Summa III q.16 a.1: Is It True That 'God Is a Man'? Predication, Supposition and the Incarnation

Orientation #

He opens by returning to the proemium of the question he had previewed, and ends “So now, ready for the second article.” He quotes the tag ex verbis inordinate prolatis incurritur haeresis (“from words uttered in a disordered way heresy is incurred”), attributed by Thomas to Hilary or Jerome, as the reason this question stands here. The previous class finished articles 8-10 on Christ’s human psychology and previewed the structure of the questions from 16 onward.

The class, in order #

1. The proemium and its division (“those things which follow upon union”) #

The point: locate the question. Things consequent on the union are divided three ways — (a) what belongs to Christ in himself, (b) what belongs to him in comparison to God the Father, (c) what belongs to him in regard to us. Under (a), twofold: what belongs to him according to his being and coming to be; and what belongs to him by reason of his unity (the next two or three questions). Aside: “sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”

2. Aside on the article in Greek (“you call me the teacher”) #

From the Catena Aurea on John 13 (the washing of the feet): Christ says “you call me the teacher and the lord.” The Greek has the article for both nouns, which translations drop; another instance of antonomasia (he is the teacher). Latin lacks the article, so Latin is missing a part of speech — “shows superiority of Greek to Latin.”

3. The twelve articles listed (“a lot of things here about predication”) #

He reads off the twelve questions: (1) is “God is a man” true; (2) is “a man is God” true; (3) can Christ be called homo dominicus, the lordly man; (4) can what belongs to the Son of Man be said of the Son of God and conversely; (5) can what belongs to the Son of Man be said of the divine nature, and what belongs to the Son of God of the human; (6) is “the Son of God was made a man” true (note: made a man, not “made flesh”); (7) is “a man was made God” true; (8) is “Christ is a creature” true; (9) is “this man began to be” or “was always”; (10) “Christ as man is a creature”; (11) “Christ as man is God”; (12) “Christ as he is man is a hypostasis or person.” He repeatedly says “be careful about that one.”

Digression on predication running through all of logic: going through the Peri Hermeneias with someone last night, the verb as sign of something said of something. Hence the De Praedicabilibus (genus, difference, species, property, accident — a complete division of names said univocally of many); the praedicamenta (categories); the four predicates in dialectic. In commenting the Metaphysics Thomas notes when Aristotle borrows from natural philosophy (per viam motus) and when from logic (per viam praedicandi).

4. The four objections of article 1 (“in remote matter is false”) #

1. Every affirmative statement in remote matter is false; “God is a man” is in remote matter, since the forms signified by subject and predicate are maxime distantes — farther apart than man and stone, and we cannot say “man is a stone.”
2. A fortiori from the Trinity: the three persons agree more than divine and human nature do, yet one person is not said of another (“the Father is the Son” would be radical). He notes Christ does say “the Father and I are one” — “there’s a hidden third thing there.”
3. Athanasius: as soul and flesh are one man, so God and man are one Christ. But “the soul is the body” is false; so “God is a man” is false.
4. What is said of God not relatively but absolutely belongs to the whole Trinity and each person; “man” is not relative but absolute; so it would follow that the whole Trinity and each person is man — clearly false.

Aside on a term: propositio is properly the name of a premise of a syllogism (“placed before”); by custom it came to stand for statement. He prefers to translate “statement,” though Thomas follows the custom. Aside on absolutum: often taken simply as the opposite of relativum (pros ti, ad aliquid), i.e. “in itself,” understood negatively — not toward another.

Joke: “So you all convinced now? If I drop dead at this moment… I have to explain it upstairs. Or downstairs, where they send me.”

5. Sed contra: Philippians 2 (“emptied himself, taking the form of a servant”) #

“One of the most beautiful texts for the incarnation.” He who was in the form of God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, in habit found as a man — so the one in the form of God is man; but he was in the form of God as God; therefore God is a man. “That’s pretty convincing.”

6. Digression: which is worse, to lose faith or charity? (“which is better to breathe or to philosophize”) #

Prompted by “conceded by all Christians” (aside: “but not by Roger Haight, apparently”). His classroom routine:

• Students say it is better to breathe than to philosophize because you cannot philosophize without breathing. That argues by the fallacy of equivocation: it shows only that breathing is prior in the second sense of “before” in the Categories, priority in being (this can be without that, not conversely — Aristotle’s example: one is before two), whereas “better” is the fourth sense.
• Then: worse to kill a man than a dog; worse to be blind than deaf — so the opposite of the worse is the better. Exception: when the lesser good is prior in being to the greater, losing the lesser is worse, because it carries the greater away with it.
• Charity is greater than faith (St. Paul). But faith is prior in being: you can have faith without charity (a dead faith), not charity without faith. So losing faith is worse — you lose charity too. Likewise despair, opposed to hope, is worse than lacking charity, “like poor Judas.”

