.16; 6.19; 8.6; Gal 2.20; Phil 1.21; Eph 3.14–19). Hence, as F. Prat explains, there originates a relation of sonship with the Father, of consecration to the Holy Spirit, of mystical identity with Jesus Christ. Thus the New Testament states the fact of the special presence of God and the special role of the three Divine Persons with or in the just.

Fathers of the Church. The Fathers echo the Biblical message about God-in-us. The Greek Fathers are even more explicit on Uncreated Grace, or God dwelling in us, than on created grace. By indwelling in us the Spirit or the Word or the Trinity divinizes us. These Fathers draw a proof for the divinity of the Spirit or the Word from the fact that, by dwelling in us, they divinize us. Thus, after SS. Athanasius and Basil, St. Cyril of Alexandria says of the Spirit, "… we already have God dwelling in us permanently …" (In loan. com. 1.9; Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne 73:157). Of the Word St. Athanasius says, "We are made sons and gods because of the Word we have in us" (Adv. Arian. 3.25; Patrologia Graeca, 26:376). St. John Chrysostom says of the indwelling Trinity, "Where one Person of the Trinity is present, there is the whole Trinity" (In ep. ad Rom. 13.8; Patrologia Graeca, 60:519). As St. Cyril of Alexandria specifies, "from the Father who through the Son causes the Holy Spirit to dwell in them" (In loan. com. 11.10; Patrologia Graeca, 74:540), such is the order of our sanctification. The Spirit sanctifies us by imprinting the seal of the Son and so making us sons of the Father.

With the Latin Fathers the teaching on the divine indwelling is less explicit and frequent; they speak more of created grace, more of the renewal of our being by grace, than of the divine presence. Yet they also witness to the faith in this mystery; thus Tertullian; thus also St. Hilary, who says, "We are all spiritual, if the Spirit of God is in us. But the Spirit of God is also the Spirit of Christ" (De Trin. 8.21; Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne 10:252); thus above all St. Augustine, the Latin Doctor on the Trinity (Trin. 15.17–19; Patrologia Latina, 42:1079–87).

The mystery of the divine indwelling, in the mind of the Fathers, pertains to the message of salvation.

Church Documents. Actually, the doctrine was never called into question within the Church, and so there is only passing reference to it in the documents on divine grace. At the time of Pelagianism (see pelagius and pe lagianism) and semi-pelagianism, there is such a mention of the guidance and infusion of the Holy Spirit (H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symolorum, ed. A. Schönmetzer [32d ed. Freiburg 1963] 243, 376). The Council of Trent, in its teaching on justification, stressed the objective change worked in us by grace, i.e., the reality of created grace; yet it did not omit to mention our anointing by the Holy Spirit (Enchiridion symolorum 1529), our insertion into Christ (Enchiridion symolorum, 1530), the intervention of the three Persons in our sanctification (Enchiridion symbolorum, 1525, 1529–31). At the beginning of the 20th century, Leo XIII illustrated the divine indwelling in his encyclical divinum illud munus on the gifts of the Holy Spirit (cf. Enchiridion symbolorum, 3329–31). Pius XII, later, in mystici corporis spoke of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the church (Enchiridion symbolorum, 3807) and of His indwelling in each soul in grace (Enchiridion symbolorum, 3814–15).

Theology of the Divine Indwelling

We may next take up the twofold theological problem concerning the manner of the divine presence by grace and the special relationships to the Divine Persons that originate in the divine indwelling.

Manner of the Divine Presence. The first theological question about the divine indwelling is this: in what way does this presence differ from God's omnipresence in all things, not excluding sinners? Various explanations were and are proposed. Some theologians appeal to divine efficient causality: God is present in the just because He produces grace (G. Vázquez). This presence is in addition to His omnipresence (John of St. Thomas, R. Garrigou-Lagrange, H. Lange); or, as P. Galtier explains, it is a special presence because God produces grace by a special efficiency proper to grace. Others speak of exem plary causality: grace makes us like unto God, whether under the aspect of deity (Garrigou-Lagrange), or that of Trinity (Galtier), or that of the divine nature as principle of divine activity (Galtier). Such explanations apparently fail to show what is specific to the presence of divine indwelling; they merely assert it. Efficient causality as such does not entail any other presence of God than that belonging to the order of creation. If this efficiency is said to be special, it should be shown what is special in it. As for exemplary causality, this entails a likeness with the exemplar; it does not involve the presence of the exemplar, unless again it be special exemplarity of god.

