I. To the Question

46. I reply:

When an affirmative proposition is false because of repugnance between the terms, then whatever reduplication or determination is added that does not take away the repugnance, it does not take away the falsity of the proposition. Now reduplication properly taken does not diminish either extreme, because it is the determination of one extreme to the other, and therefore it does not make true any false proposition that was false without the reduplication. However, if to one of the extremes, as to the predicate, there is added something that so qualifies or specifies it that the qualified extreme is not repugnant to the other extreme the way the unqualified extreme was repugnant to it before, then a proposition with such a qualifying determination - and not without it - can be true. So although ‘white’ is repugnant simply to an Ethiopian, and although therefore the proposition ‘an Ethiopian is white’ is false and ‘an Ethiopian as he is a man is white’ is false, yet when the addition of ‘as to his teeth’ is added to the predicate, whereby the predicate is qualified and its repugnance to the subject is removed, then the proposition is true that nevertheless was false without the addition.

47. As to the proposition in question: if ‘as he is man’ is taken in a properly reduplicative way, so that the qualification limits neither extreme, then the proposition ‘Christ as he is man is a creature’ is no more true than the proposition ‘Christ is a creature’; for in both cases the same reason for falsity remains, that the human nature in Christ is neither the first total being nor the first partial being of Christ, which however it would have to be if Christ were a creature in the broad sense of the term; nor is Christ’s human nature caused only by the first efficient cause and from totally nothing, taking ‘creature’ in the first way [n.21]. But if the determination ‘as he is man’ is added to one extreme, namely the predicate, so as to qualify the predicate in respect of the subject, then repugnance to the subject is removed from the now qualified predicate, which repugnance to the subject was present in the predicate taken simply.

48. So as to the proposition in question [n.41], when one takes the ‘as he is...’ as properly a mark of reduplication or of inherence of the predicate in the subject, the proposition is false; but when one takes it as it specifies or qualifies the predicate, then it indicates creation in a certain respect. And in this sense ‘Christ is a created man’ or ‘Christ is a creature as he is man’ can be thus conceded, but the phrase is improper and needs expounding by ‘Christ as to his humanity is a creature’. An example of this is plain in the example of an Ethiopian in relation to whiteness; for just as ‘an Ethiopian is white’ is false so also ‘an Ethiopian as he has teeth is white’ is false, if this second proposition is properly reduplicative. But the proposition ‘an Ethiopian is white as to his teeth’ is true, and is so according as he has teeth, provided the ‘according as’ qualifies the predicate. However in this way the expression is not proper, for syncategorematic expressions are not determinations of the predicate.

49. Further, there are two additional reasons to prove that Christ is not a creature.

The first is as follows. When some denominative is such that, by its formal idea, it denominates equally the whole as the part, then although sometimes, because of an extrinsic impediment, it might not denominate the whole supposit, yet it does not, by reason of denominating the part, thereby denominate the whole absolutely, for it would be denominating both (as far as concerns the per se idea of its form) even if there was some concurrent impediment on the part of the subject or matter. An example about whiteness with respect to a surface one of whose parts is actually black; for whiteness naturally denominates, as far as concerns itself, the whole surface, but it cannot denominate the black part, because black and white are mutually incompossible, even though the whiteness would have, on its own account, regard to every part; and so, while it denominates a part, the whole should not be called white. The denomination ‘creature’ is, as far as concerns itself, said equally of the supposit and of the nature, and said more of the supposit, it seems, because ‘nature’ is not created save because ‘this nature’ or ‘this supposit’ is created, for nature does not exist save in a supposit or an individual singular. So, in the proposition in question, in as much as the idea of creature is repugnant to the supposit of Christ, because the supposit is eternal, his human nature should not be taken as a reason to call that supposit a creature absolutely.

50. Besides, when a form is naturally said of a part and not of the whole uniformly, then, if it is said of the whole by reason of the part alone, it is said by way of synecdoche, or figuratively or improperly, because it would be simply false if the figure of speech did not excuse it. Now the human nature in Christ is a sort of part of Christ, not an integral or essential part, but a requisite part, for without it Christ would not be ‘Christ’ according to Damascene ch.49. And the term ‘creature’ denominates, as far as concerns itself, the nature and supposit equally, so it is never true to say ‘Christ is a creature (by virtue of the expression) because human nature is a creature’ but, if it is true, it is so by synecdoche - just as these others are true by synecdoche, ‘Christ descended to hell’ and ‘Christ lay in the tomb’, the first of which belonged to him only through his soul and the second through his body. “But an argument that proceeds from figurative locutions does not proceed correctly,” according to the Master in the text, for according to him “the proposition ‘Christ is a creature’, whether taken simply or with addition, is a figurative or tropical locution” [Sent. 3 d.11 ch.1 n.4].a

a.a [Interpolated text]: I say that ‘death’ can denominate the whole simply if it denominates the human nature, because neither death nor life naturally denominate both the supposit and the nature by a proper reason of denomination. For however much it is the whole that first lives and first dies, yet neither supposit nor nature is formally of a nature to live or die separately, but only the whole is through the formal part that makes the whole the whole that it is - just as the whole is said to act by reason of its form, so in this case for like reason. But it is not so with the denomination ‘creature’, as was said above [nn.49-50].