Aquinas considers this subject especially in ST I, qq. 34–35.
In consistency with his processional analysis of the immanent life of God, Aquinas approaches the mystery of the eternal generation of the Son by examining two other biblical names: Word and Image, in order to show how they complement and interpret the name Son. Here we will focus especially on Aquinas’s explanation of how the biblical name “Word” (Greek: logos; Latin: verbum), so prominent in the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, clarifies and illumines the spiritual import of the personal name Son as applied to God who “is spirit” ( Jn 4:24). This close mutual connection between the terms “Word” and “Son” is already in evidence in Jn 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only- begotten Son from the Father.”
The Son as Word
Word = in the sense of an interior concept – the kind of word that proceeds from the mind. The analogy is thus to immaterial procession and not a sensate spoken word. However, the interior concept is also expressed or spoken by an exterior word of speech. This is analogous to the Incarnation: the eternal Logos of the Father is manifest or expressed outwardly through the “speaking forth” of the Word in human nature.
“There are two words in us: that of the heart, and that of the voice. The word of the heart is the very concept of the intellect, which is hidden to men, except insofar as it is expressed through the voice, or through the word of the voice. Now, the word of the heart is compared to the eternal Word before the incarnation, when he was with the Father and hidden to us; but the word of the voice is compared to the incarnate Word which then appeared to us and was manifest.”
Aquinas implies here that from the spoken word we come to grasp the inner concept of the speaker, and analogously, from the incarnation of the eternal Word in our human nature, we come to understand that there is an eternal procession of the Logos and Son in God, eternally.
Aquinas argues, then, that Word or Verbum in God is accordingly the proper name for the Son, precisely because it expresses the spiritual generation whereby the Son comes forth from the Father’s knowledge of himself as the expression of his own wisdom.
The analogy of the Word in this way helps us interpret the analogy of Sonship.
Purification of the Analogy of Filiation in God
For in order to convey the transcendent perfection of the Word of God, we must underscore not only the likeness, but also the much more radical dissimilitude that exists between God the Word and the created verbum. Stated in terms of Dionysius’s triplex via, it is only by passing through the via negationis that can we in turn arrive, by means of the via eminentiae, at the affirmation of the incomprehensibly unique perfection proper to the Son’s generation. 474
NB: Aquinas typically employs Dionysius’s triplex via in speaking about analogical names for the divine essence. See, for example, ST I, q. 13, a. 2, and our discussion, in chapter 12 above, of St. Thomas’s appropriation of the threefold way. However, it seems to be clear that he employs a similar kind of thinking when speaking of the proper name of the Son as “Word” in SCG IV, c. 11, and in his In Ioan., lec. 1, 1–5.
In sum, even as the designation of the Son as “Word” obtains by analogy with the procession of our interior mental word, so too the difference between God’s consubstantial Word and our mental word, in keeping with the triplex via, far outstrips the similarity between the two, because the divine nature sublimely transcends created nature.
“Word” as the Proper Name of the Son
Aquinas’s argument is that the notion of Sonship and the name “Word” are mutually self-interpreting terms. He refers us back to ST I, q. 27 a. 2, where the claim is first made: “‘Word,’ said of God in its proper sense, is used personally, and is the proper name of the person of the Son. For it signifies an emanation of the intellect: and the person Who proceeds in God, by way of emanation of the intellect, is called the Son; and this procession is called generation, as we have shown above (cf. ST I, q. 27, a. 2). Hence it follows that the Son alone is properly called Word in God.” The implication of this claim is that we cannot rightly understand the name of Son without at the same time thinking of the other name of Word, and vice versa. In Trinitarian theology, these are mutually correlated analogical notions.
For its part, Sonship implies begetting and a distinction of persons, who are yet of the same nature.
Word, on the other hand, implies immateriality and a procession from the Father that is intellectual in nature.
This is why, without the complementary support of the notion “Word,” Sonship will appear either (1) as materialistic (which historically is one of the common Islamic accusations, that the Christian doctrine of God implies a materially begotten son); or (2) as a similitude for a created procession that is not immanent to the Father, but is instead something created by the Father (the error of Arianism).
Moreover, without being referred to the notion of “Sonship,” the notion of “Word” will for its part either (1) risk losing a sense of the real distinction of persons (the error of modalism); or else (2) will risk depicting the Word uniquely as a mere property of the God who is speaking, and so lose the notion of an immanent procession in God by which the divine nature is communicated, that is, received by the Word from the Father through eternal generation.
Prodigal Catholic 