Sect. 168Personal Names of the Redeemer: Summary of the Creeds and Decrees of the ChurchPersonal Names of the Redeemer: Summary of the Creeds and Decrees of the Church
I. The personal names of the Saviour directly characterize Him either as man or as God. As man He received at His birth the name of Jesus (,יֵשּׁוּעַ Jehovah is Salvation, Matt. 1:21), which is taken from His function of Redeemer. Jesus Himself has a predilection for the name “Son of Man.” This designation implies that He is pre-eminently the son of man, the second Adam far above the first in excellence; or also that He is not so much the son of one man as the son of all mankind, the desired of all nations. Neither of these names expresses that intrinsic excellence of His Person which places Him above all men, and fits Him (makes Him worthy) to effect the Redemption of all; this is done by the name Christ, “the Anointed” with Divinity. This name, as will be explained in its place, if fully understood, contains in a nutshell the whole subject-matter of “Christology.” The Saviour is called by Isaias (7) “Emmanuel,” that is, “God with us.” The manner in which He is with us is expressed in the language of the Church by the term “Word Incarnate,” or “the Word made flesh.” We shall show farther on that this term contains an explanation of the name Christ, and expresses directly and without figure of speech the constitution of the Person of the Saviour: hence Christology is appropriately described as the treatise on the Incarnate Word of God.
II. The Rule of Faith concerning the Person of the Saviour is laid down in the Apostles’ Creed or the Symbol of Baptism: upon this all subsequent definitions are founded. They, one and all, formulate the constitution of Christ in connection with His origin.
1. The original simple form of the symbol of the Apostles, as used in the West, runs thus: “I believe … in Jesus Christ His (the Father’s) only Son, our Lord, Who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” Here, Jesus, the Son of Mary, and Jesus, the only Son of God, Who shares with His Father the dominion of the world, is said to be one and the same person. Directly His birth from Mary is alone set forth; but the mention of the influence of the Holy Ghost on this birth points to the essential holiness of its product, viz. Christ, the Anointed; and the words “only Son of God the Father”; suppose His eternal origin, so that His birth in time appears as a second birth. Most of the Eastern forms run: “I believe in one God … and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” thus laying more stress on the indivisible unity, manifested by common Lordship, of God the Redeemer with God the Father.
2. The heresies of the first centuries, especially the Arian negation of the Divinity of Christ, which caused the definition of Christ’s “Eternal Lordship,” naturally led up to a closer determination of the relation which His second birth (of Mary) bears to His first birth (of the eternal Father); and also to an assertion of the reality of the second birth against the Gnostics. Thus the Council of Nicæa, after defining the Divine Sonship, continues: “Who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and took flesh [by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary] and was made Man.” The bracketed words, which belong to the Apostles’ Creed, were introduced into the Nicene formula by the First Council of Constantinople. It is worthy of remark that, whereas the symbol of the Apostles is formulated more on the line of the Synoptic Gospels, the Nicene Creed follows exactly the exposition of St. John 1:1–14.
3. The symbol of Nicæa did not speak with the same distinctness of the temporal birth of Christ as of His eternal birth. The terms “descending from heaven” (κατελθεῖν), “taking flesh” (σαρκοῦσθαι), and especially “being made man” (ἐνανθρωπεῖν), were misinterpreted by Nestorius to imply only a moral and accidental union of the Son of God with the man Jesus, the Son of Mary; he divided Christ into two distinct persons, the Divine and the human. Against this heresy the Council of Ephesus did not set up a new definition, finding the existing ones sufficient; but it approved the explanation of the Nicene symbol given by St. Cyril of Alexandria, and also his twelve anathematisms against Nestorius. According to St. Cyril, the three above expressions signify: a substantial or physical union of the Logos with the flesh or with humanity—by which the human flesh, becomes as truly His own flesh as the human flesh is the own flesh of the human soul—whence it further follows that the taking flesh out of the Virgin Mary on the part of the Logos, makes the Logos Himself, and no other, the Son of Mary. So that Christ is not the union of two persons (the Logos and Jesus), but one substantial being, the subject at the same time of the Divine and the human attributes (cf. Second Epistle of St. Cyril to Nestorius, and the Anath appended to the same). By this declaration the Council of Ephesus established the formal unity of the Nicene with the Apostles’ Creed, and gave the true sense of the κατελθεῖν and ἐνανθρωπεῖν used in the former. The second anathematism contains a formal definition of the essential constitution of Christ, giving its principle, its form, and its consequences: that the Word of God the Father unites Himself substantially (καθʼ ὑπόστασιν) to the flesh, and thus constitutes one Christ by making the flesh His own, and is consequently in one Person God and Man. Another remarkable formulation of the same doctrine is to be found in the Libellus Leporii, probably drawn up by St. Augustine, A.D. 424 or 425; it contains a retractation of the errors of the Pelagian priest Leporius. The “substantial union” of St. Cyril is here described as mixtio inconfusa (see the text in Hardouin, i. 1263.)
