THE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB
CHAPTER IX
HOW COMPLETELY OUR LORD’S HUMAN NATURE IS DIVINE
ST. THOMAS (second question) asks himself this question : Is Hypostatic Union natural to Christ as man ? One sees the meaning of his interrogation. We have said that Hypostatic Union is nothing else than the personal existence of the Word, being directly the existence of Christ’s soul, and of Christ’s body.
The question, then, of St. Thomas is this : How far is this union between Divine Personality and human nature natural to the human part of our Lord’s Person?
First of all, it could not be natural in the sense of its flowing as it were from the human, the created part of Christ ; a creature of whatever rank could never have in itself the power of such a union.
It all comes from above. There is, however, another point of view. Our Lord’s human part never was without that divine existence ; neither His soul nor His body existed even for one instant in an un-divine way ; and it is on that account that it may be said that Hypostatic Union is natural to Our Lord as man, because as man He never knew any other sort of existence. It does not seem to imply contra diction that an adult human personality should be at a given moment hypostatically united with a divine person. But in that case, Hypostatic Union could not be called natural, as it succeeded a created human personal existence, and the Mother of that hypostatically assumed human nature could not truly be called the Mother of God. Our Lady, on the contrary, is truly the Mother of God, because Her Child never existed otherwise than as the Son of God.
However, we have not exhausted the subject yet. There is one more way for our Lord’s human nature to be naturally divine, more excellent than the mere fact of His never having been anything but divine. It is this. The mode of Our Lord’s formation in the womb of His Blessed Mother was such that the result had to be human nature with divine existence. She conceived from the Holy Ghost, and conception from the Holy Ghost is necessarily the origin of a nature that must have divinity. So Our Lord as man is naturally God, because the way in which He was conceived admits of nothing else.
This is clearly expressed in the archangel’s message to Our Lady. The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore also the Holy that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. He shall be called the Son of God, precisely because the Holy Ghost will overshadow her, so that Our Lord as man is God, in virtue of his conception through the Holy Ghost.
It might be said therefore that in Hypostatic Union the human nature is as divine as divine can be, not only because it always has been divine, but it is divine because, through the laws of the conception, it had to be divine.
The grace of the (Hypostatic) Union is natural to Him in His humanity according to a propriety of His Nativity, as He was thus conceived from the
Holy Ghost, that one and the same person should be naturally the Son of God and the Son of Man.
We ought never to think of Christ’s humanity as in any way separable from His Divinity, as prior to it, or as being the object of a predestination by itself. It was always divine, and according to St. Paul’s energetic expression Christ Jesus . . . being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. 2 There seems to be no inherent contradiction in the supposition that a living, grown-up human person might be united with a divine person hypostatically at a given moment. Human personality, then, would be swallowed up by Divine Personality. But such a union would differ in many things from the Hypostatic Union that is in Christ. The greatest difference, a difference which perhaps would constitute an infinite difference, would be this, that in such a supposition the human nature would not be divine by the very laws of its conception and birth.
The hypothesis would safeguard Hypostatic Union, but it would not be Christianity, and the mother of the privileged human being would not be the Mother of God ; she would be the mother of a man who became God, which is a totally different thing. The Church in her struggle with Nestorianism established the doctrine not only of the substitution of Divine Personality for human personality in Christ, but also the title of Mary to divine maternity, because her Son was conceived in such a wise as to be necessarily God.
In my hypothesis the man thus elevated to Hypostatic Union, though truly the Son of God, would owe endless gratitude to God for the favour. In the Hypostatic Union that is in Christ it could not be said that Christ’s humanity owes a debt of gratitude for its privilege. It has Divine Personality, divine existence through the laws of its birth ; Propter proprietates Nativitatis ipsius, as St. Thomas says in the article I have cited.
Nothing short of Hypostatic Conception can give us a complete idea of Christ. His flesh is all divine, and from the very beginning of the Nestorian controversies, the champions of orthodoxy appealed to the mystery of Christ’s body in the Eucharist as an argument in favour of the personal union, from the very start, in Christ. This very fact that we acknowledge that the only begotten Son of God died in His flesh, rose and ascended into heaven, qualifies us for offering the unbloody sacrifice in the Church and, by participating in the holy flesh and precious blood of the Redeemer, for receiving the mystical blessing so as to be sanctified. We receive it not as a common flesh, nor as the flesh of an eminently sanctified man, or of one who has received dignity by being united with the Logos or by divine indwelling, but as the true life-giving and proper flesh of the Word. For since He is, as God is, in His own nature life, and is become One with His own flesh, so has He imparted to this flesh a life-giving power. 1 This profession of faith, formulated in the council of Alexandria A.D. 430 under the presidency of St. Cyril, preparatory to the great Ephesine council, shows how clear and definite the views of Christian thinkers were as to the extent of Christ’s divineness.
