Chapter 2 (40): 1. Why God Did Not Give To That Soul The Power Over, As Well As
56 | THE SENTENCES, BOOK 3
Chapter 2 (40)
1. WHY GOD DID NOT GIVE TO THAT SOUL THE POWER OVER, AS WELL AS
THE KNOWLEDGE OF, ALL THINGS. But if it is asked why God did not give to it the power of making all things, as he did knowledge of them, it may be answered that it was naturally capable of knowledge, and so that of which it was naturally capable was suitably given to it without measure.
It was not given to it to be able to do all things which God does, however, lest it be thought to be omnipotent and, for this reason, God. But perhaps it was even the case that God could not grant to it the power to do all things, although he could grant the power to do some things which it is not able to do.—And so Christ's soul knows all things which God knows in the Word of God, and contemplates more clearly and immediately than any creature as united to the Word; in the same Word, the angels too know the things which are God's and those which are future.'
2. HOW SOME WORDS OF AMBROSE ON LUKE ARE TO BE UNDERSTOOD.
But if that soul does not have as much power as God, nor does the man assumed have as much power as God, how then is to be understood Ambrose's statement on the text of Luke, where the angel says of the Son who Is to be born of the Virgin: He shall be great and will be called Son of the Most High?' For Ambrose says: "He will not be great in the sense that he was not great before the Virgin gave birth, but in the sense that the man was going to receive in time that power which the Son of God has naturally, so that man and God may be one person."" See, he says plainly that the man was going to receive in time that power which the Son of God had naturally.
3. But if the man was going to receive that power, then either his person or his nature [was going to do so]. But not his person, because it always had and has it; and so his nature. But if the nature, then the soul; for concerning the flesh, it is established that it cannot receive [that power].
—To this we say that the text is to be taken as concerning the person, but not insofar as it is God's, but rather insofar as it is the man's person. For the person of God and man, and of the Son of God and the son of man is one. Insofar as this is God's person, it always and naturally had omnipotence; but insofar as it is a man's person, it did not always exist. And so that person, which had always been God's, was going to become a man's person; and as it was going to become a man's person in the future, it was going to receive in time the power which it had always and naturally had as God's person.—That text and others like it can be rightly understood in 'See Bk 2 dist. 11 c2, esp. nn8-10.
Ak AES2:
Ordinary gloss, on Lk. 1, 32, under the name of Ambrose and Bede, but the text is
Bede's, In Evangelia, hom. 1.3.
Distinction XV | 57 accordance with this distinction, which is necessary in [resolving] several articles of questions against the cryptic wordiness of some people. But "when things are well established, it is pointless to engage in controversy concerning words."*
DISTINCTION XV
Chapter | (41)
1. OF MAN'S DEFECTS WHICH CHRIST ASSUMED IN HIS HUMAN NATURE. It
is also not to be passed over that the Son of God took a human nature that was capable of suffering: a soul capable of suffering, and flesh that was capable of suffering and mortal. And so that he should be shown to have a true body, he took on the defects of the body: hunger and thirst and suchlike; and so that he should be shown to have a true soul, he took on the defects of the soul, namely sadness, fear, pain, and suchlike.
2. AUGUSTINE. But every sense pertains to the soul: for it is not the flesh that senses, but the soul which uses the body as an instrument.
Hence Augustine, in On Genesis, book 12: "It is not the body that senses, but the soul through the body, which the soul uses as a messenger to confirm within itself what is announced outside of it."' And so, just as the soul sees or hears through the body as its instrument what is outside itself, so also it feels through the body some evils which it would not feel without the body, such as hunger and thirst and suchlike; hence it is not unjustly that they are called defects of the body. But it feels some other evils not through the body, indeed even without the body, as is the case with fear and suchlike. Therefore the soul senses sufferings, but some through the instrument of the body and others not.
