More Splendid Than The Sun Christs Fles PDF

Modern Theology Month 2019 DOI:10.1111/moth.
12540
ISSN 0266-7177 (Print)
ISSN 1468-0025 (Online)
“MORE SPLENDID THAN THE SUN”:

CHRIST’S FLESH AMONG THE REASONS
FOR THE INCARNATION
BRENDAN CASE
Abstract
This article defends two arguments proposed by Robert Grosseteste for the view that the Incarnation is logically prior
to the Fall. Each of them is motivated by the goodness of Christ as a creature who is nonetheless worthy of worship,
though the first considers this fact as an intrinsic good, and the second considers it as instrumentally good, by virtue
of its making possible fleshly communion between God and his creatures. I will then consider Bonaventure’s reasons
for rejecting these arguments, which turn on the worry that they posit a divine obligation to become Incarnate. I show
that while Bonaventure’s concern is reasonable, he addresses it at the unacceptable cost of denying important aspects
of the Incarnation’s purpose in the actual world. However, Bonaventure accepts that the Incarnation and Passion are
“necessary” for human redemption in a way that is consistent with divine freedom, an intuition which Aquinas brings
to particularly clear expression by analyzing the Incarnation as necessary in the sense of being the most fitting means of
salvation. Applying this line of thought to Christ’s flesh, considered as the fitting instrument by which God has elected
to perfectly beatify humanity, allows us to reconcile Grosseteste’s insistence on the Incarnation’s priority to the Fall with
Bonaventure’s insistence on its absolute gratuity.
Introduction1
Can sufficient reasons be given for the Incarnation of the Word, even apart from the redemption
of sinful humanity?2 (Let’s call the endorsement of any such sufficient reason “the supralapsar-
ian position,” since it entails that Christ’s Incarnation is logically prior to the Fall.) This is a
pressing question for the Christian theologian, because if such sufficient reasons could be given,
they would bear on the purpose and nature of the Incarnation, not merely in possible (e.g.,
Brendan Case
Baylor University, Institute for Studies of Religion, One Bear Place #97236, Waco, TX 76798, USA
Email: brendan.case@gmail.com
1
Many thanks to William Glass, Paul Griffiths, David Mahfood, Philip Porter, and my anonymous reviewers for
incisive criticism on an earlier draft of this essay.
2
This essay carries on a brisk trade in talk of necessary and sufficient reasons (or conditions), so a few prefatory
comments are in order about the sense and scope of that usage. Necessity and sufficiency are said in many ways – for
instance, there is logical necessity or sufficiency (to be sought among, e.g., the truths of arithmetic), and the (perhaps)
weaker condition of causal necessity or sufficiency (to be sought among, e.g., the truths of physics). There is also,
however, the necessity or sufficiency of fittingness (as a horse is necessary for a journey [sicut equus necessarius est
ad iter], in Aquinas’s famous formulation). Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (Textum Leoninum Romae 1903;
http://www.corpusthomisticu m.org/sth4001.html), 3.1.3, corp. (Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.)
The third of these senses is the one intended in the statement above, and in my comments throughout the essay.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

2 Brendan Case
sinless) worlds, but equally in the actual world.3 And so, if the supralapsarian position is true,
rejecting it will likely distort a theologian’s understanding, not only of what God might have
done in Christ, but also of what God has done in him.
The unhappy consequences of rejecting the supralapsarian position come into focus if one con-
siders Bonaventure’s disagreement with Robert Grosseteste over the reasons for the Incarnation. I
will particularly attend to two arguments Grosseteste offers in favor of the supralapsarian position,
each of which is motivated by the goodness of Christ as a creature who is worthy of worship,4
though the first views this fact as an intrinsic good, and the second views it as instrumentally good,
by virtue of its making possible fleshly communion between God and his creatures.
The latter argument, from the good of fleshly communion with God, was widely discussed
in the thirteenth century, but has been much less prominent in later debates about the supra-
lapsarian position. For instance, Juniper Carol’s magisterial survey of the history of the debate
includes only a brief reference to Grosseteste, and summarizes his contribution in terms of de-
fending “the principle that Christ is the firstborn of every creature, and that, in God’s intention,
the end is before the means to the end,” i.e., as arguing from Christ’s intrinsic goodness.5 I
suspect that this is owing to the gravity well exerted over the subsequent discussion by John
Duns Scotus, who focuses narrowly in his defense of the supralapsarian position on the intrinsic
goodness of the Incarnation, to the exclusion of its instrumental goodness.6 This essay pro-
3
For this reason, I will refer to “the supralapsarian position” rather than to the “Incarnation-anyway” position,
according to which “the Son would have become incarnate even if humanity had not fallen.” Cf. e.g., Marilyn McCord
Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 174. This
preference is pragmatic: the expression “Incarnation anyway” risks distracting us from the debate’s implications for
the actual world, as well as for possible ones.
4
Advocates of the supralapsarian position, as Bonaventure noted, generally argue from the Incarnation’s contri-
bution to some aspect of creaturely perfection, whether the Incarnation is construed as so intrinsically good as to hold
the primacy in God’s intentions in creating, or rather as instrumentally good, by facilitating the perfection of other
creatures: “Some said that the chief reason for the Incarnation was not the liberation of humankind, because, even if
humanity had not sinned, Christ would have been incarnate; but the reason for this is the manifold perfection rising
from the dignity of that work. For the Incarnation works toward the perfection of humanity – and as a result toward
the perfection of the whole universe – for this reason, that it completes and gives completion to humankind, both in
relation to nature, and in relation to glory” (Quidam dixerunt, quod praecipua ratio incarnationis non est liberatio
humani generis, quia, etiam si homo non peccasset, Christus incarnatus esset; sed huius ratio est perfectio multiplex
surgens ex dignitate illius operis. Incarnatio enim facit ad perfectionem hominis – et per consequens ad perfectionem
totius universi – in hoc quod complet et completionem dat humano generi, secundum illud quod respicit naturam, et
secundum illud quod respicit gloriam). Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, art. 2, q. 2, concl., in Opera Omnia (Quaracchi,
1887), v. III, 23b.
5
Juniper B. Carol, Why Jesus Christ?: Thomistic, Scotistic, and Conciliatory Perspectives (Manassas, VA: Trinity
Communications, 1986), 270.
6
“Here there are two doubtful points. First, whether that predestination [of Christ’s soul] necessarily presupposes
the fall of human nature, which many authorities seem to argue, who maintain that the Son of God would never have
been incarnate, if humanity had not fallen. Without prejudice [to this view], it can be said that since the predestination
of anyone to glory naturally precedes, on the part of the object, the foreknowledge of sin, or the damnation of anyone
. . . much more is that true about the predestination of that soul, which was predestined to the highest glory: but uni-
versally, whoever wills in an orderly way seems first to will what is nearer to the goal, and so, just as God wills glory
for someone before he wills grace for him, so also among the predestined, for whom he wills glory in an orderly way,
he seems first to will glory for him [sc. Christ], whom he wills to be nearest to the goal . . . . Therefore from the start
he wills the glory of Christ’s soul, even prior to his foreseeing that Adam was going to fall (Hic sunt duo dubia.
Primum, utrum ista praedestinatio praeexigat necessario lapsum naturae humanae, quod videntur sonare multae
auctoritates, quae sonant Filium Dei nunquam fuisse incarnandum, si homo non cecidisset. Sine praeiudicio dici
potest, quod cum praedestinatio cuiuscumque ad gloriam praecedat ex parte obiecti naturaliter, praescientiam pec-
cati, vel damnationis cuiuscumque…multo magis est verum de praedestinatione illius animae, quae praedestinabatur
ad summam gloriam: universaliter autem ordinate volens prius videtur velle hoc quod est fini propinquius, & ita sicut
vult prius gloriam alicui, quam gratiam, ita etiam inter praedestinatos, quibus vult gloriam ordinate prius videtur velle
gloriam illi, quem vult esse proximum fini . . . Ergo a primo prius vult animae Christi gloriam, quam praevideat Adam
casurum).” John Duns Scotus, Quaestiones in Libris IV Sententiarum (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1968 [1639]),
Bk. III, Dist. 7, Qu. 3, Scholium, 202.

“More Splendid than the Sun” 3
poses, however, that the defense of the supralapsarian position would be enriched, and its bear-
ing on the actual world strengthened, by renewed attention to arguments from the Incarnation’s
instrumental goodness, including the good of fleshly communion with Christ.
As we will see, Bonaventure rejects Grosseteste’s arguments for the supralapsarian position
from Christ’s intrinsic and instrumental goodness,7 on the basis of the worry that they posit a
divine obligation to become Incarnate. While his concerns are reasonable, Bonaventure ad-
dresses them at the unacceptable cost of denying important aspects of the Incarnation’s purpose
in the actual world. However, Bonaventure accepts that the Incarnation and Passion are “neces-
sary” for human redemption in a way that is consistent with divine freedom, an intuition which
Aquinas brings to particularly clear expression by analyzing the Incarnation as necessary in the
sense of being the most fitting means of salvation. Applying this line of thought to Christ’s
flesh, considered as the fitting instrument by which God has elected to perfectly beatify hu-
manity, allows us to reconcile Grosseteste’s insistence on the Incarnation’s priority to the Fall
with Bonaventure’s insistence on its absolute gratuity.
Grosseteste on the Incarnation’s Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods

