Thomas Joseph White on the Hypostatic Union: Questions

Vito Caiati writes, 

I am struggling, in particular, to understand what [Thomas Joseph] White is proposing with regard to the hypostatic union on pages 82-84 [of The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017].  He follows Aquinas in affirming “a substantial union of God and man. . . . [in which] the two natures remain distinct, without mixture or confusion, and [in which] the union must not occur in the nature of Christ” (82). In this substantial union, “The hypothesis [hypostasis]  of the Word does not replace the human soul of Christ.  . . .  However, just as in man the body is the instrument of the soul, so in the incarnate Word, the human nature of Jesus is the instrument of the Word. . . . [in that] the humanity of Jesus is united to the Word as an intrinsic, ‘conjoined instrument. . .“ (83).

I do not understand what is being affirmed here. If the Word is “united” to the humanity of Jesus “as an intrinsic ‘conjoined instrument’” has not something been done to this humanity that renders it more than human? In other words, can one really hold that in this process of union, the natures remain distinct? I am particularly confused because White appears to argue for precisely this position in affirming that “in Christ there is no autonomous human personhood or human personality. He is the person of the Son and Word made human, subsisting in human nature” (83). Well, if this is so, what import does his human soul have on his thoughts and actions?

The Word (Logos) is the Second Person of the Trinity.  It is the one person (hypostasis) that has the two natures, the divine nature and the human nature.  Thus there are not two persons, the Second Person and the human person of Jesus; there is only one person, the Second Person of the Trinity.  This latter person is the person of Jesus. If there were two persons, a divine person and a human person, then that would be the Nestorian heresy.  (I could explain later, if you want, why this heresy is a heresy.) In other words, the person of Jesus is the eternal Word, not a human person.  There is human nature in Jesus, but no human person in Jesus.

But this is not to say that the man Jesus merely embodies the Word, i.e., it is not to say that the Word is to Jesus as soul to body. That would be the Apollinarian heresy. The Word in Jesus does not merely assume a body; The Word assumes (the nature of) a fully human man, body and soul.   So while there is no human person in Jesus, there is a human soul in Jesus.  Here, perhaps, we have the makings of trouble for the Incarnation doctrine on White's Thomistic construal thereof, as we shall see in a minute.

In sum, one person, two distinct natures, one divine, the other human. The person is divine.  The natures are individual natures. They are not multiply realizable or multiply instantiable like rational animal which is found in Socrates and Plato equally but not in an ass. (Schopenhauer somewhere quips that the medievals employed only three examples, Socrates, Plato, and an ass. Who am I to run athwart a tradition so hoary and noble?) And yet the individual natures are not themselves self-subsistent individuals. They need a support, something that has the natures. This is part of the meaning of hypostasis.  There has to be something that stands under or underlies the natures.  The hypostatic union is the union of the two natures in one subsistent individual, the Word. (White, p. 113) 

Now this one divine person is united to the (individual) nature of Jesus as to an essential, not accidental, instrument. But this union is not identity. There is no identity of natures or confusion of natures. The divine and human natures remain distinct. They are united, but they are united essentially, not accidentally. 

Caiati asks, " Can one really hold that in this process of union, the natures remain distinct?" Yes, if union is not identity.  So I don't see a problem here.

Caiati also asks, "what import does his human soul have on his thoughts and actions?"  This is a much more vexing question, and I rather doubt that we are going to find a satisfying answer to it within the Aristotelian-Thomistic scheme that Fr. White employs.  

Who is it that is thinking when Jesus thinks?  Suppose he is debating some rabbis. He hears and understands their objections and thoughtfully replies. Is it the Word who is the subject of these mental acts? Is the Word thinking when Jesus thinks?  If yes, then his human soul is not the 'seat' of his intellectual operations.  Suppose Jesus feels hunger or thirst or the excruciating pains of his passion.  Does the Word feel these pains?  How could it if it is impassible?  If it is not impassible and does the feel Jesus' pains, then what role does the human soul in Jesus have to play?  How can Christ be fully human, body and soul, if his human soul plays no role either intellectually or sensorially?

There is also the will to consider. If Jesus is obedient to the end, and does the will of the Father, then he wills what the Father wills. "Thy will be done."  He would rather not undergo the Passion, but "not my will but thine be done." This makes sense only if Jesus has his own will, distinct from the Father's will, a will 'seated' in his human soul.  That is, the faculties of willing have to be different, even if the contents of willing are the same. But then it is not the Word that wills in Jesus.

