18.1 The Suitability of the Incarnation (SCG 4,50–55)
18.1 The Suitability of the Incarnation (SCG 4,50–55)
You may find it surprising that Aquinas begins his discussion of the suitableness of the Incarnation by launching into a defense of belief in Original Sin as he understands it. Yet he makes clear why he does so. He notes that St. Paul says that, while many became sinners because of the disobedience of one man, many are made right with God by the obedience of another (Romans 5:19). The disobedient man here is Adam as depicted in the book of Genesis. The obedient man is Christ. Paul thinks that Christ somehow reconciled sinners to God. Aquinas interprets this conclusion as teaching that the Incarnation was suitable because of Original Sin. He is aware that belief in Original Sin has been contested and that some have argued that the Incarnation was not suitable as a remedy for it. In SCG 4,50–55, therefore, he addresses the question “Was the Incarnation suitable?” by defending belief in Original Sin. With that defense concluded, he goes on to consider and rebut other reasons for denying the suitability of the Incarnation (SCG 4,53–55).
18.1.1 Original Sin (SCG 4,50–52)
By the time of Aquinas the notion of Original Sin was well established among Christian theologians, though it was sometimes presented in different ways. The biblical warrant for Original Sin was taken to be Romans 5:12–21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22. According to these texts, (1) the sin of Adam (see Genesis 3) brought condemnation and death into the world, yet (2) escape from sin and death has been made available through the activity of Christ. In time, and under the influence of figures such as St. Athanasius (c. 296–373), Tertullian (c. 160–c. 225), St. Ambrose (c. 339–397), and St. Augustine, these teachings came to be understood as holding that human beings inherit sin from Adam and are rescued, if at all, only by Christ. This understanding was confirmed by the Second Council of Orange (529).2
It is against this background that Aquinas drafts SCG 4,50–52. To begin with, he rehearses the narrative of Genesis 3, which he interprets as telling us that Adam, though not subject to death in Paradise, became so subject because of his sin.3 He says that we should hold that death was a penalty inflicted on Adam for sinning, and he adds that, since we are all subject to death, we must all share in the fault of Adam and its consequences. Aquinas is clear that not every human being has consciously chosen to commit a sinful act. Young children, he thinks, do not choose to sin. Yet, he insists, sin is in all human beings and is “passed on to them in their origin.”4 It is passed on in this way, he thinks, since sometimes even babies die and since death is a penalty for sin. He also argues that there would be no point in baptizing babies if there were no sin in them for which baptism could be thought of as a kind of antidote. “If children not yet baptized cannot reach the kingdom of God, one must say that there is some sin in them.”5 “According to the tradition of the Catholic faith,” Aquinas declares, “one must hold that people are born with Original Sin.”6
With that point made, however, Aquinas notes a number of arguments that “adversaries of this truth” might be likely to raise. He does not agree with these arguments but presents them as reasoning as follows.
1. One cannot ascribe fault to someone because of what someone else has done. So “the sin of the first man is not imputed to the entire human race.”7
2. The descendants of Adam were not actually in him. They stand to him only as originated by him. But sin is something that only an existing individual commits.
3. Sin is committed by individual people with human souls. Yet the human soul is not passed down from Adam. It is directly created by God (see SCG 2,86–89).
4. If Adam’s sin is passed down to his descendants, then it is passed down to Christ. However, Christ was without sin.
5. “What follows on a thing from its natural origin is natural to that thing. But what is natural to a thing is not a sin in it.”8
6. Let us suppose that sin flows from Adam to his descendants insofar as Adam is spoiled or failing in some way. In that case, sin would result from something in nature being defective. But “a sin does not flow from the first parent into his descendants by a spoiled origin.”9 In any case, “if by a spoiled origin sin flows from the first parent into his descendants, it will not flow into all, but into a few.”10 Also, something defective coming about because of something else failing in some way is not responsible for the defect it inherits. “Therefore, there is no way for a blameworthy failure to come down from the first parent to his descendants by origin.”11
7. What has goodness by nature does not have it taken away by sin. There is natural good even in devils. But generation is an act of nature, so Adam’s sin cannot spoil things so as to result in sin being passed on to his descendants.
