Lecture: “‘In the Beginning was the Word’: The Mystery of the Trinity in the Prologue to the Gospel of John”

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“‘In the Beginning was the Word’: The Mystery of the Trinity in the Prologue to the Gospel of John”

 

by Dr. John Goyette
Tutor, Thomas Aquinas College, California
St. Vincent de Paul Lecture & Concert Series
February 10, 2023

 

Introduction

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”[1] The opening of John’s Gospel is a profound statement about the mystery of the holy Trinity — the highest mystery of the Christian faith. St. Thomas Aquinas says, “While the other Evangelists treat principally of the mysteries of the humanity of Christ, John, especially and above all, makes known the divinity of Christ in his Gospel.”² St. Thomas gives an explanation for this: since secrets are revealed to one’s most intimate friends, Jesus confided the secrets of his divinity to John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (21:20).³ My lecture tonight has a narrow focus: I want to explain why the Son of God is called “The Word” in John’s Prologue and how that name helps manifest the eternal generation of the Son from the Father.

The thesis of my lecture is that understanding the procession of the interior word in the human soul is key to understanding the generation of the eternal Word revealed in the Prologue to John. This is also the view of St. Thomas. The scriptural basis for this interpretation can be traced back to Genesis 1:26-7: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” St. Thomas interprets this text to refer not only to man’s rational nature as an image of the very essence of God, but also as an image of the distinction of persons by the interior processions of word and love in the human soul.⁴ Indeed, the use of the plural pronouns in the biblical text (“Let us make man in our image”) suggests that an image of the Trinity of persons, not just the divine nature, is found in man. And since man is distinguished from the beasts by his rational soul, it is within the soul that one finds the image of the Trinity. St. Thomas says that “God himself placed in man a spiritual image of himself.”⁵

My interpretation of John’s Prologue, as you may have guessed, is heavily influenced by St. Thomas’s trinitarian theology, especially his account of the interior word, and I will be drawing upon his Commentary on the Gospel of John. My lecture has three parts. In the first part I will briefly discuss the context of John’s Gospel, highlighting places in the Old Testament that seem to refer to the Son as the “Word,” or as “Wisdom,” which is sometimes used as another name for the Word. In the second part I will examine the meaning of the term “word,” focusing especially on the “interior word” in the human soul which functions as a creaturely image or likeness of the eternal Word. In the third part I will show how the meaning of the term “word” helps manifest the eternal Word in the Prologue to John. In particular, I will show how the procession of the interior word in the human soul helps manifest the Father’s generation of the Son, and also helps manifest the relation of the eternal Word to creatures that is intended by the phrase “through whom all things were made.”

 

Part I: Word and Wisdom in the Old Testament

If our aim is to understand the divine Word revealed in the Prologue to John, why bother looking at the Old Testament? I think it is important to see that a careful reading of the Old Testament leads us to anticipate the revelation of the Word in the Gospel of John. What I mean is that the Old Testament indicates that the Son proceeds from the Father by way of an intellectual emanation — as “Word” or “Wisdom.” Indeed, this is the principal way in which the Old Testament reveals the second person of the Trinity.⁶ Nonetheless, as we will see, the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity in the Old Testament is to some degree hidden or obscure, and presents some textual difficulties or puzzles. With that said, let us take a look at a few passages in the Old Testament, beginning at the beginning, with the book of Genesis.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is commonly recognized that the beginning of John parallels the opening of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1). But there is this difference. While Genesis begins with the creation of the world, the Gospel of John begins prior to that beginning — it reaches back to eternity to reveal the inner life of God Himself before the creation of the world.⁷ But the Prologue also testifies to the role of the Word in the original creation: “He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). Looking back on Genesis, we can see the role of the Word in the original creation story: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” ⁸ This pattern is repeated seven more times in the creation story: “God said ‘let there be a firmament…,’and so it was.” By revealing that all things are made through some kind of divine speech, Genesis anticipates the revelation of the Word through whom all things were made. The anticipation of the divine Word is then made more explicit elsewhere. For example, Psalm 33:6 says, “By the Word of the LORD the heavens were made.”

