5.8 Alessandro Ghisaberti – Dal logos greco al logos cristiano in Tommaso d’Aquino

Aquinas’ Lectura of Saint John’s gospel relies on Aristotelian noetic. Aquinas aims at understanding the analogical relation between human logos, which coincides with the entire philosophical tradition of the past, and the Divine Logos. After highlight- ing the convergences, Aquinas focuses on three differences:

1. Human logos is the result of a formative process (from potentiality to actual- ity). In our soul both reasoning and mental word are present. The activity of reason- ing corresponds to the process of inquiry, while the mental word correspond to the concept already formed in the human mind. As a consequence, while human Logos moves from potentiality to actuality, Divine Logos is always actuality (Cf. Lectura, XXVI, p. 52).

2. The process of human knowledge develops on the basis of multiple mental words, not just on one Word. As a consequence, it is imperfect and unable to express the totality of its knowledge in a single act. On the contrary, in the case of the Divine Logos, the only one Word expresses the full nature of divinity, both in relation to the three Persons of the Trinity and to the creatures.

3. Human logos has a different nature from the subject who utters it. Rather, it is an operation of the soul that does not coincide with the activity of the intelligere. On the contrary, in God, intellect and act of intelligence are one nature. As a conse- quence, the Divine Logos is not an accidental reality, but it is a part of God’s nature (Cf. Lectura, 28, p. 53).