Christ's Two Births, Mary as True Mother and Mother of God, and Whether Christ Has Two Sonships

Orientation #

He continues reading q. 35 article by article, having already treated a. 1 (birth pertains to nature or person) (prev. lecture); he breaks at a. 5’s replies, saying “It’s four thirty,” and stops after the reply to the third objection. The next class takes up q. 35, aa. 6–8.

The class, in order #

1. Four objections against a temporal birth (“to be born is like a motion of a thing not existing”) #

• Obj. 1: to be born is like a motion of a thing not existing before, that by the birth it might be; but Christ was from eternity. — He anticipates the answer: Christ came to be a man secundum quid, “that old distinction again.”
• Obj. 2: what is in itself perfect does not need birth; the person of the Son was eternally perfect. — His aside: “but he wasn’t a perfect man.”
• Obj. 3: birth belongs properly to a person; in Christ there is only one person, hence one birth — one by which he simply is.
• Obj. 4: what is born by two births is twice born; but “twice” requires an interruption (as one is said to run twice who runs with an interruption), and the eternal birth has none.
• Sed contra: Damascene (book III): two births, one from the Father eternal, one in the last times on account of us.
• Aside: the liturgy matches this — the midnight Mass with the Gospel of St. John celebrating the eternal birth; as they also distinguish three comings of Christ. “Lex orandi, lex credendi.”

2. The body of a. 2: birth specified by its term (“nature is compared to birth as the term”) #

1. Nature stands to birth as the term of a motion or change.
2. Motion is diversified by the diversity of its terms — the Philosopher, fifth book of the Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics], “the book where Aristotle distinguishes between various kinds of change.”
3. In Christ there are two natures, one from the Father eternally, one received in time from his mother.

• Therefore two births must be attributed to Christ.

3. The replies of a. 2 (“the first objection is that of Felician, the happy one”) #

• Reply 1 = Augustine, Contra Felicianum (“the happy heretic”). The supposition: a universal world-soul that gives life to seed without being compounded with what is begotten; reaching the womb it fashions passible matter to its purpose and from active soul and passive matter one man results from two substances. So the soul is said to be born from the womb, though it was not nothing before. Far more sublimely the Son of God is born as man: not one substance from both, but one person from both — yet we do not say the Son of God began, lest his divinity be temporal, nor that his flesh was eternal, lest the body be thought untrue. He reads a published English version aloud after his own Latin, admitting: “I don’t get that very well.”
• Reply 2 = Nestorius’ argument, solved by Cyril in an epistle (in the Acts of Ephesus): it is foolish to say the co-eternal Son needed a second begetting for himself; uniting to himself according to subsistence what is human, he came forth from a woman for us and our salvation, and so is said to be born in flesh. “He didn’t need this temporal birth for himself, but for us.”
• Reply 3: birth is of the person as subject, of the nature as term; one subject can have many changes varying by their terms. Caveat: the eternal birth is not really a change, but is signified by way of change. One birth terminates in the divine nature, the other in the human.
• Reply 4: Christ can be said twice born, as one is said to run twice who runs at two times — eternity and time differ much more than two times do, yet both designate a measure of duration.

4. a. 3: Mary the true and natural mother (“the Blessed Virgin did nothing actively”) #

• Obj. 1: she contributed nothing actively, only administered the matter — else we would be the mother of the bed or stool.
• Obj. 2: the generation was miraculous, and a miraculous generation does not suffice for motherhood: Eve is not called Adam’s daughter.
• Obj. 3: a mother requires the cutting off of seed, but Damascene (bk. III) says Christ’s body was formed not of seed but by the Holy Spirit.
• Sed contra: Matthew 1:18. Body: Christ’s body was not brought from heaven, as the heretic Valentinus held (Mary “an aqueduct” for a heavenly body), but taken from the Virgin and formed of her purest bloods — which is all motherhood requires.
• Reply 1: fatherhood, motherhood, sonship fit only the generation of living things, properly called birth. Aside: “So these cherries here were never born, apparently. Except as trees.”
• Reply 2 (Damascene): the birth is according to us in being from a woman at a fitting time of conception, above us in being from the Holy Spirit and not male seed. So on the mother’s side natural, on the Holy Spirit’s side miraculous — the same thing natural and miraculous, as the heavenly bodies’ motion is natural by their aptitude but voluntary on the part of the angels moving them.
• Reply 3: the woman’s resolution of seed is not required for conception, hence not for motherhood. He notes Thomas sometimes does not deny the woman a seed, “whereby the body of the woman is prepared” — “but we’re not to dwell too much in that.”

