The Nature Assumed

It is most fitting that human nature was assumed by God. For human nature has the dignity of being rational; it was made to know and love God; it stood in need of redemption and therefore of the Incarnation. No other nature has these points of fitness for being assumed. Irrational natures lack dignity; the rational nature of the good angels is without the need for atonement, since they have not sinned; the rational nature of fallen angels is confirmed in unrepented sin, which makes atonement and redemption impossible. Of all created natures, only human nature presents the characteristics, qualities, and conditions that make the Incarnation perfectly suitable.

The Son of God assumed the nature of man, butnot the person of a man. In Christ the human nature ishypostatically united to the divine Nature in the one Person of God the Son. Therefore, Christ is (by the human nature assumed), truly human, but he is not a human person. He is a divine Person. And that Person is the Second Person of the Trinity.

Christ is not a man assumed by God. He is not a man divinized by God’s boundless power. He is God himself who has assumed, not a man, but the complete nature of man.

It has been foolishly asserted that the Son of God ought to have assumed human nature as such, in an abstract way, so that Christ would not have an individual human nature, and would be man, but not this man. Now, human nature is the nature of a bodily creature; such a creature cannot really exist except in an individual way, as this bodily thing. Hence, the Son of God took an individual human nature,and was born as a human individual of his Virgin Mother. St. John Damascene (De Fid. Orthodox, iii 11) says: “God the Word did not assume a nature that exists in thought alone . .. this would have been a false and fictitious Incarnation.”Therefore, God the Son did not assume human nature as it is mentally conceived in the universal idea of man, that is,as separated from individuals. God became man, and God-made-Man is Christ, and Christ is this one man, and no other. And this one man is a divine Person, not a human person.

Certainly, it was not suitable that the Son of God should become incarnate in all human individuals. This would make the whole human race one divine Person. And this wouldbe derogatory to the divine dignity. Besides, it would make theredemptive work of Christ both needless and impossible.

St. Augustine (De Trin. xiii 18) says that God could have assumed human nature otherwise than from Adam’srace; yet he chose to assume it from that race, so that he mightvanquish the enemy in the nature which the enemy had vanquished. The power of God is gloriously manifested in assuming a nature thatwas weakened and corrupted; to stand, in that nature, perfect in purity, power, and glory.