Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of symbols, abbreviations, and conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The Trinity and the Aristotelian categories: different ways of explaining identity and distinction
- 2 The Trinity and human psychology: “In the beginning was the Word”
- 3 The Trinity and metaphysics: the formal distinction, divine simplicity, and the psychological model
- 4 The Trinity, divine simplicity, and fideism – or: was Gilson right about the fourteenth century after all?
- Appendix: Major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies
- Bibliography of primary sources
- Annotated bibliography of selected secondary literature
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of symbols, abbreviations, and conventions
- Introduction
- 1 The Trinity and the Aristotelian categories: different ways of explaining identity and distinction
- 2 The Trinity and human psychology: “In the beginning was the Word”
- 3 The Trinity and metaphysics: the formal distinction, divine simplicity, and the psychological model
- 4 The Trinity, divine simplicity, and fideism – or: was Gilson right about the fourteenth century after all?
- Appendix: Major elements in Franciscan and Dominican trinitarian theologies
- Bibliography of primary sources
- Annotated bibliography of selected secondary literature
- Index
Summary
My purpose in this book is to give a broad overview of some of the central aspects of and developments in the trinitarian theology written in the Latin West between roughly 1250 and 1350 AD. The emphasis here will be on philosophical theology, on the rational investigation of the Trinity by later-medieval theologians using the full range of tools available to them from especially the Aristotelian tradition of philosophical analysis. Nevertheless, the philosophical nature of the discussion as it is presented here should not obscure the fact that the intense interest with which later-medieval theologians approached the issue is an indication primarily of the immense religious importance it had for them. For the doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of the Christian faith. On the basis of statements from especially the New Testament that suggested that the savior, Jesus Christ, is the very same God as the Father who sent him and yet is in some way distinct from the Father, the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated by the early Church Fathers and in the Creeds issuing from the ecumenical councils of the second to the fourth centuries AD. According to this doctrine, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct and yet identical: distinct as persons, identical as God.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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