The Bodily Defects Christ Took On (ST III q.14 a.1–4)

Orientation #

He begins straight from the prologue to q. 14, dividing the defects of the body from the defects of the soul, and ends by pointing ahead: “How could it be defects in the soul, right? This guy’s going on dangerous ground, isn’t he?” The previous class treated q. 13 on the power of Christ’s soul over his body, and the next takes up q. 15 on the defects of Christ’s soul.

The class, in order #

1. The prologue and its four questions (“first about the defects of the body”) #

He reads the division: whether the Son of God ought to take on bodily defects; whether he took on the necessity of being subject to them; whether he contracted them; whether he took on all such defects. An aside on a modern author who would say Christ’s passions were disordered — “What do you mean by that? But we’ll see.”

2. The four objections of a. 1 (“the body ought to be in all ways perfect”) #

1. Soul and body are alike united to the Word personally; the soul had every perfection of grace and knowledge; so the body should be perfect too. Student discussion: in the early Church a man with a bodily defect could not be ordained (a mute cannot pronounce the words; missing fingers); the Paschal Lamb had to be without blemish; a joke about a famous armless guitarist who played with his feet — “we can’t have a priest saying Mass with his feet.”
2. Christ’s soul saw the Word face to face and was therefore blessed; Augustine (Epistle to Dioscorus) says God made the soul so that from its fullest beatitude there flows over into the body not beatitude but “the fullness of health and the vigour of incorruption.” So Christ’s body was incorruptible. He comments: Christ must have prevented the overflow.
3. Pain follows guilt; there was no guilt in Christ (1 Pet. 2, “who did no sin”); so no penal bodily defects.
4. No wise man takes on what impedes his end. The infirmities impede the incarnation three ways: men are kept from knowing him (Isaiah 53 — “despised, the last of men… as it were hidden was his face”; he compares this to the brazen serpent Moses lifted up, serpents being “not very nice things”); the fathers’ desire “rise up, take on strength, arm of the Lord” seems unfulfilled; and the devil is better overcome by strength than by infirmity. He calls this “in some ways the most interesting objection.”

Sed contra: Hebrews 2 — in that in which he suffered and was tempted he can aid those who are tempted; with David, “I lifted up my eyes to the mountains, whence comes my help.”

3. The three reasons of the body of a. 1 (“especially on account of these three reasons”) #

1. Satisfaction. One satisfies for another’s sin by taking on himself the punishment due to it. Death — “the greatest one” — hunger and thirst (Christ’s thirst on the cross, his hunger after forty days) are the punishment of Adam’s sin (Rom. 5:12); so it suits the very end of the incarnation that he take these penalties in our flesh in our place (Isaiah 53, “truly he bore our sicknesses”). Aside: St. Alphonsus often draws on Isaiah in his meditations on the Passion.
2. Instruction in the faith of the incarnation. We know human nature only as subject to these defects — “we have no experience of Adam before his fall.” Without them he would seem not a true man but a fantastic one, as the Manicheans said; Phil. 2, “he emptied himself… found in habit as men”; Thomas the apostle was called back to faith through the sight of the wounds (John 20). Student: the modern extreme is the reverse — “I won’t believe he’s a man unless he has the baser defects,” unless “he racks up a whole series of sins.”
3. Example of patience. Hebrews 12:3, he sustained contradiction from sinners that we might not fail in our souls. He links this to Thomas’s prayer after communion, which names humility, obedience, patience — and charity.

On the order: a student proposes the first is the most necessary, and that the second and third serve virtues — faith and patience; faith comes first among virtues, and without faith that he truly became man the suffering would be “a fantastic redemption.”

