A. Solution

7. About this question one must see what is the cause of truth for the proposition ‘God is man’ being true, because it is not true first; for any predicate that only belongs to a universal through some supposit does not belong to it first or truly save because it is said of some inferior term; and so there must be some cause making the proposition true that is other than the universal. ‘Is man’ is only said of God through some determinate supposit, as through the Word; therefore the proposition is true because this proposition ‘the Word is man’ is true.

8. Second one must see about the truth of this cause [sc. the truth of ‘the Word is man’].

Here one needs to know that this proposition cannot naturally be made plain or known to be true; for either we can have a proper and determinate concept of the Word, and then this proposition is a true contingent but an immediate one and not known from the terms, because then the terms would have to include the evident relationship between them, so that the idea of the terms would necessarily include the union of the terms that the proposition expresses; or we do not have a proper concept of the Word but only a confused one (as was said in 1 d.3 nn.56-57, 187-188, d.27 n.78), and then this proposition ‘the Word is man’, as to the concept we have of the terms, is a contingent mediate one. Now such a contingent mediate proposition is not of a nature to be known save from some contingent immediate proposition from which it may follow; but, as was just said, the above proposition, because it is contingent, cannot be known from the terms, nor can it in any way be known naturally to be true, because a contingent immediate proposition is not truly known save by intuitive cognition of the extremes and of their union, of the sort we cannot have of the extremes of the proposition immediately antecedent to this one.

9. Therefore the truth of this proposition is only an immediately believed one, or one that must be made plain from something believed. And accordingly it is shown to be true in this way: for a supposit ‘subsistent in some nature as supposit’ is truly called such formally according to the nature; but it is a thing believed that this union is such that by it the Word subsists in human nature as a supposit in the nature; therefore by it the Word is formally man.

10. The major of this syllogism is proved by Damascene ch.57, “‘God’ signifies a universal of nature, so that it has in any hypostasis the order of a denominative term, as does also the term ‘man’ - for God is he who has divine nature as man is he who has human nature.”

11. The minor is proved by Augustine On the Trinity 1.13 n.28, “This assumption was such that it made God man and man God.”

12. Third one must see how this predicate ‘man’ is taken.

13. And one statement [Ps.-Hugh of St. Victor] is that it is taken for the supposit, so that the predication is by identity, by pointing to the implicature: ‘the Word is the supposit that is man’.

14. Against this:

In that case there will be a process to infinity: for this implication is on the part of the predicate and it predicates ‘man’ of something that is introduced by the subject - and then I ask whether the predicate is taken formallyScotus Metaphysics 7 q.4 n.23, “Formal predication is when the predicate is in the subject from the understanding of the subject.” ⁶⁷ or for the supposit, when the statement is made that ‘the Word is the supposit that is man’? If the predicate is taken formally the intended conclusion is gained, that the predication is formal and not only by identity; but if the predicate is only taken for the implied supposit, there will be a process to infinity, because any implicative speaking includes a proposition within it and so a predication, because such a proposition is a double proposition; either then there will be process to infinity in implication or recourse must be made to another mode of predicating.This argument is given by Bonaventure Sentences 3 d.7 a.1 q.1. The point seems to be that ‘man’ in ‘the Word is the supposit that is man’ must, according to the view here being criticized, itself be short-hand for ‘supposit that is man’ (otherwise the predication will be formal after all), so that the proposition will become ‘the Word is the supposit that is the supposit that is man’, where again the ‘man’ must be replaced by ‘the supposit that is man’, and so on ad infinitum. ⁶⁸

15. Further, the predication of a nature of a supposit is formal, not only by identity.

16. Fourth one must see what sort of predicate this predicate is with respect to the subject.

It seems that it could be posited to be the species [Henry of Ghent]: for ‘man’ is said univocally of Christ and Peter; the predicate is also said of something as to its ‘whatness’, and only said of several things that differ numerically;     therefore etc     . That the predicate is said as to whatness is plain from the Decretal On Heretics [d.6 nn.25, 73 supra].

17. I reply:

Just as it is one thing to predicate a univocal and another to predicate univocally, strictly speaking (for a univocal predicate is said to be a predicate whose per se concept is one; and in this way ‘white’ said of wood and a stone, or said denominativelyPeter of Spain Tractatus tr.2 n.21, “Denominatives are said to be all terms that, differing from something only in case, get from that name their appellation... Hence ‘grammatical’, ‘strong’, ‘white’ and the like are predicated denominatively. And therefore an accident is said to be predicated denominatively.” ⁶⁹ of anything, is a univocal predicate; predicated univocally is a predicate of which, as it is predicated, the idea is so one that this idea is included in the idea of the subject;Ibid. n.20, “But to be predicated univocally is to be predicated according to one name and one definition taken according to that name, as ‘man’ according to its name is predicated of Socrates and Plato., and the definition of it according to that name is one, as ‘mortal rational animal’, and according to this definition is it predicated of its [logical] inferiors.” ⁷⁰ and in this way a denominative predicate is not predicated univocally, that is in the way the Philosopher speaks in Categories 5.3a33-b9) - so a predicate stating the ‘what is predicated’ is one thing, and a predicate ‘predicated of a thing as to whatness’ is another (from Topics 1.5.102a31-34 [“Now genus is what is predicated in the ‘what it is’ of things that are many and differ in species; and the sort of things said to be predicated in the ‘what it is’ are whatever pertains to him who is asked to give in answer ‘what’ the thing proposed ‘is’”]), and yet not everything of any genus is predicated of anything ‘as to whatness’ but only what is predicated of its essential inferior, in whose definition it is includedIbid., “Now that is said to be predicated of something as to whatness which is appropriately given as a response to a question asked by ‘what?’ - as when the question is asked, ‘what is man?’, an appropriate response is, ‘animal’; and for this reason ‘animal’ is predicated of man as to whatness.” ⁷¹ (as in the matter at issue).a

