Dist. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/3/d/1/q/bon-sent-III-d1-littera
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### DISTINCTIO I.

*When the fullness of time came*, as the Apostle says, *God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons of God*. Now the time of fullness is called the time of grace, which took its beginning from the coming of the Savior. This is *the time of mercy* and *the year of kindness*, in which *grace and truth were made through Jesus Christ*: grace, because through charity is fulfilled what was commanded in the Law; truth, because through Christ's coming is exhibited and perfected the pledge of human redemption made of old. « The mission of the Son, therefore, is the incarnation itself ». For he was sent in that he appeared visible to the world in the form of a man, concerning which enough has been said above.

### Cap. I.
#### *Why the Son assumed flesh, not the Father or the Holy Spirit.*

But it must be diligently noted why the Son, not the Father or the Holy Spirit, was incarnate. For the Son alone assumed man. This indeed God's wisdom did with a fitting order and by lofty counsel, so that God, who had founded the world in his wisdom, according to that text: *You have made all things in wisdom, O Lord*, might in that same [wisdom] restore the things that are in the heavens and that are on the earth. This is the woman of the Gospel, *who lighted a lamp and found the tenth drachma, which had been lost* — namely the Wisdom of the Father, who with the light of his divinity kindled the earthen shell of human infirmity and repaired lost man, marked with the name and image of the king. — Therefore also the Son was sent, and not the Father, because it was more fitting that he who is from another should be sent, than he who is from no one; but the Son is from the Father, while the Father is from no one. For as Augustine says in the book *On the Trinity*: « For he does not have [one] from whom he is ». « As, therefore, the Father begot, the Son was begotten, so fittingly the Father sent, the Son was sent ». « For the Word of God is fittingly sent by him whose word it is. He is sent by him from whom he is born. That which is begotten is sent. But the Father, who sent, is from no one ». And therefore the Father was not sent, lest, if he were sent, he should be thought to be from another. — The Son, therefore, was sent first, because he is from the Father alone; then also the Holy Spirit, who is from the Father and the Son. But the Son alone was sent in the flesh, not the Holy Spirit, just as neither the Father. This was done so that he who was in divinity the Son of God might in humanity become the son of man. The Father or the Holy Spirit did not put on flesh, lest one be the Son in divinity, another in humanity, and lest the Father and the Son be the same, if God the Father were born of a man. Hence in the *Ecclesiastical Dogmas*: « Not the Father assumed flesh, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son alone, so that he who was in divinity the Son of God might himself become in man the son of man, lest the name of son should pass to another who was not son by eternal nativity. The Son of God, therefore, was made son of man, born according to the truth of nature from God the Son of God, and according to the truth of nature from man the son of man, so that the truth of the begotten one might possess the name of son by being born, not by adoption, not by appellation, but in each nativity, and might be true God and true man, one son. Therefore not two Christs nor two sons, but God and man one son, whom for that reason we also call *only-begotten*, remaining in two substances, as the truth of nature conferred upon him, the natures not confused nor commingled, as the Timotheans wish, but united by fellowship ». — Behold, you have why the Son, not the Father or the Holy Spirit, assumed flesh.

### Cap. II.
#### *Whether the Father or the Holy Spirit could have been incarnate.*

But if it is asked whether the Father or the Holy Spirit *could have been* incarnate, or even can be now, it can soundly be answered that both the Father and the Holy Spirit could of old, and can now, take flesh and become man, as much as [the Son]. For just as the Son was made man, so the Father or the Holy Spirit could and can [be].

### Cap. III.
#### *Whether the Son, who alone received flesh, did anything which the Father or the Holy Spirit did not.*

But perhaps some will say: since the works of the Trinity are undivided, if the Son assumed flesh, then [so did] the Father and the Holy Spirit; for if the Son assumed flesh, and the Father or the Holy Spirit did not do this, then not everything that the Son does does the Father and the Holy Spirit [do]; yet the Father and the Son and the Spirit of both operate all things together, equally and concordantly. — To which we say that the Son operates nothing without the Father and the Holy Spirit, but there is one operation of these three, undivided and not-dissimilar; and yet the Son, not the Father or the Holy Spirit, assumed flesh. Nevertheless the Trinity wrought the assumption of flesh itself, as Augustine says in the book *On the Faith, to Peter*: « We were reconciled through the Son alone according to the flesh, but not to the Son alone according to the deity. For the Trinity reconciled us to itself, by this, that the Trinity itself made the Word-flesh alone ». The Trinity, therefore, made the assumption of flesh, but for the Word, not for the Father or for the Holy Spirit. For if the Father had wrought the assumption of flesh for himself, and the Son for himself, or the Father for the Son, and the Son for the Father, then the operation of both would no longer be the same, but divided. But just as the unity of substance of the three is inseparable and undivided, as Augustine says in the book *On the Trinity*, so also is the operation; « yet the catholic teachers have not taught that the same Trinity was born of the Virgin, crucified, and buried, but only the Son; nor that the same Trinity descended in the form of a dove upon Jesus, but only the Holy Spirit; nor that the same [Trinity] said from heaven: *You are my Son*, but that it was only the voice of the Father made to the Son — although the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, just as they are inseparable, so also operate inseparably. This also is my faith, since this is the catholic faith ». — Although, therefore, the Son alone assumed flesh, nevertheless he wrought the incarnation itself together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.