HYPOSTATIC UNION. – A dogmatic expression referring exclusively to Jesus Christ considered in His intimate structure as God-Man, the theandric subject, in whom the divine nature and the human nature are substantially united in one single Person, Who is the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, namely the Word. Hypostatic (from Gr. ὕπόστασις = suppositum) signifies personal, and is a term reserved for the incarnate Word, in Whom the Person is not, as in us, the result of substantial union, but precedes II. Historically the formula goes back to St. Cyril of Alexandria (ἕνωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν), who used it in the sense of a real-physical union against Nestorius, who limited himself to a merely accidental-moral union; but the Council of Chalcedon determined its meaning (already implicit) in the personal sense. Under the heading Incarnation (v.) the hypostatic union has been considered as a revealed fact: here it is examined from the point of view 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 about the humanity of the Saviour, as in the case of the Docetae (v. DOCETI), or about His divinity, as in the case of subordinationism (v.) and Arianism (v.), which more directly undermined the Trinitarian mystery. But after the Council of Nicaea (325), which by defining consubstantiality (ὁμοούσιος) safeguarded the divinity of the Word, attention focused on studying especially the relationship between the human and the divine in Christ and the meaning of their unity. The problem was posed by Apollinaris of Laodicea (v.) in the second half of the 4th century, and it overflowed with an attitude that even seemed orthodox to St. Athanasius: he maintained that Christ resulted from the union of the Word with flesh (Θεὸς ἔνσαρκος), according to the expression of St. John: “And the Word was made flesh.” But in the Antiochene environment the formula of Christ as a man elevated to the sphere of the divine (ἄνθρωπος ἔνθεος) prevailed. Apollinaris and even more his disciples modified their formula, passing from the dichotomy Word-flesh to the trichotomy Word-soul-flesh, but taking “soul” as a merely sensitive principle (without intellectual faculties) and attributing to the Word itself the function of the rational soul. The Antiochene school greatly benefited from this development, which accentuated its zeal against Apollinarianism, strengthening its tendency to see in Christ a perfect man in whom the Word dwells, determining a dualistic attitude towards the mystery of the hypostatic union. Characteristic was the theory of the two sons (the Son of God and the Son of Mary), coined by one of the first Antiochenes, Diodorus (v.) of Tarsus in his anti-Apollinarian work Contra Synousiastas (PG 33), condemned by Pope Damasus (Roman Synod of 380).1. Nestorianism
But the architect of the dualistic Christology of Antioch is Theodore (v.) of Mopsuestia: in Christ there is One Who assumes and One Who is assumed (Homiliae, VIII. 1 and In Ioannem, XII. 31); the man Jesus is the temple which the Word uses; the birth from Mary, the Passion, the death pertain exclusively to the man, not to the Word, to Whom the man is united by grace, complacency, and will (In Io., I. 34 and II, 21); the human and the divine are two distinct physical realities, which come together in a common subject (πρόσωπον), similar to a moral person. On this line Nestorius developed his entire Christological doctrine (v. NESTORIANISM). The humanity and the divinity in Christ are not only two distinct natures, but also two physical subjects (πρόσωπον συναξάς; Book of Heracleides, p. 141), which are united by contact (συνέχεια) in one single πρόσωπον (mors) by way of will.St. Cyril (v.) of Alexandria immediately perceived the gravity of the Nestorian position and with perhaps even too lively an energy set himself to combat it, opposing, on the basis of tradition, a Christology founded on the profound real (ἕνωσις συναξάς) unity of the humanity and the divinity in the one hypostasis (ἕνωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν). Which is the incarnate Word. For this reason Mary is truly Θεοτόκος (Mother of God), the humanity of Christ, indeed His flesh, is worthy of adoration and is a source of vivifying grace; divine and human attributes are predicated interchangeably of Christ (communicatio idiomatum); the Word suffered and truly died according to His human nature. It is not a question of a merely moral, accidental union, but of a union such as to make of Christ one single concrete, indivisible reality. And in this connection St. Cyril cited an Apollinarian phrase attributed to St. Athanasius: Μὰς φύσις τοῦ Ἀγίου στεφανωμένην (“one is the nature of the incarnate Word”). For St. Cyril, as for Nestorius, there was no precise distinction between the terms “nature,” “hypostasis,” “person”; nevertheless, from a comparison of the two Christologies it is sufficiently clear that Nestorius saw in Christ two subjects almost standing by themselves, whereas Cyril saw only one, while admitting the two fundamental