FOUR ELEMENTARY SCRIPTURAL TEACHINGS are essential for understanding the distinctive person of Christ:
Having already explored the first two points, we now turn to the last two: one person in two natures. The subject now to be addressed is among the most difficult in biblical teaching. It is intent upon showing how Jesus is truly God yet truly human as one person.
It might seem merciful to say: “Skip these pages and go on to the temptation narrative which is easily understood.” But one who wishes to understand classic thinking about Christ cannot skip over the crucial explanation of how the unity of his divinity and humanity is congruently interpreted and duly qualified.
Multiplication tables must be memorized to be functionally applied. So in the study of ancient ecumenical theology, those who wish to remember these distinctions do well to memorize the classic formula-like codes showing basic consensual definitions in summary form—the decisions of the seven Ecumenical Councils.
Few code phrases have been more decisive for classic Christology than two natures, one person (Council of Chalcedon, SCD 148; Russian Catech.). To make this puzzling formula transparent, sensible, and useful is the purpose of this chapter.
The Personal Union: Its Scriptural Basis
Scripture Insists upon the Union of God and Man in Christ
The Savior is as simply God as if he were not man, and as plainly man as if he were not God (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 1–3; Newman, Athan. 2:326).
First it must be established that the fully God and fully human premise is required by Scripture itself. It is not merely an appendage of tradition added to Scripture.
If this is not scriptural teaching, then this strange doctrine of “one person in two natures” cannot be classic Christian teaching. For decades it has been dismissed by critics as merely a distracting philosophical riddle.
Scripture teaches the union in the writings of Paul, John, and the Letter to the Hebrews. The purpose of Christology is rightly to reflect upon that scripture-based union so as to guard against distortions and enable its truthful proclamation (Tho. Aq., SCG 4:57–74, 174).
The Personal Union in Pauline Teaching
In Romans from the first sentence, Paul was speaking of Jesus Christ as a descendant of David according to his human nature (1:3) and Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness (1:4)—dual sonship that required dual natures in a single person. Paul did not hesitate to speak in the same breath of the “human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all” (Rom. 9:5).
He is crucified Lord while also being “Lord of glory” whose human body the rulers of this age have crucified (1 Cor. 2:8; Chrysostom, Hom on First Cor. 7). What the law could not do, “God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3). Hence the Savior who appears within the distortions of human history is at the same time nothing less than God’s own Son (Origen, Comm. on Romans 1.4).
The dual nature of the person of Christ is expressed throughout the New Testament Epistles, but nowhere more explicitly than in Colossians as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” in whom “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things” (Col. 1:15–20; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 13.33), but this could only occur “through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1:20; Basil, Hom. 16.10, FC 64:26).
The same personal union is reflected in Paul’s description of Christ as being in very nature God (morphē theou), yet with respect to his humanity “made him self nothing, taking the very nature of a servant [morphēn doulou], being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6–8). Though being in the form of God, he took the form of a Servant.
In this way he is one Mediator. The Pastoral Letters reflect the view that Christ is one person uniting two natures, for in Christ we behold “one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Tim. 2:5), who “appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit” (3:16). All these phrases of the Pauline tradition require the theandric premise. David’s son is David’s Lord (Rom. 1:3,4; 9:5; Augustine on Romans 59).
There is already embedded in the messianic prophecy of Isaiah the rudiments of the two-natures teaching: the One to come would be a truly human child born (vere homo), and truly divine (vere Deus), to be called Mighty God (Isa. 9:6). The name “Immanuel” points to this union: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.21).
The Union in Hebrews
A more systematic development of Christ’s two natures in one person is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The first chapter asserts and celebrates Christ’s divinity (“his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,” Heb. 1:2; Ambrose, On Chr. Faith 3.11), the second chapter develops Christ’s humanity (“he too shared in their humanity,” Heb. 2:14), and the remaining passages set forth the mystery of the interfacing of the two natures—“the Son of God” who is able “to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:14–16; 3:1). This one person sent from God to humanity, is the representative of humanity and as such the high priest petitioning from man to God, who “through the eternal Spirit” offered his humanity “unblemished to God” (Heb. 9:14).
The Hypostatic Union in John
The prologue of the Gospel of John attests that the Logos, the one and only God, became flesh (John 1:1–18). The divine Logos was not diminished by the union with the flesh. To behold the Son is to behold the Father (John 14:9). The Son is given authority to bestow life (John 5:24, 40; 6:27; 10:10), to judge (5:22), to answer supplications (14:14; 15:7). Faith in the Son is the same as faith in God (John 12:44; 14:1; Chrysostom, Hom. on John 74.1; Augustine, Comm. on John 54).
The Theandric Premise Necessary for Reading the New Testament
Scriptural attestations to Jesus Christ are characterized by the constant use of both language strata—human and divine. Hardly a page of the New Testament lacks implicit reference to the Christ who is true God without ceasing to be truly human and unreservedly human without ceasing to be eternal Son.
Names and titles are ascribed to this one person that reveal or imply the union of the two natures—Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man, Word become flesh, the Lamb slain for the redemption of the world. Yet in all these ascriptions, it is always assumed that we are speaking of one single person, one Mediator, one self, the one and only Son (Second Council of Constantinople, CF: 161; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 8; Grensted, The Person of Christ).
If someone should imagine that Jesus Christ is two persons, one would expect him to speak of “himselves” as “we,” but this never occurs. The Son is always “I,” the Godhead is “we.” In the Son’s dialogue with the Father, there is a clear sense of “I” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 37.2).
The union is so permeant that readers of Scripture cannot always easily separate out what Christ says of himself as God and what he says of himself as human. When the Scripture student keeps clearly in mind that though divine this one is human and though human this one is divine, then the Scriptures make immediate sense and each narrative unfolds plausibly (Athanasius, Four Discourses Ag. Arians 1).
