Summa III, Q.3, Arts. 7–8: One Person in Two Human Natures, the Fallacy of the Accident, Marx on Making, and Why the Son Became Incarnate

Orientation #

He calls article 8 “what we went through all the other ones to get to”, and refers to “the previous article” (three persons said to be one man) and to “the beginning of the treatise on the incarnation, those reasons we gave from the two Summas” (prev. lecture). The recording opens mid-sentence (“Now the second objection says assumption termination”). The previous class covered aa. 3–6 of the same question; the next moves on to q. 4.

The class, in order #

1. Article 7, objections and sed contra (“one suppositum of two natures of the same species”) #

The question: whether one divine person can assume two human natures.

• Obj. 1: the assumed nature has no suppositum but the divine person; two natures of one species under one suppositum “seems to imply a contradiction”, since a nature of one species is multiplied only by distinction of supposita. His gloss: “there’s something maybe infinite about the divine person.”
• Obj. 2: on that supposition the person could be called neither one man (no one human nature) nor many men (many men are distinct in suppositum).
• Obj. 3: the whole divine nature is united to the whole assumed nature, “to each part of it” (Damascene, book three: perfect God and perfect man). Two human natures cannot be so united to each other, for the soul of one would have to be united to the body of the other and two bodies would be together, “a confusion of natures”.
• Sed contra: whatever the Father can do the Son can do; the Father could after the incarnation assume another human nature; the incarnation diminished no one’s power; so the Son could too.
• Aside: “Got himself into this mess. I don’t know where to get himself out.”

2. Respondeo: infinite power, infinite personality (“has a power limited to that one”) #

The point: nothing about a divine person can be limited to one created nature.

1. What is possible for one and not for more has a power limited to that one.
2. The power of a divine person is infinite and cannot be limited to anything created.
3. Nor can the personality be so “comprehended” or “surrounded” by one human nature that another could not be assumed to it: “something uncreated cannot be surrounded by a created.”
4. So whether we look at the person’s power (“the beginning of the union”) or at its personality (“the term of the union”), a second human nature could be assumed. His summary: “we can assume three if you want, two or four.”

3. Ad 1: matter multiplies without a new suppositum (“multiplied according to the division of matter”) #

Created nature is perfected in its definition through form, which is multiplied by division of matter (“matter is the source of individuation in material things”). If the composition of form and matter constituted a new suppositum, nature would be multiplied with supposita. But in the incarnation the union of soul and body “does not constitute a new suppositum”: he assumed not a human person but an individual human nature into his person. So there can be number on the side of nature without distinction of suppositum. If each nature had its own suppositum, “then they would have to be, like the objection says”, one man or many men.

4. Ad 2 begins: names follow supposita (“clothed in two garments”) #

Names are used as they are imposed to signify, and imposed from what is “among us”; among us a name taken from a form is never plural except from plurality of supposita. Example: a man wearing two garments is not “clothed twice” but one man clothed in two vestments; a man with two qualities is said singularly to be thus according to two qualities. The assumed nature “has itself in the manner of a garment”, though “this likeness is not to be taken in regard to all things, otherwise you get heresy” — he says to take it “very very carefully”.

5. Stray replies: unity of singular persons; communication of properties (“the Word was toward God”) #

[ed.: the two replies read here concern several persons assuming one nature and appear to belong to the preceding article, a. 6 (inferred); the transcript order is as given.]