8. People generate people, not what can be attributed to their offspring apart from their human nature. Yet sin is a defect in human beings, and it does not follow that, since people derive from Adam, they derive sin from him.
9. The parents of a particular human being might commit no sin in procreating that person. Therefore, we need not suppose that all people descended from Adam are born as sinners just because Adam sinned.
10. Adam sinned, but then he repented of his sin. We can, therefore, just as well ascribe his state of repentance to his posterity as we can his sin.
11. If Adam’s sin was passed on to his descendants, then so were the sins of progenitors following Adam in time. This would seem to mean that the most recently born are burdened with more sin than their predecessors, which is false.
Aquinas begins his response to these objections by noting that we evidently suffer from woes of various kinds. We are beset by obstacles. We are frequently frustrated. We end up dead. Aquinas notes that we might put all of this down to naturalistic factors: to what we can expect given what we are by nature and given what the world in which we live is like. He goes on to say, however, that God could have arranged for us not to undergo the evils that beset us, and he suggests that this fact gives us reason to think they are penalties of some kind: penalties for sin. He writes:
Although defects of these kinds may seem natural to human beings in an absolute consideration of human nature on its inferior side, nonetheless, taking into consideration divine providence and the dignity of human nature on its superior side, it can be proved with enough probability that defects of this kind are penalties. And one can gather thus that the human race was originally infected with sin.12
With that thought in place, Aquinas responds to the objections he noted in SCG 4,51. In doing so, he makes the following points, which I list without intending them to correspond one-to-one with the arguments alluded to in SCG 4,51 as I summarized them above.
1. Individual human beings can be praised or blamed for the actions they perform. A species, though, can be affected by its origin, and the human species can be thought of as infected by the sin of Adam. “A sin, then, which is committed by an individual human being or person is not imputed as fault to anyone other than the sinner. … But, if there is sin which pertains to the nature of the species itself (quod ipsam naturam speciei respiciat), there is nothing inappropriate (inconveniens) in it being passed from one to another, just as the nature of the species is communicated through one to others.”13 Now, the sin of Adam deprived him of personal goodness. Yet it also deprived the human species derived from him of a certain goodness, that is, that which Adam had before he sinned. The fault imputed to Adam has been transmitted to all of his descendants, not as personal fault or culpability but as inherent in human beings fathered by Adam. Before he sinned, Adam was highly graced by God. Having sinned, he lost this grace, as did all of his descendants considered as being in Adam as a species. What Adam had to pass on to his heirs was a fallen state resulting from his personal sin. The descendants of Adam are born in a sinful state “so far as they belong to Adam’s nature which was corrupted by sin.”14
2. We do not have to suppose that descendants of Adam derive their rational souls from the semen of Adam. Original Sin is a flaw in the human species, but individual rational souls come into being following the copulation of individual members of the human species.
3. Christ was a descendant of Adam, but he received from Adam only what makes a human body to be a human body. He did not inherit the fault or sin of Adam. “The power to form Christ’s body was not derived from Adam but from the power of the Holy Spirit” (see SCG 4,46).
4. Human nature has a defect passed on to it arising from Adam’s sin. Yet this defect is natural to human beings considered as Adam’s flawed descendants. Adam naturally passed on a state of being defectively human.
5. By sinning, Adam gave up what God conferred on him as a gift: unflawed human nature. This unflawed nature was, in a sense, natural since it was intended by God to be transmitted to Adam’s heirs in a natural way. It was not, however, natural in the sense of being something that anything created could bring about by its power. Yet the claim that what follows on a thing from its natural origin is natural to that thing, while what is natural to a thing is not a sin in it, is no good objection to belief in Original Sin. This claim takes “natural” to mean what results from things in the world acting in accordance with what they are and the powers that they have as created things.
6. Defective things in the world arising from a defect in what gives rise to them occur rarely. However, the defect of Original Sin comes from something that results in a defect in all of Adam’s heirs.
