Annotation CCXIII

”Glorify thou me, Father, with the glory which I had before the world was.” — John 17:5

Whether Christ began to be.

Augustine, in tract 105 on John: “Before the world was,” he says, “neither were we, nor [was] he himself, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” etc. St. Thomas, examining this passage — drawn by the scholastics for the sake of disputation — in the third volume of the Summa, question 16, article 9, says that the proposition which certain [men] build up from these words — namely, “This man” (Christ being pointed out) “began to be” — abhors from Christian piety, if nothing be added to it, and savors of the Arian dogma; because, when we say “Christ,” we designate his eternal hypostasis, to whose eternity “to begin to be” is repugnant. He judges, therefore, that Augustine’s opinion is to be understood with some addition — so that we say [that] the man Christ Jesus was not, before the world was, according to [his] humanity.