St. Thomas' Christology: Synthesis of De Deo Uno et Trino and De Homine

St. Thomas' Christology: Synthesis of De Deo Uno et Trino and De Homine

If you are a Thomistic philosopher without formal theological training, odds are you have not had a chance to study St. Thomas' IIIa Pars at any depth.  At best, as part of our Thomistic philosophical studies we philosophers have to read good chunks of the Summa theologiae, primarily select philosophically-themed questions, such as the text on the Five Ways and other questions on the One God (Ia, qq. 2-26), the questions on man (Ia, qq. 75 and following), good chuncks of the Ia-IIae on beatitude, human acts, on habits and virtues, and on law.  But rarely do we go out of those traditional loci Thomistici.  We hardly ever venture into the IIIa Pars, which is so clearly theological (although I would of course argue that the whole Summa is theological, through and through).    

But we philosophers should definitely read the IIIa Pars carefully.  In St. Thomas' Christological section of the IIIa Pars (qq. 1-59, esp. 1-26) we find so many of his philosophical doctrines coming into play in a marvellous way. This section is a true eye-opener for the philosopher: we can see the theological ‘mileage’ that St. Thomas gets out of his philosophical concepts. It is truly amazing how his philosophy of mind—which he discussed for its own sake in the Ia Pars—is now being applied perfectly to Christ's humanity in a way that it takes on new life.  

Further, this application of philosophical doctrines to Christ leads us to realize that in the Ia Pars he must have had Christ’s humanity in the back of his mind all along. The same can be said of his discussion of the virtues in the IIa pars (in particular the virtue of religion, with its discussion on prayer, and sacrifice). St. Thomas applies these questions so beautifully to his Christology, and therefore when writing the IIa Pars he must have anticipated what he was going to do here in the IIIa Pars.  I imagine he must have had all of these Christological applications in the back of his mind in those earlier sections because from the beginning it is evident that he had a very thoroughly detailed architectonic plan of what he wanted to do, so he must have thought of how the earlier sections applied to later sections from the beginning. 

Thus, the unity and harmony of the science of Sacred Theology, and of the mysteries of the faith that theology seeks to elucidate, really comes to light in this Christological section. Whereas before, in the Ia Pars he spoke of God in Himself, and then of man in himself (continuing on in the IIa Pars), here in the IIIa Pars he harmoniously applies both of those doctrinal treatises to the mystery of the God-man. Hence, Garrigou-Lagrange comments: 

Because the simpler things come before the composite… in the preceding parts of the Summa... what pertains to God and to man are discussed separately, whereas the present treatise is concerned with Him who is both God and man.¹

¹ Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, Christ the Savior, prologue. http://www.ewtn.com/library/theology/christ1.htm#00

 

Quaeritur: How are Trinitarian Processions Compatible with Divine Immutability and Eternity?

Quaeritur: How are Trinitarian Processions Compatible with Divine Immutability and Eternity?

Quaeritur: In Summa theologiae Ia, q.27, Aquinas explains in great detail what is going on inside the Trinity. The two internal processions: the Father generates the Son. The Father and the Son spirate the Holy Spirit. All of these terms seem to imply movement—emanating from, coming forth, a breathing out, etc., yet we learned earlier that God is immutable. There is no movement in God as that would imply potentiality, and in God there is no potential, He is pure act. How can movement and immutability seemingly coexist?

There also seems to be an ordering or succession of the divine persons—God the Father, the First Principle, unbegotten. God the Son, begotten, generated from God the Father. God the Holy Spirit, spirated from God the Father and God the Son. But in God there is one divine essence, not shared by the three persons, but subsisting in each one. And in God essence and existence are one and the same thing. How can we reconcile the one essence and existence of the divine persons with their apparent succession?

Respondeo: Excellent questions.  God is indeed immutable Pure Act, and therefore in Him there cannot be any sort of motion whatsoever.  It is also not quite correct to say that there is "succession" in God, because that would imply motion.  Rather, the Divine Processions are eternal processions: the Father eternally begets the Son, and the Father and Son eternally spirate the Holy Ghost.  The consequence is a priority and posteriority among the persons in God: but not a temporal priority, since the Father does not exist "before" the Son, nor do they exist "before" the Holy Ghost.  Rather, there is an order among the persons with regard to their procession.  The Father proceeds from no one: He is innascible, unbegotten, unspirated.  The Son proceeds from the Father by way of generation, and together with the Father (the Father through Him) spirates the Holy Ghost.

Moreover, none of this brings division into the Divine Simplicity, because these processions are all identical to the Divine Essence.  St. Thomas, in an objection, argues thus:

Obj. 2: "Everything which proceeds differs from that whence it proceeds. But in God there is no diversity; but supreme simplicity. Therefore in God there is no procession."  

