Faith and Reason: Aspects of Philosophical Trinitarianism in

Aquinas and Bonaventure

Philosophical theology owes a good deal to the seminal works of high Scholasticism’s
two most important theologians, Saints Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1221-1274) and
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Studies of these two Masters of Theology who held
chairs at the University of Paris have predominantly focused on comparisons and
contrasts between the Franciscan and Dominican approaches to the perennial question
of faith, reason and philosophy’s place in theology. In this essay I attempt to narrow
the problem of faith and reason down to the relationship between each of their
scientific, philosophical methods and what is fundamentally unattainable without
faith, the doctrine of the unity and trinity of God in Christian theology.
Unquestionably the Franciscan and the Dominican both approached the doctrine and
study of Trinitarian theology on the basis of Christian faith and divine revelation.
Nevertheless both exhibited an unparalleled confidence in the capacity of reason and
philosophy to explain and defend the Church’s doctrine, albeit with marked
differences that were of enormous significance for the development of Scholastic
theology. In Bonaventure we find a strong use of philosophical reason and theology in
his Quaestiones disputatae de mysterio Trinitatis (1255), the Breviloquium (1257), the
Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259) and finally the Collationes in Hexaemeron (1274),
all the works upon which this study is based. 1 We turn to Thomas’ early work, the
Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, (his commentary on Boethius’ De
Trinitate., c. 1256-1259), and also to some of his mature works, De potentia and the

Summa theologiae for an understanding of the Dominican’s philosophical

Trinitarianism.2 An important way to critically evaluate the relationship between faith
and reason in these two theologians is to consider how each found ‘evidence’ for the
Trinity in the world of created things. We will also examine the issue of ‘necessary
reasons’ for the Trinity in both, and to attempt an overall view of the connection
between the Trinitarian processions in God and creation.
The Philosophical Trinitarianism of St. Bonaventure

In his most systematic treatise, the Breviloquium, Bonaventure describes theology as

the only perfect science and also “the only perfect wisdom, for it begins with the
supreme cause as the principle of all things that are caused – the very point at which
philosophical knowledge ends.”3 Yet, metaphysics, or the study of the most
fundamental concepts of being and essence, is for the seraphic doctor the first science
from which all enquiry must begin, being as it is the first principle, center and goal of
existence.4 Against the secondary literature that would construe a Bonaventure in
terms of an opposition to Aquinas, or to philosophy per se for that matter, or who
label his outlook a “mystical” theology that treats philosophy as a mere adjunct to
theology, this distinction just quoted needs to be taken into account.5 The implication
of Bonaventure’s own words is that philosophy and theology are indeed two distinct
sciences. In this same context Bonaventure describes theology as the science that
makes “the body of faith intelligible,” 6––the task he sets out to accomplish in the
Breviloquium. Quoting St. Augustine, he gives the following reason: “what we
believe we owe to authority, what we understand to reason.” The intelligibility of
Christian doctrine therefore depends on understanding that which has been revealed
by authority––by means of reason. The philosopher or metaphysician is able to rise to
a consideration of the very notion of being from created and particular substances, but
cannot attain to the notion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 7 For Bonaventure, the
metaphysician is only a true metaphysician when he considers being in the light of
that principle which is the exemplary cause of all things. Otherwise his philosophy
remains at the level of physical science or ethics. Christ is not only the centre of
theology, but of the natural or philosophical sciences too: “He Himself is the central
point of all understanding.”8 There is an intentional circularity to the logic of
Bonaventure: If we begin with the first science, metaphysics, first “by reason of
eternal generation,” we can pass through all other sciences to culminate in theology,
the seventh science. “The rational spirit, which emanates from the most blessed trinity
and is a likeness of the trinity, should return after the manner of a certain intelligible
circle...to the most blessed trinity by God-conforming glory.”9
It is possible to take Bonaventure’s metaphor of a book to conceptualize the twins of
faith and reason or theology and philosophy: the “Book of Scripture” would
correspond to faith and theology and the “Book of Creation” to reason and
philosophy. Though we need to be careful in making clear-cut divisions between
them, for though there is a relative autonomy between philosophy and theology in the
writings of Bonaventure, both domains have a single origin in the Trinity of Persons,
and in particular reason is attributed to the Word as Exemplar. So both books must be
taken together as foundations upon which to base belief in the Trinity. 10 While
theology and philosophy are distinct disciplines, they are not separate, unrelated
sciences. A third book he describes is the “Book of Life,” and this corresponds to the
ultimate goal or end of philosophy and theology, that is, mystical “union with Him
who is above all essence and all knowledge.”

