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Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Theological Method by Timothy L. Smith (review)
- The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 67, Number 4, October 2003
- pp. 645-648
- 10.1353/tho.2003.0005
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
BOOK REVIEWS Thomas Aquinas' Trinitarian Theology: A Study in Theological Method. By TIMOTHY L. SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Pp. 258. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8132-1097-6. The Trinitarian theology of Thomas Aquinas is difficult and its interpretation remains a subject of controversy. The majority of twentieth-century theologians have severely criticized it: some have seen it as an attempt to provide a rational demonstration of the Trinity, others have characterized it as speculative reflection detached from the economy of salvation. Going back to Theodore of Regnon, and continuing through Michael Schmaus and Karl Rabner, many theologians have seen in St. Thomas the representative par excellence of an essentialist "Latin tradition" as opposed to a personalist "Greek tradition." Even today, manuals of theology continue to reproduce cliches of this sort. For this reason, Timothy Smith's work, which purports to show the inaccuracy of such interpretations, is a welcome contribution. Smith does not concentrate on the doctrinal content of Aquinas's theology but rather on his method, for a proper understanding of this method is required in order to have a correct reading of the treatise on the Trinity. The trajectory of this study is not linear. First of all, Smith provides an exposition of the context and the structure of the questions on the Trinity in the Summa Theologiae (chap. 1), then the order observed in the study of essence and of the divine persons (chap. 2), next the coordination of essential and proper terms (chap. 3, with a discussion of Trinitarian appropriations), and then the historical context of theological language (chap. 4). Finally, he underlines St. Thomas's originality in what constitutes the heart of the matter: naming God (chap. 5). This project allows us to lay to rest the methodological criticisms often leveled at Aquinas. Smith's research has much to recommend it. He aptly demonstrates that history and soteriology occupy a central place in the structure of the Summa Theologiae (12-20). He convincingly demonstrates that, for St. Thomas, the doctrine ofthe Trinity is "the interpretive framework for understanding all other doctrines" (29). In comparing Augustine and Thomas, Smith shows that it is impossible to speak of a single "Latin tradition" in Trinitarian theology (68-70, 119, 231). He also clearly establishes that for St. Thomas, the persons are never conceived of as a derivation of the divine essence. This is a veritable leitmotif: it is impossible rationally to demonstrate the Trinitarian processions (70-79, 645 646 BOOK REVIEWS "'"'"""',...,,,< and of appropriations manifests that the originality of Thomas in his theory of the divine names (1 This fundamental point is made explicit by an analysis of the distinction that Aquinas makes between the manner of signifying (modus significandi) and what is signified (res significata; 140-44). We name God as we know him; we do not know what God is in Himself, but only what God is not; however, we are able to make affirmative statements, with a substantial value, about God. These elements of the doctrine of analogy are indispensable in order to grasp the methodology of the treatise on the Trinity. At this point, Smith enters into a long discussion to show that, thanks to the distinction between the modus significandi and the res significata, the Thomistic doctrine of analogy respects the incomprehensibility of God without leading to agnosticism: our language signifies the divine reality means of concepts formed by our mind; it depends upon the mode of our knowledge and the reality outside the mind. There is neither an exact correspondence between our language and the known reality nor is there an equivocation of the agnostic type. In a long historical discussion (160-203), Smith shows that, on the one hand, such a denial of "linguistic immediacy" excludes any direct influence of the modistae ("speculative grammarians") on St. Thomas. On the other hand, however, Aquinas dearly upholds the affirmative and substantial value ofthe language that revelation gives us to name and come to know the Triune God. Our naming, although imperfect and incomplete, "does indeed refer to God properly" (233): the aim "is not grammatical but metaphysical" (234). The goal of this study is thus attained: "We showed that Thomas' Trinitarian language is not a rational demonstration but a logical presentation and investigation of doctrine" (231). Such is the project of "faith seeking understanding" which this work serves to illuminate. In order to demonstrate the unity of the treatise on God in St. Thomas, Smith takes up the solution formerly proposed by Carl Strater, S.J.: when Thomas considers the divine essence (STh I, qq. 2-26), the word "essence" means "the total essence," that is to say "the total divine reality" (pp. 24-25). Yet it is debatable whether Strater's solution resolves the problem: as I have previously written elsewhere (The Thomist 64 [2000]: 534), the concept of "total essence" is quite embarrassing. If questions 2-26 of the Prima Pars refer to such "total divine reality," does this mean that questions 27-43, which are about the distinction of the persons, refer to something "less total," or different from the "total reality of God"? The distinction between what is "common" and what is "proper" to the divine persons, apart from being much more traditional in Christian doctrine, may prove more helpful in explaining the structure of the treatise in the Summa. Moreover, along with Strater, Smith attributes to Cajetan responsibility for the modem interpretations that have separated the treatise on the "One God" and that on the "Triune God" (39-46). Granted that Cajetan introduces some new precisions in the reading of St. Thomas, it nevertheless can be shown that there are important similarities with some of Aquinas's own