A Thomistic Model of the Trinity

    My friend over at The Aspiring Jesuit blog (https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com) has recently uploaded a short post about a model of the Divine Trinity that seems plausible to him, and so I figured I would do the same by trying to explicate my understanding of St. Thomas Aquinas' philosophical model of the Trinity which is a model that naturally flows from the basic framework that Aquinas works within.

    For most Christian classical theists, God is analogically said to be a pure act of intellect, but for Aquinas, "the intellect in act is the intelligible in act," so for the intellect to be in act means that it has some intelligible species by which it is in act, and of course due to divine simplicity, this intelligible species is just the divine essence itself. Furthermore, if God's intellect was put in act through an intelligible species that is from something extrinsic to Him (as what happens with us when we cognize the world), then that would entail receptivity and passive potency which are repugnant to simplicity. 

    Given the above Thomistic aphorism, we have the intellect in act and the intelligible species through which the object of the intellect is known, and since this is the divine essence, God's knowledge is essentially self-knowledge (and since there are no accidents in God, the fact that knowledge in Him is essentially self-knowledge means that His only knowledge is self-knowledge). This knowledge is properly called a procession, since there is an order to be found between the intellect and its object, the latter coming from the former, hence "procession." Now, we also have the will, which is the rational appetite, or in other words, that aspect of the intellect which does not simply conceive of a thing, but rather conceives of a thing as good and therefore desires it. God knows Himself perfectly and hence knows His perfect goodness, and in knowing His perfect goodness He wills it, thus implying a procession of love toward Himself (given that to love a thing is to will its good). The procession of the object by the act of intellect and the love of that object by the procession of the will are two processions that are really related, since there is some actuality by which they are related (as opposed to a logical relation where there is no actuality by which they are related strictly speaking, like when I ponder the concepts of genus and species and intellectually relate the two) and they agree in source/flow from the same nature.

    The act of intellect from which the object proceeds is theologically denominated as the Father, the object which proceeds is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the act of love proceeding from the will. Now the real distinction comes in partially due to the fact that these two processions are really related to each other, since if they were only logically related to each other, there could only in principle be a logical distinction. But a real relation is not enough to constitute a real distinction, it must be a relation of opposition, which Augustine identifies and Aquinas continues with. The reason is because those which are opposed are incommensurable in some manner. Immateriality and materiality are really distinct things because they are opposed. But in the hierarchical order of the intelligent nature, it is the intellect which is primary, and from its act proceeds the object, and such procession is secondary, and the procession of love from the will is tertiary, because in order to know an object as good presupposes that the object is known simpliciter, which is the basis of Intellectualism contra Voluntarism (to expound a bit, voluntarism would entail that the willful procession is secondary, and so the Spirit would be the Second Person instead of the Son, which is false). Now, to be primary is opposed to being secondary (as long as it is said in the same sense, and in this case it is), and being secondary is opposed to being tertiary, etc. In theological language, this is explicated in terms of the opposition between that which is unbegotten (Father), begotten (Son), and that which is neither begotten nor unbegotten (Spirit).