The Thomist 64 (2000): 499-519

BALTHASARAND THE THEO DRAMATIC
ENRICHMENT OF THE TRINITY
GUY MANSINI, 0.S.B.
Saint Meinrad School of Theology
Saint Meinrad, Indiana

T

he Theodrama of Hans Urs von Balthasar is the middle
section of his theological trilogy. It is the section about the
Good, following the one about the Beautiful and preceding
the one about the True. The Glory of the Lord studies the form
and splendor of revelation, its perception (aisthesis) in and across
and beyond the forms and splendors of the world, its reduction
to an inner-Trinitarian form and splendor. The Theologik studies
the truth of this same revelation, leading it back to a truth within
God. But the Theodrama studies how revelation is manifested,
and how its truth is constituted, in action, in a dramatic
encounter between God and man, an encounter also in its turn
led back to a prior and inner-Trinitarian one. 1 If we de-italicize
the word, then, Theodrama is the drama between God and man
reflecting the inner-Trinitarian drama of Father, Son, and Spirit.
Is the drama between God and man also constitutive of the
inner-Trinitarian drama? That is the aim of this essay-to think
about Balthasar's affirmative but subtle answer to that question.
1 See "Dramatic Theory between Aesthetics and Logic," in Theo-Drama: Theological
Dramatic Theory, vol. I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 15-23. Theo-Drama vols. 1,
2, 3, 4, and 5 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998), are hereafter
ID 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, which correspond to Theo-Dramatik, Vol. I, Prolegomena; Vol. 11/1, Die
Personen des Spiels: Der Mensch in Gott; Vol. 11/2, Die Personen in Christus; Vol. III: Die
Handlung; and Vol IV: Das Endspiel (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1973, 1976, 1978, 1980).
Hereafter, parenthetical references, with roman numerals for volume numbers, are to the
German edition.

499

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

He would have it not only that there can be no ·true drama
between God and man if there is not an inner-Trinitarian drama
to be manifested, but also that there can be no drama between
God and man unless it really and truly can be said to constitute
the inner-Trinitarian drama.
In order to see the novel and, so far as I know, unique way
Balthasar has discovered to express the way in which the world
matters to God, we will compare him at a key point to St.
Thomas, and in this way attempt to further the sort of inquiry
into the relation of St. Thomas and Balthasar that James Buckley
has called for, and the difficulties of which he has called attention
to, in these pages. 2
I. THE AIM OF THE TuEODRAMA

The second edition of Mysterium Paschale contains a preface,
written after the Theodrama, in which Balthasar offers a short
statement of the theological issue the much-larger work addresses.
He draws two positions into opposition, that of the "older
dogmatics" and that of certain moderns. Moderns assert the pain
of God (K. Kitamori), have God develop (process theology), or
constitute the Trinity in dependence on the economy (Hegel and
J. Moltmann). 3 To the contrary, the older dogmatics affirms the
immutability of God and relegates the effect of the kenosis of the
Son of God to the human nature of Christ, "the divine nature
remaining inaccessible to all becoming or change, and even to any
real relationship with the world. "4 In so doing, Balthasar tells us,
it runs the risk, paradoxically enough, of both Nestorianism and
monophysitism at once. By relegating suffering to Jesus, this
dogmatics courts a Nestorianism in which an immutable Son of
God must be distinct from the suffering Jesus. On the other hand,
2 JamesJ. Buckley, "Balthasar's Use of the Theology of Aquinas,"TheThomist
59 (1995):
517-45.
3 Mysterium Paschale (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), vii. Mysterium Paschale is the
translation of chapter 9 of Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Lohrer, Vol. 111/2, Das
Christusereignis (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1969).
4 Ibid., viii.

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in restricting suffering to the lower faculties of Christ's soul, it
suggests a monophysitism of the "higher faculties," which enjoy
the vision of God just as does God.
The way forward, according to Balthasar, "relates the event of
the Kenosis of the Son of God to what one can, by analogy,
designate as the eternal 'event' of the divine processions. " 5 For
this, Balthasar takes as a clue the Scholastic assertion of the divine
processions as the condition of the possibility of creation. The
upshot is twofold, one in the order of manifestation or revelation,
and the other in the order of being. In the order of revelation, we
understand that the economy, and within the economy especially
the Cross, simply manifests modalities of love already enjoyed
eternally among the persons. In the order of being, while it is true
that God does not change by dependence on the world such that
without the world there would be something in him there is not,
it is nevertheless the case that he does change, with a change
already forever "included and outstripped in the eternal event of
Love." 6 It is this solution, though not always so compactly
expressed, and with an appeal to the same clue, that Balthasar
develops at length in the Theodrama. 7
The foregoing puts the issue in terms at once of the history of
Christian thought and of "theology," where the term denotes a
doctrine of divinity, the divine nature. But the Theodrama has
several ways of casting the issue.8 A favorite and only slightly
different way of stating the problem, a way which of its nature a
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., ix.
7 For the processions as the condition of creation in the Theodrama, see ID 5:61-65, 7576 (IV:53-57, 65-66).
8 For a brief overview of the Theodrama, see Gerard O'Hanlon, "Theological Dramatics,"
in The Beauty of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Bede
McGregor and Thomas Norris (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994), 92-101; and idem, The
Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 110-36. Both ofthese texts deal with the central argument of the TD.
See also Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
(New York: Continuum, 1994), part 3; and especially part 2 of Thomas G. Dalzell, The
Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom in the Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar (New York: Peter Lang, 1997).

GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

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"theodrama" suggests,9 is that of the dilemma of choosing
between the God of the philosophers and the God of myth. 10 A
God involved in the world and who reacts as an actor within a
drama that includes him and the world is mythic. But a transcendent divinity, a divinity acceptable philosophically, seems
religiously inadequate. Again, Balthasar expresses the issue from
its anthropological pole, as a question regarding finite freedom in
a world created by absolute freedom. In such a world, is finite
freedom really real? And does it count for anything if it has no
impact on absolute freedom? 11 Otherwise expressed, and in terms
of Trinitarian theology, how shall we express the relation between the immanent and the economic Trinity in a non-Hegelian
way? 12 And yet again, in the Christological specification of the
Trinitarianly expressed question, how shall we find a position
between, or above, those of K. Rabner and J. Moltmann on the
relation of the Cross to the Trinity? 13 To understand Balthasar is
in large part to see how for him all these questions are aspects of
one central issue.
The constantly re-expressed dilemma, this one central issue, is
brought to a final-and one cannot help saying, climacticexpression in the eschatology with which the Theodrama
concludes. What does God gain from the world? 14 Is God plus the
world more than God alone? If one chooses the "God of the
philosophers," and says no, then the world is ultimately illusory.
If one says yes, then one will also say that God needs the world.
What is the way between, or above, these alternatives, which
present us with but an "apparent contradiction?" 15 In fact, the
world plus God is "more," but on the understanding that the
O'Hanlon, "Theodrama," 94.
(1:118); 2:9, 125, 191-94 (W1:9, 112, 172-175); 4:319f. (ill:297f.); The
Glory of the Lord, vol. 4: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity (San Francisco: Ignatius,
1989), 216f.; Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter, 55, 162.
11 ID 1:255, 495-96 (1:236, 465-66); 2:72 (11/1:64-65); 4:328-29, 377ff. (111:305-6,
352ff).
12 ID 1:69, 131 (1:64, 118).
13 ID 4:322 (111:300); and 2:49 (W1:44-45), closely related to the issue of myth.
14 ID 5:508 (IV:464-65).
15 lbid. (IV:464).
9

10 ID 1:131

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world is enfolded into the relations of gift-giving, of the
Trinitarian persons.
The way forward is thus a Trinitarian way, just as the assertion
of the Trinity is originally the way between the One of the
philosophers and the many gods of paganism. 16 The Trinitarian
relations, the exchanges between the persons, would of course
occur even without the world. Thus Balthasar can write:
The whole thrust of this book has been to show that the infinite possibilities of
divine freedom all lie within the trinitarian distinctions and are thus free
possibilities within the eternal life of love in God that has always been
realized.17

Having the world's response to God occur within the Trinitarian
relations is the way to overcome the dilemma of choosing
between myth and philosophy. Balthasar thinks its advantages
significant. First, the gratuitousness of creation is grounded in the
ever greater gratuity of Trinitarian life. 18 Second, where the
"participation of creatures in the life of the Trinity becomes an
internal gift from each Divine Person to the other," the
appearance of a kind of divine solipsism is removed, as if God
made the world for his extrinsic glory. 19
It is just this "inclusion" of the world within the Trinitarian
relations that will explain how the world matters to God. This,
Balthasar's most original move in the Theodrama, will be taken up
below, but we need first at least some attempt at a comprehensive
sketch of how Balthasar executes the aim of the Theodrama.

Immutability, 110. See Gregory of Nyssa, Cat. Orat., no. 3.
(IV:465): "Der ganze Denkzug dieses Buches strebte dahin, zu zeigen, daE
die unendlichen Moglichkeiten der gottlichen Freiheit alle innerhalb der trinitarischen
Differenzen liegen, somit freie Moglichkeiten innerhalb eines immer verwirklichten ewigen
Liebeslebens Gottes sind."
18 ID 5:507 (IV:464).
19 Ibid.: " ... von der gloria Dei in der Schopfung aber wird jeder Verdacht eines g0ttlichen
Solipsismus abgewehrt: die innere T eilnalime der Geschopfe am trinitarischen Leben wird zu
einem inwendigen Geschenk jeder gottlichen Person an die andere, womit jeder Anschein
einer bloB auBerlichen 'Verherrlichung' iiberwunden wird."
16 O'Hanlon,

17 ID 5:508

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IL THE ARGUMENT OF THE THEODRAMA

The following sketch of what I call the argument of the
Theodrama is not a summary of the Theodrama just as such; that
would be something fuller and more difficult than anything that
could be attempted here. It would be fuHer, for it would rdate the
properly dramatic resources that Balthasar brings to his work and
the theological transformation he works on them. 20 It would be
more difficult, for the transformation just mentioned involves
questions of theological method, and these would need to be
addressed in detaiL I propose here a statement only of the
dogmatic theological argument of the work, at the inevitable risk
of distortion and for the purposes and convenience, as it were, of
those still beholden to what Balthasar labeled "theological epic. " 21
The more modest project is ambitious enough. It is an attempt
to present the chief and all-informing theological intelligibility of
the work Given the place of the Theodrama in the oeuvre,
is
tantamount to grasping the central argument of Balthasar's work
as a whole. 22
The chief axis of understanding on which the Theodrama as a
whole depends is the relation between the Cross, which reveals
the Trinity, and the Trinity, which founds the Cross.
(1) The Cross reveals the Trinity. 23 For Balthasar, it does so in
a way than which no greater could be thought: the greatest
imaginable distance, that between sin and the holy God, is
discovered to be out-distanced, and encompassed, by the
distinction between Father and Son. 24 No greater way of revealing
the Trinity in the created order could be thought, for the
opposition between the sinner and God is seemingly the greatest
imaginable. It supposes the infinite distance between creature and
Creator, and then multiplies that distance by the factor of
rebellion. And yet, as Balthasar has it, this "distance" is outSee here especially Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter, chap. 4.
See ID 2:43 (ll/1 :39).
22 See O'Hanlon, "Theological Dramatic:s," 93.
23 See, e.g., ID 5:120-24 (IV:104-7).
24 ID 4:325-27, 333-34 (HI:302-4, 310-11).
20
21

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505

distanced by the distinction between Father and Son-meaning
that the distance between sinful creature and holy God can be
"contained" and so rendered neutral by the greater distinction
within unity of Father and Son. 25
Dramatically, this point can be expressed by saying that the
economic drama between Christ and God reveals the immanently
Trinitarian play between Father and Son. 26
The Cross reveals the Trinity, of course, in that the Trinity is
the ground of the Cross and enables the Cross: that is, it enables
precisely this form, the crucified Christological form, of the
redemption of sinful humanity, the reconciliation of finite and
infinite freedom.
More pointedly and exactly expressed for Balthasar, the
Trinity is the ground of the Cross in that the Cross happens and
could happen only within the personal relations defined by the
Trinity. It is not just that, since Christ offers himself to God in the
Spirit, and since in that same Spirit God raises Christ, therefore
we learn that the one who offers himself and is raised must be
distinct from the one to whom he offers himself and who raises
him, as also from the one in whom he offers himself and in whom
he is raised. Rather, the very offering is a manifestation of the
relation of Son to Father; it is an economic mode or extension of
it. 27 The economic drama between Christ and God can take place
only within the personal transactions already and eternally
actualized in the Trinity.
As the ground of the Cross, however, the Trinity is not also at
the same time constituted just as such by the Cross. The position
that the Cross not only manifests, but manifests because it
constitutes the Trinity, such that without the Cross there would
be no Trinity, is the position of Hegel and Moltmann, and
Balthasar rejects it. 28 The absolute, "immanent" Trinity is eternal
25 See Dalzell on the "distance" metaphor (DramaticEncounter, 146-51); swallowing up
the distance of sin in the greater distance between Father and Son who are yet united by the
Spirit means the offer of the Spirit to the sinner, in virtue of which his heart is transformed.
26 TD1:20, 129 (1:19-20, 116-17); 2:72 (Wl:64-65); 4:322-25, 327 (111:300-303, 304);
Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter, 114.
27 TD 3:157 (W2:143-44); 4:326 (111:303).
28 TD 5:224-27 (IV:202-4) (Hegel); 5:227-29 (IV:205-7) (Moltmann).

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and is not constituted as such by the economy or any event within
it. And yet, there is another
of constitution of which one can
speak, as we shall see.
(2) While it is true to say, then, that God would be triune even
were there no creation by the Word and no created world to
redeem by the Incarnation of the Word and
descent of the
Holiy Spirit, the Cross nevertheless "enriches" the Trinity. 29
This is something distinctively Balthasarian. That the event of
the Cross reveals the Trinity, as its ground, is not distinctive.
that Balthasar wants to deny that the Cross constitutes the Trinity
is nothing except Nicene Christianity. But that nevertheless the
Cross "'enriches" the Trinity-this is proper to Balthasar; it is how
he thinks he wiH be able to insert modern concerns into the
framework of the ancient dogmatics.
The modern concern is to make the world matter to God, and
to ensure the truth of this by making the world really change
God. The modern concern would have finite freedom make a
difference not only to God, but in God. Of course finite freedom
matters to infinite and immutable Love-what we do is either in
accord with or contrary to God's will, and it "matters" to him in
this sense. But the modern concern wants God to be different
than he would have been as a result of finite freedom.
On the other hand, Balthasar' s thesis can be said to maintain
the ancient framework for three reasons. In the first place, the
"enrichment" in question is predicated of the persons, not of the
divinity. In the second place, Balthasar wants to say that this is
not a becoming like an earthly becoming, not a passage from
potency to act, but rather a matter of a supraworldly Trinitarian
"event. " 30 In the
place, the enrichment is a gratuitous
enrichment; that is, it is so to speak a contingent means by which
the persons glorify one another, a means enfolded in an eternal
conversation, glorification, and enrichment that takes place
among the persons, and would take place, whether the world
existed or not, and whether the world was redeemed in the way
29
30

ID 5:514-15 (IV:470-71).
1D 5:512 (IV:468); see Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter, 178, 207.

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that it in fact is or not. 31 We will return to this most important
point.
(3) Further, and on the strength of the view of the relation of
the economy to the persons just outlined, Balthasar thinks to have
a Trinitarian overcoming of a supposed dilemma generated by the
doctrine of creation: Does the world "add" anything to God or
not? If not, then the world seems to be not really real. If so, then
God cannot be immutable. 32 But if the persons glorify and enrich
themselves through the economy, then the world really does
matter; it is no charade. On the other hand, and for the reasons
already given just above, we remain with a God than whom
nothing greater can be conceived, the transcendent and absolutely
perfect God of classical theism. This is the cardinal point, with
which, if Balthasar can really have it, he has all the rest.
Before we go on to consider this point, however, it would be
good to illustrate the claim that the intelligibility expressed above
in (1) through (3) informs the entire Theodrama. I pick out two
important points where this can readily be seen.
First, the economic revelation of the Trinity is given particularly pointed form in the characteristically Balthasarian Christological position that the person of Christ is his mission. Already,
given what was said in (1), above, we have it that the mission is
the economic manifestation of the person, and so of the
procession (since the Son is his being generated and so is his
proceeding from the Father). The idea that the person of Christ
is his mission is a function not simply of the dialogical conception
of the person to which Balthasar is indebted, 33 nor alone of the
identity of person and role-mission which dramatic theory makes
possible, nor again of the Tho mist thesis of the identity of mission
and procession, nor of all three together. Rather, it is the notion
of person that the Trinitarian resolution of the dilemma between
mythology and philosophy needs. It is the notion of person that
the Trinitarian resolution of the question of creation's "addition"
31 ID 5:507-9, 514-15 (IV:463-65, 470-71).

ID 5:508 (IV:464-65).
1:626-43 (1:587-603); see also Hans Urs von Balthasar, "On the Concept of
Person," Communio 13 (1986):18-26.
32

33 1D

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508

to God requires. For it is maintained that just as purely immanendy Trinitarian exchanges would enrich and ever more fuHy
constitute the persons, so now in fact do economic exchanges
enrich and ever more fully constitute the persons. These
"economic exchanges," however, are simply matters of the
missions. The enrichment and continuing constitution of one person by another via the economy occurs through the missions. This
is to say, then, that the mission is the person, and the person is
the mission. The missions tum out to be the vehicle by which the
persons in fact enrich one another.
Second, there is Balthasar's soteriology. Why is it that St.
Thomas's theology of satisfaction is wanting according to
Balthasar? The fundamental reason is not that St. Thomas asserts
the continuance of the visio beatifica, nor that Christ does not
sufficiently take on our sin, for Balthasar himself, when pressed,
confines the Son's "becoming sin" to taking on the effects of sin. 34
He finds St. Thomas's soteriology lacking because it confines the
effects of Christ's passion and death to the economy. The
"wonderful exchange" is so profound for Balthasar that the
passion is taken into the modalities of the Trinitarian relations-it
"enriches" them. 35
The governing theological intelligibility of the 'Theodrama may
be summed up, then, as follows. If creation is really to count and
add something to God, if created freedom is to be in real dialogue
with God, if the event of the Cross is really to matter to the
interior life of God, then the reality of God must be such as to be
an ever-more increasing event of Trinitarian exchanges. We must
locate the world, not outside of God, and relative to the
mutable and eternal divinity of God, for in that way it will never
in the relevant way.
be made good that the world matters to
Rather, we must locate the world-not in the divinity just as such
within the Trinitarian relations. For only thus can
we say that the economy really effects something in God, and yet
at the same time maintain that, since this effect would exist
"ID4:337-38 (HI:314).
For an exposition of IBalthasar'ssoteriology, see G. Mansini, "Rahner and Balthasar on
the Efficacy of the Cross," The Irish Theological Quarterly 63 (1998): 232-49.
35

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509

anyway, God remains transcendent in the way philosophy, as
Balthasar understands the term, requires. 36
UL THE ECONOMIC "ENRICHMENT" OR CONSTITUTION OF THE
TRINITY

In order to appreciate the key and unprecedented solution
Balthasar offers to the manifold dilemma that is its point of
departure, it is helpful to compare two series of texts within his
final treatment of the central question of the Theodrama, that is,
within the concluding section of the last volume, entitled "What
Does God Gain from the World?" The citations all occur within
a few pages of one another, and this is important to remember. A
first series declares that God does not need and is not affected by
the world, which is related to him as manifesting, not constituting
him. A second series seems straightforwardly to contradict this in
asserting that the world affects God and changes him. The
resolution is to see that God's being affected by the world, or
rather the result of this, is something that would happen even did
it not happen through the agency of the world. It is a result that
would occur simply in virtue of the relations of the persons of the
Trinity themselves, although in fact they act toward one another
through the world and in such a way that it really is true to say
that the world changes God.
The first series runs as follows. Already above, we read of "free
possibilities within the eternal life of love in God that has always
been realized." And continuing: "This eternally realized love in
36 I put it this way since it is just as arguable that it is revelation that requires such
transcendence, and not philosophy. See R. Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982). I note as well that for Sokolowski the
Christian distinction is not understood by contrast to modern philosophy and paganism, but
by contrast to ancient philosophy and paganism. For him, distinctive to Christianity is that
God is out of the world completely, which is true neither for myth nor for philosophy.
Balthasar seems rather to situate Christianity relatively to an already contaminated
philosophy-that is, a philosophy contaminated by Christianity. But then, he thinks that it
is pre-Christian philosophy that is contaminated by grace and the supernatural, and only
Christian theology that can construct a philosophy not so contaminated; see Hans Urs von
Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 280.

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

God, therefore, does not require the positing-in a Hegelian
manner-of these free possibilities. "37 Quoting Adrienne von
Speyr: "In the Christian context, sacrifice, suffering, the Cross
and death are only the reflection of tremendous realities in the
Father, in heaven, in eternal life."38 Here, then, the economic
realities are but reflections, manifestations. So also are they where
we read that the "economic" sacrifice of Father and Son reflects
eternal, Trinitarian sacrifices.39 Again, Adrienne von Speyr: "In
God, becoming is a confirmation of his own Being. And since
God is immutable, the vitality of his 'becoming' can never be
anything other than his Being."40 And Balthasar, in his own voice
again: "Primarily, what we have said about heaven is meant to
show that neither creation nor Incarnation necessitates a change
in God and his eternal life. In fact, the concept of eternal life 'cuts
off all possibility of positing a change in God.'" 41 Christ "simply
expresses in the oikonomia what he has always expressed anew in
the eternal, triune life: his complete readiness to carry out every
one of his Father's wishes. " 42 Of Christ's forsakenness, we learn
that it is "the revelation of the highest positivity of trinitarian
love." 43
The second series is as follows. "We must also bear in mind
that infinite richness is rich in freedom and can enrich others (and
37 ID 5:508 (IV:465): "freie Moglichkeiten innerhalb eines immer verwirklichtenewigen
setzung jener freien
Liebeslebens Gottes ... welches somit nicht-hegelisch--der
MOglichkeiten innerhalb bedarf."
38 ID 5:511 (IV:467): "Opfer, Leiden, Kreuz und Tod sind christlich betrachtet nur die
Widerspiegelungvon gewaltigen Wirklichkeiten im Vater, im Himmel, im ewigen Leben."
39 ID 5:510 (IV:466-67).
40 ID 5:512 (IV:468): "Das Werden in Gott ist Bestiitigung seines Seins. Auch weil Gott
unveriinderlich ist, kann die Lebendigkeit seines 'Werdens' nie etwas anderes sein als sein
Sein."
41 ID 5 :513 (IV:469), quoting von Speyr at the end: "Diese Aspekte von unten nach oben
sollen aber hier vor allem beweisen, daR weder Schopfung noch Menschwerdung eine
Veriinderung Gottes und seines ewigen Lebens notwendig machen. Durch den Begriff des
ewigen Lebens 'wird die Moglichkeit abgeschnitten, eine Veriinderungin Gott anzunehmen. '"
42 Ibid.: "er driickt innerhalb der oikonomia nur aus, was er im ewigen dreieinigen Leben
immer neu ausgedriickt hat: seine vollige Bereitschaft, jeden Willen des Vaters zu erfiillen."
43 ID 5:517 (IV:473): "in der Kreuzesverlassenheit wird •.. die hochste Positivitiit der
trinitarischen Liebe offenbar."

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hence itself) in ways that are ever new." 44 It is "enriching itself";
it is growing. And this: "Eternal life, as the word itself says, is not
a complete state of rest, but a constant vitality, implying that
everything is always new. "45 Novelty, the changed, and so change,
are asserted. Quoting von Speyr: the unchangeability of God is
not something "static" but is "the movement of all movements. "46
And this most important sentence: "We must think of this in such
a way that the work of the oikonomia, which is 'not nothing'
either for the world or for God, actually does 'enrich' God in a
particular aspect, without adding anything that is lacking to his
eternal life."47 Quoting von Speyr again: "the Trinity is more
perfected in love after the Incarnation than before," which fact
"has its meaning and foundation in God himself, who is ... an
eternal intensification in eternal rest. "48 So, the economy perfects
God, who is ever intensifying anyway. And last: "We need not be
shocked at the suggestion that there can be 'economic' events in
God's eternal life. When the Father hands over all judgment to
the Son, 'something happens in God.' When the risen Son returns
to the Father, 'a new joy arises after the renunciation involved in
the separation. This new joy ... perfects the Trinity in the sense
that the grace that is to be bestowed becomes ever richer, both in
the world into which it pours forth and in God himself, who is
willing to bestow it. "' 49
44 TD 5:509 (IV:465): "Man muB somit gelten !assen, daB das unendliche Reiche sich aus
dem Reichtum seiner Freiheit immer neu bereichern (!assen!) kann"; earlier, TD 2:259
(11/1:234-35).
45 TD 5:511 (IV:467): "Ewiges Leben ist, wie das Wort es schon sagt, kein Stillstand,
sondern immerwiihrende Lebendigkeit, was ein Je-Neu-Sein einschlieBt."
46 Ibid.: "die Bewegung aller Bewegungen."
47 TD 5:514 (IV:470): "Das muB so zusammengedacht werden, daB das Werk der
oikonomia, das wie fiir die Welt, so auch fiir Gott keinesfalls nichts ist, selbst Gott in einer
bestimmten Hinsicht 'bereichert', ohne seinem ewigen Leben etwas ihm Fehlendes
hinzuzufiigen."
48 TD 5:514 (IV:470): "daB die Trinitat nach der Menschwerdung vollendeter ist als
vorher, hat also seinem Sinn und Grund in Gott selbst, der keine starre, sondern eine immer
neu in der Liebe zusammenschlagende Einheit ist, eine ewige Steigerung in der ewigen Ruhe."
49 TD 5:515 (IV:471), with quotations from von Speyr: "Man braucht deshalb vor einer
Aussage nicht zu erschrecken, die ein okonomisches Ereignis in das ewige Leben Gottes
einschreibt. Wenn der Yater das ganze Gericht dem Sohn iibergibt, so 'geschieht etwas in

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

How can we read both series together, and always on the
supposition that Balthasar means what he says?50 Because of the
Trinitarian involvement in it, the world enriches God, but not as
adding anything lacking to God. The persons are in themselves
and eternally always enriching one another, and would do so
without the world. But in fact, the economy enfolds the world
into this ever-increasing exchange of love and glory. "From all
eternity the divine 'conversation' envisages the possibility of
involving a non-divine world in the Trinity's love." 51 The
concluding paragraph of the Theodrama should be quoted.
What does God gain from the world? An additional gift, given to the Son by
the Father, but equally a gift made by the Son to the Father, and by the Spirit
to both. It is a gift because, through the distinct operations of each of the three
Persons, the world acquires an inward share in the divine exchange of life; as
a result the world is able to take the divine things it has received from God,
together with the gift of being created, and return them to God as a divine
gift. 52

As a father gives his child the wherewithal to provide him a
Fathers' Day gift, so does the Father bestow this on his child-not
only his Son, but also us, as inserted into the Son's return of
himself to the Father. As Thomas Dalzell explains, commenting
on this same passage:

Gott.' Wenn der auferstehende Sohn zum Vater zuriickkehrt, 'entsteht eine neue Freude nach
dem Verzicht der Trennung und vollendet die T rinitat im Sinne eines Je-reicher-Werdens der
zu spendenden Gnade, sowohl in der Welt, in die sie ausstromt, wie in Gott selbst, der sie zu
schenken bereit ist.'"
5 For a good discussion of how to take Balthasar's language, as metaphor or analogy, see
Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter, 169-71, 186-91.
51 TD 5:509 (IV:466): "Zunachst ist die MOglichkeit der Einbeziehung einer
nichtgottlichen Welt in die trinitarische Liebe von Ewigkeit her im giittlichen Gesprach."
52 TD 5:521 (IV:476): "Was hat Gott von der Welt? Ein zusatzliches Geschenk, das der
Vater dem Sohn, aber ebensosehr der Sohn dem Vater und der Geist beiden macht, ein
Geschenk deshalb, weil die Welt <lurch das unterschiedliche Wirken jeder der drei Personen
am gottlichen Lebensaustausch innerlichen Anteil gewinnt und sie Gott deshalb, was sie
GOttliches von Gott erhielt, mitsamt dem Geschenk ihres Geschaffenseins auch als gottliches
Geschenk erstatttet.''

°

BALTHASARON THE TRINITY

513

What he is saying is that in the finite's being drawn into the trinitarian life,
God receives not only the [finite being's] createdness, itself a gift of God, but
also an additional [zusiitzliches]gift which is to be understood as its evergreater giving back to God the gift of God's own love which it receives in
taking part in the divine conversation. But since this additional gift is in fact a
divine gift, any increase implied by its being given to God by created freedom
is situated by him within the eternal increase in God, and specifically within
the increase due to the Son's ever-greater self-gift to the Father. 53

Therefore, the world does not just express an eternally
complete God, for God is not eternally complete. Or perhaps we
should say that part of being complete is always to grow. As the
world expresses precisely that fact, it is a contingent, nonnecessary, gratuitously chosen means of accomplishing this the
free eternal exchange which would happen anyway. 54
Does God really depend on the world? Yes. Does God depend
on the world in such a way that he would be different did he not?
No.
IV. CRITICISM
Balthasar might be said to have the best of all possible or at
least all prior positions. With the "older dogmatics," God does
not need the world, and the classical philosophical requirement
of transcendence seems to be met. With Hegel, the world
constitutes the Trinity-only contingently so, and only a Trinity
that exists independently of the world process, it is true; still, the
Trinity is affected by world process. With modern process
thought, growth and novelty become metaphysically privileged
and find a place in the Absolute. The categories of "event" and
"self-giving" (Ereignis, Er-gebnis) provide an opening to
53 Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter,

210.
"But if the worldly response is to be thought of as meaning something to
God, Balthasar has to approach the hypothesis of God being 'enriched', so to speak, in such
a way that there is no suggestion of that response adding something to the eternal life of love
which was missing. In other words, he has to hold together the idea that finite freedom can
make a meaningful contribution to the innerdivine conversation and the idea that there is
already in God an ever perfect giving and receiving of love."
54 Ibid., 208:

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

postmodern philosophy. 55 Most of all, we have a religiously
satisfying way of taking those texts in Sacred Scripture that
suggest dialogical, mutual relations between God and the world.
The rest of this essay is concerned with only one of these prior
positions, and whether the requirements of transcendence
installed in the older dogmatics really are met.

A) Comparison with Aquinas on the Divine Understanding of
Created Reality
One might think that what Balthasar is proposing is not unlike
what St. Thomas offers by way of explaining how we can say that
God truly knows and loves us, we who are really not God,
without prejudice to his transcendence.
Saint Thomas's understanding of this is as follows. The
primary object of the divine understanding, which is an infinite
act of understanding, is the divine intelligibility, an infinite object.
Finite intelligibility is a partial imitation of the divine intelligibility. In understanding himself, God necessarily understands
all possible ways he can be and is imitated. Such understanding
nor
adds nothing to what he already understands-himself;
would the absence of such understanding deprive God of anything he in fact has. 56
It might appear, therefore, that just as for St. Thomas God's
understanding of the contingent world is enfolded within his
understanding of himself, so for Balthasar the Father's gift of
creation to the Son is already enfolded in his always-surpassingitself gift of himself to the Son which is the generation of the Son.
Therefore, again, just as for St. Thomas if God did not
understand the world (on the supposition of its nonexistence)
there would be no diminution of what it is that God understands,
55 See the discussion of Heidegger in The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5: The Realm of
Metaphysicsin the Modern Age (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991), 429-50.
56 For the infinity of the divine understanding, see Summa TheologiaeI, q. 7, a. 3; q. 14,

a. 4; for the infinity of the primary object of God's understanding, see STh I, q. 14, aa. 2 and
3; for the relevant infinities of will and object willed, see STh I, q. 19, a. 1, corp. and ad 3;
q. 20, a. 1, ad 3. A nice statement of this argument is in B. Lonergan, De constitutione Christi
ontologicaet psychologica(Rome: Gregorian University, 1961), nos. 55-56.

BALTHASAR ON THE TRINITY

515

so if the world did not exist there would be no diminution of the
ever-increasing richness of the personal exchanges within the
Trinity. Thus, the world is a non-necessary way that the persons
in fact actually increase one another-with an increase that would
happen even if the world did not exist. Perhaps it is helpful to
write out the parallels as follows.
(1) As the divine mind understands finite intelligibles in understanding the
Infinite Intelligible,
(2) as the divine will wills the finite good in willing the Infinite Good,
(3) so the Father generates (or creates?) the world in generating the Son,
(4) and so Father and Son give the world to each other in giving themselves
to each other.

The formal similarity of Balthasar to St. Thomas consists in
integrating a divine act relative to a finite reality into a divine act
relative to a divine reality. Again, there is a formal similarity in
the concern to express the fact that nothing external to God
operates on God-at least, for Balthasar, independently of God.
But the differences emerge, also. The point of (1) and (2) is to
show how it can be true that God understands and wills
something not himself and yet is not dependent on what is not
himself and is not different from what he would be did he not
understand and will something not himself. The point of (3) and
(4 ), however, is to show how the world can really contribute to
the divine glory and goodness in such a way that, did it not, there
would be no diminution of the divine glory and goodness.
The problem with (3) and (4) is that while it is possible to
understand that the divine will and the divine understanding can
have a finite as well as an infinite object, it is more difficult to
understand how the first procession can have a finite as well as an
infinite product. And the gift, insofar as it names a product of
inter-Trinitarian commerce, is the Holy Spirit, Proceeding Love.
We could put it like this: the world relative to the Father is not in
an opposed relation of origin, such that without the world there
is no Father (as, without the Son, there is no Father). Neither can
Father and Son be who they are without breathing the Spirit; but
they can be without the world.

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

Balthasar indeed knows that the world is not necessary for
God. But in (1) and (2) we see how the world can be distinct from
God and yet known and loved by God. Knowing and loving can
have objects distinct from the knower and lover. In (3) and (4),
on the contrary, we do not see how the world can be distinct
from God and yet generated, or given by God, within the first or
second processions. The processions serve to distinguish persons
within a single nature, but not distinct natures. If the world was
"in" the first procession, it would be the Son, or, if it is "in" in
the second, it would be the Holy Spirit. Or else Son and Spirit are
created.
What does account for the distinction of the world from God?
Not that it be generated within the generation of the Son, distinct
from the Father, or given within the mutual gift of Spirit, but that
it be understood and willed to be so distinct. This knowing and
willing are common to the three persons. This does not prevent
St. Thomas from finding an exemplar of the procession of
creatures from God in the procession of the Word from the
Father and of Love from both, as the texts adduced by Balthasar
report. 57 Thus St. Thomas' s teaching does not suggest the note of
efficiency that Balthasar's solution trades on.
B) An Ever-Growing God

Even so, we have not yet broached the most obvious problem
with Balthasar's position: whether the world contributes to God's
increase or not, still, there is increase. But from what? With what?
At the end of the day, Parmenides will have his say: if the
increment comes from what is, it already is and does not come to
be; and if it comes from nothing, it does not come to be, for
nothing comes from nothing. Therefore, there can be no
additions to God; whatever he is, he is. This is so, at least, unless
one wishes to deny the priority of act to potency.
Again, growth is a kind of becoming or change. Becoming is
the actualization of the potential insofar as it is potential.
57

See TD 5:61·62 (IV:53-54), for the texts in question.

BALTHASAR ON THE TRINITY

517

Becoming requires passive potency in the becoming subject; it
requires an agent or principle of actualization really distinct from
the principle of potency. It requires time, which is nothing but a
measure of becoming. Therefore, if there is growth in God, the
divinity is potential, non-simple, and not eternal.
There are, it would seem, two ways Balthasar's position might
be saved. It will be rejoined, in the first place, that the addition in
question is predicated of the persons and not the nature. But this
does not avoid the problem. Where the persons are distinct from
one another but not from the nature, growing persons would
seem to imply a growing divinity. One would have to restrict the
"growth" in question and conceive it as in some way belonging to
the persons alone. The growth would have to be a growth in, for
example, the very relationality of Father and Son, such that the
"addition" means the Father is more Father, and the Son more
Son, and this as not touching what they possess in common,
which cannot change. But growth predicated of the relation
would seem to be a relation of a relation, and relations of
relations are relations of reason only. Therefore, the growth in
question would be not real but only a manner of speaking,
nothing except a pointed and arresting way of indicating the
richness of the Trinitarian relations.
Nor does it help, in the second place, to urge, as Balthasar
does, that this is becoming in another sense, not an earthly sense,
and that the time in question is a kind of supratime. 58 Of such
things as wisdom, or goodness, or understanding we say that
what they are in God is not like what they are in creatures. But
we do not say this of change or becoming, because change is
constituted by potency and imperfection. Perfection is act.
Becoming requires potency. It requires being imperfect. 59
58 E.g., TD 5:67 (IV:59) (no ordinary becoming); 5:92 (IV:81) (time); Dalzell, Dramatic
Encounter, 178, 207 (a becoming not like ours); idem, 168 n. 3 (a time above our time).
59 See here the exchange of papers on passivity in God, beginning with David L. Schindler,
"Norris Clarke on Person, Being, and St. Thomas," Communio 20(1993): 580-92; Steven
Long, "Divine and Creaturely 'Receptivity': The Search for a Middle Term," Communio 21
(1994): 151-61; and David L. Schindler, "The Person: Philosophy, Theology, and
Receptivity," Communio 21(1994):172-90.

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GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.

This is not a matter of a Thomistic and Aristotelian account of
change versus some other possibility of thought. There is no other
analysis of change besides that of Aristotle. There are denials of
change, from Parmenides to (in his own way) Hume. There are
assertions that some kinds of change are really other kinds of
change, as with the reduction of qualitative to quantitative change
in materialism. There are assertions of novelty with no ground or
cause, with Nietzsche and Bergson. There are reversals of the
priority of act to potency, with Hegel. But there is no analysis of
change, a location of the principles of change, except that ?f
Aristotle.
It is hard to see how the invocation of a change in God unlike
that which we find in our earthly experience, therefore, can be
anything more than words. Change requires passive potency; it
requires composition in the subject of change. To speak of change
that is not like this, that does not involve a passage from potency
to act, is not to speak of anything at all.
What does Balthasar want? The liveliness of an "event" as
opposed to substance? But substance is nothing except what is in
itself and not in another. If the Balthasarian event exists in itself,
it is a substance in the required sense.60 If one wants to think of
such an "in itself" as a pure event, as a pure liveliness, then what
is wanted, it would seem, is a sort of pure act-a line of thought
already well developed in the history of Western theology and
metaphysics.

V. CONCLUSION
Much earlier, in The Theology of Karl Barth, Balthasar called
strenuously for a theology that is not antecedently measured and
confined by philosophy. 61 Does the foregoing criticism fail to
meet that standard, and so fail to appreciate a theology whose
60 On the other hand, if we are supposed to hear Heidegger in the talk of a Trinitarian
"event," and if this means that we are in the order of manifestation and appearance, and not
of constitution, then the problem disappears. Evidently, I do not think this is the way to
understand Balthasar.
61 See Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, 264-265, for criticism of St. Thomas in this
vein. See also ibid., 267££., for the delimitation of a theologicalconcept of nature.