4. Replies of a. 1 (“the matter of satisfaction would not be lacking”) #

• To 1: satisfaction has the punishments as its matter, but its beginning is the habit of the soul from which one is inclined to satisfy for another and from which the satisfaction gets its efficacy — for it would not be efficacious unless it proceeded from charity (1 Cor. 13, “if I give my body to be burnt and have not charity”). Hence a perfect soul in sciences and virtues, and a body subject to infirmities. He calls it “a very solid reply,” corresponding exactly to the first reason in the body: without that charity the suffering would not be satisfactory.
• To 2: by the natural relation of soul to body, glory overflows; but in Christ this natural relation was subject to the divine will, so that beatitude stayed in the soul and the flesh suffered what belongs to a passible nature (Damascene). Examples: the transfiguration — “pulls out the stopper,” at least a little, or the disciples would have been killed; the post-resurrection appearances, where he does not always let the glory through; Moses’ veil after coming down the mountain; a reported apparition in which only the hand could be shown, the whole body being too bright.
• To 3: punishment always follows guilt, actual or original, but sometimes the guilt of another for whom one satisfies — Isaiah 53, “he was wounded for our iniquities, broken for our sins.”
• To 4: the infirmity does not impede but most promotes the incarnation; though his divinity is hidden, his humanity is made known, and that is the road to his divinity (Rom. 5, “we have access to God through Jesus Christ”) — which he ties to Thomas’s explanation of “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The fathers desired not bodily but spiritual strength. Aside: Thomas often says the devil, by instigating Christ’s death, violated justice and so lost his right to hold us prisoner.

5. Article 2: necessity (“he was offered up because he wished”) #

Objections: Isaiah 53, offered because he willed, and will is opposed to necessity; Damascene (bk. III), nothing coerced in Christ, all voluntary; necessity is induced by something more powerful, and no creature is more powerful than Christ’s soul, whose office it is to conserve its own body. He warns: “don’t stop now because you might get the wrong answer.”

Sed contra: Rom. 8, sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin — whose condition is the necessity of dying.

Body: “fortunately, he studied the word necessity with his master Aristotle.” Two necessities:

• Necessity of coactio (force), from an extrinsic agent, contrary both to nature and to will, both of which are intrinsic sources.
• Natural necessity, following natural principles — of form (fire must heat) or of matter (a body composed of contraries must dissolve). Nature, as Aristotle shows in the second book of the Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics], is both matter and form.

Digression: why are there only two commandments of love and none to love yourself? Answer: because self-love is natural necessity, not force — “I’ve not been forced to love myself.” Richard III, “I am I” — he loves himself even for horrible things; and “I am my own worst enemy.” He notes Aristotle’s senses of necessity come in the fifth book [ed.: Metaphysics V], where the words treated are beginning, cause, element, nature, necessity.

Applied: by necessity on the side of matter Christ’s body was subject to death and the like, since by the beneplacitum of the divine will he permitted his flesh to act and suffer what was proper to it; this necessity came from the principles of human flesh. As to necessity of force repugnant to bodily nature, his body was subject to the nail piercing and the scourge striking. As repugnant to the will, there was no such necessity — neither in the divine will nor in the human will absolutely as it follows reason after deliberation, but only in the natural movement of the will, which naturally flees death. Hence “not my will but thine be done” speaks of the natural will; his deliberative human will was ordered to the divine will, and everything in him was perfectly ordered, with no disorder.

Replies: (1) he was offered because he willed, by divine and deliberate human will, though death was against the natural motion of the human will (Damascene); (2) answered in the body; (3) nothing was more powerful than Christ’s soul absolutely, but something can be more powerful as regards this effect — the nail as regards piercing — the soul being taken according to its own nature and power. Joke: “so I suppose if people had… the nails were bent when they struck.” Student question: did Christ preserve his own body through the Passion, so as to bear more than an ordinary man could and live longer? — “Some of the saints seem to say that. It’s a great question.” [left as a question]

6. Article 3: did he contract them? (“that together with nature we draw from our origin”) #

Objections: he drew flesh subject to these defects from his mother by origin; what is caused from the principles of nature is drawn with nature; he is likened to other men in these defects (Heb. 2), and other men contract them. Sed contra: these defects are contracted from sin (Rom. 5:12), and sin had no place in Christ. “It’s a very subtle thing he’s saying here.”

Body: contrahi, “drawn with,” implies the order of effect to cause — what is drawn of necessity together with its cause. The cause of death is sin; so those properly contract these defects who incur them from the debt of sin. Christ did not: with Augustine on John 3:31, “who is from above is above all” — from above came Christ, that is, from the height of human nature which it had before the first man’s sin; he took human nature without sin, in the purity of the state of innocence, and could likewise take it without defects. So he had these defects not by contracting them but from his own will.

