IV. On Christ as First Object

172. [The Opinion of Bonaventure] From what has been said the refutation of the opinion that posits Christ as first subject Bonaventure On the Sentences 1 prologue q.1 in corp. (1 7b): “The subject too, to which, as to ‘the integral whole’, all the things determined in this book are reduced is Christ, insofar as he embraces the divine and human nature, or the created and the uncreated, about which are the two first books; and as he is head and members, about which are the two following books. And I take ‘integral whole’ in a broad sense, because it embraces many things not only in composition but in union and in order.” ⁵³is plain, because then the necessary truths about the Father and the Holy Spirit - to wit, ‘the Father generates’, ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds’ - would not be theological truths, nor would the contingent truths about them be, to wit ‘the Father creates through the Son’, ‘the Holy Spirit is sent in time visibly and invisibly’; nor the necessary truths about the triune God, as that he is omnipotent, boundless, nor the contingent truths, as that God creates, God governs the world, remits sins, punishes, rewards, and the like. - The proof of all these consequences is that no truth belongs per se to any science unless it be about its first subject, or about a part of it, whether integral or essential, or about something essentially attributed to the subject. It is plain that the Father or the Trinity is not Christ, nor part of him in any of the stated ways, nor anything essentially attributed to Christ; both because since Christ signifies two natures - and that insofar as he is subject, according to those who posit him as subject - it follows that, as having a created nature, he will be essentially prior to the Father and to the Trinity (because an essential attribution is only made to what is essentially prior), which is false; and because Christ even in his divinity does not have any such priority according to which the Father or the Trinity could be attributed to him.

173. Against this opinion too are the reasons placed last in the solution of the second question against the position about relation to what is extrinsic [nn.164-166]. -Against the same is the first reason set down for the solution of the first question [n.151], because the necessary truths about the Father, about the Holy Spirit, and about the Trinity cannot be virtually contained first in Christ, because if the Word had not been made incarnate, those truths would not have been necessary, which is false. The third reason too in the same place [n.153] is valid here, because no knowledge would have been handed down about God except as it is included in Christ; this knowledge is about the Word only and thus is not the most distinct knowledge that could be handed down; therefore some other knowledge prior to it would have to be required.

174. The same point is shown by some of the persuasive reasons there set down [nn.154-156], because the unity which belongs to ChristIn the position of Bonaventure, see the previous footnote ⁵⁴ as he is one supposit in two natures is not an eternal unity; but it would be necessary to assert that formal unity of the first subject; therefore the first subject as first is not something eternal only.

The persuasive reason about faith Again in the position of Bonaventure. ⁵⁵seems also to be conclusive; for it is not a theological belief or truth that this man was crucified, as it does not in the subject term implicate the Word, because the Jews were able naturally to see this man on the cross. But it is a theological belief and truth that the Word was a man born of a Virgin, that the Word was a man crucified, that the Word was a man rising from the dead, and so on about the articles pertaining to his humanity; but as for those that pertain to his divinity, it is plain that they do not belong first to Christ as he is Christ, but some to the other persons, some to the Trinity.

Therefore the adequate object of theology is not Christ but something that is as it were common both to the Word, about whom primarily are believed the articles pertaining to reparation, and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, about whom are some other theological truths.

175. It seems then that one must say that things are like the way they are in medicine, on the supposition that the human body is the first subject about which health and sickness are there considered as the property: if the kinds of human body were body mixed thus and so, to wit blooded body, phlegmatic body, etc., this whole thing, healthy blooded body, would not there be the first subject, both because it is too particular and also because it includes the need to consider a property about the subject, and a property cannot be the nature of the subject, because a subject, as it is subject, is naturally prior to its property, and thus a property would be prior to itself. And in brief, whatever might be said about any medicine handed down that was about such a subject, although this subject was a particular and a per accidens being, it would at any rate be impossible for the first science of the body of man to be about a healthy blooded body. Nay rather, if there were a science about it, some other science would be prior: either about the body of man in general, because it has in its generality certain knowable properties that belong to it in its general nature, in the way it is prior to the things that come under it; or about blooded body, whose nature is naturally prior to healthy blooded body, and this prior nature virtually contains the other properties; or about the healthy body of man, because its nature precedes healthy blooded body. Thus also is it in the proposed case. Christ signifies the Word-man, according to Damascene [De Fide Orthodoxa 3 ch.4]; therefore before knowledge about Christ as about the first subject there would naturally be another prior knowledge about the Word, if there are things present in Christ by reason of the fact he is the Word, and there would, before that knowledge, be another knowledge about God as to what is present in him by reason of God as God is common to the three persons.

