WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Cloud of Witnesses: St. Thomas Aquinas, Pt. 2

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Join the hosts as they finish their discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas and his trinitarian theology. 

Welcome back to Cloud of Witnesses. This week we have a very fun and in my opinion, the most fun episode that we have done thus far. This is on St. Thomas Aquinas. This is the second part of our St. Thomas Aquinas episode. If you didn't catch the last one, I recommend go back and giving you to listen. Mark just went over some of his biography, some of the important things that sort of shaped his his upbringing and shape the way that he sort of approached theology. But today we are going to go a little more into the weeds. We're going to talk a little bit about his Trinitarian theology.

It was a lot of fun for me to go look at it to read the relevant parts of the suma. I'd done a little bit of this beforehand, but not a whole lot. And so it was fun to sort of sit down and sort of think it over in preparation for the show. Also talked about the two different feast days, major feast days of St. Thomas, and talked a little bit about why there are two, instead of just one, and why we decided to choose the less celebrated one.

The more celebrated one is in January, but we decided to go off of the March date to sort of bring a little bit of exposure to why are two feast days for St. Thomas. And so without further ado, I'm going to throw you guys over to myself as we talk about St. Thomas on the second part of Cloud of Witnesses St. Thomas Aquinas edition. Hope you enjoy. So if some of you are sort of faithful Catholics or faithful celebrants of feast days,

you might be a little confused as to why we're doing St. Thomas today when his, The standard celebration of his feast is January 28th. That is a fairly recent thing. It was moved there in the 1960s, and that is when his remains were placed in their final resting place. And it was moved to that date because the traditional dating was March 7th. And that's still the dating that Dominican celebrate. That's when he died.

But it, you know, as it is, you know, doing this year, frequently falls during Lent. And so the Catholic Church is like, hey, you know, this is one of, if not, sort of our greatest saint. Why are we celebrating his feast during Lent? And so they moved it back to January 28th in order to allow sort of a full celebration without having to worry about the fasting

during the Lenton season. So I had a very tough time trying to figure out what I wanted to talk about. you know, all of us here at Hillsdale have read his on kingship in Western Heritage, just in the Western Heritage Reader. Many of us have probably, you know, read snippets of, you know, stuff of the Summa Theologica in, you know, in the beginning core class. One of the things that I think is sort of unfortunately overlooked when a lot of people sort of look at St. Thomas on a surface level is like His Summa wasn't intended by him to sort of be his, his magmopus. That was his

scriptural commentaries. St. Thomas was an absolute, you know, new scripture front and back, new scripture incredibly, incredibly well. And some of his greatest works are actually his scriptural commentary, especially his commentary on Romans and Galatians. There's just a bunch of stuff there. So I had a hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to talk about for him because I could have literally thrown a dart on a dart on dart board and done, you know, a whole series on anything that he's talked about. And his prima par's question, 5356, he talks about like how angels move. And it's like, you know, why? Why? But it's, it's cool. He was able, you know, just using scripture and using reason, just, you know, speculate about how angels move.

Yeah, which is really interesting, you know, I don't know how many people nowadays. days would, you know, take the time to worry about how angels moved. Yeah. But he did. He did. And he came up with a pretty convincing answer. So if you want to figure that out, it's, I think Prima Parr's question, I think it's, I think it's 53 or 56, one of those two. There's also, of course, his five ways in Prima Pars question to answer three, sort of five basic proofs for the existence of God, which are all sort of based around a contingency argument.

You know, creation, the world, the universe is contingent, which means it didn't have to be the only sort of way to have this is to have something necessary in front of it to sort of put it in motion. This is sort of a very Aristotelian like act potency argument. But I decided that I wanted to talk about the Trinity. St. Thomas was a an avid defender of the filioque, his contra erore's gricorum, a lot of that was sort of on the question of the filiochwe because this was, you know, mid, late 13th century, we're at the point now where sort of this divide is really, you know, at its, not at its peak, its peak was maybe a little earlier, but this is still like a very hot button issue. And so when he's doing his Trinitarian

theology, he's using a bunch of categories to try to, explain, you know, how is it proper to talk about the Trinity? You know, he still approaches it with, there's the anecdote of St. Augustine had a dream. He was walking on a beach. And there was this little kid who was trying to, you know, digging a hole in the beach, trying to shovel the ocean into the little hole. And he else was like, what are you trying, you can't fit the whole ocean of the hole. Right. Yeah. And then the kid who is reportedly, Jesus says just, you know, Likewise, you can't fit the mystery of the Trinity into your little head. So sort of with that background and understanding, St. Thomas is still trying to use reason

