Sophia, Vol. 43, No. 1, May 2004. Copyright 9 2004 Ashgate Publishing Limited.

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, H U M A N A N D DIVINE GERALD GLEESON Catholic Institute o f Sydney [email protected], au

Christians commonly speak o f and to God as 'a person '. The propriety o f such talk depends on how the concept o f a person is being used and understood, and that concept is much contested in contemporary analytie philosophy. In this article, I note the presuppositions o f one current debate about what it is to be a human person, and then propose an alternative approach to persons - both human and divine- that draws upon the Thomistic philosophical and theological tradition. In this tradition, 'person" is neither an essence-determining kind term, nor a merely nominal or functional kind term, but is applicable analogously to entities o f various 'kinds" (e.g. humans, angels and God). The origins o f this account in Aquinas 'theology o f the Trinity will be examined, and I will conclude by noting a recent development o f Thomas'thought in relation to what it is to be a human person.

Introduction

Analytic philosophy continues to be dominated by Locke's distinction between the concept of a human (or a 'man', as Locke put it) and the concept of a person. Being a person is typically understood in psychological terms, be it as a psychological substance or as a psychological property. Being a human, by contrast, is typically understood in terms of belonging to a certain biological species, homo sapiens, individual members of which may or may not be persons. The contrast between humans and persons is well canvassed in long running debates over dualist, reductionist, and physicalist accounts of the mind. Whereas these familiar debates focus on the property of human 'mindedness' as the key to human personhood, a new debate is now under way about the essential kind to which humans belong. This new debate responds to the question, 'what are we?' i.e. the question about our essence-determining kind (we being those capable of asking the question). Two rival accounts have emerged: Animalism holds that we are essentially animals, members of the species homo sapiens; what I will call 'Personism' holds that we are essentially persons, i.e. self-conscious beings with a first-person perspective, albeit beings who are constituted by, or embodied in or as, human beings) Although it is tempting to suppose we

46

GERALD GLEESON

are essentially both animals and persons, or, perhaps, animals who are persons, the Animalist-Personist debate reveals why this solution is problematic. Both sides to the debate assume that the key to understanding our 'essence-determining kind' (what we are) is an understanding of our 'persistence conditions'. Persisting as an animal involves continuity of organic life and activity; persisting as a person involves continuity o f consciousness and rational activity. Since no entity can have two different sets o f persistence conditions, a human being cannot essentially be both an animal and a person. The Animalist and the Personist in turn are thus challenged to explain those features of human existence that do not belong to their preferred essential kind. The Animalists must do justice to the personal features of human existence; the Personists must do justice to the organic and bodily features of human existence. A common Animalist claim is that whether a human animal is a person depends on whether he or she is capable of distinctively personal activities, nnderpinned by self-consciousness and rationality. On this view, the term 'person' is 'phase sortal', like 'adult' or 'musician', only true o f human beings at certain stages in their lives, z The Personist response to this claim is that functional or phasal accounts are inadequate because they reduce personhood to a 'mode' of a physical substance, marking a substance's ability to do certain things and to have certain experiences. 3 E. J. Lowe, for example, argues that we cannot individuate psychological states, or 'modes', without first individuating their psychological subjects (substances), and so concludes that we are essentially psychological substances (albeit embodied in a human being). 4 For their part, the Animalists reply that the Personist position is unacceptable because it denies that we are really human beings, i.e. human animals. Since we cannot belong to two essential kinds, anyone who thinks that we really are animals (members o f the species homo sapiens), cannot also hold that person is our essence-determining kind. That is why for an Animalist person can at most mark a functional kind, like athlete or carpenter or adult - true of us at various times in our lives in virtue of our properties at those times. 5 Some Personists, such as Lynne Rudder Baker, try to avoid this objection by proposing a 'constitutionalist' account, according to which we are persons who are constituted by human animals. On this account, we belong essentially to the kind person, and derivatively to the kind animal. It is unclear whether this proposal constitutes a viable solution. 6 The impasse between Animalism and Personism highlights their shared assumption that person is a kind term, marking either an essence-determining kind or a functional kind. 7 This impasse leads me to reconsider the

