Summa III, Q.3, Arts. 3–6: Assuming a Nature Without Personality, the Son Alone Incarnate, Whether Father or Spirit Could Assume Flesh, and Three Persons in One Human Nature

Orientation #

“So I guess we’re up to Article three here, Question 3.” He refers back to “that text we were referring to last week, 2 Peter 1:4” (partakers of the divine nature) and says the last article of the question “is going to be whether it was more suitable for the Son to become incarnate than the Father or the Holy Spirit.” The previous class finished q. 2 a. 2 and began q. 3 aa. 1–2; the next takes aa. 7–8.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3, the objections (“abstracting personality from God”) #

Question: if the understanding abstracts personality from God, can the nature still assume? Three objections read:

1. Assuming belongs to the nature by reason of the person; remove that by reason of which, and it cannot belong — as a body, visible by reason of colour, is not seen without colour.
2. “Assumption” implies the term of the union (“take to oneself”); union comes about only in the person, not in the nature.
3. From the first part: in divine things, abstracting personality, nothing remains; but assuming is something. Sed contra: the personal properties are three (fatherhood, sonhood, and “procession, which is the one that we use for the Holy Spirit for want of a name”); take them away and omnipotence still remains, through which the incarnation was made — Luke 1:37, “nothing is impossible before God” (he glosses: nothing that does not involve a contradiction). He previews: our mind can consider God without Father, Son and Spirit, and God would still be individual, hence a person, hence able to assume — “we could talk about this even to Aristotle, who knows nothing about the Trinity, or maybe to a Jewish person.”

2. Article 3, the body: two ways the understanding relates to God (“knowing God as He is”) #

The distinction: (A) knowing God as He is — then nothing can be “drawn a line around” so that something else remains, for all in God is one save the distinction of persons, and these are distinguished only by relations, which must be together (hama, “as Aristotle said”); vs. (B) knowing God through our own way of knowing, multiply and dividedly what in God is one. In way (B) we understand the divine wisdom and goodness (the “essential attributes”) without understanding fatherhood or sonhood (the “personalities”). His illustration: the Summa itself takes up the unity, goodness and wisdom of God before the Trinity. So, abstracting personality this way, we still understand the nature as assuming — but “we understand the nature as the way of a person.”

3. Article 3, the replies (“in God the same is what you have, what you are”) #

• Ad 1: in God, that by which something is and what it is are the same (“in God the same is what you have, what you are”); so whatever is attributed to God in the abstract, with other things cut off, is something subsisting, and hence a person. Excluding the personal properties, there remains the divine nature as subsisting, therefore as a person — “so the Jew would think of God … Aristotle did the same, the old pagan.” He assumes human nature by reason of his subsistence, drawing it to himself as a person rather than making one nature out of two.
• Ad 2: cutting off the three personalities, there remains in the understanding “the one personality of God, as the Jews understand” (he adds Aristotle, Averroes), to which the assumption could be terminated, as now it is terminated to the person of the Word.
• Ad 3: “nothing remains” is said by way of resolution, as if what remained were other than the relation — since whatever is in God is considered as suppositum; but some things said of God can be understood without others, not by resolution but in the way already said.

4. Digression: the two abstractions, applied to the class (“separate the common from the particular”) #

The point: Thomas is using, without making explicit, two kinds of abstraction the mind makes in things.

• Common from particular: “what can I separate from all you guys here?” — man from the individual; considering God leaving aside Father, Son, Spirit is like this.
• Form from matter, “all the way down”: take away your colour, then your soul, then your matter — nothing left. Here the person underlies everything; take away my personality and “my knowledge of geometry and my humanity” are lost. The divine nature is common to the three persons, though differently from human nature common to us: it is one in number in them, ours is not. “There is some similarity there.” Student: the two seem the same; what is the distinction? Answer: look at the persons as ultimate subject and everything goes with them; separate out what they have in common and something remains in the mind. Boundary case: “if I leave out the rock as black and the Cain as white, I still have man”; but man exists only as black man or white man, so take those away and no man is left. So sometimes he says nothing remains, sometimes the common nature remains — “it’s kind of a subtle thing that he’s doing.”