to, and obviously scripture, you know, what we have from scripture to try to figure out, okay, what, you know, how is it proper to talk about the Trinity? So a lot of this stuff I'm taking from Prima Pars of the Summa Theologia. This is going to be question 27. He's talking about the procession of divine persons. So, like, if you're a liturgical Christian, saying either the Apostles, Creed, they're words, Father, son, and then the Holy Spirit is said to,

if you're a Western Christian, proceed from the father and the son. And so that's obviously, you know, fourth, this, sixth century language. But here, St. Thomas and sort of in the greater Scholastic tradition, are trying to sort of very clearly define what these are. And so here, this is Prima Parr's Question 28, Article 1. He asks whether there are real relations in God. He says on his on the contrary section, the father is denominated only from paternity and the son only from filiation.

Therefore, if no real paternity or filiation existed in God, it would follow that God is not really father or son, but only in a manner of understanding. And this is the Sibelian heresy, also called the modalist heresy, where you have, like the Trinity is just God. God, like, appearing in different ways to us. Right. But not actually. Having any real assuming.

Like, God is absolutely simple, so there's no... So what St. Thomas is here trying to figure out is, okay, if God is absolutely simple, how can we say that there is a, quote, like, division in the Trinity? What does it mean to say that there is actually existing a father and a son and a Holy Ghost, but there's still one God? And so his answer to this question, and we'll get to this later, why this sort of necessitates the fili-oque, his... His answer is these are called relations.

And we'll see later he calls them relations of opposition. So he says whether are there, you know, are there any real relations in God? And he says that yes, there are real relations in God or else we would be Sebelian. And the reason why they have to be relations is because relations aren't inherent to the individual. It's the difference there is in its, you know, relation to another thing. So I am not different from like my dad, qua man. I am different from my dad because he is my dad and I am his son, right?

And so this is sort of, you know, a little bit trippy like, you know, how, again, he's trying to figure out what does it mean for there to say, for someone to say there is actually a father and a son and a Holy Spirit in the Trinity. And so question 28, article one says, yes. There are these, quote, real relations in the Godhead, whereby we are able to distinguish between the father and the son and the Holy Spirit.

He says, in his, I answered that so sort of his longer explanation, relations exist in God really, and proof whereof we may consider that in relations alone is found nothing, which is only in the apprehension and not in reality. So sort of, again, that's the relation doesn't exist sort of in the thing itself, Which would be a problem because if you're saying that there is something that, you know, the father or the son, the Holy Ghost, like, possesses, then you would have to say that each person is possessing either something that is not the divine nature or that the divine nature is not sort of evenly distributed to all the persons, which would sort of result in some sort of tri-theism. Right. So this is not found in all.

so this something being in the apprehension, not in reality, this is not found in any other genus for as much as other genera as quantity and quality, and their strict and proper meaning signify something inherent in a subject. So again, this is the relations is a way to say there's a difference without saying that there is a, there's something different internally between the three persons. But relation in its own proper meaning signifies only what refers to another. Okay. So this is how we have distinction in the Trinity is by what he calls relations. But how are we able to say that these relations are distinguished from each other?

So like why don't we just have like God one, God two, and God three? Like how, what does it mean to say that, you know, the first person of the Trinity is the father versus the son? This is answered in Article 3 of the same question. He asked whether the relations in God are really distinguished from another. His I answer that, he says, the attributing of anything to another involves the attribution likewise of whatever is contained in it. So when man is attributed of anyone, a rational nature is likewise attributed to him. The idea of relation, however, necessarily means regard of one to another, according as one, is relatively opposed to another. So as in God there is a real

relation, for article one, there must also be a real opposition. The very nature of relative opposition includes distinction. Hence, there may be a real distinction in God, not indeed according to that which is absolute, namely the essence wherein there is one, there is supreme unity and simplicity, but according to that, which is relative. So these relation of oppositions, this is sort of where, this is sort of like the crux and the argument of the filialque between the east and the west. So, like, Mark and I, we're sitting right here, are relations. to each other is not oppositional. It's like we're friends and we're sort of co-hosts,

which means that they're sort of, like the relations are reversible, which means that I can sort of take on whatever role Mark has without sort of any change to myself. Sure. My relation with my dad is not the same. So like I am the son of my father. My father is the son of,

or is the father is the father of me. That relation is what is called opposed. There isn't anywhere that you can switch those relations. And so that's how we get the father and the son. And then we'll talk about the Holy Spirit in just a second. These are relations of oppositions, wherein one, the son is generated by the father in such a way as they can't be reversible.

And now you may ask where, what about the Holy Ghost? So this is going to be answered in question 36 on the Spirit. of the holy, or sorry, the person of the Holy Spirit. And he asks a couple of questions. For us, we're going to want to look at articles two and four. So article two, he asked the question whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the sun. And this, again, is the whole fili-oque thing.

