scripture and metaphysics: aquinas and the renewal of trinitarian theology

SCRIPTURE AND METAPHYSICS

Aquinas and the Renewal ofTrinitarian Theology

Matthew Levering

Challenges in Contemporary Theology

Series Editors: Gareth Jones and Lewis AyresCanterbury Christ Church University College, UK and Emory University, US

Challenges in Contemporary Theology is a series aimed at producing clear orienta-tions in, and research on, areas of “challenge” in contemporary theology. These care-fully coordinated books engage traditional theological concerns with mainstreams inmodern thought and culture that challenge those concerns. The “challenges” impliedare to be understood in two senses: those presented by society to contemporary the-ology, and those posed by theology to society.

Published

These Three are One David S. Cunningham

After Writing Catherine Pickstock

Mystical Theology Mark A. McIntosh

Engaging Scripture Stephen E. Fowl

Torture and Eucharist William T. Cavanaugh

Sexuality and the Christian Body Eugene F. Rogers, Jr

On Christian Theology Rowan Williams

The Promised End Paul S. Fiddes

Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Sarah CoakleyPhilosophy, and Gender

A Theology of Engagement Ian S. Markham

Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology Gerard Loughlin

Scripture and Metaphysics Matthew Levering


Aquinas and the Renewal ofTrinitarian Theology

Matthew Levering

© 2004 by Matthew Levering

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Levering, Matthew Webb, 1971–Scripture and metaphysics: Aquinas and the renewal of Trinitarian

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paper)1. Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274. Summa theologica. Pars 1. Quaestio 1-43. 2. Trinity. 3. Bible–Theology. 4. Philosophical theology. I. Title. II. Series.

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To Romanus Cessario, O.P. and Matthew L. Lamb

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Setting the Scene: Theological Ends 12

Chapter 1 Sacra Doctrina: Wisdom, Scripture, andMetaphysics 23

1 Wisdom 282 Theologizing as a Wisdom-Exercise 343 Isaiah and St. John the Evangelist as

Contemplatives 39

Chapter 2 YHWH and Being 47

1 R. Kendall Soulen’s Post-Supersessionist Trinitarian Theology 53

2 Aquinas on Being and YHWH 57

Chapter 3 Scripture and Metaphysics in the Theology of God’s Knowledge and Will 75

1 Jon D. Levenson on the God of Israel 772 St. Thomas Aquinas on the Knowledge

and Will of God in His Unity 83

Chapter 4 The Paschal Mystery and Sapiential Theology of the Trinity 110

1 N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham on Jesus and the Identity of God 112

2 Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Cross as Analog for the Trinity 120

3 The Paschal Mystery as Revelatory of the Trinity in Aquinas 132

Chapter 5 Scripture and the Psychological Analogy for the Trinity 144

1 Aquinas and the Psychological Analogy 149

Chapter 6 Biblical Exegesis and Sapiential Naming of the Divine Persons 165

1 The Person of the Father 1692 The Person of the Son 1793 The Person of the Holy Spirit 185

Chapter 7 Essence, Persons, and the Question of Trinitarian Metaphysics 197

1 Trinitarian Ontology in Clarke, Zizioulas, and Hütter 202

2 Trinitarian Ontology and Aquinas’s Approach 213

Conclusion 236

Index 242

viii contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this book has involved, as a delightful consequence, theinitiation and deepening of a number of friendships. Since friendshiprequires seeking a shared good together, in this case the seeking of truthabout the triune God we worship, I have been accompanied by manyfriends, in various ways, in preparing this book. First and foremost is myfriend and dean, Michael Dauphinais, with whom I have worked togetherin myriad wonderful ways since our shared years at Duke Divinity School.Gilles Emery, O.P. read the entire manuscript and offered valuable encour-agement; because this book in many ways (I hope) serves as a kind of“prolegomena” to a reading of Fr. Emery’s speculative trinitarian theol-ogy, his friendship has meant a good deal to me. John Boyle, StanleyHauerwas, Gregory LaNave, Vincent Twomey, and Thomas Weinandy, O. F. M. Cap., provided valuable corrections and insights by generouslyreading earlier versions of chapters. I have benefited as well from encour-agement from Peggy Mary Brooks, David Burrell, C.S.C., Tremayne andRegina Cates, Jeffrey Gainey, Thomas Hibbs, Russell Hittinger, ReinhardHütter, Steven A. Long, Edward Mahoney, Bruce Marshall, and MichaelSherwin, O.P. Bernhard-Thomas Blankenhorn, O.P. carefully read thepenultimate draft of the book and offered superb criticisms; I owe a specialdebt to him. To Lewis Ayres, Rebecca Harkin, Fergus Kerr, O.P., andDebbie Seymour, I owe deep gratitude for guiding the manuscript withmarvelous skill through the process at Blackwell. The trenchant writingsof Ayres and Fr. Kerr have shaped my own interpretations of Aquinas.The completion of the manuscript corresponded with the launching ofthe English edition of Nova et Vetera, no small project, for which I amespecially grateful to Georges Cardinal Cottier, O.P., Charles Morerod,O.P., and my colleagues Diane Eriksen and Joseph Pearce. My students atAve Maria College honed my approach to these topics, and our registrar,

Maria Herbel, kindly assisted me by scheduling my classes in a way thatallows for some research. My department chair, William Riordan, has sus-tained my work at Ave Maria. Words cannot express the love that I havefor my greatest friend, my wife Joy, and our four children; our marriagehas been wonderfully enriched by the loving presence and support of ourparents and our extended family. The writing of the book would havebeen impossible without support from my beloved grandmother Irene B.Webb, who has been a great blessing in my life. Finally, a particular wordof thanks must go to Romanus Cessario, O.P., who read the entire manuscript and suggested many improvements, and to Matthew L. Lamb,whose insights can be seen throughout. The book had its genesis in agraduate seminar organized by Fr. Lamb at Boston College in the Fall of1999. May God continue to bless Fr. Cessario and Fr. Lamb for so gen-erously sharing their theological wisdom. To Romanus Cessario andMatthew Lamb, in gratitude to God for their care and fidelity, I dedicatethis book.

x acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Many recent theologies of the triune God envision an opposition betweenscriptural and metaphysical modes of articulating truth. In this view, meta-physical analysis, with its effort to expose “reality in its ontological, causaland communicative structures,”1 impedes theological understanding of theGod who chooses to reveal himself not in philosophical propositions, but in dramatic, historical, and narrative form. Given this criticism, itfollows that the abstract language of metaphysical theologies of the triuneGod obscures the practical relevance of the living God of Scripture andsalvation history.

Theologians and biblical scholars who grant the reality of this opposi-tion between Scripture and metaphysics have responded in two main ways.First, some have repudiated Greek metaphysics, arguing that it has servedas a means of the Church’s distancing herself from the living God of Israeland has enabled the Church to supersede and domesticate this God. Sec-ondly, some have sought to redefine “metaphysics” along scriptural lines,by developing a Christological and Trinitarian metaphysics. In this vein,Christ’s Paschal mystery, for instance, serves as an analogy for the Trinity.The fact that Christ has revealed God to be a Trinity of Persons, like-wise, is seen to require a Trinitarian metaphysics, in which the relationalcharacter of the Trinity governs our understanding of “being.” For suchthinkers, Scripture provides the justification for developing more dramaticand narrative accounts of the distinction of the divine Persons, accountsthat move well beyond the cautious metaphysical illumination of thedivine order of origin by means of the traditional Trinitarian names Father,Son, Word, Image, Holy Spirit, Love, and Gift.

1 Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, no. 66.

Each of the seven chapters of this book will address in depth an aspectof these concerns regarding the relationship of Scripture and metaphysicsin the theology of the triune God. The book will thus provide a unifiedanalysis of, and constructive response to, such concerns, in the course ofpresenting systematically the themes of Aquinas’s treatise on God in SummaTheologiae 1, qq.1–43. Throughout the book, I argue that renewal of thetheology of the triune God requires that theologians reject the allegedopposition between scriptural and metaphysical modes of reflection,without conflating the two modes. Scriptural and metaphysical modes ofreflection came unglued, I argue, when theologians no longer recognizedcontemplation as the rightful “end” of Trinitarian theology. As Jean PierreTorrell reminds us:

When Thomas says that theology is principally speculative, he means thatit is in the first instance contemplative; the two words are practically syn-onymous in Thomas. This is why – we shall not be slow to see this oper-ative in Thomas’s life – research, study, reflection on God can find theirsource and their completion only in prayer. The Eastern Christians like tosay of theology that it is doxology; Thomas would add some further clar-ifications to that, but he would not reject the intention: the joy of theFriend who is contemplated is completed in song.2

When practical relevance replaces contemplation as the primary goal ofTrinitarian theology, the technical precisions of metaphysics come to beseen as meaningless, rather than as ways of deepening our contemplativeunion with the living God revealed in Scripture.3

2 introduction

2 Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans.Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996): 157.Cf. Servais Pinckaers, O.P., “Recherche de la signification véritable du terme spéculatif,”Nouvelle Revue Théologique 81 (1959): 673–95.3 Cf. Bruce D. Marshall, “The Trinity,” in The Blackwell Companion to Theology, ed. GarethJones (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), which offers an intriguing account of the past, present,and future of Trinitarian theology. Marshall examines Schleiermacher’s account of theTrinity. Schleiermacher holds that all doctrines express Christian (temporal) experience, andhe argues that the traditional teaching (were it true) is both conceptually incoherent andfails to express a significant aspect of our experience of “salvation.” Marshall compares thisaccount to that of Cardinal Johann Baptist Franzelin, who published the first edition of hisThe Triune God in 1869. Franzelin’s manual argues that the Bible itself teaches the funda-mental aspects of traditional Trinitarian doctrine, as illumined by the Councils of theChurch. Having drawn the comparison between Schleiermacher and Franzelin, Marshallnotes that theologians of the twentieth-century “renewal” in Trinitarian theology, led byBarth and Rahner, sought to move beyond both Schleiermacher and Franzelin in a way

For pre-Enlightenment theologians, contemplation of the triune God– a contemplative union rooted in faith formed by charity – is the primarygoal of Trinitarian theology, and it is only within this contemplative endthat “practical” ends are truly achieved. For this earlier theological tradi-tion, the Church’s mode of contemplating the triune God in Scripturerequires a difficult metaphysical ascesis – the limp of Jacob, the awe ofMoses – because her God is salvifically and radically strange. Indeed, withthis perspective in mind, A. N. Williams has approvingly remarked that“eternity will apparently be spent in the reflection on issues today con-sidered purely technical.”4 This view is held by both the Greek and LatinFathers, as well as by the great medieval theologians. St. Gregory of Nyssastates, “The knowledge of God is a mountain steep indeed and difficultto climb – the majority of people scarcely reach its base.”5 Using a different analogy to make the same point, St. Bernard contends that “the bedroom of the King is to be sought in the mystery of divine contemplation.”6 Contemplative Trinitarian theology belongs to the inte-rior spiritual conversion by which self-centered human beings become God-centered.

This book will argue that modern theologians, seeking to ascend themountain of divine knowledge and to find the “bedroom of the King,”need to learn anew the contemplative and metaphysical practices that are

introduction 3

that would integrate the insights of both. Marshall concludes, however, that the result hasbeen to lose touch with the profundity of the tradition of Trinitarian teaching. In his view,the alleged “renewal” has succeeded largely in elevating the positions of the nineteenthcentury beyond their actual importance. In Marshall’s view, Trinitarian theology rooted inthe classical tradition has far more profound resources at its disposal than those which areavailable to theologians whose work springs out of the controversies – the parallel move-ments of Protestant liberalism and Catholic manualism – of the nineteenth century.4 A. N. Williams, “Contemplation: Knowledge of God in Augustine’s De Trinitate,” inKnowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church, ed. James J.Buckley and David S. Yeago (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 131. Williams isexpounding Augustine’s view, but makes clear that it is her own as well. See also her TheGround of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)and William T. Cavanaugh, “A Joint Declaration?: Justification as Theosis in Aquinas andLuther,” Heythrop Journal 41 (2000): 265–80. On Williams’s work, see Fergus Kerr, O.P.,“Thomas Aquinas: Conflicting Interpretations in Recent Anglophone Literature,” inAquinas as Authority, eds Paul van Geest, Harm Goris, and Carlo Leget (Leuven: Peeters,2002): 165–86, at 183–6.5 St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (New York: Paulist Press, 1978): 93 (no. 158).6 St. Bernard, On the Song of Songs II, trans. Kilian Walsh O. C. S. O. (Kalamazoo, MI:Cistercian Publications, 1983): Sermon 23, no. 9, 33.

necessary for worsh ipping Israel’s God rather than culturally relevant idols.As we will see, Aquinas proves an invaluable guide for this “learninganew.” He understands theology as wisdom, that is, a participation inChrist’s sacred instruction in divine Wisdom. In his view, the story of YHWH should be read as sacred instruction in the divine “name,”charged throughout with the prophetic urgency that this “name” not fallamong the idols. We learn from Aquinas how the language of “being”preserves Israel’s radical insistence upon the intimate presence in the worldof her transcendent God, a presence that is ultimately Messianic, given the evil of the world. Furthermore, Aquinas exposes how the doctrine of divine Personhood attains real knowledge of, without overnarrating,the inner life of God as revealed in Scripture. He finds in the propernames of the Trinity – Father, Son, Word, Image, Holy Spirit, Love, Gift – the biblical distinctions of the divine communion-in-unity intowhich our lives have been salvifically drawn. Against supersessionism,including the unconscious supersessionism that is Trinitarian ontology, heteaches Christians that we must always speak of our triune God under twoaspects.

The present book is thus an exercise in dialogic contemplation of thetriune God, guided by the insights of Aquinas, that draws upon the insights of a wide array of Jewish and Christian exegetes and theolo-gians. Revealed Wisdom, as interpreted in faith by the modes of humanintellectual wisdom, illumines the mysteries of divine “being” in threedivine Persons. I should note that neither the problem, nor the basic solution advanced here, is new. Already in 1964 Giles Hibbert had written:

It is common enough to encounter Christians who have been seriouslyupset and put off by what they have seen of St. Thomas’s theological treat-ment of the Trinity. They go as far as to regard it as thoroughly untheo-logical and even unfaithful to the Christian tradition, because it seems tothem that it destroys the Mystery-Content of the Trinity and tries to sub-stitute for it a series of explanatory “metaphysical formulae”. . . . Our start-ing point will be a question which is raised by this accusation against St.Thomas: namely, whether a thorough and consistent use of metaphysicalphilosophy should, or even can, be allowed within theology; or whether itnecessarily impedes, if not actually destroys, the realization of God asMystery – present within the worshipping Christian community. In otherwords, does metaphysicizing inevitably mean de-theologizing? We wouldmaintain that the metaphysical approach to the Trinity of the great Doctorsof the West, if properly understood, can be seen to provide a means for

4 introduction

better appreciating how man in this life is to stand in his presence beforeGod, and as such it certainly does not de-theologize.7

Hibbert goes on to show that “metaphysics” belongs to the personalencounter by which human words truly express divine revelation. Scripture,as human words about “God,” cannot help but have metaphysical intelligi-bility. Hibbert points out that in order for human words to signify God, “[t]hey must have the possibility of being open, being able to pointbeyond themselves, beyond the sphere and context of their own immediateorigin; or in other words by way of analogical predication they must havethe possibility of metaphysical realization.”8 The Church expresses revelationin human words which are inevitably metaphysical in content. As Hibbertconcludes, “Thus, because the words with which the revelation of God ishanded on are human and have a potential metaphysical content, what ishanded on by way of them has a direct personal relevance – ‘encountercontent’ it could be called – in making God known to man. But it is of course necessary that this content be actualized and brought to life. Aninadequate metaphysics will only kill it, robbing it of its significance andpower. A genuinely metaphysical theology will make it live.”9 Metaphysicalanalysis sustains the believer’s ability to express, both within Scripture and in Christian theologies that interpret Scripture as a channel of divine Revelation, the Holy Trinity’s radical and mysterious presence.

The technical issues that will concern us are thus relevant not only tothe few who have the time and ability to study philosophy and theology.10

introduction 5

7 Giles Hibbert, O.P., “Mystery and Metaphysics in the Trinitarian Theology of SaintThomas,” Irish Theological Quarterly 31 (1964): 187–213, at 187–8.8 Ibid., 189.9 Ibid.

10 In noting that such issues are today considered “purely technical,” Williams does notof course mean to suggest that they have no soteriological import or no import for regu-lating our action, that is, for enabling us to encounter the God who saves us and to iden-tify and live out the Christian virtues. On the contrary, as Williams shows in her TheGround of Union, the “purely technical” issues of classical Trinitarian theology are shotthrough with soteriological implications. Yet, the significance of contemplative ends hasbeen neglected, or to put it another way, the telos of Trinitarian theology has been reversed(cf. Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doc-trine [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997]). “Purely technical” issues are explored pri-marily for the sake of reformulating action. Without being able to examine his programmaticproposals – many of which, certainly, I think are valid – one can simply note this tendency(influenced by his teacher Jürgen Moltmann) in Miroslav Volf, “ ‘The Trinity Is Our SocialProgram’: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,” Modern Theology 14 (1998): 403–23.

Most Christians contemplate God liturgically and through personal prayerand study, rather than also by developing the intellectual habits proper tospeculative theology. Nonetheless, attempts to speak about God (notmerely to fellow theologians, but also and perhaps especially to personsin the pews) require some understanding of “technical” issues. Anyonewho has ever heard a sermon on the Trinity – Catholics will attest to thepainfully awkward experience that is “Trinity Sunday” – will admit thattalk about the three Persons quickly becomes horribly thin unless thepreacher has some metaphysical understanding (without denying theunfathomable mystery) of how the Persons are perfectly one and yet dis-tinct.11 Simply put, no one in the pews wishes to hear about three gods.There is an expectation, rooted in Christian faith and the practices offaith,12 that the mystery must possess some intelligibility, that scripturaland metaphysical modes of reflection cannot ultimately be opposed. Theremust be some way of distinguishing the three Persons from the multiplegods of polytheism, beyond simply asserting that this is “not polytheism”and that the three are “one God,” whatever that might mean.

Likewise, popular nonfiction suggests a widespread fascination withwhether the word “God,” the agent whose works are testified to in Scrip-ture, has a metaphysical referent.13 Is God real? Does he “exist”? Does

6 introduction

11 For explorations of the relationship of doctrine and worship, see, e.g., Waclaw Swierzawski, “Faith and Worship in the Pauline Commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas,”Divus Thomas 75 (1972): 389–412; Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology (Oxford: Black-well, 1998); Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Robert Barron, And Now I See . . . A Theology ofTransformation (New York: Crossroad, 1998); Reinhard Hütter, “Hospitality and Truth: TheDisclosure of Practices in Worship and Doctrine,” in Practicing Theology, ed. Miroslav Volfand Dorothy C. Bass (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002): 206–27; and Frans Jozef vanBeeck, S.J., “Trinitarian Theology as Participation,” in The Trinity, ed. S. Davis, D. Kendall,and G. O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 295–325.12 For analysis indebted to the work of George Lindbeck and Stanley Hauerwas remind-ing us that Christian doctrines “are entangled with” (to use Sarah Coakley’s phrase) Chris-tian practices, see Practicing Theology, ed. Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass, especially SarahCoakley’s “Deepening Practices: Perspectives from Ascetical and Mystical Theology,” 78.Coakley’s essay emphasizes the way in which the graced practice of “infused contempla-tion,” at the highest stage of the day-to-day ascetical (thus not otherworldly) and sacra-mental life made intelligible by the doctrine of cooperative grace, enables deepenedtheological insights, as God connaturalizes the believer to the doctrinal truth. With regardto Aquinas as a contemplative, see the work of Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint ThomasAquinas, Vol. 2: Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Univer-sity of America Press, 2003); cf. M.-D. Chenu, O.P.’s evocative chapter 3 – “The Contemplative” – in his Aquinas and His Role in Theology, trans. Paul Philibert, O.P. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002): 35–61.13 Cf. Cornelius Ernst, “Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina,” The Thomist 38(1974): 422–5.

God know and love us? To name only recent bestsellers, Karen Armstronghas written a “history” of God that historicizes God as a cultural con-struct. Jack Miles has authored a “biography” of God that puts God, asplit personality in Miles’s view, on the therapist’s couch. StephenHawking’s introduction to the physical universe, A Brief History of Time,ends with the hope that, were physics able to discover a unified theorythat explains all the internal structures of the universe, then attention couldbe turned to the greatest question of all, namely why the universe exists:“Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, beable to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we would know themind of God.”14 But since God is not a creature, human attempts toarticulate the uncreated could not be satisfied by physics, let alone cul-tural history or psychoanalysis. Beginning from creaturely things, one mayinquire into what it would mean to be “not a creature.” Only such meta-physical inquiries15 can encounter the God of history who teaches, “Towhom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says theHoly One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?” (Isaiah40:26)

Yet, to many believers in the God revealed in Scripture, metaphysicsappears to be exactly the problem. Not only has the very possibility ofmetaphysics been the subject of intense disputation especially sinceLuther,16 but also metaphysics seems to many Christians to be a way to

introduction 7

14 Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (NewYork: Bantam Books, 1988): 175.15 On this see David B. Burrell, C.S.C.’s review of L. Gregory Jones and Stephen E. Fowl, eds, Rethinking Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995) in Modern Theology 12 (1996):109–12. Burrell begins, “Whether or not one is favorable or not to metaphysics, the trickyquestion remains: what is it? That is a metaphysical question, of course; perhaps the meta-physical question, which should remind us that metaphysics has come to refer to the par-adigmatic activity proper to philosophy: one which inquires into the nature of things,indeed of anything at all. So anyone who urges us ‘beyond metaphysics’ must have in minda peculiar way of carrying out that inquiry, for actually to venture beyond metaphysicswould carry us beyond inquiry itself, which would put us quickly out of bounds,” 109.Burrell has in view the complex work of John Milbank. See, e.g., Milbank’s “Only The-ology Overcomes Metaphysics,” in The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997):36–52.16 See, e.g., Gordon E. Michalson, Jr., Kant and the Problem of God (Oxford: Blackwell,1999); cf. Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy, 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2002). Heidegger influentially structures his whole philosophyaround the rejection of classical metaphysics (onto-theology). For discussion of Heidegger’sinfluence, see e.g., Laurence Paul Hemming, Heidegger’s Atheism, chapter 8: “Jean-LucMarion and the Contemporary Theological Appropriation of Heidegger,” 249–69; Fergus

get around the fact that the living God has revealed himself historically toIsrael and the Church. To put it bluntly, now that God has revealed himselfin Scripture, why would Christian theologians still rely on the insights ofGreek metaphysics? Why would not the revealed God of Scripture eithercompletely transform prior notions of “metaphysics,” or else be utterlybeyond the conceptual realm of metaphysics? The present book seeks toengage such questions. The book, I hasten to note, is not a work of metaphysics, although it contains metaphysical analysis. Rather, I havewritten a work of Trinitarian theology that persistently calls into questionthe alleged opposition between metaphysical analysis and scriptural exe-gesis by exploring how Aquinas’s use of metaphysics illumines the meaningof scriptural revelation.17

For Aquinas, Trinitarian theology is ultimately ordered to contempla-tive union, and so at the outset we can note that his Trinitarian theologyis not isolated from his doctrine of salvation. In the Eucharistic liturgy, in which the whole Mystical Body shares in Christ’s sacrificial fulfillmentof Israel’s Torah, Christ’s members (as the perfect Temple) manifest God’s name by worshipping the Trinity. By sharing in the self-emptyingform of Christ, revealed by the Spirit in word and sacrament, Christ’s

8 introduction

Kerr, O.P., After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 85–93. Kerr findsa similarity between Hans Urs von Balthasar’s metaphysics in his Theological Aesthetics andGilson’s metaphysics. Both Balthasar and Gilson emphasize that the doctrine of pure Act,in which creatures are a finite participation, does away with both essentialism and anyattempt to make God a “being” among beings.17 For exemplars of Christian metaphysics, see e.g., Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941); idem, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: Pon-tifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949); David B. Burrell, C.S.C., Knowing the Unknow-able God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,1986); Thomas S. Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the SummaContra Gentiles (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Jacques Maritain, APreface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1946); idem, Essenceand the Existent, trans. L. Galantiere and G. Phelan (New York: Pantheon, 1948); Corne-lio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino, 2nd ed. (Turin:Società Editrice Internazionale, 1950); idem, Participation et Causalité selon S. Thomas d’Aquin(Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1961); L. Geiger, La participation dans la philosophie des. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1942); Rudi A. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality inThomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Meta-physics of Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992); Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and theTranscendentals (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); W. Norris Clarke, S.J. The One and the Many: AContemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001);Steven A. Long, “On the Natural Knowledge of the Real Distinction of Essence and Existence,” Nova et Vetera (English) 1 (2003): 75–108.

cruciform members already mystically “see” the Father.18 This liturgicalunion with the Trinity is contemplative, although as a liturgical unionrequiring the active holiness of Christ’s members, Christian contempla-tion is not thereby bifurcated or cut off from Christian action. As theFathers and medieval theologians recognized, the contemplative liturgicalunion with the Trinity that is enjoyed by believers whose faith is formedby charity, is expressed theologically in contemplative and metaphysicalmodes.

The goal of this book, therefore, is sharing in the Church’s manifesta-tion of God’s “name” by renewing the practices of theological contem-plation. The first chapter of the book treats sacra doctrina, the sacredteaching or wisdom that is knowledge of God and all things in relationto God. This chapter argues that appropriating the revealed sacred teach-ing has always demanded, even for the biblical authors, metaphysical ques-tioning. Indeed, the practice of metaphysical questioning constitutes a

introduction 9

18 Cf. my Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002). Contemplative practices cannot beseparated from moral practices: both require an ascesis, a self-humbling, a conversion fromself-centeredness to God-centeredness. Put another way, overcoming idolatry requires bothintellectual and moral conversion. Gustavo Gutierrez has argued that “contrary to inter-pretations based on readings of the Bible from the standpoint primarily of religious phi-losophy, idolatry cannot be reduced to a kind of process of intellectual and religiouscleansing on the way to monotheism, a process that supposedly went on throughout thehistory of the Jewish mind. Without abandoning the realm of the cultic, the prophets force-fully point out that the idolatry of the people also takes the form of placing their trust inpower and wealth, which they turn into real idols. Their behavior means that they followprinciples that differ from, and are opposed to, those that spring from the covenant theyhave made with Yahweh, the only God and the Lord of Israel” (Gutierrez, The God ofLove, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991]: 56). From a similarperspective, Roberto S. Goizueta has noted that “Christian doctrine remains important asthe Christian community’s articulation of our lived commitment to Christ, and as the wordof God which inspires and transforms our lives. But what most defines us as Christians is not our intellectual assent to those doctrines but our lived commitment to Christ and ourneighbor. Likewise, theology remains important as the community’s reflection upon thatcommitment in the light of the Scriptures, but what makes that reflection credible andauthentically Christian is, above all, its roots in the lived commitment to Christ and neigh-bor” (Goizueta, Caminemos con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment[Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995]: 78–9). Gutierrez and Goizueta are right to insistupon uncompromising Christian morality, but the arguments of both authors would beassisted by a richer account of what constitutes, and what sustains, “our intellectual assentto those doctrines.” Through his critique (influenced by the work of Matthew L. Lamb)of the modern concept of “praxis,” which leads him to advocate an “aesthetic” under-standing of praxis, Goizueta moves in the direction of providing such an account (cf. 80ff.,especially 106–8).

spiritual exercise that purifies from idolatry those who would contemplatethe self-revealing God. This unity between rational investigation and con-templative beatitude finds wonderful expression in St. Athanasius’s under-standing of human sharing in the divine image:

They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save ofearthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had notintended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given thema share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has madeeven themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in orderthat through this gift of God-likeness in themselves they may be able toperceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Himapprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only reallyhappy and blessed life.19

The alleged opposition between metaphysics and salvation history in theology founders when confronted with this understanding of salvation(in history) as holy contemplation, an understanding shared by Aquinas.20

The remaining chapters continue in systematic fashion the book’s discus-sion of divine “being” with various theologians, most importantly St.Thomas Aquinas.21 The chapters span the themes contained in Aquinas’streatise on God in the Summa Theologiae 1, qq.2–42. While not directlytreating q.43, on the temporal missions of the Son and Spirit, the book

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19 St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. a Religious of C. S. M. V. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1993): 38 (no. 11), emphasis added. See alsoKhaled Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (New York: Routledge, 1998).20 Compare a twelfth-century Muslim contemplative approach to the divine unity: “Thefirst stage of faith in divine unity amounts to a person speaking the words ‘There is nogod but God’ while his heart is heedless or even denies it, as hypocrites may profess faithin divine unity. In the second stage one believes the meaning of the statement in his heart,as the community of Muslims believe it, and this is the faith of the common people. Thethird represent those who bear witness to [faith in divine unity] on the path of interior illu-mination by means of the light of truth, and that is the stage of those who are ‘drawing near,’and takes place when one sees many things, but sees them emanating in their multiplicityfrom the Almighty One. The fourth stage is that of those who see only unity when theyregard existence, which is the witness of the righteous ones and those whom the Sufis call‘annihilated’ by faith in divine unity” (Al-Ghazali, Faith in Divine Unity and Trust in DivineProvidence, Book XXXV of The Revival of the Religious Sciences, trans. David B. Burrell, C.S.C. [Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2001]: 10, emphasis added).21 To grasp the contemplative spirit that distinguishes Aquinas’s theological appropriationof biblical, liturgical, patristic, and philosophical themes, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P.’s mag-isterial two-volume study, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans.Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996) and espe-cially Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2 Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.:Catholic University of America Press, 2003).

engages this topic by emphasizing the scriptural and soteriological founda-tion of Aquinas’s theology of God.22 Chapters 2 and 3 address God in hisunity, in dialogue with Jewish and Christian theologians whose concern isthat Aquinas’s account of God’s “attributes” (what one can say about God asone) distort, in a supersessionist and onto-theological manner, the oneliving God revealed as YHWH to Israel as narrated in the Old Testament.Chapters 4 through 7 then explore aspects of the theology of the Trinity.Chapter 4 asks whether the Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ is revelatory ofthe Trinity in such a way as to constitute an analogy for the Trinity. Thischapter inquires into the modes by which we understand the “distinction”of Persons in God. The fifth chapter extends this topic by directly consider-ing Aquinas’s account of the “psychological analogy” as a means of under-standing the Persons as subsisting relations. In both the fourth and fifthchapters, at stake is whether Aquinas’s analogy for understanding the Trinityis grounded sufficiently in God’s revelation in Scripture.23

The sixth chapter turns to Aquinas’s description of the Persons of theFather, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here the theologians in light of whose workI contextualize Aquinas’s views are biblical exegetes. Aquinas’s description

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22 On this topic see e.g., Émile Bailleux, “Le cycle des missions trinitaires, d’après saintThomas,” Revue Thomiste 63 (1963): 165–92.23 My approach to Scripture is reflected in Adrian Walker’s “Fundamentalism and theCatholicity of Truth,” Communio 29 (2002): 5–27. Walker notes, “The inspiration of Scripturenecessarily passes through, while never being simply reducible to, the participation of theChurch (and of Israel) in Jesus Christ’s original act of traditioning, which is both immanentin, and transcendent of, the Church” (20). Cf. the important work of David S. Yeago, “TheNew Testament and Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exege-sis,” Pro Ecclesia 3 (1994): 152–64; idem, “The Spirit, the Church, and the Scriptures: BiblicalInspiration and Interpretation Revisited,” in Knowing the Triune God, ed. James J. Buckley and David S. Yeago (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001): 49–93; Stephen E. Fowl, Engaging Scripture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), especially 183–205, where he offers “a theoret-ical account to support my ad hoc use of biblical scholarship in the course of this book” (186);idem, “The Conceptual Structure of New Testament Theology,” in Biblical Theology: Retrospectand Prospect, ed. Scott J. Hafemann (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002): 225–36; C.Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002):295–312; Thomas G. Guarino, “Catholic Reflections on Discerning the Truth of SacredScripture,” in Your Word is Truth: A Project of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, ed. CharlesColson and Richard John Neuhaus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002): 79–101; ThomasWeinandy, O. F. M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,2000): 27–39; Gilles Emery, O.P., “Biblical Exegesis and the Speculative Doctrine of theTrinity in St.Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on John,” chapter 7 of Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsi-lanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003); Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, Vol. 1, trans. Mark Sebanc(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998) and Vol. 2, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Grand Rapids,MI: Eerdmans, 2000); Thomas F. Ryan, Thomas Aquinas as Reader of the Psalms (Notre Dame:University of Notre Dame Press, 2000); R. Francis Martin, “Sacra Doctrina and the Authorityof Its Sacra Scriptura According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Pro Ecclesia 10 (2001): 84–102.

of the Persons can seem far from the narrative reality that one meets inthe New Testament and in the “biblical theology” practiced by contem-porary biblical exegetes. This chapter inquires into whether Aquinas’shighly metaphysical (speculative) account treats the themes of “biblicaltheology,” and if so, what is gained by Aquinas’s nonnarrative approach.Lastly, the seventh chapter addresses the movement in theology towardsdeveloping a metaphysics that is properly theological, in other words aTrinitarian metaphysics. After examining the work of proponents of thisdevelopment in light of classical Jewish and Muslim concerns, I argue thatAquinas’s nuanced analysis of the relationship of “essence” and “Persons”accomplishes the main goals of proponents of “Trinitarian ontology,”without creating the conceptual and interreligious problems that Trinitar-ian ontology creates. Aquinas’s approach retains the integrity of the OldTestament revelation while fully displaying its integration into Christ Jesus’definitive revelation of God.

In short, the book aims both at reordering contemporary Trinitariantheology and at identifying further “signposts,” as Walker Percy might putit, along the contemplative path marked out by God himself in Scriptureand tradition.24 I hope to show that by following a path of contemplation(grounded in the active holiness that sharing in Christ’s salvific fulifillmentof Israel’s Torah involves), Trinitarian theology remains fully insertedwithin Christ’s salvific fulfillment of Israel’s Temple, where God’s name,against the idols, is manifested.

1 Setting the Scene: Theological Ends

Before embarking on this task, however, a brief “setting of the scene” isin order, so that the reader will understand more fully the post-Kantianand post-Hegelian debate about theological ends within which this book,and contemporary appropriation of Aquinas’s theology of God, isinscribed. In different ways, Cornel West, Stanley Hauerwas, and CharlesTaylor have retold American intellectual history with William James –himself profoundly influenced by Kantian and Hegelian streams of thought– at the center.25 As such retellings would suggest, modern Trinitarian

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24 Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, ed. Patrick Samway (New York: Farrar, Strausand Giroux, 1991).25 Portions of the following have appeared in my “Beyond the Jamesian Impasse in Trini-tarian Theology,” The Thomist 66 (2002): 395–420. Cornel West’s study, The AmericanEvasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,

theology conceives of its goals, content, and structure along the lines ofthe Jamesian pattern. For this reason, the remainder of this introductionwill describe James’s philosophy, its instantiation in certain criticisms ofclassical theology of God, and contemporary resources for moving beyondsuch criticisms. I will show that in the name of making the Trinity rele-vant and useful, modern theologians have fallen into a “Jamesian impasse”that ends by either knowing nothing or claiming to know too much.What is needed, I will argue, is a rediscovery of the meaning of con-templative wisdom.

In James’s famous Gifford Lectures, The Varieties of Religious Experience,he examines from a psychological perspective classic accounts of “the reli-gion of healthy-mindedness,” “the sick soul,” “the divided self, and theprocess of its unification,” “conversion,” “saintliness,” “mysticism,” and“philosophy,” among other topics. For our purposes in this introduction,James’s understanding of philosophy is especially telling.

James begins by noting that philosophy, as related to religious experi-ence, has generally been thought to have to do with the intellectual war-rants of religious claims. He inquires as to whether philosophy has beenable to live up to this task:

The subject of Saintliness left us face to face with the question, Is the senseof divine presence a sense of anything true? We turned first to mysticismfor an answer, and found that although mysticism is entirely willing to cor-roborate religion, it is too private (and also too various) in its utterances tobe able to claim a universal authority. But philosophy publishes resultswhich claim to be universally valid if they are valid at all, so we now turnwith our question to philosophy. Can philosophy stamp a warrant of verac-ity upon the religious man’s sense of the divine?26

James’s conclusion is a firm “No.” His chapter reviews various attemptsto demonstrate the existence of God and his attributes – from Protestant

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1989), nicely connects Emerson with James. I am indebted to Stanley Hauerwas’s analysisof James’s work for bringing this insight to the fore, as well as for directing my attentionto James’s use of Newman (although Hauerwas mistakenly attributes to Newman a lengthyquotation culled by James from a contemporary manual on natural theology). See StanleyHauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology (GrandRapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001): 72–86. See also Charles Taylor’s Varieties of Religion Today:William James Revisited (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), and my forthcomingreview of this book in Modern Theology.26 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (NewYork: Penguin Books, 1982): 430.

and Catholic manuals to Kant and Hegel – and finds that none of theattempts succeeds. James limits the task of philosophy as regards religiousexpression to logical clarification of doctrines and to weeding out claimsthat have been proven scientifically to be false.27

Yet, philosophy that seeks to speak about God remains of interest toJames. Granting the validity of Schleiermacher’s theory that “theologicalformulas” are at best “secondary products” attempting to express religiousfeelings, he adapts this theory to encompass the whole variety of religiousexpression: “Religious experience . . . spontaneously and inevitablyengenders myths, superstitions, dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical theolo-gies, and criticisms of one set of these by the adherents of another.”28

James then responds to a great opponent of Schleiermachian precepts, JohnHenry Cardinal Newman. First, James discusses Newman’s argument inThe Idea of a University that theology is indeed a science or a systematicarrangement of truths known about God ( James mistakenly summarizesNewman’s view as “theology based on pure reason”29). For James, this canbe shown empirically to be false, since, unlike science, neither dogmatictheology nor “natural theology” (metaphysics) has ever led to anythingbut sectarian division. Second, James nonetheless admits that Newman’saccount of God’s attributes is, as “rhetoric,” magnificent.30 James does notquote this passage of Newman’s, but instead quotes at length a Thomisticmanual’s dry account of God’s existence and attributes. James then givesNewman backhanded but real praise. Newman, says James, “gives usscholastic philosophy ‘touched with emotion,’ and every philosophyshould be touched with emotion rightly understood. Emotionally, then,dogmatic theology is worth something to minds of the type ofNewman’s.”31 Thus although Newman has insisted that his theology is sci-entific, James finds its real value in its ability to convey and stimulate reli-gious emotion.

James goes on to note that the manualist’s account of God’s existence and attributes fails precisely this test. The falsehood of the manualist’s account can be shown not only empirically, but also by themeaninglessness of the manualist’s account even were it to be true. Jamesstates:

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27 Ibid., 455.28 Ibid., 433.29 Ibid., 435.30 Ibid., 442.31 Ibid., 442.

Take God’s aseity, for example; or his necessariness; his immateriality; his “simplicity” or superiority to the kind of inner variety and successionwhich we find in finite beings, his indivisibility, and lack of the inner distinctions of being and activity, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, and the rest; his repudiation of inclusion in a genus; his actualized infinity; his “personality,” apart from the moral qualities whichit may comport; his relations to evil being permissive and not positive; hisself-sufficiency, self-love, and absolute felicity in himself: – candidly speak-ing, how do such qualities as these make any definite connection with ourlife? And if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct,what vital difference can it possibly make to a man’s religion whether theybe true or false?32

He then compares dogmatic theologians to naturalists who never get outin the fields and woods, but stay inside classifying and arranging bones.Metaphysical accounts, in this view, are nothing but meaningless words,quite cut off from anything relevant to a religious person. These abstrac-tions, James suggests, are even demonic – “they have the trail of theserpent over them” – insofar as they serve as substitutes for anythingworthy of worship and religious feeling. He concludes, “So much for themetaphysical attributes of God! From the point of view of practical reli-gion, the metaphysical monster which they offer to our worship is anabsolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind.”33

Even as James bids “a definitive good-by to dogmatic theology,”34 there-fore, Newman is somewhat excused by James on the grounds thatNewman’s description of God’s attributes is at least emotionally evocative.James’s criticism of the “metaphysical monster,” however, sweeps awayNewman’s claims for the intellectual seriousness of theology. The gauntlet thrown down by James in the United States, and by Kant andSchleiermacher in Europe, has greatly influenced how Christian theolo-gians understand theology and in particular how they understand the placeof metaphysical arguments within theology. Most contemporary theolo-gies of the triune God shy away from metaphysics as overly abstract andinstead seek practical, rather than contemplative, ends.

For example, the late Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life begins with the following proposal: “Thedoctrine of the Trinity is ultimately a practical doctrine with radical

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32 Ibid., 445.33 Ibid., 447.34 Ibid., 448.

consequences for Christian life. That is the thesis of this book.”35 Accord-ing to LaCugna, theological articulations of the doctrine of the Trinityhave, because of their “esoteric treatment of God’s ‘inner’ life,” alienatedbelievers from the living God.36 Language about God in himself, in ordernot to degenerate into logical error that would impugn either God’s unityor his Trinity, must be speculative or contemplative. It thus relies uponachieving the most rigorous conceptual distinctions. Such language, saysLaCugna, is not fully “at home with the concrete languages and imagesof the Bible, creeds, and the liturgy.”37 Similarly, David S. Cunninghamhas remarked:

To many people, including both Christians and non-Christians, this doc-trine (at least as it has traditionally been elaborated) remains esoteric and irrelevant. Too often it is expressed in cryptic formulas, or describedin densely compressed philosophical prose; this does little to set the doctrine in a bright and convincing light. Furthermore, the key terms ofTrinitarian theology continue to be translated with little appreciation forthe contemporary context of their reception. Nor is the doctrine very oftenshown to be of great significance for the day-to-day lives of Christianbelievers.38

Cunningham’s book therefore emphasizes the “Trinitarian virtues” ofpolyphony, participation, and particularity and concludes with the “Trini-tarian practices” that inform and embody these Trinitarian virtues.

Such theologies seem to place the goal of Trinitarian theology in thepractical fruits that the doctrine can inspire. Despite the intentions of theauthors, however, these practical fruits then displace the Trinity as thelocus of interest in Trinitarian theology. The intention is nonetheless aworthy one: to show that Trinitarian theology is not “merely” intellec-tual, but rather is transformative of the student of Trinitarian theology. Isthere another way of accounting for the goal of Trinitarian theology thatwould expose the transformation of the practitioner without suggestingthat the study of God has something other than transformative knowingof God as its primary goal?

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35 Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (New York:HarperCollins, 1993): 1.36 Ibid., ix.37 Ibid.38 David S. Cunningham, These Three Are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford:Blackwell, 1998), ix.

It seems to me that what is required is grasping how human transfor-mation occurs within the movement whereby we rise from idolatry and,instead of primarily contemplating creatures (ourselves), contemplate Godfor his own sake rather than for the sake of creatures. Reflecting uponthe Latino/Hispanic context, Roberto Goizueta has articulated anantipragmatist account of “ends” that may help us grasp the significanceof contemplation. Goizueta notes that some cultures appear to judge valuein terms of outcomes, results, or products. Such cultures can no longercelebrate the sheer gift of being. As Goizueta points out:

Celebration implies relinquishment of control; it implies a willingness to“let go.” It thus implies an affirmation of life as an end in itself: regardlessof its products, its results, its outcomes, or its conclusion, life is good. ForLatinos and Latinas, all human action is, at bottom, a liturgical celebration.. . . Only when intersubjective human action is lived out as an end in itself,as something to be affirmed and celebrated regardless of the “outcome,”can relationships become sources of individual empowerment and humanliberation.39

In other words, human transformation requires, and takes place within,relationships that are not outcome-based, but rather are rooted in cele-bration of the other for his or her own sake.

Goizueta goes on to describe the mystical (cruciform40) “interiority”that makes possible personal communion: “This interiority – or sensitiv-ity to the a priori presence of the poor as intrinsic to the my own iden-tity – thus creates that spirit of humility without which it is impossibleto relate to the poor person as ‘other.’ ”41 Drawing upon the work of JoséVasconcelos, he connects this “spirit of humility” that inspires Christianpraxis with contemplation, although he does not use the term. He affirmsthat “if the option for the poor has a necessary, aesthetic dimension and,as Vasconcelos maintains, the highest form of aesthetic union is mysticalunion, a necessary dimension of the option for the poor implies a per-sonal, interior spiritual life.”42 Goizueta hastens to add that such spirituallife or mystical union cannot be dissociated from embodied practices,“since the spiritual is always mediated by the sacramental concrete.”43 This

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39 Roberto S. Goizueta, Caminemos con Jesús, 110-111.40 For a splendid account of cruciformity, see Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001).41 Ibid., 209.42 Ibid.43 Ibid., 210.

understanding of contemplation as an ecclesial practice, rather than anindividualistic encounter, complements his earlier emphasis upon humantransformation (charity) as occuring within nonutilitarian relationships. Itis just such a relationship that contemplation of God for his own sakebrings about, and it is within this nonidolatrous (ecclesial) relationship thattrue awareness of God’s radical love for us comes about.

Goizueta’s understanding of theological ends, in its focus upon moralpraxis, thus pushes toward a contemplative understanding without sacri-ficing what theologians such as LaCugna wish to gain. Due to his concernto ward off any hint of (ivory tower) quietism, however, Goizueta remainshesitant to envision distinctly contemplative ends. In contrast, Josef Pieperboldly affirms that “man’s ultimate happiness consists in contemplation.”44

What does it mean for human beings to desire happiness? Pieper notesthat the typical places that human beings look for happiness – pleasure,money, power, etc. – call forth profound longing for something more. Hearrives at the conclusion that happiness can consist only in embracing the“whole good” – the universal good – and that for happiness truly toengage our freedom, we must receive this “whole good” actively andfreely. He then asks, “If ‘the whole good’ alone will ultimately quenchthe thirst of our natures, and if we can obtain this whole good only byreceiving it actively; if, in short, happiness consists in action – what kindof action must that be?”45

Action that transforms us interiorly – making us “happy” – must beaction that has primarily internal effects rather than external effects. Suchaction primarily perfects the person who acts, although secondarily (andimportantly) it will have external effects. There are two kinds of actionsthat primarily perfect and transform the person who acts: knowing or theact of intellect, and loving or the act of will. Does happiness consist inknowing, loving, or a combination of both? Answering this question,Pieper directs us to Aquinas’s view of the relationship between these twopowers of the one human soul: “Happiness does consist in having every-thing that the will can possibly will. . . . It consists in our obtaining as a possession ‘the whole good.’ But – this having, possessing, obtaining, is something different from willing!” If possessing the whole good in oursoul (being perfectly “happy”) is not an act of will, it is an act of the

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44 On Pieper see Bernard Schumacher, ed., Josef Pieper: A Philosopher Bridging Traditionwith Modernity (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, forthcom-ing). The quotation is from Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation (South Bend, IN: St.Augustine’s Press, 1998): 13.45 Ibid., 55.

intellect: “Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in anact of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.”46 The wholegood is loved and possessed as known. In knowing fully, we possess theobject that we love, and delight in this possession. The Bible, Pieper pointsout, speaks about “knowing” in this same intimate way, both with regardto the union of man and woman and with regard to eternal life.47 In con-templation, which is a knowing inspired by love, human beings receiveand possess “the whole good,” happiness.48

Pieper identifies three elements that belong to the “action” that is con-templation. First, contemplation “has to do with the purely receptiveapproach to reality, one altogether independent of all practical aims inactive life.”49 This means that contemplation, rooted in radical charity, aimsat perceiving truth for its own sake rather than for the sake of a furtherend. Second, contemplation is not the process of reasoning by which wearrive at a truth. Instead, contemplation is the intellectual seeing of thetruth – resting in and enjoying the truth. Third, contemplation of truthevokes in us amazement or wonder. On first sight, it might seem thatWilliam James and Pieper are at a complete impasse: James focuses onreligious feelings and practical actions, while Pieper focuses on contem-plation of truth for its own sake. In fact, however, the impasse is illusory.The ends that James desires can only be found by following the path thatPieper describes toward amazement, wonder, and happiness. Once onerecognizes that contemplation is a rising from idolatry, away from seekinghappiness in creatures, one can see that the creaturely goals (of the will)that James wants are to be found in the contemplative embrace of Godfor the sake of God, as opposed to the practices of idolatry.

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46 Ibid., 63.47 Ibid., 70.48 Cf. Fergus Kerr, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas: Conflicting Interpretations in Recent Anglophone Literature,” in Aquinas as Authority. Kerr summarizes A. N. Williams’s per-spective: “The impetus to understand God, as Williams puts it, is part of the larger processby which God draws human beings towards himself – the gracing of nature that we maycome to glory. . . . It is not reflection on one’s own experience of God’s goodness, or theintense awareness of God’s presence or absence that motivates unitive love, Williams insists– rather, in Thomas’s view, it is meditation on God’s nature. The painstakingly technicalconsiderations of the divine nature, simplicity, goodness, transcendence, immanence etc., should be viewed as a form of meditation meant to incite the love that leads to union.. . . On this interpretation, Thomas Aquinas offers a study of the transcendental conditionsof divinization, a study which (however) is itself always already an ascetic practice: an initiation into contemplation” (183–5).49 Ibid., 73.

What does this mean for Trinitarian theology? As we will discuss inmore detail in the chapters to come, contemplation possesses two aspects:study and prayer. For Aquinas, the two are not opposed.50 Theologicalstudy arises within the ecclesial (liturgical) context that makes possible thebeliever’s rising from idolatry, and theological study aims at fostering thisongoing rising from idolatry. Thus study and prayer share the same goaland belong to the same charitable movement of imitatio Christi – a move-ment which, as ecclesial and liturgical, overflows into the active life ofteaching and preaching. As Thomas Hibbs has remarked, “The Christianpractice of contemplation is rooted in and overflows into charity.”51

How are all these aspects to find expression in a theology of God? I willargue in chapter 1 that understanding theology as wisdom provides thekey. For now, we might simply ask whether Trinitarian theology that pri-marily focuses upon the immanent processions and relations in God canbe adequate to expressing the triune God revealed as radical self-gift inhistory.

Here we might advert to the encyclical Fides et Ratio for guidance.52

The encyclical reminds us of the distinction between two tasks of

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50 On Aquinas’s view of contemplation see Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas:Spiritual Master, 1–21 on theology and spirituality; see also Simon Tugwell, O.P.’s discussionof Aquinas’s view of contemplation in “Thomas Aquinas: Introduction,” in Albert & Thomas:Selected Writings, ed. Simon Tugwell, O.P. (New York: Paulist Press, 1988): 279–86. BothTorrell and Tugwell show that the meaning of “contemplation” was somewhat fluid forAquinas.51 Thomas S. Hibbs, Virtue’s Splendor: Wisdom, Prudence, and the Human Good (New York:Fordham University Press, 2001): 224.52 Critiquing, among other things, Fides et Ratio (cf. 117), the Italian philosopher GianniVattimo in After Christianity (trans. Luca D’Isanto [New York: Columbia University Press,2002]) has contrasted “the God of metaphysics” with “the God of the Bible.” He identi-fies the God of the Bible as a God of “weakening” or “kenosis,” contingency, and his-toricity who undermines any claims to a constrictive “order of being” in favor of anhermeneutical and communal understanding of “productive interpretation” and “being asevent.” In contrast, the God of metaphysics – the product of the claim that God “exists”outside of the historical communal announcement of “salvation” – appears as an authori-tarian mask for the violent scapegoating of those who do not fit into a particular (eccle-sial) definition of “truth.” Rejecting any “truth” beyond the aesthetic, Vattimo proposesthat “[i]f there is salvation somewhere, it has the features of lightening [weakening] ratherthan justice. . . . Eternal life is nothing but the ‘perfect’ enjoyment of meanings and spiri-tual forms generated by the history of humanity, which now constitute the ‘kingdom ofimmortality’ ” (55). In response, one might remind Vattimo of the words of the prophetAmos, “Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon theircouches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the stall; who singidle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David invent for themselves instruments ofmusic; who drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not

theology: auditus fidei, or hearing and receiving the content of faith, andintellectus fidei, or understanding and articulating the content of faith.53

John Paul II explains, “With the first, theology makes its own the contentof revelation as this has been gradually expounded in Sacred Tradition,Sacred Scripture and the Church’s living Magisterium. With the second,theology seeks to respond through speculative enquiry to the specificdemands of disciplined thought.”54 Thus speculative theology does notsimply recapitulate the biblical narrative. Rather, the central aim of theintellectus fidei is to investigate the truths of faith.55 Metaphysical conceptsenable the speculative theologian to present the revealed mysteries as intel-ligible truth that fulfill humankind’s thirst for truth. For John Paul II, ifdogmatic theology is not informed by metaphysical speculation, it cannotarticulate the meaning of Scripture, because the mysteries revealed inScripture are salvific truths intended for all human beings. Scripture’smeaning cannot be conveyed solely by more stories in addition to thestories of Scripture. Rather, the narrative of Scripture requires from thetheologian the metaphysical questioning that investigates the revealed mys-teries by seeking their “ontological, causal and communicative struc-tures,”56 and thus enables the theologian to express judgments about themeaning of Scripture’s claims about God and human beings.

Numerous theologians, agreeing with Karl Rahner that the doctrine ofthe Trinity no longer matters in the lives of most Christians, have soughtto demonstrate the relevance of the doctrine. The ultimate relevance ofthe doctrine of the Trinity, however, consists in human beings’ acquiringthe practices of contemplation, which form the spiritual exercise by whichwe are drawn away from idols and united, in Christ, to the true God infriendship. It is here that scriptural and metaphysical modes of instructionmeet. Teaching the doctrine of the Trinity requires (even in Scripture) ametaphysical ascesis in order to accomplish the spiritual exercise of con-

introduction 21

grieved over the ruin of Joseph!” (Amos 6:4–6). In chapter 2 I will seek to show that meta-physical reflection preserves our understanding of the intimacy of God to man, an intimacythat is reflected in the justice God accomplishes for the oppressed.53 For further elucidation of the significance of this distinction, see Thomas Weinandy, O. F. M. Cap., “Fides et Ratio: A Response to John Webster,” New Blackfriars 81 (2000):225–35, especially 231ff.54 Fides et Ratio, no. 65.55 Ibid., no. 66. The encyclical also speaks of fundamental theology, whose responsibilityit is to show how truths arrived at by reason support the truths of faith (no. 67).56 Ibid, no. 66.

templation, in which the self-centered person becomes God-centered. Farfrom encouraging quietism or bifurcating the active and contemplative life,contemplative practices detach the person from created goods and openthe person more profoundly to the radical self-giving for the sake of theKingdom that characterizes the Christian. In knowing and loving God’sname for his sake, we rightly order our loves: “So keep my charge neverto practice any of these abominable customs which were practiced beforeyou, and never to defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God”(Leviticus 18:30). Human beings attain the goal of contemplative embracewhen, filled with charity by graced imitatio Christi, we rest in God evenin the midst of our labors in the world for God.57 The goal is resting inGod for his own sake; in attaining this goal, practical ends are wondrouslyachieved.58

22 introduction

57 This point is made by Ellen Charry, describing the work of patristic and medieval the-ologians: “I also noticed that they understood human happiness to be tied to virtuous char-acter, which in turn comes from knowing God. Becoming an excellent person is predicatedon enjoying God. For these theologians, beauty, truth, and goodness – the foundation ofhuman happiness – come from knowing and loving God and nowhere else” (By the Renewing of Your Minds, vii). See also her programmatic first chapter, “The Art of Chris-tian Excellence,” 3–32.58 See Michael Dauphinais, “Languages of Ascent: Gregory of Nyssa’s and Augustine ofHippo’s Exegeses of the Beatitudes,” Nova et Vetera (English) 1 (2003): 141–63. Dauphi-nais shows that Gregory and Augustine, understanding contemplation as impossible withoutmoral conversion, read the beatitudes as spiritual (contemplative) exercises.

Chapter One1

SACRA DOCTRINA:WISDOM, SCRIPTURE,

AND METAPHYSICS

Rahner’s critique of the Thomistic approach to the theology of the triune God – a critique voiced in similar ways by two other giants oftwentieth-century theology, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar –remains the standard way in which Aquinas’s approach is understood bycontemporary theologians.2 In an oft-cited passage, Rahner remarks:

As a result [of beginning with God’s essence] the treatise becomes quitephilosophical and abstract and refers hardly at all to salvation history. Itspeaks of the necessary metaphysical properties of God, and not very explic-itly of God as experienced in salvation history in his free relations to hiscreatures. For should one make use of salvation history, it would soonbecome apparent that one speaks always of him whom Scripture and Jesushimself calls the Father, Jesus’ Father, who sends the Son and who giveshimself to us in the Spirit, in his Spirit. On the other hand, if one startsfrom the basic Augustinian-Western conception, an a-Trinitarian treatise“on the one God” comes as a matter of course before the treatise on the

1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “Wisdom and the Viability of ThomisticTrinitarian Theology,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 593–618.2 Rahner’s seminal work was “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendeter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte,” in Die Heilsgeschichte vor Christus, Vol. 2 of Mysterium Salutis, Grundrissheilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967). It has appeared in Englishas The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1998 [1970]). The new editioncontains an introduction by Catherine Mowry LaCugna, who lauds Rahner’s work as thefoundation of contemporary Trinitarian theology. For Barth’s and Balthasar’s position, cf.Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologik, Vol. 2: Wahrheit Gottes (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,1985), especially 128f. For further discussion, see Fergus Kerr, O.P., After Aquinas: Versionsof Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 181–3.

Trinity. In this event, however, the theology of the Trinity must producethe impression that it can make only purely formal statements about thethree divine persons, with the help of concepts about the two processionsand about the relations. Even these statements, however, refer only to aTrinity which is absolutely locked within itself – one which is not, in itsreality, open to anything distinct from it; one, further, from which we areexcluded, of which we happen to know something only through a strangeparadox.3

This paragraph suggests four major concerns, some of which, one notes,have been directed against Rahner’s own transcendental method of deduc-ing theological conclusions. First, “philosophical and abstract” or “meta-physical” knowledge about God is contrasted with “God as experiencedin salvation history,” and the Thomistic approach is faulted for payinginsufficient attention to the latter. Second, Rahner argues that attentionto salvation history rules out beginning with a metaphysical inquiry (i.e.,an account of God under the rubric of what pertains to God’s unity oressence), because such a starting-point fails to appreciate that the God ofsalvation history is never abstractly “one,” but already Father, already per-sonal.4 Third, if a treatise on what pertains to God as one precedes the

24 sacra doctrina: wisdom, scripture, and metaphysics

3 Rahner, The Trinity, 17–18.4 Citing the work of Théodore de Régnon, Rahner connects this “biblical” view withthe position of the Greek Fathers, in contrast to the Latin Fathers. On this point, see MichelRené Barnes, “De Régnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies 26 (1995): 51–79 and“Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 237–50.Barnes’s work has decisively swept away de Régnon’s theory. For further insight, see MichelRené Barnes, The Power of God: DunamiV in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001); Sarah Coakley, “Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction – Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Peda-gogy of the Song,” Modern Theology 18 (2002): 431–43; Lewis Ayres, “On Not ThreePeople: The Fundamental Themes of Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology in its Polem-ical Context,” Modern Theology 18 (2002): 445–74; André Malet, “La synthèse de la per-sonne et de la nature dans la théologie trinitaire de saint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 54 (1954):483–522 and 55 (1955): 43–84; idem, Personne et amour dans la théologie trinitaire de saintThomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1956); Emile Bailleux, “Le personnalisme de saint Thomas enthéologie trinitaire,” Revue Thomiste 61 (1961): 25–42; Gilles Emery, O.P., “Essentialism or Personalism in The Treatise on God in St. Thomas Aquinas?” The Thomist 64 (2000):521–63; idem, “Trinité et unité de Dieu dans la scolastique XIIe–XIVe siècle,” in Le Chris-tianisme est-il un monothéisme?, eds Gilles Emery and Pierre Gisel (Geneva: Labor et Fides,2001): 195–220. Richard Cross has recently argued that Gregory of Nyssa and Augustinediffer as to whether the divine essence is a universal, and that this difference (repeatedbetween John of Damascus and Aquinas) limits the Latin ability to identify personal prop-erties in God (Richard Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity,” Heythrop Journal 43 [2002]:275–94), but Emery’s work demonstrates the opposite.

treatise on what pertains to God as three, then the theology of the Trinitywill be confined to making “purely formal statements about the threedivine persons,” because the earlier metaphysical treatise – rather than thedynamism of salvation history (which, it is worth noting, moves from therevelation of God in his unity to the revelation of God in his Trinity) –will guide the theological investigation.5 Fourth, the Trinity, understoodin this way, is “locked within itself,” an object of abstruse contemplationrather than a definite historical presence and actor.6

sacra doctrina: wisdom, scripture, and metaphysics 25

5 On these grounds that Rahner lodges his well-known complaint: “Christians are, intheir practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists.’ We must be willing to admit that, should thedoctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literaturecould well remain virtually unchanged” (10–11). In my view, what Rahner is (rightly) indi-cating here is the need for the treatise on God (one and three) to be read as a unifiedwhole. However, compare the comment of Yves Congar, O.P.:

Any attempt to present him [Aquinas] as an “essentialist”, that is, as being consciousof and as affirming first of all the common divine essence, and only secondarily thePersons in that essence, would be to betray the balance of his theology. Such aninterpretation should no longer be possible since the appearance of studies by A.Malet, H. F. Dondaine, E. Bailleux, M.-J. Le Guillou and others. This interpreta-tion has all too frequently been based on the fact that Thomas’ study of the Trinityof Persons in the Summa is preceded by a study of the divine essence. Surely,however, it is hardly possible not to proceed in this way from the point of view ofteaching? Is this procedure not justified by the economy of revelation itself? DidJohn Damascene not begin with the unity of ‘God’? Thomas had a very lively senseof the absolute character of God, his transcendence, his independence and his suf-ficiency. In his mystery, which is both necessary and absolute, God knows and loveshimself. He communicates his goodness with sovereign freedom in the free mysteryof creation and of the “divine missions” through which creatures, who are made “in his image”, are included in that life of knowledge and love and are in this way“deified.” (Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith [New York: Crossroad, 1997]: III, 117)

6 Rahner elaborates this point in two directions. First, he calls attention to the Thomisticdoctrine 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 loftiestreality, beatify us if intrinsically it is absolutely unrelated to us in any way?” (15). Rahnermisunderstands what Aquinas means by “relation” in this context: see Thomas Weinandy,O. F. M. Cap., Does God Change? (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985), 86–96and Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000): 130–7; Sara Grant, Toward an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian (NotreDame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002): 40ff. Second, Rahner argues that the con-templation 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 knowl-edge of something purely extrinsic, which, as such, remains isolated from all existentialknowledge about ourselves as in our present theology the treatise on the Trinity is isolated

This chapter will focus on the criticism that Aquinas’s highly meta-physical treatise on God, one and three, is insufficiently scriptural andthereby turns the living God of the Bible into the abstract “God” of thephilosophers. Specifically, I will argue that Aquinas’s treatise is engagedwith, and governed by, salvation history in a way that Rahner did notrecognize.7 To understand how Aquinas’s theology of the triune God isattuned to “God as experienced in salvation history in his free relationswith creatures,” we must revise our expectations about what kind of theology should flow from attention to salvation history. For Aquinas, atheology of God guided by salvation history must be contemplative incharacter, in order to reflect (while refining and deepening) the contem-plative stance that characterizes the definitive prophetic and apostolicappropriation of God’s self-revelation. In a world conditioned by idolatry,the words and deeds that reveal God must be appropriated sapientially, iftheir regulative function is to be adequately grasped.8

To state the matter another way, this chapter will seek to demonstratethat the crucial means for retrieving Aquinas’s theology of the triune God,especially as regards its relationship to salvation history, will be reclaiming


from other dogmatic treatises telling us something about ourselves conducive to our realsalvation?” (15). Analysis of Aquinas’s understanding of wisdom, however, will show thatthe contemplation of the Trinity is, in Aquinas’s view, a transformative exercise. Far from“the knowledge of something purely extrinsic,” contemplation of the Trinity belongs tothe appropriation of our destiny of sharing in the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Con-templation is only possible when, contra Schleiermacher, one avoids conceptual conflationof the economic (our experience of the Trinity) and the immanent (the Trinity as such).7 In pp. 34–64 of The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999), A. N. Williams has shown that the dynamism of the economy ofsalvation suffuses Aquinas’s treatment of God as one and three. Williams demonstrates thatfor Aquinas, contemplation of God-in-Himself (the “immanent” Trinity) does not resultin a God “locked within itself,” since contemplation belongs intrinsically to the gracedmovement by which we are conformed to the triune God, i.e. deified.8 Cf. Giles Hibbert, O.P., “Mystery and Metaphysics in the Trinitarian Theology of SaintThomas,” Irish Theological Quarterly 31 (1964): 187–213. Waclaw Swierzawski, in an articlethat focuses upon how Aquinas understands God as the object of the theological virtue offaith, notes that “Thomas the theologian, had his theological basis in the Bible, but alsotook his philosophical experience from the ancient philosophers and used it in his theol-ogy. God as the object of faith appears chiefly according to his biblical vision, but thisconcept in very often expressed in metaphysical language, connected with the concept ofbeing.” Swierzawski adds that “[t]he two attitudes, the purely biblical and the philosophi-cal are combined by Thomas in a unique way, and we will observe during our work arichness of that which we call ‘philosophare in fide’.” See Waclaw Swierzawski, “God andthe Mystery of His Wisdom in the Pauline Commentaries of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” DivusThomas 74 (1971): 466–500, at 466–7.

his vision of theology as contemplative wisdom patterned by the narra-tive of Scripture.9 As Otto Pesch has remarked in the context of intro-ducing a lecture on justification and grace according to Aquinas, “thewhole spirituality of Thomas Aquinas’ theology” can be described as“Wisdom is salvation.”10 With this insight in mind, the chapter willproceed in three steps. I will first explore Aquinas’s 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 Wisdomas the Son of God.11 I will argue that Aquinas’s theology of wisdom indicates the path by which his theology of the triune God integratesmetaphysical analysis while remaining governed by scriptural revelation,itself infused with metaphysical contemplation. Secondly, in light of recentanalyses of philosophical theology as pedagogy and spiritual exercise, I willsuggest that Aquinas’s theology of the triune God must be read as an exer-cise of contemplative ascent, in which Aquinas employs metaphysicalinvestigation as a spiritual exercise in aid of the believer’s participation inGod’s own knowledge. Third, I will conclude by proposing that Aquinas’sview of St. John the Evangelist as the contemplative of Wisdom Incarnateis particularly instructive with regard to the relationship of Scripture andmetaphysics in Aquinas’s theology of the triune God. By showing thatrevelation cannot be separated from the inspired authors’ contemplativepractices, Aquinas’s interpretation of St. John radically challenges thedichotomy between Scripture and metaphysics.12


9 Rowan Williams has undertaken a somewhat similar project with regard to Augus-tine’s De Trinitate. See his “Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on the De Trinitate,” inCollectanea Augustiniana, Vol. 1, ed. B. Bruning (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990):317–32. I am also indebted to the valuable treatment of Aquinas’s use of metaphysics in The Three-Personed God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation, William J. Hill, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982): 62–9.10 Otto Pesch, “Christian Existence According to Thomas Aquinas,” Etienne GilsonLecture 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 berelated, ‘attracted’ by the Giver of that truth in love” (3).11 For a thorough discussion of this topic, see Kieran Conley, O. S. B., A Theology ofWisdom: A Study in St. Thomas (Dubuque, Iowa: The Priory Press, 1963); see also theinteresting study of L. Boadt, “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Biblical Wisdom Tradition,”The Thomist 49 (1985): 575–611.12 Aristotle recognized that “it is because of wondering that men began to philosophizeand 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 ofwonders), so if indeed they philosophized in order to avoid ignorance, it is evident that

1 Wisdom

Commentators on Aquinas’s treatise on God generally detach it from theprevious question, which is (not incorrectly) viewed as a “methodologi-cal prolegomenon”13 to the entire Summa. The problem with this approachis that it risks overlooking a key resource for recognizing the treatise onGod as an exercise of theological wisdom. In 1, q.1, a.6, Aquinas askswhether sacra doctrina is the same as wisdom. Answering in the affirma-tive, he points out, “This doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom;not merely in one order, but absolutely. . . . [S]acred doctrine essentiallytreats of God viewed as the highest cause – not only so far as He can beknown through creatures just as the philosophers knew Him – That whichis known of God is manifest in them (Romans 1.19) – but also so far as Heis known to Himself alone and revealed to others.”14 Sacra doctrina is notjust a new way of looking at things, but is God’s own knowledge asrevealed to us in Christ Jesus (the creaturely mode of our knowledge ofGod is not overturned by revelation).15 As such, sacra doctrina constitutesthe perfect wisdom. Yet, how do believers, and specifically how do the-ologians, participate in and teach this Wisdom which is God himself,


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 PeripateticPress, 1979]); cf. Denise Schaeffer, “Wisdom and Wonder in Metaphysics A: 1–2,” TheReview of Metaphysics 52 (1999): 641–56. As Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, “the greatestChristian thinkers (including Origen, Augustine, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas) consistentlyunderstand the intellectus fidei as including this interior completion of the philosophical actin theology . . .” (H. U. von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 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 believerwho encounters God in Christ experiences, the theological vision makes it possible for thefirst time for the philosophical act of encounter with Being to occur in all its depth” (146).13 A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union, 39.14 1, q.1, a.6. For emphasis on sacra doctrina as wisdom, see Mark F. Johnson, “The Sapiential Character of the First Article of the Summa theologiae,” in Philosophy and the Godof Abraham, ed. R. James Long (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1991):85–98.15 See Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Le traité de la prophétie de S. Thomas d’Aquin et lathéologie de la révélation,” in La doctrine de la révélation divine de saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed.Leo J. Elders (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990): 171–95; Paul Synave, O.P.and Pierre Benoit, O.P., Prophecy and Inspiration: A Commentary on the Summa Theologica II-II, Questions 171–178, trans. Avery Dulles, S.J. and Thomas Sheridan, S.J. (New York:Desclée, 1961); Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ: AnIntroduction to the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre DamePress, 2002): 11.

incarnate in Christ? To begin to answer this question, we will examineAquinas’s teaching on wisdom.

Aquinas has a specific intellectual virtue in mind when he speaks ofwisdom.16 Adopting the position taken by Aristotle in his Physics andMetaphysics, Aquinas states that wisdom is knowledge of what is mostknowable in itself, but least knowable to our intellects, which know onlythrough sense perception.17 Spiritual realities are most knowable in them-selves. Due to our intellects’ dependence upon sensibles, spiritual realitiesare least knowable to us. As Aquinas shows in 1, qq.2–3, the ultimate spir-itual reality is the first cause, which is pure act (and therefore transcendsevery genus). The intellectual virtue of wisdom, therefore, is the virtue ofordering all things in accord with knowledge of God as first cause, as wellas with knowledge of the first causes in every particular genus. Byknowing the first causes, the wise person “rightly judges all things andsets them in order, because there can be no perfect and universal judg-ment that is not based on the first causes.”18 On the basis of this knowl-edge of the principles of all things, the wise person is able to judge all theconclusions of the particular sciences or fields of knowledge. Insofar aswisdom demonstrates conclusions from principles, wisdom is a science;however, since wisdom judges all particular sciences by knowing theirprinciples, wisdom is more than a mere science.19

A second aspect relevant to the account in 1, q.1, a.6 of sacra doctrinaas wisdom is Aquinas’s presentation of “wisdom” as one of the seven giftsof the Holy Spirit to the believer. The gifts of the Holy Spirit enable theperson who possesses faith formed by charity to respond to the specialprompting of the Holy Spirit. As Servais Pinckaers has noted, “In the col-laboration between grace and us, the virtues represent the active side ofour participation; but their action needs to be completed by the giftswhich dispose us to welcome the motions of the Spirit and constitute thepassive or receptive side of the spiritual life; they render us docile tograce.”20 The virtues, both natural and supernatural, engage our natural


16 On the intellectual virtues, see Thomas Hibbs’s instructive Virtue’s Splendor: Wisdom,Prudence, and the Human Good (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001).17 1–2, q.57, a.2.18 1–2, q.57, a.2.19 1–2, q.57, a.2, ad 1.20 Servais-Théodore Pinckaers, O.P., La vie selon l’Esprit: Essai de théologie spirituelle selonsaint Paul et saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Cerf, 1996): 206. See also Pinckaers, The Sourcesof Christian Ethics, 3rd ed., trans. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995): 151–7; Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian

human resources, because they operate according to a human mode (theactive side). The gifts operate according to a divine mode (the receptiveside). They perfect the virtues by enabling our acts to transcend naturalhuman resources. The gifts of the Holy Spirit conform the believer toChrist by connaturalizing the believer to God’s ways.21

What is the relationship of wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit to theintellectual virtue of wisdom? The intellectual virtue of wisdom is limitedto what human intelligence can acquire by its natural endowments. Suchwisdom judges all things in light of first causes, as they can be known bynatural human intelligence. In contrast, wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spiritis attached to the virtue of charity, and is able to judge all things instinc-tively on the basis of first Truth known by the assent of faith.22 Aquinasremarks that “wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intel-lectual virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of unionof the soul with Him.”23 Faith gives knowledge of God beyond merenatural human knowledge, because faith is a supernatural participation inGod’s own knowledge. Referring to this infinitely deeper knowledge,Aquinas cites the text from 1 Corinthians 2:10, “the Spirit searches allthings, even the deep things of God.”24 The gift of wisdom is an order-ing of all things on the basis of this deeper knowledge.

Aquinas offers a further explanation of how the intellectual virtue ofwisdom differs from the gift of wisdom. He notes that the intellectualvirtue of wisdom is the perfect use of natural reason, by which one ordersor judges all things rightly, in accord with reason’s natural participation inGod’s eternal law. The gift of wisdom, however, means connaturality withGod’s eternal law, so that reason no longer needs to make its inquiry. Itis for this reason that Aquinas associates the gift of wisdom with the virtueof charity, which perfects and elevates the will, rather than with the virtueof faith. Charity, Aquinas points out, causes “sympathy or connaturalityfor Divine things.”25 While caused by charity, therefore, the gift of wisdom


Faith & the Theological Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,1996): 164–5; idem, The Virtues, or the Examined Life (New York: Continuum, 2002):13–18.21 On connatural knowing according to Aquinas, see also A. Moreno, O.P., “The Natureof St. Thomas’ Knowledge ‘Per Connaturalitem’,” Angelicum 47 (1970): 44–62; cf. Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, 93.22 2–2, q.45, a.1, ad 2.23 2–2, q.45, a.3, ad 1.24 2–2, q.45, a.1.25 2–2, q.45, a.2.

is a perfection of the intellect, because the gift of wisdom enables thebeliever to order all things rightly in relation to God known in faith.26 Inshort, the gift of wisdom explains why Christians do not need to bephilosophers in order to be contemplatives. Christians, who know firstTruth in faith, are connaturalized to that knowledge by charity throughthe gift of wisdom. The ordering accomplished by wisdom as a gift (asopposed to wisdom as an intellectual virtue) is not only contemplative,but also practical, because the gift of the Holy Spirit, in contrast to theintellectual virtue, directs all aspects of the person.27

In discussing sacra doctrina as wisdom, Aquinas makes reference to boththe intellectual virtue and the gift of the Holy Spirit. He first distinguishessacra doctrina as wisdom from the intellectual virtue of wisdom. It mightseem that sacra doctrina, which is knowledge (scientia) of the things thathave been divinely revealed (God and all things insofar as they are referredto God as their beginning and end),28 merely complements and extendsthe ordering achieved by the intellectual virtue of wisdom. On this view,sacra doctrina would be limited to adding knowledge inaccessible to naturalreason, such as the teaching of the Trinity or of supernatural beatitude ashumankind’s ultimate end. In fact, sacra doctrina both adds this supernat-ural knowledge and reorders all that can be known naturally in light ofthe triune God as our beginning and supernatural end.29 This sacred teach-ing is presented in sacra scriptura, which belongs to the structure of “faith’sencounter with God revealing.”30 For this reason, Aquinas at times uses“sacra scriptura” interchangeably with “sacra doctrina.”31 Cornelius Ernstcomments that theology is “the rational exploration and declaration of the unified self-disclosure of God in himself and in the world, mediatedby Scripture (cf. [prima pars] art.8). There are then three modes of


26 Ibid.27 2–2, q.45, a.3.28 1, q.1, a.3. For an introduction to the development of Thomas’s thought on sacra doc-trina, as well as to the vast Thomistic literature on this topic from the generation afterThomas to the present, see especially Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Le savoir théologique chezsaint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 355–96 and “Le savoir théologique chez les pre-miers thomistes,” Revue Thomiste 97 (1997): 9–30.29 Brian J. Shanley, O.P., “Sacra Doctrina and the Theology of Disclosure,” The Thomist61 (1997): 163–87.30 Jean-Pierre Torrell approvingly cites Max Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte (Munich:Kösel Verlag, 1964), to the same effect. See Torrell, “Le savoir théologique chez saintThomas d’Aquin,” 361.31 Cf. 1, q.1, a.8. James A. Weisheipl, O.P. has outlined the relationship between sacra doctrina and sacra scriptura in “The Meaning of Sacra Doctrina in Summa Theologiae I, q.1,”The Thomist 38 (1974): 49–80. In response to Weisheipl, Thomas C. O’Brien has empha-

determining the basis of theology: the infallible truth of God himself,Veritas Prima; the articuli fidei; and the canonical Scriptures; these three aremodes of a single revelation.”32 God teaches true doctrine (about himselfand all things in relation to him) in these modes; since the revelation isone, sacra scriptura can be called sacra doctrina.

