Thomistica

The Purpose of Union at the Personal Level

 

In order to gain some understanding of the weight that the incarnation had on the trajectory of humanity and in what ways, it must be defined at what level of reality Christ is one and at what level of reality he is two, assuming his divinity. How we are to interpret this twofold reality is best understood patristically, through those who effectively combatted heresy through their promise of the Holy Spirit, that is, pre-nicene theologians. All heresies fall into one of two categories of error: lessening the divinity of Christ as if it were not divine or elevating his humanity as if it were not human. To these errors, the fathers responded by affirming that Christ was perfectly human and perfectly divine, encompassing the fullness of what it means to be either, not lessening or elevating one or the other. The Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451 provides paraments for those who endeavor into the technicalities of the so-called hypostatic union:

 

So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us. 

 

These parameters were further expounded upon at the Third Council of Constantinople in A.D. 680, intended to combat those who claimed one will in Christ, attempting to reintroduce a form of monophysism/miaphysism:

 

And we proclaim equally two natural volitions or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will. For the will of the flesh had to be moved, and yet to be subjected to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For just as his flesh is said to be and is flesh of the Word of God, so too the natural will of his flesh is said to and does belong to the Word of God, just as he says himself: I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me, calling his own will that of his flesh, since his flesh too became his own. For in the same way that his all holy and blameless animate flesh was not destroyed in being made divine but remained in its own limit and category, so his human will as well was not destroyed by being made divine, but rather was preserved, according to the theologian Gregory, who says: “For his willing, when he is considered as saviour, is not in opposition to God, being made divine in its entirety.” And we hold there to be two natural principles of action in the same Jesus Christ our lord and true God, which undergo no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, that is, a divine principle of action and a human principle of action, according to the godly-speaking Leo, who says most clearly: “For each form does in a communion with the other that activity which it possesses as its own, the Word working that which is the Word’s and the body accomplishing the things that are the body’s”. For of course we will not grant the existence of only a single natural principle of action of both God and creature, lest we raise what is made to the level of divine being, or indeed reduce what is most specifically proper to the divine nature to a level befitting creatures for we acknowledge that the miracles and the sufferings are of one and the same according to one or the other of the two natures out of which he is and in which he has his being, as the admirable Cyril said. Therefore, protecting on all sides the “no confusion” and “no division”, we announce the whole in these brief words: Believing our lord Jesus Christ, even after his incarnation, to be one of the holy Trinity and our true God, we say that he has two natures [naturas] shining forth in his one subsistence [subsistentia] in which he demonstrated the miracles and the sufferings throughout his entire providential dwelling here, not in appearance but in truth, the difference of the natures being made known in the same one subsistence in that each nature wills and performs the things that are proper to it in a communion with the other; then in accord with this reasoning we hold that two natural wills and principles of action meet in correspondence for the salvation of the human race.

 

The Nature of the Union

 

Firstly, it must be explained how personhood can belong simultaneously to two individual natures subsisting as one. It must be clarified as to what is meant by “person” or “hypostasis” and what is meant by “nature” so that differences in theological claims can be proven as semantical or doctrinal. If semantical, then there is no real difference in doctrinal concepts but only an apparent difference in the meaning of the term used to signify the concepts. What is meant by nature in the metaphysical sense can be understood as “the principle of motion in that in which it is essentially and not accidentally” or “that which informs a thing with its specific difference.” These are both Aristotelian definitions, the first from Aristotle himself and the second from Boethius. More simply, nature is an intrinsic principle of motion. This is the meaning that was used during Chalcedon and this is the meaning which we now affirm. Now, person, hypostasis, or suppositum, all which can be used in this context, signify something other than nature, something more concrete. Nature belongs to a species while personhood signifies the addition of accidents and individuating principles. 

 

…the nature and the suppositum really differ; not indeed as if they were wholly separate, but because the suppositum includes the nature, and in addition certain other things outside the notion of the species, i.e. accidents and individuating principles. Hence the suppositum is taken to be a whole which has the nature as its formal part to perfect it. (ST III, q. 2, a. 2, co.)

