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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
A number of thinkers in recent decades have argued that, in light of the Trinity, we can see that God's being is communion. Particularly effective was John D. Zizioulas, whose Trinitarian ontology centered on communion. Some skeptical of this claim have invoked Aquinas as a source for countering an ontology of communion. I argue that, while Thomas never explicitly affirms that the divine being is communion, he can give us deep resources for reaching this conclusion. Indeed, he can ultimately lead us towards a divine being which is more thoroughly a matter of communion—and towards an ontology which is more radically Trinitarian—than anything we find in Zizioulas.
1 Trinitarian ontology figured prominently in the thought of such Revivalists as Colin Gunton (see Leung, King-Ho, ‘Transcendentality and the Gift: On Gunton, Milbank, and Trinitarian Metaphysics’, Modern Theology 38 [2022], pp. 81-99CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and John Zizioulas (see Micallef, Jesmond, Trinitarian Ontology: The concept of the person for John D. Zizioulas [Brussels: Domuni Press, 2020Google Scholar]).
2 See Brink, Gijsbert van den, ‘Social Trinitarianism: A Discussion of Some Recent Theological Criticisms’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 16 (2014), pp. 331-350CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sanders, Fred, ‘Redefining progress in Trinitarian theology: Stephen R. Holmes on the Trinity’, Evangelical Quarterly 86 (2014), pp. 6-20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 For an overview of this push towards apophaticism, see Kuiken, E. Jerome van, ‘“Ye Worship Ye Know Not What?” The Apophatic Turn and the Trinity’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 19 (2017), pp. 401-420CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Especially important here is Kilby, Karen, God, Evil, and the Limits of Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2020CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
4 Brooklyn, NY: Anglico Press, 2020.
5 For a summary of the conference, see Fiedler, Eduard, ‘New Trinitarian Ontologies: Approaches to Trinitarian Ontology Represented at the New Trinitarian Ontologies Conference’, Studia Theologica 23 (2021), pp. 101-124CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on the conference, and for more on recent developments around Trinitarian ontologies more generally, see Leung, ‘Transcendentality and the Gift’, 81n.1.
6 They have often developed him a bit in order to do so: see Walker, Adrian J., ‘Personal Singularity and the Communio Personarum: A Creative Development of Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of Esse Commune’, Communio 31 (2004), pp. 457-479Google Scholar; Clarke, Norris, ‘Person, Being, and St. Thomas’, Communio 19 (1992)Google Scholar, especially on pp. 603-609. For a particularly sustained and deep example, see Ulrich, Ferdinand, Homo Abyssus: The Drama of the Question of Being, trans. Schindler, D.C. (Washington, D. C.: Humanum Academic Press, 2018Google Scholar). From within more by-the-book Thomism, see Emery's, Gilles reflections on Aquinas's ‘transcendental multitude’: see Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003), p. 31Google Scholar and The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Murphy, Francesca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 137-141Google Scholar. See also Harris, Joshua Lee, ‘Transcendental Multitude in Aquinas’, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 89 (2015), pp. 109-118CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Aertsen, Jan, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Linden: Brill, 1996), pp. 223-226CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Resources for a Trinitarian ontology also abound in Emery's, La Trinité créatrice: Trinité et création dans les commentaries aux Sentences de Thomas d'Aquin et de ses précurseurs Albert le Grand et Bonaventure (Paris: J. Vrin, 1995)Google Scholar.
7 They often alleged that, for Thomas, being is a ‘philosophical’ matter which is to be handled ‘before’, and without any necessary reference to, the Trinity: see Moltmann, Jürgen, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Kohl, Margaret (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), pp. 16Google Scholar and 190; Gunton, Colin, Being and Act: Towards a Theology of the Divine Attributes (London: SCM Press, 2002), pp. 49-53Google Scholar; Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Theo-Logic II, trans. Walker, Adrian J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), p. 133Google Scholar.
