Sect. 171Position of the Human Element in Christ: Its Union with the Divine Person Into One Being—as Taught Against the Heresies of the First Four CenturiesPosition of the Human Element in Christ: Its Union with the Divine Person Into One Being—as Taught Against the Heresies of the First Four Centuries

Although the controversies of the first four centuries mainly bore on the reality of the two natures of Christ, they yet gave occasion not only for the assertion of the union of these into one person, but also for the explanation of the mode of the union. In the present chapter we attempt to give an outline of this earliest evolution of the dogma “that the Son of God and the Son of Mary are one and the same Person.”

I. From the beginning the identity of the Son of Mary with the Son of God, expressed in the symbol of the Apostles, was universally understood and professed as meaning that the same subject is both God and man; and consequently, that the human nature of this subject must not be considered as a being independent in itself, but as appertaining to the Person of the Son of God. Such was the profession of faith for which the earliest martyrs shed their blood: the Apostle St. Andrew, St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp, and many others whose “Acta” have come down to us, died for their faith in “a crucified God.”

II. Cerinthus the Gnostic “divided Jesus” into a heavenly being called Christ, and a human being born of Mary, the former dwelling with the latter. St. Irenæus upheld against this heresy the Catholic doctrine that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Word of God, is one and the same subject, Who, on account of His double birth, and of the mixture of the human with the Divine substance, possesses two natures, and so unites in Himself the attributes of both (Lib. iii., esp. cc. 16–19). Other Gnostics denied the reality of human nature in Christ, because they thought its inherent imperfections incompatible with His Divinity. The Fathers who refute them never solve the difficulty by conceding the non-reality of the human body, but argue that the assumption of a real human body was congruous or necessary for the redemption of man, and therefore not incompatible with God’s dignity (Tertull. De Carne Christi, c. 5). The same Tertullian, writing against Praxeas, who made Jesus a person filled with the power of God but not God, most appropriately explains how the human substance was assumed into the Divine Person without any confusion of the Divine and human substances (Contra Praxeam, c. 27).

III. The Arians admitted one person with one nature in Christ, and, from His human attributes, they inferred that He was but a created being. Against this heresy the Fathers taught the concrete (substantial) Divinity of Jesus, maintaining that God not only dwelt in Him as in the Prophets and Saints, but was really made man. They acknowledged that the infirmities of human nature really and truly belonged to the subject whose Divinity they defended, and to whom Scripture unmistakably attributes Divine properties. They accounted for the application of human attributes to a Divine Person by establishing that the whole humanity, essence, and nature are owned by that Person, and are “the flesh of the Logos” (σὰρξ λογωθεῖσα). Again, in opposition to the Arians, the Fathers declared that, although human passibility is attributable to the Logos, still the Logos himself is not subject to suffering: He remains unchanged and unchangeable in the union with human nature, for He is not, as Arius held, the soul of the man Jesus. On the contrary, by reason of the union, the human flesh is no longer necessarily subject to suffering; the sufferings of Christ were voluntary. The effect of the union of the Logos with our nature is in no respect an abasement of the Divine nature, but an exaltation of the human, which becomes the born organ of Divine operations. The favourite expression for this elevation is θέωσις, the deification of human nature (cf. St. Athan. De Incarnatione and Contra Arianos, especially Or. iii. n. 29 sqq.).

IV. Whilst the Arians denied Christ’s Divinity on account of His human nature, the Apollinarists denied His humanity on account of His Divine nature. Against this absorption of the humanity by the Divinity of Christ, the Fathers teach that the unity of Christ is not effected by the fusion of both substances into one, but by the uncreated substance of the Logos making the created substance physically His own, so that the two constitute one Being but not one essence. Further, they contrast the unity of Christ with the unity of the Persons of the Trinity. In Christ, one Person has two different natures; in the Trinity, one identical nature is possessed by three distinct Persons. In the controversy with the Apollinarists, as in that with the Arians, the attribution of human and Divine predicates to the same subject is explained on the ground of two natures being really possessed by the same person, and the “theosis,” or deification of the human nature, is equally insisted upon.

