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State of the question. The next two articles are written in
refutation of Apollinaris and Arius, who first of all denied that
Christ had a soul; then, retracting this former opinion, they
granted that He had a soul, but it was not an intellectual soul,
saying that the Word took the place of the intellect.
The Council of Ephesus defined against these heretics that the Word
assumed an intellectual soul.[753]
Scriptural proof. Our Lord says of Himself: "My soul is
sorrowful even unto death."[754] And again: "Father, into
Thy hands I commend My spirit."[755]
St. Thomas explains in the body of the article that these words
cannot be taken metaphorically, especially because the Gospel says
that Jesus wondered, was angry, and hungry. These acts belong to a
soul that is both intellectual and sensitive.
Theological proof. The principal reason given in the theological
proof is that Christ would be neither truly man nor the Son of man as
declared in the Gospel, unless He had a soul; and thus there would
be no more any truth to the Incarnation.
Reply to first objection. If St. John says in his prologue,
"And the Word was made flesh," flesh is taken for the whole man,
just as sometimes in Sacred Scripture we read such assertions as,
"All flesh shall see that the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken."[756]
Reply to second objection. The Word is the effective cause of
Christ's human life, the soul is its formal cause, and hence it is
not useless. Moreover, the Word cannot be the formal cause of the
human body, because the formal cause is the intrinsic cause and
therefore is a part of the composite, not so perfect as the composite.
But this cannot be said of the uncreated Word.
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