The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870

by Various

However, though pantheism rests on a false assumption, it cannot be denied that there is a certain fitness between an infinite cause and an effect, as much as possible corresponding to the infinite energy of the cause; and that consequently the external action of God, because infinite, is for that very reason inclined to effect the best possible cosmos, a cosmos almost infinite in its perfection; an infinite energy has a tendency to effect an infinite term; an infinite typical perfection, to realize an infinite expression; an infinite yearning of communication, to impart itself in a manner the most exhaustive possible.

This fitness of proportion between cause and effect is so evident as to baffle all doubt; yet the necessary distinction implied by the very nature of cause and effect, a distinction of infinite superiority on the part of the one and infinite dependence and inferiority on the part of the other, in the present case is that which gives rise to the problem which may be formulated as follows: given the infinite superiority of the cause of the cosmos, and admitting the essential inferiority of the effect, how to exalt the effect to a perfection almost absolute, and draw it as near the perfection of the cause as possible, without destroying the absolute and necessary finiteness of the effect.

The hypostatic moment is the sublime and transcendental answer which God has given to the problem. For in that mystery the cosmos, as abridged and recapitulated in human nature, without ceasing to be what it is, without losing its essence and nature, is exalted to the highest possible perfection, by a union of subsistence with the Infinite himself. Nay, the infinite subsistence and personality of the Word is the subsistence and personality of the human nature assumed; so that the human nature, though real and finite, is at the same time the nature of the person of the Word, and consequently partaking of all the dignity, perfection, and excellence of the Word. In other terms, the cosmos, as abridged in the human nature of Christ, is deified, not indeed by a change of its ontological being, but by the highest, strictest, and closest communication and union with the Godhead. For, next to the identity of nature, we can conceive of no closer union or communication than that which exists between two distinct natures completed and actualized by the same identical subsistence. Now, this identity of subsistence communicates to the inferior nature all the worth and dignity of the superior; and consequently the human nature of Christ, and hence the cosmos which it abridges, are, as it were, deified in such a manner as to exchange the denomination of attributes, and we can call man God, and God man.[130]

Thus the tendency of the infinite cause of the external works is fully satisfied. The infinite energy of the efficient cause has for its term an object perfectly corresponding to the intensity of its energy; since it terminates in an object absolutely infinite—the Word completing the two natures, the divine and the human; an individual who is very God as well as very man.

The typical cause is even better satisfied, so to speak. It tends to express itself exteriorly, as perfectly as it exists interiorly. By the hypostatic moment, the same identical type of the cosmos, its intelligible and objective life enters to form part of the cosmos, the interior logos or schema is wedded to its exterior expression in the bond of one subsistence, and is at the same time type and expression, objective and subjective life. Unlike other artists, who must necessarily regret the impossibility of their impressing on the external work, be it marble or canvas, the interior conceptions of the mind, as fully and as perfectly as they conceive them interiorly, the divine artist of the cosmos found a means whereby to unite, to bring together type and expression, the intelligible and the subjective, the original and the copy, in one identical person; so that in the person of the Theanthropos, as you admire the art so exquisitely divine in the copy, you are dazzled by the effulgence of the type which dwells and shines forth in it; as you wonder at the exactness of the created expression, you can see the original conception also, blended together in one common subsistence. The end also of the external work is fully attained. For in the hypostatic moment the infinite and transcendental excellence of God is communicated in a manner beyond which you could not go; God in this moment yielding himself so far as to make his own subsistence common to human nature, and thus making it share in his infinite dignity, attributes, and the very name of God.

We shall allude to one consequence only of the second class; those having reference to the sublimation of the cosmos; and that is the life of the cosmos.

Life is action and movement. Those beings which act not exist but do not live. If, therefore, the action of the cosmos has been elevated to the highest possible perfection by the hypostatic moment, it follows that its life also has been exalted.

Now, though action originates in the nature, which is the first principle of action in a being, yet its ontological worth and dignity it receives from the subsistence or person, because the nature would be an abstraction, a possibility, without the subsistence.

In the case, therefore, of an individual in whom the nature is inferior, and the subsistence, which actualizes and completes the nature, is superior, in the scale of being, the actions primarily originating from nature as their first root have all the ontological worth of the subsistence, and not of the nature.

Consequently, all the human actions of Christ, primarily originating in his human nature, partake of the ontological dignity and value of his person, and not of his human nature; just because his human nature is completed by and subsists in the personality of the Word.