Modus Revelatio: Aquinas and the Illumination of the Intellect

In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes, “the intellect’s natural light is strengthened by the infusion of gratuitous light,” arguing that this infusion of light often results in actual images placed in the created intellect’s imagination. The bestowed images were what made up the beatific vision and were divinely formed so as to, “express divine things better than do those which we receive naturally from sensible things, as appears in prophetic visions.” He continues later in the work,

The divine substance is rightly called the light of glory; not indeed because it
makes the object actually intelligible, as the light of the agent intellect does, but
because it makes the intellect able to understand actually.

Thus, those special intellects that God chooses and gifts to the episcopacy receive the divine lumen by the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures into the nature and essence of God. As the sole recipients of the revelation of God, the Church, through its clergy, is charged with instructing the laity as to the matters of the Christian faith. Aquinas argues that the goal of the Church is not necessarily to lead the laity to the comprehension of God but rather to elicit faith in the message it is teaching. In other words, the episcopacy seeks to create the conviction and assent that the message of the Church is true. The faith of the laity differs from the illumination and understanding of the clergy in that faith, for Aquinas, is not built on rational vision or knowledge but rather assent of the heart. Here, Aquinas’ dichotomy of the mind and heart appear strongest. Only the illuminated intellect may have knowledge of God, whereas those of a weakened and dark intellect may only have faith of the heart.