Aquinas’s account of revelation possesses a rich amplitude.33 Here wecan only note Christ’s preeminent role, as incarnate Wisdom, in teachingthe sacra doctrina.34 He shares this teaching office with his apostolicallyordered mystical Body, the Church. Insofar as they share in the Church’steaching office, theologians participate in the activity of sacra doctrina.35 Intheological reflection, then, metaphysical knowledge gained by the intel-lectual virtue of wisdom is taken up into the sacra doctrina and illuminedwithin it. Cornelius Ernst has shown that for Aquinas, following Pseudo-Dionysius, “even that activity of reason which might seem in a philo-sophical context to be purely natural is to be understood in the contextof sacra doctrina as operating within revelation, guided by the truth of sacredScripture, that light which derives like a ray from first truth.”36 This unityof sacra doctrina ensures that metaphysical and scriptural modes of divinenaming are profoundly integrated by Aquinas.37 Ernst goes on to explain,“It is the Apostolic logia, whether by way of Scripture or also of liturgi-cal tradition, which are held to confer symbolic and revelatory power


sized (following the work of G. F. van Ackeren) the nature of sacra doctrina as a humanteaching consequent upon revelation. See O’Brien, “‘Sacra Doctrina’ Revisited: TheContext of Medieval Education,” The Thomist 41 (1977): 475–509.32 Cornelius Ernst, O.P., “Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina” The Thomist 38(1974): 404. God is the object of sacred doctrine: 1, q.1, a.7.33 See the chapter on revelation in Discovering Aquinas, Aidan Nichols, O.P. (London:Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002): 21–36; see also Victor White, O.P., “St. Thomas’sConception of Revelation,” Dominican Studies 1 (1948): 3–34.34 For further discussion, see my Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation accordingto Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 31–50.35 For discussion of the doctrine taught and the activity of teaching, showing that Aquinas’saccount of revelation is in accord with Dei Verbum (as opposed to the view that revelation issimply a set of propositions), see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Thomas d’Aquin, maître spirituel (Paris:Cerf, 1996), 2. For discussion of the ecclesial vocation of the theologian, see Joseph CardinalKatzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: IgnatiusPress, 1995); J. A. DiNoia, O.P., “Authority, Public Dissent and the Nature of TheologicalThinking,” The Thomist 52 (1988): 185–207; idem, “Communion and Magisterium: Teach-ing Authority and the Culture of Grace,” Modern Theology 9 (1993): 403–18; Avery CardinalDulles, S.J., “Criteria of Catholic Theology,” Communio 22 (1995): 303–15.36 Ibid., 407.37 Cf. Mark F. Johnson, “God’s Knowledge in Our Frail Mind: The Thomistic Model ofTheology,” Angelicum 76 (1999): 25–45.

upon the sensible world. The world which is offered to our senses is madetransparent by the light of verbal revelation.”38

Sacra doctrina remains wisdom according to a human mode: the transmis-sion of sacra doctrina requires for its task of ordering the normal methods ofthe human mind. Aquinas points out that sacra doctrina “is acquired by study, though its principles are obtained by revelation.”39 Thus sacra doctrina as wisdom is not the same as the wisdom that is the gift of the HolySpirit, nor is this latter wisdom a substitute for sacra doctrina. Certainlywisdom as the gift of the Holy Spirit is intrinsically related to the wisdom ofsacra doctrina. Yet because study is necessary for sacra doctrina, the wisdomattained by natural reason (the intellectual virtue of wisdom) remains neces-sary even for the theologian possessing the gift of the Holy Spirit. In theinterplay of nature and grace, the truths known by metaphysical reasoningare not displaced by the infusion of revealed knowledge.40 Yet, the architec-tonic principle is not God known by natural reason, but God’s own knowl-edge, to use Mark Johnson’s phrase, “in our frail minds.” As the RomanianOrthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae describes the interplay, “Supernat-ural revelation unfolds and brings forth its fruit within the framework ofnatural revelation, like a kind of casting of the work of God into bolderrelief, a guiding of the physical and historical world toward that goal forwhich it was created in accordance with a plan laid down from all ages.”41

Aquinas conceives of creaturely intellect as a created, finite participa-tion in the divine intellect or the divine Wisdom.42 In the human personas created, there already exists an analogy between human knowing –despite its profound weakness – and divine Wisdom.43 This analogy con-stitutes a capacity for the new embodiment of supernatural wisdom byGod’s revelation that characterizes the graced human being. This “newcreation” of the human being is not a human achievement but the fruit


38 Ernst, “Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina,” 407.39 1, q.1, a.6, 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.40 It will be the task of the remainder of the book to illumine concretely (and therebydefend) the interplay between nature and grace that one finds in the relationship of Scrip-ture and metaphysics in Aquinas’s theology of the triune God. The final section of thischapter will seek to demonstrate that metaphysics is not extrinsic to Scripture, insofar asthe inspired authors of Scripture contemplated the mystery of God.41 Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God, trans. and ed. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994): 1.42 See, e.g., 1, q.54, a.1 (with regard to angelic intellect); 1, q.79, a.4 (with regard to thehuman intellect).43 Cf. Hibbert, “Mystery and Metaphysics in the Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas,”193–4; Ernst, “Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina,” 418–23.

of the Incarnation. In the first chapter of the Summa Contra Gentiles,Aquinas explains that “divine Wisdom testifies that He has assumed fleshand come into the world in order to make the truth known: ‘For this Iwas born, and for this came I into the world, that I should give testimonyto the truth’ (John 18:37).”44 Above all, sacra doctrina is this supernatural“truth” to which Christ “gives testimony.” In contrast to the modern focus upon the structure of our knowing, Aquinas explores sacra doctrinawith a focus upon its content, God’s own knowledge. Yet, as we haveseen, Aquinas recognizes that sacra doctrina involves human knowing(created participation in divine Wisdom) that has been supernaturally ele-vated to participate far more deeply in divine Wisdom by the grace ofthe Holy Spirit, without ceasing to be profoundly limited human knowing(acquired by study). As Giles Hibbert puts it, “It is by the practice of thisart – the true art of Christian thinking, which is far more than a meretechnique – that the theologian can say something relevant to man’s rela-tionship to God which is no way attempts to destroy the Mystery, butlaunches the human spirit towards it.”45 Given this pattern of redemptionaccomplished by the missions of Wisdom Incarnate and the Holy Spirit,it should come as no surprise that the structure of Aquinas’s Trinitariantheology is best understood within the context of his analogous use of“wisdom.”46

2 Theologizing as a Wisdom-Exercise47

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


44 Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1: God, trans. Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame: Universityof Notre Dame Press, 1975 [1955]): 60 (chapter 1). For discussion of Aquinas’s Wisdom-Christology, see Joseph Wawrykow, “Wisdom in the Christology of Thomas Aquinas,” inChrist Among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph P. Wawrykow (NotreDame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999): 175–96.45 Hibbert, “Mystery and Metaphysics in the Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas,” 194.46 On the importance of Aquinas’s account of the Trinitarian missions for responding tothe criticisms posed against Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology by Karl Rahner, CatherineLaCugna, and Michel Corbin (in La Trinité ou l’Excès de Dieu [Paris: Cerf, 1997]), seeHerwi Rikhof, “Trinity in Thomas: Reading the Summa Theologiae against the back-ground of modern problems,” Jaarboek 1999 of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, pp. 83–100.For a similar critique of the positions of these three authors, see Rikhof ’s “Aquinas’ Author-ity in the Contemporary Theology of the Trinity,” in Aquinas as Authority, ed. Paul vanGeest, Harm Goris, and Carlo Leget (Leuven: Peeters, 2002): 213–34.47 Torrell’s Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master discusses Aquinas’s treatise on God withan emphasis, evidently in response to Heideggerian critiques of “onto-theology,” on how

three) speaks “of the necessary metaphysical properties of God, and notvery explicitly of God as experienced in salvation history in his free rela-tions to his creatures” and makes “only formal statements about the threedivine persons, with the help of concepts about the two processions andabout the relations.”48 As noted above, Rahner seems to be suggesting thatAquinas’s use of metaphysics compromises Aquinas’s ability to speak aboutGod as experienced in salvation history. For Aquinas, however, the pres-ence of metaphysical language (the practice of the intellectual virtue ofwisdom) is not a sign that something has gone wrong with sacra doctrina.On the contrary, salvation history describes humankind’s – at first specif-ically Israel’s – increasingly profound engagement with divine Wisdom, anengagement that includes, at least inchoately, the metaphysical contem-plation of wise human beings.


Aquinas brings out God’s transcendence through negative theology: “Although Thomasshares neither the equivocity nor the extreme apophaticism of Maimonides, this ascendancedeserves to be remarked because it can only confirm him in his option for negative theology” (58, my translation). Aquinas recognizes the profound limitations of humanknowing, but whether this is an “option for negative theology” is debatable. Denys Turnerhas remarked

Like Bonaventure, Thomas was deeply suspicious of over-zealous negativities, of theological negations unsecured in the affirmation of human, carnal, worldly experience. Moreover, like Bonaventure, Thomas was happy to anchor the negative,apophatic “moment” of his theology in just the same secure bedrock in which isanchored the affirmative, incarnational moment: for both, what we must say aboutGod and the fact that all that we say about God fails of God derive with equal forcefrom the same necessities of thought, and converge in equal measures, in a sort of“two-sidedness” of theological speech. . . . Nonetheless, in this Bonaventure andThomas also differ: for whereas for Bonaventure, this two-sidedness of theologicalspeech is rooted primordially in the unity of the two natures of Christ, and achievedconcretely in the paradox of the passion and death of Jesus, for Thomas, the mostprimitive access of the human mind to this duality of affirmative and negative the-ologies is already given to us, in some inchoate sort, in our very created, rationalpower to know and experience our world. That world, which God shows to us, atthe same time shows God to be beyond our comprehension. (Turner, “Apophati-cism, idolatry and the claims of reason,” in Silence and the Word: Negative Theologyand Incarnation, eds Oliver Davies and Denys Turner [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002]: 23).

On this aspect of Torrell’s discussion, see Lawrence Dewan, O.P.’s insightful critique, “Torrellon Aquinas,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 623–31, at 624–8. See also Timothy L. Smith’s analy-sis of Aquinas’s debt to, and difference from, Pseudo-Dionysius on divine naming: ThomasAquinas’ Trinitarian Theology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,2003): 204–30.48 Rahner, The Trinity, 18.

It may be, however, that Rahner’s real concern is the theocentricity ofAquinas’s metaphysical language. As Thomas O’Meara has put it, Rahnersought to produce “a modern systematic theology, modern in the senseof proceeding from a subject analyzed transcendentally, existentially, andhistorically.”49 For O’Meara, Aquinas’s “thinking is largely theocentric, andfrom the eighteenth century on, human subjectivity, freedom, and scienceare the points of departure for human reflection and exploration.”50 Is theanswer, as O’Meara suggests, to transpose Aquinas’s treatise from the Aris-totelian metaphysical categories to the metaphysical categories of modernphilosophy? Before adopting such an answer we should revisit the conceptof wisdom from a different perspective. As Aquinas states in the prologueto the Summa Theologiae, his theological ordering is intended to serve “theinstruction of beginners.” The question, then, is how does a proper ordodisciplinae turn beginners into masters of theological wisdom? I will arguethat the experience of God in salvation history involves above all the contemplative discernment that reality is radically theocentric. Even appar-ently anthropocentric analogies take their bearings from contemplating the real in terms not of human subjectivity or historicity, but of divinecausality. Theocentric metaphysics belongs to the pedagogical intention of theological wisdom: Aquinas’s treatise on the triune God is intended toform the reader into a particular kind of knower, by guiding the readerthrough intellectual exercises that enable the reader to experience, throughcontemplation, the God of salvation history.

The best discussions of this pedagogical intention – which runsthroughout Aquinas’s corpus – concern the Summa Contra Gentiles.51

Although the Summa Theologiae adopts a very different structure from theSumma Contra Gentiles,52 in both works Aquinas deploys metaphysical(theocentric) analysis to raise or convert the mind to the self-revealing Godwho is triune spiritual substance and uncaused cause of all things. AsThomas Hibbs states, “The text [of the Summa Contra Gentiles] presup-


49 Thomas F. O’Meara, O.P., Thomas Aquinas Theologian (Notre Dame: University of NotreDame Press, 1997): 190–1.50 Ibid., 246; cf. 248.51 For an introduction to the debate, see Rudi A. te Velde, “Natural Reason in the Summacontra Gentiles,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994): 42–70. The standard work on theSumma Contra Gentiles is R.-A. Gauthier, Introduction to Somme Contre les Gentils, CollectionPhilosophie Européenne dirigée par Henri Hude (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1993).52 On this point (as regards Trinitarian theology), see Gilles Emery, O.P., “Le traité desaint Thomas sur la Trinité dans la Somme contre les Gentils,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 5–40,included (in English translation) as chapter 3 of his Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003).

poses some measure of intellectual virtue in its readers and provides ampleopportunity for further exercise of those virtues.”53 Aquinas must persuadereaders to allow their conceptions of God to be transformed in light ofthe kind of intellectual probing that can dispel intellectual idolatry. More-over, Aquinas’s arguments require readers to become learners in his schoolof intellectual virtue, through which he seeks (in Hibbs’ words) “to incul-cate intellectual virtue and uproot the sources of intellectual vice.”54

Readers who wish to know God solely through revelation must be per-suaded to recognize that the Christian God, while not the god of thephilosophers, cannot be known apart from philosophical practices andinquiries, whose complexity must increase when the believer moves from simple faith to the pursuit of the wisdom of sacra doctrina, faithseeking understanding.55 By integrating dialectical inquiry with key passages from the revealed “narrative” of sacra scriptura, Aquinas promptsthe reader (Christian or non-Christian) to enter into the fullness ofwisdom. The reader is invited to join in the dialectical inquiry, and to seehow the dialectical inquiry, as properly philosophical, both enriches andis enriched (fulfilled and transformed) by the Christian “narrative.”Aquinas desires to teach revealed wisdom in a way that forms in the readerthe ability to engage truth at the highest intellectual level, that is, theability to participate more and more deeply in the dynamic presence,through faith and the gift of the Holy Spirit, of God’s own knowledge inour frail minds.

The value of theological wisdom thus lies in its practice of theocen-tric contemplative ascent, which deepens the participation in God’sknowledge that the believer already has in faith, and which is perfectedin the beatific vision.56 By practicing theological wisdom, the believer


53 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 insightinto Hibbs’s approach to the Summa Contra Gentiles, see Hibbs, “Kretzmann’s Theism vs.Aquinas’s Theism: Interpreting the Summa Contra Gentiles,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 603–22.Hibbs is indebted to Mark D. Jordan, “The Protreptic Structure of the ‘Summa Contra Gentiles’,” The Thomist 50 (1986): 173–209.54 Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas, 23.55 As evidence for the necessity of philosophical practices, recall the Egyptian monks ofAnthony’s time who were shocked to hear that God does not have an arm or a hand, con-trary to the letter of Scripture.56 Mark Jordan notes a similarity with Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed: just as theGuide ends with the implications of Torah for human life, so likewise each of the fourbooks of the Summa Contra Gentiles ends with discussions of the human good (ultimately,sharing in God’s beatitude). A similar exitus-reditus pattern is found in the Summa Theolo-

is enabled to anticipate, and to live in accord with, the ultimate end ofdeification that marks the transition from grace to glory. Aquinas’s use ofthe metaphysical concept of relation within his Trinitarian reflection, GilesHibbert remarks,

enables us and assists us to genuinely start an ascent to God from the worldin which we live and have our being and in which we meet and see God’srevelation, and from there provides us with a ladder placed as it were inthe right position, up which if we climb (this we can only be invited todo) we will be lead with greater richness and surety into the presence ofGod – a presence which, however, in this life never ceases to be the“clouded” presence of faith, not that of vision.57

This account of theological wisdom as an ascent resonates with PierreHadot’s discussion of philosophy as spiritual exercise. Hadot has demon-strated that “the Socratic dialogue turns out to be a kind of communalspiritual exercise.”58 The spiritual exercise is not, Hadot makes clear,reducible to a moral exercise. Rather, for Plato at least, “every dialecticalexercise, precisely because it is an exercise of pure thought, subject to thedemands of the Logos, turns the soul away from the sensible world, andallows it to convert itself towards the Good. It is the spirit’s itinerarytowards the divine.”59 In this view, philosophy itself is the practice ofturning away from the temporal towards the eternal. As a practice, phi-losophy involves meditating on higher things in order to encourage oneselfto persevere. By practicing philosophy, one becomes adept at living philosophically.

Although Aquinas’s treatise on God is not intended as a Stoic aid inperseverance, his treatise can be seen as a spiritual exercise. The treatise,written for a community of learners, is intended as a formative contem-plative guide into the reality of God, as self-relating and as cause of all


giae. On the basis of this pattern, Jordan states, “The structure of the Contra Gentiles, as ofthe Guide, is not so much a descending deduction as an ascending exhortation. . . . Thehighest purpose of the work is not apodictic but epideictic, not demonstrative but horta-tory. In short, it is a protreptic to the contemplation of God; it is an ascent to God throughthe world and law which culminates the ‘practice,’ that is, the possession of the wisdom ofa vision” (Jordan, “The Protreptic Structure of the Summa Contra Gentiles,” 199).57 Hibbert, “Mystery and Metaphysics in the Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas,” 206.58 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995): 90.59 Ibid., 93.

things, and thus (theocentrically) into “God as experienced in salvationhistory” as the wise and loving God who freely creates and redeems. Byexcluding errors about the triune God, Aquinas’s treatise, in Hibbert’swords:

enables one or even positively causes one to “point” as it were at Godrather than away from him. And in the movement that then “follows” –the ascent of the mind (and heart) to God – what is being done is a matterof personal commitment, achieved in a reflexive spiritual act, which pre-cisely synthesizes the via negativa and the via affirmativa into one authenticmovement, having true spiritual value.60

Metaphysics as a spiritual exercise is, it should be clear, requisite forthe sacred teaching, sacra doctrina, that is sacra scriptura. Scriptural and meta-physical modes of reflection are not opposed in salvation history.61

3 Isaiah and St. John the Evangelist as Contemplatives

Indeed, Aquinas considers the Gospel of St. John to be the model of thecontemplative ascent to knowledge of the triune God. Jean-Pierre Torrellhas praised the Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John as “certainly amongthe most finished and most profound of the commentaries that Thomasleft.”62 In his prologue to this commentary, Aquinas indicates that he willread the Gospel of John in light of Isaiah 6:1, “I saw the Lord seated ona high and lofty throne, and the whole house was full of his majesty, andthe things that were under him filled the Temple.”63 Aquinas explains that


60 Hibbert, “Mystery and Metaphysics in the Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas,” 208.61 Cf. Francis Martin’s “Sacra Doctrina and the Authority of Its Sacra Scriptura Accordingto St. Thomas Aquinas,” Pro Ecclesia 10 (2001): 89ff.62 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans. RobertRoyal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996): 339. The textof the commentary is a reportatio done by Reginald of Piperno.63 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 Charac-ter and Implications,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 48 (1986): 681–98. See also R. Guindon, “Lathéologie de saint Thomas d’Aquin dans le rayonnement du ‘Prologue’ de saint John,” Revuede l’Université d’Ottawa 29 (1959): 5–23 and 121–42. For the relationship of Aquinas’s Com-mentary on John to the Trinitarian theology of the Summa Theologiae, see Gilles Emery’s “Biblical Exegesis and the Speculative Doctrine of the Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on St. John,” chapter 7 of Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press,2003). For further background on medieval exegesis and speculative theology one might see,

this passage from Isaiah’s mystical vision illuminates the manner of St.John’s contemplation of the Lord Jesus. By beginning with Isaiah’s mysti-cal vision, Aquinas makes clear (following Augustine) that the Gospel ofJohn is above all the fruit of an inspired contemplative.

For Aquinas, the author’s contemplation of Jesus is the central mark ofthe Gospel. Hans Urs von Balthasar has similarly remarked that “thephilosophianic or contemplative attitude of faith . . . has its beginnings inthe Bible, where it emerges in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testa-ment and, in the New Testament, is realized especially in Paul and John:God’s Word is itself shot through with human contemplation, which con-tains within itself the truly philosophical act.”64 Modern readers, familiaronly with the production of books in the academy, tend to overlook thecontemplative dimension that is manifest in many of the writings of Scrip-ture. In contrast, as the biblical exegete Ben Witherington notes, theFourth Gospel is “the story of Jesus Christ as sifted, ruminated on, andinterpreted by the Beloved Disciple. . . . [T]he Beloved Disciple did med-itate on, and preach and teach, the Jesus traditions for a long period oftime, at some point casting the material into his own style and idiom,likely before writing it down.”65 The production of John’s Gospel cannotbe understood without grasping the influence of its author’s contempla-tion and preaching. John was not a mere reporter. Rather, as he knewfull well, his Gospel abounds in claims that inspire questioning that is(whether or not it is recognized to be) metaphysical. Outside the Pro-logue, one needs only to recall such statements as: “If God were yourFather, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from theFather” (8:42); “before Abraham was, I am” (8:58); “I and the Father areone” (10:30), “the Father is in me and I am in the Father” (10:38); “Hewho has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9); “the Father is greater thanI” (14:28). All of these statements, John makes clear, were met with


e.g., Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, “Medieval Biblical Commentary and Philosophical Inquiry asExemplified in the Thought of Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Moses Mai-monides and His Time, ed. Eric L. Ormsby (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of AmericaPress, 1989): 101–20; Leo J. Elders, S. V. D., “Aquinas on Holy Scripture as the Medium ofDivine Revelation,” in La doctrine de la revelation divine de saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. Leo J.Elders (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990): 132–52; and Eileen C. Sweeney,“Rewriting the Narrative of Scripture: 12th Century Debates over Reason and TheologicalForm,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 3 (1993): 1–34.64 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. 1: Seeing theForm, 146.65 Ben Witherington, III, John’s Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth Gospel (Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995): 4, 6.

incomprehension and even charges of blasphemy. Both Jesus’ audience,and John, understood that what was at stake was a radical and (meta-physically) dangerous shift in divine naming.

As Aquinas knew, furthermore, the author of the Gospel also believedthat the prophet Isaiah had, in some sense, seen the incarnate Word:“Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him” (12:41). Marianne Meye Thompson has drawn attention to the connection ofJohn’s Gospel with Isaiah’s prophecy as regards divine naming:

The most likely candidates for interpreting the “I am” sayings [of Jesus inJohn’s Gospel] are generally assumed to be either the divine pronounce-ments of Isaiah or the revelation to Moses of the divine name. Thus thetranslations of these passages, and the traditions that sprang up around theirinterpretation, are of particular interest. We note, first, that the LXX trans-lation of Exodus 3:14 reads ‘I am the One who is’ (e jgwv eijmi oJ w[n). Thisunderstanding of God’s self-revelation has an analog in the divine declara-tions of Isaiah 40–66, where “I am Yahweh” (. . .) is regularly translated “am” (ejgwv eimi), suggesting a revelation of God as the one who simply is.66

The author of the Fourth Gospel would have been familiar with these(Greek) texts of Isaiah. It is no imposition upon the text of Isaiah tosuggest that the prophet had metaphysical concerns, once one recognizesthat “metaphysics” is intellectual judgment about ultimate questionsregarding the nature of God and creatures. As Joseph Blenkinsopp states,“By its nature prophecy raises the issue of the reality and power of thedeity who validates the prophet’s message.”67 Blenkinsopp admittedlydenies that (deutero-) Isaiah possessed metaphysical intelligence. Arguingthat (deutero-) Isaiah’s writings reflect a need to counter the rising influ-ence of the Babylonian cult, Blenkinsopp notes that for this reason “thegod of Israel was increasingly represented as a cosmic deity residing in thecircle of the heavens and presiding over the destinies of all nations.”68

Despite this dim view of (deutero-) Isaiah’s capacities, however, Blenkin-sopp’s interpretation of chapter six of (proto-) Isaiah is surprisingly closeto Aquinas’s:


66 Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001): 89.67 Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,1983): 212.68 Ibid., 212–13. Other exegetes such as John N. Oswalt dispute the division of Isaiahinto “deutero” and “trito” on the grounds that the division hinges upon the denial thatreal prophecy, in the sense of foretelling future realities, occurred.

In the last analysis, what is most characteristic of Isaiah is his overwhelm-ing sense of the reality of God. The attribution of holiness to God (theHoly One of Israel, the Holy God) implies not so much ethical characteras absolute otherness. The reaction of Isaiah in the vision in which hereceived his commission illustrates the fact that sin is understood not somuch in the act of ethical reflection as rather when the reality of that Otherbreaks through into consciousness – “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I ama man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”(Isaiah 6:5). The activity of God follows from this intuition of his being,and so Isaiah is able to communicate with remarkable immediacy the senseof divine power acting on the world and the reality of judgment.69

Isaiah’s prophecy connects God’s unity, transcendence, and immanence ina way that, while certainly not Aristotelian in style, exhibits metaphysicalpower of mind.

In light of the metaphysical and theological statements of both Isaiahand the Gospel of John, Aquinas holds that such statements could havebeen expressed only by one who has interiorly questioned and probed theissues at stake in divine naming, that is, only by one who intellectuallycontemplates God beyond idolatry.70 Using one contemplative (Isaiah) toexplore the work of another, therefore, Aquinas seeks to evoke the con-templation that undergirds John’s understanding of the God revealed inChrist: “It is described as high, full, and perfect. It is high: I saw the Lordseated on a high and lofty throne; it is full: and the whole house was full of hismajesty; and it was perfect: and the things that were under him filled theTemple.”71 For Aquinas, revelation depends upon the graced interior prepa-ration and prayerful contemplation of the disciples who receive and reci-procate Jesus’ love.72 St. John, Aquinas explains, was able to grasp and topresent the mystery of Jesus’ divinity in a more profound way than werethe other evangelists because “among the other disciples of the Lord, John


69 Ibid., 118. One doubts that Blenkinsopp would grant the association with metaphysics,because of the widespread misunderstanding of metaphysics as dry abstraction undertakenonly by professional philosophers.70 Cf. Norman Podhoretz’s argument that the great theme of biblical prophecy is oppo-sition to idolatry: Podhoretz, The Prophets (New York: The Free Press, 2002), 310 and else-where. Podhoretz is well aware that idolatrous practices persisted in Israel for centuries, incontrast to the notion that monotheism decisively prevailed early on.71 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, part 1, Prologue, no. 1(trans. James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher [Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1980], 23).For clarification of the text of Isaiah used by Aquinas, see Weisheipl’s Appendix I, 447–9.72 Cf. Nichols, Discovering Aquinas, 21–2.

was more loved by Christ.”73 In other words, St. John’s appropriation ofsacra doctrina depends upon the spiritual exercise that is friendship withChrist. As Aquinas remarks, “And because secrets are revealed to friends,‘I have called you friends because everything I have heard from my fatherI have made known to you’ (below 15:15), Jesus confided his secrets ina special way to that disciple who was specially loved.”74 If the SummaTheologiae’s treatise on God (one and three) is a spiritual exercise intendedto form as well as to inform the reader, then this spiritual exercise is nec-essarily rooted in contemplation of the master/friend, Jesus Christ – acontemplation of the Word through the Holy Spirit.

This point becomes clear in Aquinas’s elaboration of the terms “high,full, and perfect.”75 Aquinas considers these three terms to be descriptiveof “the threefold manner in which he [John] contemplated the LordJesus,”76 as this contemplation is manifested in the Prologue to the Gospel,in which John announces that “the Word was with God, and the Wordwas God” (1:1). The term “high” describes John’s contemplation ofChrist’s possession, as Word, of the divine essence (“the Word was God”).Evocatively employing the text from Isaiah, Aquinas states, “Now a four-fold height is indicated in this contemplation of John. A height of author-ity; 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 thesefour ways that the early philosophers arrived at the knowledge of God.”77

This last sentence indicates the point that Aquinas wishes to make: John’sunderstanding of “God,” insofar as it is guided by the prophets, is notdistant from the understanding of the Greek philosophers as interpretedfrom a Christian perspective.78

In short, thanks to the prophets, Aquinas suggests, John’s contempla-tion attains a metaphysically accurate (without requiring a reading of


73 Super Ioan. Prologue, no. 11 (Weisheipl, part 1, 27). Aquinas cites John 21:20.74 Ibid. For a discussion of what friendship involves for Aquinas, see Guy Mansini, O. S. B., “Similitudo, Communicatio, and the Friendship of Charity in Aquinas,” Recherchesde théologie ancienne et médievale, Supplementa 1: Thomistica, ed. E. Manning (Leuven:Peeters, 1995): 1–26; Fergus Kerr, O.P., “Charity as Friendship,” in Language, Meaning andGod, ed. Brian Davies, O.P. (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1987): 1–23.75 Cf. Carlo Leget, “The Concept of ‘Life’ in the Commentary on St. John,” forth-coming in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theol-ogy, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Catholic University of America Press).76 Super Ioan. Prologue, no. 1 (Weisheipl, part 1, 23). 77 Super Ioan. Prologue, no. 2 (Weisheipl, part 1, 23).78 Super Ioan. Prologue, no. 3–6 (Weisheipl, part 1, 23–5).

Aristotle) understanding of God’s essence. It has to be seen that if thiswere not true, then John’s statement that “the Word was God” would beidolatrous in its understanding of “God.” At stake here is whether theevangelist had an idolatrous (creaturely) understanding of “God,” orwhether he had, as a Jew, interiorly appropriated the teachings of theprophets about God. The four ways that Aquinas identifies in Isaiah’simagistic depiction of his vision of God – authority (the argument fromdesign), eternity (the argument from change), dignity (the argument fromparticipation), and incomprehensibility (the argument from finite truths toinfinite Truth) – show that Aquinas regards his own inquiries into thedivine essence (God as one) as part of a contemplative spiritual exercise,which, like the prophet’s vision, enables a “high” understanding of God.His point is not that Isaiah or John were metaphysicians in the sense thatAristotle was. Rather, unlike many modern readers, Aquinas finds, in theprophets, spiritual exercises (sacred teaching) by which one gains interi-orly a true understanding of “God” beyond the creaturely idols (cf. Isaiah44).

John’s contemplation is also “full.” Aquinas states that “contemplationis full when someone is able to consider all the effects of a cause in thecause itself, that is, when he knows not only the essence of the cause, butalso its power, according as it can extend out to many things.”79 In orderto know the incarnate Word, John must know his divine power and savinglove: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoeverbelieves in him should not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). This aspectof “fullness” justifies the scope of sacra doctrina, which treats all thingsin relation to God. The third term with which Aquinas describes John’scontemplation of the Lord Jesus is “perfect.” For Aquinas, contemplationis “perfect” when it attains its object. For contemplation to be perfect,therefore, the person must know and love (by faith and charity) the Trinityas Creator and Redeemer. When Aquinas in the Summa Theologiaetreats what pertains to God as three, he is imitating John’s contemplationinsofar as it is “perfect.” By knowing and loving the one God as threePersons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – human beings are fully taken upinto the dynamism that is grace and glory, the freely-given perfection ofthe imago dei.

Thus, contemplation of the Lord Jesus, imitating St. John as the exem-plar of friendship with God, will manifest itself in a treatise on the triuneGod that is “high, full, and perfect.” When contemplated with the


79 Super Ioan. Prologue, no. 7 (Weisheipl, part 1, 25–7).

intellectual virtue of wisdom, the divine Word reveals metaphysical truth.Yet the contemplation of the Word attains its perfection only in the con-templation of the Trinity. The process is not from a false “God in hisunity” to a true “triune God.” On the contrary, each mode of contem-plation reveals necessary truth. In order to interpret St. John’s words that“he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for it is not by measurethat he gives the Spirit; the Father loves the Son, and has given all thingsinto his hand” (3:34–5) and to share in the eternal life promised to onewho believes, one must conceive “God” in a way that avoids idolatry. Alimited idol “God” could not “give all things” or give “eternal life.” Nordoes St. John conceive the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three gods.John is no unsophisticated believer. His Gospel resounds with claims thatcut directly to these issues. For Aquinas, therefore, the evangelist is amodel for the theologian; Scripture, as the revelation of God against theidols, cannot be understood without attending to the metaphysical ques-tions that belong to its heart. Unless one’s contemplation is metaphysi-cally “high” and “full,” in accord with the intellectual virtue of wisdom,it will certainly not attain to the “perfect” intellectual contemplation thatcan only be had in faith. The movement of the De Deo trains the personto know and love God in the “perfect” way. Aquinas’s De Deo is thus aspiritual exercise under the guidance of the one master, Jesus Christ, theWisdom of God, who teaches us about himself (and thereby befriends us)through inspired contemplatives such as Isaiah and John. Such knowledge,above all, humbles rather than “puffs up.” As Idit Dobbs-Weinstein writesregarding Maimonides’s and Aquinas’s exegesis of Job, “According to bothMaimonides and Aquinas, it is knowledge which guards against intellec-tual pride, a wisdom (sapientia) possessed by those who acknowledge thenatural limitations of human reason (scientia) and which manifests man’sprovident participation in divine providence and government.”80

In light of the widespread critique that Aquinas’s approach obscures“God as experienced in salvation history,” I have suggested that Aquinas’stheology of God should be understood as an exercise in sapiential con-templation, which requires that sacra doctrina integrate the intellectualvirtue of wisdom. In such a framework, metaphysical tools are seen to be integral to salvation history: contemplative wisdom belongs to thedynamism by which God freely relates in salvation history to humanbeings. As William Hill has pointed out, Aquinas operates out of a


80 Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, “Medieval Biblical Commentary and Philosophical Inquiry asExemplified in the Thought of Moses Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas,” 120.

“concern for theology as real assent of the intelligence to God. . . . Theabstractness of procedure must not be misconstrued: it is not a questionof knowledge of the abstract, but of abstract (and so penetrating) knowl-edge of the actual and so the concretely real.”81 This insight into thepurpose of “abstract” theological discourse will guide our own investiga-tion of the mystery of the one God who is three Persons. As we will see,the theoretical approach, or mode of sacra doctrina, that Aquinas adopts inhis treatise on God (one and three) need not distance the reader from thebiblical narrative of salvation history. On the contrary, the philosophicalterms in which Aquinas, as a contemplative, probes the scriptural witnessto God’s simultaneous oneness and threeness recapitulates, in the theo-logical realm, the posture of the holy men and women in the Bible (e.g.,Isaiah and John) vis-à-vis the triune God’s self-revelation. Through thecontemplative practices of Aquinas’s treatise, the reader becomes a deeperparticipant in the salvation history narrated by Scripture. He or she learnshow to join more profoundly in Israel’s invocation of the “one God” andin the apostolic invocation of the God who is revealed by Christ Jesus tobe one and three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By means of the meta-physical ascesis, the believer is drawn closer liturgically (and thus histori-cally and dramatically) to the God revealed in the words of Scripture. Thismovement occurs when, by participating more and more deeply in God’sknowledge of himself as one and three, we are drawn – impelled by love– into the transcendent mystery of God’s own inexpressible communio.82


81 Hill, The Three-Personed God, 65; cf. his programmatic essay, “Seeking Foundations forFaith: Symbolism of Person or Metaphysics of Being?” in Search for the Absent God: Tradi-tion and Modernity in Religious Understanding, ed. Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P. (New York:Crossroad, 1992): 17–32.82 See Walter Principe’s “Loving Friendship According to Thomas Aquinas,” in The Natureand Pursuit of Love: The Philosophy of Irving Singer, ed. David Goicoechea (Amherst, NY:Prometheus Books, 1995): 128–41.

Chapter Two1

YHWH AND BEING

Does metaphysics guide Aquinas’s discussion of God in his unity, or doesthe witness of Scripture? Etienne Gilson famously raised this question:

Is it St. Thomas the theologian who, reading in Exodus the identity ofessence and existence in God, taught St. Thomas the philosopher the distinction between essence and existence in creatures? Or is it St. Thomasthe philosopher who, pushing his analysis of the metaphysical structure ofthe concrete even as far as the distinction between essence and existence,taught St. Thomas the theologian that He Who Is in Exodus means the Act-of-Being?2

The impossibility of answering the question reminds us of how profoundly Scripture and metaphysics are integrated in Aquinas’s sacra doctrina.3 Fergus Kerr quotes M.-D. Chenu, “However charged with

1 Portions of this chapter appeared in an earlier version as “Contemplating God: YHWHand Being in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Irish Theological Quarterly 67 (2002):17–31.2 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (NotreDame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994): 94.3 John F. Wippel has noted that in Aquinas’s theological works, “[W]e may find a runningseries of philosophical discussions joined together as succeeding questions or chapters inworks such as the Summa theologiae (see the so-called Treatises on God, or on Man, or onLaw). . . . We may easily remove such discussions from the general theological context ofthe writings in which they appear and from the references to Scripture and the Fatherscontained in some of their videturs or sed contras and use them as important sources in recon-structing Thomas’s metaphysical thought” (John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought ofThomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Uni-versity of America Press, 2000]: xxi). Such an approach, suitable for the purposes of phi-losophy, cannot be adopted by theologians. Theologians cannot “easily remove” Aquinas’smetaphysical insights “from the references to Scripture and the Fathers contained in some

metaphysical language, the questions on the one God have to do with theGod of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who will send Christ, not the god ofAristotle’s Physics. We have to hold on to the religious character of thetext and not reduce it to a deistic theodicy.”4 Similarly, commenting onthe name “He who is,” Aidan Nichols remarks, “This is how, as DomGhislain Lafont puts it, the Mosaic revelation commands study of God inhis essence, while the Gospel revelation will do the same for God in his Trinity.”5 Aquinas’s treatise on the triune God contemplates God bymeans of a progressive investigation of the “divine names,” to use Pseudo-Dionysius’s expression. This project has its roots in the efforts of the GreekFathers, pre-eminently Pseudo-Dionysius, to characterize the divineattributes,6 and it also has philosophical antecedents. As Wayne Hankey

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of their videturs or sed contras”; indeed it would be a grave theological mistake to treat thesereferences to Scripture and the Fathers as mere decorations. Rather, without conflating philosophy and theology, theologians must seek to understand the interplay of Scriptureand metaphysics that constitutes the fabric of Aquinas’s theology.4 Fergus Kerr, O.P., After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 184,quoting M.-D. Chenu, O.P., Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry and D.Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964): 321.5 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Discovering Aquinas (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002):54, citing Ghislain Lafont, O. S. B., Structures et méthode dans la Somme théologique de saintThomas d’Aquin (Paris: Desclée, 1961): 473.6 See Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas’s Doctrine of God as Expounded in theSumma Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987): 5–17. Hankey points out,“Proclus, mediated by Dionysius, also provides Thomas with a second genre, that for treat-ing God in himself in the Summa Theologiae. For the treatise may be regarded as a de divinisnominibus. This form was Christianized by Dionysius, but the very first tract de divinisnominibus is contained in the Platonic Theology of Proclus, which Dionysius was imitatingand transforming” (9). (Aidan Nichols notes, however, that when composing the prima parsof the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas had not yet read the Liber de causis: see Nichols, Discov-ering Aquinas, 198 [fn. 6].) Earlier Jewish and Christian theologians had devoted extensiveattention to enumerating the divine attributes, Philo’s Quod Deus Immutabilis Sit being thefirst significant such treatise: for analysis of this development, see Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F. M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000): 74ff..Hankey goes on to remark, “The two major divisions of Thomas’s treatise de deo (qq.2–43)originate in the Dionysian mediation of Proclan Neoplatonism. The first is the distinctionof the de deo uno (qq.3–26) from the de deo trino (qq.27–43). This has its origin in Dionysius’ division of treatises on the divine names between one on the names belongingto the unity of the Trinity and another on those names proper to the persons consideredseverally. Thomas’s second division is that of the de deo uno between a consideration of God’s substance (qq.3–11) and of his operations (qq.14–27). This derives from a Neoplatonic form of Aristotle’s distinction between the first and second acts of the soulwhich St. Thomas first finds in Dionysius and later identifies as Proclan” (12). See also T. C. O’Brien, Introduction to Summa Theologiae, vol.7: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (NewYork: McGraw-Hill [Blackfriars], 1976): xxi ff.

has pointed out, the neo-Platonic philosopher Proclus authored the firsttreatise on the divine names and influenced Aquinas; similarly LawrenceDewan has shown the influence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics upon Aquinas’saccount of the divine attributes in 1, qq.3–11.7 Aquinas would have beeninfluenced not least, however, by the fact that the contemplative goal oflearning properly God’s names is eminently biblical.8

The Old Testament portrays Jacob, who on that night receives the nameIsrael, as having wrestled all night to know God’s name, and as bearingthe mark of this struggle for the rest of his life (Genesis 32). Similarly,Moses recognizes that his mission depends upon knowing God’s name: “IfI come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathershas sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall Isay to them?’ ” (Exodus 3:13). In the Decalogue, God commands that his name be recognized as holy (the second commandment, Exodus 20:7). This commandment is fleshed out in Leviticus, where the laws forhuman holiness are ratified by the formulaic reminder, “I am YHWH”(cf. Leviticus 19). The commandment appears in the Psalms (cf. Psalm52:9, 54:1, et al.) and the prophets (cf. Amos 5, Ezekiel 43, Isaiah 63,Jeremiah 31). King Solomon, dedicating Israel’s Temple, recalls God’spromise to place God’s name there, and thereby to answer the prayers andforgive the sins of those who acknowledge his name by acknowledginghis Temple (1 Kings 8:29, 33–4).

This relationship with God through knowing his name continues, inTrinitarian form, in the New Testament. In Matthew’s Gospel, the risenJesus teaches his disciples to go forth baptizing people of all nations “inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew

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7 Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “Aristotelian Features of the Order of Presentation in St.Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Prima pars, qq.3–11,” in Philosophy and the God ofAbraham, ed. R. James Long (Toronto: PIMS, 1991): 41–53. See also Leo Elders’s attemptto ground the order of qq.3–11 in the “five ways” of q.2: Elders, “L’ordre des attributsdivins dans la Somme théologique,” Divus Thomas 82 (1979): 225–32, which is furtherdeveloped in his The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990):140–85.8 David B. Burrell, C.S.C. has explored the project of Jewish, Christian, and Muslimnaming of God in (among other places) “A Philosophical Foray into Difference and Dia-logue: Avital Wohlman on Maimonides and Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quar-terly 76 (2002): 181–94. See also two volumes of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim commentaryon the revelation of God to Moses at the burning bush on Mt. Sinai (Exodus 3): PaulVignaux, ed., Dieu et l’être: Exégèses d’Exode 3,14 et de Coran 20,11–24 (Paris: EtudesAugustiniennes, 1978) and Alain de Libera and Emilie Zum Brunn, eds., Celui qui est: inter-pretations juives et chrétiennes d’Exode 3.14 (Paris: Cerf, 1986). The former volume includesan essay by Pierre Hadot on the Neoplatonic antecedents of the Christian interpretation.

28:19). In John’s Gospel, Jesus prays, “I have manifested thy name to men.. . . Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, thatthey may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:6, 11). In Acts, Saul –the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called on his [Jesus’]name” – is blinded and asks the Lord’s name, receiving the answer “I amJesus” (Acts 9:5, 21). Jesus tells Saul that his mission is “to carry my namebefore the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show himhow much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15–16). Thesepassages show the theological significance of engagement with the divinename. By contemplative knowing of God’s name, one is drawn furtherinto the covenantal relationship that requires and makes possible holiness,the perfection of charity.9 The contemplation of the divine names assistsin union with God or deification.

However, does teaching the divine names in the highly metaphysicalfashion undertaken by Aquinas assist in such biblically inspired mysticalunion? Aquinas composed the Summa Theologiae for pedagogical reasons,that is, in the service of teaching. Teaching, for Aquinas, possesses bothan active and a contemplative aspect. Insofar as the object of teaching is

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9 The awe-inspiring gift of knowing God’s name(s) has been well expressed by the OldTestament exegete Christopher R. Seitz: “what is at stake in modern debates is not whetherGod is father or can be addressed as ‘he.’ Rather, what is at stake is whether we are enti-tled to call God anything at all. The proper question is whether we have any language thatGod will recognize as his own, such that he will know himself to be called upon, and noother, and within his own counsel then be in a position to respond, or to turn a deaf ear”(Seitz, Word without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness [Grand Rapids,MI: Eerdmans, 1998]: 252). Since God is beyond human comprehension – not in the sensethat human beings can know nothing about God, but in the sense that the finite cannotbe compared with, let alone encompass or comprehend, the infinite – affirmations or positive names for God must be integrated with negative demurrals. On naming God, seeTimothy L. Smith’s survey of medieval speculative grammar in Thomas Aquinas’ TrinitarianTheology, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003): 160–203. Seealso Gregory Rocca, O.P., “Aquinas on God-Talk: Hovering Over the Abyss,” TheologicalStudies 54 (1993): 641–61; Mark F. Johnson, “Apophatic Knowledge’s Cataphatic Depen-dencies,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 519–31; Albert Patfoort, O.P., “La place de l’analogie dansla pensée de saint Thomas d’Aquin: Analogie, noms divins et ‘perfections’,” Revue des Sci-ences Philosophiques et Théologiques 76 (1992): 235–54; Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Analogy(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996); David B. Burrell,C.S.C., “From Analogy of ‘Being’ to the Analogy of Being,” in Recovering Nature: Essaysin Natural Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics in Honor of Ralph McInerny, ed. John P.O’Callaghan and Thomas S. Hibbs (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999):253–66. Cf. Al-Ghazali, The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God, trans. David B. Burrelland Nazih Daher (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 1992, 1995): 39–41; AminaRachid, “Dieu et l’être selon Al-Farabi: le chapitre de ‘l’être’ dans le Livre des Lettres,” inDieu et l’être, ed. Paul Vignaux, 179–90.

the hearer, teaching belongs to the active life, since this involves externalaction. Insofar as the object of teaching is the “intelligible truth,” teach-ing belongs to the contemplative life.10 Contemplation of the divine truthis the result of an arduous process that begins with “contemplation of thedivine effects” and rises to contemplation of divine truth in the intelligi-ble realities that lie beyond reason, such as the reality of the Trinity.11 Inthis process that leads to contemplation of the divine truth, metaphysicsand biblical exegesis each have a role. As Aquinas remarks, the ways ofreceiving the principles necessary to arrive at contemplation of truth varyaccording to the proximate source of the principle: “as regards the thingshe receives from God, he needs prayer, according to Wisdom 7:7, I calledupon God, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me: while as regards the thingshe receives from man, he needs hearing, in so far as he receives from thespoken word, and reading, in so far as he receives from the tradition ofHoly Writ.”12 Contemplation rooted in these sources, Aquinas suggests,produces “a certain inchoate beatitude” that anticipates the state of glory.13

This experiential “inchoate beatitude” is similar to the mystical union thatOrthodox theologians such as Dumitru Staniloae have in mind when they describe an “apophatic knowledge” in which, as Staniloae argues,

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10 Summa Theologiae 2–2, q.181, a.3.11 2–2, q.180, a.4; cf. ad 1–4, where Aquinas draws upon Richard of St. Victor’s elaboration of six “steps whereby we ascend by means of creatures to the contemplationof God.” (ad 3) Aquinas’s treatise on the triune God is not as far separated from Bonaventure’s The Journey of the Mind to God as is sometimes suggested: both are highlyintellectual contemplative ascents, although Bonaventure adopts a more mystical mode ofexpression.12 2–2, q.180, a.3, ad 4.13 2–2, q.180, a.4. Otto Hermann Pesch summarizes Aquinas’s practice of analogouslynaming God, but concludes:

On the other hand, the similarity is so fundamentally bound up with dissimilarityand based on the transcendental dependence of the created from the Creator, theconcept formed from the life of created beings is such a radically alien idea for thelife of God that, as has been shown, it can hardly be justified to talk of under-standing by analogy, still less of statements from analogy about the ‘name’ of God.Within Christian theological circles it is questionable whether, considering the above,the sharp distinction between analogy and metaphor can in fact be any further sustained, since on close examination statements about God based on analogical reasoning have a status not superior to that of a higher order metaphor. (Pesch,“Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology,” in Aquinas as Authority, ed. Paulvan Geest, Harm Goris, and Carlo Leget [Leuven: Peeters, 2002]: 160).

The distinction between analogy and metaphor, blurred by Pesch, in fact sustains the pos-sibility of contemplative theology.

“the infinity or omnipotence or love of God is not just an intellectualnotion, but a matter of direct experience.”14 For Aquinas, intellectual contemplation and the experience of union in mystical darkness are notopposed, since our finite intellects, even when elevated by faith, cannotgrasp the infinite reality of God.

Given this intersection of teaching and the (deifying and mystical) con-templative life, Aquinas’s treatise on God should, as we suggested in theprevious chapter, be read as a contemplative spiritual exercise. As a con-templative spiritual exercise that seeks analogous understanding of God inhimself, Aquinas’s approach unifies metaphysical and scriptural naming.The divine names found in Scripture cannot be understood apart frommetaphysical analysis, but nonetheless it is the biblical narrative of salva-tion that governs the task of divine naming in Aquinas’s treatise on Godin his oneness.15 Put another way, Aquinas’s discussion of God under the

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14 Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God, trans. and ed. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994): 95. Staniloae, however,follows the neo-Palamite theologians in separating the divine energies from the divineessence: “We experience nothing from God, in content, other than his varied operationsthat have to do with the world, which is to say, in relation to us. Beyond this we knowthat at their basis is the personally subsistent essence, but how it is, we do not know, forit is an essence beyond all essences. All we know in God is his dynamism experienced inrelation to the world or through the prism that we ourselves are” (126). Were it not forthis distinction between energies and essence, which robs faith (and contemplation) of itsradicality, Staniloae’s position would be strikingly similar to Aquinas’s: “The qualities ofGod, as we know them, disclose their richness gradually as we develop the capacity to par-ticipate in them. Yet, as a personally subsistent being, God remains always above them,although in a certain manner he is their source. Therefore, we do not err if we considerthem in their totality as existent in his being in a manner beyond all understanding and inan inexhaustible simplicity. Thus, as dynamic manifestations of God, they are ‘around hisbeing’, and not identical with his being itself ” (127). See also 247, where Staniloae speaksof “our personal participation in the Godhead for all eternity” that is inaugurated by faith,mediated by the saving doctrine, in the Trinity.15 Metaphysical analysis clearly can be undertaken apart from Scripture, but Aquinas’smetaphysical probing in the Summa Theologiae belongs to sacra doctrina. As Stephen Pfürtner, O.P., indebted to M.-D. Chenu, has noted with regard to Aquinas’s theology ofhope, “Aquinas was anything but an abstract theologian. . . . The starting point and the basisfrom which all his theological interpretation was orientated was rather the faith of theChurch, first expressed in the Scriptures and in her authentic documents and present tohim through his living participation in its development. . . . It is completely wrong toreproach him for making these Scripture quotations a kind of text on which to hang anessentially philosophical argument, as Luther did – and, by extending his thesis further –the modern Lutherans [e.g., W. Link]” (Pfürtner, Luther and Aquinas on Salvation,trans. Edward Quinn [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964]: 58). Pfürtner quotes Luther’s remark, “This is Thomas’s order: at the beginning he takes the words of Paul, Peter, John,Isaiah, etc., and then concludes, ‘Aristotle says this’; Scripture is interpreted according toAristotle” (Pfürtner, 58, fn. 7).

rubric of his oneness contemplates Israel’s God metaphysically. One mightnonetheless ask whether metaphysics is a suitable instrument for the appro-priation of the self-revelation of the God who is one. Does “being” trulyillumine “YHWH”? Is this (metaphysically appropriated) God none otherthan the Trinity?

In order to ask and answer these questions better, I will begin with adescription of R. Kendall Soulen’s recent critique of theological explo-rations of God’s essence.16 Soulen’s concerns are particularly resonantbecause, without criticizing Aquinas by name, he lays his finger on someof the key problems that many contemporary theologians have with theThomistic doctrine of God. Second, I will examine Summa Theologiae 1,q.2 (on God’s existence) in light of a number of related texts. By meansof this approach, I hope to show that Aquinas intends to contemplate Godnot generically, but specifically as revealed through Moses to Israel. Theconcern that “being” has replaced the living God of Israel in traditionalChristian accounting of the divine names17 is mistaken: on the contrary,metaphysics accurately illumines the living God of Scripture.

1 R. Kendall Soulen’s Post-SupersessionistTrinitarian Theology

In “YHWH the Triune God,” which extends the project of his TheGod of Israel and Christian Theology, Soulen has identified two problemswith “classical” (i.e., patristic, medieval, and their modern derivatives) theologies of God:

classical accounts of God’s eternal identity have chronically suffered fromtwo limitations. First, they make God’s identity as YHWH, the God ofIsrael, all but irrelevant for understanding God’s eternal identity. Second,they are eo ipso forced to think “eternal identity” in one-sided reliance onYHWH’s dialectical shadow, ousia. The reliability of the gospel’s narrative

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16 On the application to God of the term “essence,” see Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht,O.P., “Dieu a-t-il une essence?” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 7–18.17 Ironically, just as interest in the divine attributes seems to have reached a low point in Christian theology (as importing Greek philosophy into Scripture, and as improper tononfoundationalist, postmodern philosophy), interest in the divine attributes appears to beon the rise in philosophical circles. See, e.g., Katherin A. Rogers, Perfect Being Theology(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000) and Joshua Hoffman and Gary S.Rosenkrantz, The Divine Attributes (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002).

relations is unreliably secured by etching them into the eternal countenanceof being, apart from the truly reliable identity of YHWH, the God ofAbraham, Isaac, and Jacob.18

Regarding the first limitation (the more intriguing one because the moreoriginal), Soulen theorizes that, for patristic and medieval Christian the-ologians, the naming of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit supersedesor displaces the Israelite naming of God as YHWH.19 While continuingto affirm that the triune God is the God of Israel (against Marcionism),“classical” theologians assume that the New Testament names God in adeeper – and displacing – way. Soulen states that “the Old Covenant’s identification of God becomes logically dispensable for the purposes of specifying God’s identity and purposes in their definitive form.”20 Theacts of YHWH are now seen to be the acts of Father, Son, and HolySpirit. From this it would follow, Soulen suggests, that the name YHWHwas never, in a strict sense, a meaningful name, since it falls away com-pletely when the true triune name is revealed. Israel’s relationship withYHWH (that is, the entire Old Covenant) is thus compromised, since theGod whom Israel worshipped as YHWH turns out to have an entirelydifferent “name” or identity. Discussing the doctrine of the immanentTrinity (God’s eternal identity), Soulen finds that “the Christian doctrineof God in its strictest form contains no essential reference to the Scripture of Israel and its talk of God.”21 The identity of YHWH asrevealed to Israel appears to have no impact upon the formulation ofChristian confession of the eternal Trinity.

Regarding the second limitation, Soulen, along with numerous con-temporary theologians,22 takes issue with what he considers to be thereplacement of the name YHWH (as revealed in narrative form in theOld Testament) with discourse about being or ousia. In “classical” discus-sions of God’s eternal identity, metaphysical claims about God replaceclaims based upon the narrative of YHWH. Soulen describes this meta-

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18 R. Kendall Soulen, “YHWH the Triune God,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 50. Seealso R. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: FortressPress, 1996).19 Soulen, “YHWH the Triune God,” 32.20 Ibid.21 Ibid., 33.22 For an overview, see Thomas G. Weinandy, O. F. M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (NotreDame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000): especially 1–26, 69–112. One might seealso the review of Weinandy’s book by Romanus Cessario, O.P. in Modern Theology 17(2001): 522–4.

physical claim about God’s being or ousia as constituting a “fourth” in theGodhead, at least linguistically: “Insofar as Christian theology has deemedit necessary . . . to admit a ‘fourth’ into the elemental grammar of thethreefold name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that fourth has been ousia,not YHWH.”23 He rejects two common arguments in defense of metaphysical elaboration. The first argument is that such elaboration isrooted in Scripture, particularly in “YHWH’s solemn name-revelation toMoses in Exodus 3:14.”24 In his view, this argument is based upon the misleading translation adopted by the Septuagint (and followed by theVulgate), and therefore is not in fact rooted in Scripture.25

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23 Soulen, “YHWH the Triune God,” 34.24 Ibid.25 Soulen is of course not alone in his suspicion of the traditional interpretation of Exodus3:14. Influenced not only by historical research into the culture of the ancient Near East,but also by theological (and philosophical) suspicion of the concept of “being” as appliedanalogously to God, biblical exegetes generally caution against metaphysical interpretationsof Exodus 3:14, even when admitting that the Gospel of John contains such interpretation.Christopher Seitz, for example, notes that the Greek rendering, in the Septuagint, of theHebrew words read:

“I am the One who is” (ego eimi ‘o on). . . . It was this nuance, arguably differentthan the narrative direction of Exodus, that in turn influenced certain New Testa-ment and subsequent theological statements, focused on being, rather than person-ality. It is a very small leap to see how ousia dominated the options for Trinitarianconfession. In my judgment, later Trinitarian statements would be wrongly judgedantiexegetical or philosophical, rather than scriptural. Instead, their scriptural loca-tion was either detached or obscured, given the climate of exchange, or the Hebrewtradition in place in Exodus was wrongly assessed to begin with because of the LXXrendering. In the case of Exodus 3:14, we are not learning something about God’ssubstance or essence but something about a personal identity and history he is about to make good on at Sea and Sinai. (Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providencein Christian Scripture [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001]: 140).

This sharp distinction between God’s “substance or essence” and God’s “personal identityand history” betrays an ignorance of the nature of treatises on God’s essence such asAquinas’s, which were intended to gain insight precisely into God’s personal identity. Forviews similar to Seitz’s, see Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christologyin the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998) and Ben Witherington III andLaura M. Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty: Father, Son, and Spirit in Biblical Perspective (GrandRapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002): 10–13. For a short survey of the history of interpretationof Exodus 3, see Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary(Louisville, KY: The Westminster Press, 1974): 46–89. Childs comments:

It remains a more difficult question to assess to what extent ontological overtoneswere attached to the biblical formula. (Naturally much turns on the term “onto-logical”.) However, it is of interest to note that at least the vocabulary of the LXX’s

The second argument is that metaphysical elaboration was, in its patris-tic and medieval context, simply a means of avoiding errors in discourseabout “God,” that is, a means of ensuring that our discourse about Goddoes not fall into idolatry by introducing elements that can pertain onlyto creatures. In contrast to this positive (and limited) interpretation of therole of metaphysics, Soulen sees metaphysical elaboration as what hap-pened when Israel’s testimony to YHWH no longer carried any weight.Soulen argues, “What is at stake rather is the systematic subordination ofone whole realm of discourse to another, namely, that of Israel’s Scrip-tures to that of classical metaphysics.”26 However, Soulen emphasizes thathe is not intending to demonize metaphysics. Had supersessionism notalready been dominant, perhaps the bishops at Nicea might have been ableto incorporate ousia within prior claims about the identity of YHWH. Asit was, however, ousia took over the linguistic and theological place thatshould have been accorded to YHWH.27

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rendering of Exodus 3.14 (e jgw ei jmi o J w [n) was picked up in Revelations 1:8. Certainly Philo developed the Greek translation further in terms of existence: “Tellthem that I am He Who IS, that they may learn the difference between what is andwhat is not and . . . further . . . that no name at all can properly be used of Me, to Whom alone existence belongs” (Vita Mos. I.75). Although this vocabulary was not used in the New Testament, the note which Philo strikes has some real kinshipwith the witness of II Isaiah and cannot be dismissed as “alien Greek thinking.”(Childs, 1974, 83)

See also the two volumes edited respectively by Vignaux and by de Libera and Brunn onChristian, Jewish, and Muslim interpretation of Exodus 3:14, along with Nahum M. Sarna,Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1986): 50–2.26 Soulen, “YHWH the Triune God,” 34.27 Ibid., 35. Soulen also treats two leading twentieth-century Protestant theologians whose attention to the importance of Israel and general rejection of metaphysics make thempromising sources for his post-supersessionist Trinitarian theology: Karl Barth and RobertJenson. Both theologians, Soulen notes, “argue that God’s identity as YHWH, the God ofIsrael, is not an item that can be treated as peripheral or optional for Trinitarian theology”(35). In both cases, however, Soulen concludes that God’s identity as YHWH ultimatelydoes not function in a determinative way. Since Barth is the most evident influence uponJenson’s theology (as well as upon Soulen’s), we will here address only Soulen’s critique ofBarth’s position. For Barth, YHWH refers to the form or Gestalt of the hidden, transcen-dent subject of revelation. The decisive manifestation of this Gestalt is Jesus of Nazareth(38–9). Jesus, as the self-manifesting Gestalt of revelation, supersedes YHWH. Soulen con-cludes that Barth, despite his interest in the revelation given to Israel, is a supersessionist:“The name Yahweh (together with Israel’s covenant from which it is inseparable) is ashadow, a prophecy whose limited truth must be dissolved (i.e., ‘the end of the peopleIsrael as the special people of revelation’) in order that its enduring truth (God revealsHimself as Lord) may appear in the incarnation and the Church which confesses it” (40).

Given the weaknesses he has identified, Soulen suggests a constructiveprinciple that would avoid supersessionist confession of God as Trinity.The principle is: “In no circumstances may the Old Covenant/NewCovenant schema be used to subordinate God’s identity as YHWH toGod’s identity as Triune, thereby devaluing the former into a shadow ofthe latter, which for its part is then held to be alone the enduring truth of redemption, and thus of creation and consummation as well.”28

Whatever resonance the Christian confession of God as Father, Son, andHoly Spirit might have, it should not be allowed to overshadow the res-onance proper to the (Christian and Jewish) confession of God as YHWH.The two confessions are equal in weight, since in different ways they name (from the Christian perspective) the same reality. The differencesbetween the meanings associated with “YHWH” and those associatedwith “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” must not be covered up, but rather must be recognized and fittingly exploited in order to achieve atruly non-supersessionist Trinitarian theology.

Thus, Soulen holds that the classical account of God bypasses God’seternal identity as YHWH and that the classical account gives to meta-physical claims about “being” the status that the naming of God asYHWH should have had. In what follows, I will first identify the rolethat “being” plays in Aquinas’s theology of God, and second integrate thisrole into Aquinas’s broader understanding of the significance of the name“YHWH.”

2 Aquinas on Being and YHWH

Aquinas’s treatise on the divine essence flows from the logic of his demon-stration of God’s existence, which moves from effects to the positing of a

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The “enduring truth” of the name YHWH is in fact not distinguishable (logically or oth-erwise) from Jesus Christ. Once the true Gestalt has been manifested, the symbolical rep-resentation of the hidden subject of revelation by the name YHWH is superseded. For acritical appraisal of the idealist (Kantian and Hegelian) consequences of Jenson’s rejectionof “classical” metaphysics, see Brian K. Sholl, “On Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Thought,”Modern Theology 18 (2002): 27–36. For a Jewish attempt to understand the Christian doc-trine of the triune God (in dialogue with Jenson), see Peter Ochs, “The God of Jews andChristians,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 2000): 49–69.28 Ibid., 49. This distinction between “redemption” and “consummation” is worked outin The God of Israel and Christian Theology, but remains problematic.

first cause.29 In question 13 (perhaps the most frequently studied questionof the Summa Theologiae by modern commentators), Aquinas states that“we can name God only from creatures,” since in this life we cannot knowthe divine essence, and therefore “whatever is said of God and creaturesis said according to the relation of a creature to God as its principle andcause, wherein all the perfections of things pre-exist excellently.”30 NamingGod depends upon properly knowing this cause-effect relationship. Inturn, properly knowing the cause-effect relationship is the task of Aquinas’sdemonstration of God’s existence by means of the “five ways” (1, q.2).31

The “five ways” lead to two major conclusions. First, God does not haveexistence, but is unlimited, uncreated existence or pure Act (1, q.3).32 Itis impossible, therefore, to form a concept of God’s “being,” which differsinfinitely from any creaturely mode of being.33 Second, since God is pureAct and thus the perfect fullness of “to be,” all perfections are found pri-marily in God. It is by means of these perfections – taking away the crea-

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29 I think that Aquinas’s demonstration of God’s existence works. The demonstration ofGod’s existence does not constitute a basis for Christian faith – nor does it offer an (idol-atrous) definition of divine “existence” – but it reminds believers that their faith in the cre-ating and redeeming God is not irrational, and invites nonbelievers to examine more closelythe deepest mysteries of faith. Cf. Denys Turner, “How to be an Atheist,” New Blackfriars83 (2002): 317–35. On the impossibility of rational evidence serving as a basis for the gratuitous gift of faith, see Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). For demonstration of God’s existence, see, e.g., Barry Miller, From Existence to God: A Contemporary Philo-sophical Argument (New York: Routledge, 1992); idem, A Most Unlikely God: A Philosophi-cal Enquiry into the Nature of God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).30 1, q.13, a.5.31 On the manifold ways in which the “five ways” have been interpreted (in particularthe controversy between M.-D. Chenu, O.P. and Henri de Lubac, S.J. against Chenu’s fellowDominican R. Garrigou-Lagrange, in which the latter was charged with reading a Wolffian rationalism into the texts of St. Thomas), see the interesting discussion in FergusKerr, O.P., After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 52–72. Beyondphilosophical demonstration, the spiritual significance of the five ways for demonstratingGod’s existence – how learning these ways leads us spiritually deeper into the mystery ofGod – has been exposed by Leo Elders, “Justification des ‘cinq voies,’ ” Revue Thomiste 61(1961): 207–25; idem, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990): 83ff.; Aidan Nichols, O.P., Discovering Aquinas: An Introduction to his Life, Workand Influence (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002): 48–51; and Robert Barron,Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master (New York: Crossroad, 1996): 62–5.32 On being and act, see, e.g., Michel Bastit, “L’acte propre de Dieu selon Thomasd’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 19–30.33 Duns Scotus held that it is possible to form such a concept. See William A. Frank andAllan B. Wolter, Duns Scotus, Metaphysician (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press,1995): 116–18, 146–56.

turely mode of signification – that we name God, recognizing that Godinfinitely exceeds our finite conceptions of these perfections (1, q.4).34 AsA. N. Williams states with regard to Aquinas’s discussion of the divineattributes: “Thomas insists again and again that they are merely conse-quents of the two most important principles already established: necessary being and simplicity.”35

With this framework in mind, we can examine Summa Theologiae 1,q.2 more closely. It begins – reminding us of both the foolishness of unbe-lief and the ever-present possibility of unbelief – with the Psalmist’s fool:“the opposite of the proposition ‘God is’ can be mentally admitted: Thefool said in his heart, There is no God (Psalm 53:1). Therefore, that Godexists is not self-evident.”36 Unlike Anselm, then, Aquinas does not thinkthat the fool is actually, in the strict sense, a fool; the fool’s statement isnot, as Anselm thinks it to be, logically nonsensical.37 Rather, the fool,due ultimately to the effects of original sin, lacks the speculative habitusthat would enable him to reason to God from contingent things. Yet thefool is a fool, and can only be understood as such. Aquinas agrees withSt. Paul, whom he cites in article 2, sed contra: “The Apostle says: Theinvisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that aremade (Romans 1:20).”38 As the biblical exegete Luke Timothy Johnsoncomments, noting the connection of Romans 1:20 with Wisdom 13:1:

For Paul, “what can be known about God” is not grasped simply from“creation out there,” as in the existence of the cosmos. It is grasped with

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34 See Hankey, God in Himself, 36–56, 73–4. Hankey emphasizes that Aquinas follows inthe tradition of Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius, both of whom start from sensible (mater-ial) things rather than from the human mind in their theological movement towards God.See also Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 120f.35 A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 48. See also David B. Burrell, C.S.C., “The attributes ofGod: (a) Simpleness,” in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Brian Davies, O.P. (Washington, D.C.:Georgetown University Press, 1998): 70–5.36 1, q.2, a.1, sed contra. Cf. 1, q.2, a.1, ad 1: “To know that God exists in a general andconfused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For mannaturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally knownto him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know thatsomeone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even thoughit is Peter who is approaching; for many there are who imagine that man’s perfect goodwhich is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.”37 For Aquinas’s critique of Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God, see1, q.2, a.1, ad 2. Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion model theology of the triune God asa contemplative ascent.38 1, q.2, a.2, sed contra.

immediate intuition from the human experience of contingency and depen-dence. . . . For Paul, this reality is so obvious that its denial requires a “suppression of the truth” (1:18) that in the fashioning of every creature“his eternal power and deity has been clearly perceived” (1:20).39

Johnson focuses upon idolatry as a problem of the will, but it is equallyclear that for Paul the existence of God is apparent when one moves intellectually from contingent creatures to an uncreated cause.40 ForPaul, as for Aquinas, the contemplation that is “metaphysics” belongs tosalvation history.

If the existence of God is demonstrable, why then is it revealed to Israel?Because of the distortion caused by original sin, few if any human beingswould succeed in developing and sustaining the speculative habitus neces-sary for demonstrating the existence of God, and for assenting to thisdemonstration with certitude.41 Given the situation of pervasive idolatry(the foolishness to which we all succumb apart from God’s grace), Godchose to restore humankind by entering into covenant with Israel. Hesimultaneously reveals his powerful love and his transcendent oneness: inthe context of redeeming Israel from Egyptian slavery, he gives them hisnames and his law. Aquinas is acutely aware of this salvific context when,in 1, q.2, he introduces his effort to demonstrate God’s existence bystating, “It is said in the person of God: I am Who am (Exodus 3:14).”42

In theological context – the context of Aquinas’s sacra doctrina in theSumma Theologiae – the demonstration of God’s existence belongs to God’scontinuing salvific activity with his covenantal people.43

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39 Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans (New York: Crossroad, 1997): 32.40 Aquinas understands “cause” in a fourfold way. Following Aristotle, he includes within“causality” efficient, formal, and final cause (as well as material cause, not applicable in thecase of God). Knowing the ultimate cause means more than knowing what accounts for the existence of contingent things; it also means knowing the purpose and goal of contingent things (final cause).41 Cf. 1, q.2, a.2, ad 1.42 1, q.2, a.3, sed contra. For the place of the sed contra in Aquinas’s theological argu-mentation, see Leo Elders, “Structure et fonction de l’argument sed contra dans la Sommethéologique de saint Thomas,” Divus Thomas 80 (1977): 245–60. Elders points out that thesed contra generally forms the foundation of the entire doctrinal elaboration that follows inthe body of the article (see 260). This is especially significant because the biblical quota-tions in Aquinas’s theology of God are often found in the sed contra, and often have beenoverlooked for that reason.43 As Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., states, “In the context of a commentary on Romans, we areactually on a path that relates the history of Israel and the arguments of the philosophers.Thomas reads Paul so that the phrase ‘Iudaeo primo et Graeco’ renders the history of Israel

For Aquinas, “being” is not separable theologically from the revelationof “YHWH,” since both names belong to the covenantal instruction givenMoses. The name “I am who am” (Exodus 3:14) and “I am” (3:14) istaught by God to Moses along with his proper name YHWH (3:15). Thetwo names complement each other, revealing God’s historical presence asinfinite, sheer, eternal Presence.44 They express the same God, understoodmetaphysically and historically. Both approaches are necessary for theweaning of the people from idolatry, which is the purpose of YHWH’scovenantal activity. The Hebrew translated here as “I am who am,” itshould be noted, can be and has been translated in a range of ways. Themajority of exegetes translate it as “I will be who I will be.” As the Fran-ciscan theologian Thomas Weinandy has pointed out, however, “Thosewho criticize Philo and the Septuagint for rendering the name ‘Yahweh’as ‘I Am Who Am’ or ‘He who/that Is’ fail to grasp that to be the full-ness of being does not render God immutably ‘lifeless,’ but immutably‘life-full.’ This is what Philo believes is revealed and that the Septuaginthas rightly understood.”45 The translation “will be” seeks to convey this dynamic presence, but this is better conveyed by the Septuagint’s translation.

In revealing his name “I am who am,” God seeks to ignite once again hiscovenantal relationship with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,who had been languishing in Egyptian slavery. The name “I am who am”both recalls God’s free covenantal relationship with and for Israel (as mostmodern commentators interpret it) and reveals a metaphysical truth aboutGod’s essence or nature. As the Jewish exegete Michael Fishbane remarks:

Before the name YHWH is revealed in v.15 to Moses as the name of theancient God of the patriarchs, a midrashic play on this name is given (v.14)

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a controlling story, into which the arguments of the Gentiles must be grafted” (ThomasAquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995]: 110). In light of the idolatry from which Israelwas set apart, Fergus Kerr puts it another way: “Far from being an exercise in rationalisticapologetics, the purpose of arguing for God’s existence is to protect God’s transcendence”(After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism [Oxford: Blackwell, 2002]: 58).44 From this it will be clear that no opposition between “metaphysics” and “history” isnecessary. See Armand Maurer, “St. Thomas and Historicity,” in Being and Knowing: Studiesin Thomas Aquinas and Later Medieval Philosophers (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of MedievalStudies, 1990): 95–116. As Maurer concludes, “Does not the crisis of metaphysics and his-toricity described so well by Fackenheim result from the transcendental turn taken by phi-losophy since Descartes?” (116).45 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 77.

– a “play” of profound theological seriousness, since it serves to character-ize this God through His name. God says to Moses that He is ‘ehyeh ‘asher‘ehyeh, “I shall be that which I shall be,” and that he (Moses) should tellthe people, “ ‘ehyeh (I shall be) has sent me to you” (v.14). No more, weseem to be cautioned, may be ascribed to God than that. He is the Uncon-ditioned one who shall be as He shall be.46

Following a long tradition of Jewish and Christian interpretation, Aquinasfocuses on the latter meaning as the dynamic foundation for the former:God reveals himself to be sheer infinite existence, the one who is andwho thus has the power to redeem Israel.47 God names himself simply byusing the verb “to be” and thereby reveals the unfathomable mystery ofhis simplicity – the “Unconditioned one,” in Fishbane’s phrase. No crea-ture could name himself by the name “to be.” Augustine describes thiswell in remarking of the name “I am who am” that “Scripture wouldsurely not have said that, unless it were meant to be understood in somespecial way peculiar to God.”48 All creatures are a certain limited way ofbeing, a being something, rather than sheer incomprehensible being. AsIsrael gradually recognized, this name requires a scathing critique of allidolatry.