4. The Council of Chalcedon was specially directed against the Eutychians who understood the “taking flesh,” σάρκωσις, as implying a fusion of the two natures into one. Hence it lays stress upon the “being made man,” ἐνανθρώπησις, as the union of the Logos in His unaltered Divine nature with a perfect and unaltered human nature, and places the two natures side by side under the threefold aspect of perfection, consubstantiality, and origin by generation: “We confess and teach that our Lord is perfect in deity and perfect in humanity … consubstantial with the Father as to His deity, and consubstantial with us as to His humanity … born of the Father before all time as to His deity, born in recent times … of the Virgin Mary as to His humanity.” Further, the same Council lays down the technical term for the unity of Christ: “One and the same Christ, Son and Lord unbegotten, must be acknowledged in two natures not confused, changed, divided, or separated; the union nowhere taking away the difference of the natures, but rather safeguarding the properties of each, so that they concur in one person and hypostasis.” The symbol of Chalcedon (except for the formula relating to hypostatic unity) is nothing but a compendium of the famous Epistle of Pope Leo I. to Flavian, which, in its turn, is no more than a commentary on the symbol of the Apostles.
5. The symbol of Chalcedon, confirmed and in some parts proposed more distinctly by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Second of Constantinople, A.D. 553), received a further development in the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which defined against Monothelitism, that the two natures united in one subject are, in most intimate conjunction and subordination, the principles of a twofold mental life and operation; in other words, that Christ has two wills and two operations: the Divine will, by which He acts as God; the human will, by which He acts as man, this latter entirely distinct from, but entirely subject to, the former.
6. The most important formulary of the constitution of Christ originated in the West is contained in the so-called symbol of St. Athanasius. With the exception of the clauses comparing the union of the natures in Christ with the union of body and soul in man, it is formed upon the symbol of Chalcedon (see St. Augustine, In Joan. tr. 19). The Eleventh Council of Toledo, AD. 675, gives another very complete exposition of the doctrine of Incarnation. Lastly, the Bull of Eugenius IV. (Decretum pro Jacobitis) sums up all previous definitions on the subject in question.
III. The chief points of the Catholic dogma concerning the Person of Christ are the following:—
1. Christ is not a merely human Being: He is a Divine Person,—the Logos, or only-begotten Son of God,—and as such has an eternal existence. 2. But this same Person, besides His Divine nature, has a human nature taken unto Him in time; He possesses this nature as really as His Divine nature, and as really as man possesses human nature: hence, the Divine Person of the Word is really man, and as Divine Person incarnate, He is the Person of Christ 3. The Person named Christ is not merely an ideal or moral whole, but a Being one and indivisible in the strictest sense; in Him the Divine and the human nature are united into one substantial whole, like body and soul are united into one substantial human person. 4. But the unity of Christ, being the unity of two complete living natures, has an advantage over the unity of mind and matter in man; it is not a unity of nature in the proper sense, that is such an one in which the mixed elements complete and influence each other so as to lose the qualities they possessed before the union, and to form together a new principle of action and passion. In Christ the two natures remain strictly distinct; the lower does not in any way influence the higher, and the higher only influences the lower as it would do even if separated. 5. Hence the substantial union of the human nature with the Divine Person is a truly, but at the same time, a purely, personal and hypostatic union. It is personal and hypostatic because one Person possesses the two natures, and it is purely and only such, because the two natures remain entirely unaltered and distinct. Thus the Christ of Revelation appears as a unique and peculiar Being; no other being is constituted in the same marvellous way or of such elements.
