The Union in One Person: Cyril, the Athanasian Creed, the Human Nature as God's Joined Tool, and Why Christ Is Not a Human Person (ST III, q.2 a.1–2)

Orientation #

He opens mid-question: “Now we got to get Cyril off the hook here,” i.e. the replies to the objections of the article just argued (prev. lecture: the objection that Christ’s two natures make one nature). He refers back to “the previous article” (union not in the nature) when reading a. 2, and to “our study of the Trinity” for person and nature being the same secundum rem in God. The previous class refuted the one-composite-nature reading (Eutyches, Cyril, the Athanasian Creed); the next treats person, hypostasis and suppositum and whether the union is in the hypostasis.

The class, in order #

1. Cyril and the Fifth Synod (“get Cyril off the hook here”) #

The point: Cyril’s “one incarnate nature of the divine Word” is expounded by the fifth synod (the second council of Constantinople; a student’s correction of “third” is heard), and Thomas quotes the synod’s own canon.

• The canon: whoever says “one incarnate nature of the divine Word” and takes it as the Fathers did — that from the divine and human natures a union was made secundum subsistentiam (i.e. in the person) — is fine; whoever from such words deduces one nature or substance of the divinity and flesh of Christ is anathema.
• So the sense is not that from two natures one nature is constituted, but that the one nature of God united flesh to itself in his person.
• Aside: Thomas often says such a way of speaking should not be extended but piously expounded; here he can simply cite the synod’s own explanation — “That’s good enough for me. I’m a teachable fellow.”

2. The Athanasian Creed: soul and body as likeness (“the likeness between the two should not be observed”) #

The point: the soul-body comparison holds for the unity of person, not for the making of one nature.

• Reply to obj. 2 as read: from soul and body in us a twofold unity is constituted — (a) of nature, insofar as soul is united to body as its form, so that one nature comes from act and ability, matter and form: here the likeness must not be observed, since the divine nature cannot be the form of a body (proven in the first part, on God’s simplicity); (b) of person, insofar as there is one someone subsisting in flesh and soul: here the likeness is to be noted, for the one Christ subsists in divine nature and human.
• His supplement from the Summa Contra Gentiles (“my favorite volume”): the Creed says nothing created is as like the union in Christ as the union of soul and body; Thomas asks what Athanasius means. Per Aristotle’s On the Soul, body is to soul as matter to form but also as tool to agent — the soul is “the first act of a natural body composed of tools.”
  • Aristotle against the Pythagoreans (any soul into any body): not only are matter and form relative, but not any art can use the tools of any art. His wife, a tailor, cannot use his brother-in-law the carpenter’s hammer and saw, nor he her needle and thread.
  • Applied: the union in Christ is not like form-and-matter — that was the Arian error, divine nature in place of a human soul — but the human nature is like a tool of the divinity.
  • Two kinds of tool: separate (hammer, saw) vs. joined (my hand, my teeth). Student exchange: is a priest, when Christ sanctifies through him, a hammer or a hand? A student says the hand (“we’re joined by nature”, “he assumed our nature”); he answers no, the hammer — Christ’s own human nature is like the hand, joined to God in the same person. Thomas’s example: the tongue is a tool of reason though reason is not the form of the tongue.
  • A tool has something from the excellence of the chief agent: Christ’s human nature has an efficacy a human nature not joined to him in the same person would not have.
• He notes the Summa here gives “a little different explanation” from the SCG one. Aside: “Most of our kids are just a hammer.”

3. “The Word was made flesh”; the three rifles (“no one can stand without the other two”) #

The point: reply to obj. 3, from Damascene: the divine nature is said to be incarnate because united to flesh personally, not converted into the nature of flesh; flesh is said to be deified (caro deificata) not by conversion into the divine nature but by union to the Word, the properties of each being saved — made the flesh of the divine Word, not made God.

