Introduction- the “Foolishness of God”

In the very first Chapter of his letter to the Corinthians (1:17-2:2), Paul gives the key to how we must approach the great mystery and paradox of the Incarnation of God. In doing so, he lays the very framework of what the call to holiness might be like. To those who make the personal choice for lives of sin and harm for personal gain and glory, the paths of God seem strange and unnecessary. To them only sin seems necessary and wise.

It is only natural that the manner in which God acts in this world is unlikely to be in concord with the manner in which sinners would like to act, and therefore seem to them as “foolish”. However it is also likely that the very Power of the Almighty God passes them by in that most innocuous and fragile act of love, just like the gentle breeze. In fact sinners do not primarily reject God’s ways, rather they reject God’s very existence, based upon the foolishness they perceive in the teachings of those claiming to represent him (v.21).

Yet Paul stress that this is literally all he has come to teach (vv.1:17, 2:2). It is not just the whole Christian story but specifically the “message of the cross” (vv.18,25,23; 2:14) that is this perceived “foolishness to those who are perishing, and yet at the same time it is the “power of God to those who are being saved”. Paul goes further, and clearly gives the reason why weakness is strength when he states:

“we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again” (2Cor.2:8-10)

Of course there are other passages where he speaks of boasting “let him who boasts boast in the Lord” and so on. In this Paul is literally mirroring an important OT theme which we see repeatedly, but spelt out most clearly in the story of Gideon:

“The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.” (Judges 7:2)

The only moral framework necessary for us is this- If we are being completely honest with ourselves, then that which is the deepest inclination and desire of our hearts is likely to be in concord with the will of the One who made us. God is unlikely, in creating us, to have placed a lie at the deepest part of our being. This is the conflict at the heart of any “divine command” theory, where the will of God might be at conflict with the deepest longing of the human soul. The decision every person struggling with such conflict must arrive at is whether the morality of that which is being taught them by a particular religion is from God, or whether that which is within his soul is. We would state that in Christianity, those two are completely aligned as they should be, and Christ came to show us just this.

And yet this “wisdom” of ages is hidden from the “wise” of the world for that very reason (v.2:6,8) for that same reason, rather it is “in secret” (vv.2:1,7- en mysterio) and “hidden” (apokekrumenen). Thus St. Paul can say that these things are not taught in “human wisdom” but “by (God-v.11) the Spirit” to “those who are spiritual” (v.13), as also they are spiritually discerned and understood (v.14).

Ultimately this philosophy is not one that is directed primarily as a polemic against any particular religion, rather it is directed against the very heart of sin, which is precisely what makes it a universal and eternal, perennial philosophy, and a sure hope.

IN SUMMARY, to say that God’s ways are foolish and that God does not exist is the same thing. If love appeared “wise” to those who reject God, there would be no problem of sin. Because love is the way of God, there is not the problem of sin in Heaven. Sinners make the simple error of supposing that power is no more than physical force and might. In doing so they reject true Power which is Love, God’s very Essence, which He displays and teaches in his loving Sacrifice on the Cross.

“Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the Name of our God” (Psalm 20:7)

Hypostatic Union

It took the Church a few hundred years, several councils and various battles with heretics before it could arrive at the standard and accepted theology of the Incarnation. What it all comes down to in the settled terminology of the Church, is what is called the “Hypostatic Union”, and what this in turn means, in short, is that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity of God “assumed human nature” [STIII Q.2 Art.5 ad.2]. By “Human Nature” we mean body and soul, that is, all that it takes to be human, and therefore true humanity. This presents an obvious conundrum- none less than traversing the infinite abyss between God and man. Put simply- the intellectual difficulty with the Incarnation is equal to the difference between humanity and divinity. It could not possibly be any greater.

The Birth of a Human Being

When a human being is born, it is obvious that its body is biologically derived from matter which pre-exists in the parents, in the manner that every animal and other living thing is born and reproduces. However a biological being is not immortal, while humans are- this is because human beings are “body and soul”. That immaterial and immortal soul is of the human being is created by God ex nihilo (from nothing). Each is present at the identical instant of their existence, as the “human person”. One can therefore say that this “special creation” of the soul, that which is called out of non-existence into existence as united to flesh, is the instance of a new human individual.