V. Arians and Apollinarists alike objected that the Catholic doctrine would give God two Sons, the Logos and Christ. Pope Damasus (Anath. vi.) “anathematizes those who assert two Sons, one before all ages, the other after the assumption of flesh from the Virgin.” The Fathers meet the objection by establishing that the assumption of the human nature by the Logos deprives that nature of the independence necessary to personality. Here again the theosis of the lower nature is the leading feature of the defence; the human compound, and the command which the soul possesses over the body, are not of such perfection as to exclude the union of body and soul to a higher principle (the Logos), and after this “commixtion” the command (hegemony) passes to the Logos, and thus the human body and soul are left without independent personality.

VI. The unity of subject resulting from the union of the human nature with the Son of God, was treated by Greeks and Latins as Unity of Person (πρόσωπον). Previous to the Council of Ephesus the metaphysical terms used to describe this unity are mostly very abstract and general; Christ is one (unum, ἕν); one unity (μία ἑνότης); one whole (ἕν τέλειον, μία τελειότης); one thing (una res); in short, one Being. St. Epiphanius and St. Athanasius, however, already use the concrete “one hypostasis,” or one substantial being. The union of the two natures, the basis of the unity of Person, is described by the same Fathers in a threefold manner.

1. Considering the Divine Person as the object of the union, they express the union by the terms “assumption, susception, πρόσληψις, ἀνάληψις,” which convey the idea of a physical union, brought about by the Divine Person “taking unto Him and appropriating” humanity. The putting on of a garment or the taking up of a tool are used as analogies, whence the further expressions, καταρτισμός, coaptation, συμφυία, coalescence, ἀνάπλασις εἰς μίαν ὑπόστασιν, the building up of humanity into the Divine Person. In all these expressions the Son of God is considered as adding to His Being the nature of man.

2. The second series of descriptive terms considers the nature of man as receiving its highest perfection through the union, that is, through the infusion of Divinity. Hence, again, the terms ἀνάπλασις, and ἀναμόρφωσις = taking of a higher form, viz. the infused Divine form of the Logos; admixtio and permixtio; insertion and root-taking.

3. Lastly, the Fathers view the two united substances side by side, as constituting one whole. From this point of view they describe the union as “the entering of one substance into the other (περιχωρεῖν εἰς ἄλληλα).” They illustrate this mutual penetration by the analogy of a mixture (commixtio) or commingling of the various parts of one tissue, e.g. the parts of a plant or the threads of a cloth, and the term συμφυία (concretion, growing together) is also used as expressing the meaning. Most of the above designations and analogies are found in St. Augustine, who also was the first to treat at length of the unity of man as a type of the unity of Christ. The same Father points out that the union ought to be conceived simultaneously as the putting on of a garment (induere habitum) by a Divine Person, and as a commingling of the Divine Person with human nature; the commingling showing that the putting on of humanity as a vesture implies a physical union, and the dressing as with a vesture showing that the commixtion does not alter the united natures. As a garment when put on receives a nobler form than it has when off, so the humanity of Christ, through its union with the Logos, receives a much nobler existence; the ennobling being accomplished by the infusion or commingling of the Logos, in the same manner as the human body, through the infusion of the soul, is formed into the garment of the soul (Petavius, lib. iii. cc. 1, 2; Thomassin, lib. iii. c. 1 sqq.; lib. iv. cc. 15, 16).

VII. The much-used term commixtio, or mingling of the two substances in Christ, led to misinterpretation on the part of the Nestorians and Eutychians. Hence the Fathers of later times either reject the expression, or use it only with great caution. Yet the meaning which underlies this term is that expressed in the name Christ, and is therefore of the utmost importance in Theology. As, however, it is only an analogical expression, its force should be exactly determined. The Fathers, before as well as after the Council of Ephesus, speak of “a composition without confusion,” as well as “of a mixture without confusion,” the latter being termed mixtio nova, ineffabilis, stupenda. They illustrate their idea by analogies taken from a certain class of mixtures, viz. such in which one ingredient imparts to the other a kind of anointment without either losing its own properties. The name Christ, the Anointed, probably suggested these analogies. We must here limit ourselves to a mere indication of the most common: the mixture of wine and water (wine being considered of an oily nature); the mixture of gold and wood in the ark of the covenant; cloth steeped in balsam; glowing coal or red-hot iron (a mixture of fire and coal or iron). In the light of these analogies, understood as indicated, many doubtful expressions of the Fathers not only admit of an orthodox explanation, but actually throw new light upon the subject. Thus, for instance, we easily understand in what sense they speak of the human nature being “absorbed, transformed, or taken over” by the Divine nature. Franzelin, thes. 17–21.