Tertia Pars
Lecture 22: The Assumption of Soul and Spirit in the Incarnation

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, and help us to understand what you've written. Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. After a class of marriage meeting with somebody else that I have, something that kind of interests me, you know. So, last night I was talking to these two guys that come to my house on Wednesday night. They're going through the chapter in the categories there, and the four kinds of opposites, right? And then when they turn to bed, there's going to be a couple scenes from Macbeth, and the scenes where, of course, the discovery of the death of the murder of the king, right? And the guy comes down and says, he's dead. He says, I wish you would contradict yourself. And say, he's not dead, right? But it's kind of funny, because he's been talking about the opposition of contradiction and various things about it. There's a couple of little things here in the spiritual relations of St. Teresa of Avila. On the Tuesday following Ascension Day, I spent some time in prayer. After communicating in a state of distress, because I was so distracted as to be in capable concentration. So I complained of our miserable nature to the Lord. Then my soul began to kindle with fire, and I seemed to have the clearest realization of the presence of the Most Holy Trinity, an intellectual vision, through which any sort of picture or figure of the truth, of a kind that even my stupidity could understand. My soul learned how God is three and one. And thus it seemed to me all three persons were speaking, and were distinctly present within my soul. So they really are distinct, aren't they, these three persons? They told me that from that day onward, I should find myself better in three respects. For each of the three persons was granting me a favor. One would give me charity, one joy in suffering, and one a consciousness of that charity with an enkindled soul. I now realize the meaning of these words spoken by the Lord, that the three divine persons will be with the soul that is in grace. Another little passage of one I was mentioning on St. Augustine's Day, right? I already specified it, but I didn't mind. Actually, they have the same power, anyway. On St. Augustine's Day, I had just communicated. When I was enabled to learn and almost to see, in what way I cannot tell, unless it was by an intellectual vision, which passed quickly. How the three persons of the Most Holy Trinity, whom I bear engraven on my soul, are one. This truth that I was enabled to learn by means of so remarkable a picture and so clear a light, that it has worked upon me very differently than if I had merely known it by faith. Since that time, I have been unable to think of any one of the three divine persons without realizing that they are three, so that today, when I was considering how they are all one, the Son alone had taken human flesh. The Lord showed me how the one they are distinct. These are wonders which make the soul desire fresh to escape from the shackles of the body, which impede the fruition of them. For though an understanding of them seems not to be for our lowest state, there remains to the soul, after the momentary passage of the vision, a benefit incomparably greater than any that can come from many years of meditation. Yet the soul cannot understand how. It's what they call spiritual relations. It's in the vibe with the life, you know. But these are things I guess she gave to her. Professors and so on, huh? Various accounts of her, you know, visions and so on. And one other text here from Thessalonians 5, huh? It seemed kind of appropriate for these first two articles that we had here. Okay. And may the God of peace, huh? Sanctify you complete, huh? And the entire of you. Let me just read one of the English translations here. I pray, God, that your whole spirit, and the Greek word is pneuma, and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. What do those three mean then? Spirit, the soul, and the what? Body be preserved blameless, right? Well, and Thomas explains it. Pneuma refers to the higher part of the soul, the part that has got the understanding and the will in it, huh? And therefore is the parts of the soul or the powers of the soul that aren't in the body. And that's called the pneuma, right? Okay. Or the soul, in surprise, has those powers. So it's your understanding and your will, you know, perfected by faith and hope and charity and so on. Okay. And then the soul. Thomas understands there. As Aristotle tells us, the soul is the substantial form of the body. It's the first act of an actual body. This refers to even our emotions which are in the body, right? That they might be, what? Rectified, right? And then the body, and of course, therefore, it corresponds to the, you know, when Christ says, you know, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Instead of saying flesh, he says soul. Because the soul is the act of the body and therefore, well, fitting