By Nchumbonga George Lekelefac
In spite of the unity between Thomas Aquinas of yesterday and ourselves of today which consists basically in our sharing the same Christian faith as our theological point of departure there are more differences between him and us with regard to our diverse concepts of thinking in general and of theological thinking in particular, our diverse understanding of Christian Theology, and our diverse practice of Theology.
Point I: The difference between Father John Egbulefu and Thomas Aquinas with regard to the concept of theological thinking
1) For Father John Egbulefu, theological thinking is the act of theologizing on God or on a certain divine Reality, a process that passes from the illumines human spirit’s perception of God or of a certain divine Reality through the reflection on the perceived God or divine Reality to the geometrization of the container-component of the reflected perceived God or divine reality and the arithmetization of the content-component of God or divine reality and the algebraization of the conditions under which the Deity as the container-component of the Reality ‘God’ contains the divine Trinity as the content-component adequately, and the divine Trinity as the content-component of the Reality ‘God’ is received by the Deity as the container-component adequately (like the conditions under which the mortal and visible human body as the container-component of the reality ‘the living human being’ can contain the immortal and invisible human soul and spirit as the content-component of the reality ‘the living human being’ adequately).
2a) According to our perception, God is that Reality whose container-component is the Deity and whose content-component is the divine Trinity, and who is the unitriune Lord (Yahweh) the one and triune Lord, the Lord who is numerically, thus arithmetically,, only one (God of your fathers) but structurally, thus geometrically, triune (not triple or threefold nor triadic or tripartite), and whose numerical oneness comes from His being the first and the last of Himself (“I am the First and the Last. Besides me there is no other God” Is 44:6), and whose Trinitarian structure comes from the intertwining relationship (perichoresis) among the three persons in Him called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (cf Mt 28:19) each of whom is a divine person (cf. God the Father, symbolized by the God of Abraham as of the father of Isaac; God the Son, symbolized by the God of Isaac as of the son of Abraham; and God the Holy Spirit, symbolized by the God of Jacob as of the issue proximately of Isaac and, through Isaac, remotely of Abraham, though the Holy Spirit issues or proceeds contemporaneously from the Father and from the Son, since in God – as long as He is eternal, namely has no beginning and no end, there is no interval in space nor in time, no interruption, no discontinuity, but rather continuity, no separation, but rather inseparability, no succession, but rather contemporaneousness, no mediation, but rather immediacy, between any two realities, be it between any two persons, be it between any person and anything, be it between any two things, hence between any two acts or actions, and thus between the issuing or proceeding of the Holy Spirit from the Father and His issuing or proceeding from the Son, nor between the Holy Spirit’s procession from the Father and the Son together on the one hand and the generation of the Son from the substance of God by God Himself as God the Father) on the other hand, and whose intertwining relationship thus results from the Oder of originations among them according to which the first of the three, namely the Father, has no origin and thus originates from none of the rest two, while the second and the third have Origin but originate diversely, the second, namely the Son, originating only from the Father passively by being generated from the substance of God by God the Father, thus by being born of the substance of God the Father, while the third, namely the Holy Spirit, originates from the Father and from the Son together actively by proceeding or issuing from both contemporaneously, with the consequence that there arises a Trinitarian structure consisting in the unity existing out of the union of the three persons with the one and indivisible thing with which each is united to be a divine person and that the three divine persons own together, whereby – on account of the indivisibility of this one thing consisting in each divine person’s identity as God – the three divine persons (“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob” Exod 3:15) each of whom is truly God are not altogether three gods but rather one and indivisible (“I am who I am” Exodus 3:14) God (“God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob”, Exodus 3:16).
2b) God is that numerically one but structurally triune Lord, that one and triune Lord, that unitriune Lord, that Lord who is numerically, thus arithmetically, only one (“the God of your fathers”) but structurally, thus geometrically, triune (not triple or threefold nor triadic or tripartite), and whose numerical oneness comes from His being the first and the last of Himself (“I am the first and the last. Besides me there is no other God” Is 44:6), and whose Trinitarian structure comes from the intertwining relationship (perichoresis) among the three persons in Him called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (cf Mt 28:19) each of whom is a divine person (cf “God the Father” , symbolized by “the God of Abraham” as of the father of Isaac; “God the Son”, symbolized by “the God of Isaac” as of the son of Abraham; and “God the Holy Spirit”. We came to draw this conclusion from the following reasoning and premises.
