St. Irenaeus: Early Bishop & Teacher of the Recapitulation

What Latin Traditionalists Need to Understand

By: Jay

My purpose here is to correct a tendency and misconception, which sometimes leads to an error.  Debating the status of this document’s authority is also not in view, either.  The Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes, stated (with the relevant citations of Constantinople II and III):

“22. The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come,(20) namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.

He Who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15),(21) is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled,(22) by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice(23) and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.(24)”

And the references are:

20. Cf. Rom. 5: 14. Cf. Tertullian, De carnis resurrectione 6: “The shape that the slime of the earth was given was intended with a view to Christ, the future man.”: P. 2, 282; CSEL 47, p. 33, 1. 12-13.

21. Cf. 2 Cor. 4:4.

22. Cf. Second Council of Constantinople, canon 7: “The divine Word was not changed into a human nature, nor was a human nature absorbed by the Word.” Denzinger 219 (428); Cf. also Third Council of Constantinople: “For just as His most holy and immaculate human nature, though deified, was not destroyed (theotheisa ouk anerethe), but rather remained in its proper state and mode of being”: Denzinger 291 (556); Cf. Council of Chalce, don:” to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion change, division, or separation.” Denzinger 148 (302).

23. Cf. Third Council of Constantinople: “and so His human will, though deified, is not destroyed”: Denzinger 291 (556).”

The Council of Quiersy (853), approved by Rome, stated:

“319 Chap. 4. Christ Jesus our Lord, as no man who is or has been or ever will be whose nature will not have been assumed in Him, so there is, has been, or will be no man, for whom He has not suffered- although not all will be saved by the mystery of His passion.” Denzinger, 319.

So, we see from the last quote that this does not mean that all will be saved, as so many Easterns would have.  This is why the New Catholic Catechism can say:

“521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. “By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man.” We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model:

We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church. . . For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us.”

and

“618 The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the “one mediator between God and men”. But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man, “the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” is offered to all men. He calls his disciples to “take up [their] cross and follow [him]”, for “Christ also suffered for [us], leaving [us] an example so that [we] should follow in his steps.” In fact Jesus desires to associate with his redeeming sacrifice those who were to be its first beneficiaries. This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering.

Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.”

Now, for a  perfect example of a Latin-edge error, consider this article’s argument from SSPX priest, Fr. Phillipe Laguerie, who writes:

“But, one will ask, how are we to reconcile or accommodate this delirious theology with the rest of the dogma? That’s the question.

2) They [Catholics in communion with Rome] answer, “by His Incarnation, the Son of God has united Himself in some way to every man. (521 and 618 quoting Gaudium et spes)” These two quotations, completely irrelevant as they are in this context, are used: one (in 521), as proof that each and every man is saved through the Mystery of the Incarnation (to be united to Christ, is this not Salvation?) because from that point “all the richness of Christ is intended for each person and belongs to each one” (519); the other (618) to illustrate the role of (Christ’s) Passion, which right away becomes another problem since every man is already united to Christ: through His Passion “Christ offers to all men, in a manner that (only) God knows, the possibility of being associated with the paschal mystery.”

These proposals or theses, developed in John Paul II’s writings (Universal Salvation through the Incarnation) are again taken up here as they were in the Council of Vatican II: in a thinly veiled (but real) manner. Errors are therefore maintained, although reduced to their principles. These principles are easier to swallow than their conclusions which disgust the Christian conscience and for which Salvation is obtainable only through a personal and free adherence to Jesus Christ and to His Sacrifice which has most effectively wrought our Salvation.”

It is not unversal salvation, as the reference to the papal-confirmed council of Quiersy above demonstrates.  In fact, this council is even cited in the New Catechism when discussing this Eastern doctrine.  Fr. should have read his Denzinger more carefully as well as something Eastern, such as St. John of Damascus, who wrote at length about Christ as the universal man in Book III of “On the Orthodox Faith.”

What did Aquinas say?:

“Reply to Objection 3. As Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 6,11), the Divine Nature is said to be incarnate because It is united to flesh personally, and not that It is changed into flesh. So likewise the flesh is said to be deified, as he also says (De Fide Orth. 15,17), not by change, but by union with the Word, its natural properties still remaining, and hence it may be considered as deified, inasmuch as it becomes the flesh of the Word of God, but not that it becomes God.”

–Summa Theologica, citing St. John of Damascus, Part 3, Q 2, Art. 1.

Although he is not dealing specifically with the doctrine of universal union, via Incarnation, the principle is there, since His assumption of human nature means that He assumed all men (but, again, not that all are saved).  That is why John Paul wrote in “Redemptor Hominis:”

“Christ the Lord indicated this way especially, when, as the Council teaches, “by his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man.” The Church therefore sees its fundamental task in enabling that union to be brought about and renewed continually. ”

The pontiff, as well as with the council, is fully aware of the Eastern Tradition on this matter, and is working from that well-spring.  The dogmatic ecumenical councils cited are Constantinople II and III (and by extension, Ephesus) make it clear this is not new or radical or heretical.  The real root of the problem is Western ignorance of Eastern Patristic and Ecumenical Council Tradition, as well as the normative patristic teaching of the recapitulation. 

And so, Christ is the deifying God-man, united to all men, and saving all men through His sacrmaents, especially deifying them through His Body, the Eucharist, which is why St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote at Ephesus (and this is part of the corpus of the documents of Ephesus, not just his mere opinion):