{247}
§ 2
THE PRECISION OF THE FACT IN TIME
We need now, and it is not by chance that the Church has always been active in this direction, to observe how the Ecclesial community makes more precise something that needs further clarification. After all, this is something that with all its richness is included in the content of the intimate experience of Christ and the Christologies of the New Testament. In order to gain this clarity let us also prescind here from the chronological order, and let us proceed theologically in order to recognize the inexorable stepping march that the human spirit, through a theological dialectic, has initiated in order to accurately understand the divine filiation of Christ.
Obviously, the starting point is always that Christ is the Son of God. There would be two possibilities. One, to take the New Testament purely and simply, that Christ is the subsistent revelation. Yes, but at the moment the theological dialectic began this was framed within a different horizon, the horizon of Greek reason. And here is where an enormous experience began within the Church. Because then the faithful do not ask whether Christ is the subsistent revelation of the Father, but something different, in what does the very reality of Christ consist? However, the Greek had a particular idea of what a perfectly defined reality was. Then the theological precision of what the reality of Christ may be ambulates into paths that were not entirely alien, but did become marginal to the intention of the New Testament.
Since we start from this position then the question, “what is it to be the Son of God?”, is reduced to affirm what it is that humanity {248} contributes so that this man walking in the streets of Jerusalem may truly be the Son of God. I insist on the formulation of the problem because, from my point of view, it is the only way that allows us to clarify the sense of this great theological dialectic. With it the spirit of the Church has managed to acquire precision, and perceive more clearly the divine filiation of Christ. We should not be apprehensive that these considerations may appear to be somewhat at the margin of the New Testament. The results are dogmas of the faith. Further on I will explain what sense they have under a different perspective, and how, however, the changes of perspective leave the fundamental problem unaffected.
A) Christ as manifestation of God. Therefore, in this dialectic asking what it is that humanity places in the divinity of Christ so that this man may be Son of God, the first reply was to say that what humanity places is precisely to be the very manifestation of the Word of God. Christ is Son of God because He is the earthly manifestation of the Word. But, what is this manifestation? It is what in Greek is called dokéin, dóxa, in other words it was Docetism. Christ would be purely and simply the apparition of the Word on Earth in human form.
The expression dokéin appears in St. Ignatius of Antioch the first Father of the Church. And the reply of the Church was always affirmative. But it was never a speculative reply, that is the important issue. The reply of the Church was historic and vital. It was a religious reply. In the first place, Christ is the Son of David, and an apparition is not the son of anyone. This is what all the Fathers affirm. And in second place, Christ is what we all have seen, what we all have felt, and touched (cf. 1 Jn 1:1). St. John of course writes from the intimacy of the Holy Spirit, and the mystical life with the {249} Word, but dedicated, as he said, to demonstrate the physical and carnal reality of the body of Christ. For this reason, confronting Docetism, St. John and the whole tradition following him will say that Christ is Son of God alethós, “truly”, where alétheia is precisely the opposite of dokeín, “appearance”.
Must repeat that this is not a speculative reply because speculatively Docetism would not be impossible, neither in the case of Christ nor of any reality. How could it be proven (what we call proof through metaphysical a priori reasons) that the world is not precisely one great spectrality of the unique reality of God? This could never be demonstrated at all. And precisely that this may be metaphysically possible is what permits, for example, to access the Vedic texts and not see in them a kind of great phantasmagory of a reason that has appealed to great aberrations for not having the light of revelation. But this is not the case here, the fact is that we have the life of Christ, son of David, son of Mary, and of whom the testimony of St. John (the preeminent mártus, “witness“) tells us that “what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands” (cf. 1 Jn 1:1).
B) The unity of Jesus Christ. The foregoing brings us to the second stage of this dialectic. Under the supposition that Christ is really a man and not just an appearance we then ask, What is the Word in this alethós that humanity confers, so that this humanity may be truly real, and the aggregate be the Son of God? Then it would be obvious to say that God could not save us or live with us if He actually had not been born, had not suffered, had not walked on the streets, had not suffered from heat, etc. And all this because the Word is the one that is born, suffers, etc., humanly. The Word and the humanity would constitute a unique reality in Christ.
