Whether This Is True: "Christ Is a Creature"?
Objection 1: It would seem that this is true: "Christ is a creature."
For Pope Leo says [*Cf. Append. Opp. August., Serm. xii de Nativ.]:
"A new and unheard of covenant: God Who is and was, is made a
creature." Now we may predicate of Christ whatever the Son of God
became by the Incarnation. Therefore this is true; Christ is a
creature.
Obj. 2: Further, the properties of both natures may be predicated of
the common hypostasis of both natures, no matter by what word they
are signified, as stated above (A. 5). But it is the property of
human nature to be created, as it is the property of the Divine
Nature to be Creator. Hence both may be said of Christ, viz. that He
is a creature and that he is uncreated and Creator.
Obj. 3: Further, the principal part of a man is the soul rather than
the body. But Christ, by reason of the body which He took from the
Virgin, is said simply to be born of the Virgin. Therefore by reason
of the soul which is created by God, it ought simply to be said that
He is a creature.
_On the contrary,_ Ambrose says (De Trin. i): "Was Christ made by a
word? Was Christ created by a command?" as if to say: "No!" Hence he
adds: "How can there be a creature in God? For God has a simple not a
composite Nature." Therefore it must not be granted that "Christ is a
creature."
_I answer that,_ As Jerome [*Gloss, Ord. in Osee 2:16] says, "words
spoken amiss lead to heresy"; hence with us and heretics the very
words ought not to be in common, lest we seem to countenance their
error. Now the Arian heretics said that Christ was a creature and
less than the Father, not only in His human nature, but even in His
Divine Person. And hence we must not say absolutely that Christ is a
"creature" or "less than the Father"; but with a qualification, viz.
"in His human nature." But such things as could not be considered to
belong to the Divine Person in Itself may be predicated simply of
Christ by reason of His human nature; thus we say simply that Christ
suffered, died and was buried: even as in corporeal and human beings,
things of which we may doubt whether they belong to the whole or the
part, if they are observed to exist in a part, are not predicated of
the whole simply, i.e. without qualification, for we do not say that
the Ethiopian is white but that he is white as regards his teeth; but
we say without qualification that he is curly, since this can only
belong to him as regards his hair.
Reply Obj. 1: Sometimes, for the sake of brevity, the holy doctors
use the word "creature" of Christ, without any qualifying term; we
should however take as understood the qualification, "as man."
Reply Obj. 2: All the properties of the human, just as of the Divine
Nature, may be predicated equally of Christ. Hence Damascene says (De
Fide Orth. iii, 4) that "Christ Who God and Man, is called created
and uncreated, passible and impassible." Nevertheless things of which
we may doubt to what nature they belong, are not to be predicated
without a qualification. Hence he afterwards adds (De Fide Orth. iv,
5) that "the one hypostasis," i.e. of Christ, "is uncreated in its
Godhead and created in its manhood": even so conversely, we may not
say without qualification, "Christ is incorporeal" or "impassible";
in order to avoid the error of Manes, who held that Christ had not a
true body, nor truly suffered, but we must say, with a qualification,
that Christ was incorporeal and impassible "in His Godhead."
Reply Obj. 3: There can be no doubt how the birth from the Virgin
applies to the Person of the Son of God, as there can be in the case
of creation; and hence there is no parity.
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