Reply Obj. 4: God made Christ
sin—not, indeed, in such sort that He had sin, but that He made Him a
sacrifice for sin: even as it is written (Hos 4:8): They shall eat the sins of My people—they, i.e., the priests, who
by the law ate the sacrifices offered for sin. And in that way it is written
(Isa 53:6) that the Lord hath laid on Him
the iniquity of us all (i.e., He gave Him up to be a victim for the sins of
all men); or He made Him sin (i.e.,
made Him to have the likeness of sinful
flesh), as is written (Rom 8:3), and this on account of the passible and
mortal body He assumed. (STh., III q.15
a.1 ad 4, in Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [trans. Laurence
Shapcote; The Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 19; Green Bay, Wis.: Aquinas
Institute; Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2018], 167)
Latin:
Ad quartum dicendum quod Deus fecit Christum peccatum, non quidem
ut in se peccatum haberet, sed quia fecit eum hostiam pro peccato, sicut Osee 4
dicitur, peccata populi mei comedent, scilicet sacerdotes, qui secundum legem
comedebant hostias pro peccato oblatas. Et secundum hunc modum dicitur Isaiae
53, quod dominus posuit in eo iniquitates
omnium nostrum, quia scilicet eum tradidit ut esset hostia pro peccatis
omnium hominum. Vel, fecit eum
peccatum, idest, habentem similitudinem
carnis peccati, ut dicitur Rom. 8. Et hoc propter corpus passibile
et mortale quod assumpsit. (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [The
Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 19; Green Bay, Wis.: Aquinas Institute;
Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2018], 167)
Aquinas understands
the Pauline words in the sense
that God made Christ “sin,” not so that Christ had sins but in the sense that
He became the victim of sin. (Mauro Gagliardi, The Mystery of Christ our
Savior: The Person, Life, and Redemption of Jesus According to St. Thomas
Aquinas [Manchester, N.H.: Sophia Institute Press, 2025], 84)
