Giving One’s Word: Interpersonal Love, Knowledge, and Self-Giving in Aquinas’s Psychological Analogy for the Trinity

＂St. Thomas Aquinas is rarely invoked as a patron of such a social approach to the Trinity. Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology, after all, revolves around the immanent processions of a Word and Love within the unity of the divine essence. Many have assumed that this ＂psychological analogy＂ is removed from-or even incompatible with-interpersonal knowledge, love, and self-giving. Some have concluded that Aquinas is therefore unable to accommodate a social Trinity. Others have argued that he is open to a social Trinity, but that his psychological categories need to be complemented by a more overtly social framework. This study, however, shows that these psychological categories themselves are shot through with interpersonal knowledge, love, and self-giving＂-- Provided by publisher.

Michael Joseph Higgins is professor of humanities at St. Jerome Institute, Washington.