While supralapsarian Christology had been entertained by theologians in earlier eras,8 Robert
Grosseteste was the first of many thirteenth-century theologians to expound and defend it at
length.9 He opened Book III of his De Cessatione Legalium (hereafter DCL) with an extensive
meditation on the question, “Would God have become human even if the human had not fallen?
(An Deus esset homo etiam si non esset lapsus homo)”10 Grosseteste notes that he is going be-
yond his predecessors in broaching this question, and that indeed the general consensus seems
to be that its fitting redemption of human sinfulness supplies (at least according to Anselm)
sufficient conditions for the Incarnation.11 His approach is to transfer Anselm’s arguments for
the sufficiency of sin to provoke the Incarnation to the created order more generally.
7
Bonaventure and Grosseteste offer the two most developed thirteenth-century discussions, pro and contra, of the
supralapsarian position. Others in the period (e.g., Guerric of Saint-Quentin, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas)
consider it as well; I will take stock of those alternative versions as appropriate.
8
For instance, Maximus the Confessor (seventh century), reflecting on Ephesians 1:9-10, writes, “This mystery
[of the Incarnation] is the preconceived goal for which everything exists, but which itself exists on account of noth-
ing.” Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 60, in Paul Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken (eds.), The Cosmic
Mystery of Jesus Christ (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 124. And, in the twelfth century, Rupert
of Deutz offered some brief arguments in favor of the supralapsarian position in his De gloria et honore Filii hominis
super Mattheum 13.684-686. See also the discussion in Daniel P. Horan, “How Original Was Scotus on the
Incarnation?” The Heythrop Journal 52 (2011): 374-91, here 375-76.
9
Stephen Hildebrand dates De Cessatione Legalium to sometime between 1230-1235; it was composed in Oxford,
where Grosseteste lectured in the Franciscan studium generale. See Stephen Hildebrand, “Introduction,” in Robert
Grosseteste, On the Cessation of the Laws, trans. Stephen Hildebrand (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 2012), 16.
10
Robert Grosseteste, De Cessatione Legalium, edited by Richard Dales and Edward King, ABMA VII (London:
Oxford University Press, 1986) 3.1.2, 119. Hereafter, cited as DCL.
11
“In those books which I have so far inspected, the sacred expositors do not make a determination about that
question, unless my memory fails me. But they more seem to imply that if humanity had not fallen, God would not
have become human; and thus God only became human to repair lost humanity. However, there seem to be efficacious
reasons which show simply that God would have become human even if humanity had never fallen (Non determinant
[istam quaestionem] aliqui de sacris expositoribus in libris suis quos ego adhuc inspexerim, nisi fallat memoria mea.
Sed magis videntur insinuare quod si non esset lapsus homo, non esset Deus homo; et ideo solum Deus factus sit homo
ut hominem perditum repararet. Videntur tamen esse raciones efficacies ad ostendendum simpliciter quod Deus esset
homo etiam si numquam lapsus fuisset homo.” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.2, 119.

4 Brendan Case
Grosseteste therefore opens his discussion with an Anselmian premise about divine suprem-
acy: “God is the highest power and wisdom and goodness, and better than can even be thought.”12
He then infers from God’s maximal goodness the additional thesis of God’s maximal self-diffu-
siveness: “Thus, he [sc. God] makes the entirety of things as good as it can be, that is, he pours
as much goodness into it as it is capable of. For if it were capable of some goodness which he
did not pour into it, he would not be most generous, and so neither most good.”13 If God is max-
imally good, then he is also maximally giving, since, as Plato first put it, he is without envy.14
This is not yet a thesis about the Incarnation; rather, it is a standard formulation of what Arthur
Lovejoy called the “principle of plenitude,” according to which no distinct “grade of being”
ought to go unfilled.15
This thesis does, however, supply the minor premise in a series of syllogisms aiming to es-
tablish the supralapsarian position, all of which move from some way in which the Incarnation
contributes to the perfection of the universe, to the conclusion that it belongs to every possible
created world. This only follows, of course, if the Incarnation does not have the history of sin as
a condition for its possibility, since in that case it would be possible only in fallen worlds. (No
matter how good fish might be, absolutely considered, they presumably could not contribute to
the goodness of waterless worlds.) Grosseteste defends that thesis – which is a commonplace
even among opponents of the supralapsarian position – by suggesting that, since the effects of
sin are to deform and damage, in principle nothing about the Fall could make human nature
more susceptible to union with God the Son than it would have been if unfallen.16
“Contributing to the perfection of the universe” takes at least two forms, however: as Marilyn
McCord Adams puts it, “For the letter to the Colossians, Christ is of both cosmic and soterio-
logical significance.”17 For the sake of precision, I will make a roughly parallel distinction be-
tween the intrinsic goodness of the Incarnation, and its instrumental goodness.18 Some of
Grosseteste’s arguments concern the absolute goodness of Christ’s humanity, which, as the
12
“Deus est summa potentia et sapientia et bonitas et magis bonus quam etiam possit excogitari.” Grosseteste,
DCL 3.1.3, 120, cf. Proslogion 1-3.
13
“Igitur facit universitatem rerum tam bonam quam bona ipsa potest esse, hoc est tantam ei influit bonitatem
quantae bonitatis ipsa capabilis est. Si enim ipsa esset capabilis aliquantae bonitatis quam ipse illi non influeret, non
esset summe largus et ita nec summe bonus.” DCL 3.1.3, 120. Justus Hunter also reads the latter claim as an inference
from the former. See Justus Hunter, “Rereading Robert Grosseteste on the ratio incarnationis: Deductive Strategies
in De cessatione legalium III,” The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly 81, no. 2 (April 2017): 213-45; at 222.
14
Cf. Timaeus in Plato IX (LCL 234), trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929) can
29e, and descending to Plotinus, Enneads (LCL 444), trans. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1984), 5.4.1.34-36, cf. 5.1.7.39-40, and thence to Ps.-Dionysius, Divine Names 4.1.1, where, among other places,
Grossteste might have found it.
15
Combined with two other principles – that of continuity among the grades of being, and that of their organiza-
tion into an ontological hierarchy – this principle yields the “Great Chain of Being” from which Lovejoy derives the
title of his classic study. See Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), cf. esp. 59.
16
Ibid., 3.1.6, 120. Cf. the discussion of the Incarnation’s independence of the Fall in Hunter’s “Rereading Robert
Grosseteste on the ratio incarnationis,” 224-26.
17
Adams, Christ and Horrors, 171.
18
Adams’s “soteriological dimension” might suggest restricting the instrumental goods of the Incarnation to de-
liverance from or healing of sin and its artifacts; Grosseteste sees the Incarnation as serving the good of creatures in
a much broader sense, however.

greatest of creatures, would surely be elected by God for creation in every possible world.19 On
this understanding, the Incarnation is intrinsically good, and indeed maximally so within the
sphere of creaturehood, without yet invoking any instrumental relation to other created goods.20
Nonetheless, on any account of the reason for the Incarnation, some kind of instrumental
relation will be central as well – for instance, that the Incarnate one is the world’s savior is an
instrumental good, in this case of the redemptive sort.21 Grosseteste, however, also identifies a
number of instrumental goods secured by the Incarnation which are non-redemptive, relating to
the perfection or supernatural elevation of humanity apart from their history of sin and death.
These approaches have their own distinctive strengths, each complementing the other.
Arguments from the Incarnation as intrinsically good have the virtue of emphasizing “the ab-
solute primacy of Jesus Christ” in God’s intentions for creation, “that in all things he might have
the preeminence” (Col. 1:18).22 This approach satisfies what George Lindbeck called the theo-
logical criterion of “Christological maximalism: every possible importance is to be ascribed to
Jesus that is not inconsistent with” either monotheism or his full humanity.23 The weakness of
this approach, however, is that it cannot point to any constant within creation as warranting the
Incarnation, and so must rely instead on the premise that any (sufficiently great?) intrinsic good
must belong to every possible world, which is at least disputable, and perhaps presumptuous as
well. After all, Aquinas’s express reason for resisting the supralapsarian position is that it re-
quires speculation about uncreated possible worlds; its “affirmation concerns possibility based
upon a supposition.”24 Arguments from the non-redemptive instrumental goodness of the
19
“Let us posit that humanity had not fallen nor God become incarnate; would the creaturely universe still be as
good, as perfect, as beautiful, as glorious as it is now? It seems that it in no way would be as glorious (Ponamus quod
homo lapsus non esset neque Deus homo esset, numquid univeritas creaturae esset tam bona, tam perfecta, tam pul-
chra, tam gloriosa quam nunc est? Nullomodo videtur quod tam gloriosa esset).” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.8, 121. This
line of thought appears in condensed form in Albert the Great as well: “Good is diffusive of itself, as is being: there-
fore it belongs to the best, in the best manner that it can, to diffuse itself: but the good cannot diffuse itself better
among us, than by incarnating: therefore it seems that there would have been incarnation even if there were no sin
(Bonum est diffusivum sui & esse: ergo optimi erit optimo modo quo potest, se diffundere: non autem melius potest
esse in nobis diffundere, quam incarnando: ergo videtur, quod incarnatus etiam esset si peccatum non esset).” Albert
the Great, In III Sententiarum d. 20, art. 4, s.c. 1, in Opera Omnia, edited by Peter Jammy (London, 1651) v. 15, 202b.
20
“Non omittit naturam vermiculi ne sit universitas imperfecta et minus decora, et omitteret Christum, universi-
tatis decus maximum?” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.9..
21
Consider, e.g., Aquinas’s claim, “Because the humanity of Christ is the instrument of his divinity. . . it follows
that all of Christ’s actions and passions are carried out instrumentally, by the power of his divinity, for the sake of
human salvation (Quia humanitas Christi est divinitatis instrumentum , , , ex consequenti omnes actiones et passiones
Christi instrumentaliter operantur, in virtute divinitatis, ad salutem humanam).” See Summa Theologiae 3.48.6. As
Gilbert Narcisse puts it, for Aquinas, “Christ, the only divine person in two natures, is, according to his humanity, at
an incomparable summit of the hierarchy of instruments (Le Christ, unique personne divine en deux natures, est,
selon son humanité, à un sommet incomparable de la hiérarchie des instruments).” Gilbert Narcisse, O.P., Les Raisons
de Dieu: Argument de convenance et Esthétique théologique selon saint Thomas d’Aquin et Hans Urs von Balthasar
(Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1997), 412. Cf. also the discussion of Summa Theologiae 3.48.6 in ibid., 366-67.
22
Cf. the discussion of this passage in Adams, Christ and Horrors, 170.
23
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia, PA:
Westminster John Knox, 1984), 94.
24
Corey Barnes, “Necessary, Fitting, or Possible: The Shape of Scholastic Christology,” Nova et Vetera 10, no. 3
(2012): 657-88, at 673. As Aquinas puts the point, “For those things which come from the will of God alone, beyond
anything which is due to the creature, cannot be known to us except insofar as they are handed down in Sacred
Scripture, through which divine will is known to us. So, since in Sacred Scripture the reason for the Incarnation is
everywhere given as arising from the sin of the first human, the work of the Incarnation is more fittingly said to be
ordained by God as a remedy for sin, so that, if sin did not exist, the Incarnation would not have taken place (Ea enim
quae ex sola Dei voluntate proveniunt, supra omne debitum creaturae, nobis innotescere non possunt nisi quatenus in
Sacra Scriptura traduntur, per quam divina voluntas nobis innotescit. Unde cum in Sacra Scriptura ubique incarnatio-
nis ratio ex peccato primi hominis assignetur, convenientius dicitur incarnationis opus ordinatum esse a Deo in reme-
dium contra peccatum, ita quod peccato non existente, incarnatio non fuisset).” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.1.3.

