Question Three. Whether it was Possible for Christ’s Will to have the Highest Enjoyment Possible for a Created Nature

19. I ask third whether it was possible for Christ’s soul to have the highest enjoyment possible for a created nature.

20. That it was not:

The will elicits an act of meriting, and therefore of enjoying too, because otherwise one would not merit and enjoy according to the power’s same act; but the will of Christ’s soul cannot possess the highest idea of activity in eliciting an act of meriting because it is not able to have the highest active virtue that is consequent to free intellectual nature [sc. angelic nature, infra n.81]; therefore it cannot have the highest enjoyment.

21. Further, if as much grace were given to an angel as was given to Christ’s soul, then, since the will of an angel is more perfect, its active causality would be more perfect than the active causality of the will of Christ’s soul; also the other partial cause [sc. grace] would be equal with his soul; therefore the whole, namely an angel’s will along with a certain amount of grace, would have power for a greater act of enjoyment than the will of Christ’s soul along with that amount of grace, because when one partial cause is equal and the remaining one is greater, a more perfect effect can follow.

22. On the contrary:

It is possible for Christ’s soul to have the highest grace [nn.9-10]; therefore to have the highest enjoyment too. Proof of the consequence: an act naturally elicited by some form is equal in perfection to that form; the enjoyment in question is a supernatural act and consequently is elicited by the supernatural cause which is grace, and it is plain that it is elicited naturally for grace is not in its idea formally free; therefore the amount of enjoyment can accord with the amount of grace.