Aquinas responds [to Jewish and Muslim medieval arguments against the Incarnation] in the corpus of [article 1 of question 1 of the tertia pars] by saying the key attribute or property of God under which we should think about the Incarnation is God's supreme goodness; that the Incarnation is a mystery of God's supreme goodness and love that he should, out of solidarity with us, become human -- become one of us -- so that we might know who God is. So, Aquinas doesn't deny that God is very transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, unknown in many ways, high above our comprehension, but he says because he is all those things, it is supremely fitting and wise that God should become human so that we can, as it were, perceive the human face of God; so that he could, as it were, cross the gulf of transcendence and be born in a manger, and even suffer a human life like ours even unto death, and a cruel death at that, in solidarity with us, so that we might see who God is. And this is an expression of God's goodness.
24 December 2023
Aquinas on the Incarnation
With Fr Thomas Joseph White, OP, DPhil (Oxon), STL, Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome.
Aquinas responds [to Jewish and Muslim medieval arguments against the Incarnation] in the corpus of [article 1 of question 1 of the tertia pars] by saying the key attribute or property of God under which we should think about the Incarnation is God's supreme goodness; that the Incarnation is a mystery of God's supreme goodness and love that he should, out of solidarity with us, become human -- become one of us -- so that we might know who God is. So, Aquinas doesn't deny that God is very transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, unknown in many ways, high above our comprehension, but he says because he is all those things, it is supremely fitting and wise that God should become human so that we can, as it were, perceive the human face of God; so that he could, as it were, cross the gulf of transcendence and be born in a manger, and even suffer a human life like ours even unto death, and a cruel death at that, in solidarity with us, so that we might see who God is. And this is an expression of God's goodness.
Aquinas responds [to Jewish and Muslim medieval arguments against the Incarnation] in the corpus of [article 1 of question 1 of the tertia pars] by saying the key attribute or property of God under which we should think about the Incarnation is God's supreme goodness; that the Incarnation is a mystery of God's supreme goodness and love that he should, out of solidarity with us, become human -- become one of us -- so that we might know who God is. So, Aquinas doesn't deny that God is very transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, unknown in many ways, high above our comprehension, but he says because he is all those things, it is supremely fitting and wise that God should become human so that we can, as it were, perceive the human face of God; so that he could, as it were, cross the gulf of transcendence and be born in a manger, and even suffer a human life like ours even unto death, and a cruel death at that, in solidarity with us, so that we might see who God is. And this is an expression of God's goodness.
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