On The Trinity by Gilles Emery, O.P.

TH 505 God: One and Three Reverend Romanus Cessario, O.P.

Paul M. Nguyen Congregationis Oblatorum Mariae Virginis May 10, 2013

Nguyen 2 On the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity rests the whole enterprise of the Church in the modern world. Yet, while shamrocks and triangles assist in bringing this doctrine to the flock, careful study yields a wealth of understanding concerning the God who defies comprehension. In his treatise, The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God , Gilles Emery, O.P. presents the doctrine beginning with the data obtained from divine revelation in Scripture, then treats the formulations that arise from the Magisterial work of the Fathers and doctors of the Church, and finally reflects on the mission and economy of the Trinity (19597). The first point Emery makes is that we know of the Trinity exclusively through divine revelation, specifically what is recorded in Sacred Scripture (1). Whereas it is possible to come to know the natural law and the existence of a good, omniscient, uncreated God through reason alone, the Trinity eludes such an investigation. Emery adds that revelation happens through historical events, and that through them, God really gives himself to believers (2). The texts of the liturgy, largely drawn from Sacred Scripture, give an immediate sense of Trinitarian doctrine; broadly, these texts are prayer formulae that invoke the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that express their interrelationships. (In a later chapter, Emery treats credal statements, including those used in the liturgy.) Key New Testament texts, from the Gospels and apostolic orations, illumine more about God than may be gathered from Old Testament texts, which primarily reveal the divine essence simply (21). Throughout the New Testament, the Son reveals His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit: He names the Father, speaks about what He received from (and shares with) the Father and that they are one, and He promises to send (and that the Father will send) the Holy Spirit. Jesus reveals that the Father sent him and that he will return to the Father. His sonship becomes the model for our own, and His teaching draws us into that relationship of sonship of

Nguyen 3 which he is first and superiorly. Emery specifies four dimensions of this filialpaternal relationship: (1) reciprocal knowledge and love; (2) unity of action and power; (3) the reciprocal immanence of the Father and the Son; and (4) that it is in Jesus that we discover what the name Father means (2830). That is, the Father and Son know and love each other, they act together, they are fully in each other (both exhausting the one divine essence), and (negatively) without Jesus, the name Father would remain hidden. In the epistles and Acts, letters and speeches clearly identify Jesus with God and ascribe to Him (with the Father) the work of creation and salvation and His transcendent omniscience, power, and teaching authority (3336). The Gospels proclaim the agency of the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation, illuminating the prophetic, sacerdotal, and royal offices of Jesus; they also show the intimate place of the third person in God at events such as the Annunciation and the Baptism of Jesus (37). Jesus both receives and gives the Spirit. The Gospels and New Testament material also portray the role of the Spirit in the early Church: having been active during Jesus earthly ministry, the Spirit continues to work in the Church, guiding her leaders to continue that same work. Emery concludes this second chapter by demonstrating how the Old Testament shows that they are one God and what may be said concerning Him, chiefly, that I AM who am and that this utterly simple divine being is alive and active, having created the world from nothing and called man to Himself. Emery then takes up credal formulations to discover how the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has expressed her faith in the Triune God. Of chief importance is the normative Niceno Constantinopolitan creed, in which the Church confesses the unity of God and the relations of origin of the Persons precisely. In addition, Emery draws upon the unified composite record of kerygmatic proclamation as confessions of Trinitarian doctrine: the Apostles preaching indicated

