THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
CHAPTER VIII
AMEN, AMEN, I SAY TO YOU, BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS MADE, I AM. (John VIII, 58)
THE text that I chose for the title of this chapter is one of the many passages of the Gospel narratives that show how even medieval theology, with all its high metaphysics of the Incarnation, never goes beyond the theology of the Evangelist himself. It may state the matter in terms different from those of the inspired writer, but it does not state anything beyond the inspired writer’s expression.
The above text is quite clear; its authority is undoubted; the Jews saw the purport of Christ’s solemn asseveration: He gave Himself the age of the Deity itself. They pick up stones to punish the blasphemy there and then.
The declaration of His having unchanging divine existence, implied in the words Before Abraham was made, I am, was not, humanly speaking, directly intended by Christ, but was brought about by the allusion of the Jews to the death of Abraham and to Christ’s comparative youth. It was the Jews, not Christ, who introduced the subject of Abraham. The unexpected turn the controversy took shows how clear to Christ’s consciousness was the realisation of His own superiority to time and space. I now quote a casual remark of St. Thomas, which he makes in connection with something else, but which shows that the mind of the great theologian habitually moved in a sphere which I might call the sphere of St. John’s Gospel. The doctrine contained in the remark is an intellectual consequence of the metaphysical principle laid down by St. Thomas for the understanding of the Hypostatic Union. Yet intellectual consequence though it be, it is a natural commentary on the Gospel text quoted above. Although the human nature in Christ be something new, nevertheless the personality of that human nature is not new, but eternal. And as the name "God" is predicated of the man (Christ) not in virtue of the human nature, but in virtue of the personality, it does not follow that in the Incarnation we introduce a new God. But such a consequence would follow, if the man (in Christ) had a created personality, as those who put two persons in Christ (Nestorians) would be compelled to speak. Before Abraham was made, Christ is, because eternal Personality has replaced created personality. The thing represented by the term is belongs to personality.
Christ had eternal Personality, therefore He is eternally.
Christ’s human nature did not exist from eternity; it was formed in Mary’s womb. But it exists in virtue of an eternal existence, the Divine Personality. Suppose a man had lost his eyes or his hand; suppose the eyeball or the hand to be restored to him by Divine Power it is certain that the eye or the hand would be much younger than the man’s main organism. At the same time the new members would share the age of the whole organism, as they share its general vitality and power of existence. This comparison is used by St. Thomas in order to express how there is oneness of being, oneness of existence, and therefore oneness of age in Christ’s Personality, though there be in Him the human element inserted at a given period of history into the vitalities of Divine Personality.
The seventeenth question, from which the comparison is taken, is what may be considered the sublimest height of the metaphysics of the Incarnation. It contains two articles, and the second article is the climax of speculative thought: Whether there be only one "to be" in Christ. The answer is in the affirmative.
The replacement of personality which I have spoken of is the definition of Christian councils. It would be a sufficient formula to enable us to state the mystery. St. Thomas has drawn all his conclusions from that great ecclesiastical definition. All our views of Christ, all our love for Him, are not only modified by it, but actually born of it. But when St. Thomas begins to raise the question whether there is only one existence, one to be/ in
Christ, he evidently dares a high thing, more than seemed to be originally authorised by the language of the councils. Yet an affirmative answer to the question is the only thing that does justice to words like those of the text: Amen, Amen, I say to you, Before Abraham was made, I am. That human organism that speaks, IS, exists, has being in virtue of the existence that is Eternity itself, just as the miraculously restored eye lives in virtue of the life of the old organism. For St. Thomas, the conclusion that eternal existence is the existence of the nature formed in Mary’s womb seems to offer no difficulties. He arrives at it as calmly as you arrive at the conclusion that you want food when you are hungry. Existence follows personality, he says; for it is only a personality that makes a rational nature exist finally. Now, Christ’s human nature has Divine Personality; therefore it has Divine Existence. It is God, because it exists through God’s existence. Such is the meaning of that wonderful second article of quest. 17. Its calmness is as surprising as its speculative sublimity. Like the Divine Master who thought it no profanation to utter the words, Before Abraham was born, I am, in spite of the uproarious tumult it raised amongst the Pharisees, St. Thomas, the great master of theology, thinks it no exaggeration to say that Christ’s humanity has the same existence with the eternal God. After all, it is a smaller truth than to say that it has the same personality with the eternal God.
