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Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt

Hey thanks DLW! Yes, you are right, that IS what I meant about quickening...

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In the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth there is a plaque with this inscription: Verbum caro hic factum est "the Word was made flesh here." It was there, in that particular place, "a city of Galilee" (Lk 1:26), that God became man. But we can be even more specific: it was in the womb of a virgin named Mary (cf. v. 27) that God the Son, without ceasing to be true God, assumed a complete human nature into the unity of his divine person and became true man. Moreover, according to the Church's teaching, we can be precise about the moment of the Incarnation: it took place when the Virgin Mary said to the angel, "Be it done unto me according to thy word" (v. 38). It was exactly then that, by the overshadowing of the Spirit, a body was fashioned from the Virgin's flesh and blood, a rational soul created and infused into the body and, in the same instant, the complete human nature united to the divine Word. There were no successive stages in this taking of manhood; the body did not come into being before the soul, nor the soul before the body, nor were either ever other than his, God the Son's: the flesh was conceived, ensouled, and assumed simultaneously.

The coincidence of the virginal conception and the hypostatic union is a defined doctrine of the Catholic faith. In the words of the "Formula of Union" agreed between St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Antiochene bishops in 433 and canonized by the General Council of Chalcedon in 451, "we confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God, because God the Word was made flesh and became man and from the very moment of conception united to himself the temple he had taken from her." Origen's theory that the soul of Christ pre-existed the creation of his body was condemned by the provincial Council of Constantinople in 543, as was the opinion that the body was first formed and only later united to the soul and the Word. This judgement was later confirmed by Pope Vigilius (d. 555). In 675 the eleventh provincial Council of Toledo declared that it was in his "wonderful conception" that the Word was made flesh, and five years later the Third General Council of Constantinople officially approved the synodal epistle of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem (c. 560-638), which contains this relevant passage:

"He truly became man who is ever acknowledged to be God, and is shown to be in his Mother's womb who is in the bosom of the eternal Father, and the timeless accepts a beginning in time. He did not become these things in unreal appearance (as the Manichees and Valentinians think), but in truth and reality he emptied the whole of himself by the will that is his own and the Father's, and assumed the whole mass [of our nature], flesh consubstantial with us, a rational soul of the same kind as ours, a mind like ours. For man is and is known to be all these things; and he was made man in truth at the very instant of his conception in the all-holy Virgin."

(from: American Bioethics Advisory Commission,
Appendix: An Approach to a Key Theological Question
http://www.all.org/abac/clontx10.htm)

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In a remarkable book entitled Redeemer in the Womb, John Saward addresses the issue in a way that is clear and compelling. His concern is theological, specifically about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. However, the implications for the debates over abortion and cloning are clear. He draws on Patristic sources, showing that the questions we face today are not new, and also discusses at length a controversy that has arisen from a misreading of St.Thomas Aquinas.

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Christ's Human Beginning and Ours: St. Thomas Aquinas

Where Maximus saw a confirmation, Scholasticism found an exception: unlike other men's, Christ's body was animated by a rational soul at conception. The Schoolmen (following Aristotle) held the view that the rational soul is not infused at the first moment of conception but at a later time, that is, when the embryo has attained a sufficiently advanced state of bodily development.

The philosophers of antiquity were not well up on the biology of modernity, and so they lacked the means (which we now have) of distinguishing an early human embryo from those of other species. To outward inspection, all embryos seemed to be of the same kind. The development, therefore, of a non-specific embryo into a recognizably human one had to be a process of substantial change change of nature or form, change of soul. ("Soul" here means the form of the body, that which makes a body to be the sort of body it is, its life-principle, the source of its characteristic functions.) For Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, human generation is a drama of transformation, of "coming to be" and "passing away." At first, the embryo has a "vegetative" soul: it is capable of nourishment and growth. The vegetative soul "passes away" and is succeeded by a soul that is both vegetative and sensitive: the embryo is capable of sensation as well as nourishment. Finally, the sensitive soul is replaced by one created directly by God, a soul that is at once vegetative, sensitive, and rational: the embryo is alive with the life of man.

St. Thomas stood by this theory, not just because it came to him from Aristotle, but because it corresponded to what was observable in nature, and he was convinced that a sound philosophy must be empirically based. "The judgement that the intellect makes concerning the nature of a thing must conform to what sense perception shows about the thing." Now the ancient world and the Middle Ages knew nothing of ovulation; indeed, the ovum itself was not discovered until 1827. As far as St. Thomas was concerned, conception took place through the activation by semen of a special secretion of blood in the womb. What is more, though he grasped the truth that matter must be suitably and sufficiently organized in order to be animated by a rational soul, his judgement of what constituted organization was determined by the limitations of current observation. For Aristotle (and so for St. Thomas), the soul is "the primary act of a natural organic body" (s“matos physikou organikou), that is to say, a body with organs, parts serving some essential function. Only when the embryonic body was equipped with recognizably human organs and limbs was it deemed to be alive with human life; when completely formed, it was evidently informed by a rational soul. Once there was the body of a man, there was a man, a rational animal.

