Why Does God the Father Have No Spouse?

As we near the end of Christmastide, still mindful of the Epiphany mystery of the Wedding Feast at Cana, I have been pondering the nuptial union of God the Son with His Church — a reality we know from Saints John and Paul, and from so many of our liturgical prayers.¹ God the Son, we know, has a Bride. And so does God the Holy Ghost, for He is espoused to Our Lady, as is clear from Luke 1:35 and Our Lady’s comely title in the Litany of Loreto, “Spouse of the Holy Ghost.”

But why is God the Father, alone among the Trinitarian Persons, “single”?

Most of my arguments here will be based upon fittingness, precisely because the nature of the question is so speculative and there is no authoritative argument from the sources of revelation and the magisterium. That is alright, though; Saint Thomas and other greats used arguments from fittingness all the time. For my part, I will strive to keep my speculation on tight rails. Now, if you care to, strap yourself in and join me for the ride.

Because all our knowledge of God is analogical, when we speak of the espousal of a divine Person, we are not speaking in strictly univocal terms with human marriage (cf., Analogical Knowledge of God). Something is the same, something different; yet the use of the term, warranted by Holy Scripture and the Church’s tradition, is not meaningless: we are truly talking about marriage, espousal, or nuptials, but in a much higher sense.

So we affirm it with no attenuation or compromise: God the Father joined Jesus to His Bride, the Catholic Church. God the Father also joined the Holy Ghost to His Bride, the Blessed Virgin Mary. “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Matt. 19:6). This is terra firma.

The “espoused” members of the Trinity are the Two who have temporal missions. More on the temporal missions later, but for now we can say that the Son and the Holy Ghost are sent by the Father, but the Father is not Himself sent. I think this is where our answer can be found. Elsewhere, we have touched upon the fittingness of God the Son being the One who became man, and this explanation helps us in our answer to the present question:

It would not be fitting that the Father become a child in time, for He is not from any other divine Person. He is not a son. Nor would it be fitting for the Holy Ghost to be incarnate, since He is the breath of Love between the Father and the Son. He is not Himself a son.

It is fitting that if Mary would look at a Divine Person and say, “Thou art my son,” it would be that One Person to whom those words are spoken in eternity by the Father. (The Divine Infancy)

The Church is fittingly given to the Son as His Spouse and His mystical fullness (Saint Paul speaks of Christ and the Church in terms of the “one flesh” of marriage mentioned by Moses in Genesis 2:24, and Saint Augustine called the Church “the Whole Christ”). God the Father willed that the Incarnate Logos should have brothers and sisters to share in His glory, augmenting it thereby.

The fecundity of the Son brings offspring to the Father. The Son does this through His espousals to the Church. Consider the words of the Father at the Baptism of Jesus — “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17); they are echoed each time a child of God is divinely adopted through that sacrament Jesus was then and there instituting.

Our Lady is fittingly given to the Holy Ghost as His Spouse for many reasons. One that I will not attempt to develop here is the beautiful doctrine of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, pneumatologist extraordinaire, who says that the Holy Ghost is the “Uncreated Immaculate Conception,” while His Spouse is the “Created Immaculate Conception.”

The Holy Ghost brings offspring to the Father through His espousals to Our Lady, for the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord — “the Man, Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5) — is truly the Son of God through that union. Moreover, the Blessed Virgin is not only the Mother of Christ the Head, but also the Mother of “the Whole Christ,” which is His Mystical Body, the Church. Therefore, She is Mother of all of Christ’s mystical members.

It is fitting that the Holy Ghost and not the Father be the Bridegroom of Our Lady in order to avoid confusion between the Eternal and temporal births of Jesus. His first birth is from the bosom of the Father alone in eternity, while His temporal birth at Christmas was according to His sacred Humanity and is the result of God’s eternal plan to glorify the Trinity and save man by means of the economy of the Incarnation.

Saint Thomas Aquinas gives three reasons why the Incarnation is fittingly attributed to the Holy Ghost:

• First, because the Holy Ghost is the love of the Father for the Son in a Person and, “that the Son of God took to Himself flesh from the Virgin’s womb was due to the exceeding love of God: wherefore it is said (John 3:16): ‘God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son.’”
• Second, because the Sacred Humanity of Christ was predestined to have the grace of union prior to any preexisting merits on his part, and the sanctification of human nature is attributed to the Holy Ghost, who, for that reason, is called “the Sanctifier.” Saint Thomas cites Augustine on this: “The manner in which Christ was born of the Holy Ghost . . . suggests to us the grace of God, whereby man, without any merits going before, in the very beginning of his nature when he began to exist was joined to God the Word, into so great unity of Person, that He Himself should be the Son of God.”
• Third, “the term of the Incarnation was that that man, who was being conceived, should be the Holy one and the Son of God. Now, both of these are attributed to the Holy Ghost. For by Him men are made to be sons of God, according to Galatians 4:6: ‘Because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of His Son into your [Vulgate: ‘our’] hearts, crying: Abba, Father.’” (ST III Q 32, A. 1; note that this does not mean that the Holy Ghost is properly said to be Our Lord’s “Father” in respect of His Humanity.)

These two spousal relationships fittingly correspond to the temporal missions of the Second and Third Persons, which have as their purpose to bring sons and daughters to the Father:

But go to my brethren, and say to them: I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and your God. — John 20:17

For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father). — Romans 8:15

And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father. — Galatians 4:6

While the begetting of children of God happens through the missions of the Second and Third Persons in cooperation with the secondary causality of the human agents involved — the sacred ministers of the Church and Our Lady — the children begotten are, like Jesus Himself, children of the Eternal Father; again, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17) can be said by the Father of each of us at our Baptism. Also, I cannot refrain from citing Saint John here: “Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth not us, because it knew not him” (1 John 3:1).

The Father has no mission in time. He sends the other Persons on Their temporal missions, but is not Himself sent by anyone. This is a temporal reflection of the reality of the eternal processions: in the Trinity, the Father is the Origin without origin, the principle of the other Persons, who has Himself no principle (for an explanation of my use of the word, “principle” here, see this article.) The Father created the world through the Son and in the Holy Ghost; He subsequently saved the world through the Son and in the Holy Ghost (John 1:3, John 1:12-13; Col. 1:12-20). Since the processions in the Trinity have their origin in the Father, there would be no fittingness to His either mystically perpetuating Himself (as Our Lord does in His Church); this is already accomplished by His eternal begetting of His Only-Begotten Son. Nor would it be fitting that He have a created compliment to His Eternal Person as does the Holy Ghost in Our Lady. Both of these Persons proceed from Him and, through Them, all things return to the Father by a process of emanation and return:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I intend,
and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. —Is. 55:10-11 (RSVCE)

It is far more fitting that He who is eternally fruitful in begetting the Son and spirating the Holy Ghost remains temporally “unespoused.”

Else what? Else, we might end up with Mormonism’s “Heavenly Mother.” No, thank you. I’ll take Our Blessed Lady instead.

Our train of speculative theology has now arrived safely in the station. I hope nobody was worse off for the ride.

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