6 Brendan Case
Incarnation, by contrast, are strong just where the prior sort is weak, for they appeal to features
of the world which obtain even now, such as the good of humanity’s fleshly communion with
Christ, which will be considered below. Here, the appeal is not to what God would do in a world
quite different from our own, but rather to the intelligibility of what God has done in the actual
world of which we are a part.
Grosseteste identifies a number of goods which Christ secures for other creatures, the provi-
sion of which would warrant the Incarnation even apart from sin. For purposes of the present
argument, I need not consider all of his arguments for this position at length, but a brief survey
will help us to get a feel for his approach. They include the goodness of Christ’s headship over
the church, which in an Incarnation-less world would be “headless (acephalum)”;25 the role of
Christ’s humanity in mediating justifying grace to humanity and angels alike;26 the signifi-
cance of the Incarnation as the res of which even Edenic marriage was the sacramentum;27 the
role of the Incarnate One in providing a unifying center for creation, as St. Paul at least hints in
Ephesians 1:9-10;28 and the fact that with the Incarnation the fourth of four possible ways of
bringing a human being into existence is realized.29 There are other reasons and ramifications
which I will set aside for the moment, but these arguments at least suffice to show that, for
Grosseteste, the Incarnation is massively overdetermined, which is what one might expect if it
in some sense exists for the sake of every creature, and vice versa.
Now, these arguments are not all equally persuasive. For instance, Bonaventure simply
brushes aside the argument from the fourfold means of bringing about humanity with the rea-
sonable observation that God could very well have brought about a non-divine virgin birth had
he so chosen.30 Moreover, some of these arguments are speculative, and so disputable: thus,
Bonaventure disputes Grosseteste’s claim that Christ in his humanity is head over the angelic
church; he insists that God simpliciter is their head, and that the same would have to be true for
the church absent the Incarnation.31
25
Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.10, 123.
26
Ibid. 3.1.12-14, 123-25.
27
Ibid. 3.1.20, 127.
28
Ibid. 3.1.24-28, 129-31; 3.2.3, 135. After describing Christ’s mission to redeem us from sin in Ephesians 1:7-8,
St. Paul seems to transition to a different and more encompassing explanation of the Incarnation: “He made known to
us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the
times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to (anakephalaiōsasthai) all things in heaven and on earth under Christ”
(Eph. 1:9-10). Maximus the Confessor also alludes to this passage in Ad Thalassium 60. After proposing that “this
mystery [of the Incarnation] is the preconceived goal for which everything exists, but which itself exists on account of
nothing,” he observes that, “inasmuch as it leads to God, it is the recapitulation (anakephalaiōsis) of the things he has
created.” Maximus the Confessor, The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 124.
29
“Indeed, the reason that it befits the God-human to be born from a virgin and without the seed of a man is evi-
dent enough in Anselm, to which it can be added that it was necessary for the circular period of human generation to
be perfectly completed in this way. For first a man was made, neither from a man nor from a woman. Second a woman
was made from a man alone. Third, from a man and woman at once, man as well as woman, and that is the progress
of the line of human generation, that from man and woman together propagation should come about. And so, the re-
turn into the likeness of the beginning will come about, and could not come about otherwise, namely that as from a
man without a woman came a woman, so too from a woman without a man should come a man (Ratio vero quod
Deum-hominem congruat nasci de virgine et sine viri semine satis evidens est apud Anselmum, cui adici potest quod
sic oporteat humanae generacionis circularem periodum, perfecte compleri. Primo enim factus est vir neque de viro
neque de femina. Secundo facta est femina de solo viro. Tertio de viro simul et femina, tam vir quam femina, et est
iste progressus lineae humanae generacionis, ut simul ex viro et femina fiat propagacio. Reversio igitur in similitudi-
nem principii sic erit et aliter esse non poterit, videlicet ut ex viro sine femina fit femina, et ex femina sine viro fit
vir).” Grosseteste, DCL 3.2.5, 136.
30
Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, ad 9; III, 27b.
31
Ibid., ad 7; III, 27b.

The Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods of Christ’s Flesh

Two of Grosseteste’s arguments for the supralapsarian position, however, deserve fuller atten-
tion; they will be the focus in the remainder of the essay. Each of them centers on the unsurpass-
able goodness of a creature which is worthy of worship (adorabilis). Grosseteste in fact opens
his battery of arguments for supralapsarian Christology by reflecting on the intrinsic goodness
of the Incarnation’s making one among creatures – viz., the human Jesus of Nazareth – so
worthy.32 This makes the ensemble of creatures inestimably more glorious than they would be
without the Incarnate One,33 especially considering that “the one Christ, God and man, is in-
comparably better than any bare creature.”34 Grosseteste even takes the further step of arguing
that every creature’s individual glory is enhanced by belonging to the ensemble that includes
Christ, whose deity “ignites” the creature it assumes, perhaps in something like the way that a
collection of lesser jewels themselves shine the brighter for being set in proximity to a magnifi-
cent diamond.35 Grosseteste proposes that the intrinsic goodness of the Incarnation provides
strong grounds for taking it to be prior in God’s intentions even to the redemption of humanity
from sin. To think otherwise is to be committed to the odd view that our sinful world, because
it provides sufficient grounds for the Incarnation, is in fact a much better world than a sinless
world could have been!36
32
“For every creature, insofar as it is a creature, is not worthy of worship. But the flesh assumed by the Word,
although according to its own nature is not worthy of worship, as John Damascene says, is nonetheless adored in the
incarnate Word of God, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the Word of God, who is hypostatically united to it.
Nor do we adore the bare flesh, but the flesh of God, namely God incarnate (Omnis enim creatura ex parte ea qua nuda
creatura est, inadorabilis est. Caro autem assumpta a Verbo, licet secundum sui ipsius naturam non est adorabilis, ut
dicit Iohannes Damascenus, adoratur tamen in incarnato Dei Verbo non propter seipsam, sed propter unitum ei secun-
dum ypostasim, Dei Verbum, nec adoramus carnem nudam sed carnem Dei, scilicet incarnatum Deum).” Grosseteste,
DCL 3.1.8, 121-22.
33
“Thus, since the flesh of Christ is not at all to be counted as outside the creaturely universe, the creatures of the
universe have in the flesh of Christ, which is worthy of worship, a gloriousness inestimably greater than they could
have, were the Word of God never incarnate (Cum igitur caro Christi extra universitatem creaturae omnino numer-
anda non sit, habent creaturae universitatis in carne Christi adorabili gloriositatem supra estimacionem maiorem
quam habere posset, Verbo Dei nunquam incarnato).” Ibid. 3.1.8, 121-22.
34
“Unus Christus, Deus et homo, sit incomparabiliter maius bonum quam universa nuda creatura.” Ibid. 3.1.9,
122.
35
“The creaturely universe is more glorified in the flesh assumed by the Word, I might even say, ignited by the
deity of the assuming Word, although the other creatures are not themselves ignited, than it could be glorified without
this (Universitas creaturae magis glorificata in carne assumpta a Verbo, ut ita dicam, ignita divinitate Verbi assumen-
tis, licet aliae creaturae in seipsis sic non igniantur, quam possit sine hac glorificari).” Ibid. 3.1.8, 122. One of this
essay’s reviewers helpfully pointed out that the image of Christ’s deity “igniting” the assumed creature derives prox-
imately from John Damascene, Three Treatises on Holy Images, trans. Andrew Louth (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2003), 1.2.70, 58, who himself draws on a long tradition of figuring the double-natured Christ as a
piece of iron rendered red-hot by the infusion of fire.
36
“Thus it either must be confessed that God would have become human even if humanity had not fallen, or that
the universe now is inestimably better than it would have been if humanity had not fallen (Aut igitur fatendum est
Deum esse hominem etiam licet homo lapsus non esset, aut universitatem nunc supra estimacionem esse meliorem
quam fuisset nisi homo lapsus esset).” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.8, 122. Aquinas famously seizes this nettle: “But nothing
prevents human nature from having been brought to a greater state after sin, for God permits evils to be done that he
might draw forth something better from them. Whence it is said in Romans 5, where iniquity abounded, grace also
superabounded. Whence also in the blessing of the Paschal candle it is said, O happy guilt, which merited to have such
and so great a redeemer (Nihil autem prohibet ad aliquid maius humanam naturam productam esse post peccatum,
Deus enim permittit mala fieri ut inde aliquid melius eliciat. Unde dicitur Rom. V, ubi abundavit iniquitas, superabun-
davit et gratia. Unde et in benedictione cerei paschalis dicitur, o felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere re-
demptorem).” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.1.3 ad 3. But he perhaps would have done well to heed his teacher Albert
the Great’s warning that “such statements are exceedingly improper, as when guilt is called blessed and happy: be-
cause it is not called blessed and happy in itself, but from what follows it (tales locutiones valde impropriae sunt, ut
dicatur culpa beata & felix: quia non dicitur beata & felix in se, sed ex consequenti).” Albert the Great, In III Sent., d.
20, art. 4, ad 1; Jammy v. 15, 203a.

