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

186 The Person of the Son
account of its privileged, divine make-up, Thomas has no diYculty in showing
that, within God the name Word means a reality of a personal, rather than
essential, order, because it proves on reXection to contain an immanent
procession and a relation of origin. ‘In God the proper meaning of the term
‘‘Word’’ is one proceeding from another: this is numbered in the ranks of the
personal names, because the divine persons are distinct on the basis of origin,
as we have shown.’29 From this point on he can integrate his idea of the Word
with everything he has said earlier about relations (q. 28), the person (q. 29),
and personal plurality within God (qq. 30–32).
In these elucidations, Thomas is particularly careful to put some space
between his own idea of the divine Word and all the assorted essentialist takes
on the Word. Seeing it as the intellectual idea of God’s essence, or as the divine
knowledge common to the three persons, is not his style of understanding the
Word. ‘Word is the only one amongst the terms referring to the intellect
which is predicated in a personal way of God...forawordiswhat the intellect
forms in its conceiving.’30 As we have seen, the intellect and its
intelligent act are essential realities, absolutes. Thomas at this point brings
in a striking correction to the avenue laid out by Anselm of Canterbury in his
Monologion. One cannot disclose the personal character of the Word simply
by looking at knowledge or by reXecting on the ‘Supreme Mind’.31 Doing that
ultimately rebounds into a Sabellian conception of the Word, because it
cannot show a real relation within God between the Word and the One
from whom he proceeds. In other words, Thomas rules out understanding
the Word as if it were a derivate of the divine essence. One of the fundamental
features of his Trinitarian epistemology is brought out again here. Faith in the
Trinity cannot be adequately set forth by beginning from God’s essential
attributes (which are the matter for appropriations). Their personal distinctions
do not arise within the order of essence, but in the order of relative
properties.32 To avoid confusing these two orders, one must distinguish
carefully between the following notions:
. To know (intelligere): this is an essential act, common to the whole Trinity;
each person knows himself and knows the others. God knows himself
through himself and, in this way, knows other things.
29 ST I, q. 34, a. 1. 30 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 2.
31 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 2 and ad 3; cf. De potentia, q. 9, a. 9, ad 8. This relates to particular
terminological issues, but these points cut across the different theological routes which one finds
in St Anselm and in St Thomas.
32 See above, in Chapter 3, ‘The Essence and the Distinction of Persons: the Common and the
‘‘Proper’’’.