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Question One. Whether this proposition is true, ‘God is man’
1. About the seventh distinction I ask whether this proposition is true, ‘God is man’.a
a.a [Interpolation] About this seventh distinction, where the Master explains three opinions posited above about the incarnation of Christ in its factual reality, three questions are asked: two about locutions that express the union, and one locution expressing the predestination of the union. The first is whether this proposition is true, ‘God is man’; the second is whether this proposition is true, ‘God became man’; the third is whether Christ was predestined to be the Son of God. Argument about the first.
2. That it is not:
Because in things that divide being, or in the divisions of being, the first that divide it are most diverse; but being is divided by the first division into finite and infinite; therefore finite and infinite are most diverse. Therefore if there are any other dividers of being that are so incompossible that one cannot be predicated of the other, this will be most of all the case in the issue at hand.
3. Again, the same thing is not predicated of the same thing both in the abstract and denominatively, because if this proposition, ‘man is white’, is denominatively true, yet it is not true in the abstract, ‘man is whiteness’, according to the Philosopher Topics 1.2.109a34-b12, where he destroys a problem about accident if what is assigned as accident is predicated of the whatness; but God was human-ed, according to Damascene ch.46 [“Therefore we do not say that man was deified but that God was human-ed”], and according to Cassiodorus on Romans 1.3, ‘made to him from the seed of David’ [Cassiodorus, Exposition of the Psalter, psalm 9.1, “What more marvelous than God un-confusedly human-ed for the salvation of the human race?” psalm 56, “For God - so to say - became human-ed, who also in the assumption of the flesh did not cease to be God”] ; therefore he was not man.
4. Further, if God is man, then either ‘man’ predicates a relation or it predicates something relative to God; it does not predicate a relation because ‘man’ is not said relative to the other correlative (for God is not man of something); if it predicates something relative to God, then it is said of the three persons, according to Augustine On the Trinity 5.6 n.7 [“But whatever is said relative to substance is said according to substance; so the result is that the Son is in substance equal to the Father and to the Holy Spirit;” 8 n.9, “Whatever God is said to be relative to himself is also said thrice of the individual persons... and said.. .together of the very Trinity”]; therefore the three persons will be man, which is false.
5. Further, if God is man, I ask according to the idea of what predicate is ‘man’ predicated of God?66 None seems capable of being assigned: not the predication of genus or of species or of difference (because God is not in a genus or a species, nor is he a predicate of the essence of a subject); nor the predication of the property (because then God would fall into the definition of man); nor the predication of the definition (for the same reason); nor the predication of an accident (because no such thing is said of God).
6. On the contrary:
John 1.14, “The Word was made flesh,” where, according to Augustine [On the Trinity 2.6 n.11], ‘flesh’ is put for man.
I. To the Question
A. Solution
7. About this question one must see what is the cause of truth for the proposition ‘God is man’ being true, because it is not true first; for any predicate that only belongs to a universal through some supposit does not belong to it first or truly save because it is said of some inferior term; and so there must be some cause making the proposition true that is other than the universal. ‘Is man’ is only said of God through some determinate supposit, as through the Word; therefore the proposition is true because this proposition ‘the Word is man’ is true.
8. Second one must see about the truth of this cause [sc. the truth of ‘the Word is man’].
Here one needs to know that this proposition cannot naturally be made plain or known to be true; for either we can have a proper and determinate concept of the Word, and then this proposition is a true contingent but an immediate one and not known from the terms, because then the terms would have to include the evident relationship between them, so that the idea of the terms would necessarily include the union of the terms that the proposition expresses; or we do not have a proper concept of the Word but only a confused one (as was said in 1 d.3 nn.56-57, 187-188, d.27 n.78), and then this proposition ‘the Word is man’, as to the concept we have of the terms, is a contingent mediate one. Now such a contingent mediate proposition is not of a nature to be known save from some contingent immediate proposition from which it may follow; but, as was just said, the above proposition, because it is contingent, cannot be known from the terms, nor can it in any way be known naturally to be true, because a contingent immediate proposition is not truly known save by intuitive cognition of the extremes and of their union, of the sort we cannot have of the extremes of the proposition immediately antecedent to this one.
9. Therefore the truth of this proposition is only an immediately believed one, or one that must be made plain from something believed. And accordingly it is shown to be true in this way: for a supposit ‘subsistent in some nature as supposit’ is truly called such formally according to the nature; but it is a thing believed that this union is such that by it the Word subsists in human nature as a supposit in the nature; therefore by it the Word is formally man.
10. The major of this syllogism is proved by Damascene ch.57, “‘God’ signifies a universal of nature, so that it has in any hypostasis the order of a denominative term, as does also the term ‘man’ - for God is he who has divine nature as man is he who has human nature.”
11. The minor is proved by Augustine On the Trinity 1.13 n.28, “This assumption was such that it made God man and man God.”
12. Third one must see how this predicate ‘man’ is taken.
13. And one statement [Ps.-Hugh of St. Victor] is that it is taken for the supposit, so that the predication is by identity, by pointing to the implicature: ‘the Word is the supposit that is man’.
