Christology - two natures, human and divine
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Here's a thread picking up from some issues discussed on the Epiphanies one about coping with the idea of Hell.
@A Feminine Force raised some interesting issues and I'd like to home in on one of them - the issue of Christology.
She wrote:
'... the idea of Jesus being fully human and fully divine and what does that mean, because sin is kind of a built-in feature of being human and if Jesus can't sin then he can't be human.
I have concluded that Jesus the man and the Christ in him are two separate aspects of the same being.
Jesus the man was perfectly capable of sinning but elected not to on account of being overshadowed by the Christ in him.'
Emphasis mine in bold.
Theologians have debated these things for centuries of course.
AFF asked me to outline the Orthodox position on Christology as she said she'd never heard it. I replied that she probably has but not heard it 'labelled' that way. To all intents and purposes, the RCs, Eastern Orthodox and most mainline Protestants would share the 'Chalcedonian' definition of how this 'works'.
In essence, the 'Chalcedonian' position runs as follows:
- Jesus is one person (hypostasis) in two distinct natures.
- These two natures are united, 'without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.'
- Jesus is perfectly human and perfectly divine, complete in both Godhead and humanity - consubstantial (there's a hymn thread about that in Ecclesiantics!) with the Father and with humanity.
Our minds melt at this point, if not before.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal of course.
Now then, I'm intrigued that AFF has concluded that 'Jesus the man and the Christ in him', are 'two separate aspects of the same being' - as, unless I'm missing something, that sounds rather Chalcedonian the way I've read it.
Where the fun might start is the issue as to whether Jesus the man was 'overshadowed' by 'the Christ in him' or whether his human and divine natures worked in total harmony. Jesus the man 'chose' not to sin not because the 'Christ in him' wrestled him to the ground or prevented him, but because his humanity and divinity were working in harmony.
I came across an intriguing poem by John Burt earlier today, the third in his sequence of Sonnets for Mary of Nazareth. It's in A Century Of Poetry: 100 Poems For Searching The Heart selected and commented on by Dr Rowan Williams (SPCK, London, 2022).
Burt suggests that Mary had to teach Jesus how to be human as any mother teaches a child. Something, Williams tells us, theologians have tentatively suggested.
My brain bursts at this point.
But hey ... let's think this all through ...
So far as we can.
If all this is so, what are the implications for:
- The way we live.
- Our attitude towards sin and 'human perfectability'.
- Our attitude towards suffering and death.
- How we treat other people.
And much more besides?
And please, trained theologians and pastors/ministers here, correct me if I'm not defining things correctly.
@A Feminine Force raised some interesting issues and I'd like to home in on one of them - the issue of Christology.
She wrote:
'... the idea of Jesus being fully human and fully divine and what does that mean, because sin is kind of a built-in feature of being human and if Jesus can't sin then he can't be human.
I have concluded that Jesus the man and the Christ in him are two separate aspects of the same being.
Jesus the man was perfectly capable of sinning but elected not to on account of being overshadowed by the Christ in him.'
Emphasis mine in bold.
Theologians have debated these things for centuries of course.
AFF asked me to outline the Orthodox position on Christology as she said she'd never heard it. I replied that she probably has but not heard it 'labelled' that way. To all intents and purposes, the RCs, Eastern Orthodox and most mainline Protestants would share the 'Chalcedonian' definition of how this 'works'.
In essence, the 'Chalcedonian' position runs as follows:
- Jesus is one person (hypostasis) in two distinct natures.
- These two natures are united, 'without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.'
- Jesus is perfectly human and perfectly divine, complete in both Godhead and humanity - consubstantial (there's a hymn thread about that in Ecclesiantics!) with the Father and with humanity.
Our minds melt at this point, if not before.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal of course.
Now then, I'm intrigued that AFF has concluded that 'Jesus the man and the Christ in him', are 'two separate aspects of the same being' - as, unless I'm missing something, that sounds rather Chalcedonian the way I've read it.
Where the fun might start is the issue as to whether Jesus the man was 'overshadowed' by 'the Christ in him' or whether his human and divine natures worked in total harmony. Jesus the man 'chose' not to sin not because the 'Christ in him' wrestled him to the ground or prevented him, but because his humanity and divinity were working in harmony.
