Hypostatic Union

HYPOSTATIC UNION. - Dogmatic expression that refers 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 a single Person, who is the second of the Most Holy Trinity, that is, the Word. Hypostatic (from the Greek ὑπόστασις = suppositum) means personal, and it is a term reserved for the Incarnate Word, in whom the Person is not, as in us, the result of the substantial union, but precedes it. Historically the formula goes back to St. Cyril 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 entry Incarnation (v.) the hypostatic union has been considered as a revealed fact: here it is examined from the point of view of the mode, according to which the divine and the human are united in the person of the God-Man.

I. CONTROVERSIES AND DEFINITIONS

The controversies surrounding 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 Savior, such as Docetism (v. DOCETI), or concerning his divinity, such as subordinationism (v.) and Arianism (v.), which more directly undermined the Trinitarian mystery. But after the Council of Nicaea (325), which by its definition of consubstantiality (ὑμοσύσεις) secured the divinity of the Word, attention concentrated 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 4th century, beginning with an attitude that seemed orthodox even 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: "And the Word was made flesh." But as the Antiochene formula of Christ as perfect man elevated to the sphere of the divine (ἐνθρωπος ἕναρχος) prevailed, Apollinaris and even more his disciples modified their own formula, passing from the dichotomy Word-flesh to the trichotomy Word-soul-flesh, but taking "soul" as a simple sensitive principle (without intellectual faculty) and attributing to the Word himself the function of rational soul. The Antiochene school was greatly to benefit from this development, intensifying its zeal against Apollinarianism, reinforcing its tendency to see in Christ a perfect man, in whom the Word dwells, producing a dualistic attitude toward the mystery of the hypostatic union. Characteristic is the theory of the two sons (the son of God and the son of Mary), coined by one of the early Antiochenes, Diodore (v.) of Tarsus in the anti-Apollinarian work Contra Synonziastia (PG 33), condemned by Pope Damasus (Roman Synod of 380).

1. Nestorianism

But the architect of Antiochene dualistic Christology is 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; the birth from Mary, the Passion, the death concern exclusively the Man, not the Word, to whom the Man is bound by grace, by complacency, by will (In Io., I. 34 and II. 21): the human and the divine are two well-distinguished physical realities, which converge in a common subject (πρόσωπον), similar to a moral person. Along this line Nestorius developed his entire Christological doctrine (v. NESTORIANESIMO). The humanity and divinity in Christ are not only two distinct natures, but also two physical subjects (πρόσωπα φυσικά; Libro di Eracl., p. 141), which unite by contact (συνέχεια) in a single (moral) πρόσωπον, by way of 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 it, opposing, on the basis of tradition, a Christology founded on the profound physical, real unity (ἐνῶσις φυσικά) of humanity and divinity in the single hypostasis (ἐνῶσις 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, the divine and human attributes are predicated interchangeably of Christ (communicatio ultimatum), the Word has truly suffered and died according to his human nature. It is not a question of a moral, accidental union, but of a union such as to make of Christ a single concrete, indivisible reality. And in this connection St. Cyril cited an Apollinarian phrase attributed to St. Athanasius: Μία φύσις τοῦ Λόγου σοσπραγμένη ("one is the nature of the incarnate Word"). For St. Cyril, as for Nestorius, no precise distinction was made between the terms "nature," "hypostasis," "person"; nevertheless it emerges clearly enough from the comparison of the two Christologies that Nestorius saw in Christ two subjects almost self-subsisting, while 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 sole person, that of the Word." Cyril's thought, which undoubtedly connects to the sources of Revelation, triumphed at the Council of Ephesus (431), where his letter II to Nestorius (Καταφλωτρός) was read and acclaimed, and the other (the IV to Nestorius) with its annexed anathematisms was inserted into the acts. In vain have certain modern critics attempted to overturn the facts, excusing Nestorius and accusing St. Cyril: the controversy touched 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 became increasingly exasperated through the work of Dioscorus, successor of St. Cyril, who had in Constantinople, alongside the imperial Court, a docile ally, Eutyches (v.). The one and the other, abusing some incautious phrase of St. Cyril, pushed the physical unity defined at Ephesus so far as to fuse together the two natures, divine and human, into one alone, making of Christ a hybrid theandric union. Eutyches, before a synod assembled under the presidency of Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, denied the consubstantiality of Christ with us men and maintained that if before the union one could speak of two natures, after the union it is impossible to affirm anything but one nature; whence 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 against orthodoxy. The necessity of a new Council arose, which, after the death of Theodosius, was held at Chalcedon in 451 (v. CALCEDONIA, Concilio; EUTICHIANESIMO; MONOFISISMO), and it was not content to condemn Eutychianism, but reaffirmed the condemnation of Nestorius already given 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 concurring in one person or hypostasis (πρόσωπον-ὑπόστασιν); (one must confess) one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ, not parted or divided into two persons." The formula is of immense import from the historical and doctrinal point of view. It resolves the problem by consecrating the distinction between nature (φύσις) and person (ὑπόστασις or πρόσωπον), in order to fix the distinction on the line of nature and the unity on the line of person. Moreover, by insisting on the substantial integrity of the two natures despite the union, it makes it understood that the personality, in which the meeting of the two natures is effected, is not on the line of essence, but on that of being.

