Aquinas, the Trinity and the limits of understanding

Abstract

In this paper I will offer a reading of certain aspects of the thought of Thomas Aquinas on the doctrine of the Trinity—in particular, a reading of some of the more technical elements of Thomas’s treatment, of things he has to say about processions, relations, and about the persons of the Trinity in relation to the divine essence. I will propose that at least some of what Thomas lays out here is best understood (or at the very least that it can be understood) in terms of theology reaching its limits, in terms, to put it very bluntly, of the dead-ends of theology. At various stages Thomas proposes things, I shall argue, that we cannot possibly grasp or make sense of, and if we suppose Thomas to be someone from whom we can learn, we should perhaps neither skip lightly past these elements in his thought, nor try to persuade ourselves that if we strain and squint hard enough we can just about see what he means. We should at least consider the possibility that one of the things to learn from Thomas can be learned precisely from the way in which he is content to present us, at times, with proposals which neither he nor we can grasp. My aim, then, is to look to Thomas to explore something about the limits of theology, and about the way we ought to conduct ourselves in the presence of that which we cannot grasp. 1 To begin with, however, a little about the context in which this reading of Thomas takes place. Much has been written in the last few years on the Trinity in Aquinas, and much of this has been written with the aim of rehabilitating Thomas and so rediscovering the value of his Trinitarian thought. The need for this rehabilitation stems from the fact that, in the broader revival of Trinitarian theology over the last 40 years or so, Aquinas has often been presented as a classic example of thinking about the Trinity gone wrong, Trinitarian theology done in such a way as to make the doctrine seem sterile, confusing and irrelevant. To provide a context for my own proposal, then, I need first to lay out what have become common criticisms of Aquinas, and then to say a little about the various renewed readings of Thomas which have called these criticisms into question.