PSYCHOLOGY OF JESUS CHRIST (PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF G.). — In the generic sense, psychological consciousness is the perception that an intelligent being has of its own acts, but in a more precise 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 active principle. Modern thinkers call it self-consciousness and, at least since Locke, identify it with personality, which is expressed by the pronoun I. Indeed, it is customary to distinguish 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 identical (James) and are reduced to two aspects of self-consciousness, which constitutes personality.
This modern theory, which Catholic philosophy and theology do not accept (v. PERSONA), creates serious difficulties in the domain 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; consequently there should be two persons. These conclusions contradict the dogmatic definitions of the Church’s magisterium. Protestants, who have unreservedly adopted this psychological theory of the person, have been forced to tamper with the data of the traditional Faith. Some, on the basis of the two consciousnesses admitted in Christ, do not hesitate to recognize two persons in him, returning to a form of Nestorianism (v.); others, eliminating the divine consciousness altogether, reduce Christ to a mere man with his human personality. More subtly, Sanday (Christologies ancient and moderne, ch. 7) places in Christ the human consciousness as the sole center of activity of the conscious I, which is nevertheless also endowed with a subconsciousness, from which the sense of the divine sometimes emerges, hence the suggestion of being God. Thus Protestants either fall into Nestorianism or remain victims of the kenotic theory (v. RENOSI), which is a kind of Monophysitism, because through it divinity is hybridly absorbed into human nature.
Catholics avoid these erroneous solutions, but they do not escape the serious problem. Recently, some of our theologians have addressed the question fully, deepening the study of Christ’s humanity from the psychological point of view (D. de Basly, Gaudel, J. Rivière, Héris, P. Galtier).
The solution to the problem, according to the doctrine of s. Thomas, is as follows: first of all, being in creatures is really distinct from their essence or nature. Materially, the person is a whole resulting from an individuated nature, the existential act, and its proper accidents; formally, however, it is constituted by subsistence, which is nothing other than the being proper to that individual nature. In Christ, therefore, since there is only one person, that of the Word, there is 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 Christ’s perfect ontological unity is assured.
Along the dynamic, operative line, unity continues as the function and expression of ontological unity. Certainly the human nature of the Savior, like ours, has its own activity according to its corporeal and spiritual operative faculties; it is the source of all Jesus’ human activity, its principium quo. But in every concrete nature there is also the supposit or person, who is the agens par excellence, the principium quod, that is, the efficient, directing, hegemonic principle of the whole complex activity of the nature, as appears from the conscious responsibility and attribution we express when we say: I see, I think, I will. This does not mean establishing two distinct and parallel activities, one belonging to nature and one to the person. The activity of a subject is one, like its being, and proceeds from nature and person together, by way of formal causality and by way of efficient causality.
In Christ, just as the human nature does not exist of itself but participates in the being of the Word, in whom it subsists, so it does not exercise its complex activity independently of the Word, who 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 the assumed nature exclusively as a person. But if one admits, in a Thomistic manner, that the Word makes the human nature his own by communicating to it the divine being, proper to the three persons, according to the relation of filiation, which gives that being a personal imprint (secundum modum possidendi), one can also consequently admit 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 understood in this way, it is not difficult to establish Christ’s psychological unity. As God, he has a divine consciousness, which, absolutely speaking, is common to the Father and the Holy Spirit, but relatively speaking is in a certain way personal, analogously to what has been said concerning being. Moreover, as man, he has a human consciousness of his own. Whoever admits that the person is constituted on the basis of psychological consciousness is forced to attribute a dual personality to the incarnate Word, in the Nestorian manner. But for us consciousness is revelatory, not constitutive, of personality. Therefore the two consciousnesses in Christ reveal his one person, which is that of the Word. The difficulty evidently does not concern the divine consciousness, but the human one. In the psychological and gnoseological domain, consciousness, also according to s. Thomas, apprehends acts or psychic facts, but not the being of the acting subject. Yet in Aristotle (Ethics, IX, 9) and in s. 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 thus arrives at a perception, at least implicit, of its being; it knows that it exists (cf. Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum). On the basis of these principles, it is not repugnant to hold that Christ’s human psychological consciousness apprehends, at least implicitly, his one 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 smack of Nestorianism!): 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 is expressed in our I, which is our incommunicable personality; in Christ, the human consciousness mysteriously flows into the divine I, which expresses itself divinely and humanly: I have existed from eternity, I suffer.
Only in this way can the profound language of the Gospel be adequately understood, and only in this way can that ontological and psychological unity of Christ be preserved which is the fundamental reason for the reality of the Incarnation and the infinite value of the Redemption.
BIBLI: cf. encyclical of Pius XII on the Council of Chalcedon, Sempiternus rex, of 8 Sept. 1951 (AAS, 43 [1951], pp. 625–44). Catholic studies: I.-A. Chollet, La psychologie du Christ, Parigi 1903; L. de Grandmaison, Jeux-Christ, II, there 1931, p. 79 ff.; D. de Bally, Le Moi du Christ, in La France franciscaine, 1929, nos. 2–3; above all P. Collier, L'unité du Christ. Être... Personne... Conscience, Parigi 1939; P. Parente, L'io di Cristo, Brescia 1951; A. Michel, Christologie, in Ami du clergé, 61 [1951], p. 736 ff.; 65 [1952], p. 513 ff. Protestants: W. Sandav, Christologies ancient and modern, Oxford 1910; G. Stanley Hall, Jesus the Christ in the light of Psychology, 3rd ed., Nueva York 1923; W. Temple, Christus Veritas. An essay, Londra 1924; Ch. Gore, The Reconstruction of Belief, Londra 1926; H. Hodgson, Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, Londra 1933. Pietro Parente
#### PSICOLOGIA INFANTILE: 9. INFANZIA.