Medieval Philosophy

by Peter S. Adamson

The first answer, inspired by Hugh of Saint Victor, is that the body and soul were both “assumed” by the divine nature (§6.2.1). This avoids the difficulty of leaving Christ’s body outside his divinity, but threatens to eliminate the human nature entirely. The second view, which is that of Gilbert of Poitiers, takes more or less the opposite approach by saying that divinity is a third, distinct thing in Christ added to body and soul (§6.3.1). Here there’s no danger of eliding Christ’s humanity, but it’s difficult to see how Christ will be a single, unified person; divinity and humanity would be juxtaposed rather than fused. Indeed, you might even wonder how on this view we have one rather than two persons in Christ, and the whole point was to understand how a single person can have two natures. Finally, there is the third view, based on Abelard. This time the idea is to start with the divine Person, and imagine it taking on human nature in a more accidental or extrinsic way, like someone putting on a set of clothes that he can later take off (§6.4.1).