Summa III q.31 a.5–8: The Matter of Christ's Body – The Virgin's Pure Blood, Christ in Adam and the Fathers, and Why He Was Not Tithed in Abraham

Orientation #

He opens with his usual prayer and goes straight into article 5, continuing the question on Christ’s conception. He does not say what was done last time or what comes next; at the end he calls a break.

The class, in order #

1. Article 5: was Christ’s flesh conceived from the Virgin’s purest blood? (“I think the biology in these old days was kind of mixed up”) #

His framing before the objections: the old biology is confused — a woman’s period was taken to mark fertility because the blood could be “stamped” by the male; so “we’ll take this to the greater sense what Thomas says.”

Objections as he reads them:

1. The collect of the Feast of the Annunciation says the Word wished to take his flesh from the Virgin; flesh differs from blood.
2. Eve was formed miraculously from Adam — but from his flesh and bones, “bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh” (Gen 2:23) — so Christ’s body likewise from flesh and bone, not blood. (Aside: the friend who joked about “an extra bone” making Adam again.)
3. Christ’s body is of the same species as other men’s; those are formed from seed and menstrual blood, not “purest blood.”

Sed contra: Damascene (bk. III) — the Son of God put together for himself from the most chaste and pure bloods of the Virgin a flesh animated by a rational soul.

2. His answer to article 5 (“the woman administers the matter”) #

1. Christ’s conception followed nature in being from a woman, above nature in being from a virgin.
2. Nature’s condition (Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals): the woman supplies the matter, the man is the active principle — but a woman who conceives from a male is not a virgin.
3. So the supernatural side is that the active principle was divine power; the natural side is that the matter was like what other women supply.
4. That matter is the woman’s blood — not any blood, but blood brought by her generative power to a fuller “digestion,” apt for conception. He comments that this “comes closer to the idea of truth.”

Aside on semen = seed: the word suggests the whole seed comes from the man, “but we would say no, the fertilized egg is something from both.”

3. Replies in article 5 (“blood, which was not yet in act a part”) #

• To 1: flesh and bones are actual, attached parts; they cannot be taken without corruption or diminution of the body. Christ, who came to repair what was corrupt, should inflict no corruption or diminution on his mother’s integrity. So his body was formed from blood, which is flesh in potency, not in act. He glosses: blood carries nourishment to all the parts, supplying matter that can be formed into flesh and bone.
• To 2: Adam, as principle of human nature, had something in his body (the rib) not pertaining to his personal integrity, only to his being the beginning of the nature; from that Eve was formed without detriment. The Virgin had nothing of the kind, so nothing could be taken without corrupting her body.
• To 3: the woman’s seed is imperfect in the genus of seed, through the imperfection of the feminine power, and is not the matter required for conception (Aristotle). Further, even imperfect seed is resolved with concupiscence, which should have no place in this conception — hence Damascene: Christ’s body was not seminalis. Menstrual blood proper has a natural impurity of corruption, a superfluity nature expels; from that no offspring is formed. The blood used is the purgation of that pure blood, prepared by digestion. In other men even this carries the “impurity of lust,” since the mixture of male and female draws it to the place of generation; in Christ’s case the Holy Spirit united and formed it — hence “most chaste and most purified blood.”

His side-remark on the male determining sex: “they make fun of Henry VIII” for blaming his wives, but the male principle is responsible — “in that sense the male is more determinative, more active.”

4. Digression: the three appearances in John, and the 153 fish (“kind of order among these three appearances”) #

From his reading of Thomas on the last chapters of John:

• First appearance (Thomas absent): he breathes, “receive the Holy Spirit” — manifests his divine nature, since it is God’s to give the Holy Spirit.
• Second (Thomas present, “put your fingers here”) — manifests his individuality: the same individual who was on the cross.
• Third (to the seven, with Nathanael; eating fish and bread) — manifests that he has the same nature as they, eating in a human way, not from need.