BALTHASAR ON THE TRINllY

519

inspiration is wholly from revelation? To the contrary and to
repeat, invoking the Aristotelian analysis of change is not an
invocation of something peculiarly, narrowly Aristotelian. It is to
invoke the only analysis of change that human thought has
produced. The Physics, at this point, is strong. It is strong with
the strength of reason, and so of nature, itself. To say that
revelation, as read by Balthasar, trumps Aristotle here is not to
preserve revelation and therefore the autonomy of theology; it is
to say that grace does not complete but rather destroys nature,
that faith kills and does not perfect reason.
It is in that same earlier work on Barth that Balthasar takes
such pains to defend an analogous naming of God and the world.
If the analogy of names were the point of departure for an answer
to the question of the Theodrama as to whether the world adds
anything to God, the answer would most certainly be no. Nor
would this denial imply that the world is therefore illusory. To
the contrary, and in two ways. First, and obviously, participated
being, for all that it cannot add anything to the being (God's
being) of which it is a participation, is not therefore unreal. 62
Second, if infinite Love loves a finite good, that is to make that
finite good "matter" both infinitely, and, since infinite Love is
immutable, unchangeably. This is to find a sense of what it means
to "matter," furthermore, that is instructed by the manifestation
of the God than which nothing greater can be thought.
It is this answer alone that seems congruent with the classical
theology Balthasar intends still to preserve in the Theodrama.The
Theodrama itself, so promising in the prospect of a properly
theological and indeed Trinitarian reconciliation of modern
concerns with the "older dogmatics," appears to be yet another
demonstration of the impossibility of such a project, if indeed, as
it seems, the Trinitarian overcoming of the impasse there
proposed rather destroys than preserves the classical part of the
material it seeks to integrate.
62 Balthasar's fear about the world seeming illusory next to the God who need not create

seems to suppose some one field of being in which the divine nature would compete with
worldly natures. Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason, is especially valuable in warding
off intellectual vertigo of this kind.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 521-63

ESSENTIALISM OR PERSONALISM IN THE TREATISE ON
GOD IN SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS?1
GILLES EMERY, 0.P.
Universityof Fribourg
Fribourg. Switzerland

T

he relationship between the unity of God and the
distinction of persons belongs among the foremost points
of controversy in the interpretation of the Trinitarian
theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. The discussion has for some
time crystallized around the "essentialism" or "personalism" that
is attributed to Aquinas's treatise. Such a problematic (in which
the very terms of the alternatives already determine the kind of
solution that one can adopt) lies at the intersection of many
approaches and different methods of analysis, because it involves
not only the recovering of the thought of Thomas Aquinas from
a historical perspective, but also the profoundly speculative
fundamental notions of his Trinitarian theology (person, relation,
essence, notional act, etc.), the relationship between theology and
philosophy, and finally the very aim of Trinitarian theology. After
a brief overview of the debate, we will present the general
framework of a reading that investigates the Trinitarian doctrine
of St. Thomas on the relationship between person and essence in
God.
I. A LONG AND WIDE-RANGING DEBATE

When, at the end of the nineteenth century, Theodore de
Regnon examined the Trinitarian synthesis of Thomas Aquinas,
1 This article first appeared as Gilles Emery, O.P., "Essentialisme ou personnalisme dans
le traite de Dieu chez saint Thomas d'Aquin?" Revue Thomiste 98 (1998): 5-38. The
translation is by Matthew Levering.

521

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

his analysis led him to formulate the problem of an "essential"
approach as opposed to a more personal representation of the
mystery of God. It provided the basis of the distinction that, since
de Regnon, has become customary to introduce: the distinction
between the "Greek" conception which begins with the consideration of the persons, and the "Latin" or "Scholastic" conception which takes its point of departure in the unity of the
essence or the divine substance. 2 The problem identified by this
the history of Trinitarian doctrine concerns not only
pioneer
the methodological priority of the divine essence in Thomas, but
also
connection between essence and person in his use of the
psychological analogy derived from Augustine: "AH the Augustinian theory, if superb when it begins from a 'personal' God,
risks dissolving when it analyzes the acts of a 'nature' identical to
many persons. "3
Such is, since then, the problem constandy posed in the
reading of the treatise on the Trinity
Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: does his theological elaboration, very attentive to the
prerogatives of the essence or nature of
adequately take
account of the tripersonal reality of God? Placed at the heart of
the interpretation of the history of doctrine sketched by de
Regnon, this question is intensified by the contrasts
which it is
inscribed: Thomas manifests a concern for conceptual organization rather than a contemplative approach to the mystery of God,
a recourse to a "static" metaphysics rather than to a "dynamic"
the extension of this schema of interpretation,
thought, etc. 4
the theology of Thomas Aquinas becomes the focal point of
difficulties attributed to a large current of Latin medieval thought
which, following Augustine, accorded primacy to the divine
essence rather than to the persons and was devdoped on the basis

2 Cf. Th. de Regnon, Etudes de theologie positive sur la sainte Trinite (Pa.iris: Victor
Retaux, 11192-98), 1:335-40, 428-35.
3 Ibid., 2:214.
4 Ibid., 2:128-29, 447-51.

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

523

of a metaphysics rather than by reference to the history of
salvation. 5
Karl Rahner has summarized this difficulty in regard to the
division of the treatise on God into a treatise De Deo uno and a
treatise De Deo trino: "If one begins with the basic notions of the
Augustinian and western approach, a non-Trinitarian treatise De
Deo Uno comes apparently automatically before De Deo Trino. " 6
Rahner specifies that
this separation first occured in St. Thomas, for reasons which have not yet been
clearly explained. St. Thomas does not begin with God the Father as the
unengendered origin in the Godhead, the origin of all reality in the world, but
with the nature common to all three persons. And the procedure became wellnigh universal.7

The consequence is a "splendid isolation" of the treatise on the
Trinity that fails to weigh its repercussions for the doctrine of
salvation: "It looks as though everything important about God
which touches ourselves has already been said in the treatise De
Deo Uno." 8
Faced with this affirmation, contemporary Trinitarian theology received the task of displaying the personal reality of God as
the point of departure of the treatise De Deo, thereby clarifying
all the other treatises of theology and demonstrating their organic
unity. It is precisely on the basis of this critical reading of the
Latin and Thomist tradition that one understands the famous
fundamental Rahnerian axiom: "the Trinity of the economy of
salvation is the immanent Trinity and vice versa."
Rahner's critique has been pursued in many studies, notably on
the Christo logical impact of the deficiency present in Thomas (the
5 M. Schmaus, "Die Spannung von Metaphysik und Heilsgeschichte in der Trinitatslehre
Augustins," in Studia patristica 6, "Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der
altchristlichen Literatur, 81" (Berlin: F. L. Cross, 1962): 503-18.
6 K. Rabner, "Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De Trinitate,'"
in Theological
Investigations, vol. 4, trans. K. Smyth (New York: Crossroad, 1982): 83-84.
7 Ibid., 84; cf. K. Rabner, The Trinity, trans. J. Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1998),
16-17.
8 Rabner, "Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De Trinitate,'" 84; The Trinity, 17.

524

GILLES EMERY, 0.P.

hypostatic union approached by the angle where the person is
identical to the divine essence, "as if God were not Trinity"). 9
Even in recent works, it is not rare to encounter the accusation of
a philosophical pre-comprehension of God (de Deo uno) that
arranges the Trinitarian mystery in preestablished human
categories that are incapable of taking account of the full
tripersonal Godhead. 10 At the heart of this debate (essencepersons, immanent Trinity-economic Trinity), the firm maintaining of the unity of operation of the Trinity ad extra by
Thomas inspires the suspicion that he weakens the personal traits
in the creative and redemptive action of God in favor of a certain
"monism." Thomas Aquinas, by reason of such essentialist or
"unitary" representation of God, bears therefore a large part of
the responsibility in this "loss of function" of Trinitarian faith
that the authors have long discerned: the Trinity remained in
Thomas "locked in the immanence of its own life." 11
Following the lead of Walter Kasper, Trinitarian doctrine
today is expected to furnish an adequate Christian response to the
situation of modern atheism. 12 This demand begins from the
historical affirmation of the failure of a monopersonal "theism"
in modern Western thought and of its progressive transformation,

9

Cf. G. Lafont, Peut-on connaitre Dieu en Jesus-Christ?(Paris: Cerf, 1969), 151-57.

10 M. Corbin, La Trinite ou l'exces de Dieu (Paris: Cerf, 1997). On the contemporary

emphasis on the "living God of Revelation" in contrast to a "principally philosophical"
treatise De Deo uno (fhomas Aquinas), see notably W. Breuning, "La Trinite," in Bilan de
la theologie du XXe siecle, vol. 2, ed. R. Vander Gucht and H. Vorgrimler (Tournai-Paris,
1970), 252-67; L. Scheffczyk, "Die Trinitatslehte des Thomas von Aquin im Spiegel
gegenwartiger Kritik," Studi tomistici 59 (1995): 163-90, esp. 164-66.
11 G. Greshake, Der DreieineGott: Eine trinitarischeTheologie (Freiburg im Breisgau,
1997), 117; the author summarizes here a current of interpretation of Thomas, and holds for
his part that in Thomas, despite his going beyond a pure and simple essentialism, the
"unitarian" perspective remains dominant (119). For the position of the problem, see notably
H. Miihlen, "Person und Appropriation. Zurn Verstandnis des Axioms: In Deo omnia sunt
unum, ubi non obviat relationisoppositio,"Munchenertheologische'Zeitschrift16 (1965): 3757.
12 Cf. W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell (New York:
Crossroad, 1986), 294-95.

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

525

through deism, into atheism. 13 In this perspective, Trinitarian
doctrine should emphasize the freedom of God, manifested in
love, by strictly linking the consideration of the "essence" to the
divine freedom which accords liberty to humankind in love and
for love. One thus expects that Trinitarian doctrine will clarify
our understanding of human life, ecclesial and social, by removing all presentations of God that, in conceiving him as an essence
posed in opposition to man, make him a "rival" for man. 14 The
question of the relationship between essence and person in God,
however, goes far beyond a simple arrangement of concepts, for
it inquires into the very purpose of Trinitarian theology. In order
to integrate correctly the contribution of Thomas Aquinas, we
must test the correspondence between these demands and the role
that Thomas assigns to the theological elaboration of a treatise on
the Trinity.
In this task, which stretches over more than a century of
interpretations, the first requirement was to go back, beyond the
manuals of the school, to Aquinas's texts, in order to try to
identify the place of the person in his doctrine on God. Among
the major works, we should place first the studies of A. Malet
which, from a historical and systematic perspective, devoted
themselves to showing the deeply rooted influence of Greek
patristics in the thought of Thomas as well as the accent he placed
on the persons in God. 15 Malet's research, intended to show the
"synthesis" of person and nature in God, nonetheless remained
dominated by the antinomic dialectic imposed by the controversy:
13 Ibid.: "From the theological standpoint we must speak more accurately of the heresy
of theism." For the nuances of the historical evolution of this vocabulary (in which the
Trinitarian question has been presented since Socinus), see H. Bouillard, Verite du
christianisme, "Sur le sens du mot 'theisme'" (Paris: Desdee de Brouwer, 1989), 219-32.
14 Such a demand constitutes the major purpose of the work of G. Greshake, cited above;
cf. also W. Millier, Die Theologie des Dritten: Entwurf einer sozialen Trinitiitslehre (St.
Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1996).
15 A. Malet, "La synthese de la personne et de la nature dans la theologie trinitaire de saint
Thomas," Revue Thomiste 54 (1954): 483-522; 55 (1955): 43-84; idem, Personne et amour
dans la theologie trinitaire de saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1956). See also the reviews
of this work by J.-H. Nicolas, Revue Thomiste 57 (1957): 365-73; H. Dondaine, Revue des
sciences philosophiques et theologiques 43 (1959): 172-74.

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

526

one strives to establish "the primacy of person over nature" 16 in
Thomas in order to show his "personalism," which should be
opposed to an "essentialism." Despite the reservations that one
could formulate on other points, Malet's work had the merit of
showing the inadequacy of accounting for Thomas's thought
through the schema of opposition between Greeks and Latins. 17
Around the same time, a vigorous overview of the Thomist
doctrine of relation and of notional acts (personal acts considered
as the manner of the subsistence of the person) led P. Vanier to
note the eminently dynamic and personal Trinitarian conception
in Thomas. The orientation of the study was, here again, the
necessity of a return to the texts of Thomas and of a historical
approach in order to recover, against certain misadventures of
school-Thomism, the thought of the master. 18 In his enthusiasm
for the mature thought of Thomas, P. Vanier postulated the
existence of a second redaction of the commentary on the Sentences, in order to explain the presence of the mature doctrine of
Thomas in this work (notably the rejection of a "derivation" of
the persons from the essence, following a perspective that Vanier
qualified as "Ps.-Dionysian"). This hypothesis has not received
scholarly confirmation, 19 but it has drawn attention to the
complexity of the teaching of Thomas, even in his first work of
theological synthesis.
Alongside various works devoted to certain more limited
aspects of the problem, 20 the question has been reviewed recently
by H. Schmidbaur, who endeavors to show the strict "personalism" of Thomas in opposition to other theological currents
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with regard principally to
Personneet amour, 71-88.
The God of Jesus Christ, 297-98.
18 Cf. P. Vanier, Theologie trinitaire chez saint Thomas d'Aquin: Evolution du concept
d'action notionnelle (Montreal: Institut d'Etudes Medievales, 1953).
16 Malet,

17 Cf. Kasper,

19 See notably, on the properly theological level, A. F. von Gunten, "Gibt es eine zweite
Redaktion des Sentenzenkommentars des hi. Thomas von Aquin?," Freiburger'Zeitschrift(Ur
Philosophieund Theologie 3 (1956): 137-68.
20 Cf. notably E. Bailleux, Le don de Dieu: Essai de theologie personnaliste(Diss., Lille,
1958); idem, "Le personnalisme de saint Thomas en theologie trinitaire," Revue Thomiste
61 (1961): 25-42.

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

527

the doctrine of processions and relation. 21 It is again the "primacy
of person" that constitutes the object of the study. The manifestation of the place of person in Trinitarian theology is here,
however, taken into a framework of understanding dominated by
a nearly irreducible opposition between essence and relation (to
such a point that, for example, the conception of a free creation
by a "mono-personal" God becomes in itself contradictory). The
enterprise of "rehabilitating" the thought of Thomas in the face
of contemporary critics poses then the question of the balance of
Thomas's thought. It seems indeed that, on the basis of an authentic evaluation of "person," the debate should lead us to
reconsider the integration of the elements of the problem in
Thomas.
II. THE CREATIVE AND REDEMPTIVE ACTIVIlY OF THE DIVINE
PERSONS

The Trinitarian dimension of the divine creative and redemptive activity is not the first element in the order of the speculative
exposition, but it can be useful to consider first the influence of
Trinitarian faith. What is at stake is our "experience" of the
Trinity 22 and the interpretation that one should give to the rule
of the unity of activity of the divine persons, a rule that is
sometimes suspected of obscuring the divine tripersonality.
This rule of the unity of operation of the persons ad extra (a
principle shared by East and West) does not constitute the sole
aspect of Thomas's doctrine on this point. If he holds firmly the
unity of divine action, in virtue of the unity of the principle of operation (the divine nature) required by the consubstantiality of the
Trinity, he maintains equally clearly another principle: "the procession of the divine persons is the cause and the reason of the
PersonarumTrinitas:Die trinitarischeGotteslehredes heiligen
Thomas von Aquin (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1995); see my review in Revue Thomiste 96
21 Cf. H. Chr. Schmidbaur,

(1996): 690-93.
22 This vocabulary can appeal to Thomas himself: cf. A. Patfoort, "Cognitio ista est quasi
experimentalis (I Sent, d.14, q.2, a.2, ad 3)," Angelicum 63 (1986): 3-13; idetn, "Missions
divines et experience des Personnes divines selon saint Thomas," Angelicum 63 (1986): 54559.

528

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

procession of creatures." This thesis is found in all of Thomas's
works. 23 The connection of the double rule (unity of operation ad
extra and causality of the Trinitarian processions) comes not from
a modern interpretation, but is explicitly posed by Thomas. 24
Thus, the causality of the Trinitarian going-forth (processus) in
the order of efficiency and of exemplarity unites the divine
activity ad extra to the eternal generation of the Son and to the
procession of the Holy Spirit: it furnishes from this fact the
"motive" of the divine economy. The elaboration of the doctrine
of the Word and of Love at the core of the Trinity finds itself
verified by its capacity to take account of the activity of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit in the world and on behalf of mankind: the
Father accomplishes all things by his Word and by his Love.25 We
touch here the necessity of a redoublement of Trinitarian language
in Thomas: it is imperative to consider the double perspective of
the common nature and the Trinitarian relations if one is to take
account fully of Trinitarian faith. We will return to this point
further on.
In order to manifest the activity of the divine persons on our
behalf, Thomas exploits principally three themes of his Trinitarian doctrine. The first resides in the very existence of Trinitarian processions: the "first" going-forth constituted by the
Trinitarian processions is the cause and the reason of the
"second" going-forth that is the production of creatures (in the
order of creation as in that of grace). What is affirmed of the
processions (understood as the "path" that leads to the person) is
equally affirmed of the distinction of the persons by their relations. The relation of divine persons is the source or the prin23 Cf. F. Marinelli, Personalismo trinitario nella storia della salvezza (Paris: Vrin, 1969);
G. Emery, La Trinite creatrice (Paris: Vrin, 1995). Outside the commentary on the Sentences
(which contains more than ten passages developing this thesis), cf. notably De Potentia, q. 10,
a. 2, arg. 19, sed contra 2, and ad 19; Summa Theologiae I, q. 45, a. 6; a.7, ad 3.
24 Cf. I Sent.,d. 27, q. 2, a. 3, ad 6: "Non tantum essentia habet ordinem ad creaturam sed
etiam processio personalis, quae est ratio processionis creaturarum"; I Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a.
3.
25 Cf. Summa contra Gentiles IV, 13; 20-22; and Gilles Emery, O.P., "Le traite de saint
Thomas sur la Trinite dans la Somme contre Les Gentils," Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 5-40.
The fruits of the elaboration of the Summa contra Gentiles are reprised in STh I, q. 34, a. 3;
I, q. 37, a. 2; I, q. 43.

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

529

ciple of the whole production, by God, of creatures; the very
plurality of creatures, under this aspect, finds its rationale in the
distinction of the divine persons by their relations. 26
The second theme is furnished by the personalpropertiesof the
Word and of Love. Word and Love provide the rationale, in an
eminently Trinitarian perspective, of the effects that come forth
from the generosity and from the wisdom of God. The action ad
extra is clarified here by the personal "term" of the fruitful
immanent actions.
The third theme is constituted by the notion of order in the
Trinity. Thomas exploits it in all his works, by means of the
concepts of principle(the ordo signifies the relation of origin) and
auctoritas (the Father is without origin) and by an analysis of the
language with which we formulate the Trinitarian act (notably the
preposition "by": the Father acts by the Son and the Spirit). Thus,
regarding the Father, Thomas can affirm that the relation of
origin in the Trinity (the Father is the principle of the Son) is the
source of this relation of origin that God maintains with
creatures. 27 There should be nothing surprising in reading in St.
Thomas that as the preposition "by" (per) designates the divine
causality from the side of the realities produced by God:
the proposition "the Father works all things by his Son" does not signify
something appropriated to the Word, but indeed a reality that is proper to him
[non est appropriatum Verbo, sed proprium eius], since the Son has from
another to be the cause of creatures, that is to say from his Father, from whom
he has being.28

We note finally that, in the order of the supernatural acts of
faith and charity, Thomas does not fail to maintain a proper
relation to the person as regards exemplarity and according to the
term of the act (Son and Holy Spirit): this is the reason for which
26 Cf. I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2.

I Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 2, qla. 2; cf. STh I, q. 33, a. 3.
I, 3, Turin, Marietti, 1952, no. 76. The expression "from the side of
creatures" signifies here that the Son is not the formal cause of the act of the Father-that
would make of the Son a principle with respect to the Father-but a principle with respect
to creatures, following the order in the Trinity.
27

28 In Joann.,

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

a divine effect can properly be retraced, under this aspect, to a
personal property in God. 29
These brief reminders allow us to observe that Thomas proposes a theology attentive, in its very principles, to the personal
dimension of creation and of the economy of salvation. Such is
moreover the motive that one should assign to the revelation of
the Trinity:
The knowledge of the divine persons was necessary to us on two grounds. The
first was to enable us to think rightly on the subject of the creation of things .
. . . The second motive, and the principal one, was to give us a true notion of
the salvation of mankind, a salvation which is accomplished by the incarnation
of the Son and by the gift of the Holy Spirit. 30

The knowledge of salvation procured by the mission of the divine
persons, along with the right understanding of the free creation
by a God acting according to love, constitute the fundamental
purpose of Trinitarian doctrine for Thomas. Already at this first
level it is apparent that Thomas's organization of the treatise on
God, beginning with the consideration of what concerns the
essence in order to approach next what touches the distinction of
persons, would not result in "stripping the Trinity to a large
extent of any function in the economy of salvation. "31 The
properly Trinitarian dimension is certainly developed without
prejudicing the dogmatic rule of the unity of operation of the
Trinity (can it be otherwise?), and without restricting the
autonomy and the proper competence of philosophical knowing,
which is legitimate and pertinent but incapable of discerning the
presence of the Trinity. We do not find here, however, any
"primacy" of the essence or of the unity of God, but indeed two
aspects or two approaches that shed light on and become
integrated in the consideration of the divine person. We find here
a first expression of the redoublement of language and of approach to the mystery of God that we will explicate further on:
29 Cf. I Sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 2 (relationship of the creature to a personal reality in God: the
act of theologal charity comes to an end in the similitude of the personal procession of the
Holy Spirit).
30 STh I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3.
31 Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, 312.

THE ESSENCEAND THE PERSONS

531

the divine creative and redemptive activity is first considered in
the treatise on God with regard to the divine attributes of
knowledge, will, and power, then in the Trinitarian treatise with
regard to the names of Word, Love, and Gift. Likewise, the
treatise on creation begins by taking account of the creative
activity as well as of the attributes common to the three persons,
which permits Thomas then to pose clearly the Trinitarian
principle of creation. 32 Even more: the key concepts of the
speculative synthesis on the Trinity in its immanent being
(procession, relation, property, order) are those which permit
Thomas to manifest the personal traits of God's action on our
behalf. One perceives here the usefulness of a doctrine of the
"immanent Trinity," as it is generally called today, 33 for the
comprehension of the economy in which the Trinitarian mystery
manifests itself for us.
III. THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE
TREATISE ON GOD

As we have remarked above, one of the major critiques that
contemporary theology addresses to Thomist thought concerns
the distinction between a treatise De Deo uno and a treatise De
Deo trino. Teaching the treatise on God is most often
characterized today by the rejection of this distinction and by the
choice of a resolutely "theological" approach, founded upon the
history of salvation (against the "philosophical" conception of a
treatise De Deo uno). This is not the place to show the legitimacy
and the usefulness of a philosophical approach that establishes the
praeambulafidei, which theological reflection can then take up in
32 STh I, q. 45, aa. 6-7: the procession of the eternal persons is the cause and the reason
of creatures. We note that creation is reprised in detail for the angels, the corporeal creatures,
and mankind; here again, the Trinitarian dimension is presented, whether in the theological
exegesis of the work of the six days (STh I, q. 74, a. 3), or in the study of the creation of man
in the image of God (STh I, q. 93).
33 So long as the "immanent Trinity" is not defined as being necessarily indifferent to its
manifestation ad extra or excluding this same manifestation in human history. This strange
opposition has sometimes led authors to hold that, since the Trinity is manifested in the
world, "there no longer is an immanent Trinity" (for example Greshake, Der dreieine Gou,
373, 381).

532

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

deepening them, but It IS necessary at least to consider the
fundamental structure of the treatise.
In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas announces a treatise on
God divided into three sections (consideratio autem de Deo
tripartita erit): (1) what concerns the divine essence, (2) what
concerns the distinction of persons, and (3) what concerns the
procession of creatures ab ipso.34 It is essential to note that the
treatise on God, the consideratio de Deo, does not consist of two,
but rather of three, sections. The divine act ad extra, inaugurated
with creation, is integrated around God, in accordance with the
theocentric approach specific to the theologian; creatures are
examined inasmuch as they have God as their principle (efficient,
exemplar, and final cause).35 The study of God as principle is not
determined by the aspect of unity or of Trinity, but rather is
determined by the unique and entire reality of God (the three
persons of one and the same essence) which is posed here in a
theological synthesis resulting from the first two sections of the
treatise. Regarding the first two sections, there is no question of
a "one God" or of a "tri-God," but of God considered under the
aspect of the essence and under the aspect of the distinction (that
which concerns the essence, and that which concerns the
distinction of persons: ea quae pertinent ad essentiam divinam, ea
quae pertinent ad distinctionem personarum). The nuance is
important, because the structure set forth by Thomas poses simply
the opportunity for a double consideration or a double approach
to the God confessed by Christian faith.
Why this double consideration in the first two sections of the
treatise on God? After we have considered the texts of Thomas
and researched the characteristics that are proper to them, it is
worth remarking that this completely traditional distinction
appears at the origins of properly speculative Trinitarian
theology. In the history of doctrines, indeed, this methodological
option appeared as the result of a principle stemming from the
triadology of the Cappadocians which Thomas receives notably
through Augustine and John Damascene: the necessary distinction
34 STh I, q. 2, prol. Cf. the recapitulation of the prologue in STh I, q. 27.
35 ScG II, c. 4.

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

533

and connection of what is common and of what is proper in the
Trinity (commune-proprium), following the specifications elaborated by Basil of Caesarea in order to challenge the errors of
Eunomius of Cyzicus. St. Basil, attempting to take away from the
name "Unbegotten" (hagennetos) the exceptional status that
Eunomius had accorded it in order to ground his radical
Arianism, observes:
The divinity is common [koinon] but the paternity and the filiation are
properties [idiomata]; and from the combination of these two elements, that
is to say from the common and from the proper [tou te koinou kai idiou ],
occurs in us the comprehension of the truth. Thus, when we mean to speak of
the unbegotten light, we think of the Father; of the begotten light, we think of
the Son. As regards light and light there is no contrariety between them, but as
regards begotten and unbegotten one considers them under the aspect of their
antithesis. 36

The binomial common-proper, as is known, is equally exploited
by St. Basil in order to establish the formula "one substance, three
hypostases" which becomes from then on the expression of
Trinitarian orthodoxy. 37 The Arian controversy thus led orthodox theology, in order to grasp correctly what the faith itself
proposes ("the comprehension of the truth"), to pose the
necessary distinction between what is common and what is proper
in the Trinity, that is to say the substance (ousia) and the
property, of which Basil already notes the purely relative content
(relation of opposition). It is this binomial that becomes, in
Thomas (in another context than Basil and following a different
orientation but on the same basis): essence (substance)/distinction
of persons (relative properties).

36 Basil of Caesarea, Against Eunomius 2.28, Sources chretiennes, 305, pp. 120-21. For
exegesis of this fundamental passage, see B. Sesboiie, L 'apologie d'Eunome de Cyzique et le
Cantre Eunome (L. I-III) de Basile de Cesaree, Presentation, analyse theologique et traduction
frarn;aise (Rome, 1980), 77-84.
37 Cf. notably Basil, Letter 214, 4 (Y. Courtonne, Saint Basile, Lettres, vol. 2, [Paris, 1961],
205). It is known that the formula is already posed in Marius Victorin us, Against the Arians
2.4 and 3.4 (Sources chretiennes 68, pp. 408, 450) but its establishment as the expression of
orthodoxy is the work of the Cappadocians.

534

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

One can thus observe, already in Basil of Caesarea, the
necessity of a connection ("combination") of the proper and of
the common, that is to say of a pair of notions that permit us to
know the divine persons. Basil illustrates it with the example of
light, which is dear to him. This is one of the first formulations of
what G. Lafont has called, in St. Thomas, the "law of
redoublement" 38 which we have evoked above in regard to the
creation: in order to speak the Trinitarian mystery, it is necessary
always to employ two words, two formulas, in a reflection in two
modes that joins here the substantial (essential) aspect and the
distinction of persons (relative properties). This is precisely what
Thomas does in the structure of his treatise on God. One need
not have recourse to the quite embarrassing concept of "total
essence," as C. Strater has done, 39 in order to explicate the first
section of the treatise on God. Since the relations are really
identical to the essence, the essence is not constituted by the
relations: this "totality" (of our concepts), if one wishes to speak
thus, would only be adequately expressed by the complex
redoublement of our discourse joining the aspect of the divine
substance and that of the relative property, this relative property
being identical to the divine substance in the reality of God.
The pair essence/distinction of persons can suggest the
distinction between truths accessible to the natural reason (what
concerns the essence) and truths held by faith only (what concerns
the distinction of persons). Here the structure of the Summa
contra Gentiles comes to mind. However, because of the
specifically theological purpose of the Summa Theologiae, and
because of the broader value of such a distinction, this
explanation is insufficient. It does not suffice to project purely
and simply on the Summa Theologiae the "apologetic" perspective
of the Summa contra Gentiles. It would be more fitting to seek an
explanatory principle that belongs to the aim of Trinitarian
theology itself rather than to other considerations.

38 Lafont,

Peut-on connaitreDieu en Jesus Christ?, 130.

39 C. Strater, "Le point de depart du traite thomiste de la T rinite,"

12 (1962): 71-87.

Sciencesecclesiastiques

THE ESSENCEAND THE PERSONS

535

It seems to me that one ought first to emphasize, on the basis
of the distinction common-proper,the priority that the knowledge
of the common has with us. Thomas constantly recalls, "What is
essential is prior according to our understanding [secundum
intellectum]to what is notional, just as what is common to what
is proper." 40 Such an explanation is based in the first place on the
path of our access to the mystery of God (one knows the divine
essence through its effects: this is a prerequisite assumed by faith
in the Trinity), but it is not limited to this order of progression in
understanding. The conceptual priority belongs to the common
taken in itself, not in a relationship to creatures (in which latter
case, because of the relationship associated with the common, the
property of the person ought to receive the conceptual priority).
The order of concepts at work takes on a properly Trinitarian
motif: the comprehension of the personal reality in God
presupposes the knowledge of the essence because it integratesit
(the proper does not have reality without the common). One
cannot conceive of the person without the substance or without
the nature belonging to the very ratio of the divine person, this
latter being defined as "distinct subsisting in the divine nature
[distinctum subsistens in natura divina]"41 or, with Boethius, as
"individual substance of rational nature." The exploitation of the
category of relation carries a double aspect. By its proper ratio it
is pure relation (esse ad), but a relation equally inheres in a subject
(esse in) that grounds its being: this "to be" of the relation,
accidental in creatures, is in God the substantial esse of the
divinity. 42 In treating of the divine essence, Thomas thus treats of
what is fundamentally required in order to account for the person
and for the esse of the relation in God, and therefore in order to
elaborate what is the pinnacle of his doctrine of the divine
1 Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 2, qla. 2, arg. 1 and sol.; cf. I Sent., cl. 7, q. 1, a. 3, arg. 4 and ad
4; also STh I, q. 33, a. 3, ad 1: "Communia absolute dicta, secundum orclinem intellectus
nostti, sunt priora quam propria: quia includuntur in intellectu propriorum, sed non e
converso."
41 De Pot., q. 9, a. 4; Thomas here makes precise the signification of the divine person and
not only of the person in general, in order to emphasize the aspect of relation. Cf. I Sent., d.
23, q. 1, a. 4. This technical definition is reprised in a very similar manner in STh I, q. 29, a.
4 and q. 30, a. 4.
42 STh I, q. 28, a. 2; STh I, q. 39, a. 1.
40

536

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

persons: the subsisting relation. It is not, moreover, strange that,
in Thomas, the structure of a treatise is clarified by the very
content of the treatise that it contains
germ. This explanation
respects the fundamental principles of the Trinitarian doctrine of
St. Thomas and shows itself equally capable of integrating the
order of our knowledge of the mystery. It likewise wiH permit us
further on to specify the relation between essence and person.

IV. RELATION, PROCESSION, AND PERSON
A rapid overview of the plan of questions 27-43 of the Prima
pars enables one to see that the aim of Thomas is entirely oriented
towards person in God:
1. Origin or processions (q. 27)
2. The relations of origin (q. 28)
3. The persons (qq. 29-43)
a. The persons, considered in an absolute manner (qq. 2938)
The persons according to what is common to them
L
(qq. 29-32)
The persons according to what is proper to each (qq.
33-38)

b. The persons, considered according to their relations (qq.
39-43)
L
The persons in relation to the essence (q. 39)
The persons in relation to the properties (q. 40)
The persons in relation to the notional acts
41)
1v. The persons according to their mutual relations (qq.
42-43)

Of the seventeen questions, fifteen are placed under the tide
"the persons," and are entirely devoted to the persons under their
diverse considerations. The question of the divine missions (q.
43), which opens the great movement of the Trinitarian economy
of grace and which attaches the Secunda and the Tertia pars to the
Trinitarian treatise, is itself approached from the angle of the
mutual relations of the persons. On the simple level of structure,

THE ESSENCEAND THE PERSONS

537

could one say more clearly that the missions of the persons
procure participation in the Trinitarian communion? 43
The two sole exceptions are constituted by the questions on
procession and relation (qq. 27 and 28); these two questions do
not have, however, any other goal than to lead to an
understanding of "person," as Thomas explains in the prologue
to question 29: "Having seen what ought first to be recognized
[quae praecognoscendavidebantur]on the subject of processions
and of relations, it is necessary to come to the persons." It is thus
to the divine persons, to each one of them and to their
relationship of mutual communion, that Thomas wishes to lead
us.44 This plan manifests a resolute option in favor of a doctrine
governed by the notion of person. Now this project is only
effectively completed because it integrates the consideration of the
essence in that of the person, requiring the prior explication of
"what concerns the essence" in order to clarify the mystery of the
three divine persons. In other words, by making use of the "law
of redoublement,"a synthesis occurs within the notion of person
which Thomas goes on to clarify by means of the notion of
subsisting relation or of distinct subsisting in the divine nature.
The sequence of questions-processions-relations-persons-is
thus easily explained. Procession or origin is perceived as the path
that leads to the person: it signifies the relation, either in the
"active" mode of a notional act (generation, spiration), or in the
"passive" or rather "receptive" mode that we perceive as the
foundation of the relation. 45 The concept of procession thus
prepares for that of relation. For its part, the relation that
distinguishes the three in God furnishes the key to the theological
43 This structure accounts for the effect of the mission that Thomas, like Irenaeus of Lyons
or Basil of Caesarea, formulates thus: the Holy Spirit makes known the Son, and the Son
manifests the Father (In loan., 16, 14, no. 2107).
44 Cf. F. Bourassa, "Note sur le traite de la Trinite dans la Somme theologique," Science
et F,sprit 27 (1975): 187-207; H. Jorissen, "Zur Struktur des Traktates 'De Deo' in der
Summa theologiae des Thomas von Aquin," in Im Gespriich mit dem dreieinigen Gott:
Elemente einer trinitarischen Theologie, Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Wilhelm
Breuning, ed. M Bohnke und H. Heinz (Diisseldorf, 1985): 231-57.
45 The privilege of constituting the person, properly speaking, does not belong to the
notional act or to the procession, but to the personal property that is the relation possessed
by the person: cf. STh I, q. 40, a. 4.

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

538

understanding of the mystery: relation of opposition according to
origin. It only remains then for Thomas to display the bundle of
Trinitarian relations in the communion of distinct persons. The
methodical order followed by Thomas thus implements a rigorous
use of concepts where each presupposes the preceding one.
The linking of these concepts, in this precise order, does not
represent, however, Aquinas's only approach to the matter. In the
Summa contra Gentiles, for example, he poses first the reality of
three persons and the truth of procession, and only turns to
relation in order to clear up the objections that human reason can
oppose to Trinitarian faith, or in order to establish the procession
a Patre Filioque at the end of his expose. 46 In this latter case, he
observes the order of exposition person-distinction-oppositionrelation. Similarly, in the De Potentia, he follows the sequence
person-distinction-relation. 47 In these two works, indeed, Thomas
starts from the first given of the Catholic faith: "three persons of
one sole essence." In the Summa Theologiae, the inverse sequence
appears as the exact expression of the ordo disciplinae required by
the general prologue. This observation could seem elementary,
but it is fundamental for grasping the aim of Trinitarian doctrine
in Thomas.
On the one hand, the point of departure of the treatise on God
(i.e., what concerns the essence) and that of the section on the
distinction of persons (i.e., procession and relation) in the Summa
Theologiae are explained by pedagogical arrangement: the point
of departure is posed for conceptual reasons of organization and
only finds its full meaning in the later integration that it prepares.
The methodical organization proposed by Thomas ought to be
appreciated according to its termination point: the persons in
God.
On the other hand, the organization of the material ought to
be grasped in the light of a deliberately modest and limited
theological aim, which Thomas explains elsewhere in these terms:

46

ScG IV, cc. 10-14 and 24.

47 De Pot., q. 8, a. 1 (on the reality of relations in God, at the beginning of three questions

on Trinitarian theology).

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539

The plurality of persons in God belongs to those realities that are held by faith
and that natural human reason can neither investigate nor grasp in an adequate
manner; but one hopes to grasp it in Heaven, since God will be seen by his
essence, when faith will have given way to vision. However, the holy Fathers
have been obliged to treat it in a manner developed because of objections
raised by those who have contradicted the faith in this matter and in others
that pertain also to the faith; they have done it, however, in a modest manner
and with respect, without pretending to comprehend. And such a search is not
useless, since by it the spirit is elevated to the understanding of an aspect of the
truth that suffices for excluding the errors. 48

This observation is not at all rhetorical. It is the project that
Thomas enacts strictly in all of his works: Trinitarian theology is
sustained by a contemplative end in which the immediate motive
is the defense of the faith. The Summa contra Gentiles explains it
in detail: it is precisely in order to show that the faith is not
surpassed or vanquished by human reason that the doctrine of the
Word and that of Love, of relation, etc., intervene. 49 The treatise
of the Summa Theologiae equally takes its point of departure here,
from the very first article: it is necessary to pose in God,
following the Catholic faith, a truly immanent procession, which
Arianism and Sabellianism, the two major dangers in this matter,
have failed to do (STh I, q. 27, a. 1). Thomas appears to know
well that the doctrine of relation and the clarification of
processions go back historically to the defense of orthodoxy in
the face of Sabellianism and of Arianism under their diverse
forms. The Against Eunomius of Basil of Caesarea shows us
nothing different. Thus, what one asks from the theological
reflection upon the processions and the relations is to make
manifest that it is not unreasonable to believe in three persons
really subsisting in the unique essence of the divinity: the
Trinitarian mystery which constitutes the heart of the Christian
faith resists the objections that one can address to it. The fruit of
contemplation that one obtains, in making manifest the
intelligibility of the faith in the connection of its mysteries,
suffices for the believer who wishes "to defend" his faith, in the
48

49

De Pot., q. 9, a. 5. The question here is that of the number of persons in God.
ScG IV, c. 10, no. 3460; ScG IV, c. 19, no. 3557.

