Hypostatic Union

HYPOSTATIC UNION. – A dogmatic expression referring exclusively to Jesus Christ considered in his intimate structure as God-Man, a theandric subject, in whom the divine nature and the human nature are substantially united in one Person, who is the second of the Most Holy Trinity, that is, the Word. Hypostatic (from the Greek ὑπόστασις = suppositum) means personal, and is a term reserved for the Incarnate Word, in whom the Person does not, as in us, result from substantial union, but precedes II. Historically, the formula goes back to s. Cirillo of Alexandria (ἐνῶσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν), who used it in the sense of a real-physical union against Nestorius, who limited himself to an accidental-moral union; but the Council of Chalcedon determined its meaning (already implicit) in the personal sense. Under the heading Incarnation (v.) the h. u. has been considered as a revealed fact: here it is examined from the standpoint of the manner in which the divine and the human are united in the person of the God-Man.

I. CONTROVERSIES AND DEFINITIONS

Controversies concerning the mystery of Christ began from the very dawn of Christianity. In an initial period, doubts and errors arose either concerning the humanity of the Saviour, as in docetism (v. DOCETI), or concerning his divinity, subordinationism (v.) Arianism (v.), which more directly affected the Trinitarian mystery. But after the Council of Nicaea (325), which, by defining consubstantiality (ὑμοσύσεις), safeguarded the divinity of the Word, attention became focused on studying especially the relationship between the human and the divine in Christ and the meaning of their unity. The problem arose with Apollinaris of Laodicea (v.) in the second half of the fourth century, beginning with an attitude that even seemed orthodox to St. Athanasius: he maintained that Christ resulted from the union of the Word with the flesh (Θεὸς ἕναρχος), according to the expression of St. John: “The Word became flesh.” But when, in Antiochene circles, the formula of Christ as a perfect man elevated to the sphere of the divine (ἐνθρωπος ἕναρχος) prevailed, Apollinaris and, still more, his disciples modified their formula, passing from the dichotomy of Word–flesh to the trichotomy of Word–soul–flesh, but taking “soul” as a simple sensitive principle (without intellectual faculties) and attributing to the Word himself the function of the rational soul. The Antiochene school was to profit greatly from this development: it heightened its zeal against Apollinarianism, reinforcing its tendency to see in Christ a perfect man in whom the Word dwells, and thus determining a dualistic attitude toward the mystery of the u. i. Characteristic was the theory of the two sons (the Son of God and the son of Mary), coined by one of the first Antiochenes, Diodore (v.) of Tarsus, in the anti-Apollinarian work Contra Synonziastia (PG 33), condemned by Pope Damasus (Roman Synod of 380).

1. Nestorianism. — The architect of Antiochene dualistic Christology, however, was Theodore (v.) of Mopsuestia: in Christ there is One who assumes and One who is assumed (Homelia, VIII. 1 and In Ioannem, XII. 31); the man Jesus is the temple which the Word uses; birth from Mary, the Passion, and death concern exclusively the Man, not the Word, to whom the Man is joined by way of grace, favour, and will (In Io., I. 34 and II. 21); the human and the divine are two clearly distinct physical realities, which converge in one common subject (πρόσωπον), similar to a moral person. Along this line Nestorius developed his entire Christological doctrine (v. NESTORIANISM). The humanity and divinity in Christ are not only two distinct natures, but also two physical subjects (πρόσωπα φυσικά; Libro di Eracl., p. 141), united by contact (συνέχεια) in a single πρόσωπον (moral), through the will.

