Aquinas on the Incarnation (ST III q.6 a.4–6): Flesh and Soul Assumed Together, the Whole Before the Parts, and the Role of Grace

Orientation #

He opens on “this next article” (a. 4) as the reverse of the one before and refers back to “the previous article” for the authority of Pope Leo that Christ’s soul has no other beginning of being than ours (prev. lecture). He ends by reading the proemium of q. 7 and stopping before its thirteen articles (“Maybe we should stop there”). The previous class treated q. 6 aa. 1–3 (order of assumption through soul and spirit); the next begins q. 7 on Christ’s habitual grace.

The class, in order #

1. Article 4, the objections: was the flesh assumed before the soul? (“This is the reverse, huh?”) #

The point: the three objections argue that flesh, being first in the order of generation, was united to the Word before the soul.

• Obj. 1 (Augustine, De fide ad Petrum, “hold most firmly and in no way doubt”: the flesh was not conceived in the Virgin’s womb without the Godhead before it was assumed) plus the principle that the material disposition is before the completing form in the way of generation, so flesh was assumed before it was united to the soul. He glosses with Aristotle: the body is first “kind of like a plant” (a plant soul, not a permanent one), then animal, finally rational; if that is the order of generation, why not assume flesh first?
• Obj. 2: soul and body are both parts of human nature; the soul in Christ has no different beginning of being than in us (Leo, previous article); so neither should the body; but in us flesh is conceived before the rational soul comes. He ties this to Aristotle’s definition in De Anima II: the soul is the first act of a natural body composed of tools (organs); without the distinction of organs, no such form. In the fertilized egg one first sees cell division and growth (common with the plant), later sensation.
• Obj. 3 (Liber de Causis): the first cause flows more into the caused and is united to it before the second cause; Christ’s soul is to the Word as second cause to first; so Word is united to flesh before soul. “That’s a difficult proposition… we will see what Thomas says.”
• Sed contra, Damascene bk. III: the Word’s flesh was simul animated, rational, intellectual (no animal or plant soul stage), so union to flesh did not precede union to soul.

2. The body of a. 4: flesh is assumable only by its order to the rational soul (“it is not really what human flesh”) #

Argument as he reads it:

1. Human flesh can be assumed by the Word by the order it has to the rational soul as its proper form.
2. It does not have this order before the rational soul comes, because at the same time some matter becomes the proper matter for a form, it receives that form: in the same instant the disposing alteration ends and the substantial form is brought in.
3. So flesh ought not be assumed before it is human flesh, which it becomes when the rational soul comes. Symmetry he draws: the soul is not assumed before the flesh (against the soul’s nature to be before being united to the body, since it is actually the form of the body); likewise the flesh is not assumed before the soul. “You convinced of that?”

3. Student question: when does the rational soul come, and abortion (“You never act with a doubtful conscience”) #

A student asks whether Thomas thought the rational soul was present at conception. Answer: no, not at the very moment; this goes back to the definition of soul (substantial form of an organized body); for Thomas following Aristotle there is a series of generations, plant before animal before man, which does not say exactly when the change takes place. Moral consequence he draws: one can argue against abortion even before the rational soul is there.

• Masturbation is a very serious sin but less than murder; the closer to an actual human being, the more heinous the sin; but the sin does not begin only when it is an actual human being, otherwise masturbation would not be wrong; the fertilized egg at any stage is closer to a man than the seed.
• A student adds the moral-doubt argument: hunting with a buddy, something moves in the bush, you shoot not knowing whether it is deer or buddy: a sin even if it was not your buddy, because you were willing to kill somebody. Berquist: the same applies to the bioethics argument “even if it isn’t really human life yet”; with a moral doubt you have no right to act.

4. Replies to the three objections (“the Holy Spirit, who is an agent of infinite power”) #

• Reply 1: human flesh has its being through the soul, so before the soul comes it is not human flesh but can be a disposition for it; in Christ’s conception, however, the Holy Spirit, an agent of infinite power, at the same time disposes the matter and brings it to completion. His caution: be careful arguing from Christ to us, “which your daddy was not” an agent of infinite power; we do not know by faith that the rational soul is there from the beginning in us because it is so in Christ. Aside: he has been reading the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel.
• Reply 2: form and act give the species; matter of itself is in ability (potency) to the species; so it is against the notion of the form to pre-exist the nature of the species, but not against the nature of matter. Hence the dissimilitudo between our origin and Christ’s (our flesh conceived before animated, and from the seed of man; Christ’s not, but from the Holy Spirit) concerns what precedes the completion of nature; a difference in the soul pre-existing the body would redound to a diversity of nature. His “very crude example”: no difficulty in wood existing before the chair; real difficulty in the form of the chair existing before the wood, since the form is something that exists in the wood.
• Reply 3: the Word is understood to be united to the flesh before the soul only in the common way He is in all creatures, by essence, power and presence, before in nature not in time (flesh is a being in the Word before it is animated by the soul); but by the personal union flesh must be united to the soul before the Word, since from union to the soul it can be united to the Word in person, person being found only in a rational nature. “Don’t worry too much about that objection.”
• Aside on the De Causis: early Thomas followed the opinion it was by Aristotle, later realized it was not; he wrote a commentary, occasionally disagrees, but respects it; a Greek work after Aristotle (Neoplatonists, whose name he cannot recall), modified by the Arabs.

