II. To the Principal Arguments

43. To the arguments.

To the first [n.2] I say that although there are in Christ two willings, yet he is not two willers, because the concrete thing is not multiplied without multiplying the supposit - as is plain about someone possessing two sciences, who is not called two knowers; so it is in the issue at hand, that, if there are several existings each of which will be the existing simply of the supposit, it does not follow that the supposit is two things. And in the form of the reasoning, ‘existing constitutes a thing, therefore many existings, many things’, there is a fallacy of the consequent, from destruction of the antecedent and the consequent; for the dividing of the antecedent and consequent involves some negation about each of them.The conclusion ‘many existings, many things’ requires dividing up ‘existing’ and ‘thing’ so that each, by way of negation, becomes many (‘this existing or this thing is not that existing or that thing etc.’). The original premise, however, said nothing about how the multiplication of one term related to the multiplication of the other, so that to introduce multiplication into the conclusion is to destroy the premise, and thus the conclusion too that was depending on it. ⁵⁵

44. And as to the confirmation of the reason [n.2], when it is said that then Christ would be a per accidens thing, I say that if ‘accident’ or ‘per accidens’ is taken there properly, as they join together two genera or things of two genera, there is no ‘per accidens thing’ there, because the divine nature is not in any genus; human nature too is not an accident of anything, since truly it is a substance. If however ‘per accidens one’ means improperly anything that includes a two, one of which comes to a second possessed of complete existence and is not a form per se informing the second and constituting a third thing, then it can be conceded, though in the issue at hand it does not sound well.

45. But then there is the argument against the meaning of the term [n.2], namely that this unity [sc. of Christ] is the greatest unity according to Bernard: I say that a unity can be called greatest from the privation of distinction or from the perfection of the things united in the unity. In the first way, the unity here is not the greatest, because the distinction of natures is here the greatest; in the second way it can be conceded that the unity is the greatest after the Trinity, because the united things are most perfect, for one is infinite and the other is a substance perfect in itself; and the latter, from its unity with the former, is most perfect in the sharing of characteristics, for it is ‘God’ [d.7 n.51 infra].

46. To the next [n.3], I concede that human nature is potential, as an effect is potential in respect of its cause but not as perfectible by the Word, for the Word cannot be the form of anything; conversely too the nature is not the form of the Word, and so it does not give existence by informing but by union; for just as from this union the Word is man by this nature, so by this nature he is existent with the existence of this nature.

47. To the next [n.4] the answer is plain from the same point, that the infinite receives no perfection that may inform it; yet, just as this nature is united to the Word without passive reception of any of the perfection in the Word, so the Word is by this union existent with the existence of this nature.