Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought [1st ed.] 9783030477899, 9783030477905

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv
Introduction (John T. Slotemaker)....Pages 1-17
Theological Epistemology (John T. Slotemaker)....Pages 19-48
Emanations and Relations (John T. Slotemaker)....Pages 49-77
Persons and Personal Distinction (John T. Slotemaker)....Pages 79-112
Conclusion (John T. Slotemaker)....Pages 113-127
Back Matter ....Pages 129-131

Citation preview

Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought

John T. Slotemaker

Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought

John T. Slotemaker

Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought

John T. Slotemaker Fairfield University Fairfield, CT, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-47789-9    ISBN 978-3-030-47790-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47790-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For my parents, Tom and Hennie, you have been the grace of God to me. And for the Dragon in the hostas, and for those who named her.

Preface

In the spring of 2012, I defended a dissertation on the development of medieval trinitarian theology between 1250 and 1380. That work—like so many in the genre—was a massive accumulation of technical data that sprawled over 850 pages. In this, at least, it was not unlike other works in the field: Théodore de Régnon’s Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité was published in 4 volumes and extends to over 2300 pages, Michael Schmaus’s massive history of medieval trinitarian theology is over 1000 pages, as is Russell Friedman’s magisterial Intellectual Traditions.1 Hester Gelber’s unpublished dissertation, “Logic and the Trinity,” sits on almost every medievalist’s shelf and is a more modest 685 pages.2 These are works that are frequently referenced but rarely read; from their titles, to their length, to their content, these are imposing pieces of scholarship that are best referenced and not read in one’s armchair next to the fire. A few years ago, I began to imagine a shorter, trimmer, and more accessible volume on medieval trinitarian theology. While pondering what type of book could fill the obvious lacuna, I reread C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity as I was preparing an undergraduate readings course.3 Lewis’s goal in that work was to present a common or “mere” Christianity: an overview of Christian thought that looks at normative theological beliefs shared by the majority of Christians past and 1  John T.  Slotemaker, “Pierre d’Ailly;” Michael Schmaus, Der “Liber propugnatorius;” Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions. 2  Hester G. Gelber, “Logic and the Trinity.” 3  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

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present. He sets aside the heated theological debates between Anglicans, Catholics, Protestants, and the Orthodox, to focus instead on certain themes shared by all Christians. There are, of course, objections to be leveled against Lewis’s approach, and in particular it seems that oftentimes the most interesting material is found not in commonality but in disagreement. Further, if one is to truly understand the nuances of Christian thought, one must attend to the various theological and philosophical systems that inform the respective denominations. That said, there is also a useful simplicity to the volume as it attempts to tell a broader story. There is something gained by looking at what is held in common. This book is an attempt to outline some of the basic or “mere” trinitarian beliefs held by Christians living in the late medieval period: a period circumscribed for the purposes of this volume from roughly the time of Anselm up through the first generation of the Reformation era. The intent here is not to obfuscate the disagreements between Christian theologians writing on the Trinity, but to highlight commonalities that can be gleaned by focusing precisely on these disagreements. Thus, by looking at a range of theological opinions one can get a sense of the options that were on the table and the common assumptions undergirding those commonalities. It is these distilled or common assumptions about medieval trinitarian theology that I am attempting to flesh out in this work. While I will look broadly at the long Middle Ages, there is one important way in which this work is methodologically circumscribed. I am primarily tracing the trajectory of medieval trinitarian theology that becomes normative as a result of two events: (1) the establishment of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as the textbook for theological education at the medieval Universities, and (2) the theological doctrines adopted as part of the Fourth Lateran Council (the Liber extra) that ensconced the Lombard’s trinitarian theology as normative. These two early thirteenth-century events were significant in laying the foundation for several developments: the dominance of a particular genre of medieval trinitarian theology (e.g., through the genre of Sentences commentaries); the emergence of a normative structure of trinitarian theology as established by this genre; and the development of theological parameters within which orthodoxy was to reside. As Peter Gemeinhardt writes—in response to the ascendancy of the Lombard’s theology at Lateran IV—“the Council’s decision impacted grammar and dialectics on the doctrine of the Trinity … from this point forward, the tradition of Trinitarian thought had to be read according to

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the Lombard’s rationale.”4 This does not mean, however, that I am limiting the discussion to the period after the early thirteenth century; I am, instead, limiting the discussion to the theological streams that fed into this tradition, such that I will be discussing Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and numerous other theologians who thrived before the early thirteenth century and influenced later developments. However, it does mean that I will not be focusing on the dizzying diversity of trinitarian theologies that flourished during the long twelfth century (e.g., the alternative trinitarian theologies of Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Robert of Melun, Joachim of Fiore). Given these parameters, there is one objection to this approach that is necessary to address at the outset. This book of less than 50,000 words cannot possibly be comprehensive in any way, be it theological, historical, or textual. It does not cover every theological topic in play regarding trinitarian theology in the long Middle Ages; it is not historically comprehensive, and does not, and cannot, present a historical overview of the topics discussed; it is not textually inclusive in looking at all genres or forms of trinitarian theology in primary (e.g., biblical commentaries, sermons, liturgies, hymnody, iconography, scholastic treatises) or secondary works. This work is both more and less than that. It is more, in that by limiting the discussion the reader will be given an overview of a complex subject in a relatively brief format. It is less in that the remarkable complexity and diversity of medieval trinitarian theology will often be discussed briefly and without as much detail as some may desire. It is my hope that the utility of the former will outweigh the limitations of the latter, and that those who seek to fill out the contours of this landscape will use this book as a way into the great literature referenced throughout. This is emphatically a work for those just beginning to learn about how medieval Christians understood the triune God. * * * It is a privilege to thank colleagues and students who have contributed to this work in various ways, including Lewis Ayres, Michel Barnes, Monica Brinzei, Delphine Conzelmann, Boyd Taylor Coolman, Richard Cross, Russell Friedman, Hester Gelber, Christine Helmer, Kevin Hughes, Bruce 4  Peter Gemeinhardt, “Joachim the Theologian,” 41. See Constant J.  Mews and Clare Monagle, “Peter Lombard, Joachim of Fiore and the Fourth Lateran Council.”

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Marshall, Constant Mews, JT Paasch, Dominique Poirel, Chris Schabel, J.  Warren Smith, Graham White, Jeremy Wilkins, Scott Williams, Jeff Witt, and Ueli Zahnd. In particular, those who participated in the workshops on Medieval Trinitarian Theology at Boston College over the past few years have shaped my thinking in numerous ways. I am grateful to you all for your assistance and friendship. You all—particularly Russ—deserve more footnotes than you have received, given the space limitations of this volume. The anonymous reviewers saved me from a few errors, and generally improved the quality of the work. I am grateful for their comments and criticisms. This work began while directing independent studies on medieval trinitarian theology, Anselm of Canterbury, and the thought of C.S. Lewis. I am grateful to my students—Richard Burke, Meaghan Conlon, Jessica Estrada, Nick Frega, Anthony Iorio, Margaret Liguori, Hannah Megan, Carlos Mesquita, and Michael Valvala—for asking questions that I had forgotten how to ask, and for teaching me that it is important to be able to answer them. You are missed.

Styles and Conventions All sources (primary and secondary) are referenced by name and an abbreviated title in the footnotes, with complete bibliographic information found in the corresponding bibliography. I have used single quotation marks to designate terms qua terms, and double quotation marks for quotations, scare quotes, and so forth. Because individual chapters are available independently, I have on occasion treated a given topic in two separate chapters—attempting to limit redundancy in all cases. Given the introductory nature of the volume and the number of sources referenced, it has not been practical to provide a reference to both the standard Latin edition and an English translation. As a result I have provided my own translations (unless noted), though I have freely referenced existing translations throughout.

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Timeline of Councils and Theologians Irenaeus (†202) Tertullian (†220) Origen (†253) Porphyry of Tyre (†305) Nicaea (325) Arius (†336) Marius Victorinus (†364) Hilary of Poitiers (†368) Athanasius (†373) Marcellus of Ancyra (†374) Basil the Great (†379) Constantinople (381) Gregory of Nazianzus (†390) Gregory of Nyssa (†394) Ambrose of Milan (†397) Maximus of Turin (†c420) Augustine (†430) Chalcedon (451) Boethius (†524) Rusticus the Deacon (†564) Isidore of Seville (†636) John of Damascus (†749) Alcuin of York (†804) Theodulf of Orléans (†821) Ratramnus of Corbie (†868) Anselm of Canterbury (†1109) Soissons (1121) William of Champeaux (†1121) Roscelin of Compiègne (†1125) Hugh of St. Victor (†1141) Sens (1141) Peter Abelard (†1142) William of St. Thierry (†1148) Thierry of Chartres (†c.1150) Bernard of Clairvaux (†1153) Gilbert of Poitiers (†1154) Peter Lombard (†1160) Robert of Melun (†1167) Richard of St. Victor (†1173) Walter of Mortagne (†1174) Clarembald of Arras (†1187) Joachim of Fiore (†1202) Amalric of Bena (†c.1205) Lateran IV (1215) William of Auxerre (†1231)

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Alexander of Hales (†1245) William of Auvergne (†1249) Robert Grosseteste (†1253) Lyon II (1272–1274) Thomas Aquinas (†1274) Bonaventure (†1274) Albert the Great (†1280) Henry of Ghent (†1293) James of Viterbo (†1307/8) John Duns Scotus (†1308) Henry Harclay (†1317) Peter Auriol (†1322) Walter Chatton (†1343) William of Ockham (†1347) Robert Holcot (†1349) Richard Campsall (†c.1350) Adam Wodeham (1358) Gregory Rimini (†1358) Facinus of Asti (fl.c.1360s) Hugolino of Orvieto (†1373) John Klenkok (†1374) Angel of Döbeln (fl. 1370s–80s) John van Ruysbroeck (†1381) John Hiltalingen of Basel (†1392) Peter Gracilis (†1393) Marsilius of Inghen (†1396) Henry Totting of Oyta (†1397) Henry of Langenstein (†1397) Pierre d’Ailly (†1420) Peter of Pulkau (†1425) Nicholas Dinkelsbühl (†1433) Berthold of Ratisbon (Puchhauser) (†1437) Florence (1438–1445) John Capreolus (†1444) William of Vorilong (†1463) Denys the Carthusian (†1471) Gabriel Biel (†1495) Marsilio Ficino (†1499) Giles of Viterbo (†1532) Martin Luther (†1546) John Mair (†1550) Michael Servetus (†1553) Philipp Melanchthon (†1560) John Calvin (†1564)

John T. Slotemaker

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Bibliography Modern Sources Friedman, Russell L. Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University: The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250–1350. Leiden 2013. Gelber, Hester Goodenough. “Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in Scholastic Thought, 1300–1335.” Ph.D Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974. Gemeinhardt, Peter. “Joachim the Theologian: Trinitarian Speculation and Doctrinal Debate,” in A Companion to Joachim of Fiore, ed. Matthias Riedl. Leiden 2018, 41–87. Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York 2001. Mews Constant J., and Clare Monagle. “Peter Lombard, Joachim of Fiore and the Fourth Lateran Council.” Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale 35 (2010), 81–122. Schmaus, Michael. Der “Liber propugnatorius” des Thomas Anglicus und die Lehrunterschiede zwischen Thomas von Aquin und Duns Scotus, II Teil: Die trinitarischen Lehrdifferenzen. Münster 1930. Slotemaker, John T. “Pierre d’Ailly and the Development of Late Medieval Trinitarian Theology: With an edition of Quaestiones super primum librum Sententiarum, qq. 4–8, 10.” Ph.D Dissertation, Boston College, 2012.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Sources   3 Language and Categories   8 Bibliography  15 2 Theological Epistemology 19 The Trinity and Demonstrative Arguments  20 Vestiges and Images  24 The Trinity and Scripture  29 Cognitio per Filium  33 Knowing the Trinity Through Prayer  37 Conclusion  40 Coda: The Trinity and Aristotelian Logic  40 Bibliography  46 3 Emanations and Relations 49 The Generation of the Son  50 The Spiration of the Holy Spirit  57 The Divine Relations: A Common Language  63 Disparate and Opposed Relations  69 Conclusion  73 Bibliography  75

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4 Persons and Personal Distinction 79 Divine Persons  80 Attributes, Properties, and Appropriations  89 Personal Constitution  94 The Distinction of Persons 100 Conclusion 108 Bibliography 109 5 Conclusion113 Patient Learning 114 Exhausting the Dialectical Possibilities 120 Bibliography 126 Index129

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This chapter introduces the volume by means of defining its methodological and historical contours, the sources of medieval trinitarian thought, and the language and categories of discourse. The first section lays out the chronological parameters of the work as well as describes the various topical limitations that have been put in place to keep the material manageable. The second section treats the sources of trinitarian theology as found in the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the Fathers of the Church. The final section introduces the reader to the basic language and categories of medieval trinitarian thought (emanations, relations, and persons). Keywords  Scripture • The Creeds • Patristic sources • Emanations • Relations • Persons This book is about unity and distinction/diversity, in a twofold sense. First and foremost, it is about the Christian claim that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, such that God is one substance (or essence) and three distinct persons who are this one thing (res). Second, this book is about the unity and diversity of medieval theologies of God. The latter constitutes the basic argument of this work, which is that while there is clearly a diversity of views regarding who God is and how the triune God can be talked about in the long medieval period (c. 1000–1550), there is

© The Author(s) 2020 J. T. Slotemaker, Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47790-5_1

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also a profound unity or agreement.1 There is, one could say, a common or basic trinitarian theology held by almost all medieval and Reformation era Christians. Here it is perhaps useful to say a bit about both of these aspects. First, this volume is focused on the long medieval period (c. 1000–1550) because of the richness of philosophical and theological argumentation about God that emerged during these centuries. As the recent work of Russell Friedman has masterfully demonstrated, the quality of theologizing about the Trinity in the medieval period is second to none and is an interesting source of theological and philosophical speculation. Further, as Lambertus de Rijk observed, no student of medieval speculative thought can help being struck by the peculiar fact that whenever fundamental progress was made, it was theological problems which initiated the development. …speculation was, time and again, focused on how the notion of being and the whole range of our linguistic tools can be applied to God’s nature.2

To study Christian theologizing about God, therefore, is to enter into the long debates in Western philosophy about the nature of God, the principle of individuation, substances and categories of accidental being, and other such topics. Second, the present work defends the somewhat counter-intuitive thesis that medieval and Reformation era theologies of God remained remarkably consistent.3 Writing precisely at the hinge between the late medieval and early modern world, Martin Luther wrote in the first part of the Smalcald Articles in 1537 that with respect to trinitarian theology or Christology there is no contention or dispute with his Roman adversaries, because “both sides share the same confession.”4 Here Luther observes that his break with Rome is not over trinitarian doctrine or Christology, precisely because both Protestants and Catholics held similar beliefs about the one God and the incarnation of the Son. This, of course, is true in a 1  Throughout this book I use the phrase “long medieval period” to refer to the time from roughly 1000 to 1550, and “late medieval” to refer to the period from about 1300 to 1550. 2  Lambertus de Rijk, “On Boethius,” 1. 3  Here the work takes issue with various narratives that attempt to explain the shift from the medieval to early modern world in terms of how God was understood. 4  Luther, Smalcald Articles (WA 50, 198).

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rather stark sense; the Church divisions that emerged out of the sixteenth-­ century conflagration were not initially divisions grounded in divergent theologies of God or Christ (though whether divergent theologies of God and Christ eventually emerged is a rather different question), but about issues of salvation and the Church. Thus, the present volume will examine select topics of trinitarian theology in such a way as to demonstrate the basic normativity—shaped by common philosophical categories (Aristotelianism), Scripture, the Creeds of the Church, and Church tradition—that existed in trinitarian theology between the years 1000 and 1550. In what remains of the introduction, we will consider some preliminary topics, including the sources of trinitarian speculation in this period, and the common language and categories employed by the majority of the thinkers discussed.

Sources The theologians of the early Church held that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is fundamentally a reflection upon Scripture. Augustine argued in De Trinitate that the Scriptures—both Old and New Testaments—bear witness to the fact that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Medieval theologians shared this view. According to William of St. Thierry, the Scriptures contain a biblical argument for both unity and diversity in God: (1) His unity is evident in the shema, “hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4); (2) and His trinitarian diversity is evident in the baptismal formula spoken by Christ, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).5 For William, the Scriptures speak about the unity and diversity in God: the book of John, in particular (3:17, 14:26, 15:26), was understood to provide substantial evidence that God is both three and one.6 Here, following Augustine, William observes that the Christian Scriptures speak of three persons, and that the Father sends the Son and that the Father and Son send the Holy Spirit. As William recognized, however, the doctrine of the Trinity is not explicitly stated in the Scriptures. The Christian doctrine uses lots of  William, Aenigma fidei (PL 80, 408).  See William (Ibid.). As we will see in chapter 2, Peter Auriol argued that the entirety of the Gospel of John is one argument for the Trinity. 5 6

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technical terms to describe how God is three and one that are not found in Scripture. In particular, William observes that the words ‘Trinity’ and ‘homoousios’ are not found in the Bible: the former being used to describe the three persons in one God and the latter to identify the Father, Son, and Spirit as one substance. William’s response is clear; the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the Church’s interpretation of what the Scriptures present of the living God. While the doctrine, per se, is not found directly in the Scriptures, what the doctrine articulates is a theological model that can help one read and understand the complex statements made in Scripture.7 William’s approach was normative for theologians up through the medieval and Reformation eras, in that trinitarian theology presents, for these thinkers, a technical distillation of what is present in Scripture. John Calvin—often problematically labeled as one who would have preferred to reject such technical terms8—would claim that the use of the words ousia, hypostasis, essentia, and persona within trinitarian theology is often falsely decried by heretics as un-biblical and the product of human invention, when in fact such language merely articulates that which is found in the Scriptures. The Scriptures, Calvin thinks, are often unclear to the extent that they perplex or hinder our understanding, and in such cases why should one not explain the Scriptures by means of clearer words (verbis planioribus) to shed light upon the faith?9 In this sense trinitarian theology is a human attempt to bring clarity to the truths of the faith presented in Scripture by means of technical philosophical language. Scripture, therefore, is the foundation of trinitarian theology for all of the medieval and Reformation era theologians. The fourteenth-century Augustinian theologian Peter Gracilis put it this way, every Catholic writer who has written about the Trinity, which is God, intends to teach that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one substance/essence and are one God with an inseparable equality, and that this unity in essence, and Trinity in persons, is proved through many Scriptures.10

It is, as Gracilis attests, simply a fact that for all catholic authors the doctrine of the Trinity is understood to be fundamentally a distillation of  William, Aenigma fidei (PL 80, 409–410).  For example, pace Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas, 41. 9  Calvin, Institutes (1536), II (CO 1, 60). 10  Gracilis, Sent. I.3 (R, fol. 21r). 7 8

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Scripture. That said, trinitarian theology is not just a record of what is in Scripture, it is also a doctrine that was worked out in the Creeds of the Christian Church and by the numerous theologians of the Early Christian period. Here it is necessary to say a word or two about these sources. In its present form the Nicene Creed professed by the Western Churches goes back to the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). This Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was accepted at the Council of Chalcedon (451) and would become a normative statement of belief for both Eastern and Western Christians.11 It is, therefore, a statement of faith that has governed the great majority of Christians throughout time and history, and it has a fundamentally trinitarian structure. First it speaks of the Father almighty who is the creator of the cosmos and the maker of things visible and invisible. Second, it turns to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is begotten from the Father, before all ages; and, lest one confuse the issue, it is clarified that the Son is begotten, not made, and is consubstantial (omousion Patri) with the Father. The Son is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Third, the Creed speaks of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life (vivificatorem) who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. This creedal statement is an articulation of the trinitarian faith professed by Christians throughout history and includes the basic framework of trinitarian theology. Here Christians confess that God the Father is all powerful (omnipotentem) and that Jesus is the only begotten (unigentium) Son of God who is eternally from the Father (ex Patre). The Father, Son, [and Spirit] are one substance (consubstantialis) eternally and as such are the God from whom all things proceed. Finally, the creed in the West states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son.12 The medieval Church also produced authoritative documents expanding upon the early creeds, the most important being the first and second canons of Gregory IX’s Liber extra (1234) following the fourth Lateran Council.13 This collection of canon law contains an explication of basic trinitarian theology and was central to the medieval theological tradition. The Liber extra is generally consistent with the earlier Christian creeds, however, there are a few distinct aspects worth noting.

 Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.162–163.  Ibid., cf. the “Western Recension,” I.672. 13  For a translation of the Liber extra, see Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.741–742. 11 12

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First, Augustine maintained that the Son and Holy Spirit emanated from the Father (a Patre), however, in the subsequent medieval tradition there emerged a minority opinion that held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the essence. This position is evident, most notably, in Anselm of Canterbury (see Chap. 3). The Liber extra—following the language of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed—would reassert in canon 2 that the divine essence is not the thing begetting or being begotten (or proceeding), generating or being generated, and as such put an end to this particular theological trajectory.14 Second, while the Western patristic tradition did not specify whether or not there was a unique or particular property common to each person by which the persons are distinct, the Liber extra somewhat codified the language of “personal properties” stating that the Holy Trinity is indivisible (individua) according to the common essence and is distinguished (discreta) according to personal properties.15 This language of personal properties would become central to the development of trinitarian theology after the late twelfth century, and here the Liber extra establishes the use of this language. Beyond a reflection upon Scripture and the creedal statements of the Church, Western trinitarian theology also inherited the rich patristic tradition, and much of medieval and early modern thinking about God is shaped by this deposit of faith. There are, of course, a diversity of patristic authors who influenced the development of medieval trinitarian theology, as the doctrine was worked out by theologians such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Marius Victorinus, Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine. That said, this plethora of authorities obfuscates the fact that when it comes to tracing theological influence, it is Augustine’s great De Trinitate that overshadows the entire Western tradition. While there have been claims—particularly in the second half of the twentieth century— that certain strains or traditions of medieval or Reformation era trinitarian theology (e.g., Richard of St. Victor or John Calvin) are grounded in an “Eastern” theology that emerges out of the Cappadocian Fathers and the Pseudo-Dionysian tradition as transmitted to the Latin West, much of that research has not withstood more modern criticism. In short, what one 14  Liber extra 1.1.2 (CIC II.7): [Essentia divina] non est generans, neque genita, nec procedens; sed est Pater, qui generat … 15  Liber extra 1.1.1 (CIC II.5): Haec sancta trinitas, secundum communem essentiam individua et secundum personales proprietates discreta.

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finds in Richard or Calvin that could perhaps be traced back to an “Eastern” tradition is better explained by looking to Augustine himself;16 not to mention, much of the search for these alternate—read “non-­Augustinian”— sources was generated and driven by a problematic historiographical narrative that was critical of Augustine and praised the “Eastern” tradition.17 So, what is the role of Augustine in the development of trinitarian theology in the long Middle Ages? The easiest place to look to get a sense of Augustine’s influence in the medieval and Reformation eras is Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the corresponding commentary tradition. The Lombard was a theologian at the University of Paris and wrote what would become the textbook of medieval theology up until, and in some regions through, the sixteenth century.18 This work is divided into four books—the first on the Trinity—and is comprised of thousands of citations from the patristic tradition. The Lombard engages with the patristic authorities and develops his theology out of, and in dialogue with, these “sentences” from the Fathers. In the Sentences he cites Augustine 680 times, 310 of which are from De Trinitate. When contrasted with the next highest authors by citation numbers (Ambrose 66, Hilary 63, Jerome 48, and Gregory the Great 41), we can observe that the Lombard quotes Augustine’s De Trinitate more than the four other highest cited authors combined.19 Focusing now on the first book of the Sentences, we observe that he rarely references Fathers from the Greek tradition—no quotations from Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory Nyssa, or Origen’s De principiis, and only 9 from John of Damascus’s De fide orthodoxa—and from the Latin tradition his main sources, beyond Augustine, are Hilary’s De Trinitate (50+) and Ambrose’s De fide (11). Similar patterns hold for the reception of patristic sources in the massive Sentences commentary tradition that extended from the thirteenth century up through the sixteenth, and which remained primarily engaged with Augustine, and, to a much lesser degree, Hilary— both as found in the Lombard.20  Cf. Jean Ribaillier’s discussion of Richard’s sources in De Trinitate (Paris 1958), 17–33.  The literature on this topic is substantive, but the place to begin remains Michel René Barnes, “De Regnon Reconsidered.” 18  Philipp W. Rosemann, The Story. 19  Jacques-Guy Bougerol, “The Church Fathers,” 114–124. 20  I have catalogued similar patterns in the commentaries on book I of the Sentences by Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Gregory of Rimini, though a more thorough study is needed to confirm this argument. That said, similar patterns emerge 16 17

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The upshot is that Augustine’s De Trinitate had a massive influence on medieval trinitarian theology and one can, somewhat simplistically, look at three distinct areas of influence. First, following books 1–4, De Trinitate had an influence on medieval biblical exegesis; medieval theologians, following Augustine, would find evidence of the Trinity in both Old and New Testaments. Second, following books 5–7, the work influenced the technical language and categories used to discuss the divine nature, God’s attributes, and the divine processions and relations. In particular, Augustine’s distinction between substantial terms and relational terms would become normative for almost all subsequent medieval theologians (see the following section). Finally, books 8–15 of De Trinitate influenced the way in which medieval theologians understood certain trinitarian images or analogies. Here, in particular, Augustine’s noetic triad of memory, understanding, and will as an image of the Trinity (imago Trinitatis) would influence the development of medieval trinitarian epistemology, trinitarian theology, and anthropology.

Language and Categories The sources of trinitarian theology in the long Middle Ages established a normative language for speaking about God as Trinity, and here, at the outset, it is useful to briefly sketch the contours of medieval trinitarian theology by defining its essential terms and the parameters of the discussion. Classical Christian theology teaches that God is one substance, essence, or nature; this one substance is eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, ineffable, good, or, as Anselm states, everything it is better to be than not to be (quidquid melius est esse quam non esse).21 God is one substantial thing, and not more than one thing. Further, Christians believe that this one God is three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons simply are the divine essence: it is not the case that the one essence is at times manifest as Father, or other times manifest as Son, or that each person constitutes a part of the essence that is distributed equally among the three. Rather, the three persons are the divine essence, such that each is fully and completely God. But how, precisely, can there be one God who when one reads the subsequent essays by Bougerol, Leo J. Elders, and Eric Leland Saak in The Reception of the Church Fathers, 289–404. 21  Anselm, Proslogion 5 (I, 104); cf. id., Monologion 15 (I, 28–29),

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is three persons? How are these three related to each other and to the divine essence? Medieval Christians held that the Father is from no one, the Son comes from the Father, and the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and Son. When speaking about the two “coming forths” in God, they spoke of two emanations (emanationes): further, and being more precise, the emanation of the Son is referred to as generation (generatio), while the emanation of the Spirit is referred to as procession (processio) or spiration (spiratio). The term generation is employed because the language used to refer to the first two persons in Scripture—Father and Son—indicates a paternal and filial relationship, respectively, and borrowing from this imagery the biological term generation is used to describe the first emanation. The second emanation is referred to as a procession and, as Isidore of Seville tells us,22 the term is probably used because it is biblical (John 15:26): “when the Paraclete comes, who I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father (Spiritum veritatis qui a Patre procedit).” The book of John, in particular (14:16–17, 26; 15:26; 16:12–15), speaks of the Spirit as being sent (mitto) from the Father, or proceeding from the Father. Somewhat later in the fifth and sixth century, it would become normative to speak of this second emanation as a spiration (spiratio): literally, a breathing forth. This language of the Spirit as wind or breath is found in Scripture as well, though less directly: for example, in Acts 2:2–4 when the Spirit comes in a mighty wind (spiritus vehementis), or John 20:22 when Christ breathes (insuflo) the Spirit upon the disciples. Despite the explicitly biological language of generation and spiration, however, the emanations in God are not understood as natural emanations that happen in space and time, given that the generation of the Son is eternal, such that there is no time when the Father and Son were not Father and Son. To be the Father, therefore, is to have an eternal Son and to be eternally in the act of generating the Son: and, mutatis mutandis, for the Holy Spirit who is breathed forth eternally from the Father and Son. The emanations in God, therefore, are eternal and come forth from the Father (though, as we shall see, some medieval theologians argued for spiration from the essence not the Father). Related to the discussion of the two emanations in God, the Western tradition also developed an understanding of the trinitarian relations  Isidore, Etymologies 7.3.6 (158).

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between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This language developed throughout the period and by the thirteenth century it was customary to speak about the trinitarian relations as such: the Father’s relation to the Son is paternity (paternitas), the Son’s relation to the Father is filiation (filiatio), the Father and Son’s relation to the Spirit is active spiration (spiratio activa), the Spirit’s relation to the Father and Son is passive spiration (spiratio passiva). While the language of paternity and filiation would become normative, the terms for the emanation of the Spirit were a bit more fluid. For example, John Duns Scotus and Peter Auriol used the language of spiratio activa and spiratio passiva, while Thomas Aquinas refers to the active emanation of the spirit as spiration (spiratio) and the passive emanation as procession (processio).23 While the trinitarian relations were understood as distinguishing one person from another, the theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries also held there to be certain notions that reveal the persons or make them known. The notions (notio)—innascibility, paternity, filiation, common spiration, and procession—indicate active or passive emanations and it is these properties by which a person is known. Thus, the Father is known by the notions of innascibility and paternity: in that the Father comes from no one, He is known by innascibility; in that the Father sends out the Son and the Holy Spirit, He is known by paternity and spiration, respectively.24 To take stock briefly, medieval theologians held that the one God is best described as being one substance that is two emanations, three persons, four relations, and five notions. This generates a problem, however, in that how is one to develop a language that can precisely indicate how all of these terms can be predicated of God, and yet not lead to the implication that there is some composition in the one perfectly simple essence. After all, how can one predicate all of these terms—‘God,’ ‘Trinity,’ ‘goodness,’ ‘truth,’ ‘love,’ ‘power,’ ‘Father,’ ‘Son,’ ‘Spirit,’ ‘paternity,’ ‘filiation,’ ‘active spiration,’ ‘passive spiration,’ and so forth—of the one simple, incomplex divine essence/nature, while maintaining some philosophical clarity with regard to divine simplicity? Are all of these terms predicated of God in the same way?

23  Auriol, Scriptum I.26 (Electronic Scriptum); Scotus, Reportatio I.11.2 (Wolter-Bychkov I, 419); Thomas, ST I.28.4 (4, 325–326). 24  For example, Thomas, ST I.32.3 (4, 355).

