Ryan J. Brady, Ph.D, Cand.

Ave Maria University

The Divine Logos of John 1:1 and the Background of Augustine’s Analogy of the
Word as found in Philo and other Fathers of the Church

The Gospel of John begins “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν,

καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. πάντα διʼ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς

αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.1 This striking statement that the

Logos (Word)2 was in the beginning in relationship to God (literally, “towards” Him3)

and yet also identified with God and the one through whom all things came to be is

shrouded in mystery. Although some previous thinkers said similar things4 there is

something radically new about it. Here, the Logos is not merely some part of creation but

1
Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Jn 1:1–2. My translation: In the beginning was the Word and the Word
was with (lit., ‘towards’) God and the Word was God. He was towards God in the beginning (cf.,
footnote #3.
2
Although the primary way Logos will be translated in this essay is as ‘word’, it should be noted
that in Sophocles’ Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (from B.C. 146 to A.D.
1100), there are various other definitions given. Though the first meaning is ‘word’, it is also said
to mean ‘speech’, ‘sentence’, ‘syllogism’, ‘account’, and reason – whether internal (λόγος
ἐνδιάθετος) or uttered (λόγος προφορικός). Cf., E. A. Sophocles, Greek Lexicon of the Roman
and Byzantine Periods (From B. C. 146 to A. D. 1100) (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1900), 720.
3
Πρός with the accusative suggests a movement towards – though a movement that “breaks off
on the frontier of the object sought whereas with εἰς it is continued right on into the object.” In
other words, there is a distinction of that which is ‘towards’ the other. Perhaps a similar phrase to
the Λογος which was towards God, is “λέγειν πρός τι,” meaning, to speak with “reference to”
someone or something and recalls the category of “πρός τι” in Aristotle (meaning ‘relation’; cf.,
chapter 7 of the Categories). The Word, then, apparently exists in reference to the Father or in
relationship with Him even though He is also God. For the meaning of πρός, cf., Gerhard Kittel,
Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 721.
4
As Jaeger pointed out, “the Stoics had taught that the divine principle and cause of the world
was the Logos, which penetrated all that exists”),Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek
Paideia (Cambridge, MA: the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 28.

1
is also equated with God and in relationship to Him as the transcendent God Himself.5 In

order to better understand how this can be, St. Augustine would turn to “that image which

the creature is, that is, to the rational soul for a more careful questioning and

consideration” of the procession of the Son from the Father. He would do so by seeing a

link between the way the mind “beget[s] its knowledge when it knows itself” and the way

the Father begets the Son;6 in other words, the way a word is spoken by man and the way

the Divine Word is ‘spoken’ by the Father. In this essay, we will investigate both the way

this ‘analogy of the word’ was used by thinkers prior to Augustine and also the thought of

the Latin Father himself.

Philo (25 BC – 50 AD)

One stage in this development may be found in the Jewish thinker, Philo, who

spoke of two kinds of words (λόγοι) in man, that which is uttered and that which is kept

concealed.7 By this distinction between what may also be called the spoken (προφορικὸς

/ Prophoric) and unspoken (ἐνδιάθετος / Endiathic)8 words, Philo would provide a

foundation for thinking about the procession of the Word in eternity and the procession of

the Word into the world, when the Father would ‘speak’ the Word externally. In one

5
As Augustine says, on this passage: “In Him are all things: and yet in that He is God, under Him
are all things.” Sermon 67.3 (Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers); sermon 117 in the modern
numbering). “Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament,” in Saint Augustin: Sermon
on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. R. G.
MacMullen, vol. 6, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 459.
6
Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity, ed. Hermigild Dressler, trans. Stephen McKenna, vol. 45, The
Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 287;
Bk. 9.12.17.
7
Charles Duke Yonge with Philo of Alexandria, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 502.
8
Cf., The Special Laws, IV 69 in Peder Borgen, Kåre Fuglseth, and Roald Skarsten, “The Works
of Philo: Greek Text with Morphology” (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005).

