m in
personal being.

Reply Obj. 3: Some say that angels are not assumable, since they are
perfect in their personality from the beginning of their creation,
inasmuch as they are not subject to generation and corruption; hence
they cannot be assumed to the unity of a Divine Person, unless their
personality be destroyed, and this does not befit the
incorruptibility of their nature nor the goodness of the one
assuming, to Whom it does not belong to corrupt any perfection in the
creature assumed. But this would not seem totally to disprove the
fitness of the angelic nature for being assumed. For God by producing
a new angelic nature could join it to Himself in unity of Person, and
in this way nothing pre-existing would be corrupted in it. But as was
said above, there is wanting the fitness of need, because, although
the angelic nature in some is the subject of sin, their sin is
irremediable, as stated above (I, Q. 64, A. 2).

Reply Obj. 4: The perfection of the universe is not the perfection of
one person or suppositum, but of something which is one by position
or order, whereof very many parts are not capable of assumption, as
was said above. Hence it follows that only human nature is capable of
being assumed.
_______________________

SECOND ARTICLE [III, Q. 4, Art. 2]

Whether the Son of God Assumed a Person?

Objection 1: It would seem that the Son of God assumed a person. For
Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 11) that the Son of God "assumed
human nature _in atomo,"_ i.e. in an individual. But an individual in
rational nature is a person, as is plain from Boethius (De Duab.
Nat.). Therefore the Son of God assumed a person.

Obj. 2: Further, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 6) that the Son
of God "assumed what He had sown in our nature." But He sowed our
personality there. Therefore the Son of God assumed a person.

Obj. 3: Further, nothing is absorbed unless it exist. But Innocent
III [*Paschas. Diac., De Spiritu Sanct. ii] says in a Decretal that
"the Person of God absorbed the person of man." Therefore it would
seem that the person of man existed previous to its being assumed.

_On the contrary,_ Augustine [*Fulgentius] says (De Fide ad Petrum
ii) that "God assumed the nature, not the person, of man."

_I answer that,_ A thing is said to be assumed inasmuch as it is
taken into another. Hence, what is assumed must be presupposed to the
assumption, as what is moved locally is presupposed to the motion.