 

Now, it can only be said that person and nature are distinct in a subject contained in a species. For there is only one God but billions of humans. Therefore, God’s very nature which is unique is itself His individuating principle, personhood being identical to essence in each of the divine persons. But in man, nature is not unique to one alone but is common to the species. Consequently, nature as taken in the abstract does not include the individuating principle in each concrete subject of the human species. It can properly be said that the individual human nature is assumed by the divinity of the Son, that very divinity acting as the personhood which the individual human nature of Christ is dependent on.

 

Regarding what is united, the human and the divine, it must be said that two extremes remain in one person. This may seem like a contradiction unless we say that the union is by virtue of relation, similar to how we say that the persons of the Trinity are distinguished by relation. The difference between the use of relation in triadology and in christology is the resultant term. While the resultant of relation in triadology is a personal distinction, the resultant of relation in christology is a personal union. Since the natures of each of the extremes are contraries, one nature being uncreated, infinite, and simple, and the other nature being created, finite, and composite, the natures must remain distinguished. Otherwise, it would follow that the infinite would no longer remain infinite, assuming the essential properties of that which is finite since no contradictions can be included in the definition of a term. But this is repugnant to the infinite since divine quiddity is unchanging. Therefore, it is impossible to say that the relation of union takes place in the divine person assuming lest a change occur in the substance as if an accident were to inhere in it or potentiality were actualized. So, no new relation occurs inherently in the divine person assuming. Rather, the relation of the union must occur in the nature assumed. Scotus here stakes his claim on the type of union occurring between the natures:

 

For ‘union’ is a special relation of dependence and order, not of the same idea in each extreme: real in the nature united and not of reason, and a relation of inequality. (Ord. III, d. 1, q. 1, n. 14)

 

To summarize what is stated, the kind of relation is this: an unequal relation of dependence. It is unequal in the sense that it is asymmetrical or unilateral, occurring solely in the nature assumed, meaning the individual human nature relates to the hypostasis of the Word as obtaining the personhood which the Word had already, with no new relation occurring in the Word. It is dependent because the individual nature obtains dependency on the personhood of the Word. The nature becomes en-personed. Now, it is not to be understood that the person in which the human nature of Christ subsists is some sort of addition to the nature. Rather, the personhood in Christ is the consequence of a negative condition. An individual nature belongs to a newly distinguished person if it is not sustained by the personhood of a prior subject. The individual nature of Christ remains assumed to a prior subject, that being the person of the Word. Therefore, the individual sustenance of the human nature by the Word is never negated, as it is normally by God in man’s nature, it never receives distinguished personhood from the Word. Nor does human nature essentially require this negation because all that is necessarily predicated of human nature still remains, including individual personhood. The miracle of the incarnation occurs in this way: God, by virtue of His omnipotence, prevents the individual nature of Christ from lacking dependence of personality, assuming the nature to the subsistence of the Word, with no new relation in the Word, but a new relation in the individual nature, a relation of dependence. This negation of personhood, commonly called Negatio ulterioris ordinationis, was first introduced by Scotus. Since personhood is negated from the individuated human nature, and the nature is assumed by the person of the Son, no extension occurs in the Son’s personhood to the human nature.

 

Although no new extension or relation occurs in person the Word and there remains one being hypostatically, this being now subsists in two natures by virtue of the human nature’s dependence on the personhood of the Word:

 

“…being pertains both to the nature and to the hypostasis; to the hypostasis as to that which has being—and to the nature as to that whereby it has being…  it must be borne in mind that if there is a form or nature which does not pertain to the personal being of the subsisting hypostasis, this being is not said to belong to the person simply, but relatively.” (ST III, q. 17, a. 2, co.)

 

The personhood of the Word is simply or identically the divine nature and relates passively, not as if acted on, to the human nature which actively depends on the personhood of the Word for individuation. This must be so since the personhood of the Word is simply or identically the divine essence and accrues being in a new nature not by virtue of addition but by supplying the being which it already had to the human nature through, that same being which existed prior to the incarnation. Therefore, nature was accrued relatively, passively respective to the person or nature assuming and actively by the nature assumed. Regarding identity, the person of the Son is absolutely identical with the divine nature and relatively identical to the human nature. 

