3 prominent schools or traditions of thought about the Trinity that emerged in the Middle Ages:
- Emanationist: Bonaventure & Scotus. Makes use of a more restricted or modest doctrine of divine simplicity and correspondingly presents us with a kataphatic, quasi-univocal way of speaking of processions and persons.
- Nominal minimalist: Ockham. Presents us with a theory of divine simplicity so exacting that one is led to an equivocal way of speaking about the divine processions; this approach is radically apophatic (there is no demonstrative knowledge of the existence of God). Such a minimalistic approach can lead easily to speculative agnosticism regarding the existence of God, and an evacuation from theology of the very notions of a divine essence (divine attributes), as well as the notions of divine persons, relations, and processions. If taken to an extreme, this kind of thinking has the capacity to burn down all the bridges of connection between grace and nature, and between Christian theology and modern philosophical reasoning. Modern Trinitarian Christology often follows this way of thinking. Post-Hegelian Trinitarian theologians deny any talk of the divine nature and identify the persons primarily by reference to God’s economic activity in creation (i.e. we only know the Triune persons due to their historical presence among us).
- Relationist: Aquinas. Makes use of a moderate theory of simplicity that allows room for proper analogies for processions and persons in God, understood in terms of subsistent relations. It is moderately apophatic.
Some Conceptual Advantages of Thomistic Trinitarian Theology
Each is based by argument in scriptural exegesis interpreted through the lens of patristic traditions of the early Church (showing an organic & logically continuous development):
- Both Trinitarian + Monotheistic: Allows a real distinction of persons (Trinitarian) + unity of essence (monotheism). “The category of relation is helpful in Trinitarian theology because it permits one to signify a distinction of persons in God that entails no distinction of essence or substance, and no inequality in properties.” Furthermore, it allows us to maintain
- Positive use of psychological analogy: Allows us to maintain that (1) the immaterial processions in God are substantial (since God is simple) and not something accidental (like the intellectual acts of a human person), (2) the subsistent persons are really relative to one another, (3) they act in virtue of their shared divine nature, which each possesses fully.
- Allows distinction of personal mode regarding the nature of God: Based on the order of reception of the nature, Aquinas does think that each of the three persons possesses the divine nature in a distinct personal way or mode of being. The Father is infinitely good in a paternal way, the Son in a filial way (as deriving his goodness from the Father), and the Spirit in a spirated way (as eternally derivative of the Father and the Son). In the economy, the three persons always act as one, and each also acts in a distinctive personal mode.
- It provides us with analogical notions for personhood, relation, and nature that are applicable in similar and dissimilar ways to divine persons and created persons (both angels and human beings): This is true because Aquinas maintains Boethius’s definition of the person (an individual with a rational nature). This notion of an intellectual nature as an intrinsic component of a person allows us to maintain that the Father, Son, and Spirit are persons. It respects the apophatic character of our knowledge of the Trinity, even “after” divine revelation and in the light of faith. However, it also provides enough kataphatic content to allow us to perceive significant likeness amid the discontinuity between Trinitarian persons and personal creatures.
Prodigal Catholic 