Another Theological Conundrum: Hypostatic Union and the Contingency of the Incarnation

In the immediately preceding theological thread, Dr. Caiati reminded me of Fr. Thomas Joseph White's The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (CUA Press, 2017). So I cracked open my copy and found some notes from October 2018, one batch of which I will now turn into a weblog entry.

'Hypostatic Union' ". . . refers to the divine person of the Word uniting a human nature to himself  in his own person." (113, emphasis in original) This is the familiar one person (hypostasis)- two natures doctrine.  The one person is the Word (Logos), the second person of the Trinity.  The union is called hypostatic because it is the union of two natures in one hypostasis. The two natures are divine nature and human nature. Both natures are to be understood as individualized, not as universals. They are natures of one and the same self-subsistent individual, the Word. There is no "confusion of natures," which is to say that the  two natures are really distinct, distinct in reality and not merely in our thought, though not separable in reality.  These two natures are nonetheless essentially together: neither can exist without the other.  It is not as if there is "merely an accidental association of two beings, the man Jesus and the Word of God." (113) There is only one being, the Word, which possesses two distinct but really inseparable natures.  Fr. White then concludes:

Consequently, Jesus's concrete body and soul are the subsistent body and soul of the person of the Word. The person of Jesus simply is the person of the Son [the Word or Logos or second person of the Trinity] existing as man.

I have two questions.

First, is human nature conjoined to the Word at every time? It would have to be given that the two natures are essentially, and not merely accidentally, united. The Word is essentially divine. So if the two natures are essentially united, then the Word is essentially human: it possesses essentially a human nature.  That implies that at no time is the Word not in possession of a human nature. Now the Incarnation is the acquisition by the Word of a human nature. The Incarnation is an event -- call it the Christ event -- that occurred at a particular time in a particular place.  Before that time, the Incarnation was at best prophesied.  A contradiction would seem to ensue:

1) The Word possesses human nature at every time;

2) It is not the case that the Word possesses human nature at every time.

How do we negotiate this aporetic dyad? More simply, how remove the contradiction? Can it be removed without adding 'epicycles' to the theory that raise problems of their own?

My second question is a modal counterpart of the first. The Incarnation is a contingent event. There was no necessity that it occur.   Had Adam not sinned there would have been no need for a Redeemer. Man would have continued blissfully in his paradisiacal, prelapsarian state. The soteriological significance of the Incarnation is that only by the Son's becoming man and suffering the ultimate penalty could man be restored to fellowship with God.  For the offense against God was so great that only God could expiate it. But if the divine and human natures are united essentially in one person, the Word, then, given that the Word is a necessary being, it follows that the Incarnation is a necessary event. A second contradiction seems to ensue:

3) The Word possesses human nature in every possible world;

4) It is not the case that the Word possesses human nature in every possible world.

(4) is true because there are worlds in which there is no Fall and thus no need for Incarnation. For those who don't understand Leibnizian 'possible worlds' jargon, the contradiction amounts  to saying both that the Word is and is not human necessarily. Bear in mind that if x has a property essentially, and x is a necessary being, then x has the property necessarily.

There is a third question the 'exfoliation' (unwrapping) of which I will save for later, namely, if the Word has a human soul in virtue of having human nature, how does that human soul integrate with the conscious and self-conscious life of the second divine person? A person is not merely an hypostasis or substratum, but one that is conscious and self-conscious.  A person is not an object but a subject or a subject-object. A number of further difficult questions spin off from here. Time to hit 'post.'

