The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas - El Camino ...

Trinitarian Monotheism 139
In the Sentences, Peter Lombard still thinks of the terms for number and
quantity as being closely connected. ‘When we say three persons, the number
three does not aYrm either numerical quantity nor any diversity within God.’
For this reason, the Lombard ascribes a purely negative meaning to the
‘numbers’ we use in speaking of God, as in one, two, three persons. The phrase,
‘one Father’ is used to exclude the idea that there are many Fathers. The
expression ‘one God’ rules out a plurality of gods. The phrase ‘many persons’
or ‘three persons’ excludes the idea of God as one single, solitary person (that is,
Sabellianism). When we say ‘the Father and the Son are two persons’, we mean
that the Father is not the only person within God, that neither is the Son the
only person, and that the Father is not the Son—and so on.55 How can one
make positive aYrmations about there being ‘number’ in God without fragmenting
the divine unity?
Much nearer to Thomas, the Summa of Alexander of Hales explains that,
‘in the divine persons, there is no number in an absolute (simpliciter) sense,
and nor can one properly speak of there being so’, for that would entail a
diversity of substances: there is no ‘number’ in the quantitative sense, but
there is just a ‘certain number’ of persons at least to the extent that one person
is distinguished from another as to origin.56 Albert the Great provides a more
detailed consideration, one which distinguishes several kinds of ‘numbers’.
The important step is his acknowledgement that, ‘in a certain way’ one can
positively aYrm that there is a number in God, in relation to the personal
distinctions which come about through the properties of origin.57 On the
matter of divine unity, Albert has also thought through why one should notice
the diVerence between ‘one’ as a numerical principle, (relating to number as
quantity) and the ‘one which is convertible with being’ (relating to the
oneness which every being has).58 BeneWting from Albert’s analysis, Thomas
excludes quantitative, numerical manyness from God but recognizes that
there is in God a transcendental ‘multiplicity’. He takes up this approach in
his Commentary on the Sentences (and thus in his tenth Quodlibet), and then,
in a more developed way, in the Questions De potentia and in the Summa
theologiae.59
Like St Albert, Thomas sets aside the reply to the question made by the Master
of the Sentences. In attributing a merely negative function to the numerical terms
in our language for God, Peter Lombard only took into account the connection
55 Peter Lombard, Sentences, Book I, dist. 24 (vol. I/2, pp. 187–189).
56 Summa Fratris Alexandri, Book I (ed. Quaracchi, vol. 1, nos. 313–316).
57 Albert, I Sent. d. 24, a. 1.
58 Albert, I Sent. d. 24, a. 3.
59 De potentia, q.9,a.7;ST I, q. 30, a. 3; cf. I Sent. d. 24, q. 1, a. 4; Quodlibet X, q. 1, a. 1.