I. The personal names of the Saviour directly characterize Him either as man or as God. As man He received at His birth the name of Jesus (,יֵשּׁוּעַ Jehovah is Salvation, Matt. 1:21), which is taken from His function of Redeemer. Jesus Himself has a predilection for the name “Son of Man.” This designation implies that He is pre-eminently the son of man, the second Adam far above the first in excellence; or also that He is not so much the son of one man as the son of all mankind, the desired of all nations. Neither of these names expresses that intrinsic excellence of His Person which places Him above all men, and fits Him (makes Him worthy) to effect the Redemption of all; this is done by the name Christ, “the Anointed” with Divinity. This name, as will be explained in its place, if fully understood, contains in a nutshell the whole subject-matter of “Christology.” The Saviour is called by Isaias (7) “Emmanuel,” that is, “God with us.” The manner in which He is with us is expressed in the language of the Church by the term “Word Incarnate,” or “the Word made flesh.” We shall show farther on that this term contains an explanation of the name Christ, and expresses directly and without figure of speech the constitution of the Person of the Saviour: hence Christology is appropriately described as the treatise on the Incarnate Word of God.
II. The Rule of Faith concerning the Person of the Saviour is laid down in the Apostles’ Creed or the Symbol of Baptism: upon this all subsequent definitions are founded. They, one and all, formulate the constitution of Christ in connection with His origin.
1. The original simple form of the symbol of the Apostles, as used in the West, runs thus: “I believe … in Jesus Christ His (the Father’s) only Son, our Lord, Who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” Here, Jesus, the Son of Mary, and Jesus, the only Son of God, Who shares with His Father the dominion of the world, is said to be one and the same person. Directly His birth from Mary is alone set forth; but the mention of the influence of the Holy Ghost on this birth points to the essential holiness of its product, viz. Christ, the Anointed; and the words “only Son of God the Father”; suppose His eternal origin, so that His birth in time appears as a second birth. Most of the Eastern forms run: “I believe in one God … and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” thus laying more stress on the indivisible unity, manifested by common Lordship, of God the Redeemer with God the Father.
2. The heresies of the first centuries, especially the Arian negation of the Divinity of Christ, which caused the definition of Christ’s “Eternal Lordship,” naturally led up to a closer determination of the relation which His second birth (of Mary) bears to His first birth (of the eternal Father); and also to an assertion of the reality of the second birth against the Gnostics. Thus the Council of Nicæa, after defining the Divine Sonship, continues: “Who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and took flesh [by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary] and was made Man.” The bracketed words, which belong to the Apostles’ Creed, were introduced into the Nicene formula by the First Council of Constantinople. It is worthy of remark that, whereas the symbol of the Apostles is formulated more on the line of the Synoptic Gospels, the Nicene Creed follows exactly the exposition of St. John 1:1–14.
3. The symbol of Nicæa did not speak with the same distinctness of the temporal birth of Christ as of His eternal birth. The terms “descending from heaven” (κατελθεῖν), “taking flesh” (σαρκοῦσθαι), and especially “being made man” (ἐνανθρωπεῖν), were misinterpreted by Nestorius to imply only a moral and accidental union of the Son of God with the man Jesus, the Son of Mary; he divided Christ into two distinct persons, the Divine and the human. Against this heresy the Council of Ephesus did not set up a new definition, finding the existing ones sufficient; but it approved the explanation of the Nicene symbol given by St. Cyril of Alexandria, and also his twelve anathematisms against Nestorius. According to St. Cyril, the three above expressions signify: a substantial or physical union of the Logos with the flesh or with humanity—by which the human flesh, becomes as truly His own flesh as the human flesh is the own flesh of the human soul—whence it further follows that the taking flesh out of the Virgin Mary on the part of the Logos, makes the Logos Himself, and no other, the Son of Mary. So that Christ is not the union of two persons (the Logos and Jesus), but one substantial being, the subject at the same time of the Divine and the human attributes (cf. Second Epistle of St. Cyril to Nestorius, and the Anath appended to the same). By this declaration the Council of Ephesus established the formal unity of the Nicene with the Apostles’ Creed, and gave the true sense of the κατελθεῖν and ἐνανθρωπεῖν used in the former. The second anathematism contains a formal definition of the essential constitution of Christ, giving its principle, its form, and its consequences: that the Word of God the Father unites Himself substantially (καθʼ ὑπόστασιν) to the flesh, and thus constitutes one Christ by making the flesh His own, and is consequently in one Person God and Man. Another remarkable formulation of the same doctrine is to be found in the Libellus Leporii, probably drawn up by St. Augustine, A.D. 424 or 425; it contains a retractation of the errors of the Pelagian priest Leporius. The “substantial union” of St. Cyril is here described as mixtio inconfusa (see the text in Hardouin, i. 1263.)