The 153 fish: Thomas’s reckoning — seven gifts of the Holy Spirit × seven apostles = 49, plus 1 for their unity = 50, × 3 for the Trinity = 150, plus thought, word and deed = 153. Augustine’s (which he calls “a little more extreme”): getting to heaven by the ten commandments through the seven gifts, so 17 + 16 + 15 … down to 1 = 153. The fish are the saved, drawn up “on the shore of eternity,” and the net does not break — unlike the earlier catch, which is the Church in this world, where some fall away. He and a student work the summing trick aloud (pair first and last: 17+1=18, eight pairs of 18 plus 9 in the middle = 153) and joke it is a way to fall asleep — “or stay awake.”

5. Article 6: was Christ’s body in Adam according to signate matter? (“Hoc est verum figmentum”) #

The error behind the article (from his footnote): that Christ’s body was formed from a determinate portion transfused intact from person to person, Adam down to the Virgin — “this is a pure fiction.”

Objections:

1. Augustine (De Gen. ad litt. X): Christ’s flesh was in Adam and Abraham according to bodily substance — and “bodily substance” sounds like something individualized. (He notes Thomas’s usage materia signata for individual matter.)
2. Rom 1:3: Christ made from the seed of David according to the flesh; David’s seed was something individually signed in him.
3. Christ’s affinity to the human race comes from taking flesh from it; without signate matter derived from Adam he would have affinity rather to whatever else the matter came from.

Sed contra: Augustine — in whatever way Christ was in Adam and Abraham, other men were there too (though not conversely); and other men were there only according to origin, not signate matter.

His answer: the matter of Christ’s body was not the Virgin’s flesh or bone or anything actually a part of her body, but her blood; whatever she took from her parents was actually a part of her body, hence not the matter of Christ’s body. So Christ’s body was in Adam not as some designatable portion but according to origin, like the flesh of other men. And Christ’s body related to Adam only through his mother’s body, which itself was not in the fathers by signate matter. Joke: “I’m not a chip off the old block… Christ is not a chip off the old.”

Replies: (1) Augustine means not that Christ’s body was a bodily substance in Adam, but that the bodily substance of it — the matter taken from the Virgin — was in Adam as in an active principle, an efficient cause, not as in a material principle: the generative power of Adam and his descendants down to the Virgin prepared that matter, but the forming of it into Christ’s body was not by power of seed derived from Adam. “Then get original sin, I guess.” He stresses the distinction: other men are in Adam according to the active principle of seed; Christ’s body was in Adam according to bodily substance only, the active principle being the Holy Spirit. (2) Though Christ was not in the fathers by a seed-like reason, the Virgin was conceived from man’s seed and was in them that way; so through her Christ is said to be of the seed of David by way of origin. (3) Christ’s affinity to the race is by likeness of species — “an animal that has reason” — and likeness of species is taken from proximate matter and the active principle generating like in species, not from remote matter; so it makes no difference whence the matter of that blood was taken.

6. Article 7: was Christ’s flesh in the ancient fathers infected with sin? (“as if it’s preserved from the other parts of the body”) #

Objections: (1) Wis 7 — nothing stained enters into divine wisdom, and Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24); he notes the distinction between the flesh of Christ in the fathers and in Christ. (2) Damascene (bk. III): Christ took on the first-fruits of our nature, and in its first state human flesh was not infected. (3) Augustine: human nature always had, along with the wound, the medicine for the wound; what is infected cannot be the medicine.

Sed contra: Christ is referred to the fathers only through the Virgin’s body, and the whole of her body, as it was in the fathers, was subject to sin.

Answer: comparing Christ or his flesh to the fathers, error is possible in two ways: (a) attributing to Christ the condition of the fathers — e.g. saying Christ sinned in Adam, false, because his flesh was not derived according to the law of concupiscence or the seed-like reason; this mistake “you can make about the Blessed Virgin too”; (b) the reverse — attributing to what was in the fathers the condition of Christ’s flesh, i.e. positing some part of Adam’s body not subject to sin from which Christ’s body was later formed. His footnote assigns this to Hugh of St Victor. Two reasons it cannot be: first, Christ’s flesh was not in Adam according to signate matter that could be marked off from the rest “as the pure from the impure” (article 6); second, human flesh is infected because conceived through concupiscence, and the whole of it is so conceived, hence the whole is stained. So the whole flesh of the ancient fathers was subject to sin.

