When studying the one person and two natures of our Lord Jesus Christ, defining terms is very important and crucial for our understanding and defense of the orthodox faith. One such term is that of "subsistence", which is used in contexts of discussing the Trinity and the person of Christ.
One question that is often asked is this: what is it that prevents the human nature of Christ from being a separate person (Nestorianism)? Islamic debater Jake Brancatella asked this sort of question in his debate with Samuel Green. Since Christ assumed both a human body and a rational soul, aren't these sufficient conditions for being a human person? This is a good question and I am glad Jake brought it up. As far as I can tell, Mr. Green seemed unable to provide any sort of adequate response to Jake's argument. This should tell us a lot about the lamentable lack of classical theological education in seminaries today. This is why the retrieval of Reformed Scholasticism is a great blessing to Christ's church.
In this article I wish to provide a brief answer to this question, but proceed to elaborate on it more by examining how Thomism, Scotism, and Reformed Scholasticism typically understood the nature of what subsistence (or 'personhood') is.
The answer to Jake's question is that Christ's human nature (hereafter "CHN") is not a person because it is enhypostasis, meaning that it is sustained by and subsists in the divine person of the Logos. In order for it to be a separate person, it would need to have its own incommunicable subsistence apart from the Logos. It does not have this, and could not have this, otherwise there would be no real Incarnation (Cyril of Alexandria talked about how Nestorianism basically leads to viewing the Incarnation of Christ as being the same as when God dwelt in the prophets and was connected to them by a union of mere good-will or grace).
One question that some have posited as dividing Thomists and Scotists (e.g., Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay [Oxford University Press, 2016], pgs. 68-70) is whether or not that which prevents CHN from being a person is a negative privation (which is alleged to be the Scotist position) or some sort of positive ontological entity (Thomist view).
Is subsistence a negative privation or positive entity?
Thomists generally spoke of subsistence as a positive entity which functions in the role of terminating a nature, similar to how a point terminates a line:
"In addition to this, the fact that the term "hypostasis" or "person" and similarly the proper names of natures with pronouns, such as "this man," "this ox," and likewise demonstrative pronouns personally, like "I," "you," "he," are all acknowledged to formally signify substance, and not negation or accident or something extraneous, further supports these points. If we all confess this, why, when investigating the purpose of the signified thing, do we deviate from the common confession? And if it is permissible to say that personality is formally negation, why not stand in a sentiment that is so much more probable and in accordance with the common confession?.......It [subsistence] is the term of nature. This is proven by the fact that the nature of a person is the nature to be terminated, and personifying is terminating nature. For we explain the human nature in Christ to be personified by the Word because it is terminated by His person; and conversely, the Word personifies that nature because it terminates it.......And this is not a fabrication but has testimony from the terms of quantity: a point is so terminus of a line that there is no cause of it."" (Cardinal Cajetan, Commentaria in Summam Theologiae, Part III, Q. 4, art. 2, §8, 10)
"[Subsistence] completes [the nature] and renders it subsistent per se through the perseity of independence from a sustainer....it constitutes the suppositum, as incommunicable to another." (Jean Baptiste Gonet, Clypeus Theologiae Thomisticae, tr. 11, disp. 8, a. 3, §2)
"[Personhood] is not a mode, but a real entity, really distinct from nature." (Jean Baptiste Gonet, Clypeus Theologiae Thomisticae, tr. 11, disp. 8, art. 6, §1)
"Every non-subsisting thing, as such, is less perfect than the subsisting or perfectible by subsistence, as is evident in a separated soul and any other part, which is less perfect than a subsisting thing, being incomplete and perfectible. However, a subsisting thing is perfect, whole, and complete, from which the non-subsisting part lacks something. Therefore, the non-subsisting thing will rather express the negation of that perfection, whereas the subsisting thing adds not only the negation but also some positive perfection beyond the nature of the non-subsisting.......[Subsistence] adds to nature a terminus or substantial formality, which excludes the mode of inherence and the mode of communicable part, and thus renders the nature terminated and incommunicable to any further terminus, just as a point terminates a line by a positive addition and termination." (John of St. Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus: Philosophia Naturalis, p. 1, q. 7, a. 1)
Another distinctive of the Thomist position is that they view subsistence as logically prior to esse (Richard Cross, Christology and Metaphysics in the Seventeenth Century [Oxford University Press, 2022], pg. 38)
Scotus, on the other hand, believed that subsistence was simply a negative privation. According to him, in order a human nature to be its own distinct person, there must be, as Dr. Richard Cross puts it, "an absence of hypostatic dependence." For example, Scotus wrote the following:
"And so this negation, not of actual dependence but aptitudinal, this sort does complete the idea of ‘person’ in intellectual nature and of ‘supposit’ in created nature." (Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, III, d.1, p. 1, q.1, n. 46)
It ought to be noted that the idea of CHN not being a person because it does not have its own hypostasis is found very explicitly in Aquinas' own writings (De Unione, art. 2, ad. 10).
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