Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 81:2 (Fall 2019)
Article: Abstracts Of Recent WTS Doctoral Dissertations
Author: Anonymous

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WTJ 81:2 (Fall 2019) p. 333

Abstracts Of Recent
WTS Doctoral Dissertations

A Divine Person In The Theology Of Thomas Aquinas

Deryck Chalenor Barson

This dissertation is situated within the recent resurgence of interest in Thomas Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology and the retrieval of his mature thought. At the heart of Trinitarian theology lies the question of how to define a person in God. This consideration is central to Christian monotheism, which affirms three subsistences in one divine essence while also highlighting the necessary link between the inner life of God and God’s act in creation and grace, since, for Aquinas, the exterior procession of creatures from God follows upon the interior processions of the persons in God. The broad focus of this dissertation is the study of how Thomas answers this question with the assertion that a person in God is a relation that subsists. More pointedly, this dissertation considers how persons in God are constituted and distinguished within Thomas’s mature theology. This project aims to shed light upon Thomas’s view that relation and notional action are two principles of personal distinction in God, with relation being the first principle of distinction and origin the second. This explains how relation better accounts for multiplicity in God than origin, which can be illustrated by a consideration of the name Father, which signifies both relation qua hypostasis and relation qua relation, property, and notion, whereas the name Begetter only signifies the property and notion of the person. Additionally, this thesis aims to account for how Thomas’s definition of person in God—a relation as subsisting—is not an equivocation with respect to Boethius’s definition of person as an individual substance of a rational nature.

To achieve these ends, an in-depth study of the Aristotelian concepts used by Aquinas in his theology proper is required, as these are most necessary for understanding how Aquinas arrives at his original conclusions on personal constitution and distinction in God. This contributive element within the dissertation is germane to Thomas’s speculative reflection of the divine persons, which itself is situated between the scriptural revelation of the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit and the contemplation of the personal action of God in the world created.

WTJ 81:2 (Fall 2019) p. 334

There Is Hope For Your Future:
An Exegetical And Theological Study Of Eschatology In The Book Of Hosea

Sherif Gendy

This dissertation examines the eschatology of Hosea, which the prophet communicates through his prophetic sign acts in the first three chapters and subsequently in the context of Yahweh’s covenant lawsuit against Israel...

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