elements, divine and human. Posterity rightly translated the contrast between Nestorius and St. Cyril into the clear formula: “not two natures and two persons, but two natures and one single person, that of the Word.” Cyril’s thought, which without doubt is connected with the sources of Revelation, triumphed at the Council of Ephesus (431), where his second letter to Nestorius (Καταφύλαξις) was read and acclaimed, and the other (the fourth to Nestorius) with the appended anathemas was inserted in the acts. In vain have some modern critics attempted to reverse the facts, excusing Nestorius and accusing St. Cyril: the controversy touched on the grave problem of the ontological unity of Christ, 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 grew more intense through the efforts of Dioscorus, successor of St. Cyril, who in Constantinople found a docile ally in the imperial court in the person of Eutyches (v.). Both of them, misusing some incautious phrases of St. Cyril, pushed so far the physical unity defined at Ephesus that they fused the two natures, divine and human, into one, making of Christ a stubborn hybrid mixture, a drico. Eutyches, before a synod gathered under the presidency of Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, denied the consubstantiality of Christ with us men and maintained that while before the union one could speak of two natures, after the union it is not possible to affirm that there is only 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 arose, which, after the death of Theodosius, was held at Chalcedon in 451 (v. CHALCEDON, *Council*; EUTYCHIANISM; MONOPHYSITISM), and it did not content itself with condemning Eutychianism but reaffirmed the condemnation of Nestorius already pronounced in 431: “We must recognize one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, without abolishing the difference of the natures by reason of the union and indeed preserving intact the property of each nature, which converge in one single person or hypostasis (πρόσωπον-ὑπόστασιν); (we must confess) one and the same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, not parted or divided into two persons.” The formula is of immense significance from both the historical and doctrinal points of view. It resolves the problem by consecrating the distinction between nature (φύσις) and person (ὑπόστασις or πρόσωπον), fixing the distinction along the line of nature and the unity along the line of person. Moreover, by insisting on the substantial integrity of the two natures, it intends that personality, in which the encounter of the two natures takes place, is not on the line of essence but on that of being.
In 553 the Second Council of Constantinople, confirming Chalcedon, further clarified and illuminated the doctrine of the faith, eliminating forever the two antithetical positions, Nestorianism and Eutychianism (can. 7: Denz.-U., 219). Thus was the formal faith of St. Cyril written and interpreted in its true sense (ἔνωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν, union according to hypostasis, i.e., personal, which leaves intact, whole, and distinct the two natures). On this solid foundation theology constructed the christological edifice along its metaphysical lines. What remained to be clarified was the very personal unity of Christ from the psychological point of view: to this another heresy, namely Monothelitism, contributed.
3. *Monothelitism.* – On the psychological terrain of the activity of the God-Man, Severus (v.) of Antioch opened the opposing path, a man of keen intellect, sympathetic to the Alexandrian tradition and opposed to the definition of Chalcedon. Without further insisting, as the Eutychian Monophysites did, on the unity of nature in Christ, he preferred to study activity in connection with the hypostasis rather than with the natures, concluding that in Christ there is only one operation, as there is only one principle of action (monenergism). In this doctrine of Severus the Monothelitism (v.) that developed in the 7th century through the efforts of Sergius, bishop of Constantinople (v.), was already virtually present.
The doctrine opposed by St. Maximus (v.) to Sergius and Pyrrhus was substantially accepted and sanctioned by the Roman Synod of 649 under Martin I and by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680–81 under Pope Agatho. In the latter it was defined: “And we confess two natural wills in Him and two natural operations indivisibly, unchangeably, inseparably, unconfusedly, according to the doctrine of the holy Fathers, and we also confess two wills not contrary, far from it... but His human will following and not resisting or reluctant, but rather subject and subordinate to His divine and omnipotent will. For it was necessary that the will of the flesh be moved, but subject to the divine will” (Denz.-U., 291). Thus was the christological drama begun in the 4th century brought to a close with the precious result of a precise expression of what human reason, illumined by faith, can say about the mystery of the God-Man.