The Book of Creation

In the “first book”, the book of creation, we read of the perceptible world of sensory
knowledge and natural things, the natural sciences and philosophy. In his Disputed
Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, Bonaventure says that in the pre-lapsarian
state of humanity, the first book was an efficacious light that bore witness to God as
Trinity. The created world is a kind of book reflecting its Maker, the Trinity at three
levels of expression: vestige, image and likeness. Vestiges (vestigia: footprints) mirror
God as their single origin in that they have their own unique existence (esse), and
therefore speak to the reader of a threefold efficient, exemplary and final causality.
God is the principle, exemplary form and final end or goal of all things that exist.
Vestiges give witness to the Trinity, but only from afar. However much vestiges
mirror their originating cause, the dissimilarity is always greater. They are unlike the
unity, simultaneity, fullness, equality, and substantiality of the Triune God. Because
vestiges imply production and hence an originating principle, they are divine words
expressing and bearing a trace of the Divine Exemplar, the Word through whom all
things are created.

The second level of expression, the image, is a distinct nature which bears a closer
resemblance of its Creator than the vestige in that it mirrors God through the faculties
of memory, intelligence and will. The image ‘grasps’ not only the created essences
below it in the hierarchy of created beings, but “even the creating essence,” above it.
(Here Bonaventure differs from St Thomas). Like a mirror, the image receives and
represents within itself all things.16 The threefold imagery of memory, intelligence and
will analogically reflects the Trinitarian Persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In
human beings, who through intellectual judgment are able to form images, generate
thought, and a likeness of themselves, the book of creation becomes a mirror in which
is reflected “the eternal generation of the Word, the Image and the Son, eternally
emanating from the Father.”17

The Book of Scripture

The Seraphic Doctor uses the metaphor of the book of Scripture to illustrate what
today approximates with faith, revelation and theology. While “Scripture” was the
term Bonaventure often used when he wanted to speak of theology or Christian
doctrine, it should be noted that this did not mean that divine revelation was equated
with the literal reading of the Scriptures. 18 Theology involved a study of the
foundational literal sense onto which was built three further spiritual meanings: the
moral, the anagogical and the allegorical interpretations of Scripture. 19 Just as the
literal meaning is foundational for the theological, so reason is foundational for good
theology.

According to Bonaventure, a need arises for the book of Scripture due to the fall of
humanity into the “darkness of ignorance” and the loss of the “eye of contemplation.”
This book had been written “in accord with the divine revelation which has never
been deficient nor absent from the beginning of the world to the end,” and which
spreads the light of a more efficacious testimony that God is Trinity. 20 With this
universal disclosure of knowledge Bonaventure shows great confidence in the role of
reason in the pre-lapsarian state of humanity. It also manifests the unity of
Bonaventure’s thought on the roles of revelation and reason. But even as Bonaventure
argues that humankind may arrive at knowledge of God through creatures by the
natural light of reason, he nevertheless draws the line and clearly states that it is not
possible for man to come to knowledge of the Trinity of Persons in the One Divine
Essence through creatures: The plurality of persons [together] with unity of essence is
proper to the divine nature alone, the like of which cannot be found in creatures, nor may it
be found, nor thought of rationally: for that reason in no manner is the Trinity of the Persons
cognizable through a creature, by ascending rationally from the creature into God.

