2 personhoods of jesus?

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JLCecilia

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Hi, I need some help coming up w/ some good verbage to describe the ‘traits’ or ‘characters’ as Jesus: fully human and fully divine. DS is learning his numbers 1-10 and I thought I’d apply some catechesis to this. For the number ‘2’ I wanted to use the 2 ‘personhoods’ of Jesus. Is this an appropriate phrase to use for this? I wasn’t sure exactly what verbage the catechism uses to describe this.

Can you enlighten me? Thanks so much, JLC.
 
JLCecilia,

I echo what utunumsint said above – two natures*, *in one person.

You might have been getting at “nature” through your use of “personhood”. . . but I think you should stick with nature, even though a young child might not understand the complexities of the word or idea. But as your young son grows you will have laid the groundwork for his understanding of “nature”.

For instance you can discuss with him how everything that God made has its own special nature – trees, squirrels, boys and girls. And that their nature is what gives them the ability to do things or not: a tree nature can’t walk, a squirrel nature can’t talk, but a boy nature can do both.

Only Christ (that we know of!) had two natures – a human nature and a God nature. So he could do human things AND God things, and it means He was man and God.

What do you think?

VC
 
Verbum_Caro said:
JLCecilia,

I echo what utunumsint said above – two natures*, *in one person.

You might have been getting at “nature” through your use of “personhood”. . . but I think you should stick with nature, even though a young child might not understand the complexities of the word or idea. But as your young son grows you will have laid the groundwork for his understanding of “nature”.

For instance you can discuss with him how everything that God made has its own special nature – trees, squirrels, boys and girls. And that their nature is what gives them the ability to do things or not: a tree nature can’t walk, a squirrel nature can’t talk, but a boy nature can do both.
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IMO this is great stuff. My son is just turning three, and I’ve been looking around for good catechetical resources for him. I find a lot of the stuff out there simply ignores these improtant theological details.
Only Christ (that we know of!) had two natures – a human nature and a God nature. So he could do human things AND God things, and it means He was man and God.
Click to expand...
What do you think?
Click to expand...
VC
Click to expand...
For an older child you could mention the apparent dual nature of matter at the qantum level (wave/partical), but probably not suitable for her now. 🙂

God bless,
Ut
 
Yes, Jesus is a divine Person Who assumed a human nature. Thus, He is one Person (divine) with two natures (human and divine).

The term that the Church has used since the 5th century to describe this mystery is the Hypostatic Union. This may currently be beyond your son (of course who knows, he could be a theological prodigy), but the definitive work on this subject is ‘On the Unity of Christ’ by Saint Cyril of Alexandria.
 
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