Aquinas on the Incarnation (ST III q.16, a.5–6): Can Human Things Be Said of the Divine Nature? Was God Made Man?

Orientation #

He says only “We’re up to Article Five here, I guess,” so the class continues the sequence of articles treated previously. The previous class treated earlier articles of the same question on predications about Christ.

The class, in order #

1. Opening: the Pope on reason and faith (“the vast potential of human reason”) #

Reading from the Catholic World Report on Benedict XVI meeting Cameroon’s Islamic community: religion’s urgent task is “to unveil the vast potential of human reason, which is itself God’s gift.”

• He hears in “vast potential” the definition of reason: the ability for large discourse — large (a) because discourse ranges over universal, less universal, more universal, least and most universal, and (b) because one can discourse about great things: the soul, human happiness, the cosmos, most of all God. “Nice confirmation of Shakespeare there.”
• The surprising line: “religion is purified and structured by reason.” Usually one would expect reason purified by faith; a student suggests the Pope, speaking to Muslims, means purified from superstition. “Structured” he glosses as ordered — again matching Shakespeare’s definition, reason “looking before and after.”

2. Aside: God’s law is not arbitrary (“they’re based upon something natural”) #

He has been reading Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 129, where Thomas gives seven strong arguments that God’s laws rest on something natural.

• Illustration from As You Like It: two pairs of brothers, an elder unjust to a younger, a younger usurping an elder — brothers unjust to brothers is the unnatural; the Forest of Arden (“finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything”) is the symbol of nature as the measure of good, and there they are reconciled. A friend at odds with his brother came back from the play “mildly disposed” toward him.

3. Article 5, the objections (“whether those things which are of human nature can be said of the divine nature”) #

The point: the whole article rests on the difference between what “God” signifies and what “divinity / divine nature” signifies.

1. Things of human nature are said of the Son of God; but God is the same thing as his own nature; therefore they can be said of the divine nature. — His diagnosis in advance: the objection reasons from the identity of the things and overlooks the difference in mode of signifying. Parallel: on John 1:1, one patristic reading takes “the beginning” as God himself; “the Word was in God” says one thing is in another, yet they are really the same — as “the divine nature is in God,” or “God has the divine nature,” where what he has, he is.
2. Damascene, book III: “we say that the nature of the Word was incarnate,” following Athanasius and Cyril. He wonders aloud how Thomas will handle so weighty an authority.
3. Things of the divine nature belong to Christ’s human nature — to know the future, to have saving power. “An interesting objection.” He predicts the solution will run on what can and cannot be participated.

4. Sed contra and the meaning of idiomata (“we do not name or say those things which are private”) #

Damascene, book III: of the divine nature we do not predicate what is private to human nature — idiomata, from Greek idios, private; hence an idiom in language is a private way of speaking (his French teacher: “That’s a French idiom — don’t fight it, accept it”). We do not say the deitas can suffer or is created.

5. Corpus: abstract vs. concrete names (“as they are signified in the abstract, as that by which”) #

Principle: what is proper to one thing cannot be truly said of another unless it is the same as that thing — risibile belongs only to what is man.

• In the Incarnation the two natures are not the same; only the hypostasis is one. The geometrical figure he keeps returning to: one point is the beginning of two lines, but the lines are not each other.
• Therefore: in the abstract (the nature as that by which), the properties of one nature cannot be said of the other. “Divine nature” signifies that by which God is God; to say what is proper to man belongs to the divine nature is to say what is proper to man makes God to be what he is — “that’s laughable.”
• In the concrete, names supply for the hypostasis, so what belongs to either nature may indifferently be said of them, whether the name gives both natures to understand (Christ — divinity anointing, humanity anointed), or only the divine (God, Son of God), or only the human (man, Jesus).
• Two hesitations he voices against Thomas’s own text: elsewhere Thomas says “Christ” names the anointed, hence the human nature — yet Peter’s confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” must be a complete profession of faith, since (Paul VI) the whole Church is built on Peter’s faith, so both natures must be in it. And “Jesus” means saving — is that not more apt of both, since as God he saves us even more? “Be careful about that though.”
• Leo the Great to the Palestinians: it does not matter from which substance Christ is named, since the person remaining inseparably one, the same is whole Son of Man on account of the flesh and whole Son of God on account of one divinity with the Father.

6. Why we cannot avoid the two modes of signifying (“the form and what has the form are not the same”) #

Digression tying back to Thomas on divine names: we say both that God is good and that he is goodness itself.

1. Reason’s proper object, per De Anima III, is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined.
2. In material things the form and what has the form are distinct.
3. So our speech carries this duality into talk of God, where neither mode is adequate: “good” answers to his being good, “goodness itself” to his simplicity.