The final synthesis of dogmatic definitions is this: Christ is the person of the Word subsisting in the divine nature and in the human nature; along the ontological line the two natures are distinct and whole, but they converge in the single hypostatic subsistence of the Word; along the dynamic, psychological line, the will and activities are two, but they are united in the personal unity of the single principle of action, which is always the Word. Theology had the task of explicating and developing this doctrinal synthesis as fully as possible.
II. THEOLOGY OF THE MYSTERY
The patristic thought of the East is gathered and summarized by St. John Damascene, especially in *De fide orthodoxa* (PG 94), translated several times into Latin and a source for scholastic theologians. In turn, the Damascene drew from St. Maximus the Confessor (7th cent.) and from Leontius of Byzantium (6th cent.). Leontius (v.) waged a thoroughgoing battle against Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and also against the mitigated Monophysitism of Severus of Antioch. Following the Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus), he distinguished being from essence and established as the reason for personality the being-for-self (ἔντασις καθ' ὑπόστασιν). Consequently, the Mystery of the God-Man was explained by him through the communication of the divine being to the assumed nature; the humanity of the Savior does not have its own being but subsists by virtue of the personal being of the Word. St. Maximus the Confessor (PG 91) pursued the same path and, more than Leontius, emphasized the dependence of the human nature of Christ on the being of the Word, so that this nature never had being and therefore personality except in the Word (ἔντασις καθ' ὑπόστασιν is not being: PG 91, 560). The Damascene finally consecrated the term ἐναπόστασις to indicate the human nature of Christ, which is hypostasized in the Word, from which it receives being (ἔντασις καθ' ὑπόστασιν. III, 111). Without doubt, the Damascene connects with the entire Greek tradition when he emphasizes being to determine the constitution of the person or hypostasis. Already in the first of the *Dialogues on the Trinity* (PG 28, 1114 ff.)—a work once attributed to St. Athanasius, now claimed for Didymus the Blind by A. Günther in *Studia Anselmiana*, 11 (1941)—at § 2 (col. 1120) one reads: “Ἡ γὰρ ὑπόστασις τὸ ἐν αὐτῷ σημαίνει (hypostasis signifies being, while nature indicates τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι).” The Damascene rightly specifies the concept of hypostasis as τὴν καθ' ἑαυτὴν ὑπόστασιν ὑφεστηκυῖαν: being-for-self, subsistent. *Dialectica*, ch. 42: PG 94, 612).The handing on of Greek patristic thought to the scholastics was eminently metaphysical and oriented theologians to deepen the concept of personality in an ontological sense. In the West, as early as the 5th century, Rufinus (Hist. ecc., I, 29) had begun to use the term *subsistentia* in a concrete sense to translate the Greek ὑπόστασις understood as person (cf. also Anastasius Bibliothecarius, *Interpretatio VII Synodi, praefatio*). Among the scholastics, *subsistentia* gradually assumed an abstract sense to indicate the formal reason of the person. Thus, by the beginning of scholasticism (11th century), not only was the doctrine of the faith concerning the God-Man well determined, but also the terminology to express it in a scientific form.
### Structure and Nature of the Hypostatic Union
1. *Structure and Nature of the Hypostatic Union* – Nestorianism and Monophysitism will persist through the centuries in every theological construction. Indeed, they were at the threshold of Scholasticism when Hugh of Saint-Victor (De Sacramentis, I, 11) tended to fuse together the assumed human nature and the Word, while Abelard and his disciples so separated the assumed man from the Word as to exclude the possibility of calling Christ God-Man, since humanity did not enter into His definition. Peter Lombard (III Sent.) collected three opinions current in his time: a) the Word assumed a concrete, perfect man; b) the Word assumed human nature (soul and body) by uniting it substantially to His person; c) the Word united to Himself separately, as two garments, a soul and a body, which do not constitute a man. St. Thomas rejects the first and third opinions as erroneous and adopts the second as Catholic (In III Sent., d. 6) and defends it with careful reasoning (Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 2, a. 6), asserting, on the basis of Revelation and conciliar definitions, that the hypostatic union was made «secundum subordinati» if it could not be that in Christ there is one supposit, one hypostasis, one person, and therefore one being, which «habet duos respectus, unum ad naturam divinam, alterum ad humanam» (In III Sent., d. 6, q. 2).
