The Trinity and metaphysics: the formal distinction, divine simplicity, and the psychological model

2010 ◽  
pp. 94-132
Author(s):  
Russell L. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Psychological Model ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Formal Distinction

scholarly journals TO THE GLORY OF HIS GRACE: The Doctrine of Divine Simplicity and its Interrelatedness to the Economy of God in Salvation

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Robb Lawrence Torseth
Keyword(s):  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Theology Proper

It is a contemporary trend by many theologians and philosophers to view the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (from hereon, DDS) as an unnecessary, illogical, and problematic addendum of scholasticism to theology proper. However, upon further investigation, this doctrine is found to be prevalent and implied in biblically orthodox ontology. Furthermore, it may be shown that the DDS bears potentially broad ramifications to how we understand the Trinity (given that it proceeds from simplicity in logical priority) and, subsequently, how we understand the initial, sustained, and perfected work of God in salvation through grace. Therefore, contrary to current theological trends, it may be stated that the DDS is, in fact, a centrifugal, practical, and even indispensablepart of the Christian understanding of how we know God. 

Duns Scotus and William of Ockham

2021 ◽  
pp. 52-67
Author(s):  
Richard Cross
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
William Of Ockham ◽  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Beatific Vision ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Dialectical Process ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Do So

Duns Scotus and William of Ockham engage with Aquinas’ thought in fundamentally negative ways. They never make distinctively Thomist positions their own, and when they use Aquinas’ thought, they do so merely as a way of sharpening their own theologies through the dialectical process of rejecting an opponent’s view. This chapter first considers the role of Aquinas’ thought in Scotus’ teaching on religious language and univocity, divine simplicity and omnipresence, the Trinity, cognitive theory, the question of the first object of cognition, angelic individuation, the beatific vision, the plurality of substantial forms, free will, and normative ethics. A second section discusses Aquinas’ place in Ockham’s teaching on common natures, intuitive cognition, divine ideas, and the nature of grace.

Classical Theism and the Doctrine of the Trinity

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Charles J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The Trinity

It is well known that Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas participated in a tradition of philosophical theology which determined God to be simple, perfect, immutable and timelessly eternal. Within the parameters of such an Hellenic understanding of the divine nature, they sought a clarification of one of the fundamental teachings of their Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. These classical theists were not dogmatists, naively unreflective about the very possibility of their project. Aquinas, for instance, explicitly worried about and fought to dispel the seeming contradiction between the philosophical requirement of divine simplicity and the creedal insistence on a threefold personhood in God.1 Nevertheless, doubts abound. Philosophers otherwise friendly to Classical Theism (CT) still remain unsure about the coherence of affirming a God that is at once absolutely simple and triune.2 A less friendly critic has even suggested that the theory of divine simplicity pressured Augustine and his medieval followers away from recognizing that real complexity within the life of God which Trinitarianism expresses.3

Complexity without Composition

2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-631
Author(s):  
Jeff Steele ◽  
Thomas Williams ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Correct Interpretation ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Formal Distinction

John Duns Scotus recognizes complexity in God both at the level of God’s being and at the level of God’s attributes. Using the formal distinction and the notion of “unitive containment,” he argues for real plurality in God, but in a way that permits him to affirm the doctrine of divine simplicity. We argue that his allegiance to the doctrine of divine simplicity is purely verbal, that he flatly denies traditional aspects of the doctrine as he had received it from Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, and that his denial of the doctrine allows him to escape certain counterintuitive consequences of the doctrine without falling afoul of the worries that motivated the doctrine in the first place. We note also an important consequence of Scotus’s approach to simplicity for the correct interpretation of his view of the foundation of morality.

