Annotation CLXXXVI

”Forty and six years was this temple in building.” — John 2:20

Whether the body of Christ was first formed in the womb before it was assumed by the deity.

Augustine, in the book of 83 Questions, question 56, so expounds this passage that he seems to affirm that the body of Christ was conceived in the womb of [his] mother before it was assumed by the divinity — saying thus: “Human conception is said to proceed and be perfected thus: that in the first six days it has, as it were, a likeness of milk; in the following nine days it is converted into blood; then in twelve days it is solidified; in the remaining eighteen days it is formed, up to the perfect lineaments of all the members. Forty-five days, then, with one added — which signifies the sum: for six, and nine, and twelve, and eighteen, brought together into one, make forty-five; one being added, therefore, as has been said, they make forty-six. Not absurdly, then, is the temple said to have been built in forty-six years — [the temple] which signifies his body: so that, as many years as there were in the building of the temple, so many days there were in the perfecting of the Lord’s body.”

Peter Lombard, in the third book of the Sentences, distinction 3, sifting this interpretation of Augustine, writes thus: “On the occasion of these words, certain [men] have presumed to say [that] the form of the Lord’s body [was] perfected in so many days, after the manner of other bodies, and distinguished by the lineaments of [its] members; and [that] then the Word is said to have united to itself flesh and soul: and in this manner they say that that number befits the perfection of the Lord’s body. But there was another reason for that saying, from which a sound understanding of the word arises. For Augustine did not say that [as though denying] that, as soon as that flesh — sanctified by the working of the Holy Spirit, and separated from the rest — was united to the Word of God together with a soul (so that [he] might be perfect and true God, [and] perfect and true man): but [he said it] because the distinction of the members of that Lord’s body, in the very moment of the conception and of the union of God and man, was so slight and small that it could scarcely be submitted to human sight; but in those days which Augustine mentions, it was perfected and made conspicuous.”