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

The Person of the Son 181
people could argue that all there is to it is that St John and the Church took
the term Word in an entirely personal sense. But this assertion does not help
us out in showing what makes this word intrinsically Wtting to be the exclusive
and proper name for one divine person. Conversely, if one considers the
mental word as being something distinct from the intellect which conceives it,
then, when it is applied to God, Word will refer to the distinct person of the
Son; but it will only be by linguistic convention that one limits the term Word
to this strictly personal meaning.
Returning to his analyses when he revised his Commentary on the Sentences,
St Thomas tackled the same problem again. He now observes that the
word is relative to the mind that conceives it. If one gauges its meaning from
the natural workings of the created thing which the name ‘word’ was originally
cut out to signify, then one would be forced to acknowledge that, when it
is attributed to God, the term Word can designate either the divine essence or
the person of the Son. And if one considers such a relation as real, then the
term Word refers to the person of the Son who is in fact distinguished from
the Father by his relation of origin. To put it another way, St Thomas’ earliest
writings hold on to two aspects in the word, as we Wnd it in the human mind:
(1) that through which the mind knows or the act of knowledge itself; (2) a
relation which links the word to the principle which ‘pronounces’ it. If one
takes nature, or the operation which it is originally intended to perform
within created reality, as the gauge of its meaning, then one would be forced
to acknowledge that, when it is attributed to God, the term Word can
designate either the divine essence or the person of the Son. It will then be
‘the usage of the saints’ rather than the intrinsic properties of the word which
drives us to maintain an exclusively personal meaning for the name Word.
The same problem recurs when one considers the process of knowledge in the
light of relation: ‘The name word does not just signify a relation, as the names
father and son do, but is used to refer to a reality which is absolute but which,
at the same time, also has a relation, as happens with the word science.’12 One
can clearly observe the diYculties which Thomas is in here. Like St Albert,13
12 I Sent. d. 27, qla 2, a. 2. On the two editions of the Commentary on the Sentences, see F. von
Gunten, In principio erat Verbum, pp. 121–128; cf. G. Emery, La Trinité créatrice, pp. 414–420.
13 Albert the Great, I Sent. d. 27, a. 6. Bonaventure escapes the problem by explaining that ‘to
speak the Word’ implies the conception of this Word: for God, it touches on the generation of
the Word in an exclusively personal sense (Bonaventure, I Sent. d. 27, p. 2, a. un., q. 1). From
St Thomas’ perspective, this reply leaves the difficulty standing. He explains, ‘This question has
a superficially easy look to it, if we take it that a word implies an origin in virtue of which the
divine persons are distinguished. But, if one examines it more deeply, the question reveals great
difficulties, on account of the fact that we find in God some aspects implying an origin which is
solely conceptual, and not real’ (De veritate, q. 4, a. 2).