8 Kilby identifies Thomas as a source in ‘Aquinas, the Trinity and the Limits of Understanding’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005), pp. 414-427. Also relevant is Holmes, Stephen R., The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History, and Modernity (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2012), pp. 154-159Google Scholar. Levering, Matthew, whom we will discuss momentarily, discusses this point more directly in Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 197-235Google Scholar.
9 Though we will focus on John Zizioulas, he was far from the only figure to speak of ‘being as communion’. According to Healy, Nicholas J., the same claim runs deep in the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar: see The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Being as Communion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Ratzinger, Joseph speaks in similar terms: see The Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. McCarthy, Mary Frances (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987), pp. 21-23Google Scholar.
10 See Being as Communion (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), especially pp. 36-41 and 49; quoted on p. 44.
11 Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 213. Elsewhere, Zizioulas clarifies that he believes in a single divine essence: see The One and the Many (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2010), pp. 21-22.
12 Chief among these commitments is Zizioulas's tendency to oppose Person to nature, which we will discuss below.
13 Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 228.
14 Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 163. He also speaks of ‘the Trinitarian communion of knowing and loving’ (p. 87) and of ‘the divine communion’ (p. 136).
15 Levering highlights the importance of this logical distinction in Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 213.
16 See Being as Communion, p. 104, along with the dig at ‘Western theology’ on p. 40.
17 Though Gilles Emery never asks whether being is communion in Thomas's Trinity, he draws out a number of ways in which it is bound up with communion. See ‘Qu'est-ce que la “communion trinitaire”?’ Nova et Vetera 89 (2014), pp. 258-283. I will refer to this article repeatedly as I continue.
18 The texts from Zizioulas and Levering on which I will focus here were both written some time ago, and one might object that theology has since moved on. In response, I should mention that Being as Communion exerted a huge influence both on social Trinitarianism and on the Trinitarian Revivals of the twentieth century (see Holmes, The Quest for the Trinity, pp. 12-16 and Coakley, Sarah, ‘Afterward: “Relational Ontology,” Trinity, and Science’, in The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology, ed. Polkinghorne, John [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010], pp. 188-191Google Scholar). Insofar as the influence of both social Trinitarianism and the Trinitarian Revivals continues to be felt, Being as Communion continues to be relevant. Levering, for his part, anticipates the wariness over Trinitarian ontologies which has emerged of late. Yet, more than any of these more recent interventions, Levering speaks directly to the question of ‘being as communion’, and he does so in Thomas's name.
19 As we will see, this correction chiefly concerns Zizioulas's tendency to oppose the divine Persons to the divine nature. This move was hardly unique to Zizioulas. Instead, it ran rampant through the Trinitarian revivals—virtually all of which were emphatically ‘personalist’ and stridently anti-’essentialist’. For some background on this talk of ‘personalism’ and ‘essentialism’ with reference to Aquinas, see Emery, Trinity in Aquinas, pp. 165-208.
20 Levering explores these points in some detail just before denying that the divine being is a communion: see Scripture and Metaphysics, pp. 219-227.
21 Il concetto de communicazione: Saggio de lessicografia filosofica e teologica sul tema di ‘communicare’ in Thommaso d'Aquino (Rome: Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 1998), p. 170. Di Maio makes this same point on pp. 169 and 194. For more on communio in Thomas more generally, see pp. 169-175. Roy J. Deferrari also defines communio as a ‘synonym of communicatio’: see A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1960), p. 179.
22 Di Maio, Il concetto di comunicazione, p. 169. For more on Thomas's use of ‘communis’, see pp. 158-164.
23 I Sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 3; emphasis added here and to all passages from Thomas to follow.
24 For the link between communitas and communis—and hence communio—see Di Maio, Il concetto di comunicazione, pp. 164-168 and 170. Deferrari also links communio and communicatio in A Latin-English Dictionary, p. 179. See also Emery, ‘Qu'est-ce que la “communion trinitaire”?’ pp. 260-261.
