The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas - El Camino ...

The Person of the Son 177
personality. The approach is not purely linguistic, but it does take the
language of revelation as its starting-point. These names give rise to a twofold
reXection: the Son within the immanence of the Trinity, and in the Trinitarian
economy. And, as in the whole of Trinitarian theology, reXection on the
person of the Son is very intimately bound to Christology.1 One side of it
aims at bringing the Son’s personal existence and eternal property within the
eternal Trinity to light, and its other side is economic, seeking to illuminate
creation and salvation within the Son, creating the bases for Christology. Such
areXection can be organized around the many names which the Bible gives to
Christ: Son, Life, Truth, Word, Image, First-Born, Wisdom, Power, Saviour,
and so on. Amongst these names, some are attributed to the whole Trinity in
common, and are appropriated to the Son (for instance, Wisdom, Truth, or
Power); so they are not adequate means for knowing what the Son’s personal
property is. The tradition stemming from Augustine, which had been systematized
by Peter Lombard, drew up its reXection on the Son around three
main names which indicate the Son in his personal property: Son, Word, and
Image.2 These three ways of formulating the Son’s personal property are the
foundation for the other names which Scripture and tradition give the Son.3
More important, as we have said, they give us the basis for organizing and
exposing the person and work of the Son of God.
St Thomas begins with a question about the name Word (q. 34), then he
moves on to the name Image (q. 35). At Wrst glance, the absence of a question
about the name Son can seem surprising. What can explain it? On the one
hand, the investigation of the name Father could not have been carried out
without studying the name Son, which was given the same priority as Father,
since paternity is utterly bound up with sonship. Bearing ‘relative opposition’
in mind, these relational ways of naming are mutually inclusive. Thomas has
explained that the Father is Father as ‘Father of the Son’ by drawing out the
fact that ‘the perfection of paternity and of sonship are found in the Father
and in the Son’. This is why son is a name which belongs primarily to the
eternal Son, taking creatures in its tow within many degrees of participation
as its beneWciaries, through assimilation to the Wliation of the Son.4
1 One must keep in mind the distinction between our journey of discovery (the reception of
revelation and the economy of Christ and the Holy Spirit, opening up the way to knowledge of
the Trinity), and the order of reality-itself (the eternal Trinity which freely reveals itself within
the passage of history); see above, Chapter 1.
2 See Peter Lombard, Sentences, Book I, dist. 27, ch. 3 (vol. I/2, pp. 206–207), where one also
finds this reference to Augustine.
3 Cf. ST I, q. 39, a. 8.
4 ST I, q. 33, a. 3. See above, in Chapter 8, ‘The Paternity of the Father: Father of the Son and
Father of his Creatures’.