5. Article 4, objections and sed contra (“undivided are the works of the Trinity”) #

Question: can one person assume a created nature without another?

1. Augustine: the works of the Trinity are undivided; one essence, so one operation; assuming is an operation. (“So, you convinced by that?” — joke about submitting the recording to the Holy See.)
2. As the person of the Son was incarnate, so also the nature — Damascene III: “the whole divine nature in one of its hypostases was made incarnate”; but the nature is common to the three. He flags: “what does that mean?”
3. As human nature is assumed by God, so men are assumed by grace (Romans 14:3, “God assumed him”), and that belongs to all the persons. Sed contra: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2 — the incarnation belongs to “discrete theology,” where something distinct is said of the three persons. Aside: his Wednesday-night group is on the Categories chapter on quantity, discrete (number) vs continuous (line, surface, body); de Broglie’s book on discrete and continuous in modern physics.

6. Article 4, body and replies: act vs term (“the act of assuming … the term of assumption”) #

The key distinction, “simple enough”: assumption implies (A) the act of assuming, proceeding from the divine power, common to the three; and (B) the term, a person. What belongs to action is common; what belongs to the term belongs to one person and not the others. “The three persons made it that the human nature would be united to the one person of the Son.” Appropriation: “the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Blessed Virgin” is not the Spirit acting alone but appropriation, as a work of love and mercy, by reason of his way of proceeding; likewise in the Creed “God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth” — “what did the Father alone create?” Even in formal things like the Creed there is appropriation. Taking the nature from the Virgin is common to the three, appropriated to the Spirit, as creation is common but appropriated to the Father.

• Ad 1: the argument proceeds on the side of operation; it would follow only if assumption implied operation without the term.
• Ad 2: the nature is said to be incarnate, as it is said to assume, by reason of the person in whom the union is terminated, not insofar as common; the whole nature is said incarnate not because incarnate in all the persons but because nothing of the perfection of the divine nature is lacking to the person incarnate — “a little bit like” speaking of the divine nature in the Eucharist.
• Ad 3: assumption by grace of adoption terminates at a partaking of the divine nature by likeness to his goodness (2 Peter 1:4), so is common on the side of the principle and the term; assumption by grace of union is common on the side of the principle only, not the term. “A nice little comparison.”

7. Article 5, objections and a run of asides (“God is the Son of Man”) #

Question: could another person besides the Son assume human nature? He predicts yes, since a. 8 will ask only whether it was more suitable for the Son.

1. By assumption God is Son of Man; for Father or Spirit to be a son would confuse the persons.
2. By the incarnation men reach adoption of sons (Romans 8:15); adoptive sonship is a partaking of Christ’s natural sonship (Romans 8:29, conformed to the image of his Son), which the Father and Spirit lack — “a very interesting objection.”
3. The Son is sent and born by a temporal nativity; the Father is not sent, one of his notions being innascibilis, unbegotten. He grants the objections show it “more appropriate to the Son” but asks whether they show impossibility. Sed contra: whatever the Son can, the Father can, or the power is not the same. Asides: (a) an objection seen elsewhere — if only the Son became man we have more reason to love him; his reply: another reason, not a reason to love him more, since each person is infinitely good (“Thomas can go a long way with this infinity of God”). (b) Compendium of Theology, whether God produced the world naturally or by will, three arguments: diversity of things vs nature determined to one; nature acts for an end, presupposing a mind; God’s power is infinite, so nothing particular unless his will determined it — the third surprised him. (c) Savouring Thomas’s arguments like an all-day sucker; ruminating animals of the Old Testament as symbol of the mind chewing arguments (Augustine, Boethius). (d) The morning’s gospel, Christ calling Herod “that fox”; Machiavelli’s lion and fox; the unjust servant praised for cleverness.

