Aquinas on the Incarnation (ST III q.6 a.2–3): Spirit, Soul and Body, and Why Christ's Soul Did Not Exist Before His Flesh

Orientation #

He refers back to “the first article” (q.6 a.1, that the Word assumed flesh by means of the soul) as already seen, and calls the Thessalonians text “kind of appropriate for these first two articles” (prev. lecture). Verified sources place the class at ST III q.6 aa.2-3, with an opening stretch probably between a.1 and a.2. The previous class covered Christ’s assumption of soul and mind and opened q.6; the next continues with q.6 aa.4-6.

The class, in order #

1. Opening asides: contradiction in Macbeth; Teresa’s vision of the Trinity (“spiritual relations of Saint Teresa of Avila”) #

Two pieces of reading he brings in before the article.

• His Wednesday-night group is doing the four kinds of opposites in the Categories; the same night a scene from Macbeth turned on contradiction: the man announcing the King’s murder is told “I wish you would contradict yourself and say he’s not dead.”
• Teresa of Avila’s Spiritual Relations: on the Tuesday after Ascension, in an intellectual vision “without any picture or figure”, she understood how God is three and one, all three persons speaking and “distinctly present” in her soul, each granting a favour (charity, joy in suffering, consciousness of that charity). His comment: “So they really are distinct.” He supposes it is obvious which person gives which gift, though she does not specify; “actually, they have the same power.”
• On Augustine’s day she learned “how the three persons… are one”, so that she cannot now think of one without realising three, and saw that “the Son alone had taken human flesh” though the three are one. Such a passing vision leaves a benefit greater than years of meditation, “yet the soul cannot understand how.”

2. Spirit, soul and body in 1 Thessalonians 5: the order of the assumption (“the spirit, the soul, and the body”) #

Point: Paul’s triad pneuma, psuche, body, as Thomas explains it, gives the very order in which the Word assumes: body through soul, soul through spirit.

• Pneuma (spirit): the higher part of the soul, understanding and will, the powers not in the body, perfected by faith, hope, charity; or the soul insofar as it has those powers.
• Soul: taken as Aristotle’s substantial form, first act of a natural body; so here it covers even the emotions, which are in the body. Christ’s “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”: Paul says “soul” instead of “flesh” because the soul is the act of the body.
• Body: what you do with your body.
• Why Christ on the cross and Stephen, the first martyr, say “receive my spirit” rather than “my soul”: when the soul leaves the body its bodily powers (digesting, walking) are no longer in act, though rooted in the soul; understanding and will remain, and those are what make the soul a spirit. So there is “a kind of precision” in “spirit”.
• Related: Paul’s animalis homo (from psuche, the soul as related to body) vs pneumaticos, usually rendered “natural man” and “spiritual man”; and the Mass response et cum spiritu tuo.
• Rectifying spirit, soul, body means first understanding and will, then something “overflowing” to the emotions and body.
• A “delayed Christmas gift” from a daily Mass reading.

3. Q.6 a.2, the objections: did the Word assume the soul by means of the spirit? (“the same thing does not fall as a middle”) #

He reads three objections against the article’s thesis.

1. Nothing is a middle between itself and something else; but spirit or mens is not other in essence from the soul (first part). You would not say “I have a soul and I have a spirit” as two things. Student: didn’t Paul speak of a sword dividing spirit from soul? He: “I suppose that’s the dark night of the soul, too.”
2. That by which something is assumed is more assumable; but the spirit is not more assumable than the soul, since angelic spirits are not assumable. So why not assume angels?
3. What is later is assumed by what is prior; but “soul” names the essence, naturally before its power, the mind.

• On mens: translating it “mind” seems wrong; Augustine uses it for the soul insofar as it has understanding and will (where the image of God is), not just the faculty; sometimes just for reason. He guesses mens is related to mensura, measure, “reason that measures things.”

4. Sed contra and body of a.2 (“through the spirit the soul”) #

Point: the spirit is the middle both by order of dignity and by suitability of assumption.

• Sed contra, Augustine, On the Christian Struggle: the invisible unchangeable Truth took on the soul through the spirit and the body through the soul. Thomas “is repeating what Augustine has said” in both articles; aside: Chrysostom says we are not upset if someone else has said what we will say, and Cajetan says Thomas inherited the intellect of all the Fathers because he so reverenced them.
• Body: as flesh was assumed through soul (a.1) on account of (1) order of dignity and (2) suitability, so the same two are found comparing the soul’s higher part, called spirit, to its other parts. A body without a soul (a chair, a table, even a tree) makes no sense as assumed.
  1. Suitability: the soul is assumable only because it is capable of God, existing to his image, which is according to the mind, called spirit. Ephesians 4, renovamini spiritu mentis vestrae (“be renewed by the spirit of your mind”): the Latin shows why the two words are associated.
  2. Dignity: the understanding is the superior, more worthy, more God-like part; Damascene, book III: the Word is united to flesh through the intellect as middle, the purest part of the soul, and God is understanding.