7. “Sin does not take away that good of nature that belongs to the nature’s species. But that good of nature which grace added over and above nature could be removed by the sin of our first parent.”15
8. If Adam had not sinned, he would have passed on to his heirs all that he had before he sinned: a graced life free from defect and death. As human, Adam was not naturally immune to defect and death. As graced, though, he was. Adam passed on to his descendants what he was as a sinner.
9. Christian baptism frees us from Original Sin. But this does not mean that we do not, as Adam’s natural successors, start with the stain of Original Sin as conceived by people subject to it.
18.1.2 The Suitability of the Incarnation (SCG 4,53–55)
I have noted several times that Aquinas is fond of the word conveniens, which we can translate into English as “suitable,” “fitting,” or “appropriate.” I have also noted that conveniens and its English equivalents are rather vague terms. Context can make them more precise. Hence, for example, we know exactly how it is suitable, fitting, or appropriate to behave when presented to the British monarch. We know this in the light of British royal protocol. In the absence of such a context, however, “suitable,” “fitting,” and “appropriate” are not words that are easily definable except with reference to each other, or with reference to terms that are equally hard to define.
On the other hand one might grasp what someone takes to be suitable, fitting, or appropriate given arguments that they provide for something not being such.16 And in SCG 4,53 Aquinas summarizes a series of arguments to the effect that the Incarnation was not conveniens. In fact, he summarizes twenty-six arguments for this conclusion. Then in SCG 4,54 he explains why he takes the Incarnation to be suitable, while going on in SCG 4,55 to reply to the arguments listed in SCG 4,53. These, he says, are “disposed of easily” (non difficile est solvere).
18.1.2.1 Arguments against the Suitability of the Incarnation (SCG 4,53)
The drift of the arguments to which Aquinas thinks it easy to reply is as follows.
1. It hardly befits God to be united to a human nature, this being so much lower than God is.
2. If God were to become incarnate, something of use (utilitas) would have to come from it. Yet God can produce what is useful merely by willing it to be and without becoming incarnate.
3. If God cares for all things, then God should not have taken on only a human nature.
4. It would have been more appropriate for God to have taken on an angelic nature than a human one since angels are more like God than are human beings.
5. If God were to assume a human nature, people would be led erroneously to think that God is not “exalted above all bodies.”17
6. Many errors have arisen concerning the Incarnation. So “it was not becoming human salvation that God should be incarnate.”18
7. If the Incarnation occurred so as to save people, then it should have saved all people, while it appears to have saved only some people.19
8. If God became incarnate, his incarnation should have come with evidence of this fact going beyond the miracles of Christ, which it did not.
9. If the Incarnation was needed so as to free people from sin, then it should have occurred earlier than Christians claim that it did.
10. If the Incarnation was needed so as to free people from sin, then God incarnate should be in the world until the end of the world.
11. It would be good if people had an assurance of beatitude. But this assurance would have been better given to us if God had assumed “an immortal, impassible, and glorious flesh and had displayed this to everyone.”20
12. God incarnate would have made use of wealth and honor, which, according to Christian teaching, he did not.
13. Christians say that Christ, though divine, suffered, and that all of us should recognize this fact. But the Incarnation of God in the suffering Christ positively obscures Christ’s divinity.
14. It cannot be thought that Christ, as God incarnate, went to his death in obedience to God as his father, as Christians believe. That is because we cannot think of God, considered as the father of Christ, wanting his son to undergo something contrary to what the divine nature is: something not able to die.
15. God does not will the death of human beings. He desires sinners to repent and live. So he could have hardly wanted Jesus, the most perfect person, to die.
16. It seems cruel to demand that an innocent human being should die on behalf of sinners, as God incarnate is said to have done.
17. It might be said that Christ’s death was a wonderful demonstration of humility. However, one who is humble is so before one who is superior, and God has no superior.
18. Again, people can be verbally instructed when it comes to what humility is. They can also be instructed by human example. Therefore, it was not necessary for the Word to become flesh or to die.
19. It might be said that Christ died to cleanse us from sin. Yet it is only by God’s grace that people are freed from sin.
20. It might be said that the death of the sinless Christ amounted to satisfaction for sin (i.e., to restitution for sin). To this claim, however, it can be replied that sinners should themselves satisfy for sins that they have committed.21
21. If something greater than human beings was needed to satisfy for human sin, an incarnate angel would have done as well as God.
