ABSTRACT
According to Christian doctrine, Jesus Christ is one person who has two natures-human and divine. It is affirmed that he is “truly divine and truly human in two natures” but at the same time “one person and substance.” The Council of Chalcedon declared in 451:
… one and the same Christ … acknowledged in two natures, without mingling, without change, indivisibly, undividedly, the distinction of the natures nowhere removed on account of the union but rather the peculiarity of each nature being kept, and uniting in one person and substance, not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son …1
For centuries theologians and Christian philosophers have tried to develop metaphysical models with which they could take into account this dichotomy between the unity of the person of Jesus Christ and the duality of his divine and human natures. Hylomorphism is perhaps one of the most influential models for a rational reconstruction of this fundamental Christian dogma. Hylomorphism is the view that all living beings are a compound of form and matter. Applied to the human person this means that the soul as the substantial form configures matter in such a way that it becomes a human body [see contribution Hylomorphism]. The main topic of this chapter is the question how the hylomorphic formmatter-distinction can be applied to the person of Christ which is a union of a human and a divine nature. The Hylomorphic model, which is presupposed in this contribution, is the Aristotelian form-matter-distinction in the Thomist understanding of Aristotelianism. Can the person of Christ be reconstructed as a compound of form and matter? A direct application of Hylomorphism to Jesus Christ would imply that the divine nature would be the formal part of the compound Jesus Christ, and the human nature the material part.2 This solution, though, would be incompatible with Hylomorphism itself. There are two main arguments against such a direct application of the hylomorphic model to the person of Jesus Christ, which can be both derived from Hylomorphism itself:
i. concerning the nature of the human body which Christ adopted at his incarnation; ii. concerning the divine person who became incarnate as a human being.
