The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 10, October, 1869 to March, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
The Incarnation of the Word is like to this union, hence called
hypostatic or personal union. The second person of the Trinity united
himself to the entire human nature, constituted of body and soul, in
a manner so close and intimate as to be _himself_ the subsistence
of the human nature; the latter never enjoying a subsistence of
its own, because, contemporaneously to the very first instant of
its existence, it became the internal, the immediate, and the most
intimate organ of the Word of God, and subsisted of the subsistence
of the Word, so that it never bore the attribution and solidarity of
those actions which have an immediate origin in human nature, but the
attribution and solidarity, and, consequently, the moral worth, of
those actions belonged to the personality of the Word, according to
the axiom that _Actiones sunt suppositorum_.
Hence the union between the Word of God and his human nature was not
a moral union, which always implies the distinct individuality and
personality of the two terms united, as Nestorius thought, and many
would-be Christians of the present day seem to hold.
Nestorius was ready to grant that the union between the Word and
human nature was as high and intimate as possible, so far as moral
union can permit; but never would he concede that it was any higher
than simple moral union, which kept whole and entire the two
individualities united. Consequently, he admitted two persons and
two individualities in Christ--the _Word_ of God, and the man called
Christ. From which theory it follows that our Lord was a mere man--a
saint, if you will, the highest of all saints, yet simply a man.
Catholic doctrine, on the contrary, teaching that the union of the
Word and the human nature was personal, inasmuch as the divine person
of the Word was the subsistence in which his human nature subsisted,
teaches consequently, at the same time, that in Christ there is one
person, one individuality--the divine personality of the Word; that
therefore Christ, the new individual, is God, being the second divine
person, in which both his divine and human nature subsist. Nor was
the human nature of this new individual so absorbed by the divine
personality as to cease to be a substance, as Eutyches affirmed, who
upheld, it would seem, a fusion and a mixture of the two natures
altogether inconceivable and absurd.
From all we have said we may form quite an accurate idea of what the
hypostatic union really means. It is the union, or the meeting, so
to speak, of the human and divine natures in the one single point
of contact, the infinite personality of the Word of God; the human
nature having no personality of its own, but subsisting of the
identical personality of the Word.
The new individual possessed of the divine and human nature in the
unity of the single personality of the Word is Jesus Christ.
To complete now the idea of the hypostatic union, we shall point out
some consequences which evidently flow from that union:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account