that is the powers that it has in the body. And then, of course, the body is what you do with your body, right? Kind of the, you know, what you use your body for, right? But the order there, I thought it was kind of interesting. The spirit, pneuma, psuche, the soul, and then the body, right? It seemed to be a little, reminded me a little bit of this, right? This happened up in one of the daily masses there, you know, this reading. I was kind of struck by it because the first article here is whether he assumes, what? Flesh by means of the soul, right? And then does he assume the soul by means of the spirit, right? So he has to say the same order that he has, that St. Paul has in this text here, right? Okay. That's a little tidbit there, a little Christmas gift. Delayed until this January. Okay. So we're up to the second article, I guess. We're going to start doing it. And I noticed too, you know, that like, you know, we had the Feast of the First Martyr there, right? And of course, he speaks about giving up his what? Spirit. And I think, I remember rightly, Christ on the cross, you know, he uses the word spirit rather than soul. Either he could say soul, right? He's laying down his soul, right? But is there some precision why you might say, receive my spirit rather than my soul? Because your soul leaves your body, you know? The powers that the soul has only, what, enact in the body, you no longer have those powers enact. Although the root of them is still in your soul, right? But you don't actually have the power to digest food anymore, right? You don't have any, actually, the power to walk around. But you do have those powers that enable us to call the soul a spirit. You do have understanding and what? Will. So in a sense, it's your spirit, you are what? So in a sense, Turning into the hands of God, right? Rather than your soul, although you could say your soul, right? But I think there's kind of precision in Christ saying, you know, we see my spirit, and Stephen there, he was the first martyr, right? He used the word pneuma. That's related to, I think, when St. Paul speaks in another place of the literal translation, I think it's in Romans, the animal man doesn't understand this, but the spiritual man, that's usually how they, they usually translate it as the natural man and the spiritual man, but he's using animalis homo, which is the psuche for soul, which is related to the body. The other one is pneumaticos, which is the spirit. I'm supposed to come back to in the mass there, you know, at conspiritutuo, right? So are we. So in a sense, you're saying, you know, especially with your, what? You're understating your will, right? In a sense, you've got to be in your understanding of the will first, right? And then there can be something overflowing to the body, right? Or to the emotions even, right? But that's the result of the evil. So it seems that the Son of God did not assume the soul by means of the, what? Spirit. For the same thing does not fall as a in-between, a medium, right? Between itself and something else, right? But the spirit, or the mens, is another word, huh? Is not other in essence. Question 6, Article 2, huh? Question 6, Article 2. Is that correct for me? Yes. Okay. But the spirit, or the mind, is not other in essence from the soul itself, right? As has been said in the first part, right? So he wouldn't say that I have a soul and I have a spirit. As if these are two different things in me, right? And so the objection is saying, well then, how can there be something in between the two? But didn't St. Paul speak of a sword that goes between the spirit and the, yeah. I suppose that's a dark night of the soul, too, part of that. Therefore, the Son of God did not assume the soul by means of the, or as a middle, right? Ground, the spirit, right? Because nothing is between itself. What's in between is always in between two different things. More with that, by means of which there is an assuming, seems to be more able to be assumed. But the spirit, or the mind, again, mens, if you translate it in English as mind, it seems, you know, not correct, right? But they use the word mens, not just for what? The power of faculty, but for the rational part of the soul, right? The soul and its rational part. But the spirit, sieve mens, is not more able to be assumed than the soul, which appears from this that the angelic spirits are not, what? Able to be assumed, right? So the objection is saying that if he assumes the soul by means of the spirit, then the spirit is more assumable than the soul. And therefore, why didn't he assume angels, right? Therefore, it seems that the Son of God would not assume the soul by means of the, what? Spirit. Moreover, what comes after is assumed by the first. Yeah. But the soul names the very, what? Essence, which is before naturally the power of it, which is its mind. Well, I was referring to that when I talked about the word mens, right? Because mens is usually taken by Gustin there, and they'll say that the image of God