The opening of the Prologue of John parallels the opening of Genesis in another way, by providing the setting for John 1:14: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Just as all things were made through the Word in the beginning, so the Word assumes a human nature to initiate a new life of grace. Genesis narrates the original creation story, and John narrates the new creation: the Incarnate Word as the principle of the restoration and elevation of the race of Adam through a new life of grace. We can also recognize common themes — such as light and darkness — which feature prominently in Genesis and in the Prologue to John.

Time does not permit me to discuss all of the Old Testament passages that anticipate the divine Word in John’s Gospel, but I do want to look at a couple of passages from the wisdom literature that present a personified Wisdom that has divine qualities, proceeds from God Himself, and is present with God before the creation of the world. The first passage is from the Wisdom of Solomon and the second from Proverbs:

Wisdom of Solomon. One of the richest passages is found in Chapter 7 of the Wisdom of Solomon. There Solomon prays to God, crediting him with giving him [Solomon] knowledge of the universe: the structure of the world, the elements, the motion of the heavens, animals, plants, and men (verses 15-20). Starting in verse 21, Solomon begins calling God by the name of “Wisdom”: “I learned both what is secret and what is manifest, for Wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me. … For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (7:21-26). That the Wisdom revealed in this passage is the Son of God seems pretty clear from Paul’s letter to the Colossians where the Son is named the “image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col 1:15). What is most interesting, for our purposes, is noticing that Wisdom is identified as “God” earlier in the chapter, but later described as something that proceeds from God. Wisdom is a “breath” of God, a “pure emanation” of the Almighty, a “reflection” of eternal light, a “spotless mirror,” and an “image.” The text implies that Wisdom both is God and is from God. In other words, Wisdom is “God from God.” In fact, this passage from the book of Wisdom is the origin of the phrase in the Nicene creed, “God from God, Light from Light.”⁹ The latter half of the phrase is taken from the description of Wisdom as a “reflection of eternal light.” Wisdom is nothing other than light from light. The key takeaway is that the Son proceeds from the Father as some sort of intellectual emanation, a Wisdom that comes forth from God and is the image and likeness of the Father. Again, we can see that the Old Testament anticipates the revelation of the Word in John. Indeed, two chapters later in the book of Wisdom we see that Wisdom is also called the “Word”: “O God of my fathers and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things by thy Word, and by thy Wisdom hast formed man, to have dominion over the creatures thou hast made…” (Wisdom of Solomon 9:1-2).

Proverbs. The other text in the wisdom literature I will touch on is a passage from Proverbs, Chapter 8, verses 22-31, where we see a personified wisdom describing herself in language that seems to refer to the procession of the Divine Word:

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.

In this passage we see a personified wisdom as a companion of God, present with Him before the creation of the world, who seems to be a helpmate or coworker in the act of creation: “I beside him, like a master workman.” Again, this anticipates the Word “through whom all things were made.” Wisdom is also described as something brought forth: “When there were no depths I was brought forth… Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth.” This description is consistent with the divine Word as an intellectual emanation proceeding from the Father before the creation of the world.

This description is confusing, however, insofar as Wisdom is also said to be created. “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work” suggests that the wisdom which serves as a companion to the Lord in creating the world is a creature, not the second person of the Trinity identified in the Prologue to John’s Gospel. Indeed, this scriptural passage has a long history. It was in many ways the focus of the Arian controversy, with Arius and his contemporaries arguing that this passage refers to the Son of God, but that the Son was his first creature (and therefore not equal to the Father), and St. Athanasius arguing that this passage should be interpretated in another way, with greater subtlety, and in a manner consistent with divinity of the Word revealed in the Gospel of John.¹⁰

The focus of this paper is not to address the interpretive difficulties raised by references to the personified Wisdom that proceeds from God and is God. Besides the difficulty of understanding why wisdom is said to be “created,” ¹¹ one might also wonder why wisdom is personified as a woman — which might seem problematic if wisdom is the Son of God. I think these difficulties can be addressed, but the more fundamental point they drive home is that the revelation of the divine Word is revealed in the Old Testament in a manner that is hidden and obscure, and confused with the likenesses of creatures.¹² It is only after Christ, after the revelation of the Word Incarnate, that we can look back and clearly recognize the Trinity in the Old Testament. This is the meaning of the last line of the Prologue: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:18).

