The most complete formulation of this heresy seems to be that of Manichaeism, promulgated by a certain Manes (c. 216-276) from Persian Gnostic sources. Its basic principle is that matter is evil and the creature of an Evil God, or Demiurge. Thus the true God could not have assumed a real human body made up of flesh and bones an ‘ d been born in the manner of men. For them, the body of Jesus was an “apparent body,” a “glorified” body. Manichaeism was established in Egypt before the end of the third century, but here its roots were deeply imbedded in the Egyptian Gnosticism of the second century. Early in the fourth century there were sects in Rome, and by the end of that century, Manichaeism spread through out North Africa. Even St. Augustine himself was a Manichee for nine years before his conversion. Although the details of Manichaeism are complex, as are its subsequent forms as adopted by the Albigensians, Cathari, and Puritans, its basic principle is clear: Jesus Christ could not have been a true man like us. He gave only the “appearance” of joy and tears, suffering and death, since such physical things are unworthy of God. It is fundamentally a dualism unable to reconcile spirit and matter, God and man, divinity and humanity (or even flesh and spirit in man). Together with an irreconcilable dualism in Manichaeian Christology, there is an irreconcilability in its puritanical spirituality, as well as a fundamental inability to accept the human body as a work of God’s art, or man as the “image of God.” St. Thomas combines all the various sects that deny the full reality of Christ’s human body under the heading of “Manichaeian.”
The basic point Thomas insists on is the absolute reality of the concrete, individual human nature of Christ that was begotten of the Virgin Mary ( Sum. theol. III, q.5, a.1). In the words of the De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus (c. 2; sometimes attributed to Augustine, but in reality the work of Gennadius), St. Thomas stressed that the “body” ( corpus ) assumed by the Word “was not putative, as though it were something imaginary” (PL 58, 981). For him, the whole significance and purpose of the Incarnation and Redemption of man would have been frustrated unless the “flesh” (Jn 1:14) assumed by the Word were a true physical and organic human body, made of flesh and blood as we are, possessing all that is needed to constitute a complete human nature without original sin. Apart from Scriptural texts, Thomas relies most heavily on the Council of Ephesus (43 1), which declared the Virgin Mary to be in truth the “Mother of God, from whom that perfect, holy body, informed with an intellective soul, was taken, to which the Word of God is united in his person ( secundum hypostasim ) and said to be born in the flesh” (Denz. 25 1; cf. Sum. theol. III, q.4, a.3, Sed contra, etc.).
Historically there were opinions, later condemned, that denied that Christ had a human soul; such was the position of certain Arians and later of Apollinaris (cf. St. Aug. De haeres., 49. PL 42, 40; St. Athanasius, Contra Apollinarium, Lib. II, n. 3. PG 26, 1136; St. Thomas, Sum. theol. III, q.5, a.3). For them the place of the human soul was taken by Christ’s divinity. Historically there were some, like the Monothelites, who denied that Christ had a human will, its place being taken by the divine will (on this point consult ODCC, 2nd ed. Oxford 1974, 932-33). But most extensive was the view of the Monophysites, whom we shall discuss later, who held that Christ has only one nature both divine and human. Such a union, according to St. Thomas, would result in a tertium quid that would be less than divine and more than human, which would in effect be a denial of the reality of both Christ’s humanity and his divinity ( Sum. theol. III, q.2, a. 1). An extreme form of Monophysitism was condemned in the person of Eutyches (d. 454) at the Council of Chalcedon (451), to which the Monophysites of today have remained implacably opposed (cf. ODCC, 931-32).
The basic view of St. Thomas is that the whole of human nature, past, present, and to come, was united to the divinity in the one, indivisible person of Jesus Christ. In this indivisible unity the eternity of God, which knows no beginning, middle, or end. was joined to the temporality and historicity of man, with all its yesterdays and tomorrows, all its aches and pains, all its grandeur and ignominy. How the eternal instant of God felt, thought, willed, grew, and matured, suffered and died in his human nature is a mystery that is too much for our all-to-temporal being to understand. But we must take consolation in the fact that Jesus fully experienced all the human loves, compassion, loneliness, joys and desires, affection and aspirations that we experience too often in an inhuman and incomplete way. And he endured incredible suffering and death. The same Jesus who could pour out his heart in love for his disciples (Jn 14-17) is the same Jesus who could say, “I am thirsty” (Jn 19:28), and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46).
The less we appreciate the true humanity of the historical Jesus, the less we involve ourselves in the divinity that Christ came to give us. One constant theme of all the great Fathers of the Church, especially St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, is that God became a partaker of our humanity that we might become partakers of his divinity. There is only one point in which divinity and humanity meet for all eternity, and that is in the person of the historical Jesus.
