Context

Islamic translation of Aristotle is an explosion scientific knowledge which is deemed as fact and
which Thomas is trying to contextualise Christian doctrine
Summa - commentaries on the sentences are unbearably tedious for Christian doctrine for 500
years this was standard for any intellectual to do a commentary on the sentences.
Trying to give an account of the trinity in thought forms of your generation but also have a
common lexicon with the culture
What is the value of metaphysical language in theology?
Aquinas knows what he has to say i.e. tradition and Scripture but words are changing their
meaning, substance, essence and person
Daniel Waterland
In this series, Ill examine the way he deals with some favorite unitarian proof-texts, which,
unitarians think plainly assert the numerical identity of the Father with the one true God,
Yahweh. According to Waterland, these unitarians are making a mistake like the one I made.
You [i.e. Clarke] next cite John 17:3, 1 Cor. 8:6, Eph. 4:6, to prove, that
the Father is sometimes styled the only true God; which is all that they prove. But you have not
shewn that he is so called in opposition to the Son, or exclusive of him. It may be meant in
opposition to idols only, as all antiquity has thought; or it may signify that the Father
is primarily, notexclusively, the only true God, as the first Person of the blessed Trinity, the Root and
Fountain of the other two.
You observe that in these and many other places, the one God is the Person of the Father, in
contradistinction to the Person of the Son.
It is very certain, that the Person of the Father is there distinguished from the Person of the Son;
because they are distincly named: and you may make what use you please of the observation
against the Sabellians, who make but one Person of the two. But what other use you can be able to
make of it, I see not; unless you can prove this negative proposition, that no sufficient reason can be
assigned for styling the Father the only God, without supposing that the Son is excluded.
As to 1 Cor. 8:6, all that can be reasonably gathered from it, is, that the Father is there
emphatically styled one God; but without design to exclude the Son from being God also: as the Son
is emphatically styledone Lord; but without design to exclude the Father from being Lord also.
Reasons may be assigned for the emphasis in both cases; which are too obvious to need reciting.
observe that the discourse there, v. 4, 5, is about idols, and nominal gods and lords, which have
no claim or title to religious worship.These the Father and Son are both equally distinguished from:
which may insinuate at least to us, that the texts of the Old or New Testament, declaring the unity
and excluding others, do not exclude the Son, by whom are all things (Daniel Waterland, A
Vindication of Christs Divinity: Being A Defence of Some Queries, Relating to Dr. Clarkes Scheme of
the Holy Trinity [1719] in Van Mildert, ed. The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, Vol. I., pp. 279-
80, broken into shorter paragraphs, bold added)

Relation in Aquinas means relative location
Basil - divine names show relation
Thomas logical relative location (relation) leads to divine names
Change in the idea of what a person means from Aquinas to modernity much of the debates were
due to terms not being used the same way (Waterman above was one of the few who understood
this) In modernity an intellect/will is a self especially in the Romantics great moral value to the
individuality of personhood, what I am is different to others
Boethius: Individual substance of an intellectual nature there can be three existences of the same
intellectual/willed nature
Mid 20
th
cent French existentialism?
Divine simplicity is not talked about today relationship requires choice/freedom against the
relative location, change in meaning of terms again
Dorna German theologian get name reference
For perfect goodness to be perfectly good requires choice, God rejoices in who he is each person
has to embrace the choice unsustainable in divine simplicity
You can talk about Unity/oneness that does not require/does not mean simplicity Simplicity in
Thomas is that God is not composite
Love is a non-personal, from the filioque cant talk about the Holy Spirit as love that the father and
son shareas it depersonalises the Spirit
Faithfulness to Scripture and church authorities at the end of the day are always behind Thomas
arguments
Why do you say God is simple because scripture says it/uses it, how do you make sense of this? Well
this is my account of how using substance/Aristotles categories
See Aquinas commentary on John
Filioque:

