¹ Other problems considered within the category termed “metaphysics” include the nature of free will, time, etc. The aspect of metaphysics with which this paper is principally concerned, however, is the nature of the first principle of things.

² ST, prologue. All citations of the Summa Theologiae are from Aquinas, Thomas, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Pegis, Anton (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1945)Google Scholar.

³ Aquinas cites Exodus 15:3 as an authoritative instance wherein God was rightly named in ST I, q.13, a.1, sed.

⁴ In this quote in ST I, q.13, a.1, resp., Aquinas cites Aristotle's philosophy of language as it is found specifically in Perih, i.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Te Velde, Rudi, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2006), 98Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid, 99.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid, 100.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² It is evident that Scripture's naming of God is, to some degree, driving his argument of God's nameability as his citation in ST I, q.13, sed. functions as the launching pad from which his inquiry proceeds: “It is written (Exod. xv. 3): The Lord is a man of war, Almighty is his name.”

¹³ ST I, q.13, a.1, resp.

¹⁴ ST I, q.12, a.12.

¹⁵ ST I, q.3, prologue.

¹⁶ Te Velde, Aquinas on God, 74.

¹⁷ ST I, q.2, a. 3.

¹⁸ De Pot. q.7, a.5. Accessed from Thomas Aquinas, “Quaestiones Disputatae De Potentia Dei,” Dominican House of Studies: Priory of the Immaculate Conception, http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/QDdePotentia.htm.

¹⁹ ST I, q.12, a.12. Italics added.

²⁰ ST I, q.12, a.12, resp.

²¹ ST I, q.2, a.3.

²² ST I, q.12, a.12, resp.

²³ This conclusion, though its argument is scattered throughout ST I, qq.2‐12, is located in ST I, q.13, a.1.

²⁴ ST I, q.13, a.2.

²⁵ ST I, q.13, a.1, resp.

²⁶ See Brian Shanley's gloss on the nature of the question of ST I, q.13, a.2 in Aquinas, Thomas, The Treatise on the Divine Nature, ed. Shanley, Brian (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), 328Google Scholar.

²⁷ See Alain of Lille, Regulae Theologicae, XXI, XXVI.

²⁸ ST I, q.13, a.2.

²⁹ While the latter two points of Aquinas’ argument in ibid are straightforward, the nature of Aquinas’ first claim merits further commentary. What he is doing here is suggesting is that Alain of Lille's methodology does not account for the idea that God is the cause of all things and that all things cannot rightly be applied to describe God substantially. His example is this: God is both the cause of goodness in the same way that he is the cause of bodies. While Alain of Lille's notion that affirmative names solely represent causality rightly ascribes goodness to God, the same method must also affirm the notion that God is a body. As God possessing a body would imply that there is potentiality in God – a characteristic not attributable to the divine essence – Alain of Lille's understanding of affirmative names must consequently be erroneous.

³⁰ It must be noted that Aquinas’ triplex via is still apophatic in nature inasmuch as it is primarily grounded upon claims about what God is not. The utter apophaticism from which I am distinguishing the triplex via is a methodology that cannot produce any positive claims about God's substance.

³¹ ST I, q.4, a.2, resp.

³² ST I, q.13, a.2, resp.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ In ST I, q.13, a.3.

³⁶ ST I, q.13, a.3, obj. 3.

³⁷ This does not negate the fact that Aquinas does affirm that some divine names are metaphorical. In fact, he posits this in ST I, q.13, a.3, ad. 1. The intelligibility of metaphors, however, hinges upon non‐metaphorical names. This is so because metaphorical names applied to God figuratively refer to perfections of God. For example, by saying, “God is a rock,” one, in other words, is affirming the locution, “God is powerful.” Because the perfection signified by the metaphorical name is intended to be applied to God, it must be able to do so properly. For if it did not, the names given to God would simply be rendered a vacuous, unintelligible web of mutual reference, each referring to one another, but none actually signifying what is proper to God.

