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In order to show the appropriateness of the Incarnation, St.
Thomas employs this principle: good is self-diffusive, and the
higher the order of good, the more abundantly and intimately does it
communicate itself. The truth of this principle is seen on every level
of being: in the light and heat of the sun, in the fruitfulness of
vegetative life, of sense life, of intellective knowledge and love.
The higher a thing stands in goodness the more creative it is, both as
goal to attract and as agent to effect.
But does a thing that is good necessarily communicate itself? Yes,
if it is an agent limited to one kind of activity, as is the sun to
radiation. But if the agent is free, then its self-communication is
also free. [708] By such free self-communication a perfect
agent gives perfection, but does not itself become thereby more
perfect. Now God is the supremely good thing, infinitely good.
Hence it is appropriate that He communicate Himself in person to a
created nature, and this is what comes to pass in the incarnation of
the Word.
Does this reason prove the possibility of the Incarnation? No,
because reason can simply not prove apodictically even the possibility
of a mystery essentially supernatural. But, as profound reason of
appropriateness, the argument just given is inexhaustibly fruitful.
And on this point we find among theologians no notable controversy.
Real controversy begins when we put the questions: Why did God
become incarnate?
The answer of St. Thomas [709] runs thus: In the actual
plan of providence, [710] if the first man had not sinned, the
Word would not have be come incarnate. He became incarnate to offer
God adequate satisfaction for that first sin and all its consequences.
Let us listen to his argument.
A truth which absolutely surpasses all that is due to human nature, a
truth which depends solely on God's will, can be known by divine
revelation only. But according to revelation, contained in Scripture
and tradition, the reason everywhere assigned for the Incarnation is
drawn from the sin of the first man. [711] Hence it is
reasonable to conclude that, if the first man had not sinned, the
Word would not have become incarnate, and that, after that sin, He
became incarnate in order to offer God adequate satisfaction, and thus
to give us salvation.
This line of reasoning is in harmony with Scripture. [712]
Among the many texts let us quote one: The Son of man came to seek
and to save that which was lost. [713] It is also the voice of
tradition, formulated thus by St. Augustine: [714] Had man
not sinned, the Son of man had not come.
Such is the answer of St. Thomas. Scotus, on the contrary,
maintains that, even if Adam had not sinned, the Word would still
have become incarnate. But, since He would not have come to atone
for sin, He would not have a human nature subject to pain and death.
[715] Suarez, [716] seeking a middle ground, says that
the Word became incarnate equally for the redemption of man and for the
manifestation of God's goodness. By the adverb "equally" he
understands that these two motives are coordinated, as being two chief
purposes, each equal to the other, whereas Thomists hold that the
ultimate purpose of the Incarnation was indeed to manifest God's
goodness, but that the proximate purpose was man's redemption.
Against the Scotist view Thomists use the following argument.
Divine decrees are of two kinds: one efficacious and absolute, the
other inefficacious and conditional. The latter is concerned with the
thing to be realized taken in itself, abstracting from all actual
circumstance. Thus, for example, God wills the salvation of all
men. But, in fact, God permits final impenitence in a sinner (e.
g.: Judas) as manifestation of infinite justice. Efficacious
decrees on the contrary are concerned with the thing to be realized
taken with all its concrete circumstances of place and time. Hence
these decrees are immutable and infallible. [717] Now the
present efficacious decree extends to the concrete circumstance of the
passibility of our Savior's humanity. And Scotists themselves
concede that the union between divine nature and human nature subject to
passibility presupposes Adam's sin.
This reasoning, which Thomists hold to be irrefutable, supposes that
the last end of the Incarnation is to manifest the divine goodness by
way of redemption, redemption being efficaciously decreed as
subordinated to this manifestation. Thus proposed, the argument
concludes against both Suarez and Scotus. For us men and for our
salvation, says the Council of Nicaea, He came down from heaven.
Had man not sinned, the Son of man had not come, says tradition.
[718] Scotus and Suarez would reword this sentence. They
say: Had man not sinned, the Son of man would still have come, but
not in a "passible" humanity. By such restatement the assertion of
the Fathers, taken simply as it stands, would be false. To
illustrate, it would be false to say that Christ is not really in
heaven and in the Eucharist, though He is not in either place in a
passible humanity.
Scotus brings another difficulty. A wise man, he says, wills first
the end, then the means in proportion to their nearness to that end.
