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

202 The Person of the Son
participation in the natural light of knowledge derives.’97 ‘Whatever truth is
known by anyone is due to a participation in that light which shines in
darkness.’98 In the deepest sense, to participate in the Word is to have the
knowledge given in revelation. In the Old Covenant, it was in the Word that
inspired men and women spoke. ‘At one time, the Only Son of God revealed
knowledge of God through the prophets, whose proclamation was measured
to the extent to which they had been made participants in the eternal Word.’99
In the New Covenant, it is in his own Xesh that the Word elicits knowledge of
God. Thomas Wnds that,
People disclose their secrets by their word. This is why it is only by a person’s words that
we can know another person’s secret....No one can gain knowledge of the Father
except by his Word, which is his Son. One reads in Matthew 11.27: No one knows the
Father except the Son. And just as when a man wants to reveal himself through the word
of his heart, uttering it in audible sounds, he clothes his inner word with the garments of
writing or of speech. And in the same way, God, wanting to disclose himself to men,
reveals himself in Xesh and in time by his Word which he conceives from eternity. And
so no one can arrive at a knowledge of the Father except through the Son.100
Going beyond the aYnity between the Word and every creature, it is at this
juncture that the Summa indicates a second angle on the Wttingness of the
incarnation of the Word:
The Word of God has a special aYnity with human nature, because he is a concept of
the eternal Wisdom, from which all human wisdom comes. And this is why a human
being is perfected in wisdom—which is the perfection belonging to him as a rational
being—in the measure that he participates in the Word of God; just like the disciple is
instructed by receiving the word of his master. Hence it is said in Ecclesiasticus, The
Word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom (1.5). And so to lead humanity to its
perfection, it was Wtting that the Word of God personally united himself to a human
nature.101
In all of these instances, St Thomas especially accentuates God’s own selfknowledge,
which wisdom consists in. It is the knowledge peculiar to himself
which the Father expresses in his Word, in such a way that the Word is
personally the ‘doctrine of the Father’.102 Everything else we know about the
97 In Ioan. 1.9 (no. 129). 98 In Ioan. 1.5 (no. 103).
99 In Ioan. 1.18 (no. 221). In Ioan. 5.38 (no. 820): ‘Christ is by nature the Word of God. Every
word inspired by God is a participated likeness of him, and since every participated likeness
leads to its principle, it is clear that every word inspired by God leads to Christ.’ See aso In Ioan.
10.8 (no. 1384).
100 In Ioan. 14.6 (no. 1874).
101 ST III, q. 3, a. 8. Cf. SCG IV, ch. 42 (no. 3802): ‘The greatest affinity which the Word has is
with human nature.’
102 In Ioan. 7.16 (no. 1037). Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate I.XII.27.