As a young man in my twenties, I read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This morning and just a while ago, I was led to refer to the Catechism to examine what it had to say about Jesus’ humanity. I was amazed and encouraged. This is what I found.
In Part 1: Section 2: Chapter 2: Article 3 of the Catechism, it reads (note the asterisked portion):
Paragraph 1:
470 Because *”human nature was assumed, not absorbed",* in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ's human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ's human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from "one of the Trinity".
Paragraph 2:
485 The mission of the Holy Spirit is always conjoined and ordered to that of the Son. The Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the giver of Life", is sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and divinely fecundate it, causing her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father *in a humanity drawn from her own.*
Let’s look at paragraph 2 first. It states unequivocally that God the Son (Christ) was conceived in Mary’s womb by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, “in a humanity drawn from her own.” Without a doubt, this means Jesus’ humanity is none other than Mary’s humanity—our humanity (at least from a Reformed perspective).
Paragraph 1 is also interesting. It states that with respect to Christ, “human nature was assumed, not absorbed.” Now, the Chalcedonian Creed clearly states that Christ’s divine and human natures are to be “… acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation …” This means the two natures—divine and human—of Christ are not to be mixed up (or divided). This in turn implies that Christ’s divine nature cannot be absorbed either, for He is by nature divine and assumes human nature by grace. Expressed syllogistically where P = Premise and C = Conclusion:
P.1: Christ’s human nature is assumed, not absorbed.
P.2: Christ’s divine nature is a given.
P.3: Christ’s divine and human natures are not confused, changed, divided, or separated.
P.4: If Christ’s divine nature is absorbed, it would constitute change (from being a given) and separation (from assumed human nature).
C: Christ’s divine nature cannot be absorbed.
Following from the syllogism above, I submit to you that the idea that the foetal Christ in Mary’s womb has divine blood of God flowing in his veins is in effect a fallacious anti-credal claim amounting to this: that Christ has absorbed His divine nature from His heavenly Father!
Put simply in another way, to claim that Jesus has divine blood from God is a non-Christian and heretical claim that opposes the Chalcedonian Creed. The Catholic Catechism clarified this truth of Christ’s two natures hypostatically united in one person in the paragraphs just cited. Protestants, as do Catholics, uphold the Chalcedonian Creed.
Philosophically and theologically speaking, it appears that Prince assumes a strict separation between divine (seen as pure and incorrupt) and human (seen as impure and corrupt), entailing a foetal Jesus to be pure by virtue of absorption of divine blood from God. This dualistic assumption is reminiscent of Gnostic Docetism, a heretical thought-system espousing trenchant dichotomy between the spiritual/divine and the material/human to the extent that Jesus is regarded as a spiritual entity taking on a phantasm-like human body. For if Jesus' human body is not real, it would not pollute His spiritual essence.
By extension, this bipolar dichotomy results in the need for divinizing of Jesus to such an extent that His humanity is eclipsed in favour of His divinity. This move is evidenced in the idea that Jesus must have absorbed His blood from God the Father in order that His humanity can remain sinless, pure, and incorrupt. But this very move pushes Prince’s Christology into the realm of heresy akin to the fourth-century heresy of Eutychianism, which Christology asserts Jesus' humanity in such a fashion as to be absorbed into His divinity. Similarly, in Prince’s Christology, the divine nature of Jesus overwhelms and deflates His humanity such that Jesus’ humanity is merely partial rather than full—a partial humanity derived from Mary as far as His bodily receptable is concerned but animated by God’s divine substance or blood. This is a strange and Eutychianesque mixture of human and divine substances, a confusion of Christ’s two natures that contravenes the Chalcedonian Creed.
As such, any claim that Jesus absorbs his divine nature by receiving divine blood from God the Father is heresy striking to the core of Christian faith and life. This is the claim that Joseph Prince makes (see 7:16-8:49 in https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5u5j4z). It must be refuted and demolished, for the good of the body of Christ and the world, to the glory of God.
