I am quite behind in summarizing these chapters, as I am already in to volume 2 of The Christian Tradition: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom. However, I intend on catching up soon. I find that the little time that I do have to write or reflect on these books is spent reading more of them. I suppose I would rather read them than write about them. But, as I first mentioned, I am doing this for my benefit to help me digest what I am reading. Although I am only hitting some high bullet points in each chapter (there is so much more to Pelikan’s insights than what I am including) it is fun to go back and read my notes on each chapter. Anyway, I should finish up The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition soon. Now, on to chapter 5.
Chapter 5: The Person of the God Man
“The dogma of the Trinity was developed as the church’s response to a question about the identity of Jesus Christ. Was he, or was he not, equal in his divine existence with the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth? The answer of orthodox Christian doctrine to that question was the confession that he was “from the ousia of the Father” and “homoousios with the Father.”
When the creed of Nicea was formalized, the question of Christ was whether or not he was preexistent or not. Now, a few decades later, the theme is not preexistence, but incarnation. Who is Christ in the flesh? “Not the relation of God to God is now at issue, but the relation of God to man in the person of the earthly Christ, who dwelt among men.”
This is an important question on several levels. One such level is baptism. If we are baptized into Christ, are we then baptized into a man or into God? The question of the fleshly Christ as compared to the divine Christ was necessary in order to reconcile the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ – in other words, the church needed to wrap these two apparent natures of Jesus into one person so that the doctrine of baptism was not into a creature, but a creator (deity).
Another level was the traditional understanding of the absoluteness and impassibility of the divine nature. The church had already decided that Christ was divine (the question of preexistence at Nicea answered this dilemma), but if Christ is also human, then the fact that he has emotion and pain (weeping, the trial and the cross, etc.) is one that has to be seriously dealt with. “This attribute of being ancient and unchangeable could not be set aside even in the incarnation. Although he was said to suffer in the flesh, impassibility continued to be characteristic of him insofar as he was God. He was incapable of suffering but took on a flesh that could suffer, so that the suffering of his flesh could be said to be his own. But then the question was: ‘In what sense does not [the impassible Logos] himself suffer?’ Cyril replied that it was ‘by suffering in his own flesh, but not in the nature of his deity,’ in a manner that transcended all reason and all language.”
Keeping Christ as a single-minded, single-being (in regards to incarnation) and not schizophrenic was the danger incurred by this line of questioning. In other words, it was very easy for some to say that at some time Jesus acted only in his divinity and at other times he acted only in his humanity – a schizophrenic Christ. It was very important for the church to decide how Jesus was unified in natures (divine and human) yet keeping those natures distinct. Christ had to be both divine and human at the same time and at all times.
One other dilemma the church faced in dealing with Christology was that of worship. “Was the humanity of the Logos, too, the object of worship?” Certainly “anthropolatry” could not be accepted – so how would the church again, decide how Jesus was to be worshiped. The church could not say that they were worshipping only the divinity of Jesus for that is not who he is in whole and the church could not be allowed to separate the natures (for he would cease to be Jesus the Christ if they did so). “Any worship of the incarnate one that separated his humanity from his divinity would be equivalent to replacing the divine Triad by a tetrad of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the man Jesus.”
Of special note in this discussion is the name given to Mary, the mother of Jesus – theotokos, God-bearer. “Mary had served as proof for the reality of the humanity of Jesus: he had truly been born of a human mother and therefore was a man.”
“Athanasius himself – found in this title (theotokos) an apt formula for their belief that in the incarnation deity and humanity were united so closely that, by what came to be known as ‘the communication of properties,’ neither birth nor crucifixion nor salvation could be attributed to one nature without the other.”
Much of what is written above was considered presuppositions of Christology. Because Christ was already agreed upon to be God, the church presupposed that he was absolute (ancient – has always been), impassible (unchanging and unaffected by external forces), Creator and Lord, of the same essence as the Father and Spirit, etc. However, despite these presuppositions, many questions about his humanity created big dilemmas regarding his divinity. What about the crucifixion – did God die on the cross? Is that acceptable? Did God need to be strengthened by angels in the garden? Is that acceptable? So on, and so on.
The starting point for the church was definitely the divine Scriptures. Typically, for Christological purpose, John 1:14 was where everyone began. But, so many places in the Gospels were named as causing problems with various doctrines. For instance, Nestorius had problems with Jesus’ prophecy, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Nestorius called him “double” because Jesus asserted himself as a temple who could be destroyed but also a God that could raise up. Therefore a distinction existed in the functions or abilities of Jesus the divine and Jesus the human. He referred to the temple of his body in the third person and the Logos who raises up in the first. This is but one example of the various dilemmas that the church faced and felt obliged to answer.
So where does that leave us regarding an answer to the question of the divine-human Jesus? The church agreed that there are in fact two natures in Christ. These natures made up the one person – Jesus. There was not a fusion between the natures, but they remained distinct. The human was assumed by the divine and the divine by the human. Leo I had a great deal in articulating the dogma of the two natures in his Tome. “A passible humanity was joined to an impassible divinity, so that Christ would ‘from one element be capable of dying, and from the other be incapable.’ This was the meaning of the stories in the Gospels, all of which, both the evidences of kenosis and the proofs of continuing divine power, had to be accounted for in a Christological doctrine: both the lowliness of the swaddling clothes and the glory of the angels’ song; both the vulnerability to Herod and the adoration of the Magi; both ‘being pierced with nails and opening the gates of Paradise to the faith of the thief’ on the cross.” “Therefore ‘each “form” does that acts which are appropriate to it, in communion with the other, the Logos, that is, performing what is appropriate to it, and the flesh carrying out what is appropriate to the flesh.”
The two councils that contributed to the Christological confession were the Council of Ephesus in 431(which affirmed Nicea as not only Trinitarian but also Christological) and the Council at Chalcedon in 451. I’ll end with the Chalcedonian formula which has been fundamental to Christology in the western, eastern and Syriac traditions of the church (although following its formation, many debates were still being held regarding its validity – about 20 more pages were given to this in chapter 5, but I don’t really want to delve into it. Suffice it to say, this creed sums up orthodox Christology for the most part for all orthodox churches). It reads:
“Following therefore the holy fathers, we confess one and the same our Lord Jesus Christ, and we all teach harmoniously [that he is] the same perfect in godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the same of a reasonable soul and body; homoousios with the Father in godhead, and the same homoousios with us in manhood, like us in all things except sin; begotten before ages of the Father in godhead; the same in the last days for us and for our salvation [born] of Mary the Virgin Theotokos in manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, unique; acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation – the difference of the natures being by no means taken away because of the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved, and [each] combining in one person and hypostasis – not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Logos, Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets of old and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us about him, and the symbol of the fathers has handed down to us.”