3. And just as Christ took on a true human nature, so also he took on the true defects of man, but not all of them. For he assumed the defects of punishment, but not those of fault; and yet not all the defects of punishment, but all those which it was suitable for him as man to assume and which did not derogate from his dignity. For just as he was made man for the sake of man, so also for his sake he took on man's defects. He took of what was ours to confer on us what was his and so as to take away what was ours. For he took the ancientness [of our nature] in order to infuse his newness in us. He took a single ancientness, that is, the one of punishment, in order to destroy our twofold one, that is, of punishment and of fault.
'Cf. Augustine, Contra Academicos, bk 2 c10 n24; c11 025.
'Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, bk 12 ¢24 n51.
58 | THE SENTENCES, BOOK 3
4. HOW THAT WHICH POPE LEO SAYS IS TO BE TAKEN. Authority hands down that "our Lord assumed in himself all that pertained to our infirmity, apart from sin."' But unless this is taken to refer only to those things which it was suitable, and not indecent, for him to bear on our behalf, it shall be proven to be false.—For he did not take on any ignorance, even though there is an ignorance which is a defect and not a sin, namely invincible ignorance. And indeed, vincible ignorance is a sin, but only if it concerns those things which it is profitable for us to know: for there are some things whose knowledge does not assist, or whose ignorance does not stand in the way of, salvation, and perhaps the ignorance of such things is not a defect.'
5. But it is also evident that in us there are an ignorance and a difficulty to will and do the good, and these pertain to our misery. And so Augustine, in On Free Will, book 3, says: "To approve falsehoods as if they were truths, so as to err unwilling, and to be unable to refrain from lustful acts because of the painful throes of a carnal bond, this is not the nature of man as he was originally established, but his punishment after his condemnation.'" "From this misery, which was most justly inflicted on sinners, God's grace brings freedom because man was able to fall by his own free will, but he could not also rise. To this misery pertain the ignorance and obduracy [to will and do the good] which every man suffers from the beginning of his life, nor is anyone freed from this evil other than by God's grace."°—See, Augustine clearly says here that the ignorance by which anyone unwillingly approves falsehoods as if they were truths, and the weakness by which one cannot restrain oneself from evil, pertain to our misery and are a punishment of man. But Christ did not have these; and so he did not take on all the defects of our infirmity apart from sin.
6. THAT SUCH AN IGNORANCE AND DIFFICULTY IS NOT A SIN. But perhaps someone will say that these are sin.—But opposed to this is Augustine's assertion, namely that God could have placed these blamelessly in man before sin, at the beginning of his establishment, so that they would be natural endowments of his. In the book of Retractations, he says: "Even if ignorance and difficulty had been among man's natural primordial endowments, God would not be deserving of blame, but of praise."° But if man had naturally had these things in the beginning, would these be a defect and punishment in him? No; [because] if a defect or punishment had been placed in him before sin, God would appear to deal unjustly with him, if man experienced the punishment before the fault—Because of this, we
*Leo, Sermo 63, c4.
*On vincible and invincible ignorance, see Bk. 2 dist. 20 cS n4 and 22 c5 nn. 1-2.
"Augustine, De libero arbitrio, bk 3 c18 n52.
"Augustine, Retractationes, bk 1 c9 né.
Ibid.
Distinction XV | 59 rightly say that such things would not have been defects or punishments, if they had naturally been placed in man; in the same way, it was not a defect or punishment for man to be unable to make progress before sin, when he had not yet received grace. But after he received grace, through which he was able to make progress, and for a time he did indeed make progress, and afterwards he lost it by his own fault, he simultaneously lost the power to make progress, and it was a defect and punishment for him not to be able to make progress, namely to reject evil and do good.
7. And so, apart from sin, Christ took all our defects which were suitable for him to take and profitable for us. For there are several kinds of illnesses and defects of the body from which he was entirely free. As for the defects which he did have, he took them either to demonstrate his true humanity: such as fear and sadness; or to fulfill the work for which he had come: such as the capacity to suffer and die; or to raise our hope from our despair of immortality: such as death.
