Ordinatio

[The Opinion of Bonaventure] From what has been said the rejection of the opinion that posits Christ as first subject¹ is plain, because then the necessary truths about the Father and the Holy Spirit – to wit, ‘the Father generates’, ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds’ – would not be theological truths, nor would the contingent truths about them, to wit ‘the Father creates through the Son’, ‘the Holy Spirit is sent in time visibly and invisibly’; nor the necessary truths about the triune God, as that he is omnipotent, boundless, nor the contingent truths, as that God creates, God governs the world, remits sins, punishes, rewards, and the like. – All these consequences are proved because to no science does any truth belong per se unless it be about the first subject of it, or about a subjective or integral or essential part of it, or about something essentially attributed to the subject. It is plain that the Father or the Trinity is not Christ, nor part of him in any of the stated ways, nor anything essentially attributed to Christ; both because since Christ states two natures – and this insofar as he is subject, according to those who posit that – it follows that, as having a created nature, he will be essentially prior to the Father or the Trinity, because an essential attribution is not made save to what is essentially prior, which is false; and because Christ even according to divinity does not have any such priority according to which the Father or the Trinity could be attributed to him.

Against this opinion too are the reasons placed last above in the solution of the second question against the position about relation to what is extrinsic [nn.164-166]. – Against the same is the first reason set down for the solution of the first question [n.151], because the necessary truths about the Father, about the Holy Spirit, and about the Trinity cannot be contained first in Christ virtually, because if the Word had not been incarnate, those truths would not have been necessary, which is false. The third reason too in the same place [n.153] is valid here, because no knowledge would have had to be handed down about God save as included in Christ; this knowledge is about the Word only and thus is not the most distinct knowledge that could be handed down; therefore another prior knowledge would need to be required.

Making for this point are some of the persuasive considerations there set down [nn.154-156], because the unity which belongs to Christ² as he is one supposit in two natures is not an eternal unity; but it would be necessary to posit the formal unity of the first subject; therefore the first subject as first is not something eternal only. The persuasive consideration too about faith³ seems to be conclusive; for it is not a theological belief or truth that this man was crucified, as it does not implicate the Word in the subject term, because the Jews could naturally see this man on the cross. But it is a theological belief and truth that the Word was a man born of a Virgin, that the Word was a man crucified, that the Word was a man rising from the dead, and so on about the articles pertaining to humanity; but as for those pertaining to divinity, it is plain that they do not belong first to Christ as he is Christ, but some to the other persons, some to the Trinity. Therefore, the adequate object of theology is not Christ but something that is as it were common to the Word, about whom are primarily believed the articles pertaining to reparation, and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, about whom are some other theological truths.

It seems then that it must be said that just as if in medicine the human body be the subject, about which is considered health and infirmity there as property: if the kinds of human body were body mixed thus and so, to wit blooded body, phlegmatic body, etc., this whole, healthy blooded body, would not there be the first subject, both because it is too particular and also because it includes the property that needs to be considered about the subject, and a property cannot be the idea of the subject, because a subject, as it is subject, is naturally prior to its property, and thus a property would be prior to itself. And in brief, whatever might be said about any medicine handed down, that it was about such sort of thing, although a particular and a per accidens being, at least it would at any rate be impossible for the first science of man’s body to be about a healthy blooded body. Rather, if in any way it were about this, another science could be prior: either about man’s body in general, because it has in its generality certain properties knowable about it through a common idea, as is a prior to its inferiors; or about blooded body, whose idea is naturally prior to healthy blooded body, and this prior idea virtually contains the other properties; or about man’s healthy body, because its nature precedes healthy blooded body. So it is in the proposed case. Christ states the Word-man, according to Damascene [De Fide Orthodoxa 3 ch.4]; therefore before the knowledge that would be about Christ as about first subject, there would by nature be another prior one about the Word, if any things are present in him through the idea by which he is the Word, and prior to that one another one about God as to things that are present in him through the idea of God as God is common to the three persons.