22. Sin is not removed by sin. It is increased. So if Christ had to satisfy for sin by his death, this death should not have involved anyone sinning. It could have been a natural death.22
23. Since people frequently sin, Christ should have died many times over if his death is needed for the sins of human beings.
24. Bearing in mind the distinction of natures in the Word incarnate, the death of Christ no more satisfies for Original Sin than would the death of any other human being, for Christ died in his human nature, not his divine one.
25. If Christ satisfied for the sin of the human race, it seems unjust that people continue to suffer from the results of Original Sin: these being a tendency to sin, suffering, and death.
26. If Christ satisfied for the sin of the human race, there is no need to seek further remedies for the forgiveness of sin. Yet people keep on seeking such remedies.
Having listed these arguments, Aquinas concludes SCG 4,53 by observing: “These and similar points, then, can make it appear to someone that what the Catholic faith preaches about the Incarnation has not been harmonious with the divine majesty and wisdom.”23
18.1.2.2 Why the Incarnation Was Suitable (SCG 4,54)
As I have said, Aquinas replies to the above arguments in SCG 4,55. As I have also said, though, in SCG 4,54 he presents an independent case for the conclusion that the Incarnation was conveniens. Here are his arguments for this conclusion.
1. Perfect human happiness lies in beatitude (see SCG 3,48–63). Struck by the gulf between God and human beings, between the divine nature and human nature, people might naturally feel disheartened about their ability to achieve such a glorious status. But the Incarnation assures us that what is human can be united to what is divine by intellect and can grasp God immediately. The Incarnation shows that what is human can enjoy the immediate vision of God. Therefore, it provides us with grounds for hoping in our own beatitude.24
2. “This dignity of human beings—namely, that in the immediate vision of God their beatitude is to be found—was most suitably manifested by God by his own immediate assumption of human nature.”25
3. The truths of the Christian faith (the “articles of faith”) are not things that we can know to be true. We cannot demonstrate them to be true. We must settle for believing them in faith, which falls short of knowledge. But faith in what is true about God and beyond human reasoning has to be taught by one who knows without reasoning what God is and what he is doing. The truths of faith have to be delivered to us by nothing less than God, and they are so delivered by virtue of the Incarnation. For it is nothing less than the Word incarnate that passes them on to us. Only by becoming incarnate can God instruct us concerning what we need to believe but cannot prove by reason.26
4. Our perfect happiness consists in enjoying God, in coming to be like God by means of the beatific vision (again see SCG 3,48–63). Yet one can only enjoy something if one has developed a taste for it, if one loves it somehow. And the Incarnation can be seen as something that might stir up love for God in us. For in the Incarnation we find God loving us to a high degree. “God’s love for people could be demonstrated to them in no way more effective than this: God willed to be united to human nature in person, for it is proper to love to unite the lover with the beloved as far as possible.”27
5. We value and strive for friendship. However, friendship can only exist between things that are equal in some way.28 Thus, we may think of the Incarnation as giving us friendship with God because God became incarnate and, by doing so, came in human nature to treat us as an equal.
6. “It was necessary for people to be solidly grounded in virtue to receive from God made human both the teachings and the examples of virtue” so as to lead us to beatitude.29 Over time, various people have given us examples of virtuous behavior. But all of them have somehow failed when it comes to achieving goodness, while God incarnate gives us the unqualifiedly best example of what it is to be perfectly good as a human being.
7. Sin is an obstacle to beatitude. So the human race needs a remedy for sin, and this remedy can only come from God as moving us to good and as remitting the offense against him in which sin consists. But if we are to be confident of God’s forgiveness of our sins, then God must assure us regarding our forgiveness. It was, therefore, fitting for him to become incarnate so that people might be forgiven and be assured of forgiveness.
