Suppositum, Person, and Nature

Authority level: Authoritative doctrine
Theological status: Theological synthesis
GuideThe entry presents Catholic teaching together with theological explanation. The exact note of each proposition depends on the teaching act and sources cited.
Contents

Suppositum, Person, and Nature are technical terms for a concrete subsisting subject, a rational individual subject, and the essence or principle by which a thing is what it is and acts as it does.

What, who, and subsisting subject

Nature answers what a being is and grounds the operations proper to that kind of being. Suppositum names the concrete individual that subsists in a nature and acts. In classical usage a person is a suppositum of a rational nature. The terms are not three separable components inside a human being; they distinguish aspects needed to speak accurately about concrete subjects and their capacities.[1]

Ordinary grammar often attributes actions to a nature, but strictly the acting subject is the suppositum through its nature and powers. A human person sees through bodily organs and intellect, suffers through a passible nature, and chooses through intellect and will. This rule becomes especially important when Christian doctrine attributes divine and human actions to the one Christ.

Trinitarian use

The Church uses substance, essence, or nature for the one divine being; person or hypostasis for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their real distinction; and relation for the distinction of each to the others. There are not three divine natures or three gods. Nor is the one nature a fourth subject beside the Persons: each divine Person is the one God whole and entire.[2]

Christological use

The eternal Son assumed a complete human nature without assuming a second created person. Jesus Christ is one divine Person or hypostasis in two natures, divine and human, without confusion, change, division, or separation. His human intellect, will, body, suffering, and death are fully real and belong to the divine Person as their subject through the assumed human nature.[3]

Communication of idioms

Because the one Person of the Son is the subject of both natures, predicates grounded in either nature can be said of Christ: God suffered in the flesh, the Son of Man came down from heaven, and Mary is Mother of God. This communication of idioms does not transfer a human limitation into the divine nature or make the human nature eternal; it attributes each operation to the one who acts through the relevant nature.

The same grammar excludes Nestorian division and Monophysite confusion. Two complete natural principles of operation do not imply two persons, while one person does not imply one mixed nature. The councils' dogmatic confession controls any scholastic vocabulary used to explain it.

Limits of the terminology

Suppositum is broader than person because non-rational substances can subsist individually without being persons. Modern personalist language can illuminate dignity and relation, but it should not silently redefine conciliar person and nature in ways that dissolve the Trinity or Incarnation. Technical terms serve revealed mysteries and must be interpreted through the Church's creeds and councils.

References

  1. 1.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, questions 2–4 — Classical analysis of nature, person, suppositum, subsistence, assumption, and the hypostatic union of Christ
  2. 2.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 249–256 — Dogmatic terminology of substance or nature, person or hypostasis, and relation in confessing the one God in three Persons
  3. 3.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 464–483 — Dogmatic Christology of the one divine Person or hypostasis of the Son subsisting in two complete and unconfused natures