Replies: (1) Christ took flesh not subject to sin but cleansed from every infection — he notes this differs from the cleansing of the Blessed Virgin “in his opinion.” (2) “First-fruits” means likeness of condition — flesh uninfected as man’s was before sin — not a continuous line of preserved purity down to Christ’s body. (3) In human nature before Christ the wound (original sin) was there in act; the medicine was there only according to the power of origin, inasmuch as from those fathers Christ’s flesh was propagated.

Asides: his own names — “my name is really Christian Hugo Duane Berquist, and my confirmation name is Victor… I’m guilty as charged”; his brother Richard, hence Richard of St Victor; Italian forms of the fathers’ names (Ugo di Vittore, “Abba Pambo” as “Pombone”). Also: Thomas’s after-communion prayer asks for charity and patience — “need patience to go through all these things.”

7. Article 8: was Christ tithed in the loins of Abraham? (“Don’t recommend this for your Sunday sermon”) #

Word-play first: loins, lumbago, lumbar — the lower back; “decimated” = tithed, one in ten.

Objections: (1) Heb 7 — Levi, Abraham’s great-grandson (pronepos; the class jokes “nepotism”), was tithed in Abraham when Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek, because he was in his loins; Christ too was in Abraham’s loins. (2) Christ took flesh from the seed of Abraham through his mother, and his mother was tithed in Abraham. (3) Augustine: what is tithed in Abraham is what needed curing; all flesh subject to sin needs curing; and Christ’s flesh as in the fathers was subject to sin (art. 7). (4) This takes nothing from Christ’s dignity: the father of a high priest may give tithes to a priest, the son still being greater than a simple priest. He remarks on the article’s strangeness — “I don’t know about this Thomas sometimes… Augustine’s responsible for this nonsense.”

Sed contra: Augustine — Christ was not tithed there; he did not draw thence the fervour of the wound but the matter for the medicine.

Answer, “according to the intention of the apostle”: Paul proves the priesthood of Melchizedek greater than the legal priesthood, since Abraham, with Levi already in his loins, gave tithes to Melchizedek. If Christ too were tithed in Abraham, his priesthood would be less than Melchizedek’s, not according to his order. Why tithing signifies imperfection: he who tithes keeps nine and gives the tenth, and ten is in a way the limit of all numbers, which go forward as far as ten; so the giver professes himself imperfect and attributes perfection to the other. Human imperfection is from sin needing cure, and to cure from sin belongs to Christ alone — “the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world” (John, the Baptist speaking) — whose figure Melchizedek bears (Heb 7; he corrects himself mid-sentence on who bears whose figure). So Abraham’s tithe prefigures the one conceived in sin and all descended from him, who contracted original sin and need Christ’s cure. Isaac, Jacob, Levi and the rest were in Abraham not only according to bodily substance but according to the seed-like reason, through which original sin is contracted; Christ alone was there according to bodily substance only, hence not as needing cure but as the medicine of the wound. “This is very subtle, Thomas.”

Replies: (1) covered by the answer. (2) The Blessed Virgin, conceived in original sin, was in Abraham as needing cure and so was tithed, descending by the seed-like reason; Christ’s body is not so. He objects aloud: “but this ain’t the truth here, Thomas. Cut that out, my text, I guess.” (3) Christ’s flesh is called subject to sin in the fathers according to the quality it had in those tithed parents, not according to the quality it has as in act in Christ, who was not tithed. (4) The Levitical priesthood was derived by fleshly origin, so it was no less in Abraham than in Levi; Abraham’s tithing to a greater shows Melchizedek’s priesthood, as figuring Christ, greater than the Levitical. But Christ’s priesthood follows not fleshly origin but spiritual grace; hence a father may tithe to a priest as lesser to greater while his son, if a high priest, is greater than that priest — by spiritual grace, not fleshly origin.

