Summa III q.32 a.1–3: The Holy Spirit and Christ's Conception – Appropriation to the Spirit, 'Conceived de Spiritu Sancto,' and Why the Spirit Is Not Christ's Father

Orientation #

He opens straight into the prologue of the question on the active principle of Christ’s conception and reads through articles 1–3, stopping just short of article 4 (“we get four two… wait too long and we get stuck in the bus”). He also refers back to an earlier article on appropriation (“we had the article back there about… appropriated”). The previous class treated the formation of Christ’s body from the Virgin’s blood and its presence in Adam and the patriarchs.

The class, in order #

1. The prologue: four questions (“about this four things are asked”) #

He lists the division: (1) whether the Holy Spirit was the active principle of Christ’s conception; (2) whether Christ may be said conceptus de Spiritu Sancto — “that preposition de, you know… you have to understand Latin”; (3) whether the Holy Spirit may be called Father of Christ according to the flesh — “I’m sure Thomas will say no”; (4) whether the Blessed Virgin did anything actively in the conception. He notes that (4) is not about the act of conception itself.

2. Objections of article 1 (“undivided are the works of the Trinity”) #

1. Augustine (De Trinitate I): the works of the Trinity are undivided, as the essence is undivided — “that’s why we say in the name of the Father,” singular. Effecting the conception is a divine work; so it should not be attributed to the Spirit more than to Father or Son. He notes at once: this is a question of appropriation.
2. Galatians 4:4, “God sent his Son, made of a woman”; Augustine (De Trinitate IV): he was sent in that in which he was made of the woman. But mission is attributed most of all to the Father; so the conception should be attributed to the Father.
3. Proverbs 9:1, “Wisdom built for itself a house”; Christ is the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24); the house is his body, his temple (John 2). So the conception should be attributed to the Son. Sed contra: Luke 1:35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.”

Aside on John’s “the disciple whom Christ loved”: he asks whether this phrase is really antonomasia — not one word, but functioning as one — since Christ obviously loved others too; “it’s amazing how important antonomasia is there in Scripture.” Parallel raised: Christ addressing his mother as “woman.” Thomas’s own explanation offered instead: at Cana she asks a miracle, which he does not as man but as God, and she is not his mother as God; on the cross, suffering in his human nature, he acknowledges her as mother.

Aside: “Okay, you have me thoroughly confused, Thomas” — his old teacher Cuthbert used to say it is the business of the teacher to confuse the issue; “makes us stop and think.”

3. The body of article 1: three reasons for the appropriation (“appropriated, nevertheless, to the Holy Spirit”) #

The conception of Christ’s body is the work of the whole Trinity, yet appropriated to the Holy Spirit — just as creation is appropriated to the Father in the Apostles’ Creed (“I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”), though the Son and Spirit also created.

1. On the side of God, the cause of the Incarnation: the Holy Spirit is the love of Father and Son; the Incarnation came from the greatest love of God (John 3:16, said to Nicodemus). “That’s usually the reason that we give.”
2. On the side of the nature assumed: that human nature was assumed from no merits but from grace alone; grace is appropriated to the Spirit (“divisions of graces, but the same Spirit”). Augustine, Enchiridion: Christ’s being born of the Holy Spirit insinuates the grace of God, with no merits preceding.
3. On the side of the end of the Incarnation: that the man conceived be holy and Son of God; both are appropriated to the Spirit — through him men are made sons of God (Gal 4:6, “Abba, Father”), and he is the Spirit of sanctification. So, as others are sanctified by the Spirit to be adopted sons, Christ is conceived in sanctity by the Spirit to be the natural Son. Gloss on Romans 1:4 ties “predestined the Son of God in power” to “according to the Spirit of sanctification”; and the angel’s “therefore what will be born of you will be holy and will be called the Son of God.”

He stresses the angel’s mind: “Think of the mind this angel had… he said what he meant, what he said.” Aside from Thomas on the Apostles’ Creed: if a peasant would seem stupid not to believe a philosopher, yet the distance between peasant and philosopher is nothing compared with that between our mind and the angelic mind — so it is far more unreasonable for the philosopher not to believe the angel.

Summary he gives: love, grace, sanctification, sonship — all appropriated to the Holy Spirit.

