II. To the Second Question

A. Solution

46. To the question posed second above [n.8], whether it was in the power of Christ’s soul not to die from the violence of the passion, I say that if Christ’s soul had been left to itself absolutely then, from the fact it was glorious, its glory would have redounded to the body, and consequently it would have been in the power of the soul not to die from any passion.

47. But because, in the fourth instant, his body was, by a miracle, without the redounding into it of glory (as is plain from the preceding question [nn.28-30]), the body was in the fourth instant necessarily corruptible through passion.

48. Nor was it in the power of the soul to preserve the body from suffering. The reason is that, by the institution of nature, it was the case that, after the Fall, some of the active elements were of a nature to dominate over some of the passive ones - then the argument goes: all bodies capable of change and corruption can be corrupted by the approach to them of the dominating active element; Christ’s body was of this sort from the first instant of union until death; therefore through the approach of such active element a disposition or quality could have been induced in the body that was incompossible with the passive animation of the body, and so the body could have been deprived in life or by death, because the soul perfects only a body disposed to it.

B. Objections

49. If you say that, just as the soul is created and united [sc. with the body] by God alone, so God alone can separate it, and thus nothing else (no cause of suffering) can separate the soul - nothing else, I mean, other than the first Uniter.

50. A second proof is that if keeping the body from suffering was not in the power of Christ’s soul, then his passion and his soul’s separation were not voluntary, and so not meritorious either.

51. Third, that if not-dying was not in the power of Christ’s soul then his suffering was coerced; and if so, it was not meritorious.

C. Response to the Objections

52. To the first of these objections [n.49], when it says that only God can unite the soul to the body, there could be a doubt whether at the resurrection (when the body will be supremely disposed to the soul) the soul could reunite itself or whether, in generating man, it unites the intellective soul to the body, meaning by ‘union’ the organizing and fitting disposition of the body so it is ultimately perfectible by the intellective soul. Now as to the first point [sc. the union or reunion of soul to body] the place for discussing it is found in Ord. 4 d.43 q.3 nn.21-22, q.4 n.15. But if one concedes the antecedent (that ‘only God can unite the soul to the body’), I deny the consequence (that ‘only God can cause separation’ [of the soul from the body, n.49]), because while a natural or created agent can induce a quality in the body that is incompossible with passive animation of the body, it cannot cause any quality in the body on which would necessarily follow, by absolute necessity, the animation of the body; so the consequence is not valid, for no disposition caused in the body by a natural agent is cause simply of the passive animation of the body (an example: fire can by its action cause a quality suited for separating soul from body, but it cannot cause any necessity for uniting the intellective soul to the body -I mean fire cannot do so by itself alone).

53. On the contrary: it is commonly said [Richard of Middleton] that a natural agent does induce a disposition in the organic body, namely the perfect organization and due complexion of the elements, which is the simply necessitating disposition for inducing the soul.

54. I reply that no disposition induced in matter by a natural agent is a necessitating disposition for the infusion of the soul (but whatever the disposition is, since it exists on the part of the matter under matter’s idea of being receptive of form and in potency to form, that disposition is in contradictive potency to the intellective soulMetaphysics 9.8.1050b8-12: “Every power is a power at once for contradiction:...what is possible to be is able to be and not to be.” ⁹⁹). For if it were such a necessitating disposition, then the disposition induced in matter by a natural agent would necessitate God’s causing and creating the soul and animation of the body - which is false. The Philosopher, however, would have to say it, because he posited that God acts naturally and does whatever he does by necessity of nature [Ord. 1 d.8 n.251-252]. And so, just as the Philosopher posits that, when air is supremely hot and supremely disposed for the form of fire, the necessary result is that fire acts on the air and corrupts its form as air, so he would posit that, when the organic body is disposed by the action of a natural agent, God necessarily creates the soul in the body by animating the body. But just as the Philosopher erred in that principle (positing that God creates everything by necessity of nature), so theologians, by rejecting the Philosopher as to that principle, must necessarily reject him as to the conclusion, because no natural agent can simply necessitate matter for passive animation. Rather any disposition caused in matter by a natural agent is in contradictive power to form and to animation by God, for God causes voluntarily and contingently whatever he causes that is outside himself.

55. To the second objection [n.50], when it is said that Christ’s passion was then not meritorious, I say that the will can have a meritorious act about any object that is not in its power, or indeed that is necessarily unable to be otherwise, just as the will can love God with love of friendship by willing him good, namely by willing him to be just and wise and other things of the sort, and yet, whether the will wills or not, God is wise, just, etc. Thus too Christ’s will could have had merit about Christ’s passion, although it was not in his will’s power to prevent it, namely by his consenting to the passion and accepting it because of the good following from it and because it was accepted by God.