Supreme harmony or supreme disharmony? An analysis of Amy Plantinga Pauw's ‘The Supreme Harmony of All‘: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards

2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-485
Author(s):  
Steven M. Studebaker
Keyword(s):  
Social Model ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Social Models ◽  
Psychological Model ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Trinity

Amy Plantinga Pauw's ‘Supreme Harmony of All’ is the first book-length treatment of Jonathan Edwards's trinitarian theology. She argues that his trinitarian thought embodies the emphases and polarities of the Western psychological model and the Eastern social model of the trinity. Throughout the book she details his doctrines of the immanent and the economic trinity in the contrasting categories of the psychological and the social models of the trinity. She recommends his ‘cobbled’ approach as the only effective way to construct a contemporary trinitarian theology. In contrast, I argue that Edwards consistently used the Augustinian mutual love model. Furthermore, he developed social themes within the mutual love model. His usefulness for contemporary trinitarianism is not to suggest an eclectic method of appropriating conflicting conceptualities, but to challenge the common assumption that Western Augustinian trinitarianism is inherently monistic and must be transcended by recourse to the Eastern trinitarian tradition.

The Divine Simplicity in St Thomas

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Burns
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Divine Simplicity ◽  
Summa Theologiae ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Divine Essence ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
The Trinity

In the Summa Theologiae ‘simplicity’ is treated as pre–eminent among the terms which may properly be used to describe the divine nature. The Question in which Thomas demonstrates that God must be ‘totally and in every way simple’ (1.3.7) immediately follows the five proofs of God's existence, preceding the treatment of His other perfections, and being frequently used as the basis for proving them. Then in Question 13 ‘univocal predication' is held to be ‘impossible between God and creatures’ so that at best ‘some things are said of God and creatures analogically’ because of the necessity of using ‘various and multiplied conceptions’ derived from our knowledge of created beings to refer to what in God is simple for ‘the perfections flowing from God to creatures… pre–exist in God unitedly and simply, whereas in creatures they are received divided and multiplied’ (1.13.5). In line with this, in the De Potentia Dei the treatment of analogical predication is integrated into that of ‘the Simplicity of the Divine Essence’ (Q 7). Moreover, it lies at the root of Thomas's rejection of any possibility of a Trinitarian natural theology such as, for instance, St Anselm or Richard of St Victor had attempted to develop, on the grounds that ‘it is impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason’ since ‘we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons’ (1.32.1). Even modern minds sympathetic to Thomas have clearly found it difficult to understand his concern for the divine simplicity: in his Aquinas Lecture Plantinga speaks for many in stating that it is ‘a mysterious doctrine’ which is ‘exceedingly hard to grasp or construe’ and ‘it is difficult to see why anyone should be inclined to accept it’. Not surprisingly, therefore, some of the most widely read twentieth–century commentators on Aquinas have paid little attention to it. Increased interest has recently been shown in it, but a number of discussions pay insufficient attention to the historical context out of which Thomas's interest in the doctrine emerged, and consequently tend to misconstrue its nature.

The Self Before God? Rethinking Augustine's Trinitarian Thought

2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Drever
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Psychological Model ◽  
De Trinitate ◽  
Individual Consciousness ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The Trinity

What is often termed the modern crisis of the Western self—the problems associated with the proto-Cartesian and proto-Kantian conceptions of the self—has given rise to attempts not only to confront the crisis constructively, but also to trace its origin. In one philosophical reading of the development of the crisis in the Western self, Augustine stands as one of its forefathers. In this reading, Augustine's anthropology is anchored firmly within Platonism and is viewed as a key precursor of the tradition leading to the modern, autonomous self of Descartes and Kant. Such a reading often focuses on Augustine's somewhat idiosyncratic self-analysis in Confessionum libri [Conf.] XIII, and points to his so-called psychological model of the Trinity found in De Trinitate [Trin.]. It is argued that his method of inward movement, which involves the utilization of the structures of individual consciousness as an analogy to the immanent Trinity, in conjunction with his analysis of the individual self in Conf., becomes a basic foundation for the modern private, autonomous self.

Henry of Harclay on the Formal Distinction in the Trinity

1981 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 250-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark G. Henninger
Keyword(s):  
The Trinity ◽  
Formal Distinction
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