4. Replies of article 1 (“to the Father is attributed authority”) #

• Reply 1: the work is common to the whole Trinity but attributed in a way to individual persons: to the Father, authority or origin with respect to the person of the Son; to the Son, the assumption of the flesh; to the Holy Spirit, the formation of the body assumed, since he is the Spirit of the Son (Gal 4:6). Comparison: as the formative power of the soul in the seed is contained in the spirit in the seed and forms the body in ordinary generation, so the power of God which is the Son (1 Cor 1:24) formed through the Holy Spirit the body he assumed. The angel’s words show both: “the Holy Spirit will come upon you” (preparing and forming the matter) and “the power of the Most High will overshadow you” — overshadowing because the incorporeal light of divinity will be formed in a body; shadow is from light and body. He expands on appropriation in the Creed: sanctification, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins are appropriated to the Holy Spirit — “the soul of the Church”; Christ breathes the Spirit on the apostles for forgiveness of sins, though not the Spirit alone forgives. He notes the new form of absolution names Father, death and resurrection of the Son, and the sending of the Spirit for forgiveness; and that Thomas divides the articles of faith somewhat differently, without appropriation — “we’ll talk about that sometime.” Joke from the class: “the new and improved St. Thomas.”
• Reply 2: mission regards the person assuming, who is sent from the Father; conception regards the body assumed, formed by the Spirit’s operation. Mission and conception are the same in subject but differ in definition (“that’s the old philosophical term”). Mission is attributed to the Father, from whom the Son proceeds — the Son does not proceed from the Holy Spirit; effecting the conception to the Spirit; taking on flesh to the Son — and that is no appropriation, “He’s the only one that took on flesh.”
• Reply 3: Augustine, Questions on the Old and New Testament: the house may be understood in two ways (in geminam) — the Church, which Christ built for himself by his blood, and his body, called his temple. What is done by the Holy Spirit is done by the Son of God on account of the unity of nature and will — “the one power.”

5. Article 2 and the preposition de (“he does not say de ipso, but ex ipso”) #

Objections:

1. Gloss of Augustine on Romans 11:36: note he does not say de ipso but ex ipso — heaven and earth are ex ipso because he made them, not de ipso, because they are not of his substance. The Holy Spirit did not form Christ’s body of his substance; so not de Spiritu Sancto.
2. The principle de quo something is conceived has itself as the seed. Jerome (Exposition of the Catholic Faith): not as some most wickedly (sceleratissime) opine, that the Holy Spirit is in place of the seed; rather by the power of the Creator the body of Christ was formed.
3. Nothing is formed out of two things except by some mixture; Christ’s body was formed de Virgine Maria; so de Spiritu Sancto would imply a commixture of the Spirit with the matter the Virgin supplied — plainly false. Sed contra: Matthew 1:18, “before they came together she was found with child de Spiritu Sancto.”

A long class exchange on the creeds: whether the Nicene has de Spiritu Sancto and ex Maria Virgine; a student reports the Greek of an early creed in Denzinger reads ex; the Syriac has no distinction, one word for both; English renders Deum de Deo as “God from God”; the Apostles’ Creed in English says “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” Observation from the class: “by” indicates efficient causation more, “from” material.

Aside: the Missale Romanum his brother Mark left in a church in Quebec, mailed back to their mother in St. Paul by a stranger who found the address inside.

6. Body and replies of article 2 ("de designates both relations") #

Conception is attributed not to the body alone but to Christ by reason of his body. The Holy Spirit has a twofold relation to Christ: to the Son of God, who is said to be conceived, the relation of same substance; to his body, the relation of efficient cause. The preposition de designates both relations — as we say a man is de suo patre. So Christ may fittingly be said conceived de Spiritu Sancto: efficacy toward the body assumed, consubstantiality toward the person assuming. (“Efficacy means maker.”)