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

hope of the beatific vision. Trinitarian theology is pursued for no
other motive when Thomas, in the Summa Theologiae, guides us
progressively from processions to relations and from relations to
persons.

V. THE PROCESSIONS AND THE "PSYCHOLOGICAL WAY"
The point of departure that Thomas takes in his analysis of
processions is open, however, to the suspicion of "dissolution"
that de Regnon raised, and that has not ceased since then to
constitute a point of controversy in the interpretation of Thomas.
In exploiting the Augustinian "psychological" way of the self's
knowledge and love of itself, does Thomas manage to pose in
God some properly personal (notional) acts? Does the
comprehension of the two processions in God go beyond that of
essential acts?50
We note first that Thomas's intention is evidently to avoid
posing the distinction of persons on the basis of an absolute or
essential reality. This is the error for which Abelard, who had
employed the triad "power-wisdom-goodness" in order to make
manifest the distinction of persons, was reproached, and which
adjustment of the doctrine of appropriations. Thomas
caused
explains this by linking Abelard's error to Arianism and to
SabdHanism.
This distinction [of persons in God] cannot be according to an absolute reality,
since everything which is attributed absolutely in God signifies the divine
essence; it would result that the divine persons would be distinguished by
essence, which is the heresy of Arius. 51

And if one considered a procession according to the essential
attributes, it would result in a procession incapable of taking
account of a real relation, since an essential act in God only
involves a procession and relation of reason: 52 this leads to
50 See, for example, Muller, Die Theologie des Dritten, 40; Corbin, La Trinite ou l'exces
de Dieu, 54-55.
51 De Pot., q. 8, a. 1.
52 I Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 1; STh I, q. 27, a. 4, ad 1.

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

541

Sabellianism. Thus, if one considered only nature and will (or
knowledge and love) in seeking to understand the modes of the
procession of the Son and of the Spirit, one could not go beyond
a simple conceptual distinction of persons: these attributes, since
their proper ratio should be posed in every truth, only are
distinguished by reason, being in God a single reality in virtue of
the divine simplicity.
The problem recurs in the question of the Filioque, where
Thomas exploits this argument many times to establish the
necessity of an order of processions (and therefore the procession
of the Holy Spirit a Filio) in order to avoid Sabellianism. 53 The
Trinitarian processions cannot be explained by a relationship of
the divine essence towards creatures: this is again, Thomas
explains, the erroneous path followed by Sabellius. 54 One can
surely see that, if Thomas had been left with an "essential"
perception of divine processions, it would have gone against the
most elementary principles of his Trinitarian doctrine.
It is only by missing the difference between "to know" or "to
understand" and "to speak," or between "to love" and "to spirate
love," that one could find in Thomas an "essential" comprehension of divine processions. At stake is nothing less than our
capacity to be able to render account of Trinitarian faith, that is
to say, of a real distinction of three divine persons. Thomas
explains this, in the Summa Theologiae, in opposition to St.
Anselm (whose excessive accentuation on the essence in the
knowledge of personal processions he takes care to correct in
other contexts as well): 55
Anselm improperly took to speak [dicere] for to understand [intelligere]. It is a
matter of two different things. Because to understand means only the
relationship of the knower to the thing known; no origin is evoked here, but
only a certain information in our intellect, since our intellect has need of being
put in act by the form of the object known. Now in God this means a total
identity, since the intellect and the thing known are absolutely the same thing,
53

ScG IV, c. 24, no. 3616; De Pot., q. 10, aa. 2 and 5.

54 STh I, q. 27, a. 1; STh I, q. 28, a. 1, sed contra and sol.; De Pot., q. 8, a. 1.
55 Cf. notably I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 3, arg. 1 and ad 1; cf. Albert the Great, I Sent., d. 27,
a. 2, ad quaest. 2; Malet, Personneet amour, 55-59.

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

as was seen [STh I, q. 14]. But to understand means principally a relationship
to the word conceived; to speak is nothing other than to utter a word; but by
the intermediary of the word there is a relationship to the thing known, which
is manifested by the word uttered to the one who understands. 56

Thus, "to speak a word" is a process (processus) constitutive of
the achievement of the act of intellection, without these two acts
being identified or reduced to each other. 57 This is not the place
to present Thomas's noetic and the accomplishment of the act of
intellectual knowledge by the speaking of the word, 58 but it is
necessary at least to retain three points for Trinitarian theology.
First, Thomas distinguishes between the act of intellection
common to the three persons in virtue of their unique essence
(essential act), and the notional act of speaking which belongs
properly and exclusively to the person of the Father: "So
therefore, the only person who speaks in God (dicens in divinis)
is the one who utters the Word, although each person
understands and is understood, and consequently is spoken in the
Word. "59 There is no confusion between the level of the essential
act (common to the three) and that of the notional act (proper to
a divine person). Second, this Word is entirely related to the
person of the Father. Thomas discerns an origin (as the human
word is spoken by the intellect, the divine Word exists a Patre)
that signifies the name itself of Word, a properly relative term.
"The Word, spoken properly in God, signifies something that
proceeds from another." Third, this name of Word can only
belong properly to the person of the Son. At the end of a

q. 34, a. 1, ad 3.
In us, the speaking of a mental word is necessary to the achievement of the act of
intellectual knowledge (there is no intellection without the speaking of a word): Thomas
explains this as early as ScG I, c. 53 in order to pose a word in God. But the existence of the
divine Word as a distinct person (a real relation with its source) is never established as a
rational necessity. Thomas emphasizes in this regard the difference of the mode of intelligence
in God and in us (STh I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2); the rule of analogy is the same in the things that
only faith allows us to grasp.
58 One could refer with profit to H. Paissac, Tbeologiedu Verbe: Saint Augustin et saint
Thomas (Paris: Cerf, 1951); cf. also Y. Floucat, "L'intellection et son verbe selon saint
Thomas d'Aquin," Revue Thomiste 97 (1997): 443-84; 640-93.
59 STh I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 3.
56 STh I,
57

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543

remarkable evolution, 60 Thomas can affirm without ambiguity in
the Summa Theologiae, as an exact consequence of the preceding
explanations of the ratio of word and of speaking, "The name of
Word in God, if it is taken properly, is a personal name and in no
way an essential name . ... It is not taken essentially, but only
personally. " 61
The same distinction, although Thomas has not developed it
with a comparable fullness, can be observed in the doctrine of the
procession of the Holy Spirit as Love. If one takes Love as a
proper name of the Holy Spirit, Thomas explains, it is not a
matter of love or of the act of love common to the three persons
(essential love, of which St. John says, "God is love" [1John4:816]), but of a loving imprint that is to the notional act of love
(active spiration, notion of the Father and of the Son) what the
Word is to the speaking of the Father, and that is related to the
essential act of love in the same way that the Word is related to
the essential act of intellection. Measuring the extreme poverty of
our vocabulary with regard to love, Thomas observes:
In as far as love or dilection only means a relationship of the one who loves to
the thing loved, love and to love in God are said essentially, like understanding
and to understand. But in as far as we use these words in order to express the
mutual relationship of the one who proceeds by the mode of love to its
principle, of such kind that by Love one understands Love proceeding and that
by to love one understands to spirate Love proceeding, then Love is a name of
the person, and to love (diligere vel amare) is a personal verb, like to speak or
to beget. 62

Just as Thomas has identified the properly relative and
therefore personal standing of the speaking of the Word, he
likewise deepens his thought on love until he has established the
"relative" reality of personal Love sent out by a fecund act of the

°

6 For an illuminating sketch of this evolution, cf. A. F. von Gunten, "In principio erat
Verbum: Une evolution de saint Thomas en theologie trinitaire," in Ordo sapientiae et amoris,
Hommage au Professor J.-P. Torrell, O.P., ed. C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Editions
universitaires, 1993), 119-41.
61 STh I, q. 34, a. 1 (emphasis added).
62 STh I, q. 37, a. 1; cf. Emery, "Le traite de saint Thomas sur la Trinite dans la Somme
contre Jes Gentils," 27-28; H.-D. Simonin, "Autour de la solution thomiste du probleme de
!'amour," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 6 (1931): 174-274.

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

544

Father and the Son, a mysterious impression, affection, or
attraction of love which is in no way confused with an essential
property of the divinity. Thus, when he introduces his Trinitarian
treatise by posing a mode of procession according to intellectual
act and another according to voluntary or loving act (STh I, q.
27), he has in view not the essential act but indeed the personal
term of a notional act.
The "psychological" analogy is developed here in two phases.
In a first phase, Thomas situates the immanent spiritual activity,
the activity that befits God and that allows one to render account
of the procession from a personal term which is God in the midst
of God, and which, as such, can only be grasped in the domain of
intellectual and voluntary action. One observes that as early as the
Summa contra Gentiles Thomas introduced the distinction of
persons by the consideration of "God" present to himself as the
known in the knower and as the loved in the lover. 63 Does this
approach to processions, which emphasizes immanence through
the self-presence of God known and loved, mean that the
psychological analogy presents the Trinitarian processions as an
emanation from the divine substance ("God")? In order to
respond to this question, one must take into account the stages of
the exploitation of the analogy, which is not applied in a static
manner but follows a progression intended to gather together the
diverse elements of the reality.
We remark first that, in this context, Thomas emphasizes
always the distinction that this self-presence suggests: distinction
between "God knowing" and "God known," distinction between
"God loving" and "God loved." In the intellectual analogy, for
instance, the accent is not placed solely on the identity, but
indeed on the reflexive self-understanding in view of manifesting
the distinction according to origin. 64 Thomas can bring out here
63 For this formulation,

on which is based the development of the intellectual analogy for
the procession of the Son and the voluntary (or loving) analogy for the procession of the
Spirit, cf. Sc.G IV, c. 11, no. 3469; ScG IV, c. 19, nos. 3560-63; Compendium Theologiae I,
37, 45; STh I, q. 27, a. 3.
64 ScG IV, c. 11, no. 3469: "Etiam intellectus noster, seipsum intelligens, est in seipso, non
solum ut idem sibi per essentiam, sed etiam ut a se apprehensum intelligendo." It is by means
of this reflexive self-understanding that Thomas establishes the prerogatives of the intellect

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

545

many elements already elaborated in the treatise on the divine
essence (intellectual and voluntary activity by which God knows
and loves himself), and the correlatives in presence are designated
by the word "God" qualified by the acts of intellection and of
love. But, at this juncture, when Thomas poses the presence of a
word and of a love in God in a productive operation, it is indeed
the personal reality that is in view. One must insist that it is not
simply a matter of "God knowing" or of "God known," but of
the self-presence, by a fecund emanation, of "God known present
in God knowing" which allows for gathering together the aspect
of the distinction, that of the relation of origin, and that of the
unity. On the other hand, the formulation of this self-presence is
not the end (terme) of the analogy, but its point of departure.
Thomas does not yet employ the names of Father, Son, Holy
Spirit, because it is precisely this that the analogy is called upon
to manifest, since it is by the speaking of the Word and the
spiration of personal Love (the outcome of the psychological
analogy) that, in God, this self-presence in the distinction is
verified, so that the expression "God known in God who knows"
only finds its full sense in the affirmation "the Father speaks the
Word," where it manifests its intelligibility. This means that, in
the formulation of this analogy, "God" does not designate the
divine "to be" in its indistinct unity, but God refe"ed to God in a
distinction that is grasped according to the intellectual and loving
operation. In virtue of his doctrine of relation, Thomas does not
think of God as the subject of a notional act without posing
immediately and simultaneously two persons from the fact of the
relations that constitute them.
In a second phase, he establishes the personal property of the
Word and of Love, personal "terms" of a notional act, which are
never confused with the "essential" activity, although they are
unthinkable without this essential activity common to the three
persons (each person understands and loves). This elaboration,
which is clarified well in the doctrine of relation that it introduces
with the notion of distinction according to origin, is based on the
at the summit of the degrees of existence: "Nam intellectus in seipsum reflectitur, et seipsum
intelligere potest" (no. 3465)

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

546

knowledge of a true immanent fecundity of "to speak" and of "to
spirate Love" in God. It is entirely oriented towards the
manifestation of a real distinction of persons, of such a kind that
"if the procession of the Word and of Love does not suffice for
suggesting the personal distinction, there could not be any
personal distinction in God, "65 since, in short, the second term of
an alternative in this domain could only consist in a common
(essential) act incapable of manifesting the truth of Trinitarian
faith.
There is, therefore, no "derivation" of persons from an
essential act in Thomas. This observation clarifies anew the
structure of the treatise on God: the distinction of the two
sections of the treatise (what concerns the essence, then what
concerns the distinction of persons) does not express a separation
between a treatise on a "monopersonal" God and a treatise on
God the Trinity, nor a conception of the essence which opens up
into a plurality. In reality, it prevents the derivation of the
persons from the essence: it is to relation, and not to essence in
its proper formality, thatthe manifestation of the plurality in God
belongs. 66 The pivot of this structure is, once again, the doctrine
of relation, since only this relation of opposition according to
origin allows for the introduction of the aspect of plurality in
God. This theological option is crystallized in many famous theses
of Thomas's triadology that it will suffice to describe briefly.
Refusing to make the persons derive from the essence, Thomas
firmly excludes the expression "the essence begets" or "the
essence is begotten." The question is historically connected to the
critique that Joachim of Fiore had addressed to Peter Lombard,
accusing the latter of posing a "quaternity" in God from the fact
that he had excluded a notional act attributed to the essence. 67
De Pot., q. 9, a. 9, ad 7.
This is a fundamental insight of the work of Schmidbaur, PersonarumTrinitas.
67 Thomas explains the interpretation that Joachim of Fiore gave of the Master of the
Sentences thus: "He believed that Master Peter posed the essence as something distinct from
the three persons, in a manner in which the essence could have been called a fourth reality.
He believed in effect that from the fact that one says that the essence does not beget, is not
begotten and does not proceed, it is distinguished from the Father who begets, from the Son
who is begotten and from the Holy Spirit who proceeds" (Expositio super secundam
65

66

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

547

Thomas is concerned with this problem · as early as his
Commentary on the Sentences and he examines the question most
closely in his commentary on the decretal Damnamus of Lateran
IV. To attribute a notional act to the essence ("the essence
begets," "the essence is begotten") amounts for Thomas to
dividing the essence among the three persons, and therefore to
opening the path to Arianism, since generation and spiration, as
such, distinguish a supposit-principle from a supposit-term. It is
very clearly the faith of Nicaea, professing the consubstantiality
of the three persons, that is in play in Thomas on this point. 68
His position engages first an analysis of language. Since the
mode of signification of the term "essence" is that of an abstract
form, this term does not have of itself the faculty of holding the
place of a person; otherwise, one would signify a distinction in
the essence as one signifies a distinction of supposits. 69 In
creatures (to which, precisely, our mode of signification is linked
in virtue of the constitution of our knowledge), actions are the
work of supposits: "the essence does not act, but it is the principle
of the act in the supposit." In God, the essence is really identical
to each of the three supposits or persons, but, since it is necessary
to take account of the mode of our knowledge and of our
language, the essence is grasped in the notional act on a different
mode from the person, since the person is distinct whereas the
essence is common. 70 The essence is what the notional act
communicates. It is also by it (principle quo with the property)
that the Father begets and that the Father and Son spirate the
Holy Spirit, but it cannot itself be the subject of a productive
(notional) act in God.

Decretalem, in Opera omnia 40 (Rome: Editio Leonina, 1969]: p. E 41)
68 In his brief Exposition of the Second Decretal, Thomas twice has recourse to the
homoousion of the Council of Nicaea in order to establish his response to the question.
69 STh I, q. 39, a. 5; Fxpositio super sec. Dec., p. E 41.
70 I Sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 1: "In divinis autem essentia realiter non differt a supposito sed
solum ratione, sive quantum ad modum significandi: quia suppositum est distinctum et
essentia est communis .••. Sed actus qui dicitur de supposito secundum modum secundum
quern differt ab essentia, non potest de essentia praedicari; et hujusmodi est actus generandi,
qui praedicatur de supposito Patris, secundum quod distinctum a supposito Filii."

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

548

It is m strictly extending these explanations that Thomas
proposes the famous formula: "It is because he is Father that the
Father begets [Quia Pater est, generat]," and not the inverse
proposition (the Father is Father because he begets). What
Thomas rejects, here again, is that the supposit to whom belongs
the notional act could be thought in a prerelational or essential
manner (as subsisting essence), independently of his constitution
as a person, that is to say, independently of his personal relation.
Positively: since the subject of attribution of a notional act is a
person as such (acts are the work of supposits), it is not so much
the begetting which makes the Father be Father, but indeed rather
the inverse. The Father is thought as subject of a personal act
because he is a person. It is also for this reason that, in the case of
the personal property of the Father, inasmuch as this property
constitutes the person of the Father, it ought to be thought as a
precondition (it is "preunderstood") to the notional act of begetting. The relation of the first person precedes the act in the order
of concepts, "as the person who acts is preunderstood to his
action" 71-otherwise, one could not see in the relation the
principle of the constitution of the person and the person itself.
In the case of active spiration, however, there is indeed a conceptual priority of the procession or origin, that is to say of the
notional act, above the property or notion of active spiration
common to the Father and to the Son. The reason for this is,
however, identical since here, in the order of notions, we are
already in possession of a personal concept of Father and of Son,
constituted by the relations of paternity and of filiation (and not
by active spiration, which is not a personal property constituting
a person), and the act therefore is indeed thought as the work of
sup posits. 72
Here we must pose the question: in order to emphasize the
personalism of Trinitarian faith, should not Thomas begin his
71 STh

I, q. 40, a. 4; I Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2.

72 The procession or passive origin (the "begotten 'to be'" of the Son and the "to proceed"

of the Holy Spirit) presents a different case since it is conceived as the path leading to the
person who proceeds: it is attributed to the person who proceeds and not to the personsource to whom belongs the active origin (cf. STh I, q. 40, a. 4).

THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS

549

treatise on God by the consideration of the person of the Father,
rather than by a section on the divine essence? This position,
promoted notably by M. Schmaus and K. Rahner on the basis of
their consideration of Scripture,73 is largely accepted today in the
essays and manuals of Trinitarian theology: "The doctrine of the
Trinity must start with the Father and understand him as origin,
source and inner ground of unity of the Trinity." 74 The Father
would appear then, from the first, as "the personal divine
Being."75 In this perspective, which appeals also to Greek thought
and notably the Cappadocian Fathers, the aspect of unity in the
Trinity is manifested in the extension of the primacy that belongs
to the Fa th er: the unity is then the consequence of the fact that
the Father communicates all his essence to the Son and to the
Holy Spirit. The advantages of such a structure of triadology, like
the biblical and traditional foundations that it can bring out, are
not negligible. We would wish, however, to show the speculative
reason 76 that leads Thomas to chose another path from which the
benefit is no less.
In explaining the constitution of the divine person by relation,
Thomas rules out conceiving a divine person outside of his
personal relation. Without this relation, which requires the
simultaneous understanding of the other person to which a
person is referred, following the Aristotelian (and patristic) rule
of the necessary simultaneity and co-understanding of correlatives, a person cannot be thought as person. This is precisely
the reason for which Thomas poses the conceptual priority of the
relation of paternity, inasmuch as that constitutes the person of
the Father, above the notional act of generation. This thesis is
expressed by Thomas's repeated affirmation: "If one abstracts the

73 Rahner, The Trinity, 16. This is one of the major conclusions that Rabner drew from
his foundational study on the meaning of the word "God" in the New Testament: see K.
Rabner, "Theos in the New Testament," Theological Investigations, vol.1, trans. C. Ernst
(New York: Crossroad, 1982), 79-148, esp. 145-47.
74 Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, 299.
75 Ibid.
76 In order to be complete, it would be necessary to develop the historical themes that
situate more fully the thought of Thomas in the Latin heritage that he deepens.

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

relations in the persons, the hypostases disappear. " 77 He
distinguishes here two kinds of abstraction, but the conclusion is
identical: if one removes the relation conceived as proprium from
the divine person, there only remains in our mind the essence
common to the Three. If one abstracts the relation grasped by our
intelligence as a form, then, if it is a matter of the personal
relation that constitutes the person, 78 the hypostasis disappears
from our mind. In this second case, taking the whole measure of
the function of the constitution of the person which belongs to
the relation, and which is not limited to the simple manifestation
of a distinction already given independently of the relation (as if
the personal relation happened to a person already otherwise
constituted), Thomas can even add:
If one removes the relation from our mind, there does not remain any substrate
to this relation, since the relation itself is the reality that subsists. If one
abstracts the relation, to speak properly, nothing subsists, neither what is
absolute, nor what is related, nor the hypostasis, nor the essence, since the
relation itself is the reality that subsists.79

n I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2; De Pot., q. 8, a. 4; Comp. Theo/. I, 61; STh I, q. 40, a. 3.
78 The precision is imposed, because the persons possess many relations of which only one

constitutes each person. Thus, for Thomas, if one abstracts the notions of Unbegotten
(innascibility) or of Spirator (principle of the Holy Spirit), which belong to the Father, the
hypostasis of the Father stays in our mind, because innascibility and active spiration do not
constitute the person of the Father. The three personal relations alone are involved here:
paternity, filiation, and passive spiration (procession of the Holy Spirit); d. STh I, q. 40, a.
3.
79 I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2: "Remota relatione per intellectum, non relinquitur aliquid quasi
substratum illi relationi, sed ipsamet relatio est res subsistens. Unde, abstracta relatione
proprie loquendo nihil manet, neque absolutum, neque relatum, neque hypostasis, neque
essentia." Thomas reprises here the teaching of Albert the Great: "ipsa relatio fert secum
suum suppositum, quod distinguit. Et propter hoc separata personalitate per intellectum in
divinis nihil manet. Separata enim paternitate a Patre per intellectum nihil manet in re Patris .
. . . et ita nihil manet" (Albert the Great, Super Dionysium de divinis nominibus, c. 2, no. 25;
ed. Colon., vol.37/1, p. 60). The point of view adopted in this affirmation is that of the reality
of God such as the faith teaches it, and Thomas considers the relation as form (there are no
accidents in God, and what is signified there as a form is subsisting). This does not take away
either the legitimacy of a distinction between what is common and proper in God, or the
possibility of dialogue with believers of other religions or with philosophers who know of
God only what concerns his unity or his essence.

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551

One notes in this latter text that Thomas does not oppose the
personal relation to the essence as two great irreducibles, as if the
essence were posed outside of persons or beside the relation: the
subsisting relation "integrates" the essential being of the divinity
that it possesses properly considered as divine relation and in
virtue of which it subsists. In its character of personal property,
of relation constituting the person or of subsisting relation, the
relation cannot be separated from the essence without all the
reality of God vanishing from our mind: nihil manet.
It is because he holds, in a rigorous manner and in its
uttermost consequences, a resolutely relational understanding of
the person that Thomas's thought can hardly begin a treatise on
God with the person of the Father, presenting there the attributes
of the divine substance (power, wisdom, goodness) in order to
come next to the Son and then to the Holy Spirit receiving the
substance of God and everything that belongs to it, and in order
to manifest finally the divine unity, resulting from the Father's
primacy or status as font. In proceeding thus one puts, in the
place of the Thomist treatise concerning the divine essence, a
treatise on the Father. This approach certainly has the advantage
of emphasizing from the beginning that the essential attributes are
considered in a person (the Father), but one would in that case
treat of the Father in an extensive manner before having grasped
Him in his relation to the Son. The consideration would be indeed
that of a person, but independently of the relation that constitutes
it, in the manner of a personal essence. 80
In all rigor, if the structure of a treatise corresponds well to the
master ideas of that treatise, such a methodological option
requires a theology that can think of the person without the
relation. This is precisely what Thomas Aquinas rejects. If one
80 Rabner ("Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De Trinitate,"' 84) notes with clarity, but
not without some debatable generalization: "It would be more biblical and Greek to start
from the one absolutely unoriginated God, who is still the Father, even when it is not yet
known that he is the Begetter and Spirator, because he is known as the unoriginated
hypostasis, who may not be thought of positively as 'absolute', even when he is not yet known
expressly as relative"; cf. on the other hand, The Trinity, 16: for Saint Thomas "the first topic
under study is not God the Father as the unoriginate origin of divinity and reality, but as the
essence common to all three persons."

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

must pose the question in terms of "essentialism" and of
"personalism," one should wonder which of the structures risks
more the danger of an "essentialisrn": that of Thomas, which
poses first the divine essence in order to assume it into the
doctrine of the person as subsisting relation, 81 or that which can
think of the Father in a "nonrelational" or rather "'prerdational"
manner with the sole essence or divine substance with which he
is identified? Without entering into the speculative ramifications
of these fundamental approaches, 82 or into the historical sources
that one can bring out (which lead moreover to nuandng the very
sharp prejudices in favor of an exclusive "personalism" of the
Cappadocian triadology in contrast to Latin theology), 83 one
ought at least to condude that
question of "personalism," in
Thomas's perspective, is measured not in terms of an opposition
between person and essence but by the place that one accords to
relation in the account of the persono
It is true that Thomas pays great attention to the theme of the
Father as "principle without principle," "principle of all the
divinity," "source" or "font of the divinity," "primordial author,"
possessing the "plenitude of the font" or "the universal auctoritas!'84 With his Greek sources, he speaks of the Father as "'font of
81 Not beginning his treatise on God with the person of the Father, Thomas equally
cannot begin with a treatise on "God" that would be distinguished from the Trinity. There
remains then only one solution: to expose first what, in God the Trinity, concerns the unity
of essence, and to follow this with a treatise on the persons that introduces an analysis of
relation.
82 One can think here of the doctrine of the Filioque which, in Thomas, is fundamentally
connected to the thesis of the constitution and the distinction of the person by the single
relation of opposition according to origin: d. Gilles Emery, O.P., "La procession du SaintEspritaFilio chez saint Thomas d'Aquin," Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 531-74; Schmidb:mr,
Personarum Trinitas, 353-61.
63 A. de Halleux, "Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Peres Cappadociens?"
in Patrologie et oecumenisme: &cueil d'etudes (Louvain: 1990), 215-68. Halleux concludes
that the principle of unity and the Trinitarian principle have equal importance in the doctrine
of God of the Cappadocians who "are at the same time, and totally, personalists and
essentialists" (265-66). This study, like many others of the same author, furnishes important
foundations for the rediscovery of a complementarity between the so-called "Greek" and
"Latin" approaches to the mystery of the Trinity.
84 Such expressions, easily accessed by means of the Index Thomisticus,
are very
numerous, and occur most often in the Commentary on the Sentences.

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553

deity f!ontana deitas],"85 and he knows that the Christian East
considers the procession a Patre as the reference to the "First
origin fprima origo]. "86 One could multiply the examples. But
these expressions are always strictly understood by means of the
doctrine of the relation of opposition according to origin, with
the notion of principle and of order (expressing the relation to
the principle), of such kind that the person of the Father never is
posed without the relation of paternity which constitutes it, and
cannot therefore be identified with the essence or with the
divinity in a stage that would precede the deployment of the
doctrine of relations.
There is thus no possibility, in Aquinas, of considering the
essence in the manner of a fecund subject or of a "font of being"
from which the persons would be drawn, and therefore no
derivation of the persons from the essence. The essence that is in
question in the first section of the treatise on God is not a source
of the plurality of persons. It is, from one end to the other of the
treatise, "the unique essence of three persons," numerically one,
subsisting in each of the persons, never outside of the persons
with which it does not number.

VI. RELATION AND ESSENCE: A UNITARIAN PERSPECTIVE?
The analysis of the relationship between essence and person
poses ultimately the difficult question of subsistence in God. 87 The
terms of the debate are the following: is subsistence the work of
the essence or of the persons as such? If the persons hold their
subsistence from the essence, does not the essence return to the
forefront? Would we not be faced with a "primacy" of the divine
85 I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 1; d. 28, q. 1, a. 1; In librum beati Dionysii De divinis
nominibus expositio, 2, 4, (Turin: Marietti, 1950), no. 181.
86 Cf. I Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3; In loan., 15, 26, no. 2065.
87 It suffices for our purpose to consider subsistence (subsistentia) as the mode of the
substance existent by itself, without entering into the developments of the Thomist tradition
on the distinction between existence and subsistence or on the terminal mode of the essence.
"In so far as the substance exists by itself and not in another, one calls it 'subsistence
[subsistentia]': because to subsist [subsistere]is said of what exists in itself and not in another
thing" (STh I, q. 29, a. 2).

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

essence over the relation, since in this vision of things the essence
grounds the subsistence, so that one affirms first the subsistence
of the essence in order then to attribute it to the relations (to the
persons) which receive it from the essence? Do we not find, then,
in Thomas, despite the advances in his theory of relation, a
fundamentally "unitarian" perspective that makes the divine
essence the guiding concept in the doctrine on God the Trinity? 88
The principles of Thomas's response have already been
suggested above. In considering relations in creatures, where they
are accidents, one discovers a double aspect: (1) the being (esse)
of the relation, which it possesses, since it is an accident, by
inherence in a subject; and (2) the essence or reason (ratio) of the
relation, which is proper to the relation, and which consists in the
reference to another (ad aliquid}.The first aspect is grasped in the
consideration of that in which the relation exists, while the
second aspect is grasped by the reference to an exterior reality.
In contrast to the approach nearly universally adopted in the
wake of nominalism, this analogy does not consider the relation
as a category understood as being between individuals, but in
individuals, "in the things." The transference of this category into
God leads to identifying the first aspect, the being of the relation,
with the divine esse: that which is inherence of the accident in
creatures becomes, in God, "the being of the divine essence" of
such kind that the relation exists or subsists as really identical to
the essence. Between essence and relation, on this point, there is
no difference. As regards the second aspect, the proper ratio of
relation, it consists alone in the relationship to another thing,
88 Greshake, Der dreieine Gott, 117-18. For a more complete overview of the question,
in an approach that extends the reflection of St. Thomas in a critical manner, cf. K.
Obenauer, "Zur subsistentiaabsoluta in der T rinitatstheologie," Theologieund Philosophie
72 (1997): 188-215. Obenauer proposes to grasp the divine essence (das Wesen Gottes) in a
relational manner as the indivisible reality of relations, consisting in the going forth
(processus)of relations, and residing as "absolute" in the measure in which the relative being,
completed in the personal relations, is in itself one. This proposition merits attention, but it
poses notably the question of the knowledge of the divine essence by natural reason, as well
as the question of the function of relation in God (realization of the relational character of
the essence?). Thomas avoids all absorption of one notion by another, since the essence does
not constitute the relation, and no more does the relation constitute the essence.

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555

which does not modify the subject but which is pure "ecstatic"
reference to this other reality (privilege of the relation): this is
what permits an account of a strict Trinitarian monotheism, since
the constitution and the real distinction of the persons by the
relation in no way affect the unity of the divine being. 89 It is on
this basis that Thomas can show that the name of "person," in
God, signifies "the relation insofar as subsisting [relatio ut
subsistens]," which comes back "to signifying the relation by
manner of substance, that is to say of the hypostasis subsisting in
the divine nature. " 90
The place of the essence in the subsistence of relations is found
expressly formulated in the disputed questions De Potentia:
The relations in God, although they constitute the hypostases and thus make
them subsist, do it however insofar as they are the divine essence; indeed, the
relation insofar as it is relation does not have anything of what subsists or
makes subsist: that belongs solely to the substance.
The relation distinguishes the hypostases insofar as it is relation, but it
constitutes the hypostasis insofar as it is the divine essence: it does the one and
the other thing insofar as it is divine essence and relation. 91

Following these texts, to which it is not difficult to attach the
doctrine of the Ipsum esse subsistens, would the essence not play
the decisive role in the subsistence of the divine person?
One way to understand this is to emphasize that, for Thomas,
"only the relation subsists," that subsistent relation being the only
subject of attribution of acts in God (the acts are the work of
supposits), the sole "subject-bearer of the essence" which has no
reality outside of the persons. 92 But, if one wishes to withdraw
from the substance or from the divine essence as such the dignity
of subsistence, one still must explain the numerous texts of
Thomas's corpus that speak of a subsistence of the essence or of

Cf. STh I, q. 28, a. 2.
STh I, q. 29, a. 4; De Pot., q. 9, a. 4.
91 De Pot., q. 8, a. 3, ad 7 and 9; cf. also ad 8.
92 This thesis constitutes a leitmotiv of Schmidbaur, Personarum Trinitas, notably 435-37,
89
90

445, 513-26.

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GILLES EMERY, O.P.

the divine esse, or of an activity attributed to the essence. 93 Thus,
Thomas explains in the De Potentia:
In God, the personal properties only work to distinguish mutually the supposits
from the divine nature, and they are not the principle of the subsistence of the
divine essence, because the essence is subsistent by itself; it is, on the contrary,
from the essence that the personal properties have subsistence. 94

As regards essential acts

create, to govern, to understand, to
etc.), one speaks more properly when one attributes them to
a concrete essential name (e.g., "God"), but the distinction is
placed here on the level of the mode of signification and not of
the reality signified. As regards the reality itself, in virtue of the
identity between the quod and the quo in God, these essential acts
refer indeed to the divine essence, and Thomas does not deny that
the latter could be signified-although in an improper mannerby the mode of a sup posit. 95
When he treats of individuation, Thomas likewise retains a
double approach. On the one hand, the divine essence or nature
exists singularly by itself and it is "individuated" by itsdf. 96 This
is the reason for which a plurality of gods is presented as an
impossibility: the divine essence plays here the role of a principle
of individuation. In the distinction of three persons, on the other
hand, the principle of individuation ("quasi principle of
individuation") of persons can only be the personal property, and
not the divine essence or nature. 97 In both cases, the prindpie of
individuation is characterized by the fact of not existing in
another (incommunicability): the divine essence is not possessed
93 E.g., creation, in I Sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 1. Thomas shows there that, in contrast to the
notional act, the creative act is attributed to a supposit that is not grasped on a different mode
from the essence.
94 De Pot., q. 9, a. 5, ad 13: "In divinis autem proprietates personales hoc solum habent
quod supposita divinae naturne ab invicem distingmmrur, non :mtem sunt principium
subsistendi divinae essentiae: ipsa enim divina essentia est secundum se subsistens; sed e
converso proprietates personales habem quod subsistant ab essentia."
95 Cf. De Pot., q. 8, a. 2, ad 7.
96 ScG I, c. 21, no. 199: "Divina essentia est per se singulariter existens et in seipsa
individuata"; ScG I, c. 42, no. 346.
97 ScG IV, c. 14, no. 3503; cf. ScG l'V, c. 10, no. 3452.

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557

by another God, the personal property does not exist in another
person. In conclusion:
For this reason, we say that there is only one God, since there is only one
subsisting essence [una essentia subsistens]; and we say that there are many
persons, in virtue of the distinction of subsisting relations f.propter
distinctionem subsistentium relationum]. 98

It seems that, in order to understand these texts in their full
meaning, one ought to take into account two principles of
reading. The first is in the rule of redoublement discussed above,
which is based on the distinction between "common" and
"proper" in God the Trinity. The complexity of our knowledge
of the mystery, faced with the impossibility of extracting the
persons from the essence as if they were an emanation or an
effusion of it, obliges us to approach subsistence by a double
knowledge. The solution does not therefore consist in excluding
the conception of subsistence from the essence, which conception
the Thomist doctrine of pure Act cannot in fact renounce; rather
it is necessary to see where the synthesis of the two approaches
takes place. Now it is very clearly in the teaching on the
person- "what is most perfect fperfectissimum] in all
nature" 99-as subsisting relation that this integration is effected.
It is necessary to note here a particular application that, under
the aspect of our access to the knowledge of God, accounts for
the fact that some non-Christians can conceive of God as a person
who exists or subsists. Thomas gives here, as an example, the
Jewish faith, but one can extend his explanation to other nonChristian religions as well as to philosophical reflection that
borders on the idea of a personal God: "If, by our thought, one
abstracts the personal properties, there still remains in our
consideration the divine nature as a subsisting reality and as a
person. " 100 The reason advanced by Thomas is the real identity of
98 ScG IV, c. 14, no. 3502. It is in order to account for this double approach that the
Thomist tradition has developed the concept of "communicable subsistence" distinct from
the "incommunicable subsistence" proper to the divine person.
99 STh I, q. 29, a. 3.
100 STh ill, q. 3, a. 3, ad l; cf. ad 2.

GILLES EMERY, O.P.

558

quo est and
quod est in God: all that one attributes to God
under an abstract mode (quo, for example the nature or the
essence signified as a form), considered in itself, and even if one
abstracts from the rest, ought necessarily to be thought as a
subsisting reality because of the perfect simplicity of God. This
thesis, which is not unique to Thomas (one finds it already in
Albert and Bonaventure), 101 establishes dearly that the idea of a
certain personality of God is accessible outside of Christian faith:
in making precise our concepts, it constitutes an important
foundation of interreligious dialogueo This does not involve,
however, a consideration of the reality of God as the Christian
faith teaches it, since in this case personality pertains exclusively
to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, without the
addition of a fourth termo Indeed, if one knows God "as he is
[sicuti est]," Thomas specifies, it is impossible to proceed to the
abstraction of one thing in order to maintain another thing,
God is one (divine simplicity)o The
because all that is
abstraction of divine relations consequently cuts out the whole
reality of God, because the essence is not a substrate other than
the rdation: 102 "nothing remains," as has been seen aboveo
Thus, the particular case of the abstraction of Trinitarian
relations so as to pose an "absolute" subsistence of the divine
essence, in order to conceive of God as a person, hardly causes
difficulties, since this abstraction is explicitly cut off from
Trinitarian faith and does not envisage the full reality of Godo By
isolating a concept, however, it reveals itself to be capable of
conceiving the rational character of a non-Christian monotheism,
safeguarding at the same time the prerogatives of faith which
alone permits one to know the three persons in Godo Thomas
employs the same procedure of abstraction in order to deny that,
from the plenitude of God (goodness, love, beatitude), one could
have deduced the plurality of persons: 103 human reason can
Cf. Albert the Great, Commentarii in I Sent., d. 2, a. 12, ad 1; Bonaventure, In librum
Sent., m, d. 5, a. 1, q. 4.
102 Sfh m, q. 3, a. 3 and ad 3.
103 I Sent., I, d. 3, q. 1, a. 4, ad 3. The theological argumentation in this domain (the
psychological analogy for example) resides rather in certain "adaptations," and never in
necessary reasons.
101

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559

certainly arrive at the full goodness and beatitude of a unique
God conceived as subsistent, but it could not find a motif that
establishes the divine tripersonality.
This point leads us to the second principle of reading. The
opposition between essence and person, as the opposition between essence and subsisting relation, leads to an impasse, since
it is not a matter of two great irreducibles, neither on the level of
reality (there is only a distinction of reason between essence and
person or relation), nor even on the level of concepts. The notion
of person, as we have said, assumes or integrates the reality of
essence and the notion of subsisting relation is unthinkable
without the concept of essence. "The divine essence, although it
is subsisting, cannot be separated from the relation that it is
necessary to understand in God." 104 At stake is once again the
numerical identity of the essence in each of the persons, following
the homoousion of Nicaea. In the subsisting relation, Thomas
joins the two aspects, that of the esse and that of the ratio. When
one speaks of subsisting relation, it is of the relation reuniting the
two aspects that one treats. When Thomas isolates "the relation
as relation," that is to say the relation according to its proper
ratio which consists in the pure ad aliquid, he only describes a
component, intended to manifest the distinction of persons which
leaves intact the pure unity of the divine substance that this ad
aliquid does not modify. And when he treats of the existence of
relation in God, he specifies: "The esse of the relation does not
depend on the substance [nee esse relationis est esse dependens
neque a substantia], nor on another exterior reality, since the
being of the relation is the being of the essence. " 105 Correlatively,
there would be a profound misunderstanding in thinking that,
' 04 ScG IV, c. 14, no. 3502: "Essentia enim divina, etsi subsistens sit, non tamen potest
separari a relarione quam oportet in Deo intelligi ex hoc quod Verbum conceptum divinae
menris est ab ipso Deo dicente. Nam et Verbum est divina essentia, ut ostensum est; et Deus
dicens, a quo est Verbum, est eriam divina essentia; non alia et alia, sed eadem numero." The
same thing holds for the spiration of Love.
105 ScG IV, c. 14, no. 3508. It is in creatures that there is a dependence between the "to
be" of the relation and the "to be" of the substance bearing the accident. G. Ventimiglia, "Le
relazioni divine secondo S. T ommaso d' Aquino: Riproposizione di un problema e prospettive
di indagine," Studi tomistici 44 (1991): 166-82.