St. Cyril (v.) of Alexandria immediately perceived the gravity of the Nestorian position and, with an energy perhaps even too vigorous, set about combating II. On the basis of tradition, he opposed to it a Christology founded on the profound, physical, real unity (ἐνῶσις φυσικά) of humanity and divinity in the one hypostasis (ἐνῶσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν), which is the incarnate Word. For this reason Mary is truly Θεοτόκος (Mother of God), Christ’s humanity, indeed his flesh, is worthy of adoration and is a source of vivifying grace, divine and human attributes are predicated indiscriminately of Christ (communicatio ultimatum), and the Word truly suffered and died according to his human nature. This is not a moral or accidental union, but a union such as to make Christ one single concrete, indivisible reality. In this connection St. Cyril cited an Apollinarian phrase attributed to St. Athanasius: Μία φύσις τοῦ Λόγου σοσπραγμένη (“the nature of the incarnate Word is one”). For St. Cyril, as for Nestorius, no precise distinction was made among the terms “nature,” “hypostasis,” and “person”; nevertheless, comparison of the two Christologies makes it sufficiently clear that Nestorius saw in Christ two subjects almost self-subsistent, whereas Cyril saw only one, while admitting the two fundamental elements, divine and human. Later tradition rightly translated the contrast between Nestorius and St. Cyril into the clear formula: “not two natures and two persons, but two natures and one person, that of the Word.” Cyril’s thought, which undoubtedly connects with the sources of Revelation, triumphed at the Council of Ephesus (431), where his second letter to Nestorius (Καταφλωτρός) was read and acclaimed, and the other (the fourth to Nestorius), together with its appended anathemas, was entered into the acts. In vain have certain modern critics attempted to reverse the facts, excusing Nestorius and accusing St. Cyril: the controversy concerned the grave problem of Christ’s ontological unity, which Nestorius compromised and St. Cyril defended (cf. M. Jugie, Nestorius et la controverse nestorienne, Paris 1912; A. D’Alès, Le dogme d’Ephèse, ibid. 1931).

2. Monophysitism. — The reaction against Nestorius continued and gradually became more extreme through the activity of Dioscorus, the successor of St. Cyril, who found in Constantinople, alongside the imperial Court, Eutyches (v.). Both of them, abusing certain imprecise expressions of St. Cyril, pushed the physical unity defined at Ephesus so far as to fuse the two natures, divine and human, into one, making Christ a hybrid theandric union. Before a synod convened under the presidency of Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, Eutyches denied Christ’s consubstantiality with us human beings and maintained that, although before the union one could speak of two natures, after the union it was impossible to affirm more than one nature; hence the formula “from two natures,” opposed to the other, “in two natures.” With the complicity of the court of Theodosius II, in 449 at Ephesus the faction of Dioscorus and Eutyches triumphed over orthodoxy. The need for a new Council became apparent; after the death of Theodosius, it was held at Chalcedon in 451 (v. Council; EUTYCHIANISM; MONOPHYSITISM), and it was content not only to condemn Eutychianism, but also reaffirmed the condemnation of Nestorius already issued in 431: “One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, must be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and both converging in one person or hypostasis (πρόσωπον-ὑπόστασιν); (one must confess) one and the same Son and Only-begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, not divided or separated into two persons.” The formula is of immense importance from the historical and doctrinal points of view. It resolves the problem by consecrating the distinction between nature (φύσις) and person (ὑπόστασις or πρόσωπον), establishing the distinction along the line of nature and unity along that of person. Moreover, by insisting on the substantial integrity of the two natures despite the union, it makes clear that the personality in which the two natures meet does not belong to the order of essence, but to that of being.

In 553, the Second Council of Constantinople, echoing the Council of Chalcedon, confirmed and clarified the doctrine of the faith with still greater luminosity, eliminating forever the two antithetical positions, Nestorianism and Eutychianism (can. 7: Denz-U, 219). Thus St. Cyril’s felicitous formula ἔνωσις καθ'ὑπόστασιν—union according to the hypostasis, that is, personal union—was sanctioned and interpreted in its true sense; it leaves the two natures intact, integral, and distinct. On this solid foundation theology constructed the Christological edifice in its metaphysical lines. The personal unity of Christ itself still remained to be clarified from the psychological point of view; another heresy, namely Monothelitism, contributed to this clarification.