7. Reply to objection 1 (“there is not the same way of signifying”) #

In divine things person really is the same as nature (from the study of the Trinity), and by that identity the divine nature is said of the Son of God; but the mode of signifying differs, so some things are said of the Son that are not said of the nature: the Son of God is generated, the divine nature is not (as in the First Part); the Son of God suffered, the divine nature did not. His gloss: “divine nature” signifies that by which God is God, and God is not God by anything human; “God” signifies that which has the divine nature — and that person could have, and did have, another nature, so things can be said of God by reason of the human nature: “the Word was made flesh.”

8. Reply to objection 2 (“incarnation more implies a union to flesh than the properties of flesh”) #

“Incarnation” names the union to flesh, not the properties of flesh; since each nature is united to the other in the person, the divine nature can be said to be incarnate and the human nature deified. His reaction: “I didn’t realize you were going to be so subtle. That’s pretty good.”

• Aside: Ammonius Hermias, the Neoplatonic commentator on the Peri Hermeneias, stands high with them because Thomas takes examples from him and criticises him less than other authorities — and Thomas’s own commentary breaks off where the medieval Latin translation of Ammonius breaks off. One place Thomas does not follow him is where Ammonius’s explanation is too subtle and Thomas prefers a simple one. Here he would not dare say that of Thomas; and Athanasius and Cyril are “pretty strong guys — you don’t mess around with those guys.”

9. Reply to objection 3: participation (“not according as they essentially belong”) #

Divine attributes are said of Christ’s human nature not essentially but participatively, i.e. had in a partial way; what cannot be partaken — to be uncreated, to be omnipotent — is in no way said of human nature. The reverse fails absolutely: the divine nature can receive nothing participatively from human nature, since it is purely perfect and complete act.

• Ethics parallel: will and emotions can partake of reason; can reason partake of the emotions? “Don’t think so” — it can be impeded or shaken by them; a student presses (“angry reasoning, fearful reasoning”) and he allows reason can in some way partake of their influence. But God can in no way partake of anything.
• Supporting argument from Summa Contra Gentiles (five chapters on God’s goodness: God is good; goodness itself; nothing bad in him; the good of every good; the highest good): if God were bad he would have to be essentially bad, since he cannot partake of badness — and badness itself is impossible, since it could not even be, to be being good.
• On St Paul’s “we see in part”: in the treatment of “perfect” and “whole” in the fifth book of the Metaphysics (inferred), Thomas notes, as in Physics III, that whole and perfect are near-synonyms; so imperfect and partial are near-synonyms, and partaking is bound to the imperfect — to partake is to take a part. Joke: “we’re partaking of the mind of Thomas Aquinas, who’s partaking of the mind of God — so we’re really a part of a part.”

10. Article 6, the objections (“this is false: God was made man”) #

1. “Man” signifies a substance, so to become a man is to come to be simply; but “God was made simply” is false, since all things were made through the Word. — He explains simpliciter vs. secundum quid: coming to school today, or learning geometry, or growing to five foot ten, is coming to be something; only his parents’ generating him was his coming to be.
2. To become a man is to be changed; God cannot be the subject of change (Malachi 3:6, “I the Lord, and I do not change”; and a canonical epistle, “not a shadow of change in him”). He defines change in passing: becoming other — staying the same is not changing.
3. “Man,” as said of Christ, supplies for the person of the Son of God; but “God was made the person of the Son of God” is false.

11. Sed contra (“the Word was made flesh”) #

John 1:14; flesh stands for man by synecdoche. Augustine in the Catena Aurea calls it part for the whole without naming the figure; Plato in the Symposium likewise speaks of giving the name of the part to the whole without a name for it — the names synecdoche and antonomasia come from the rhetoricians, though Thomas often picks them up. Athanasius, Epistle to Epictetus: “the Word was made flesh” is as if one said he was made a man — hence no heresy putting divinity in place of the human soul.

12. Corpus (“each thing is said to be made that which newly begins to be said of it”) #

To be man is truly said of God (established in a previous article), but belongs to him not from eternity but from time, through the assumption of human nature; therefore “God was made man” is true — though understood diversely by diverse persons, as with “God is man.” He notes the order of the articles: first that it is true to say God is man, then that this is said of him only from the fullness of time, hence “became.”

13. Reply 1: becoming simply (“in a suppositum newly created”) #

To become a man is to come to be simply only in those in whom human nature begins to be in a newly created suppositum. God is said to be made man because human nature began to be in a suppositum of the divine nature pre-existing from eternity; so for God to become man is not to come to be simply.

• The lines again: if a line and its endpoint come to be together, that point begins to be simply; but if a new line is drawn to the endpoint of an already existing line, that point does not begin to be simply — it begins to be the endpoint of this line.
• Parallel: when he learned geometry he did not begin to be, he began to be a geometer.
• Aside: John 17, eternal life is to know Thee and him whom Thou hast sent; Thomas sometimes explains heaven as knowing both God and the incarnate Word. So “going out and coming in, and finding pasture” — into the divine nature and out to the incarnate Word; Ezekiel’s book written inside and outside. So too they went from the Prima Pars to the Tertia Pars, finding pasture in both.