8. As the church has traditionally taught, justice “requires that God should not remit sin without satisfaction.”30 But it is beyond the power of any ordinary human being to satisfy for the sin of the whole human race. “Therefore, in order to free the human race from its common sin, someone had to satisfy who was both human and so proportioned to the satisfaction, and something above what is human that the merit might be enough to satisfy for the sin of the whole human race.”31 Yet only God is above human beings as able to bestow beatitude. “Therefore, it was necessary for our achievement of beatitude that God should become incarnate to take away the sin of the human race.”32
18.1.2.3 Replies to the Arguments in SCG 4,53 (SCG 4,55)
With these points made in defense of the Incarnation’s suitability, Aquinas replies to the arguments in SCG 4,53. I paraphrase his arguments as follows:
1. Human beings have God as their end and are born to be united to him by their intellect. The Incarnation provides us with a unique example of a subject that is exactly so united.33
2. The divine nature is not dragged down in any way because of the Incarnation. The Incarnation results in something creaturely being elevated to the status of being divine.34
3. God could have willed to bring about the good that comes from the Incarnation without having become incarnate. But doing so by becoming incarnate “was in harmony with human nature” (congruebat humanae naturae).35
4. Human beings are both immaterial and bodily. They are neither purely material nor purely immaterial. “Thus, it seems suitable that the universal cause of all things assume that creature in which the cause shares more with other creatures.”36 From this it seems to follow that it was suitable for God to assume the nature of a rational creature rather than a nonrational one.37
5. Angels are unchangeable when it comes to their will. They have an “unchangeable choice” and cannot be converted from what they will.38 People, however, can be so converted. Now, Scripture says that the chief aim of the Incarnation is the salvation of sinners. So it makes sense that God should assume a human nature rather than an angelic one.39
6. In the Incarnation it is a person (the Second Person of the Trinity) that assumes human nature. So it was more suitable for God to assume human nature than angelic nature since in people the nature is other than the person, which is not the case with angels.40
7. Angels know God better than human beings do. Unlike people, therefore, they can be “intelligibly instructed by God regarding divine truth.”41 For instruction concerning divine truth, however, people, whose knowledge derives from their senses, need someone in the world to hand this on to them. Such instruction was provided by God incarnate, who, as God incarnate, also provided human beings with grounds for hoping for union with God in spite of the immense difference between people and God. We might add that human beings are superior to everything in the spatiotemporal world, which makes it appropriate for God to assume a human nature so as “to finish a kind of circle in the perfection of things.”42
8. The Incarnation does not lead people into wrongly thinking of God as not being greater than anything bodily. That is because it did not amount to God being just something bodily or something other than what is divine. In the Incarnation, there is one person with two distinct natures: divine and human.43
9. Since the Incarnation, lots of errors have arisen concerning it. But these errors have, over time, been corrected by sound Christian teaching.44
10. Human salvation is, indeed, a great good. And it derives from the Incarnation. But God’s act of saving people needs to be accepted by them. So the Incarnation does not bring about salvation automatically. It only brings about salvation in those who willingly “cleave to the incarnate God by faith and love.”45
11. The Incarnation did come with manifestations of Christ’s divinity. For Christ performed many miracles. Furthermore, he did so in his own right and not as someone calling on God to bring about a miracle. And he gave others the power to bring about miracles in his name. Also, and through Christ, miracles of a nonphysical kind occurred, such as the reception of the Holy Spirit and the coming about of charity in people (see Hebrews 2:3–4).46
12. There are reasons why the Incarnation should not have occurred earlier than it did. For one thing, it provided a remedy for sin, which means that it had to occur after people had sinned, acknowledged their failure, and looked to God for help. Again, by virtue of the Incarnation, God provided precepts that lead to perfection (see 15.2 here); but people have to be led gradually to such precepts, as children have to be instructed over time. So it was fitting for Christ to have taught us in the wake of what people were taught by the Old Testament. It was also fitting that, just as people of great dignity should be preceded by envoys preparing the way for them, Christ should have been preceded by the authors of Old Testament texts, which point to Christ as one to come.47
13. Had Christ lived among us until now, our reverence for him would have decreased because of his familiarity as one among many. Instead, he left us so that we might respect or revere him for what he is.48
14. The fact that God became incarnate as something with flesh and blood, something able to suffer and die, tells us that God wants to be united to people in a most intimate and, therefore, most loving way. Again, if God had not become incarnate, he could not, by virtue of the death of Christ (the death of God), have rescued us by satisfying for sin. Again, by becoming human, God was able to give us an example of virtuous behavior. Also, by uniting himself to what is human, Christ, by his resurrection, gave us an assurance of our own resurrection after death.49
15. It was appropriate for Christ not to have been someone with a lot of money or someone enjoying great worldly honors. That is because God became incarnate so as to teach us that our final end does not consist in earthly riches. Also, had Christ been someone with great financial backup, people might have supposed that we are saved by money and not by God.