8. THAT HE TOOK THOSE DEFECTS BY HIS WILL ALONE, NOT BY THE NE-
CESSITY OF HIS CONDITION. And he took these defects not by the necessity of his condition, but by the will of his compassion. And so he had true defects, as we do, but not from the same cause. For we derive these defects from original sin, as the Apostle indicates, saying: The body is dead because of sin,' that is, it has in itself the necessity of dying. But Christ did not have defects from such sin, because it was without sin that he was conceived and born and lived on earth. It was entirely from the will of his compassion that he transferred true infirmity from what was ours to himself, just as he also took true flesh; and he could have taken it without any infirmity, just as he took it without any fault.
9. AGAINST SOME WHO DENY THIS, HE PROVES WITH AUTHORITIES THAT
CHRIST, ACCORDING TO HIS HUMANITY, TRULY FELT PAIN AND WAS AFRAID.
A few are found to have thought wrongly concerning sensation in the suffering of the humanity of Christ. They assert that the man Christ bore a likeness and semblance of suffering and pain, but did not at all endure pain or suffering [itself]. Let us remove all doubt from what we said above by convicting them by the testimonies of authorities.
10. The Prophet Isaias says: Truly, he has borne our weaknesses, and he has carried our sorrows.' And Truth itself says in the Gospel: My soul is sorrowful even unto death;? where we also read: Jesus began to be dismayed and distressed.'° The Prophet too, in the person of Christ, says:
My soul is filled with evils.'' Expounding this text, Augustine says: "The 7TRom. 8, 10.
+s "53,4:
°Mt. 26, 38.
Mk. 14, 33. lips, 87, 4.
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soul of Christ was filled not with vices and sins, but with the evils of humanity, that is, it was filled with sorrows, in which it suffers together with the flesh. For there can be no suffering of the body without the soul; but the soul can suffer even without the body's pain. He took on these affects of human infirmity, as he did the flesh itself and death, not by the necessity of his condition, but by the will of his compassion."""
11. Ambrose too, in On the Trinity, book 3, says as follows: "It is written: Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.'* And so Christ is afraid; while Peter is not afraid, Christ is afraid. Peter said: J Jay down my life for you;"* Christ said: My soul is troubled.'° Each statement is true and each is fully reasonable: both that the one who is lower is not afraid, and that the one who is greater suffers this feeling of fearfulness."'°—The same, in the same place: "As a man, he is troubled; as a man, he sheds tears; as a man, he is crucified."'' "It was through his human nature that he both was distressed and rose from the dead."'* "Neither his power, nor his divinity is troubled, but his soul is troubled:'? it is troubled in accordance with his having taken human frailty. Indeed, by taking a soul, he took also the soul's capacity to suffer, for insofar as he was God, he could not be troubled or die."*°—The same, in the same place: "He took my sadness. With confidence I call it sadness because I preach the cross.
As aman, he suffered sadness, which he bore with my capacity to suffer: he takes pity on me; he is sad in me; he suffers in me. And so he who had no reason to suffer for himself suffered for me and in me. And so, Lord
Jesus, you suffer my wounds, not your own, because you suffer not for your own sake, but for mine.""!
12. Jerome, too, in his Explanation of the Faith, says: "We say that a passible humanity was taken by the Son of God in such a way that the divinity remained impassible. For the Son of God suffered truly, and not putatively, all the things which Scripture attests according to that which was able to suffer, namely according to the substance that was taken. For although the person of the Son had taken a humanity that was able to suffer, yet by such indwelling it suffered nothing according to its own substance, as neither did the whole Trinity, whom we must necessarily
'? Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, on Ps. 87, 4, n3.
BMt. 26, 39.
Tia oe 1 sl i ne ON & '°Ambrose, De fide, bk 2 c5 nn41, 43-44.
TIbid., bk 2 c7 n56.
'SIbid., bk 2 c8 n59. yn 2 *°*Ambrose, De fide, bk 2c7 nn56.
*lTbid., bk 2 c7 nn53-54.