Summa III, Q.2, Arts. 3–5: One Hypostasis in Christ, the Sense in Which His Person Is 'Composed', and the Union of His Soul and Body

Orientation #

He opens by warning that “some of these things may seem a little picky on Thomas’s part,” but they answer a long history of misuse of “person” and “hypostasis.” He refers back to “my homely example” of the point and two lines “remember that” (prev. lecture) and to the Trinity treatise in “the first part” (God not in a genus). He ends a. 5 reply 1 and goes off into Mary; nothing said about next time. The previous class treated q. 2 a. 2 (one person subsisting in two natures) and introduced the point-and-lines figure; the next continues q. 2 with a. 5 replies and a. 6 (accidental union).

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, objections: two hypostases in Christ? (“it seems that the union of the incarnate Word was not made”) #

Point: he reads the three objections of q. 2 a. 3, pausing on the Latin/Greek vocabulary that gave heretics “wiggle room.”

• Obj. 1: hypostasis and suppositum “properly name something subsisting in the genus of substance”; Augustine (Enchiridion): divine substance and human substance are the one Son, “but other on account of the Word and other on account of the man”; Leo to Flavian: one “breaks forth miracles” (he notes the vivid first sense of the verb, “horns”), the other “succumbs to injuries.” Everything “other and other” (aliud et aliud) differs in suppositum — so the union is not in the suppositum. He glosses: Christ works miracles primarily by the divine nature, suffers and dies by the human.
• Aside on grammar vs. logic: “nothing is nothing” is affirmative (about a negative); “nothing is better than God” is grammatically affirmative but, understood as “no thing is better than God,” the logician calls it negative — “nothing” there is a sign of negation, not a noun. Likewise alius vs. aliud: in the Trinity the Father is alius from the Son (distinct person), but not aliud (which would mean a different nature). Student cites Vincent of Lérins: in the Trinity alius et alius, in the Saviour aliud et aliud — “more or less the same distinction.”
• Aside: etymologically “hypostasis” fits any subsisting individual substance, but by custom it comes to mean person, so Greeks say “hypostatic union” and mean what we mean by “personal union.” Compare “anyone home?” — etymologically a chair is “any one,” but common sense says a person; Greek ouden (ou + one) = nothing, whereas our “no one” is a person. Between Greeks and Romans “lots of room for misunderstanding, and lots of room for the heretics too.”
• Obj. 2: Boethius (book on the two natures): hypostasis is nothing other than a particular substance; in Christ besides the Word there is another particular substance, body, soul, and their composite — so another hypostasis.
• Obj. 3: the Word’s hypostasis is in no genus or species (first part, simplicity of God); but Christ as man is in the human species (Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1: he was made within our nature who exceeds every order); a thing is under the human species only by a hypostasis of that species — so another hypostasis. “Pinning down Nestorius and his followers can be hard to get very precise.”
• Sed contra: Damascene, book 3: two natures, one hypostasis (writing in Greek).

2. Body of a. 3: three reasons the “person but not hypostasis” view is erroneous (“this all appears erroneous in three ways”) #

Point: some, “ignorant of the relation of hypostasis to person,” conceded one person but posited one hypostasis of God and another of man; Thomas gives three reasons this is wrong.

1. Person adds to hypostasis only a determined (rational, broadly: reason or understanding) nature — Boethius’s definition, individual substance of a rational nature. So person = hypostasis + rational nature; to give the human nature its own hypostasis is to give it its own person: “now you’ve got two persons there” — Nestorius, Mary “Mother of Christ” not Theotokos. Condemned by the fifth council (Second Constantinople): whoever introduces two subsistences or two persons into the mystery of Christ, “anathema” (he plays on the Latin damnamus, “damn”); the Trinity receives no addition of person or subsistence. Subsistentia there = the subsisting thing, proper to the hypostasis (Boethius).
2. Even if person adds something to hypostasis, it could only be “a property pertaining to dignity” (footnote: Bonaventure — “we got to watch out for that guy”). Not false in itself: a hypostasis of rational nature has a dignity. But then a union “in the person, not the hypostasis” removes hypostasis and leaves only dignity: an accidental union. Council of Ephesus, Cyril’s anathema against joining the subsistences only by conjunction of dignity, authority or power rather than natural union.
3. Only the hypostasis is that to which we attribute the operations and properties of the nature and what belongs to it in the concrete: “this man reasons,” “is capable of laughter,” “is a rational animal”; that is why it is called suppositum — it underlies what is said of man. With another hypostasis, “born of the Virgin, suffered, crucified, buried” would be verified of someone other than the Word: you could say the man died but not that God died. Ephesus anathema against parting the Gospel sayings between the man and the Word.

• Conclusion as he reads it: it is heresy “from long ago condemned” to say two hypostases or supposita, or that the union was not made in the hypostasis — “two things he’s saying there”; synod text: the flesh united to the Word by subsistence, one Christ, both God and man.
• Aside: “three’s enough? often two is not enough” — how many kinds of sin? Mortal and venial are not enough; original is a different kind; “two of them will keep you out of heaven.”