8 Brendan Case
Grosseteste goes on in De Cessatione Legalium 3.1 to develop a second argument from

Christ’s worshipfulness, now considered as a non-redemptive instrumental good. As noted
above, this approach has the virtue of appealing to the Incarnation’s relation to humanity as
such, so as to identify a specific motive for the Incarnation even in an unfallen world. Grosseteste
sets up this argument by quoting De Spiritu et Anima, a treatise attributed (wrongly, it seems)
to Augustine: “This was the whole good of humanity, that whether they were coming in or going
out, they would find pasture in their maker, pasture outwardly in the flesh of the Savior, pasture
inwardly in the divinity of the Creator.”37 The ultimate good for humanity consists in this two-
fold enjoyment of God: first, and un-controversially, the intellectual enjoyment of the divine
essence in the beatific vision,38 and second, the sensible enjoyment of God made flesh.39 The
New Testament hope is not only to “see God” (Matt. 5:8), but also “to depart and be with Christ”
(Phil. 1:23), “who died for us so that whether we wake or sleep, we might live with him” (1
Thess. 5:10). Given that twofold beatitude, Grosseteste argues that, if the latter of these condi-
tions depends upon the fall, then humanity could never be as happy in a sinless world as in a
redeemed one; but this is absurd, and so we must conclude that the fleshly communion with
God supplied by the Incarnation provides a sufficient reason for the Incarnation, even apart
from the effects of sin.40
Grosseteste considers an objection: why could the saints, in Jesus’ absence, not simply exer-
cise their glorified senses on other sensible objects? His response focuses on the way in which
joy in general is attenuated by being distributed over multiple objects,41 and particularly on the
way in which, in this case, the saints’ attention could be divided only by being diverted away
from God, and toward a mere creature.42 This is an inferior state to one in which the saints di-
rect their single intention, incorporating both the senses and the intellect, to the flesh of God the
Son, and through him to the divine nature he shares with the Father and the Spirit.
37
“Hoc erat totum bonum hominis ut sive ingrederetur sive egrederetur pascua in factore suo inveniret, pascua
foris in carne salvatoris, pascua intus in divinitate creatoris.” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.22, 128. The actual author seems
to be one Alcher of Clairvaux (twelfth century). See the discussion in Joseph Ratzinger, Offenbarungsverständnis und
Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras: Habilitationschrift und Bonaventura-Studien, in Gesammelte Schriften, v. 2
(Freiburg in Breisgau: Herder, 2009), 97n32.
38
Cf. e.g., Bonaventure, Breviloquium 7.7.1; V, 289. For the biblical background to the trope of “vision,” cf. Matt.
5:8, 1 John 2:28-3:2, and 1 Cor. 13:10-12, i.a.
39
This argument is intimate with Grosseteste’s other arguments for the supralapsarian position from human unity
with Christ. Adams traces their interrelations: “Whether or not humans and angels had sinned, and hence even if we
hadn’t, Divine cosmic purposes would include adopting us as God’s children, making us not to be isolated atoms but
members of the Church, that mystical body of which Christ is the head. To be fit for either, we would have to be justi-
fied . . . Moreover, the way Incarnation-anyway advocates read, the epistles proclaim that human being is destined to
be joined to God, not merely in a conformity of wills, but through a union of natures, not just by spiritual harmony but
by a union of flesh.” Adams, Christ and Horrors, 176-77.
40
“For the whole human being would not be beatified in his soul, namely through the contemplation of deity, and
in his flesh, through the sight of the flesh of the assumed humanity, unless God were a human being. And so, the full
beatitude of humanity requires God to be a human. And so, if we posit that humanity had not sinned, God nonetheless
would have become a human, or humanity would never have been fully blessed (Non enim esset totus homo beatifi-
catus in anima, videlicet per contemplacionem deitatis, et in carne per visum carnis asssumptae humanitatis, nisi
Deus esset homo. Plena igitur beatitudo hominis exigit Deum esse hominem; posito igitur quod homo non peccasset,
Deus nihilominus homo esset, aut homo nunquam plene beatus esset).” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.22, 128.
41
“And if someone should say that humanity could have complete beatitude by contemplating one thing in his
mind, and by sensing another through his flesh, we ought to say to him that the intention of his soul would be divided
among many things, and thus diminished in the individuals (Quod si diceret aliquis quod posset homo beatitudinis
habere complementum contemplando mente unum et senciendo per carnem alterum, dicendum est illi quod intencio
animae suae esset in plures divisa, et ita in singulos minorata).” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.23, 128.
42
“Nor will beatitude be able to be perfect in this way, since it demands the conversion of the whole intention of
the soul to the highest good (Nec posset esse sic beatitudo perfecta que exigit tocius intencionis animae in summum
bonum conversionem).” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.30, 129-30.

Grosseteste puts an exclamation point at the end of this argument with a rhapsodic depiction
of Christ’s beauty: “The flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ will be manifested after the resurrection
as more splendid and more beautiful than the sun and every corporeal creature, because in
comparison with the splendor of the flesh of Christ, the sun will seem not to shine . . . For no
mere bodily creature will be able to have as much beauty and splendor as will the glorified flesh
of the Lord Jesus Christ.”43 The light of God which outshines sun and moon in the new creation
(Rev. 22:5) shines from the glorified face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). This is (at least, if not
only) why the saints in the intermediate state, even in the midst of the beatific vision, still long
for their bodies; their final end yet awaits them. Without this communion, the life of heaven
would be, not merely different than it in fact is, but impoverished in a specific way, by being
deprived of a profound good for which there is no substitute.
Bonaventure for and against the Fleshly Communion Argument

Bonaventure clearly feels the force of these Grosstestean arguments from the good of the
Incarnate deity, both as an intrinsic and as an instrumental good. I will consider his responses
to the latter argument first, and then turn to his objections to the former. The clearest measure
of Bonaventure’s attraction to the fleshly-communion argument is that he offers it as one of the
reasons for the fittingness of the Incarnation.44 What he says is strongly marked by the pseudo-
Augustinian De Spiritu et Anima on which Grosseteste drew:
It befits the most generous rewarder to perfectly reward those who love him; but the human
being, who is a lover of God, is not perfectly beatified except in God himself, who is his
whole reward, nor is he perfectly beatified, unless he is perfectly beatified both on the part
of his body and on the part of his soul, both on the part of the exterior sense and on the part
of the interior sense; but the exterior sense can only be beatified in a corporeal thing: there-
fore since it befits God perfectly to beatify the human being, and God beatifies the human
being in himself, by giving himself as a reward; it was fitting for him to have not only a
spiritual nature, but also a corporeal one. And this is from the Incarnation; therefore, etc.45
The argument is the same as the one from Grosseteste: if humanity is made perfectly happy only
by communion with God, and if humanity is capable of bodily as well as of spiritual communion,
then perfect human happiness necessarily consists of both bodily and spiritual communion with
God. But then, does this fact obligate God to become Incarnate in any creation that includes human
persons? I will return to this question, as it seems to be at the heart of Bonaventure’s reluctance
toward the supralapsarian position, but one should notice for now that, however different things
might have been, one fact about the saints’ actual communion with God is that it is bodily as well
as intellectual.
43
“Caro Domini Iesu Christi manifestabitur post resurrectionem splendidior et pulcrior sole et omni corporali
creatura, quia comparacione splendoris carnis Christi, nec sol splendere videbitur. . . . Non enim posset aliqua pura
creatura corporalis tantam habere pulcritudinem et splendorem quantum habet caro glorificata Domini Iesu Christi.”
Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.24, 129.
44
Grosseteste, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2 q. 1; III, 19a.
45
“Decet largissimum remuneratorem diligentes se remunerare perfecte; sed homo, qui est amator Dei, non beat-
ificatur perfecte nisi in ipso Deo, qui est tota merces, nec beatificatur perfecte, nisi totaliter beatificetur et ex parte
corporis et ex parte animae, et ex parte sensus exterioris et ex parte sensus interioris; sensus autem exterior non potest
beatificari nisi in re corporali: ergo cum deceret Deum perfecte hominem beatificare, et Deus beatificat hominem in
se ipso, dando se in praemium; decebat eum habere naturam non solum spiritualem, sed etiam corporalem. Et hoc est
ex incarnatione ergo etc.” Ibid.

10 Brendan Case
The argument from fleshly communion is also the first objection Bonaventure poses in favor
of the supralapsarian position in his article on the reason(s) for the Incarnation: “Augustine (De
Spiritu et Anima) writes: ‘He assumed the whole human being, that he might beatify the whole’;
but the whole human being ought to have been beatified, and as fully beatified, if there were no
Fall, as if there were a Fall: therefore if the human being had not fallen, God would not have
been incarnate.”46 And in the “responsio” he notes that advocates of supralapsarian Christology
argue that the Incarnation “also makes for perfection of glory in this, that the human being finds
his pasture in God, both with respect to the corporeal and the spiritual part, whether he comes
in, or whether he goes out, which would not have been the case, if God were not incarnate.”47
But in this article, Bonaventure rejects this argument, and all others which treat any good,
when abstracted from the “restoration of humankind,” as a sufficient reason for the Incarnation.48
Rather, his view is that “many other fitting reasons are annexed to this one (aliae multae sint
rationes congruentiae huic annexae),” which are distinguishable from redemption, but insuffi-
cient on their own to justify or account for God’s decision to become incarnate.49 Redemption
from sin, on this view, is at least a necessary condition for the Incarnation;50 Bonaventure does
not expressly address, in this question or (so far as I know) elsewhere, whether redemption itself
would offer a sufficient condition for the Incarnation apart from the other reasons which are
“annexed” to it.
How does Bonaventure respond to the argument from fleshly communion? “This is not the
chief reason [for the Incarnation],” he writes, “but one annexed to the principal one, because,
even if God had never been incarnate, the human being would be perfectly and totally beatified,
by the glorification of his body and by the vision of God.”51 Bonaventure’s claim is a counter-
factual, concerning the perfect happiness which would reign in an Incarnation-less heaven.
Given the difficulties in observing possible worlds, however, Bonaventure understandably
seeks evidence for this claim in the structure of the actual world. This attempt to defeat the
Grossetestean argument forces Bonaventure to backpedal from his insistence, in the article on
the Incarnation’s fittingness, on the link between fleshly communion with Christ and “perfect
46
“Augustinus de Spiritu et anima: ‘Totum hominem assumsit, ut totum beatificaret’; sed homo debebat totus
beatificari, et ita plene beatificari, si non esset lapsus, sicut si esset lapsus: ergo si homo non esset lapsus, Deus esset
incarnatus.” Grosseteste, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, sc 1; III, 22b.
47
“Facit etiam ad perfectionem gloriae in eo, quod homo in Deo suo invenit pascua quantum ad partem corpora-
lem et quantum ad partem spiritualem, sive ingrediatur, sive egrediatur, quod non faceret, si Deus non esset incarna-
tus.” Ibid., resp.; III, 24a. Note that “sive ingrediatur, sive egrediatur,” alluding to John 10:9, is a quotation from Ps.-
Augustine’s De Spiritu et Anima, quoted as well in Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.22, 128.
48
“Praecipua ratio incarnationis est reparatio humani generis, quamvis aliae multae sint rationes congruentiae
huic annexae. Ista enim est praecipua respectu omnium, quia, nisi genus humana fuisset lapsum, Verbum Dei non
fuisset incarnatum.” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2; III, 24ab.
49
Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2; III, 24b.
50
The Incarnation “is restorative by making satisfaction, and satisfaction is not made, unless by him who ought
and can; and no one ought, except a human being, nor is able, except God: it is necessary, that in satisfaction there
must be a simultaneous coming together of both natures, namely the divine and the human (Incarnatio est reparativum
satisfaciendo, et satisfactio non fit, nisi ab eo qui debet et potest; et non debet nisi homo, nec potest nisi Deus: oportuit,
quod in satisfactio simul esset concursus utriusque naturae, divinae scilicet et humanae).” Bonaventure, Breviloquium
4.2; V, 242b. This necessity, for Bonaventure as for Aquinas, is that of fittingness, not of logical constraint or external
compulsion. Thus, he writes that the Cross was “most acceptable for placating God [and] most fitting for curing the
illness (acceptabilissimus ad placandum Deum [et] congruentissimus ad curandam morbum).” Bonaventure, III Sent.,
d. 20, art. un., qu. 5, concl.; III, 427b. He goes on to emphasize that “on the part of God, the restorer . . . there is no
doubt that he could liberate and restore human kind in another way (ex parte Dei reparantis . . . absque dubio aliter
potuit genus humanum liberare et reparare).” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 20, art. un., qu. 6, concl.; III, 431a.
51
“Ista non est ratio praecipua, sed annexa principali, pro eo quod, etsi nunquam Deus incarnatus esset, homo
glorificatione corporis sui et visione Dei perfecte et totaliter beatus esset.” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1;
III, 25b.