In 1, q.13, a.11, Aquinas examines Exodus 3:13–15 in more detail. Heargues that the name “He who is,” more than any other name, “mostproperly” expresses the divinity. As Aquinas describes the giving of thename to Moses, “It is written that when Moses asked, If they should sayto me, What is His name? what shall I say to them? the Lord answered him,Thus shalt thou say to them, HE WHO IS [Qui est] hath sent me to you(Exodus 3:13–14). Therefore this name HE WHO IS, most properlybelongs to God.”49 Exploring this name metaphysically, Aquinas gives threereasons for this view that “He who is” expresses God (as one) in the

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46 Michael Fishbane, Text and Texture: Close Readings of Selected Biblical Texts (New York:Schocken Books, 1979): 67; cf. for a study of intratextual development of biblical themesthat, while concerned with the Hebrew Bible, is valuable for understanding how Exodus3 functions in Jesus’ naming of himself, see Fishbane’s Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).47 1, q.2, a.3. It is not for nothing that Aquinas’s treatise on God as one includes discussions of God’s justice, mercy, providence, predestination, book of life, power, andbeatitude. Cf. Jean-Marc Laporte, “Beatitude in the Structure of Aquinas’ Summa: Is Ia 26a Stray Question?” Toronto Journal of Theology 18 (2002): 143–52.48 Saint Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press,1991): Book 1, ch. 1, no. 2.49 1, q.13, a.11, sed contra.

highest way. First, the name “He who is” signifies being and nothingmore.50 It conveys God’s simplicity. Second, citing John Damascene,Aquinas notes that “He who is” does not determine any particular modeof being. Since we cannot know what God is, but only that God is, namesthat are broader or less determined are more expressive of the reality ofGod than are more determinative names. Being is a broader name thangood, because only something that is, is good. Third, citing Augustine,Aquinas notes that the name “He who is” signifies God’s sheer presence,his eternally present existence that encompasses past, present, and futuretime in its sheer “to be.” Precisely as the God of Abraham, Isaac, andJacob, God is active intimately without being limited by temporality. Inall three ways, the name “He who is” (or “I am” or “I will be”) ensuresboth God’s transcendence and his active immanence.

By naming himself in these ways – first by means of the verb “to be,”second the by the name “YHWH,” and third as “the God of your fathers,the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,” the God ofIsrael associates his historical salvific activity with his metaphysical reality.In the Gospel of John, Jesus identifies himself as this creating and redeem-ing God: “Before Abraham was, I am” (8:58).51 When such biblical textsprompt metaphysical questioning in the tradition of Greek philosophy, is

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50 Aidan Nichols, O.P. puts it this way: “Although a biblical scholarship more attuned to the nuances of the Hebrew original would want to find more in the revelation of thedivine name than simply metaphysics, it is hard to deny that the biblical author is makingsome kind of statement about the God of the Fathers as a unique referent of the languageof being. To this extent – a considerable extent! – the ancient and medieval exegesis of what is on any showing a key text of the biblical revelation is abundantly justified” (Discovering Aquinas [London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2002]: 43).51 See Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans, 2001): 87–92. Thompson argues:

the link between Jesus’ statement and the divine OT “I am” is through the middleterm, life. Jesus claims to share in God’s kind of existence, eternal existence, exis-tence that does not “come into being” but that simply “is” (8:35; 1:1,2). This lifehe has from the living Father (6:57; 5:26; 10:18). In thus using the absolute “I am,”Jesus does not simply appropriate to himself a “name” for God, but he does uselanguage that is particularly redolent of the passage in Exodus 3:14 when he uttersthe “I am” as the climax to his discourse about his authority to bestow life. Furthermore, the “I am” of the Gospel may be even more allusive of the similarphrases in Isaiah, where the emphasis falls both on God’s eternity and on God’sunique identity as creator of all and sovereign over all. Both the biblical and later Jewish interpretative traditions make clear that the interpretation of God’s name,revealed in the incident of the burning bush, was inextricably linked to God’s life-giving power, in terms of past and future creation of life. (91)

the priority of the revelation of the living God to Moses thereby imper-iled? One might ask what such metaphysical reflection upon YHWH’srevelation of his name “I am who am” intends to achieve. Does it enablethe theologian to draw closer to the living God active in history?Acknowledging a debt to the work of Robert Sokolowski, ThomasWeinandy finds – because of the Christian doctrine of creation – a unityof metaphysical and historical naming of God in Christian, as opposed toclassical Greek, thought:

Within Greek thought these attributes [e.g., imperishability, perfection,goodness, power] constitute God as one who is removed from, even ifrelated to, all else that is. They constitute him as transcendent in the senseof not only making him other than the cosmic order, but also as oftenbeing incapable of actively relating to the cosmic order. Within theJudeo/Christian tradition these attributes do constitute God as wholly otherthan all else, but they equally constitute him as Creator and so immediatelyrelated to all else that is.52

With many modern commentators, Soulen assumes that the ontologicalinterpretation belongs to the unwarranted philosophical displacement of

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For a more detailed treatment, arguing that the “I am” statements in John imply onto-logical unity with the divine Father, see David Mark Ball, “I Am” in John’s Gospel: Literary Function, Background, and Theological Implications (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,1996). Christopher Seitz views John 8:58 as “a clear reference to the ‘ehyeh ‘aser ‘ehyeh ofExodus 3:15” (Seitz, Word without End, 257).52 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 72; see also Weinandy’s survey of the Old Testament’s portraitof God, 41–63. Weinandy goes on to connect the “I am” that names the one divine Act withthe Persons as verbs, relational modes of pure Act. While “essence” and “Person” are the samein God, Gilles Emery is right to insist upon the practice of “redoublement” in our contem-plation of the triune God, so as to avoid conceptual conflation of divine unity and Trinity.Carl Sträter, followed by Timothy Smith, is thus mistaken in “defining ‘divine essence’ as thetotal divine reality” (Timothy Smith, Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology, [Washington, D.C.:Catholic University of America Press, 2003], 25). Smith holds, “In order to insure that thedoctrine of the Trinity is integral to the entire Summa, the subject of the early questions mustbe properly clarified to include the totality of God, encompassing what is distinct as well aswhat is common and one. It is the abstracted whole of the Godhead that is seen as a unity andexists, is simple, is perfect, is good, infinite, immutable, eternal, and one” (47). But as Emeryremarks, “One need not have recourse to the quite embarrassing concept of ‘total essence,’ asC. Sträter has done, in order to explicate the first section of the treatise on God. Since the rela-tions 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 expressedby the complex redoublement of our discourse joining the aspect of the divine substance andthat of the relative property, this relative property being identical to the divine substance in thereality of God” (Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in St. ThomasAquinas?” The Thomist 64 [2000]: 534, chapter 5 of his Trinity in Aquinas [Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003]).

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53 Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001): 171.54 Ibid., 174.55 Ibid., 175.

YHWH. If Weinandy is right, however, the ontological or metaphysicalinterpretation underscores the identity of the God of Abraham, Isaac, andJacob precisely as the creating and redeeming God.

It does not seem a stretch to suppose that at the same time as he revealshis personal name YHWH, God reveals his metaphysical reality, in all itsconceptual incomprehensibility. The name “I am who am,” a name thatis necessarily metaphysical, does not on Aquinas’s interpretation trap Israel’sGod within the limitations of Aristotle’s (idolatrous) prime mover. Rather,the name belongs to the history of Israel’s and the Church’s striving againstidolatrous conceptions of the divine being, a history that flows throughthe inspired contemplative practices of the prophets. As Christopher Seitzsays in summarizing prayer in the Old Testament:

Prayer, it would seem, belongs to the realm of truth, from the standpointof human beings within the covenant, and concerns God’s holy self, fromthe standpoint of the divine. Certain individuals are better at staying withthe truth than others. This truth has a twofold character: (1) truth aboutGod’s character and self and (2) truth about the situation of judgment andGod’s absence or withdrawal from the covenant relationship for a season.53

The prophets are those whose (contemplative) prayer corresponds to thetruth. Like Isaiah, they are those who have sapientially “seen” the gloryof God and whose lips have been “touched” by the searing (liturgical)presence of his mercy (Isaiah 6). Connecting the prayer of the prophetsto the prayer of the prophesied “servant” who will bear all sins, Seitz statesthat “the servant is a man of prayer. . . . His prayer is but the utterance ofhis life itself, which is given up in obedience – like Moses before him.”54

For Seitz, then, the prophets’ contemplation cannot be separated from thetransformative disclosure of the true divine names: “To speak about prayerin the Old Testament, therefore, is to speak of God’s intimate disclosureand the way that disclosure penetrates to the heart of prayer as presentedin the New Testament.”55

It follows that were one to imagine the reception of the name “I amwho I am” or “I am who am” simply as a reception of a fact, a datumabout God, one would miss how Scripture contains within itself “meta-physics” as the contemplative demand for transformative truth. Aquinasrecognizes Moses as a supreme contemplative. For Aquinas, Moses is the

greatest prophet of Israel because he is above all a contemplative of God’sessence; as a contemplative, he knows God sufficiently to lead Israel awayfrom the idolatry of the Egyptians, spiritual (and physical) slavery.56 AsDeuteronomy states, “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israellike Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (34:10).57 Moses’s faceshines with the glory of the Lord, whom he meets on Mount Sinai andin the Tent of Meeting (see Exodus 33:11, 34:1–24, 40:34–6; Numbers12:8).58 Such face-to-face knowledge begins with the revelation of thename “I am who am.”

As the Torah makes clear, both Moses’ contemplative life and his cor-responding active life revolve around his mission to separate Israel fromthe idolatry of the nations. This intimate connection of his divinelyordained mission with the (revealed) truth about God suggests, as Aquinasholds, that Moses, in comparison with the patriarchs, “was more fullyinstructed in the simplicity of the Divine essence.” The importance ofMoses’ receiving the name “I am who am” at the very moment of hisreceiving his active mission can hardly be overemphasized.59 Agreeing withtraditional Jewish understanding of the relationship of Moses to the laterprophets, Aquinas states that “all the other revelations to the prophets werefounded” upon this fundamental revelation to Moses.60 He argues that theOld Testament, which for him is entirely a collection of prophetic books,61

centers upon the Mosaic revelation of God’s simplicity. Thus, the MosaicLaw has its own integrity “by withdrawing men from idolatrous worship”and including “them in the worship of one God, by Whom the humanrace was to be saved through Christ.”62 The written law reveals the neces-sity of apprehending God’s simple being in order to attain to the end –

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56 2–2, q.174, a.4; cf. a.6.57 Norman Podhoretz remarks, “Title or no title, Moses is clearly the prophet. . . .[M]ost important of all, it is Moses who meets with God on Sinai and brings back theTen Commandments. The first of these ratifies in concrete language Abraham’s moreabstract conception of the war that has been declared against idolatry” (Podhoretz, TheProphets [New York: The Free Press, 2002], 25–6).58 Janet Martin Soskice argues that the danger of falling into metaphysical idolatry can beavoided once the ability to speak about God is seen as “the gift of God’s self-disclosure inhistory (both Israel’s and our own)” that is received in prayer (Soskice, “The Gift of theName: Moses and the Burning Bush,” Gregorianum 79 [1998]: 231–46, at 246).59 2–2, q.174, a.6.60 Ibid. Moses is the great teacher of God’s oneness, while Christ Jesus reveals the mysteryof the Trinity.61 For discussion of this point, see Nichols, Discovering Aquinas, 25.62 1–2, q.98, a.2.

God himself – that God has ordained for rational creatures. Knowing Godas sheer infinite “being” does not involve capturing God in a concept; onthe contrary, a proper apprehension of God as “I am who am” destroysall conceptual idolatries that seek to place God within a finite creaturelycategory.63

In coming to know God as “YHWH” under the rubric of oneness,the Israelites do not come to know an abstraction superseded by the revelation of the Trinity. Within his treatise on God’s essence, Aquinasdiscusses the name “YHWH” in 1, q.13, a.9. This discussion representsa development in Aquinas’s work, brought about by his reading of MosesMaimonides. As Armand Maurer has noted, Aquinas discusses the nameYHWH only in the Summa Theologiae, his most mature work.64 Aquinasidentifies the significance of the name YHWH as follows: “if any namewere given to signify God not as to His nature but as to His suppositum,accordingly as He is considered as this something, that name would beabsolutely incommunicable; as for instance, perhaps the Tetragrammatonamong the Hebrews.”65 He holds that, as regards its ability to signify theincommunicable “substance” of the one God, “YHWH” is the mostproper name for God, more proper than “God” or “He who is.”66

Through Moses, God draws the Israelites away from idolatry by givingthem personal knowledge of himself. Thus “I am who am” is not anabstract name, but rather describes YHWH as known personally by Israel.

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63 Jean-Luc Marion acquits Aquinas of falling into “onto-theology,” in which “being” isunivocal and thus idolatrous, in his well-known retraction, “Saint Thomas d’Aquin etl’onto-théo-logie,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 31–66. See also Michel Nodé-Langlois,“Ontologie et théologie,” Revue Thomiste 102 (2002): 179–201; Géry Prouvost, “La ques-tion des noms divins: Saint Thomas entre apophatisme et ontothéologie,” Revue Thomiste97 (1997): 485–511. Provoust provides a systematic overview of the topic, sketches theviews of the Greek Fathers, and then surveys various positions taken within the Thomistictradition.64 Armand Maurer, C.S.B., “St. Thomas on the Sacred Name ‘Tetragrammaton’,” Medi-aeval Studies 34 (1972): 275–86, at 275–8. Maurer states, “The Summa Theologiae is the onlywork of St. Thomas, to my knowledge, that recognizes a divine name that is in a sensemore suitable than ‘He who is’ because it expresses the ineffable and incommunicable divinesubstance. This is ‘Tetragrammaton’, the sacred name revealed by God to Moses in Exodus.The Summa does not deny anything said in the earlier writings about the appropriatenessof the name ‘He who is’, but it adds a significant item to the doctrine of the divine names,while developing this doctrine in a remarkable way” (278). Maurer’s essay is helpful alsoin describing the medieval signification theory in the context of which Aquinas treats notonly the Tetragrammaton, but also “He who is” and “God.”65 1, q.13, a.9.66 1, q.13, a.11, ad 1.

The name conveys and guarantees YHWH’s promise to be personally(covenantally) present, as sheer Presence, not only in the past and present,but also in the future.

Should Christians, however, who know that the one God subsists inthree Persons, contemplate the one God known personally by Israel asYHWH? As Bruce Marshall points out in his own response to Soulen, ifChristians worship Israel’s God, then Israel’s God is in fact better namedas “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”67 Does this mean that Israel’s God(“YHWH”) is superseded? Aquinas asks the seemingly odd question ofwhether the divine nature, abstracted by our mental operation from thePersons, could assume a human nature, just as the Person of the Son did.68

In answer, he first points out that this kind of abstraction, if we are seekingto know God as he is, is impossible, since “it is impossible for the intel-lect to circumscribe something in God and leave the rest . . .”69. God’s sim-plicity (the reality that he is pure Act, not a composite) makes God beyondthe reach of our mode of knowing, which relies on abstracting one aspectfrom another and thus is suited to knowing composite things. But oncethe weakness of our intellect (its inability to know God as he is, prior tothe beatific vision) is recognized, one can suitably abstract the Personsfrom the divine nature, as Aquinas does in his De Deo, in order to con-template what is one in God.

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67 Bruce Marshall, “Do Christians Worship the God of Israel?,” in Knowing the Triune God: The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church, ed. James J. Buckley and David S.Yeago (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001): 231–64. Marshall poses the question of super-sessionism and explores how the Christian tradition has understood the God of the OldTestament. He notes that many Fathers of the Church, as well as more recent figures, haveequated the God of the Old Testament with a particular Person of the Trinity, especiallythe Word (Son) or the Father (cf. Rahner). Of the latter option, Marshall notes:

The deeper problem, though, is that equating the God of Israel with the Trinitar-ian Father apparently makes idolaters of Christians. Israel’s God, after all, claimsexclusive rights to human worship; in Isaiah’s language, he gives not his glory toanother (cf. Isaiah 42:8). If this God is simply identical with the Father, then theSon and the Spirit are not the God of Israel – not the being referred to by (orwhose presence is embodied in the utterance of) the Tetragrammaton. Were that thecase, then in worshipping them – in giving them glory along with the Father –Christians would worship that which is not the God of Israel, and thus give theirhearts to false gods. (250).

68 The significance of this text has been pointed out by Gilles Emery, O.P., “Essentialismor Personalism,” 557–9. Bruce Marshall also remarks upon this text from Thomas (“DoChristians Worship the God of Israel?,” 243, fn. 17).69 3, q.3, a.3.

This abstraction, justified under the rubric of “redoublement” or thenecessity of studying the triune God from two irreducible perspectives,70

enables the theologian both to avoid positing a fourth in God and to avoiddepriving the divine essence (what is common in God) of “personal”reality. Aquinas explains:

Because in God what is, and whereby it is, are one, if any one of the thingswhich are attributed to God in the abstract is considered in itself, abstractedfrom all else, it will still be something subsisting, and consequently a Person,since it is an intellectual nature. Hence just as we now say three Persons,on account of holding three personal properties, so likewise if we mentallyexclude the personal properties there will still remain in our thought theDivine Nature as subsisting and as a Person.71

The divine nature thus understood – it is crucial to see that a fourthPerson is not posed here, since God is under consideration as one – couldassume a human nature to its subsistence. The corollary that Aquinas drawsis the point towards which we have been moving. If we understand thedivine nature “as subsisting and as a Person,” Aquinas states, we are think-ing of God in the way that Jewish believers do.72 This logical abstraction– knowing God as Jewish believers do, without thereby knowing God inan “a-Trinitarian” way, since the Trinity is the one God – is undertakenby Aquinas in his treatise on the divine essence.73 Aquinas explicitly

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70 On “redoublement” in Trinitarian theology, see Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism,”534.71 3, q.3, a.3, ad 1.72 3, q.3, a.3, ad 2.73 As Bruce Marshall recognizes, this kind of solution is crucial for avoiding superses-sionism. Marshall states:

Granted that the descriptions “is the God of Israel” and “is the Father, the Son, andthe Holy Spirit” actually succeed in identifying the same being, and granted thatrecourse to the first as well as the second is necessary to identify the one God, itmay seem that at least on this score, supersessionism has safely been put to rest. Butobviously it has not. Granting these two claims entails that Christians cannot iden-tify the one God without recognizing that he is Israel’s Lord, but it also entails thatJews cannot identify the one God at all. If both of these descriptions are necessaryto identify the one God, then of course neither of them is, by itself, sufficient. Thismeans that the God of Israel cannot actually be identified without reference to theFather, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (“Do Christians Worship the God of Israel?,”260).

Rejecting this view, Marshall notes, “It would be possible for Trinitarian theology to avoidthese unwanted supersessionist outcomes by granting that both descriptions are not in fact

recognizes his discussion of the divine essence as not a discussion of an abstract God, but of a personal, living God – the one God who is the Trinity.

Karl Rahner, however, raises a crucial question at this point: is not theGod of Israel already known as Father? If so, would it not be a mistaketo investigate the God of Israel, YHWH, by means of metaphysical explo-ration of the name “I am who am,” rather than direct engagement withthe name “Father”? Why contemplate YHWH as one (sheer “to be”)rather than immediately contemplating God as Father? For Rahner, as wehave seen, the Thomistic treatise on the divine essence distorts Trinitar-ian theology by undertaking a metaphysical analysis of God outside of thecontext of Scripture, of salvation history: “For should one make use ofsalvation history, it would soon become apparent that one speaks alwaysof 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 hisSpirit.”74 Drawing upon his earlier article “Theos in the New Testament,”Rahner goes on to make this point even more strongly. He states, “TheGod of the old covenant – oJ Qeoz, as such – is already known and confessed in the experience of salvation and revelation. About this God,who is already known, who has already assumed a relation to man, wefind out, through the event of the New Testament, that he sends us hisSon and the Spirit of his Son.”75 The God experienced by Israel in Old

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necessary to identify God. In order to pick the one God out, it suffices to describe himas the God of Israel. For this purpose one need not, in fact, describe him as the Father,the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (262). This is exactly Aquinas’s approach. Like Marshall,Aquinas makes clear that this does not reduce the importance of the revelation of God’sTrinitarian name. In Marshall’s words, “To say that the Jewish people may identify the onetrue God without referring to the persons of the Trinity is not, therefore, to suggest thatGod might not be the Trinity, or that being the Trinity is somehow not as basic to God’sidentity as being the one God” (263).74 Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1998 [1970]), 18.75 Ibid., 59. C. Kavin Rowe has argued against this view in “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002): 295–312:

Among both Protestant and Roman Catholic exegetes and systematic theologiansthere is a common (and in many ways understandable) assumption that YHWH, theGod of the Old Testament, is the Father only. This assumption, however, will notstand under exegetical scrutiny. The New Testament texts never identify the Fatheras the Son or vice-versa, but they do give the divine name kyrios (=YHWH) to boththe Father and the Son. The word kyrios (and less frequently theos) and the way inwhich it is used in the New Testament in Old Testament citations, hymns of worship,prayers, soteriological statements, etc. exerts a unitive pressure in two directions with

Testament times is Father because he is experienced as “the concrete God,and him as necessarily, simply, and absolutely unoriginate.”76 Admittedly,this God is not named (or known as) Father in the fullest sense until therevelation of the Son, but nonetheless the God revealed to Israel is thePerson of the Father.77

Aquinas agrees that the God revealed to Israel can be called Father, butdiffers from Rahner by distinguishing senses of the word “Father.” Hestates that “in the Old Testament the Father was known under the aspectof the God Almighty. . . . although they knew him as God Almighty, they did not know him as the Father of a consubstantial Son.”78 In otherwords, Israel, through the revelation given to Moses from which flowedall other prophetic revelations, knew God’s omnipotence as belonging tohis identity as YHWH, “I am who am.” Israel knew attributes that pertainequally to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Israelites did not know,however, the properties that distinguish the Persons. Had Israel knownthat the Father was “uncaused,” not merely in the sense that God is uncaused but in relation to the intra-divine “causation” that distin-guishes the Persons, then Israel would have known the Trinity. ForAquinas, Israel – as a whole – can be said to have known God the Trinityin his common nature as “I am” (and in this sense to know the unorig-inate God), but cannot be said to know the Trinity in its intra-divine rela-tions of origin (i.e., in the sense of “unoriginate” that pertains uniquelyto the Father).

Soulen’s concerns, therefore, are addressed by Aquinas. Rather thanbypassing God’s eternal identity as YHWH, Aquinas integrates his meta-physical reflection on the name “I am who am” into a complex accountof YHWH, Moses, the Mosaic Law, and the relationship of Christians tothe contemplative life enjoyed by Moses and sustained, in its critique of

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respect to its referent, toward the Father and toward Jesus. This pressure moves usto the conclusion that YHWH is not the Father alone. There is a differentiationinto Father and Son within the unity of the one Lord (kyrios heis in Deuteronomy6:4). (303).

76 Rahner, The Trinity, 59.77 Ibid., 60. Rahner adds, “But this changes nothing of the fact that, when and insofaras the Trinity has not yet been revealed, the concrete God, who is necessarily conceivedas unoriginate, and with whom the history of pre-Trinitarian revelation is concerned, isthe ‘Father’ ” (60).78 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, part 2, ch. 8, lect. 2, no.1161 (trans. James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher [Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publi-cations, 1999], 24–5).

idolatry, by the Mosaic Law.79 Through Moses and Israel, God teacheshumankind about the being and simplicity of God. For Aquinas, thedivine name given to Moses fully displays the divine unity: “Hear, OIsrael, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4).80 Understoodin this way, contemplative knowledge of God involves a double move-ment.81 This movement begins with contemplating YHWH, God knownas one and as sheer infinite being, who is not a philosophical abstractionbut rather the personal God. In a second movement, this God is con-templated in his threeness. As Gilles Emery has shown, what intrinsicallyunites these two movements in Trinitarian theology is the concept of“relation,” which contains two aspects, relation in (esse) and relation to(ratio). The contemplation of YHWH, God known as one, engages “rela-tion” in the first sense. Emery points out:

For Aquinas, there is not on one side the unique essence, and on the otherside the relation. Everything converges in the relation, which comprises theelement of the personal distinction (ratio) and the element of the divinehypostatic subsistence (esse). One sees very well here that, contrary to whatbecame the common teaching of the Thomist school, Thomas Aquinas doesnot carry out a division between a treatise “De Deo uno” and “De Deotrino”. Instead he brings together in the analysis of the relation the aspectof the common essence of the three persons (subsistence of the divine esse)and the aspect of the personal distinction (relation of origin). These twoaspects constitute together the theological notion of the divine person.82

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79 Armand Maurer, C.S.B. has identified Aquinas’s sources for his knowledge of the Tetra-grammaton: St. Jerome, the Venerable Bede, and above all Maimonides. See Maurer, “St.Thomas on the Sacred Name ‘Tetragrammaton’,” 282–4.80 1, q.11, a.3; see also a.4. God’s oneness depends upon his simplicity as sheer “to be.”81 Cf. the corpus of Gilles Emery, beginning with his essay “Le Père et l’oeuvre trinitaire de création selon le Commentaire des Sentences de S. Thomas d’Aquin,” in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris, ed. C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires,1993): 85–117. See also Ghislain Lafont, O.S.B., Peut-on connaître Dieu en Jésus-Christ? (Paris:Cerf, 1969).82 Gilles Emery, O.P., “Trinité et unité de Dieu dans la scolastique XIIe–XIVe siècle,” inLe Christianisme est-il un monothéisme?, eds Gilles Emery and Pierre Gisel (Geneva: Labor etFides, 2001): 217, chapter 1 of his Trinity in Aquinas. Emery’s analysis of “relation” offersa better solution than does Dumitru Staniloae’s defense of the doctrine of the Trinity as aphilosophical breakthrough. Staniloae writes:

There was a time when the coincidence of opposites was considered incompatiblewith reason. Wherever a synthesis of such a kind was encountered – and the wholeof reality is like this – reason would break it up into irreconcilable and contradic-tory notions, setting up some elements over against others or trying to melt them

Because of this fundamental integration, Christians call upon God by thename Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rather than by the name YHWH. Yet,as Christopher Seitz notes, the “Christian confession that the name ofGod has been given to Jesus,” and that God is now named in and throughJesus as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, “means not that the attributes ofGod as rendered by the literal sense of the Old Testament have becomelost in some transfer. Holiness, righteousness, justice, mercy, compassion,and jealousy, as these describe YHWH in the Old Testament, remain trueof God in his essence.”83 When the treatise on the Trinity integrates thetruths arrived at by contemplation of YHWH the “I am who am,” thebalance between the covenants is maintained. The Old Testament is ful-filled, but not superseded, by the New. YHWH, understood in light ofthe Trinitarian name revealed by Jesus Christ, names the God personallyrevealed to Israel through Moses – the God who in his identity and attrib-utes, his being, simplicity, and Presence, fuels Christian contemplation.84

As Augustine puts it:

yhwh and being 73

all down by force into one new element. . . . It is a fact that plurality maintains unityand unity maintains plurality, and that the decline of either of them means the weak-ness or disappearance of the life or existence of any individual entity. This concep-tion of the mode of being of reality is recognized today as superior to former ideasof what was rational, while under the pressure of reality the idea of what is ratio-nal has itself become complex and antinomic. Assertions formerly considered irra-tional because of their apparently contradictory character are now recognized asindications of a natural stage towards which reason must strive, for the understand-ing of this stage constitutes the natural destiny of reason, and the stage is itself animage of the supernatural character of that perfect unity of what is distinct withinthe Holy Trinity. (Staniloae, The Experience of God, 250).

83 Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture, 144. In this chapter,entitled “Handing Over the Name: Christian Reflection on the Divine Name YHWH,”Seitz is likewise responding to Soulen’s article, although he mentions the article only in a footnote. (Seitz also responds to Soulen in “Our Help Is in the Name of the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth: Scripture and Creed in Ecumenical Trust,” in NiceneChristianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism, ed. C. Seitz [Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press,2001]: 19–34.)84 Similarly, C. Kavin Rowe (himself attentive to Soulen’s article) points to “kyrios” as aname indicative, in both Testaments, of the divine unity: “Read canonically, then, the fullunity of God as expressed through his name kyrios is that of Father, Son, and Spirit: the– (one Lord) of Deuteronomy 6:4 is in the New Testament differentiated into kyrios pater(Father), kyrios iesous (Son), and kyrios pneuma (Spirit). Thus the oneness and unity is notimpaired but is dynamically upheld through the use of his name kyrios for the Father, Son,and Spirit, the one Lord God” (Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,”304).

This contemplation is promised us as the end of all activities and the eternalperfection of all joys. For we are God’s sons, and it has not yet been manifestedwhat we shall be; we know that when he is manifested we shall be like him, forwe shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). What we shall contemplate as we liveforever is what he told his servant Moses: I am who I am. And so you shallsay to the children of Israel, He who is sent me to you (Exodus 3:14).85

Aquinas avoids in his treatment of God’s essence the form of superses-sionism that Soulen ascribes to the classical account. Another question,however, might now come to the fore: is YHWH, as narrated in the OldTestament, truly the “I am who am,” or does YHWH’s character in thenarrative of the Old Testament actually develop in ways that do not squarewith YHWH’s claim to be the infinite fullness of being (the only onewho can say that his identity or nature is existence)? This question canbe answered only on the basis of an account of how to interpret the OldTestament’s characterizations of YHWH, and it may be here that Soulen’slarger concerns would emerge. This task – examining how Aquinas’s treatise draws upon various Old Testament characterizations of YHWH –is that of the next chapter.

74 yhwh and being

85 Saint Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press,1991): Book 1, ch. 3, no. 17 (77).

Chapter Three

SCRIPTURE ANDMETAPHYSICS IN THETHEOLOGY OF GOD’S

KNOWLEDGE AND WILL

As Thomas Weinandy has shown in detail, it seems to many that whereasthe revealed God of the Bible cares compassionately and responsively(covenantally) for creatures, the God of metaphysics, idolatrously inclosedin a conceptual box of human deductions, remains distant. This chapterwill seek to address this concern as regards God’s knowledge and will.Specifically, the chapter will compare Aquinas’s theology of God’s knowl-edge and will – which flows from his analysis of God’s being, simplicity,and perfection that we examined in the previous chapter1 – to that of aJewish biblical exegete and theologian, Jon D. Levenson. Levenson bothdescribes well the exegetical problems that face metaphysical accounts ofGod in his unity and argues powerfully that the “God of metaphysics”cannot be the God of the covenants. I will focus on Levenson’s workrather than drawing in other biblical exegetes, partly for reasons of spacebut also because the great majority of biblical exegetes share Levenson’srejection of Aristotelian metaphysics, if not all of his particular exegeticalpositions. By comparing Levenson and Aquinas on the attributes of Godin his unity, I hope to expose the way that Aquinas’s metaphysical accountof God’s unity defends God’s radical presence (or immanence) far betterthan can a nonmetaphysical account, and to show how Aquinas’s meta-

1 The present chapter thus completes our analysis of Summa Theologiae 1, qq.1–26.

physical analysis, which serves his biblical exegesis, strengthens his specu-lative theology.

Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence attempts to sever the God of Israel from metaphysicalinterpretations. He identifies three key errors that have distorted, and continue to distort, Jewish and Christian theological depiction of Israel’sGod: “the residue of the static Aristotelian conception of deity as perfect,unchanging being; the uncritical tendency to affirm the constancy ofdivine action; and the conversion of biblical creation theology into anaffirmation of the goodness of whatever is.”2 The primary result of theseerrors, Levenson thinks, is “to trivialize creation by denying the creator aworthy opponent.”3 As exegetically mistaken, these errors will not holdwhen confronted with evidence of God’s changing, inconstant will; God’suncertain knowledge; and God’s need to master (with the liturgical assis-tance of Israel) the evil impulses in the world and in himself in order towin the total mastery over creation that Israel knows, in faith, that he willwin. Levenson argues not only from the biblical texts themselves, but alsoon the basis of the rabbinical tradition and his own evident acquaintancewith (largely Christian) process theology. I will examine Levenson’s cri-tique and his constructive account of the God of the Hebrew Bible/OldTestament in some detail. Aided by Levenson’s critiques, I will then ad-dress Aquinas’s theology of the knowledge and will that belong to Godin his unity.

76 god’s knowledge and will

2 Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipo-tence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), xxv. Levenson added this prefaceto the 1994 edition, responding to his critics and elaborating his viewpoint.3 Ibid. Following Robert Sokolowski, Guy Mansini, O. S. B. has argued that until Godis revealed as transcendent, evil appears to be inevitable and part of the natural order:

It is this sense of things, the natural inevitability of evil, that constitutes the back-ground against which to appreciate the word that Christianity speaks about evil. ThisChristian word trumps the notes of inevitability and finality that evil carries as naturally presented to us. Nature is no framework that includes God, and so neithercan evil be the ineluctable thing it seemed to be as a function of nature, which isa principle whereby things happen not always “always” but sometimes only “for themost part” – in other words, fallibly. Rather, evil acquires both a contingency anda nonfinality it does not possess as a natural phenomenon. (Guy Mansini, O. S. B.,“Error, Guilt, and the Knowledge of God: Questions About Robert Sokolowski’s‘Christian Distinction’,” Logos 5 [2002]: 117).

On this view, “creation” has its fullest meaning when God’s transcendence is revealed.

1 Jon D. Levenson on the God of Israel

As evidence of God’s changing, inconstant will, Levenson draws attentionto a passage from the prophet (deutero-)Isaiah. This portion of Isaiah’sprophecy is generally seen as highly sophisticated in its portrait of God’sunity, omniscience, and omnipotence. Levenson quotes Isaiah 54:7–8: “For a little while I forsook you, but with vast love I will bring you back.In slight anger, for a moment I hid My face from you; but with kindnesseverlasting I will take you back in love – said the Lord your Redeemer.”4

What does it mean for God, in anger, to forsake Israel by hiding his facefrom Israel for a moment? Noting that this prophecy (as scholars nowthink) was written during the exilic period, Levenson interprets theprophecy in light of the dissonance caused by the Babylonian Exile: “atthe moment, YHWH is failing to exercise his magisterial powers over the world, so that those who revere him suffer the taunts and jeers ofthose who do not.”5 For some reason, YHWH does not will to save hispeople yet. He wills instead to allow chaos to reign. Reading further inIsaiah 54 (v. 9–10), Levenson concludes that YHWH has chosen not to act because he wishes to punish the people for their sins. In Levenson’s view, this suggests that YHWH’s will contains two sides: a punishing side that allows chaos to come close to destroying his people,and a “benevolent, world-ordering side.”6 The two sides are in conflictwithin the divine will, but Israel, in covenantal faith, knows that thebenevolent side will win. Interpreting Isaiah 54, Levenson states, “Theside of God that unleashes them [the waters of chaos], however, is checkedby the side of him that loves and forgives. This latter, friendlier dimen-sion of the divine personality is here articulated as God’s covenantal oathto Noah, his sacred and inviolable pledge to maintain the created order.”7

Levenson suggests that these two dimensions of the divine will, andtheir conflict, are on display wherever the biblical authors meditated uponthe divergence between the God they knew in covenantal faith, and therealism of their actual historical experience of chaos, sin, and suffering.Commenting upon Psalm 89, Levenson notes, “As in Psalm 74 and Isaiah51, so here we find a jarring juxtaposition of the hymnic affirmation ofGod’s world-ordering power and endless faithfulness and the grim reality

god’s knowledge and will 77

4 Ibid., 21.5 Ibid.6 Ibid.7 Ibid., 21–2.

of historical experience.”8 Levenson emphasizes that both aspects ofYHWH’s personality are allowed full range by the biblical authors: “againhere the remarkable point is that the author or redactor refuses to choosebetween faith and realism or to beat one into the mold of the other.Indeed, as v. 50 shows, the speaking voice of the psalm dares to reproachGod for the incongruity of the two.”9 This allowance for “incongruity”or inconstancy in God is in marked contrast to what Levenson has earlierdescribed as the uncritical “Aristotelian” effort to smooth over incon-gruities. If history is evidence of YHWH’s will, then the covenants andcrises of history indicate a conflict within the divine will itself.

Levenson notes, however, that this movement towards asserting anunchanging divine will is not only an Aristotelian one: it is found within theBible itself, as well as in the rabbinic tradition. As an intra-biblical example,Levenson cites 1 Chronicles 21:1, which parallels 2 Samuel 24:1. 2 Samuelrecords that “the anger of Lord again flared up against Israel; and He incitedDavid against them”; whereas the Chronicler, in his later version of thesame event, states rather that “Satan arose against Israel and incited David tonumber Israel.” The Chronicler is unable to allow for the biblical testimonyto a real division within the divine will. Levenson remarks, “A more refinedand sophisticated sensibility has proven less able to tolerate the idea that Godcan be a cause of evil.”10 For Levenson, such apparent refinements onlytranspose the difficulty, because they hypostasize and divinize the force ofanti-God (be it named Satan or Amalek). God’s agency is matched andopposed, for a time, by an anti-God; and this force thus takes on divinestatus at least as regards agency. In other words, the evil side within God hasbecome hypostasized (in a Manichean way) as an evil force outside of andopposed to God. Thus, Levenson notes, “In Rabbinic thought Amalek isthe hypostasization of God’s authorship of a world in which Jewry suffers forbeing themselves and of his willingness to allow genocidal anti-Semites tosurvive to strike again. God becomes God, the good God realizes his good-ness, only when he overcomes his negative pole. Until then, his unity isfragmented, and his name incomplete.”11 To become God, God must defeatthe anti-God, Amalek (or Satan).

The Bible contains significant evidence, in short, that God’s will is fragmented and changing. Although within the Bible itself, as within the


8 Ibid., 23.9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., 44.11 Ibid., 45.

rabbinic tradition, an effort is made to deny the fragmentation of God’swill, this move results simply in a hypostasization of the evil side of God’swill into an anti-God whom God must fight in order to become God(for the world). Levenson’s basic argument is that if God’s will is one, ifGod’s will is good, and if God’s will is powerful (divine), then God’sagency in the world will show it. The history of human suffering, andespecially the terrible suffering of God’s people, shows otherwise. Thus,God’s will must in fact be divided – as suggested by numerous biblicalpassages – even though God’s people know, in covenantal faith, that God’sgood will eventually must triumph.

In arguing that God’s will is fragmented, Levenson surprisingly sayslittle about God’s knowledge. Is God’s will (according to the Bible) frag-mented because he lacks knowledge, or does God indeed have a malignwill? Indeed, if God has a malign aspect in his will, on what grounds canwe actually consider this evil aspect to be distorted, disordered? Levensonnotes in commenting on Genesis 18 that God is subject to no human oreven divine norms, but rather possesses “a freedom unlimited even by hisown principles of justice and generosity.”12 God’s freedom, then, is notnormed by his knowledge: he might know that something is just, but notdo the just thing. Levenson’s stark (though covenantal) voluntarism nodoubt influences his decision to say little about God’s knowledge, becauseGod’s will ultimately is all that matters. In his theology of creation,however, Levenson also provides exegetical grounds for minimizing God’sknowledge.

As Levenson understands the creation accounts, there is a significantrealm that in the beginning God must conquer for himself, and that iscontinually slipping out of God’s control. “Creation” signifies this con-quest, which is ongoing in the history of the world. Levenson opens hisdiscussion of creation by stating, “We can capture the essence of the ideaof creation in the Hebrew Bible with the word ‘mastery.’ ”13 God “creates”in the sense of mastering pre-existing chaos. With a number of scholars,Levenson holds the doctrine of “creation from nothing” to be mistakenor at least a case of eisegesis. He argues, “Nowhere in the seven-day cre-ation scheme of Genesis 1 does God create the waters; they are most likelyprimordial. The traditional Jewish and Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilocan be found in this chapter only if one translates its first verse as ‘In thebeginning God created the heaven and the earth’ and understands it to


12 Ibid., 150.13 Ibid., 3.

refer to some comprehensive creative act on the first day.”14 Levenson iswilling to suppose that that not only the waters, but also the “other divinebeings” who seem to be referred to when God says “Let us make manin our image” (v. 26), are primordial.15

On this reading, the creation story intends to show that YHWH con-quers not only the primordial chaos (the waters), but also other divinebeings. Levenson finds evidence of this possibility in Psalm 82:1: “Godtakes his stand in the assembly of El; among the gods He pronouncesjudgment.”16 Similarly, Psalm 74 contains a description of a primordialbattle between God and sea-monsters: God’s victory enables him to estab-lish the heavens and “all the bounds of the earth” (v. 17).17 From thesetexts and others like them, Levenson wishes to affirm “God’s total masterynot as something self-evident, unthreatened, and extant from all eternity,but as something won, as something dramatic and exciting.”18 The cre-ative act is an act of conquest and ordering, not an act of causing crea-tures to come into existence and sustaining them in existence (althoughthis latter aspect is somewhat close to what Levenson means by ordering).Since this order is continually threatened, creation (as a “good” order)continually needs to be renewed by God’s powerful agency.

In human history, disorder and chaos generally appear to be winningthe day; but Israel, through its covenantal faith, knows that God willconquer by means of new powerful acts: “Whatever the special act ofGod, in the Hebrew Bible nature is not autonomous and self-sufficient,but dependent upon God’s special solicitude, his tender concern for theordered world.”19 Levenson’s insistence that “creation” is the continuingdrama of divine mastery – the continuing drama of divine renewal of goodorder – is thus opposed to the Deist conception of creation as an act thatoccurred once long ago. Yet, it is clear that in Levenson’s account, allbeings possess absolute ontological autonomy vis-á-vis YHWH, eventhough YHWH may master them and thus constrain this autonomyextrinsically. Levenson’s YHWH could have only limited knowledge ofother beings. YHWH would be creator in the sense of “orderer,” as theone who masters the chaos. The chaos itself must escape YHWH’s fullknowledge, since he is not its creator. In giving order to the primordial


14 Ibid., 5.15 Ibid.16 Ibid., 6.17 Ibid., 9.18 Ibid.19 Ibid., 12.

waters, and defeating the forces of disorder within them, he organizes orforms living beings such as plants, animals, and human beings. He doesnot, however, know exhaustively and intimately their inmost principle. Hedid not give them being, and therefore he cannot comprehend fully theprinciple of their being. Levenson suggests that this inmost principlewould have been a negative force: “It seems more likely that they [theancient rabbis] identified ‘nothing’ [the ‘void’ of Genesis 1:2] with things like disorder, injustice, subjugation, disease, and death. To them, inother words, ‘nothing’ was something – something negative. It was notthe privation of being (as evil is the privation of good in some theodi-cies), but a real, active force, except that its charge was entirely negative.”20

By ordering this “negative charge,” YHWH stamps it with his own positive (ordering rather than disordering) charge; yet, since he does notgive it existence, he cannot know the inmost principle of the negativecharge.

It follows that YHWH could not have exhaustive knowledge of whatwill emerge, in history, when he organizes the “waters.” Nor could heenjoy exhaustive knowledge of human beings. Since human beings woulddepend for existence upon a principle (the negatively charged waters) thatescapes YHWH’s full knowledge (if not his mastery), YHWH could notknow exactly what human beings are going to do as history proceeds. Hecan know only that just as he mastered the waters, he will master humanbeings by his mighty acts. Intrinsically, human beings are radicallyautonomous from YHWH, although YHWH remains capable of master-ing them extrinsically. As Levenson puts it, interpreting Psalm 44, whatis required “is the awareness that history, no less than nature, slips out ofGod’s control and into the hands of obscure but potent forces of malig-nancy that oppose everything he is reputed to uphold.”21 There are massivegaps in God’s mastery of history, let alone in his knowledge of the forcesactive in history. Nonetheless, Levenson affirms that God’s mastery is suf-ficient so that he can be counted upon to master, eventually, those thingsthat “deserve to be blasted from the world. . . . Some of what is, is notyet good.”22 In this historical sense, God is omnipotent.

Thus YHWH’s will is fragmented, his knowledge limited. For thisreason, in creation, both the original event and as an ongoing event,


20 Ibid., xxi.21 Ibid., xxiii. Levenson makes clear here that he is attempting to account for the Holocaust.22 Ibid., xxiv.

YHWH possesses a worthy opponent. The drama for mastery that Levenson believes is depicted by the Old Testament is not only foughtagainst the forces of disorder, ultimately nature and humankind, but alsowithin YHWH himself. For Levenson, biblical Israel – the peopledescended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob according to the flesh – iscaught up in a particular way into this battle. The Temple is the micro-cosm of creation, where creation is continually represented (re-presented),renewed, and re-created.23 The boundaries that God has imposed in hisordering of creation are observed by following the laws that God has givenIsrael; and the rest that is true “creation” (that is, enjoyment of the God’sorder established by God’s mastering and ordering the “negative charge”)is the Sabbath. The Jewish people are thus both a sign of what God hasdone, and participants in the work of “good ordering” that God ispresently doing in human history and will do in the future.24 By theirobedience to YHWH’s laws, even in the midst of terrible chaos and fear-some suffering that seem to render such laws meaningless and the law-giver impotent, observant Jews are sharing in YHWH’s work of orderingthe world and are, by their prayers, challenging YHWH to bring this workto ultimate completion. As Levenson concludes, “Though the persistenceof evil seems to undermine the magisterial claims of the creator-God, it is through submission to exactly those claims that the good order that is creation comes into being.”25 Levenson’s account of YHWH and creation thus is directed ultimately toward upholding the significance, in light of the Holocaust, of Jewish observance of the laws of the Old Testament.26


23 Ibid., 95.24 See ibid., 120 and elsewhere.25 Ibid., 156.26 Cf. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). Miles surveys theliterature of the Old Testament and also concludes that God’s will is fragmented and hisknowledge limited. Although the book is written for a popular audience, Miles has train-ing as a biblical scholar. For Miles, the “God” who emerges as a character from the variousstories of the Old Testament is “an amalgam of several personalities in one character” (6).As the Bible progresses, God “gradually becomes both more unitary and more ethical”(111), but this development merely complicates the portrait of God obtained by the readerof the whole Old Testament. God, Miles thinks, is frequently proclaimed to be one, butspeaks and acts in ways that are incompatible and incongruous (6). Miles holds that “God’smind is cloven” (216). Ultimately, Miles presents a God whose inner psychology seems tovalidate the amoral, fluid personality theories of pop psychology. Walter Brueggemann’sTheology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,1997) adopts Levenson’s position without the grandeur of Levenson’s Jewish liturgical vision(271–2).

Despite his intentions, however, Levenson’s approach inescapably adoptsmetaphysical claims and begs metaphysical questions. For example, thebeing of Levenson’s YHWH is circumscribed or limited by the existenceof the void or waters – the “negative charge” – that he did not create,and from which he gives order to everything. What does it mean to saythat God is limited in being? Would it not make him finite, a being amongbeings (“onto-theology”)? Would he then be worthy of worship? Wouldit not limit and circumscribe his freedom and power? In “ordering” theworld, could he have had anything but the most provisional plan towardwhich the order aimed, if his knowledge of future contingent realities wasobscure? Similarly, can he be trusted to know individuals (Abraham) or awhole people (Israel) and to have a plan for them? If his existence islimited (finite), he is not his existence: therefore could he accuratelydescribe himself simply by means of the variations of the verb “to be”?

2 St. Thomas Aquinas on the Knowledge and Will of God in His Unity27

If Levenson’s approach begs important metaphysical questions, doesAquinas’s speculative theology do any better? Three aspects of Aquinas’sinterpretation of biblical texts in his speculative theology stand out. The


27 Bernard Lonergan, S.J. offers an account of how Aquinas’s analysis of God’s knowl-edge and will, which is based upon the same premises as his version of the psychologicalanalogy for the Trinity, does not make the Trinity rationally necessary. Lonergan shows that:

though our intelligere is always a dicere, this cannot be demonstrated of God’s. Thoughwe can demonstrate that God understands, for understanding is pure perfection, stillwe can no more than conjecture the mode of divine understanding and so cannotprove that there is a divine Word. Psychological Trinitarian theory is not a conclu-sion that can be demonstrated but a hypothesis that squares with divine revelationwithout excluding the possibility of alternative hypotheses. Finally, Aquinas regularlywrites as a theologian and not as a philosopher; hence regularly he simply stateswhat simply is true, that in all intellects there is a procession of inner word. (Lon-ergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M.Doran [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997]: 204.)

The opposite position is taken by Wayne Hankey in God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine ofGod as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).Hankey summarizes his concerns by concluding:

While denying of God the mode of the finite, Thomas holds that proper predicationsare made of him. He affirms that God’s acts are all one in his simplicity and yet distin-

first is that biblical texts about God must be weighed in the context ofother biblical texts about God. The whole of the Bible contains God’srevelation of himself. It follows that the biblical texts in which God speaksor acts with the specific intention of revealing his own identity (or inwhich the human author speaks most specifically about God’s identity)will serve to interpret other biblical texts about God. The position of theSecond Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation,Dei Verbum, corresponds in this regard to Aquinas’s position: “But sincesacred Scripture must be read and interpreted with its divine authorshipin mind, no less attention must be devoted to the content and unity ofthe whole of Scripture, taking into account the Tradition of the entireChurch and the analogy of faith, if we are to derive their true meaningfrom the sacred texts.”28 Second, Aquinas insists that biblical texts must beillumined metaphysically by analyzing, in terms of being and causality, theconcepts and images expressed in the biblical texts. The Bible’s languageabout God and his actions (words and deeds) describe an acting God,whose being and causality is continually contrasted with that of the idols.Third, the human language used to describe God and/or his acts may beeither analogical or metaphorical. If the latter, the language may in factactually describe a reality, such as a change, in human beings. Rather thanproperly describing God himself, metaphorical language describes insteadthe relation of human beings to God.29 Since, as Dei Verbum states, “insacred Scripture, God speaks through men in human fashion,” theintended meaning of the human words must be explored;30 insofar as


guishes them as diverse forms of self-relation. God’s Trinitarian distinction is rationallyderived in an intelligible sequence in the Summa Theologiae and yet denied to be so.These and many more difficulties arise from Aquinas’ attempt to draw together the one and the many in the manner they appeared to him. The manifold problems of hispredecessors remain imperfectly resolved in his system. (147)

I do not agree with Hankey that Aquinas’s theory of divine simplicity conflicts with hisaccount of analogous predication of diverse human perfections, or that he rationally derivesGod’s Trinitarian distinction.28 Dei Verbum, no. 12. It is worth noting that Aquinas’s understanding of, and appreciationfor, the Old Testament is reflected also by Dei Verbum’s discussion of the Old Testament in nos 14–16. See also Christopher Kaczor, “Aquinas on the Development of Doctrine,” Theo-logical Studies 62 (2001): 283–302.29 On metaphorical language according to Aquinas, see, e.g., Joseph Wawrykow, “Reflec-tions on the Place of the De doctrina christiana in High Scholastic Discussions of Theology,”in Reading and Wisdom, ed. Edward D. English (Notre Dame: University of Notre DamePress, 1995): 99–125, especially 102–9.30 Dei Verbum, no. 12.

divine naming is involved, this exploration will involve metaphysical analy-sis. As Aquinas quotes Gregory the Great on naming God: “Though ourlips can only stammer, we yet chant the high things of God.”31

Discussing God’s perfection, Aquinas cites Matthew, “Be you perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).32 Aquinasnotes that “a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, becausewe call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection.”33

God’s perfection is in accord with his infinite mode of being. Thus, all perfections that belong in a limited way in finite beings are attributesof God.34 In God, these perfections are simple rather than diverse, since he is sheer undivided Act.35 It follows that we name real attributesof God by naming the perfections that we find in creaturely being, solong as we keep in mind that by these names we are not pretending to know God comprehensively.36 In attributing a perfection to God, wemust remove by mental abstraction the finite creaturely mode of being, recognizing that the perfection exists in God according to his infi-nite, unfathomable mode. I have noted that Levenson suggests that“history, no less than nature, slips out of God’s control and into the handsof obscure but potent forces of malignancy”; God may master theseobscure forces, but he certainly does not know them exhaustively. In contrast, Aquinas’s understanding of God’s perfection requires that Godsupremely knows.

Aquinas defends this position on the basis of two further scriptural pas-sages, one from Job and the other from Romans 11. The two texts belongto perhaps the two most profound discussions in the Bible of divine Provi-dence. It is important to note at the outset, then, that Aquinas is no moreinterested than is Levenson in what Levenson deems “the static, Aristotelian


31 1, q.4, a.1, ad 1. The quotation is from Gregory’s Moralia, Book V, 26, 29.32 1, q.4, a.1.33 Ibid.34 1, q.4, a.2.35 See 1, q.3, a.7; 1, q.4, a.2, ad 1.36 See 1, q.3, prologue: “When the existence of a thing has been ascertained there remains the further question of the manner of its existence, in order that we may knowits essence. Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, wehave no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.” The point is thatwe cannot know God’s essence. This does not mean that we can have only (strictly) neg-ative knowledge of God. Aquinas states that affirmative names “signify the divine substance,and are predicated substantially of God, although they fall short of a full representation ofHim” (1, q.13, a.2). Cf. 1, q.13, a.2, ad 2 and 3; 1, q.13, aa.3–6, 12.

conception of the deity.”37 Just as Levenson’s account of God’s will andknowledge seeks to make sense ultimately of the Holocaust, so too Aquinasrecognizes that in speaking of God’s knowledge we are not speaking of a“mere” philosophical problem, but rather the topic at hand is inseparablefrom the relation of human history to God. Job, in the midst of “arguing hiscase” with God about the terrible mystery of his suffering, states, “WithHim is wisdom and strength, He hath counsel and understanding” ( Job12:13). Similarly, anguished by the failure of much of Israel to recognize herMessiah, St. Paul holds nonetheless that God’s plan is such that he hasordered events so that “he may have mercy upon all” and concludes pas-sionately, “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledgeof God” (Romans 11:33). As Aquinas reads these passages, both Job and St. Paul are granting, without fathoming, the truth that God knows all.38

This truth befits, Aquinas recognizes, the God who is the dynamic full-ness of “to be” and who is perfect. Since God is sheer “to be,” he is infi-nite, unbounded, and therefore “in the highest degree of immateriality.”39

As perfectly (according to his infinite mode) immaterial, he is able topossess in himself the “form” or concept of everything else, whereasnothing else can possess the “form” or concept of him, since he is infi-nite. Aquinas thus illumines the biblical testimony with a metaphysicalargument: if God is how the Bible says he is, then metaphysically (asregards his being) he must be such. To know is a perfection of finite ratio-nal existence, but knowledge in finite creatures is possessed as a habit,rather than being always “in act.” God therefore possesses the perfection– in this case the perfection of knowing – but possesses it according tohis simple, infinite mode.40 He is his knowledge, and his knowing is infi-nite. Knowing is a perfection of his infinite Act.41


37 Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, xxv. For a brief response to this point, seeMichael Dodds, O.P., “St. Thomas and the Motion of the Motionless God,” NewBlackfriars 68 (1987): 233–42.38 Waclaw Swierzawski points out that in his biblical commentaries, Aquinas defines God’s“glory,” a term used so frequently in Scripture, as God’s perfect knowledge of himself, hisradiant Word of love, in whom all things were made and who took flesh in Christ Jesus(Swierzawski, “God and the Mystery of His Wisdom, in the Pauline Commentaries of SaintThomas Aquinas,” Divus Thomas [Piacenza, Italy] 74 [1971]: 466–500, at 484–91). We willdiscuss in chapter four how, according to Aquinas, God reveals his Trinitarian glory in Christ.39 1, q.14, a.1; cf. 1, q.7, a.1.40 As regards the mode of God’s knowledge, see, e.g., John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinasand the Axiom ‘What is Received is Received According to the Mode of the Receiver,’ ”in A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture, ed. Ruth Link-Salinger, et al.(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988): 279–89.41 1, q.14, a.1, ad 1–3.

Is this account of God’s knowledge too strong? Surely the Bible doesnot justify such an absolute divine knowing? Aquinas begins with God’sknowledge of himself. If God – sheer infinite Act – knows himself, thenhis knowledge is already infinite. Aquinas quotes St. Paul, who indicatesthat God knows himself perfectly: “The things that are of God no manknoweth, but the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11).42 In choosing toquote this text, Aquinas directs attention to the entire chapter of 1Corinthians 2, which treats the “wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:7).43

This wisdom is Christ Jesus, who embodies God’s eternal plan (or Provi-dence) for the salvation of the world by enabling the world to share inthe Trinitarian communion of knowing and loving.44 This salvation in theSon is taught to us by the Spirit. In the verse before the one quoted byAquinas, St. Paul states, “For the Spirit searches everything, even thedepths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10). God, then, knows himself. Hisknowledge is infinite. Can infinite knowledge, however, be knowledge atall? Is not “infinite” inexhaustible, so that God would never reach the endof himself, and thus never know his whole being? Aquinas answers thisobjection – which is metaphysical – by means of metaphysical analysis ofthe act of knowing. Since God is simple, what he knows is not differentfrom his act of knowing; otherwise he would be composed of the act andits object. Therefore, by his infinite act of knowing, he knows himself asinfinite Act. His power of knowing is coextensive with his act of being.He thus comprehends himself fully as infinite.45

If in this case the biblical testimony and the fruits of metaphysical analy-sis appear to mutually illumine each other (with the biblical testimonyremaining the source of reflection), the next issue poses more difficulties.Granted that God knows himself, the question is whether, and if so towhat extent, God knows things other than himself. Levenson casts doubtespecially upon God’s knowledge of things other than himself. Because ofthe dark, negative forces at play, Levenson envisions history as continuallyescaping God’s control. Influenced by process theology, which sees God


42 1, q.14, a.2.43 Aquinas wrote a lengthy commentary on 1 Corinthians, as on all the Pauline letters.He also commented upon the Gospels of Matthew and John, as well as the Psalms, Isaiah,Job, Jeremiah, and Lamentations.44 On Aquinas’s theological account of divine Providence in light of Christian eschatol-ogy, see the important contribution of Matthew L. Lamb, “The Eschatology of St. ThomasAquinas,” in Thomas Aquinas and Christian Doctrine, ed. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap. et al. (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, forthcoming).45 See 1, q.14, aa.3–4. On the relation of divine simplicity to divine infinity, see EileenC. Sweeney, “Thomas Aquinas’ Double Metaphysics of Simplicity and Infinity,” InternationalPhilosophical Quarterly 33 (1993): 297–317.

as developing along with human history, he emphasizes the dramatic, riskynature of the God-world relationship. If God knows not only himself, butknows everything from his timeless eternity, would this take the dramaout of history by making God into a “static” agent, frozen, as it were, ineternity and unable to respond freely to events, in contrast to the bibli-cal depiction of God? Similarly, would it make creatures into puppets,enacting a drama whose every “free” moment has been known for eter-nity? Is not the biblical portrait the very opposite – a free God engagingin a give-and-take relationship with very free creatures?

Aquinas begins with Hebrews 4:13: “All things are naked and open to hiseyes.”46 This quotation follows upon the more well known text in verse 12,“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edgedsword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, anddiscerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him nocreature is hidden.”47 Hebrews 4 is thus the prime scriptural locus of thepoint to be discussed. For the inspired author of Hebrews, God has a radi-cally complete knowledge of creatures. Aquinas seeks to shed light meta-physically on this scriptural claim, which he accepts in faith. God, in hissupreme act of understanding, perfectly comprehends himself.48 Could Godperfectly comprehend himself if he did not comprehend to what his powerextends? In other words, could sheer Act comprehend himself if he did notknow all the finite modes in which he could, as cause, share his existence?Could a cause know himself exhaustively if he did not exhaustively knowthe effects that could proceed from himself? Clearly, the answer is no. Inknowing himself, God must therefore know (in himself) all the effects thatcould proceed from him as cause.49 Every finite mode of existence is hiseffect. This is so because everything is either sheer Act or created (finite) act;the latter participates in a finite way in the act of being of the former. Every-thing that exists – whether a dog, a man, a thought (which shares in themode of being of the spiritual soul), and so forth – receives its existence as acaused, finite participation in sheer Act. God causes and sustains every exis-tent by giving being, although God may (and does) work through secondarycauses such as parents to bring living creatures into existence. God exhaus-


46 1, q.14, a.5.47 Aquinas cites this remainder of Hebrews 4:12–13 in 1, q.14, a.6.48 It is worth emphasizing that God’s knowledge, like each of his attributes, is nothingother than God himself. As Matthew L. Lamb has remarked with regard to the attributeof eternity, “For Augustine eternity is not a pale abstraction. Eternity is the Triune God”(Lamb, “Eternity Creates and Redeems Time: A Key to Augustine’s Confessions within aTheology of History,” forthcoming in a festschrift for Robert Crouse).49 1, q.14, a.5.

tively knows all effects that could proceed from him; therefore, God, fromhis timeless eternity, exhaustively and simultaneously knows everything thatis other than himself.50

Furthermore, God knows each of his effects not in general, but dis-tinctly.51 Aquinas cites Proverbs 16:2, “All the ways of a man are open to Hiseyes.”52 He illumines the meaning of this text metaphysically by reference toGod’s perfection: since it belongs to the perfection of human beings toknow singular things (rather than solely universal concepts such as “man”),it belongs to God’s perfection, though in accord with his simple, infinitemode.53 He also points out that the principle that God’s knowledge mustextend as far as his causality extends, applies in the case of God’s knowledgeof particular things. God causes the existence of particular things, by givingthem the gift of existence, a finite sharing in infinite Act.54 Just as Godknows all particular things, God in his simple act of understanding knows allpossible statements or judgments of truth, without undergoing a process ofreasoning to arrive at such truths. Indeed, God’s knowledge embraces man’sthoughts: “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of men” (Psalms 94:11).55 Sincehuman beings will live forever in God, and thus will have an infinite numberof thoughts and affections of the heart, God in his infinite knowledge knowsthese infinite thoughts.56 Aquinas cuts away, with clear scriptural warrant, anypossible “distance” of human beings from God; God is not “over against”


50 For further philosophical reflection on this point, emphasizing God’s knowledge as causal,see Brian J. Shanley, O.P., “Eternal Knowledge of the Temporal in Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997): 197–224; Eleonore Stump and NormanKretzmann, “Eternity and God’s Knowledge: A Reply to Shanley,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 439–45; Shanley, “Aquinas on God’s Causal Knowledge: AReply to Stump and Kretzmann,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 447–57.In his response, Shanley takes up the question of how God knows evil. On God’s knowledgeof things other than himself as the “divine ideas,” see John L. Farthing, “The Problem ofDivine Exemplarity in St. Thomas,” The Thomist 49 (1985): 183–222. Farthing pays attentionto the relationship of biblical revelation and classical philosophy in Aquinas’s approach to thistopic. See also Brian J. Shanley, O.P., “Eternity and Duration in Aquinas,” The Thomist 61(1997): 525–48, and Matthew L. Lamb, “Eternity and Time,” in Gladly to Learn and Gladly toTeach: Essays on Religion and Political Philosophy in Honor of Ernest L. Fortin, A. A., ed. MichaelP. Foley and Douglas Kries (New York: Lexington Books, 2002): 195–214.51 On God’s distinct knowledge of each thing, see 1, q.14, a.6; on his timeless, nondis-cursive knowledge, see 1, q.14, a.7.52 1, q.14, a.11.53 Ibid.54 Ibid.55 1, q.14, a.14.56 1, q.14, a.12. In attempting to guide us through the philosophical difficulties that arisewhen one distinguishes God from creatures as pure Act, David Burrell, C.S.C. has insight-fully remarked:

human beings, but rather everything that human beings are and do is wonderfully present in God. God truly knows and loves us, from within, not extrinsically. Thus Aquinas joins, and goes well beyond, Levenson in aprofound critique of the Deist god.57

The modern tendency to envision God “over against” human beings,and thus as an enemy to human freedom, makes particularly problematic thecorollary that follows from all we have said so far.58 This corollary is thatGod, in his sheer Act, knows everything that in time is going to happen,even if these events are going to happen freely. It is crucial to emphasize inthis regard that God is not in time: God simply is, and so his Act is theeternal fullness of being, sheer Present.59 It is not true to say that God knowswhat is going to happen “before” it happens, if the sense of “before” is thatGod and human beings are together in time and that God is able to foretell


If the creator is the source of all-that-is, and hence of the perfections of things, thecreator will be the source not merely of their “existence” (in the “on/off ” sense),but of all that emanates from their existing. Operations above all are the sign ofsomething’s existing, so it follows that the initial and grounding perfection is exis-tence itself. If that be the case, this utterly “non-qualitative property” of existencewill be the “ effect of the first and most universal cause, which is God” [1, q.45,a.5]. From that divine activity will flow all that comes to be from such creatures.Far from being an initial “floor,” an “on/off property,” what the act of creationbestows, in creating this world, is what makes it to be and to be a world: the exis-tential order that is the only matrix within which action occurs. (See David B.Burrell, C.S.C., “Creation and ‘Actualism’: The Dialectical Dimension of Philo-sophical Theology,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 [1994]: 25–41, at 32).

57 On God’s transcendence and intimate presence, see Thomas Weinandy’s Does God Suffer?(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000) and Does God Change? (Still River, MA:St. Bede’s Publications, 1985); Herbert McCabe, O.P., God Matters (London: GeoffreyChapman, 1987): 39–51; Michael Dodds, O.P., The Unchanging God of Love: A Study of theTeaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Immutability in View of Certain Contemporary Critics(Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1986); idem, “Thomas Aquinas, Human Suffering, and theUnchanging God of Love,” Theological Studies 52 (1991): 330–44 and “Ultimacy and Intimacy:Aquinas on the Relation between God and the World,” in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris, ed. C.-J.Pinto de Oliveira, O.P. (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1993): 211–27.58 On this modern tendency, and its roots in William of Ockham, see Michael AllenGillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 14–32. Seealso Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), which demonstrates the importanceof Spinoza. For discussion of the noncompetitive relationship of God’s causation and ours(in dialogue with Colin Gunton), see Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism(Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 43–8. See also David Burrell, “Jacques Maritain and BernardLonergan on Divine and Human Freedom,” in The Future of Thomism, ed. Deal Hudsonand Dennis Moran (Mishawaka, IN: American Maritain Association, 1992): 161–8. Burrell argues that Lonergan gets the non-competitive relationship right.59 1, q.10.

the future. On the contrary, God is radically outside the order of time; Godis the Creator of time. He is thus perfectly present, in his eternity, “within”all moments of time as Creator and sustainer of being.60

Aquinas evokes this perfect Presence scripturally by quoting Psalm 33:15,“He Who hath made the hearts of every one of them; Who understandethall their works.”61 Psalm 33 anthropomorphically depicts God as lookingdown from his throne in heaven and watching everyone whom he hascreated, so as to save the just. The point of the psalm is that nothing escapesGod’s eye and that God’s plans will not be frustrated by any worldly powers.Recognizing that the anthropomorphic aspects of this portrait aremetaphorical (because God is not bodily62), Aquinas takes up the metaphorof God’s “eye”: “His glance is carried from eternity over all things as theyare in their presentiality. Hence it is manifest that contingent things are infal-libly known by God, inasmuch as they are subject to the divine sight in theirpresentiality; yet they are future contingent things in relation to their owncauses.”63 Everything is perfectly present to God, who is sheer Presence in


60 1, q.8.61 1, q.14, a.13.62 Aquinas responds to this idea in 1, q.3, aa.1–2. In article 1, he asks whether God is a body.The objections are taken from a wide variety of biblical quotations, all of which describe Godin bodily terms. In response, Aquinas cites John 4:24, “God is a spirit.” He goes on to explain(drawing upon a previous discussion in 1, q.1, a.9) that the Bible “puts before us spiritual anddivine things under the comparison of corporeal things” (1, q.3, a.1, ad 1). Thus, for example,“Corporeal parts are attributed to God in Scripture on account of His actions, and this isowing to a certain parallel. For instance the act of the eye is to see; hence the eye attributedto God signifies His power of seeing intellectually, not sensibly; and so on with the otherparts” (1, q.3, a.1, ad 3). Aquinas’s point is that in describing the active, living God, we arecompelled to rely upon sensible images, even though God is immaterial.63 1, q.14, a.13. In light of evolutionary theory, J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P. has defendedthis understanding of creation and the triune God’s causality in “By Whom All ThingsWere Made: Trinitarian Theology of Creation as the Basis for a Person-Friendly Cosmol-ogy,” in Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism, ed. Christopher R. Seitz (GrandRapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001): 63–73. See also Michael A. Hoonhout, “Grounding Providence in the Theology of the Creator: The Exemplarity of Thomas Aquinas,” Heythrop Journal 43 (2002): 1–19. Hoonhout points out:

This importance of grounding theology of providence in the characteristics of theCreator-God suffered a serious blow, however, with the emergence of nominalism inthe fourteenth century. Though it was primarily a development in philosophy with itsown logic, epistemology and ontology, nominalism had a theological counterpartwhich laid great stress upon the absolute power of the Creator. While its motive was topreserve the transcendent freedom of the Creator, this came at the cost of denying theintelligible order and genuine causality in the world. This bald emphasis upon thepower and indeterminacy of God’s will over and against the world deprived the doc-trine of providence of those attributes of the Creator (i.e., his wisdom, goodness andexemplarity) and those features of creation (i.e., the order, unity and teleology ofnature) traditionally relied upon to express its intelligibility. (2)

his timeless eternity, but this fact does not in any way compromise the factthat in time things come to be. Indeed, God’s Presence (as Act) is what sus-tains each moment of time, and all of time, in being.

And yet, if God knows absolutely everything from his timeless eternity,does this not displace the active biblical God? In fact, the contrary is true.Aquinas’s teaching on God’s knowledge defends metaphysically the scrip-tural account of a supremely active, engaged God. Since God knows eachthing in knowing his causal power, God’s knowledge of things is, whenjoined to his will to give being to what he knows, the wondrously inti-mate cause of at the heart of each and every thing.64 Aquinas states, “Nowit is manifest that God causes things by His intellect, since His being isHis act of understanding; and hence His knowledge must be the cause ofthings, in so far as His will is joined to it.”65 God knows us so intimatelyas to be, precisely in knowing us, our cause of existence. Aquinas addsthat God knows from eternity all the things that he could cause to sharein his existence, whether or not he actually wills to cause those things toexist, and whether or not they exist at a particular moment in time.66

Nothing “falls out” of his knowledge. As Scripture teaches, God is notaloof but is intimately, limitlessly, and lovingly engaged – not only by theforce of his will, as Levenson suggests, but also by his active wisdom – inevery existing thing at every moment.

God’s extraordinarily intimate engagement with the world, however,raises the problem of evil. As we have seen, Levenson proposes not onlythat God’s will is fragmented and his knowledge obscured, but also thatGod is solely the orderer, and not in a strict sense the Creator, of theworld. By distancing God from the act of creating, if not from the strug-gle to order or re-create, Levenson limits the responsibility of God for themess in which the world is in, that is, for the suffering caused by dis-ruptions and disorders within both the natural and the human order. Thisis so even though Levenson’s reading of the biblical texts leads him toadmit that God’s will is fragmented, that is, that God has a malicious side(that he is working to overcome). Both Levenson’s distancing of God fromthe act of creating, and Levenson’s positing of two competing intra-divine


Levenson proceeds upon an understanding of Creation and God’s causality influenced by nominalism.64 See also 1, q.22, on God’s Providence, although God’s Providence (as likened to prudence) belongs to both his intellect and his will.65 1, q.14, a.8. Reflecting upon this insight would benefit William J. Mander’s intriguingessay, “Does God Know What It Is Like to Be Me?” Heythrop Journal 43 (2002): 430–43.66 1, q.14, a.9. In this regard, he cites Romans 4:17.

forces, have affinities with neo-Platonic and Manichean thinkers withwhose ideas Aquinas would have been familiar. Aquinas, in contrast, thinksthat the biblical depiction of God requires the utmost connection of Godwith the world, and yet holds that God is omnipotent and all-good. If,however, God knows absolutely everything, and if his knowledge, unitedwith his will, is causal, does this not involve God in evil?

Aquinas answers by quoting Proverbs 15:11: “Hell and destruction arebefore God.” In the RSV, the full text of verse 11 reads, “Sheol andAbaddon lie open before the Lord, how much more the hearts of men!”God knows evil things. Since God knows all things by knowing himself,does this mean that there is evil in God – that Aquinas agrees with Levenson in positing evil within the very heart of the divinity? The ques-tion hinges upon how one understands metaphysically “evil.” Does theevil of punishment that is Sheol, or the evil of fault that is in the wickedman’s thoughts and deeds, have its own metaphysical reality? In otherwords, does “evil” (concretized as Sheol/hell or as wicked thoughts anddeeds) have its own existence, so that there is evil being (not simply beingthat is evil but rather evil being, what Levenson refers to as the “negativecharge”) and good being?

Aquinas shows that there is no evil being.67 Creaturely being is thevarious ways in which God can cause his infinite being to be reflected or


67 On this topic see Brian Davies, O.P., The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Claren-don Press, 1992): 89–97; idem, “The problem of evil,” in Philosophy of Religion, ed. B.Davies, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998): 163–201; HerbertMcCabe, O.P., God Matters, 25–38; Laurent Sentis, Saint Thomas d’Aquin et le mal: Foi chré-tienne et théodicée (Paris: Beauchesne, 1992); Patrick Lee, “The Goodness of Creation, Evil,and Christian Teaching,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 239–69; Carlo Leget, “Aquinas on Evil:An evaluation of and some reflections in connection with two recent studies,” Jaarboek 1993of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht,161–87. Davies shows that the problem of evil can havea solution only if we insist upon the intimate presence of God, and that the solution willbe clear only when God’s purposes have been fully revealed at the end of time:

God could have created a world in which no evil suffered comes to pass (though Ido not know what such a world would look like). And he could have created aworld full of moral agents who always act well. But God has evidently not donethat. Why not? I have no idea. And that is why I think that there is a problem ofevil. But it is not a problem which casts doubt on what we say if we assert thatdivinity is not something fictional. It is not a problem which suggests that there isno God. Rather, it is something which invites us to reflect on the mystery of divin-ity, something which serves to remind us that God is nothing less than the begin-ning and end of all things, the source from which everything that we can understandderives its existence. (“The problem of evil,” 198).

imitated finitely.68 Were there evil being as such, it would have to arise asparticipating divine evil being as such. As we have seen, Levenson seemsto think that there may well be divine evil being as such, inasmuch as thedivine will is fragmented between a good and a bad side. But were theredivine evil being as such, warring against good divine being, then Godcould not be one (contra Deuteronomy 6:4).69 Arguing that God is good,Aquinas cites two central scriptural texts: “The Lord is good to them thathope in him, to the soul that seeketh him” (Lamentations 3:25) and“None is good but God alone” (Luke 18:19).70 Arguing that every createdbeing is good, he refers to 1 Timothy 4:4, “For everything created byGod is good.”71

If, however, “everything created by God is good,” we must ask again:what is evil? In human beings, evil may be present in two ways. It maybe physical lack of good, as when a human being has lost a leg. Second,evil may be present in the human being as a lack of spiritual good. Thehuman person is intended to know and love God, and to love other crea-tures in God. When, instead, the person acts against love, the personactively incurs a lack of his or her proper good; the soul is deformed. Justas the body of a person who has lost a leg has suffered a loss of its propergood, so also the soul of a person who hates and wills harm to an inno-cent child has suffered a loss of its proper good, and the person can rightlybe said to possess an “evil” soul.72 It is the defect or the lack of beingthat is called evil, not the existence of the thing per se. With regard to


68 See, among numerous passages, 1, q.2, a.3; 1, q.4, aa.2–3; 1, q.3, a.8, especially ad 1.69 Levenson’s view of biblical monotheism is most clearly expressed in Creation and thePersistence of Evil, 131–9; in his view the key to biblical “monotheism” is allegiance toYHWH, whether or not there was/is some kind of pantheon of gods. In other words, bib-lical monotheism is more practical/functional than theoretical/philosophical.70 1, q.6, a.1; 1, q.6, a.2, obj.2 and ad 2. See also 1, q.6, a.3.71 1, q.5, a.3.72 Gregory M. Reichberg has drawn attention to the fact that Aquinas:

took particular care to indicate the limitations of privation as a tool for elucidatingthe special sort of evil that emerges within human freedom. This evil he designatesby the names “sin” (peccatum), “moral fault” (malum culpae), or “moral evil” (malummorale). Aquinas’s conceptualization of evil along positive lines as something done ismost visible in his analysis of intentional wrongdoing (peccare ex industria aut ex certascientia), also termed “sinning from malice” (peccare ex malitia). (Reichberg, “BeyondPrivation: Moral Evil in Aquinas’s De Malo,” The Review of Metaphysics 55 [2002]:750–1)

For Aquinas, sin cannot be described solely in terms of privation, since it is an act. However,as Reichberg continues:

God’s knowledge of evil, therefore, Aquinas states, “Now a thing is know-able in the degree in which it is; hence, since this is the essence of evilthat it is the privation of good, by the very fact that God knows goodthings, He knows evil things also; as by light is known darkness.”73 God’sknowledge, in union with his will, is the cause of all good; insofar as Godpermits (in his Providence) a lack or defect of good in a thing, he knows– precisely by knowing the good of the thing – that the thing possessesa certain lack or defect of good. In this way, he knows fully both the evilsin the material world and the evils in the spiritual world. He knows themas defects (lack of being) in his good creation, defects which he is per-mitting in order to accomplish the wondrous work he, in his supremewisdom and goodness, has in view.

