Dist. 2, Art. 2, Q. 2
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/2/q/bon-sent-III-d2-a2-q2
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### Question II. *Whether Christ assumed a rational soul.*

Secondly it is asked whether Christ assumed a rational soul. And that he did seems so.

*Arguments.*

1. Matthew, chapter twenty-six: *My soul is sorrowful even unto death*; but if he did not have a rational soul, he would not be made sorrowful: therefore, etc.

2. Likewise, in the Symbol of Athanasius: « Perfect God, perfect man, subsisting from a rational soul and human flesh »: therefore, etc.

3. Likewise, Christ died; but that death was not through the separation of the divinity from the flesh: therefore it was through the separation of the soul from the flesh: therefore he had a soul.

4. Likewise, Christ descended to the dead and on the third day rose from the dead: therefore either by reason of the soul, or by reason of the *body*, or by reason of the *divinity*. Not by reason of the *flesh*, because that remained in the tomb; not by reason of the *divinity*, because that cannot change place: therefore by reason of the *soul*: therefore, etc.

*On the contrary.*

But on the contrary: 1. John, chapter one: *The Word was made flesh*; there John sufficiently expresses the mystery of the incarnation: therefore nothing is to be added: therefore it seems that he assumed flesh alone.

2. Likewise, the union of the divine nature with the human is called *incarnation*; but denomination ought always to be made from the more worthy; and since the soul is more worthy than the flesh, and the incarnation is not called *animation*, but rather *incarnation*: therefore it seems that the soul was not assumed by the Word.

3. Likewise, the union regards the origin of sin; but the original [sin] has its origin from the flesh: therefore it seems that it sufficed for the Son of God to assume flesh for the reparation of the human race.

4. Likewise, « nature does not do through many things what it can do through fewer »; but in Christ the divine person was able for the act of understanding and loving and giving life, since the Son of God himself lacks neither will nor intelligence nor life: therefore it seems that Christ did not have a rational soul.

### Conclusio

> Christ assumed a true soul with its powers, vegetative, sensitive, and rational.

*Threefold assertion.*

**Respondeo:** It must be said that concerning this there were three ways of speaking, and two were heretical, and the third catholic.

*First opinion, heretical.*

For some said, like Eunomius, that the Son of God assumed flesh without a soul, because the divinity was to it in place of a soul; and since the Word of God gave life to that flesh, it did not need another life-giving spirit.

*Refuted.*

— But since the divine nature can in no way be a perfective form of the body, because God is the perfective or constitutive form of nothing; nor can it in any way have the passions of sorrow and grief: it is impossible to say this, that Christ lived a created life and felt griefs and death, and yet did not have a soul.

*Second opinion, heretical.*

And so there was another way of speaking, that Christ had a soul, but not a soul of any kind, but only a soul giving life and giving sensation, of which kind is the sensitive soul; but he did not need a rational soul, because for the other acts of the intellective part the power of the uncreated person sufficed.

*Refuted.*

— But this error is still worse, because if Christ did not have a rational soul, he did not redeem a rational soul from sin. — And again, if he did not have a rational soul, he was not a true man, because he did not have the completion of a man. And to say this is without doubt erroneous.

*The catholic position and conclusion.*

And so there is a third way of speaking, true and catholic, that Christ assumed a true body and a true soul with its powers, vegetative, sensitive, and rational.

*The reason.*

— And the reason for this is that Christ assumed human nature, in order to be the mediator of God and men. And because [he was] a perfect mediator, therefore [he was] perfect God and perfect man; and because there is no perfect man unless he have a body with all its members and a soul with all its powers: therefore he assumed all these things. *Again*, because he was a perfect *mediator*, therefore he was a perfect *comprehensor* and a perfect *wayfarer*, perfect in *contemplation* and perfect in *action*, perfect in *operation* and perfect in *suffering*. And from all these things it follows that he had the true substance of a soul. — Hence the reasons demonstrating this are to be conceded.

*Solution of the opposing arguments.*

1. To that, therefore, which is objected first concerning the word of John, it must be said that this was said by *synecdoche*, and flesh is there taken for the whole human nature. — And if you ask why he used that synecdochic manner of speaking? it must be said that he did this *Note.* because the assumed nature is more known to us on the side of the bodily substance than of the spiritual. And therefore, because our knowledge begins from those things which are more known to us, he described the mystery of the union of human nature with the divine more on the side of the flesh. — Another reason can also be given: *Another reason.* because in the assumption of the flesh is included the assumption of the rational soul. For if he assumed what was less suited to assumption and stood further from the one assuming, much more did he assume that which was more suited and more fitting.

2. And through this the response to what follows is clear, namely why it is called incarnation rather than animation; for the denomination is made from the more known part and from that part in which the formal character of the whole is more implicated. — And as to what is said, that the denomination ought to be made from the more worthy; it must be said that this is true, unless another reason intervenes.

3. To that which is objected, that the union is ordered against the origin of sin; it must be said that, if the origin of sin is from the flesh as from a bearer and infecting the soul by its infection; nevertheless it is never in the flesh except from the soul, nor is the derivation of flesh from flesh except through the power of the soul; and therefore the cure ought not to regard only the flesh, but also the soul, indeed the soul more principally than the flesh. And on this account it did not suffice to assume the flesh alone.

4. To that which is objected, that the person of the Word suffices to give life to and to regenerate the flesh through intellect and will; it must be said that, although it belongs to the person of the Word to give life by the mode of an *efficient [cause]*, nevertheless it does not belong [to him] to give life by the mode of a *perfecting form*, and this by reason of the supreme perfection which is in God, on account of which he cannot be the constitutive part of anything; *Note.* and therefore according to the human nature Christ had a created completive form, and thus it is most certainly to be believed that Christ assumed both true flesh and a true rational soul.

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