I came across an intriguing poem by John Burt earlier today, the third in his sequence of Sonnets for Mary of Nazareth. It's in A Century Of Poetry: 100 Poems For Searching The Heart selected and commented on by Dr Rowan Williams (SPCK, London, 2022).
Burt suggests that Mary had to teach Jesus how to be human as any mother teaches a child. Something, Williams tells us, theologians have tentatively suggested.
My brain bursts at this point.
But hey ... let's think this all through ...
So far as we can.
If all this is so, what are the implications for:
- The way we live.
- Our attitude towards sin and 'human perfectability'.
- Our attitude towards suffering and death.
- How we treat other people.
And much more besides?
And please, trained theologians and pastors/ministers here, correct me if I'm not defining things correctly.
Comments
Would this be in a different way than (good) parents teach their own children to be human?
So don't expect a child-care manual.
But, yes, I think it would be. Otherwise we might get into Docetic territory or something like that.
My brain is still bubbling ...
Don't expect a sensible response. 😉
I mean, you said, “yes, I think it would be,” so just trying to figure out which thing it “would be” (the same or different, that is). Of course we can’t really know until we ask Him (or her, or Joseph, or…) when we get there. Heck, I’m not sure how much of “being human” is learned or intrinsic (biological and/or metaphysical) for ordinary humans.
There is a lot about the divine and human nature of Christ that just cannot be explained.
One side says Jesus could not sin because of his divine nature. The other side says Jesus could have sinned in his humanity but did not.
TomA (long A)to, Toma(short a)to. Let's call the who thing off.
Maybe there is a synthesis. Jesus did not sin because his humanity was fully healed, fully aligned with God, fully whole. He did not sin because he was prevented, not because the divine nature overrode the human nature, but because he is the one human being whose will is perfectly integrated.
A question: do you find it more fully meaningful to imagine as Jesus was someone who could have failed but did not, or as someone who would not fail because his humanity was fully healed?
No seriously, my Tradition (from which all this derives of course 😉) would go for a 'synergistic' approach. The synthesis.
We certainly wouldn't see it as the divine nature over-riding the human one but rather the two natures working in harmony.
Did you really expect me to come up with a different answer?
Or was it a rhetorical question?
I'm no great shakes but I am now part of the Tradition which bequeathed these great big whopping Conciliar definitions to the rest of Christendom.
So I'm hardly likely to come out with anything very different.
That doesn't mean that all Orthodox people go round thinking about these issues all the time, any more than @A Feminine Force's 'non-creedal' Baptist church did.
But the Big C Councils do set the tone and tenor for the way we think about these things, as they do for all Christians who give them more than cursory nod.
I know you mean well but your question sounds as if I hadn't thought about any of this before and you're having to lecture me on it. I know that is highly unlikely to be your intention but that's how it comes across.
And there's an irony insofar as my own Tradition came up with this stuff in the first place before Christendom was divided.
I'm not saying we've got a trademark and monopoly on it of course. It's all 'open-source' now. Out of copyright. 😉
But I hope I wouldn't presume to lecture you on what Lutherans believe when it comes to those issues where we don't overlap so much.
Amen. At least now after the Fall.
"It takes a village to raise a child."
But the child is more than the external influences IMHO.
Oh, of course. And any attempts to raise children without that, to see what you get without that kind of parental interaction would be (and when it has been tried (yikes!) has been) deeply morally wrong, so how much is intrinsic (physically and metaphysically) and how much is learned, I’m not sure we’ll ever know in this life.
I'm reminded of a story about the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom who told his parishioners at the Russian cathedral on Ennismore Gardens that they should stop trying so hard to be Orthodox but try harder to be human.
@Gramps49, it's morning now and in the clear light of day I feel I responded rather harshly to your last post. I know you mean well and that we are on the same page on many things - as indeed many of us are here irrespective of different ecclesial abodes.
I took it that you were trying to 'preach to the converted' as it were and that what you posted didn't need saying. That was presumptuous of me as it is always good to be reminded of these things and also I'm not the only poster here and others may have found your comments helpful.
Indeed, I did too, truth be told, as a reminder of views I hols but don't always articulate clearly and also a reminder of how much we share in common across our various Christian traditions.
I would prefer you to adopt a less didactic tone at times but then I need to work on the tone and tenor of my posts also.
Peace to you and peace to all.
Amen to that.
Since Jesus was tempted but did not sin, sin is not intrinsic to human nature.