Therefore, if we hold theology to be in itself the first knowledge, it will not be first about Christ; and if it is equally about truths common and proper to the three persons, it would not be about any person as about some adequate subject, but about God as God is common to the three persons. And then the thesis will be saved that either every theological truth is about the first subject, to wit a truth that is in God by reason of God, or about a subjective part, as it were, of the first subject, to wit a truth that is properly in some person, or about what is attributed to the first subject or to a part, as it were, of the subject, to wit about the creature as to the respect that it has to God as God and about the nature assumed as to the respect it has to the Word sustaining it [n.172].

[The Opinion of Lincoln]⁴ – In another way, however, it is posited that Christ is the prime subject, according to Lincoln in his The Work of Six Days, and this according as Christ is one by a triple unity, of which the first is with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the second of the Word with the assumed nature, the third of Christ the head with his members. And on behalf of this opinion about Christ seems to be the first reason set down for the first question and the penultimate one [nn.151, 156], because the seven articles of the faith pertaining to the humanity [of Christ]⁵ God does not contain as subject, because they do not belong to him by nature of his divinity. But the subject does contain the property by whose form the property is in it. Now Christ contains those articles, because they are present in him according to his humanity, and this really; he also contains the others pertaining to his divinity,⁶ because they seem to be present in him according to his divinity.

A confirmation is that the subjects of the parts of the doctrine should be contained under the subject of the whole, either as subjective parts or as quasi-integral parts; not so contained under God are the subjects of the parts of Scripture. The thing is proved by many glosses at the beginnings of books, assigning as material causes certain things that are not anything of God, to wit, a gloss on Hosea says that the matter of Hosea is ‘the ten tribes’.

Again, third: nothing proper to God is narrated in some place of Scripture, because no fact is there narrated where anything was required on the part of God save only his general influence; therefore such a book is not about God.

To the first argument [n.177] I say that the contingent truths asserted of Christ are not contained virtually in any subject in the way a subject is said to contain a property, because then those truths would be necessary; yet they do have a subject of which they are immediately and first asserted, and that is the Word, for the theological truths about the incarnation, nativity, passion, etc. are these: ‘The Word became man’, ‘the Word was born man’, ‘the Word suffered as man’ etc. hen you say that ‘the property is present according to the human nature’, I reply: humanity is not the subject’s first idea at which the resolution stands, but is as it were a prior property mediating between the first subject of these truths, which is the Word, and the other later properties, as ‘born’ etc. It is plain that humanity cannot be the idea of the subject with respect to the first property, which is ‘was incarnate’, because that is said of the Word without humanity being pre-understood as present in the Word as subject; this is the first reason.

To the second [n.178] I say that the attribution of the parts of science to the first subject would be enough, and this sort of attribution to God can be saved as to any matter assigned by the adduced glosses. In another way: the matter of any book whatever is God of whom is therein narrated how he governed the human race; but the tribe or person governed is the remote matter. Thus are such glosses to be understood.

Hereby is clear the response to the third [n.179], that although there were some book containing no miracle of God, yet any book contains God’s providence and governance about man in general or about a determinate tribe or person, so much so that if the same history about Pharaoh be written in Exodus by Moses and by some Egyptian in the chronicles of the Egyptians, the subject of Moses’ history is God, about whom is transmitted there that he governs man, by mercifully freeing the oppressed Hebrews, by justly punishing the Egyptian oppressors, by wisely ordering a fitting form of liberation and by powerfully doing, for the purpose that the freed people might accept the law with joy, so many signs proper to himself; but the subject of the history of a historiographer would be the kingdom, or the king, or the Egyptian people, whose deeds and fortunes that befell them he intended to write, such that it is incidental to him what God did, but principal what his people did or suffered. Principal for Moses is what God did or permitted, but incidental as it were what the matter happened to be about. And granted that in some places no miracle were narrated, yet what God permitted, by giving assistance according to his ordinary influence, not preventing, this is principally intended in that book insofar as it is part of Scripture; and how that was fittingly ordered to some good, if it was so orderable, or how justly punished if it was bad, this is frequently added in the same or another book, or if it was permitted and not here punished, Scripture is elsewhere not silent about it in general, that it will be punished elsewhere.