For: God, having spoken, must be a living being, since the dead cannot speak, and having been heard, audible, hence is perceptible, and having been understood is intelligible, and being intelligible must be a structured living being, for structure is the principle of intelligibility such that an unstructured, formless, amorphous, shapeless, reality is not intelligible, cannot be understood, and God having spoken words that are intelligible to intelligent beings, must be a living person, and God – having said “let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves” (Gen 1: 26) – must be not a single person but rather a collective living person, a group or aggregate of persons of a certain number, and God -having appeared to Abraham in the form of three men (cf Gen 18: 1-2a) – must be an aggregate of three persons, whereby, as long as at the beginning of their visit to him, Abraham adored them by bowing to the ground in front of them (cf Gen 18: 1-2) while it is the commandment of God that only God is to be adored (cf. “You shall have no gods except me…you shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, Yahweh, your God, am a jealous God” Deut. 5:7.9), it follows that these three persons must be divine persons in human form, three divine persons in the form of three men, showing that God can come to man in human form, and this rightly so, because if God wants to be received by Man He has to come to man in human form, since whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver, and this coming of God in human form to man shows that man can reckon with the incarnation of the Word (cf Jo 1: 14), and furthermore as long as God had earlier said to Moses that Yahweh, the Lord, is the name by which He is to be invoked by men (cf Ex 3:15), wherefore Abraham called the three persons in human form not “my Lords”, but rather “my Lord” (cf Gen 18: 3), it follows that the three adored, and hence adorable, and hence divine , persons are altogether not three lords, hence not three gods, but rather only one God, one God in three persons, and as long as the three persons at the end of their visit, with one voice, together, said to Abraham “I shall visit you again next year without fail” (Gen 18, 10) , and not “we shall visit you again next year”, it follows that there is “one God in three persons” ; but as long as, on the one hand, there are “three persons in one God”, and this one God in whom there are three person is “one God in three persons”, it follows that God is “one in three” (“one God in three persons”, not “one person in three gods”) and “three in one” (“three persons in one God”, not “three gods in one person”), and this structure of God is what is called the divine Trinity. Thus, the divine Trinity is like a medal of two sides, the one side of which is called “God is three in one”, while the other side is called “God is one in three”.
The divine Trinity consists in the unity existing out of the union of the three persons with the one and indivisible thing with which each is united to be a divine person and that the three divine persons own together, whereby – on account of the indivisibility of this one thing consisting in each divine person’s identity as God – the three divine persons called “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob” (Exod 3:15) each of whom is truly God are not altogether three gods but rather one and indivisible God (“I am who I am” Ex 3:14; “the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob”, Ex 3:16).
2c) And God the Lord (Yahweh) is He who, as long as He “the God of your fathers” (Ex 3: 15), is numerically one God. But this one “God of your Fathers” is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (Ex 3:15). But these three are not three gods but rather by three divine persons. For each of them is the union of 1) what is peculiar and proper to only his person, namely “the Father” in “God the Father”, “the Son” in “God the Son”, and “the Holy Spirit” in “God the Holy Spirit’ and 2) what the three of them as divine persons own together with one another, namely “God” in ‘“God the Father”, “God” in “God the Son”, and “God” in “God the Holy Spirit”, each is God and thus “the act of being God (actus essendi Dei) as the divine essence and the state of being God (status essendi Dei) as the divine nature which derives or results from such act or into which the actus essendi Dei leads, is what the three divine persons not just have in common but rather own together since the act of being God, the divine essence is not divisible, cannot be divided nor split, and hence the divine nature is indivisible, cannot be divided, cannot be split into pieces or parts.
It follows that the three divine persons “the God of Abraham”, “the God of Isaac”, and “the God of Jacob” who are altogether not three gods but rather only one God, “the God of your fathers” is, as long as the three own together the one and indivisible divine essence or divine nature, to be called “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” (Ex 3:16). And as long as Abraham is the father of Isaac, and Isaac is the son of Abraham a son generated by Abraham, and Jacob is an issue proximately of Isaac and, through Isaac, remotely also of Abraham, it follows that “the God of Abraham as of the father of Isaac”, “the God of Isaac as of the son of Abraham”, and “the God of the Holy Spirit as of the issue proximately of Isaac and, through Isaac, remotely also of Abraham, as the three divine persons that own the one and indivisible divine essence and hence the one and indivisible divine nature can altogether be called “the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob” is the old-testamentary pre-figuration, or representative symbol for, the church-traditional formulation “God the Father (of the Son), God the Son (of the Father), and God the Holy Spirit (of the Father and of the Son together)”, while the formulation “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob” is the old testamentary pre-figuration or representative symbol for the new-testamentary formulation “the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28: 19).
Thus “the divine Trinity” is that single and indivisible unit (unum) the unity (unitas) of which exists out of the indissoluble union (unio) of the three (‘tri’) persons in one God (“God is three in one”, there are “three persons in one God”) with the one (‘une’) and indivisible divine essence (“God is one in three”) from which derives the divine nature, from which in turn derives the divine substance.
Point 2: The difference between Father John Egbulefu and Thomas Aquinas with regard to the Concept of Christian Theology.
