Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/782

 INCARNATION

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INCARNATION

(2) The Human Nature of Jesus Christ. — The Gnostics taught that matter was of its very nature evil, somewhat as the present-day (christian Scientists teach that it is an "error of mortal mind"; hence Christ as God could not have had a material body, and His body was only apparent. These heretics, called doketct, included Basilides, Marcion, the Manicha?ans, and others. Valentinus and others admitted that Jesus had a body, but a something heavenly and ethereal; hence Jesus was not born of Marj', but Ilis airy body passed through her virgin body. The ApoUinarists admitted that Jesus had an ordinary body, but denied Him a human soul; the Divine nature took the place of the rational mind. Against all these various forms of the heresy that denies Christ is true Man stand countless and clearest testimonies of the written and unwritten Word of God. The title that is characteristic of Jesus in the New Testa- ment is Son of Man; it occurs some eighty times in the Gospels; it was His Own accustomed title for Himself. The phrase is .\ramaic, and would seem to be an idiomatic way of saying "man". The life and death and resurrection of Christ would all be a lie were He not a man, and our Faith would be vain (I Cor., XV, 14). "For there is one God, and one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (I Tim., ii, 5). Why, Christ even enumerates the parts of His Body. "See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have" (Luke, xxiv, 39). St. .\ugustine says, in this matter: "If the Body of Christ was a fancy, then Christ erred; and if Christ erred, then He is not the Truth. But Christ is the Truth; hence His Body was not a fancy" (QQ. Ixxxiii, q. 14; P. L., XL, 14). In regard to the human soul of Christ, the Scripture is equally clear. Only a human soul could have been sad and troul)led. Chri.st says: "My soul is sorrowful even unto death" (Matt., xxvi, .38). " Now is my .soul troubled" (John, xii, 27). His obedience to the heavenly Father and to Mary and Jo.seph supposes a human soul (John, iv, 34; v, .30; vi, 38; Luke, xxii, 42). Finally Jesus was really born of Mary (Matt., i, 16), made of a woman (Gal., iv, 4), after the angel had promised that He should be conceived of Mary (Luke, i, 31); this wo- man is called the mother of Jesus (Matt., i, 18; ii, 11 ; Luke, i, 43; John, ii, 3); Christ is said to be really the seed of Abraham (Gal., iii, 16), the son of David (Matt., i, 1), made of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom., i, 3), and the fruit of the loins of David (.\cts, ii, 130). So clear is the testimony of Scripture to the perfect human nature of Jesus Christ, that the Fathers held it as a general principle that whatsoever the Word had not assumed was not healed, i. e., did not receive the effects of the Incarnation.

(.3) The Hypostatic Union of the Divine Xature and the Human Nature of Jesus in the Divine Person of Jesus Christ. — Here we consider this union as a fact; the nature of the union will be later taken up. Now it is our purpo.se to prove that the Divine nature was really and truly luiited with the human nature of Je.sus, i. e., that one and the same Person, Jesus Christ, was God and Man. We speak here of no moral union, no union in a figurative sense of the word; but a union that is physical, a union of two substances or natures so as to make One Person, a union which means that God is Man and Man is God in the Person of Jesus Chri.st.

\. The Witness of Holy W>it. — St. John says: "The Word was made flesh'' (i, 14), that is. He Who was God in the Beginning (i, 2), and by Whom all things were created (i, 3), became Man. According to the testimony of St. Paul, the very same Person, Jesus Christ, "being in the form of God [if MoP'fS Q"" Inrdpxoif]. . . emptied himself, taking the form of a servant [twp^iriv SouXou Xapdv]" (Phil., ii, 6, 7). It is always one and the same Person, Jesus Christ, Who

is said to be God and Man, or is given predicates that denote Divine and human nature. The author of life (God) is said to have been killed by the Jews (.\cts, iii, 15); but He could not have been killed were He not Man.

B. Witness of Tradition. — ^The early forms of the creed all make profession of faith, not in one Jesus Who is the Son of God and in another Jesus Who is Man and was crucified, but " in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, \\'ho became Man for us and was crucified". The forms vary, but the sub- stance of each creed invariably attributes to one and the same Jesus Christ the predicates of the Godhead and of man (see Denzinger, " Enchiridion"). Franze- lin (thesis xvii) calls special attention to the fact that, long before the heresy of Nestorius, according to Epiphanius (.\ncorat., ll, 123, in P. G, XLII, 234), it was the custom of the Oriental Church to propose to catechumens a creed that was very much more detailed than that proposed to the faithful; and in this creed the catechumens said: " We beheve . . . in one Lorti Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of God the Father . . . that is, of the substance of the Father ... in Him Who for us men and for our salvation came down and was maile Flesh, that is, was perfectly begotten of Mary ever \'irgin by the Holy Spirit; Who became Man. that is, took perfect human nature, soul and body anil mind and all whatsoever is human save only sin, without the seed of man; not in another man, but unto Himself did He form Flesh into one holy unity [fi's fxlav aylav evirriTa]: not as He breathed and spoke and wrought in the prophets, but He Ijecame Man perfectly; for the Word was made Flesh, not in that It untierwcnt a change nor in that It exchanged Its Divinity for humanity, but in that It united Its Flesh unto Its one holy totality and Divinity [els fiiav . . . €avroO aytav TeXeidT-rjTo. re Kal didr-qra]." "The one holy totality", Franzelin considers, means personahty, a person being an individual and com- plete subject of rational acts. This creed of the cate- chumens gives even the Divinity of the totality, i. e. the fact that the individual Person of Jesus is a I)ivine and not a human Person. Of this intricate question we shall speak later on.

The witness of tradition to the fact of the union of the two natures in the one Person of Jesus is clear not only from the symbols or creeds in use before the condemnation of Nestorius, but also from the words of the ante-Nic»an Fathers. We have already given the classic quotations from St. Igrtatius the Martyr, St. Clement of Rome, St. Justin the MartjT, in all of which are attributed to the one Person, Jesus Christ, the actions or attributes of God and of Man. Melito, Bi.^hop of Sardis (about 176), says: "Since the same (Christ) was at the same time God and perfect Man, He made His two natures evident to us; His Divine nature by the miracles which He wrought during the three years after His baptism; His human nature by those thirty years that He first lived, during which the lowliness of the Flesh covered over and hid away all signs of the Divinity, though He was at one and the .same time true and everlasting Ciod" (Frag, vii in P. (!., V, 1221). St. Irena-us, toward the close of the second century, argues: "If one person suffered and another Person remained incapable of suffering; if one person was born and another Person came down upon him that was horn and thereafter left him, not one person but two are proven . . . whereas the Apostle knew one onlv Who was born and Who suffered" ("Adv. Itor."', Ill, xvi, n, 9, in P. G., VII, 928). Tertullian bears firm witness: " Was not God really crucified? Did He not really die as He really was crucified?" (" De Carne Christi", c. v, in P. L., II, 760).

II. The N.\ture of the Incarnation'. — We have treated the fact of the Incarnation, that is, the fact of the Divine nature of Jesus, the fact of the human