{250} In what does this unique reality consist? It could be thought that the Word is just what animates the humanity so that this humanity might be the one that as Son of God may be born, suffers, be injured, etc. If this had been true it means the Word was performing the functions of a soul in the sóma of Christ, that was Apollinarianism. Apollinaris of Laodicea insisted that the humanity supplies (sit venia verbo) the body, and the Word would be the rational soul of the body of Christ. If they were two perfect realities (we are told), the complete man (téleios, “perfect”), and the complete divinity, there would be two sons, the Word and the son of Mary. But then, according to Apollinaris, “it is impossible that two perfect realities constitute one only reality”1. And he tells us that Christ, taking God as pneúma, with a psyché, and a sóma, is the “celestial man” of St. Paul (cf. 1 Cor 15:48-49)2. The ambiguity or, at least, the lack of discernment of the New Testament forms begins to manifest itself in the necessity for precision.
Can it be understood in the way of Apollinaris of Laodicea that Jesus Christ may be the “celestial man”? The reply of the Church was, of course, in the negative. But also not because of speculative reasons, but because of vital and religious reasons. So vital and so religious that they consisted in saying: nothing was redeemed except what was assumed. If the Word had not possessed a rational soul man would not have been redeemed in his integrity; it would have been impossible. At this point appears the beginning of the stepping march of what St. Irenaeus of Lyon called sóma tes aletheías, the body of truth3. Dogmas {251} and affirmations are not independent, they constitute a unitary body, and the modification of each one of them has repercussions on the entire sóma of revealed truth. It is not the case, therefore, that the Word may be the soul of the body of Christ; something deeper is needed, the humanity of Christ is perfect, and the divinity of the Word is also perfect. That is the third answer. Then we ask how can these two complete realities constitute just one thing?
C) The divine filiation. Here is where Greek reason begins to act in a really decisive and enormously problematic way with its idea of reality. The two realities, the divinity and the humanity, are complete and constitute just one divine filiation, just one Son of God. The reality here is the filiation. Then we ask in what does this single filiation consist? That is the question.
We could think, and it was actually thought, that it consists in the Word assuming mankind to himself. And this assuming is something that precisely concerns the whole of mankind into the reality of Christ, and confers to him some characteristics he would not have if he were just one man, son of Mary, and descendant of David. However, this adventitious characteristic, of something literally assumed, is precisely what the Greek expresses with the word cháris. The divine filiation would be a filiation katá chárin (by grace) of the man son of Mary. This, in the Pauline terminology, would consist in saying the Christ was Son of God “by adoption”, that was Adoptionism, filiation means adoption. This way of thinking culminates in the III century with Paul of Samosata. According to him, in the first place, God has a Lógos. And this Lógos, in the second place, acted on the prophets. And finally, inspired the son of Mary in a special way. The Word gives this man the Lógos of God, i.e., the divine lights that {252} no other man has, and with that confers on him a divinity katá chárin4.
The reply of the Church could not have been more to the point, the Word does not inspire the divinity, but indeed Christ is in one form or another the Word itself. The reality of Christ is divine not katá chárin, by grace, but physically (let us say it this way). It is the case of a physical unity, and not adoptive, of the Son of God. Filiation is not adoption but physical union. I mentioned above that if we had suddenly asked St. Paul or St. Peter what is understood by the divine filiation of Christ, adoptive son or physical reality, they would have replied that they did not understand the question. We are certain of one thing, that if they had understood it they would have answered as the Church did, that it was a case of a physical reality and not merely adoptive.
D) The physical filiation. This brings us to the fourth stage in this dialectic, the physical unity of the Son of God. In what does the physical reality, and not merely adoptive, of the filiation consist? To this question the Church herself has replied in three successive phases. This means that no dogmatic formula is adequate to the immense reality, to the infinite reality it wishes to express. They are all in conformity with reality, but none is adequate. And the proof of this is evident since the Church has had to return to the same point in three or four consecutive councils. It is not a theory; but it is a confirmation.
