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Cyril of Alexandria left to posterity a sizable body of exegetical literature. This thesis attempts to reconstruct his theology of Scripture in order to suggest that his exegetical practice is inseparable from, and must be interpreted in light of, his overarching theological vision. I argue that the most important intellectual factor shaping his exegesis is his Christologically focused, pro-Nicene Trinitarianism, an inheritance that he received from fourth-century authors. Cyril’s appropriation of pro-Nicene thought is evident in his theology of revelation and his theology of exegesis. Revelation, in his understanding, proceeds from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit, following the order of Trinitarian relations. Moreover, this pattern applies to the inspiration of Scripture as well, insofar as inspiration occurs when the Son indwells human authors by the Spirit and speaks the words of the Father. Corresponding to this movement of God towards humanity in revelation is humanity’s growth in understanding that occurs according to a reverse pattern—in the Spirit, through the Son, unto the Father. This scheme applies broadly to Cyril’s soteriology, but also to his understanding of exegesis, since he regarded biblical interpretation as a means of participating in the divine life. More specifically, this Trinitarian pattern implies that the Spirit is required to read Scripture properly, and that in the act of interpretation the Spirit directs the reader to a Christological reading of Scripture, through which the believer gains a limited but genuine apprehension of the Trinitarian mystery. This process continues until the final eschatological vision when the types and riddles of Scripture will be done away with in light of the overwhelming clarity of the vision of the Father.

In this thesis, my purpose is to determine why Augustine’s theory of knowledge by illumination was rejected by Franciscan theologians at the end of the thirteenth century. My main methodological assumption is that Medieval accounts of divine illumination must be interpreted in a theological context, or with attention to a scholar’s underlying doctrines of God and of the human mind as the image of God, inasmuch as the latter doctrine determines one’s understanding of the nature of the mind’s cognitive work, and illumination illustrates cognition. In the first chapter, I show how Augustine’s understanding of illumination derives from his Trinitarian theology. In the second chapter, I use the same theological methods of inquiry to identify continuity of thought on illumination in Augustine and Anselm. The third chapter covers the events of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries that had an impact on the interpretation of illumination, including the Greek and Arabic translation movements and the founding of universities and mendicant orders. In this chapter, I explain how the first Franciscan scholars transformed St. Francis of Assisi’s spiritual ideals into a theological and philosophical system, appropriating the Trinitarian theology of Richard of St. Victor and the philosophy of the Arab scholar Avicenna in the process. Bonaventure is typically hailed the great synthesizer of early Franciscan thought and the last and best proponent of traditional Medieval Augustinian thought. In the fourth chapter, I demonstrate that Bonaventure’s Victorine doctrine of the Trinity both enabled and motivated him to assign originally Avicennian meanings to philosophical arguments of Augustine and Anselm that were incompatible with the original ones. In the name of Augustine, in other words, Bonaventure introduced a theory of knowledge that is not Augustinian. In the fifth chapter, my aim is to throw the non-Augustinian character of Bonaventure’s illumination theory into sharper relief through a discussion of knowledge and illumination in the thought of his Dominican contemporary Thomas Aquinas. Although Aquinas is usually supposed to reject illumination theory, I show that he only objects to the Franciscan interpretation of the account, even while he bolsters a genuinely Augustinian account of knowledge and illumination by updating it in the Aristotelian forms of philosophical argumentation that were current at the time. In the final chapter, I explain why late thirteenth-century Franciscans challenged illumination theory, even after Bonaventure had enthusiastically championed it. In this context, I explain that that they did not reject their predecessor’s standard of knowledge outright, but only sought to eradicate the intellectually offensive interference of illumination, as he had defined it, which they perceived as inconsistent with the standard, in the interest of promulgating it. In concluding, I reiterate the importance of interpreting illumination as a function of Trinitarian theology. This approach throws the function of illumination in Augustine’s thought into relief and facilitates the effort to identify continuity and discontinuity amongst Augustine and his Medieval readers, which in turn makes it possible to identify the reasons for the late Medieval decline of divine illumination theory and the rise of an altogether unprecedented epistemological standard.

Dans un siècle postrévolutionnaire particulièrement marqué par les tumultes politiques, le progrès scientifique, les idéologies sociales et le développement de la rivalité entre la raison et la foi, l’abbé Paul François Gaspard Lacuria (1806-1890) élabore son œuvre principale : Les Harmonies de l’être, dont l’objectif annoncé est précisément de réduire l’opposition apparemment irréductible entre science et foi. C’est sous l’égide de la doctrine trinitaire, et grâce à des considérations géométrico-mathématiques, que l’abbé recherche cette conciliation philosophique harmonieuse qui doit fonder, selon lui, les bases synthétiques d’un savoir universel ramené en définitive à la « Grande Unité ». L’absence de travaux universitaires abordant le cas de ce métaphysicien mystique, marqué par l’occultisme à des titres divers, nous a incité à entreprendre le présent travail qui comporte, outre une biographie complète de l’auteur, une présentation et une analyse détaillées de son œuvre, enfin un examen de la postérité de celle-ci et de son influence posthume. / In the aftermath of the Great Revolution, France witnesses, during the Nineteenth Century, and apart from continuous political turmoils, the development of scientific progress, social ideologies, and new phases in the progressive evolution of the age-old strife between faith and reason. It is during this eventful period that Father Paul François Gaspard Lacuria (1806-1890) elaborates his main work : Les Harmonies de l’être, with the declared intention of bridging the gap between science and faith. Basing himself on the trinitarian doctrine of Roman Catholicism as well as on deep-reaching geometrical and mathematical analogies, Father Lacuria seeks an harmonious philosophical synthesis capable of establishing a universal knowledge, ultimately reducible to the “Great Unity”. The conspicuous lack of an academic monograph devoted to such an important mystical figure, whose work borders sometimes on occultism, has given birth to the present research, which attempts to retrace the French metaphysician’s biography and to give a detailed analysis of his works and of their posthumous fate.