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The theological outline sketched above is philosophically supported and clarified by a distinction between substantial terms and relational terms that the medieval tradition inherited from Augustine. Aristotle argued in the Categories that of the “things that can be said,” there are ten basic categories, including substances and nine categories of accidental being (quantity, quality, relation, place, time, state (or position), action, and affection (or passion)).25 Working within this framework, Augustine would argue that when speaking about God a basic distinction can be made between terms predicated of God according to substance (secundum substantiam) and those predicated according to relation (secundum relativum).26 In a creature, the former category would be understood (by definition) to be predicated of the substance of the thing, the latter would be predicated accidentally (secundum accidens); thus, if it is said that there is a person standing in front of the Church, one could say that ‘woman’ is predicated of this individual secundum substantiam, and ‘in front of’ could be predicated secundum relativum to indicate her physical position with respect to the Church. In the case of any thing the substance is that which the thing is, such that to the extent that it is, it is a substance. A relational category, however, indicates something accidental to a substance: an individual need not be in front of the Church, she could be in the Church, or on the Church, or to the left of the Church, and so forth. However, classical Christian doctrine states that God cannot have any accidental properties (accidental properties are things that can change, and there is no change in God),27 so how can something be predicated of God according to relation? Augustine maintained that within God relational predicates such as ‘father’ and ‘son’ indicate an eternal relation that is not accidental to God but is simply what God is. Thus, for Augustine, the relational terms predicated of God describe a relation—that is, the Father really sends the Son,  Aristotle, Categories (1a1–2a10; Barnes 3–4).  Augustine, De Trinitate 5.4.6 (CCSL 50, 210). Here we use Augustine’s language of “relation” and pass over the somewhat complex issue that, in Aristotle, the category is not relation per se but “things toward something” (τὰ πρός τι). Aristotle has in mind individual things that are toward something else and not relations as such (though generally a relational term is predicated of such things). Further, we leave aside the complex issue of whether or not Aristotle understood the categories to be words, concepts, or realities—we are speaking here of predicates, though for Aristotle this does not seem to limit the categories to a grammatical function. 27  Augustine, De Trinitate 5.4.5 (CCSL 50, 209–210). 25 26

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and the Son is really sent—without indicating anything accidental, precisely because the emanations in God are eternal. But, if that is the case—if relational terms do not indicate an accident and are not predicated secundum accidens—how is it that they identify something different from the substantial terms or the substance itself? Augustine’s answer is that such relational terms indicate the eternal distinctions in God between persons, while the substantial terms do not. The upshot is that there is a basic distinction between terms predicated of God secundum substantiam and terms predicated secundum relativum. The former includes terms such as ‘good,’ ‘powerful,’ ‘loving’ (i.e., the divine attributes), ‘God,’ and the like; such terms are predicated of the one substance and the three divine persons equally. For example, one can say that God is good, the Father is good, the Son is good, and so forth. Relational terms, by contrast, are predicated of the divine persons and indicate distinction within the divine nature. The term ‘father,’ therefore, is predicated of the first person of the Trinity indicating a relation between Father and Son, however, it cannot be applied to the other divine persons in the way substantial terms can (i.e., one can say the Father is the Father, but not the Son is the Father, etc.). This works for the relational terms ‘father’ and ‘son,’ but how is one to speak of the Holy Spirit given that the terms ‘holy’ and ‘spirit’ would seemingly be substantial terms applied to all three persons and the essence (i.e., God is holy, the Father is holy, the Son is holy, etc.)? Augustine observed that for many relations that exist in the natural world there is a language that adequately captures it: a father has a son, a daughter has a mother, and so on. In these two cases there are adequate terms used to describe the paternal relation. This is not always the case, however. Augustine, following Aristotle, observes that, in some cases, a given relation that is observed between two things is not adequately identified through a particular word in a natural language. For example, access to the internet for many individuals is through a point-to-point protocol between an individual’s computer and an internet provider. This relation—between user and provider—is one that did not exist 100 years ago, and, while the terms ‘user’ and ‘provider’ did exist, they were not used to describe this relation. Thus, prior to the adoption of the terms ‘user’ and ‘provider’ to describe such a relation, there was indeed a relation without terms sufficient to describe it. In such cases where there are no adequate terms to describe one thing in relation to another, a term must be coined or adopted. This is what happens, Augustine argues, with respect to the

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Holy Spirit: while neither the term ‘holy’ nor ‘spirit’ indicates a relation, theologians are justified in using the name Holy Spirit to indicate the “Spirit of the Father and Son” (using the word, in effect, as a relational term). I want to conclude by noting that there were medieval theologians who took a different path when it came to working out the basic terms and categories of trinitarian theology. Many of these theologians worked between the Carolingian period and the end of the twelfth century prior to both the Sentences of Peter Lombard being established as the theological textbook within the Universities, and the trinitarian statements of Lateran IV.  The trinitarian theology throughout this period remains understudied, and to date there is no satisfactory narrative that begins to capture the diversity of trinitarian theology during this incredibly rich period. Here we can note, by way of passing, a couple exceptional thinkers who simply took a different path. Gottschalk of Orbais is an interesting example of a Carolingian theologian who does just this. While much of what he wrote is lost, fragments of his trinitarian theology are present in the De una et non trina deitate by Hincmar of Rheims.28 In this work Hincmar critiques Gottschalk’s rejection of the formula of one nature/ substance and three persons, and his replacement language that God is trina (threefold, or triple). It seems Gottschalk’s argument was that the divinity of God is not limited to the one nature, but extends completely to the three persons, such that one can speak of trina deitas. Somewhat later, the twelfth-century theologian Thierry of Chartres would argue in De sex dierum operibus (On the Six Days of Creation) that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can helpfully be understood in relation to the four Aristotelian causes, such that the Father is the efficient cause, the Son is the formal cause, the Holy Spirit is the final cause, and, finally, the matter God creates—and out of which He makes all things—is the material cause.29 What is important to note is that Hincmar and Thierry—one could add Peter Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Joachim of Fiore, et al.—are not necessarily explicating what could or should be called heretical views. Their theological language and categories, while somewhat unusual, attempt to explicate an account of how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be fully God, and yet there is one God. For our purposes, therefore, the point is not to label them as heretical or problematic, but to simply note that they fall outside  See Hincmar, De una et non trina (PL 125, 473–618).  See Thierry of Chartres, De sex dierum operibus.

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of the normative ways of speaking about the Trinity that would develop in the period following Lateran IV and be ensconced in the Lombard’s trinitarian theology.30 * * * The structure of this volume follows the basic trinitarian categories of emanation, relation, and person. It begins, however, with a chapter on trinitarian epistemology. The second chapter considers how it is that one can know God is Trinity. It begins with a discussion of early medieval attempts to prove that God is Trinity by means of rational argumentation. And, while it is clear that this tradition had some influence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, one observes that formal demonstrations for the triunity of God waned by the thirteenth century and up through the sixteenth. However, if one cannot know God is Trinity by means of demonstrative argument, how is one to know God is triune? In the subsequent sections of the chapter, we explore how medieval and early modern Christians thought the Trinity is known through vestiges, Scripture, the Son (cognitio per Filium), and prayer. The third chapter considers the theological topics of the divine emanations and the divine relations. It begins with an analysis of the generation of the Son, looking at several models of generation found in the thirteenth century. Following this discussion, it shifts to the procession of the Holy Spirit, treating the question of whether or not the Spirit proceeds from the essence or the Father, as well as other issues surrounding the procession of the Spirit from the Father and Son (filioque). The second half of the chapter examines the divine relations and returns to the Augustinian distinction between terms predicated of God according to substance and those predicated according to relation, arguing that this distinction was normative for all medieval theologians. Building upon this section, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the late thirteenth-century debate regarding disparate and opposed relations. It is argued that this heated debate was both philosophical and theological, involving both the philosophical

30  The other thing to note is that many of these theologians examined trinitarian theology in radically distinct genres. See, for example, Cédric Giraud, “The Literary Genres of ‘Theology’.” Invaluable here is Olga Weijers, A Scholar’s Paradise.

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issues regarding the principle of individuation, and theological issues regarding the relations between the Eastern and Western Churches. The fourth chapter examines the divine persons and accounts of personal distinction. The first part treats the definition of a divine person in Augustine and Boethius before turning to the reception of the Boethian definition in Thomas and Scotus. The second section considers the distinction between divine attributes, personal properties, and trinitarian appropriations, with a focus on how these distinctions were worked out in the twelfth century. The third section looks at the notion of personal constitution and whether or not the divine persons are “constituted.” Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of personal distinction and examines four medieval models. The volume concludes with a brief discussion of two interrelated topics that demonstrate the common or normative aspects of medieval trinitarian theology. First, it was argued in the third chapter that medieval theologians shared a common understanding of the divine relations—an understanding that builds upon Augustine’s theology in important ways, but also redefines it and narrows it in others. Here that common theology is placed into contrast with Wolfhart Pannenberg’s account of the divine relations to highlight an alternative theology and to demonstrate certain common assumptions of the medieval view. Second, the chapter examines the ways in which post-Lombardian medieval trinitarian theology was circumscribed by certain theological, philosophical, and educational developments that occurred in the early thirteenth century.

Bibliography (CCSL = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina; CO = Calvini Opera; CR = Corpus Reformatorum; PL = Patrologia Latina; WA = D.  Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe)

Manuscript Sources Peter Gracilis. Lectura super quattuor libros Sententiarum.   London, Royal 10 A 1, fols. 1–236 [sigla R]

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Pre-modern Sources Anselm. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, Opera Omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt. Edinburgh 1946–1961. Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. Princeton 1995. Augustine. De Trinitate, in CCSL 50 and 50A. Calvin, John. Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, 59 vols., ed. Guilielmus Baum, et al. (Brunswick 1863–1900). Corpus Iuris Canonici [Liber extra], ed. Aemilius Friedberg, 2 vols. Graz 1959. Hincmar of Rheims. De una et non trina deitate, in PL 125, 473–618. Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. Stephen A. Barney, et al. Cambridge 2006. John Duns Scotus. Reportatio I-A, ed. and trans. Alan B.  Wolter and Oleg V.  Bychkov, 2 vols. St. Bonaventure, NY, 2004 and 2008. NB: cited as Wolter-Bychkov. Luther, Martin. D.  Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 73 vols. Weimar 1883–2009. Peter Auriol. Scriptum super primum Sententiarum, at http://www.peterauriol. net/editions/electronicscriptum/contents/, accessed January 2020. NB: cited as Electronic Scriptum. Richard of St. Victor. De Trinitate, ed. J. Ribaillier. Paris 1958. Thierry of Chartres. De sex dierum operibus, ed. N.M. Häring in Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School. Toronto 1971. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, in Opera Omnia (Leonine Edition), vols. 4–12. Rome 1888–1906. William of St. Thierry. Aenigma fidei, in PL 180, 397–440.

Modern Sources Barnes, Michel René. “De Regnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies 26.2 (1995), 51–79. Bougerol, Jacques-Guy. “The Church Fathers and the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, ed. Irena Backus. Leiden 2001, 113–164. Giraud, Cédric. “The Literary Genres of ‘Theology’,” in A Companion to the Twelfth-Century Schools, ed. Cédric Giraud. Leiden 2020, 250–271. Helm, Paul. John Calvin’s Ideas. Oxford 2004. de Rijk, Lambertus. “On Boethius’ Notion of Being. A Chapter of Boethian Semantics,” in Meaning and Inference in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann. Dordrecht 1988, 1–29.

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Pelikan, Jaroslav and Valerie R. Hotchkiss, eds. Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vols. New Haven 2003. Rosemann, Philipp W. The Story of A Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s ‘Sentences.’ Ontario 2007. Weijers, Olga. A Scholar’s Paradise. Teaching and Debating in Medieval Paris. Turnhout 2015.

CHAPTER 2

Theological Epistemology

Abstract  This chapter examines how it is that one can know God is Trinity. It begins with a discussion of early medieval attempts to prove that God is Trinity by means of rational argumentation. And, while it is clear that this tradition had some influence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, one observes that formal demonstrations for the triunity of God waned by the thirteenth century. In the subsequent sections of the chapter, we explore how medieval Christians argued that the Trinity is known through vestiges, Scripture, the Son (cognitio per Filium), and prayer. Keywords  Trinity • Epistemology • Knowing God • Vestiges • Scripture • Prayer John Calvin wrote in the Institutes that God discloses Himself to humanity through the creation of the universe such that one cannot “open his or her eyes without being compelled to see Him.”1 The creator God is evident, Calvin argues, throughout creation: there is no place one can look without seeing God’s glory—the beauty of the universe itself is a mirror in which one can contemplate God, a virtual theater of His glory.2 The problem, however, is that despite divine wisdom and goodness being imprinted 1 2

 Calvin, Institutes (1559), I.5.1 (CO 2, 41).  See Susan E. Schreiner, Theater of His Glory.

© The Author(s) 2020 J. T. Slotemaker, Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47790-5_2

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into the very fabric of the world, human beings are limited in their ability to know God. They are simply not in a position to understand and interpret creation in a way that leads to a discrete knowledge of God’s trinitarian nature. So how can one know the triune God? Almost every medieval theologian held that God is revealed through two sources: (1) the natural world, and (2) the Scriptures. This idea emerges as early as Tertullian’s third-century work Adversus Marcionem, and many medieval theologians, such as Hugh of St. Victor, referred to these sources as the “two books” written by the Holy Spirit, the finger of God (digitus Dei).3 The two books, for Hugh, provide knowledge of God as He reveals Himself to human beings. For some, like John Calvin, the knowledge that one gets of God through the natural world is limited, such that he will rework the metaphor and argue that human beings are only able to read the “book of nature” by means of the “spectacles” of Scripture.4 Without Scripture, Calvin argues, one can only acquire a confused knowledge of God by means of the natural world. For others, such as Peter Abelard, there is a more complete knowledge of God that one can access by means of reason unaided directly by Scripture, and that is the basic tension we will be tracing in this chapter.

The Trinity and Demonstrative Arguments Can human reason deduce that the one God is three persons? Is this article of faith known only by means of revelation, or can one demonstrate that God is three and one? There was a remarkable range of opinions in the medieval period regarding what could be known about the Trinity by means of reason alone. That said, the question of demonstrably proving the Trinity is really a question belonging to the long twelfth century; for the majority of later thinkers between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, the triunity of God was an article of faith that could not be rationally demonstrated. However, in the twelfth century this was not yet settled, and theologians between Anselm and Richard of St. Victor would wrestle with this question. We begin with Anselm. Anselm is infamous for arguing in the Monologion that he would present a theology of the trinitarian God in which nothing would be argued

3 4

 Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1.18 (46–47).  Calvin, Institutes (1559), I.6.1 (CO 2, 53).

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on the basis of Scripture, but by means of reason alone.5 Here Anselm seems to move from a natural knowledge of the divine essence and its attributes to a full-blown account of the divine Trinity. However, as the reader quickly realizes, Anselm is working with a particular understanding of reason and is operating within the constraints of the “reasoning of the faith.”6 Commentators on Anselm have disagreed as to what this means, with some arguing that Anselm intends to provide philosophical proofs that God is Trinity that ought to be convincing to believer and unbeliever alike,7 while others have attempted to soften this claim by arguing that Anselm is working within the context of the faith and is presenting arguments based on the creeds and Scripture—if not quoting them directly— for monks within his community.8 Regardless of how one adjudicates this scholarly debate, almost everyone would agree that Anselm displays a remarkable confidence in the ability of human reason to know the Trinity. Anselm’s arguments in the second half of the Monologion attempt to demonstrate that a divine essence must necessarily be triune. His exposition of the necessary emanations in God emerges seamlessly out of his treatment of the divine essence, its attributes, and its role in creation.9 What is perhaps more interesting is that Anselm is not an anomaly in the twelfth century. As Richard Southern reminds us, for the first time ever [in the twelfth-century masters] we find scholars confident that nature could be fully understood … everything could be known, and already, as it seemed to those optimistic masters, more was known than had ever been known before.10

This optimism with respect to human knowledge was not limited to the natural world, and the theologians of the twelfth century demonstrate a remarkable confidence regarding what can be known about the divine nature. Here we consider Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Abelard because they offer two important alternatives in the century following Anselm. Hugh maintained in his early Sententiae de divinitate that there are four ways the human creature can know the Creator, two according to nature  Anselm, Monologion, prol. (I.7).  Ibid. 7  Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm, 14–19. 8  John T. Slotemaker, Anselm of Canterbury, 6–8, 17–20. 9  Ibid. 31–41. 10  R.W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism, 33. 5 6

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and two according to grace: according to nature, reason and the natural world can lead one to knowledge of God; according to grace, inspiration and teaching can lead one to knowledge of God.11 Reason, what Hugh calls the first eye, is understood as an internal knowledge that is based on nature and not grace. He writes that reason naturally has the light of truth planted into it and is the source of three kinds of knowledge regarding God: “God exists, God is one, and God is triune.”12 Here, it seems, Hugh supports a purely rational knowledge of God as Trinity, though as we will see, he would nuance this in subsequent works. Later in his De Sacramentis, Hugh argues that there is not a purely rational knowledge of God as Trinity that is available to all human beings: he argues, by contrast, that the fact “that God is” (quia esset) is available to all rational creatures, while “what God is” (quid esset) remains unknown without the aid of grace and revelation.13 Thus, for Hugh, knowledge of God as Trinity is bound to God’s revelation through Scripture—that said, Hugh also thinks that that revelation is now available to almost all persons, such that one is without excuse. Since God is revealed through the Word to all rational beings, they cannot help but see God’s trinitarian nature manifest throughout the created order. Hugh’s De tribus diebus (On the Three Days) is a strikingly beautiful exposition of this basic theological point. Peter Abelard, by contrast, will make a more robust claim about what can be known based on reason alone. He begins his examination of trinitarian theology in the Theologia ‘summi boni’ with the claim that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are known by means of their power, wisdom, and goodness, respectively: the Father through the power to create and do all things, the Son through His wisdom, and the Holy Spirit through His goodness in human redemption. This trinitarian triad—also found in Hugh’s De tribus diebus—was central to Abelard’s trinitarian theology. While Hugh had argued that the Trinity can be known through the natural world as interpreted through Scripture, Abelard’s focus is on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and what can be known by means of 11  Hugh, Sententiae de divinitate III (Coolman-Coulter, 156). I have cited the English translation. 12  Ibid. 157. 13  See Hugh, De Sacramentis I.3.1 (PL 176, 217). Cf. Bonaventure’s reading of Hugh, Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis I.1 (V, 45). 14  Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise, 105n14.

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examining the properties associated with the three persons. Thus, understanding Father as power, Son as wisdom, and Spirit as goodness provides some knowledge about the Trinity: knowledge, Abelard argues, that is not limited by the revelation found in Scripture. The pagan philosophers, Abelard claims, had some knowledge about the divine Trinity. In particular, he examines Cicero’s De inventione and Plato’s Timaeus: the former providing evidence that pagan philosophers were not polytheists as well as linking the notion of the order and goodness of creation with the notion of God; the latter discussing the nature of the “world soul” that is perhaps a simulacrum for the Holy Spirit. The point Abelard insists upon is that the Pagan philosophers could come to some knowledge of the Trinity through an analysis of certain attributes that belong to the three divine persons in a unique way. Abelard also argues in the Theologia ‘summi boni’ that by means of natural reason one could know that God is Trinity through the goodness or order of the created world.14 There is, however, one caveat that we must add to this picture of Abelard, lest one think that he falls outside of the normative Western tradition. In the final chapter of the ‘summi boni’ he maintains “that all people may have faith in the Trinity by nature” (quod fidem trinitatis omnes homines naturaliter habeant),15 such that there is a common faith that all individuals have by nature (naturaliter). But what does this mean? It seems that even Abelard would argue that faith is necessary for a knowledge of God as Trinity, though a faith that could be defined as a virtue common to all and a natural human quality. As such, one need not be a Christian to know about the triune nature of God, as the common faith available to all teaches that God is threefold by means of knowing His power, wisdom, and goodness. We began this discussion with John Calvin, who would clearly reject Abelard’s claim regarding a natural knowledge of the Trinity. Calvin, one could say, is at the other end of the theological spectrum. What is striking, however, is that Calvin himself uses language that seems to borrow from Abelard and an older intellectual tradition. Calvin notes that some philosophers have referred to the human person as a microcosm (μικρόκοσμος) that contains the divine power (potentia), goodness (bonitas), and wisdom (sapientia).16 Here the triad so famous in the twelfth century—and the 15  Abelard, Theologia ‘summi boni’ III.5 (CCCM 13, 200–201); id., Theologia ‘Scholarium’ II (CCCM 13, 497–498). 16  Calvin, Institutes (1559), I.5.3 (CO 2, 43).

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center of Abelard’s argument—is employed by Calvin, who similarly argues that these three attributes reveal the nature of God. For Calvin God’s power is on display when the wicked are punished and the needy are “raised out of the dust,” God’s wisdom is on display through the fact that all things have their season, order, and time, and God’s goodness is on display in the very fact that there is anything created at all.17 The point here is not to argue that Calvin follows Abelard’s argument per se, or that they would agree about how the triad power, wisdom, and goodness reveals the nature of God. It is, rather, that thinkers who are quite far apart in terms of what they think can or cannot be known about the Trinity based on natural reason share a common tradition and grammar going back to both non-Christian and Christian sources. In the long medieval tradition, there are few theologians who would agree with Peter Abelard that there is some natural knowledge of the Trinity. It was generally held that knowledge of the Trinity is available to reason informed by the faith. However, what individual thinkers meant by that claim was varied. Southern, therefore, is correct in his judgment that in the long twelfth century there was an optimism about what can be known about God. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there was a bit more caution about what reason could know about God both informed by faith and uninformed by faith. In the following section, we will consider a similar line of inquiry, looking this time at how a few later thinkers understood the trinitarian vestiges or images as related to questions of theological epistemology.

Vestiges and Images Building upon Genesis 1:26 medieval theologians understood human beings to be made in the image and likeness (imaginem et similitudinem) of God. This tradition has roots in the Greek Fathers such as Origen of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa and was worked out in extensive detail in Augustine’s De Trinitate. Furthermore, beyond the study of the human person, medieval theologians held that there were vestiges (vestigia) or footprints of God embedded in the natural world. What knowledge of God can be gleaned from the vestiges or images of the Trinity?

 Ibid. I.5.6–8 (CO 2, 44–47).

17

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From the perspective of the thirteenth century, Abelard’s faith in dialectic and a natural knowledge of the Trinity is a bit unnerving. Thomas Aquinas, for example, argues in the Summa theologiae that knowledge of God is not self-evident, however, human beings can develop demonstrative arguments that prove the existence of God. These arguments are demonstrations quia (reasoning from effect to cause) and not demonstrations proper quid (reasoning from cause to effect) because what is known about the one God are His effects evident through creation. Thomas subsequently develops five arguments (the quinque viae) to prove the existence of God by means of observing the natural world.18 However, Thomas does not think that one can know that God is Trinity by means of demonstration. In his discussion of the knowledge of the divine persons, Thomas questions whether it is possible to know the Trinity from creatures (ex creaturis). After all, if there are vestigia (footprints) of the Trinity in creation, it would seem these “little tracks” might provide knowledge of the Trinity. Thomas’s response is that the vestigia cannot give one knowledge of the Trinity precisely because the creative acts of God belong to the unity of the divine essence, not the distinction of persons; stated differently, when God creates, it is the divine essence that creates, not a distinct person or a distinguished Trinity of persons. Thus, what can be known about God by means of creation is not knowledge of God qua Trinity, but knowledge of God qua essence.19 If this is the case, however, in what sense do the vestigia give one knowledge of God? Thomas maintains that while the vestigia cannot give one knowledge of the Trinity in the sense of furnishing a proof for its existence, they can provide some knowledge, in the sense that once one believes in the Trinity, the trinitarian nature of God is manifest throughout creation. Taking the Trinity as a given—in Thomas’s words, Trinitate posita—one comes to observe that the goodness of God is manifest in creation through His infinite power. A goodness, he argues, that can only reach ultimate happiness when it is shared.20 Observing the emanation of all good things from God, one schooled in trinitarian faith cannot help but recognize in creation the footprints of the trinitarian fecundity that is the Father, Son, and

 Aquinas, ST I.1.2–3 (IV, 8–14).  Aquinas, ST I.32.1 (IV, 349–350). 20  Aquinas, ST I.32.1.2 (IV, 350). 18 19

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Holy Spirit. Thomas concludes that, following Augustine, Christians arrive at a knowledge of the Trinity through faith (per fidem).21 Thomas was not alone in arguing that knowledge of the Trinity is available only through faith. His contemporary, the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure, also insisted that there were limitations in terms of what the vestigia could reveal about God. In the Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Journey of the mind into God), Bonaventure presents a mystical vision of Jesus under the aspect of a six-winged Seraph (angel). The six wings represent stages of knowing God, and Bonaventure examines the stages in pairs: the two lower wings symbolize what can be known of God through vestigia (Itin. 1–2), the two middle wings symbolize what can be known of God through the imago Dei (Itin. 3–4), the two upper wings symbolize what can be known of God through seeing God in God’s self, first as the unity of essence (Itin. 5), and subsequently as a Trinity of persons (Itin. 6). Here Bonaventure agrees with Thomas, arguing that at the first two levels what is known of God is God qua essence, such that a fully trinitarian knowledge of God does not emerge until one reaches the upper wings of the Seraph.22 This is a position Bonaventure maintained as early as his commentary on the Sentences.23 At the beginning of the fourteenth century, John Duns Scotus would defend a similar position, though on different grounds. Scotus makes a distinction between theologia in se (theology in itself) and theologia nostra (our theology): the former referring to God’s knowledge of God, the second referring to our knowledge of God in the present life. Theologia nostra, according to Scotus, includes the truths of the faith that God wills to reveal to humanity through Scripture and the Church. Thus, proving the existence of God is, strictly speaking, not theology, but part of metaphysics or natural philosophy, while the truth that God is Trinity is fundamentally a revealed truth (theologia nostra) that God makes evident through Scripture. No one, Scotus argues, can arrive at demonstrable knowledge of the Trinity in this life by natural means.24 As Scotus understands things, if God were not a Trinity (per impossibile), He could still create human beings; thus, since being a Trinity is not necessary in terms of God producing human beings, God being Trinity cannot be demonstrated based  Ibid.  Bonaventure, Itinerarium 6 (V, 310–312). 23  Bonaventure, Sent. I.3.1.4 (I, 76b). 24  Scotus, Quodlibet 14.34 (Alluntis-Wolter, 323). 21 22

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on God’s effects.25 Despite this, what can one know about the Trinity by means of the vestiges? Scotus maintains that a creature cannot distinctly represent (distincte repraesentare) the Trinity. That said, a creature can represent the Trinity in two somewhat lesser or incomplete ways: (1) by means of likeness (per modum similitudinis), and (2) by means of proportion or correspondence (proportionis).26 Creatures can represent the Trinity by means of likeness as goodness represents goodness, truth represents truth, and unity represents unity. In short, where one finds goodness, truth, and unity, one finds a likeness of the Trinity, in that all such qualities found in created things are related, per modum similitudinis, to the three persons of the Trinity.27 Further, creatures can represent the Trinity by means of proportion, such that the limited represents the unlimited, dependent represents independent, possible being represents necessary being (necesse esse). Here, what Scotus seems to mean is that proportionally the very limited, dependent, and contingent nature of creatures is related to the trinitarian nature of God who is unlimited, independent, and necessary. But what does it mean to represent the Trinity in a non-distinct way? Scotus is clear that to represent the Trinity distinctly would be for terms to be attributable to the trinitarian persons insofar as the attributes are actually attributed (in quantum sunt appropriata). That, quite simply, is not what is going on in vestigial attribution; instead, this type of representation is such that the terms or attributes in question represent that which, by nature, one can attribute to the persons. The difference is that the former kind of attribution would be to say what the divine persons are in se, whereas the latter is a kind of attribution that uses terms that, by nature, are applicable to the divine persons. To say this somewhat differently: when goodness is found in created things, that goodness is not the same goodness that is the Holy Spirit (such that it distinctly represents that person), but is rather like that goodness in the Holy Spirit (per modum similitudinis).28 Thomas and Scotus agree, therefore, that the trinitarian vestiges cannot provide a rational demonstration for the Trinity. And here the argument can be extended from the vestiges found throughout all of creation to the  Ibid.  Scotus, Reportatio I-A, I.3.3 (Wolter-Bychkov, 206). 27  While this is found in Scotus, it is also present in Bonaventure, Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis I.2, concl. (V, 54–56). 28  Ibid. 25 26

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imago Trinitatis. Thomas and Scotus both argue that human beings are made in the image of God, such that there is a trinitarian image found in the human person through the acts of memory (memoria), understanding (intelligentia), and willing (voluntas).29 For Thomas and Scotus, the image is not the powers of the soul (potentiae animae), but the acts themselves, whereby one remembers, thinks, and loves. That said, while there is an image in the human person, what one can know about God as Trinity by means of the image is radically limited. In Thomas’s language, the image is not created by the Trinity, but is the product of the divine essence; as such, one can argue that there is a God who creates all things, but one cannot argue that there is a Trinity of persons. In Scotus’ language, it is not necessary that God is Trinity, and, per impossibile, if God were not a Trinity of persons, God could still have created humans capable of remembering, thinking, and loving. Therefore, one cannot deduce from the imago Trinitatis that God is a Trinity of persons. This basic position would become normative for the majority of late medieval theologians. Almost a century after the death of Thomas, the Augustinian theologian Peter Gracilis would argue that a vestige of the Trinity appears in every creature (quaelibet creatura) because every creature is one thing (aliquid unum) that has a likeness (speciem) or beauty (pulchritudinem), and has order, love, and goodness (ordinem, amorem, bonitatem). The unity of every created thing represents the Father who is the principle of origin; the beauty of every created thing represents the Son, who is the beauty according to which every beauty is formed; 30 and order represents the Holy Spirit, who is the love and goodness of the Father and Son. Thus, all created things have a unity, beauty, and order that is intrinsic to it as a created thing. That said, such knowledge is only available to one who holds that God is Trinity based on the Scriptures and the creeds. As Gracilis concludes, “one is not able to have sufficient knowledge of the Trinity through the contemplation of creatures, without doctrine and divine inspiration or revelation.”31 Like so many medieval theologians, Gracilis recognized that knowledge of the Trinity is fundamentally gleaned from the Scriptures and the Church’s distillation of what the Scriptures teach in the creeds. Luther would also insist that Christians know the trinitarian nature of God  Thomas, ST I.93 (V, 401–412); Scotus, Reportatio I-A.3.7 (245–248).  Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate 6.10.11 (CCSL 50, 241–242). 31  Gracilis, Sent. I.4 (R, fol. 23v). 29 30

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through Scripture and the creeds: in the memorable image of Luther, the creeds of the Church are like the honey collected from beautiful flowers. The flowers are the Scriptures, and the Fathers of the Church are the bees who have taken what is good and pure in the Scriptures and collected it into an abbreviated form, as the goodness of a flower is condensed into honey.32 For Gracilis and Luther, therefore, the Scriptures and the creeds— which are not something radically distinct from the Scriptures, but a simple distillation of what is taught within them—are the true source of trinitarian theology.

