Person and Being: Key Points

On the basis of the majority of my posts, it might come as a surprise to hear that I actually spend a great deal of time studying Thomistic metaphysics. After all, as I’ve mentioned before, I attend one of the most Thomistic divinity schools in the country. Anyway, I’ve been reading Person and Being written by the late Thomistic philosopher theologian and Jesuit W. Norris Clarke, SJ. and I’ve decided to post his key points as I read through it.

1. One theme that is overlooked in Aquinas, but is nonetheless central to his ontology is that being is “intrinsically active and self-communicating” (6). Furthermore, for Aquinas, the telos, the natural goal of being itself is dynamic self-expression and self-communication. Being through action is oriented toward communicating itself to others.

2. All beings possess intrinsic dynamism toward self-communicative action because “they are all diverse modes of participation in the infinite goodness of the one Source, whose very being is self-communicative love” (11). In Clarke’s view, this is grounded in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Father communicates and gives his whole being to the Son and in an act of mutual love the Father and Son bring forth the Spirit. The inner life of God as self-communicative love flows into creation.

3. Relationality is “a primordial dimension” of being that is inseparable from the substance of being. Although they are distinct from one another, relationality and substantiality “go together.” Just as being is intrinsically oriented toward self-communicating activity, so is being as substantiality oriented toward relationality.

4. Although substance and relation are both primordial to being, substance is nevertheless logically prior to relationality. As Clarke notes, “the very meaning of relation implies that it is between two terms that it is connecting, between two relateds” (16). Substance is the in-itself of being and is logically necessary for any conception of relationality—for it is substance that is in relation.

5. If being is intrinsically self-communicative, then it must also be intrinsically receptive. If being is communicative there must be a receiver, a listener, for it to be meaningful at all. In Clarke’s view, this is evident especially in the persons of the Trinity. The Father is the giver and the Son is the receiver. The receptive nature of the Son does not signal anything lesser about the Son. The notion of receptivity as essentially a passive and negative attribute must be rejected. All being-in-relation involves a complex dynamic of self-communication and reception in order for it to be meaningful.