Can a Human Being Be God? Nature and Person, and Christ's Habitual Grace (ST III, q.7, a.1)

Orientation #

He says “we’re now up to question seven” and rereads the proemium “to refresh ourselves”; the grace of union “has already been spoken of” (prev. lecture). He ends by announcing the next article: “whether there are virtues in Christ.” The previous class treated q. 6 aa. 4–6 and previewed q. 7; the next treats Christ’s virtues, faith, hope, gifts and fear.

The class, in order #

1. A rebel parish and Father Dresser’s syllogism (“No human being can ever be God”) #

Point: a news item (January Catholic World Report, Brisbane, Archbishop Battersby vs. St Mary’s parish, Fr Peter Kennedy) supplies an unorthodox priest’s book, quoted: the divinity of Christ “does violence to my own intelligence… No human being can ever be God, and Jesus was a human being.” He takes this as the occasion for an exercise in defending the faith.

• Three uses of philosophy in theology, from Thomas’s commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate: (1) the praeambula of faith, things knowable by reason as well as by faith; (2) likenesses (the image of the Trinity in our soul), always deficient; (3) answering objections to the mysteries. Dresser’s objection is of the third kind, in the form of a syllogism, first figure, middle term “human being” between the extremes.

2. Two examinations of an argument: form and matter (“Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics”) #

Point: an argument is examined twice—formally, does the conclusion follow? materially, are the premises true?—which is why Aristotle wrote two Analytics.

• Likeness: a wrong sum comes either from adding wrongly or from a wrong number. Either defect suffices to ruin the argument; in Physics I Aristotle’s opponents’ conclusions both fail to follow and rest on bad premises.
• The class judges the form: “perfect.” So the defect is in the matter.
• Minor premise (“Jesus Christ is a human being”): a student proposes it is false; he rejects this—human being means a man, an animal with reason. Student: does “human being” mean “human person”? No. So the minor stands and the fault is in the major.
• Boundary: if “human being” meant “human person,” the major would be true (no human person is God). And “no human being, from having human nature, is God” is true, but that is not what the major says.

3. Hypostasis vs. nature, from what is more known to us (“that by which one is a human being”) #

Point: Aristotle’s fundamental distinction about “substance”—individual substance (hypostasis; person, when of rational nature) vs. nature—solves the objection.

1. Human nature is that by which one is a man.
2. By human nature I am not a geometer or logician (else everyone with human nature would be one), nor white, nor healthy; human nature only makes me capable of learning geometry from Euclid, logic from Aristotle.
3. But I am geometer, logician, white, healthy. So I am not the same as the human nature I have; my “personality” is not my nature. Conclusion: the same person can be man and God only if person and nature are distinct. The Word draws human nature (partly from the Virgin, partly the created soul) to the already existing person, himself; having human nature, he is a human being, since “what has human nature is human being.”

• Deficient likeness: the endpoint of one line, to which a second line is drawn, is now also the end of the second line.
• Aside: a Mohammedan says Mohammed is the prophet, never God, and would share Dresser’s premise.

4. “The Word was made flesh” and the unchanging God (“Do you believe that God became man?”) #

Point: how can “became” or “was made” be said of the Word if God never changes?

• Set aside the synecdoche (“flesh” for “man”). “Wood was made a chair”: the wood changed. “God became man”: God stands here for the Word, as in “the Word was toward God” God stands for the Father. From years of teaching Physics I, “becoming” means almost the same as change: becoming healthy, sick, a geometer are changes. So either God changes, or why say “became”?
• Likeness 1, made precise: point X, the end of line A; draw line B to X. Student: X has become the end of line B, yet no change in X; the line was extended to it. Student: X gains a relation. He allows it—not a real change within it. So “God became man” signifies no change in the person; something was drawn to and terminated at that person.
• Likeness 2: a son grows taller than his father (immigrants, better diet); the father “has become shorter than the son” without shrinking—the change is in the son. Aristotle lists no change in the category “toward something” (relation), only in quantity (growth), quality (alteration), where (place), etc.
• Aside: “God never changes” yet accomplishes so many things is hard to understand; not treated today.

5. The proemium of question 7 refreshed (“the co-assumpta as he calls it”) #

Point: the map of what Thomas considers about the things assumed with human nature.

• Co-assumpta divide into perfections and defects (defects = the suffering body, “not some defect of knowledge… all these crazy things they say nowadays”).
• Perfections: grace, knowledge, power—Thomas adds power to John’s “full of grace and truth.”
• Grace: as individual man, as head of the Church; the grace of union already treated.
• Thirteen articles; one cannot understand the division of thirteen in advance, but: articles 1–8 split between gratia gratum faciens (sanctifying grace, with virtues and gifts) and gratia gratis data (a. 7, prophecy under it); then the excellence of the grace—fullness (as of Mary, “full of grace”; is it proper to Christ?), infinity, increase; the last article stands by itself.
• Article titles and where the difficulty lies: habitual grace; virtues; then faith and hope in particular but not charity (charity remains in the next world; hope depends on whether he already has the beatific vision); gifts of the Holy Spirit as distinguished from virtues; the gift of fear—“He’s afraid of himself?”

6. Article 1, objections and sed contra (“there was not habitual grace”) #

Point: three objections against habitual grace in the soul assumed by the Word (he notes Thomas says “soul”).

