The Personal Mode of Trinitarian Action in Saint Thomas Aquinas

The Thomist 69 (2005): 31-77 THE PERSONAL MODE OF TRINITARIAN ACTION IN SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS1 GILLES EMERY, 0.P. University ofFribourg Fribourg, Switzerland HEN SCHOLASTIC theologians explore the economic act of the Trinity, they frequently refer to the doctrine of appropriations. They understand by "appropriation" the attribution to one divine person of features common to the whole Trinity, in order to illumine better the distinct properties of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.2 It is in this way, for example, that the Scholastic authors of the thirteenth century generally considered the attribution of creation to the Father ("I believe God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth") or sanctification to the Holy Spirit believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life").3 Resting on a complex analysis of the divine attributes, the theory of appropriations possesses a realism 1 English translation by Matthew Levering. A portion of this article appeared in an earlier French version in the Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie 50 (2003): 334-53. 2 St. Bonaventure, Breviloquium I, c. 6 (Opera omnia, vol. 5 [Quaracchi: Ed. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1891], 214-15). 3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 45, a. 6, ad 2. The aim of appropriation is not to diminish the personal features of the Trinity (as is sometimes suggested by modern criticism) but, on the contrary, to make the persons more manifest to believers (STh I, q. 39, a. 7). References to Aquinas are taken from the following editions. Summa Theologiae: Leonine Edition, vols. 4-12 (Rome, 1888-1906); Scriptum on books I and Hof the Sentences: ed. P. Mandonnet, 2 vols. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929); Summa contra Gentiles: ed. P. Marc, C. Pera, and others, 3 vols. (Turin-Rome: Marietti, 1961-67); Qv.aestiones Disputatae De Veritate: Leonine Edition, vol. 22 (Rome, 1975-76); Quaestiones Disputatae De Potentia: ed. P. Bazzi and others (Turin-Rome: Marietti, 1965); Quaestiones De Quolibet: Leonine Edition, vol. 25 (Rome, 1996); Contra errores Graecorum: Leonine Edition, vol. 40A (Rome, 1967); Lectura in Ioannem: ed. R. Cai (Turin-Rome: Marietti, 1952); SuperEpistolas S. Pauli lectura, ed. R. Cai, 2 vols. (Turin-Rome: Marietti, 1953). 31 32 GILLES EMERY, O.P. that Albert the Great, for example, describes by explaining that Trinitarian appropriation is founded "on the side of the reality itself" and not solely in our mind.4 However, today the theory ofappropriations provokes reservations among many theologians who accuse it of obscuring the personal dimension of the Trinitarian act or running the risk of being a mere linguistic game.5 The appropriative method would be quite unsatisfying if one regarded the divine act as pertaining exclusively to the divine essence and the Trinitarian dimension as dependent only on an appropriation. In other words, appropriation would be badly understood if one used it in order to cover up or "disguise" a monist conception of divine action. Is appropriation, however, the sole explication of the Trinitarian dimension of the divine act? Is it not necessary, rather, to recognize a mode of acting proper to each divine person, beyond the appropriations? Certain oft-repeated diches in this domain aim at opposing the Thomist tradition to the Greek tradition (with the latter recognizing a distinct mode of acting of the hypostases in the single operation of the Trinity).6 In fact, the texts show that Thomas Aquinas upholds a personal, proper modality of the act of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. It is this teaching, too little known even today, that we wish to present here, by situating it in its doctrinal context. The structure of this article will be as follows. I will describe first the fundamental principle of the thought of St. Thomas concerning the Trinitarian act: The Father creates and does everything by his Son in the Holy Spirit (1). This principle 4 St. Albert the Great, I Sent., d. 34, a. 5 (Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, vol. 26 [Paris: Vives, 1893], 171). Following his master, St. ThomasAquinas explains: "From the standpoint of the reality, the likeness of the appropriated attribute to the person's property makes the congruity of the appropriation, a congruence...