is in the mens, right? M-E-N-S. And that refers to the soul insofar as it has mind and understanding and will, right? It doesn't mean mens in the sense of mind, just the mind and understanding. But often mens is used for just the, what? Just for reason, yeah. And I guess the word M-E-N-S is supposed to be related to the word mensura, to measure, right? So it's reason that measures things. Therefore, it seems that the Son of God would not assume the soul by means of the spirit or the mind, as if assuming the soul by reason of what its power is, right? But here's this guy again here. But against this is what Augustine says in the book on the Christian struggle, right? The unseen or the invisible and unchangeable truth itself, right? Through the spirit, the soul, and through the soul, took on the body. So Thomas is repeating what Augustine has said, right? In these two articles, huh? As Aristotle says, we will not be upset if someone else has said what we're going to say. Same thing with Thomas, huh? He seems to have inherited the intellect of all the church fathers, as the Cajetan says, right? Because he so reverence them, huh? I answer it should be said, that it has been said, the Son of God is said to have assumed flesh by means of the soul, both in account of the order of, what? Dignity. And also in account of the, what? Suitability of assumption, huh? So you should not be suitable for even just a body that doesn't have a soul, right? It's not a living body. Assume a chair or a table or something, right? It doesn't make any sense, even a tree. But both of these same things are found if we compare, the understanding of this again is used for that, the soul as of ours has these higher powers, which is called the, what? Spirit, right? To the other parts of the, what? Soul. For the soul is, what? Not able to be assumed in a suitable way, except for the fact that it is capable of God, existing to his, what? Image, yeah? Which is according to the mind, which is called the spirit. So the image of God in our soul is in our, what? Understanding and our will, right? Which is called the spirit, according to that of Ephesians 4. Be renewed, right? By the spirit of your, what? Mind. There you have the, you know, the reason why those two words are associated in Latin. But it's a little bit hard when you translate it, huh? I don't know if you have the Latin there, but we know, famini, spiritu mentis vestris, right? Likewise, the understanding, among the other parts of the soul, is superior and more worthy and more like God. And therefore, as Damascene says in the third book, huh, that he is united to the flesh by means of the, what? Understanding the word of God, huh? The word of God is united to the flesh through a middle, meaning the intellectual part of the man. For the intellectual part is the most, what? Pure part of the soul. And God is, what? Understanding. Understanding, okay? And I guess these are words of Damascene being quoted there, huh? Unto the first objection. If the intellectus, huh, is not other from the soul in its essence, right? It is distinguished nevertheless from the other parts of the soul by reason of its, what? Power. And according to this, it belongs to it to be, what? To have the notion of the middle, right? Okay. So the soul is more worthy to be assumed than the body, right? And the body is suitable to be assumed only to the fact that it has a soul, right? And the soul is, what? Able to be assumed properly because it has, what? Parts that... can know and love God, right? And that's what we call the soul, and so far as it has those powers, we call it the spirit, right? Okay? So it's, and of course, that's the most worthy part of us to be assumed by God, right? Now, what about the subjection, why not assume then the angel, right? Who's very much a spirit, right? Okay? And he says, well, it's not because he's lacking in dignity or worth, right? As if, you know, man is something more worthwhile than an angel, right? But an account of the fact that his fall cannot be, what? Repaired, right? Now, you know, when an angel is created, his mind is fully, what? Formed, right? And so when he chooses, he chooses forever. Why we, as our life and our experience and our emotions change, right? We flip back and forth, right? Just hope we flip in the right direction. So in the scripture there, it compares our will to what the tree, right? And the tree falls, right? Or it falls, it stays, right? Yeah. Which is not, which cannot be said about the human spirit as it's clear from the things they said in the first part when we realize how mutable our spirit is. Now, when we say that between the soul and the word of God, when you lay down as a middle intellectus, right? To quote the Latin. Intellectus is not taken for the what? No, excuse me, the soul, huh? Between which and the word of God is laid down as a middle intellectus. The word soul there is not taken for what? Which is common to all the what? Powers. But for the inferior powers, right? Which are common to all