beatitude.”52 Here, he maintains that the “corporeal vision of Christ pertains not to the essential
completion of beatitude, but to a certain accidental joy.”53 This is the crux of the argument:
fleshly communion with Christ is not an essential part of the joy of heaven, but just (so to speak)
an additional perk, a surprising position for a thinker as famously “Christocentric” as
Bonaventure to adopt.54
Bonaventure justifies this contention about the actual marginality of Christ’s flesh to the life
of heaven by appeal to two considerations. First, “because the other senses, such as touch or
taste, are beatified just as sight is, and yet they will not have objects corresponding to them.”55
But how does Bonaventure know that? Grosseteste doesn’t address this concern directly, but a
remark by Julian of Norwich does: “Then shall we ale come into oure lorde, ourselfe clerely
knowing and God fulsomly having; and we endlesly be alle had in God, him verely seyeng and
fulsomly feling, and him gostely hering, and him delectably smelling, and him swetly swelwing
[swallowing].”56 After all, our principal mode of communion with Christ here below, in the
Eucharist, is precisely one of touch and taste.
Bonaventure’s second consideration is this: “Further, the face of Christ will be no less blessed
for being turned to see other bodies, than the face of any other, which is turned to see his
body.”57 Bonaventure’s intuition is not unreasonable: if seeing Christ’s face is essential to the
joy of heaven, then Jesus ought to be less blessed than the saints, since (assuming the absence
of heavenly mirrors) he cannot gaze on himself. But his conclusion is too hasty: Christ does in
fact look on his body (the church), and surely sees his own transfiguring glory reflected back to
him in the faces of the saints.58
Bonaventure does, of course, argue that the resurrected bodies of the saints will be glorified,
but (in this article at least) it is not from without, by the vision of Christ. Rather, that glory
comes from within, spreading from the soul outward to the body:
For the glory of the exterior senses will be by way of the overflow of the delight which
comes from the superior part because of the vision of God, the vision of whom so restores
us, when it perfectly appears, that beyond it nothing is necessary for the soul to its beati-
tude; because every other good and beautiful thing, compared to that, is almost nothing,
nor can it comprise any essential joy.59
52
“Since it befitted God perfectly to beatify the human, and God beatifies the human in himself, giving himself
as a reward; it was befitting for him to have a nature not only spiritual, but also corporeal (Cum deceret Deum perfecte
hominem beatificare, et Deus beatificat hominem in se ipso, dando se in praemium; decebat eum habere naturam non
solum spiritualem, sed etiam corporalem).” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, art. 2, q. 1; III, 19a.
53
“Visio Christi corporalis spectat non ad essentialem completionem beatitudinis, sed ad quoddam accidentale
gaudium.” Ibid., Bonaventure’s italics.
54
Just as in the Sentences commentary, consider Bonaventure’s account of Christ as the “integral subject (subiec-
tum integrale)” of theology, cf. I Sent., proem., q. 1, concl. (I, 7a). A still more striking, if much later, text is
Bonaventure’s discussion of Christ as the sevenfold medium of the human sciences in the Collationes in Hexaemeron
1 (V, 331a-335b).
55
“Quia alii sensus beatificantur ut visus, et tamen obiecta sibi correspondentia non habebunt, ut tactus, gustus.”
Ibid.
56
A Revelation of Love in The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A
Revelation of Love, Brepols Medieval Women Series, edited by Jacqueline Jenkens and Nicholas Watkins (University
Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) §43, 259.
57
“Praeterea, aspectus Christi non minus erit beatus conversus ad alia corpora videnda, quam aspectus aliorum
conversa ad videndum corpus ipsius.” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1; III, 25b.
58
Thanks to David Mahfood for helpful suggestions about how to proceed here.
59
“Gloria enim sensuum exteriorum erit per redundantiam delectationis venientis a parte superiori ex visione Dei,
cuius visio adeo reficit, cum perfecte apparet, ut nihil ultra necessarium sit animae ad eius beatitudinem; quoniam
omne aliud bonum et pulcrum, ad illud comparatum, quasi nihil est nec intendere potest essentiale gaudium.” Ibid.

12 Brendan Case
For Bonaventure, even the flesh of Christ is “almost nothing” in comparison with the joy of the
intellectual “vision of God,” which in itself deifies every aspect of the saint, body as well as soul.60
Any delight which the resurrected saints will derive from enfleshed communion with Jesus will
make a negligible addition to the delights already redounding to their bodies by virtue of their in-
tellectual communion with the Trinity.
It is important to note that, despite its counterfactual structure,61 Bonaventure’s argument
does not bear only on a putative possible world, sans Incarnation, but also quite directly on the
actual world. His bid to defeat the Grosstestean argument for the supralapsarian position from
fleshly communion with Christ requires him to maintain that the resurrected saints in heaven
actually will have no more than an incidental interest in the fleshly presence of their Savior, and
indeed that their joy would not be altered if he vanished from their presence forever. For now,
we should simply note that Bonaventure himself offers good reasons in his article on the
Incarnation’s fittingness for doubting both of these propositions.
Aquinas also takes up the fleshly communion argument in his discussion of the reason for the
Incarnation in his Scriptum super Sententiis; his treatment closely resembles Bonaventure’s,
even including the insistence that “in the vision of Christ’s humanity there will be a certain
accidental joy.”62 However, he deploys an analogy missing from Bonaventure’s argument which
is worth considering briefly: heaven will include a “certain accidental joy” in Christ’s flesh,
“just as there is in the victory of his Passion; and yet all agree that if humanity had not sinned,
Christ would not have suffered.”63 Now, it is certainly true that crosses, and the will to build
them, belong only to the order of fallen time; so too, then, humanity’s rejoicing in their being
overcome and overwritten by God’s love is possible only east of Eden. But therein lies a funda-
mental disanalogy between the Passion and fleshly communion with Christ, for the latter, un-
like the former, has no necessary relation to sin and its artifacts.
Bonaventure on the Primacy of Christ and the Freedom of God

The deeper reasons for Bonaventure’s reluctance to countenance arguments for the supralapsar-
ian position come into clearer focus in his response to the first argument considered from
60
Guerric of Saint-Quentin also addresses the fleshly communion argument for the Incarnation in an earlier dis-
cussion of supralapsarian Christology in the seventh of his Quaestiones de Quolibet which survives in two quite dif-
ferent recensions. See Guerric of Saint-Quentin, Quaestiones de Quolibet, ed. Walter Principe, C.S.B. (Toronto:
PIMS, 2002). In his introduction to this edition, J.-P. Torrell dates these Quaestiones to 1233-42, when Guerric held a
chair at the University of Paris as a Master of Theology. Ibid., 3-4. In both the Vatican and the Assisi mss., Guerric
suggests that (ps.-)Augustine’s argument “that ‘the human is perfected according to his interior sense in the contem-
plation of Deity; therefore, etc. (quod ‘homo perficitur secundum interiorem sensum in contemplatione Deitatis; ergo,
etc.)” concerns only “the fallen state of the human (statum hominis post lapsum).” Guerric of Saint-Quentin,
Quaestiones de Quolibet, 7.1.14, 314. In the Assisi ms., however, he goes on to propose that unfallen humanity “would
not have needed to be beatified in this way, but would have been perfected otherwise if they had not fallen (nec opor-
tuisset sic beatificari, sed aliter perficeretur si non cecidisset).” Ibid. Guerric’s approach seems to presuppose (though
the brevity of a quodlibet perhaps necessarily leaves the question open) that fleshly beatification is instrumental to
spiritual beatification; Christ’s flesh provides a pathway by which we might be led through sensibles to rest in the
contemplation of intelligibles. Bonaventure’s engagement with this article shows a better understanding of the fleshly
communion argument, which does not merely regard the obstacle that fallen flesh poses to human beatitude, but rather
the irreducibility of fleshly to spiritual beatitude.
61
I.e., “. . . the human being would be perfectly and totally blessed . . . (. . . homo . . . perfecte et totaliter beatus
esset).” Bonaventure, III Sent. d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, ad 1; III, 25b.
62
“In visione humanitatis Christi erit quoddam gaudium accidentale.” Bonaventure, Script. super Sent. (Parma,
1858; http://www.corpusthomisticu m.org/snp3000.html) bk. III, d. 1, q. 1, a. 3 ad 6.
63
“. . . sicut etiam in victoria passionis ejus: et tamen constat apud omnes quod si homo non peccasset, Christus
passus non fuisset.” Ibid.