Lacking the Premise, the Texts Are Unintelligible
Distinctive qualities of both humanity and deity are ascribed to the unifying person in a such a consistent way that the text makes little sense unless one assumes that these two natures were united in a single person. He is paradoxically “before Abraham” yet “born in a manger,” “suffered under Pontius Pilate” yet “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
The sentences of the New Testament constantly juxtapose the two natures in a way readers find so inescapable that to fight it is to fight the text itself. Only the theandric premise can allow these varied ascriptions in a given narrative to make sense.
Examples: The one who upholds all things by the word of his power is the same one who grows in the womb of Mary. He who knows all from the foundation of the world declares as man that he does not know the day or hour of judgment. He who created all has nowhere to lay his head. He from whose hand comes all things is the same one who agonized in the Garden. The eternal One who cannot change or suffer prays that the cup might pass from him. The eternal One who is unlimited in power suffers and dies. The one who is crucified and buried is the same one in whom the eternal life of God remains and works.
These statements are neither contradictions nor absurdities, seen in the light of the permeant logic of the divine-human personal union. Only with the two-nature/one-person hypothesis do these Scriptures make sense. Lacking this premise, the scriptural testimony will be found constantly confusing, a maze of internal contradictions. With this premise, the scriptural testimony has economy, beauty, and cohesion (Gregory of Nazianzus, Fourth Theol. Orat. on the Son, Orat. 30).
The Union of Two Natures in One Person
The Scriptures represent Jesus Christ as having a divine nature and a human nature in a single undivided personality (John 1:1–18; 9:48–59; Hilary, Trin. 8.13). The notion that two natures are united in one person is constantly assumed in the New Testament, even where it is not formally defined.
This scriptural teaching has become known in the tradition as the personal union of the divine and human natures, or the hypostatic (= personal) union, from hypostasis, or personal subsistences in the Godhead, as distinguished from their common essence or substance (ousia) as God (Council of Chalcedon, CC: 35–36; Second Council of Constantinople, CC: 46). Christ’s personhood is as singularly unified as any one person can be, yet in a profound, mysterious union of humanness and deity (Tho. Aq., SCG 4:152–55, 175–82; BOC: 47, 515).
The personal union is not a conflation or mixture of two composite things so the person could be said to be part human, part divine (Chalcedon, CC: 36; Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, V, 51–56). Gregory’s summary: “What He was He laid aside; what He was not He assumed; not that He became two, but He deigned to be One made out of the two” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 37.2).
Attributes Applied to One Person as Human, as Divine
In the New Testament, ascriptions are constantly applied to the one person that are taken from either or both the human nature and the divine nature. In some passages these two natures are held in tension in a single compact phrase, such as: they have “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). It is not uncommon to hear Jesus Christ attested as truly God in one passage, truly human in another, and both in the next (John 11:1–43). The one personal subject, Jesus Christ, is consistently described as divine and human.
Hence the redeemer is called theanthropos, God-man, the single person being undivided. The unitive term “God-man” (or God-as-a-man) is preferred to the more general “God-in-humanity” or “godly person” because these phrases might be used equally to speak of the union of Christ with every believer, while no believer is rightly spoken of as “God-man.”
The Union is Not an Oscillation
The union is not an oscillation or a pendulum. The incarnate Lord did not swing back and forth between being partly or occasionally God and partly or occasionally human (Newman, Athanasius 2:240–42). To allege this obscures the central paradoxical point of Christ’s existence: he was always God and nothing less, expressed within the frame of time and assuming the normal structures of human consciousness.
The apostles actively proclaimed the full deity and full humanity of the Lord and left for later reflection the formal definition of their precise correlation (Hilary, Trin. 9). Scripture repeatedly portrays Jesus Christ as one person, a single subject self, an undivided personality in whom these two natures are inseparably united (Ursinus, CHC: 208–12; G. Berkouwer, The Person of Christ).
Technical language eventually became necessary to defend against ingenious distortions of this obvious scriptural teaching. It is useful to show how this technical language still stands as a reasonable defense of scriptural teaching.
One-dimensional phrases such as “the dying God” should be avoided or qualified because they begin by forgetting the divine-human premise. Then they collapse triunity into sonship and the deity of Christ into his humanity. Rather than the “death of God,” classic exegetes spoke more precisely of the God-man “according to his humanity” who suffered and died. Yet the scriptural texts do not intend that the interpreter artificially split Christ’s divine acts from his human acts, for this tends to rend the union of his person. Much current biblical criticism assumes that the humanity of Christ can be detached as an object of historical study like any other historical object to be assessed separately. This rends the personal union assumed in the texts.
All who understand the scriptural testimony to the union will be in position to see how the major ecumenical definitions sought to clarify and secure that union. All ecumenical formulations sought accountability to Scripture as expressive of the one mind of the believing church. They are best understood as attempts at consensual exegesis.
The unity of the theandric person is a simple idea, though its simplicity encases a mystery. It is the remarkable idea that one person is truly human and truly divine, uniting God and humanity in one individual. In Christ we have to do with only one person (Council of Toledo, SCD 20; SCD 42, 143, 215), in whom divinity and humanity are personally united (Council of Ephesus, SCD 13, 215, 288).
It is inexact to think of the Christ of Scriptures merely as godly (theophoros; Council of Ephesus, SCD 117:50), since the god-like (godly) metaphor sells short the deeper premise that the two natures are united in their personal subsistence (hypostasis). Hence the union is termed a hypostatic (personal) union (Third Council of Constantinople, SCD 289–93; see also SCD 13, 111, 115f., 148, 216), which began with the incarnation (Vigilius, SCD 204f.). No expression is more compact than that of Gregory the Theologian on this point: “He is the Way, because He leads us through Himself” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 30.21).