[719] Thus he transfers the subordination in question from the
order of different acts of the divine will to the order of different
objects of those acts. Then he continues: Now Christ, being more
perfect, is nearer the last end of the universe than is Adam. Hence
God, to reveal His goodness, chose first the incarnation of the
Word, before Adam was willed, and hence before his sin had been
committed.
In answer to this objection, many Thomists, [720] following
Cajetan, [721] distinguish the final cause [722] from
the material cause. To illustrate. In the order of final causality
God wills, first the soul, secondly the body for the sake of the
soul. But in the order of material causality He wills first the
body, as being the material cause to be perfected by the soul, and the
soul is created only when the embryo is sufficiently disposed to receive
the soul.
Applying this distinction to the Incarnation, God wills, under
final causality, the redemptive Incarnation before He wills to permit
Adam's sin, conceived as possible. But in the order of material
causality, [723] He permits first the sin of Adam, as
something to be turned into a higher good. Similarly, in the order of
beatitude, beatitude itself is the final cause and man is the material
cause, the subject, [724] which receives beatitude.
This distinction is not idle, verbal, or fictitious. It is founded
on the nature of things. Causes have mutual priority, each in its own
order: [725] form before matter, matter before form. If Adam
had not sinned, if the human race were not there to be redeemed, the
Word would not have become incarnate. That is the order of material
causality. But in the order of finality, God permitted original sin
in view of some higher good, which good we, after the Incarnation,
know to be an incarnation universally redemptive.
On this last point some Thomists hesitate. John of St. Thomas and
Billuart say they have no answer to the question: What higher good
led God to permit original sin? But others [726] give a
satisfactory answer. Before the Annunciation, they say, the
question could not be answered. But, after the Annunciation, we see
that the higher good in question is the universally redemptive
Incarnation, subordinated of course to the revelation of God's
infinite goodness.
That this is the thought of St. Thomas himself appears in the
following words: "Nothing hinders human nature from being led after
sin to a greater good than it had before. God permits evils only to
draw forth from them something better." [727] Where sin
abounded, says St. Paul, there grace super-abounded. And the
deacon, when he blesses the Easter candle, sings: Oh happy guilt,
which merited so great and so beautiful a Redeemer!
Thus God's mercy, goodness, and power find in the Incarnation
their supreme manifestation. How does God manifest His omnipotence?
Chiefly, says the liturgy, [728] by sparing and showing
mercy. [729] .
Hence, as the Carmelites of Salamanca so well say, we are not to
multiply divine decrees, and to suppose, as did John of St. Thomas
and Billuart, a whole set of conditional and inefficacious decrees.
It suffices to say that among all possible worlds known by what we call
God's simple intelligence, there were included these two possible
worlds: first, a human race that remains in a state of innocence and
is crowned with a non-redemptive Incarnation; secondly, a fallen
human race restored by a redemptive Incarnation. Thus, while the
fallen race is first [730] as material subject of the
Incarnation, the Incarnation itself is first in the order of
finality. [731] And thus, too, the ultimate purpose of the
universe is the manifestation of God's goodness.
How, then, are we to conceive the succession, not in divine acts of
will, but in the order of objects willed by God? Let us take an
architect as illustration. What the architect aims at first is not the
summit nor the foundation but the building as a whole with all its parts
in mutual subordination. Thus God, as architect, wills the whole
universe as it now stands with its ascending orders, nature first,
then grace (with the permission of sin): then the hypostatic union as
redemptive from sin. The Incarnation, though it presupposes a sinful
human race, is not "subordinated" to our redemption. Redemptive by
its material recipient, it remains in itself the transcendent cause of
redemption, and we, as recipients, as bodies are to souls, remain
ourselves subordinated to Christ, who is the author of salvation and
the exemplar of holiness. All things belong to you, says St.
Paul, [732] but you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to
God.
Let us conclude with a corollary, thus expressed by St. Thomas:
[733] : "God's love for Christ is greater than His love for
all creatures combined. By this love He gave Christ a name that is
above every name, since Christ is truly God. Nor is Christ's
pre-eminent excellence in any way diminished by the death which God
imposed on Him as Savior of the human race. On the contrary, by
this death Jesus gained the most glorious of victories, a victory
which made Him the Prince of peace, whose shoulders bear the
government of the world." [734] Having humbled Himself, says
St. Paul, [735] having become obedient unto death, even unto
death on the cross, He was exalted and given the name that is above
every name.
This transcendent excellence of the Savior, thus delineated by St.
Thomas, is in fullest accord with Scripture and tradition. The
glory of God's Son was not diminished, was rather pre-eminently
enhanced, when for our salvation He came down from heaven and was made
man.
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