8. Article 5, body and replies (“the Father or the Holy Spirit could have assumed flesh”) #

Body: assumption implies the act (source: divine power) and the term (a person). The power relates without difference to all the persons, and personality is a common notion in the three — “one person is not more a person than the other,” though the personal properties differ. A power that relates indifferently to many can terminate its action to each, as rational powers can do either of opposites. So the Father or Spirit could have assumed flesh “just as the Son.”

• Ad 1: temporal sonship does not constitute his person as eternal sonship does; it follows on his temporal birth; transferring the name to the Father or Spirit would confuse our minds, not the persons — there would not be two Sons in the divinity.
• Ad 2: adoptive sonship, a partaking likeness of natural sonship, comes to us appropriately from the Father as principle of natural sonship and by the gift of the Spirit, love of Father and Son (Galatians 4:6); so if the Father were incarnate we would receive it from him as principle of natural sonship, and from the Spirit as common bond. A student: Isaiah foretells Christ as “Father forever,” being source of our being begotten — he agrees this is appropriating him as Father. Aside on “love child” for illegitimate child, “and then you say, well, that’s the Holy Spirit.”
• Ad 3: innascibilis belongs to the Father according to eternal activity, which does not exclude temporal; the Son is said sent because he is from another, without which incarnation would not suffice for the notion of mission — so the Father could be said incarnate but not sent. He notes Sabellius (one person, called Son because he became man) as how a heretic might take these things.

9. Transition: the next two “strange” articles (“three persons in one nature”) #

The Trinity is three persons in one nature; the Incarnation one person in two natures; now the reverse questions: could two or three persons assume one human nature, could one person assume more than one? In the Summa contra Gentiles three questions are separated — did God become man (Scripture, against heretics), is it possible (against misuse of philosophy), is it suitable — but here they mix, the last article being on suitability. Student: why ask such crazy questions? “You learn more about what God is capable of … know his love more.”

10. Article 6, objections, and a digression on intellect vs sense (“one is not less apt to understand”) #

1. Three persons in one human nature would be either many men (no, as one nature in many persons does not make many gods) or one man (no, since “this man” demonstrates one person, removing the distinction of persons).
2. Assumption terminates at the unity of the person; the three are not one person.
3. Damascene III and Augustine De Trinitate I: whatever is said of the Son of God is said of the Son of Man and conversely (“we can say God died for us … this man is God”); then generating the Son from eternity would be said of that man, hence of the Son of God — “which is not fitting”; “it turns to inconvenience.” Digression from On the Soul III: sense and reason both know by receiving, but sense in an organ, reason immaterially; too loud a sound deafens, too bright a light blinds, too hot Chinese or Indian food kills taste (his hot mustard on a hot dog); but understanding the highest intelligibles (angels, God) makes the mind understand other things better — as freshmen at Thomas Aquinas College find early things easy later. “These articles are really making you understand lesser things better” (reading De Potentia; ethics, logic seem simple afterward).

11. Sed contra, and the problem of one will (“who’s going to do the talking?”) #

Sed contra: the incarnate person subsists in two natures; three persons can subsist in one divine nature, so also in one human nature. He calls it “an image of what takes place in the Trinity,” hard even to explain to Mohammedans who think Christians polytheists. Student: who would do the talking? Discussion: the three have only one will — unusual even among friends; a student asks whether one person could use the human nature while the others do not; answer: no, because there is one operation, one will, so whatever the human nature did would be given to the three. Aside: the divine will is free toward creatures yet there is no separate free choosing of the Father, unlike Zeus and Hera in Homer; our imaginations of the Father wanting to punish and the Son intervening.