3. Predication to the hypostasis, not the nature (“You can’t say Christ’s human nature was angry”) #

Point: since operations are attributed to the hypostasis, one says Christ by/through his human nature is angry, by his divine nature created the world — not that the nature does it. Even in me, “my individual human nature” does not walk or understand; I do, through my nature.

• John 11 to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life”: “resurrection” belongs to him by the human nature (he rose, and could die, only as man), “life” by the divine nature (he is life itself). Same order in “I am the road, the truth and the life”: as man the road, as God truth and life — Thomas’s opening of the third part.
• Student: what is the difference between your individual human nature and your person? — In my individual human nature nothing is found except human nature; in Duane Berquist the person there is also geometer, white, sitting — these “go beyond” the individual nature. “It’s very very hard, you see.”

4. Reply to obj. 1: alterum vs. aliud, and truth between two extremes (“an accidental difference makes alterum”) #

Point: accidental difference makes alterum, essential difference aliud; the same hypostasis can undergo diverse accidents (I am both white and a geometer), but in creatures the same thing cannot subsist under diverse natures. So alterum et alterum in creatures signifies diverse accidental forms, not diverse supposita; and Christ said aliud et aliud signifies diverse natures, not diverse hypostases. Gregory Nazianzen to Cledonius: aliud et aliud are those from which the Saviour is, not alius et alius; contrariwise in the Trinity alius et alius, not aliud et aliud.

• He draws out: the two mysteries are “in a way contrary” — one nature, many persons; one person, many natures.
• Argument that truth lies between two extremes and explains the errors: Trinity errors: three persons + three natures, or one person + one nature; each has part of the truth. If either heresy were true, there would be “no basis at all” for the other; the truth (one nature, three persons) explains why each mistake arose. “Mistakes can’t explain each other.” Same in the soul: Platonists — souls of dogs and cats immortal; early scientists (and modern science) — no soul immortal; Aristotle in between (only the understanding soul), explaining both.
• Truth as a mean: King Lear, “all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so” (Shakespeare says “nor nor” for “neither nor,” “or or” for “either or”); Falstaff, those who say more or less than the truth are “villains and sons of darkness” (“he’s a big liar himself”). The courtroom oath — truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth — excludes the two departures, saying more and saying less. Likeness to moral virtue between extremes (courage between cowardice and foolhardiness). Saying what is not is = adding; saying what is is not = clipping. Class example: nine present; “twenty” says what was not was; “five” says less.

5. Replies to obj. 2 and 3: complete hypostasis; species by nature, not individuation (“in so far as it is in its completion”) #

• Reply 2: hypostasis signifies a particular substance “not in any way, but in so far as it is in its completion”; what comes into union with something more complete is not a hypostasis. The hand or foot: an individual substance, but “is this a person? no.” So Christ’s human nature, a particular substance, comes into union with the whole Christ, God and man; the complete thing is the hypostasis. “A precision of what Boethius is saying.”
• Reply 3: even in creatures a singular is placed in a genus or species not by what pertains to its individuation but by its nature, determined by its form (Philippians: “in the form of God, took the form of a slave” — form taken for the nature); individuation in composites is more by matter. So Christ is in the human species by the assumed nature, not by hypostasis. Point example: the point where the second line is drawn is the beginning of the new line not as that line’s own endpoint but “by reason of the point it already was.”
• Aside: printer trouble — “use it or lose it”; the sunshine-days copier that cost the secretary a fortune.

6. Article 4: is the person of Christ composed? (“it is altogether simple, just as the nature”) #

Point: objections say no (the person of Christ is the Word’s; its nature is simple; every part is imperfect — Aristotle, Natural Hearing book 8: “perfect” and “whole” mean almost the same, taken up again in Wisdom book 5; what is composed is homogeneous with its parts, as only body comes from bodies, so a “person” from two natures would be a body, i.e. a union of natures); sed contra Damascene book 3: two natures, one hypostasis, “ex utrisque compositum” — “strange… Thomas must see some distinction I didn’t see.”

• Body: two ways to consider the person: in itself, altogether simple like the nature of the Word (“that’s what I was thinking”); according to the notion of person, to which it belongs to subsist in a nature — and so it subsists in two natures: one thing subsisting, but alia et alia ratio subsistendi. Composed only “in so far as one subsists in two natures.” Point example: the point is indivisible in itself, but is beginning of line A and of line B — “in thought it’s composed.” He judges: asked without distinction one would say not composed, “or you’d end up with Nestorians.”
• Replies: 1 concedes simplicity in itself; 2: composition here is not by reason of parts but of two natures — anything in which two things come together “can be said to be composed of them”; 3: homogeneity holds only in parts of the continuous (a line is composed of lines not points, a surface of surfaces not lines); the animal is composed of soul and body, neither an animal. “A very strange meaning of composed” — like Father Boulay on fear in heaven, a very attenuated, stretched meaning; “could be piously expounded.”