The Trinity and Scripture The first four books of Augustine’s De Trinitate are an extended analysis of how Scripture speaks about God. Here Augustine gives an explanation for how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—who are the one God— are to be understood according to the faith. This, he writes, must first be established by an appeal to “the authority of sacred Scripture.”33 Augustine begins with an analysis of two distinct kinds of passages: those that speak of the Son of God as the same substance with the Father (e.g., John 1:1, 2, 3, 14), and those that seem to speak of the Son as subordinate to the Father (e.g., I Timothy 2:5; John 14:28).34 The former support a pro-­ Nicene interpretation of the Trinity and are evidence of his basic claim; the latter pose a challenge, and Augustine follows previous Latin theologians such as Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan in arguing that such passages refer to the Son’s incarnate life, such that when Christ says “the Father is greater than I” it is a statement about his life as incarnated in the flesh. His approach, however, is not limited to just the Son. He also examines similar passages about the Spirit. De Trinitate I–IV is not, however, a simple theological reading of New Testament passages that examine the divinity of the Son and Spirit. In the second book, Augustine turns to Old Testament theophanies and argues that because it is proper for the Son and Spirit to be “sent,” many of the passages in the Old Testament are not speaking about the Father (or the one God) but of the Son or Spirit. For example, Augustine examines  Luther, Sermon 27 (1535), (WA 41, 275).  Augustine, De Trin., 1.2.4 (CCSL 50, 31–32). 34  Ibid. 1.6.9 (CCSL 50, 37–38), 1.7.14 (CCSL 50, 44–46). 35  Augustine, De Trin. 2.10.19–2.12.22 (CCSL 50, 105–109). 32 33

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Abraham’s discussion of the “three men” near the Great oaks of Mamre in Genesis 18—here, and in other passages, Augustine insists that it is not only the Son who is revealed but also the entire Trinity.35 Augustine’s methodology throughout the first four books of De Trinitate is exegetical and provides a foundation for arguing that both the Old and New Testament contain evidence that God is Triune. These first four books are also a complex argument that knowledge of the Trinity is always saving knowledge grounded in Jesus Christ; thus, as has been emphasized in the literature, there is an explicitly Christological and Soteriological dimension to Augustine’s biblical and trinitarian hermeneutics. Knowledge of God, therefore, cannot be gleaned from the biblical text without the gradual process of purification that is found through participation in Christ, and, through Him and the Spirit, in relationship with the Father.36 This should not surprise us, for Augustine states in the very introduction to De Trinitate that he is on guard against those who attempt to formulate a knowledge of God based on a “misguided love of reason” independent of the faith.37 The long medieval tradition would inherit Augustine’s trinitarian hermeneutics, and here it is perhaps instructive to consider a couple concrete examples. First, it goes without saying that numerous biblical passages were understood as defending the claim that God is Trinity: for example, dozens of New Testament passages were used to defend the generation of the Son (John 1:1–5; 1:14; 1:18; 3:16; 5:26; 14:11; 17:21, etc.), or the procession of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7; 20:22, etc.). The great Patristic authors discussed these passages at length and the medieval theologians inherited a tradition of commenting upon them. What is perhaps more interesting is that building upon Augustine’s work these authors also understood the Old Testament to provide evidence of the Trinity. Here we can turn to an interesting case in which Peter Lombard and Bonaventure—following Augustine’s Sermon 9—read the first three commandments of the Decalogue as pertaining to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively. Peter Lombard argues that the Decalogue should be understood (Cf. Matthew 22:40) as consisting of two tables: the first table contains commandments 1–3 and pertains to the love of God; the second table contains

 Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, 142–173. Cf. Luigi Gioia, Theological Epistemology.  Augustine, De Trin. 1.1.1 (CCSL 50, 27). See Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 243.

36 37

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commandments 4–10 and pertains to the love of neighbor.38 Bonaventure would agree with the Lombard’s approach. In his reading of the first table, Bonaventure argued that the triad introduced by Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor—power, wisdom, and goodness—could fruitfully be applied to this passage. Bonaventure concluded that 1) you shall have no other God before me refers to the Father as power (potentia), 2) you shall not use the name of the Lord in vain refers to the Son as wisdom (sapientia), and 3) you shall remember to keep holy the Sabbath day refers to the Holy Spirit as goodness (bonitas).39 The problem, however, is that it is not immediately clear why this triad is usefully applied to this passage. Bonaventure explains: the first commandment—to have no other gods—is about the Father, and the proper worship and adoration that is a fitting response to the divine power (potentia) and majesty (maiestas) of the first person of the Trinity. The Father, following Hugh, represents the divine power, and the only appropriate human response to this power is worship and adoration. The second commandment is in relationship to Christ in that one is to faithfully confess the Truth and Wisdom of God, as Christ, through the proper use of oaths. That is, one can avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain by confessing the Truth of Christ found in the Son of God. The third command is to love the Holy Spirit. This commandment instructs the proper rest, work, and avoidance of Sin that are necessary to love the Holy Spirit. This rest contains seven acts or intentions, the work contains six acts of mercy, and the injunction not to sin contains five ways to avoid sinning. These three aspects are appropriate to the Holy Spirit, in that one who keeps them all will truly be ordered to the proper love and goodness of God.40 But what is going on in such readings of the Old Testament? Here Bonaventure interprets the Old Testament Law as pertaining to the proper love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And, well, it is clear that such readings of the Old Testament only make sense within the context of

 Lombard, Sent. III.37.1.1 (II, 206).  Bonaventure, Collationes de decem praeceptis I.3–5 (V, 507–508). 40  Cf. Ibid. II–IV (V, 511–522). 38 39

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Augustine’s hermeneutics described above. For Augustine, the Lombard, and Bonaventure the one God of Scripture is a Trinity of persons, and as such the Old Testament bears witness to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While medieval and early modern theologians understood the Old Testament to be a witness to the triune God, here we can turn to the ways in which the New Testament functioned both as a source for trinitarian theology and as a lens by which to read the Old Testament. The fourteenth-­ century Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol wrote a comprehensive biblical commentary—the Compendiosa litteralis sensus totius scripturae—that was influential throughout the late medieval and early Reformation period. In his commentary on John’s gospel, Auriol provided a densely theological gloss examining the nature of Christ as the second person of the Trinity. In outlining the basic structure of the book of John, Auriol argues that almost the entirety of the book is one argument for the claim that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, who is: equal to God the Father in authority, efficacy, immensity, mode of operation (modus operandi) and activity, benevolence to humanity, friendship and charity, patience and longsuffering (longaminis). The Son is equal to the Father in all things that belong to the divine essence and is also equal to the Father in producing the Holy Spirit (est aequalis Patri in producendo Spiritum Sanctum).41 In short, Auriol interprets the book of John as an argument for the divinity of Christ that not only makes claims about the Word in relation to God the Father, but also explicates in detail the central claims of trinitarian theology. Auriol is not unique in his reading of the Gospel of John; since the patristic period, Christian theologians—from Hilary and Augustine to Calvin and Melanchthon—understood John as demonstrating the trinitarian truths of the faith.42 Further, Luther, like Auriol, would claim that the specific purpose of the Gospel of John was to defend the divinity of Christ, and the Trinity, against the heresiarch Cerinthus.43 However, it is not just the case that John provides evidence for the Trinity; John also, as we will see with Luther, was understood to provide a hermeneutics by which to read other biblical books. In Matthew 11:27 Jesus states that all things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.  Auriol, Compendiosa, fol.127r–v.  Cf., for example, Melanchthon, Loci (1559) I, (CR 21, 619–621).

41 42

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Martin Luther begins his exposition of this passage by observing that here Matthew speaks in a Johannine fashion (Iohannis more).44 John had said that the Word was the “unbegotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” (in sinu Patris) (1:18), and Luther links his exposition of Matthew with this passage of John that speaks of the intimacy of the relation between Father and Son. Luther argues explicitly that the knowledge one arrives at from John and Matthew is not philosophical (non philosophice) but theological, such that what the Son knows is not an abstracted philosophical knowledge of the divine substance, but a knowledge of the judgment and will of the Father. This type of theological knowledge, Luther argues, is beyond mere human reasoning, and is a mystery hidden (mysterium absconditum) from the wise and knowing. The Son transmits a knowledge of the Father to humanity because, in his divine being, He understands with the Father. The Son, therefore, is the source of knowledge about the Father and the trinitarian mystery. What Luther emphasizes here and elsewhere is that the knowledge one arrives at about the Trinity is not a kind of knowledge that one can deduce philosophically; it is, instead, a theological knowledge that is revealed in Scripture. Thus, as he writes elsewhere, theological knowledge of the Trinity can only be gleaned through revelation.45 The upshot is that from Augustine up through Luther the Old and New Testaments were understood as a witness to the triune nature of God—the former being read through the latter, with the Gospel of John often being seen as a unique witness to the divinity of Christ and the trinitarian mystery.

Cognitio per Filium As we saw in the previous section, the Gospel of John was often understood as a unique witness to the Trinity because of its presentation of the Word. It was, however, not just the Gospel of John that inspired such reflections. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, Jesus says that with respect to the Father, “all things are delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is, but the Father, and who the Father is, but the Son,  Luther, Sermon 27 (1535), (WA 41, 277–278).  Luther, Annotationes Matthaei 11 (WA 38, 525). 45  Luther, Reihenpredigten über Johannes 1–2 (WA 46, 669). While this view was generally accepted, some questioned whether the technical terms of trinitarian theology are justified. See, for example, Servetus, De trinitatis erroribus, and Melanchthon, Loci (1521), prol. (CR 21, 85). 43 44

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and to whomever the Son will reveal Him (10:22).” The Son reveals the Father: the Father is known through the Son, to whomever the Son chooses to reveal Him. This basic fact is the origin or beginning of trinitarian theology, in that it was speculation about who the Son is, and how He is related to the Father, that led theologians to explore the relation between Father and Son. In the long Middle Ages, all Christian theologians agreed that the Trinity is known through the Son. In letter 11, for example, Augustine writes that knowledge of the Father comes through the Son (cognitio per Filium), in that the Son reveals to humanity the wishes and desires of the Father.46 The Son, however, is not just transmitting knowledge from the Father to humanity, He is also revealing the Father to humanity. Augustine is more explicit about this in De Trinitate where to know God is to move from knowledge of the material world created by God to knowledge of the immaterial God, precisely through the salvation offered through Christ.47 In this section, we will focus on two thinkers who inherited this Augustinian tradition, and yet are rarely placed in conjunction: Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther. Thomas begins the third part of the Summa theologiae with a discussion about the fittingness (convenientia) of the incarnation. Here he argues that it is most fitting that the invisible things of God are known through visible things (per visibilia), such that, as John of Damascus says, through the incarnation of the Word the goodness, wisdom, and justice of God are manifest.48 The argument Thomas makes is that something is fitting to something else if it belongs to it by reason of its particular nature (secundum rationem propriae naturae). In the case of God, what belongs to God by means of His nature is goodness, such that what belongs to the essence of goodness belongs to God per se. Further, according to Thomas, the essence of goodness is to communicate itself to others; for God to be good, therefore, is for God to communicate Himself to creatures. This is what God did when He joined Himself, in the person of the Son, to creatures through the incarnation.49 The point Thomas makes here is that it is fitting for God to reveal Himself to humanity through the incarnation—a theme that he would treat in more detail in his commentary on John.

 Augustine, Ep. 11.4 (CCSL 31, 28).  Ayres, Augustine, 142–173. 48  Thomas, ST III.1.1 (11, 6–7). 49  Ibid. 46 47

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Thomas’s commentary on the prologue to the Gospel of John is a lengthy meditation on the Word of God, and here we can focus on two aspects of that argument. First, Thomas makes it clear that it is through the Word that the Father is known. The Word is the Son of God and is the likeness of the Father from whom He is sent: the Word is the fullness of divinity and is equal to the Father. Further, Thomas claims that the Word qua Word articulates or expresses the whole being of the Father (totius esse Patris expressivum).50 That is, to know the Son is, in some sense, to know the Father, and one is reminded of the passage cited above that to know the Son is to know the Father, and to know the Father is to know the Son. Here, however, the focus is on the trinitarian persons per se, such that the discussion is about the Father and Son. But what about the incarnate Christ? John 1:15 states that the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” such that the second person of the Trinity was incarnated, enfleshed. Three verses later John writes, No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made Him known.

According to Thomas, the incarnate Christ is a source of knowledge of God and the divine Trinity. The Son, he writes, first revealed God to humanity through the prophets of the Old Testament. Here God is revealed through the Word as the Word makes Him manifest. That said, through the incarnate Christ there is a second, fuller, revelation—one that surpasses all other teachings, precisely because it is given directly by the only begotten Son (ab unigenito filio). The question Thomas asks is how, precisely, this second revelation through the incarnate Christ extends beyond the first revelation found in the Old Testament: “what did [the incarnate Christ] make known except the one God (unum Deum)?” The one God was also made known through Moses and the Prophets: for example, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one (dominus unus est)” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Does Christ only give knowledge of the one God?51 Thomas concludes his lecture by arguing that through the incarnation Christ reveals the mystery of the Trinity and many other things that were

 Thomas, Super Ioannem 1, lect. 1 (CT).  Thomas, Super Ioannem 1, lect. 11 (CT).

50 51

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not known to Moses or the other prophets of the Old Testament. What is known through Christ, therefore, extends beyond that which was known to the prophets of old, for through Christ one is introduced to the Father, and can know the Father qua Father. Further, it is through Christ that one can know the Spirit, for the Spirit is sent from the Father, through the Son. Christ himself says he will send the advocate, the comforter, to His Church (John 15:26): the Spirit who will testify on Christ’s behalf. The idea that the Trinity is known through the incarnation of the Word remained commonplace up through the sixteenth century. Here we can turn our attention to Martin Luther who was forceful in insisting that to know Christ is to know the Trinity—ubi verbum, ibi Trinitas, where there is the Word, there is the Trinity.52 For Luther, to know the Son is to know the Father, and to be introduced to the trinitarian mystery. That said, Luther’s reading of the tension between Moses’s claim of the one God and the New Testament’s claim about the divinity of Christ is somewhat different from that of Thomas. While Thomas played on the tension between the two, indicating that the New Testament builds upon the claims of the Old—Luther, in characteristic fashion, would put Christ at the center of both. In a sermon preached on Trinity Sunday (May 23, 1535), Luther would insist that Moses knew the trinitarian mystery in the same way Paul knew the trinitarian mystery. Here Luther uses intimate language to bring together that which Thomas somewhat pulled apart, noting that Paul and Moses kiss each other sweetly (so lieblich küssen).53 But what does Luther mean by this kiss? Luther attempts to demonstrate that Moses knew about Christ, by using passages in Paul (I Corinthians 10:9) to interpret Numbers 14:22; throughout, drawing a link between the language of temptation mentioned in both texts and arguing that both Moses and Paul confess “Christ as the Son of God, who is born in eternity from the Father, the same divine essence, and yet distinct from him.”54 The kiss is the place where Moses and Paul meet—it is their shared knowledge of Christ and all that He reveals. While Thomas and Luther perhaps disagree about how to characterize the gradual revelation of the trinitarian God in Scripture, they both agree that it is through the Son, the Word of God, that the Trinity is revealed.  Luther, Sermon 31 (1526), (WA 20, 388).  Luther, Sermon 27 (1535), (WA 41, 272). 54  Ibid. 52 53

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In Luther it is through the Son that Moses comes to know the trinitarian nature of God, even if the revelation to Moses uses different language than the New Testament to talk about this reality. For Luther, to know the Word of God is to know the triune God, such that where there is the Word, there is the Trinity. For the majority of theologians in the Latin West, the Trinity is manifest through the Son. And the knowledge of the Trinity that one arrives at by means of the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church is fundamentally a knowledge acquired through faith. Further, it is a knowledge that is not a purely cognitive process whereby one reads a text, or hears the creeds, and deduces that God must be three distinct persons. As Calvin would argue, the true knowledge of God (vera Dei cognitio) is not derived from human acts, but is in fact a singular gift of God; in particular, knowledge of God and the Trinity is acquired through faith and proceeds only from the illumination of the Spirit (nisi ex Spiritus illuminatione procedat).55 Here we can consider what this possibly means for two rather distinct theologians, William of St. Thierry and John Calvin.

Knowing the Trinity Through Prayer The French monastic theologian William of St. Thierry begins his Enigma of Faith by asking how it is that the lower can know the higher: how are humans to come to know God as Trinity? William answers this question by emphasizing that the knowledge one has of God is not like seeing an object by means of vision, and it is not like what one experiences when one “sees” with the mind’s eye. It is, rather, the knowledge one has through faith. As such, William argues that there are various ways in which one can come to know God as Trinity. First and foremost, the Scriptures reveal the nature of God to human beings. God communicates through the Scriptures and His nature is revealed, in part, through His word. Second, William writes that one can come to know God through the Son, who is silently a witness to the nature and substance of God. The Son of God, qua God, reveals the divine nature and substance to humanity through the incarnation. However, and this brings us to William’s third point, knowing God by means of Scripture and the Son is not purely a noetic act that is divorced

 Calvin, In acta apostolorum (CO 48, 416).

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from other aspects of human life; to know God, William writes, is perhaps more a manner of living (vivendi modus) than a manner of speaking or writing (loquendi modus).56 What does this mean? William is clear that knowledge of God is intimately linked to meekness and humility. One will learn more about God through prayer, he writes, than through lecturing on God or even reading books. Humble prayer, William thinks, has the power to reveal the trinitarian nature to humanity in ways that are important and profound.57 Here, as a Benedictine and, eventually, Cistercian Monk, William reinforces the role of humility, obedience, and prayer so central to Benedict’s Rule and the monastic life. To climb Jacob’s ladder, Benedict instructs, one must walk through the steps of humility to learn to love God fully so that God will be fully revealed.58 The manner in which one lives, therefore, is central to coming to know the triune God, and prayer is a central piece in his understanding of the rightly ordered life. This is a theme that William shares with many of his medieval contemporaries and is also found in the theology of John Calvin. Calvin developed a theology of divine participation according to which human beings can be incorporated into the divine life through Christ and the Spirit, and he works this out in his exegesis of Romans 8:26 by observing that it is through the Spirit that Christians come to know that God is their Father.59 Calvin here is referring to the notion that it is through the Spirit that a Christian comes to understand his or her place as an adopted son or daughter of the Father.60 This language builds explicitly on the Christological argument that Calvin developed previously in his comments on Romans 8:9, where he argued that the Spirit given to Christians is none other than the Spirit of Christ (Christi Spiritum) that dwells in the believer. The Spirit that is received by the Christian, therefore, is the same Spirit that is given to Christ from the Father. Further, once the Christian is incorporated into Christ, they are empowered by the Spirit to address God as “Father,” and it is through the power of the Spirit that the Christian is taught how to pray and what to ask for in prayer. What Calvin understands this to mean is that by nature the Christian does not know how to pray, such that the faithful are blind  Cf. William, Aenigma (PL 180, 397–399).  Ibid. 58  Benedict, Rule, Chap. 7. 59  Calvin, Ep. ad. Rom. (CO 49, 157). 60  Ibid. 144–145. Cf. id. Inst., III.20.37 (CO 2, 663). 56 57

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(caecos) in their addresses to God and remain filled with “anxious desires” and their minds are “disturbed and confused.” In short, Christians do not know what to ask for, such that complex human desires—the needs and longings of the human heart—must ultimately be guided and taught by the Spirit.61 Here he observes that the Spirit begins to work in the individual even prior to the act of prayer, for the desire to pray is itself only possible through the grace of the Spirit. Further, he argues that the “unutterable groanings” of the human heart arise by the impulse of the Spirit and far exceed the capabilities of the human mind. Thus, the Spirit is said to intercede by stirring up the desires in the human heart, such that those desires penetrate into heaven itself.62 So how does one know God as Trinity? According to Calvin, when one is incorporated into the life of the Son one comes to know God as Father. Furthermore, through incorporation one begins to pray to the Father, as taught by the Son, and comes to know the Father through the Son. The act of prayer also intimately includes the Spirit, for as Paul argues, the Spirit intercedes on one’s behalf and teaches one how to pray to the Father. Prayer, therefore, teaches one about the trinitarian nature of God and how to speak to God. According to Calvin, to pray is to enter into the trinitarian mystery. A contemporary of Calvin, Philip Melanchthon, would make a similar argument and take an explicitly pedagogical approach. At the end of his discussion of the Trinity in the final edition of the Loci, Melanchthon maintains that prayer is essential to knowing the triune God, and presents the reader with a couple of sample prayers. Here we can consider one of these: Holy Spirit who has been poured into the Apostles, who the Son of God our Redeemer has promised to us in order to kindle in us the true knowledge and worship of God, as it is written, “I shall pour out on you the Spirit of grace and prayer (Zechariah 12:10),” arouse in our hearts the true fear of God, true faith, and an understanding of His mercy which the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has promised to us for the sake of His Son: be our Comforter in all of our deliberations and dangers, and kindle our minds so that with true obedience we may ever worship the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Son our Redeemer, and You the Holy Spirit.63  Calvin, Ep. ad. Rom. (CO 49, 157).  Ibid. 63  Melanchthon, Loci (1559), I.  Translation from J.A.O.  Preus, The Chief Theological Topics, 38–39. 61 62

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This prayer, and an accompanying one to the Son, is provided so that the reader can learn how to pray to the triune God. Melanchthon writes that if one thinks and prays to the Holy Trinity about the three persons in a way that emphasizes their work and benefits, the Christian will grow in their understanding and devotion to God. As William had argued in the twelfth century, it is through the act of humble prayer that one can come to know the Triune God.

Conclusion Theologians working in the long Middle Ages debated what could be known about the Trinity, and how it could be known. Yet, among these disagreements, there were some common assumptions. First, almost no medieval theologians thought that a purely demonstrative argument could be made for the triune nature of God. Certain twelfth-century theologians seem to be a bit of an exception, though with the one caveat of Peter Abelard, the majority of the twelfth-century theologians—including Hugh and Richard of St. Victor—understood demonstrations for the Trinity to be coming from a place of faith, not unlike Anselm in the previous century. And even Abelard, when pressed, insisted that knowledge of the Trinity was grounded in faith, though, a faith that he thought was available to all persons independent of Scripture and the Church. Second, all of the theologians agreed that knowledge of the Trinity is grounded in Scripture (and the distillation of Scripture in the Creeds) and the ways in which the Son reveals the Father, and the Spirit, as witnessed therein. Finally, while not a topic discussed in all of the scholastics, the common assumption seems to be that the Triune God is known more deeply through prayer (and, by extension, worship, and the liturgy). Reason and revelation, therefore, constitute access to knowledge about the Trinity and are the common thread that runs through the entire discussion.

Coda: The Trinity and Aristotelian Logic The present chapter treated the topic of theological epistemology and the ways in which medieval Christians thought about knowing God as Trinity, with the first part of the chapter examining the use of natural reason. However, beyond the specific question of how natural reason could provide knowledge of the Trinity, there is a separate discussion about whether

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or not trinitarian theology is compatible with Aristotelian logic. Here we will briefly outline this concern and possible solutions as discussed by a couple fourteenth-century theologians.64 While this discussion was not necessarily new to the fourteenth century (e.g., see Peter Abelard and select twelfth-century theologians), there are few periods in the history of theology as focused on the compatibility of Aristotelian logic and trinitarian theology. The majority of medieval and early modern theologians argued for the formality or universality of Aristotelian logic: the idea, in short, that formal logic (the syllogism) applies universally to all sciences. The problem, however, is that trinitarian doctrine seems to provide a challenge for logicians such that if it is true, Aristotelian logic is not formal (i.e., it cannot apply to theology). Here is an example of a problematic third-figure trinitarian syllogism—following Boethius in modifying the Aristotelian figures—taken from Ockham’s Summa logicae: [Argument 1] Haec essentia est Pater Haec essentia est Filius _________________ ∴ Filius est Pater

This essence is the Father This essence is the Son _________________ ∴ the Son is the Father

This argument does seem to pose a problem: this is a valid third-figure expository syllogism, in which both premises are true and the conclusion is false. That is, the divine essence is the Father and the Son, and yet the Son is not the Father (the Son is distinct from the Father). Here, medieval theologians worried, one would have to admit that Aristotelian logic does not apply to trinitarian theology. The response to this problem by fourteenth-century theologians was quite diverse, and we can begin with Ockham’s understanding of the third-figure expository syllogism in the Summa logicae. Ockham formulates the third-figure expository syllogism as follows: B – A B – C _____ ∴ C – A  Here we follow Hester Gelber, “Logic,” Chaps. 7 and 8.

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Ockham argues that the middle term (here B) must supposit for something that neither is several things nor is identical with something that is several things. The condition of singularity, Ockham argues, is important to guarantee the formality of the syllogism. For example, consider the following example given by Ockham: [Argument 2] Humanity is Socrates Humanity is Plato _________________ ∴ Socrates is Plato In the case of this third-figure expository syllogism, the argument is valid and both premises are true, yet the conclusion is false. In response, Ockham argues that in this particular syllogism the middle term (Humanity) supposits for several things. That is, the middle term is not a singular thing and therefore this term cannot be used as the middle term of an expository syllogism. Ockham’s response to both arguments is that, following the fallacy of accident, they are not actually syllogisms because the middle term is not singular: that is, the term essentia/essence in argument 1, and humanity in argument 2, both supposit for more than one thing. These arguments, therefore, are paralogisms—products of fallacious or illogical argumentation—that do not pose a problem for the formality of Aristotelian logic precisely because they are not actually syllogisms. As Ockham realized, the problem a theologian faces is that when speaking about the divine Trinity there is one, singular essence that happens to be three distinct things (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit); because of this, the Trinity is particularly susceptible to paralogisms and theologians must be on guard against such fallacious reasoning. Ockham’s solution to the problem was not universally accepted. A fellow Franciscan, Walter Chatton, rejected Ockham’s use of the fallacy of accident to avoid these trinitarian dilemmas. Chatton argued that in fact the divine essence could function as a middle term in a third-figure expository syllogism, otherwise the essence could be threefold (triplicata) in the three persons (i.e., there would be three things). As Chatton understands things, the essence or deity of the three divine persons is sufficiently identical to formulate a syllogism with the terms ‘essence’ or ‘deity,’ in that it satisfies the condition of essential identity. The upshot is that Chatton

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denies Ockham’s solution to the trinitarian dilemma and insists that the terms ‘essence’ and ‘deity’ can indeed be used as the middle term in an expository syllogism.65 Thus, he rejects Ockham’s solution to the dilemma. The problem, however, is that theologians who wanted to defend Ockham’s solution had to explore various ways of identifying the fallacy of accident in trinitarian statements. Here we can consider an interesting solution that was actually mentioned by Ockham himself,66 and first attributed by Walter Chatton to Richard Campsall, and later developed in the writings of Robert Holcot.67 Since Campsall’s theological works on the Trinity are no longer extant, we turn to Holcot. Robert Holcot’s discussion of trinitarian theology in his commentary on the Sentences is rather unusual.68 There is no lengthy discussion of processions, relations, or persons, or an account of trinitarian metaphysics or the individuation of the divine persons. Holcot begins with sixteen arguments that attempt to prove that the one God is not three distinct persons. These arguments are quite diverse, but many of them examine the universality of Aristotelian logic. In the fifth argument, Holcot presents the following syllogism: [Argument 3] Hic Pater generat Hic Pater est haec essentia divina _________________ ∴ Haec essentia divina generat

This Father generates This Father is this divine essence _________________ ∴This divine essence generates.69

Holcot notes that this seemingly valid expository syllogism is inconsistent with trinitarian doctrine (following Lateran IV). Ockham would have argued that in this case the middle term supposits for more than one thing, such that this is not a valid syllogism by means of the fallacy of accident. This is not Holcot’s approach. Instead, he responds with an infamous passage in which he argues: It is not unfitting that natural logic should be deficient in things of faith. And, therefore, just as faith is above natural philosophy in pos-

 Chatton, Lectura I.2.6.4 (I, 485–486).  Ockham, Summa Logicae II.4.11 (OP I, 822). 67  Campsall’s argument must be reconstructed using Chatton, Letura I.2.6.4 (I, 483). 68  Here I am following John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt, Robert Holcot, 73–84. 65 66

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iting that things are produced through creation—to which natural philosophy does not reach—so the moral instruction of faith posits some principles that natural science does not concede. In the same way, the rational logic of faith (logica fidei) must be different from natural logic (logica naturalis)… a fortiori it is necessary to posit a logic of faith.70 Here it seems that Holcot is about to abandon the universality of Aristotelian logic and embrace a form of skepticism or fideism that theologians such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Adam Wodeham so vigorously sought to avoid. However, while Holcot here does seem to argue that Aristotelian logic is not up to the task of formulating valid and true trinitarian syllogisms,71 he does not abandon reason in the process. Holcot’s response is that natural logic needs to be supplemented by a logic of faith: that logic, however, is not a kind of fideism, or irrationality, but a supplemental logic that builds upon certain propositions held by Augustine and Anselm. So what is this logica fidei? Holcot posits two rules that can be used by the theologian to supplement natural logic: the first rule originates with Augustine, and the second with Anselm. Rule 1: Every absolute name is predicated in the singular of the three [divine persons], and not in the plural. Rule 2: The divine unity holds its consequence, where the opposition of relation does not intervene.72 The first rule builds upon Augustine’s distinction between terms predicated of God according to substance (secundum substantiam) and those predicated according to relation (secundum relativum). Substantial terms, such as ‘good,’ ‘true,’ and ‘beautiful,’ are predicated equally of the three divine persons, and the one essence: that is, God is ‘good,’ the Father is ‘good,’ and so forth. Relational terms, such as ‘father’ and ‘son,’ are uniquely predicated of the individual persons and indicate a distinction between them: that is, the Father is ‘father’, the Son is neither ‘father,’ nor

 Holcot, Sent. I.5 (L e.8vb).  Ibid. L f.2ra. 71  It is important to note that in his Quodlibetal questions Holcot follows the approach of Ockham. 72  Holcot, Sent. I.5 (L f.2ra). 69 70

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the Holy Spirit. Holcot employs this basic rule of trinitarian grammar to address various trinitarian syllogisms and their respective premises. For example, Holcot considers the following argument: [Argument 4] tres personae sunt tres dii, igitur, unus Deus non est tres personae.

The three persons are three gods, ∴ the one God is not three persons.73

While this argument may appear to be problematic for the Christian theologian, Holcot argues that by applying the first rule to the initial premise one can rule it out. That is, the first premise violates rule 1 by using the absolute term ‘god’ in the plural. Fourteenth-century theologians refer to the second rule as the regula Anselmi, and it states that the only distinction in God is a distinction by relation. Holcot applies this rule to instances in which it seems that an improper distinction is predicated. For example, one of the premises Holcot considers in a subsequent argument seems to imply a distinction between the Father and paternity, such that the argument concludes that there are four things in God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and paternity). Holcot, following rule 2, would reject this premise because there cannot be a distinction between the Father and paternity because such a distinction is not a distinction based on relation.74 The rules of faith, therefore, are theological propositions that were originally formulated by Augustine and Anselm. They are, as such, rational supplements to an Aristotelian logical framework and are useful for examining trinitarian arguments that seem to contradict the truths of the faith. This approach, Chatton tells us, was first employed by Richard Campsall, who seemed to limit his discussion to rule 2. Holcot supplements this rule with a second, strengthening the position. The approach of Ockham, Campsall, and Holcot would be discussed at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries in the writings of Henry Totting of Oyta and, subsequently, those who were influenced by his commentary. Oyta discussed Anselm’s rule in his

 Ibid. L e.8va.  Ibid. L e.8vb.