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

47

Aristotelian-Thomistic account of human beings as essentially 'hylomorphic', or psychophysical, entities. Recent proponents of hylomorphism include David Braine, John Haldane, William Stoeger, and Elenore Stump. 8 On this account, human beings are neither psychological substances joined to bodies, nor physical entities with psychological properties, but rather psychophysical, or better spiritual-material, entities through and through. Although I believe that the concept of a 'hylomorphic' entity provides a surer starting point than either physicalism or substance dualism, it is important to acknowledge that it is only a starting point, a credible prima facie answer to the 'what are we?' question. As William Stoeger has remarked, given the current state of science and philosophy, 'referring to the human person as a psychosomatic unity is a preliminary intuitive conclusion based on our experience of personal integrity'.9 Likewise, John Haldane suggests 'emergent mentalism' as a good description for the human phenomenon, a phenomenon we should seek to understand in its own terms, rather than 'reduce' to it to something less in the interests of a grand natm'alising project, l~ The Thomistic understanding of personhood, which arose in the context of theologies of Incarnation and Trinity, both presupposes and goes beyond the Aristotelian hylomorphic principle. With respect to the current options of Animalism and Personism, a Thomistic account of the human being agrees with the Animalist that we are animals, while denying that our nature is merely animal; it agrees with the Personist that we are essentially persons, while denying that person marks our essential kind (genus or species). It holds that our being persons depends on our having a rational or intellectual nature, but denies that our personhood is either equivalent to, or reducible to, that nature. This account thus involves a metaphysics of personhood that goes beyond essences and substances, and a relational view of personhood that is grounded in metaphysics, rather than psychology. In short, for Thomas, personhood belongs to the metaphysics of existence, rather than essence. In the remainder of this article I seek to explain how this understanding of personhood emerged in the course of Christian theological explorations, and I conclude by outlining a recent proposal for its application to human persons. I note in passing that the fact that a concept first emerged in a religious context does not preclude its subsequent independent justification in philosophical terms. I do not attempt to provide that justification here, except to the extent that an appreciation of the historical emergence of this understanding of personhood adds to its intellectual credibility in its own right.

48

GERALD GLEESON

The Metaphysics of Incarnation In its traditional theological uses, person is a metaphysical classification. Two metaphysical claims about persons are of most relevance to my project: first, Boethius' classic definition o f a person as an 'individual substance of a rational nature', and secondly, Aquinas' claim that the persons in the divine Trinity are to be understood as 'subsistent relations'. The impetus for these metaphysical understandings of person came from attempts to safeguard the Christian doctrines o f Incarnation and Trinity. The Incarnation involves the claim that Jesus o f Nazareth was fully human and fully divine. Since to be fully human is to possess a complete, integral and individual human nature, when Christians reflected on what kind o f being Jesus was, they concluded that he was human, that he possessed a human nature. But if the question shifts from 'what is Jesus?' to 'who is Jesus?', the Christian answer is that he - the subject addressed - is the Son o f God. So - Christians also concluded - Jesus was not a 'human subject', but rather a divine subject, the Word of God, and as such possessing properties true o f the divine nature. In thus attempting to protect the doctrine o f Incarnation from misunderstanding, Christians came to distinguish between having a complete and individualised human nature (with its various capacities and attributes), and being an individual subsisting subject (a someone who exists his own right). Armed with this distinction, early Church councils concluded that the individual human nature of Jesus did not exist in its own right, as the nature of a subsisting human being, but existed only in the subsistence of the divine person, the Word or Son o f God. Person was thus understood to refer to the 'metaphysical subject', that which exists and has a certain nature (whether a human nature or a divine nature, or - in the case of the incarnate Logos both natures). In the case of all other human beings, the individual subject who exists is a human subject with a human nature. In the case o f Jesus, the individual subject is a Divine subject, the Logos, who exemplifies Humanness - for Jesus' human nature is a true instance of what it is to be human but is not himself a human subj ect.l~ This very summary discussion reminds us o f how the word 'person' has altered its meaning: in classical Catholic theology, Jesus was not 'a human person' at all, whereas in contemporary idiom to say that Jesus was 'a human person' is typically to say that he was a human being ('like us in all things but sin').