The Birth of God

This is how the Birth of Jesus differs from that of a human being: At the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of his Mother, it is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity himself which unites with the Flesh, the Flesh itself being derived from Mary. So let us consider what is different from before: In the first creation above, the reason that an immortal human being is born is that a soul is created into existence that did not exist before, hence “new” individual. In the case of Jesus the individuating Spirit is not “new”, rather the Eternal Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity of God. Thus at the birth of Jesus, the Body of Christ is given the eternal of God himself. At that very moment of his conception, Jesus is God. Thus in this it is not that “God is created” as immortal into the future as human beings are, as many of the objections go, but rather that God who is eternal assumes that which is truly human. The question of new Creation does not come into existence, because the existence of that human Person is the uncreated eternal Existence of God (not the de novo existence of a human soul).

So while a human person is given a human existence “by” God (it is by the power of God that he exists), the Body of Christ Jesus is given the eternal Existence of God himself, and so not being a new existence, it is not the creation of a new Person, the Person is Eternally existing (I should be saying Body and Soul of Christ, but it might confuse the issue were I to introduce it at this stage). This is called by the Church as the Hypostatic Union (don’t worry about the derivation of the actual term, it has its own linguistic history and will not benefit us to discuss it at this stage). That Eternal Son is never a human person, because at the moment of Conception of the Flesh, the Person is already Eternal. Thus there is no point at which a new Human Person can be said to begin to exist. The Person Jesus existed always, because it is the Divine Person, but He did not have a human Nature always. And having human Nature, then it was for him to be subject to the dictates of that Nature, and thereby to be born of the Virgin Mary.

Jesus is not born as a “New Creation”. It is the Human Nature of the Eternal Son that is newly created. We can now call him “Jesus”, but it is the same Eternal Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity of God. That is the most succinct manner in which I can possibly describe the Incarnation of Christ. If there is anything that is beguiling and might be to some dissatisfying to some in the description it is of course the counter-intuitive existence of a “nature” that is not a person, or at least not one that is a human person. It is discomfiting precisely because we posit a thing that appears to not be a thing at all, it is balanced on the edge, it would seem to us, of existence and non-existence. But this is the most efficient manner in which one might describe what a the human Nature of Christ is: It is all that it takes to be human, everything involved in being human, without actually being a human person, or without ceasing to be a Divine Person. It is a conditional humanity that is conditional on it not being personal, but divine.

Person of Christ, and his Nature- Divinely Individuated

“Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor.1:24)

“… the express image (χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως- character tes hypostaseos) of his person” (Hebrews 1:3)

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity of God “assumed human nature”. What this means is that the Son of God, the eternal Second Person of the Holy Trinity necessarily assumed all the elements of humanity: body, soul, mind and intellect. There is nothing human that is lacking to the Divine Person of the Son, he is now truly both Son of God and Son of Man. That the Person is Divine does not take away from Jesus’ humanity, rather it enhances it by making that humanity perfect. The meaning of “human nature” is simply this: “everything that it means to be human”, or “everything that humanity entails”, and this “everything” is taken to be encompassed by the terms “body and soul”, if the “soul” be taken as the seat also of the will or intellect. That which “individuates” the human nature, by which we mean that which causes a specific instantiation of that generally defined concept of humanity, is the Divine Individual.

The obvious objection is that the coming together of a Body and Soul of Christ does what it does to every other human being- makes them a “human person”. St Aquinas says of this:

“The body is not said to be animated save from its union with the soul…Therefore in Christ there was a union of soul and body…Now it belongs essentially to the human species that the soul be united to the body, for the form does not constitute the species, except inasmuch as it becomes the act of matter, and this is the terminus of generation through which nature intends the species. Hence it must be said that in Christ the soul was united to the body; and the contrary is heretical, since it destroys the truth of Christ’s humanity (…) This would seem to be the reason which was of weight with such as denied the union of the soul and body in Christ, viz. lest they should thereby be forced to admit a second person or hypostasis in Christ, since they saw that the union of soul and body in mere men resulted in a person. But this happens in mere men because the soul and body are so united in them as to exist by themselves. But in Christ they are united together, so as to be united to something higher, which subsists in the nature composed of them. And hence from the union of the soul and body in Christ a new hypostasis or person does not result, but what is composed of them is united to the already existing hypostasis or Person. Nor does it therefore follow that the union of the soul and body in Christ is of less effect than in us, for its union with something nobler does not lessen but increases its virtue and worth…” [STIII Q.2, Art.5]