Not Two Sons
As God, the Son knew that he was human; as human, he knew that he was God, hence one Son encompassed two natures. He was not two Sons, but one uniting two. “For both are God, that which assumed, and that which was assumed; two Natures meeting in One, not two Sons (let us not give a false account of the blending)” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 37.2).
There are not two bodies or two souls or two conscious persons, but a single conscious person uniting the divine and human natures. It is not one or the other nature that speaks when Jesus Christ speaks, but one person bearing the congruent imprint of two natures (Second Council of Constantinople).
In the New Testament he always speaks as a single-person “I” whether in his human or divine voice, there being only one “I,” not two; for if there were two “I”s, there would have been at Nazareth two persons. He unites in one person the utterly diverse characteristics needed for his mediatorial work (Ambrose, On Chr. Faith; 3.11; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q17–19).
Classical exegetes carefully steered a middle course between two hazards: the denial of the union of God and humanity in Christ and the denial of the distinguishability of deity and humanity in Christ. It was to provide guidance for this trajectory that the ecumenical definitions developed the “one person in two natures” formula (Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 8; Leo I, Sermon 72.1).
By uniting two-natures, the incarnate Son is distinguished both from other human persons and from the other persons of the Trinity: “On the one hand, He is joined to the Father and the Spirit by His divinity, while on the other He is joined by His humanity to His Mother and to all men. However, because of the fact that His natures are united, we say that He differs both from the Father and the Spirit and from His Mother and other men” (John of Damascus, OF 3.3).
The Divine-Human Permeation Likened to Body-Soul Interface
The unity of the human and divine natures of Christ is a mystery without adequate empirical analogy. The Colossian Letter attests “the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (2:2). Yet the one analogy that ancient exegetes thought came closest to expressing the union of Christ’s person is that of the psychosomatic (soul-body, freedom-nature) interface that every human being already knows (and is!).
The “Athanasian Creed” (Quicunque) summarized this analogy: “For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and Man is one Christ” (COC 2). Augustine gave definitive expression to the psychosomatic analogy of divine and human natures in Christ: “There are some who request an explanation of how God is joined to man so as to become the single person of Christ, as if they themselves could explain something that happens every day, namely, how the soul is joined to the body so as to form the single person of a man. For, as the soul makes use of the body in a single person to form a man, so God makes use of man in a single Person to form Christ. In the former person there is a mingling of soul and body; in the latter Person there is a mingling of God and man…. The one process happens daily in order to beget men; the other happened once to set men free” (Letters 137, italics added; Chemnitz, TNC: 95–100, 296–97). “If you inquire how the Deity is united with human nature, it is appropriate for you first to ask in what way the soul is united to the body” (Gregory of Nyssa, ARI 11).
No living human being can lack a body. No human being can lack a soul, for the soul is what makes the body live. The psychē (anima, soul) sees only with bodily eyes and hears only with bodily ears. Similarly Jesus Christ saw, heard, and even suffered and died as a human being. The Word dwelt in flesh, just as our souls dwell in our bodies. As the soul-body interface pervades every moment of human selfhood, so the divinity-humanity of Christ pervades every moment of his unique personhood (Hugh of St. Victor, OSCF: 236–39). As psychē transcends soma, as imagination soars above finitude, so does the divine nature of Christ transcend the limits of human finitude in the man Jesus.
Accordingly there is a veiled similarity (acknowledging differences) between this everyday human body/soul permeation and the unique mystery wherein God becomes human. The human psychē acts and suffers through the body in ways that require a body, yet always such action and suffering has an interfacing spiritual dimension that transcends the body. The human spirit (pneuma) is precisely characterized by that interface (Kierkegaard, SD: 146, 147).
Every human being already knows something of the complexity and mystery of the psychosomatic interface, because each person is one. We know how subtly our bodies are affected, moment by moment, by our spirited or dispirited condition (Rom. 8:9–17; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 8.11). We know how deeply psychosomatic factors affect the health and malaise of the body, its immune systems, often causing allergies, ulcers, headaches, and nausea.
In human existence the bodily nature grounds the person’s capacity for self-transcendence. Yet imagination and freedom transcend finitude and body. These two always exist in intense and delicate interfacing (Nemesius, On the Nature of Man; Niebuhr, NDM). The complexity and subtlety of this interface is something like that between the divine and human natures of the one person, Jesus Christ.
Grace-enabled freedom receives and owns the body willingly, as did the Son receive life willingly from the Blessed Mother, and as the Mother received with favor the Word. This is what human freedom is constantly choosing: either to receive joyfully or waste in despair over one’s own living body (Kierkegaard, Either/Or I; SD; The Concept of Anxiety).
The “entire and singular unity of Person” was explicated by Vincent of Lérins in this ingenious way: “For the conjunction has not converted and changed the one nature into the other (which is the characteristic error of the Arians), but rather has in such wise compacted both into one, that while there always remains in Christ the singularity of one and the self-same Person, there abides eternally the characteristic property of each nature; whence it follows, that neither does God (the divine nature) ever begin to be body, nor does the body ever cease to be body. This may be illustrated in human nature: for not only in the present life, but in the future also, each individual man will consist of soul and body; nor will his body ever be converted into soul, or his soul into body” (Vincent, Commonitory 13).