the soul, at least to the animal soul, right? When Aristotle takes up the soul and the dianima there, right? He's going to investigate what the soul is by listening to what his predecessor said first, right? And they investigated the soul through two things, through sensation and through moving around. And therefore, they investigated the soul through what's common to every animal soul, right? So the understanding was too high to investigate at first, or it seemed to be a kind of sensation, right? And of course, even modern biologists think that the brain is the organ of thought, right? Or some part of the brain, right? So it's still a bodily sense organ, right? And life in the plants is kind of, what? Hidden, right? So, that's a little bit that takes to St. Paul, right? We used the word soul, right? So you should rectify your spirit, your soul, and your body, right? Well, that means rectify your understanding and will first, right? Then rectify your emotions and then rectify the actions that you perform through your body, right? And reflecting and not hitting your needle and so on. It's that sort, right? But there's an order there, right? It corresponds to the order in which Christ, or the word, assumes what? Yeah. He assumes a body through the soul and the soul through the spirit, yeah. So you're all convinced now that this is the way the word of God should proceed, huh? Who was it? Paul and Mars, one of those heretics who got a position of, you know, he had the word there, you know, substituting for our mind and our will, right? And then finally he had some kind of a soul, so. Could just be an animal soul, right? So you'd be assuming a body with only a, what? Animal soul, right? A beast. You see. Even without, you know, thinking, you know, as profound as Thomas is thinking about this, if you even ask the average Catholic, you know, would it make sense for God to, you know, take on the body of a dog or a cat or something, right? You kind of automatically can say there's something wrong with that, right? Well, what's wrong with it, you know? Well, it would not be suitable to take on, what? A soul that didn't have a mind and a will to know and to love God, right? Okay. And he couldn't really love us, right? Direct us and so on and be our teacher, right? You want to have a dog for your teacher? That question came up once a long time ago. How could God, is it possible for him to put you in a rock? And I suppose one thing that occurred to me was that that's related to this was that, well, if he did, it means if it's a, what they call a hypostatic union, it's, well, that nature doesn't have a person to assume. And so basically, Well, I don't assume a person now. Yeah. Well, no. But it doesn't have a hypostasis. It's not a nature which is capable of being a hypostasis. A stone isn't the kind of nature that it has it. Or a tree or a dog or anything else. But the, one of the quotes that you could sort of use as an objection was when our Lord says, God can raise up sons of Abraham from these very stones. The only thing I can think of is that, well, if he did, then there wouldn't be stones anymore. Right. They'd be sons of Abraham. Adam was made from the clay, right? Or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, third question, whether the soul of Christ was taken on by the word before the flesh, right? I guess there are some people who thought that he took on the soul first and then later on he added a body to it, right? To the third one proceeds thus. It seems that the soul of Christ was taken on by the word, then his flesh, right? As if there was a before in time, I guess this means, huh? For the Son of God took on flesh by means of, or by the middle of the soul. That is the first article we saw, right? But one comes to the middle before one comes to the extreme. Therefore, the Son of God first took on the soul, then the body, right? Moreover, the soul of Christ is more worthy than the angels. According to that of Psalm 96. Adore him, all you his angels, right? But the angels were created from the beginning, as is had in the first. That was the opinion, I guess, of some of the church fathers, right? But probably not the dominant opinion, as rejected by Thomas. Therefore, also the soul of Christ is among them, which was not created before it was, what? Assumed, huh? For Damascene says in the third book, that never did the soul nor the body of Christ have its own hypostasis, right? Apart from the hypostasis of the word. Therefore, it seems that the soul was assumed before the flesh, right? Which was conceived in the, what? Yeah. Moreover, John says, chapter 1, verse 14, We have seen him full of grace and truth, right? And afterwards, in verse 16, We have all received of his, what? Fullness, huh? That is, all the faithful, whatever time, as good as him expounds, right? But this would not be unless Christ had the fullness of grace and truth before all the saints who were from the beginning of the world. It's a genius argument, huh? Because the cause is not after