16. Given what Scripture teaches, we can assume that Christ died while being obedient to God the Father. But Christ died for love of us. He embraced his death as an act of charity to us. So Christ was obedient to his father as he died. In being so, he did not compromise his divinity since he suffered and died in his human nature, not his divine nature.
17. God does not will death to people, but he does will the virtue of embracing death bravely and in charity. It is in this sense that God willed Christ’s death.
18. God did not will Christ’s death out of cruelty. He willed it insofar as it was an act of charity.
19. It is true that God lacks humility. That is because nothing is greater than God, while humility involves subjecting oneself to a superior. But it was fitting for Christ to display humility in his human nature, and the humility of Christ gained value from the fact that Christ was also divine.
20. People can certainly be taught about humility. Yet deeds influence action more than words, and people are especially influenced by the deeds of people they recognize to be good. So it was fitting for God incarnate to set an example of humility for us to follow.
21. Christ’s death provides an example of holding death in contempt while sticking to truth. But Christ also died to suffer the penalty due to the sin of human beings, to make satisfaction for sin. And, although God’s grace suffices for the forgiveness of sin, satisfaction is also required. By dying out of charity, however, Christ satisfied for sin as neither people nor angels were able to do.
22. Sin is not removed by sin. But the efficacy of Christ’s death derived from the charity of Christ embracing it on behalf of people. It did not derive from the sin committed by those who killed Christ.
23. Christ did not have to die just as many times as people sinned. His death dealt with all sin because of his charity and because of his dignity as both divine and human.
24. It is not evidently unfitting for the penalties due to Original Sin to remain even in those saved by Christ. The suffering of those saved by Christ allows them to be like Christ, who suffered and died on their behalf. Again, if the followers of Christ became immortal and incapable of suffering, others would come to follow Christ more for bodily benefits than spiritual good, which would run counter to Christ’s desire to draw people from love of bodily things to love of what is spiritual. Also, if adhering to Christ automatically rendered one free from suffering and death, people would be pretty much coerced into adhering to Christ, which would not be desirable since faith in Christ is only meritorious if it is embraced freely.
25. Christ certainly satisfied for human sin. Yet people saved from sin by Christ still need to work at the business of staying conformed to Christ and his work of salvation. Therefore, each Christian should “seek to be regenerated through Christ” and should “undertake to do those things in which the power of Christ’s death operates.”50
By means of these arguments, Aquinas takes himself to have defended the conclusion that the Incarnation is conveniens, just as he takes SCG 4,40–49 to have defended the conclusion that the Incarnation is not impossible. Notice, however, that he does so somewhat modestly. He does not declare that he has intellectually fathomed what the Incarnation is and what its effects are. In concluding SCG 4,55, he says that “from what has been set down [sc. in SCG 4,40–55] it is to some extent (aliquatenus) clear that what the Catholic faith preaches about the Incarnation contains nothing impossible and nothing inharmonious.”51 The words “to some extent” here surely need to be taken seriously. Aquinas does not claim to have demonstrated that God became incarnate or that the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation can be formally proved. Nor does he claim to have fathomed the suitability of the Incarnation. All he claims to have done is to have shown that certain arguments against the possibility of God becoming incarnate are answerable, and that certain arguments holding that the Incarnation, as understood by orthodox Christians, was not suitable are also answerable. The remorseless and detailed way in which Aquinas argues concerning the Incarnation in SCG 4,40–55 should not blind us to the fact that he takes his achievement in these chapters to be a limited one coming from someone who does not yet enjoy the beatific vision.