(c) The main theological and philosophical difficulty that arises from what has already been said is “Why is the historical Jesus not a human person?” If a person is “an individual substance of an intellectual nature,” as Boethius had said (see above, Note III), then why is not the individual human nature born of the Virgin Mary not a human person, that is, a “man”? Could a divine Person, the Son of God, assume a human person, in which case there would be two persons in Jesus, just as there are two natures? As the Greeks put the question, “Why are there not two hypostases in Jesus?” We do not say that the Word assumed “a man,” but a human nature. Technically, this is a real philosophical problem that has its roots in Aristotelian philosophy. Normally what Mary would have given birth to should have been a human person having an individual human existence ( esse ) . But, in fact, she gave birth to a divine Person, the Only Begotten Son of the eternal Father, in human flesh.
Historically, Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople (428-3 1), condemned the teaching of some monks concerning the divine maternity of Mary. These monks even went so far as to call Mary, the “Mother of God,” Theotokos ( deipara, or Dei genetrix ), meaning “God-bearer.” For Nestorius, God could have no mother, for he existed from all eternity; Nestorius therefore insisted that Mary could only be called Christotokos, the mother of Christ, or “Christbearer,” thus teaching that the hypostasis or person of Christ, born of Mary, was other than the divine person begotten of the Father. Thus, while emphasizing the infinite gap between the human nature of Christ and his divine nature as God, Nestorius and his numerous followers (even to this day) also taught that an infinite gap exists between the hypostasis begotten of Mary and the Second Person ( hypostasis ) of the Holy Trinity. In other words, Nestorius taught not only a duality of nature ( physeis ) in Christ, but also a duality of substances ( hypostases ), that is, of persons. We have already touched upon the difficulties of the Greek and Latin terminology in this matter (Notes III and IV above).
The Council of Ephesus was convoked in 431 by Theodosius II at the instigation of St. Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria and representative of Pope Leo I at the Council. Much to the surprise of Nestorius, his views were condemned and the Council declared that the human nature of Christ is united to the divine, not by a fusion of natures ( secundum naturam, kata physin ), but by an identity of person ( kath hypostasin; secundum personam ). In other words, the Council of Ephesus declared as a matter of revealed doctrine that there is only one person in Christ—the Divine Word, the Son of the Father, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity—and a duality of natures that always remain distinct, except by reason of the Divine Person (Denz. 250-264).
One of the monks denounced by Nestorius in his sermons was the archimandrite Eutyches, who taught that in Christ there is an intimate fusion of natures, so that after the Incarnation there was in Jesus only one person and one nature. The Council of Chalcedon was convoked in 541 by the Emperor Marcion under the presidency of St. Flavian to consider the orthodoxy of the extreme view proposed by Eutyches. The Monophysite (one-nature) position held by Eutyches and his followers was condemned outright as contrary to orthodox belief, and the Council declared that Jesus Christ has two distinct natures, in no way “fused or changed into one.”
This historical background is necessary in order to understand St. Thomas’ commentary on John because he refers to these heresies,ind their condemnations over and over again. Thomas, in fact, was one of the first scholastics to utilize the Latin translations of the Greek acts, decrees, and canons.
St. Thomas’ most important contribution to Christology is his insight into the manner of the union between the divine and the human in Christ (see Friar Thomas dAquino , pp. 307-313). The crux of his profound insight into the fact that the union must be hypostatic is most clearly expounded in the two articles on the unity of Christ’s esse (q. 17). To this problem we must now turn briefly.
VI
ST. THOMAS’ DOCTRINE OF THE HYPOSTATIC UNION
The Council of Ephesus (431) declared against Nestorius that there is only one hypostasis in Jesus, and that that hypostasis is the eternal Son of the Father, consubstantial with him in nature (that is, physis ), or substance ( ousia ). The Council of Chalcedon (451) declared against Eutyches that there are two distinct natures in Christ in no way “fused or changed into one,” but are united kath’ hypostasin, that is, by reason of one person. Since the union cannot be between the two natures, divine and human, for the two would become one nature, and since the union cannot be between the divine Person and the human person, for this could only be a union secundum quid and per accidens, the union can only be in the unique Person, that is, secundum hypostasin. Since, as we have already seen, what the Greeks called hypostasis, the Latins called persona, the union of the divine and human in Christ is called “personal” or “hypostatic” (see Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium ).
But the philosophical clarification and possibility of a theological understanding of the mystery did not come to Thomas until he returned to Naples in 1272 and resumed dictating the Tertia Pars. By the time Thomas came to compose question 17 concerning the kind and number of existences ( esse ) in Christ, he saw clearly the mysterious reality of the Incarnation.