A final point about God’s knowledge should already be evident: Goddoes not change his mind. Aquinas cites James 1:17: in God “there is nochange nor shadow of alteration.”74 Both St. James and Aquinas know thatthe Bible often depicts God as changing, but attention to literary genreindicates the truthfulness of James’s words. When a created thing changes,it changes in relation to God. When Israel changes, God does not change;rather, Israel’s relation to God changes. The scriptural authors, recogniz-ing that God is personally, intimately, and lovingly present in all createdrealities, sometimes describe creaturely change, in relation to God, as achange in God.75 As the prophet Malachi recognizes, in fact God’s unchang-ing constancy, his goodness, constitutes the ground upon which Israel,


if we consider moral evil with respect to its mode of being, it can be said to consistin nothing other than the privation of a human act’s ordination to its proper andfitting end. “The evil of fault,” he [Aquinas] writes, “consists in the privation oforder in an act.” From this point of view, moral evil detracts from what is properlyhuman; it represents an impoverishment, a special sort of incompleteness (lack ofintegritas) that affects the doer and his action. This leads Thomas to cite anew theAugustinian dictum that “sin is a non-being” (peccatum est nihil), which, he explains,can rightly be said on two counts. First, on the part of the act itself, insofar as it isdeprived of its due excellence, and second, on the part of the agent who, havingfreely posited a disordered act, is himself deprived of valuable internal goods, naturaland supernatural. (758–9)

It is worth noting that “malum culpae” is best translated as the “evil of fault,” in order tocontrast it with the “evil of punishment.” On this see Romanus Cessario, O.P., The GodlyImage: Christ and Salvation in Catholic Thought from Anselm to Aquinas (Petersham, MA: St.Bede’s Publications, 1990).73 1, q.14, a.10.74 Ibid.75 See Saint Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Brooklyn, NY: New CityPress, 1991): Book 5, ch. 4, no. 17 (201).

despite its failings, can be assured of God’s covenant faithfulness to hispromise to redeem Israel: “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you,O sons of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6).76 The same point holdsfor God’s will. Aquinas cites a scriptural text that affirms (through thestory of Balaam and Balak) God’s absolute sovereignty over human events:“God is not as a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man, that Heshould be changed” (Numbers 23:19).77 Seeking the divinely intendedmeaning of scriptural passages that seem to contradict the clear statementsof Numbers, Malachi, and James, Aquinas argues that they may suggesteither that God wills to change the order of natural causes, or that theexpression of God’s will is intended metaphorically, as often is clearly thecase. Illumined metaphysically, these scriptural affirmations that God doesnot change are corroborated by the reality that God is already supremelythe fullness of actuality; he cannot add anything to his perfection, and hissheer actuality rules out any potentiality to undergo a defection from fullactuality.78 He is already the glorious fullness of love and care, and he isfully present to each one of his creatures at every moment, in accord withtheir capacity to receive his Presence.

When Aquinas turns to God’s will, he begins by asking whether thereis will in God. He identifies a scriptural source for the answer in Romans12:2, “That you may prove what is the will of God.”79 The full text ofthis passage (RSV) reads: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by themercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy andacceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformedto this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that youmay prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable andperfect” (12:1–2). Aquinas’s choice of scriptural text thus links the dis-cussion of God’s will with what has been said about God’s knowledge,


76 Cf. Joyce G. Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1972): 245. On the topic of whether God changesor suffers, see Weinandy’s Does God Suffer? Weinandy shows that a changing, suffering Godwould be less able to be present compassionately with those people who are suffering, andwould be less able to relieve suffering. In addition to the work of Michael Dodds, see alsoMaurice Curtin, “God’s Presence in the World: The Metaphysics of Aquinas and someRecent Thinkers (Moltmann, Macquarrie, Rahner),” in At the Heart of the Real, ed. FranO’Rourke, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992): 123–36. Curtin emphasizes that thenotion of God’s causality, and the intimate presence that is affirmed in that notion, is abandoned by recent thinkers.77 1, q.19, a.7. See Thomas G. Weinandy, O. F. M. Cap., Does God Suffer?78 1, q.14, a.15.79 1, q.19, a.1.

since St. Paul here unites the renewal of the mind with the discernment ofGod’s will. God’s will, in other words, follows upon God’s knowledge orwisdom: as the passage suggests, when our minds are renewed so as to beable to know wisdom, we will be able to discern God’s will. The choiceof text also links the whole discussion of God with our salvation.80

Aquinas then illumines this scriptural text metaphysically. When wespeak about the supremely simple God using words taken from the per-fections of creatures, we distinguish God’s intellect and will, even thoughin him they are the same. The desire to embrace truth and delight in pos-sessing it is the intellectual appetite, or the will. Since God knows himself,he must delight in the truth that he knows as good. This delight is theintellectual appetite or will in God (the act of the will is love81). God eter-nally knows himself and eternally delights in this knowledge as fully pos-sessed. When God apprehends himself as infinite good, his will does notchoose whether to delight in infinite goodness; rather, God’s will is nec-essarily attracted by its proper object, infinite goodness.82 Indeed, since inknowing himself God knows all goodness, God’s will is completely movedby the knowledge of his own essence.83 God’s beatitude or happiness is sofull that there is nothing more to desire, and so his will simply delights.Aquinas beautifully describes the fullness of the beatitude of God:

As to contemplative happiness, God possesses a continual and most certaincontemplation of Himself and of all things else; and as to that which is


80 For readings of Aquinas’s theology of the triune God that develop the relation of Aquinas’stheology of God to his doctrines of creation and salvation, see A. N. Williams, The Ground ofUnion: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) and GillesEmery, O.P., La Trinité Créatrice (Paris: Vrin, 1995), summarized in idem, “Trinité et création.Le principe trinitaire de la création dans les commentaires d’Albert le Grand, de Bonaventureet de Thomas d’Aquin sur les Sentences,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 79(1995): 405–30, chapter 2 in his Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003); seealso Emery’s “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?”The Thomist 64 (2000): 521–63, chapter 5 in Trinity in Aquinas.81 Aquinas treats God’s will before God’s love (1, q.20), but the act of the will is love.For a Thomistic account of God as love, see William Rossner, S.J., “Toward an Analysisof ‘God Is Love’,” The Thomist 38 (1973): 633–67; Brian Davies, O.P., “How Is God Love?,”in Moral Truth and Moral Tradition, ed. Luke Gormally (Portland, OR: Four Courts Press,1994): 97–110. Davies argues that the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation reveal the truenature of God’s love, but I would suggest that he undervalues the glory of the divine unity.82 1, q.19, aa. 3, 10. For further philosophical discussion of Aquinas’s understanding ofwill, see, e.g., Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “The Real Distinction between Intellect and Will,”Angelicum 57 (1980): 557–93 and “St. Thomas, James Keenan, and the Will,” Science etEsprit 32 (1995): 19–33.83 1, q.19, a.1, especially ad 3.

active, he has the governance of the whole universe. As to earthly happi-ness, which consists in delight, riches, power, dignity, and fame, accordingto Boethius (De Consol. III, 10), He possesses joy in Himself and all thingselse for His delight; instead of riches He has that complete self-sufficiencywhich is promised by riches; in place of power, He has omnipotence; fordignities, the government of all things; and in place of fame, He possessesthe admiration of all creatures.84

God, then, is will (just as he is intellect), and delights eternally is hisperfect goodness. But why does his will extend to anything beyondhimself? If his will is completely engaged by his own essence, how couldhe will anything else? Indeed, were he to will other things besides himself,it would seem that his will could not be said to be completely engagedby his own essence. If he wills the other things that we see around us,moreover, it would seem that these other things might either frustrateGod’s will, or be unfitting things for God to will. How could God’s willbe fully engaged in delighting in the divine essence and somehow also beengaged, even in a limited way, in the often terrible particulars of naturaland human history (earthquakes, wars, abortion, genocide)? At first glance,Levenson’s notion of God’s fragmented and impotent will seems like theonly way out. Aquinas, in contrast, affirms with St. Paul that the will ofGod is “what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

Recognizing that some passages in Scripture seem to suggest that God’swill is malevolent, in contrast to St. Paul’s clear statement about the good-ness of God’s will, Aquinas devotes two articles to the “expressions” ofGod’s will that are found in the Bible. He divides these “expressions” intofive kinds: “prohibition, precept, counsel, operation, and permission.”85

God’s will is simple, unlike our will which manifests itself in variousexpressions. Aquinas notes that “what is usually with us an expression of will, is sometimes metaphorically called will in God; just as whenanyone lays down a precept, it is a sign that he wishes that precept obeyed. Hence a divine precept is sometimes called by metaphor the willof God, as in the words: ‘Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven’(Matthew 6:10).”86 God’s will, in its simplicity, is called by Aquinas God’s“will of good pleasure,” whereas the metaphorical signs of God’s will arecalled God’s “will of expression.”87 The point of this distinction is to


84 1, q.26, a.4.85 1, q.19, a.12.86 1, q.19, a.11.87 1, q.19, a.11.

enable biblical interpretation to proceed without anthropomorphizingGod.

Does God will things other than himself ? Aquinas again turns to apassage from St. Paul: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1Thessalonians 4:3).88 God thus wills things other than himself, above allhuman beings and their sanctification in Christ by the Holy Spirit. Inwilling other things, God not only possesses a wise plan for their salva-tion, but also is intimately and intensely involved with what he wills, tothe point of sanctifying sinners. How and why does God will things otherthan himself? Aquinas notes that appetite in natural things seeks not onlyto acquire its proper good and to rest in it (these aspects pertain to theself-fulfillment), but also has self-giving dimension. In resting in the goodthat one possesses, one also wishes to share it. If this self-giving aspectbelongs to the perfection of the will in creatures, then it must analogouslybelong to God according to his infinite mode of being. Aquinas states:“Hence, if natural things, in so far as they are perfect, communicate theirgood to others, much more does it appertain to the divine will to com-municate by likeness its own good to others as much as possible.”89 Inwilling himself, therefore, God wills to communicate his own goodnessin finite modes. Our question – why would God will other things, whenhe is delighting in his own infinite goodness – is thus turned on its head:embracing his own infinite goodness does not in fact trap God in his ownself, but rather constitutes precisely the reason why God wills to share hisbeing in finite ways, that is, why God wills other things.

As regards how God could do this without fragmenting his one, simplewill, Aquinas’s answer is similar to his explanation of how in knowinghimself, God knows all possible finite ways in which he could share hisinfinite being (that is, all other things). In willing his own being, Godwills the being of certain of the finite ways in which he could share hisinfinite being. He does not will other things for their own sake; rather,he wills other things so that they may share in his own goodness – as St.Paul says, for sanctification. Aquinas notes that God “wills both Himselfto be, and other things to be; but Himself as the end, and other thingsas ordained to that end; inasmuch as it befits the divine goodness thatother things should be partakers therein.”90 In willing the one end (his


88 1, q.19, a.2. The link between Aquinas’s theology of God and his soteriology couldhardly be more emphasized.89 1, q.19, a.2.90 Ibid.

own goodness), God thereby wills both himself and all other things,because he wills all other things to share in that end. He includes otherthings in the one end which he wills.91 However, since God’s will is self-communicative and perfectly one, can he be said to will freely the finitethings that he creates and sustains in being? Or is the creation of thingsa necessary act, belonging to the necessary attraction of his will to its infi-nite object, his own goodness? Aquinas draws upon yet another statementof St. Paul: God “Who worketh all things according to the counsel ofHis will” (Ephesians 1:11).92 This text belongs to the magnificent hymnthat opens the Letter to the Ephesians in which St. Paul praises the Fatherwho “chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (1:4)and “destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according tothe purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freelybestowed on us in the Beloved” (1:5–6).

Aquinas illumines St. Paul’s affirmation metaphysically: “Although Godnecessarily wills His own goodness, He does not necessarily will thingswilled on account of His goodness; for it can exist without other things.”93

Nothing is added to God’s infinite goodness by the things that God wills assharers in his infinite goodness; just as nothing is added to God’s infinitebeing by the creation of things that participate in being. Such things do notadd to God, but rather, by God’s wondrous generosity, share in and reflectGod. The extent of God’s freedom in creating can be more nearly fathomedby asking whether anything caused God to create. Is there not some purposeintrinsic to a dog, for example, that would have caused God to will to createit? The answer is no, because the ultimate object of God’s will is not the dog.God wills each thing for the purpose of the ultimate end or goal of creation.This object is his own goodness as shared in by creatures. The dog belongs tothe wondrous universe that God has ordered to his own goodness. It istoward this “end” that the whole universe, in God’s mysterious Providence,is proceeding. Thus, no other cause than the divine will caused God to


91 Aquinas’s account of God’s causality of all things by God’s knowledge and will is con-sistent with the natural processes that belong to the created order: for example, the gassesin the universe that eventually form the sun and the planet Earth; human beings who pro-create, write books, build houses; plants that grow and produce seeds, etc. All of thesethings ultimately “are,” however, because God gives them the (continual) gift of being,which is a participation in God himself, and God gives this gift because of his own good-ness. Aquinas notes, “Since God wills effects to proceed from definite causes, for the preser-vation of order in the universe, it is not unreasonable to seek for causes secondary to thedivine will. It would, however, be unreasonable to do so, if such were considered primary,and not as dependent on the will of God” (1, q.19, a.5, ad 2).92 1, q.19, a.3.93 1, q.19, a.3, ad 2.

create.94 Neither God does not will to create “by a necessity of nature.”95

Among various arguments against such a doctrine of necessary emanation,Aquinas points out that since creatures that act by intellect and will are moreperfect than creatures who act by nature, it follows that God, in his infiniteperfection, acts by intellect and will; and his divine nature would not determine him to the production of created effects.96 Thus, God’s creatingis perfectly free, a mystery of sheer gift.

Levenson’s fragmented God is unable to give fully this gift, since he doesnot create from nothing, but instead orders and masters things. In Aquinas’sview, by contrast, unless God were fully the giver of this gift, nothing couldexist. Aquinas cites Wisdom 11:26, “How could anything endure, if Thouwouldst not?”97 Aquinas presses this extraordinary intimacy of God withcreation to a point that, to those who have not realized the implications ofGod willing what he knows, will cause surprise. He holds that the will ofGod is always fulfilled. The first objection to this claim comes from themystery of salvation as expressed in the Bible: “God will have all men to besaved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).98 If, asseems likely, not all men will be saved (since some appear to die unrecon-ciled to God with blood upon their hands), then it would seem that God’swill is not always fulfilled. Aquinas interprets 1 Timothy 2:4 in light of twoother central scriptural texts on this topic: Psalm 115:3, “God has done allthings, whatsoever he would”99 and (from St. Paul’s discussion of “God’spurpose of election”)100 Romans 9:19, “Who resisteth His will?”101 It isworth noting that the first verse of Psalm 115 is the Te Deum: “Not to us, O


94 1, q.19, a.5. Cf. Oliva Blanchette, The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas: ATeleological Cosmology (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992).95 1, q.19, a.4.96 Ibid. For a defense of God’s freedom in creating, see Bernhard-Thomas Blankenhorn,

O.P.’s response to W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (who seems to have changed his view: see TheOne and the Many A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics [Notre Dame: University of NotreDame Press, 2001]: 238) and to Norman Kretzmann: “The Good as Self-Diffusive inThomas Aquinas,” Angelicum 79 (2002): 803–37.97 Ibid.98 1, q.19, a.6, obj.1.99 1, q.19, a.6: “Deus autem noster in caelo universa quae voluit fecit” (from the Hebrew)

or “Deus autem noster in caelo omnia quaecumque voluit fecit” (from the Septuagint).The numbering of the Psalm is different in the Vulgate, which places this verse in Psalm113:11. In the RSV, the psalm reads, “Our God is in the heavens, he does whatever hepleases.”100 Romans 9:11.101 1, q.19, a.8, obj.2. For Aquinas’s full discussion of the predestination of the saints,which follows upon God’s Providence (and which must be understood in light of the factthat God is not in time, and so there is in God no “pre” or “post”), see 1, q.23.

Lord, not to us, but to thy name give glory, for the sake of thy steadfast loveand thy faithfulness!”

Aquinas illumines these fundamental scriptural loci by means of a metaphysical analysis of causality. He distinguishes between God, who isthe “universal cause” of all things, and “particular causes” or secondarycauses through which God accomplishes his plan.102 We touched upon thisdistinction above: secondary causes preserve the “order of the universe,”in which things can truly cause effects.103 These particular causes are willedby God, yet they may nonetheless be free. Simply put, if “the divine willis perfectly efficacious, it follows not only that things are done, whichGod wills to be done, but also that they are done in the way that Hewills. Now God wills some things to be done necessarily, some contin-gently, to the right ordering of things, for the building up of the uni-verse.”104 God wills that Jane be a human being with free will (God willsher free will), and God wills that Jane freely cause certain effects. It needsto be seen that were God not to will the act of Jane’s free will, she wouldhave no free will. Were God not to will her free act (the act that she freelywills), she would have no free act. Created act depends upon participa-tion in pure Act, God himself. Recall that Aquinas does not imagine Godas “over against” human beings, as if God’s intimate involvement in hiscreation were a threat to human freedom. On the contrary, it is God’sconstant gift of being that enables and sustains any free act. The Enlight-enment portrait turns reality upside down. God’s intimate involvement iswhat enables a free act to be free.105 Human freedom is not lost whenGod wills human freedom.106


102 1, q.19, a.6.103 See 1, q.19, a.5, ad 2.104 1, q.19, a.8. For further discussion, see Bernard Lonergan, S.J., Grace and Freedom, ed.Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000):66–118, Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: CatholicUniversity of America Press, 1995); Harm J. M. J. Goris, Free Creatures of an Eternal God:Thomas Aquinas on God’s Infallible Foreknowledge and Irresistible Will (Leuven: Peeters, 1996).Goris’s book deserves to receive more attention from theologians.105 It is no surprise that the Enlightenment portrait of God “over against” human beings,threatening human freedom, has led not only to a rejection of God, but also paradoxicallyto a rejection of human freedom itself, replaced by mechanistic materialism. Cf. David B.Burrell, C.S.C.’s Introduction to his translation of Al-Ghazali, Faith in Divine Unity and Trustin Divine Providence, where Burrell notes that trust in divine providence, for Al-Ghazali,“entails aligning oneself with things as they really are: in Ghazali’s terms, with the truththat there is no agent but God Most High,” when this is properly understood (xx).106 For further elucidation, see Herbert McCabe, O.P.’s God Matters 14–18. See also BrianJ. Shanley, O.P., “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American CatholicPhilosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 99–122. Shanley remarks:

The distinction between the “universal cause” (God) and the “par-ticular causes” (created things) assists us in understanding why the par-ticular causes cannot frustrate God’s will. This carries us into the questionof whether God wills evils, but we should first understand the underly-ing metaphysical framework of causality. Why cannot a defect in a par-ticular cause frustrate the will of the universal cause? For example, did notAdam and Eve (particular causes) frustrate God’s will by eating the fruit?Did not Cain frustrate God’s will by killing Abel, whom God hadblessed?107 Aquinas explains that all particular causes are included within


None other than Jean-Luc Marion has argued recently that Aquinas is separated fromthe subsequent scholastic and modern onto-theological tradition by a deeper senseof divine transcendence that is rooted in creation and that is reflected in a differentsense of divine causation. God does not cause as the supreme or most powerfulBeing among beings; God cannot be encompassed by an a priori concept of beingor an a priori concept of causation. Aquinas’s God is not a Cartesian causa totalis etefficiens moving other beings according to the modern mode of efficient-productivecausation. It is rather that God as the creative causa essendi originates beings in a waythat transcends any mode of mundane moving and so lies beyond or conceptual ken.For Aquinas, God is not a rival to human freedom like some Homeric deity or themodel idol that Nietzsche rightfully saw as a threat to human freedom. Instead, theradical transcendence and distinction of the Creator God from the created worldmeans that God empowers rather than overpowers creaturely freedom. God gener-ously allows created beings to share in divine providence as bearing the dignity ofcauses in their own right. This is especially true of the human person, who fallsunder divine providence as a secondary cause of a peculiar kind because it belongsto him to reflect the Creator’s own mode of causation through his free, rational,provident, and self-determining actions. (121–2).

See also Steven A. Long, “Providence, liberté et loi naturelle,” Revue Thomiste 102 (2002):355–406.107 One might ask further: what about Abel? Given that God has willed to permit Cainto do what he freely did, what about poor Abel, who did nothing except for get mur-dered just when things were looking up in his life? What about God’s command (eventaken metaphorically or according to a spiritual sense) to “wipe out” the Amalekites, men,women, and children? In permitting even one instance of innocent suffering, is not God(as Ivan Karamazov says) a villain? In response to the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel and othershave come to the conclusion that were God to permit such innocent suffering, despitehaving the power to stop it, then God would be guilty as at best an accessory to the hor-rifying crime. Or are we to deny that anyone suffers innocently, and thus make a mockeryout of human justice and human experience of, for example, the fragility and innocenceof young children? Such questions are raised by John E. Thiel, God, Evil, and Innocent Suf-fering: A Theological Reflection (New York: Crossroad, 2002). Thiel is aware that, accordingto St. Paul (elaborated by Augustine, the Council of Trent, and others), every human beingdeserves death because of the introduction of death into the world through original sin,which establishes the dreadful murderous disorder that we find elaborated, not merely in

the will of the universal cause: “if any particular cause fails of its effect,this is because of the hindrance of some other particular cause, which isincluded in the order of the universal cause.”108 Nothing falls out of theprovidential “order” willed by the universal cause (God), even though theGod wills to establish this order (the ordering of all things to the end ofhis goodness, which is the object of his will) through free causes that are“defectible and contingent.”109 God’s universal will is to order all thingsto his goodness. Cain’s horribly defective act, in God’s unfathomable wiseplan, conduces, despite its wickedness, to this ordering. Human beingscannot stand outside the order of God’s goodness.110

This causal order grounds Aquinas’s answer to the objection posed by areading of St. Paul’s statement that “God will have all men to be saved” (1Timothy 2:4). God is like a just judge who in principle (God’s “antecedentwill”) wills that all people should live. However, people are free to choosewhether to live in justice or whether, by injustice, to experience the “death”


the story of Cain, but throughout Genesis (and the remainder of the Bible) (see Thiel,105ff.). Although one may not be guilty of a particular sin when one suffers, one is caughtup in the guilty disorder that is the human condition after the Fall, in the sense of belong-ing interiorly (or exteriorly in Christ’s case and, through Christ, in the case of baptizedchildren before the age of reason) to the disorderly realm that is the post-Fall world. Thielstates: “This consistent teaching on the universality of sin and guilt has typically been con-ceived in a way that makes innocent suffering impossible in a Christian worldview” (116).Were this true, then it would be difficult to understand martyrdom. Thiel’s statement needsmore nuance: the suffering of the martyr is innocent, and yet belongs interiorly (not simplyextrinsically) to the context of the world’s guilt. None of us suffers, as it were, alone; wesuffer as part of a disordered body, even when we also suffer (innocently) as part of Christ’sMystical Body. Both of these aspects are affirmed by what Thiel calls the “classical tradi-tion,” despite Thiel’s claim that “[v]ictimizing sin often causes victimization out of all pro-portion to the victim’s guilt, and thus the scandal of innocent suffering that the classicaltradition works so hard to deny” (128); “the classical tradition makes extraordinary effortsto distance God completely from innocent suffering by denying its very existence” (131).On the contrary, informed by the innocent suffering of Christ and the martyrs (Abel andJob figuratively representing Christ), the classical tradition does not deny the scandal ofinnocent suffering, but rather sees its interior sacrificial value in the interior healing, ornew ordering, of the world whose sin consists precisely in the rejection of self-giving love.Thiel’s position requires him to reject, having misunderstood, the New Testament’s viewof Christ’s death as the perfect sacrifice (see 150ff ).108 1, q.19, a.6.109 1, q.19, a.8.110 1, q.19, a.6, ad 1. This does not mean that human beings are not called to lamentprofoundly the state of terrible disorder that persists, even though Christians know that thisdisorder is now (eschatologically and providentially) ordered in Christ. Cf. MatthewBoulton, “Forsaking God: a theological argument for Christian lamentation,” Scottish Journalof Theology 55 (2002): 58–78.

that is punishment (God’s consequent will).111 Does this not mean, however,that God himself wills evils? If God wills particular causes, does not God willCain’s act of murder, and does not God will Cain’s refusal (if he did refuse)to repent? Why should Cain be ordered to God’s goodness by eternal pun-ishment, if God himself is the universal cause? Here we find the key reasonwhy theologians balk at depicting God as so intimately and intensely involvedin the world.112 As Levenson remarks, “I find it especially odd that scholarswho lived through the years of the Holocaust and other unspeakable horrorsof our century should have imagined that the Hebrew Bible consistentlyupheld a doctrine of God’s uniform, uninterrupted kingship, in spite ofample textual evidence to the contrary.”113

Aquinas’s metaphysics, far from distancing him from the living God,seems to have led him too far in exposing the scriptural God of Presence!114

In illuminating metaphysically the key biblical loci on God’s will, fromboth the Old and New Testaments,115 Aquinas has shown at every step


111 For a defense of the distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will, seeRichard Schenk, O.P., “The Epoché of Factical Damnation? On the Costs of BracketingOut the Likelihood of Final Loss,” Logos 1 (1997): 132–3.112 Like Levenson’s, Thiel’s God is distanced from the world, even though Thiel repeat-edly speaks of God’s solidarity and presence with innocent sufferers, and of God’s promiseto defeat suffering and death. Thiel remarks, “My theological proposal removes God’sagency from suffering and death in order to reject any notion that these events are God’sretributive justice and the traditional belief that all human suffering is guilty” (129). Thielstruggles against the dualism – separation of God from his creation – that his positionimplies. If God’s will, however, is not intimately engaged in everything that happens, it isimpossible to escape the abyss of dualism. To his credit as a logician, Levenson embracessuch dualism, even while (like Thiel) affirming that God will triumph.113 Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, xxiii.114 As Pope John Paul II remarks of this God in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, trans. JennyMcPhee and Martha McPhee (New York: Knopf, 1995), “In a certain sense God has gonetoo far!” (40).115 I should note that although I am not attempting to locate my argument within thecontext of Jewish theology, I do not think that the arguments that I am making are foreignto Jewish theology. In Aquinas these arguments are indebted, through Maimonides andthrough the Old Testament itself, to Jewish theology. For example, Levenson argues againstthe position of Abraham Joshua Heschel who:

like his Hasidic sources, sought to affirm the principle “All is God” by reference tothe doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. “The miracle of coming into being out of nothingis only possible through the continual action of God,” Heschel wrote. “His poweris constantly present within all His creations, and were He to remove Himself for amoment they would revert to their natural state, which is nothingness.” (Creationand the Persistence of Evil, xxiv)

Levenson remarks about Heschel’s position, “This notion of the God who sustains all things,though derived from some common biblical affirmations, is difficult to reconcile with the

God’s extraordinary engagement with the world. As Jesus said, “Are nottwo sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to theground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head areall numbered” (Matthew 10:29–30). Jesus goes on to suggest that, inaccord with his Father’s will, human beings will be ordered to God’s good-ness in two different ways: “So every one who acknowledges me beforemen, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; butwhoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father whois in heaven” (Matthew 10:32–3).

How does God’s intimate involvement in creation not involve him indoing evil? First and foremost the acts of free rational creatures, angels andhuman beings, belong to free rational creatures. No one, including God,compels these actions. Levenson fears that in Protestant theology “theAristotelian conception of God as unmoved, perfect being” is added to“the classical Reformation notion of grace and its corollary, the fear of‘works righteousness,’ ” with the result that human acts no longer haveany role “in the cosmogonic-soteriological drama.”116 Aquinas’s emphasison God’s willing all things and on God’s will being fulfilled would nodoubt inspire this same fear. As Aquinas states, however, “it is not by God’swill that man becomes worse. Now it is clear that every evil makes a thingworse. Therefore God wills not evil things.”117 As the Bible makes clear,man becomes worse by his own sinful acts. God wills only being; Godcannot will defect. God is giver of being, not giver of absence of being,


old mythological image of the divine warrior at combat with the inimical forces” (xxv). Iwould agree with this, and would suggest that the mythological image of the divine warriorat combat, while an important metaphor, is not the key self-identification of YHWH inthe Old Testament. In my view, Levenson overemphasizes the importance of this metaphor,exactly because of the problem of evil. Note how Levenson continues:

The image of God’s creating out of nothing leads rather easily to a conception ofGod as against nothing: there is nothing he is against. This, in turn, leads one towonder whether there is evil at all in a world in which, as Heschel and his Hasidicsource put in, “all is God.” Thus Heschel, though anxious to differentiate his posi-tion from pantheism, seems, like pantheism, unable to coordinate the God of moral-ity with the God of cosmogony. In this, his thought, like Niebuhr’s, has broken withthe biblical pattern, for better or worse. (xxv)

The question is whether Heschel has indeed failed to coordinate the two aspects; and afurther question is whether the “biblical pattern” is preserved in Levenson’s own attemptat coordination.116 Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, xxvi.117 1, q.19, a.9.

even though he permits moral and physical corruption to exist by sus-taining whatever being remains. Aquinas affirms that God “in no way willsthe evil of sin, which is the privation of right order towards the divinegood.”118 Aquinas also denies that evil, in itself, “operate[s] towards theperfection and beauty of the universe,” except insofar as God permits eviland accomplishes good out of it (the Cross is an example).119

What, then, does God will when he wills the free act of Cain, that is,when he wills the being of the participated act? We need to approach this question from another way in order to understand it: what does Cainwill in his free act of murdering his brother? He wills some good that hethinks will accrue to himself upon his brother’s demise. Does God willthe “good” that Cain wills? No, because this good is illusory. In willingto allow the free act of Cain, God wills the good that God alone, inwilling himself, fully sees: the unfathomable good, to be revealed at theFinal Judgment, of the ordering of all creation, including free creatures,to God’s Goodness. As Aquinas states, “God therefore neither wills evilto be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills to permit evil to bedone; and this is a good.”120 We can only know that it is a good when weunderstand that God’s willing is not arbitrary, but flows from his wisdom;and that both his willing – that is, his loving, since love is the first move-ment of the will121 – and his wisdom belong to the wondrous perfectionthat makes him worthy of our worship.122


118 Ibid.119 1, q.19, a.9, ad 2. On Aquinas’s difference from Bonaventure here, see Michal Paluch,O.P., “ ‘God permits the evil for the good’: Two different approaches to the History of Salvation in Aquinas and Bonaventure,” Angelicum 80 (2003): 327–36.120 1, q.19, a.9, ad 3, emphasis added. God does directly will punishment, as the good ofjustice, even though defect (such as the loss of life, or the loss of eternal goods), results.God also wills the corruption and decay of material things: “in willing the preservation ofthe natural order, He wills some things to be naturally corrupted” (1, q.19, a.9).121 1, q.20, a.1.122 As William Cavanaugh aptly puts it, “Because of God’s absolute simplicity, God knowsand loves other things by knowing and loving Himself as creator and sustainer of all thatis. We are thus drawn into God’s own circle of knowing and loving which will serve asthe basis for Aquinas’s unfolding of the doctrine of the Trinity.” See William T. Cavanaugh,“A Joint Declaration?: Justification as Theosis in Aquinas and Luther,” Heythrop Journal 41(2000): 265–80, at 267. Arguing against LaCugna, Cavanaugh suggests that a “proper under-standing of divine simplicity is necessary both to explicating the Trinitarian processions andto Aquinas’s display of the participation of the human being in the Trinitarian life. Far froma divorce of the immanent from the economic Trinity, Aquinas begins with the divine sim-plicity precisely as a way of overcoming the zero-sum view of divine and human relations,clearing the way for the participation of the human in the divine” (266). Cavanaughexplains that “it is the very otherness of God that explains human participation in the

Thus the ordering of creatures to God that God wills in willing himself is not an extrinsic imposition upon history by an aloof God, asmany theodicies mistakenly imply. Rather, God wills this good orderingto be accomplished through the free action of the incarnate Son, JesusChrist crucified.123 Nor does God will, as Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazovwould have it, a “future” good ordering that somehow makes up for theevil that human beings do in history. God does not “foresee” events as ifhe were watching an unfolding movie. From eternity, God directly willsthe good ordering of creatures, and by his own sacrificial death in Christ,he accomplishes in history this sheer gift of good ordering. Denys Turnerhas thus rightly remarked that Aquinas:

sits ill to our contemporary debates, since he is a metaphysician, but notone as offering what Heidegger rejects, a defender of natural theology, butnot of “theodicy”, a theist who knows nothing of “deism”, an apophati-cist whose negativity is rooted in rational foundations, and a rationalistwhose conception of reason is as distanced from that of the Enlightenmentas it is possible to be.124


Trinity, because it breaks down the zero-sum calculation of the human and the divine. Pre-cisely because God is pure act, God is not another being in the universe which competesfor ‘space,’ as it were, with human agents” (269). In the saving action of God – the mis-sions of the Son and Holy Spirit – we are therefore drawn to share more intimately in thedivine Act in which we already participate, as Aquinas’s treatment of the properties ofFather, Son, and Holy Spirit makes clear. As will be apparent, Cavanaugh’s treatment owesmuch to the insights of A. N. Williams (about deification) in The Ground of Union. ThomasWeinandy’s study of divine actuality in Does God Change? and Does God Suffer? reachessimilar conclusions, as does Brian Davies’s The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (cited byCavanaugh) and Michael Hanby, Augustine and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003):82–90.123 Romanus Cessario, O.P. states, “Co-present in the divine intelligence with the tragedy of human history is its merciful remedy. Before all time the human history of JesusChrist as head and salvific focus of historical humanity has been predestined; in that humanhistory and destiny all human histories have been actively saved” (The Godly Image, 205).See also Emile Bailleux, “La plénitude des temps dans le Christ,” Revue Thomiste 71 (1971):5–32; Nicholas J. Healy, “Inclusion in Christ: Background to a Christian Doctrine of Providence,” Communio 29 (2002): 469–89.124 Denys Turner, “Apophaticism, idolatry and the claims of reason,” 33–4. Turner concludes that “if you want to be an Eckhartian, and say, as he does, that ‘you should love God as he is non-God’, then you had better be a Thomist first, lest it be said of youwith justice, as Scotus said of other over-enthusiastic aphophaticists of his time, negationes. . . non summe amamus, which, roughly paraphrased, means: you cannot love a mere post-ponement” (34).

This chapter has sought to engage Levenson’s work as representative of anantimetaphysical turn in Old Testament theology, and in biblical exegesisin general. I am well aware that the fact that Levenson is writing Jewishtheology, and that my effort is one of Christian theology, makes this criti-cal engagement somewhat problematic. However, Levenson’s work opensup with burning clarity the gaps that scholars today find in metaphysicalaccounts of the God of Israel, and boldly proposes a constructive proposalregarding God’s causal ordering that seeks to fill those gaps. Aquinas’sviews, when understood as a radical and biblical vision of God’s intimate pres-ence in the world, fill the gaps better than does either Levenson’s construc-tive proposal or most contemporary systematic theologies. Indeed,Aquinas’s metaphysical analysis, not surprisingly, turns out to be radicallyChristological and pneumatological in its implications. Only such anunderstanding of God’s intimate presence could justify the claim that theself-same God of Israel is Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah, whose Cross,understood in light of his resurrection in the Spirit, reveals God’s gift ofgood ordering as profoundly rooted in God’s personal engagement withsinners. To this topic – God’s Paschal mystery and the revelation of thetriune God – we now turn.


1 See Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000): 1–74, for a survey a contemporary theological/exegetical critiques of the doctrine of divine impassibility and an account of the Old and New Testaments that suggests that metaphysical investigation is in fact required by Scripture itself.2 In order to grasp the links between Protestant and Catholic theologians on this point,as well as to understand their philosophical underpinnings, see David Coffey, Deus Trinitas:The Doctrine of the Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 105–50; and SamuelM. Powell, The Trinity in German Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Chapter Four

THE PASCHAL MYSTERYAND SAPIENTIALTHEOLOGY OF THE TRINITY

When the New Testament scholars N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham fault patristic and medieval theology for distorting metaphysi-cally the biblical portrait of the Trinity, their arguments should be givensignificant weight.1 This is even more the case when their view corre-sponds to a movement in Protestant (Barth, Moltmann) and Catholic(Mühlen, Balthasar) Trinitarian theology to employ the Paschal mysteryof Jesus Christ as the fundamental datum for speculation about the innerlife of the Trinity.2

Anne Hunt, in her study of this theological movement, speaks for manyof these theologians in arguing that before the twentieth century, theolo-gians focused on the “divine being ad intra” with the result that the eventsof salvation history did not shape their speculative conclusions about

the Trinity.3 Hunt indicates surprise that this situation lasted as long as it did: “Why then is the Trinity not considered in terms of Jesus’ death andresurrection? In retrospect it seems an astonishing omission in classicalTrinitarian theology. Apparently the interconnection of the Trinity withJesus’ death and resurrection is simply not a question at this stage in thetradition.”4 In the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar and numerous of hiscontemporaries, Hunt recognizes something new, namely an interpreta-tion of the Trinity that finds in Christ’s passion and resurrection, ratherthan in the metaphysical structure of spiritual act, the foundation for speculation about the inner-Trinitarian mystery.

Does Aquinas approach the mystery of the Trinity through the revela-tion of God in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ? This chapter willsuggest that the answer is yes. Contemporary theologians’ focus on therevelatory character of Christ’s passion and resurrection has, as we will see,clear affinities with Aquinas’s approach. Nonetheless, although the pro-found connections between Aquinas’s theology of the triune God and his soteriology have been exposed by, among others, A. N. Williams,5 onemust state at the outset that Aquinas, in his formal discussions of the triuneGod in himself, hardly makes reference to Christ’s passion and resurrec-tion. The concerns raised by contemporary exegetes and theologians, andtheir call for a different approach, are not surprising. If Christ crucifiedand risen is the heart of revelation, should not reflection upon his Paschalmystery guide reflection upon all other theological topics? Should not thePaschal mystery strikingly illumine the reality of God-in-himself ?

This chapter addresses these concerns of the “Paschal mystery”6

exegetes and theologians, in order to gain insight into the revelation thatthe one God of Israel is a Trinity of Persons. First I will examine theexegetical approaches and concerns of N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham, both of whose investigations of the biblical “identity of God”leads them to criticize traditional theological approaches to the divineidentity. In light of Bauckham’s and Wright’s call for a depiction of Godthat employs the Paschal mystery as the central analogy for the divine life,I will describe in detail Hans Urs von Balthasar’s approach to this ques-tion. I will then attempt to clarify further the issue at stake by exploring

the paschal mystery and theology of the trinity 111

3 Anne Hunt, The Trinity and the Paschal Mystery: A Development in Recent Catholic Theology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997), 2.4 Ibid., 5; cf. vii–viii.5 A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1999).6 This name has been applied to them by David Coffey.

the theological significance of Christ’s Paschal mystery according toAquinas. Aquinas’s treatise on Christ’s passion can help us to understandwhat it might mean to say that the Paschal mystery is the prime locus ofrevelation about God without thereby suggesting that Christ’s suffering,qua suffering, is an analog for the divine life. Using both Aquinas’s SummaTheologiae and his Commentary on the Gospel of John, I will show how forAquinas, Christ’s Paschal mystery manifests – to the eyes of faith – theTrinity.

1 N. T. Wright and Richard Bauckham on Jesus and the Identity of God

N. T. Wright has remarked, “Long before anyone talked about ‘nature’and ‘substance,’ ‘person,’ and ‘Trinity,’ the early Christians had quietly butdefinitely discovered that they could say what they felt obliged to say aboutJesus (and the Spirit) by telling the Jewish story of God, Israel and theworld, in the Jewish language of Spirit, Word, Torah, Presence/Glory,Wisdom, and now Messiah/Son.”7 For Wright, narrative theology – the-ology that seeks insight into Israel’s God by retelling the story of Israeland placing Jesus within that story, as does the biblical narrative – offersthe most accurate portrait of God. Wright conceives of his exegesis asdependent upon this form of narrative theology. In Wright’s words, “ifyou start with the God of the Exodus, of Isaiah, of creation and covenant,of the Psalms, and ask what that God might be like, were he to becomehuman, you will find that he might look very much like Jesus of Nazareth,and perhaps never more so than when he dies on a Roman cross.”8 Spec-ulative theology is suspect – at the very least to be normed and correctedby narrative theology.

Given this starting point, Wright warns against the tendency of Christians to speak about a “God” abstracted from this Jewish story.Although he thinks that a “high Christology” belonged to the Christianmessage from the outset,9 Wright is wary of translating the language ofthe New Testament authors into the terms of the later creedal formula-tions. The phrase “Son of God” exemplifies this mistake for Wright:

112 the paschal mystery and theology of the trinity

7 N. T. Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” Ex Auditu 14 (1998): 48–9.8 Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 54.9 See, e.g., the exegetical essays in The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in PaulineTheology, N. T. Wright (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 18–136.

“Later Christian theologians, forgetting their Jewish roots, would of courseread this as straightforwardly Nicene Christology: Jesus was the secondperson of the Trinity.”10 In fact, Wright suggests, the early Christians weresimply making use of a phrase found frequently in the “Jewish story” oftheir milieu, in order to convey Jesus’ messianic identity.

As Wright argues in a number of places, the key to the worldview orstory of Jesus’ Jewish milieu was that “YHWH would comfort and restorehis people after their exile, would pour out his wrath upon the paganswho had held them captive, and would return in person to Zion to reignas king.”11 Wright interprets Jesus’ actions in light of this Jewish narrative.On the basis of an analysis of Jesus’ actions, as recorded in the synopticgospels, Wright concludes that Jesus “believed that it was his own tasknot only to announce, but also to enact and embody, the three major kingdom-themes, namely, the return from exile, the defeat of evil,and the return of YHWH to Zion.”12 By enacting and embodying thesethree tasks, Jesus was doing (or claiming to do) what only YHWH coulddo.

For Wright, Jesus’ resurrection explains the shift in “worldview” thatoccurred among Jesus’ disciples after his death. In light of his resurrec-tion, his disciples recognized that in Jesus YHWH had actually returnedto Zion and renewed the covenant, now ordered around Jesus himself, asthe true interpreter of Torah and true embodiment of the Temple, inwhom the exile of Israel was over and through whom sins were forgiven.13

Given the validation of Jesus’ messianic actions, it became necessary to“speak of him within the language of Jewish monotheism.”14 The resur-rection confirms that Jesus’ enactment and embodiment of YHWH’s workwas truly the presence of YHWH, the God revealed in the Jewish Scrip-tures, restoring and renewing (as promised by the prophets) Israel and theworld. Wright summarizes this perspective: “In Jesus himself, I suggest,we see the biblical portrait of YHWH come to life.”15


10 Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 48.11 N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 588. Seealso Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992),145–338.12 Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 481; cf. “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 52–3(and elsewhere throughout Wright’s corpus).13 Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 538–9.14 Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 52; cf. The Climax of the Covenant, 99–136.15 Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 53. In addressing the same texts of Wrightand Bauckham that I am discussing here, C. Kavin Rowe has pointed out that their under-standing of first-century Jewish monotheism needs to take more fully into account the fact

For Wright, the early Christians were not only challenging the world-view or story of their Jewish milieu; they were affirming it, announcing itsfulfillment, and redescribing God by insisting that “[Jesus] and his Fatherbelonged together within the Jewish picture of the one God.”16 On thisbasis, he critiques views of God that seem to him to be unbiblical: “Westernorthodoxy has for too long had an overly lofty, detached, high-and-dry,uncaring, uninvolved, and (as the feminists would say) kyriarchal view ofgod. It has always tended to approach the Christological question by assum-ing this view of god and then fitting Jesus into it.”17 The “kyriarchal” god,he implies, would never have become truly incarnate – in other words,never would have entered into the messiness of enacting and embodying therestoration and renewal of Israel. The “kyriarchal” god of “Western ortho-doxy” remains fundamentally ahistorical, even when the Incarnation isaffirmed as dogma. He suggests that “[w]e could only ask the ‘kenotic’ ques-tion in the way we normally do – did Jesus ‘empty himself ’ of some of his‘divine attributes’ in becoming human? – if we were tacitly committed to aquite unbiblical view of God, a high and majestic God for whom incarna-tion would be a category mistake and crucifixion a scandalous nonsense.”18

Instead, rather than beginning with theological or philosophical a prioriclaims, theologians, aided by historical methodology, should contemplateJesus’ (Jewish) humanity, as presented in the synoptic gospels, in order to“see, as Paul says, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”19 In Jesus,Israel’s God is fully revealed.20


that “imaging, and, of course, identifying YHWH as a human being is categorically ruledout by the foundational first two commandments of the Decalogue” (Rowe, “Romans10:13: What Is the Name of the Lord?” Horizons in Biblical Theology 22 [2000]: 167; cf.169). Rowe argues that it is necessary to distinguish more adequately “between Creatorand creature” (168) in order to grasp the radicality of St. Paul’s claims about Jesus. In thisview, Wright and Bauckham “by and large get at the central question the wrong wayaround. That is to say, their studies move in the direction of how it is that Jesus can beidentified with YHWH (the divinity of Jesus), the one God of Jewish monotheism. It is theimplicit underside of this question, however, that needs the attention and creates problemsfor their theses – how can the creator YHWH, the one who cannot be imaged as a humancreature, be totally identified in his identity with the human creature Jesus?” Rather than ana-lyzing Jesus’ identity metaphysically, Rowe answers the question by suggesting that Paul’s(or Saul’s) encounter with the risen Lord enabled Paul to re-read the Scriptures and findthat the life of Jesus embodied and revealed the identity of YHWH.16 Ibid.17 Ibid.18 Ibid., 54–5.19 Ibid., 55.20 Wright remarks, “I do not think Jesus ‘knew he was God’ in the same sense that oneknows one is tired or happy, male or female. He did not sit back and say to himself ‘Well

Richard Bauckham, a New Testament scholar with a background inthe theology of Jürgen Moltmann, has taken a similar approach to thequestion of Jesus’ identity. Bauckham first makes the argument that first-century (or “Second Temple” period) “Jewish monotheism did not char-acterize the uniqueness of God in such a way as to make the earlyChristian inclusion of Jesus in the unique identity of God inconceivable.”21

Bauckham notes that scholars of the Second Temple period have gener-ally made one of two claims with regard to the issue of “monotheism.”On the one side are scholars who hold that Second Temple Judaism con-ceived monotheism strictly, so that the attribution of divinity to Jesuswould have meant breaking with the Jewish monotheistic worldview. Onthe other side are scholars who suggest that Jewish monotheism of thisperiod was open to “various kinds of intermediary figures – principalangels, exalted humans, personified divine attributes or functions – whoare understood to occupy a subordinate divine or semi-divine status.”22

Bauckham proposes that both sides are partially right. In his view, SecondTemple monotheism was indeed strict: “most Jews in this period. . . . drewthe line of distinction between the one God and all other reality clearly,and were in the habit of distinguishing God from all other reality by meansof certain clearly articulated criteria.”23 However, despite this strictness,Second Temple monotheism was also flexible, or open to a narrative thatattributed divinity to Jesus.

Bauckham argues that this flexibility lies in the particular ways thatSecond Temple monotheism “understood the uniqueness of God.”24 Theseways can be seen by reflecting upon the practice by observant Jews ofreciting the “Shema” (Deuteronomy 6:4–6) and the first two command-


I never! I’m the second person of the Trinity!’ ” (Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,”53.) Wright adds that the “category of ‘vocation’ [is] the appropriate way forward for talkingabout what Jesus knew and believed about himself.” (Ibid.) Although Wright’s critique isaimed at the patristic and medieval tradition, for Aquinas, Jesus’ human knowledge of hisdivinity certainly belongs to his vocation of preaching about divine mysteries. This knowl-edge could not trivialize Jesus’ human thinking (as in “Well I never! . . .”). On the con-trary, Jesus’ exalted human knowledge – as a spiritual communion – rules out such childishself-reflection.21 Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism & Christology in the New Testament (GrandRapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999): 72.22 Ibid., 2.23 Ibid., 3. He adds, “So-called intermediary figures were not ambiguous semi-divinitiesstraddling the boundary between God and creation. Some were understood as aspects ofthe one God’s own unique reality. Most were regarded as unambiguously creatures, exaltedservants of God whom the literature often takes pains to distinguish clearly from the trulydivine reality of the one and only God.” (3–4)24 Ibid., 5.

ments of the Decalogue (Exodus 20:2–6 and Deuteronomy 5:6–10). Byreciting twice daily the Shema (and possibly reciting the Decalogue aswell), Second Temple Jews engaged in what Bauckham describes as a“kind of practical monotheism, requiring a whole pattern of daily life andcultic worship formed by exclusive allegiance to the one God.”25 In otherwords, their monotheism was not simply of the intellectual variety, as witha purified concept of God. Rather, their monotheism involved obedienceto the God speaking in the Torah and through the prophets. Bauckhamstates, “Since the biblical God has a name and a character, since this Godacts, speaks, relates, can be addressed, and in some sense known, theanalogy of human personal identity suggests itself as the category withwhich to synthesize the biblical and Jewish understanding of God.”26

More than a mere conceptual breakthrough, Jewish monotheism was theresponse of a people to the God whose identity is revealed “in the nar-ratives of Israel’s history.”27 Bauckham is careful to point out that thesenarratives, even in their most anthropomorphic passages, “are aware of thetranscendence of God,” in the sense that the biblical authors recognizethat in presenting God as a character with a personal (narrative) identitythey are employing language analogously.28

Despite this caveat, Bauckham emphasizes that a monotheism defined interms of personal (narrative) “identity” differs greatly from a monotheismdefined in the categories of Greek philosophy, namely the “concept ofdivine essence or nature.”29 By developing the category of identity, he seeksto overcome the limits imposed by the standard distinction between “func-tional” and “ontic” attribution of divinity. Second Temple monotheism, heargues, was concerned not with abstract attributes but with the identity of apersonal God, YHWH, and thus functional lordship cannot be separated inthis context from “ontic” lordship.30 Israel has learned God’s personal charac-teristics – who, rather than merely what, God is – through her history (thepatriarchs and the Exodus) and through God’s revealing the divine name andits meaning to Moses (Exodus 3 and Exodus 34).

Bauckham distinguishes two classes of such characteristics: “There arethose which identify God in his relationship to Israel and there are those


25 Ibid., 6–7.26 Ibid.27 Bauckham here acknowledges a debt to narrative theology (notably the work of HansFrei), with its emphasis on “identity” as revealed by the continuity of a narrative.28 Ibid., 8.29 Ibid.30 Ibid., 41–2.

which identify God in his relation to all reality.”31 The two classes areunited, Bauckham notes, in “Israel’s eschatological expectation”: theprophets testify that precisely in fulfilling his promises to his people Israel(in accord with his identity as already revealed to Israel), YHWH willreveal to all nations “his sovereignty as Creator and Ruler of all things.”32

It is by these characteristics – Creator and Ruler – that Second TempleJudaism, influenced largely by Deutero-Isaiah, knows God’s personal iden-tity as the one true God.33 Only the God identified as Creator and Rulercould be worshipped, because only this God is distinct from every crea-ture.34 With regard to the personifications of divine Wisdom found inSecond Temple literature, Bauckham argues that in each case Wisdom is intended to express an aspect of YHWH’s identity, that is, the one God’s identity. Bauckham suggests that personified Wisdom may indeedinvolve, for the Jewish authors, “some form of real distinction within theunique identity of the one God,”35 but the oneness of God (YHWH’sidentity as Creator) is not challenged by these authors. The point is that Second Temple Judaism insists upon God’s oneness, as constituent ofGod’s identity, without thereby ruling out “distinctions within the divineidentity.”36

Bauckham then makes two extended arguments. First, he argues thatthe New Testament authors, without rejecting Jewish monotheism, pur-posefully include Jesus within God’s identity: “They include Jesus in theunique divine sovereignty over all things, they include him in the uniquedivine creation of all things, they identify him by the divine name whichnames the unique divine identity, and they portray him as accorded theworship which, for Jewish monotheists, is recognition of the unique divineidentity.”37 This argument, which Bauckham substantiates by briefly sur-veying the New Testament in light of the Old Testament, depends uponthe particular discourse used by the New Testament authors to describeJesus and his work. Simply put, Bauckham’s position is that by employ-ing particular Old Testament passages and motifs, the New Testamentauthors purposefully inscribe Jesus into the discourse of Jewish monothe-ism. While we cannot here evaluate the merits of Bauckham’s proposal,


31 Ibid., 9.32 Ibid., 10.33 Ibid., 10–11.34 Ibid., 13–16.35 Ibid., 22.36 Ibid.37 Ibid., 26.

we can note its similarity to Wright’s approach. Just as Wright evokes the “worldview” of Second Temple Judaism and then shows how Jesus’actions enact the fulfillment of YHWH’s anticipated restoration of Israel, Bauckham points to the discourse in which Second Temple Jews narrated YHWH’s identity and then shows how the New Testamentauthors identify Jesus with the God of Israel.38

The second argument that Bauckham makes is of more significance forour purposes. Bauckham suggests that for the early Christians, “focusingon the earthly Jesus turned the issue of the divine identity around.”39 Notonly was Jesus identified with the already-known personal characteristicsof the God of Israel, but now the identity of the God of Israel had to bere-thought in terms of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In thisre-thinking, the New Testament authors turned once again to the Scrip-tures of Israel. As Bauckham states, “They brought the Old Testament textinto relationship with the history of Jesus in a process of mutual inter-pretation from which some of their profoundest theological insightssprang.”40 Bauckham considers Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55) to be thecrucial text for this process of mutual interpretation, because here onefinds the themes of Jewish monotheism interwoven with the revelation ofGod’s glory in the person of his suffering Servant.41 Interpreting Philip-pians 2:5–11, he suggests that the central theme of the passage is not the“contrast of divine and human natures,” but the contrast between divinestatus (honor) and the “loss of all status.”42 The God of Israel, in Jesus, isrevealed as the “self-giving” God, whose identity itself (Creator andRuler) is pure self-giving.43 In Bauckham’s words, “the cross reveals whoGod is.”44

Baukham proceeds to clarify the relationship of the God revealed bythe Cross to the identity of God revealed the Old Testament. Recalling


38 While their methods have a structural similarity, they obviously proceed along differ-ent paths. It should also be noted that Wright has documented and defended his position,in his two volumes on Jesus and Israel, far more extensively than Bauckham has done thusfar.39 Ibid., 46.40 Ibid., 47.41 Ibid., 48ff.42 Ibid., 61. Bauckham gives a similar interpretation of the Gospel of John. He notes that for the Fourth Evangelist, “When Jesus is lifted up, exalted in his humiliation on thecross, then the unique divine identity (‘I am he’) will be revealed for all who can to see”(65–6).43 Ibid.44 Ibid., 63.

his earlier discussion, he notes t–hat God in the Old Testament is identi-fied not simply as Creator and Ruler, but also as the God of the Exodusand the covenants, the merciful and faithful God. The prophets foretellthe eschatological vindication of this covenant God, in which the covenantGod, characterized by mercy and faithfulness, will be revealed to all thenations. The New Testament authors witness to the reality that in Jesus’Cross, this eschatological vindication has been manifested.45 The relation-ship between divine identity in the two Testaments is thus one of both“consistency” and “novelty.”

The consistency is found in two aspects: the fact that the Old Testa-ment expects that God’s covenantal identity (God’s mercy and faithfulness)will be manifested by a new, triumphant act; and the fact that the Godof Israel, in the Old Testament as well as the New, “is characteristicallythe God of the lowly and the humiliated, the God who hears the cry ofthe oppressed, the God who raises the poor from the dust, the God whofrom his throne on high identifies with those in the depths, the God whoexercises his sovereignty on high in solidarity with those of lowest statushere below.”46 The novelty, Bauckham proposes, consists in three relatedpoints: first, in Jesus, the God of Israel dwells “not only with but as thelowest of the low”; second, the divine self-giving happens through incar-nation, in a human life; third, “the inclusion of Jesus in the identity ofGod means the inclusion in God of the interpersonal relationship betweenJesus and his Father.”47 With regard to this third aspect, Bauckham empha-sizes that this relation in God does not undermine God’s personal agencytowards creatures. Rather, God’s personal agency even in the Old Testa-ment is understood in an analogous way, so that God’s personal agencydoes not rule out (as it would for mere human beings) a distinction ofsubjects in God. These aspects of novelty require the revelation of a newname: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).48

Like Wright, Bauckham concludes by affirming Jesus’ divinity but cri-ticizing theological approaches influenced by Greek philosophical cate-gories. He remarks, “The conceptual shift from Jewish to Greek categorieswas from categories focused on divine identity – who God is – to cate-gories focused on divine being or nature – what God is.”49 This analysis


45 Ibid., 71.46 Ibid., 73.47 Ibid., 73–5.48 Ibid., 76.49 Ibid., 78.

does not mean that he rejects the formulations of the early councils, suchas the Nicene homoousion. Instead, he critiques the Fathers of the Churchon other grounds: “the shift to categories of divine nature and the Platonic definition of divine nature [substance] which the fathers took forgranted proved serious impediments to anything more than a formal inclu-sion of human humiliation, suffering and death in the identity of God.That God was crucified is indeed a patristic formulation, but the Fatherslargely resisted its implications for the doctrine of God.”50 In sum, the“God of the attributes” could not adequately account for the revelationof the suffering God. The identity of God as a suffering God has only beenfully realized, Bauckham suggests, in the twentieth century, through thework of theologians such as Barth and Moltmann, drawing upon thebreakthrough insights of Martin Luther.51

2 Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Cross as Analog for the Trinity52

Bauckham mentions two Protestant theologians, but he could equally havementioned the contribution of the Catholic theologian Hans Urs vonBalthasar toward understanding the Cross as an analog for the Trinity. Howdoes Balthasar understand the Cross? I will begin with two texts fromBalthasar’s trilogy. In volume four of his Theo-Drama, Balthasar states, “Itis all the more terrifying for the Son, therefore, in the darkness of hisanguish, to see that this whole work, which has begun to be realized inMary, is pointless (because of his gratuitous suffering) and doomed tofailure. The Son is not simply alone with sinners in that absolute exchangeenvisaged by Luther: he is accompanied by a witness to God’s activity(which always operates sola gratia), and this robs the Man of Sorrows


50 Ibid., 79.51 Ibid. Bauckham cites his own Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the Making (Basingstoke:Marshall Pickering, 1987), as well as Alister E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross(Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), D. K. P. Ngien, The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s‘Theologia Crucis’ (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), and J. Moltmann, The Crucified God, trans.R. Wilson and J. Bowden (London: SCM, 1974), among others. For an opposing view,drawing on the brilliant work of Michel René Barnes, see John Milbank, “The Force ofIdentity,” in The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997): 194–216. In light of Gregoryof Nyssa’s reflections on God’s active power, Milbank warns against theologies that make“pity and suffering ontologically ultimate” (208).52 This section has appeared, in slightly different form, as “Balthasar on Christ’s Consciousness on the Cross,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 567–81.

of all hope of completing his mission.”53 Does this mean that Jesus is hopeless on the Cross? Compare a second text, this time from volumetwo of Balthasar’s Theologik (published five years later): “Jesus must havehad before his eyes the impossibility of accomplishing his earthly mission. . . from the very beginning and, as resistance to him grew, with increas-ing clarity.”54 In his experience, therefore:

two things can and must occur together: forsakenness by the Father as thefinal radicalness of frustration and failure (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46) andthe knowledge (which at the moment is perhaps no longer tangible) that“the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, everyman to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for theFather is with me”(John 16:32). Ultimate failure and sure knowledge ofultimate fulfillment are not, as in the Old Testament, juxtaposed, butcontain one another here.55

In this second text, Balthasar holds that Jesus would have known that hisearthly mission of gathering Israel was doomed, and yet would haveknown (even if not in a “tangible,” conscious way) that the Father wouldaccomplish the mission.

How is one to understand this insistence that the incarnate Son is bothrobbed of all hope for his mission and yet still knows that the Father willtriumph? Balthasar’s answer is that this experience of the incarnate Sonreveals the unity, in the Spirit, of “removal into the uttermost distancefrom the Father and the final step towards and into the Father. Theparadox of every Christian mission, that is, movement away from God asmovement towards God, is brought here to a unique, because most pro-foundly Trinitarian, fulfillment.”56 In other words, Balthasar proposes that cruciform abandonment functions as the supreme analog for theTrinity.

Challenging both the psychological analogy (Augustine and Aquinas)and the intrasubjective analogy (Richard of St. Victor), Balthasar seeks a new path for Trinitarian theology. His critique of Augustine’s


53 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV: The Action, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994): 357.54 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologik, Vol. II: Wahrheit Gottes (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,1985): 222; cf. 305ff. For the English translations, I have employed by permission a draftof Adrian Walker’s forthcoming translation.55 Ibid., 223.56 Ibid.

psychological analogy is standard; he suggests that it tends towardsmonism.57 His critique of Richard is more significant, since most theolo-gians who criticize Augustine’s model seek to embrace Richard’s. Balthasarnotes that “it is mistaken to take a naïve construction of the divine mysteryafter the pattern of human relationships (as Richard of St. Victorattempted by way of a counterblast to Augustine) and make it absolute;for it fails to take into account the crude anthopomorphism involved ina plurality of beings.”58 For Balthasar, Richard’s mistake is not tritheism –Balthasar later remarks that four of the six books of Richard’s De Trinitateare devoted to the one divine essence, in order “to exclude all suspicionof tritheism”59 – but rather lies in Richard’s grounding of his analogy uponthree human persons rather than upon the Trinitarian event of the incar-nate Son’s Passion, death, and Resurrection. Balthasar argues that in orderto gain more than “the faintest glimmer of an elucidation of the super-abundant triune life resident within the divine unity,”60 one must lookbeyond all creaturely analogies and focus upon the revealed archetype,Jesus Christ.61

Balthasar thus identifies the incarnate Son of God’s Paschal mystery(itself the ultimate expression of the entire kenotic existence of the incar-


57 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, Vol. III: The Dramatis Personae: The Person inChrist, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992): 526. He explains thatAugustine’s analogy for the Trinity from the imago dei or the rational soul’s memory, under-standing, and will “takes place within the same spiritual being, thus yielding an image ofthe inner life of the one divine Spirit; but, at the same time, the sequence closes the createdspirit in on itself and is unable to show how genuine objectification and genuine love –which is always directed toward the other – can come about.”58 Ibid., 526–527. For a more favorable scholarly reading of Richard, cf. Nico den Bok,Communicating the Most High: A Systematic Study of Person and Trinity in the Theology of Richardof St. Victor (Paris: Brepols, 1996).59 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, Vol. V: The Last Act, trans. Graham Harrison (SanFrancisco: Ignatius Press, 1998): 82; cf. Theologik II, 39.60 Theologik II, 39.61 Cf. Theologik II, 35–42. Balthasar describes Augustine’s analogy as “dialectical,” begin-ning from knowing, and Richard’s as “dialogical,” beginning from loving. Regarding bothanalogies, he concludes, “Augustine and Richard, and thus Scheeben as well, were fullyconscious of the fragility of their undertakings. . . . The images remained as such uncon-nected and juxtaposed in the created realm – those most clearly of all which consciouslypresented themselves as imagines Trinitatis: the point of intersection where the lines pro-jected by Augustine, Richard and Scheeben would have to meet was infinitely beyond con-struction. They are – and here Hegel’s method can be included as well – images whichlook upwards from below and (what might be surprising at first glance) which Christ doesnot utilize when he undertakes to exposit the divine aspect of his person into the languageof his humanity” (Theologik II, 61).

nate Son) as an economic Trinitarian analogy for the immanent Trinity.62

Because of the “identity of unity and difference” in Jesus (whose divineand human natures are united in the Person of the Son), his metaphysi-cal constitution already points to the unity and distinction of the divineTrinity.63 The suffering, death, and resurrection of the incarnate Son revealanalogously the eternal mutual kenosis of the Father and the Son in theecstasis of love.64 The Father’s kenotic begetting of the Son is imaged bythe Son’s kenotic handing-himself-over to the Father; the intra-divinekenosis means that every intra-divine relation involves mutual kenosis.Balthasar posits (working “backwards” from the atemporal order of the processions) “the Son’s antecedent consent to be begotten and theSpirit’s antecedent consent to proceed from Father and Son.”65 Inthis mutuality he finds “the way in which the Persons of the Trinity ‘make room’ (‘space’) for one another, granting each otherfreedom of being and action.”66 Since the kenotic “distance” between theFather and the Son constitutes (as spanned by the Spirit) the greatest pos-sible separation, no matter how “bitter,” the incarnate Son endures (outof love) the Father’s wrath against sinners without thereby causing theGodhead to break apart.67

Quoting the mystical theology of Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar furtherholds that the intra-divine kenosis means that the Father in a certain sense


62 For further analysis, see above all Thomas Rudolf Krenski’s Passio Caritatis. TrinitarischePassiologie im Werk Hans Urs von Balthasars (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1990); see also, e.g.,Anne Hunt, The Trinity and the Paschal Mystery: A Development in Recent Catholic Theology(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997); idem, “Psychological Analogy and PaschalMystery in Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 59 (1998): 197–218; Margaret Turek,“Dare We Hope ‘That All Men Be Saved’ (1 Timothy 2:4)?: On von Balthasar’s Trinitar-ian Grounds for Christian Hope,” Logos 1 (1997): 92–121; idem, “‘As the Father Has LovedMe’ (John 15:9): Balthasar’s Theodramatic Approach to a Theology of God the Father,”Communio 26 (1999): 295–318; J. B. Quash, “‘Between the Brutely Given, and the Brutally, Banally Free’: Von Balthasar’s Theology of Drama in Dialogue with Hegel,” ModernTheology 13 (1997): 293–318; Brian J. Spence, “The Hegelian Element in Von Balthasar’sand Moltmann’s Understanding of the Suffering of God,” Toronto Journal of Theology 14(1998): 45–60; Steffen Lösel, “Murder in the Cathedral: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s NewDramatization of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Pro Ecclesia 5 (1996): 427–39; Edward Oakes,S.J., Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum,1994): 242ff.63 Theologik II, 117–18.64 Balthasar acknowledges his debt to the Trinitarian metaphysics of Gustav Siewerth,Clemens Kaliba, Wilhelm Moock, and Klaus Hemmerle. See Theo-Drama V, 66–76.65 Theo-Drama V, 93; cf. Theologik II, 126–28.66 Ibid.67 Theo-Drama IV, 325; Theo-Drama V, 98.

“conceals” knowledge in order to make room for the freedom of love.68

He states:

“The Father shows the Son less his total knowledge than his total love,which conceals something whose concealment lets love radiate even morebrightly.” In God there are things that exist “only to provide love withevery opportunity for development, to give it the room which it wouldlack if everything were stale foreknowledge – room which it needs, for itcannot exist without self-surrender, movement and flight.”69

Again following von Speyr, Balthasar speaks of faith, analogously under-stood, as a “divine virtue.” He explains that “faith as it exists in God . . .is in harmony with ‘irrefragable knowledge’ but is not swallowed up byit, because the love that grants freedom to the other [divine person] alwaysoffers him something ‘that transcends his capacities of knowing’, some-thing that has an utterly unique origin, springing from the ‘hidden depthsof the one and communicated to the hidden depths of the other.’ ”70

Divine knowledge is muted in order to allow for the fuller expression ofthe ecstatic interplay of love.

The metaphysical suppositions of this kenotic theology of the Trinitydeserve notice. Drawing upon Gustav Siewerth, Balthasar argues that love– as self-surrender – encompasses the other transcendental categories.71

The self-emptying or self-surrender that distinguishes (and unites) the


68 Theo-Drama V, 96. Cf. Guy Mansini, O.S.B., “Balthasar and the Theodramatic Enrich-ment of the Trinity,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 499–519; Thomas G. Dalzell, The DramaticEncounter of Divine and Human Freedom in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York:Peter Lang, 1997).69 Theo-Drama V, 96. The notion of “stale foreknowledge” in God suggests that Balthasaris taking a univocal approach to divine knowledge. Furthermore, two other questions arisehere. How could the Father’s “total knowledge” differ from the Son’s “total knowledge”without, at some point, rending the unity of the divine essence? How can divine Personsknowing and willing distinct things not be three gods? Second, does not Balthasar’s oppo-sition of “total knowledge” to “total love” suggest a division between the divine intellectand the divine will, which are one and the same (given the unity of the divine essence)?On such questions, which expose fundamental problems in Balthasar’s use of analogy, seeBernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., “Balthasar’s Method of Divine Naming,” Nova et Vetera(English) 1 (2003); 245–68.70 Ibid., 97.71 Theologik II, 127; cf. Theo-Drama V, 68ff. For discussions of kenotic love in Balthasar’smetaphysics, see, e.g., John O’Donnell, S.J., Hans Urs von Balthasar (Collegeville, MN: TheLiturgical Press, 1992): 7; Aidan Nichols, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide through Balthasar’sDramatics (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000): especially197; Angela Franz, “Trinitarian Analogia Entis in Hans Urs von Balthasar,” The Thomist 62

Persons in God accounts for all real distinctions, including that of the mul-tiplicity of creatures and that of the creature and God: “Without this personal distance in the circumincessio of the Persons it would be impossi-ble to understand either the creature’s distance from God or the Son’s‘economic’ distance from the Father – a distance that goes to the limit offorsakenness.”72 All creatures bear the Trinitarian mark of kenotic distinc-tion, i.e. self-surrendering love (simultaneously letting the other “be” tothe point of complete self-surrender and full communio73), and this Trini-tarian mark is most profoundly realized in the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.The metaphysical priority of love is demonstrated experientially by theexample of the child, who is awakened to the fullness of its (human) beingthrough “being received into the space of the parent’s love.”74 Balthasaradds that, “though it remains true that fully realized love also presupposesa fully realized knowledge . . . the unpreconceivability of the self-surren-der or self-expropriation which first makes the Father Father cannot beascribed to knowledge but only to groundless love, which fact proves theidentity of love as the ‘transcendental par excellence,’ ” more fundamen-tal than being or knowing.75

Balthasar’s theology of the Trinity, and his corresponding Trinitarianmetaphysics, lead him, when he focuses his attention specifically upon theCross, to develop the substitutionary aspects of Luther’s theology.76 In the


(1998): 533–59; Manfred Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis. Darstellung und Deutung der The-ologie Hans Urs von Balthasars (Freiburg: Herder, 1981); Mark McIntosh, Mystical Theology(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998): 107.72 Theo-Drama V, 98.73 Referring to the poetry of Paul Claudel, Balthasar speaks of the “communion of allparticularized things in being.” (Theologik II, 34)74 Theologik II, 162.75 Theologik II, 162–163. This theme is a central argument of Theologik II.76 For further analysis, see Roch Kereszty, “Response to Professor Scola,” Communio 18(1991): 227–36; Michele M. Schumacher, “The Concept of Representation in the Theol-ogy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Theological Studies 60 (1999): 53–71; Gérard Remy, “Lasubstitution: Pertinence ou non-pertinence d’un concept théologique,” Revue Thomiste 94(1994): 559–600; idem, “La déréliction du Christ: Terme d’une contradiction ou mystèrede communion?” Revue Thomiste 98 (1998): 39–94; Michel Beaudin, Obéissance et solidar-ité: Essai sur la christologie de Hans Urs von Balthasar (Montreal: Fides, 1989); Karl-HeinzMenke, Stellvertretung (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1991); M. Imperatori, S.J., “Heideggerdans la ‘Dramatique divine’ de Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Nouvelle revue théologique 122(2000): 191–210; David Coffey, Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1999): 105–50; Gilbert Narcisse, O.P., “Participer à la vie trini-taire,” Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 107–28; Guy Mansini, O.S.B., “Rahner and Balthasar onthe Efficacy of the Cross,” Irish Theological Quarterly 63 (1998): 232–49.

economy of salvation, the forsakenness of the incarnate Son involves thepouring-out of the Father’s “wrath” upon Jesus Christ. As Balthasar states,“Can we seriously say that God unloaded his wrath upon the Man whowrestled with his destiny on the Mount of Olives and was subsequentlycrucified? Indeed we must.”77 Yet, he argues that the “exchange of places”in Luther is rendered in overly formal categories. According to Balthasar,Luther “wants nothing to do with the one, unifying hypostasis in Christ,or with the humanity as an imago dei (the humanity touches the divinityonly at a mathematical point, as it were), or, finally, with a theandric oper-ation of the united natures and therefore with an obedience to missionwhich accompanies the suffering Christ into his Godforsakenness.”78

Luther did not recognize that the substitutionary act of Christ on theCross expresses a reality in the Trinitarian life. Simply put, the kenosis bywhich the Father begets the Son implies “such an incomprehensible andunique ‘separation’ of God from himself that it includes and grounds everyother separation – be it never so dark and bitter.”79

Humankind’s (and Christ’s) separation from God is experienced withinhuman consciousness. For this reason, Balthasar’s Christology, which he identifies as a “Christology of consciousness,” focuses upon “the indi-vidual human consciousness of Jesus.”80 He argues that Jesus’ human consciousness coincides with his consciousness of mission. Jesus’ mission-consciousness is always absolute: as his human consciousness devel-ops over time, his mission-consciousness likewise increases in clarity, andso there is never a distinction between his (nonstatic) human conscious-ness and his mission-consciousness.81 His human “I” is identical with hismission. His mission-consciousness is his “fundamental intuition concern-ing his identity” as the one sent from the Father.82 In this way, Jesus’ con-sciousness is more than merely human, since his mission-consciousness isof his being sent from the Father to accomplish salvation (his mission is thusboth particular and universal, and expresses in a human way his divineSonship). Balthasar explains that “Jesus is aware of an element of the divine


77 Theo-Drama IV, 345; cf. 348.78 Theologik II, 310.79 Theo-Drama IV, 325.80 Theo-Drama III, 166. Balthasar explicitly rejects, as impossible, the quest to uncover a“psychology of Jesus.” Yet, his purpose is to show that Jesus’ human consciousness, insofaras we can know of it from the biblical data, is identical with his mission-consciousness.81 Balthasar’s debt to Schleiermacher is clear, although he radically re-works Schleiermacher’s theory.82 Theo-Drama III, 166.

in his innermost, indivisible self-consciousness; it is intuitive insofar as itis inseparable from the intuition of his mission-consciousness, but it isdefined and limited by this same mission-consciousness.”83

Christ’s human consciousness is entirely delimited by his consciousnessof mission. This perfect accord differentiates Christ from other humanbeings, and indicates his divinity. Balthasar states, “The qualitative differ-ence between his faith and ours is this: we only receive our mission onthe basis of our coming to faith, whereas Jesus always has and is hismission; in his mission, he has utterly abandoned himself to the Fatherwho guides him and in whom he has complete trust.”84 Jesus’ will per-fectly accords with the Father’s from the beginning; over the course oftime, Jesus learns what his mission entails. Jesus’ absolute obedience (asSon) to the Father, in the Holy Spirit, allows the Holy Spirit to teachhim what he has to learn (beyond the fact that he is “the one sent”),when he has to learn it.85

What Jesus learns is described by Balthasar in terms of intuitive “ini-tiation,” “opening up,” and “becoming explicit,” rather than as newknowledge. He learns that his mission, as the one sent to reveal the Father,requires him to descend to the uttermost point of not-knowing, of aban-donment by the Father: the Word is revealed precisely in its opposite, thesilence (non-Word) and death of the Cross.86 Balthasar explains that “theoutcome is that he is forsaken by God on the Cross. Yet this ‘infinite dis-tance’, which recapitulates the sinner’s mode of alienation from God, willremain forever the highest revelation known to the world of the diastasis(within the eternal being of God) between Father and Son in the HolySpirit.”87 Jesus’ “knowing” of divine realities, for Balthasar, is a more and more explicit intuitive grasp of the divine “diastasis,” or separation,that Jesus (as the incarnate Son revealing the Father) is called to enact,


83 Ibid.84 Ibid., 170–71. The question of how Christ’s human knowledge corresponds with hisdivine knowledge is thus placed to the side. Rephrasing the question in terms of con-sciousness, rather than of knowledge, enables Balthasar simply to affirm that Christ’smission-consciousness “totally occupies his self-consciousness and fills it to the very brim.He sees himself so totally as ‘coming from the Father’ to men, as ‘making known’ theFather, as the ‘Word from the Father’, that there is neither room nor time for any detachedreflection of the ‘Who am I?’ kind” (172).85 Ibid., 179–80, cf. 182–3; 227.86 For further discussion of this point, see especially Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Gloryof the Lord, Vol. VII: Theology: The New Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco:Ignatius Press, 1989): 130–61.87 Theo-Drama III, 228.

ultimately, upon the Cross. The content of Jesus’ supreme knowing is precisely unknowing or not-knowing.