7. Article 5: union of soul and body in Christ (“Christ is said to be a man univocally”) #

Point: objections deny the union to avoid a new person: (1) in us soul + body causes the person, so it would constitute a hypostasis not the eternal Word’s; (2) soul + body constitutes the nature of the species, but Damascene says in Christ no common species, only an individual; (3) soul joins body only to vivify it, and the Word, fountain of life, could vivify it — “sounds a little bit almost like Arius” [ed.: the Word in the place of the soul]. Sed contra: the Church sings animatum corpus — animated from anima.

• Body: Christ is man univocally with other men, in the same species (Philippians 2:7, “made in the likeness of men”). His catch: Thomas says nothing is said univocally of God and creature, “but man is said univocally of Christ and us.” Species requires soul joined to body, since form constitutes the species only as act of matter, the term of generation; contrary is heretical (his text refers to Second Constantinople) as taking away the truth of his humanity — otherwise “a soul and a body but not a man.”
• Student aside: Byzantine heresies about Christ’s natures and forms of authoritarian government — “I’ll let that pass.”
• Reply 1: some denied the union lest they be forced to introduce a new person; because in mere (pure) men soul and body are joined so as to exist per se; in Christ they are united so that they might be joined to a more chief one subsisting in the nature composed from them; the coniunctum “comes to” (advenit) a pre-existing hypostasis. Point example again: a finite second line must have an endpoint, but it is drawn to the existing point, which becomes its endpoint too; in us the nature is not drawn to the divine person, so it has its own endpoint. The nature drawn from the Blessed Virgin subsists in the divine person rather than by itself. “Careful with imagination, but maybe a likeness there.”

8. Closing digression: understanding the mystery, and Mary (“the grace of Mary is of the hypostatic order”) #

• We are promised to understand the Incarnation in heaven: John 17, eternal life is to know you and him whom you sent — knowing the divinity and the one sent as man; after that Mary (Pius XII: after God and Christ, Mary is the joy of heaven). Monsignor Dionne’s article, laid out “in a bald way, just the syllogism”: the grace of Mary is of the hypostatic order.
• “I am the immaculate conception” / “I am the resurrection”: not bad grammar but a universal cause — Christ’s resurrection is the cause of everyone’s (Paul: if Christ rose we rise, if we don’t he didn’t). So the Immaculate Conception, her first privilege in time (Mother of God the greatest), is said that way to mark something universal in Mary’s causality — Mother of Mercy, mediatrix of all grace, Bernard’s aquaeductus; her excellence is derived to us.

His words #

• suppositum — “the underlying”; that which underlies what is said of man
• hypostasis — etymologically any subsisting individual substance; by Greek custom = person
• alius / aliud — masculine: distinction of persons; neuter: distinction of nature/thing
• alterum vs. aliud — other by accidental difference vs. other by essential difference
• subsistentia — “the subsisting thing,” proper to the hypostasis
• property pertaining to dignity — what person would add over hypostasis (Bonaventure’s view)
• ratio subsistendi — “other and other” in Christ, while one thing subsisting
• Natural Hearing — [ed.: Physics], book 8
• Wisdom — [ed.: Metaphysics], book 5
• animatum — “animated,” from anima
• pure men — “mere men”
• advenit — the joined soul-body “comes to” a pre-existing person
• aquaeductus — Bernard’s name for Mary

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 3 (whole article, with replies)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 4 (objections, body, replies)
• Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, reply 1)
• Handout “The Art About Statement,” p. 3 (verified source; the “nothing is nothing” / negation passage) Mentioned
• Augustine, Enchiridion; Leo, Epistle to Flavian; Boethius, on the two natures; Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 1; Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa book 3; Gregory Nazianzen to Cledonius; Second Constantinople and Ephesus (Cyril) anathemas; Vincent of Lérins (student)
• Summa Theologiae I on God’s simplicity and the Trinity (“the first part”); prologue to the third part; Thomas on univocity of God and creature
• Aristotle, Natural Hearing book 8; Wisdom book 5
• Philippians 2 (form of God/slave; v. 7); John 11, 14, 17
• Shakespeare, King Lear; Falstaff; Pius XII on Mary; Msgr. Dionne’s article; Bernard of Clairvaux
• DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 635 (verified source)

His questions #

• Is “nothing is better than God” an affirmative statement? Grammatically yes, but as “no thing is better,” the logician calls it negative.
• If you say the human nature has its own hypostasis, what are you saying? A human person — two persons, Nestorius.
• How many kinds of sin are there? Two is not enough; three (original, mortal, venial).
• Can you say Christ’s human nature was angry? No; Christ through his human nature is angry — operations go to the hypostasis.
• What is the difference between your individual human nature and your person? The person includes what goes beyond the nature (geometer, white, sitting).
• Why can the truth explain the errors but the errors not each other? Each error has part of the truth; if an error were true the other would have no basis.
• Is my hand a person? No — an individual substance, but not complete.
• Is that point composed? In itself indivisible; composed only as beginning of line A and of line B.
• Is anything said univocally of God and man? Not of God and creature, but “man” of Christ and us.
• Does Christ (or Mary) “not know grammar” in “I am the resurrection”? He speaks as universal cause; Mary likewise, tentatively — left partly open.