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← Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologica, Part I

Thomas Aquinas · c. 1265–1274

Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Public domain edition from Project Gutenberg. Ponderspace organises the text; it belongs to whoever published it.

Every question stated with its strongest objections before any answer is given.

Part 57 of 57 · 1401 sections in this edition

Reply Obj. 4: These words of Augustine are not to be understood as though the immediate seminal virtue, or the corporeal substance from which this individual was formed were actually in Adam: but so that both were in Adam as in principle. For even the corporeal matter, which is supplied by the mother, and which he calls the corporeal substance, is originally derived from Adam: and likewise the active seminal power of the father, which is the immediate seminal virtue (in the production) of this man.

But Christ is said to have been in Adam according to the "corporeal substance," not according to the seminal virtue. Because the matter from which His Body was formed, and which was supplied by the Virgin Mother, was derived from Adam; whereas the active virtue was not derived from Adam, because His Body was not formed by the seminal virtue of a man, but by the operation of the Holy Ghost. For "such a birth was becoming to Him," [*Hymn for Vespers at Christmas; Breviary, O. P.], WHO IS ABOVE ALL GOD FOR EVER BLESSED. Amen.