In the last volume of his Theo-Drama, Balthasar takes pains to affirmthat “[i]t is an indispensable axiom that the Son, even in his human form,must know that he is the eternal Son of the Father.”88 Jesus must, Balthasarsays, enjoy “the immediate vision of the Father.”89 He explains that Jesus’knowing “that he is the eternal Son of the Father” means that Jesus “mustbe aware of the unbreakable continuity of his processio and his missio, or,in other words, he must know of his transcendental obedience, whichupholds his entire earthly existence (Theo-Drama III, 165ff, 515ff).”90 Jesus’“knowing” of his eternal Sonship is in fact his absolute mission-consciousness, his “transcendental obedience.” Balthasar’s insistence that Jesusmust enjoy the immediate vision of the Father is likewise qualified. Heemphasizes that “[i]n the Lord’s Passion his sight is veiled, whereas hisobedience remains intact.”91 This veiling holds for Jesus’ entire life, if notto the same degree as the ultimate not-knowing Jesus experiences on theCross: Jesus’ mission “presupposes (right from the Incarnation) a certainveiling of his sight of the Father: he must leave it in abeyance, refrainfrom using it; this is possible because of the distance between Father andSon in the Trinity.”92

We are now able to interpret more precisely Balthasar’s position onwhether Jesus possessed “hope” on the Cross. By following the path ofabsolute obedience to the Father, Jesus (the Son) is infinitely separatedfrom the Father. Jesus’ separation is not that of will (as if he joined sinnersin hating the Father), but a separation constituted by lack of consciousknowledge that makes his obedience to the Father blind, without therebybecoming disobedience. In obedience to his mission of “being sent,” Jesus“distances” himself to such a degree that he has absolutely no knowledgeof the Father’s love. Balthasar states:

The Son bears sinners within himself, together with the hopeless impene-trability of their sin, which prevents the divine light of love from register-


88 Theo-Drama V, 124. It is worth noting that volume V was published five years aftervolume III. In the later volume, Balthasar is taking the opportunity to clarify some of thepositions adopted in the earlier volume, and he goes over much of the same terrain againin volume II of the Theologik.89 Ibid., 123.90 Ibid., 124.91 Ibid.92 Ibid., 125; cf. Theologik II, 261–5, 322ff, where Balthasar, generally following Adrienne von Speyr, describes the incarnate Son’s “super-obedience” (“Übergehorsams”).

ing in them. In himself, therefore, he experiences, not their sin, but thehopelessness of their resistance to God and the graceless No of divine graceto this resistance. The Son who has depended [sich verlassen] entirely on theFather, even to becoming identified with his brothers in their lostness, mustnow be forsaken [verlassen] by the Father. He who consented to be given[ver-geben] everything from the Father’s hand must now feel that it was all“for nothing” [vergebens].93

Thus Jesus’ lack of hope, his conscious not-knowing, is total. Yet Jesus’will is still perfectly in accord with the divine will; his mission-consciousness remains intact, and in this there resides an implicit “hope.”His union with sinners means not a perversion of will, but rather that atthe moment when his mission is most fully “opened up” and madeexplicit to him, he knows absolutely nothing. His depth of not-knowing(as the not-knowing of the Son, the Word) goes infinitely beyond anymere human separation from truth. Balthasar affirms, “In his dereliction[on the Cross], the Father gives no word of answer to the Son; and hisWord, that is, the Son himself, sinks into the silence of death.”94

This death is enormously fruitful, because it is located within the Trini-tarian life. Balthasar holds that “the Son’s eternal, holy distance from theFather, in the Spirit, forms the basis on which the unholy distance of theworld’s sin can be transposed into it, can be transcended and overcomeby it.”95 The Son’s holy distance is intellectual, whereas the unholy distance of the world’s sin is moral. As Balthasar states, “This [the freerejection of God’s will] cannot be said to be an element that is present asa possibility in the Son’s relationship with the Father.”96 Yet the Son’s holydistance, in the divine plan, encompasses the unholy distance: “These twoforms of timelessness – the God-forsakenness of the damned and the God-forsakenness of the Son on the Cross – are not simply unrelated.The latter is because of the former.”97 Father and Son mutually surrender


93 Theo-Drama IV, 349; cf. Theologik II, 294ff. Balthasar indicates that Jesus’ experience on the Cross is what John of the Cross describes as the “dark night of the soul.” In hisapostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (2000), the Pope takes up the same theme, but thePope, drawing upon Catherine of Siena and Thérèse of Lisieux, insists upon “the para-doxical blending of bliss and pain,” without suggesting that the bliss is no longer experi-enced (no. 27).94 Ibid., 359; cf. Theologik II, 294ff.95 Ibid., 362; cf. Theologik II, 314ff., where Balthasar summarizes Adrienne von Speyr’stheology of Holy Saturday.96 Theo-Drama V, 502.97 Ibid., 311; cf. 257 and elsewhere. For further elucidation of this point, see AidanNichols, O.P., No Bloodless Myth, 216.

themselves and are abandoned by the other, and this abandonment goesinfinitely beyond the condition of finite sin.98 Moreover, “[b]ecause of theenergy that man has invested in it, sin is a reality, it is not ‘nothing’.”99

Sin is the “refuse” or “chaff ” that is consigned by Jesus to hell.100 It followsthat the incarnate Son can truly bear all sin – in its hypostasized form,stripped of its association with particular disobedient persons – withoutperverting his own will. Quoting Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar notes, “ ‘The Son presents to the Father, in his own person, the sin of the worldthat he has taken away’, at the same time presenting to him ‘in his Body,his Bride, the living sinner now stripped of sin’.”101


98 The problem nonetheless remains: how does a fundamentally “intellectual” distance – it has to be such, since the divine Persons never hate each other – encompasses a willfuldistance constituted by hatred of God? Balthasar affirms that Adrienne von Speyr solves thisproblem:

The mention of the Father here opens up a new and significant dimension of Adri-enne von Speyr’s theology which supplies what is lacking in Luther’s theology. Forhere Hell is a Trinitarian event. She portrays at length the Trinitarian form of sin, amatter which cannot be presented here. However, a fundamental statement is thaton Holy Saturday the Son (as man and redeemer) is initiated into the dark mysteryof the Father, something which itself can happen only in secret and in silence. Thispresupposes a motion (not potentiality) in the eternal life of the Trinity. This isalready true of the Cross: “The Father is never more present than in this absenceon the Cross.” Hell is described as a “preserve” of the Father, in the sense that, ascreator (indeed, already as generator of the Son, in whom every possible universe isalways already co-projected) he foresaw and took responsibility for the possibility ofthe creature’s freedom and, on the basis of the abuse of its freedom, the possibilityof its eternal perishing: “a chaos of sin . . . like a mirror image of the chaos at thebeginning of creation.” And now there is something like a “retraction” of the Father,in order to admit the incarnate Son into this ultimate darkness, which the Fatherdiscloses to him, as the redeemer of sinners, only here at the end of the way ofredemption. (Theologik II, 321–22, emphasis added).

99 Theo-Drama V, 314.100 Cf. Theologik II, 324:

In his passage through hell, Christ encounters not only sin, which has now becomean amorphous mass, but also figures which Adrienne has called “effigies” [Effigien].These effigies consist of what of his own substance a man has lent to the sin he hascommitted: “This lost piece of man goes into hell with sin.” The Son replaces whathas been lost by his personal grace: “So the erstwhile sinner is indeed now closerto the Lord, but at the same time, as sinner, he is copied, in negative, in hell. Aneffigy of him . . . lies buried and rejected in hell.” The effigies are like a hollowimpression, as when a body has lain in the sand. (The quotations are from Adrienne von Speyr’s Kreuz und Hölle, Vol. I: Teil die Passionen [Einsiedeln:Johannes Verlag, 1966])

101 Theo-Drama V, 314–15.

For Balthasar, then, the Son’s obedience on the Cross, in order to bear sinfully, must be characterized by two elements: absolute faithfulness, andabsolute lack of grounding in knowledge. Jesus only moves to the pinnacleof obedience (the pinnacle of union with the Father’s will) by simultane-ously entering the abyss of not-knowing. The highest obedience – thehighest charity – is that which obeys without (conscious) knowledge orhope.102 This highest charity expresses the self-abandoning that characterizesabsolute Love, that is, the Trinity: “This obedience alone exegetes God asTrinitarian love, and that precisely by the Father’s exposing his Son out oflove for the world to the contradiction of the contradivine.”103 Completeself-abandoning to the “other,” a self-abandonment made absolute byunknowing (so as to be willed as self-abandoning rather than as somethingelse), serves as Balthasar’s analog for the Trinity. All the elements of thePaschal mystery, as understood by Balthasar, are taken up into this analogand themselves become analogs – Christ’s faith, death, and so forth.104

Having laid out Balthasar’s understanding of the Paschal mystery asanalog for the Trinity, we may question whether it is adequate to the mys-teries that it describes. His analog depends upon an account of the Cross thatrequires exegetically Jesus’ absolute unknowing to the point of sending awayhis mother. Theologically and philosophically, the analog requires 1) anunderstanding of sin as “chaff ” so that Jesus can engage sin interiorlywithout perverting his will, 2) an understanding of charity as made perfectby lack of knowledge, and 3) an understanding of the distinction of Personsas an infinite “distance” encompassing the divide (of will) between sinnersand God. One notes then that Balthasar does not simply exegete the Paschalmystery in order to arrive at theological conclusions: rather, he bringsimportant theological and philosophical a prioris to his exegesis.

If his exegesis of the Paschal mystery is tested by its fruit, one finds thathis understanding of his analog leads to an account of the Trinity that affirmsthe Father “shows the Son less his total knowledge than his total love, whichconceals something whose concealment lets love radiate even morebrightly,” because love requires that everything not be “stale foreknowl-edge,” since love “cannot exist without self-surrender, movement, andflight.”105 The divine Persons have “faith,” analogously understood, sincethey are continually receiving new knowledge from each other, and sincethere is always something concealed that has yet to come to light. One


102 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington(Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993): 11–14 (nos. 398–401).103 Theologik II, 331.104 See Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.’s excellent, “Balthasar’s Method of Divine Naming.”105 Theo-Drama V, 96.

Person knows something that another Person does not yet know.106

Balthasar insists that his statements, as analogous, can be held in conjunctionwith their opposites. For Balthasar, “the Father gives everything to the Son”can be held in conjunction with “the Father conceals some knowledge fromthe Son,” because of the analogous character of time in the Trinity. Yet,once “analogy” ultimately overturns the principle of contradiction, onewonders whether the limits of human language about God have been over-stepped. Either the Father conceals knowledge, or he does not.

We might ask, in conclusion: Does Balthasar’s account stand exegetically?Is his hypostasizing of “sin” metaphysically acceptable? Could Christ haveenjoyed perfect charity without the full participation of his intellect? Coulda “distance” within God include the willful rejection of God? Does his the-ology fragment, by overstepping the limits of human language, the unity ofGod? Is there a better way of understanding the Paschal mystery’s revelatorycharacter? Sapiential theology will have recourse here to the contemplativeunion in self-giving love promised by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount,“Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8).107

3 The Paschal Mystery as Revelatory of the Trinity in Aquinas

The approach recommended by Bauckham, and taken by Balthasar, thustakes us from a “kyriarchal” view of God to the other extreme.108


106 Such conclusions would seem to beg a return to apophatic caution. Karen Kilby,responding in this way to social theories of the Trinity that overburden the limits of analogy,aptly inquires: “Where exactly, one might wonder, did they acquire such a vivid feelingfor the inner life of the deity?” (Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with SocialDoctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81 [2000]: 439.) See also David Bentley Hart,“No Shadow of Turning: On Divine Impassibility,” 187–93; Gilles Emery, O.P., “L’immutabilité du Dieu d’amour et les problèmes du discours sur la ‘souffrance de Dieu’,”Nova et Vetera 74 (1999): 5–37; and Sarah Coakley’s analysis of the Trinitarian theology of Gregory of Nyssa in “‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique ofCurrent Analytical Discussion,” in The Trinity, ed. S. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 123–44.107 Michel René Barnes’s “The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: Mt. 5:8 in Augus-tine’s Trinitarian Theology of 400,” Modern Theology 19 (2003): 329–355 alerted me to thistext’s function in framing sapiential Trinitarian theology. Servais Pinckaers, O.P. has demon-strated Aquinas’s profound debt to Augustine’s reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Seealso the superb article of Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., “What Is the End of the Human Person?The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulfilment,” in Moral Truth and Moral Tradition, ed.Luke Gormally (Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 1994): 68–96.108 The relationship of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s thought to Aquinas’s is a complex one,but in the areas of Trinitarian theology, Christology, and soteriology there is a marked diver-

Does Aquinas fall into the kyriachal view? Does he make the mistake that Wright finds in “Western orthodoxy,” the mistake of bypassing thehistorical Jesus in describing the Trinity? In light of Wright’s thesis thattraditional Trinitarian theology, because of its nonnarrative character, “hasalways tended to approach the Christological question by assuming this[ontological] view of god and then fitting Jesus into it,”109 I will nowexplore how, according to Aquinas, Christ’s Paschal mystery determinesour understanding of the Trinity.

As with our analysis of Balthasar, it is necessary first to ask what ismeant when one speaks about the revelatory power of Christ’s Paschalmystery. What is the salient aspect (or aspects) of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection that might illumine the inner life of the Trinity? Wrightsuggests that the salient aspect is the way in which Jesus’ historical expe-rience is precisely the opposite of what one would expect to find from a“kyriachal” God, that is, from “an overly lofty, detached, high-and-dry,uncaring, uninvolved” God that, in Wright’s view, emerges out of the tradition of Western metaphysics. Jesus’ historical experience, and in par-ticular his Paschal mystery, reveals a God who is lowly, attached, present,


gence. Commenting on Balthasar’s interpretation of Aquinas’s historical role in The Theol-ogy of Karl Barth (263–6), Fergus Kerr, O.P. has noted:

Much as with de Lubac, Thomas is admitted to be a “transitional figure”: beforehim the one and only concrete spiritual order governed all theology, ahead of himlay the duplex ordo, culminating at Vatican I. “Whoever does not realise how Thomaswas open both to the past and to the future will misunderstand his position in thehistory of human thought.’ Yet, if de Lubac encouraged us to read Thomas as theinheritor of the patristic conception of natural desire for God, Balthasar (here atleast) preferred us to read Thomas more in terms of what was to come. The notionthat philosophy and theology should divide and go their separate ways is the ‘authen-tic spirit of Thomism”. In the event, the three treatises that did not interest Aquinas– de Deo Trino (excellent formal training but no shaping influence on the project ofthe Summa Theologiae), de Christo (carefully done but with no influence on all thatprecedes in the Summa), and de Ecclesia (simply absent) – are, Balthasar contends,precisely what Christian theology is about. In other words, Thomas’ focus wasalready opening him to the standard account in terms of theistic proofs, natural law,etc. His predominantly philosophical methodology prevents him from doing Chris-tian theology properly. Above all, as he says, theology does not deal with singularia:the very particular historical events are treated as mere examples. Thus, in the end,Balthasar chooses Barth over Aquinas, because Barth’s methodology means theologypracticed as scientia de singularibus. (Fergus Kerr, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas: Conflict-ing Interpretations in Recent Anglophone Literature,” in Aquinas as Authority, ed.Paul van Geest, Harm Goris, and Carlo Leget [Leuven: Peeters, 2002]: 169.)

109 Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 54.

caring, and involved. The Paschal mystery reveals the inner-Trinitarian lifeas one of humility, self-giving, presence, and love.

Aquinas’s discussion of God’s essence (what is common to the Persons) isrepresentative of the tradition of Western metaphysical reflection upon Godthat Wright criticizes. Thus it is worth asking what, in Aquinas’s view, thePaschal mystery reveals. Aquinas treats this the topic of question 46, article3 of the tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae. The question posed is “Whetherthere was any more suitable way of delivering the human race than byChrist’s passion?” It would seem, Aquinas notes in the objections, that therewere more suitable ways than Christ’s bloody death. In accord with Wright’sportrait of a kyriarchal God, “God could have liberated mankind solely byHis Divine will.”110 Not only would this have spared the life of his incarnateSon, but also it seems more fitting on another ground, that of the divinepower. Injustice is typically righted by a superior power: thus courts of lawhave the power to deprive the criminal of his freedom in order to restore theorder of justice by means of this retributive punishment. If the court of lawdoes not or cannot exercise this superior power, the criminal continues toact with impunity. Thus, “it seems more suitable that Christ should havedespoiled the devil solely by His power and without the Passion.”111

As these objections show, Aquinas is well aware of the notion of a “kyri-archal” God (although Aquinas would not have used “lordly” in a pejorativesense) that Wright both opposes and links with metaphysically sophisticatedtreatises. Aquinas, however, rejects the kyriarchal portrait of God quite asstrongly as Wright does. Christ’s Paschal mystery reveals a different God, nota God “on high” who rules by divine decrees or a God who comes downto earth to demonstrate his absolute power. In his response, Aquinas statesthat indeed Christ’s passion was the most suitable, or fitting, manner ofredeeming the human race on the grounds that Christ’s passion teaches usabout the God who saves us. He states, “In the first place, man knowsthereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love him inreturn, and therein lies the perfection of human salvation.”112 Christ’sPaschal mystery reveals to humankind the extraordinary depth of God’s love.Without Christ’s passion, humankind would not have known the super-abundance of God’s love. The Paschal mystery reveals the Trinity (God-in-himself) in terms of a wisdom of wondrous love, to the point of the Son ofGod giving his own life for the salvation of sinners, that is, for the salvationof those who by pride had cut themselves of from God.


110 3, q.46, a.3, obj.1. Aquinas draws here upon Anselm’s marvelous Cur Deus homo.111 Ibid., obj.3.112 3, q.46, a.3.

Aquinas gives a second reason for the fittingness of Christ’s passion as theway that God chose to redeem humankind: by his passion, Christ “set us anexample of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues dis-played in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it iswritten (1 Peter 2:21): Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that youshould follow in His steps.”113 Obedience is ultimately the conforming of one’shuman will to the will of God, who is love: “everything that the Son doesis directed to the glory of the Father.”114 Humility is the opposite of pride,and means that one loves each thing in accord with its goodness, rather thanproudly rejecting the goodness of other things. In this way, Christ’s passionreveals the Trinity not only as constant and just, but also as perfect love andperfect humility, since God in Christ actively loves, rather than dominates,the creatures he has made. Lastly, Aquinas comments on the fittingnessfound in the symmetry of God’s plan: “as man was overcome and deceivedby the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; andas man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death.”115 Thissymmetry of God’s plan (his divine Providence) manifests the wisdom ofGod, who orders all things rightly.

Like Wright, Bauckham, and Balthasar, then, Aquinas has recourse toJesus’ Cross in order to dispel the myth of what Wright calls the “kyri-archal” or aloof and uncaring God. The Paschal mystery of Jesus Christreveals a God of superabundant and active love, humility, and wisdom. AsAquinas observes, “Christ suffered voluntarily out of obedience to theFather.”116 The incarnate Son, in his humanity, obeys the Father’s will.Yet, does the fact that Christ suffered out of obedience to the Father meanthat God the Father abandoned the Son to a state of God-forsakenness,or poured out his wrath upon the Son? In contrast to Balthasar’s view,Aquinas states that the Father “abandoned” the incarnate Son in the senseof not shielding him from those who would crucify him. As Aquinaspoints out in answer to an objection, “It is indeed a wicked and cruel actto hand over an innocent man to torment and death against his will. YetGod the Father did not so deliver up Christ, but inspired him with thewill to suffer for us.”117 Furthermore, the incarnate Son did not undergo


113 Ibid.114 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, part 2, ch. 14, lect. 3, no. 1906 (trans. James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher [Petersham, MA: St. Bede’sPublications, 1999], 352).115 3, q.46, a.3.116 3, q.47, a.3.117 Ibid, ad 1.

the abandonment by God experienced by unrepentant sinners in hell. Hellis an experience that depends upon possessing a perverted will; the per-verted will itself constitutes the experience of “wrath” that constitutes theinterior punishment. Christ could only have experienced such absoluteabandonment had his will been perverted.

Even so, the Father did abandon the Son to undergo the most intensesuffering. The incarnate Son was able to undergo the most intense sufferingpossible, precisely because of his intimate knowledge of the Father. In suffer-ing innocently for the sins of all others, he knew fully the glorious love ofthe Father that the sinner rejects; in this way, his perfect knowledge of theFather enabled him to suffer, out of love, immeasurably profound pangs ofsorrow for sins. The Father inspired Christ’s human will with this perfectcharity by infusing Christ’s humanity with the fullness of the grace of theHoly Spirit. In Christ’s passion, one thus sees manifested the incarnate Son’sobedience to the Father through the Holy Spirit. The Paschal mystery ofJesus Christ reveals God’s wisdom and love in Trinitarian form. AsRomanus Cessario has put it, “He who in the depths of the divine reality isthe perfect image expressed by the Father and who together with the Fatherbreathes forth personal love as the bond of fellowship, replicates this divinecommunion within the medium of his humanity and his human history forour sakes . . . The perfect mesh of the Father’s loving initiative to savehumankind and of Christ’s human response is a crucial feature of Christ’ssatisfactory work, according to St. Thomas. For in that communion of lovesour own imaging communion with the Trinity is restored.”118

If we now return to Anne Hunt’s comment – “Why then is the Trinitynot considered in terms of Jesus’ death and resurrection? In retrospect itseems an astonishing omission in classical Trinitarian theology” – it shouldbe apparent that her criticism misses the way in which Aquinas interpretsChrist’s Paschal mystery as the revelation of God’s Trinitarian wisdom andlove. For Aquinas, Christ’s Paschal mystery manifests the Father as the onewho sends the Son (the Father’s Word of love for the world); manifeststhe incarnate Son who is God’s perfect Word in the world; and manifeststhe Holy Spirit who gifts the incarnate Son with supernatural love. AsAquinas writes in his Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, “And justlike one of us who wants to be known by others by revealing to themthe words in his heart, clothes these words with letters or sounds, so God,wanting to be known by us, takes his Word, conceived from eternity, andclothes it with flesh in time. And so no one can arrive at a knowledgeof the Father except through the Son.”119 Only the revelation of Jesus


118 Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Godly Image, 205–6.119 Super Ioan. 14, lect. 2, no. 1874 (Weisheipl, part 2, 339).

Christ provides humankind with knowledge of the Trinity, and this rev-elation is received only through faith.120

Aquinas’s Commentary on the Gospel of St. John nonsystematicallyaddresses the revelatory function of Christ’s Paschal mystery in three ways.In one set of passages, Aquinas discusses the Father’s generation of the Sonin terms of self-giving. In a second set, he explores how Christ is sent tomanifest the Father. In a third set, he identifies the Paschal mystery as thecentral way in which Christ manifests his Father and the Trinity. I willdiscuss each of these thematic sets of passages in turn.

Aquinas speaks of an “astonishment of devotion” that characterizes thebeliever who, “considering the great things of God, sees that they areincomprehensible to him; and so he is full of astonishment: ‘The Lord onhigh is wonderful’ (Psalms 93:4), ‘Your testimonies are wonderful’ (Psalms118:129).”121 Nowhere is this astonishment more fitting than in reflectionupon the Father’s eternal generation of the Son. In generating the Son,the Father gives or communicates everything to the Son. Against thenotion that the modern period invented the theology of self-gift and self-communication, it is necessary to emphasize that this language of radicalgiving, which is ultimately biblical, appears in Aquinas.122 Commentingon John 5:20, Aquinas notes that “because the Father perfectly loves theSon, this is a sign that the Father has shown him everything and has communicated [communicaverit] to him his very own power and nature.”123


120 Bruce Marshall, in “Do Christians Worship the God of Israel?,” interestingly com-pares Balthasar’s Theo-Drama (III) and Aquinas’s Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew onthis point: “As Hans Urs von Balthasar puts the claim, ‘distinguishing a plurality in God isonly possible on the basis of the action of Jesus Christ. In him alone is the Trinity openedup and accessible.’ Modern Trinitarian theology in particular has tended to insist upon thispoint. Traditional reflection on these issues had, to be sure, commonly held that ‘the Trinityis implicitly contained in Christ’ ” (242). Marshall distinguishes the modern view (Balthasar)from the traditional view (Aquinas) on the grounds that the modern position requires ref-erence to Jesus. In my view, Balthasar and Aquinas are saying the same thing here. However,since both Christ (crucified) and the revelation of the Trinity were prefigured in the OldTestament, it was not impossible for learned Jews to gain insight into the mystery of theTrinity, and implicit faith in God the Trinity is possible for people of all times and places.On this subject, see my Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation According to ThomasAquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).121 St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John, part 1, ch. 3, lect. 2, no.449 (trans. James A. Weisheipl and Fabian R. Larcher [Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1980],191).122 Although there are not three “selves” in the modern sense in the Trinity, neverthelessthe Father gives all that he is (the divine essence) in begetting. The radical character of thisgeneration is denoted in the phrase “self-gift.”123 Super Ioan. 5, lect. 3, no. 753 (Weisheipl, part 1, 302). Note the contrast with Balthasar’sview.

Similarly, commenting on John 3:34, Aquinas conceives of the Father’sgeneration of the Son in terms of gift: “For God the Father is said togive [dare] the Holy Spirit without measure to Christ as God, because hegives to Christ the power and might to spirate the Holy Spirit, who, sincehe is infinite, was infinitely given him by the Father: for the Father givesit just as he himself has it, so that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him asmuch as from the Son. And he gave him this by an everlasting gen-eration.”124 The generation of the Son is the Father’s self-gift or self-communication. Further, Aquinas interprets John 5:20, “For the Fatherloves the Son, and shows him everything that he does” by connecting the Father’s love with the Father’s generative communication or gift.

How can this be, given that the Father generates by the divinenature?125 Aquinas notes, “If love is taking essentially [pertaining to God’soneness], it indicates the divine will; if it is taken notionally [pertainingto the distinction of Persons], it indicates the Holy Spirit.”126 The gener-ation of the Son does not pertain to either of these kinds of love, becausethe Father generates neither by the divine will nor by the Holy Spirit,but by the divine nature. Aquinas explains that when we link the Father’sgeneration of the Son (his self-gift) with the Father’s love, this refers notto the power of generation, but to the fruit of generation. Because theFather generates the Son by giving him everything he has – by speakingthe entire Trinity in his Word – the Son is the perfect image of the Father.As image (Hebrews 1:3, Colossians1:15), the Son must be perfectly lovedby the Father. Aquinas states, “For since likeness is a cause of love (forevery animal loves its like), wherever a perfect likeness of God is found,there also is found a perfect love of God.”127 The Father’s love is a signof what he has done for the Son in giving him everything that he, theFather, possesses. It is love that manifests a giver who has generated hisperfect likeness.

If the Father’s begetting of the Son is characterized by this absoluteself-giving, then if Christ is to make the Father known, he will have todo so by giving himself. Aquinas repeatedly affirms that manifesting theFather, making him known, is the task of the incarnate Son. FollowingChrysostom, he interprets John 17:6, “I have manifested your name to


124 Super Ioan. 3, lect. 6, no. 543 (Weisheipl, part 1, 221).125 On the potentia generandi, see John Boyle’s excellent “St. Thomas and the Analogy ofPotentia Generandi,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 581–92.126 Super Ioan. 17, lect. 6, no. 2262 (Weisheipl, part 2, 510).127 Super Ioan. 5, lect. 3, no. 753 (Weisheipl, part 1, 302).

the men” as suggesting “the characteristic work of the Son of God, whois the Word, and the characteristic of a word is to manifest the one speak-ing it: ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whomthe Son chooses to reveal him’ (Matthew 11:27); ‘No one has ever seenGod; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made himknown’ (John 1:18).”128 Before Christ’s coming, the people of Israel knewGod the Father, but they only knew him as Father in the sense of Creator,and as the one and only God. Christ’s disciples, on the other hand, areable to know the Father by faith (by the grace of the Holy Spirit) as theFather of the only-begotten Son.129

In exploring how Christ manifests his Father, Aquinas emphasizes thedisciples’ friendship with Christ. The figure of the apostle John is para-digmatic for Aquinas, since he was uniquely beloved by Christ. Inter-preting mystically John’s closeness to Jesus at table, Aquinas writes that“we can see from this that the more a person wants to grasp the secretsof divine wisdom, the more he should try to get closer to Christ, accord-ing to ‘Come to him and be enlightened’ (Psalms 34:5).”130 The sign offriendship is that friends reveal their secrets to each other, and thus whenwe have become friends of God in Jesus Christ he reveals to us, by theHoly Spirit, what belongs to his infinite wisdom: “It is characteristic ofthe Holy Spirit to reveal the truth because it is love which impels one toreveal his secrets.”131 Christ’s wisdom is nothing less than the Trinity. Inspeaking his Word (the Wisdom of God), the Father speaks the wholeTrinity. Thus Aquinas notes that if someone were to ask, “The Father willmanifest himself, will he not?” the answer is “Yes, both the Father andthe Son. For the Son manifests himself and the Father at the same time,because the Son is the Word of the Father: ‘No one knows the Fatherexcept the Son’ (Matthew 11:27).”132 Since Christ is the Wisdom of God,his wisdom is the Trinity, and learning his wisdom, as his friend, meansto share in his Trinitarian life.133 Aquinas would agree with St. Maximus


128 Super Ioan. 17, lect. 2, no. 2194 (Weisheipl, part 2, 485–6); cf. 7, lect. 3, no. 1061(Weisheipl, part 1, 423).129 Super Ioan. 17, lect. 2, no. 2195 (Weisheipl, part 2, 486); cf. 1, lect. 8, nos. 179–86(Weisheipl, part 1, 89–91), which discusses the glory of Christ as the glory manifested tothose who recognize, in faith, his divinity.130 Super Ioan. 13, lect. 4, no. 1807 (Weisheipl, part 2, 303).131 Super Ioan. 14, lect. 4, no. 1916 (Weisheipl, part 2, 357): “Manifestare autem veritatemconvenit proprietati Spiritus sancti. Est enim amor qui facit secretorum revelationem.”132 Super Ioan. 14, lect. 5, no. 1937 (Weisheipl, part 2, 367).133 Super Ioan. 15, lect. 3, no. 2016 (Weisheipl, part 2, 403). See also Super Ioan. 14, lect.4, no. 1920 (Weisheipl, part 2, 359): “note how intimate his indwelling is, for he will be

the Confessor’s remark that “[t]heology is taught us by the incarnate Logosof God, since He reveals in Himself the Father and the Holy Spirit. Forthe whole of the Father and the whole of the Holy Spirit were presentessentially and perfectly in the whole of the incarnate Son.”134

Christ, then, reveals the Trinity to his friends. As incarnate Wisdom,he does so by teaching through his words and actions.135 Aquinas fre-quently describes Christ’s “eagerness to teach.”136 Yet, Jesus’ words cannotbe understood simply by hearing or reading them, as can the words ofother teachers. Rather, in order for true teaching to occur, we must hearor read his words in the Holy Spirit. As Aquinas writes, “The root andfountain of our knowledge of God is the Word of God, that is, Christ.. . . From this knowledge of the Word, which is the root and fountain,flows, like rivulets and streams, all the knowledge of the faithful.”137 Thisknowledge requires not merely hearing, but rather a participation in theWord by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit.138

In addition to words, Jesus teaches effectively by what he does. Com-menting on John 5:36 “The very works which my Father has given meto perform – those works that I myself perform – they bear witness to me that the Father sent me” – Aquinas remarks that “the sort of


in you, that is, in the depths of your heart: ‘I will put a new Spirit within them’ (Ezekiel11:19).”134 St. Maximus the Confessor, “On the Lord’s Prayer,” in The Philokalia, compiled by St.Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, Vol. 2, ed. and trans., G.E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981): 287.135 For a thorough discussion, see Michael Dauphinais, The Pedagogy of the Incarnation:Christ the Teacher According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: Doctoral Dissertation, 2000).See also Michael Sherwin, O.P., “Christ the Teacher in St. Thomas’s Commentary on theGospel of John,” forthcoming in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesisand Speculative Theology, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Catholic Univer-sity of America Press); Richard Schenk, O.P., “Omnis Christi Actio Nostra Est Instructio: TheDeeds and Sayings of Jesus as Revelation in the View of Thomas Aquinas,” in La doctrinede la révélation divine de saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. Leo J. Elders (Vatican City: LibreriaEditrice Vaticana, 1990): 104–31.136 Super Ioan. 9, lect. 4, no. 1355 (Weisheipl, part 2, 104).137 Super Ioan. 17, lect. 6, nos. 2267–2268 (Weisheipl, part 2, 512).138 Cf. Super Ioan. 3, lect. 1, nos. 431–443 (Weisheipl, part 2, 184–8) where Aquinas interprets Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about being “born again.” Aquinas writes that inorder to know Christ truly, “It is necessary that one be [spiritually] generated in the like-ness of the one generating; but we are regenerated as sons of God, in the likeness of histrue Son. Therefore, it is necessary that our spiritual regeneration come about through thatby which we are made like the true Son; and this comes about by our having his Spirit”(no. 442, p. 187).

person he [Christ] is can be learned through the works he does.”139 Hisdefinitive work is his passion. As the “way,” Christ opens up for us friend-ship with the Father; as the “truth” and “life,” Christ is the end or des-tination of the way, and thus is the consubstantial Son.140 In revealinghimself by his works, Christ thus reveals the Father: “the Father was seenin the incarnate Christ: ‘We have beheld his glory, glory as of the onlySon from the Father’ (John 1:14).”141

Thus far, our discussion of Aquinas’s Commentary on John has sug-gested two things. First, Aquinas holds that the Trinity is constituted byabsolute self-giving. Second, Aquinas holds that Christ’s mission, as theincarnate Word, was to reveal the Father by teaching through words anddeeds. Now we arrive at the third theme: through his Paschal mystery,Jesus Christ manifests the Father in a supreme way.

Aquinas states that Christ “carried his cross as a teacher his cande-labrum, as a support for the light of his teaching, because for believersthe message of the cross is the power of God.”142 His Cross and resurrec-tion reveal the true meaning of his oral communication, and so the Paschalevents are the culmination of his teaching. Following Augustine, Aquinasremarks, “Christ hanging on the cross is like a teacher in his teachingchair.”143 Christ, in his humanity, teaches the obedience that springs from love.144 This obedient love (or human self-giving) gives access to the Father: “For just as the love which the Father has for him is themodel or standard of Christ’s love for us, so Christ wants his obedienceto be the model of our obedience. . . . Christ shows that he abided in the Father’s love because in all things he kept the Father’s command-ments.”145 When we come to understand Christ’s love, manifested on theCross, he reveals for us the Father’s love – the love expressed (as we haveseen) as the absolute self-giving that begets the Son, the Father’s Word orImage.


139 Super Ioan. 5, lect. 6, no. 817 (Weisheipl, part 1, 327–8). Aquinas makes the same pointlater in discussing how Christ teaches through his action of prayer: “For every action ofChrist is a lesson for us.” (Super Ioan. 11, lect. 6, no. 1555 [Weisheipl, part 2, 190]).140 Super Ioan. 14, lect. 2, nos. 1867–1870 (Weisheipl, part 2, 336–7).141 Super Ioan. 14, lect. 2, no. 1881 (Weisheipl, part 2, 342).142 Super Ioan. 19, lect. 3, no. 2414 (Weisheipl, part 2, 566).143 Super Ioan. 19, lect. 4, no. 2441 (Weisheipl, part 2, 574); cf. Barnes, “The Visible Christand the Invisible Trinity.”144 Super Ioan. 14, lect. 8, no. 1976 (Weisheipl, part 2, 383).145 Super Ioan. 15, lect. 2, no. 2003 (Weisheipl, part 2, 398).

In short, it is by attending to Christ’s passion and resurrection – throughwhich our hearts are purified – that we truly learn who God is. By suf-fering on the Cross, Christ obediently does the Father’s will; he abides inthe Father’s love. This love is manifested by Christ, through his humanact of supreme suffering, as supreme self-giving. By his resurrection,Christ, as man, reveals the fruit (the glory) of this supreme self-giving:the fruit is the glory of friendship with the Father, since like loves itslike.146 When we are conformed to his (self-giving) image, we manifesthis glory and are glorified with him. As Aquinas explains, commentingon John 3:16, Christ “indicates the immensity of God’s love in saying,‘have eternal life’: for by giving eternal life, he gives himself. For eternallife is nothing else than enjoying God. But to give oneself is a sign ofgreat love: ‘But God, who is rich in mercy, has brought us to life inChrist’ (Ephesians 2:5).”147 Christ, whose Paschal mystery is God’s revela-tory gift of himself to us, thus reveals that “eternal life” (sharing in Godhimself) is sharing in God’s supreme self-giving – a self-giving that is,unlike human self-giving, without risk, suffering, or loss, in other words a self-giving that is glory. In giving himself, Christ reveals theWisdom of the Father who draws all things into the self-giving communioof Love.148

The Paschal mystery is Christ’s ultimate teaching about his Father, andat the heart of this sapiential teaching is self-giving. In a way that differsfrom that of the “Paschal mystery” theologians such as Balthasar who seethe Cross as a sign of radical intra-divine abandonment, and yet agreeswith their emphasis on self-giving, the Paschal mystery does indeed revealthe Trinity according to Aquinas. For Aquinas, as for Wright, the Paschalmystery must be approached in faith through the purifying pedagogy withwhich God had instructed Israel (for Aquinas this means largely theMosaic testimony to God’s being and simplicity, and other attributes), andthrough Christ’s oral teaching before his passion, death, and resurrection.Thus Aquinas, like Wright, would agree with Richard Hays’s importantremark that “the Gospels teach us how to read the Old Testament, and– at the same time – the Old Testament teaches us how to read the


146 Super Ioan. 17, lect. 1, nos. 2190–2192 (Weisheipl, part 2, 482–4).147 Super Ioan. 3, lect. 3, no. 480 (Weisheipl, part 1, 202). Cf. on Christ’s supreme obe-dience Super Ioan. 19, lect. 5, no. 2452 (Weisheipl, part 2, 578).148 See also Super Ioan. 14, lect. 6, no. 1947 (Weisheipl, part 2, 371): “these words indi-cate the intimacy of Christ with us: with him, that is, with the one who loves and obeyshim, since he takes pleasure in us, and has us take pleasure in him, ‘delighting in the sonsof men’ (Proverbs 8:31).”

Gospels.”149 To understand this divine pedagogy, Wright employs histori-cal and literary methods. As we have seen, Aquinas’s metaphysicalapproach to the divine pedagogy, while different from Wright’s exegeti-cal methods, is not opposed to them. Far from constructing an aloof “kyriarchal” idol, he seeks to maintain faithfulness to the transcendent and immanent God revealed to Israel as YHWH, the one God, the “Iam.” Aquinas places metaphysics in service of God’s command to Israel toavoid all forms of idolatry.

Christ’s Paschal mystery reveals that his claim to be the Son of theFather – his claim to be the perfect image of the Father – is indeed thevery truth manifested by the incarnate Word’s suffering, death, and resur-rection. The Spirit conforms the incarnate Son, on the Cross, into theperfect “analogy,” or human “icon,” of the Father. The analogy isgrounded in the incarnate Son’s wisdom and self-giving love, not inabsolute unknowing or utter self-abandonment. For this reason, thePaschal mystery serves as an “analogy” for the Trinity precisely in direct-ing our hearts to the perfected imago dei that we see (in faith) in JesusChrist.150 The “analogy” of the Paschal mystery is thus properly devel-oped through metaphysical investigation of the imago dei, the spiritualcapacities for wisdom and love. As ways of instilling within believersgreater contemplative understanding of the mystery of the Trinity, reflec-tion upon the Paschal mystery and the psychological analogy, as devel-oped metaphysically by Aquinas, complement one another.


149 Richard B. Hays, “Can the Gospels Teach Us How to Read the Old Testament?,” ProEcclesia 11 (2002): 405. Hays uses the abbreviation “OT.”150 Cf. Michael A. Dauphinais, “Loving the Lord Your God: The Imago Dei in SaintThomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 241–67; Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Image et béati-tude,” chapter 4 of Saint Thomas d’Aquin, maître spirituel, 105–32.

1 David Coffey, Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1999): 30. For a critical assessment of Coffey’s book, see Paul D. Molnar’s review inTheological Studies 62 (2001): 377–9. Molnar rightly points out that “[t]his book representsa much needed counter-move to a number of celebrated recent presentations of the doc-

Chapter Five

SCRIPTURE AND THEPSYCHOLOGICAL ANALOGY

FOR THE TRINITY

David Coffey has issued an intriguing challenge to the Augustinian sapi-ential tradition of Trinitarian theology that has found in St. John’s use ofthe name Logos for the Son of God a way of achieving some analogouscontemplative understanding of the mystery of how the three-PersonedGod is one God, and vice-versa. Coffey states:

But that the two processions take place according to the divine intellect (byknowledge) and the divine will (by love), respectively, is something thatcould only be known if revealed, and revealed it simply has not been. Ifmy views on the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel, argued earlier, are correct,that Jesus is there called the Word of God does not provide a legitimatepoint of departure for such speculation, as calling a human being a “word”cannot be literal, and indeed can only be metaphorical, speech. Jesus is saidto be the Word of God only inasmuch as in his person he embodies divinerevelation. Therefore the Thomist-Lonerganian system, to the extent thatit rests on Augustine’s psychological analogy, must be said to be a rathershaky edifice. Lacking proper grounding in the Bible, it should probably becharacterized as philosophico-religious speculation rather than theologystrictly so-called. At best it is an illustration of something already revealedin other ways.1

Although Coffey refers to his interpretation of the Prologue of St. John’sGospel, his understanding of the entirety of the New Testament textsabout Christ is at issue. He argues that the New Testament, while viewing“God’s very divinity as shared in uniquely by the man Jesus,”2 consistentlyunderstands Christ in his actions, not in his being. According to Coffey,the “biblical world of meaning” is “functional” rather than metaphysicalor ontological.3 The early Church, shaped by Greek philosophical con-cerns, shifted Christian understanding of Jesus away from his actions –away from the biblical world of meaning – and toward questions aboutJesus’ being. The Council of Nicea, Coffey argues, “penetrates to a meta-physical level of reality that was scarcely the concern of the biblicalwriters.”4 This level of reality drives a wedge between the biblical Jesusand the “ontological” Jesus of Nicea’s “homoousion.” Post-Nicene theol-ogy has to attempt to deal with this tension: “The result has been that,as theology concerns itself with understanding this action, it is necessar-ily driven back to the biblical concept of Savior, which it now has toappropriate in terms of the homoousion, finding that it has to produceelaborate theories to do so.”5 Soteriology and Christology are thus sepa-rated with unfortunate consequences, as theological treatises addressingChrist’s actions as Savior are written with little connection to parallel trea-tises on Christ as ontologically God and man.

For Coffey, the New Testament writers presume Jesus’ prerogativesfunctionally without concerning themselves with potential ontological

the psychological analogy for the trinity 145

trine of the Trinity that have polemicized against a doctrine of the immanent Trinity andhave floundered because of their failure to understand the importance of this doctrine”(377). Molnar, however, ultimately cannot agree with Coffey’s conclusions; cf. Paul D.Molnar, “Deus Trinitas: Some Dogmatic Implications of David Coffey’s Biblical Approachto the Trinity,” Irish Theological Quarterly 67 (2002): 33–54. David Tracy has recentlydefended the psychological analogy as a valid fruit of speculative Trinitarian theology: “Icontinue to believe . . . that the brilliant use of the analogies of intelligence and love by thewestern Trinitarian theologies of Augustine and Aquinas are splendid, plausible, and modestanalogically speculative forms for reflection on the immanent Trinity without any loss of a grounding in the realistic forms (here, especially, doctrine, confession, and liturgy) ofarticulating the economic Trinity” (Tracy, “God as Trinitarian: A Christian Response toPeter Ochs,” in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. [Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 2000]: 84). Cf. David Tracy, “Trinitarian Speculation and the Forms ofDivine Disclosure,” in The Trinity, ed. S. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1999): 287.2 Ibid., 10.3 Ibid., 9.4 Ibid., 10.5 Ibid.

questions to which these prerogatives might, outside the “biblical worldof meaning,” give rise. Conceiving divinity functionally leaves ample roomfor a certain duality within God, whereas conceiving divinity ontologi-cally necessarily raises difficult questions about whether Jesus’ functionalprerogatives (his divinity as revealed in and by his actions) compromiseGod’s unity. Since the New Testament simply treats Christ’s actions, ittreats him always in his humanity: “Whatever the New Testament saysabout Christ, no matter how exalted it may be, is said of him as a man,as a human being. His essential humanity is never pushed beyond legiti-mate limits by anything it says of him, and so he is never seen as even apossible rival to the one God of Israel, to whom he himself prayed.”6 Theclassical Trinitarian questions arise only after the “functional” biblicalworldview, in which God is understood “in his dynamism, that is, in theexercise of his power,” has been eclipsed by the Greek one.7

Coffey’s insistence that the biblical worldview is a “functional” ratherthan “ontological” one faces problems already in the Old Testament, butmeets its greatest challenge in the Gospel of John. He therefore devotesa good deal of effort to interpreting the Gospel of John. As he states, “Inmy view, nowhere in the New Testament, not even in the Prologue ofthe Fourth Gospel, is the concept of a metaphysical (or ontological) incar-nation attained.”8 Acknowledging a debt to Maurice Wiles, Coffey makesa twofold argument. First, commenting on John 1:14, “the Word becameflesh and lived among us,” he holds that “become flesh” does not in thiscontext mean “become human.”9 Rather, “flesh” is understood as opposedto “spirit,” and indicates the assumption of mortality and weakness.

Second, he argues that the second half of verse 14, “and lived among us,”indicates that John envisions Jesus as a living man who is changed by comingdown to live among us, living the sphere of “spirit” and immortality. Coffeynotes, “John says that the Word became ‘flesh’ rather than ‘human’ becausehe thought of the Word as already and always a human, the divine, preexis-tent man who had lived with God from eternity in the sphere of the Spiritbut who at a certain point exchanged this mode of existence for that ofmortal men and women, the sphere of the flesh.”10 The idea of a divine manwho came down from heaven accords with Coffey’s view that “ontological”

146 the psychological analogy for the trinity

6 Ibid., 10.7 Ibid., 11.8 Ibid., 12.9 Ibid., 13.

10 Ibid.

questions were not raised by the New Testament authors, since any attemptby the Gospel writer to distinguish between divinity and humanity in Jesuswould have raised the question of being.

Coffey holds, then, that the “Word” of John’s Prologue is simply thedivine man, not a way of distinguishing between the preexistent Son andthe human nature that he assumes in the incarnation. Comparing John1:14 with Colossians 2:9, “In him the fullness of deity dwells bodily,”Coffey suggests that the meaning in both cases is that the divine manembodies God’s Wisdom functionally; at the very least, neither passagedemands “to be understood in the sense of a metaphysical incarnation.”11

However, he does not mean to discredit the legitimacy of what, in hisview, is the later (and fully legitimate) development of the New Testa-ment’s teaching in light of ontological categories. His position leads himrather to insist simply that “Word is metaphorical (in the economic as wellas the immanent Trinity), secondary, and not privileged.”12 It follows fromthis view that analysis of the name “Word” in order to gain analogousinsight into the mystery of distinct Persons in God (the Trinity) is a mis-guided endeavor.

In short, the “illustration of the Trinity” developed by means of the psy-chological analogy may be evocative and even illuminating in certainrespects, but by injecting ontological concerns into the New Testament itsubstitutes a philosophical path for the revealed path that makes Trinitar-ian theology truly theology.13 Coffey thus requires that Trinitarian theol-ogy, in seeking understanding of the mystery of distinction in God, movebeyond the analogy from “Word” and instead take its bearings from theNew Testament’s functional understanding of God, “namely the New Testament statements about Jesus and the Spirit as emissaries of theFather.”14 This leads him to propose two “models” of the Trinity, a pro-cession model dependent upon the New Testament testimony to Jesus andSpirit being “sent,” and a return model dependent upon Coffey’s viewthat, in the New Testament, “the Holy Spirit is Christ’s human love of the Father” and therefore that the human process of “active self-transcendence” in Christ is none other than the Holy Spirit’s work inreturning Christ (and us) to the Father.15


11 Ibid.12 Ibid., 7.13 Ibid., 4.14 Ibid.15 Ibid., 64. The latter model shows the influence of Rahner’s theology.

Coffey’s odd interpretation of the Word as a preexistent divine man16

can here be left to the side, as can his almost equally problematic dis-tinction between ontological and functional concerns in the biblicalworldview.17 Instead, I wish to pursue Coffey’s view that Trinitarian the-ology should move beyond the analogy from “Word” and take its bear-ings rather from the New Testament’s functional understanding of God,“namely the New Testament statements about Jesus and the Spirit as emis-saries of the Father.”18 Coffey’s position justifies exploring anew ThomasAquinas’s understanding of the psychological analogy. I will seek to showthat Aquinas’s understanding of the psychological analogy flows out of hisbiblical exegesis, and thus belongs to the sapiential ascent traced above.19


16 As an opponent of his view, Coffey cites only James D. G. Dunn, Christology in theMaking (London: SCM Press, 1980). Not surprisingly, Coffey does not cite any biblicalscholars who support his view. In fact, the case against Coffey’s reading, from the side ofbiblical scholars, is overwhelming. Ben Witherington III, in his John’s Wisdom: A Com-mentary on the Fourth Gospel, interprets John 1:14 in a way clearly opposed to the positiontaken by Coffey:

At v. 14 the logos finally reaches the human stage. The strophes before this were notin any direct way talking about the incarnation, but here the subject is directlytreated. Here one finds “ho logos sarx egeneto.” This means “the Word became flesh.”It certainly does not mean that the Word turned into flesh with no remainder,because he remains the Word who is beheld by the community at the end of thehymn. Thus it might be better to say that what is meant is either the Word tookon flesh, or the Word came on the human scene. The Word became more than hewas before, not less. To his divine nature he added a human one. (55)

In a footnote to this passage, Witherington adds, “In this case the subject is ontology, notprimarily status or prerogatives as was true in the Philippian hymn” (374, fn no. 37). FrancisJ. Moloney, S.D.B., in his The Gospel of John (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1998),also takes a position that contradicts Coffey’s. Moloney interprets John 1:14, “As the Baptistcame into the human story (cf. v. 6: egeneto anthropos) so also the Word enters the humanstory: the Word became flesh (sarx egeneto). The preexistent Word, so intimately associatedwith God (vv. 1–2), now enfleshed, can be the communication and revelation of God inthe human situation, where he now dwells (v. 14b)” (38). Many other exegetes could becited to the same effect. On “being” or the “I am” statements in the Fourth Gospel, seeMarianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,2001): 87–92.17 Richard Bauckham has proposed the category of “identity” as one that blends thecentral insights of both the functional and the ontological perspectives. See Bauckham, GodCrucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,1998).18 Coffey, Deus Trinitas, 4.19 As A. F. Gunten, O.P., remarks after tracing the development of Aquinas’s under-standing of the “Word” from his Commentary on the Sentences to the Summa Theologiae,

1 Aquinas and the Psychological Analogy

Descriptions of the psychological analogy for the Trinity often make itsound far more abstract than the analogy actually is, as formulated eitherby Augustine or (in condensed fashion) by Aquinas.20 The standard cri-tique of the psychological analogy is that, by taking its bearings from the mind, it is ultimately unable to move beyond the divine unity to a truly Trinitarian vision.21 The Orthodox theologian Boris Bobrinskoy, following Yves Congar, O.P., has articulated this standard critique:

Fr. Yves Congar has defined his [Augustine’s] attitude as “a static, essentialistapproach.” Moving from the One to the Three, St. Augustine will examinethe relations of the Trinitarian persons inside the one, divine Essence. It is inthis context, on the basis of the use of natural reason, that he developed histheory of psychological analogies. . . . What, in Augustine, only had an illus-trative character, became a systematic criterion of later theological thought,with Anselm and in Thomism. This view reflects a profound knowledge ofthe psychological domains, and thereby tries to have access to the divineMystery. It is an essentialist vision which, from the outset, moves from thevision of the One God to elaborate a doctrine of the Trinity.22


“The texts of Scripture invited him to undertake a philosophical study that bears its fruits. Itthen permits him to give a more precise interpretation of Scripture” (Gunten, “In principio eratVerbum: Une évolution de saint Thomas en théologie trinitaire,” in Ordo sapientiae et amoris ed. C.-J.Pinto de Oliveira, O.P. (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1993): 119–41, at 141).20 Timothy Smith argues that in the Summa Theologiae Aquinas “set aside” Augustine’s“doctrine of the divine image” (Smith, Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology, [Washington,D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003]: 70). In contrast, I think it quite clearthat Aquinas does “use the doctrine of the divine image to illustrate the way God is oneand three” (70), although he approaches it metaphysically. On this point see William B.Stevenson, “The Problem of Trinitarian Processions in Thomas’s Roman Commentary,” TheThomist 64 [2000]: 619–29. Smith remarks, “The task Thomas addresses in q. 27 is one ofexegesis, however, not rational speculation” (80), but exegesis and rational metaphysicalspeculation need not be opposed in this way. For an excellent account of Aquinas’s debtto Augustine, see D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Develop-ment of Aquinas’ Teaching (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990).21 For an account of the psychological analogy in Aquinas that shows how this pitfall isavoided, see Gilles Emery, O.P., “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God inSaint Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 544–6, chapter 5 in Trinity in Aquinas(Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003). See also the analysis provided 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): 199–204 and 214–15.22 Boris Bobrinskoy, The Mystery of the Trinity: Trinitarian Experience and Vision in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition, trans. Anthony P. Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1999): 284.

According to Bobrinskoy, psychological analogies flow from and embodya “essentialist vision.” Fergus Kerr has described the unfortunate popu-larization of this notion by John Macquarrie’s influential Principles of Christian Theology:

Macquarrie sets out the standard objections to “substantialist metaphysics”in comments such as the following. In protest against the allegedly prevalent conception of the self as substance, for instance, he writes: “themodel or paradigm underlying the notion of substance is that of the solidenduring thing (like a rock). But thinghood cannot be an enlighteningmodel for selfhood. . . . This is to reify the self, to treat it as a thing,however refined that thing may be thought to be. This is at bottom a mate-rialistic understanding of selfhood that cannot do justice to it. The self, aspersonal existence, has a dynamism, a complexity, a diversity-in-unity, thatcan never be expressed in terms of inert thinghood” (p.72). Further on,when we get into the doctrine of God, it turns out that this same notionof substance distorts understanding of divine selfhood: “The formula of onesubstance and three persons constitutes an interpretation that has ceased tocommunicate, for it talks the language and moves in the discourse of anobsolete philosophy” (p.192). Macquarrie, in his Heideggerian way, pro-poses to replace the ‘obsolete’ language of substance and “inert thinghood”with that of temporality and history. This account of the classical conceptof substance is quite fanciful.23

Aquinas begins his account of the psychological analogy with the divineprocessions (Coffey’s “procession model”). Far from being unitarian oressentialist, Aquinas’s argument takes as its starting point Jesus’ words,“From God I proceeded” (John 8:42).24 Aquinas is concerned with how to understand this personal procession. As part of his theological exe-gesis, Aquinas reviews both how this passage has been interpreted in the past, and the Church’s doctrinal teachings (the witness of Tradition)that bear upon this passage. His method of biblical exegesis leads him


23 Fergus Kerr, O.P., review of James W. Felt, S.J., Coming to Be: Towards a Thomistic-Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Becoming (New York: SUNY Press,) in Modern Theology 18(2002): 413–16. Kerr concludes, “At least one thing is clear: Felt makes it untenable to goon attacking ‘classical theism’ for its connivance with ‘substance metaphysics’ ” (416), sincethe whole notion of “substantialist metaphysics” involves a misunderstanding of the conceptof substance. Kerr directs attention to William P. Alston, “Substance and the Trinity,” inThe Trinity, ed. S. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999): 179–201. Alston shows that Greek metaphysics did not conceive substance as “inert.”24 Summa Theologiae 1, q.27, a.1, sed contra. Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism,” 553–61responds to the charge of unitarianism.

to devote significant space to the heretical interpretations of Arius andSabellius.25

Aquinas states that Arius interpreted John 8:42 and similar passages assignifying that the Son proceeds from the Father as an effect from a cause.Since an effect is never coequal with its cause, Arius reasoned that “theSon proceeds from the Father as His primary creature, and that the HolySpirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as the creature of both.”26

Aquinas’s response to Arius is instructive for the light it sheds on Aquinas’sconcerns in treating the mystery of the Trinity. He argues that Arius’sinterpretation is false because the New Testament – specifically passagesfrom the letters of St. Paul and St. John, authoritative interpreters of Jesus’words – contradicts Arius’s position. Significantly, both passages selectedby Aquinas pertain directly to our personal relationship to distinct Personsof the Trinity.27


25 Investigation of the great heresies is an important means by which Aquinas seeks togain understanding of the Trinity. For Aquinas’s theological exploration of other early here-sies related to Trinitarian doctrine, see Gilles Emery, O.P., “Le photinisme et ses précurseurschez saint Thomas: Cérinthe, les Ebionites, Paul de Samosate et Photin,” Revue Thomiste95 (1995): 371–98.26 1, q.27, a.1.27 Aquinas explores human beings’ relations to distinct divine Persons further on in histreatise. He notes that the change occurs in the creature, not in God. Thus he states, “Fora thing is sent that it may be in something else, and is given that it may be possessed; butthat a divine person be possessed by any creature, or exist in it in a new mode, is tempo-ral” (1, q.43, a.2). This is so because “[t]hat a divine person may newly exist in anyone,or be possessed by anyone in time, does not come from change of the divine person, butfrom change in the creature” (1, q.43, a.2, ad 2). The new relationship is truly present inthe creature:

The soul is made like to God by grace. Hence for a divine person to be sent toanyone by grace, there must be a likening of the soul to the divine person Who issent, by some gift of grace. Because the Holy Ghost is Love, the soul is assimilatedto the Holy Ghost by the gift of charity: hence the mission of the Holy Ghost isaccording to the mode of charity. Whereas the Son is the Word, not any sort ofword, but one Who breathes forth Love. Hence Augustine says (De Trin. IX.10):The Word we speak of is knowledge with love. Thus the Son is sent not in accordancewith every and any kind of intellectual perfection, but according to the intellectualillumination, which breaks forth into the affection of love. (1, q.43, a.5, ad 2)

Aquinas concludes this passage by speaking of “a certain experimental knowledge” thatbelongs to those who have a relation to the Word. Similarly, he writes, “By the gift ofsanctifying grace the rational creature is perfected so that it can freely use not only thecreated gift itself, but enjoy also the divine person Himself; and so the invisible missiontakes place according to the gift of sanctifying grace; and yet the divine person Himself isgiven” (1, q.43, a.3, ad 1).

The first passage Aquinas cites against Arius is 1 John 5:20, “And weknow that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, toknow him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God andeternal life.” Believers thus have a distinct personal relation to the Son(that is, the condition of being in the Father’s true Son Jesus Christ). Thesecond passage is 1 Corinthians 6:19: “Do you not know that your bodyis a temple of the Holy Spirit . . .?” Again a distinct personal relation isindicated, this time to the Holy Spirit. Since “to have a temple is God’sprerogative,” the latter passage teaches the full divinity of the Holy Spirit,just as the former passage teaches the full divinity of the Son. Aquinasthus moves from the Persons, revealed in believers’ personal relations tothem, to their common essence, divinity. Of course the Trinity acts asone ad extra; the divine Persons are distinguished only by their internalrelations, not by distinct ways of acting toward creatures. Yet, rational crea-tures have distinct relations to each Person, in accord with the propertiesthat belong to each Person in the ordered relations of the Trinity. Notonly does Aquinas begin his discussion of the Trinity with the Persons,he focuses on biblical texts that demonstrate that the treatise on the Trinityis no mere abstract exercise, but rather belongs to the heart of our Chris-tian life.28

Having established these biblical passages as particularly problematic forArius’s position, Aquinas then seeks the reason why Arius’s biblical inter-


28 In “What does love know? St. Thomas on the Trinity” (New Blackfriars 82 [2001]:260–72), Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury, takes an approach similar inmany respects to the one I am taking here. Williams seeks “to challenge the accusation ofabstractness levelled against” Aquinas’s theology of the triune God, in particular byLaCugna. Toward the end of his brief essay, he states, “Throughout this paper so far, I havebeen attempting to suggest that we radically misunderstand Thomas’s Trinitarian theologyif we ignore the way in which he repeatedly grounds what he wants to say in the exi-gencies, as he sees them, of what has emerged in our historical encounter with God as set out in Scripture. How must God be if this is how God acts?” (270). He concludes that the analogy from the mind accounts for the wisdom and love that God enacts in thecreated order, by grounding in God the “divine gratuity and other-centeredness” that God manifests in creation and redemption. Williams suggests that the doctrine of the Trinityshould recall us to the “tight interweaving of love and knowledge” (272), action and contemplation. Williams’s approach is adopted by Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions ofThomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002): 195ff. Yet one would not wish to extend this argument to the conclusion, expressed by Dumitru Staniloae, that were God not Trinity,then we would be left with “the formula for an impersonal or unipersonal god who doesnot possess the spirit of communion within himself, and hence is neither apt for, nor dis-posed towards, communion with created persons” (Staniloae, The Experience of God, trans.and ed. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer [Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,1994]: 246; cf. 249).


29 John F. Wippel has drawn attention to Aquinas’s awareness of the influence of philo-sophical presuppositions upon theological conclusions: “For his [Aquinas’s] view that differences between theologians arise from differences in their underlying philosophical positions see In II Sent., d.14, q.1, a.2 (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, P. Mandonnet,ed., [Paris, 1929], Vol. 2, p.350): ‘Similiter etiam expositores Sacrae Scripturae in hoc diversificatisunt, secundum quod diversorum philosophorum sectatores fuerunt, a quibus in philosophicis eruditisunt.’ ” (Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to InfiniteBeing [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000]: xxi–xxii, fnno. 21.)30 1, q.27, a.1.

pretation led him into error. He finds that Arius’s error was brought aboutby a lack of proper metaphysical understanding.29 Specifically, Arius’smistake lay in thinking of the Father’s begetting of the Son in terms of acause’s production of an external effect. Arius lacked the concept of anaction that remains within the agent, and thereby may remain coequal and consubstantial with the agent. He thus failed to grasp how God theFather can beget or cause the Son without the Son thereby being lessthan the Father.

Aquinas points out that a variation of this same mistake was made bythe other preeminent heretic in Trinitarian doctrine, Sabellius. Sabellius,like Arius, thought of the Son as an external effect and assumed that thiswould make the Son less than the Father. Rather than concluding thatthe Son was less than God, however, Sabellius conflated “Father” and“Son” (falling into a perfect essentialism) so that “Son” is simply a descrip-tive term for the Father in the Father’s outward acts as incarnate. Accord-ing to Aquinas, Sabellius thought that “God the Father is called Son inassuming flesh from the Virgin, and that the Father also is called HolySpirit in sanctifying the rational creature, and moving it to life.”30

As with Arius, Aquinas first points out against Sabellius that Jesus’ ownwords demonstrate the contrary, namely that the Father and the Son trulyare distinct. He cites John 5:19, “the Son can do nothing of his ownaccord, but only what he sees the Father doing” (RSV). It should be clearthat in this statement the being of the Son is at stake. Does Jesus intendto be speaking of one God appearing in two ways, or of distinct Personsin the one God? Does the Son share distinctly in the divine being (the“I am”), or is “Son” simply a metaphorical name for the one God, theFather? Aquinas makes clear that biblical exegesis requires metaphysicalanalysis: ontological questions are embedded in Jesus’ words. Aquinas pro-ceeds to show that at the metaphysical level the essentialism of Arius andSabellius has the same root: “Careful examination shows that both of these

opinions take procession as meaning an outward act; hence neither ofthem affirms procession as existing in God Himself.”31 The metaphysicsof Arius and Sabellius is fundamentally incapable of grasping spiritualbeing: “act” for them is not conceived apart from the material constituentsof the acts that we see around us.

Biblical exegesis itself, then, calls for an adequate metaphysical under-standing of spiritual act. Jesus’ words, “From God I proceeded,” requirethat his hearers understand what he means by “procession.” Jesus wasspeaking about his own mode of being, that is, his own relation to thesource of being, God. Either he meant that he proceeded from God butnot as God (Arius), or that he proceeded in the sense of the Father pro-ceeding to outward act (Sabellius), or that he proceeded as a mere humanbeing (Paul of Samosata), or that he proceeded as a distinct mode of beingGod. Metaphysically, the concept of procession can either be understoodin terms of outward, external processions, or in terms of inward, intel-lectual processions. Since the first way (outward processions) reduces Jesusto a mere creature, the second way is necessary. This second way is thepsychological analogy.

Biblical exegesis also requires the psychological analogy for anotherreason. Aquinas knew well Isaiah’s testimony to God the Creator: “Towhom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says theHoly One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? Hewho brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one ismissing” (Isaiah 40:25–6). God, the Creator, is not on the same level ascreatures. When Aquinas speaks about God, therefore, he does so analo-gously and cautiously. He notes, “As God is above all things, we shouldunderstand what is said of God, not according to the mode of the lowestcreatures, namely bodies, but from similitude of the highest creatures, theintellectual substances; while even the similitudes derived from these fallshort in the representation of divine objects.”32 Since God is Spirit (John4:24), spiritual creatures reflect the divine identity in the highest manner,even though they fall woefully short. The spiritual power to know andlove God is the pinnacle of the creature’s participation, both naturally and by grace, in the divine being, since spiritual nature manifests the greatest similitude to the triune God. In order truly to contemplate the


31 Ibid.32 1, q.27, a.1.

Trinity, one must rise up interiorly from contemplation of the image –the dynamism of finite spiritual act healed and perfected by knowing and loving God in himself – within us. In order to be understood notmerely notionally but really, in Newman’s sense, the Bible’s words aboutGod thus call for the contemplative deployment of the psychologicalanalogy, through which one contemplates the finite spiritual image, healedand elevated by Christ, in order to glimpse (and experience in faith-filled contemplation) the mystery of the infinite reality of God the Trinity.

In short, Aquinas’s biblical exegesis leads him to the psychologicalanalogy for the Trinity from two directions: as the necessary corrective tothe metaphysical errors underlying the Trinitarian heresies of Arius andSabellius, and as the contemplative action suggested by analogical predi-cation illumined by the biblical theology of the creation of human beings:“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he createdhim; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).33 In neither caseis the analogy intended to be “demonstrative” of a reality in God: the factthat the distinct processions, in their relations of origin, constitute distinctPersons in God is something we can know only by means of revelation.34

In both cases Aquinas’s account of the psychological analogy flows from his effort to illumine biblical revelation, as interpreted in theChurch’s Tradition.

Because Arius imagined the Son in terms of outward procession, hecould not grasp how the procession of the Son would not introduce diver-sity in God. Lacking a proper analogy, Arius then had to defend thesupreme simplicity of the God of Israel (whatever is in God, is God) bypositing that the Son is a creature. Similarly, Sabellius defended God’ssupreme simplicity by proposing that the Father is called “Son” in certainexternal acts. The psychological analogy avoids this difficulty posed to


33 The biblical exegete Richard Elliott Friedman comments on Genesis 1:27, “We arguebut truly do not know what is meant: whether physical, spiritual, or intellectual image ofGod. . . . Whatever it means, though, it implies that humans are understood here to sharein the divine in a way that a lion or cow does not. That is crucial to all that will follow”(Friedman, Commentary on the Torah [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001]: 12). Itseems clear that the distinction between human animals and other animals, once one grantssuch a distinction, rests on rationality, the spiritual soul.34 Timothy Smith emphasizes this point: “One must then maintain the proper lines ofthe analogy between the manner of understanding and loving in us and the manner of thetwo processions in God” (Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology, 85–6).

God’s simplicity.35 Aquinas notes that the act of understanding involves theprocession of a concept (an inner word), and this procession remainswithin the intellect. As he states, “the more a thing is understood, themore closely is the intellectual conception joined and united to the intel-ligent agent; since the intellect by the very act of understanding is madeone with the object understood.”36 When God knows himself in his Word,this unity is perfect: “as the divine intelligence is the very supreme per-fection of God, the divine Word is of necessity perfectly one with thesource whence He proceeds, without any kind of diversity.”37 The gen-eration of the Word is not an act that actualizes a potency, but rather isperfect act generating perfect act.38

Coffey’s evaluation of the psychological analogy – “Lacking proper grounding in the Bible, it should probably be characterized as philosophico-religious speculation rather than theology strictly so-called”39


35 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. rejects this doctrine of “Trinitarian simplicity.” He argues that“simplicity theory of the Augustinian, Lateran [the Fourth Lateran Council’s teaching thaton the one essence and three Persons, in which the council rejected a “quaternity”], andThomistic sort cannot claim much by way of biblical support. Paul and John do not state,or even suggest, that Father, Son, and Spirit are finally just the same object. The wholedrift of their thought appears to go just the other way. Simplicity doctrine finds its wayinto Christian theology via Neoplatonism. . . .” (C. Plantinga, Jr., “Social Trinity andTritheism,” in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, ed. R. J. Feenstra and C. Plantinga, Jr.[Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989]: 21–47, at 39.) With regard toAquinas’s account, Plantinga asks, “But how can three things (the divine relations) that arereally distinct each bear an identity relation to the divine nature or essence, differing fromit ‘only in our mind’s understanding’? That is, how can three things identical with somefourth thing remain distinct?” (40–41). Plantinga advances these questions in defense of histheory of “social Trinitarianism,” according to which the three Persons each have a distinctessence along with their shared generic essence. Regarding this generic essence, Plantingacomments, “Father, Son, and Spirit each has this essence, though none is it” (31). Planti-nga grounds his theory upon strict adherence to the biblical witness. In striving to makehis interpretation intelligible and defend it against charges of tritheism, he demonstrates thatinterpretation of the Bible requires posing and answering metaphysical questions. AsMatthew Lamb has pointed out to me, Plantinga’s account of the psychological analogymistakenly conceives knowledge as by confrontation rather than by identity; Plantinga alsofails to see that the reality of the relation is the reality of the terms, not a third thing. Fora reply to Plantinga, David Brown, and other social Trinitarians, see Brian Leftow, “Anti-Social Trinitarianism,” in The Trinity, ed. S. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1999): 203–49; cf. Michel René Barnes, “Divine Unity and theDivided Self: Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology in Its Psychological Context,” ModernTheology 18 (2002): 475–96.36 1, q.27, a.1, ad 2.37 Ibid.38 See Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, 114–15.39 Coffey, Deus Trinitas, 30.

– is thus the very opposite of the psychological analogy as it is concretelydeveloped, on biblical grounds, by Aquinas. This is shown further by thenext article of question 27. Having argued that the psychological analogygives an account of procession that enables theologians to avoid the inter-pretive error of Arius and Sabellius, Aquinas seeks to demonstrate that thepsychological analogy does not eclipse the name “Son.” Certainly the psychological analogy makes sense of the name “Word” for the SecondPerson of the Trinity, but does it allow for the preeminence in the NewTestament of the name “Son”?

Aquinas answers in the affirmative. In his view, the account of proces-sion in God provided by the analogy from the soul’s powers makes intel-ligible the New Testament’s depiction of the procession of the divine Wordas the “generation” of a “Son.” In created intellects, Aquinas notes, “theact of human understanding in ourselves is not the substance itself of theintellect; hence the word which proceeds within us by intelligible oper-ation is not of the same nature as the source whence it proceeds.”40 InGod, in contrast, the act of understanding is the same as the divine nature.It follows that “the Word proceeding therefore proceeds as subsisting in the same nature.”41 Generation requires this coming forth as a likenessfrom something existing in the same nature. Since the Word is anabsolutely perfect likeness proceeding from God and existing in the samenature, the Word is perfectly generated or begotten, and so the name“Son” applies supremely.

Does the psychological analogy also shed light upon the procession ofthe Holy Spirit? Were the psychological analogy to lead to the conclu-sion that only one procession (that of the Word) existed in God, thenclearly this analogy would be dangerous, despite its usefulness in helpingtheologians avoid Arius’s error. In treating the second procession in God(that of the Holy Spirit), Aquinas again begins with the New Testament:“The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (John 15:26); and He is dis-tinct from the Son, according to the words, I will ask My Father, and Hewill give you another Paraclete (John 14:16).”42 Is the psychological analogyable to illumine this revelation of a second procession in God? In answer,Aquinas argues that indeed there are two, and only two, processions in anintellectual nature. The acts of an intellectual nature are of two kinds:either knowing an object as true by means of the procession of a conceptand the act of judgment (intellect), or willing the object known as good


40 1, q.27, a.2, ad 2.41 Ibid.42 1, q.27, a.3.

by means of the procession of love (will). Every intellectual nature, be itthe human soul or (analogously) God himself, is united with the being ofits object under these two aspects, the true and the good. For this reason,there is no third procession.