• “To the second”: human nature would be assumed in the unity not of one person but of the singular persons; as the divine nature has natural unity with the persons, so the human nature would have unity with them by assumption.
• “To the third”: the objection was that what is said of one could be said of the other (Christ born of Mary, born of the Father; hence anything of any person could be said of the man, and back again — “you get these contradictions”). Reply: in the incarnation there is a communication of properties pertaining to nature: whatever belongs to a nature can be said of the person subsisting in it under the name of either nature, God or man. On the supposition, things of human and divine nature could be said of Father, Son and Spirit; but what belongs to the Father by his proper person could not be attributed to the Son or Spirit, since the distinction of persons remains. So “that man would be ungenerated” as “man” stands for the Father; but “man is ungenerated, the Son is man, therefore the Son is ungenerated” is the fallacy of figure of diction (“in the six fallacies in speech”) or of accident — just as “God is ungenerated” (the Father being ungenerated) does not let us conclude the Son is ungenerated though he is God.
• This “goes back to the business of supposition”: “the Word was toward God” — one cannot be toward oneself, so “God” there stands for the Father, not the divine nature (else the nature would differ from the Son); a student asks about the hyperbaton, “the Word was God.”
• Student question: does the Holy Spirit have the power of breathing the Holy Spirit? Student: yes insofar as he is God, not insofar as he is divine nature. Berquist: “the power of breathing the Holy Spirit is a divine nature, the divine nature is in the Holy Spirit, therefore…” — is that the fallacy of accident? The power is the divine nature insofar as it is in the Father and Son, which as such is distinct from the Spirit; so it is accidental to the divine nature insofar as it is in the Holy Spirit to be that power. “I have a healthy respect for that fellow, the accident.”

6. Digression: the fallacy of accident (“deceives even the wise”) #

The point: what belongs to a subject only because of something it has “before” is easily mistaken for what belongs to it as such.

• Heraclitus, “the very first part of natural philosophy”: hot and cold, dry and wet are the same because one becomes the other; “if you become something, then you are what you become” — I became a geometer so I am a geometer, a father, a monk; so the cold is hot. That is the fallacy of accident. (Student joke: “I know the fallacy of the accident, therefore I am the fallacy.”)
• The sick becoming healthy: it is the body as such, not the sick as such, that becomes healthy; but since being sick belongs to the body before it becomes healthy, “we see the sick become healthy” and it “seems to be essential” — hard to separate.
• Student: the teacher learning as he teaches? Accidental: every college teacher says he learns the subject better teaching, but as learning he does not know it, and as teaching he does.
• Karl Marx (told before): man’s fulfilment in making. Aristotle: making perfects the thing made (the chair), not the man. Marx: making changes yourself too. A carpenter’s “you like this job because you’re learning something”: does that belong to the maker as such? Insofar as the maker doesn’t know how to make, he is not a maker; essentially he knows how.

7. Ad 2 concluded and ad 3: one man with two natures (“one man having two human natures”) #

• Ad 2 conclusion: it could be said to be one man having two human natures. Many men are called one people because they come together in something one, not from unity of suppositum; likewise if two persons assumed one nature they would be “one man” only in that sense — “which is some kind of chimera”. “Thomas seems to be preferring to say that it’s one man having two human natures.” Asides: “What a monster”; “you wouldn’t want to talk about that in the pulpit”; “the very question itself is scandalizing”; “don’t cast your pearls before swine, they turn on you.”
• Ad 3: divine and human nature are not related to the person in the same order. The divine nature is compared per prius, one with it from eternity; the human nature per posterius, assumed in time — “not to this that the nature be the person itself, but that the person subsists in that nature”: the Son of God is his own deity but not his own humanity. Hence the divine nature is united by the personal union to the whole assumed nature, all its parts; but two assumed natures would have a uniform relation to the person, neither assuming the other, so one need not be totally united to the other. His image: the divine nature “floods” both, but one does not flood the other.

8. Second digression: does making perfect the maker? (“does it belong to making as such”) #

Marx makes man perfect himself by making, so making becomes how man reaches his end; but it is “really accidental” that a man is perfected by making — frying an egg every morning, slicing an orange. Student: a Chinese philosopher’s butcher who by practice never dulls his blade — you perfect your ability to make, which does not perfect you as a man. Aristotle’s point: it does not belong to making as such to perfect the maker, so man’s perfection cannot consist in an activity essentially perfecting something other than man. Student: the Japanese “sword saint”, flower arranging, calligraphy as spiritual paths? His reply by analogy: the Peripatetics walked; if I walk in the woods thinking how nature imitates God, that is something added to walking — “is walking a way of thinking about God?” Some walk when restless in their offices, but it is accidental to walking; “he fulfils his canonical obligation by walking.”

