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A Thomistic Model of Friendship with God as Deification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Raphael Joshua Christianson OP
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Abstract

While friendship with God is an important theme for Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas never explicitly delineates what such friendship looks like. In this article, I present a systematic description of friendship with God according to Thomas Aquinas. I examine three dynamics (mutuality, benevolence, and communicatio) and two effects (mutual indwelling and union) which Aquinas attributes to human friendship, and I show how they can exist analogically in friendship with God. Such a presentation reveals that friendship with God effects the deification of the human person, and such a deified condition is the intended state of the human person, in which he or she can be most fully human. This conclusion allows me to propose a way to define a human person as a relation (using the term deificatus), analogous to Aquinas's definition of person for the Trinity. In turn, I show how this reality impacts a Thomistic understanding of genuine human friendship, whereby one friend loves the other qua deificatus.

Keywords

Aquinasfriendshipdeificationcharityparticipation
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 100 , Issue 1089 , September 2019 , pp. 509 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologiae, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 3 vols. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947)Google Scholar, I-II q.4 a.8 corp; hereafter, ST.

2 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.1 corp. See Torrell, Jean-Pierre, Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Blankenhorn, Bernhard (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press), pp. 46-48Google Scholar; Kimbriel, Samuel, Friendship as Sacred Knowing: Overcoming Isolation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 144-145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Aristotle, , Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Ostwald, Martin (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1962), VIII.7Google Scholar; hereafter, NE.

4 All scriptural citations come from NRSV.

5 Emery, Gilles, “Brief Catalogue of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Torrell, Jean-Pierre, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, vol. 1 of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans Royal, Robert (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 333, 339, 343Google Scholar. See Kerr, Fergus, “Thomas Aquinas: Charity as Friendship,” in Ancient and Medieval Concepts of Friendship, eds. Stern-Gillet, Suzanne and Gurtler, Gary M. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), p. 263Google Scholar; Keaty, Anthony W., “Thomas's Authority for Identifying Charity as Friendship: Aristotle or John 15?” The Thomist 62, no. 4 (1998), p. 582CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.1 corp.

7 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.1 corp.

8 Aquinas, ST II-II q.83 a.2 ad 3.

9 See Fuchs, Marko, “Philia and Caritas: Some Aspects of Aquinas's Reception of Aristotle's Theory of Friendship,” in Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, eds. Hoffmann, Tobias, Muller, Jorn, and Perkams, Matthias (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 214Google Scholar.

10 Aquinas, ST II-II q.25 a.3 corp.

11 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa contra gentiles, trans. Pegis, Anton C., Anderson, James F., and Bourke, Vernon J. (New York: Hanover House, 1955), III.26Google Scholar; hereafter, SCG. Aquinas, ST I q.20 a.1 corp. See Malloy, Christopher, “Thomas on the Order of Love and Desire: A Development of Doctrine,” The Thomist 71, no. 1 (2007), p. 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Aquinas, ST I-II q.31 a.3 corp.

13 Aquinas, ST II-II q.180 a.1 corp. See ST I q.5 a.4 ad 1.

14 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.1 ad 2.

15 Torrell, Christ and Spirituality, p. 48; Bobik, Joseph, “Aquinas on Communicatio, the Foundation of Friendship and Caritas,” The Modern Schoolman LXIV (November 1986), pp. 13-14Google Scholar; Mansini, Guy, “Similitudo, Communicatio, and the Friendship of Charity in Aquinas,” in Thomistica, ed. Manning, E. (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), p. 5Google Scholar.

16 Aquinas, ST II-II q.25 a.3 corp; Aristotle, NE VIII.5. The Classical and Medieval perspective obviously do not account for modern forms of instant communication from a distance.It is possible to expand “near” to include the reach of electronic communications.

17 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.1 ad 1.

18 There could be extraordinary mystical experiences that count as external interactions.However, theological friendship is available to all persons, not just extraordinary mystics.Consequently, such mystical experiences do not sufficiently respond to the objection.

19 Aquinas, ST I q.8 a.3.

20 Aquinas, ST I-II q.27 a.3 corp. See Aristotle, NE VIII.8.

21 Mansini, “Similitudo,” p. 7.

22 Aquinas, ST I-II q.27 a.3 corp; Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 36.

23 Mansini, “Similitudo,” p. 7.

24 Aquinas, ST II-II q.24 a.1 corp.

25 Aquinas, ST I q.12 a.4 corp; ST II-II q.24 a.2 ad 2.

26 Kimbriel, Friendship as Sacred Knowing, p. 140.

27 Aquinas, ST I-II q.110 a.2 corp.

28 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.2 corp.