3. Monothelitism. — On the psychological plane of the activity of the God-Man, Severus (v.) of Antioch, a man of keen intellect, sympathetic to the Alexandrian tradition and opposed to the definition of Chalcedon. Without insisting, like the Eutychian Monophysites, on the unity of nature in Christ, he preferred to study his activity by relating it more to the hypostasis than to the natures, and concluded that in Christ there is only one operation, just as there is only one active principle (monenergism). Monothelitism (v.), which developed in the seventh century through the work of Sergius, Constantinople (v.), is already virtually present in this doctrine of Severus.

The doctrine opposed by St. Maximus (v.) to Sergius and Pyrrhus (PG 90–91) was substantially accepted and sanctioned by the Roman Synod of 649, under Martin I, and by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680–681, under Pope Agatho. At the latter council it was defined: «Et duas naturales voluntates in eo et duas naturales operationes in-

divise, inconvertibiliter, inseparabiliter, inconfuse secundum sanctorum Patrum doctrinam adaeque praedicamus: et duas voluntates non contrarias, absit... sed sequantem eius humanam voluntatem et non resistentem vel reluctantem, sed potius et subiectam divinae eius atque omnipotenti voluntati. Oportebat enim carnis voluntatem moveri, subici vero voluntati divinae» (Denz-U, 291). Thus the Christological drama that had begun in the fourth century came to a close, with the precious result of a precise expression of what human reason, enlightened by faith, can say concerning the mystery of the God-Man.

The final synthesis of the dogmatic definitions is this: Christ is the person of the Word subsisting in the divine nature and in the human nature; on the ontological level, the two natures are distinct and integral, but converge in the single hypostatic subsistence of the Word; on the dynamic and psychological level, the will and activities are two, but are joined together in the personal unity of the one active principle, which is always the Word. Theology was entrusted with the task of making explicit and developing, insofar as possible, this doctrinal synthesis.

II. THEOLOGY OF THE MYSTERY

Eastern patristic thought is collected and summarized by St. Giovanni Damasceno, especially in the De fide orthodoxa (PG 94), translated several times into Latin and a source for the scholastic theologians. Damasceno, in turn, drew upon St. Massimo confessore (7th century) and Leonzio bizantino (6th century). Leonzio (v.) waged a thorough struggle against Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and indeed also against the mitigated Monophysitism of Severo d’Antioche. Following the Neoplatonists (Plotino, Porfirio, Proclo), he distinguished being from essence and established self-subsistent being (εἶναι καθ'ἐκντό) as the principle of personality. Consequently, he explained the Mystery of the u. i. by way of the communication of divine being to the assumed nature; the humanity of the Savior does not possess its own being, but subsists by virtue of the personal being of the Word. St. Massimo confessore (PG 91) continued along the same path and, more than Leonzio, emphasized the dependence of Christ’s human nature upon the being of the Word, so that this nature never possessed being, and hence personality, except in the Word (ἐν αὐτῷ... λαβύσσα τοῦ εἶναι τὴν γένεσιν; PG 91, 560). Damasceno brought the matter to its definitive conclusion by consecrating the term ἐνυπόστατος to indicate Christ’s human nature, which is hypostasized in the Word, from whom it receives being (ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ εἶναι λαμβάσω; De fide orth., III, 11). Without doubt, Damasceno connects with the whole of the Greek tradition when he emphasizes being in order to determine the constitution of the person or hypostasis. Already in Book I of the Dialoghi sulla Trinità (PG 28, 1114 ff.)—a work once attributed to St. Atanasio and now claimed for Didimo il Cieco by A. Günther in Studia Auselmiana, 11 (1941)—§ 2 (col. 1120) reads: Ἡ γὰρ ὑπόστασις τὸ εἶναι σημαίνει (hypostasis signifies being, whereas nature indicates τὸ τί εἶναι). Damasceno rightly specifies the concept of hypostasis as τὴν καθ'αὐτὸ καὶ ἰδιώστατον ὑπαρξίν: being subsisting by and in itself; Dialectica, chap. 42; PG 94, 612).