 

Operation is the motion that originates from a thing’s nature. If operation is defined as “motion originating from a principle” or “activity originated from a principle” and nature is the principle of motion, then it is necessary to imply that two operations flow from two natures, one person subsisting in both. Through divine nature which is the Word’s own personhood, things pertaining to the divine are wrought, while simultaneously, through human nature, things pertaining to human nature are wrought. The divine nature acts from eternity, perceived by us as premeditated, and the human nature acts in temporality through motion. So there is a stark distinction between divine internal operation which is immobile and identical to substance and human internal operation which is classified as the accidental movement from potency to act. Yet both are attributed to the same being or person, the divine internal operation occurring eternally while its supernatural effect occurs externally, manifesting itself temporarily in creation as a natural effect produced by the distinguished human operation as if through instrumentation. From the human operation proceeds the manifold operations of its parts since human nature is composite: those of the mind or soul (memory, intellect, will) and those of the body (sensation, material actualization or decay, bodily activity). The intrinsic divine operation includes a lower operation in its external effect, that being the manifold operations flowing from human nature:

 

…wherever there are several mutually ordained agents, the inferior is moved by the superior…  [but] the operation which belongs to a thing by its form is proper to it, nor does it belong to the mover, except insofar as he makes use of this kind of thing for his work. Hence, wheresoever the mover and the moved have different forms or operative faculties, there must the operation of the mover and the proper operation of the moved be distinct; although the moved shares in the operation of the mover, and the mover makes use of the operation of the moved, and, consequently, each acts in communion with the other. (ST III, q. 19, a. 1, co.)

 

Since the human nature is dependent on the divine nature for its personhood, miraculous negation of individuation apart from the divine is included in the external effect of the internal divine operation, and all of the operations in Christ are premeditated in the divine as carried out through an instrument. The operations of the human nature, though distinct from the divine nature, are carried out in perfect accordance with the divine nature. In other words, that which is carried out by the divine nature is uniform with that which is carried out by the human nature as divine is to human. The human nature perfectly resembles the divine nature, only in the human version. 

 

Analogy

 

A common analogy used by theologians, notably John of Damascus and Maximos the Confessor, to combat miaphysitism/monophysitism, as well as monothelitism (the belief of one will in Christ), is a flaming sword. When the sword pierces or slices it cuts and burns as one but the action of piercing and slicing belongs to the sword while the action of burning belongs to the flame. For the principle of motion in the flame merits heat and the principle of motion in the sword merits sharpness. But these principles do not mutually include one another. The principle of motion intrinsic to fire does not merit sharpness nor does the principle of motion intrinsic to the sword merit heat, but only relative to the principle that it subsists concurrently with. Even more so is the case with Christ’s dual natures. For heat and sharpness are not mutually exclusive, but ineffable and comprehensible, super-essential and essential, immutable and moved, uncreated and created, infinite and finite, and simple and composite are all contradictories which cannot be identical to the subject that they are predicated of unless subsisting together relative to that which they have in common. The only thing that the divine and human natures have in common is that their subsistence is individuated, the human nature from other concrete forms of that same nature and the divine nature from other persons of the same essence. Therefore, they can be united in what is common to them. But what is common to them is not nature and all that is included in the nature of each. Rather, it is a specific property of that nature: that the nature belongs to the subsistence of that which is individuated. Therefore, therefore it is utterly blasphemous to say that Christ is a composite nature for that would mean that he would contain the most prominent of all contradictions: the chasm between divine substance and creaturely substance. This chasm is closed not by identity in nature, but by identity in person. In the same way that the principle of operation for sharpness differs from the principle of operation for heat, the principle of operation for seeing of the blind differs from the principle of operation for the touching of those eyes. The nature of man does not have in it the power to order the coincidental timeliness of natural forces restoring the man’s sight and nor does the nature of God include in it the restriction of form that enables bodily touch.

