Peter Lombard and the Imago Trinitatis1

chapter 8 Peter Lombard and the imago Trinitatis1

John T. Slotemaker Fairfield University

8.1 Introduction

A philosophically and theologically rich account of Christian humanism must incorporate an understanding of the human person created in relation to God. The patristic and medieval Christian tradition generally grounded its theology of the relation between the human creature and the Creator in a theology of the imago Dei (the image of God) or more specifically the imago Trinitatis (the image of the Trinity). For pre-modern Christians the claim that human beings are made in the imago Trinitatis entailed that they image or mirror, in a limited way, the unity and distinction of the one God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Further, this theological understanding of the human person served as a foun- dation for understanding the moral life and for grounding a theological defense of the distinctiveness of the human being (when contrasted with other crea- tures). As Peter Lombard argued in the mid-12th century, the imago Trinitatis grounds a theology according to which the human being is a unique creature in relation to God: a theology, according to the Lombard, that ultimately informs “in what respect humanity is like God.”2 For the majority of pre-modern theologians, the starting point for such an analysis was the creation of humanity depicted in Genesis 1:3

And [God] said: Let us make man to our image and likeness (ad imaginem et similitudinem nostrum): and let him have dominion over the fishes

1 The present paper expands a line of argument that I explored in “Reading Augustine in the Fourteenth Century: Gregory of Rimini and Pierre d’Ailly on the Imago Trinitatis,” Studia Patristica 69 (2013), 345–57. 2 See Peter Lombard, Sententiae in iv libris distinctae vol. 2, (ed.) Ignatius Brady (Grottaferrata: 1971–1981), 1.34.4 (Silano 2, 71). Throughout I reference both the critical edition (i.e., Brady et al.) and the recent English translation by Giulio Silano. See Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book i: The Mystery of the Trinity, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: 2007), and Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book ii: On Creation, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: 2008). All quotations are from Silano’s translation, with occasional modifications. 3 Frederick G. McLeod’s The Image of God in the Antiochene Tradition (Washington, d.c.: 1999) traces the history of interpretation of Genesis 1:26–27 in the Antiochene School.

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of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth. And God created man to his own image (ad imaginem suam): to the image of God (ad imaginem Dei) he created him: male and female he created them. (Gn 1:26–27)

Genesis 1:26–27 states that humanity is created in the image (imago) and likeness (similitudo) of God. However, it is far from transparent what it means to be created in the image and likeness of the divine; as a result, this passage has been the subject of constant discussion and debate since the early Christian period. Perhaps the most influential interpretation of Genesis 1:26 originated with Origen of Alexandria in the 3rd century. Origen spoke of the relationship of the Father to the Son in psychological terms: i.e., the Son of God is the will (θέλημα) proceeding from the divine mind (νοῦς).4 For Origen, there was an analogy between the generation of the Son from the Father and an act of the will proceeding from the human mind (mens). This noetic or psychological analogy5 was expanded and further refined in the Greek speaking East through the theology of Gregory of Nyssa and the subsequent patristic tradition.6 While the psychological analogy emerged in the writings of the Greek Fathers, it is perhaps known first and foremost through the Latin writings of

4 Origen, Origenes Vier Bücher von den Prinzipien, (eds.) H. Görgemanns and H. Karpp (Darmstadt: 1976), 1.2.9. See also Henri Crouzel, Théologie de l’image de Dieu chez Origène, Études publiées sous la direction de la faculté de théologie S.J. de Lyon-Fourvière 34 (Paris: 1956); Henri Crouzel, “Le Dieu d’Origène et le Dieu de Plotin,” in Origeniana Quinta, (ed.) Robert J. Daly, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 105 (Leuven: 1992). 5 The term “psychological analogy” is an imprecise and problematic term. Throughout the present paper I will use it as shorthand to designate particular noetic triads that were developed in the early patristic period. These noetic triads—e.g., Augustine’s memoria, intelle- gentia, and voluntas—were developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Christian era and were used to indicate an analogy between the two emanations in God (the emanation of the Son from the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the Father (and Son)) and particular cognitive functions of the human mens. 6 On Nyssa see Michel René Barnes, “Divine Unity and the Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology in its Psychological Context,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, (ed.) Sarah Coakley (Oxford: 2003), 45–66; Sarah Coakley, “Introduction—Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Pedagogy of The Song,” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, 1–13; David B. Hart, “The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on the Vestigia Trinitatis” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, 111–31; and Morwenna Ludlow, Gregory of Nyssa Ancient and [Post]Modern (Oxford: 2007). Similar language is also found in Cyril of Alexandria. See Brian E. Daley, “The Fullness of the Saving God: Cyril of Alexandria on the Holy Spirit,” in The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation, (eds.) Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating (London: 2003), 113–148, esp. 146–147.