Summa III, Q.4, Arts. 1–3: Why Human Nature Could Be Assumed, and Why Not a Person or a Man (with a Digression on the Two Senses of 'Through')

Orientation #

He does not say what was done last time or what comes next, beyond “we’ll see in that article or part which kind of order” for the later part of q. 4, and stopping at “the article before our break.” Verified sources: ST III q. 4, aa. 1-3 read in class. The previous class treated q. 3 aa. 7-8 (two natures by one person; why the Son), and the next treats q. 4 aa. 4-6.

The class, in order #

1. Proemium of q. 4: the union on the side of what is assumed (“about the union on the side of what is assumed”) #

He reads the plan: first what is assumed by the Word, then what is assumed with it, both perfections and defects. Defects: flesh subject to death and suffering; sin is not a defect assumed. Threefold consideration of what is assumed: human nature itself, its parts, the order of assumption. Six questions: whether human nature was more assumable than any other; whether he assumed a person (“you must know the answer to that already”); whether he assumed a man (“I gotta be very careful when you say that”); whether a human nature separated from singulars (he glosses: universal human nature, “the form of man himself”); whether in all individuals; whether in some man generated from the stock of Adam.

• Aside: he remarks on Thomas’s thoroughness, and on Christ’s “You have written well, Thomas” from the cross; also St. Teresa of Avila’s Dominican confessor famed for lectures on the Summa, and a saint who hears “have no fear, it is I.”

2. Article 1, objections: why not any nature? (“more able to be assumed by the Son of God”) #

Four objections, which he calls “closely difficult”:

1. Augustine to Volusianus: in things done with wonder, the whole reason is the power of the doer; the incarnation is the “miracle of miracles” (all miracles ordered to it, as Thomas says) and God’s power is infinite; so human nature is no more assumable than any other.
2. Likeness is the reason for congruity; rational creature has likeness of image, irrational of footprint; so the irrational creature is assumable too.
3. “Now he goes above man”: angels have a more express likeness of God (Gregory on Ezekiel 28:12, “you are the seal of likeness”), and sin is found in angels too (Job 4:18); so angelic nature is as assumable, “you might argue… even more so.”
4. More like God as more perfect; the universe is more perfect than its parts, human nature among them; so the universe is more assumable. “That’d be an interesting one.” Sed contra: Proverbs 8:31, from the mouth of Wisdom, “my delights are to be with the sons of men.”

3. Article 1, body: dignity and necessity (“according to a certain what appropriateness”) #

Point: “assumable” means apt to be assumed by a divine person, and the aptitude is not a natural passive potency (which does not reach what transcends the natural order, as personal union does) but a congruence, noted in two things.

1. Dignity: human nature, as reasonable and understanding, is apt to touch the Word itself by its operation, knowing and loving. He ties this to the catechism (“Why did He make me? To know and love Him”), defending the catechism’s answers as good even if not understood; contrast his grandchildren’s catechisms, which say only that the Trinity is a mystery. So man by nature is already ordered to union with God by operation, though this is less than union in Christ’s person; creatures without understanding and will are not.
2. Necessity: man needs a remedy, being subject to original sin; he notes that in the Compendium of Theology Thomas always begins the incarnation from original sin. Only human nature has both: the beast lacks the dignity, the angel lacks the necessity. Boundary he draws: the angel chooses once and “goes forever” in one direction; man in this life changes from virtue to vice and back. “Does that convince you, gentlemen?” — one student: “It’s not an argument” (left there).

4. Article 1, replies (“creatures are denominated such from what belongs to them”) #

• Ad 1: creatures are named from their own causes, not from the first universal cause; a sick man is “incurable” not because God cannot cure him but because his own principles cannot (“doesn’t have recuperative powers in himself”). So “not assumable” subtracts nothing from divine power; it shows the creature’s lack of aptitude. “If you just look at the power of God, you don’t see the reason.”
• Ad 2: likeness of image = capable of God by attaining him in operation; likeness of footprint = mere representation from the divine impression, “much more distant.” What falls short of the lesser lacks suitability for the greater: a body not apt to be perfected by a sensing soul is much less apt for an understanding soul; union in personal being is greater than union by operation. He notes Thomas elsewhere argues the reverse way, from incarnation to hope of the beatific vision; here from operation to personal union. Aside: his daughter’s horses, “nice animals,” but they cannot know or love God in himself.
• Ad 3: some say the angel cannot be assumed because from creation he is perfect in personality, not subject to generation and corruption, so his personality would have to be destroyed, unfitting to his incorruptibility and to the assumer’s goodness. Thomas: this does not wholly exclude it, since God could create a new angelic nature and draw it at once to his person, nothing pre-existing being corrupted. What is lacking is congruity of necessity: angelic sin cannot be remedied (as in the first part, on the angels). Berquist adds an argument Thomas does not develop: each angel is a different nature, so assuming one would leave nothing else of that nature; in man many individuals share the nature, so assuming it deprives the rest of creation of nothing.
• Ad 4: the universe’s perfection is not the perfection of one person or suppositum but of what is one by position or order, many of whose parts are not assumable; so only human nature.
• Aside: the angels’ “sudden determination” is frightening; the Ratzinger Report on the flak over Paul VI speaking of the devil and of “other Judases in the priesthood.”

