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Cajetan says the purport of this title is to show that the question of
this article concerns the divine person as such, so far as we introduce
a mental distinction between person and the divine nature.[659]
State of the question. It is apparent from the first two difficulties
presented at the beginning of the article, namely, that there is no
possibility of any addition to a divine person because this person is in
Himself infinitely perfect. Also incommunicability belongs to the
concept of person.
Conclusion. To assume a nature is most properly befitting to a
person.
Authoritative proof. St. Augustine, who is quoting St.
Fulgentius, says: "This God, that is, the Only-begotten One,
took the form, that is, the nature of a servant to His own person."
Proof from reason. It may be expressed in syllogistic form as
follows: The word "assume," which practically means to take to
oneself, is both the principle and the term of an act. But only a
person can be both the principle and term of an act. Therefore only a
person can assume.
The other articles of this question will bring out more clearly the
meaning of the adverb "most properly."
Proof of minor. It belongs to a person to act, for actions are
attributed to supposita, and a person is that which by itself
separately exists and acts. Moreover a person is the term of this
assumption, because the union took place in the person and not in the
nature.
Assumption is properly an action by which the human nature is drawn
into the subsistence of the Son, so that it may subsist by this
subsistence. Hence this action not only produces in the human nature
of Christ a relation of dependence on the Word, but communicates to
it the personality of the Word.
Reply to first objection. No addition is made to the divine person,
who is infinite. But what is divine is united to man. Hence not
God, but man is perfected.
Reply to second objection. "A divine person is said to be
incommunicable inasmuch as it cannot be predicated of several
supposita, but nothing prevents several things being predicated of the
person.... But this is proper to a divine person, on account of
its infinity, that there should be a concourse of natures in it, in
subsistence."[660]
Doubt. Does the termination of another nature belong exclusively to a
divine person, so that it would be repugnant to every created or
creatable personality? Can an angel, for example, or a devil assume
the human nature? Some thought that St. John the Baptist was an
angel incarnate, and that Antichrist will be a devil incarnate.
Reply. It is the common teaching among theologians that no created
person can assume a nature into union with its suppositum. So say
Cajetan, Soto, Alvarez, Medina, Suarez, Vasquez, Billuart.
The reason is that finite personality derives its limitation and
species from the nature whose complement and term it is. Although
subsistence is the mode and term of the nature, it does not specify the
nature, but is specified by it. Thus we speak of the human
personality, or of the angelic personality; hence it implies a
contradiction for the same personality of one nature to terminate
another. On the contrary, the divine personality because of its
infinity, as St. Thomas says,[661] is above both genus and
species and contains formally and eminently the power of all possible
personalities.
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