• Someone can take “the Word was made flesh” to say conversion; studying the heresies (as in the SCG) shows how easily Scripture is misread. Hence Vatican II: Scripture, sacred tradition and the magisterium — no one stands without the other two. His image: stacking M1 rifles in bivouac, two hooked together fall, you need three. Converts on EWTN’s “Coming Home” from sola scriptura are asked “where’d you get these books?” and so brought to tradition. Likewise Vatican II itself cannot be understood without Scripture and tradition.
• His own extension: are Thomas’s (or Shakespeare’s) words wise because wisdom turned into vocal sound? No — they are wise because they are the words of a wise man used as a tool. So Christ’s human actions are divine because they are the actions of the divine person, though in a human nature.
• Exam note: they will be asked for “the three reasons” (of the article). Aside on rehearsing reasons in bed at night: the reason you forgot gives more delight, “like the lost sheep.”

4. Article 2, the objections (“Why does Thomas always attack the truth in this way?”) #

The point: falsehood eliminated, now “the truth”: it seems the union was not made in the person.

1. The person of God is not other from his nature (learned in the Trinity); so if not in the nature, not in the person.
2. Human nature is not of less dignity in Christ than in us; personality pertains to dignity (first part); our human nature has its own personality, so much more in Christ. (He previews: Thomas will say it is drawn to a higher personhood.)
3. Boethius: person is an individual substance of a rational nature; the Word assumed an individual human nature, since universal nature does not subsist but is considered only in “naked contemplation” — naked meaning without images or senses (Damascene); so that nature has its own personality.

• Sed contra: Chalcedon — not in two persons divided, but one and the same only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
• His remark: the SCG says one must see what it means to be united in person and in nature; the first article treated the second, this one treats the first. Why Thomas attacks the truth: “to make you stop and think, I guess.”

5. Body of the article: nature vs. suppositum (“the whole having the nature just as a formal part”) #

The point: person signifies something other than nature, and so what is united to the Word but not to its nature is united in the person.

1. Nature signifies the essence of the species, what the definition signifies (Aristotle: definition is speech signifying what a thing is).
2. If nothing besides what belongs to the species could be joined to it, there would be no need to distinguish nature from the underlying (suppositum); each individual would be altogether the same as its nature.
3. But in some subsisting things — most of all things composed of matter and form — there is found what does not pertain to the species: accidents and individuating principles. So there nature and suppositum differ secundum rem, not as separated, but because the suppositum includes the nature plus more; the suppositum signifies the whole having the nature as a formal part perfective of it.
   • Example: “Am I, Duane Berquist, human nature? If I was, I’d be the only man.” He has human nature as a formal part, plus knowledge of odd and even numbers, health, colour, sitting. So in composed things nature is not said of the suppositum: this man is not his own humanity.
4. In a thing where there is nothing besides the notion of its nature, as in God, suppositum and nature are not other secundum rem but only in the thought by which we understand them: nature as essence, suppositum as subsisting.
5. What is said of suppositum holds of person in intellectual creatures (Boethius); hypostasis, corresponding to suppositum, is said of any individual substance. Everything in a person, whether pertaining to its nature or not, is united to it in the person — “in my person I am both a man and a geometer, and somewhat healthy.”
6. So if human nature is not joined to the Word in the person, it is joined in no way, and the faith of the Incarnation — on which, with the divinity, the whole Christian faith depends — is wholly taken away. Since the Word has a human nature united to itself but not as pertaining to its divine nature, the union is in the person, not the nature.

• His gloss: Thomas argues it is either joined to the nature or to the person; the previous article excluded the nature; so the person, or not at all.
• Student: so person is to nature as whole to part? He: yes, in us, especially composites; human nature is not the whole of me. Human nature and geometry do not come together to form one thing; both belong to the same person. So too “God is man and man is God” — not because the natures are joined to each other (one does not become the other, nor do they make one great nature) but because both belong to the same person subsisting in them.

6. Excursus before reply 1: same secundum rem, different secundum rationem (“the same knowledge of opposites”) #

The point: the objection presses the Trinity teaching that Word and divine nature are the same secundum rem; he prepares Thomas’s reply with an analogy from divine will and knowledge.