There is one more consideration that finds a natural place here : St. Thomas says 2 that Hypostatic Union is something created. This doctrine, strongly emphasised by Aquinas, whilst containing a world of wisdom, might be easily misleading, as implying apparently an inferiority of divineness for Christ’s humanity.
That Hypostatic Union is a created thing ought to be clear to everyone, after a little thought. In Hypostatic Union Divine Personality replaces human personality ; or, what is more to the present purpose, Divine Personality is united with an individual human nature. Now such a union is brought about by God’s creative Omnipotence, uniting the two extremes into the One Ineffable.
If creative Omnipotence did not intervene, a human nature could never have divine existence, Divine Personality, except in the pantheistic sense. Personal being outside God is always the result of a creative act of God. Now the circumstance that personal being exists before namely, the second Person of the Trinity does not alter the case. It had to be given to an individual human nature, and such granting, or such uniting, supposes as much a creative act as the production of personal being ex nihilo. In this sense Hypostatic Union is something created, aliquid creatum. It is the result of a created act, but a result that implies a series of infinitudes. For though Hypostatic
Union be something created, in no sense is it something finite. To be a created thing and to be a finite thing are not necessarily synonymous. Philosophers admit degrees in Infinitude : there are greater infinitudes and lesser infinitudes. In order to explain Hypostatic Union exhaustively, no doubt every kind of infinitude ought to be pressed into service : it is deep calling unto deep. But one thing is certain : it has no finite element, though it be a created marvel. Christ’s human nature no doubt has finite elements, but that thing that makes the nature divine, Hypostatic Union, is all made up of Immensity and Illimitability.
CHAPTER X
THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH
THE commonest theological formula stating the Mystery of the Incarnation is this : God was made man/ We have scriptural authority for it in the words of St. John’s Gospel, first chapter : And the Word was made flesh/
St. Thomas makes an exhaustive study of the various formulas that express the wondrous mystery, in the sixteenth question of his third part of the Summa. It shows amongst other things how various were the aspects of the mystery known to the great thinker.
Now the formula God was made man has his full approval. It is a true statement. His interpretation is this : God is said to have been made man, because a human nature began to have being through the personality of a divine nature that pre-exists from all eternity/ l
In other words, for God to become man is merely the fact of a Divine Personality doing duty of personality for a particular human nature. Such office, Divine Personality did not exert from all eternity, but started it in time, in the hour which had been predestined. So it is both orthodox and grammatical to say : God became man.
Many of us would feel easier in our minds with that other formula, Man became God/ as it expresses better the elevation of human nature through Hypostatic Union, as it seems to contain no narrowing of the Godhead, but a broadening of manhood. Yet St. Thomas rejects the formula as misleading. His reasons are best given in the third article of the thirty-third question, where he treats of Christ’s conception. I give his meaning. We say with great propriety of language that God became man ; but we cannot say with any propriety that man became God. God merely assumed what is human ; but this human element never existed before the assumption. If it had existed it would have had a separate personality. Now it would be against the nature of Hypostatic Union to unite Divine Personality with a pre-existing complete human being having already personal existence.
In other words, the reason why it cannot be said that man became God is this, that the human part of Christ never had a personal existence of its own. The Godhead that created it in Mary’s womb performed the functions of personality in it from the first moment of its existence.
This, and no other, is the reason why the two propositions, God became man, and man became God, are not convertible propositions. Divine Personality existed in Itself from eternity, before it discharged the office of personality to a human nature. But the human nature never existed before it was given Divine Personality. Its creation and its being raised to Divine Personality are not two divisible moments.
But, on the other hand, St. Thomas admits the convertibility of the two propositions : God is man, and man is God. It is the factum est ( became ) the theologian does not like when Christ’s human nature is spoken of in connection with the possession of perfect Divinity. Only a pre-existing thing becomes properly something new, has new relations, new functions. St. John describes in his first chapter the life of the Word before the Word became flesh/ There is no history of Christ’s humanity before it became divine. Its history starts with its being supported in existence by the Personality of the Word.
But man is God, and God is man. For some minds the first formula is more prolific in spiritual consolations ; for other minds the second formula is more delightful. One is as good as the other, from the point of view of theological accuracy. By the first we mean that Divine Personality has replaced human personality ; by the second we look directly at the human element having its existence through Divine Personality. The first is no narrowing down of limitless infinitude, the second is limitless broadening of finiteness.