7. Reply to the first: the Virgin’s flesh, and the Immaculate Conception (“Shame on you, Thomas”) #

Thomas replies that the flesh of the Virgin was conceived in sin — “Shame on you, Thomas. He’s got something to explain when he gets up there.” Discussion: there are texts in the Sentences commentary where Thomas seems to make her free of original sin; Fr. Peter’s remark that Thomas and Bonaventure have scattered through their writings the very reasons Scotus put together, but never collated them; a supposed traditional authority (a breviary reading) on the other side, which would weigh heavily if the point is known only by revelation. He gives Thomas’s own type of reason: God redeems all from sin, some by forgiving after the fact, one by preserving beforehand — with St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s image of the father who picks you up after the stone trips you versus the father who runs ahead and removes the stone, for which you are more thankful. Bañez (Teresa of Avila’s adviser) is recalled as very severe against her exemption, holding her sanctified in the womb like John the Baptist — and this after Trent, though Trent in treating original sin did not single her out; he was a Dominican, and may have drawn on Augustine’s authority.

Aside on Benedict XVI’s Milestones: the identification of revelation with Scripture, so that Scripture read by modern historical method leaves everything up for grabs and the scriptural scholars become “the alternative magisterium”; and Lonergan’s route, the magisterium as authority but historically conditioned, so only those who grasp the conditions can interpret it — “kind of trumps.” A student: after Vatican II everything was fluid, “as if nothing had been defined” — “we were back to prime matter.”

Returning: Christ’s flesh was taken from the Virgin without guilt, and he could have taken it without poena — translated here as “penalties,” not simply punishment or pain — but willed to take it on for the work of our redemption; so he had these defects not by contracting but by voluntarily assuming.

8. Replies 2 and 3 of article 3 (“one remote… the proximate cause is sin”) #

To 2: the cause of death is twofold — a remote cause on the side of the material principles, the body being composed of contraries, but this was impeded by the original justice given to Adam; hence the proximate cause is sin, which takes away original justice. Student: so by its own principles the body would still have grown old and fallen apart? — Adam’s body would not have grown old had he behaved as he should; apart from the preternatural gift it would have decayed. He adds that, given the immortality of our souls, the defect of a non-immortal body is what the preternatural gift takes care of; Christ, being without sin, would have had that gift, so sin is the proximate cause. To 3: Christ is likened to other men as regards the quality of the defect, not as regards its cause.

Aside: “Interesting individual is Christ — I’d like to have talked to him.” Augustine’s list of things he would like to have seen includes Rome in all its glory and Christ in the flesh; he would rather see “Thomas in all his glory,” Thomas lecturing — and the story of Thomas coming over the hill above Paris, the brother exclaiming at the beauty, Thomas answering that he would give it all for Chrysostom on John.

9. Article 4: did he take on all bodily defects? (“contraries are not able to come about together”) #

Objections: Damascene, what is not assumed is not cured, and he came to cure all; he took the fullness of all grace in the soul, so proportionally all defects in the body (“that’s imagination there, seeing a little proportion”); he took death, the chief defect, so a fortiori the lesser. Sed contra: contraries cannot be in the same subject at once, and some infirmities are contrary, from contrary principles — “you can’t have fever and chill at the same time”; so we human beings have to divide these defects up among ourselves.

Body: he took defects to satisfy for the sin of human nature, and for this the perfection of knowledge and grace in his soul is required — “this is what these modern heretics don’t see; they think he’s got to be ignorant of who he is, ‘Who am I?’” Therefore he assumed the defects that follow from the common sin of the whole nature, not those repugnant to perfection of knowledge and grace — ignorance, proneness to evil, difficulty toward the good — nor those caused in some men by particular causes, such as leprosy and the falling sickness, morbus caducus (Shakespeare speaks of it; Caesar is supposed to have had it). Such defects come sometimes from men’s own guilt, as from inordinate eating, sometimes from a defect in the forming power; neither belongs to Christ, whose flesh was conceived by the Holy Spirit, of infinite wisdom and power, unable to err or fail, so nothing was disordered in the rule or exercise of his life. He took the defects commonly found in all men from the first man’s sin — death, hunger, thirst, weariness — which Damascene calls natural and indetractible [ed.: “indetractable,” his own rendering, which he praises]: natural because they follow the whole nature, indetractible because they involve no defect of knowledge or grace. Joke: “Don’t wreck your reputation. Get detraction.”