Starting from the real distinction between essence and being, St. Thomas 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), and is really distinct from nature as a whole from one of its parts: «Suppositum significatur ut totum habens naturam, sicut partem formalem» (ibid., 3ª, q. 2, a. 2). Thus, the constitution of the person includes the specific nature, the principles that individuate it, 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 exsistere»: De pot., q. 9, a. 1). Indeed: «Ad rationem hypostasis non sufficit quod aliquid sit particulare in genere substantiae» («individuated nature»), «sed ulterius requiritur quod sit perfectum» («complete specific substance») «et in se subsistens» (Quaestio de Verbo inc., a. 2, ad 3). Although being also belongs to nature (ut quo), it is proper to the supposit or person (ut quod), to which it confers unity and consistency (Quodlib., 9, a. 3, ad 2). Where there is a duality of being, one cannot speak of a single person; and if a nature, even if individuated, comes to be united to an already existing person, there is no substantial union unless that nature is drawn into the unity of personal being. Applying these principles to the hypostatic union, St. Thomas concludes that the ένωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν definitive at the Council of Ephesus is nothing other than a union in the personal being of the Word, and that the Chalcedonian formula «two complete natures concurring in one person or subsistence» has no other meaning than this: the Word, already subsisting in the divine nature, draws 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 bound to the unity of being, which St. Thomas affirms everywhere, even in the Quaestio de Verbo Incarnato, where (as 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 clear theology, a faithful echo of the patristic tradition and the attitude of the ecclesiastical magisterium, is incompatible with the theory of a double being in Christ, such as that of the schools of Soto and Suárez, based on the principle of the identity of being with essence. Soto maintains that the assumed nature, with its own proper being, is not a person in Christ insofar as it communicates with the Word, from which, however, it receives nothing. In this way, it is difficult to preserve the substantial character of the hypostatic union desired by the Council of Ephesus, while it is easy to drift toward the conception of an *assumptus homo* placed alongside the Word as a subject in itself. Suárez, recognizing this danger, seeks to establish a real bond between the Word and the assumed nature, which would consist in a substantial mode: the human nature of Christ, identical with its being, is not a person because it lacks that mode which is supplied by the assuming Word. But this mode added to the existing nature has all the appearance of an accident, which once again could compromise the substantial character of the hypostatic union. The inventor of this substantial mode was Cajetan, who believed he was interpreting Capreolus’ thought better than Capreolus himself and asserting that the formal reason of personality does not lie in being, but in a mode or pure term that delimits the substance and disposes it to existential act. The human nature of Christ has neither its own being nor this pure term, and therefore is not a person, but is hypostasized in the Word, which communicates to it being and the substantial term. But apart from the artificiality of this theory, it is not clear how it can meet the requirements of the Council of Chalcedon regarding the integrity of the assumed nature, if it is true that this nature lacks that term or substantial mode and such a term is a real complement of the nature, in substantial line.
The doctrine of St. Thomas, outlined above, is much simpler and more effective in avoiding the double danger of Nestorianism and Monophysitism: according to this doctrine, the human nature of Christ is substantially integral, because nothing is lacking to it except being, which is outside the substantial line and serves only to realize, to actuate the nature. The lack of proper being prevents the nature from being a person, and the communication of the Word’s being causes it to subsist in the divine person, which in this way makes it profoundly its own in being and operation, as the Council of Ephesus requires. It is not the solution to the Mystery, but the rational illustration, which also has its difficulties. The greatest is this: the being of the Word, being infinite, cannot be subjected in a finite nature. But it is answered that that divine being does not enter into the assumed nature as a form but only terminates it as an act: therefore no metaphysical admixture. Nor does the other difficulty carry much weight: the divine being is identical with essence and therefore is common to the three Persons; if therefore the hypostatic union consisted personally in the communication of that being, not only the Word but all three Persons would be incarnate. It is answered that being, although in itself one and identical in the three Persons, is relatively distinct according to the mode in which the Persons possess II. The area of a triangle is identical in the three angles, but each of them contains and possesses it according to a proper mode. The Word communicates being to the human nature according to the relative mode by which He possesses it (according to the relation of filiation); therefore only the Word is made man, not the other divine Persons.