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

49

The Thomistic Understanding of Person The distinction between being an existent or 'subject of existence' and having a certain nature was developed in scholastic philosophies of existence and essence. Speaking most generally ofexistents, Thomas Aquinas uses the terms 'hypostasis' and 'suppositum'; being a 'person' is one way - a more excellent way - of being an 'hypostasis' or a 'suppositum'. These three terms do not mark a 'genus' or 'species' (an essential kind), but refer to individual entities as individuals, as 'subsisting' or 'existing in their own right', albeit as individuals of some kind. They thus correspond to Aristotle's 'first substances'. It is significant to note that for Thomas, 'person' is an evaluative term, marking 'what is most perfect in all nature' (I. 29.3). 12Every subsisting existent is a suppositum, but only some are 'persons', viz. those who are rational (I. 29.2), those whose nature is o f sufficient depth and complexity to enable them to possess and to exercise a rational nature, with 'dominion over their actions' (I. 29.1). Some contemporary philosophers also regard 'person' as an evaluative term - marking the worth of human beings at certain times in their lives on the basis o f capacities like self-consciousness and rationality; they therefore deny the title 'person' to some human beings, e.g. the unborn, the severely demented, the persistently unconscious. For Thomas, by contrast, person marks not merely an attribute or property, but an evaluation of a being's metaphysical status. A contemporary Thomist, therefore, can argue that an embryo with a human nature (however undeveloped) is a person in the metaphysical sense, even if an embryos seems not to be a person in the modem sense of having self-conscious subjectivity. 13 Thomistic thought developed this metaphysical understanding o f person in two ways. First, by examining the basis for the individuality o f an entity. In the case of sub-personal beings, individuality is limited to the material level - the difference between this plant and that plant o f the same species is explained in terms of the different quantities of organic matter that compose them. In the case of human persons, however, individuality also arises on the formal or spiritual level: what it is to be this human being, Socrates, is not due simply to Socrates' material properties or genetic code. Socrates' rational nature - i.e. his self-consciousness, and his intellectual and volitional powers, expressed in his choices and actions - underpin the uniqueness and 'incommunicability' o f his personal existence. Individuality here concerns the rational subject who is Socrates. Personal incommunicability as a metaphysical subject thus transcends material individuality. 14 Secondly, this understanding o f the person was explained in terms o f the priority o f existence (esse) over essence. In the Thomistic tradition, existence is not a property or perfection added on to an already given essence (such as

50

GERALD GLEESON

a individual human nature). Rather, existence is actuality or perfection, in comparison to which essence is potentiality or limitation. Every contingent being (e.g. this or that human being) is merely this or that contingent being of its kind; Socrates is only this human being - he is not all that being (esse, actuality) can be. In the case of every existent (entity), the perfection of esse which is in-itself-unlimited is restricted to being merely an existent entity o f such and such a kind. O f course, the principle o f essence involves some determinate content - it makes Socrates a human being, rather than some other kind o f being; but more fundamentally, it is the actuality o f existence (esse) that makes the human Socrates to exist at all. From the perspective of existence (esse) as perfection, an existent that is aperson has that perfection ofesse whereby a being is present to itself, with the existence proper to spirit, and with a formal incommunicability. This is why for Thomas person marks what is most perfect in nature. Further, a human person has or exercises a human nature, but is not reducible to being merely an instance of that nature. ~5 Against the background of this metaphysical understanding of person, I now ask in what sense, for Aquinas, is God a person?

T h o m a s o n G o d as Person

With characteristic brevity, Thomas identifies the still relevant worries we might have about speaking of God as a 'person' (I. 29.3). First, there is no basis in the Bible for speaking o f God as a 'person'. Secondly, given its etymology (as an actor's 'mask'), the term 'person' could only be metaphorical with respect to God. Thirdly, 'person' signifies an hypostasis or substance, and God is not a substance with properties. Fourthly, and in any ease, God is neither an individual substance nor a rational substance - and both these notions are implied by the metaphysical understanding o f a person. Thomas's succinct replies encapsulate his understanding of how human language can be used to speak o f God (I. 29.3c). First, he says, there will always be a need to use new words to express the ancient faith 'in order to confute heretics' - or, more charitably, we might say, in order to address those who wish to understand what Christians believe, as well as to enable Christians themselves to articulate their faith in their own cultural contexts. Secondly, we need to distinguish between the first use o f a word and the 'objective meaning' it later acquires (quod signifieandum). 'Person' might have first been used of actors' masks in their representation of famous people - there are echoes of this in our use of'persona' today - but it soon came to signify the dignity attached to worthy people as such. Since the dignity o f