5. a. 4: Mother of God (“Nestorius say that she should be called the Mother of Christ”) #

• The historical setting: Nestorius preached in the cathedral at Constantinople that she is Mother of Christ, not of God. He teases the class: “You guys should not be attacking my friend Nestorius.”
• Obj. 1: nothing about divine mysteries beyond Scripture; Scripture calls her mother of Christ, of the boy (Mt 1:18), never genetrix Dei.
• Obj. 2: Christ is God by the divine nature, which did not take its begetting from the Virgin.
• Obj. 3: “God” is common to Father, Son and Spirit; then she would be mother of all three. This raises how “God” can stand for one person — as in “the Word was with God,” where God stands for the Father: suppositio.
• Sed contra: the chapters of Cyril approved at the Synod of Ephesus — anathema on whoever does not confess Emmanuel to be truly God and the Virgin therefore Theotokos. He notes these councils are “referenced as much as the four Gospels.”
• Body: every name signifying a nature in the concrete can stand for every hypostasis of that nature; since the union was made in the hypostasis, “God” can stand for the hypostasis having both natures, and what belongs to either nature is attributed to that person. Conception and birth are attributed to the hypostasis according to the nature in which it is conceived and born; since from the first instant the human nature was assumed by the divine person, “God was conceived, born of the Virgin.” This could be denied only with Photinus (the man was son of God after conception) or Nestorius (the humanity not assumed into the unity of person) — both Arian, so denying it is heretical.

6. The replies of a. 4 (“although it is not found expressly in Scripture”) #

• Reply 1 (against the scriptural objection — “How would you apply to that? The Protestants are wrong”): Scripture says expressly Jesus Christ is true God (1 John 5:20) and that Mary is his mother; hence of necessity, in Scripture’s own words, she is Mother of God. Romans 9:5: Christ, who is above all, God blessed forever, is from the Jews only through the Virgin. A student adds the morning’s reading on holding traditions “whether by word of mouth or writing” — corrected from 2 Thessalonians to 2 Timothy, then back to 2 Thessalonians.
• Reply 2 (Cyril): as the soul is born with its own body and it would be superfluous to say one generates the flesh but not the soul, so with Christ. So she is mother of God not of the divine nature, but of the person having both natures, according to his human nature — and one need not always add the qualification: “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
• Digression: when was the second part of the Hail Mary added? Unresolved; possibly mentioned by Thomas in a sermon. A verse is recited: “O Mary, Mother of all grace, Mother of mercy to our race, protect us now from Satan’s power, and at life’s closing hour” — “kind of the two parts of the Hail Mary.”
• Reply 3: “God,” though common to three, sometimes stands for only one person; here only for the Son made flesh. His example: “I am the son of a man; I am a man; therefore I am the son of myself.” The fault is in supposition, not in a second meaning of “a man”: “a man” there stands for his father because his father has human nature. “That’s a kind of subtle thing.”

