The reception of Hugh of Saint Victor’s The Four Wills of Christ in the Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and in the Summa Theologiae

Abstract

Hugh of Saint Victor writes in his booklet On the four wills of Christ that, given the double nature of the Lord, we will find in him two wills: the divine will and the human will. But, although the divine will is simple, the human will presents itself reflecting the complexity of its nature. Hence Hugh distinguishes in Christ four wills: the divine, the rational human, the carnal and the will of piety -voluntas pietatis-. It is the latter that is mentioned by Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on the Sentences and in the Third Part of the Sum of Theology. We can see that Hugh presents these distinctions in the light of Scripture, offering as proof the passages of the Gospel with examples of each type of will. For his part, Aquinas confronts the argument based on Hugh that the will of piety be voluntas ut ratio, for that reason he identifies it with voluntas ut natura. The Angelic doctor sees all the non-rational aspects as globally ut natura, either because they follow nature, or because the convenience of some
good is naturally intuited. However, in Hugh, the voluntas pietatis is voluntas humanitatis; it is a characteristic will of man as such.