Question Three. Which of the Three Opinions that the Master Reports should be Held

71. Lastly the question is asked, without arguments, which of the three opinions that the Master reports should be held.Tr. The three views from Lombard’s Sentences 3 d.6 are: first, that in the incarnation a man already constituted of soul and flesh became God and that God became that man; second, that the man Christ consists of three substances [God, soul and flesh] or two natures [divine and human] and that he is one composite person; third, that the union of soul and flesh with the Word did not constitute a single substance or person but God clothed himself with the human nature as with an external habit or covering. ⁶¹

72. I reply.

The first one is not generally held to, because the assumer is not the thing assumed, but the Word is ‘this man’. Now whether ‘this man’ can stand for any singular of human nature and not precisely for the supposit of the Word (as white can stand for ‘this white’, which is a singular of white in the concrete - in the way that the proposition ‘every white is colored’ is true - and not stand for the subject or supposit subsisting in whiteness), will be touched on in d.11 n.69 below on ‘Whether this man began to be’.

73. The third opinion was not heretical in the time of the Master, but was condemned afterwards in the time of Alexander III, as is plain in the decretal On Heretics [n.25 supra].The condemnation by Alexander III in 1177AD is included in the Decretals of Gregory IX, and reads more fully: “Since Christ is perfect God and perfect man, it is remarkable by what temerity anyone dares to say that Christ is not anything according as he is man. Now lest so great abuse or error arise or be introduced in the Church of God, we command Your Fraternity by apostolic writing that, having convoked the masters of Paris and Reims and of the other cities round about, you forbid by our authority under anathema that, for the rest, no one is to dare to say that Christ is not anything according as he is man, because, just as Christ is true God, so he is true man, subsistent of rational soul and human flesh.” John of Cornwall, in a eulogy to Alexander III, reports that, “Master Gilbert de la Porree, as many relate, taught...that Christ is and became a person composed of two natures or three substances, and yet did not become a person or a substance or anything as he is man.” ⁶² Also the authorities adduced on its behalf [by Lombard in the Sentences], which seem to mean that ‘Christ assumed human nature as a habit’ [cf. Philippians 2.7, “he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave.. and was found in habit as a man”Augustine 83 Questions q.73 n.2 explains Paul’s verse in Philippians thus: “‘He emptied himself’, not changing his form but ‘taking on the form of a slave’, and not changed and transmuted into a man with loss of his incommutable stability, but, by as it were taking on true man, he himself, who takes it on, ‘was made in the likeness of men...and was found in habit as a man’. By this name ‘habit’, then, the Apostle sufficiently indicated how he meant the phrase ‘made in the likeness of men’, because the Word was not made into man by transformation but by habit when he took on man, whom he associated with himself by in some way uniting man with, and conforming him to, immortality. And by this word [‘take on’] should be understood not that the Word was changed by taking on man, just as neither are our members changed when they put on clothing, although the taking on here conjoined the taken-on ineffably with the taker-on.” ⁶³] need expounding because there is a certain likeness of this nature to a habit; for just as he who has a habit does not change, but rather the haver, or the one with the habit, is hidden under the habit, so the divine person is not changed in this union but the human nature is, which has as it were hidden the person of the Word.

74. Therefore the second opinion should be held, that the person of the Word subsists in two natures: in one from which he has first existence, in the other (coming externally as it were) from which he has second existence, just as if, in a different way, Socrates were said to subsist in humanity and whiteness. But as to what the opinion says, ‘that the person of Christ is composite’, it is not commonly held when composition in the proper sense is spoken of, namely composition of act and potency (as of matter and form) or of two potentialities, of the sort that the Philosopher [Metaphysics 5.25-26.1023b19-34] calls elements integrating the total nature [cf. d.1 n.78 supra].

75. The authorities from Damascene,Three authorities from Damascene for the second opinion are quoted by Lombard, where the person of Christ is said to be composed of two natures. ⁶⁴ then, which mean that the person is composite, need exposition: that both the divine and the human nature are there as truly as if they composed the person but are there so un-confusedly that there is from them no third thing, for they do not bring about any composition. And this same thing is said by Damascene himself ch.49, “If, according to the heretics, Christ exists in one composite nature, he is changed from a simple nature into a composite one,” and “he is called neither God nor man,” “in the way we say a man is composed of soul and body, or the body of four elements.”Damascene, “If therefore, according to the heretics, Christ exists through the union of one composite nature, he is changed from a simple nature into a composite one, and.will be called neither God nor man but only Christ. But our dogma is not that Christ is composed of one nature, nor is he another thing from other things, as man is from soul and body, or as body is from the four elements.” ⁶⁵ So one should expound Damascene and say that the nature of Christ is composite because of the truth of the two natures in which he exists - but it is possible more truly to deny composition, because one of the natures does not perfect the other nor is some third nature made out of them. .