explanations. Thus, for example, Smith reproaches Cajetan for thinking that the BOOK REVIEWS 647 subject of the phrase "God creates" refers to the divine essence as an absolute and concrete subsistence (45). Yet, is this affirmation so far from St. Thomas's position? Aquinas explains: "creatio est opus essentiae divinae, unde est opus suppositi indistincti" (I Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 4, ad 2). The proceedings brought against Cajetan here do not help to resolve the problem of interpreting Thomas. Smith credits the Summa with having clarified the concept of procession and, this is of note, having eliminated the term "natural" from the discussion of processions (84). But he claims that the name "Son" "has virtually no epistemological value except as it is indicative of the mutual distinctions within the Trinity" (105). He therefore distinguishes between "Proper names" (capital P) and "proper names": the former (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) tell us that there are distinctions in God by means of relations of origin, although "they do not, however, tell us about the proper identity of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit" (109), while the latter (Word, Love, Gift) are called proper "simply by reason of being specific to one Person" (107; cf. 105, 108-9). Thus, the term "Love" "has only negligible semantic import" (107). These explanations are very disappointing. Smith does not seem to consider the precise relationship between the name "Son" and the name "Word," and he pays little attention to the function of the study ofthe name "Love": the analogy of the Word and of Love, which is at the very heart ofThomas's Trinitarian doctrine, is thus obscured. The same malaise might be said to afflict his understanding of the relationship between origins and relations in God. How are we to understand the statement that "For Thomas the origins and relations of the Persons are not distinct at all, not even according to our understanding" (153)? If our mind does not distinguish between origins (procession) and relations, whythen does St. Thomas study them in a distinct manner? Smith's work contains other expressions that seem either awkward or unfortunate. Despite the fact that he clearly maintains the affirmative and substantial character of our language about God, his explanations concerning the proper names of the divine persons tend surprisinglytoward apophatism, bordering on agnosticism (see for example 15455 ). My final criticism concerns the historical aspect of the question. Smith demonstrates, with great erudition, how St. Thomas distinguishes himself from the modistae: on this point, it is by means of the history of doctrine that the originality of Aquinas is brought to light. Yet this historical aspect is hardly appealed to in the study of the treatise on the Trinity itself: missing here is a discussion of Thomas's contemporaries. On one point, at least, Smith does compare Aquinas with St. Albert the Great on their interpretation of PseudoDionysius (210-28). He argues that Albert names God first "good" rather than "being," thereby disagreeing with Aquinas. Albert's basis for naming God by way of analogy "is not, as it is for Thomas, the participation of creatures in the divine perfections" (211, cf. 225); Albert also "denies that we can have access to the being of God even in the beatific vision" (ibid.). According to Smith, Albert's reading ofthe Divine Names is guided by the complete negation of knowing and 648 BOOK REVIEWS language, because Albert teaches that we can reach God as cause of creatures and not as He is in himself, so that Albert's understanding of divine names is "fundamentally negative" (218). ForAlbert, "divine predication remains equivocal" (216). While it is true that Albert strongly emphasizes the negative aspect of analogy, perhaps his thought is more complex. On the one hand, he maintains that the name "being" naturally precedes the name "good": it is solely in respect to the relationship to effects, that is the "prout sunt in causa," that the name "good" has a priority over the name "being" (Albert, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, c. 13 [ed. Colon., t. 37/1, p. 449]; cf. Albert, I Sent., d. 2, a. 14). This teaching is in fact identical to that of St. Thomas. In his commentary on Dionysius's Divine Names, Albert emphasizes the second point of view, namely the divine attributes as cause of creatures, because such is the subject matter of the Divine Names (in Albert's interpretation). On the other hand, Albert does not say that we attain to God solely under the aspect of his activity ad extra. Certainly, we come to know God from our knowledge of creatures, but our analogical knowledge is capable of naming that which belongs to God substantially (secundum substantiam) and absolutely (and not only causally). This appears dearly in Albert, Super Dionysium De divinis nominibus, c. 1 (ed. Colon., t. 37/1, pp. 2, 25, 35, etc.), as was established by Francis Ruello (Les "noms divins" et leurs "raisons" selon saint Albert le Grand commentateur du "De divinis nominibus" [Paris: Vrin, 1963], pp. 43-117). For these reasons, granting that Albert can be interpreted in many different ways, Smith's interpretation seems at least questionable. Timothy Smith's study is very useful for definitively dismissing certain criticisms leveled against St. Thomas's theology, in particular the charge that sees in Aquinas a rationalist attempt to demonstrate the Trinity. The attention paid to methodology and analogy is also key: Smith is to be commended for dearly calling this to mind. But on some points, it seems to me that this present work remains incomplete and contains debatable interpretations. Perhaps it would be necessary to study the content of Trinitarian doctrine in a more detailed fashion, for in St. Thomas, method is intimately linked with the object of study. A historical approach in this line of research could also be useful were it to be pursued not only in the Summa but in Thomas's other works as weH and then comparing them with those of other theologians in the thirteenth century. (Translated by John Langlois, O.P.) University ofFribourg Fribourg, Switzerland GILLES EMERY ...