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

The Person of the Son 201
6. THE WORD DISCLOSES AND REVEALS THE FATHER
By examining the notion of Word, Thomas has shown this: since he proceeds
from the Father’s conceiving, ‘the Word articulates the whole being of the
Father’.92 The theme of the Son as the Splendour of the Father has likewise
shown that the Word is the manifestation of the Wisdom of the Father.93 Since
the Word expresses the Father from eternity, one can show that the disclosure
of the Father in the economy is brought about by the same Word. In fact, the
Word does not just involve a note of action (the Father accomplishing all
things through his Son) but also a note of revelation. As we have seen, it is here
that one espies one of the biblical features which is underlined in the Commentary
on the Fourth Gospel: ‘since the aspect of disclosure is suggested
better by the name Word than by the name Son, the evangelist prefers to use it
here’.94 Thus, the disclosure of the Father rebounds on the person of
the Word at every step of the economy, right up to the new covenant, when
the Word discloses the Father in his own Xesh. St Thomas tells us that,
Just as one who acts through his intelligence produces things in being by patterning
them on his idea, so also a teacher brings about knowledge within another in the
pattern of his idea. The science of the apprentice is drawn from the science of the
teacher; it is like an image of it. And God by his intellect is not just the cause of all
beings which naturally subsist; but all knowledge is derived from the divine intellect
. . . Necessarily, then, it is by the Word of God, which is the eidetic pattern of the
divine intellect, that all intellectual know-how is caused. This is why it says in John 1.4:
And the life was the light of men. For the Word who is himself the Life and the One in
whom all things have life, discloses the truth to the human spirit, like a light does.95
Without making a detailed analysis of the numerous facets of this teaching,
we can at least make a brief survey of them. The John Commentary, in
particular, pays close attention to the role of the Word as illuminator. This
action on the part of the Word is not restricted to revelation in this strict
sense, but concerns, in the Wrst instance, understanding in a more general
way: ‘he shines in everyone’s understanding; because whatever light and
wisdom there is amongst men has come to them from participating in the
Word’.96 As soon as human beings use their own natural reason, their knowledge
Xows from the Word, because ‘it is from this true Light that human
92 In Ioan. 1.1 (no. 29).
93 SCG IV, ch. 12 (no. 3483). See above, in this chapter, ‘The Word, Wisdom, and Splendour
of the Father’.
94 In Ioan. 1.1 (no. 31). 95 SCG IV, ch. 13 (no. 3495).
96 In Ioan. 1.26 (no. 246); cf. In Ioan. 1.9 (no. 125).