Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?

The Thomist 64 (2000): 521-63 ESSENTIALISM OR PERSONALISM IN THE TREATISE ON GOD IN SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS?1 GILLES EMERY, 0.P. University ofFribourg Fribourg. Switzerland The relationship between the unity of God and the distinction of persons belongs among the foremost points of controversy in the interpretation of the Trinitarian theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. The discussion has for some time crystallized around the "essentialism" or "personalism" that is attributed to Aquinas's treatise. Such a problematic (in which the very terms of the alternatives already determine the kind of solution that one can adopt) lies at the intersection of many approaches and different methods of analysis, because it involves not only the recovering of the thought of Thomas Aquinas from a historical perspective, but also the profoundly speculative fundamental notions ofhis Trinitarian theology (person, relation, essence, notional act, etc.), the relationship between theology and philosophy, and finally thevery aim ofTrinitarian theology. After a brief overview of the debate, we will present the general framework of a reading that investigates the Trinitarian doctrine of St. Thomas on the relationship between person and essence in God. I. A LONG AND WIDE-RANGING DEBATE When, at the end of the nineteenth century, Theodore de Regnon examined the Trinitarian synthesis of Thomas Aquinas, 1 This article first appeared as Gilles Emery, O.P., "Essentialisme ou personnalisme dans le traite de Dieu chez saint Thomas d'Aquin?" Revue Thomiste 98 (1998): 5-38. The translation is by Matthew Levering. 521 522 GILLES EMERY, O.P. his analysis led him to formulate the problem of an "essential" approach as opposed to a more personal representation of the mystery of God. It provided the basis of the distinction that, since de Regnon, has become customary to introduce: the distinction between the "Greek" conception which begins with the consideration of the persons, and the "Latin" or "Scholastic" conception which takes its point of departure in the unity of the essence or the divine substance.2 The problem identified by this pioneer the history of Trinitarian doctrine concerns not only the methodological priority of the divine essence in Thomas, but also connection between essence and person in his use of the psychological analogy derived from Augustine: "AH the Augustinian theory, if superb when it begins from a 'personal' God, risks dissolving when it analyzes the acts of a 'nature' identical to many persons."3 Such is, since then, the problem constandy posed in the reading of the treatise on the Trinity Aquinas's Summa Theologiae : does his theological elaboration, very attentive to the prerogatives of the essence or nature of God~ adequately take account of the tripersonal reality of God? Placed at the heart of the interpretation of the history of doctrine sketched by de Regnon, this question is intensified by the contrasts which it is inscribed: Thomas manifests a concern for conceptual organization rather than a contemplative approach to the mystery of God, a recourse to a "static" metaphysics rather than to a "dynamic" thought, etc.4 the extension of this schema of interpretation, the theology of Thomas Aquinas becomes the focal point of difficulties attributed to a large current of Latin medieval thought which, following Augustine, accorded primacy to the divine essence rather than to the persons and was devdoped on the basis 2 Cf. Th. de Regnon, Etudes de theologie positive sur la sainte Trinite (Pa.iris: Victor Retaux, 11192-98), 1:335-40, 428-35. 3 Ibid., 2:214. 4 Ibid., 2:128-29, 447-51. THE ESSENCE AND THE PERSONS 523 of a metaphysics rather than by reference to the history of salvation.5 Karl Rahner has summarized this difficulty in regard to the division of the treatise on God into a treatise De Deo uno and a treatise De Deo trino: "If one begins with the basic notions of the Augustinian and western approach, a non-Trinitarian treatise De Deo Uno comes apparently automatically before De Deo Trino."6 Rahner specifies that this separation first occured in St. Thomas, for reasons which have not yet been clearly explained. St. Thomas does not begin with God the Father as the unengendered origin in the Godhead, the origin of all reality in...