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State of the question. The meaning of the title is: Can the divine
nature assume a nature different from its own, if by God we
understand, in the way the pagans and Jews imagine Him to exist,
without personal relations and without persons, as our Catholic faith
acknowledges to be in Him?
It seems that the divine nature cannot so assume; because, as stated
above, it befits the nature to assume because of the person, and
because the union took place not in the nature, but in the person.
Reply. It is affirmed, nevertheless, that the divine nature can
assume our nature.
Proof. It is taken from the counterargument of this article, from
the argumentative part and from the reply to the second objection. The
reasons given are: 1. In this hypothesis, God's omnipotence, by
which the Incarnation took place, would remain. 2. There would
also remain the one personality of God as the Jews understand, which
could be the term of the assumption.[664]
In God, the Deity and God are identical, or in God whereby it is
and what is are the same; for God's essence is His self-existing
being.[665]
First doubt. Is it something absolute or something relative that
immediately terminates the human nature of Christ?
Reply. It is something relative that immediately and proximately
terminates Christ's human nature, namely, the personality of the
Word, which is constituted by relative subsistence, or by the
subsisting relation of sonship, as explained in the treatise on the
Trinity. The divine relations are subsisting relations, inasmuch as
their inexistence (esse in) is substantial and not accidental as in
created predicamental relations, for example, in created paternity and
created sonship.[666]
Proof. The Eleventh Council of Toledo in its profession of faith
says: "Neither the Holy Spirit nor God the Father, but only the
person of the Son took flesh."[667] But if the Word were to
terminate the human nature formally and proximately by a common and
absolute subsistence, then the Father and the Holy Spirit equally
with the Son, would have been incarnate.
Second doubt. Could the triune God assume the human nature primarily
on account of absolute subsistence, and only secondarily on account of
relative subsistences?
Reply. The triune God could have assumed absolutely our human
nature, because this absolute subsistence "could be the principle and
term of this assumption," as stated by St. Thomas in this
article.[668] For the reason why God subsists in His own
nature, can be the reason why He subsists in a different nature. But
absolute and common subsistence could be the reason for His subsistence
in a different nature.
Third doubt. What is the difference between the incommunicability of
absolute subsistence and of relative subsistence?
Reply. The first incommunicability is not within the Trinity, but
only external to it. The second incommunicability is both internal and
external to the Trinity. Common and absolute subsistence does not
formally attribute incommunicability internally to the Deity, for the
Deity is communicated to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. On the
contrary, the personality of the Father is not communicated to the
Son. But God by reason of His common and absolute subsistence is
incommunicable externally, in this sense that He is by Himself
separately existing, really and essentially distinct from the world.
St. Thomas says: "A person is said to be incommunicable inasmuch
as it cannot be predicated of several supposita."[669]
What the philosopher means by saying that God is personal, is that
He is the separately existing being, distinct from every creature,
intelligent and free and so is externally incommunicable. When
theologians speak of the three divine persons, what they first of all
have in mind is internal incommunicability. Thus the Father
communicates the whole divine nature to the Son, but not His
personality, which is the subsistent relation of paternity in
opposition to filiation.[670]
Objection. The Fathers and councils never mention this absolute
subsistence, which seems to have been discovered by Cajetan.
Reply. They never referred to it because there was no occasion of
doing so to refute errors against it such as Nestorianism and
Monophysitism, which had not yet arisen. It sufficed to exclude
union in the nature and affirm the union in the person of the Word, as
recorded in revelation. Absolute subsistence was not discovered by
Cajetan, for St. Thomas explicitly refers to it in this third
article.
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