C. Michael Patton and Rhome Dyke · The Theology Program · 73 minutes
Lecture by C. Michael Patton, Th.M., and Rhome Dyke, Th.M., from The Theology Program, published on their public channel. Study notes below from Medina Community Church.
Last session established that Christ is fully God. This one asks the question the church spent the next century answering: what does it mean that he is also fully man, and how do the two fit together in one person? The teachers call this doctrine no less a determiner of orthodoxy than the Trinity, and far less understood. Listen for the recurring test that sorts every proposal: could this Christ represent us, and could he redeem us?
The session opens by naming a habit most Christians share: we focus so much on the deity of Christ that we lose sight of his humanity, the way in bibliology we can see the godness of Scripture and forget the manness through which it is communicated. Yet the question of who Jesus Christ is, what the incarnation means, what it means that he is God and man and not just God, has determined orthodoxy for centuries, and it presses directly on salvation. Why did Christ have to become man? Could God have accomplished redemption some other way? The eternal God, who does not experience succession of moments, entered succession of moments, and then died. From the outside it can look ridiculous; the church had to learn to say why it is instead the heart of redemption.
Three terms frame the discussion. Incarnation is the biblical understanding that Christ took on flesh, a true human nature. The hypostatic union, from the Greek hypostasis, meaning person, names the union of the two natures of Christ in one person. And theanthropos, from theos and anthropos, is the theological descriptive name for Christ: the God-man. The questions these terms carry are not easy. Is Christ partly God and partly man, ninety percent one and ten percent the other? Did he sacrifice some deity to become human? If he retained full humanity and full deity, which one had control? The teachers ask the class to do what it did with the Trinity: step off the ladder of inherited assumptions and enter the early church struggle from the beginning.
The first proposal came from Apollinarius of Laodicea, a friend of Athanasius and teacher of Jerome. Christ was God who took on a human body without a human mind: the divine Logos was inserted where the human mind would have been, so that the Word became flesh only in the sense that God took on a body. Gregory of Nazianzus, opposing him, wrote that Apollinarius assumes the man who came down from heaven is without a mind, the Godhead of the only begotten filling the function of the mind in the human composite. The teachers observe that this is how many Christians instinctively picture Jesus even now, God at the controls of a human shell, thinking always through a fully deified cognition. Apollinarianism was condemned at the Council of Constantinople and condemned again at Chalcedon.
The class works out why the early church rejected the view. The fathers thought in terms of redemption, and their instinct was what came to be called the recapitulation view of the atonement: Christ took our place not only in death but in life, retracing what man is, struggling as we struggle day by day with limited knowledge, and ending without sin. A Christ who thought only with a God-mind, who knew every detail of every coming day, could not represent us in that daily struggle, and a Christ who was only God in a body would have redeemed at most our material part, when the whole of us needs redeeming. Gregory of Nazianzus put it in a sentence the church never forgot: what God has not assumed is not saved. To save all of man, Christ had to assume all of man.
The next option restored the full humanity but divided the person. Nestorianism held that Christ was fully man and fully God, two natures united in purpose but not in person, because it could not see how one individual could carry both. This is the view we drift into whenever we say Christ was speaking here out of his humanity and there out of his deity, as if two consciousnesses took turns at a light switch. The teachers note that Nestorius himself, another good exegete from Antioch, was probably condemned unfairly; his later writings suggest he did not hold what his name now carries. The view was condemned in 431 and again at Chalcedon.
The problem surfaces at the cross: which one died? If the humanity died and was separated from the deity, there are two persons, and two persons cannot accomplish redemption. A separate human person whom God controlled from within does us no good; on those terms God could have controlled any of us into a sinless life and a sacrificial death. Redemption required one person who could represent both sides, as Anselm argued in the eleventh century in Cur Deus Homo, why the God-man: only one who was fully God and fully man could stand in our place and bring us to God. The cry from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, remains a mystery the teachers refuse to over-explain, but whatever happened there happened to one whole person, not to a detachable part.