 

Part II – The Meaning of the Term Word

Having seen how the Old Testament anticipates the divine Word, let me now turn to the second part of my paper, which is largely a philosophical explanation of the meaning of the term “word.” This will prepare us to see how the interior word in the human soul can reveal something about the divine Word at the beginning of John’s Gospel.

There are five things I want to note about the meaning of the term “word”: 1) “word” most properly names a concept of the mind, not a vocal word, 2) a word is something produced or brought forth by the mind to express what it knows, 3) a true “word” names the perfect expression of the thing understood, 4) a word completes the act of understanding by manifesting or representing the thing understood, and 5) the interior word is also a name for the artist’s preconception of something to be made — the form or exemplar of his artistic production.

Word names a Concept of the Mind. The “Word” in the Prologue to John’s Gospel (logos in the original Greek and verbum in the Latin vulgate) is not a vocal word, but an “interior word,” or a concept of the mind. St. Thomas argues that the human word has three proper meanings (i.e., non-metaphorical meanings): the interior word or concept of the mind, the vocal word, and the image of the vocal word in the imagination.¹³ Even though the vocal word is what is most commonly and manifestly called a “word,” St. Thomas insists that the name “word” is said first and principally of the interior word of the mind, because the vocal word is only said to be a word because of its signification, not because of the particular vocal sound that is made. The sound by itself, without the signification, is not even truly said to be a word.¹⁴ But the source of the signification is the concept of the mind. So the most proper meaning of “word” is the concept of the mind which is also called the “interior word” or “word of the heart.”

St. Thomas bases his argument for the priority of the interior word on a passage from Aristotle’s On Interpretation (16a3-7) where Aristotle says that vocal sounds are signs or symbols of things in the soul that are the same for all men and that these in turn are “likenesses” of things outside the soul. For Aristotle, vocal sounds only signify external things indirectly, through the medium of the concepts in the mind. Moreover, since vocal signs are only significant by convention, and because their signification depends upon the “likenesses” in the soul which are natural signs (because they are the same for all men), it is the concepts in the mind that are more properly called “words” than the exterior sounds. One can perhaps also infer that for Aristotle the interior logos is prior to the exterior logos from a statement he makes in the Posterior Analytics where he says, “demonstration is concerned not with the external logos but with the logos in soul.”¹⁵ For Aristotle, then, the true logos is the logos in the soul.

We see something similar in Plato, who indicates that the logos in the soul is the true and living logos, having a far greater claim to the name than the written or the vocal word. In Plato’s Phaedrus (276A-E), both Socrates and Phaedrus agree that the written word is merely an image and reminder of the living and ensouled logos in the mind of the man who knows, because only the logos in the soul is accompanied by knowledge.¹⁶

The idea of an interior word might seem strange. We do not usually call the concept in the mind a “word” in common English usage.¹⁷ That there is an interior word, which is more properly said to be a word than the exterior vocal sound, is easier to see from the Greek word logos, the original language of John’s Gospel. Logos has a broad range of meanings ranging from a vocal word, a concept or notion in the mind, a statement, and even an argument. The word logos also has a very rich tradition in Greek philosophy and more often refers to the interior word than the exterior vocal sound, and sometimes refers to a cosmic principle of intelligibility that transcends individual men.¹⁸

