on Christ's knowledge, Ambrose furnishes the sed contra authority showing that the reality of the Incarnation means Christ must have human knowledge. Thomas quotes Ambrose's De incarnationis dominicae sacramento: "God assumed the perfection of human nature in the flesh; He took upon Himself the sense of man, but not the swollen sense of the flesh."45 The perfection of human nature requires human knowledge. Thomas appeals to Ambrose to show that Jesus's full humanity means his possession of human knowledge and even a certain advance or growth in wisdom.46 As the great opponent of the Arians, however, Ambrose also supports Christ's full divinity. When discussing whether Christ is a creature, Thomas again turns to Ambrose in the sed contra. Ambrose asks, "Was Christ made by a word? Was Christ created by a command? ... How can there be a creature in God?"47 In these crucial questions, Thomas draws on Ambrose to uphold the reality of Christ's divine and human natures.

Ambrose's greatest contribution in Thomas's treatment of the Incarnation, however, involves the union with and effects upon humanity that follow from the affirmation of his full humanity and divinity. Ambrose helps Thomas show the identification with us that Christ assumes. In the question on the defects of the soul that Christ assumed, he quotes Ambrose on Christ's sorrow. In the sed contra, Ambrose says that "as man He had sorrow; for He bore my sorrow. I call it sorrow, fearlessly, since I preach the cross."48 Ambrose, and Thomas with him, grasps the personal, salvific import of the theologically orthodox articulation of the Incarnation. His affirmation is deeply personal and experiential precisely because metaphysically and ontologically exact.

Thomas greatly appreciates Ambrose's way of formulating Christ's assumption of the human will and passions as my or mine. Hence, Ambrose serves as a key source for Thomas's articulation of Christ's two wills and two operations in qq. 18-19. Ambrose's De fide and Augustine's Contra

45 ST III, q. 9, a. 1, sc.46 ST III, q. 12, a. 2, sc. Thomas again appeals to De Incarnationis. For a treatment of Thomas's adoption but modification of Ambrose and John Damascene on the question of Christ's advance in wisdom, see Kevin Madigan, "Did Jesus 'Progress in Wisdom'? Thomas Aquinas on Luke 2:52 in Ancient and High-Medieval Context," Traditio 52 (1997): 179-200. For another treatment of the complexity of Thomas on this question, see Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., "Christ's Acquired Knowledge according to Thomas Aquinas: How Aquinas's Philosophy Helped and Hindered His Account," New Blackfriars 96 (2005): 255-68.47 ST III, q. 16, a. 8, sc.48 ST III, q. 15, a. 6, sc.

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The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments: The Influence of St. Ambrose on the tertia pars of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae

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