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

Missions 373
(a) Initial ClariWcations
These analyses are the bedrock of the doctrine to which we now turn. Within
the dynamic of the gifts by which the saints are conformed or ‘assimilated’ to
the Word and Love in sanctifying grace, the Son and Spirit are sent into
human hearts, they and the Father dwell there, these persons are really given
and they are ‘possessed’ by the hearts which receive them. This teaching rests
on the notion of mission: mission consists in the person’s new way of being
present. So invisible mission engages a newness and a real presence of the
divine person who is sent. Thomas writes that,
a divine person is sent in that he exists in someone in a new way; and he is given in that
he is possessed by someone. Neither of these occurs outside of sanctifying grace.58
One might be surprised to learn that this reply bases itself in a created eVect
(sanctifying grace) when it has to reckon with the gift of the uncreated
persons themselves. We can get hold of Thomas’ angle on this by considering
the divine persons’ action. The persons’ donation is an idiosyncratic divine
action, quite diVerent from other divine actions like creating the world and
maintaining creatures in existence. How is one to distinguish amongst these
diVerent creature-related actions within God himself ? The action or operation
of the Triune God is as singular as God’s being. When we acknowledge
many divine actions on behalf of the creature, we are not introducing a real
diVerentiation into God himself: within the divine persons, such diverse
actions only present a distinction ‘of reason’, not a real distinction.59 But on
the part of the creaturely beneWciaries of God’s action, that is, within the
divine action’s ‘eVects’, the distinction is thoroughly real. The gifts of grace
with which human beings are sanctiWed are a diVerent kind of reality from
nature, and from the other goods which we receive through creation. Thomas
had already said as much when he put forward the general notion of ‘mission’:
the new presence of the divine persons does not consist in a change in the
persons themselves, but in a change within the creature who is enlarged by a
new gift of the divine person.60 This is why Thomas exhibits mission by way of
considering the eVects of the divine persons within creatures, or the new
presence of the persons who are given.
58 ST I, q. 43, a. 3. This is another doctrinal commonplace; see for instance the Summa fratris
Alexandri, Book I, no. 512; Albert, I Sent. d. 15, a. 16; Bonaventure, I Sent. d. 15, pars 2, q. un., a. 1.
59 Cf. I Sent. d. 17, q. 1, a. 1, sed contra 3; I Sent. d. 37, q. 1, a. 2. The only real distinction in
God is that amongst the divine persons. God’s action upon the world does not bring a real
distinction into God himself. The three persons act through their unitary essence, in an action
that is unitary.
60 Cf. ST I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 2.