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.