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

51

God exceeds that of all others, 'person' is an evaluative term that is pre-eminently applicable to God. Thirdly, and likewise, the original use of 'hypostasis' and 'substance' (which assumed the distinction between a substantial essence and its accidental properties) must be distinguished from its 'objective meaning' in the case of God in whom there are no 'accidents', and no properties distinct from the divine essence itself. The divine hypostasis, therefore, is simply the divine subsistence, God's existence in God's own right. Thus far, we find that Thomas' defence of 'person' in relation to God involves distinguishing its 'core meaning' from its 'non-core' meanings or associations. As we might expect, he employs this distinction again in response to the last, and most fundamental objection - viz. that person denotes (as in the case of human beings) an individual substance of a rational nature. Yet, although Thomas does respond in this way, we will see that he also seems to question his own strategy at the very last moment by proposing a different definition of person with respect to God. He first says that humans and God are both 'rational' in the general (or 'core') sense of being 'intelligent' beings, though our rationality is 'discursive' and God's is not. Similarly, humans and God are 'individuals' in the general sense of being unique or 'incommunicable', though our individuality involves matter and limitation (our bodiliness), and God's does not. Moreover, the core idea of 'substance' as 'self-subsistence' applies to humans and to God, though, as Thomas notes, in radically different ways! However, at this point the crucial differences between human and divine 'personhood' lead Thomas to suggest that the original Boethian definition of person with which he has been working does not after all strictly apply to God, and ought to be replaced by Richard of St Victor's definition - viz. that '"Person" in God is the incommunicable existence of the divine nature' (I. 29.3c). This remark prompts the question whether Richard's definition simply articulates the dissimilarity involved in the analogous use of the Boethian definition, or whether Richard's definition is simply equivocal with the Boethian definition? In support of the former view, we can recall that speaking analogously in relation to God always involves taking a word we understand in its human context and using it in a context we don't understand, viz. the divine nature, even though we believe we have good reasons for so using it. On Thomas' account, Christians have good reason to use the word 'person' (and likewise the word 'good') in relation to God, despite that fact that they cannot begin to comprehend what it is for God to be person (or to be good). Human and divine persons are more unlike than alike.

52

GERALD GLEESON

A Trinity of Persons From this discussion it is clear that Thomas recognises the acute strain involved in speaking of both God and humans as 'persons' in the metaphysical sense, even though he is convinced we are entitled to do so. Matters become more strained once we recall that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit whom Christians confess as 'persons' are explained in Thomas's theology of the Trinity as 'subsistent relations' in an intellectual nature. How could the word 'person' be applicable to a metaphysical 'relation'? To address this question we need briefly to recall Thomas's Trinitarian theology: God is not a 'static' entity, there is 'movement' in God - 'processions' as they are called, which are immanent movements within the life of God, like the 'movement' that occurs within us when we think a thought or love another, or indeed love ourselves. In speaking of these movements or processions, we speak of their 'points of origin' and their 'points of conclusion', i.e. between their 'terms', and so of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This manner of speaking should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the divine 'persons' are not distinct entities or even terms of these relationships; they are simply the 'terms' of the 'movements' or processions within the divine nature. Since the divine persons have no distinction from each other except that constituted by their relations, they simply are subsistent relations: the relation of divine paternity is the Father, the relation of divine filiation is the Son, the divine procession of love is the Holy Spirit (I. 30.2). So, while there is only one divine nature, the divine essence or Godhead - this Godhead is that of 'three persons', subsisting in three ways that differ only in their relationality. I will examine this theology is more detail shortly. Enough has been said, however, to generate the problem Thomas now faces: How can Christians speak of three persons in God without thereby implying there are three gods, and without predicating of Father, Son and Spirit a term or perfection (viz. personhood) that is not true of the divine essence itself. And, in any case, Thomas foresees the further objections that 'person' is not a relational term at all, and that personhood cannot consist in an attribute or property - for then it would be possessed by three distinct subjects (see I. 29.4 objections). Thomas begins by rejecting one ad hoc solution to this problem - viz. that 'person' is an approved ecclesiastical metaphor, an arbitrary, culturally bound image (like 'shepherd' or 'rock') that is not truly applicable to God. On the contrary, he says, Father, Son and Spirit really are persons. But how can they be persons if they are subsistent relations? Thomas's next move is linguistic. Like Aristotle, Thomas often does not sharply distinguish between language and reality. In general, he holds that to predicate a term is to predicate a reality of a subject: e.g. to say that