12. Article 6, body and reply to the first objection (“the power of the one doing it”) #

Body: from the union of soul and body in Christ there came no new person or hypostasis (he uses both Greek and Latin names), but one assumed nature in the divine person, through the power of the divine person, not of the human nature. The condition of the divine persons is that one does not exclude another from communion in the same nature, only in the same person. Since the whole reason of the incarnation is the power of the one doing it (Augustine, letter to Volusianus — “which I’m sure you’re acquainted with”; he likes reading those letters), it is judged by the condition of the person assuming rather than of the nature assumed; so it is not impossible that two or three assume one human nature. It would be impossible for them to assume one hypostasis or human person — Anselm, On the Virginal Conception: many persons cannot assume one and the same man, “man” meaning person. Student: it would be strange for two, rather than one or three; he grants it, notes two could be said sent, and compares the power of breathing the Spirit belonging to Father and Son together.

• Ad 1: positing this, the three would be one man on account of the one-in-number human nature, as now one God on account of the one divine nature; “one” here means unity in nature, not person, and one cannot argue to one simpliciter — many men are one in some respect, one people, one family; Augustine De Trinitate VI, spirit of man and of God diverse by nature but one spirit by adhering (1 Corinthians 6:17). The recording ends here mid-discussion; the remaining replies of a. 6 are not reached.

His words #

• personality; the personal property constituting a person: fatherhood, sonhood, “procession, for want of a name” for the Spirit.
• essential attributes; wisdom, goodness — what can be understood without the personalities.
• hama; “together,” of the relations that distinguish the persons (from Aristotle).
• “in God the same is what you have, what you are”; his rendering of quo est and quod est identical in God.
• by way of resolution; taking away form down to the ultimate subject, so nothing remains.
• suppositum; that as which everything in God is considered.
• discrete theology; Dionysius’s term, glossed by discrete vs continuous quantity.
• act of assuming vs term of assumption; the working distinction of aa. 4–6.
• appropriation; attributing a common work to one person by reason of its likeness to his personal property.
• innascibilis; “unbirthable,” unbegotten — the Father’s notion.
• “it turns to inconvenience”; his playful English for inconveniens, “it doesn’t hold up.”
• hypostasis; the Greek name, alongside the Latin “person.”
• one simpliciter; one simply, vs one in some respect (one people, one family).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 3, aa. 3, 4, 5, and a. 6 through ad 1.
• Luke 1:37; Romans 14:3; 2 Peter 1:4; Romans 8:15, 8:29; Galatians 4:6; 1 Corinthians 6:17 (as cited in the articles). Mentioned
• Augustine, letter to Volusianus; De Trinitate I and VI.
• John Damascene, book III.
• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 2.
• Anselm, On the Virginal Conception.
• Thomas, Compendium of Theology (chapter on whether God made the world naturally or by will); Summa contra Gentiles (structure of the incarnation questions); De Potentia.
• Aristotle, Categories (quantity); On the Soul III.
• Louis de Broglie, a book on the discrete and continuous in modern physics.
• The day’s gospel (Pharisees warning Christ about Herod); Isaiah on Christ as “Father forever.”

His questions #

• “What can I separate from all you guys here?” The common from the particular — man from the individuals; and, differently, form from matter down to nothing.
• Student: the two abstractions “seem like the same, what’s the distinction?” Persons as ultimate subject: remove them, nothing remains; separate the common: something remains in the mind.
• “So, you convinced by that?” (the works of the Trinity are undivided) No; the argument holds for the act of assuming, not the term.
• “What did the Father alone create, and not the Son and the Holy Spirit?” Nothing; creation is common and appropriated to the Father.
• “Could some other divine person assume human nature besides the person of the Son?” Yes; the Father or the Spirit could have assumed flesh just as the Son.
• Student: “Why does Thomas ask these questions?” To know more of what God is capable of, and his love.
• Student: “Who’s going to do the talking?” (three persons in one human nature) All three, since there is one will and one operation.
• Student: why two persons rather than one or three? Left open (“that’s a question”; “possible, maybe”).