2
remarkable section of On Abraham, he argues “the speech which is conceived within is

naturally the father of that which is uttered (πατὴρ γὰρ ὁ ἐνδιάθετος φύσει τοῦ

γεγωνοῦ).”9 There could hardly be a better foundation of pagan thought for people like

St. Ignatius to later teach that “Christ was the Father’s Word issuing from silence.”10

For Philo, God made man after the image “of some other god” because he could

not conceive of a mortal being having been formed in the likeness “of the supreme Father

of the universe.” He thought man could only be made “after the pattern of the second

deity, who is the Word of the supreme Being.” He grants “it is fitting that the rational

soul of man should bear in it the type of the divine Word since … virtuous and consistent

men … bear in themselves a familiar acquaintance with his Word, of which the human

mind is the similitude and form,”11 but the supreme Father, the first deity, is so

transcendent in his estimation that He could not have made man in his own likeness. Man

must consequently be made in the image of the secondary God or Word because “in his

first Word, God is superior to the most rational possible nature,”12 which is apparently the

second Word. So even if he “undeniably shows a tendency to hypostasize the Logos and

the powers, as if they were separate from God himself,” Philo nevertheless held to the

common Jewish belief that there is but one God (and not more than one Person).13

9
Charles Duke Yonge with Philo of Alexandria, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 418, On Abraham 83.
10
Quote from J.N.D. Kelly’s paraphrase of his teaching. Cf., Magn. 8, 2: cf. Eph. 3, 2; Rom. 8, 2.,
and J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Fifth Ed., Revised. (London; New Delhi; New
York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 1977), 96.
11
Charles Duke Yonge with Philo of Alexandria, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 834; Questions and Answers on Genesis, 2.62.
12
Charles Duke Yonge with Philo of Alexandria, The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 834.
13
Cf., David T. Runia, “Philo the Theologian (15 BC–50 AD),” ed. Trevor A. Hart, The
Dictionary of Historical Theology (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster Press, 2000), 425–426
and J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Fifth, Revised. (London; New Delhi; New York;
Sydney: Bloomsbury, 1977), 11.

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Unfortunately, others such as the Arians seemed to follow Philo more than the Gospel on

tis point, so such speculations had potential to lead to error despite their remarkable

proximity to some of the teachings of Christianity. As Newman observed regarding the

Arians, they “meant by the προφορικὸς λόγος a created being, made at the beginning of

all things as the visible emblem of the ἐνδιάθετος, to be the instrument of God’s purposes

towards His creation.”14 In other words, they forgot that the Word’s nature was identical

with God’s, and their penchant for philosophy combined with their errors would cause

others to mitigate or outright deny the role of philosophical analogies in discussions of

the Trinity.

St. Athanasius (296-373 AD) and St. Basil (330-379 AD)

In view of Arian tendencies to exaggerate the likeness between the human mind’s

word and the Divine Word and to think of the Son as proceeding by the Father’s will

(and, according to some, for the sake of man), Athanasius came down soundly against the

role of philosophical speculation both in general (he argues that the Word brought the

philosophical schools to naught in On the Incarnation, 50.3) and in this regard in

particular. In responding to the Arians who pointed out that a human word is made up of

syllables and once those syllables are spoken, the word disappears (and thus the Word of

God must not be truly God, who exists always) he responded by simply insisting on the

scriptural teaching. “If their dispute concerns God, who created humanity,” he said, they

14
John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833),
216.

4
ought not to “entertain human thoughts but others that are above human nature”15

because God’s Word is not merely pronounced as a human word is.

Interestingly, though, St. Athanasius’ contemporary, St. Basil the Great, saw that

he could use the analogy to his advantage on this point. He noticed that “our outward

word has some similarity to the divine Word” inasmuch as our word “declares the whole

conception of the mind,” which is its “source.”16 The Mind of the Father, in other words,

is completely expressed in the generation of the Word. Consequently, the Word must

have all of the same attributes of the Father – including immutability and divinity.