This study traces the first steps of how divine simplicity entered into Christian Trinitarian discourse. It is the burden of this thesis to demonstrate that divine simplicity emerged in the ante-Nicene period with a distinctive status quaestionis concerning (a) the meaning of the doctrine, and (b) its function in reflections on the Father-Son relation. The first part argues that simplicity emerged in the ante-Nicene period with two possible trajectories of interpretation, anticipated by Plato’s Republic and Phaedo respectively. In the apologists, divine simplicity emerged as a purely metaphysical doctrine. However, a richer interpretation of the doctrine is also available in ante-Nicene theology, as exemplified in Origen’s understanding of divine simplicity as a metaphysical-ethical synthesis, meaning that (a) God’s nature is perfectly incorruptible, and (b) God’s character is perfectly free from contradictions. The second part argues that divine simplicity acquired a role in ante-Nicene reflections on the Father-Son relation within two significant ante-Nicene contexts: (a) polemic against Valentinian emanation (prolatio/probolē) and (b) polemic against Monarchianism. The genius of Origen is to utilise divine simplicity for avoiding the Monarchian identification between the Father and Son on the one hand, and the Valentinian separation between the Father and Son on the other. Consequently, we find the surprising conclusion that divine simplicity serves as a principle of differentiation as well as unity between the Father and Son. This thesis raises new questions for both modern theologians and patristic specialists. For modern theologians, the ante-Nicene developments suggest the Son’s generation as a fruitful site for further analysis on the relation between divine simplicity and Trinitarian theology. For patristic specialists, ante-Nicene developments highlight the need to account for the transition from the ante-Nicene to the post-Nicene status quaestionis: how did divine simplicity change from being attributed to the Father (ante-Nicene) to being attributed to the divine essence (post-Nicene)?

Meister Eckhart exhibits an unprecedented confidence in the transcendental way of thought in medieval philosophy. Eckhart, unlike his predecessors, identifies being as such (ens commune) and God, allowing the most primary determinations metaphysics – ‘being,’ ‘one,’ ‘true,’ ‘good,’ – to function as both metaphysical and theological first principles. Eckhart placed them at the head of his projected Tripartite Opus, a vast work of quaestiones and commentaries whose intelligibility, he insists, requires the prior foundation of a supposed series of a thousand axioms. The table of contents remains, the opus propositionum does not. This thesis argues that what enables Eckhart to pursue the direct application of the transcendentals to the divine also makes it unrealizable. His determination of unity is twofold: as (i) indivisibility, and the standard transcendental conception of unity as a negation of the given positive content of being (ens); as (ii) indistinction, comprehending both the negation of otherness which produces the indivisible and the otherness that is negated. There is an inherent tension between Peripatetic metaphysics and Procline henology. Consequently, the Good is devalued when the Procline One appears within the transcendental perspective. Metaphysics, theology and, a fortiori for Eckhart, ethics, take no consideration of Goodness. I show how this tension gives rise to Eckhart’s association of the divine essence with the Neoplatonic One, while the Peripatetic One and the transcendental “true” function as the explanans of the Trinitarian intellectual self-return. This, in turn, gives rise to the constitutive function of the imago dei, and every imago as such, within that self-relation. Ultimately, this produces a standpoint wherein every essence, only as idea, contains the divine uniform infinity.

In light of women’s marginal status in church governance and ministry through most of recorded history, feminist trinitarian ecclesiology is needed to transform the church’s institutional and spiritual life. While Vatican II provided the paradigm shift and promising anthropology essential for an egalitarian church, feminist ecclesiology prompts a radical transformation of its hierarchical and patriarchal structures and practices so that it may truly embody the Trinity. Trinitarian life provides practical and radical consequences for Christian life, and provides a model of church marked by relationships of equality, mutuality, unity and reciprocity. It also provides a strong ecclesiological argument for reform of the juridical Catholic nullity of marriage process, which may pave a pathway for the civilly remarried to receive the sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist.