Grosseteste, namely that the God-man is so intrinsically good that it would be absurd for it not
to be uppermost in God’s intentions for his creatures, and indeed particularly absurd for it to be
intended only as a solution to human sin. Bonaventure takes stock of this objection,64 but sug-
gests only that God’s foreknowledge encompasses both sin and the Incarnation as a response to
it.65 This is really no answer, however, since the objection concerns not the fact of the
Incarnation’s foreordination, but rather the logical relation between that foreordination and
God’s foreknowledge of sin.66
Bonaventure is clearer about Christ’s primacy over other creatures in God’s intentions, and
indeed comes close to endorsing explicitly the supralapsarian position, in a later comment ex-
plaining why Christ’s death on our behalf does not imply that the Father loves humanity more
than his Son: “Humankind, however, was not the ultimately decisive reason for the Incarnation
and nativity of Christ, but in a certain manner the inducing reason. For Christ is not ordered to
us as an end, but we are ordered to him as an end, because the head is not for the sake of the
members, but the members for the sake of the head.”67 This passage, and other later comments
along the same lines, prompt Ilia Delio’s judgment that Bonaventure should on the whole be
regarded with Scotus as a proponent of the supralapsarian position.68 Whatever the truth of that
difficult question, this passage at least highlights the significant internal tensions aroused even
within the Sentences commentary by Bonaventure’s stated opposition to it.
He does, nonetheless, have reasons for resisting the inference from Christ’s glory to the view
that his election is prior even to the fact of sin; these come into clearer focus in his long con-
structive response to the question of the Incarnation’s “principal reason (ratio praecipua).” It is
clear that he was personally drawn to the supralapsarian position, but felt that it was impious to
assert it: “But the first [supralapsarian] mode seems to be more consonant with the judgment of
reason; the second [infralapsarian], however . . . is more consonant with the piety of faith.”69 He
offers two explanations for its apparent impiety, the first being simply that this is not how the
64
“If, therefore, it is unfitting for the noblest creatures to be introduced only incidentally, since the agent should
intend the nobler works principally, it seems that it is unfitting to say that the Incarnation came about for the sake of
repairing humanity (Si ergo inconveniens est, nobilissimam creaturam occasionaliter esse introductam, cum agens
principaliter intendat opera nobiliora, videtur, quod inconveniens sit dicere, incarnationem factam esse propter homi-
nis reparationem).” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, sc. 5; III, 23a.
65
Ibid., ad 5; III, 27a.
66
Cf. Juniper Carol’s discussion of the logical relations among the “signa rationis” in the later scholastic debate
over Christ’s primacy. Carol, Why Jesus Christ?, 4-5.
67
“Humanum vero genus respectu incarnationis et nativitatis Christi non fuit ratio finaliter movens, sed quodam
modo inducens. Non enim Christus ad nos finaliter ordinatur, sed nos finaliter ordinamur ad ipsum, quia non caput
propter membra, sed membra propter caput.” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 32, art. un., q. 5, ad 3. Gilles Emery rightly
glosses this passage as follows: “Containing in itself its own motivation, constituting, in other words, the motive
(propter quod) of all the rest, the Incarnation appears as the center of the history to which the creature is ordained
(Contenant en soi sa propre motivation, constituant par ailleurs le motif [propter quod] de tout le reste, l’incarnation
appairit comme le centre de l’histoire auquel le créature est ordonnée).” Gilles Emery, Trinité Creatrice, 222.
68
Ilia Delio, “Revisiting the Franciscan Doctrine of Christ,” Theological Studies 64, no.1 (March 2003): 3-23; here
10-14.
69
“Videtur autem primus [supralapsarian] modus magis consonare iudicio rationis; secundus [infralapsarian
mode] tamen, ut apparet, plus consonat pietati fidei.” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, resp.; III, 24b. Bonaventure
here reverses the judgment of Albert, who wrote of the supralapsarian position, “but I believe this which I have said
to be more concordant with the piety of faith (sed credo hoc quod dixi magis concordare pietati fidei).” Bonaventure,
III Sent., d. 20, art. 4, sol.; v. 15, 203a.

14 Brendan Case
Scriptures describe the reason for the Incarnation.70 (But what, Grosseteste or Maximus might
protest, about Colossians 1:15-20 or Ephesians 1:9-10?71)
Bonaventure’s second explanation of the supralapsarian position’s potential impiety relates to
its dependence on the principle of God’s necessary and maximal self-diffusiveness in creation,
which, as noted above, warrants Grosseteste’s inference that the good of the Incarnation belongs
to every possible world. The supralapsarian position, he suggests, “in a certain manner encloses
God with the perfection of the universe, and imposes a certain necessity on him, since it says
that otherwise his works could not be brought to perfection.”72 Bonaventure worries that rea-
soning of this sort constitutes a claim by the creature against God, so that he would be unjust or
unfaithful if he failed to deliver the goods. And, perhaps worse yet, he worries that it involves
the suggestion that the God-man himself makes a kind of quantifiable – and so finite – addition
to the perfection of the universe.
Bonaventure prefers to eschew these temptations altogether, and say “that the mystery of the
Incarnation is above every perfection,” and that “Christ is above the perfection of the universe,”
just as Aristotle had described God as “above every order of the universe . . . as a general is not
said to be of the army, but above the army.”73 Better, he thinks, to say that, just as the mystery
of sin is a darkness too stifling for thought to penetrate, so too the mystery of the Incarnation is
a brightness too dazzling for thought to withstand, except to note that the former, in God’s prov-
idence, provokes the latter.74
Bonaventure’s concern not to assert a human claim to God’s most extraordinary and unex-
pected gift is understandable. Even Grosseteste betrays some awareness of it, for instance when,
after observing, “But the universe is capable of this good, namely that it should have the God-
man as part of itself,” he immediately disclaims, “if indeed the God-man ought to be called a
‘part.’”75 This is Bonaventure’s question – should one think of the God-man as “a part of the
universe” at all? Ought he figure in our schemes of cosmic bookkeeping? Does he not rather
belong to another order altogether than that of nature?
70
The infralapsarian position “agrees more with the authorities of the Saints and of sacred Scripture. For both the
New Testament and the Old, where they speak about the descent of the Son of God, offer the liberation of humankind
as a reason, which is clear if you consider individual passages (auctoritatibus Sanctorum et sacrae Scripturae magis
concordat. Nam tam novum quam vetus Testamentum, ubi de Filii Dei descensu loquuntur, humani generis liberatio-
nem rationem reddunt, quod patet per singula discurrendo).” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl.; III, 24b.
This is the principal reason that Aquinas offers as well for his reluctance to endorse the supralapsarian position; his
view is that while nothing would have prevented the Incarnation in a sinless world, Scripture gives us too little data to
decide the question either way. Aquinas, ST 3.1.3.
71
Cf. n. 28 above.
72
“Quodam modo Deum intra perfectionem universi concludit et quandam necessitatem incarnationis ponit ei,
cum dicit, opera eius aliter ad perfectionem non perduci.” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, a. 2, q. 2, concl.; III, 25a.
73
“Quod incarnationis mysterium est supra omnem perfectionem . . . Christum esse supra omnem perfectionem
universitatis . . . supra omnem universi ordinem . . . sicut non dicitur esse dux de exercitu, sed supra exercitum.” Ibid.
This analogy comes from Aristotle’s Metaphysics L, 1075a1.
74
“The Incarnation of God is of a superexceeding dignity; and thus, since it involves a certain excess, the mystery
of the Incarnation would not have been introduced, unless an opposite excess had preceded it, which was to be cor-
rected and restored by it (Incarnatio Dei est superexcedentis dignationis; et ideo, cum sit ibi quidam excessus, non
fuisset introductum incarnationis mysterium, nisi praecessisset excessus oppositus per ipsum corrigendus et restau-
randus).” Ibid.; III, 24b.
75
“Est autem universitas huius boni capax, videlicet quod habeat [hominem Deum] partem sui, si amen pars de-
beat dici hominem Deum.” Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.4, 120.

Necessary, Free, and Fitting: The Fleshly-Communion Argument after Aquinas

Bonaventure’s responses to these two Grosstestean arguments for supralapsarian Christology
– from the intrinsic goodness of the God-man, and from the instrumental goodness of human
communion with him – raise reasonable concerns about their implications, but have less suc-
cess in undermining the premises which warrant them. On the one hand, Grosseteste (and, in
some moments, Bonaventure!) seems to be plainly right in pointing out that the Incarnate One
is the greatest among God’s creatures, and that fleshly communion with him is a constituent
of perfect human beatitude; why would the LORD – whose goodness is unstinting, and whose
power to act unconstrained – make his sending consequent on the horrors of sin? But on the
other hand, Bonaventure (and, in some moments, Grosseteste!) is surely right to insist that this
fact must not be taken as obliging or externally constraining God to become incarnate. Is it pos-
sible to resolve these tensions?
To see how this might be resolved, it will be useful to briefly consider Bonaventure’s and
Aquinas’s defense of the necessity of the Incarnation for human redemption, another case of an
apparent conflict between creaturely necessity and divine freedom, but one for which
Bonaventure refused any straightforward resolutions. As noted above (n. 50), for Bonaventure
a God-man is “necessary” for redemption from sin, even though God was free to choose another
means of saving us.76 Similarly, as Henri de Lubac has shown, Bonaventure holds both that, on
the one hand, the beatific vision is absolutely necessary for the final happiness of humanity;77
but on the other, this supernatural beatitude remains a purely gratuitous and (condignly) unmer-
ited gift, which God is not in any way obligated to provide.78 In both cases, Bonaventure allows
that a supernatural good (the Incarnation, the beatific vision) can in some sense be necessary
for creatures, without thereby compromising divine freedom. In his writings, however, this
co-existence of freedom and necessity seems to remain at the level of an intuition, not explicitly
thematized. To shed some light on the precise sense of necessity which is applicable in these
cases, and to see whether it might be relevant to the relation between communion with Christ
and human beatitude, I turn now to the mature thought of Thomas Aquinas.
In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas develops a helpful account of how the Incarnation’s ne-
cessity for human redemption might be reconciled with divine freedom in the choice of how to
76
On the one hand, “In satisfaction there must be a simultaneous coming together of both natures, namely the
divine and the human (Oportuit, quod in satisfactio simul esset concursus utriusque naturae, divinae scilicet et hu-
manae).” Bonaventure, Breviloquium 4.2; V, 242b. And yet, on the other, “on the part of God, the restorer . . . there is
no doubt that he could liberate and restore human kind in another way (ex parte Dei reparantis . . . absque dubio aliter
potuit genus humanum liberare et reparare).” Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 20, art. un., qu. 6, concl.; III, 431a.
77
“By the very fact that the human being was made, with respect to his soul, in the image of God, he has such a
great capacity, that no good could suffice for him, besides the highest good (Eo ipso quod secundum animam factus
est ad imaginem Dei, tantae capacitatis est (homo), ut nullum bonum possait ei sufficere, praeter summum bonum).”
Bonaventure, IV Sent., d. 49, a. 1, q. 3, quoted in De Lubac, Le Mystère du Surnaturel (Paris: Editions Montaignes,
1965), 132. Cf. also: “The rational creature is immediately born to be joined to God. And this order is essential to the
image, and in this the human being and the angel are alike, because the mind of both is immediately formed by the
first Truth (Immediate nata est [creatura rationalis] Deo conjungi. Et hoc [ordo] est essentialis imagini, et in hoc an-
gelus et anima aequiparantur, quia utriusque mens immediate ab ipsa prima Veritate formatur).” Bonaventure,
Breviloquium, pars 7, cap. 7; V, 289, quoted in de Lubac, Le Mystère du Surnaturel, 148.
78
The beatific vision “can only be gratuitous, both because of the gratuitous condescension of God, and because
of the exaltation of the creature beyond its boundaries or its state of nature (non potest non esse gratuitum, tum propter
gratuitam Dei condescensionem, tum propter creaturae exaltationem ultra terminos sive status naturae).” Bonaventure,
II Sent., d. 29, a. 1, q. 1, quoted in De Lubac, Le Mystère du Surnaturel, 125n2.

