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

Missions 393
Along with his peers, St Thomas broadly echoes this teaching and constantly
cites Augustine’s analyses.152 The divine person is disclosed in his mission; it
makes him known through the gifts which represent him, and which are
appropriated to him.153 And when the person is thus disclosed, he is given in
the relation personal to him. The Son makes himself known as his relation to
the Father: faith receives him as the Envoy and Son of the Father. And
correlatively, the Holy Spirit makes himself known as his relation to Father
and Son: he is received as the Spirit of Father and Son.154 This knowledge of the
divine person via his originary relation is part of the meaning of ‘mission’.155
But what is the nature of this ‘disclosure’ and ‘knowledge’ of the divine person?
Thomas explains it in particular detail when he presents the ‘knowledge with
love’ which characterizes the Son’s mission, stating that,
not just any mental advancement indicates the Son’s being sent, but only that sort of
enlightenment which bursts forth into the aVect of love, the kind namely described in
John: ‘Everyone that hath heard from the Father and hath learned, cometh to me’
(John 6.45); and in the Psalm which says, ‘In my meditation a Wre shall come forth.’ So
Augustine says in a very indicative way that ‘the Son is being sent whenever someone
has knowledge or perception of him,’ for ‘perception’ points to a kind of experiential
knowledge, and this is precisely what wisdom is, that is, a knowing that is as it were
tasted; thus the phrase in Ecclesiasticus, ‘The wisdom of doctrine is according to her
name’ (6. 23 in the Vulgate).156
For this reason, knowledge of the divine person is a graced knowledge, or a
sanctifying gift’s enabling us to recognize a divine person. This is why the Son
is only sent when he is received in grace, with charity. If one knows the Son
through a mere external knowledge or within a dead faith, then the Son does
not dwell in one’s heart and he is not possessed.157 It works the same way for
the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not given if he is only known symbolically,
without the reception of the grace that sanctiWes.158 Thomas says that,
Knowledge is not enough for there to have been a mission. Rather, it is necessary that
there be knowledge deriving from a gift appropriated to a person, and by which we are
united to God after the mode proper to this person, that is, when the Holy Spirit is
sent, through love. And such a knowledge is of the experiential order.159
152 ST I, q. 43, a. 3, arg. 3 and ad 3; a. 4, ad 2; a. 5, ad 1 and ad 2; a. 6, ad 2. Cf. I Sent. d. 14, q. 2,
a. 2, arg. 3 and ad 3; d. 15, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 2 and ad 2; arg. 5 and ad 5; d. 15, q. 3, a. 1, sed contra 1;
d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, sed contra 2; etc.
153 I Sent. d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, ad 1.
154 Cf. I Sent. d. 15, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; d. 15, q. 3, a. 1.
155 I Sent. d. 15, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, ad 1; cf. ST I, q. 43, a. 4, ad 2.
156 ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2; cf. Augustine, De Trinitate IV.XX.28.
157 ST I, q. 43, a. 3, ad 3.
158 ST I, q. 43, a. 3, ad 4.
159 I Sent. d. 14, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3; cf. Albert, I Sent. d. 15, a. 17.