In working out his concept ofverbumAquinas was engaged not merely in fitting an original Augustinian creation into an Aristotelian framework but also in attempting, however remotely and implicitly, to fuse together what to us may seem so disparate: a phenomenology of the subject with a psychology of the soul.

The Aristotelian framework was impressive. First, it was a general theory of being, a metaphysics. Secondly, it was a general theory of movement, a physics in that now antiquated sense. Thirdly, it was a general theory of life, a biology. Fourthly, it was a general theory of sensitivity and...

It is almost a decade since M. T.-L. Penido published his ‘Gloses sur la procession d’amour dans la Trinité.’¹ As the reader may recall, the article dealt with the speculative aspect of the second divine procession, passed in review the efforts of a very large number of theologians to attain a coherent statement, and found them all wanting. Briefly and bluntly, for Penido theologians on this issue fall into two classes: those who did not pretend to grasp the matter and those who did but failed to be convincing. The indictment is startling.^b

Let us turn at once to what...

The plan of our inquiry has been, first, to determine the introspective psychological data involved in the Thomist concept of averbum mentisor inner word; secondly, to review the metaphysical categories and theorems in which these introspective data were expressed by Aquinas; thirdly, to follow the extrapolation from the analysis of the human mind to the account of the divine intellect as known naturally; fourthly, to study the theory of the procession of the divine Word. The first task, of introspective psychology, fell into two parts corresponding to the two different types of inner word, namely, the definition and...

Just as a modern exact science is generically mathematics and only specifically mechanics or physics or chemistry, so also the Thomist analysis of theverbumor inner word is generically metaphysics and only specifically psychology. Two chapters have been devoted to the psychological side of the issue before us. Attention must now be turned to the metaphysics, for the matters of fact that have been assembled in preceding chapters find their systematic formulation and structural interrelation in terms of potency, habit, operation, action, passion, object, species.¹

Since in general it will be possible to assume that the reader is familiar...

Two general observations on Thomist trinitarian theory have inspired this inquiry into the concept ofverbum.^aThe first was that the analogy to the procession of the divine Word lies in the analysis, not of knowledge in general, but of intellectual reflection, of rational consciousness.¹ The second was that the analogy to the procession of the Holy Spirit lies in the act of love, not as within the will for that isprocessio operationis,but as grounded in a perfect inner word, a judgment of value.² Now because rational consciousness has received remarkably little attention from commentators and manual writers,...

Our inquiry began from the observation of a strange contrast.¹ St Augustine restricted the image of God within us to theratio superior.² St Thomas restricted the image to theprincipium verbi, verbum,andamorof rational creatures.³ But in prevalent theological opinion there is as good an analogy to the procession of the Word in human imagination as in human intellect, while the analogy to the procession of the Holy Spirit is wrapped in deepest obscurity.⁴ It seemed possible to eliminate the obscurity connected with the second procession by eliminating the superficiality connected with opinions on the first. With...