To this, he responds: 

Ad 2: "Whatever proceeds by way of outward procession is necessarily distinct from the source whence it proceeds, whereas, whatever proceeds within by an intelligible procession is not necessarily distinct; indeed, the more perfectly it proceeds, the more closely it is one with the source whence it proceeds. For it is clear that the more a thing is understood, the more closely is the intellectual conception joined and united to the intelligent agent; since the intellect by the very act of understanding is made one with the object understood. Thus, as the divine intelligence is the very supreme perfection of God (Question [14], Article [2]), the divine Word is of necessity perfectly one with the source whence He proceeds, without any kind of diversity." (ST Ia, q. 27, a. 1, ob. 2, ad 2).

God is Dead

God is Dead

The Dead Christ, by Andrea Mantegna c.1480

Holy Saturday is that day of the year that I cannot help but think of the deep theological irony involved in Nietzsche's infamos phrase.  "God is dead" is something we faithful Catholics can utter today with profound devotion.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, truly underwent human death.  On that day, God was dead.  Quite literally so.  And we commemorate that day every year on Holy Saturday, so at least liturgically we can say today, with Nietzsche: God is dead.  (Nietzsche of course didn't mean it that way, but it is ironic that his words help us, on a day like today, to profess our faith and meditate on its depths.)

You may be thinking: "Wait, God did not die; it was just Jesus who died."  The theological principle of the communicatio idiomatum, the "communication of idioms" (cf. my wife's post) states that the attributes of each of Jesus' two natures can be attributed to the person.  So we attribute to the Person of the Word, whom we call "God," both human and divine attributes.   Among these human attributes we include His mortality, and the fact of His death.  It is true that the Divine Nature did not die: the Divine Nature is immortal, and in this sense each of the three Divine Persons is immortal through their Divine Nature.  But the Second Person, the Person of the Word, "God," also possesses a human nature, which was mortal while on this earth.  And through this human nature, the Person of the Word did truly die.  And this fact is what we especially remember today.

Or maybe you're thinking: "Jesus did not die; only his body died."  If you are thinking along these lines, you are probably thinking of the basic truth of the faith that the Second Person of the Trinity is eternal, and never ceases to be, even during the three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.  And it is true that he never ceases to be.  In fact, even the constituent parts of His human nature (body and soul), never ceased to be, even though they were separated.  That is to say, throughout the triduum the Second Person of the Trinity continued His divine existence, and continued to be hypostatically united not only to his human soul, which "descended into hell," but also to his body, which lay in the tomb (cf., Summa theologiae IIIa, q. 50).  But still, it is true to say that He died, or that He underwent death, given that death does not mean ceasing to be, but rather it means the separation of soul and body.  He truly suffered this separation of body and soul, which we call human death.

Ultimately, the underlying principle here is: acta sunt suppositorum, acts are done by persons (supposits). We do not say that my body drives my car; we say: I, the person, drive the car, even if it's my through my body that I do it. So Christ's actions and passions may be done through his body, but it is He who does them through His body. So it is not wrong to say His body died, so long as we don't mean to deny that the person died.  At any rate it is more proper to say that the Person ("God," "Jesus," "the Word") died.

That's what's so awe inspiring about today: the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity truly underwent human death --a separation of his body and soul-- for our salvation.

Quaeritur: Why the Lack of Feminine Language in Reference to the Trinity?

Quaeritur: Why the Lack of Feminine Language in Reference to the Trinity?

Quaeritur: I am reading St. Thomas' treatise on the Trinity (Summa theologiae, Ia Pars, qq. 27-43).  I am trying to understand more about the Trinity, how the Persons relate to one another, and how we can properly communicate about it. One thing that feels amiss to me is the lack of the feminine when I encounter the Trinity. God is obviously neither male nor female, but when I see the term "generation" as it relates to the Father and Son, a maternal force more readily comes to mind. In our creatural experiences women are the generators. I might suggest allowing some of the feminine attributes of God to be encountered here. It is also not uncommon for the Father’s love for us to be described in a maternal way. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I [God] comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.” (Isa. 66:13). Some others are Mt. 23:3 and Is. 49:15.

Respondeo: Regarding the feminine aspects of 'generation', St. Thomas is simply being faithful to Scripture (and Tradition) by using masculine terms. Jesus revealed himself as the as the only-begotten (rather than "birthed" or "conceived") Son of the Father: all of these are masculine references. Despite the Divine Nature being asexual, and despite there being some apt maternal metaphors for God and His relationship towards us (as you rightly point out), God did reveal Himself to us principally in unequivocally masculine terms, and so it makes sense that we respect that revelation by echoing it in our theology.

Quaeritur: Does Aquinas Fall into the Heresy of Modalism?

Quaeritur: Does Aquinas Fall into the Heresy of Modalism?

