MMM Gone Wild at Paris! Or, the Birth of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology (Scott)

“All we need is one substance to cure the ills of our society!” “I have personal experience with substance abuse, and it is wrong.”

Before I start a mini-series on the Trinitarian thought of Henry of Ghent, I thought it would be good to offer a brief survey of the late 13th c. landscape. This is way too brief and fairly focused, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere. As the scholastics would say, you cannot will to do something, unless you have some sort of knowledge. No voluntary action without knowledge, however imperfect or confused that knowledge is! (As an aside: Jean-Luc Marion, a contemporary philosophical-theologian and former student of Jacques Derrida contests this medieval Aristotelian claim, and argues that acts of will –i.e. to love- does or can precede any knowledge.)

Of all the issues to discuss about the Trinity the one at hand here is the question: what causes or explains why the divine persons are really distinct from each other? We know there are three persons, and one ‘substance’/’ousia’ from Scripture and our orthodox Creeds, but is there anything that we could say that might account for why there are three, and not say five divine persons? Or even, why not say there is a potential infinity of divine persons (on some contestable account of the deification of believers)? You get my point. Why three divine persons and what makes it that there are three, no more and no less?

Thomas Aquinas, the better known and infinitely more translated into English, has some interesting things to say in response to our questions above. In regards to our question two scholars, Gilles Emery and Russell Friedman to offer differing interpretations on just how Thomas answers our question. But in order to get to what the debate is over, you need to know about certain models ready-to-hand for folk like Aquinas in the 13th.

According to Friedman, there were three general models for answering these questions which were available for use and implementation in the 13th c. and early 14th. Two of these models derive from Augustine’s De Trintate (4th c.), and the third from Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate (12th c.). When I say ‘derive from Augustine’, I mean 13th c. folk learned about these two models by reading his book; Augustine himself surely got these from others before him (e.g. Ambrose’s De Trinitate).

Model One via Augustine: relation model. On this view, divine persons are really distinct from each other because they are constituted and distinguished by one term of a correlation. If there is a Father, then there is a child (i.e. a Son). If there is a spirator, then there is a spirated Spirit (as we will see in due course this correlation receives some criticism, or at least respectful doubt about its success). This model does not explicitly commit you to saying there are three subjects (Father, Son and Holy Spirit [F,S,HS]) with one common essence (divine essence [DE]), or to saying there is one subject, i.e. substance, [DE] with three real modes that are correlatives [F,S,HS].

Model Two via Augustine: psychological model. On this view, divine persons are really distinct from each other because a divine person is constituted by some psychological property. For example, we could say the first divine person is the divine memory, and the second divine person is divine intelligence (otherwise called the divine Word), and the third divine person is divine love. (‘Word’ theology is a pre-Nicene account of the Son. This is derived from John 1:1, and other NT passages that call the Son ‘God’s wisdom and power’.) These are three really distinct property, but all are identical with the same subject/substance. As you may guess, Augustine uses this as an analogy. He does not really these psychological properties are the precise properties that constitute and distinguish the divine persons otherwise the Father wouldn’t have intelligence and love unless he was united to S and HS. And likewise, S wouldn’t have memory and love unless he was united to F and HS; and likewise, HS wouldn’t have memory and intelligence unless united to F and S. This is a position orthodox theologians reject, precisely because it would posit psychological imperfections in F, S, and HS respectively. Still, this is a helpful for to trying to understand how there can be three who are one, just like how Augustine himself had three psychological properties and yet was one substance.

Model Three via Richard of St. Victor: emanation model. What distinguishes divine persons is their diverse ‘causal’ origins within the very same divine essence. F is (i) ‘from no one, and productive of another’; S is (ii)‘from another, and productive of another’; and HS is (iii) ‘from another, and productive of none’. There is a symmetry here, and moreover, each divine person has a different ‘causal’ origin. And Richard thinks if persons have diverse causal origins, then persons are not identical and thus really distinct. His use of ‘causal’ here is technical. Prior to making this claim in his De Trinitate that S and HS are ‘caused’, he has ‘proved’ by a ‘necessary argument’ that there can only be three sorts of essences or powers (potentia). There are those essences that are: (1) eternal and from them self, (2) eternal and from another, and (3) temporal and from another. He argues that God is (1), and that there can only be one (1). So when he moves on to discuss divine persons of that very same eternal-and-not-from-another-essence, he will argue, on the basis of the plenitude of wisdom and love in DE, that there must be a perfect community of divine persons, that there can only be three persons for a perfect community, and that each divine person must be constituted by some property, a personal property [PP] that objectively distinguishes this person from that person. He thinks (i)-(iii) are such [PP]s.