14. Against this:
In that case there will be a process to infinity: for this implication is on the part of the predicate and it predicates ‘man’ of something that is introduced by the subject - and then I ask whether the predicate is taken formally67 or for the supposit, when the statement is made that ‘the Word is the supposit that is man’? If the predicate is taken formally the intended conclusion is gained, that the predication is formal and not only by identity; but if the predicate is only taken for the implied supposit, there will be a process to infinity, because any implicative speaking includes a proposition within it and so a predication, because such a proposition is a double proposition; either then there will be process to infinity in implication or recourse must be made to another mode of predicating.68
15. Further, the predication of a nature of a supposit is formal, not only by identity.
16. Fourth one must see what sort of predicate this predicate is with respect to the subject.
It seems that it could be posited to be the species [Henry of Ghent]: for ‘man’ is said univocally of Christ and Peter; the predicate is also said of something as to its ‘whatness’, and only said of several things that differ numerically; therefore etc. That the predicate is said as to whatness is plain from the Decretal On Heretics [d.6 nn.25, 73 supra].
17. I reply:
Just as it is one thing to predicate a univocal and another to predicate univocally, strictly speaking (for a univocal predicate is said to be a predicate whose per se concept is one; and in this way ‘white’ said of wood and a stone, or said denominatively69 of anything, is a univocal predicate; predicated univocally is a predicate of which, as it is predicated, the idea is so one that this idea is included in the idea of the subject;70 and in this way a denominative predicate is not predicated univocally, that is in the way the Philosopher speaks in Categories 5.3a33-b9) - so a predicate stating the ‘what is predicated’ is one thing, and a predicate ‘predicated of a thing as to whatness’ is another (from Topics 1.5.102a31-34 [“Now genus is what is predicated in the ‘what it is’ of things that are many and differ in species; and the sort of things said to be predicated in the ‘what it is’ are whatever pertains to him who is asked to give in answer ‘what’ the thing proposed ‘is’”]), and yet not everything of any genus is predicated of anything ‘as to whatness’ but only what is predicated of its essential inferior, in whose definition it is included71 (as in the matter at issue).a
a.a [Interpolation] Thus it could therefore be said that, since no union is like this one - because of which the predication [sc. ‘God is man’] is said to be true - there is no predicate said of a subject that is related to it.
18. As far as concerns what is predicated, then, this is the species, because it is not of a nature to be genus or difference or property or accident. But as far as concerns the manner of the relation of the predicate in regard to the subject, the predicate does not belong to the idea of the subject, and it comes to a subject existing in complete act, and it can be absent from the subject - and to this extent, the predicate seems to have a relation in regard to the subject like the sort the predicate called ‘accident’ has.
19. And if it be objected [Godfrey of Fontaines, Richard of Middleton] that the relation of this universal [sc. ‘man’], because it is an ‘accident’, is founded in reality only in an accident - I reply that, as to the fact, it is true that this second intention ‘accident’, of which the logician speaks, is only founded in an accident that states a first intention, as the metaphysician speaks; yet it is not of the idea of this second intention that it only exist in the first intention, just as it is not of the idea of genus or species that it only be founded in the idea of substance (and perhaps already in the proposition ‘the white is wood’ the predicate is the second intention of accident, speaking logically; or if it is not so there, then at least if ‘to be wood’ could come to an actually existing white, such that it would not be predicated of the notion or essence of the subject nor would be convertible with the subject, ‘to be wood’ would seem perfectly an accident, speaking logically).
20. Fifth, what sort of predication, whether per se or per accidens, is this predication?
It seems not to be per se in the first mode, because the predicate does not fall into the definition of the subject; nor in the second mode, because the reverse does not hold (the subject does not fall into the definition of the predicate); nor generally is it in any mode of per se,72 because the relation [sc. the relation of ‘man’ to ‘God’ in ‘God is man’] does not seem necessary in any of them.
21. But this is not conclusive, because some contingent propositions can be per se, as with immediate predication in the second mode, if the proximate reason for the inherence of predicates is included in the subjects even though the inherence of the predicates is not necessary, as in the case of ‘the hot heats’ and ‘the will wills’.
22. But not even this mode of per se seems present in the issue at hand (the thing is plain in the second article [n.7]).
23. Response:
If the discussion about ‘per accidens’ is being done in the way the metaphysician speaks about it, namely that either one term is accidental to the other or both are accidental to a third (as is plain in Metaphysics 5.6.1015b16-34, 7.1017a19-22, ‘On Being and One’) - then this proposition [sc. ‘God is man’] is not per accidens, because “what exists in the true sense is not an accident of anything”, from Physics 1.3.186b4-5; hence this union is not conceded to be accidental either, because neither extreme is an accident. But this argument does not prove that the proposition is per se,73 speaking logically of ‘per se’.a But the subject ‘God’ here does not determinately include ‘Son’ more than ‘Father’ - so just as this proposition too, ‘the rational is animal’, is not per se, logically speaking. One could concede, then, that, logically speaking, the predicate is outside the per se notion of the subject and that, for this reason, the proposition is true not per se but per accidens, even though neither extreme is really present per accidens in the other.
a.a [Interpolation] first because the predicate is not of the per se notion of the subject, even in the concreteness of the supposit; second because in per se predications the subject supposits determinately (for if it were to supposit only indeterminately then this proposition ‘animal is man’ would be per se, because it can be verified in Peter or in Paul); third because if ‘man’ [sc. in ‘God is man’] were predicated per se of whatever is contained under the subject, then both the Holy Spirit and the Father would be ‘man’.