Under normal circumstances, the human body-soul composite indeed does represent the de novo existence of a human “person”. This independent individual is nevertheless dependent upon God ontologically (dependent for its very existence, or in the all-important “category” of existence). That which makes the human Nature of Jesus a particular instantiation, or a particular instance of the general concept of humanity, is that it is particularised by the Eternal Being, and to that Eternal Being which encompasses all Being. That very Being of God upon which each particular human being that ever was is dependent in the category of ontology, is that which is the particular instance of the Humanity of Christ. We can see then that as the Incarnation is defined, it is an instantiation of the same human nature, but in a different ontological category- the one in the category of ontological dependence, the other in that of ontological Essence itself.

The human Nature in the case of Christ is instantiated in the Being of the eternal God himself, rather than being an individual dependent upon God for its being. In other words, instantiation of Christ is “Being” with a capital “B”, not a small “b” like for the rest of humankind. His existence is not a de novo existence, although his Body and Soul is created de novo. His Existence is the Eternal existence of God himself. Thus as St. Thomas states that while in a human being, the body-soul composite exists “by themselves”, the body-soul composite exists not “by themselves”, like other humans, but rather as united to the “already existing Hypostasis or Person”.

The Creator becomes creature without ever without ceasing to be Creator and that’s why its different. He does so not to fulfil some deficiency on his part, rather as an abounding grace for us. The Incarnation is thus essentially a compositional claim- that in some sense God is now “both” God and Man, purely for our benefit, he has transcended the traditional “either…or” between the two:

“The Person or hypostasis of Christ may be viewed in two ways. First as it is in itself, and thus it is altogether simple, even as the Nature of the Word. Secondly, in the aspect of person or hypostasis to which it belongs to subsist in a nature; and thus the Person of Christ subsists in two natures. Hence though there is one subsisting being in Him, yet there are different aspects of subsistence, and hence He is said to be a composite person, insomuch as one being subsists in two. And thereby the solution to the first is clear…This composition of a person from natures is not so called on account of parts, but by reason of number, even as that in which two things concur may be said to be composed of them” [ST III Q.2 Art.4].

In order to truly also be “Man”, the Divine Second Person could not be a human Person, for were this the case all we get is a shrink-wrapping of the two persons. Such a means of Salvation would be as ridiculous as it sounds- that in order to save mankind God shrink-wrapped a particular individual to himself. There would be no sense in which that human person were God, precisely because he were a human person. A human person is not God by definition, whereas although “human nature” is a quality rather than an individual, hence can be adduced to an individual. That abstract quality as it were is individuated by the Divine Person. We have to be careful not to state however that in the Incarnation God simply accrued a quality:

“But the Word of God from all eternity had complete being in hypostasis or person; while in time the human nature accrued to it, not as if it were assumed unto one being inasmuch as this is of the nature (even as the body is assumed to the being of the soul), but to one being inasmuch as this is of the hypostasis or person. Hence the human nature is not accidentally united to the Son of God.” [ST III Q.2 Art.6 ad.2], since having individuated human Nature, we have a substantive God- Man.

So the Incarnation is defined as One Person two Natures, else it would not make sense. If that is “not human enough” for you, we would say to interlocutors, that is not God’s problem for he is in fact more human than you are. That is to say your being a human person does not make you more human than God. In corollary, to those that ask that because Jesus is not a human Person he cannot be truly human we must answer that if there is nothing lacking in his humanity through this absence, then the question is irrelevant, and it proves a strawman- Christians do not claim that Jesus became a “human guy” anyway.

When God creates a human being, he creates a body-soul composite dependent on his existence. In Jesus, God creates a Body-Soul composite whose existence is the same as the Existence of God himself. So as St Aquinas says, it’s not the same mode of existence at all and so to take the absence of human personhood as a drawback would be to commit a category error for that reason.

As we stated before, the human person is called to a dependent existence upon God whereas the Divine Nature of Christ is brought forth to the Eternal existence of God’s Person. Further, it is worth also taking this from a “top-down” aspect: a person is “someone” who is conscious, or self-aware. The Divine Person has an eternal awareness of Himself and his divinity. In taking human nature, the entire human experience is experienced in the Divinity (not in the humanity). A human person experienced his human nature in his humanity. This never happened in Jesus.