Another difficulty arises. Since God is perfectly simple, the divine intel-lect is the same as the divine will. Does this mean that what constitutestwo processions in other intellectual natures must be one procession inGod? Aquinas replies that without positing diversity of operations in God,one can posit analogously a distinction of processions based upon orderof origin within the divine act. This order of origin arises from the reality,demonstrated by Augustine, that “nothing can be loved by the will unlessit is conceived in the intellect.”43 The divine Act is supremely one; yet,as the Act of an intellectual nature, it must involve analogously this orderof origin. Aquinas states, “So as there exists a certain order of the Wordto the principle whence He proceeds, although in God the substance ofthe intellect and its concept are the same; so, although in God the willand the intellect are the same, still, inasmuch as love requires by its verynature that it proceed only from the concept of the intellect, there is adistinction of order between the procession of love and the procession ofthe Word in God.”44 The procession of the Word occurs by way of a like-ness, and may be called generation; the procession of Love (the HolySpirit) occurs by way of an ecstatic impulse toward the object known, andmay be called spiration.45

The processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct in God,but they are intimately related. As Aquinas states, “the Son is the Word,not any sort of word, but one Who breathes forth Love.”46 This pointshould caution against any suggestion that Aquinas’s use of the psycho-logical analogy tends toward a rationalistic equation of God, who is infi-nite and incomprehensible, with the human mind. Aquinas employs the


43 1, q.27, a.3, ad 3. As Augustine puts it in Book X of De Trinitate, we do not love theunknown, but rather we love to know the unknown.44 Ibid.45 William Charlton argues that Aquinas’s own description of the processions, like thoseof Arius and Sabellius, falls into “physicalism.” See Charlton, “McCabe on Aquinas on theTrinity,” New Blackfriars 80 (1999): 491–501. This charge holds especially, Charlton thinks,for Aquinas’s concept of the procession of the will, since it is described in terms of impulse.Charlton argues further that the psychological analogy does not distinguish two processions.According to Charlton, they can be conflated into one act that is judged to be enjoyable.Charlton would benefit from the exposition of the two processions in Lonergan’s Verbum.46 1, q.43, a.5, ad 2. Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book 9, ch. 2.

analogy to illumine what has been revealed, namely an order of origin inthe simple divine Act. He speaks analogously rather than univocally. Hedoes not equate the Word with the human procession of the intellect, orthe Spirit with the human procession of the will. The interplay betweenWord and Spirit is far more mysterious than what we understand analo-gously from the human processions of the intellect and the will.

To this point, we have explored why Aquinas begins his discussion ofthe distinct Persons in God by interpreting Jesus’ words, “From God Iproceeded.” By examining the decisive heretical interpretations of Jesus’words (Arius, Sabellius), Aquinas shows that a metaphysics of spiritual actis needed in order to grasp analogously the kind of eternal divine pro-cession that could both distinguish Jesus (as Son) from God and preservethe absolute unity of Father and Son by indicating how the simplicity ofthe divine Act is not broken by the diversity of processions. He therebymanages to interpret metaphysically the biblical concept of procession ina way that retains both distinction and unity. This does not complete theexegetical/speculative task, however.47 He also needs to show how the pro-cessions involve relations of origin that constitute distinct Persons or subjects in God.

Aquinas’s interpretation of procession has shown that the distinctPersons in God are not prior to the processions. The Father is not Father“before” begetting or generating the Son; rather, begetting constitutes the Father as Father. As Aquinas notes, “The Father is denominated onlyfrom paternity; and the Son only from filiation.”48 The Father is paternity


47 On the relationship in Aquinas between exegetical and speculative labors, see GillesEmery, O.P., “Biblical Exegesis and the Speculative Doctrine of the Trinity in St. ThomasAquinas’s Commentary on St. John,” in his Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press,2003). Emery shows how speculative theology, for Aquinas, belongs within the exegeticalact and, in its systematic form, flows from it.48 1, q.28, a.1, sed contra. This stands in contradistinction to Thomas Weinandy’s view that:

the Father is the Father in that he begets the Son in the Spirit. The Father spirates theSpirit in the same act by which he begets the Son, for the Spirit proceeds from theFather as the fatherly Love in whom or by whom the Son is begotten. . . . Whilein human beings something must first be known before it is loved, in God theknowing and the loving are simultaneous – the begetting and spirating come forthfrom the Father as distinct, but concurrent, acts. The Father does not, even logi-cally, first beget the Son and then love the Son in the Spirit. The begetting of theSon and the proceeding of the Spirit are simultaneous and, while distinct, mutuallyinhere in one another. The Father is the Father because, in the one act by whichhe is eternally constituted as the Father, the Spirit proceeds as the Love (Life and

(begetting); the Son is filiation (being begotten). Yet, procession, whilenecessary for illuminating the order of origin in the Trinity, as well as thedynamic character of each of the Persons, tends to conceive of Persons asemanating from the essence, and thus provides an inadequate understand-ing of divine personhood. Aquinas thus explores the relations that one findsconstituted by the processions. In the order of origin, there is a real rela-tion – not merely a logical relation, but a relation of mutual dependence– in the Father’s generation of the Son. The relation is one of “opposi-tion” in the order of origin of the processions.49 Since it is not an oppo-sition between the relation and the divine Act of being, the relation is thesame as the divine Act of being. In the relative opposition according toorigin, the Father is the relation “begettor,” and the Son is the relation“being begotten.” Since the reality of “relation” is in the termini, “relation” adds to the analogy the element of stable, though not static,personhood.50

Furthermore, the category of relation has the marvelous benefit of pos-sessing two aspects: “in,” since relation must always subsist in a substance,and “to,” since the proper meaning of relation is to indicate a “towardssomething.” Aquinas notes that relation, in creatures, has a “respect to thatin which it is” and a “respect to something outside.”51 When, in light of biblical revelation, relation is applied analogously to God, these tworespects under which “relation” must be viewed illumine the “redouble-


Truth) in whom the Son is begotten of the Father. (Thomas G. Weinandy O. F. M.Cap., The Father’s Spirit of Sonship, Reconceiving the Trinity [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,1995] 69–72, emphasis added).

Weinandy is right that in God there is no priority, even a logical one; the priority is con-ceptual, i.e. in our mind. Yet, for the purposes of the human discourse that is Trinitariantheology, this conceptual priority in our minds is necessary: without it, we would not beable to distinguish conceptually two processions. Similarly, Weinandy correctly affirms thatthe Spirit is present in the generation of the Son, but pace Weinandy, the Spirit is presentsimply as the one who proceeds from the begotten Son, not as a principle. In the real rela-tion, “Father” corresponds to “Son”; were “Father” to be equally constituted as Father byrelation to the Holy Spirit, then the Persons could no longer be distinguished by the realrelations (which arise from the processions).49 “Opposition” tends to be understood spatially rather than metaphysically, and thus mustbe used cautiously if one is to avoid tritheism.50 In the second volume of his Theologik, Hans Urs von Balthasar argues that “relation”is too weak a category to ground a distinct Personal identity. As I will suggest in chapter7, the fault lies in Balthasar’s understanding of “relation.”51 1, q.28, a.2. Emery draws out this point in “Essentialism or Personalism.”

ment” – that is, the viewing of the mystery of God in two irreduciblerespects – that fuels contemplation of the God of Israel who is one andthree.52 When the divine relation is viewed in its respect “in,” the Fatheris simply the simple God. When the divine relation is viewed in its respect“to,” the Father is begetting, paternity. It is the same relation, and thus itis true to say that the Father is God and the Father is paternity. Yet, it isnot true to say that the God is paternity, because that would not respectthe dual aspect of “relation” that preserves analogically our understandingof divine unity-in-Trinity.53

The relation Father – Son, as a clear relative opposition, nicely exposesthe meaning of divine “relation.” If these two real relations (Father andSon) are found in the order of origin of the procession of the Word,however, how does the procession of Love, or the Holy Spirit, involve arelation of origin? In the order of origin of the procession of Love, spi-rating Love is opposite to Love being spirated. In this relative oppositionaccording to origin, the Holy Spirit is the relation “Love being spirated.”The relation “spirating” is none other than the Father and the Son. Thisis so because the “Father,” as we have seen, is distinct from the “Son”only as regards the relative opposition begettor-being begotten. It is thisrelative opposition alone that distinguishes “Father” and “Son.” ThusFather and Son cannot be distinct in a second way. In begetting the Son,the Father bestows upon him his spirative power.54 While the real rela-tions in God are four (begetting, begotten, spirating, being spirated), then,only three relations subsist distinctly in the divine Act. Only three relations– paternity, filiation, procession (or being spirated) – are distinct modesof being the one divine Act.

As distinct modes of being the one divine Act, the three relations inGod are rightly called “Persons.”55 Aquinas notes that “person in any nature


52 Ghislain Lafont coined this term, which has been developed further by Gilles Emery.Chapter 7 discusses this approach in detail.53 Thus, the normal pattern – a (Father) = b (God), a (Father) = c (begetting), thereforeb (God) = c (begetting) – does not hold in Trinitarian theology. Rather, because relationis viewed in two irreducible respects (redoublement), one must think of a1 and a2.54 I will discuss this point in more detail in the next chapter.55 For further theological discussion of human and divine personhood, see Horst Seidl,“The Concept of Person in St. Thomas Aquinas: A Contribution to Recent Discussion,”The Thomist 51 (1987): 435–60. Seidl emphasizes that “person” is properly a metaphysicalconcept. As such, “person” requires other such concepts for intelligibility, including “indi-vidual substance, universal, nature, and existence” (435). The metaphysical concept of“person” – rather than a phenomenological explanation of personality – is applied analo-

signifies what is distinct in that nature: thus in human nature it signifiesthis flesh, these bones, and this soul, which are the individuating princi-ples of a man.”57 In God, what is distinct are the relations, which subsistor exist distinctly in God. Therefore, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit arecalled Persons inasmuch as they subsist distinctly in the one divine Act.Since the Persons are distinct only in their mutual relations, each Personis the same as the divine Act. The Persons are distinct modes of activelybeing the one divine Act. The distinction lies solely in the relative order of origin of the processions, but it is a distinction that makes a difference.

Since “person” is applied analogously to God – and since Augustine,among others, had exposed the difficulties associated with even analogoususe of the term – Aquinas argues carefully for the fittingness of the term.“Person” is particularly fitting or suitable because, as Boethius noted byway of definition, we reserve the term “person” to individuals who possessrationality.58 Further, as Richard of St. Victor added, spiritual self-possession gives an “incommunicability” to the person.59 Individuality andincommunicability fittingly illumine the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.Analogously understood, they are Persons who subsist distinctly in (infi-nitely) rational nature, although the divine nature is not itself differenti-ated in them. In his analysis of the concept of “Person,” Aquinas does notidentify further what particular characteristics or properties distinguish thePersons, and neither does he explain further how to distinguish thePersons without anthropomorphizing them. Rather, he contents himselfwith drawing the metaphysical analog of individual and incommunicablesubsistence in rational nature. It is crucial to understand why he does notproceed in the opposite fashion by asking what pertains to human per-sonalities: to do so would be to introduce into the analog anthropomor-phic and tritheistic elements. Even so, this cautious approach leads one toask whether the metaphysical analog is sufficiently “personal.” Is the analog


gously by Aquinas to God. Focusing upon how this metaphysical analysis engages and clar-ifies the experience of biological, psychological, sociological, historical, and spiritual aspectsof human personhood, Yves Floucat offers a complementary perspective; see Floucat,“Enjeux et actualité d’une approche thomiste de la personne,” Revue Thomiste 100 (2000):384–422. See also Albert Patfoort, O.P.’s review essay addressing the Trinitarian and Chris-tological issues raised by Ghislain Lafont, O.S.B.’s Peut-on connaître Dieu en Jésus Christ? (Paris:Cerf, 1969): Patfoort, “Un projet de ‘traité moderne’ de la Trinité. Vers une réévaluationde la ‘notion’ de personne?” Angelicum 48 (1971): 93–118.56 1, q.29, a.4.57 1, q.29, a.1.58 1, q.29, a.3, ad 4.

adequate to convey the sense of truly distinct, active Persons witnessed toin narrative form by Scripture? The answer is clearly no. The metaphys-ical analog developed in q.29 – an analog that is properly metaphysicalbut that belongs to the interpretation of the New Testament, as we haveseen – identifies the mode of divine “Personhood” that belongs to each“Person” in God, but the particular characteristics of each Person need tobe filled out by a separate investigation of not “Person,” but this Person.

Aquinas undertakes this task in the remaining questions (qq.30–43) ofhis treatise. He investigates the distinct characteristics of the Persons byreturning to the order of origin exposed biblically and metaphysically inqq.27–8. As we will see in the next two chapters, he seeks to identify thedistinguishing marks of the three Persons by attending to how the par-ticular characteristics attributed to the distinct Persons in Scripture are illumined by analysis of the order of origin. In this way, he avoids a rationalizing anthropomorphism that goes beyond what we can know(analogously) from revelation, while nonetheless achieving insight into thedivine Persons as described biblically in relational terms flowing from theorder of the divine processions.

What, then, has the metaphysical analysis of divine processions, rela-tions, and Persons accomplished? The difficulty of keeping these meta-physical concepts straight has led many frustrated theologians away fromAquinas’s Trinitarian theology as overly abstract. When one follows themetaphysical analysis with care, however, one recognizes how powerfullyit affirms the relational name revealed in the Gospels. Building upon thedynamic relationality implied in Jesus’ relationship with his Father – againwe return to his words, “From God I proceeded” – Aquinas’s metaphys-ical analysis enriches biblical exegesis by expressing the relationality of thedivine Persons who subsist, in distinct modes, as the one God. Throughsapiential contemplation of biblical revelation, we thus come to knowmore profoundly the thoroughly relational communion that is the sub-sisting Persons. As Thomas Weinandy has written, “As subsistent relationsfully in act, the persons of the Trinity are utterly and completely dynamicand active in their integral and comprehensive self-giving to one another,and could not possibly become more dynamic or active in their self-givingsince they are constituted, and so subsist, as who they are only in theircomplete and utter self-giving to one another.”59 To share, by a knowingfueled by love, in this relational act – the one divine Act expressed, in


59 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of NotreDame Press, 2000): 119.

the order of origin of the processions, distinctly by the divine Persons –is to enter into a glorious dynamism of perfect communion. Christ isSavior not only because he bears our sin, but ultimately because he puri-fies our hearts and draws us, by his Spirit, into the communion of therelational three-Personed God.60

The various critiques put forward against the psychological analogyseem, from this vantage point, misguided. Coffey’s criticism that theanalogy has no biblical foundation overlooks the fact that the analogy flowsfrom the New Testament’s testimony to the “procession” of both Son andSpirit. Furthermore, the analogy demonstrates its value by providing someunderstanding of the biblical witness to a God who is absolutely one andyet intrinsically, and dynamically, relational. The standard criticism that theanalogy is essentialist appears, at least in Aquinas’s metaphysical version, tobe the very opposite of the truth. On the contrary, the analogy is pro-pelled by analysis of distinct processions and their relations of origin, notby analysis of the essence. Lastly, the analogy offers a powerful responseto the view – advocated among Christians by Arius and Sabellius – thatconfessing three coequal, consubstantial, truly distinct Persons in Godwould, by introducing a fundamental diversity, destroy the unity of God.


60 For elaboration of this point, see Gilles Emery, O.P., La Trinité créatrice (Paris: Vrin,1995): 384–413 and the excellent article by Charles Morerod, O.P., “Trinité et unité del’Eglise,” Nova et Vetera 77 (2002): 5–17.

Chapter Six

BIBLICAL EXEGESIS ANDSAPIENTIAL NAMING OF

THE DIVINE PERSONS

Scholars have long noted the relative lack of exegetical studies on the theology of God in the New Testament. As Marianne Meye Thompsonhas recently remarked in a book that attempts to address that lack:

About twenty-five years ago, Nils A. Dahl, a professor at Yale DivinitySchool, wrote a now oft-cited essay entitled “The Neglected Factor in NewTestament Theology.” That neglected factor, according to Dahl, was God.A decade later Leander Keck asserted that Dahl was indeed correct: “Theunderstanding of God has been the neglected factor in the study of NewTestament theology as a whole. This is particularly true of the study of NewTestament Christology, even though every statement about Christ impli-cates God, beginning with the designation of Jesus as the Anointed.” Whilethere are numerous studies about God in the OT, focused variously onnames for God or conceptions of God, “God” has largely been ignored asthe proper subject of inquiry and reflection with respect to the substanceof NT theology. Furthermore, the contrast with OT studies is only high-lighted, not relieved, by the plethora of Christological studies in the NT.Apparently scholars have concluded that the OT is about God and the NTis about Jesus, or else that God has but secondary importance in engagingthe witness of the NT Scriptures.1

1 Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001): 1–2. Cf. C. Kavin Rowe, “Romans 10:13: What Is the Name of theLord?” Horizons in Biblical Theology 22 (2000): 136, especially fn 5.

Thompson, following Dahl, suggests that a central reason for this lack is“the fact that most of the references to God occur in contexts that dealwith some other theme.”2 Exegetes, focusing on these other themes, gen-erally treat God only insofar as God is related to their particular theme(e.g., Christ, righteousness, and so forth). One would suspect that thegeneral contemporary theological suspicion of treating “God in himself,”along with the corresponding emphasis on “God for us,” has contributedto the situation; as, no doubt, has the disputed question of the status oflanguage about “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” in the New Testament.Many, if not most, New Testament scholars deny that the New Testamentauthors thought of either the “Son” or the “Spirit” as divine; such schol-ars hold that Trinitarian language is a later imposition upon the texts ofthe New Testament, which according to this view do not envision a“God” other than the one God of Israel.

Stimulated by the work of Thompson and others, however, this situa-tion may be changing.3 Thompson’s book focuses on “God” as under-stood in the Gospel of John. Similarly, Luke Timothy Johnson andWilliam Kurz, S.J.’s The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship includes anessay by Kurz that focuses on the Trinitarian implications of the Prologueof the Gospel of John. Kurz argues that it is necessary and justifiable to“bring particularly the Nicene Creed to bear on our interpretation and actualization of the Johannine prologue. Recently, under the unex-amined influence of historical criticism, teachers and preachers of Scrip-ture have often seemed to go out of their way to minimize connectionsbetween this biblical prologue which Christians read and the creed whichthey recite and doctrines which they believe.”4 Displaying a thoroughknowledge of the insights of historical criticism into the contextual back-ground of the Prologue, Kurz concludes, “Thus the prologue explicitlyclaims that Jesus . . . is in fact the Word or Son of God who was with the Father from before creation.”5 Kurz then compares the Prologue

166 biblical exegesis and naming of the divine

2 Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John, 2.3 See e.g., David Yeago, “The New Testament and Nicene Dogma,” Pro Ecclesia 3 (1994):152–64; Robert W. Jenson, “The Bible and the Trinity,” Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002): 329–39; andthe emerging work of C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” ProEcclesia 11 (2002): 295–312, “Luke and the Trinity: An Essay in Ecclesial Biblical Theology,”Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003): 1–26, “The God of Israel and Jesus Christ: Luke,Marcion, and the Unity of the Canon,” Nova et Vetera (English) 1 (2003): 359–80.4 Luke Timothy Johnson and William Kurz, S.J., The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship:A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002): 165; Kurz’s essay drawsupon an earlier essay, “The Johannine Word as Revealing the Father: A Christian CredalActualization,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 28 (2001): 67–84.5 Ibid., 174.

phrase-by-phrase with the Nicene Creed and finds an impressive continuity.

This continuity enables Kurz to argue for the view that “to seek andfind the mind of God in Scripture requires reading the particular passageswithin the overall context of God’s total revelation – i.e., not only withinall of Scripture, but also in the Church’s life and Tradition, and amid thecoherence of all the truths of faith among themselves and with God’swhole plan of revelation.”6 In a masterful essay that opens the volume,Luke Timothy Johnson likewise rejects the tendency to pit Scriptureagainst the ecclesial matrix in which Scripture is read theologically.7 In hisview, the key step toward recovering a properly Catholic biblical exegesisis to seek instruction in “premodern” biblical exegesis in order to regainwhat it means to practice, certainly with the tools of historical criticismbut also with a theological and pastoral insight formed in the biblicalworldview, ecclesial exegesis: a community of readers, governed by the ruleof faith, who are not merely academics but are also, within a particularecclesial tradition, hearers and practitioners of the Word.8

From a different perspective – that of Protestant biblical theology – BenWitherington III and Laura Ice have asked whether the New Testamentteaches the fundamental elements of what the Church later codified asTrinitarian doctrine. In The Shadow of the Almighty: Father, Son, and Spiritin Biblical Perspective, Witherington and Ice explore the meaning of“Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” by surveying the use of each term in theNew Testament texts, including Paul, the Synoptics, John, the generalepistles, and Revelation.9 Although the book is brief and intended for awide audience, nonetheless its survey of many of the relevant scripturaltexts offers a means for developing the program of Johnson and Kurz.10

This chapter will employ Witherington and Ice’s book as a resource for

biblical exegesis and naming of the divine 167

6 Ibid., 187.7 Ibid. The chapter is entitled “What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship? An

Opening Statement.”8 Johnson’s insights resonate with the philosophical work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Kurz

makes clear that the key difficulty for Johnson is squaring his vision of ecclesial exegesiswith the ecclesial authority exercised by the Magisterium of the Church.9 Ben Witherington and Laura Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty: Father, Son, and Spirit in

Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002). Earlier Thompson had publishedThe Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville, KY: WestminsterJohn Knox Press, 2000).10 I will focus on the areas where Witherington and Ice’s book may help to deepen ourunderstanding of Aquinas’s sapiential theology of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;thus I will not draw out areas of clear disagreement, such as on the nature of baptism andso forth.

entering more deeply into the sapiential ascent toward contemplativeunion offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. Like Aquinas, Witherington andIce study the uses of the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in order togain insight primarily into God, rather than primarily into our relation-ship with God. Similarly, their exegesis aims at discovering whether andhow “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” name divine Persons: by identifyingthe distinctive roles or characteristics of the Persons, they hope to showthat these roles and characteristics constitute three distinct agents who arethe one God.

The purpose of this chapter is not to evaluate Witherington and Ice’sbook, but rather to enable to the reader of Aquinas’s text to hear the bib-lical motifs that infuse Aquinas’s metaphysically sophisticated analysis ofthe proper names of the Persons. The Protestant scholar John Goldingayhas recently challenged the validity of such sapiential analysis precisely onthe grounds that it ignores Scripture:

For all its truth and fruitfulness, the doctrine of the Trinity seriously skewsour theological reading of Scripture. It excludes most of the insightexpressed in the biblical narrative’s portrayal of the person and its workingout of the plot. There is a paradox here. Some of the key figures in thedevelopment of the doctrine of the Trinity emphasized how little we maydirectly say about God, particularly God’s inner nature. Yet theology nevertheless involves the venture to think the unthinkable and say theunsayable. Yet in doing so it ignores the theological potential of the thingsthat Scripture does say.11

By comparing the conclusions of Witherington and Ice with those ofAquinas, I hope further to expose the way in which Aquinas’s specula-tive, metaphysically informed treatment of the proper names of the Personsbelongs within contemporary discussion, both biblical and speculative,


11 John Goldingay, “Biblical Narrative and Systematic Theology,” in Between Two Horizons:Spanning New Testament Studies & Systematic Theology, ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000): 123–42, at 131. Interestingly, Goldingay and I bothmaintain that it is valuable to read the Old Testament in light of the work of Jack Milesand Jon Levenson, although it seems that Goldingay would agree with their viewpointrather than with that of Aquinas. Goldingay states, “I am not yet ready to give up the hopethat Christian doctrine and lifestyles might be shaped by Scripture, though I do not havegreat expectation that this will ever happen. If it is to do so, however, of key importancewill be not the reading of scriptural narrative in light of what we know already and howwe live already, but the reading of scriptural narrative through the eyes of people such asJack Miles and Jon Levenson who do not believe what we believe or do not practice whatwe practice” (138).

regarding what Christians should say about the distinct Persons whom, asone God, we worship. Does Aquinas’s sapiential theology – which hewsclose to the credal and ecclesial Tradition – skew the biblical (narrative)portrayal of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or ignore “the theologicalpotential of the things that Scripture does say”? Does sapiential, tradition-constituted inquiry work, or is there a continual distancing from the bib-lical Word?

In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas devotes six questions specifically to thePersons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These questions constitute thepinnacle of Aquinas’s treatise on God: here we encounter the mystery of theproper names of the Persons, which has been prepared for by the discussionin qq.27–32 of processions, relations, and Persons. Each name, as a markerof a “proper” distinction in God, resonates with awe-inspiring meaning forthe Christian believer who seeks to know God and in love, to praise himwith a “pure heart” purified of idolatrous discourse. Questions 33–8 are notbereft of biblical quotations, and they are rich in quotations from theFathers. Nonetheless, Aquinas’s treatment of the proper names of thePersons – Father, Son, Word, Image, Holy Spirit, Love, Gift12 – can appearmechanically technical. In order to appreciate Aquinas’s metaphysical preci-sion as a mode of purifying our worship of the living three-Personed God,one must hear the biblical “echoes”13 that resound in Aquinas’s treatment ofthe proper names and that remind us of the source and goal of his contem-plation. Reference to the exegetical insights of Witherington and Ice willhelp to expose these decisive echoes, by enabling us to understand what bib-lical themes and issues are at stake in the sapiential purification of ourworship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

1 The Person of the Father

There are two central aspects to Witherington and Ice’s treatment of theFather that will shed light on Aquinas’s discussion of the Person of theFather. The first is that the Father is the principle or source of the wholedivinity, and that all life comes from him. Commenting on the Gospel ofJohn, Witherington and Ice remark, “The Father has life in himself and


12 Aquinas owes his identification of the proper names for the Persons to Augustine, whoin De Trinitate beautifully exposes the names Gift, Word, and Image in Book 5, chapter 3and the name Love especially in Book 9 (cf. Book 15, chapter 5).13 To use Richard Hays’s phrase. See his extraordinary Echoes of the Scripture in the Lettersof Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

has granted the Son the same privilege (5:25–6).”14 In summarizing thewitness of the New Testament texts, they make a similar point with regardto the Father’s “begetting” power. “Father” is a suitable name because theFather is “begettor” of the Son. In Witherington and Ice’s view, thisbegetting role pertains to the begetting of Jesus’ human nature. Insofar asWitherington and Ice are suggesting that the begetting of Jesus’ humannature is a personal property of the Father, Aquinas would of course dis-agree; but they seem also to be pointing more generally to the Father’srole as the principle of the Son’s being. They write, “One of the impor-tant motifs that generates this Father language is the notion of the Fatheras a begetter of the Son, and in an extended sense of humankind, par-ticularly of believers who are ‘born of God.’ ”15

Second, Witherington and Ice focus upon the discontinuity betweenthe Old Testament’s infrequent use of “Father” and the use of “Father”in the New Testament. Witherington and Ice argue that the New Testa-ment texts (and thus Jesus himself) ground their discussion of God theFather “in a particular set of historical relationships: (1) the relationshipof Jesus with God; (2) the relationships of early Christians with God madepossible by Jesus and enabled by the Holy Spirit.”16 They admit that Godis occasionally presented in the Old Testament and inter-testamental lit-erature as a “Father” to his people Israel or to a future Davidic king.17

However, they note that God is not prayed to or addressed personally asFather in the Old Testament. Further, they emphasize that the use of“Father” in the New Testament is radically focused upon relationship withJesus: “Jesus wishes to call Israel forward into a new relationship with aGod who can be addressed as abba if one will become a disciple of theone who has a unique relationship with that abba.”18 Jesus thus reveals ahighly personal sense of “Father.” The “Father” is the one who is Jesus’Father. Father, as used in the New Testament, is not first a broader category and then also, by extension, Jesus’ Father; rather, Father is firstJesus’ Father. To be “Father” in this sense means to be Father of the only-begotten Son.


14 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 50.15 Ibid., 59.16 Ibid., 63–4.17 See especially their treatment in pp.1–16.18 Ibid., 63. In emphasizing discontinuity, they are explicitly arguing against the directiontaken by Marianne Meye Thompson in The Promise of the Father, although at times thedivergence with Thompson’s view seems to be exaggerated.

This view shapes Witherington and Ice’s interpretation of John8:31–59, a passage that is often considered anti-Semitic. In their view, theGospel of John highlights this new, unique, intimate relationship to theFather that is now possible in Jesus, but not outside of him. They state,“According to this Gospel, people must first become children of Godthrough faith, before God is truly their Father, and that entails first alsohaving a relationship with Jesus. The Son has been bequeathed life fromthe Father, and he is the one who bestows it and the relationship withGod it involves on others (5:25–6).”19 When in John 8:31–59 some Jewsargue with their fellow Jew, Jesus, that Abraham is their father and thusthey do not need to be freed from (spiritual) bondage, Jesus condemnsthem harshly, warning that such a misunderstanding of God’s Fatherhoodwould leave them in their sins. According to Witherington and Ice, Jesus’point is that a radically reconceived notion of God’s Fatherhood is nec-essary for entering into the salvation that Jesus, as messianic Son, brings.In accord with God’s saving will to fulfill his covenants and redeem allhumankind through his Son Jesus Christ, God will now have to be relatedto as the Father of the Son. Human beings call upon this God as “Father”by calling upon his Son; to relate to him as “Father” in this sense is pos-sible only if one knows (implicitly or explicitly) the “Son” to whom heis primarily Father, and through whom human beings are restored to rightrelationship with God (freed from spiritual bondage). The New Testamentoffers, through Jesus, a radically reconfigured notion of God’s salvificFatherhood and our adoptive sonship – reconfigured around the personof Jesus the Son and Savior.20

From these two central themes in Witherington and Ice’s discussion ofthe Father, we can gain insight into Aquinas’s sapiential analysis.21 Thefirst question Aquinas asks in his exploration of the Person of the Fatheris whether the Father is the “principle” (principium) of the Son and Holy


19 Ibid., 48.20 This point – the newness of Jesus’ revelation of the Father – is made also by Jean Galot,S.J., “Le mystère de la personne du Père,” Gregorianum 77 (1996): 5–31.21 I have been preceded in this effort to expose the biblical foundations of Aquinas’s the-ology of the Father by René Lafontaine, S.J. In “La Personne du Père dans la pensée desaint Thomas,” chapter 4 of L’Ecriture âme de la théologie (Bruxelles: Institut d’EtudesThéologiques, 1990): 83–108, Lafontaine states: “je montrerai au départ d’exemples choisiscomment le discours systématique de la Somme présuppose l’autorité de l’Ecriture et yrenvoie comme vers son épanouissement ultime” (83). Drawing upon the work of M.-J.Le Guillou, who has argued for the significance of the concept of “paternity” in Aquinas’sthought, Lafontaine traces the understanding of the Father in Aquinas’s doctrines of Trinityand creation, the moral life, and Christology.

Spirit. Answering yes, Aquinas moves from this biblically derived affir-mation to speculative questions that flow from it. If the Father is the prin-ciple, how is he still one God with the Son and the Spirit? Would notthe Father, as the principle, be greater than the Son and Spirit, who wouldseem to be lesser than their principle?22 Ultimately such questions areliturgical ones: has the New Testament deviated from the worship of theone God? Aquinas explains that the Father is the principle because boththe Son and the Spirit proceed from him: “anything whence somethingproceeds in any way we call a principle.”23 He then moves to examinemetaphysically what it means to be a “principle.”

The Latin Fathers, Aquinas notes, distinguished “principle” from“cause.”24 “Principle” can signify cause, but it can also signify, more


22 Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J. remarks, “In addition to limiting attention to only one ofseveral Trinitarian languages, the structure of the processional model carries an inherentdifficulty. While affirming and promoting the equality of divine persons and their mutualinterrelation, it nevertheless subverts this by its rigid hierarchical ordering. The Father gives everything and receives back nothing that could be considered ontologically essential.The Spirit on the other hand receives everything and gives nothing essential in return”(Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse [New York: Crossroad, 1992]: 196). She notes that this “subtle hierarchy” continues to beleaguerTrinitarian theology based upon the processional model, even when “God as a profoundrelational communion” is appreciated and emphasized (196). While in theory “[s]equence. . . does not necessitate subordination” (196) in practice:

the basic metaphors being used necessarily signify an order of precedence in theirhuman gestalt. Processions, whether academic, liturgical, funeral, and so on, implyrank. Parents exist before their children, and are responsible for their existence. Agift implies a giver who is already there. While Trinitarian equality is affirmed, theimages falter and are simply not capable of bearing the burden of the mutuality tobe expressed. The Father generates the Son and from one or both proceeds theSpirit, a pattern that presses headlong toward a first followed by a second and a third,in fact if not in intent. The impression is consistently given of an inherent incon-sistency in classical Trinitarian theology that it uses constructs that by their verydesign undermine equality and mutuality and introduce subordination in a subtleway. Different metaphor systems are needed to show the equality, mutuality, and reciprocal dynamism of Trinitarian relations. (197)

Johnson interprets the Trinity through the lens of power rather than of wisdom. The“order” against which Johnson – in calling for a social and theological ordering based uponher views of “women’s reality” and human happiness – contends is in fact the biblical orderof begetting and spiration. Since this order is the Trinity, it is not metaphorical speech butanalogical. Johnson’s withdrawal of the notion of “order” from Trinitarian theology cutsoff Trinitarian theology from its foundation in revelation, and constructs a myth.23 1, q.33, a.1.24 1, q.33, a.1, ad 1. He notes that this distinction was not made by the Greek Fathers.

widely, simply the “first term of a thing.”25 In order words, “principle”can signify the order that things have in relation to each other, rather thansignifying a cause – effect relationship. “Cause,” in contrast, suggests atemporal priority, a difference of substance, and a dependence of the effecton the cause in a way that makes the effect lesser than the cause in per-fection or in power.26 In identifying “principle” as a better term fordescribing the Father than “cause,” Aquinas notes that “the wider a termis, the more suitable it is to use as regards God (q.12, a.11), because, themore special terms are, the more they determine the mode adapted to thecreature.”27 The mystery that the Father is “principle” of the Son andHoly Spirit does not therefore indicate in any way that the Son and HolySpirit are lesser because they are not the Father. Rather, it implies an orderof origin. This order lacks any kind of subordination of the Son and HolySpirit.

Indeed, following the Latin Fathers, Aquinas argues that even referringto the Son and Holy Spirit as “principled” or “caused” would be amistake. The mystery of procession from the Father, Aquinas wishes toemphasize, is completely distinct from our experience of cause and effect,which always contains some sense of subordination on the part of theeffect. The Father is “principle” in a way that goes beyond our commonunderstanding of what this might mean. It is not, however, “proper”(unique) to the Father to be a principle; the Son is one principle, withthe Father, of the Holy Spirit. Aquinas speaks of the Father as “the prin-ciple not from a principle” and of the Son as “the principle from a prin-ciple.”28 However, it is “proper” to the Father to be unbegotten. Uniquelyamong the Persons of the Trinity, the Father is not “from another.”29 TheFather is not only a principle, he is the first principle in the order of originof the divine Persons.

To speak of the Father as “principle” thus should open up a (mysteri-ous) vista of an order of origin in which the Father is first and is the“from whence” of the other two Persons, and yet in which the other twopossess the same dignity as the Father, in perfect equality with him. Thecaution with which Aquinas approaches this task of using human languageto name what is distinct about the Father, without thereby indicating any


25 1, q.33, a.1, ad 1 and 3.26 Ibid., ad 1.27 Ibid.28 1, q.33, a.4.29 Ibid.

kind of subordination of the coequal Son and Spirit, reflects the extraor-dinary profundity of this mystery, which human language can so easilycompromise. How could something be first, the “from whence” – perhapsthe most awe-inspiring mystery of all – and yet not be superior in anyreal sense to the two Persons who proceed? Aquinas’s language preservesboth sides of the mystery: the Father’s uniqueness in the Godhead as theprinciple without a principle, and the Son’s and Spirit’s coequality withthe Father. It is this profound mystery that engages the person who con-templates, by means of the order of origin, the Persons in God.

The second aspect distinguishing the Father that is identified by With-erington and Ice is the discontinuity between the few references to Godas “Father” in the Old Testament, and the numerous references to Godas “Father” in the New Testament. In the New Testament, what is meantis Jesus’ Father, the Father of the Son; and Jesus’ Father becomes, insofaras we have faith in Jesus, our Father: we participate in, even if we do notfully share, the way in which Jesus is Son of the Father. In other words,what is meant by “Father” in the Old Testament is God in his unity,whereas what is meant in the New Testament is the Father of the Son.The New Testament celebrates our participation in the Son, through theSpirit, in praising the Father, i.e., our sharing in the Trinitarian life. LikeWitherington and Ice, Aquinas finds in the Old Testament some fore-shadowing of the more specific understanding of “Father”: “It is said(Psalms 89:26): ‘He shall cry out to me: Thou art my Father.’ ”30 In theNew Testament, Aquinas argues, “Father” signifies the relation that dis-tinguishes the “Father” as a distinct Person in God. This relation is pater-nity: the Father is the principle of the Son, and is properly named by thisrelation. “Father” names the relation paternity (thus the noun “Father”in God, as an active relation, should be thought of as more like a verb31),which subsists in God and therefore is God.

Yet, since God is not male or female, why not apply to the first Persona name that more adequately minimizes the creaturely “mode of signifi-cation” in its application to God?32 Aquinas points out that every father


30 1, q.33, a.2.31 See Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2000): especially 115–20.32 Although the context for this question is not a feminist one, it touches upon feministconcerns: why name God “Father” if God is not, in some sense, male? Aquinas’s answerfocuses upon the fact that the first Person of the Trinity is a person, not a process; and hispersonhood is defined by active begetting (as opposing to receptive bringing forth). Thedifficulty for feminist theologians goes far deeper than simply the name “Father.” In a review

begets, but every begetter is not a father. Since, as noted above, “the morecommon term is more properly applied to God,” would it not be moreproper to name the first divine Person “begetter” or “genitor” rather than “Father” (thereby leaving out the ways in which the name “Father”


of Nicholas Lash’s Believing Three Ways in One God (London: SCM Press, 1992) in ModernTheology 11 (1995): 262–4, Sarah Coakley points out:

This too is a point at which feminist issues impinge on Trinitarianism at deeperlevels than Lash is aware. It is in his favor that he takes earlier feminist critiques oftraditional theological language seriously, and at various points in his text adverts tothem positively. But minor complementary adjustments to “Father” language do notgo far enough; the more pressing issue is how the very nature of perfect “relation-ship” is constructed and idealized in any given Trinitarianism, and whether sublim-inal gender messages are not insidiously encoded here. (A telling case in point isprecisely the identification of the Spirit with “love” in Augustine and Aquinas. Is ita coincidence that Aquinas grants women a share in the beatific vision in virtue oftheir supposedly greater capacity for love (see ST 3a.55, 1 ad 3)? Or that Augustinehad earlier judged women fully in the “image of God” only through their maritalconjoining to a male bearer of Christic rationality (de Trinitate 12, 7, 10–12)?) Thisshows that the more complex “archaeology” in this area has only just begun: genderis inscribed deeply, if hiddenly, in both Eastern and Western visions of the Trinity– though in significantly different ways which demand further analysis. (264)

Without granting Coakley’s reading of Aquinas or Augustine, I agree that gender isinscribed in our biblical, analogical Trinitarian language deeply and hiddenly, but also quiteopenly. Coakley’s recent collection of essays, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophyand Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), explores divine and human power in light of humandependency, submission, and kenosis, and opens crucial avenues for a way forward, yet herrejection of “implied ‘essentialist’ visions of gender” (37; cf. 153–67) continues to press thequestion – for those who are not persuaded by her critique of “gender binaries” in favorof an almost completely fluid account of bodiliness – of whether the male and female bodiesof human persons differentiate human persons in a way that is significant for analogous(Christian) discourse that builds upon creaturely reality. See also Janet Martin Soskice’s workon this topic, “Trinity and Feminism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology,ed. Susan Frank Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 135–50 and “Cana Feminist Call God ‘Father’?” in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Chal-lenge of Feminism, ed. Alvin F. Kimel, Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992): 81–94. AsSoskice remarks in the latter article, “what real choices does the Christian feminist have?The least problematic, as I have said, is to reject Christianity altogether. If, on the otherhand, one stays within Christianity, one must come to terms with those sections of its textsand those parts of its tradition where the symbolism is ineradicably masculine” (91). BothCoakley and Soskice recognize that the doctrine of the Trinity, so long as Scripture andtradition are taken seriously and the words Father and Son are employed (theologically andliturgically), will not be “free” of all gender implications (the mode of signification) nomatter how much we recognize that God (the res significata) has no gender. The procedureof using human language to delineate analogously the divine attributes cannot escape thefact that the human language, both esoterically and openly, is indebted to the reality of the

is less “common” or encompassing)?33 Addressing a question that is alsoaddressed (in light of modern feminist thought) by Witherington and Ice,Aquinas notes that “generation signifies something in process of beingmade [in fieri].”34 The distinct divine relations or Persons, however, are notin process of coming to be, but rather are. “Begetter” and “genitor,” there-fore, inaccurately give the impression of a relation in which neither termis perfected or complete; whereas “Father” expresses, in a resolutely per-sonal manner, the full existence of the other term in the relation (the rela-tion Father-Son is in the Father as “paternity” and in the Son as“filiation”).35 “Father” is properly the name of the divine Person who isdistinguished in the Godhead by paternity, or generation. Learning thisname enables us to contemplate the mystery, revealed in the New Testa-ment, of perfect divine generation of another Person that does not destroydivine unity.36

“Father” is thus differently understood in the New Testament than itis in the Old. However, which meaning of “Father” belongs firstly toGod? Is “Father” applied first and foremost to the distinct Person, or toGod understood in his unity? Aquinas answers by pointing out that theprimary sense of “Father” is the eternal sense. Eternally, the Father isFather of the Son. God is not eternally Creator in this sense; rather, God


sexual differences between male and female human beings. Jesus ratifies the ability of suchsexually differentiated language to convey truth about God the Trinity, and thus the good-ness of such language even in our fallen world. Has such language (Father, Son) in factbeen good, that is, in fact communicated the truth of the divine Persons, God himself, ina salutory way to the church? Answering in the negative, Daphne Hampson shows in The-ology and Feminism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) that Jesus’ choice of such language is incom-patible with feminist understandings of reality, at least as feminism has been traditionallyconstrued by its academic practitioners. Christian revelation offers the possibility of refor-mulating feminism: see e.g., Pope John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris Dignatatem;Francis Martin’s important The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in the Light of ChristianTradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994); J. A. DiNoia, O.P., “Knowing and Namingthe Triune God: The Grammar of Trinitarian Confession,” in Alvin Kimel, Speaking theChristian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism: 162–87.33 1, q.33, a.2, obj.2.34 1, q.33, a.2, ad 2.35 Ibid.36 Thus, the Father does not give himself in a way that constitutes a “separation” or dis-tance between himself and the Son that then has to be “bridged” by the Holy Spirit.Although the Holy Spirit is the mutual love between the Father and the Son, the HolySpirit is not the “glue” that holds the Father and Son together. The communication of thedivine nature is explored by Gregory Martin Reichberg, “La communication de la naturedivine en Dieu selon Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 93 (1993): 50–65.

(understood as one) is “Father” of all creatures in time. It follows that“paternity in God is taken in a personal sense as regards the Son, beforeit is so taken as regards the creature.”37 Aquinas adds that “filiation” eter-nally is God the Son, while in creatures there are found various degreesof finite, limited likeness to this perfect filiation.38 God the Trinity is theFather of irrational creatures (see Job 38:28) by reason of what Aquinascalls a “trace” (vestigia) of the divine filiation, and is the Father of all ratio-nal creatures (see Deuteronomy 32:6) by reason of the image of God inthe rational creature, which is a “likeness” (similitudo) of the divine filia-tion. More immediately, the relation of adoptive sons and daughters toGod by grace is a supernatural likeness of the divine filiation (Romans8:16–17), and this likeness is enhanced by glory, the completion of grace(Romans 5:2).39

Although rational creatures become adopted sons in the incarnate Son,rational creatures are adopted sons of the whole Trinity, not simply of theFather. Creatures become adopted sons of the whole Trinity insofar asthey share intimately, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the divine fil-iation by being “conformed to the image of the Son of God.”40 Whilethe relation Father-Son is limited to the divine Persons, nonetheless insofaras creatures are generated and receive their being (including receiving theiradoptive sonship), there is a likeness – Aquinas cautions against over-exu-berance by calling it a “remote similitude” (similitudinem quandam remotam)– of creatures specifically to the Son’s proper mode of subsistence in God.41

The likeness is “remote” because the Son possesses by nature what he


37 1, q.33, a.3.38 Ibid. See also ad 1: “For as the word conceived in the mind of the artist is first under-stood to proceed from the artist before the thing designed, which is produced in likenessto the word conceived in the artist’s mind; so the Son proceeds from the Father before thecreature, to which the name of filiation is applied as it participates in the likeness of theSon, as is clear from the words of Romans 8:29: ‘Whom He foreknew and predestined tobe made conformable to the image of His Son.’ ”39 1, q.33, a.3. The biblical citations are Aquinas’s. The significance of the name “Father”for human understanding of deification (union with God) is explored further by Victor M.Fernández, “Sentido teológico de la paternidad de la primera Persona,” Angelicum 77 (2000):437–58. Gilles Emery, O.P. has examined the Father’s role in the Trinitarian work of cre-ation: “Le Père et l’oeuvre trinitaire de création selon le Commentaire des Sentences deS. Thomas d’Aquin,” in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris, ed. C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg:Editions Universitaires, 1993): 85–117.40 1, q.33, a.3, ad 2. For a thorough discussion, see Luc-Thomas Somme, O.P., Fils adop-tifs de Dieu par Jésus Christ: La filiation divine par adoption dans la théologie de saint Thomasd’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1997).41 Ibid.

receives (the Son is subsisting filiation), whereas creatures are not God.Aquinas cites John 1:18 as evidence of the Son’s absolute pre-eminence:“The only begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declaredunto us.”42

From the above, one can see that Aquinas’s discussion in q.33 of thedistinct characteristics (or names) of the Person of the Father contains fewof the biblical quotations that one might expect to find.43 He cites theGospel of John only once in the four articles that compose q.33. The firstand fourth articles have no biblical quotations whatsoever. It should alsobe clear, however, the insights that animate Witherington and Ice’s exeget-ical treatment of God the Father – namely, the Father as the principle(without a principle) who begets the Son, and “Father” as the propername for the divine Person – also animate Aquinas’s treatment. Wither-ington and Ice develop these concerns within an exegetical context (thatis, by means of comparison of biblical texts) and with an eye to debateswithin current New Testament studies. In contrast, Aquinas seeks sapien-tial insight by exposing how each name, when understood through meta-physical ascesis or purification, serves as a pathway to deeper contemplativeknowledge of or union with, through the revelation of the Father by theSon and Spirit, the Person of the Father.44 It should be seen that Aquinas’sapproach both remains attuned to the central motifs of the New Testa-ment, and enables the reader of Scripture, purified in heart, to see moredeeply into the mystery of the Father.


42 Ibid.43 The contemporary disjunction between speculative theology and biblical exegesis,however, may somewhat color such expectations. Aquinas lectured daily on the Bible, andwould have expected his readers to be familiar with the array of relevant biblical passages.For the study of the Bible in Dominican priories, see William A. Hinnebusch, O.P., TheHistory of the Dominican Order, Vol. 2: Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York: AlbaHouse, 1973): 20–1.44 Hinnebusch’s work reveals the extraordinary contemplative atmosphere in whichAquinas lived and taught, which would have informed the way he approached the divinenames. See Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, Vol. 1: Origins and Growth to1500 (New York: Alba House, 1966); 347–53; Vol. 2: 56–7. On human experiential rela-tionships to distinct Persons through the divine missions of the Son and Spirit, see 1, q.43as well as Albert Patfoort, O.P., “Ista cognitio est quasi experimentalis,” Angelicum 63 (1986):3–13 and “Missions divines et expérience des Personnes divines selon S. Thomas,” Angelicum63 (1986): 545–59. See also Gilles Emery, O.P., “Essentialism or Personalism in the Trea-tise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?” The Thomist 64 (2000): 521–63, especially 527–31;Charles André Bernard, S.J., “Mystère trinitaire et transformation en Dieu,” Gregorianum80 (1999): 441–67.

2 The Person of the Son

Much of Witherington and Ice’s treatment of the Son is devoted toshowing that the New Testament does in fact teach the divinity of theSon. In this regard, their approach is not far from that of the early Fatherswho strove against the Arian heresy. While the refutation of Arius occu-pies significant portions of Aquinas’s biblical commentaries, especially theCommentary on John, and is present in the Summa Theologiae as well,Aquinas in his discussion of the Person of the Son in qq.34–5 is occu-pied instead with exposing the significance of the names Word and Imagefor understanding what distinguishes the Person of the Son.

Aquinas begins by asking whether “Word” (Logos) is a personal namein God, or rather a name that applies to God in his unity, as belongingto his act of understanding. Following John Damascene, Aquinas suggeststhat “Word” can have three meanings: “first and chiefly, the interiorconcept of the mind is called a word; secondarily, the vocal sound itself,signifying the interior concept, is so called; and thirdly, the imaginationof the vocal sound is called a word.”45 Insofar as “Word” is used of God,it must have the first meaning. Implied in this first meaning is the conceptof procession: the interior word proceeds from the intellect. Since pro-cession, as we have seen, belongs solely to the Persons in God, “Word”must be a personal term when applied to God.46 As a strictly personalterm, “Word” thus implies no alteration of the essence.47 However, is therenot a concept formed in any act of understanding, and does not the actof understanding belong to what is one in God?

Recalling his earlier discussion of God’s knowledge, Aquinas argues that the Father speaks the Word, rather than understands the Word.48 Thisdistinction between “speaking” and “understanding” an inner word is


45 1, q.34, a.1. For a thorough discussion of the themes broached here, see the impres-sive essay by Yves Floucat, “L’intellection et son verbe selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,” RevueThomiste 97 (1997): 443–84 and 640–93, and his study L’Intime fécondité de l’intelligence: Leverbe mental selon saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Téqui, 2001). See also Bernard Lonergan, S.J.,Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas.46 Ibid.47 Ibid., ad 1.48 God’s knowledge belongs to the common essence, but this does not mean that thereis an “essence” outside the Persons that understands. Rather, the Persons are the one divineunderstanding according to their distinct modes; thus, the Father understands as generat-ing a Word, and the Son understands as the Word proceeding. The essential attributes arenever separated from the order of origin, even though the essential attributes are perfectlyone and simple. On this point, see 1, q.34, a.2, ad 4.

significant because the former conveys the sense of origin that distinguisheswhat belongs to the Persons in God from what belongs to them incommon. Only the Father speaks the Word, although all the Personsunderstand and are understood. In the Word the whole Trinity (as wellas all creatures) is spoken, because the Father’s Word expresses everythingthat he knows.49 The Word thus subsists distinctly as a Person in God, in relation to the Father who speaks. Furthermore, since this speaking is the generation of a concept or Word, it can be seen that this is theFather’s generation of the Son. The Word is a proper name of the divineSon.50

Contemplating the Son as Word thus offers a way to understand themeaning of filiation in God. Analysis of the name “Word” provides insightinto the mystery of how the Son – subsisting filiation – is both distinctfrom God (as spoken) and is God (who is pure immaterial Spirit). Yet,would it not be better simply to exploit the familial image expressed bythe name “Son”? The New Testament reveals various names throughwhich we enter into this mystery of divine filiation or of a second Personin the Godhead: “For the Son’s nativity, which is his personal property,is signified by different names. . . . To show that He is of the same natureas the Father, He is called the Son; to show that He is coeternal, He iscalled the Splendor; to show that He is altogether like, He is called theImage; to show that He is begotten immaterially, He is called the Word.”51

Even so, the work required in order to understand divine filiation throughsuch lenses – -”Splendor,” “Image,” “Word” – seems quite technical anddifficult. Why does Aquinas not begin with the image of the divine family(Father-Son) and from this familial image develop a portrait of the Personsin God as a perfect interchange of wisdom and love?

It should be noted that Aquinas does employ the familial image whenhe considers it helpful. In attempting to explain how the Holy Spirit proceeds immediately from the Father and mediately from the Son,Aquinas states, “So also did Abel proceed immediately from Adam, inasmuch as Adam was his father; and mediately, as Eve was his mother,


49 1, q.34, a.1, ad 2 and especially ad 3. Cf. my “Speaking the Trinity: Anselm and HisThirteenth-Century Interlocutors on Divine Intelligere and Dicere,” in Saint Anselm – HisOrigins and Influence, ed. John R. Fortin (Lewiston: Edwin Mellon Press, 2001): 131–43.50 1, q.34, a.2. For the development of Aquinas’s understanding of human words and thedivine Word, see A. F. Gunten, O.P., “In principio erat Verbum: Une évolution de saintThomas en théologie trinitaire.”51 1, q.34, a.2, ad 3.

who proceeded from Adam.”52 The familial image thus has a place withinAquinas’s speculative theology, but a circumscribed place, since he hastensto add that “this example of a material procession is inept to signify theimmaterial procession of the divine persons.”53 In describing the Son, heturns to the biblical analogs “Word” and “Image,” rather than to the rolesof fathers and sons within human families. By drawing out the implica-tions of immaterial (spiritual) analogs, he seeks insight into the mysteryof spiritual “Sonship.”

Indeed, in so doing Aquinas is on solid biblical ground. Witheringtonand Ice approach the divine Son in two ways: through an exploration ofJesus’ description of himself as “Son of Man” in the context of Israel’smessianic expectations, and through the influence of the Jewish Wisdomliterature.54 The connections to the Wisdom literature are especiallyimportant because they give insight into the uniqueness and immaterialcharacter of the Son. Noting that John 1:18 calls the Son “monogenes,”Witherington and Ice point out that Wisdom is called “monogenes” inWisdom of Solomon 7:22:

for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me. For in her there is aspirit that is intelligent, holy, unique [monogenes] . . . all-powerful, oversee-ing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent and pure andmost subtle. For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her


52 1, q.36, a.3, ad 1.53 Ibid. Pope John Paul II has remarked, “In the light of the New Testament it is pos-sible to discern how the primordial model of the family is to be sought in God himself,in the Trinitarian mystery of his life. The divine ‘We’ is the eternal pattern of the human‘we,’ especially of that ‘we’ formed by the man and the woman created in the divine imageand likeness” (“Letter to Families,” no. 6, Vatican translation [Boston: St. Paul Books &Media, 1994]). The Pope’s words, composed during the “Year of the Family,” remind usthat every human community, and especially the profound one that is the family, finds itssource in God and must be measured in light of God’s perfect unity and communion ofPersons. Similarly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church employs this image in its section on“Life in Christ,” when discussing the nature of the family (no. 2205: the Catechism doesnot use the image in its first section on “The Profession of Faith,” when discussing thePersons of the Trinity). Anthropomorphism, which can be found in the work of popular-izers of the familial image, fails to observe proper caution and turns the Trinity into anexpression of good home life.54 Cf. Witherington’s Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1994), as well as his John’s Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1995) and The Many Faces of the Christ: The Christologies ofthe New Testament and Beyond (New York: Crossroad, 1998).

pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection ofeternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of hisgoodness. (7:22–6)55

As the Word, Jesus possesses the immaterial, divine qualities that had beenattributed to Wisdom.56 The Gospel authors (not only John but to a lesserextent Matthew and Luke) thus express the characteristics of Jesus’ divinefilial identity by turning to the qualities described in the Old Testament’scharacterization of Wisdom. When Aquinas, in his turn, seeks to glimpsethe divine characteristics of the Son, who is filiation, his exploration ofthe Person of the Son as “Word” and “Image” corresponds to the bibli-cal authors’ depiction of Jesus’ characteristics as Son in terms of the lan-guage of immaterial Wisdom. The New Testament’s familial language(Father-Son) is not lost but rather is grasped more deeply.

As we have seen, Wisdom of Solomon 7:22 describes Wisdom as “thefashioner of all things.” Similarly, Wisdom of Solomon 8:1 says, “Shereaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she ordersall things well.” John applies the attributes of Wisdom to the Logos(Word), although there are differences as well, not only because Jesus isWisdom come in the flesh but also because John, in his opening chapterand elsewhere, purifies the concept of Wisdom in light of his theology ofthe one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. The first chapter of Johnbears witness to this refinement of the Old Testament concept of Wisdom.First John introduces the eternal Word: “In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in thebeginning with God; all things were made through him, and without himwas not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life wasthe light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasnot overcome it” (1:1–5). In Wisdom of Solomon 7, Wisdom was seenas “a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty” and as the “fashionerof all things” who “pervades and penetrates all things” and who is a“reflection of eternal light” and “image of his goodness.” John’s theologyof the Word refines these concepts. The Word is God and yet also is “withGod,” indicating distinction but not emanation. The Word is not simplythe “fashioner of all things,” but rather God is said to make all things


55 Ibid., 91.56 Ibid.

through the Word. The Word does not simply “pervade” all things, butrather in the Word is life and light, in which creatures share. Second, John introduces the coming of the Word in the flesh, as Jesus Christ: “Thetrue light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. . . . Andthe Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father”(1:9,14). The incarnate Son, who is Jesus Christ, makes known the invisible Father.

Aquinas asks further whether the name “Word” indicates not only rela-tion to the Father, but also, in some sense, relation to creatures, as Johnsuggests. Following Augustine, Aquinas notes that if the Son is the Father’s“spoken” Word, in which the Father utters all that he knows, then notonly the whole Trinity but also all possible creatures are spoken in theWord. Similar to what the Old Testament says about Wisdom, in the WordGod knows (and creates) all creatures. This is clear from the Gospel ofJohn. Yet, how one should distinguish the relation Father-Word from therelation to creatures connoted by the name Word? After all, as we haveseen, the Persons in God are distinguished solely by relation of origin.Were the Son/Word also distinguished in God by relation to creatures,then it would seem that not only would God be in a relation of mutualdependence to creatures (thus ceasing to be the free transcendent God),but also there might be a new distinct relation in God, and thus anotherPerson.

The Father generates the Word in knowing all that is God and all theways that God could be finitely participated. As regards the personal rela-tion Father-Word, therefore, strictly speaking, the name Word “does notimply relation to the creature,” but rather implies relation to the Father.57

However, insofar as the Word is the divine essence as spoken, the Fatherutters in the Word all possible creatures, and all possible creatures areunderstood in the Word. In this way, the name Word does imply relationto creatures, even though the relation to creatures is shared by the wholeTrinity as belonging to God essentially (rather than as belonging to thedistinction of Persons).58 By distinguishing the relation to creatures fromthe relation to the Father, Aquinas illumines the progression in the firstchapter of John’s Gospel from verses 1–2 (which discuss the Word in rela-tion to God) to verses 3–4 (which discuss the Word in relation to crea-tures). The relation to creatures implied by the name Word, Aquinas notes,


57 1, q.34, a.3, ad 1.58 Ibid.

is not a relation in time. It belongs to God in his eternity, because heeternally knows creatures.59

If Aquinas’s sapiential analysis of the Word corresponds to Witheringtonand Ice’s emphasis on Wisdom, what about his analysis of “Image,” thesecond name by which he explores the meaning of divine Sonship? Thename “Image,” which we have already seen in Wisdom of Solomon 7, isfound in St. Paul’s opening exhortation in his Letter to the Colossians.60 Intheir book, Witherington and Ice refer readers to Witherington’s earlierbook, Jesus the Sage, for a discussion of Colossians 1:15.61 There Withering-ton shows that the Colossians hymn (1:15–20) is itself suffused with theinfluence of the Wisdom of Solomon.62 As with the Gospel of John, henotes that “the composer of this hymn is not simply transferring what wasonce said of Wisdom to Christ, for there are various small emendations oradditions along the way.”63 In accord with Aquinas, Witherington interpretsColossians 1:15 – Christ as “image” or “icon” of the invisible God – tosignify perfect likeness, not merely likeness. Witherington affirms, “Christ issaid to be the image of the invisible God, but this does not mean he ismerely a likeness of him, but rather that he is the exact representation ofhim, in character and otherwise.”64 As Aquinas states, when “image” is usedof the Son, it refers to being of the same divine nature.65

Why is not the Holy Spirit an “image”? Aquinas notes that an imagemust be referred to something else of which it is the image. If this is so,then it follows that “for a true image it is required that one proceeds fromanother like to it in species, or at least in specific sign. Now whatever


59 1, q.34, a.3, ad 2 and 3. The “relation” in time is in creatures, but not in God, sinceGod is not dependent upon creatures. On this point see Thomas Weinandy, O. F. M. Cap.,Does God Change? (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985): 90–6.60 In q.33, a.3, obj.3, Aquinas cites Colossians 1:15, “Who is the image of the invisibleGod, the first-born of every creature,” and he presumes this quotation in q.35.61 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 74–5. They maintain that the Sonis presented in the New Testament as like the Father. For example, commenting on Mark14:61–2, they state that “the Son of Man is presented as reflecting and participating in thedivine identity” (80). Even so, their discussion would have been significantly improved byexamining Colossians 1:15.62 Ben Witherington III, Jesus the Sage, 266–7.63 Ibid., 267.64 Ibid., 269. Witherington does not think that the next phrase of Colossians 1:15, “thefirst-born of all creation,” means that the Son is created: “When the hymn says he is thefirstborn of all creation this probably does not refer to his being created, for it is about togo on to say he is the author of all creation. Clearly he is depicted here as on the side ofthe creator in the creator-creature distinction” (ibid.).65 1, q.35, a.2, ad 3.

imports procession or origin in God, belongs to the persons.”66 Both theSon and the Holy Spirit proceed in God. In fact, as Aquinas points out,the Greek Fathers frequently speak of the Holy Spirit as the Image of theFather and of the Son.67 Why does Aquinas, following Augustine, valuethis name as one that gives insight into what distinguishes the Son fromthe Spirit? First and foremost, Aquinas notes that in the New Testamentonly the Son is named Image.68 He explains that Image properly namesthe Son not because the Son receives the divine nature (the Holy Spiritreceives the divine nature as well), but because the Son receives the divinenature as begotten, or as born (natus). Something that is begotten fromanother, is always of like species, or its image. In contrast, something spi-rated from another (as love is), is not necessarily its image. This is true eventhough in the case of the Holy Spirit – “the divine love” – it is of likespecies.69 Thus, “Image” names the absolute likeness proper to filiation,and thus gives us insight into what distinguishes the Son in the Trinity.The Son, in the order of origin of the divine Persons, is distinct becausehe proceeds as the Father’s Word and because he is the perfect begottenImage of the Father.

3 The Person of the Holy Spirit

Aquinas begins his discussion of the Person of the Holy Spirit by askingwhether the name “Holy Spirit” is the proper name of one divinePerson.70 This question touches upon two contemporary concerns, raised by Witherington and Ice, that will help us reach the heart ofAquinas’s discussion. The first is whether the “Spirit” actually names apersonal agent at all, since in the Old Testament the “Spirit” in oftendescribed in terms that do not reflect personal agency. The second is whether Christ is the Spirit, an idea that has developed among biblical scholars in light of St. Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 6:17 and15:45 and 2 Corinthians 3:17–18, and that has been appropriated by sometheologians.


66 1, q.35, a.1.67 1, q.35, a.2.68 Ibid.69 1, q.35, a.1.70 For a survey of the Holy Spirit in Aquinas’s theology, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, SaintThomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, chaps 7–9, 153–224. Torrell draws upon a wide range of(largely French) Thomistic literature.

Citing the M. E. Lodahl’s Shekinah Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish andChristian Religion as an important recent example, Witherington and Icenote that some biblical scholars think that “the Holy Spirit is not seen asa person in the NT, but rather what we have is simply another expres-sion of the same sort of notions about divine presence as are found in theOT and in non-Christian early Judaism.”71 As with their analysis of theFather, Witherington and Ice emphasize the discontinuity between“Spirit/ ruach/shekinah” in the Old Testament and “Spirit/ pneuma/ par-aclete” in the New Testament. In the former, they argue, the Spirit typ-ically appears as an impersonal agent. God sends his spirit upon humanbeings, especially the prophets, but God’s spirit does not exercise a dis-tinct personal agency.72 By contrast, in the New Testament – especially inthe Gospel of John, Acts, and the letters of Paul – the Spirit is generally,though not always, spoken of as a distinct, personal, divine agent whoshapes people and events.73

Aquinas recognizes the prevalence, especially in the Old Testament, oflanguage about the Spirit for which it is difficult to pin down personalagency. Following Hilary, he cites as examples of such difficult languageIsaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Matthew 12:28, “In theSpirit of God I cast out devils,” and Joel 2:28, “I will pour out My Spiritover all flesh.”74 In interpreting such passages, Aquinas argues that at timesthe word “spirit” simply means the whole Trinity, which is spirit (asimmaterial), rather than a specific, distinct personal agent.75 If “spirit”sometimes means the whole Trinity, however, how is one to tell whenthe word refers particularly to the Person of the Holy Spirit? Could it bethat the Spirit is so close to the Son that, indeed, the Spirit and the Son(both of whom come forth from the Father) are not distinct divine Persons– in other words that the risen Christ, at least, is the Spirit?76


71 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 102, referring to M. E. Lodahl,Shekinah Spirit: Divine Presence in Jewish and Christian Religion (New York: Paulist Press,1992).72 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 103–5.73 See ibid., 145–7, for a summary of this aspect.74 1, q.36, a.1, obj.1. These examples come from Hilary of Poitiers (De Trin. 8), whosuggests that in the three cases the word “Spirit” refers respectively to the Father, the Son,and the Spirit. The confusion derives from the fact that the “spirit,” as used in these exam-ples, can signify an impersonal agency.75 1, q.36, a.1, ad 1.76 See Roger Haight, S.J. Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999). Haightwrites, “The symbol of the Spirit more forthrightly makes the claim that God, God’s veryself, acted in and through Jesus. This stands in contrast to the symbols of God’s Word and

The conflation of Christ and the Spirit takes theological form in thevarieties of “Spirit Christology,” according to which Christ, and especiallythe risen Christ, manifests God the Spirit in such a way that Christ canproperly be described as the Spirit.77 The biblical scholar J. D. G. Dunn


Wisdom which, insofar as they became personified and then hypostatized, tend to connotesomeone or something distinct from and less than God that was incarnate in Jesus, eventhough it is called divine or of God. By contrast, the symbol of God as Spirit is not a per-sonification of God, but refers more directly to God, so that it is clear from the beginningthat nothing less than God was at work in Jesus” (451). Haight has earlier stated that theSpirit is God “at work” in God’s creation (448). Thus, Spirit-Christology – recognizingthe Spirit at work in Jesus – means recognizing that in Jesus God’s Spirit was at work inGod’s creation (452). For Haight, the “symbols” of Word or Wisdom do not have this sameconnotation of agency; moreover, such symbols, while valuable in certain ways, are moreprone to “literalist misreading” which uproots them from the level of “vital religious imag-ination” and errs by understanding them in terms of “a pre-existent Logos” (177). InHaight’s view, then, these symbols are not as adequate an expression of God’s work in Jesusas is available through Spirit-Christology, which emphasizes that in the fully human Jesuswe experience precisely God at work or God’s Spirit. Worship of the “risen Christ” is,insofar as it brings about “salvation” by empowering “human existence and freedom thatshare in God’s absoluteness” (178; cf. 454f.), an encounter with God at work, that is, withGod as Spirit. Thus encounter today with “Jesus” is none other than encounter with “Godas Spirit.” Regarding his theory of symbols, Haight explains:

Five symbols from the Jewish-Christian scripture which figure most prominently inlater Trinitarian theology provide good examples of these qualities of conceptual orlinguistic religious symbols. These are Yahweh, Spirit, Word, Wisdom, and Logos.Yahweh is the name of the absolutely transcendent one. The scriptures are filledwith the theme of God’s inapproachability and the need of mediation to establishcontact. The other symbols may be understood by contrast: they point to indica-tions and traces of God in the world. . . . And what is this Logos that according tothe poem of John was with God from the beginning? This Logos is God’s wisdom,and God’s Word, and God’s Spirit, and perhaps God’s reflective reason as well. Thesesymbols, metaphors, or models did not have a stable univocal meaning. (472–3)

It should be clear that Haight’s work turns Catholic theology into Schleiermacher’s TheChristian Faith, and shares with Schleiermacher the implicit rejection of the doctrine of theTrinity. For critical analysis of Haight’s work, see most importantly Thomas Weinandy, O. F. M. Cap., “The Symbolic Theology of Roger Haight,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 121–36,especially 128–9, and “The Case for Spirit Christology: Some Reflections,” The Thomist59 (1995): 173–88.77 Developing a view held by numerous other biblical scholars, the New Testament scholarJ. D. G. Dunn has outlined and defended a version of “Spirit Christology” in works suchas Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975);Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incar-nation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980); and The Christ and the Spirit: Collected Essaysof J. D. G. Dunn, Vol. 1: Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). In his recent

is best known for promulgating this view. Witherington and Ice devote asignificant amount of work to explaining why “Spirit-Christology” is anexegetical mistake.78 Aquinas’s question is a more refined one: whetherone can name a distinct divine Person by means of terms that apply equallywell to the other two Persons, “holy” and “spirit.”79 Would not such aname leave in question the distinctiveness of the Person thus named? Howdoes this name distinguish characteristics that specify this Person in theTrinity?

Aquinas begins by recalling his teaching on the two divine processions,which ground the relations and to which the New Testament powerfullytestifies. He notes that unlike in the case of the “Word,” there is no nameto signify clearly the proper name of the second procession in God. Thisis because we name God analogously from creatures, and “in creaturesgeneration is the only principle of communication of nature.”80 Thus thesecond procession could only properly be called “generation,” but thisname would not distinguish it from the first procession (Aquinas there-fore calls it “spiration”). For this reason, the relation that is constituted bythe second procession does not have a “proper” name, one that like“Father” and “Son” distinguishes the relation clearly from the character-istics of the other Persons.

First, therefore, the name “Holy Spirit” indicates that this Person pos-sesses what the Father and the Son possess; all three are “holy” and“spirit.” These common attributes suggest the full divinity of the Spirit.Second, the names “holy” and “spirit” denote the unique properties oflove, what make love distinctive. As regards the name “spirit,” Aquinasstates, “For the name spirit in things corporeal seems to signify impulseand motion; for we call the breath and wind by the term spirit. Now it


study The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), Dunn arguesChrist, specifically the risen Christ, “is experienced in and through, even as the life-givingSpirit, just as the Spirit experienced other than as the Spirit of Christ is for Paul not theSpirit of God” (264). On the same page, Dunn speaks of “Paul’s similarly puzzling con-ception of the risen Christ’s relationship with the Spirit (closely identified, but not com-pletely).” Dunn’s version of “Spirit Christology” is, while in my view mistaken, far lessdeleterious than Haight’s. Gordon D. Fee’s God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in theLetters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) argues against versions of “Spirit Chris-tology,” including Dunn’s; see, e.g., 832–42. Witherington and Ice acknowledge a signifi-cant debt to Fee’s work in their section on the Holy Spirit.78 On Spirit-Christology, see Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 131–5.On John’s account of the Logos, see also Witherington’s John’s Wisdom, 47–59.79 See 1, q.36, a.1, obj. 1 and ad 1.80 1, q.27, a.4, ad 3.

is a property of love to move and impel the will of the lover towards theobject loved.”81 This impulse or movement of the lover to the beloved is the “love” that is the Holy Spirit in the Trinity: the Holy Spirit is distinguished in relation to the other Persons as the unitive force. Regard-ing the name “holy,” Aquinas makes a similar point. He argues that “holiness is attributed to whatever is ordered to God. Therefore becausethe divine person proceeds by way of the love whereby God is loved, that person is most properly named the Holy Spirit.”82 The Holy Spirit proceeds in the “ordering” of God the Son to God the Father, as the Love that, in the divine order of origin, is a Person. In knowinghimself, God loves what he knows.83 Just as with the Son (Word, Image),soteriological motifs are clearly present in the meaning, within the Trinity, of the name of the subsisting relation that is the Person of theHoly Spirit.

Yet, if the Person of the Holy Spirit is distinct in the Trinity as thepersonal love that “orders” the Father and the Son to each other byuniting them, this suggests that the relation that is the Person of the HolySpirit is constituted by relation to both the Father and the Son. In con-trast to the relation “Father-Son,” the relation that is the Holy Spirit istherefore more difficult to conceive analogously. The Holy Spirit is notthe Son of the Father; rather, the Holy Spirit is related both to the Sonand to the Father, in one relation. Thus, analysis of the name “Holy Spirit”leads into reflection upon how the procession of the Holy Spirit (the pro-cession that constitutes the subsisting relation that is the Holy Spirit)involves both the Father and the Son, so that the Holy Spirit is relatedto both. Is it possible to gain some understanding of this mystery andthereby understand more profoundly, even if by a mere glimpse, what dis-tinguishes the Holy Spirit as a Person in the Trinity?

Witherington and Ice find in the New Testament two distinct “send-ings” of divine Persons (agents) from the Father, that of the Son and thatof the Holy Spirit.84 Moreover, not only are the processions of distinctdivine Persons from the Father revealed in the New Testament, but alsothese processions have a certain order and pattern. From their analysis ofthe Gospel of John, Witherington and Ice affirm that “[t]he Spirit is


81 1, q.36, a.1.82 Ibid.83 See 1, q.36, a.2.84 See, e.g., Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 107, on the Son and HolySpirit in the Gospel of Mark.

clearly seen as Jesus’ agent just as Jesus is seen as the agent of the Fatheron earth (see 16:13–15).”85 Similarly, drawing on the work of Gordon Fee,Witherington and Ice point out that “Paul primarily concentrates on theSpirit’s relationship to the Father,” but also that in Paul “the Spirit conveysto the believer the very presence of Christ, even though Christ remainsin heaven at the right hand of God.”86 Thus the Spirit is Christ’s (theSon’s) agent, as well as the Father’s agent. However, Witherington and Icedo not attempt to gain insight into the distinctiveness of the Holy Spirit’sprocession in the Trinity. Their goal is simply to show that in the NewTestament, the economy of salvation, the Spirit is a distinct divine Personor a distinct divine agent.87

Aquinas identifies a similar pattern in the witness of the New Testa-ment about the Holy Spirit. He argues that the passages that point to theinvolvement of the Father and the Son in commissioning the Spirit’s workmean that the Holy Spirit proceeds, in the divine Trinity, from the Fatherand the Son. This point takes on a particular poignancy because it belongsto the division between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.88 AsTheodore Stylianopoulos writes, the difficulty for the Eastern Orthodoxis that “the filioque as a doctrinal formula and as articultated by Augustineand all his later interpreters posits that not only the Father but also theSon is a source or origin or cause of the Spirit.”89 From the Orthodoxperspective, understanding the Son in this way leads to “compromisingthe principle of the ‘monarchy’ of the Father and confusing the hyposta-tic properties of the Father and the Son, as if one could have a hybridFather-Son person or hypostasis.”90 In Aquinas’s view, however, processionfrom the Father and the Son is the only way to account for the Holy


85 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 128; cf. 129. It should be notedthat in their section on the Holy Spirit, they frequently argue that the reception of theHoly Spirit is separate from water baptism. On this and on other points, I disagree withtheir analysis.86 Ibid., 132 and 134, respectively.87 See also Witherington, John’s Wisdom, 250–4.88 But on this point see the hopeful document, “The Father as the Source of the WholeTrinity: The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Greek and Latin Traditions” (1995), by thePontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (see Catholic International 7 [1996]: 36–49for the English translation); cf. Albert Patfoort, O.P., “Le Filioque dans la conscience del’Eglise avant le concile d’Ephèse,” Revue Thomiste 105 (1997): 318–334; Bertrand de Marg-erie, S.J. “Vers une relecture du concile de Florence grâce à la reconsidération de l’Écrit-ure et des Pères grecs et latins,” Revue Thomiste 86 (1986): 31–81.89 Theodore Stylianopoulos, “The Filioque: Dogma, Theologoumenon or Error?,” in TheGood News of Christ (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1991): 207.90 Ibid., 209; cf. 218.

