Research in the history of philosophy and theology is subject to a fundamental tension. Historians, who have been trained to present ideas in the context out of which they arose, are not inclined to ask whether such ideas are relevant beyond their time-conditioned circumstances. Philosophers and theologians, by contrast, proceed in the diametrically opposed fashion: abstracting ideas from their historical context, they focus on the internal cogency of systems of thought; then, in a further step, they often equate a particular historical system with the truth. Very few philosopher-historians have striven to avoid these extremes by attempting to develop philosophy in genuine dialogue with historical reality. Michel Foucault comes to mind as an example - perhaps the paradigmatic one.

To the latter category of philosopher-historians, we can now add Jonas Narchi with his study of philosophical arguments for the Trinity in the twelfth century. Narchi's methodology is not Foucauldian but takes its inspiration from Erich Przywara and Dieter Henrich. Przywara summarized the principle of his historico-philosophical research in the formula, "truth in-beyond history" (Wahrheit in-über Geschichte, 20 n. 31), whereas Henrich developed his investigations of German Idealism by analyzing ideas as belonging to "constellations" of thinkers, questions, motivations, and texts. Like Przywara, Henrich believed that emphasis on the complex genesis of ideas and their meaning within larger personal, historical, and textual structures should not be taken to detract from their systematic significance.

The notion of "intellectual space" (Denkraum) constitutes the final element in the methodological framework that Narchi adopts. In what intellectual space were twelfth-century discussions of the Trinity as a philosophical problem able to occur? What were the historical factors that helped open this space, and what were the constraints that delineated its contours? Narchi addresses these questions in chapters 2 and 3, whereas chapters 4 and 5 are devoted to the two phases in which trinitarian thought unfolded the Denkraum in which it operated.

Among the cultural preconditions that created the space for intellectual investigations of the Trinity, Narchi analyzes the role which the Trinity played in popular devotion, art, and mystical visions. From his detailed and sophisticated discussions, let us note only two points. First, Karl Rahner's observation (42) that the Trinity is more of a speculative problem than a reality in the lives of Christians turns out to be quite mistaken, at least when one considers the way in which trinitarian aspects informed religious practice in the twelfth century. Second, Narchi throws into relief that thought does not occur only in concepts and texts: images, too, advance "arguments" - in this case, arguments regarding the most appropriate ways to conceive of the three persons of the Christian God. In the images that he analyzes, the author diagnoses "an intense struggle of the artists for a felicitous artistic register [...] capable of thinking or inferring the Trinity in images" (89).

After his consideration of the "venerated," the "imagined," and the "mystically beheld" Trinity, Narchi turns to the "fought-over," the "divisive," and the "contested" Trinity. The Trinity was "fought-over" with Judaism and Islam, in particular in the Crusades, so that "reason, violent action, and religious faith complement[ed] one another, motivate[d] one another, and justif[ied] one another" (Susanna Throop, quoted at 146). It was "divisive" in the relationship between the Western and Eastern Churches with their different stances on the Filioque. And it was "contested" even within Western Christianity, to such a point that trinitarian debates came to be conducted by common people - a complaint that Narchi finds in the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux (10-11) and Bishop Stephen of Tournai (177). In an instructive pun, Bernard insinuated that the mystery of the Trinity was degraded "in the streets" (triviatim) because certain scholars deigned to bring the conceptual tools of the trivium to bear on a mystery of the faith.

It is within the contours of this discursive space that trinitarian thought unfolded in the twelfth century. This unfolding occurred initially in an intellectual constellation around the schools of Laon and Reims, and reached a first stage of completion in Paris, in the thought of Hugh of Saint-Victor and Abelard. These two thinkers shared significant commonalities, approaching the Trinity as an object of philosophical or rational knowledge rather than as a matter of faith. Hugh attempted to infer the divine persons a posteriori, by considering the deep structure of the "Book of Nature," where he found that each created being possessed a triadic ontological structure. This triad, composed of magnitudo, pulchritudo, and utilitas, he then traced to the three persons of the Deity. Abelard inferred the Trinity by means of an a priori argument that focused on the inner logic of God's nature as the highest good. Both arguments failed - and Abelard's did so in scandalous circumstances - because of inherent difficulties, and above all the confusion of aspects of God's essence with attributes that can only be "appropriated" to the divine persons.

If Hugh's and Abelard's arguments both failed, why did their authors meet with dramatically different reactions? Hugh of Saint-Victor came to be recognized as an auctoritas whereas Abelard's thought was condemned at two councils. The explanation is not philosophical or theological, Narchi argues, but boils down to the different places that these thinkers occupied in the institutional and political landscape of their time - places that Narchi analyzes in detail and summarizes in diagrams (217 and 249).

The Denkraum for a philosophical discussion of the Trinity did not close after Abelard's condemnations; rather, it was reconfigured in a range of "reactions" designed to address the difficulties from the first phase. Again, Narchi paints a complex picture of the institutional and intellectual constellation in which these debates occurred, mostly among second-generation Victorines. He concludes that Richard of Saint-Victor's caritas argument for the Trinity emerged from the debates as the "systematically most mature trinitarian argument of the twelfth century" (388). Rather than distinguishing several attributes of the divine essence, Richard focused on one of them - perfect love - to show that it can be realized only in a Trinity of persons.

Toward the end of the twelfth century, the space for a philosophical discussion of the Trinity closed. The institutional separation of philosophy and theology in the universities, the rediscovery of Aristotelian metaphysics, and the further development of the notion of trinitarian appropriations all contributed to a situation in which the Trinity was regarded as a matter of faith rather than reason.

Jonas Narchi has written an ambitious and stimulating book. His work exemplifies the fruits of a methodology which takes seriously the idea that truth is accessible only in the medium of history. The book is lucidly written and well-produced, with the exception of a few minor errors (the index appears in the wrong font, for example). Historians of medieval theology as well as philosophers and theologians taking an interest in the emerging field of trinitarian ontology will read this study with profit. [1]

Note:

[1] Narchi himself has contributed to a collective volume on this "trinitarian ontology"; see Jonas Narchi: Can There Be a Philosophy of the Trinity? Victorine Answers Reconsidered, in: Eduard Fiedler / Pavel Frývaldský (eds.): Trinitarian Ontologies: Towards a Trinitarian Transformation of Philosophy (= Studies on Triadic Ontology and Trinitarian Philosophy; Vol. 1), Baden-Baden 2025, 183-206.

Philipp W. Rosemann