The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

compelled lo perceive as not self is not a perception of self, and we can
only on reflection believe such to be the case." 528 Mill sums up the opinion
of Hamilton as this: "Belief is a higher source of evidence than knowledge;
belief is ultimate: knowledge only derivative; knowledge itself finally rests
on belief; natural beliefs are the sole warrant for all our knowledge.
Knowledge, therefore, is an inferior ground of assurance to natural belief;
and as we have belief which tells us that we know, and without which we
could not be assured of the truth of our knowledge, so we have, and are
warranted in having, beliefs beyond our knowledge; beliefs respecting the
unconditioned, respecting that which is in itself unknowable."
How little we are competent to decide on the metaphysic of a
personal union, in which an infinite person takes to itself a human nature,
is manifest when we attempt the metaphysic of that personal union with
which we are most familiar--the union of soul and body in man. In our
own persons, we are not always, perhaps are never, able to draw the line
between what the body does through the soul, and what the soul does by
the body. In ourselves there is a shadow of the marvel of the
Communicatio idiomatum. The soul is not mechanically, nor merely
organically, united with the body, but is incarnate, "made flesh." It takes
the body into personal unity with it, so that henceforth there is a real
fellowship of properties. What the soul has per se, the body has through
the soul in the personal union. There is a real conjoint possession of
powers by body and soul in the one human person.
Fellowship of Properties in the human person.
The body has real properties, by means of the union with spirit,
which it could not have as mere matter. That which is per se but flesh, is, in
the personal union, body; and body is an integral part of the person of man.
It receives personality from the spirit--not that the spirit parts with its
personality so as in any sense to lose it, nor that the body receives it
intrinsically, so as in any sense to hold it apart from the spirit, but that this
one personality, essentially inhering in the spirit, now pertains to the
complex being man; two natures share in one personality, the one by
intrinsic possession,
528 Note A, in Reed, pp. 749, 750.