1) The first step would consist in saying: the physical filiation means that the Word is the eternal Son of God, descends upon a man and dwells in him as in no other. Physical filiation would mean physical dwelling. The real and physical filiation of Christ {253} would be a real and physical presence of the fullness of the divinity in the humanity of Christ. That was the point of view of Nestorius. Nestorius came from Antioch where they were quite immersed in Aristotelian philosophy, and where (fortunately) they were quite literalist in the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, while not so fond of allegorical interpretations like the Alexandrians.
In Nestorius each element, God on the one hand, and man on the other, is complete. As elements, God and humanity, each are a complete reality. And this is just what the Greek called phúsis, nature. They are two complete natures, the divine and the human. By virtue of this, each one of these physical realities has a prósopon, what today we might translate as person. Of course, that is what it meant then. But in the primitive Greek tragedy the prósopon meant the mask each player wore. Obviously, here it is not the case that these natures may have a mask, but rather that they do have a facies determined by the function, which the nature each one has is going to perform. In this case I would dare to translate prósopon by facies. There are two prósopa, one, the prósopon of the humanity, and the other, the prósopon of the divinity. Hence, each one of these two natures, with its particular prósopon, precisely by having this dwelling and this quite intimate presence on each other, can use the prósopon of the other. Human nature can make use of the facies or divine prósopon, and the divine nature can use the human prósopon. In this manner each of the natures performs, in a certain way, the function of the other.
When Nestorius realized that in the Conciliar rounds of discussions this solution did not appear satisfactory he proposed a third prósopon, which he called the prósopon of union5, in which there is {254} a kind of facies common to the divine prósopon, and the human prósopon. This is what precisely allows the transference of functions that in Greek theology had a precise name, the koinonía idiomáton, the commonality or communication of properties. This would allow to say, for example, that the Word was born, that the Word died, although the eternal Word of God may not be the object of birth or death. Here is a brief passage of Nestorius where he tells us quite clearly what he is thinking about, “Incarnation must be conceived as the mutual common use of the two prósopa” (of the two facies)6. According to Nestorius, “the natures subsist in their prósopa, in their natures, and in the prósopon of union. With respect to the natural prósopon of one, the other makes use of it thanks precisely to the prósopon of union. This is how there is no more than one prósopon for the two natures”7 with two different persons, each one living in a certain way exhaustively in the bosom of the other8. This way, “the very essence of humanity uses the prósopon of the essence of divinity, but not of the essence, and the essence of divinity uses the very prósopon of humanity”9.
The Church reacted swiftly against this position of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in the year 431. St. Cyril of Alexandria affirmed (and this was an exorbitant affirmation) that in Christ there was nothing but mía phúsis, only one nature. Also, that what really constituted his divine filiation is that the two natures constitute a hénosis phusiké, a physical union of natures. However, this appeared somewhat harsh to the Antiochian party, and properly so. Then appeal was made to a formula of compromise. We do not have any official text of the {255} decisions of the Council of Ephesus, but we do have the letter of St. Cyril to John of Antioch, which this one subscribed, but not Nestorius. In it the exorbitant affirmations of St. Cyril do not appear. We are told that “we confess that Our Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of God is perfect God and perfect man, composed of body and rational soul (...) who is consubstantial to the Father according to divinity and that he is consubstantial to us according to humanity. Because there was a union of two natures, and therefore, we confess one only Christ, one only Son and one only Lord” (DS 272).
2) We can understand that this was considered insufficient. Because dogmatic formulas just by being dogmatic, does not mean they are adequate to reality although they conform to it. The insufficiency was clear because, what does hénosis phusiké mean, that two natures may physically constitute one reality? This had an immediate sense, which consists in saying that the two natures are united in such a way that divine filiation would constitute a unity of phúsis, a unity of nature. That was indeed the beginning of the theology of Eutyches, which culminates with Severus of Antioch. It would be a case of the union of natures.
