Agere Sequitur Esse

Passibility of Christ’s Soul

Since the soul is the form of the body, any suffering undergone by the body must in some way affect the soul. Therefore in that state in which the body of Christ was passible, His soul was passible also.

We may note that the suffering of the soul is of two kinds. One kind of suffering arises from the body, the other from the object that causes suffering, and this can be observed in any one of the faculties. For the soul is related to the body in the same way that a part of the soul is related to a part of the body. Thus suffering may be caused in the faculty of sight by some object, as when vision is dimmed by an excessively bright light; suffering can also arise from the organ itself, as when vision is dulled because of an injured pupil.

Accordingly, if the suffering of Christ’s soul is regarded as arising from the body, the whole soul suffered when the body suffered. For the soul in its essence is the form of the body, and the faculties, too, are all rooted in the essence of the soul. Consequently, if the body suffers every power of the soul suffers in some way. But if the suffering of the soul is considered as arising from an object, not every power of Christ’s soul suffered, understanding suffering in the proper sense as connoting harm. For nothing that arose from the object of any of these powers could be harmful, since, as we saw above, the soul of Christ enjoyed the perfect vision of God. Thus the higher reason of Christ’s soul, which is immersed in the contemplation and meditation of eternal things, embraced nothing adverse or repugnant that could cause it to suffer any harm.

But the sense faculties, whose objects are material things, could receive some injury from the suffering of the body; and so Christ experienced pain of sense when His body suffered. Furthermore, just as laceration of the body is felt by the senses to be injurious, so the inner imagination apprehends it as harmful; hence interior distress follows even when pain is not felt in the body. We assert that suffering of such distress was experienced by the soul of Christ. More than this: not the imagination alone, but also the lower reason apprehends objects harmful to the body; and so, as a result of such apprehension by the lower reason, which is concerned with temporal affairs, the suffering of sorrow could have place in Christ, so far as the lower reason apprehended death and other maltreatment of the body as injurious and as contrary to natural appetite.

Moreover, in consequence of love, which makes two persons, as it were, one, a man may be afflicted with sadness not only on account of objects he apprehends through his imagination or his lower reason as harmful to himself, but also on account of objects he apprehends as harmful to others whom he loves. Thus Christ suffered sadness from His awareness of the perils of sin or of punishment threatening other men whom He loved with the love of charity. And so He grieved for others as well as for Himself.

However, although the love of our fellow men pertains in a certain way to the higher reason, inasmuch as our neighbor is loved out of charity for God’s sake, the higher reason in Christ could not experience sorrow on account of the defects of His fellow men, as it can in us. For, since Christ’s higher reason enjoyed the full vision of God, it apprehended all that pertains to the defects of others as contained in the divine wisdom, in the light of which the fact that a person is permitted to sin and is punished for his sin, is seen to be in accord with becoming order. And so neither the soul of Christ nor of any of the blessed who behold God can be afflicted with sadness by the defects of their neighbors. But the case is otherwise with wayfarers who do not rise high enough to perceive the plan of wisdom. Such persons arc saddened by the defects of others even in their higher reason, when they think that it pertains to the honor of God and the exaltation of the faith that some should be saved who nevertheless are damned.

Thus, with regard to the very things for which He was suffering in sense, imagination, and lower reason, Christ was rejoicing in His higher reason, so far as He referred them to the order of divine wisdom. And since the referring of one thing to another is the proper task of reason, we generally say that Christ’s reason, if it is considered as nature, shrank from death, meaning that death is naturally abhorrent, but that if it is considered as reason, it was willing to suffer death.

Just as Christ was afflicted with sadness, so He experienced other passions that stem from sadness, such as fear, wrath, and the like. Fear is caused in us by those things whose presence engenders sorrow, when they are thought of as future evils; and when we are grieved by someone who is hurting us, we become angry at him. Such passions existed otherwise in Christ than in us. In us they frequently anticipate the judgment of reason, and sometimes pass the bounds of reason. In Christ they never anticipated the judgment of reason, and never exceeded the moderation imposed by reason; His lower appetite, which was subject to passion, was moved just so far as reason decreed that it should be moved. Therefore Christ’s soul could desire something in its higher part that it shrank from in its lower part, and yet there was no conflict of appetites in Him or rebellion of the flesh against the spirit, such as occurs in us owing to the fact that the lower appetite exceeds the judgment and measure of reason. In Christ this appetite was moved in accord with the judgment of reason, to the extent that He permitted each of His lower powers to be moved by its own impulse, in keeping with propriety.

In the light of all this we see clearly that Christ’s higher reason was completely happy and full of joy in respect to its proper object. On the part of this object, nothing that might engender sorrow could arise in Him. But on the part of the subject it was full of suffering, as we indicated in the beginning of this chapter. Yet that enjoyment did not lessen the suffering, nor did the suffering prevent the enjoyment, since no overflowing from one power to another took place; each of the powers was allowed to exercise the function proper to it, as we mentioned above.

Reference

St. Thomas Aquinas. (1265-1274). Compendium Theologiae: Passibility of Christ’s Soul, trans. by Cyril Vollert. St. Louis & London: B. Herder Book Co., 1947