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September 10, 2020 - January 25, 2021
A second crucial debate culminated in the first Council of Constantinople, held in 381. At issue here was the proposal of Apollinaris that Christ had no rational soul, his rationality being, on Apollinaris’ account, entirely accounted for by his divine nature.
The next crucial council was held in Ephesus in 431. Nestorius, the archbishop of Constantinople, taught that the Son, the second person of the Trinity, was not the same as Jesus, a human being who died on the cross.
On his proposal, at least as they understood it, the incarnation involved not a true union in one hypostasis or one person but instead only a particularly close cooperation of two hypostases or persons;
Where Nestorius had suggested that Christ was not one person but two, the monk Eutyches held, or at any rate was thought to hold, that Christ had not two natures but one, namely, divinity.
begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer, as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the
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In 680, the third council of Constantinople then came at it from the other direction once again, spelling out that the oneness of Christ’s person did not undermine his having two natures, this time by stating explicitly that Christ had two wills – his having both a divine and a human will being a necessary condition of his truly having both a divine and a human nature.
the so-called three opinions in Christology.
The first, often referred to as the assumptus homo or “assumed man” theory, says that the Word assumed an independently existing human being in such a way that one divine-human person resulted. The second, often referred to as the “subsistence theory,” says that the Word assumed a human nature in such a way that one divine-human person resulted. The third, often referred to as the habitus theory, thinks of the assumed human nature as similar to an acquired garment (think of a religious “habit”); according to this last approach, the body and soul of Christ are not united to each other (this
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sees the second of these three as
being an authentic presentation of Catholic doctrine, and the first and third as being unorthodox deviations.
The entire Summa finds its fulfillment in the discussion of the person of Christ and the benefits he bestows.
If studying Aquinas is worthwhile at all, then, it is clearly worthwhile to study his thoughts on the incarnation. This is true not only for reasons of historical interest but also because understanding his views may shed light on the actual truth about any number of matters.
Aquinas is so powerful a thinker that what he has to say on such topics is bound to be illuminating, even when we end up disagreeing with it.
And Aquinas is not just another thinker. Reading what he has to say is not just one more step in getting familiar with “the literature.” He truly is a philosopher and theologian of genius, someone from whom anyone has a lot to learn.
working at a great disadvantage if we try to engage in Christology or metaphysics without dealing with Aquinas. We will run a great risk of re-inventing the wheel, not to mention making it less round than it ought to be.
Sometimes, Aquinas expresses himself rather casually – the idea that his formulations are always rigorously strict and consistent is an obfuscating myth – and careful analysis is needed to figure out what he really means.
There remains a difference between what (as it seems to us) Aquinas would or should have said, and what he actually did say.
While Aquinas considers it to be a fact that God became human, he would say that it is a fact that could not be discovered by human reason operating on its own. Humans can learn it only by God’s revealing it: God tells them that it is true, and they accept what God says as true, i.e. they have faith in what has been revealed.
Theology for Aquinas demands that we be willing to accept that the full truth is surprising and even somewhat subversive of our natural ways of thinking.
As his [God’s] power is not limited to those modes of goodness and existence which are in creatures, but he can make new modes of goodness and existence that are unknown to us, so also, through the infinity of his power, was he able to make a new mode of union, although no adequate exemplar for it may be found among creatures.
To answer these questions about his theology, we must first have an understanding of what he means by “person” and “nature.” But for Aquinas, those notions are discovered by purely philosophical thought, i.e., thought unaided by revelation.
What is a person? Aquinas often uses Boethius’s famous definition of person as an “individual substance of a rational nature” (naturae rationabilis individua substantia).
“Hypostasis,” it seems, is the core concept for Aquinas, with “person” being a special kind of hypostasis. So let us begin with hypostasis.
Some paradigm cases of what Aquinas is targeting are the archangel Michael, the human Socrates, and the cat Rusty. Even though only two of these are persons, and only two of them are material, they are all substances according to Aquinas’s way of thinking.
few paradigm cases of non-substances: Rusty’s redness, a pile of sand, a severed limb.
substances are all individuals; they all subsist; they all stand under non-subsisting beings; they are all unified.
Aquinas thinks the notion of individuality is built into the meanings of words like “supposit” and “hypostasis,” with the result that it would be redundant to speak of an “individual supposit” or an “individual hypostasis.”
substance subsists, which means that it exists in and through itself, not in another.
Rusty’s redness does not subsist or exist on its own: it exists only by inhering in him.
a substance is a substanding entity, i.e., an individual that “stands under” its non-essential features (its “accidents,” in Aristotelian terminology) by serving as that in which they inhere.
clear. To begin with, subsisting is, so to speak, what supposits do for themselves, while substanding is what they do for other, non-subsisting entities.
substance is unity. Unlike a pile of sand, say, which is not one thing, but instead many things, a substance is just one thing.
a pile of stones is not a substance because it is not unified in the right way.
Aquinas thinks that since they can exist on their own, without inhering in other entities, substances are wholes, rather than being mere parts of wholes greater than themselves.
substances exist simpliciter, i.e. absolutely or unqualifiedly;
Aquinas even goes so far as to say that while a substance is a being (ens), an accident is really not so much a being as it is of a being or a being’s (entis, in the genitive case);
supposits are for Aquinas not only what truly and properly exist, but also what truly or properly act and bear properties.
Likewise, it is Socrates that weighs over 70 kg, and not his weight. Socrates kicks in virtue of his leg; he weighs over 70 kg in virtue of his weight.
A person, as we saw earlier, is for Aquinas a special kind of substance, a substance that has a rational nature.
Rational supposits direct their own actions, and in that way they exemplify more fully the self-contained individuality that characterizes supposits generally.
So supposits in Aquinas’s thought are individual, they subsist and substand, they are unified, they are wholes, and they exist and act and bear properties in the primary way. Among supposits, some stand out inasmuch as they have reason and thereby have a kind of dominion over themselves, and these special supposits are persons.
Socrates’s being human is his nature, it is somehow the most important or most fundamental fact about him
In addition to the word “nature,” Aquinas uses other words: “essence”; “quiddity,” i.e., whatness; “substance” in the above-mentioned sense of “second substance”; and sometimes even “form.”
definition. Aquinas himself does so, saying that nature or essence is what corresponds to a definition: For the common nature is what is signified by a definition indicating what a thing is: whence this common nature is called essence or whatness.
So while we can grant that essence is “what is signified by a definition,” this is no help for us when we are trying to figure out what nature or essence is in the first place.
most common contemporary view of essence. That view – call it the “modal” view
accidents. To give the clichéd example, no human being can lack risibility, i.e., the ability to laugh, but risibility is still an accident.
The three main points are these: (a) natures ground their supposits, but accidents do not; (b) accidents actualize potentialities of their substances, but natures do not; and (c) accidents are derived from their supposits, while natures are not.
“form” is a word that can sometimes be used as a synonym for “essence” or “nature.”
Substantial natures are thus principles that constitute the “substantial existence” of their substances, and by this, Aquinas clearly means subsistence.