Like all analogies, this one is best used with constraint. Any analogy loses its integrity when flattened into an equation. The body-soul analogy is not to be equated with the divine-human union because (1) soul is not uncreated—for God alone is uncreated; (2) our bodies are unlike Christ’s body in that in them the Logos has not become incarnate; and (3) our bodies and souls interface in such a way that the right balance is constantly prone to being upset by the history of sin and personal sin, unlike Christ’s humanity and divinity, which appear to be steadily cooperative (Tertullian, On the Soul; Augustine, On Gospel of John, Tractate 19.5.15). Hence the correspondence is best viewed circumspectly as an analogy and not an equation, for God is not soul and humanity is not body. Analogy differs from equation precisely in its dissimilarities.
The Limits of the Eucharistic Analogy
Similarly there is another analogy that must carefully avoid being flattened into an equation. It appeared repeatedly in classic attempts to clarify the union of two natures in Christ: the divine-human unity of Christ’s person is like the divine-human action in the Eucharist.
It will suffice to quote John of Damascus, who cautiously drew the analogy in this way: “Now, bread and wine are used because God knows human weakness…. He does through the ordinary things of nature those things that surpass the natural order…. However, should you inquire as to the manner in which this is done, let it suffice for you to hear that it is done through the Holy Ghost, just as it was through the Holy Ghost that the Lord made flesh subsist for Himself and in Himself from the blessed Mother of God. And more than this we do not know, except that the word of God is true and effective and omnipotent, but the manner in which it is so is impossible to find out. What is more, it is not amiss to say this, that just as bread by being eaten and wine and water by being drunk are naturally changed into the body of the person eating and drinking and yet do not become another body than that which the person had before, so in the same way are the bread of the offertory and the wine and water supernaturally changed into the body and blood of Christ by the invocation and coming down of the Holy Ghost, yet they are not two bodies, but one and the same” (OF 4.13, italics added).
The union of the two natures of Christ is not precisely analogous to the union or henosis of two persons in marriage (Origen, OFP 2.6). For the unity of marriage leaves husband and wife “even after their union, two persons.” Christ is more profoundly and intrinsically one person than two marriage partners are one person. Christ’s personal union is a union that can only exist in one distinctive person in whom there is an intimate and perpetual conjunction of divine and human natures in one individual, wherein the human nature was assumed by the logos so as to be the Word in person (enhupostatos logo; Augustine, Hom. on John).
Avoiding Misunderstanding of the Personal Union of the Savior
The “two-nature, one-person” formula has remained the stabilizing center of apostolic consensus of ecumenical Christology for almost two millennia. It has repeatedly been tested by challenge. The major tendencies to heretical distortion in the two-natures union are these: it runs the risk of inordinately divinizing the human, humanizing the divine, or dualizing the one person. Keeping these factors in due balance is the challenge of classic Christian teaching of Christology.
Among the most familiar distortions of the apostolic consensus is the one that has claimed that the divine nature became entirely inactive, dormant, paralyzed, or even nonexistent during Christ’s earthly ministry. There is no warrant in the text for this conclusion, for in Scripture it is precisely the Word that has become flesh to abide among us, not the Word that ceases to be in becoming flesh. The New Testament does not imply that the Logos in becoming flesh temporarily quit being Logos and began being merely a man. Rather “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The central point is that God became flesh without contradiction or negation of either deity or humanity (1 Tim. 3:16; 1 John 4:2).
Another misreading holds that the union between humanity and deity in Christ was not completed in the incarnation, but was only gradually seeking to be realized (Schleiermacher, ChrF: 377–90). Some have argued that it was only belatedly in the resurrection, not the incarnation, that the union could become realized and thus recognized as realized (Pannenberg, JGM; I. A. Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ I). Paul commends the mind of Christ, who “in very nature God” was found in human form as servant (Phil. 2:7). The classic consensus held that the incarnation was not incomplete, but fully manifest in the nativity.
Some versions of kenotic (divine self-emptying) theory suppose that the Trinity must have been altered in number during Jesus’ earthly ministry. This was firmly countered by the Second Council of Constantinople: “For the Holy Trinity when God the Word was incarnate, was not increased by the addition of a person” (CC: 48). God remained triune and the trinity became most profoundly expressed through the incarnation.
Popular criticisms of the personal union of Christ are often based upon some point that has been repeatedly disavowed ecumenically as a misunderstanding of it. Some criticize Chalcedon’s teaching as dualistic, as a dissection of the whole, a fissure of the person (each of which the formula itself specifically rejected!). Some think it amounts to duplicity. Some view it as two abstractions instead of one reality, or two halves instead of one personal whole, wherein God now acts, and now man acts. Each of these criticisms was specifically anticipated in the precise formulation of Chalcedon, in its attempt to move cautiously between duplex personality and impersonal manhood (Leo I, Tome; Aldwinckle, MTM).
That the classic Christological formulae have undergone various reinterpretations in their long history remains a testimony to their vitality, not deadness (Mackintosh, PJC: 300). Personal salvation, however, is not dependent upon the precise acceptance of a particular Christological formula or definition of the Person, but rather upon active faith in the Person himself.
The Personal Union Not Subject to Empirical-Rational Laboratory Dissection
Only dead things can be dissected. The worshiping community is invited to celebrate and study and revel in this living mystery, not as something fully comprehensible to objective analysis, but as a divine gift for joyful contemplation (BOC: 489, 597, 609). Modesty of expression remains a radical intellectual requirement in the presence of this incomparable Person. This mystery was already being acknowledged in New Testament times: “Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body” (1 Tim. 3:16; Theodoret, Interp. of 1 Tim., 3.16; Newman, GA).
The union of humanity and divinity in Christ is not an incidental or ancillary aspect of Christian proclamation, nor an odd accommodation to myth. Rather it is at the heart of faith, a hinge point for subsequent profound knowledge of God revealed in history and of history itself. For the Father is recognized through the Son (Matt. 11:27), the Word of Life, “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim” (1 John 1:1; Didymus the Blind, Comm. on 1 John 1).