• An article of the Sentences he was reading: is God’s will the cause of things? Objections: rather his knowledge, or his power. Thomas: God’s power is infinite and would produce nothing in particular unless he willed this rather than that; and (Aristotle, ninth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IX]) knowledge alone cannot produce, being knowledge of opposites.
  • Examples: medical knowledge can make you healthy or sick, not both — one must choose; his logic exams, where he knew how to make a fallacy look like a good argument and deceive many, so teaching or deceiving depends on will; the master of rhetoric can persuade or dissuade — with the “little moral problem” of the lawyer who knows his client guilty.
• So the will determines to what power and knowledge are applied; God’s mind and will are the same thing, yet differ secundum rationem, and it is as will that he is said to cause — as in predestination, “a free choice on God’s part.” Thomas may say the like here: person and nature the same secundum rem, differing secundum rationem, so being united to God as nature and as person are not the same, as “this comes from the divine will” and “from the divine knowledge” are not the same statement.

7. Reply to the first objection (“according to the way of signifying”) #

The point: though in God nature and person are not other secundum rem, they differ in the way of signifying; person signifies as something subsisting, and human nature is so united to the Word that the Word subsists in it, nothing being added to the definition of its nature nor its nature changed; hence union in the person, not the nature.

• His illustration: does God know bad things? Yes. Does he will them? No. Will and knowledge are the same, but the bad is an object of God insofar as he is mind, not insofar as he is will. We do not understand God, but we understand he is both, neither fully expressing him.
• Aristotle in Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]: acting and undergoing are the same motion. Pushing the cup and its being pushed are the same secundum rem, differing secundum rationem: pushing insofar as from me into the cup, being pushed insofar as in the cup from me. “I kick you”: kicking and being kicked, the same; “and two can play at that.”

8. Reply to the second objection: dignity of personality (“exists in something more dignified than itself”) #

The point: personality pertains to dignity insofar as it belongs to a thing’s perfection to exist per se; but it is more dignity to exist in something more dignified than oneself than to exist per se. So human nature has more dignity in Christ than in us: in us, existing per se, it has its own personality; in Christ it exists in the person of the Word.

• Thomas’s parallel: to complete the species belongs to the dignity of a form, yet the sensitive is nobler in man, joined to a nobler completing form, than in the brute where it is the completing form.
• His examples of sense ennobled in man: the cat comes for sandwich meat from the icebox but sleeps through a Mozart opera; recollection as a kind of syllogism in imagination and memory (Aristotle) — reasoning back to what you did at ten yesterday; poetic imagination; cuisine and wine — the cat likes his steak but does not appreciate the white sauce.

9. Reply to the third objection: individual but not per se (“the hand of Socrates”) #

The point: the Word assumed human nature not in the universal but in atomo, in the individual (hence he reads “individual” for Damascene’s “undivided”); otherwise every man would be the Word of God. But not every individual in the genus of substance, even of rational nature, is a person — only what exists per se, not what exists in something more perfect.

• Socrates’ hand is an individual but not a person, existing in its whole; this is signified by substantia individua in Boethius’s definition — a hand is not a complete substance but a part. So Christ’s human nature, an individual in the genus of substance, existing not by itself but in something more perfect, the person of God, has no personality of its own.

10. His “limping comparison”: points and lines (“it’s one and the same point”) #

The point: a geometrical picture of one person in two natures.

• Line with endpoint A; draw a second line with its own endpoint: two points, “two persons.” Draw the second line to A instead: one and the same point begins both lines. In the Incarnation, human nature drawn from the Blessed Virgin is drawn to the same person, the second person of the Trinity; had it not been drawn to that point, it would have its own personality, as in you and me.
• Its limit: the two lines are not distinct in kind. Better: a circle with its diameter — one point is the beginning of a curved line and a straight line, which can never coincide (a student: “maybe at a point”; “but then the point’s not a line”), always distinct, like the divine and human natures. The point, indivisible, “very much an atom,” is in both lines, as one person subsists in two natures that remain entirely distinct — “the fire and the bush.”
• Student: could Christ assume another human nature, be two men? He: yes, no limit to divine power, as many lines can be drawn to the same point — one person, “a crowd”; “Don’t tell that to the people who believe there are alien planets.” Someone recalls a saint (Clement, as heard) saying it would not be fitting since it would confuse us: “we’re confused enough without that.” Closing joke: think how many chicken coops he could build.