Perhaps this would answer to Athanasius’ concern because the Word would then

not return to nothingness after being uttered. Be that as it may, Athanasius remained

skeptical of applying the image of man’s word to God (who, he insisted, does not exist in

the way man does). Rather, He exists always and his Word must always exist with Him

just as the radiance of a light always exists with a light. Curiously, then, even though

Athanasius was willing to use the word ‘radiance’ analogously, he emphatically shied

away from an ‘analogy of the word’ (due to the fact that the word of man disappears once

it is spoken and is not a word that affects anything merely by being spoken, as God’s

Word does17). Perhaps his reaction against analogy regarding the Word was simply based

off of the false conclusions of the Arians, therefore, and not so much against any use of

analogy in shedding light on the Trinity.

St. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch (d. 184 AD)

15
Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1–10, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 11 (quoting the second discourse against the Arians, 18.35)
16
Homily 16.3. Cf., PG 31:477. Cited in Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1–10, Ancient Christian
Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 10.
17
Ibid., 2.35

5
 Among the early Christian thinkers who were willing to use philosophical thought

in speculation about the inner and outer words of our minds was St. Theophilus, who

wrote nearly two hundred years before Athanasius. He also made a distinction “between

the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the intelligence of the Father, and the λόγος προφορικός, the Word

brought forth externally in order to create.”18 For Theophilus, God the Father possessed

his interior Word within Himself and begat Him from His wisdom (ἔχων οὖν ὁ θεὸς τὸν

ἑαυτοῦ λόγον ἐνδιάθετον ἐν τοῖς ἰδίοις σπλάγχνοις, ἐγέννησεν αὐτὸν μετὰ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ

σοφίας ἐξερευξάμενος πρὸ τῶν ὅλων).19 As Newman notes, the gennesis (γέννησις) or

begetting he speaks of is necessarily a proper and true begetting of the Word, which is of

one substance (ὁμοούσιος/Homoüsios) with the Father. It is not a metaphorical begetting;

“for if metaphorical, there was nothing in it to call for mention of the intrinsic nature of

God.”20 Unfortunately, though, “the philosophical words, Endiathetic and Prophoric”

which are used in an orthodox way by Theophilus and which are, according to Newman,

“implied as ideas in Justin and Tatian, as also in Hippolytus and others,”21 were not used

in such a way by all. Newman makes a fascinating claim on this point:

The Platonic doctrine of the Logos ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικὸς, the Word conceived
in the mind and the Word spoken, a Divine attribute and a Divine energy, leads
either to Sabellianism or to Arianism;—to Sabellianism, since the Divine Word,
Endiathetic, is not a Person; to Arianism, since the Personal Word, Prophoric, is not
strictly Divine.22

18
F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church
(Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1617.
19
John Henry Newman, Tracts: Theological and Ecclesiastical (London: Basil Montagu
Pickering, 1874), 209.
20
Ibid., 210.
21
Ibid., 210.
22
Ibid., 259.

6
It seems that he must be correct if, in fact, a) it is not possible to think of the Endiathic

procession as a procession of the Father in eternity wherein the Word is begotten as being

of the same nature of the Father and if b) it is not possible to think of the Prophoric

procession of the Word in time as being a procession of the Word which is God (cf., Jn.

1:1) and became flesh (cf., Jn. 1:14). In other words, if the revelation of Sacred Scripture

is not taken into account in accordance with the analogy of faith, then either of these

philosophical concepts can lead to heresy. That is, using “either of the two absolutely and

to the exclusion of the other would have involved some form of Sabellianism, or

Arianism, as the case might be; but each term might correct the defective sense of the

other.”23 Perhaps for this reason the terms were ultimately “received into the Church” 24

despite the need for absolute precision in understanding them.

St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394)

St. Gregory of Nyssa made use of an analogy of the word in the human mind in

discussing the Father’s eternal generation of the Son and did so in such a way that he

avoided the errors of both Sabellianism and Arianism (which he called a ‘Jewish’ error).