Thought 2 - sin doesnt change essential human nature. Its something that sullies it. Dirty socks are still socks.
Thought 3 - doesnt much of this rely on acceptng the stories in Genesis as fact?
Thought 4 - the language about the Incarnation and hypistatic union are using 3rd century categories and language to reach towards an understanding. Given our inability to encompass the Divine, it might be way off beam.
Regarding Thought three, it relies on accepting the stories in Genesis as true, but not necessarily as literal, in my view.
Regarding Thought four, I don’t see that we would be in a better position than they would just because we are centuries and centuries later. Other than that we’ve had Christians building on solid theology, including those dogmas and doctrines, for longer, but I’m not sure the current era, with its anti-supernatural biases, would be better at grasping those things.
There are no 'new heresies.'
I believe that to be the case even though I know there's a risk of veering into a kind of 'Church Fundamentalism' as opposed to the kind of 'biblical fundamentalism' that has developed in conservative forms of Protestantism.
I understand that sola scriptura is more nuanced than that but I'm not sola scriptura so whilst I admire the approaches taken by Protestant Shipmates on Kerygmania and elsewhere - such as here in Purgatory, I'm inevitably going to come at these things from a different direction to some extent.
So if someone quotes Luther, say, as @Gramps49 did on the atonement thr, my immediate reaction is going to be, 'Does this accord with Tradition?'
Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't.
In this case I think it does. Spot on, Martin.
Other times I might think otherwise.
I know some may think that's to adopt a theological strait-jacket but I tend to think these things are often more elastic and stretchy than how they are often applied - or indeed 'enforced'.
We'll all find out one day.
In the meantime we must love and respect one another regardless of whether we fit neatly into one theological category or another.
If I may share my thoughts on your thoughts not strictly in that order:
My take on Genesis is informed by a lot of personal insights and experiences that were echoed later in life when I read the Valentinian creation story. In effect: Genesis brings us in half way through the story. Whether it's true or factual or not, for me it's a coherent narrative.
The way I understand it, Genesis isn't the story of some mythical ancestors but a personal account of how each one of us arrives in the flesh in this material reality.
We arrive as Adam and Eve with a primary intention to experience what is "good" and "evil". That intention sets the karmic wheel automatically in motion because we come with the script in hand of what we intend to experience, and we see very shortly after arrival, by the first or second incarnation, we are already Cain and Abel.
We are sinners because we have the intention before we arrive to discover what sin actually is. Our consciousness isn't created by our flesh, it powers it, and that consciousness has no understanding of good or evil outside of what we supply to it through our experience.
Jesus arrived without this intention, with something altogether different in his script. He arrived without sin because he didn't come with that intention. He arrived without karma.
As to the Creator's intention for how we are supposed to be, I can't actually comment on that because my perception of the One in Whom we have our being is too narrow to presume to be able to make that assumption. What I can understand by observation is that whatever we intend is in fact allowed because there's no great hand coming out of the sky to stop us, or to prevent us from forming the thoughts and intentions we act upon.
I think this is a great analogy. I think it's also fair to say that it's something that harms ourselves. Hamartia - you know - taking aim to harm someone else and being hit from behind with your own arrow as it were.
IMO our ability to encompass the Divine from this level of awareness is so minuscule that it's a pure miracle that we have any concept of it at all. Plato's cave doesn't even begin to cover it.
AFF
Different, not better, except to the extent that one generally understands better one’s native language.
I think it would behoove us, then, to try to learn that different language with its structures and analogies and try to actually get into that mindset.
Could you explain what you mean here and where this idea came from?
I’d say it behooves us both to offer resources to enable people who want to learn that different language with its structures and analogies and to try and get into that mindset to do so. But it behooves just as much to make sure we also use the language that people already understand, and can understand without special instruction. I mean, after all, that’s exactly what the people in the 3rd C who philosophized about the Incarnation and hypistatic union were doing—using the language and categories they were familiar with and understood.
I think part of the problem is our modern era may not have those sorts of categories the way they did. I’m inclined to think, if anything, it’s been trying to move away from that whole worldview as much as possible, looking down at it as “primitive.” That doesn’t mean we don’t have things now (some aspects of quantum physics, I think, but that’s not exactly common knowledge for most people) that could be helpful, but I think that relearning that stuff would help a lot. I don’t know how much we can teach people about some aspects of this without special instruction—even in the early Church, catechumens needed instruction, after all, and in many liturgical churches, there are confirmation classes which in theory are trying to teach those things.