Word Names Something Formed or Expressed. Granted that there is an interior word or logos in the mind, one might wonder how it is distinct from other things found in the soul. According to St. Thomas, a word is something formed or expressed by the intellect through its operation.¹⁹ It’s a kind of product or terminus of the intellect’s operation.²⁰ To understand what this means, it helps to see that there is a twofold operation in the human act of understanding.²¹ The power of the intellect first comes to know something by being passive and receptive, by being impressed or informed by some intelligible object.²² Aristotle calls this the “intelligible form” and St. Thomas calls it the “intelligible species.” Like the power of sensation, the intellect is made to be in act by receiving a form or species: the power of sensation receives a sensible form or species, the intellect receives an intelligible form or species.²³ Once it has been informed by the intelligible species, however, it expresses what it knows by forming a concept — the interior word or logos in the soul.

The logos in the soul is almost always something complex, whether it be a definition, a statement, or an argument.²⁴ So even simple names like “man” or “dog” signify a complex word or logos in the soul, namely the definition of man or dog, respectively. As both Aristotle and St. Thomas maintain, the logos in the soul signified by a name is a definition.²⁵ But as we know, a definition is composed of parts, namely, genus and difference. The composite character of the logos in the soul is one way of seeing why the “interior word” in the human soul is something that is formed by the mind — something that the mind actively produces.

Another indication that the mind actively forms and produces a definition is found by reflecting on the discursive process involved in forming a definition. St. Thomas talks about the need for the mind to reason things out when it forms a concept of something simple like a man or a stone.²⁶ The human mind does not move all at once to a complete expression of what it knows, but does so by moving from a more generic and confused expression to one that is more specific and distinct.²⁷ It is common experience that the mind expresses its intellectual impressions in different ways, and moves from less perfect expressions to more perfect expressions — from potency to act. One can form various concepts that express the intelligible form or species of man that is impressed upon the mind: substance, animal, featherless biped,²⁸ rational animal.²⁹ Of course, most of these concepts do not adequately capture or express what a man is, which is why the process of formulating a definition takes time and entails moving from one thing to another. Although the “what it is” of something might be simple in itself, the definition is not; and although receiving the intelligible impression of something simple gives us some sort of knowledge of it, to understand what it is, the mind needs to think it out, which entails effort and struggle to express what it knows.

Word Names Something Perfect. The discursive character of human reason and speech might lead one to wonder whether the formation of an interior word is bound up with a distinctively human form of knowing, one that necessarily entails something imperfect or defective. This is an important consideration for theology because it raises the question whether the name “word” can be truly and properly predicated of God, or whether “word” is at best a mere metaphor the way that (say) “lion” and “rock” are used of God in scripture.

St. Thomas anticipates this difficulty. He argues that only the perfect or complete expression of what the intellect knows has the full account (or ratio) of “word”:

As long as the intellect, by reasoning, casts about this way and that, the formation is not yet complete. It is only when it has conceived the notion of the thing perfectly that for the first time it has the notion of the complete thing and a word. Thus in our mind there is both thinking (cogitatio), meaning the discourse involved in an investigation, and a word, which is formed according to a perfect contemplation of the truth.³⁰

Until the intellect forms a perfect expression, the thing formed is not truly said to be a word. This also fits with Aristotle’s account of the interior word or logos in the soul. If the name “man” is a conventional sign of the “definition” in the soul that is shared in common by all men regardless of the language they speak, the interior logos signified by the name “man” must be a true definition (e.g., rational animal), not a half-formed definition such as “featherless biped.”³¹

Since the perfect expression is a true word, St. Thomas insists that “word” is “predicated properly of God because it is entirely free from matter, corporeity, and all defects, and such things are properly predicated of God, such as knowledge and the known, understanding and the understood.”³²