He argues that by rising anagogically (ἀναγωγικῶς) “from matters that concern ourselves

to that transcendent nature, we gain a knowledge of the Word” and adds:

As in our own case we say that the word is from the mind, and no more entirely the
same as the mind, than altogether other than it… in like manner, too, the Word of
God by its self-subsistence is distinct from Him from whom it has its subsistence;

23
Joseph Pohle and Arthur Preuss, Christology: A Dogmatic Treatise on the Incarnation,
Dogmatic Theology (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1913), p. 23 n. 64.
24
John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: J. G. & F. Rivington, 1833),
214.

7
 and yet by exhibiting in itself those qualities which are recognized in God it is the
same in nature with Him who is recognizable by the same distinctive marks.”25

The way he specifically avoids the Sabellian error is, perhaps, most remarkable. The

Father, he says, cannot be conceived of without the Word and the Word cannot be

conceived of without the Father, whose Word He is. Actually, just as Father and Son are

‘relative’ terms distinguishing the Persons, “this, too, to a certain extent is a term of

“relation.”26 In other words, the Word is personally distinct from the Father and not

simply a mode of Him that can come and go at any given moment.

St. Augustine

The one who is most known for employing an analogy of words in the human

mind to understand the Trinity better was St. Augustine, who argued that man “subsists”

as the image of God (cf., 1 Cor. 11:7) inasmuch as he “approaches it by a kind of

similarity” or “likeness.”27 By the likeness of some “word of man,” the “Word of God

may in some manner be seen as in an enigma.”28 Because a word of man can be

understood internally or externally, so too the Divine Word can be understood inasmuch

as it pertains to the Divine Nature or as it pertains to the external going forth into

creation:

That the Word proceeded from God is an eternal procession; he does not have a
time, through whom time was made. Let no one ask in his heart: before the Word

25
Gregory of Nyssa, “The Great Catechism,” in Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, Etc., ed.
Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. William Moore, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature
Company, 1893), 476–477; Chapter 1.
26
Ibid., 476.
27
Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity, ed. Hermigild Dressler, trans. Stephen McKenna, vol. 45, The
Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 240.
28
Ibid., 477–478, 15.11.20.

8
 was, in what way did God exist? You should never say, Before the Word of God
was. God never was without the Word because the Word is abiding, not transient …
He proceeded from [God] as God, as equal, as the only Son, as the Word of the
Father; and he came to us because the Word was made flesh that he might dwell
among us.29

Here we have an example of the Word proceeding from the Father eternally as an abiding

Son who is equal to the Father. So even when Augustine has in mind the eternal

proceeding of the Word, he avoids denying that the Son is personally distinct from the

Father. In his 196th Sermon, he did so by asserting that in the “first begetting” (that of the

eternal generation as opposed to that which took place with the Incarnation), the Word

was the “Father’s own” Word who is the Son. It was an eternal begetting because the

Father “has never been without the Son” and thus “He both begot and yet did not begin to

do so.” Again, the Son must be a person because “there is no beginning for one begotten

without beginning. And yet he is the Son, and yet he is begotten.”30 He is, therefore,

clearly distinct from the Father who begot Him as an equal.

He also spoke in a Prophoric sense (pertaining to the Word in relation to

creatures, or the Word’s procession ad extra) while avoiding the Arian tendency to deny

the Divinity of the Word. The Arians had thought of the Word as proceeding from the

Father’s bosom such that he was necessarily not divine and reasoned that if the Word

were to essentially belong to God as equal to Him, He could not be external to Him in

any way. Newman says they argued that if Catholics “held their Logos to be Prophoric,

29
Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28–54, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. John
W. Rettig, vol. 88, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1993), 154–155.
30
Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1–10, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 3.