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when one speaks of "essence" in God, on the level of reality, one
has spoken of something other than the relation.
The question, at bottom, is this: what is a relation? If,
following the path of a conceptualist nominalism, the relation is
grasped as a category of understanding, a comparison or putting
in relationship of two absolute realities, of such kind that this
relation amounts to a concept or to the act by which the knowing
subject refers this thing to that thing, 106 or if it is solely defined as
a relationship existing between two realities but not in them, so
that its being is posed necessarily against the being of realities
referred to or outside of these realities, Trinitarian theology could
only very laboriously try to reunite the being of the essence and
that of the relation in a convincing way. The thought of Thomas
thus becomes incomprehensible. But if the esse and the ratio of
the relation are considered in the synthesis proposed by Thomas,
one can see clearly that the constitution and distinction of divine
persons comes back to the relation "inasmuch as it is divine
essence and relation" 107 at the same time, although this implies no
dependence of the relation with respect to the divine essence.
We should recall here the exegesis of Cajetan who-against the
critique of Peter Auriol and with the purpose of avoiding the
consequences of Scotist theology (which tends to pose the constitution of the divine person by an absolute property) 108-reads
in the Summa Theologiaethe affirmation of a constitution of the
divine person by the relation as such. Cajetan interprets the texts
by means of the following distinction: when one affirms that
relation constitutes the divine person because it is identical to the
essence (quia est eadem essentiae), one indicates that relation
holds this privilege from the essence as from its root (radicaliter);
106 Cf. notably R. Schonberger, Relation als Vergleich:Die Relationstheoriedes Johannes
Buridan im Kontext seines Denkens und der Scholastik (Leiden: Brill, 1994) (a study of the

doctrine of relation from Thomas Aquinas to Buridan).
107 De Pot., q. 8, a. 3, ad 9; cf. also ad 7-8.
108 Duns Scotus, Lectura in I Sent., d. 26, q. un. (Opera Omnia, vol. 17, pp. 328-37).
Scotus, appealing to Bonaventure, holds as more probable the opinion according to which the
person is not constituted by the relation but by an absolute reality, so that the divine persons
are first thought of as absolutes and only secondly as the relations by which they are referred.

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561

when one affirms that relation constitutes the divine person
inasmuch as it is the divine essence (ut est essentia), one attributes
formally (formaliter) the constitution of the divine person to the
relation. Cajetan accounts for the theses of the De Potentia by
means of the first affirmation, although he explains the thought
of the Summa Theologiae, where the presentation of relation is
better unified, by means of the second. Whatever the difference
between the De Potentia and the Summa and the accuracy of
Cajetan's interpretation, he notes quite rightly that Thomas has
in view divine relation, and that it comes back to being able to
speak of divine relation and subsisting relation. A relation in
creatures, indeed, does not possess of itself that which constitutes
a person: it is to the divine relation, from the fact that there are
no accidents in God, that this belongs. In this way, if one thinks
of the subsisting relation as a reality formally divine (in the
"genre" of divina), it belongs to this relation insofar as it is a
relation that constitutes the person: the relation in this case
constitutes the person in virtue of its very formality (infra
latitudinem relativam), without thereby excluding the radical role
of the essence. In other words, "the relation constitutes the
person in this way alone: by posing itself, because it is the person
itself fponendo seipsam, quia est ipsa persona]." 109
These precisions certainly pretend to nothing more than an
identification of the order in the diverse aspects of our
understanding of the mystery. Nevertheless they show that
Thomas does not present the divine relation, taken in a complete
manner (ratio and esse), as a greatness in competition with the
essence, and that the esse that one should attribute to the essence
does not diminish the privilege of the relation: it is indeed in its
formality and its integral reality of divine relation that it
constitutes the persons and distinguishes them.

109 Cajetan, In I, q. 40, a. 4 (Ed. Leonine, vol. 4, p. 419). Cf. Vanier, Theologie trinitaire
chez saint Thomas d'Aquin, 77-80; idem, "La relation trinitaire dans la Somme theologique
de saint Thomas d'Aquin," Sciencesecclesiastiques1 (1948): 143-59, esp. 156-59.

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CONCLUSION

The relationship between essence and personal relation in
God, according to Thomas Aquinas, is entirely bound up with the
very structure of his treatise on God. This treatise is based on the
path of our access to God and on a conceptual organization that
makes the doctrine of persons, inasmuch as they are subsisting
relations, the place of synthesis of all the preliminary elements.
To place essence and relation in concurrence, as two great
opposites or exterior one to the other, would amount to
misunderstanding Thomas's synthesis of relation. Our understanding of the texts consequently is not aided by posing the
exclusive primacy of one notion or the other, as if the one should
prevail to the detriment of the other. If the problem of
essentialism and personalism should consist in a systematic
opposition of these two notions, one must recognize that, in St.
Thomas at least, this would be a false question where the terms
are badly posed. The reading of the texts of Thomas that
articulates the perspective of common and of proper invites us
rather to understand, through the redoublementof our discourse,
the integration of the diverse elements in their summit, that is to
say in the doctrine of subsisting relation which furnishes the key
of the organization of the treatise of God. The constitution and
the subsistence of persons come down to relation and its integral
being, without negating the preliminary study of the essence and
without refusing to the essence the fundamental role that our
understanding of the mystery assigns it. The important accent
placed by Thomas on the Trinitarian principle of creation and on
the personal dimension in the accomplishment of salvation, by
means of notions keyed to his doctrine of divine persons, shows
the fecundity of this teaching and its capacity to render account
of the divine activity ad extra.
There is not, in Thomas, any attempt (or any possibility) of
conceiving the person in God the Trinity as a divine Being
personalized in a nonrelational or prerelational manner. The idea
of a unique personality of God, which grounds the rational
legitimacy of a monotheism outside of Christian faith (and which

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563

safeguards the gratuity of the revelation of the Trinity!), is not
added to the divine tripersonality and offers only an incomplete
knowledge that does not consider God as he is. The personal
distinction in God is never posed as an emanation from the
essence: neither in the doctrine of processions, nor in the
knowledge of the person of the Father, nor in the study of the
distinct persons. This speculative motif, which grounds the
distinction between the treatise on the essence and that on the
plurality of the persons, retains the prerogatives of faith, since a
personal plurality in God cannot be extracted from a knowledge
of the essence or of the essential acts. From this point of view,
replacing a treatise on what concerns the essence by a treatise on
the Father would constitute perhaps less an advance than a
regression towards a prerelational conception of the divine
person. This is why, in the light of the thought of St. Thomas, the
question of Trinitarian personalism invites an inquiry into one's
conception of relation and the role that one recognizes for it in
manifesting the intelligibility of the faith.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 565-80

FOR INSERTING A NEW QUESTION (26A) IN THE PRIMA
PARS
FREDERICK E. CROWE
Lonergan Research Institute
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

l

ust over fifty years ago Bernard Lonergan finished his series of
articles on "The Concept of Verbum in the Writings of St.
Thomas Aquinas." 1 Though his general thesis has made an
pact on Thomist studies and been recognized in the wider
academic world, 2 there are still many particular points to study
and many implications of the main thesis to explore. The present
article explores the meaning and implications of an intriguing
statement Lonergan makes in the concluding pages of his study:
"Thus, the Augustinian psychological analogy makes trinitarian
theology a prolongation of natural theology, a deeper insight into
what God is. " 3
I interpret this deeper insight as the discovery of a new divine
attribute, and I will argue that discussion of this new divine
attribute belongs between questions 26 and 2 7 of the Prima pars,
where it functions as a new and unifying transition from the
questions on God as one to the questions on God as three, so that

Studies 1946-49, published in book form as Verbum: Word and Idea in
Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967; 2d ed., Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1997); henceforth Verbum, with page references to the 1997 edition.
2 For example, Anthony Kenny, Aquinas (London: Oxford University Press, 1980), 83:
1 Theological

"The best book in English about Aquinas's philosophy of mind is Bernard Lonergan's
Verbum."
3 Verbum, 215. Lonergan really meant this point to be taken seriously, for a little later on
the same page he repeats it: "the psychological analogy truly gives a deeper insight into what
God is."
565

566

FREDERICKE. CROWE

questions 2 to 43, instead of being two treatises (God as one, God
as three) can be seen as one treatise on God, with no jump to a
new consideration at question 27.
To mark this proposal, I would insert a new question between
the present question 26 and the present question 27, tentatively
calling it question 26A. I will first show the opening Thomas
leaves for an insertion here, then set forth the relevant human
perfection uncovered by Lonergan, transfer it in the usual way of
analogy to a divine attribute, and conclude with brief reflections
on repercussions this proposal may have on our doctrine of God.
I. THE ORDER OF THE PRIMA PARS

The grand sweep of Thomas's master plan for his Summa
Theologiae has been a fertile field for Tho mist exegesis.4 The
rationale of this division is of the highest interest to Thomists but
it has no immediate reference to our present question. Within the
Prima pars itself there is an introductory question on sacra
doctrina,after which Thomas unfolds his plan, laid out according
to the intention of this sacra doctrina, namely, "to discuss [our]
knowledge of God, and not only as he is in himself, but also as he
is the cause of [created] things and their final end. "5 The treatise
on God "as he is in himself" covers questions 2 to 43, and that on
God as principle of creation the rest of the Prima pars. Once more
the rationale of this division has no immediate reference to our
topic.
Within the treatise on God "as he is in himself" we come to a
division and order that is highly relevant to our topic. Thomas
4 It is not part of my commitment to study the literature on this, but I may mention by
way of example the justifiably famous analysis proposed by M.-D. Chenu; he saw the whole
Summa under the heading of an "emanation et •.. retour ... la la pars et la Ila Pars sont
entre elles comme exitus et .•. reditus ... deux branches de la courbe qui, partant de Dieu,
ramene tout a lui," with the third part figuring as the means God chose for that return.
M.-D. Chenu, Introduction a l'etude de saint Thomas d.Aquin, 1d ed. (Montreal: Institut
d'Etudes Medievales; Paris: J. Vrin, 1954) 266; see also ibid., 260-64 and 266-73, which are
devoted to "La construction de la Somme."
5 STh I, q. 2, pro.: "Dei cognitionem tradere, et non solum secundum quod in se est, sed
etiam secundum quod est principium rerum et finis earum."

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

567

divides this section to consider first "those things that pertain to
the divine essence" (questions 2-26), and then "those things that
pertain to the distinction of persons" (questions 27-43). 6
The twenty-five questions from 2 to 26 consider such matters
as God's existence, perfection, goodness, infinity, eternity, unity,
knowledge, will, and power. With question 27 Thomas begins to
treat "of those things which pertain to the trinity of persons in
divinity," and because the persons are distinguished according to
origin he will treat first the question of origin or procession, then
that of relations, and thirdly that of persons,7 before going on to
the many questions that arise in regard to individual persons, the
comparison of persons, and so on. 8 Thomas's first Trinitarian
question is therefore, "whether there is procession in God. " 9
I believe Thomas has left an opening here for a new question,
for he makes the transition from the divine essence to the Trinity
without assigning grounds for that transition, and indeed without
assigning grounds for this order of the treatises. Of course, he has
reasons for his procedure. That God is one and God is three is
part of his faith, so he must consider both. Further, in considering
two things, there must be an order of one after the other; and
Thomas chooses to take essence first and distinction of persons
second. Nothing could be simpler; the Thomist order is perfectly
normal. But it is an ordering of our beliefs, not an ordering
according to theological reasons. We believe God to be one and
we believe God to be three, and we have reasons for each of these
beliefs; but that does not give us a theological reason for the
order of the Prima pars. Why, for example, do we not begin with
6 Ibid.: "ea quae ad essenriam divinam pertinent" and "ea quae pertinent ad distincrionem
personarum." Note that Thomas regards the whole Prima pars as a treatise on God, setting
it in contradistinction to the treatise "de motu rationalis creaturae in Deum" (on the
movement of a rational creature to God), covered in Secunda pars. Also note that the treatise
on God is "tripartita," including as its third part a treatise on "ea quae pertinent ad
processum creaturarum ab ipso" (those things which pertain to the procession of creatures
from him [questions 44-119])-again a division that touches our question only because the
procession of creatures from God could be seen by analogy as continuous with the
processions of Son and Spirit internalto God.
7 STh I, q. 27, pro.: "de his quae pertinent ad trinitatem personarum in divinis."
8 STh I, q. 29, pro.
9 SI'h I, q. 27, a. 1, pro.: "Utrum processio sit in divinis."

568

FREDERICKE. CROWE

the triune God and proceed in the second place to the unitary
God? One might well argue that the triune God has a stronger
claim than the unitary to be basic in our concepts.
In any case, since Thomas is writing according to a reasoned
series, "according to the order of teaching, " 10 there seems to be
need and room here to give a theological justification of the
order, whatever it be, that we happen to choose. Can we justify
the Thomist order, starting with the divine essence and turning
from a treatise on God as one to a treatise on God as three? It
will be part of my contention that by assigning a new attribute to
the divine essence we can do just that, thereby justifying his
transition from questions De Deo uno to questions De Deo trino
and seeing that transition less as a transition and more as a link
to make one integral treatise out of two.
There is, however, a real oddity in the role of question 26 in
the Tho mist "plan" which must be mentioned here. Thomas twice
rounds off the questions that pertain to the unity of the divine
essence, as if ready in each case to proceed to the distinction of
persons, but in the first of these transitions he turns, not to the
distinction of persons, but to a question on divine beatitude. Thus
in his prologue to question 26 he says, "Finally, after considering
those things that pertain to the unity of the divine essence we
have to consider ... "Surely, we think, he means to turn now to
the distinction of persons. Not so. His topic is beatitude: after
considering what pertains to the unity of God "we have to
consider the divine beatitude. " 11 (As if beatitude did not pertain
to the divine essence!) Then, in the prologue to question 27, he
again rounds off the questions pertaining to the divine unity, and
this time proceeds to Trinitarian questions: "Having considered
the things that pertain to the unity of the divine essence, it
remains ... " and now the Trinity: it remains "to consider the
things that pertain to the trinity of persons in God. " 12
10 Prologue to Summa and to the Prima pars: "secundum ordinem disciplinae."
11 STh l, q. 26, pro.: "Ultimo autem, post considerationem eorum quae ad divinae
essentiae unitatem pertinent, considerandum est de divina beatitudine."
12 STh l, q. 27, pro.: "Consideratis autem his quae ad divinae essentiae unitatem pertinent,
restat considerare de his quae pertinent ad trinitatem personarum in divinis."

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

569

The perplexity is compounded by the further oddity that the
question on beatitude is not announced in any of the carefully
drawn plans of the Prima pars, nor is any rationale for its inclusion given in question 26 itself. 13 It seems to be an afterthought
of Thomas, but even so we would expect his "Finally" sentence
to read, "Finally, among those things that pertain to the unity of
the divine essence we have to consider beatitude." This oddity has
no special significance for our topic, but it does prompt the
question whether Thomas felt the need of some transitional idea
from God as one to God as three. 14

II. A NEW PERFECTION OF HUMAN SPIRIT: RATIONAL
CONSCIOUSNESS

The contention of this article is that Lonergan's Verbum study
uncovers a new human perfection, that this suggests a new
attribute under which to consider the divine essence, that this new
attribute affects quite radically the Thomist transition from
question 26 to question 27, and that notable clarifications of
general Trinitarian questions result as byproducts. I proceed now
to the first of these claims.
What I am calling here a new human perfection needs its own
name. Lonergan, after the example of Aquinas, is more concerned
with meaning than with words, 15 so the term he uses here is
13 The oddity continues in that Cajetan, in his commentary published with the Leonine
edition of Thomas, does not advert to the problem.
14 This is the kind of question without data that encourages guessing, a quite harmless
pastime as long as we know that we are guessing. Here is one guess. The Prima secundae,
dealing with our "reditus" to God, begins with our last end, which is beatitude. Did Thomas,
on writing this part, realize "But I said nothing about beatitude in God," and so go back to
insert question 26 in the Prima pars without tidying up the details of the prologues outlining
his plan?
15 Some data on this may be found in Verbum, 115: "so far was Aquinas from the
stereotyped terminology that sometimes is attributed to him that he could write 'a wise
person is not fussy about words' (Aquinas, II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 1 sol.: 'sapientis enim est non
curare de nominibus')"; see also Verbum 127, 130. The whole of chapter 3, "Procession and
Related Notions," is worth reading for perspective on terminology. See also Bernard
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas
(London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971), 142: "as if to insist upon meaning and to

570

FREDERICK E. CROWE

"rationality," and the new divine attribute would be the
rationality of God. The connotations of this term make it less
than happy as a concept for the divine, and in fact Lonergan does
not seem to have used it for God. It is ambiguous even for human
psychology, for what Lonergan proposes is not some generic
rationality but a quite specific one, and though he later names it
more specificaHy "reflective rationality" 16 the term "reflective" is
also in need of explanation and further specification. Let us not
cavil, however, about the term, but look to the meaning as it
emerges in Lonergan's explanation, first in abbreviated form, then
at greater length.
The brief explanation runs as follows:
To introduce a term that will summarize all this, we may say that the inner
word is rational, not indeed with the derived rationality of discourse, of
reasoning from premises to conclusions, but with the basic and essential
rationality of rational consciousness, with the rationality that can be discerned
in any judgment, with the rationality that now we have to observe in all
concepts. 17

This makes the point positivdy and negatively, but it is somewhat
cryptic, an abbreviation, introducing "a term that wiH
summarize," so we must tum to the fuH explanation as given
Verbum.
The proximate context and occasion for the Verbum study was
the need, as Lonergan saw to overcome the conceptualism that
afflicted much of Thomistic exegesis: the disposition, namely, to
take concepts for granted as a bask given, to compare the
concepts in judgments, and to compare the judgments in
syllogisms, and only secondly to search for understanding. For
Lonergan this represents a blackout of the whole rich universe of
insights which are the fertile source of concepts, and an oversight
of the intelligible procession of concepts (and judgments and
contemn terminological primness"; also p. 69.
16 Verbum, 207. We avoid giving the won:! "reflective"
the sense of a second act
supervening 011 direct understanding and knowledge; it means rather that reflection in a
special sense is internal to every procession of a word in us; it means the same as the "because
of" character of our inner words.
17 Ibid., 46-4 7.

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

571

syllogisms) from an act of understanding. Instead of that rich
universe bequeathed to us by Aristotle and Aquinas, and the
intelligible procession of concepts which was added by Aquinas,
we have what Lonergan rather caustically describes as a
"metaphysical sausage machine, at one end slicing species off
phantasm, and at the other popping out concepts" -a poor
substitute for what he sees as "an operation of rational
consciousness. " 18
To this negating element there has to be added the positive
side. We have to pin down this "basic and essential rationality of
rational consciousness," this "operation of rational consciousness." Lonergan does this by contrast with natural process, the
process, say, of heating: "The intelligibility of natural process is
passive and potential ... but it is not the very stuff of intellect."
Or, if we tum to the laws by which we understand natural
process, we find that they have "the intelligibility of some specific
natural law ... but never the intelligibility of the very idea of
intelligible law." Even then, "the intelligibility of natural process
is imposed from without; natures act intelligibly," but not
intelligently.
On all three of these points Lonergan contrasts the
intelligibility of the procession of an inner word.
[T]he intelligibility of the procession of an inner word is not passive nor
potential; it is active and actual ... it is intelligible, not as the possible object
of understanding is intelligible, but as understanding itself and the activity of
understanding is intelligible. Again, its intelligibility defies formulation in any
specific law .... [It] is the pure case of intelligible law .... Thirdly, it is native
and natural for the procession of inner word to be intelligible, actively
intelligible, and the genus of all intelligible process .... intelligence in act does
not follow laws imposed from without, but rather it is the ground of the
intelligibility in act of law, it is constitutive and, as it were, creative of law; and
the laws of intelligible procession of an inner word are not any particular laws
but the general constituents of any law .... an inner word not merely has a
sufficient ground in the act of understanding it expresses; it also has a knowing
as sufficient ground, and that ground is operative precisely as a knowing,
knowing itself to be sufficient. 19
18

Ibid., 48.

19 Ibid., 4 7.

572

FREDERICK E. CROWE

With this Lonergan comes to the short form of his key statement,
summarize
this,
already quoted: "To introduce a term that
we may say that the inner word is
not indeed with the
derived rationality of discourse, of reasoning from premises to
conclusions, but
the bask and essential rationality of rational
consciousness."
This amounts to saying that we have discovered a new
perfection of human spirit and human consciousness: a new
perfection, we might add, that borrows the use of an old name.
But there is a hint of where we might find a new name, for later
Lonergan adds a contrast between "caused by" and "because of,"
a way of putting it that might be converted into a better name
than rationality.
[I]nner words do not proceed with mere natural spontaneity as any effect does
from any cause; they proceed with reflective rationality ... not merely from
a sufficient cause but from sufficient grounds known to be sufficient and
because they are known to be sufficient. ... The inner word of defining is not
only caused by but also because of the act of understanding. 20

Thus this "basic and essential rationality of rational
consciousness/' this "operation of rational consciousness/' has to
do with internal process. It is a process within inteHigence. It is an
inteUigible process; more, it is an inteHigent process. It is a
process from knowledge to knowledge, from knowledge as
insight, as perfection, as insight into a particular phantasm, to
knowledge as the expression of the insight, knowledge as
conceived, objectified, made universal. It has a "because of"
character; it is intrinsicaHy in itself, and not just as seen in an
object, a "because of"; we could
it a "because-of-ness," were
not that phrase such a mouthful in English.
My own preferred term for this perfection is ipsum quia
(because-of-ness itself), coined on the pattern of ipsum intelligere
(understanding itself, the very essence of understanding) and
ipsum ama:re (loving itsdf, the very essence of loving), where quia
20 Ibid., 207; see 220: " ... thought because of understanding, and love because of both,
where 'because' means not the logical relation between propositions but the real processio
intelligibilisof an intellectual

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

573

has the same essential dynamism as intelligere and amare, and
adds the new dynamism of "from ... to"; it is the "because of"
linking "from X" and ..to Y." If the form ipsum quia suggests a
divine attribute in parity with ipsum intelligere and ipsum amare,
that is all to the good, because I propose it as a divine essential
dynamism, as pertaining to the essence of the one God, and as a
better name for the new attribute than the rather infelicitous
"rationality," even if we convert the latter to "rationality itself."
I have so far avoided the Latin term emanatio intelligibilis
(intelligible emanation), though it figures so prominently in
Lonergan's thought. This very Thomist phrase is the carrier for
his exposition of rationality, but it is a problem to many. 21
Though the term occurs not frequently in Thomas, it is definitely
Thomist, and the core purpose of Lonergan's Verbum articles was
to recover the idea Thomas had of it, 22 which is simply another
way of stating what we have already said, that his purpose was to
overcome a conceptualism that had no room for an emanatio
intelligibilis. Emanatio intelligibilis is, in fact, the complete
antithesis of the "metaphysical sausage machine" mentioned
above.
In any case the phrase is definitely a key to Thomas's
Trinitarian thought. In the very first article of his Trinitarian
questions in the Prima pars, he lists and sets aside various modes
of procession to arrive at emanatio intelligibilis as the only
procession that elucidates our faith in the divine Word:
Procession [in God] is not then to be understood the way it occurs in the
corporeal world, either through local motion or through the action of some
21 Karl Rahner is said to have been puzzled by Lonergan's use of it, and to have asked
someone supposedly in the know, uwhat does he mean by emanatio intelligibilis?" It is useful
to adduce this item of news, coming to us by the academic grape-vine but apparently
authentic, for it suggests that emanatio intelligibilis is not part of the stock-in-trade of current
Thomism and that it may have a meaning not yet widely recovered in our utraditional"
interpretation of Thomas.
22 Verbum, 222: "my purpose has been to understand what Aquinas meant by the
intelligible procession of an inner word." The focused treatment is Verbum, 46-59; pp. 206-8
list the equivalent phrases, of which the preferred one seems to be processio intelligibilis; but
it looks as if Thomas himself did not use the term emanatio intelligibilis frequently, and this
may account for our neglect of it.

574

FREDERICKE. CROWE

cause to produce an external effect, as heat [proceeds] from the heater to the
heated, but is to be understood as intelligible emanation, as of an intelligible
word from the speaker. 23

Further, in the justly famous treatment in book 4 of the
Summa contra Gentiles Thomas goes through in far greater detail
a similar series of emanations that are to be set aside in order to
conclude, "It remains therefore that divine generation is to be
understood as intellectual emanation. " 24 The occurrence of the
phrase in these two key loci of Thomist Trinitarian doctrine
cannot but be significant for the meaning Thomas attached to the
phrase. As for the meaning it has for Lonergan, it is simply a
Latin form of "basic and essential rationality of rational consciousness," or of the "operation of rational consciousness."
We need another step before we proceed to speak of
"reflective rationality" or ipsum quia as an attribute of God. This
rationality has an aspect we may call generic in the sense that it
applies both to the procession of concept and judgment in us
(these are one in the procession of God's one Word) and to the
procession of love. We may call it transcendental in the sense not
only that it is not limited to any one of these three occurrences,
but also in the sense that it is an attribute of consciousness and the
condition of possibility of any of the occurrences. 25
This, I believe, is of some importance for our transfer of the
human attribute to God. I would illustrate it by a parallel in
Lonergan's position on what may be called the transcendental
23 STh I, q. 27, a. 1: "Non ergo accipienda est processio secundum quod est in
corporalibus vel per modum localem, vel per actionem alicuius causae in exteriorem
effectum, ut calor a calefaciente in calefactum, sed secundum emanationem intelligibilem,
utpote verbi intelligibilis a dicente."
24 ScG IV, c. 1 (paragraph 8 in the Leonine manual edition}: "Relinquitur igitur quod
generatio divina secundum intellectualem emanationem sit intelligenda."
25 For Lonergan's use of "transcendental," see A Second Collection (London: Darton,
Longman & Todd Ltd, 1974; repr. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 207, "in
the Scholastic sense (it is not confined to any particular genus or category ... ) and in the
Kantian sense (it is the condition of possibility ..• of any categorial method}"; A Third
Collection (New York: Paulist, 1985), 145 n. 8: "three meanings •.. the most general ...
concepts ... of the Scholastics; the Kantian conditions of the possibilityof knowing an object
a priori; Husserl's intentionality analysis in which ... act and object, are correlative"; and
Third Collection, 82-83.

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

575

character of "is." "Is," Lonergan says,26 may be thought of in two
ways. First, it may be viewed as contrasted with "was" and with
"will be." But there is a second way to think of it, a way in which
"is" is not contrasted with "was" or "will be," a way rather which
finds a common and fundamental reference to being in all three.
There is an aspect of "is" that underlies its use in the three
temporal meanings and prescinds altogether from temporal
connotations. If we get hold of that aspect which is common to
all three, which underlies all three, which pervades all three,
which does not include a reference to time, we will have a radical
sense of "is" and, I have argued elsewhere, a radical new meaning
for eternal life and eternal being. 27 In a similar way, there is a
"because-of" character that pertains to the dynamism of the
human mind in a way that is prior to all particular instances of
rational consciousness and so provides an analogy for the divine
dynamism where we conceive "ipsum quia" as an essential divine
attribute and as in our thinking prior to and grounding the two
Trinitarian processions.
III. A NEW ATIRIBUTE OF THE DIVINE ESSENCE: lPSUM QUIA

Our human word is not only caused by an insight; it is also
consciously "because of" the insight. While the ontological
"caused by" is irrelevant to Trinitarian theology, 28 the cognitional
"because of," as a property and perfection of the human, provides
the possibility of analogous understanding of ipsum quia as a
divine attribute. There is in God not only the procession of an
inner Word and the procession of inner Love, and so three divine
26 Bernard Lonergan, De scientia atque voluntate Dei: Supplementum schematicum,
unpublished notes for students of the course De praedestinatione, College of Christ the King
(now Regis College), Toronto, March 1950, caput 3.
27 Frederick E. Crowe, "Complacency and Concern in the Risen Life," Lonergan
Workshop 13 (1997): 18-19; for the original presentation of this idea, see idem, "Rethinking
Eternal Life: Philosophical Notions from Lonergan," Science et Esprit 45 (1993): 25-39.
28 With the mature Thomas we avoid saying the Word is "caused by" the Father's
"dicere," or that proceeding Love, the welling forth of Love, is "caused by" the Utterance and
the Word; though Thomas did speak of the proceeding person as being produced (SI'h I, q.
37, a. 2, ad 3), this is not characteristic of his language; see Verbum, 204, 206.

576

FREDERICKE. CROWE

Persons, but also, in the divine essence, a radical dynamism that
has the character of "because of," that can be named ipsum quia,
that in our human thinking is the ground of the pro-cessions of
Word and Love, that is a divine fermentation such that those
processions can be.
It is this rationality, conceived as a human perfection and
therefore as pertaining in the via eminentiae to the being and
essence of God, that we have now to study in its divine form. An
indirect and preparatory step is to open our minds to the concept
and possibility of an internal infinite and eternal dynamism in
God. Here I draw on a Thomist professor29 who, to overcome the
appearance of the "static" in the divine "is," an appearance of the
static that we too readily attach to "is" used as a copula, proposed
that when we say "God is," we think of God as "is-ing." It is a
striking expression, and though it is not directly relevant to the
concept of "rationality" in God it can play a supportive role in
our conception of rationality as a divine dynamic and eternal
perfection.
I would first conceive this new attribute in its purest form, in
its most generic aspect, by simply saying that God is such as to
have in the divine essence an attribute that underlies our human
concept of the divine processions. That ought to be readily
conceded, for it is little more than an analytic proposition: there
are processions internal to God, therefore the being of God is
such as to have internal processions. We first conceive this divine
attribute, then, simply as a "suchness"-God is "such" as to have
two internal processions. At this abstract stage we already have an
attribute of the divine essence conceived in relationship to the
divine processions, and so the possibility of an ordered transition
from question 26 to question 27 of the Prima pars, and a quite
natural transition from a treatise De Deo uno to a treatise De Deo

trino.
It is desirable, however, to conceive this "suchness" in a more
concrete way, for as yet we have little positive content for our
new question 26A, and could propose the question in Thomist
29 From Toronto's

Mediaeval Institute, I believe, but I am dependent on my unreliable
memories of fifty years ago.

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

577

form only as "Whether God is such as to be able to have internal
processions." 3°For that more positive understanding I call again
on book 4 of the Summa contra Gentiles, which we can use as a
springboard to our conception. Thomas sets up a series of higher
and higher emanations in which principle and term come closer
and closer to identity, while the emanation remains and, we may
even say, grows in perfection. A baseball proceeds (emanates)
from the bat of the batter, and is totally extrinsic to the bat. A
plant proceeds from a seed, and is also extrinsic to the seed; still,
the process began within the principle of the emanation,
inasmuch as the seed was formed there. In an animal, the image
proceeds from the sensation, and is extrinsic to it, since at this
level of life sensitive potency does not reflect on itself. Still, both
principle and term are now internal to the animal: they are now
more nearly one. But then we come to the life of intellect, which
is able to reflect on itself, so that the principle and term approach
identity, less perfectly in human intelligence since the process
starts outside in the object sensed, more perfectly in the angel, in
whom the process is totally internal, with absolute perfection in
God in whom principle and term are perfectly one in being. 31
Here we have a series of the same type as that which Newman
constructed for the approach of a polygon to a circle. Increase the
number of sides in the polygon as much as you please; with each
step you come closer to the circle, but you never reach the circle,
you simply find a way to point to it. 32 In the same way Thomas,
in this illuminating series of emanations, approaches ever more
closely to the identity in being of Father and Son, while their
distinction, signified and grounded by the emanation, is preserved
untouched; the distinction of being is disappearing while the
reality of the procession and the distinction of persons remain.
The series points to its goal-reality of procession without
difference in being-but cannot reach it except by analogy and
the way of eminence.
30 "Utrum

Deus sit talis ut possit habere processiones intemas."

31 ScG IV, c. 11.
32 John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1930), 320-21.

578

FREDERICKE. CROWE

We need a similar series to point to our goal of conceiving
rationality, ipsum quia, without principle or term, a series that
shows the ipsum quia to remain while the distinction of a term
that is "cognitional cause" and a term that is "because of"
vanishes. Could we simply take over and adapt the Thomist
series? To a certain extent that might be possible. For Thomas the
task was to show the identity of being of principle and term of the
emanation, while maintaining the reality of the emanation. Ours
would be to show the identity of a divine rationality, the oneness
of the "because-of-ness" character of rational process, while
maintaining the reality of the emanatio intelligibilis and so the
distinction of an antecedent and what is "because of" that
antecedent. Just as the Thomist sequence brings principle and
term of an ontological process closer and closer together in one
identical being (the context for Thomas is the divine generation
of a Son, hence has a clear ontological cast), so a focus on the
rational side of the Thomist process would bring the rational
"cause" and the rational "consequence" closer and closer to the
identity of one rationality as an essential attribute, while
maintaining the reality of the "because of," and so the distinction
of the divine persons. Unfortunately, however, we would not be
able to duplicate all the Thomist steps, for the material and
sensitive emanations have no place in the world of "because of."
We await another Thomas to construct the series we need.
At the start of section II above, I proposed as a second step in
our essay that this new attribute, ipsum quia, affects quite
radically the Tho mist transition from question 26 to question 2 7.
We are ready now for that step, but it can be handled quite
briefly. Our new question, 26A, dealing with that new attribute,
would at once assume a natural locus between question 26 and
question 27 in the Prima pars. It would follow on question 26 as
a new dynamic attribute follows on the more static attributes
(though "static" suggests a kind of inertia and is not a happy term
for things divine). But clearly, and without unhappy connotations, the new attribute would take its place prior to question
27 and point to it. It really would provide that springboard to
question 27 that is not explicit in the Prima pars. Thus questions

PRIMA PARS, Q. 26A

579

2 to 43 of the Prima pars would form one "integral" treatise on
one "integral" God, God would be conceived by us the way He
is, namely, as three in natural unity, and there would be nothing
awkward in the transition from question 26 to question 27. 33
IV. BYPRODUCTS OF THE NEW ATTRIBUTE

A first and obvious byproduct of inserting this new attribute
into the Prima pars is the negative side of what I said more
positively in speaking of a nacl.ral transition from question 26 to
question 2 7: namely, to the charge that a treatise De Deo uno
followed by a treatise De Deo trino divides our God doctrine into
two parts, I would claim that Lonergan's new and deeper insight
gets the two parts back together again, so that we avoid the
appearance of a somewhat arbitrary jump, or of bringing in a
processioex machina in order to begin the Trinitarian study. The
question of the processions has no ex machina appearance now,
but rather arises quite naturally from the new concept we have of
God. Thus the unitary God is linked naturally with the
Trinitarian God and the Trinitarian God is continuous in human
thought with the unitary God, and we have the Trinity emerging
from within the nature of God instead of being considered in a
separate set of questions.
Not that we conceive the processions as processions from the
ipsum quia; that would be the processiooperationisthat Lonergan
repudiates in favor of a processiooperati.34 But as a human mind
has to think of the divine ipsum intelligerein two ways, as in the
Father as Dicens and as in the Son as Verbum, so we have to think
of the divine ipsum quia in two ways, as in the Father as in "that
because of which," and as in the Son as in the "becaused," or the

emanans.

-

33 We realize, of course, that Thomas did not number his questions; nevertheless the
traditional numbering is sacrosanct and if a new question is to be introduced it has to be
numbered 26A. An unwieldy alternative would be to modify question 27 somewhat to bring
it back to include a question on the divine essence.
34 Verbum, 205-6; see the index of the book for several references to processiooperationisprocessiooperati (procession of an operation-procession of a product of the operation).

580

FREDERICK E. CROWE

Another byproduct is that we avoid to some extent the
impression inevitably formed by speaking of "first, second, and
third" Persons. In the imagination of the believer a "first" Person
is somehow before and above and superior to the second and
third persons; the "first" Person has a se something the other two
"receive" and would otherwise lack. In the new perspective all
three are immediately related in our thinking to the "because-of"
attribute, for it is an attribute of the divine essence. Of course,
the traditional conception, once the Trinity is conceived in facto
esse (as already constituted), then all attributes are from the
Father and communicated to Son and Spirit; thus, for example,
the divine simplicity is communicated to Son and Spirit by the
Fathero So also, then, is ipsum quia communicated to Son and
Spirit by the Father. But there is a difference: the communication
of the divine simplicity from Father to Son is a notional act
facto esse, but the
following on the Trinity as conceived
relation of ipsum quia to a possible procession is antecedent to the
facto esse. While our concept of the
Trinity as conceived
Trinity is still
fieri (as on the way to being constituted). the
so for the distinction
potential for an emanatio intelligibilis
of the three is already intrinsic to the conception. 35 When the
psychological analogy is set forth, the Father will still be seen as
"first," and the Son and Spirit as "second" and "third/' but prior
to the order of the psychological analogy there is the new
attribute that potentially regards aH three without assigning the
36
order of first, second, and

35 The importance of the two orders of our concepts of the Trinity, one in fieri and one
in facto esse, is set forth by Lonergan, Verbum, 213-16.
36 This is not the place to discuss the history of theological thought on the Trinity, but I
may at least indicate the relevance of this essay to the controversy between those who
consider Augusrinian-Thomist thinking a decline from Cappadocian thought and those who
consider it a development.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 581-92

ST. THOMAS AND THE ANALOGY OF POIENTIA
GENERANDI
JOHN F. BOYLE
Universityof St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

I

n the intellectual achievement that is St. Thomas Aquinas's
Trinitarian theology, the question of whether the potentia
generandi-the power of generating-is essential or personal
occupies a rather modest corner. The question is not, however,
without interest, for it is one on which Thomas changes his mind.
Such questions, even the modest ones, offer their own particular
insights into Thomas's thought.
The question itself is an interesting one. In the life of the
Trinity, the Father generates the Son. The act of generation is a
personal act of the Father; as such, it is proper to the Father but
not to the Son or the Holy Spirit. The act is a notional act, that
is, an act that makes known something proper to a particular
divine person. But acts do not come from nowhere: some agent
must do the act, and that agent acts on the basis of powers that he
has. The agent in this case is the Father. But what about the
power of generating (potentia generandi) 1 by which he acts? Is it
essential or personal? The answer is not obvious. Agents in the
created order act on the basis of powers they have according to
their nature or essence; acts are of persons, but the power is
essential, that is, according to the person's nature. Thus one
might be inclined to say that the potentia generandi is essential, a
matter of the divine nature. Yet in the case of the Trinity, in
1 Thomas usually speaks of potentia generandibut sometimes of potentia generativa;he
seems to use these terms interchangeably.