7. a. 5: three objections for two sonships (“nativity is a cause of sonship”) #

• Obj. 1: nativity causes sonship; two nativities, so two sonships.
• Obj. 2: a relation’s being is to be toward another, so take away one relative and the other is destroyed; the eternal sonship cannot depend on the mother, since nothing eternal depends on the temporal; so either he is not her son at all (contrary to what was settled) or by another, temporal sonship.
• Obj. 3: relatives are specified from each other and one thing cannot be in diverse species; but Father eternal and mother temporal are terms omnino diversi, so not one relation.
• He asks the class what they would have thought unaided; Scripture itself says Son of God and Son of Man, as if two sonships.
• Sed contra: Damascene III — what is of the nature is multiplied in Christ, what is of the person is not; but sonship maxime pertains to the person, being a personal property (cf. First Part).

8. The body of a. 5: plurality of relation from cause and subject, not terms (“not to be noted according to the terms”) #

• Two opinions: those attending to the cause (nativity) posit two sonships; those attending to the subject (the person) posit one.
• His rule (he remarks, “That’s strange. He says that”): unity or plurality of a relation is taken from its cause or subject, not its terms. Proof: otherwise every man would have two sonships, to father and to mother; but by the same birth he is born of both, hence by the same relation referred to both. Parallels: one teacher teaching many disciples the same teaching has one relation (a student proposes: teaching the same man logic and geometry gives two, since the subject differs); a lord governing diverse subjects by the same power.
• Diverse causes differing in species give relations differing in species: teacher of some in grammar, of others in logic — “So I teach these guys logic Wednesday night, I teach you guys theology.”
• Many causes of the same species do not multiply the relation: a father of many sons by many acts of generation has one fatherhood, since many forms of one species cannot be at once in one subject. Boundary case: father of one by natural generation and another by adoption — as God is Father of the Son by divine generation and of us by adoption.
• Applied: the two nativities differ in species, so as regards cause there would be diverse sonships, one temporal and one eternal. But the subject of sonship is only the person, and in Christ the person is the eternal one; and every relation said of God from time posits in God nothing secundum rem but only secundum rationem. Hence the sonship toward the mother is not a real relation.
• So both opinions say something true: by the perfect notion of sonship, two according to the two natures; by the subject, only the eternal one is real. He is nevertheless really said Son of the Virgin from the real relation of motherhood in her — as God is really Lord from the real subjection of the creature, though lordship is not real in God.

9. Digression on non-mutual relations (“some relations are real and some are not real”) #

• Aristotle, fifth book of “wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V]: relations founded on quantity, on acting and undergoing, and the class where one side only is real. His example, knowledge: understanding a triangle or seeing you puts a real relation in me, but my seeing remains in me and does nothing to you, so “being seen” is nothing real in you. Likewise measure and measured — the measured is really related, the measure is not.
• God is in no way changed by creating; we depend really on him. Reason: a real relation in God would add an accident and he would no longer be altogether simple.
• “You shouldn’t confuse the way of understanding with the way things are” — we cannot understand our relation to God without understanding a like relation of God to us, but we must not conclude to a real relation in God. So Mary has a real relation to Christ; the converse is not real in him, since he is the second person.
• Pastoral caution, tied to Augustine’s letter (Ep. 120, he says “one twenty”) on helping each according to his capacity: “You wouldn’t want to preach this from the pulpit” — someone will hear “Christ didn’t really have a relationship with his mother.”
• Historically: some (Averroes is named) held all relations are of reason, others that all are real; “Aristotle was the first to see clearly that some relations are real and some are not.”

