Whether It Is Befitting for a Divine Person to Assume?
Objection 1: It would seem that it is not befitting to a Divine
Person to assume a created nature. For a Divine Person signifies
something most perfect. Now no addition can be made to what is
perfect. Therefore, since to assume is to take to oneself, and
consequently what is assumed is added to the one who assumes, it does
not seem to be befitting to a Divine Person to assume a created
nature.
Obj. 2: Further, that to which anything is assumed is communicated in
some degree to what is assumed to it, just as dignity is communicated
to whosoever is assumed to a dignity. But it is of the nature of a
person to be incommunicable, as was said above (I, Q. 29, A. 1).
Therefore it is not befitting to a Divine Person to assume, i.e. to
take to Himself.
Obj. 3: Further, person is constituted by nature. But it is repugnant
that the thing constituted should assume the constituent, since the
effect does not act on its cause. Hence it is not befitting to a
Person to assume a nature.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine [*Fulgentius] says (De Fide ad Petrum
ii): "This God, i.e. the only-Begotten one, took the form," i.e. the
nature, "of a servant to His own Person." But the only-Begotten God
is a Person. Therefore it is befitting to a Person to take, i.e. to
assume a nature.
_I answer that,_ In the word "assumption" are implied two things,
viz. the principle and the term of the act, for to assume is to take
something to oneself. Now of this assumption a Person is both the
principle and the term. The principle--because it properly belongs to
a person to act, and this assuming of flesh took place by the Divine
action. Likewise a Person is the term of this assumption, because, as
was said above (Q. 2, AA. 1, 2), the union took place in the Person,
and not in the nature. Hence it is plain that to assume a nature is
most properly befitting to a Person.
Reply Obj. 1: Since the Divine Person is infinite, no addition can be
made to it: Hence Cyril says [*Council of Ephesus, Part I, ch. 26]:
"We do not conceive the mode of conjunction to be according to
addition"; just as in the union of man with God, nothing is added to
God by the grace of adoption, but what is Divine is united to man;
hence, not God but man is perfected.
Reply Obj. 2: A Divine Person is said to be incommunicable inasmuch
as It cannot be predicated of several supposita, but nothing prevents
several things being predicated of the Person. Hence it is not
contrary to the nature of person to be communicated so as to subsist
in several natures, for even in a created person several natures may
concur accidentally, as in the person of one man we find quantity and
quality. But this is proper to a Divine Person, on account of its
infinity, that there should be a concourse of natures in it, not
accidentally, but in subsistence.
Reply Obj. 3: As was said above (Q. 2, A. 1), the human nature
constitutes a Divine Person, not simply, but forasmuch as the Person
is denominated from such a nature. For human nature does not make the
Son of Man to be simply, since He was from eternity, but only to be
man. It is by the Divine Nature that a Divine Person is constituted
simply. Hence the Divine Person is not said to assume the Divine
Nature, but to assume the human nature.
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