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| I know, he is looking in the wrong direction... |
Anyway, the next theologian I am going to briefly mention in this series (which is taking me way too much time) is Anselm of Canterbury. In Italy (where I am from), he is usually called Anselm of Aosta, where he was from. I used to be quite pedantic about specifying this, but after years abroad I do not really mind anymore. This said, let us turn our attention to something that we can learn about the equality of the three persons of the Trinity from Anselm of Aosta...... did I say Aosta?
We will focus on De Processione Spiritu Sancti (The Procession of the Holy Spirit), a beautiful treatise based on a lecture Anselm gave during the council of Bari in 1098. Pope Urban II called the council in order to convince the bishops from Puglia and Sicilia who followed the eastern though on the procession of the Holy Spirit. Urban well thought to call his best trinitarian champion for this.
We will see here what Anselm has to say about the equality on the three persons of the Trinity. While reading him, please bear in mind the claim of today's subordinationists according to which "differences in roles and authority between the members of the Trinity are thus completely consistent with equal importance, personhood, and deity" (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Zondervan, 1994, 459. Emphasis added). The main (extremely serious) problems are the two emphasised concepts, i.e., difference in "authority" and it supposed harmony with equality of "importance." I think the above claim is a logically absurd escaping device, as I have tried to briefly show in my previous post. But let us turn to Anselm, now.
"The Father is not earlier or later than the Son, or greater or lesser; and the one is God neither more nor less than is the other ... the Son so exists from the Father that He is in every respect the same thing as the Father and is one and the same God as the Father. Thus, just as the sole and simple God cannot be greater or lesser than Himself, nor earlier or later than Himself, and just as He has no diversity within Himself, so the Son is neither earlier nor later, neither greater nor lesser, than is the Father. Nor does the Son have in Himself anything different from the Father; rather, just as the Son has it from the Father to exist perfectly, so He has it from the Father to be equal and similar to the Father in every respect—indeed, to be the very same thing [as is the Father]. Hence, just as although the Son exists from the Father, the Son is no less God than is the Father, so although the Son has from the Father the fact that the Holy Spirit exists from Him, the Holy Spirit exists no less from the Son than from the Father. For insofar as the Son is one and the same God as the Father—i.e., insofar as the Son is God—He is not distinct from the Father and does not have any dissimilarity. For the Father is not one God and the Son another God, nor are they dissimilarly that which they are; rather, the one is distinct from the other insofar as the one is the Father and the other is the Son. And just as the Son is not a God other than the Father, so with respect to the fact that the Son is God He does not have anything from any other than from Himself. Now, when we say that God exists from God and that the Son exists from the Father, we construe this to mean not that one God exists from another God but that the same God exists from the same God—even though we say 'The one exists from the other,' i.e., that the Son exists from the Father. For (as was said earlier) just as in accordance with the name signifying oneness God receives no diversity, so in accordance with the names signifying that God exists from God, necessarily He admits of plurality ... Just as God is not greater or lesser than Himself: so in the case of the three (viz., the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit) there is not anything greater or lesser; and no one of them is what He is any more or less than is another of them, even though it is true that God exists from God by proceeding and by being begotten." - Anselm of Canterbury, The Procession of the Holy Spirit, 14. Emphasis added.
Of course, Anselm does not believe that the three persons are absolutely and under every respect the same. In fact, he seems to distinguish them according to classical orthodoxy (see, among many places, paragraphs 14 to 16 of The Procession). I let the reader read the rest of Anselm's work which, although not perfect and rather brief, is a very interesting part of the centennial debate about God's triunity.
Next blog post: Thomas Aquinas! And I hope to make it longer than this one.
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