The “I” is already present at the creation of the Body and Soul, and it is the divine “I”. So this is how Jesus is created: The Divine Person is eternal. He assumes humanity to that pre-existing Person, that’s why there cannot be a human person. This is not what happens in the creation of the human person. In Jesus, God is truly human, without ceasing to be God. That is only possible because it’s the same Person, not a new person. Were it two persons it would be a God and a Man. Because it is one Person , Jesus is the God-Man.

Jesus does not have a human personhood. But the human Nature is “hypostatically” united with the Divine Person. This obviates the need for a separate “human person”. When we talk about Jesus, we are not concerned with a “human person”, when we are given to believe that he is a divine person. The Hypostatic Union is that by which the Divine Person of God can also have “true Humanity” while retaining that which is essential in order to be God viz. Divine Personhood NOT being human personhood. For God to become a human person is a contradiction, for then he would not also be a divine Person. This is overcome through the Hypostatic Union, whereby God does not become a human Person and yet is Human. This is also the only manner in which God can also be man.

There is no wriggle -room here. When Jesus is called “man” in the Bible, it is to be taken to imply “God-Man” because Jesus is God-who-is-Man. Thanks to the Hypostatic Union, the Person of God can remain the Person of God yet attain everything that is human, all that being human encompasses and yet be God. Jesus is the Man who God is. Jesus is God. A “nature”, if we take human nature as the example, is everything that is takes to be human, literally everything that is involved in being human, without being a “particular” human, a particular individual. When the particular individual is present, it is both a person and a nature. 

The Human Nature of Christ in Scripture

That Jesus is “fully God” and “fully man” is not optional “in him the fulness of deity was pleased to dwell bodily” (Col.2:9, note that in 1:19 “bodily form” is not present),

and again: “ This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” (1 Jn4:2,3)

 ^“Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great: He was revealed in flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory.” (1 Tim.3:16)

again:

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4)

also:
(Romans 1:3,4) “the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord”

In the book of Hebrews:

Hebrews 10:5-7 speaks of “a body you have prepared for me”, going off from the Septuagintal reading of Psalm 40:6 (The Masoretic text reads “but you have given me an open ear”). This reading makes it obvious that Christ is pre-existent, pre-existing his own Body.

Contemplating the vast difference between Creator and Creature:

It would certainly seem to us that a creator, from our ordinary experience at least, could not possibly experience the ontological gap between it and its creation. For example a human being will never experience the limitations of what it takes to be a painting or a building. These are more than mere antonyms, they are anthesis- a destroyer is closer to a builder than the building is- at least one is human and has a conscious experience. However at the same time there is undoubtedly an analogical similarity in the manner that colors are also brought together in the painters own being, and rigid structure is also present in the builder’s.

But we might yet state that with respect to the created order there is no difference that is greater than the difference between the self-conscious and the inanimate experience of existence, since the latter lacks this experience completely, while the former not only possesses it but can also reflect upon it. And yet in all reality there is an even greater difference- that between what is ontologically subsistent by virtue of its own Essence that that which has no virtue of self-subsistence but must have existence gifted to it and be sustained by that which gives the gift. It seems that God in his omnipotence finds the way in love and Mercy to enable him even to bridge this greatest of differences, which is precisely what makes the Incarnation so unlikely an event and so great an occurrence.

Yet in all of this we can yet maintain that there remains a similarity between the Creator and the rational creature- that of intellect, rationality itself. In spite of all that we have said in an effort to describe the greatness of the difference between us and God, that one essential similarities remains which is also in a manner of greatest of similarities and is in a sense that very thing which confers the quality of dignity- self-awareness. It is not without weight that the Bible records the words “Let us make man in our own image and likeness”.

The Human Will of Jesus

Jesus took on all aspects of humanity, hence He is “really human”: We necessarily confess that Jesus had a Human Body and a Human Soul. But the will is an essential faculty of the soul, and so we must necessarily confess Jesus as possessing a Human Will (a faculty of the soul). Because of this we must also necessarily confess two wills in Jesus: the Divine Will and the Human Will. The reality of Jesus’ Humanity is non-negotiable. Thus the presence of two wills in Jesus is dogmatically asserted by the Church. The reason Jesus took on Human form is to redeem us, and as St Basil says, “What was not assumed was not redeemed”. Hence did Jesus not posssess a human will, neither would He really be Human, nor would our own wills be redeemed. Indeed in the gospels Jesus says “my food is to do the Will of my Father in Heaven” distinguishing his human Will from the Divine Will.