In 553 the II Council of Constantinople, echoing that of Chalcedon, confirmed and defined still more luminously the doctrine of the faith, eliminating forever the two antithetical positions, Nestorianism and Eutychianism (can. 7: Denz-U, 219). Thus was sanctioned and interpreted in its true sense the felicitous formula of St. Cyril ἔνωσις καθ'ὑπόστασιν, union according to the hypostasis, that is, personal, which leaves the two natures intact, integral and distinct. On this solid foundation theology built the Christological edifice in its metaphysical lines. There remained to clarify the same personal unity of Christ from the psychological point of view: another heresy contributed to this, namely Monothelitism.

3. Monothelitism

On the psychological ground of the activity of the God-Man, controversy was opened by Severus (v.) of Antioch, a man of acute intellect, sympathetic to the Alexandrian tradition and opposed to the definition of Chalcedon. Without insisting further, as the Eutychian Monophysites did, on the unity of nature in Christ, he preferred to study his activity by linking it with the hypostasis rather than with the natures, and concluded that in Christ there is only one operation as there is only one agent principle (monenergism). In this doctrine of Severus, Monothelitism (v.) is already virtually present, and it developed in the 7th century through the work of Sergius, bishop of Constantinople (v.).

The doctrine opposed by St. Maximus (v.) to Sergius and to 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 680-81, under Pope Agatho. In this last it was defined: «Et duas naturales voluntates in eo et duas naturales operationes indivise, 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 4th century came to a close, with the precious result of a precise expression of what human reason, enlightened by faith, can say about 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 line the two natures are distinct and intact, but they converge in the single hypostatic subsistence of the Word; on the dynamic, psychological line, the will and the activities are two, but they are joined in the personal unity of the single agent principle, which is always the Word. Theology had the task of making explicit and developing this doctrinal synthesis as far as possible.

II. THEOLOGY OF THE MYSTERY

Eastern patristic thought is gathered together and summarized by St. John Damascene, especially in De fide orthodoxa (PG 94), translated several times into Latin and a source for the scholastic theologians. The Damascene in turn draws on St. Maximus the Confessor (7th century) and on Leontius of Byzantium (6th century). Leontius (v.) waged a thoroughgoing struggle against Nestorianism and Eutychianism, indeed also against the mitigated Monophysitism of Severus of Antioch. Following the Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus), he distinguished being from essence and established being-for-itself (εἶναι καθ'ἑαυτό) as the ground of personality. Consequently the Mystery of the hypostatic union was explained by him by way of a 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) continued along the same path, and more than Leontius he emphasized the dependence of Christ's human nature on the being of the Word, in such a way that that nature never had being and therefore personality except in the Word (ἐν αὐτῷ... λαβοῦσα τοῦ εἶναι τὴν γένεσιν; PG 91, 560). The Damascene definitively concluded by consecrating the term ἐνυπόστατος to designate the human nature of Christ, which is hypostatized in the Word, from which it receives being (ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ εἶναι λαβοῦσα; De fide orth., III, 11). Without doubt the Damascene links up with the whole Greek tradition when he emphasizes being in order 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) we read: Ἡ γὰρ ὑπόστασις τὸ εἶναι σημαίνει (hypostasis signifies being, whereas nature indicates τὸ τί εἶναι). The Damascene rightly defines the concept of hypostasis as τὴν καθ'αὐτὸ καὶ ἰδιώτατον ὕπαρξιν: being for itself, subsisting of itself; Dialectica, ch. 42; PG 94, 612).

