Question Three. Whether the Organization and Animation of the Body Preceded the Incarnation

99. Whether the organization and animation of the body preceded the incarnation. 100. That they did:

Because [William of Ware] the body of Christ was generated “from the most pure blood” of the blessed Virgin, according to Damascene [Orthodox Faith ch.46]; but the generated body is more dense than the blood from which it is generated, according to Damascene [ibid., ch.50]; therefore the blood occupies less space and consequently the formation or conception or generation was necessarily accompanied by local motion; and that not in an instant, so not along with the incarnation either (which happened in an instant), nor after it; therefore before it.

101. Further, the organized body had a different figure from the blood it was generated from, and the body was differently formed, because the blood was uniform in its parts but not so the organized body; therefore it occupied a different place; therefore the formation required local motion; therefore it happened in time and beforehand.

102. Further, every generable and corruptible substance that is not created but produced is produced through alteration; all the matter assumed by the Word is generable and corruptible - and it was not immediately created because it came from blood; therefore it was produced through alteration and consequently a potential part of the whole was altered into the form of the same whole; therefore this potential part was first under the privation opposed to that form, and this prior in time because privative opposites cannot be in the same thing at the same time. Therefore the body was nonanimated prior in time to being animated.

103. On the contrary:

There is the Master in the text [3 d.2 ch.3] and Damascene; and again, Damascene [ibid., ch.46] says, “at the same time flesh, at the same time flesh of the Word of God, at the same time animated flesh.”

104. I say that the question can be understood of priority in time or of priority in nature.

I. To the Question

A. Of Priority in Time

105. The first way has two articles: namely about the order of animation in relation to incarnation, and second of the order of organization in relation to animation.

1. Of the Order of Animation in Relation to Incarnation

106. As to the first article I say that animation did not precede incarnation in time, because then the nature would at some point have been a person in itself (and not in the Word), namely as soon as there was animated flesh.

107. Proof of the consequence:

For the animated body, if it is at any time subsistent in itself, is a person. The consequent is false, because then the blessed Virgin would not have been the true Mother of God; for she would not have borne God but that pure man whose nature would afterwards have been united to God. This consequent is against Damascene [ibid., ch.56], who determines, against Nestorius, that the blessed Virgin was true Mother of God and not of some pure man only. The consequence is plain, because the whole idea of the maternity of Mary was complete in the production of that nature.

2. Of the Order of Organization in Relation to Animation

108. As to the other point, about complete organization [n.105], I say that organization can be understood:

On the one hand either as the final induction of the form immediately disposing it [the body] to the soul - according to one opinion [Avicebron, William of Auvergne, et al.] - or as the induction of the intellective soul - according to another opinion that posits the organic body to exist formally by the soul [Aquinas et al.].This question about the unity or plurality of substantial forms is discussed extensively by Scotus in Ordinatio 4 d.11 q.3. ³⁷

109. Or, on the other hand, organization can be understood as the change preceding the ultimate induction of the organic form, disposing it to intellective form; but two changes precede, namely the local motion whereby the matter is taken to the place proper for generation, and the alteration by which the matter in the due place is altered and disposed for the inducing of the form of the organic body.

110. And in this second way [n.109] - according to an opinion that posits the heterogeneous parts of the organic body to differ in species [infra d.4 n.38] - many generations and many changes can be posited; for just as the parts have different quidditative substantial forms, so there is a different generation for each of them and there is a proper alteration for each generation; and also, further, one can posit that not all these generations are simultaneous but that one precedes another in time, and thus one alteration disposing to one generation is naturally prior to another.

111. But however it may be with these matters, one can say that organization taken in the first way [n.108], namely the organization whereby the body is said to be organized, does not precede animation in time, even in our own case, because then a father would in no way generate a man (as is plain from Augustine [rather, Fulgentius] On the Faith to Peter n.60, before the end, “Hold most firmly and in no way doubt that God the Word made flesh has one person of his divinity and his flesh, for God the Word deigned to unite full human nature truly to himself,” and Damascene ch.46 [n.103]); for the whole of a father’s action would be complete in duration first before the soul was complete; but he does not generate a man whose whole action is complete in time prior to and before a man is complete.