The plain sense reading of the New Testament becomes increasingly problematic and confusing when any of these three errors are made: that Jesus lacks humanity, deity, or personal union. The texts will fight any reader all the way if any of these are abandoned. With such a concession, a major retrogression has occurred that finally tends to make Christology formally and logically impossible (Harvey, HB: 275–89).
Yet it is not likely that inquirers into Christianity will ever cease raising questions about the unique theandric person attested in the New Testament. Luther commented wryly: “I know nothing about the Lord Christ that the devil has failed to attack” (Table Talk 1.269).
The Honest Money Changer
The experienced reader of the gospel narratives is like a skilled and honest money changer, according to Athanasius’s happy analogy. He must attend carefully to the context of each scriptural passage concerning Christ, as to whether it has more particular reference to voicing his humanity, or deity, or the divine-human union.
“Expressions used about His Godhead and His becoming man are to be interpreted with discrimination and suitably to the particular context…. He who expounds concerning His Godhead is not ignorant of what belongs to His coming in the flesh; but discerning each as a skilled and ‘approved moneychanger,’ he will walk in the straight way of piety; when therefore he speaks of His weeping; he knows that the Lord, having become man, while He exhibits His human character in weeping, as God raises up Lazarus” (Athanasius, On the Opinion of Dionysius, 9).
The dishonest money changer constantly shortchanges either the divine or the human. The honest money changer keeps the two currencies (divinity and humanity) in fitting congruence as the worshiping community moves through narrative after narrative.
Classic exegetes recognized that language was early applied to Christ in reference to varied contexts before or after his incarnation or resurrection. The continuing problem for any reader of Paul or Mark or John is that “sometimes indeed when teaching about the supreme nature, he is completely silent about the human nature, but sometimes when treating of the human dispensation, he does not touch on the mystery of His divinity” (John IV, Epist. to Constantius [AD 641], SCD 253).
Generic Contexts for Using Language of Deity, Humanity and Union
Hence it became a constant task of Christian reflection to sort out the different classes or “generic modes” or ways of speaking of Christ’s identity in the gospel stories—whether human, divine, or divine-human. By the eighth century, four standard classes had been astutely outlined by John of Damascus, the most systematic of the Eastern theologians. Accordingly, varied references are made to Christ in relation to four stages or modes, which may be characterized in outline form. Things may be said of Christ in reference to:
I. Before the incarnate theandric union so as to show
Consubstantiality with the Father
The perfection of the Person
The mutual indwelling of the Persons in one another
The subordination of Son to Father
The will of the Father as fulfilled by the Son, or
The fulfillment of prophecy, or
II. During the time of incarnate union so as to indicate
The deification of the flesh, or
By assuming the human
By uplifting the human
The humbling of the Word
By lowering from glory to finitude
By assumption of the flesh, or
By temporarily emptying (kenosis), or
Permeation of both deity and humanity in the union
By uniting
By anointing
By an intimate conjoining
By permeating, or
By mutual indwelling, or
III. After the Union, so as to show the
Divine nature, or
Human nature
Spoken of him naturally
of his birth
of his personal growth
of his age
of his finitude as hunger, thirst, weariness, fear, sleep
of his death
Ascribed to him fictionally “as if” human only (Luke 24:28)
Things spoken in the matter of association and said relatively
Things spoken by reason of distinctions in thought
Things spoken to strengthen faith
Things spoken with reference to his ethnic identity, or
One Person displaying both divinity and humanity, or
IV. After the Resurrection
As pertaining to divinity, or
As pertaining to humanity
As actual but not according to nature (as eating after the resurrection)
As actual and according to nature (as passing through closed doors)
As simulated or intentionally fictional (as when he “acted as if he were going farther,” Luke 24:28)
As pertaining to both natures
The options were thought to be exhaustive of the options of how the divine-human relation might appear or be presented in a given episode. A watchful interpreter will attend to which of these options would constitute the prevailing motif implied in a particular episode. Ascriptions concerning Christ are best applied in relation to the circumstance in which they occur, whether before or after the incarnation or resurrection (John of Damascus, OF 4.18).
This neglected ancient theandric premise awaits attentive and coherent application within current Scripture studies. Much modern critical Scripture study has limited its range to speak of only one dimension, the human nature as if able to be abstracted from the divine-human union. I hope before the end of this century some able scholar will take this brilliant analytical tool provided thirteen centuries ago by John of Damascus and apply it systematically to a consistent New Testament hermeneutic and text-based Christology.
The Logic of Intrapersonal Permeation
To permeate is to spread, to become diffused, or to penetrate (per + meare = “to pass through”) something. The interpenetration of divinity and humanity of Christ in one person refers to the diffusion of each nature in the other. The Greek terms expressing this union were koinonia (“communication, communion”) and poieo (“to do”) or koinopoiesis (“communicative action” or “communication of acts”). They are referred to more commonly in the Latin as communicatio idiomatum (“communication of idioms or attributes,” or genus idiomaticum, Hilary, Trin. 9.15–20; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q16; Chemnitz, TNC: 162–64; Barth, CD 4/2:73).
In seeking to set forth a plausible theory of the personal union consistent with Scripture and resistant to distortion, the classic exegetes (of East, West, and of the Protestant era), have applied a carefully devised logic of permeation that deserves to be restudied. Scholastic teachers sought to show how Christ’s deity affected his humanity, what his humanity meant in relation to his deity, and how the permeation between them is communicated in the actions of the single, unified person.
