b) Regarding the outward aspect of Christ's human nature we have no reliable information.29

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Tertullian asserts that our Lord closely resembled Adam, and he attributes this resemblance to the alleged fact that, in fashioning the body of our proto-parent, the Creator had before Him as in a vision the portrait of " the Second Adam.” 30 But this is an entirely gratuitous assumption. The conjecture of several Fathers 31 that the bodily presence of our Divine Lord was contemptible, arose from a misinterpretation of Is. LIII, 2 sqq., where the Messias is pictured in His cruel suffering. It has been asserted that the impression of our Lord's face (Volto Santo) on the so-called Veil of St. Veronica, which is preserved in St. Peter's Basilica at Rome,32 bears a certain family resemblance to a portrait found on an ancient monument at Karnak and believed to represent the Jewish King Roboam, a bodily ancestor of our Lord. But, as has been pointed out, the name appended to this portrait, which was at first deciphered as "Rehabeam," is really the name of a city, and the picture itself was most probably intended to be a composite portrait representing the population.33

The description of our Divine Lord contained in the report of the alleged ambassadors of King Abgar, is,

29 On this subject cfr. Vavasseur, De Forma Christi, Paris 1649; G. A. Müller, Die leibliche Gestalt Jesu Christi nach der Urtradition, Graz 1908; S. J. Hunter, Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, Vol. II, pp. 463 sqq., London 1895; F. Johnson, Have We the Likeness of Christ? Chicago 1902.

30 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural, pp. 130 sq.

31 E. g., Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, and also Tertullian.

32 Cfr. P. J. Chandlery, S. J., Pilgrim-Walks in Rome, p. 27, 2nd ed., London 1905. On this and other apocryphal portraits of Christ cfr. C. M. Kaufmann, Christliche Archäologie, pp. 406 sqq., Paderborn 1905.

33 F. Kaulen in the Kirchenlexikon, 2nd ed., Vol. X, 1225, Freiburg 1897.

of course, quite as spurious as the apocryphal correspondence of Christ with the toparch of Edessa, which has come down to us in the so-called Legend of Thaddeus.84

It is safe to assume that the Son of God, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, was beautiful in form and figure, of majestic mien and sympathetic presence. The fact that no trustworthy portrait of Him exists may be due to a purposive design on the part of Divine Providence, lest the beauty of His manhood outshine His spiritual form and dignity.35

Readings:— J. Morris, Jesus the Son of Mary, 2 vols., London 1851.-P. Vogt, S. J., Der Stammbaum Christi bei ... Matthäus und Lukas, Freiburg 1907.-J. M. Heer, Die Stammbäume Jesu nach Matthäus und Lukas, Freiburg 1910.

34 Cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, pp. 109 sq.; H. Leclercq, art. "Abgar " in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. I; J. Tixeront,

Les Origines de l'Église d'Edesse et la Légende d'Abgar, Paris 1888.

35 Cfr. Suarez, De Incarn., disp. 32, sect. 2; L. Janssens, De DeoHomine, Vol. I, pp. 505 sqq.

SECTION 3

THE PASSIBILITY OF CHRIST'S HUMAN NATURE

I. HERETICAL TEACHINGS AND THE CHURCH. -The term "passibility" (capacity for suffering), when applied to our Divine Saviour, means bodily infirmity to a degree involving the possibility of death (defectus corporis), and in addition thereto, those psychical affections which are technically called Táon, passiones,1 by Aristotle and St. Thomas. It is necessary to assume such physical defects and psychical affections in Christ in order to safeguard His human nature and the genuineness of the atonement. In other words, the passibility of Christ is a necessary postulate of His Passion.

a) To deny our Lord's liability to suffering and death, or the immeasurable richness of His soul-life while on earth, would be tantamount to asserting that Christ merely bore the semblance of a man and that His human actions were apparitional,- just what the Docetists asserted. On the other side we have Monophysitism, the doctrine of one composite nature in Christ, which logically

3

leads to the heretical assumption of "Theopaschitism ❞— a worthy pendant to Patripassianism, and to the equally heretical theory that Christ was absolutely incapable of suffering. Towards the close of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century, a Monophysitic sect under the leadership of Julian of Halicarnassus and Gajanus, maintained that the body of Christ was incorruptible even before the Resurrection, or, more precisely, that it was not subject to decay (þłopá). These sectaries "were named by their opponents Aphthartodoceta, i. e., teachers of the incorruptibility of the body of Christ, or Phantasiasta, i. e., teachers of a merely phenomenal body of Christ." Julian was at least consistent, but his opponent Severus, Monophysite Bishop of Antioch (512), contradicted his own fundamental assumption when He admitted the orthodox doctrine that Christ before His Resurrection shared in all the bodily sufferings and infirmities of human nature. The Severians were therefore called paproλáтpai or corrupticola.

b) Meanwhile, at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (A. D. 431), the Church had laid it down as an article of faith that "the Word of God suffered in the flesh, and was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, and that He is 'the first-born from the dead' [Col. I, 18], as He is life and life-giver inasmuch as He is God."

2 Cfr. Pohle-Preuss, The Divine Trinity, pp. 117 sq.

3 About A. D. 476. 4 A. D. 536.

5 Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, P. 533.

6"Si quis non confitetur, Dei

6

Verbum passum carne et crucifixum carne et mortem carne gustasse, factumque primogenitum ex mortuis, secundum quod vita est et vivificator ut Deus, anathema sit." Cfr. Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiri dion, n. 124.

Carefully distinguishing between passibility and passion the Decretum pro Iacobitis of Eugene IV, adopted by the Council of Florence, A. D. 1439, defined: "Deus et homo, Dei Filius et hominis filius, . . . immortalis et aeternus ex natura divinitatis, passibilis et temporalis ex conditione assumptae humanitatis. Firmiter credit [Ecclesia], . . . Dei Filium in assumpta humanitate ex Virgine vere natum, vere passum, vere mortuum et sepultum - God and man, Son of God and son of man, . . . immortal and eternal by virtue of [His] Divinity, capable of suffering and temporal by virtue of [His] assumed manhood. The Church firmly believes . . . that the Son of God in [His] assumed humanity was truly born of the Virgin; that He truly suffered, died, and was buried."7 Though these and other ecclesiastical definitions professedly deal only with our Saviour's liability to suffering and death, they plainly include, at least by implication, the psychical affections which are the common lot of all men, and which necessarily accompany suffering and death. It is impossible to conceive of a genuine human soul devoid of spiritual and sensitive affections, or even of actual bodily suffering, without a corresponding affliction of the soul.

2. THE PASSIBILITY OF CHRIST'S HUMAN NATURE DEMONSTRATED FROM DIVINE REVELATION. The heretical doctrine that Christ was incapable of suffering is manifestly repugnant to Holy Scripture and Tradition.

a) One need but open the Gospels at almost any page to be convinced that, in His human na

7 Cfr. Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiridion, n. 708.