• Asides: solving a problem in one’s sleep or while shaving; the friend who came back from University of Chicago seminars smoking a pipe (“gives you time to think”, but accidental); a student on Bill Gates having people rock while thinking; “play Minesweeper.”

9. Article 8 preface: suitability presupposes the fact (“why is two half of four”) #

Student observation, endorsed: questions of what is “convenient or appropriate” (a. 8) look back at what actually is and show its appropriateness, unlike the possibility questions. Given that the Son became man and that the Father or Spirit could have, we now ask why it was suitable. This makes the question “more relevant”: if only the Son could have, one would just say “that’s the way it is” — like asking why two is half of four rather than three. “Kind of appropriate that it ends up with this article.”

10. Article 8, objections and sed contra (“the Father is greater than me”) #

• Obj. 1 (for the Father): the incarnation brings men to true knowledge of God (John 18:37, to Pilate, “for this was I born” — which he notes Thomas quotes at the start of the Summa Contra Gentiles); yet many were impeded, referring what is said of the Son by his human nature to his person — Arius, from John 14:28, “the Father is greater than I”. No one would think the Father less than the Son. “What a possible reasoning!”
• Obj. 2 (for the Father): the incarnation is a recreation (Galatians 6:15, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, but a new creature”); creating is appropriated to the Father (“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator” in the creed). “Good argument.”
• Obj. 3 (for the Spirit): the incarnation is for remission of sins (Matthew 1:21, “Jesus” meaning saviour); remission is attributed to the Spirit (John 20, “receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive”). “Two arguments for the Father and one for the Holy Spirit.”
• Sed contra: Damascene, book three: the incarnation makes known God’s wisdom (a solution to a most difficult problem, and most suitable) and power (he made the victim the victor); both are appropriated to the Son, 1 Corinthians 1, “Christ the power and wisdom of God.”

11. Respondeo, reasons one and two (“thought of the artist”) #

Thomas gives “three reasons, three parts of the reason” why it was most suitable for the Son.

1. From the union itself: like is fittingly united to like. The Word has (a) a common agreement with all creation, since the artist’s thought is the exemplar of what he makes — the housebuilder first builds the house in his mind; so the Word, God’s eternal concept, is the exemplar of all creation. Creatures are instituted in their species by partaking this likeness “in a mobile way”; so it was fitting to repair them to unchangeable perfection by a personal, not participatory, union — the artist restores the collapsed artefact by the form of his art. (b) A special agreement with human nature: the Word is the concept of eternal wisdom, from which all human wisdom is derived; man goes forward in wisdom, his proper perfection as rational, by partaking the Word as the disciple receives the teacher’s word (“the fountain of wisdom, the word of God on high”, Ecclesiasticus (inferred)). So for man’s consummate perfection the Word should be personally united to human nature.
   • His additions: elsewhere Thomas simply notes that in Greek the Word is logos, also “reason”, whence “logic”; man is the animal with reason, and reason “more than anything else is man” (Ethics, book ten) — so the very word shows an affinity between the second person and what makes man man. Also: God has spiritual and material creatures and man unites the two, “a little cosmos”, so uniting man to himself unites the whole of creation back to him. Student: a Persian father’s saying — God thought of man and then created him; man thinks of God and so reflects the divinity.
2. From the end of the union: fulfilment of predestination to the heavenly inheritance, owed only to sons (Romans 8:17; St John’s epistle on the sons of God, the beatific vision). Fitting that men partake by adoption a likeness of the natural Son (predestined “to be conformed to the image of his Son”). So the second reason is from the name “Son”, the first from the name “Word” — “I love the two names.”

12. Third reason, the first sin; the replies (“desiring knowledge”) #

3. From the sin of the first man, remedied by the incarnation: he sinned by desiring knowledge (“you will be as gods, knowing good and evil”, the serpent’s promise). So it was fitting that man, who receded from God by a disordered desire of knowledge, be led back by the Word of true wisdom. “That’s very very subtle… that may be the most principal one.”
   • Parallel he draws: as the fall began with the woman and was consummated with the man, redemption begins with Mary’s fiat and comes to the second Adam. The first sin was not a sin of the flesh (the body was fully under reason so long as the soul was subject to God) but a spiritual sin — the reverse of us, where religious life first overcomes sins of the flesh before reaching “the main battlefield” of spiritual sins. The disordered desire to know (embryos etc.) “characterizes modern man”.