The rub is in “special instruction.” Perfectly acceptable special instruction and even catechesis can happen without ever hearing the word “hypostasis.” Take the apocryphal story of St. Patrick teaching about the Trinity not through grand philosophical ideas but through a simple and familiar plant. (And yes, as an analogy it falls apart, just like pretty much every attempt to explain the Trinity does at some point.)
I’m not arguing against special instruction or catechesis. I’m arguing that good instruction or catechesis is predicated on awareness of the audience for which it is intended and conveys information in a way that audience will understand.
Right, but one can say “this thing I have just explained is called ‘hypostatic union,’ in case you encounter the term later.”
I mean, a lot of learning involves learning new words and such. It doesn’t have to be either/or—it can be, perhaps should be, both/and.*
Maybe we need drawings of helpful insects explaining the less common or difficult words in the margins.** I would eagerly read a theological work like this, actually.
* ©️ @Gamma Gamaliel
** This is a reference to the excellent children’s magazine Cricket
Agreed!
It ain't easy.
But we have to start somewhere.
If their eyes glaze over, then one can move on (but in this context, one has already explained the concepts, and then pointed out the technical term after that, not started with the technical term), and if there’s confusion, one can try to clear it up. But I don’t think it means we should just avoid the concepts altogether.
I mean, if a child is going to go into surgery, you can say, “so this gas will help you fall asleep” (explanation) “And we call it an ‘anesthetic’” (new word), “So if the doctor mentions that word, you know what they mean.”
Believe me, I relate. It’s been jarring how much basic knowledge we got in school just isn’t taught much anymore, but in college they’re still expected to know it, so I get high school graduates, native English speakers, who don’t know how to sound out unfamiliar words (for course instructions that I did not write), because their generation is no longer being taught to do so with what we called “phonics,” so they grab a word that starts with the same letter and is around the same length but has a different meaning, and just keep barreling through. You have to make sure they understand the instructions so they can complete the assignment, without writing or speaking down to them (first because it’s unkind, second because you have students of all types and backgrounds, some who have learned more than others), but at least in my experience—I teach composition at the community-college level—modern students have gaps in basic knowledge that a generation or two ago they didn’t have. (I mainly blame No Child Left Behind and the reliance on “teaching toward the test” in terms of standardized testing, for the last 20+ years, not the students, nor texting, etc., as some do. Explaining that their nouns and verbs have to agree in number means making sure they know what nouns and verbs are, or even what the (grammatical) subject of a sentence is. My understanding is that similar issues have developed in other subjects over the last couple of decades.)
(Maybe we need something like “Theology Rock!” à la the old Schoolhouse Rock cartoons some of us grew up with… I’m now imagining “Three-Ring Government” but about the Trinity…)
That said, I also think it’s about more than “the word for that is hypostasis.” It’s about understanding “hypostasis” within the framework of the philosophy of which it’s part.
I’d say we’re exploring part of how it ain’t easy.
Do we?
I guess this is where I confess to being one whose eyes glaze over with philosophical talk about things like hypostasis. It’s not that I don’t understand the concepts; it’s just I find it pretty dry and boring and irrelevant to my life.
Some of us are quite content to say and believe “fully human, fully God” without trying to understand the mechanics of that statement of faith.
Others’ mileage may, of course, vary.
I think that’s fine. Maybe we’re talking about two different things here?
At my first church, there was an adult male who was a severe autistic person. He had never been communed because previous pastors did not think he could understand what communion was all about (this was a LCMS church). His elderly parents were so concerned he was missing out on receiving the sacrament. I told them I would work with him so that he could commune. I sat down with him and simply told him when he comes to commune and I give him the bread, it will be the Body of Christ. And when he receives the wine, it will be the blood of Christ. I had him repeat that concept several times.
The next Sunday, he came up to the communion rail. I gave him the bread. He immediately held it up and said, the Body of Christ. When I came back with the chalice, he told it and held it up saying, the Blood of Christ. Thank God, he had figured out he did not have to drink the whole chalice. I had forgotten to coach him on that one.
I met him where he was able to understand. And for him that understanding still speaks to me 50 years later.