581

582

JOHN F. BOYLE

which the three persons share one nature entirely, if the power
were essential, then would not the Son and the Holy Spirit share
that power and be able to generate too? Thus one might be
inclined to say that the potentia generandi is proper to the Father,
that is to say, it is personal and not essentiaL 2
This question is not new with St. Thomas. It is found in this
particular guise in the twelfth century. Peter Lombard attends to
it in his Liber sententiarum where he holds that the potentia
generandi is essential. 3 Once in this standard textbook of
theology, the question was assured a life; it is found in almost
all-if not all-of the Trinitarian literature of the thirteenth
century, and indeed in the Scholastic literature well beyond. 4
Thomas inherits the question. Although it is not at the heart of
his Trinitarian theology, he keeps coming back to it and
reformulating his answer to it. The question nagged
not
because doctrinal fidelity hung in the balance, but because it
demanded particular refinement and precision in analogical
analysis.
The general contours of St. Thomas's development on this
question are dear. The question admits, as Thomas always notes,
of three possible answers: the potentia generandi is purely
personal, purely essential, or both personal and essential. When
he first addresses the question in his Parisian Scriptum on
Lombard's Liber sententiarum, he maintains what we might call
a strong middle position, that is to say, that the potentia
generandi is equally essential and personal. He considers the
question again a number of times during his sojourn in Rome
2 The difficulty is captured well by John of St. Thomas, In primam parlem Summae
theologiae, disp. 36, a. 3, from his Cursus theologicus (Paris: Desdee, 1946), vol. 4, fasc. 2,
pp. 330-31. This was in the early printed editions disp. 16 of Cursus theologici in Primam
Partem D. Thomae Tomus Secundus, a quaestione decima quinta usque ad vigesimam
septimam.
3 Peter Lombard, Sententiae in N libris distinctae, I, d. 7, c. 2, ed. Patres Collegii S.
Bonaventurae (3d ed.; Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1971), vol. 1, pp.
93-94.
4 Banez gives a concise and systematic summary of the various Scholastic answers to the
question in his commentary on Summa theologiae I, q. 47, a. 5 in Scholastica commentaria
in universam primam parrtem (Venice: Apud Petrum Mariam Bertranum, 1611), vol. 1, col.
957.

ANALOGY OF POTENTJA GENERANDI

583

antecedent to his return to Paris for his second regency. The
principal texts are three. In the disputed questions De Potentia,
Thomas again holds the middle position, but the central features
of the analogy are increasingly clarified. In the Roman
Commentary, his second commentary on the first book of
Lombard's Liber sententiarum, Thomas thinks the position that
the potentia generandi is purely essential to be the truer. Having
said that, he then qualifies his position. Finally, in the Summa
Theologiae, Thomas explicitly rejects the middle position, takes
the essential position, and again qualifies it. He is never a strict
essentialist on this question; he always qualifies his position.
Interestingly, he articulates his final position as a modified
essentialist position and not a modified middle position. Although
his final position might be categorized more easily as a soft
middle position, Thomas nonetheless places himself firmly in the
essentialist camp, but with qualifications. Why this should be will
become dear with a focused consideration of the positions in the
four texts.
In his Parisian Scriptum on Lombard's Liber sententiarum at
the beginning of his career, Thomas poses the question as whether
the potentia generandi is ad aliquid, that is, relational as opposed
to essential. 5 In a Trinitarian context, to say something is
relational is necessarily to say that it is personal, since the persons
are subsisting relations. In his response to the question, Thomas
denies that the potentia generandi is ad aliquid. He refutes this
position throughout his career, and his answer is always along the
same lines: the position makes no sense given the meaning of the
terms in the natural order.
Consider Thomas's argument here in the Scriptum. The
position that the potentia generandi is ad aliquid arises from a
confusion of categories. In analyzing operations or actions, one
speaks of their principles. Commonly noted are two: the
principium quod and the principium quo, that is, the principle
which acts (the agent) and the principle by which the agent acts.
Potentia is a principium quo, the power by which the agent acts.
5 "Utrum potentia generativa sit ad aliquid" (I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 2; ed. P. Mandonnet
[Paris: Lethielleux, 1929], vol. 1, pp. 178-80).

584

JOHN F. BOYLE

The argument for the purely ad aliquid is this: principium
considered precisely as principium is relational or ad aliquid; since
potentia is a principium, it is also ad aliquid. Unfortunatdy, a
category mistake is lurking in the argument While it is true that
principium considered as principium is ad aliquid (i.e., in the
category of relation), it is not true that the particular thing that is
the principium is itself ad aliquid. Potentia is properly in the
category of quality, not relation, and thus the argument fails.
which a
fact, there are no instances in the created order
potentia in its most proper sense is ad aliquid.
Throughout his career, Thomas denies that the potentia
generandi is to be understood as purely personal or relational.
Notably, he is much more lax in addressing the position that the
potentia generandiis purely essential. Why the consistent concern
to deny the purely personal character of the potentia generandi?
The answer is in the analogical character of the analysis. If the
potentia generandi is purely personal, then there is no analogy
since there are simply no such potentiae in the created order. It is
not that one could not engage in such speculation, nor is it that
such divine potentiae are impossible; rather, it is that such
potentiae do not assist one in coming to a deeper understanding
of the Trinity in an analogical way. What had started as dearly
and properly analogical-the consideration of the divine essence
and divine acts-is now shifting. The language of the natural
order is now being so restricted by Trinitarian demands as to be
rendered meaningless, or perhaps we might better say, purely
equivocal. In short, if one holds potentia generandi to be purely
personal, one has inverted the ordinary order of analogical
analysis.
So how is one to understand the potentia generandi?Thomas
first affirms (from what has already been argued in I Sent., d. 4)
that the principium of any divine operation whatever.is the divine
essence. He is on
analogical ground here as it is also true that
the essence of any given creature is also a principium quo of its
actions. Nonetheless, God is of a different order from created
things. God's properties are his essence. The principium quo of
the Father's act of generation is indeed the divine essence but the

ANALOGY OF POTENI1A GENERANDI

585

essence according to which it is paternity itself. The potentia
generandi is thus not purely essential. The Father's
paternity-that subsisting relation that constitutes the person of
the Father-is the divine essence. Because in God person is
essence, Thomas locates relation in the very understanding of the
potentia generandi as essential. By introducing paternity into the
consideration of potentia as principium quo, Thomas sees the
personal as constitutive of the potentia generandi precisely as a
potentia. He firmly grounds the analogy in what is properly to be
understood of a created potentia, but also locates the difference,
the point at which the comparison fails, in the introduction of
paternity into the divine potentia generandi. He concludes that it
is thus a kind of-quasi-medium between essential and personal.
In his first consideration of this question, we can see Thomas's
attentiveness to its analogical character. He rejects the purely
personal understanding of the potentia generandi for the reason
that it is not in accord with a natural understanding of potentia.
In the created order potentia is essential. At the same time,
Thomas thinks the purely essential understanding of the potentia
generandi is inadequate from the vantage point of the divine
reality in which the persons are the essence itself. Thomas
concludes that the potentia generandi is both essential and
personal, thus maintaining the analogy with created reality and
the truth of the divine mystery.
In the disputed questions De Potentia, Thomas returns to this
question but formulated a bit differently. He asks whether the
potentia generativa in God is said essentially or notionally. 6 That
the question is posed in terms of how the term is said of God
makes the analogical character of the issue dear. Of the three
possible answers to the question, Thomas first considers that the
potentia generandi is wholly notional. As he had in the Parisian
Scriptum, he rejects this position, but at greater length. The
argument's details need not detain us. It is, at least initially, a
fuller elaboration of the argument found in the Scriptum. The
6 "Utrum potentia generativa in divinis dicatur essentialiter vel notionaliter" (De Pot., q.
2, a. 2, in Quaestiones disputatae, ed. P. Bazzi et al. [8'h ed.; Turin: Marietti, 1949], vol. 2,
pp. 27-29).

586

JOHN F. BOYLE

proponents of the purely notional understanding of the potentia
the
generandi have made a categorical mistake; potentia is
category of quality not relation. Thomas's point is the same: if the
potentia generandi is purely notional, there is no natural analog.
Thomas not only argues against this position by countering the
arguments of its proponents, he also poses an argument of his
own directly against it. With it, we see a shift in his analysis. He
turns his attention from the analogical uses of principium and
potentia to the analogical use of generare, to generate or beget.
Here he articulates what he understands generation to be, and
from this he will not waver throughout the remaining considerations. In natural generation in the created order, the
begotten is made like the begetter. A man begets a man; the
begotten is made like the begetter in their shared human nature.
As it is by virtue of his human nature that a man begets another
man, and as it is in that nature that the son is made like the
father, the principium of generation is the nature. The defining
feature of generation is likeness in nature, the assimilation of the
begotten to the begetter in the begetter's nature.
turning to the
divine, one can
say that the begotten Son is conformed to the
divine nature is
Father
the divine nature and thus
principium generandi.
Following this line of argument from generation as assimilation in nature, some hold the potentia generandi to be purely
essentiaL Thomas rejects the purely essential position and again
adopts a middle position. The argument, however, has shifted
from the Parisian Scriptum. In the Scriptum, Thomas qualified the
wholly essential position on the basis of Trinitarian doctrine.
Here he does so on the basis of the natural analog of generation.
In acts that arise by virtue of a common nature, the mode of the
acts themselves is often affected by properties of the agent. So,
Thomas observes, actions arising from common animal nature are
of a particular kind when found in man since they are affected by
what: is proper to man; for example, the imaginative power is
more perfect in man than brutes because of man's rationality.
understand
Likewise in the case of individuals, one man
something more dearly than another; although the act of

ANALOGY OF POTENI1A GENERANDI

587

understanding arises from shared human nature, the greater
clarity of understanding in one man arises from some personal
particularity of his own affecting the act. The point is that such a
particularity is a principiumquo of the act. Thomas then applies
this to the question at hand. If the common divine nature is a
principium of some operation which belongs to the Father
alone-precisely the circumstance under consideration, that is, the
potentia generandi is essential and also the principium of the
Father's unique act of begetting-then it must be a principium
according to which it pertains to the Father by some personal
property. From this line of analogical reasoning, Thomas
concludes that in the very understanding (ratio) of this potentia
paternity is in some way (quodammodo)to be included, even with
regard to that which is the principium of generation. Thus
potentia generandi signifies at the same time both essence and
notion.
This is a splendid bit of analogical reasoning. Thomas
maintains the essential character of potentia as principium quo.
But in considering acts that arise from a common nature (i.e., that
have a common nature as principiumquo), he finds that these acts
are, as it were, further specified by properties of the agent, which
properties are themselves principia quibus of the act. The great
value of this consideration is that Thomas has articulated a
natural analog for the middle position with regard to the potentia
generandi. In the Scriptum the demands of Trinitarian doctrine
seemed to force him to the middle position. Here, he has a full
analog from the natural order that provides an illuminating
account of the potentia generandiin the divine as both essential
and notional.
Within the year, Thomas abandons this line of analogical
argument and indeed the middle position itself.
When Thomas comments a second time on the first book of
Lombard's Liber sententiarum, he asks whether the potentia
generandiis notional or essential. 7 The response is short and the
7 "Utrum potentia generandi in diuinis sit notionale uel essentiale." The text of the second

commentary is found in Oxford, Lincoln College Ms. Lat. 95. The attribution of the text to
St. Thomas was established by Leonard E. Boyle, in "'Alia lectura fratris Thorne,'" Mediaeval

588

JOHN F. BOYLE

shift is clear. He says there are three opinions on this question:
the potentia generandi is purely notional, it is between them
having something of each, and it is purely essential. He says
almost nothing about the first two. Of the last he says that he
holds it to be the truer. His reason is the argument from
assimilation according to nature in generation. The potentia
generandi is that by which the begetter begets, and is that in which
the begotten is assimilated to the begetter. Since the begotten is
assimilated into the begetter's nature, the nature is that by which
the begetter begets; and since nature is essential in God, the
potentia is essential in God. The extended analogical argument of
the De Potentia is gone. Without further explanation, we find
only this gentle qualification: because generandi is added, the
potentia is said to be in God with an order to the notional. 8 A
similar move is found in the Summa Theologiae, written the next
year. Let us consider it together with the Roman Commentary.
In the Summa, Thomas poses the question whether potentia
generandi signifies relation and not essence.9 From the very
posing of the question, Thomas has the purely relational
understanding of the potentia generandi in his sights, and it is to
it that he turns first in the response. His argument is again the
argument from assimilation. When any agent produces, it makes
what it produces like itself with regard to the form by which it
acts. So in human generation, the son who is begotten is like the
Studies 45 (1983): 418-29. The critical edition is being prepared for publication by Leonard
E. Boyle and john F. Boyle.
8 "Responsio. Dicendum quod circa hoc sunt tres opiniones. Quidam enim dicunt quod
potentia generandi sit pure personale siue notionale in diuinis, et ad hoc moti sunt propter
rationes inductas in obiciendo. Alli dixerunt quod potentia generandi sit medium inter
personale et essentiale, habens tamen aliquid de utraque. Alii fuerunt sicut Magister qui dicit
quod est pure essentiale; et hanc reputo ueriorem. Illud enim quo generans generat est
potentia generandi, et illud ergo quo generans generat est potentia generatiua, et hoc est in
quo generatum assimilatur generanti. Assimilatur autem in natura sua, et ideo natura est quo
generans generat. Cum ergo natura sit essentiale in Deo, dico quod potentia est pure
essentiale in Deo. Set quia additur hoc quod dicitur generandi, dicitur esse in Deo cum ordine
ad notionale" (f. 22v.).
9 SI'h I, q. 41, a. 5: "Utrum potentia generandi significet relationem et non essentiam" (ed.
InstitutumStudiorumMedievalium Ottaviensis (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1953], vol.1, pp.
261-62).

ANALOGY OF POTENIIA GENERANDI

589

father who begets and is like him in that human nature by virtue
of which the father begets in the first place. Thus, that in which
the begotten is assimilated to the begetter is the potentia generandi
in the begetter.
Thomas now applies this to the Trinity. "The Son of God is
assimilated in the divine nature to the Father begetting. Hence,
the divine nature in the Father is the potentia generandi in Him."
Thomas concludes that the potentia generandi principally signifies
the divine essence. He explicitly denies that it signifies essence in
so far as it is the same as relation such that it might signify both
equally. If the Father begat according to those properties proper
to Him as a person He would beget the Father, whereas he begets
the Son who is like Him not in person but in nature. Thus
paternity is to be understood as constituting the person of the
Father, the principium quod of the begetting, but not the
principium quo or potentia of the begetting which refers to the
divine nature. Thomas condudes dearly enough: "That by which
the Father generates is the divine nature in which the Son is
assimilated to Him."
As he had in the Roman Commentary, Thomas then qualifies
this position. "And thus the potentia generandi signifies the divine
nature in recto, but relation in obliquo." The explanation is found
in the reply to the third objection: potentia signifies in recto and
generation in obliquo. "Hence with regard to essence which is
signified, the potentia generandi is common to the three persons;
with regard to the notions which are connoted, it is proper to the
person of the Father." What was articulated in the Roman
Commentary as signifying essentially but with an order to the
notional is here articulated as signifying essentially in recto but
connoting notionally in obliquo.
Given the shift in Thomas's thinking in the Roman
Commentary and the Summa Theologiae, three questions arise:
What has happened to the De Potentia analogy used to argue for
the middle position? Why does Thomas consider his new position
that of purely essential and not simply a more modest form of the
middle position? What is the point of the qualification of the
purely essential position?

590

JOHNF. BOYLE

First, what happened to the De Potentia analogy? Thomas
makes no direct reference to it in either the Roman Commentary
or the Summa. As it was the argument for the middle position, he
has presumably not simply omitted it, but has now rejected it. He
has further distilled his understanding of the place of nature in
generation. Or better, he has come to see that, most properly,
generation is a question of nature: the assimilation of the begotten
to the begetter in that nature in virtue of which the generation
takes place. Considered most formally, generation is assimilation
in nature and the potentia generandi is that nature. As for the
various particular properties that had functioned as principia
quibus in the De Potentia argument, Thomas simply denies that
in generation they are principiaquibus, now situating them in the
agent as constitutive of the agent. What seems to be at work here
is a formal refinement of the terms. The particular properties are
now more properly placed in the principiumquod, that is to say
the agent, and not in the principium quo or potentia, which is
most properly understood to be purely and formally the nature
according to which generation takes place. 10 In the De Potentia,
Thomas's consideration of the natural analog moved him to reject
the purely essential position and maintain the middle position by
which potentiagenerandisignified both essentially and notionally.
The natural analog has now been refined and with that the
argument from analogy for the middle position has been lost.
Indeed, Thomas is left with a particularly strong form of the
argument from assimilation for the purely essential signification
of potentia generandi.
Thomas now claims this position as his own. In both the
Roman Commentary and the Summa he qualifies his position so
as to introduce something of the notional. In so doing, he would
seem to be returning to the middle position but in a soft form.
Why insist that the purely essential is the truer and that this is
now his position? The answer lies in his statement that potentia
generandisignifies essence in recto and generation in obliquo.This
is a way of saying that it signifies primarily the divine essence and

°

1 Cf. Aquinas, Compendium theologiae l, c. 63 (Opera Omnia iussu Leonis Xl1I P. M.
Edita, vol. 42, p. 101).

ANALOGY OF POTENI1A GENERANDI

591

secondarily the person of the Father. In this a strong middle
position of equal signification is clearly abandoned. But the in
recto/inobliquodistinction carries a more precise meaning. To say
that the potentia generandisignifies the divine essence in recto is
to say that it can be predicated of the essence; to say that it
signifies the person of the Father in obliquo is to say that it cannot
be predicated of the Father. 11 Hence one finds the still weaker
language in the reply to the third objection that the divine essence
is signified, but the person of the Father connoted. Such a
distinction makes for a particularly vigorous analogy. In the
created order, the potentia generandiis essential, that is to say it
signifies the nature; more truly it is simply predicated of that
nature. By now insisting on the purely essential character of the
potentia generandiin the divine, Thomas maintains the analogy
in the divine analog in which the potentia generandi is essential,
signifies in recto the divine nature, and therefore can be
predicated of that nature. The analogy in its fullness is thus most
rightly preserved in maintaining that the signification is most
properly understood as purely essential.
So why the gentle qualification of the purely essential position
in both the Roman Commentary and the Summa? For the simple
reason that God is different. The analogy is not perfect and thus
in the case of the Trinity the potentia generandi does, in a
secondary way, signify notionally. In the divine, the potentia
generandi does make the Father known, but by connotation. In
this, potentiagenerandiin the divine is different from the potentia
generandi in creation-importantly, but, from the vantage point
of the potentia considered most formally, only secondarily.
The line of development in Thomas's thought on how to
understand potentia generandi is an exquisite example of the
boldness of his analogical thinking. The natural analog is
uncompromised and increasingly clarified. With increasing
precision in articulating the natural analog comes increasing
simplicity in articulating the divine analog. Potentia generandi
11 The use of in recto and in obliquo is particularly prominent in a similar discussion
among the theologians about the signification of the term "person." Cf., especially for the use
we have made of it here, De Pot., q. 9, a. 4 (ed. Bazzi, p. 232).

592

JOHN F. BOYLE

speaks to the divine essence, illuminating the place of divine
nature in divine generation without compromising the unity of
essence and person. This is all, as noted in the beginning of this
essay, a modest corner of St. Thomas's Trinitarian thought; it is,
nonetheless, an interesting one in which to watch Thomas work
through an analogy with clarity and precision.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 593-618

WISDOM AND THE VIABILITY OF THOMISTIC
TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
MATTHEW LEVERING
Ave Maria College
Ypsilanti, Michigan

L INTRODUCTION

lthough we see today evidence of increasing appreciation
for Aquinas's Trinitarian theology, Karl Rahner's critique
of the Thomistic approach-a critique voiced in similar
ways by Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar-remains the
standard way in which the Thomistic approach is understood by
contemporary theologians. 1 One way to contribute to a new
reading of Aquinas's treatise on God (one and three) is to begin
with Rahner's critique.
In an oft-cited passage, Rahner remarks:
As a result [of beginning with God's essence] the treatise becomes quite
philosophical and abstract and refers hardly at all to salvation history. It speaks
1 Rahner's seminal work was "Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendeter Urgrund der
Heilsgeschichte," in Die Heilsgeschichte var Christus, vol. 2 of Mysterium Salutis, Grundriss
heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967). It has appeared in English
as The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (2d ed.; New York: Crossroad, 1998). The new edition
contains an introduction by Catherine Mowry LaCugna, who lauds Rahner's work as the
foundation of contemporary Trinitarian theology. For Barth's and Balthasar's positions, cf.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologik, vol.2: Wahrheit Gottes (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,
1985), esp. 128f. Thanks in large part to the work of French Dominicans, preeminently Gilles
Emery, the time seems ripe for a new appreciation of Aquinas's approach. In addition to
numerous articles, Emery has contributed a monograph, La Trinite creatrice (Paris: Vrin,
1995), that responds masterfully to Rahner's claim that Aquinas's Trinitarian theology
isolated the doctrine of the Trinity from the other doctrines of Christian faith.

593

594

MATIHEW LEVERING

of the necessary metaphysical properties of God, and not very explicitly of God
as experienced in salvation history in his free relations to his creatures. For
should one make use of salvation history, it would soon become apparent that
one speaks always of him whom Scripture and Jesus himself calls the Father,
Jesus' Father, who sends the Son and who gives himself to us in the Spirit, in
his Spirit. On the other hand, if one starts from the basic Augustinian-Western
conception, an a-trinitarian treatise "on the one God" comes as a matter of
course before the treatise on the Trinity. In this event, however, the theology
of the Trinity must produce the impression that it can make only purely formal
statements about the three divine persons, with the help of concepts about the
two processions and about the relations. Even these statements, however, refer
to a Trinity which is absolutely locked within itself-one which is not, in
its reality, open to anything distinct from it; one, further, from which we are
excluded, of which we happen to know something only through a strange
paradox. 2

This paragraph
suggests four major concerns. First,
"philosophical and abstract" or "metaphysical" knowledge about
God is contrasted with "God as experienced in salvation history,"
and the Thomistic approach is faulted for paying insufficient
attention to the lattero Second, Rahner argues that attention to
salvation history rules out beginning
a metaphysical inquiry
(Le., an account of God under the rubric of what pertains to his
unity or essence), because such a starting-point fails to appreciate
that the God
salvation history is never abstractly "one," but
already Father, already personaL 3 Third? if a treatise on what
2 Rahner, The Trinity,

17-18.

3 Citing the work of Theodore

de Regnon, Raimer connects this "biblical" view with the
position of the Greek Fathers, in contrast to the Larin Fathers. On this point, see Michel
Rene Barnes, "De Regnon Reconsidered," Augustinian Studies 26 (1995): 51-79; and
"Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology," Theological Studies 56 (1995): 237-50.
Barnes persuasively challenges the accuracy of the theory, formulated in the nineteenth
century by de Regnon, that the Greek Fathers began with the divine persons and the Latin
Fathers with the essence. Barnes's research concerns the earlier Fathers. It is also wonh
noting (because of his influence upon Aquinas) that John Damascene, in his Exposition of the
Orthodox Faith, first defines God's unity, perfection, goodness, wisdom, ruid power, and then
proceeds to treat the distinction of persons in God. Wayne Hankey has suggested that
Aquinas, like earlier medieval theologians, finds this order in Pseudo-Dionysius's The Divine
Names; see Wayne Hankey, "Denys ruid Aquinas: Anrimodem Cold and Postmodern Hot,"
in Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community, ed. Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones
(New York: Routledge, 199!!), 168-69. See also Hankey's God in Himself: Aquinas' Doctrine
of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 23.

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

595

pertains to God as one (Rahner calls this treatise an "a-trinitarian
treatise," although since the Trinity is one I would contest this
label) precedes the treatise on what pertains to God as three, then
the theology of the Trinity will be confined to making "purely
formal statements about the three divine persons," because the
earlier metaphysical treatise-rather than the dynamism of
salvation history-will guide the theological investigation. 4
Fourth, the Trinity, understood in this way, is "locked within
itself," an object of abstruse contemplation rather than a definite
historical presence and actor. 5
No one article could address all these concerns, despite their
interrelatedness. This article will focus on the criticism that
Aquinas's highly philosophical and abstract treatise on God (one
and three) appears insufficiently scriptural. Specifically, I will
argue that Aquinas's treatise is engaged with, and governed by,
4 It is on these grounds that Rahner lodges his well-known complaint: "Christians are, in
their practical life, almost mere 'monotheists.' We must he willing to admit that, should the
doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could
well remain virtually unchanged" (10-11). What Rahner is (rightly) indicating here is the need
for the treatise on God (one and three) to be read as a unified whole.
5 Rahner elaborates this point in two directions. First, he calls attention to the Thomistic
doctrine of mixed relation, in which God is "logically" related to us and we are "really"
related to God. He asks, "How can the contemplation of any reality, even of the loftiest
reality, beatify us if intrinsically it is absolutely unrelatedto us in any way?" (15). Numerous
theologians have made dear that Rahner misapplies what Aquinas means by "relation" in this
context; see, e.g., Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap., Does God Change? (Still River, Mass.:
St. Bede's Publications, 1985), 86-96; and Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2000), 130-37. Second, Rahner argues that the contemplation of the
Trinity does not truly engage us in a knowing of the particular persons, who remain
interchangeable. He asks, "is our awareness of this mystery merely the knowledge of.
something purely extrinsic, which, as such, remains isolated from all existential knowledge
about ourselves as in our present theology the treatise on the Trinity is isolated from other
dogmatic treatises telling us something about ourselves conducive to our real salvation?" (15).
An analysis of Aquinas's understanding of wisdom will show that the contemplation of the
Trinity is, in his view, a transformative exercise. Far from "the knowledge of something
purely extrinsic," contemplation of the Trinity belongs to the appropriation of our destiny
of sharing in the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet given Aquinas's theocentric account
of wisdom, contemplation of the Trinity must be distinct (not isolated) from Christology and
the doctrine of grace, pace Rahner's axiom. For contemplative purposes, conflation of the
economic (our experience of the Trinity) and the immanent (the Trinity as such) must he
avoided.

596

MATIHEW LEVERING

salvation history in a way that Rahner did not recognize. 6 To
grasp how Aquinas's theology of the triune God is attuned to
"God as experienced in salvation history in his free relations with
creatures," we must revise our expectations about what kind of
theology should flow from attention to salvation history. For
Aquinas, a theology of God guided by salvation history must be
contemplative in character, in order to reflect (while refining and
deepening) the contemplative stance ·that characterizes the
definitive prophetic and apostolic appropriation of God's selfrevelation. In a world conditioned by idolatry, the words and
deeds that reveal God must be appropriated sapientially, if their
regulative function is to be adequately grasped.
To state the matter another way, this article will seek to
demonstrate that the crucial means for retrieving Aquinas's
Trinitarian theology-especially as regards its relationship to
salvation history-will be reclaiming his vision of theology as
contemplative wisdom. 7 As Otto Pesch has remarked (in the
context of a lecture on justification and grace according to
Aquinas), "the whole spirituality of Thomas Aquinas' theology"
can be described as "Wisdom is salvation. " 8 With this insight in
mind, the article will proceed in three steps. I will first explore
In The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 34-64, A. N. Williams shows that the dynamism of the economy of
salvation (ultimately ordered to deification) suffuses Aquinas's treatment of God as one and
three. Williams demonstrates that for Aquinas contemplation of God-in-Himself (the
"immanent" Trinity) does not result in a God "locked within itself," since contemplation
belongs intrinsically to the graced movement by which we are conformed to the triune God,
that is, deified. See also Williams's comment on Aquinas's denial that God has a "real
relation" to creatures (67).
7 Rowan Williams has undertaken a somewhat similar project with regard to Augustine's
De Trinitate. See his "Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on the De Trinitate," in
CollectaneaAugustiniana,vol. 1, ed. B. Bruning (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990),
317-32. I am also indebted to the brief but excellent treatment of Aquinas's use of
metaphysics in William J. Hill, O.P., The Three-PersonedGod: The Trinity as a Mystery of
Salvation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 62-69.
8 Otto Pesch, ChristianExistence accordingto Thomas Aquinas, Etienne Gilson Lecture
Series (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989), 2. Pesch explains, "For
Christian existence is nothing else than to live out the unity of faith, hope and love, and that
means to understand God's truth for the world and for human beings and to be related,
'attracted' by the Giver of that truth in love" (3).
6

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

597

Aquinas's complex account of wisdom, which he presents in four
ways: wisdom as a (natural) intellectual virtue, wisdom as a gift
of the Holy Spirit, wisdom as sacra doctrina, and Wisdom as the
Son of God. 9 I will argue that Aquinas's theology of wisdom
indicates the way in which his theology of the triune God
integrates philosophical (metaphysical) terms and categories while
remaining governed by scriptural revelation.
Second, I will examine theological wisdom in light of recent
accounts of Aquinas's theology as pedagogy or protreptic, as well
as Pierre Hadot's work on ancient philosophy as spiritual
exercise. The purpose here will be to show why theocentric
metaphysics is intrinsic to Aquinas's theological wisdom. I will
suggest that Aquinas's theology of God (one and three) should be
read as an exercise of contemplative ascent, in which Aquinas
employs metaphysical tools as a means of intellectual ascesis in
aid of the believer's participation in God's own knowledge.
Third, I will conclude by proposing that Aquinas's view of St.
John the Evangelist as the contemplative of Wisdom incarnate is
particularly instructive with regard to the relationship of Scripture
and metaphysical tools in Aquinas's theology of the triune God.
By showing that revelation cannot be separated from the inspired
authors' contemplative practices, Aquinas's interpretation of St.
John calls into question both the dichotomy between abstract or
theoretical investigation of the triune God and the dynamisms of
salvation history, and the corresponding conflation of
"economic" and "immanent" Trinity. 10
9 For a thorough discussion of this topic, see Kieran Conley, O.S.B., A Theology of
Wisdom: A Study in St. Thomas (Dubuque, Iowa: The Priory Press, 1963). See also the
interesting study of L. Boadt, "St. Thomas Aquinas and the Biblical Wisdom Tradition," The
Thomist 49 (1985): 575-611.
10 Aristotle recognized that "it is because of wondering that men began to philosophize
and do so now ..•. Now a man who is perplexed and wonders considers himself ignorant
(whence a lover of myth, too, is in a sense a philosopher, for a myth is composed of wonders),
so if indeed they philosophized in order to avoid ignorance, it is evident that they pursued
science in order to understand and not in order to use it for something else" (Metaphysics A,
982b10-20, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle [Grinnell, Iowa: The Peripatetic Press, 1979]); cf.
Denise Schaeffer, "Wisdom and Wonder in Metaphysics A:l-2," The Reviewof Metaphysics
52 (1999): 641-56; and Josef Pieper,Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. G. Malsbary (South
Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 1998). As Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, "the greatest

598

MATIHEW LEVERING

II. WISDOM AND SACRA DOCTRINA

Commentators on Aquinas's treatise on God generally detach
it from the previous question, which is (not incorrectly) viewed as
a "methodological prolegomenon" 11 to the entire Summa. The
problem with this approach is that it risks overlooking a key
resource for recognizing the treatise on God as an exercise of
theological wisdom.
In STh I, q. 1, a. 6, Aquinas asks whether sacra doctrina is the
same as wisdom. In order to understand what he means by
wisdom, it is necessary to read this article in light of his account,
in the Prima secunda.e, of the intellectual virtues. Aquinas has a
specific intellectual virtue in mind when he speaks of wisdom.
Adopting the position taken by Aristotle in his Physics and
Metaphysics, Aquinas states that wisdom is knowledge of what is
most knowable in itself, but least knowable to our intellects,
which know only through sense perception. 12 Spiritual realities
are most knowable in themselves. Due to our intellects'
dependence upon sensibles, spiritual realities are least knowable
to us. As Aquinas shows in STh I, qq. 2-3, the ultimate spiritual
reality is the first cause, which is pure act (and therefore
transcends every genus). The intellectual virtue of wisdom,
therefore, is the virtue of ordering all things in accord with
knowledge of God as first cause, as well as with knowledge of the
first causes in every particular genus. By knowing the first causes,
Christian thinkers (including Origen, Augustine, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas) consistently
understand the intellectusfidei as including this interior completion of the philosophical act
in theology" (H. U. von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A TheologicalAesthetics, vol. 1,
Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982], 146)
Balthasar further remarks that "because of that final securing of reality which the believer
who encounters God in Christ experiences, the theological vision makes it possible for the
first time for the philosophical act of encounter with Being to occur in all its depth .... The
correctness of such an integrated vision can also be seen from the philosophianic or
contemplative attitude of faith which has its beginnings in the Bible, where it emerges in the
Wisdom literature of the Old Testament and, in the New Testament, is realised especially in
Paul and John: God's Word is itself shot through with human contemplation, which contains
within itself the truly philosophicalact" (ibid., emphasis added).
11 Williams, The Ground of Union, 39.
12 STh I-II, q. 57, a. 2.

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

599

I
I

the wise person "rightly judges all things and sets them in order,
because there can be no perfect and universal judgment that is not
based on the first causes." 13 On the basis of this knowledge of the
principles of all things, the wise person is able to judge all the
conclusions of the particular sciences or fields of knowledge.
Insofar as wisdom demonstrates conclusions from principles, it is
a science; however, since it judges all particular sciences by
knowing their principles, it is more than a mere science. 14
A second aspect relevant to the account in STh I, q. 1, a. 6 of
sacra doctrina as wisdom is Aquinas's presentation of "wisdom"
as one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The gifts enable the
person who possesses faith formed by charity to respond to the
special prompting of the Holy Spirit. As Servais Pinckaers has
noted,
In the collaboration between grace and us, the virtues represent the active side
of our participation; but their action nee;ds to be completed by the gifts which
dispose us to welcome the motions of the Spirit and constitute the passive or
receptive side of the spiritual life; they render us docile to grace. 15

The virtues, both natural and supernatural, engage our natural
human resources; because they operate according to a human
mode (the active side). The gifts operate according to a divine
·mode (the receptive side). They perfect the virtues by enabling
our acts to transcend natural human resources. The gifts of the
Holy Spirit conform the believer to Christ by connaturalizingthe
believer to God's ways. 16
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., ad

1.

Pinckaers, O.P., La vie selon l'&prit: &sai de theologie spirituelle
selon saint Paul et saint Thomas d'Aquin (Pais<· Cerf, 1996), 206. See also Pinckaers, The
Noble, O.P. (3ded.; Washington, D.C.: The
Sourcesof ChristianEthics, trans.
Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 151-57; and Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian
Faith and the TheologicalLife (Washingtoh, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, ,
15 Servais-Theodore

1996), 164-65.
16 On connatural knowing according to Aquinas, see also A. Moreno, O.P., "The Nature
of St. Thomas' Knowledge 'Per Connaturalitem,'" Angelicum 4 7 (1970): 44-62; d. Pinckaers,
The Sources of Christian Ethics, 93.

600

MATTHEW LEVERING

The intellectual virtue of wisdom is limited to what human
intelligence can acquire by its natural endowments. Such wisdom
judges all things in light of first causes, as they can be known by
natural human intelligence. In contrast, wisdom as a gift of the
Holy Spirit judges all things instinctively on the basis of first
Truth known by the assent of faith. 17 Aquinas remarks that
"wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual
virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union
of the soul with Him. " 18 Faith gives knowledge of God beyond
mere natural human knowledge, because faith is a supernatural
participation in God's own knowledge. Referring to this infinitely
deeper knowledge, Aquinas cites 1 Corinthians 2:10, "the Spirit
searches all things, even the deep things of God." 19 The gift of
wisdom is an ordering of all things on the basis of this deeper
knowledge.
Aquinas also notes that the intellectual virtue of wisdom is the
perfect use of natural reason, by which one orders or judges all
things rightly, in accord with reason's natural participation in
God's eternal law. The gift of wisdom, on the other hand, means
connaturality with God's eternal law, so that reason no longer
needs to make its inquiry. The gift of wisdom is thus associated by
Aquinas with the virtue of charity, which perfects and elevates the
will. Charity, Aquinas points out, causes "sympathy or
connaturality for Divine things. " 20 While caused by charity,
therefore, the gift of wisdom is a perfection of the intellect,
because the gift enables the believer to order all things rightly in
relation to God known in faith. 21 In short, the gift of wisdom
explains why Christians do not all need to be philosophers.
Christians, who know first Truth in faith, are connaturalized to
that knowledge by charity through the gift of wisdom. The
ordering accomplished by wisdom as a gift (as opposed to
wisdom as an intellectual virtue) is not only contemplative, but
11-11, q. 45, a.1, ad 2.
11-11, q.45, a.3, ad 1.
19 STh 11-11, q. 45, a. 1.
20 STh 11-11, q. 45, a. 2.
17 STh

18 STh

21 Ibid.

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

601

also practical, because the gift of the Holy Spirit, in contrast to
the intellectual virtue, directs all aspects of the person. 22
In discussing sacra doctrina as wisdom, Aquinas makes
reference to both the intellectual virtue and the gift of the Holy
Spirit. He first distinguishes sacra doctrina as wisdom from the
intellectual virtue of wisdom. It might seem that sacra doctrina,
which is knowledge (scientia) of the things that have been
divinely revealed (God and all things insofar as they are referred
to God as their beginning and end), 23 merely complements and
extends the ordering achieved by the intellectual virtue of
wisdom. On this view, sacra doctrina would simply add
knowledge inaccessible to natural reason, such as the teaching of
the Trinity or of supernatural beatitude as humankind's ultimate
end. As Brian Shanley has pointed out, however, revelation
completely transforms our knowledge of all things: "The term
revelabiliahere bears the burden of describing the new horizon
opened up by revelation; it denotes the capacity for reality to be
grasped in the light of divine revelation. " 24 Sacra doctrina is not
simply teaching about revealed realities. Rather, it is an entirely
new teaching, which takes up all that can be known naturally and
orders (re-orders) it in light of the revelation of the triune God as
our beginning and supernaturalend. Shanley notes that what is
produced is "an entirely new view of the whole based on the
presentational dimension that results from faith's encounter with
God revealing. " 25 The new view of the whole is presented,
according to Aquinas, in sacra scriptura, which belongs to the
structure of "faith's encounter with God revealing. " 26 At times,
22

SI'h II-II, q. 45, a. 3.

23

SI'h I, q. 1, a. 3. For an introduction to the development of Thomas's thought on sacra

doctrina, as well as to the vast Thomistic literature on this topic from the generation after
Thomas to the present, see especiallyJean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., "Le savoir theologique chez
saint Thomas," Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 355-96; and "Le savoir theologique chez Jes
premiers thomistes," Revue Thomiste 97 (1997): 9-30.
24 Brian J. Shanley, O.P ., "Sacra Doctrina and the Theology of Disclosure," The Thomist
61 (1997): 177.
25 Ibid.
26 Jean-Pierre Torrell approvingly cites Max Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte(Munich:
K6sel Verlag, 1964), to the same effect. See Torrell, "Le savoir theologique chez saint
Thomas d'Aquin," 361.