St. Thomas. The explanation of St. Thomas Aquinas is well known (Summa theologiae 1a, 43.3): God is in the just "as the known is in the knower and the loved in the lover." Various commentators have tried to show how here a real and not only "intentional" presence is involved (see intentionality): not only an image of god or imprint of God, but God Himself is in the just soul. Knowledge and love, in the context, do not mean only acts, for God's presence persists in the absence of acts; it ought to mean habitual knowledge and love and to result from the habitual principles of that knowledge and love. Why do these principles (faith and charity, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit) bring about a new presence of God? Because they are principles not of any knowledge and love, but of a special, namely, supernatural and theological, knowledge and love. This "special" requires further explanation.

De la Taille. This explanation may be derived from the divine causality that is proper to the supernatural order, such as is suggested in M. de la taille's concept of the supernatural. What is proper to supernatural reality is God's self-gift: the Uncreated Act actuating, or communicating Himself as act to, the obediential potency of spiritual creatures. Every spirit is open to the Infinite; not that he could of himself "conquer" the Infinite, but he can "receive" Him as the Act of his potency, if and when the Infinite deigns to give Himself. In so doing, God is not changed; all the change or newness is on the side of the creature, namely, the created actuation, or created grace. This is a link of immediate union with God, for it is what makes God's self-gift real. Thus grace, of its very essence, involves a new presence of God such as is nowhere found in the order of nature. This presence by actuation or self-communication of the Act has been called by some (e.g., K. Rahner) "quasiformal" causality; the phrase means that God unites Himself to the soul after the manner of a form uniting itself to matter, although not in a univocal but in an analogical way ("quasi"): God cannot be the form of any creature but only (in the supernatural order) its quasiform, changing the soul, but without in any way being affected Himself or entering into composition with the soul. In this context, the divine indwelling is not just one of the formal effects of sanctifying grace: Uncreated Grace and created grace are correlatives, two inseparable aspects of grace-life.

This idea of the divine indwelling is apt to show why the habitual presence of God as "the known is in the knower and the loved in the lover" is a real presence of God: God's self-gift, permanent as the gift of grace to which it is correlated, constitutes the presence. This presence is real or ontological, yet refers to the intentional order: it enables the just to know and love God in Himself, as personal, and definitely as tripersonal. Thus the divine indwelling originates a new relationship to the Trinity (see created actuation by uncreated act).

Trinitarian Relationship. Here the theological question is the following: is our new relationship particular or proper to each of the Divine Persons, or is it the same for the three and diversified only by appropriation or by a (legitimate and significant) way of speaking? The reason for asking the question lies in the traditional teaching based on the councils [cf. Lateran IV (Enchiridion symbolorum, 800) and Florence (Enchiridion symbolorum, 1330)], and recalled by Pius XII: in all things where divine efficient causality is concerned, its effect must be said to be common to the three Persons, and not proper to any one of them, because of their unity in nature (Enchiridion symbolorum, 3814). None of them has a separate or distinct efficient causality. It may be that Holy Scripture seems to assign to each of the three Persons a distinct role in our sanctification or in the indwelling. This, however, cannot be an efficient causality.

More Common Teaching. The difficulty has been solved by theologians mainly in two ways. The more common teaching of the School, with St. Thomas (Summa theologiae 3a, 23.2), explains our relationships to the three Divine Persons by appropriation. That relationship, it is said, is one and the same, common to the three, because it refers to divine efficient causality; and the one effect of this causality is created grace: one foundation for our relationship to the Triune God. But because of the resemblance between some aspect of grace and a Person's proper way of existing within the Trinity, grace may be "attributed" to one Person (though it be the effect of the three as one God). Thus grace and the indwelling being the effect of God's love can be ascribed in a special way to the Holy Spirit, whose procession and manner of existing in the Trinity are by way of love. Accordingly, in this explanation, there are no proper or distinct relationships of the just souls to each of the Divine Persons except in our subjective or psychological approach to each of them. This approach is different for the Father, whose adopted sons we are, for the Son, our elder Brother, and for the Holy Spirit, our indwelling Guest. In reality, none of the three does anything that is not done equally by or conjointly with the other two.

