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

The Person of the Holy Spirit 255
To our knowledge, this analysis supplies one of Thomas’ clearest expositions
of the relationship between created and uncreated grace. Like the Wne-tunings
which we mentioned earlier, it does not appear in the treatise on grace, but
rather in the study of the Holy Spirit, in Trinitarian theology. The ‘priority’ in
question is not a matter of temporal order, or ‘before’ and ‘after’. It concerns a
metaphysical and structural priority, that is, of the reality whose presence
explains that of something else. From the point of view of our assimilation to
the Holy Spirit in the condition of our human nature, created gifts are
primary, because they represent the priority of a disposition. But from the
point of view of the Author or Agent of grace, and the end to which grace
disposes us, that is, receiving the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit himself
is absolutely primary. And it is this which Thomas has in mind when he
discusses the name Gift, which refers to the person of the Holy Spirit.
One last shading relates to the personal meaning of the name ‘Gift’. As we have
seen, this name always involves some sort of link with creatures,146 since it
touches on the real donation of the Holy Spirit in time, or his eternal ‘aptitude’
for being given. But, it follows on from the innermost rules of Trinitarian
theology that a divine person exists in his eternal, personal relation at the
heart of the Trinity. The divine person is not ‘constituted’ as such through his
relationship to the world (the trap door into Arianism and Sabellianism), but,
rather, through an intra-Trinitarian relation. In other words, the Holy Spirit is
not ‘more’ in relation to creatures than Father and Son are, or, he is no ‘more’
given to the saints than they: the connection with creatures is common to the
three persons, belonging to the way we understand the divine nature, in which
the three persons share. Thomas’ response to this point is like the ones he gave
for the names Word and Love:147 Gift has an intrinsic involvement with creatures,
in that the very notion of Gift ‘includes in itself an essential attribute, just as the
notion of person includes that of the essence’.148
This aYrmation must not be taken in the conWned sense of the essential
attributes common to the three persons, which comes into play in the Holy
Spirit’s giving himself to the saints. It is in fact the essential attribute which is
engaged in the relationship with creatures,149 but its engagement is based in
146 I Sent. d. 27, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2.
147 ST I, q. 34, a. 3, ad 1; q. 37, a. 2, ad 3. 148 ST I, q. 38, a. 1, ad 4.
149 We have already seen this in the investigation of the names Word and Love. Yet another locus
is I Sent. d. 18, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1: ‘A name can connote an eVectoccurringinthecreature...suchthat,
by denoting a relationship of principle to the creature, it also implies something else. In this
case, even though the relationship to the creatures gives an understanding of the essence (for the
eVect enables one to grasp the cause), because of the other aspect which it signiWes, a name can
concern a person....I thus say that, over and above the relationship which it implies to that to
which it lends itself to being given, the name Gift involves a relationship to that from which it
proceeds . . . and under this aspect it is personal [notional].’