25 Thomas's language here might even seem to prove too much. For he associates ‘real community’ so strongly with the divine essence that he seems to remove it from everything else. Real community, that is, seems to have nothing to do with anything created—a claim which would be devastating for a Trinitarian ontology. Elsewhere, however—including in more mature texts—Thomas is clear that, while the unity of the Persons in the divine nature is the greatest possible unity of Persons, this unity finds analogous echoes in human persons’ unity in our common human nature (see in Ioan., #2214). To say that this metaphysical unity of many human beings in a common nature is an analogous echo of the divine Persons’ unity in the divine nature might itself provide fruitful avenues into a Trinitarian ontology.
26 See ST I q. 30, a. 4.
27 In Ioan., #60.
28 ST III q. 3, a. 6.
29 ‘Qu'est-ce que la “communion trinitaire”?’ p. 279.
30 p. 260. Emery makes the same point throughout this essay: see especially pp. 260, 261, 266, 274, 279, 280.
31 See ST I q. 3, a. 4.
32 ST III q. 3, a. 6.
33 In Div. Nom., #127.
34 De Pot., q. 9, a. 6, c.; see also ad 3, 4, and 6, and ST I q. 29, a. 3, ad 4.
35 I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1.
36 We need not enter into the question of Thomas's posture towards Richard of St. Victors's definition of divine personhood as ‘divinae naturae incommunicabilis existentia’ (see ST I q. 29, a. 3, ad 2). For even if Thomas may not unambiguously embrace Richard's definition, he still tightly associates incommunicability with personhood more broadly. See Di Maio, Il concetto di comunicazione, p. 203n.128.
37 ST III q. 3, a. 6.
38 Levering worries that ‘Trinitarian ontology’ might undermine this conceptual distinction in Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 228.
39 Levering raises this concern in Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 213.
40 ST III q. 3, a. 6.
41 In Ioan., #60.
42 See De Pot., q. 10, a. 5, ad 11. Thomas also speaks of the Holy Spirit as the ‘community’ of the Father and the Son in I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 4, ad 1 and Catena en Matthaeum c. 12, l. 9.
43 For more on communion and the Eucharist in Aquinas, see Di Maio, Il concetto di comunicazione, pp. 170-171.
44 ‘Qu'est-ce que la “communion trinitaire”?’ p. 266. Emery makes this point throughout this essay: see pp. 260, 261, 266, and 274-277.
45 See especially De Pot., q. 10, a. 5, ad 11.
46 To clarify, it is not merely because the Father and the Son are really identical to the divine essence that They are communion. Instead, this conclusion holds even insofar as essence and Persons are logically distinct. Simplicity, in other words, demands this conclusion not only because of the real identity of essence and Persons; it does so also because of the real identity between the Persons Themselves and all that They have. Just as, for example, each divine Person is the relation He has towards the others (see ST I q. 40, a. 1), so each is the communion He has with the others.
47 ST I q. 31, a. 2. Thomas makes almost the exact same claim in De Pot., q. 9, a. 8. See also I Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1.
48 A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), p. 31. See also Lumen Gentium 13: ‘Between all the parts of the Church there remains a bond of close communion whereby they share spiritual riches, apostolic workers and temporal resources’ (emphasis added).
49 See The Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 21-23 and The God of Jesus Christ: Meditations of the Triune God, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2008), p. 35. Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI, continued along similar lines during his pontificate: see Caritas in Veritate 54-55.
50 Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2002), p. 41.
51 ‘Vides Trinitatem si Caritatis Vides: Persons in Communion’, Communio 42 (2015), p. 402.
52 Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London: T&T Clark, 2006), p. 5.
