Divine Persons and Notional Acts in the Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas

This article presents a reconstruction of an important but neglected element of the trinitarian theology of Thomas Aquinas: namely, his teaching on the notional acts, the intratrinitarian acts attributed to the Divine Persons, and how they relate to individual Divine Persons. In the process, this article shows that, for Aquinas, and for medieval theologians more generally, although we can distinguish between the Divine Persons and their respective intratrinitarian acts according to our human mode of understanding, each Divine Person is, in reality (literally, in the res, or in the thing), nothing other than a single eternal act. This article also explains how thinking of the Divine Persons as divine acts offers significant resources for contemporary theology and corrects against certain perceived weaknesses of Aquinas’s trinitarian theology and relation-centered accounts of the Trinity more generally.

Virtue Ethics and Action Guidance

Theological ethicists rarely allow the virtues to perform the heavyweight work of guiding action. This article contests this tradition and argues that, and demonstrates how, virtue ethics provides a practicable method of normative action guidance. The article contends that there are five interrelated but distinct modes of virtue action guidance. The first three modes—dialogue, emulation, and substituted judgment—invite the agent to take counsel with moral exemplars. The interrogative and discovery modes direct agents to morally deliberate using thick accounts of the virtues.

Overcoming the “Distance”: Robert Doran as a Bridge between the Trinitarian Analogies of Bernard Lonergan and Hans Urs von Balthasar

Bernard Lonergan and Hans Urs von Balthasar would appear to be worlds apart in their trinitarian theologies. The former championed while the latter eschewed the traditional Western psychological analogy. And yet, Robert Doran’s Lonergan-inflected trinitarian theology presented a revised version of the psychological analogy, drawn from the order of grace. This analogy is in fact isomorphic to Balthasar’s primary eucharistic analogy for the trinitarian processions. Recognizing formal similarity invites a rapprochement between these two theologies and a call for a renewal of boldness in speculative theology.

Did Christ Have a Conscience? Revisiting the Debates on Christ’s (Un)Fallen Humanity

This article draws on the Dutch neo-Calvinist dogmatician Herman Bavinck’s notion of conscience to explore the question of whether Christ’s assumed humanity is fallen or unfallen. It will demonstrate that, for Bavinck, Christ’s conscience was silent and did not accuse or exonerate him according to the moral law (the word of God) as occurs in the postlapsarian conscience. Such a unique conscience reflects the unfallenness of Christ’s humanity and his impeccability. Moreover, Christ’s impeccability is concomitant with Christ’s permanent response to God’s word in faith. This suggests that in the eschaton, the human conscience will become silent in a faithful trust in the word of God.