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1. Personality excludes a threefold communicability.
1. It formally excludes the communicability of nature to
another suppositum because the nature already exists in a
suppositum. 2. By presupposition and materially it
excludes the communicability of the universal to the
individual because the person is an individual itself and
has an individuated nature. This incommunicability
properly pertains to the individuation of nature which
takes place in us and in corporeal beings by matter
determined by quantity inasmuch as a specific form as
received in this matter is no longer
communicable.[298] 3. Personality excludes the
communicability of the part to the whole because the person
is a complete substance.[299] Thus a separated soul
is not a person but a principal part of a person. Thus we
do not say, "Peter is now in heaven," but "the soul
of Peter." On the other hand we say, "After the
Ascension, Jesus is in heaven; and after the
Assumption, the Blessed Virgin is in heaven and not
only her soul." The humanity of Christ is not a person
for, while it is individuated and singular, it is not a
suppositum or a subject, but it pertains to the suppositum
of the incarnate Word.
2. In this way we explain that there is but one person
in Christ, that is, one intelligent and free subject,
although He has two intellects and two wills. So also we
see how in God there are three persons and one nature and
one being. We say this because there are three free and
intelligent subjects although they have the same nature,
the same essential intellect, the same liberty, and the
same essential love. Contradiction is avoided by the fact
that the three divine persons are relative and that they
are opposed to each other, as we shall see below.
3. Personality is quite different from that
individuation whose principle is matter determined by
quantity. Individuation properly excludes the
communicability of the universal to the inferior and it
takes place through something lower than the universal,
that is, by the matter in which the form is received so
that the received form is no longer subject to
participation.[300]
On the other hand, personality properly and formally
excludes the communicability of nature to another subject
or suppositum because the nature is terminated and
possessed by one subject existing separately per se, for
example, by Peter, and now Peter's human nature cannot
be attributed to Paul. St. Thomas says: "Person
signifies that which is most perfect in all nature,
namely, something subsistent (existing separately per
se) in rational nature," whereas our individuation
derives from something lower than ourselves, namely,
matter.[301]
In Christ, although individuation as in us is derived
from matter, the personality is uncreated and differs
infinitely from matter. The term "individual"
designates that which is inferior in man, that which is
subordinate to the species, to society, and to the
country; person designates that which is superior in man,
that by reason of which man is ordered directly to God
Himself above society. Thus society, to which the
individual is subordinate, is itself ordered to the full
perfection of the human person, as against statism, which
denies the higher rights of the human person. We thus
arrive not only at a concept which is definite and distinct
but at a vital concept of the person immediately subject to
God loved above all things. Such is the definition of
person. For a simple understanding of the dogma it is
sufficient to say that the person is a free and intelligent
subject and is predicated analogically of man, the
angels, and the three divine persons, for each of these
is a free and intelligent subject.[302]
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