Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of symbols, abbreviations, and conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The Trinity and the Aristotelian categories: different ways of explaining identity and distinction
- 2 The Trinity and human psychology: “In the beginning was the Word”
- 3 The Trinity and metaphysics: the formal distinction, divine simplicity, and the psychological model
- 4 The Trinity, divine simplicity, and fideism – or: was Gilson right about the fourteenth century after all?
- Appendix: Major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies
- Bibliography of primary sources
- Annotated bibliography of selected secondary literature
- Index
Appendix: Major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of symbols, abbreviations, and conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The Trinity and the Aristotelian categories: different ways of explaining identity and distinction
- 2 The Trinity and human psychology: “In the beginning was the Word”
- 3 The Trinity and metaphysics: the formal distinction, divine simplicity, and the psychological model
- 4 The Trinity, divine simplicity, and fideism – or: was Gilson right about the fourteenth century after all?
- Appendix: Major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies
- Bibliography of primary sources
- Annotated bibliography of selected secondary literature
- Index
Summary
ELEMENTS IN FRANCISCAN TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY
(a) The Father is the Father because he generates, and the ground of generation is that the first person is God innascible, i.e., primity gives the “proto-Father” the ability to generate and hence become the Father (= flashpoint 1).
(b) Nested distinctions: two sources of distinction in God, emanational distinction (disparate relations) and relational distinction (opposed relations), where the indispensable emanational distinction is nested inside the (counterfactually) dispensable relational distinction. Thus: the persons could be (but in fact are not) constituted without opposed relations.
(c) The Holy Spirit would be distinct from the Son, even if the Holy Spirit did not come from the Son (= flashpoint 2; see at and around Diagram D).
(d) Flashpoint 3: the distinction between the emanations generation and spiration is the most basic distinction in God – the emanations are intrinsically and irreducibly distinct on the basis of the different ways in which they originate, by way of nature (or intellect) in the case of generation and by way of will in the case of spiration.
(e) “Strong” use of the psychological model of the Trinity. The Son's generation really is intellectual in character and on this basis the Son really is a Word; the Holy Spirit's spiration really is by way of will and on this basis the Holy Spirit really is Love or a Gift. The two major characteristics of a strong use are: (1) a tight link between the divine intellect and the emanation of the Son, on the one hand, and the divine will and the emanation of the Holy Spirit, on the other; and (2) the attempt to consistently make psychological positions answer trinitarian questions – since the Son is a Word or a concept, concept theory should in some way be directly applicable in the study of the Son in the Trinity, and since the Holy Spirit is a willed Gift, a theory of willing and volitions should be directly applicable in the study of the Holy Spirit.
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- Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham , pp. 171 - 173Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010