1) For Father John Egbulefu, from the point of view of its history, Christian Theology is a divinely illumined reasoning and creative activity that has been developed in the Church of Christ from the Church’s prolongation of Christ’s proclamation of the Good News of the Kingdom of God that has arrived in His person and about the God of the Kingdom and the accessibility to humans through Christ of the eternal life lived in the numerically one God by the three persons living in Him, namely the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who jointly made Man, and no other creature, in their own image, in the likeness of themselves (cf. Gen 1:26), making Man consist of the triad “spirit, soul and body” (1 Thes 5: 23), and have invited Man not only to come and – with blessedness (beatitudo), namely with happiness (felicitas), gladness (laetitia), joy (gaudium) and jubilation (jubilatio) – see their face in heaven that Man on earth has since then been desiring to see, but also to participate in their life; a beatifying vision in which consists that full knowledge of the truth that God wants for every human at the end of Man’s earthly spiritual journey to heaven as to Man’s Heavenly Father and spiritual fatherland; and a participation as that sharing in the eternal life lived by the three persons in one God which takes place inside God, and in which consists the peak, apex, zenith, climax, culminating point, of the salvation willed by God for all humans at the end of the world and history, and to which as to eternal banquet of the resurrected Son of God the Father has invited all humans of goodwill (as echoed by the words of the priest at the Holy Mass when showing Christ to the Assembly of His Faithful he invites them on behalf of God the Father to come forward and receive His Son as the Lamb whose victory over death has led His Father throw a banquet to His honour: “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb”).
2) For us: from the point of view of its utility, Christian Theology is that scientific, mystical, practical and technical operation on the believed word of God (Logos tou Theou) deposited in the Scripture and Tradition of the Church which is carried out by the human spirit with the help of the human reason and mind and intellect and illumined by the graces of God that have entered into him and enkindled in him the warm and glad faith in God, the hot and joyful love for God, the fiery and jubilating hope on God, to enable him acquire spiritual benefits from the operated Word of God and communicate them to fellow human spirits as to intelligent living beings to enable himself and fellow humans fulfil the purpose of God’s creation of the human being.
Such benefits acquired from the Word of God by the exploring human spirit are 1) that 1a) knowledge of the perceived God (cf. scientific theology), 1b) affective love for the known God (cf. mystical theology) as well as 1c) effective or performative love for the known God (cf. practical theology), and 1d) service to the known and affectively and effectively loved God (cf technical Theology) on earth for the purpose of living with God hereafter in heaven, 2) for the reason of which God has created Man, i.e. has called the human being into existence, through His eternal Word that was still in His pre-incarnate state, and has given to humanity salvation through His eternal Word that is meanwhile in His incarnate state whereby this incarnate Word of God is the Son of God as God that has become Man but without ceasing to be God through the incarnation of the Word in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, Mary, by the work of the Holy Spirit and who therefore is both God and Man in one divine person and this Godman in the person of Jesus Christ is the proper efficient and only one infallible Mediator between God and humanity, Bringer of God to humans and of humans to God, Bringer of the divinely willed salvation to humanity, revealer of God to humanity, Reconciler of humanity with God, Bringer of the quests and requests and questions of humans on their behalf to God and Bringer of God’s graces and truths and answers to humans, and Bringer to God from humans of their thanks and praises and honour and glory to God as their proper reaction to His divine assistance to them.
3) For us: from the point of view of its proper structure and proper framework within which it is done, Christian Theology is that scientific, mystical, practical and technical operation on the believed Word of God in which the divinely illumined human spirit with the help of the human reason and the human mind and intellect explores attentively the logic between the believed Word of God (Logos tou Theou), on the one hand, and the questions of humans about the divine reason for, and purpose of, and hence the sense or meaning of, the human existence and life on earth, on the other hand, an exploration carried out within the divine-human coordinate system of Faith and Reason (fides et ratio) : Faith that is only credible if it is reasonable by binding itself to reason; Reason that is only credible if it is credulous and remains consistent in its credulity by believing in the truth and assenting to the truthfulness of the logical conclusions and consequences drawn from the two premises that the common sense and the common experiences of humans are.
3a) System is 1) that pluriform organic unity 1a) resulting from the union of two mutually contrary (i. e. opposite but not opposed), interdependent, mutually complimentary, correlated poles or axes or dimensions called coordinates – which, being unity, 1b) is interchangeable with trueness and truth and truthfulness, with beauty and beautifulness, and with goodness that diffuses itself, and 1c) generates a new life (according to the principles ‘variety is the spice of life’ and ‘new life arises from the encounter of two contraries’) and 2) is characterized by a catholicity (i.e. has an all-embracing character) that qualifies it 3) as a ferment of unity in (spite of) diversity and of communion in (spite of) freedom and which 4) demands per se and propitiates tensional polarity between the particular and the universal, between the one and the many or the singular and the plural, between the simple and the complex.
