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

210 The Person of the Son
ones who had been lifted above, like we make images of the saints in order to
see imaginatively those whom we cannot see substantially; and thus they
presumed . . . that the Son is of another nature than the Father.’129 Along
with his patristic sources (particularly Hilary and Augustine), St Thomas
tries to bring the fact of the consubstantial expression of the Father out of
the name Image.
In order to show this, he Wrst sifts through the constitutive elements of the
notion of image.130 On the one hand, Trinitarian faith leads us to avoid the
idea of inequality between the Son-Image and the Father. But, on the other
hand, equality is not necessarily a constitutive feature of every image: for
otherwise, how could one explain that man bears the ‘image of God’ without
being equal to God? One must pick out a notion of image which Wts
analogically between Trinitarian theology and anthropology. Saint Augustine
had already realized this, and Thomas assimilates his way of working it out.
One has to distinguish between the image, the likeness, and the equality:
not every image necessarily implies equality, and not every likeness is an
image.131 St Thomas also takes over from Hilary the two features out of
which the notion of image is constructed within Trinitarian theology: the
origin of the image in relation to its model, and the likeness in speciWcs
between an image and its model (which, for God, comes down to a unity
of nature).132 On this basis, Thomas extracts three elements in which the
notion of the image come together:
Weseehow[Christ]iscalledtheImageofGod(Col.1.15) . . . Thenotionofimageembraces
the constitutive elements: (1) there must be a likeness; (2) this likeness must issue orderive
from the reality of which it is a likeness; (3) it requires that it issues according to an aspect
which either comes from the speciWcnatureoristhesignofthespecies.133
The Wrst element does not create any problems: an image represents
another reality, presenting a resemblance or likeness to it. But the element
of resemblance by itself falls short of imaging. For there to be an image, the
image must be somehow derived from its model. As Augustine explains, a
partridge egg is like a chicken egg, but it is not its ‘image’! In fact, ‘for one
being to image another, it must proceed from it’; it must ‘issue from the
other’; it is requisite that the image be the expression of its model: in short, an
image calls for a relation of origin.134 This second feature is decisive for
129 In Col. 1.15 (no. 32).
130 Amongst the many studies of this, see R. Imbach and F.-X. Putallaz, ‘Notes sur l’usage du
terme imago chez Thomas d’Aquin’, Micrologus 5 (1997), 69–88.
131 Augustine, On 83 Questions, q. 74. Thomas, In Col. 1.15 (no. 31); ST I, q. 35, a. 1.
132 I Sent. d. 28, q. 2, a. 1. 133 In Col. 1.15 (no. 31).
134 ST I, q. 35, a. 1; In Col. 1.15 (no. 31). Cf. Augustine, On 83 Questions, q. 74.