• Reply 1: the body, not being consubstantial with the Spirit, is not properly said conceived de Spiritu Sancto but rather ex Spiritu Sancto. Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit: what is ex aliquo is either from the substance (as the Son from the Father) or from the power (as all things from God) — and in the latter way Mary had in her womb from the Holy Spirit.
• Reply 2: Jerome seems to differ from other doctors. Chrysostom on Matthew: the Holy Spirit went before into the Virgin, “the divinity coming in for the seed”; Damascene (book III): the wisdom of God overshadowed her as a divine seed. Thomas resolves it: taken as the active power in the seed, Chrysostom and Damascene compare the Spirit (or the Son, the power of the Most High) to seed; taken as the bodily substance transformed in conception, Jerome denies the Spirit was seed. “Sic facile solvitur — no problem for great Thomas.” A student asks whether Jerome was then calling Chrysostom and Damascene stultissimi; answer: “not according to St. Thomas.”
• Reply 3: Augustine, Enchiridion: it is not said in the same way that Christ is conceived de Spiritu Sancto and de Maria Virgine — of the Virgin materialiter, of the Spirit effective; therefore there is no place here for commixture. He notes “from” is equivocal: it can name matter, or the opposite, or the efficient cause.

Digression on Jerome’s temper: his controversies with Augustine (hence Augustine’s letter/work on Genesis) — “Jerome had a controversy with just about everybody. Except the women”; a choleric temperament. Thomas on anger, under “thou shalt not kill”: the Stoics wanted the wise man wholly without emotion, the Peripatetics wanted emotions moderated by reason; Thomas judges the latter far truer, else why would we have the capacity for emotion at all — and Christ’s anger as example, but within reason. Francis de Sales had anger to overcome. St. Alphonsus (On the Love of Jesus Christ), on the canticle of charity: since love is patient, one who really loves Christ loves to suffer. Then an extended topical exchange on the anger of men in power — LBJ at the St. Mary’s College centenary in California, Kennedy “cold as ice,” Clinton’s rages, and Obama’s “compressed fury” and his speech attacking the Supreme Court decision on corporate spending, with Alito’s “it’s not true.”

7. Article 3: objections (“the father gives the active principle”) #

1. Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals: the father gives the active principle, the mother ministers the matter; the Virgin is called mother of God by reason of the matter she supplied; therefore the Spirit should be called father by reason of the active principle. “That’s a good argument.” His own gloss: when the man’s role is over there is very little matter there, and all the matter of the next nine months comes from the mother — “so there’s still some truth in the saying” — with the class noting the kinship of mater and matter.
2. As the minds of other saints are formed by the Spirit and they are called sons of the whole Trinity, so Christ’s body formed by the Spirit would make him son of the Spirit.
3. God is called our father because he made us (Deut 32: “Is he not thy father, who possessed thee and made thee and created thee”); the Spirit made Christ’s body. Sed contra: Augustine, Enchiridion: Christ is born of the Holy Spirit but not as a son, and of the Virgin as a son. He adds Augustine’s saying: a father in heaven but no mother, a mother on earth but no father.

8. The body of article 3: sonship requires likeness of species (“only that which is generated in a likeness”) #

1. The names father, mother, son follow on generation — not any generation, but properly generation of the living, and especially of animals. Fire generated is not called the son of the fire generating it, except metaphorically; we say this only where generation is more perfect. (The acorn is a boundary case: “in some ways” a living thing, but sonship belongs especially to animals. A joke: “the acorn is the father of Obama” — corrected in play to “the child.”)
2. Not everything generated in animals takes the name of son, but only what is generated in a likeness of the generator. Augustine’s examples: a hair born from a man is not the man’s son; nor is a man born said to be the son of the seed — because the hair lacks the likeness of the man, and the man born is like the man generating, not the seed.
3. Perfect likeness gives perfect sonship, imperfect likeness imperfect sonship: man is called God’s son imperfectly, both as created to his image and as made like him by grace — “a partaking of the divine nature,” as Peter says.
4. Key principle: what is said of something according to the perfect notion is not said of it according to an imperfect notion. As Socrates, said to be a man naturally by the proper notion, is never called a man in the sense in which a picture of a man is called a man.
5. Therefore Christ, who is Son of God according to the perfect notion of sonship, though as man he is created and justified, is not called Son of God by reason of creation or justification but only by his eternal generation — and so in no way is he to be called son of the Holy Spirit, nor of the whole Trinity. Class gloss: “So I’m not the son of my painting, right? My statue” — even if the statue somehow had life. Aside attached to the hair example: in Job, on hearing of his children’s death, Job tears his garments and cuts his hair — garments are goods close to the body but not of it, hair is from the body but not the body; both signify the loss of things that came from him yet were possessed outside himself.

