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).