5. Article 5, objections and sed contra: whole through the parts? (“he assumed the whole man by means of the parts”) #

• Obj. 1 (Augustine, De agone christiano): the invisible, unchangeable Truth (capitalized, “I am the truth”) assumed through the spirit the soul and through the soul the body, thus the whole man; spirit, soul, body are parts.
• Obj. 2: flesh was assumed through the soul because the soul is more like God; the parts, being simpler, are more like the most simple God than the whole. He flags at once that this overlooks the main difference between the material world, where the simple is imperfect, and God, where the simple is the perfect.
• Obj. 3: the whole results from union of parts; union is the end of assumption; so parts are understood before.
• Sed contra, Damascene bk. III: in Christ we do not consider parts of parts but what is proximately composed, Godhead and humanity; humanity is a whole put together from soul and body; so the parts were assumed through the whole.

6. The body of a. 5: simul, and two ways of being before by nature (“the whole reason of the thing done is the power of the one doing”) #

“By means of” in the incarnation does not designate an order of time, since the assumption of whole and parts was simul. Digression on simul: we fall back on the first meaning of a word; simul is “together” or “at once” (you and I came together, neither before nor after); Aristotle takes up hama right after before and after, because it is known by its negation. What is designated is the order of nature, and something is before by nature in two ways:

• from the side of the agent: simply first is what first falls in his intention; first secundum quid is that from which his operation begins, because intention is before operation;
• from the side of matter: what exists before in the transformation of matter. In the incarnation attend most of all to the side of the agent, because (Augustine, epistle to Volusianus) in such things the whole reason of the thing done is the power of the doer (he compares Christ to the Sadducees: “you know neither the power of God nor the Scriptures”). In the maker’s intention the complete is always before the incomplete: the house builder intends the whole house before the foundation, which is made for the rest. So the Word assumed the parts by means of the whole, consistent with a. 4: body assumed for its order to the soul, body and soul for their order to human nature. “He’s consistent here, this guy.”
• Reply 1: Augustine’s words mean only that in assuming the parts the Word assumed the whole; assumption of parts is before in the via operationis, in our understanding not in time; assumption of the nature is before in the via intentionis, which is before simply. Illustrations of the two orders: Scripture’s “do good and avoid evil” is the order of intention, “turn away from evil and do good” the order of execution; the Our Father is in the order of intention (first two petitions for the end, next two for the chief means and the supporting one, the last for the impediments); the Psalms divided (Thomas following Augustine) into three fifties, turning from sin, doing good, resting in God, are in the order of execution, fitting since the Psalms are much longer.

7. Reply 2: simplicity and perfection; reply 3 (“the simpler or the shorter is more perfect”) #

Reply 2: God is simple in such a way that He is also most perfect, so the whole is more like God insofar as more perfect. He recalls Thomas’s “big point” in the prima pars: simplicity of God then perfection of God, in contrast with material things where the more composed is more perfect, an opposition between simplicity and perfection. Does material nature ever transcend that? Foreshadowings he offers: the first computers filled a room and did less than a little thing now; Aristotle on tragedy vs comedy, both producing pity and fear but tragedy with fewer words, so more perfect; “brevity is the soul of wit”; Teresa of Ávila, the closer you get to God the simpler you are; Shakespeare’s sonnet on “simple truth miscalled simplicity”. But generally an animal is more perfect than a plant, a man than an animal, and more composed. A student adds prayer with words vs without words: with words more perfect in some way, but not more simple; he agrees. Reply 3: the personal union is that in which assumption terminates, not the union of nature resulting from the parts; the objection confuses the two unions. “It’s a plain objection.”

• Aside: his dental crown; “Crowning with Many Crowns”, three coronations, “so we’re a tertiary, I guess”.

8. Article 6: was human nature assumed by means of grace? (“grace cannot be understood as a middle”) #

Preface: Thomas is “very thorough”; Aristotle in the second book of wisdom on those who dislike such men as stingy rather than liberal. Story: the old bachelor professor who paid exactly his share at dinner; people want to be “liberal” and let a few distinctions go by.