3b) The proper divine-human coordinate system within which Christian Theology is done, is the coordinate-system the two precise coordinates of which are faith and reason (fides et ratio), and is nurtured with an organic and unitary vision of knowledge by an illumined human spirit endowed with reason and mind and intellect and attentive to the logic between faith and reason, hence to the coherence and relevance between, on the one hand, the believed – truths of and in the – Word of God (Logos tou Theou) and, on the other hand, the divine reason for and purpose of, hence the proper sense or meaning of, man’s being (esse; das Sein des Seienden; cf. Verbum erat Deus) and his being there, i.e., his existing, and being always beside another reality than himself (‘das Dasein und Dabeisein des Seienden, sein immer bei einem Anderen Sein’; cf. et Verbum erat apud Deum), and his being always inside another reality than himself (das Darinsein des Seienden; cf ‘In principio – id est, in Deo – erat Verbum’), hence his being and existing and living in the world. Thus the three named centres of gravity under which the reflection on the divine reason for and purpose of man’s being, man’s being there or existing, and man’s living in the world, are reflected – like in a mirror (speculum) – in the first three statements of the prologue to the Gospel according to St John : “In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum” (Jo 1:1), three succinct statements intimately connected with one another, a connection that comes out from latency to more evidence when the three statements are made in such a way that the last, namely the third, becomes the first, while the second to the last, namely the second, remains the second. would read thus: Deus erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Verbum erat in Deum’’, and it is this inverse form of the tripartite statement that is the regulating principle of the order of sequence of the thoughts that are the content of the systematic reflection at hand.
3c) The divine-human coordinate system the two precise coordinates of which are faith and reason (fides et ratio) and within which Christian Theology is done, has along its vertical axis the three constituents of the believed Word of God as Word (namely the Semantics of the Word of God, the Grammar and Syntax of the Word of God, and the Pragmatics of the Word of God), while it has along its horizontal axis the tripartite divine purpose of the human existence on earth, precisely the threefold reason given by the ecclesiastical Magisterium for why God has created Man (namely Man ought to know God, have both affective and effective or performative love for God, and serve God), with the consequence that there are four distinct but inseparable theological sub-systems of coordinates.
3ca) The first of the four theological sub-systems within the main coordinate System (the organic unity resulting from the logical union) of ‘the believed Word of God’ and ‘the questions of Men on earth about the reason for, hence about the proper sense and meaning of, their existence and life in this world ‘ is that coordinate sub-system the vertical axis of which is the Semantics of the Word of God, while its horizontal axis is Man’s God-given obligation to know God. And the theology done within such a sub-system is called Scientific Theology. The adjective ‘Scientific’ derives from the noun ‘Science’ which is the English translation of the Latin n turn derived from the Latin noun ‘Scientia’ that has its roots in the Latin verb ‘sciò, scire, scivi, scitum’, meaning ‘to know in general’, as distinct from ‘to know both sides of the reality’ which is well articulated by the Latin verb cognosco, cognoscere, cognovi, cognitum’, meaning ‘to know both the inside and the outside, the exterior and the interior, of the reality’, whereby to know the outside or the externals or the exterior of a reality means to know only that the reality exists and know its name or why it is being called what it is called, and know its outward features, etc., whereas to know the inside or the internals or the interior of the reality means to know the intentions, desires, wish, will, plans, secrets, of the reality in question. The theologians of the medieval period practiced mainly Scientific Theology after the introduction of the idea of Science from Aristotle by St Albert the Great OP, the professor of St. Thomas Aquinas OP.
3cb) The second of the four sub-systems within the main coordinate System (the organic unity resulting from the logical union) of ‘the believed Word of God’ and ’the questions of Men on earth about the reason for, hence about the proper sense and meaning of, their existence and life in this world’ is that coordinate sub-system the vertical axis of which is the Syntax of the Word of God, while the horizontal axis is Man’s God-given obligation to love God affectively, show affective love to God consisting in Man’s attachment to God, dedication to God, enchanted contemplation, adoration as devoted admiration, and exaltation, of God as of that absolutely superlative Mystery itself in person who is the most paradoxical and yet fascinating, bottomless, immense or immeasurable, inscrutable and tremendous Reality that there is . And the Theology done within such a sub-system is called Mystical Theology. The adjective ‘Mystical’ comes the noun ‘Mysticism’ which means the waking up of the created human spirit to the Mystery of that eternal and supernatural all-creating Spirit (cf. Veni Creator Spiritus) that God as the unity (hence the goodness, the truth and truthfulness, and the beauty and beautifulness) existing out of the eternal union of the Deity as of His proper container-component with the Trinity as with His proper content-component is. Mystery, on its own part, is essentially that supernatural reality worthy of belief and required to be believed which, as something good, by nature, diffuses itself towards man for whom it is a mystery, addressing itself thereby to the whole of man (“spirit, soul and body” 1Thes 5:23), whereby it, i) by addressing itself to the human body, transcends (goes beyond) the power of the sensory organs to perceive (cf. mysterium est imperscrutabile), ii) addressing itself to the human spirit, enchants the mind (cf. mysterium est fascinosum) and, iii) addressing itself to the human soul, subordinates the natural human reason to its own supernatural laws (cf. mysterium est tremendum).
The theologians of the patristic period practiced mainly Mystical Theology as they leaned on Plato for his Metaphysics of every visible reality being the shadow or reflex or sign or symbol of a certain invisible reality that is the ideal, while they shunned Aristotle whose doctrines they considered to be diametrically opposed to the truths of the Christian Religion.