That there is a threefold plurality of the one Divine Essence can only be known by
revelation of the Word Incarnate. Bonaventure illustrates this in his Itinerarium with
the analogy of the two cherubim in the Temple sanctuary. By them “we understand
the two kinds or grades (duos modos seu gradus) of contemplation of the invisible and
eternal things of God: the first considers the essential attributes of God; the second,
the proper attributes of the three Persons.” 23 The structure of Bonaventure’s thought is
similar to that of Aquinas’ description of Divine oneness and threeness as what is
essential and what is proper to God, but where the Franciscan differs is in associating
the proper attributes with the diffusion of goodness in God. As he explains, St John
Damascene, following the example of Moses who proclaims the Unity of God in the
Old Testament, taught that the more proper name of God is ‘He Who Is,’ i.e., Being
Itself (cf. Ex 3:14). However, it takes a further step to acknowledge God principally as
Good and therefore as the Trinity. For Dionysius considered God’s name to be more
properly Goodness and he followed the example of Christ who attributed exclusively
to God the name Good (Lk 18:19) and revealed the plurality of God in the New
Testament.24

God as subsistent being (He Who Is) may be grasped by the philosopher, yet even this
is only discoverable along the soul’s journey “with the High Priest into the Holy of
Holies.” This means that it is only those who are practiced in the way of
contemplation, of seeing God ‘above’––and not only ‘outside’ in his vestiges or even
‘within’ in his image––who can approach this level of knowledge. And yet to see God
as He Who Is is manifestly not at the same level as contemplating God under the
aspect of goodness and the plurality of Persons. This takes a further step (gradus).
The soul still needs to be raised from the consideration of God according to His
essential attributes to “the contuition” of God as Pure Goodness also. Here it is not as
evident in Bonaventure as it is in Aquinas that there is such a clear demarcation
between the orders of faith and reason. Just as God’s unity and his triunity are not two
‘things’, so reason and faith for Bonaventure are not so distinct that each be
selfcontained. There is an equality represented in the two cherubim facing one another
in the sanctuary, but it would seem that the inequality arises according to the
conceptual order of the knower, who needs to rise from lower to higher knowledge
through the light of Scripture.

Upon reaching the heights of contemplating the communicability and diffusion of the
Good through the Trinitarian manifestations, Bonaventure would have us take a step
back in awe: “But when you contemplate these things, take care that you do not think
you can understand the incomprehensible.” It is only through the paradoxical
coincidence of opposites, the “dialectics of dissimilarity” that the finite human
creature can understand something of the mystery of the infinite God. This applies
just as much to the knowledge of the essential attributes of God. “If ‘God’ is the name
of the being that is first, eternal, most simple, most actual, and most perfect, such a
being cannot be thought not to be, nor can it be thought to be other than one.” We
may come to know of the supreme Being through its opposite, for most pure being
cannot come to our mind except “with the full flight on non-being.” We cannot grasp
nothingness (or the non-accompaniment of being) without therefore also
acknowledging pure being having nothing of non-being, both in reality and in our
thinking of it. For Bonaventure, human knowledge does not depend solely on the
active intellect’s abstractions from sensible likenesses, but also on an intuitive grasp
of Divine Being. Though he does not claim that we are conscious of this reality. We
come to contemplate this only when we transcend our normal ‘phantasmal,’ or
imaginative ways of thinking. Just as the eye sees nothing, or rather is blinded when
looking at the sun, so the mind does not grasp Pure Being even though it is pure Being
that first comes to the mind and through which all other beings are grasped.