Is it possible that two wills exist in one Person? If you think about it, there is a sense in which we have more than one will ourselves: the sensual and the spiritual? St Paul laments that the two “laws” in him are at variance with each other. The sensual appetite in man is concerned with immediate ends and the spiritual appetite with with “final ends” i.e. with God. Say you were at a restaurant and the waitress asks at the end of the main meal whether you would also like dessert. Although your whole being wants to say “Yes!!!” but in fact what you do is say a polite “no thank you”. Your sensual appetite is made subject to reason. When in human beings the two wills are perfectly aligned, the person has spiritual well-being. Indeed in Jesus the Human is perfectly obedient to the Divine Will and there is no conflict whatsoever. Thus He is able to say “not mine, but your Will be done”.

This might lead us to wonder what exactly it is that is represented by the human Will of Christ. That human will of Christ is at all times experiencing the vicissitudes of creaturely existence, and in those same vicissitudes, which include the experience of suffering (which we discuss more in detail here Divine Impassibility- Can God Suffer?), the experience of the creaturely instinct of its avoidance while at the same time the unshakeable conformity with the Divine Will in spite of these. Thus what the divine will of Christ represents is God’s human experience.

Aquinas answers the question of whether that can truly be called “will”, which in everything merely acts in accordance with a higher will. He replies that not only is this possible, but it is fitting and the perfection of human Nature that it be completely and utterly in accordance with God’s will. He gives the examples of those who have reached the highest state of sanctity, which are the saints. He also asks us to consider that God does indeed move the human will interiorly, especially so in holy and prayerful persons, and once again, this does not obviate the presence in them of a a distinct will. Thus it is the ontological distinctness that causes human persons to be separate rather than anything to do with non-conformity or conformity of the willing. This is the reason that in them the sensitive appetite is not a separate person than the rational appetite. In Christ, the problem of Ontology is obviated by the hypostatic unity of the natures. In the next objection (ad.2) he also gives the example of a servant that is moved by its master, and yet we can still say they too have free will, which is not in conflict of their duty.

“Whatever was in the human nature of Christ was moved at the bidding of the Divine will; yet it does not follow that in Christ there was no movement of the will proper to human nature, for the good wills of other saints are moved by God’s will, “Who worketh” in them “both to will and to accomplish,” as is written Philippians 2:13. For although the will cannot be inwardly moved by any creature, yet it can be moved inwardly by God, as was said in I:105:4. And thus, too, Christ by His human will followed the Divine will according to Psalm 39:9; “That I should do Thy will, O my God, I have desired it.” Hence Augustine says (Contra Maxim. ii, 20): “Where the Son says to the Father, ‘Not what I will, but what Thou willest,’ what do you gain by adding your own words and saying ‘He shows that His will was truly subject to His Father,’ as if we denied that man’s will ought to be subject to God’s will?”” [STIII,Q18,Art.1,ad.1]

By way of summarizing the argument, the premise of the objection that there cannot be two wills in one person is not dissimilar from that of the objection that we cannot have three persons in one entity- both are extrapolations from our experience of the physical world. Even here, we showed that there can be the semblance of two wills in a human persons who is “undecided” between two choices with varying objectives. Can there be any objections to the existence of two wills in Christ apart from this? If the objection is that a will that is completely subservient is not really a will, then we have shown that this is not true. For this it would be necessary to describe why exactly two non-conflicting wills cannot belong to the same person. The mere presence of two wills does not divide the person into two, we have no reason to believe there be any intellectual means by which we begin with one person and end up with two. We have a physical means, and that is the birthing process and the analogy for the Trinity.