His words #

• “get Cyril off the hook” — the reply that reads Cyril through the fifth synod.
• “secundum subsistentiam” — the synod’s phrase, which he glosses as union in the person.
• “piously expounded” — Thomas’s usual treatment of loose phrasing, not “extended.”
• “act and ability” — [ed.: act and potency], soul-body as one nature.
• “the first act of a natural body composed of tools” — Aristotle’s definition of soul as he quotes it [ed.: organic body].
• “joined tool” vs. separate tool — hand/teeth/tongue vs. hammer/saw.
• “caro deificata” — flesh deified: made the flesh of the Word, not made God.
• “naked contemplation” — Damascene: without images, without senses.
• “the underlying” — his rendering of suppositum; “what underlies the nature.”
• “secundum rem” / “secundum rationem” — in the thing itself vs. in the way we understand or signify.
• “hypostasis” — corresponds in Latin to suppositum, said of any individual substance.
• “in atomo” — in the individual; why he reads “individual” for “undivided.”
• “substantia individua” — Boethius’s phrase; a hand is not one.
• “ninth book of wisdom” — [ed.: Metaphysics IX], knowledge of opposites.
• “Natural Hearing” — [ed.: Physics], acting and undergoing one motion.
• “limping comparison” / “humble comparison” — his point-and-lines picture.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, ST III q. 2 a. 1, replies to obj. 1–3 (Fifth Synod canon; Athanasian Creed; Damascene on incarnation and deification).
• Thomas Aquinas, ST III q. 2 a. 2, whole: objections, sed contra (Chalcedon), body, replies.
• Boethius, definition of person, as quoted in obj. 3 and the body.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles: explanation of the Athanasian Creed via tool and agent; “what it means to be united in person / in nature”; the whole faith depends on divinity and humanity (no book given).
• ST I: divine nature cannot be form of a body (simplicity of God); personality and dignity; definition of person.
• Aristotle, On the Soul: soul and body as form/matter and agent/tool; against the Pythagoreans.
• Aristotle, Physics (“Natural Hearing”): acting and undergoing.
• Aristotle, “ninth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IX]: knowledge of opposites.
• Aristotle on recollection (work not named).
• Thomas, commentary on the Sentences: is God’s will the cause of things (locus not stated).
• Vatican II on Scripture, tradition and magisterium (document not named).
• Damascene, on “one incarnate nature” and in atomo.

His questions #

• What is the sense of Cyril’s “one incarnate nature of the divine Word”? Not one nature made from two, but the one nature of God united to flesh in his person, per the fifth synod.
• In what way is the union in Christ like that of soul and body? Not as form and matter (heretical) but as agent and joined tool; and as one someone subsisting.
• Is a priest, used by Christ, like the hammer or the hand? The hammer; Christ’s own human nature is the hand, joined in the same person.
• Are Thomas’s words wise because his wisdom turned into sound? No, because they are the words of a wise man; so Christ’s human actions are divine as actions of the divine person.
• Why does Thomas always attack the truth in this way? “To make you stop and think, I guess.”
• Am I, Duane Berquist, human nature? No; I have it as a formal part, plus geometry, health, colour — the person is the whole.
• Does God know bad things? Does he will them? Knows, yes; wills, no — the bad is object of God as mind, not as will, though mind and will are the same secundum rem.
• Can a straight line and a curved line ever coincide? No, always distinct, though one point begins both — like the two natures in one person.
• Could Christ assume another human nature and be two men? Yes, no limit to divine power — but, as a saint reportedly said, not fitting, since it would confuse us.