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

53

Socrates is an animal, is to say that Socrates exemplifies animality or that animality is exemplified in Socrates. On this occasion, however, Thomas begins with a thoroughly linguistic point. He notes that in predicating quite general terms we need not be constrained by what is true of a referent under a more specific description. In saying Socrates is an animal, we do not exclude the fact that he is rational, even though 'animal' does not imply rational. We are simply using 'animal' in its most general meaning, as it is applicable to all animals. Likewise, in speaking of God as 'person' we are speaking quite generally, we are not committed to the view that God is a person in the way we are, viz. as individual rational substances. This linguistic point does not, however, turn 'person' into a genus term, like 'animal'. 'Person', like 'surface' and 'body', can 'range over' diverse kinds of being, even though those kinds are not species of a genus (cf. I. 30.4).~6 Of course, the kind of persons we are acquainted with are all 'human substances', but Thomas's Christian faith has led him to believe there are divine 'persons' who are not distinct individual substances. On this basis he further refines the core-meaning of 'person' to signify individuality, uniqueness, incommunicability, distinction from 'others of one's kind'. This move creates room for the question: What is it to be distinct and incommunicable of one's kind? In the case of humans, it is to be a particular living animal, with this body, this flesh and bones, this soul. In the case of God, the question becomes: What kind of distinction and incommunicability is there in God? Of course, this is an awkward question, since there cannot be more than one God for there is only one divine nature or essence. Thomas replies that the only sort of distinction possible in God is that deriving from the relationships between Father, Son and Spirit. The only distinction between Father and Son is that Father is Father in relation to Son, and Son is Son in relation to Father. The one divine nature or divinity 'subsists in' the three Trinitarian relations. In naming Father, Son and Spirit, we are not naming three Gods, but simply naming the three subsistent relationships in the Godhead. But what entitles us to use 'person' of Father, Son and Spirit, thus understood? Recall, that 'person' does not look like a relational term (unlike 'father' and 'son' which clearly are relational terms), precisely because 'person' refers to a being in its distinctness and separateness from others. In other words, 'person' looks like a substance term. Thomas partly accepts this point: in speaking of divine persons we are speaking of 'a relation as subsisting', as an hypostasis or subject subsisting in the divine nature. He then he adds: 'although in truth that which subsists in the divine nature is the divine nature itself'. Because 'person' is a substance term, a term for something that subsists in its own right, to speak of the Father (or Son or Spirit)

54

GERALD GLEESON

as person is to speak of the reality (the subsistence) of that relation of fatherhood (or sonship or spiration) which constitutes the uniqueness or incommunicability true of God as Father (or Son or Spirit), never forgetting that in all other respects Father, Son and Spirit are simply one G o d - for what ultimately subsists is simply the divine nature. Harking back to an old debate, Thomas concludes that there are two ways in which we can view our use of 'person' with respect to God, depending on whether we are focussing on the relationality or the divine nature) 7 First, in speaking of the divine persons, we can be signifying directly the relationality of the persons thought of as subjects, while indirectly signifying the divine essence in as much as the persons are identical with the divine essence. Or, secondly, we can be signifiying the divine essence directly in as much as it is God who is Father Son and Spirit, and the relationality of the persons indirectly, that is as deriving from the divine essence. The crucial conclusion that Thomas draws from this discussion is that, in the case of God, 'relation, as such, enters into the notion of person indirectly' (I. 29.4 c). He then adds the remarkable observation that this insight has only emerged in response the challenges of heretics. Prior to the controversies over the divine persons, 'person' was taken to be an 'absolute' term applicable to an entity in isolation from others. Now, however, Christians realise that relationality can properly be included in the concept of what it is to be a person - even though Thomas thinks that this is not the case for human persons (ad. 4). Thus far, I have considered the ways 'person' characterises metaphysical realities, albeit realities that are analogous, given the differences between what it is for humans and for God to be persons. Some philosophers and theologians see two problems arising from this account. First, Thomas's contrast between human personhood as 'rational substance' and divine personhood as 'subsistent relation in an intellectual substance' seems to strain the analogy of personhood to breaking point. Secondly, a metaphysical understanding of persons as 'subjects of existence' seems highly abstract and remote from the contemporary understanding of persons, which emphasises subjectivity, self-consciousness, and above all relationships to others. I conclude by outlining a recent response to these problems which seeks to link human and divine personhood through a relational metaphysics.