1. Grace is a partaking of the divine nature in a rational creature (2 Peter: “partakers of the divine nature”—“kind of a definition”); Christ is God not by participation but in truth. His gloss: not God by human nature—“even Father Dresser was right about that.”
2. Grace is needed to act well (1 Cor 15, “not I but the grace of God with me”) and to attain eternal life (Rom 6); as natural Son the inheritance is owed him, as Word he can do all good; so no grace needed beyond the grace of union.
3. What acts as an instrument needs no habit; the habit is in the principal agent (does the hammer need a habit to be used well?); Christ’s human nature is an instrument of his divinity (Damascene bk. III; also the Athanasian Creed likeness). Sed contra: Isaiah 11:2, the Spirit of the Lord rested on him, which is through habitual grace “as said in the first part.”

7. The response: three reasons (“the Lord gives grace and glory”) #

Point: habitual grace must be placed in Christ for three reasons.

1. Union of his soul to the Word: the nearer a receptive thing is to the cause pouring in, the more it partakes; grace is poured in by God (Psalm 83: grace in this life, glory in the next; glory is sometimes called gratia consummata). Nothing is closer to God than being united in the same person, so his soul receives grace most of all, more than any saint. Aside: an article (name unclear in recording) that Mary’s grace is “of the hypostatic order”—her proximity to Christ makes us expect a greater influx than any other saint.
2. Nobility of his soul, whose operations must attain God most nearly by knowledge and love—in his human nature, not divine; so that nature must be elevated by grace. “A very good argument.” (Aside: a punctuation question, some read the phrase as about prayer; Pius XII mentioned.)
3. His relation to the human race: as man he is mediator (1 Timothy), so his grace must overflow into others (John 1:16, “of his fullness we have all received, grace for grace”—he found “grace for grace” in Shakespeare too).

• Thomas often gives three reasons though more exist; “this is pretty thorough.”
• Aside: rereading the goodness of God in “my favorite book,” Summa Contra Gentiles: five chapters, twenty-two philosophical arguments (4 that God is good, 5 goodness itself, 6 that nothing bad can be in him, 3 good of every good, 4 summum bonum); the Summa Theologiae question has “only a little bit” of it—milk for beginners, as Thomas says.

8. The three replies (“not as an inanimate instrument”) #

1. Christ is true God in person and divine nature, but with unity of person there remains distinction of natures; his soul is not divine by its essence, so it becomes divine by partaking, i.e. by grace. “Beautifully solved”—the objection ignores the two natures. Aside: Thomas prays for more grace and that God reward the grace rather than him; God crowning the saints crowns the work of his own hands; one may pray that God move one’s will to love him, since God’s moving the will does not force it.
2. As natural Son the uncreated beatitude is owed him—the uncreated act by which the Father knows and loves himself (cf. Contra Gentiles I end, God’s beatitude, presupposing the Nicomachean Ethics notion of beatitude). Of that act the soul is not capable, by difference of nature: we never know God as much as he is knowable, love, praise or thank him as much as he deserves. So he attains God by the created act of enjoying God, only through grace. De Anima III: the natural object of our mind is something sensed or imagined, so God, unsensed, is known through them; grace raises us to know him as he is. Likewise for action: besides divine operation there is a human operation in Christ, perfected by habitual grace. Aside: “don’t you get tired of thanking God in heaven?"—no; “does God get bored being changeless?"—that would put a limitation on God.
3. The objection misses the distinction between an inanimate instrument (the hammer, only acted upon) and an instrument animated by a rational soul, which acts as well as is acted upon; for the suitability of that action it needs habitual grace.

• “So you’re all convinced now”: next, whether there are virtues in Christ.

His words #

• praeambula of the faith; things knowable by natural reason as well as faith.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; “the so-called Physics.”
• hypostasis; the individual substance, as against the nature; a person when of rational nature.
• personality; his term for one’s being a person having many things besides the nature.
• deficient likeness; a philosophical image (line-endpoint, father and son) that illustrates a mystery imperfectly.
• co-assumpta; the things assumed with (human nature) by the Son.
• gratia gratum faciens; sanctifying grace; gratia gratis data; the other kind (prophecy under it).
• gratia consummata; glory, as grace consummated.
• partaking; his rendering of participation, “grace is a partaking of the divine nature.”
• summum bonum; the highest good (from the Contra Gentiles list).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, prooemium (structure of the question)
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 7, a. 1 (objections, sed contra, response, replies)
• Catholic World Report (January), item on St Mary’s Parish, Brisbane, and Fr Dresser’s book Mentioned
• Thomas, Commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate (three uses of philosophy)
• Aristotle, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics; Physics I; De Anima III; Nicomachean Ethics (on beatitude)
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles I (goodness of God, five chapters; beatitude of God at the end of bk. I)
• Damascene, bk. III; Athanasian Creed
• 2 Peter (partakers of the divine nature); 1 Cor 15; Rom 6; Isaiah 11:2; Psalm 83; 1 Timothy (mediator); John 1:16; John 1 (“the Word was made flesh”; “the Word was toward God”)
• Summa Theologiae I (habitual grace, “the first part”)
• Shakespeare (“grace for grace”); an article on Mary’s grace of the hypostatic order

His questions #

• Is the form of this argument defective or not? No, the form is perfect; the defect must be in the matter.
• Is there any defect in the minor premise? No; “human being” means a man, an animal with reason, so the major is at fault.
• By human nature, am I a geometer? a logician? white? healthy? No; human nature is only that by which I am a man, so I am not the same as my human nature.
• How can the same person be a man and be God? Only through the distinction between the person and the nature the person has.
• Do you believe that God became man—and isn’t God changing when he becomes a man? No change in the person; something is drawn to and terminated at him, as X becomes the end of line B without changing.
• Is it due to some change in the father that he has become shorter than the son? No, the change is in the son; there is no change in the category of relation.
• Does the hammer need a habit in order to be used well by me? No; but Christ’s humanity is an animate instrument that also acts, so it needs habitual grace.
• Does God get bored being changeless? No; that would put a limitation on God.