“The purpose of this chapter is to provide a short bridge of transition from our study of the patristic era to the consideration of Thomas Aquinas in the high Scholastic period. To do so we will consider briefly the development of 2 forms of analogical thinking regarding the Trinity” (171).
1st: The “triplex via” and apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite
Dionysius the Areopagite was an anonymous theologian & mystical philosopher around early 6th ce. Building upon the Cappadocians’ stress on the interplay of light & darkness in regard to speaking about God, Dionysius’ writings on the apophatic character of all our names for the divine nature greatly influenced both Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, especially in their refinement of analogical discourse about the divine nature of God.
The triplex via or threefold way (based on the perfections of creatures) of (1) affirmation of creaturely perfections, (2) negation, and (3) eminence or superabundant predication.
- The causal way (via causalitatis): Since God is the cause of all things, He has in Himself the perfections of all creatures (the effects). We can say, for example, that “God is good”, because what He produces is good.
- The way of negation (via negationis): Since God (i.e., what He is in Himself) utterly transcends all creaturely perfections, He transcends the grasp of the human mind and we are left in a divine darkness. We cannot say, for example, that God is good in the same way we call other creatures good, because His goodness transcends all creaturely goodness (and is ultimately unknowable by us).
- The way of eminence (via eminentiae): Since God transcends all creaturely perfections due to His “super-essential” perfection, He is unknowable to us not because He is unintelligible but rather because He is supra-intelligible. Therefore, the via negationis does not have the last word.
2nd: The conciliar determinations of the Fourth Lateran Council directed against Joachim of Fiore.
Whereas Joachim of Fiore, in a misguided attempt to avoid a “quaternity” in which the divine essence exists alongside the 3 divine persons, put forward the idea that “the essence of God itself as begetting and begotten, spirating and spirated” (177), the Fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, condemned this idea of conceiving the essence itself in relational terms (because it does not adequately maintain the unity of the Trinity) and affirmed “that the three persons are one in being, essence, and nature, and that this plenitude of the divine essence is integral to each of the persons, not extrinsic to him” (178). Simply put, each of the three persons is the one God. In addition, Lateran IV stresses that the persons and not the nature are the principle of the processions.
Lateran IV also put forward a conciliar affirmation of the principle of analogy with a strongly apophatic character: “For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them” (Decree Ch. 2). Every similitude between creatures and God implies a “greater dissimilitude.” “Apophaticism can serve, then, as a guard against rationalism in matters of theological mystery” (180)
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