To sum up, Bonaventure uses the philosophical tools at his disposal to develop his
analogies of God’s relation to creation expressed in the characteristically symbolic
language ‘vestige,’ ‘image,’ and ‘likeness’ of the Latin Middle Ages to demonstrate
the unknowability of the Divine Trinity. He shows what the human mind cannot know
if only in order that it might recognize its own inability and thereby seek that which is
infinitely more simple, perfect, powerful, wise and good. The darkening of the
intellect is an apophatic means of intuiting an even more splendid Light to be sought
and loved. “This very darkness is in fact the supreme illumination of our mind.” His
confidence in reason together with his understanding of the limits of the mind in
respect of the Infinite, and his modesty in regard to what we can grasp of Trinitarian
revelation, are critical to understanding the relationship between faith and reason in
the Seraphic Doctor. As Denys Turner so ably summarizes, reason is a point of entry
into the ‘darkness of God,’ “just as the human nature of Christ is, as Bonaventure tells
us, a transitus into the Deus absconditus of Christian faith.”

The role of necessary reasons in Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas

The relationship between Bonaventure’s theology and philosophy has often been
studied by way of contrast with the more dominant Thomistic thought of Catholic
theology, and has therefore also been interpreted in terms of St. Thomas. In his
Trinitarian theology, Bonaventure’s daring use of the so-called ‘necessary reasons’ for
plurality within the One Divine Essence has been one such area of discussion, recently
in the work of Gilles Emery, O.P. Emery’s summary of the Scholastic treatment of
God’s Oneness and Threeness in these two Scholastic theologians is focused on
necessary reasons as constituting the principle difference between the two. In fact he
claims that Bonaventure “go[es] from oneness to the affirmation of the Trinity” by
means of necessary reasons. Further, he argues that Bonaventure’s Trinitarian
theology does not limit itself to establishing the non-contradiction or harmony
between oneness and threeness (to which Aquinas restricts his study), but that the
very aim of Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity functions
as a “disenvelopment” of Threeness from Oneness “using the resources of reason,”
i.e., necessary reasons. Emery’s elaboration on Bonaventure’s true purpose needs to
be weighed against the Franciscan’s conviction that the reasonableness of the Trinity
is rooted in his taking it on faith that God is what he is necessarily, and that there must
therefore be necessary and rational reasons for who He is––apart from our making
sense of the fact that in Bonaventure’s mind there is an obligation imposed by the
Gospel itself and that this does not itself run counter to reason. There must be a
necessary relation between the unity of God’s essence and the Trinity of Divine
Persons, even if we cannot know this philosophically. We can however think about it
with the light of revelation and “by intelligence lifted up by faith.” Indeed, there is no
possibility, even in Bonaventure’s confidence in humanity’s pre-lapsarian ability, that
humankind ever possessed knowledge of God as a Trinity of Persons without the
preordained and guiding hand of revelation. As we saw, Bonaventure understood
Divine revelation to be present to humanity “from the beginning of the world.” Yet, to
believe in the Trinity is a “truth beyond reason.” No matter how much Bonaventure
speculates as to necessary reasons for generation and procession in the Godhead, this
is always subject to the presuppositions of revealed faith, and they are not, strictly
speaking, the kind of demonstrable arguments that Aquinas taught should never and
cannot be used to ‘prove’ the Trinity.

The only reasons Aquinas would allow were the so-called “adaptations” or “probable
arguments”, which are arguments capable of showing that what is proposed to faith is
not unreasonable or impossible. All that the so-called necessary reasons really amount
to in Thomas’ thought are probable arguments that do not have the force of necessity.
To attempt to prove that God is a Trinity by natural reason is to derogate from the
dignity of faith. For, as Thomas says, the Catholic faith is firstly concerned with
invisible realities that do not come under the sway of human reason, mysteries that are
in fact hidden or veiled. The only way we may use such arguments in Trinitarian
theology is to show that the presuppositions of the faith are not incongruous or
unreasonable, and to bolster the faith against attacks. But these cannot be considered
to be adequate proofs. To ‘prove’ supernatural realities by means of natural reasons is
to give unbelievers the impression that we believe because of reasons that in fact are
not cogent or simply unconvincing.