Word Manifests or Represents the Thing Understood. But one might ask, is expressing a word or concept necessary to complete our knowledge? Why is it insufficient for the intellect to receive the intelligible form passively? What is the importance of the mind expressing what it knows? The answer is that the expression of an interior word is how the intellect relates what it knows to things outside the mind, which are the ultimate objects of knowledge. It is precisely in the word that the intellect “sees the nature of the thing understood.”³³ This is because the word represents or manifests to us the thing understood. Knowledge begins in the senses because the natures in things are intelligible, and that intelligibility is present in potency in their sensible forms, and in the sensible images or phantasms formed by the imagination. The initial motion of the mind is from things outside the mind and results in an impression. But since the things known or understood are outside the mind³⁴ (because the mind does not simply know its own ideas), the mind needs to turn back to the things outside the mind, to go out to them.³⁵ This is where the concept or interior word comes in: it represents or manifests the thing understood precisely as something outside the mind. This is why St. Thomas will sometimes refer to the concept as an intention, because it reaches out to the extra-mental things.³⁶ This is also why the word is a quasi-terminus.³⁷ It terminates the interior act, but it does so by serving as a kind of medium through which the things outside the soul are manifested and signified.³⁸

Thus the interior word is necessary to manifest to oneself the things outside the mind. A word or concept is also necessary, however, to manifest these same things to another. As we already noted, a vocal word only signifies something outside the mind through the medium of the interior word. Since the interior word not only signifies but truly manifests exterior things, one man can manifest the truth to another and lead him to know something that was previously unknown.³⁹

Word Is a Name for the Architect’s Pattern or Exemplar. An interior word or concept can also be operative in the making of external things. Before an architect directs the construction of a house, he first conceives the design of the house.⁴⁰ The artist, according to St. Thomas, must have a preconceived plan to direct his artistic production. Indeed, the first phase in the architect’s design of a building is the conceptual design. It comes before any detailed plans or blueprints are drawn up, and it is also where we are most likely to recognize that the mind is productive or creative.

So far we have considered the interior word in man in order to better understand the divine Word. We have seen that the interior, immaterial logos in the soul, is more properly said to be a word than the vocal word, or the imagined vocal word. The interior word is expressed by the mind through its immanent operation — an operation that remains in the agent and is necessarily related to the source or principle that speaks or utters the word — the mind in act that is forming or expressing the word. Since “word” names what the intellect forms “according to a perfect contemplation of the truth,” the interior word names a perfection which, when sufficiently refined, can be properly predicated of God. It perfects or completes the act of understanding by representing or manifesting the thing understood. Finally, the “word” can also name the pattern or plan produced by the architect of a thing to be made.

 

Part III – What the Name “Word” Reveals about the Son

Let us now turn to the Prologue itself. How shall we approach this text? Let us begin with things that are more obvious or manifest. “The Word” is obviously a name for the Son, which is evident from some of the later lines of the Prologue: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14).

Beyond the fact that “The Word” is a name for the Son, the opening line of the Prologue also very clearly reveals the basic trinitarian doctrine that the Son is both distinct from the Father and shares His very same nature. That the Word was “with God” shows the distinction between the Father and the Son; that “the Word was God” testifies that the Son is not a creature, but true God.

The Interiority of the Word. Understanding the divine Word as an interior word, as “word” in the most proper sense, guards against the mistake of seeing divine procession as something ad extra, as terminating in a creature. This mistake leads inevitably to either the Arian or the Sabellian heresy.⁴¹ Arius held that the Son proceeded from the Father as his primary creature: he admitted a distinction between the Father and the Son but denied their unity of nature. Sabellius held the opposite view: he admitted their unity of nature but denied the real distinction between the Father and the Son. Understanding the procession revealed in scripture as an interior procession — a procession within God Himself — is the only way to avoid denying either the unity or the distinction revealed in the Prologue. The interiority of the Word in God conveys the unity of the divine nature and is presupposed in everything else we will consider.