St. Thomas taught that Christ's body did not develop in the normal manner. Having been created directly by the Holy Spirit from the flesh and blood of the Virgin, without any involvement of male seed, it was fully formed, perfectly organized, from the first moment of conception, and from that first moment was animated by a rational soul. St. Bonaventure held the same opinion: from his conception, Christ's body had "perfection of organization."

There is an obvious difficulty with this opinion. If the incarnate Word is to be called "man" univocally, why should he differ from other men with regard to the animation of his human body? In the terminology of St. Maximus, it would seem to imply a difference in the "definition of nature" rather than the "manner of existence." St. Thomas considers this question in an objection quoting St. Leo the Great. He replies that the difference between Christ and us in this respect is one of timing, not of nature. Our Lord's animation was essentially the same as other men's in the sense that his rational soul, like all others, was infused as soon as the body was formed. What was different was the time of that formation: Christ's body was perfectly formed at an earlier moment than other men's.

Were he alive today, St. Thomas would without doubt hold the doctrine of immediate animation. The fundamental principles of his philosophy of man are independent of his obsolete biology; indeed, when applied to modern knowledge, they provide formidable support for immediate animation. Stripping off the shell of the out-of-date science, we find the permanently valid kernel of his thought on the soul. This is not wishful thinking. It is simply the application of the Thomist axiom stated earlier: philosophy must have an empirical base.

The essential principles of Thomist anthropology are as follows:

A. The soul is not the self. A man is not only a soul but something composed of soul and body. The soul separated from the body is not a man. The soul on its own can no more be called a person than a hand or foot on its own. The person is the possessor of the complete nature of the species.

B. It is natural for the soul to be united to the body. That is why the separation of soul from body at death is "against nature" and why the resurrection of the body is in a certain sense "necessary."

C. The soul is the form of the body. "Form" here means the innermost shaping principle of a thing, making it to be what it is. The soul is not a motor in a machine, making it move. No, it is what makes the body what it is, the body of a rnan. An ensouled body is the body of a living human being.

D. The rational soul, which is not transmitted by the parents, is infused by God as soon as the body is ready to receive it. It must be suitably organized. St. Thomas explains how the human body is suitably disposed by the Divine Artist for those spiritual acts of which only man among bodily creatures is capable. His senses are not just for food and sex but for knowledge, and so he does not sniff around on the ground but stands upright and can lift up his face to contemplate the heavens.

Modern biology has proved that the fundamental "disposition" or "organization" of living matter is genetic (cf. D). We can now do what the ancients could not: we can distinguish the human embryo from embryos of other species. The perceptible form of the zygote, its genetic structure, may therefore be regarded as, so to speak, the outward and visible sign of its metaphysical form, that which makes it to be what it is, a member of the human species (cf. C). "The human zygote as we understand it today with DNA and RNA would in Thomas' understanding eminently satisfy as having the organized matter required for the infusion of a human spiritual soul."

Thus man is a natural and complete whole from his conception (cf. A and B). The embryo is alive with unmistakably human life. For St. Thomas, that is just another way of saying that it is ensouled with a human (rational) soul. "It" is already "he" or "she."

The doctrine of immediate animation makes St. Thomas' Christology shine with even greater power. It resolves tensions and unanswered questions.

1. The Angelic Doctor tells us that, while Our Lord's conception was wholly miraculous in the sense that its active principle was the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit (rather than the natural power of male seed), it was wholly natural when we consider the matter furnished by his Mother. Strictly, on St. Thomas' view, one ought to add that the conception was also, if not miraculous, at least extraordinary in the sense that his body was animated at an earlier moment than any other human body. If, however, Christ is like us even in the moment of his animation, then we can appreciate the sense in which, though in its manner it is miraculous, his conception remains completely natural, the beginning of real and complete human life.

2. If the Son of God's embryonic condition is like that of every other human being, we understand better what St. Thomas has to say about his self-emptying and his assumption of our "natural and blameless disabilities." He emptied himself, not by laying aside his divine greatness, but by taking on our human littleness, and first of all the microscopic infirmity of the embryo. He accepts the limitations of the long, slow womb-way to birth. Apart from the virginal manner of his conception and birth, the Christ Child, unborn as well as newborn, is like every baby.

3. St. Thomas' doctrine of man is undoubtedly christocentric. He does not confuse philosophy with theology, truths of natural philosophy with truths of supernatural revelation, but his faith in God-made-man does give added weight to what his reason tells him of man-made-by-God. As Josef Pieper says:

"Thomas might never have had the courage to defend natural and visible reality, in particular man's corporeality, as an essential part of man and would never have had the courage to draw the ultimate conclusions from this conviction had he not thought in terms of the Incarnation of God. . . . One who believes that the Logos of God has, in Christ, united with the bodily nature of man cannot possibly assume at the same time that the material reality is not good. And how can visible things be evil if the "medicine of salvation" deriving from that prototypal Sacrament be offered to man in the same visible things . . . when the sacraments are performed."