9
that was enough to prove that He was not God.”31 Augustine, nevertheless, spoke of the

need for the Divine Word to come forth from the Father and speak with His voice. If He

had remained with the Father “as not to receive the form of a servant [cf., Philippians 2:7]

and speak as man with men how could they have believed in Him, since their weak hearts

could not have heard the Word intelligently without some voice that would appeal to their

senses?”32

Augustine explained this procession from the Father into the world by noting that

in the process of bringing his own word to his congregation by means of his voice, the

word did not depart from his heart. In a similar way, the “Word came forth to our senses,

yet departed not from His Father. My word was with me, and it came forth into a voice:

the Word of God was with the Father, and came forth into Flesh.”33

An objection that could be raised that, if this coming among us is similar to the

way we speak a word, then the Word must change because our own word, “when it is

spoken through a sound or through some bodily sign … is not spoken just as it is”34 but

changes in some way. For Augustine, this is really where the particular aptness of the

analogy comes in. Surely the spoken word is distinct from the word in our mind, but

when “that which is in the knowledge is in the word, then it is a true word, and the truth

31
John Henry Newman, Tracts: Theological and Ecclesiastical (London: Basil Montagu
Pickering, 1874), 164.
32
Augustine of Hippo, “Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John,” in St.
Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies, ed.
Philip Schaff, trans. John Gibb and James Innes, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company,
1888), 221.
33
Augustine of Hippo, “Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament,” in Saint Augustin:
Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. Philip Schaff, trans.
R. G. MacMullen, vol. 6, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 467; Sermon 69.7
(NPNF); 119.7 . (Ben.).
34
The Trinity, 15.11.20, ed. Hermigild Dressler, trans. Stephen McKenna, vol. 45, The Fathers of
the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 478.

10
which is expected from man, so that what is in the knowledge is also in the word, and

what is not in the knowledge is not in the word.”35 So even if there is a distinction, there

is also an identity just as the Father and Son are distinct as Persons and yet united in

nature. This particular analogy is particularly suitable for making sense of the fact that

the Word is both distinct from God and God Himself. Augustine says it is “in this way

the likeness of the image that was made [by God; namely, man] approaches, insofar as it

can, to the likeness of the image that was born [of God; namely, the Word], whereby God

the Son is proclaimed as substantially like the Father in all things.36 Even when speaking

of the Son’s entry into the world, therefore, he defended His true nature as God.

It seems that among the early Christians, Augustine utilized the patrimony of his

Pagan and Jewish philosophical predecessors most wisely. Although he ultimately placed

the highest degree of confidence in the truths explicitly revealed in Scripture, he was

willing to unfold those truths by making use of what was best in philosophical and

analogous reasoning. Unlike Athanasius, he did not think the use of analogy (at least in

regard to the procession of the Word) a presumptuous enterprise, but he did recognize its

limits and constantly pointed out the ways the analogy fell short. For this reason, he

pointed out in his 117th Sermon that the first couple of verses of the Gospel of John

cannot not be comprehended and as such professed ignorance of its meaning is better

than “presumptuous knowledge” because “the Creator transcends indescribably whatever

we could gather from the creature, whether by the bodily senses, or the thought of the

35
Cf., De Trinitate, Bk. 15.11.20
36
Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity, ed. Hermigild Dressler, trans. Stephen McKenna, vol. 45, The
Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 478;
Book 15.11.20.

11
mind.”37 At the same time, he clearly believed the analogy of the word was a good way

of attaining some sense of the mysteries of God that can only be known by faith and was

willing to utilize the best of philosophical conclusions in using it.