The legacy of Greek patristics to scholasticism was exquisitely metaphysical and oriented theologians toward deepening the understanding of personality in an ontological sense. In the West, as early as the 5th century, Rufinus (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 Anastasius Bibliothecarius, Interpretatio VII Synodi, praefatio). Among the scholastics subsistentia gradually took on an abstract sense to indicate the formal ground of the person. Thus at the beginning of scholasticism (11th century) not only was the doctrine of faith concerning the hypostatic union well determined, but so too was the terminology for expressing it in scientific form.

1. Structure and character of the hypostatic union

Nestorianism and Monophysitism would threaten every theological construction throughout the centuries. Indeed they stood on the threshold of scholasticism, when Hugh of St. Victor (De Sacramentis, I, II) 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 that Christ could be called God-Man, because humanity did not enter into his definition. Peter Lombard (III Sent.) gathered 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. Thomas rejects the 1st and 3rd opinions as heretical and adopts the 2nd as Catholic (In III Sent., d. 6) and defends it with careful argumentation (Sum. Theol., 3rd, q. 2, a. 6), asserting, on the basis of Revelation and the conciliar definitions, that the hypostatic union was brought about «secundum subsistentiam seu hypostasim» and that therefore in Christ there is a single suppositum, a single hypostasis, a single person and hence a single 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., 3rd, q. 19, a. 1, ad 4); it is really distinct from nature as a whole is from one of its parts: «Suppositum significatur ut totum habens naturam, sicut partem formalem» (ibid., 3rd, q. 2, a. 2). Thus the specific nature, the principles that individuate it, the accidents, and being all contribute to the constitution of the person: 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). In fact: «Ad rationem hypostasis non sufficit quod aliquid sit particulare in genere substantiae (= nature individuated), sed ulterius requiritur quod sit perfectum (= substance specifically complete) et in se subsistens» (Quaestio de Verbo inc., a. 2, ad 3). Although being also belongs to nature (ut quo), it is nonetheless proper to the suppositum 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 an individuated one, comes to be united to a person already existing, there is no substantial union, unless that nature is drawn to the unity of the personal being. Applying these principles to the hypostatic union, St. Thomas concludes that the ἕνωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν defined at the Council of Ephesus is nothing other than union in the personal being of the Word, and that the Chalcedonian formula «two integral natures concurring in a single person or subsistence» has no other meaning than this: the Word, already subsisting in the divine nature, draws the human nature to himself and makes it subsist by virtue of his own personal being. Accordingly the personal unity of Christ, God-Man, is bound to the unity of being, which St. Thomas affirms 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 limpid theology, a faithful echo of the patristic tradition and of the stance of the ecclesiastical magisterium, is not reconcilable with the theory of a twofold being in Christ, such as that of the schools of Scotus and Suárez, founded on the principle of the identity of being with essence. Scotus maintains that the assumed nature with its own being is not a person in Christ only 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 intended by the Council of Ephesus, while it is easy to move toward the conception of an «assumptus homo» placed alongside the Word as a subject standing on its own. Suárez, perceiving 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 replaced by the assuming Word. But that mode added to an existing nature has every appearance of an accident, which once again could compromise the substantial character of the hypostatic union. The inventor of this substantial mode had been Cajetan, believing that he was interpreting the thought of St. Thommas and asserting that the formal reason for personality does not lie in being, but in a mode or in a pure term, which delimits the substance and disposes it to the existential act. The human nature of Christ has neither its own being nor this pure term, and therefore is not a person, but is hypostatized 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 respond to 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 if such a term is a real complement of the nature, on the substantial line.

