The Problem of Trinitarian Processions in Thomas’s Roman Commentary

The Thomist 64 (2000): 619-29 THE PROBLEM OF TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS IN THOMAS'S ROMAN COMMENTARY1 WILLIAM B. STEVENSON St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland It seems providential, at a time in which we have seen a revival of scholarly interest in the Trinity, that a work of Thomas devoted largely to an explication of the doctrine of the Trinity should have been discovered.2 The Roman Commentary gives us a glimpse into the mind of Thomas as it was immediately prior to fashioning what must be considered his definitive treatment of the doctrine.3 That treatment, found in Summa Theologiae I, qq. 1 A version of this paper was presented at the Thirty-Fourth International Congress of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 1999. 2 We now know that Thomas commented on the Sentences of Peter Lombard twice. In addition to the Scriptum on all four books of the Sentences, which he wrote while a bachelor at Paris (1252-56), he commented on the first book a second rime as a master (1265-66). Such an undertaking was unusual for a master, but as the occasion for this second commentary was Thomas's establishment of a Dominican studium in Rome, it may have been intended for the instruction of those just starting their theological studies-that is, those "beginners" referred to in the Prologue of the Summa Theologiae. This second commentary is now commonly referred to as the Roman Commentary in order to distinguish it from the Parisian Scriptum of a decade earlier. The Roman Commentary is found in Oxford, Lincoln College Ms. Lat. 95. Leonard E. Boyle positively established Thomas's authorship of the text in "'Alia lectura fratris Thome,"' Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 418-29. The critical edition of the text is being prepared by Leonard E. Boyle and John F. Boyle. The texts used in this article are working texts prepared byJohn F. Boyle and are at this point strictly provisional. For incipits and explicits, see Mark F. Johnson, "'Alia lectura fratris Thome': A List of the New Texts of Sr. Thomas Aquinas found in Lincoln College, Oxford, MS. Lat. 95," Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 57 (1990): 34-61. 3 For a further examination of the practical and theoretical exigencies of Thornas's Trinitarian thought in the Roman Commentary, see John F. Boyle "The Ordering of Trinitarian Teaching in Thomas Aquinas' Second Commentary on Lombard's Sentences," 619 620 WILLIAM B. STEVENSON 27-43, masterfully transforms Augustine's Trinitarian thought, which restricted the image of the Trinity to the ratio superior of the human person, by setting it within the framework of an Aristotelian ontology. Thomas's re-casting of Augustine's psychological analogy into an Aristotelian framework is a remarkable achievement because it allowed him to sublate an analogy based on a psychology of the soul into a general metaphysical analysis of cognitional acts.4 Hence, when one reads qq. 27-29 of the Prima pars one finds a thinker for whom the relation between intra-divine processions, relations, and persons has ceased to be a problem. The Trinitarian theology of the Summa is, of course, not merely the result of identifying Aristotelian equivalents to Augustine's memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas.5 Indeed, that triad is conspicuously absent. The Summa's treatment of the Trinity is the product of a much more radical re-appropriation of Augustine. We must remember that no fewer than 22 "trinities" are found in Augustine's work, 13 of which are discussed in the De Trinitate. In the Summa, we have the intra-divine processions, conceived according to a single analogy of intelligible emanation, which ground the relations, which in turn ground and, insofar as they subsist, are the divine persons. We now know that the mastery demonstrated by this sort of seamless treatment of the doctrine came only at the end of a life spent wrestling with Augustine's legacy. In the Roman Commentary we see Thomas's final sustained attempt at developing a Trinitarian theology on the analogy of memory, intellect, and will. It is an attempt he Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale Supplementa (1995): 125-36. 4 Perhaps the most detailed...