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From Impassibility to Self-Affectivity: the Trinitarian Metaphysics of Esse in Thomas Summa theologiae

The Aquinas Lecture in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas, Irving, Texas.

The Feast of St Thomas Aquinas 2015

Dr Wayne J. Hankey

Department of Classics, Dalhousie University and Kings College, Halifax

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Scholarly Background[footnoteRef:1] [1: From my Aquinas New Aristotle and the Platonists: Plotinus unus de magnisinter commentatores de Aristotilis (Aquinas, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas ) A lecture for the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, April 15, 2010, unpublished Background Paper.]

This will not be part of the lecture as delivered but it is important for the perspective from which it is written.

At about same time that Aquinas had completed his change of mind on the mental word, coming closer to Augustine by way of Aristotle[footnoteRef:2], a move important for his developed view on whether the divine Trinity can be demonstrated from a trinity of the human mind, he was working on his Exposition of the Divine Names of Dionysius. In part of it he used William of Moerbekes translation of Aristotles Categories (finished in March 1266) which went with his translation of the commentary of Simplicius on the same.[footnoteRef:3] The Exposition is the first of the long list of commentaries on non-Scriptural, Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian books which Aquinas undertook in the wake of William of Moerbekes new translations, or revisions of the translations, of Aristotle, of Greek commentators on Aristotle, and of Proclus. Scholars frequently note the dependence of Aquinas Exposition of the De Anima on Moerbekes translation of Themistius annotated paraphrase of the same work finished on the 22nd of November 1267,[footnoteRef:4] and the temporal coincidence between Aquinas on the De Anima and his treatise on human nature in the Summa theologiae.[footnoteRef:5] However, the sequence in which Moerbekes translation of Simplicius precedes the Exposition of the Divine Names, and the overlap in time and place of the beginning of the Prima Pars of the Summa, are less noticed.[footnoteRef:6] Yet one of their effects may be a profoundly important change not only in Thomas theology but in that of the Latin West generally. This is the separation of the de deo uno (qq. 3-26) from the de deo trino (qq. 27-43) within Thomas treatise de deo in the Summa Theologiae and his placing the de deo uno first. Thomas is said to be the originator of this fundamental structural determinant of the de deo and it appears for the first time there.[footnoteRef:7] Further, while it has been maintained either (or both!) that Augustinian or Aristotelian rationalism underlies his division and ordering of the treatise, Thomas is explicit that he finds this distinction, and the reason for beginning from the divine as one and good, in Dionysius, and that no reduction of theology to philosophical reason is involved. Dionysius said that he separated the consideration of the undifferentiated and the differentiated names into distinct treatises.[footnoteRef:8] Thomas also learns from Dionysius that unum habet rationem principii.[footnoteRef:9] Further, following Dionysius, he begins his own de deo uno, which clearly takes the On the Divine Names as a model, with perfection and goodnesswhich immediately follow simplicity. By a Neoplatonic logic, following the one Dionysius derived from Proclus, which circles upon itself, having begun it with simplicity, Aquinas concludes the first section of the de deo uno with Gods unity.[footnoteRef:10] Moreover, the logic by which Aquinas will treat the procession of creatures after the procession of the Divine Persons because they all act together in creation, he also finds in the Divine Names.[footnoteRef:11] [2: Harm Goris, Theology and Theory of the Word in Aquinas: Understanding Augustine by Innovating Aristotle, in Aquinas the Augustinian, edited by Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and Matthew Levering (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2007), 6178 at 64.] [3: Simplicius, Commentaire sur les Catgories dAristote, Traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke, ed. A. Pattin, 2 volumes, Corpus Latinorum commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum 1-2 (vol. 1, Louvain/Paris, 1971, vol. 2 Leiden, 1975). There is a list of citations by Aquinas at vol. 1, xiv; at 1, xi, Pattin dates the work as finished in March 1266. On Aquinas use of the new translation in his exposition of Dionysius, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Volume 1, The Person and His Work, revised edition, translated by Robert Royal (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 434.] [4: Themistius, Commentaire sur le Trait de lme dAristote, traduction de Guillaume de Moerbeke, dition critique et tude sur lutilisation du Commentaire dans loeuvre de saint Thomas par G. Verbeke, Corpus Latinum Commentariorum in Aristotelem Graecorum 1 (Louvain / Paris, 1957).] [5: See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, A Commentary on Aristotles De Anima, trans. Robert Pasnau (New Haven / London: Yale University Press, 1999), xivxviii.] [6: Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Volume 1, 333, 426, 346, 434. ] [7: See W.J. Hankey, The De Trinitate of St. Boethius and the Structure of St. Thomas' Summa Theologiae, Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi Boeziani, ed. L. Obertello, (Roma: Herder, 1981), 367375, idem, God in Himself, 2435, idem, Denys and Aquinas: Antimodern Cold and Postmodern Hot, Christian Origins: Theology, rhetoric and community, edited by Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones, Studies in Christian Origins (London: Routledge, 1998), 139184 at 16859, Paul Rorem Procession and Return in Thomas Aquinas and His Predecessors, The Princeton Seminary Review 13, #2 (1992), 147163, idem, Pseudo-Dionysius. A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16974. ] [8: Aquinas, In librum Beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus expositio, ed. C. Pera (Turin/ Rome: Marietti, 1950), I. l.1, 1-3, p. 6, II, i, 110, p. 38, 121, p. 40, 126-127, pp. 4041, II, l. 2, 141, p. 46. It is not important that there is considerable doubt as to whether Dionysius wrote the Theological Representations, Aquinas thought he had.] [9: Aquinas, In librum Beati Dionysii, II, ii, 143, p 46. See also, II, ii, 135, p. 45.] [10: See my God in Himself, 5780. and H.-D. Saffrey, Theology as science (3rd-6th centuries), trans. W.J. Hankey, Studia Patristica, vol. XXIX, edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone, (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 32139.] [11: Aquinas, In librum Beati Dionysii, II, ii, 153, p. 48: Deinde, cum dicit: est autem discretio et cetera, exponit quomodo in communi modo discretionis supra signatae, invenitur et discretio et unitio, idest aliquid commune toti Trinitati et aliquid distinctum ad personas pertinens. Dictum est enim supra quod discretiones divinae vocantur secundum processiones deitatis. Est autem duplex processio: una quidem secundum quod una persona procedit ab alia et per hanc multiplicantur et distinguuntur divinae personae et quantum ad hoc attenditur discretio propria in communi modo discretionis; alia est processio secundum quam creatura procedit a Deo, secundum quam fit multitudo rerum et distinctio creaturarum a Deo, et haec est discretio unita, idest communis toti Trinitati. and ST 1.45.6 Whether to create is proper to any person?: On the contrary, Dionysius says (Div. Nom. ii) that all things caused are the common work of the whole Godhead.]