29 Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Weisheipl, James A. and Larcher, Fabian R. (Albany: Magi Books, Inc., 1998), 15.2019Google Scholar; hereafter, John.

30 See Aquinas, ST III q.8 a.1; Blankenhorn, Bernhard, The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), p. 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Aristotle, NE VIII.7.

32 Aquinas, ST II-II q.24 a.2 corp. In the phrase per infusionem Spiritus Sancti, Spiritus Sancti should be understood as a subjective genitive, i.e. the Holy Spirit does the infusing of created charity, rather than the objective genitive, in which it would be the Holy Spirit who is infused.This is clear from other passages, such as when Aquinas speaks of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as being infused through the work of the Spirit; see Aquinas, ST I-II q.68 a.4 ad 1.

33 See Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of Boethius's “Hebdomads,”trans. Peter King, 2004, http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/translations/AQUINAS.Exposition_of_Hebdomads.pdf (accessed June 15, 2018), n. 24.

34 Aquinas, Thomas, In librum beati Dionysii de Divinis Nominibus expositio, trans. Marsh, Harry Clarke Jr., in Marsh, Harry Clarke Jr., “Cosmic Structure and Knowledge of God: Thomas Aquinas’ ‘In librum beati Dionysii de Divinis Nominibus expositio’,” PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 1994, IV.20Google Scholar.

35 te, Rudi A. Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), p. 100Google Scholar.

36 Aquinas, ST I. q.13 a.5 corp. See te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 96.

37 See te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, p. 37; Spezzano, Daria, The Glory of God's Grace: Deification According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2015), p. 364Google Scholar.

38 Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Litzinger, C. I., (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964), VIII.VI.1607Google Scholar; hereafter, Ethics.

39 Aquinas, ST II-II q.29 a.1 corp.

40 Aquinas, ST I-II q.19 a.10 ad 1.

41 See Aquinas, ST I q.19 a.6 ad 1.

42 Aquinas, SCG IV.22.4.

43 Aquinas, ST I-II q.8 a.3 corp.

44 Aquinas, ST I-II q.19 a.10 corp.

45 Schwartz, Daniel, Aquinas on Friendship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 48-50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Aquinas, ST I-II q.28 a.2 corp. See Cross, Bryan R., “St. Thomas Aquinas on Unity as an End of Love,” in Love and Friendship: Maritain and Tradition, ed. Brown, Montague (Washington D.C.: American Maritain Association, 2013), p. 174Google Scholar.

47 Gallagher, David M., “Desire for Beatitude and Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas,” Mediaeval Studies 58 (1996), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Aquinas, ST I-II q.28 a.3.

49 Cross, “Aquinas on Unity,” p. 176.

50 Aquinas, ST I-II q.28 a.2 sc.

51 Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, pp. 33-34. See Aquinas, ST I q.6 a.1 corp.

52 Aquinas, ST II-II q.24 a.8 corp.

53 Aquinas, ST I-II q.28 a1 ad 2. See Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” p. 26; McEvoy, James, “The Other as Oneself: Friendship and Love in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Thomas Aquinas: Approaches to Truth: The Aquinas Lectures at Maynooth, 1996-2001, eds. McEvoy, James and Dunne, Michael (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), p. 23Google Scholar.

54 Aquinas, John 15.2016.

55 Aquinas, ST I-II q.28 a.1 corp.See Aristotle, NE IX.4; Cicero, De amicitia XXI.80; Sirach 6:11.

56 See Aquinas, ST I q.12 a.6 corp.

57 Aquinas, Thomas, On Love and Charity: Readings from the Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, trans. Kwasniewski, Peter A., Bolin, Thomas, and Bolin, Joseph (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), III d.27 q.2 a.1 ad 10Google Scholar. This book bases its translation and numbering off a provisional version of the Leonine text.The Corpus Thomisticum, which did not have access to the Leonine version, places this as ad 9 in the same article.See http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/snp3027.html#11069 (accessed June 15, 2018).

58 Aquinas, ST II-II q.29 a.1 corp. See Stump, Eleonore, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010), p. 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the following section, I am indebted to various discussions with Eleonore Stump about the divided human will.

59 Aquinas, ST II-II q.29 a.3 corp.

60 Aquinas, ST II-II q.29 a.3 corp.

61 See Aquinas, ST I-II q.71 a.2 ad 3, a.6 corp.

62 See Aquinas, ST I q. 49 a.3 corp.

63 Aquinas, ST I-II q.82 a.3 corp.

64 Aquinas, ST I q.29 a.1.

65 Aquinas, ST I q.29 a.4 corp.

66 Aquinas, ST II-II q.23 a.5 corp; Aquinas, Ethics VIII.III.1574.

67 Kimbriel, Friendship as Sacred Knowing, p. 138.