Appendix on the Analogy of the Word and the Role of Philosophy in Aquinas

In St. Thomas Aquinas we find a further clarification of this doctrine. He spoke of

the Word as proceeding from the Father’s intellect by way of a kind of self-understanding

and he confidently used the arguments of Augustine and others in doing so. He knew,

however, that purely philosophical arguments can not be used as definitive proof of truths

that can only be known by revelation - such as those pertaining to the Trinity (as

Trinity). In fact, the likeness of our understanding as applied to the understanding of God

and the procession of the Word does not “sufficiently prove anything about God” because

understanding (intellectio) does not have the same meaning in us and in Him. He says it

is for this reason that Augustine argued that faith is the way to knowledge and not the

other way around. He thus quotes Augustine, who said faith is the way to knowledge and

not the other way around.38

37
Sermon 67.3 (NPNF; sermon 117 in the modern numbering). Saint Augustin: Sermon on the
Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. R. G.
MacMullen, vol. 6, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 459 and 464.
38
Summa Theologiae, I q.32 a.1 ad 2. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Editio altera

Romana. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2009): Similitudo autem intellectus nostri non

sufficienter probat aliquid de Deo propter hoc, quod intellectus non univoce invenitur in Deo, et

12
 Faith being presupposed, however, philosophical arguments can go a long way in

coming to a better understanding of what has been revealed. An example of this is the

way St. Thomas based an argument about the procession of the Word by reason on the

knowledge we can have of the procession of our own knowledge into words in the

Summa Contra Gentiles. It is similar to many arguments we have already seen but adds

further precision:

It belongs to the interior word or intelligible species, to proceed from the intelligent
being through the latter’s act of intelligence, since it is the term of its intellectual
operation; for the intellect by understanding conceives and forms the understood
species or idea which is the interior word. Therefore God’s Word must needs
proceed from Him by reason of His act of intelligence. Hence God’s Word stands in
relation to God understanding, whose Word He is, as to Him from whom He
proceeds; for such a relation is implied by the very nature of a word. Since then in
God the intelligent subject, the act of intelligence, and the intelligible species or
word, are essentially one, and since for this reason each one of these must needs be
God, it follows that there is only a distinction of relation between them, for as much
as the Word is referred to the cause of His conception, as to the source whence He
proceeds. Hence John the Evangelist, lest the phrase The Word was God should
seem to remove any distinction whatsoever between the Word and God the speaker
and conceiver of the Word, added (verse 2): The same was in the beginning with
God, as though to say: “This same Word, whom I have stated to be God, is in some
way distinct from God the speaker of the Word, and thus may be described as being
with God.39

Arguments of this sort can go so far in the estimation of Thomas, in fact, that they can be

considered almost demonstrative so long as faith is presupposed (as it is in this latter

section of the Summa Contra Gentiles dealing precisely with things known by revelation

in nobis. Et inde est, quod August. super Joan. (tract. 27. circa med.) dicit, quod per fidem

venitur ad cognitionem, et non e converso.

39
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Summa Contra Gentiles,
vol. 5 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 52–53; SCG 4.11.

13
as opposed to natural reason); accordingly, he says, “it is clear (patet) from what has been

said that the Son proceeds from the Father, as the Father’s knowledge of Himself.40

For him, therefore, faith is preeminent and yet other arguments from natural

reason can be profitably used. The theologian “makes use also of the authority of

philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural

reason, as Paul quotes a saying of Aratus: As some also of your own poets said: For we

are also His offspring (Acts 17:28).” Nevertheless, in doing so, he only “makes use of

these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of

the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of

the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable.”41

The first Vatican Council would echo this teaching six centuries later:

Reason, indeed, enlightened by faith, when it seeks earnestly, piously and calmly,
attains by a gift from God some, and that a very fruitful, understanding of
mysteries; partly from the analogy of those things which it naturally knows, partly
from the relations which the mysteries bear to one another and to the last end of
man: but reason never becomes capable of apprehending mysteries as it does those
truths which constitute its proper object. For the divine mysteries by their own
nature so far transcend the created intelligence that, even when delivered by
revelation and received by faith, they remain covered with a veil of faith itself, and
shrouded in a certain degree of darkness, so long as we are pilgrims in this mortal
life, not yet with God: “for we walk by faith, and not by sight.”42

40
SCG 4.23.
41 STh., I q.1 a.8 ad 2
42 Vincent McNabb, ed., The Decrees of the Vatican Council (New York: Benziger Brothers,
1907), 26.

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