As a general principle, this is certainly true. In the Summa Theologiae, anthropology is presented in a christological (and Trinitarian) frame. Man (at the end of the first part and throughout the second part) is enveloped by the one Lord Jesus Christ: in the mysteries of his divinity (in the first part) and in the mysteries of his humanity (in the third part). St. Thomas looks at the human person in the light of the divine person of the Word-made-flesh. Only with respect to the moment of animation does the principle appear to have been inconsistently applied.

http://www.all.org/abac/clontx10.htm

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THE BIG IDEA:

S: The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life

C: Our creation in the image of God and Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection are the basis for our human dignity.

. . .

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2. Incarnation (Luke 1:26-38)

(Read Lk 1:30-38.) . . . And something happened. What precisely happened on a cellular or genetic level? I haven’t a clue. But I know this: God became a zygote, a one-celled human being. And God grew into a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus, and an infant in a stable in Bethlehem.

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• Image is everything. Human life has sanctity and dignity because are made in the image of God and because God himself took on that image and bears it still.


• Human life is sanctified and dignified not only by being made in the image of God, but because God himself bears that image.

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There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. . . . Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Essays, HarperSanFrancisco: 1976, page 46)

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In Nazareth there is a plaque with this inscription:

Verbum caro hic factum est

"the Word was made flesh here."

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Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt

Hey thanks DLW! Yes, you are right, that IS what I meant about quickening...
To be frank, the pictures and the massive quotations on this thread are quite distracting, so that I am not able to follow the line of reasoning - and so I will leave it to you two. :)

"Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow." - C. S. Lewis

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In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. He went in and said to her, 'Rejoice, so highly favored! The Lord is with you. She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, 'Mary do not be afraid; you have won God's favor. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; he will rule over the house of David and his reign will have no end. Mary said to the angel, 'But how can this come about since I am a virgin?' 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you' the angel answered 'and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too: your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God.' 'I am the handmaid of the Lord', said Mary 'let what you have said be done to me.' And the angel left her.

(Luke 1: 26-38)

http://www.botticellisvision.com/st%20francis%20web%20site/The%20Annunciation.htm

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Originally posted by DLW

Should we do a poll on the perceived helpfulness of the majority of your art postings?

dlw

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

Verbum caro hic factum est

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In the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth there is a plaque with this inscription: Verbum caro hic factum est "the Word was made flesh here." It was there, in that particular place, "a city of Galilee" (Lk 1:26), that God became man. But we can be even more specific: it was in the womb of a virgin named Mary (cf. v. 27) that God the Son, without ceasing to be true God, assumed a complete human nature into the unity of his divine person and became true man. Moreover, according to the Church's teaching, we can be precise about the moment of the Incarnation: it took place when the Virgin Mary said to the angel, "Be it done unto me according to thy word" (v. 38). It was exactly then that, by the overshadowing of the Spirit, a body was fashioned from the Virgin's flesh and blood, a rational soul created and infused into the body and, in the same instant, the complete human nature united to the divine Word. There were no successive stages in this taking of manhood; the body did not come into being before the soul, nor the soul before the body, nor were either ever other than his, God the Son's: the flesh was conceived, ensouled, and assumed simultaneously.

The coincidence of the virginal conception and the hypostatic union is a defined doctrine of the Catholic faith. In the words of the "Formula of Union" agreed between St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Antiochene bishops in 433 and canonized by the General Council of Chalcedon in 451, "we confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God, because God the Word was made flesh and became man and from the very moment of conception united to himself the temple he had taken from her." Origen's theory that the soul of Christ pre-existed the creation of his body was condemned by the provincial Council of Constantinople in 543, as was the opinion that the body was first formed and only later united to the soul and the Word. This judgement was later confirmed by Pope Vigilius (d. 555). In 675 the eleventh provincial Council of Toledo declared that it was in his "wonderful conception" that the Word was made flesh, and five years later the Third General Council of Constantinople officially approved the synodal epistle of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem (c. 560-638), which contains this relevant passage:

"He truly became man who is ever acknowledged to be God, and is shown to be in his Mother's womb who is in the bosom of the eternal Father, and the timeless accepts a beginning in time. He did not become these things in unreal appearance (as the Manichees and Valentinians think), but in truth and reality he emptied the whole of himself by the will that is his own and the Father's, and assumed the whole mass [of our nature], flesh consubstantial with us, a rational soul of the same kind as ours, a mind like ours. For man is and is known to be all these things; and he was made man in truth at the very instant of his conception in the all-holy Virgin."

(from: American Bioethics Advisory Commission,
Appendix: An Approach to a Key Theological Question
http://www.all.org/abac/clontx10.htm)

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