Aquinas outlines two kinds of reasoning by which we investigate matters human or

divine. One is demonstrative, the syllogistic argument based on premises and
conclusion and which necessarily compels the mind’s assent. St Thomas is clear that
matters of faith cannot be demonstratively proved in this way, for faith must be
voluntary. The best necessary reasons and demonstrative arguments can offer is to
show that belief in the Trinity is not impossible. And though the matters of faith
cannot be demonstratively proved, “neither can they be demonstratively disproved.”
The second kind of reasoning is persuasive. Only this kind of argument can fall within
the scope of faith and sacra doctrina in the hope of persuading the truth of faith to the
doubtful or unbelievers. Persuasive reason draws on analogies to confirm the truths of
faith, and this goes to show a further reason why necessary or demonstrative
arguments cannot be legitimately used to ‘prove’ the Trinity: doing so would make
the argument about God depend on creatures, the conclusion would be made subject
to analogies (and therefore in terms of premises that refer principally to created
things). This would be a kind of natural theology in which God and creation are
univocally predicated, thereby reducing the mysteries of faith to the mere shadows of
philosophy reason. That would therefore not be knowledge of the God of Christian
theology.

For Bonaventure the obligation to believe in what cannot be known without the
authority of revelation is that which is mediated in the so-called book of Scripture,
which bears witness to the truth that God is a Trinity, especially in the sacraments and
teaching of the New Testament. “This testimony is so express and efficacious that it
renders this truth not only credible –– i.e. congruous for belief –– but necessary as
well, since it obliges us and constrains us to believe it.” Bonaventure’s necessary
reasons must therefore be seen within the context of faith seeking understanding: that
contemplating God in the “highest and most reverent way” necessitates us to think
that he both understands Himself and wills His Goodness. Nevertheless this reasoning
is not dictated by the innate light itself, but by the infused light from which ––together with
the natural light –– one concludes that God is to be thought of as one who generates and
spirates one co-equal to and consubstantial with Himself, and thus one thinks of God in the
highest and most reverent way.

To think of God in the highest and most reverent way for Bonaventure is a fruit of the
meeting of faith and reason. It is faith that moves us to think of God in the most
elevated and loving way, in this way affecting our natural reason to think at a higher
level to believe that God communicates himself in the most complete way, and it
would not be most loving if, believing him so able, we thought him unwilling to do so...faith
tells us that God totally communicates himself by eternally having a beloved and another
who is loved by both. In this way God is both one and three.45

The necessary reasons in the Disputed Questions are not therefore a derivation of
threeness from oneness as Emery claims ––just as they are not so in Aquinas––but are
the fruit of Bonaventure’s thinking on the close interrelation of being and goodness.
The structure of essential attributes juxtaposed alongside the personal plurality in God
in chapter 5 of the Itinerarium (symbolized by the two cherubim) is consistent with
the literary structure of the Disputed Questions. In the latter, the first seven questions
are divided into two articles each, the first article dealing with God in his essential
attributes, and the second with the distinction of the Persons. The final and eighth
question of the work does not distinguish these two aspects of the doctrine separately.
Instead it brings the essential attribute of primacy and personal properties together as a
distinct synthesis. The Christian doctrines of the Trinity and non-eternity and
nonnecessity of Creation are all expressed sympathetically in terms of the resources of
thirteenth century philosophy: the Aristotelian principle of the two modes of
procession by way of nature and will and the neo-Platonic emanation of the One (the
threefold perfection, fontality and fecundity in the one God). So the Father is
described as the original fontal principle of the common fontality of both Trinitarian
inner, necessary life and God’s temporal, creative action. Such a view emphasizes the
single origin of both theology and philosophy, faith and reason. The plurality of the
Trinitarian Persons remains underivable by means of reason alone, but the articulation
of the Dionysian and Victorine self-diffusive goodness and charity in God as
supremely communicable is a flowering of the seed of reason in the light of
revelation’s gift. If for Bonaventure created reality is not properly intelligible without
the philosopher being informed by theological understanding, then, as Gregory
LaNave put it, “created reality is intelligible not in terms of the divine work ad extra,
but in terms of the law of God’s very being. Because God is supremely
selfcommunicative within himself, the world is intelligible. The logic of the Trinity is
the explanation of being itself. The Word is the basis for all that is.”