Nguyen 4 key truths of belief in the one God who sent His Son and the Holy Spirit into the world to achieve the possibility of salvation for all mankind. Emery reminds readers that early heresies contributed to the development of ever-clearer creeds that answered those heterodox positions that either reduce the divinity of the Son, remove the Father from acting after the Son was sent, separate the action of each Divine Person in the world, or place the entire God into the humanity of the Son such that even the Father died on the cross, to name a few such positions. In the fourth chapter, Emery moves into the magisterial segment of his treatise, exploring the application of technical philosophical language to this doctrine. The Greek terms that became ambiguous were clarified by supplying new and definitive Latin terms, especially consubstantialis and filioque to clarify those respective doctrines about the divine unity and about the procession of the Holy Spirit from both Father and Son. The Second Council of Constantinople proclaimed that the three in God are hypostases () or persons and that they each exhaust one same divine nature (, natura), substance (, substantia), power (, virtus), and authority (, potestas) (83). Emery then breaches the doctrine of subsistent relations, with the assistance of the Cappadocian fathers. He distinguishes that some names define while others are merely privative; the latter applies when God is said to be unbegotten (85). Names may also signify an entitative substance or a relation between entities. Certainly God signifies an entitative substance, the one divine being, but the latter is the case with the personal names of the Three in God: the Father is father of the Son, the Son is son of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from them (both). The philosophical category of relation must be the only means by which the persons in God are distinguished, lest God be actually divided (this would contradict the absolute simplicity of God). The Cappadocian fathers also formulated the Trinitarian doctrine in a comprehensive series of statements of opposition, namely that each

Nguyen 5 person in God is not any other (87). Finally, Emery articulates the teaching of the Fathers that the related divine persons remain within the one divine substance, which they each exhaust; they mutually indwell (89). Emery next takes up the fundamental Trinitarian doctrine, as formulated by the fourth century. This includes aspects already presented, but synthesizes and further clarifies what precedes. The doctrine is marked by three points: (1) the notions of nature (or substance) and person (and the corollary principle that what may be attributed to the nature is attributed to all persons who share it); (2) the immanent generation of the Son; and (3) the unified economy of the persons in God. While much of the discussion thus far has concerned the distinguished persons (and indeed, the very distinctions between them), Emery here presents many aspects of the doctrine concerning the divine essence simply. He mentions the axiomatic phrases God is what God has, and Ipsum esse subsistens to characterize God as utterly simple, pure act, beyond change, and without mixture. Emery next reminds readers that anything said of God must use words from our limited material experience (even our conceptions of goodness and love), speaking analogically, that is, acknowledging that the presence of that trait in God is, in fact, the ultimate, most perfect, and transcendent possession of that trait by which all partial possessions are measured. Emery proceeds to St. Thomas Aquinas, who took up the definition of person provided by Bothius from antiquity (an individual substance of a rational nature) and adapted it to an intellectual hypostasis. Emery points out that this formulation entails three things: (1) individuality (entitative indivisibility); (2) substance (that which exists in itself and not in another); and (3) the faculties of intellect and will. St. Thomas prefers the term intellectual to rational because the former denotes powers of knowing simply while rational denotes

Nguyen 6 discursive reasoning, which defies the simplicity of God. The doctrine of the three persons of the Trinity require that the relations between them be real and not merely logical. Further, the relations must subsist, yielding persons according to the technical definition, while still remaining relations within the actually undivided God. In the fifth chapter, Emery presents the doctrine concerning each person in God. He explores the multivalent meanings of referring to the first as Father, the second as Son, Word, and Image, and the third as Holy Spirit, Love, and Gift. In this investigation, Emery repeatedly explores each as they signify relations between the persons. Of particular interest is the third person by the name Gift. Emery shows (following Aquinas) that the Holy Spirit both gives (as in the gifts of the Holy Spirit) and is given (as the power of God present among men and in the Church). In the final chapter, Emery turns to the economy of the Trinity, noting that the investigation thus far as been a posteriori, from the revelation to men concerning the Trinity, and that in this final chapter, it will be on the order of nature, properly called theology. He discusses the unified action of the Trinity (as the single divine essence, all three persons together), each persons proper modes of acting, and those actions of the Trinity which are customarily appropriated to one person in particular (though all act). The second point is perhaps the most obscure: while the Trinity acts in unison outside itself, the inner dynamics of that divine act preserve the relations of origin between the persons: the Father acts through the Son and in the Holy Spirit (162). Finally, Emery presents the visible and invisible missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Acting together, the Father sent both into the world for the salvation of men; their work continues invisibly on the order of grace, in and through the Church. Thus concludes Emerys treatise of the one God in three divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.