There are a few claims that have generated
so much controversy as the claim that God became man.
For centuries, Christians and non-Christians have argued over whether this could possibly
be true and if so, how?
In past videos we have already gazed into the mystery of the Incarnation, its possibility,
its fittingness and its inner workings.
In this video, we continue to inquire just how the Incarnation is to be understood, described
and participated.
St. Thomas's treatise on Jesus Christ is divided into two parts.
The first part focuses on the metaphysics of the hypostatic union.
The big questions in this part are how the Lord is to be understood as one person in
two natures and what follows from this union?
The second part focuses on the life of Christ, proceeding from his conception to his ascension
in an attempt to understand just how he is saving.
This video focuses on the latter half of the first part in which St. Thomas investigates
some of the implications of the hypostatic union.
Having established that Christ is God and
man how do we understand and interpret this claim?
First, let's turn to the defects that Christ assumed.
Jesus Christ did not sin and yet we see him suffering many of sin's penalties.
How do we make sense of this?
Well, Christ assumes these trials of his own volition and we can appreciate the wisdom
in his choice.
By doing so, he satisfies for the sins of the human race and assuming our punishment,
he commends the genuineness of his humanity and he gives us an example of patient endurance.
Now mind you, he did not assume every particular human defect but only those like hunger, thirst,
bodily pain and death, which flow from the common sin of the whole nature and which help
him accomplish the salvation for which he came.
So for instance, he did not forfeit the fullness of knowledge nor assume any defects that would
have impeded his exercise thereof.
As St. Thomas writes, "Ignorance is not taken
away by ignorance, but Christ came to take away our ignorance for he came to enlighten
them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
Therefore, there was no ignorance in Christ."
St. Thomas devotes himself at this juncture to cleaning up our speech about the Incarnation.
We want to speak well about God, but it's so easy to err even in our most careful attempts,
we find ourselves stumbling into Arianism, which fails to acknowledge Christ's divinity
or Apollinarianism, which fails to acknowledge his integral humanity or Nestorianism, which
fails to acknowledge the union of divine and human natures.
Working within the tradition he inherits St
Thomas gives guidelines for speaking about the incarnate Lord.
We call this doctrine the communication of idioms.
The communication of idioms boils down to two basic rules.
First rule, you cannot attribute properties of the divine nature directly to the human
nature or vice versa.
So you cannot say deity dies or that Christ's human body is omnipresent.
Second rule, you can attribute properties of the divine nature to the concrete subject
and this holds even if the name used for the concrete subject is derived from the human
nature.
The same can be said for properties of the human nature, mutatis mutandis.
The reason for this is that there is only one person or hypostasis of both natures and
the same hypostasis is signified by the name of either nature.
So whether we say man or God, we're pointing to the same divine Person.
St. Thomas writes and hence of the man may
be said, what belongs to the divine nature as of a hypostasis of the divine nature
and of God maybe said what belongs to the human nature as of a hypostasis of human
nature.
This is probably clear as mud at this point, but let's give an example.
For instance, you can say that God died.
God here names the concrete subject subsisting in divine and human natures.
Though the name God is derived from the divine nature, it points to the concrete subject,
the person of the Word who was the subject of all of the experiences of the God-man.
And so by virtue of the fact that this concrete subject subsists in a human nature and that
he suffered death in his humanity, we can say that God died.
We can multiply similar examples.
A famous affirmation of the sort is enshrined in the dogma of the divine maternity because
Mary gave birth to the divine Person subsisting in divine and human natures.
We can truly say that Mary is the mother of God.
Having organized our speech, St. Thomas goes on to explain how Christ is one.
This point and it's pretty contentious among students of St. Thomas, so we're not going
to wade into the details.
Basically St. Thomas teaches in the summa that in Christ there was one who, who here
identifies the one concrete subject or hypostasis or person.
Further in Christ there are two whats.
What here signifies the two natures, divine and human in which the divine person subsists.
In Christian theology, the unity of the who grounds of the union of the whats and this
accounts for the coherence of Christ's person and agency.
The unity of Christ's being communicates a union through every facet of his life, not collapsing
what is distinct, but rather ordering each in hierarchical fashion.
We saw earlier how the human intellect, while distinct from the divine intellect syncs perfectly
with it.
Here we see how this plays out in desire and
choice.
The divine and human wills in Christ each has its own natural operation with the divine
as the principle cause and the human as the animate instrument thereof.
The union of will's orders Christ's operations.
In his twofold operation each nature retains its proper form and power whereby it acts
and yet without confusion, the lower operation is ordered to the higher it follows that we
can speak of theandric or divino human operation.
Christ heals by a touch exorcizes, by a word and saves by dying.
After describing the consequences of the hypostatic union in the Son, St. Thomas characterizes
its consequences in relation to the Father.
This concerns Christ's subjection prayer, priesthood, adoption and predestination.
Here we see how Christ's humanity is taken up into his divine personality as ad Patrem
or towards the father.
In his humanity, Christ is subjected to the
Father for our salvation with his human will he prays to the Father and shows us an example.
By his priesthood, Christ serves as a mediator and victim on our behalf.
He offers himself in sacrifice to the Father for sinful humanity and he bestows God's divine
gifts on us in turn.
As the only be gotten by nature, Christ cannot be called an adopted son, and yet Christ's
relation to the Father passed through the hypostatic union is the cause of our own adoption
as sons and daughters of God.
Finally, we say that Christ is predestined from all eternity to the grace of union and
we are thereby predestined to a partaking of his grace of headship.
With so many possibilities of muddling the
Incarnation, the thought of the doctrine can be overwhelming, but when we cleave to the
truth, we find therein a saving revelation.
Indeed, we cannot fail to appreciate that the hypostatic union has real consequences
in Christ's adopted brothers and sisters.
God is truly with us.
In faith we look to him who goes between God and man as he beckons us to follow after him.
For Christ the mediator has opened the way before us and in our study and worship, we
behold him who gives us a place in heaven and who draws us
to himself by his hold on our nature.
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