I’ll state this entire section from Fr. White:

“In the case of Christ, however, this process of free human self-expression is also affected intimately by the theandric character of his free human actions. Jesus decides things in a genuinely human historical way, in reflective thought and free, active decision. But he also decides humanly what to do with reference to God the father, and God the Holy Spirit, and so with reference to the divine nature that he bears within himself and which he shares with the Father and the Spirit. So his free human actions and decisions bear the mark, so to speak, of the divine life and will that are present within him, and his person and by virtue of his divine nature. His human spontaneity, passion, desire, intention, decision, and free choice are all real, but they’re also imbued “from the start” with the presence of the Father and the Spirit, acting with him and in him in a divine way, to bring about the Kingdom of God. His free human autonomy is that of the son of God made man, for the purpose of the redemption of the human race.

One might object that this characterization would seem to delimit the authentic human freedom of Christ, since his human choice making never operates in an independence from the will of God, But must always unfold in correspondence to it. Hell however we should recall a fundamental metaphysical truth: in God freedom is expressive of sovereign goodness. When Christ as man acts freely in accord with the divine will then his human will is assimilated the sovereign goodness that is proper to him by virtue of his deity. Consequently, the horizon of his human freedom is expanded and ennobled, not lessened or restricted. Because he is God, Christ makes human choices that are most excellent and most human. He is not less free than all others, therefore, but is the first of all, and is the model of authentic moral liberation.” (TIL, 120)

“In their essential specification, Christ’s human will and intellect are identical with those of other men, but they acquire a unique mode because of the hypostatic union, through which they are appropriated instrumentally as the human expression of the person of God the Son. Because they subsist in God the Son, the human will and intellect of Christ are necessarily rendered relative to
his divine intellect and will as the primary source of their personal operation. (ref: Damascene, De Fide Orth. III, 14–18. See, for example, c. 17: “Wherefore the same flesh was mortal by reason of its own nature and life-giving through its union with the Word in subsistence. And we hold that it is just the same with the deification of the will; for its natural activity was not changed but united with His divine and omnipotent will, and became the will of God, made man. And so it was that, though He wished, He could not of Himself escape (Mk. 7:24), because it pleased God the Word that the weakness of the human will, which was in truth in Him, should be made manifest. But he was able to cause at His will the cleansing of the leper, because of the union with the divine will” (trans. S. D. F. Salmond, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9 [Oxford: James Parker, 1899]).” (TIL, p.252,253)

White adds another quote from Damascene:

“Damascene says (De Fide Orth. III, c. 14) that “to will this or that way belongs not to our nature but to our intellect, i.e., our personal intellect.” . . . When we say, “to will in a certain way,” we signify a determinate mode of willing. Now a determinate mode regards the thing of which it is the mode. Hence since the will pertains to the nature, “to will in a certain way” belongs to the nature, not indeed considered absolutely, but as it is in the hypostasis. Hence the human will of Christ has a determinate mode from the fact of being in a Divine hypostasis, i.e. it was always moved in accordance with the bidding of the Divine will. (ref: STIII,Q18,a.1,obj.4 &ad.4)”

White continues:
“Although the divine agency must always take the initiative in the human acts of Christ, Jesus is not therefore any less human than we are. On the contrary, his human nature is an “instrument” that operates in accordance with its own divine identity. Therefore, precisely because he has in his human intellect an immediate knowledge of his own personal divine goodness at all times, the judgments and practical choices of Christ are more and not less human than ours.” (TIL, 253)

White continues in another footnote:
“Aquinas argues that moral deliberation and judgment are necessary to any human nature and therefore existed in Christ, but were always inspired by a sense of the higher good of the divine will, which made the human choices of Christ freer and more pure. Colman O’Neill comments: “Christ was unique in that he had no choice [concerning the possible final end of man]; for with his human mind he saw God and his will was necessarily held by this Supreme Good (cf. ST III, q.9, a. 2; q. 10). But anything less than God was powerless to compel his will. With respect to all created things he was supremely free for he could measure their value against his vision and possession of the divine good (III, q. 18, a. 4). . . . His obedience dedicated him to the will of his Father; far from restricting his liberty, it set him free from attachment to any created thing so that he could rise to the summit of human liberty and renounce his life for the sake of what his will held dearest.” See “The Problem of Christ’s Human Autonomy,” appendix 3 in Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars edition, vol. 50, trans. C. O’Neill (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965), 233–34.” (TIL, 254)

There is no Change in the Essence of God

A possible objection against the doctrine of the Incarnation is from Divine immutability: it is impossible that God assume humanity which would be different from the state of him not having assumed it. The answer to this is that in the Incarnation, God is unchanged in his Essence. In taking on Flesh, God does not gain in his omnipotence nor lose any of it through corruption. God simply assumes Human Nature as a grace for us. In the incarnation, God neither improves nor declines.