³⁸ Within the semantic triangle itself, the modus significandi denotes the way in which a nomen signifies a ratio. For this reason, if one's ratio does not comprehend the res significata, the modus significandi does not fully correspond with the res significata.

³⁹ ST I, q.13, a.3, resp.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Brian Shanley makes this distinction in his commentary on ST I, q.13, a.3, resp. in Aquinas, The Treatise on the Divine Nature, 331.

⁴² ST I, q.13, a.5.

⁴³ ST I, q.13, a.5, resp.

⁴⁴ Here, in ibid, Aquinas’ logic is built upon his previous articles. Specifically, he has already concluded that our theological knowledge derives from the examination of God's effects because they possess some likeness to God. For this reason, the names used to describe creation can (in a way which will soon be articulated) simultaneously be applied to God. If there were no likeness between God and creation, all similar names between them would be equivocal. As a result, humans would have no knowledge of God because they would not possess the likeness and therefore the names requisite for apprehending divine matters.

⁴⁵ ST I, q.4, a.3.

⁴⁶ ST I, q.4, a.3, resp.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Aquinas’ claim here, in ST I, q.4, a.2, resp., hinges upon a prior argument made in ST I, q.3, a.4. Within this article, Thomas contends that God's essence (essentia) and existence (esse) are identical. Although he substantiates this through three different arguments, one is particularly cogent. In it, he first contends that “whatever a thing has besides its essence must be caused either by the constituent principles of that essence…or by some exterior agent.” For this reason, if a thing's existence and essence are not identical, its existence must be caused by one of the two forces listed above. Aquinas notes, however, that a thing's constituent principles cannot cause its essence because nothing can be the sufficient cause of its own being. Moreover, because of Thomas’ previous argument in ST I, q.2, a.3 wherein he proves that God is creation's first efficient cause, it follows that he also could not have been caused by an external agent. For this reason, Aquinas concludes that it is logically necessary to conclude that God's essence and existence are identical.

⁴⁹ ST I, q.3, a.4.

⁵⁰ ST I, q.13, a.5, resp.

⁵¹ Aquinas examines the tension between the multiplicity of perfections in creation and their unity in the divine essence more thoroughly in ST I, q.13, a.4.

⁵² ST I, q.4, a.2, resp.

⁵³ Jenson, Robert, Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Ibid, 4.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ In ibid, Jenson's fuller description of the gospel is this: “It happened during the reign of Tiberius at Rome that certain Jews believed themselves to have encountered the prophet and rabbi they had followed, Jesus of Nazareth, alive after his execution, endured somehow ‘for their sake,’ and to have encountered him so situated over against his own death as to preclude his dying again. Given Israel's grasp of death and life, they could report such events only by saying, ‘The God of Israel has raised his servant Jesus from the dead.’ And given Israel's interpretation of God and the meaning that ‘raised’ must have within her linguistic world, such a risen one must merely thereby be establish as somehow Lord of all; the creeds’ direct progression from ‘rose’ to ‘is seated at the right hand of God’ to ‘will judge the living and the dead’ traces a straightforward conceptual nexus.”

⁵⁷ Ibid, 25.

⁵⁸ Here, the use of the term “church” demands qualification. While Jenson suggests that the church today, in its fractured, multidenominational state, is still the church, the contemporary church is not the primary audience to whom he writing. Instead, on ibid, viii, Jenson writes, “The present work is deliberately done in such anticipation of the one church, and this will be throughout apparent, in its use of authorities and its modes of argument.” As his argument progresses, it will be profitable to note that some aspects of Jenson's theology (e.g., the establishment of structures of historical continuity) solely pertain to the unified church.

⁵⁹ Ibid, 25‐26.

⁶⁰ Quotation from ibid, 13. It should also be noted that by rooting God's identity by Jesus’ resurrection and with the church, Jenson is not doing so at the expense of identifying God with his actions in the history of Israel. Rather, he implicitly links God's actions in Israel with the resurrection of Jesus by contending that it was the God of Israel who raised Jesus from the dead. This connection is made more explicitly in ibid, 47‐48 as Jenson asserts, “It is the metaphysically fundamental fact of Israel's and the church's faith that its God is freely but, just so, truly self‐identified by, and so with, contingent created temporal events.”