In the West, we say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. In the East, they say that, no, the Holy Spirit only proceeds from the Father. And the way that sort of Eastern theology cashes this out is by saying that there is, in the generation of the father of the other two persons, there is something substantially or inherently or like, you know, actually different about the procession itself. Interesting. So St. Thomas, yeah. And this is sort of like, you know, why, what, you know, what is the problem here? Like those both seem like, you know, viable answers. Right.

For St. Thomas, the reason that can't happen is because a difference in the quality of the relation, of the procession, would mean that there is some unequal distribution of attributes in the godhead. I see. So if the relation is different, that means that in some way, shape, or form, some aspect of the godhead would have to be, you know, inferior to the other? Yeah, sort of. Yeah. So like the, for St. Thomas, the relation is the same. The difference and the way that we get the, the difference in the persons is how the relation. So if the Holy Spirit were to proceed just from the Father, then his relation to the Father would be the same as his relation to the son.

Because like the kind of relation can't change. So the way they were able to differentiate between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is because the son proceeds a lot. alone from the father, the father proceeds from none, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son. So we have these relations of oppositions wherein the object and the subject cannot like swap places, and we have something unique and differentiating between the persons that doesn't ascribe sort of any difference in quality in the godhead. So he, this is question 36 article two. He says, I answer that. It must be said that the Holy Spirit is from the Son.

For if he were not from him, he could in no wise be personally distinguished from him, as appears from what has been said above. And he references a couple of other articles. For it cannot be said that the divine persons are distinguished from each other in any absolute sense. This is sort of a nod to the Eastern way of saying that there's an absolute difference in the quality of relation between the Father and the Son of Holy Spirit. Sure. If it would follow that there would not be one,

essence of the three persons, since everything that is spoken of God in an absolute sense belongs to the unity of essence. Therefore, it must be said that the divine persons are distinguished from each other only by the relations. Now, there cannot be in God any relations opposed to each other except relations of origin, as proved above, and opposite relations of origin are to be understood as of a principle and from what is from the principle. Therefore, we must conclude that it is necessary to say that either the Son is from the Holy Spirit, which no one says, that the Holy Spirit is from the Son as we confess. And then Article 4 of the same question,

whether the father and the son are of one principle of the Holy Spirit. So this is a question that sort of arises from a certain polemic in the East. There are several Eastern authors, pre-Skism. It's like St. John of Damascus writes about this, and they say, well, like there are these fathers who say very clearly that the the father alone is the origin of the Trinity. The father, like the father alone is the origin of the sun. He alone is the origin of the Holy Ghost.

And the way that sort of Western, the sort of Western response is, yes, there is a certain way in which the father is uniquely the origin of the Holy Ghost, insofar as he is the, that like from which the Holy Ghost originally is spirated from. And that's sort of where we get the language of, you know, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. So that's kind of like an answer.

So coming off of this sort of train of thought is that the Holy Spirit is, you know, generated from the Father through the Son, which is sort of an answer to that polemic, is that in the Western theology, there is still a way in which we say that properly the Father is the only origin of the. entire Trinity. Interesting. So this is question 36 article four. He says, so the question is whether the father and the son are one principle of the Holy Spirit. So this is going to be something that is defined at I believe Florence, the Council of Florence that Eastern Christians have a problem with is saying that the Holy Spirit is inspired from the father and the son as a single principle.

So he answers, the father and the son are in everything one. wherever there is no distinction between them of opposite relation. So in anything other than their relation to each other, they are perfectly one. Hence, there is no relative opposition between them as the principle of the Holy Spirit. It follows that the Father and the Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit. So because the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as the Father's relationship to the Son, it is properly said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as a single principle So that's sort of a very brief roughshod summation of St. Thomas Aquinas,

the Trinitarian theology. There is so much more that it could be said. Talk about what a person is, whether a person is a substance or not. Like there's just so much more. But we don't have time for that. So before we sign off, Mark, is there anything that you want to say? Well, Dom, I mean, there's really not anything more to add to, I mean, the life of such a great person. I wish we had more time to discuss than we already do. We could have,

like, this show just could have been a show about Aquinas. It could have been for the whole time. Yeah. So. And we still probably wouldn't get through everything. Oh, definitely not. And neither of us I think are smart enough to get through everything. Absolutely not. But maybe one day we will be. Hopefully, you know, in, you know, Kingdom Come will be able to talk with Swissate Thomas and actually understand what he's saying. That's right. All right. Well, thank you all so much for turning in this week. We will see you guys next time. Stay holy.