The legacy of Greek patristic thought to scholasticism was eminently metaphysical and directed theologians toward a deeper investigation of personality in an ontological sense. In the West, as early as the 5th century, Rufino (Hist. eccl., I, 29) had begun to use the term subsistentia in a concrete sense, to translate the Greek ὑπόστασις understood in the meaning of person (cf. also Anastasio Bibi, Interpretatio VII Synodi, praefatio). Among the scholastics, subsistentia gradually acquired an abstract sense, to indicate the formal principle of the person. Thus, at the beginning of scholasticism (11th century), not only was the doctrine of faith concerning the u. i. clearly established, but so too was the terminology for expressing it in scientific form.

1. Structure and Character of the u. i. — Nestorianism and Monophysitism would threaten every theological construction throughout the centuries. Indeed, they were present at the threshold of scholasticism, when Ugo di S. Vittore (De Sacramenti, I, II) sought to fuse the assumed human nature and the Word, whereas Abelardo and his disciples so radically separated the assumed man from the Word as to exclude the possibility of calling Christ Man-God, because humanity did not enter into his definition. Pietro Lombardo (III Sent.) gathered together three opinions current in his time: a) the Word assumed a concrete, perfect man; b) the Word assumed human nature (soul and body), uniting it substantially to his person; c) the Word united to himself separately, like two garments, a soul and a body, which do not constitute a man. St. Tommaso rejects the first and third opinions as heretical and adopts the second as Catholic (In III Sent., d. 6), defending it with careful argumentation (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 2, a. 6), and asserting, on the basis of Revelation and conciliar definitions, that the u. i. was effected «secundum subsistentiam seu hypostasim» and that therefore in Christ there is one suppos itum, one hypostasis, one person, and consequently one being, which «habet duos respectus, unum ad naturam divinam, alterum ad humanam» (In III sent., d. 6, q. 2).

Proceeding from the real distinction between essence and being, St. Tommaso makes being a constitutive element of the person as such: «esse pertinet ad ipsam constitutionem personae» (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 19, a. 1, ad 4); it is really distinguished from nature as a whole is distinguished from one of its parts: «Suppositum significatur ut totum habens naturam, sicut partem formalem» (ibid., 3ª, q. 2, a. 2). The constitution of the person therefore involves the specific nature, the principles that individuate it, the accidents, and being. Of these elements, the most important and decisive is the last, namely substantial being, which is equivalent to subsistence («subsistere nihil aliud est nisi per se existere» (De pot., q. 9, a. 1). Indeed: «Ad rationem hypostasis non sufficit quod aliquid sit particulare in genere substantiae (= natura individuata), sed ulterius requiritur quod sit perfectum (= substantia specifice completa) et in se subsistens» (Quaestio de Verbo inc., a. 2, ad 3). Although being also belongs to nature (ut quo), it is nevertheless proper to the suppositum or person (ut quod), to which it imparts unity and consistency (Quadib., 9, a. 3, ad 2). Where there is a duality of being, one cannot speak of a single person; and if a nature, even though individuated, comes to be united with an already existing person, there is no substantial union unless that nature is brought into the unity of personal being. Applying these principles to the u. i., St. Tommaso concludes that the ἔνωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν defined at the Council of Efeso is nothing other than union in the personal being of the Word, and that the Chalcedonian formula, “two complete natures converging in one person or subsistence,” has no other meaning than this: the Word, already subsisting in the divine nature, draws the human nature to himself and causes it to subsist by virtue of his own personal being. Therefore, the personal unity of Christ, God-Man, is linked to the unity of being, which St. Tommaso asserts everywhere, including in the Quaestio de Verbo Incarnato, where (as already in In III Sent.) he speaks of two beings in Christ in the sense that «unum esse Christi habet duos respectus, unum ad naturam divinam, alterum ad naturam humanam».

