Dist. 49, Part 2, Art. 1, 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/4/d/49/q/bon-sent-IV-d49-p2-s2-a1-q2
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### Question II. *Whether the glorified body is passible by a passion coming from without.*

Secondly it is asked whether the glorified body is passible by a passion coming from without, as by fire or by a knife. And that it is not, seems to be so:

1. Because Anselm says that "they will be omnipotent over their own will, as God is over his": therefore if the will of the souls is set upon the conservation of the body: therefore nothing will be able to harm the body of the soul.

2. Likewise, "every passion, the more it is done, casts away from substance": therefore if it is passible from without, therefore a casting-away from substance can come about, therefore corruption also. But it was proved above that it is incorruptible and immortal: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, nothing composite can suffer from without which cannot suffer from within; but the glorified body cannot suffer from within: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**

1. The glorified body is constituted materially out of earth; but earth cannot, while the form which it has remains, be so far raised up that it should be higher than fire: therefore it remains below fire: therefore if the lower suffers from the higher; but such a body is lower than fire, it seems etc.

2. Likewise, the noblest body is lower than the lowest spirit, however sinful; but the spirit of sinners, when placed in fire, suffers: therefore the human body, however ennobled, can suffer from fire.

3. Likewise, every continuum is divisible, everything divisible is partible, and everything partible is passible from without: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, whenever a hard body meets a soft one, it must needs divide it, if the impulse be vehement; suppose therefore that a knife meets a glorified body: either then it is harder than the knife, or the knife penetrates; but it is not harder, since it is fleshly: therefore etc.

### Conclusion

> *The glorified body is impassible from without by every kind of corrupting passion.*

**I respond:** It must be said that the glorified body is impassible from without by every kind of corrupting passion. Now this is twofold, namely by *influence*, as fire burns a body; and by *violence*, as a knife divides. — The first is not in the glorified body, because *such influence* is either according to the *order of justice*; and this is in demons and in sinful souls according to the order of justice; in the glorified body there is no such passion, because it has not deserved to be punished. The other is according to the *order of nature*; and this occurs only when the patient is of such a nature that that matter desires to be under another act, for privation is the principle of suffering. But since in the glorified body the appetites are already terminated, therefore, if a glorified body were placed in the fire of hell, it would not be harmed.

*To 1 and 2.* And by this the solution to the first two is clear, because the demon suffers according to the order of justice, although it is superior by nature. — The second is likewise clear, namely that earth suffers, because matter is that which has the account of privation.

The other is action by violence, and concerning this some say that it does not suffer, because there is no one who would inflict it; and if there were one who wished to inflict it, the body could turn aside. — But then, according to that way, Adam's body before the fall would have had the dowry of impassibility. Let it also be supposed, by an impossibility, that a knife is applied to the belly: either the belly resists, or it does not. If it does not: therefore it suffers, and the knife enters in, and so it is passible; if it resists, I ask: by what nature? And some say that it has the nature of a fifth essence, which is neither cuttable nor divisible; whence if someone were beside the sun and were to drive a knife against it, it would not pass through; and it would not resist by the *nature of the hard and the soft*, but because it *lacks hardness and softness and passibility*.

But because this is difficult to understand, it must therefore be said that the glorified body cannot suffer *by the violence* of a body meeting it, because every body is pervious to it, and it passes through that body, as will be seen. Whence, just as if someone had a crystal knife, he would not drive out a ray by its stroke, but rather the ray would penetrate it, whence it would not suffer from it; so in the case at hand it must be understood that the glorified body penetrates the knife.

*To 3.* As for what is said, then — that every continuum is divisible — this must be understood of mathematical division, not of the natural division about which the objection is here made. For Anselm so expounds it, that it is understood according to intellect, not according to act.

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