16 Brendan Case
save us, by way of the concept of “fittingness.”79 The Incarnation, he suggests, is necessary to
save humanity, not logically or causally, but with what might be called the “necessity of the
fitting means,” “by which one arrives at an end better and more fittingly, as a horse is necessary
for a journey.”80 Of course, a horse is not absolutely necessary for a journey, a fact with which
Aquinas was well-acquainted, having trudged on foot from one corner of Europe to the other.81
And yet, Aquinas reasons, no doubt reflecting on his own experience, someone who preferred
to walk rather than ride from Naples to Paris would be, in one or more senses, wrong, either
ill-informed or a crank.
Aquinas further elaborates this necessity of the fitting means in his discussion of the neces-
sity of the Passion in Summa Theologiae 3.46.1, by way of an appeal to a threefold distinction
among the senses of creaturely necessity, which derives from Aristotle’s Metaphysics.82 First,
there is the necessity of “what cannot be otherwise,”83 which is “internal,” in the sense of aris-
ing from the very nature of the thing itself, as when we say that “an animal is necessarily cor-
ruptible.”84 (“Animal” is defined as involving corruptibility, just as “triangle” is defined as
involving “plane figure.”) Second, there is an “extrinsic” necessity, which arises from a thing’s
dependence on or vulnerability to “something external . . . as when someone cannot go because
of the violence of the one detaining him.”85 The Passion is not necessary in either of these
79
“The ‘teleological correlative congruences’ reconcile the concepts of ‘fittingness’ and ‘necessity’ in the
Christological domain. Necessity is presented as a sort of fittingness in relation to an appropriate end. For example,
Christ suffered freely by virtue of its high fittingness, which is a kind of theological necessity according to the goal
of the economy of salvation (Les ‘convenances correlatives finales’ rapprochent les concepts de ‘convenance’ et de
‘nécessité’ dans le domaine christologique. La nécessité se présente comme une sorte de convenance par rapport à une
fine appropriée. Par exemple, le Christ a souffert volontairement en raison d’une haute convenance, qui est une sort
de nécessité théologique selon la fin de l’économie du salut).” Narcisse, Les Raisons de Dieu, 93.
80
“. . . per quod melius et convenientius pervenitur ad finem, sicut equus necessarius est ad iter.” ST 3.1.2, corpus.
As Narcisse notes, “It is generally the order of finality which one recognizes to be that of fittingness. ‘To be fitting’ is
to be appropriated for some desired end. In this context, the fundamental question of the fittingness of the Incarnation
reduces to investigating the ‘motive’ for the Incarnation (C’est généralement l’ordre de la finalité qu’on reconnaît être
celui de la convenance. ‘Convenir,’ c’est être approprié à une fin recherchée. Dans ce contexte, la question source de
la convenance de l’incarnation revenait à scruter le ‘motif’ de l’incarnation).” Narcisse, Les Raisons de Dieu, 92.
81
Aquinas’s “travels and especially the long walks he undertook to arrive at the places of his meetings argue for
his robustness. If he had to cover on foot the distance from Naples to Paris, then to Cologne and back, then from Paris
to Rome and back, in addition to the various trips to go to provincial chapters, one would calculate that he must have
covered 15,000 kilometers (9,000 miles) on foot.” J.-P. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. I: Person and Work, trans.
Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 280.
82
There is a further sense of absolute necessity which is not in view here, as it applies only to God. This is neces-
sity understood not only as the impossibility of being otherwise, but also as the impossibility of not being at all.
Necessity in this sense applies only to God, because only his essence is identical with his act of existence. In the
Summa Theologiae, Aquinas discusses this kind of necessity particularly in his treatment of the “third way” to God
in Summa Theologiae 1.2.3, and of divine simplicity in Summa Theologiae 1.3.4. For a helpful exposition of the sense
of “necessity” in these passages, cf. Guy Jalbert, O.M.I., Necessité et Contingence chez saint Thomas d’Aquin et ses
Prédécesseurs (Éditions de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1961), 209-14, 219-29.
83
“. . . quod secundum sui naturam impossibile est aliter se habere.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.46.1, corp.
84
“Absolute necessity applies to a thing insofar as it is intimate and near to it; whether it is the form, or matter, or
the very essence of the thing; as we say that an animal is necessarily corruptible, because this follows from its matter,
inasmuch as it is composed from contraries (Necessitas absoluta competit rei secundum id quod est intimum et prox-
imum ei; sive sit forma, sive materia, sive ipsa rei essentia; sicut dicimus animal necesse esse corruptibile, quia hoc
consequitur eius materiam inquantum ex contrariis componitur).” Aquinas, Sententia libri Metaphysicae (Taurini,
1950; http://www.corpusthomisticu m.org/cmp05.html) V, lect. 1, no. 833.
85
“. . . ex aliquo exteriori . . . utpote cum aliquis non potest ire propter violentiam detinentis ipsum.” Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae 3.46.1, corp.

senses, Aquinas observes, being neither analytic in the nature of God or sinful humanity, nor
imposed on God from without.86
There is also, however, the extrinsic necessity of the end, imposed by the most fitting means
of achieving some specific goal.87 It is in this sense that we say it is necessary to take a medicine
to avert illness, or to travel to a distant country in order to earn a profit: a miracle cure would
be “necessary” for treating an ailment in the sense that someone afflicted by the illness and
desiring healing would, if possessed of appropriate knowledge and the requisite means, reliably
choose it over any alternative treatment.88
Now this necessity of the fitting means cannot arise with respect to God’s decision to create
as such, or even to create this particular world, since God (creation’s only counterpart) has no
needs to which the creature might minister.89 But, given this particular creation, with its inter-
nal order and history, we can, Aquinas maintains, form a posteriori judgments about what is
most fitting for it, from the means which God has elected to secure its beauty and wholeness.90
In particular, when the ends, not only of human redemption, but also of Christ’s meriting heav-
enly glory and fulfilling Old Testament prophecy are brought into view, Aquinas proposes that
not only the Incarnation, but also the Passion is necessary in this third sense, as the most fitting
means to achieve them.91 The very fact that God chose to be crucified is a powerful indication
after the fact that the cross was “necessary,” not in an internal (logical) or external-efficient
(physical) sense, but in the sense of being, however mysteriously, how anyone who was well-
formed and well-informed would have chosen to save a fallen world. God did not have to choose
86
Ibid.
87
“If, however, that external thing which imposes the necessity is an end, something might be called ‘necessary’
on the supposition of the end, namely when some end either in no way can be, or cannot be fittingly, unless with such
an end presupposed (Si vero illud exterius quod necessitatem inducit, sit finis, dicetur aliquid necessarium ex suppo-
sitione finis, quando scilicet finis aliquis aut nullo modo potest esse, aut non potest esse convenienter, nisi tali fine
praesupposito).” Ibid. Cf. also the discussion of this passage in Barnes, who describes it as the “weak external neces-
sity of fittingness.” Barnes, “Necessary, Fitting, or Possible,” 672.
88
“Things are said to be necessary, without which some good cannot exist or come to be, or some evil be avoided
or expelled. For instance, we say that it is necessary to drink a drug, i.e., a laxative medicine, not because an animal
cannot live without it, but rather in order to expel or avoid this evil which is an infirmity . . . Similarly, to sail to
Aegina, namely to that place, is necessary, not because a man cannot exist without this, but because without this he
cannot acquire some good, i.e., wealth (Dicuntur necessaria, sine quibus non potest esse vel fieri bonum aliquod, vel
vitari aliquod malum, vel expelli; sicut bibere pharmacum, idest medicinam laxativam, dicimus esse necessarium,
non quia sine hoc vivere animal non possit; sed ad expellendum, scilicet hoc malum quod est infirmitas, vel etiam
vitandum . . . Similiter navigare ad Aeginam, scilicet ad illum locum, est necessarium, non quia sine hoc non possit
homo esse; sed quia sine hoc non potest acquirere aliquod bonum, idest pecuniam).” Aquinas, Sententia libri
Metaphysicae V, lect. 1, no. 828.
89
“But when we speak about bringing the whole universe into being, we cannot find some further created thing
from which can be taken the reason that it is this way or that; for, since the reason for the determinate disposition of
the universe can be taken neither from divine power, which is infinite, nor from divine goodness, which does not need
things, it is necessary that its reason be taken from the simple will of its producer (Cum autem de toto universo loqui-
mur educendo in esse, non possumus ulterius aliquod creatum invenire ex quo possit sumi ratio quare sit tale vel tale;
unde, cum nec etiam ex parte divinae potentiae quae est infinita, nec divinae bonitatis, quae rebus non indiget, ratio
determinatae dispositionis universi sumi possit, oportet quod eius ratio sumatur ex simplici voluntate producentis).”
Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia q. 3, art. 17, resp., quoted in Hester Goodenough Gelber, It Could Have
Been Otherwise: Contingency and Necessity in Dominican Theology at Oxford, 1300-1350 (Boston, MA: Brill, 2010),
120-21.
90
“Although the course of things is determined by what now exists, the divine wisdom and power is not, however,
limited to that course. For, although no other course would be good and fitting for what now exists, nonetheless God
could have made other things, and imposed another order on them (Licet iste cursus rerum sit determinatus istis rebus
quae nunc sunt, non tamen ad hunc cursum limitatur divina sapientia et potestas. Unde, licet istis rebus quae nunc
sunt, nullus alius cursus esset bonus et conveniens, tamen Deus posset alias res facere, et alium eis imponere ordi-
nem).” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.25.5 ad 3, quoted in Gelber, It Could Have Been Otherwise, 121.
91
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.46.1.