This lucid theology, a faithful echo of the patristic tradition and of the position of the Church’s magisterium, is incompatible with the theory of a dual being in Christ, such as that of the schools of Scoto and Suárez, founded on the principle of the identity of being with essence. Scoto maintains that the assumed nature, with its own being, is not a person in Christ only insofar as it communicates with the Word, from whom, however, it receives nothing. In this way it is difficult to preserve the substantial character of the u. i. intended by the Council of Efeso, whereas it is easy to move toward the conception of an «assumptus homo» placed alongside the Word as a self-subsisting subject. Suárez, recognizing this danger, seeks to posit a real bond between the Word and the assumed nature, consisting in a substantial mode: Christ’s human nature, identical with its being, is not a person because it lacks that mode, which is supplied by the assumed Word. But this mode, added to the existing nature, has every appearance of an accident, which could once again compromise the substantial character of the u. i. The inventor of this substantial mode had been Gaetano, believing that he was interpreting St. Tom-

Thomas’s doctrine, set out above, is much simpler and more effective in avoiding the dual danger of Nestorianism and Monophysitism: according to this doctrine, Christ’s human nature is substantially complete, because it lacks nothing except being, which lies outside the substantial order and serves only to actualize and actuate the nature. The lack of its own being prevents the nature from being a person, while the communication of the Word’s being causes it to subsist in the divine person, which thereby makes it profoundly its own in being and operation, as the Council of Ephesus requires. This is not a solution to the Mystery, but a rational elucidation, which nevertheless has its own difficulties. The principal one is this: since the being of the Word is infinite, it cannot be received by a finite nature. The answer is that the divine being does not enter the assumed nature as a form but terminates it only as an act: hence there is no metaphysical incompatibility. Nor does the other difficulty carry much weight: the divine being is identical with the essence and is therefore common to the three Persons; if, then, the u. i. consisted personally in the communication of that being, not only the Word but all three Persons together would become incarnate. The answer is that being, although, like the essence, one and identical in the three Persons in an absolute sense, is relatively distinct according to the manner in which the Persons possess II. The surface of a triangle is identical in its three angles, but each of them contains and possesses it in its own proper manner. The Word communicates being to the human nature according to the relative manner in which he possesses it (according to the relation of filiation); therefore only the Word remains incarnate, and not the other divine Persons.

Once the profound and true ontological unity of the God-Man is thus secured on the basis of the unity of personal being, his psychological unity also follows. Christ is one and feels himself to be one in his divine consciousness and in his human consciousness, which are expressed in a single I (v. CRISTO). Both forms of unity correspond to the Gospel texts and to the documents of the faith, which consistently present a single subject, a single I, to whom divine and human properties are attributed according to the two natures ineffably united and subsisting in the person of the Word.

2. Consequences of the u. i. — From the fundamental structure of the u. i. proceed all the lines of which Christology is composed, touching both the assumed person and the assumed nature, as well as the relationship between the two in its static and dynamic aspects.

a) Operational theandrism. — Regarding the activity of the God-Man, the Church, in condemning Monenergism and Monothelitism, defined (the Roman Council of 649 and the Third Council of Constantinople) that in Christ there are two wills and two activities, distinct according to the two natures. In reality, the will is a faculty proper to the nature, and every nature is the remote principle of action. Since in Christ there are two natures, there are two wills and two activities; but the acting subject (principium quod) is one alone, namely the Word, who wills and acts humanly and divinely. This truth is derived from the sources of Revelation. Indeed, in the Gospel Jesus Christ presents himself as a single subject acting both as God and as man (cf. the miracle of the man born blind and the resurrection of Lazarus). The Fathers who fought against the Monothelites echo the same truth. Thus St. Sophronius (Ep. synodica: PG 87, 3167); St. Maximus and St. John Damascene,