4. The Council of Chalcedon was specially directed against the Eutychians who understood the “taking flesh,” σάρκωσις, as implying a fusion of the two natures into one. Hence it lays stress upon the “being made man,” ἐνανθρώπησις, as the union of the Logos in His unaltered Divine nature with a perfect and unaltered human nature, and places the two natures side by side under the threefold aspect of perfection, consubstantiality, and origin by generation: “We confess and teach that our Lord is perfect in deity and perfect in humanity … consubstantial with the Father as to His deity, and consubstantial with us as to His humanity … born of the Father before all time as to His deity, born in recent times … of the Virgin Mary as to His humanity.” Further, the same Council lays down the technical term for the unity of Christ: “One and the same Christ, Son and Lord unbegotten, must be acknowledged in two natures not confused, changed, divided, or separated; the union nowhere taking away the difference of the natures, but rather safeguarding the properties of each, so that they concur in one person and hypostasis.” The symbol of Chalcedon (except for the formula relating to hypostatic unity) is nothing but a compendium of the famous Epistle of Pope Leo I. to Flavian, which, in its turn, is no more than a commentary on the symbol of the Apostles.
5. The symbol of Chalcedon, confirmed and in some parts proposed more distinctly by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Second of Constantinople, A.D. 553), received a further development in the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which defined against Monothelitism, that the two natures united in one subject are, in most intimate conjunction and subordination, the principles of a twofold mental life and operation; in other words, that Christ has two wills and two operations: the Divine will, by which He acts as God; the human will, by which He acts as man, this latter entirely distinct from, but entirely subject to, the former.
6. The most important formulary of the constitution of Christ originated in the West is contained in the so-called symbol of St. Athanasius. With the exception of the clauses comparing the union of the natures in Christ with the union of body and soul in man, it is formed upon the symbol of Chalcedon (see St. Augustine, In Joan. tr. 19). The Eleventh Council of Toledo, AD. 675, gives another very complete exposition of the doctrine of Incarnation. Lastly, the Bull of Eugenius IV. (Decretum pro Jacobitis) sums up all previous definitions on the subject in question.
III. The chief points of the Catholic dogma concerning the Person of Christ are the following:—
1. Christ is not a merely human Being: He is a Divine Person,—the Logos, or only-begotten Son of God,—and as such has an eternal existence. 2. But this same Person, besides His Divine nature, has a human nature taken unto Him in time; He possesses this nature as really as His Divine nature, and as really as man possesses human nature: hence, the Divine Person of the Word is really man, and as Divine Person incarnate, He is the Person of Christ 3. The Person named Christ is not merely an ideal or moral whole, but a Being one and indivisible in the strictest sense; in Him the Divine and the human nature are united into one substantial whole, like body and soul are united into one substantial human person. 4. But the unity of Christ, being the unity of two complete living natures, has an advantage over the unity of mind and matter in man; it is not a unity of nature in the proper sense, that is such an one in which the mixed elements complete and influence each other so as to lose the qualities they possessed before the union, and to form together a new principle of action and passion. In Christ the two natures remain strictly distinct; the lower does not in any way influence the higher, and the higher only influences the lower as it would do even if separated. 5. Hence the substantial union of the human nature with the Divine Person is a truly, but at the same time, a purely, personal and hypostatic union. It is personal and hypostatic because one Person possesses the two natures, and it is purely and only such, because the two natures remain entirely unaltered and distinct. Thus the Christ of Revelation appears as a unique and peculiar Being; no other being is constituted in the same marvellous way or of such elements.
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