Thomas Aquinas on Trinitarian Action: The Essential Unity and Personal Character of Divine Action in Creation and Salvation

Scripture presents a God who is at work in a dazzling array of activities: creating, blessing, destroying, calling, sending, judging, consoling, listening, saving, teaching, and guiding. How can one understand this activity from a trinitarian perspective? Thomas Aquinas offers a set of resources relevant to both historical and systematic theologians. In contrast to scholars who present a merely essentialist reading of Aquinas on divine action, I argue that he presents a deeply personalist vision of divine action that accounts for both the essential unity and personal character of divine action, such that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can be said to act inseparably, yet in distinctly relational modes. The personal character of divine action is not simply appropriated to the persons: it is truly theirs in a proper and incommunicable way. Thus, the extrinsic activity of the persons is inseparable, since one and the same divine essence is the principle of their action. And yet, the divine persons act in distinctly relational ways, for the persons act in the way that they exist, and they exist as subsistent relations. For Thomas, then, each divine person is an acting subject with a distinct personality, furthering the story of creation and salvation.