7. The corpus: four ways of conceding the statement wrongly (“not according to the same reason”) #

All Christians concede “God is a man,” but not on the same understanding.

1. Manichaeans: the Word is a man not truly but fictitiously, a likeness, since the body was imaginary. Example: a bronze or painted figure on the wall is “called a man” by likeness — “that’s George Washington.”
2. Those denying soul and body were united in Christ (a position taken up out of fear that a united body and soul would give a human person, hence two persons — already refuted): for them “man” is said figuratively, by reason of the parts.
3. Photinus: truth on the man’s side, not on God’s — Christ is God by partaking, through grace, as holy men are called gods, only more excellently through more abundant grace. He notes Christ’s own use of “you are gods”: people take it as equivocating, but Christ argues a fortiori — if those who merely partake are called gods, how much more the one who has the divine nature. (Some editions read divus/divi.)
4. Nestorius and those positing two hypostases or supposita: both terms true, but not the truth of predication — “man” is said of God by a conjunction of dignity, authority, affection, or indwelling. Of two distinct supposita, one cannot properly be said of the other, only figuratively, as “Peter is John” because they are joined. Joke: “my wife might be my better half, but it’s never me.”

Therefore, granting that the true divine nature is united to a true human nature not only in person but in suppositum or hypostasis, the statement is true and said properly — for the truth of the terms and for the truth of predication. He notes hypostasis/suppositum is more general than person: a person is by definition a hypostasis of an intellectual nature.

8. Supposition: “the best way to translate supponere is to stand for” #

A name signifying a common nature in the concrete can stand for any of those contained in that nature. His examples: “Duane Berquist is the son of a man” — “a man” there stands for his father, not for universal man; “I am the father of a woman” — stands for his daughter Maria. So “God,” by its way of signifying (concrete, not abstract), can stand for the person of the Son. Student exchange on John 1:1: in “the Word was toward God,” God stands for the Father; in “God is a man” it stands for the Son — same name, both have the same nature. Since the person of the Son, for whom “God” stands, is also the suppositum of human nature, “man” is truly and properly said of “God” so standing, as “man” is said of Socrates and Plato.

9. Reply to the first objection (“not in remote matter but natural”) #

When diverse forms cannot come together in one individual substance, a statement whose subject signifies one and predicate the other is in remote matter. When they can, the matter is natural or contingent — his example: “the white one is [a man].” Divine and human nature, though most distant, come together through the incarnation in one individual substance, one person, and neither is in it per accidens but secundum se, substantially. So the matter is natural, and “man” is said of God per se, as its hypostasis — not by reason of the form signified by “God” but by reason of the individual substance which is the hypostasis of the human nature.

10. Reply to the second and third (“in the abstract… in the concrete”) #

Second: the three persons agree in nature but are distinguished in suppositum, hence not said of each other. In the incarnation the natures, being distinct, are not said of each other in the abstract (the divine nature is not the human nature), but because they meet in one suppositum they are said of each other in concreto. “God” signifies as having the divine nature, “man” as having the human; one person has both. His parallel: geometry is not health, but the one who has health is the one who has geometry — so “the healthy one is a geometer” is true, “geometry is healthy” is not.

Third: soul and flesh are signified in the abstract, like divinity and humanity; in the concrete they are “animated” and “corporeal/fleshly,” as God and man are concrete. So the ensouled is corporeal and the corporeal ensouled, though the soul is not the body.

11. Digression: Anaxagoras, Einstein, pantheism (“the ruler must be separated from the ruled”) #

Prompted by a bookstore volume on scientists and religion, in which Einstein praises Spinoza for making body and soul the same thing; Einstein’s God is pantheistic. Anaxagoras is the first Greek, among those whose fragments we have, to speak explicitly of a greater mind responsible for the distinction and order of the natural world — and he saw it must be unmixed with things, since if mixed it could not rule them; the general principle: the ruler must be distinct or separated from the ruled. Einstein reaches a greater mind but mixes it with the universe, so he does not get as far as Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras’ impiety: the sun is a burning stone (possibly from meteorites; one fell in the American southwest, known to the Indians, and one in his part of the world) — Aristotle rejected it, saying it would burn up on the way down; the Athenian authorities went after him, and through him at Pericles, who had befriended him. De Tocqueville (Democracy in America) has a short chapter on pantheism as the danger of democratic thinking — French and German thinkers; the Enchiridion Symbolorum shows 19th-century German theologians corrected for pantheism. He recalls a cardinal (Siri?) writing on pantheistic statements in Hans Küng and Brunner. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, where Thomas shows God responsible for the distinction and order of things, Anaxagoras is often brought in.