5. Article 2: did he assume a person? (“assumed human nature in atomos”) #

Objections: (1) Damascene, Orthodox Faith III: the Son assumed human nature in atomo — he glosses atomos, tomos “cut” plus a- negative, here “the individual”; but an individual of rational nature is a person by Boethius’s definition; (2) Damascene: he assumed what he planted in our nature, and he planted personality; (3) nothing is consumed unless it is, and Innocent III says the person of God consumed the person of a man (“kind of a funny word”), so a man’s person was there before. He jokes these all agree with “my Nestorian heresy.” Sed contra: Augustine, On Faith to Peter: God assumed the nature of man, not the person — “nobody can make a point like Augustine or Thomas,” with Aristotle’s Metaphysics XIII opening: say some things better than predecessors and others no worse. Body: to be assumed is to be taken to another, so the assumed is pre-understood to the assuming, as the thing moved is pre-understood to the motion; but a person is not pre-understood in human nature before the assumption; rather the person is the term. His “famous example”: a point (the divine person) and a line drawn to it (the nature): the line has no endpoint until it reaches the point; it acquires that point as its endpoint and has no endpoint of its own. If a person were pre-understood, either it is corrupted (so assumed in vain) or remains (two persons, erroneous). So in no way is a human person assumed; the nature is given the Word’s own personality. Aside: writers often let “human nature” pass for “person”; asked to define person, he follows Boethius, individual substance of a rational nature. Replies: (1) assumed in the individual, which is none other than the uncreated person of the Son — the line assumed “in the indivisible point”; he adds one might also say it was individual, not universal, human nature, but without its own personality. (2) The nature lacked its own personality not by defect of something belonging to its perfection but by addition of something above it, union to the divine person — a higher personality than it would have on its own. (3) “Consumption” here is not destruction of what was but impeding what otherwise could be: left to itself the nature would have its own personality, as the line left to itself would have its own endpoint; so, improperly, the person is said to consume the person. Student: this fits Richard of St. Victor’s definition of person, which stresses independence; the assumed nature lacks the independence others have because it depends on the divine person — something added, not taken away. Berquist accepts.

6. Article 3: did he assume a man? (“whether the divine person assumed a man”) #

Objections: Psalm 64 “blessed the one whom you chose and assumed,” glossed of Christ; Augustine, On the Christian Struggle (he checks the rendering “agony/fight/struggle”), the Son of God assumed man to undergo human things; “man” signifies human nature, and he assumed human nature; the Son of God is man, and not a man he did not assume (else equally Peter), so he is the man he assumed — Berquist: “but was he a man before he assumed it?” Sed contra: Pope Felix, martyr, introduced at the Synod of Ephesus (“one of the four” councils the Pope honoured as the four Gospels): born of the Virgin because he is the eternal Son, “not a man assumed by God,” who would be someone else. Body: the assumed is pre-understood, not the term; the individual in whom human nature is assumed is nothing but the divine person, the term. “Man” signifies human nature as apt to be in its suppositum; as Damascene says, “God” signifies one having divine nature, “man” one having human nature. So it is not properly said he assumed a man, given one suppositum and one hypostasis in Christ (he notes the words are etymologically similar); those positing two hypostases can say it, as the first opinion in Sentences III d. 6 does, erroneously — “back to Nestorius.” Replies: (1) such speech of the holy doctors is not to be extended but piously expounded: he assumed man because he assumed his nature and the assumption terminates in the Son being man — “through this assumption he became man,” the best way to put it; otherwise you have a man, hence a person, already there. (2) “Man” signifies human nature in the concrete as in some suppositum, so as we cannot say he assumed a suppositum, we cannot say a man was assumed. (3) He is not the man whom he assumed but the man whose nature he assumed. “It’s not too tricky, is it?”

7. Digression: the two mysteries in the two chief sacraments (“Baptism and Eucharist”) #

Baptism is the foundation, most necessary; the Eucharist the end and goal; both symbolised by the blood and water from Christ’s side, though all sacraments draw strength from the passion. Baptism is in the name of the Trinity; the Eucharist says “this is my body,” “the cup of my blood,” pointing to Christ’s human nature and so the Incarnation. “Kind of interesting”: the two chief mysteries stand out in the two chief sacraments.