David Coffey on Persons Human and Divine

A subsidiary goal of David Coffey's theology of the Trinity is to link human and divine personhood. 18 He finds unsatisfactory Thomas's position that

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

55

while the divine persons are essentially relational, human persons are not. Accordingly, Coffey develops a Trinitarian theology that involves a metaphysical understanding of personhood as relation, and then seeks to show how this understanding ofpersonhood provides a metaphysical basis for the modem view of human persons as psychologically relational beings. Coffey's theology of the Trinity is far reaching and beyond the scope of this article, except for its bearing on his account of the human person. Building on the Thomistic theology outlined above, Coffey argues that we need to distinguish between two different kinds of personhood and 'incommunicability' in God. First, there is God's absolute personhood and incommunicability. The divine essence is radically incommunicable - nothing other than God can be God. Secondly, there is the 'relative incommunicability' of the three persons within the divine essence: in the Trinitarian relations, the divine essence is indeed communicated from Father to Son, and from Father and Son to Spirit. What is not communicable, however, is personhood as such: The fatherhood of the Father is not communicated to the Son, nor sonship to the Father, and so on. Coffey thus speaks of one absolute subsistence in God, and three relative subsistences. It is important to note that there cannot be any higher philosophical principle that would integrate absolute and relative personhood in God within a single vision or metaphysical system. 19 Although Coffey does not discuss the divine consciousness, the implications of his account should be noted because consciousness is the most evident feature of modem conceptions of personhood. God of course is supremely 'conscious' - but the divine consciousness must be understood in the light of the Trinity. The 'absolute' personhood of God, the Godhead, is not a fourth person in addition to the three! There is but one divine essence, nature and subsistence, and one divine consciousness. Yet within this absolute divine personhood, there are three 'relative persons' who are incommunicable insofar as they are in relation to each other, and 'consciously' so - the Father knows he is Father in relation to the Son, the Son knows he is Son in relation to the Father, and so on. The relative consciousness of each person thus subsists within the one absolute consciousness of God. It is important to note again that whether we are considering the divine nature as such, or the divine 'consciousness', the two modes of discourse - about the divine unity and about the Trinitarian relationality - each valid in their own sphere, cannot be subsumed into some 'higher' third mode of discourse. I turn now to focus on Coffey's proposal that human persons be understood as 'subsistent relations'. In thinking about the relationship between humans and God, Coffey notes that we come up against one of the central issues in theology - 'how to relate God to the world without compromising

56

GERALD GLEESON

his transcendence'. 2~ The context for Coffey's proposal is the traditional Thomistic metaphysical claim that creation adds nothing to God; it is but a created participation in the infinite being and perfection of God. 21 This is perhaps the most fundamental and the most mysterious of Christian metaphysical claims, and is reflected in Thomas's argument that the relation between God and what God creates is 'real' on the part of the creature, but only 'logical' on the part of God. In other words, whereas creatures really depend on God for their existence, God's being is not changed or affected by God's act of creating - even though it is true to say ('logically') that God is related as creator to his creation. Coffey develops this account by noting that while the ('logical') relation of God to creation is not a 'real' relation between beings that exist apart from their relationship, it is not not-real: it is in truth, 'more than real' or 'super real', or - as Coffey terms it - 'transcendental'. The scholastic context for the term 'transcendental' is discussion about the properties of Being, such as Good and True. Goodness and Truth are distinct from Being, belong to Being, and yet add nothing to Being. A transcendental relation belongs to the being of an entity, and so contrasts with a categorial relationship that is added on to an already existing entity.22The concept of a transcendental relation is close to what some now call a 'constitutive relationship', a relationship that make something be what it is. 23 God's relation to creation is 'transcendental' because apart from this relation, the created does not exist; the transcendental relation of creation is both necessary to, and identical with, the being of the creature, because it is the principle of its subsistence. Returning to Thomas's account of the Trinity, Coffey uses this understanding of a transcendental relation to clarify the Trinitarian relations. The three persons are the 'terms' of the divine processions (of knowledge and love), but they are not the terms of the relations between the persons: they are those relationships. A transcendental relation does not concern merely an aspect of a being, but the entire being itself. It is only by holding that the divine Son is the subsistent relation of Sonship, that we avoid making the relation between Father and Son something accidental or additional to the being of Father and Son. 24 Coffey's use of the term 'transcendental relationship' is allied to, yet distinct from, another use of the term, viz. to refer to a relationship within a finite being that concerns the very being of the entity, e.g. between existence and essence, or between form and matter. In this latter sense, there is a transcendental relation between two incomplete principles that together form a third complete entity. In the former sense of transcendental relation, of course, God and creature do not form a third entity. The term 'transcenden-