14. Reply 2: absolute vs. relative (“without his change, through the change of another”) #

1. Becoming implies something newly said of another.
2. Where this happens with a change in the subject, becoming is real change — and this holds in all absolute things: whiteness (a quality) or magnitude (a quantity) cannot newly come to a thing except by that thing’s being changed.
3. But relatives can be newly said without change in the subject: a man newly becomes on the right side by another’s motion; he himself was taller than his son and became shorter with no change or fault of his own, but by the son’s growth.
4. To be man belongs to God by reason of the union, which is a certain relation; so it is newly said of God without his change, through the change of the human nature assumed. “Therefore no change is to be understood on the side of God, but only on the side of human nature.” Also Psalms: “Lord, you are made a refuge for us.”

• Terminological note he flags: here absolute is opposed to relative, not to secundum quid, though Thomas elsewhere writes “absolute vel simpliciter.” Illustration by necessity: “two is half of four” is absolutely/simply necessary; eating is necessary only if you are to go on living — some starve to death. A student adds the college degree: necessary if you want a good job, but avoidable.

15. Reply 3 and close (“man supposes the person of the Son of God, not naked”) #

“Man” supplies for the person of the Son of God not naked but as subsisting in human nature; so although “God was made the person of the Son” is false, “God was made man” is true, because that person was united to human nature. “Very good, Thomas. You pass.”

• Closing story: Cajetan at his defence was picked up and carried off on shoulders by those he had invited for a beer at his expense — “so we’ll carry Thomas on our shoulders.”

His words #

• Ability for large discourse — his definition of reason, taken from Shakespeare: large both in ranging from least to most universal and in treating great things.
• Idiomata / idios — “private”; hence the proprietates of a nature, and hence an idiom in a language.
• Deitas — the divine nature signified in the abstract, “that by which one is God”; opposed to God, signifying “that which has the divine nature.”
• Hypostasis / suppositum — that which the concrete name supplies for; one in Christ, the natures two.
• Participative / to partake — to have in a partial way; “partake means to take a part.”
• Simply (simpliciter) vs. secundum quid — to come to be simply is to come to be at all; to learn geometry is to come to be a geometer.
• Absolute — here opposed to relative, not to secundum quid.
• Synecdoche — part for the whole, as “flesh” for “man.”
• Change — “becoming other.”
• Nudam (“not naked”) — the person as supplied for by “man,” i.e. as subsisting in human nature.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 16, a. 5 (objections, sed contra from Damascene bk. III, corpus, three replies)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 16, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, corpus, three replies)
• John 1:14; Malachi 3:6
• Leo the Great, Epistle to the Palestinians (as quoted by Thomas)
• Athanasius, Epistle to Epictetus (as quoted by Thomas)
• Pope Benedict XVI, address in Cameroon, quoted in the Catholic World Report
• Shakespeare’s definition of reason, and As You Like It (Forest of Arden) — probably from the handout “An Excellent Play,” p. 11 (inferred)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, c. 129; and the five chapters on God’s goodness
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on John 1:1; Catena Aurea (Augustine); commentary on the Peri Hermeneias; Summa Theologiae Prima Pars (divine names, the Trinity, God’s immutability)
• Aristotle, De Anima III; Physics III; Metaphysics V (inferred, on “perfect” and “whole”)
• Ammonius Hermias on the Peri Hermeneias; Damascene bk. III; Cyril; Plato, Symposium
• John 17; Ezekiel (book written inside and outside); Psalms (“you are made a refuge”); St Paul, “we see in part”; Peter’s confession
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (usurping brother)

His questions #

• Can things of human nature be said of the divine nature? No — not in the abstract, since the divine nature signifies that by which God is God, and what is proper to man cannot make God to be what he is.
• Can what is proper to the divine nature be said of Christ’s human nature? Yes, but only participatively, and only what can be partaken; not being uncreated or omnipotent.
• Can the divine nature partake of anything from human nature? No — it is purely perfect and complete act, and partaking belongs to the imperfect.
• Does “Christ” signify both natures or only the human? Thomas says both here (divinity anointing, humanity anointed), though elsewhere he takes it of the anointed human nature; he says “be careful.”
• Why can we not avoid saying both “God is good” and “God is goodness itself”? Because reason’s object is taken from sensible things, where form and what has the form differ; neither mode is adequate to God.
• Is “God was made man” true? Yes, because being man newly begins to be said of God, not from eternity but from time, by the assumption of human nature.
• Is becoming man for God to come to be simply? No — that happens only where human nature begins in a newly created suppositum; here the suppositum pre-existed.
• Does becoming man mean God changed? No — union is a relation, and relatives can be newly said without change in the subject; the change is wholly on the side of human nature.
• Is “absolute” here the same as “simpliciter”? No — here it is opposed to “relative,” though Thomas elsewhere writes “absolute vel simpliciter.”