Regarding the Hypostatic Union

[preyoflove]

Greetings of Christ’s Love, Mercy and Peace!

One question that has been bugging me for quite a long while now concerns the Hypostatic Union. If our Lord Jesus Christ is both truly God and truly man, why is there only one Person in Him or why is He only one person? I may be mistaken but I thought that to be truly human, you must have or should I say must be a human person too. So, since the Son of God is a divine person in the first place, when He became human, why didn’t He also become a human person, thus having now two persons in Him or being two persons-- one divine and the other human?

Thank you.

Peace.

 

[LilyM]

Umm … two persons with two natures = two entirely separate beings. There’s no point at which the two can be said to be united, even if they share the same name.

You couldn’t say the ‘divine’ Jesus person was the same being as the ‘human’ Jesus person in any way, since divinity and humanity are so distinct from each other.

 

[preyoflove]

Umm … two persons with two natures = two entirely separate beings. There’s no point at which the two can be said to be united, even if they share the same name.

You couldn’t say the ‘divine’ Jesus person was the same being as the ‘human’ Jesus person in any way, since divinity and humanity are so distinct from each other.

I see and understand. So what is, therefore, wrong in thinking that Christ could not be truly human because He is not a human person but a divine person?

Thank you.

Peace.

 

[LilyM]

I see and understand. So what is, therefore, wrong in thinking that Christ could not be truly human because He is not a human person but a divine person?

Thank you.

Peace.

Christ was BOTH a truly human person AND a truly divine person, if my understanding is correct - but those persons were one and the same person, not two separate or separable persons.

As a (perhaps bad, but work with me here) analogy, imagine me saying I’m one person, and as one person I have two natures - one being a truly human nature, the other being a truly female nature. Doesn’t make me two separate persons, but just one person who is BOTH 100% female AND 100% human!

 

[preyoflove]

Christ was BOTH a truly human person AND a truly divine person, if my understanding is correct - but those persons were one and the same person, not two separate or separable persons.

This is what I suspect all along. Maybe this is what the mystery of the Incarnation was all about, among others, that Christ is both a human person and a divine person at the same time such that He has only one person.

You see, the way this was taught to me was through a sort of trick questioning. I think it was Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., who did it beginning with “How many natures does Christ have? Two, human and divine.”, and then “How many persons does Christ have? One. Divine. Bet I got you on that one!”. So that is where my question arose as to why Christ is not a human person if he’s also truly human.

Thanks, sister in Christ.

 

[LilyM]

This is what I suspect all along. Maybe this is what the mystery of the Incarnation was all about, among others, that Christ is both a human person and a divine person at the same time such that He has only one person.

You see, the way this was taught to me was through a sort of trick questioning. I think it was Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., who did it beginning with “How many natures does Christ have? Two, human and divine.”, and then “How many persons does Christ have? One. Divine. Bet I got you on that one!”. So that is where my question arose as to why Christ is not a human person if he’s also truly human.

Thanks, sister in Christ.

Well, in that case I absolutely take back what I said - I’d trust Fr Groeschel’s opinion over my own uneducated guess any day. At least he said a lot of other people wouldn’t know that either

If it helps, one definition of ‘person’ I’ve just come across is:

“3. The composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality …”

Now you can’t say His ‘composite of characteristics’ was human and leave it there, can you?

Certainly He HAD and WAS everything (barring sin) that humans have and are, and in that sense WAS truly human, but because He was MORE, it’s not like the word ‘human’ sums up His characteristics adequately, does it?

Just like my ‘person’ isn’t animal - I AM truly animal, all humans are - warm blooded mammals of the primate class and the species homo sapiens, to be precise. But at the same time much more than just an animal.

To sum up the composite of characteristics that make me up you’d have to say ‘human’, I guess, so my ‘person’ in that sense is a human person.

The only word that could sum Jesus up adequately is indeed ‘divine’. :getholy:

 

[Usagi]

My understanding is this:

When used theologically in talking about the Trinity or the Incarnation, the word “person” refers to something you could have a relationship with. “Nature” is what something is.

So God has one nature (He is God), but includes three Persons who have distinct relationships with each other and with us (“God our Father, Christ our brother,” etc., to quote the song.)

Christ is the opposite. He is one Person (the same one that is the Second Person of the Trinity) but fully possesses both His original divine nature and a created human nature. He is fully God and fully Man, but other people only have one relationship with Him, not one for each of His natures. That’s why we can call Mary “mother of God” even though God the Son pre-existed her and created her. She conceived, carried, gave birth to, and reared Him in the human fashion, and so she is rightly called “mother” of the entire, single Person that is Christ.

Usagi

 

[Tomster]

The word nature has a definite meaning in popular usage. The nature is that which makes a thing what it is; it is that composite unity of substance, qualities, and powers by means of which a person acts in a particular way, and in consequence of which he belongs to particular category or class of being . Now ordinarily a complete existing human nature is a human person. But the Council of Chalcedon defined that there is an unique exception to this rule in the case of the humanity of Christ which, although it is complete and existing, is nevertheless NOT a human person. The humanity of Christ was from the very first moment assumed, appropriated, by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, so that Christ is a Divine Person, having two natures, a human nature and the Divine.

It can hardly be stressed too much that the doctrine of the hypostatic union thus defined is nothing more than the revealed doctrine of the Incarnation: “The Word was made flesh.” It is not the fruit of human speculation upon the revealed word of God; it is not a theological conclusion; it is itself a divine revelation. Hence the hypostatic union precisely as such can never be the subject of debate among Catholic theologians. Upon this all Catholics are, and must be, agreed: that the human nature of Christ, though real and complete, does NOT constitute a human person distinct from the Son of God; that the one person of Christ is the divine Person of the Word who, subsisting eternally in the divine nature, in the fullness of time took upon himself a human nature and thus is both truly God and truly man.

 

[Tomster]

This brings us at once to a wonderful phrase of St. Peter, who says that we are made “partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:4) Catholic theology has ever clung to the belief that here we have no mere figure of speech but the declaration of of a definite fact. We really are made to be partakers of the divine nature. It is not merely that our spiritual faculties of intellect and will establish a special likeness to God in our souls; that is true enough, but over and above this natural likeness to God a wholly supernatural quality is given to us which makes us to be of the same nature as God. In this connection we may recall the principle used by early writers in arguing the divinity of the Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit deifies us; in other words makes us partakers of the divine nature. St. Augustine puts the matter thus: “He descended that we might ascend, and while retaining his own divine nature he partook of our human nature, that we, while keeping our own nature, might become partakers of his.”

The Church has enshrined this wonderful truth in one of the most beautiful of the prayers at Holy Mass, extraordinary rite. “O God, who in creating human nature, did marvellously ennoble it, and has still more marvellously renewed it, grant that by the mystery of this water and wine we may be made partakers of his Godhead, who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord.”