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

57

tal relationship' is applicable to both kinds of relationships insofar as both are essential to the being of a created entity. We have noted that esse is in itself unlimited, and Thomistic philosophers have come to emphasise the 'intrinsic dynamism' of esse: a particular (kind of) substance comes to exist in virtue of the transcendental relationship between the dynamism of esse and the limiting content of its essence (or kind). If this insight is combined with the form/matter (soul/body) account of human beings, then, Coffey argues, we realise that the human person is constituted by two transcendental relations: (1) that between soul (spirit) and body, and (2) that between the (whole) person and God. The first relation between soul and body is prior in the logical order, in that God gives existence to a particular human being, who is individuated both materially and formally (or spirituality) as 'this person'. The second relation is prior in the ontological order, in that it is the transcendental relation to God that is the principle of the subsistence of this human person. In virtue of the (first) transcendental relation between spirit and matter, the human being is individuated in the world, is an essentially 'embodied being' whose selfrealisation consists in activity in the world, chiefly love of God and neighbour. In virtue of the (second) transcendental relation to God, the human being is properly a person or spiritual being, transcending the material world. In short, Coffey argues, to exist in virtue of these two relations is what it is to be a human person. Moreover, Coffey argues that finite persons are best defined in terms of their subsistent transcendental relation to God. Although, like all created beings, sub-personal beings are identical with their transcendental relation to God (in virtue of which they exist), they are not distinguished by this relation as such, and are rather to be defined in terms of their genus and species. Persons (e.g. humans and angels), by contrast, are spiritual beings, or have a spiritual component, and their transcendental relationship to God constitutes their spiritual nature, by which they are ordered to God who is Infinite Spirit. Persons are thus a 'created spiritual participation' in God's infinite spiritual being, and so can be properly defined as a 'subsistent relation' over against God. Those finite persons who are human persons exist also in virtue of the transcendental relationship between spirit and matter, and hence their embodiment in the world. In the absence of a spiritual nature, constituted by their relation to God, humans would be merely animals (individual substances), but not persons. 25 Coffey believes his proposal overcomes the tension in Thomas's account, in which divine persons are 'subsistent relations', whereas human persons are 'rational substances'. Human beings are ultimately to be understood in terms of the ontologically prior subsistent relations to God and

58

GERALD GLEESON

between spirit and matter. Furthermore, this metaphysical relationality underpins the psychological relationality that we recognise as essential to human self-realisation, viz. the idea that human beings become individuals ('persons' in the modem sense) through relationships with other persons. To be a person is to be in relationship with others, but this is underpinned metaphysically by one's subsisting in relationship to God, who is Absolute Person. In short: 'Human beings are persons because they stand in a transcendental relation to another than themselves, to God, and they achieve their personhood before him through relations with other human beings in the world' .26

Conclusion

Contemporary philosophers tend to discuss human beings under the rubric of 'philosophy of mind': humans are 'minded' beings, and philosophers are interested in how the phenomenon of mind fits into the natural world studied by science. Can mindedness be explained in terms of physical substances and their properties, or does our mindedness entail that we are ultimately psychological, non-physical, entities? In this paper I have eschewed these alternatives and returned to an older way of addressing the issue, viz. 'hylomorphism', which accepts that humans are psychophysical, and indeed spiritual-material, entities through and through. This approach involves a kind of 'dualism', though a dualism that is neither substance nor property dualism, as these are currently understood. This Thomistie account is underpinned by a metaphysics of existence, rather than essence; it recognises that person marks the metaphysical status of as existent as a rational, self-conscious subject of existence. Thomas Aquinas developed this metaphysical approach with respect to the personhood of Jesus and to the persons in the divine Trinity, and recent proposals by David Coffey show how a relational understanding of the divine persons can be deployed to provide a metaphysical basis for the modem psychological and relational understandings of human persons. Of course these claims need a far more detailed defence than I have offered here - I hope simply to have shown that they are worth considering as a fruitful alternative to the various impasses and unfulfilled 'research projects' of much contemporary philosophy of mind. 27

