Today’s Aquinas: Consubstantial with the Father

We’re blogging through St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae, sometimes called his Shorter Summa. Find the previous posts here.

My plan is to faithfully step through each of the chapters in the Compendium Theologiae, one each week, until I’ve gotten through the whole thing; otherwise, I’d be mightily tempted to skip the current chapter as it offers very little that’s new. However, things are busy just now, and the previous chapter took me three weeks to get through, so I’m going to take my comfort where I find it.

Summing up the last six or so chapters on the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, Thomas says,

As is clear from the foregoing, all the characteristics of divine generation we have been discussing lead to the conclusion that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Therefore, by way of summing up all these points, the words, “Consubstantial with the Father,” are subjoined.

To put it another way, if you want to know what it means when you say “consubstantial with the Father” in the Creed each week then go re-read the posts on the last six or so chapters.

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photo credit: Public Domain; source Wikimedia Commons