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commentary on the Sentences and argued that it only works for Christians who are distinguishing paralogisms from syllogisms; it does not work, however, for the nonbeliever. Oyta’s own project, therefore, was to try to develop a universal rule for identifying paralogisms that could be accepted by those who do not hold the principles of trinitarian doctrine.75 Oyta’s text would come to have a significant influence on the development of theology at Vienna in the first half of the fifteenth century. Therefore, through the initial work of Oyta and Henry of Langenstein, Anselm’s rule is transmitted to subsequent theologians including Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl, and through extensive borrowing, Peter of Pulkau. But this is a story best told by others, on another page.76

Bibliography (CCSL = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina; CCCM = Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis; CO = Calvini Opera; CR = Corpus Reformatorum; OP = Opera Philosophica; OT = Opera Theologica; PL = Patrologia Latina; WA = D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe)

Manuscript Sources Peter Gracilis. Lectura super quattuor libros Sententiarum.   London, Royal 10 A 1, fols. 1–236 [sigla R]

Pre-Modern Sources Anselm. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, Opera Omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt. Edinburgh 1946–1961. Augustine. De Trinitate, in CCSL 50 and 50A. ———. Epistulae I–LV, in CCSL 31. Benedict. RB 1980. The Rule of St. Benedict in English, ed. Timothy Fry. Collegeville 1982. Bonaventure. Opera Omnia. Quaracchi 1882–1902. Calvin, John. Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, 59 vols., ed. Guilielmus Baum, et al. (Brunswick1863–1900).

75  See Henry Totting of Oyta, Sent. I.8.2, edited in Alfonso Maierù, “Logica aristotelica e theologia trinitaria,” 481–512. 76  I am grateful to Chris Schabel for bringing this material to my attention.

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Chatton, Walter. Lectura super Sententias, 3 vols., ed. Joseph C. Wey and Girard J. Etzkorn. Toronto 2007–2009. Hugh of St. Victor. De sacramentis christianae fidei, in PL 176, 173–618. ———. Sententiae de divinitate, in Trinity and Creation, ed. Boyd Taylor Coolman and Dale M. Coulter. Turnhout, 2010, 113–160. John Duns Scotus. God and Creatures. The Quodlibetal Questions, trans. F. Alluntis and A.B. Wolter. Washington DC 1975. NB: cited as Alluntis-Wolter. ———. Reportatio I-A, ed. and trans. Alan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2 vols. St. Bonaventure, NY, 2004 and 2008. NB: cited as Wolter-Bychkov. Luther, Martin. D.  Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 73 vols. Weimar 1883–2009. Melanchthon, Philipp. Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicae, in CR 21, 81–228. ———. Loci Praecipui Theologici, in CR 21. [Translated by J.A.O.  Preus, The Chief Theological Topics, 2nd ed. (St. Louis 2001)]. Peter Abelard. Theologia “Summi boni,” in CCCM 13. ———. Theologia “Scholarium,” in CCCM 13. Peter Auriol. Compendiosa in universam sacram scripturam commentaria. Paris 1585. Peter Lombard. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols. Grottaferrata 1971 and 1981. Robert Holcot. In quatuor libros Sententiarum quaestiones. Lyon 1518. Servetus, Michael. De trinitatis erroribus libri septem, in Obras Completas II–2, ed. Ángel Alcalá. Zaragoza 2004. Tertullian. Adversus Marcionem, ed. and trans. Ernest Evans. Oxford 1972. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, in Opera Omnia (Leonine Edition), vols. 4–12. Rome 1888–1906. William of St. Thierry. Aenigma fidei, in PL 180, 397–440. William of Ockham. Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum/Ordinatio, ed. Gedeon Gál and Stephen F.  Brown, et  al., OT I–IV.  St. Bonaventure, NY 1967–2000.

Modern Sources Anatolios, Khaled. Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine. Grand Rapids 2011. Ayres, Lewis. Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge 2010. Gelber, Hester Goodenough. “Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in Scholastic Thought, 1300–1335.” Ph.D Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1974. Gioia, Luigi. The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate. Oxford 2008.

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Maierù, Alfonso. “Logica aristotelica e theologia trinitaria. Enrico Totting da Oyta,” in Studi sul XIV Secolo in memoria di Anneliese Maier, ed. A. Maierù and A. Paravicini Bagliani. Rome 1981, 481–512. Mews, Constant J. Abelard and Heloise. Oxford 2005. Schreiner, Susan E. Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin. Durham 1991. Slotemaker, John T. Anselm of Canterbury and the Search for God. London 2018. Slotemaker, John T., and Jeffrey C. Witt. Robert Holcot. Oxford 2016. Southern, R.W. Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1. Oxford 1995. Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams. Anselm. Oxford 2008.

CHAPTER 3

Emanations and Relations

Abstract  This chapter provides an overview of late medieval theories of the divine emanations and relations. It begins with an analysis of the generation of the Son, looking at several models of generation that were normative in the thirteenth century. Following this discussion it shifts to the procession of the Holy Spirit, treating the question of whether or not the Spirit proceeds from the essence or the Father. The second half of the chapter turns to the divine relations and examines the Augustinian distinction between terms predicated of God according to substance and those predicated according to relation. Building upon this section, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the late thirteenth-century debate regarding disparate and opposed relations. Keywords  Emanations • Generation • Procession • Relation • Disparate relation • Opposed relation • Filioque Medieval Western theologians agreed that the Scriptures describe three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that God the Father eternally sends the Son (John 10:36, I John 4:14), and that the Father and Son eternally send the Holy Spirit (John 15:26, 16:13–15). These two coming forths or sendings within God are understood to be the two divine emanations, the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit. Further, these two emanations can be described by means of their © The Author(s) 2020 J. T. Slotemaker, Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47790-5_3

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correlative relations, such that the relation of paternity-filiation maps onto the emanation of the Son, and the relation of active spiration-passive spiration maps onto the emanation of the Holy Spirit. In this chapter, we begin with the two emanations and move to the relations. One note: the following two sections on the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Spirit could be almost identical. For medieval theologians the metaphysical and theological questions about divine production were identical for both Son and Spirit, thus, much of what is said in the section on the generation of the Son can apply, mutatis mutandis, to the discussion of the spiration of the Spirit. Because of this, and to limit redundancy, the section of the Spirit will focus on other issues related to the Spirit beyond those of production per se.

The Generation of the Son The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) begins its description of the Son by stating that He is “begotten from the Father (ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς) before all ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made.”1 Here the Church clarifies that the Son of God is from the Father and comes from the Father as one who is begotten;2 that said, the Son is not from the Father as one who is created or generated in time, He is rather God from God, light from light, true God from true God. This, however, represents the version of the creed modified at Constantinople. The original creed of Nicaea (325) maintained that the Son is begotten of the Father, such that He is “of the essence/substance of the Father” (ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός/ de substantia Patris).3 Here, it seems, there is some ambiguity in the matter. Is the Son from the Father, or from the essence of the Father? What, after all, is the Son’s relation to the essence when it comes to production?4 Augustine—it seems—maintains that the Father and Son are consubstantial (consubstantialem) and coeternal (coaeternum), and yet the Father generates the Son. The Son does not come forth from the undivided  Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.162–163.  This is the creed accepted in 381 at Constantinople. There is good reason, however, to think that the original sense of Nicaea 325 was in fact generation from the essence. See, for example, Athanasius, Against Arius I. 3  Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.158–159. 4  See the medieval Latin creeds and statements as well, Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.675: Deus [Filius] est ex substantia Patris ante saecula genitus… (Quicunque vult). 1 2

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essence or the nature of the one God, the Son is generated from the Father.5 However, things are not that simple, for he also writes: “the Father and Son are one wisdom, because they are one essence, and taken separately wisdom from wisdom, just as essence from essence (essentia de essentia).”6 In the subsequent centuries Medieval theologians would debate this issue. Peter Abelard and Peter Lombard, for example, maintained the generation of the Son from the Father (de Patre) and denied the language of substance from substance (or the Son being from the substance),7 while others, such as Richard of St. Victor and Joachim of Fiore,8 would argue that one can state that substance begets substance (substantia gignat substantiam), or substance generates substance (substantia generat substantiam). For many twelfth-century theologians, this would become a debate over Augustinian authority. In what follows I will trace the broadly Lombardian reading of Augustine as it became normative after Lateran IV, which states that “we say that neither did the Father generate the divine essence, nor the divine essence generate the Son, nor the divine essence generate the divine essence.”9 In doing so, however, I am not arguing that this is the correct reading of Augustine—instead, we trace this tradition because it is what became determinative for Western medieval trinitarian theology. The alternative tradition found in Joachim and Richard would become untenable post Lateran IV. Augustine would describe the generation of the Son using precisely the creedal language developed at Constantinople, noting that one should not think about the generation of the Son as one thinks about water coming from a rock, but, instead, as light coming from light.10 The point, for Augustine, is that the generation of the Son is not one of inequality, but equality: the light that comes forth is eternal and equal in every respect to the light that emits it. That said, who or what generates the Son? Is the Son generated from the Father or from the divine essence? We will begin with the latter question. Augustine is consistent with a broadly Greek-speaking tradition that emphasized the primity or primacy of the Father: the idea that the Father takes logical and causal priority, though not temporal priority, in the two  Augustine, De Trinitate 4.20.27 (CCSL 50, 195–196).  Augustine, De Trinitate 7.2.3 (CCSL 50, 250). 7  Abelard, Theologia Christiana 3.109 (CCCM 12, 235). 8  Cf., for example, Richard, De Trinitate 6.22 (259). 9  Lombard, Sent. I.5.1 (I.81). 10  Augustine, De Trinitate 4.20.27 (CCSL 50, 195–196). 5 6

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emanations in God.11 In homilies 20–22 of his tractates on the Gospel of John, Augustine maintains that the Son receives his being and power from the Father, as He eternally is generated from the Father. This eternality is important because for the Father to eternally be the Father there must be an eternally generated Son who constitutes the relation. This claim, Augustine reminds us, is central to maintaining the equality of the divine persons: it is not as if the Father was incomplete before generating the Son, but the Father is eternally Father, eternally generating an eternal Son.12 This is similar to what Augustine maintains in De Trinitate II, where he defends the claim that even though the Son is from the Father, He is Deus de Deo, lumen de lumine—God from God, light from light— such that there is an equality of persons.13 Distinct yet equal. According to Peter Lombard, Augustine’s claim that the Son is from the Father (and not the essence) is important theologically, in that for the Father to be the Father eternally is to have eternally generated the Son: that is, the correlative logic of an eternal Father and eternal Son is built into the idea of the primity of the Father. Further, if the alternative scenario holds and the Son is from the essence, and is the essence, the same thing (i.e., the essence) would be generating itself. This, however, is not possible, therefore the Father and not the essence generates the Son.14 Here we can turn to some of the questions generated by Peter Lombard’s reading of Augustine in the thirteenth century. Following the canons of Lateran IV, thirteenth-century theologians argued for generation from the Father, and not the essence, and worked out this theological claim with a bit more precision. In particular, they divided the question into two parts:15 ( 1) is the Son generated by the Father, or by the essence, and (2) is the Son generated from the Father, or from the essence? The distinction between the two questions centers on the two prepositions “by” and “from.” The first question is focused on who or what the 11  See Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God. See also John T.  Slotemaker, “The Primity of the Father.” 12  Augustine, In Iohannis evangelium 20–22 (CCSL 36, 202–232). 13  Augustine, De Trinitate II.1.2–II.5.10 (CCSL 50, 81–93). 14  Lombard, Sent. I.5.1 (I.82). 15  JT Paasch, Divine Production. I am grateful to JT for discussing this material with me and deeply informing what follows.

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agent is with respect to divine production; that is, who is the agent that actually generates the Son? The second question, by contrast, is not concerned with determining the agent per se, but that from which the Son is generated. The focus of this question, therefore, is on determining whether or not there is some substrate, matter, or form from which the Son is generated: that is, is the Son from the Father as matter or form, or is the Son from the essence? The first question was answered unequivocally in the second canon of Lateran IV where, following the Lombard, the council teaches that the divine essence is not the producer or the product of generation or spiration. Here the council is addressing, among other things, the theology of Joachim of Fiore, who the council Fathers interpreted as confusing the nature of the divine essence in relation to the three persons.16 This debate about Joachim’s theology pushed the council Fathers to reconsider the Lombard’s position and to clarify the relationship between the divine essence and the three distinct persons, stating that “in God there is one Trinity, not a quaternity, because each of the three persons is that entity, namely, substance, essence, or divine nature.”17 The three persons, therefore, are equally the divine nature, and the divine nature is the three persons. Further, the council also solidified that the essence, per se, does no emanating, generating, or producing of any kind. This basic position was maintained by all of the later thirteenth-/fourteenth-century scholastics, such as Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. The more vexing question, that would occupy these same theologians, is whether or not the Son is from the Father, or from the essence. And if so, how? Turning to the second question, we can observe that what is really being asked is not whether or not the Son is from the Father (vs. the essence), but the way in which the essence relates to the production of divine persons. This question has been studied in exquisite detail by JT Paasch, who focused on this question in the writings of Henry, Scotus, and Ockham, and here we can briefly summarize the various opinions regarding divine production as sketched in his work. We can recall that, 16  In particular, the second canon states that Joachim interpreted Peter Lombard as maintaining a quaternity within the Trinity, such that there are the three divine persons and the divine essence. 17  Liber extra 1.1.2 (CIC II.7): … in Deo solummodo trinitas est, non quaternitas. On this debate, see Axel Mehlmann, “De unitate trinitatis.”

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for the Lombard, the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father, not as if the substance of the Father is some kind of material from which the Son is generated, but in the sense that the Son is produced by the Father who is a substance (qui est substantia).18 Henry disagrees with the Lombard, and in an attempt to explain divine production argues that the Father generates the Son from the essence. The essence is not created in the process, that is, the Father does not produce or create the essence, instead the essence is the unproduced constituent that the Father uses to generate the Son. Building upon Aristotle’s hylomorphism—the idea that all things are made up of matter and form—Henry thinks of the divine essence analogously to a lump of matter, and the property of sonship as a form, which are joined (eternally) in the production of the Son.19 Thus, he writes that the person of the Son is constituted from the divine essence and the personal property (filiation), much as a human person is constituted by means of matter and form. But does it make sense to think of the divine essence as quasi-matter? Duns Scotus rejected Henry’s understanding of the divine essence being like a piece of quasi-matter (quasi-materia) and the Son being like the substantial form. As Scotus understands things, this is precisely the inverse of how the relationship between essence and personal property should be imagined. One of his arguments, in response to Henry, is that the personal property of the Son (i.e., filiation)—which Henry imagines to be like the substantial form—is a relation, in that it indicates the relation of Father to Son. Thus, if the production of the Son is like the substantial form, as Henry claims, it is as if the change that takes place in the production of the Son is a simple change in relation, not a true begetting.20 Scotus responds that “the divine essence is the formal term of the generation of the Son,” not the Son’s sonship.21 Thus, for Scotus, the divine essence is like the form that somehow is activated by the Father to produce the Son. In this sense, the Father produces the Son from the essence, in that the Father activates the divine essence and produces the Son from it.22 William of Ockham—and many subsequent fourteenth-century authors such as Walter Chatton and Robert Holcot—argue that it makes no sense  Lombard, Sent. I.5.2 (I.110).  Henry, Summa 54.3 (Badius II, 84rE); JT Paasch, Divine Production, 33–38. 20  Scotus, Rep. I-A, 5.2 (I, 274–279); JT Paasch, Divine Production, 52–53. 21  Scotus, Rep. I-A, 5.2 (I, 274). 22  Scotus, Rep. I-A, 5.2 (I, 279–287). 18 19

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to discuss the divine essence and personal properties as some kind of quasi-­ form or matter. For Ockham, this is at best true in some kind of analogous way, and in his later writings he will go so far as to reject the basic language—employed by Henry and Scotus—of divine persons being “constituted” in any strict sense.23 For Ockham, the Church teaches that the Father generates the Son, and since the Father and Son share the divine essence, the Son is generated from the essence. There is, for Ockham, an active productive aspect in the person of the Father and a passively produced aspect in the person of the Son, though the active and passive sides of this production do not in any way produce the divine essence. The essence is eternal and unchangeable, and for Ockham, as for Scotus, the relations are necessarily subsequent to the essence anyway (logically, not temporally), such that the relation of Father-Son, or producer-produced, are not constitutive of the essence. Returning to the language of Lateran IV and the question of whether or not one can state that the essence generates the essence, we observe that for Henry, Scotus, and Ockham, there is a way in which one can state that the Son is from the essence, so long as what that means is that the Son is produced by the Father through generation. Further, there is a way in which one must state something like this, for one cannot state that the Son is produced ex nihilo—for that would be heresy. The Son is truly produced in a certain sense from some thing, and it was the focus of Henry and Scotus to try to imagine precisely how one could state that the Son is produced both by and from the Father (or essence). The debate about precisely how to talk about the Son being from the Father is one that belongs uniquely to the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. This debate was generated by Lateran IV, one could say, and was worked out in increasing detail toward the end of the thirteenth century. As one notices with Ockham, it became increasingly out of fashion to engage in certain types of metaphysical questions regarding the production of divine persons. That is not to say such discussions completely disappeared in subsequent decades and centuries: for instance, such topics are still discussed in numerous members of the Wegestreit in the fifteenth century, as authors like John Capreolus or William Vorilong defended Thomas and Scotus, respectively. However, as we will see with the discussion of relations below, such debates were mostly rehearsed arguments that did little to further the theological positions. Here we can  See the discussion of Ockham in chapter 4, Personal Constitution.

23

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turn to the alternative tradition that began to emerge with the writings of Ockham. Some fourteenth-century Augustinian theologians, such as Gregory Rimini, John Hiltalingen of Basel, and Peter Gracilis, would return to a basic Augustinian position that emphasized that one simply cannot know certain types of things about divine generation, because they exceed the bounds of human comprehension and knowledge.24 Gregory, for example, references a passage from Augustine’s reply to Maximinus the Arian, in which the Bishop of Hippo writes: As to the difference between being born (nasci) and proceeding (procedere), who can explain it with respect to that most excellent nature? Not all that proceeds is born, although all that is born proceeds; in the same way, not every biped is a human being, although every human being is a biped. This much I know; I do not know how, and am neither able, nor sufficient, to distinguish between generation (generatio) and procession (processio). This is the case because both of them are ineffable.25

This passage was originally recorded in the Lombard’s Sentences, and Gregory here is returning to this earlier tradition as found in both Augustine and the Lombard—a tradition that exercised a bit more theological humility in terms of positing an intra-trinitarian metaphysics. Gregory, as a result, would simply argue that, Spiration and generation are distinct productions and are formally distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis), just as the Son, who is generation, and the Holy Spirit, who is spiration, are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis).26

The two emanations in God are distinct in and of themselves; there is no metaphysical account that can be provided.27 Gregory’s apophatic approach to such theological questions can be found in many sixteenth-century thinkers such as John Mair, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin. John Calvin, for example, never attempted to explicate metaphysically how the essence relates to the Father in terms of the production of the Son; he would, like Melanchthon,  This position was also held by non-Augustinians as well, such as Chatton and Holcot.  Lombard, Sent. I.13.3 (I, 123). Cf. Augustine, Contra Maximinum (PL 42, 770–771). 26  Rimini, Lectura I.13.1 (II, 199). 27  See Gregory’s rejection of all previous models, ibid. (198–199). 24 25

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find such questions theologically inappropriate. Mair, for his part, would not find them inappropriate, per se, but as a student of Ockham’s logic he would find them less than helpful as a way of discussing the divine productions. It is unclear, at present, just how much influence fourteenth-century theologians like Gregory had on developments in the sixteenth century, as it is possible that the main influence in the sixteenth century is what it was in the fourteenth, the theology of Augustine.

The Spiration of the Holy Spirit In its original form the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. This, however, would be amended in the Latin West to state that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (qui ex Pater Filioque procedit).28 In this section we will consider two basic views regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit with respect to production. First, however, a brief note on terminology is in order. The scholastic language used to talk about the spiration (spiratio) of the Holy Spirit developed over a period of centuries. The term spiratio is a noun meaning “breath” or “breathing” (the verbal form is spirare, “to breathe”) and is used to describe the coming forth, or emanation, of the Spirit from the Father and Son. When Augustine spoke of the coming forth of the Holy Spirit, however, he tended to use the verb procedo (to proceed) and never, in De Trinitate, uses the word spiratio or spirare in reference to the Spirit (beyond quoting Scripture: John 3:8, “the Spirit breathes where he will” (Spiritus ubi uult spirat)).29 The other language Augustine uses with respect to the Spirit is gift (donum) as well as love (caritas), not breath.30 Less than a century later Fulgentius would use the term aspirantis (to breathe) to refer to the Spirit being breathed forth,31 and in the seventh century Isidore of Seville would argue that the Spirit is called spiratus precisely because as something “breathed forth (spirare)

28  Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.672; cf. ibid. I.675: Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio (Quicunque vult). 29  Augustine, De Trinitate 15.19.36 (CCSL 50A, 512–513). The same is true of Hilary of Poitiers’s De Trinitate. 30  Augustine, De Trinitate 15.16.29 (CCSL 50A, 504): … proprie spiritus sanctus caritas nuncupetur (cf. 15.18.32). 31  Fulgentius, De Trinitate 2 (PL 65, 499). … Spiritus alicujus est aspirantis.

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[He] is related to something else.”32 Thus, while this language is normative for the later scholastics, it did not emerge as standard until sometime after Augustine’s De Trinitate. While Augustine’s De Trinitate did not provide what would become the normative language of spiration, Augustine did set the stage for the Western medieval view of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Augustine argues that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and, as we will see in the discussion of the filioque below, that would have implications for the Western tradition more broadly. However, if we focus for a moment just on the nature of the procession, we observe that Augustine makes an important qualification. He writes that only the Son is called the Word of God, and only the Holy Spirit is called the Gift of God, and only He—from whom the Word is begotten, and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds—is God the Father. I have added ‘principally’ (principaliter), however, because the Holy Spirit is also found to proceed from the Son.33

As discussed in the section on generation above, Augustine defends the primity of the Father with respect to the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does proceed from the Father and the Son, according to Augustine, but that procession comes forth principally from the Father. While Augustine’s understanding of the primity of the Father in the emanation of the Spirit was arguably the majority opinion for early Christian theologians both East and West, in the medieval West this tradition was subtly challenged between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In the sixth century Fulgentius of Ruspe maintained, as Augustine did, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, while retaining some of the emphasis on the priority of the Father.34 That said, in his writings the language of principaliter a Patre is not used, and one has the sense that this theological point is not a central concern of Fulgentius. A couple centuries later, Alcuin of York’s trinitarian theology—which is generally quite derivative from both Augustine and Fulgentius—continues this gradual shift, arguing that the Son comes a Patre alone while the Holy Spirit proceeds  Isidore, Etymologies VII.3.2 (157–158).  Augustine, De Trinitate 15.16.29 (CCSL 50A, 503): … quo procedit principaliter spiritus sanctus nisi deus pater. Ideo autem addidi, principaliter, quia et de filio spiritus sanctus procedere reperitur. 34  Fulgentius, De fide 11.52 (PL 65, 696). 32 33

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from both equally (ex Patre et Filio aequaliter procedit).35 In Alcuin the emphasis is unequivocally on the procession equally from both the Father and the Son, such that the primity of the Father is downplayed. This would set the stage for a somewhat different theology altogether. In the Carolingian period, Theodulf, the Bishop of Orléans, compiled a list of quotations from early Christian sources that emphasized the unity of the divine essence. These texts were presented in such a way as to lend support for the idea that the Spirit proceeds from the essence.36 And, whatever Theodulf’s role in this theological trajectory, in the subsequent generation Ratramnus of Corbie would argue explicitly that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father insofar as He “flows from the substance” (de substantia manat).37 Here one finds an entirely distinct theology of the procession of the Holy Spirit that would be worked out in more detail in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm’s pneumatology is perhaps the climax of a Carolingian and post-Carolingian theology that emphasized the role of the essence in the emanation of the Holy Spirit. While Anselm’s trinitarian theology continued to develop throughout the Monologion, De Incarnatione, and De processione, it is true that throughout there is a steady and gradual movement toward an account of the procession of the Holy Spirit according to which the Spirit is emanated from the Father, in so far as He is God, and the Son, in so far as He is God. The Augustinian language according to which the Spirit proceeds principaliter a Patre is eclipsed and the emphasis is shifted to the divine essence. The Spirit, therefore, proceeds not from the Father principally (principaliter), but from God who is Father and from God who is Son.38 Anselm, therefore, concludes his final work of trinitarian theology (De processione) by noting that the true faith teaches that “God is from God by generation (deum esse de deo nascendo), and that God is from God by procession (deum de deo procedendo).”39 What is striking is that Anselm’s understanding of the filioque is intimately tied to his account of the unity of the divine essence. From the perspective of the Greek position Anselm is responding to, the filioque is problematic, because if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the  Alcuin, De Fide 1.11 (PL 101, 20).  Theodulf, Libellus de processione (PL 105, 259). 37  Ratramnus, Contra Graecorum 1.3 (PL 121, 229). 38  Anselm, De processione 14 (II, 213 f.). 39  Anselm, De processione 16 (II, 218). 35 36

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Son, it would seem to imply that the Spirit has two principles of origin, or causes (the Father and Son). Anselm, in response, argues that the perfect unity and simplicity of God implies that the Holy Spirit must come from the essence of the Father and Son, not the Father alone. In short, the Father and Son cannot be separated in the procession of the Holy Spirit, precisely because what emanates the Spirit is not something unique to the Father or Son, but that which is common to them both. The divine essence, therefore, is the principle from which the Spirit is spirated. What one observes, therefore, is that there are two positions viable in the Western tradition between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In theologians such as Hugh of St. Victor there is a defense of the traditional Augustinian language that emphasizes the primity of the Father.40 However, in Anselm, and others, there is a reworking of this Augustinian theology and an attempt to understand the role of the divine essence in acts of generation and spiration, such that the Son and Spirit are from God, qua Father, or from God, qua Son. In many ways these questions remained undetermined up until the question was raised at Lateran IV in response to Joachim of Fiore. Indeed, in response to Joachimite theology, the Council Fathers sought to answer the question of whether or not the divine essence generates, or is generated, or proceeds. Interpreting Lateran IV’s response to Joachim is incredibly complicated, and here we have to be clear about what it is we are attempting to do. The goal, at present, is not to present a charitable or generous reading of Joachim’s theology, but to consider how Lateran IV’s response to Joachim shaped the subsequent tradition.41 In constitution 1 (de fide), the Council Fathers argued that the “Father is from none, the Son is from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit is from both equally… the Father generated, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding.”42 Here, of course, the constitution states that the Father is the one who generates the Son, leaving aside the language of the divine essence. The second constitution—written against Joachim—explicitly addresses the question of whether or not one can state that the divine essence generates. Here the Council Fathers wrote:

 See here Peter Gemeinhardt, “Logic, Tradition and Ecumenics.”  For an excellent introduction to Joachim, see Peter Gemeinhardt, “Joachim the Theologian.” 42  Liber extra 1.1.1 (CIC II.5). 40 41

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[the divine essence] neither generates, nor is generated, nor proceeds; but it is the Father who generates, and the Son who is generated, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.43

The context, of course, is not in response to the theology of Anselm. In fact, the second constitution is directed against the theology of Joachim, who the Council Fathers interpreted as saying there is no essence, substance, or singular nature in God. Instead, they argued, Joachim held that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are a collective (not unlike saying that the members of a congregation make up a collective called a Church). Further, the Fathers also condemned Joachim because of his critique of Peter Lombard. As stated in the second constitution: [Joachim] calls Peter Lombard a heretic…. because he said in his Sentences, “For there is a certain supreme reality which is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and it neither generates, nor is generated, nor proceeds.”44

Here we come to the point, which is that the Council Fathers believed that Joachim held, as a result of his theology of “collectives,” that Peter Lombard was wrong when he stated that the divine essence neither generates, nor is generated, nor proceeds. In response, the Fathers critiqued Joachim by means of embracing the theology of the Lombard. In the Sentences, book I, distinction 5, Peter Lombard argues that one cannot state that the Father generates the essence, or that the essence generates the Son, or that the essence generates an essence.45 For the Lombard, the idea that the essence generates is problematic, and he is more comfortable remaining closer to Augustine and arguing that the Father generates the Son “from the Father’s substance (de substantia Patris).”46 The Lombard’s intuition here seems to be that there is no quartum quid within God; that is, there is no fourth thing, no essence, which is somehow distinct from the three persons. The three persons are simply the one essence. As such, the essence qua essence does no generating or spirating, the persons do. In his discussion of the spiration of the Holy Spirit, the Lombard applies this logic to the procession of the Spirit, 43  Liber extra 1.1.2 (CIC II.7): [Essentia divina] non est generans, neque genita, nec procedens; sed est Pater, qui generat, et Filius, qui gignitur, et Spiritus sanctus, qui procedit. 44  Liber extra 1.1.2 (CIC II.6). 45  Lombard, Sent. I.5.1 (I.81). 46  Lombard, Sent. I.5.1 (I.86).

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arguing that while the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, it is still proper to say that the “Holy Spirit proceeds principally from the Father (Spiritus Sanctus principaliter procedat a Patre).”47 Here he follows Augustine’s logic that what this means is not that the Spirit proceeds first from the Father with respect to temporality (prius) or greatness (magis), but that, because the Father generates the Son, that which is from the Son is also from the Father. Now, whether nor not this is a faithful reading of what Joachim taught is a rather different matter, but what the Council wanted to guard against is a theology that did not maintain that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one substance or essence. Further, the Council sought to clarify precisely how to speak about divine generation and procession, such that one should not speak about the essence generating or being generated. This would, of course, limit certain theological trajectories that were increasingly common between the years 800 and 1200 (e.g., the theology of Anselm). Anselm’s theology of the divine essence—so central to his response to the Greek theological positions and his defense of the filioque—is marginalized by Lateran IV. And while my intention here is not to argue in favor of Anselm’s response to the Greeks, it is important to notice how certain theological positions are implicated in the decisions ensconced in Lateran IV and the defense of Peter Lombard. This conciliar decision would have lasting implications for the development of Western theology up through the late medieval and early modern periods (not to mention the modern). Western theology, as such, increasingly emphasized a particular reading of Augustine after Lateran IV. Further, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son remained central to Western theology throughout the period under consideration. There were councils here and there to discuss the filioque, both with respect to the theological and political dimensions of the debate. However, not much would come of these councils and the attempts to heal the breach between East and West. The Reformation theologians such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin would retain the filioque as central to Christian trinitarian theology, usually based on arguments from Scripture and informed by the Fathers. For example, the Gospel of John (20:21–23) records that when Jesus had risen from the dead, he appeared to his disciples where they were cowering in a locked room. He said to them “peace be with you,” he  Lombard, Sent. I.12.2 (I.119).

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showed them his hands, and he breathed (insuflo) on them. Insufflating the disciples, he said, “receive the Holy Spirit.” Calvin, in his commentary on this passage, writes that Christ was said to breathe forth the Holy Spirit on the disciples, precisely because He shares the Spirit in common with the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.48 This dominant Latin tradition would be followed by Luther, Melanchthon, and the other Reformers without much debate.