The Sharing of Aspects of Each Nature with the Other
The mediatorial work required over time an ongoing interpenetration of both natures within the one person. This is what is meant by communicatio idiomatum—the communication of divine and human properties fully and unitively to the single person. From the unity of the person of the Mediator there follows a communication of idioms, or reciprocal ascription of properties and operations (Council of Ephesus, SCD 116–24; see also SCD 16, 201), so the properties of each nature may be predicated of the other. Calvin held to “such a connection and union of the Divinity with the humanity, that each nature retains its properties entire, and yet both together constitute one Christ” (Inst. 3.14.1; BOC: 593). The one person embraces two natures and their idiomata, their distinctive features or properties (from idios, pertaining to self, one’s own, private or distinctive idioms, see Luke 9:10; 10:23).
In this way the one person may be called just as easily “Jesus” as “the Christ”: “And thus, Christ—which name covers both together—is called both God and man, created and uncreated, passible and impassible. And whenever he is named Son of God and God from one of the aspects, He receives the properties of the co-existent nature, of the flesh, that is to say, and can be called passible God and crucified Lord of Glory—not as being God, but in so far as the same one is also man. When, again, He is named Man and the Son of Man, He is given the properties and splendors of the divine nature. He is called Child before the Ages and Man without beginning…. Such, then, is the manner of this exchange by which each nature communicates its own properties to the other” (John of Damascus, OF 3.4).
This permeant logic gradually entered into the life of prayer and counsel, with language such as that which Augustine suggests: “Let Christ raise you by that which is man, lead you by that which is God-man, and guide you through to that which is God” (Tractates on John, Tractate 23.6, italics added). The multilevel relation of believers to Christ is profoundly glimpsed in Christ’s remarkable prayer to the Father concerning “I in them and you in me” (John 17:23; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 11.12).
Perichoresis: Where Divinity and Humanity Interpenetrate
Paul taught that “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9). The consensual exegetes interpreted this to mean that the divine nature penetrates and perfects every aspect of the human, and the human is pervaded by the divine (John of Damascus, OF 3.8). This was powerfully conveyed by the term perichoresis (Lat. circumincession, an embracing movement, “a proceeding around,” or “walking about all sides”), literally the existence of natures in one another.
The perichoresis or active intermingling of the natures was that abundant interpenetration by which the divine nature of the Son pervaded inwardly the human nature so as fully to impart his divinity to his humanity and his God-manhood to every aspect of his action (Schmid, DT: 306). In the Son, the deity participated in the Passion of the humanity and the humanity in the majesty of the deity without blurring or confusing either.
The Lutheran Formula of Concord summarized this patristic point for Protestants: “the entire fullness of the divinity dwells in Christ, not as in other holy men and angels, but bodily as in its own body, so that, with all its majesty, power, glory, and efficacy, it shines forth in the assumed human nature of Christ, when and as He wills, and in, with and through it, exerts its divine power, glory and efficacy, as the soul does in the body and fire in glowing iron” (Formula of Concord, BOC).
The picture of iron being heated was often employed: Iron being “incessantly heated”—penetrated by fire while remaining iron (Origen, OFP 3.6; Maximus, Disputatio cum Pyrrho). “While we speak of the cut burn and the burnt cut of the red-hot knife, we nevertheless hold the cutting to be one operation and the burning another” (John of Damascus, OF 3.19). In this analogy the red-hot knife is Jesus Christ—the knife his humanity, the heat his divinity—cutting and burning are distinguishable but inseparable. “For the two natures are one Christ and the one Christ is two natures” (John of Damascus, OF 3.19; Chemnitz, TNC: 229–30). Yet in such an example “one must find in it that which is like and that which is unlike. For likeness in everything would be identity and not an example, which is especially true with divine things. So, in the matter of theology and the Incarnation, it is impossible to find an absolutely perfect example” (John of Damascus, OF 3.26).
His Human Nature Endowed with Requisite Gifts for Mission
Jesus was endowed with extraordinary gifts for his mission. These gifts were as complete as can or need be given to a human being. They were sufficient to his mission of salvation. They were given contextually as needed from the time of birth, yet these gifts had to be allowed to grow in time and emerge as competences ordinarily emerge in the development of a human person. Hence Scripture portrays Jesus paradoxically as full of grace from birth, yet also capable of growing in grace through the years (Luke 2:40, 52; Origen, Homilies on Luke 19–20).
Jesus taught, acted, and suffered as the Spirit guided (Acts 1:2, 10:38). “For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit” (John 3:34; Ammonius, Fragments on John 105, JKGK 224). While being empowered by God the Spirit, Jesus taught and acted not simply as a prophet (speaking for God), but as God (Luke 5:20–21), from whom power was perceived as streaming forth immediately from his person (Luke 6:19; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on Luke, Hom. 25). The Son is attested as having been unreservedly given the power of miracle, the power to know and act as God, yet this power was voluntarily constrained under the premise of a self-chosen, humble mission of servanthood. Even then, there was sufficient impartation of divine power for each stage of the fulfillment of his office of Mediator.
Who Suffers—God, Man, or God-man?
This premise of the grace of theandric union affected thinking about who suffered in the suffering of the divine-human mediator. Luther drew the distinction carefully: “If I believe that only the human nature has suffered for me, I have a Savior of little worth…. It is the [unique theandric] person that suffers and dies. Now the person is true God; therefore it is rightly said: ‘The Son of God suffers.’ For although the divinity does not suffer, yet the person which is God suffers in His humanity…. In His own nature, God cannot die; but now God and man are united in one person, so that the expression ‘God’s death’ is correct, when the man dies who is one thing or one person with God” (Luther, quoted in the Formula of Concord, BOC: 631–32).