Of course, Severus of Antioch has been exonerated later because with his special theological language he says nothing different from what the Council of Chalcedon said. But, be that as it may, men have to be judged historically through the way they have been understood in history, and not by what they meant to say, which is a different matter. Historically, Severus of Antioch represents the culmination of the theology of Eutyches according to which the two natures produce one only and mysterious nature in Christ, this is what was called Monophysitism. Christ (Eutyches and Severus of Antioch will tell us) does not have a nature, but {256} he is a nature. Against the whole idea of the transformation of the divine nature in the human, Severus of Antioch will tell us that “the Word does not change into something else, but does occur by being in a different way”10. This comes, of course, from some paragraphs written some time after the Council of Chalcedon.
In the Council of Chalcedon (451) the Church had answered Severus of Antioch firmly rejecting this position, and pointing out that “we must recognize that one and the same Christ, Son and only-begotten of the Lord, who exists in two natures, that are unconfused, immutably, indivisibly, and inseparably united without the differences of the natures in no way abrogated, and the properties of each of the two natures remaining completely undisturbed, they do not compose, however, anything but only one person and concurring subsistence, this person not being divided into two persons, but undivided constituting just one only-begotten Son of God, the Word we call our Lord Jesus Christ” (DS 302). This was the famous formula of the Council of Chalcedon, in which we are expressly told there is only one person, who is the Word, and two natures, the divine and the human.
Certainly, this formula of the Council of Chalcedon is not perfect. Of course, it is a dogma of faith, but what is the dogma of faith in it? In the first place, the Council of Chalcedon, as the one in Nicea did when it expressed the divinity of the Word against Arius, has utilized concepts from Greek philosophy, the concepts of nature and person. But then, {257} in the dogmatic formula of faith these terms cannot function philosophically. That would be absurd. To translate into a more common language what the Council of Chalcedon says, simply means to say that if I ask who Jesus Christ is, there is only one answer, the Word. And if I ask what Jesus Christ is, we have to say that He is God and man. In other words, the difference between the “what” and the “who” is the only thing that enters into the definition of the Council of Chalcedon. All the rest, in its philosophical form of what is a phúsis (a nature), and a person does not enter into the dogmatic definition of Chalcedon.
Let us not say this is obvious now because today we are ready to admit all kinds of obvious things when the formulation of dogmas is blamed on Greek philosophy. When one has studied theology and they have put all that into your head as if it were of faith, one has the right to say it with a certain amount of energy. At least there are a couple of reasons in the same Council of Chalcedon that leaves the door open for other things, in the first place, “two natures”. Is it the case that these two natures are simply juxtaposed and coordinated? The Council of Chalcedon says nothing about that even though it is essential. In the second place, “natures”, is it the case that the concept of nature applied to God and man is univocal? Does God have nature in the same sense man has? Or, does man have nature in the same sense God has? In what does this duality of natures consist, regardless of how much unconfused they may be? It is a dogma of faith. But expressed philosophically in terms of the phúsis, it leaves this problem hanging in the human mind, which as such is not a theological problem, but a problem injected by Greek philosophy into the precision of the divine filiation of Christ.
3) Furthermore, we have the right to ask, in what does that mysterious (because it is) personal unity of {258} Christ consist? In what does the formal reason for being a person consist? Here, a third step was taken, precisely when it was affirmed that to be a person consists in having will, freedom, and being responsible for one’s own acts. That was Monothelitism, if Christ is only one person it means he only has one will and one freedom.
The Church in the third Council of Constantinople (680-681) energetically reacted against this intellectual conception of the person, in Christ there are two wills (DS 549). Clearly, the Church has never defined what is the formal reason for being a person, neither in the case of Christ nor in the case of the Trinity. We must keep this in mind. And so, leaving aside the somber history of Honorius, the Church has defined against the Monothelites the existence of two wills in Christ. The question is what is the sense of this definition? It has been said, and reasonably, that the sense of this definition consists in that humanity in the hands of the Word is not a kind of Aristotelian substantial compound, with prime matter, substantial form, and some faculties. But rather that He is a man taken individually, with all his morality, and personal responsibility. That is the case of Christ, it is true, and it was necessary to affirm it.