who reaffirm the twofold will, but attribute to the Word hegemony over both operative faculties, designating him as the sole Θέλητικος-ἐναργητικος (Disp. cum Pyrrho: PG 91, 320), or as the mover (κινητικός) of his humanity (ibid., 1056), or as the arbiter of its movements (De fide orthod., 3, 15; PG 94, 1060 and 1073). The hegemonic influence of the Word, however, does not deprive Christ’s human nature of freedom: St. Maximus merely alludes to the problem of reconciling human freedom with the action of the Word, but the complete solution was worked out by later theology (v. CRISTO). Against the human freedom of the Savior one can oppose neither impeccability (v. ibid.) nor a possible conflict with the divine will, which seems to emerge at Gethsemane (« Transeat a me calix iste... Non mea sed tua fiat voluntas »). St. Thomas, on the basis of tradition, distinguishes in Jesus the will ut natura (Θέλησις) and the will ut ratio (βούλησις): there was conflict on the part of the will as nature, which recoils from everything that in itself is harmful to the subject, but not on the part of the will as reason, which can tend toward an object harmful and displeasing in itself for the sake of a good (as when a sick person decides to take bitter medicine with a view to recovery). The will as reason, whose proper characteristic is freedom, was always freely conformed to the divine will in Christ.

As for the twofold activity, the problem received opposing solutions according to the different conceptions of the u. i.: the Nestorians separated human activity from divine activity too sharply; the Monophysites, on the other hand, fused them into one. Toward the end of the fifth century, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite proposed a formula (in the Epistola IV ad Caium monachium) that caused considerable controversy: « Christus qua Deus incarnatus, novam quandam theandricam operationem nobis instituens ». The Monophysites, such as Severus of Antioch, welcomed the formula, but St. Maximus rejected it, and the Roman Council of 649 proscribed the formula when understood as reducing the two distinct activities to unity (canon 15: Denz-U, 268). But, once the Monothelite crisis had passed, St. John Damascene adopted that formula without hesitation in an orthodox sense: later theology clarified and justified it down to the smallest detail. Indeed, the dynamic theandrism of the God-Man has various degrees, all of which rest on the duality and integrity of the natures and on the absolute unity of the acting person (principium quod). Once the principle has been established that the Word is the one acting subject, the arbiter of the operative powers of his natures, it is clear that all his human actions, even the humblest, must be called theandric, because, although they spring from the human nature, they belong properly to the Son of God (hence the infinite moral value of every gesture and every suffering of Christ-Man). More strictly, however, those human actions are called theandric upon which the divine influence of the Word is more strongly exercised, such as, for example, acts of virtue and all those actions that are more directly ordered to the purpose of the Incarnation, which is the Redemption of the human race. Finally, properly divine actions are also called theandric when humanity cooperates in them as the Word’s conjoined instrument, such as, for example, miracles.

b) Communication of idioms. — This is the mutual predication of divine and human attributes made in the person of Jesus Christ on the basis of the u. i. (v. IDIOTA).

c) Filiation of Christ. — That Jesus Christ, as the Word, is the true, natural, and non-adoptive Son of God is a Arianism (v.). But in the eighth century two Spanish bishops, Elipando (v.) and Felice, while admitting that truth of faith, thought that Christ, insofar as he was man, could be called the adopted Son of God (v. ADOZIA-NIEMO): this strange opinion was nevertheless condemned by particular councils and by Pope Adriano I (Denz-U, 299, 311, 3007). In reality Christ, even insofar as he is man, is the natural Son of God, because the subject of filiation is not the nature but the person, in which the nature subsists; and the person in Jesus Christ is one, namely that of the Word, the true Son of God.

d) Adoration of Christ. — Adoration (latria) is reserved to the divinity, and therefore Christ insofar as he is God is worthy of adoration in the strict sense. As regards his humanity, the Nestorians denied that it could be the object of latreutic worship; but the Church’s magisterium (at the Council of Ephesus, can. 8, and more peremptorily at the Second Council of Constantinople, can. 9: Denz-U, 221) defined that Christ’s flesh (humanity) must be the object of the same adoration offered to the Word. The matter is clear to anyone who considers the u. i., which makes the assumed nature a possession of the Word, sharing in its subsistence. But a theological clarification is necessary: God is adored in himself and for himself, Christ’s humanity in itself, but on account of the Word, to whom it is hypostatically united. The worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is dogmatically founded on these principles.

