Sie sind auf Seite 1von 10

St.

Thomas Aquinas
Hypostatic Union
The essence of the mystery of the Incarnation is the
hypostatic union, which Chalcedon defined as the union of
two real natures, human and divine, in the one person of the
Logos of the Father. St. Thomas begins with a definition of
the crucial terms, nature and person, with a distinction
between them that is one of the highlights in the history of
Christology. "Nature," he explains, specifies what a thing is;
"person" individualizes a thing by giving it concrete
existence.
He explores the connotations which this difference implies, and
comes to grips with the only real problem in the mystery: Why was
the humanity of Christ capable of being assumed by the divinity?
Why, in other words, was it not incommunicable, as Nestorius
claimed, while remaining in every other sense a genuine human
nature? We shall follow Thomas' reasoning process, putting into
free translation his long treatment of the subject in the Disputed
Questions, and the Union of the Word Incarnate, as the clearest
exposition of the meaning of the hypostatic union in Christian
theology.
To make the question clear he considers, first,
what nature is, secondly, what person is, and
thirdly, how the union of the Incarnate Word is
of person, not of nature.
The term nature was first used about the nativity, or the
being born, of living things, plants and animals, and later
applied to their inborn qualities. Because native principles
are intrinsic (and not imposed from without, as in the case of
the violent and artificial) the term later came to signify the
inward principle of motion; in this sense nature is the
principle of instinctive impulses which well up essentially
from within the subject and not from outside.
And because such natural movement, as we
especially see in the generative activity, reaches to a
thing of a specific kind, the term, nature comes last
of all to stand for the determinate kind, type, or
essence, signified by the definition. Thus, Boethius
speaks of a nature as of the informing specific
differences in a thing.
(11) In this sense do we speak of nature in the present
question. To appreciate what the term person implies, we
should see that if there be a thing in which there is only a
specific essence, that specific essence will be individually
complete in itself; the complete substance and the nature
will be really identical, and merely logically distinct. By
nature he means the specific essence, and by person the
complete substance.
(12) But if there be any reality in a thing distinct from the
specific essence (which is signified by the definition),
whether that be accident or individual matter, then the
complete substance will not wholly coincide with the
specific nature, but will possess some additional reality.
Such is the case with anything composed of matter and
form, and also with a person, which Boethius defines as
an individual substance of rational nature.
(13) So then, what prevents a reality from being united in
person, and not in nature? For an individual substance of a
rational nature possesses some reality not proper to his
specific nature; this belongs to his person, not his nature.
Here we have a hint how human nature can be conceived to
be united to the person, and not the nature, of the Word of
God, and how manhood can be attributed, not to the divine
nature, but to the person of the Word who assumes it.
Submitted By: Marylen F. Sebelleno
BEED 1st year
THEOLOGY 102
(Christology and Mariology)
Tue-Thu 7:30-9:00

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen