Conjecture:the second trinitarian person possesses his human nature eternally

[N0X3x]

by this I mean that from an eternal, timeless perspective, the 2nd person of the trinity has never and will never lack a human nature.

according to this conjecture, there is no 2nd person distinct from humanity.

a diagram:

http://win_corduan.tripod.com/000002012/trinityandincarnation.jpg

thoughts?

 

[Della]

This is a very ancient idea, actually. As I understand it, the Church Fathers believed that Jesus, being God and therefore outside time and the physical universe, does indeed possess his human nature in eternity. It’s one of many paradoxes about him that theologians have debated and studied for centuries.

Indeed, even the venerable Haydock’s Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 tells us that many scholars believe that when the OT says that God visited people, that it was the “pre-incarnational” Jesus who they saw and conversed with. From Genesis, where it talks about God “walking in the garden” to the one of the three visitors Abraham hosted, to others, as well.

What this tells me is that, just as the Scripture says, Jesus was “crucified from the foundation of the world.” IOW, God always intended to become one of us in the person of the Son. Exactly how and why is a mystery–one that God has not revealed to us–not yet, anyway. All we know is that Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and gave birth to her Creator. “in the fullness of time.” Some of the great saints, such as St. Louis Marie de Montfort, St. Alphonsus de Luguori and St. Maximilian Kolbe delved into this mystery in their writings. Theirs is very deep stuff indeed–rich and complex.

 

[MiserableSinner]

From Genesis 32

Jacob Wrestles with God

22The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children,e and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,f for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel,g saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.

If Jacob wrestled with God, and he did, God must have at least appeared as a human with human flesh and bones even before the Incarnation of the Holy One.

I wonder - was this our Lord Jesus Christ (God), the Father (God), the Holy Spirit (God), or all 3 (God)?

I believe it may have been the Son of God who is God. There is no indication that the Father or the Holy Spirit have ever taken on human form. In The Word, Jesus says God is Spirit and no one has seen Him. He was obviously talking about God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, because men had seen Him.

For this reason, I believe it must have been Jesus - the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity.

And in my foolishness, I recently told someone that I thought Jesus was not with human nature until the Incarnation. Thanks for posting this thread.

I salute you all
I salute your Guardian Angels

 

[JMKC]

I have to disagree with this conjecture. Human nature is composed of a human body and human (rational) soul. The hypostatic union occurred at a specific point in time, namely the Annunciation. This is the moment at which the Son assumed a human nature. Therefore, the human nature of Christ did not pre-exist His conception, and it was not united to His Divine Nature prior to that moment either. When we speak of the Son’s human nature, we are really referring to the mystery of Incarnation, which is a temporal, and not an eternal, event.

 

[JMKC]

As a side note, God did possess the idea of human nature from eternity, and from eternity would have therefore possessed the idea of Christ’s human nature (since He knows all things), however it wasn’t willed or turned from potentiality into act until the Incarnation. So, there’s a difference between the idea of Christ’s nature and His human nature in existence united to His Divine Nature in the Person of the Son.

 

[Della]

As a side note, God did possess the idea of human nature from eternity, and from eternity would have therefore possessed the idea of Christ’s human nature (since He knows all things), however it wasn’t willed or turned from potentiality into act until the Incarnation. So, there’s a difference between the idea of Christ’s nature and His nature in existence united to His Divine Nature in the Person of the Son.

The problem is, though, that God is outside time, therefore his acts are eternal. In time, Christ was conceived, but in eternity he offers the one sacrifice of his body and blood–how can that be if his death only has value in time? We are dealing with a paradox here, as are so many of the mysteries of God. We cannot say that Jesus could not have appeared in his human form in the OT since he is eternal by his very nature. If he could go to the abode of the dead and preach to those who died before him, surely he could appear to Abraham or walk in the Garden of Eden.

 

[JMKC]

The problem is, though, that God is outside time, therefore his acts are eternal. In time, Christ was conceived, but in eternity he offers the one sacrifice of his body and blood–how can that be if his death only has value in time? We are dealing with a paradox here, as are so many of the mysteries of God. We cannot say that Jesus could not have appeared in his human form in the OT since he is eternal by his very nature. If he could go to the abode of the dead and preach to those who died before him, surely he could appear to Abraham or walk in the Garden of Eden.

I was speaking mainly about Christ’s human nature, particularly that it did not pre-exist the Incarnation. Though God is eternal, not all of His acts exist from eternity. For example, though my soul was in His Intellect from eternity, He did not will it into existence until my conception. Could Christ have appeared in some mysterious way prior to His conception? Why not. I don’t know enough (nor have I studied this idea enough) to say yes or no, but I’m open to the possibility. But I would argue that it would be contrary to the doctrine of the Incarnation to say that Christ’s humanity was united to His Divinity from eternity.

Thanks for the distinction! I think the initial conjecture can be read in two ways, though the way it was worded implied His humanity existed from eternity, which is why I disagreed.

 

[JMKC]

St. Thomas (in the Summa, Tertia Pars, Q.6, a.3) is a source for what I mean to say:

“…] it is not fitting to suppose that this soul was united to the Word from the beginning, and that it afterwards became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin; for thus His soul would not seem to be of the same nature as ours, which are created at the same time that they are infused into bodies.”

 

[Della]

I was speaking mainly about Christ’s human nature, particularly that it did not pre-exist the Incarnation. Though God is eternal, not all of His acts exist from eternity. For example, though my soul was in His Intellect from eternity, He did not will it into existence until my conception. Could Christ have appeared in some mysterious way prior to His conception? Why not. I don’t know enough (nor have I studied this idea enough) to say yes or no, but I’m open to the possibility. But I would argue that it would be contrary to the doctrine of the Incarnation to say that Christ’s humanity was united to His Divinity from eternity.

Thanks for the distinction! I think the initial conjecture can be read in two ways, though the way it was worded implied His humanity existed from eternity, which is why I disagreed.

It is a fine distinction but a real one. He was conceived in time and born in time, but could appear at any time in history as a human being, as he pleased, because he is also eternal. Does that sum it up pretty well? I’m no theologian, either, but that makes sense to me, anyway.

 

[JMKC]

It is a fine distinction but a real one. He was conceived in time and born in time, but could appear at any time in history as a human being, as he pleased, because he is also eternal. Does that sum it up pretty well? I’m no theologian, either, but that makes sense to me, anyway.

I think I see what you’re getting at, and I think it sums it up. I was just being nit-picky about the OP’s conjecture that Christ “has never and will never lack a human nature”. I might make a distinction and say that His Divinity is eternal but not His humanity, so if He did appear prior to the Incarnation, it would have been an appearance without the union of human nature to Divine Nature, in some mysterious way. The term here, I think, is “theophany”. I’ll echo you though and say that I’m not a theologian, so I stand to be corrected. Just working off of my studies thus far, which aren’t anywhere near completion yet

 

[JMKC]

An interesting piece about possible appearances of God in the Old Testament can be found at New Advent, in the Catholic Encylopedia article on “Angels”:

That a process of evolution in theological thought accompanied the gradual unfolding of God’s revelation need hardly be said, but it is especially marked in the various views entertained regarding the person of the Giver of the Law. The Massoretic text as well as the Vulgate of Exodus 3 and 19-20 clearly represent the Supreme Being as appearing to Moses in the bush and on Mount Sinai; but the Septuagint version, while agreeing that it was God Himself who gave the Law, yet makes it “the angel of the Lord” who appeared in the bush. By New Testament times the Septuagint view has prevailed, and it is now not merely in the bush that the angel of the Lord, and not God Himself appears, but the angel is also the Giver of the Law (cf. Galatians 3:19; Hebrews 2:2; Acts 7:30). The person of “the angel of the Lord” finds a counterpart in the personification of Wisdom in the Sapiential books and in at least one passage (Zechariah 3:1) it seems to stand for that “Son of Man” whom Daniel (7:13) saw brought before “the Ancient of Days”. Zacharias says: “And the Lord showed me Jesus the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan stood on His right hand to be His adversary”. Tertullian regards many of these passages as preludes to the Incarnation; as the Word of God adumbrating the sublime character in which He is one day to reveal Himself to men (cf. Against Praxeas 16; Against Marcion 2.27, 3.9, 1.10, 1.21-22). It is possible, then, that in these confused views we can trace vague gropings after certain dogmatic truths regarding the Trinity, reminiscences perhaps of the early revelation of which the Protevangelium in Genesis 3 is but a relic. The earlier Fathers, going by the letter of the text, maintained that it was actually God Himself who appeared. He who appeared was called God and acted as God. It was not unnatural then for Tertullian, as we have already seen, to regard such manifestations in the light of preludes to the Incarnation, and most of the Eastern Fathers followed the same line of thought. It was held as recently as 1851 by Vandenbroeck, “Dissertatio Theologica de Theophaniis sub Veteri Testamento” (Louvain).

But the great Latins, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the Great, held the opposite view, and the Scholastics as a body followed them. St. Augustine (Sermo vii, de Scripturis, P.G. V) when treating of the burning bush (Exodus 3) says: “That the same person who spoke to Moses should be deemed both the Lord and an angel of the Lord, is very hard to understand. It is a question which forbids any rash assertions but rather demands careful investigation . . . Some maintain that he is called both the Lord and the angel of the Lord because he was Christ, indeed the prophet (Isaiah 9:6, Septuagint Version) clearly styles Christ the ‘Angel of great Counsel.’” The saint proceeds to show that such a view is tenable though we must be careful not to fall into Arianism in stating it. He points out, however, that if we hold that it was an angel who appeared, we must explain how he came to be called “the Lord,” and he proceeds to show how this might be: “Elsewhere in the Bible when a prophet speaks it is yet said to be the Lord who speaks, not of course because the prophet is the Lord but because the Lord is in the prophet; and so in the same way when the Lord condescends to speak through the mouth of a prophet or an angel, it is the same as when he speaks by a prophet or apostle, and the angel is correctly termed an angel if we consider him himself, but equally correctly is he termed ‘the Lord’ because God dwells in him.” He concludes: “It is the name of the indweller, not of the temple.” And a little further on: “It seems to me that we shall most correctly say that our forefathers recognized the Lord in the angel,” and he adduces the authority of the New Testament writers who clearly so understood it and yet sometimes allowed the same confusion of terms (cf. Hebrews 2:2, and Acts 7:31-33).

The saint discusses the same question even more elaborately, “In Heptateuchum,” lib. vii, 54, P.G. III, 558. As an instance of how convinced some of the Fathers were in holding the opposite view, we may note Theodoret’s words (In Exod.): “The whole passage (Exodus 3) shows that it was God who appeared to him. But (Moses) called Him an angel in order to let us know that it was not God the Father whom he saw — for whose angel could the Father be? — but the Only-begotten Son, the Angel of great Counsel” (cf. Eusebius, Church History I.2.7; St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:6). But the view propounded by the Latin Fathers was destined to live in the Church, and the Scholastics reduced it to a system (cf. St. Thomas, Quaest., Disp., De Potentia, vi, 8, ad 3am); and for a very good exposition of both sides of the question, cf. “Revue biblique,” 1894, 232-247.