A second objection, especially from those that hold to Divine Simplicity (like myself!) is that the Incarnation introduces “composition” into God. Analyzed philosophically, these are both the same question really and receive the same answer. The reason is that St. Aquinas’ answer is to say that the human nature is indeed “accidental” to the essence of God. Again this in no way restricts God, or diminishes His omnipotence, or changes his Essence.

This is another objection I have heard in relation to the Incarnation- that it might ascribe an attribute to the Son that the other two Persons do not possess. It is true that it would not be fitting for the Father to become Incarnate. It is the Son who is the Word and the Son that is “sent”. A son never “sends” their father anywhere, it would not be fitting. That the Son is sent, is again a product of his Relation to the Father as “Son”. It’s not a question of ability. That’s exactly how it is in the internal life of the Trinity. The Son is Begotten of the Father , and returns to the Father in the Love of the Holy Spirit.

The Divinity of the Son remained the same Divinity, retaining all its “omnis”, if you will- the divine Son remains omnipotent, omni-benevolent, omniscient, omnipresent as He always was i.e. He remains one and the same God. It’s a “both…and” situation, not “either …or”. If all the “omnis” are preserved, how are we saying that God has changed?

Change is the defining characteristic of creation, which shows degradation, corruption, entropy, causal relation. In fact what we call change is very specifically related to the causal relations that we observe in nature. God takes on human form as a Mercy, while all else changes from necessity and the laws of Physics. One must avoid the pitfall of defining an attribute of God which is Immutability, in humanistic terms: If the immutability of God as God defines it, is not violated by taking on human Nature, for the reason that He suffers no change in his divine Power., We do not force our humanistic definition of change upon the Deity. The Incarnation has not violated any naturalistic law of mutability (as defined by corruption, causality, entropy etc.) – God was not “corrupted” by the Incarnation. Jesus’ glorified Body is not subject to any entropy. It is this both “in time” and also not in time-“both…and”.

Lastly, the Incarnation is the moment at which God enters time. So once again the transition of a timeless entity to now having the aspect of time in addition to and simultaneously with its timelessness does not fit into any known definition of change, because the entity has never stopped being timeless, where timelessness is also the property of being unchanging, so from the unchanging perspective of that entity it has simply continued being unchanging. Perhaps this is why St. Thomas is right in stating “it is only in our manner of thinking…”, that is only from our temporal perspective that the uncomfortableness exists.

Aquinas answers this in STIII, Q.2 Art.7: “Whatever has a beginning in time is created. Now this union was not from eternity, but began in time. Therefore the union is something created. I answer that, The union of which we are speaking is a relation which we consider between the Divine and the human nature, inasmuch as they come together in one Person of the Son of God. Now, as was said above (I:13:7), every relation which we consider between God and the creature is really in the creature, by whose change the relation is brought into being; whereas it is not really in God, but only in our way of thinking, since it does not arise from any change in God. And hence we must say that the union of which we are speaking is not really in God, except only in our way of thinking; but in the human nature, which is a creature, it is really. Therefore we must say it (the union- my addition) is something created. Reply to Objection 1. This union is not really in God, but only in our way of thinking, for God is said to be united to a creature inasmuch as the creature is really united to God without any change in Him….”

Jesus’ Humanity in Heaven and Eternity

A Muslim interlocutor asked me “What role if any does he, as a human, play in the triad? Because the Son/Jesus are one person, right? Is the human side of him just sitting off to the side somewhere observing?”

I answered,

that’s a good question and it does make one wonder. When we go to Heaven we will see Jesus as human, and he is God (the Son, as you said correctly). So this is answering the question of “our perception”.

What is Jesus himself doing? “Being God”, is the answer. What does God do as “God in His Humanity”? I’d say two things: he interfaces with the angels and saints in Heaven, and Mary his Mother (as Catholics put it), and second: He is the Atoning Sacrifice for humanity to the Father. Not in a bloody manner anymore, but rather intercessory/ mediatory. The Son is always “given” to the Father from all eternity even apart from Creation, but now he is given to the Father along with Creation.