Thus assured of the profound and true ontological unity of the God-Man on the basis of the unity of personal being, there follows also His psychological unity. 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. PSICOLOGY OF CHRIST). Both this unity and the ontological unity respond to the texts of the Gospel and the documents of the faith; which constantly present a single subject, to which divine and human properties are attributed according to the two natures inseparably united and subsisting in the person of the Word.
### Consequences of the Hypostatic Union
2. *Consequences of the Hypostatic Union* – From the fundamental structure of the hypostatic union all the lines of Christology proceed, which touch upon both the assuming person and the assumed nature, as well as the relationship between the hypostatic union and the other aspects, both static and dynamic.
a) Theandric operation. – Regarding the activity of the God-Man, the Church, in condemning Monenergism and Monothelitism, has defined (Roman Council of 649 and the Third Council of Constantinople) that in Christ there are two distinct wills and two distinct activities according to the two natures. In reality, the will is a faculty proper to nature, and each nature is a remote principle of action. Since in Christ there are two natures, there are also two wills and two activities; yet the acting subject (principium quod) is one alone, namely the Word, who wills and acts both divinely and humanly. This truth is derived from the sources of Revelation. Indeed, in the Gospel Jesus Christ presents Himself as a single acting subject both as God and as man (cf. the miracle of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus). The Fathers who fought against the Monothelites reiterate the same truth. Thus St. Sophronius (Synodal Letter: PG 87, 3167); St. Maximus and St. John Damascene,
who insist on the double will, yet attribute to the Word hegemony over both opposing faculties, calling Him the unique (δειγματικός-ἐνεργηματικός) (Disputation with Pyrrhus: PG 91, 320), or the mover (κυνηγός) of His humanity (ibid., 1056), or the arbiter of its movements (De fide orthodox., 3, 15; PG 94, 1060 and 1073). The hegemonic influence of the Word, however, does not deprive the human nature of Christ of its freedom: St. Maximus merely alludes to the problem of reconciling human freedom with the action of the Word, but the full solution was elaborated by later theology (v. CRISTO). Against the human freedom of the Savior, neither impeccability (v. ibid) nor any supposed conflict with the divine will—such as seems to emerge in Gethsemane (v. Transeat a me calix iste... Non mea sed tua fiat voluntas)—can be opposed. St. Thomas, following tradition, distinguishes in Jesus a will as nature (δειγματικός) and a will as reason (βουληματικός): the conflict arises from the will as nature, which recoils from anything harmful to the subject, but not from the will as reason, which can tend toward an object harmful in itself and displeasing in view of a greater good (as when a sick man decides to take bitter medicine for the sake of healing). The will as reason, whose proper act is freedom, was always freely conformed to the divine will in Christ.
As for the double activity, the problem received opposing solutions according to different conceptions of the hypostatic union. The Nestorians divided the human activity too sharply from the divine; the Monophysites, on the other hand, fused them into a single activity. Toward the end of the 6th century, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite proposed a formula (in the Fourth Epistle to Caius the Monarch) that caused a great stir: “Christus qua Deus incarnatus, novam quandam theandricam operationem nobis instituens.” The Monophysites, such as Severus of Antioch, readily accepted the formula, but St. Maximus rejected it, and the Roman Council of 649 condemned the formula when taken to mean a reduction of the two distinct activities to a single unity (can. 15: Denz.-U., 268). Once the Monothelite crisis had passed, however, St. John Damascene forthwith adopted the formula in an orthodox sense: later theology clarified and justified it in detail. Indeed, the Damascene theandrism of the God-Man admits of various degrees, all resting upon the duality and integrity of the natures and upon the absolute unity of the acting person (principium quod). Once it is established that the Word is the sole acting subject and arbiter of the operative virtues of His natures, it is clear that all His human actions, even the most humble, must be called theandric, for although they proceed from human nature, they belong to the Son of God (whence the infinite moral value of every gesture, every suffering of Christ the Man). More rigorously, however, the actions are theandric upon which the divine influence of the Word is exercised most directly, such as acts of virtue and those actions most directly ordered to the end of the world’s redemption, namely the Incarnation. Finally, actions are also called theandric when they are properly divine, to which the humanity contributes as a conjoined instrument of the Word, as in the miracles.