As human, the Savior could suffer, be powerless, and die as a human being, not in his divine nature, but through his possession of humanity. Although in his divine nature he was insensible to pain, the God-man was capable through the divine-human union to suffer pain (for discussions of passability, see Chrysostom, Hom. on John 60; Strong, Syst. Theol.: 697). As mediator, he exercised divine attributes as needed, yet was self-constrained in their use due to the gradual disclosure of his mission.
Ironies abound in consequence: “Thus the Lord of Glory is even said to have been crucified, although His divine nature did not suffer; and the Son of Man is confessed to have been in heaven before His passion, as the Lord Himself has said” (John of Damascus, OF 3.3, John 3:13). “The same one person is at once uncreated in its divinity and created in its humanity” (John of Damascus, OF 4.5).
Gregory the Theologian played out this series of intriguing word pictures which are all deciphered by the premise of permeation:
He hungers—but He feeds thousands….
He is wearied, but is the Rest of them that are weary….
He is heavy with sleep, but walks lightly over the sea….
He prays, but He hears prayer.
He weeps, but He causes tears to cease.
He asks where Lazarus was laid, for He was Man; but He raises Lazarus, for He was God.
He is sold, and very cheap, for it is only thirty pieces of silver; but He redeems the world….
As a sheep He is led to the slaughter, but He is the Shepherd of Israel, and now of the whole world also.
As a Lamb He is silent, yet He is the Word….
He is…wounded, but He heals every disease….
He dies, but He gives life….
If the one give you a starting point for your error, let the others put an end to it.
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 29.20)
Orthodox Christians can affirm each of these lines without a sacrifice of intellect and in good conscience, but none can be said without the premise of “One Person, Two Natures.”
Imagine a mathematician who has been struggling to understand a vast body of perplexing data. He sits facing the blurred maze of numbers and equations. Then someone hands him a simple formula that makes instant sense of the entire system of numbers. That is how the worshiping community beholds and celebrates and sings and dances the permeant logic of two-nature Christology. The logic appears constantly in the liturgy, while theological and historical reasoning tries to catch up.
Ecumenical council definitions sought to define faith in such a way that it would not be easily distorted. Their definitions were largely elicited and required by persistent distortions that did not reflect the consensual mind of the believing church.
The Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon, AD 451, SCD 148) defended the scriptural teaching of the personal union of Christ by defining it as:
Rejected Options Implied
Chalcedon was intensely economical in stating the faith in such a way that it could not be easily distorted. Among the options that were implicitly rejected were the Eutychians who tended to confuse the natures and the Nestorians who tended to divide the person (Ursinus, CHC: 196–202). The rejected options may be summarized in this simple schema:
Heresies that reject Christ’s humanity:
Docetists (Christ as not fully in flesh)
Apollinarians (Logos replaces human spirit)
Eutychians (Christ as a single mixed nature)
Heresies that reject Christ’s divinity:
Eutychians (Christ not fully divine, but mixed nature)
Ebionites (Jesus as natural son of Joseph and Mary)
Arians (Christ as creature, not eternal)
Heresies that reject Christ’s personal union:
Nestorians (Christ as two persons)
The divine nature remains uncreated, infinite, almighty, and all-wise, while the human nature retains its own properties, namely, those characteristic of all human existence as created, finite, and subject to time and death. In this way ecumenical orthodoxy maintains Christ as truly human, truly God, one person.
To dispel distortion, the formula had to be precise: Jesus Christ “must be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion or change, without division or separation. The distinction between the natures was never abolished by their union but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they come together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis” (Council of Chalcedon, CF: 154–55; A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition; R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon).
The Ecumenical Confession of the Union
Whatever unites human beings through their participation in human nature is precisely the human nature experienced by Jesus. Whatever distinguishes one person from another also distinguished Jesus from all other human persons, for there was only one Jesus of Nazareth.
The most essential distinctions were tightly compacted in these phrases of the Quicunque Creed (AD 440), which confesses:
Our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God is
both God and man;
God of the substance of the Father, begotten before time,
and man of the substance of his mother born in time;
perfect God and perfect man,
consisting of a rational soul and human body;
equal to the Father in his divinity,
less than the Father in his humanity;
who, although both God and man, is not two but one Christ;
one, however, not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh
but by the assumption of manhood into God.
Wholly one, not by fusion of substance but by unity of person.
For as the rational soul and the body are one man,
so God and man are one Christ
(TGS: 102; SCD 40)
This language has been chanted for centuries as one of the three most widely accepted confessions of the ancient church. There is not a line of this ancient creed that does not find ample confirmation in the Reformation teaching, sermons, and catechesis concerning Jesus Christ.
Protestant formularies typically followed this ancient ecumenical teaching as can be seen in the Westminster Confession: “Christ, in the work of mediation, acteth according to both natures; by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes, in Scripture, attributed to the person denominated by the other nature” (Article 8, CC: 205).
The saving mediatorial work “becomes impossible if one separates the two natures of Christ, as Nestorius did, or if one only ascribes to Him one divine nature, like the Monophysites, or if one curtails one part of human nature, like Apollinarius, or if one only sees in Him a single divine will and operation, like the Monothelites. ‘What is not assumed cannot be deified’” (Lossky, MTEC: 154). “For each of the two natures performs the functions proper to it in communion with the other; the Word does what pertains to the Word and the flesh what pertains to the flesh” (Leo I, Tome).
Divine and Human Will in the Son
The prayer of Jesus at Gethsemane shows that he had a self-determining human will which could say: “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Yet from that same passage it is also evident that his human will was unremittingly consecrated to follow voluntarily the divine will. “For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38; Athanasius, Four Discourses Ag. Arians, 3.58–67).