@Nick Tamen - I wasn't saying we should hit people with the term 'hypostasis' - but I think we should at least attempt to familiarise people with the concept it refers to.
I’m more than happy to say the fault there is mine in not appreciating Lewis, but it is what it is. And it points to what I’m getting at: One size/one approach doesn’t fit all, and that’s okay.
And what I’m saying is we shouldn’t assume everyone needs to be familiar with the concept. It will help some to be familiar with it, but some won’t miss out on a thing by not being familiar with it. I’m very familiar with it and the difference that familiarity has made for me is negligible—great for trivia night, but pretty much irrelevant in living out my faith.
I can see why this might be confusing. But my definition is a commonly used one, at least in the medical world.
Thank you for that suggestion. I can tell you there were quite a few in the congregation that had tears in their eyes.
'What is not assumed cannot be healed.'
'God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself.'
Pretty cosmic stuff.
It doesn't get bigger than that.
You do believe in the Incarnation, I take it? In which case it makes all the difference to your faith.
Nobody (except @ChastMastr his numero uno fan) is asking you to read Lewis any more than you are asking me to read Calvin's Institutes which are hardly known for their zingy prose and scintillating syntax.
Nobody's asking you to bandy the term 'hypostatic union' about either.
You don't have to know the term or wrestle with convoluted passages from the Fathers, the 'Medieval Schoolmen' or the Reformers to live in the good of what the term denotes.
@Heavenlyannie - I didn't know that. Who said the Ship wasn't educational?
The fact of hypostatic union is crucial, but knowledge of that term is not.
When I said hypostasis is pretty irrelevant to my faith, what I meant was that an understanding of all the philosophical conversations, or even the word “hypostasis,” is irrelevant to my faith on a day-to-day basis. That Christ is fully God and fully human is, of course, pivotal. That I contemplate or understand philosophical explanations of that, not so much.
I was speaking only for myself, and I was doing so simply to make the point that one size doesn’t fit all; we’ll all have our own approaches and our needs, our own things that are helpful and our things that get in the way. One size doesn’t, and needn’t, fit all.
Apologies if I was battering away at points you hadn't made.
The language may change but we all seem to be dealing with the same concepts to a greater or lesser extent.
If a group of theologians came up with an alternative way of expressing the 4th century Creeds they'd still be doing so 'in dialogue' or with reference to them.
There can be many reasons, such as how the Passion event is effective for our Salvation, our understanding of who the Christ is etc but I want to give you a piece of imaginative contemplation
Go to the Garden of Gethsemane, forget the stuff about Christ contemplating the sin of the World, rather focus on his struggle. I would like to suggest that in the words in Matthew 36:39 Here you can see the human nature "let this cup pass" and the divine nature "as you".
* I find intriguing that the greek text does not have the final "will". You can see it in the literal translations in the Greek.
The story of where it came from is too long and involved because it encompsses the observations and experiences and sorting and discarding of reasons for the past 50 years of my life and I don't think you want to read the exegesis of all of that. It's a summary conclusion and if you are interested in its defense I can share with you in PM. A lot of my ideas are insights that came in answer to a question, or from a personal "visionary" experience, and this is a partial explanation.
This particular answer came to me when I was wrestling with the logic of Problem of Evil and the logic of the nature of Free Will. At the time I was also experiencing memories of the "place between" incarnations and I had one particularly vivid experience of sitting in "the writer's room" of my life.
What it means is that I scripted every moment of my life. Like a dramatist, I had a gods-eye view of every major event that I needed to experience, and wrote exactly how I needed to get to those points. I got the agreement of every other person in the drama to play their parts, large and small and walk on, and I agreed to play my part in their dramas as they wrote it for me.
This was the moment where I operated my Free Will. I could make anything happen in the play that I wanted and could get the support of anybody I needed to make it happen in return for my cooperation with them to experience what they wanted.
Here and now is where I am experiencing my Free Will. I'm having the experience that I wrote for myself. I have choices but I can't make anything happen that isn't in my Script.
As much as I might want to win the lottery, if I didn't will that when I wrote the Script, it won't happen. I might have many choices about what to have for supper tonight, but I can't just magically make what I want appear before me or erase it, like a writer can who writes a story. I'm a bowling ball in a trough, a rat in a maze. My choices might be many but they are managed by the constraints of the Script.
AFF