MATIHEW LEVERING

602

therefore, Aquinas uses "sacra scriptura" interchangeably with
"sacra doctrina," even though the latter results from the study
teaching of the former. 27
this new view of the whole, the intellectual virtue of
wisdom, as a human achievement, is not negated. The believer
who possesses the intellectual virtue of wisdom (not every
believer, since charity infuses all the moral virtues,
does not
infuse intellectual virtues) continues to attain knowledge of God
as first cause, and to order all things in relation to God as first
cause. The difference is that now this (true) metaphysical
knowledge is surpassed. Whereas natural reason can only attain
to knowledge of God by means of creatures, now the believer
possesses a real participation
God's own knowledge. 28 As
Aquinas states,
sacred doctrine essentially treats of God viewed as the highest cause-not only
so far as He can be known through creatures
as philosophers knew
Him-That which is known of God is manifest in them (Rom. 1: 19)-but also
so far as He is known to Himself alone and revealed to others. 29

By means of this participation in God's own knowledge, the
believer reorders all things, now in relation to the triune God and
the ultimate end of supernatural beatitude. This reordering is the
task of sacra doctrina, understood as wisdomo Sacra doctrina
remains wisdom according to a human mode: it is based upon
revealed principles known in faith, but it requires for its task of
ordering the normal methods of the mind. As Aquinas points out,

CL STh I, q. 1, a. 8. James A. Weisheipl, 0.ll'o, outlined the relationship between sacra
doctrina and sacra scriptura in "The Meaning of Sacra Doctrina in Summa Theologiae I, qo 1,
The Thomist 38 (1974): 49-80. In response to Weisheipl, Thomas C. O'Brien emphasized
(following the work of G. F. van Ackeren) the nature of sacra doctrina as a human teaching
consequent upon revelation. See O'Brien, "'Sacra Doctrina' Revisited: The Context of
Medieval Education," The Thomist 41 (1977): 475-509. I would argue that O'Brien's view
is more compatible with Weisheipl's than O'Brien himself seems to have thought.
28 For a detailed discussion of this point, see Mark F. Johnson, "God's Knowledge in Our
Frail Mind: The Thomistic Model of Theology," Angelicum 76 (1999): 25-45.
29 STh I, q. 1, a. 6.
27

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

603

sacra doctrina "is acquired by study, though its principles are
obtained by revelation. " 30
Sacra doctrina as wisdom, in short, is not the same as the
wisdom that is the gift of the Holy Spirit, nor is this latter wisdom
a substitute for sacra doctrina. Certainly the two are intrinsically
related, since sacra doctrina is based upon the supernatural virtue
of faith, and all the virtues and gifts are infused simultaneously in
the believer. Yet because study is necessary for sacra doctrina, the
wisdom attained by natural reason (the intellectual virtue of
wisdom) remains necessary even for the theologian who possesses
the gift of the Holy Spirit. The truths known by metaphysical
reasoning are not displaced by an infusion of revealed knowledge.
Even so, the architectonic principle is now not God known by
natural reason, but God's own knowledge, to use Mark Johnson's
phrase, "in our frail minds."
Although it is beyond the scope of this essay to delve into the
structure of Aquinas's theory of knowledge, two points are worth
mentioning before we proceed. First, Aquinas conceives of
creaturely intellect as a created, finite participation in the divine
intellect or the divine Wisdom. 31 In the human person as created,
there already exists an analogy between human knowing and
divine Wisdom. This analogy constitutes a capacity for the new
embodiment of (supernatural} wisdom that characterizes the
graced human being. Second, this "new creation" of the human
being, in which by grace the human being participates infinitely
more deeply in divine Wisdom, is not a human achievement but
the fruit of the Incarnation. In the first chapter of the Summa
contra Gentiles, Aquinas explains that "divine Wisdom testifies
that He has assumed flesh and come into the world in order to
make the truth known: 'For this I was born, and for this came I
into the world, that I should give testimony to the truth' Oohn

30 Ibid., ad 3. The objection had argued that wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and so
sacra doctrina (which requires study) could not be wisdom.
31 See, e.g., STh I, q. 54, a. 1 (with regard to angelic intellect); I, q. 79, a. 4 (with regard
to the human intellect).

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MATIHEW LEVERING

18:37)." 32 Sacra doctrina involves human knowing (created
participation in divine Wisdom) that has been supernaturally
elevated to participate far more profoundly in divine Wisdom (by
the grace of the Holy Spirit), without ceasing to be human
knowing (acquired by study). Given this pattern of redemption
accomplished by the missions of Wisdom incarnate and the Holy
Spirit, it should come as no surprise that the structure of
Aquinas's Trinitarian theology is best understood within the
context of Aquinas's analogous use of "wisdom."
III. THEOLOGIZING AS A WISDOM-EXERCISE 33

In light of this examination of Aquinas's view of sacra doctrina
as wisdom, one might evaluate Rahner's view that Aquinas's
treatise on God (one and three) speaks "of the necessary
metaphysical properties of God, and not very explicitly of God as
experienced in salvation history in his free relations to his
creatures" and makes "only formal statements about the three
divine persons, with the help of concepts about the two
processions and about the relations. "34 As noted above, Rahner
seems to be suggesting that Aquinas's use of metaphysics
compromises his ability to speak about God as experienced in
salvation history. For Aquinas, however, the presence of
metaphysical language (the practice of the intellectual virtue of
wisdom) is not a sign that something has gone wrong, since
salvation history describes humankind's-at first specifically
Israel's-increasingly profound engagement with divine Wisdom.
32 ScG I, c. 1 (trans. Anton C. Pegis [2d ed.; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1975], 60). For a superb discussion of Aquinas's Wisdom-Christology, see Joseph
Wawrykow, "Wisdom in the Christology of Thomas Aquinas," in Christ Among the Medieval
Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr., and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1999), 175-96.
33 Jean-Pierre Torrell, in Saint Thomas d'Aquin, maitre spirituel (Paris: Cerf, 1996),
discusses Aquinas's treatise on God with an emphasis (evidently in response to Heideggerian
critiques of "onto-theology") on how Aquinas brings out God's transcendence. The central
theme of Torrell's book, which is. an introduction to Aquinas's theology, is Aquinas's
contemplative and mystical orientation. This theme should be seen as inspiring my approach
to Aquinas's treatise on God.
34 Rahner, The Trinity, 18.

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605

Yet, Rahner's own constructive Trinitarian theology, which is
itself highly abstract, suggests that his concern may be not
primarily with metaphysical language per se, but with Aquinas's
metaphysical language. 35 As Thomas O'Meara has put it, Rahner
sought to produce "a modern systematic theology, modern in the
sense of proceeding from a subject analyzed transcendentally,
existentially, and historically." 36 Where Aquinas speaks of
Trinitarian missions, for example, Rahner speaks of divine selfcommunication. O'Meara finds that Rahner's criticisms seek
primarily to update Aquinas. For O'Meara, Aquinas's "thinking
is largely theocentric, and from the eighteenth century on, human
subjectivity, freedom, and science are the points of departure for
human reflection and exploration. " 37 Is the answer simply to
transpose Aquinas's treatise from the Aristotelian metaphysical
categories to the anthropocentric metaphysical categories of
modern philosophy? Before adopting such an answer, one should
revisit the concept of wisdom from a different perspective. As
Aquinas states in the prologue to the Summa Theologiae, his
theological ordering is intended to serve "the instruction of
beginners." The question, then, is what is involved in such
"instruction" (eruditionem). How is it that a proper ordo
disciplinae turns beginners into masters of theological wisdom? 38
In investigating this question, I will argue that the experience
of God in salvation history-from Moses at the burning bush to
the prophets to St. John at the foot of the cross-involves above
all the contemplative discernment that reality is radically
theocentric. Even apparently anthropocentric analogies take their
bearings from contemplating the real in terms not of human
35 Cf. ibid., 80-120. One might compare Rahner's approach with the far more narrativedramatic approach of contemporaries such as Hans Urs von Balthasar.
36 Thomas F. O'Meara, O.P., Thomas Aquinas, Theologian (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1997), 190-91.
37 Ibid., 246; cf. 248.
38 I am arguing that the theocentric (contemplative) order of Aquinas's treatise on the
triune God must characterize any contemporary Thornist Trinitarian theology. However, I
am not suggesting that Thornist Trinitarian theology must confine itself to re-presenting, and
commenting upon, each of Aquinas's questions in the order he presents them. This would
reduce Thornist Trinitarian theology to a historical enterprise, rather than the contemporary
systematic enterprise it should be.

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MATIHEW LEVERING

subjectivity or historicity but of divine causality. 39 Theocentric
metaphysics thus belongs to the pedagogical intention of
Aquinas's theological wisdom: Aquinas's treatise on the triune
God is intended to form the reader into a particular kind of
knower, by guiding him through intellectual exercises that enable
him to experience, through contemplation, the God of salvation
history.
The best discussions
pedagogical intention-which runs
throughout Aquinas's corpus-concern the Summa contra
Gentiles. Mark Jordan and Thomas Hibbs (the latter
acknowledging a debt to the former) have argued
theological
wisdom is for Aquinas essentially pedagogy or protreptic. I will
not enter into the debates over the structure
the Summa Contra
Gentiles, in which context the approach of Jordan and Hibbs is
contested. 40 Rather, my purpose is simply to appropriate their
work insofar as it provides evidence that, for Aquinas,
theologizing is an exercise that seeks to transform as well as to
inform. Although the Summa Theologiae adopts a very different
structure from the Summa contra Gentiles,41
both works
Aquinas deploys metaphysical (theocentric) analysis to raise or
convert the mind to the self-revealing God who is triune spiritual
substance and uncaused cause of all things.
Mark Jordan comes to the Summa contra Gentiles with a
central question in mind: "How is the reader meant to be engaged
by this avowedly persuasive work?" 42 His question might also be
the role that meditation upon divine causality (the five ways to prove the
existence of God) plays in Aquinas's theology of the triune God, cf. Hankey, God in Himself,
55-56, 68-74, 139-42.
40 For oo introduction (lacking a discussion of Hibbs's work) to the debate, see Rudi A.
te V elde, "Natural Reason in the Summa contra Gentiles," Medieval Philosophy and Theology
4 (1994): 4 2- 70. The standard work on the Summa contra Gentiles is R.-A. Gauthier, Somme
contre les gentils: Introduction, Collection Philosophie Europeenne dirigee par Henri Hude
(Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1993). See also Michel Corbin, Le chemin de la theologie chez
Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972), and Albert Patfoort, O.P., Thomas d'Aquin: Les
cles d'une theologie (Paris: FAC, 1983).
41 On this point, see Gilles Emery, O.P., "Le traite de saint Thomas sur la Trinite clans la
Somme contre les Gentils," Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 5-40.
42 Mark D. Jordan, "The Protreptic Structure of the 'Summa Contra Gentiles'," The
Thomist 50 (1986): 174.
39 Regarding

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

607

phrased in terms of formation: how is the reader meant to be
formed? What transformation in the reader does Aquinas desire
his Summa contra Gentiles to accomplish? Jordan's answer is that
Aquinas intends to draw the reader through the insights and
errors of the "Gentiles"-the ancient Greek philosophers-to the
fullness of Christian faith. 43 The pedagogical purpose is to show
believers how Christian wisdom includes truths (about God) that
can be philosophically demonstrated, as well as truths that cannot
be so demonstrated. As Jordan explains,
in order to teach believers about what can and cannot be demonstrated,
Thomas must undertake a persuasive clarification of the truth of faith. As it
teaches believers how to persuade, the Contra Gentiles must also persuade
believers to become habituated in the whole of Christian wisdom. 44

Christian wisdom, insofar as it moves beyond faith and the gift of
the Holy Spirit, cannot be attained without acquiring the practices
of philosophical wisdom (the intellectual virtue of wisdom).
As Thomas Hibbs states, therefore, "The text [of the Summa
contra Gentiles] presupposes some measure of intellectual virtue
in its readers and provides ample opportunity for further exercise
of those virtues. "45 Aquinas must persuade his readers to allow
their conceptions of God to be transformed in light of the kind of
Ibid., 184.
Ibid., 190-91. Rudi A. te Velde takes issue with Jordan's claim: "It seems to me
misleading to read in the use of convincere an intention of rhetorical persuasion. The twofold
mode of truth is primarily a logical division, a division of the truth claims of faith into one
part that can be demonstratively made known as true in the light of natural reason and
another, the truth of which cannot be made known in the light of reason." (Te Velde,
"Natural Reason in the Summa contra Gentiles," 55) Te Velde's point is that the arguments
from natural reason contained in the first three books of the Summa contra Gentiles cannot
be "persuasive" for believers, "since reason does not contribute to the inner truth and
certainty of faith-the truth of which is founded in God's knowledge of himself (prima
veritas)-but only to the way the truth of faith can be appropriated within the domain of
human experience and understanding." (55) The question, however, is whether he has
grasped what Jordan means by «habituation" into Christian wisdom.
45 Thomas S. Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa
Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 3. For more insight
into Hibbs's approach to the Summa contra Gentiles, see idem, "Kretzmann's Theism vs.
Aquinas's Theism: Interpreting the Summa Contra Gentiles," The Thomist 62 (1998): 603-22.
43
44

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MATil1EW LEVERING

intellectual probing
can dispel intellectual idolatry.
Moreover, Aquinas's arguments require his readers to become
his school of intellectual virtue, through which he
learners
seeks
Hibbs's words) "to incukate inteUectual virtue and
uproot the sources of intellectual vice. " 46 Readers who wish to
know God solely through revelation must be persuaded to
recognize that the Christian God, while not the god of the
philosophers, cannot be known apart from philosophical practices
and inquiries, whose complexity must increase when the believer
moves from simple faith to the pursuit of the wisdom of sacra
doctrina, faith seeking understanding. 47 In
vein, Hibbs
remarks, "Appreciation of Aquinas's teaching entails apprehending its arguments from the vantage point afforded by the
possession of the virtues. " 48 Neither Aquinas nor Hibbs, however,
is sanguine about whether the reader already possesses the
required virtues. Rather, Aquinas's teaching is intended as
pedagogy. By integrating dialectical inquiry with key passages
from the revealed "narrative" of sacra scriptura,Aquinas prompts
the reader (Christian or non-Christian) to enter into the fullness
of wisdom. The reader is invited to join the dialectical inquiry,
and to see how that inquiry, as properly philosophical, both
enriches and is enriched (fulfilled and transformed) by the
Christian "narrative."
Hibbs explains that "the dialectical structure of the Contra
Gentiles seeks to provoke the reader to inquiry, to an appropriation of the virtue of wisdom." 49 Aquinas's theological
argumentation is not merely intended to inform the reader;
purpose is also to shape the kind of reader who
be able to
understand the argumentation. Understanding
not necessarily
mean agreeing. It
mean grasping the interplay of wisdoms
(the intellectual virtue, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and sacra
doctrina or sacra scriptura) and judging the text in light of the

wm

wm

Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative, 23.
As evidence for the necessity of philosophical practices, recall the Egyptian monks of
Anthony's time who were shocked to hear that God does not have an arm or a hand, contrary
to the letter of Scripture.
48 Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas, 4.
49 Ibid., 5.
46

47

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

609

text's conception of wisdom as formative teaching. Aquinas never
claimed to have the last word; as Alasdair Macintyre has
indicated, "each article, each question takes the argument as far
as it needs to be taken in the light of what Aquinas knew of the
discussions of each particular argument so far but leaves it open
to be taken further. " 50 But as a faithful teacher of sacra doctrina,
Aquinas was also aware that students-even highly advanced
students-need to be guided in the acquisition and deepening of
the virtues. Intellectual virtue is no exception to this rule. Behind
Aquinas's theological works is the desire to teach revealed
wisdom in a way that forms in the reader (or hearer) the ability
to engage truth at the highest intellectual level, that is, the ability
to participate more and more deeply in the dynamic presence
(through faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit) of God's own
knowledge in our frail minds.
Since, as we have seen, wisdom for Aquinas is primarily
knowledge of God, the teaching required of the wise person will
primarily be teaching about the triune God. We have shown that
this teaching, in Aquinas's view, must not only inform but also
form, by eliciting in the reader the practices that will enable the
reader to raise his mind to apprehend more profoundly the God
experienced in faith. It remains to place Aquinas's concept of
wisdom (and thus of theology) in the context of recent theoretical
analysis of ancient philosophy.
Jordan argues that Aquinas's Summa contra Gentiles belongs
to the ancient philosophical genre of protreptic. 51 Protreptic
differed from philosophy per se in that it functioned as a kind of
introduction or invitation to the practice of philosophy. Jordan
explains, "A protreptic was originally a persuasion to the study
and practice of some art or skill; for philosophic writers, it
became an exhortation to the practice of the philosophic art,
which required virtues of inquiry and contemplation." 52 Jordan
suggests that Aquinas found an exemplar of ancient protreptic in
50 Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1988), 164.
51 Jordan, "The Protreptic Structure of the Summa Contra Gentiles," 191f.
51 Ibid., 192.

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MATTHEW LEVERING

the first two chapters of Aristotle's Metaphysics, which play an
important role in Aquinas's own conception of wisdomo
According to Jordan, Aquinas transformed his model into a call
"to progress
the practice of Christian wisdomo"53 Since this
practice is, for the viator, always ongoing, Aquinas's protreptic is
not simply a prdude to his theological work, but lies at the heart
of the work itselfo
Jordan also notes a similarity with Maimonides' Guide for the
Perplexed: just as the Guide ends with the implications of Torah
for human Hfe, so likewise each of the four books of the Summa
contra Gentiles ends with discussions of the human good
(ultimately, sharing in God's beatitude)o54 As is well known, the
same exitus-reditus pattern is found in the Summa Theologiaeo On
the basis of this pattern, Jordan states,
The structure of the Contra Gentiles, as of the Guide, is not so much a
descending deduction as an ascending exhortation .... The highest purpose of
the work is not apodictic but epideictic, not demonstrative but hortatoryo In
short, it is a protreptic to the contemplation of God; it is an ascent to God
through the world and law which culminates the "practice," that is, the
possession of the wisdom of a visiono55

The value of theological wisdom thus lies in its practice of
contemplative ascent, which deepens the participation in God's
knowledge that the believer already has
faith, and which is
perfected in the beatific visiono By practicing theological wisdom,
the believer is enabled to anticipate,
to live in accord with,
the ultimate end of deification (as A. No Williams has rightly
emphasized)
marks the transition from grace to glory.
Jordan's comparison of Aquinas's work with ancient protreptic
is valuable for its emphasis on theological wisdom as something
that is not only taught but practicedo Aquinas's teaching about
God (one and three) has to be seen as an exemplar
invitation to the practice of contemplationo However, since
protreptic is basicaUy encouragement or exhortation, the risk
53 Ibido, 194.
54

IbicL, 199.

55

Ibid.

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

611

inherent in the comparison is that Aquinas's account of
theological wisdom will be confused with rhetorical theology as
defined recently by David Cunningham: "theology gains its
greatest insights when it leaves matters of truth to God and
strives, rather, toward verisimilitude-toward what appears to be
true. "56 Truth, Cunningham argues, is found only in the beatific
vision. Aquinas, in contrast, is fully convinced that theological
wisdom attains truth here and now, not only in the articles of
faith but also in its own deductions. Cunningham's claim about
the nature of theology is uncomfortably close to Jordan's remark
that Aquinas's Summa contra Gentiles is simply "a protreptic to
the contemplation of God," as if (as with the distinction between
protreptic and philosophy proper) such contemplation did not
really occur until the beatific vision. Although this is not
apparently Jordan's meaning, nonetheless the difficulty remains.
Unlike protreptic, theological wisdom is not simply hortatory,
even as regards participation in the ultimate end. Rather, just as
grace is a foretaste of glory, so also theological wisdom is, while
not beatitude, a real foretaste of beatific contemplation of God's
truth.
For this reason, it is also useful to compare Aquinas's account
of theological wisdom with Pierre Harlot's discussion of
philosophy as spiritual exercise. Hadot has demonstrated that
the Socratic dialogue turns out to be a kind of communal spiritual exercise. In
it, the interlocutors are invited to participate in such inner spiritual exercises
as examination of conscience and attention to oneself; in other words, they are
urged to comply with the famous dictum, "Know thyself. "57

The spiritual exercise is not, Hadot makes clear, reducible to a
moral exercise. Rather, for Plato at least,
every dialectical exercise, precisely because it is an exercise of pure thought,
subject to the demands of the Logos, turns the soul away from the sensible
56 David S. Cunningham, Faithful Persuasion:In Aid of a Rhetoricof ChristianTheology

(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 4.
57 Pierre Hadot, Philosophyas a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 90.

MATTHEW LEVERING

612

world, and allows it to convert itself towards the Good. It is the spirit's
itinerary towards the divine. 58

In this view, not merely protreptic but also philosophy proper
belongs to the exhortation by which the person turns towards
higher things. Philosophy itself is
practice of turning away
from the temporal towards the eternal; as a practice, philosophy
involves meditating on higher things in order to encourage oneself
to persevere. By practicing philosophy, one becomes adept at
living philosophically.
Is Aquinas's treatise an example of such a spiritual exercise?
On the one hand, the answer is no. Because of the supernatural
virtue of faith, Aquinas's treatise on God is not intended as a
(Stoic) aid in perseverance. His treatise also involves scriptural
narrative in a way that classical philosophy obviously does not.
Yet on the other hand, with these caveats, Aquinas's treatise can
be seen as a spiritual exercise. The treatise, written for a
community of learners, is intended as a contemplative guide into
the reality of God, as self-relating and as cause of
things, and
thus into "God as experienced in salvation history" as the wise
loving God who freely creates
redeems.
this way, it:
preserves the contemplative and pedagogical intention of the
dassical philosophical dialogues, despite differing greatly in form.
Similarly, the treatise makes dear that the theologian must grasp
his own rational processions of knowing and loving, since these
spiritual acts the human person undergird analogous discourse
about the God who is spiritual, rather than material, act. 59 In light
of the tradition of spiritual exercise recognized by Hadot,
therefore, one can identify Aquinas's treatise as a form of spiritual
exercise, dynamically ordered to contemplation of divine truth,
and attentive to the dictum "Know thyself." However, the
differences may
be stronger than the similarities. As Hibbs
shows, scriptural "narrative" is an integral part of Aquinas's

58 Ibid., 93.
59 This point is emphasized by Bernard Lonergan, S.J., Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas,
ed. !Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

613

theological wisdom. By way of elaborating this point, I will turn
to Aquinas's reading of St. John.

IV. ISAIAH AND ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST AS CONTEMPLATIVES
Aquinas considers the narrative of St.John the Evangelist to be
the model of the contemplative ascent to knowledge of God.
Jean-Pierre Torrell has praised the Commentary on the Gospel of
Saint John as "certainly among the most finished and most
profound of the commentaries that Thomas left." 60 Aquinas
composed this commentary between 1270 and 1272, at the
height of his theological powers. In the prologue, Aquinas
indicates that he will read the Gospel of John in light of Isaiah
6:1, "I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, and the
whole house was full of his majesty, and the things that were
under him filled the Temple." 61 He explains that this passage
from Isaiah's mystical vision illuminates the manner of St. John's
contemplation of the Lord Jesus. By beginning with Isaiah's
mystical vision, Aquinas makes dear (following Augustine) that
the Gospel of John is above all the fruit of an inspired
contemplative. For Aquinas, the author's contemplation of Jesus
is the central mark of the gospel. He thus feels justified in
employing Isaiah 6: 1 as an exegetical tool. Using one
contemplative to explore the work of another, he writes of St.
John's contemplation: "It is described as high, full, and perfect.
It is high: I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; it is
60 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans.
Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 339. The
text of the commentary is a reportatio done by Reginald of Pipemo.
61 For a discussion of Aquinas's method of exegeting John's Prologue, see C. Clifton
Black, "St. John's Commentary on the Johannine Prologue: Some Reflections on Its
Character and Implications," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 48 (1986): 681-98. Although he is
wary of some aspects of Aquinas's procedure, Black remarks that Aquinas's "unmitigated
concern to read the Bible holistically-to interpret the Fourth Gospel within its larger
scriptural context-resonates with, and might inform, the current resurgence of interest in
canonical criticism." (696) See also R. Guin don, "La theologie de saint Thomas d' Aquin dans
le rayonnement du 'Prologue' de saint John," Revue de l'Universited'Ottawa 29 (1959): 5-23
and 121-42.

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MATTHEW LEVERING

full: and the whole house was full of his majesty; and it was
perfect: and the things that were under him filled the Temple." 62
As Aquinas goes on to sketch in more detail the meaning of
"high, full, and perfect," we find that this threefold account of
John's contemplation reflects the structure of Aquinas's
Trinitarian theology. Before exploring this point, however, we
should note how he depicts the process of revelation. The sole
source of divine revelation is Jesus, but revelation is not an
extrinsic event, as if Jesus simply enunciated doctrinal truths
which were then codified, without any process of subjective
appropriation on the part of the disciples. Rather, revelation
depends upon the (inspired) interior preparation and prayerful
contemplation of the disciples who receive and reciprocate Jesus'
love. St. John, Aquinas explains, was able to grasp and to present
the mystery of Jesus' divinity in a more profound way than were
the other evangelists because "among the other disciples of the
Lord, John was more loved by Christ." 63 The spiritual exercise
that informs sacra doctrina is directed by Christ as spiritual
master, who is the source of theological wisdom" Put another
way, sacra doctrina depends upon friendship with Christ. As
Aquinas remarks,
And because secrets are revealed to friends, "I have called you friends because
everything I have heard from my father I have made known to you" (below
15: 15), Jesus confided his secrets in a special way to that disciple who was
specially loved. 64

If the Summa Theologiae's treatise on God (one and three) is a
spiritual exercise intended to form as well as to inform the reader,
then this spiritual exercise is necessarily rooted in contemplation
62 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, p" 1, pro!., no. 1 (trans.
James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher [Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1980], 23)" For
clarification of the text of Isaiah used by Aquinas, see Weisheipl's appendix 1, pp. 447-49.
63 In Joan., p. 1, prol., no. 11 (Weisheipl, trans., 27). Aquinas cites John 21:20.
64 Ibid. For an excellent discussion of what friendship involves for Aquinas, see Guy
Mansini, O.S.B., "Similitudo, Communicatio, and the Friendship of Charity in Aquinas,"
Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale, Supplementa 1: Thomistica, ed. E. Manning
(Leuven: Peeters, 1995): 1-26.

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

615

of the master/friend, Jesus Christ-a contemplation of the Word
through the Holy Spirit.
This point becomes clear in Aquinas's elaboration of the terms
"high, full, and perfect." The term "high" describes John's
contemplation of Christ's possession, as Word, of the divine
essence. Aquinas explains,
Now a fourfold height is indicated in this contemplation of John. A height of
authority; hence he says, I saw the Lord. A height of eternity; when he says,
seated. One of dignity, or nobility of nature; so he says, on a high throne. And
a height of incomprehensible truth; when he says, lofty. It is in these four ways
that the early philosophers arrived at the knowledge of God. 65

This last sentence indicates the crucial point that Aquinas wishes
to make. In the remainder of his account of "high" contemplation, Aquinas argues that John's contemplation of Jesus'
divinity is paralleled by the metaphysical arguments of Plato and
Aristotle. 66 John's contemplation, Aquinas suggests, attains and
(in the gospel) presupposes the conclusions about God's essence
reached metaphysically by the great philosophers, even though
John himself is not a "philosopher" in the sense that Plato and
Aristotle were. The four ways-authority (the argument from
design), eternity (the argument from causality}, dignity (the
argument from participation), and incomprehensibility (the
argument from finite truths to infinite T ruth)-show that Aquinas
regards his own inquiries into the divine essence (God as one) as
part of the spiritual exercise of contemplation, which alone
enables a "high" understanding of God.
John's contemplation is also "full." Aquinas states that
"contemplation is full when someone is able to consider all the
effects of a cause in the cause itself, that is, when he knows not
only the essence of the cause, but also its power, according as it
can extend out to many things. "67 When one recalls that
Aquinas's treatise on God under the rubric of oneness includes
questions regarding such points as the existence of God in things,
65

In Joan., p. 1, pro!., no. 2.

66 Ibid., nos. 3-6 (Weisheipl, trans.,
67 Ibid., no. 7 (Weisheipl, trans.,

23-25).
257).

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MATiliEW LEVERING

the providence of God, and so forth, one recognizes that Aquinas
is teaching that contemplation of God must first be "high" and
"full" because it must first address the aspects that pertain to
God's unity, in order to be able then to rise to contemplation of
God's threeness without falling into a polytheistic account of
God's presence. This aspect of "fullness" justifies the scope of
sacra doctrina, which treats all things in relation to God.
The third term with which Aquinas describes John's
contemplation of Jesus is "perfect." For Aquinas, contemplation
is "perfect" when it attains its object. For contemplation to be
perfect, therefore, the person must know and love (by faith and
charity) the Trinity as Creator and Redeemer. As he states in STh
I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3,
There are two reasons why the knowledge of the divine persons was necessary
for us. It was necessary for the right idea of creation [because it reveals God's
freedom in creating] .... In another way, and chiefly, [it was necessary] that
we may think rightly concerning the salvation of the human race, accomplished
by the Incarnate Son, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

When Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae treats what pertains to
God as three, he is imitating John's contemplation insofar as it is
"perfect." To know God as one is insufficient (even though the
true God is one: God's oneness cannot, for Aquinas, be subsumed
conceptually into threeness along the lines proposed by
philosophers and theologians who argue that being itself is
intrinsically relational) because it is only by knowing and loving
God as three-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-that human beings
are fully taken up into the dynamism that is grace and glory, the
freely given perfection of the imago dei.
In short, contemplation of the Lord Jesus will manifest itself
in a treatise on God that is "high, full, and perfect." Contemplation of the authority, eternity, dignity, and incomprehensibility of the Son of God is not opposed to the metaphysical
efforts of the philosophers. When contemplated with the
intellectual virtue of wisdom, the divine Word will reveal truth
accessible to reason alone, unenlightened · by faith. Yet the

WISDOM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY

617

contemplation of the Son of God attains its perfection only in the
contemplation (possible only in faith) of the Trinity. The process
is not from a false "one God" to a true "triune" God. On the
contrary, each manner of contemplation reveals necessary truth.
If one's contemplation is not "high" and "full," in accord with the
intellectual virtue of wisdom, it will certainly not attain to the
"perfect" contemplation that can only be had in faith. The
movement of the De Deo trains the person to know and love God
in the "perfect" way. Aquinas's De Deo is thus a spiritual exercise
under the guidance of the one master, Jesus Christ, the Wisdom
of God, who teaches us about himself (and thereby befriends us)
through inspired contemplatives such as Isaiah and John.
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The above reflections have avoided the question of how the
incarnate Son's Cross and Resurrection should instruct
theological claims about the Trinitarian relations. This question,
present in Rahner but most powerfully brought to the fore by
Karl Barth, Jurgen Moltmann, and Hans Urs von Balthasar, has
recently become a pressing one for theologians who wish to
evaluate the contemporary relevance of Aquinas's approach. I
hope, however, that I have prepared the ground for further
reflection along these lines. This article has been limited to
exploring the structural intention of Aquinas's approach to the
doctrine of the triune God, in light of the widespread criticism
that Aquinas's approach obscures "God as experienced in
salvation history." I have suggested that Aquinas's Trinitarian
theology should be understood as an exercise in sapiential
contemplation, which requires that sacra doctrina integrate the
intellectual virtue of wisdom. In such a framework, metaphysical
tools are seen to be integral to salvation history: contemplative
wisdom belongs to the dynamism by which God freely relates in
salvation history to human beings.
As William Hill has pointed out, Aquinas operates out of a

618

MATIHEW LEVERING

concern for theology as real assent of the intelligence to God .... The
abstractness of procedure must not be misconstrued: it is not a question of
abstract, but of abstract (and so penetrating) knowledge of
knowledge
the actual and so the concretely real. 68

Thus the theoretical approach that Aquinas adopts in his treatise
on God (one and three) need not distance the reader from the
biblical narrative of salvation history. On the contrary, the
philosophical terms which Aquinas, as a contemplative, probes
the scriptural evidence to God's simultaneous oneness and
threeness recapitulates, in the theological
the posture of
the holy men and women the Bible (e.g., Isaiah and John) vis-avis the triune God's self-revelation. Through the contemplative
practices of Aquinas's treatise, the reader becomes a deeper
participant in salvation history. He learns how to join more
profoundly
farad's invocation of the "one God" and in the
apostolic invocation of the God who is revealed by Christ Jesus
to be one and three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By means of
the metaphysical ascesis, the reader is drawn doser to the
revealed God whose simultaneous oneness and threeness invites
inexhaustible contemplation. This movement occurs when, by
participating more and more deeply in God's knowledge of
himself as one and three, we are drawn-impelled by love-into
the transcendent mystery of God's own inexpressible communio. 69

68 Hill, The Three-Personed God, 65; d. his important programmatic essay, "Seeking
Foundations for Faith: Symbolism of Person or Metaphysics of IBeing?" in William J. Hill,
OJ'., Search for the Absent God: Tradition and Modernity in Religious Understanding, ed.
Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P. (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 17-32.
69 I would like to thank Grego•y LaNave and an anonymous reviewer from The Thomist
for extremely helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

The Thomist 64 (2000): 619-29

THE PROBLEM OF TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN
THOMAS'S ROMAN COMMENTARY 1
WILLIAM B. STEVENSON
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland

I

t seems providential, at a time in which we have seen a revival
of scholarly interest in the Trinity, that a work of Thomas
devoted largely to an explication of the doctrine of the Trinity
should have been discovered. 2 The Roman Commentary gives us
a glimpse into the mind of Thomas as it was immediately prior to
fashioning what must be considered his definitive treatment of the
doctrine. 3 That treatment, found in Summa Theologiae I, qq.

1 A version of this paper was presented at the Thirty-Fourth International Congress of
Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1999.
2 We now know that Thomas commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard twice. In
addition to the Scriptum on all four books of the Sentences, which he wrote while a bachelor
at Paris (1252-56), he commented on the first book a second rime as a master (1265-66).
Such an undertaking was unusual for a master, but as the occasion for this second
commentary was Thomas's establishment of a Dominican studium in Rome, it may have been
intended for the instruction of those just starting their theological studies-that is, those
"beginners" referred to in the Prologue of the Summa Theologiae. This second commentary
is now commonly referred to as the Roman Commentary in order to distinguish it from the
Parisian Scriptum of a decade earlier. The Roman Commentary is found in Oxford, Lincoln
College Ms. Lat. 95. Leonard E. Boyle positively established Thomas's authorship of the text
in "'Alia lectura fratris Thome,"' Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 418-29. The critical edition
of the text is being prepared by Leonard E. Boyle and John F. Boyle. The texts used in this
article are working texts prepared by John F. Boyle and are at this point strictly provisional.
For incipits and explicits, see Mark F. Johnson, "'Alia lectura fratris Thome': A List of the
New Texts of Sr. Thomas Aquinas found in Lincoln College, Oxford, MS. Lat. 95,"
Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 57 (1990): 34-61.
3 For a further examination of the practical and theoretical exigencies of Thornas's
Trinitarian thought in the Roman Commentary, see John F. Boyle "The Ordering of
Trinitarian Teaching in Thomas Aquinas' Second Commentary on Lombard's Sentences,"

619

620

WILLIAM B. STEVENSON

27-43, masterfully transforms Augustine's Trinitarian thought,
which restricted the image of the Trinity to the ratio superior of
the human person, by setting it within the framework of an
Aristotelian ontology. Thomas's re-casting of Augustine's psychological analogy into an Aristotelian framework is a remarkable
achievement because it allowed him to sublate an analogy based
on a psychology of the soul into a general metaphysical analysis
of cognitional acts.4 Hence, when one reads qq. 27-29 of the
Prima pars one finds a thinker for whom the relation between
intra-divine processions, relations, and persons has ceased to be
a problem.
The Trinitarian theology of the Summa is, of course, not
merely the result of identifying Aristotelian equivalents to
Augustine's memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas. 5 Indeed, that
triad is conspicuously absent. The Summa's treatment of the
Trinity is the product of a much more radical re-appropriation of
Augustine. We must remember that no fewer than 22 "trinities"
are found in Augustine's work, 13 of which are discussed in the
De Trinitate. In the Summa, we have the intra-divine processions,
conceived according to a single analogy of intelligible emanation,
which ground the relations, which in turn ground and, insofar as
they subsist, are the divine persons. We now know that the
mastery demonstrated by this sort of seamless treatment of the
doctrine came only at the end of a life spent wrestling with
Augustine's legacy. In the Roman Commentary we see Thomas's
final sustained attempt at developing a Trinitarian theology on
the analogy of memory, intellect, and will. It is an attempt he
Recherchesde theologieancienneet medievaleSupplementa (1995): 125-36.
4 Perhaps the most detailed study of this transformation of Augustinian Trinitarian
thought is Bernard Lonergan's Verbum articles, originally published in TheologicalStudies 7
(1946): 349-92; 8 (1947): 35-79, 404-44; 10 (1949): 3-40, 359-93. Lonergan later
augmented these and assembled them in book form. The critical edition of the book is
published as volume 2 of the CollectedWorks ofBernardLonerganunder the title ofVerbum:
Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1997). This essay is indebted to Lonergan's study of the
development of the general notion of verbum in the thought of Aquinas.
5 This seems to be the task to which Thomas sets himself in the De Veritate. Cf.
Lonergan,Verbum, 221.

TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN THE ROMAN COMMENTARY

621

ultimately abandoned in order to begin work on the Summa. By
attending to the structure of the Roman Commentary as well as to
the use Thomas makes of the Augustinian triad of memoria,
intelligentia, and voluntas, we may arrive at a clearer understanding of Thomas's mature Trinitarian thought as well as a
firmer grasp of the implications of the ordo doctrinae, which
governs that thought.

l. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN MEMORY AND INTELLECT
Unlike the Summa, in which the discussion of Trinity is
immediately preceded by the treatise De Deo uno, the Roman
Commentary considers the imago Dei (d. 3) as a prologue to its
extended treatment of the Trinity (d. 4££.). The "magnificent
disorder" of the Commentary, however, becomes apparent when
one considers that earlier, in d. 2, q. 2, which is concerned with
the summum bonum, Thomas gives what seems like a premature
disquisition on the processions of word and love within a simple
being as a way of leaving open the possibility of a plurality of
persons in the supreme good. One might expect that his
discussion of the imago Dei would develop the notion that the
emanation of word and love within human rational consciousness
is the locus of that image. It does not. Thomas is compelled by
Lombard's text to comment on the Augustinian triad of memoria,
intelligentia, and voluntas-a task that presents some special
difficulties to the Aristotelian. This is most apparent in Thomas's
treatment of memory.
To begin with, in his discussion of mens in d. 3, q. 3, a. 1,6
Thomas points out that Aristotle and Augustine have very
different notions of memoria. According to Aristotle, memory
pertains to the sensitive, rather than the intellective, part of the
soul. 7 Memory extends to the concrete and particular; intellect
abstracts from the here and now or the there and then. For
Aristotle, the very existence of science depends on this fact of
6 "Quid sit mens" (124ra-b).
7 "Secundum Philosophus, memoria est in parte sensitiua anime"

3, a. 1, obj. 3 [124ra-b]).