The final option, Eutychianism or monophysitism, from monos and physis, one nature, blended the two natures into a third thing. Christ was from two natures before the union but only one after it, like a drop of water disappearing into a bucket. Eutyches, a preacher from the same Antioch circle, produced a Christ who is neither fully human nor fully divine, perhaps some proportion of each, and the class names the fatal flaw at once: such a Christ can represent no one. There is no true man to stand in for men and no true God to bring men to God; his death takes nobody place, and he can no longer come before the Father on his own merit. Monophysitism was condemned at Chalcedon.
The teachers pause over the pattern. In contrast there is clarity: the church did not draft its confession in advance and condemn deviations on sight; it thought each proposal through the way the class has just done, found where each one denied redemption, and set up a boundary there. Apollinarius, Nestorius, and Eutyches were sincere men doing their best, and the church living on the other side of them can learn from their mistakes. By the time the wrong answers were fenced off, what remained could be stated with precision, and that is what the fourth council did.
The Council of Chalcedon met in 451 primarily to settle this issue, and its definition is the fullest christological statement the church possesses, not infallible, the teachers stress, but very well thought through. Evangelicals who say they receive the first four ecumenical councils are saying, in effect, that they believe in the Trinity and the hypostatic union. The definition confesses one and the same Son, complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead and of one substance with us as regards his manhood, like us in all respects apart from sin, born for us of Mary the virgin, the God-bearer, recognized in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. Two of those four adverbs answer Eutyches, who confused and changed the natures; two answer Nestorianism, which divided and separated them. The characteristics of each nature are preserved and come together in one person: the humanity did not become omniscient or omnipresent at the union, and the deity lost nothing of what it was.
The definition calls Mary theotokos, the God-bearer. Nestorius had wanted christotokos or anthropotokos, Christ-bearer or man-bearer, to say that Mary bore the humanity only, and the church saw that this very move separated the person. If from conception Christ was the united God-man, then the one Mary bore is God, and the title guards that. The teachers insist this was a christological issue, not a mariological one: the title was never meant to elevate the status of Mary, and everything to do with elevating Christ. It arose in the middle of this controversy for exactly this purpose.
The class then works at the word person. A person is an independent agent with one consciousness; two consciousnesses would be two persons, which is Nestorianism. So Christ on earth did not alternate between a God-consciousness and a human consciousness; the trick question, was he God-conscious or human-conscious, has only one answer: both at once, one consciousness expressed through the theanthropic union. That presses hard questions the teachers leave open with care. Was he always conscious of his deity, even in the womb, and if so, in what sense was his infancy truly human? Did his humanity limit his deity by necessity, or did he voluntarily limit its exercise? These questions carry into next session and the kenosis of Philippians 2, where Christ, existing in the form of God, emptied himself and took the form of a servant.
The orthodox definition of the hypostatic union: Christ is one person who exists forevermore in two complete natures, God and man. Forevermore, because Christ is the firstfruits of what we will become, the second Adam leading resurrected humanity into eternity; he will forever represent man and forever represent God. The risen Christ Thomas touched still bore the scars. The church has often used sloppy language here, as if Christ dumped his humanity at the ascension, and the teachers hear in that our lingering Gnosticism, the instinct that the physical is beneath God. They also note the map of Christendom: Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism are all Chalcedonian, while the churches that broke away over monophysitism, the Coptic Orthodox and Armenian and Jacobite churches, remain non-Chalcedonian, and Patton declines to pronounce on the salvation of their members while holding that a blended Christ, if it were true, could not save.