e) The relation of the Word to the assumed nature. — The u. i. is a relation founded on the communication of the subsistence (being) of the Word to the assumed nature. This relation is real from the human nature to the Word, but is merely logical in the opposite direction. The Word therefore acquires nothing by becoming incarnate and is changed in nothing. Contrary to the claims of Apollinarianism and Monophysitism, the Word does not become formally composed with the human nature, as the soul is with the body; rather, he merely actualizes that nature terminatively through his subsistence or personal being, which neither loses nor acquires anything. The annihilation of which St. Paul speaks in connection with the Incarnation (Phil., 2, 6 ff.) is explained in a moral sense as the profound humiliation of the Word, who hides himself in the envelope of our flesh, but not in a physical sense, as though the Word thereby suffered a real loss or limitation of his divine nature (v. RENOSI). The u. i., thus understood, extends to every part of Christ’s humanity, including the blood, and once established remains immutable forever. It certainly remained intact even during the triduum of death: during that period the soul and body of Our Lord were separated from each other, but remained hypostatically united to the Word.

f) The holiness of Christ. — By virtue of the u. i., the humanity of Jesus Christ belongs intimately to the Word, who makes it subsist in his personal being, sustains it, moves it, and directs it, as the soul in us sustains the body. This condition fully meets the requirements of formal holiness, which consists in union with God, exclusion of sin, and divine adoptive filiation. Jesus’ humanity is substantially united to the Word, sharing in his being and natural divine filiation, as has been said; moreover, it excludes from itself even the possibility of sin, because the principium quod of its physical and moral activity is the person of the Word, to whom not only sin but even sinfulness is repugnant. The Fathers insist on this substantial holiness of Christ’s humanity, employing biblical texts such as Ps. 44,8: « Propterea unxit te Deus, Deus tuus, oleo laetitiae prae consortibus tuis... ». Christ is the Anointed One of divinity (διά τὴν θεότητα), that is, the Holy One par excellence, as St. Gregorio Nazianzeno says (Orat., 30, 31).

But besides this substantial holiness (quond esse), in Christ-Man there is an accidental holiness proceeding from sanctifying Grace, which was fullest in him, according to the evangelical testimony (Io. 1, 14): « plenum Gratiae et veritatis ». The reasons are evident: the richer the rational creature is in Grace, the closer it is to God; but no closeness is more intimate than the u. i.; Christ was destined to destroy the kingdom of sin and to restore the Kingdom of God in the conscience, which is the kingdom of Grace. Nor can it be objected that Christ’s humanity, already holy by virtue of the u. i., has no need of sanctifying Grace, because the first holiness lies solely on the plane of being; in order to act in a divine manner it was necessary to elevate the faculties of the assumed nature to the supernatural state through supernatural habits such as those of Grace. Consequently, in Christ, in addition to incomparable sanctifying Grace, there were also the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are as it were its radiations. Some of these infused habits, however, are incompatible with the singular conditions of the Incarnate Word; faith and hope, for example, must therefore be excluded, since they are irreconcilable with the beatific vision, which Jesus’ soul enjoyed from the beginning. The same must be said of the virtue of penance, servile fear, and so forth.

