Twelfth Distinction

Single Question. Whether the Human Nature in Christ was able to Sin

1. About the twelfth distinction I aska,b whether the human nature in Christ was able to sin.

a.a [Interpolation] About the twelfth distinction, where the Master deals with the conditions of the assumed nature, one question is asked, namely whether Christ was able to sin...

b.b [Interpolation] Whether the human nature in Christ could have procreated - Godfrey [of Fontaines] Quodlibet 9 q.5, and an article here is possible.

2. That it was

John 8.55, “If I say that I do not know him, I will be like you, a liar.” Christ was able to say and did say all of this statement, therefore he was able to say a part of it; therefore he was able to say, “I do not know the Father,” and so to lie, and consequently to sin.

3. Further, Augustine On Free Choice 3.5 n.56, “A nature that can sin is better than a nature that cannot sin.” But Christ assumed the best human nature in the best part of himself;     therefore he assumed it as able to sin; therefore in that nature he was able to sin.

4. Again, what someone can do if he wills, he can do simply (for, according to Augustine On the Spirit and the Letter 31.n.53, “That which a man does is in his power”), and this is taken up by Anselm Why God man 2.10; Christ was able to sin if he wanted, because ‘to want to sin’ is to sin; therefore he was able to do it simply; therefore etc     .

5. On the contrary:

If he could sin he could be damned; the consequent is false, therefore the antecedent is too. The consequence is manifest, for anyone who is damned is damned because of sin.

6. Again, Christ was always blessed; therefore he could not sin or be damned. The consequence is manifest, for privative opposites are no more present in the same thing than contradictories are, for they are immediate opposites in a subject apt for them.

I. To the Question

7. There are two difficulties here: one, how the blessed are incapable of sin, and the other how Christ, who was a wayfarer and was able to merit, could have, along with the blessed, inability to sin. The first article belongs to 4 d.49, about which see there [q.6 nn.10-11].

8. To the second question I reply in brief that since Christ in the first moment of the [hypostatic] union was blessed with God, his blessedness took from him all the power of sinning that could be taken from him by blessedness, although along with it there stood, by dispensation, the power of meriting; for the fullness of glory, whereby he was no less joined to the end (though he could merit) than any other blessed, as equally removed all power in him for turning away from the end as it does in others.

9. In agreement with this is that when matter is under a form equal to its whole appetite it cannot be under another form (the point is plain in the case of all the celestial bodies); of such sort is blessedness with respect to the soul, as is plain from the definition of blessedness in Augustine On the Trinity 13.5 n.8, “He is blessed who both has all that he wills and wills nothing badly;”     therefore etc     .

10. Those, however, who say [Henry of Ghent; cf. d.2 n.14 above] that Christ’s united nature enjoyed the end by force of the union have to say as a result that he was incapable of sin not only by his fullness of glory but by the force of the union.

11. This opinion was refuted above [d.2 nn.15-23].

II. To the Arguments

12. To the first argument [n.2]: he who says the whole statement says that part of it materially, but he does not say the part, that is, does not assert it. For between this part (which cannot be asserted by the blessed, and especially not by Christ), namely, “If I say that I do not know him,” and the other part, “I will be like you etc.” there is a necessary consequence; and so if he could have asserted the first, he could have lied. However, he can be making the statement in a manner of speaking, so that, as speaker, he speaks each categorical part [sc. ‘I do not know him’, and ‘I am like you, a liar’], but yet he does not assert it, nor can he assert it, unless his intellect is capable of being deceived or his will capable of being damned or depraved (for if he lets it seem that words willingly spoken are in conflict with what is meant, he sins); for neither of these capabilities is in the perfectly blessed, because both are cases of imperfection (one of moral imperfection and the other of intellectual imperfection).

13. To the second [n.3] I say that the nature Christ assumed was of itself capable of sin and able to sin, because it was not by force of the union in a state of bliss, and it had free choice, and thus it could be turned either way; but it was confirmed in blessedness from the first instant such that it was incapable of sin, just as the other blessed are incapable of sin.

14. To the last argument [n.4] I say that by virtue of the expression the major is false, because it indicates that a categorical proposition follows a conditional one, and the conditional is necessary but the categorical consequent to it is contingent, and a contingent proposition does not follow necessarily; the conditional antecedent in the whole conditional proposition is necessary, because the antecedent includes the consequent (for the ‘to will’ in respect of the ‘to sin’ includes ‘able to’, for ‘to will’ is not only being able to do but doing it) - but the consequent is contingent, for it belongs to some nature and not to others.

15. If however the major [n.4] should in some way be true, one must expound it so that the antecedent of the whole conditional possesses some determination without which the consequent does not follow from it. And the determination must be this: ‘what someone can do if he wills, and he can and should will it, he can do simply’; for without this condition (namely, if he should not or cannot will it) the proposition will not be true save by supposing something impossible; and what is possible simply of itself but impossible by supposition is impossible simply.

16. Now the minor, ‘Christ was able to sin’, is false in this way, because as is not able to sin so neither is he able to want to sin.

17. It can in another way be said that a proposition that is conditional by an ‘if’, that is, by a condition, can determine a possible or an impossible result; if an impossible one, nothing follows, as in this case. See on this matter ‘Whether God is one’ in the argument ‘everything that it would be better if it existed must be posited’, 1 d.2 nn.189-190.