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

Appropriation 315
acknowledges that they also designate that which is divine as such, or that
power, wisdom, and goodness are common to the three persons.
Abelard’s response to this drew on the linguistic and grammatical structure
of our statements: ‘Words maintain the same value or bear an equivalent
meaning when they are taken in themselves, but do not retain this value when
put together into a sentence or phrase.’9 So, within the statements we make
about the Triune God, one must distinguish those which touch on the
common identity (the power shared by the three persons), and those which
deal with the distinct property of a person (where we are attributing wisdom
and benevolence personally to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The words
‘power, wisdom, goodness’ can thus contain two diVerent meanings, depending
on the context: the one personal, the other substantial, that is, shared by
all three persons. This conceptual paradigm enabled Abelard to illuminate the
Trinitarian dimension of creation and salvation history: that which deals in
power (such as creation ex nihilo, sending the Son) is attributed to the Father;
what touches on wisdom (such as judging and discerning) is ascribed to the
Son; and we attribute that which belongs to the action of divine grace to the
Holy Spirit.10
Abelard clearly would not dream of attributing to the Father a powerfulness
of essence which is higher than the Son’s, and he also avoids any suspicion of
Sabellianism. He may have Wgured out how to apply the attribute of power in
a way which connects essential power to what would later be called ‘notional’
power (power to beget and power to breathe).11 The Master of Pallet did not
minimize the real distinctness between the divine persons, and he recognizes
that the reasons he puts forward are approximations, drawn from what
creatures can teach us about God, and which could never enable us to
‘comprehend’ the Trinity on any level.12 But the fact remains that Abelard’s
theory was discernibly controlled by his anti-‘tritheist’ polemics, aimed at
Roscelin, that his employment of the triad-formula ‘power—wisdom—
goodness’ is ambiguous, and that its emphasis is therefore on the unity of
the divine substance. Abelard rapidly drew a two-pronged objection: that of
rationalism and that of modalism (that is, distilling the Trinity into the
divine unity).13 Being less up to date with what was original in Abelard’s
work, Bernard of Clairvaux also threw in accusations of Arianism and
9 Ibid., Bk III, ch. I [XI] (CCCM 13, p. 173).
10 Ibid., Bk III, ch. I (CCCM 13, pp. 177–179).
11 S. P. Bonanni, Parlare della Trinità: Lettura della Theologia Scholarium di Abelardo, Rome,
1996, pp. 86–102, 184.
12 Abelard, Theologia Summi Boni, Bk II, ch. III (CCCM 13, pp. 138–139).
13 See the Letter from Roscelin, which accuses Abelard of a kind of Sabellianism (PL 178.
357–372).