⁶¹ Ibid, 47‐50.

⁶² ST I, q.1, a.9‐10.

⁶³ Ibid, 49.

⁶⁴ Ibid, 49‐50.

⁶⁵ Ibid, 5.

⁶⁶ Ibid, 18‐20.

⁶⁷ For example, the rejection of this secondary task is clearly manifest in academic structure of many conservative Bible colleges in the U.S. Specifically, by possessing biblical studies departments without complementary theological studies departments, such institutions tacitly affirm Jenson's first task of theology (i.e., the maintenance of the gospel), but simultaneously reject the notion that “the thinking internal to the task of speaking the gospel” is another essential component of it.

⁶⁸ Ibid, 16.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ In ibid, 29‐33, Jenson delineates the nature of Scripture's inner differentiations and how its various internal “canons” (e.g., the Tanakh, the Gospels, apostolic documents) relate to one another. Additionally, with regard to the interpretation of Scripture specifically, it should be noted that the theologian's task is not to simply read it in isolation and then retransmit its message. Instead, Jenson contends that the theologian's task of attending to Scripture is inextricable from the diachronic ecclesial context in which she or he does so. For this reason that Jenson states, “the slogan sola scriptura, if by that is meant ‘apart from creed, teaching office, or authoritative liturgy,’ is an oxymoron” in ibid, 28.

⁷¹ Ibid, 33.

⁷² Ibid, 20.

⁷³ Ibid, 19‐20.

⁷⁴ Ibid, 20.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ Quotation from Thomas Aquinas, “Questiones Disputatae de Veritate,” Dominican House of Studies: Priory of the Immaculate Conception, http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/QDdeVer.htm, q.14, a.10, ad.9. For a more thorough understanding of how this proposition coheres with Aquinas’ theology, see ST I, q.1. Here, Aquinas classifies sacra doctrina as a higher science, whose truths are infallible (ST I, q.1, a.8, resp.). Because the subject matter of sacred doctrine overlaps with that of philosophy and the former possesses a higher degree of certitude than the latter, it is the task of theology to adjudicate the veracity of philosophy's claims (ST I, q.1, a.6, ad. 2). Moreover, as will soon be exhibited, Aquinas employs philsophy as a tool for making theologoumena intelligible.

⁷⁸ ST I, q.1, a.5, sed.

⁷⁹ Jenson, “Systematic Theology,” 7.

⁸⁰ For Jenson's explicit rejection that the philosophy utilized by Aquinas resides in human nature, see ibid, 6‐7. For an example of one of Jenson's critiques delineating how Aquinas’ philosophical claims pertaining to the relationship between ontology and God's perfection attributes (ST I, q.4) are byproducts of Ancient Greek mythology and solely intelligible therein, see Jenson, Robert, The Knowledge of Things Hoped For (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1969), 92‐94Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Jenson, “Systematic Theology,” 9‐10.

⁸² Ibid, 10.

⁸³ Jenson, “The Knowledge of Things Hoped For,” 96.

⁸⁴ Jenson, “Systematic Theology,” 14.

⁸⁵ Ibid, 15‐16.

⁸⁶ ST I, q.12, a.12, resp.

⁸⁷ Jenson, “Systematic Theology,” 47‐48.

⁸⁸ ST I, q.13, a.7.

⁸⁹ ST I, q.9, a.1.

⁹⁰ ST I, q.3, a.6.

⁹¹ ST I, q.3, a.7, resp.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ Because Jenson is writing to a necessarily unified church, he would disagree with some of the sources that Aquinas would consider normative, particularly those dogmatic decisions made by the Roman Catholic Church after the Great Schism (e.g., the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council). Nevertheless, Jenson would accept the majority of sources Aquinas held as authoritative. For this reason, this slight dissimilarity certainly should not be considered the primary factor causing the theological claims of Jenson and Aquinas to diverge.