Ontology, or the Theory of BeingCoffey, P. (Peter)
Philosophy
Ontology, or the Theory of Being
Coffey, P. (Peter)
Ontology
The principal difficulty against this view is a theological
difficulty. As formulated by Urraburu,(295) it appears to involve
an ambiguity in the expression “substantial union”. It is briefly
this: If the subsistence proper to a complete individual nature
adds no positive perfection to the latter, so that the latter
necessarily subsists and is a person unless it is actually assumed
into a higher personality, and by the very fact that it is not
actually so assumed, then the human nature of Christ “is as
complete in every way and in every line of substantial perfection,
by virtue of its own proper entity, when actually united with the
Divine Person, as it would be were it not so united, or as the
person of Peter, or Paul, or any other human person is”. But this
implies that there are in Christ “two substances complete in every
respect”. Now between two such substances “there cannot be a
substantial union,” a union which would constitute “one being,”
“unum per se ens”. Hence the view in question would appear to be
inadmissible.
But it is not proved that the union of “two substances complete in
every respect” cannot result in the constitution of a being that
is really and genuinely one—“unum per se ens”—_in the case in
which the union is a personal union_. The hypostatic union of the
human nature of Christ with the Divine Person is primarily a
_personal_ union whereby the former nature subsists by and in the
Divine Personality. It has the effect of constituting the united
terms “one subsisting being,” and therefore has supereminently, if
not formally, the effect of a “substantial union”. Nay, it is a
“substantial” union in the sense that it is a union of two
substances, not of a substance and accidents; and also in the
sense that it is not a mere accidental aggregation or artificial
juxtaposition of substances, resulting merely in the constitution
of collective or artificial unity, a _unum per accidens_. But is
it a “substantial” union in the sense that it is such a union of
substances as results in one “nature”? Most certainly not; for
this was the heresy of the Monophysites: that in Christ there is
only one nature resulting from the union of the human nature with
the Divine. If then, with Urraburu, we mean by “nature” simply
“substance regarded as a principle of action” (71), and if,
furthermore, the hypostatic union does not result in one “nature,”
neither does it result in one “substance,” nor can it be a
“substantial” or “natural” union in this sense.(296) He does not
say, of course, that the hypostatic union is a “substantial union”
which results in “one nature,” or even explicitly that it results
in “one substance,” but he says that the two substances are
“substantially conjoined,” “substantialiter conjunguntur”; and he
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