Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham

by Russell L. Friedman

• ISBN13: 9780521117142
• ISBN10: 0521117143
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

How can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be distinct and yet identical? Prompted by the doctrine of the divine Trinity, this question sparked centuries of lively debate. In the current context of renewed interest in Trinitarian theology, Russell L. Friedman provides the first survey of the scholastic discussion of the Trinity in the 100-year period stretching from Thomas Aquinas' earliest works to William Ockham's death. Tracing two central issues - the attempt to explain how the three persons are distinct from each other but identical as God, and the application to the Trinity of a 'psychological model', on which the Son is a mental word or concept, and the Holy Spirit is love - this volume offers a broad overview of Trinitarian thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, along with focused studies of the Trinitarian ideas of many of the period's most important theologians.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
List of symbols, abbreviations, and conventions	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Trinity and the Aristotelian categories: different ways of explaining identity and distinction	p. 5
Background, and the relation account	p. 6
The emanation account and the foundations of the trinitarian traditions	p. 15
Emerging trinitarian traditions in the late thirteenth century: the case of John Pecham	p. 30
Henry of Ghent and the rejection of the relation account	p. 45
The Trinity and human psychology: "In the beginning was the Word"	p. 50
The psychological model of the Trinity and its proper interpretation	p. 52
Concept theory and trinitarian theology	p. 75
The Trinity and metaphysics: the formal distinction, divine simplicity, and the psychological model	p. 94
The divine attributes, the search for simplicity, and the possibility of trinitarian explanation	p. 94
Peter Auriol	p. 113
Francis of Marchia	p. 120
William Ockham	p. 124
The Trinity, divine simplicity, and fideism-or: was Gilson right about the fourteenth century after all?	p. 133
Fideism, Praepositinianism, and the debate over personal constitution	p. 133
Walter Chatton	p. 146
Robert Holcot	p. 155
Gregory of Rimini	p. 158
Appendix: major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies	p. 171
Bibliography of primary sources	p. 174
Annotated bibliography of selected secondary literature	p. 178
Index	p. 187
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