The doctrine of St. Thomas, set out above, is much simpler and more effective in avoiding the twofold 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 actualize the nature. The lack of its own being prevents the nature from being a person, and the communication of the being of the Word makes it subsist in the divine person, which in this way makes it profoundly its own in being and in acting, as the Council of Ephesus requires. It is not the solution of the Mystery, but the rational illustration, which also has its difficulties. The greatest is this: the being of the Word, being infinite, cannot be subordinated into 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 there is no metaphysical repugnance. Nor does the other difficulty carry much weight: the divine being is identical with the 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 the three Persons together would be incarnate. It is answered that being, although like the essence it is one and identical in the three Persons in a notional sense, is relatively distinct according to the mode of possessing it on the part of the Persons. The surface of a triangle is identical in the three angles, but each of them contains and possesses it according to its own mode. The Word communicates being to the human nature according to the relative mode by which it possesses it (according to the relation of filiation); therefore only the Word remains incarnate, not the other divine Persons.

Once the profound and true ontological unity of the God-Man is thus assured on the basis of the unity of the personal being, there also follows its psychological unity. Christ is one and feels himself one in his divine consciousness and in his human consciousness, which are expressed in a single I (v. PSICOLOGIA DI CRISTO). Both unities respond to the texts of the Gospel and to the documents of the faith which constantly present a single subject, a single I, to which 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 hypostatic union

From the fundamental structure of the hypostatic union proceed all the lines of which Christology is composed and which touch both the person assumed and the nature assumed, and the relation of the one and the other in the static and dynamic aspect.

a) Operative theandrism. - Concerning the activity of the God-Man, the Church, by condemning monenergism and monothelitism, has defined (Roman Council of 649 and 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 a remote principle of action. Since in Christ there are two natures, there are two wills and activities; but the agent subject (principium quod) is only one, namely the Word, who wills and acts humanly and divinely. This truth is drawn from the sources of Revelation. In fact in the Gospel Jesus Christ presents himself as a single subject acting as God and as man (cf. the miracle of the man born blind, of 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 insist on the twofold will, but attribute to the Word the hegemony over the one and the other operative faculty, calling him the unique Θέλητικος-ἐναργητικος (Disp. cum Pyrrho: PG 91, 320), or the mover (κινητικός) of his humanity (ibid., 1056), or the arbiter of its movements (De fide orthod., 3, 15; PG 94, 1060 and 1073). The hegemonic influence of the Word, however, does not take away freedom from the human nature of Christ: St. Maximus only hints at the problem of reconciling human freedom with the action of the Word, but the integral solution was elaborated by later theology (v. LIBERTÀ DI CRISTO). Against the human freedom of the Savior one cannot oppose either impeccability (v. ibid.) or a possible contrast with the divine will, which seems to surface 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 a contrast on the part of the will as nature, which shrinks from everything that is in itself harmful to the subject, but not on the part of the will as reason, which can tend to an object in itself harmful and displeasing in view of a good (as the sick person who decides to take bitter medicine in view of healing). The will as reason, to which freedom properly belongs, was always freely conformed to the divine will in Christ.