• Ad 1: nothing that human malice cannot abuse, even God’s goodness (Romans 2:4, “you contemn the riches of his goodness”); had the Father become incarnate, one could take “occasion” (an accidental cause) of error, as if the Son did not suffice to repair human nature. “A weak objection, no, to the truth.”
• Ad 2: the first creation was by the Father’s power through the Word (John’s Gospel); so the recreation through the Word should be by the Father’s power, that recreation correspond to creation (2 Corinthians 5, “God was in Christ reconciling the world”).
• Ad 3: it is proper to the Holy Spirit to be the gift of the Father and the Son; remission of sins is through the Spirit as gift; so it was more fitting that the Son become incarnate, of whom the Spirit is the gift — as when he breathes on the apostles (“whose sins you shall forgive”) he bestows the gift. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

His words #

• suppositum — “any other underlying”; what a name from a form is pluralised by
• the power, “the beginning of the union” vs the personality, “the term of the union”
• comprehended / surrounded — the uncreated cannot be so by the created
• matter “the source of individuation in material things”
• garment / vestment — how the assumed nature “has itself”, with a warning against pressing the likeness
• figure of diction — “in the six fallacies in speech”; fallacy of accident — “deceives even the wise”
• supposition, “standing for” — “God” in “the Word was toward God” stands for the Father
• hyperbaton — a student’s term for “the Word was God”
• per prius / per posterius — how divine and human nature are compared to the person
• “flood” — his image for the divine nature’s total union with the assumed nature
• convenient / appropriate / suitable — questions that presuppose the fact
• verbo [ed.: verbum], “the thought of God, his eternal concept”; logos — Word, also reason
• “little cosmos” — man as uniting material and immaterial creation
• occasion — “that accidental cause”
• recreation — the effect of the incarnation, corresponding to creation

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 3, a. 7 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 3, a. 8 (objections, sed contra, respondeo, replies)
• Two replies (“to the second… unity of singular persons”; “to the third… communication of properties”) apparently from III, q. 3, a. 6 (inferred)

Mentioned

• Damascene, book three (twice)
• John 18:37; John 14:28; John 20 (“receive the Holy Spirit”); John 1 (“in the beginning was the Word”)
• Galatians 6:15; Matthew 1:21; 1 Corinthians 1; Romans 8:17; Romans 2:4; 2 Corinthians 5
• Ecclesiasticus, “the fountain of wisdom, the word of God on high” (inferred locus); “St John’s epistle” on the sons of God (1 John, inferred); Genesis, “you will be as gods” (inferred)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, beginning (quoting John 18:37)
• Aristotle, Ethics, book ten (reason more than anything is man); “the very first part of natural philosophy” on Heraclitus
• the Creed (“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator”)

His questions #

• Does the Holy Spirit have the power of breathing the Holy Spirit? Student: yes, insofar as he is God; Berquist: the syllogism from “divine nature” commits the fallacy of accident, since the power belongs to the nature as in Father and Son.
• Is the teacher learning as he teaches the same case? Yes, accidental: as learning he does not know, as teaching he does.
• Does it belong to the maker as such to learn how to make? No; insofar as he does not know how, he is not a maker.
• Does it belong to making as such to perfect the maker? No; so man’s perfection cannot consist in making.
• Is walking a way of thinking about God? Thinking is something added to the walking; accidental to it.
• Why is two half of four, rather than three? There is no “why” — the contrast that shows why a. 8 is relevant only if the other persons could have become man.
• Why was it suitable that the Son become man, though the others were possible? Three reasons: the Word as exemplar and source of wisdom; the natural Son and adopted sons; the Word of true wisdom remedying the disordered desire to know.
• The second reason is from the name Son; the first may be called from what? The answer is not audible on the transcript (evidently “Word”).