the cause, huh? Since, therefore, the fullness of grace and truth was in the soul of Christ from his union to the, what? Word, according to that, we saw his glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and of truth, huh? Consequently, it seems that from the beginning of the world, the soul of Christ was assumed by the word of God, huh? That's pretty convincing, right? But against this is what Damascene says. I'm so used to say, Augusta. I can't get out of my head. But against this is what Damascene says in the fourth book. Not as some, what, lie, huh? Before the incarnation of the Virgin was the intellect or the intellectual part of the soul united to the word of God. And from then he was called, what? Christ, huh? And here we have the troublemaker origin again, huh? Sometimes Thomas is very rough and says origin is the origin of areas, the area of areas, right? I answer it should be, but nevertheless, in the golden shade, you know, he'll quote, you know, full explanations by origin. So, it's kind of interesting that he does that. I answer it should be said that origin laid down that all souls were created from the beginning, right? Even your soul and my soul, right? Among whom also he laid down that the soul of Christ was created. But this is, what, not fitting, right? If it be laid down that it was then created, but not, what, at once united to the word. Because it would follow that that soul would have some time, right? Its own subsistence without the word, right? And thus, when it was taken on by the word, either there would not have been made a union in, what, subsistence, or in hypostasis you could say it too, I suppose. Or the subsistence of the soul pre-existing would have been corrupted, right? Which is not appropriate, this would be corruption in his, huh? But likewise it is unsuitable if it be laid down that the soul was united from the beginning to the word, and afterwards was made incarnate in the, what, uterus of the virgin, right? Because thus his soul would not seem to be of the same nature with ours, huh? Which are, at the same time, created when they are, what, poured into the bodies, right? Whence Leo Papa, this must be Leo the Great, huh? He's quite an interesting pope. Says in his epistle to Julian that he was not of another nature, his flesh and us, right? Nor another way than in other men was the soul, what? We in the beginning, right? Now, of course, for we who've been studying the categories and know the five senses, right? You know, four central senses and then the crowning sense, which is attached to the second sense. We know that there's many senses of order, right? And order according to time is only the first sense, right? But there are many orders according to, what, nature, right? Like Aristotle says, for example, When you sit down, the statement that you are sitting is true. Now, is there any time lag there? You sit down and then gradually the statement that you are sitting becomes true? No, they're simultaneous, right? Together, right? And yet, as you're sitting down, in some sense, before the truth of that statement. It's not before it in time, is it? But is it before it in some other sense? Yeah. Because it's the cause of that statement being true, right? If I stand up, then that statement becomes false, right? But there's no time lag. I have to stand up and then stand up for a while before it becomes false. So, something can be before in nature, which is one thing to say, even when something is not before in what? In time, right? Is two ever, never half a four? They're simultaneous, huh? Two and half a four. But it's half a four because it's two. It's not two because it's half a four. So, to the first, therefore, it should be said, that it has been said above, the soul of Christ is said to be a, what? Middle, in union, of the flesh to the word, according to the order of, what? Nature, right? But it's not necessary from this that it would be a middle in the order of time, huh? I have a second objection, huh? To second it should be said, that as Leo Papa, in the same epistle, right, says, that the soul of Christ excelled not by the, what, otherness of genus, but by the, what, height of its power, right, then? For it is of the same genus with our souls, right? But it excels even the angels, according to the fullness of grace and, what, truth, right? But the way of the incarnation, the way of the coming flesh, corresponds to the soul according to the propriety of its, what, genus, that is, the soul. From which it has, that since it is the form of a body, that it be created the same time that it is, what, poured into and united to the body. And this does not belong to the angels, who are substances altogether separated from, what, bodies, right? Now, Thomas sometimes discusses that opinion, though, that said to the souls, the angels were created, right, before the material world, right, in time or, you know, in duration. And I don't know if he says that, I don't think he says that's radical, right? But he kind of rejects