3cc) The third of the four sub-systems within the main coordinate System (the unity resulting from the logical union) of ‘ the believed Word of God’ and ‘the questions of Men on earth about the reason for, and hence about the proper sense and meaning of, their existence and life in this world’ is that coordinate sub-system the vertical axis of which is the Grammar of the Word of God, while its horizontal axis is Man’s God-given obligation to love God effectively, to show performative love to God consisting in obeying the commandments of God, listening to the words of God and putting them into practice, doing the will of God all the time and unconditionally. And the Theology done within such a coordinate sub-system is called Practical Theology. The adjective ‘practical’ comes from the noun Practice, which is the English translation of the Greek ‘Praxis’, meaning application, the application of principles or of laws, the translation of word into action. The modern period is that which begins immediately after the Middle Ages. Its first stage begins from the Protestant reformation that opposed the deployment of Philosophy to explain the Christian Faith. Such rejected Philosophy embraces the Metaphysics of Plato as the patristic theologians had done, and the philosophical doctrines of Aristotle on Logic and Science and Metaphysics as the medieval theologians had done. While rejecting the use of philosophy in Theology the Protestant Reformers called for a radical return to the Scriptures, and in fact to the Scriptures alone, without also the Tradition, and they also called for a restriction to faith alone without also the human reason and to the divine grace alone without also the human nature. But the bi-testamentary Scripture alone without the Tradition (constituted by the trio: doctrines, devotions and disciplines) of the Church, fails to be the full Word of God, like two elements of hydrogen alone without natural oxygen (constituted by the three precise isotopes, O-sixteen comprising 8 elements of proton and 8 elements of neutrons, O-seventeen comprising 8 elements of proton and 9 elements of neutron, and O-eighteen comprising 8 elements of proton and 10 of elements of neutron) fails to be Water. The impossibility of sustaining the Protestant ideology of ‘sola scriptura, sine traditions’ in the face of the fact that the Word of God that can truly be the water of life is the one found in the togetherness of Scripture and Tradition led in the second stage of the modern period to a return to the medieval theologians, hence the Neo-scholasticism , or to the Fathers, hence the Neo-mysticism, the limits of both of which led in the third stage of the modern period to a return to the union of only the Scriptures, without the Tradition, to the Culture of the people, hence the Neo-protestant Inculturation Theology, or to Science as the proper culture of the modern man, hence the Neo-protestant Scientific Theology.
3cd) The fourth of the four sub-systems within the main coordinate System ( unity resulting from the logical union) of ‘the believed Word of God’ and ‘ the questions of Men on earth about the reason for, and hence the proper sense and meaning of, their existence and life in this world’ is that sub-system the vertical axis of which is the Pragmatic of the Word of God, while the horizontal axis is the God-given obligation to Man to serve God, namely to be available to God, to be at His disposal, work for Him the way it pleases Him, a way acceptable to Him, by using the same way He uses to work for humanity to work for Him, since whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver, hence by imitating Him (“Try, then, to imitate God, and follow Christ by loving as He loved you, giving himself up in our place as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God” Eph. 5: 1-2), adopting His method, the skill, technique, craftsmanship, that He uses in working for Man, especially in creating Man, be it 1) in creating the living human being, namely by first creating a container (the material visible mortal body) and then inserting, infusing, into it the contrary (opposite but not opposed) content (the spiritual invisible immortal soul and spirit that are constituted by the breath of life put into the human body by God at creation, cf Gen 2: 6-7, and recapture the two, white and red, corpuscles of the blood as of the latently lying subcutaneous but indispensable source of physical life for Man) which the container is able to contain adequately, be it 2) in creating the female human being (that has ‘spirit, soul and body’) as the contrary (opposite but not opposed) helpmate of the male human being (that also has ‘spirit, soul and body’) by first taking a rib or bone as the contrary of flesh from the side of the male being, and then enclosing the bone in a flesh as in the contrary of bone (cf. Gen 2: 20b-23).
The theology done within such a coordinate sub-system is called Technical Theology. The adjective ‘Technical’ comes from the Greek noun ‘techne’ meaning ‘craftsmanship’, technique, skill, of a craftsman, his technical know-how of creating, producing, inventing, fabricating material goods in the form of material objects as means of defending and promoting the progress of the human life to perfection, hence the technical know-how of producing means of movement or of transport on land like automobiles, or in the air like aircrafts, or in or on the waters like ships and boats, means of nutrition like foods and drinks and of health care like medicine, means of self-protection like houses and clothes and shoes, means of communication, etc). Technical Theology is the proper Theology for the contemporary Period as the Age of Science and Technology, unitedly called the Age of Technoscience, and of Globalization
4) In other words: According to our perception and persuasion, there are four species of Christian Theology: scientific, mystical, practical and technical; and these four have each come up to take upper hand in a particular period in the history of Christian Theology so useful for the Church’s accomplishment of her salvific mission to the peoples of all the nations on the planet earth.
