PSYCHOLOGY OF JESUS CHRIST (Psychological Consciousness of G.). - In a generic sense, psychological consciousness is the perception that an intelligent being has of its own acts, but in a more determinate sense it is the perception that the thinking subject has of itself through its acts: « percipit se intelligere » (Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 87, a. 1). It is therefore an intimate knowledge, which includes a relation to the subject, that is, to the person as an active principle. The moderns call it self-consciousness and, at least since Locke, identify it with personality, which expresses itself with the pronoun I. Indeed, one usually distinguishes the I from the me: the former is perceived as a fixed, stable subject, which knows the me as a fluctuating subject through multiple psychological phases. But in reality the one and the other are identified (James) and are reduced to two aspects of self-consciousness that constitutes personality.
This modern theory, which Catholic philosophy and theology do not accept (v. PERSONA), creates grave difficulties on the terrain of Trinitarian and Christological dogma. In the Trinity there is a single consciousness and therefore there should be a single person; in Christ there are two consciousnesses: one divine, the other human, therefore there should be two persons. Conclusions that are in contradiction with the dogmatic definitions of the Church's magisterium. The Protestants, who have without hesitation adopted this psychological theory of the person, have been constrained to tamper with the data of the traditional Faith. Some, by virtue of the two consciousnesses admitted in Christ, do not hesitate to recognize in him two persons, returning to a form of Nestorianism (v.); others, by eliminating the divine consciousness altogether, reduce Christ to a simple man with his human personality. More subtly, Sanday (Christologies ancient and modern, ch. 7) posits in Christ the human consciousness as the sole center of activity of the conscious I, which however is also endowed with a subconsciousness, from which the sense of the divine sometimes surfaces, whence the suggestion of being God. Thus the Protestants either fall into Nestorianism or remain victims of the kenotic theory (v. RENOSI), which is a kind of Monophysitism, because with it the divinity is absorbed in a hybrid manner into the human nature.
Catholics avoid these erroneous solutions, but they do not escape the grave problem. Recently some of our theologians have squarely confronted the question, deepening the study of Christ's humanity from the psychological point of view (D. de Basly, Gaudel, J. Rivière, Héris, P. Galtier).
The solution of the problem, according to the doctrine of St. Thomas, is the following: first of all, being in creatures is really distinct from their essence or nature. The person materially is a whole resulting from an individuated nature, from the existential act and from its proper accidents, but formally it is constituted by virtue of subsistence, which is nothing other than the proper being of that individual nature. In Christ, therefore, since there is only one person, that of the Word, there is only one being, the personal being of the Word himself, which is communicated to the assumed human nature, which thus comes to subsist in the person of the Word. In this way the perfect ontological unity of Christ is assured.
In the dynamic, operative line, unity continues as a function and expression of ontological unity. Certainly the human nature of the Savior, like our own, has its own proper activity according to its bodily and spiritual operative faculties; it is the source of all of Jesus' human activity, its principium quo. But in every concrete nature there is also the suppositum or person, which is the agens par excellence, the principium quod, that is, the efficient, directing, hegemonic principle of all the complex activity of the nature, as appears from the conscious responsibility and attribution that we make to ourselves in saying: I see, I think, I will. This is not intended to establish two distinct and parallel activities, one of the nature and one of the person. The activity of a subject is one alone, like its being, and springs from the nature and the person together by way of formal causality and by way of efficient causality.
In Christ the human nature, just as it does not exist of itself, but participates in the being of the Word, in which it subsists, so it does not carry out its complex activity independently of the Word, which fulfills in it the functions of our human personality. There is a difficulty: every divine action ad extra is common to the three persons and therefore the Word cannot influence exclusively, as a person, the assumed nature. But if one admits, in the Thomistic manner, that the Word makes the human nature its own by communicating to it the divine being, proper to the three persons, according to the relation of filiation which gives to that being a personal imprint (secundum modum possidendi), one can also admit, consequently, a divine operative influx, which efficiently derives from the three persons, but is exercised in a certain personal manner by the Word, who remains the active term of attribution of all the activity of the assumed human nature. From the ontological and operative unity, thus understood, it is not difficult to establish the psychological unity of Christ. He, as God, has a divine consciousness, which absolutely speaking is common to the Father and the Holy Spirit, but relatively is in a certain way personal, analogously to what has been said of being. Moreover, he as man has his own human consciousness. Whoever admits the constitution of the person on the basis of psychological consciousness is constrained to attribute to the incarnate Word a twofold personality, in the Nestorian manner. But for us consciousness is revelatory, not constitutive of personality. Therefore the two consciousnesses in Christ reveal his single person, which is that of the Word. The difficulty evidently does not concern the divine consciousness, but the human one. On the psychological and gnoseological level, consciousness, even according to St. Thomas, attains the acts or psychic facts, but not the being of the acting subject. And yet in Aristotle (Ethics, IX, 9) and in St. Thomas (De veritate, 4, 10, 8, 8) we find the assertion that the soul, turning back upon itself, perceives its acts, sentit se sentire, intelligit se intelligere, and therefore arrives at a perception, at least implicit, of its being, knows that it exists (cf. the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes). On the basis of these principles it is not repugnant that the human psychological consciousness of Christ attains, at least implicitly, its single being, which is the divine being of the Word.
The beatific vision contributes to making this perception more explicit and clearer. And then one cannot and must not speak of a human I of Christ (which would have a Nestorian flavor!): in Him there is a single I ontologically founded on the unity of being. Psychologically this I (= person of the Word) is perceived by the divine consciousness and in a certain way also by the human consciousness. In us psychological consciousness expresses itself in our I, which is our incommunicable personality: in Christ the human consciousness flows mysteriously into the divine I, which expresses itself divinely and humanly: I am from all eternity, I suffer.
Only thus is the profound language of the Gospel adequately understood, and only thus is that ontological and psychological unity of Christ saved, which is the fundamental reason for the reality of the Incarnation and for the infinite value of the Redemption.
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