This thesis is an attempt to relate the Scriptural revelation of God's nature to the normal Christian life. It analyses the experiential factors that originally gave rise to a triune awareness of God, arguing that a contemporary recovery of those seminal events is requisite for an integration of the trinity into the Christian life. After a theological summation of the biblical revelation, the thesis then explores the nature of the orientation of the trinity within the Christian life. This orientation is brought about by observing the harmonious arrangement of the different Persons within the Godhead. Once this is done we can then ensure that this arrangement finds an echo and corresponding imprint within the Christian life. As the Christian consistently integrates that tripartite relationship into the Christian life, the doctrine of the trinity will be a continual source of sustenance and direction for life and godliness. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / Th. M. (Systematic Theology)

No figure of fourth-century Christianity seems to be at once so well known and so clouded in mystery as Hilary of Poitiers. His work as an historian provides invaluable knowledge of the mid-fourth century, and he was praised as a theologian throughout late antiquity. Today, however, discussions of his theology are founded upon less solid ground. This is largely due to methodological issues. Modern scholarship has often read Hilary through anachronistic historical and theological categories which have rendered his thought incomprehensible. Recent scholars have sought to overcome this and to reexamine Hilary within his own historical, polemical, and theological context. Much remains to be said, however, in regard to Hilary's actual theological contribution within these contextual parameters. This thesis contends that in all of Hilary's polemical and constructive argumentation in De Trinitate, which is essentially trinitarian, he is inherently and necessarily developing an anthropology. In all he says about the divine, he is saying as much about what it means to be human. This thesis therefore seeks to reenvision Hilary's overall theological project in terms of the continual, and for him necessary, anthropological corollary of trinitarian theology-to reframe it in terms of a 'trinitarian anthropology'. My contention is that the coherence of Hilary's thought depends upon his understanding of divine-human relations. I will demonstrate this through following Hilary's main lines of trinitarian argument, out of which flows his anthropological vision. These main lines of argument, namely, divine generation, divine infinity, divine unity, the divine image, and divine humanity, each unfold into a progressive picture of humanity from potentiality to perfection. This not only provides a new paradigm for understanding Hilary's own thought, but invites us to reexamine our approach to fourth-century theology entirely, as it disavows any reading of the trinitarian controversies in conceptual abstraction. Further, theological and religious anthropology are widely discussed in contemporary scholarship, and Hilary's profound exploration of divine-human relations, and what it means to be a human being as a result, has much to offer both historical and contemporary concerns.

La thèse porte sur la façon dont le De unitate et pluralitate creaturarum d’Achard de Saint-Victor recourt aux doctrines médio et néoplatoniciennes pour résoudre la question d’une coexistence de l’unité et de la pluralité en Dieu et dans les créatures. L’enjeu est ainsi de mieux comprendre la place de la métaphysique platonicienne dans l’école de Saint-Victor, et ce malgré la rareté des sources au XIIe siècle, œuvres de Platon ou de ses disciples grecs. La première partie introduit d’abord à la philosophie d’Achard et aux problèmes paléographiques et philologiques que soulève le manuscrit unique du De unitate ; puis elle déconstruit cet ouvrage en ceux de ses éléments (questions, doctrines, notions) qu’il emprunte au médio et au néoplatonisme. Les deux autres parties examinent comment pour Achard une pluralité est possible : en Dieu (pluralité de personnes, de raisons dans le Verbe) et dans le monde (en tant qu’il est connu par Dieu par les formes-prototypes). Chaque partie examine comment les principaux penseurs tardo-antiques et alto-médiévaux (Apulée, Augustin, Calcidius, Boèce, Erigène) et les auteurs victorins, Hugues et Richard de Saint-Victor ont repris les éléments platoniciens étudiés dans la première partie. Ensuite est proposée une reconstruction de la réponse d’Achard. La thèse contribue à résoudre deux problèmes de l’histoire de la philosophie : quels éléments et sources platoniciens ont été reçus au XIIe siècle et quelle place la pensée victorine fait-elle à l’héritage platonicien. Les problèmes philosophiques soulevés sont la multiplication des objets intelligibles et sensibles, la définition de la chose et l’identité des êtres. / The main goal of this dissertation is to describe how Achard of Saint-Victor uses Medio and Neoplatonic doctrines in his treatise De unitate et pluralitate creaturarum in order to answer the question about unity and plurality of God and his creatures. This will lead to a better comprehension of the role of platonic metaphysics in the doctrine of the school of St. Victor despite the weak presence of Plato’s heritage in the XIIth century. In the first part of the thesis, I introduce Achard’s philosophy and the paleographical and philological problems posed by the only manuscript of the De unitate. Then I consider the elements of the treatise (questions, doctrines, notions) which were borrowed from Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. The two other parts are dedicated to the examination of the possibility of a plurality in God (persons and reasons in the Word of God) and in the world (as it is conceived by God through form-prototypes). In each part, I examine the way that main thinkers of Late Antiquity and High Middle Ages (Apuleius, Augustin, Chalcidius, Boethius, Erigena) and the Victorins (Hugues and Richard) absorbed the platonic doctrines described in the first part of my dissertation. At the end of each part, I propose the reconstruction of Achard’s development of those doctrines.This dissertation contributes to two problems of the history of philosophy: what Platonic doctrines and sources were received in the XIIth century and what is the place of the Platonic heritage in Victorin thought. The philosophical problems of the multiplication of intelligible and sensible objects, of the definition of things and of the identity of beings are also addressed.