The four species of Christian Theology result from proper structure and proper framework within which Theology is done
4a) Christian Theology is Theology done generally within the two coordinates of faith and reason (fides et ratio), particularly within the two precise coordinates of the believed Word of God (Logos tou Theou), as source of divine answers to human questions, and the reason why God created man, i.e. called the human being into existence, made man in the image and likeness of Himself, as the key questions leading to man’s other regularly coming up questions at God, like those concerning the purpose of the human life and how man should live in order to live a fulfilled and, only so, successful life here and hereafter.
4b) Theology is the product of the act of Theologizing, a believing thinking act , action and activity on the words spoken by God that takes place among the people of God to whom God has spoken in diverse times and in diverse ways, beginning with talking to them directly by Himself in the Old Testament, passing through His talking to them indirectly in the New Testament partly in the person of His Son speaking to His Apostles and disciples and partly in the person of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and the Son speaking through the Apostles and prophets, and ending with His talking to His people in the post-biblical generations and indirectly through the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth speaking to and in the papal, conciliar and synodal Magisterium of the Church in the doctrinal Tradition of the Church, leading them to the complete truth (cf. Jo 16: 13) by, on the one hand, telling them of the things to come as what He has learnt from the Father and the Son (cf. Jo 16: 13-15) who, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, will be sent in the name of the Son by the Father (cf. Jo 14: 26a), and on the other hand, teaching them everything and reminding them of all that the Son said to them (cf. Jn 14: 26b).
4c) The act of Theologizing is that in which a structurally christianized, evangelized, and hence functionally christianizing, evangelizing, human spirit with a divinely illumined reason and mind and intellect works scientifically, mystically, practically and technically on the structured, hence, intelligible Word of God (Logos tou Theou) that it has perceived, heard, and believed, seeking thereby:
1) to make the virtually intelligible Word actually understood (verbum intelligibile quaerens intellectum facere) by bringing out, through reading between the lines ( inter lineas leggere) of the structured divine Word, the truth (vertitatem exponere) as the proper being (because ‘that which is’, ens, and ‘that which is true’, verum, are interchangeable – ens et verum convertuntur) that underlies and sustains the trueness and truthfulness of the divine Word and without which the divine Word were untrue, inauthentic, fake, counterfeit, false, untruthful, deceitful, and hence unreliable and, thus, could not be built upon, in order, by following the exposed splendid and luminous truth as the liberator from darkness to light and from ignorance of God to knowledge of God (Scientific Theology), from disobedience to God to obedience to Him and thus from sin to holiness (cf. Practical Theology), from death to life, from detachment from God to attachment to Him and thus from death to life (cf Mystical Theology), from poverty to wealth, from hunger to good nourishment, and hence from sickness to good health of mind and body, from discomfort to welfare, from sterility to productivity and fecundity (cf Technical Theology), wherefore the truth is the proper way and leader to life (cf. Jn 14,6),
2) to arrive at seeing the face of the God of the Word, the God that has spoken and is speaking the divine Word, whereby the human spirit keeps looking as it were at those contours of, the lines and curves on, the contemplated face of God which constitute the structure of the face of the speaking God, and the spirit can contemplate only indirectly the radiant face that is otherwise dazzling and hence inaccessible to the spirit as a created and hence limited being; thus the human spirit on earth looks at the face of God in heaven only indirectly by looking at the image of the divine face as it is reflected in the deposit of faith as in a mirror (speculum) – like that image of the splendid and otherwise dazzling face of the shining Sun from on high which is reflected in the limpid, sparkling, crystal-clear, mirror-like water-mass here below; in the process of the contemplation of the face of God – by looking with the mind and heart as the two spiritual eyes of the living human being at the lines and curves on the face of the God of the Word as the God that has spoken and is speaking the Word and has been creating and directing and providing for the visible and invisible things in a magnificent and mysterious and paradoxical way and manner – the spirit adores Him (i.e. admires with devotion the indirectly seen face of the speaking God and praises Him for His operations as the aggregate of His actions and works) and finally requests Him for more and more knowledge of Him , knocking as it were at God’s door and begging to be let in into God, the human spirit requesting that the door may be opened to him by God only inside whom there is security of life, and who seeing the childlikeness of the clinging love of the human spirit to Him fatherly opens the door, unzips His clothes for the clinging human spirit so fond of Him and gives the spirit extraordinary knowledge of Himself, knowledge of the interiority of God stretching from the knowledge of the internal, through the knowledge of the interior, to the knowledge of the intimum of God at the level of which knowledge no longer consists in gaining insight through research as searching more and more for the knowable in the believed Word of God , “scibile in Verbo Dei credito quaerens amplius amo quod nosco ut cognoscam quod amo” , cf scientific Theology, but rather) consists in the exchange of affection between the human as created spirit and God as the Spirit that created man (cf Mystical Theology); and finally 3) the spirit passes from admiring the God of the Word as the creative God to imitating Him, not only by imitating His goodness in order through such imitation to arrive at holiness and perfection in virtuous life (cf. Practical Theology) but also by imitating His technical know-how of creating, be it the spirit’s imitation of how God has technically created the human being, so that the spirit night, through such imitation, arrive at producing material goods like means of movement, of mobility, of travelling, and of transportation, and means of communication, be it the spirit’s imitation of how God has created the woman, so that the spirit might, through such imitation, arrive at producing such material goods like food and drinks and medicine (cf. Technical Theology).
