II. To the Second Question

A. Solution

18. The answer to the other question is plain according to what was said above, d.1 nn.44-47, that created personhood states negation of actual dependence on something else as on the supposit of the nature, and also negation of aptitudinal dependence, which - as far as concerns the thing having the aptitude - would always be actual (as the separated soul would always depend on the body as far as concerns the soul’s natural aptitude); since therefore it is a contradiction for a nature to depend and not depend actually on an extrinsic person, and the nature’s being assumed is its actually depending with this particular dependence, it is a contradiction for it to be assumed and to have at the same time its own created personhood.

19. But those who would posit that created personhood states some positive nature or entity over and above the singular nature, and that for this reason it is repugnant for created personhood to be assumed but not so repugnant for the singular nature - they would have to look for some other cause why a person cannot be assumed [cf. n.8].

20. But what is here supposed [n.19] was rejected in d.1 n.26; and against it well proceeds the reason touched on [n.7] about the division of substance and accident and threefold substance.

B. To the Principal Arguments

21. To the arguments of the second question.

To the first [n.7] I say that if what is positive in a person be taken, then, because ‘personhood’ adds nothing positive beyond ‘this nature’, a created person is the same as ‘this nature’. But if personhood be completely taken according as it imports incommunicability, then ‘person’ is not altogether the same as ‘this nature’; just as an entity that is indifferent to some affirmation and negation is not altogether the same as the negation, or the same as itself along with the negation, so it is here; and therefore ‘this nature’ has enough distinction from ‘this non-dependent person’ that this nature is able to depend but not that this non-dependent nature is able to depend (taken in the composite sense). - The proof adduced for identity [of created person and nature] only proves that created person does not add any positive entity over and above ‘this nature’ - which I concede.

22. To the second [n.8] I say that person in the case of creatures states a ‘dignity’ materially by reason of the intellectual nature that it connotes, but not formally by reason of the incommunicability that it further adds - unless it be said that some negation is a mark of dignity, as was said in 1 d.28 nn.27-28 about ‘unbegotten’ in divine reality.