Within Chalcedonian agreement, the traditions lean differently. Roman Catholic theology, confessing both natures fully, has tended in practice to let the deity control everything: a Christ omniscient from the womb, who never exercised faith or hope, which the teachers call a confession of orthodoxy with a practical bent toward Apollinarianism. Lutheran theology teaches that in the incarnation the finite contained the infinite, finitum capax infiniti, with an intermingling of the properties of the natures; this underwrites consubstantiation, Christ humanly present in, with, and under the elements of the Supper, and its heretical bent, the accusation sometimes made, is monophysitism, since a humanity present in many places at once has taken on a divine attribute. Chalcedon says the characteristics of each nature must be preserved, and corporeality, being in one place at one time, belongs to humanity; the teachers press this against transubstantiation as well, and note that this is my body was spoken while Christ stood bodily at the table. Reformed theology answers finitum non capax infiniti: the finite cannot contain the infinite, so the deity of Christ was never fully contained by his humanity, though he was willingly conscious only through it; the accusation aimed at this view is Nestorianism, and the teachers, taking the Reformed position, deny that it divides the person. The Zwinglian view of the Supper, which the teachers share, takes the elements as a symbol pointing to the reality that Christ died for us.
Unlike the Trinity analogies, which the previous session retired as teaching heresy, a few pictures of the hypostatic union come closer, though none can grasp it: fire in iron, heat of one nature made an inseparable part of another; light as wave and particle in one; and Calvin two eyes, one vision. The summary chart sets the two great mysteries side by side as mirror images: in the Trinity the unity is in nature and the diversity is in persons; in Christ the unity is in person and the diversity is in natures. Patton adds his own view on the exercise of deity: before the resurrection Christ had suspended not the ability but the right to exercise his divine attributes, because of his mission; with the mission complete, the risen Christ has the right to exercise all the qualities of his deity, which may be why the Christ of Patmos presents himself with the emphasis on the God side of the union. Next session takes up the humanity of Christ in the Bible, the kenosis, and the problem passages: the garden prayer that the cup might pass, and the Christ who days earlier said, get behind me, Satan.
Each opens the chapter in your ESV app or on esv.org.
Tap an answer. A wrong guess points you back to the outline; when all seventeen are right, the lecture is marked complete on this device.
1. What habit of mind does the session name at the outset?
2. What does the term hypostatic union name?
3. What is the theanthropos?
4. What did Apollinarianism teach?
5. Which sentence of Gregory of Nazianzus became the church answer to Apollinarianism?
6. In the recapitulation view of the atonement, what belongs to Christ redeeming work besides the cross?
7. What did Nestorianism teach about the two natures?
8. What question exposes the fatal flaw of a two-person Christ?
9. What was Anselm eleventh-century question, Cur Deus Homo, about?
10. What picture does the session use for Eutychianism?
11. Why can the blended Christ of monophysitism redeem no one?
12. In the Definition of Chalcedon, which two adverbs answer Eutyches, and which two answer Nestorianism?
13. What happened to the attributes of each nature at the union, according to Chalcedon?
14. Why did the church insist on calling Mary theotokos rather than christotokos?
15. Why is, was Christ God-conscious or human-conscious, a trick question?
16. Why does orthodoxy say Christ exists in the hypostatic union forevermore?
17. How does the summary chart set the Trinity and the hypostatic union side by side?
All seventeen correct. Lecture 9 is complete.
The teachers say many of us confess Chalcedon but read the Gospels as Apollinarians, picturing God at the controls of a human shell. When you read of Jesus hungry, tired, or amazed, what do you instinctively do with those texts, and what would change if you took his human mind seriously?
The early church tested every proposal by one question: could this Christ represent us and redeem us? Practice that test aloud on each of the three heresies from the session. Why does each one leave you unredeemed?
Gregory of Nazianzus said that what God has not assumed is not saved. What does it mean for your daily struggle, decisions made with limited knowledge, temptation resisted without a script, that Christ recapitulated a life like yours without sin?
The session calls the title theotokos a statement about Christ, not Mary. How does this episode help you talk with Catholic friends about Mary, and with any friend about why precision in doctrine serves love rather than opposing it?
The mystery the whole session labors to honor, from John 1: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The lecture directions for the week: meet with others over the group discussion questions; read the Definition of Chalcedon slowly, printed in the course notes, until its four adverbs are familiar; and watch your own reading of the Gospels for the heresies of the session, the switching Christ of Nestorianism and the God in a body of Apollinarius. The course turns next to the humanity of Christ in the Bible: the kenosis of Philippians 2 and the problem passages read through a Chalcedonian lens.