II. To the Arguments

34. To the arguments.

To the first [n.2] I say that that which naturally denominates a supposit by reason of nature can be said of that supposit, as ‘to live’ and ‘to understand’ and ‘to eat’ and other such things; but ‘creature’ is not such a denominative. An example: a man is said to be ‘curly’ as to his head, but he is not said to be ‘triangular’ or ‘round’ as to his head, for the first denominative naturally applies to the head it is found in, but not the second; so ‘to be Creator’ naturally denominates by reason of nature but ‘creature’ does not.

35. In another way it can be said, according to the reason posited for the question [n.2], that ‘creation’ does not state something repugnant to the nature or to this supposit as ‘creature’ does; for ‘to create’ is to give something being after non-being by way of first causality - and this is not repugnant to Christ; but ‘to be created’ is to receive first being after non-being from the first efficient cause, and this is repugnant to Christ.

36. To the next argument I concede that ‘man’ predicates something of Christ, and that that something is created and a creature, so that ‘creature’ is said of the nature; but that it is therefore said of Christ does not follow; for if the middle term in the major is taken in the abstract and is said of Christ in the minor in the concrete, there will be four terms in the syllogism.

37. To the next [n.4] I say that Christ is a created man in the sense that ‘created’ here is qualified by ‘man’ to say ‘created man’, and so the inference ‘therefore he is a creature’ does not hold, but there is a fallacy of simply and in a certain respect (as in the case of ‘Socrates is made white, therefore Socrates is made’).

38. In another way it can be said that the division [sc. into ‘being created’ and ‘being uncreated’] is insufficient, because, although anything ‘one’ is sufficiently divided in itself by both terms, yet something that involves two things in itself, namely nature and supposit, is not thus sufficiently divided, because one of the terms belongs to it by reason of nature and the other is repugnant to it by reason of supposit.

39. To the next argument [n.5] I say that any property in the abstract that belongs to any genus has ‘creature’ as a higher denomination, just as does also ‘to be an effect’; but not every concrete thing of any genus has ‘created’ as a higher nature, but only that concrete thing whose first being is the being of that denomination, that is, whose first being is created; but the first being of Christ (whether his first total being or his first partial being) is not created. The case is like ‘to be a creature’, which is not a superior denomination of ‘to be white’ such that, for this reason, Socrates should be called ‘creature’ because whiteness is a creature, but he is a creature for another prior reason; hence, although ‘creature’ is said of whiteness it is not said of white if white is not the first being of that of which it is said.

40. To the next [n.6], it is plain that Christ is called ‘generated’ and ‘conceived’ because these terms naturally denote the whole by reason of the nature, so that, in their case, nature is the ‘that by which’ with respect to the whole; but it is not so in the case of the predicate ‘to be a creature’, for this would need to be said of the supposit by a denomination proper to the supposit and other than the denomination by which it is said of the nature; or it would at least need to belong to the supposit by reason of the first being of the supposit.