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2 Aquinas the Augustinian? On the Uses of Augustine in Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology Bruce D. Marshall Pia expositio patrum: A Case Study Deep in the Summa theologiae’s questions on the Trinity, St. Thomas Aquinas detects a problem in the Trinitarian theology of St. Augustine. The issue, very extensively discussed in medieval Trinitarian theology from the twelfth century on, is whether the divine essence generates, or is generated—whether the essence itself, and not merely one or another of the divine Persons, can rightly be said to generate or beget anything, or to be generated or begotten by anything. The answer is an emphatic no: “The essence does not generate the essence.”1 Generating and being generated are each characteristics which are proper or unique to a divine Person (to the Father and to the Son, respectively ). And, Aquinas says, “those things which are proper to the persons, the characteristics by which they are distinguished from one another, cannot be attributed to the essence” (ST I, q. 39, a. 5, c). In defense of this judgment Aquinas offers a semantic argument, the details of which need not concern us here, about modes of signification and the supposition of terms.2 But in any  1. ST I, q. 39, a. 5, s.c. I will cite the Summa theologiae parenthetically in the text following the Latin text in the Blackfriars edition. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 2. On the argument itself, see Bruce D. Marshall, “In Search of an Analytic Aquinas: Grammar case Lateran IV had, some fifty years earlier, already condemned the teaching, which it associated with Joachim of Fiore, that the divine essence generates or is generated.3 The question that interests Aquinas is not whether it is wrong to hold that the essence generates, but why. Unhappily, Aquinas observes, no less an authority on the Trinity than St. Augustine apparently held precisely that the essence does generate. In book VII of De Trinitate, near the conclusion of an involved discussion of what would later be called Trinitarian appropriations, Augustine says that “the Father and the Son are one wisdom because they are one essence, and taken one by one they are wisdom from wisdom, just as they are essence from essence.”4 This evidently entails what Thomas himself has just denied, that when the Father generates the Son, it happens that the essence generates the essence. Surely the divine essence could not be “from” any essence other than itself, and could not be from anything unless some kind of generation were involved, so Aquinas takes it to be obvious that Augustine’s “essentia de essentia ” implies the rightly rejected “essentia generat essentiam.” What shall we do when the highest authority among the Fathers in matters pertaining to the Trinity apparently got it wrong? In spite of his standing, Aquinas firmly replies, we do not follow Augustine on this point, lest we repeat his mistake. Instead we correct him. Or perhaps more precisely, we find a way of interpreting him in optimam partem, so that whatever their surface meaning, his utterances come out in conformity to a correct view of the matter . When it comes to problems about essence and person in the Trinity, Aquinas points out, “the holy teachers sometimes went beyond what correct speech allows. In such cases we do not repeat what they said, but explain it.”5 What and the Trinity,” in Grammar and Grace, ed. Robert MacSwain and Jeffrey Stout (London: SCM Press, 2004), 55–74. 3. See especially DH 804 (=Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, 40th ed. [Freiburg: Herder, 2005]), and the essays cited in notes 2 above and 20 below. 4. De Trinitate, VII, 3. I will cite the De Trinitate by book and section number, following the enumeration in CCL 50 and 50A, and omitting the intervening chapter numbers. Page and line references are to this edition (here: CCL 50, p. 250.22–23). 5. ST I, q. 39, a. 5, ad 1: “Ad exprimendam unitatem essentiae et personae sancti doctores aliquando expressius locuti sunt quam proprietas locutionis patiatur. Unde huiusmodi locutiones non sunt extendendae sed exponendae.” The practice of putting the best construction on an authoritative text (authentica scriptura) applies across the board, and not only to Augustine. Reflecting on the statement “Solus Pater est Deus,” for example, Aquinas observes that while it admits of a benign interpretation, nonetheless “non est extendenda talis locutio...

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