C. Whether Nature Could Reunite the Intellective Soul to the Dissolved Mixed Body so that it be the Same Man

1. Opinion of Others and its Refutation

215. As to the third article [n.163]: once the body has been restored by something or other, it seems that the soul could be united to that body by nature, because this form [the soul] is the disposition that necessitates with respect to animation; so there is in nature a disposition necessary for animation, but that which it disposes for necessarily follows on such disposition.

216. But on the contrary

It is plain that the soul cannot be united to the body by any creature other than itself; but neither can it be united by itself as by the effecting principle of the union. Proof of both theses: an equivocal cause is simply nobler than the effect, and the proof is from Augustine 83 Questions q.2, “Everything that comes to be cannot be equal to that by which it comes to be, otherwise justice, which must render to each what is his own, would necessarily be taken away from things.” But Augustine means this about an equivocal cause, because justice in a univocal cause requires equality, while in an equivocal it requires eminence. Avicenna holds the same in his Metaphysics 6.3, and Augustine Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.16 n.33, holds the same, that “the agent is more outstanding than the passive thing.” This proposition, as stated elsewhere [Ord. I d.3 n.407], depends on this other, “the agent is simply more perfect than its formal effect;” but man is simply more perfect than his soul (as whole than part), and than any other bodily substance. It is plain, therefore, that neither the soul nor any other bodily substance (other than man) can be the effective cause of man.

217. Again, Physics 2, the form and efficient cause are not numerically the same; therefore the soul, which is the formal cause of man, cannot be the efficient cause of the same man.

218. Again, the first union [of body and soul], made in generation, is not less natural than this other, made in resurrection; but the soul could not have been the effective cause of this union; therefore only God was in creating and infusing the soul. - I concede the conclusion that if the first production of man is subject to active divine virtue alone, then to him alone will be subject the second production of man; but this production is in the animation of the organic body.

219. To the argument for the opposite [n.215] I say that in the whole of nature there is nothing in the receptive thing that is a disposition that necessitates for the form, because along with any such disposition there stands the potency for the contradictory opposite [sc. the disposition, qua disposition, can be with or without the form it is the disposition for]; the receptive thing, which is precisely receptive, necessarily goes along with this potency, for such potency is repugnant to necessity [sc. a potency qua potency is not necessitated to being actualized or to not being actualized].

220. But the customary phrase ‘the disposition that necessitates’ [n.215] must be understand in this way: not because the disposition belongs to the idea of necessity but because, when the disposition is posited, the agent necessarily induces the form for which the disposition is the mere disposition - the agent induces either with necessity simply, as when the agent is merely natural, or with necessity in a certain respect, as when the agent is voluntary and disposes itself so to act. And in this last way the form of corporeity is a disposition necessitating for the soul, not that the disposition is of itself or by virtue of itself followed by animation, but because once the disposition is in place, the agent, by the conditioned necessity of its own disposition, induces the form that it is for.