5. Replies to the objections; Apollinaris; could God assume a stone? (“his fall cannot be repaired”) #

• Ad 1: the intellect is not other from the soul in essence, but is distinguished from the other parts by reason of its power, and in that way has the notion of a middle. His summary: soul is more worthy than body; body assumable only through soul; soul assumable properly because it has parts that can know and love God, which as such we call spirit.
• Ad 2, angels: not for lack of dignity, as if man were worth more, but because an angel’s fall cannot be repaired. An angel is created with mind fully formed, so when he chooses, he chooses forever; we flip back and forth as experience and emotions change, “hopefully flipping the right direction.” Scripture compares our will to the tree: where it falls, it stays. The human spirit is mutable (first part).
• Ad 3: when intellect is laid down as middle between soul and Word, “soul” is not taken for the essence common to all the powers but for the inferior powers common to every soul, at least the animal soul. Aside: in the De Anima Aristotle’s predecessors investigated the soul through sensation and locomotion, what is common to every animal soul; understanding seemed too high, or a kind of sensation; modern biologists still take the brain as organ of thought, a bodily organ; life in plants is “hidden.”
• Back to Paul: rectify spirit, soul, body, i.e. understanding and will, then emotions, then bodily actions (genuflecting, not hitting your neighbour), the same order in which the Word assumes body through soul and soul through spirit. “You all convinced now that this is the way the Word of God should proceed?”
• Apollinaris: the Word substitutes for our mind and will, leaving only some kind of soul, so the body assumed would have only an animal soul, a beast. Even the average Catholic senses something wrong in God taking the body of a dog or cat; what is wrong is that such a soul could not know and love God, could not love us or be our teacher: “You wouldn’t have a dog for your teacher.”
• Old student question: could God assume the nature of a rock or tree? His answer: a hypostatic union needs a nature capable of being a hypostasis; a stone, tree or dog is not such a nature (a student notes no person is assumed; he agrees, but the nature must be one that can have a hypostasis). Possible objection, “God can raise up sons of Abraham from these very stones”: then they would no longer be stones; Adam was made from clay.

6. Q.6 a.3, the objections: was the soul assumed before the flesh? (“the soul of Christ was taken on by the Word before”) #

Some thought the soul was taken first and a body added later, a before in time. Objections:

1. Flesh was assumed through the soul as middle (a.1); one comes to the middle before the extreme.
2. Christ’s soul is more worthy than the angels (Psalm 96, “Adore him, all you his angels”); angels were created from the beginning, as some Fathers held (not the dominant opinion; rejected by Thomas). And Damascene, book III: neither soul nor body of Christ ever had its own hypostasis apart from the Word, so the soul was not created before it was assumed. Hence assumed before the flesh conceived in the Virgin.
3. John 1:14, “full of grace and truth”, and 1:16, “of his fullness we have all received”, i.e. all the faithful of whatever time (Chrysostom). This requires Christ’s fullness before all the saints from the beginning of the world; since the fullness was in his soul from its union with the Word, the soul was assumed from the beginning. “A genius argument, because the cause is not after the effect”; “that’s pretty convincing.”

• Sed contra, Damascene, book IV (he catches himself saying “Augustine”): not, as some lie, was the intellect united to the Word before the incarnation from the Virgin and then called Christ. “Here we have the troublemaker Origen again.”

7. Body of a.3: against Origen (“all souls were created from the beginning”) #

Point: neither way of putting a pre-existing soul of Christ is fitting.

• Aside: Thomas can be rough on Origen (“Origen is the origin of Arius”, his paraphrase), yet quotes Origen’s explanations in the Golden Chain.
• Origen: all souls created from the beginning, including Christ’s. Then either
  1. it was created but not at once united to the Word: then for some time it had its own subsistence without the Word, so either no union in subsistence (hypostasis) was made, or the pre-existing subsistence was corrupted, which is unfitting; or
  2. it was united to the Word from the beginning and made incarnate later in the Virgin’s womb: then his soul would not be of the same nature as ours, which are created when poured into bodies. Leo (the Great, “quite an interesting pope”) to Julian: his flesh was not of another nature than ours, nor his soul begun in another way.

8. Order of nature vs order of time (“something can be before in nature”) #

Point: the middle of a.1 is a middle in the order of nature, not of time (ad 1).

• From the Categories (he counts “four central senses and then the crowning sense” of before/order): before in time is only the first sense; there are many orders according to nature.
• Aristotle’s example: when you sit, “you are sitting” becomes true with no time lag; standing up, it becomes false at once. Yet your sitting is before the truth of the statement as its cause, a kind of dependence, though not before in time.
• Two and half of four: simultaneous, yet it is half of four because it is two, not two because it is half of four.
• Ad 1: the soul is a middle in the union of flesh to the Word by order of nature; nothing follows about order of time.