Proprium Theory. In recent years the appropriation theory has been losing ground: it apparently minimizes the sayings of Holy Scripture and, some say, savors nominalism. Another, more recent explanation, the proprium theory, is being proposed and spreading. It may point to antecedents in D. Petau, T. de Régnon, M. Scheeben, G. Waffelaert, who, however, may exaggerate by, as it were, restricting the indwelling to the Holy Spirit alone. Today the proprium theory seeks to assign to each of the three Persons a proper manner of indwelling. It distinguishes in the divine indwelling two really distinct aspects (the distinction is evident in the theory of De la Taille): an aspect of efficient causality, i.e., the production of created grace (or of the created actuation), which is common to the three Persons (cf. Enchiridion symbolorum, 3814), and the aspect of union or the relationship proper, which as such does not "produce" a created effect, since it only "unites" the just souls with the Triune God. This union being immediate, i.e., with God as personal (and not merely as Creator and Lord), is tripersonal, i.e., diversified for each of the three Persons. (Perhaps the distinction is implied in, certainly it is allowed by, the quatenus of the text of Pius XII, Enchiridion symbolorum, 3814.) It is so independently of our subjective approach. This distinction between efficiency and union is a prerequisite for the possibility of proper or distinct relationships to each of the Divine Persons: these would be unthinkable if the divine indwelling meant only divine efficient causality. In the proprium theory, the diversity in our attitude toward the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is based on the ontological reality of the triune relationship that objectively brings us face to face (in the darkness of faith) with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The foundation of this triune relationship, both threefold and one, is one, the created grace, whose function is to draw us into a personal relationship with God as personal or as three Persons. Thus the divine indwelling relates or unites us in a real manner with each of the Persons; it includes a triune relationship, because it means personal presence of the tripersonal God. The divine indwelling is Trinitarian.

This second approach, more realistic and closer to scriptural and patristic teaching, seems to be gaining in appeal in our day. However, it is well to note that in the appropriation theory also, the doctrine of the divine indwelling means the presence in us of the three Divine Persons. Whichever way one conceives theologically the mystery of God-in-us, as a doctrine of the faith it is meant to have a bearing on the Christian life. Nor should the appropriation theory be said to impair the vital import of the doctrine—perhaps it shows deeper reverence for the mystery. It remains true, however, that a more real theology of the divine indwelling holds a greater appeal to the contemporary mind.

Practical Considerations

We may finally indicate briefly the spiritual (or pastoral) and ecumenical import of the doctrine.

Spiritual Theology. The doctrine and theology of the divine indwelling bring out the exalting and personal aspect of the life of grace. The change worked in us by God's transforming presence, for all its importance as the condition of the reality of that presence, is incomparably less important than the divine indwelling itself. This stands out better still when, as suggested above, God's presence in us is conceived, not as a formal effect, but as the constituent of the state of grace. What the divine indwelling means for the pastoral teaching on grace may be best exemplified in the message of the apostle of the divine indwelling, elizabeth of the trinity. Her Reminiscences (Westminster, MD 1952) are an object lesson in living by the mystery of the indwelling Trinity. Her message also points to the personal and Trinitarian aspect of the life of grace. The awareness of the indwelling Guests makes for a fruitful living by the life of grace. Here a theology of our relationships with the Divine Persons built on the proprium theory enhances the vital significance of the doctrine of divine indwelling.

Ecumenical Implications. The doctrine on the divine indwelling, when placed at the heart of our teaching on the life of grace, is apt to reveal a kinship with Oriental theology, heir to the tradition of the Greek Fathers, which the Latin stress on created grace may well have obscured. By stressing Uncreated Grace or the indwelling Spirit or Trinity, the more or less dimmed unity in doctrine, if not in theology, between the separated East and ourselves may be brought to the light of day. On the other hand, for the Christians of the Protestant communities, the personal relationships with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which the doctrine on the divine indwelling involves, should place in proper focus the ontological reality of grace—a stumbling block for them because it is "unscriptural." With them we may agree to say that it is our personal relationship with the Divine Persons that comes first, indeed, that it is the all of the life of grace, created grace being necessary only for these relations to be real.

See Also: grace, articles on; grace, created and uncreated; holy spirit, gifts of; presence of god, practice of; jesus christ (in theology).

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