b) Communication of idioms. – It is the mutual predication of divine and human attributes in the person of Jesus Christ on the basis of the hypostatic union (v. IDIOTA).
c) Sonship of Christ. – That Jesus Christ, as the Word, is the true, natural, and not adoptive Son of God is a truth of faith defined against Arianism (v.). Yet in the 8th century two Spanish bishops, Elipandus (v.) and Felix, while admitting this truth of faith, thought that Christ, insofar as He is man, could be called an adoptive son of God (
V. ADOZIANISMO): this strange opinion was, however, condemned by particular councils and by Pope Adrian I (Denz
U., 299, 311, 3007). In reality, Christ, even insofar as He is man, is a natural Son of God, because the subject of filiation is not 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. – Latria is reserved for the divinity, and therefore Christ insofar as He is God is worthy of adoration in the strict sense. As for His humanity, the Nestorians denied that it could be the object of latreutic worship; but the magisterium of the Church (at the Council of Ephesus, can. 8 and more peremptorily at the Second Council of Constantinople, can. 9; Denz.-U., 221) defined that the flesh (humanity) of Christ must be the object of the same adoration offered to the Word. This is clear to anyone who considers the hypostatic union, which makes the assumed nature a possession of the Word, in which it shares His subsistence. Yet a theological clarification is necessary: God is adored in Himself and for Himself; the humanity of Christ is adored in itself, but by reason of the Word to which it is united hypostatically. On these principles is dogmatically founded the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
e) Relation of the Word to the assumed nature. – The hypostatic union is a relation founded upon 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 only logical in the inverse sense. Thus the Word gains nothing and changes in nothing by the Incarnation. Contrary to the claims of Apollinarianism and Monophysitism, the Word does not enter into formal composition with human nature, as the soul with the body; rather, He merely actuates that nature terminatively by means of His subsistence or personal being, which loses nothing and gains nothing. The “kenosis” of which St. Paul speaks with regard to the Incarnation (Phil. 2:6 ff.) is to be understood morally as the profound humiliation of the Word, who hides Himself within the envelope of our flesh, but not physically, as if the Word suffered any real loss or limitation of His divine nature (v. KENOSI). The hypostatic union, thus understood, extends to all parts of Christ’s humanity, even to His blood, and once established, remains immutable forever. It certainly remained intact even during the three days of death: in that period the soul and body of Our Lord were separated from each other, yet still hypostatically united to the Word.
f) The Holiness of Christ. — The humanity of Jesus Christ, by virtue of the hypostatic union, is intimately proper to the Word, which causes it to subsist in its personal being, sustains it, moves it, directs it, as in us the soul governs the body. This condition fully meets the demands of a formal holiness, which consists in union with God, in the exclusion of sin, and in divine adoptive filiation. The humanity of Jesus is substantially united to the Word, of which it shares the being and the natural divine filiation, as has been said, and moreover 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 which not only sin but even sinfulness is repugnant. The Fathers insist on this substantial holiness of the humanity of Christ, employing biblical texts such as Ps. 44:8: «Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows...». Christ is the One of divinity (δειγματικός), that is, the Holy One par excellence, as St. Gregory Nazianzen says (Orat., 30, 31).
But besides this substantial holiness (quoad esse), in Christ-Man there is an accidental holiness deriving from sanctifying grace, which in Him was most perfect, according to the evangelical testimony (Jn. 1:14): «full of grace and truth». The reasons are evident: the more a rational creature is rich in grace, the closer it is to God; but no intimacy is greater than the hypostatic union. 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 the humanity of Christ, already holy by virtue of the hypostatic union, has no need of sanctifying grace, because the first holiness is only on the level of being; to act in a divine manner it was necessary to elevate the faculties of the assumed nature to the supernatural state by means of supernatural habits such as those of grace. In Christ, therefore, besides the incomparable sanctifying grace, there were also the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are like the irradiations of that grace. Some, however, of these infused habits are repugnant to the singular conditions of the Incarnate Word; hence they must be excluded, for example, faith and hope, which are incompatible with the beatific vision, of which the soul of Jesus enjoyed from the beginning. The same may be said of the virtue of penance, servile fear, etc.
