La teología del Verbo en la «Summa contra gentiles»

Abstract

The present work is written against the background of S. Thomas's different answers to the question concerning the individual character an the personality of the Word of God. The differences appear above all in the major theological works of S. Thomas (the Commentary on the Sentences, the De Veritate, the Summa Contra Gentiles, the De Potentia, and the Summa Theologica). These writings mark various stages in the evolution of the Common Doctor in his Theology of the Word. The work studies one of these writings, the Summa Contra Gentiles, which presupposes a highly advanced investigation into the trinitarian theology of S. Thomas. It consists of two parts, in the first of which the argumentation of the Holy Doctor is followed step by step, while the bearing of his statements is explained by means of studies on the intellectual act and the nature of the mental word or intentio intellecta. It is here that S. Thomas arrives for the first time at the idea that the intellectual act, in which the mental word is produced, is a kind of generation. The generation in question is in man a mental generation, that of a mental word, and in God a real generation, in which the Word produced, —i.e. engendered,— is of the same nature as God himself, and therefore truly God. The boldness of S. Thomas has caused his integrated theology of the Word, especially in the relatively concise formulation of the Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, to be criticized as non-theological, i.e. as rationalist or lacking in theological authority. In the second part of the work these objections are answered on the basis of the words of S. Thomas himself. This enables the author, incidentally, to defend the role and value of a theological elaboration, constructed by the reason enlightened by faith, and having as its object the first of the Christian mysteries, namely the Most Holy Trinity. The analogy of the mental word as an aid to speaking of the personal Word of God appears, in particular, as an apt analogy which clarifies the revealed mystery and assists the reason in forming a judgment regarding its intrinsic credibility.