Download PDF | Russell L. Friedman - Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham-Cambridge University Press (2010).
207 Pages
medieval trinitarian thought from aquinas to ockham How can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be distinct and yet identical? Prompted by the doctrine of the divine Trinity, this question sparked centuries of lively debate. In the current context of renewed interest in trinitarian theology, Russell L. Friedman provides the first survey of the scholastic discussion of the Trinity in the 100-year period stretching from Thomas Aquinas’ earliest works to William Ockham’s death.
Tracingtwo centralissues –the attemptto explainhowthethree persons are distinct from one another but identical as God, and the application to the Trinity of a “psychological model,” on which the Son is a mental word or concept, and the Holy Spirit is love – this volume offers a broad overview of trinitarian thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, along with focused studies of the trinitarian ideas of many of the period’s most important theologians. An “Annotated bibliography” points the reader to further secondary literature. russell l. friedman is Professor of Philosophy at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Introduction My purpose in this book is to give a broad overview of some of the central aspects of and developments in the trinitarian theology written in the Latin West between roughly 1250 and 1350 AD.1 The emphasis here will be on philosophical theology, on the rational investigation of the Trinity by later-medieval theologians using the full range of tools available to them from especially the Aristotelian tradition of philosophical analysis.
Nevertheless, the philosophical nature of the discussion as it is presented here should not obscure the fact that the intense interest with which later-medieval theologians approached the issue is an indication primarily of the immense religious importance it had for them. For the doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of the Christian faith. On the basis of statements from especially the New Testament that suggested that the savior, Jesus Christ, is the very same God as the Father who sent him and yet is in some way distinct from the Father,2 the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated by the early Church Fathers and in the Creeds issuing from the ecumenical councils of the second to the fourth centuries AD. According to this doctrine, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct and yet identical: distinct as persons, identical as God.
Once the doctrine was formulated, however, the major goal in trinitarian theology would be to explain precisely how three really distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, can be essentially identical, i.e. identical in the one, simple divine essence. Identity and distinction:that isthe major issue intrinitariantheology. This issue drove the trinitarian discussion in the Latin West from Augustine of Hippo and Boethius through Anselm of Canterbury and up to the figures who will be dealt with in the present book. How can it be that the Son is identical to the Father and the Holy Spirit as one God, while really distinct from both the Father and the Holy Spirit as a person? To see just how much is riding on this doctrine, consider that in order to explain how God the Son was able to take flesh as Jesus Christ, while God the Father and God the Holy Spirit never took flesh, you have to explain how these three persons can be really distinct from each other and yet all one God. This example, moreover, shows that the doctrine of the Trinity is closely tied to the theology of the incarnation, and through that to the issues of redemption and salvation that are of immediate concern to all the faithful. Given the enormous significance of the Trinity to the Christian faith – its biblical roots, its patristic elaboration, and its centrality to the Christian message – it cannot be wondered at that later-medieval theologians approached trinitarian theology with the utmost seriousness, and wrote a great deal about it.
In fact, the trinitarian literature written during the hundred years between 1250 and 1350 is immense. Basically every theologian from the period had to think about trinitarian theology in the course of his theological education, and a large portion of the various genres of medieval theological literature – the period’s Sentences commentaries, quodlibetal questions, and disputed questions3 – deal with trinitarian issues. Given the enormity of the later-medieval literature on the Trinity, I will be concentrating in the four chapters of the present book on two major aspects of the discussion. The first aspect is the metaphysics of identity and distinction in the Trinity, that is to say, what “mechanism” – if any – brings about the real distinction of the three divine persons, while still allowing them to be essentially one. In short, how is it even possible to explain the fact that the three divine persons are really distinct from one another but the same in the divine essence? Roughly speaking, Chapter 1 and Chapter 4 deal with this metaphysical issue of identity and distinction.
The second aspect of our period’s trinitarian theology that I will deal with is the application to the Trinity of a “psychological model,” according to which the Son is a mental word or concept, and the Holy Spirit is a gift or love. The psychological model was a major resource that theologians in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries relied upon in order to clarify or to explain how the persons in the Trinity could be personally distinct yet essentially identical. Indeed, in the later-medieval period the psychological model was probably the means most frequently turned to when attempting to prove that there is a Trinity of persons. I will deal with the psychological model in Chapters 2 and 3, in Chapter 2 detailing how several theologians used theories of concept formation to explain how the Son is distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and in Chapter 3 discussing reactions to that view, including reactions from a number of theologians who claimed that the psychological model was of little or no use in clarifying or explaining the Trinity.
Throughout the book I will give the big picture, describing how the period’s trinitarian theology evolved, but I will always illustrate the trends under discussion by explaining the actual positions and arguments of a few selected medieval theologians. In this way, while giving an overview of some of the major issues in later-medieval trinitarian theology, simultaneously I mean to show something of the large variety of views defended in the period’s trinitarian thought.
It should be noted that the conclusion to Chapter 4 is also a conclusion to the entire book. I have included in the footnotes what I consider to be the minimum necessary Latin text, and have translated as much of that text as practical, in order to indicate what I think the highly technical jargon of later-medieval trinitarian theology actually means. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. References in the footnotes to editions of the Latin texts are abbreviated according to the editor’s (or the series’) name and keyed to the “Bibliography of primary sources”; line numbers in modern critical editions are indicated in superscripts to page number references.
I do not necessarily respect the orthography of any edition I use. I have mostly avoided discussing secondary literature in the main text or the footnotes of the book, instead including an “Annotated bibliography of selected secondary literature,” where I pointthe readertowardsthe most importantwork currently available on later-medieval trinitarian theology. This bibliography is by no means exhaustive, but the works referred to there can in turn lead the reader to much further useful literature. Finally, in an appendix to the book I have presented a list of “Major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies.”
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