56. To the third objection [n.51], when it is said that if it was not in the soul’s power not to suffer then the passion was coerced and not meritorious, I say that coercion is in one way opposed to what is natural [Physics 2.1.192b13-36, 8.4.255a2-4] and in another way opposed to what is voluntary [Ethics 3.1.1110a1-3]. In the first way, since it is natural for a stone to go downwards, it is coerced and against natural inclination for it to go upwards - and ‘going upwards’ is coerced in this way because opposed to the natural inclination of the stone. And in this way of speaking about what is coerced (the way it is against the natural inclination of nature itself), death was coerced because against the natural inclination of the body, because the natural inclination of the body is to be perfected by the soul. In another way the coerced is opposed to the voluntary, and then, according to what was said above [d.15 n.95], as to the way the passion was not wanted and yet as not wanted happened, the passion was coerced and Christ did not thus merit by suffering it; in another way, as willed and as accepted by the will, it is meritorious and not coerced. These points are made plain in d.15 nn.98, 100, 126.

D. To the Principal Arguments

57. To the first principal argument [n.9], when it is said that Christ’s soul dominated the body more than it did the appetite,     therefore etc     ., I say that the soul does not dominate the body (as to every potency that belongs to the body) more than it dominates the sense appetite; indeed it dominates less, for as to the powers of the vegetative soul that belong to the body it does not dominate the body, but it does dominate as to the motive power, so that the soul can move the body hither and thither in place and to this work or to that work as it pleases. But it is not thus with the vegetative powers, because these are wholly irrational and not obedient to the soul in their acts; for although it is in the power of the soul to provide them with the matter on which they act, yet once the matter is provided to them they are not subject to the dominion of the soul in their acts; and so from impure intake of food and weakening of power in converting it, the power would have been corruptible and death would have followed. Again, Christ’s soul did not so dominate the sense appetite that his sense appetite could not suffer, but he was truly in pain; therefore he did not so dominate his body that, because of the domination of the soul, it could not suffer. And so the argument assumes something false, namely that ‘his soul dominated his sense appetite so that it did not suffer, and thus it dominated his body more’.

58. To the second argument, from John [n.10], I say that the ‘I’ in the supposit or subject place [‘I have power...’] and in apposition [‘.. .from myself’] stand for the same person but not according to the same nature, as follows: ‘I, the supposit of the Word according to divine nature, lay down my soul from myself according to human nature, because I lay down my soul from my body and not from the Word’; so that the ‘power of laying down and separating’ are attributed to the Word, but ‘his soul suffering separation from the body’ he did by reason of human nature, where the separation was made.

59. The answer to the third argument [n.11] is plain from the same point, that as ‘man’ he received the commandment of laying down his soul: he laid down his soul by consenting to it and suffering it, but not by effecting it, such that the effecting of it was in the soul’s power. Such an exposition of the text is not a forced one, because the same authority can be expounded partly of the head and partly of the members, as in this case, ‘he was able to sin and did not sin’ [Ecclesiasticus 31.10], where ‘being able to sin’ is expounded of the members and ‘not sinning’ is expounded of the head; thus one and the same thing can in one respect be expounded of Christ as he is an eternal supposit, and by reason of his being a supposit in divine nature, and in another respect of the created nature in the supposit.

60. To the fourth argument [n.12], about the loud cry, I say that it was another miracle, namely that he cried aloud even in the hour of death, or it was by the power of the Word; and so his soul was miraculously separated from the body before the hour of separation due to the violence of the passion. But it was not a new miracle that he thus cried in the hour of death, but it came from the old miracle whereby his glory did not redound to his body - just as everything that he suffered was in some way miraculous, although natural, because what could not happen save by presupposing a miracle could, even though a miracle was presupposed, come about naturally - but this natural coming about was in a way a miracle in relation to the necessarily presupposed miracle. However, the fact that Christ suffered in body and sensitive soul, or in the lower part of reason or even in the higher part, was because of the miracle that the glory of his soul did not redound to the body, nor to the lower part. Therefore the whole of what he suffered was a miracle and yet happened naturally once the miracle was performed (just as the man born blind sees naturally when his eye has been miraculously illumined, and as the body lives naturally when the intellective soul is supernaturally added to it).