On the other hand, if the human soul in Jesus is indeed the 'seat' of his intellectual and voluntative and sensitive and affective functions, then the person in him, the Word, is severed from his soul.  But this drains 'person' of its usual meaning which includes soulic functions. The one person in two natures threatens to become a mere substratum or support of the two natures. 

White's view is that the Incarnation, although ultimately a mystery, can be rendered intelligible to the discursive intellect in the Thomistic way.  I doubt it. But there are other ways, and they need to be examined.

Comments

[Tom]

Hi Dr. BV, what a timely post. I've just been listening to Dr. William Lane Craig's lecture series on the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. Very interesting and difficult material. I understand why you doubt that such things could be rendered intelligible. If that is the case, what should we Christians do about our beliefs? Are we irrational for holding onto these beliefs?

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi Tom,

First off, White's book is magisterial and you should read it.

That being said, I don't think his Aristotelian-Thomistic approach is up to the task of rendering the Incarnation intelligible. But there are other approaches out there and they would have to be examined.

Or one might try a mysterian line acc. to which the doctrine makes no logic sense, but is true nonetheless!

Finally, there are Christians like Dale Tuggy who are unitarians and in consequence deny the Chalcedonian definition.

[Tom Tillett]

I am way out of practice in all of this, but have fairly recently stumbled on your blog and find it both intriguing and provoking about matters I have not given thought to for many years. Let me try this, and if I am way off the mark, just ignore me and continue on with your excellent work as if I had never said anything. I will not take offense.

But you said, " … there are other ways, and they need to be examined." So I offer this.

It seems to me that the problem is with the definition of person on the one hand and human nature on the other. If the Incarnation must be one Person, the Word, but two natures, divine and human, then the components of the merely human must also be capable of being separated (conceptually) between the human person and human nature. Otherwise, the human person is synonymous with human nature and there would be no logical space to fit a divine Word anywhere in the mix. At this point, I look to a Kierkegaardian scheme as a possible solution.

In The Sickness Unto Death, K posits that the person (he says spirit) is the self, but a self as a positive (read: active) third to the synthesis of the human being as a relation between the finite and the infinite, and etc. If I can substitute your phrase 'body and soul' for K's 'finite and infinite' (quite different pairings, but similar enough for these purposes), then I would say that on this reading of K, body and soul are essential human nature, but they are not the self/person proper. In brief, the self is the self-awareness in the relation between body and soul, but it is more than just a unity that maintains or grounds the relationship between the two (the 'negative third'). It is a 'positive third', that maintains a certain power over the relation. It can reinforce it by living in it, reject it, or find another conceptual synthesis to replace it.

This presents, I think, a space in the human personality for a divine Incarnation.

The Word is Incarnated in the place of the normal human self and becomes the positive third of the synthesis of the human body and soul. Except this Word, this Self, this Will, is divine and without Sin, and unlike us regular creatures, can posit the appropriate synthesis - balance - of body and soul. At the same time, the Word can do that other thing that a Kierkegaardian self must, which is to 'rest transparently in the power that created it' - i.e. God. In this, the divine Word is without Sin again, and is perfectly attuned to the will of God, and therefore perfectly obedient.

Thus, we have one Person, the Word, fully divine and in control of a fully human creature in all its finiteness and infiniteness, temporality and eternity, freedom and necessity. One Person, One Divine Self, Incarnated in a moment in time in a fully rational, hormone driven, DNA determined, culturally embedded human being named Jesus, but with the perfection God always intended for His human beings, to be self-aware of all of it and fully empowered to direct things towards the fulfillment of God's will.

The trick, of course, is to buy into the idea that the will can be plausibly understood as something real and separate in the human psyche - apart from the content the will operates on. We must also be willing to go along with K's idea that rationality is firmly seated in human nature and not in the self/person proper. That is, the rational apprehension of things like the Good and the Beautiful is not a product of our choice or conscious intention, but instead is in some sense spontaneously produced. Then I would argue that a Divine Will can be substituted in without fundamentally changing its divinity, while at the same time preserving and perfecting the human nature it inhabits.

There is a lot more to be said about all of this, not least the notion of 'spontaneously produced' rationality, but I have gone on too long. Assuming you've read this far, I would appreciate any thoughts you care to have.