24. Hence this union of the extremes [sc. ‘God is man’] is conceded to be neither essential nor accidental but substantial - Damascene ch.49, “For we say the union is substantial, that is, true and not in imagination;” and so, in accord with the diversity of this union from all others, one can posit a diversity of this sort of inherence from all others.
B. A Doubt
25. But about this proposition, ‘Christ is man’, there is a doubt that it is per se, because here the subject does include the predicate, for, according to Damascene ch. 49, “Now we say that ‘Christ’ is the name of the hypostasis, not stated in a uniform way, but an existence significative of two natures;” so Christ signifies ‘an existent in human nature’, and thus it includes the predicate ‘man’, as Peter does.
26. It is said [William of Ware] that this is per accidens on account of an implication in the subject, which implication is per accidens; for Christ implies about the Word that he is man, because Christ is the Word-man or ‘the Word who is man’, because a ‘who is’ falls as a middle between the demanding and the demanded terms,74 according to Priscian [Grammatical Foundations, 18.1 n.6, “When it is said ‘Achilles son of Peleus slew in fight many Trojans’, the participle of the substantive verb, ‘being’ [ens], is understood (which is not now in use among us [sc. ‘ens’ is now used as a noun and not as the participle of the verb ‘esse’]), and in its place [sc. in place of ‘Achilles, being son of Peleus,.’] we can say or understand ‘who is or who was the son of Peleus’. In like manner.. .‘a friend agreeable to me is coming’, that is, ‘a friend who is agreeable to me.’; the ‘who is’ is understood. And these constructions, indeed, which the nature of the words demands, vary in this way in their cases, to which we may join pronouns or participles in the same cases.”].
27. But this statement of Priscian is not the purpose, because a substantive does not demand its adjective to be at the same time through an intermediate implication, nor conversely, but substantive and adjective are together construed intransitively. And so, although an intermediate implication occurs in the phrase ‘the cappa of Socrates’ [sc. ‘the cappa that is of Socrates’], yet it does not occur in the phrase ‘white man’, otherwise determining any extreme by any accident or adjective added to it would be impossible, and there would be a process to infinity.75 Therefore one may say that such an implication is not introduced by this name ‘Christ’, and that there is no need, because of it, to posit that the proposition [sc. ‘Christ is man’] is true per se; however, since, according to the Philosopher Metaphysics 5.29.1024b26-28 ‘an account false in itself is true of nothing’, then also, by similarity, a concept that is not in itself per se one is not asserted per se of anything one, nor is anything asserted per se of it. So this proposition ‘Christ is man’ can be conceded to be not altogether per accidens, for the subject includes the predicate, nor altogether per se, for the subject does not have a concept altogether per se one. And the like would be said of this proposition, ‘a white man is colored’.
II. To the Principal Arguments
28. To the arguments.
As to the first [n.2], I concede the greater diversity but not the greater repugnance; for those thing are said to be more diverse that agree less in the same thing, but they are not for this reason more repugnant (just as white and black agree in more things than white and man do, and yet white and black are more repugnant than white and man); and in this way a greater diversity in the extremes is not a cause of their being false but the repugnance is, or the incompossibility of things that formally have any of the four oppositions [Categories 10.11b17-23; Peter of Spain Tractate 3 n.29, “Now one thing is said to be opposed to another in four ways: for some opposites are opposite by relation, as father and son, double and half, master and slave; others are opposite by privation, as privation and possession, or sight and blindness, or hearing and deafness; others are contraries, as white and black; others are opposite by contradiction, as affirmation and negation (as ‘sits’ and ‘does not sit’).”].
29. To the second [n.3] I say that ‘to be human-ed’ is the proper denominative not of this term ‘man’ but of the term ‘becoming man’ - and universally, this sort of denominative, which signifies a form in its becoming, is said of the same thing that the form itself is said of, and yet denominatively or with the like denomination; for ‘white’ and ‘becomes white’ are the same, and ‘man’ and ‘becomes man’ are the same; but the proper denominative of man is the term ‘human’ (and this term is not said of God). And this has to be understood in the way that from subjects denominating supposits further denominatives can be taken; and this is not because they in-form them, the way concrete accidents are denominated [sc. as man is called white because he has the form of whiteness], but because of possessing or being related to something else extrinsic to such a substance.
30. To the third [n.4] I say that Augustine is speaking only of those things relatively said that predicate an intrinsic extreme.
31. However alternatively it could also be said that this predicate [sc. ‘man’], although it does not predicate a relative, yet does imply a relation of union with the Word, for this predicate is truly predicated of God because of the union of the nature with the word - which union is a relation.
32. As to the other [n.5], it is plain that this predicate participates something of the idea of a species and something of the idea of an accident in relation to the subject, because this nature comes to the Word actually existing perfectly in himself.