Expanding My Faith: Weekly Column

Send questions to: DRE@saintcolumbachurch.org and place “Q’s Pews” in the subject line. All questions are answered and kept confidential. If your question is used in the column, it will remain anonymous. James Gregory, DRE

“Fide quaerens Intellectum”

“Always be prepared to make a defense … for the hope that is in you … with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15)

“Q’s from the Pews”

Hypostatic Union, part 2

Last week I explained that a hypostasis is who we are: the essence of a person. The hypostatic union is the joining of one person with two natures. Nature is how the “who” (person) can express itself. The who can only do what its nature can do. For example, I have human nature, so I can read, write, and dance. If I were a tree, I could not read or write, but I could sway in the wind and produce seeds. My nature does not change who I am, only how I am perceived and interact.

The Son of God eternally has a Divine nature. That nature can do what is Divine and contains all the attributes of Divinity: omnipotence, omniscience, transcendence and impassability (impassibility means that the God’s nature cannot be contained ). When the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” God the Son took on a human nature. He could do all that a human can. Now just as a Tree and Human cannot share natures as they are distinct, so too the Divinity of God the Son is not shared with His Humanity. They are fully separate and distinct. The Union is with the person (Hypostasis) and each nature.

Because of the “reality” of our created physical world, we see a person as both who they are and what they are. But this is incorrect. “Who we are” exists in us as something we sense as unique from our nature. So, too, for Jesus. The who He is, is God the Son. What He is, is both Fully Divine and Fully Human.

Send questions to: DRE@saintcolumbachurch.org and place “Q’s Pews” in the subject. All questions are answered and kept confidential.

Catholic Challenge for February

Light a candle daily or weekly, and call to mind friends/family that are struggling. Ask the Lord, the Light of the World, to bring new Hope into their hearts as you pray for them.

Totally Catholic Trivia

Communicatio Idiomatum is the Latin term for interaction between nature and person. Martin Luther varied with the Orthodox view and thought that in Jesus, the Divine and the Human natures mixed together. This would mean that Jesus could do through his human nature what is Divine, making Jesus became a sort of demi-god.