 

Miaphysitism Destroys Trinitarian Terminology

 

If Christ has one nature then it is either composite or the definition of the nature does not differ from the definition of hypostasis. However, the nature of the divine essence cannot be composite. This would have one of three consequences. Either Christ is separated from the identity in nature which the Father and Spirit have, the divine persons are each independent in nature, or the divine essence is subject to accidental change and capable of composition. All of these are blatant heresies for obvious reasons. St. John of Damascus proves this in respect to a particular operation, the will:

 

… if we say that there is one compound will in Christ, we separate Him in will from the Father, for the Father's will is not compound. It remains, therefore, to say that the subsistence of Christ alone is compound and common, as in the case of the natures so also in that of the natural properties. (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Ch. 14)

 

And if nature does not differ from hypostasis, they are synonymous in definition, and the principle of motion as well as the operations produced by that principle belong to hypostasis, then the persons of the Trinity would all be distinct in nature since nature and its operation in no way differ from the subsistence to which they belong. As St. John of Damascus concludes:

 

… if we allow that they belong to subsistence, we will be forced to say that the three subsistences of the Holy Trinity have different wills and different energies [operations]. (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3, Ch. 14)

 

Also, if we say that Christ has one nature that is simple or un-composed, then nature must be one of three things. Either it is human plainly, divine plainly, or a third kind of nature, neither divine nor human but produced from two contrary principles. If it is plainly human or plainly divine then only Christianity is ultimately debunked and Docetism or Arianism are implied. If the nature is plainly one or the other, whatever nature belongs to Christ excludes what pertains to the other nature. But Christ clearly was born, walked, preached, and died, all things which pertain to human nature and therefore that which pertains to human nature cannot be excluded from the subsisting subject. He also very evidently was born of a virgin, prophesied, walked on water, and resurrected which, though visible, were wrought by the operation of the God which invisibly arbitrates reality. Therefore, that which the human nature subsisted in, the divine nature did also. If he is neither nature, but third kind, then one of either contraries is added from the set of properties and qualities that compose this new nature. But this is absurd for many reasons. Primarily, since divinity is perfectly one, if it is included, it must be perfectly included and therefore exclude every quality or property pertaining to human nature. 

 

Obj. 1: Analogy of Body and Soul

 

St. Athanasius was the first to use the unity of the distinct natures of the body and soul as an analogy for the unity of distinct natures in Christ. It is commonly objected that if the natures in Christ are not taken to be one composite nature, then Christ would have three natures. But this is false because the distinction of natures between body and soul do not indicate an essential distinction. The essence of man is composed of body and soul and therefore man’s nature is composite. However, God’s essence is not composite and thereby nor can his nature be composite. Therefore, it cannot be added in composition to human nature which is indeed one composed nature. For the essence of man is a composite nature and the essence of God is not. But there is not one essence of God and man since God is altogether simple. Therefore, the composition of natures in the singular nature of man cannot be applied to the union of natures in Christ.

 

Obj. 2: Conflict of Wills

 

It is also sometimes said that a distinction of wills, a distinction which multiplies, must imply contrariety of will. But this is not the case because God and man both will according to the form proper to their nature. Each will has the same intellectual object but one proper to the form of human nature and the other as identical to the divine essence. If there is conflict between the wills, the object of the will would have to be different. This different object of the will would have to be identified. St. Maximos the Confessor poses what this object could be by identifying different modes in which Christ could will:

 

…it remains for us to discover the real cause of conflict of wills. What do you say to this? The natural will or sin? If you say it's the natural will, and since we know there is no other cause of this than God, then you make God the author of the conflict of wills. But if the cause is sin and Christ is free from sin, then the incarnate God has no opposition [that is, opposition of conflict] of any kind in those wills proper to His natures, since no effect can result from a cause which does not exist. (Disputations with Pyrruhs)

 

The mode of willing is either sinful, or inherently in conflict with the divine will. Christ has no mode of willing since through his disposition to the divine through identity in subsistence, his will is determined by what is unchanging. Only God Himself could willfully create a contrary object in the will of the nature which He unites Himself to subsistently. But this would mark a defect in the divine will to cause opposition within the Son’s own hypostasis. And the divine will is super-abundantly perfect. Negating the possibility of a gnomic will (one that has modality) already elements the possibility of a sin-capable will, since sin is a mode of willing in which the object of the will is disproportionate to man’s highest end, beatitude. Sin is not natural to human nature. Rather, the possibility of corruption is natural to it. Therefore, it remains that Christ healed what he assumed, including the will. If Christ has a divine will eternally, prior to the incarnation, then he must have assumed a distinct human will along with the nature lest it not be healed.

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Article by Matthew Shuler