Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES Tractatus de Verbo Incarnato. By BARTHOLO M. XmERTA, 0. Carm. ~ Vols. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1954. Pp. 766. Many years of research and writing by a distinguished Professor of Theology at the Carmelite College in Rome have culminated in this extensive treatise on the Incarnation. It is not, like so many others, a commentary on St. Thomas' treatise on the same question, although it does follow his order in a general way and makes reference to the parallel questions of the Summa. Nor is it a theological manual. It is rather an independent work which, in line with previous studies by the author, gives major emphasis to the formal constitutive notion and the functions of supposit and nature in the hypostatic union. The division of the work is the customary one of Christology and Soteriology . In the first there is a detailed examination of the constitution of Christ from both the positive and speculative sides. The remaining twothirds of the first section is devoted to a consideration of the consectaria humanitatis, the mode of union, the properties of Christ's humanity, grace, knowledge, power and others. The Soteriology discusses the Redemption in three parts: first, the mysteries of Christ's actual life from His conception to His ascension; second, the work of Redemption itself; and finally the various offices of Christ as teacher, priest, king, mediator, head of the mystical body. The work concludes with a supplement on the fittingness and the motive of the Incarnation. The principal contribution this work makes to theology is its exhaustive study of the question on which it places heaviest emphasis, the question on which the author has been writing articles since the thirties, the constitution of Christ. The author's sustained interest in this problem is evident from his early articles on the nature and suppositum in Christ down to his recent work El Yo di Cristo. Xiberta's view is that St. Thomas, in his defense and explanation of the hypostatic union, insisted on the unity of Christ, but did not specifically consider what formally constitutes the supposit . This was the work of later medieval theologians and even now modem theologians, among whom must be included Xiberta himself, are attempting to answer the more complex problems about the constitutivu~ formale of the supposit. More than the question of simple definition is involved. What answers are to be given these questions? What is the full content of the " I " in Christ? How was the human intellect conscious of 531 532 BRIEF NOTICES the divinity in the one Christ? More than psychological difficulties, these .questions presuppose some definite conclusions about the ontological unity of Christ. Hence, the analysis of the influence of the Word on the assumed humanity, making it the Word's own human nature, yet preserving it distinct from the divine nature, is the basic problem to be solved in the consideration of the ontological constitution of Christ. Xiberta thinks the more complex points about the hypostatic union will be explained if the definition of supposit proposed by an English Carmelite , .John Baconthorpe, in the fourteenth century is followed. This definition is: " ratio formaliter constitutiva suppositi concipitur tamquam plena actuatio naturae substantialia se habens tamquam effectus formalis secundarius in actuatione ipsius naturae substantialia." Of the explanations of Cajetan and Suarez, the present author says: " Whatever philosophical value they may have, their usefulness is found wanting in the present theological question; in fact, they do not explain what subsistence is; but only indicate what accompanies subsistence." (p. 267) Yet Xiberta does not seem to advert to the fact that Baconthorpe's notion of supposit is but one part of his entire system, a system which disagrees not only with the later work of Cajetan and Suarez, but with the basic philosophical doctrines of St. Thomas. Nor does Xiberta see that this disagreement might involve much more fundamental problems for the whole treatise on the Incarnation. · The most evident shortcoming of this work, however, is the unusual order it follows. Important questions like the fittingness and the motivation of the Incarnation, which should be introductory, are treated in a supplement. And the supplement is curiously entitled: " The Incarnation seen under...