18 Brendan Case
the cross; he chose it precisely because he was free to select whatever means were most fitting
for human redemption, just as Aquinas, given the option, would have freely and yet dependably
chosen a horse for his trans-European travels.
These considerations allow a way to refine Grosseteste’s argument for the supralapsarian
position from fleshly communion with Christ, so as to see in it a proposal that the same “neces-
sity of the fitting means” which applies to the Incarnation’s redemptive instrumental goodness
ought to apply as well to its non-redemptive instrumental goodness. God, in his wisdom and
freedom, has chosen to perfect human beatitude by way of both intellectual and fleshly commu-
nion with himself, a fact which, as we have seen, furnishes one of Bonaventure’s five arguments
in favor of the Incarnation’s fittingness.92 If God has elected the Incarnation as a means to the
particular end of human beatification, then that election can be analyzed in terms of the same
kind of weak, external necessity of fittingness which Aquinas and (implicitly) Bonaventure see
at work in God’s choice of the means of salvation. As noted, this is a kind of necessity which
obtains without prejudice to divine freedom,93 and which can be discerned after the fact even in
the supernatural order, by attention to what God has in fact chosen to do.
If Aquinas’s account of the “necessity of the fitting means” applies in this way to the
Incarnation’s non-redemptive instrumental goodness, however, one might wonder whether
Aquinas was inconsistent in not drawing this conclusion himself. I would suggest that he would
have been, except for the fact that, in the Summa Theologiae, he flatly refused to acknowledge
any non-redemptive goods achieved for humanity by Christ. It is striking, and I suspect not
accidental, that no such goods figure among his reasons for the Incarnation’s fittingness in
Summa Theologiae 3.1.1.94 Likewise, in his discussion of the supralapsarian position in Summa
Theologiae 3.1.3, he considers, as an argument in that view’s favor, the objection that Augustine
in De Trinitate 13 proposes other, unspecified goods which the Incarnation achieves for human-
ity besides redemption, which would provide a motive for it even in sin’s absence.95 His re-
92
Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 1, art. 2, qu. 1; III, 19ab..
93
As Narcisse observes, “The idea of fittingness appeared as a possible guarantee of theological specificity and,
notably, of a form of expression which would be respectful of the fullness of the Christian mystery (L’idée de conve-
nance est apparue comme une garantie possible de la spécificité théologique et, notamment, d’une expression re-
spectueuse de la plenitude du mystère chrétien).” Narcisse, Les Raisons de Dieu, 359.
94
He lists two reasons for the Incarnation’s fittingness, both of which point to its intrinsic goodness: first, “it
seems to be most fitting that through visible things the invisible things of God should be shown forth, for it was for
this that the whole world was made (videtur esse convenientissimum ut per visibilia monstrentur invisibilia Dei, ad
hoc enim totus mundus est factus).” 3.1.3 sed contra, cf. Rom. 1:18-20. And second, it befits God, as goodness itself,
and so as supremely self-diffusive, to share himself in the greatest possible way. (Ibid., corp). With only the intrinsic
goodness of the Incarnation in view, the problem of whether the “necessity of fittingness” might apply to it simply
cannot arise, since that necessity pertains, as argued above, to the selection among possible means to some external
end. The “fittingness” which Aquinas assigns to the Incarnation in this article seems rather to be what Narcisse de-
scribes as “subsequent argumentative fittingness . . . which begins from a fundamental mystery in order to reach some
mysteries at a lower level. . . For example, there is the fittingness which exists between the mystery of divine freedom
and the Economy of salvation (convenance argumentative subséquente . . . qui part d’un mystère fondamental pour
accéder à des mystères d’un niveau inférieur . . . Par exemple, la convenance qui existe entre le mystére de la liberté
divine et l’Economie du salut).” Narcisse, Les Raisons de Dieu, 87.
95
“It seems that, if humanity had not sinned, God would have been incarnate nonetheless. For, while the cause
remains, the effect remains. But, as Augustine says in De Trinitate 13, ‘many other things are to be considered in re-
gard to the incarnation of Christ’ besides absolution from sin (Videtur quod, si homo non peccasset, nihilominus Deus
incarnatus fuisset. Manente enim causa, manet effectus. Sed sicut Augustinus dicit, XIII de Trin., alia multa sunt
cogitanda in Christi incarnatione praeter absolutionem a peccato).” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.1.3.

sponse is uncompromising: “All the other causes which are assigned pertain to the remedying
of sin.”96 Once he had articulated how the necessity of the fitting means applies to the
Incarnation’s redemptive instrumental goodness, acknowledging its non-redemptive instru-
mental goodness might have conceded too much to the supralapsarian position. This approach
fortifies Aquinas against arguments for that position from Christ’s instrumental goodness, but
perhaps only at the cost of artificially restricting his account of the Incarnation’s scope.
Conclusion: The Reasons for the Incarnation Reconsidered

This essay has defended three interrelated theses, which it might be helpful to underscore by
way of a conclusion. First, I argue that Grosseteste was right to suggest that the good of fleshly
communion with God in Christ offers a sufficient reason for the Incarnation even apart from its
role in redeeming us from sin. The life of heaven is a great Eucharistic liturgy, in which the
body of Christ, no longer veiled by the appearances of bread and wine, is offered as the object
in which the human senses find their perfect fulfillment. Despite Aquinas’s resistance to the
fleshly-communion argument, few theologians have depicted this heavenly Communion as
beautifully as he did in the final stanza of his Eucharistic hymn, “Adoro Te Devote”: “Jesu,
whom I look at shrouded here below, / I beseech thee send me what I thirst for so, / Some day to
gaze on thee face to face in light / And be blest for ever with thy glory’s sight.”97 Grosseteste
rightly suggests that no reason can be given for taking this glorious communion to be conse-
quent in God’s intentions to the horrors of sin.
Second, I propose that reasoning of this kind, from the Incarnation’s non-redemptive instru-
mental goodness, ought to play a larger role than it generally has in debates over the reasons
for the Incarnation. Faced with arguments for the supralapsarian position from the intrinsic
goodness of the Incarnation – arguments familiar from Duns Scotus and offered by Grosseteste
as well – the skeptic can appeal to divine freedom, and retreat to the indisputable biblical teach-
ing that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Arguments for the
96
“Omnes aliae causae quae sunt assignatae, pertinent ad remedium peccati.” Ibid. This claim is probably consis-
tent with Aquinas’s later statement that the Passion achieves “many things pertaining to the salvation of humanity,
besides liberation from sin (multa ad salutem hominis pertinentia praeter liberationem a peccato).” Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae 3.46.3. Aquinas here has in mind such goods as Christ’s examples of divine charity towards us and of
human obedience to God, the fittingness that the Devil who overcame man be overcome by a man, or the merit which
Christ acquires for human justification and glorification, which are distinct from the satisfaction for sin which Christ
makes on our behalf, but which are all in some sense artifacts of the Fall. Ibid., and cf. Ibid. 3.3.8 ad 3. The most dif-
ficult of these goods to account for as dependent on the Fall is Christ’s role in humanity’s justification and exaltation,
which Grosseteste numbers among the non-redemptive instrumental goods which warrant the supralapsarian posi-
tion. Cf. Grosseteste, DCL 3.1.12, 123-25. While this is an area which would merit further study, at least this much
seems clear: for Aquinas, a gift of supernatural grace is necessary for human beings to merit the beatific vision
(cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1-2.5.5), even in their unfallen integrity. Ibid. 1.95.4 ad 1, and 1-2.114.2. For further
discussion of this requirement of grace even in Eden, cf. Joseph Wawrykow, God's Grace and Human Action: Merit
in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), esp. 191-92. Nonetheless,
while this grace is in some sense always mediated by the “invisible missions” of the Son and the Spirit (ibid. 1.43.5,
and cf. the discussion in Dominic Legge, O.P., The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas [New York: Oxford
University Press, 2017], 27-30), unfallen humanity would not have required the merits won for them by Christ in his
“visible mission” in order to attain their final end. Wawrykow acknowledges the logical posteriority to the Fall of
Christ’s election as the meritorious cause of human glorification: “Jesus Christ has been ordained to be the savior of
the human race. Thus, in accordance with his divine ordination, Christ was given grace to such a degree that Christ’s
acts were meritorious not only for himself, but even meritorious condignly for others.” Wawrykow, God's Grace and
Human Action, 247.
97
“Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, / Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio: / Ut te revelata cernens facie, / Visu sim beátus
tuæ gloriæ.” The English translation above is by Gerard Manley Hopkins, quoted in Paul Murray, Aquinas at Prayer:
The Bible, Mysticism, and Poetry (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 240.

20 Brendan Case
supralapsarian position from the Incarnation’s non-redemptive instrumental goodness are not
vulnerable to this sort of objection, however, because they reason to the Incarnation’s priority
to the Fall from specific aspects of God’s work in the actual world, such as the fact (if it is
one) that fleshly communion with God in Christ is a constituent of the joy of heaven. (Another
promising starting point for this kind of argument is Christ’s role in securing the merit by which
humanity is awarded the grace of the beatific vision, which was briefly considered above, n.
96.) Granted that Christ achieves real goods for us apart from salvation from sin, the defender
of the infralapsarian position must either marginalize them or, failing that, entertain the very
sort of speculation about possible (i.e. Incarnation-less) worlds which is supposed to render the
supralapsarian thesis suspect.
Finally, I suggest that while Bonaventure and Aquinas were rightly concerned to maintain
God’s freedom in the face of all creaturely demands, there is a better way to defend the gratuity
of Christ’s flesh than severing the link between it and human beatitude. This approach is mod-
eled on the strategy both men employ to interpret the link between the Incarnation and human
redemption. Put simply, we should affirm that Christ is necessary for perfect human happiness
in the same way that he is necessary for human redemption, as the most fitting means to that
particular end, though we can only know this a posteriori, from God’s having chosen it. Divine
freedom is not threatened by the fact that, in his wisdom, God has made us for himself, so that
our hearts are restless until they rest in contemplation, not only of God’s divine essence, but also
of Christ’s glorified flesh, which is more splendid than the sun.

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Modern Theology Month 2019 DOI:10.1111/moth.

“MORE SPLENDID THAN THE SUN”:

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Grosseteste on the Incarnation’s Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods of Christ’s Flesh

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Grosseteste goes on in De Cessatione Legalium 3.1 to develop a second argument from

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Bonaventure for and against the Fleshly Communion Argument

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Bonaventure on the Primacy of Christ and the Freedom of God

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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Necessary, Free, and Fitting: The Fleshly-Communion Argument after Aquinas

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Conclusion: The Reasons for the Incarnation Reconsidered

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© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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