Quaeritur: I've run into someone who keeps accusing St Thomas of teaching Modalism via Summa theologiae I.39.1c, by conflating Person and Nature in God (making them synonymous). I'd really appreciate any help/commentary you can point me to.  I've read the section multiple times and don't see modalism, but I'd really like some input from folks educated in that department.

Respondeo: This is an issue which not only surpasses all created intellects, but in a particular way surpasses mine, which is that of a mere beginner in theology. The De Deo Trino is truly the most difficult treatise in all of theology.

The simple answer is that this text does not teach modalism for the following reason: Modalism (in the sense of Sabellianism) claims that the distinction of Persons in God is not a real distinction in God (in se), but a distinction of reason in the believer (quoad nos). It is obvious that this is not Aquinas' teaching, since he explicitly teaches passim, including in this text, that the Divine persons are really (i.e., in se) distinct.

But there is something much more interesting in this text than its not teaching Modalism. It is interesting that you bring this up because, not three weeks ago I looked at this text myself for the first time, and was surprised by it. I wasn't surprised because I thought it fell into heresy, but rather, because, while I have faith that the text is not heretical (St. Thomas cannot be a heretic), nonetheless I had always conceived of the Persons in God as being distinct from the Divine Nature. So, what struck me was that the relations in God are actually identical to the Divine Essence! Now that I have pondered it for a while, I have realized that it makes sense. It stands to reason that each of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity must each be identical to the Divine Essence: how else can the Second Person of the Trinity be God, if He is not identical to the Divine Essence? If the Second Person were something really different from the Divine Essence, then the Second Person would not be God!

But then, what about the seeming contradiction in Aquinas' teaching, namely, that (a) the Divine Relations are distinct from each other, but (b) they are not distinct from the Divine Nature? It's a seeming contradiction because, according to Aristotelian Logic, if two (or three) things are identical to a third (or fourth), they are identical to each other. But what I have found, based on Cajetan's and Garrigou-Lagrange's commentaries on this issue, is that this seems like a contradiction only to those who conceive of God as falling into our categories of being, into our logic, who conceive of the absolute and the relative as being categories that are prior to God and into which God must be categorized. But in reality God is beyond being, and is prior to our categories of 'absolute' and 'relative'. Here are Cajetan's famous, sublime words regarding our inability to understand this mystery (in ST I.39.1):

We fall into error when we proceed from the absolute and the relative to God, because the distinction between absolute and relative is conceived by us as prior to God and therefore we try to place God in one or the other of these two members of the distinction. Whereas the complete opposite is the case. The divine nature is prior to being and all its differences, it transcends all being and is above unity, etc. Thus, in God there is but one formal nature or reason, and this is neither purely absolute nor purely relative... but it contains most eminently and formally both that which is of absolute perfection and whatever the relative Trinity requires.

So I have no personal solution to this problem except to say that Aquinas' text seems reasonable, although wrapped in mystery, and to say that perhaps if you look at the different Thomistic commentators, they might shed light onto the issue. I would recommend you look, in particular, at Garrigou-Lagrange (God the Trinity and the Creator).

Let me know what you else you find!

Amazon Links:

THE TRINITY AND GOD THE CREATOR: A Commentary on St. Thomas' Theological Summa Ia q. 27-199.

Apparent Contradiction in the Trinitarian Faith

Apparent Contradiction in the Trinitarian Faith

The following is quoted from the blog called "Three Anachronisms":

"Disproof of Catholic doctrine?

No, I'm not going Protestant. :P I simply thought of this last night and can't get it out of my mind. I got this while reading Surprised by Joy, by C. S. Lewis, interestingly enough.

So, Jesus is fully human and fully divine, i.e. he's a divine person with both human and divine natures. Ok, got that. Now the question. If he has divine nature (Creator) and human nature (created) wouldn't he, in a sense, have to have created himself? And if so, isn't that a contradiction (as one cannot both be creator and created at the same time). The answer to the question that arrises immediately is that he was God before he was man, but God is above time and thus that is irrelevant. I suppose that since he created his human nature and not his own human person that he wouldn't have created himself, but rather just his nature...but that to me does not make much sense. I suppose also that some might think that the person of the Father was the creator, and not the Son, but John 1:3 "All things were made by him [the Word i.e. Jesus]: and without him was made nothing that was made." All persons of the Trinity were directly involved in all the steps of salvation, creation, redemption, and sanctification.

I suppose I may have disproved it, but I'm altogether not sure enough. If any of you would like to help, please do!

~Ambrose

posted by Immortal Philosopher at Thursday, January 31, 2008 "

Dear Ambrose,

A few points:

1) It is true that the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity do operate together when they operate ad extra through their Divine Nature. Therefore, the acts of creation and conservation of the universe, the general and specific motions of Divine Providence, etc., are caused ad extra by all three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. (NB.: This is not true of ad intra operations; and it is not true when the Second Person operates through his Human Nature only.)