4d) With regard to Scientific Theology and Mystical Theology, the mirror in which the image of the radiant, and otherwise inaccessible, face of God called the truth of the Word of God is reflected differs according to whether the Truth concerned is truth as a person reflected in a mirror that is a particular thing peculiar and proper to a particular person, or truth as a thing reflected in a mirror that is a particular thing peculiar and proper to a particular thing.
4da) In Mystical Theology, such Truth of the Word of God is a person, namely the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ as the Godman, and the mirror concerned is 1) the immaculate Womb of the Virgin Mary (cf. “O Jesu vivens in Maria”; “Virgo, Speculum Justitiae”, “Virgo, Sedes Sapientiae”) and 2) the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharistic Sacrament, the Sacrament of the otherwise invisible Body and Blood of the invisible heavenly Jesus Christ in the visible form of Bread and Wine (representing matter in its solid and liquid states respectively as two of the species of matter) as the only ‘place’ in which the heavenly Christ the Godman (who as God is omnipresent, i.e, present everywhere at the same time and at all times) is at the same time also present here on earth truly, i.e. with both His divinity and His humanity, hence really, i.e. with His humanity, namely with His human body and human soul and human spirit, and substantially, i.e. with His divinity, namely as the divine Word living the divine life and accomplishing the divine Will and inseparably united with the divine Trinity, since such divine Word is inseparably united with the substantial image of God and the Wisdom of God, both of which together with the eternal Word constitute the triad that the Son of God is, who, in turn, is inseparably united with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, both of whom with the Son constitute the triad that are the three persons in one God who in turn are inseparably united with the one and indivisible divine substance that derives from the one and indivisible divine nature that in turn derives from the one and indivisible divine essence as with the one thing with which each of the three persons in one God – the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit – is united to be a divine person and hence truly God, but without the three divine persons, namely God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, being altogether three Gods, rather they are one God on account of the indivisibility of the one divine substance without the union with which none of the three persons would be a divine person and hence truly God, and which is what the three divine persons own together and which unites them and only together with which the three persons constitute the divine Trinity.
4db) In Scientific Theology such Truth of the Word of God is rather a thing, namely the correspondence be it of the offspring with its origin, the children with their parent, the effect with its cause (cf. ontological truth), be it of the visible container as of the external or exterior component with the hidden content as with the internal or interior component of the same reality (cf. technical truth), be it of the actual thoughts going on in the mind with the words being said orally (cf. logical truth), the action being done with the word said earlier or with the thought going on in the mind (cf. ethical truth), and the mirror concerned is that Deposit of the divinely revealed and humanly believed and magisterially taught truths of the Christian faith which is structured into halves called ‘the old-testamentary and new-testamentary Scriptures’ and ‘the doctrinal, devotional, and disciplinary Tradition of the Church’ (cf. the depositum fidei as mirror according to the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 9 and 10). And like it is the bundle of rays emitted from the face of the Sun and emanating from the Sun that carry the image of the splendid and otherwise dazzling face of the shining Sun from high with them and implant it into the limpid, sparkling, crystal-clear, mirror-like water-mass here below, so too it is the Holy Spirit, who is emitted from the Son of God and emanating from God the Father, that carries the truths of the splendid and, otherwise, inaccessible Word or Son of the reigning God from on high with Himself and implant these truths into the inspired and inerrant Deposit of faith, and sustains the permanent presence of the truths of the Word of God inside such Deposit, a deposit structured into two halves called the Scripture and the Tradition of the Church .
The Scripture contains those words of God which God has spoken to His people, beginning with talking to them directly by Himself in the Old Testament, passing through His talking to them indirectly in the New Testament partly in the person of His Son speaking to His Apostles and disciples and partly in the person of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and the Son speaking through the Apostles and prophets.
The Tradition of the Church contains those words of God which God has been speaking in the post-biblical generations and indirectly through the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth speaking to and in the papal or pontifical, the conciliar and the synodal Magisterium of the Church in the doctrinal Tradition of the Church, leading them to the complete truth (cf. Jo 16: 13) by, on the one hand, telling them of the things to come as what He has learnt from the Father and the Son (cf. Jo 16: 13-15) who, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, will be sent in the name of the Son by the Father (cf. Jo 14: 26a), and on the other hand, teaching them everything and reminding them of all that the Son said to them (cf. Jn 14: 26b).