SPEAKING OF PERSONS, HUMAN AND DIVINE

59

Endnotes

1. Eric Olson champions the Animalist view - see Olson, Eric T. The Human Animal Personal Identity without Psychology. Oxford: OUP, 1997. For Personist views see, for example, Baker, Lynne Rudder. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge: CLIP, 2000, and Lowe, E. J. Subjects of Experience. Cambridge: CUP, 1996. 2. See for example, Olson, The Human Animal, op. tit., pp. 97-102. The term 'phase sortal' is that of David Wiggins. 3. Of course, accounts of personhood as a mode or property of a substance (a physical substance) face well known questions about whether those 'person making properties' can be explained in physical terms (cf. debates over the causal efficacy of the psychological, mind/brain identity, physicalism, and so on). 4. Lowe, E. J. Subjects of Experience. Cambridge: CUP, 1996. 5. See Olson, op. cit., pp. 97-102. 6. For doubts about Baker's account see, Gleeson, Gerald. 'Person, Body, Gender - Philosophical Reflections on the 'What are we?' Question', Australasian Catholic Record 79 (2002): 285-298; and Degrazia, David. 'Are We Essentially Persons? Olson, Baker and A Reply', The Philosophical Forum 33 (2002): 101-120, atp. 117. 7. See Gleeson, 'Person, Body, Gender', op. cit., pp. 285-298. 8. See Braine, David. The Human Person:Animal & Spirit. Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. Haldane, John. 'The Examined Death and the Hope of the Future', American Catholic Philosophical Association, Proceedings 74 (2001): 245-257; and 'A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind', in Form and Matter, David S. Oderberg (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, pp. 40--64. Stoeger, William. 'The Mind-Body Problem, the Laws of Nature, and Constitutive Relationships', in Neuroscience and the Person, Robert John Russell et al. (eds.), Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1999, pp. 129-146. Stump, Eleonore. 'Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism', Faith and Philosophy 12 (1995): 505-531. 9. Stoeger, 'The Mind-Brain Problem', op. cit., p. 134. 10. See John Haldane, 'Psychoanalysis, Cognitive Psychology and Self-Consciousness', in Mind, Psychoanalysis and Science, Peter Clark & Crispin Wright (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1988, pp. 113-139, at p. 137. 11. For more on how subjects exemplify a nature, see Haldane, John. 'A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind', op. tit., pp. 54-540. 12. References in the text are to Aquinas, Thomfis. Summa Theologica, Vol. I. Translated by fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benzinger, 1948. Reprinted, Allen, Texas: Christian Classics, 1981. 13. Gleeson, Gerald. 'Why It's Wrong to Experiment on Human Embryos', Social Alternatives 22/1 (2003): 33-38, at pp. 35-37. 14. See Crosby, John E 'The Twofold Source of the Dignity of Persons', Faith and Philosophy 18 (2001): 292-306. 15. By contrast two plants of the same species each have their own esse (act of existence), yet both are so limited and restricted by their plant nature as to differ only at the level of organic matter.

60

GERALD GLEESON

16. See Braine, The Human Person, op. cit., p. 490. 17. See Velecky, Ceslaus, OP. 'Divine Persons', Appendix 7. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 6. The Trinity. London: Blackfriars & Eyre and Spottiswoods, 1965, p. 148. 18. Coffey, David. Deus Trinitas. Oxford: OUP, 1999. 19. Coffey, Deus Trinitas. op. cit., pp. 72, 76. 20. Coffey, Deus Trinitas. op. cit., p. 26. 21. See Sokolowski, Robert. The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982, pp. 32-3. 22. Following Rahner, the term 'categorial' (belonging to a specific category) is used rather than 'categorical' (which colloquially implies 'absolute' or 'plain'). 23. See Stoeger, 'The Mind-Body Problem', op. cit. 24. It is crucial to note the distinction between the term of a relation and the term of a movement or procession. Coffey writes: 'if in the Trinity the Father loves the Son, here the Son is the term of the Father's movement of love but not the term of the relation of divine sonshop, for the Son is this relation, not just its term . . . . When thinking about a transcendental relation we need to avoid the trap of imagining it as though it is just some special, intensified case of a predicamental relation.' (private communication). 25. Coffey, Deus Trinitas. op. cit., pp. 78-9. 26. Coffey, Deus Trinitas. op. cit., p. 86. 27. I thank David Coffey and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.