We have already explained that for Aristotle nature is only a quo, that by which a thing is what it is. An individual, specific nature is “had by” a concrete suppositum or ousia (substance) in the primary sense of the term. We also said that existence ( esse ) belongs only to things, substances in the primary sense of ousia, that is esse belongs to a concrete, individual substance ( ousia ) having a specific kind of nature, by means of which the thing exists as a specific kind of thing. A thing is one because it has one esse.
Regarding the Incarnation the inevitable question arises as to whether Christ is one or many (a. 1), and whether in Christ there is only one esse or more (a. 2). Prior to q. 17 in the Tertia Pars, for example in the Disputed Question De unione verbi incarnati, debated in Paris earlier that year (127 2), Thomas thought that the individual human nature begotten of Mary must have some kind of esse of its own, even if only “in a certain sense” ( secunduin quid ) “as human.” But this would mean that in the strict sense ( simpliciter ) Christ is one” because he has only one person, namely, the divine; but in another sense Christ is “two” ( secundum quid ) , because he has two natures. In the Summa (III, q.17, a.2) Thomas in no way allows the human nature of Christ to have an esse proper to it. If the concrete, individual human nature that Christ received from Mary had its own esse in any way, then the union between it and the Divine Person would be accidental, and Christ would not be absolutely and indivisibly one being, one person. Even if the new manner or mode of God’s existence, namely, “as human,” had its own esse secundum quid, as Thomas earlier thought, then the union would not be absolutely and in every way one, but secundum quid many. From this it would follow that the union between the Divine Person and the human nature would be “accidental” an accident in a substance. But the union between Christ’s human nature and his Divine Person cannot be accidental, no more than our human nature can be accidental to our personality. Therefore, St. Thomas concluded, the human nature of Christ and all his natural characteristics and his activities exist by the one esse of the Godhead. Thus the special kind of union that exists between the person of Jesus Christ and his human nature is “personal” or “hypostatic,” that is, secundum personam or kath’ hypostasin.
Thomas’ understanding of the hypostatic union rests squarely on his basic principle that in all creatures esse is other than essence. Only in God are esse and his essence identical (see Sum. theol. I, q.3, a.4, and all parallel places). Fr. Norbert Del Prado, O.P., has called this so-called real distinction between essence and existence in creatures “The Fundamental Truth of Christian Philosophy” (1911). It is only because human nature does not include esse in its definition (nature, or essence) that Christ’s human nature cannot have an esse proper to it as human. It is the real distinction between essence and existence ( esse ) in creatures that underlies Thomas’ teaching in III, q. 17.
It is clear, therefore, that all other medieval positions that identify essence and esse in creatures—such as the Scotists, Nominalists, Suarezians—must face the question of the hypostatic union in another way. This is not the place to discuss those other views.
This then is our faith, that Jesus Christ, born of Mary at a specific time in human history, is in reality God himself; he is the Only Begotten Son of the eternal Father, identical with him in nature and being ( esse ), but distinct from the Father as a Son who receives all that he has from the Father. As this Only Begotten Son is identical with his divine nature and as he was truly begotten of Mary by the Holy Spirit, Jesus—the historical Jesus has two distinct natures, one divine by which he is equal to the Father (Jn 17:11), the other human by which he is the Son of Mary, less than the Father Qn 14:28), a man like us in all things except sin—in short, our brother in the flesh. Thus our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God and our brother in the flesh, by the will of the Father and the work of the Holy Spirit, brought life into the world by his death and resurrection. By his death on the cross he destroyed our death of damnation. By his resurrection he restored our life of grace and glory. And we believe that he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
The only point that still needs to be mentioned here is that only the Son, the Word, “became flesh” (Jn 1:14). In the Nicene Creed we profess our belief in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father... one in being (that is, homoousion ) with the Father. Then we profess our belief in his Incarnation when we bow our heads as we say: “By the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” That is to say, only the Son of God became man, not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit. We cannot say that the Father suffered and died for us; nor can we say that the Holy Spirit became man, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried. Only in the heresy of Sabellius (3rd cent.) where the word person is taken to be a “mask” ( persona, or prosopon ) through which the one God speaks to us with different masks could one say, “the Father suffered and died.” This heresy in the West has also been known as Patripassionism, meaning that the “passion of Christ” can be attributed to the Father. This heresy, also known as “Modalism,” was condemned in 447 by Pope Leo I in a letter to Turribius, bishop of Asurias (Denz. 284). It had long been battled in the East by St. Basil the Great (c. 330-379).
Thus Christ alone is the mediator between God and man. “There is no other name, under heaven, given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). St. Paul expresses the simple truth in the most direct way when he said (1 Tim 2:5-6): There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.
Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Gospel of John
COMMENTARY ON
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN