Dist. 16, Art. 1, Q. 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/16/q/bon-sent-III-d16-a1-q1
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### Article I. *On the suffering of pain, insofar as it concerns the soul and the flesh in common.*
### Question I. *Whether in Christ there was a true suffering of pain.*

Concerning the first point one proceeds thus, and it is asked whether in Christ there was a true suffering of pain. And that there was, is shown.

1. Isaiah, chapter fifty-three: *We saw him as the lowliest of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity*; but it is certain that the Prophet does not understand this of the knowledge of simple cognition: therefore he understands it of the knowledge of experience: therefore he truly experienced the sufferings of pain.

2. Likewise, in his person it is said in the Psalm: *I am poor and sorrowful*; but Christ was truly poor and a beggar in temporal things: therefore he was afflicted with true pain.

3. Likewise, a soul joined to a passible body truly grieves, the body suffering; but the soul of Christ was joined to flesh that was not only passible, but indeed also suffered: therefore it endured true pain.

4. Likewise, satisfaction is made through the penalty of pain; but Christ truly made satisfaction, because *he truly bore our infirmities, and carried our sorrows*: therefore he truly grieved.

5. Likewise, it is no great thing to have patience in that suffering which brings on no pain; but the patience of Christ is greatly commended in the bearing of sufferings: therefore it seems that Christ felt true pain in himself.

6. Likewise, either he truly suffered and grieved, or not. If so, I have my point; if he did not truly suffer, and seemed to suffer: then he deceived the eyes of those who beheld him in his passion, and by the same reasoning in any other of his operations; and if this is so, the whole Gospel is a lie, and his miracles false, and the Christian faith empty in every respect: if therefore such things are false and erroneous, it remains, etc.

**On the contrary:** 1. Hilary in the tenth book *On the Trinity*: « The strength of the body, without sense of penalty, received the force of the penalty raging within itself »; but true pain is not without sense of penalty: therefore in Christ there was no true pain.

2. Likewise, Dionysius to John the Evangelist: « Far be it that I should be so mad as to believe that the Saints suffer anything, but I believe that they perceive the sufferings of the body only insofar as they judge them »: if therefore this is true, the Saints do not perceive sufferings except according to judgment, therefore not according to experience: therefore in suffering they do not have true pain: therefore much less does the Holy of Holies, namely Christ.

3. Likewise, Moses fasted forty days and forty nights without any injury of the body on account of continual contemplation: if therefore the perfection of contemplation takes away suffering and the sense of hunger, by the same reasoning it seems that it would take away the sense of pain in passible flesh. But in Christ there was continual and most perfect contemplation: therefore it seems that there was no experience of pain in him.

4. Likewise, it seems so *by reason*. « The acting nature is more excellent than the one acted upon »; and the assumed nature is more excellent than every other: therefore it does not seem that it could be afflicted or injured by any other nature.

5. Likewise, a thing which removes injury and pain is not subject to the suffering of pain; but the hand of Christ cured the pains of others by mere touch: therefore it seems that he could undergo no pain.

6. Likewise, if the soul of Peter were placed in hell, it would not be tormented by the fires, because it does not have in itself a cause on account of which it ought to grieve: therefore if the soul of Christ had no cause of suffering in itself, it seems that it felt no pain in flesh however passible. If therefore pain is a suffering of the soul itself rather than of the flesh, as Augustine says; it seems that in Christ there was no true pain.

### Conclusion

> A true suffering of pain was in Christ.

**I respond:** It must be said that, without doubt, as the Gospel says and the catholic faith holds, a true suffering of pain was in Christ. For in him there was passible and pierceable flesh, there was also the power of perceiving, according to which the soul suffers along with the injured body. Since therefore these two things make true pain, namely *true injury* and *true sense of injury*, and these two truly were in Christ; it must be held without hesitation that in Christ there was a true suffering of pain. — For if anyone says otherwise, according to what certain heretics say, and it is the ancient error of the Saracens, that Christ, although he seemed to suffer and grieve, nevertheless did not truly have pain and the sense of suffering; he not only empties out the faith of Christ and the Gospel of Christ, but also empties out our redemption and says that Christ is not Christ. For when he says that he did not truly *suffer*; he says that he did not make satisfaction, and on this account that the human race is not redeemed. But when he says that he *simulated* suffering; he says that he is a liar, and so that he was neither truly the Son of God nor the messenger of God, and so neither a mediator, but rather a deceiver. And therefore those who say that Christ did not truly grieve or suffer; even though they seem to honor him outwardly, in truth they blaspheme him most impiously. — The reasons therefore proving that he truly grieved are to be granted.

1. To that, then, which is objected first concerning the authority of Hilary, the answer is threefold. For some say that Hilary retracted those words. Whence I have heard that William, the bishop of Paris, reports that he saw and read through the book of that retraction. — Otherwise

it can be said that Hilary, in the aforesaid statement and in the others placed in the same passage, does not exclude the sense of pain from Christ according to the *human* nature, but according to the *divine*; whence those words are to be referred to the person of Christ. And this indeed is confirmed, because, as the same Hilary says, « the understanding of statements is to be taken from the causes of speaking ». For Hilary in the foregoing words wished to exclude the error of Arius, who said that Christ according to his whole self had suffered. — In a third way it is answered that Hilary does not mean to show that Christ did not have *true pain*, but that he did not have a *cause of pain*; and this manner of solving the Master indeed hints at in the text, and it is reasonable enough, as will better appear in the exposition of the text.

2. But to that which is objected concerning the authority of Dionysius, it must be said that Dionysius did not wish to say nor did he hold that the blessed John and the other Saints did not experience pain in their torments, but he wishes to commend the constancy of the mind, which was no more moved by the experience of sense than it would be moved by mere consideration and the judgment of reason.

3. To that which is objected concerning Moses, it must be said that, although the sweetness of contemplation in a certain way refreshed him and drew him away from the exterior senses, so much so that it in a certain way lulled the natural powers, so that they did not consume and require food as they otherwise would; nevertheless that he fasted for so long a time without any injury to himself, this was through a special benefit and a divine miracle. And therefore this has no place in the matter at hand, because Christ in his passion did not exercise the miracles of power, but rather used the arms of patience.

4. To that which is objected, that the acting nature is more excellent than the one acted upon; it must be said that this need not be understood to be true *absolutely*, but only according to some condition. For because a stone injures the foot, it is not necessary that the stone be nobler than the foot, but it suffices that it exceed it in some condition, namely in hardness and solidity; and so it is in the matter at hand. For although the nail was not nobler than the flesh of Christ, it was nevertheless harder and more solid. And if *you object* to me about the soul, that it cannot suffer; it must be said that the soul suffered *by accident*, namely by suffering along with the flesh. Or, according to Augustine in the sixth book of the *Music*, the soul takes the occasion of suffering from the flesh; nevertheless it suffers of itself, the occasion having been received from elsewhere. — It can also be said that that statement is to be understood according to the institution of nature, not according to the dispensation of mercy and the punishment of justice, of which the first regards the soul of Christ, the latter the sinful soul, as is expressly had in the forty-fourth distinction of the fourth book.

5. To that which is objected, that the hand of Christ was curative of pains: it must be said that this was by the power of the hidden divinity; and according to that power, I grant indeed that he could not suffer nor grieve. From this, however, it does not follow that he was free of pain. For there was there another created power, according to which he could grieve, namely the sensitive power of the soul.

6. To that which is objected, that the soul of Peter would not suffer in hell; it must be said that it is not similar, because the soul of Peter after perfect purification is not passible from a cause of its own, nor from divine dispensation for the salvation of another; but it is not so with the soul of Christ, which by dispensation and voluntarily had passibility, when it was joined to passible flesh, as was had from the preceding lecture.