As for the twofold activity, the problem had opposite solutions according to the different conceptions of the hypostatic union: the Nestorians divided human activity too much from the divine; the Monophysites instead fused them into one. Toward the end of the 5th century the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite proposed a formula (in the Epistola IV ad Caium monachium), which caused much stir: « Christus qua Deus incarnatus, novam quandam theandricam operationem nobis instituens ». The Monophysites, such as Severus of Antioch, looked favorably on the formula, but St. Maximus rejected it and the Roman Council of 649 proscribed the formula taken in the sense of a reduction to unity of the two distinct activities (can. 15: Denz-U, 268). But, once the Monothelite crisis had passed, St. John Damascene adopted that formula outright in an orthodox sense: later theology clarified and justified it down to the detail. In fact 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 agent person (principium quod). Once the principle is established that the Word is the only agent subject, arbiter of the operative virtues of his natures, it is clear that all his human actions, even the humblest, must be called theandric, because, although springing from the human nature, they are proper to the Son of God (hence the infinite moral value of every gesture, of every suffering of Christ-Man). But more rigorously theandric are the human actions on which the divine influence of the Word is most exercised, as, for example, the acts of virtue and all those actions that are ordered more directly to the end of the Incarnation, which is the Redemption of the human race. Finally, the properly divine actions are also called theandric, to which the humanity contributes as a conjoined instrument of the Word, as, for example, the miracles.

b) Communication of idioms. — It is the mutual predication of the divine and human attributes made in the person of Jesus Christ on the basis of the hypostatic union (v. IDIOMI).

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.). But in the 8th century two Spanish bishops, Elipando (v.) and Felix, having admitted that truth of faith, thought that Christ as man could be called the adoptive Son of God (v. ADOPTIONISM): the strange opinion was however condemned by particular councils and by Pope Adrian I (Denz-U, 299, 311, 3007). In reality Christ, even as man, is the natural Son of God, because the subject of the sonship is not the nature, but the person, in whom 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 as 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 that is paid to the Word. The matter is clear to anyone who thinks of the hypostatic union, which makes of the assumed nature a possession of the Word, whose subsistence it shares. But a theological clarification is required: God is adored in himself and for himself, the humanity of Christ in itself, but by reason of the Word, to which it is hypostatically united. On these principles the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is dogmatically founded.

e) Relation of the Word to the assumed nature. — The hypostatic union 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 it is only logical in the reverse sense. Nothing, then, does the Word acquire by becoming incarnate, in nothing is he changed. Contrary to the claims of Apollinarianism and Monophysitism, the Word does not come to be formally composed with the human nature, as the soul with the body; but he does nothing other than actuate that nature terminatively by means of his subsistence or his personal being, which loses nothing and acquires nothing. The self-emptying of which St. Paul speaks in connection with the Incarnation (Phil., 2, 6 ff.) is explained on moral grounds as a profound humiliation of the Word, who hides himself in the wrapping of our flesh, but not on physical grounds, as if the Word suffered for this a real loss or limitation of his divine nature (v. KENOSIS). The hypostatic union thus understood extends to all the parts of Christ's humanity, even to the blood, and once established it remains immutable forever. Certainly it remained intact even during the triduum of death: in that period the soul and the body of Our Lord were divided from one another, but 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, who makes it subsist in his personal being, sustains it, moves it, directs it, as in us the soul governs the body. This condition fully answers the requirements of a formal holiness, which consists in union with God, in the exclusion of sin, in divine adoptive sonship. The humanity of Jesus is substantially united to the Word, whose being and natural divine sonship it shares, as has been said, and furthermore it excludes from itself even the possibility of sin for the reason that the principium quod of its physical and moral activity is the person of the Word, to whom not only sin but even peccability is repugnant. The Fathers insist on this substantial holiness of Christ's humanity, making use of biblical texts such as Ps. 44:8: « Propterea unxit te Deus, Deus tuus, oleo laetitiae prae consortibus tuis... ». Christ is the Anointed of divinity (διά τὴν θεότητα), that is, the Holy One par excellence, as St. Gregory of Nazianzus says (Orat., 30, 31).

