II. To the Principal Arguments

34. To the principal arguments.

To the first [n.3], when - as to the first member of the division [n.2] - argument is made about the comparison of the two unions, I reply and say that the hypostatic union is greater as to first act, because by this union the being of the person assuming is communicated to the assumed nature; and in fact even now this union includes the other union, which is union with second act and operation; but if the unions were separated, as they could be, that union would be greater which is of the nature to the Word as to term in respect of first act, but not to it in respect of second act and of beatific existence, because blessedness exists in operation more than terms for operation do. Or, to speak more properly, one can say that neither union is greater than the other because they are of different ideas - and since neither includes the other, one of them can exist without the other.

35. To Augustine’s authorities:

As to the first [n.3], I concede that supreme grace exists in this union, because the con-descending of the divine will, which was the principle of the assumption, was supremely gracious; but supreme habitual grace is not in the union by force of the union, although in fact it does now accompany the union. Hence Augustine’s authority can be expounded of the fact - because he is speaking of ‘things begun in time’ - , that the supreme grace of all exists in the union of our nature with the divine Word.

36. Reply can on the same grounds be made to the authority of Augustine On the Trinity 13.9 [n .3] when he gives the argument a minore: it is indeed true that for the Son of God to be really a son of man seems less possible than for a son of man to be able by grace to be a son of God; and therefore if the former is possible by grace, much more is the latter so. But, if a son of God is a son of man, there is no necessity that this same predicate ‘son of man’ should be said determinately of the same subject; indeed, one might perhaps deny the first proposition or combination, namely that a son of man is a son of God by grace; nor, further, is any concession made that Christ is a son of God by adoption; but what follows is that some man or other, or the same man, could be a son of God by grace, because the first combination was made with someone indeterminately [sc. ‘the Son of God is a son of man’], and not to this or that man determinately [sc. ‘the Son of God is this son of man’].

37. As to the argument [n.4] proving that ‘Christ or any assumed nature is incapable of sin, otherwise God could be said to be capable of sin or of being damned or of being a devil etc.’ (which seem horrendous), I reply: just as he who has the light of glory and consummate charity cannot sin, not because these are formally repugnant to sin (as neither is first act repugnant to the opposite of a contingently causable second act), but because God, by his ordained power, cannot not cooperate with the second acts of vision and enjoyment, which acts are repugnant to sin - so God, by his ordained power, cannot not give to a hypostatically united nature supreme charity and, further, supreme enjoyment, which exclude sin; and by this union the assumed nature is incapable of sin, not formally, but virtually by way of disposition, a disposition that, in respect of God as agent, is remote but necessary - as necessary as is it is necessary that someone blessed does not sin.

38. As to the second proof, from Anselm [n.4], I say that the second man [Christ] - because he is God - was, by congruity, filled with supreme grace, whereby he was incapable of sin; and it was not appropriate for the first man [Adam] to be filled with as much grace, because he was not God. So it is not by force of this union that Anselm posits [in Christ] an inability to sin, but only by congruity, because fullness of grace was the accompaniment of the union.

39. When, against the second member [n.2], argument is made about a nonintellectual nature, the response to the first point [n.5], as to how a non-intellectual nature could be said to be united in hypostasis or substance and yet not be a person, is plain because of the difference between the dependence that is called union in hypostasis or in substance and the dependence that is called union in person [n.31].

40. As to the other point [n.6], which is about the sharing of characteristics, some deny the consequence; but since the idea of this sharing is that the supposit receives, in the concrete, the predication of the nature in which it subsists, then even if the supposit were to subsist in the nature of a stone, there seems no reason for stone not to be predicated of it, by saying ‘God is a stone’ just as now one says ‘God is a man’, and both these would be equally true. - But when the further inference is drawn that ‘the sharing then is more perfect, namely because any part of a stone is stone etc.’ [n.6], I say that although a part of a stone receives the predication of stone in general as being a homogeneous or subjective part of the whole, yet it does not receive the predication of that of which it is an integral part, just as no integral whole is predicated of an integral part (as we do not say that a wall is a house); for in this case the Word would not be stone in general but ‘this particular whole stone’; and because no part of the stone would be ‘this stone’, so no part of the stone would be predicated of him.