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

Trinitarian Creation and Action 343
2. THE ‘EFFICACY’ OF THE TRINITARIAN PROCESSIONS
In his Wrst theological synthesis, the Commentary or Writing on the Sentences,
Thomas formulated this central idea: ‘the eternal processions are the cause
and the rationale (causa et ratio) of the making of creatures’.14 The words
cause and rationale are rounded out with other terms in order to pin down the
Trinitarian ground of creation. The procession of the persons is the origin,15
the principle,16 and the exemplar17 of the procession of creatures. This aYrmation
is put forward as a theological exegesis of the biblical texts concerning
the action of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The idea is not peripheral. One
comes upon it nearly twenty times in Thomas’ works, either in the same
words18 or in formulae contiguous to them: ‘the temporal procession of
creatures derives from the eternal procession of the persons’;19 ‘the coming
out of the persons in their unity of nature is the cause of the coming out of
creatures in their diverse nature’.20
Thomas could have learned this thesis from his teacher, Albert the Great,
who formulated it in his commentary on the Sentences.21 It is also obviously
inspired by Bonaventure who, without using precisely these words, also
taught that the processions of the Son and Holy Spirit have a causality and
exemplarity in relation to creation: the reason for the ‘extrinsic diVusion’ of
created goodness is the ‘intrinsic diVusion’ of the sovereign Good within
the divine persons, in the way that the primary reality is the cause of all
the secondary things which derive from it. But the creative causality of the
Trinitarian processions held far more meaning for Thomas than it had for
Albert or Bonaventure: it is as if the character of his theology were shaped by
its systematic mining of this thesis.22
When it is addressed to the divine creative act, Thomas calls the causal
function of the Trinitarian processions the ‘order of creation’.23 An order is
made up of a particular way in which things are related to a principle. It
involves three elements.24 In relation to the created order, these are: Wrst, an
14 I Sent. d. 14, q. 1, a. 1. 15 I Sent. d. 32, q. 1, a. 3. 16 I Sent. d. 35, div. text.
17 I Sent. d. 29, q. 1, a. 2, qla 2; De potentia, q. 10, a. 2, sed contra 2.
18 I Sent. d. 10, q. 1, a. 1; I Sent. d. 14, q. 2, a. 2; I Sent. d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2; I Sent. d. 27, q. 2,
a. 3, ad 6; De potentia, q. 10, a. 2, arg. 19 and ad 19; ST I, q. 45, a. 6, sol. and ad 1; q. 45, a. 7, ad 3.
19 Sent., prol.; Super Boetium de Trinitate, prol.
20 I Sent. d. 2, div. text.
21 Albert, I Sent. d. 20, a. 3, sed contra; I Sent. d. 29, a. 2, sed contra 2.
22 We examine this at length in La Trinité créatrice, and more brieXy in ‘Trinité et création. Le
principe trinitaire de la création dans les commentaires d’Albert le Grand, de Bonaventure et de
Thomas d’Aquin sur les Sentences’, RSPT 79 (1995), 405–430.
23 Thomas Aquinas, General Prologue to the Commentary on the Sentences.
24 I Sent. d. 20, q. 1, a. 3, qla 1; cf. ST I, q. 42, a. 3.