(Roman Comm., d.3, q.

622

WILLIAM B. STEVENSON

cognition. The "here and now," which Thomas designates by
such terms as materiaindividualis,materiadesignata,and materia
signata, is "irrelevant to all scientific explanation; it is an
irrelevant a priori; time and place as such explain nothing. "8
Thus, for Archimedes, the baths of Syracuse and King Hiero's
votive crown were in the decisive sense irrelevant to his insight
into the principles of displacement and specific gravity; that
insight was only extrinsically conditioned by those now legendary
factors. Now because we are not angels human understanding is
always insight into what Aristotle calls "phantasm. " 9 But the
intellective part of the soul does not remain within the limits of
the sensible and imaginable. Rather, it grasps the intelligible in the
image; it abstracts from that which in its particularity cannot be
an explanatory factor. In the third book of his commentary on
the De Anima, Thomas sums the matter up simply, saying that
"the intellective part of the soul understands species abstracted
from phantasms." 10
Memory, on the other hand, pertains to the past precisely as
past, and so is a sort of extension of sense which only knows the
here and now. As such, it cannot be intellective, although it
provides the phantasms into which the intellect will abstract
intelligible species. Thomas knows that, as it stands, Aristotle's
concept of memory deals the deathblow to Augustine's triad
inasmuch as what purports to be an analogy intrinsically
unconditioned by space and time would after all be stuck in the
sensible or imaginable-a glorified clover-leaf analogy. This
account of memory, of course, is not what Augustine meant by
memoria at all, but Thomas's defense of Augustine is puzzling.
Augustine, Thomas observes, understood memory to pertain not
only to the past, but also to the present and future: "And
therefore [memory] is not in the sensitive part of the soul, since
8 Lonergan, Verbum, 53.
9 Common experience affirms this: "Quilibet in se ipso experiri potest, quod quando
aliquis conatur aliquid intelligere, format sibi aliqua phantasmata per modu exemplorum, in
quibus quasi inspiciat quod intelligere studet." Summa Theologiae, I, q. 84, a. 7.
10 "pars animae intellectiva intelligit species a phantasmatibus abstractas" (De Anima III,
lect. 12 [§777]).

TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN THE ROMAN COMMENTARY

623

sense does not extend itself, except to the present only; rather, it
is in the intellective part, which extends itself to the past and
future." 11
This explanation is problematic for several reasons. To begin
with, broadening the scope of memory to include the present and
future only sidesteps the problem posed by the Aristotelian notion
of memory. It is dear that the senses cannot extend to the past or,
for that matter, the future. But Aristotle's point is that there is a
real distinction between an understanding which has its genesis at
a particular place and time but for which those factors are
essentially irrelevant, and a recollection of the past as past.
Properly speaking, the intellective soul does not remember; "to
know the past as past, like knowing the present is the work of
sense." 12 Furthermore, by declaring that memory pertains to the
present Thomas is conceding that indeed it is not possible fuHy to
extricate memoria from the sensitive part of the soul, for he states
explicitly that the senses extend themselves to the here and now.
Although memory of the present is distinguished from sense
knowledge here, Thomas does not provide the grounds for that
distinction. Finally, extending the province of memory to the
future fails to overcome the challenge presented by Aristotelian
psychology. There is a prima facie plausibility to the claim that
anticipation or knowledge of the future must be purely intellective. While we have sense knowledge of the present and
recollections of past particulars, we certainly cannot claim to have
such knowledge of the future. Since knowledge of future
contingents lies outside man's natural powers, must not any
knowledge of the future necessarily be "abstract"? Yet, as one of
Thomas's own examples from the sciences illustrates, even such
"memory" of the future cannot claim to be purely intellective.
Thomas himself observes in the De Veritate that the astronomer
11 "Ad tertium dicendum quod memoria aliter sumitur ab Aristotele et aliter ab Augustino.
Aristoteles enim accipit ibi memoriam prout est preteritorum tantum, et secundum hoc
pertinet ad sensitivam partem que cognoscit hie et nunc. Ab Augustina autern sumitur largius
prout scilicet est preteritorum, presentium, et futurorum. Et ideo non est in sensitiva cum
sensus non extendat se nisi ad presenria tanturn, set est in intellectiua que ad preterita et
futura se extendit" (Roman Comm., d. 3, q. 3, a. 1, ad 3 [124ra-b]).
12 Lonergan, Verbum, 53. Cf. De Verit., q. 10, a. 2.

624

WILLIAMB. STEVENSON

is able to predict all the eclipses of coming centuries, but he does
not, as a scientist, know them in their particularity. 13 Lonergan
puts it this way: "his science as such will not give him knowledge
of any particular eclipse as particular 'sicut rusticus cognoscit'; for
insofar as the astronomer knows future eclipses as particular, it is
only by relating his calculations to a sensibly given here and
now." 14
Thus, the problem with this defense of Augustinian memoria
is that it seems to fail to take into account the decisive fact that
past, present, and future as such have no intrinsic bearing on the
intelligent grasp of intelligibles. While it is indeed true that the
intellective memory of Augustine extends to past, present, and
future, the explanation in the Roman Commentary fails to explain
why it is intellective. Such an explanation is critical if Thomas is
to succeed at making Augustine's triad work within the context of
Aristotelian science. Intelligence in act always prescinds from the
particularities of space and time. When this is not adverted to, the
distinction that Thomas draws between image and vestige15 is
obliterated and so also is any claim to having a suitable analogy
for the intra-divine processions.
If this judgment seems harsh, Thomas's own thought seems to
warrant it. In fact in the very next article (d. 3, q. 3, a. 2) 16 he
explains that, for Augustine, memory is a habitual knowledge that
makes human cogitation and its terminal acts of understanding
possible. 17 He essentially repeats the account of memoria found
in the De Veritate. In the tenth question of that work he explains
13 "sicut si quis astrologus coguosceret omnes motus caeli et distantias caelestium
corporum, cognosceret unamquamque eclipsim quae futura est usque ad centum annos; non
tamen cognosceret earn in quantum est singulare quoddam, ut sciret earn nunc esse vel non
esse, sicut rusticus cognoscit dum earn videt" (De Verit., q. 2, a. 5).
14 Lonergan, Verbum, 53.
15 All creatures bear the imprint (vestigium) of their triune Creator. The "image" of the
invisible God, however, could be found only in that which is not intrinsically conditioned by
space and time, for example, the human operations of knowing and loving. Cf. Roman
Comm., cl 3, q. 2, a. 1: "Utrum in omnibus creaturis sit uestigium Trinitatis" (14vm-15rf).
16 "Utrum in mente secundum ista tria, scilicet memoriam, intelligentiam et voluntatem,
sit ymago Trinitatis" (124rb-va).
17 "Ipse enim per memoriam nichil aliud intelligit hie quam habitualem notitiam ad
cognoscendum aliquid" (Roman Comm., d. 3, q. 3, a. 2, ad 3).

TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN THE ROMAN COMMENTARY

625

how memory is a habitual knowledge in which the mind is
present to itself. 18 This is how memory's knowledge of the present
differs from that of sense, for consciousness is not sense
knowledge. Thomas is thus able to free Augustine's triad from the
Aristotelian charge that it is rooted in sense knowledge, and
therefore not a truly spiritual analogy. Nevertheless, it seems that
for Thomas memoria always has an ambiguous status, since even
if it has this intellective aspect, it does not thereby lose its
sensitive and imaginative aspect.

IL LOMBARD'S MISTAKE
In the Roman Commentary, we see also that Thomas needs to
extricate the triad of memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas from
Lombard's misinterpretation of Augustine. It seems that Lombard
understood these three to be powers or potencies (vires, potentiae)
of the soul. 19 To be sure, the terms themselves signify faculties
rather than acts, but there is a theological rationale for
considering them as acts. In the fourteenth book of the De
Trinitate, Augustine declares that "if the rational soul is made to
the image of God in the sense that it can make use of reason and
intellect to understand and consider God, then the image of God
was in the soul from the beginning of its existence," that is, prior
to any of its acts. The human person possesses the image of God
by his nature, not by his acts. It seems that this is the reason that
Thomas himself considered the triad as powers in his first
commentary on the Sentences. The Thomas of the Roman
Commentary, however, explains that if memoria, intelligentia,
18 Cf. De Verit., q. 10, a. 2. See also Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study
in the Development of Aquinas' Teaching (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1990), 115-22.
19 "Ad tertium dicendum quod si recte considerentur uerba Magistri et uerba Augustini
non uidentur sonare idem; et uidetur quod Magister non intellexerit intentionem Augustini.
Magister enim unit quod ilia tria, scilicet memoria, intelligentia et uoluntas, sint tres uires et
tres potentie. Set hoc Augustinus non uult" (Roman Comm., d. 3, q. 3, a. 2 ad 3). Indeed,
Lombard does say that "Mens enim, id est, spirirus rationalis, essentia spiritualis est et
incorporea. Illa vero tria, naturales proprietates seu vires sunt ipsius rnentis, et a se invicern
differunt" (Peter Lombard, I Sententiae, d. 3).

626

WILLIAM B. STEVENSON

and voluntas are a triad of potencies, as Lombard insists, then
there is no way to ground an essential unity
God, nor is there
a basis on which to posit the intra-divine processions, for a
potency cannot give rise to a potency.
It might be easy to fault Lombard here, but only from the lofty
point of view of Thomas's mature Trinitarian though to As Juvenal
Merriell reminds us, Lombard's treatment may very well be "the
first step in the direction of an ontological interpretation of the
Augustinian analogy. " 20 Still, any useful metaphysical analysis
must be guided by Augustine's own account of the psychological
facts. Lombard, says Thomas, failed
this regard. Indeed,
Augustine is quite dear that the triad of memoria, intelligentia,
and voluntas has no explanatory power unless one remembers,
understands, and loves his own remembering, understanding, and
loving. 21 This point is critical, for as MerrieH observes, Augustine
"points out that in themselves the terms memoria, intelligentia,
voluntas are insufficient to reveal the Trinity unless we
understand the triad in terms of the processions of word and
love." 22 If these three are not understood in relation to the
twofold procession of word and love, then the persons are only
distinguishable by absolute or essential attributes; thus, the Father
is the memory of the Godhead, the Son the understanding, and
the Spirit the loveo The unintended result is a sort of
crypto-tritheism.
The Roman Commentary's adaptation of Augustinian
Trinitarian thought shows that Thomas had to differentiate
Augustine's understanding of memoria from Aristotle's, and do so
To the Image of the Trinity, 52.
De Trinitate, XV, 20.39: "De creatura eriam quam fecit deus quantum
valuimus admonuimus eos qui rationem de rebus talibus poscunt ut invisibilia eius per ea quae
facta sunt sicut possent intellecta conspicerent, et maxime per rationalem vel intellectualem
creaturam quae facta est ad imaginem dei, per quod velut speculum quantum possent, si
possent, cemerent trinitatem deum in nostra memoria, intelligentia, voluntate. Quae tria in
sua mente naturaliter divinitu instituta quisquis vivaciter perspicit et quam magnum sit in ea
unde potest etiam sempitema immutabilisque narura recoli, conspice, concupisci
(reminiscitur, per memoriam, intuetur per intelligentiam, amplecritur per dilecrionem),
profecto reperit illius summae ttinitatis imaginem."
22 Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity, 32.
20 Merri ell,

21 Augustine,

TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN THE ROMAN COMMENTARY

627

from the perspective of Aristotle's science. He also he needed to
develop an alternative to the ontological interpretation of
Augustine's triad inherited from Peter Lombard. His treatment is
typically nuanced, but the result is ambiguous: memory must be
conceived as a certain type of memory; the faculties of memory,
understanding, and will must be understood in terms of their
acts-qualifications abound. He faced the additional challenge of
developing a treatise on the Trinity on the foundation laid in his
discussion of the imago Dei. This task, I believe, was an important
element in Thomas's emerging awareness of an ordo doctrinae.
Ill. THE ORDO DOCTRINAE

When one examines the distinctions that flank his treatment of
the imago Dei in distinction 3, one finds that Thomas drops
altogether any discussion of memory, understanding, and will.
This triad is nowhere to be found either in his discussion of
plurality in the summum bonum (d. 2) or the doctrine of the
Trinity (d. 4££.). What might we make of this? It seems that when
Thomas's primary concern is theological, rather than anthropological, he grounds all plurality in God in processions of
intelligible emanation. Of course, a divine procession must be
internal, but it cannot be one whereby an act arises from a
potency, since there is no potency in God. Nor can it be an
internal procession in which an act arises from act, since God is
absolutely simple, existing as one infinite act. Ultimately, any
distinction in God must be made according to processions per
modum operati.23 Lonergan defines this sort of procession as an
"internal procession in which the principiating act and the
principiated act are really distinct, not on the basis of absolute
existence, but on the basis of relative existence. " 24 In order to
posit a plurality in God without compromising His essential
unity, Thomas needs to speak in terms of act and only of act, not
23 Cf.

De Verit., q. 4, a. 2, ad 7.

24 "Processio ad intra in qua actus principians et actus principiatus

distinguuntur realiter,
non tamen secundum esse absolutum, sed secundum esse relativum" (Bernard Lonergan, De
Deo Trino II, Pars systematica [Rome: Gregorian University, 1964], 76).

WILLIAM B. STEVENSON

628

of potency or even of habit-hence the Summa's replacement of
memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas, with principium verbi,
verbum, and amor (STh I, qq. 27-29).
The structure of the Roman Commentary suggests that Thomas
intended to develop a theological anthropology that served as the
foundation for a fully developed Trinitarian theory. But the utter
lack of continuity between the two indicates the problematic
nature of that project and creates a tension that Thomas will
ultimately resolve in the Summa, where the imago Dei is
separated from the intra-divine processions by some sixty-six
questions. That fact in itself proves exactly nothing, but it
increases the suspicion evoked by the Roman Commentary: that
the distinct tasks of Trinitarian theology and theological
anthropology have distinct criteria. Indeed, just as the Summa
maintains that the divine processions can only be understood
according to the analogy of intelligible emanation and
accordingly restricts the triad to principium verbi, verbum, and
amor, so also does it explain that the image of God in the human
soul cannot be restricted to acts, for it exists in the dim-witted as
surely as it exists in the bright. The image pertains to the
intellectual nature of man, prior to the specific acts of
intelligence. 25 Granted, that image is more perfectly manifested in
the habits and acts of understanding and loving, but it belongs to
man essentially. The Roman Commentary, on the other hand,
conflates the anthropological consideration of the intellect as
imago Dei and the theological or Trinitarian consideration of
intellectual operations as analogous to the intra-divine
processions.
The Roman Commentary represents an attempt to translate
Augustine's Trinitarian thought into Aristotelian ontology.
Thomas explains that in addition to the sensitive aspect of
memory there must be an intellective memory by which the mind
is habitually present to itself and out of which reasoning
proceeds. It is only when he invokes Aristotle's psychology,
however, that he is able fully to establish the abstract character of
25 Sth I, q. 93, a. 4.

TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN THE ROMAN COMMENTARY

629

intellective memory. Difficulties remain, for while Thomas's
Trinitarian thought required him to demonstrate the inadequacies
of treating memory, intellect, and will as potencies or powers of
the soul, such a consideration seems necessary to affirm the image
of God within human nature, and not just human acts of
intelligence and loving. This seems to be confirmed by Thomas's
auspicious omission of memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas in the
properly Trinitarian portions of the Roman Commentary. The
exigencies of a theological anthropology differ from those of a
Trinitarian theology. For while theological anthropology requires
an explicit analysis of faculties, a Trinitarian theology must advert
exclusively to the immanent operations of understanding and
loving. It would be left to the Summa Theologiae, not only to
make this distinction, but also to discern and articulate an
intelligible order, an ordo doctrinae which moves from the priora
quoad se to the priora quoad nos so that the beginner might more
easily understand these and all the verities of the faith within a
single formal viewpoint.

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d'Aquin. Tome 1. By JEAN-PIERRETORRELL, 0.P. Paris: Desclee, 1999.
Pp. liii + 351. 180F (paper). ISBN 2-7189-0950-1.
Jean-Pierre Torrell's Le Christ en ses mysteres: La vie et !'oeuvre de jesus
selon saint Thomas d'Aquin is a timely book. It is a close reading of questions
27 to 45 of the Tertia pars of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. A
second volume covering questions 46 to 59 is promised.
Torrell explicitly states that his task is not simply one of an historical
recovery of Thomas's thought. He takes Thomas's work to be of service to
theology today, and much of this fine book is an effort to suggest how. In
doing so, Torrell appreciates some of the difficulties and challenges of
contemporary theology, especially contemporary Roman Catholic theology,
which seems to suffer from manifold fragmentation. Most pervasive and
pernicious is the divide between the study of Scripture and systematic theology.
Certainly this past century has seen a renewed interest in what is often called
"biblical theology." With it has come a desire to bring Scripture more fully and
richly to bear :m theological reflection, and, at the same time, to pursue those
ways in which the rich theological tradition of the Church can inform a
substantive-and faithful-reading of Scripture. If such has been the task, it has
proven to be a difficult one indeed. This egregious instance of fragmentation
is hardly the only one. The many sub-disciplines of theology seem to work in
increasing isolation; sub-disciplines have spawned their own sub-disciplines.
The dangers and privileges of specialization are ubiquitous. If such is, on the
negative side, an unfortunate circumstance of our time, St. Thomas may well
have something to contribute to our work. This Torrell argues, explicitly and
implicitly, throughout his book.
Torrell begins at question 27, for it is at this question that Thomas begins
his consideration of the narrative of Christ's life. This first volume follows
Thomas through the Transfiguration; the promised second volume will cover
the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. Torrell has focused on these
questions not simply because they show Thomas engaging the scriptural text,
but because in them Thomas engages directly the narratives of the Gospels.
Throughout these pages, Torrell brings out how fully immersed in the Gospels
Thomas is, and, perhaps surprising to many, how attentive he is to the
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Synoptics. Over and over again, Torrell uses Thomas's commentary on
Matthew, as well as the Catena aurea on the other Synoptics, to complement
the reading of the Summa or, better, to show how the thinking in the Summa
is nourished by the reading of the synoptic Gospels.
Thomas's reading of the Gospels is not, however, a bare reading. Torrell
brings out with striking clarity the depth of Thomas's study of the Fathers,
both Latin and Greek. His reading of the Fathers is a docile one, in the literal
sense of seeking to learn from them. Torrell shows the delicate ways in which
Thomas brings together the reading of Scripture and the Fathers to come to a
deeper understanding of the faith. (One is inclined to say that if Torrell
presents Thomas as a model of the intelligent theological reading of the Fathers
for his time, Torrell is himself a model for the intelligent theological reading
of St. Thomas in our time.)
Perhaps most striking is Torrell's sense of the whole. He never considers
questions or sets of questions as free-standing treatises. No event in the life of
Christ stands in isolation. A profound sense of unity pervades this part of the
Summa as it does the Summa as a whole. We might note two strains of capital
importance. The first is methodological. From the opening of the book, Torrell
brings out the consistent use of arguments from fittingness. Even the superficial
reader of the Tertia pars cannot help but be struck how often Thomas argues
ex convenientia, rather than by strict deduction. Torrell brings out the
methodological force of this kind of argument precisely as a way of theological
engagement of historical particularity. A second point of unity is intimately tied
to the arguments from fittingness: namely, the economic, specifically
soteriological, character of the Tertia pars. It is precisely the goal of bringing
man to eternal life that shapes and guides Thomas's thought. As arguments
from fittingness are most properly made with regard to final cause, this
soteriological focus ought not be surprising. Still, Torrell brings it out with a
consistency and a force that not only shows its importance to Thomas's
Christology, but also shows how it serves as a unifying principle.
Throughout, Torrell is interested in engaging contemporary thought. To this
end, he seeks not only to understand Thomas, but also to suggest ways in which
he might be reconsidered. He is dismissive of the Aristotelean biology that
informs Thomas's thinking on the conception of both Mary and Christ. At the
same time, he carefully disentangles the theological strains in Thomas's thought
from this biology to show that, fundamentally, it is the theological principles
that shape Thomas's thinking. Indeed, he brings out how Thomas's fidelity to
the Fathers greatly strains the Aristotelean biology in just these questions.
Torrell also expresses concern on several occasions about what he terms
Thomas's "biblical literalism" in considering specific gospel narratives. Torrell
is sensitive to the advances of modern thought, in this case in the study of
sacred Scripture. At the same time, he notes any number of instances in which
Thomas's thought is convergent, either explicitly or implicitly, with elements
in contemporary Scripture scholarship.

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Further, Torrell notes places in which Thomas's thought is quite apropos of
modern concerns. He brings out, for example, the pneumatological character
of Thomas's Christology. He also shows how this pneumatological dimension
is itself deeply rooted in a fully Trinitarian consideration of the person and
mission of Christ (particularly, though by no means exclusively, manifest in the
baptism). Perhaps the most striking and well-developed reconsideration of
Thomas in the light of modern theology is Torrell's suggestion for rethinking
Thomas's position on the contentious point of Christ's possession of the
beatific vision.
For the contemporary theologian, even the theologian not particularly
captivated by or enthusiastic about St. Thomas, this volume is timely as it offers
in a most accessible and relevant way the work of a truly great and not merely
historically seminal theologian. It provides a striking opportunity to deepen
one's own theological thinking on the person and mission of Christ.
Le Christ en ses mysteres is also timely for the student of St. Thomas's
thought. It can serve, certainly, as an introduction to these important questions
of the Summa .. As Torrell notes in his introduction, almost half a century ago
M.-D. Chenu called for greater attention on the part of Thomists to those parts
of the Summa that were, in effect, extended considerations of Scripture. The
value of this book, however, goes well beyond its service as a response to
Chenu's call. Torrell's mastery of St. Thomas is arresting. He does not simply
present the text; rather, he brings out the conceptual unity and integrity of the
text.
Torrell's reading is twofold. On the one hand, he considers many specific
articles in detail. He often provides substantial quotations, well chosen and
never overwhelming, and then guides the reader to see the import of Thomas' s
line of thought. He is, as well, attentive to the responses to initial arguments
which serve to give precision to Thomas's position or suggest the dialectical
character of his thought. In his attention to detail, Torrell is a helpful guide to
Thomas's language. We have noted already his attention to "fittingness."
Examples could be multiplied. Torrell speaks to the rich implications of
Thomas's use of conversatio as the word for Christ's way of life; or again, he
notes that the term manifestatio, found so frequently, is the Latin equivalent
of the Greek "epiphany." On the other hand, he is always careful to consider
the larger division of the text in such as way as to see how Thomas situates a
specific topic. One might note, for example, that Thomas locates the baptism
not at the beginning of the public ministry (as is common in modern thought)
but as the conclusion of the part on the entrance of the incarnate Word into
the world. Torrell masterfully considers why Thomas might do this, developing
the parallel between the baptism at the end of the questions on the entrance
into the world and the transfiguration at the end of the questions on the public
ministry.
Although Torrell states clearly that his task is not strictly one of historical
reconstruction, he offers plenty of historical insights. His own historical work,

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so amply manifest in his St. Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, bears
much fruit here. We might note especially his treatment of Thomas's question
on Christ's way of life. This question, which covers such topics as whether
Christ should have led a solitary life or should have lived a life of poverty,
echoed throughout many of the mendicant controversies of Thomas's day. By
introducing texts from Thomas's own defenses of the mendicants, Torrell
brings out the ways in which the debates of Thomas's own day and, more
importantly, his own Dominican vocation give life to these particular articles.
If such considerations illumine the articles, they do not exhaust them, and
Torrell avoids clumsy historical reduction.
The use of the works in defense of the mendicants is but one instance of
Torrell' s consistent use of material from elsewhere in Thomas. Often times, this
is from elsewhere in the Summa. Although one would expect references back
to the first 26 questions of the Tertia pars, Torrell draws widely from
throughout the Summa, and throughout the corpus. Most noteworthy, however, is his use of Thomas's commentary on Matthew, showing over and over
again how a careful reading of this commentary complements the Summa.
Indeed, one can see how the Summa really is a preparation for the theological
reading of Scripture.
For those interested in Thomas as a theologian this book is indeed timely.
In it, the all-too-common and enduring textbook stereotypes fall: for example,
Thomas's thought is not scriptural, it is rigidly Aristotelean, its arguments are
mechanically deductive. Torrell brings to life the supple, organic quality of
Thomas's theology.
Of course one could quibble with a book of this scope. When one has read
St. Thomas as long and as deeply as has Torrell, one takes positions on any
number of issues contentious among Thomists. Many readers will no doubt find
themselves disagreeing with Torrell along any number of fault lines. Yet even
to disagree, perhaps especially to disagree, is to think again and in a fresh way
about essential elements in the thought of St. Thomas.
This is a welcome book. Those who know little of Thomas on the life of
Christ will find an incomparable introduction to it, and those who have spent
years in study will find much that is illuminating. One can only hope that the
concluding volume will appear soon, followed promptly by an English
translation.
}OHNF. BOYLE

University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

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Trinity and Truth. By BRUCE MARSHALL. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000. Pp. 287. ISBN 0521453526.
This remarkable book sets forth a bold thesis and develops it with great
subtlety. In its negative aspect-looking chiefly, one supposes, towards
theologians-the thesis is that typically modern accounts of the Christian faith
fail to meet the best standards of analytical philosophy, even while
accommodating modern thought in ways that diminish the substance of the
faith. In its positive aspect-addressed not only to theologians but clearly also
to philosophers-the author's thesis is that a Tarski-Davidson account of truth,
meaning, and justified belief is the strongest available in contemporary
philosophy, and that its theological inadequacy can and should be made good
by full-blooded doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity.
For a description of what Christians most importantly hold true, Marshall
begins by attending to the crucial ritual act of the assembled Christian
community, which is the Lord's Day liturgy of word and sacrament whereby
the narrative of God's history with the world is rehearsed and prolonged. By
readings from the canonical Scriptures, preaching, prayers, and gestures, the
Father, the Son, and the Spirit are identified as the triune God who, in a
differentiated unity of action, creates, redeems, and consummates the world.
Marshall focuses particularly on the Resurrection of Jesus; and "Jesus is risen"
will, at a later stage in his argument, become the prize example of a statement
whose meaning and truth are to be determined.
The next step, however, is to show what has been wrong with the grounding
of the truth claims for Christianity offered in their several ways by
Schleiermacher, Bultmann, K. Rahner, S. M. Ogden, D. Tracy, and W.
Pannenberg (though the last mentioned is let down gently in virtue of his
"eschatological reserve"). Their fault lies-alone or in combination-in their
supposition of an internally accessible"experience" or an externally evident set
of irrefragable data that are not themselves belief-dependent at least for their
meaning. These variously "foundationalist" justificationsof Christian belief will
not stand up to the analytic work of such philosophers as Quine, Putnam,
Dummett, and Davidson.
From analytic philosophy, and particularly from the work of Davidson in
the wake of Tarski, emerge proposals for the assessment of truth claims and the
justification of beliefs that, so far as they go, provide what Marshall believes
are a more suitable beginning for the clarification of the nature and content of
the Christian faith. In the line of Tarski and Davidson, the truth conditions of
a sentence take the following shape: "'Grass is green' is true if and only if grass
is green"-and this within a cohesive framework of meaning, other beliefs, and
the way the world is arranged. This is considered by Marshall to be the most
adequate philosophical account of truth on the current scene. The added
"framework" (my word, not Marshall's) is perhaps what saves this account
from being a "truism" (a possibility which seems to concern Marshall very

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but its very basic character is precisely what testifies to the elementary,
intuitive nature of our grasp of (th
e notion of) truth. However, Marshall will hold that a Tarski-Davidson account
needs theological modification, not only when talking about God, but also
when talking about creatures, since the actions of the divine persons and their
mutual relations are constitutive of the very concept of truth. His next step is
to examine more analytically what the canonical Scriptures and Christian
doctrine and practice claim about God and truth.
If Jesus is "the truth"
14:6), he enjoys comprehensive epistemic
primacy; and if his life, death, and resurrection are "for the life of the world"
(John 6:51), then "what happens on the way from Bethlehem to Golgotha and
the Emmaus road has universal scope." The Pauline way of putting this is to say
that aH things were made through Christ and for Christ and hold together in
him, who "made peace by the blood of his cross" (1Cor8:6; Col 1: 15-20). The
ontological basis resides in Christ's being "the icon of the unseen God" (Col
1:15; cf. 2 Cor 4:4-6; Heb 1:3), the eternally begotten Son of the Father who
as such shares in the Father's being, will, and purpose (John 1:1-3, 18). Include
Rom
in the reckoning the Holy Spirit (Gen 1:2; 2:7; Luke 1:35; 4:11;
8:11; Acts 2:17, 33; 1Cor12:3), who is called "the Spirit of truth" (John
14-16), and the developed Trinitarian picture appears as follows:
The Father loves the Son Jesus, in eternity and in time, precisely by
giving him the gift of the Spirit-the one gift equal to and so worthy of
both the giver and the receiver-to repose in and on him; the Son loves
the Father precisely by gratefully receiving and rejoicing in this gift,
and (in time) sharing the gift with the world. Father and Son are thus
eternally united or joined with one another in and through the Holy
Spirit as a person distinct from both, though the love which unites
them, as it springs only from fullness and not from lack, does not have
the distinctive note of desire. That creatures succeed in attaining the
God who perfectly expresses himself in Jesus Christ results from the
gift of this Spirit; that they, made from nothing and so lacking all,
cannot help desiring union with this God, whether or not he ever wills
to pour out his Spirit so that they may attain him, results from their
creation in the image of this same Spirit. Anything which is, however
remotely, like the Spirit to whom it eternally belongs to unite the
Father and the Son in love, will naturally seek its own share in that
love. (115)

With the claim of "an unrestricted epistemic primacy" for Christ and the
Trinity, how is the charge of "fideism" to be avoided? Other-or
"alien"-truth claims are excluded insofar as they are inconsistent with the
narrative centered on Jesus. Yet the better they positively fit with that
narrative, the greater their chance of being right (cf. 2 Cor 10:5). For its part,
Christianity has shown, says Marshall, considerable assimilative capacity for
truths discovered and formulated elsewhere, although modern Christian

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637

thinkers have often been too lax in their application of the consistency test.
Marshall himself is ready to admit evolutionary theory on geological and
biological grounds because "the beliefs negated by [its] novel claims are not
really central" to the Christian community, although he realizes that "there are
evident limits to pursuing this strategy," for "eventually the community will
run out of beliefs to decentralize," and even a "decision to live with epistemic
tension can be made only sparingly" (150f., 164f.). On the other hand, "that
Jesus is not dead, though he once was, is utterly central to the Christian
community's belief system," and a demonstration that the tale of the
Resurrection was an apostolic hoax (illustrated by Marshall in an amusing
counterfactual anecdote) would require such a shift in "our epistemic
priorities" (preparedness for which is, in principle, a condition for rationality)
that the faith would simply have to be avowed false (166-69).
The point at which philosophical accounts of truth may be "radically
disciplined and changed," though hopefully "not annihilated," by theological
accounts (the language is that of D. M. MacKinnon), is located by Marshall in
the provision of personal "bearers" (a key term), primarily divine and
derivatively human. "Jesus is risen" is true if and only if Jesus is risen, etc.-but
with now an extra element in the concept of truth: only ifJesus presents himself
to us as risen. This is because the identity of Jesus in the whole story is bound
up with the divine Trinity's self-communication to us, and that indeed with
redemptive and transformative purpose. The Christian faith, its truthfulness,
stands or falls with the self-presentation of the risen Lord and its/his effect. In
fully Trinitarian terms: "If a share in the Father's creative and definitive
knowledge is the end of the epistemic road, and the narratives which identify
Jesus crucified and risen-not all alone, but as they are used to order the whole
field of belief-are the road itself, then we traverse this road from beginning
to end by partaking of the communally embodied love the Spirit imparts"
(216). Not incidentally, "the eucharistic disunity of the church" ranks among
"the strongest objections to Christian belief" as a case in which the Christian
community's central beliefs lead one "to expect a particular state of affairs
which manifestly fails to obtain" (165f.).
Truths about God, says Marshall, cannot be "automatic," for they call for
personal acceptance on our part. This itself depends on revelation (a word not
much used by Marshall) and on the work of the Spirit. Room is always left,
therefore, for "the skeptic"; and although such a person is not described by
Marshall as an "unbeliever," the classical questions debated in Christian
theology concerning election, free will, and faith remain open and are
untreated in this connection.
In the light of truths about God and his relation to the world (especially as
its creator), truths also about the world will be marked by "traces of the
Trinity." Only those truths pertaining to sin and all evil will lack the divine
imprint since they fall outside God's active will.

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Throughout the book Marshall is able to support his arguments from major
figures in the Western tradition of Christian thinking, notably Augustine,
Anselm, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Luther, Barth, and Balthasar; and there are
hints of its congruity with the East, especially with Athanasius, the
Cappadocians, and Palamas.
In the face of postmodern tendencies to fragmentation and even nihilism,
Marshall sides with those philosophers who stick to a unitary concept of truth.
Indeed he proposes to them what should be a congenial account of the
Christian faith which the Holy Spirit may perhaps integrate into his work of
persuasion. To theologians and all thinking believers Marshall displays the
intellectual superiority of a robust version of the historic faith over reductionist
restatements of it. In highly technical style, he furnishes a surround for the kind
of advocacy that has been conducted in evangelistic, apologetic, and pastoral
mode by Lesslie Newbigin and other significant theological writers of the late
twentieth century.
GEOFFREY WAINWRIGHT

Duke University
Durham, North Carolina

New Approaches to God. By JULES M. BRADY, S.J. North Andover, Mass.:
Genesis Publishing, 1996. Pp. 136. $19.95 (paper). ISBN: 1-886670-09-

9.
In New Approaches to God, Fr. Jules Brady attempts to synthesize arguments
from Anselm, Aquinas, and Kant in order to propose his own argument for
God's existence. This compact text is written in a clear and succinct style.
Brady often uses familiar analogies or examples to help the reader grasp his
ideas. Furthermore, he prefaces each chapter with a question or a set of
questions and then endeavors to answer them for the sake of clarifying its
important themes. This seems like sound pedagogy. Unfortunately, the editing
and proofreading at times leaves something to be desired. For example, the
endnote chapters are mislabeled (e.g., the notes for chapter 4 are labeled
"chapter seven," those for chapter 5 are labeled "chapter eight").
Brady's compact text contains three distinct sections or parts. The first
section, chapters 1 through 3, consists of primary source selections from
Anselm, Aquinas, and Kant. The translations of Anselm and Aquinas are
Brady's. The passages again are clear and concise. The Kant selection is takeri
from Norman Kemp Smith.

