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Christ is in our midst!

I happended to be reading a Roman Catholic prayer on the meditation "The Five Mysteries of the Third Part." It mentions the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the Roman Catholic understanding of the soul of Jesus Christ? It kind of sounds strange to me. I would guess that it refers to the Holy Spirit. It's amazing on how the Church has had to wrestle with the issues of one & two wills, one & two natures, etc. Where does the soul of Jesus Christ fall in? That still sounds strange to me. Is His soul created or uncreated? I know the answer. I would like some feedback. I thought in past threads that this might have been discussed but I cant recall. This topic made lead once again on the issue of the created & uncreated divine energies between West & East.

He is in our midst, and ever will be!

This issue of "where the soul of Jesus falls in" has been huge enough to be the subject of the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephasus, 431. This Council condemned the teaching that Christ was not truly human in that his soul was divine in essence. (This heresy was condemned under the name of "Apollinarianism.")
So it is to be affirmed that His soul was created, and had its own particular "heart", hypostatic identity, or "Nous."
It did have, in distinction from our human soul, complete purity and was fully "energized" from conception so that God's will for us can be accomplished: yours and my nous is to be united with His Nous, for through doing so we become deified.

[ 08-22-2002: Message edited by: durak ]

Hi:


When talking about the Eucharist, the Roman Catholic Church confesses the Real Presence of Christ's Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

It seems to me that in doing so, the Church is mentioning 4 mutually exclusive "attributes" (for lack of a better word) of the Person of Jesus Christ. (In modern times, we might group Body and Blood as physical things, but this is not quite the mindset we inherited from the Hebrew cosmovision, as the Blood as the essence of life, while not spiritual in nature as the Soul, was well beyond mere matter).

So it seems to me that the Roman theology about the Soul of Christ is (obviously) still pretty much in line with the Council of Ephesus. The Soul of Christ is a part of His created, human nature.

We also believe that between His death and His resurrection, His Soul was effectively separated from His Body, because He was truly dead, and this separation is one of the effects of real death.

The Holy Spirit simply cannot be Christ's Soul one way or another, because the Holy Spirit is a distinct Hypostasis.

Shalom,
Memo.

Memo,
You have spoken well, especially with regard to the "separation."
In the preparation rite of the gifts before beginning of the Liturgy, the 1965 Byzantine Liturgical Conference translation directs the priest to pray:
"When your body was in the tomb, and Yours soul in hell, when you were in paradise with the thief, You were at the same time -- O Christ, as God, upon Your throne with the Father and the Spirit -- infinite and filling all things."
It remains for Rum Orthodox, who began this thread by intimating that he "knows the answer" to inform us if we are on the right track!

Hi:

Thank you.


Oh, there are a lot of symbolic representations of these realities in the Eucharist.

The Eucharistic species begin the liturgy separated, that is, the Body and the Blood of the lord are both placed upon the Altar, but they are not together. This represents the Sacrifice. The Lord shed the last drop of His Precious Blood for us.

And later, when a fraction of the Lamb is dropped in the Chalice, this is said to represent the Resurrection. Fitting, since bringing Body and Blood together again makes one "whole" again.

The Roman theology about the Eucharist says that the whole Christ is present in either of the Consecrated Gifts, but that doesn't preclude us from having a virtually identical symbol by dropping a faction of the consecrated Host in the Chalice.

Shalom,
Memo.