I know very little about the Solemn Doctor, and I look forward to being educated. The suggestion that Henry has a fertile metaphysical imagination–which, God knows, we all need in dealing with these abstruse topics!–is a splendid advertisement for the new blog. I’m ready to learn….

Peter

I’ll get back to you with a fuller response in the next day or two. For now, suffice it to say that yes, Augustine is contrasting the human mental word with the divine mental word, and he wishes to point out some disanalogies. However, he does point out some analogies, e.g., the mental word necessarily is something having to do with an occurrent thought (in human and divine cognition). What is at question is what it would mean to say the Word has to do with an act of thinking; is the act of thinking the act productive of the mental word, or is the mental word somehow prior to the act of thinking (as a condition for thinking), or perhaps is the production of the mental word unrelated to an act of thinking (as its productive cause).

In a nutshell, is the Word produces by the Father’s act of thinking (i.e. the Father’s act of thinking is sufficient for the production of the Word), or is the produced Word causally unrelated to the Father’s act of thinking? I think these ‘two views’ are certainly in De Trin. 15.4.24-25 and I will do a little exegesis if need be when I’ve got the book in front of me.

Also, beware of attributing to Aug. the view that the mental Word just is either the Father’s act of thinking or some knowledge that the Father has. In Books 6-7 and 15.7.n.12 Aug. argues that the Word cannot be the Father’s very knowledge; this would be absurd b/c then the Father would not know anything unless the Father has the Son. Divine attributes like omniscience are equally had by all divine persons, such that the Father must have ‘his own’ omniscience which is not strictly speaking identical with the produced mental Word. This doesn’t nec. imply social psych. trinitarianism, but just that each divine person is a knower (they could have the very same mental acts).

More soon enough.

1. In Augustine’s De Trinitate 15 I could not spot the two ways of accounting for the generation of Word in a juxtaposition. More than that, I could not find there Augustine stating that Father had an occurent thought (occurent cogitation) or that the generated Word was in any sense a “byproduct” of Father’s thinking.

2. As it appears, Augustine suggests what you term “the second way” not so much to avoid the risk of posing composition in God, as for fear of compromising the coaeternity of divine Word with Father: “solus Deus intellegatur habere Verbum sempiternum sibique coaeternum. Nisi forte dicendum est, ipsam possibilitatem cogitationis, quoniam id quod scitur, etiam quando non cogitatur, potest tamen veraciter cogitari, verbum esse tam perpetuum, quam scientia ipsa perpetua est.[...] quis non videat, quanta hic sit dissimilitudo ab illo Dei Verbo, quod in forma Dei sic est, ut non antea fuerit formabile postque formatum, nec aliquando esse possit informe, sed sit forma simplex et simpliciter aequalis ei de quo est, et cui mirabiliter coaeterna est.” (De Trin.15.15.25)

3. Could it be the case that the whole passage in question explains the difference between human and divine cogitation in terms of their different relations with word as the representative product of knowledge? Thus, human word is merely an occurent formation, contingently supervening upon the possibly sempiternal knowledge, whereas divine Word is the form of knowledge itself (the act of thinking identical with eternal being) If put so, the apparant problem of contradistinction between Father’s act of thinking and the generation of Word appears to dissolve.

Perhaps. Henry himself certainly thinks that some sort of analogical thinking is involved when we do theology. But, I don’t think that Henry’s view about analogy vs. univocity would determine whether his own acct. _requires_ analogical discourse contrary to univocal discourse. It does matter a great deal how one might parse out what univocal discourse would be when doing theology. One needs to be very careful if one were to go with univocal discourse. And, I happen to think that some sort of univocal discourse is _required_ for doing theology. But to get into this discussion would require various other discussions.

For example, when Henry posits a passive power in God, he quickly qualifies how we are to take this (there is no ‘distance’ between potentiality and actuality in God). So, suppose we say there is a ‘real generation’ in divinis. What does this mean? Well, Henry says–in creatures a real generation requires some sort of motion between bodies in order for the generated entity to exist, but in God there is a real generation without any motion whatsoever. So we need to abstract out the notion of motion when we think of divine generation. Henry clearly knows what needs to be denied and does in fact make such a denial. He does at least seem to know what he is talking about. But if this were purely ‘analogical thinking’, would he really know what sort of denial that needs to be made to talk about divine generation? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

How would you respond to someone who claimed the following: the (unique) necessity that is involved when speaking of the relations among the Trinitarian persons—unique in that that kind of necessity is no part of the created order—coupled with God’s simplicity suggests the need for analogical language. E.g., doesn’t your essay suggest that we don’t mean the same thing when we predicate active/passive (in the context of your essay) of God and of creatures?