9. Replies of article 3 (“not according to a likeness of species”) #

• Reply 1: Christ is conceived of the Virgin, who supplies matter in the likeness of species — she is a human being — and so he is her son; of the Holy Spirit as active principle, but not according to likeness of species as a man is born of his father; so not son of the Holy Spirit.
• Reply 2: men spiritually formed by the Spirit are not sons of God according to the perfect notion of sonship, but by an imperfect sonship according to the likeness of grace, which is from the whole Trinity; of Christ the case is different, as in the body of the article.
• Reply 3: he notes the same answer serves for the third objection.

He breaks off before article 4.

His words #

• appropriated / attributed — of a work common to the whole Trinity, assigned to one person by some fitness, as creation to the Father in the Creed.
• antonomasia — a descriptive phrase standing for a name, as “the disciple whom Christ loved.”
• the same in subject… differ in their definition — “that’s the old philosophical term” [ed.: same in subject, different in ratio], of mission and conception.
• de vs. ex — de connoting from the substance; ex either from substance or from power; de also able to mark efficient causality, as “de suo patre.”
• efficacy — “efficacy means maker” [ed.: efficient causality].
• materialiter / effective — of the Virgin and of the Spirit respectively in the conception.
• secundum metaphoram — the sense in which fire generated could be called son of fire.
• perfect / imperfect notion (ratio) of sonship — by likeness of species vs. by image or grace.
• choleric temperament — of Jerome.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 32, prologue and aa. 1–3 (whole: objections, sed contra, corpus, replies).
• Within them, quoted: Augustine, De Trinitate I and IV; Enchiridion; Questions on the Old and New Testament; Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit; Jerome, Exposition of the Catholic Faith; Chrysostom on Matthew; Damascene III; Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals; Luke 1:35; Matt 1:18; Gal 4:4 and 4:6; Prov 9:1; 1 Cor 1:24; John 2; John 3:16; Rom 1:4 with the gloss; Rom 11:36 with Augustine’s gloss; Deut 32.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed (peasant, philosopher, angel); his division of the articles of faith.
• Thomas on anger, under “thou shalt not kill” (Stoics and Peripatetics).
• Thomas on Job (garments and hair).
• Augustine’s work on Genesis occasioned by controversy with Jerome (inferred: De Genesi ad litteram).
• Alphonsus Liguori, On the Love of Jesus Christ; Francis de Sales.
• Denzinger (Greek text of an early creed); the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds; the Syriac creed; the Missale Romanum.

His questions #

• Why should the conception be appropriated to the Holy Spirit rather than to Father or Son? Because it fits the cause of the Incarnation on God’s side (love), on the side of the nature assumed (grace, not merit), and its end (holiness and sonship) — all appropriated to the Spirit.
• Is “the disciple whom Christ loved” really antonomasia, since it is not one word? He takes it to function as antonomasia; Scripture uses it much.
• Why does Christ call his mother “woman” at Cana? Thomas: she asks a miracle, which he does as God, and she is not his mother as God; on the cross, suffering as man, he calls her mother.
• Can Christ be said to be conceived de Spiritu Sancto? Yes, because de marks both consubstantiality (toward the person conceived) and efficient causality (toward the body); but of the body alone ex is more proper.
• Was the Holy Spirit “in place of the seed,” as Jerome denies and Chrysostom and Damascene seem to affirm? As active power, yes (Chrysostom, Damascene); as bodily substance transformed, no (Jerome) — the difference is only in what “seed” means.
• Was Jerome then calling Chrysostom and Damascene most foolish? Not according to St. Thomas.
• Should the Holy Spirit be called the Father of Christ according to humanity? No: sonship in its perfect notion requires generation in likeness of species, and Christ is Son by eternal generation alone; so not son of the Spirit nor of the whole Trinity.
• Is the acorn the son of the oak? Sonship belongs to generation of the living “in some ways,” but especially of animals; left as a boundary case.