Interior Word as Produced or Expressed. Understanding the second feature we considered, that a word is produced or brought forth from the intellect, helps to manifest the real distinction between the Word and the Father. Also, considering how the interior word is produced in the human soul can help manifest divine generation to us more fully. Defining generation, St. Thomas proposes that generation is the coming forth from a conjoined living principle according to a likeness in the same specific nature.⁴² By “from a conjoined living principle” he means generated from the very substance of the generator. The operation of the intellect is a vital operation, an operation proper to living things — indeed the highest living operation.⁴³ Since the word expressed or brought forth in the inner recesses of the mind completes the intellect’s vital operation as its product or fruit, it is a kind of offspring of the mind, sharing in its very life — unlike an external product of the mind like a house or some other artifact. Notice that in English and in Latin, we call the expression of the interior word in our own minds a “conception,” tacitly recognizing that it bears a likeness to generation.⁴⁴ This is because bringing forth a concept in the mind is like conception in that the thing conceived is brought forth from within and shares the life of the parent — the conception of the word in the interior of the mind is akin to conception within the womb. Indeed, in one of the Psalms, David speaks of the Son of God as “from the womb…before the daystar” (Psalm 110:3). “From the womb” means from the very substance of the Father and “before the daystar” means before the heavens, before the creation of the world.⁴⁵ Even though the Greek word for mental conception is not the same as the Greek word for biological conception, the likeness between the two is the basis for Socrates describing his art of questioning as akin to a midwife helping his interlocutors manifest or bring to light the things they conceive in their mind.⁴⁶

These considerations of the expression of the interior word help us to understand how the divine Word proceeds from the Father as a living likeness of the Father, distinct from the Father by a relation of origin.⁴⁷ But in order to see that the Word is a subsisting person — sharing the very same nature with the Father, we will need to consider the third feature of the interior word, that is, that a word is the perfect expression of what the intellect knows.

Word as Perfect Expression of the Father. Remembering that the interior word in the truest sense must be a perfect and complete expression of what is known will help us see why the Word is the true offspring of the Father.

As I have already indicated, there is nothing in the name “word” that signifies that it comes forth from an intellect that moves from potency to act, and therefore “word” can be predicated of God as a proper name (i.e., a non-metaphorical name). In God there is no movement from potency to act, so a divine Word must always be in act and would have to come forth from God fully formed from all eternity — unlike the interior word in the human soul that is usually formed or expressed over time by means of a process of thinking (cogitatio) that advances from potency to act.⁴⁸

There are two other points worth noting about the perfection of the Divine Word that bring us closer to an understanding of divine generation. First, because God knows all things in one simple act of understanding, everything contained in the knowledge of the Father is expressed in a single divine Word, whereas we must form many words through which we express separately all that we know.⁴⁹ Consequently, the divine Word is the most perfect word, which is why John refers to the Son as The Word rather than as the “Word of God” — to signify the supereminence of the Divine Word. As St. Thomas puts it, “there is one absolute Word, by participating in which all persons having a word are called speakers.”⁵⁰ The Divine Word is unique, then, insofar as it expresses everything in the Father and is therefore a perfect likeness of Him. This is why the Word is a “reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wisdom 7:26). Moreover, insofar as a son can be said to be an image of his father, the Word can also be said to be a Son.

 The Divine Word is also perfect in another way: the Word, like every divine perfection, is identical to the divine essence and subsists in the divine nature — unlike our words which are mere qualities or accidents of our soul.⁵¹ Since the Word comes forth as a likeness of the Father, and shares the very same nature (not only specifically, but numerically the same), he is therefore a true “Son.” And since there is only one Divine Word, he is not only a “Son,” but the only begotten Son from the Father (John 1:14) — a more perfect likeness of his Father than any human son is a likeness of his father. This is why St. Paul says, “I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from Whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14-15).

The Word Manifests the Father. The fourth feature of a word, that a word manifests the knowledge in the mind of the knower, is applied to the Word of God in two ways: first, the eternal Word manifests the Father to Himself and second, the Word manifests the Father to us. We can see this latter sense of manifesting near the end of the Prologue: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. …No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 18). We see that Word is a fitting name not only because the Son manifests the Father to himself, but also because the Word made flesh manifests the Father to us.