176. Therefore, if we hold theology to be in itself a first knowledge, it will not be first about Christ; and if it is equally about truths common and proper to the three persons, it would not be about any person as about some adequate subject, but about God as God is common to the three persons. And then the thesis will be saved that either every theological truth is about the first subject, to wit any truth that is in God by reason of God, or is about a subjective part, as it were, of the first subject, to wit any truth that is properly in one of the persons, or is about what is attributed to the first subject or to a part as it were of the subject, to wit about the creature as to the relation it has to God as he is God, and about the assumed nature as to the relation it has to the Word who sustains it [n. 172].

177. [The Opinion of Lincoln] Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, The Work of Six Days ch.1: “.. .And this is the one subject of this wisdom [theology] which the Savior expresses in John when he says: ‘And that they too may be one in us’. Consider what is said, how the ‘one’ by which we are one with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - which is also expressed in John when he says ‘And that they too may be one in us’ - seems to bind together in itself the ‘one’ of the substance of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the ‘one’ of the union of the two natures in the person of Christ, and the ‘one’ whereby we are one in Christ, and ‘one’ by the renewal of the Spirit of our mind with the Supreme Trinity!” ⁵⁶- However Christ is in another way posited as the prime subject according to Lincoln in his The Work of Six Days, and this way is that in which Christ is one by a triple unity, of which the first is unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the second the unity of the Word with the assumed nature, the third the unity of Christ the head with his members.

And on behalf of this opinion about Christ seems to be the first reason and the second to last reason set down for the first question [nn.151, 156], because the seven articles of the faith that pertain to Christ’s humanityThese seven (from the Creed) are: conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, descended into hell, rose again from the dead on the third day, ascended into heaven, will come again to judge the living and the dead. ⁵⁷ are not contained in God as subject, because they do not belong to him by nature of his divinity. However that subject does contain the property by whose form the property is present in him. But Christ does contain those articles, because they are present in him according to his humanity, and really so present; he also contains the other articles pertaining to his divinity, These seven articles are: I believe in one God, Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, I believe in the Holy Spirit, creator of heaven and earth, forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting. ⁵⁸because they are seen to be present in him according to his divinity.

178. A confirmation is that the subjects of the parts of the doctrine should be contained under the subject of the whole of it, either as subjective parts or as integral parts; the subjects of the parts of Scripture are not thus contained under God. The thing is proved by many glosses at the beginnings of books, assigning as their material causes certain things that are not anything in God, to wit, a gloss on Hosea says that the matter of Hosea is ‘the ten tribes’.

179. Again, third: in some places of Scripture nothing proper to God is narrated, because no fact is there narrated where anything is required on the part of God save only his general influence;     therefore such a book is not about God.

180. To the first argument [n.177] I say that the contingent truths asserted of Christ are not contained virtually in any subject in the way a subject is said to contain a property, because then those truths would be necessary; yet they do have a subject of which they are immediately and primarily said, and that subject is the Word, for the theological truths about the incarnation, nativity, passion, etc     . are these: ‘The Word became man’, ‘the Word was born a man’, ‘the Word suffered as man’ etc.

When you say that ‘the property is present according to his human nature’, I reply that humanity is not the first idea in the subject wherein the resolution of the property rests, but is as it were a prior property, which mediates between the first subject of those truths, which is the Word, and the other later properties, as ‘born’ etc. It is plain that humanity cannot be the idea of the subject in its relation to the first property, which is ‘was incarnate’, because that property is said of the Word without humanity being preunderstood as present in it as in a subject; this is the first reason.

181. To the second [n.178] I say that it would be enough if the attribution of the parts of the science to the first subject is of the sort that the attribution to God can be saved in respect of any matter assigned by the glosses. Otherwise put: God is the matter of any book at all that narrates there about him how he governed the human race; the race or person governed, however, is the remote matter. The glosses are to be understood in this way.

182. Hereby is clear the response to the third [n.179], that although there be some book containing no miracle of God, yet any book contains God’s providence and government of man in general or of a determinate race or person, so much so that if Moses writes about Pharaoh in Exodus the same history as some Egyptian writes in the Egyptian Chronicles, the subject of Moses’ history is God, whose government of man is treated of there, in his merciful liberation of the oppressed Hebrews, in his just punishment of the Egyptian oppressors, in his wise ordering of an appropriate form of liberation, and in his performing, with a view to making the liberated people receive the law with joy, so many signs proper to himself. But the subject of the Egyptian historiographer’s history would be the kingdom, or the king, or the Egyptian people, whose actions and the events that happen to them he intends to write, such that what God did is incidental to him, but what the race did or suffered is principal. For Moses the principal thing is what God did or permitted, and the matter in which it happened is for him as it were incidental. And granted that in some places no miracle is narrated, yet that which God permitted, by giving assistance through his ordinary influence and not preventing, is what is principally intended in that book insofar as it is part of Scripture; and the way this thing was fittingly ordered to some good, if it was capable of being so ordered, or the way it was punished, if it was made, is frequently added in the same or another book; or if the thing was permitted and not in this place punished, Scripture is not silent in other places about it in general that it will be punished somewhere else.