9. Ad 2: same genus as our souls, unlike the angels (“not by otherness of genus but by height of power”) #

• Leo, same epistle: Christ’s soul excels not by otherness of genus but by height of power; same genus as ours, excelling even the angels in fullness of grace and truth. The way of the incarnation follows the propriety of its genus: as form of a body it is created when poured into and united with the body, which does not hold of angels, substances wholly separate from bodies.
• Aside: Thomas discusses and rejects the opinion that angels were created before the material world (not calling it radical): bodies, lowly as they are, are an integral part of the universe, and God would not make a universe missing parts; on that opinion angels would not be part of the same universe, and bodies “an afterthought.” Origen’s version: all created as spirits; those who turned to God became angels, those who turned away were put into bodies made for them, “all nonsense.” Student: fallen angels? He: perhaps attached to air bodies; he doesn’t know the details.
• Aside: the Pope’s addresses treated Origen kindly, as a warning that the theologian needs humility; his addresses on Paul (about sixteen) stress humility.

10. Ad 3: justified beforehand by faith in Christ to be born (“believed in Him as to be born”) #

Point: all received of Christ’s fullness by faith in him, so justification before his soul existed poses no problem.

• Romans 3: God’s justice through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. As we believe in him as made flesh, the patriarchs and prophets believed in him as to be born, with the same spirit (2 Corinthians). Faith in Christ justifies from the proposal of God’s grace (Romans 4:5, faith reckoned as justice); since that proposal is eternal, nothing prevents some being justified by faith in Christ before his soul existed.
• Parallels raised: the definition of the Immaculate Conception, “in view of” Christ’s death on the cross, a special providence; Mary ordered to that providence even before she believed the angel. Student: prophecy generally; the Apocalypse’s “Lamb slain from the beginning of the world”, which a commentary read as slain in figure; the class’s Friday text on the cross figured in Isaac and in the ram caught by its horns in the wood.
• His qualification: the patriarchs did not receive the beatific vision until after Christ died and descended to hell, so there is a fullness of grace after the cross even though grace was received before it by those who believed in the cross to come. Student: and not their bodies until the resurrection; he adds Augustine’s view that we will see God more perfectly once bodies are rejoined to souls, “more perfectly than just a soul.” “It got interesting, though, being in the immaterial world for a while, just a change of pace.”

His words #

• pneuma / spirit: the soul insofar as it has understanding and will, the powers not in the body.
• psuche / soul: the substantial form, first act of the body, including the powers in the body such as emotions.
• animalis homo vs pneumaticos: “natural man” and “spiritual man”; the first from psuche.
• mens: not just the faculty “mind” but the soul as having understanding and will; he relates it to mensura, measure.
• “middle” (medium): what stands between two different things; nothing is a middle between itself and another.
• renovamini spiritu mentis vestrae: “be renewed by the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4).
• “subsistence” / “hypostasis”: used interchangeably for the union in person.
• “poured into” the body: his rendering of the soul’s infusion [ed.: infusion].
• “Leo Papa”: Leo the Great.
• “Golden Chain”: the Catena Aurea (his English).
• “before in nature” vs “before in time”: order by dependence or causality vs order by time.
• “the proposal of the grace of God”: God’s eternal purpose from which faith justifies [ed.: propositum].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 6, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 6, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, replies)
• Teresa of Avila, Spiritual Relations (two passages on the Trinity)
• 1 Thessalonians 5 (spirit, soul, body), with Thomas’s explanation
• Ephesians 4 (renovamini spiritu mentis vestrae), quoted in the article
• John 1:14, 1:16; Psalm 96 (his numbering); Romans 3; Romans 4:5; 2 Corinthians, all as quoted in a.3
• Augustine, On the Christian Struggle (sed contra a.2); John Damascene, book III (a.2) and book IV (a.3); Leo the Great, epistle to Julian (a.3)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories (four kinds of opposites; senses of “before”)
• Aristotle, De Anima (predecessors on the soul)
• Shakespeare, Macbeth (discovery of the murder)
• Chrysostom on John 1:16; Cajetan on Thomas and the Fathers
• Thomas, Summa I (spirit not other in essence from soul; mutability of the human spirit)
• Paul on the animal and spiritual man (Romans or Corinthians, he is unsure)
• Definition of the Immaculate Conception; Apocalypse, the Lamb slain from the beginning; Genesis, Isaac and the ram
• Pope’s addresses on Origen and on Paul

His questions #

• Why does Christ on the cross, and Stephen, say “receive my spirit” rather than “my soul”? Because after death only the powers that make the soul a spirit, understanding and will, remain in act.
• If the spirit is more assumable than the soul, why did God not assume angels? Not for lack of dignity but because an angel’s fall cannot be repaired; the human spirit is mutable.
• What is wrong with God taking on the body of a dog or a cat? Such a soul could not know and love God, love us, or teach us.
• Could God assume the nature of a rock or a tree? Not in a hypostatic union, since such a nature is not capable of being a hypostasis; stones raised as sons of Abraham would no longer be stones.
• When you sit down, is there any time lag before “you are sitting” is true, and is your sitting before it in any sense? No lag; yet it is before as cause, an order of nature, not of time.
• Is two ever not half of four? They are simultaneous, but it is half of four because it is two, not the reverse.
• How could those before Christ in time receive of his fullness? By faith in him as to be born, justifying from God’s eternal proposal of grace.
• Did the patriarchs then have everything before the cross? No: the beatific vision only after Christ’s death and descent into hell, and bodies only at the resurrection.