• Obj. 1: by grace we are united to God; Christ’s human nature most of all united to God; so by grace. (“That convinces me.”)
• Obj. 2: as the body lives by the soul, the soul lives by grace; nature made suitable for assumption through the soul; so the soul assumed through grace.
• Obj. 3 (Augustine, De Trinitate XV): the incarnate Word is like our word in the voice; our word is united to voice by means of spirit (breath); so the Word united to flesh by the Holy Spirit, hence by grace, attributed to the Spirit (1 Cor., divisions of graces, the same Spirit).
• Sed contra: grace is an accident of the soul (secunda pars); the union is according to subsistence in the hypostasis, not according to an accident.
• Body: in Christ are the grace of union and habitual grace; neither is a middle. The grace of union is the personal being freely given to human nature in the person of the Word, the term of the assumption; habitual grace pertains to the special holiness of that man, an effect following the union (John 1:14: “only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”, because he is the only begotten he has the fullness). Aside against contemporary scholars who say he did not know who he was. If “grace” means God’s will doing something gratuitously, the union was by grace, but as efficient cause, not as middle.
• Reply 1: our union to God is through operation (knowing and loving), hence by habitual grace as perfect operation proceeds from a habit; the union of human nature to the Word is not by operation but according to personal being, depending on no habit but immediately from the nature itself. “That’s interesting how he gets out of that difficulty.” Aside: Thomas’s life, puzzling, falling to the ground praying, getting up with the answer.
• Reply 2: the soul is the substantial perfection (form) of the body, grace an accidental one (“not part of his nature”); so grace cannot order the soul to the personal union, which is not an accident, as the soul does the body.
• Reply 3: our word is united to voice by spirit not as formal medium but as mover; from the interior word proceeds the breath from which the voice is formed; similarly from the eternal Word proceeds the Holy Spirit who forms Christ’s body; it does not follow that the grace of the Spirit is the medium of the union. “He’s the mover.”

9. Back to the proemia of q. 4 and q. 7 (“about the things assumed with”) #

He locates the treatise: q. 4 proemium divides the union on the side of the assumed into what is assumed (human nature, its parts, the order of assumption: qq. 4, 5, 6) and the coassumpta, perfections and defects. Q. 7 proemium subdivides the coassumpta: perfections first (grace, knowledge, power), then defects (not ignorance, but a body that can suffer). Grace is considered as of a singular man (q. 7) and as head of the Church (q. 8); the grace of union has already been spoken of, i.e. the hypostatic union. Thirteen articles in q. 7; he stops there.

His words #

• “first act of a natural body composed of tools”: his rendering of Aristotle’s definition of soul [ed.: organs, organic body]
• “ability”: for potentia [ed.: potency]
• simul, hama: together, at once; known by negation of before and after
• “dissimilitude”: the unlikeness (dissimilitudo) between our origin and Christ’s
• via intentionis / via operationis: order of intention (whole first) vs order of execution (parts first)
• “secundum quid”: first in a qualified way, where operation begins
• agens infinitae virtutis: the Holy Spirit as agent of infinite power in Christ’s conception
• “coassumptis”: things taken on together with human nature, perfections and defects
• “grace of union”: the personal being freely given to human nature in the Word, the term of assumption
• “habitual grace”: the special holiness of that man, an effect of the union
• “habitus”: habit; perfect operation goes forth from it
• “second book of wisdom”: [ed.: Metaphysics II (inferred)]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST III q. 6 a. 4 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas, ST III q. 6 a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas, ST III q. 6 a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies)
• Thomas, ST III q. 4 proemium; q. 7 proemium Mentioned
• Augustine, De fide ad Petrum; De agone christiano; epistle to Volusianus; De Trinitate XV
• Damascene, bk. III (twice)
• Liber de Causis; Thomas’s commentary on it
• Aristotle, De Anima II; on before/after and hama (locus not stated); on tragedy and comedy; “second book of wisdom”
• Pope Leo (previous article)
• John 1:14; 1 Corinthians (divisions of graces); Matthew’s genealogy; Christ to the Sadducees
• Thomas, prima pars on simplicity and perfection of God; secunda pars on grace as accident
• The Our Father; the Psalms in three fifties (Thomas following Augustine)
• Teresa of Ávila; Shakespeare’s sonnet (“simplicity”)

His questions #

• If flesh is before in the order of generation, why wouldn’t flesh be assumed first? Because before the rational soul comes it is not human flesh, only a disposition for it.
• You convinced of that? Student instead asks when Thomas thinks the rational soul comes: not at the very moment of conception; a series of generations, time unspecified.
• Do you see some difficulty in the form of the chair existing before the wood? Yes: the form is something that exists in the wood; matter may pre-exist, form may not.
• Simul is what? Together, at once; neither before nor after.
• For the house builder, what is before in his intention, the foundation or the whole house? The whole house; the foundation is made for the rest.
• What’s the difference between “do good and avoid evil” and “turn away from evil and do good”? Order of intention vs order of execution.
• Does a simpler thing ever become more perfect in material things? Sometimes (computers, tragedy with fewer words), a foreshadowing of God; but generally the more perfect is more composed.
• Accidental means what? Not part of his nature.
• How do you get out of the objection that by grace we are united to God? Different kinds of union: ours by operation and habit, Christ’s according to personal being.