I have been thinking for some time about how Jesus can be both true God and true man. It seems contradictory but I think I might have come up with a line of thinking that helps explain it for me. I recognize it is a mystery that will not be clear to us until the next world but some simple concepts help me to understand it and may help others. I still have no idea how one person can have two natures but given that it happens I can conceive of the result.

Person – an individual distinguishable from any other individual.
Nature – a quality shared with other individuals to make an identifiable group.

Jesus is one person, distinguishable from the Father, the Holy Spirit, and any other human.

Jesus has two natures, one He shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit and another He shares with all humans. Some qualities are shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit but not with humans, and other qualities are shared with other humans but not with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The person of Jesus can grow in His human nature, but not in His Divine nature. The birth, development, and death of Jesus affects His total Person because He is only one Person, but it affects only His human nature because His divine nature cannot change.

The human nature of Jesus must be an essential quality of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity because God cannot change in His Divine nature. Jesus proceeds from the Father and therefore He is logically created even though this creation is from eternity and not in time. It is for this reason that He has the nature of a creature. Before conception He was fully human but did not have a body. The conception gave Him a body that developed in Mary’s womb so that Mary was the mother of Jesus, the one Person Who is also the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

The body of Christ formed in Mary’s womb is the same that is present physically in the Holy Eucharist and at least symbolically in the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. Christ is God so that He cannot be divided so as to be only partially present; if He is present at all it must be whole and entire. Since He is infinite He can be divided infinitely and still each infinitesimal particle is identical to the whole before being divided and there is still only one Christ. This helps me with how Christ can be present at multiple places and in multiple ways at the same time.

This is seriously heretical. You may want to dispense with your speculations and simply accept with childlike faith that the teaching of the Church is true.

Please point out the nature of the heresy. I would be glad to change my position if I knew why it was wrong but simply telling me it is wrong does not help me.

"Begotton, not made, cosubstantial with the Father."

Your speculation regarding the creation of the Son in eternity seems close to Arianism.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm

I don't think being close to something is heretical. If so, please explain it to me.

1) It is erroneous to use "Jesus" to refer to the Second Person before the Incarnation.
2) As CCB notes, the Divine Son is begotten, not created.
3) The human nature of Jesus is a created nature.
4) Your definition of "person" is not the standard one but is, I think, workable. Your definition of "nature" won't do. "Nature" is not a quality.

Ok..

No it is not. The Second Person of the Trinity was not created. One needs a body to be fully human and before the Incarnation The Second Person did not have a human nature.

1. OK my shorthand notation may be wrong so substitute Second Person.
2. My poor terminology.
3. Is this dogma? I don't think God can change and being united with a human nature seems to me to be a change. I chose my current thinking to avoid having a change in the Second Person.
4. I guess I don't see your point. Please elaborate.

If the human nature of the Second Person is not an essential quality, then how did the Second Person acquire a human nature without changing? Can God change?
My terminology "logically created" was my attempt to explain how the Second Person proceeds from the Father. Calling it "created" is not essential to my presentation so use your own word.
The saints are human but they do not have the same kind of body they had on earth. The Second Person could have had some kind of glorified body before the incarnation. I have no idea what form it could take but I can imagine it to be there in some way.

I'm not sure what you mean by "essential quality," but your underlying question is a very good one. God does not change, so the assumption of a human nature cannot have changed the Godhead. I'll try to get back with a fuller explanation later.

(It's a good enough question that I actually gave the wrong answer on a test in seminary. So it must be hard to get the right answer )

My terminology might not be good because I have never had any formal Catholic education. I was already a college graduate before I became a Catholic but I have done a lot of self-teaching. Because of the poor instructor I can eaily make mistakes but I try to listen to the best teacher there is, the Holy Spirit. He only speaks to me in whispers so I might easily misunderstand Him. I think what I mean by "essential quality" is that a human nature is part of the essence of the Second Person.

The fact that God does not change and that the Second Person is both God and man is what caused me to adopt a lot of my radical ideas. I recognize that they are novel but I don't think that equates to heretical or wrong. Thank you for your patient replies.

Grandpavan, I think that you might find the Creed promulgated by the 11th Council of Toledo in the 7th century helpful. It can be read in about 10 minutes or so, but it gives a good explanation of what the Church teaches with respect to the Trinity and it might be a good reference for thinking about the Trinity.

I would only note that in the section entitled "the Father", there is a phrase which reads "He Himself is the Father of His own essence" and I think this is a translation error of some sort, so skip over that phrase.

Thank you for the link to the Council of Toledo. I have read it and while I might use different terminology I agree with the Council as I understand their terminology. I still do not see an explanation of how the Second Person unites a nature of God and a nature of man without having a change in an unchangeable God unless the nature of man is coeternal with the nature of God. I recognize that this is a mystery that we cannot fully understand but I am trying to come as close as I can to developing a model for how it could be. Thanks for your interest and information.

God does not change within Himself, but His relationship to the created world can and does change. A simple analogy: If I look at a coin full on, it looks like a circle. If I rotate the coin 90º about its vertical axis, the coin will look like a vertical bar. Has the coin changed at all? No; only my relationship to it has.

Similarly: When I am in a state of grace, I am in God’s friendship. If I should fall from grace, I forfeit that friendship (though God in His mercy can restore it). Has God changed? No, but my relationship with Him changed.

So it is with the Incarnation. God gained no new perfection in the Incarnation. Rather, God chose to relate to the world in a human way, which is in every sense less than the way He relates to the world as God. But His Divine Essence remains untouched and unchanged; He is what He was, neither more nor less. Only His way of relating to the world is different.

Do I understand then that the Son as man is only a way of relating and not a real entity? I guess I don't follow. Does the Son as man only exist because we can see Him now whereas we could not see Him before? I'm really trying to follow this but I can't. The Son either is or is not human in Himself and not dependent on how He presents to anyone or anything.

There is another model of the Trinity in which the Father is the Creator, the Son is the perfect knowledge of the Father and His creation, and the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the two. In this model the Son could include in His essence all the properties of creation. I haven't really thought through this but it just crossed my mind.

I don't think this works. "In Himself" is a tricky phrase. The Son is a divine Person only, never a human person, but He is a divine Person who has assumed a real, full, complete human nature. He really acts through that nature, but it doesn't change who He is as God.

Please pardon me for being obtuse, but I believe that the Son is true God and true man. I don't see how he can be true man without being a human person. I agree that the Son posesses a human hature but I am troubled by His "assuming" this nature because to me that implies a time before He had this nature. If something is different between before and after I feel this must be a change. I appreciate your patience with me.

There is a time before the Son had a human nature.

What's your definition of "person"?

What I’m really trying to do on this board is to discern the Holy Spirit working in me. Along those lines I was thinking about this post and began to wonder how do we know that the student is incorrect and the teacher is correct? If the Holy Spirit speaks to us, this might be different from conventional wisdom. It is possible that we might misunderstand or it might really be the devil speaking to us disguised as the Holy Spirit. That’s why I want to know that things are based on facts and not on interpretations. Otherwise my view is only a theory and is permissible to be held as a theory but not posited as a fact. My concept of the hypostatic union is only a theory but one that helps me to visualize God.