By the time Aquinas comes on the scene around in the mid to late 13th c. he has written commentaries on many of Aristotle’s texts (esp. On the Soul/De Anima), and has developed his own psychological account of human, angelic and divine cognition! With all the technical psychological tools that Aquinas has, he characterizes how the Son emanates from/comes from/proceeds from/is produced by the Father by saying that the Son is the ‘Word of the Father’. A ‘Word’ is like a concept that your intellect can make. It is not itself an act of thinking, but rather it is a mental object that your mind can make, so that this ‘Word’ you make to exist in your mind is really distinct from your intellect just sitting there doing other stuff. In fact, a ‘perfect Word’ will be a perfect copy of everything you, or in this case, God, could and does think.

Here then is where the quasi-debate between Emery and Friedman arises. Emery thinks that when Aquinas says S is the divine ‘Word’, and that F by means of an intellectual productive act produces this Word, that Aquinas is speaking technically and not metaphorically or loosely. However, Friedman thinks Aquinas is speaking metaphorically. So, is Aquinas speaking metaphorically or not? Friedman reduces the debate to the question: what is the rock bottom account given by Aquinas that (clearly) explains the real distinction? Aquinas has various passages explicitly affirming a version of Model One, and Friedman takes this as evidence that Aquinas speaks metaphorically about calling S the divine Word, and so is less committed to a version of Model Two where S is a Word in addition to being a Son. Friedman mentions Aquinas’s worry that _being a Son_ is not identical to _being a Word_. So this gives Aquinas a moments pause to say _being a Word_ is the proper and particular property that distinguishes the 2nd person of the trinity from the 1st person. Emery, a Dominican himself, is willing to let Aquinas affirm Model One and a version of Model Two such that _being a Word_ in God is somehow the same as _being a Son_ in God. Friedman and Emery have yet to put on the boxing gloves in print, so far as I know. Yet who do I think is correct or nearer the truth?

Friedman employs historical argumentation about how Aquinas as a Dominican and those wily Franciscans (e.g. Duns Scotus or Peter Aureol) disagreed. The Dominicans (e.g. Giles of Rome) sided with Model One though kept the language of the divine ‘Word’ because of the theological authority and respect such a name deserves because it comes from St. John’s Gospel and the respected St. Augustine. On the other hand, the Franciscans sided with a version of Model Two and a version of Model Three while keeping Model One. Ultimately, some will say the distinction btwn. _being a Word_ and _being a Son_ are two descriptions of the same object, i.e. the 2nd person of the Trinity; and that this PP is a (cor)relative property.

Of course, both Dominicans and Franciscans would use all three models in various contexts and points; indeed, as Friedman argues, the Franciscans employed ‘nested distinctions’ in order to have their cake and eat it too. So they could use all three models, or at least look like they do! Still, when it comes down to our very precise question: what causes or explains the real distinction between divine persons, the debate was heated!

Notice that not a word has really been said about the Holy Spirit (yet). Friedman’s text, an unpublished Phd. dissertation that is currently being re-written for publication, is titled, ‘In Principio Erat Verbum: The Incorporation of Philosophical Psychology Into Trinitarian Theology, 1250-1325′. So his focus is entirely on the Father and Son. Once we get deep into H.o.G.-land, we’ll get our belly’s full of the Holy Spirit whom Henry calls: Inflamative Love, Illuminative Love, Manifestive Love, Zeal, and more (notice that _being spirated_ is not front and center? Though of course– it will be there in due course; he employs all three Models. The more the merrier!)!

Tune in next time for the role that Henry of Ghent played in this Trinitarian disputation gone wild, Live! @ the University of Paris.

Preview: Henry (according to Friedman) more or less started the heated Trinitarian dispute between Dominicans and Franciscans by arguing that the Son proceeds from the Father, not ‘by nature’, but ‘by intellect’. A truly provocative claim, at least at the time and circumstances. Indeed, Henry was neither a Dominican nor a Franciscan so there was no automatic-fan-club after he died (as was the case for the Dominican Aquinas), though his 16 yr. career (1276-92) gave him enough time to influence a generation of students and keep up with his dart throwing at Giles of Rome; and you wonder why you’ve never heard of the H.o.G. until now.