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

182 The Person of the Son
he has not been able to explain why the precise denotation of the term Word
makes it purely relative to the Father.
The disputed questions De veritate make a minor advance on this, but one
still Wnds the two aspects of the ‘word’: the word as the token of what is
known to us, and the word as it is expressed by the mind. Observing that what
is known within our minds proceeds from our minds, St Thomas explains
that a ‘word’ implies an ‘out-going’ or ‘emanation’ from the mind. So ‘word’
has a relation to the mind which conceives it. But he still does not clearly
distinguish between this ‘word’ and the activity of knowledge itself. In other
words, the intrinsic relation which is implied by the nature of a word could be
real, but it could also just be a ‘relation of reason’: and this means it cannot
create a real distinction between one person and another within God. This
analysis leads one to hold that the name ‘Word’ has a double edge when it is
applied to God. If one takes the term ‘word’ in its foremost aspect, as that
which is known in us, Word is an analogous way of speaking of the divine
nature; but here we are only holding on to one partial aspect of the notion of
Word. Openness to the complete meaning of the name Word requires that we
grasp the combined aspects, (including its being expressed by another); and
then in its fullest and most inward meaning, Word will refer to the person of
the Son who proceeds from the Father.14
It is only with the Summa Contra Gentiles that St Thomas’ mature theory
begins to appear. The theory he develops now is unique to him amongst his
contemporaries. From now on, he considers the mental word (verbum,
intentio intellecta) very precisely as that which the mind expresses or forms
within its act of knowledge.15 He makes a clear distinction between the word
itself, on the one hand, and all the other aspects of intellectual knowledge on
the other; the word is not the activity of knowledge, but that which, within
this act of knowledge, really proceeds within the mind. The word is no longer
seen as an intelligible species or the idea of the thing known, that is, as the
likeness of the thing known in the mind, that through which the intellect
knows and which puts the mind into an active state of knowing, the intelligibility
of the thing in act. The word is the expression of the thing known in
the mind of the knower; formed by the intellect, its existence is intrinsically
relative. From now on, Thomas’ earlier desire to keep the term ‘word’ at arms’
length evaporates. Looking at it in the light of the fact that the ‘word’ is
constituted by a relation of origin toward the mind which speaks it16
14 Thomas, De veritate, q.4,a.2.
15 SCG I, ch. 53; SCG IV, ch. 11. L.-B. Geiger, ‘Les rédactions successives de Contra Gentiles I,
53 d’après l’autographe’, in St Thomas d’Aquin aujourd’hui, ‘Recherches de philosophie, 6’, Paris,
1963, pp. 221–240.
16 SCG IV, ch. 11 (no 3473).