Domingo Bañez on the Creative Action of the Trinity: Early Modern Controversies and a Contemporary Debate

Abstract: How should one rightly understand the role of the Trinity in the act of creation? A neglected commentary of Domingo Bañez (1528–1604) on a key article in the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas suggests a way forward through conflicting scholarly interpretations of various high medieval and early modern theologians. Read against the commentary of Cajetan (Tommaso de Vio: 1469–1534) on this same article, one can grasp an early-modern panorama of responses to this question. Bañez argues, in his reading of Thomas, that each divine person creates (a) indivisibly and inseparably, with the other divine persons, on account of the unity of the divine essence, which is the principle of divine action—and yet each person acts (b) in a distinct manner, for the divine essence, the principle of action, is itself possessed by each divine person under or according to a distinctly relational mode. One must coordinate the “essential” and the “personal” perspectives on divine action in order to get a full view of divine activity. That is to say, on my reading of Bañez, the divine persons act in a distinct, proper, and personal mode that is not reducible to appropriation. And, to clarify further, this distinct mode of acting does not jeopardize their essential unity of action, such that each person acts “in virtue of” (speaking from our perspective) one and the same divine essence.