Spirit as a relation distinct from the Son: “It must be said that the HolySpirit is from the Son. For if He were not from Him, He could in nowise be distinguished from Him.”91 The Son’s procession from the Fatherconstitutes the relation Father-Son. If the Spirit’s procession from theFather constituted the relation Father-Spirit, then the Spirit would berelated to the Father exactly as the Son is related to the Father. Recallthat the distinct relations in the Trinity are relations of opposition in theorder of origin (e.g., Father-Son). The Son is relatively opposed solely tothe Father in the Trinity. If the Spirit were also relatively opposed solelyto the Father, then the relations Son and Spirit would not be distinct fromeach other.

The relation of origin that distinguishes the Spirit must be distinct fromthe relation of origin that distinguishes the Son. The Romanian Ortho-dox theologian Dumitru Staniloae argues that to go further would be tofall into rationalism: “we will refrain from explaining the generation ofthe Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit, that is, the mode of beingof the three persons. Instead we will confine ourselves only to castingtheir unity of being and of love into relief. Thus we seek to avoid thepsychologizing explanations of Catholic theology which has recourse tothese only from its desire to find human arguments in favor of the Fil-ioque.”92 In contrast, Aquinas affirms that Scripture itself provides a theo-logically rich explanation of the distinction between generation andprocession. He states, “We ought not to say about God anything whichis not found in Holy Scripture either explicitly or implicitly. But thoughwe do not find it verbally expressed in Holy Scripture that the Holy Spiritproceeds from the Son, still we do find it in the sense of Scripture, espe-cially where the Son says, speaking of the Holy Spirit, “He will glorifyMe, because He shall receive of Mine’ (John 16:14).”93 As Aquinas rec-ognizes, John 16 is a central biblical locus for understanding the sending


91 1, q.36, a.2. See Gilles Emery, “La Procession du Saint-Esprit a Filio chez saint Thomasd’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 96 (1996): 531–74, chapter 6 in Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI:Sapientia, 2003). In light of Aquinas’s attitude toward the Eastern Orthodox, Emery sketchesAquinas’s deployment of a full range of biblical, patristic, and metaphysical arguments, inter-woven by Aquinas to demonstrate the truth of the filioque. See also Emery, “Saint Thomasd’Aquin et l’Orient chrétien,” Nova et Vetera 74 (1999): 19–36; Jaroslav Pelikan, “The Doc-trine of Filioque in Thomas Aquinas and its Patristic Antecedents: An Analysis of Summa the-ologiae, Part I, Question 36,” in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, Vol.1, ed., Armand A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974): 315–36.92 Staniloae, The Experience of God, trans. and ed. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer[Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994]: 247–8; cf. 274.93 1, q.36, a.2, ad 1.

of the Spirit. In 16:7, Jesus tells his disciples that “it is to your advantagethat I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come toyou; but if I go, I will send him to you.” A similar stance is taken by theverse that follows upon the one Aquinas quotes. Jesus promises: “All thatthe Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine anddeclare it to you” (16:15).94 In the distinct relation of origin that consti-tutes the Spirit, therefore, the Spirit is relatively opposed not solely to theFather, but also is relatively opposed to the Son.95 This position, Aquinaspoints out, is not far from that taken by many Greek Fathers. He states,“Hence also the Greeks themselves recognize that the procession of theHoly Spirit has some order to the Son. For they grant that the Holy Spiritis the Spirit of the Son; and that He is from the Father through the Son.Some of them are said also to concede that He is from the Son; or that Heflows from the Son, but not that He proceeds.”96

The Father and the Son are distinguished solely by the relation oforigin Father-Son. They are not distinguished by anything that is not thisrelation of origin. It follows that “whatever is from the Father, must befrom the Son unless it be opposed to the property of filiation.”97 If this


94 These biblical texts have been interpreted by Eastern Orthodox theologians as refer-ring to the economy of salvation (the missions) rather than to the immanent processionsthemselves, but Aquinas insists that the former are revelatory of the latter, given Christ’smission to reveal the mystery of the Trinity. Dumitru Staniloae holds that:

from the order in which the divine persons are manifested in the world Catholictheology infers an order of their relations within the Godhead, and admits nofreedom for that divine order by which the persons are active in the world, for –according to this view – divine acts in the world must strictly reproduce the orderin which the persons are found within the divine life. This theology denies that theSon can be sent by the Holy Spirit, as the Lord says he is (Luke 4.18), because inthe eternal sphere it is the Spirit who proceeds from the Son. We see here no under-standing of the mystery of divine freedom, and an interpretation of God’s work inthe world that follows an order devoid of freedom. . . . Hence too the rationalismof Catholic theology. (The Experience of God, 274)

Aquinas would agree that the Holy Spirit internally moves the incarnate Son (Luke 4:18).For Aquinas, the reality of a divine order of origin – like the order of a dance – does notrestrict the freedom of the Persons. Cf. Yves Congar, O.P., I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans.David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 1997): III, 119–20.95 Whereas in the distinct relation that constitutes the Son, the Son is relatively opposedonly to the Father.96 1, q.36, a.2; for the similar perspective of contemporary Orthodox theologians, mostimportantly Dumitru Staniloae, see Stylianopoulos, “The Filioque: Dogma, Theolo-goumenon or Error?,” in The Good News of Christ, especially 206–7.97 1, q.36, a.2, ad 6.

is so, then the Father and the Son, while distinct Persons, are not distinctas regards the spirative power. As regards spirative power – the act of spi-ration – they are “one principle” of the Holy Spirit.98 The Eastern Ortho-dox theologian might ask whether this view compromises the monarchyof the Father or conflates the Father and Son into one hypostasis. Theanswer is no. Since the Father, in generating the Son, gives him the powerto spirate the Spirit, the Spirit according to Aquinas proceeds “principallyor properly” from the Father.99 Aquinas concludes therefore that is properto say that “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.”100

Although the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit –“one in the spirative power” – nonetheless “if we consider the suppositaof the spiration, then we may say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from theFather and the Son, as distinct; for He proceeds from them as the unitivelove of both.”101 The Father and the Son are not conflated by being oneprinciple of the Holy Spirit. The monarchy of the Father is not lost,because the Father and the Son remain “two spirating” Persons (“fromthe Father through the Son”).102 Yet, the Father and the Son are one prin-ciple of spiration, because spiration is perfectly one.103 Generation and fil-iation, not spiration, distinguish the Father and the Son.

Following Augustine, Aquinas identifies “Love” as a proper name ofthe Holy Spirit, just as “Word” and “Image” are the proper names of theSon. The Holy Spirit is not the love that belongs to God in his unity.Just as Aquinas has earlier distinguished between “to understand” (whichbelongs to each Person as the one God) and “to speak the Word” (whichis proper to the Father), so now he distinguishes between “to love” and“to (spirate) Love.”104 In the former sense, which pertains to the one divine


98 1, q.36, a.4, especially ad 1. Aquinas specifies that the word “principle” does not heremean “personal agent” (see ad 5).99 1, q.36, a.3 and ad 2, respectively.100 1, q.36, a.3.101 1, q.36, a.4, ad 1.102 1, q.36, a.4, ad 7; cf. ad 5.103 1, q.36, a.4.104 1, q.37, a.1; cf. 1, q.37, a.2, ad 2. For analysis of the significance of q.37 in Aquinas’sTrinitarian theology, see Anthony Keaty, “The Holy Spirit Proceeding as Mutual Love: AnInterpretation of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, I.37,” Angelicum 77 (2000): 533–57. Respond-ing to H. F. Dondaine’s thesis, Keaty argues that Aquinas’s theology of the procession ofthe Holy Spirit is determined not by a change in Aquinas’s attitude toward his predeces-sors on this topic, but rather by “the rules formulated in I.27 and I.28” (542) by Aquinasin order to interpret the meaning of the relevant biblical passages without falling into Ari-anism or Sabellianism. Dondaine’s position is followed by Yves Congar, O.P. in volume oneof his I Believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith (New York: Crossroad, 1997): I, 90

essence, all three Persons love, according to the modes in which theysubsist in God: the Father and Son love (essentially) as spirating Love, andthe Holy Spirit loves (essentially) as Love proceeding.105 In the latter sense,the Father and Son spirate Love, and Love proceeding is the Holy Spirit.Once the Holy Spirit is recognized as the mutual love of the Father andSon in this latter sense, Aquinas points out, “it necessarily follows that thismutual love, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from both.”106 As proceeding fromthe Father and Son, the Holy Spirit is their mutual bond. In the Personof the Holy Spirit, the relation Father-Son is expressed as that of Lover-Beloved.107 As Witherington and Ice note with regard to the Gospel ofJohn, “It cannot be overemphasized how much John stresses the unity andlove and intimacy between the Father and the Son.”108 This love – as adistinct appetitive movement or impulse (Love proceeding) in God – isthe Person of the Holy Spirit. Aquinas affirms that the name “Love”implies a relation to creatures: “As therefore we say that a tree flowers byits flower, so do we say that the Father, by the Word or the Son, speaksHimself, and His creatures; and that the Father and the Son love eachother and us, by the Holy Spirit, or by Love proceeding.”109 The Holy


and III, 117. Congar holds that Aquinas preserves the concepts of the Spirit as Love, Gift,and mutual love of the Father and Son, but does not “make these ideas the principle bywhich the mystery of the holy Triad should be understood theologically or that on whicha theological construction should be erected. The principle that he prefers is the structureof the spirit itself, which includes knowledge and love of itself. He does not, however,deduce these faculties or these acts from the essence of God, nor does he see in this struc-ture the equivalent of Anselm’s rationes necessariae. . . . [For Aquinas] what affirms the Triadof Father, Word-Son and Spirit is faith. The best way of approaching this mystery of faithintellectually, he claims, is through our knowledge of the structure of a spiritual being” (III,117). Congar does not grasp the role of biblical exegesis in determining Aquinas’s approach.105 1, q.37, a.1, ad 4.106 1, q.37, a.1, ad 3.107 Ibid. Congar cautions against interpreting this anthropomorphically: “The theme ofthe Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son has been widely discussed in recentworks on triadology and in spiritual books. It is not difficult to explain and it can easilybe applied to other forms of expression. It is in accordance with human experience and ithas strong echoes in the psychologic study of interpersonal relationships. It also quicklyarouses a warm response. On the other hand, however, it presents certain difficulties to thetheologian. Above all, it takes anthropomorphic expressions to the limit of doctrinal pre-cision” (III, 122). Congar adds that the theme of mutual love differs from the Greek empha-sis on the principle of the Father’s monarchy. See also F. Bourassa, “Le Saint-Esprit unitéd’amour du Père et du Fils,” Sciences ecclésiastiques 14 (1962): 375–415; idem, “Le Espritsaint, ‘communion’ du Père et du Fils,” Sciences ecclésiastiques 29 (1977): 251–81 and 30(1978): 5–37.108 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 48.109 1, q.37, a.2; cf. ad 3.

Spirit is not the cause of the mutual love of the Father and Son; rather,they love each other by spirating love.110

Aquinas also names the Holy Spirit “Gift.” What does the name “Gift”specify about the distinctive characteristics of the Holy Spirit among thePersons? As with the name “Love,” Aquinas’s discussion draws uponAugustine. In Book IV, chapter 20 of On the Trinity, Augustine notes thatjust as to be from the Father is the same as “to be born,” so also to befrom the Father and the Son is the same as “to be the Gift of God.”111

Aquinas explains that although the Son, as John 3:16 says, is also given(from the Father), nonetheless the Holy Spirit, as the mutual love of Fatherand Son or as Love proceeding, has a special, distinctive likeness to gra-tuitous gift. This is so because to give the gift of oneself freely, withoutthe intention of receiving anything in return, is to love.112 Aquinas statesthat “love has the nature of a first gift, through which all free gifts aregiven.”113 Since their love is not self-aggrandizing – each possesses fullythe infinite divine nature – the Father and the Son give this gratuitousgift in spirating their mutual love. The Holy Spirit, as Love proceeding,is thus “the first gift.”114 “Gift” properly names the Holy Spirit in twoways: by reference to the distinct characteristic of the Holy Spirit as onewho proceeds but is not a principle in the Trinity (recall that the Fatheris a principle without a principle, and the Son a principle with a princi-ple), and by reference to the distinct characteristic of the Holy Spirit asLove.115 These characteristics are borne out (and indeed revealed) in theNew Testament, which speaks of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and calls himthe “Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29).116 Aquinas quotes Augustine: “Bythe gift, which is the Holy Spirit, many particular gifts are portioned outto the members of Christ.”117 The doctrine of the Trinity informs thedoctrine of salvation and vice-versa, as always in the Summa Theologiae.


110 1, q.37, a.2.111 Quoted in 1, q.38, a.2.112 1, q.38, a.2. Here Aquinas cites Aristotle’s definition of a gift as “an unreturnablegiving.” On the Son’s being given, see ad 1.113 Ibid. For further discussion, see e.g., F. Bourassa, “ ‘Don de Dieu’, nom propre duSaint-Esprit,” Sciences ecclésiastiques 6 (1954): 73–82.114 Ibid.115 Cf. 1, q.38, a.2, ad 2.116 See Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, 138, 142.117 1, q.38, a.2; cf. ad 3. Cf. Bruce D. Marshall, “What Does the Spirit Have to Do?”forthcoming in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and SpeculativeTheology, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Catholic University of AmericaPress). The quotation from Augustine is taken from On the Trinity, Book XV, ch. 24.

One would expect nothing less from a doctrine of God rooted in thewords of Scripture.

Witherington and Ice remark that “while it is quite true that there isno developed doctrine of the Trinity enunciated in the New Testament,there is nonetheless the raw data to construct such a doctrine. There isan especial wealth of material about the relationship of the Son to theFather, and of the Spirit to the Son.”118 Aquinas draws upon the “devel-oped doctrine” as elaborated by the Fathers and by his medieval prede-cessors, and as enunciated by the Church’s credal formulations. By meansof metaphysical precision, he teaches the doctrine of the Trinity – thedoctrine of the distinct characteristics of the Persons of the Father, Son,and Holy Spirit – in such a way as to illumine the Trinitarian pattern ofour salvation and to provide for those who seek divine truth in love, aforetaste of the eternal happiness of contemplating, in the divine essence,the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Word, Image, Love, Gift. From each ofthese names, Aquinas draws precious insight in order to enable us to seeboth the perfect unity of Persons and the chiseled specificity of their per-sonal characteristics. He does so without losing sight of the fact that allour language about the divine Persons is analogous, and that thereforeutmost caution and reticence is required in the task of applying names tothe Persons.119 All this would be of nought, however, were Aquinas toneglect what Witherington and Ice call the “raw data” provided by theNew Testament about the Persons of the Trinity. As we have seen, it isthis “raw data” that Aquinas sapientially illumines, so that we see the NewTestament’s revelation of the Trinity, God in himself, with contemplativeclarity that, by purifying our knowing, crystallizes (as it were) the stepsof the mystical dance revealed in Christ who, through the Spirit, invitesour participation in the inexhaustible life of the Father.120


118 Witherington and Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty, xi.119 Cf. Rowan Williams’s discussion of St. John of the Cross’s theology of the Trinity,“The deflections of desire: negative theology in Trinitarian disclosure,” in Silence and theWord: Negative Theology and Incarnation, ed. Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2002): 115–35.120 This metaphysically informed knowledge is, or should be, mystical. As Georges Car-dinal Cottier, O.P. has pointed out, “while with knowledge the object is received in theknowing subject according to the mode of the knower, love is directed to the object initself in such a way that here below love goes further than knowledge. It is from this ‘further’that mystical knowledge is born.” (Cottier, “Metaphysics and Mysticism,” Nova et Vetera[English] 1 [2003]: 277).

Chapter Seven

ESSENCE, PERSONS, ANDTHE QUESTION OF

TRINITARIAN METAPHYSICS

Aquinas expends much effort in distinguishing between what pertains towhat is common in God and what pertains to the distinction of Persons.In speaking about God, one needs to avoid two errors. First, we should not conflate the unity and the distinction of Persons in God.Second, we must not make of the divine essence a reified “fourth” in theTrinity, as if the common essence existed anywhere other than in thePersons. Aquinas’s discussion of how to avoid these errors in theologicalspeech occupies a significant portion of his treatise on the Trinity in theSumma Theologiae. He largely devotes questions 30–1 and 39–42 of theprima pars to this task.

Oddly, despite renewed attention to interreligious dialogue, these ques-tions receive little attention in contemporary Trinitarian theology outsideof Thomistic circles. These questions become pressing, however, whenone is concerned to understand how the God proclaimed as one in theOld Testament is the same God who is proclaimed in the New. If theNew Testament is witnessing to more than one person in the Godhead,what happens to Old Testament discourse about God’s unity? Is divineunity now superseded by a “super-unity” that is Trinity, so that divineunity must now itself be understood in Trinitarian terms? Does theconcept of divine unity need to be modified to account for the distinctpersonal modes in which this one God subsists? How can one God subsistdistinctly in three ways, and remain recognizably “one”?

In the medieval period, Jewish and Muslim theologians pressed suchquestions in polemical fashion,1 and Christian theologians could notignore the difficulties. One finds the ninth-century Muslim theologianAbu ‘Isa al-Warraq challenging Melkite Christians: “As for their claim thatthe substance is not numerically a fourth to the hypostases, and theirdislike of employing number, two or any other, when referring to italongside any of them, we question them about this and say: Tell us aboutthe hypostases. Since they are eternal and numerically three and you affirmthat the substance is other than them, do you affirm that it is a fourth,or do you derive it from the three themselves or from one of the threeand designate it substance and consider it as other than the three?”2 Similarquestions are found in the late-thirteenth-century Jewish work the Niz-zahon Vetus (“Old Book of Polemic”), a popular handbook for answeringChristian claims. As the Jewish scholar David Berger notes in his intro-duction to the Nizzahon Vetus, “The Trinity, which was an obvious targetfor logical questions, posed a particular problem for Jewish polemicists;they considered it so irrational that they had trouble in coming to gripswith it.”3 An anonymous remark in the Nizzahon Vetus simply points tothe impossibility of the one God of the Torah turning out to be, in anysense, two: “Thus, if you say that he [Jesus] is God, then you have in

198 the question of trinitarian metaphysics

1 The medieval dialogue between Jews, Christians, and Muslims was intensely polemicaland politically charged, and in this sense far from something to be proud of, given Chris-tian oppression and persecution of Jews, Muslim invasion and conquest of Christian coun-tries and oppression of Christians and Jews, and the Christian crusades. Nonetheless, asregards Christian theological awareness of Islam, it could be argued that medieval Christ-ian theologians were significantly more aware of the thought of their Muslim contempo-raries than is common today. How many Christian theologians today are familiar withnon-Western Muslim theological treatments of Christianity, as well as with Muslim phi-losophy? On this point see e.g., Pim Valkenberg, “How to Talk to Strangers: Aquinas andInterreligious Dialogue,” Jaarboek 1997 of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, 9–47; “John ofDamascus and the Theological Construction of Christian Identity vis-à-vis Early Islam,”Jaarboek 2000 of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, 8–30; Marcel Poorthuis, “The ThreeRings: Judaism, Christianity and Islam: A bibliographical essay on their interaction in theEastern and Western world,” Jaarboek 1999 of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, 7–53;Marcus van Loopik, “Rabbi Mosche ben Nachman-Ramban: Eine Jüdische Propagan-daschrift, Barcelona 1263,” Jaarboek 1999 of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht, 54–82; JosephKenny, “Saint Thomas Aquinas: Reasons for the Faith against Muslim Objections (and OneObjection of the Greeks and Armenians) to the Cantor of Antioch,” Islamochristiana 22(1996): 31–52; Joseph Ellul, O.P., “Thomas Aquinas and Muslim-Christian Dialogue: AnAppraisal of De rationibus fidei,” Angelicum 80 (2003): 177–200.2 David Thomas, ed. and trans., Anti-Christian Polemic in Early Islam: Abu ‘Isa al-Warraq’s“Against the Trinity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 103 (no. 65).3 David Berger, Introduction to The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: ACritical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996): 13.

effect denied God, for it is written in the Torah, ‘See, then, that I, I amhe; there is no god beside me’ [Deuteronomy 32:39]. The counter-argument that they are one may be refuted by reference to Jesus’ state-ment, ‘It is I and he who sent me; he has not left me alone’ [cf. John14:23–4; 5:30]; this implies that they are two.”4 These concerns obviouslyremain fundamental to any Christian theology of God that seeks to becoherent in itself and engaged in interreligious dialogue.5

Aquinas’s sapiential effort in qq.30–1 and 39–42 to speak truthfullyabout God’s conceptually distinct, but identical, unity and Trinity thusremains centrally important, despite (or because of) its apparent abstrac-tion from the concerns of soteriology and anthropology that drive modernTrinitarian handbooks. Although the issues raised in qq.30–1 and 39–42are generally overlooked or noted only briefly, nonetheless these questionsmay be due to emerge from obscurity. The contemporary movementtowards “Trinitarian ontology,” which has captured the attention of a widevariety of theologians and philosophers, should bring these questions, soimportant for non-idolatrous contemplation and proclamation of the Godof Jesus Christ, back to the forefront of Trinitarian theology.6

the question of trinitarian metaphysics 199

4 David Berger, ed. and trans., The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1996): 200 (no. 194).5 Herbert McCabe remarks that Aquinas “holds that we cannot understand how Godcould be both Father, Son, and Spirit as well as utterly one and simple, but we do under-stand that this does not involve the kind of contradiction that would be involved in saying,say, that God is three Fathers as well as being one Father, or three Gods as well as beingone God. What we have to do in this case is to see how we are compelled to say each ofthe things but not to try to imagine them being simultaneously true; we should not expectto form a concept of the triune God, or indeed of God at all, we must rest content withestablishing that we are not breaking any rules of logic, in other words that we are notbeing intellectually dishonest” (Herbert McCabe, O.P., “Aquinas on the Trinity,” New Black-friars 80 (1999): 268–83, at 271). McCabe would have benefitted from Gilles Emery’s work.See also Leo Elders, S.V.D., “Geheimnischarakter und Rationalität in der Trinitätslehre nachThomas von Aquin,” in Der dreifaltige Gott und das Leben des Christen, ed. Georg Schwaiger(St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1993): 74–87; Georg Scherer, “Die Unbegreiflichkeit Gottes unddie Trinität bei Thomas von Aquin,” in Im Gespräch mit dem dreieinen Gott, ed. MichaelBöhnke and Hanspeter Heinz (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1985): 258–75.6 In introducing his annual review of books and articles on Trinitarian themes, GillesEmery, O.P. has nicely described the problem:

The history of theology shows that it is under the aspect of Trinitarian faith thatmonotheism has become a question for theology. The problem posed is then this:if it is appropriate, as common usage has it, to speak of a “Trinitarian monotheism,”in what manner is Trinitarian faith monotheistic? in what does the divine unityconsist? Many works . . . discuss this question and attempt to respond to it. Certainof them avoid recourse to the notion of substance or of essence, considering it

In response to deist theological or philosophical depictions of God thatmake Christian revelation irrelevant, Trinitarian ontology suggests thatChristian revelation deconstructs and radically reconfigures any prioraccount of “being” or “God.” There is no possibility here of canvassing,even in a preliminary fashion, the work of the wide range of philosophersand theologians who have, from different perspectives and with differentemphases, developed the movement that is broadly known as Trinitarianontology.7 We will examine this theme in the works of three contempo-rary thinkers: W. Norris Clarke, S.J.’s Explorations in Metaphysics, JohnZizioulas’s Being as Communion, and Reinhard Hütter’s Suffering DivineThings (one philosopher and two theologians; Roman Catholic, GreekOrthodox, and Lutheran respectively). Taken together, these thinkersprovide a reasonably adequate portrait of the basic positions and concernsof the leading variants of Trinitarian ontology, although Hütter’s recent


attached to an outdated cosmology and metaphysics. Confronted by the hubris ofthe subjective idealist and the conception of the absolute self-determination of Godin modern thought, contemporary Trinitarian theology seeks to give more place tohuman liberty by affirming the primacy of plurality in God, that is to say a per-sonal plurality that is the work of love, grounding history and guaranteeing humanliberty. Thus for the unity of essence in God are substituted, more and more, thenotions of union or of communion, conceived on the basis of a “social analogy,” oron the mode of perichoresis or of an exchange that is interpersonal, communica-ble, open, hospitable, and capable of integration. The conception of unity is thenfound profoundly modified, and one should ask whether monotheism is sufficientlymaintained. To this question is added that of the function of reflection on God theTrinity. The contemporary discourse on unity as perichoretic communion is ani-mated, at bottom, by a practical purpose that recalls the project of theodicy, andwhich is presented as a response to the critiques of modern theism and of atheism.Many contemporary essays on “Trinitarian ontology” are inscribed in the samepurpose. One expects the doctrine of God the Trinity to be such that, in order torespond to the demands of understanding the world and human life, it bears withit a remedy to modern individualism and avoids any presentation of God which, inconceiving him as a supreme substance over against man, would make him a “rival”for man. Trinitarian theology is thus put in service of anthropology and apologet-ics. Is this indeed its proper place? Patristic and medieval speculative reflection isdeveloped, more modestly perhaps, in order to respond to monarchian, Arian, sub-ordinationist or tritheist doctrines, with the goal of securing the affirming of thedivine unity in the distinction of persons: the Father, the Son and the Spirit are notthree gods but one God alone. (Emery, “Chronique de théologie trinitaire (V),”Revue Thomiste 101 [2001]: 581–2, my translation).

7 For an introduction, see the study and accompanying bibliography (by no means exhaus-tive) of Klaus Obenauer, Thomistiche Metaphysik und Trinitätstheologie: Sein-Geist-Gott-Dreifaltigkeit-Schöpfung-Gnade (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2000), reviewed by Gilles Emery, O.P.in his “Chronique de théologie trinitaire (V),” 614–17.

important metaphysical work has moved away from his earlier position.As we will see, the three approaches beg especially Abu ‘Isa al-Warraq’ssophisticated questions about the rapport of the substance and thehypostases in God. Once Trinitarian ontology has reopened these ques-tions, this section of Aquinas’s Trinitarian treatise emerges as acutely rel-evant to adequate worship of the God who is God of both Old and NewTestaments.8 I will argue that Aquinas’s sapiential effort always to distin-guish linguistically and theoretically two aspects when speaking of thetriune God enables him to avoid, in a way that Trinitarian ontologycannot, the twin errors of, on the one hand, conflating God’s unity andTrinity so as to render one or the other unintelligible and, on the otherhand, denying the real identity of the two aspects in the triune God.9


8 For analysis of the relationship between essence and Persons in God, see the followingrecent studies of Gilles Emery: “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in SaintThomas Aquinas?” The Thomist 64 (2000): 521–63 and three contributions to Le Chris-tianisme est-il un monothéisme?, “Questions adressées au monothéisme par la théologie trini-taire,” 25–33, especially 33 where he raises the question of “Trinitarian ontology”; “Trinitéet unité de Dieu dans la scolastique XIIe-XIVe siècle,” 195–220 (chapter 1 of his Trinityin Aquinas [Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003]); and “Bilan et propositions pour un‘monothéisme trinitaire’: Réflexion dogmatiques,” 345–53.9 Although David S. Cunningham’s solution is to reject ontology altogether as “substancemetaphysics” and replace it with the notion of participation, nonetheless it is worth quotingCunningham’s criticism of Trinitarian ontology in “Participation as a Trinitarian Virtue:Challenging the Current ‘Relational’ Consensus,” Toronto Journal of Theology 14 (1998):7–25, at 9:

Nor does it help to ground this notion [relationality] ontologically. In order to avoidthe criticism that I have just suggested – that is, in order to claim that divine relation-ality is not a contingent matter – some writers have claimed that it lies at the very heartof what it means to be. Thus, the ancient metaphysical claim that “To be is to be a sub-stance” is replaced by the claim that “to be is to be in relation.” I have some significantdoubts about the coherence of such a claim. Ontological statements are supposed totell us about what something is – its being or essence. The old substance metaphysicswas certainly an ontology, in that it suggested that God “is” a substance. What is lessclear is whether “in relation” is something that one can “be” in a way that fulfils therequirements of an ontology. The preposition “in” offers a hint here; prepositionalphrases cannot stand alone, but assume a substantive that governs them. (If I use suchphrases as “out the window” or “over the line,” my audience will naturally assume thatI am referring to something that is, in fact, out the window, or over the line.) In thissense, the claim that “to be is to be in relation” does not really answer the ontologicalquestion about a thing’s being or essence; it leaves that question untouched and then goeson to say something about the interdependence of the (as yet ontologically evasive)entities. As a result, audiences tend to “fill in” the undefined ontological status of enti-ties with whatever is handy – and in this respect the dominant tradition is, once again,a metaphysics of substance.

1 Trinitarian Ontology in Clarke, Zizioulas,and Hütter

In a programmatic essay, “To Be Is to Be Substance-in-Relation,” W. NorrisClarke, approaches the topic of Trinitarian ontology from the standpoint of Thomistic metaphysics.10 Clarke contrasts the standard Aristotelianaccount of “being” with the insight that “being” must be “substance-in-relation.” The latter grounds a relational ontology. In the realm of creatures,all beings are, no matter how apparently autonomous, constituted by rela-tion. In itself, the creature is constituted by its relation to God, its Creator.Therefore, in the realm of creatures, ontology or metaphysics – the study ofbeing qua being – must recognize that created being is relational by defini-tion. As Clarke states with regard to creatures, “To be a substance and to berelated are distinct but complementary and inseparable aspects of every realbeing. The structure of every being is indissolubly dyadic: it exists both asin-itself and as toward others.”11 Clarke then asks whether this relationality ofbeing belongs to divine being. For Aquinas, Clarke finds, the (philosophi-cal) answer is no. Aquinas had two overriding concerns: to reject any hint ofphilosophical deduction of the reality that God is Trinity, and to preservethe freedom of God in creating. Thus, although in creatures being is (asgood) self-communicative, and in this way relational, Aquinas argues thatwe can say only that in divine being it is most “fitting” that God communi-cates his own goodness, both in the intra-divine processions, and in the pro-cession of creatures from God.12 In Clarke’s reading, Aquinas comes close toacknowledging the intrinsic relationality of divine being, but stops short byconcluding that although we can recognize the fittingness of the relationality of divine being when revelation teaches us, we cannot philosophically rise to the conclusion that divine being, like creaturelybeing, is relational by definition.

Clarke criticizes Aquinas for remaining overly cautious in this aspect ofhis metaphysics. In contrast to Aquinas, Clarke notes, Bonaventure wasbolder. Following the school of the Victorines, Bonaventure argues thatsince being (as good) is self-communicative, the highest good must be self-communicative in the absolutely highest degree. In The Journey of the Mindto God Bonaventure states:


10 This essay has appeared as chapter 6 of Clarke’s Explorations in Metaphysics (Notre Dame:University of Notre Dame Press, 1994): 102–22.11 Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 108.12 Ibid.

Behold, therefore, and observe that the highest good is unqualifiedly thatthan which no greater can be thought. And this good is such that it cannotrightly be thought of as non-existing, since to exist is absolutely better thannot to exist. And this good exists in such a way that it cannot rightly bethought of unless it is thought of as triune and one. For good is said to beself-diffusive, and therefore the highest good is most self-diffusive. But thishighest diffusion cannot be unless it be actual and intrinsic, substantial andhypostatic, natural and voluntary, free and necessary, unfailing and perfect.Unless there were in the highest good from all eternity an active and con-substantial production, and a hypostasis of equal nobility, as is the case withone who produces by way of generation and spiration, – thus there belongsto the first Principle from all eternity a co-producer – so that there is theloved and the beloved, the generated and the spirated, that is, the Father,and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that is to say, unless these were preset,there would not be found the highest good here, because it would not be supremely self-diffusive. For the diffusion that occurred in time, in thecreation of the world, is no more than a focal point or brief moment incomparison with the immense sweep of the eternal goodness. From thisconsideration of creation one is led to think of another and a greater dif-fusion – that in which the diffusing good communicates to another Hiswhole substance and nature. Nor would He be the highest good were Heable to be wanting in this, whether in reality or in thought.13

Clarke identifies an affinity between Bonaventure’s position with Hegel’sviews. Drawing upon both Bonaventure and Hegelian philosophy, Clarkeproposes that “it is according to the divine nature – inevitable, if you will(‘necessity’ is perhaps too strong a word, with misleading implications ofimpersonal compulsion) – to communicate its goodness to some finitecreated world, but to which particular finite universe would have to bedetermined by a free choice. . . .”14 For Clarke, philosophy can achieve the


13 St. Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God, trans. Philotheus Boehner, O. F. M.,ed. Stephen F. Brown (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993): 33. In discussing Bonaventure,Clarke does not refer directly to this text, but it exemplifies Bonaventure’s view. The neces-sity implied here is recognized, Bonaventure suggests elsewhere, only by the light of faith,and thus is a necessity of fittingness (see Brown, fn 166, 69). On the relationship of faithand reason in our knowledge of the Trinity, see St. Bonaventure, Disputed Questions on theMystery of the Trinity, trans. Zachary Hayes, O.F.M. (St. Bonaventure, NY: The FranciscanInstitute of St. Bonaventure University, 1979 [Vol.3 of The Works of St. Bonaventure, ed.George Marcil, O.F.M.]): q.1, a.2, responsio (128–33). See Gilles Emery, “Trinité et Unitéde Dieu dans la scholastique XIIe-XIVe siècle,” 209–14.14 Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 108. Clarke’s position here is superbly critiqued byBernhard-Thomas Blankenhorn, O.P., “The good as self-diffusive in Thomas Aquinas,”Angelicum 79 (2002): 803–37. Blankenhorn notes that “Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on

insight that divine being must be relational, but it cannot determine the precise mode in which the divine nature communicates itself.

Christian revelation goes beyond, and supereminently confirms, theinsights of philosophy by identifying the mode, namely the mode of theTrinity. In his presentation of the Trinity, Clarke suggests that the self-communicative impulse of the divine being is fulfilled super-eminently inthe divine Persons flowing forth from the divine nature or being. Accord-ing to Christian revelation, Clarke notes, “the inner being of God is by the very necessity of its nature self-communicating love, which flowers out into the internal procession of the three Persons within the unity ofthe divine nature.”15 Since the divine being is itself relational (self-communicating), it follows that the procession of the Persons can be seenas a flowering of the inner dynamism of the divine being – a floweringexpected by philosophy, but whose exact mode could not have been deter-mined. The Persons are, on this account, simply the expression of thedynamism of the divine being, since they are the divine being commu-nicating itself. As Clarke concludes (recognizing that Aquinas did not holdthis position), “It is thus of the very nature of being at its supreme inten-sity to pour over into self-communicative relatedness.”16 Being, at its mostintense, is relational being: perfect Trinity. The intrinsic meaning of“being” is “relational being” – at its divine source, is the infinite rela-tional Being that Christians call Trinity.

This does not mean, however, that being is a mere relation with nosubstantial reality. This would rob “being” of any self-possession or dis-tinct actual presence. Rather, Clarke holds, “The intrinsic structure of allbeing is irreducibly dyadic: substance-in-relation.”17 Substance here is not


bonum diffusivum sui . . . leads to the relationality of all created being (esse) but not to therelationality of the divine being, the latter being so partly because of Thomas’ subordina-tion of the good as self-diffusive to the good as final cause, which allows him to consis-tently maintain both the self-diffusive character of the divine good and the free divinechoice to create” (803).15 Ibid., 109.16 Ibid.17 At the end of his essay, Clarke notes that a discussion with David Schindler in the pages of Communio (20 [1993]: 580–98) has led him to amend his concept of a “dyadic”structure of being to a triadic, so as to include the aspect of receptivity (119–20). (Clarkealso mentions the influence of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Trinitarian theology.) For createdbeing, this aspect of receptivity is clear, since we receive existence from God. For divinebeing, the aspect of receptivity is less clear, but Clarke thinks that by careful analogy, onthe basis of the revelation of the divine processions, we may apply the concept of “receptivity”to God the Trinity, taking away the conditions of temporality and change that “receptiv-ity” implies in creatures. On this point, see Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 119–20 and

understood as static and self-inclosed, as modern philosophers fromDescartes on have tended to understand it.18 Instead, the term “substance”simply refers to the “in-itself dimension of being.”19 This “in-itself ” aspectcannot be separated from the relational or self-communicative aspect ofbeing. Properly understood, “being” both stands on its own and is pro-foundly relational and self-communicative; precisely in standing on its own(the “in itself ” aspect), being is self-communicative, since being is “activepresence.”20 For Clarke, the definition of “being” is nicely captured byAquinas’s definition of the divine Persons. As one would expect from a Trinitarian ontology, Clarke’s description of being as “substance-in-relation” mirrors Aquinas’s description of the divine Persons as subsistingrelations, relations subsisting in the divine essence or being. ElsewhereClarke has noted: “To be, therefore, it finally turns out, is to be-in-communion. . . . There is no viable substitute for communion; this is thelaw of being itself.”21 Clarke’s position, which we found already largelypresent in Bonaventure (drawing from Richard of St. Victor), has a richlypastoral impact. Since being is “self-communicative love,”22 one can cometo understand both creation and the Trinity.

The Greek Orthodox theologian John D. Zizioulas gained internationaltheological prominence for his Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood


Clarke, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993): 82f. Clarke hastreated this theme in other places as well.18 Clarke mentions Descartes, Locke, and Hume. He further notes that Aquinas (as inter-preted by Josef Pieper) insisted that the highest being (God) possesses the power to relateto all things as that which orders all things and to which all things are ordered (116). Clarkealso cites Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity (New York: Herder &Herder, 1970): 102–3, as well as Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Concerning the Person in Theol-ogy,” Communio 17 (1990): 438–54. In both places Ratzinger argues that the relational aspectof “person” was not adequately developed in traditional Christian anthropology, whichinstead relied upon Boethius’s definition, even though “person” as applied to God was rec-ognized to be completely relational. Clarke argues that the medieval concept of the humanperson was in fact relational: “The notion of the self, the person, as primordially an iso-lated, atomic individual, only accidentally related to others, came in much later, withDescartes and Locke. It is as alien to the classical and medieval Christian tradition, boththeological and philosophical, as their notions of substance are to the classical and medievalone of substance as active relation-generating center” (118). Yet, Clarke agrees withRatzinger that Aquinas’s thought needs further development on this point, so as to accen-tuate the relational, rather than the “in itself,” aspect of personal being. On this point, seeClarke’s essay “Person, Being, and St. Thomas” in Explorations in Metaphysics, 211–28.19 Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 113.20 Ibid.21 Clarke, Person and Being (Marquette: Marquette University Press, 1993): 82.22 Ibid., 88.

and the Church.23 The first section of this book offers a theological accountof Trinitarian ontology. Zizioulas is concerned to avoid an account of Godwhich would view God as subject to any natural “givens.” Influenced byHeidegger and by the Eastern Orthodox emphasis on deification (and also,one would suppose, by the oppressive uniformity sought by Communistpolitical systems in traditionally Orthodox countries), Zizioulas considersas a negative reality the fact that:

the being of each human person is given to him; consequently, the humanperson is not able to free himself absolutely from his “nature” or from his“substance,” from what biological laws dictate to him, without bringingabout his annihilation. And even when he lives the event of communioneither in the form of love or of social and political life, he is obliged in thelast analysis, if he wants to survive, to relativize his freedom, to submit tocertain natural and social “givens.”24

In Zizioulas’s view, deification involves escaping these “givens” and sharingin the absolute personal freedom of divine existence. Deification, however,is not something that happens only after death; it begins in this life, bymeans of communion with Christ in the Church. Zizioulas describes hisunderstanding of deification: “The demand of the person for absolutefreedom involves a ‘new birth,’ a birth ‘from on high,’ a baptism. And itis precisely the ecclesial being which ‘hypostasizes’ the person accordingto God’s way of being. That is what makes the Church an image of theTriune God.”25 God’s way of being, Zizioulas notes, is absolute freedom,and the Christian shares in this way of being even while still on earthlypilgrimage.

Zizioulas’s identification of God’s way of being as absolute freedomleads him to be highly critical of Greek philosophical ontology before its


23 John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood,NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997): 1985. See also his “The Doctrine of the HolyTrinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution,” in Trinitarian Theology Today,ed. Christoph Schwöbel (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995): 44–60. After writing thissection, I found many of my concerns about Zizioulas’s approach reflected in ThomasWeinandy’s “Zizioulas: The Trinity and Ecumenism,” New Blackfriars 83 (2002): 407–16 aswell as in Lucian Turcescu’s incisive critique of Zizioulas’s concept of “person” in “ ‘Person’versus ‘Individual’, and Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa,” Modern Theology18 (2002): 527–39; see also Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., The Father’s Spirit of Sonship(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), 63.24 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 19.25 Ibid.

purification (in Zizioulas’s view) by the Greek Fathers. For Zizioulas,Greek philosophical concepts of being were essentialist; they failed to rec-ognize the primacy of person, and thus of freedom. The Greek Fathers,notably St. Basil, radically revised this ontology, Zizioulas states, by insist-ing upon the Father as principle. All “being” is owed to the Person ofthe Father. The hypostasis (Person) of the Father is prior to the concept“being,” in that the Father communicates all being. Zizioulas notes that“when we say that God ‘is,’ we do not bind the personal freedom of God– the being of God is not an ontological ‘necessity’ or a simple ‘reality’for God – but we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom. Ina more analytical way this means that God, as Father and not as substance,perpetually confirms through ‘being’ His free will to exist.”26 Being is notprior to Father; rather Father, the free Person, is prior to being as theone who constitutes divine being. Zizioulas makes the same point inanother way: “If God exists, He exists because the Father exists, that is,He who out of love freely begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit.”27

Being itself is therefore the Father’s free act in establishing the Trinitariancommunion of love. As Zizioulas remarks, the Father’s free act of love inbegetting the Son and bringing forth the Spirit is “constitutive of His sub-stance, i.e., it is that which makes God what He is, the one God.”28 Beingis communion because being flows forth from the Father’s absolute per-sonal freedom; the Father, in an eternal event of communion, freely actsto constitute the being (communion) of the Trinity.

According to Zizioulas, however, the doctrinal formulation of theTrinity as “one substance (ousia), three Persons” brought about confusionabout the intent of the Cappadocian Fathers. It would seem from this for-mulation that “the unity of God, the ‘ontology’ of God, consists in thesubstance of God.”29 The divine substance or essence thus became the waythat theologians, misunderstanding the Cappadocians, came to speak aboutGod’s being. In both the West (Aquinas and theologians following hisexample) and in manuals of “modern Orthodox dogmatics,” the doctrineof the triune God was arranged under two headings, “On the One God”and “On the Trinity.”30 As already suggested above, Zizioulas rejects thisapproach on the grounds that for the Greek Fathers, radically revising


26 Ibid., 41.27 Ibid.28 Ibid., 46.29 Ibid., 40.30 Ibid.

Greek ontology, “the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological‘principle’ or ‘cause’ of the being and life of God does not consist in theone substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father.”31

If one is not going to fall back into pre-Christian Greek ontology, thetreatise on the Trinity, not the treatise on God’s essence or being, must be prior. This is so because the Father is the principle of being.Ontology itself is Trinitarian: “being” can only be understood as “com-munion” – ultimately the free event of Trinitarian communion, causedfreely by the Person of the Father, in which the creature shares fully inChrist.

Zizioulas argues that the Greek Fathers’ breakthrough to this person-alist ontology came about through their liturgical experience, in whichGod is known (eucharistically) through “personal relationships and per-sonal love,” and in which the divine life comes to us as communion.32 Ineucharistic context, “life” or being was recognized to be communion.This liturgical experience then shaped their doctrine of the triune God:their doctrinal position was grounded in their experiential (liturgical) real-ization that “without the concept of communion it would not be possi-ble to speak of the being of God.”33 Since this communion is Trinitarian,the Greek Fathers necessarily adopted a Trinitarian ontology: “It wouldbe unthinkable to speak of the ‘one God’ before speaking of the Godwho is ‘communion,’ that is to say, of the Holy Trinity.”34 By beginningwith the reality of (liturgical and Trinitarian) communion, the GreekFathers were able to see that the concept of the Trinity provides theconcept of “God” with its meaning. Breaking from the essentialist ontol-ogy of Greek philosophy, the Greek Fathers grasped that “it is commu-nion which makes beings ‘be’: nothing exists without it, not even God.”35

Yet Zizioulas is careful to add that the “communion” which “being” iscannot be properly understood if “communion” is treated as merelyanother essence or substance. On the contrary, God’s “being is the con-sequence of a free person” – the Father.36

“Communion” is thus a personalist rather than an essentialist concept.As Zizioulas states, “the ultimate ontological category which makes some-thing really be, is neither an impersonal and incommunicable ‘substance’


31 Ibid.32 Ibid., 16.33 Ibid., 17.34 Ibid.35 Ibid.36 Ibid., 18.

[as is held by essentialism or pre-Christian Greek ontology], nor a struc-ture of communion existing by itself or imposed by necessity, but ratherthe person.”37 The divine being is caused when the Father freely (exercis-ing his freedom in love, which constitutes the divine being as commu-nion) wills to exist as Father. Zizioulas affirms: “True being comes onlyfrom the free person, from the person who loves freely – that is, whofreely affirms his being, his identity, by means of an event of communionwith other persons.”38 It follows that the Father does not, for Zizioulas,exist by necessity or on account of his “nature”; rather he exists by hisfree will, and shares this free existence in love with the Son and the HolySpirit.39 In this way, Zizioulas hopes to uphold both the absolute freedomof the divine Persons (and of the human persons who are “hypostasized”by baptism into the divine mode of personal being), and their absolutecommunion. In the Trinitarian ontology advocated by Zizioulas, it is thefree, personal event of (Trinitarian) communion, caused by the Father’slove, that constitutes true “being.”

The two versions of Trinitarian ontology that we have discussed so farare, it will be clear, very different. Clarke, from the perspective of a Chris-tian philosopher, seeks to open up the concept of “being” to show thatbeing is itself relational. In this way, he seeks to overcome the apparentdivide between traditional metaphysical investigations of God – in which“being” is considered as referring to what pertains to God in his unity –and Trinitarian theology. For Clarke, Trinitarian theology can enrichmetaphysics by enabling philosophers to attend more profoundly to therelational character of being. Clarke’s discovery is that the relationality of the Persons is just what one should expect from an analysis of “being,” in which it becomes clear that “being” (as intrinsically self-communicative) flowers intrinsically into relations. The Trinity is thus, inits character as subsisting relations, a description of the divine “being.” Inthis way, the conceptual distinction between “being” (pertaining to whatis common to the Persons) and “Person” in God is overcome by showingthat being itself is relational.

Zizioulas, too, intends to overcome the traditional distinction between“being” and “Person” by demonstrating that being is communion.However, Zizioulas approaches the topic from the opposite perspectivethan that of Clarke. Whereas Clarke is concerned to refine the traditional


37 Ibid., 17–18.38 Ibid., 18.39 See ibid., 41, 48–9.

concept of “being,” Zizioulas is primarily concerned to emphasize thepersonal freedom of the Father and the Father’s role as principle or causeof all being. Zizioulas would not have much sympathy for Clarke’s effortto show that being itself, as a metaphysical concept, is relational. ForZizioulas, the flowering of the Trinitarian relations out of the divine beingis precisely the mistake made by Western theologians from Augustine on.Zizioulas wishes to reverse the direction: any concept of divine “being”must flow from a prior concept of the communion of Persons, rooted inthe Father’s role as principle and in the Father’s absolute personal freedom.While the endpoint is generically the same (“being as communion,” orTrinitarian ontology), therefore, the paths traveled by Clarke and Zizioulasto that position are polar opposites: Clarke analyzing the concept “being,”Zizioulas analyzing the concept “Person.” Nonetheless, the twoapproaches share a similar result, despite their dissimilarities.40 Both con-flate the concepts of “being” and “Person” so that one can no longer usethe concept “being” to refer to what pertains to God in his utter sim-plicity and unity. Rather, the concept “being” (as intrinsically relational)now refers primarily to what is distinct (relational) in God.41

Having described the positions of Clarke and Zizioulas, I can summa-rize Reinhard Hütter’s approach in his Suffering Divine Things much morebriefly. In Suffering Divine Things, Hütter grapples with the question ofhow (Protestant) theology can at once be fundamentally receptive or“pathic” (normed by Scripture and Church doctrine) and creative or“poietic” (fostering new developments). Hütter also inquires into howtheology can claim to know theological truth solely by means of Christ-ian resources, that is, without having recourse to a metaphysics of being.42

In order to address these issues, he develops an account of theology as a


40 Dumitru Staniloae’s position stands somewhere in between these two contrasting poles.Like Zizioulas, Staniloae insists upon the priority of the Persons: “This [divine] love doesnot produce the divine persons, as Catholic theology affirms, but presupposes them”(Staniloae, The Experience of God, trans. and ed. Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer [Brook-line, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994]: 245). Like Clarke, Staniloae emphasizes love:“Love in the world presupposes as its origin and purpose the eternal perfect love betweena number of divine persons” (ibid.).41 It should be noted that Clarke’s recent The One and the Many: A Contemporary ThomisticMetaphysics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) makes many valuablecontributions, as does his earlier work, much as I disagree with this aspect of his thought.42 As Hütter states, “. . . when under the conditions of postmetaphysical thinking a cognitive-theoretical grounding of theology as a discipline has become obsolete, two alter-natives are possible. The first is a constructivist understanding of theology grounded in theconstitution of the religious subject or of religious intersubjectivity and directed toward alife orientation and a pragmatic articulation or actualization of faith. . . . The other alter-

participation in the divine Trinitarian life of communion. The “pathos”and “poiesis” of the theologian – of theological truth – are a participationin, and image of, the pathos (receptivity) and poiesis (activity) of the divinePersons in the communion of the Trinity.43 Hütter draws upon Zizioulasin order both to articulate a “metaphysics” that is Trinitarian rather thanphilosophical, and to describe how human beings participate ecclesially inthis Trinitarian mode of being.

How does Hütter understand Trinitarian ontology? In Suffering DivineThings, he accepts Zizioulas’s narrative of a post-Cappadocian fall intoessentialism that has been reversed only recently by a reappropriation ofthe Trinitarian metaphysics of the Greek Fathers. As Hütter recounts:

One of the central features of contemporary Trinitarian theology is theincreasing attention leading Western theologians are paying to the EasternOrthodox understanding of the Trinity – one deriving from the Cappado-cian Fathers and especially from Gregory of Nazianzus – as a “communionof persons” or as an onto-relational unity. The central assumption of thisTrinitarian perspective is the logical priority ascribed to the divine“persons,” who can exist only in relation to one another and as such con-stitute God’s deity, providing thus also the basis of God’s unity. That is, theunity resides in the relation of the persons to one another rather than insome substance logically preceding these persons as whose ‘mode of being’the latter would then be understood.44

This description is not as radical as Zizioulas’s as regards the absolutefreedom of the Father. For that reason, it reveals the particular ways in


native would be explicitly pneumatological as well as ecclesiological prolegomena to Christiantheology, that is, a development of the pathos that makes Christian theology plausible as adistinct church practice.” (Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice, trans.Doug Stott [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000]: 23) There are good reasons not to accept“the conditions of postmetaphysical thinking.” Indeed, while Hütter still has reservationsabout the “metaphysics of being,” he now affirms a “metaphysics of participation” or “meta-physics of creation” modeled upon Aquinas’s. See Reinhard Hütter, “Est and Esse: TheAffirmative and the Negative in Theological Discourse,” in Théologie négative ed., MarcoM. Olivetti (Padua: CEDAM, 2002): 325–40, especially 333 and 340. On the voluntaris-tic nihilism implicit in “postmetaphysical claims,” see e.g., Hütter’s “The Directedness ofReason(ing) and the Metaphysics of Creation,” forthcoming; Michael Allen Gillespie,Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); and Nicholas Boyle,“After Realism,” in Who Are We Now? Christian Humanism and the Global Market from Hegelto Heaney (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998): 247–81.43 See Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, 27, 117–25, 153-7. Hütter’s account of the “pathic”and “poietic” aspects of theology represents a significant achievement.44 Ibid., 117; cf. 154. No doubt Hütter would now revise this position in light of recentwork (noted above) by Michel Barnes, Lewis Ayres, and Gilles Emery, O.P., among others.

which Zizioulas’s version of Trinitarian ontology has influenced main-stream Western theology (Catholic as well as Protestant). There are twoparticularly important aspects: first, the proposition that the Persons “con-stitute God’s deity” and provide “the basis for God’s unity”; and secondthe rejection of any prior account of “being” which would then enablethe divine Persons to be described as distinct “modes” in which this one“being” subsists.

To these points, Hütter adds two further nuances. Citing Wolfhart Pannenberg, he emphasizes (from a pneumatological perspective) theaspect of perichoresis or mutual indwelling as constitutive of the Persons’“being” as communion.45 As Pannenberg brings out, the Persons are“ecstatic” in the sense that each Person exists in the other two and inrelation to the other two. “Being” is thus a communion of ecstatic love(of each Person in the other two). Second, he draws out the notion of“pathos” or “kenosis” (self-emptying in receptivity to the other) in theTrinitarian life of communion. He argues, “Within the triune commu-nion, each of the divine persons receives its hypostatic reality from theother two; that is, each becomes the person it is through the pathos ofrelationality qualifying and identifying it from the perspective of the othertwo persons. The personal being of each person . . . resides in its receptionof identity through the other two; that is, it is pathically constituted.”46

This “pathic” element of the Persons’ perichoretic communion – theirreceiving of their identities from each other – complements the “ecsta-tic” element. Hütter identifies the pathic element with “intra-Trinitariankenosis”47 in which the Persons are constituted by kenotic self-emptying.By including the theme of kenosis, Hütter connects his version of Trini-tarian ontology with the Christological version of Trinitarian ontologyproposed by such theologians as Hans Urs von Balthasar, who as we haveseen interprets the Son’s “abandonment” on the Cross by the Father as arevelation of radical intra-divine kenosis and finds in this kenosis the keyto the “being” of the Trinity.48 Hütter thus provides an interpretation ofTrinitarian ontology that combines existing pneumatological (mutualindwelling as ecstatic love) and Christological (intra-divine kenosis)approaches.


45 Ibid., 117.46 Ibid.47 Ibid.48 For an exposition of Balthasar’s Trinitarian ontology, see Angela Franz Franks, “Trini-tarian Analogia Entis in Hans Urs von Balthasar.”

2 Trinitarian Ontology and Aquinas’s Approach

To recapitulate: For Clarke, being itself is relational, in the sense that“being” flowers internally into relations. Relations emerge from the self-communication intrinsic to being. The risk associated with this account isclearly that of conflation of divine unity and divine Trinity: it becomesimpossible to speak of a “unity” that is not intrinsically relational. In Clarke’saccount, the word “being” applies equally well to the Trinity (since “being”is intrinsically communion), and thus it becomes difficult to speak of adivine unity that is conceptually distinguishable from divine threeness. ForZizioulas, in contrast, the relations do not flower forth intrinsically from thedynamism that is “being”; rather, the Father freely affirms his own beingand thereby, in the event of communion, constitutes the Trinity. The Fatheris the source of “being,” and “being” simply describes the Trinitarian com-munion. Here the divine unity is simply the perichoretic communion or,indeed, the Father himself in his free affirmation of himself in the otherPersons. In Zizioulas’s account, it becomes unclear how the “unity” of Godis to be fully upheld, since this “unity” is the interrelationships of the three:it is the three (and ultimately the Father, who comes dangerously close toembodying divine “unity” in Zizioulas) who constitute a “unity” that is,therefore, reducible to threeness.49

Hütter, in Suffering Divine Things, agrees with Zizioulas in having thethree constitute the divine “unity,” so that “being” refers to threefold com-munion rather than to oneness per se. For Hütter, “being” is nothingother than the Trinity, and cannot be understood conceptually in distinc-tion from it. Hütter does not follow Zizioulas’s emphasis on the monar-chy of the Father. In its place, Hütter emphasizes the ecstatic mutualindwelling of the Persons as constitutive of the divine unity, and notesthat this mutual indwelling occurs by mode of absolute kenosis or pathicself-emptying to the other. However, his account continues to suffer fromthe problems found in Clarke’s and Zizioulas’s as regards defending a real


49 Elizabeth Johnson takes Zizioulas’s approach to its full conclusion by conceiving of theTrinity as unified in the same way that a “triple helix” is unified. It is impossible to seehow monotheism, belief in one God, is retained here. On Johnson’s debt to Zizioulas, seePatricia A. Fox, God as Communion: John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson, and the Retrieval of theSymbol of the Triune God (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001). See also ElizabethA. Johnson, SHE WHO IS: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York:Crossroad, 1992).

divine unity. Although Hütter avoids the internal flowering of Personsfrom “being” that characterizes Clarke’s view, he embraces the idea of thethree “constituting” a unity that in such a way as to endanger both thefull divinity of each Person in himself and the simplicity of God.

The difficulties caused by Trinitarian ontology recall the question fromAbu ‘Isa al-Warraq with which we began: “Tell us about the hypostases.Since they are eternal and numerically three and you affirm that the sub-stance is other than them, do you affirm that it is a fourth, or do youderive it from the three themselves or from one of the three and desig-nate it substance and consider it as other than the three?”50 Clarke derivesthe hypostases from “being,” risking making “being” a fourth from whichthe three Persons emerge; Zizioulas and Hütter derive the unity (one“God”) from the three, leaving in doubt the question of how each Person,in himself, is fully God.

Does Aquinas avoid these pitfalls any better? In arguing that the answeris yes, I will highlight five aspects of his approach: 1) his practice of“redoublement,” 2) his identification of metaphysical “undividedness” asthe way to understand numerical terms applied to God; 3) his insistenceupon the real identity of divine essence and Persons, 4) his differentiationof the Persons solely in terms of the communication of the essence (rela-tions of origin), and 5) his account of the order of origin and the mutualindwelling of the Persons.

Redoublement

Aquinas’s practice of redoubling in his doctrine of God has been analyzedby Ghislain Lafont, O. S. B. and exposed more fully by Gilles Emery,O.P.51 Aquinas begins with the fact that God can be viewed under two


50 David Thomas, Anti-Christian polemic in early Islam: Abu ‘Isa al-Warraq’s “Against theTrinity”, 103 (no. 65).51 See Ghislain Lafont, O. S. B., Peut-on connaître Dieu en Jésus Christ? (Paris: Cerf, 1969)and Gilles Emery, O.P., “Essentialism or Personalism.” (My analysis in this chapter is deeplyindebted to Emery’s seminal studies.) The work of Gerald Bray is typical in its misunder-standing of Aquinas’s project. Bray fails to grasp Aquinas’s definition of “person,” assertingerroneously that for Aquinas, “person was an aspect of nature which signified what was distinctin that nature.” He then concludes, “The Trinitarianism of Anselm and Aquinas can rightlybe criticized for being too philosophical, too abstract, and even reactionary, in the sensethat it is dependent on the primacy of nature over person – almost inevitable in any philo-sophical theology, but directly counter to the spirit of Chalcedonian Christology. Unfor-

aspects: what is common and what is proper (to the Persons). Given thesetwo aspects, neither of which is reducible to the other, one must speakabout God in two ways. As Emery notes, “in order to speak the Trini-tarian mystery, it is necessary always to employ two words, two formulas,in a reflection in two modes that joins here the substantial (essential) aspectand the distinction of persons (relative properties). This is precisely whatThomas does in the structure of his treatise on God.”52 Since a divinePerson is a Person precisely in possessing the divine essence in a modedistinct from that of the other Persons, the concept of Person as subsist-ing relation integrates the concept of “essence.” Following Basil the Great,Emery notes, “One cannot conceive of the person without the substanceor without the nature belonging to the very ratio of the divine person,this latter being defined as ‘distinct subsisting in the divine nature [dis-tinctum subsistens in natura divina]’.”53 It is appropriate to investigate firstwhat is common, so as to integrate this concept into the concept of Personas subsisting relation. These two steps are the “redoublement” in Trini-tarian theology: in seeking to understand the Persons (the second step),one integrates what one has learned about the essence (the first step). AsAugustine points out, “[E]very being that is called something by way ofrelationship is also something besides the relationship.”54

Therefore, even if one were to wish to begin with the Father – as domost notably Zizioulas and Karl Rahner55 – one would still need to inves-


tunately, Christology and Trinitarian theology tended to go their separate ways during thehigh Middle Ages, and they are still not always closely linked even today.” (Gerald Bray,The Doctrine of God [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993]: 183.) In elucidatingAquinas’s balanced account of essence and Persons, integrated in the doctrine of Person assubsisting relation, Emery’s “Essentialism or Personalism” incisively treats a number of thefundamental themes of Trinitarian theology.52 Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism,” 534.53 Ibid., 535.54 St. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press,1991): Book 7, chapter 1, no. 2 (219).55 Emery makes reference to Michael Schmaus, Rahner, and Walter Kasper, and notesthat this view “is largely accepted today in the essays and manuals of Trinitarian theology”(549). Cf. Wendelin Knoch, “ ‘Deus unus est trinus’: Beobachtungen zur frühscholastischenGotteslehre,” in Im Gespräch mit dem dreieinen Gott, ed. Michael Böhnke and HanspeterHeinz (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1985): 209–30; Hans Jorissen, “Zur Struktur des Trak-tates ‘De Deo’ in der Summa theologiae des Thomas von Aquin,” in Im Gespräch mit demdreieinen Gott, ed. Michael Böhnke and Hanspeter Heinz (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1985):231–57.

tigate what attributes of the Father are common to the Trinity, and whatattributes belong to the Father as incommunicable personal properties.Indeed, as Emery has shown, in order to understand the Father qua Father,rather than in an “essential” manner, one must investigate first whatbelongs to the common divine nature. To do otherwise would be to con-sider the Father “in a prerelational or essential manner” as if the Fathercould be thought of “independently of his constitution as a person, thatis to say, independently of his personal relation.”56 One must first recog-nize the Father as “divine” in order to be able (as a second step) to com-prehend the uniqueness of his paternity, his ability to communicate hiswhole essence and yet remain fully himself. It is this shared divinity thatAquinas speaks of in investigating the divine “being” (or nature oressence)57, which is perfectly simple and which, when shared by the Fatherwith the Son and Holy Spirit, remains undivided.

Undividedness

Nonetheless, could not the practice of redoublement imply, and evenrequire, Trinitarian ontology? It would seem that, having treated divine“being” under the aspect of what is common (one) in God, the next stepwould be to treat “being” under the aspect of the distinction of Persons.Why would this not revolutionize the concept of divine being, when itbecomes clear that divine being does not subsist as a monad, but rathersubsists distinctly in the three?

The answer consists not only in acknowledging that redoublement inthe doctrine of God requires a dual movement in which “relation in”(what is common) and “relation to” (what is distinct) signify the same rela-tion viewed under relation’s two aspects, which cannot be conflated. Theanswer also requires recognizing the undividedness of the divine being inthe Persons. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas places the concept of undi-videdness at the beginning of his effort to avoid the errors that often occur


56 Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism,” 548.57 Aquinas, interpreting “homoousion” as “of one essence,” explains the terms being,essence, and nature as follows: “Because nature designates the principle of action while essence comes from being (essendo), things may be said to be of one nature which agree insome action, as all things which give heat; but only those things can be said to be of one essence which have one being. So the divine unity is better described by saying that the three persons are of one essence, than by saying they are of one nature” (1, q.39, a.2, ad3).

when speaking of divine essence and Persons. He notes that numericalterms, when applied to God, do not signify quantity; quantity belongsonly to material things. Rather, numerical terms when applied to Godsignify metaphysical undividedness. Aquinas states, “So when we say, theessence is one, the term one signifies the essence undivided [indivisam]; andwhen we say the person is one, it signifies the person undivided; andwhen we say the persons are many, we signify those persons, and theirindividual undividedness. . . .”58 The divine being or essence is strictlyundivided even as subsisting distinctly in three Persons.

It is this absolute undividedness that we mean when we speak aboutthe unity of God. Since “being” is common to God, “being” is undi-vided and is not, qua being, intrinsically relational (even though it sub-sists, as undivided being, in the divine relations).59 What then is relationalin God, if not the divine being? Aquinas emphasizes that relation – in itsproper aspect of “relation to” – pertains solely to the divine relations:“The supreme unity and simplicity of God exclude every kind of plural-ity of absolute things, but not plurality of relations. Because relations arepredicated relatively, and thus the relations do not import composition inthat of which they are predicated.”60 In other words, a plurality of rela-tions does not destroy the divine unity and simplicity. The relations, whilethey subsist in the divine being, do not derive from the divine being. Ifthey did, they would be related to the divine being as source.61 In this


58 1, q.30, a.3.59 Emery notes in regard to the concept “subsisting relation” or relation subsisting in theessence: “At stake is once again the numerical identity of the essence in each of the persons,following the homoousion of Nicaea” (559).60 1, q.30, a.1, ad 3.61 Cf. Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism,” 540–6. Noting that this point is the “fun-damental insight” of Hans Christian Schmidbaur’s recent Personarum Trinitas: Die trinitarischeGotteslehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquin [St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1995]), Emery states:

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 distinctionof the two sections of the treatise (what concerns the essence, then what concernsthe 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 theessence which opens up into a plurality. In reality, it prevents the derivation of thepersons from the essence: it is to relation, and not to essence in its proper formal-ity, that the manifestation of the plurality in God belongs. The pivot of this struc-ture is, once again, the doctrine of relation, since only this opposed relationaccording to origin allows for the introduction of the aspect of plurality in God.(546)

regard, Augustine remarks that we must not think of the Persons “as though they were three things consisting of one material, even if whatever that material might be it were wholly used up in these three;for there is nothing else, of course, of this being besides this triad. . . .[W]e do not talk about three persons out of the same being, as thoughwhat is being were one thing and what person is another.”62 Rather, the relations in God relate only to each other. The divine being subsists in three distinct modes, but the divine being is not what is related in these distinct modes. The divine being is the same in each Person. What are related are solely the Persons who subsist in thedivine being. Paternity is related to filiation, and both are related to procession.

Yet, is not paternity the same as the divine being? Why then wouldnot the divine being (in the Father) be related to filiation? One tends toimagine the Father as a distinct entity, as if because he possesses the divinebeing in a distinct mode (paternity), the divine being in him relates dis-tinctly to the divine being in the other Persons. But the Father does notpossess being as a distinct entity. If this were so, there would indeed bethree gods, three divine entities. Rather, the Father is a distinct relationsubsisting in the divine being. Dumitru Staniloae, citing Basil the Great,reminds us:

When we think of the Father as incomprehensible and uncreated, we thinkalso of the Son and the Holy Spirit, for the infinity, glory, and wisdom ofthe Father are not separated from those of the Son and of the Spirit, butin them is contemplated what is uninterruptedly and undividedly common:“For it is in no wise possible to entertain the idea of severance or division,in such a way as that the Son should be thought of apart from the Father,or the Spirit be disjoined from the Son. But the communion and the dis-tinction apprehended in them are, in a certain sense, ineffable and incon-ceivable, the continuity of nature being never rent asunder by the distinctionof the hypostases, nor the notes of proper distinction confounded in thecommunity of essence.”63


In contrast to Schmidbaur, Emery refuses to grant “primacy” to the concept of person (asif God’s unity were somehow secondary), preferring instead to emphasize the integrationof the two concepts of essence and Person in “subsisting relation.”62 St. Augustine, The Trinity, Book 7, chapter 3, no. 11 (230).63 Staniloae, The Experience of God, 252; citing Letter 38, PG 32.332D.

The real relations in the divine being are opposed to each other; the divinebeing is not opposed (related) to the relations. The divine being does notitself relate because the relations subsist in the undivided divine being. AsAquinas says, “relations do not import composition in that of which theyare predicated.”64 He makes the same point in explaining the use of theterm “Trinity.” Although there are three Persons in the one God,nonetheless “when we say, Trinity in Unity, we do not place number inthe unity of nature; as if we meant three times one; but we place thePersons numbered in the unity of nature; as the supposita of a nature aresaid to exist in that nature.”65

Identity of Essence and Person, Distinction of Persons

This conceptual distinction between the divine being (essence or nature)and the divine Persons (distinct relations) can easily, however, lead to theimpression that the being and the Persons are not the same. One of thepurposes of Trinitarian ontology, in some of its forms at least, is to ensurethat “being” is not reified as a “fourth,” as if “being” were somehowoutside the Trinity. Aquinas shares profoundly in this concern. Noting that“[s]ince as Jerome remarks, a heresy arises from words wrongly used, whenwe speak of the Trinity we must proceed with care and with befittingmodesty,”66 Aquinas works diligently to express the real identity of thedivine being and Persons, and yet at the same time to preserve the realdistinction of Persons. He warns against using language about the Personsthat appears to derogate from their perfect unity in being (essence). Thismistake, he notes, is that of Arius, “who placed a Trinity of substancewith the Trinity of persons.”67 Thus, Aquinas allows such words “other”and “distinction” to describe the Persons, but rejects words such as “sep-aration,” “division,” “disparity,” “alien,” and “discrepant.”68 These latterwords, in his view, would signal a lack of real identity in “being” amongthe Persons. He quotes Hilary (De Trin. vii): “It is sacrilege to assert that


64 1, q.30, a.1, ad 3.65 1, q.31, a.1, ad 4.66 1, q.31, a.2.67 Ibid.68 Ibid.

the Father and the Son are separate in Godhead.”69 In contrast, “other”and “distinction” imply no more than relative opposition within the orderof origin. He also rules out words describing the essence that seem to obscure its communicability, among them “singularity” and “only”(unici).

Aquinas emphasizes that divine simplicity requires a real identity of thedivine essence with the Persons: otherwise there would be multiple gods.70

This real identity means that essence is the same as Person in God. Andyet, how can essence be the same as each Person and the same as thethree Persons together, if each Person is really distinct from the other two?In discussing redoublement and metaphysical undividedness, we alreadyhave provided the lineaments of the answer to this problem, but Aquinasadds further important nuances. He emphasizes that relation, when appliedanalogously to God, is not “accidental” to the essence (as relation is increatures). On the contrary, in God, because of divine simplicity, the rela-tions “are the divine essence itself.”71 It follows that it is only in our modeof thinking – not in God himself – that there is a difference betweenessence and relation in God.

Essence and Person are really identical in God. Why then do we under-stand them by different concepts (“essence” and “person”)? Drawing uponhis discussion of analogous naming in q.13, Aquinas explains that “divinethings are named by our intellect, not as they really are in themselves, forin that way it knows them not; but in a way that belongs to thingscreated.”72 The human intellect gains knowledge by way of the senses. Inthe material things that are the objects of the senses, there are two aspects:


69 Ibid.70 1, q.39, a.1.71 Ibid.72 1, q.39, a.2. On this topic, see the helpful comments of Emery in “Essentialism or Per-sonalism,” 547:

In creatures (to which, precisely, our mode of signification is linked in virtue of theconstitution of our knowledge), actions are the work of supposits: “the essence doesnot act, but it is the principle of the act in the supposit.” In God, the essence isreally identical to each of the three supposits or persons, but, since it is necessaryto take account of the mode of our knowledge and of our language, the essence isgrasped in the notional act on a different mode from the person, since the personis distinct whereas the essence is common. The essence is what the notional actcommunicates. It is also by it (principle quo with the property) that the Father begetsand that the Father and Son spirate the Holy Spirit, but it cannot itself be the subjectof a productive (notional) act in God.

form (the nature of the species) and individuating matter. In speaking ofcreated things, therefore, we speak of individuals sharing in a nature. This“mode of signification” extends to speech about the triune God: thedivine nature is like the form, and the Persons sharing in this nature arewhat are “individual” or “distinct” in the nature. Aquinas notes that “inGod the essence is taken as the form of the three persons, according toour mode of signification.”73 By the formal aspect (nature), we expresswhat is one in God; by the individuating aspect (person), we express whatis three in God. But in God – as opposed to in our dual mode of speak-ing – these two aspects are the same.

In emphasizing the real identity, Aquinas avoids the danger of positinga fourth (“being” or “essence”) in the Trinity. On the other hand, doeshe go too far? If the difference is only in our mode of speech, not inGod himself, can one still maintain that there are three Persons in oneGod? Should there not be really either three Persons in three gods or onePerson in one God, if there is no difference between Person and essencein reality but only in our mode of speaking? The answer, as will be seenfrom what we have said above, is that while there is a real identity ofPerson and essence, there is a real distinction, not only in our mode ofspeaking but in reality, of the Persons in God. Here Aquinas notes that “relation as referred to the essence does not differ therefrom really,but only in our way of thinking; while as referred to an opposite relation, it has real distinction by virtue of that opposition.”74 In other


73 1, q.39, a.2.74 1, q.39, a.1. Comparing Gregory of Nyssa’s and Augustine’s Trinitarian theology, DavidBentley Hart puts it this way:

It is precisely here that the artificial distinction between “Greek” and “Latin” the-ology has worked the most injurious mischief, by prompting many to rush to oneend or the other of a scale that must be kept in balance. . . . Otherwise, we will findourselves trading in mythology: speaking of God as an infinite psychologic subjec-tivity possessed of plural affects, or as a confederacy of three individual centers ofconsciousness; in either case reducing God, the transcendent source of all being, toa composite being, an ontic God, in whose “subjectivity” there would remain, evenwithin the immanent divine life, some sort of unexpressed interiority (or interiori-ties), some surfeit of the indeterminate over the determinate, some reserve of self inwhich identity is constituted as the withheld. God is one because each divine Person,in the circle of God’s knowledge and love of his own goodness (which is bothwisdom and charity), is a “face”, a “capture”, of the divine essence that is – as mustbe, given the infinite simplicity of God – always wholly God, in the full depth ofhis “personality”. For any “mode of subsistence” of the infinite being of God mustbe an infinite mode, a way whereby God is entirely, “personally” God. God is neverless than wholly God. (Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on theVestigia Trinitatis,” Modern Theology 18 [2002]: 546)

words, as already stated, the essence does not relate; only the Persons do.

If this is true, how can it be true to say “God begot God,” as is impliedby the “God of God” of the Nicene Creed?75 Aquinas points out that“God,” although referring to the divine unity, does not refer to the essenceas if the essence stood on its own, outside of the Persons. As he remarks,“this word God signifies the divine essence as in Him Who possesses it.”76

The word “God” can stand for the essence or for a Person or Persons.Aquinas thereby balances the real identity of Person and essence in God

with the equally real distinction of Persons. This balance is on display inAquinas’s account of the patristic practice of appropriating essential attri-butes – attributes that belong to what is common or shared in God – todistinct Persons. Because of the real identity, each Person possesses all theattributes of the essence. Yet, because of the distinction of Persons, it canbe helpful to illumine the relative properties of the Persons by means ofessential attributes. These essential attributes of God can be known tosome degree (analogously) by reason, whereas the personal properties canonly be revealed to faith. In appropriating essential attributes to distinctPersons, therefore, one sheds light on what is naturally less known (thePersons) by what is more known (the essence). Aquinas states that thisappropriation can be done in two ways: “in one way by similitude, andthus the things which belong to the intellect are appropriated to the Son,Who proceeds by way of intellect, as Word. In another way by dissimil-itude; as power is appropriated to the Father, as Augustine says, becausefathers by reason of old age are sometimes feeble; lest anything of the kindbe imagined of God [the divine Father].”77 The result of the practice of


75 1, q.39, a.4. On medieval supposition theory, which developed in order to handle thiskind of problem, see Stephen F. Brown, “Medieval Supposition Theory in Its TheologicalContext,” Medieval Philosophy & Theology 3 (1993): 121–35.76 Ibid. In contrast, one could not say “essence begot essence” (1, q.39, a.5). Cf. Emery,“Essentialism or Personalism,” 546–7. Furthermore, this does not mean that the unity ofPersons causes the unity of essence, as Timothy Smith implies: “For Thomas, the unity ofthe nature is caused by, or consists in, the unity of the Persons (in the act of being)” (Smith,Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology, [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of AmericaPress, 2003]: 41).77 1, q.39, a.7. The best recent discussion of how the doctrine of appropriation is elab-orated in Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology is found in Jean-Pierre Torrell’s Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master, 158–63, which draws upon H.-F. Dondaine’s critical French edition (1946) of the Summa Theologiae I, qq.27–43. Torrell points out that appropriation lies between mere wordplay that does not describe at all the reality of the Persons, and pro-

appropriation is that (as Trinitarian ontology seeks) the essence is furtherintegrated conceptually with the Persons, but the conceptual distinctionbetween essence and Persons remains, in a way that it does not in Trini-tarian ontology.