that opinion, you know, that position, right? And the reason for rejecting it is that bodies, lowly as they are, right, compared to angels, are an integral part of the universe, right? So God would not make the universe, you know, missing parts, right, huh? Okay. And then the angels would not really seem to be, what, part of the universe, right, or part of the scene universe, huh? Kind of like an afterthought, right? Of course, the origin thought that we were all created spirits in the beginning, and some of us turned towards God more or less, and some of us turned away from God more or less, right? And those who turned towards God became the angels, higher or lower, and those who turned away from God, you know, were put into bodies, and then bodies were created, right? But that's all nonsense, anyway. How did the fallen angels? Well, he might have been, you know, attached to bodies, too, like, you know, Arab bodies or something, you know. I don't know all the details of the position. So origin's got some odd positions, huh? Did you understand the Pope's little blurb on him? Because he covered origin when he did his origin. Yeah, he kind of kind of, wasn't he? Well, it was interesting, because he talked about, he always reflected on origin as a warning for the theologian, because he needs humility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what is it? He read these dresses of, I am. It was about 16 of mine, so 16, at least 16 of them on St. Paul, and it's got kind of, kind of, through reading them on the period. And there's a lot of emphasis there upon humility, right, in St. Paul, right, in some of the talks. Kind of beautiful. Okay, now look at this third objection here, right? How could those who, if they were after or before Christ in time, how could they have received? To the third, therefore, it should be said that of the fullness of Christ, all men have taken or received by the faith which they had in him, right? For it is said in Romans, Epistle to Romans, chapter 3, that the justice of God is through the faith in Jesus Christ in all and over all who believe in him, right? But just as we believe in him as, what, made flesh, right? So the ancients, meaning the patriarchs and so on, and the prophets, believed in him as to be, what, born, right? Having the same spirit we believe, as it's said in 2 Corinthians, huh? But the faith which is in Christ has the power of justifying from the, what? Proposal. Proposal, yeah. For the grace of God, huh? According to that of Romans 4, 5. To he who, what? Yeah. But believing, huh? In the one who justifies impious. His faith is, what? Regard his justice according to the proposal of the grace of God, right? Whence, because this proposal is eternal, right? Nothing prevents by the faith of Jesus Christ some to be justified before his soul was, what? Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me of the definition there of the macroconception, right? If you look at the artificial text of that, because it says, in view of, right? Christ, death, and the cross. So there's some kind of what? Yeah. But it reminds you a little bit of this, right? Yeah. She did not believe the angel who came to her and so on, right? But even before that, right? Because she was ordered to that divine providence. So that's interesting objection, though, right? It's related to anything. Anything related to prophecy would be sort of related to this. There's an expression in the Apocalypse where Christ is referred to as the lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world. Well, how can he be slain from the beginning of the world? Some commentator, I don't remember what I read somewhere, said, well, he was slain from the beginning of the world in figure. So they sort of, they knew that this is a figure of something to come. And that's what our text, for Friday in the midday about the cross was figured in not only the ram, but it was figured in Isaac being offered up, but also in the ram because it was caught by someone in the wood. So the wood itself that snatched, that caught the ram that Abraham offered him, I don't know, it wasn't figured. And so all that would have been somewhat prophetically known, I assume. Yet, you know, don't they say that the prophets and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on, they didn't receive the Bittic vision until after Christ died on the cross. And the descent into hell, right, is to give them, right, the vision, yeah. So that there is a certain fullness of grace, right, that comes after he's in fact died on the cross, right, even though there's grace received before that, right, by those who believe in the cross that is to come, right. Well, the resurrection, yeah, even Augustine says that we'll see God more fully in a way, more perfectly in a way, once our soul, our bodies are joined to our souls because we'd be more a perfect thing than we were just a soul. It became interesting, though, being in the immaterial world for a while, right. Each other would change the pace.