8. Closing aside: honour in heaven (“all the laymen want to be king”) #

From Thomas on the Symbolum Apostolorum on eternal life: there will be knowledge in fullness, pleasure, and also honour. Thomas observes that laymen want to be king and priests want to be bishop — and heaven explicitly promises a kingdom, so the laity get what they want, and the priesthood there is something like a bishop’s status: “we’re going to get the honour that we seek in this life.” A student adds, “we’ll get to be Monsignor.” But, he ends, “St Anselm didn’t want to be bishop at all.” Then: “You should take a little break here.”

His words #

• “the collect” — the prayer of the Mass, here of the Feast of the Annunciation, quoted in objection 1.
• “digestion” — the concoction by which the woman’s blood is made “more ample or perfect,” apt for conception.
• “in ability or potency” [ed.: in potentia] — blood is flesh in ability, not in act.
• semen — “the word means seed,” as if the whole seed came from the man.
• seminalis / “seed-like reason” [ed.: ratio seminalis] — descent by the power of seed, through which original sin is contracted.
• signatum / materia signata — “individualized,” “individually signed,” “stamped” matter.
• corpulenta substantia — “bodily substance”; the only mode in which Christ was in Adam and Abraham.
• “first fruits of our nature” — Damascene’s phrase for what Christ took on.
• “decimated” / “tithed” — one in ten; the sign of professing oneself imperfect.
• pronepos — great-grandson (of Levi to Abraham).
• Pontifex — high priest.
• “Hoc est verum figmentum” — his footnote’s verdict on the transfused-portion theory: “a pure fiction.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 31, aa. 5, 6, 7, 8 (objections, sed contra, corpus, replies)
• John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa III (sed contra of a. 5; on seminal generation; on the first-fruits)
• Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram X (in aa. 6, 7, 8)
• Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals (woman supplies matter; blood as matter; woman’s seed imperfect)
• Genesis 2:23; Romans 1:3; Wisdom 7; 1 Corinthians 1:24; Hebrews 7

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John, final chapters (three appearances; the 153 fish)
• Augustine, on the 153 fish
• Thomas Aquinas, on the Symbolum Apostolorum (eternal life)
• Hugh of St Victor (named in his footnote as holding the rejected position in a. 7)

His questions #

• Was Christ’s flesh conceived from the Virgin’s most pure blood? Yes — from blood brought by her generative power to a perfect digestion, the matter women supply naturally.
• Why blood rather than flesh and bone? Flesh and bone are actual parts; taking them would corrupt or diminish his mother, and he came to repair corruption; blood is flesh in potency.
• Why not from the woman’s seed or menstrual blood? The woman’s seed is imperfect in the genus of seed and involves concupiscence; menstrual blood is a corrupt superfluity — Christ’s was the purified blood united by the Holy Spirit.
• Was Christ’s body in Adam and the fathers according to individually signed matter? No — only according to origin, through his mother’s body; the transfused-portion theory is a fiction.
• In what sense, then, was he in Adam “according to bodily substance”? The matter he took from the Virgin was in Adam as in an active principle preparing it, not as in a material principle, and not by the seed’s power.
• Was Christ’s flesh, as it was in the fathers, infected with sin? Yes — the whole flesh of the fathers was subject to sin; there was no preserved uninfected portion, since the whole is conceived through concupiscence.
• Was Christ tithed in the loins of Abraham? No — he was there only according to bodily substance, not the seed-like reason, hence not as needing cure but as the medicine; otherwise his priesthood would be less than Melchizedek’s.
• Was the Blessed Virgin tithed in Abraham? Thomas says yes, as conceived in original sin and needing cure — a reply he protests against (“this ain’t the truth here, Thomas”).