8. Digression: relations constitute the persons only as the divine nature (“constitute and distinguish the persons”) #

From De Potentia (he says “question eight”): a. 1 real relations in God; a. 2 whether they are the divine substance; a. 3 whether they constitute and distinguish the persons — yes, with a distinction: fatherhood distinguishes the Father from the Son as a relation, but constitutes the Father as it is the divine nature, not as relation, since the substance is common to the three and an individual substance cannot be constituted in its personhood by a relation alone. “Very subtle.” He recalls a Sentences text: since relation and substance are the same, some words signify substance as substance, some relation as relation, some both. Parallel from the power of generating (from the Trinity treatise): if the power were the divine nature, Son and Spirit would generate; if it were fatherhood, then since every per se agent makes its like (dogs, cats; the carpenter making a house like the idea in his head — “as Karl Marx says,” first in the head, then in wood and brick), the Father would generate another father. Truth between the extremes: the power to generate is the divine nature as found in the Father; then God from God, one in substance, yet only he has the active power.

9. Digression: two senses of “through” (“A made known C, but not”) #

Setup: A proves B, B proves C. A makes known C through B (B an instrument of A). Does B make known C through A? Yes, in another sense: to make known you must be known, and B is known only through A, so B’s power to make known C is through A — a student calls A a “necessary precondition.” Applications, each attached to the sense: God made my soul through himself, no creature (Aristotle, Generation of Animals: the human soul does not come from the parents); God made my body through my parents (first sense), and my parents made my body through God, having their power from him (second sense). Thomas’s king and bailiff: the king acts on citizens through the bailiff; the bailiff acts through the king, whose power he has. Christ forgives my sins through the priest (first sense); the priest forgives through Christ’s power, “whose sins you shall forgive” (second sense). The A-B-C case is the easiest to see. “Take a little break now.”

His words #

• assumable (assumptibile): apt to be assumed by a divine person; not natural passive potency but congruence.
• congruence of dignity vs. congruence of necessity: aptness to touch the Word by operation; need of remedy for sin.
• likeness of image vs. likeness of footprint: capable of God by operation vs. mere representation from the divine impression.
• pre-understood (fore-understood): what is assumed is understood before the assuming; the person is the term.
• point and line: divine person as pre-existing point, assumed nature as line acquiring that point as endpoint.
• atomos: Greek, “not cut,” the individual.
• consume (Innocent III): improperly, impeding the personality the nature would otherwise have.
• person (Boethius): individual substance of a rational nature; Richard of St. Victor’s definition stresses independence (student).
• suppositum / hypostasis: “etymologically similar.”
• “man” signifies human nature as apt to be in its suppositum; so “he became man,” not “assumed a man.”
• two senses of “through”: instrument vs. source of the power.
• “thirteenth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics XIII].

Texts #

Read in class:

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 4, prooemium; a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies); a. 2; a. 3. Mentioned:
• Augustine, Epistle to Volusianus; On Faith to Peter; On the Christian Struggle.
• Gregory, homily on the hundred sheep, on Ezekiel 28:12; Job 4:18; Proverbs 8:31; Psalm 64.
• Damascene, Orthodox Faith III; Boethius, On the Two Natures; Innocent III, a decree; Pope Felix at the Synod of Ephesus; Sentences III d. 6 (first opinion).
• Thomas, Compendium of Theology; De Potentia (his “question eight”), aa. 1-3; a Sentences text on words signifying substance and relation; ST I on the angels.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XIII ch. 1; Generation of Animals.
• The catechism; the Ratzinger Report; St. Teresa of Avila’s confessor; a saint playing Joan of Arc in convent plays (name garbled in recording).

His questions #

• Whether human nature was more assumable than any other nature? Yes: only it has both congruence of dignity and of necessity.
• Does that convince you, gentlemen? A student: “It’s not an argument”; left there.
• Why didn’t God assume an angel, which is more like him? Angelic sin cannot be remedied; he adds that each angel is its own nature.
• Did he assume a person? “You hope so.” No: the person is the term of the assumption, not pre-understood; the line has no endpoint until it reaches the point.
• Does the line have an endpoint? “Not till it gets there.” So the nature has no personality of its own but the Word’s.
• Whether the divine person assumed a man? No: “man” signifies nature in a suppositum; he is the man whose nature he assumed.
• Was he a man before he assumed it? No, else a person would already be there.
• In baptism and the Eucharist, which mystery stands out? Trinity in baptism, Incarnation in the Eucharist.
• What is the power by which the Father generates the Son? The divine nature as found in the Father.
• Did B make known C through A? Yes, in a second sense: B’s power to make known comes from being known through A.