The Hypostatic Union Demonstrated from Sacred Scripture

Though the term “Hypostatic Union,” and indeed the Church’s entire technical vocabulary for the union of Christ’s two natures, is nowhere found in the Bible, the doctrine itself is undoubtedly Scriptural. This can be shown by a general argument and by a special one.

The General Argument

Sacred Scripture attributes to Christ two distinct series of predicates, one divine, one human — representing Him as both true God and true man. But the Christ who is true God is identical with the Christ who is true man. Both classes of attributes, therefore, belong equally to one and the same Person, the God-man Jesus Christ. There are not two persons dividing the divine and human attributes between them, but one individual — the Divine Person of the Logos, or Son of God — who is alike God and man because He possesses both a divine and a human nature. Technically: Godhead and manhood are hypostatically united in Christ.

Two Key Texts

John 1:14

The most pregnant sentence in the Gospels is undoubtedly John 1:14: “And the Word was made flesh.” Who is the subject of “was made flesh”? The Logos, whom we have already shown to be the Son of God, true God, the Second Person of the Trinity. This Logos was made flesh — became man. The one Incarnate Logos is therefore both God and man, and so God-man.

What does “was made” mean here? A creature can “become” something in three senses: it can simply begin to exist (as “the world became,” i.e., began to be); it can undergo substantial change (as water was changed into wine at Cana); or it can assume a new mode of being over and above what it already has, whether through an intrinsic quality (learning, sanctity) or a purely extrinsic relation (the generalship of an army). The Incarnation of the Logos cannot mean either of the first two: the eternal, immutable Logos cannot have a creatural beginning, nor can the Godhead be transubstantiated into flesh. Only the third sense applies — though even this needs qualification, since in a creature such a new state is always accidental, never substantial, whereas in the Logos the assumption of manhood is a mode of being founded on substantial union, without any intrinsic change in the Logos Himself. In simpler terms: the union of the Logos with human nature results in one Divine Person possessing two distinct natures — what theologians call the Hypostatic Union.

Philippians 2:6–7

St. Paul’s teaching agrees with St. John’s: Christ, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as man” (Philippians 2:6–7). Paul asserts of Christ, first, that He was “in the form of God” — consubstantial with God, and so Himself God — and second, that He “took the form of a servant” and so was “found as man.” This is a clear assertion of the Incarnation, involving a self-emptying (exinanitio, kenosis). Does this mean the Godhead annihilated itself, or that God ceased to be God? That is intrinsically impossible — and besides, verse 11 of the same chapter states that “the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” So “emptied himself” can only mean that He who was God “took the form of a servant,” i.e., assumed human nature: the Son of God appeared among men not only “in the form of God” but also “in the form of a servant.” On St. Paul’s own teaching, then, the two natures in Christ are combined in a personal, Hypostatic Union.¹

A Further Consideration

Indeed, every argument that proves Christ’s Divinity equally demonstrates the Hypostatic Union, since Scripture declares the man Jesus to be true God — which could not be so unless Divinity and humanity were united in Him as in a single individual subject. Otherwise we should have to side with Nestorius: that the man Jesus merely bears the Godhead within his person, rather than being that Person.

The Modernist claim that “the Christological teaching of SS. Paul and John, and of the councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, does not represent Christ’s own teaching, but merely the upshot of philosophical speculation,” cannot stand against our Lord’s own self-assertion, which agrees substantially with the doctrine of the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Councils.²

Notes