Replies: (1) all the particular defects arise from the corruptibility and passibility of the body with particular causes added; in curing passibility and corruptibility by assuming them, he consequently cured the rest — “you didn’t have to be irascible and a coward and all these things.” (2) The fullness of grace and knowledge was owed to Christ’s soul as such, from the fact of its assumption by the Word, so he took every fullness of wisdom and grace absolutely; but the defects he took dispensatively, to satisfy for our sins, not because they belonged to him as such — hence only those sufficient to satisfy for the sin of the whole nature. Thus dying, hunger, thirst, weariness follow from original sin; being a coward, irascible, or a leper comes from particular causes acting on these common conditions. (3) Death comes to all men from the first parent’s sin; the other defects, though less than death, do not — so the reason is not similar.

His words #

• “defects” — the bodily infirmities Christ assumed; distinguished from the defects of the soul treated later.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics], book two: nature is both matter and form.
• “necessity of coactio” — necessity of force, from an extrinsic agent; vs. “natural necessity,” from natural principles of form or matter.
• “beneplacitum” — the good pleasure of the divine will, by which Christ let his flesh suffer what was proper to it.
• “natural movement of the will” vs. “deliberate will following reason” — the key to “not my will but thine be done.”
• “contrahi”, “drawn with” — to contract, i.e. to draw a defect of necessity together with its cause, the debt of sin.
• “poena” — rendered by the class not as punishment or pain but as “penalties.”
• “dispensatively” — how Christ took our defects, as against “absolutely” for grace and knowledge.
• “natural and indetractible” — Damascene’s names for the common defects Christ assumed.

Texts #

Read in class: Summa Theologiae III, q. 14, prologue and aa. 1–4 (objections, sed contra, body, replies); Isaiah 53 (several verses); Romans 5:12; Romans 8; Hebrews 2; Hebrews 12:3; Philippians 2; 1 Peter 2; John 3:31; John 20; Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus; Damascene, bk. III.

Mentioned: Aristotle, Physics II (inferred) and the fifth book on beginning, cause, element, nature, necessity (Metaphysics V, inferred); 1 Cor. 13 alluded to (“if I give my body to be burnt”); Thomas’s prayer after communion; St. Alphonsus’s meditations on the Passion; Thomas’s commentary on the Sentences; Scotus, Bonaventure, Bañez, the Council of Trent; Benedict XVI, Milestones; Lonergan; Thérèse of Lisieux; Shakespeare, Richard III and the falling sickness; Chrysostom on John.

His questions #

• Why did the soul escape the defects while the body did not? Because the natural overflow of the soul’s glory into the body was held back by the divine will, so that the flesh could suffer what belongs to it.
• Is the order of the three reasons significant? Yes — satisfaction is the most necessary; the second serves faith, which is first among the virtues, and the third patience.
• Why are there only two commandments of love, and no commandment to love yourself? Because loving oneself is natural necessity, not coercion; it needs no command and is implied in “love your neighbour as yourself.”
• Was it necessary that the nail pierce him? Yes, by necessity of force with respect to his bodily nature, though nothing was more powerful than his soul absolutely.
• Was Christ preserving his body through the Passion, so as to bear more than an ordinary man? Left open — “some of the saints seem to say that; it’s a great question.”
• Did Thomas hold the Virgin’s flesh conceived in sin? As written, yes — though he elsewhere gives the reasons Scotus later assembled, and his own principle (redemption by preservation) points the other way.
• If the proximate cause of death is sin, would Christ’s body still have grown old by its own principles? Only as remote cause: the preternatural gift of original justice would have prevented it, as in Adam.
• Must Christ take on all our defects? No — only those common to the whole nature from Adam’s sin, not those repugnant to perfect knowledge and grace, nor those from particular causes.