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This most famous question evidently belongs to the relations prevailing
between Christ and His Father.
Scotus engages in a lengthy discussion on Christ's predestination,
and in his theological summa he explains his own view about the motive
of the Incarnation, seeking to rest it on the principle that Christ
is the first of all the predestined, and therefore the first intended
by God, even before Adam. To this the Thomists reply that Christ
is the first intended by God in the genus of final cause; but because
He was willed by God as the Savior or Redeemer, the permission of
Adam's sin to be repaired is first in the genus of material cause.
Thus God wills the soul prior to the body in the genus of final and
formal cause, but He first wills the body in the genus of material
cause to be perfected, and if the embryonic body were not disposed for
the reception of the rational soul, this soul would not be created.
Likewise, in virtue of the present decree, if Adam had not sinned,
the Word would not have become incarnate. St. Thomas realized the
importance of the predestination of Christ, who is the first of all
the predestined.
St. Thomas says indeed, as we shall immediately see, that Christ
was not predestined first to glory, as Scotus contends, but to divine
and natural sonship, which is more exalted, and he shows that
Christ's gratuitous predestination is the exemplar and cause of our
predestination, inasmuch as Christ condignly merited all the effects
of our predestination.
There are four articles to this question.
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1) Whether Christ is predestinated.
2) Whether He is predestinated as man.
3) Whether His predestination is the exemplar of ours.
4) Whether it is the cause of ours.
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