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The second part of Brady's text, chapters 4 through 7, contains commentary
on the classic debates between Anselm, Aquinas, and Kant regarding the
Ontological and Cosmological Arguments. Chapter 4 is a defense of Anselm's
(first) theistic argument, found in chapter 2 of the Proslogion. Brady argues that
Anselm's argument can be read on three different levels. The first regards the
crucial premise (i.e., God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived)
as grounded in faith, and so fails to be a demonstration for God's existence
(50-51). The second level simply leaves the crucial premise unjustified. This
version also fails as a demonstration, according to Brady, and he cites Aquinas's
objection that it illicitly moves from the concept of something to its (actual)
existence. What the second level lacks, according to Brady, is "a foundation in
the real (i.e., extra-mental) order for the concept" (52-53). Brady believes that
Anselm accomplishes this in his response to Gaunilo: "Anselm proposes a
method of arriving at the concept of that than which nothing greater can be
conceived by starting with something that is objective, extra-mental and in the
real order outside the mind, the degrees of good" (51). Since the highest degree
of goodness corresponds to that than which nothing greater can be conceived,
the third level of Anselm's argument is immune to Aquinas's criticism. Thus
while the first two readings of the Ontological Argument are not
demonstrations for God's existence, Brady argues that the third is.
That Anselm makes such a response to Gaunilo is not always noted in the
literature. In this regard Brady's defense seems rather novel. However, I
anticipate two objections, both of which deal with justifying the claim
regarding degrees of goodness. On the one hand, if goodness (or degrees
thereof) is a mind-independent object due to empirical considerations (e.g.,
witnessing that certain things in nature are better than others for various
reasons), then the argument ceases to be an a priori proof. On the other hand,
if goodness (or degrees thereof) is a mind-independent entity due to conceptual
considerations, then the argument remains a priori, but it then seems that
Brady has simply justified one controversial a priori claim with another. After
all, is it not the case that "goodness" or "degrees of the good" is a concept? But
if so, then it is not clear how this move escapes Aquinas's objection. If goodness
or degrees of the good is not merely a concept, as Brady suggests, this needs to
be further developed and justified. Lacking further elucidation, Anselmians
taking Brady's tack may have a dilemma on their hands. Either Anselm's proof
ceases to be a priori, which undercuts its very motivation, or it rests upon a
new crucial premise just as controversial, if not more so, than its more familiar
predecessor.
Brady ends his treatment of the Ontological Argument with a discussion of
Kant's criticism of it. He presents Kant's relevant views concisely and clearly.
However, Brady's Anselmian response is somewhat puzzling. He concludes that
if Kant is correct, then Anselm's "hypothetical proposition [i.e., being able to
conceive of something greater than the greatest conceivable being] would not
be the absurdity that it is" (55). Brady seems to reaffirm Anselm's position

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without
why Kant's view is incorrect and thus comes dangerously
dose to begging the question against Kant. This difficulty is alleviated initially
with Brady's addition that for Anselm "'God is'-is an analytic proposition in
a special sense" (55). However, Brady does not explain what that entails, nor
how it addresses Kant's criticism.
Chapter 5 is a discussion of the debate between Aquinas and Kant on the
Cosmological Argument. Brady begins his exposition by defining key Thomistic
key terms, such as essence and esse. He goes on to explain succinctly why esse
must be distinct from essence in any finite thing. This, of course, invites the
question of how we should understand the esse of any finite thing. Answering
this question, Brady explains, "depends on a correct understanding of the
principle of causality: a cause is both simultaneous with the effect and prior in
Since, according to this Thomistic principle, the
nature to the effect"
existence of (say) the President of the United States cannot be adequately
explained by either his parents or in reference to the man himself, the only
adequate explanation for the President or any finite thing, Brady concludes, is
the First Cause, God. This conclusion is strengthened, he claims, by the
realization that without a First Cause there would be no finite beings (62). This
last claim presupposes Thomas's view that an infinite regression of causes is
unintelligible-a premise often regarded as the most controversial in Aquinas's
first two Ways. Brady offers a very brief account of it in the prologue, but does
not offer a defense.
In discussing Kant's objection(s) to the Cosmological Argument, Brady
focuses upon Kant's noumen::1Jphemonena distinction as it applies to causality.
He tells us that, according to Kant, causal relations are understood as arising
from the imposition of categories upon our experience. According to this
schema, and as Brady points out, a sensible cause is necessarily connected with
a sensible effect (64). However, Aquinas's first two Ways argue from a sensible
effect back to a nonsensible cause, God. Kant's ontology will allow no such
inference: "Kant rejects vaulting from a sensible effect, my existence, to a not
sensible cause, an absolutely necessary being" (65). Brady's resolution to this
debate begins by noting that Kant's philosophy is grounded in phenomenology
while Aquinas's is a philosophy of being. From this, Brady concludes that "Kant
and Aquinas simply offer us different philosophies; consequently one does not
negate the other" (66).
Pointing out, as Brady does, that Kant and Aquinas reach different
conclusions regarding the Cosmological Argument because of their differing
ontological presuppositions is insightful. This important point is sometimes
overlooked. However, to infer that different ontologies do not "negate" one
another simply because they are different is highly dubious. Invariably, such
differences lead to logical incompatible entailments. For example, Christian
ontology grounded in enduring substances and a Buddhist ontology grounded
in momentary states will lead to differing entailments regarding the afterlife.
The debate between Kant and Aquinas regarding the validity of the

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Cosmological Argument seems to be a similar example. If so, then it is difficult
to see how both ontologies can coexist, and therefore how they do not
"negate" one another. It seems that Brady needs to accomplish one of two
tasks. Either explain how these two ontologies are only prima facie
incompatible or offer some sort of account why one (presumably Thornas's) is
more plausible than the other.
The sixth chapter is dedicated to the First Way. Brady countenances the
hypothesis that Aquinas wrote the Five Ways for a very select audience,
namely, Augustinian theologians. Because he was suspicious of their view that
we have direct or immediate knowledge of God, he utilized Aristotelian
principles to show how our knowledge of God is best characterized (or at least
can also be characterized) as indirect, mediated by objects of sense. But, of
course, Aristotle's is not specifically a philosophy of being. Because Thomas
relies almost exclusively upon Aristotelian principles, according to Brady, it
may therefore appear that the Five Ways are incomplete or otherwise not
totally persuasive (70-71). Brady countenances Sillem's remark that if the Five
Ways are understood in the context of Aquinas's full ontology, then they
become more persuasive. The suggestion is that it is because instructors do not
often put the Five Ways into their proper metaphysical context that the Angelic
Doctor's theistic arguments are often (too) hastily cast aside.
The seventh chapter is Brady's exposition on the Fourth Way. This is the
jewel of section 2. He deftly uses accessible analogies to reinforce two crucial
ideas. First, by referring to how a yardstick compares to a one-foot ruler, Brady
explains that differences in existential acts (i.e., how our act of existence differs
from that of, say, nonrational animals) cannot be quantitative, but must rather
be qualitative. Second, by referring to two student renditions of the Mona Lisa,
he explains how, although different, a man's act of existing and a brute's act
of existing are nonetheless similar. Furthermore, by eliminating what he
plausibly takes to be mutually exclusive alternatives, he concludes that the only
defensibie explanation of the qualitative differences and similarities among
man's (superior) esse and a brute's (inferior) esse is the infinite act of existing,
which is God (77-78).
This chapter has a thoroughness that the prior ones, at times, lack. The
Fourth Way is notoriously difficult, and Brady offers some genuine insights. As
Fr. Copleston famously remarked: "if the line of thought represented by the
fourth way is to mean anything to the common reader, it has to be presented
in a rather different form from that in which it is expressed by Aquinas who
was able to assume in his readers ideas and points of view which can no longer
be presupposed" (Aquinas [Penguin Books, 1961]). This, it seems to me, is
exactly what Fr. Brady has done. Thomists and non-Thomists alike can grasp
the force of Brady's rendition.
Chapter 8 signals the third part of Brady's text. This chapter and the next
contain his most novel insights. The introduction, written by Joseph Bobik,
contains a succinct and helpful account of Brady's chapter 8 argument. Bobik

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comments that, "the argument in chapter eight, from knowing-that-I-know, is
challengingly subtle, appropriately ascetic, dearly and persuasively presented,
and very likely capable of convincing the careful realist reader" (14). I agree;
I also agree, however, with Bobik's following comment that, "one would like
to see Fr. Brady anticipate disproofs of this proof" (14). For instance, Brady
assumes that "being is intelligible," or, to put the same idea in different
verbiage, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true and necessarily so.
Many philosophers deny this claim and it would have been helpful if Brady had
offered a discussion in its defense.
Similar remarks apply to the complementary chapter 9 argument from what
Brady calls the "dynamism of the mind." He points out that we, as finite
knowers, can and do have many successive realizations regarding the world
around us. If we affirm that a tree exists and then affirm that there is a blue jay
on the lawn and next affirm the existence of an acquaintance, this
demonstrates being aware of movement in our mental activities. This
movement leads Brady to infer that the change associated with such movement
points to a source, which he names "mental natural appetite" (106). And he
infers from this that because our mental natural appetite is continually moving
from affirmation to affirmation, this is evidence that our minds (naturally)
strive to be completely satisfied in intellectual affirmation. The idea seems to
be that our moving between affirmations is evidence that we are searching for
that affirmation which will result in a cessation of all affirmation. From
Brady concludes that the only plausible end goal for this teleology of the mind
is affirming the existence of Pure Esse (111-12). This is another intriguing
argument and well deserving of further investigation in its own right.
However, Brady does not consider objections to his assumption that our minds
possess the teleology that he ascribes to them. Our minds do indeed move from
intellectual affirmation to affirmation (more or less) as he describes, but how
does it follow from this that our minds naturally strive to be intellectually
satiated? Reliance upon teleology in nature has become circumspect in
philosophy. Thus prudence seemingly dictates that Brady explain why this
modem trend is at least unwarranted, if not plainly unfortunate.
Since Brady assumes, without much by way of justification, a great deal of
Thomistic metaphysics, this book seems best suited for theologians and
philosophers who are steeped in Thomism, and who have little or no difficulty
in making the kinds of assumptions Brady makes. Non-Thomists may require
more discussion and defense of these assumptions-most notably, the
unintelligibility of an infinite causal regress, the truth of the Principle of
Sufficient Reason, and that there is teleology of the human mind. However,
such scholars could benefit from Brady's discussions of the First and
particularly the Fourth Ways. Beginning Thomists may desire a more
penetrating and thorough discussion of the dassic debates between Anselm,
Aquinas, and Kant. However, they could benefit from the discussion in chapter

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9 of the religious value of studying natural theology. In any event, advanced
Thomists, especially neo-Thomists influenced by Maritain, dearly will gain the
most from Brady's text. Those who seek to explore their Thomism in
contemporary circles and find new approaches to God would do well to find
Fr. Brady's appropriately named text.
DEAN A. Kow ALSKI

Loras College
Dubuque, Iowa

Introduction to Scholastic Realism. By JOHN PETERSON. New York: Peter
Lang, 1999. Pp. 190. $46.95 (doth). ISBN 0-8204-4370-4.

Writing in a recent issue of New Blackfrairs, Catherine Pickstock posed the
following question, and I think not rhetorically: "How should one respond to
the death of realism, the death of the idea that thoughts in our minds can
represent to us the way things actually are in the world? For such a death
seems to be widely proclaimed by contemporary philosophers" (July/August
2000, p. 308). In his Introduction to Scholastic Realism, John Peterson attempts
to provide a response to Pickstock's quandary by articulating a realist
philosophy based, for the most part, on the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Using
the techniques and meta-philosophical moves common to twentieth-century
analytic philosophy, Peterson makes a strong case for understanding realism
through the lenses of Scholastic philosophy. That Aquinas, following Aristotle,
was unabashedly a realist in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and moral theory
is not to be denied. But what is one to make of the philosophical suitability of
Aquinas's version of realism at the beginning of the new millennium? Peterson
provides a strong argument in favor of a Scholastic form of realism-in this
book equated for the most part with Thomism-within the confines of recent
analytic philosophy. While Peterson does not address the issues Pickstock raises
through postmodernism, nonetheless the arguments in this book apply equally
well to most forms of postmodernism.
The architectonic of this book appears to be an ontological dialectic that
forces the reader to come to terms with the adequacy of what Peterson refers
to as Scholastic realism. Working within the structures of mid-twentieth
century analytic philosophy-in fact, the philosophical shadows of G. E. Moore
and Gustav Bergmann appear to hover continuously over the philosophical
dialectic -Peterson engages the reader in a dialogue that confronts the
philosophical weaknesses in most of the major ontological theories common to

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mainstream Western philosophy. The result of the dialectic suggests, Peterson
argues, that a form of Scholastic realism found in the writings of Aquinas can
be justified adequately as the most perspicuous response to these major
philosophical worries.
Peterson articulates a version of moderate realism with a substantial form
determining the set of essential properties that in turn constitute the essence
in the particular thing. In many ways, this dialectic forces the metaphysician
into accepting a theory of natural kinds akin philosophically to the writings of
Kripke and the early Putnam. This theory of natural kinds, founded
ontologically on a set of essential properties-the forma substantialis of
medieval Thomism-serves in turn as the foundation for a theory of truth, a
theory about the nature of facts, an analysis entailing the existence of God, a
theory distinguishing knowledge from bdief, a theory of predication, the
ontological underpinnings of a theory of natural law morality, an account of
a theory of the person, and finally a theory of intentional logic at odds with the
formalism prevalent in many contemporary logic texts.
That Peterson here attempts a monumental philosophical undertaking is not
to be denied. What is gratifying, however, is that for the most part the
ontological dialectic in this book is persuasive and articulated in a perspicuous
manner. This is not to suggest that there may not be some philosophical
quibbles to which Peterson may need to respond. In some ways, this is not an
easy book to read. The reader needs to bring to the philosophical table both a
sense of Scholasticism and a sense of the general tenor of
Nonetheless, one can read this book and emerge with a better handle on how
Scholastic realism might deal with many of the problems found in twentiethcentury analytic philosophy"
Throughout the text, Peterson offers succinct narratives of several major
ontological theories common to Western philosophy. The introduction contains
an articulate account of differing theories that consider the status and function
of universals. Chapter 1 begins the dialectic with an account of the nature of
tmth. Peterson argues that the concept of truth is indeed analogicaL Truth
entails a conformity or "measure," which is the "adequatio" common in the
texts of Aquinas. Ontological truth has the divine mind as the ultimate
"measure" and formal truth has the human mind as its "measure." Peterson
argues that a propositional theory of truth entails scepticism; for him,
sentential truth is predicated of statements and not of propositions, beliefs, or
judgments. The relation of "conformity" needed in sentential truth is, in the
end, a relation of formal identity; readers familiar with Aristotle and Aquinas
will recall the use of formal cause.
Peterson considers various objections to a correspondence theory of truth,
to which his account of sentential truth is reducible. He considers Frege,
Blanchard, the so-caUed "copy theory" of truth, and what philosophers like
Roderick Chisholm have called "the problem of the criterion." He next treats

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and rejects what he calls five "rival theories" to his account of sentential truth
as one of formal identity: the coherence theory espoused by Blanchard and A.
C. Ewing earlier in the twentieth century; the pragmatic theory common to
Peirce, James, and Dewey; Tarski's semantic theory; the reductionist theory put
forward by Frank Ramsey and A. J. Ayer; and finally the performative theory
articulated at mid-century by Peter Strawson. Peterson argues that none of the
above "rival" theories will stand up to the strengths of his proposal for
sentential truth based on moderate realism.
For sentential truth to hold, one needs an adequate account of facts. Readers
familiar with logical atomism will recall these worries, especially in
Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Peterson argues ultimately that a fact is a state of
affairs that subsists in-and is known by-the mind of God. Facts are
ultimately the measure of truth, and the exemplars in the Divine Mind are the
ultimate source for essences found in the natural things of the world. A fact,
using the language of Aquinas, is a composite of "essence and existence."
Peterson's dialectic suggests that one has two choices: either one adopts a
Hegelian view of the Absolute, or one adopts a form of the Judaeo-Christian
God. The Hegelian account is problematic, so Peterson argues, and one is left
with the God of Aquinas. This is the God of the Summa Theologiae with Divine
Exemplars serving as the Divine Ideas. In effect, this chapter on the status of
facts is a dialectic establishing the necessity for the existence of the God of
Aquinas.
Following the account of the ontology needed for Scholastic realism,
Peterson considers the vexing epistemological issue of how one is to account
for and distinguish knowledge from true belief. Of course, Plato's Theatetus
articulated these issues with care and they remain with us, thanks especially to
the work of Roderick Chisholm. Using categories from Frege, Peterson suggests
that belief is when sense and referent are not identical, while knowledge is
when sense and referent are identical. Knowledge is, once again, a relation of
formal identity. This leads Peterson into considering a theory of predication,
where he argues that knowledge, truth, and predication all imply a theory of
formal identity. His point is that the moderate realism articulated by Aristotle
and perfected in the writings of Aquinas provides the best response to the
question, "What is X?" Peterson argues explicitly that "moderate realism is the
only view of universals under which it is possible to predicate a species of an
individual" (106). The shadow of G. E. Moore on the role of common sense
hovers strongly over this discussion of predication. Peterson appeals to De Ente
et Essentia and Aquinas's account of first and second intentions in order to
distinguish knowledge of an essence from knowledge of a universal.
Peterson uses the material obtained in the discussions of ontology,
epistemology, and predication for his development of Aquinas's natural law
moral and legal theory. His argument is that formal identity plays a role in
moral theory too. This is an extensive chapter, comprising more that twenty-

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five percent of the book. In effect, this chapter establishes that the metaphysical
backdrop for natural law moral theory is the version of Scholastic realism
articulated in the earlier chapters. This is a thorough analysis of the role human
nature as a philosophical anthropology plays in determining the virtues
necessary for a theory of natural law. Peterson develops Aquinas's account of
the intellectual and the moral virtues, with particular emphasis on the nature
and function of prudence in Aristotelian naturalism. This is a finely honed
account from which the reader can profit substantially.
The final two chapters concern the role of a philosophy of the person and
the nature of intentional logic, both topics common to recent analytic
philosophy. In the end, Peterson argues that his account of the moderate
realism of Aquinas makes for an intelligible philosophy of the person. The first
of these two chapters discusses the role of matter and form in determining
what makes for the substantial individual in Aquinas's ontology as opposed to
a "collection of qualities" ontology common to much empiricism. Furthermore,
Peterson suggests that the ontological holism of Aquinas's hylomorphism
renders suspect any form either of reductive materialism or Cartesian dualism.
As Aquinas once wrote: "Anima mea non est ego!" The last chapter considers
the intentional logic originally discussed at mid-century by the late Henry B.
Veatch. Peterson develops a realist form of logical theory that transcends the
formalism common to much contemporary logic theory, especially of the
syllogism. This is a contemporary defense of the Aristotelian form of realist
demonstration from which scientia is developed.
This book is, in my judgment, the kind of analysis that John Haldane has
recently termed "Analytical Thomism." Yet Peterson's text appears removed
from the serious recent discussions on Aquinas's philosophy by analytic
philosophers-Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe, Anthony Kenny, Norman
Kretzmann, Eleonore Stump, and Brian Davies, to mention but a few. At times,
the book seems strangely dated. This observation does not dismiss the quality
of the argument nor what Peterson attempts to undertake, but it does suggest
that analytic philosophy and the philosophy of Aquinas are not isolated
philosophical entities practiced by persons few and far between.
I would like to mention a few philosophical questions that can be culled
from considering the dialectic in this book. First, in chapter 4, Peterson appears
to be willing to adopt the category of "negative facts" into this account of
Scholastic realism. Certainly at one time Russell postulated this category of
weird ontological entities. One might wonder about Russell's other weird
category-possible facts. It is unclear to me that Aquinas would accept these
categories into his ontological scheme.
Second, in discussing knowledge and belief, I suspect that some discussion
of intentionality theory in Aquinas would be important and useful. This is one
area where I think Peterson is too much influenced by what I take to be G. E.
Moore's account of the mental act of awareness. Moore writes often about the

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"diaphanous arrow of consciousness." I would argue that Moore's account of
the act of awareness is more akin to Platonic "acquaintance" than it is to the
intentionality theory of Aquinas, who, following Aristotle, adopts what I would
call a "structured mental act."
Third, as to the discussion of De Ente et Essentia, I submit that Aquinas
owes much of his account on the differing acts of awareness for the essence and
for the universal to Avicenna's claim that "Nature is neither one nor many."
This is foundational for the position Aquinas articulates on the status of our
knowledge of universals.
Fourth, while I completely agree with Peterson's claims about the necessity
for a metaphysical foundation for natural law theory, nonetheless there are
many contemporary natural law philosophers who adopt what has been called
the "new natural law theory" developed and espoused by Germain Grisez, John
Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and Robert George. This theory argues against the
philosophical anthropology Peterson adopts as propaedeutic to understanding
natural law moral theory. Henry Veatch, it should be noted, would have agreed
with Peterson in this debate.
Fifth, in his account of the syllogism Peterson denies the role and
importance of analytic truth claims. This follows, he argues, from the need to
have demonstrations indeed prove something about the external world and not
be rendered unable to transcend the limits of logical formalism. I suggest that
adopting a concept of real, causal connections in the version of synthetic
necessary truths might solve this conundrum for Peterson. The late Everett J.
Nelson argued strenuously for the category of substance and the category of
causality, both of which are synthetic necessary connections in the external
world. This concept of synthetic necessary truths, I have argued elsewhere, is
similar structurally to essential formal identity in Aquinas. Hence, one need not
wiggle out of the need for some analytic truth claims in order to save
Aristotelian realist demonstration.
In closing, I wish to second the acknowledgment that Professor Peterson
offers to the significant contributions made to Scholastic realism during the last
half of the twentieth century by the late Professor Henry Babcock Veatch.
Veatch was indeed a philosopher for philosophers, a man dedicated to
ontological, epistemological, and moral realism. His many writings have greatly
assisted all of us interested in the grand plan of interpreting the philosophy of
Aquinas within the general framework of contemporary analytic philosophy.
ANTHONY

Denison University
Granville, Ohio

J. LISSKA

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The Dearest Freshness Deep down Things: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Being. By PIERRE-MARIE.EMONET.New York: Crossroad, 1999. Pp. 160.
ISBN 0-8245-1794-6.
The Greatest Marvel of Nature: An Introduction to the Philosophy of the
Human Person. By PrnRRE-MARIE.EMONET.NewYork:
Crossroad, 2000.
Pp. 128. ISBN 0-8245-1799-7.
God Seen in the Mirror of the World: An Introduction to the Philosophy of God.
By PIERRE-MARIEEMONET.New York: Crossroad, 2000. Pp. 152. ISBN
0-8245-1873-X.

These three short books, by a Dominican priest who is Professor of
Philosophy at the Seminaire International d'Ars in France, are a marvel of
initiation to philosophical thinking for those who have no formal philosophical
training, and a delight for those have. He stimulates the reader to basic
philosophical insights principally by appealing to the imagination, using
especially poetry and painting as his media, and basing himself on the
challenging, but I think quite sound, thesis of Bergson: "There is no philosophy
so sound and so subtle that it cannot be, and ought not to be, expressed in
everyday language." The author himself suggests that there is a kinship between
the painter and the philosopher: both need to transcend mere appearances (29).
The first book, The Dearest Freshness Deep down Things, deals with the
basic themes of metaphysics: being, essence/existence, form/matter, activity,
unity, truth, goodness, beauty, efficient and final causality, act and potency,
Pure Act, the ultimate Cause, etc. Each chapter begins with a stimulating
quotation from a poet or some other thinker, and often ends with a brief
summary of some appropriate technical philosophical term. What is so
astonishing and captivating is the author's skill at stimulating a fresh new
perspective on these age-old problems and terms, so that the basic intellectual
insight behind them suddenly shines forth. The quotations both at the head of
each chapter as well as throughout it are themselves worth the price of the
book. Let me cite a few examples to catch the flavor of the work: "God has not
made the world; he has made it make itself; he has provoked it." "God has
seeded the world to his likeness" (Claudel). "Cezanne seeks to paint matter in
the process of giving itself form" (Merleau-Ponty). "In the flower there is a
within, that opens its eyes, and unveils, ever more profoundly, a form that
ravishes by its proportions and its hues" (Balthasar). "All things hasten toward
being more, in the light of the morning" (Olivier). "I bring to everything its
deliverance. Through me nothing is any longer alone. In my heart I associate
it with something else" (Claude!).
The author wisely follows the example of Aristotle in drawing all his
examples of what is meant by being as active presence from living beings, such
as plants and animals, as they strive actively to bring to actuality the ideal form
(final cause) that is at work within them. It would have been helpful, however,
to extend his examples to the inorganic but still highly active world of atoms

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and molecules to complete the analogy. And the brief argument for ascending
to God as Pure Act or Prime Mover suffers too much from its Aristotelian
limitations to be persuasive.
In sum, if anyone were to ask me for a good, non-technical book as an
introduction to metaphysics, this is without hesitation the one I would
recommend. The author is obviously a fine philosopher himself, who has
learned to live his own philosophy and extend it from mind to imagination
and heart as well.
Correction: On page 14 the text of Aristotle is incorrectly referenced and
two key explanatory phrases are omitted, thus rendering the text meaningless.
The quotation should read: Physics, 2.8.199a13: "Now intelligent action is for
the sake of an end; therefore the nature of things also is so. Thus if a house,
e.g., had been a thing made by nature, it would have been made in the same
way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature were made also by art,
they would come to be in the same way as by nature."
Much the same can be said of the second volume, The Greatest Marvel of
Nature, on the philosophy of the human person. It is as good as the first, if not
even possibly better. Most of the quotations heading each chapter are like
wake-up calls to the mind and the imagination. A few examples again: "The
body is the work of the soul. It is its expression, and its promulgation in the
domain of matter" (Claudel). "The human soul breathes above time"
(Maritain). "By space, the universe embraces me all around, and overwhelms
like a point. By thought, I comprehend the universe" (Pascal). "Water
apprehends water; mind inhales essence" (Claude!).
The chapter headings themselves are especially eloquent. Some samples:
"10. The Intellect, Essential Gentleness"; "13. "Like a Hand, Intellect Gathers
Being at the Heart of Things"; "21. Freedom at the Heart of the Will"; "21.
Life of the Soul as Spirit." The whole book is strongly recommended.
The third volume, God Seen in the Mirror of the Universe, the briefest in the
series, is not, I regret, to be recommended as much. Parts 2 and 3, on the
nature and attributes of God, and the relation of the world to God, are as fine,
rich, and insightful as the other volumes, though not quite up to their level.
But the trouble occurs in part 1, on the ascent to the existence of God by
reason. It seems that in the philosophy of being and of the human person the
solutions to the basic problems are based on one or a few commanding insights.
Not so in the philosophy of God There the ascent of reason to God seems to
require a whole series of insights linked carefully together. Either one does this
very carefully and precisely or the argument fails to achieve its objective. This
is not supposed to be a technical study; still, the brief sketches of arguments
given here remain so closely tied to limited Aristotelian perspectives that they
do not bring us with clear evidence to the desired goal of a single infinitely
perfect Source of all Being.
The author claims to be using the famous Five Ways of St. Thomas, but in
fact some of his interpretations are somewhat eccentric and miss the real point

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and power of some of the proofs, precisely because they are tied too closely to
an Aristotelian interpretation. For example, the Second Way, from the causal
dependency of one being on another for its very being, is watered down, quite
contrary to Aquinas's intention, to just the causality of any agent over its own
action. Thomas clearly indicates he is talking about a deeper dependency of the
whole being of one being on another being as its efficient cause, when he says,
"If a being were the cause of its own self, then it would have to preexist itself
in order to cause itself, which is impossible" (STh I, q. 2, a. 3). This would not
make sense if he were merely talking about an already existing being causing
its own action.
The author's Third Way, from contingency, can be a good one in itself, as
found elsewhere in St. Thomas, but as put here it is not really the path of St.
Thomas himself. The latter depends on the famously controverted premise that
at some point of past history there would have been a time when all contingent
beings would have passed out of existence together, leaving nothing, and from
nothing, nothing can ever henceforth appear. The Fourth Way of Aquinas is
also a difficult one in its present curiously inverted order of causality and
supreme excellence, and the author straddles the difficulty.
In sum, if one is to use these Five Ways of St. Thomas in their exact present
form, many precisions and adaptations need to be made before a clear, cogent
conclusion can be reached. There are in fact broader, simpler, and more cogent
ways of arguing to God in the general spirit of the Five Ways, but without the
unsolved textual difficulties we find here. It is clear that the author knows well
and highly esteems Aristotle, and justly so, but the one place one cannot stick
too closely to him is on the question of God as unique, infinitely perfect Source
of all being-which the author tends to do, showing little appreciation of the
other Neoplatonic dimension of Thomas' s thought as evidenced by his rich and
profound doctrine of participation. However, as I have said above, the rest of
the book (about two-thirds of it), on the nature and attributes of God and his
relation to the world, get back on the track again with the author's customary
fresh insights, mediated by stimulating creative images drawn from both art and
life.
In sum, these three slim volumes, aside from the first part of the last one,
are a remarkable and highly recommended achievement, unique of its kind as
far as I am aware, by a talented philosopher with the rare gift of making clear
the meaning and relevance of philosophy to life to the ordinary intelligent
reader. They are also a delight, for the most part, for the professional
philosopher himself.
W. Norris Clarke, S.J.

Fordham University
New York, New York

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651

The Mystery of the Trinity in the Theological Thought of Pope John Paul II. By
ANTOINE E. NACHEF, B.S.0. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Pp. 289.
$32.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8204-4524-X.

The plentiful and intellectually rich writings of Pope John Paul II have
occasioned a growing number of studies such as this book, which attempt to
analyze various dimensions of his philosophical and theological world-view.
Father Nachef, Professor of Theology at the International Marian Research
Institute in Dayton, seeks to give a systematic presentation of the Pope's
thought on the Trinity. Although John Paul has not written extensively on the
Trinity as such, Nachef attempts "a careful tour of his writings from a
Trinitarian perspective" (1). At the same time, Nachef situates the pontiff's
Trinitarian thought squarely within the larger ensemble of dogmatic
themes--creation, anthropology, evil, redemption, Christology. Only after
several chapters take up these moments of salvation history do the final two
chapters of the book turn toward explicit considerations of Trinitarian
theology.
Although Nachef states that John Paul's Trinitarian thought should be
"located within the framework of other contemporary Trinitarian theology"
(ibid.), he makes relatively little attempt to do so. Rather than placing the
Pope's thought in dialogue with other contributors to the late twentiethcentury revival of Trinitarian theology (Rahner, Balthasar, Hill, Kasper, etc.),
Nachef presents John Paul's thought with specific attention to the question of
its philosophical background. Is John Paul "more of a Lublin Thomist or a
Schelerian phenomenologist" (18)? Is the Pope's thought "fundamentally
phenomenological while borrowing some elements from Thomism, or is it
metaphysical and greatly expanding Thomas with insights from
phenomenology" (19)? It is, of course, a matter of relative priority; there is no
question that John Paul draws from both Thomism and phenomenology.
Furthermore, these two influences are but part of a larger complex of ideas and
experiences that come together in his unique thought. Still, the slant of one's
interpretations of the Pope's writings may be quite different depending upon
which source one judges as more determinative. In general, those who read the
Pope more from the viewpoint of phenomenology are more inclined to
highlight the rather more original and "progressive" elements of his theology,
while those who stress the Thomist background seem readier to emphasize the
continuity of his theology with the traditional positions of the Neoscholastic
manualists.
This is the question that drives the book, as Nachef not only offers his own
reading of the principal texts but also canvasses the secondary literature for
other commentators who have explored the sources of John Paul's thinking.
Thus there are those (e.g., R. Harvanek) who assert that the Pope should be
interpreted more "from the point of view of Munich phenomenology and
Scheler rather than from the perspective of Thomism and Aristotelianism" (37).

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On the other side are those (e.g, G. McCool, R. Buttiglione, J. Conley) who,
while acknowledging the importance of the phenomenology of consciousness
as an element of John Paul's thinking, insist upon the prior importance of a
metaphysics of being in the Pope's thought. Nachef unambiguously aligns
himself with this later camp in arguing for the relative priority of an objective
ontology to the philosophy of the conscious subject in the thought of John Paul
(a priority first observed, of course, in the pre-papal writings of Karol Wojtyla,
most notably in The Acting Person). The personalist philosophy of John Paul,
so fundamental to his theological vision, is the resuh of the integration of a
framework of the ontology of
philosophy of conscious subjectivity into a
human nature. Nachef approvingly cites Buttiglione, who remarks: "In sum, St.
Thomas provides an objective personalism, a set of objective features which are
necessary to work out an authentic philosophy of the person" (50). Nachef
helpfully points out that one cannot simply refer to the Thomism of
Wojtyfa/John Paul, but must rather note earlier and later forms of Thomism:
"Whereas earlier he used the metaphysics of universal mature whose source was
the universal structure of man as such formulated in the universal concept, his
later Thomism was a philosophy of conscious subjectivity and the concrete
person" (39).
The personalist focus upon the concrete, singular, and unrepeatable
character of each subject in no way reduces the objectiveness of that subject's
universal nature and, in particular, the moral norms that flow from that nature.
The freedom of the human person should emerge from the truth about human
nature. Ethics remains firmly grounded in metaphysics. For Nachef, "The
Pope's insistence that specific acts are intrinsically and universally wrong shows
his divergence from many personalist and phenomenological ethicians 'who
easily speak of conflicts of value and who refuse to condemn a particular act
as wrong, apart from the act's context of motive and circumstances"' (46-47).
The proper relating of Thornist and phenomenological influences in the
thought of John Paul allows a reader to grasp the nuanced balances in his
writing between person and nature, person and community, and body and
consciousness. These elements come together in acts of self-donation, in which,
by giving themselves away to others (through their bodies), men and women
discover and fulfill their own reality as persons. In his writings John Paul
repeatedly echoes Gaudium et spes 24, which states that humans can discover
their true selves "only through a sincere gift of self" to others. Nachef
demonstrates that this personalist emphasis of John Paul most definitely does
not degenerate into subjectivism or relativism of any kind.
These considerations of philosophical anthropology, though first in the
order of presentation, are themselves grounded in the revealed theology of the
divine persons. It is the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit as self-donative and
self-receptive persons from all eternity that provide the proper framework for
the understanding of human persons as constituted by acts of mutual giving and
receiving. While the Pope's anthropology may have received more attention

BOOK REVIEWS

653

than his Trinitarian theology, nonetheless, the prominence of Trinitarian
thought is readily discernible. First, there is the "Trinitarian triptych" of three
early encydicals-Redemptor hominis (RH), Dives in misericordia (DM), and
Dominum et vivificantem (DV). Nachef rightly points out the thematic unity
of these three documents, which focus, respectively, on Jesus Christ, God the
Father, and the Holy Spirit. It is only with the issuance of DV in 1986 that RH
(1979) and DM (1980) are set in their full context.
The second major explicit reflection upon the Trinity in John Paul's corpus
of writings comes in those texts, such as Tertio Millennia Adveniente, that deal
with the preparations for the celebration of the Jubilee Year. As is well known,
the three-year preparatory period was devoted, sequentially, to the Holy Spirit,
to Jesus Christ, and to God the Father (interestingly, an order differing from
that of the Trinitarian encyclicals).
Nachef devotes his final two chapters to specifically Trinitarian topics"Immanent and Economic Trinity in the Theological Thought of John Paul II"
and "The Procession of the Holy Spirit in the Thought of Pope John Paul II:
Theological Considerations." The presentation is thorough and straightforward
and indicates that John Paul reaffirms the traditional elements of Trinitarian
theology (e.g., the absolute identity of the immanent and economic Trinity).
Attention is given to the communio of the divine persons, based on the mutual
acts of self-donation and self-reception, as the bases for ecclesial and spousal
communio among human persons, all the while respecting the analogical
dissimilarity between divine and human persons. Nachef observes that John
Paul's interest in the individual human person over the universality of nature
places him in the tradition of the Cappadocians. At the same time his
pneumatology bears the marks especially of Saint Augustine; the mutual
offering of Father and Son to each other is the basis for understanding the Holy
Spirit as the Person-Uncreated Gift. John Paul emphasizes as well that the Holy
Spirit is not only a Person-Gift in the context of the immanent Trinity, but also
in the economy of salvation; the Spirit is the source of every gift of God in the
order of creation and the subject of God's self-communication in the order of
redemption.
Nachef's book is an informative presentation of Trinitarian themes in the
writings of John Paul IL Readers will find a thoroughly documented account
in a descriptive mode, with little by way of any critical observations or
comparisons. Two of the issues that could have received further attention stand
out in my mind. First, John Paul relies exegetically on the "Upper Room"
scenes of the New Testament as a basis for his Trinitarian reflections (the
farewell discourse at the Last Supper, the appearance of the Risen Christ to the
disciples on Easter evening, and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost).
It might be said that John Paul develops a "theology of the Upper Room";
indeed, he states in DV 66 that "the event of Pentecost does not belong only to
the past; the Church is always in the Upper Room that she bears in her heart."
Second, the Pope speaks of a "double rhythm" of the mission of the Son and

654

BOOK REVIEWS

the mission of the Holy Spirit (DV 63). Here John Paul is offering a suggestive
line of thought for reflection upon the relationship between the two distinct
but inseparable missions in the divine economy.
l\.fORRIS\V.PELZEL

Saint Meinrad School of Theology
Saint Meinrad, Indiana

GENERAL INDEX TO 1HE 1HOMIST
VOLUME 64 (2000)
ARTICLES
Beards, Andrew, "Christianity, "Interculturality," and Salvation: Some
161
Perspectives from Lonergan" ......................•.
Boyle, John F., "St. Thomas and the Analogy of Potentia Generandi" . 581
Crowe, Frederick E., "For Inserting a New Question (26A) in the Prima
Pars" ..........................................
565
Decaen, Christopher, "Elemental Virtual Presence in St. Thomas" •.. 271
Dewan, Lawrence, O.P., "St. Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good"
337
Emery, Gilles, O.P., "Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in
Saint Thomas Aquinas?" . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . 521
Knasas, John F. X., "Aquinas's Metaphysics and Descartes's Methodic
Doubt" ......................•.................
449
Lee, Patrick, "The Goodness of Creation, Evil, and Christian Teaching" 239
Levering, Matthew, "Wisdom and the Viability of Thomistic Trinitarian
Theology" ... : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
Long, Steven A, "On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End for Man" 211
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., "Balthasar and the Theodramatic Enrichment of the
Trinity" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499
Margerie, Bertrand de, S. J. ''Note on Balthasar's Trinitarian Theology" 127
Miner, Robert C., "Non-Aristotelian Prudence in the Prima secundae" 401
Nichols, Aidan, O.P., "Thomism and the Nouvelle Theologie" . . . . . . . . 1
Nolan, Michael, "The Aristotelian Background to Aquinas's Denial that
"Woman is a Defective Male" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Pagan-Aguiar, Peter A, "St. Thomas Aquinas and Human Finality: Paradox
or Mysterium fidei?" ..••..•..•.........•....•...•.
375
Peterson, John, "Reductionism in Metaphysics: A Mistake in Logic?" . 301
Pruss, Alexander R., "Christian Sexual Ethics and Teleological Organicity"
71
Rioux, Jean W., "Cantor's Transfinite Numbers and Traditional Objections
to Actual Infinity" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Stevenson, William R., "The Problem of Trinitarian Processions in Thomas's
Roman Commentary" .............................
619
Sullivan, Denis F., "The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Domains of
Moral Responsibility" .............................
423

REVIEWS
Adams, Marilyn McCord, What Sort of Human Nature? Medieval Philosophy
and the Systematics of Christology (Michael Gorman) . . . . . . 486
Bastit, Michel, Les principes des choses en ontologie medievale (Thomas
Scot, Occam) (Timothy B. Noone) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Brady, Jules M., S.J., New Approaches to God (Dean A. Kowalski) . . . 638
Bertram, Jerome, trans., The Monastic Institutes (Lauren Pristas) . . . . 154
Buckley, Michael J., The Catholic University as Promise and Project: Reflections
476
in a Jesuit Idiom (Michael J. Baxter, C.S.C.) .............
Casarella, Peter J., and George P. Schner, S.J., eds., Christian Spirituality and
the Culture of Modernity: The Thought of Louis Dupre (Roger
Kimball) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Clayton, Phi.Hp, God and Contemporary Science (Edward T. Oakes, S.J.) 140
Cole, Basil, O.P., and Paul Conner, 0. P., Christian Totality: Theology of the
147
Consecrated Life (Gabriel O'Donnell, O.P.) .............
Emery, Kent, Jr., and Joseph Wawrykow, Christ among the Medieval
Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the
Order of Preachers (Gilles Emery, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Emonet, Pierre-Marie, The Dearest Freshness Deep down Things: An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Being (W. Norris Clarke, S.J.)
----" The Greatest Marvel of Nature: An Introduction to the Philosophy of
the Human Person (W. Norris Clarke, S.J.)
_, God Seen in the Mirror of the World: An Introduction to the Philosophy
of God (W. Norris Clarke, S.J.) ......................
648
Eschmann, Ignatius Theodore, O.P., The Ethics of Saint Thomas
Two
Courses (Desmond J. FitzGerald) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Gal, Gideon, O.F.M., and David Flood, O.F.M., eds., Nicolaus Minorita:
Chronica (Timothy B. Noone) .......................
489
Peter of John Olivi On the Bible: Principia quinque in Sacram
Scripturam: Postilla in lsaiam et In I ad Corinthios (Timothy B.
Noone) ........................................
492
Gonzalez-Ayesta, Cruz, El don de sabiduria sequin santo Tomas: Divinizacion,
filiacion y connaturalidad (Luc-Thomas Somme, 0.P.) ..... 482
Helm, Paul, Faith i:md Understanding (Cad N. Still) ..............
143
Johnson, Luke Timothy, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing
Dimension in New Testament Studies (Francis Martin) ..... 495

INDEX OF REVIEWS (Continued)

Kretzmann, Norman, The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas's Natural Theology
in Summa Contra Gentiles II (Thomas S. Hibbs) . . . . . . . . . . 309
Macintyre, Alasdair, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need
the Virtues (Servais Pinckaers, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Mamie, Pierre, Msgr., and George Cottier, O.P., eds., Charles Journet et
Jacques Maritain: Correspondance, 3 vols. (Gregory M. Reichberg)
131
Marshall, Bruce, Trinity and Truth (Geoffrey Wainwright) ......... 635
Mcintosh, Mark A., Mystical Theology (Ralph Del Colle) . . . . . . . . . . 324
Nachef, Antoine E., B.S.O., The Mystery of the Trinity in the Theological
Thought of Pope John Paul II (Morris W. Pelzel) . . . . . . . . . . 651
Peterson, John, Introduction to Scholastic Realism (Anthony J. Lisska) . 643
Ramsey, Boniface, O.P.,John Cassian: The Conferences (Lauren Pristas) 154
Royal, Robert, The Virgin and the Dynamo: Use and Abuse of Religion in
Environmental Debates (Kevin W. Irwin) ...............
328
Saint Thomas d'Aquin et le sacerdoce. Actes du colloque organise par l'Institut
Saint-Thomas-Aquin les 5 et 6 juin 1998 a Toulouse (Guy Mansini,
0.S.B.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Stewart, Columba, Cassian the Monk (Lauren Pristas) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Torrell, Jean-Pierre, O.P., Le Christ en ses mysteres: La vie et /'oeuvre de jesus
selon saint Thomas d'Aquin (John F. Boyle) .............
631