12. Reply to the fourth, and meaning vs. standing-for (“the word God has the same meaning”) #

“Man” is said of God not by reason of the nature of God but by reason of the union in the person, and that union implies a relation; so the rule about absolute names said of each person from eternity does not apply.

What he insists on: supposition is not a change of meaning. “I’m married to a woman” — “a woman” stands for Rosalie; “I’m the son of a man” — for Victor Berquist, his father. But “man” has not taken on a new meaning. It would be “really wrong,” false, to say that in “I’m the son of a man” and “I’m the father of a man” the word man has two meanings. So too “God” has the same meaning in “God is a man” and in “the Word was toward God,” standing in one case for the Son, in the other for the Father — “God from God.” To say otherwise is ex verbis inordinate prolatis.

But “man might become God” (of us, or “you are gods” in the psalms) is a different meaning of “God” — by partaking. Parallel from the Ethics: “reasonable” said essentially (of reason itself) and by partaking (a reasonable love, fear, anger), the latter said by relation to the first. So we are gods by partaking without having the divine nature. Thomas also speaks of idols called gods, false gods; Heraclitus, talking to the statues, said it was like a man talking to his house. A student recalls Acts, where they want to take Paul for a god, and a minute later, after the Jews come, want to kill him.

13. Is this distinction grammar or logic? (“he has to be too subtle for the grammarian”) #

Student question: where does the distinction of meaning and supposition belong? Answer: logic; to the grammarian “God” is just a noun. His standing joke against grammarians: “equilateral triangle” and “green triangle” get the same grammatical analysis, noun modified by adjective — but equilateral is a species-making difference and green an accident. “I am a stone. Fine.”

Student: does Aristotle touch this distinction? Not as explicitly as Thomas, but he understands it — it is involved right away in the Categories, where he uses concrete names in distinguishing the categories (since they are distinguished in comparison to substance), then abstract names within a category. The relation of virtue to courage and temperance is the same as that of virtuous to courageous and temperate; but to show these qualities are something of substance you need the concrete: you cannot say “the man is courage,” only “he is courageous.”

His words #

• ex verbis inordinate prolatis incurritur haeresis — “from words uttered in a disordered way heresy is incurred”; quoted from Hilary or Jerome as the reason for this question.
• antonomasia — calling him “the teacher” as though there were only one.
• propositio — “placed before”; properly the premise of a syllogism; he prefers “statement” over “proposition.”
• remote matter — matter of a statement whose subject’s and predicate’s forms cannot meet in one individual substance; opposed to natural and contingent matter.
• absolute — not toward another; opposed to relative (pros ti, ad aliquid).
• supponere — “to stand for”; a concrete name standing for a singular having the nature.
• suppositum / hypostasis — the Latin and Greek for the same thing; more general than person (a person is a hypostasis of an intellectual nature).
• way of signifying — concrete vs. abstract; why “God” can stand for the Son but “divinity” cannot be said of “humanity.”
• homo dominicus — “the lordly man” (article 3, not yet treated).

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 16, proemium; the list of the twelve articles; a. 1 in full (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies).
• Philippians 2:6-7 (the sed contra).

Mentioned

• Catena Aurea on John 13; John 1:1.
• Athanasius (source of obj. 3); Hilary or Jerome (the heresy tag).
• Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias; Categories (senses of “before”; concrete and abstract names); Metaphysics with Thomas’ commentary; Ethics (“reasonable” by partaking).
• Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles on God as cause of distinction and order (inferred: SCG IV, ch. 3 matched in the audio).
• Anaxagoras’ fragments; Heraclitus on statues; Acts of the Apostles (Paul taken for a god); Psalms (“you are gods”).
• De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, chapter on pantheism; Enchiridion Symbolorum; Spinoza, Einstein, Hans Küng, Brunner, Roger Haight.

His questions #

• Why is this question placed here? Because words uttered in a disordered way incur heresy — one must know how to speak of Christ.
• Is “God is a man” true? Yes, properly and truly, both in its terms and in its predication.
• Is the human nature of Christ his divine nature? No — in the abstract one cannot be said of the other.
• Which is worse, to lose faith or to lose charity? To lose faith, since faith is prior in being and losing it carries charity away too.
• Which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? Why? Breathing is only prior in being; to conclude it is better is the fallacy of equivocation between the second and fourth senses of “before.”
• In “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God,” what does “God” stand for? The Father; in “God is a man” the same name stands for the Son, with no change of meaning.
• Can you say “this healthy one is a geometer”? Is geometry health? Yes to the first, no to the second — concrete names of one suppositum are predicable, abstract ones are not.
• Does the distinction of meaning and supposition belong to grammar or logic? Logic; the grammarian sees only a noun.
• Does Aristotle touch this distinction? Not as explicitly as Thomas, but he understands it — it is at work in the Categories.