The Divine Relations: A Common Language In the Western-Latin tradition books 5–7 of Augustine’s De Trinitate are the quintessential statement of the divine relations. In the fifth book Augustine begins with the observation that in the created world there is nothing greater than human reasoning, and yet in human reasoning there is no beauty of color, no greatness of space, no extension, no movement. If this is true of the human mind—which is the greatest thing in the created world—it is probably also true of God, who is greater than the human mind. Thus we should not look for such things in God, for God is good without quality, great without quantity …. eternal without time.49 But what does this mean? In the introduction we briefly considered Augustine’s distinction between terms predicated according to substance and those predicated according to relation. Given the centrality of this distinction to Western medieval trinitarian theology, we return to this discussion, repeating where necessary, and expanding in places. God is, no doubt, a substance. In Exodus 3:14, God says to Moses “I am who I am”—and Augustine reads that to mean that God is pure being (esse). But what does it mean to state that God is a substance or essence? Is He a substance in the same way that a human person is a substance? The problem, of course, is that all natural essences or substances are susceptible of accidents; that is, there is no pure substance independent of accidental properties. In the natural world, the girl Sophia, her substance, has a particular weight, height, and color; she is extended in space and is in relation to numerous things such as her grandparents, parents, and stuffed animal Toothless. These accidental properties, however, are subject to change and variation: Sophia will grow heavier and taller, her golden hair will darken, and her relational properties will underdo a certain shadow of  Calvin, In evangelium Ioannis (CO 47, 438–440).  Augustine, De Trinitate 5.1.2 (CCSL 50, 206–207).

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turning. In short, her accidental properties will undergo change. This, of course, cannot happen in God, Augustine writes, for God is a substance without change, and as such is not susceptible to accidental properties or variation.50 God is being in its highest and purest form and undergoes no change. The upshot is that when terms such as ‘good,’ or ‘beautiful,’ or ‘eternal’ are predicated of God, they are predicated of the one substance, such that they are substantial terms that indicate what that substance is of its nature, not something that it can have or lose. For example, while a person can have goodness and lose it, God is said to be goodness (not have it). So far, so good. Scripture, however, seems to speak of God with relational terms that imply change when applied to created things. The terms ‘father’ and ‘son,’ for example, are relational terms that in created things indicate accidental properties predicated of a substance. Thus, for creatures we can say that a given person becomes a father through the act of begetting a child, such that there was a time before which all fathers are fathers (i.e., no one is born a father or is substantially a father by nature, one can only become one through change). When the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are predicated of God, however, they cannot indicate change or variation, in that they cannot be predicating accidental properties of God that He can be said to have at one time and lose at another. The terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son,’ therefore, indicate an eternal relation in God, in that in God there always was a Father and a Son, and there always will be a Father and Son. Further, there is a reciprocity involved in this relation, such that the Father is the Father precisely because He has a Son, and the Son is a Son because He eternally is in relation to the Father.51 Augustine’s conclusion is that, when speaking about God, one can use substantial terms that are predicated of the one substance and the three persons equally (e.g., God is just, the Father is just, the Son is just, etc.), and relational terms that are only predicated of the individual divine persons and indicate distinction (e.g., the Father is the Father, the Son is not the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit the Father): thus there are terms predicated secundum substantiam and those predicated secundum relativum. This allows Augustine to examine the various terms spoken of God in Scripture and to explain how those terms indicate either something common to the substance (and three persons), or something that indicates a  Ibid. 5.2.3 (CCSL 50, 208).  Ibid. 5.5.6 (CCSL 50, 210–211).

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relational distinction between the three persons. This approach makes good sense when speaking of the Father and Son, for the terms ‘father’ and ‘son’ indicate in Latin and English a reciprocal relation. But what is one to say about the Holy Spirit? How are the terms ‘holy’ and ‘spirit’ to be understood? Augustine realizes that this poses a problem and responds by stating that the terms ‘holy’ and ‘spirit’ can be predicated secundum substantiam such that one can say God is holy, the Father is holy, the Son is holy, as well as God is spirit, Father is spirit, Son is spirit, and so forth. Further, these same terms can be predicated secundum relativum in that the tradition has used them to indicate a relation between the Holy Spirit and the Father and Son. But how can these terms be used in this way? This understanding of the terms is legitimate, Augustine argues, because Scripture reveals that the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father, such that there is a gift of the giver and a giver of the gift.52 Finally, as Augustine continues to explore this language and the limitations of it, he makes the argument—following Aristotle in the Categories—that when there is not a natural term in a given language to indicate a particular relationship, one must coin a new term to name the relation.53 In the introduction, we considered the example of the terms ‘provider’ and ‘user’—terms that, prior to the development of the internet, were not employed to describe the relation between one who sells/provides internet access and one who uses it. Here we can take a rather different example. In a discussion about the third installment of How to Train your Dragon, my daughter Sophia made the argument that Toothless (the dragon) was not quite like a pet, but was something like a pet. The problem, it seems, is that the word ‘pet’ does not quite get at the relationship in question. Hiccup is not Toothless’s “owner” in a strict sense, but there is something “pet like” about Toothless and his relationship to Hiccup. Further, as Sophia insisted, there is something a bit unsatisfactory about the terms ‘pet’ and ‘owner’ as used to describe such relationships anyway. Why do we say that one is an owner of a pet? Sophia observed that she has had a series of what could be called “natural pets,” none of which were purchased or owned per se. It seems, therefore, that the relation between “pet” and “owner” is not one that there is a good term for; there is a relation involved, but it is not clear that the terms ‘owner’ and ‘pet’ get at  Ibid. 5.11.12 (CCSL 50, 218–220).  Ibid. 5.12.13 (CCSL 50, 220).

52 53

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what that relationship is. Here, as Aristotle would argue, there is not a great term to describe the relationship, and one is left to coin a term (interestingly, this is happening in modern English usage as terms like ‘fur buddies,’ ‘fur babies,’ or ‘feather friends’ are being coined to replace the term ‘pet’; as one animal rights website puts it, if they are a pet they are property, if they are property, they have no rights). And, returning to the Holy Spirit, Augustine argues that it should not bother anyone that there are not easily identifiable terms for the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father and Son, for language often fails to describe adequately a given relationship. He concludes that the term ‘Holy Spirit’ can be used to indicate the eternal relation between the Father, Son, and the third person of the Trinity. Boethius would follow Augustine’s language in his own De Trinitate, noting that everything that God is, He is essentially. That is, God does not have accidental attributes, as if God being just is somehow distinct from God’s being: “God is truly and entirely God.”54 That said, the terms ‘father’ and ‘son’ can be predicated of God, such that they indicate a relation of identical things (ad id quod est idem) with respect to the first and second persons of the Trinity.55 However, since there are no accidents in God, these relational terms do not indicate change in God—as if God “became” the Father in time,—but an eternal relation of equality.56 Finally, these relational terms applied to the three persons of the Trinity indicate the distinction between the persons, such that for the Father to be the Father is for Him not to be the Son, and mutatis mutandis for the Son and Spirit. For his part, therefore, Boethius remains faithful to Augustine’s basic position and further ensconces the distinction between substantial and relational predicates into the grammar of Western trinitarian theology. Augustine’s distinction between relational and substantial terms would be accepted by Boethius, and later Anselm, and would become ensconced in the tradition. While some theologians would nuance this in interesting ways (e.g., Alcuin’s attempt to analyze various grades of figural predication when discussing the nine categories of accidental being as applied to God),57 the position of Augustine and Boethius would be generally accepted. In the preceding, therefore, I focused narrowly on Augustine  Boethius, De Trinitate IV (174).  Ibid. VI (180). 56  Ibid. V (179). 57  Alcuin, De fide (PL 101, 22–23). 54 55

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because, quite simply, from Augustine to Luther, from Anselm to the Lombard, there was almost no theologian who did not accept Augustine’s basic distinction.58 Of course, it should be pointed out that here Augustine was preceded by a Greek tradition that built upon Aristotle, such that a theology of relations was worked out previously in theologians such as Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great. And while Augustine’s knowledge of those sources—perhaps transmitted through Ambrose, or Marius Victorinus, or others—remains a source of scholarly debate, it is true that this basic distinction was not new when Augustine formulated it in De Trinitate. Given the common acceptance of Augustine’s distinction between relational and substantial terms, it is not necessary to outline, even briefly, the reception of it throughout the high and late medieval period, as it worked its way through theologians such as Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. Here, however, it is perhaps useful to point out that even Martin Luther— who passionately maintained that Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light59—would employ this basic distinction throughout his corpus. As a young Augustinian monk at Erfurt, Martin Luther (c. 1510) heavily annotated Johannes Amerbach’s 1489 edition of Augustine’s De Trinitate. There, in the margins of books five through seven of De Trinitate, one can see a young Luther working through Augustine’s distinction, asking questions, and applying it to test cases.60 Despite the philosophical foundation for this basic distinction emerging from Aristotle, Luther would continue to employ it throughout his life. In particular, his engagement with the technical aspects of this tradition is on display in the Doctoral disputations of Georg Major and John Faber conducted in 1544. In these disputations, Luther examines questions relating to the intra-trinitarian life of God and employs the basic account of relations that one finds throughout the Western tradition. In John Calvin, himself no lover of Aristotle, we find a similar move, when he adopts the basic grammar set out by Augustine. Calvin writes in the Institutes that when speaking of the three persons we can use the term ‘subsistences,’ such that the one God is three distinct subsistences (subsistentiae), Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Further, Calvin 58  While not all theologians employed it to the extent Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, or Thomas would, I can think of no theologian who argued against this distinction or rejected it as part of an alternative model, and so forth. 59  Luther, Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam 50 (WA 1, 226). 60  See Luther, Erfurter Annotationen, 581–596, see, for example, 592.

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goes on to claim that the three subsistences are distinct by means of a special quality, which indicates a relation; when one mentions the term ‘God,’ for example, it is applied, no less, “to the Son and the Spirit than to the Father.” However, when Father is compared to Son, there is a distinction based on a relational property (dico ad alias relatam proprietate distingui).61 The claim that almost all Western theologians in the long Middle Ages are broadly Augustinian with respect to their theology of the divine relations is true in a certain sense, however it also obscures an important fact. While it is true to say that all medieval theologians inherited Augustine’s basic distinction between substantial and relational terms, it is also true that what medieval theologians did with that tradition—how they interpreted it and modified it—diverges far from what Augustine originally maintained. Augustine, we could say, set the framework for subsequent discussions of the divine relations, but what that tradition became in someone like Thomas Aquinas, for example, is radically divergent. Aquinas’s account of subsistent relations is metaphysically distinct from Augustine’s, and has theological implications far beyond those imagined by the Bishop of Hippo.62 The divergence between Augustine and those who built upon his theology is evident, for example, in the fact that there were heated debates about how precisely the relations are to be understood. In particular, in the second half of the thirteenth century about whether or not the relations in God are disparate or opposed. We now turn to this debate.

61  Calvin, Institutes (1559) I.13.6 (CO 2, 94). Here Calvin is difficult to pin down. While he does call the properties “relational” here, the ones he develops later are not necessarily relational. See John T. Slotemaker, “John Calvin’s Trinitarian Theology.” 62  Every writer fears being misunderstood, and it is my fear that I will be misread here. The claim here is that Augustine’s distinction between relational terms and substantial terms was universally accepted—it is not that the later medieval account of the divine relations is identical to Augustine’s, or even the “best reading” of it. The former claim is patently false, though one finds it in the literature. See, for example, the most egregious case of this in Edmund Hill, The Mystery of the Trinity, 93, where he states that he will analyze Augustine by presenting the “fruits of the developed tradition in their most mature form, which means in effect as formulated by Thomas Aquinas.” I am grateful to Michel Barnes for pointing out this reference.

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Disparate and Opposed Relations If there is a special circle of the inferno described by Dante reserved for historians of theology, the principal homework assigned to that subdivision of hell for at least the first several eons of eternity may well be the thorough study of all the treatises devoted to the inquiry: Does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father only or from both the Father and the Son?63 (Jaroslav Pelikan)

In the period between 1250 and 1320, there was an intense debate about what kind of relations obtained between the three divine persons: on the one hand, most Franciscan theologians argued that there were disparate relations between the three divine persons, while, on the other hand, most Dominican theologians argued that there were opposed relations. This debate—as evidenced by Pelikan’s quotation—can easily be caricatured as one of the most arcane and unnecessary theological debates in the period of high scholasticism. Thus, to avoid mischaracterizations and misunderstandings of this medieval debate, it is important to elucidate the philosophical and theological questions that motivated it. First, however, a couple definitions are in order. As discussed in the introduction, thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologians agreed that there were four relations in God. The Father’s relation to the Son is paternity, the Son’s relation to the Father is filiation, the Father’s and Son’s relation to the Spirit is active spiration, and the Spirit’s relation to the Father and Son is passive spiration. These four relations map onto the two emanations, such that an active and passive relation characterizes each emanation: (1) with respect to the emanation of the Son, the active relation is paternity, the passive relation is filiation; (2) with respect to the emanation of the Holy Spirit, the active relation is active spiration, the passive relation is passive spiration. The theologians in question agreed on this basic picture, however, they disagreed as to whether or not the relations in question are necessarily opposed: that is, whether or not there has to be an opposition between the active and passive relations. The defenders of opposed relations said that the opposition was necessary for individuation, while the defenders of disparate relations said that the opposition was not. That said, the question itself is purely counterfactual, in that they all agreed that there are both active-passive relations corresponding to both emanations. So if, in fact, they all agreed  Jaroslav Pelikan, The Melody of Theology, 90.

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that both sets of active-passive relations do obtain for each emanation, what is this debate about? Here we can note a philosophical and theological aspect to it. First, the debate was concerned with the individuation of non-material things. Thomas Aquinas held that material things were a composition of matter and form: thus, two given entities of the same species or class share the same kind of form (e.g., two wolverines have the same form), and yet are distinct by matter (i.e., they are made of distinct stuff that distinguishes them). The problem, however, is that two non-material things cannot, by definition, be individuated by matter. Instead, Thomas argues that, following Aristotle, non-material things are distinct through opposition. There are four kinds of opposition: (1) opposition of affirmation and negation, (2) opposition of privation and habit, (3) opposition of contrariety, and (4) opposition of relation. The first three types of opposition cannot be applied to God, therefore the divine persons must be distinct by opposition of relation.64 But how is one to understand this? Lambertus De Rijk observes that for Aristotle relational opposition is generally understood by means of natural kinds of relations; “things opposed are always somehow related to one another, but the nature of their opposition is not always the same. In some cases the opposition between things bears on their merely being put together under a certain relational aspect (‘father-child’, ‘double-half’).”65 Here he draws our attention to the Categories, where Aristotle states that opposed relatives are things like double and half (half of that which is double), and the knowable and knowledge (i.e., knowledge that is of a knowable).66 In the Trinity there are opposed relatives, such as Father and Son—the former an active relation that “sends,” the latter a passive relation that is “sent.” This means, according to Thomas, that both the active and passive relations must obtain between all three persons in order for them to be distinct; it is, as such, the opposition of the relative things that accounts for their individuation. According to Thomas, therefore, what is partly at stake is the metaphysical question of the individuation of non-material things. Scotus rejects Thomas’s account of individuation and maintains that there need not be opposed relations between the individual divine persons 64  Thomas, Summa contra IV.24.8 (CT). See John T. Slotemaker, “John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay,” 427–433. 65  De Rijk, Aristotle, 450–451. 66  Aristotle, Categories (11b24–31, Barnes 18).

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in order for them to be distinct. In short, Scotus thinks that the distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the result of the distinction between the acts of generation and spiration. Generation and spiration are distinct, according to Scotus, and the Son and Holy Spirit are distinct based on these two emanations: the Son’s unique property that distinguishes Him is generation (formally, filiation), the Holy Spirit’s unique property that distinguishes Him is being spirated (formally, passive spiration). According to Scotus, therefore, there need not be an opposed relation between the Son and Holy Spirit in order to account for their individuation; the divine persons, he argues, are the divine essence and a constitutive personal property, by which each divine person is individuated. The Son and Holy Spirit are distinct because the Son’s personal property is unique to the Son (filiation), and mutatis mutandis for the Holy Spirit (passive spiration). As such, the emphasis shifts from the relations, per se, to the emanations in God, such that it is the emanation of one person from another that ultimately informs and grounds Scotus’s account of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons. According to Scotus, the opposition of relation is not metaphysically required to individuate the persons, as one can account for individuation in other ways.67 Second, this debate was also about the theological question of the filioque. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed originally stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (ex Patre procedit), and in the Latin West this formula was expanded, as early as the sixth century, to state that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son (filioque). This addition to the creed was subsequently adopted by the Western Church, such that the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Second council of Lyons (1272–1274), and the Council of Florence (1438–1445) all include the filioque. For Thomas and Scotus, therefore, the debate about opposed and disparate relations was not simply a philosophical question about individuation; it was also a theological question that touched on the relationship between the Eastern and Western Churches. So, what was at stake theologically? It is perhaps surprising to the reader being introduced to this debate for the first time to learn that everyone involved in it agreed that it is purely counterfactual: when Scotus asks whether or not the Holy Spirit would be 67  Scotus, Reportatio I-A.11.2 (Wolter-Bychkov I, 412–421). See John T.  Slotemaker, “John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay,” 434–439.

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really distinct from the Son if He did not proceed a Filio, he is not asking whether or not, in fact, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. As a Western theologian following the Councils of the Church, Scotus holds that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. The question, therefore, is instead about whether or not it would be possible to account for the distinction of persons if, counterfactually, the procession of the Holy Spirit a Filio did not obtain. Stated differently, could any non-­ Western model (i.e., one that rejects the filioque) account for the distinction of persons? Thomas argued emphatically that the procession of the Holy Spirit a Filio was indeed necessary to account for the distinction of persons. Given his understanding of individuation, Thomas maintained that, in fact, the persons would not be distinct if an opposed relation did not obtain between each of the divine persons.68 Thus, the filioque must be true to account for personal distinction and to avoid heresy. Scotus’s response to Thomas was that opposed relations need not obtain between the divine persons, such that if the filioque were not true, the Holy Spirit would still be distinct from the Son. According to Scotus, disparate relations are sufficient to account for personal distinction. There is, however, a different side to Scotus’s argument, and it is one that is also found in the writings of Scotus’s student Henry Harclay.69 In their discussion of the topic, both Scotus and Harclay recognize the problem with Thomas’s position when it comes to thinking about the Eastern Churches. If Thomas is right, any trinitarian theology that rejects the filioque is, by definition, heretical in that it does not distinguish the Son and Holy Spirit. In response, Scotus and Henry reference a long passage from Robert Grosseteste, where the Bishop of Lincoln writes that the disagreement between the Latins and Greeks is not real, but merely verbal: otherwise either the Greeks or us Latins are heretics. But who would dare to accuse John Damascene, and blessed Basil, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril, and other Greek Fathers, of being heretics. …[or] blessed Jerome, Augustine and Hilary, and other Latin [Fathers]?70

 On Thomas, see Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas, 209–269.  See John T.  Slotemaker, “John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay,” 439–451, and the sources cited therein. 70  Scotus, Ordinatio I.11.1 (Vatican V, 3). 68 69

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This position goes back to Peter Lombard,71 and both Scotus and Harclay suggest that it is just not prudent to claim that the entire Greek tradition is heretical. The upshot is that the debate over disparate or opposed relations was simultaneously philosophical and theological—as such, it was also a debate with profound ecumenical implications. Further, it was a debate that took shape around the middle of the thirteenth century and continued up through the first decades of the fourteenth century. By the mid-fourteenth century, however, the debate had subsided. Oxford thinkers such as Walter Chatton and Robert Holcot either discussed the question briefly before moving on or ignored it all together. In Paris, a few thinkers, such as Peter Auriol,72 Gregory of Rimini,73 John of Basel,74 and Peter Gracilis75 would continue the debate with muted enthusiasm, whereas the question was completely ignored by Marsilius of Inghen and Pierre d’Ailly. There is, however, some remnant of the debate that persists throughout the fifteenth century, particularly in those who would defend Scotus or Thomas. For example, the fifteenth-century Thomist John Capreolus would repeat the basic arguments of Thomas, as would Peter of Aquila and William Vorilong, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Scotists.76 In both groups, however, there are almost no new or original contributions to the argument, as these scholars simply repeat the positions of their master and respond to counter-arguments. In the sixteenth century, one notes, the argument has almost completely disappeared, not only in theologians such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin but also in the scholastic work of John Mair.77

Conclusion Theologians working in the long Middle Ages accepted an account of the two divine emanations and their corresponding relations that was shaped, for the most part, by Augustine’s De Trinitate. More than any other work, Augustine’s magnum opus would set the framework for subsequent  Lombard, Sent. I.12.2 (I.119–121).  Auriol, Scriptum I.11 (ES). 73  Rimini, Lectura I.11 (II, 177–189). 74  Basel, Lectura I.10–11 (II, 124). 75  Gracilis, Lectura I.11 (R fols. 39r–41v). 76  Aquila, Commentaria I.11 (190–198); Vorilong, Sent. I.11 (fols. 25va–26rb). 77  See, for example, John Mair, In primum Sententiarum I.11/12 (fols. 45rb–45vb). 71 72

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accounts of how the divine persons emanate and are related. Further, in the years following Lateran IV a very specific account of the divine emanations would be ensconced; the same would happen to the discussion of divine relations, but for somewhat different reasons. Here it is perhaps important to say a bit more about these two points. For scholastic theologians working after the early thirteenth century, there was a common or normative theology of the emanations and relations. First, concerning the emanations, we can note that while there was debate about how production worked with respect to the essence and the individual persons (e.g., in Henry, Scotus, and Ockham), certain lines of discourse that had been prevalent in the twelfth century were no longer tenable as a result of the decisions of Lateran IV: that is, one could no longer maintain that substantia generat substantiam. Further, on the philosophical side, one notes that in Henry and Scotus a hylomorphic metaphysics of substances shaped the discussion in profound ways, as it would with Ockham, who, while rejecting the debate about matter-form as applied to the trinitarian productions, in some ways remains constrained by the previous debate. Thus, the discussion of the production of divine emanations is circumscribed or limned by a very particular set of conciliar statements emerging from Lateran IV as well as an Aristotelian philosophy of substances. The scholastic debates about the divine relations are also set in motion by Augustine’s De Trinitate, books 5–7, and his use of Aristotle to examine the difference between substantial and relative predicates. Augustine’s basic distinction would become normative and was adopted by Boethius and the subsequent tradition. In the conclusion, we will have a chance to look at an instance of a non-Aristotelian view of the divine relations, but here it is important to just observe that a particular account of relations was central to this entire debate. That is clear, for instance, in the debate between Thomas and Scotus about opposed versus disparate relations; while these two theologians, and their followers, disagreed about whether or not the four relations in God were disparate or opposed, they did agree that there are four relations in God. Now, for those trained in scholastic theology, the obvious response is to simply state that, of course, there are four relations in God. There are four relations in God and there can only be four relations in God, precisely because there are two emanations in God and there are two relations (one active, one passive) corresponding to each emanation. That, of course, makes sense for Thomas, Scotus, and almost all late scholastic theologians; it is, however, far from necessary that

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there must be four and only four relations in God. For example, this language is not found in Augustine, Anselm, Peter Lombard, or even Lateran IV—it is, one could say, a certain way of interpreting Augustine that became normative as a result of certain philosophical and theological commitments. It is hard to imagine precisely just how much influence this scholastic way of thinking about the emanations and relations would have on subsequent generations and centuries. There were numerous theologians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who seemed to chafe at the constraints— for example, Giles of Viterbo, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, or John Calvin—being employed by a particular conciliar tradition or metaphysical system. Yet, it is striking just how much the language and categories of the scholastics would be retained in these thinkers, even if the categories themselves were evacuated, a bit, of the metaphysical accounts that supported and sustained them (here Calvin is perhaps the best example). And, well, as the sixteenth century would progress, there was a return of these metaphysical accounts, even if they were put to a very different use.

Bibliography (CCSL = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina; CCCM = Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis; CO = Calvini Opera; CR = Corpus Reformatorum; OP = Opera Philosophica; OT = Opera Theologica; PL = Patrologia Latina; WA = D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe)

Manuscript Sources Peter Gracilis. Lectura super quattuor libros Sententiarum.   London, Royal 10 A 1, fols. 1–236 [sigla R]

Pre-Modern Sources Alcuin of York. De Fide sanctae et individuae Trinitatis, in PL 101, 13–58. Anselm. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, Opera Omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt. Edinburgh 1946–1961. Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. Princeton 1995. Augustine. Contra Maximinum Arianum, in PL 42, 743–814. ———. De Trinitate, in CCSL 50 and 50A. ———. In Iohannis evangelium tractatus CXXIV, in CCSL 36.

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Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium and De Trinitate, ed. Claudio Moreschini, in Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, opuscula theological. Munich 2005. Calvin, John. Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, 59 vols., ed. Guilielmus Baum, et al. (Brunswick 1863–1900). Corpus Iuris Canonici [Liber extra], ed. Aemilius Friedberg, 2 vols. Graz 1959. Fulgentius of Ruspe, Liber de Trinitate ad Felicem, in CCSL 91A, 631–646 (cf. PL 65). ———. De fide ad Petrum, in CCSL 91A, 709–760 (cf. PL 65). Gregory Rimini. Lectura super primum et secundum Sententiarum, 7 vols. Berlin and New York 1981–1987. Henry of Ghent. Summa quaestionum ordinariarum. Paris 1520. Isidore of Seville. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. Stephen A. Barney, et al. Cambridge 2006. John of Basel. Lectura super quattuor libros Sententiarum, 2 vols. Würzburg 2016 and 2017. John Duns Scotus. Opera Omnia. Civitas Vaticana 1950–. ———. Reportatio I-A, ed. and trans. Alan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2 vols. St. Bonaventure, NY, 2004 and 2008. Luther, Martin. D.  Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 73 vols. Weimar 1883–2009. ———. Erfurter Annotationen 1509–1510/11, ed. Jun Matsuura. Köln 2009. Mair, John. In primum Sententiarum. Paris 1519. Peter Abelard. Theologia Christiana, in CCCM 12. Peter of Aquila. Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum, ed. C.  Paolini. Levanti 1907. Peter Auriol. Scriptum super primum Sententiarum, at http://www.peterauriol. net/editions/electronicscriptum/contents/, accessed January 2020. NB: cited as Electronic Scriptum. Peter Lombard. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols. Grottaferrata 1971 and 1981. Ratramnus of Corbie, Contra Graecorum opposita, in PL 121, 223–346. Richard of St. Victor. De Trinitate, ed. J. Ribaillier. Paris 1958. Theodulf of Orléans. Libellus de processione Spiritus Sancti, in PL 105, 239–276. Thomas Aquinas. Summa contra gentiles, in Corpus Thomisticum, ed. Roberto Busa. at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org, accessed January 2020. NB: cited as CT. William Vorilong. Super quattuor libris Sententiarum. Lyon 1502.

Modern Sources De Rijk, Lambertus M. Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology. Volume I, General Introduction, The Works on Logic. Leiden 2002.

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Emery, Gilles. Trinity in Aquinas. Ave Maria 2008. Friedman, Russell L. Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham. Cambridge 2010. Gemeinhardt, Peter. “Joachim the Theologian: Trinitarian Speculation and Doctrinal Debate,” in A Companion to Joachim of Fiore, ed. Matthias Riedl. Leiden 2018, 41–87. ———. “Logic, Tradition and Ecumenics: Latin Developments of Trinitarian Theology between c. 1075 and c. 1160,” in Trinitarian Theology in the Medieval West, ed. Pekka Kärkkäinen. Helsinki 2007, 10–68. Hill, Edmund. The Mystery of the Trinity. London 1985. Mehlmann, Axel. “De unitate trinitatis. Forschungen und Dokumente zur Trinitätstheologie Joachims von Fiore im Zusammenhang mit seinem verschollenen Traktat gegen Petrus Lombardus” (Ph.D. dissertation, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1991). Paasch, JT. Divine Production in Late Medieval Trinitarian Theology: Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. Oxford 2012. Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Melody of Theology: A Dictionary. Cambridge 1988. Pelikan, Jaroslav and Valerie R. Hotchkiss, eds. Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vols. New Haven 2003. John T.  Slotemaker. “The Primity of the Father in Origen of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo,” in Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer. Leuven 2011, 855–871. ———. “The Primity of the Father in Origen of Alexandria.” “John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay on the Non-necessity of Opposed Relations,” The Thomist 77 (2013), 419–451. Widdicombe, Peter. The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius. Oxford 2001.

CHAPTER 4

Persons and Personal Distinction

Abstract  This chapter examines the theology of divine persons. The first part treats the definition of a divine person in Augustine and Boethius before considering the reception of the Boethian definition in Thomas and Scotus. The second section looks at the distinction between divine attributes, personal properties, and trinitarian appropriations, with a focus on how these distinctions were worked out in the twelfth century. The third section turns to the notion of personal constitution and whether or not divine persons are “constituted.” Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the four dominant models of personal distinction. Keywords  Trinitarian persons • Attributes • Properties • Appropriations • Distinction of persons The Scriptures speak about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are described in the creeds as being one God—it is, however, not immediately clear what the three are or how one should speak about them. John speaks of the Logos (λόγος) becoming incarnate as a human being at a given point in time (1:14), and the Church has argued accordingly that Jesus Christ is one person (πρόσωπον), one hypostasis (ὑπόστασις), with two natures, truly human (ἄνθρωπον ἀληθῶς) and truly divine (θεόν ἀληθῶς).1 Here it is clear that one should speak of the incarnate Word as a 1

 See the Chalcedonian definition, Pelikan-Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, I.180–181.

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person, given that Jesus was a human person in every sense of the term. It is not, however, obvious that the pre-incarnate Logos or Word should be spoken of as a person. In the fourth Gospel, John does not use the term ‘person’ to talk about the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity— John calls Him the Logos. So what is one to make of this? How is one to speak of the three?

Divine Persons In the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John, some of the Jews present at the Temple asked Jesus if He was the Messiah. Jesus responded by saying that He had already answered the question by doing the works of His Father: He says He is there to give people eternal life; He says “I and the Father are (εσμεν) one” (John 10:22–30). In his discussion about what to call the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Augustine turns to this passage in John. What is striking about this scriptural passage, according to Augustine, is that if the Father and Son are truly one thing, why did Jesus not say “I and the Father is one?” Why not use the singular instead of the plural? Augustine’s answer is that if the “Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit … is neither the Father nor the Son, then certainly there are three.”2 In the same way one can use the plural to talk about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Jesus used the plural verb to indicate that while He and the Father are one, they are yet distinct. There is truly a plurality in God. A plurality, however, of “three what (tres quid)?” Augustine concludes that there is a great poverty (magna inopia) of human language such that one cannot state precisely what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are. In the Latin West of Augustine’s time, theologians were accustomed to using the term ‘person’ (persona) to speak of the three, while in Greek the theologians were accustomed to using the term ‘hypostasis’ (ὑπόστασις); in reality, Augustine notes, these terms are only used because one is obliged not to remain silent.3 The point, therefore, is that while one can speak of three divine persons, one cannot predicate ‘person’ of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same way that one can of a human person. In short, there is a radical difference between a human person and a divine person. But how is the term used when applied to God?

2 3

 Augustine, De Trinitate 5.9.10 (CCSL 50, 217).  Ibid. 5.8–9.10 (CCSL 50, 217).

