System of Sacred Theology · §2.1.9 · Ludwig Crocius

1. The rational soul is the true informing form of man — not accidental motion, crasis, or Averroist assistance

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1. The rational soul is the true form of man.

I mean a form that is not accidental — such as continuous and perennial motion, which Cicero in the first Tusculan Questions believed Aristotle meant by the word entelechy, and such as the mixture of the primary qualities, which both impious heretics (Carpocrates, Epiphanes, Prodicus, the Cainites and Antitactae, in Theodoret, book 5 On divine decrees, chapter on man) and Galen (in the book That the manners of the soul follow the temperament of the body, chapters 3 and 4, and Epidemic book 6, and book 3 On affected places) imagined as the form of man;

nor an assisting form, such as Averroes (On the soul book 3, chapter 5) thought to be one for all, in reality separated from all, and joined to individuals only through images of phantasy residing in them;

but an informing form, which informs the body and with it constitutes man in a certain species of things.

Latin

1. Anima rationalis est vera hominis forma. Formam dico, neque accidentalem, qualis est continuata & perennis motio, quam entelecheian voce Aristoteli intellectam putavit Cicero, 1. Tusc. quaestionum, & qualis est primarum qualitatum crasis, quam hominis formam finxerunt, tam impii haeretici, Carpocrates, Epiphanes, Prodicus, Cajani & Antitactae, apud Theodoretum lib. 5. de divinis decretis, cap. de homine, quam Galenus, libro quod mores animi sequantur temperamentum corporis cap. 3. & 4. & lib. 6. Epid. & lib. 3. de locis affectis: neque assistentem, qualem Averroes lib. 3. de an. cap. 5. putavit unicam esse omnium, re ab omnibus separatam, neque nisi per imagines phantasiae insidesentes singulis conjunctam: sed informantem, quae corpus informet & cum eo hominem in certa specie rerum constituat.

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About this text

Ludwig Crocius's System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636), all four books: theology and its rule in Scripture; man's last end, death and the resurrection; God, the Trinity, creation, providence and sin; and the grace of Christ, the Word and sacraments, faith, the Christian life and prayer.

Ludwig Crocius (1586–1655) taught theology and philosophy at Bremen and sat as a delegate at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). A Calvinist of the irenic school, he spent his career seeking common ground between the Reformed and Lutheran churches.

His System of Sacred Theology (Bremen, 1636) is a full Reformed dogmatics in the high-orthodox style: precise definitions, ordered questions, objections raised and answered.

Date1636 AD (Bremen; Reformed professor)

EditionSyntagma sacrae theologiae (Bremen: Berthold Villerian, 1636)

English follows the 1636 Bremen Latin (Berthold Villerian), read chapter by chapter from the SLUB Dresden page images, with a machine reading of the same pages as a check. No modern English was copied. The author index at the end of the volume is not translated.

Reference

VD17 14:684303C. SLUB id335860389.

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