Abstract
The doctrine of the Incarnation is the Christian teaching that Jesus Christ, the man who was born of Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, was not merely a human, but was God incarnate – one person of the Holy Trinity. Retaining his divine nature, the Son of God took on, or assumed, in the technical language, a human nature, and thus became a real human, no less a human than you or I. Jesus Christ, then, on the traditional view that Aquinas inherited and defended, is one divine person with two complete natures. This chapter will focus on Aquinas’s metaphysical understanding of the Incarnation. For a discussion of the goal of the Incarnation – the regeneration of humans to right relationship with God – see in this volume, by Thomas Williams.1