The Person as Substance and the Person as Relation

The Misunderstanding of the So-Called "Trinitarian Ontology

Consubstantialem Patri

Exaltavit humiles

In the first issue of this year’s PATH journal from the Pontifical Academy of Theology, an article by Giulio Maspero titled From the Ontology of Nicaea to Trinitarian Ontology appeared, wherein his thesis, purpose, and intended goal are presented in the article’s concluding words:

“Addressing the challenges posed by post-modernity, starting from the ontology of Nicaea and from the theological path that led to recognizing the interpenetration of relations and substance in the Triune God, can truly allow us to respond to the aporetic dimension of classical metaphysics and to the efforts that modernity has undertaken to overcome it” (p. 70).

First, I note that the post-Nicene clarification of the Trinitarian mystery was not the result of a "theological path" but of a dogmatic development. In fact, at the Council of Florence, the Church did not teach any "interpenetration of relations and substance in the Triune God"; on the contrary, it clearly distinguished between the divine substance or nature, where “omnia sunt unum” (Denz. 1330)—that is, all divine attributes are identical to each other in the infinite simplicity of the divine nature or essence—and the divine person (“relationis”).

Certainly, God, the one and same divine substance, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; He is three persons. But this does not authorize us to confuse the concept of God or divine nature—which, as the First Vatican Council would say, is «una singularis, simplex omnino et incommutabilis substantia» (a singular, entirely simple, and immutable substance) (Denz. 3001)—with the concept of the divine person, which is not substance but is subsistent relation (“relationis oppositio,” Denz. 1330).

This distinction reveals an essential difference between our being as persons and the divine person, particularly concerning the category of relation. In us, the relationship with another is accidental; I have a relationship with someone. In contrast, in God, the relation is not something added to fatherhood as though it were an accident; it is subsistent. This means that the Father does not have a relation with the Son as if He were a substance like our personhood; rather, He is a relation to the Son. The entire essence of the Father consists in being. He is not like one of us, who is not a father initially and later becomes one; He is Father by essence and from all eternity.

Secondly, the valid aspect of modern metaphysics—by which I do not mean the idealist Hegelian version, rooted in Cartesian thought, but rather the realist Aristotelian metaphysics developed in modern Thomism—does not surpass or resolve any supposed "aporetic dimension of classical metaphysics," if by this expression one refers to Aristotelian metaphysics. In Aristotelian thought, contrary to what Severino and, apparently, Maspero claim, there is no contradiction, nihilism, or dualism. On the contrary, modern Thomism affirms and builds upon Aristotelian metaphysics, perfecting it by integrating valid contributions from modernity and German idealism.

By contrast, it is the modern metaphysics that originated with Descartes, with its identification of thought and being—reaching its extreme form in Hegel—that is truly aporetic. This form of metaphysics has corrupted classical metaphysics, creating an untenable theoretical situation responsible for the moral collapse in the last century, which in turn contributed to the outbreak of two world wars. (bold added by the Editor)

Maspero’s Metaphysical Position Resembles that of Gustavo Bontadini. Both Maspero and Bontadini view "modern" metaphysics—referring to the Cartesian-Hegelian line—as a sublative reconciliatory and unifying resolution of the “aporia” in classical, that is, realist and Aristotelian, metaphysics as employed at Nicaea. Certainly, neither of them rejects realism in an absolute sense, being well aware, as Catholics, that it is the epistemology endorsed by the Church, which recommends the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The difference lies in the fact that, while Maspero proposes a metaphysics of being as the relation of consciousness to consciousness, Bontadini advocates for a metaphysics of the “unity of the experience of being” as a phenomenological being correlated to consciousness, inspired by Parmenides. Bontadini calls this metaphysics “neoclassical,” finding in Parmenides the primary origin of idealism as the identity of thought and being—a concept he nevertheless considers “irrefutable,” since for him thought is “intranscendable.”

Bontadini does not propose a Trinitarian ontology because, as a Catholic, he knows that the Trinity of divine persons is an object of faith and therefore belongs to dogmatic theology, not to ontology. Maspero, on the other hand, falls under the influence of Hegel, though his project had already been attempted in the 19th century by Catholic theologians like Günther, Hermes, and Frohschammer, but was condemned by Blessed Pius IX. The focus of ontology is the ens (being), primarily understood as substance rather than as relation, which is merely an accident of substance. And even when metaphysics concludes that God exists, it is certainly not the Trinitarian God, but rather the God discovered by reason.

Metaphysics knows nothing of the fact that relation could be elevated to the status of subsistence as if it were a substance; hence, it absolutely cannot demonstrate it. Yet God, who humbles the proud and exalts the lowly, has deigned to use the lowest of all entities—relation—to represent the divine Person. In God, the Person is not a substance, because substance is solely the divine nature, but rather a subsistent relation. Thus, the Trinitarian ens certainly exists, but we know this only through faith, which makes it an object of faith and not an object of reason, i.e., of metaphysics.

If one can speak of the presence of a triad within the metaphysical ens, it is in the composition of subject, essence, and existence, whereby we say that the ens is that which has an essence in the act of being.

The Trinitarian ens is not the ens as such, but the divine ens! (bold added by the Editor) It is God—not the ens simpliciter proper to metaphysics—but the highest and supreme ens, which is a nature, not just any nature, but the divine nature, which is one in three persons.

Certainly, ens is analogical, meaning both one and multiple. But this does not in any way imply a unity of essence and a trinity of persons. The unity in multiplicity proper to the metaphysical and transcendental ens refers to the fact that, as Aristotle says, "being is said in many ways." It is diversified, and differentiated. It has many meanings, similar or dissimilar to each other, according to different proportions, degrees, and modes of being—all of which variously converge toward a single meaning of imperfect, non-univocal unity, up to a supreme ens analogized at the summit of a plurality of lower analogates.

In conclusion, it makes sense to speak of a Trinitarian theology, anthropology, and ethics, because here we have subjects that are related to the Trinity: either insofar as God is certainly the three Divine Persons, or insofar as man fulfills the divine will, acting as a child of the Father, the image of the Son, and moved by the Holy Spirit.

P. Giovanni Cavalcoli, OP

Fontanellato, October 11, 2024

source:

https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/la-persona-come-sostanza-e-la-persona.html