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The Bishop of Hippo argued that when applied to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the term ‘person’ named something that the three had in common. This is the case because when we say “the person of the Father,” we mean that which the Father is—that is, the essence—not the Father in relation to the Son. Stated differently, the term ‘person’ as applied to the three is not a relational term, but is instead an essential term that is used in the same way as terms such as ‘God,’ ‘great,’ ‘good,’ just,’ and so forth.4 Thus, one can predicate ‘person’ equally of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, just as one can goodness or justice. The question, however, is why can one say there are three persons, if indeed the term ‘person’ is simply a substantial term?—terms predicated of God secundum substantiam are usually used in the singular (e.g., God is love, not loves, God is God, not gods). Augustine does not give a clear answer. The Augustinian approach would be inherited by Anselm, who further struggled with how to define the term ‘person’ as predicated of the three. Anselm’s first foray into trinitarian theology is the Monologion, a work in which he reasons “with himself” about God. Here Anselm builds a rational foundation for trinitarian theology, beginning with the emanational nature of God and working toward an account of the three divine persons. What is interesting, however, is that just at the moment where Anselm is to reveal who or what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are, he is left with Augustine’s basic question. Can one really say what the three are? Here Anselm famously writes that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “three I know not what” (tres nescio quid).5 While the term ‘person’ has been used to refer to the three, that simply cannot hold: the term ‘person’ signifies an individually existing thing, a substance. To say three persons is to say three substances, which would be to predicate three gods. Here Anselm has bumped up against one of the implications of Augustine’s approach, which is that it leads to what we could call an essentialist understanding of a divine person (see the discussion of Thomas below). Despite understanding the problem that seems to arise, Anselm’s solution in the Monologion is Augustine’s. Anselm reasons that one cannot presumably go on calling the Father, Son, and Spirit the “three I know not what”: the answer, therefore, is to adopt a term that cannot be predicated of the essence in the plural and can be used to identify the three without identifying them by means of their proper names or relations (e.g., Father, 4 5

 Ibid. 7.6.11 (CCSL 50, 262).  Anselm, Monologion 79 (I, 85–86).

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Son, Fatherhood, Sonship). He concludes that one can refer to the Trinity as “one essence and three persons or substances” (tres personae sive tres substantiae).6 And while this approach seemed sufficient in the Monologion, Anselm would later investigate the matter in more detail. The Monologion was written for the purpose of theological meditation, not for scholarly disputes. When, some 15 years later, Anselm would be thrust into a trinitarian controversy involving the theology of Roscelin of Compiègne, he would be forced to be more precise with his language. The debate with Roscelin is worked out in several drafts of Anselm’s Epistola de Incarnatione, where one observes that Anselm is attempting to define his terms more precisely than in the Monologion. In one of the drafts of de Incarnatione—called by scholars the Cur Deus magis—Anselm is working with two basic definitions of ‘person’ found in Boethius and Porphyry. Boethius had famously defined the person of Christ as an “individual substance of a rational nature” (naturae rationabilis individua substantia).7 However, Anselm observes that if this definition were adopted for the three, and not just Christ, it would seem to imply three substances within the one essence. Porphyry, on the other hand, defined a person as a collection of properties and not as an individual substance.8 To be a person, therefore, is to have a natural collection of properties that distinguish one person from another person. In the subsequent drafts of de Incarnatione Anselm applied this understanding of a person to trinitarian theology, arguing that to be a trinitarian person is to be essentially the one essence and to have a unique individuating personal property (or collection of properties). Thus, to be the Father is to be the divine essence and to have the property of fatherhood, and mutatis mutandis for the Son and Spirit. What we observe in Anselm, therefore, is an attempt to work through several definitions of what it means to be a person: (1) an apophatic definition (three I know not what),9 (2) the Boethian definition, and (3) the Porphyrian definition. Here, however, we must say a bit more about the Boethian definition, given that it has had a long history in Western theology.  Ibid.  Boethius, Contra Eutychen 3 (214). 8  Constant J. Mews, “St. Anselm and Roscelin,” 63 and 84. 9  The first was employed because Augustine’s approach left Anselm with an essentialist understanding of person that did not answer the question of why the term ‘person’ is used in the plural if it is an essential term. 6 7

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The critiques of Boethius’s definition of person as predicated of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit begin early and are frequent. Rusticus the Deacon would object to Boethius’s definition already in the sixth century, to be followed by a long list of critics in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.10 Boethius’s theological writings (opuscula sacra) were the subject of commentaries by twelfth-century thinkers such as Thierry of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, and Clarembald of Arras. Here, in their commentaries on Boethius’s trinitarian and christological works, these thinkers all criticized Boethius’s definition, ultimately rejecting it. Clarembald would argue that when the term ‘person’ is predicated of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it should not be understood as indicating “three individual rational substances.”11 Instead, when this term is predicated of the three “we affirm that there are three persons because they bear a certain similarity to three persons who are distinct (separatis) from one another.”12 Three human persons are, of course, individuated, and what Clarembald wants to insist upon is that when the divine persons are called persons, it is simply a statement of their individuation. The analogy Clarembald employs is that of a father who is not a son, and a son who is not a father. Of course, the first cannot obtain naturally (as all fathers were first sons), but the Bible helpfully provides an example of this non-natural type in the person of Adam. Thus, Clarembald says we can imagine Adam as a father who is not a son, and Abel as a son who is not a father. In this case, he argues, the father is not the son, and the son is not the father (Adam is not Abel, and Abel is not Adam)—in short, these are distinct individual rational substances, for whom nothing of the two can be said universally of the other (de alia catholice). When applied to the Trinity, we can say that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, and mutatis mutandis for the Spirit. In this sense, he concedes, ‘person’ can be applied to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as individuated, however not as three substances.13 What one observes about these twelfth-century critiques—from Walter of Mortagne’s rejection of the definition, to the anonymous Summa Sententiarum’s use of the definition while, at the same time, redefining the terms of the definition so as not to identify the persons as individual  Rusticus, Contra Acephalos (CCSL 100, 39–40).  Clarembald, Tractatus I.8 (89). 12  Ibid. 13  Ibid. 10 11

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substances—is that they all move away from the language of three substances.14 The thirteenth century would produce further refinement in how to think about divine persons. Here, for the sake of simplicity, we can look at two alternatives that became influential in the later Middle Ages. First, that of Albert the Great and his student Thomas Aquinas, and second that of John Duns Scotus. By the mid-thirteenth century it is not surprising to find that Albert the Great catalogued and critiqued seven different definitions of the term ‘person’ as used in trinitarian discourse, before adding his own as an eighth option.15 Here he records the positions of Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Hugh of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, and other unnamed sources, noting the problems with each definition. Albert’s student, Thomas Aquinas, would adopt this research in his own commentary, before systematically reducing the list to three basic views in the Summa theologiae.16 In Thomas’s distillation in the Summa the three options are as follows: (1) an essentialist position according to which the term ‘person’ signifies the divine essence just as the term ‘God’ or ‘wise’ does; (2) a modified essentialism according to which the term ‘person’ signifies the essence directly (in recto) and the relations indirectly (in obliquo); and (3) a rejected essentialism according to which the term ‘person’ signifies relations directly (in recto) and the essence indirectly (in obliquo).17 The first position is linked by Albert and Thomas with Augustine, and Thomas objects that if ‘person’ only signifies the essence—ex vi suae significationis—it is problematic when applied to the three divine persons, because it would have to be used in the singular. The second position, Thomas notes, was adopted in response to the problems with (1), however, this position does not alleviate the problem, given that the primary signification is still the divine essence, such that it would still be difficult to understand it in the plural. This position was defended by Simon of Tournai, however Thomas does not name him explicitly.18 Finally, the third position, attributed by Albert to William of Auxerre, is rejected (perhaps for moving too far in the opposite direction), though in Thomas’s words, it comes nearer to the truth.  Summa Sententiarum 1.9 (PL 176, 56).  Albert, Sent. I.23.B.2 (XXV, 582–587). 16  Thomas, Scriptum I.23.1.3 (I, 560–565). 17  Ibid. I.29.4 (IV, 333). 18  See Simon, disputatio 83, q.1, in Les “Disputationes” de Simon de Tournai, 241 (cf. qq. 2–4, 241–242). 14 15

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Having catalogued the various options, Albert argued that the term person signifies both the substance (substantia) and the relational property (proprietas) unique to each divine person.19 Thomas would build upon this position. For Thomas, the term ‘person’ indicates a substance because when one asks the question “three whats,” the answer to the “what” question is usually a substance (i.e., it is hard to imagine a what that is not a substance). As such, there seems to be three distinct things, or substances, or essences in God. Thus, he would conclude that the term person, as applied to God, indicates a “subsistent individual of a rational nature”—though, in a more excellent way than as predicated of a human person.20 But what does this mean? Thomas, we will recall, argues that when speaking about God the relations do not indicate an accidental property, as there are no accidents in God, but the divine essence itself. In this sense, the relations in God are said to subsist or to be subsistent. Thomas would link his discussion of the divine relations and the divine persons, claiming that when ‘person’ is predicated of God, it signifies a subsisting relation, in a twofold sense.21 The relation signifies both (1) the essence, in that the Father, for example, subsists in the essence, and (2) a relation, in that the Father indicates a relation to the Son. Similarly, the term ‘person’ signifies first and foremost the relation directly (qua subsistent hypostasis), and indirectly the essence. However, as Thomas notes, one can also state that ‘person’ signifies the essence directly, in that it signifies the relation which is, in fact, a subsistent hypostasis that simply is the divine essence. By defining a trinitarian person as a subsistent relation, Thomas has employed the Boethian definition and pushed it in a particular direction. Thomas agrees with Boethius that there must be some substance that is identified or named by means of the term ‘person,’ yet he also realizes that this is perhaps problematic given that it seems to indicate that there are three individual substances in God. Thus, Thomas argues that in God ‘person’ signifies a subsistent relation, which, in turn, has a twofold aspect, such that when a relation is compared to the essence it is only rationally distinct from it, and yet when compared to that which it is in relation to (e.g., the Father and Son) it is really distinct. The persons are really distinct from each other, and yet there are not four substances in God (for  Albert, Sent. I.23.B.2 (XXV, 585–586).  Thomas, ST I.29.3 (IV, 331). 21  Ibid. I.29.4 (IV, 333). 19 20

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when compared to the essence, the persons are only rationally distinct from it).22 But not everyone was content to accept and modify Boethius’s definition. The Boethian definition, we recall, was significantly criticized by many of the twelfth-century theologians. Richard of St. Victor, for example, developed an interesting alternative that would become influential in the later tradition. Richard, following Anselm, argued that Boethius’s definition is problematic because if the persons were individuated rational substances within the divine nature, they would be three distinct gods; further, the divine nature itself would seem to be a divine person (as Rusticus the Deacon argued centuries before him).23 Instead, Richard argues that a trinitarian person is an “incommunicable existence of the divine nature” (divinae naturae incommunicabilis existentia).24 This definition would be adopted by William of Auxerre and John Duns Scotus, the latter famously reworking the definition and making it central to his trinitarian theology. We turn here to Scotus’s reading of Richard. Scotus defines ‘person’ by analyzing the terms employed in the respective definitions of Boethius and Richard.25 Allowing for a re-ordering of the terms, we get: Boethius: Scotus:

individua incommunicabilis

substantia subsistentia

rationabilis intellectualis

naturae naturae

Scotus’s understanding of this definitional shift is grounded in an analysis of each individual term in the definition and how it applies to the divine nature. First, he turns his attention to the term ‘rational’ and its replacement ‘intellectual.’ According to Scotus, when one is speaking of divine or angelic natures, it is appropriate to speak of an intellectual and not a rational nature because ‘rational’ (rationabilis) denotes a process of reasoning that is not appropriate to either. The imperfect method of reasoning 22  Medieval thinkers held that things can be really distinct (in re), rationally distinct (rationis), or formally distinct (formalis). Really distinct things are separable and can exists independently; rationally distinct things are distinct mentally or conceptually; and formally distinct things are not separable nor distinct only conceptually, such that formally distinct things are not really distinct, nor are they simply rationally distinct. 23  Rusticus, Contra Acephalos (CCSL 100, 40). 24  Richard, De Trinitate IV.22 (187). 25  For the entirety of the subsequent discussion, see Scotus, Reportatio I-A.23 (19–20).

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accomplished by human beings is simply not fitting for the divine nature, which, in turn, is properly said to be intellectual in nature. The second transposition is the replacement of ‘individual’ with ‘incommunicable’ as the modifier of substance/subsistence. Scotus reasons that in the divine nature there is no individual per se: the divine supposits are not individuals, as the term ‘individual’ implies a thing that is capable of division and of which one can subsequently predicate ‘individual’ as a part of that thing. For example, one can speak of an individual tree, however as soon as one employs the modifier ‘individual,’ it implies that there is a group of trees to which this one tree belongs, and further it implies a division between this one tree and the group of trees (without the division it is hard to see how a given tree is an individual tree). The problem is that there is no division in the divine nature (though there is distinction)—as such, the persons within the divine nature could be incommunicable subsistences but not individual substances. Finally, the third transposition replaces the term ‘substance’ with ‘subsistence.’ The problem with the term ‘substance’ is that there are intellectual substances that are communicable and not persons: the two examples Scotus gives are a separated soul (anima separata) and a second substance (secunda substantia), both of which are intellectual substances that are communicable. The divine persons, however, are incommunicable, such that the term ‘substance’ does not capture the true nature of the divine persons because it also includes the class of communicable intellectual substances. But where does that leave us? How can we summarize Soctus’s view? At the heart of Scotus’s theology of persons, there is a twofold incommunicability: (1) the divine persons are incommunicable in the nature of a subsisting one or distinct person (in natura subsistentis); and (2) the divine persons are incommunicable as something subsisting incommunicably in reality (subsistentem incommunicabiliter in natura).26 The persons, that is, are distinct not just as a thing or “this” (haec), in Scotus’s language, but are also individual subsistents within a nature. And, if we focus on the incommunicability of a given subsisting person, Scotus is clear, elsewhere, that each divine person is incommunicable in various ways, but in particular because each person has a unique property (e.g., 26  As such, the divine person signifies both the nature per se and the one subsisting in the nature: further, as the nature the divine person can be adored (adorari), and as the one subsisting in the nature the divine person can be produced (produci). See Ibid.

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generating in the Father, or being generated in the Son) that blocks communicability.27 There is, therefore, a communicability and an incommunicability to the divine nature and the three divine persons. The divine nature is communicable to the divine persons, in that the persons are the divine nature; second, the divine essence, or nature, is that by which the divine persons have existence (habent esse).28 The essence, therefore, is communicable to the divine persons in a twofold way, and the divine persons are incommunicable, as discussed above, in a twofold way. Here we can take stock and return to where we began, with Augustine. Augustine hesitated to define the nature of a divine person. Others, such as Anselm, initially followed him, only to realize in subsequent debates that further precision was necessary. Anselm would, at this point, begin to explore the options offered by Boethius and Porphyry. The twelfth century witnessed a plethora of new arguments and positions, as twelfth-­ century theologians struggled with the basic Boethian definition and made significant modifications. And, as these were received in the thirteenth century, there was an attempt to reduce this number (as we saw in Thomas) and to come to some consensus. Scotus, of course, did not agree with Thomas, and would posit a definition of the divine persons that moved away from Thomas’s reworking and reinterpretation of Boethius. But what, in all of this, is the common ground between these various definitions? The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologians agreed that there are three supposits in God. ‘Supposit’ is a term predicated per se of a being that subsists (as such, the term is used similarly to the Greek ὑπόστασις); if such a being is intellectual, or rational, it is identified as a person. Late medieval thinkers agreed, therefore, that there are three supposits in God: three subsistent and distinct things. These three can be called persons, they all agree, if ‘person’ is understood in a particular way. Similarly, the Boethian definition, for those who defended it, could work if one redefined what it meant to be a substance, in this particular case, as a distinct subsistent thing (and not a categorical substance), and if the terms ‘rational’ and ‘individual’ were understood correctly. No one, it seems, was  Ibid. I-A.26.1 (73). See Scott Williams, “Persons,” 81–82.  Scotus, Reportatio I-A.23 (22). For Scotus, the divine nature is communicable by identity (ut quod) and not by division or information (ut quo), such that the Father communicates the divine essence ut quod—whereas, in the natural world, communication of a creaturely nature is by either division or information. See Williams, “Persons,” 81–82. 27 28

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willing to accept the Boethian definition tout court, and this itself tells us something about these debates. If the apogee of the debates over how to define ‘person’ occurred around the time of Scotus, the need to define the term precisely never waned. The definition of divine persons would again be the source of reflection in the first half of the sixteenth century with the rise of anti-­ trinitarinism. Michael Servetus, for example, argued that the Latin term persona indicates a role, or a mask, or a character. However, in response Calvin, and later Melanchthon, would not develop a sophisticated metaphysical account, but would reiterate the patristic tradition and the teachings of the Church. Melanchthon, for example, wrote that Servetus was playing games with the language of the divine persons, and that in response one must acknowledge that the “Church speaks differently” about three divine persons who are undivided (individua), intelligent (intelligens), and incommunicable (incommunicabilis).29 Here, the definition provided by Melanchthon is close, in a sense, to that given by some of the later scholastics, however, the difference is that he does not attempt to provide a metaphysical account of how precisely a divine person is undivided, intelligent, and incommunicable. Instead, Melanchthon adopts this definition based on Church authority, and, more specifically, Scripture. In this particular case, Melanchthon reminds his reader that in the Baptism of Christ the distinction of the three is present, and gives credence to the claim that the three are undivided, intelligent, and incommunicable.

Attributes, Properties, and Appropriations As we have seen above, Augustine distinguished between terms predicated of God according to substance and those predicated according to relation. The first category of terms, those predicated secundum substantiam, are often referred to as divine attributes: thus, the one essence is good, true, just, and loving, as are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The latter category, those predicated secundum relativum, are predicated of the divine persons and indicate a relational distinction between the respective persons: thus, the Father is Father, while the Son is not Father. What remained somewhat unclear, however, is how to predicate certain trinitarian triads of the three persons. Are all substantial terms predicated of all three persons

 Melanchthon, Loci (1559) I, (CR 21, 613–614).

29

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equally, or are there distinguishing characteristics or attributes that belong in some unique way to an individual person? We begin, therefore, with Augustine’s claim in De Trinitate 6.10.11— referencing Hilary of Poitiers—that the Father is eternity (aeternitas), the Son is beauty/form (species), and the Holy Spirit is gift (munere).30 In this passage Augustine calls these terms propria: individual properties, one could say, or distinct characteristics/attributes. The problem, however, is that these three propria do not fit the distinction articulated above between substantial and relational terms. Strictly speaking, the term ‘eternity’ is a substantial term that applies to the one essence, and as such it is properly predicated of all three persons equally. So, in what sense is a particular propria—which for all intents and purposes is a substantial term—predicated of a singular person of the Trinity in some unique way? Is it functioning in Hilary’s triad as an individuating property? This is the problem inherited by twelfth-century theologians and it would be theirs to solve. When approaching this question one observes that by the twelfth century the list of trinitarian triads predicated of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had expanded considerably. Jean Châtillon catalogues eight such triads, though his list is far from exhaustive.31 The problem, as noted above, is that many of the terms predicated of the individual persons are substantial terms that can also be predicated of the one substance and the three persons equally: that is, if we take the first triad Châtillon catalogs— predicating power (potentia) of the Father, wisdom (sapientia) of the Son, and goodness (bonitas/benignitas) of the Holy Spirit—we can note that the Father is power, and yet the one God is power, the Son is power, and so forth. However, if that is the case, as all Western theologians would recognize, how does it make sense to predicate power of the Father, wisdom of the Son, and goodness of the Holy Spirit, as if these predicates indicate something specific about the respective persons?32 Here we can turn our attention to this particular triad. Peter Abelard was infamous in the twelfth century for predicating power, wisdom, and goodness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively. He begins the Theologia summi boni with the claim that the Father is power because He can do all things as He wishes; the Son is wisdom because He is the wisdom that is able to discern; the Holy Spirit is the  Augustine, De Trinitate 4.10.11 (CCSL 50, 241).  Jean Châtillon, “Unitas, Aequalitas, Concordia vel Connexio.” 32  Here see Dominique Poirel, Livre de la nature. 30 31

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goodness or grace (gratia) who through mercy He redeems humanity.33 These divine attributes describe the one God, but also describe the three divine persons and their respective work. According to Abelard, therefore, when Christians speak about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are speaking about divine power, wisdom, and goodness of God. These three attributes were central to Abelard’s theology and ethics. Abelard defended these claims throughout his various writings by means of engagement with the pagan philosophical tradition as well as a barrage of Christian authorities. For example, Maximus of Turin argued that the Father is power because the Son and Spirit come from Him, though He Himself is unbegotten, and Abelard finds Maximus an important source of authority.34 Methodologically, however, Abelard’s approach is not to ground his argument narrowly in a barrage of witness, but to develop a kind of natural theology that was popular at the time and can also be found in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor and William of Champeaux. Here I think Constant Mews is correct that Abelard’s approach is perhaps best understood as a sub-species of natural theology that accepts, as Hugh and William did, that God can be known through the created world, and looks at human language, in particular, as a source of such knowledge. Thus, through understanding the words predicated of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we can better understand these divine attributes, and the three persons in God.35 In the twelfth century numerous theologians besides Abelard predicated the triad power, wisdom, and goodness, to the Father, Son, and Spirit, respectively. Hugh of St. Victor would explore the utility of this triad throughout numerous writings, as would Robert of Melun. In Robert’s theology, for example, the triad becomes an organizing principle of his massive trinitarian theology. Other theologians such as Walter of Mortagne, Clarembald of Arras, and William of St. Thierry critiqued the triad, and in particular Abelard’s use of it. Walter, for his part, wrote his De Trinitate as a refutation of what he thought was the improper predication of power, wisdom, and goodness to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Walter, like others, would insist that these three attributes are substantial terms and should not be understood as proper names of the persons or as individuating properties. Instead, Walter argued that the terms  Abelard, Summi boni 1.2 (CCCM 13, 86–87).  Abelard, Theologia Christiana 1.25–26 (CCCM 12, 81–82). 35  Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise, 104. 33 34

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unbegotten, begotten, and proceeding (paternity, filiation, and procession) should be employed—instead of power, wisdom, and goodness—to indicate a distinction of person.36 His point was simply that, following Augustine, relational terms indicate distinction, substantial terms do not. Clarembald of Arras links Abelard’s theology with Arianism and argues that his so named Theologia (the science of God) should be referred to as the Stultilogia (the science of stupidity)—a term of derision applied first to Abelard’s theology by Bernard of Clairvaux.37 According to Clarembald, Abelard foolishly hoped that the three persons could be distinguished by means of power, wisdom, and goodness38—a mistake that Clarembald finds so obviously wrong that one could expect even a beginner in theology to identify the mistake and avoid it. Like Walter, Clarembald would follow a basically Augustinian grammar of substantial and relational predicates to critique Abelard’s use of the triad power, wisdom, and goodness. Abelard’s teaching would be condemned both at the Council of Soissons (1121) and at the Council of Sens (1141). One overarching concern of these Councils seemed to be that, according to Abelard, only God the Father was omnipotent. When Peter Lombard wrote his Sentences and delivered them as lectures in the 1150s, therefore, the debate about Abelard’s triad was already in the rear view mirror. Predicating ‘power,’ ‘wisdom,’ and ‘goodness’ to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as somehow distinguishing properties or characteristics was rejected by numerous theologians and two councils. The Lombard would articulate his own response to Abelard’s theology, however he did not advance the discussion in a substantive way. The language that would become normative, for later theologians, would not be developed until a couple years after the death of the Lombard in Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate. Richard of St. Victor was intimately familiar with the previous use of the triad power, wisdom, and goodness in Abelard, Hugh, and others, and would propose a way forward. In particular, Richard was concerned with Abelard’s use of the triad as three properties of the divine persons (the view condemned at Sens) and suggested that a distinction be made between trinitarian properties and trinitarian appropriations. There are certain terms or properties (proprietates) that can only be applied to one of the divine persons; for example, Richard notes, only one person is called  Walter of Mortagne, De Trinitate 7–11 (PL 209, 583–586).  Clarembald, Tractatus I.36–37 (99–100). 38  Ibid. I.39 (100). 36 37

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Father and only one person is called Son.39 Here, following Augustine, there is a special way of indicating distinction between the persons by means of unique or personal properties that belong only to one person. However, there are situations, Richard admits, where one can speak of the Father, loosely, as power, or the Son as wisdom. What is going on in such instances? Richard argues that certain terms such as ‘power,’ ‘wisdom,’ and ‘goodness’ can be appropriated (appropriatio) of the three divine persons in such a way that the property in question is not understood to be unique to the person (e.g., as Father and Son are), but to attribute a certain quality or operation to a given divine person.40 But what does this mean? The term ‘father’ is the particular or unique property of the Father and can only be predicated of Him as a property. The term ‘power’, however, can also be predicated of the Father, not as a unique property, but as a trinitarian appropriation. This, Richard argues, is fitting in certain circumstances. The example he gives is that ‘power,’ ‘wisdom,’ and ‘goodness’ are rightly appropriated of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when one observes that power qua power can exist without wisdom. Wisdom, however, cannot exist without power, in that wisdom does not give power the power to exist, though power does give wisdom the power to exist. Similarly, goodness is not present without wisdom or power, in that power gives goodness the ability (posse) to be good, and wisdom gives goodness the knowledge (nosse, know how) to be good. Here, he argues, one can see a parallel with the Father, Son, and Spirit, such that the three terms in question are fittingly appropriated to the three persons.41 The distinction between trinitarian properties and appropriations would become common parlance in the thirteenth century, and involved various factors, including the decisions at Lateran IV (regarding the language of properties), the discussions of personal properties in the Lombard’s Sentences (e.g., dd. 21, 22, 23, 27), and, most significantly, Richard’s critique of Peter Abelard. One implication of this development was a renewed and heightened focus on how to understand persons, personal properties, and personal distinction. It also raised new questions. As  Richard, De Trinitate VI.11 (240).  Ibid. VI.10 and VI.15 (238–39 and 247–48). See also id., De tribus appropriatis (PL 196, 991–994). 41  Richard, De Trinitate VI.15 (247–48). On Richard’s role in the development of the notion of trinitarian appropriations, see Poirel, Livre, 391–420. Cf. Lombard, Sent. I.34.4 (I, 252–253). 39 40

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the Lombard had asked: are the personal properties the persons themselves (ipsae personae) and God (i.e., the divine essence)?42 Here we turn to one of the questions raised as a result of these developments—the question of personal constitution.

Personal Constitution In his Sentences (I.25) Peter Lombard argues that the divine persons are distinct by unique personal properties. The question that arises is whether or not these distinguishing properties are the persons themselves (ipsae personae) and the essence, or are in the persons in such a way as to not be the persons (in personis ut non sint personae).43 The Lombard’s response is that the properties are themselves the persons, and he elicits a list of authorities to support this position. The most important is a passage that he attributes to Jerome (though it is actually Pelagius): “we distinguish the three distinct persons by means of property, for we confess not only the names, but the properties of the names, that is, the persons.”44 Here, he argues, the text implies that the persons simply are the properties. The Lombard anticipates objections, the most significant, perhaps, being that if the persons are the properties, the persons cannot be distinguished by them.45 The argument here remains underdeveloped, though the intuition seems to be that in order for the persons to be distinct by means of personal properties, there must be a way in which the properties are distinct from the persons lest one be simply stating that the persons are distinct in and of themselves. Here the Lombard has very little to offer in terms of a response to this objection, and he, again, quotes a patristic authority in response. And again, it is important to provide his citation from Hilary of Poitiers, for as this chapter progresses, the Lombard’s position (and his authorities) becomes increasingly significant. What is being examined is boundless and incomprehensible; it goes beyond what words can bear and what sense can contain; it is ineffable, unreachable, uncontainable. The nature of the thing itself empties words of their meaning; the impenetrable light blinds the mind’s contemplation; what is contained by no boundary exceeds the capacity of the intellect. My mind is  Lombard, Sent. I.33.1 (I, 240).  Ibid. (I, 241). 44  Ibid. I.25.3 and 33.1 (I, 196 and 241). 45  Ibid. I.33.1 (I, 242). 42 43

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weak, my intelligence is confused; in my words, though I will confess not weakness, but silence. It is very dangerous to say more than Heaven permits concerning such great and recondite matters: that we speak of God more than he himself has indicated.46

The Lombard does not provide a dialectical argument, but simply follows Hilary in maintaining that there are radical limitations to what can and cannot be known about God. He will continue this line of argumentation, citing passages from Augustine that make a similar claim, all of which became increasingly important in the fourteenth century, as we will see. For now, however, we turn to the late thirteenth century and what emerges from this question of whether or not the personal properties are distinct from the persons. The Lombard’s original question was not just whether or not the personal properties are the persons or are in the persons, he also asked whether or not the properties are the persons and the essence. That is, he was focused not just on whether or not there is a distinction between the persons and their respective properties, but how those properties relate to the essence itself. Is there a constitution of property and essence that makes a person? This question would be taken up by thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and John Duns Scotus. Thomas Aquinas, for his part, would talk about the persons as subsistent relations, and would argue that the “relations or properties distinguish or constitute the hypostases or persons, insofar as they are themselves the subsisting persons, just as paternity is the Father, and filiation is the Son.”47 For Thomas, therefore, the language of constitution is employed, very briefly, to discuss the relation between the property and the person. That said, in neither the Scriptum nor the Summa theologiae does Thomas embark in a lengthy discussion of the constitution of divine persons. A generation or two later, however, such questions would emerge with more urgency. The secular master Henry of Ghent maintained that each divine person is a constitution of personal property and divine essence. He argued that “the entirety (integritas) of a [divine] person involves two [things], namely the essence and the personal property” such that “in the same [person]

46  Ibid. I.33.1 (I, 242–43). Cf. Hilary, De Trin. II.5, as translated by Giulio Silano, Peter Lombard, The Sentences, 183. 47  Thomas, ST I.40.2 (IV, 413).

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the essence is quasi-material and the property is quasi-formal.”48 Here Henry builds upon Aristotelian hylomorphism—the idea that natural objects are a unity of matter and form—to argue that each divine person is constituted of the divine essence (quasi-materiale) and a property (quasi-formale). And while Henry’s view of quasi-matter and quasi-form would be debated, the notion that divine persons entail a kind of constitution would become normative around the late thirteenth century. Duns Scotus would follow Henry in arguing that a divine person is a constitution of essence and property, and while he would reject Henry’s language of the essence as quasi-materiale and property as quasi-formale, his focus was on what kind of property would, with the essence, constitute a divine person. Here, as we will see in more detail below, Scotus considers two options, relational properties (e.g., Father or Son) or absolute properties (e.g., non relational properties).49 For our present purposes, however, it is enough to observe that Scotus, like Henry, thinks that divine persons are a constitution of essence and personal property. In fact, it does not seem, so far as I can tell, that Scotus even imagined that constitution would be a problem.50 The thirteenth-century view that a divine person is a constitution of essence and property would come under criticism in the early fourteenth century. The shift is evident in the writings of William of Ockham. In his earliest theological work, Ockham maintained a rather standard late thirteenth-­century view of constitution, stating that the “divine persons are constituted (constituuntur) and distinguished (distinguuntur) by relations of origin.”51 Ockham’s argument, however, is simply that this is the measured view of the Saints; He holds it not because he thinks it is the most reasonable or rational, but because of authority.52 Some years later in the Summa logicae, Ockham reversed his opinion and argued that the language of constitution is not proper when speaking of the persons and personal properties.53 The problem, as Ockham sees it, is that certain verbs—for example, habere (to have) or constituere (to

 Henry of Ghent, Summa quaestionum ordinariarum 53.3 (II, fol. 63vZ).  See Scotus, Ordinatio I.26 (Vatican VI, 1–61), id., Reportatio I-A.26 (Wolter-Bychkov II, 65–131). 50  See his terse discussion of Praepositinus, Reportatio I-A.26 (Wolter-Bychkov II, 68). 51  Ockham, Ordinatio I.26 (OT IV, 157). 52  See Ockham, Ordinatio I.26 (OT IV, 147, 156, and 157). 53  See John T. Slotemaker, “William of Ockham.” 48 49

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constitute)—imply a distinction that is improper to the divine nature. Thus, he claims that the following propositions ought to be rejected: 1) God has justice (Deus habet iustitiam), or 2) God has wisdom (Deus habet sapientiam).