However, was this the last sense of the definition of the Council of Constantinople? I do not think so. One may think that there is a deeper reason, which affects not only the case of Christ, but of all human realities. It is said that freedom is what constitutes the person, but that is not true. Freedom constitutes the person if and when freedom may be my own, mine, my freedom. Now, the moment of “my” is anterior to the moment of freedom. And this is what happens in the case of Christ. The freedom of Christ is a human freedom, perfectly different from the divine freedom. In the {259} “my” is precisely where the divine person of Christ is. And of this person the Church has never given a dogmatic definition. The same problem of freedom appeared when we spoke about the persons of the Trinity. To imagine that the persons of the Trinity are three persons each having their responsibility is an enormous and heretical tritheism. Here, for the opposite reasons, it would be to affirm a kind of great Docetism to think that Christ does not have a proper personal freedom that is his very own insofar as man.
In such fashion we have been present to this kind of colossal theological dialectic, which starting from the New Testament text elevates us to an apprehension a little more precise (only a little bit more) of what the divine filiation of Christ is. A filiation, which is not adoptive, but physical. A physical reality, which does not consist purely and simply in a mere dwelling, but in a true unity. In a unity, which is not a unity of nature, but a unity of person. And of a person constituted by what I have called the his-ownness (sit venia verbo), and not by the exercise of freedom.
This truly colossal dialectic, which made the Church throughout all its eras place the first four ecumenical councils in a certain way close to the Gospel, in the end it is a dialectic essentially religious. All reasons that in general have been proposed against all the errors and deviations have been much more than speculative, they have been theological. They have been religious reasons. We have seen it in the case of Docetism, if Christ had not possessed a complete humanity there would have been no redemption. We have seen it in the case of Apollinarianism, if the humanity of Christ had not possessed a complete rational soul, the human spirit would not have been redeemed. The same in the case of Adoptionism, the unique {260} and exceptional position of Christ in his divine filiation would disappear. And the conception of Nestorius and the Monophysites leads us precisely to a dissolution of what has always been understood by divine filiation in the New Testament itself, not in the theological speculation. Because, for example, if it were true, as Nestorius said, that in Christ there is nothing but the presence and total dwelling of the Word in the humanity of Christ, what reason could we offer to call the Blessed Virgin “Mother of God”? Actually Nestorius himself said it; she is not mother of God, but mother of Christ. This is absolutely chimerical. If we grant a certain causality to the fiat of the Blessed Virgin in the union, in that case she is Mother of God. This of course, by communication of languages, but she is authentic Mother of God.
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1 Quoted by St. Athanasius in Contra Apollinarium, Bk. 1, ch. 2, in J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, vol. 26, op. cit., col. 1096.
2 Cf. Apollinaris of Laodicea, fragment 25, in H. Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule. Texte und Untersuchungen, Tübingen, 1904, p. 210.
3 Cf. Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus haereses, Bk. 1, ch. 9, no. 4, in J.-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, vol. 7, op. cit., col. 548.
4 Cf. the fragments of Paul of Samosata published by H. de Riedmatten, Les actes du procés de Paul de Samosate. Étude sur la Christologie du IIIe au IVe siécles, Fribourg (Switzerland), 1952, pp. 136-137.
5 Cf. his Liber Heraclidis, translated from the Syriac by F. Nau, Le Livre d’Héraclide de Damas, Paris, 1910, pp. 193-194.
6 Nestorius, Liber Heraclidis, op. cit., p. 233.
7 Ibid., p. 194.
8 Cf. ibid., pp. 206-207.
9 Ibid. p. 282.
10 Zubiri quotes here the exposition of Severus of Antioch made by J. Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes dans l’antiquité chrétienne, vol. III: La Fin de l’age patristique (430-800), 4ª ed., Paris, 1919, p. 120, “Le Verbe ne se modifie pas, ne change pas: il devient autrement, mais non pas autre qu’il n’était: iln’y a pas nouveau sujet, mais nouvel état produit”. J. Tixeront refers in turn to J. Lebon, Le monophysisme séverién, Louvain, 1909, pp. 206, 209.