St Thomas Aquinas and Philosophical Trinitarianism

Like Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas held that it is impossible to attain knowledge
of the Triune God by natural reason. Perfect knowledge of “the unity and trinity of the
one God” can only occur “in the life to come” through divine grace and not by
anything due to our nature. Nevertheless, incomprehension does not entail
unintelligibility. Faith provides the presuppositions needed to acquire knowledge of
the Trinity “at the beginning of our belief,” just as the beginner in natural science also
needs to believe certain principles on the authority of a teacher. For Thomas, we study
the Church’s Trinitarian doctrine without the presumption of understanding it, in
order to defend the faith against error, and to show that belief in the Trinity is
reasonably thinkable. That there can be no necessary reasons to demonstrate or prove
matters of faith also means no arguments against the faith are compelling. It is
possible, albeit difficult, to attain to the knowledge of God’s existence without the aid
of faith, though entirely impossible to know the Triune God by reason alone.

The structure of Thomas’ analysis of God reflects a faith-based, Christian philosophy

informed by that which reason could not possibly know without the divine
transformation of nature and reason in the ascent of a return (reditus) to God.
Aquinas discusses what is common in God, that is, the essential divine attributes (de
deo uno) and then moves on to what is proper, the Trinitarian processions (de deo
trino). The relationship between God and creation is one of the important fruits of the
framework of exitus and reditus, especially in the Summa theologiae. This conceptual
relationship between the one divine essence and the three divine persons forms a
consistent and lucid pattern, contributing to an intricate and innovative synthesis of
the Church’s ancient teaching with the resources of reason and philosophy. Not less
important is Thomas’ study of the Trinitarian dogma in one of his early (though
incomplete) works, the Expositio of Boethius’ De Trinitate.50

Here he expresses that which human reason is capable of knowing, i.e., that God
exists, but that it is incapable of grasping God’s essence. We can know that God exists
as First Cause and as Being itself. Creatures lead to an analogical knowledge of their
Creator as effects lead to their cause. For “human reason in the development of its
natural knowledge must advance from things that are posterior to those that are prior,
and from creatures to God.” Through the light of natural reason obtained through the
senses, the mind can grasp that he is one, that his essential attributes are simplicity,
perfection, goodness, infinity, immutability, eternity, and unity. Here we see that
natural reason can only reduce created effects to a single principle or cause.
Therefore, according to Thomas, the power of creation ex nihilo is common to the one
Divine Essence rather than proper to the Persons. Because divine creative causality
belongs to the whole Trinity, it is the Unity only, and therefore not the Trinity of
Persons that may be knowable to us by divine causality.

Responding to a question in the Expositio, “Can the human mind arrive at a

knowledge of God?” Thomas replies: God is known only through the form of his effect.
Now effects are of two kinds. One is equal to the power of its cause, and through an effect of
this sort the power––and consequently the essence––of the cause is fully known. The other
effect falls short of the above-mentioned equality, and through such an effect the power of
the agent cannot be fully grasped and consequently neither can its essence: we can only know
that the cause exists (quod est). And so knowledge of the effect functions as the principle of
knowing that a cause exists (an est), as the essence of the cause itself does when it is known
through its form. Now all effects stand in this relation to God. It follows that in the present
life we can only come to know that he exists (quia est).

In the first effect by which God is known as Aquinas describes it, we can assume that
the knowledge that is equal to the power of its cause, and known through the form of
its essence, is the Wisdom that proceeds from the Father’s perfect knowledge, the
Word who is of the same nature as the Father. Because God’s essence transcends
every created form, it is unknowable to the finite human mind without participation in
God through the illumination of faith and the gifts of wisdom and understanding, the
strengthening of the creature’s own natural light. Thomas concludes further on in the
reply that the creature “is not competent to penetrate to a vision of his essence.”
Reason demonstrates that it cannot know, and in that unknowing reason is said to
transcend it own natural limits, thereby becoming intellect (intellectus), which is a
participation in the divine light of truth. If God is hardly known in his essence, how
much less must he be known in the inner, personal life of the relations of knowledge
and will, those powers by which the human intellect apprehends an analogy of the
Trinity within itself, in whose image it is created.

Aquinas’ apophatic understanding of God gives us further reason to argue that it is

impossible to conceive of the Trinity by deriving the doctrine of the plurality of
persons from the divine unity and essential attributes. Aquinas’ treatment of the
essential attributes of God is not an account of the One God as distinct from God as
Three. Gilles Emery argues that “this thesis, too little known even today, constitutes
one of the absolutely fundamental traits of St Thomas’s Trinitarian theology.” That
God is one and three is a truth that can only be attained through believing the
authority of divine revelation. Nevertheless, “the method used in treating of the
Trinity is twofold, as Augustine says: authority and reason.” For the authority of
revelation for Aquinas is not an imposition on human reason. Faith cannot be contrary
to nature. Just as grace does not destroy nature, but rather perfects it, so nature is a
“preamble” to grace and reason the preamble to faith. Both reason and faith are from
God and since “what is imperfect bears a resemblance to what is perfect, what we
know by natural reason has some likeness to what is taught to us by faith.” It is
impossible for the light of reason to be contrary to the light of faith, though natural
reason and philosophy fall short of faith and theology. Therefore, a philosophy that
contradicts the contents of faith is simply bad philosophy or the result of faulty
reasoning.

Relation or Emanation

One of the most important and original insights into the link between Trinitarian faith
and reason in Aquinas is that of the concept of relation in God. Aquinas had adopted
St. Anselm of Canterbury’s rule that “in God all is unity except where there is
opposition of relations,” and made the opposition of relations the principle of
Trinitarian distinction. (This contrasts with Bonaventure as representative of the
Franciscan school that would emphasize the Father as ‘fontal plenitude’ and origin of
emanation). Aquinas bases his understanding of relation on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
and this becomes the philosophical key to his systematic treatment of both immanent
Trinitarian theology and the relation of God ad extra, to creation.62 Thomas thus
brings together the common essence and the distinction of the three Persons under the
aspect of relation, constituting the notion of ‘subsistent Relations’. The three Persons
are identified by the very relations between them, so that there is no real difference
between God’s unity and his plurality except for a conceptual one on our part. In
contrast with other scholastic theologians including Bonaventure, for Thomas, the
relations not only manifest the divine hypostases but also distinguish them. Real
relations in God can be understood only in regard to those actions according to which there
are internal, and not external processions in God. These processions are two only, one
derived from the action of the intellect, the procession of the Word, and the other from the
action of the will, the procession of love. In respect of these two processions, two opposite
relations arise, one of which is the relation of the Person proceeding from the principle; the
other is the relation of the principle Himself.

This is an opposition according to relation, e.g., active generation from the Father
(paternity), passive generation of the Son (filiation) and the procession of love from
both by passive spiration, constituting the Holy Spirit.

Aquinas differs from Bonaventure in the order in which he understands origin and
relation in the procession of the Persons. This has implications for the way in which
we understand the application of philosophy in their respective Trinitarian theologies.
Bonaventure sees origin and emanation in the Father rather than the real relations as
the absolutely primary aspect in which to understand order in God. The real relations
in God are distinctions founded in origin, i.e., the Father is the Father because he
generates and generation is the basis of our speaking about paternity in God the
Father.68 Aquinas would admit this on conceptual grounds only, for it is relation rather
than origin that distinguishes the Persons. The Father is Father because of the relative
opposition of paternity and sonship. So, the substantial relation of Sonship constitutes
the Son, Fatherhood the Father, and Spiration the Holy Spirit. For the Father to be
unbegotten and to be characterized by the property of innascibility is for Aquinas a
merely negative characteristic simply meaning “not a son.” But Bonaventure, drawing
on what he thought was an Aristotelian axiom, “the more prior a being is, the more it
is fecund,” argued that this term also implies an affirmation, “since unbegottenness
posits in the Father a fountain-fullness.”

Bonaventure’s line of reasoning is well described by Kevin L. Hughes as “a logic of

transformed perception” in contrast with St Thomas Aquinas’ “logic of ordered
relation.” And that is the difference between knowledge of things in Christ and
knowledge of things in themselves. Aquinas is known for his ‘common-sense’
approach to reality, as perceived by the senses. Even so, this cannot lead directly to
the knowledge of the Trinity, though by grace and faith in the triune Mystery in its
incomprehensibility but supreme intelligibility, philosophy and reason’s analogies
assist in making the mystery more intelligible. Bonaventure would not have disagreed
with Thomas, though he was more inclined to emphasize created things as patterns
analogically reflecting the eternal light given by Exemplaric Word. The Word is
expressive of the Father and the Spirit, and, as Zachary Hayes suggests, is “the
ontological basis for all that is other than the Father, and in it is contained the basis for
all other relation.” It is the procession of the Word that is the absolute centre of the
inner dynamic life of the Trinitarian relations. The Word is a middle way (media)
between communicated and communicating, the Son who proceeds from the
Father and sends forth the Holy Spirit, and who both gives and accepts love from
both. Whereas intra-Trinitarian relation in Aquinas is the cause, the reason and the
exemplar of distinction in creatures, for Bonaventure the focus is on the Word who is
expressive of all that God has created. The Father’s fountain-fullness or fontality is at
the origin of the common fontality of the Trinity as the principle of creation. Just as
for Aquinas the real relations are the reason and cause of created existence, so for
Bonaventure the primacy and fontality of the Father as origin of the Son and Holy
Spirit is the overriding logic in our thinking about the production of creatures.

Aquinas therefore seeks knowledge of the Trinity as the proper methodology for
getting the doctrine of creation right. We understand creation in terms of God
precisely as uncreated, and not God in terms of creation. By making the distinction
between uncreated and created he speaks of all things either in terms of God or as
relative to him as their origin and end. The processions within God are then seen as
the cause of every other procession outside of God. Distinction in God produces a
creation of distinct realities, hence the plurality, diversity and multitude within
creation is an exemplum of distinction within unity. Trinitarian faith illuminates
natural plurality within creation. “Plurality is not a falling away from unity, but rather
a participation in the fullness of Trinitarian life.” By making the distinction between
uncreated and created Aquinas does not separate God from creation, but rather,
Trinitarian theology is wedded to creation, and by the same token so is created reason,
which is no less than a share in the supreme Wisdom of God.
With this outlook we can account for something of the distinctive rationales of
Thomas’ and Bonaventure’s Trinitarian philosophies. Though the doctrine held on
faith is an unfathomable Mystery, it is nonetheless supremely intelligible. For on the
Thomist view human reason is a participation in God’s very own self-understanding,
and in Bonaventure the one divine essence can be conceived in a light which itself
cannot be seen. There is an intrinsic complementarity in these distinct approaches to
the Trinity that have their source in supreme Unity. The work of Aquinas and
Bonaventure is an old but unsurpassed example of the serious engagement with
intellectually demanding problems that confront the thinking believer. Scripture and
tradition lay at the heart of both theologians, but contrary to the presuppositions of
much of post-Kantian thought, Aquinas and Bonaventure were not fumbling in an
irrational subservience to an imposed authority. Their Trinitarian theology
demonstrates that they did not preclude the new insights that arose outside of
Christian revelation, but embraced them in order to shed light on what they already
took to be true. Their reasoning might be depicted as incredible, but it was neither
unreasonable nor unintelligible, and few have dared to expand on reason’s capacity
with the lucidity of Aquinas and the readiness of Bonaventure. These Scholastics
intuited a Trinitarian structure to the universe because they believed, but this was far
from closed in on itself. It was critically open to the best reason and contemporary
learning had to offer. They are the historical foundations for the insights of today and
the history of thought is the ladder on which we too stand.