His reasoning is that if one says God has justice, or God has wisdom, it seems to imply a distinction between God and His justice—as if justice is an accidental property God can have, or not have. These propositions are amphibolies (syntactically ambiguous sentences) and need to be clarified. His response is that one should state instead that: 2a) God is justice (Deus est iustitiam), or 2b) God is wisdom (Deus est sapientiam).54

Ockham argues that wisdom is not an accidental property God can have or not have, God simply is justice and wisdom. Theologians, therefore, should avoid saying that God has wisdom or justice, or that God is constituted of wisdom and justice. Following this discussion of the divine attributes, Ockham turns his attention to problematic propositions that emerge within trinitarian discourse. Here he argues that the following propositions ought to be rejected: 3) The Father has paternity (Pater habet paternitatem), or 4) Paternity is constitutive of the Father (Paternitas est constitutiva Patris).

The problem, Ockham reasons, is that these propositions imply a distinction that is improper to the simplicity of the divine essence and the Trinity of persons. In the first proposition, it seems that paternity is something that the Father has, such that it is a property that is somehow distinct from Him. In the second, it seems that the Father is somehow constituted of two distinct things, an essence and the property of paternitas that combine to make (constitute) the person of the Father. Instead, Ockham insists, one should state that

 Ockham, Summa III-4.6 (OP I, 777).

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3a) The Father is paternity (Pater est paternitas), and 4a) The Father is the essence (Pater est essentia).55

The conclusion here is that, for Ockham, the person of the Father is the essence and paternity. The Father is not constituted of two distinct things that somehow make up the one simple divine person. In defense, Ockham argues that this was the position of Augustine, Anselm, and an earlier tradition, that emphasized the simplicity of the divine nature. Ockham is increasingly cautious about late thirteenth-­ century attempts to understand persons as some kind of constitution, and argues that such theologies are not consistent with an earlier tradition that one finds from Augustine up through Peter Lombard. This theological shift, which emerges around the third decade of the fourteenth century, would have a lasting influence on trinitarian theology up through the sixteenth century. In the decades following Ockham, Walter Chatton, Robert Holcot, William Rubio, and Gregory of Rimini (the latter two familiar with both Ockham’s and Chatton’s theology) would critique the notion of the divine persons being “constituted” and would endorse a minimalist understanding of trinitarian theology according to which one would not posit individual personal properties that accounted for the personal distinction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.56 For Chatton, Holcot, Rubio, and Gregory, the persons are distinct in and of themselves (se ipsis) and not on account of distinct properties. We will return to this discussion in the following section. Here, however, it is important to make a few observations about how the language of properties and constitution was received in the early sixteenth century. The discussion of personal properties would shift in the sixteenth century, as theologians like Calvin and Melanchthon would employ the language in a different way. Calvin, for example, uses the language of properties (proprietate quadam) to explain how it is that the persons are distinct, however his use of those terms is somewhat different. Throughout the various editions of the Institutes, Calvin speaks about properties that indicate a distinction of persons. However, when it comes to actually naming the three properties, in the earliest edition of the Institutes (1536), he  Ibid. (OP I, 778).  For a discussion of the origins of this view, see Russell L.  Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 678–683. 55 56

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lists three non-relational properties that distinguish the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: origin or font (principium/fons), wisdom (sapientia), power (virtus), respectively.57 The first, of course, could be understood as a relational term; however, the latter two are clearly not. Further, Calvin does not talk about constitution in the sense that the thirteenth-century theologians would; thus, while the language of properties would be maintained, there is no metaphysical account of precisely how such a property constitutes a divine person, or how it accounts for personal distinction. Melanchthon would also use the language of personal properties, however, as with Calvin, his understanding of this discussion has shifted. He states that the personal property of the Son that distinguishes him from the Father and Spirit is “being begotten” (genitum esse) and “being the image” of the Father (imaginem esse). Here, however, he identifies genitum esse and imaginem esse as a singular property and speaks of it using the singular  (haec est) and not the plural verb form. When speaking of the Holy Spirit, he argues that “proceeding from the Father and Son” (procedere a Patre et a Filio) is the Spirit’s personal property; however, he also notes that the Spirit is this property because He is the person sent into the hearts of the faithful. Here, Melanchthon is using the term personal property in a somewhat distinct way from most of his medieval predecessors.58 Further, Melanchthon never systematically states what the personal property of the Father is in a technical sense. He writes, of course, that the eternal Father is a person and is unbegotten (Pater aeternus est persona non nata), and one can reasonably assume that the personal property of the Father is being “unbegotten”—though Melanchthon never spells that out directly.59 What one finds in the early Reformers, therefore, is a complicated reception of the medieval tradition. For those familiar with how the discussion of attributes, properties, and appropriations developed in the twelfth century and was employed in the thirteenth and fourteenth, the theology of Calvin and Melanchthon can seem metaphysically underdetermined, in a certain sense, or perhaps even metaphysically confused. Calvin, for example, never works out an account of how precisely the properties 57  Calvin, Institutes (1536) (CO 1, 62). See John T.  Slotemaker, “Calvin’s Trinitarian Theology,” 800–808; and Cf. Arie Baars, “The Trinity,” 253–254, and id., Om Gods verhevenheid en Zijn nabijheid. 58  Melanchthon, Loci (1559) I, (CR 21, 615–616). 59  Ibid. (CR 21, 614).

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function to distinguish the persons. Are the properties relations? Are they subsistent relations? Are the properties relational terms that indicate the procession of one person from another? Calvin does not answer such questions, and one is left to interpret what that means.

The Distinction of Persons From a medieval perspective, how to account for personal distinction is one of the great problems of trinitarian theology. In the fourteenth century, Henry Harclay writes that it is the one great difficulty. For Harclay, the problem is something like this: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three things (tres res), such that not one of them is the other (e.g., the Father is Father, the Son is not-Father), yet they all inhere in one thing, the divine essence, which is by implication said to contain contradictories (e.g., Father, and not-Father, Son and not-Son).60 How is one to explain such philosophical puzzles? The first thing to observe is that all medieval theologians understood the Father, Son, and Spirit to be distinct according to the Scriptures. Calvin writes in his commentary on John 1:1—in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God—that the second clause with God (apud Deum) indicates a distinction from the Father (a Patre), such that the Son is understood to be a distinct hypostasis. The third clause, by contrast, indicates that the Word is the Father and is the same essence as the Father.61 This was held, of course, by all trinitarians going back to the earliest centuries. That said, how to define the distinction of persons would become a matter of dispute. Fourteenth-century theologians tended to agree that there were four basic ways of distinguishing the persons. Ockham lays out the state of the question as follows: Concerning this question there are many opinions. [1] One is that the persons are distinguished in and of themselves (se ipsis). [2] A second is that they are distinguished precisely by means of real relations. [3] A third is that they are distinguished first by absolute properties and quasi-secondarily (quasi secondario) by means of relations. [4] A fourth opinion could be that they are distinguished precisely by means of absolute properties.62  Harclay, Ordinary Questions V (I, 206–207).  Calvin, In evangelium Ioannis (CO 47, 3). 62  Ockham, Ordinatio I.26 (OTh IV, 146). 60 61

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This passage by Ockham is not unique to him; Scotus had presented an almost identical breakdown of these options in book I of his Lectura, Ordinatio, and Reportatio I-A, and half a century after Ockham, Pierre d’Ailly would repeat Ockham’s typology.63 Given this, we will spend a bit of time working through these four options as understood in the fourteenth century.64 [1] The first option for personal distinction is traced back to Praepositinus of Cremona, who argued that the persons are distinct as persons, in and of themselves (se ipsis).65 Praepositinus rejected the idea that the persons are constituted of a person and a personal property and argued instead that the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct in and of themselves. But what does this mean? Praepositinus would argue that while it is common to speak of the persons as if they are a constitution of person and personal property—for example, when one says “Paternity is in the Father (Paternitas est in Patre)”—this is just a manner of speaking and does not imply that paternity is somehow distinct from the Father. For Praepositinus paternity is the Father. Further, he argued, no account of personal distinction can be given beyond saying that the persons themselves are distinct. Praepositinus developed what I will refer to here as trinitarian minimalism (borrowing from how the term minimalism is used in analytic philosophy to speak about theories of truth). The minimalist position argues that the theories discussed below (2–4) attempt to explain too much about how the persons are distinct, and do not provide anything that is (1) intelligible or plausible or (2) that is not already stated in the Creed. Further, in Gregory of Rimini and others, minimalism would be defended as the historical position held by early Christian theologians such as Augustine. This position was hotly debated and critiqued by almost all thirteenth-­ century theologians.66 Indeed, the only high-profile defender of trinitarian minimalism, following Praepositinus, would be William of Auxerre67— that is, until the fourteenth century.

 D’Ailly, Sent. I.8.1 (M934, fol. 59vb; M935, fol. 75va).  There were, of course, other theories, particularly in the twelfth century. See, for example, Peter Abelard’s account of personal distinction. 65  Praepositinus, Summa 117 (V, fol. 20vb). 66  For an excellent summary of the critiques of trinitarian minimalism, see Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 679–683. 67  William, Summa Aurea I.7.6 (125–127). 63 64

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As we saw above, William of Ockham explored aspects of trinitarian minimalism in his Summa logicae, and he would be followed by numerous theologians in the fourteenth century, including Walter Chatton, Robert Holcot, William Rubio, and Gregory of Rimini. Those authors have been the focus of various studies, tracing the rise of a renewed interest of trinitarian minimalism in the first half of the century.68 What is interesting is that current research is beginning to point to a larger tradition of trinitarian minimalism that emerged among the Augustinian Order in the fourteenth century. Here we can observe that, prior to Gregory of Rimini, the majority of Augustinians defended a Thomistic view of opposed relations (on this model, see 2 below), including Giles of Rome, Augustinus Triumphus, Dionysius de Borgo, Gerard of Siena, Thomas of Strasbourg, and Alphonsus Vargas Toletanus. That said, both John of Rome and Thomas of Fabriano defend a variant of trinitarian minimalism prior to Gregory, and, post-Gregorian Augustinian theology would embrace trinitarian minimalism in spades. The recent work of Monica Brinzei, Chris Schabel, Jeff Witt, and myself suggests that trinitarian minimalism is common among late medieval Augustinian hermits, including Facino of Asti, Hugolino of Orvieto, John Klenkok, John Hiltalingen of Basel, Angel of Döbeln, Peter Gracilis, and Berthold of Ratisbon.69 The reception of trinitarian minimalism, like so many topics, is not well documented in the fifteenth century. While further research is needed, one can note that at the turn from the late medieval period to the early modern, a form of trinitarian minimalism was still being debated among theologians like John Mair.70 Further, this form of trinitarian theology shared—with theologians like Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin—a hesitation to speculate about the intra-trinitarian life of God. Thus, while it is certainly not yet clear that trinitarian minimalism directly influenced theologians such as Calvin, it is possible. [2] The second theory Ockham examines is the view that the persons are constituted and distinguished by means of real relations. This is the position that was developed at length by theologians like Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus, and, as such, morphed into two distinct  See Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 664–752 and 831–871.  This claim builds on the ongoing work of Monica Brinzei, Chris Schabel, Jeff Witt, and others. I am grateful, particularly to Chris, for sharing some of his yet to be published research. 70  John T. Slotemaker, “John Mair’s Trinitarian Theology.” 68 69

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sub-species of this second view [2a and 2b]. However, before looking at the differences between Thomas [2a] and Scotus [2b], we can briefly note what these two share in common. The relation account [2] maintains that the divine persons cannot be distinguished by absolute entities, because any two things distinct by absolute entities cannot be identical. The divine persons, of course, share a common essence (i.e., they are essentially identical), therefore they cannot be distinct by absolute entities or properties (pace 4 below). As such, the persons are distinct by relations of origin, such that the relational properties (e.g., fatherhood and sonship) of the persons—identifying the origin of one person from the other—indicate the distinction between them. Further, both Thomas and Scotus hold that the persons are a constitution of person and personal property, such that personal distinction is on account of a personal property that each person has that is unique to it as a person. The two respective sub-species, however, disagree about numerous details. For Thomas Aquinas (2a) the divine persons are distinct by opposed relations of origin. This argument goes back to Aristotle’s theory of the individuation of non-material things, and claims that, for the divine persons to be distinct, there must be an opposition between the respective personal properties. Of the four kinds of opposition Aristotle identifies, however, the only one appropriate to the divine nature is relational opposition. Therefore, Thomas argues that the divine persons are subsistent relations, and that what distinguishes one person from another is the opposed relation between them. The opposition of paternity and filiation (in the emanation of the Son) distinguish the Father and Son, and the opposition of active spiration in the Father-Son and passive spiration in the Spirit (in the emanation of the Spirit) distinguish the Father and Son from the Holy Spirit. One implication of this view, of course, is that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son (filioque) necessarily obtains, because if it did not, one could not account for personal individuation at the metaphysical level (i.e., Thomas holds this position for metaphysical reasons, not just because Augustine or the Western version of the Creed maintains the filioque clause).71 Duns Scotus’s theology of personal distinction is complicated, because formally he holds to a version of the relation account [2b] that is referred to as disparate relations, while also elaborating a variety of the absolute  On this, see John T. Slotemaker, “John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay.”

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persons account discussed below [4]. Here we focus on the former. Scotus argues that a divine person is both the divine essence and the individual person’s constitutive personal property. The incommunicable (non-­ repeatable) personal properties of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are paternity, filiation, and passive spiration. The distinction between the persons, however, is not based on an opposition between an active and passive relation (e.g., active spiration and passive spiration)—for Scotus, as for so many Franciscans before and after him, the emphasis was on the emanation of one person from another, not the relation per se. Thus, while the persons are distinct by relations of origin (in that they each have a unique and individuating relational property), in a sense, it is also true to say that, for Scotus, it is the way the divine persons emanate or originate that plays the primary role.72 The two sub-species of the relation account would have a significant history in the development of medieval theology and its reception, to such an extent that the traditional narratives of medieval trinitarian theology— by Théodore de Régnon, Michael Schmaus, and Russell Friedman—have focused almost exclusively on these two variants of the relations view. In short, all of these authors have presented an overview of medieval trinitarian theology by arguing that there are basically two models or traditions. And, when viewed against Ockham’s typology, the two models are really just two variants of the relation account. We will have a chance to return to this historiography in the conclusion to the volume, but for now it is enough to emphasize that as one moves into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is simply taken as a given that these are the normative categories. Gabriel Biel repeats the four theories found in Ockham as do others, and even in authors who do not repeat the typology (e.g., John Mair), one has the sense of what the four options are.73 This would persist throughout the writings of the early Reformers. [3] The third view discussed by Ockham (though not mentioned by Scotus) maintains that the persons are distinguished first by absolute properties and quasi-secondarily by means of relations (for Ockham, [3] and [4] are distinct views, though for Scotus there is just one view about absolutes, and that is Ockham’s [4]). This third view is the most difficult to

 See Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God, 131–144.  Gabriel Biel, Collectorium I.26 (526–529).

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trace historically and, it seems, did not have a substantial following.74 That said, it seems plausible that Ockham has in mind theologians such as William of Auvergne, or possibly James of Viterbo.75 William of Auvergne rejected the idea that the persons are distinct by means of relations [2] on the basis that relations are not the kind of things that can constitute something or be the grounds for distinction. As William sees it, relations are never primary or first, in that they always assume an absolute (i.e., for a relation to obtain, there must be two things that are related). Instead, he maintains that the persons are constituted by means of some absolute thing that is prior to the relations (metaphysically, not temporally). What is interesting about this position is that William does insist that the language of relations should be retained, though they do not constitute or distinguish the persons, they are instead supervenient (istae relationes supervenerint) with respect to the absolute persons. Here one notes that, for William, the claim that the persons are distinct by means of relations is true, in-so-far-as it is held that the relations are supervenient upon something absolute. William claims that the “[Son] necessarily has that being (esse) to which ‘being related to’ (esse ad aliud) is added, when [the Son] is generated and receives from the Father the first [being], and then receives the other… an order of being, not of time (ordine essendi, non temporis).”76 Because of this, I think William of Auvergne is a good candidate for someone who holds, as Ockham notes, that the persons are distinguished by means of absolutes and quasi-secondarily by means of relations. That said, when Ockham breaks from Scotus and interprets [3] as distinct from [4], it is a bit unclear what this is about. Here we can make a couple observations: first, it seems that Scotus thinks that the position about absolutes (Ockham’s [4]) is traceable back to Bonaventure and Richard of St. 74  Scotus seems to discuss a view like this, wanting to trace it back to Bonaventure and Richard of St. Victor. That said, in such passages Scotus is engaged in an attempt to give this view authority by means of referencing the previous tradition. As a result, such attributions by Scotus need to be examined with care. See Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 341–348. 75  Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 348–356, places these thinkers in a trajectory of those who held the absolute persons view, anticipating Scotus. That is certainly correct, from a certain perspective that traces the trajectory of the absolute persons account. That said, it also seems that the theology of William of Auvergne is the closest to what Ockham is positing here as the third opinion. 76  William of Auvergne, De Trinitate 28 (160).

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Victor.77 This, however, seems difficult to maintain given Bonaventure’s critique of the absolute persons view and his argument that the personal properties are relations.78 Scotus, of course, has his own reasons for linking the absolute persons view with Bonaventure—to give the position authority, as Friedman argues—and it seems Ockham is just not comfortable with this. It is possible, therefore, that Ockham divides the absolute persons view one finds in Scotus’s account into two distinct positions to highlight that there were, in fact, two positions that need to be distinguished and that Scotus’s final position in the Ordinatio is distinct from that of his predecessors.79 [4] The fourth view maintains that the divine persons are distinguished [and constituted] by means of absolute properties.80 This view was not well established previous to John Duns Scotus, though the absolute properties view, as noted above, would be explored by theologians such as William of Auvergne, Robert Grosseteste, Peter John Olivi, and James of Viterbo.81 That said, what one finds in William of Auvergne is somewhat distinct from what one finds in Scotus. Scotus’s endorsement of the claim that the persons are distinguished by means of absolute properties is incredibly complex given that he explores the idea throughout various writings, seemingly endorsing it at points (Ordinatio) only to reject it later (Reportatio I-A).82 Further, as Friedman has argued, Scotus’s argument in defense of the absolute persons view is heavily invested in defending the position based on authority. That said, what Scotus holds is that there could be incommunicable (non-­repeatable) absolute properties that are non-relational and individuate the Father, 77  See Scotus, Ordinatio I.26 (VI, 23–24). Gabriel Biel, Collectorium I.26 (528), follows Scotus in linking Bonaventure and Richard with this view. 78  Bonaventure, Sent. I.26.2 (I.455–456). 79  If one rejects this reading of [3] and [4], I think the other option would be to argue that Ockham’s [3] is intended to indicate those views—like Thomas’s and Bonaventure’s—that argue that the divine relations have a twofold nature: when compared to the essence they dissolve into the divine, whereas when compared to each other they indicate distinction. This seems hard to maintain, however, given that Ockham has a separate category for the relation view as put forth by Thomas [2], and if Thomas and Bonaventure do not hold [2], it is hard to see who does. 80  One could, I think, make the case that Ockham’s [3] is Scotus’s [3], though that seems less plausible (that said, I do not have space to make those arguments here). Here I follow the editors of the OT IV, 143–44, fn. 2. 81  Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 348–356. 82  Scotus, Reportatio I-A.26.5 (II, 124–129).

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Son, and Holy Spirit.83 Richard Cross is correct, I think, to highlight that what makes this a compelling option for Scotus is that he has in his metaphysical toolbox “entities that are neither essential (in the sense of being both necessary and quidditative), accidental, nor relational.”84 Here Cross has in mind Scotus’s account of individuating entities called hacceities (haecceitas). Scotus also claimed that if the divine persons are distinct by means of absolute properties, the relational properties discussed above (e.g., paternity, filiation, passive spiration) could still obtain, though they would not be the properties that are constitutive of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Scotus’s discussion of the absolute properties model is fascinating because it highlights just how normative the relations account [2] had become by the early fourteenth century. The Liber propugnatorius, for example, states that Scotus’s account of absolute properties was condemned when he taught at Oxford, which could be the reason he moves away from this view.85 Regardless, what is clear is that Scotus expends a tremendous amount of energy arguing that the absolute properties view is indeed a non-heretical option, and that it has deep roots in an earlier tradition. For his part Scotus is convinced that it has some basis in Bonaventure, who he reads as claiming that persons are primary substances “prior”—in a metaphysical sense, not temporal—to being related.86 And whether or not one is convinced by Scotus’s reading of Bonaventure is, in some sense, besides the point; the take away, at least here, is that Scotus clearly wanted to argue that some non-relational account, that retained the notion of constitution, was a viable option within trinitarian theology. In the subsequent history of medieval and early modern theology, there are few defenders of the absolute persons view, though to trace this history one would want to consider Michael of Massa and John of Ripa, who explicitly defended it, as well as William Vorilong.87 These theologians, it seems, took the absolute persons view as a serious option, even if they offered criticism.

 Scotus, Ordinatio I.26 (VI, 22–29).  Richard Cross, Duns Scotus, 65. 85  See the Vatican edition of Scotus, VI, 22*–24*. 86  Bonaventure, Sent. I.26.1.1 (I, 436–37). Cf. Scotus, Ordinatio I.26 (VI, 23). 87  See Vorilong, Sent. I.26 (fols. 43r–44v). On Ripa, see Ernst Borchert, Die Trinitätslehre des Johannes de Ripa, 475–494. On Massa, see Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 822–831. 83 84

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Conclusion This chapter considered how medieval theologians understood (1) divine persons, (2) the distinctions between attributes, properties, and appropriations, (3) personal constitution, and (4) personal distinction. These themes are all interrelated, of course, as the question of how to account for personal distinction builds upon what a person is and how a person is or is not constituted by personal properties. That said, it is useful to divide up the topics to gain some clarity. The question here is, what does one learn about medieval accounts of persons and personal distinction by taking the long view? The definition of trinitarian persons was a hotly debated topic in the twelfth century, though as one moves into the thirteenth and fourteenth there is a sense that the debate subsided. In many ways the medieval definition of a divine person was always connected to an Augustinian and Boethian heritage, even if thinkers such as Anselm, Richard of St. Victor, or Duns Scotus would reject the Boethian definition. The commonality across definitions is the claim that the persons are distinct and subsist as individual “substances” or incommunicably existing things. There is, to use the language of Scotus, something unique or incommunicable about a divine person such that it subsists as a person. That much, it seems, all of the medieval theologians agreed about. This chapter concluded with a discussion about personal distinction. Here it was argued that there were four basic models used to account for personal distinction in the fourteenth century—this, however, is not what one finds in the secondary literature, so here I want to briefly address a question of historiography. The great narratives of medieval trinitarian theology developed by Théodore de Régnon, Michael Schmaus, and, to a lesser extant, Russell Friedman, all support a two-model approach.88 This narrative has venerable roots in the early modern period (Dionysius Petavius) and was worked out with some detail in de Régnon, who argued that there are two traditions: a Dominican tradition (i.e., Thomas) that grounded personal distinction in opposed relations of origin, and a Franciscan tradition (i.e., Scotus) that grounded personal distinction in disparate relations. The former, according to Régnon, was supported by a 88  Cf. Théodore de Régnon, Études, vol. II, and Michael Schmaus, Der “Liber propugnatorius.” Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, begins the important work of challenging these narratives, though his earliest work remains grounded in a two-model approach.

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“static” (statique) Aristotelian philosophy of relations (de la métaphysique péripatéticienne), the latter by a “dynamic” (dynamique) Dionysian philosophy of emanation (métaphysique Dionisienne).89 The fact that medieval theologians classified the emanation account and the relation account as intimately related provides evidence that the two-­ model approach is in need of revision. I would argue, as above, that from a medieval perspective there are four basic models that are operative between 1250 and 1550. But, that is a story best told elsewhere.90 Here I want to simply observe that whether one maintains that there are two models, or four models, these are models that share quite a bit in common. In fact, the more one focuses on this taxonomy and how much these individual models have in common, it is striking just how distinct medieval trinitarian theology was prior to the Lombard and Lateran IV. Augustine, Anselm, Peter Abelard, and Joachim of Fiore were doing something radically different from what one finds in the Sentences commentaries of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Thus, while there is a diversity of views regarding personal distinction in the material covered in this chapter, the real diversity of medieval trinitarian theology can be found in those who predate these developments.

Bibliography (CCSL = Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina; CCCM = Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis; CO = Calvini Opera; CR = Corpus Reformatorum; OP = Opera Philosophica; OT = Opera Theologica; PL = Patrologia Latina; WA = D. Martin Luthers Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe)

Manuscript Sources Peter Gracilis. Lectura super quattuor libros Sententiarum.   London, Royal 10 A 1, fols. 1–236 [sigla R] Peter d’Ailly. Quaestiones super primum, tertium et quartum librum Sententiarum.   Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 934, fols. 1–152 [sigla M934]   Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 935, fols. 1–196 [sigla M935] Praepositinus of Cremona.   Vatican, Codex Vaticanus Latinus 1174 [sigla V]  Théodore de Régnon, Études II, 447–458.  I am currently working on a monograph that elaborates on the four models of trinitarian theology explored in the previous section. 89 90

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Pre-Modern Sources Anon. Summa Sententiarum, in PL 176. Albert the Great, Primum librum Sententiarum, in Opera Omnia, ed. E. Borgnet, 38 volumes. Paris 1890–1899. Anselm. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, Opera Omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt. Edinburgh 1946–1961. Augustine. De Trinitate, in CCSL 50 and 50A. Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium and De Trinitate, ed. Claudio Moreschini, in Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae, opuscula theological. Munich 2005. Bonaventure. Opera Omnia. Quaracchi 1882–1902. Calvin, John. Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, 59 vols., ed. Guilielmus Baum, et al. (Brunswick 1863–1900). Clarembald of Arras. Tractatus super librum Boetii “De Trinitate,” in Life and Works of Clarembald of Arras: A Twelfth-Century Master of the School of Chartres, ed. Nikolaus M. Häring. Toronto 1965. Gabriel Biel. Collectorium circa quattuor libros Sententiarum, ed. W.  Werbeck, et al., 5 vols. Tübingen 1973–1977. Henry of Ghent. Summa quaestionum ordinariarum. Paris 1520. Henry Harclay. Ordinary Questions, 2 vols, ed. Mark G. Henninger. Oxford 2008. John Duns Scotus. Opera Omnia, ed. Luke Wadding. Lyons 1639. ———. Opera Omnia. Civitas Vaticana 1950–. ———. Reportatio I-A, ed. and trans. Alan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2 vols. St. Bonaventure, NY, 2004 and 2008. Melanchthon, Philipp. Loci Praecipui Theologici, in CR 21. Peter Abelard. Theologia Christiana, in CCCM 12. ———. Theologia “Summi boni,” in CCCM 13. ———. Theologia “Scholarium,” in CCCM 13. Peter Lombard. Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, 2 vols. Grottaferrata 1971 and 1981. ———. Peter Lombard, The Sentences, book I, trans. Giulio Silano. Toronto 2007. Richard of St. Victor. De tribus appropriatis personis in deitate, in PL 196, 991–994. ———. De Trinitate, ed. J. Ribaillier. Paris 1958. Rusticus the Deacon. Contra Acephalos, in CCSL 100. Simon of Tournai. Disputationes, in Les “Disputationes” de Simon de Tournai, ed. Joseph Warichez. Louvain 1932. Thomas Aquinas. Scriptum super librum Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi, ed. P Mandonnet. Paris 1929. ———. Summa Theologiae, in Opera Omnia (Leonine Edition), vols. 4–12. Rome 1888–1906. Vorilong, William. Super quattuor libris Sententiarum. Lyon 1502. Walter of Mortagne. De Trinitate, in PL 209, 575–590.

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William of Auvergne. De Trinitate, ed. Bruno Switalski. Toronto 1976. William of Auxerre. Summa Aurea, ed. Jean Ribaillier, 6 vols. Paris 1980–1986. William of Ockham. Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum/Ordinatio, ed. Gedeon Gál and Stephen F.  Brown, et  al., OT I–IV.  St. Bonaventure, NY 1967–2000. ———. Summa Logicae, ed. Gedeon Gál and Stephen Brown, OP I.  St. Bonaventure, NY 1974.

Modern Sources Baars, Arie. Om Gods verhevenheid en Zijn nabijheid. De Drie-eenheid bij Calvijn. Kampen 2005. ———. “The Trinity,” in The Calvin Handbook, ed. Herman J. Selderhuis. Grand Rapids 2008, 245–257. Borchert, Ernst. Die Trinitätslehre des Johannes de Ripa. Munich 1974. Châtillon, Jean. “Unitas, Aequalitas, Concordia vel Connexio: Recherches sur les origins de la théorie thomiste des appropriations (Sum. Theol., I, q. 39, art. 7–8),” in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, vol. I. Toronto 1974, 337–379. Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus. Oxford 1999. ———. Duns Scotus on God. New York 2005. de Régnon, Théodore. Études de théologie positive sur la sainté Trinité, 4 vols. Paris 1892–1898. Friedman, Russell L. Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University: The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250–1350. Leiden 2013. Mews, Constant J. Abelard and Heloise. Oxford 2005. Mews, Constant J. “St. Anselm and Roscelin: Some New Texts and Their Implications, I: The De incarnatione verbi and the Disputatio inter Christianum et Gentilem,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 58 (1991), 55–98. Pelikan, Jaroslav and Valerie R. Hotchkiss, eds. Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vols. New Haven 2003. Poirel, Dominique. Livre de la nature et débat trinitaire au xiie siècle: Le De tribus diebus de Hughes de Saint-Victor. Turnhout 2002. Schmaus, Michael. Der “Liber propugnatorius” des Thomas Anglicus und die Lehrunterschiede zwischen Thomas von Aquin und Duns Scotus, II Teil: Die trinitarischen Lehrdifferenzen. Münster 1930. Slotemaker, John T. “John Calvin’s Trinitarian Theology in the 1536 Institutes: The Individuation of Persons as a Key to Calvin’s Sources,” in Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F.  Brown, ed., Kent Emery Jr., Russell L. Friedman and Andreas Speer. Leiden 2011, 781–810.

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———. “John Duns Scotus and Henry Harclay on the Non-necessity of Opposed Relations,” The Thomist 77 (2013), 419–451. ———. “John Mair’s Trinitarian Theology: The Inheritance of the Scholastic Tradition,” in A Companion to the Theology of John Mair, eds., John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt. Leiden 2015, 77–114. ———. “William of Ockham and Theological Method,” in Language and Method: Historical and Historiographical Reflections on Medieval Thought, ed. Ueli Zahnd. Freiburg 2017, 121–142. Williams, Scott. “Persons in Patristic and Medieval Christian Theology,” in Persons: A History, ed. Antonia Lolordo. Oxford 2019, 52–84.