The Word Is the Plan and Exemplar of Creation. Finally, let us consider briefly how the notion of the word helps illuminate the third verse of the Prologue, which begins to speak about the Word insofar as he relates to creatures: “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” This seems to be getting at the same thing mentioned in Genesis — that the world was made through some sort of divine speech. But what exactly does that mean? One might take this to refer to the Son as some kind of instrumental agent cause, but that would undermine the divinity of either the Father or the Son. If the Father is the principal agent and the Son His instrument that would undermine the equality of the Father and the Son and their unity of operation. Since the Father and the Son share the same nature, the same power, and the same operation, they act as one. Jesus testifies to the unity of divine action later in the Gospel of John: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19).⁵² This also echoes the phrase from the Wisdom of Solomon, where the Son is described as “the spotless mirror of the working of God” (Wisdom 7:26).

How, then, should we understand the phrase “through Him all things were made”? The fifth feature of the word — the word as plan or exemplar — is especially helpful in unpacking the meaning of the phrase because the Word is the form or exemplar of all creation. As we already discussed, the Word expresses everything contained in the wisdom of the Father, including the knowledge of creatures which — according to St. Thomas — is both “expressive and operative.” The divine Word is the plan in the mind of the divine architect. Here is how St. Thomas puts it:

For whoever makes something, it is necessary that he preconceive it in his wisdom, which is the form and pattern (ratio) of the thing made: as the form preconceived in the mind of the artisan is the pattern (ratio) of the cabinet to be made. Thus, God makes nothing except through the concept of his intellect, which is the eternally conceived wisdom, namely, the Word of God, and the Son of God. Therefore, it is impossible that he should make anything except through the Son. Whence, Augustine says in the de Trinitate that the Word is the art full of the living patterns of all things. Thus it is clear that everything which the Father makes, he makes through him.⁵³

So it is clear, then, the Word is a principle of every creature as the preconceived plan for all creation.

The notion of the Word as divine exemplar also explains the passage in scripture where St. Paul says, “He [the Son] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation, for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him...” (Col 1:15-16). St. Thomas explains this passage by appealing to the Platonists, who posited Ideas and said that each thing came to be by participating “in an Idea,” like the Idea of Man, or some other species. He affirms that the basic principle that that all things participate in an eternal exemplar, but rather than there being many ideas or exemplars there is only one exemplar, the Word of God. He uses the notion of participation, in other words, to explain why St. Paul says that all things are created “in the Word” as well as “through the word”:

For an artisan makes an artifact by making it participate in the form he has conceived within himself, enveloping it, so to say, with external matter; for we say that the artisan makes a house through the form of the thing which he has conceived within himself. This is the way God is said to make all things in his wisdom, because the wisdom of God is related to his created works just as the art of the builder is to the house he has made. Now this form and wisdom is the Word; and therefore in him all things were founded (condita sunt), as in an exemplar: “He spoke and they were made” (Gen 1), because in his eternal Word he created all things to be.⁵⁴

This is how all things are said to be “founded” or “created” in the eternal Word. In time his creatures are enveloped in external matter. But they already exist, in way, in the Word as God’s divine plan or exemplar.

 

Conclusion

Let me conclude. The revelation of the Son as Word in John’s Prologue is perhaps the single deepest and most profound revelation of the Trinity in the whole of scripture. It clarifies and recapitulates what was foreshadowed in the Old Testament: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Hebrews 1:1-2). The revelation of the Word gives us a privileged entry into an understanding of the Trinity and it is thus no surprise that it plays a pivotal role in St. Thomas’s trinitarian theology. As St. Thomas himself notes, “No mode of procession of any creature perfectly represents the divine generation. Hence it is necessary to gather a similitude from many modes, so that what is lacking in one may in some way be supplied by another…Nevertheless, among them all the procession of the word from the intellect represents it more clearly/distinctly.”⁵⁵ St. Thomas’s words also remind us of the ultimate poverty of our understanding. Whatever light is shed by the interior procession of the word, we must remain mindful that we do not comprehend the mystery, but at best only catch of glimpse of the secret of divine generation. As the Apostle says, “now we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor 13:12).

 

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