The Savior’s Human Will Obeyed His Divine Will
On this scriptural basis, it became a distinctive point of ecumenical confession that Jesus had two wills—his human will being obedient to the divine will in him—his human will following, and not resisting or opposing, but rather subject to his divine and all-powerful will” (Third Council of Constantinople, CC: 51). “The two wills proper to the two natures are different, but He who wills is one” (Lossky, MTEC: 146; Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 30; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q18).
The divine will always “goes before” or “prevenes” (leads the way by grace) for the human will, so that the human will may choose freely in accord with the divine will. “And when He begged to be spared death, He did so naturally, with His divine will willing and permitting, and He was in agony and afraid. Then, when His divine will willed that His human will choose death, the passion was freely accepted…. And so, the Lord’s soul was freely moved to will, but it freely willed those things which His divine will willed” (John of Damascus, OF 3.18). Jesus’ will was not simply an automated or programmed response as in a mechanism or in animal instinct, but genuine human volition.
The consensus-bearing Fathers made a distinction between brute appetite and free will. It was ably summarized by the Damascene: “He willed freely with His divine and His human will, for free will is absolutely inherent in every rational nature. After all, of what good can rationality be to a nature that does not reason freely. Now, the Creator has implanted a natural appetite in brute beasts which constrains them to act for the preservation of their own nature. For, since they lack reason, they cannot lead; rather, they are led by their natural appetite. Whence it is that the instinct to act arises simultaneously with the appetite, for they enjoy neither the use of reason nor that of counsel or reflection or judgment. For this reason they are neither praised and deemed good for practicing virtue nor punished for doing evil. The rational nature, however, has its natural appetite, which becomes aroused, but is guided and controlled by the reason,” and it is on this basis that “the rational nature is both praised and deemed good for practicing virtue and punished for practicing vice” (OF 3.18, italics added).
It is God’s nature to will. It is also human nature to will. Willing, like knowing, belongs to the human condition, to ordinary human personhood. One who wills is called a person. Yet it is possible for one will to remain free while voluntarily obeying another.
“To will is inherent to all men” (John of Damascus, OF 3.14). How one wills particularly in a given situation depends upon judgment, not nature, and upon self-determining freedom, not external causal determinations alone.
Divine Working and Human Working in Jesus Christ
The mediatorial work of the Son required the cooperative permeation or interpenetration of the two working wills, divine and human, as seen in John’s testimony: “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17). “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does” (John 5:19; Augustine, The Creed 2.5). “The Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38). “For the very work the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36; Augustine, Hom. on John 23). “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life” (John 5:21; Cyril of Alex. Comm. on John 2.6).
Every discrete act or work of the Mediator required this co-willing and coworking of the two natures (Chemnitz, TNC: 215–30). “For, since He is of one substance with God the Father, He freely wills and acts as God. And, since He is also of one substance with us, the same one freely wills and acts as man. Thus, the miracles are His, and so are the sufferings” (John of Damascus, OF 3.14). Just as there are two wills in Christ, we are also led by the texts to assume that there are two actions without division or confusion, a divine action and a human action, hence two operations (Honorius, Two Wills and Operations, SCD 251–52).
Why a Union That Included Human Nature Was Necessary for Salvation
God did not choose to become enfleshed in a brute beast, but in human form, for animals are less capable of imaging the divine nature. If God became a frog, it would first be necessary to give the frog speech and moral awareness in order for God to become revealed to or through the frog.
But human nature, as originally given by grace, is capable of communication with God, of partaking of the divine life (Gen. 2:15–17; Gregory of Nazianzus, Second Oration on Easter 8; 2 Pet. 1:4). God became human, not a rock or hummingbird or spider, because humanity is already made in God’s image.
Humanity is not less but more human through God’s enfleshment. Yet under the conditions of the fallenness of history, the capacity of humanity to image or reflect God has become grossly distorted. This is why Christ, the perfect image of God according to which humanity was originally made, is said to have restored that lost image by assuming human nature and filling it with the divine life, enabling genuine human faith, hope, and love. Hence the incarnation is said to embody the fulfillment of humanity and to express the truly human.
There can be no mediation between God and humanity without positing a Mediator capable of empathy with ordinary humanity and of equal dignity with God (Phil. 2:6–11; Heb 2:17–18). As human, he is capable of making intercession and sacrificial offering for humanity; as divine Son his act of sacrificial offering has infinite value to the Father (Heb. 4:15).
If the one who died on the cross were only human and not Son of God, the death could not serve sufficiently as an act of atonement for the whole world. If the one who died were only God and not human, there would have been no basis for celebrating the empathy of God with humanity. Only a mediator fully divine and fully human could undergo the experience necessary to save humanity.
Conclusion: What the Work Requires, Only This Person Bestows
Here the unifying principle of Christology reappears: What the mediatorial work requires, the mediatorial person supplies: being very God while being thoroughly human (Rom. 1:3–4), equal with God, empathic with humanity (Phil. 2:6–7)—distinguishable yet inseparable in one person—Word made flesh (John 1:14; Pope, Compend. 2: 110).
The theandric logic and the triune logic necessarily interface: Christ is one person, two natures; God is three persons, one in essence. If God were only one person, God could not send, yet be sent; be both the Giver of law and obedient to it; both offer intercession for humanity and receive the prayers of humanity; both justify and sanctify, making just and making whole.
When Christ is worshiped, he is not worshiped just as the divine nature of the eternal Son, but as incarnate (enfleshed!) Lord. John of Damascus summed up centuries of debate: “And we do not say that His body is not to be adored, because it is adored in the one Person of the Word who became Person to it. Yet we do not worship the creature, because we do not adore it as a mere body, but as being one with the divinity” (OF 3.8).