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

Missions 385
As in his ‘Writing on the Sentences’, Thomas insists that it is the divine
persons themselves who are given. The gift is not restricted to sanctifying
grace, but extends to the uncreated persons. In a sense, the pathway for the
presentation of this has been turned around the other way. In his Sentence
commentary, Thomas had taken oV from the divine person who ‘proceeds’ in
creatures, that is, from the temporal procession, and gone on to show that the
divine person is given in the gift of sanctifying grace. In the Summa, the
elucidation begins from the divinizing acts and from grace, in order Wnally to
show that the divine person is really given. This analysis is, in some ways less
complex that that of the ‘Writing on the Sentences’. It is also more readily
integrated into the Trinitarian theology of the Summa (with its doctrine of the
presence of the known and the loved in the knower and lover). But we Wnd the
same thesis in both texts. Thomas argues that,
Still as, when sanctifying grace is given, it is the Holy Spirit himself who is possessed
and dwells in a person, so it is he himself who is given and sent. The gift of grace
perfects the intelligent creature not only by putting him in a state in which he has this
created gift at his free disposal, but also to enjoy the divine person himself. The
invisible mission is cut out for the gift of sanctifying grace, but the divine person is
altogether given in it.118
The connection between the created gift of grace and the uncreated gift of the
divine person is explained in a way that is like the one we Wnd in the Sentence
commentary: the gifts of grace, that is, of wisdom and charity, are a disposition
to receiving the divine person, and it is because of this that the weight is on
the human side of the event. Created gifts of grace are necessary in order to
‘proportion’ a human being to the divine persons, that is, in order to raise the
human soul so as to make it capable of attaining God, or of being divinized.119
They achieve the purpose for which they are given, by paving the way for the
enjoyment of the divine persons. And it is the divine person who gives this
grace: just as the divine person is the end or aim of grace (grace is given with a
view to the enjoyment of the divine person), so he is its cause. Thomas brings
this out in the course of elucidating a verse from Paul which is located at the
heart of this discussion: ‘The charity of God has been spread in our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us’ (Rom. 5.5). Thomas
comments that,
118 ST I, q. 43, a. 3, sol. and ad 1. Cf. In Ioan. 4.10 (no. 577), in relation to the ‘living water’:
‘The grace of the Holy Spirit is given to human beings in such a way that the very source of grace
is given, that is, the Holy Spirit himself.’
119 ST I-II, q. 112, a. 1; cf. q. 110, a. 1.