112. But if the discussion be about organization in the second way [n.109], one must hold that all inductions of partial substantial forms, even if there be many of them, yet take place in the same instant, and no part is prior in time to another, because no part assumed by the Word ever pre-existed in its own supposit - and this is what would have happened if any part had existed prior in time.

113. But as to the transference of matter to the place proper for generation, and as to the alteration preceding the generation of the whole or the generation of the parts [n.109], there is doubt whether these preceded the incarnation in time or existed in the same instant as it; for if they are posited as having existed together in time, then it seems more possible to save the fact that Mary cooperated in these motions (on this question see infra d.4 n.41) - and if the whole is posited as having happened in an instant, so that there was no local motion there nor any successive change, then the fact is more saved that in the ultimate instant of the Virgin’s express consent the Word-man existed in the Virgin’s womb, because before that instant there does not seem to have been any operation specific to the incarnation, and in that instant the whole incarnation seems to have been complete.

B. Of Priority in Nature

114. About priority in nature, it seems one should say that the foundation of the relation naturally precedes the relation, because - according to the Philosopher Categories 7.6a36-37 and to Augustine On the Trinity 7.1 n.2 - what is nothing in itself is nothing in relation to another [cf. 1 d.3 n.31], and the whole nature is the foundation of this relation (from the previous question, n.86); therefore the entity of the whole nature naturally precedes the incarnation and so animation naturally precedes it as well; but animation is naturally preceded by the organization of the whole, according to one opinion, or at least is simultaneous with it, according to the other opinion about forms [n.108].

II. To the Principal Arguments

115. To the first argument [n.100] I say that if it were conceded that the alteration precedes the incarnation in time, it could be said that, along with the alteration, there was occupation of a lesser place (as is universally the case with any condensing), and so there would be posited one per se local motion there, by which the matter was removed to a place appropriate for generation, and another per accidens local motion concomitant to the generation of the denser body, by which a lesser place would be occupied; and, in the ultimate instant of condensing, all the partial forms and the whole form of the organic body would be induced and, in that instant, the whole would be assumed, though in a certain order of nature. - But if it be posited that the alteration did not precede, then it can be posited that the occupation of a lesser place was sudden, and this by divine power, provided however that created virtue could not cooperate with it (discussion of which is contained in d.4 n.46 infra).

116. The same point must be made in answer to the second argument, about figuration [n.101].

117. To the third [n.102] I say that alteration properly speaking is between privation and form, as is plain in Physics 5.1.225a7-18, and not between negation and form [cf. 4 d.10 p.1 q.2 n.19]; but privation is a negation in something naturally fit [sc. for the relevant form, Categories 10.12a29-31]; and therefore, when the form is produced simultaneously with what receives it, there is properly no alteration to that form,a but only alteration to what is receptive of it. But since here [sc. the hypostatic union] the intellective soul is induced (even in our own case) simultaneously with the being of the organic body, there is properly no alteration to the soul but only to the being of the organic body; and the subject of this alteration is the matter that existed before under the form of blood. - And when in the major is taken [n.102] that ‘every generable and corruptible form, if it is not immediately created, receives being through alteration of the subject’, this proposition must be denied if it is understood to mean that being is received through an alteration of which the form is first the term, and if it is understood to be about alteration properly speaking; however the proposition can be conceded if, namely, it is about an alteration of a thing some part of which is the term, and it is about alteration commonly speaking. So here [sc. the hypostatic union] the term of the alteration properly speaking is the organic body, which is some part of the animated body.

a.a [Interpolation] because what is receptive was not under privation before it was under form, nor was it naturally fit to have form before it had it.