In a striking formulation, Robert defines a person as an “atom” in the genus of rational nature (Ex his patet quod ad verum esse personae oportet quod sit rationalis natura. Item, quod sit atoma in illo genere (III Sent., q. 8, p. 39, l. 108-9)). He writes: “It is evident what is understood here by nature, namely, an individual nature in the genus of human, and by person, namely, a thing in act of singular genus remaining distinctly apart from all others.” A person is a thing unto itself in a high order of act (res in actu sui generis). With this phrasing, Robert captures wonderfully our modern sense of the otherness of each person but how does the “atom” of the person relate to human nature? As a genus, human nature is a matter-form composite, a singular in incomplete act: it is a res supplemented by the res that is the person; a person is an intensity of act crafting its own genus and unable to suffer further supplementation. A person is the culmination of an already partially formed, partially in act, “individual” human nature, which functions as a principium materiale (equivocity). Wrestling against this equivocity, Robert deploys delicate language to explain the individuation of singular objects of many hefty ontological parts. A culminating form delivers a signatio actio making an ens actuale et individuum. Form unites with matter as a co-party (coadunat et continent (II Sent., q. 17, p. 64, l. 99-106)). The composite qua form individuates the composite as an individual and the same composite qua matter partially, but significantly, contracts the form to individual status. As co-parties of the composite, matter and form help realize the actualis existentia of the composite: a term used to capture the presence of the composite’s standing in individuated reality. Though an intensity of act a person still needs the other individuating principles of being to be adequately individuated. There is no real distinction of persons from their individuating conditions in the singular common natures, which are co-parties to their identities. For Robert, individuation of persons is, one might say, a communicative phenomenon: a unity of singularizing arcs of being with an emphasis on a kernel of ontological uniqueness that is the person. Robert’s cunning treatment of the restrained fracturing of singular objects gets another loosening of the nut in the case of Christ. Robert wants to defend the claim that the happiness of Christ was the same before and after the resurrection. He needs to secure an aloofness from the trauma of human nature. Trauma? Yes: division and corruption are structural in the created order (II Sent., q. 20, p. 79, l. 6-11): omnia componibilia secundum quod huiusmodi aliquid imperfectionis habent (III Sent., q. 14, p. 67, l. 7-8). Christ transcends this structural imperfection both in person and nature: Persona divina est natura divina quoad identitatem. Sed illa est simplicissima (III Sent., q. 14, p. 67, l. 4-5). About natural singular objects, Robert can cogently argue that even though the components are res there is nevertheless no real distinction between nature and person on account of the coesse of the multiple individuating parts of the singular object (III Sent., q. 11, p. 58, l. 86-90). In Christ, however, there is a real distinction between human nature and person: Christ’s individuation as a person is prior to any role played by human nature (III Sent., q. 11, p. 58, l. 91-2); for the person of Christ, individuated bodily, does not draw on any source of being other than the divine nature he always is. Hence Christ is not a persona composita, as Robert puts it, but a persona simplex. Put another way, for Robert, we have thoroughly embodied personalities, but Christ does not. As Przywara notes, Aquinas precisely tries to finesse this point (AE, 304-05). Any treatment of the Incarnation is bound to be horribly fraught: Leo Strauss quips somewhere that Christianity drives philosophy to madness. Robert’s account minimizes the humanity of Christ and Thomas is at the other pole risking naturalizing Christ. Robert edges towards angelism whilst Thomas’s talk of the Incarnate Word having an esse secundarium through human nature moves dramatically the other way. Having no truck with the composition suggested by Thomas’s esse secundarium, for Robert, the Incarnation is thus utterly gratuitous: a thoroughly historical initiative congruent with Robert’s metaphysical and political dislike of naturalism. This is not the thinking of a befuddled mind. Best to think of Robert as kin to Augustinians down through the centuries who have been skeptical of Aristotle’s naturalism: Olivi, Malebranche, Pascal, Scheler, and even Kolnai. Kilwardby’s theory of metaphysical composition is indicative of the rising tide of Augustinianism that actually reached high water mark in the early modern period. It should be no surprise that his angelism ends up working against his overall goal. Flipping between a musical Platonism (univocity) and a medical naturalism (equivocity) – leading to an account of the Incarnation wherein an aloof Christ (univocity) surfs the suffering of a fracturing human nature (equivocity) – Robert’s position is unstable. His aloof Christ is meant to curb Anselmian humanism, to, so to say, put man in his proper place. With an ironic twist on the declaration of Gaudium et Spes (para. 22) that Christ “fully reveals man to himself,” Robert’s account of the Incarnation elevates an embodied Jesus to an angelic Christ and with little tinkering one arrives at Descartes’s ego perplexed to find itself a “winged cherub without a body.” In Robert’s hands, Augustine’s idealist philosophy is a sobering dissent from Gregory’s political theology that contributes to an early modern angelism that ironically makes man a master of nature. (excerpted from chapter 1)