But besides this substantial holiness (quoad esse), in Christ as Man there is an accidental holiness proceeding from the sanctifying grace which in him was most full, according to the evangelical testimony (Jn. 1:14): « plenum Gratiae et veritatis ». The reasons are evident: the more the rational creature is rich in grace, the closer it is to God; but no closeness is more intimate than the hypostatic union; Christ was destined to destroy the reign 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 former holiness is only on the line 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 by means of supernatural habits such as those of grace. In Christ consequently, besides the incomparable sanctifying grace, there were also the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are, as it were, the radiations of that grace. Some however of these infused habits are repugnant to the singular conditions of the incarnate Word; hence they are to be excluded, for example faith and hope, which are not reconciled with the beatific vision, which the soul of Jesus enjoyed already from the beginning. The same is to be said of the virtue of penance, of servile fear, etc.

g) The knowledge of Christ. - As true Son of God, Christ possesses in common with the Father and with the Holy Spirit the infinite divine knowledge. According to the best theological doctrine the infinite act of this knowledge cannot be communicated to a human intelligence naturally finite. But the problem arises distinctly regarding the human knowledge of Christ, that is, the knowledge of which his soul was capable. In the 6th century arose the heresy of the Agnoetae (v.), who did not hesitate to attribute to Christ as Man a true and proper ignorance (ἄγνοια). Agnoetism started especially from Mk. 13:32, where Christ himself confesses that he does not know the day of the final judgment; but that error was condemned by the Church (Roman Council of 649 and Third Council of Constantinople) and in 1918 the Holy Office prescribed certain propositions tending to deny or to 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 (cf. St. Augustine, Serm., 97; De Genesi contra Manich., I, 22, 34). The text of St. Mark was already rightly explained by the Fathers in the sense that Christ as Man knew the day of Judgment, but with a knowledge that was not communicable, for evident reasons.

In particular theology attributes to the soul of Christ a threefold knowledge: 1) beatific vision: although not defined by the Church, it is admitted by all theologians because it is consonant with the requirements of the hypostatic union and with the divinity of the (incarnate) Word; 2) infused knowledge (proper to the angels and extended to the blessed), which consists in a divine illumination by way of species directly infused into the intellect; 3) acquired knowledge, proper to all living men, which they attain 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 way of intelligible species. Nor are they superfluous; on the contrary, 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 doubt spontaneously arises that in Christ, as in us, there was, besides the intellectual and volitional life, also the sensitive life, which is so great a part of our psychology. Tradition is unanimous in attributing to Jesus the functions proper to the sensitive sphere and in particular those that are customarily called passions (love, joy, desire, anger, etc.). The passions, being in themselves not evil, are living forces at the disposal of the will, which give tone to the moral and intellectual life; the absence of original sin (v.) and still more the exigency of the hypostatic union perfectly immunize the passions of Christ, which therefore remain docile living instruments of his soul and of his divinity. The Fathers subordinate to the influence and hegemony of the Word all the movements of the sensitive life of Jesus-Man and therefore customarily designate his passions with the term propassions to indicate their blamelessness (ἀδιάβλητα πάθη), and so calls them Damascene, De fide orth., III, 20.

Interesting is the question of the passibility of Christ. The docetism (v. DOCETI) of the first centuries, risen again 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 true and proper physical suffering. Some (St. Hilary) raise some doubt which, however, does not take root. The liturgy and Christian piety bow over the torn flesh of the Savior with a sense of vivid and profound compassion. Nevertheless theologians, even modern ones, highlight a problem: how is it that Christ, who enjoyed the beatific vision, could really suffer and taste 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 to the problem by two ways: first of all the beatific vision with its corresponding joy could remain circumscribed to the intellect and the will, in which it properly took place, while in the lower faculties the storm of pain beat down. Secondly, deepening the psychological analysis, St. Thomas rightly points out that the coexistence of two different feelings about one and the same object does not conflict with the soul, for two distinct reasons: thus a mother suffers physically in childbirth and rejoices morally at the birth of her child. Indeed, on the same moral level, the mother can suffer and rejoice in the face of her son's martyrdom, that is, suffer naturally and rejoice supernaturally, because the loss is transformed into a glorious conquest. Analogously the soul of Jesus suffering suffered physically and morally from the blows, the wounds, the insults, the ingratitudes; but at the same time it rejoiced in God because thus the great design of the Redemption of the human race was being accomplished.

Pietro Parente