West and East divide The Pope tries to get the Western confession to be said universally in 1014
The West clause has been around for centuries council of Toledo 580s it is cited here to defeat
some Arian heresy the council is saying it as orthodoxy and therefore it has been around before
then there is no discussion, it is in Augustine but not stated spirit proceeds from the father and
son. Gregory of Naz, spirit proceeds from the father through the son. In the liturgy before the 580s
which all consider to be unchanging
(Alcin of York ) Charlemagne tries to get the whole empire to quote the filioque
Dont see Nicene-Constantinople creed in the acts of the actual councils. Do see them in the acts of
the council of Chalcedon, therefore you dont see the original creed (without the filioque) written till
then
The west and east are confessing different creeds for at least 5 centuries before the split without
excommunication - so it is not theological
Patriarch Photius of Constantinople says if you quote the filioque you are excommunicated
Both sides see the filioque as a divergence of liturgy not doctrine until Photius wants to
excommunicate the pope. In east the emperor has deposed a bishop and placed Photius in his place
originally a layman. The west sees this political interference as unacceptable.
A pope in 1014 tries to impose his authority on east by enforcing the filioque
2 relationships of origin begetting/spiration
Begets/begotten
Spirates/spirated
4 terms for 3 persons
2 options:
The one who begets and the one who spirates is the same or father and son together spirate
(breathe out the spirit)
East: filioque is economic language in the Bible of the spirit being sent by son in John for e.g. (spirit
of the son in Galatians) see Tom Smail, Giving gift - chapter title: Who gives the gift?
Authority: can a pope change a councils decision
Creed should be left alone but filioque is good theology
Trinitarian theology is all about the filioque in the following yearsfrom 1014:
Anselm: defend existing from differences in relations of origin otherwise we are talking about the
same person but
Ignorance in the West of earlier debate about this as Gregory has argued that begetting and
procession we cannot understand what does it mean for the father to be ingenerate?
Anselm argues that the Spirit proceeds from the ousia not the hypostasis!


Why is there 3ness in the trinity? See Richard of St victor
The notion of triangularity as a necessary presupposition of triune love ad intra was explored by
Richard of St. Victor in the twelfth century. In his De Trinitate he argues that genuine love needs to
be not only mutual but shared, if it is to exist in all its fullness. This requires a third person: Shared
love is properly said to exist when a third person is loved by two persons harmoniously and in
community, and the affection of the two persons is fused into one affection by the flame of love for
a third.
1
For Richard, this third person in the case of God was the Holy Spirit, the condilectus or co-
beloved. More recently, David Miller has suggested the need for a mnage trois in matters of
ultimate love, both divine and human, maintaining that a threatening fantasy lurks in the trinitarian
image: the necessity of the third in love.
2
His approach follows that of Augustines search for
vestigia trinitatis within human nature, together with his notion of the lover, the beloved and the
love that unites the two. Though he was not attempting to derive an insight into the nature of the
Trinity from the concept of love, Millers analogical methodology cannot take us very far in our
understanding of trinitarian interrelatedness. Pannenberg rightly points out that, in order to find a
basis for the doctrine of the Trinity we must begin with the way in which Father, Son, and Spirit
come on the scene and relate to one another in the event of revelation.
3


Thomas: god is esse god is a verb not a noun no potentiality just actualisation life
Existing from - in the divine life are relations of origin
For Thomas a person is a rational/intellectual substance God: Son is perfect idea of the father and
the spirit is the perfect delight of the father in the son there is a dynamism here, begetting seems
punctiliar, but is eternal and ongoing and always happening therefore active the relations of origin
are a relational dynamic
Person means a subsistent (1. The act or state of subsisting) relation of origin in the divine essence
the father just is the relation of begetting and procession, but this is dynamic, God as verb not noun
and from eternity
Contrast the interpenetration or perichoresis as the dynamo the act of loving each other?
In old language is only difference in the spirit is that he proceeds

1
Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate III. 19, quoted in +Kallistos of Diokleia, The human person as an icon of
the Trinity: 10
2
Miller, David L., Three Faces of God: Traces of the Trinity in Literature and Life, Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1986: 44, authors italics. Millers thesis is not very convincing: in his desire to press his point that every dyad
turns out to be a triad (after the contemporary theologian Tom Driver) he tends towards impersonality in some
of his examples
3
Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991: 299, my italics. Drawing
from the biblical statement that God is love (1 John 4:8), Pannenberg points out that [e]ven if we presuppose a
plurality of persons in a relationship of love, the persons are related to one another by something else, i.e. love,
which is not itself thought of as a third, as the third person. (Ibid: 297)
Aquinas says if that is the case and there is nothing accidental in god then the spirit simply is that
procession from the father
The son simply is the two hypostatic relations but not composite! And/or the simply is the begotten
who proceeds
The father is the one who begets and proceeds
The son is the one who is begotten and proceeds
and the spirit is the proceeded Aquinas and Holmes!