2) The Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was caused ad extra by the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, acting together. That is, they (together) created the Human Nature--both body and soul--inside the womb of the Blessed Virgin AND they (also together) caused this nature to be hypostatically united to the Second Person. (NB.: These two events happened simultaneously.)

3) Therefore, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity did not create Himself. Rather, the Second Person created his Human Nature only and caused it to be hypostatically united to Himself.

4) Here is the the battle-song of the Trinitarian faith, the "Athanasian Creed" (aka, Quicumque vult), one of the Four Official Creeds of the Church, which is traditionally recited during Matins of Sundays within Trinitytide, and which marvelously summarizes our Faith in the Trinity and in the Hypostatic Union:

Whoever wishes to be saved must before all else adhere to the Catholic Faith. He must preserve this Faith whole and untarnished; otherwise he will most certainly perish forever.

Now this is the Catholic Faith: that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity; neither confusing the persons nor distinguishing the nature. The Person of the Father is distinct; the Person of the Son is distinct; the Person of the Holy Spirit is distinct. Yet the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit possess one Godhead, equal glory, and coeternal majesty.

As the Father is, so is the Son, so is the Holy Spirit. The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The Father is infinite, the Son is infinite, the Holy Spirit is infinite. The Father is eternal, the Son is eternal, the Holy Spirit is eternal. Nevertheless, they are not three eternals, but one Eternal. Even as they are not three uncreateds, or three infinites, but one Uncreated, and one Infinite. So likewise the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, the Holy Spirit is almighty. And yet they are not three almighties, but one Almighty. So also the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. And yet they are not three Gods, but only one God. So too the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord. And still there are not three Lords, but only one Lord. For just as we are compelled by Christian truth to profess that each Person is individually God, so also are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to hold there are three Gods or Lords.

The Father was made by no one, being neither created nor begotten. The Son is from the Father alone, though not created or made, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son, though neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding. Consequently, there is one Father, not Three Fathers; there is one Son, not three Sons; there is one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. Furthermore, in this Trinity there is no “before” or “after,” no “greater” or “less”; for all three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal. In every respect, therefore, as has already been stated, Unity must be worshipped in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.

This is what everyone who wishes to be saved must hold regarding the Blessed Trinity. But for his eternal salvation, he must also believe according to the true Faith in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now the true Faith requires us to believe and acknowledge that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both God and Man. He is God, begotten of the substance of the Father before the world began; He is Man, born in the world of the substance of His Mother. Perfect God, perfect Man, a substance composed of a rational soul and a human body. Equal to the Father in divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity. And although He is God and man, still He is only one Christ, not two. One, not by any turning of the divinity into flesh, but by the taking up of humanity into God. One only, not by any confusion of substance, but by the unity of His Person. For just as the rational soul and the body form one man, so God and Man form one Christ.

He suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father all-powerful, and whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. At His coming, all men must rise with their bodies and must give an account of their own deeds. And those who have done good shall go into eternal life, while those who have done evil shall go into eternal fire.

This is the Catholic Faith, and anyone who does not believe it fully and firmly cannot be saved.

5) Ergo, there is no contradiction in the truths that God revealed. If you ever find a contradiction within the Truths revealed by God, that should be an indication, not of any deficiencies in the Revealed Truth, but of the deficiencies in your own reasoning. Here's what Holy Mother the Church teaches infallibly on this subject:

"[A]lthough faith is above reason, nevertheless, between faith and reason no true dissension can ever exist, since the same God, who reveals mysteries and infuses faith, has bestowed on the human soul the light of reason; moreover, God cannot deny Himself, nor ever contradict truth with truth. But, a vain appearance of such a contradiction arises chiefly from this, that either the dogmas of faith have not been understood and interpreted according to the mind of the Church, or deceitful opinions are considered as the determinations of reason. Therefore, "every assertion contrary to the truth illuminated by faith, we define to be altogether false" [Lateran Council V, see Denzinger n. 738 ]." (Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, Denzinger n. 1797.)

6) I suggest you take a look at one of the traditional manuals of scholastic Theology that go into these issues, the most basic, popular, and widely-circulated in the English-speaking world being Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (reprint availabe through TAN Books). (Another popular one in English is the two-volume set by Adolphe Tanquerey, Manual of Dogmatic Theology; it is out of print, but if budget is not a problem you can easily buy a used copy off the internet.) Ott is by no means the best--it sometimes errs on the finer points due to its overly-simplistic approach--but it is a good starting point and it is very-readily available. I read it when I was in my junior year in high school and, through it, I discovered my vocation to study theology (and, therefore, philosophy). I hope you enjoy it as well.