53 ST I q. 42, a. 6, ad 3.
54 In Ioan., #2112.
55 For a much fuller articulation of this point, see Michael Joseph Higgins, ‘Giving Perfections, Receiving Perfections: The Essential Divine Attributes in Aquinas's Trinitarian Theology,’ PhD Diss. (The John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family, 2017). For briefer engagements, see Legge, Dominic, The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 111-122Google Scholar; White, Thomas Joseph, ‘Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 18 (2016), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hankey, Wayne, God In Himself (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 130-131Google Scholar; and Emery, , Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), pp. 115-153Google Scholar.
56 De Pot., q. 2, a. 1, ad 13. See also q. 2 a. 5, ad 4 and ad 5; q. 3, a. 15, ad 17; and q. 9, a. 5, ad 23. For more on this language of modus existendi, see Emery, Trinity, Church, and the Human Person, pp. 134-136.
57 ST I q. 39, a. 8.
58 See ST I q. 39, a. 4, ad 3.
59 Levering identifies the dynamic we have alluded to here—that the one divine essence exists as fatherhood in the Father and as sonship in the Son—as ‘the only theologically valid sense in which “Trinitarian ontology” could be understood’ (Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 230). He does not, however, allow this dynamic to soften his rejection of being-as-communion in Thomas's Trinitarian theology.
60 ‘Qu'est-ce que la “communion trinitaire”?’ p. 258.
61 See ST I q. 40, a. 2.
62 For reciprocal knowledge in Thomas's Trinity, see in Ioan., ##1063, 1065, 1149, 1216, 1284, 1398, and 1414. For reciprocal love, see ST I q. 37, a. 2. For more on this point, see Bourassa, François, ‘Personne et conscience en théologie trinitaire’, Gregorianum 55 (1974), pp. 471-493Google Scholar, pp. 677-720 and Gomes, Cirilo Folch, ‘La Réciprocité psychologique des personnes divines selon la théologie de St. Thomas d'Aquin’, Studi tomistici 13 (1983), pp. 153-171Google Scholar. For a more direct engagement with it, see Higgins, , ‘Aquinas on the Role of Another in Perfect Self-Knowledge,’ Modern Theology 38 (2022), 19-35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 See Emery, Trinitarian Theology, pp. 298-311. For more on reciprocal indwelling in Thomas's Trinitarian theology, see Durand, Emmanuel, La Périchorèse des personnes divines (Paris: Cerf, 2005Google Scholar).
64 See ST I q. 42, a. 5.
65 ST I q. 42, a. 5. For more texts that link relation to indwelling, see Emery, Trinitarian Theology, p. 304.
66 Quoted from Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 228.
67 Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 228; emphasis added.
68 Being as Communion, p. 44.
69 Being as Communion, p. 44; emphasis original. Zizioulas contrasts Person to substance all through pp. 36-49. See especially pp. 48-49.
70 See Emery, Trinity in Aquinas, pp. 127 and 190.
71 See Emery, Trinity in Aquinas, pp. 165-208.
72 We find something similar in the passage from Ratzinger we cited above: ‘The mediation of the Father and Son to complete unity is being seen, not in general ontic consubstantiality, but as communion, that is to say, not on the basis of a general metaphysical substance of being, but on the basis of the Persons’ (Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, 41-42). Communion is not ‘ontic’ or ‘metaphysical’; it is personal. As in Zizioulas, it is persons instead of being. Indeed, the logic runs that a unity which was ontic or metaphysical would not be communion. Being is not a matter of communion; it is opposed to communion. It is implicitly defined in un-social terms. That said, Ratzinger elsewhere casts the Persons’ ‘ontic consubstantiality’ (and not merely Their union in the Holy Spirit) in social terms: see Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004) 186-187. Yet the fact that even he periodically succumbed to this temptation to oppose Persons and being gives some indication for how pervasive this trend was.
73 See Scripture and Metaphysics, p. 163.
74 More technically, we could say that Zizioulas is speaking of first substance, whereas Levering is speaking of second substance (see ST I q. 29, a. 1, arg. 2).