Comments

[Dave Bagwill]

A quick word about 'Word' for your consideration. It really seems to me that the question is one of interpretation of the scripture, not the opinions of councils and heresy-hunters.
"Commentators have long recognized that John is thoroughly Hebrew in his approach to theology. He is steeped in the Hebrew Bible. “Word” had appeared some 1,450 times (plus the verb “to speak” 1,140 times) in the Hebrew Bible known so well to John and Jesus. The standard meaning of “word” is utterance, promise, command, etc. It never meant a personal being — never “the Son of God.” Never did it mean a spokesman. Rather, word generally signified the index of the mind — an expression, a word. There is a wide range of meanings for “word” according to a standard source. “Person,” however, is not among these meanings."
Anthony Buzzard https://21stcr.org/commentaries/john-1-articles/john-1-1-caveat-lector-reader-beware/

[BV]

Dave,

There are serious questions about the interpretation of Scripture, and one can reasonably question whether there is scriptural support for a doctrine of the Trinity. But that is not what this post is about. It is about the internal coherence of Catholic Christology according to which God is triune and the 2nd person of the Trinity becomes man. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:14)

Since you are a unitarian, my questions in the above entry are not your questions.

[BV]

By the way, Dave, what do you do with John 1:14? Dismiss it? Re-interpret it?

[Dave Bagwill]

I know what the post is about, Bill. My comment was germane to the 'downstream' issues that result from a possibly -probably - misuse of John 1.1 - notably, the hypostatic union, docetism, pre-existence, dual-nature - you know, the stuff that has divided Christianity since the 4th century.
Whatever you mean by unitarian - I am not defending any -ism at all. My interests - and yours if I'm not mistaken - go far beyond sectarianism.

I gladly bow out of this and leave it to your intra-mural hashiangs-out.

1.14 - now I'm ignoring it, or re-interpreting? Really? If you re-read what I posted, you will see that the word is not a pre-existing 'person' or 'spirit' that takes on flesh. God's purposes, thoughts, plans were fully expressed in the man Jesus Christ. It's not a difficult concept; and certainly not worth the contendings and heresy-seekings and martyrdoms of the past. IMHO.
I'll leave ya'll to it.

Cheers

[BV]

>>1.14 - now I'm ignoring it, or re-interpreting? Really? If you re-read what I posted, you will see that the word is not a pre-existing 'person' or 'spirit' that takes on flesh. <<

But surely, Dave, if you take John 1:14 at face value and do nor dismiss or re-interpret it, then you would have to conclude that the Word is a person. So how are you reading 1:14? Assuming that you are not dismissing it.

[Tom Tillett]

What I'd like to say is this: the problem is in the use of the essence/accidental duality in describing the God-man, Jesus. Essence, ontological being, assumes accidental qualities in temporal time, and as such, the essence is the reality of the thing. All else is temporally and contingently bound and subject to change and alteration.

But this is not true of the Hypostatic Union: Jesus is essentially Divine and essentially human; ie, what are normally accidental qualities of an essence are here essential. Thus, we clearly have a different order of things for which the essence/accidental duality is inapt. At best, in the God-man, 'essence' and 'essential' are metaphors for the true nature of Jesus.

What the Incarnation points to is the true nexus between the Divine/Eternal and temporal reality, in which the entrance of the Divine makes the accidental essential and necessary. Here is another example following the paradigm of the Incarnation: Divine Grace takes BV, clearly an accident born of a woman in the slipstream of time, and gives him absolute value as a child of God. An accidental person is thereby made essential - but again, only in a metaphorical sense. If you apply the literal meaning of essential to BV, then everything collapses into confusion - as the questions you have raised in this post indicate.

The Divine is its own category. Divinity breaking into time divinizes the temporal and accidental in a way that we can only point to by analogies and metaphors. Such is true of all spiritual truths, actually. That God created the Heavens and the Earth and called it all 'good,' makes creation essential and necessary (ie, Real), but only in a metaphorical sense. My sacred wedding vows transform my relation to this woman from an accidental meeting within a world of alternate contingent possibilities into an essential relationship - never to be broken. That the Cross defeated Evil does not stand up in the face of the rampant Evil seen every day since the Cross, but it was a full and final defeat nonetheless - because 'defeat' is a metaphor or analogy about something that is ontologically real but simply incapable of being described in ordinary human terms.

My answer to your question about the necessary/contingent modality problems with the Incarnation are the same as above, so I'll just leave it here.

[BV]

Analogical predications, however, are not intended as metaphorical but as literal. But thanks for the comment.