Question Two. Whether a Created Person was Assumed or was Able to be Assumed

6. Second I ask whether a created person was assumed or was able to be assumed.

7. That it was:

The nature was assumed; therefore the person was too. - The consequence is proved through the same major as was set down for the preceding question [sc. divine nature and divine person are the same in reality, n.2] and through this minor: a created person is the same as the nature, because if it is different it would be either substance or accident; not accident because no accident is the reason that anything subsist in itself; if it is substance then either as matter or as form or as the composite - and whichever it is, the result is that there were several composite substances or several forms in a created person.

8. Again, everything pertaining to dignity in a creature is something positive; person states something pertaining to dignity;     therefore it states something positive. But everything positive can be assumed; therefore etc     .

9. Again, if the supposit were absolute, the divine nature would assume it, because nature differs from person only in idea; therefore it can assume now. - Response: the consequence is not valid, because now there is not a difference of reason only, then there was.

10. Again, [human] nature is united to [divine] nature, because [divine nature] is in the three persons; and, because a human nature is united first to a whole person, it is also therefore per se united to anything of the person; so the person is assumed when the nature is assumed.

11. On the contrary:

If a created person was assumed, then two persons were or would be one person.

I. To the First Question

A. Solution

12. The answer to the first question is plain from the first and last question of the first distinction. For in the last question [d.1 nn.211-220] it is said that the essence is not the formal idea of terminating the union, although it is the idea of effecting it; it was however able to be the formal idea of terminating, as was said in question two of the first distinction [d.1 nn.108-109].

13. So therefore, if the discussion is about the idea of causing the assumption, it is plain that the divine nature is the idea of causing it; but it is not in fact the idea of terminating it, though it could be that idea.

14. But if the question is asked about the assumer as term, one can say that if it is of the idea of the assumer that it have incommunicable subsistence and the essence by itself does not have incommunicability, then the essence cannot be the assumer as term. But if in the assumer, that is, in what terminates the union, a singular per se existence without incommunicability is sufficient, then, since ‘being per se and a this’ belongs to the divine nature, the divine nature would be able to do the assuming.

B. To the Principal Arguments

15. To the Arguments.

To the first [n.2]: a reply seems difficult for those who say that the property or the person differ only by reason from the nature [see Lectura 3 d.5 n.25 for how they should make reply].

16. It was said differently in 1 d.2 nn.388-390, that an entity incommunicable from the nature of the thing is not formally communicable; and so the Father communicates to the Son an entity that from the nature of the thing, before all operation of the intellect, is communicable and not incommunicable. And accordingly, whatever third thing they are compared to that belongs to one of them according to its formal idea, it should not belong to the other if it is not formally the same as the other; of this sort is the act of assuming according to one of the ways [supra d.1 nn.93-94, 108], because assuming belongs incommunicably to what is subsistent insofar as it is subsistent as to the term.

17. To the next [n.3] I say that infinity is not the idea of terminating this union but independent personhood is, from d.1 n.44 supra. But if you say that infinity can for something be the idea of terminating, because it supplies the place of any created supposit [cf. William of Ware, d.1 n.18 supra] - this can be denied if incommunicability is required in the term; for ‘infinite’ and ‘incommunicable’ are not formally the same, because everything infinite is formally communicable [sc. in God].

II. To the Second Question

A. Solution

18. The answer to the other question is plain according to what was said above, d.1 nn.44-47, that created personhood states negation of actual dependence on something else as on the supposit of the nature, and also negation of aptitudinal dependence, which - as far as concerns the thing having the aptitude - would always be actual (as the separated soul would always depend on the body as far as concerns the soul’s natural aptitude); since therefore it is a contradiction for a nature to depend and not depend actually on an extrinsic person, and the nature’s being assumed is its actually depending with this particular dependence, it is a contradiction for it to be assumed and to have at the same time its own created personhood.

19. But those who would posit that created personhood states some positive nature or entity over and above the singular nature, and that for this reason it is repugnant for created personhood to be assumed but not so repugnant for the singular nature - they would have to look for some other cause why a person cannot be assumed [cf. n.8].

20. But what is here supposed [n.19] was rejected in d.1 n.26; and against it well proceeds the reason touched on [n.7] about the division of substance and accident and threefold substance.

B. To the Principal Arguments

21. To the arguments of the second question.

To the first [n.7] I say that if what is positive in a person be taken, then, because ‘personhood’ adds nothing positive beyond ‘this nature’, a created person is the same as ‘this nature’. But if personhood be completely taken according as it imports incommunicability, then ‘person’ is not altogether the same as ‘this nature’; just as an entity that is indifferent to some affirmation and negation is not altogether the same as the negation, or the same as itself along with the negation, so it is here; and therefore ‘this nature’ has enough distinction from ‘this non-dependent person’ that this nature is able to depend but not that this non-dependent nature is able to depend (taken in the composite sense). - The proof adduced for identity [of created person and nature] only proves that created person does not add any positive entity over and above ‘this nature’ - which I concede.

22. To the second [n.8] I say that person in the case of creatures states a ‘dignity’ materially by reason of the intellectual nature that it connotes, but not formally by reason of the incommunicability that it further adds - unless it be said that some negation is a mark of dignity, as was said in 1 d.28 nn.27-28 about ‘unbegotten’ in divine reality.