We have come some way toward formulating a response to Abu ‘Isaal-Warraq’s important concerns: “Tell us about the hypostases. Since theyare eternal and numerically three and you affirm that the substance is otherthan them, do you affirm that it is a fourth, or do you derive it from thethree themselves or from one of the three and designate it substance andconsider it as other than the three?”78 The essence or “substance” is otherfrom the hypostases only in our mode of conceptual signification, not inGod. The essence is not a “fourth,” nor is it derived from the commu-nion of the Trinity (“from the three themselves,” Hütter) or from theFather (“from one of the three,” Zizioulas). The Persons are numericallythree, but this does not imply composition in God, since they are not aquantity.

Differentiation of the Persons by Communication of the Essence

Aquinas differentiates the Persons in terms of the communication of theessence (relations of origin). This theme bears directly upon the issue


perties that distinguish the Persons. Rather, appropriated names have a certain affinity with the properties of the Person, and by this affinity enable us to grasp more deeply thereality of the Person. See also J. Châtillon, “Unitas, aequalitas, concordia vel connexio.Recherches sur les Origines de la Théorie Thomiste des Appropriations (Sum. Theol., I, q.39, art. 7–8),” in Armand A. Maurer, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: CommemorativeStudies, Vol. 1 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974): 337–79. In Trinityand Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 251–6, Bruce Marshall has eloquently defended appropriation theory: “Every attribute and action common to the three persons belongs primarily to one of them. The primacy here in question is that oflikeness (similitudo, as the medievals put it) rather than of causality or existential depen-dence. . . . Every attribute and action common to the three persons belongs to each of them in a different way” (254). This is true so long as one understands the “different way” to be in the order of origins, not in the appropriated term itself. Norman Kretz-mann has investigated the way in which the transcendental “Truth” is rightly appropriatedto the Son, in “Trinity and Transcendentals,” in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, ed. R.J. Feenstra and C. Plantinga, Jr. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989):79–109.78 David Thomas, Anti-Christian polemic in early Islam: Abu ‘Isa al-Warraq’s “Against theTrinity”, 103 (no. 65).

raised in the Nizzahon Vetus: “Thus, if you say that he [Jesus] is God, thenyou have in effect denied God, for it is written in the Torah, ‘See, then,that I, I am he; there is no god beside me’ [Deuteronomy 32:39]. Thecounter-argument that they are one may be refuted by reference to Jesus’statement, ‘It is I and he who sent me; he has not left me alone’ [cf. John14:23–4; 5:30]; this implies that they are two.”79 If one affirms that theSon is God, and that there is a distinction between the divine Son andthe divine Father, does not this contradict God’s message in the Torahthat there is no God besides YHWH, the “I am”? Is Israel’s God beingworshipped by Christians?

Aquinas explains that the divine Persons are differentiated in the Trini-tarian processions by two “principles of difference,” origin and relation.80

These two principles differ conceptually, although in reality they are thesame. Aquinas notes that “origin is signified by way of act, as generation;and relation by way of the form, as paternity.”81 For two crucial reasons, hefinds “relation” to be a more adequate word than “origin” for describingthe distinction of Persons.82

First, origin is not something intrinsic in a thing, whereas relation isintrinsic (not “out there” between two things, but in the two things).83


79 David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition ofthe Nizzahon Vetus, 200 (no. 194).80 1, q.40, a.2.81 Ibid.82 Hans Urs von Balthasar criticizes Aquinas’s technical Trinitarian theology on the grounds that “relation,” even when combined with procession, is too weak a categoryto ground a distinct Personal identity: “the question arises whether processio and relatio,as the text of De Pot. 10, 3 maintained, can be identified secundum rem, since the first category expresses an act and a terminus, whereas the second expresses neither of these, meaning as it does nothing other than the sheer bond between two beings. What connects them is the Augustinian analogy of the mens, whose transposability into thesphere of God is boldly presupposed – even though in order to do so the accidental mustbe reinterpreted as a substantial reality. Yet if ‘relatio’ formally signifies nothing more than the bond between two termini, how can it then be taken as laying the foundation for the hypostases as such? Faith knows from the facts of revelation that the hypostases really exist in their relative opposition, just as it knows from the same facts and from theinterpretation of them in the Church that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. Tocome to grips speculatively with the mystery of the identity of both aspects succeeds onlyby the mutual approach of two irreducible propositions whose unification cannot be successful” (Balthasar, Theologik, Vol.2: Wahrheit Gottes [Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1985]: 124). Balthasar’s understanding of “relation” as “the bond between two termini” ismistaken.83 In “Essentialism or Personalism” Emery notes, “In contrast to the approach nearly universally adopted in the wake of nominalism, this analogy does not consider relation

Therefore relation, unlike origin, can account for an intrinsic distinction,a “stable” personhood. The distinction must be intrinsic if one is to havedistinct Persons. Second, origin is not constitutive of a Person, but ratherdescribes the path by which a Person is constituted; it does not describethe Person so constituted.84 In contrast, relations constitute Persons.Because of the divine simplicity, if there are relations in God, then thereare distinct divine Persons. Unlike in creatures, where relation is an acci-dental quality and does not subsist, in God relations subsist, since what-ever is “in” God, is God (otherwise it would be a creature). Aquinasremarks, “Relation presupposes the distinction of the subjects, when it isan accident [i.e., in creatures]; but when relation is subsistent, it does notpresuppose, but brings about distinction.”85 The relation itself constitutesa distinction in God.

For this reason, the relation (relative property) is the Person. In crea-tures, certainly, “relation” is an abstract concept, whereas “person” is aconcrete concept; but in God, the abstract and the concrete are the same,as with Godhead and God. Thus one can truly say that “paternity is theFather Himself, and filiation is the Son, and procession is the HolySpirit.”86 What is the usefulness of this realization for the question raisedby the Nizzahon Vetus, namely, how can one be two? What is the goodof learning that the Persons in God are subsisting relations?

Aquinas points out that the concept “relation,” in its proper (relational)aspect, does “not signify existence in something, but rather existencetowards something.”87 Certainly a relation must be “in” a substance. Thedivine relations exist “in” the divine essence, in the sense that they arethe simple divine essence. Because the proper meaning of “relation” isexistence toward another, however, the relations in God are distinct solelyfrom each other. Aquinas emphasizes therefore that “the distinction of thedivine persons is not to be so understood as if what is common to themall is divided, because the common essence remains undivided; but thedistinguishing principles themselves [that is, relation and origin] must con-stitute the things which are distinct.”88 Relation does not import any dis-tinction in God that would destroy God’s unity of being and thereby deny


as a category understood as being between individuals, but in individuals, ‘in the things’ ”(554).84 1, q.40, a.2.85 1, q.40, a.2, ad 4.86 1, q.40, a.1, ad 1.87 1, q.40, a.1.88 1, q.40, a.2.

God’s injunction in the Torah. The relative properties do not divide theunity of God, because they do not describe related beings, but rather rela-tions in the one being – relations that do not alter (or relate to) the onebeing in which they subsist, because they are the one being in which theysubsist.

We gain a deeper understanding of this reality when Aquinas describesthe “notional acts” (actus notionales). Since, as Aquinas says, “[e]very originis designated by an act,”89 the procession of the persons must be describedin terms of acts such as generation and spiration. Aquinas calls these acts“notional” because they signify the characteristic activity (notiones) of thePersons, namely their mutual relations.90 Although we distinguish themconceptually from the relations, in accord with the distinction (in ourmode of signification) between act and relation, the notional acts are thesame as the relations.91

Here the important point, for our purposes, lies in the reality that inthe notional act of generation, the Son does not proceed from the Fatherex nihilo, as creatures do from the Creator. The Father generates the Sonof his substance (de substantia Patris), the divine essence:

Therefore the Son of God is begotten of the substance of the Father, butnot in the same way as man is born of man; for a part of the human sub-stance in generation passes into the substance of the one begotten, whereasthe divine nature cannot be parted; whence it necessarily follows that theFather in begetting the Son does not transmit any part of His nature, butcommunicates His whole nature to Him, the distinction only of originremaining.92

The Son is the one divine substance as communicated by the Father. The sub-stance is the same: only the distinction of origin (the relation) differs. In theFather’s communication of his substance, the substance is a “consubstantialgenerating principle” or cause (not a material principle).93 Distinguishingsubstance and Person, even while recognizing their real identity, helps us tounderstand that the distinction of Persons is utterly relational. The Father, as


89 1, q.41, a.1, ad 1.90 Ibid. On this point, see Timothy Smith, Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology, 102–3.91 1, q.41, a.1, ad 2.92 1, q.41, a.3.93 1, q.41, a.3, ad 1.

the principle of generation, has the power to generate.94 But the power togenerate is not paternity. Paternity (the Father) is the notional act of gener-ating; the power to generate is that by which the Father generates. The twoare conceptually distinct. In God, paternity is the Person of the Father,while the Father’s power to generate belongs to his essence. Aquinas remarksthat “the agent is distinct from that which it makes, and the generator fromthat which it generates: but that by which the generator generates iscommon to the generated and generator, and so much more perfectly, as thegeneration is more perfect.”95 The divine Persons thus share the same power,but in the Father this power is possessed as the power of generating, in theSon as the power of being generated, and in the Holy Spirit as the power ofbeing spirated, in accord with the relative properties by which they possessthe divine essence.96 The Persons are distinguished solely as relations, not byany essential attribute such as power. In this way, the divine unity is upheldalong with the distinction of Persons. The fundamental issue of fidelity tothe God of Israel, raised by the Nizzahon Vetus, thus receives a carefulresponse.

Appreciating the Order of Origin and Mutual Indwelling of the Persons

However, it seems as though one of the key issues raised by Trinitarianontology has not yet been adequately addressed. Recall Hütter’s empha-sis on how Trinitarian ontology reveals “being” as a communion of ecsta-tic (out-going) love and as a pathic communion of kenotic self-emptying.For all our careful distinctions about how to speak about being andPersons in God, does not Christ reveal that God is self-emptying love? IfGod is self-emptying love, is this not an adequate characterization of“being”? And would this not be a Trinitarian characterization of being,one known not philosophically but through the revelation of the Father,Son, and Holy Spirit in the Paschal mystery? Moreover, if the Trinity (as


94 1, q.41, a.4.95 1, q.41, a.5, ad 1.96 1, q.41, a.6, ad 1; cf. 1, q.42, a.6. On this issue and Aquinas’s change of mind aboutit over the course of his career, see John F. Boyle’s “St. Thomas and the Analogy of Poten-tia Generandi,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 581–92.

one) is the Creator, why would not created being be ultimately describ-able as “Trinitarian”? Despite cogent reasons against it, are we not backto Trinitarian ontology?

In answer, let us review the two common errors in speaking about thetriune God. The first error is to conflate the oneness and threeness; thesecond error is to make of the divine essence a reified “fourth” in theTrinity. Trinitarian ontology, motivated by desire to avoid the seconderror, falls into the first. God’s being is not a communion, because beingis not what relates in God. The analogy of being cannot be “Trinitarian,”because the divine being is (necessarily) conceptually distinct from the relations in the divine being. “Being” describes what is, in an undi-vided way, one in God. The analogy of being, predicated upon the cre-ative act in which God the Trinity creates all else, pertains to what is onein God.

While true, this position needs nuance. Certainly, the gift of creaturelybeing is Trinitarian (and thus Christological, since Christ is the Word).Everything God does when he acts as one, is the act of the whole Trinityin accord with the order of origin of the processions in God. Indeed forAquinas, as Emery has emphasized, “The processions of the divine Personsare the cause of creation.”97 The procession of creatures depends upon theprocessions of the divine Persons. Aquinas states that “the divine Persons,according to the nature of their procession, have a causality respecting thecreation of things. . . . God the Father made the creature through HisWord, which is His Son; and through His Love, which is the HolySpirit.”98 Therefore, within every creature, one finds a trace or (in ratio-nal creatures) an image of the Trinity.99

Although the gift of creaturely being is Trinitarian and every creaturebears a trace or image of the Trinity, however, this does not mean thatthe analogy of being is Trinitarian (as “Trinitarian ontology” would haveit). On the contrary, the analogy of being pertains to the analogy, whichmust always be cautiously expressed, between infinite divine being, whichis undivided and one, and creaturely being. The Trinitarian trace and


97 1, q.45, a.6, ad 1. On this theme, see Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism,” 527–31;for a detailed treatment of this theme in Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences (comparedwith the commentaries of Albert the Great and Bonaventure), see Emery, La Trinité créa-trice: Trinité et création dans les commentaires aux Sentences de Thomas d’Aquin et de ses précurseursAlbert le Grand et Bonaventure (Paris: Vrin, 1995). See also Emile Bailleux, “La création,oeuvre de la Trinité, selon saint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 62 (1962): 27–50.98 1, q.45, a.6.99 1, q.45, a.7.

image in creatures pertain to a certain representation that one can, in faith,find in creatures of the distinct properties of the Persons.

It might seem, nonetheless, that the Paschal mystery provides a Trinitarian analogy of being. As we have seen, the Paschal mystery is revelatory of the Trinity because Christ’s passion and resurrection revealhim, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be the perfect Image of the self-giving Father. Does Christ reveal the Trinitarian meaning of “being”?Certainly, the Paschal mystery makes supremely manifest Christ’s claimsabout his relationship, as Son, to the Father and the Holy Spirit. Throughthe dialogue of the Father and the incarnate Son in the Holy Spirit, the Paschal mystery confirms Christ’s testimony that there are distinctPersons in God, and thus confirms the relations of self-giving within theGodhead. Even so, the Paschal mystery suggests that this self-giving iscommon to the three Persons. While the three Persons are distinct, thegiving itself is common: each Person gives or is given. The “giving,” aslove, belongs to what is shared, to the divine “being.” In short, redou-blement retains its value in analyzing the Trinitarian character of thePaschal mystery.

Having made this point, the danger remains of reifying being (oressence) and thus separating “being” from “Trinity.” Given this danger, itis crucial to appreciate Aquinas’s account of the order of origin and themutual indwelling of the Persons. The order of origin is a reality that doesnot elicit much excitement among theologians today. If the greatestinsights we have into the divine Trinity lie in the order of origin, thenthis might seem like hardly any insight. By contrast for Aquinas, as wesaw in the previous chapter, the eternal order in which the communica-tion of the divine nature occurs is the supreme contemplative height ofTrinitarian theology and Christian faith. This order is revealed in the NewTestament by the names Father, Word and Image (the Son), Love and Gift(the Holy Spirit), in which names we see an order of intra-divine pro-cessions whose analogical signification can be teased out by contemplativereference to the processions in the soul. It is by penetrating, in sapientialcontemplation, the mystery of this revealed order that theologians gaindeeper insight into the Trinity.

This order, Aquinas points out, belongs strictly to the Persons in God,not to the essence.100 Having called the order of origin an “order ofnature” in God, Aquinas remarks that this does not mean that the divinenature is subject to order: “The order of nature means not the ordering


100 1, q.42, a.3, ad 4.

of [the divine] nature itself, but the existence of order in the divinePersons according to natural origin.”101 The order of origin thus teachesus strictly about the distinction of Persons. Since the Persons are distin-guished in the communication of the divine essence from the Father tothe Son, and from the Father and Son to the Holy Spirit, the order oforigin does not signify that one Person is greater than another Person inGod. Aquinas notes that “the greatness of God is nothing but the per-fection of His nature.”102

Because the Persons share the same essence, they are equal. The dis-tinction of Persons in the communication of the divine essence (being)means that the Father, for example, is not more dignified because he is(as he certainly is) the principle of all. Rather, Aquinas explains, “As,therefore, the same essence, which in the Father is paternity, in the Sonis filiation, so the same dignity which in the Father is paternity, in theSon is filiation.”103 The divine nature (that is, the divine greatness anddignity) “exist in the Father by the relation of giver, and in the Son bythe relation of receiver.”104 Given the identity of “being” and “Person,”despite the distinction of Persons, no inequality between giver and receiveris possible. Divine being subsists in the ordered Trinitarian relations. Inthis sense, which is the only theologically valid sense in which “Trinitar-ian ontology” could be understood, one sees fully that being exists in Godin the relations, and vice versa.

This interplay of the two aspects under which the triune God can be viewed is also evident in Aquinas’s treatment of perichoresis, or themutual indwelling of the Persons.105 Aquinas remarks, “There are three


101 1, q.42, a.3, ad 3.102 1, q.42, a.4. With regard to John 14:28, “The Father is greater than I,” Aquinas(drawing upon Athanasius and Hilary) comments in 1, q.42, a.4, ad 1 that Christ may besaying this with regard to his human nature, or, if he is saying it in regard to his divinenature, he means to signify that the Father is the principle from whom the Son comes (theFather’s “paternal authority”).103 1, q.42, a.4, ad 2.104 Ibid.105 In the Trinitarian thought of Colin Gunton, Jürgen Moltmann, and others, perichoresishas become a political concept that bears far more theological weight than it can sustain.See the comments in this regard made by Karen Kilby in “Perichoresis and Projection:Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81 [2000]: 435–43. She con-cludes, “In short, then, I am suggesting we have here something like a three stage process.First, a concept, perichoresis, is used to name what is not understood, to name whateverit is that makes the three Persons one. Secondly, the concept is filled out rather sugges-

points of consideration as regards the Father and the Son; the essence, therelation, and the origin; and according to each the Son and the Fatherare in each other.”106 The Persons dwell perfectly within each otherbecause they share the very same, undivided essence (being). Since eachPerson is the essence (distinguished only by the relation of origin), thefact that the Persons share the same essence means that each Person isperfectly in the other two Persons. Secondly, the Persons dwell perfectlywithin each other because they are distinguished by relation to each other.In each Person, therefore, the relational reality of the other Persons ispresent: “as regards the relations, each of the two relative opposites is inthe concept of the other.”107 Thus, the mutual indwelling of the Personscan be conceived both from the perspective of relation “in” (essence) andfrom the perspective of relation “to” (Person).108


tively with notions borrowed from our own experience of relationships and relatedness.And then, finally, it is presented as an exciting resource Christian theology has to offer thewider world in its reflections upon relationships and relatedness. . . . Projection, then, is par-ticularly problematic in at least some social theories of the Trinity because what is pro-jected onto God is immediately reflected back onto the world, and this reverse projectionis said to be what is in fact important about the doctrine” (442).106 1, q.42, a.5.107 Ibid. Staniloae terms this “intersubjectivity” (The Experience of God, 262), but this seemsto tend toward tritheism. Compare the valuable description provided by another Orthodoxtheologian, David Bentley Hart: “Just as the Father is the plenitude of divine goodness, inwhom inhere both his Word (manifestation, form) and Gift (the life in which the Wordgoes forth, light in which he is seen, joy in which he is known, generosity wherewith heis bestowed), so in the Son whom the Father generates the depth of the paternal arche andthe boundless spiritual light and delight of wisdom also inhere, and in the Spirit whom theFather breathes forth the plenitude of paternal being and filial form inhere in the ‘mode’of accomplished love. Each Person is fully gathered and reflected in the mode of the other:as other, as community and unity at once” (Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory ofNyssa on the Vestigia Trinitatis,” 546–7).108 Although he is right that perichoresis has not traditionally been used to displace ormodify the unity of essence, Miroslav Volf is mistaken in suggesting that perichoresis there-fore has pertained more to the unity than to the Trinity of Persons: “traditionally, peri-choresis has been used mainly to reflect upon the divine unity” (Volf, “ ‘The Trinity Is OurSocial Program’: The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Shape of Social Engagement,” ModernTheology 14 (1998): 409). Volf cites John Damascene:

In De Fide John of Damascus, who popularized the term that Pseudo-Cyril firstextended from Christological into Trinitarian language, writes, “For . . . they aremade one not so as to commingle, but so as to cleave to each other, and they havetheir being in each other without any coaescence or commingling” (I, vii). Here

Just like the order of origin, therefore, the mutual indwelling of thePersons is a fundamental insight of Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology. Theperichoresis of the Persons is based not upon a dynamic intertwining ordance of three strands (a triple helix), which would make perichoresisextrinsic rather than intrinsic to each Person, but rather upon the verynotion of Person as subsisting relation. Lastly, Aquinas explains that themutual indwelling is also due to origin. Since the procession of the Wordand the procession of the Spirit are not external processions, as if theywent out of God, but rather are internal processions, remaining withinthe Godhead, whatever is spoken in the Word, is in the Word (and the


perichoresis describes the kind of unity in which the plurality is preserved rather thanerased. But the resources of perichoresis for thinking about identity are as rich as forthinking about unity. For it suggests that divine persons are not simply interdepen-dent and influence one another from outside, but are personally interior to one another.(ibid.).

Describing what he means by “identity,” Volf continues, “First, identity is non-reducible.Persons cannot be translated fully into relations. A person is always already outside of therelations in which he or she is immersed. If this were not the case, ‘not-mine’ could neverbecome ‘mine’ because it would have no place outside of itself to land, so to speak” (410).From this comment, it seems that Volf is not speaking about either “person” or “relation”with the same metaphysical clarity practiced by Aquinas and the Greek Fathers. Regard-ing such use of “identity,” one would need to recall Herbert McCabe’s bracing reminder,“I think it will be clear that Aquinas’s doctrine gives us no warrant for saying that thereare three persons in God; for ‘person’ in English undoubtedly means an individual subject,a distinct center of consciousness. Now the consciousness of the Son is the consciousnessof the Father and of the Holy Spirit, it is simply God’s consciousness. There are not threeknowledges or three lovings in God. . . . If we say there are three persons in God, in theordinary sense of person, we are tritheists” (McCabe, “Aquinas on the Trinity,” 282). Forsimilar concerns, well expressed, see also David S. Cunningham, “Participation as a Trini-tarian Virtue: Challenging the Relational Consensus,” Toronto Journal of Theology 14 (1998):7–25, especially 7–9. Cunningham notes that in most contemporary theology “relation” isused in a loose sense, with the result that “the emphasis on ‘relationality’ in the work ofmany contemporary Trinitarian theologians still conjures up an image of three individuals,even if very closely related ones. This helps to explain the popularity of the tag-line ‘personsin communion,’ which (I suspect) is most frequently read as implying that, first, there are(relatively independent) persons, who (then) come into communion (as contrasted withpersons who are not in communion)” (8). Cunningham cites LaCugna, Colin Gunton,Alan Torrance, Elizabeth Johnson, Walter Kasper, and Moltmann as exemplars of this dif-ficulty. Given this tendency toward tritheism, Jean-Hervé Nicolas, O.P.’s “Una et trinaDeitas,” which (as Nicolas’s contribution to the festschrift for Jean-Pierre Torrell) focuseson explicating God’s unity, is timely. See Nicolas, “Una et trina Deitas,” in Ordo sapientiaeet amoris ed., C.-J. Pinto de Oliveira, O.P., (Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1993): 229–46.

same for the Spirit).109 Since the whole Godhead is spoken by the Fatherin the Word, the whole Trinity is in the Word. Mutual indwelling thusis seen to be at the heart of the Trinitarian mystery. The conceptual dis-tinction of essence and Persons illumines, rather than obscures, the realityof mutual indwelling.

In these five ways – redoublement, undividedness, the real identity ofdivine essence and Persons, the differentiation of the Persons solely interms of the communication of the essence (relations of origin), and theorder of origin and mutual indwelling of the Persons – I have attemptedto show that Aquinas’s theology of the triune God both upholds the unityof God better than does Trinitarian ontology, and provides a better (non-essentialist) account of the distinction of Persons in God.110 Aquinas’sapproach embodies the insight of St. Maximus the Confessor: “Nor inthe Divinity is one thing derived from another: the Trinity does not derive from the Unity, since it is ungenerated and self-manifested. On thecontrary, the Unity and the Trinity are both affirmed and conceived astruly one and the same, the first denoting the principle of essence, thesecond the mode of existence. The whole is the single Unity, not divided


109 In “ ‘The Trinity Is Our Social Program,’ ” Volf suggests that the Trinity is best under-stood as “the narrative of divine self-donation” (412). Volf explains how this narrativeshould structure the Christian life:

If my argument is cogent, then to propose a social knowledge based on the doc-trine of the Trinity is not so much to “project” and “represent” “the Triune God,who is transcendental peace through differential relation”, as John Milbank arguesin his justly acclaimed Theology and Social Theory (6). Rather, to propose a social knowledge based on the doctrine of the Trinity is above all to renarrate thehistory of the cross, the cross understood not as a simple repetition of heavenly lovein the world, but as the Triune God’s engagement with the world in order to trans-form the unjust, deceitful, and violent kingdoms of this world into the just, truth-ful, and peaceful “kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” (Revelation 11:16).(415)

Aquinas’s theology of God narrates the “divine self-donation” in terms not only of love(the procession of will), but also of wisdom (the procession of intellect), thereby challeng-ing the modern voluntarist focus upon power without falling into a rationalistic concep-tion of God. Thus Thomistic theology restores the central place of contemplation (alsodisplaced in modernity) as a mode of deification, without falling into quietism, since con-templation, as wisdom, is based upon the charity that comes to us through the Spirit ofJesus Christ, our Paschal sacrifice.110 Trinitarian ontology also aims at renewing our sense of the Trinitarian character ofcreation and of creatures, which would require developing further the doctrine of the Trini-tarian vestigia and imago.

by the Persons; and the whole is the single Trinity, the Persons of whichare not confused by the Unity. Thus polytheism is not introduced by divi-sion of the Unity or disbelief in the true God by confusion of thePersons.”111 Indeed, understanding the other areas of Trinitarian theologydepends upon grasping the technical discussions of the rapport of essenceand Persons. Only such metaphysical precision retains the unity of Scrip-ture: the revelation in the Old Testament of the one God is not super-seded by the revelation, in the New Testament, that the one God subsistsin three Persons. As the biblical scholar C. Kavin Rowe eloquentlyremarks,

The New Testament and the early Church made claims about the humanperson Jesus of Nazareth and about the Spirit (see above texts) that requiredspecification in terms of ontology. It would not do simply to state the claims(YHWH is somehow both Father and Jesus Christ; the Spirit is somehowinseparably the Spirit of God the Father and of the human person JesusChrist; there is a Trinitarian pattern of salvation, etc.). The relation of Godthe Father, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit as well as the relation of Jesus’ divin-ity and humanity had to be specified in terms consistent with the most fun-damental theological thrust of the Old Testament, that of the unity andsingularity of the one Creator God and the directives for exclusive worshipthat were inextricably bound with this God’s identity. That YHWH (kyrios)is both God the Father and Jesus Christ leads of necessity to the questionof essence, or ‘being,’ most acutely at the point of the Christian worshipof Jesus Christ.112

Rowe has placed his finger upon the heart of the explication of the Chris-tian God. His conclusion is that “the ontological judgments of the earlyecumenical Creeds were the only satisfying and indeed logical outcomeof the claims of the New Testament read together with the Old.”113 This


111 St. Maximos the Confessor, “On the Lord’s Prayer,” in The Philokalia, compiled by St.Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, Vol. 2 ed. and trans. G. E. H.Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981): 296.112 Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002): 307.113 Ibid., 308. He continues:

If the Old Testament counts for anything, we cannot worship a mere human (onewho is created) instead of, in conjunction with, or over against the one God of theOld Testament. Such worship would mean rank and obvious idolatry, the total denialand destruction of Old Testament monotheism. . . . To put it into dogmatic terms,we cannot simply confess an economic Trinity but must also move to specification

conclusion signals, one may hope, a reunification of biblical exegesis andcontemplative theology.


with respect to the immanent Trinity if the Old Testament is to retain its authori-tative witness. Conversely, the Old Testament’s affirmations about God and theworship of God force us to make statements about divine ontology in light of the claims of the New Testament. We may go one step further yet and assert thatthe ontological judgments of the early ecumenical Creeds were the only satisfyingand indeed logical outcome of the claims of the New Testament read together withthe Old. . . . [T]he two-testament canon read as one book pressures its interpretersto make ontological judgments about the Trinitarian nature of the one God ad intraon the basis of its narration of the act and identity of the biblical God ad extra.(Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” 307–8)

Rowe acknowledges a debt to the canonical hermeneutics of Brevard Childs.

1 Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of theTrinity,” New Blackfriars 81 [2000]: 442.2 Ibid., 443.

CONCLUSION

Karen Kilby has asked, “Does the Trinity need to be relevant? What kindof relevance does it need to have?”1 Kilby notes that modern Trinitariantheologies, prompted by the view of thinkers such as Schleiermacher andWilliam James that the doctrine of the Trinity has no practical relevance,have energetically worked to make the doctrine of the Trinity more excit-ing. The unfortunate result, however, has been not only weakening thedoctrine’s intelligibility, but also dramatizing the doctrine to adapt it to fitparticular practical (social or political) viewpoints. Kilby’s solution,drawing upon George Lindbeck’s theory of doctrine, is to give the doc-trine of the Trinity a regulative or “grammatical” role in Christian life.She argues that “one should renounce the very idea that the point of thedoctrine is to give insight into God,” and that the doctrine “can insteadbe taken as grammatical, as a second order proposition, a rule, or perhapsa set of rules, for how to read the Biblical stories, how to speak aboutsome of the characters we come across in these stories, how to think andtalk about the experience of prayer, how to deploy the ‘vocabulary’ ofChristianity in an appropriate way.”2

Yet, having brilliantly identified the problem, Kilby may have falleninto it herself. If the doctrine of the Trinity is not primarily about God,but rather is primarily about us, then are we not back at the sameproblem? Her solution is the Jamesian impasse once again, but this timeacknowledged as such: “The doctrine on this account can still be seen asvitally important, but important as a kind of structuring principle ofChristianity rather than as its central focus: if the doctrine is fundamen-

tal to Christianity, this is not because it gives a picture of what God islike in se from which all else emanates, but rather because it specifies howvarious aspects of the Christian faith hang together.”3 What differentiatesKilby’s view from those of other theologians caught up in the Jamesianimpasse is that she, having masterfully critiqued their efforts to make thedoctrine relevant, accepts the impasse with a certain sadness brought aboutby the sight of so many theological ventures run aground. If the doctrineis to have primarily practical ends – as Kilby clearly thinks it must – thentheologians should at least avoid projecting these ends into their charac-terizations of the Trinity himself. She admits that theologians who acceptthe creedal confession that God is three and one “will inevitably try tomake sense of this” and ask what it means as regards the inner life of God.If such questions must be asked, Kilby requests that theologians have the decency not to “use the doctrine as a pretext for claiming such aninsight into the inner nature of God that they can use it to promote social,political or ecclesiastical regimes.”4

While I agree with Kilby’s criticisms, I do not accept her conclusion.A better solution lies in renewing our understanding of the relationshipbetween the theological interpretation of Scripture and the practices ofmetaphysical inquiry, and rediscovering theology as contemplative wisdom.Aquinas’s contemplative insights remain continually engaged with scrip-tural revelation (chapter 1) – both that of the living God of Israel whonames himself YHWH, the God of the covenant and the “I am” (chap-ters 2 and 3), and that of Christ Jesus, who reveals himself to be the savingWord and wisdom of the Father, and who reveals their mutual Spirit oflove by the divine charity expressed supremely upon a cross in Jerusalemunder Pontius Pilate (chapter 4). The insights are drawn forth and crys-tallized from the scriptural revelation by means of metaphysical analysisthat preserves Aquinas’s contemplation of the Trinitarian names from idolatry (chapters five and six). Finally, Aquinas’s contemplative exerciseallows him to distinguish what belongs to God in common from whatcharacterizes the three distinct Persons in God (chapter seven). His carefuldistinctions neither conflate the two aspects, as is commonly the problemtoday, nor allow us to imagine that the two aspects are not, in reality, thevery same God.

In short, we have undertaken a contemplative exercise, guided byAquinas, that has both addressed many of the key problems in contem-

conclusion 237

3 Ibid., 443–4.4 Ibid., 444.

porary Trinitarian theology and offered liturgically significant – orderedto deification – “insight into the inner nature of God,” in Kilby’s phrase.5

The primary goal of such an exercise is to gain knowledge of God inhimself. Within the exercise, Scriptural and metaphysical instruction com-plement one another. The knowledge of God in himself is sought not forthe sake of any created good, but simply because of the glory and beautyof God. However, such knowledge is sought within, and made possibleby, the context of the triune God’s self-revealing gifts of creation andredemption. In seeking contemplative ends, we attain practical ends aswell.6 As Jesus said, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, andall these things shall be yours as well” (Matthew 6:33).

However, is this a sufficient apologia for the kind of speculative theol-ogy practiced in this book? I have sought to articulate the persuasivenessof Thomistic speculative Trinitarian theology from within the practice of dialogue with influential contemporary exegetical and theological positions.7 This seems a way to carry forward the Thomistic theologicaltradition of identifying and constructively replying to objections broughtforward from Scripture and from other theologians. Yet, will the conclu-sions reached here be of interest to “the person in the pew”? Have I identified anything that will help believers in their life of faith, and pre-achers in their pastoral ministry? Here it is useful to quote once morefrom Kilby:

The doctrine of the Trinity arose in order to affirm certain things aboutthe divinity of Christ, and, secondarily, of the Spirit, and it arose against abackground assumption that God is one. So one could say that as long asChristians continue to believe in the divinity of Christ and the Spirit, andas long as they continue to believe that God is one, then the doctrine isalive and well; it continues to inform the way they read the Scriptures and

238 conclusion

5 Ibid., 444.6 Victor White, O.P. has remarked that for Aquinas Sacra doctrina’s “whole raison d’être . . . isin man’s need for teaching about his end and his salus, and how he is to direct his inten-tions and actions towards them. In this sense it is wholly supremely practical. Our present-day understanding of the psychological function of symbols and beliefs may help us tounderstand how eminently practical and inherently salutary are such seemingly ‘speculative’treatises as those on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Eucharist.” (White, Holy Teaching: TheIdea of Theology according to St. Thomas Aquinas [London: Blackfriars, 1958]:14.)7 Steven A. Long has nicely characterized the aridity of a “Thomism” that would makeonly historical claims: see his “Nicholas Lobkowicz and the Historicist Inversion ofThomistic Philosophy,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 41–74.

the overall shape of their faith. But clearly many theologians are wantingsomething in addition to this, something beyond this, some one particularinsight into God that this particular doctrine is the bearer of. It is whenone gets to thinking about three being one, and how this might be possi-ble, that most Christians grow puzzled, silent, perhaps even uninterested,and this is what so many theologians are troubled by. It is therefore (thoughfew would quite admit it directly) the abstraction, the conceptual formula,the three-in-oneness, that many theologians want to revivify, and if one isgoing to make an abstraction, a conceptual formula, relevant, vibrant, excit-ing, it is natural that one is going to have to project onto it, to fill it outagain so that it becomes something the imagination can latch onto.8

Kilby rightly identifies the abstraction of the doctrine as what is troublingmany theologians, and indeed many “people in the pew” and pastors. Atits height, certainly, contemplation does not require study. Yet, the intel-lectual (metaphysical) exercises that Aquinas, pedagogically, undertakes inthe Summa Theologiae assist believers in arriving at such sublime contem-plation. These exercises enable us, like the inspired authors of Scripturethemselves (St. John), to appropriate God’s revelation. As Wayne Hankey,without making distinctions between human appropriation (a “revelation”given by the natural light of the intellect) and divine revelation but nevertheless with profound insight, describes the relationship of Scriptureand metaphysics in Aquinas’s theology of the triune God:

History provides the evidence for that unity of the two theologies, scrip-tural and philosophical, in which Aquinas believed and which is essentialto his theological practice. They are both aspects of one thinking which isboth human and divine or, alternatively, they are two forms of revelation.It continually turns out that any other course than this broad ecumenicalway does not limit revelation to Scripture but makes revelation theologi-cally incomprehensible.9

Such contemplation invests the full powers of mind and heart in an inte-grative wisdom that journeys upwards, in faith, to the triune God whoexceeds our knowing, yet who has given us (through creation andredemption) true knowledge of himself – a graced knowledge that, when

conclusion 239

8 Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the Trinity,”442–3.9 Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself: Aquinas’ Doctrine of God as Expounded in the SummaTheologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987): 146.

joined to love, is unitive. Such holy wisdom (purity of heart) is the salvificfulfillment, in Christ’s Mystical Body, of Israel’s Temple.10

Once this view of contemplative wisdom is adopted, then the questfor immediate relevance, excitement, and practical import becomes lessurgent. It becomes less urgent not because the quest is now relativized(although it is) – and certainly not because the quest has been abandonedin a form of quietism – but rather because the quest has been, in themanifestation of God’s “name” in his mystical Temple, fulfilled. Simplyput, contemplating the majesty and intimate presence of God suffices to calm fears about God’s relevance. What we learn of God’s analogous“characteristics” in his unity and Trinity inflames our longing for eternal union with this God of infinite and simple being, goodness,wisdom, and love; who is Creator, Sustainer of every aspect of creaturelybeing, and Redeemer; who is personal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,Word, Image, Love, and Gift; who is three and one perichoretically, as amystical dance.

The very caution with which we have to learn – apprenticing our-selves to a master of the divine names – to speak about this triune Godreflects the terrible glory of this unfathomable God, and enables us torejoice even more in the beauty and delicacy of each glimpse that, squint-ing in the infinite light, we attain in Christ. As C. S. Lewis famously putit in his children’s books, we come to realize by grasping the theocentriccharacter of reality that this God is not “tame.” Furthermore, when weundertake these intellectual exercises within the Church, with her doctri-nal and liturgical tradition of naming God in order to appropriate God’sself-revelation, we come to know that no union with this God is otherthan charitable union with our fellow human beings and indeed with allcreation. Ultimately we do not, on our own, accomplish this true unity:God himself unites us according to the pattern that, in his wisdom, heknows as conducing to our true good, and God enables us to cooperatewith him in building, in the world, his Temple of living stones.11

240 conclusion

10 See Charles Morerod, O.P., “Trinité et unité de l’Eglise,” Nova et Vetera 77 (2002):5–17, Luc-Thomas Somme, Fils adoptifs de Dieu par Jésus Christ (Paris: Vrin, 1997); MatthewLevering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (NotreDame: University of Notre Dame, 2002).11 Trinitarian monotheism is thus a wisdom, not a ploy for power in modern terms (towhich the dynamism of divine teaching and human contemplation remains foreign). For astandard depiction of monotheism as violent, see e.g., Martin S. Jaffee, “One God, OneRevelation, One People: On the Symbolic Structure of Elective Monotheism,” Journal ofthe American Academy of Religion 69 (2001): 753–75.

What is learned through Aquinas’s contemplative practices is thus suf-ficient meat for the people in the pew and for pastors. In speaking aboutthe highest mysteries, theologians can describe more than an abstractionthat functions as a regulative, grammatical norm. The project of Trinitar-ian theology is not, as it were, a Jamesian tragedy. Nonetheless, as weknow from personal experience and from the lives of the saints, such con-templative learning (in faith) does not spare us from the experience ofsuffering and anxiety. In the intense experience of the fragility of ourbeing – what has been called “the unbearable lightness of being” – ourself-centered perception of reality impedes our ability to trust our brokenselves to the God “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Not only by contemplative exercises but also by our suffer-ing insofar as it becomes (Eucharistically) a suffering-for-others joined inthe Holy Spirit to Christ’s sufferings, we must learn to trust the Trinityto hold our fragile being in his hands. As Henri Nouwen put it, we mustbe trained and formed like the trapeze artist so that we completely “letgo” in order that God, who bestows upon us our new name (Revelation2:17) in his mystical Temple that is his Body, may catch us.12

Indeed, it is only if our contemplative exercises are sustained by con-tinual prayer and sacramental grace that the practices of contemplativewisdom may avoid the poison of pride, manifested in the careerism andecclesial infidelity of the “academic” theologian. Contemplative exerciseson their own cannot produce the theology that the Church needs. Once,admiring a book on the theology of wisdom, I was told that its authorhad, in later life, suffered from acute and eventually suicidal depression.In prayerful solidarity with that author, we can affirm that the fragile con-templative wisdom of the theologian has meaning only as cruciform par-ticipation, in the Mystical Body, in the fulfillment of God’s covenants withIsrael that has been accomplished on the Cross by the Messiah – theWisdom of God, who is salvation.

conclusion 241

12 Henri J. M. Nouwen, Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring (New York:HarperSanFrancisco, 1994): 66–7. A homily preached by Fr. Robert Imbelli introduced meto this book.

Abel 103–4n107Abraham 171Act, divine 58, 89n56, 107–8n122,

161–2Acts of the Apostles 50, 241Adam 103Alston, William P. 150n23Amalek 78Amos 20–1n52, 49Anselm, Saint 59antipragmatism 17anti-Semitism 78, 171apophaticism 35n47, 51–2, 108n124,

132n106appropriation theory 222–3n77Aquinas, Saint Thomas: Balthasar

on 132–3n108, 224n82; causality60n40; Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John 39–40, 136–9, 140–1,142, 178, 183–4; contemplation2, 19, 20n50, 38–9, 237–8; 1 Corinthians 87n43; Cross 135,141; De Deo 45, 68, 72; divinenames 4, 48, 49, 58–9, 237;Eastern Orthodox Church 191n91,192; essentialism 25n5, 133–4; evil93–5; Exodus 47, 60, 62–3; familyimage 180–1; Father 171–8;filiation 182; God 58–9, 60, 71,75–6; God’s knowledge 75, 92;

God’s will 75, 92–3, 96–101; HolySpirit 185–96; Image 184–5; James95; Job 45; John’s Gospel 39–45,153, 157 (see also Commentary);Lamentations 94; Love 193, 195;Luke’s Gospel 94; mixed relationdoctrine 25n6; Moses 65–6;Paschal mystery 112;paternity/filiation 177; Paul 59,60–1n43; Persons 11–12, 25n5,162–3, 205, 216–20, 222–3;physicalism 158n45; Presence 91–2,109; procession 150–1, 157–8;Proverbs 89, 93; psychologicalanalogy 121–2, 148, 149–64;Rahner on 34–5; redoublement69, 160–1, 214–16, 216, 228;Sabellius 153–4; sacra doctrina 9–10,27–9, 31–4, 37, 43, 46, 47–8;salvation history 24, 26; Scripture191–2; Son 179–85; speculativetheology 83–4, 159n47, 169;study/prayer 20; Summa ContraGentiles 36–7; Summa Theologiae 2,10–11, 36, 47–8n3, 50–1, 58, 59,84n27, 133–4, 169, 195, 197, 216,239; theology 4, 11, 12; Trinitarianontology 213; Trinitarian theology8–9; Trinity, doctrine of 4, 196;triune God 26–7, 39, 48, 70n73,

INDEX

index 243

97n80, 111, 239; truth 51;Wisdom 27, 28–34, 37; Word148–9n19, 151n27, 179–80, 183–4;YHWH 67–8, 71–2

Aristotle: being 202; causality 60n40;deity 76, 86; Metaphysics 49;philosophy 27–8n12; Physics 48;Wisdom 29

Arius: 1 Corinthians 152–3; 1 John152–3; John’s Gospel 152–3;Persons 151–3, 164, 219–20;procession 154; refutation 179;simplicity of God 155

Armstrong, Karen 7ascesis 3, 9n18, 21–2, 46Athanasius, Saint 10Augustine of Hippo, Saint:

contemplation 22n58; De Trinitate27n9; divine name 62; essence24n4, 149; eternity 88n48; Holy Spirit 195; Persons 218;psychological analogy 121–2, 149;relation 215; Trinitarian theology144; Trinity 73

autonomy 80, 81, 90; see also freewill

Ayres, Lewis 25n4

Bailleux, E. 25n5Balaam and Balak story 96Baldwin, Joyce G. 96n76Balthasar, Hans Urs von 23, 110;

on Aquinas 132–3n108, 224n82;Christology 126–7; contemplation40; faith 124; God’s knowledge124n69; metaphysics 8n16; missionof Jesus Christ 121; Paschalmystery 122–3; relation 160n50;Trinitarian theology 121–2, 125–6;Trinity 111

baptism 49–50, 206Barnes, Michel 24n4Barth, Karl 2–3n3, 23, 56n27, 110,

120Basil, Saint 207, 218–19Bauckham, Richard: identity of God

111, 116–19, 120, 148n17; Jesus119; Second Temple monotheism115–16; Trinity 110

beatitude 22n58, 51, 97–8begetting 138, 170, 174–6, 185,

221–2, 226being 4, 17; Aristotle 202;

communion 209–10; divine 10–11,212, 216–17; freedom 209; gift100n90; homoousion 216n57; JesusChrist 145; Persons 4; relation204; YHWH 53–7, 61–6; see alsoessence

Berger, David 198Bernard, Saint 3Blankenhorn, Bernhard-Thomas

101n96Blenkinsopp, Joseph 41Bobrinskoy, Boris 149–50Boethius, Anicius 98, 162Bonaventure, Saint 35n47, 51n11,

202–3, 205Boulton, Matthew 104n110Boyle, John F. 227n96Brown, Stephen F. 222n75Burrell, David B. 49n8, 89–90n56,

102n105

Cain 103–4, 105, 107Cappadocian Fathers 207Catholic theology 110, 191causality 60n40, 89n50, 96n76,

100n91Cavanaugh, William 107–8n122Cessario, Romanus 95n72, 108n123,

136charity 18, 19, 20, 30–1Charlton, William 158n45Charry, Ellen 22n57Châtillon, J. 223n77

244 index

Chenu, M.-D. 47–8Childs, Brevard S. 55–6n25Christian Fathers 3Christology 126–7, 145, 165,

214–15n511 Chronicles 78Chrysostom, St John 138Clarke, W. Norris 200; hypostasis

214; philosophy 203–4; relation205n18; “To Be Is to BeSubstance-in-Relation” 202–5;Trinitarian ontology 202–5

Coakley, Sarah 175n32Coffey, David: Holy Spirit 147; John’s

Gospel 146–8; Logos 144; Prologueto John’s Gospel 145; psychologicalanalogy 156–7, 164; Word 147–8

Colossians 138, 147, 184communio 46, 125communion: being 209–10;

perichoresis 212; Trinity 208–9Congar, Yves 25n5, 149, 194n104,

n107consummation 57n28contemplation 4, 9n18, 241; Aquinas

2, 19, 20n50, 38–9, 237–8;Augustine 22n58; Balthasar 40;charity 19, 20; divine names 50;ecclesial practice 17–18; Father178; happiness 18–19, 97–8;image/knowledge 155; intellectual52; investigation 10; Islam 10n20;James 19; Moses 65–6, 71–2;Pieper 19; prayer 6; Scripture 12;Trinitarian theology 2, 3, 20;Trinity 26n7, 44; truth 19, 51;Wisdom 239–40

1 Corinthians 30, 87, 152–3, 1852 Corinthians 185covenants 60, 75, 79, 119creatio ex nihilo 79–80creation 76n3, 81, 101n96; created

things 103–4, 115n23, 221

creation theology 79Creator-God 65, 91n63, 154, 176–7Cross 120, 135, 141, 241Cunningham, David S. 16, 201n9,

232–3n108Curtin, Maurice 96n76

Dahl, Nils A. 165Dauphinais, Michael 22n58Davies, Brian 93n67Decalogue 116Dei Verbum, Second Vatican Council

84–5deification 38, 50, 177n39, 206Descartes, René 205n18Deutero-Isaiah 117, 118Deuteronomy 66, 71n75, 72, 94,

115–16, 177, 199, 224Dewan, Lawrence 49diastasis 127–8DiNoia, J. Augustine 91n63divine names: Aquinas 4, 48, 49,

58–9, 237; Augustus 62;contemplation 50; Exodus 49, 61,74; John’s Gospel 41; knowledge22; Moses 49, 61, 74, 116; NewTestament 229; order of origin 1;Scripture 52–3; see also YHWH

Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit 45Dodds, Michael 96n76Dondaine, H. F. 25n5, 193n104Dostoevsky, Fyodor 108Dunn, James D. G. 148n16, 187–8Duns Scotus, John 58n33, 108n124

Eastern Orthodox Church 191n91,192n94

ecstasis 123, 212Egyptian idolatry 66Elders, Leo 60n42Emery, Gilles: Eastern Orthodoxy

191n91; essence 64n52;“Essentialism or Personalism”

index 245

68n68, 224–5n83; heresies 151n25;redoublement 214–15; relation 72,217n59, 228; speculative theology159n47; Trinitarian theology199–200n6

Enlightenment portrait 102–3Ephesians 100, 142Ernst, Cornelius 31, 32esse/ratio 72essence: Augustine 24n4, 149; Emery

64n52; God 47, 53, 66, 85n36,222; hypostasis 223–4; identity55n25, 219–20, 221; Persons 152,179n48, 201n8, 217–18n61,219–20, 223–7, 229–32; relation215; substance 198, 203, 223–4,225–6; Trinity 197, 227–8, 229;unity 200n6

essentialism: Aquinas 25n5, 133–4;post-Cappadocian 211;psychological analogy 150, 164;Sabellius 153–4; Zizioulas 207

eternity 88n48Eucharist 8–9, 241Eve 103evil: Aquinas 93–5; free will 106–7;

God 93n67; God’s will 106, 107;human beings 94–5; inevitability76n3; Satan 78; see also sin

Exodus: Aquinas 47, 60, 62–3;covenant 119; divine names 49, 61,74; Moses 66, 74; translation 41,55n25

Ezekiel 49

faith 37, 58n29, 124, 131–2, 224n82Family, Year of 181n53Father: Aquinas 171–8; begetting

138, 159–60, 170, 221–2, 226;contemplation 178; God of Israel70–1, 139; Holy Spirit 139; JesusChrist 170–1, 174; New Testament70–1n75, 170, 174; Old Testament

170, 174; as principle 171–4, 210, 230n102; procession 173–4;self-surrender 129–30; Son 23,70–1n75, 123, 139, 141, 151, 153,155–6, 159–60, 161, 177–8, 190,226–7, 231; Witherington and Ice169–71, 174, 178; Word 180,183–4; YHWH 70; see also God;paternity; Persons

Fee, Gordon 190Felt, James W. 150n23feminist theology 174–5n32Fernández, Victor M. 177n39Fides et Ratio encyclical 20–1filiation 159–60, 177, 180, 182,

192–3, 218Fishbane, Michael 61–2Floucat, Yves 162n55, 179n45forsakenness 121, 126, 129–30, 135–6Franks, Angela Franz 212n48Franzelin, Johann Baptist 2n3free will 102, 103–7freedom 206–7, 209Friedman, Richard Elliott 155n33

gender/Trinity 175n32Genesis 49, 79, 81, 155Al-Ghazali 102n105gift: being 100n91; Holy Spirit

29–30, 33, 37, 195; Levenson 101;Paschal mystery 229; Persons137n122; Son 138; Wisdom 30–1,33

Gilson, Etienne 8n16, 47, 8n17glory 38, 86n38, 114, 141, 142God: Aquinas 58–9, 60, 71, 75–6;

aseity 15; attributes 11, 14, 48, 49,53n17, 64, 215–16; Bible 20–1n52,26, 75; causality 96n76, 100n91;corporeal parts 91n62; createdthings 88–9, 103–4, 115n23, 221;Creator 65, 91n63, 154, 176–7;essence 47, 53, 66, 85n36, 222;

246 index

God: Aquinas (cont’d)evil 93n67; existence 14–15, 47,58–9, 60; identity 111, 112–14,116–20, 148n17; John’s Gospel166; kyriarchal 134; metaphysics20–1n52, 75; New Testament165–6, 197; Old Testament 70–1,82n26, 118–19, 165, 197, 234–5;ontic/psychologic 221n74;perfection 85; philosophy 26, 37;Presence 13, 90n57, 91–2, 96, 109;suffering 120; transcendence 76n3,90n57; truth 32; unity 75–6,217–18, 232n108; Weinandy 75;Word 156; YHWH 237; see alsoFather; God of Israel; God’sknowledge; God’s will; Persons;triune God

God of Israel: Bauckham 116–17;Father 70–1, 139; Levenson 76,77–83; Marshall 69n73; Soulen 53;Trinity 111; see also YHWH

God-centredness 9n18, 21–2God’s knowledge: Aquinas 75, 92;

Balthasar 124n69; causality 89n50;human beings 89–90; Levenson 79,87–8; limitations 81–2; Matthew238; Paul 87; perfect 86–7; andwill 75

God’s will: antecedent/consequent104, 105n111; Aquinas 75, 92–3, 96–101; evil 106, 107;fragmentation 78–9, 81–2; goodpleasure/expression 98–9; andknowledge 75; Levenson 98–9;Matthew 98–9, 106; Paul 97, 99,100

Goizueta, Roberto S. 9n18, 17–18Goldingay, John 168goodness 95–6, 107grace 33, 38Greek Fathers 192, 207–8Greek ontology 208

Gregory of Nazianzus 211Gregory of Nyssa, Saint 3, 22n58,

24n4, 120n51, 221n74Gregory the Great 85Gunten, A. E. 148–9n19, 180n50Gunton, Colin 231n105, 232n108Gutierrez, Gustavo 9n18

Hadot, Pierre 38, 49n8Haight, Roger 186–7n76Hampson, Daphne 176n32Hankey, Wayne 48–9, 59n34, 83n27,

239happiness 18–19, 97–8Hart, David Bentley 221n74Hauerwas, Stanley 6n12, 12Hawking, Stephen 7Hays, Richard 142–3Hebrews 88, 138, 195Hegel, G. W. F. 12, 14, 203Heidegger, Martin 7–8n16, 108Hell 130n98, 136; see also Sheolheresies 151n25, 155Heschel, Abraham Joshua 105–

6n115Hibbert, Giles 4–5, 34, 38, 39Hibbs, Thomas 20, 36–7Hilary, Saint 186, 219–20Hill, William 45–6Hinnebusch, William A. 178n43,

178n44Holocaust 82, 105Holy Spirit: Act 108n122; Aquinas

185–96; Augustine 195; coequality174; Coffey 147; connaturalization30; Father 139; gift 29–30, 33, 37,195; human beings 99; Love151n27, 193–5, 229, 237; NewTestament 186, 189–90; OldTestament 185–6; Paul 190;procession 151, 157, 180–1, 185,190–1, 192, 232; relation 161,176n36, 216, 227; Son 136, 152–3,

index 247

191, 192n94; Witherington and Ice186, 188, 189–90, 194, 196

homoousion 120, 145, 216n57Hoonhout, Michael A. 91n63human beings 96; autonomy 81, 90;

charity 18; evil 94–5; free will102; God’s knowledge 89–90; HolySpirit 99; knowing 33, 35n47;Persons 151n27, 178n44;understanding 157

Hume, David 205n18humility, spirit of 17, 135Hunt, Anne 110–11, 136Hütter, Reinhard 200–1; Suffering

Divine Things 210–12, 213–14;Trinitarian ontology 210–12, 227

hypostasis 78, 224n82; Clarke 214;essence/substance 198, 203, 223–4;evil 78; Father/Son 190, 207

Ice, Laura: Father 169–71, 174, 178;Holy Spirit 186, 188, 189–90, 194,196; New Testament/Trinity167–8; Son 179, 181–2, 184

identity: essence 55n25, 220, 221;functional/ontological 148n17; God111, 112–14, 116–20, 148n17;Persons 229–31; triune God 201;Volf 231–2n108; YHWH 54,56n27, 57, 116–17, 118

idolatry 60, 65, 66, 67–8image 155, 184–5imitatio Christi 20, 22Incarnation 34, 41, 56n27, 119,

147interiority 17, 42–3intersubjectivity 121–2, 231n107Isaiah, Book of 7, 41–2, 49, 65, 77,

186Isaiah, prophet: as contemplative 42,

44; divine names 41; God theCreator 65, 154; prophecy 77;vision 40

Islam 10n20, 198; see also al-Warraq,Abu ’Isa

Israel 4, 49, 60, 67–8, 95, 116–17; see also God of Israel

Jacob 49Jaffee, Martin S. 240n11James, Saint 95James, William 12–15, 13, 19, 241Jenson, Robert 56n27Jeremiah 49Jesus Christ: being 145; Father

170–1, 174; homoousion 145;human consciousness 127; John 40;John’s Gospel 50, 63, 121, 150–1,224; mission 121, 126–7, 128, 141;names 50; New Testament 145–6;Nicodemus 140n138; obedience128, 135; Paschal mystery 1, 11,110, 131–2, 133–4, 141; passion134–5, 136, 142, 229, 241; Paul114; resurrection 111, 113, 136,142; revelation 109, 136–7;salvation 108n123; sin 130n100;sinners 128–9; and Spirit 187–8;Trinitarian theology 137n120;Trinity 113, 139–40; Wisdom 139,147; Word 237; Wright114–15n20; YHWH 56n27, 63,113; see also Son; Word

Jewish monotheism 115, 117–18Jewish people 82, 116Jewish theology 109, 112, 198Job 45, 85, 86, 104n107, 177Joel 1861 John 74, 152–3John Damascene, Saint 25n5, 63, 179,

231–2n108John of the Cross, Saint 196n119John Paul II, Pope 21, 176n32,

181n53John the Evangelist, Saint 27, 39–45,

144

248 index

John’s Gospel: antiSemitism 171;Aquinas 137, 138, 153, 157,191–2; Arius 151–3; Coffey 146–8;divine name 41, 50; God 166;Jesus Christ 50, 63, 121, 150–1,224; Prologue 145, 147, 166–7;Seitz 55n25; Witherington 40–1,148n16; Word 182–3; see alsoAquinas, Commentary

Johnson, Elizabeth A. 172n22,213n49

Johnson, Luke Timothy 59, 166–7Johnson, Mark F. 28n14, 33Jordan, Mark 37–8n56judgment 157–8

Kant, Immanuel 12, 14, 15Karamazov, Ivan 108Keaty, Anthony 193n104Keck, Leander 165kenosis 114, 122–4, 126, 212, 213–14Kerr, Fergus 19n48, 47–8, 61n43,

132–3n108, 150Kilby, Karen 132n106, 230–1n105,

236–7, 238–9Kimel, Alvin F. 175n32Knoch, Wendelin 215n55knowledge: as attribute 88n48;

human beings 33, 35n47; image155; judgment 157–8; love 124,144; names 22; senses 220–1; see also God’s knowledge

Kretzmann, Norman 223n77Kurz, William 166–7kyrios 70–1n75, 73n84, 114, 234

LaCugna, Catherine Mowry 15–16,107n122, 232n108

Lafont, Ghislain 48, 214–15Lafontaine, René 171n21Lamb, Matthew L. 88n48Lamentations 94Lash, Nicholas 175n32

Latino/Hispanic approach 17Le Guillou, M.-J. 25n5, 171n21Levenson, Jon D. 75; Creation and

the Persistence of Evil 76; gift 101;God of Israel 76, 77–83; God’sknowledge 79, 87–8; God’s will98–9; Heschel 105–6n115;Holocaust 105; monotheism94n69; YHWH 77–83

Levering, Matthew 9n18Leviticus 22, 49Lewis, C. S. 240Lindbeck, George 6n12, 236Locke, John 205n18Lodahl, M. E. 186Logos 144, 147, 148n16, 182, 187n76;

see also WordLonergan, Bernard 83n27Love: Aquinas 193, 195; Holy Spirit

151n27, 193–5, 228, 237;knowledge 124, 144; procession158; self-emptying 227–8; self-surrender 124–5, 129–30, 131,142; Staniloae 210n40; Trinity 207

Luke’s Gospel 94Luther, Martin 7–8, 120, 125, 126

McCabe, Herbert 199n5, 232n108MacIntyre, Alasdair 167n8Macquarrie, John 150Maimonides, Moses 35n47, 37n56,

45, 67, 105n115Malachi 95–6Malet, A. 25n5Manicheism 78, 93Mansini, Guy 76n3Marion, Jean-Luc 67n63, 103Mark’s Gospel 121, 184n61Marshall, Bruce D. 2–3n3, 68,

69–70n73, 137n120, 223n77Mary, Mother of God 120Matthew’s Gospel: baptism 49–50;

forsakenness 121; God’s knowledge

index 249

238; God’s will 98–9, 106;perfection 85; Son/Father 139;Spirit 186; Trinity 119

Maurer, Armand 61n44, 67, 72n79Maximus, Saint 139–40, 233medieval theology 22n58, 54, 110,

167, 198metaphor/analogy 51n13metaphysics 1, 7–8, 61n44; ascesis 3,

9n18, 21–2, 46; Balthasar 8; God20–1n52, 75; Incarnation 147; Johnthe Evangelist 40–1; ontology 202;Persons 161–2n55; procession 154;revelation 5, 8; sacra doctrina 9–10;salvation history 10–11; Scripture1, 2, 5, 21, 27, 52n15; substantialist150; technical practices 3; theology4–5; Trinitarian 1, 12; YHWH 65,71–2

Milbank, John 120n51, 233n109Miles, Jack 7, 82n26mission 121, 126–7, 128, 141mixed relation doctrine 25n6Molnar, Paul D. 144–5n1Moltmann, Jürgen 110, 115, 120,

230n105monotheism: Jewish 115, 117–18;

Levenson 94n68; Old Testament234–5n113; Trinitarian 199–200n6,240

Mosaic Law 66–7Moses 48, 55, 61, 65–6, 71–2, 74,

116Mühlen, Heribert 110

names: Holy Spirit 188; Jesus 50;Moses 74; Persons 168–9; see alsodivine names

nature 33, 206neo-Palamites 52n14Neoplatonism 49n8, 93New Testament: divine names 229;

Father 70–1n75, 170, 174; filiation

180; God 165–6, 197; Holy Spirit186, 189–90; Jesus Christ 145–6;Son 70–1n75, 179; Spirit 234

Newman, John Henry 14, 15, 155Nicea, Council of 56, 145Nicene Christology 113Nicene Creed 120, 166–7, 222Nichols, Aidan 48, 63n50Nicodemus 140n138Nietzsche, Friedrich 103Nizzahon Vetus 198, 224, 225, 227nominalism 91n63Nouwen, Henri 241Numbers 66, 96

obedience 116, 128, 131, 135, 136Old Testament 142–3;

antimetaphysical turn 108–9; Father170, 174; God 70–1, 82n26,118–19, 165, 197, 234–5; HolySpirit 185–6; monotheism234–5n113; prayer 65; Spirit 185;YHWH 74

O’Meara, Thomas 36ontology 64–5, 202onto-theology 34–5n47, 67n63, 83,

103origin, order of 1, 224–7, 229, 233Oswalt, John N. 41n68ousia 53–6, 207; see also being

Pannenberg, Wolfhart 212Paschal mystery: Aquinas 112;

Balthasar 122–3; Jesus Christ 1, 11,110, 131–2, 133–4, 141; revelation137; Trinitarian ontology 228;Trinity 143

passion 134–5, 136, 142, 229, 241paternity 159–61, 176–7, 218, 224,

227pathos 211, 212, 213–14patristic theology 22n57, 54, 110,

167

250 index

Paul, Saint: Aquinas 59, 60–1n43;Colossians 184; free will 104–5;God’s knowledge 87; God’s mercy86; God’s will 97, 99, 100; HolySpirit 190; Jesus Christ 114;Johnson 59–60; Spirit 185

Percy, Walker 12perfection 85perichoresis 212, 230–1n105,

232n107, 233, 240personalist ontology 208–9Persons: agency 189–90; Aquinas

11–12, 25n5, 162–3, 205, 216–20,222–3; Arius 151–3, 164, 219–20;Augustine 218; being 4, 210, 212,216–17; coequality 174; distinction197, 219–20, 222–3, 223–7;essence 152, 179n48, 201n8,217–18n61, 219–20, 223–7, 230–2;faith 131–2; Father 207; gift137n122; God 69, 125; humanbeings 151n27, 178n44; identity230–1; metaphysics 161–2n55;mutual indwelling 230–3, 233;names 168–9; origin 224–7, 229;ousia 207; perichoresis 212,230–1n105, 231n107, 232, 240;procession 24, 172n22, 204, 228–9;relation 151, 161–2, 209, 221,224–7; Scripture 163; Son 68;Trinity Sunday 6; undividedness216–19; unity 164, 196; YHWH234–5

Pesch, Otto 27, 51n131 Peter 135Pfürtner, Stephen 52n15Philippians 118Philo 48n6, 56n25, 61philosophy: Aristotle 27–8n12; Clarke

203–4; God 26, 37; presuppositions153n29; spiritual exercise 38

physicalism 158n45physics 7

Pieper, Josef 18–19Pinckaers, Servais 29Plantings, Cornelius Jr. 156n35Plato 38Podhoretz, Norman 42n70, 66n57poiesis 211postmetaphysics 210–11n42post-supersessionism 56n27praxis 9n18prayer 6, 20, 51, 65Presence 13, 90n57, 91–2, 96, 109presuppositions 153n29primordial chaos 80process theology 76procession: Aquinas 150–1, 157–8;

Arius/Sabellius 154; Father 173–4;filiation 218; Holy Spirit 151, 157,180–1, 185, 190–1, 192, 232–3;knowledge/love 144; love 158;metaphysics 154; mission 128;paternity 218; Persons 24, 172n22, 204, 228–9; relation160–1, 163; Son 185, 190; Word158, 232–3

Proclus 48n6, 49, 59n34projection 231n105prophecy 42n70Protestant theology 56n27, 110,

167–8Proverbs 89, 93Psalms 49, 59, 77, 80, 81, 89, 91,

101–2, 139, 174Pseudo-Cyril 231–2n108Pseudo-Dionysius 32, 48, 59n34psychological analogy: Aquinas 148,

149–64; Augustine 121–2, 149;Coffey 156–7, 164; essentialism150, 164; Trinity 155

Rahner, Karl 2–3n3, 21–2, 23–6,34–5, 70

ratio/esse 72reading 51

index 251

receptivity 204–5n17redemption 57n28redoublement 69, 160–1, 214–16,

216, 228Régnon, Théodore de 24n4Reichberg, Gregory M. 94–5n72,

176n36relation: Augustine 215; Balthasar

160n50; being 204; Clarke 205n18;Emery 72, 217n59; essence 215;Holy Spirit 161, 176n36, 216, 227;origin 224–7, 233; Persons 151,161–2, 209, 221, 224–7; procession160–1, 163; redoublement 216;Son 216; substance 201n9, 204–5,225–6; Trinitarian ontology 230;Trinitarian theology 72, 232n108;Trinity, doctrine of 163–4;Weinandy 163; Zizioulas 213

resurrection 111, 113, 136, 142revelation 48, 84, 204; faith 224n82;

interiority 42–3; Jesus Christ 109,136–7; metaphysics 5, 8; Mosiac48; Paschal mystery 137; pre-Trinitarian 71n77; sacra doctrina 33;verbal 32; Wisdom 33–4; YHWH11

Revelations 56n25, 233n109Richard of St Victor 51n11, 121–2,

162, 205Rogers, Eugene F. Jr. 60–1n43Romans 28, 59, 85, 86, 96, 98, 101,

177Rowe, C. Kavin 73n84, 113–14n15,

234–5

Sabellius 153–4, 155, 164sacra doctrina 47–8; John the Evangelist

43; metaphysics 9–10; revelation33; sacra scriptura 32; salvationhistory 46; truth 34; Wisdom 27,28–9, 31, 33, 37

sacra scriptura 31, 32

Saintliness 13salvation 87, 108n123salvation history 10–11, 23, 24, 26,

45–6, 110–112 Samuel 78sanctification 99sapientia 45Satan 78Saul 50Schindler, David 204–5n17Schleiermacher, Friedrich 2n3, 14, 15scientia 31, 45Scripture: Aquinas 191–2;

contemplation 12; divine names52–3; metaphysics 1, 2, 5, 21, 27,52n15; Persons 163; Trinity,doctrine of 168; triune God 3

Second Temple Judaism 115–16, 118

Second Vatican Council 4, 84–5Seidl, Horst 161–2n55Seitz, Christopher 41n68, 50n9,

55n25, 64n51, 65, 73self-centredness 9n18, 21–2selfhood 150self-revelation 46self-surrender 124–5, 129–30, 131,

142Septuagint 55, 61Shanley, Brian J. 89n50Shema 115–16Sheol 93–4Siewerth, Gustav 124signification mode 221, 223sin 94–5n72, 130n98, 130n100;

see also evilsinners 128–9Smith, Timothy L. 50n9, 64n52,

149n20, 155n34social Trinitarianism 156n35Socratic dialogue 38Sokolowski, Robert 64Solomon, King 49

252 index

Son: Act 108n119; Aquinas 179–85;coequality 174; divinity 179;Father 23, 70–1n75, 123, 139, 141,151, 153, 155–6, 159–60n48, 161,177–8, 190, 226–7, 231;forsakenness 126, 129–30, 135–6;as gift 138; Holy Spirit 136,152–3, 191, 192n94; Logos 144;New Testament 70–1n75, 179;obedience 131, 136; Persons 68;procession 185, 190; relation 216;salvation 87; self-surrender 129–30;suffering 120–1; Witherington andIce 179, 181–2, 184; Word 157,158, 228; Wright 112–13; see alsofiliation; Jesus Christ

Soskice, Janet Martin 66n58, 175n32

soteriology 111, 145, 199Soulen, R. Kendall 53–7, 64–5, 74speculative theology 112, 178n43,

238; Aquinas 83–4, 159n47, 169Speyr, Adrienne von 123–4, 130spiration 188, 193, 227Spirit 154–5; Jesus Christ 187–8;

Matthew 186; New Testament 234;Old Testament 185; Paul 185;Word 159; see also Holy Spirit

Spirit Christology 187, 188Staniloae, Dumitru: apophaticism

51–2; Basil the Great 218–19;intersubjectivity 231n107; Love210n40; revelation 33; Spirit/Son191, 192n94; Trinity 72–3n82,152n28

Stevenson, William B. 149n20Sträter, Carl 64n52study/prayer 20Stylianopoulos, Theodore 190substance: essence 223–4, 225–6;

nature 206; relation 204–5, 225–6

suffering: covenants 79; Eucharist241; God 120; Job 104n107; Son120–1; Weinandy 96n76

Summa Contra Gentiles 34supersessionism 4, 56, 57, 68n67, 74supposition theory 222n75Swierzawksi, Waclaw 26n8, 86n38

Taylor, Charles 12teaching 50–1, 52technical issues 3, 5–6Tetragrammaton 67, 68n67theology: Aquinas 4, 11, 12; basis of

31–2; metaphysics 4–5; negative35n47; pre-Enlightenment 3;Wisdom 4, 37–8

1 Thessalonians 99Thiel, John E. 104n107, 105n112Thomistic manual 14–15Thompson, Marianne Meye 41,

63n51, 165, 166, 170n181 Timothy 94, 101, 104–5Torah 12, 66, 116, 198–9, 224Torrell, Jean Pierre 2, 10n21, 20n50,

39transcendence 4, 76n3, 90n57translation problems 55Trinitarian ontology 199–201,

233n110; Aquinas 213; Clarke202–5; Hütter 210–12, 227;Paschal mystery 229; redoublement228; relation 231; Zizioulas205–10, 212

Trinitarian theology 12–13, 200n6;Aquinas 8–9; Augustine 144;Balthasar 121–2, 125–6;Christology 214–15n51;contemplation 2, 3, 20;Cunningham 16; Emery199–200n6; Jesus Christ 137n120;Marshall 2–3n3; non-supersessionist57; Rahner 23–6, 24–5; relation

index 253

72, 232n108; relevance 236–7;Wright 133–4

Trinity: Augustine 73; Bauckham110; communion 208–9;contemplation 26n7, 44; Cross120; essence 197, 228, 229; God of Israel 111; Jesus Christ 113,139–40; Love 207; Matthew 119;monotheism 199–200n6, 240;Paschal mystery 143; psychologicalanalogy 155; resurrection 136;unity 213, 219; see also Persons

Trinity, doctrine of: Aquinas 4, 196;gender 175n32; heresies 151n25,155; Kilby 238–9; LaCugna 15–16;Molnar 144–5n1; Rahner 25n5;relation 163–4; resurrection 111;Scripture 168; teaching of 21–2

Trinity Sunday 6tritheism 122, 231n107triune God 2, 3, 73; Aquinas 26–7,

39, 48, 70n73, 97n80, 111, 239;errors 228; identity 201; Rahner23; redoublement 69; self-revelation46

truth: Aquinas 51; contemplation 19,51; God 32; sacra doctrina 34;Scripture/metaphysics 1; Wisdom30; Word 45; YHWH 57n27

Turner, Denys 35n47, 108, 108n124

unbelief 59understanding 37, 157unity 75–6, 200n6, 213, 217–18, 219,

233n108; Persons 164, 196

Vasconcelos, José 17Vattimo, Gianni 20–1n52Veritas Prima 32virtues 29–30, 37Volf, Miroslav 231–2n108, 233n109voluntarism 79, 233n109

Walker, Adrian 11n23al-Warraq, Abu ’Isa 198, 201, 214,

223waters 80, 81Weinandy, Thomas G.: attributes

48n6, 64; Father/Son 159–60n48;God 75; Presence 90n57; relationof Trinity 163; salvation history110n1; suffering 96n76; YHWH61

West, Cornel 12Wiles, Maurice 146Williams, A. N. 3, 5n10, 19n48,

26n7, 97n80, 111Williams, Rowan 27n9, 152n28,

196n119Wippel, John F. 47–8n3, 153n29Wisdom: Aquinas 27, 28–34, 37;

Aristotle 29; charity 30–1;contemplation 239–40; Cross 241;as gift 30–1, 33; human knowing33; Jesus Christ 139, 147; Logos182, 187n76; revelation 33–4; sacradoctrina 27, 28–9, 31, 33, 37;theology 4, 37–8; truth 30; Word187n76; YHWH 117

Wisdom of Solomon 51, 59, 101,181–2

Witherington, Ben III: Father169–71, 174, 178; Holy Spirit 186,188, 189–90, 194, 196; John’sGospel 40–1, 148n16; NewTestament/Trinity 167–8; Son 179,181–2, 184

Word: Aquinas 148–9n19, 151n27,179–80, 183–4; Coffey 147–8;Father 180, 183–4; God 156; JesusChrist 237; John’s Gospel 182–3;procession 158, 232–3; Son 157,158, 228; Spirit 159; truth 45;Wisdom 187n76; see also Logos

worship/doctrine 6n11

254 index

Wright, N. T. 110; God’s identity111, 112–14; Jesus Christ114–15n20; resurrection 113;Second Temple Judaism 118; Son112–13; Trinitarian theology133–4; YHWH 143

YHWH 4, 41; Aquinas 67–8, 71–2;autonomy 80; being 53–7, 61–6;Father 70; God 237; as God ofIsrael 77; identity 54, 56n27, 57,

116–17, 118; Jesus 56n27, 63, 113;Levenson 77–83; Leviticus 49;metaphysics 65, 71–2; OldTestament 74; personality 78;Persons 233–5; revelation 11; truth57n27; Weinandy 61; Wright 143

Zizioulas, John: Being as Communion200, 205–10; essentialism 207;relation 213; Trinitarian ontology205–10, 212

scripture and metaphysics: aquinas and the renewal of trinitarian theology

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