g) The Knowledge of Christ. — As true Son of God, Christ possesses in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit the infinite divine knowledge. According to the best theological doctrine, the infinite act of this knowledge cannot be communicated to the naturally finite human intellect. But the problem is posed distinctly with regard to the human knowledge of Christ, that is, the knowledge of which His soul was capable. In the 6th century there arose the heresy of the agnoetae (v.), who did not hesitate to attribute to Christ-Man a veritable ignorance (ἀγνοίας). Agnoetism drew especially from Mk. 13:32, where Christ Himself confesses that He does not know the day of the final judgment; but this error was condemned by the Church (Roman Council of 649 and the Third Council of Constantinople) and in 1918 the Holy Office proscribed certain propositions tending to deny or eliminate the perfect knowledge of Christ (Denz.-U., 2032 ff.). Catholic doctrine therefore stands for a perfect human knowledge of Christ, to which error and ignorance are as repugnant as sin is (cf. St. Augustine, Serm., 97; *De Genesi contra Manich.*, I, 22, 34). The text of St. Mark was already rightly explained by the Fathers to mean that Christ-Man knew the day of Judgment, but by a knowledge not communicable, for evident reasons.
In particular, theology attributes to the soul of Christ a threefold knowledge: 1) the beatific vision: although not defined by the Church, it is admitted by all theologians because it is consonant with the demands of the hypostatic union and the divinity of the Incarnate Word; 2) infused knowledge (proper to angels and extended to the blessed), which consists in a divine illumination by means of species directly impressed on the intellect; 3) acquired knowledge, proper to all living men, which the mind attains through the experience of the senses and abstraction. These three kinds of knowledge can coexist in the same intellect, because they are not of the same species: the beatific vision is intuitive and actual, the other two kinds of knowledge are habitual and are actualized at will by means of intelligible species. Nor are they superfluous; rather, they reveal the richness of the human knowledge of Christ.
h) The Human Passions of Christ. — If the human nature assumed by the Word is consubstantial with ours, it is natural to doubt whether in Christ, as in us, there was, besides the intellectual and volitional life, also the sensitive life, which is 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 which are commonly called passions (love, joy, desire, anger, etc.). Since passions in themselves are not evil, they are living forces at the disposal of the will, which gives them direction in moral and intellectual life; the absence of original sin (v.) and, still more, the requirement of the hypostatic union, perfectly immunize the passions of Christ, which remain therefore docile living instruments of His soul and of His divinity. The Fathers subordinate all the movements of the sensitive life of Jesus-Man to the influence and hegemony of the Word, and hence they commonly denote His passions by the term *propassions* to indicate their irreproachability (ἀδιάβλητα πάθη), which St. John of Damascus calls them (*De fide orth.*, III, 20).
An interesting question is that of the passibility of Christ. Docetism (v. Docetism) of the early centuries, revived in a new form at the time of Monophysitism (v. Monophysitism), contributed to cloud sound doctrine, which always saw in Jesus, during His earthly life and especially on the Cross, a veritable physical suffering. Some (St. Hilary) raise a doubt which, however, does not take root. The liturgy and Christian piety dwell upon the lacerated flesh of the Saviour with a sense of vivid and profound compassion. Nevertheless, theologians, even modern ones, point out a problem: how could Christ, who enjoyed the beatific vision, really suffer and experience pain in soul and body? Some have thought of a suspension of the vision during the tragic hours of the Passion, but St. Thomas finds the best solution of the problem in two ways: first, the beatific vision with its concomitant joy could remain confined to the intellect and will, in which it continued to operate, while in the lower faculties the storm of pain raged. Secondly, by psychological analysis, St. Thomas rightly notes that there is no contradiction in the simplest soul experiencing two different feelings about the same object for two distinct reasons: thus a mother suffers certainly 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, suffering naturally and rejoicing supernaturally, because the loss is transformed into a glorious achievement. Similarly, the soul of Jesus in His suffering suffered physically and morally from the blows, wounds, insults, and ingratitude; but at the same time He rejoiced in God because thus the great design of the Redemption of the human race was being accomplished.