4e) With regard to Practical Theology and Technical Theology, the aspect of God to be imitated differs according to whether it is God’s being, or God’s doing, that ought to be imitated. For in the Practical Theology God is imitated from the point of view of what He is, namely as Goodness itself in person, while in Technical Theology God is imitated from the point of view of what and how He as the Creator is doing especially in His relation towards Man
4ea) In Practical Theology that imitation of the goodness of God through which to arrive at holiness and perfection in virtuous life is the one that stretches from His benevolence or goodwill (as opposed to the malevolence or bad-will of humans), His benediction or blessings as opposed to the maledictions or curses by humans) , and His beneficence or works of charity, perfect charity, corporal and spiritual works of mercy (as opposed to the maleficence or works of iniquity, sheer wickedness, corporal and spiritual works of heartlessness perpetrated by humans).
4eb) In Technical Theology, God’s technical know-how of creating the human being – as the synthesis of ‘the body’ (which is the container-component of the reality ‘living human being’) and ‘the spirit united with the soul’ (which are the two constitutive elements of that breath of life which God breathed into the body through the nostrils and both of which together constitute the bipartite content-component of the reality ‘living human beings cf. Gen 2: 6-7) – is imitated by the creative human spirit in order to arrive at producing material goods like means of movement, of mobility, of travelling, and of transportation, and means of communication, with which to enhance the material well-being of humans. For, the production of such material goods passes through such imitation and the deployment of the laws of dynamism deduced ‘from the complex perfect linear geometrical figures that symbolize the Trinitarian, structure of God the Creator (a linear figure translated from that complex perfect curved geometrical figure that symbolizes the Trinitarian structure of God that results from the intertwined relationship (perichoresis) among the three persons in one God, an intertwining that in turn results from the order of the originations within the Godhead according to which the Father has no origin and thus originates from no other than Himself, while the Son originates from only the Father, whereas the Holy Spirit originates from the Father and the Son together who are inside one another), and ‘from the complex perfect linear geometrical figures that symbolize the Theandric structure of the incarnate Word as Godman as the proper Mediator between God the Saviour and humankind in need of salvation’, and ‘from the post-incarnational Trinitarian-theandric structure of God the Saviour’, to render operative and operational those otherwise static or motionless objects that are similar in shape and in function to the corresponding parts of the divinely indicated animals moving in the air, on the land and in the waters (cf. Gen 1: 28) which are invented through replacement or substitution of the various parts of such divinely indicated zoological elements (over which man has to have mastery to the extent of reproducing them, or over which man should have authority by authoring works similar to them) with technical fabrications that are, all dissimilarities to the imitated creatures of God notwithstanding , are analogous in structure and in function to the respective substituted parts of the creatures of God.
God’s technical know-how of creating the woman as the synthesis of ‘a bone taken from the Man as from a person contrary – opposite but not opposed – to the woman’ and ‘the flesh in which the bone as a thing contrary – opposite but not opposed – to the flesh is enclosed and with which the bone is united into a single living being’ (cf. Gen 2: 21-23) is imitated in order to arrive at producing material objects as goods, like food and drinks and medicine, with which to enhance the material well-being of humans in mind and body. For, the production of such material goods passes through such imitation and the mixing of the divinely indicated botanical elements (cf. Gen 1: 29) partly according to the laws of stability derived from the complex perfect linear geometrical figures that symbolize the Trinitarian, theandric, and Trinitarian-theandric structures of God the Creator, and of the Godman and of God the Saviour respectively, and partly according to the terms of the system of 1) the altogether fourteen (namely seven times two) intra-relational theandric, i.e. divine-human, unions between the each of the three constitutive distinct but united elements (divine Word, divine Life and divine Will) of the divine half of the incarnate Words as Godman and each of the three constitutive distinct but united elements (human spirit, human soul and human body) of the human half of the incarnate Word as Godman found inside Christ Godman as the Mediator between God and humanity and as the Salvation Bringer. from God to humans, 2) the one mediated inter-relational theandric union of the incarnate Word as Godman and the divine Trinity through the eternal Word, and 3) the one mediated extra-relational complex theandric Union of the aggregate of the three constitutive distinct but united elements (human spirit, human soul and human body) of the human half of the incarnate Word as Godman with the divine Trinity through the aggregate of the three constitutive distinct but united elements (divine Word, divine Life and divine Will) of the divine half of the Godman an aggregate which is united both with the divine Trinity and with the divine half of the incarnate Word as Godman.
In fact, most conspicuous difference between the concept of Theology by Thomas and our own concept of Theology lies in the inclusion and real presence of Technical Theology in our concept of four species of Theology comprising scientific, mystical, practical and technical Theologies, whereas Technical Theology is excluded and absent in the concept of Theology by Thomas Aquinas.
Researched by Nchumbonga George Lekelefac, B. Phil., (Mexico); S.T.B., (Rome); J.C.L/M.C.L., (Ottawa), Diploma in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch; International Language Tutor of English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German; Doctorandus, University of Münster, Germany; Europe/ US Correspondent of “The Herald Tribune Newspaper” and “The Sun Newspaper”; Independent Ecclesiastical Journalist; Canon Lawyer and Researcher; Founder/ CEO of the “Nchumbonga Lekelefac Institute of Research, Documentation, Language and Culture, USA. Email: nchumbong@yahoo.com