Aquinas unfolds his analysis of the Trinitarian persons of God in ST I, qq. 27–43. His 1st question is not about relations or persons, but is about whether one might even rightly say that there are “processions“ in God?
Analogies for the Eternal Derivation of Persons in God via “processions”:
- Theory of cognition: Based on Aristotle’s writings on abstraction and concept formation, Aquinas thinks that when we grasp the essences of things abstractly we do so by a twofold process in which our intellect (1) is informed passively by an immaterial “intelligible species” that is abstracted from the senses, which the intellect then (2) appropriates actively so as to form from it an immaterial “concept” by which to consider reality anew. While the intelligible species is impressed upon our minds, the concept proceeds from our minds. We go, in effect, from the experience of multiple humans to the passive intellectual reception of the essence of the human in an abstracted mode, to the generation of a concept of the human, by which we make use of that abstract knowledge actively to think about the multiple humans we encounter. The immaterial concept of the human proceeds forth from our intellect as something immanent to it, permitting us to grasp intellectually the essences of things around us. This generation of the concept occurs by way of a relational procession.
- Theory of human willing: Where human knowledge works through abstraction, the will, which is in the rational appetite, tends toward the concrete good that is first known, and therefore loved. Love, then, can also be thought about in processional terms: it is an immanent activity in us by which we tend to love the goodness of another. This procession is also relational: love in human beings aims toward the good of the beloved. The analogy of love (which originates from knowledge – we can only love what we first know).
Benefits of starting with “processions” via psychological analogy as a starting point:
- Preserves transcendence of God: By looking at relations through the perspective of processions (which is totally different than how humans have relations), Aquinas preserves the transcendence and alterity of the Trinitarian personal communion in both intra and extra Trinitarian life.
- Preserves relationality of Triune persons: The immanent relationality of the three persons is the prior foundation for all of God’s relations to creation. The eternal relations of the Father to his Word and to the Spirit are the inner ground or basis of all that occurs in God when he relates to us in creation and in the order of salvation… All of this need not have occurred, but insofar as it does, it occurs only ever in and from the eternal processions of the Son and the Spirit, and as extrinsically expressive of them, without the creation or economy of salvation in any way constituting these relations.
- Sets foundation for relations of origin: Aquinas appeals to psychology analogy to set the stage for a consideration of the relations in God as relations of origin. Real relations imply correlative terms that are opposite to one another (as when one causal agent is active upon another that is receptive or passive), and they are “co-simultaneous.” The persons are always already related to one another in all that they are and only ever exist in the opposite relations of generation and spiration. This concept of the persons in turn allows us to understand the personal acts of generation and spiration. In virtue of his paternity, the Father eternally communicates all that he is as God to the Son, and the Father and the Son as a principle of spiration eternally communicate all that they are as God to the Spirit. This notion of relational procession allows us to establish a concept of Trinitarian monotheism. Each of divine persons is wholly relative to the others, truly distinct from the others, and truly God.
Aquinas identifies a proper analogy for the immanent life of the Trinity by similitude to human cognition and voluntary love. Thus, Aquinas offers us a viable model for the genuine theological use of the psychological analogy.
“To be clear, my argument here is meant to conclude to the necessity of the psychological analogy as a theological analogy for procession as immanent spiritual activity in God, not to the necessity of a distinctively Thomistic interpretation of the psychological analogy.”
Prodigal Catholic 