10. The replies of a. 5, up to the break (“the Ethiopian is said to be white by reason of his teeth”) #

• Reply 1: the temporal birth would have caused a real temporal sonship had there been a subject capable of it; the eternal suppositum cannot be subject of a temporal relation, and the human nature cannot be the subject either — for as the Ethiopian is called white by reason of his teeth only because the teeth really are the subject of whiteness, so human nature would have to be subject of sonship; but this relation directly regards the person.
• Reply 2: the eternal sonship does not depend on the mother; together with it is understood a temporal respect depending on her, by which Christ is said son of his mother — she having the real relation.
• Reply 3: “one in being follows another” [ed.: being is said in many ways] as in the fourth book of “wisdom” — the Metaphysics; so a relation can be a being in one extreme and a thought only in the other, as with the knowable and knowledge, the Philosopher’s example in Metaphysics V. He notes Thomas distinguishes four kinds of non-real relation, two taken from Aristotle — identity (“when I say Duane Berquist is Duane Berquist,” there are not really two Duanes) and the knowledge case — and two from Avicenna: relation to what does not exist (today before tomorrow, and tomorrow does not exist), and a relation related to the subject it is in [left compressed].
• Then: one extreme may carry many relations, the other one. In men, on the parents’ side two relations differing in species, fatherhood and motherhood, because father and mother are principles of generation for different reasons; whereas when many are principles of one action for the same reason — “as when many pull the ship” — there is one and the same relation in all. On the offspring’s side there is one sonship secundum rem, twofold according to reason as answering two parents. So too in Christ: one real sonship regarding the eternal Father, with another temporal respect regarding his temporal mother.

His words #

• secundum quid — in some way, qualifiedly; how Christ “came to be” a man.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Aristotle’s Physics], book V, on the kinds of change.
• “the happy heretic” — Felician (felix), against whom Augustine writes.
• “generator of God” — his rendering of genetrix Dei, Mother of God.
• suppositio — “can stand for”; how a common name like “God” or “a man” stands for one hypostasis.
• recte considerante — “correctly considering”; “that’s what we pray for.”
• quandoque — “sometimes.”
• magisterium — the teacher’s relation to disciples under one teaching.
• secundum rem / secundum rationem tantum — in reality / according to reason only.
• omnino diversi — altogether diverse, of the two terms Father and mother.
• “book of wisdom” [ed.: Aristotle’s Metaphysics].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 35, aa. 2, 3, 4, 5 (a. 5 through reply 3).
• Augustine, Contra Felicianum (quoted in III q. 35 a. 2 ad 1), read in Latin and in an English version.
• Cyril, epistle against Nestorius (ad 2 of a. 2 and of a. 4); Cyril’s chapters approved at Ephesus (sed contra a. 4).
• John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa III (sed contra a. 2; a. 3 objections and ad 2; sed contra a. 5).
• Matthew 1:18; 1 John 5:20; Romans 9:5.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics V; Metaphysics IV and V.
• Augustine, Letter 120 (on teaching according to capacity).
• 2 Thessalonians (traditions by word or writing) — the reference wavered with 2 Timothy.
• Valentinus, Photinus, Nestorius, Arius; Avicenna, Averroes, Albert.
• The Hail Mary’s second part; the verse “O Mary, Mother of all grace…”

His questions #

• Should a temporal birth be attributed to Christ? Yes — two natures, and birth is diversified by its term, so two births.
• Does “twice born” require an interruption? No — as one runs twice at two times; eternity and time differ far more than two times, yet both measure duration.
• Can Mary, who acted only as matter, be truly his mother? Yes — motherhood requires contributing the matter in the generation of a living thing, properly called birth.
• Can one generation be both natural and miraculous? Yes — natural on the mother’s side, miraculous on the part of the Holy Spirit, as heavenly motion is natural by aptitude and voluntary from the angels.
• Should Mary be called Mother of God, when Scripture never says it? Yes — Scripture says Christ is true God and Mary is his mother, so it follows of necessity in Scripture’s words.
• If “God” is common to three persons, is she mother of the Father and the Spirit? No — “God” here stands for only the person of the Son made flesh, as “a man” in “son of a man” stands for my father.
• Are there two sonships in Christ? Only one real one, the eternal; the temporal is a respect of reason, since sonship’s subject is the person alone.
• Do I have two sonships, to my father and to my mother? No — one birth, therefore one relation to both; the parents’ side carries two relations, the offspring’s one.
• Does God have a real relation to us? No — that would add an accident and destroy his simplicity; the real relation is in us, yet he is really Lord.
• When was the second half of the Hail Mary added? Left open.