g) The knowledge of Christ. — As the true Son of God, Christ possesses in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit the infinite divine knowledge. According to the better theological teaching, the infinite act of this knowledge cannot be communicated naturally to the human intelligence, which is finite. But the problem concerns specifically Christ’s human knowledge, that is, the knowledge of which his soul was capable. In the sixth century there arose the heresy of the Agnoetes (v.), who did not hesitate to attribute to Christ-Man genuine ignorance (ἄγναια). Agnoetism drew especially on Aff. 13, 32, where Christ himself professes not to know the day of the final judgment; but that error was condemned by the Church (the Roman Council of 649 and the Third Council of Constantinople), and in 1918 the Holy Office prescribed certain propositions tending to deny or eliminate Christ’s perfect knowledge (Denz-U, 2032 ff.). Catholic doctrine therefore upholds a perfect human knowledge in Christ, incompatible with error and ignorance just as with sin (cf. St. Agostino, Serm., 97; De Genesi contra Manich., I, 22, 34). The text of St. Marco was already rightly explained by the Fathers in the sense that Christ-Man knew the day of Judgment, but possessed this knowledge in a form that could not be communicated, for evident reasons.

In particular, theology attributes a threefold knowledge to Christ’s soul: 1) beatific vision: although not defined by the Church, it is admitted by all theologians because it accords with the requirements of the u. i. and with the divinity of the (incarnate) Word; 2) infused knowledge (proper to the angels and extended to the blessed), which consists in divine illumination through species directly infused into the intellect; 3) acquired knowledge, proper to all living human beings, who attain it through sensory experience and abstraction. These three kinds of knowledge can coexist in the same intelligence because they are not of the same species: the beatific vision is intuitive and actual, while the other two kinds of knowledge are habitual and are actualized at will through intelligible species. Nor are they superfluous; rather, they reveal the richness of Christ’s human cognition.

h) The human passions of Christ. — If the human nature assumed by the Word is consubstantial with ours, the question naturally arises whether in Christ, as in us, there was, in addition to intellectual and volitional life, also sensitive life, which constitutes so large a part of our psychology. Tradition is unanimous in attributing to Jesus the functions proper to the sensitive sphere and, in particular, those ordinarily termed passions (love, joy, desire, anger, etc.). Since passions in themselves are not evil, they are living forces at the disposal of the will, lending tone to moral and intellectual life; original sin (v.) and, still more, the requirements of the u. i. perfectly immunize Christ’s passions, which therefore remain docile, living instruments of his soul and his divinity. The Fathers subordinate all the movements of Jesus-Man’s sensitive life to the influence and hegemony of the Word and therefore customarily designate his passions by the term propassions, to indicate their irreprehensibility (ἀδιάβλητα πάθη), as the Damascene calls them, De fide orth., III, 20.

The question of Christ’s passibility is interesting. The Docetism (v. DOCETI) of the first centuries, revived in a new form at the time of Monophysitism (v. AFTARDOCETISMO), contributed to clouding the sound doctrine, which always saw in Jesus, during his earthly life and especially on the Cross, a genuine physical suffering. Someone (s. Ilario) raised certain doubts, but they did not take root. Christian liturgy and devotion bend over the Savior’s tortured flesh with a feeling of lively and profound compassion. Yet theologians, including modern ones, highlight a problem: how could Christ, who enjoyed the beatific vision, really suffer and experience pain in soul and body? Some have thought that the vision was suspended during the tragic hours of the Passion, but s. Tommaso finds the best solution to the problem in two ways: first, the beatific vision, together with its corresponding joy, could remain confined to the intellect and the will, in which they properly took place, while the storm of pain raged in the lower faculties. Secondly, deepening the psychological analysis, s. Tommaso rightly observes that the coexistence of two different feelings concerning the same object, for two distinct reasons, is not incompatible with the simplicity of the soul: thus a mother suffers physically in childbirth and rejoices morally at the birth of her child. Indeed, on the same moral plane, a mother can suffer and rejoice in the face of her child’s martyrdom—that is, suffer naturally and rejoice supernaturally—because the loss is transformed into a glorious conquest. Similarly, the soul of the suffering Jesus suffered physically and morally because of the blows, wounds, insults, and ingratitude; but at the same time it rejoiced in God, because in this way the great design of the Redemption of the human race was being accomplished.