a.a [Interpolation] Thus it could therefore be said that, since no union is like this one - because of which the predication [sc. ‘God is man’] is said to be true - there is no predicate said of a subject that is related to it.

18. As far as concerns what is predicated, then, this is the species, because it is not of a nature to be genus or difference or property or accident. But as far as concerns the manner of the relation of the predicate in regard to the subject, the predicate does not belong to the idea of the subject, and it comes to a subject existing in complete act, and it can be absent from the subject - and to this extent, the predicate seems to have a relation in regard to the subject like the sort the predicate called ‘accident’ has.

19. And if it be objected [Godfrey of Fontaines, Richard of Middleton] that the relation of this universal [sc. ‘man’], because it is an ‘accident’, is founded in reality only in an accident - I reply that, as to the fact, it is true that this second intention ‘accident’, of which the logician speaks, is only founded in an accident that states a first intention, as the metaphysician speaks; yet it is not of the idea of this second intention that it only exist in the first intention, just as it is not of the idea of genus or species that it only be founded in the idea of substance (and perhaps already in the proposition ‘the white is wood’ the predicate is the second intention of accident, speaking logically; or if it is not so there, then at least if ‘to be wood’ could come to an actually existing white, such that it would not be predicated of the notion or essence of the subject nor would be convertible with the subject, ‘to be wood’ would seem perfectly an accident, speaking logically).

20. Fifth, what sort of predication, whether per se or per accidens, is this predication?

It seems not to be per se in the first mode, because the predicate does not fall into the definition of the subject; nor in the second mode, because the reverse does not hold (the subject does not fall into the definition of the predicate); nor generally is it in any mode of per se,See Aristotle Prior Analytics 1.4.73a34-b18. ⁷² because the relation [sc. the relation of ‘man’ to ‘God’ in ‘God is man’] does not seem necessary in any of them.

21. But this is not conclusive, because some contingent propositions can be per se, as with immediate predication in the second mode, if the proximate reason for the inherence of predicates is included in the subjects even though the inherence of the predicates is not necessary, as in the case of ‘the hot heats’ and ‘the will wills’.

22. But not even this mode of per se seems present in the issue at hand (the thing is plain in the second article [n.7]).

23. Response:

If the discussion about ‘per accidens’ is being done in the way the metaphysician speaks about it, namely that either one term is accidental to the other or both are accidental to a third (as is plain in Metaphysics 5.6.1015b16-34, 7.1017a19-22, ‘On Being and One’) - then this proposition [sc. ‘God is man’] is not per accidens, because “what exists in the true sense is not an accident of anything”, from Physics 1.3.186b4-5; hence this union is not conceded to be accidental either, because neither extreme is an accident. But this argument does not prove that the proposition is per se,Scotus Lectura 3 d.7 n.33, “Know that an accident, as the metaphysician takes it, is a thing dependent on a substance; but, as it is taken by the logician, it is an intention made by the soul and is nothing but the contingent inherence of a predicate in a subject. And although this intention of contingent inherence only exists in a real accident, yet there is no repugnance to its being found in something else.” ⁷³ speaking logically of ‘per se’.a But the subject ‘God’ here does not determinately include ‘Son’ more than ‘Father’ - so just as this proposition too, ‘the rational is animal’, is not per se, logically speaking. One could concede, then, that, logically speaking, the predicate is outside the per se notion of the subject and that, for this reason, the proposition is true not per se but per accidens, even though neither extreme is really present per accidens in the other.

a.a [Interpolation] first because the predicate is not of the per se notion of the subject, even in the concreteness of the supposit; second because in per se predications the subject supposits determinately (for if it were to supposit only indeterminately then this proposition ‘animal is man’ would be per se, because it can be verified in Peter or in Paul); third because if ‘man’ [sc. in ‘God is man’] were predicated per se of whatever is contained under the subject, then both the Holy Spirit and the Father would be ‘man’.

24. Hence this union of the extremes [sc. ‘God is man’] is conceded to be neither essential nor accidental but substantial - Damascene ch.49, “For we say the union is substantial, that is, true and not in imagination;” and so, in accord with the diversity of this union from all others, one can posit a diversity of this sort of inherence from all others.