CHAPTER 5

Conclusion

Abstract  This chapter concludes the volume with a brief discussion of two interrelated topics. First, it was argued in the second chapter that medieval theologians shared a common understanding of the divine relations. Here that common theology is placed into contrast with Wolfhart Pannenberg’s theology of the divine relations to highlight an alternative account that was not supported by any medieval theologians. Second, the chapter examines the ways in which post-Lombardian medieval trinitarian theology was circumscribed by certain theological, philosophical, and educational developments that occurred in the early thirteenth century. Keywords  Divine relations • Historical theology • Historiography • Pannenberg • Peter Lombard This book has presented an overview of trinitarian theology in the long Middle Ages by looking at the central themes that occupied medieval theologians. The argument throughout has been that among the diversity of theological opinion, there was a center to medieval trinitarian theology that was the product of various historical accidents, including conciliar statements (e.g., Lateran IV) and the adoption of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as the textbook for teaching theology. Here we will conclude this volume by exploring this argument about unity and diversity. First, we will return to the topic of the divine relations to consider in more detail the © The Author(s) 2020 J. T. Slotemaker, Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47790-5_5

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claim that medieval trinitarian theology was focused on one particular way of understanding the divine relations (in exclusion of others). Second, we will briefly summarize the various philosophical and theological parameters that circumscribed, or came to define, medieval trinitarian theology.

Patient Learning In an essay on Trinity and revelation, Rowan Williams writes that “theology… is perennially liable to be seduced by the prospect of bypassing the question of how it learns its own language.”1 And so it is; theologians speak about God and creation using a common language and grammar that has been passed down over two millennia. Every Catholic seminarian 50 years ago knew that in God there are five notions, four relations, three persons, two emanations, and one essence/substance—and, when the great Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan lectured on the topic at the Gregoriana, he added zero comprehension.2 These theological statements are governed by a particular grammar that dictates precisely how the terms are used in a given sentence or proposition about God. Thus, one can be taught rather quickly how the Church speaks about God by understanding both the language and grammar of trinitarian discourse. Within this framework, however, one hardly needs to know what a notion, relation, person, emanation, or essence actually is—in a deep sense—to be able to answer certain questions about the nature of God; one can simply repeat various formulae and presumably be speaking some sense. In short, it is easy to learn the sentence “the persons are distinct by opposed relations of origin”—it is harder, of course, to understand what that sentence means, and its history. Here, I think, is where Williams’s observation is instructive. What does Williams mean by stating that theology is often seduced into not exploring how it learns its own language? It seems to me that what he is pointing out is that theologians often make assumptions based on how things have been without exploring in detail precisely how it is that a certain way of speaking emerged in the first place. Williams, for his part, argues that this way of proceeding once dominated early modern and modern theology, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as large swaths of what he refers to as “liberal theology.” At the heart of this practice, he notes, is a basic “impatience with learning, and with learning about our 1 2

 Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology, 131, emphasis his.  Fred Lawrence related this account of Lonergan’s lectures in private correspondence.

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learning.”3 As Williams understands it, theologians should slow down and develop a different approach to the material; they should cultivate the virtue of patience with respect to the language and grammar of theology and come to a deeper understanding of how this way of speaking emerged in the first place. In short, one should learn to read the tradition with patience and depth. I introduce Williams’s remark here because it highlights certain aspects of the theological enterprise that are relevant to the present work. This book is an attempt to look at a certain tradition of trinitarian theology that emerged in the Latin West and became normative, and it argued that within this one tradition there is both a remarkable diversity of opinions regarding certain theological claims, as well as a center or core set of assumptions that guided the enterprise throughout. That is, while there is a dizzying diversity of trinitarian theologies among the scholastics working between about 1225 and 1550, what held that diversity together—and actually grounded the disputes about emanations, relations, and persons— is a common language or grammar. The common assumptions were both philosophical (i.e., predominately Aristotelian) and theological, and provided a context for the intense debates and gave them meaning. In what follows I will attempt to say a bit more about this unity and diversity, but here I will focus on the fact that, as a result of certain common assumptions, there was a calcification of opinion that is, at least potentially, a threat to the theological enterprise. In the words of Williams, there is a forgetting about why this language was adopted in the first place and an impatience that normalizes certain assumptions without dissecting the implications of those assumptions. What does this calcification look like? What kind of forgetting or impatience are we implying? A study of the forms of medieval trinitarian theology that emerged in the commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard between 1225 and 1550 reveals certain common assumptions. There is a proper order to things that goes unchallenged, for the most part—an order that originated with the Lombard and had implications for the subsequent tradition.4 Further, there is a common way of understanding the emanations, ­persons,  Ibid. 132.  Here, for example, one can think about the way in which the Lombard placed his discussion of the imago Dei (I.3) immediately before his discussion of the emanation of the Son (I.4–7), and the way in which this location of the two topics influenced how subsequent thinkers employed the imago in discussions of the divine emanations via the noetic analogies of Augustine. 3 4

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and relations that becomes normative and, for the most part, unchallenged. Here we can take one example as a point of reference: the divine relations. What are the divine relations? The high and late scholastic theologians all tended to agree that the divine relations were fourfold: active generation, passive generation, active spiration, and passive spiration. As discussed in Chap. 3, these relations describe the active relations of origin as the Father actively sends forth the Son, and the Father and Son send forth the Holy Spirit, and, mutatis mutandis, the passive relations. These internal relations within God were understood in a particular way, and, while they could be disparate or opposed, no medieval theologian disputed the number of them. But is the biblical witness so clear? Are there four, and four only? Must there be two passive and two active? Here we can turn to the Lutheran German theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg, as an interesting point of contrast. Pannenberg maintains in Grundzuge der Christologie that Christology must begin with the historical person Jesus Christ (from below) and cannot, as classical Christology had, begin with the divinity of Christ (from above). This basic methodology is worked out in his Christological work as well as in his Systematic Theology, and in the latter it is put to the task of analyzing the divine Trinity and the nature of the intra-trinitarian relations. In his systematics Pannenberg begins his analysis of the traditional doctrine of the divine relations with the historical person Jesus Christ. The point of departure, therefore, is the biblical account of the relations between God and Jesus, and Pannenberg argues that “one can know the inter-trinitarian distinctions and relations, the inner life of God, only through the revelation of the Son.”5 Throughout Pannenberg is extremely critical of the traditional account of the divine relations, in at least two ways: (1) the divine relations did too much work in articulating the distinction of persons, and (2) the divine relations were understood as grounded in the language of emanation (relations of origin), such that there is an active and passive relation corresponding to the two emanations. Regarding the latter, it seems that Pannenberg’s concern is with respect to the uni-directional account of the divine relations, such that on a traditional view of generation the Father is only active and the Son is only passive. On Pannenberg’s account, there is a reciprocity of relations, such that the language of active and passive is stripped away. Further, Pannenberg is critical of the tradition, on biblical grounds, for limiting the 5

 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology I, 273.

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understanding of the divine relations based on a metaphysics of what two emanations would entail; instead, Pannenberg uses Scripture as a source of information for articulating how many relations there are in God, and how to articulate them. To give but one example of this, he is insistent that the biblical text claims that Jesus actively distinguishes himself from the Father, which constitutes an active relation to the Father (i.e., one that is not simply passive).6 For example, in John 20:17 the resurrected Christ tells Mary that he is ascending to his Father; here the trinitarian relation between Son and Father is such that the Son is actively going to the Father, and not passively being generated. To return to the former, Pannenberg argues that the relations do too much work in articulating the distinction of persons. Here his insight is simply that when one looks at the long medieval tradition stretching from Augustine up through John Calvin it is the relations of origin that are understood to be doing the work in terms of grounding the distinction of persons. Pannenberg, following the line of reasoning above, argues instead that the biblical relations articulated through the history and life of Jesus Christ should be the foundation for articulating the distinction of persons. His concern throughout is that the classical way of understanding the divine relations problematically derives the threeness of God from the oneness of God and subordinates the Son and Spirit to the Father. And, to that end, Pannenberg’s account of the divine relations is grounded in the individual person’s mutual self-distinction that entails reciprocal mutuality and dependence.7 There is much one could say in response to Pannenberg from a medieval theological perspective, not least being that the theology presented in Pannenberg is incoherent classically as it relies on a Hegelian philosophical framework. I will leave such concerns aside here, and focus on the historical context Pannenberg attempts to reconstruct. For, as Lewis Ayres observed in a passing footnote, Pannenberg has a problematic way of “building arguments around brief but large-scale historical surveys” that often are unexamined by Pannenberg and simply unsustainable given current research.8 Pannenberg’s account of what is normative in medieval theology is very narrowly circumscribed by the corpus of Thomas Aquinas. This is true not just in his account of trinitarian relations, but extends to  Ibid. 309–311.  Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology I, 294–312. 8  Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 385n4. 6 7

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other areas as well. For example, in his discussion of the order of doctrine he maintains that, following Thomas, there has been a problematic acceptance of a de Deo uno—De Deo trino model, such that the one God is discussed before the Trinity of persons.9 Here Pannenberg seems to congratulate himself for thinking his way out of this dogmatic structure— which, of course, is somewhat ironic given that between the composition of the Summa theologiae and the sixteenth century there are precious few examples of theologians adopting Thomas’s ordering of doctrine. The majority followed the Lombard and did not divide their theology into a de Deo uno—De Deo trino model. Here, one realizes, Pannenberg’s knowledge of medieval trinitarian theology is relatively thin. To return to the relations, however, one notes a similar priority given to Thomas. In fact, both of Pannenberg’s reservations about relations of origin discussed above make more sense when aimed at Thomas than other theologians, such as Bonaventure, Scotus, Ockham, Holcot, or Rimini. Thomas’s account of opposed relations of origin is susceptible to Pannenberg’s claim that the relations of origin do too much work in distinguishing the persons, however, when one considers some of the great Franciscan theologians (e.g., Bonaventure or Scotus) who rejected this position, and supported disparate relations and a focus on the emanations, the argument has less traction. And, well, Pannenberg’s argument has almost no force when considered in light of the trinitarian minimalism that one finds in Praepositinus, William of Auxerre, Chatton, Holcot, Rimini, and many others. This is not to say that Pannenberg’s point is entirely negated, but it is to say that it makes more sense as a critique of Thomas. Further, regarding Pannenberg’s second point (i.e., that the relations are narrowly linked to the emanations), the same argument holds: for Thomas the active and passive nature of the opposed relations is built into the metaphysical structure, in a sense. There has to be an opposition, for Thomas, and that requires an active and passive relation, given generation and spiration. This, however, is simply not a profound critique of Scotus, for example, who holds an account of disparate relations and is more interested in providing a robust understanding of the divine emanations within God. One could perhaps extend this critique historically to argue that Pannenberg’s overview of medieval thought is limited in that his criticism breaks down in the theologians working both prior to the early thirteenth century and after it. 9

 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology I, 280–299.

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The point here is that while I do not find Pannenberg’s theology accurate as a critique of the medieval tradition, it is nevertheless true that within the medieval period there was a very particular way of thinking about relations that, while not completely normative, does operate within certain assumptions. Pannenberg is right, therefore, that the account of the divine relations, at least in the scholastics, is not primarily grounded in a discussion of Scripture. Anselm, Scotus, and Thomas did not begin their account of the relations with a scriptural discussion of Jesus’s relation to the Father as worked out in numerous biblical passages; they tended to begin with the theoretical concept of an emanation and reasoned their way toward an account of relations based on that theological claim. Further, I think Pannenberg is right that if one is methodologically doing a different type of theology—for example, developing a low Christology versus a high Christology—the scholastic assumptions about the number and nature of the divine relations would need to be rethought. What Pannenberg helps us see, I think, is that certain terms and theological categories in the medieval period were philosophically and theologically fixed. And, while one has to be broader than just looking at Thomas, it is accurate to note that there are viable ways of thinking about generations, persons, and relations that fall outside of the somewhat narrowly circumscribed register of the medieval theologians considered in the previous three chapters. Thus, if we return to the observation of Rowan Williams, there is an important lesson to be learned, in that one has to continually return to the normative ways of speaking and thinking within theology and ask where they came from in the first place. To not investigate this question is problematic in at least two ways. First, if one never looks at the origins of the debates that set in motion a certain way of speaking about God, it is unclear that one ever really learns what one is talking about. A theologian can easily learn to speak in a certain way about emanations, relations, and persons that is orthodox and sound (e.g., see Abelard’s statement that at Soisson he had to recite the Athanasian symbol, which any school boy could recite as well as he)10—though understanding the origins of that language, and what it intends to convey, is a rather different matter. And, second, I think that if one does not reflect on the origins of what has become normative in theological discourse, one never really steps into a position to challenge those assumptions. Stated somewhat differently, to begin rethinking the terms of trinitarian discourse requires a profound  Abelard, Historia Calamitatum 10.

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familiarity with the tradition—a patience to learn about Christian learning, as the former Archbishop Williams would say.

Exhausting the Dialectical Possibilities In the previous section I suggested that scholastic trinitarian theology in the late medieval period was limited by certain presuppositions and that the practice of doing theology, according to Williams, is to learn about this history and how it has shaped both past and present theological discourse. Here I want to say a bit more about this. At a conference on late medieval philosophical psychology about a decade ago, Kent Emery Jr. suggested that by the end of the fourteenth century medieval theologians working on trinitarian theology had exhausted the dialectical possibilities open to them given the constraints within which they were operating. Professor Emery never explained precisely what he meant by the constraints, and here I want to explore this idea and say a bit about what I think he meant, or at least how I understood him. Trinitarian theology is limned by certain scriptural, creedal, and doctrinal positions; that is, a theologian must work within the constraints of the Scriptures, the ancient creeds of the Church, and the particular theological commitments of a given Church (e.g., concerning the filioque). This is true of all theologians, east and west, ancient and modern. However, in the medieval west there emerged further constraints that defined the material much more dramatically. What are the constraints that limn the dialectical possibilities of late medieval trinitarian theology? (1) Scholastic trinitarian theology between the time of Peter Lombard and the early sixteenth century was, for the most part, developed within a singular genre, the commentary on the Sentences. This had a significant impact on subsequent trinitarian theology in several ways. First, it provided a traditional ordering of the material that would not be significantly challenged for hundreds of years. It was taken for granted, for example, that the discussion of the imago Trinitatis (Sent. I, d.3) nestled up against a discussion of the generation of the Son (Sent. I, d.4–7), such that it became normative to talk about Augustine’s noetic analogies alongside issues of divine generation. This structural decision also had the effect of ensconcing Augustine’s noetic analogies squarely within the Latin

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t­radition—something one does not see, as broadly, in the preLombardian Latin tradition.11 The implications of Peter Lombard’s Sentences and the structure it imposed on subsequent theological thinking are profound, and has not been studied by historians of theology to the extent that it deserves. Here it is important to observe that even in the sixteenth century, when thinkers such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin were rethinking the genre, form, and structure of theology, they initially proposed alternative organizing principles—Calvin’s 1536 Institutes follows the Apostle’s Creed, Melanchthon’s 1521 Loci followed the book of Romans—only to return, eventually, to certain aspects of the Lombard’s organization. This happened as early as Calvin’s later editions of the Institutes and would become normative in later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism. (2) As pointed out by Gemeinhardt and others, the Lombard’s theological commitments, as supported by Lateran IV, would become normative. This had the effect of excluding certain theological options that were hotly debated in the twelfth century. For example, the question of whether or not one can say “the essence generates” became settled in a way that it was not prior to the Lombard and Lateran IV.  A thorough study of both Peter Lombard and Joachim of Fiore is enough (we could add Peter Abelard), I think, to convince one that certain strains of thought, or trinitarian theologies, were put to rest with the adoption of the Lombard at Lateran IV in the teaching of the Universities and other educational systems. And, while we have limited our discussion to Lateran IV’s rejection of the essence generating, the council Fathers also condemned the followers of Amalric of Bena—the Amalricians—who worked out a theology by which God is understood to be all things (omnia sunt Deus), such that the three “persons” are just three distinct historical representations, or incarnations, in history. Amalric’s historical narrative of trinitarian theology reminds one of Joachim, and both theologians and their theologies shared a similar fate with respect to the council. (3) Along with the adoption of the Lombard’s Sentences as the textbook, one was not just ensconcing the Lombard’s order of doctrine and theological content, but his authorities as well. The  See John T. Slotemaker, “Peter Lombard and the Imago Trinitatis,” 175–180.

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Lombard’s text is a masterful ordering of patristic authorities and “sentences” taken from their work; as such, the work relies extensively on others, in particular Augustine, who accounts for a significant percentage of his quotations (i.e., Augustine is quoted 680 times in the Sentences, the second-most frequently cited author is Ambrose at 66).12 This means, practically, that to adopt this text was not just to adopt the Lombard, but also his use of sources and his profound debt to Augustine (and the Lombard’s reading of him). The Lombard’s sources and references would remain the sources quoted and cited in trinitarian theology up through the early sixteenth century. Here we can give two concrete examples of this at work. In Scotus’s attempt to defend his account of absolute properties he thought it necessary to redefine what it meant for something to be supported by authorities (auctoritates). As Friedman has demonstrated, Scotus would argue that, unless a given theological position was ruled out by Scripture, the creeds, and the Fathers, it could be maintained.13 This was necessary because Scotus could not find authoritative passages in Augustine (or the Lombard’s collection of Augustine quotations) to support his account of absolute persons; as Friedman states, Scotus was “creating space for what he himself recognize[d] to be a highly unusual trinitarian theology.”14 A similar need arose with the trinitarian minimalists, such as Gregory of Rimini, who went back and re-read Augustine for himself, or re-­ interpreted passages found in the Lombard, to support trinitarian minimalism. In this case there were previous authorities, such as William of Auxerre, who Gregory could rely upon. That said, what Gregory realized he needed, of course, was the support of Augustine. Thus, he read through the Lombard carefully and returned to the texts of Augustine to defend a particular trinitarian epistemology, and so forth. The broader point, however, is that with the Lombard came a specific historiography, if you will, or narrative, of Western theology up through the twelfth century. To adopt the Lombard was to adopt his sources and his reading of those sources.  Jacques-Guy Bougerol, “The Church Fathers,” 115.  Russell L. Friedman, Intellectual Traditions, 345. 14  Ibid. 346. 12 13

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(4) A second set of limning factors one can trace is the influence of Aristotle upon Western trinitarian theology. This would begin, in modest ways, in Augustine’s and Boethius’s discussion of the divine relations, but would blossom at the schools and Universities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Marilyn McCord Adams referred to the basic Aristotelian framework for medieval trinitarian theology as “Categories-metaphysics” and defined it as the idea that “substance is the first category on which all the items in the other categories depend.”15 As a result of this Categories-metaphysics, the Augustinian and later medieval theologians developed the distinction between terms predicated according to substance and those predicated according to relation. In short, the trinitarian nature of God as three persons was analyzed according to a substance-­accidents framework that we can refer to as Categories-­ metaphysics, and this basic intellectual model was adopted by almost every medieval theologian. This meant, as Pannenberg suggests, that the divine relations had to be understood in a particular way in accordance with a broadly Aristotelian framework. However, it also meant that the relational terms themselves—not just Father and Son, but the understanding of the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of…”—were emphasized within trinitarian discourse. In a nonAristotelian philosophical framework (e.g., Giles of Viterbo’s commentary on the Sentences ad mentem Platonis), the scriptural language of Father and Son could perhaps have a rather different meaning, and the discussion of the “divine relations” could have an entirely different function. (5) Medieval logic also played an important role in trinitarian theology with respect to theories of the syllogism and supposition. This relationship between medieval logic and trinitarian theology has not been central to the present chapter, but allow one brief example. Consider the following question: is it true to say Deus genuit Deum (God generated God)? This was the Lombard’s question in distinction 4 of book I of the Sentences and would be treated by almost all subsequent medieval theologians, who would employ supposition theory to argue that—allowing for the proper supposition of terms—the proposition Deus generat Deum can be read as Pater genuit Filium (the Father generated the Son). Thus, the proper  Marilyn McCord Adams, “The Metaphysics of the Trinity,” 101.

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supposition of terms would allow for certain propositions to be maintained and understood correctly. In this instance, therefore, the proper supposition of terms would allow for one to hold certain premises that could otherwise be argued to be problematic, or simply rejected as false. It is, however, not just supposition theory that would be important for late medieval theologians; as William of Ockham wrote at the beginning of the Summa logicae, students of theology often struggle because they are not properly trained in logic, and by the fourteenth century it was held that the entire study of logic was essential to the theological enterprise.16 I am not, of course, implying that the study of formal logic is not beneficial to the theological enterprise (quite the contrary). It is, however, true that the intense scrutiny of trinitarian propositions in relation to Aristotelian logic would have an impact on how the doctrine was formulated in the fourteenth century. Not only that, but how trinitarian theology was viewed in terms of rationality—that is, whether or not Aristotelian logic was understood to be universal and apply to all sciences—was increasingly an issue for debate and concern. Here we can think of a few examples: Holcot’s infamous 16 arguments against the Trinity;17 Henry Langenstein’s presentation of trinitarian theology within a Jewish context;18 or Michael Servetus’ arguments against the doctrine “of which Paul [the Apostle] knew nothing” (de quibus Paulus nunquam cogitavit).19 All of this is to say that the form of Western theology that developed in the high and late scholastic period was certainly defined by a particular commitment to Aristotelian logic. The point here (in 4 and 5) is that Aristotelian philosophy (as mediated by Boethius, Porphyry, the great Arabic philosophers, and others) would circumscribe the discussion of trinitarian theology in a particular way. Of course, one could object that there is an alternative philosophical tradition; some have, in older narratives, attempted to defend the claim that there is a distinct theological tradition that one finds in Richard of St. Victor and Bonaventure that reaches back to an alternative philosophical framework. This account of  See John T. Slotemaker, “William of Ockham,” 121–142.  John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt, Robert Holcot, 76–81. 18  Michael H. Shank, Unless you Believe. 19  Servetus, De Trinitatis erroribus I (II-2, 679). 16 17

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medieval trinitarian theology argues that there is an independent Pseudo-Dionysian tradition that is grounded in an alternative NeoPlatonic philosophy and influences some thinkers such as Richard and Bonaventure. This is perhaps true at some level, although simple narratives that want to drive a wedge between the dominant Aristotelian approach and this Pseudo-Dionysian tradition are hard to maintain in the light of recent scholarship that has attended closely to two complicating factors: (1) the fact that this NeoPlatonic tradition is also influenced by Aristotle in profound ways; and (2) the ubiquitous presence of Augustine on all medieval theologians. Thus, while there is more to say about this topic, the point I want to make here is simply that Aristotelian philosophy would come to circumscribe medieval trinitarian theology in important ways. * * * The goal of this book has been to introduce as briefly as possible some of the dominant themes of trinitarian theology in the long Middle Ages. What I have attempted to demonstrate is that despite the breadth of opinions held by scholastic theologians, there was an undeniable center that grounded the late medieval debates. This center was defined by sources, traditions, creeds, and an Aristotelian philosophy that almost all medieval Christians shared. And while they would dispute those sources and traditions—that is, not everyone agreed about how to read Augustine’s De Trinitate or Aristotle’s Categories—the center still held. Further, as I suggested above, this is what generated the disagreements, as well as grounded them and gave them meaning. It is also, in the end, what makes the study of this material so rewarding. But where is the field at, and what remains to be done? Richard Cross, Gilles Emery, Russell Friedman, JT Paasch, and others have produced some outstanding literature on trinitarian theology from the time of Thomas Aquinas up through William of Ockham (c.1250–1325). The period immediately following Ockham, both at Oxford and Paris, is less well known, though up through at least 1400 there are some valuable resources in the works of Russell Friedman, Zénon Kaluza, Alfonso Maierù, Chris Schabel, Michael Schank, and others. Thus, a general picture of the development of trinitarian theology for much of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is emerging with some clarity. That said, there are several areas of study that would benefit from further research.

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First, the century or two before the publication of Peter Lombard’s Sentences remains problematically understudied and would benefit from sustained research. There is still no clear narrative of the development of trinitarian theology between about 1000 and 1200, and, yet, this is perhaps one of the most exciting and fruitful periods of theological exploration. Second, while the study of fourteenth-century trinitarian theology is making headway, there is quite a bit of work that remains to be done on questions of trinitarian theology and Aristotelian logic (a field of study that has not received as much attention as it deserves following the important work of Hester Gelber). Third, the development of trinitarian theology during the long fifteenth century remains obscure, including, of course, the changes in theology during the first half of the sixteenth century. Finally, trinitarian theology that was not part of the Sentences commentary tradition—for example, as found in biblical commentaries, sermons, the liturgy, iconography—remains understudied. I hope that, in a modest way, the present volume will encourage such studies.

Bibliography Pre-Modern Sources Peter Abelard. Historia calamitatum, ed. J. Monfrin. Paris 1979. Servetus, Michael. De trinitatis erroribus libri septem, in Obras Completas II-2, ed. Ángel Alcalá. Zaragoza 2004.

Modern Sources Adams, Marilyn McCord. “The Metaphysics of the Trinity in Some Fourteenth Century Franciscans,” Franciscan Studies 66 (2008), 101–168. Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and its Legacy: An approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford 2006. Bougerol, Jacques-Guy. “The Church Fathers and the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, ed. Irena Backus. Leiden 2001, 113–164. Friedman, Russell L. Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University: The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250–1350. Leiden 2013. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Grundzuge der Christologie. Gütersloh 1964.

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———. Systematic Theology, volume I, trans. Geoffrey W.  Bromiley. Grand Rapids 2009. Shank, Michael H. Unless you Believe, You shall Not Understand: Logic, University, and Society in Late Medieval Vienna. Princeton 1988. Slotemaker, John T. “Peter Lombard and the Imago Trinitatis,” in A Companion to Medieval Christian Humanism, ed., John P.  Bequette. Leiden 2016, 168–188. ———. “William of Ockham and Theological Method,” in Language and Method: Historical and Historiographical Reflections on Medieval Thought, ed. Ueli Zahnd. Freiburg 2017, 121–142. Slotemaker, John T., and Jeffrey C. Witt. Robert Holcot. Oxford 2016. Williams, Rowan. On Christian Theology. Oxford 2000.

Index1

A Abelard, Peter, 13, 20–25, 31, 40, 41, 49, 88–91, 107, 117, 119 Albert the Great, 82, 83 Alcuin of York, 56, 57, 64 Amalric of Bena, 119 Ambrose of Milan, 6, 7, 29, 65, 120 Angel of Döbeln, 100 Anselm of Canterbury, 6, 8, 20, 21, 40, 44–46, 57–60, 64, 65, 65n58, 73, 79, 80, 80n9, 82, 84, 86, 96, 106, 107, 117 Aquinas, Thomas, 7n20, 10, 25, 34, 44, 51, 65, 66, 66n62, 68, 82, 93, 100, 101, 115, 123 Aristotle, 11, 11n26, 12, 52, 63–65, 68, 72, 101, 121, 123 Athanasius, 6

Augustine of Hippo, 3, 6–8, 11, 11n26, 12, 15, 24, 26, 29, 30, 32–34, 44, 45, 48–50, 54–56, 59–66, 65n58, 66n62, 70–73, 78, 79, 80n9, 82, 86–88, 90, 91, 93, 96, 99, 101, 107, 113n4, 115, 118, 120, 121, 123 Auriol, Peter, 10, 32, 71 B Basil the Great, 6, 7, 65, 70 Bernard of Clairvaux, 90 Berthold of Ratisbon (Puchhauser), 100 Boethius, 15, 41, 64, 65n58, 72, 80–84, 86, 121, 122 Bonaventure, 26, 27n27, 30–32, 103–105, 103n74, 104n77, 104n79, 116, 122, 123

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 J. T. Slotemaker, Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47790-5

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INDEX

C Campsall, Richard, 43, 43n67, 45 Capreolus, John, 53, 71 Chalcedon, Council of, 5 Chatton, Walter, 42, 43, 43n67, 45, 52, 54n24, 71, 96, 100, 116 Clarembald of Arras, 81, 89, 90 Constantinople, Council of, 5 D d’Ailly, Pierre, 71, 99 Duns Scotus, John, 7n20, 10, 26, 52, 82, 84, 93, 94, 100, 101, 104, 106 F Facino of Asti, 100 Florence, Council of, 69 G Gabriel Biel, 102 Gilbert of Poitiers, 13, 81 Giles of Viterbo, 73, 121 Gracilis, Peter, 4, 28, 29, 54, 71, 100 Gregory of Nazianzus, 6, 7, 65 Gregory of Nyssa, 6, 7, 24, 70 Gregory Rimini, 7n20, 54, 55, 71, 96, 99, 100, 120 Grosseteste, Robert, 70, 104 H Harclay, Henry, 70, 71, 98 Henry of Ghent, 51–53, 70, 72, 93, 94 Henry of Langenstein, 46, 122 Henry Totting of Oyta, 45 Hilary of Poitiers, 6, 7, 29, 32, 70, 88, 92, 93

Holcot, Robert, 43–45, 44n71, 52, 54n24, 71, 96, 100, 116, 122 Hugh of St. Victor, 20–22, 31, 40, 58, 82, 89, 90 Hugolino of Orvieto, 100 I Irenaeus, 6 Isidore of Seville, 9, 55 J James of Viterbo, 103, 104 Joachim of Fiore, 13, 49, 51, 51n16, 58–60, 58n41, 107, 119 John Hiltalingen of Basel, 54, 100 John of Damascus, 7 K Klenkok, John, 100 L Lateran IV, Council of, 5, 13, 14, 43, 49–51, 53, 58, 60, 69, 72, 73, 91, 107, 111, 119 Lombard, Peter, 7, 13, 14, 30–32, 50–52, 51n16, 54, 59, 60, 65, 71, 73, 90–93, 96, 107, 111, 113, 113n4, 116, 118–121, 124 Luther, Martin, 2, 28, 29, 32–34, 36, 37, 54, 60, 61, 65, 71, 73, 100, 119 Lyon II, council of, 69 M Mair, John, 54, 55, 71, 100, 102 Marsilius of Inghen, 71

 INDEX 

Maximus of Turin, 89 Melanchthon, Philipp, 32, 39, 40, 54, 60, 61, 71, 73, 87, 96, 97, 100, 119

S Sens, Council of, 90 Servetus, Michael, 87, 122 Soissons, Council of, 90, 117

N Nicaea, Council of, 5 Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl, 46

T Tertullian, 6, 20 Theodulf of Orléans, 57 Thierry of Chartres, 13, 81

O Origen, 6, 7, 24 P Peter of Pulkau, 46 Porphyry of Tyre, 80, 86, 122 R Ratramnus of Corbie, 57 Richard of St. Victor, 6, 7, 20, 40, 49, 84, 90, 91, 91n41, 103, 103n74, 106, 122, 123 Robert of Melun, 89 Roscelin of Compiègne, 80 Rusticus the Deacon, 81, 84

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V Victorinus, Marius, 6, 65 W Walter of Mortagne, 81, 89, 90, 96 William of Auvergne, 103, 103n75, 104 William of Auxerre, 82, 84, 99, 116, 120 William of Champeaux, 89 William of Ockham, 7n20, 51, 52, 94, 100, 122, 123 William of St. Thierry, 3, 4, 37, 38, 40, 89 William of Vorilong, 53, 71, 105 Wodeham, Adam, 44