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

398 Missions
Secondly, on each of the levels that the image occurs, the resemblance to
God is a matter of knowing and loving God. It is by knowing God and loving
him that one ‘resembles’ or is ‘assimilated’ to him, whether this falls under the
heading of a natural aptitude, or under that of an activity or habit acquired in
grace or in glory. One can see two very typical things in this exposition. One is
that the image does not consist in any sort of intellectual engagement or just
any sort of love, but in the knowledge and love of God. A second is that Thomas
puts the weight on the action of knowing and loving God. Thirdly, when he
scrutinizes these two constitutive features of the image, Thomas shows that
the issue is entirely one of the image of the Trinity. This is a precise replay of
what he said in his doctrine of the indwelling: the divine persons are present
as the ‘object’ of our action, when in faith or vision we know in the love which
is charity. We shall take on these aspects in brief.
Human beings are to the image of the Trinity in their mind or soul. More
precisely, the image resides in the mens.175 This word is not easy to translate
into modern languages: it means the highest faculties of the intellectual soul.
The mens is ‘the highest part of the soul’s power’. Mens indicates either the
soul as it unfolds into intellectual power, or the superior faculties or ‘powers’
of the soul (the intelligence and will).176 The image is tied to what distinguishes
a human being from other embodied creatures, which means those
authentically spiritual faculties which make him a person. And the image
consists in a representation of the Triune God, an expression of the ‘speciWcs’
or characteristics which belong to God. Thomas notes that,
As a result, if the image of the Divine Trinity is to be found in the soul, we must look
for it where the soul comes the nearest to a representation of the species of the Divine
Persons. Now the divine persons are distinct from each other by reason of the
procession of the Word from the One who is his Speaker, and the procession of
Love connecting both. But in our soul word ‘cannot exist without actual thought,’ as
Augustine says (De Trinitate XIV.7). So, primarily and chieXy, the image of the Trinity
is to be found in the acts of the soul, that is, inasmuch as from the knowledge which
we possess, we form an internal word in an actual thought; and thence break forth
into love. But, since the principles of acts are the habits and powers, and everything
exists virtually in its principle, therefore, secondarily and derivatively, the image of the
Trinity may be considered as existing in the powers, and still more in the habits,
forasmuch as the acts exist virtually in them.177
175 ST I, q. 93, a. 6.
176 De veritate, q. 10, a. 1; see Ambroise Gardeil, La Structure de l’Ame et l’expérience mystique,
Paris, 1927, pp. 21–45 and 349. Cf. ST I, q. 79, a. 1.
177 ST I, q. 93, a. 7.