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I. Cos vid' o la gloriosa rota muoversi[footnoteRef:12] [12: Dante, Paradiso, 10. 145.]

The Moving Circles of Theology

In Thomas rightly ordered Summa theologiae[footnoteRef:13], Sacred Doctrine exercises its privilege to begin treating its subject, God, with Himself. Though faith presupposes natural knowledge, as grace does nature,[footnoteRef:14] when setting out as preamble to demonstrate the existence of God as the first necessity of our theology, we hear: I am Who am said by the person of God[footnoteRef:15] Thus co-ordinately and simultaneously, though differing in kind from revealed theology, philosophical theology rises from Gods effects so as to make the Divine speech intelligible to us. We are led to what is above reason by developing our natural reasoning until we reach the philosophical sciences and certain conceptual knowing.[footnoteRef:16] Elsewhere, when drawing the circles described by these rising and descending movements, Aquinas takes us back to the origins when he, unknowingly, quotes Heraclitus: the way up and down are the same.[footnoteRef:17] I shall think with you this evening about the encirclings by which Thomas multilayered thearchy manifests the God who includes and embraces us within a cosmos material and spiritual. However, before entering those perfect or motionless motions, let me bring before you, besides the one way by which philosophy ascends and Gods self-knowledge descends, the other great circle described by all things, the circle of Conversion. [13: Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Prologus: secundum ordinem disciplinae] [14: Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.2.2 ad 1: dicendum quod Deum esse, et alia huiusmodi quae per rationem naturalem nota possunt esse de Deo, ut dicitur Rom. I non sunt articuli fidei, sed praeambula ad articulos, sic enim fides praesupponit cognitionem naturalem, sicut gratia naturam, et ut perfectio perfectibile. Idem, De veritate, q. 10 a. 12 co. quod est Deum esse, demonstrationibus irrefragabilibus etiam a philosophis probatum] [15: Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.2.3: Sed contra est quod dicitur Exodi III, ex persona Dei, ego sum qui sum.] [16: Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.1.1 ad 2: Unde nihil prohibet de eisdem rebus, de quibus philosophicae disciplinae tractant secundum quod sunt cognoscibilia